5/30/2021
Since
I posted my first book review on November 13, 2012 (an Amazon review
of The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment
in Ancient Greece by Bernard
Frischer), I've been writing online book reviews ever since, As of today,1,127
reviews to be exact. And let me tell you, posting all those reviews
and having avid readers from around the globe, from England, India, Canada and the US to Iran, South Africa, Australia and Argentina read and comment on
my reviews has been exhilarating.
Of course, writing book reviews is all about writing about a particular book. Sure, I frequently toss in my own reflections but whatever I write uses the book under review as the benchmark.
So, in the spirit of keeping things fresh, I'm starting this journal. Or, should I say novel? Since here's the thing: I'll be leaning on my own experience but I don't want to be bound by my past, exactly the reason I'm writing this journal as Cole Robinhood. Catchy name, eh? As far as I can determine, nobody on the globe has the name Cole Robinhood on their birth certificate.
Therefore,
in the spirit of creativity and fiction, in the spirit of allowing my imagination free rein, I'll be making up a lot of this as I go.
5/31/2021
Personal reflection: much of the four stages of my life revolved around society attempting to impose its regimentation. Fortunately, my first five years were spent in isolation out in the woods. Then came the buzzsaw of 1950s American culture, compliments of television, school and sports. Too bad I didn't know myself well enough to steer clear of watching television and participating in team sports. As they say, live and learn.
At age nineteen, a stroke of good fortune: as a college freshman, I discovered the worlds of philosophy. I subsequently added literature, classical music and the arts. But then the not so good fortune: American work world despises anything touching on things like philosophy and the arts. However, to make a living I had to submit to the demands of work world. To compound the difficulty, in my twenties and thirties I didn't have any special talent or credentials, which left me at the mercy of employers. This translated into (gulp) working as a commercial casualty underwriter for the insurance companies.
At age thirty-nine, prime time of mid-life crisis, I knew I had to make a
break (calling it a jailbreak wouldn't necessarily be an exaggeration).
Through twenty years of voracious reading and a particular personal dynamism,
I did develop special talents permitting me to enter the publishing
industry. This I
did and reaped the rewards of success for twenty-seven years. I gave a short speech at my retirement luncheon thanking everyone and noting I have all positive memories revolving around my time in publishing (quite different than those awful years in insurance. Makes me sick just thinking of all that dreadful nastiness).
Then in retirement, age sixty-six, I came fully into my own. As Olga Tokarczuk notes when speaking of Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet, “old age is actually the only time in life when we can finally be ourselves, without worrying about the demands of others or conforming to the social norms that we have been constantly instructed to follow.” How true! The glory of being in a position to finally be ourselves! For me, a kind of paradise.
6/1/2021
According to the great philosopher/mathematician/poet Jacob Bronowski, as modern peoples, we're now living the myth of creativity as opposed to the many traditional societies living the myth of creation.
This
statement has always resonated with me since I have engaged in a sting of creative arts: playing renaissance music, playing a mrdanga drum in
kirtans and drum circles, performing spoken word theater, performing
physical theater (living sculpture mime, mask acting, commedia
dell'artre, street theater), improvisational dancing and, of course,
writing, first writing prose poems, novels, line poetry and then book
reviews (in many ways, writing book reviews is my true calling as an
artist). The key element is creativity, to bring something new, something uplifting into the world.
Speaking of book reviewing, this from my review of On Writing by Stephen King:
"When
I first began writing book reviews, here's what I did: I wrote out
great book reviews written by such authors as John Updike, Michiko
Kakutani and James Wood, wrote them out word for word just to get the
feel for what it's like to write a great review. I also used a
digital device to record their reviews and I listened while taking my
walks. After a few months, I recorded my own book reviews,
alternating with the great writers' reviews until I was satisfied
with my writing - my rhythm, vocabulary, use of examples and
metaphor.
Fortunately, I have two abilities that help greatly as a book reviewer: 1) I can easily become absorbed in a book, especially a novel, really absorbed, as if I'm living heart and mind in the unfolding story, and 2) both my short-term and long-term memory are excellent for fiction. I can remember the details of the novels I've read 50 years ago as if I read them yesterday, an ability that comes in mighty handy when writing reviews."
However, no matter what form the art takes, anything from playing trumpet, acting Shakespeare, painting portraits to writing novels or avant-garde poetry, one thing is a MUST: to be on fire, to be passionate about what one's doing, to be dedicated to every step in the process to make sure what is being created is the best possible work one is capable.
What does Cole Robinhood have to say about all of this? I checked in with Cole (in many ways, he's my second self – keep in mind this journal is a novel right from the first page) and good news: Cole agrees entirely! Hey, wait a minute. Since this is The Journal of Cole Robinhood, which one of us is writing these words?
6/2/2021
Cole Robinhood - Life #1: After studying philosophy in college, Cole Robinhood made his way to India where he studied yoga and meditation with a master. After sufficient training, the master instructed Cole to do a ten year solitary retreat, practicing a physically demanding form of yogic meditation where one can remain in a state of blissful awareness for hours at a time.
Cole Robinhood - Life #2: After studying philosophy in college, Cole Robinhood met a beautiful Swiss lass visiting the US who happened to be a serious student of philosophy, a graduate student in a Swiss university. They fell in deeply in love, married and moved back to Basil, Switzerland where the lass, Lauriane by name, continued her study of philosophy (she was from a family with money) while Cole dedicated himself to writing about art and literature.
Cole Robinhood - Life #3: After studying philosophy in college, Cole Robinhood learned the tricks of the stock market. He made a quick fortune, moved to California and dedicated himself to the sport of surfing.
All three Cole Robinhood lives above, especially two and three, have money as the foundation; in other words, Cole has the good fortune to be freed up from chasing a paycheck. Turns out, there's so much truth in what Marx said: most people are alienated from the end of production, they don't enjoy their job or "career" but simply show up every day for the paycheck.
* * * *
"Ultimately, you have to play to your strengths." This quote from novelist Dennis Lehane is so true but some people, Cole Robinhood, case in point, have to learn the hard way. Darn! I so admire artists, musicians and writers who discover their true artistic calling at a young age. When did Cole Robinhood discover his true artistic calling to be a book reviewer? At the tender age of sixty-three. Sixty-three! Cole made a commitment to keep himself in good health so he can enjoy a long, fruitful career as a book reviewer. Goal: to live to a healthy one hundred six, which translates into being a book reviewer for forty-three years, the number of years many women and men spend on their one artistic strength. Cole reflects: "I guess I'm just a late bloomer."
"Hey, Cole, how about a novel?" "This journal is it, buddy. As close to a novel as I'll get."
6/3/2021
"I wanted to live among books." So says Alberto Manguel, one of our greatest living booklovers. Taking a look at Cole's three lives, we can see he'll be surrounded by books as he writes about art and literature. As for his other two lives, not so much. As for me, I always, always wanted to live among books ever since I fell in love with philosophy, art and literature in college. Prior to college, I spent my days outside, swimming, diving, surfing, running, biking, walking and playing other sports. I read books but nearly always when assigned in school.
Cole started his avid reading as a kid - adventure stories, the classics and then at age thirteen, the magic age for many kids who become serious readers (and even writers) of science fiction, he fell in love with the tales of Philip K. Dick - explosive imagination squared!
6/4/2021
The difference between Cole and myself leads to reflections on life and wisdom. Like many people, I'm not overly thrilled with all the garbage my society force-fed me when I was young, nor am I pleased with my younger self's level of intense stupidity. One ancient myth I continually think about: Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, born fully formed. Oh, to be like Minerva, to start off in life with wisdom! I know, I know...we human are not nearly so fortunately - we must earn wisdom through years of absorbing life's hard knocks, years of living through the consequences of lacking wisdom (the polite way of putting it), that is, being dunces, boobs, dummies, not knowing ourselves or the rhythms of nature, human nature included.
"If I only knew then what I know now." How many people have voiced this wish? Round to the nearest billion. Of course, the key is learning from our many mistakes. I recall Schopenhauer saying individuals who are society's artists, writers and philosophers tend to have a terrible young adulthood, making mistake after mistake since they truly come into themselves only when they are older adults, sometimes much older adults. Such individuals, Schopenhauer goes on, are simply not equipped to effectively handle the rough hurly-burly, the conniving, the wheeling and dealing and backstabbing so all-pervasive in the world of commerce and business. This was exactly the case with me, for sure. Reading this section of Schopenhauer's essay had me not only nodding my head but crying.
* * * *
James Wood judges a book review as a legitimate literary form, on the same level with an essay, short-story or poem. I agree - and I've conveyed this to a number of younger writers dedicated to writing book reviews.
Over the years I've expanded the ways I go about writing a book review, moving out from the traditional New York Times format to reviews where I'll list and highlight things like themes, individual characters, specific aspects of a story - a most effective way to convey as much information as possible within about 1000 words.
Tangential observation: many people nowadays make a decision to see a film based more on the movie trailer than on what a movie critic might have to say. Recognizing this dynamic, when reviewing a novel, I attempt to create a combination book review/trailer thereby providing a reader with a more colorful portrayal of the novel. Is this book worth my time to read? This is the key question I attempt to answer when I write such a review.
6/5/2021
The great novelist Henry James much preferred individual book reviews chock-full of examples and quotes rather than literary theory regardless of the theoretical slant. This is my preference also.
I recall scanning shelves and shelves of books of literary theory when at Powell's Books in downtown Portland. I looked through dozens of volumes written by such as Roland Barthes, Terry Eagleton and Northrop Frye. But, darn, I couldn't find even one book that interested me. I had to admit any theorizing or philosophizing about literature holds zero appeal for me.
When it comes to novels and short stories, what I enjoy and find most helpful are well-written, insightful book reviews. I've read many thousands of book reviews. Among my favorite writers of book reviews - Michiko Kakutani, Parul Sehgal, Edmund White, James Wood, Jim Shepard and several excellent reviewers on Goodreads. Additionally, a nod to a list of other authors of book reviewers I've enjoyed for a special reason: Thomas M. Disch and John Clute (Science Fiction) Ariel Dorfman and Alan Josephs (Latin American literature), Orville Prescott (the first full-time book reviewer for the New York Times), Christopher Buckley (humor) and Carlin Romano (book reviewer for the Philadelphia Inquirer back in the 1980s and 1990s - author of the first book reviews I fell in love with).
6/6/2021
Cole Robinhood - Life #1 continued: following his ten year silent meditation retreat, Cole walks down to the village to check in with his master. The master can see Cole has benefited tremendously from his many years in silence and solitude. Such blossoming in the life of a yogi is something to behold. The master gives Cole his next sadhana practice: ten more years in silence and solitude, deepening meditation, awakening even more bliss, continuing to make yoga, the union with the divine, the firm, unshakable ground of his life. Cole, now age thirty-three, walks back to his cave.
6/7/2021
My first published work ever - a prose poem or microfiction I wrote at age 38 -
THE BACON SLICER
While watching a machine that slices bacon at the farmer's market, a man with a large family and many personal interests was struck with a great idea. That evening he went down to his basement and spent all night constructing a steel apparatus four feet high and seven feet long. The next morning, when his creation was finished, he pressed himself up against the back of it and turned it on; he proceeded to go through the contraption and come out in thin strips just like bacon.
He - all seven slivers of him, that is - wobbled up the stairs to the kitchen where he was able to hug his wife and five children simultaneously and still have one sliver left over. His wife was perplexed, but his youngest daughter looked up at him with a bright smile and said, "Daddy, you're so wonderful."
6/8/2021
Cole Robinhood - Life #2, Continued: Cole married Swiss lass Lauriane at age twenty-three. He's now age twenty-six and a young author of a best selling children's book about a man, Mr. Swiss, who visits the Kunstmuseum Basel to view all the fine art. Meanwhile, Lauriane not only continues her study of philosophy but teaches philosophy part-time at the local university in Basel. The couple now have a baby girl - Zoé.
* * * *
As a dedicated book reviewer, something Parul Sehgal said strikes home. Parul told an interviewer she sees Hilton Als as the gold standard for a critic since he doesn't write about anything that doesn't matter to him.
I took this statement to heart - unless I'm moved by a book, unless what the author says really matters to me, I am simply not going to spend the time and effort writing a review of that book. And when I do write the review, I will zero in on what matters to me. I might have to write the review in a "highlighted themes" format to get to what matters to me but if that's what it takes, that's what I'll do.
6/9/2021
What does it mean to be a Goodreads reviewer?
Being a Goodreads reviewer does have its advantages. Unlike a reviewer like Michiko Kakutani, reviewer for the New York Times, who,
in effect, was obliged to finish reading and writing a review of a book
she hated (I can picture Michiko fuming as she turned the pages of The Kindly Ones, Mortals
and several other novels), if I find the book I'm
reading distasteful, I nearly always move on to another book.
Likewise,
Parul Sehgal told an interviewer she sometimes struggles through the number of
pages she sets as the day's goal. Parul is motivated to finish the required amount, knowing she'll reward herself in some way,
like a piece of chocolate.
I could never bribe myself to read like that. For me, the reading itself is the reward. When reading ceases to be pleasurable, I know it's time to stop.
Also, critically important: I'm not on anybody else's schedule nor do I have to abide by anybody else's rules and word count. Of course, I'm not being paid nor do I have the advantage of a professional editor. But that's life - there are always trade-offs.
6/11/2021
What common ground do I share with Cole Robinhood? Beyond doubt, a LOVE of reading books and writing about books.
Here's one of my very first reviews of a novel I can relate to (understatement) because I was subjected to the crush of office work for eighteen years as a young man -
THE BIG CLOCK by Kenneth Fearing
Oh, yes, how the clock still goes on humming. Kenneth Fearing heard
its mechanical, deadly heartbeat, saw its two giant claws scrapping
around and around the numerals – twelve on top, six on bottom, nine on
the right and three on the left, back in the 1940s when he wrote his
novel, The Big Clock – a tale about the work-a-day world filled
with people willing to conform, no matter what the price: high blood
pressure, cerebral hemorrhages, ulcers eating out the lining of their
stomach, moral decay eating out their soul. As Fearing’s main character
George Stroud says about the clock: “It would be easier and simpler to
get squashed, stripping its gears than to be crushed helping it along.”
One
of my all-time favorites, Kenneth Fearing’s classic noir/thriller
published in 1946 is not only a caustic commentary on American business
but a story holding the reader in suspense with a keen desire to keep
turning the pages to find out what happens next right up to the last
sentence. More specifically, the novel features the following:
Multiple Narrator/Rotating First-Person
Not
only is the story told from the point of view of George Stroud, a
sharp-looking, nimble-minded publishing executive/husband/father, but
from the point of view of six other men and women – and with each
rotation of first-person narrator the story picks up serious momentum
and drives toward its conclusion. Considering how effective multiple
narrators can be in the hands of an accomplished writer, it’s surprising
this literary technique isn’t employed more frequently.
Femme Fatale
What’s classic hardboiled noir without a femme fatale? There’s Vivian Sternwood in Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Brigid O'Shaughnessy in Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, Phyllis Dietrichson in Cain’s Double Indemnity -- and, yes, of course, Pauline Delos in The Big Clock.
Here’s George Stroud’s first impressions when meeting Pauline at a posh
uptown Manhattan party: “She was tall, ice-blonde, and splendid. The
eye saw nothing but innocence, to the instincts she was undiluted sex,
the brain said here was a perfect hell.” Incidentally, here are the
first impressions of a similar sharp-looking, nimble-minded married man
on meeting femme fatale Caroline Crowley at a similar posh uptown
Manhattan party in Colin Harrison’s 1996 thriller, Manhattan Nocturne:
“She may well have been the most beautiful woman in the room. . . . her
face was no less beautiful as it approached, but I could see a certain
determination in her features.” Goodness, some things never change.
The Power of Myth
Robert
Bly speaks of a major character from ancient Norse mythology: the
giant: the giant is a being we can not only view as huge, cannibalistic,
mean, violent and heavy-footed, but also as psychic energy from our
shadow side that can, when we become enraged, take possession of us.
Perhaps, on some level, the author was aware of this mythology when
writing how business tycoon Earl Janoth reacts with extreme violence
after Pauline makes accusations about his homosexual relations with
Earl’s life-long friend/business colleague: “It wasn’t me, any more. It
was some giant a hundred feet tall, moving me around, manipulating my
hands and arms and even my voice. He straightened my legs, and I found
myself standing.“
Greenwich Village Artist
George Stroud
collects the paintings of Louise Patterson. As a point of contrast to
the men and women droning their life away in an office, Louise is a
complete eccentric who hates anything smelling of the business world.
Since events pull her into the story, she interacts with Stroud and his
colleagues. Here is a snatch of dialogue where she lambasts one of the
mousy white-collar types, “What the hell do you mean by giving my own
picture some fancy title I never thought of at all? How do you dare, you
horrible little worm, how do you dare to throw your idiocy all over my
work?” The author gives Louise Patterson a turn as one of the
first-person narrators -- a real treat for readers.
The Art of the Novel
Kenneth Fearing was a poet as well as a novelist. Although The Big Clock
is a scathing depiction of the world of business, it is also a work of
first-rate literature: all of the characters are complex and developed.
There are no easy answers given; rather, Fearing’s poetic vision prompts
us to reflect deeply on the challenges we face living in a modern,
urbanized, highly standardized, clock-driven world.
A New York Review Books (NYRB) Classic,
its two hundred pages, can be read in a few days -- highly, highly
recommended.
6/12/2021
Some people say they lack the concentration to listen to audio books. Not me - once I click into listening to a good audio book, I can listen for hours and hours at a time. Audio books are cool - it's as if a listener is given yet again another dimension of the book. A good narrator can make a huge difference.
Occasionally I get in a funk where audio books simply don't grab me, as the case this past week. My remedy: start listening to Three Trapped Tigers by G. Cabrera Infante, one of the most exuberant novels ever written. And the narrator is excellent.
6/14/2021
In his fifteenth year of solitary, silent retreat as a yogi, Cole Robinhood reached enlightenment. He dedicated the remainder of his life to the Goddess of love, beauty and bliss.
6/15/2021
Colin Harrison's 1993 Bodies Electric shares much in common with Kenneth Fearing's 1946 The Big Clock - both novels are set in New York City, both novels spotlight drama within a large publishing corporation, both feature a narrator who is a thirtysomething supersharp executive in emotional crisis, both also feature a stunning young female beauty (hardly a surprise!) and both make a powerful statement on the society and culture of their time. Last but hardly least, both novels have made a great impression on me - I've read the books and listened to the audio books multiple times. Here's my review -
BODIES ELECTRIC by Colin Harrison
"My name is Jack Whitman and I should never have had the first thing to do with her."
- Colin Harrison, Bodies Electric
Colin
Harrison's novel is not only a thriller but a study in sociology,
psychology and cross cultural collisions, a novel of hard-boiled
language and fast-paced action. As by way of example, I'll link my comments to several
quotes from the opening pages:
Thriller - "My name is Jack
Whitman and I should never have had the first thing to do with her - not
with what was happening at the Corporation at the time. But I'm as weak
hearted for love and greedy for power as the next guy, maybe more so.
And I was crazy for the sex - of course that was part of it." Jack
Whitman is the first-person narrator and this is how the novel opens, an
opening Raymond Chandler and his fictional private-eye Phillip Marlow
would appreciate.
Sociology - "And it was equally clear that if
the woman had been dressed in a pair of tight jeans and cheap red pumps,
she might be a New York-born Puerto Rican whore addicted to
self-destruction, carrying a purse filed with rubbers and wrinkled bills
and selling herself to all comers at the entrance to the Lincoln
Tunnel, a woman who, despite providence's gift of fine bones and large,
deep eyes, was forced to love life faster and harder than was ever
meant." The author has Jack Whitman make pointed, telling and sometimes
scathing observations about society on nearly every page.
Psychology
- "Morrison, second in command in the Corporation, the man everyone
feared . . . . Morrison had lost half a leg and most of a hand as a Navy
SEAL in Vietnam, having survived, he had the confidence of five men.
Combat had shown him that we are all merely walking bags of meat, and
once a man has decided that, all manner of brilliant scheming becomes
possible." Indeed, Harrison's novel is a study in corporate psychology.
One could argue Bodies Electric should be required reading for anybody contemplating a career in the business world, particularly the American business world.
Cross-Cultural
Collisions - "What is certain is that as Liz waited for the light, a
silver BMW with tinted windows . . . pulled over and someone poked the
short metal barrel of a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol over the
electric window and started shooting. . . . Liz was right in the way of
it." Liz was Jack Whitman's beautiful young pregnant wife and both Liz
and her seven month old daughter in the womb were killed by a Harlem
gang's bullets. New York City aka the Big Apple as the American melting
pot on speed. Harrison loves the city (and he said so directly in an
interview) and captures NYC's hyper-energizing hum.
The
characters play for high stakes, as well they should, since they are
each caught in an emotionally-charged net of circumstances and faced
with life and death choices. Regarding our main character, Jack Whitman -
he sees the twenty-something cinnamon-skinned beauty with her little
four-year-old girl on the subway in two ways: as Madonna and Child and
as an exotic sexually-charged object of desire.
In the aftermath
of his tragic loss, the magnetic pull is too powerful to resist (one
way to think of Whitman's attraction is in terms of Carl Jung's
archetype, the "anima"). Whitman hands her his business card and offers
help, which turns out to be the first step in a series of events
swirling himself and others in unexpected and sometimes dark, violent
directions. For my money, Bodies Electric is a modern classic.
---------
6/17/2021
Here's a review I'm especially proud of since James Wood told me he LOVES it!
JR by William Gaddis
This 700+ page novel by William Gaddis (1922-1998) is a splendid
work of literature. And in case you’re wondering about the title, JR is
the name of one of the main characters, a grungy 12-year old boy who
happens to be a financial genius working his money-magic from a public
telephone booth in a hallway at his school. An alternate meaning of the
two huge letters on the book’s cover could be ‘Jabbering Ruck’, since
the novel is mostly dialogue and, make no mistake, every single person –
down-on-their-luck men, flower-loving women, corporate business-types,
school administrators, ticket takers, school kids, old ladies – do not
possess the patience or capacity to hear one another out. Nearly every
sentence in the entire novel is cut off before the sentence is
completed. And, equally telling about American culture, everybody stops
talking mid-sentence to answer the phone. Interruption as a mode of
communication.
There is a quote cited in the middle of the novel:
‘That a work of art has a beginning, middle and end, life is all
middle.’ Curiously, from the very first page to the last page, I had the
distinct feeling I was in the middle of Gaddis’s novel, and for good
reason: there are no chapter breaks nor scene demarcations, the dialogue
has no character attributions, that is, there are no he said, she said,
Tom said, Amy said. Dialogue and descriptions, action and
interruptions, connections and misconnection, intimacies and alienation
are part of one unending literary gush – novel reading as three weeks of
ultimate extreme rafting down white water rapids. Do they pass out
awards for finishing JR? They should.
And, man o’ man, what a
novel: grand in scope, sweeping social commentary, satire, dark humor
(yes, be prepared to laugh-out-loud a few times on every page) as Gaddis
writes about multiple aspects of the American dream and American
nightmare and everything in between – business, commerce, education,,
government, sex, love, marriage, divorce, vision, literature, art,
music, to name just a dozen – and with some of the most memorable
characters you will ever encounter. However, I can see where Jonathan
Franzen and other literary types judge JR a difficult book. But, from my
own experience, once you follow Gaddis’s pace and rhythm, the language
is quite engaging and not at all overwhelming. Here is a snatch of
dialogue where an old aunt explains some family history to a visiting
lawyer:
“Well, Father was just sixteen years old. As I say, Ira
Cobb owned him some money. It was for work that Father had done,
probably repairing some farm machinery. Father was always good with his
hands. And then this problem came up over money, instead of paying
Father Ira gave him an old violin and he took it down to the barn to try
to learn to play it. Well his father heard it and went right down, and
broke the violin over Father’s head. We were a Quaker family, after all,
where you just didn’t do things that didn’t pay.”
How about that
for insight into the culture? A young boy wants to play violin instead
of fixing farm machinery or dealing in money. Well, whack! . . . take
that kid. Get back to work so you can hand me some money! Bulls-eye, Mr.
Gaddis. And heaven help those adults who don't grow out of wanting to
play music or paint pictures or write books. Darn. . . why don't they
really grow up and get a real job and do something useful so they can
make some serious money?
One of my favorite characters is
Whiteback, the school principal, who speaks pure Buffoon-ese. My guess
is Gaddiss had great fun including Whiteback. I love the fact Whiteback
displays his Horatio Alger award and 56 honorary degrees on his wall.
56! Here is Whiteback meeting with Dan, one of the school testers, and a
Major Hyde, a corporate-military type pushing his company’s agenda on
the school. At one point in the conversation, Whiteback pontificates on
the justification of monies being given his school for standardized
testing:
“Right, Dan, the norm in each case supporting or we
might say being supported, substantiated that is to say, by an overall
norm, so that in other words in terms of the testing the norm comes out
as the norm, or we have no norm to test against, right? So that
presented in these terms the equipment can be shown to justify itself in
budgetary terms that is to say, would you agree, Major?
--- I’ll say
one thing Dan, if you can present it at the budget meeting the way
Whiteback’s just presented it here no one will dare to argue with you . .
. “
What a scream. No joke, no one will argue. How do you argue
with blustering sophistic double-speak?! Language as an administrate
cover-up. Ironically, JR was published during the Watergate era.
In
one scene we have Jack Gibbs making his entrance into a ramshackle,
crumbling apartment, bottle in hand, to join his buddy. Through Gibbs's
rant, Gaddis gives us the myth of the American writer/artist – the
surly, gruff, liquor-fueled, poetic, perceptive outsider shooting holes
through all the hypocrisy, shallowness, stupidity, self-righteousness
and insensitivity of modern American life. It is as if the spirits of
Henry Miller, Jackson Pollock, Charles Bukowski and other American
tough-guy writers and artists loom over Gibb’s shoulder; matter of fact,
one could take the words of Gibb’s rant and easily transpose them into a
number of Bukowski-style poems. My sense is Gaddis also sees these
looming spirits and knows the downside of the myth. What real freedom is
there when one is tied to the scotch bottle and crusty, hard-boiled
cynicism? But, then again, perhaps Gaddis detects some keen wisdom in a
crusty cynicism, after all, his novel depicts how modern American
cultural fuels one-dimensionality and a constriction of choice, where
people are forced to live in a world constantly bombarded by noise,
tawdriness, commercialism, land destruction, cesspools and intrusive
gadgets.
JR is a challenging book, but a book well worth the
effort. And, even if they don’t give you an award for finishing, at
least you can tell your friends you made it to the end.
6/22/2021
One of my favorite novels, one I read three times over the course of 25 years. My review:
HIGH ART by Rubem Fonseca
Fantástico! Brazilian author Rubem Fonseca's High Art is among the greatest of Latin American boom novels. I’m not alone in my praise – in his glowing New York Times
book review, Mario Vargas Llosa judged the author’s work a stunning
accomplishment, a combination of amusing detective novel and an elegant
literary experiment of the topmost aesthetic and intellectual order.
A fictional fiesta. Certainly one of the high arts of High Art
is the art of breathtaking storytelling. To attempt a synopsis would be
ridiculous as there are too many colorful stylistic spirals and as many
unexpected curves and curls as there are feathers on a Hyacinth Macaw
or Toco Toucan. Rather, I'd like to share my excitement for this book
that I've read three times and counting by noting a number of
captivating characters and dazzling details:
Mandrake the
lawyer: The novel’s first-person narrator goes by the cartoonish name of
Mandrake. We can judge such a name as a parody of pulp detective
fiction. He’s a criminal lawyer in Rio and is teamed up with a
hardworking Jew by the name of Wexler. All the many references to
Wexler’s Jewishness can also be seen as a parody, this time of social
stereotyping. Mandrake doesn’t work nearly as hard as Wexler when it
comes to defending clients because he’s continually sidetracked by
investigating the truth behind the crimes he’s drawn into.
Mandrake
the irresistible playboy: Actually, Mandrake has to deal with another
major distraction: beautiful women. His leading girlfriend at the moment
is tall, thin, ravishing Ada with her long legs and neck slightly
curved forward. Ada would like nothing more than to wed Mandrake and
start a family. Good luck, dear lady! Although you are in the lead,
there are at least two or three or four (I lost count!) other
attractive, vivacious sexpots who keep knocking on the playboy's door.
Mandrake,
the eccentric: How eccentrically oddball? One morning our Sherlock
Holmes wannabe accompanies two real detectives at the apartment of a
rich socialite. They find the young lady’s bloated corpse on her bed,
having been strangled sometime the previous evening. And where is
Mandrake’s attention? Why, he’s making remarks about the fashionable
décor, all the furniture, paintings, lamps and carpets speaking to an
owner bathing in luxury. And while the head detective is busy gathering
evidence, Mandrake scrutinizes the magazine covers on the coffee table: Amiga, Status, Donald Duck and then pleads with the other detective to let him feed the exotic tropical fish in the aquarium lest they go belly up.
Camilo
Fuentes: An enormous, powerful Bolivian from Indian stock, a man who
doesn’t mess around when it comes to conducting his business trafficking
drugs for gangsters and seeking out targets to be murdered. Camilo
especially hates Brazilians since they have always looked down on him as
a Bolivian and as an Indian, as someone who is poor and badly dressed,
but most of all, he despises Brazilians because, in his eyes, they are
all disgusting dogs.
Hermes: Specialist in Persev, a code
word for a set of tactics and skills of knife handling and knife
combat. In the aftermath of being stabbed himself, Mandrake seeks out
Hermes, a former client who owes him one since the Rio lawyer got the
knife expert off a murder charge. Mandrake takes his combat lessons to
heart and from this point forward wears a leather shoulder strap for his
new Randall. Rubem Fonseca delves into the details on what it means to
make a knife an extension of your very arm. "Hermes reached out his hand
and picked up the knife. A friend of mine raises birds. I once saw him
stick his hand in a cage and grasp a bird to transfer him to another
cage. This was the way Hermes held the Randall, as it were alive,
capable of escaping from his hand."
Iron Nose: Nickname for the
black dwarf José Zakkai, kingpin of a gangster mob, a man keen on
accumulating and wielding power. When asked his specialty, Zakki
answered: “Survival. When I was born my mother took one look at my hands
and fainted. I had webbing between my fingers. . . But here I am, a
first-class chatterbox, though I still haven’t grown much.” Even
hardened gangsters and murderers realize Iron Nose is not a man to laugh
at (although his cover is working as a clown for a circus) – you just
might be forced to eat huge hard-shelled cockroaches if you don’t give
Nose the information he wants, fast.
Rafael: Knife fighter and
professional killer, a students of the Professor (Hermes) whose hobby is
the cultivation of roses. “I have more than a hundred and fifty
different species. My mother had the prettiest roses I’ve ever seen, to
this day. And I think they’re the most sublime flower of all.”
Ricardo
Mitry and Lima Predo: both men wealthy, completely self-centered, cruel
and vicious – in the grand tradition of Latin American
multigenerational tales, we are even treated to the particulars of their
family genealogy. During one memorable party at his apartment, Mitry
brings out a silver tray containing several small mirrors with fine
lines of white powder along with a crystal vial filled with pills of
every color. In attendance are two young glamorous prostitutes, Titi and
Tata, well dressed, well tanned and absolutely scrumptious. During a
dance in the nude, Mitry pinches Tata’s ass and proclaims to all: “The
newest dream of the powerful – that flesh should have the durability of
synthetic rubber.”
Pop Culture: One hip, shapely Rio goddess
wears a shirt that says: COCA-COLA – THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES, another
upper class call girl sports one reading: I (big read heart) NEW YORK.
There’s references galore to popular movies, both old time black and
white and current ones playing in living color: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Vincent Price in The House of Usher, the pornographic Orgy of the Perverts.
Radio programs, television shows, videocassettes, glossy magazines,
sensationalist newspapers - as we turn the pages, no mistaking the fact
we are in hopped-up, with-it, trendy Rio.
High Culture: Not only
a plethora of general historical and literary allusions but more
specifically, Ajax, Zeus, Achilles are among the copious references to
all things Greek: Greek mythology, Greek history, even Greek philosophy.
As Mario Vargas Llosa acknowledged in his review, such mentions and
citations adds a certain dignity and aesthetic dimension to Rubem
Fonseca’s novel.
High Art: As in deft, nimble style, as in a
story jam-packed with such flamboyant characters and absorbing scenes,
the book will almost hop out of your hands to dance the samba. Is there
any question about how I can’t recommend High Art highly enough?
----------
6/26/2021
I'm including book reviews in this journal since my creative energies have been dedicated to writing reviews these past 8+ years. I posted reviews for all 22 of Zoran Živkovic's novels. Among my favorites:
THE LIBRARY by Zoran Živković
The Library - Zoran Živković's short novel is a tour de force
of imagination, a delight most especially for readers, like myself, for
whom libraries hold a special place in the heart.
Zoran
Živkovic is no stranger to libraries. The Serbian man of letters has
spent a lifetime sifting through stacks of books in his capacity as
academic, philologist, essayist, researcher, publisher, translator and
connoisseur of science fiction. His experience served him well when it
came time to write these highly original tales.
The Library
- a series of six encounters with libraries, all told in intimate first
person by an unnamed narrator. As to the ways in which these six
captivating, whimsical, occasionally beguiling yarns interlink is left
entirely up to you, the reader.
Here they are. In the spirit of sharing my enthusiasm for the magic of The Library, I'll offer a quick snip on five and say a bit more on the one library that most tickled my fancy:
Virtual Library
- Sitting at his computer, reading through his junk email, the narrator
is intrigued by one email that announced: VIRTUAL LIBRARY with the
slogan "We have everything!" Rather than his usual practice of instantly
deleting, he opens it up. He decides to test the veracity of such a
bold claim by searching for his own three published books. To both his
astonishment and consternation, he discovers this online library has
posted a photo of his younger self, the years of his deaths (nine
different years) and not only his three books are listed but a grand
total of twenty-one, eighteen of which display a publication date in the
future. Ahhhh! He shoots off a pointed email to the VIRTUAL LIBRARY and
to his stupefaction receives an instant personalized response. From
here, the email exchanges spin out into even more bizarre dimensions. If
Jorge Luis Borges was alive today, I can imagine his wry smile reading Virtual Library.
Home Library
- "Common sense is all very well and good, but you can't always rely on
it. Sometimes it is far more advisable and useful to accept wonder." So
reflects the narrator as he has come to accept the wonder of climbing
forty-four steps up to his second-story apartment but only forty-one
steps on the way down (he counted and recounted numerous times). And
then when he mysteriously receives a series of large books from an
unknown sender in his mailbox his capacity for wonder over common sense
is tested to the limit. In one interview Zoran Živković stated "Home Library
is exemplary of my idiosyncratic approach to the art of the fantastic.
All the essential keys of my poetics are contained in it."
Night Library - Similar to The Encyclopedia of the Dead
authored by his fellow Serbian Danilo Kiš, Zoran Živkovic's narrator is
in a library at night, after hours. In the Kiš tale, the narrator reads
about his father's life, a life too ordinary to be documented in
history books; in Živkovic's tale, the narrator chooses to read about
his own life, a life he resents documented in any book. Humor mixed with
horror - echoes of Nikolai Gogol, one of the grand literary masters
Zoran Živkovic most admired.
Infernal Library - For
artists in the medieval world, hell is burning in flames surrounded by
devils with pitchforks. For Jean-Paul Sartre, hell is other people. For
the narrator in this Zoran Živkovic tale, a man who avoided reading
books his entire life, hell is - I can't bring myself to write it. You
fill in the blank.
Noble Library - A tale that's too much magical mystery tour for me to say anything other than I urge you to read for yourself.
Smallest Library
- The unnamed narrator pays a visit to the booksellers where they
always set out their wares, used books, every Saturday year round, rain
or shine, under the Great Bridge. At the very end of the row, peddling
his books in an old ice cream vendor’s cart, there’s a new seller -
small, wrinkled, gray bearded, hoarse voice - who tells the narrator he
has what he is looking for. When the narrator asks how he knows, the old
bookseller simply says, “It’s not hard to tell. It shows on your face.”
The narrator is taken aback since he can now see the old man is blind.
Following
a further exchange, the narrator is handed a bag of books to which he
asks how much money is owed. Between hacking coughs, the vendor says,
“You owe me a lot. But not for the books. They are free.” When the
narrator asks why, the blind one tells him, “Because that is the only
way for you to get them. I don’t sell books.”
Back in his
apartment, he empties out the bag of books and to his amazement there
are not only the three books the old man spoke of but a fourth book, an
old edition in obvious excellent condition. No writing appears on the
chestnut-colored cover but when he opens the book, after a
chestnut-colored flyleaf, “the words The Smallest Library were
written at the top of the first page in tiny, slanted letters.” Although
there is one word on the next page which he assumes is the book’s
title, he is a bit perplexed to find neither copyright information nor
author. No matter, when he flips through the pages he can see the book
is a novel with numbered chapters.
But he hankers to know more
details about this seemingly anonymous edition by an anonymous writer.
The computer to the rescue. He looks up the website for The National
Library that has absolutely everything about every book ever published.
He plugs in the one word title. Nothing. Perhaps, he ruminates, he has
the spelling wrong. He opens the book once again to check the title
page. Holy thunderbolts! “What I saw on the third page simply could not
have been true. A lump formed in my throat. The difference was much more
than one letter. A completely different title, consisting not of one
word but three, greeted me.” And then, after his hands stop trembling
enough to take a gander at the pages of the novel itself, he’s in store
for an even bigger jolt: it is a completely different novel with not
numbered chapters but chapter titles.
At this point our
writer-narrator swings into high gear in an attempt to solve the puzzle.
Reading this Zoran Živković tale, I was right there with him step by
step, each revelation as much a surprise for me as it was for him. The
suspense mounts and we do not discover where all this mystification is
leading until the very final sentence. Then, as if watching a time-lapse
film of a flower coming into full bloom, miraculously, the underlying
meaning of the entire sixteen-page story bursts forth.
6/27/2021
Who would think one of the most penetrating novels about artists and art, creativity and creation would come from a crime fiction writer in the style of David Goodis or Jim Thompson? Kenzo Kitakata caught me by entirely by surprise. Here's my review -
WINTER SLEEP by Kenzo Kitakata
Kenzo Kitakata from Japan has made a career of writing hardboiled crime fiction. You want gangsters and the underworld? Read Ashes, The Cage and City of Refuge.
Winter Sleep, the author's fourth book translated into English, is a world away - this is a novel about artists and their art.
Winter Sleep
centers on Masatake Nakagi, age thirty-nine, an internationally
renowned artist who has recently spent three years in prison for killing
a man during a bar brawl. Since Nakagi paints mostly abstracts, we
might think of him as we would Jackson Pollock or Clyfford Still or Hans
Hofmann.
Nakagi also serves as the tale's narrator, thus we
follow the artist in his daily routine of morning run, painting, eating,
drinking and occasional sex during his stay at a secluded cabin up in
the mountains.
However, being a famous artist comes with a price
- as if he's the blue ribbon strawberry pie at the county fair, a
string of men and women all want their slice of Nakagi.
Topping
the list, there's stunning Natsue pulling up in her white Mercedes. Art
dealer and all around business sharpie, Natsue has definite plans for
Nakagi, both professional and deeply personal.
Akiko is an
eighteen-year old beauty who addresses Nakagi as sensei since she's an
aspiring artist who wishes to learn from the master. Conveniently, Akiko
is renting a mountain villa not too terribly far from Nakagi's cabin.
Forever
the man with questions, writer/journalist Nomura seeks to solve the
puzzle that is Nakagi in order to discover what it takes to be both
great artist and unrepentant murderer. If he can extract what he needs,
Nomura might even be able to write more than just an article - he'll
have enough material to write a book.
On one of his visits to the
cabin, Nomura brings along Oshita who is much more than just another
thirty-year-old art student - Oshita claims to have come from Nakagi's
heart. And another thing about Oshita: like Nakagi, he's also a
murderer. But Oshita got off from going to prison due to the testimony
of a psychiatrist pronouncing him 'incompetent'.
Kenzo Kitakata
frames of his tale thusly - clean and simple, not a trace of complexity
or mystery hovering around the edges, a most befitting frame since (and
this is the critical point about Winter Sleep) the real fire, the sweet juice, the Dionysian core of the novel revolves around the creation of art.
Sure,
there's an element of suspense in the closing chapters (a crime fiction
author just can't help himself) but to repeat for emphasis: Winter Sleep
is a novel about artists and their art, the foremost artist, of course,
is Nakagi, but there's also Akiko and Oshita. To underscore this point,
I'll segue to a number of direct quotes.
Nakagi trots up the
stairs to his second floor studio where he previously had drawn one line
on a huge canvas. He tells us, "I soon became totally engrossed. Using
charcoal, I covered the canvas with black lines. I started to see
something in the blackness. At that point, I stopped. I had been
standing in front of the canvas for three hours, but it felt like a
second. I could usually work only in natural light, but when a fit like
this came, it didn't matter."
I hear echoes of art critic Harold
Rosenberg announcing back in the 1950s that many abstract expressionist
artists approach their canvas as “an arena in which to act” rather than
as a place to produce an object. “What was to go on the canvas was not a
picture but an event.” Rosenberg termed such an event "action
painting." From a number of Nakagi's reflections and observations while
creating, I had the definite impression he was a spiritual brother to
those American action painters.
"A painter leaves behind
paintings the way a hiker leaves behind footprints; once he's made them,
they're just there, belonging to no one."
Nakagi's statement
here speaks to his identity being neither entwined nor defined by any of
his past artworks. One has the feeling Nakagi is on the cusp of a
creative explosion, similar to when Jackson Pollock transitioned to
applying paint to his canvas positioned on the floor.
Akiko and
Nakagi in conversation where Akiko says, "Landscapes and still lives and
people are easy to paint because you can see them. It's harder to paint
what's in your heart. You can't see anything there."
"Well, there are feelings," I said.
"You've had a lot of practice putting those feelings into color and form, haven't you sensei?"
"I've had a lot of practice drawing what I see as I see it."
It's
that 'as I see it' that makes all the difference. As an artist and
creator, Nakagi judges himself living on a completely different plane
from what he terms 'ordinary human beings'. There is a hefty dose of
Nietzschean philosophy here (in the sense of artist as spiritual seeker
and visionary expressing in and through art). A question one can ask
while reading Winter Sleep: To what extent does moving through
life as an artist contribute to Nakagi's apparent indifference to
conventional rules and moral codes?
Nakagi critiquing Akiko's
drawings: "Sketching is something like - it's like drawing yourself.
That's what all painting is, really. But you aren't trying to see
yourself clearly."
One detects how radical and transformative
Nakagi's Nietzschean view of art: the finished work doesn't reveal the
apples or trees or model one uses as a subject as much as the work
reveals the soul of the artist.
Nakagi speaking to Oshita: "I'm
me. I'm not you. You say you came from my heart, but you can't paint
like me. You're not me. You're you."
Such a powerful dynamic -
Nakagi recognizes Oshita did truly come from his heart but painting and
artistic expression are on a completely different plane. What Oshita
needs to paint is not being in touch with Nakagi but Oshita being in
touch with Oshita.
I could go on offering commentary on dozens of other direct quotes. Winter Sleep makes for a rich, compelling read. If you're into art, that is.
7/1/2021
I read and reviewed a few Parker novels by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark - then it hit me, as if Parker was himself speaking to me: "If you want to join me on my heists, read all the novels in order." I took Parker's words seriously and went back and read and reviewed all 24 Parker novels in order. The first Parker novel sets the tone. Here's my review
THE HUNTER by Richard Stark
“When a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered him a lift, Parker told him to go to hell.”
The above is the first line of the first chapter of The Hunter, the first Parker novel by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark.
Mr.
Westlake told an interviewer: "All fiction starts with language, what
kind of language do you use - starts with the language, then goes to the
story, then goes to the people." And regarding his Parker novels
specifically: "I want the language to be very stripped down and bleak
and no adverbs; I want it stark. So, the name will be Stark just to
remind me what we're doing here."
As they say, the rest is
history. Under the pen name of Richard Stark, grand master of crime
fiction Donald E. Westlake went on to write 24 Parker novels - number
1-16 from 1962 to 1974 then number 17-24 from 1997 to 2008.
The Hunter
introduces readers to Parker, one of the most memorable characters in
all of fiction. That's right - not just crime fiction but all fiction.
Physically,
Parker is "big and shaggy, with flat square shoulders ... His hands,
swinging curve-fingered at his sides, looked like they were molded of
brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. His hair was
brown and dry and dead,..His face was a chipped chunk of concrete, with
eyes of flawed onyx. His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless."
Parker
is always Parker, he's never called by his first name, if he has one at
all, but you can bet a mil if he did it wouldn't be Clarence or Alister
or Yale.
Parker has been working heists for eighteen years,
roughly one a year, where he joins other heisters on a job - hit an
armored car, rob a bank, steal jewelry, that kind of thing, usually
going for cash since it's the cleanest.
On the job, Parker is
always the true professional - all business, focused, keenly perceptive,
constantly thinking through the possibilities. Parker is also the
ultimate heister - solid, steady, calm, cold, calculating, keen on
self-survival and, last but hardly least, willing to kill whenever
necessary.
Mr. Westlake recounts his dealings with publishers: "When Bucklin Moon of Pocket Books said he wanted to publish The Hunter,
if I’d help Parker escape the law at the end so I could write more
books about him, I was at first very surprised. He was the bad guy in
the book."
Oh, yea, bad to the bone. Here's what Dennis Lehane,
contemporary crime writer and lifelong fan of Richard Stark, has to say:
"Parker is as bad as he seems. If a baby carriage rolled in
front of him during a heist, he'd kick it out of his way. If an innocent
woman were caught helplessly in gangster crossfire, Parker would slip
past her, happy she was drawing the bullets away from him... If you
stole from him, he'd burn your house - or corporation - to the ground to
get his money back."
And that hardness remains consistent in
all 24 Parker novels. As per Mr. Westlake, "I’d done nothing to make him
easy for the reader; no small talk, no quirks, no pets. I told myself
the only way I could do it is if I held onto what Buck seemed to like,
the very fact that he was a compendium of what your lead character
should not be. I must never soften him, never make him user-friendly,
and I’ve tried to hold to that."
Turning to The Hunter,
recall Parker tells that driver of the Chevy to go to hell. Parker's
walking across the George Washington Bridge to Manhattan. Parker's going
for a very specific reason: to find wife Lynn and a guy by the name of
Mal Resnick since both wife and Mal pulled a double-cross on him back in
California during a heist.
As he takes long strides across the
bridge, Parker can feel his large hands around Mal's neck, squeezing,
demanding Mal tell him how he can get his $45,000, his fair split from
that California job. Then when Mal spills, Parker tightens his squeeze
until Mal's cowardly eyes bulge and he breaths no more.
As to
how it all plays out, you'll have to read for yourself. And I dare you
to stop reading after you're done with chapter one. Shifting to
philosophy, two of the many reasons why Richard Stark will appeal to a
much wider audience than simply crime fiction buffs:
Number One:
On
the Parker novels, the great Irish author/critic John Banville tells
us: "This is existential man at his furthest extremity, confronting a
world that is even more wicked and treacherous than he is." Since I'm a
huge fan of existential literature with its themes of alienation,
absurdity, freedom, authenticity explored by such French authors as
Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Georges Simenon and Pascal Garnier, I'm
especially taken by Richard Stark.
Number Two:
Anthropologists
cite prior to the advent of agriculture six thousand years ago, we
humans were hunters for nearly one hundred thousand years. In many ways,
Parker embodies this hunting spirit (The Hunter, so appropriate a title). Thus, on some level, we can feel a kinship with Parker.
Also,
according to one of Westlake/Stark's leading critics, Parker is a wolf
in human form. Now, of course, wolves hunt in packs. Parker is a heister
and heisters, like wolves, work in packs. But here's the rub: the other
men and women (mostly men) Parker must work with are human, all too
human, with their bloody human emotions and human personalities that
always seem to get in the damn way. And herein lies the great drama of
the Parker novels - to see how Parker the wolf responds to all the many
challenges and double-crosses he must inevitably deal with. So gripping.
-------------------------------------
A fantastic author! I'm a new fan of Mario Levrero. Here's my review of the only Levrero novel currently available in English translation.
EMPTY WORDS by Mario Levrero
Uruguay, the Latin American country famous for producing strange writers - none stranger than Mario Levrero (1940-2004).
You
want far out? You want peculiar? You want uncanny? A Mario Levrero
novel is so strange it crosses over into the literary land of gleeful
weirdness.
Gleeful weirdness. Say that three times fast while
laughing and jumping up and down. My kind of writing. And Mario Levrero
is definitely my kind of author.
Mario Levrero wrote over two
dozen books, mostly novels. The first Levrero novel to be published in
English is the book under review - Empty Words.
Mario Levrero's masterpiece, The Luminous Novel, will be translated into English this August. I can hardly wait.
The Luminous Novel - 400 pages detailing why he, Mario Levrero, could not write the novel he received a Guggenheim grant to write.
Mario
Levrero possessed a boundless imagination. Critics and reviewers were
forever attempting to categorize Mario's writing but he was simply too
creative for any school or niche, no matter how expansive. As Mario told
an interviewer: “It would be far more interesting for them if, instead
of writing, I committed a murder.”
Ever since Mario published
his first novel, La Ciudad (The City), at age 26, one fact has always
remained consistent: everything Mario Levrero has written can be
recognized instantly, his literary voice is that distinctive.
Question:
What is writing for Mario Levrero? Answer: a brain teaser, a mystery, a
tool for solving mystery, both a means for exploring the unconscious
and a bi-product of the unconscious, a creative articulation
transcending categories, a free expression of the imagination.
Turning to Empty Words,
we have a narrator who embarks on a therapy to better his life:
improved penmanship. "The idea, then, is that by changing the behavior
observed in a person's handwriting, it may be possible to change other
things about that person."
According to the narrator, we're
talking change on a number of important levels: “transforming a whole
plethora of bad behaviors into good ones and catapulting blissfully into
a life of happiness, joy, money, and success.”
After nearly two
month of practice, the narrator reinforces his initial thinking: "I
have to let my inner self change and grow under the magical influence of
graphology. Big writing, big me. Small writing, small me. Beautiful
writing, beautiful me."
Does his personal metamorphosis go
further? Oh, yes. With more practice, he reports: "I want to get in
touch with myself, with the miraculous being that lives inside me and is
able, among so many other extraordinary things, to fabricate
interesting stories and cartoons."
Such ruminations culminate in a
rousing crescendo of self-discovery: "That's the point. That's what
it's all about. Reconnecting with the inner being, the being which is
part, in some secret way, of the divine spark that roams tirelessly
through the Universe, giving it life, keeping it going, and lending
reality to what would otherwise be an empty shell."
Now, do you
sense Mario Levrero might be sticking a sharp satiric needle into his
narrator's fleshy backside, suggesting all this inner glory via improved
handwriting might be so much bullshitski? Could be, especially since
Mario provides a note on the text and a Prologue that themselves might be written with his tongue deep in his cheek.
And
how does our narrator fare in his goal of improved handwriting? As he
quickly discovers, his attention is forever being pulled in the
direction of literature and meaning. This to say, when his focus shifts
away from maintaining uniform loops and crossing all his t's while
keeping his handwriting large and smooth to focusing on the content and
meaning of what he's writing (a literary man just can't help himself),
his penmanship reverts back to his old habit of small, cramped and a
jagged mixing of print and script. Darn!
Problems assail our
poor narrator from every angle. Oh, yes, to compound his difficulties,
other slices are continually being added to his writer's pie - for
example: his disturbing dreams, insomnia, past unsettling memories, son
Ignacio's interruptions, drama revolving around a dog and then a cat,
wife Alicia's list of demands, his natural inclination to philosophize.
"The
fact is, we're all nothing but the crossover points of threads that
stretch far beyond us, reaching from one unknown place to another. Not
even this language I'm using belongs to me. I didn't invent it, and if I
had it would be no use for communicating with."
So curious.
Crossover points, language, communication - all abstract concepts as the
narrator completes his handwriting exercise. Is it truly possible to
write meaningful sentences devoid of meaning? If he was only after an
improvement in penmanship, why not repeat a word or two or three
containing the most challenging letters to keep large and smooth? That's
exactly what I would do if I wanted to concentrate exclusively on my
handwriting without letting even a trace of meaning or content enter
into my composing.
"My character obliges me, and enables me, to
do things one way and not another. I approach tasks with a degree of
Zen; as far as I'm concerned, things should be done when they're good
and ready, and their readiness is something I need to feel coming from
within myself."
I see the narrator's reflection above as
supercharged with meaning. Does he feel, really feel, he's ready to
concentrate on improving his handwriting when his mind continually pulls
him away to think about what content he's writing? Will he abandon his
penmanship project once he senses inspiration for a work of fiction
flooding in, where the story might even 'tell itself' while using his
pen and paper as the vehicle?
And can this whole writing exercise
be likened to Oulipo's constrained writing techniques with such works
as Georges Perec's novel, A Void, where Perec composed an entire
300-page saga without once using the letter 'e'? Can we liken the
absence of meaning and content for Mario Levrero's narrator to Georges
Perec's absence of that frisky vowel?
Any novel gives a reader an opportunity to watch the mind of the novelist at work. With Empty Words, watching Mario Levrero's mind at work is the main attraction - and what an attraction it is. Besides which, reading Empty Words is fun.
7/3/2021
I reviewed two Christopher Buckley novels, Thanks You For Not Smoking and Wet Work. I received gracious notes from Christopher on each one. For Wet Work, he said, "That's the best review I ever received on the novel. Bless you."
Here's my review of that smashing novel, a true, blue reflection on American society and the American character. Or, should I say American characters!
WET WORK by Christopher Buckley
“What a country, America. A lunatic asylum, without enough attendants or tranquilizers.”
Wet Work
- Christopher Buckley's international thriller about an American
billionaire turned obsessive maniac. Where are the attendants and
tranquilizers when they're needed most?
The author told an interviewer writing Wet Work
was "the worst writing experience of my life. The words flowed like
glue. I rewrote it five times. I don't know why it was so hard -- maybe
because I don't read thrillers."
I suspect Christopher Buckley’s difficulty also arose from the fact that Wet Work
is a novel of obsession. Recognizing the two master storytellers
spinning tales of obsession, Ernesto Sabato and Tommaso Landolfi, were
reclusive misanthropes spitting their venom as they wrote fiction at the
opposite end of the literary spectrum from Mr. Buckley’s other novels,
his difficulty is most understandable.
But I'm glad he persevered. Wet Work is a cracking good novel that continues to speak to us today.
The
tale is framed thusly: superrich Charley Becker lost his wife to
illness and his son to drunk driving. His heart now belongs to Natasha,
his one and only grandchild. Charley doted on and hovered over Natasha
all through her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood.
However,
forever wishing to strike out on her own, Natasha chooses to live in a
ramshackle apartment in a seedy Lower East Side neighborhood and pursues
her acting career. Her latest role on stage proves a disaster - the
city’s leading theater critic writes a scalding review of Natasha’s
performance.
Poor Natasha; she's so, so upset. Director Tim
comes over to her apartment, insists she improves her acting (she plays a
cocaine addict) by experiencing firsthand what it’s like to be high on
cocaine. Natasha initially refuses (she’s never taken drugs) but, for
the sake of theater, snorts a line of South America’s finest. Within
minutes, Natasha is dead.
Tim panics, leaves, and afterwards
concocts an alibi, says he was at a nightclub with Ramírez at the time
Natasha took cocaine. Tim forces Ramírez to go along with his alibi
since that “Puerto Rican piece of shit” sold the cocaine to him in the
first place.
Charley Becker’s grief runneth over. But not long
thereafter, Charley’s anguish and sorrow transform into anger and a
thirst for revenge. Charley knows many people throughout the government,
military, and, in the case, police force, and when Charley finds out
Tim’s alibi contains flaws and he and his team can piece together the
truth, sayonara Tim. Likewise Ramirez and his Hispanic buddies who deal
drugs.
But then Charley Becker goes further, much further, his
inner heart of darkness takes over - revenge turns into unflinching
obsession. Charley the billionaire intends to employ the full force of
his wealth and connections to hunt out everyone along the cocaine trail,
everyone he deems responsible for the tragic death of dear Natasha,
everyone from street dealers and middlemen in New York and Miami right
down to the growers, producers and ultimate drug lord in Peru, hunt them
out and sentence them all, every single one, to on-the-spot execution.
What
an adventure, one that takes Charley and crew, armed to the teeth on
his yacht, up the Amazon. Incidentally, the novel's title refers to
killing so close up the killer gets wet with the victim's blood. "I
killed them close up, with my own forty-five," Charley tells a priest,
"Close enough to get wet. Wet work, that's what they call it. It's an
actual term."
So much action, so many killings. Here are several Wet Work callouts:
Backstory
- We learn Charley was an orphan subject to physical and emotional
abuse, an orphan raised by Catholic nuns in the Southwest. Each chapter
offers another facet of the billionaire's background and character. In
this way, Christopher Buckley presents a well-rounded protagonist, a
crusty, callous gent, for sure.
Multiple Narratives - The story
pops back and forth between Charley's chase and police and military
chasing Charley, one Charley chaster being Senior Agent Frank Diatri of
New York City Drug Enforcement. Go get 'em, Frank.
Familiar
Names - Charley's hired hit-men are Bundy, Rostow and McNamara, names
from the Nixon years. Also, that theater critic is E. Fremont-Carter, so
close to Eliot Fremont-Smith, a one-time tough as nails leading New York Times book reviewer.
Sophomoric
Sycophants - "This is Sensitive City, here, John. I don't think it's
going to do us any good if, if, you know, here we are doing the war on
drugs and cashiering out front-line soldiers." The dialogue of American
officials is a hoot. Roger Ramjet cartoons, anyone?
Details,
Details, Details - Turning the pages, we learn much about things like
weapons, the military, cocaine production, art, government bureaucracy
and various forms of life along the Amazon River.
Showdown -
Face to face with Charley, drug lord El Niño talks with pride about his
taking revenge on the US by flooding the world’s wealthiest and most
powerful country with cocaine. “An amoeba that gives you diarrhea is
nothing next to an alkaloid that makes people kill themselves and each
other for it.” Sounds like highly educated El Niño has internalized
Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.
Seen through the lens of the many tragedies in the US wrought by
cocaine coupled with mass exploitation, mass destruction and mass murder
committed throughout all of Latin America, Wet Work makes for one grim, unnerving story.
Salsa
Satire Seasoning - Keep in mind, we're talking humorist Christopher
Buckley here. Through all the tracking and shootings, be prepared to
laugh out loud on nearly every page. Here's a batch of samples to serve
as a taste test:
“The ascots tied around the necks were wrong, somehow, like silk scarves on pit bulls.”
“I
spoke to his ex-wife, the most recent one. He’s got four. She told me
he’s a mercenary and he kills people and doesn’t report the income.”
“Suckled by a sow, now there’s man who’s starting from scratch.”
“And there’s, you know, a lot of people are going to be cheering him on. The Rich Man’s Bernhard Goetz.”
“Somewhere
in the jungle they were wearing cashmere blazers and ascots and
whatever else rich people wear. Bermuda shorts? That would be a sight,
Diatri thought, natives sitting around the fire arguing over how to make
a really dry martini.”
Takeaway Message - In his New York Times
review back in 1990 when the novel was first published, Andrew L.
Yarrow wrote, "Simply put, not enough is at stake. One wishes that Mr.
Buckley had aimed more clearly at his true target, the recesses of
venality and the corruption of the American soul." I completely disagree
with Mr. Yarrow. Casting the spotlight on the cartoonish, bullheaded
mindset of Americans along with an entire American society that has
turned its back on the wisdom traditions, Greek philosophy comes
immediately to mind, Wet Work hits the bullseye.
----------
*Note - The quote at the beginning of my review is taken from Christopher Buckley's novel, Boomsday
---------
I've included a string of my book reviews here over the last number of days since my writing book reviews is the pinnacle of my creative writing. Or, as Christopher Buckley might say, "A dedicated book reviewer just can't help himself."
----------
Back in the 1980s I looked forward to reading Philadelphia book critic Carlin Romano. One book review I particularly remember - Carlin's write up on Galactia 2.2 by Richard Powers. I thought at the time - ah, if I only had the talent and opportunity to write such a perceptive, absolutely gorgeous book review!
Well, after a number of years writing book reviews myself, I posted my own review of the Powers novel as something of a tribute to Carlin Romano. Here it is:
GALATEA 2.2 by Richard Powers
Galatea 2.2 is a brilliant novel by brainy Richard Powers that's
an update on the classical Pygmalion tale of bringing a man-made work
alive - in Ovid, a sculptor animates his beautiful female statue; in
this novel, main character Richard Powers (modeled very much after the
author himself) and his fellow researcher and cognitive neuroscience
genius, a fifty-something gent by the name of Philip Lentz, design and
instruct Helen, a neural net, to emulate human thought and speech.
Author Richard Powers is a seasoned veteran at writing long, erudite, intellectual novels - prior to Galatea 2.2 published in 1995, he counted four doorstop novels to his credit, most notably The Gold Bug Variations which interlaces the discovery of the chemistry behind DNA with Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations
played on harpsichord. And just for good measure, as an added
conceptual layer, our author from America's Midwest throws in references
to Edgar Allan Poe's tale, The Gold Bug. I bet Mary Higgins Clark or James Patterson never thought of writing such a novel.
Just in case you think Galatea 2.2
sounds like nothing but the heady stuff, let me quickly point out
narrator Richard Powers (again, so much like the author) includes
additional storylines: his recent breakup and past years with his flame,
a gal he calls C.; his past relationship with his now dead father;
friendship with his past mentor, Professor Taylor, who persuaded him
back when he was an undergrad to switch from physics to literature; his
current time at U (University of Illinois) where he deals not only with
Lentz but also comes in contact with other academic types, two
delightful youngish ladies in particular; and last but hardly least, the
ongoing saga of his life as a novelist and lover of literature.
The
opening pages set the stage: On the strength of having past affiliation
with the university (undergrad, grad student, English instructor) and
having published well received literary novels, Richard Powers, age
thirty-five, is granted a year's appointment, official title "Visitor,"
at the massive Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences at U. (RP has
this thing about calling people, cities and schools by their first
initial). Richard takes up residence solo since he has had his breakup
with C. and pedals on a second-hand bike to his office at the center
where he spends hours and hours not writing his next novel (he's in a
bit of a writing funk at the moment) but exploring that newest of
technological marvels (it's early 1990s), the internet.
It isn't
long before Richard rubs elbows with a group of researchers at the local
watering hole and is asked to join computer wiz Philip Lenz who is
challenged by his PhD buddies to develop a computer program in ten
months capable of displaying reading comprehension enough to surpass
your average human grad student on the English Department's Master's
Comprehensive Exam. Not exactly brimming over with literary inspiration
at the moment, Richard agrees to team up with Lentz.
Now the fun
(or, at least, the high-grade thinking) begins both for Richard and for
the reader since not only does exploring the domain where concepts,
literacy and literature interface with computer technology provide
Richard with a wide platform to delve into his background and
understanding of such specialties as cognitive neuroscience, computer
programing and language (both human and computer simulated), but he has
ongoing interactions with wizmaster Lentz.
Ah, Philip Lentz. The
ultimate bald, overweight, oddball, multiple PhD egghead nerd wearing
his coke bottle glasses and spouting out platitudes and judgments on
every conceivable field, from neurology, networks and computer
engineering to linguistics, literature and music. Occasionally bordering
on mellow but usually acerbic, sarcastic, cutting, stinging, sardonic,
ironic or some combination of the above, by this reviewer's reckoning,
in addition to Richard, Philip Lentz is the human star of this Galatea 2.2 show.
Here's
Richard mulling over Lentz's radical brainchild: Connectionism: "The
new field's heat generated its inevitable controversy. I sensed a
defensive tone to many of Lentz's publications. Both the neural
physiologists and the algorithmic formalists scoffed at connectionism.
Granted, neural networks performed slick behaviors. But these were
tricks, the opposition said. Novelties. Fancy pattern recognition.
Simulacra without any legitimate, neurological analog. Whatever nets
produced, it wasn't thought. No even close, talk not of the cigar."
The
above quote also serves as an example of Richard Powers' brain power
(both author and main character). And when Richard interacts with Helen,
the synapses in the gray matter really start to fire off.
Oh,
yes, Richard and Helen make quite the pair. We watch as Richard brings
Helen to life at first as a computer program and then something either
approaching or replicating a fully human mind, not to mention conscious
awareness (I wouldn't want to say anything more specific so as to
spoil).
Recall back there I listed several other storylines such
as Richard's relationship with C., his father, his mentor and his being a
novelist. The powerful, heartfelt emotions Richard experiences in these
other non-technical dimensions of his past and present exert their
influence on his dealing with Helen. And his speaking and listening to
Helen (Lentz rigs the technology where Richard and only Richard can
carry on 2001 Space Odyssey HAL-like conversations with Helen),
in turn, play their part in Richard's sorting out his life, a feedback
loop running from head to heart, from heart to head.
In the end, Galatea 2.2
is a deeply moving story, one where emotions and feelings meet thinking
and reflection, mostly for Richard but also, curiously enough, for that
oddest of oddballs, Philip Lentz. And a piece of good news: even for
non-science, non-computer types such as myself, this Richard Powers
novel is accessible, making for an enjoyable, compelling read. What an
accomplishment from one super-smart author.
And Richard's numerous metaphors and turn of phrase sparkle, as per:
"I
had nothing left in me but the autobiography I'd refused from the start
even to think about. My life threatened to grow as useless as a
three-month-old computer magazine."
"The maze performed as one
immense, incalculable net. It only felt like countless smaller nets
strung together because of differences in connection density. Like a
condensing universe, it clustered into dense cores held together by
sparser filaments - stars calling planets calling moons."
"We
could eliminate death. That was the long-term idea. We might freeze the
temperament of our choice. Suspend it painlessly above experience. Hold
it forever at twenty-two."
"But I had never once put fingers to
keys for anything but love. I had written a book about lost children
because I had lost my own child and wanted it back. More than I wanted
anything in life, except to write."
7/7/2021
Here's my review of
The FLAME ALPHABET by Ben Marcus
The Flame Alphabet - novel as wild SF. That's SF as in
speculative fiction, as in science fiction, as in singularly freaky, as
in supersonic futuristic.
On the first page, the tale's
narrator, a middle-aged husband and father, a gent by the name of Sam,
double-bolts his bedroom door, packs up sound abatement fabrics,
anti-comprehension pills, child's radio retrofitted as toxicity screen
and Dräger Aerotest breathing kit.
What's going on here? As we
discover very quickly, mom and dad must protect themselves against the
toxic words coming out of fourteen-year-old daughter Esther's mouth.
The Flame Alphabet
quakes and jives at the impossible intersection of Philip K. Dick (dry
humor, bizarre technologies, oddball twists), Cormac McCarthy (violent
post-apocalypse), Thomas M. Disch (diabolic experiments in concentration
camp), Thomas Ligotti (hyper weird horror) and Gary Lutz (exactitude of
language).
But fear not as there's good news for fans of straightforward, linear narrative: The Flame Alphabet
is a science fiction thriller from first page to last, a tale of
ghastly global catastrophe brought about when language spoken by
children suddenly becomes toxic for adults.
With its unifying plotline and articulate protagonist, The Flame Alphabet is much different than The Age of Wire and String,
an earlier work by the author that features narrator as slightly
confused recent arrival, an outsider cataloguing a remarkable stringy,
wiry age in his own personal, jumbled language.
However, there are several important points of overlap - a prime example: in the prelude (Argument) of Wire and String,
a philosopher by the name of Sernier demonstrates "the outer gaze
alters the inner thing, that by looking at an object we destroy it with
our desire, that for accurate vision to occur the thing must be trained
to see itself, or otherwise perish in blindness, flawed."
Our Flame Alphabet
narrator also references Sernier, this time as a philosopher of the
deadly crisis who vehemently objects to personal stories and anecdotes
replacing hard facts. And narrator Sam goes on to relate that according
to Sernier, "as soon as we litter our insights with pronouns, they
spoil. Ideas and people do not mix."
Thus, The Flame Alphabet
is a more detailed report, an insider's account, from the age of wire
and string. “This has led to a fatal toxicity.” - so proclaims the
outsider in his Wire and String catalogue. How fatal; how toxic? Family man Sam gives us nearly 300 pages of an alphabet aflame.
Since
we're talking intricately constructed thriller here, so as not to give
away too much, I'll make an immediate shift from arc of plot to eight Flame hot spots:
LANGUAGE
Following
formal announcement that the words of children are causing all the
sickness in adults, Sam studies Esther's handwriting: "Each piece of the
alphabet that she wrote looked like a fat molecule engorged on air,
ready to burst. How so very dear."
It's that 'how so very dear'
that lets us know Sam can still lace his personal tragedy with dry,
black humor, as dry and as black as burnt toast. Although Sam never
tells us his academic background or profession, it's obvious he's an
expert in language - among other linguistic talents, he can write a
Chinese script.
LOVING PARENTS
Major tension, especially in
the longer first part of the novel: Sam and wife Claire become
progressively sicker when in the presence of daughter Esther, yet, as
Esther's parents, the last thing they want is to be separated from her;
rather, Sam and Claire yearn to hug and support Esther in any way they
can.
Like Sam, Ben Marcus is both husband and father. In an
interview, he reflected: "There's that incredible loyalty you have as a
parent. And it's a loyalty that to me is almost biological, which allows
us to love our children unconditionally. I was interested in that
conflict — the cause of your sickness is there in your home, but it's
also the cause of your greatest love."
TO BE JEWISH
Sam and
his family are Forest Jews. In this America of wire and string, such
Jews possess a special, hidden hut out in the sticks. "The technology of
the hut was a glowbug setup. The hut covered the hole and the hole was
stuffed with wire. From our own hole came bright orange ropes of
cabling, the whole mess of it reeking of sewage, of something dead
beneath the earth." One of the kookier SF elements in the tale.
Ben
Marcus told an interviewer: "I did a lot of research into Christian and
Jewish mysticism, which is very much, in some sense, opposed to
language, or it sees religious experience as being above or beyond
language, Language can't reach that ineffable feeling we might have in a
religious sense. So I wanted to wonder what we'd be like if we couldn't
communicate with each other. Is it a desperately lonely experience, or
is there something possibly religious to it?"
I suspect many
readers will find this whole Jewish, Kabbalah mystical aspect of the
novel a chaotic tumble, alternating between fascinating and utterly wire
and string confusing.
PALMER ELDRITCH REDUX
As PKD had his
Palmer Eldrich, so Ben Marcus has his redheaded Murphy/LeBov. Paranoid,
power hungry, manipulative, cunning, calculating, sinister - Sam warns
us about this larger than life creep with a foreshadowing zinger: "In
the end our language is no match for what this man did."
INTERNAL LANGUAGE
Amid
all the sickness, disease and death, Sam recognizes the irony of spoken
and written language spreading mayhem since, ordinarily, it is the
unspoken words, our own internal dialogue, that poison our human, all
too human lives.
MARCUS SPARKLE
According to Gary Lutz, we
can tell if a writer is intent on creating sentences that are themselves
works of art by turning to any page of the writer's work and spotting
such sentences. Here's one from a chapter opening:
"Claire and I
traced our lethargy, the buzzing limbs and bodies that we dragged around
like sacks, to a trip to the ocean, where we succumbed to illconsidered
napping atop a crispy lattice of seaweed and sand gnats that left us
helplessly scratching ourselves for days."
Gary Lutz alludes to
an author's attention and use of stressed syllables, monosyllabic words,
alliteration, assonance and ending with the forceful punch of a word of
one-syllable - all qualities present here.
FAR OUT FLASH
Why,
oh why is this happening? Sam and others recognize the language fever
makes absolutely no logical sense. I find it curious that nobody either
in the novel or reviewing the novel has offered the suggestion (after
all, this is science fiction) that perhaps an alien invasion is under
way. In other words, more subtle than Jack Finny's Body Snatchers or
John Wyndham's Midwich Cuckoos, aliens have finally figured out how to
effectively eliminate adult Earthlings.
FLAME ALPHABET
And what is the flame alphabet of The Flame Alphabet? A clear, definitive answer is provided - but you'll have to read this extraordinary novel to find out.
7/14/2021
I can almost hear a reader of this Cole Robinhood journal shout out: Alright already with the book reviews, share something personal!
Apologies, but I LOVE book reviews. However, if you want something personal, here goes - as part of a book review!
TWO KINGS AND TWO LABYRINTHS by Jorge Luis Borges
If asked to suggest a one word key as a humble first step to unlock
the worlds and mysteries of Jorge Luis Borges, my answer would be:
labyrinths. Here are two Borges quotes:
“There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.”
“It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.”
Many Borges tales have references, either direct or indirect, to labyrinths, my favorite, a one-pager entitled The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths.
It gives me great joy to share my write-up -
SYNOPSIS
An
ancient Babylonian king constructed an intricate, impenetrable
labyrinth so complex, nobody with an ounce of sense dare enter. Indeed,
so convoluted and twisted, so baffling and wondrous, his labyrinth was
unseemly in the eyes of God.
The king of the Arabs pays a visit
to court and, as a way to mock the simplicity of his guest, the
Babylonian encourages the Arab to enter his labyrinth. Thus, the Arab
king wanders for hours, bewildered and disgraced, until evening when he
calls upon God’s help and finally locates the exit.
The Arab king
says nothing but returns a second time to Babylon with an army and
destroys the city and captures his former host. The Arab king takes the
Babylonian king many miles out into the desert and, before abandoning
the Babylonian, tells him as repayment for being treated to his
convoluted Babylonian labyrinth, this is his Arabian labyrinth.
PATTERN
In
an interview, Borges once said how the universe as labyrinth is really
encouraging news since the very existence of a labyrinth implies the
universe contains both pattern and structure; much more preferable than
complete chaos.
Sidebar: The difference between labyrinth and
maze: a labyrinth has only one path to follow, whereas a maze offers a
number of paths to choose from. However, this is not a hard and fast
rule since there are some labyrinths with multiple paths and some mazes
with only one path.
UNIQUE NARRATOR
This short tale is read by a character in another of his stories – Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth.
Also,
wise to keep in mind the image of a labyrinth, both Babylonian and
Arab, when reading other Borges tales, for example, "The Aleph was
probably two or three centimeters in diameter, but universal space was
contained inside it, with no diminution in size,” or, “It is not as
though the Zahir were made of glass, since one side is not superimposed
upon the other – rather, it is as though the vision were itself
spherical, with the Zahir rampant in the center.” Or, yet again, as in
the story There Are More Things where a nephew investigates his uncle's monstrous house now belonging to an extraterrestrial being more Minotaur than man.
BABYLONIAN LABYRINTH
I
myself envision the cubicles in a modern office building forming a
convoluted labyrinth with a mean-spirited worker as the stand in for
Minotaur. Of course, some of these labyrinths will have more than one
Minotaur, while some others might be fortunate to have none - finding
out the number is half the challenge. Also, the various reams of data
that must be understood, assimilated and handled add more abstract
dimensions to our office labyrinth, making it maze-like, with multiple
choices and paths available.
MY FIRST DREAM
I can really
empathize with the Babylonian king out in the middle of the desert since
I had an extraordinarily vivid dream when in my early 20s. Here’s the
dream: the mountains and ground and sky and sun along with my own body
shake as if in a cataclysmic earthquake. The convulsions become so
extreme the entire universe crumbles and comes to an end - all that
remains is an infinite blackness and my own consciousness. I’m in a
state of shock, having witnessed the end of the universe. I behold the
infinite darkness and remain in this shocked state for many minutes,
wondering what I should be thinking at this point. Then, gradually I
felt my fingers (ah, fingers!) touching something soft – oh, yes, the
sheets of my bed. Slowly, very slowly, I woke up. What a relief – the
universe coming to an end was only a dream.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF LABYRINTHS
Of course, there is are critical differences:
(1) the Babylonian king in the desert remained a man in his body whereas in my dream I was bodiless;
(2)
the desert is a specific landscape on our planet whereas the infinite
blackness of my dream was, well, infinite and undifferentiated.
Sidebar:
It was this vivid dream that in large measure motivated me to seek a
meditation teacher and initiate a lifetime meditation practice.
MY SECOND DREAM
Several
years ago I had a similar vivid dream, a dream where I died and all
that remained was my consciousness and an infinite darkness. This time,
however, since I had many years of meditation practice, I relaxed into
the experience and felt restful, even blissful. These two encounters
with infinity really brought home for me how when it comes to the desert
labyrinth in its various manifestations, much of what we undergo is
mind-created. I relay all this as a way of underscoring the truth of how
Jorge Luis Borges judges literature.
BORGES ON LITERATURE AND LIFE
In
an interview, Borges said, “Many people are apt to think of real life
on the one side, that means toothache, headache, traveling and so on,
and then you have on the other side, you have imaginary life and fancy
and that means the arts. But I don’t think that that distinction holds
water, I think that everything is a part of life.” I agree - the longer I
live, the less weight I give to people who are “realists,” those folks
who place hard facts above imagination, storytelling, poetry and the
arts. For me, such realism bespeaks how one is trapped in a Babylonian
labyrinth.
7/29/2021
I remember a snatch of a dream - I'm offer congratulations to a bearded man (I say "touché") since he made a profound comeback to a philosophic statement somebody made. The bearded man walks away and smiles at me. He's walking with another guy.
Perhaps this will be my first dream on the path of my own attempt at lucid dreaming.
7/31/2021
Afternoon dream - watch as 5 people walk across a bridge single file - one short woman with ponytail smiles and shouts 'Hi!'
8/1/2021
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorges Luis Borges sitting side by side having an enjoyable exchange
I see a Black and White scene from a detective novel - men and women on the street, a few cars
8/2/2021
Taking Colin and Adam to school. Both are on a team/music team playing a different instrument. The instrument somehow gets a sticky glue on it during a game and a tribesman says that's how their new instrument was invented; that's how a new game was invented. The uniforms are yellow and white and look like soccer uniforms. There is a coordination of car pick-up where I am going to take both Colin and Adam and Adam's friend to the next game. I see it is a sunny day.
Afternoon - dream treasure is under a cushion of a couch three guys are sitting on --- two 12-year-old boys climbing out of high barn window.
8/3/2021
Watching a monologue --- watching a parade with competing participants
Afternoon dream - recognize a man asking me a question as a dream sign (a man). I become aware I am dreaming. At this point I wake up.
Afternoon dream - I'm standing to the right in a line of men. There's a line of men facing us. The guy in the middle of the other line lobs a glowing ball (ball of enlightenment) - I leap out and grab the ball (and become lucid) - to stay in the dream I spin and hand the ball to my teammate in the middle since by so doing, all with become enlightened via the light. I jump up 20 feet and grab onto a little 6" pole - since I know I'm dreaming I flip myself around this little magic pole - all can see I can do this since all is a dream ------ I see a woman made up with makeup. I give her a dose of enlightenment. She sheds her makeup and become attractive via her natural beauty
8/4/2021
Mid-morning dream - Standing on small hill of blacktop ---------- a white wall where someone comes smashing through and lands on a white tarplin covering a rectangular hole ---- Terry's very oval face
Afternoon dream - woman creating an elaborate, colorful flower arrangement on the bottom part of a stand in the shape of a Christmas tree. This scene occurs in much detail for a good length of time.
8/5/2021
In a castle/shopping mail with baskets full of various items to carry and clean. Detail in the contents of the baskets; detail in the person ordering the carrying -- whole sense is nasty and brutal
It is a all out war in hand to hand combat - nasty and brutal dream
I look through an open door at three women in scant dress
8/6/2021
Woman talking on a small bandstand, some type of performance event with surfing on huge waves in the background.
Afternoon dream - I see from far above a dozen or so boats in a circular pattern on a river.
8/7/2021
Joanne comes out from around the corner and gives me a kiss
Afternoon dream - a happy dog moves in front of me and starts wagging its tale as it looks at me.
8/8/2021
I watch as an Olympic athlete raises a torch/pole on fire.
-----------------
Shift of Energy - After writing 2 or 3 book reviews every week for 9 years (that's 1,175 book reviews!), I plan to do a slow, careful read of 10 lengthy, substantial literary novels, reading about 5 pages a day. This amounts to posting 3 or 4 reviews of these hefty novels every year. My first book: The Literary Novel by Mario Levrero.
8/11/2021
I look out a window in my old bedroom - I waiting for the next wave of events
I'm at the ocean and feeling all the sand on the beach on my feet, between my toes - I look out at the waves, huge waves rolling in, one after the other in an (unnatural) way - meaning I could take this weirdness as a sign that I'm in a dream and thus become lucid. This time I didn't become lucid; rather, I woke up after nearly eight hours of sold sleep.
8/12/2021
A dream of where the concluding scene has me being chased by a fat man. I'm not fearful; rather, it is like playing a game of tag. I recall vaguely there were other parts of this dream but I didn't recall any of them specifically when I woke up. This fat man could hardly qualify as a dream sign since there's nothing unusual about a chase (a frequent happening in anybody's dream) or a fat man.
What is holding my ability to dream lucidly back is the fact that I cherish a good, solid night's sleep, something to be cherished when one is older. Dang! - I took a good night's sleep as a given when I was younger. Anyway, I'm going to keep on trying, although I suspect I might have better luck reaching lucidity, at least at first, during my afternoon naps.
A piece of great news: I'm really, really enjoying reading a long novel - The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero from Uruguay. Also good news: I'm corresponding via Facebook with Mario's son Nicolas who currently lives in Buenos Aires.
8/15/2021
No dream recall in past few days for a very good reason: I did oodles of exercises in the evenings and had a solid sleep these past few days, which is pure gold when you're older. The worst thing to happen when you're old is an inability to get a good night's sleep and drag through the day. -- Nope. Not me, not at all, especially these past three days.
One thing I'm improving in - my endurance in loving to read a longer novel. At the moment, not only The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero but also other novels.
8/17/2021
Mountain Goats are able to soar through the air since they file their coat of hair in a certain way.
I return a book to a librarian at the desk and she tells me the cost is $39. I think to myself that amount is excessive!
8/19/2021
I'm outside two bedrooms, one with Cody, one with Dylan. They are both sleeping. I tell an older woman that they need their rest and should not be woken up.
I'm woken up by a sound and feel my body filled with bliss.
8/20/2001
I sense a schedule of reading one substantial novel per month will work out well. Of course, I'll be listening to audio books and occasionally reading and posting reviews for shorter works but the idea of immersing myself in the world of a novel, living and breathing within a work created by the imagination of a fine novelist will suit my 72-year-old mind and body.
I LOVE Mario Levrero's The Luminous Novel. This is my book for August.
For September, it will be Mac's Problem by Enrique Vila-Matas and October The Pets by Bragi Ólafsson, a novel recommended by my writer friend I exchange comments with on Facebook - Peter Cherches.
Also up for September is The Unwanted Dead: The Shocking End of Zorba's Heretical Author by Yorgos Pratanos, an author I've been corresponding with and consider my spiritual and literary brother. Such a cool guy.
Beyond October, who knows? I have several candidates, modern classics of world literature, but I'll hold off naming names here in late August.
8/24/2021
Dream where Terry is sitting on my bed with a laptop. I feel good about Terry doing this since she's happy and productive.
8/26/2021
I took my time in composing a review for Mario Levrero's The Luminous Novel, tooling and editing the sentences over the course of more than two weeks. When I finally posted my review, I had great feedback from Mario's son down in Buenos Aires and also the publisher, And Other Stories. Here it is -
THE LUMINOUS NOVEL by Mario Levrero
When it comes to literature, Uruguay produces the weird ones - and Mario Levrero wrote some of the weirdest works of fiction in all of Latin America, the novel under review, The Luminous Novel, serves as case in point.
Similar to the novels by American poet Ben Lerner, Mario Levrero is all about voice. It doesn't matter how seemingly trivial or mundane the subject, anything from playing games on the computer to observing the movement of ants in his garden, what makes The Luminous Novel shine is authorial voice.
However, Mario Levrero's voice is not at all like Ben Lerner's poetic, quasi baroque voice. Indeed, as translator Annie McDermott conveyed in an interview: "Levrero isn't pretentious; for Levrero, writing should be down to earth, not flowery or elaborate or anything resembling stuffy."
Additionally, as per Annie: "Levrero is earnest, he tries hard to be understood but at the same time he's ironic, he recognizes the humor in attempting to communicate to others one's innermost feelings and perceptions." It's this combination of earnestness and irony that makes The Luminous Novel such a compelling read, a comic novel Levrero himself described as "a monument to failure."
A monument to failure - why would Levrero say such a thing? Here's the skinny: back in the 1980s when Levrero was in his 40s, he typed out the preliminary pages for what he envisioned eventually would become The Luminous Novel. Then in 2000, Levrero received a Guggenheim grant to complete his work. But he couldn't do it. Rather, he kept a journal documenting all the reasons and details why he couldn't do it. The result is the book published in English for the first time by And Other Stories consisting of a 400 page Prologue: Diary of the Grant followed by 100 pages of Mario's original six chapters entitled The Luminous Novel.
To
share direct hits of Mario Levrero's highly distinctive, instantly
recognizable authorial voice, take a gander at these quotes -
"Absolutely zero interest in writing today. I woke up already feeling a bit crooked, i.e. with that unsteadiness I'd forgotten about and which must therefore relate to my blood pressure, since it went away when I started taking the medication last month."
"And then I also talk about trivial things and it really is a way of relaxing. Of course, afterwards I have to throw myself into some complicated program on the computer, because my mind flounders if it's not doing something complicated. The mind is like a set of teeth that has to be chewing all the time."
"And the grant? I imagine some impertinent reader, the sort there inevitably is, will be thinking: "Did they give this guy a load of cash just so he could play Golf (and Minesweeper - a new habit) and entertain himself with Visual Basic? Outrageous. And he calls it a "diary of the grant".' Reader, relax. It will take me a while to change my ways."
"On the other hand, the luminous moments, described in isolation, would be indistinguishable from a life-affirming article in Selections from Reader's Digest, and the thoughts that inevitably accompanied them would only make matters worse."
"What I'm going to say next should be taken literally; it's not symbolic, it's not a way of saying something else, and it's not an attempt to be poetic. It's a fact, and anyone who doesn't believe me should please leave immediately and stop besmirching my text with their slippery gaze - and never, ever try reading one of my books again."
"It's pointless. I can't go on with this novel. I woke up today in a terrible rage, eyes bloodshot, fingers trembling with the desire to rip the two copies and the original of the first chapter to shreds. Not because I think what I've written so far is definitively and irredeemably awful, but because i feel certain I won't be able to continue..."
The above snips focus on Mario's writing and Mario's states of mind. Actually, equally engaging are the many times Mario turns his attention outward, to his girlfriend Chi, to his writing students, to his shutters or refrigerator needing repair, to the books he's reading, mostly detective novels, to the activity of pigeons, to the movement of various types of ants, to oodles of other encounters. For instance, here's Mario recounting a particular kind of wasp which is an expert spider-hunter:
"These wasps paralyze their prey and then stab it with their rear stinger, injecting fertilized eggs into its body - while the spider is still alive and paralyzed - and then leave it there. When the larvae hatch from the egg, they feed on the spider's body until it's completely destroyed in the most diabolical torture technique Nature has ever invented."
With Levrero, all of existence is
seen as a life and death struggle infused with spiritual significance,
Eros and Thanatos in full bloom.
As Adam Thirlwell noted in his incisive New York Times review: "The diary may be a museum of unfinished stories, but a story, this book shows, doesn’t need to be finished to have its own meanings — the largest of which may be that the transcendental experience Levrero is after has been visible all along, in this diary of everyday disaster."
Lastly, worth highlighting: my reading schedule changed radically as I initially intended to read about five pages a day over the course of months, but once I started, I fell completely and totally under the author's magic spell and entered something akin to a trance state, so much so I read The Luminous Novel hours at a time and finishing much sooner than I anticipated. Levrero wasn't joking when he said a work of art should be a form of hypnosis. The Luminous Novel qualifies as prime example.
8/27/2021
Dream with Detail - I'm at a conference in midtown Manhattan. I hop on a bus and travel uptown about ten blocks. When it is time to get off the bus, I have to pay in quartets but the quarters in my pocket are stuck as if in a silly putty - I pay the amount but it take a couple of minutes. The streets and buildings are as if the city is semi-abandoned, like the poorest of commercial districts - everything is either boarded-up or metal gates close down the doors. I become semi-lucid and fill the streets and buildings with shinning new constructions and magnificent wealth. I have King Kong come down the street, speaking upper class English and being ultra-polite, a real tourist attraction. Then I switch to have Osho drive his Rolls down the street with an army of orange-clad followers cheer him on. Then I have another huge group of Tibetan monks swarm uptown. An entire city of glitter and bliss!
8/29/2021
I dream of four men in dialogue, the whole scene appearing as if on a movie screen and I'm in a theater watching. I become lucid! However, the moment I become lucid, the scene vanishes and a moment later I wake up.
It is almost as if my subconscious dreaming mind is resisting my becoming aware that I'm dreaming. Perhaps on some level, my dream is resisting my lucidity. So curious.
9/1/2021
Dream with detail where I remember two bit: 1) a couple of women inform me they are devising a plan to be an effective counter to a force going against them; 2) George Heckert carries a suitcase down to a subway platform, happy his train finally arrived.
----------------
I've decided to shift from longer novels to shorter ones. I just did finish The Pets by an Icelandic author and have another twenty lined up. I'm giving myself an entire week or more to finish each novel, enough time to take in the full rasa of each book.
9/2/2021
Dream with detail - I'm enjoying myself in this dream. There's a parade and I'm doing an energized Glenn Russell version of the Irish Jig. At another point in the parade down a street in Philadelphia, I soar ten feet up in the sky and do a twisting flip before I land.
9/5/2021
Beginning back in 2008 when I had my thyroid surgery, I began listening to courses offered by The Great Courses and The Modern Scholar:
Philosopher's Toolkit
Introduction to Greek Philosophy
Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition
The Greco-Roman Moralists ** - among my favorite
Why Evil Exists
Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
The Ethics of Aristotle
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Philosophy, Religion and the Meaning of Life
Philosophy as a Guide to Living
Aesthetics (Book) - ** among my favorite
Aristotle for Everybody (Book)
Think Like a Stoic
The Terror of History - ** among my favorites
Plato, Socrates and the Dialogues - ** among my favorites
Hinduism
Buddhism
Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Mystical Tradition - ** among my favorites
Philosophy of Religion
The Study of Religion
Lives of Great Christians
Comparative Religions
The Apocalypse
History of Christianity in the Reformation - ** among my favorites
After the New Testament
Lost Christianities - **** among my favorites
Early Christianity and the Experience of the Divine
Mindfulness Meditation
The Medieval World
The History of Ancient Rome
Early Middle Ages
High Middle Ages
Late Middle Ages
Crusades
Gnosticism
Plato and Aristotle - Modern Scholar
Think Like a Philosopher - Modern Scholar
How to Read a Novel - Modern Scholar
Science Fiction - Modern Scholar
The History of the City (Literature)
Leonardo Da Vinci - Great Courses Video Series
Topology - Great Courses Video Series
Ancient Mediterranean Cities - Great Courses Video Series
Writing Great Sentences - ** among my favorites
History During time of Columbus
Philosophy of Consciousness
How To Be an Epicurean (book)
Epicureanism - Tim O'Keefe ***
9/8/2021
Dream of attempting to take trains and subways into New York - the feeling is one of modest frustration
-----
I've taken a shift in my novel reading and reviewing, that is, I'm reading slowly and carefully, living though each and every novel. The novel that prompted me to charge - The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero. Two others since then - The Pets by Bragi Ólafsson and Females by Wolfgang Hilbig. I'll add to the list as I go along.
9/9/2021
Peter Cherches recommended this novel to me. Peter enjoyed my review so much, he posted it on his Facebook page and encouraged friends to read my review and the novel.
THE PETS by Bragi Ólafsson
The Pets
by Bragi Ólafsson - one of the oddest existential novels you'll ever
encounter. Two authors, João Reis and Peter Cherches, let me know they
love this novel. I can see why.
At his apartment in Reykjavík,
Bragi Ólafsson told an interviewer: “With each book, I know less and
less who’s doing the writing. There are always fragments of me in my
characters, particularly my protagonists, but I’ve never gone so far as
to look at a character and say: That’s me! Getting so entangled in their
lives and inner lives sometimes makes me believe that I’m a more
complex person than I actually am, but by now I can’t point at a single
character and claim that it originated within me. I just don’t know any
more.”
The Pets is a quirky novel most captivating. In the
opening chapter main character Emil Halldorsson tells us he's just
returned from his buying binge in London (he recently won the lottery)
to his apartment in Reykjavík. He's informed by Tomas, his neighbor,
that there was a man in an anorak pounding on his front door earlier in
the day.
Who could it be? Emil thinks it might have been
Sigurvin, an old work mate or Jaime, a friend from Chile. Anyway, Emil
enters his apartment and reflects back on the details of his flight from
London and then puts on a CD and leaves a message on linguist Armann
Valur's answering machine informing him that he mistakenly picked up
Armann's eyeglasses case when he was sitting next to him on the
airplane.
Bragi Ólafsson builds suspense thusly: all the odd number chapters of Part One
feature Emil recounting his travels from London, especially his meeting
a young lady by the name of Greta he's been thinking about for the past
fifteen years, a time when Greta emerged from a bedroom fling during a
teenage party. The even number chapters chronicle the movements of the
mysterious man in the anorak from the time he banged on Emil's door to
his reappearance at Emil's apartment.
Part Two opens with
Emil recognizing the mystery man in the anorak pounding on his front
door yet again as none other than Havard Knutsson, the guy who joined
him at a London flat five years ago with disastrous consequences (Havard
killed the four animals Emil had responsibility for taking care of).
Emil also knows Havard committed other acts of violence (against humans)
and has spent the past five years in a Swedish mental institution.
Emil
doesn't answer the door but Havard isn't about to go away - Emil
watches as Havard climbs in through his kitchen window. Emil promptly
scurries to his bedroom and hides under his bed.
And that's where
Emil spends the rest of the novel - voyeuristically peeking out from
under his bed, beneath overhanging sheets, watching Havard and then a
string of others who enter his apartment, among their number: Armann,
Greta, Sigurvin, Jaime.
What goes through Emil's mind now that he's a bona fide voyeur? I'll link my comments with Emil's ruminations:
"And at the same time I wonder why the hell one ever wants to get to know other people, or let them take advantage of oneself."
An
individual's anxiety, dread, alienation along with an examination of
their relationship and responsibility to others play a prominent role in
existential literature and these themes are front and center in The Pets.
"I
suddenly realize very clearly the ridiculous position I am in and carry
on thinking about the problems that one creates for oneself by getting
to know various people. One shouldn't let others into one's life."
Georges
Simenon wrote dozens of his romans durs, that is, "hard" psychological
novels that pushed his protagonist to the edge. In a number of ways,
this Bragi Ólafsson tale reminds me of Simenon, however even Simenon
didn't come up with anything near as farcical as having his main
character's existential crisis occur when hiding under a bed! Bragi, you
win the gold metal for originality.
"I still can't believe it. I
tell myself that I may be having a nightmare. But just maybe. There is
so little chance that it is impossible. In other words, it is reality.
It is reality with a capital R; the most emphatic R I have ever
experienced in reality."
Emphatic and intense - in this way, Emil shares much with narrator Ishmael from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Many are the references, both direct and indirect, to Moby Dick in The Pets. As to how and why this is the case, you'll have to read for yourself.
"All
at once I feel it is worthwhile huddling here under the bed - it's as
if this pathetic confinement has suddenly acquired a purpose."
Ha!
Perhaps there's a connection between Emil's voyeurism and the aesthetic
distance one needs in order to better appreciate a work of art or
drama. I frequently imagined Emil as a one-man audience watching live
theater in his very own apartment. Or, perhaps I should say, as one reviewer
noted, Emil observing animals in a zoo. Or, maybe a combination of both
as in Desmond Morris's The Human Zoo.
"Is the eccentric up there playing with me?"
Emil
makes occasional references to God, curious references, that might be
lighthearted or somewhat serious. Thus, in a peculiar way, The Pets
borders on religious existentialism in the spirit of Gabriel Marcel or
Martin Buber. Am I joking? Pick up a copy and judge for yourself.
9/11/2021
An entire string of early morning dreams - thousands of birds in the sky. Seeing quail close-up. The water from an ocean overflows a street. Vivid colors all round. There was plenty of opportunities to recognize this could only happen in a dream and thus become lucid - but not this time.
9/12/2021
Wild, wild dream with detail. I'm attending a physical theater school where there are a number of classes, about 10 students in each class, all happening in a huge room. All sorts of extreme forms of physical theater happening. I have glimmers of lucidity but not to the point where I can hold it more than a moment at a time.
-------
TOWARD YOU by Jim Krusoe
You like weird, flaky storytelling that's even further out there then Barton Fink, Fargo and The Big Lebowski? Folks, I'm here to report Jim Krusoe out oddballs even The Coen Brothers.
Toward You takes its place as number three after Girl Factory and Erased in the author's trilogy about the relationship between this world and the next - and we're talking screwball doozy all the way.
"I'd
been tinkering with the Communicator when I heard a short squeal of
breaks outside my house and then a dull thud: the sound of a body being
struck by a speeding car." So begins this tale set in a raunchy lower
middle class neighborhood of St. Nils, small US city where half the men
and women are unemployed and everyone spends their off hours eating,
sleeping or watching TV.
Bob is the guy who hears the short
squeal and dull thud. Bob opens his front door and witnesses the
aftermath of the collision: the hit dog wobbles up his sidewalk and
drops over dead. Bob reads the big brown dog's name on the oval
nameplate of its thick leather collar: Bob.
Bob (the human)
ponders what to do with Bob (the dog). Calling the city is out of the
question on Thursday at five-thirty since city offices are now closed on
Friday and with Columbus Day on Monday, the city wouldn't come by till
at least Tuesday or even later. Dragging Bob the dead dog to his next
door neighbor Farley's yard is also out - Farley works nights and he
might be home looking out the window this very moment. Nope. Only one
choice - drag Bob to his backyard and bury Bob under the anemic rosebush
in need of fertilizer. "Bob would become the rosebush and the rosebush
would become Bob."
After putting the finish touches on Bob's grave - making a grave marker by painting Bob over today's date over RIP
in Old English lettering on a piece of scrap wood, Bob shares strokes
of his backstory: an unsocial klutz in high school, flunked out of St.
Niles Community College, enrolled in the Institute for Mind/Body
Research where he 1) had a deeply emotional (for him) short-term
relationship with fellow student Yvonne; and 2) began working on his
Communicator so he could share messages back and forth with the dead.
Saddened by Yvonne ending their relationship, he quit school and learned
furniture upholstery, eventually starting his own business he named
Bob's Upholstery. He continues to work on the Communicator in his spare
time (no success yet but Bob senses he could have his first
breakthrough).
And then it happens. The very next morning after
burying the big brown dog, Bob's working on an antique chair when he
hears someone knocking on his front door. Bob opens the door to see a
woman and a young girl both with dark hair in pigtails, the woman's
wearing a deerskin dress and moccasins and the girl in regular kid
cloths and her arm wrapped in fresh gauze. Wouldn't you know it - the
woman is none other than Yvonne and the girl, about age ten, is Dee Dee,
her daughter.
Turns out, Yvonne is going door to door in her
neighborhood (she lives a few blocks away) asking if anybody has seen a
large dog that bit Dee Dee. More concerned with rekindling a romantic
relationship than Dee Dee's health (possible contraction of rabies), Bob
tells her 'no' but invites them in to share a cake he's baked. Hey,
Bob! Why don't you tell the truth to possibly save a child's life? Nope.
Bob is way too feckless and lonely to put Dee Dee ahead of himself.
Jim
Krusoe frames his novel thusly where bizarre and weird lead to gobs
more that's kooky, creepy, funky and freaky. Take a gander at a few
clips that could be from the Toward You movie trailer -
Peeping
Tom - Bob's feeling down, a real case of alienation from his true
identity. To snap himself back into being his authentic self, Bob takes
an evening walk. He comes upon Yvonne's house. One thing leads to another
until Bob is up in a tree peering in at Yvonne brushing her teeth in
the upstairs bathroom. Yvonne turns and stares out the window. Did she
see him? Bob waits a few minutes before dropping down from the tree.
Minutes later, wouldn't you know it - a policeman tells Bob, "We got a
call about a prowler." Could be trouble, Bob.
Contacting the Dead
- Bob constructs a homemade helmet out of egg cartons to better hear
all those vibrations coming from the other side (the land of the
afterlife). Bob starts hearing strange sounds. Are they the 'Terminal
Waves' you're so keen to tap into, Bob? Still wearing his special
helmet, Bob takes a stroll outside. Guess who spots him doing all this?
Wouldn't you know it - the very same policeman. This could mean more
trouble, Bob.
Voice from Beyond - "Does it surprise you that my
best friend here is Bob? Well, Bob is my only friend." So speaks Dee Dee
now that she's dead. And the Bob she's talking about is Bob the dog. By
switching to Dee Dee from the beyond, Jim Krusoe adds more weirdness to
his already bugged out tale.
I could add additional clips
featuring that police officer, Dennis the psychopath (owner of Bob the
dog) and next door neighbor Farley, but I'll stop here and say you'll
have to read for yourself. Oh, if only the Coen Brothers would make a
film of Toward You, it might be a box office smash, coining a new category - The Super Weird.
9/17/2021
Reading The Dreamed Part by Rodrigo Fresan. Marvelous novel.
9/19/2021
A crazy dream! I'm working for a landscaper/architect of some sort and we're working at estate for Trump of all people. Anyways, we workers are told that a German Shepard dog has to be shot. And I'm the one who shoots the poor dog! Talk about doing something in your dream that you would NEVER do in waking life. My goodness. Of course I felt guilty and sad about what I did. In a way, I can be thankful for that! I wouldn't want to feel good about it, for sure.
My review of -
ICE by Vladimir Sorokin
Riveting. Absolutely riveting.
And this riveting, spellbinding novel comes in two different flavors. You get to choose which one might suit your taste.
Flavor number one is to read Bro before Ice. Flavor number two is reading Ice without having read Bro. Permit me to elaborate.
Bro is Volume #1 of Vladimir Sorokin’s Ice Trilogy. Bro
is the first person account of how a young Russian by the name of
Alexander Snegirey has his heart awakened by Primordial Light in 1928.
As part of his awakening he is given the name of Bro and told he must
find his Brothers and Sisters who have also been chosen to likewise have
their hearts awakened. The novel takes readers on Bro’s breathtaking
adventure up until 1950. Ice continues the thread of the story beginning in the year 2000. Thus Bro provides not only historic context for Ice but puts the reader in the know about those who come to have their hearts awakened.
I'm glad I read Bro prior to reading Ice
since I generally like to follow a story chronologically. Added to
this, I would make the world's worst detective - much better for me to
know the basic facts of what's going on rather than being kept in the
dark.
British critic Michael Froggatt disagrees. In his review for Strange Horizons Mr. Froggatt judges Ice the strongest novel in the trilogy and goes on to say how reading Bro lessens the mystery and suspense of Ice. He concludes by suggesting a reader who is interested in tackling Vladimir Sorokin's Ice Trilogy begin with Ice and work outwards.
Either way, Ice
possesses an intensity, a surging drive right from the first pages. The
narrative voice is detached, hard-edge, objective, as if a journalist
recording the nitty-gritty of combat in a war zone. We encounter drug
dealers, drug addicts, prostitutes, bottom of the barrel ruck and their
coarse, crude, brutal, blunt way of speaking and dealing with one
another – a novel not for the squeamish.
Many of the men and
women are given a special call-out. Two examples: “Ilona: 17 years old,
tall, thin, with a lively laughing face, leather pants, platform shoes, a
white top.” - “Borenboim: 44 years old, medium height, thinning blonde
hair, an intelligent face, blue eyes, thin glasses in gold frames, a
dark green three-piece suit."
There’s mystery afoot, a stroke of
Vladimir Sorokin infusion of radical myth mixed in with cosmic science
fiction: these denizens of Moscow’s concrete canyons wonder what the
hell is going on with the ice and all those primitive looking ice
hammers. And the shift in their feelings. The contrast between the
scummy day-to- day lives of these people and what they eventually feel
in their hearts is quite striking: hard-as-nails drug kingpin Borenboim
talking about his tender heart; likewise Nikolaeva the prostitute - very
funny in an odd, offbeat way.
Two glimmers of refinement in
this dank, cesspool world: Boremboim has a collection of Borges stories
in his briefcase and Mozart is playing softly at a rehabilitation
center. In Moscow 2000 overflowing with hard rock and liquor, gadgets,
computer games and Hollywood posters, to know at least somebody
appreciates Borges and Mozart is most refreshing.
Part Two
switches to an old lady’s first person account retracing her childhood
in a poor Russian village under Nazi occupation and her joining others
villagers herded off to Germany to work in a factory. But then something
remarkable happens. She’s singled out since she has blonde hair and
blue eyes. What follows thereafter ties her to a strange brotherhood.
Her worldview is forever transformed – from 1950 right up until 2000,
the grueling, gritty details of her earthbound, everyday routine take a
distant second to her true identity and mission.
One of the more stimulating dimensions of Ice
is the way in which the story raises a number of philosophical issues.
How bound are member of a particular religious cult or sect by their
beliefs? Jim Jones and the mass suicides/mass murders in Jonestown,
David Koresh and the Branch Davidians going up in flames in their
compound in Waco, Marshall Applewhite leading Heaven’s Gate members in
mass suicide - we need only think of these events to know that sects and
cults can be closely linked to violence and death.
And
considering the frequent instances of torture, imprisonment and murder
throughout history perpetuated in the name of religion, how far are the
major religions removed from sects and cults? Any time members view
others through the lens of “us versus them” watch out. Brutality and
viciousness of one stripe or the other usually isn’t far behind.
What are we to make of the fellowship in Ice?
Those initiates speak of opening the heart but how open is their heart
to those outside their fellowship? Referring to “ordinary” humans as
meat machines unworthy of life has a frightening ring. And this
reference to libraries; "Thousands of meat machines were always sitting
there, engaged in silent madness: they attentively leafed through sheets
of paper covered with letters." Sounds like a rant spouted by a
semi-illiterate thug.
Witnessing the horrors of twentieth
century totalitarian governments is hardly less disturbing. And how
about the omnipresence of contemporary multinational corporations?
Perhaps Vladimir Sorokin in his sly way is commenting on the dangers of
all forms of power and coercion reducing individuals to hungry consumers
or meat machines.
Even if Ice is the only novel within
the trilogy one reads, it is well worth it. For fans of the author, both
old and new, nothing short of all three volumes will do.
9/20/2021
My review of -
THE INVENTED PART by Rodrigo Fresán
"Today's electrocuted readers, accustomed to reading quickly and
briefly on small screens. And, yes, goodbye to all of them, at least for
as long as this book lasts and might last. Unplug from external inputs
to nourish yourselves exclusively on internal electricity."
The
above quote is taken from the opening paragraph of this magnificent,
exuberant 550-pager by Argentine author Rodrigo Fresán, a novel for
lovers of books and reading, a novel about writing and writers and a
plethora of other provocative topics for readers to linger over and
luxuriate in.
As by way of a sampler, here's a few juicy bits
from the first pages, the narrator, a writer, reflecting back to the
time when he was The Boy in his boyhood:
"The same way he'd feel
later on, holding any one of his many favorite novels. Eyes open wide,
one of those books that, with time's rapid passing, time's running,
charges you the entrance fee of learning everything all over again: a
brand new game with rules and - you've been warned - a breathing all its
own, a rhythm you have to absorb and follow if your goal is to climb up
on the shore of the last page."
"And The Boy is already not all
that rational and already thinks like one of those antique windup tin
toys. Like his favorite toy."
"The Boy will learn how to
neutralize and ignore the call of that abyss: opening a book, plunging
inside, the freest of falls, closing the cover on reality, behind him
now not in front and opening his eyes. And he'll always marvel at the
fact that whenever he picks up a book for the first time - he's been
told that the same thing happens to other people with firearms - he'll
always be surprised by the fact that, no matter the number of pages and
type of binding, he thought it'd be lighter or heavier, but never like
this. And then it'll seem logical and narratively appropriate that each
book feel unique and different and special."
"The laugh of
someone who has come back from the dead and lived to tell the tale, to
write it down, and then, alter it, improve it, add the invented part.
The invented part that is not, not ever, the deceitful part, but the
part that actually makes something that merely happened into something
as it should have happened. Something (everything to come, the rest of
his life, will spring from that there and then, from that exact moment)
more authentic and valuable and pure than the simple and banal and often
unsubtle and sloppy truth."
The Invented Part makes for a
fun read - literary fiction that's actually highly enjoyable. But it
doesn't stop there - to add a sweet icing to our reading pleasure, when
we finish The Invented Part, we can look forward to two more books in the series: The Dreamed Part and soon (I hope) to be translated The Remembered Part, all published by Open Letter, translator par excellence Will Vanderhyden.
I must admit I face a dilemma as a reviewer sitting down to review The Invented Part.
I could easily continue with author quotes. enough eminently quotable
lines to go on for pages, but I'm obliged to make overarching
observations about such things as what the book's about, the writing,
the author's themes.
Here goes: we have The Boy becoming The
Writer becoming The Lonely Man. There's also The Young Man and The Young
Woman making a documentary about The Writer along with a tangent on The
Writer's Mad Sister. The writing itself is nothing short of spectacular
– James Joyce and Marcel Proust have nothing on Rodrigo Fresán. The
novel covers the three most important themes of human existence: Eros
and Thanatos and Grafi - love and death and writing.
Now the juice – juicy Invented Part quotes, a flock of fabulous Fresán. I'll sprinkle in my own brief commentary.
A Fresán definition: "liferary
- a life made of books, a life made of lives. Yes: the library like an
organism, alive and in constant expansion, surviving owners and users
alike."
I think here of not only a public library or a university
library but one's personal library. Can you envision your personal
library as a living, pulsing organism made up of a phalanx of lives -
all those authors, all those fictional characters, a bit like Hesse's
Magic Theater, as many doors as you like.
"A library without precise limits, where you never find the book you are looking for, but always find the book you should be looking for."
I
remember those times in libraries where I walked out with an unexpected
treasure. One of life's beauties: the glorious experience of browsing
many books on multiple shelves.
"He'd become a writer because it was the closest thing to being a reader."
I'd
go even further: I switched from writing microfiction to writing book
reviews since, for me, reviewing gets me even closer to reading books.
"To
put it another way: it's one of those moments in which literature, the
act itself of making literature, reveals things that life does not and
will never be able to make sense of on its own."
I hear echoes
from philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer and John Dewey when they
speak of the clarity afforded by the aesthetic experience. For a
literary writer, the fresh air, the lucidity, the insights into all
facets of life when they press further and further into their story.
"The problem is that literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared."
The
narrator is quoting Philip Roth here but he surrounds this quote with
observing how reading a book on a screen always contains the lure of
hopping around the internet, much different than sitting in solitude
with a real book where you make a firm time commitment to read without
interruption.
"On screens - big and small screens - where our
lives are no longer projected because our lives, now, more all the time,
are screens.
To be or not to be a screen, that is the question."
Ha!
According to the narrator, we no longer project ourselves onto our
personal internet profile; we ARE our internet profile. With a touch of
black humor, one can hear the current generation proclaim: Who cares
when my physical body gives out and I die? I will live on as my internet
profile.
The Writer on the type of book he would like to write:
"A book like one of Edward Hopper's clean and well-lit rooms, but with a
Jackson Pollock waiting to come out of the closet."
The above is
one of dozens of descriptions The Writer writes down about the book he
would like to put in our hands - a book that will eventually make a deep
impression on our hearts and minds.
"Writers are people who, inexactly, always prefer to look away, toward another part - the invented part."
Want a more exact reason why Rodrigo chose to title his novel The Invented Part? Read it to find out!
9/21/2021
My review of -
HOUSES by Borislav Pekić
Imagine an American movie buff going into a deep sleep Rip Van
Winkle-style in 1941 and finally waking up in 1968. The first thing on
the agenda, of course, is a trip to the local movie house expecting a
variation on the 1941 musical comedy You'll Never Get Rich featuring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. So happens there’s a double feature: Bullett starring Steve McQueen and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Whoa! We can imagine the level of instant future shock.
Something along similar lines transpires in Houses,
Serbian author Borislav Pekić’s 1970 novel about a kingpin Belgrade
building owner, who, after having been knocked down, beaten up and
traumatized during a riot in the city back in 1941, has sealed himself
off in a high-rise apartment for twenty-seven years where he has been
zeroing in on his beloved buildings through binoculars.
Oh, and
there’s also the absence of news reports – since property mogul Arsénie
Negovan’s heart and health could take a nosedive if he suffers further
trauma, his wife, nurse and lawyer make sure he does not receive
bulletins or news releases (usually bad news) about his properties, his
city of Belgrade, his country or the world. In other words, Arsénie
Negovan is completely uninformed of events between the Nazis having been
forced out of Belgrade at the end of World War ll and the prevailing
modern Communist government in the year 1968.
Then crisis hits:
Arsénie overhears his wife and lawyer talking in whispers about the
impending destruction of one of his apartment houses. What, his dear
Simonida is to be torn down! (Mr. Negovan gives women’s names to his
properties - Sophia, Eugénie, Christina, Emilia, Serafina, Agatha,
Barbara, Daphne, Anastasia, Juliana, Theodora, Irina, Xenia, Eudoxia,
Angelina - and looks lovingly on each one of them as an urban
goddesses). Arsénie will not let it happen; he resorts to drastic
measures. Unbeknownst to his wife and everyone else, he dips into his
closet and puts on his very formal suit complete with tuxedo tails, his
1940s top hat, grabs his cane with a handle in the form of a silver
greyhound's muzzle and hits the Belgrade 1968 streets – a seventy-seven
year old man on a mission.
Arsénie Negovan cuts quite the figure –
what the formally attired old man sees and hears, the reactions to his
demands about his building (actually the building has been taken over by
the state many years ago) makes for one of the more humorous bits of
the novel. At one point the wife of his former building caretaker takes
him to task: ““Get out of here, and tell those who sent you that the
Martinovići have nothing more for you to confiscate. You can still get
this!” She brandished her clenched fist. “Just look at him, all dressed
up with a hat and a tie! Don’t you think I can tell a secret policeman
when I see one?”” For the one and only Arsénie Negovan, prime builder of
this very city, to be spoken to in such a manner. Outrageous! More than
outrageous since never in his life has he ever been remotely associated
with lowly organizations such as the police.
The entire novel
consists of Arsénie Negovan’s written account of his own life and events
stretching back to 1919, the year this man of houses witnessed another
ugly riot with a mob carrying scythes, hammers, placards and red
banners, this time in the Ukraine. Up there in his apartment, in
self-imposed exile, his extensive notes, including a last will and
testament, are written on the back of rent receipts and accounting
forms. Quite the irony here since author Borislav Pekić was reduced to
writing his novels on toilet paper while serving a five year prison term
for his involvement in the Union of Democratic Youth in Yugoslavia.
As
perhaps to be expected, at the heart of Arsénie's account is his very
personal relationship with his houses. Not only does he bestow a
feminine name to each but his houses are his very sense of identity.
Indeed, in his case “the Possessor becomes the Possessed without losing
any of the traditional function of Possession, and the Possessed becomes
the Possessor, without in any way losing its characteristics of the
Possessed.”
The more we read it becomes clear this is a tale of
obsession. And with a tragicomic dimension in that Arsénie is blind to
the way ownership of property is inextricably bound to the forces of
politics and economics. Arsénie proclaims: “A man who builds houses or
owns them cannot be party to a war. For him all wars are alien.” Yet
again another instance of irony, since, as Barry Schwabsky points out in
his Introduction to this New York Review Books edition:
“Pekić considered Communism to be one of those delusions, yet from a
Marxist viewpoint, his novel can be considered a study of bourgeois
self-deception.”
Houses is an absorbing first-person
narrative with many highly dramatic episodes. There’s the time Arsénie
refuses to leave his window to go to the cellar when bombs are exploding
all over Belgrade - his houses are in danger and through a sheer act of
will he offers them courage by remaining at his post. Months later he’s
elated and turns into a giddy little boy watching German tanks leave
Belgrade, leaving his Agatha, Jillana, Christina and other houses in
peace. Then again caught in another riot, this time in 1968, along the
very same streets of that detestable 1941 riot. Arsénie words of
passion: “They always demanded the same thing. They wanted my houses. They wanted them in March 1941 and They wanted them now in June of 1968!”
Widening the lens, Houses
is a deeply penetrating insight into the clash of ideologies in those
tumultuous mid-twentieth century years of Yugoslavian history, a novel
with a special appeal for anyone interested in the fate of Eastern
Europe. Borislav Pekić maintained an unflinching skepticism respecting
notions of “progress” or “advancement” of “improvement” attained through
the march of history. His perspective comes through loud and clear in Houses.
Highly recommend. Special thanks to translator Bernard Johnson for
rendering the Serbo-Croatian into a fluid, readable English.
9/23/2021
Dream with detail - With Terry looking at shabby apartment houses by a bridge we're on. We think the area is too dangerous - thus those apartments are not for us!
10/7/2021
Established a 30-minute daily meditation practice beginning last week listening to tambura in C#. Peaceful, joyful experience.
10/12/2021
I had two incredibly dreams with detail. The setting and themes and feel of the dreams shared much in common. What I recall is being in some type of arts workshops where the materials for the class were complex and I gathered much. Somehow one of the leaders of a particular workshop wanted me to hand back the materials from his, but this was a complex undertaking. The building was large with a number of workshops running concurrently. All very, very confusing. --- The good news is I remembered my dreams, something that hasn't happened in some time, probably because my sleep has been deep since I've been doing tons of walking and exercise.
Listening to Into to Tantra by Lama Yeshe. Great insights into our dreamlike existence (emptiness and impermanence) and the crystal clear, pure clear light nature of our true being we can contact and experience first-hand which will lead to great joy and peace of mind.
10/24/2021
Dream where I'm at a soccer game and right outside a house. I'm holding a dog on a leash and at some point I interact with Dick Cushing.
11/11/2021
Wild dream with detail. I leave an exotic white car, Jaguar I think, in midtown Manhattan since I can't find the keys. Take a bus to Jersey but realize I need to return that rental car so I ask a cop for info so I can get back to NYC. He delays but finally gives me directions so I can get back. I'm back but I still don't have the keys. I woke up, what a relief! and reflected that we don't need thinking to free us from the dream we're trapped in; what we need is to wake up!
This for me underscores the goal of moksha - release - to free oneself from being trapped, from being deluded, from being unfree.
11/25/2021
I'm making my way through the tales of American horror writer Thomas Ligotti. So far I've read and reviewed nearly twenty with about twenty-five to go. Here's a review of one of my favorites:
The Shadow at the Bottom of the World by Thomas Ligotti
“Before
there occurred anything of a truly prodigious nature, the season had
manifestly erupted with some feverish intent. This, at least, was how it
appeared to us, whether we happened to live in town or somewhere
outside its limits.”
Thomas Ligotti places his short-story, The Shadow at the Bottom of the World, under the heading The Voice of Our Name,
most appropriate since, as in the above opening lines, the tale is told
by a narrator speaking in first-person plural, that is, as “we” and
“us” and “our.”
Personally, I'm put on my guard when anybody
takes on the role of spokesperson for an organization or crowd. Call me a
skeptic, but I sense some element of personal dignity is forfeited when
an individual assumes the identity of a group.
I'm also alerted
to something strange afoot when the narrator tells us “the season had
manifestly erupted with some feverish intent” and immediately talks
about a dark, abysmal presence in crisis or that something “perhaps had
been secretly invoked by small shadowy voices calling out in the midst
of our dreams.” He also speaks of a bitter scent in the air, the
"hysteric brilliance” of trees and the “intemperate display” of flowers,
shrubs and plants.
If this isn't enough, the narrator alludes to
the stars in the night sky growing delirious and taking on "the tints
of an earthly inflammation.” And, finally, there's that scarecrow in an
open field, a field refusing to turn cold when the season turned from
autumn into early winter.
Ah, that scarecrow. In addition to the
lurid description of the natural world appearing to have gone on some
weird acid trip, the tale's narrator expresses concern over a scarecrow
seemingly caught between opposing forces – its head slumps as if in “a
grotesque slumber” yet its arms extend as if in an “incredible gesture
toward flight,” its head nods as if trapped in a bad dream as its
overalls flap and flannel shirt flutters as if in a strong wind. But,
gulp, there is no wind; all else in field and trees remains completely
still.
Does all this bizarreness creep out the men and women who
witness what has happened to their otherwise reliable, predictable
world? You bet it does. But there's a glimmer of comprehension in the
person of a Mr. Marble whose been making his own detailed observations,
studying signs and uttering prophecies.
Sidebar: Some Thomas
Ligotti irony on display here in his calling this man Mr. Marble, as in
those common expressions - “losing one's marbles” and “scrambled
marbles” since attributes of a tribal shaman frequently include crazy
wisdom along with a deep connection to the Earth and an ability to
journey to realms beyond the purely physical, qualities, as we come to
learn, possessed in abundance by strange Mr. Marble.
Such an
incredible tale probing the human psyche, the dynamics of groupthink and
the very nature of reality. Here are several clips from what could be a
Shadow at the Bottom highlight reel -
One – The narrator
reports many individuals were nudged from their beds, called as
witnesses to what he terms “an obscene spectacle.” The scarecrow appears
to be a living creature (“appears” and “seems” are terms the narrator
uses repeatedly, as if they're all being tricked into seeing what they
see). Beholding the scarecrow, some claim it “actually raised its arms
and its empty face to the sky, as though declaring itself to the
heavens” while others saw “its legs kick wildly, like those of a man who
is hanged.” Of course, what's so freaky about scarecrows is how similar
they are to humans, adding a special sting to the night's “obscene
spectacle.”
Two – The following day, they all revisit the field
and the scarecrow. In his account, the narrator uses terms like pilgrim,
augur, idol, avatar, revelation, congregation, terms closely associated
with religion. The narrator reflects, “Our congregation was lost in
fidgeting bemusement.” However, there is an exception: Mr. Marble “whose
eyes...were gleaming with perceptions he could not offer us in any
words we would understand.” Their inability to understand is predictable
- after all, their worldview is probably a combination homespun
pragmatism and fundamentalist Christianity. Anything outside their
limited sphere of belief and comprehension would be far too removed from
even the first step in appreciating and understanding what someone like
Mr. Marble had to offer.
Three – Standing in that field, the
narrator recounts there wasn't sufficient sunlight to “burn off the
misty dreams of the past night.” He also observes “radiant leaves
possessed some inner source of illumination or stood in contrast to some
deeper shadow which they served to mask” and the group's impeded
efforts to come to terms with their fears. Also, how “odd droning noises
that filled the air could not be blamed on the legions of local cicadas
but indeed rose up from under the ground.” Oh, how all of what's spoken
here relates to tribal ritual and shamanism – dreams, shadows, masks
and, of course, that continuous cicada-like droning noise we can liken
to a didgeridoo, sacred instrument of the Australian Aboriginal peoples.
Four – When the farmer who owns the field tries
to tear the scarecrow apart, he and everyone else are in for a shock:
after the straw and rag clothes are discarded, rather than two crosswise
planks as to be expected, there was something “black and twisted in the
form of a man, something that seemed to come up from the earth.” The
narrator describes the gruesome particulars and concludes with “All of
this was supported by a thick, dark stalk which rose from the earth and
reached into the effigy like a hand into a puppet.” Ligotti fans will be
brought to attention by this last statement - puppets controlled by a
malignant outside presence serving as a major theme for the author.
And
what happens when they try to hack away and destroy that stalk rising
from the earth? And what happens thereafter (I've only highlighted the
opening scenes)? For Thomas Ligotti to tell.
The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
prompts us to ask a number of philosophic questions. Will this
community's worldview be shattered when nature appears to violate its
own rules? Is anybody truly open to messages that might be contained in
their dreams? What's with Mr. Marble and what will he do under these
seemingly horrific circumstances? Are these people connected or
disconnected to the Earth? Do these freakish happenings threaten a
traditional Christian view of God? What, if anything, is nature herself
trying to communicate to these men and woman? Might there be a kind of
Zoroastrian dualism at play here?
The questions continue. Have a read yourself. I'm confident you'll come up with some humdingers on your own.
11/28/2021
Happy Morning! Luicid Dream! Actually an entire series of scenes where I became completely, totally lucid.
First lucidity - I'm high up, say 40 floors up, on the balcony and I jump off, arms spread and soar over the ocean. I think, "I must be lucid." But I still stay in the dream and soar. The scene switches and I'm with Bhagavan Das and others at a yoga and arts camp. I walk down a path with others, realize I'm dreaming and jump fifty feet in the air. I do this repeatedly. At one point I sing those Twelfth Night lines beginning 'When I was a little boy with a hay ho the wind and the rain - somehow I know all the lines and I dance, bending my back back so far my head almost touches my waste - now that's flexible!
11/29/2021
I wish I could report a second lucid monring dream but I cannot. I even listened to some audio book on Dream Yoga last night. But no, no lucidity this morning.
However, I do remember a good bit of the dream, the various scenes in a restaurant where Nick, the cook/waiter/check in guy took my roller with my publishing materials (in the dream I'm still working). He refused to give it back to me, even when I returned a second time and offered him $20, even when I hunted him out in the backrooms of the restaurant among the lockers for the men and women like in a high school area. My last face-to-face with Nick, offering him the $20 and I wake up! I thought thank goodness it was only a dream!!
12/3/2021
A dream where I hear someone say, "Walt!" Now were they addressing me? I think in the dream they must be talking about Walt Disney.
1/16/2022
I'm rereading (and listening to audio) some novels that have meant a great deal to me. So far: The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz and The Affirmation by Christopher Priest.
1/17/2022
Here's my review for -
THE GOLDEN AGE by Michal Ajvaz
The Golden Age - Tale of an island along the Tropic of Cancer far out in the Atlantic Ocean, an island twelve miles wide and so
perpetually high it makes Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds appear drab.
Novel
as 329-page travelogue of the fantastic provided complements of a
narrator/travel guide who now lives in Prague following a three year
sojourn on this island that has no name, nameless since the islanders
"did not like fixed names and changed their own with great frequency."
If this sounds like the island inhabitants have completely flipped out,
please read on as we're just touching the tippity top of a very strange
iceberg - or, in this case, tropical island.
As the narrator
points out, the houses in the upper town are built into a waterfall with
nothing more than flowing water forming many of the exterior walls,
however safety is not an issue as theft and murder are completely
nonexistent on the island. “Although morality and humanensss meant
nothing to the islanders, they were strangers too, to egoism, and they
were too dreamy and lazy to do evil.”
Does this remind you of
another land from classic literature? How about Odysseus and his crew in
the land of the Lotus Eaters? But as the novel's narrator tells us
directly, the islanders do not drink alcohol nor do they use drugs.
Actually, the islanders enjoy one drug but this drug's description isn't
provided until many pages later. Not for me to give too much away here.
European
conquerors landed on the island years ago (picture a captain like
Cortés, Pizarro or Ponce de León unloading cannons and other artillery)
but, boy, were they in for a surprise. Their machines and equipment
began acting in funny, unpredictable ways. From the narrator’s
description, I can imagine cannons giggling and firing flowers instead
of cannonballs. And even more profoundly, the foreigners “were alarmed
to realize that they were beginning to look at the world through the
eyes of the islanders.” Must be something in the air - on this island,
your mind will soften to the point where you'll take in all of life as
if you are one of the mild-mannered, passive islanders and immediately
begin to like it. So much for conquest.
You may ask how the
islanders spend their days. We’re told the islanders’ way of life
consists of “nothing more than bathing lazily in their perfect,
unvarnished sense of the absolute, in the sea of bliss composed of
lights and murmurs before these degenerated into shapes and words.” Ah,
to experience the world as primordial blissful light, as a “splendid, idle glow of the
present.”
More specifically, the islanders possess an exceptional
capacity for hearing sounds - the soft music of waterfalls in their
upper town and the steady rippling of the sea in their lower town,
sounds non-islanders could rarely perceive, subtle music that would hold
their attention all day long, day after day. No surprisingly, the
narrator observes this hyperperception for sounds has something in
common with addiction to drugs.
Although not an islander
himself, over time the sounds have their effect even on the narrator - he
sometimes imagines an inverse world where concert halls are turned over
to the sounds of rain and the rustlings of wind; meanwhile, synesthesia in action: the lines on
plaster walls form readable texts while pages of books are written with random, indecipherable markings.
And what of sight and seeing? The
narrator delves into great detail but one piece of his report stands
out: for the islanders "shape and color had an intrinsic longing to
create a glowing carpet." In other words, in a very real sense, the
islanders are on an unending acid trip. Whoa, baby! No wonder the
islanders live in the warmth and radiance of the present moment with
little heed given to past or future.
And when the islanders want
to trade with foreigners for food, clothing and other goods, there's no problem
– an unending supply of precious stones can be mined with ease. All the
islanders have to do is chip away at their section of mountain that's
part of their home and presto, a cluster of extremely rare and valuable
gems land at their feet.
All of the above is taken from the first 40 pages. This to say I've just touched on
several highlights that set the framework for author's unraveling tale. Much, much more will follow, including the islanders'
prime art: the ongoing creation of what they call the Book - a hypertext with pockets to insert additional pages (among many other things), the one and only copy that's shared by all.
The author devotes a number of chapters to the Book. One key passage; "Owing to the extraordinary thinness of the paper, insertions could be made in the Book
on many levels. Each series of insertions reached a different depth: I
don't know which were the deepest because I didn't open all the Book's
pockets (and I didn't reach the bottom of all those I did open). It was
impossible to determine the number of levels of insertion by the
thickness of the pocket: some of the more swollen pockets had only one
or two levels, as the stories recounted in them were long. The deepest I
ever reached into a pocket was the eleventh level - but I'm not saying
that it went no further than this. As the case may be, the island's Book had more levels of insertion than the nine counted by Michel Foucault in Raymond Roussel's New Impressions of Africa."
Additionally, multiple chapters at the end of the novel focus on the rivalry
between two feuding royal families. But enough highlight reel.
With The Golden Age, Michael Ajvaz has written a
work of extraordinary imagination and philosophical depth. Actually,
I'll go further: by my modest judgement, the novel counts as
one of the most explosive, most creative works I've come across. Thank you, Dalkey Press, and thank you, Andrew Oakland, for your clear English translation.
1/21/2022
I listened to Bodies Electric by Colin Harrison again - and at age 72 I can detect Jack Whitman's bullheadedness more clearly. The guy is so oblivious to the levels of sutlety needed in dealing with people. Being smart is one thing; being so sharp in some areas and a dullard in others makes for a deadly combination.
*********************THE END**********************
CONTINUED UNDER 'DREAM JOURNAL OF COLE ROBINHOOD'
Comments
Post a Comment