Magnificent Octopus

The taste of the Russian peasant

2012-01-25T18:30:00.002-05:00

The thespian side of Elizabeth's soul! Hunger for the awe lighting up visitors' faces when they reached her presence, having passed through the enfilade of staterooms connected through carved and gilded portals. Hunger for the gasps of astonishment at the soft browns and yellows in the Amber Room. Shades of ebony touching on the color of dark honey, through which she, the queen bee, floated in her luscious dresses, her high heels sliding on the polished mosaics of the floors. "How vulgar, Varenka," Catherine had murmured. "She has the taste of the Russian peasant she will always be."

The Winter Palace, by Eva Stachniak, is a historical novel centering on the rise to power of Catherine the Great of Russia, from the time she arrived at the court of Empress Elizabeth, at the age of 15. Catherine is a mythic character, but the truth is I know very little about her.

Her story is told through the eyes of one of the maids at court, Varvara, the orphaned daughter of a bookbinder, whose main duties revolve around the transmission of information, or, more bluntly, spying.

I wanted to love this book, but didn't. A little over halfway through I toyed with the idea of abandoning it. After all, I know the story ends in a coup and Catherine's ascension to the throne. I think the only thing that pulled me along was the introduction of the character of Count Poniatowski and the connection to Polish history, though I think my curiosity would be better served by a biography or history text.

The tagline — "behind every great ruler lies a betrayal" — is a little misleading; there is no single betrayal on which events hinge.

It was not believable to me that Catherine would suddenly have so much support, at court, among the Guard, after having lived so much on the sidelines, out of the court's and public's eye. Her life was fuller, of course, than we are allowed to see (and the novel is weaker for us not seeing it).

That's one of Varvara's epiphanies, but she comes off as rather pathetic for not having realized earlier that her status was not unique, for not having questioned some sources of information or the nature of other relationships. For someone in the know, she knows very little. Similarly, I don't buy Varvara's grief for her husband, and the characterization of her relationship with her daughter feels forced. It's too bad that we experience all the novel's events through someone whose characterization is relatively weak.

There's a disconnect between her perception, Catherine's story, and what I think the reader is intended to come away with.

About the palace cats.

Excerpt.

X

2012-01-23T22:35:00.001-05:00

Has anyone read X'ed Out, by Charles Burns? Can you explain it to me?

I wish I'd known that this story was incomplete and was only the first part of a serial. On its own it's a bit slight, and I don't see what the big deal is over it. The story elements are part David Lynch, part William S. Burroughs — trippy and unexplained. Visually it pays homage to Tintin, but beyond that I don't see how referencing Tintin adds to the story. Maybe Burns intends a stronger parallel to be drawn in the next 100 pages, but I don't see it yet.

I'd be interested to see how the whole story plays out — what's with the hive, and the lizard creatures? — but the first volume by itself was pretty disappointing.

Reviews
The Guardian
LA Times

Wonderful

2012-01-22T19:24:00.001-05:00

Graphic novels, comic books, whatever you want to call them, have never really been my thing. I've always been open to them in theory, but was never particularly drawn to them as a genre.

I use the word "genre" deliberately because it highlights a major misconception about what comic books are, one I was guilty of in the past, and one that is slowly being overcome in the literary establishment. Graphic novels are not a genre unto themselves; the term describes a format, like book, movie, painting, article, that delivers some kind of narrative (hence the "novel" part). I have over the years read in the form of graphic novels: adventure stories, fantasies, journalistic reportage, science fiction, historical memoirs, love stories.

My other half has always been a big fan of Daniel Clowes. This Christmas I gave him a handful of Clowes's latest, and since nobody gave me any books for Christmas this year (what the fuck?!), I've taken to reading over his shoulder.

Saturday morning I managed to squirrel away on my own with Mister Wonderful. Dark comedy romance? It's an evening in the life of a divorced middle-aged man out on a blind date. It's funny, perceptive, sweet. The night's events are visually depicted, but the meat of the story is Marshall's internal running commentary. In this way we also get glimpses into his past, learning how he came to be the man he is today.

But one night about three months ago, I was "befriended" by a strange woman. We wound up spending a crazy, sleepless weekend together. It was sort of like "Breakfast at Tiffany's," except in this version, Holly Golightly is an unstable, crank-snorting sociopath. It wound up costing me $800, my grandmother's earrings and a laptop, but such is the price of transformative human events, I suppose.

Clowes is a keen observer of behaviour. We miss a lot of Natalie's chitchat because Mister Wonderful is too busy thinking about having to pee but this not being a good time to go pee. Her emotional confessions are interrupted by the waitress. He grumbles about the rich party-goers and insults them in his head. It's all very human.

I'm learning that reading graphic novels requires a certain kind of literacy; one review notes some of the artist's techniques:

He makes judicious and creative use of comic book devices: three dimensional words to symbolize emotional distress; a little floating man to represent Marshall's superego; text in word balloons running off the side of a panel or obscured by inner-thought boxes; vignettes drawn in cartoony style to depict imagined consequences; flashbacks tinted a rusty orange.

Mister Wonderful originally ran in the New York Times Funny Pages.

From real to configurational space

2012-01-21T10:27:00.003-05:00

Back in December when I was wondering what to read next, I held up two books and asked Helena, the one about robots or the one about something else (I don't remember what)? No contest. Robots, hands down.

The Cyberiad is a collection of short stories by Stanisław Lem. The stories are awesome and clever and hilarious.

They are illustrated by Daniel Mróz — the drawing I've posted here depicts the electronic bard, the story about which I quoted from previously. (There is an online gallery of Mróz's work, and and the recent Google doodle commemorating one of Lem's publications also pays him tribute in employing his style.) The illustrations are as funny and weird and complex as Lem's stories.

The stories read like fairy tales, though they are set in the far future. They deal with warring kingdoms, exotic cultures, human foibles, and questions of morality. They have a 1001 Nights feel to them, but with robots. Essentially, The Cyberiad relates the adventures of Trurl and Klapaucius, two constructors, as they execute various commissions across the universe while working on their own personal robotics projects. But they — the stories, not so much the constructors, but sometimes — are deeply reflective and philosophical.

Trurl and Klapaucius are friends, colleagues, competitors. The stories are about them more than their creations — the robots serve to amplify their too-human flaws: greed and ambition often lead them to go about their work with blinders on. The fact that they enjoy some relative successes means that there are others scheming to undermine them; when they're not trying to sabotage each other, they will join forces against a common threat.

Many people point to The Cyberiad as the perfect entryway to Lem's work. These stories are certainly accessible, but I'm not sure how representative they are of Lem. They are nothing like the handful of novels that I've read, but I imagine some other of his books might share The Cyberiad's light-heartedness and joie de vivre.

I don't know if Douglas Adams ever cited Lem as influence, but a comparison between these authors is clear.

Behold, from "The Third Sally or The Dragons of Probability" (I've inserted breaks for readability, but note that Lem writes this as one paragraph):

Trurl and Klapaucius were former pupils of the great Cerebron of Umptor, who for forty-seven years in the School of Higher Neantical Nillity expounded the General Theory of Dragons. Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here.

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way. And then there were the imaginary dragons, and the a-, anti- and minus-dragons (colloquially termed nots, noughts and oughtn'ts by the experts), the minuses being the most interesting on account of the well-known dracological paradox: when two minuses hypercontiguate (an operation in the algebra of dragons corresponding roughly to simple multiplication), the product is 0.6 dragon, a real nonplusser. Bitter controversy raged among the experts on the question of whether, as half of them claimed, this fractional beast began from the head down or, as the other half maintained, from the tail up.

Trurl and Klapaucius made a great contribution by showing the error of both positions. They were the first to apply probability theory to this area and, in so doing, created the field of statistical draconics, which says that dragons are thermodynamically impossible only in the probabilistic sense, as are elves, fairies, gnomes, witches, pixies and the like. Using the general equation of improbability, the two constructors obtained the coefficients of pixation, elfinity, kobolding, etc. They found that for the spontaneous manifestation of an average dragon, one would have to wait a good sixteen quintoquadrillion heptillion years. In other words, the whole problem would have remained a mathematical curiosity had it not been for that famous tinkering passion of Trurl, who decided to examine the nonphenomenon empirically.

First, as he was dealing with the highly improbable, he invented a probability amplifier and ran tests in his basement — then later at the Dracogenic Proving Grounds established and funded by the Academy. To this day those who (sadly enough) have no knowledge of the General Theory of Improbability ask why Trurl probabilized a dragon and not an elf or goblin. The answer is simply that dragons are more probable than elves or goblins to begin with. True, Trurl might have gone further with his amplifying experiments, had not the first been so discouraging — discouraging in that the materialized dragon tried to make a meal of him. Fortunately, Klapaucius was nearby and lowered the probability, and the monster vanished.

A number of scholars subsequently repeated the experiment on a phantasmatron, but, as they lacked the necessary know-how and sang-froid, a considerable quantity of dragon spawn, raising an ungodly perturbation, broke loose. Only then did it become clear that those odious beasts enjoyed an existence quite different from that of ordinary cupboards, tables and chairs; for dragons are distinguished by their probability rather than by their actuality, though granted, that probability is overwhelming once they've actually come into being.

Suppose, for example, one organizes a hunt for such a dragon, surrounds it, closes in, beating the brush. The circle of sportsmen, their weapons cocked and ready, finds only a burnt patch of earth and an unmistakable smell: the dragon, seeing itself cornered, has slipped from real to configurational space. An extremely obtuse and brutal creature, it does this instinctively, of course.

Now, ignorant and backward persons will occasionally demand that you show them this configurational space of yours, apparently unaware that electrons, whose existence no one in his right mind would question, also move exclusively in configurational space, their coming and goings fully dependent on curves of probability. Though it is easier not to believe in electrons than in dragons: electrons, at least taken singly, won't try to make a meal of you.

[Helena asked if she'd made a good choice, selecting this book for me to read. I told her, excellent. Over the weeks I was reading these stories I would retell parts of them to her, and we'd share our puzzlement or laugh at their ridiculousness.

In an unrelated conversation, she told me she's changed her mind about what she wants to be when she grows up. Maybe she wants to be a constructor (and I thought this was a weird choice of word for her to use), to build things she designs herself, ecological things, that are good for the planet, to make our lives better, like pineapple phones or electric cars.]

What you know, you know

2012-01-19T22:45:00.001-05:00

"Why did you strike his so soundly?"

"He needs that scholarly pride clouted out of him."

"Like the man you spoke of who angered you?"

There's a short silence. His shoulders rise and fall. "There are those who think that all of life's lessons can be reaped from reading. I despise them."

"Despise them?"

"What a man does with his brain is his concern, not mine. Just do not let him think he's a better man for it. [...]"

Although many professional reviewers are quibbling over the liberties David Snodin has taken with Shakespeare's Othello, I rather enjoyed his Iago, and I'm guessing my general ignorance of Shakespeare went a long way in this regard. I didn't notice what plot points were changed, nor did I have a strong sense of Iago's character before jumping in.

Of course, I knew the basics of Shakespeare's story, and read up on it a little after Snodin's novel had hooked me.

Snodin has written about his fascination with the character of Iago, and the more I know, the more entranced I become myself — enough so that I'll be checking out Othello on film soon.

Snodin's story picks up where Shakespeare's left off. Iago is imprisoned for murder in a remote corner of Cyprus, and by page 11 we learn he's escaped. Back in Venice, we learn of the domestic tragedy of Othello and experience its aftermath through Gentile Stornello, cousin of Shakespeare's ill-fated Desdemona. Gentile's a nerd and a weakling — a poet! — and he gets mixed up with — that is, beaten up by — one of the Malipiero bad boys. And he falls for his servant girl.

One of the Malipiero uncles is Chief Inquisitor of the Serene Republic of Venice. He has Gentile brought in, because he can. And he throws Gentile — who reminds him of his own deceased son — in with Iago — for whom there is still an official hunt going on. That is, he's got Iago, but he's not telling anyone yet, cuz that's not enough for him; he wants to know what makes Iago tick. So he lets him go. Malipiero uses Gentile to gleen what he can about Iago.

So the plot has some Shakespearean-like complexities at its core.

It's a cat-and-mouse story — the cat know exactly where the mouse is, and the mouse knows the cat is on its tail, but the cat waits for exactly the right moment to pounce, and the mouse plays to survive, and you're never really sure what the cat gets out of it. Is there really such a thrill in the hunt or is it simply playing, to the death — does it enjoy the game or is it merely acting according to its nature?

There are a lot of reasons I enjoyed Iago.

One. I'm loving historical Venice, its sounds and colours. This is directly related to my ongoing relationship with the Assassin's Creed video games, and reading this book was a reasonable substitute for the games, allowing me to immerse myself in that world through a different channel.

Two. It seems I may have my own personal Iago these days, whispering groundless suppositions in my Othello's ear. But by what motivation? Jealousy, cruelty, kindness, justice, amusement?

Three. I read this novel while watching people grieve. It served as a much-needed escape from funereal circumstances and as a reminder of some basic truths.

The loyalty and protection of those closest to you, I think, is what makes for true succor — a shield against the fears of the night and the perils of the world outside.

Mostly it made me wonder about our true natures. Do we always act as our selves, or can we be driven to deeds that are out of character? How? Which is our true self — the one in cool-headed repose or the one inflamed by passion? Do we betray our true selves under torture? People around me are saying things in their grief — I can't tell if it has muddied their contact with the world or if it has stripped bare something that is in their essence.

(With these questions I'm reminded of Louise Penny's A Trick of the Light, a completely different novel from this one, and a remarkably strong one in how it's holding up in my memory, but with a similar motivation — to dig at the roots of human nature.)

Reviews
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The New Republic
Washington Post
Winnipeg Free Press

I tend to agree with the reviewer of the Winnipeg Free Press piece:

It is a journey that ends, as it seems all post-Freudian accounts of evil must, with sexual trauma suffered in childhood.

This is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the novel, betraying as it does the most unsettling aspect of Shakespeare's play. Whereas Shakespeare's Othello reveals to us monstrosity disguised as mundanity, Snodin's Iago only manages to make the monstrous mundane.

From what I gather, if you know your Shakespeare, this book may disappoint you, but if you're like me, Iago may inspire you to approach its source.

Finding Shakespeare

2012-01-14T10:23:00.002-05:00

Hamlet finally meets his maker in The Blast of War, Volume 2 of Kill Shakespeare (collecting issues 7–12).

The first volume, A Sea of Troubles, set the stage, bringing to life the premise that Shakespeare's creations have taken on a life of their own and are grappling with some metaphysical complexities. Are they bound by Shakespeare's quill (and what exactly is the nature of that bond), or is their will entirely free (and if so, where does that leave Shakespeare)? The plot is a question of resolving the balance of power — the bloodlustiness of Lady Macbeth and her demonic minions and the treachery of Richard III on the one hand, with Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet leading a kind of uprising against a meaningless existence on the other, essentially in defense of Shakespeare's honour.

This second volume see these factions do battle in an ultimate confrontation. But it's not all war. I was swept up in the love story: Romeo is alive after all. Will Juliet go back to him, or will she move forward with Hamlet?

Shakespeare turns out to be an alcoholic recluse wallowing in his own existential crisis. Hamlet has searched him out.

"Amazing. These people believe you their creator and yet thou art merely a drunkard. They deserve better. For this ale-soaked form deserves not my pity, nor even my scorn."

"Careful, Prince. I was not asked to be their — or your — maker. But know this: I most assuredly can unmake thee."

While the first volume stands for the novelty of its premise, I enjoyed the sequel even more for the strength of its story.

The video clip that follows features an interview with Kill Shakespeare's creators. It provides some insight on what went into its making, but it also gives you a taste of the story and the wonderful artwork.

There's some talk of adapting this work for film. Personally, I'd love to see this turned into a TV series: the Kill Shakespeare universe is wide open for countless potential adventures.

Reviews
Blogcritics
Clandestine Critic
Geeks of Doom
Grovel
PopMatters

************

I read this back in early December, but for various reasons haven't had the opportunity to post about it (or spend much time on the Internet at all) till now. It's a happy coincidence that since then, I've read David Snodin's Iago, another extrapolation of the life of a Shakespearean character beyond Bill's script (I'll write more about this novel later). It certainly complemented my reading of the comic, giving me a fuller appreciation of Iago — a character I know very little about (I've never read or seen Othello) — and how he fits among the villains in Shakespeare's world, and helped keep this comic book alive in my mind.

This to say: you don't need to know any Shakespeare at all to enjoy Kill Shakespeare, but (as with anything, I guess) the more you know, the richer it is.

Why should I long for things of this world?

2012-01-12T22:37:00.003-05:00

My father's voice came back to me first: "The power of reason . . . breaking down fear and superstition . . . Kunstkamera is a temple of knowledge." And then I remembered our maids calling Peter's museum a cursed place, one that would bring bad luck on our heads. Were they right when they sneered at my father's words?

I pushed away these thoughts. I would not cry, I vowed.

The first thing Professor Stehlin pointed out to the Grand Duke in Kunstkamera was a glass dome covering a hill made of skulls and bones. Two baby skeletons propped on iron poles looked as if they were preparing to climb it. Beside them another skeleton, bow in hand, seemed about to start playing his violin. A wreathe made of dried arteries, kidneys, and hearts hung above them, with a a calligraphed inscription that said: Why should I long for things of this world?

"Anatomical art," Professor Stehlin called it. "So why should we think of death when we are still in our prime?" he asked his pupil.

The Grand Duke rubbed his hands and grinned. He remembered word for word what I had read to him days before.

To make us aware of the brevity of life. To remind us that we will have to account for our deeds well beyond the moment of death.

Professor Stehlin nodded with a smile.

— from The Winter Palace, by Eva Stachniak.

It feels right to be reading this when it's cold. These last weeks have been dark. There has been death, and also violence. It's been a sad time, and morbid too.

The description of this museum disturbed me. The book is historical fiction. At this point I had to investigate: how much is historical, how much is fiction?

Kunstkamera is real, situated across the Neva from the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. It is Peter the Great's personal collection of anthropological artefacts. Something of a freak show.

Much of the extensive and gruesome collection of anatomic specimens is viewable online.

Capitaine Haddock: Iconoclast

2012-01-02T13:18:00.002-05:00

I am surrounded by Tintin lovers.

As much as we are sceptical of the translation of Tintin to the big screen, we are eager to see it. But for various reasons, it will have to wait a little while.

Myself, I have only a passing acquaintance with the intrepid young reporter. So by "we" I really mean my daughter, her father, his mother, her brother, and so on.

Being surrounded by Tintin as I am, there's nothing to do but grab an album off the stack: Le Crabe aux pinces d'or, in which we are first introduced to Capitaine Haddock.

I read this in French, and while I didn't get all the words, I got most of them. In fact, the most entertaining aspect of the story was the stream of insults Capitaine Haddock would let forth.

Canailles!... Emplâtres!... Va-nu-pieds!... Troglodytes!... Tchouk-tchouk-nougat!...

Sauvages!... Aztèques!... Grenouilles!... Marchands de tapis!... Iconoclastes!...

Chenapan!... Ectoplasmes!... Marins d'eau douce!... Bachie-Bouzouks!... Zoulous!... Doryphores!...

Froussards!... Macaques!... Parasites! Moules à gaufres!

and

Filibustier!... Végétarien!... Pacte-à-quatre!...

Pirate!... Corsaire!

Arlequin! Hydrocarbure! Zoulou! Canaque! Gyroscope!

Emplâtre!... Doryphore!... Noix de coco!... Zouave!... Cannibale!...

Anthropopithèque!... Iconoclaste!...

Paltoquet! Anacoluthe!... Invertèbre!... Jus de réglisse!

Do these insults really need translation?

I'm informed that this character trait of the good captain's pervades the rest of the adventures. There is much to look forward to.

Such is the way of scientific fanaticism

2012-01-01T17:06:00.002-05:00

Trurl decides to build a machine that could write poetry...

The program found in the head of an average poet, after all, was written by the poet's civilization, and that civilization was in turn programmed by the civilization that preceded it, and so on to the very Dawn of Time, when those bits of information that concerned the poet-to-be were still swirling about in the primordial chaos of the cosmic deep. Hence in order to program a poetry machine, one would first have to repeat the enter Universe from the beginning — or at least a good piece of it.

[...]

Towards the end of the twentieth century the machine began to tremble, first sideways, then lengthwise — for no apparent reason. This alarmed Trurl; he brought out cement and grappling irons just in case. But fortunately these weren't needed; instead of jumping its mooring, the machine settled down and soon had left the twentieth century far behind. Civilizations came and went thereafter in fifty-thousand-year intervals: these were the fully intelligent beings from whom Trurl himself stemmed. Spool upon spool of computerized history was filled and ejected into storage bins; soon there were so many spools, that even if you stood at the top of the machine with high-powered binoculars, you wouldn't see the end of them. And all to construct some versifier! But then, such is the way of scientific fanaticism. At last the programs were ready; all that remained was to pick out the most applicable — else the electropoet's education would take several million years at the very least.

During the next two weeks Trurl fed general instructions into his future electropoet, then set up all the necessary logic circuits, emotive elements, semantic centers. He was about to invite Klapaucius to attend a trial run, but thought better of it and started the machine himself. It immediately proceeded to deliver a lecture on the grinding of crystallographical surfaces as an introduction to the study of submolecular magnetic anomalies. Trurl bypassed half the logic circuits and made the emotive more electromotive; the machine sobbed, went into hysterics, then finally said, blubbering terribly, what a cruel, cruel world this was. Trurl intensified the semantic fields and attached a strength of character component; the machine informed him that from now on he would carry out its every wish and to begin with add six floors to the nine it already had, so it could better meditate upon the meaning of existence. Trurl installed a philosophical throttle instead; the machine fell silent and sulked. Only after endless pleading and cajoling was he able to get it to recite something: "I had a little froggy." That appeared to exhaust its repertoire. Trurl adjusted, modulated, expostulated, disconnected, ran checks, reconnected, reset, did everything he could think of, and the machine presented him with a poem that made him thank heaven Klapaucius wasn't there to laugh — imagine, simulating the whole Universe from scratch, not to mention Civilization in every particular, and to end up with such dreadful doggerel! Trurl put in six cliché filters, but they snapped like matches; he had to make them out of pure corundum steel. This seemed to work, so he jacked the semanticity up all the way, plugged in an alternating rhyme generator — which nearly ruined everything, since the machine resolved to become a missionary among destitute tribes on far-flung planets. But at the very last minute, just as he was ready to give up and take a hammer to it, Trurl was struck by an inspiration; tossing out all the logic circuits, he replaced them with self-regulating egocentripetal narcissistors. The machine simpered a little, whimpered a little, laughed bitterly, complained of an awful pain on its third floor, said that in general it was fed up, through, life was beautiful but men were such beasts and how sorry they'd all be when it was dead and gone. Then it asked for pen and paper.

— from "The First Sally (A) or Trurl's Electronic Bard," in The Cyberiad, by Stanisław Lem.

Ma chandelle de Noël

2011-12-24T10:38:00.001-05:00

Ma petite chandelle
Est très belle
Elle est décorée
D'étoiles en papier

Elle va me quitter bientôt
Car je vais la donner en cadeau
Noël c'est triste et amusant
Surtout le jour de l'an

Elle va me manquer
Pendant toute l'année
Car Noël est bientôt fini
C'est ainsi

— by Helena, grade 3.

Written for maman et papa at Christmas.

The furious animation of children

2011-12-14T12:30:00.001-05:00

The differences among the children were startling, and yet, in the end, their faces mingled. Above all, the tapes revealed the furious animation of children, the fact that when conscious they rarely stop moving. A simple walk down the block included waving, hopping, skipping, twirling, and multiple pauses to examine a piece of litter, pet a dog, or jump up and walk along a cement barrier or low fence. In a schoolyard or playground, they jostled, punched, elbowed, kicked, poked, patted, hugged, pinched, tugged, yelled, laughed, chanted, and sang, and while I watched them, I said to myself that growing up really means slowing down.

— from What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt.

Looking for China

2011-12-13T18:22:00.000-05:00

Sometime he directed me to one or another of his online projects. That was how I realised that Aykan was a virtuoso of programming. Once, on one of our infrequent rendezvous, I called him a hacker. He burst out laughing, then got very angry with me.

"Fucking hacker?" He laughed again. "Fucking hacker?" Listen bro, you're not talking to some sebum-faced little sixteen-year-old geekboy with wank-stained pants who calls himself Dev-L." He swore furiously. "I'm not a fucking hacker, man, I'm a fucking artist, I'm a hardworking wage slave, I'm a concerned motherfucking citizen, whatever you want, but I'm not a fucking hacker."

— from "An End to Hunger," in Looking for Jake, by China Miéville.

While a friend of mine is sharing her enthusiasm for China Miéville as she discovers Bas-Lag for the first time, I've been experiencing Miéville withdrawal. His next novel is a few months off yet, so I finally turned to Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories that I'd been saving up for just such an occasion.

Ah, it's great to read phrases like, "a bad atmosphere as tenacious as stink," and, "manipulating scobs of gris-gris," again.

A few of the stories are standouts. Namely, "Foundation," "Reports of Certain Events in London," and "Details."

They are cool and original and unsettling. I moved through them relatively slowly, partly in order to draw out the Miéville experience, but primarily to prevent overdosing on the vibe.

The story about the Ikea ball room, for example — I kept returning to it in my mind for days afterward, every time we passed Ikea (twice), every time I received or threw out an Ikea flyer (twice), every time we discussed a potential Ikea purchase, every time the kid mentioned hot dogs, whenever a colleague mentioned having recently been. This to say: the story stayed present, and I will never, ever leave a child of mine to the care of the Ikea ball room, and I want to warn all parents against it. (It turns out, that of all the people I informally polled, none have put a child in the ball room — it was too busy. It makes me wonder who actually enjoys this privilege?)

All this being the effect of a story I didn't even particularly like — the writing style felt off, it dragged a bit. Yet. It creeped me out!

You can't read too much of that kind of thing at once.

When Miéville is being straightforward with the storytelling, when it's about "regular" people in London (as opposed to "creatures" in imaginary worlds), when he's doing dialogue, he reminds me of Doris Lessing. The Londonness, the political sensibility. Banality preserved in even extraordinary circumstances.

A few other stories remind me of Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves. It's hard not to think of Danielewski when structures are imbued with qualities ordinarily reserved for animate things. "Reports of Certain Events in London," for example, uses scraps of documents to tell its story about streets that move. The alleyways, they fucking move! Also, there's a Johnny Truant–like edginess in a couple other stories (see quotation at the top of this post).

I was reminded of one other voice in particular, though it took me a while to identify. Anne Hébert. Every now and again, romanticism rears its ugly head, brought into sharp relief by the urban setting, and it made me think of Hébert's psychologically starved characters in lush surroundings, her vampires.

What you cannot know is how it hurt.

For we who are not, or were not, our bodies: we, for whom flesh is, or was, only one possible clothing. We might fly or invert ourselves through the spines of grass, we might push ourselves into other ways of being, we might be to water as water is to air, we might do anything, until you looked at yourselves. It is a pain you cannot imagine — very literally, in the most precise way, you cannot know how it is to feel yourself shoved with a mighty and brutal cosmic hand into bloody muscle. The agony of our constrained thoughts, shoehorned into those skulls you carry, stringy tendons tethering our limbs. The excruciation. Shackled in your meat vulgarity.

On the whole, these stories weren't completely satisfying. They're too long, or too short, not tight enough. The characters feel incomplete, the ideas haven't been fully thought out. For whatever reason, these short stories don't quite work for me. (Note also that one story is in graphic form, and the ebook interface in this case was not easy. Had I known, I might've opted for paper.)

I like Miéville best when he's discursive and epic, and that's only just hinted at here. He does manage to establish mood quickly and strongly. I almost wish each of them had been sustained for the length of novel.

If you worry that Miéville might be a little weird for your pedestrian tastes, this collection will give you an idea of what he's capable of. Only know that he's much, much better in long form.

Excerpt: "Looking for Jake."

Flipback

2011-12-08T23:08:00.019-05:00

It's a tiny — but perfectly readable — little book, about the size of a cassette tape.

Its orientation is perpendicular to that of a typical book. Closed, the book has a horizontal "landscape" orientation. The text runs parallel to the spine, and you turn pages upwards.

I don't know what the technical term is for this kind of binding, but the cover is attached only to the back end page, so the binding is super flexible while the spine of the cover lies flat (kind of like those 3-ring binders where you can unfold the cover back from the rings).

It's printed on onion paper, also known as bible paper — the pages are very thin. The 633-page novel I have at hand is barely more than a centimetre thick. (The standard paperback version comes with 384 pages.)

Background
For many months I've been seeing these lovely little books near the checkout in several local bookstores. Sadly for me, it was a weird selection of titles and they were all in French. While I considered picking one up for mere novelty's sake, I figured the language hurdle would discourage me from getting around to actually reading it.

A little investigation shows that these books are an award-winning concept that originated in The Netherlands (where they're known as dwarsliggers), and they've been around for some time in French and as librinos in Spanish.

And as of this past summer, a British publisher (Hodder & Stoughton) is offering titles in English. They're called flipbacks.

For the time being there are only 18 titles, but they are varied — good chance you'll find something to interest to you.

I wanted Cloud Atlas, long on my to-read list, but it wasn't readily available. I finally chose Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved (mostly on the strength of Sasha's review), and I ordered it up. I'm not far enough along to comment on the novel, but I've read enough to know something about the reading experience.

Yay
- Fits in your pocket. Discreet enough to read under the table at dinner parties or take into the toilet at work.

- One-handed functionality. Perfect size for gripping with one hand. One-handed page turning takes a little bit of practice, but it can be done. All in all, suitable for rush-hour public-transit commutes.

- It's a hardcover. Kinda. It's some sort of cardboard, sturdier than a paperback's covering, that won't rip or crease easily. It would have to be to protect the fine paper inside. It takes some effort to ding it up.

- The horizontal orientation means another design opportunity with regard to the cover art. Because it's not enough to turn a cover sideways. Designers get to re-envision such exciting elements as image cropping and text placement.

Nay
- The paper seems so delicate — I wonder if it's undergone strength testing. My book has suffered no damage yet (I have been treating it rather gingerly), but I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before pages are ripped.

- The line spacing is a bit tight. Certainly it's tighter than standard, and it does take some getting used to. I find I tend to use my bookmark as a line guide. Also, reading while in motion, my eyes occasionally trip to the wrong line.

- Margins are near nonexistent, so you'll have to jot down your notes somewhere else.

In sum

I'll happily consider acquiring more flipbacks as the catalogue of titles expands.

Not surprisingly, as with any good book, when a story is engrossing, the interface disappears.

Something old and predatory and utterly terrible

2011-12-03T18:49:00.003-05:00

"I stared at the whole mass of the bricks. I took another glance, relaxed my sight. At first I couldn't stop seeing the bricks as bricks, the divisions as layers of cement, but after a time they became pure vision. And as the whole broke down into lines and shapes and shades, I held my breath as I began to see.

"Alternatives appeared to me. Messages written in the pockmarks. Insinuation in the forms. Secrets unraveling. It was bliss.

"And then without warning my heart went tight, as I saw something. I made sense of the pattern.

"It was a mess of cracks and lines and crumbling cement, and as I looked at it, I saw a pattern in the wall.

"I saw a clutch of lines that looked just like something. . . terrible — something old and predatory and utterly terrible — staring right back at me.

"And then I saw it move."

— from "Details," in Looking for Jake, by China Miéville.

Monsieur le president

2011-12-03T09:24:00.000-05:00

The President is the latest novel by Simenon to be rediscovered by English-speaking audiences, issued by Melville House as part of its Neversink Library.

Again, different from any Simenon I've read to date. This one's a political drama with psychological suspense.

What makes this book different is that all the others deal with seemingly ordinary men — businessmen, clerks, shopkeepers, family men. Ordinary men who in one sense or another, actively or passively, walk away, and by doing so are doing something extraordinary. The President, one might say, is the opposite — the former leader of the nation, a rather extraordinary figure, who has withstood extraordinary circumstances, has taken extraordinary measures to achieve and maintain his status, or the aura of it, is reduced to ordinary actions, is shown to be an ordinary human, mortal, and with all the usual emotions and baser instincts.

The man now is old and ineffectual. He's been cast aside by his country, but still he hopes to make one final, dramatic play. After all, once upon a time, the premier was privy to some financial hanky-panky.

The Premier was livid when he finally gave the signal, in much the same spirit as a general launching a battle half lost in advance.

This would no longer be a bloodletting operation, affecting the whole of France to a more of less equal extent. Those in the know had already escaped, and what was more they had made huge profits at the expense of the medium and small investors.

During all these discussion, Chalamont, as white faced as his chief, had remained in the office, lighting one cigarette after another and throwing each one away after a few tense puffs.

He was not fat in those days. The caricaturists usually depicted him as a raven.

[It very nicely complemented the ambience of the book that I would climb out of the metro every morning at the site of Occupy Montreal.]

The figure of the premier is said to be inspired by Georges Clemenceau, who served nonconsecutive terms as Prime Minister of France as well as holding various other positions of influence.

I don't know how much of the novel is founded in history. It doesn't matter. It's an excellent read, with all the witty detail I've come to expect of Simenon.

He was a big, flabby chap, always dressed up to the nines, always with his hand held out and his lips ready to smile, the kind of fellow who won't express his views even on the most harmless subject without first peering at you to try to guess what yours may be.

The Premier had done nothing to help him, merely staring at him as malevolently as if he'd been a slug in the salad.

"I was at Le Havre, after driving a friend to the boat, and I thought I'd just like to drop in on you . . ."

"No."

That an unpopular trick of his. His "no" was celebrated, for he brought it out frequently, without anger or any other inflection. It wasn't even a contradiction: it simply took note of an almost mathematical fact.

This novel certainly has suspense — an element of mystery combined with politics. But ultimately The President is a character study (as are most Simenon novels). The man of consequence is shown to be suddenly grappling with his impotence, but more simply, to put a more everyman spin on it, it's about a man grown old and coming to terms with the choices he's made.

Tellingly, the title of the book alludes to another figure, the president, who has the power to appoint the premier. Perhaps this is to suggest to the reader that the premier be absolved of some responsibility, that not everything is within his control, that there are higher authorities, whether in public life or private.

November days

2011-11-30T20:41:00.001-05:00

Helena turned nine this month. Part of her special day included a trip to the toy store, where she casually informed me that she didn't believe in Santa Claus anymore. She hasn't believed in a while, she says. I guess she just wanted to get it out in the open.

This month I started exercising. Not that I believe much in exercising, beyond that I know that I should. Mostly with the encouragement of my physiotherapist and for the benefit of my knee, I bought an exercise bike (because, who's kidding whom, I will never get my lazy ass to a gym). And I bike almost every day. I'm not sure I've seen much benefit apart from more mobility in my knee, but I suppose it's helping to counterbalance all the cakes I've partaken of this November. Most remarkable of all is how easy it was to develop this new habit. Which has me thinking I ought to try developing more new habits.

The first day of the exercise bike, I figured out how to position and fasten my ereader. But for the time being, it's still a bit awkward — I'll leave ereading for more advanced exercise sessions. Audiobooks are easier. I've just finished listening to Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay — it was charming and poignant and even tragic. But, in its being read me, I feel it's been interpreted. A much more passive experience than reading — I don't get from it what I get from the page when it's at a pace I set in my own voice inside my head. A nice way to pass the time, though.

One of my birthday gifts to Helena: The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. Mostly because I wanted to read it myself. I can't say Helena was particularly thrilled, but then we saw the movie, and we were enchanted, so now we are reliving the magic in book form and waiting for snow.

Fairytale update

2011-11-28T22:19:00.006-05:00

I had to know how it all turned out. I had to invest in the subsequent volumes of Doctor Who: A Fairy Tale Life.

And it turns out rather well, I think. The Doctor finds the TARDIS, Amy is cured of recombinant yersinia pestis, children thought lost to the serpentine of the Dread Tower are restored to their families, and the galactic tourist industry is well on its way to recovery. (Sorry if I spoiled it for anybody, but really, these resolutions are rather obvious from the start.)

What surprises, and thrills, me most about this SF franchise comic book experience is exactly how much these characters sound exactly how they're supposed to sound, saying exactly the sort of thing they would say. The whole thing was very cinematic, like I'd just watched an episode on TV.

Bonus: Helena's on page 14. So we all read happily ever after.

A language of collapsing jargon

2011-11-26T10:40:00.001-05:00

When he speaks he wears a large and firm smile. He has to push his words past it so they come out misshapen and terse. He fights not to raise his voice over the sounds he knows you cannot hear.

"Yeah no problem but that supporting wall's powdering," he says. If you watch him close you will see that he peeps quickly at the earth, again and again, at the building's sunken base. When he goes below, into the cellar, he is nervy. He talks more quickly. The building speaks loudest to him down there, and when he come up again he is sweating below his smile.

When he drives he looks to either side of the road with tremendous and unending shock, taking in all the foundations. Past building sites he stares at the earthmovers. He watches their trundling motion as if they are some carnivore.

Every night he dreams he is where air curdles his lungs and the sky is a toxic slurry of black and black-red clouds that the earth vomits and the ground is baked to powder and lost boys wonder and slough off flesh in clots and do not see him or each other though they pass close by howling without words or in a language of collapsing jargon, acronyms and shorthands that once meant something and now are the grunts of pigs.

He lives in a small house in the edges of the city, where once he started to build an extra room, till the foundations screamed too loud.

— from "Foundation," in Looking for Jake, by China Miéville.

Astronauci

2011-11-23T12:26:00.002-05:00

The Google doodle in Poland today celebrates the 60th anniversary of the publication of Stanisław Lem's first science fiction novel, The Astronauts.

The doodle, inspired by The Cyberiad, viewable at Google Polska is crazy interactive.

10 Things You Need to Know about Stanislaw Lem

Coincidentally, just the other day I decided to treat myself to a copy of The Cyberiad. I'll be sure to tell you all about it someday.

Edited to add:
Permalink to interactive doodle now available.

Familiar and unimportant as my big toenail

2011-11-17T07:18:00.005-05:00

After Midnight, by Irmgard Keun, is a deeply affecting novella. Had I had any inkling as to what this story was actually about, and had I not already been seduced by Keun's voice in The Artificial Silk Girl, I probably would not have picked this book up, and I'd be the sorrier for it.

First published in 1937, it's a pretty scathing commentary on daily life in Nazi Germany.

"[...] When I get home now, Sanna, I'll find my old man sitting there grumbling, 'Elvira,' he says, 'this place is no better than a concentration camp.' 'Fancy you not noticing that before,' says I. 'We're all in a concentration camp, the whole nation is, it's only the Government can go running around free.'"

It is chilling, even while ostensibly recounting the tales of a party girl. I guess this excerpt is fairly representative of the sort of reality check or punch in the gut the book delivers ever few pages. What this excerpt fails to convey, I think, is how light the overall tone is, how the narrator is young and vibrant, worldwise yet naive.

Then they said Göring would be talking on the radio that evening. All the ladies were going to stay at Aunt Adelheid's to hear him. Thinking nothing of it, I said I'd rather not hear him, because I always got the feeling he was telling me off. And that was absolutely all I said on the subject, but even so it was far too much. It's true, though: one of those speeches begins harmlessly enough, going on about the magnificent German nation which will overcome everything, and you feel you're being praised and flattered for listening to it. Then the radio lets out a sudden flood of abuse, saying everyone who offend against the nation's will for reconstruction will be smashed, and those who go in for harmful carping criticism will be destroyed.

My heart always stands still when I hear those speeches, because how do I know I'm not one of the sort who are going to be smashed? And the worst of it is that I just don't understand what's really going on. I'm only gradually getting the hang of the things you must be careful not to do.

It turns out I know next to nothing about Nazi Germany. What I do know centers around wartime and the Holocaust. Reading about the time before is somewhat horrifying. It's like Nineteen Eighty-four, only real.

People are denounced, their neighbours denounce them, on the slightest pretext. They are questioned and jailed and worse.

Suddenly I remembered something Paul had said. I'll never forget the evening when he told us about countries where you can say what you like, where you don't have anything to fear as long as you don't break God's ten commandments. There are countries, he said, without any hidden dangers, where you can greet people any way you like — and you can weep on days of rejoicing and laugh on days of mourning, just depending how you feel at the time.

And suddenly it was all too much for me. Here I sat, going to be punished and I didn't know why. I didn't know what was good any more, I didn't know what was bad any more. I thought of those countries obeying God's ten commandments, where good is good and bad is bad. I though to the far-off foreign lands Paul talked about. I could not keep from crying harder than I'd ever cried in all my life before.

Pretty easy to see why the book had trouble getting published, why it was censored.

Beyond politics, Keun also manages to show great emotional insight at an individual level. For example, Algin takes no notice of his wife Liska, who flirts shamelessly with another man.

Having got to know Liska the way a man gets to know a woman only if he lives with her for years, sleeping with her all that time — well, he's got not to know her again. It's like reading a wonderful poem, and learning it off by heart because you like it so much and you want to be able to recite the whole thing. And when you do know it off by heart you can slowly begin to forget it again. Which is what people generally do.

Everybody's so bloody ineffectual. As citizens. As lovers.

Despite all the heavy shit of history to grapple with, despite all the heavy emotional shit of love and jealousy and boredom, the prose is fresh and clear.

But Algin was there. He was alive. Drunk, but alive all right. Sitting there with an old man with a bristly haircut. I knew the man by sight. He sits in Bogener's wineshop every afternoon and every evening, by himself, circumspectly drinking half a bottle of claret. I knew his way of beckoning to the waiter. I knew his way of giving a tip. I knew his usual seat. I knew the newspaper he read, I knew the wine he drank. I knew when he came in and I knew when he left. I'd never spoken to him, never thought much about him, but he was familiar to me, familiar and unimportant as my big toenail. And to see him sitting in a different part of the café talking to Algin struck me as strange, mysterious and not quite right, as if my big toenail had suddenly taken the place of my eyelashes.

This is a tough book to write about even though it's relatively short (less than 200 pages). It's a love story, and it has a gossipy tone, but then it's something much, much more serious.

The Artificial Silk Girl was a smooth read and interesting as a historical artefact. But this book — After Midnight — is on an altogether different level. I look forward to more of Keun being available in English.

**********

My favourite image: "The streets were shiny black, like eels. Wet and slithery."

A slight aura of something dubious and unpleasant

2011-11-16T23:20:00.002-05:00

A thin, grey man with a bicycle was going on angrily about not being allowed through. He had finally got a new job, he said, and he had to be on time. Unpunctuality could mean bad trouble for him. And even if his employers did realize he couldn't help being late, they might still be angry with him. Life's nearly always like that: you put difficulties in a person's way, and a slight aura of something dubious and unpleasant still clings to him whether it is his fault or not. "Look, be reasonable, will you?" a fairly high-up SA man, drinking coffee from his flask, told the thin, grey cyclist. "Don't bleat on like that! Just be thankful to the Führer for his high ideals!"

"That's right," said the thin, grey man, "the Führer gets to have the ideals and we get to carry the can." His voice was trembling; you could tell his nerves were worn to a shred. The people who'd heard him were struck dumb with alarm, and the SA man went red in the face and could scarcely get his breath back. All at once the grey man looked utterly broken, extinguished. Three SA men led him away. He didn't put up a struggle.

His bicycle was lying on the ground. People stood around it in a circle, staring in nervous silence. It shone dully in the rain, and had a subversive look about it; nobody dared touch it. Then a fat woman made an angry face, flung her arm up in the air in the salute of the Führer, said, "Disgusting!" and kicked the bicycle. Several other women kicked it too. And then the cordon opened and let us through.

— from After Midnight, by Irmgard Keun.

Paper dolls

2011-11-13T09:06:00.001-05:00

Kids crying boredom? Give them a tissue.

Helena recently stayed over at her grandfather's for a night, and though she'd mildly protested the arrangement at the start, when she came home she was pleased to tell me, "I didn't get bored at all!"

She handed me a handful of tissue, which turned out to be a hospital's worth of very delicate children with various illnesses.

The one on the left has measles, the one on the right was undergoing an operation.

Chrysalis

2011-11-10T23:17:00.004-05:00

More than a few of the reviewers seemed perplexed by — or simply undecided about — the meaning of the air chrysalis and the Little People. One reviewer concluded his piece, "As a story, the work is put together in an exceptionally interesting way and it carries the reader along to the very end, but when it comes to the question of what is an air chrysalis, or who are the Little People, we are left in a pool of mysterious question marks. This may well be the author's intention, but many readers are likely to take this lack of clarification as a sign of 'authorial laziness.' While this may be fine for a debut work, if the author intends to have a long career as a writer, in the near future she may well need to explain her deliberately cryptic posture."

Tengo cocked his head in puzzlement. If an author succeeded in writing a story "put together in a exceptionally interesting way" that "carries the reader along to the very end," who could possibly call such a writer "lazy"?

The review Tengo reads, of Air Chrysalis, the novel within the novel of 1Q84, could apply equally well to 1Q84. Haruki Murakami is no debut novelist, but I don't doubt that he knows exactly his own strengths and weaknesses and what the critics make of him. He also is guilty of deliberately cryptic posturing, and yet he carries me along to the very end.

Lines like these crop up every so often:

On a table behind the dowager stood a vase containing three white lilies. The flowers were large and fleshy white, like little animals from an alien land that were deep in meditation.

This description strikes me as brilliantly weird. But other lines aspiring to similar effect fall flat.

I prefer a couple other Murakami novels over this one, but I like this one better than some.

I've developed a fondness for Murakami, not for what he says, not for how he makes me feel, but for making me remember how I once felt.

At the risk of repeating myself, reading Murakami reminds me of my university days, talking late into the night, being and discovering deep and cool.

It turns out that the world of 1Q84, for all the talk of parallel reality, is scarcely different at all from, uh, reality.

The most interesting review I've read of 1Q84, in addition to connecting it to dots drawn by Philip K Dick, makes the point that it works differently on readers depending on where they're coming from literarily speaking:

I suspect part of the problem is that critics tend to focus on the fact that Murakami is a Raymond Chandler fan — he's even translated three Philip Marlowe novels into Japanese (and that dowager in the sunroom I mentioned way back at the beginning? Straight out of The Big Sleep). So they "get" the parts of Murakami that feature aloof, minimalist protagonists stumbling through the world looking for answers to their mysteries, but the weird stuff? That's just... weird. Science fiction readers, though, are much more accustomed to this sort of thing, and the first question they'd ask isn't so much "what the heck is going on?" but "does Murakami make this work?"

The disappointment I feel in this book lies in its lack of 1984ishness. A few potentially ominous signs that the character had slipped into a world not like the one we know had me expecting some doublethink, a denunciation or wrongful imprisonment for misunderstanding the rules of this world, but a couple hundred pages on I realized this wasn't going to happen.

[The novella I happened to be reading alongside the undertaking of 1Q84 was, coincidentally, far more Orwellian, and frightening for being grounded in a real time and place in our recent history. That book was After Midnight, by Irmgard Keun, set in 1930s Germany. But more on this another time.]

There's nothing Orwellian about 1Q84. Which is fine. But I feel a tiny bit cheated. Even though I was carried along to the very end. And really, I loved every minute of it.

Simenon redux

2011-11-08T07:20:00.021-05:00

It's about this time last year that I caught the Simenon bug, when I read my first roman dur (quite possibly my first Simenon ever, though my memory unreliably wavers around potentially having read a Maigret novel in association with a high school French class). To date I've read eight of them. And this is while exercising restraint. Can you say "addicted"?

I won't list all the ones I've read here as you can easily access them via this blog's index (by author) or by clicking the Simenon tag at the bottom of this post. I will say that my favourite to date is Red Lights.

Most of those I've read have been New York Review Books classics. This publisher has been steadily releasing Simenon titles since 2003. Last month saw the publication of Act of Passion. I don't have a copy yet, but here's how it opens, and here's a bit from Roger Ebert's introduction (I've heard that Ebert claims to have read a hundred-something Simenon books!).

But another small publisher with big ideas has entered the Simenon fray. I read The Train — in the Neversink Library from Melville House — just a few weeks ago. I think it's currently my second favourite — a punch in the gut you never see coming, and subtler than most. Today sees the publication of Melville House's second Simenon title.

I have The President on deck, and I'll tell you all about it soon. It starts like this:

For more than an hour he had been sitting motionless in the old Louis-Philippe armchair, with its almost upright back and shabby black leather upholstery, that he had lugged around with him from one Ministry to another for forty years, till it had become a legend.

They always thought he was asleep when he sat like that with eyelids lowered, raising just one of them from time to time, to reveal a slit of gleaming eyeball.

Thanks, small and independent publishers! Keep them coming!

Some other Simenon-related stuff:

An exhibition — The inaugural exhibition of the recently opened Museé des lettres et manuscrits in Brussels is dedicated to the works of Simenon. (On till February 24, 2012.) (Via.)

A blog — The Man from London takes its name from a 1934 Simenon novel and espouses a great deal of admiration for his work. If you're at all interested in Simenon's output, you'll find browsing through this blog's archives a pleasure. (In doing so just now I'm reminded that Julian Barnes has an essay on Simenon in Something to Declare — a copy of which is somewhere in this house — which I may or may not have ever read long before I became a Simenon fan.)

Spider house rules

2011-11-06T11:55:00.005-05:00

Helena never used to flinch. These days I suspect she mostly pretends to be scared of them because you're supposed to be scared of them. And it turns out spiders aren't scary at all if you know exactly where they are. At all times.

Hence Helena's desire to confine our recent arachnid visitor — who lurks in one bathroom corner one day, another the next — to a particular location.

The plans I found end there, and have not yet been continued. But these notes begin to explain the shoebox she's been carrying around.

Advertising

2011-11-03T22:38:00.041-04:00

I don't understand advertising. I don't understand how it works. How is it that it still works when I know what it's trying to do? The most astute ad men while they can appreciate an ad's workings will still be seduced by a turn of phrase, an image, or the idea behind them.

But when I don't see what it's trying to do, it appears to be pointless — and what's the point of pointless advertising? Some ads, no matter how hard I look, have neither cool nor clear branding going for them. I know that I'm cynical by nature, and I tend to question my surroundings, but I couldn't possibly be immune to advertising, could I? Is anybody immune to advertising?

The advertising agency Leo Burnett earlier this year released a book about its HumanKind philosophy. Humankind, by Tom Bernardin and Mark Tutssel, Leo Burnett Worldwide. It should be of some interest to advertising professionals. As a coffeetable book it's sure to interest many casual browsers. It is gorgeous. But I'm not sure who would read it cover to cover (although, I did).

(Note: I'm not actually completely stupid about advertising. I did work at an agency for a couple of years (in the capacity of "quality assurance specialist"), and some aspects of my current job also have a marketing angle. Also, I once dated someone who is now an advertising mogul. But I won't pretend that I know a whole lot about the business either.)

Humankind starts off reading like a manifesto.

HumanKind breaks the routine into which the advertising industry fell during the let-the-good-times-roll years of the late-20th and early-21st century global economic boom (and to which many people in the industry still adhere). People then had money to burn — or they could easily borrow the money to burn. Merchandise and services were flying off shelves. We were generating a need for products whose only purpose was to placate clients and shareholders' desire for more, more, more. Creativity rooted in genuine human need was devalued. In its place "positioning" began to masquerade as creativity.

Because of all of this, many of us who market brands — and if you're reading this book, that may mean you — got lazy and began to forget that it's people who make the difference. We found ways to communicate based on our needs and ambitions. People? Who are they?

Empty at its core, faithless to human needs, and untrue to the world in which we live, this sort of creativity sputtered and finally lost its power.

The Internet had a lot to do with this, of course. People today are savvier yet more cynical — savvier because information is literally at our fingertips, more cynical because information is literally at our fingertips.

People have gone from passive to empowered, from one-size-fits-all to wanting and expecting everything to be custom-made, from inferred knowledge to direct knowledge.

We are no longer "consumers" first, but humans first.

[...]

We can no longer build brands, we can only move people. We can no longer position brands, we can only create content that encourages authentic conversations between people and brands based on a brand's human purpose. We can no longer rely on ads that speak to people, we must provide people with opportunities to act. As marketers, we can no longer claim that it is up to us to be the motor that drives brands, we can only empower people and let them take the steering wheel themselves.

But the book soon dwindles into a portfolio of case studies. Ultimately, I'm not sure that it's more than a lush piece of marketing collateral for the agency itself. Still, it has inspired me to react.

Leo Burnett's biggest success, without a doubt, at least in terms of embodying the HumanKind philosophy, is Earth Hour. This now annual global event is, at its core, a marketing campaign. It raises awareness regarding a specific issue. It doesn't matter that we don't know that World Wildlife Fund is behind it. In this case, marketing isn't about sales.

As I already mentioned, this book is gorgeous: photo spreads, bold font, pages of colour. There are slogans spattered throughout, often big white text on pink or orange or green. Things like, "value of the brand to society = value of society to the brand." "Ad agencies don't create iconic brands, people do." That all (good) advertising is an invitation to people to act.

On sober afterthought, I'm no longer reacting viscerally — when first I closed this book, my gut was screaming that advertising is stupid (is it because I so badly don't want to be played?). How can anyone make money with this, how can they spend so much money to create this, who does advertising work on?

But, on sober afterthought, I'm finding much to admire in HumanKind; for example, the Museu Efémoro, where a rum distillery sponsored the cataloguing of street art in Lisbon.

An interesting supplement to this book, both as reinforcement and occasional counterpoint, is a documentary I recently watched, Art & Copy (which can be viewed in its entirety online), in which the importance of connecting with your audience is stressed above selling a product per se.

The modern advertising agency, according to the film, stemmed from a fundamental shift in thinking about advertising — from words, often illustrated as an afterthought, to art, in which design was integral to the message being conveyed. Hence the Creative Director was born.

Mostly though, this film features people who just love doing advertising, because it can be clever and cool, and when they're lucky, they make a lot of money by helping someone make a lot money. But I'm not convinced a lot of people understand how it works.

Don Draper cut through all the bullshit when he said, "I don't sell advertising, I sell products." Has the essence of advertising really changed all that much from the world as portrayed in Mad Men?

Yeah, advertising can be cool. Humankind almost makes me believe that it can even mean something.

Fairytale, Doctor-style

2011-10-29T14:19:00.003-04:00

Recently I read the first instalment of Doctor Who: A Fairy Tale Life, courtesy of the review copy system at NetGalley.

This selection was driven by my curiosity on two fronts:
1. I'm a fan of the Doctor Who TV series, and I wonder about the other aspects of fandom so many others engage in.
2. I wanted to try out the possibility of reading a comic book on my ereader.

It turns out that navigating a comic book on my Sony Reader is entirely possible. Once I opened the file (Adobe PDF format), the ereader presented an interface heretofore unseen by me. I've read novels in PDF and somehow the text is magically reflowed to accommodate my screen settings. In this case, the page dimensions and comic panels are, sensibly, preserved, but I'm able to zoom in and out and scroll up, down and side to side, much like when you read a PDF on your computer screen. The resolution is surprisingly good.

But the navigation quickly becomes tedious, and sadly, my ereader does not support colour, so I found myself flipping from ereader to laptop to appreciate the colour and to make sure I didn't miss any frames and was following them in the right order. So it's not exactly an immersive experience the way other ebooks are, or as is a printed graphic novel in hand.

As for the story, the Doctor and Amy travel to the year 7704 on the planet Caligaris Epsilon Six, a holiday world engineered to look and act exactly like a medieval fantasy. But the tourist industry isn't operating the way one would expect it to, and there are signs of biological contamination. Uh-oh.

Of course now I need to know what happens next. I will be ordering the collected subsequent instalments.

Do you read comic books or graphic novels on your ereader? Any tips for me?

Do you dare confess? Do you read novel or comic book spin-offs of science fiction or other franchises?

The forest of story

2011-10-25T07:09:00.006-04:00

How do you say "1Q84"? Do you pronounce all the elements separately — one-Q-eight-four? Or eighty-four? For months I've been wrongly referring to it at IQ-84 (because IQ trips so naturally). Maybe Q-teen eighty-four? (My daughter has taken to reading the cover by column — Japanese style! — as eighteeen Q-ty-four.)

As his doubts increased, Tengo began deliberately to put some distance between himself and the world of mathematics, and instead the forest of story began to exert a stronger pull on his heart. Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed their pages he had to come back to the real world. But at some point Tengo noticed that returning to reality from the world of a novel was not as devastating a blow as returning from the world of mathematics. Why should that have been? After much deep thought, he reached a conclusion. No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.

The older he became, the more Tengo was drawn to this kind of narrative suggestion. Mathematics was a great joy for him even now, as an adult. When he was teaching students at the cram school, the same joy he had felt as a child wold come welling up naturally. To share the joy of that conceptual freedom with someone was a wonderful thing. But Tengo was not longer able to lose himself so unreservedly in a world of numerical expression. For he knew that no amount of searching in that world would give him the solution he was really looking for.

— from 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami.

To the end of book one, the worlds in 1Q84 do not appear to be all that different from our own (except for the two moons, but maybe that's not another world after all, maybe that's the book the girl wrote, or the one Tengo is still writing). Certainly there's no hint of a totalitarian state as is suggested by referencing Orwell's 1984. The affinity with 1984 comes in the treatment of memory, and its power to rewrite history.

"Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us — is rewritten — we lose the ability to sustain our true selves."

The characters of 1Q84 are beginning to accept that their realities are "an endless battle of contrasting memories."

This novel did not grab me from the start as some other Murakami books have, but still it exerts some magical pull. It moves swiftly, almost without you realizing it, and before long is deeply engrossing. All the Murakami I've read has been dream-like, disorienting, provocative. 1Q84 is no exception, but I find it also touches on some much more serious subject matter: violence against women, but also the morality of vigilante justice (more than one scene put me in mind of Natsuo Kirino's Out).

Having finished book one, I am very grateful at this point that the whole of the story has been published in a single volume. It's not a mindfuck the way The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is, but it definitely comes across as better controlled and more mature than some other Murakami novels I've read. And I want to know more about Chekhov and the Gilyak.

The intellectually offensive union of sickness and stupidity

2011-10-23T13:48:00.001-04:00

No, I'm not the least bit offended by Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. But it's so easy to mock the patients who people this novel. And Mann does, and I immensely enjoy his doing so.

Part of the magic of the Mountain: I picked it up again the other week after a hiatus of several months, and it's as fresh and engaging as if I'd left off only the day before. (Why did I leave off at all if it's so good, you ask? I don't rightly know. It demands attention, and once the momentum is interrupted and the spell is broken, it's easy to forget how rewarding time with it is.)

No doubt this magic is connected to Mann's treatment of time as one of the major themes.

What is time? A secret — insubstantial and omnipotent. A prerequisite of the external world, a motion intermingled and fused with bodies existing and moving in space. But would there be no time, if there were no motion? No motion, if there were no time? What a question! Is time a function of space? Or vice versa? Or are the two identical? An even bigger question! Time is active, by nature it is much like a verb, it both "ripens" and "brings forth." And what does it bring forth? Change! Now is not then, here is not there — for in both cases motion lies in between. But since we measure time by a circular motion closed in on itself, we could just as easily say that its motion and change are rest and stagnation — for the then is constantly repeated in the now, the there in the here. Moreover, since, despite our best desperate attempts, we cannot imagine an end to time or a finite border around space, we have decided to "think" of them as eternal and infinite — in the apparent belief that even if we are not totally successful, this marks some improvement. But does not the very positing of eternity and infinity imply the logical, mathematical negation of things limited and finite, their relative reduction to zero? Is a sequence of events possible in eternity, a juxtaposition of objects in infinity? How does our makeshift assumption of eternity and infinity square with concepts like distance, motion, change, or even the very existence of a finite body in space? Now there's a real question for you!

Hans Castorp turned these sorts of questions over and over in his own mind — a mind that, since his arrival up here, had tended to quibble and think indiscreet thoughts of this sort and had perhaps been especially honed and emboldened for grumbling by a naughty, but overwhelming desire, for which he had now paid dearly.

Chapter 6 gets very philosophical. We meet Leo Naphta, Jewish-born Jesuit. His conversations with Herr Settembrini, and others, are intense and also confusing (to Hans as well as myself). Various kinds of dualism, religious and philosophical. Free will, politics (in philosophical sense, never actually discussing the real matters of the day), pragmatism. Art and science. There's a section promoting cremation as a more logical alternative to burial.

Hans is finally arriving at some truths.

At this point Hans Castorp spoke up, breaking into their conversation with the courage of simple souls. He stared into space and declared, "Contemplation, retreat — there's something to it, sounds quite plausible. One could say that we live at a rather high level of retreat from the world up here. At five thousand feet, we recline in our lounge chairs — and remarkably comfortable they are — and look down on the world and its creatures and think things over. To tell the truth, now that I stop and think about it, my bed — and by that I mean my lounge chair, you understand — has proved very beneficial over the last ten months, made me think more about things than I ever did in all my years down in the flatlands, I can't deny that."

And still, it's funny.

The mood of pallid Frau Magnus in particular seemed without a glimmer of hope; she exuded bleakness of spirit the way a cellar exudes damp. And perhaps even more explicitly than Frau Stöhr, she represented the union of sickness and stupidity that Hans Castorp had declared intellectually offensive.

Hans, originally at the sanatorium to see his cousin for a 3-week visit, has been there now for over a year. It's almost 2 years since I started reading The Magic Mountain, and suspected I'd be letting the story unfold in near real time. It still captivates me, and I love it for slowing my mind down.

And yet, I'm setting it aside again to indulge in Murakami's 1Q84. Sometimes it all a bit too much for Hans — he needs to stop and consider his friends' philosophizing in his own time and space, somewhere away from them, as do I. And Hans has another order of thinking to do now that his cousin has left to rejoin the world below.

I return to "the bourgeoisiosity of life."

Life, fate

2011-10-19T23:56:00.063-04:00

Life and Fate. Sounds big, deep, sprawling. It is.

Life's a mess. Really there's no getting around it. You make plans, they go wrong. You make other plans, they go wrong in a different way. After much consideration I've come to the conclusion that life has a multiplicity of different ways in which things can go wrong. Incidentally, my father's a physicist and is very keen on things like multiplicity, which is how we ended up a million miles from Moscow in Kazan, because he was working on something important for the war. The War. Now there you have a serious example of things going wrong. However, because of it, we socialists had a real chance to show the world what we were made of, which is steel. Ask Comrade Stalin. My mother is not a scientist. She believes in fate. But it seems to me that in the end fate is just as messy and hard to live with as life.

— from Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman, a BBC4 dramatization.

So here's a book I had absolutely no interest in reading. I knew a little bit about its history (written in 1959 and banned in the USSR and not published there till nearly 30 years later), and a little about it's subject matter (life — and the lives of some Russian Jews in particular — in Stalinist Russia during World War II). I don't find either point very compelling — I've had my fill.

But then this radio dramatization caught my ear, and I was hooked. As it stars Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant, you could say the production is of decent quality. I have trouble with audiobooks and radio plays in general in that they tease me into believing they're conducive to multitasking. But I can't do it. If I'm to get anything out of them, I need to give them my attention, at which point I figure I might as well just read the book. I ended up listening to most parts of this drama twice, to ensure I had the characters and events straight, but I was very glad to do so.

Some of the early great lines include: "How could I talk to a woman who thought Balzac wrote Madame Bovary?" and: "A way to a Russian's heart is through his brain."

As you might guess from the book's title, there's a great deal of philosophizing going on.

Identity's one of the major themes. There's a passage I went back to — it turns out it was just a short sentence, but in my head it had expanded into something unwieldy. I can't recall the original phrasing, but its sense was that the woman hadn't ever really thought of herself as Jewish; she went to Russian school, had Russian friends, played Russian games, read Russian books — of course she was Russian. (This is something I actually spend a lot of time thinking about, albeit with regard to identities other than Jewish and Russian.)

There's some similar musing about science. That there's no such thing as Stalinist science, or Jewish science, etc, it's just science, that's all, but of course not everyone sees the world this way. Isn't that mind-boggling? That someone could dispute your science because it wasn't Soviet enough?

Then there's love.

I wanted to tell him everything, and I told him nothing at all. I wanted to ask him everything, and I asked him about eating black bread. Is it possible to lose everything because we don't speak when we must? I was an idiot...

[Oh, I have been an idiot. Listening to this production is an emotional double-whammy these days, for what it is and for the real life it reminds me of.]

It's quite a drama. There are funny bits, and poignant bits, and clever bits, and bits that made me cry. There's a lot about doing the right thing, and a lot of "if we only knew," and of course we never do, which makes it all the harder.

Some people see it as a counterpart to Tolstoy's War and Peace. I think there's more war, and less peace, in Life and Fate. Maybe only it seems more brutal because these historical events are closer in time. But the comparison captures the right sprawl, and there's a similar quality of introspection.

The radio drama leaves some plot points unresolved. Perhaps they are treated this way in the book as well. I'm tempted to find out.

The BBC4 Life and Fate page has a couple video clips featuring Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant, on the story but also on the nature of radio drama, as well as some other background material. Apparently the podcasts are no longer available for download, but if you ever come across the opportunity to give them a listen, take it.

Reviews
The Economist
The Times Literary Supplement

Cover charge

2011-10-15T19:41:00.001-04:00

Which cover do you like better?

Would you pay a premium (of, say, 50% more) to have the book with your preferred cover? Have you ever insisted on a particular edition of a book (and paid for it)?

only the snow can begin to explain

2011-10-14T07:22:00.010-04:00

E.E. Cummings was born this day in 1894. "anyone lived in a pretty how town" is the first of cummings' poems I ever experienced (in high school, no less). I knew anyhow town — I lived there. It is my favourite of his poems to this day. Some days, to hear it, makes me immeasurably sad.

Long coveted and newly acquired: E.E. Cummings Complete Poems 1904-1962.

I'm going to bed

2011-10-12T21:07:00.011-04:00

To read!

(Inner Sanctum, 1948.)

I think she's flirting. I can't decide if it's sexy, creepy, or ridiculous.

The indigestion of an unfulfilled duty

2011-10-10T09:54:00.000-04:00

Eberhard Mock, Criminal Councillor investigating the serial killings that occur in The End of the World in Breslau (by Marek Krajewski), adheres to the maxim, primum edere deinde philossophari ("eat first, then philosophize").

I'm glad that he does. Apart from the detail that helps the historical setting of 1925 Breslau come alive, whenever Mock sits down to a meal, it gives the reader, as well as Mock himself, the time to consider and digest the investigation, not to mention the opportunity to reflect on events related to his personal life.

The troubled barman of Petruske's tavern placed a plate of thick, fried bacon slices in front of Mock. When Mock pointed to his empty tankard, the barman assumed an expression of someone greatly put upon. Mock decided to torment him even further by ordering some bread and horseradish. An existential agony swept across the barman's features.

Mock observed the effects of alcohol and anger in the eyes of the wretchedly dressed drunks crowding the tables and walls. The most genial person in the place seemed to be the blind accordionist playing a sentimental tune. Had he not been blind, he would been glaring at Mock just as amicably as the builders, carters, cabbies and bandits crammed into the bar.

Mock tore his eyes away from his brothers in alcoholic misery, and set about his food. First he decorated the slices of bacon with mounds of horseradish, then, using a knife, pressed it into a hot mush after which, with a faint sigh, he devoured the smoked and roasted meat followed by slices of dark, wholemeal bread. He washed down the strong taste of meat and horseradish with Haas beer.

Scanning the bar with bloodshot eyes, he listened to the swearing and cursing. Foremost in this were unemployed workers, embittered at the whole world. All of a sudden a butcher joined in their laments to complain about capitalist exploiters who undervalued his rare ability to decapitate a cow with one blow.

Mock had a revelation: the supper had not been unpalatable because it consisted of foul and badly prepared food, but because his mouth was acidic with the indigestion of an unfulfilled duty.

It's full of atmosphere and attitude; it has tremendous period verisimilitude, a smattering of Latin, and wit (you might call it a running gag that one of Mock's subordinates is chided for not knowing Latin — Krajewski himself is a classics scholar), which make this novel highly engrossing, despite the severe brutality.

The End of the World in Breslau is the second in Krajewski's series of Eberhard Mock investigations, but its events take place in 1925, well before those in Death in Breslau, which is set primarily in 1933. While I thoroughly enjoyed the Nazi elements of the first book, and the added level of intrigue with regard to the bureacracy and administration of a police investigation, I preferred this second novel with its "simpler" storylines.

There are the bizarre serial killings, the scenes of which always include a calendar page indicating the date of death. And then there's Mock's marriage — his wife feels mistreated and so sets out on her own sexual adventures and develops an association with the Monistic Community of Breslau (a kind of secret society — fictitious). The pacing is brilliant — Krajewski sticks with one storyline at a time, till just about the point where you're close to forgetting the other existed before he switches tracks.

Meanwhile, there's an end-of-the-world cult gaining popularity in Breslau. Oh, and there's some trouble with Mock's nephew, who is neglecting his studies and getting mixed up with the wrong crowd. Do you think all these elements might be connected?

Mock is fairly unlikeable, though he does have a strong sense of justice. The fact of his moral ambiguity means you never know what he's going to do next.

I'm ordering up the third book of the series straight away. And I'm delighted to learn that there are even more Breslau books, although they are not yet translated.

[I read this book as part of RIP VI. As a noir crime novel, it falls into a subcategory of mystery, but I think the end-of-world cult aspect gives it a nice, Halloween-y edge.]

Truth, beauty, genius

2011-10-07T06:50:00.010-04:00

Erasmus Valentine had a fondness for women of a certain age, and that age was at least sixty. He loved their soft, stretched flesh, hanging off their arms like wings, and the look of surprise in their eyes when he made love to them. He loved their stiff gray hairs, which stuck straight out from their scalp and were often dyed a strange false shade of lavender or orange, and he loved their long beaklike noses. If he was particularly lucky, their cries of passion would even sound like squawks.

He was often successful in his amorous quests. Though sometime surprised, or confused, Valentine had loved many, many women of London, none younger than fifty-seven — and that one looked quited ancient for her age. But one bird had escaped his net, and it was the bird he wanted to catch more than any other: Ada Byron, the Countess of Lovelace herself. She was a different sort of bird. Ada had been famous for being wild and brilliant in her youth, and age hadn't tempered her with caution — as it often did — but with confidence. She still smoked cigars, gambled, and wrote tracts on the future of analytical engines with just as much fervor as — if not more than — she had when she was in her twenties. When her husband died thirty years ago in an accident involving the steam presses he made to shape wooden ceilings into cathedral-like patterns, she hadn't sought a new husband. Not out of grieving, but because she didn't see the need for one. She was independent. She laughed at bawdy jokes, and drank with the men after supper. And she had rejected all of Valentine's advances. But she was coming to Illyria today, and Valentine was determined to persevere.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace contributed to Charles Babbage's analytical engine. She is widely held to have been the first computer programmer.

Ada Lovelace also appears in All Men of Genius, first novel by Lev AC Rosen. But as should be clear from the excerpt above, it is not quite the same Ada Lovelace. This one is sixty-seven, a widow who smokes cigars and wins at poker.

But she is but a bit player in All Men of Genius.

This is steampunk. (And it's steampunk week at Tor.com.) Victorian London, horseless carriages that run on different principles than our own, mechanical prostheses, gears, a lot of clockwork, a kind of science that may resemble magic more than what has been borne out in our history.

Violet, age 17, wants to study science at Illyria College, but the school is (as the schools are in her day and age) male only. She applies under the name of her twin brother and gains entry. Now she has to go about in disguise.

All Men of Genius is said to be inspired by Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (or, What You Will) and Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest. I read Twelfth Night for grade 13 English — I remember I made some clever comment about "Illyria" sounding like "delirium" — so I can attest to there being commonalities. Clearly, character names and plot devices have been liberally borrowed. I have not read Earnest — but, oh look, there it is on my shelf, can it be that I really haven't read it? — but an Internet review of the synopsis makes the similarities to this play clear as well.

This is a charming novel, about science, about girls doing science, and about beauty.

"What's so funny?"

"That all you should see in flowers is scientific principles," he said, "even when a man tried to show you their beauty."

"But that is their beauty," Violet said, pursing her lips. "Really, I don't know what it is with your gender, that they must divide science and beauty into separate fields. As if the stars and planets themselves are lovely, but to map the way they turn takes that away from them. In my opinion, the way a planet spins only adds to its beauty."

And it's about love, too. Love is bound to gum up the works.

Cross-dressing, mistaken identities, killer automata, invisible cats. The pacing is perfect. All Men of Genius is sweet and funny and full of joy.

Excerpt.

Books not to be seen reading in public

2011-10-04T18:28:00.003-04:00

Standing room only again in the metro the other morning. I'm used to it. I pull out my novel.

I feel someone's eyes on me. A middle-aged man, balding, bespectacled, seated in front of me.

He's not staring at me so much as he's leering at my book. Still, unpleasant.

I'm reading The End of the World in Breslau, by Marek Krajewski. (Excerpt.)

To spectacular cover art gracing the English translations of the Eberhard Mock investigations, from Quercus Publishing, is by Andrzej Klimowski.

Here. Take a good, close look.

Horrified, yet still strangely enthralled

2011-10-03T18:05:00.001-04:00

A book.

An old book actually. Yellowed pages. The dry, musty smell of old parchment. A weathered cover of leatherlike material with more than its fair share of cracks. When I reached out to trace it with the tip of my finger, something strange happened.

The book shifted beneath my touch, as if trying to escape.

I yanked my hand back in surprise.

I stared at the book in a kind of sick fascination, the way one stared at a bad traffic accident, disgust and horror mingling with a deep-seated need to see, to understand, to know just how bad it was.

Tentatively, I reach out again.

This time the cover yielded slightly to my touch but didn't pull away. Maybe I'd just imagined it. Something still didn't feel right, though. The book was warm, pliable, like a living thing rather than an inanimate object.

I half expected to hear it breathing.

Horrified, yet still strangely enthralled, I gently pushed the cover open.

Eyes to See, by Joseph Nassise, is a bit weird. I can't say I've read anything quite like it before. It's broadly classified as "fantasy" (according to the promo notes) but pulls elements together from various (sub)genres. There are ghosts, a witch (who performs magic), a berserker, a demonic ritual, an old manuscript, serial killings. And Jeremiah Hunt, a near-blind man who sees ghosts.

Jeremiah gained this special sight in his efforts to track down his daughter, who was abducted from his home. Years later, the police have stopped looking. His wife left a long time ago. He makes a living as a ghostbuster, relying on seeing and interacting with ghosts, tactically possessing and/or being possessed by them. Oh, and, the dead can see emotions. Occasionally, the cops call on him for help, although they don't know the precise nature of how Hunt comes to his "intuitions" about their criminal situations.

On this particular police case, a couple seemingly ritualistic murders, his background as a classics professor even comes into play.

Drawing on all these different traditions, the book had potential, I thought — a crazy energy. But ultimately, the world-building was weak, falling into the trap of telling not showing (including a completely irrelevant explanation by Jeremiah of the different classes of ghost — apparitions, spectres, poltergeists, etc — which is doubly ridiculous once we learn how ignorant he is of the supernatural world), and trying to be too many things for its own good.

The tone, especially the dialogue, in trying for a clipped noir-ish feel sounds laughably repetitive and predictable. Also, the narration's switching in perspective is needlessly disorienting, and there are continuity errors.

The plot was engaging enough that I had to see how the story ended, but I don't see myself picking up Jeremiah Hunt's further chronicles.

Excerpt.

[I read this book as part of RIP VI. While this novel fits all the criteria to be the perfect creepy lead-up read to Halloween, the writing is more horrific than the story, and its quality makes it the most disappointing book I've read all year.]

Rainy afternoon

2011-10-01T17:40:00.002-04:00

It's rainy and cold.

Before surrendering to a lazy day, I thought I'd give it one last shot to get the kid active, even though I didn't much feel like it myself.

"How about we go shopping for a skirt, like you wanted?" "No!" "What if we hang out at the bookstore?" "Yes!"

She never ceases to surprise me.

So we went to the bookstore.

I thought about buying a copy of The Train (Simenon) for myself, seeing as how my electronic review copy is set to expire in a few days and I have to have this book on my shelf. But more than that, I wanted to browse, to discover something.

I opened a copy of Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, started reading it, and, three pages in, determined it was crap, or, at least, not for me, not today.

Here's what we bought:

The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future, by George Beard and Harold Hutchins.
Panda Man to the Rescue, story by Sho Makura, art by Haruhi Kato.
The Lazarus Project, by Aleksander Hemon.

The Project's for me, of course, and I must say its first three pages were vastly more compelling than anything else in the store. Today anyway. It's been on that list in the back of my mind of books to watch for for some time, and it puts me in mind of that Doctor Who Episode, The Lazarus Experiment — I'm sure they have nothing to do with each other, but it's as valid a reason as any to choose one book over another.

Happy, rainy reading.

It was sharp and exquisite and deliciously painful

2011-09-29T23:42:00.005-04:00

Every day that passed nibbled away some of my meager capital of happiness. That isn't the right word, but as I can't find another, and as people are always talking about happiness, I am obliged to make do with the word myself.

The Train, by Georges Simenon, has been nibbling away at my conscience since I put it down over a week ago.

It turned out not to be the book I expected it to be, and it is all the finer for it.

I had expected some kind of psychological suspense, some small mystery — the sort of thing I've come to expect from Simenon. Man walks away from his ordinary life, to finally really start to live. And on the other side of the tracks he discoveres life with prostitutes and other criminal elements; he may become involved in crime, even murder, himself. What the reader generally discovers is the seedy side of of an ordinary mind. It's what happens when you give in to impulse, desire, your baser instincts; when you let the monster of existential dread crawl out of a tiny crevice in your brain, the monster sets up house and governs your affairs.

That's what most Simenon novels feel like (his romans durs).

Early on it dawned on me that The Train was not a typical roman dur. It was some kind of war story, and potentially, since Marcel is riding a train going god knows where, and his story becomes entwined with that of a Jewish woman, a story about the Holocaust — not the sort of thing I like reading about, although far more horrific than any "horror story" in the conventional sense.

But the book isn't that either.

Altogether my impression, when war broke out, was that fate was playing another trick on me and I was not surprised for I was practically certain that was going to happen one day.

This time it wasn't a microbe, a virus, a congenital deformity of heaven knows what part of the eye — the doctors have never been able to agree about my eyes. It was a war which was hurling men against one another in tens of millions.

The idea was ridiculous, I realize that. But the fact remains that I knew, that I was ready. And that waiting, ever since October, was becoming unbearable. I didn't understand. I kept wondering why what was bound to happen didn't happen.

What was bound to happen didn't happen.

Marcel is not led to his death. He does not commit murder or consort with prostitutes. In fact, he doesn't even walk away from his life — at least, not in a very deliberate way.

The story: As Nazi tanks approach, Marcel's family takes the decision to leave, or rather they go with the flow, and end up leaving, just like everybody else. They board the train, but Marcel is separated from his pregnant wife and his little girl. And Marcel doesn't seem to know how he feels about this. And when Anna boards the train, Marcel starts to feel a little differently.

Anna's mysterious and exotic, and maybe a little dangerous. But she is also a very sympathetic character, for whom the cicumstances may be consequential.

It's a distressing novel because it's about doing the right thing, and it forces you to consider what the right thing is. How often when we do the right thing is it the socially expected thing, the socially accepted thing? Doing right is an adherence to social norms and standards; it has very little to do with being good. Often, "right" and "good" coincide. But it's devastating when they come into conflict.

The horror in this novel is subtle. It has very little to with Nazis or with war, although both contribute to the circumstances in which this particular horror thrives, when man forgets his social contract and his actions are less than human. It's somewhat understandable that when you know the Nazis are coming, your social order starts to fall apart, but the savage animal acts, man against man, are not made more agreeable by acknowledging their source.

So. Here I am talking about brutality, but the novel doesn't really show much evidence of it. It's subtle. Simenon's subtle. It's like this. For example. The train is packed with people wanting out, some have tried to bring all their belongings, others have brought the wrong belongings. And the barmaid favours someone with her favours, and under cover of dark they have sex, right there on the train, inches away from everybody, and really, aren't there more important things toward which to be directing one's attention and energy. The scene (and this sort of behaviour recurs) is not particularly long or lurid, but it's somehow... indecent. And even though it registers on Marcel as such, he starts not to care. And so the slip into something less than civilized.

"Even so, we shall probably never see anything we leave behind again..."

The idea didn't upset me. On the contrary, it filled me with a sort of somber joy, like that of destroying something you have patiently built up with your own hands.

Marcel was a sickly child, till he grew into a sickly youth. He spent years in a sanatorium, and somehow survived to become a weak man. He sheds his home, his material possessions, his family, and his dignity. The thing he clings to and protects with the most fervour is his spare eyeglasses, but one day he stops caring about even that.

I am not ashamed to say that I was happy, with a happiness which bore the same relation to everyday happiness as the sound produced by passing a violin bow across the wrong side of the bridge bears to the nomal sound of a violin. It was sharp and exquisite and deliciously painful.

But perhaps that is also the day he truly loses sight of his life. He is unable to discern what is right, what is good, what is happiness.

Somehow, everything lost comes back to him. (The compass he never had remains lost to him.) When the novel ends, Marcel has "a wife, three children, a shop in the Rue du Chateau." And such an ending was devised to leave a very bitter aftertaste. It's all wrong, but other choices would've been wrong too. All those savage, inhuman acts are still there — when the war is over we are not better people; merely we can manage to apply a shinier veneer.

Maybe Marcel should've lived a different life, maybe he would've been happier then, truer to himself — but probably not. Contrary to the publisher's blurb that Marcel confronts "a blood-chilling choice," rather it is existential spleen–chilling.

[I read this book as part of RIP VI. Had I known more about the story I'd've seen that it doesn't really fit my idea of a chilling autumn read. However, the story is psychologically, morally disturbing, and a very powerful read.]

Out of print

2011-09-23T17:40:00.008-04:00

I'm not what you'd call an impulse shopper. I've wanted one of these t-shirts forever, but which one? It had to be a design I liked and a book I loved. Something that expressed something about me. Finally, a day came when I felt I deserved a little something, and about a year and a half after first hearing about these tees, I decided. The Master and Margarita.

The shirt is thin, but it's a good-quality print, and the cut and the feel make for a remarkably comfortable fit. I love it.

(I'm fairly certain now that I want to dress my daughter in Darwin's Origin of Species, but I'll have to think on this for another month or two.)

And, for every purchase, a book is donated to a community in need.

I did in fact read The Master and Margarita (by Mikhail Bulgakov), but it must've been a lifetime ago. I remember Pontius Pilate and the politics of the crucifixion, and something about a cat, bearing some resemblance to my actual cat, but little else. I've been wanting to reread this for several years now, and now I'm really going to have to, so as not to appear a fraud.

An e-version of the translation by Richard Pevear is widely available under a creative commons license.

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret

2011-09-22T23:54:00.001-04:00

I got kind of excited last month about there being a new Ondaatje. I got caught up in the hype, and I think I even said, "Ooohh, a new Ondaatje!" But then I thought, wait, do I even like Ondaatje, I don't remember. So by the time I actually picked up The Cat's Table, I had mentally prepared myself for disappointment. It took but a few pages before I was all, oh, Ondaatje, I remember, he's good.

The cat's table is that table in the dining room positioned furthest away form the Captain's table, reserved for those passengers of least consequence. And this is where 11-year-old Michael gets to sit during his 21-day journey from Ceylon to England.

[My mother would've made a similar journey, but she would've been a few years older, a few years earlier. I must ask her about it.]

There's not much happpening in this book. It is a novel — a voyage — of discovery: of passing the time, hearing stories, and plotting adventures, of fast friendships, unknown territory, and gossip. (It's a lot like how I remember camp to be: bonding intensely with a group of strangers over a relatively short period, and making your own fun.) As readers we overhear the passengers' stories and see certain events and have to piece them together much as Michael does.

[O]ur table's status on the Oronsay continued to be minimal, while those at the Captain's Table were constantly toasting one another's significance. That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.

The thing I take away from this novel is how children's experience of things, of life, is always somewhat removed from anything like an adult reality. There. That was a hard sentence to write. I almost said a child's experience is childish, or naive, or incomplete, and that's not exactly true. It's still a perfectly full and true and valid experience, just different.

I think The Cat's Table has this in common with The Fragile Mistress, which I read earlier this summer. In both cases, the "children" are exposed to situations that are beyond their ability to understand them, not because of their age exactly, but because they're not privy to the whole story and have to fill in the blanks by themselves, and the logic drawn upon to smooth over the gaps varies if you're 8, 11, 14, or 39.

You have to be careful with these things. See, I was once a child myself, and there's some stuff I remember, and some stuff I learned. I remember overhearing someone say, about me, you can't expect her to understand, she's just a child (I was almost 8), and I remember being very angry about this. I learned that grown-ups often underestimate children, at least in terms of their capacity to grok. So now I try very, very hard not treat children like children.

[Just this weekend my daughter did something crazy, but I maintained my composure. I heard their voices, her and the girl from a neighbouring cottage, coming through the trees. I didn't know there was a path through these woods, I thought you had to go by the road to access her cottage. Maybe they're coming along the shore, rock-jumping — tricky, but doable since the water level's low. Then I see them, paddling their canoe up onto our tiny shore. And I was horrified! that someone let them — an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old — paddle themselves across the lake. Of course, nobody let them — the canoe was there, and inspiration struck. And then I saw that the both of them were life-jacketed, and the 10-year-old actually seemed to know what she was doing, handled the canoe with more ease than I could, and was very confident in instructing Helena on what to do. So I plastered a smile over my horror, and deep down felt a little proud, happy for her for embarking on her own adventure. Then they paddled out to where J-F was fishing before returning the canoe to its point of origin.

What was my point? Oh, yes. To the 8-year-old mind, canoeing across the lake seemed very reasonable. It is a valid and beautiful experience, and Helena will remember it very differently from how I will.]

The Cat's Table is by far my favourite of the few Ondaatje novels I've read. While the language of the others was more beautiful, more poetic, it also sometimes works to keep the reader at a distance. The Cat's Table, however, is a straightfoward exercise in storytelling, and I was charmed by it. There's nothing pretentious about it, and I recommend it as an entry point to Ondaatje's work.

You might like to give a listen to Jian Ghomeshi interviewing Michael Ondaatje. I met Michael Ondaatje once, at a fundraiser for world literacy — he was a notable attendee, and there were signed copies of The English Patient up for auction. (Come to think of it, Jian was there too, but I didn't meet him, he was the musical entertainment.) Someone actually introduced us while we were milling around near the bar. I had not read anything of his at this point. We made small talk — the weather? travel? — while we drank our drinks. We didn't talk about books at all.

Barefoot

2011-09-14T20:43:00.001-04:00

Late at night, after the specially invited First Class passengers had left the Captain's Table, and after the dancing had ended with couples, their masks removed, barely stirring in each other's arms, and after the stewards had taken away the abandoned glasses and ashtrays and were leaning on the four-foot-wide brooms to sweep away the coloured swirls of paper, they brought out the prisoner.

It was usually before midnight. The deck shone because of a cloudless moon. He appeared with the guards, one chained to him, one walking behind him with a baton, We did not know what his crime was. We assumed it could only have been a murder. The concept of anything more intricate, such as a crime of passion or a political betrayal, did not exist in us then. He looked powerful, self-contained, and he was barefoot.

Cassius had discovered this late-night schedule for the prisoner's walk, so the three of us were often there at that hour. He could, we thought among ourselves, leap over the railing, along with the guard who was chained to him, into the dark sea. We thought of him running and leaping this way to his death. We thought this, I suppose, because we were young, for the very idea of a chain, of being contained, was like suffocation. At our age we could not endure the idea of it. We could hardly stand to wear sandals when we went for meals, and every night as we ate at our table in the dining room we imagined the prisoner eating scraps from a metal tray, barefoot in his cell.

— from The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje.

A cat's life

2011-09-12T16:13:00.001-04:00

I've been working from home quite a bit over the last month, for various reasons. As with any situation, it has its pros and cons. The drawback that most perturbs me is the paranoid feeling that the second I leave my post — whether the chosen premium location of the day be the bed, the sofa, or the kitchen table — I am usurped.

***************

The feline section of this article on Literary Pets is slight, but I am delighted to learn that Alexandre Dumas had a cat who "each day greeted him in the street as he returned from work." I had a cat who used to do that.

***************

I'm currently reading The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje. It is enchanting, like your grandfather recounting his childhood adventures (or so I imagine). "What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power."

Men of honour

2011-09-11T09:55:00.002-04:00

I did it. I finished something by Conrad (The Duel).

Colonel D'Hubert himself, hardened to exposure, suffered mainly in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty in supplying the deficiency. But to loot a pair of breeches from a frozen corpse is not so easy as it may appear to a mere theorist.

Even though I thought it quite funny in spots, there were times I thought this novella dragged. I don't think I'll be trying Nostromo anytime soon, but I believe the curse is finally broken.

This ebook includes a lot of supplementary material, about this story and about duelling. I haven't worked my way through all of it, but I was delighted to discover that the historical duel on which Conrad based his story took place between two French officers, Fournier and Dupont. Being that I live with a Fournier, upon learning this tidbit I can better appreciate the grandiose sense of honour and justice that might lead to the sort of decades-long standoff Conrad described.

A trick of the light

2011-09-09T23:11:00.001-04:00

A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny, was a wonderful discovery for me, and the perfect first read for me of RIP VI. It's a detective novel with lots of traditional elements: a sleepy village, eccentric characters, a troubled police inspector (well, they're all troubled, aren't they? — and this one may be less tortured than many). It's not exactly a locked room, but the list of possible suspects is limited to a fairly small group. And there's a big reveal at the end, on a stormy night.

The story: A body's found in Clara's garden, the morning after the big party celebrating Clara's art show. That's pretty much it, but you don't need anything more.

Clara's an artist, so it's natural that she should be surrounded by other artists. And critics and art dealers and a poet. It makes for some wonderful digressions on the nature of art, how much of it inspiration versus hard work, the subjectivity of its value.

One clue leads to an AA meeting, and the cast is then filled out with alcoholics. That leads to some interesting discussions about finding your happy place, whether it's possible for a person to change, and when are people really themselves. And forgiveness, and doing things for the right reasons.

While most of the story takes place in the fictional village of Three Pines (it almost makes me want to take a drive through the Eastern Townships to pinpoint it), Chief Inspector Gamache does have to come into the big city, Montréal (avec un accent), to take care of some business. I do get a kick out of encountering familiar stomping grounds in fiction. (I figure I live about halfway between the Inspector's place edging Outremont and the victim's apartment in the Plateau.)

The thing about this book: it made me feel very smart. Not in a look-at-me-I'm-reading-War-and-Peace kind of way. And not in a I-figured-out-whodunnit-by-page-23 way either. (I've always been really crap at figuring out whodunnit.) But in the way I recognized clues, the way my mind wandered down certain paths. The thing is: I know I was led down these paths, in the way clues and characters were smoothly, elegantly revealed.

The reader may guess, but the reader won't figure it out, as some vital information is withheld. But this does not detract from the pleasure of reading this novel.

I don't have many benchmarks when it comes to mysteries. This book feels a little like Agatha Christie, but not so dated. It doesn't have the verbal flair of Fred Vargas — the conversations and observations here are just as philosophical, but toned down, more natural — but then it doesn't get carried away either with the unbelievable, sensationalistic, or just plain weird plot stuff that Vargas gets away with. It is exactly what it sets out to be, and that's more than can be said for some other mystery books (for example, Erasing Memory, by Scott Thornley, which I read earlier this summer) that veer off into thriller territory or gawd knows what.

A Trick of the Light proved to be very comfortable and very comforting.

Agent Lacoste was exhausted. She wished she could take her bowl of café au lait and a croissant, and curl up on the large sofa by the fireplace. And read one of the well-worn paperbacks from Myrna's shop. An old Maigret. Read and nap. Read and nap. In front of the fireplace. While the outside world and worries receded into the mist.

A Trick of the Light is Penny's seventh book in a series of mystery novels featuring Chief Inspector Gamache. Let me assure you that it stands perfectly well on its own, but it does refer to previous cases and it's evident the characters are evolving. I'll be looking up her previous books. If A Trick of the Light is any indication, they're the perfect thing to have on hand for a rainy day.

Altogether loud and sensuous, almost phonetic

2011-09-06T18:44:00.011-04:00

This month's issue of Words without Borders includes a fresh bunch of Polish poetry:

only i am, Justyna Bargielska
Alterity, Jacek Dehnel
I Wish I Had a Master, Julia Fiedorczuk
Old-Fashioned, Edward Pasewicz
Adjectival Poem, Piotr Sommer
Bugging, Piotr Sommer
Utensils Shrink, Piotr Sommer

These poets are new to me, with the exception of Sommer, who is fast becoming a favourite.

This from "Bugging" (in the sense of eavesdropping; I would've translated the title differently, maybe "What's Overheard," or "The Overhearing" to preserve the nounishness, but hey, I passed on the poetry translation career option years ago):

Bah, wires can chirp almost as well,
so it's easy to confuse them. It's altogether loud
and sensuous, almost phonetic.
[...]
And no way to avoid the brown-eyed gaze of the pansies,
which have all but disappeared now from the flower beds,
forced out by nasturtiums and marigolds. No flower beds either.
All the hazel eyes are rotting now underground.

RIP VI

2011-09-05T16:06:00.002-04:00

It's been a few years since I followed along with Carl's annual autumnal Halloween-mood-based challenge, Readers Imbibing Peril (RIP). The goal is to celebrate books that might be classified in the following genres: Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. Dark fantasy. Gothic. Horror. Supernatural.

I'm pretty noncommittal with respect to reading goals, but sometimes it just feels right.

Having just come off 5000 pages of political romance, I'm looking to switch gears and clear my way through some of the books that inadvertently got set aside. As it happens, a number of them fit the above-mentioned categories.

A Trick of the Light, Louise Penny. Mystery (of the cozy variety). I was drawn to this book by the Montreal backdrop.

The Train, Simenon. Psychological suspense. Because I think Simenon's amazing.

The End of the World in Breslau, Marek Krajewski. Noir mystery thriller. I read the first of this series a few months ago and was struck by the unique setting — 1930s Nazi-run Wrocław.

Eyes to See. Joseph Nassise. Creepy supernatural suspense horror thriller. This one's a review copy. Heck, I'll give anything a try. And the cover looks pretty demonic.

And this might be the year I pick up Shirley Jackson's classic, The Haunting of Hill House.

Fire and ice

2011-09-05T13:50:00.001-04:00

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one."

This series of books alone, with its vast array of characters, offers a reader hundreds of lives: lords, princes, queens, whores, fools, pawns, swordsmen, witches, holymen.

I've finished A Dance with Dragons, book five of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. This series has been quite the unexpected 5000-page diversion for me these last few months. I'd planned on reading all sorts of things this summer. Instead I found myself embroiled in the politics of Westeros.

I've been reading it sunny days on the boat, rainy days curled up on the sofa, late into the night, with my morning coffee. Sure, I read a few smaller novels alongside these, but the world of A Song of Fire and Ice has sprawled across my summer.

The standout book for me is book three (A Storm of Swords), but each of them has its key events and players and shifting tides.

A Dance with Dragons had a lot of hype to live up to. I'm disappointed that this book had almost nothing about Arya, whose storyline and current circumstances I find most intriguing. There's little about Cersei and Jaime, nothing of Sansa or Sam. But instead Martin returns us to Tyrion and Jon, whose respective stories had been ignored in book four. One thing I dislike about this book is the new trick of naming chapters coyly (for example, The King's Prize, or The Blind Girl) instead of owning up immediately to the character perpective being taken as has been the tradition so far. But I guess the suspense ultimately pays off.

I'm devastated that certain people die.

The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. Summer dug up a severed arm, black and covered with hoarfrost, its fingers opening and closing as it pulled itself across the frozen snow. There was still enough meat on it to fill his empty belly, and after that was done he cracked the arm bones for the marrow. Only then did the arm remember it was dead.

This series is addictive. The world is detailed, the characters (most of them) are fully three-dimensional. Life here is ethically complicated. There are bits that drag, but Martin always kept me wanting to know what happened next. I'm already looking forward to The Winds of Winter.

Conrad and me

2011-08-31T18:41:00.002-04:00

"Drop this! I won't fight with you. I won't be made ridiculous."

"Ah, you won't?" hissed the Gascon. "I suppose you prefer to be made infamous. Do you hear what I say? ... Infamous! Infamous! Infamous!" he shrieked, rising and falling on his toes and getting very red in the face.

My grade 11 history teacher wore a brown leather jacket, Lennon specs, and a beard. He was a Harley-riding born-again Christian. Mr Osgan encouraged all sorts of strange ideas. For example, we did a unit on Ancient India, which may not sound so strange in these enlightened times, but back in my day, the classes of my peers were essentially limited to the big three: the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.

Naturally, the course material lent itself to discussion of philosophy and religion, and really, that's all your typical hormonal teenagers really want to talk about. I don't think it was just me; most kids thought he was pretty cool, laid-back, like, he got it, man.

He'd go off on all sorts of interesting tangents. It seemed to me they were all about road trips, and meeting hippies and drinking tea and playing sitar. No, he probably didn't tell us any stories quite like that, but he may as well have, man, that was totally the aura he exuded.

For some reason, Mr Osgan seemed to think I was pretty bright, and he gave me A++s (that's double pluses) on my essays. I wrote something on Lucretius and Epicureanism. Then there was this thing on Pythagoras's Table of Opposites and how Pythagoras was clearly(!) influenced by Eastern philosophy. I had to present that to the class. Mr Osgan told me he was giving me bonus points for having conducted the whole seminar barefoot, that it somehow enhanced the material. But I hadn't given it any thought. I was just reckless that week. That was the week my mom went to visit my sister, and I stayed home alone with my big brother, though you can't really say my brother was very present. I had friends over, and stayed out late, and didn't prepare for my project at all. I just left my shoes somewhere, or my feet hurt or something. It was spring, and warm and sunny.

Anyway, before all that stuff, on the very first day of class — history was my home room — Mr Osgan had us fill out some basic information about ourselves, things related to culture and language and religion, I think, and we had to respond to something like, I dunno, "How would you describe yourself," or "What do you want me to know about you?" — something like that. And I remember I wrote that I was "a prolific reader" and I think I was going through my Somerset Maugham phase and I said something about that, but then I worried a long time, for days, about whether I'd used the word "prolific" correctly.

So Mr Osgan notes that I'm Polish, and he starts to tell me, and the whole class, about Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, aka Joseph Conrad, and how remarkable it is that he should write so remarkably well in a language (English) other than his mother tongue (Polish), and, really, I should read him. I'm pretty sure he noted Nostromo as being particularly good. And then he went off on a tangent about some commune where they drank tea and read Conrad or something.

Shortly thereafter I had my very own copy of Nostromo (did our rinky-dink local bookstore actually have it in stock? did my mother special order it for me?). I'm sure Mr Osgan noticed me carrying it around for a while, but he had the sense never to ask me about it.

I still have that book somewhere. Dogeared at page 17. It bears the distinction of being the first of very few books I never finished.

University was a lot harder than high school. In first year, I was a math and philosophy major, but everyone still had to take English. Everyone was tested and placed according to their abilities. I was exempt from all the basic grammar and composition stuff, and ended up in a lit survey course, which was one of the very few lit courses I took in university.

Of course, Heart of Darkness was on the syllabus, and nothing in the world could convince me to read it. I'm not sure I even tried. Maybe I tried. Maybe I read a page. I'm pretty sure I didn't even try. I totally faked it. I hadn't even seen Apocalypse Now.

And I've felt this gaping lacuna in my literary education ever since.

I tried to read Nostromo again later, in my twenties, which served only to grant it the the distinction of being the only book I never finished twice.

Enter The Duel. I received my e-book for free when I subscribed to Melville House's mailing list (offer no longer available).

Conrad's Duel. It's funny! And absurd — the extent to which honour may be insulted and defended. I'm not quite finished, but finish it I will. I may even try Nostromo again.

Thank you, Melville House, for reconciling me to Joseph Conrad. Otherwise this standoff might've lasted to the death (mine).

Congratulations, Frances, for all the extraordinary reading you accomplished this month — the Art of the Novella reading challenge — and thanks for the nudge in this direction.

Sorry, Mr Osgan, that I never appreciated Conrad the way you hoped I would. But look at me now.

Saying these words the chief spun round to seize the truth, which is not a beautiful shape living in a well, but a shy bird caught by strategem.

It ran out of my arms and eyes like lightning

2011-08-29T23:02:00.002-04:00

First, let me say that this is my favourite of all NYRB Classics book covers to date. The image (Susan Bower, Downhill in a Pram) is wonderfully eerie and funny and wicked all at once (kind of like the novel itself).

I'd love to recommend this book — The Pumpkin Eater, by Penelope Mortimer — but, honestly, I haven't the foggiest to whom. I suspect that those people who would find it engaging and relevant are also likely to find it emotionally difficult, and I'm not sure I want to wish that on anyone.

I took my time with this novel; 222 pages but it took me a couple weeks. Having reserved it for my commute (A Dance with Dragons is a bit cumbersome to be lugging about on the metro), I read it in 15-minute spurts here and there, and since I've spent several days working from home lately because of my knee injury, well, it took even longer. This book bears the distinction of having ruined my day, on at least two occasions. I'd come home fuming: I can't believe Jake, what a jerk! So it's a book that manages to spill its emotions over into real life.

We never know the narrator's name. She's on her fourth marriage and has a lot of children — we don't know how many, and Dinah's the only one of them with a name. And she wants another one.

The novel starts off on her therapist's couch, and through flashbacks and choice glimpses of her day-to-day, Mortimer touches on not only (obviously) marriage and motherhood, but also depression, (in)fidelity, sexuality, abortion, sterilization, death, fulfillment (all kinds), and the Cold War. Throw in some complicated relationships with her own parents. Oh, and the nature of happiness. Heavy stuff, but the voice is honest and witty.

Bear in mind that The Pumpkin Eater was originally published in 1962, and it still feels a bit scandalous. It reads a lot like Doris Lessing, and maybe a little bit like Sylvia Plath (but without so much hysterical exuberance).

I realized that for the first time in my life I could make love without danger. Danger? For the first time in my life I could make love. It was an amazing thought, as though I suddenly had the gift of tongues, the ability to fly. I could hardly contain my love, it ran out of my arms and eyes like lightning. "Be careful," Jake said, "You'll hurt yourself." I laughed till the tears came and it really did hurt. "You're crazy," Jake said. "What's the matter with you?" "Nothing. I love you. I've been such a fool."

This novel asks what more do people want — from marriage, from life, from other people. What more can you possible want when there isn't any more? This is it, it's all there is. Some people derive happiness from that; others...

It's said that we're born alone, and that we die alone. The fact of the matter is that ultimately, no matter how many lovers or children, or friends or parties or marriages, we also live alone, though some of us by our natures feel it more keenly than others, and some circumstances make it more keenly felt.

Reviews
– Daphne Merkin's introduction to the NYRB Classics reissue, in Slate
– NPR

I learned from Emily that this novel was made into a movie. The introduction confirms this (I tend to save these for last, as I've been burned a couple times, by if not exactly spoilers then too much information), and informs me that the screenplay was by no less than Harold Pinter. I'm betting it's worth looking up.

One must seek to become human and to love the fact of one's humanity

2011-08-27T11:31:00.001-04:00

Inspired by NPR's recent list of top 100 science fiction and fantasy books, a coworker and I have been comparing notes on our respective SF educations, and trying to help each other other close up some gaps. So I was scanning my shelves the other night, looking for a copy of something or other, and was delighted to find a beat-up old paperback, which I immediately set about rereading.

The War Hound and World's Pain, by Michael Moorcock, is not on NPR's list (though, his Elric saga is). My copy was printed in 1982, and it's likely I acquired and read it that same year, or the year after. The pages are severely yellowed, the spine cracked, with whole sections of pages breaking free of their gluey bonds, and the book smells intensely of that used-book-shop smell, though it's only ever been used by me, and a friend or two (the books on either side of it don't smell at all). I wrote my name inside it; I recognize my highschool penmanship.

The language of the book, quite deliberately, is stilted and somewhat formal, to mimic the style of a journal as written in 1680. I am surprised that my 13-year-old self would've got on with it. But it must've been hard to resist the callout on the back cover:

WITHIN A WITHERED FOREST, IN A PALACE RICH AND DESOLATE, A MAN LOVED A WOMAN — AND MADE A PACT WITH SATAN!

Now, at 13, I'm sure I knew about the holy grail, King Arthur, Monty Python, and all that, but I think I thought of it more as a treasure quest — the "holy" part of it eluded me.

Yet, I connected with this book. (I've held on to it for almost 30 years, and think of it as a favourite, but haven't really examined why until now.) I read it at a time when I no longer believed in God (hadn't done so since I was 4), I was mystified by the hold organized religion had over so many, and it was increasingly difficult to come up with excuses to get out of church on Sunday mornings (without resorting to the actual truth and devastating my mother). At the same time, this book opened my eyes to the curiosities of religious mythology — I realized I could be interested in and educated about religion and religious culture without actually being religious, without taking sides. (And so began a lifelong fascination with the story of Lilith.)

So in retrospect, I think this novel helped me to consolidate my atheism, to begin to glory in my humanness, to be true to myself.

"All I have learned, lady, is to accept the world's attributes as they are. I have learned, I suppose, an acceptance of my own self, an acceptance of Man's ability to create not sensations and marvels but cities and farms which order the world, which bring us justice and sanity."

"Aha," she said. "Is that all you learned, then, young man? Is that all?"

"I think so," I said. "The marvellous is of necessity a lie, a distortion. At best it is a metaphor which leads to the truth. I think that I know what causes the World's Pain, lady. Or at least I think I know what contributes to that Pain."

"And what would that be, Ulrich von Bek?"

"By telling a single lie to oneself or to another, by denying a single fact of the world as it has been created, one adds to the World's Pain. And pain, lady, creates pain. And one must not seek to become saint or sinner, God of Devil. One must seek to become human and to love the fact of one's humanity."

I became embarrassed. "That is all I have learned, lady."

"It is all that Heaven demands," she said.

I still don't believe in heaven, but I am glad to be reminded of von Bek's lesson in humility and humanity.

Restless as maggots

2011-08-23T18:01:00.001-04:00

When Jake and I were first married — after the three eldest children had been taken away — we lived together in the evenings. Like actors, our lives began when the curtain went down. We ate and quarrelled and made love, cooked and drank and talked through the night, while the audience slept. Then, beginning with Dinah, the children began staying up later. They needed help with homework. They needed food. They needed conversation. They needed more and more of our lives. In a useless attempt to keep something for ourselves, we gave them bed-sitting rooms, television sets, new electric fires; but at eight o'clock, then nine o'clock, then ten o'clock they would be sitting in a patient row on the sofa preparing to talk to us or play games with us or perhaps just watch us, their eyes restless as maggots, expecting us to bring them up. My guilt and Jake's exasperation loaded the atmosphere until, to me, it became unbearable. But the children breathed it in placidly. There were now more great bored ones staying up in the evening than there were small, manageable ones asleep with their teeth cleaned. The nurse went off duty, as she called it, at half past seven, seldom failing to remark that she had had a twelve hour day. We went out, in order to be alone, to the great dirty pub on the corner, to the cinema, anywhere where we might be anonymous and behave, if necessary, unsuitably to our age and situation. That night, after I came home, there was no question of going out. We waited, with bad grace and burning impatience, for them to go to bed.

At last, lingeringly, with sad backward glances at the glorious day, they went. They could well look after themselves, but because I had been away I went about picking up socks, opening windows, telling them to hurry, tucking them in. Encouraged, they clung to my hand, each jealous of another, demanding to know about death and sex and other subjects which they hoped might interest me. When one of them pestered unduly, another would demand that I was left alone; when one of them called for me to go back and listen, another said crushingly, "You are a beast, can't you see she's tired." By the time I left Dinah, dazed by the possibility of a Supreme Being, my longing to be alone with Jake had cooled and hardened into a longing to forget, to postpone, to sleep.

— from The Pumpkin Eater, by Penelope Mortimer.

I'm guessing (with desperate hope that I am not alone) that anyone with children, no matter how many, will find something to relate to in this passage.

Artificial silk

2011-08-22T20:42:00.001-04:00

I'm sure Hubert didn't see me, but it still hit me like a bullet — his black coat from the back and his fair neck — and I had to think of our outing to the Kuckuckswald, where he lay on the ground with his eyes closed. And the sun made the ground hum and the air was trembling — and I put ants on his face while he was sleeping, because I'm never tired when I'm with a man I'm in love with — and I put ants in his ears — and Hubert's face was like a mountain range with valleys and all and he would pucker his nose in a funny way and his mouth was half open — his breath came out of it like a cloud. And he almost looked like a looney, but I loved him more for his sleepy face than for his kisses — and his kisses were quite something, let me tell you.

The Artificial Silk Girl, by Irmgard Keun, was written in 1932 in Germany. An English translation was recently republished by Other Press.

Comparisons to Bridget Jones' Diary and Sex and the City totally miss the mark. A single girl's romantic-sexual adventures in the big city — there the similarity ends. Bridget, Carrie, and friends are fun-loving, ambitious, independent-minded (and Doris is all these things), but they are at times (often) also pathetic. Doris, on the other hand, the eponymous artificial silk girl (a woman should never wear artificial silk when she's with a man, it wrinkles too quickly), is tragic. She shares more with Holly Golightly (both the literary and film versions) and Letty Fox.

[I haven't given a whole lot of thought as to what I see as the difference between pathetic and tragic. I'm using these words with their common meanings, not as precise literary terms. I dunno, I just feel there's a difference. Kind of like what Arthur Miller said.]

Doris is of a time where women were out in the world, they could make a living if they had to, or if they wanted to. When the novel opens she's working in an office ("True education has nothing to do with commas!"). But that's not to say it was easy. Opportunities are limited, and it's hard to be taken seriously.

Then there's love.

If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has this pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch.

Contemporary chick-lit heroines should be sobered by Doris's account.

So this novella makes for a fascinating historical document as regards women in society, circa 1930. But it also paints a vivid picture of a certain slice of society in immediately pre-Nazi Germany, and it's impossible to read the comments about Jews (Doris didn't care if you were or you weren't, but some of her men did) and about politics without a historical eye.

Doris toys with the idea of educating herself about politics, but it bores her, and it never really sticks. But I wouldn't say she is clueless abut politics; simply, she prefers not to bother with it, it's too much trouble. ("Politics poisons human relationships.")

Is there any reason to read this book, then, aside from its historical interest? I think, yes, for its voice. Certainly, it would've been unique in Keun's time. And it's still fresh now, and fairly compelling.

**********

Keun has a gift for startling images. I highlighted several of these:

"Dear God, my letters are trembling on the paper like the legs of dying mosquitoes."

"He had the voice of a bowling ball that made my blood run cold."

"And with my last paycheck, I bought myself a honey brown dress with smooth pleats, quiet and serious, like a woman who forgets to laugh when she's being kissed by someone she likes."

"There's someone playing the harmonica next door with his forehead as crumpled up as his life."

"It's not always the face that makes a whore — I am looking into my mirror — it's the way they walk, as if their heart had gone to sleep."

They sit moony, staring up at the bloody blue

2011-08-16T23:56:00.001-04:00

I'm very excited to be finally starting A Dance with Dragons! I was pretty ambivalent about book 4 (A Feast for Crows) for the first few hundred pages, but some of the newer characters did manage to draw me in and pull me along.

I must say I found the violence in that book somewhat more difficult to stomach (Asha Greyjoy. Brienne.). It didn't feel gratuitous exactly, but since the nature of it has changed (has it? or am I just now noticing it?) it's natural that my relationship with it has changed too. In addition to genuine concern for character outcomes, I'm driven along now also by sick curiosity.

Anyway, the final couple hundred pages of book 4 made it all worthwhile (Arya — I love that kid! Cersei — I hate that bitch!). Every now and again I bemoan that these books are ssooo llooonng, but it's been great to have something so escapist to turn to over the last week as I've spent time in several waiting rooms and was otherwise housebound (torn meniscus), and for the coming week as well, since all childcare plans for the final days of summer have gone to pot.

I'm still a bit puzzled by the labels this series of books is associated with: epic fantasy, high fantasy, magic. To my mind, the books read like historical romance, with a bit of other stuff thrown in.

The fantastic creatures that "people" the books are not the kind humans rub shoulders with at the village fair. The creatures are outsiders to the established social world. That nudges the books toward horror. The elements of magic — isolated incidents — are looked upon with great scepticism. The creatures, the magic, the shamanism, the supernaturalism, they are not viewed as the normal state of the world. This is nothing like the Piers Anthony or Michael Moorcock I read in my youth. In many ways, this world feels more real, more like our own.

I'm betting that the page count covering all those traditionally fantastic elements is paltry relative to the thousands of pages of "history" being related.

So it comes as a surprise (even a treat) that the prologue to book 5 should look more closely at one of those fantastic/horrific aspects.

Dogs were the easiest beasts to bond with; they lived so close to men that they were almost human. Slipping into a dog's skin was like putting on an old boot, its leather softened by wear. As a boot was shaped to accept a foot, a dog was shaped to accept a collar, even a collar no human could see. Wolves were harder. A man might befriend a wolf, even break a wolf, but no man could truly tame a wolf. "Wolves and women wed for life," Haggon often said. "You take one, that's a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you're part of him. Both of you will change."

Other beasts were best left alone, the hunter had declared. Cats were vain and cruel, always ready to turn on you. Elk and deer were prey; wear their skins too long, and even the bravest man became a coward. Bears, boars, badgers,. weasels . . . Haggon did not hold with such. "Some skins you never want to wear, boy. You won't like what you'd become. "Birds were the worst, to hear him tell it. "Men were not meant to leave the earth. Spend too much time in the clouds and you never want to come back down again. I know skinchangers who've tried hawks, owls, ravens. Even in their own skins, they sit moony, staring up at the bloody blue."

How to be by yourself in a furnished room with chipped dishes

2011-08-12T18:42:00.000-04:00

So they have courses teaching you foreign languages and ballroom dancing and etiquette and cooking. But there are no classes to learn how to be by yourself in a furnished room with chipped dishes, or how to be alone in general without any words of concern or familiar sounds.

— from The Artificial Silk Girl, by Irmgard Keun.

I'm almost done this short novel, and I have her After Midnight lined up to read soon.

For a little bit about Keun, her books, and the climate in which they were written, see:

Deutsche Welle: "But Keun's "The Artificial Silk Girl" is more than just a diary of dancing and dalliances. It also contains subtle but scathing commentaries about life under the rising Third Reich."

Melville House Publishing: "Much fiction has been written about the Nazis in the years since World War II, but it is incredibly rare to have a novelist of Keun’s talents and first-hand knowledge describe the day-to-day reality of an evil empire while it was still in power."

The Millions: "She was a best-selling debut novelist at twenty-six, published a second bestseller a year later, was blacklisted by the Nazi regime and in exile by the spring of 1936."

Sarah Blogwell's Bake: "She observes all: an eternally naïve narrator who misunderstands what is going on, but who — of course — really understands more than anyone."

Walk through polaroids of the past

2011-08-06T09:47:00.001-04:00

Her shoes off and her quick feet wild

2011-07-31T14:37:00.002-04:00

In the moonlight, there was an edged beauty to my mother. The round woman looked glamorous against the barren debris, the garbage, and the graves, her bosoms asserted themselves into the stenchful air, amid the corrupted stone. Her presence was like a narcotic in this dirty place; the earth rose, aroused, swirls of dust that turned to intoxicating waves of wind and imagination. I envisioned her dancing in one of her silk dresses, her shoes off and her quick feet wild, a rough star of the underground with all her boyfriends. I could see my shadow when I looked into the stone, the throw of moonlight on the graves. I was so small against the large female person who was my mother sometimes and sometimes this character from the past, as sultry and sexy as any character I might read about in the British romance novels left in the closet at One Metadulah Street. Even in the ugly field of forgotten deaths here, she looked radiant and carnal — her rippling flesh, freckles and broad, full-lipped face. It was dizzying, death and decay and my mother's perfumed, sex smell.

[...]

The evening wind went through the underside of my sandals like a tongue, my legs were shorter than hers, I thought, and I put my hand under my shirt to feel my breasts. I put my hand to touch the tiny bumps that I hope will make me like her. I studied my mother against the moonlight and the sky which made this place, like all of Israel, horrible and stunning at the same time — the graves that were strips of brittle stone, and the desiccated, naked ground.

— from The Fragile Mistress, by Leora Skolkin-Smith.

The Fragile Mistress is the retitled, repackaged, slightly expanded reissue of Edges, O Israel O Palestine. It's a slim novel, poetic and compelling.

It's a coming-of-age story, but on a few different levels: Liana's 14 and has travelled to Israel with her older sister and her mother. She witnesses a traumatic event, but also experiences a sexual awakening and falls in love. Liana's also grappling with a host of mommy issues; as much as she feels humiliated and embarrassed by her mom, she also admires her and is drawn by the mystery of her womanhood.

Israel is also coming of age in this novel. It's 1963, and there's a water war developing. There are soldiers and snipers, checkpoints and barbed wire. There are stories of the Haganah.

Quite wisely in the final chapter, a kind of epilogue, on her return to Israel some 20-odd years later Liana recognizes that she hadn't fully understood the politics of the time. Her experiences — the events, the terrain — "had my own face back then, too, my physical confusions, my formlessness."

So it's not exactly a political novel, but Israel is always present.

In the afterword, Skolkin-Smith writes:

Most potential readers, I thought and perhaps still believe, wouldn't even know there had been a world before the state of Israel was formed in 1948 or that this world included Jews, including many non-zionist Jews who coexisted peacefully with their Arab neighbors.

It makes for a vibrant backdrop and, ironically, an almost apolitical one.

The language is strong — in a rawly poetic, carnal way — sometimes almost uncomfortably so. At time it reads like the diary of a petulant adolescent, but this is fitting. Some passages verge on excessive, but taken as a whole, this is a tight novel with no extraneous bits.

Excerpt.

Spotless against the dirty sky

2011-07-28T18:04:00.001-04:00

He couldn't go on walking until three in the morning, so he stopped along the way at cafes. A few people would be standing around a horseshoe-shaped counter, their lives suspended. Some dreamed as they drank their coffees. Others, with their elbows on the counter, stood empty-eyed over empty drinks. Nothing but magic, it seemed, would bring them back to life.

As in many Simenon novels, the protagonist antihero of The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, one day walks away from his life, steps out of himself, or possibly into himself for the first time.

Luc Sante in his introduction points out that Kees Popinga, as well as his boss before him, is something of a Flitcraftian character. That Flitcraft phenomenon is the thing that first drew me to the fiction of Paul Auster (City of Glass, but other of his works too), and it is a recurring theme in Simenon's romans durs. My fascination with this phenomenon — that's me fighting the impulse to just walk away, transferring my energy into a curiosity about the sort of people who just walk away. I mean, what kind of people do that? (And I happen to know that people do do that.)

"Just use the sink in the hall to wash up. I hope you don't mind noise, because you're going to hear train whistles all day and all night long. We're right next to a train yard."

She shut the door behind her. Kees went to the window and pressed his face against it; in the dimming light, he could make out train tracks leading to infinity, train cars, whole trains, and at least ten locomotives, from which the smoke rose up spotless against the dirty sky.

He smiled, stretched, and sat down on the bed. Fifteen minutes later, without even bother to undress, he was fast asleep.

"The smoke rose up spotless against the dirty sky" — I love that. It's so... opposite.

The train's a recurring motif; I guess it works kind of like a siren call on Popinga — the draw to leave, to be removed from wherever it is that he is, and with the appeal of the suggestion of something a little untoward happening behind drawn blinds on a train in the night.

A typo in the early pages leads to a great deal of confusion (the date should be the 23rd, not the 28th, of December); but the fact that the novel takes place over the holiday season also works to enhance the sense of loneliness and the sense of being shut out of life — Popinga's own life, but also everybody else's.

This novel performs wonderfully a bunch of things I learned from James Wood about how fiction works. We're asked to sympathize with this character from the start, and page by page he becomes more unlikable. We are as confused as he is when we first hear about Pamela's death.

The violence and other criminal acts happen off-screen, so to speak; but this is consistent with Popinga's self-delusion. It's as if he blacks out certain events, or isn't fully present in them. (I'm reminded of Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square.)

I've eased off my rush through Simenon's material — too much existential grittiness over too short a time is difficult to stomach, psychically speaking — but my fascination with the spirit of his roman dur continues to build.

Crammed with shoes

2011-07-27T21:21:00.005-04:00

It was still raining. Paris was gray, dirty, and confused — a nightmare. It was crammed with people who had no idea where they were going; crammed with streets, the ones around les Halles where people slipped on rotting vegetables; crammed with shop windows that were crammed with shoes. It was the first time he'd noticed all the shoe stores, the hundreds and hundreds of pairs on their shelves.

— from The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, by Simenon.

It shames me, and fills me with regret, to realize that for all the times I've been to Paris, I never once bought shoes there. Scarves and purses and berets, and even a haircut, but never shoes. I must rectify this.

This week I am far from Paris, and far from Montreal too. In many ways one might say my hometown is the opposite of Paris. But today, I bought some exquisite shoes, all manner of greens, from lime to olive, on gold-flecked platforms, with wide silk ribbons to swathe my ankles.

So for the moment I am content to let Simenon walk me through Paris. Through his eyes, but in my own new shoes.

Tékitoi

2011-07-22T19:36:00.000-04:00

What I've been listening to this week, the perfect accompaniment to heat and wind and storms and confusion.

How fiction works

2011-07-21T23:16:00.001-04:00

It turns out that How Fiction Works, by James Wood, is not at all what I expected it to be. 1. It's very readable. 2. There's a lot in it that I find problematic.

I thought there would be more yes, you're so right, so bright, I'm such an idiot for not seeing it that way before, but instead I'm finding i) things I already know, and ii) things I don't necessarily agree with.

Really, he's such a well-respected critic, I'm surprised I have the guts to stand up to him (in my head, anyway). It turns out I don't see fiction quite the same way Mr Wood does, and rather than feeling stupid about it, I'm giving myself a pat on the back for having, over the last few years, learned, all by myself, and with the help of the likes of you, how to read fiction, and reasonably well.

The first bit is about narration and perspective, and the tension between the author's point of view and a given character's (and he calls this irony), and how you can tell a word belongs to one or the other, and what it tells us about one or the other. So far, so sensible.

It becomes clear, though, that's he's cherry-picking his examples to serve his point.

I'm not here to stage a defense of David Foster Wallace (I'm not qualified) — plenty of others have done that before me. But.

Wood excerpts a passage from "The Surfing Channel" (found in Oblivion). Wood has no problem with Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis (neither of whom I've read) making use of ads and business letters, the "media-speak" of their day, in their work. But "In Wallace's case, the language of his unidentified narration is hideously ugly, and rather painful for more than a page or two" [24]. Ugly. The same tension he's trying to demonstrate, the blurring between author and character, exists beautifully here, but to Wood the words are ugly. To be fair, it seems he's not blaming DFW, it's the language of the times he lives in that's at fault. But c'mon. Ugly. That's a fat 4-letter load of judgement.

Wood talks about verb tenses and time signatures — how things happen at different speeds, now or continuously — detail and randomness, and gives a lovely example of how memory works. Then he seems to contradict himself:

The artifice lies in the selection of detail. In life, we can swivel our heads and eyes, but in fact we are like helpless cameras. We have a wide lends, and must take in whatever comes before us. Our memory selects for us, but not much like the way literary narrative selects. Our memories are aesthetically untalented. [39]

I think my memory's pretty talented actually. All it wants to do is force a narrative on itself. I'd say my sense of aesthetics evolves from how I process my reality (I have no sense of aesthetics before I'm there to experience it), not the other way round. Increasingly it seems Wood aspires to some 19th-century ideal; Madame Bovary, c'est lui.

So I reached for my copy of Oblivion. And guided by the thoughts I'd jotted down when I first read it, I found:

I am still far from being certain of what the rapid flash of the Father's transfigured face was meant to mean, not why it remains so vivid in my memory of our courtship. I think it can only be the incongruous, near instantaneous quality of its appearance, the utter peripheralness of it. For it is true that the most vivid and enduring occurrences in our lives are often those that occur at the periphery of our awareness.

So while Wood is going on about seemingly random writerly detail intending to denote the real but in fact signifying it, I'm seeing that I favour DFW telling me the actual real, in all its excruciating, unadulterated glory.

I suspect it would take less time for me to actually do my taxes than to read DFW writing about the process of completing one's taxes. But Wood, I think, is looking to fiction for a kind of abridgement of life. Perhaps Wood has trouble sifting through his memory of real-life experience to cobble together a narrative (perhaps most people do?); he's not a writer, after all. Perhaps this is why we read, so others can string together stories for us.

Wood goes on to address character, whether "flat" or "rounded."

Is it contradictory to have defended the flatness of characters while simultaneously arguing that the novel has become a more sophisticated analyst of deep, self-divided characters? No, if one resists both Forster's idea of flatness (flatness is more interesting than he makes it out to be) and his idea of roundness (roundness is more complicated then he makes it out to be). In both cases, subtlety of analysis is what is important. [94]

I think I agree, though I suspect each reader will gauge "subtlety" differently.

Once character is firmly in place, chronology is no longer so important. Character seems also to be the basis of morality, or at least the framework across which to stretch the moral fabric of life in all its complexity.

The book gets a bit weaker as it goes along. Or maybe I'm just losing interest.

"One way to tell slick genre prose from really interesting writing is to look, in the former case, for the absence of different registers. [106]."
I'm glad to read this; it sounds like good advice. With this criteria I can confirm that George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series has some "literary" merit; it's not just fantasy.

Wood talks about language, word choice, but this is tricky stuff to pin down. Good writing at the word level means something like free of cliché, original, choosing very specific words for effect. Wood has a sense of perfect sentences and gives a few examples, but it seems no rules can be set down. We slide from here into style and metaphor. Wood continues to cite passages, from Woolf, from Roth, and he picks them apart to show how they create the effect they do. Somehow all these things must magically fit together, they must be appropriate and relate to each other (choice of words, metaphor, character, fictional world); there are no specific rules for this (and we should all be glad for that), and somehow we just know when it doesn't work.

Which, all in all, is a very sensible approach to reading. Even though it confirms to me my own abilities as a reader, I'm a little disappointed that Wood didn't reveal the grand secret of good fiction (though, of course, I'd be outraged if he had).

I should note also that this book is not about how to write. I don't think you could derive a system of mechanics from what Wood has set down here. I expect most authors are aware of all these elements, but I wonder to what degree they actively consider them while writing.

Somewhere in this book it was also considered how little control an author ultimately has over the reader, and how much the reader must also act as author in ascribing meaning to the words on the page.

The last chapter is a bit ridiculous. Amid a bunch of nonsense, it's mostly a paean to realism. It becomes clear to me that this book should've been called How (Fictional) Realism Works.

The very best part about having read this book is that I learned something about Saramago's Ricardo Reis, one of the few novels of his that I haven't read yet, about its relation to Fernando Pessoa, whose Book of Disquiet I have queued up. I have a feeling I'll be reaching for Ricardo Reis sooner than I'd expected to.

The game continues

2011-07-19T22:27:00.001-04:00

Book 3 of the Game of Thrones books (more properly the series is known as A Song of Fire and Ice, but I don't know anyone who calls it that), A Storm of Swords, is the best yet.

There are scenes of oh my gawd, yes!, and scenes where people die, no!, why did you have to kill them Mr Martin?, and it's one after the other, and then there's more.

It's sssoooo gripping that I had to read in the car. That may not seem like a big deal, given that I'm a known bibliophile, but there are some places, like in the car, where you just don't read, much as I would like to, because it's not polite, you have to stay engaged, or navigate, or simply stare off into space as a show of solidarity, if everybody else has to sit in the car and drive, or, at any rate, not read, then you have to not read too. So it's one of those self-imposed rules, I don't read in the car, because if I did someone might tell me not to, and then there would be hours of discord. Anyway, we had this family event to go to and we're carpooling with in-laws, and it's time to go but I'm right at the part where Dany is going to be fucking amazing, but I climb in dutifully, pull out my book, apologize, I'll be with you in about 5 minutes, at the end of the chapter, and I read in the car. And Dany was fucking amazing.

Then there's this beautiful horrific bit where the Imp gives as a wedding present to the king, his 13-year-old spoiled brat of a nephew, a book, a rare illuminated tome, and Joffrey uses his cool new sword to hack it up into little pieces, and you've known it all along, but the scene serves to drive home just what a despicable little shit he is.

I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish book 3 last night. So book 4. Onward!

Movies reviewed by my 8-year-old daughter

2011-07-18T22:25:00.001-04:00

ET: The Extraterrestrial
"It's nice because it's happy and sad at the same time. But you know how it's going to end. How come all these types of movies are the same?"

Shutter Island
"That was more confusing than Lost!"

**********
She's away this week, with my mother-in-law, but I miss her like crazy already.

Yes, I let her watch Shutter Island with me. Because I'm a negligent parent. It was just one of those days, when my I-just-want-to-put-my-feet-up-and-watch-a-stupid-movie-iveness outweighed any sense of parental responsibility.

But hey. We had some interesting conversations about the Holocaust, and mental illness, and what it means to be criminally insane. She recognized Leonard DiCaprio from Inception. Most interesting: Scenes of the death camp, the ill and emaciated and abused, had Helena asking, "Are those bad people? They look creepy, like monsters." Which points to how we tend to depict monsters physically, and the point that you cannot tell a true monster by how he looks.

And also. As to her reaction to ET, pressed to define "these types of movies," she couldn't, but I'm a little bit mortified — and a little bit impressed (proud) — that she should be at so early an age so jaded wrt the plotting of blockbuster fare.

We're all of us muleteers travelling down the same road

2011-07-16T11:36:00.006-04:00

This book is about Cain: "cain is the man who killed his brother, cain is the man born to witness the unspeakable, cain is the man who hates god."

And it's about God, too:

Yes, I've been using my will rather too much, as have others in my name, that's why there is so much discontent, people turning their backs on me, some even denying my existence, Punish them, They're beyond my jurisdiction, out of my control, the life of a god isn't as easy as you all think, a god cannot, as people imagine, simply say I want, I can and I command, and he can't always get what he wants straight away, but has to go round in circles first, it's true that I placed that mark on the forehead of cain, whom you've never seen and don't even know, but what I can't understand is why I don't have the power to stop him going where his will takes him and doing whatever he wishes.

And about how they just don't understand each other. They squabble:

That mark on your forehead has grown bigger, it looks like a black sun rising up above the horizon of your eyes, Bravo, cried cain, applauding, I had no idea you went in for poetry, There, you see, you know absolutely nothing about me.

Cain is José Saramago's last novel, reimagining the life of the biblical character, first son of Adam and Eve, brother and murderer of Abel, condemned to wander the Earth.

It's a short novel, but I've been taking my sweet time with it. It is quite poetic, and it's a pleasure to read some things slowly, this is one of them. But it's also very thoughtful, asks some hard questions, like who is this god person anyway, and it demands thinking about them.

It is full of gentle humour, and compassion for all its characters, except maybe god, no, for him too. It is irreverent, but humane.

The thing is, I feel grossly inadequate to be discussing this book, cuz really, I know next to nothing about the bible, just, you know, some stories, and I'm pretty sure I don't have them right.

Cain ventures into some territory I'm rather unfamiliar with. He wanders the Earth, or biblical lands anyway, but he also travels through time (or alternate presents) to be present at the destruction of Sodom, the land of Uz (Job), Mount Sinai, the fall of Jericho, the tower of Babel, the land of Nod, the sacrifice of Isaac, the launching of Noah's ark. (The bible places Cain in the land of Nod, but so far as I know, he doesn't appear at these other sites or events, even though I recall that many characters lived for hundreds of years.)

Here's a review in The Scotsman, and one on the blog My Bread and Jam.

Cain opens in the garden of Eden, an idyllic time, before all the trouble starts, and god gives Adam and Eve the gift of language, or you might say thought, maybe even free will, now we're in trouble. And they're naked. Of Eve's smile:

The angel liked that smile. In heaven, people smiled a lot too, but always seraphically and with the slightly embarrassed look of someone apologising for being so contented, if you could call it contentment.

So, anyway, Cain, not his brother's keeper, he murdered him, and is exiled, land of Nod, Cain meets Lilith. Lilith! I love Lilith! Ever since I read The War Hound and the World's Pain when I was 13. Saramago is drawing on pseudepigrapha here (I learned a new word!). Apparently there's quite a mythology surrounding Lilith and Cain and their relationship ("she would remain bound to him by the body's sublime memory"), but you won't find this in your standard religious texts.

There are a few throwaway lines that make you go, wait a minute ("he had to do the rounds of the other paradises that exist in the heavens [p 16]," or "because we human beings were quadrupeds once [p 57]"), how can that be, and you wonder if there was anything like this in the bible, and then you think, well, maybe it's not inconsistent with all the stuff that's already packed in there, it's only natural some stuff would've been missed, and it makes sense so why discount it.

Is it blasphemous? Most probably, and I'm guessing it would offend a lot of people, religious types, as it offended the Vatican, and as is the way of the world, sadly, it may be these people who would benefit the most from this kind of sincere investigation, the train of Cain's thought that we follow, into what makes god tick, whether god can do evil, and why he would, or whether there is some tacit complicity between good and evil.

Mostly it drives home what a fucked up world we live in, and that it has always been this way, where so many innocents die, and where is the justice in this, where is god in this, where is he when you need him, what is he thinking.

As for lot's wife, she disobeyed the order not to look back and was transformed into a pillar of salt. No one has ever been able to understand why she was punished in that way, for it is only natural to want to know what is going on behind you. It's possible that the lord wanted to punish curiosity as if it were a mortal sin, but that doesn't say much for his intelligence either, just look at what happened with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, if eve hadn't given adam some of the fruit to eat, if she hadn't eaten it herself, they would still be in the garden of eden, and we know how boring that was.

So it's funny, at least I think that bit's funny, in a gentle way, the humour may be mildly barbed but it's not aggressive. It's hard to imagine Saramago actually hated god, if we can assume the character of Cain might've embodied some of Saramago's thoughts on the issue of god or religion, but he did get angry, and not even at god really but at the impossibility of understanding him, that it has always been this way and will go on forever.

While the false abel is walking towards the square where, according to the old man, his destiny awaits him, let us attend to the extremely pertinent observation made by a few of our more vigilant and attentive readers, who consider that the dialogue we have just set down would be historically and culturally impossible, that a farmer with little and now no land and an old man with no apparent means of support would never think of speak like that. They are quite right, of course, however, it's not so much a question of them having or not having the ideas and the necessary vocabulary to express those ideas, but of our own capacity to accept, even if only out of simple human empathy and intellectual generosity, that a peasant from the very earliest times and an old man leading two sheep along by a piece of rope, with only a limited knowledge and a language that it still only taking its first tentative steps, were driven by the need to try out ways of expressing premonitions and intuitions apparently beyond their reach. Obviously, they didn't say those actual words, but the doubts, suspicions, perplexities, argumentative advances and retreats were nevertheless there. All we did was put into a modern idiom the twofold and, for us, insoluble mystery of the language and thought of the time. If the result is coherent now, it would have been then, given that we're all of us muleteers travelling down the same road. All of us, both the learned and the ignorant.

A new era in the aesthetics of the human body
If milk is spilled, it's spilled

If milk is spilled, it's spilled

2011-07-13T22:38:00.001-04:00

Crying over spilt milk is not as pointless as people say, it is in a way instructive because it shows the true scale of the frivolity of certain human behaviour, because if milk is spilled, it's spilled and all you can do is clean it up, and if abel died a cruel death that's because someone took his life. Thinking while getting soaked to the skin is not the most comfortable thing in the world and that is perhaps why, from one moment to the next, the rain stopped, so that cain could think at his leisure and freely follow the course of his thoughts until he found out where they would lead him. Neither he nor we will ever know, for the sudden appearance, out of nowhere, of a dilapidated hut distracted him from his ponderings and from his griefs.

— from Cain, by José Saramago.

Look inside, outside, peripherally

2011-07-07T21:56:00.002-04:00

"I think what we do is intuitive, but it's also essentially about observation." He was looking down at his cup as if he was reading the tea leaves. "If your work is about observation, then it seems only natural — to me at least — that you never stop observing. You observe obsessively . . . and minutely. You train yourself to look inside, outside, peripherally. You study art and music, the way people dance, walk, lie — and tell the truth. You record your dreams and you're willing to learn from them." He put the cup down on top of the circular end table next to him. "Am I making any sense?"

"I think so. Go on." She looked at him over the rim of her cup.

"Sadly, I can't. I only know that much. Everything influences my observation — absolutely everything." He moved slightly, as if he was uncomfortable or about to stand up, but he didn't. "Sitting at the computer just now, I noticed the wear on the desk where you put your hands every day. I noticed the imprint from a ballpoint pen where you've written letters and signed cheques on the soft wood — white pine, I think. Some keys on your computer are more worn than other, and there's a slight whitening on the edge of the desk where I suspect you rub your right hand when it's itchy or numb from working at the keyboard — but not your left, because you're right-handed."

— from Erasing Memory, by Scott Thornley.

I don't read very many mysteries. And I like them, I really do — good ones, anyway. It's just that I don't know how to go about choosing a mystery with any degree of confidence that it will be a good one.

What intrigued me about Erasing Memory: the murder victim is a violinist, the cop is cultured enough to recognize the signs that she is one, and it seems pertinent to the case that she be one (interesting to me cuz I know a little something aobut violins and violinists). Also, the fact that it's set in Southern Ontario, and an area in particular that I have some familiarity with.

So it starts off as a quiet kind of cottage mystery. The murder method is truly gruesome, but the scene of it is precise, deliberate, beautiful in its way. Detective MacNiece is shown to be the sensitive type, knows his Schubert, keeps a volume of e.e. cummings on the passenger seat of the car.

The fact that the victim is a violinist turns out to be not particularly relevant, except in helping MacNiece identify the murder as being of a personal nature (ie, not random). But by this point, it doesn't matter; the writing is smooth, the characters are interesting, and the plot has taken a weird turn. I'm hooked.

By "weird turn" I mean the story shifts from the beach and the fishing boat and the marina to something more like a political thriller.

A couple trivial things that bother me. The Polish names don't ring true (and I fail to see how this wasn't gotten right, given that the area, one the author presumably knows well, has a large Polish community). One of the cops is Swetsky, a second-generation Pole, and I can't see a genuine Polish name morphing into something like that in less than 4 generations. Another cop's friend is Bozana; I know a dozen Bożenas, but Bozana is simply archaic. (I'd be curious to know how authentic the Romanian names are.)

The other thing is the Sydney Carton reference. Not because it didn't entirely make sense, but because it was called attention to in such a self-congratulatory way (something like "when's the last time a couple cops sat around making Charles Dickens references?"). If you don't think your readers will get Sydney Carton, better to cut the whole reference out entirely.

But apart from that, it was a very engrossing read.

Good chance I will give the next MacNiece mystery a go.

Sleep is good, and books are better

2011-07-05T08:12:00.002-04:00

In the turret room, as he opened the door of the wardrobe, he looked at Alayaya curiously. "What do you do while I'm gone?"

She raised her arms and stretched like some sleek black cat. "Sleep. I am much better rested since you began to visit us, my lord. And Marei is teaching us to read, perhaps soon I will be able to pass the time with a book."

"Sleep is good," he said. "And books are better." He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Then it was down the shaft and through the tunnel.

— from A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin.

I finished this book a while ago and am now into the third in the series, racing to catch up in time for the publication next week of book five, A Dance with Dragons.

Say what you will about genre fiction, it's clearly written by people who love books, and that thrill of reading is often more palpable than in fiction that's considered more literary.

Everybody had matching towels

2011-07-05T00:02:00.000-04:00

The B52s closed the jazz festival tonight.

I don't know that they're jazz, but they are jazzy.

Glad I was there.

Big fish

2011-07-04T19:09:00.001-04:00

Another four-day weekend. The same fishing lodge. This time we bring the kid. This could be the start of a family tradition.

While not exactly reluctant, nor is Helena enthusiastic about fishing (much like myself, I suppose). But her father bought her her own real fishing rod (by "real" I mean not Dora-branded, cuz that's for babies), and Helena's a sport for trying stuff out.

And wouldn't you know, Helena caught the first fish of the weekend, at which point she declared, "I love fishing!" to her father's great joy.

A couple days in, she caught what turned out to be the big fish of the weekend (a smallmouth bass, for which this lake is known). We put it in the livewell for a while, and Helena wanted to name it. Bass... Bass-y! But with my influence, she settled on Shirley (Bassey).

But it's when we pulled the boat up for the night that Helena's real work began in documenting our catches.

I read next to nothing (I started Erasing Memory, by Scott Thornley, in which a murder is committed, fittingly, in a cottage on a lake), and it was lovely.

A new era in the aesthetics of the human body

2011-06-28T23:35:00.002-04:00

Now before we forget abut it completely or before our continuation of the story renders the fact redundant because it comes too late, we will tell you about the stealthy, almost clandestine visit the lord made to the garden of eden one hot summer night. As usual, adam and eve were sleeping, naked, beside each other, not touching, a deceptively edifying image of the most perfect innocence. They did not wake up, and the lord did not wake them either. He had gone there with the intention of correcting a slight flaw, which, as he had finally realised, seriously marred his creations, and that flaw, can you believe it, was the lack of a navel. The pale skin of his babies, untouched by the gentle sun of paradise, was too naked, too vulnerable, and in a way obscene, if that word existed then. Quickly, in case they should wake up, god reached out and very lightly pressed adams's belly with the tip of his forefinger, making a rapid circling movement, and there was a navel. The same procedure, carried out on eve, produced similar results, with the one important difference that her navel was much better as regards design, shape and the delicacy of its folds. This was the last time that the lord looked upon his work and saw that it was good.

Fifty years and one day after this fortunate surgical interventiuon, which gave rise to a new era in the aesthetics of the human body under the consensual motto that everything about it can always be improved, disaster struck.

— from Cain, by José Saramago.

Compañero

2011-06-24T18:40:00.000-04:00

The wit in Chuzzlewit

2011-06-24T10:39:00.005-04:00

It was one of those unaccountable little rooms which are never seen anywhere but in a tavern, and are supposed to have got into taverns by reason of the facilities afforded to the architect for getting drunk while engaged in their construction. It had more corners in it than the brain of an obstinate man...

Hurrah! I finished Martin Chuzzlewit. It's very long, and for some stretches very boring, but also very funny. The breed of humour is much more physical than I recall from other Dickens books — it's slapstick.

It was so amusing, that Tom, with Ruth upon his arm, stood looking down from the wharf, as nearly regardless as it was in the nature of flesh and blood to be, of an elderly lady behind him, who had brought a large umbrella with her, and didn't know what to do with it. This tremendous instrument had a hooked handle; and its vicinity was first made known to him by a painful pressure on the windpipe, consequent upon its having caught him round the throat. Soon after disengaging himself with perfect good humour, he had a sensation of the ferule in his back; immediately afterwards, of the hook entangling his ankles; then of the umbrella generally, wandering about his hat, and flapping at it like a great bird; and, lastly, of a poke or thrust below the ribs, which give him such exceeding anguish, that he could not refrain from turning round to offer a mild remonstrance.

The pacing really picks up in the last few hundred pages. And there's a murder! Nobody told me there was a murder in Chuzzlewit.

I'm not particularly happy with how everything turns out. A couple plot points are left unresolved. And Tom Pinch surely deserves better, and he is certainly the star of this novel.

And while I rooted for Tom, and loved to hate the despicable Jonas, none of the characters really sings, with ugly truth or deep humanity.

I might agree with Chesterton:

Dickens may or may not have loved Pecksniff comically, but he did not love him seriously; he did not respect him [...] But the fact remains. In this book Dickens has not allowed us to love the most absurd people seriously, and absurd people ought to be loved seriously. Pecksniff has to be amusing all the time; the instant he ceases to be laughable he becomes detestable.

I care not at all for Peckniff ("He was a most exemplary man; fuller of virtuous precept than a copy book."), but love this description:

His shoes looked too large; his sleeve looked too long; his hair looked too limp; his features looked too mean; his exposed throat looked as if a halter would have done it good. For a minute or two, in fact, he was hot, and pale, and mean, and shy, and slinking, and consequently not at all Pecksniffian.

Then there's the bit about America, which I neither love nor hate as most readers seem to. I am surprised that Dickens would put his characters through such hell, but I like that America turns out to be not so much the land of opportunity as the land of opportunists.

I don't recommend Chuzzlewit as an entryway to Dickens, but I found plenty in it to make it worthwhile.

I've been reading this on my ereader over several weeks. Chuzzlewit is a free download from Project Gutenberg. I'm somewhat surprised that I didn't abandon this novel when I was overcome by distractions, but I'm pleased to realize that the fact that it's free and digital in no way diminished the commitment I generally feel toward a book once started.

I was reading Chuzzlewit on the metro, and smiling at some passage or other, when a woman leaned over to ask, "What are you reading? You're enjoying it so much. Is it a romance?" I told her, no, Dickens, and she just loves Dickens, which one?, so I told her, but she hadn't read it, and we chatted for a moment about Dickens in general, doesn't matter whether he's being funny or poignant or creepy, the man has a way with words.

And this exchange made me smile all the more, because I realized: with the advent of ereaders, as much as I miss seeing people's book covers and knowing what they're reading, it's not a human connection — it's just plain voyeurism. Paper or digital, if you're really interested in what someone's reading, you should talk to them.

Lumpy and runneled and cracked

2011-06-22T20:17:00.012-04:00

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. I supposed it depends on the words, depends on the picture.

The stink of the Lannister host reached Arya well before she could make out the devices on the banners that sprouted along the lakeshore, atop the pavilions of the westermen. From the smell, Arya could tell that Lord Tywin had been here some time. The latrines that ringed the encampment were overflowing and swarming with flies, and she saw faint greenish fuzz on many of the sharpened stakes that protected the perimeters.

Harrenhal's gatehouse, itself as large as Winterfell's Great Keep, was as scarred as it was massive, its stones fissured and discolored. From outside, only the tops of five immense towers could be seen beyond the walls. The shortest of them was half again as tall as the highest tower in Winterfell, but they did not soar the way a proper tower did. Arya thought they looked like some old man's gnarled, knuckly fingers groping after a passing cloud. She remembered Nan telling how the stone had melted and flowed like candlewax down the steps and in the windows, glowing a sullen searing red as it sought out Harren where he hid. Arya could believe every word, each tower was more grotesque and misshapen than the last, lumpy and runneled and cracked.

"I don't want to go there," Hot Pie squeaked as Harrenhal opened its gates to them. "There's ghosts in there."

Chiswyck heard him, but for once he only smiled. "Baker boy, here's your choice. Come join the ghosts, or be one."

— from A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin.

I can't keep away from these books it seems, even though I tell myself I have other things to do, other books to read first, save these for later. But this series — A Song of Fire and Ice — is addictive.

Frankly, I'm hard-pressed to explain why. And I'm incapable of summarizing the story. Not much happens at all at a page-by-page level, yet so much happens. It's somehow magical, that there should be life on the page.

I'm halfway through book two (even while trying to finish Martin Chuzzlewit and keep up with a couple other reading "commitments") and there's but one mention so far of the walking dead that closed out book one.

Anyway, I'm solidly committed now to seeing how far this series will take me. I have given up on the televization for good. It strikes me as remarkably faithful, and on-screen that can be quite boring (the same fault the Harry Potter books suffered, in my view.) Filmically, so many things might be better cut, or altered, or resequenced. But in this case, with legions of fans, it seems more important to be faithful.

Then there are descriptions such as the above, sure to be shortcutted in a few-second glimpse of an extraordinary set — that's what pictures can do, what film is for — but lost is the... I dunno, the immersion, the feeling of scurrying away to read a wholly different world, a whole other world. Not sure how I can justify the assertion that worlds like this are meant to be read (and imagined), not seen. But there you have it.

"Lumpy and runneled and cracked" — those words so much richer than a picture.

And then there was one

2011-06-16T20:04:00.002-04:00

One of the perks of my no-longer-new job is that when the kid comes with me (hey, I guess that's a perk right there), there are some fixtures in this office space that serve as marvelous distractions.

There's the freshwater aquarium. There's the saltwater aquarium. (Although, I don't know which is which. They both have, in addition to fish, similar (but different!) anemone-like creatures and cucumber-like creatures, star-like creatures and shrimp-type creatures.) And there's the aquarium with the leopard eel.

There's the goldfish and turtle pond with the cascading water at the entranceway.

And there's the CEO, who loves to watch the fish, tend to the fish, talk about the fish. He also gets on well with kids. Thanks to him, Helena already knows more about these fish than I ever will. Also, he's good at task-setting — like, "You need to catch 10 goldfish with this small net by x o'clock. I'll get you a bucket to put them in" — thanks to the accomplishment of which challenge Helena was able to witness the feeding of said goldfish to the leopard eel and a few other choice carnivorous creatures.

The first time she came with me to this office (during her Christmas break), there were 8 mini turtles and 1 much larger one, commonly referred to (by the kids who frequent the office) as the mommy turtle, although apparently none of them were actually related.

While I worked(!), Helena set about documenting their characteristics.

It was just a few short weeks later that I heard about the first demise. "Oh, no, which one was it?," I ask a coworker. "I don't know. Do they have names? The one with spots all over." Gasp. Spotty!

The last mini turtle vanished last week. That leaves just mommy turtle, and she doesn't look too happy these days.

I found the cataloguing project Helena had started on (in scintillatingly legible gold-coloured pencil), and I transcribe its text below, to commemorate, in this small way, the contribution these turtles have made to my work life.

**********
Document sur les tortus du travaille

tortu préféré brownie
1. Brownie aime être calme et atantife.
**********
[sic]

Darwin would be proud.

The smell of secession

2011-06-14T22:26:00.008-04:00

The Oregon Experiment, by Keith Scribner, has a couple really interesting things going for it. Namely:

1. A nose. One of the main characters works as a nose.
2. A secessionist movement.

But it turns out that this is a novel with a breast fixation. This book is all about the breasts. Large, or too small, fleshy, pillowy, ample, lactating, infected, hard, soft, sharp, droopy, pointy. We know all about the characters' breasts, and the characters' mothers' breasts, and the characters' lovers' breasts.

On the other gendered hand, we know very little about what the men look like. Apart from one male "milky torso," there is little indication whether the men are fleshy, flabby, sinewy, sculpted.

A little imbalance doesn't usually faze me. But this book is top-heavy to the point of tipping over. It's too much.

And breastfeeding. The pressure to breastfeed. The romance of breastfeeding. The bond that results from breastfeeding. And such issues. Is it OK to be breastfeeding 4-year-old girls? (Boys?) How about grown men?

Not that I'm a prude or anything. But there's a lot in this novel that made me uncomfortable. Maybe that's the point. But I don't have a good (constructive?) feeling about it.

The characters are all pretty messed up, and none of them particularly likable. They're all pretty selfish actually.

There's Scanlon, a poli sci prof specializing in mass movements and radicalism. His wife Naomi is a former professional "nose" (perfuming and such), but she posttraumatically lost her sense of smell some years ago. Baby on the way, they're moving from New York to Oregon for Scanlon's work.

Naomi's sense of smell comes back, and along with it a hormonal flood — resentments and memories and worries about (in)dependence and career fulfillment and striking a family balance and reclaiming one's body, one's self — issues not uncommon to new mothers.

They befriend a local anarchist. Angry young man. And this relationship I don't see as credible. I just don't see what Clay gets out of it, why he would stick around. Whatever. It's kind of essential to the plot that there be an anarchist, and that he be entwined within this family. So there he is.

And the leader of the secessionist movement, Sequoia, is a near-ideal, free-loving, all-giving vegan earth mother goddess. But I can't really like a character who's chosen to call herself Sequoia. Plus, in complete contrast to her usual policy of openness, she lets her past drive a wedge between her and her daughter.

Scanlon needs both these locals for his work. He tries to convince himself that he's not a bourgeois slumming it for the sake of his research, he tries to walk the talk, but really, who's he kidding?

And it all ends very badly, making me think much the worse of all the characters.

Somewhere in its heart this book is about leaving a life behind, running away from your past, it catching you up even while you yearn for it, ambling toward a life you think you're supposed to be living. Maybe outrunning your past, or just forgetting it.

Somewhere toward the end, the book purports to be about love, the bonds of family, and betrayals thereof. But there's very little real love here. Maybe that's the point. But I can't shake the feeling that this book was written by a man with a superficial grasp of what love is, who just plain doesn't understand women. It makes me angry, and sad. Maybe that's the point.

I'm reminded a little of Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist, for the street-level view of a movement, the day-to-day practicalities that weigh the lofty ideals back down to earth. Also, Annette Gilson's New Light, for it's Americanness, for putting the commune back in community.

It's also a very olfactory book, though it's neither Proust nor Süskind; only when the smells of fear and danger crop up, I'm afraid the nose has some rehabilitation to go before her alleged genius specificity fully returns.

So, there's some pretty heady stuff in here, but it didn't come together for me. I may or may not pick up Keith Scribner's next novel, depending on its subject matter. I'm sure he'll be fine; his wife must have quite the rack.

Physical and metaphysical at one and the same time

2011-06-09T22:37:00.003-04:00

OK. Wow. This is an amazing little book.

Martin Chuzzlewit is finally almost leaving America. And during his very long (boring) illness in that new land I was distracted (sorry, Charlie) by, appropriately, a little Europeana.

From the first sentence I was drawn along.

When people stopped believing in God, they started to seek ways of expressing that the world is absurd, and they invented Futurism and Expressionism and Dadaism and Surrealism and Existentialism and the Theater of the Absurd. And the Dadaists wanted to do away with art and they made art out of things that were not used before, such as wires and matches and slogans and newspaper titles and the telephone directory, etc., and they said it was new and absolute art. The Futurists wrote verse with lots of interjections such as KARAZUK ZUK ZUK DUM DUM DUM, and they promoted expressive typography, and the Expressionists and the Dadaists wrote verse in new, unknown languages to show that all languages are equal, both comprehensible and incomprehensible ones, such as BAMBLA O FALI BAMBLA, and the Surrealists, on the other hand, promoted automatic writing and unusual metaphors, and they wrote for instance MY CORK BATH IS LIKE YOUR WORM EYE, and they explained that the meaning of this verse spurted out of it automatically and that was physical and metaphysical at one and the same time. The Existentialists said that metaphysics was decadent and everything was subjective, but that objectivity existed nevertheless and that we were going about it the wrong way, because the most important thing was intersubjectivity. And the main thing was for everything to be authentic and that history and the course of history were the result of the philosophical question whether people could communicate authentically and, if they could, then history could be more meaningful than previously, so long as transcendental authorities were restored. And linguists said that communication was only a question of the manner of deconstruction and that there were several ways to deconstruct. And old people said that communication was in a sorry state because people were not capable of looking each other in the eye anymore and they averted their gaze immediately they caught someone's eye and that nowadays people only looked blind people in the eye.

— from Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century, by Patrik Ouředník.

Europeana is not a novel. So far as I can tell, it's mostly fact. But not entirely. (I would love to see this book annotated. There are some wonderfully intimate, human "facts" included, which may or may not have a basis in historically verifiable anecdotes; either way, they're beautiful.)

The language is so simple, simplistic, naive, it's as if a child had written it. Or a poet.

It pretends to be objective, but it's not. The facts by themselves are cold. The book's power is in how they're juxtaposed. It made me cry.

It does, in fact, in its brief 120 pages cover many events of the 20th century, from a European perspective, and several times. It touches on the invention of tanks and dishwashers, Esperanto and the Enigma machine. Barbie, Scientology, the Y2K bug, and psychoanalyis.

It's main focus, however, is war — both the world wars — cuz let's face it, war pretty much defined the century, framed by fascism and communism and democracy.

The text is repetitive and recursive. It runs over the same territory several times, but from different angles, with different emphasis. This neatly parallels my own theory that time, history, our cultural evolution is not quite cyclical, but spiral, that each time we go over the same old ground, our experience of it is — metaphorically speaking — a little broader, a little higher.

It's the forest and the trees at once. Europeana is an exquisite thing.

Polish monsters

2011-06-06T18:21:00.000-04:00

I so wanted to love A Polish Book of Monsters — I'd placed an order for it within minutes of having been alerted to its existence — but I found it to be a huge disappointment. Subtitled "Five Dark Tales from Contemporary Poland," it more accurately should've been labeled simply as an SF sampler.

Yoo Retoont, Sneogg. Ay Noo, by Marek S Huberath. This is a futuristic, postapocalyptic, dystopian tale. Nothing particularly original, but I did find it to be the most emotionally wrenching of the stories included here. As one might guess by the title, much of the story is written in "dialect" — personally I find this more distracting than clever or colourful. Part 1 is online.
Spellmaker, by Andrzej Sapkowski. This one's a fairly straightforward fairytale, distinguishable from standard bedtime fare only by the hero's rather boastful arsenal of augments. In addition to there being a traditional monster, however, one might view the protagonist as also being somewhat monstrous. The concept here spawned a series of stories, film and television adaptations, and a videogame. Translated variously as The Witcher and The Hexer.
Key of Passage, by Tomasz Kołodziejczak. This story read like typical fantasy, and it bored me. Excerpt.
A Cage Full of Angels, by Andrezej Zimniak. To my mind, this is the most original of the stories included in this volume. Not that I'm especially well read in SF, but I've never come across an idea anything like this one. I like this one also because it has an urban and "contemporary" feel, even though it's evident that things work not quite as they do in our known world.
The Iron General, by Jacek Dukaj. This story has something of an epic space opera about it. As the title might suggest, it is militaristic and political. In the context of this story, the term "monster" is used to depict (moral) character. Excerpt.

Sadly, I didn't find any of these monsters to be particularly monstrous.

Having read The Dedalus Book of Polish Fantasy, and being familiar with Stefan Grabiński, and aware of China Miéville's admiration for Eastern European imaginative fiction, I had hoped for something better. I didn't find these monsters to be anything special. I'd like to think there are better Polish monsters out there, that it will only take a better editor to collect them.

I fear I didn't give this book, these stories, a fair shake. Particularly offputting to me was the introduction, by editor and translator Michael Kandel, probably best known as the preeminent translator of Stanisław Lem. But the background material Kandel presents was poorly written (it can't have been copyedited) and simplistic, with no clear logic drawing it forward, making me question his abilities as a translator. The blurbs extolling the "virtuoso translations" etc seem to me to be somewhat excessive — after having read the book, they strike me as overly defensive. Despite the variety of the material, there is an overwhelming sameness of tone — a blandness — throughout the stories, a tone that I also associate with Lem (which books I've read were translated by Kandel). In the case of Lem, I'd accepted the detached tone as being part of Lem's philosophical style, but I'm concerned now that it might originate in, or be exaggerated in, the translation (I'm very curious now to read some non–Kandel-translated Lem for the sake of comparison).

Kandel seems to conclude that Polish monsters are generally internal ones, but the stories here do not completely bear this out; nor is that a uniquely Polish stance. I can't say what point he's trying to make, or what he means to demonstrate by setting these stories on the English-speaking world (other than that Poland produces a great deal of competent and diverse creative output).

So. I'm glad I read this sampling for a taste of what's out there in Poland. But here's hoping there are bigger, better, weirder, scarier monsters lurking in the corners of Poland's darker minds.

"Lift me like an olive branch"

2011-06-05T15:09:00.005-04:00

Leonard Cohen was this week conferred the 2011 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters, reminding me that I left Beautiful Losers half read on my nightstand last summer (and that I should finish it), but putting his songs in my head.

"The passing of time, sentimental relationships, the mystical traditions of the East and the West and life sung as an unending ballad make up a body of work associated with certain moments of decisive change at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century."

Listen to my favourite cover version of one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs: Dance Me to the End of Love.

The many books I thought I'd've read by now but haven't

2011-06-03T23:11:00.002-04:00

So many I thought I'd be over and done with. So many I had planned. But there just isn't enough time.

Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens. I was distracted, first by something shiny, something new, then by something relatively short, which I needed in order to feel I'd actually accomplished something. It's so bloody long. Even though some scenes do drag on, it is really quite funny. I picked it up again today, determined to stay focused, to finish it. I'm still a bit disoriented trying to remember who's who and what last happened, but confident it'll come together.

The Doll, Bolesław Prus. Purchased directly upon its release in February. This was going to be my end-of-winter read. Something richly Slavic, to remind me where I come from. But I was daunted by its size (~700 pages).

The Pale King, David Foster Wallace. This was going to be my big spring read. In fact, my other half (himself an enforcer of the Income Tax Act) and I were going to read it together (and we almost never do anything together — sigh). I haven't even purchased this yet.

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, Simenon. In January it was apparent I was suffering from a surfeit of Simenon, but I bought another to keep on standby. And for a couple weeks already I've been feeling ready. There's just no time. (And there's Mr Chuzzlewitt to lay to rest first.)

The End of the World in Breslau, Marek Krajewski. Because I liked the first book of his so much, I invested in more.

Europeana, Patrik Ouředník. On my wish list for several years already, I finally ordered it along with something or other.

The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa. I actually had to tear myself away from this one, because it didn't feel right — not fair to me or the book — to be embarking on a fourth or fifth concurrent read.

The Fragile Mistress, Leora Skolkin Smith. This is a review copy. Because the backdrop — 1960s Israel/Palestine — fascinates me. Plus another of hers.

X'ed Out, Charles Burns. I picked this graphic novel up for J-F at Christmas, because then I'd get to read it too. He was finished with it in 2010. I started to look at it, but didn't feel like I had the solid, uninterrupted couple hours it deserved, so I put it down.

The Elephant's Journey, José Saramago. I treated myself to this book for my birthday more than half a year ago. What am I waiting for? Almost an imperative now that I have a review copy of Cain on my e-shelf, also for which I am awaiting a perfect, quiet time.

I should've had time for all this.

This is not a catalog of the unread books lying around the house (there are so many more). These are but the ones I seriously, reasonably expected to have made my way through before summer took hold (which it hasn't quite yet).

I have not yet finished The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann. I've forgotten which Bolaño it is I have sitting on the shelf. I want the new Fred Vargas novel. I vow still to someday finish The Adventures of Amir Hamza. A coworker brought me the 2nd and 3rd books following A Game of Thrones. I'd thought this might be the summer of Pynchon (in particular, Against the Day); now I'm thinking rather not.

This week I shall see Chuzzlewitt through. I will write about A Polish Book of Monsters. I will write about The Oregon Experiment. I will make sense of Humankind.

And then I will read some more.

The game

2011-05-29T14:26:00.001-04:00

What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

Well, I'm hooked. A Game of Thrones (George R.R. Martin) was completely compelling, I'd read it while cooking, while walking, it had me cursing J-F for (unusually) taking the metro with me in the morning and cutting into my reading time.

It's a soap opera of epic proportions. The story lines are somewhat predictable, never straying far from those trusted themes, typical of fantasy novels, of love, duty, honor, and I can't say they're treated with any peculiar nuance, but the characters are interesting and complicated, and sometimes they have wise things to say.

Mostly, though, I just want to know what happens next! I'm mildly pissed off that so many threads are left unresolved at the end of this first book of a five-part trilogy — in particular, a potentially paranormal, zombie-like plot line! — as this means I'll probably be reading another 2000 pages of stuff. Which isn't a bad thing exactly; I just hadn't planned on it, and it's getting in the way of other reading plans.

I have seen an episode and a half of the television series. It's well cast and seems to be true to the book, but doesn't have the same escapist thrill as reading does. I'll watch a bit more, for J-F's sake. I'm kind of hoping it picks up and saves me from reading the rest of the series.

A mind needs books

2011-05-23T22:45:00.000-04:00

"Why do you read so much?"

Tyrion looked up at the sound of the voice. Jon Snow was standing a few feet away, regarding him curiously. He closed the book on a finger and said, "Look at me and tell me what you see."

The boy looked at him suspiciously. "Is this some kind of trick? I see you. Tyrion Lannister."

Tyrion sighted. "You rare remarkably polite for a bastard, Snow. What you see is a dwarf. You are what, twelve?"

"Fourteen," the boy said.

"Fourteen, and you're taller than I will ever be. My legs are short and twisted, and I walk with difficulty. I require a special saddle to keep from falling off my horse. A saddle of my own design, you may be interested to know. It was either that or ride a pony. My arms are strong enough, but again, too short. I will never make a swordsman. Had I been born a peasant, they might have left me out to die, or sold me to some slaver's grotesquerie. Alas, I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and the grotesqueries are all the poorer. Things are expected of me. My father was the Hand of the King for twenty years. My brother later killed that very same king, as it turns out, but life is full of these little ironies. My sister married the new king and my repulsive nephew will be king after him. I must do my part for the honor of my House, wouldn't you agree? Yet how? Well, my legs may be too small for my body, but my head is too large, although I prefer to think it is just large enough for my mind. I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind . . . and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge." Tyrion tapped the leather cover of the book. "That's why I read so much, Jon Snow."

— from A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin.

I'd never heard of this book till a few weeks ago, when the televisionization of the novel premiered. I never did get around to watching it, but I noticed that a coworker was reading it, and she was kind enough to lend me her copy when she was done with it, recommending it as fast and light.

I had some trouble finding my way into the novel — it felt like too many characters to keep track of and I worried over how I could manage 800 pages (but I'm chalking up this hesitation to the anxiety, the general distractedness I've been feeling all week long — I've been unable to make even simple hairstyling decisions, and I managed to get off at the wrong metro stop the other day).

But it's all intrigue, mostly political but some sexual in nature. And at this point (about a third through), I can't stop reading. It is indeed a lovely, light break from Martin Chuzzlewitt, and completely undemanding of me in the way that a couple other books I've been grappling with exactly aren't.

Dybbuk

2011-05-21T07:48:00.001-04:00

I have tickets to see a play this week! A friend of mine is acting in it, so I thought I'd find out a little bit more about it, and it turns out to be a very compelling story.

The Dybbuk was written by S. Ansky in 1914, in Yiddish. And the story's a bit creepy.

It's about a pair of lovers, Leah and Hannan. Leah's father opposes their marriage and when he calls it off, Hannan drops dead. Leah is resigned to marrying a man of her father's choosing, but on the way to the wedding, she is possessed by Hannan's spirit. The rest of the story deals with the challenge of exorcising the spirit, which can only be achieved finally through the trial and judgment of Leah's father.

In an interesting twist, the production I'm to see is performed by a small, all-women cast. I'm told the roles were cast without regard for gender, on the basis of talent alone, but I suspect it'll be difficult to view this show without a feminist lens.

(I would be remiss not to mention that The Dybbuk was famously brought to the screen in 1937 by Michał Waszyński.)

The Dybbuk plays at La Salla Rossa (Montreal), May 22 – 25.

The girl who ate what was given her

2011-05-16T20:26:00.004-04:00

"A simile," he said, "is true because you say so. It's a persuasion: this is like that. That's not enough for it anymore. Similes aren't enough." He stared. "It wants to make you a kind of lie. To change everything.

"Simile spells an argument out: it's ongoing, explicit, truth-making. You don't need . . . logos, they used to call it. Judgement. You don't need to . . . to link incommensurables. Unlike if you claim: 'This is that.' When it patently is not. That's what we do. That's what we call 'reason,' that exchange, metaphor. That lying. The world becomes a lie. That's what Surl Tesh-echer wants. To bring in a lie." He spoke very calmly. "It wants to usher in evil."

As of this writing, Embassytown is my favourite China Miéville novel, but then, I once studied linguistics and philosophy, and being that I work as an editor, it should go without saying that I'm a bit of a language geek, and I would happily discuss with you why a given metaphor is more effective and/or appropriate than a simple simile, or vice versa, so, these factors taken together, it's no wonder Embassytown rocks my world.

Embassytown is about Avice Benner Cho, who returns to her hometown, on a planet that humans (which she is one) colonized. The humans coexist with the Ariekei, though communication is difficult given the complex Ariekei language (more on this later) (and it seems that the humans benefit more from their trade relationship than vice versa).

Avice grew up wanting to leave, and then she did. She trained as an immernaut and travelled subspace as crew on ships delivering passengers (usually in sopor) and cargo.

The steersperson took us close to Wreck. It was hard to see. It looked at first like lines drawn across space, then was briefly, shabbily corporeal. It ebbed and flowed in solidity. It was many hundreds of metres across. It rotated, all its extrusions moving, each on its own schedule, its coagulated-teardrops-and-girder-filigree shape spinning complexly.

Wreck's architecture was roughly similar to Wasp's, but it was antiquated, and it seemed many times our dimensions. It was like an original of which we were a scale model, until abruptly it altered its planes and became small or far off. Occasionally it wasn't there, and sometimes only just.

All this backstory to demonstrate that Embassytown is far, far away, the last outpost, a final frontier. As a colony under Bremen's control in geopolitical terms, it functioned according to its own rules, much like the New World operated a little differently than its European masters might've known or liked.

So Avice goes back to Embassytown, with her husband, a linguist who is fascinated by the Language of the Ariekei. The Ariekei are insect-like, winged and hoofed, with eyestalks. They speak with two simultaneous voices.

Their language is organised noise, like all of ours are, but for them each word is a funnel. Where to us each word means something, to the Hosts, each is an opening. A door, through which the thought of that referent, the thought itself that reached for the word, can be seen.

In this linguistic system, thoughts cannot precede words, indeed they cannot be thought without having the words for them. The Ariekei need similes to express their reality. They need to be able to say what something is like. If they can express it, it is a truth. They are unable to lie.

And then the new Ambassador shows up, and says something in Language, causing what can only be called a diplomatic incident. But, oh, just wait and see.

(I've read several reviews of Embassytown that are critical of it taking so long before the story gets started. For me, these first 100+ pages of world-building are the richest, and would be worth reading even if nothing followed. But maybe you have to have sat, and appreciated, a class on the philosophy of language to totally get that.)

I like to think of this novel as being all about linguistics.

"Words don't signify: they are their referents. How can they be sentient and not have symbolic language?"

It takes the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to the extreme. It's about linguistic relativity and Wittgenstein. And about Lakoff:

Metaphor has been seen within the Western scientific tradition as purely a linguistic construction. The essential thrust of Lakoff's work has been the argument that metaphors are primarily a conceptual construction, and indeed are central to the development of thought.

So, if an alien (Arieke) speaks a language (Language) and there's no one there to hear it, does it still think? What if the alien can't hear itself speak, can't hear itself think? Then there are no words, no thoughts, and reality collapses.

Avice when she was young herself was made a simile and incorporated into the language. Her assimileation (ooh, I just made that up!) was scripted or planned or faintly conceived, and then recounted. There was a human girl who in pain ate what was given her in an old room built for eating in which eating had not happened for a time. Avice was the girl who ate what was given her. It's never entirely clear what the Ariekei meant by her, by the simile of her, and Avice comes to wonder: if she changes her experiential truth, can she change the Ariekei's reality?

There's this wonderful Doctor Who–type moment toward the end that's a life-affirming vindication of what it is to be alien (cognitively, politically) and joy that, yes, good sense has prevailed, see, if only people would (could) just talk to each other, communication is brilliant, words are more powerful than any weapons, and more menacing: You get to live. It's a reward, but also a sentence.

Ten things about China. (Are you paying attention, Steven Moffat? Really, Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who episode was almost as disappointing as Gaiman himself is overrated. But China Miéville, his monsters — big scary, political monsters — would make the Doctor run.)

Atomic secrets

2011-05-15T21:46:00.001-04:00

The Atomic Weight of Secrets, or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black, by Eden Unger Bowditch, is the first book in The Young Inventors Guild trilogy.

Jasper and Lucy ran up to their rooms and dropped off their bags. Looking around for a place to put their satchels, they opted to shove the lot under their beds.

"That's as good a place as any," said Jasper, pulling the edge of his quilt down so the satchel was completely hidden.

"I really think it's just awful keeping all these things from Rosie," said Lucy, "and from Miss Brett and. . . It make me feel like a naughty girl."

"Well, you're not a naughty girl. None of us is naughty. And we're not telling lies either. Not really," he said. He stopped rushing for a moment and looked Lucy in the eyes. A sneaky smile spreading across his face, he said, "It is terribly exciting, isn't it, Lucy? I mean, it's exciting as well as dangerous, amazing, historic, and brilliant, and, of course, terrifying, and horridly worrying. Still, all said, it is frightfully thrilling, isn't it?"

Lucy smiled. "Yes," she said in earnest. "Frightfully."

It's a mysterious and charming story. Helena is a little young yet for the attention a book like this requires, but I will encourage her to read it someday. Reminds me a little of Lemony Snicket, but without so much snark, and maybe not quite so nefarious.

A group of kids — 2 girls, 3 boys — ranging in age from 6 to 13, specializing in different kinds of science and themselves the children of the world's most important scientists, are taken from their parents and thrown together into a private boarding school, for them alone.

There's not much the teacher can teach such clever children, but she does find a gap in their education that she is able to fill: nursery rhymes and other children's literature.

On weekends the children are taken to their respective parentless homes, where the nannies attend to their needs. The homes abut a shared meadow.

The children come from unique backgrounds but find they have quite a bit in common when they start to discuss the circumstances by which they came together, so they put their inventive, scientific minds to work toward a common goal. The mysterious men in black factor into their separation from their parents, but it's never clear whether they are their jailers or their protectors.

The review at Young Adult Books Central sums it all up more succinctly than I can.

Unholy verbs

2011-05-10T12:44:00.000-04:00

ACL — Accelerated Contact Linguistics — was, Scile told me, a speciality crossbred from pedagogics, receptivity, programming, and cryptography. It was used by the scholar-explorers of Bremen's pioneer ships to effect very fast communication with indigenes they encountered or which encountered them.

In the logs of those early journeys, the excitement of the ACLers is moving. On continents, on worlds vivid and drab, they record first moments of understanding with menageries of exots. Tactile language, bioluminescent words, all varieties of sounds that organisms can make. Dialects comprehensible only as palimpsests of references to everything already said, or in which adjectives are rude and verbs unholy. I've seen the trid diary of an ACLer barricaded in his cabin, whose vessel has been boarded by what we didn't then know as Corscans — it was first contact. He's afraid, as he should be, of the huge things battering at his door, but he's recording his excitement at having just understood the tonal structures of their speech.

— from Embassytown, by China Miéville.

I'm not very far along yet, but this seems to be a novel about linguistics, and the linguistics major in me is somersaulting. A novel about an alien race with a language, Language, where thoughts cannot precede words, indeed they cannot be thought without having the words for them, where Language and Reality are one.

And some of the sentences are gorgeous.

Excerpt. (On sale May 17.)

Housecleaning

2011-05-03T21:23:00.000-04:00

I love that when I perched on Helena's bed this morning and she opened her eyes, the first thing she thought to say was, "Who won last night?"

************

I love democracy. Despite the overall result, I love that we did this, that for the first time since moving here, my vote in my riding really counts. It feels like the Quebec I fell in love with, my adopted home, a country within a country, may be returning to itself.

************

I'm still reading Martin Chuzzlewit. It's rather long. And enjoyable enough, if not deep. A third of the way through and I'm still wondering whether the title means to refer to Martin Jr or Sr. I'm just at the bit where Jr's recently arrived in America. Frankly, I'm more interested to see what comes of the Pecksniffs and Tom Pinch.

************

Has anybody been watching Doctor Who? That timey-wimey stuff is hurting my brain. And I've spent far too many hours lately searching the forums and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. [SPOILERS] Especially wrt Rory. I mean, when Rory came back as the android Roman centurion toward the end of last season, and then the Doctor reset the universe, I thought Rory'd be restored, or undone, or set right. But even when the Doctor first comes back he's all "How could we forget the Doctor?" — how could he even forget to remember? It's not quite like being at the eye of the storm — the whole universe poured out of Amy's head. So who did she remember — who's the Rory she brought back? Real Rory of flesh and blood, or Roman Rory who believed he was real, who stood guard over her for 2,000 years? Who would you bring back?

And I think, when Rory says he was there, when Rome fell, I think the Doctor's thinking, whoa, how could he remember being not real?, which is why he starts to probe with "personal" questions. So this is the problem behind Amy's quantum pregnancy. It's not a mystical timehead or genetic transfer pregnancy — it's quantum because Rory's not resolved. Poor Rory.

************

Every now and then, I realize that someone's missing from my blogroll. I follow most blogs through Google Reader, and with an adjustment here, an update there, sometimes my lists don't match up. Sorry. If you're missing from my sidebar, let me know.

************

I love that there's a flower stall outside the metro station near my work so I can buy flowers on my way home.

Old heads upon young shoulders

2011-04-29T13:24:00.000-04:00

An ancient proverb warns us that we should not expect to find old heads upon young shoulders; to which it may be added that we seldom meet with that unnatural combination, but we feel a strong desire to knock them off; merely from an inherent love we have of seeing things in their right places. It is not improbable that many men, in no wise choleric by nature, felt this impulse rising up within them, when they first made the acquaintance of Mr Jonas; but if they had known him more intimately in his own house, and had sat with him at his own board, it would assuredly have been paramount to all other considerations.

— from Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens.

Mr Jonas, you may gather, is not very likable.

I love how Chuck delivers an insult.

Very swaggering and very slinking

2011-04-18T17:48:00.001-04:00

It happened on the fourth evening, that Mr. Pecksniff walking, as usual, into the bar of the Dragon and finding no Mrs. Lupin there, went straight up-stairs; purposing, in the fervour of his affectionate zeal, to apply his ear once more to the keyhole, and quiet his mind by assuring himself that the hard-hearted patient was going on well. It happened that Mr. Pecksniff, coming softly upon the dark passage into which a spiral ray of light usually darted through the same keyhole, was astonished to find no such ray visible; and it happened that Mr. Pecksniff, when he had felt his way to the chamber-door, stooping hurriedly down to ascertain by personal inspection whether the jealousy of the old man had caused this keyhole to be stopped on the inside, brought his head into such violent contact with another head that he could not help uttering in an audible voice the monosyllable "oh!" which was, as it were, sharply unscrewed and jerked out of him by very anguish. It happened then, and lastly, that Mr. Pecksniff found himself immediately collared by something which smelt like several damp umbrellas, a barrel of beer, a cask of warm brandy-and-water, and a small parlour-full of stale tobacco smoke, mixed; and was straightway led down-stairs into the bar from which he had lately come, where he found himself standing opposite to, and in the grasp of, a perfectly strange gentleman of still stranger appearance who, with his disengaged hand, rubbed his own head very hard, and looked at him, Pecksniff, with an evil countenance.

The gentleman was of that order of appearance which is currently termed shabby-genteel, though in respect of his dress he can hardly be said to have been in any extremities, as his fingers were a long way out of his gloves, and the soles of his feet were at an inconvenient distance from the upper leather of his boots. His nether garments were of a bluish grey — violent in its colours once, but sobered now by age and dinginess — and were so stretched and strained in a tough conflict between his braces and his straps, that they appeared every moment in danger of flying asunder at the knees. His coat, in colour blue and of a military cut, was buttoned and frogged up to his chin. His cravat was, in hue and pattern, like one of those mantles which hairdressers are accustomed to wrap about their clients, during the progress of the professional mysteries. His hat had arrived at such a pass that it would have been hard to determine whether it was originally white or black. But he wore a moustache — a shaggy moustache too: nothing in the meek and merciful way, but quite in the fierce and scornful style: the regular Satanic sort of thing — and he wore, besides, a vast quantity of unbrushed hair. He was very dirty and very jaunty; very bold and very mean; very swaggering and very slinking; very much like a man who might have been something better, and unspeakably like a man who deserved to be something worse.

— from Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens.

Once upon a time I vowed to read a Dickens a year. Seeing as they're so long, I think one every two years or so should suffice.

Several commenters on this blog have in the past mentioned Martin Chuzzlewit, for its humor, for its women characters, and for some of the more memorably Dickensian characters going. Not being the least bit familiar with it, and it bearing the distinction of not having been recommended by Oprah, I decided to take it up.

Not much has happened yet. I'm a little daunted that my e-reader calculates this novel at 3167 page turns — I've barely made a dent.

But it is funny, although mostly in attitude, in an almost self-parodying tone. This effect is somewhat exaggerated by the fact that I can't help but hear the text in my head as narrated by Simon Callow, and am reminded of the Doctor's judgment that the American bit (which I've got a way to go before I get to it) is rubbish.

One may read a defense of the American bit — indeed, the novel as a whole — by GK Chesterton, from which I learned that this is a novel about a selfishness, and, despite its humour, this novel is sad.

I have just recently encountered Mark, the barman, who is a jolly fellow, who is looking to find a new situation in the city, a gloomy and difficult one, one in which his jollity might be seen as a credit, for there is no trial of character in being jolly as a barman, surely it be a virtue only when overcoming some adversity, working as a grave-digger or taxman perhaps.

Literary Mad Men

2011-04-14T07:20:00.003-04:00

It's taken a while, but finally I've watched all Mad Men episodes to date. From the start of the series, it's been impossible not to notice what these wonderfully culturally literate (it is advertising, after all) characters were reading.

I've tried to keep a list of those books that were directly discussed or in the hands of readers. In chronological occurrence of their mention:

Lawrence, DH: Lady Chatterley's Lover (S01e03)
Jaffe, Rona: The Best of Everything (S01e06)
Uris, Leon: Exodus (S01e06)
Rand, Ayn: Atlas Shrugged (S01e08, but with several mentions)
O'Hara, Frank: Meditations in an Emergency (S02e01)
Fitzgerald, F Scott: Babylon Revisited and Other Stories (S02e04)
Forester, CS: Horatio Hornblower (S02e08)
Porter, Katherine Anne: Ship of Fools (S02e09)
Faulkner, William: The Sound and the Fury (S02e11)
Gibbon, Edward: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (S03e03)
Ogilvy, David: Confessions of an Advertising Man (S03e06)
Twain, Mark: Tom Sawyer (S03e06)
Hilton, Conrad: Be My Guest, Autobiography of Conrad Hilton (S03e07)
McCarthy, Mary: The Group (S03e10)
Benedict, Ruth: The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (S04e05)
Keene, Carolyn: The Clue of the Black Keys (S04e09)
Berne, Eric: Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships (S04e10)
Le Carré, John: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (S04e13)

Of course, there have been countless literary allusions throughout the series. TS Eliot's The Hollow Men was recited. A reference to The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Sloan Wilson) is as much a cultural touchstone as it has to do with any novel. Moby Dick. I can't help but think of The Bell Jar when you mention the summer the Rosenbergs were executed, but very likely that's the sort of reference that wasn't necessarily intended.

I've read only a few of those listed, some of them many years ago, but on watching some episodes, I have been inspired to directly seek out some titles, particularly since they are not merely props but have direct bearing on the plot or characters at issue. I know I'm not the only one to be reading up. Frank O'Hara's rediscovery has been widely noted.

Similarly, according to NPR, "Interest in Rand and her philosophy is on the upswing. Since the 2008 presidential election, according to Brook, the novel Atlas Shrugged has sold more than 1 million copies, far more than in any similar period in the book's 54-year history." While this is linked to the rising popularity of the Tea Party, no doubt sales for this particular novel were boosted by its exposure on Mad Men.

But I think my favourite book sighting, late in season 4, is the Nancy Drew mystery in Sally Draper's hands. We've seen the books in the house she grew up in; it should come as no surprise that Sally too should find escape in a good book. Reminds me a little of my own young self, visiting my dad's office and being told to sit quietly — I'd read. Though I can't recall it specifically, I'm sure I read The Clue of the Black Keys — I read them all. I'll be sure to dig this one out of the box in my mom's basement as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Have you been reading along with the Mad Men?

A quick note

2011-04-12T12:56:00.001-04:00

Not my usual fare, but I accepted a copy of Attachments, by Rainbow Rowell, because I am fascinated by email relationships.

I don't feel particularly good about admitting that I've read a book written by someone named Rainbow. But everything about this book will be sold to people who wouldn't mind that fact. Ironically, it's exactly this sort of thing that it'd be likely the two female leads would kvetch over.

So the plot: the new IT security guy is charged with monitoring company email (it's a newspaper office), and surprise, he gets caught up in their story.

Being that I work in an office where it's widely known that the email is monitored, and it's surmised that the CEO spends his day doing little else but reading it, I was interested to see how this might play out in fiction.

While people who work together do share news and laughs via email, they still talk. My experience is that when there's real news to dish, we go for coffee. So while Rowell's email exchanges are necessary (this is the whole premise, after all), liberty is taken with them to the point where they no longer ring true — they're too long, too conveniently structured, and not all of them meet the criteria for being flagged by Web security.

I love the copy-desk setting. When Lincoln starts befriending his coworkers, he realizes that the copy-desk crowd is much like his D&D gang, only without the D&D. Weirdly, it's only Lincoln who knows all the words to Auld Lang Syne, which is exactly the sort of thing a bunch of copyeditors would know.

There's nothing very original about this novel — it's fairly predictable, with very ordinary characters — but it does have a modern moral bent in terms of email privacy. It was a nice way to spend a Saturday morning blanketed in bed, and I admit, I raced toward the end to see how things panned out for everybody. I'm not much for romantic comedies when it comes to movies either, but every now and then it makes for a nice change of pace.

L'Amour

2011-04-05T12:51:00.002-04:00

With no trace of irony, she clinks her glass against his. He would rather not know what they are drinking to. To his leaving? To the peacefulness of their breakup? To Scotland's mild summer? Silently, he drinks to l'Amour, and everything he knows about it. Its 2,700 miles, from its source in the Argun region to its mouth on the Tatar Strait, opposite Sakhalin. He keeps his bad joke about the River Amour to himself. A pity he doesn't realize that the river's English name, Armur, is closer to the word "armor" than to "love," and — worse — that armur means "muddy" in Buriat.

Our hero takes a sip from this dark, bitter beer that he does not like, which is precisely why he chose it. He had to give the whole debacle a degree of harmony.

— from The Intervention of a Good Man, by Hervé Le Tellier.

Slight, but a mostly pleasant read. It continues to astound me that 20- and 30-year-old women would want to associate with or attach themselves to 50-year-old men, but that's not a problem of the novella, that's life. The story gives a nice play-by-play of the thought processes of one party to a such relationship as it disintegrates.

I hate the title. En français, c'est Je m'attache très facilement — much better. I suppose it's an intervention of sorts, but I think "intervention" is semantically loaded with things not present here. And I don't think he's a particularly good man. We have only his word for it, and his carrying on an affair with an as-good-as-married younger woman in a very insecure and needy way doesn't exactly speak to his goodness. The Slight Disturbance of Some Pathetic Chump, more like.

And there's that thing with the Polish girl who works at the hotel. Do you really have to bring up Nazi concentration camps just because she's Polish? That was weird and out of place.

Although Le Tellier is an Oulipo member, I didn't recognize any of the qualities related to that group in this novella. However, I did very much enjoy his Enough about Love, and I see the Oulipo in it in retrospect, and I look forward to reading more by him.

Read Le Tellier on what exactly is French love...

Suspended in a mystic delirium

2011-04-02T22:03:00.001-04:00

Here are some of the questions I have. How content should I aim to be? How discontent? What is the proper balance and how is it to be managed?

How aggressive should I be in seeking out new experiences? In challenging myself? How much should I hope to accomplish?

How fragile should I strive to be? How efficient, how dreamy, how routine? What depth of engagement with others should I hope to achieve? Why have friendships become so difficult?

What is life's richest possible template, and how bad should I feel if it doesn't suit me? Assuming that everyone has their own richest possible template, how do I go about finding my own?

If you could only get to the center of all questions, then the questions themselves would vanish and you'd be left hanging there, suspended in a mystic delirium.

The Saint: The True Story of How One Man's Search for Virtue Led to the Brink of Madness, by Oliver Broudy, raises these questions and many, many more. And it's as much the author's meditation on these issues, his dissatisfaction with the statusphere of New York City, as it is the story of a crazy man, a rich man with good intentions, who collects Gandhi memorabilia. With a bit about Gandhi thrown in for good measure.

I connected with this memoir right from the epigraph, which comes from one of my very favourite books (The Razor's Edge, W Somerset Maugham), a passage beginning thusly: "You're not altogether stupid. As a matter of fact, you sound like a very religious man who doesn't believe in God."

Lots of questions. Really good questions.

Polish noir

2011-04-01T07:23:00.003-04:00

Marek Krajewski was a wonderful discovery and Death in Breslau is full of, in my opinion, fantastic story elements. I won't repeat myself on those points, but I can add now to that list: a lost manuscript, a Kurdish sect, a centuries-old prophecy, and a retelling of an Oedipal tragedy. One would expect no less from an author who's a Classics scholar.

Oh, and! Our detective! Eberhard Mock likes to combine his enthusiasms for chess and brothels. He gets away with as much shit as he does only because he has dirt on everyone.

Also, I would clarify that this novel definitely falls on the side of entertainment(!) — not that there's anything wrong with that — and doesn't have the philosophical depth of Simenon's romans durs. Nor does it have the kind of reflection and wit I so like in Fred Vargas's novels — not that there should be any similarity between these authors beyond that of broad crime genre label. I bring these names up only because I know and like their work, so they're a kind of benchmark against which I can position new discoveries.

Krajewski is straight up: sex and violence and Nazis, and never knowing for sure who's on whose side.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Krajewski's Breslau novels.

Reviews
The Independent
Where the Long Tail Ends

This too shall pass

2011-03-31T21:20:00.003-04:00

I don't sleep well of late.

I spent the start of my week in the arms of Morpheus, in hospital bed with a kidney stone. I don't recommend the experience. There are easier ways to get a day off work. Although, morphine is pretty spectacular, rolling through your body in waves, rendering each segment heavy, limp, unencumbered. Weighty and weightless at the same time.

By chance, I am fortunate to be back in touch with a dear, dear friend of my adolescence. We were going to write poetry, change the world, dance however we damn well pleased. I've missed her.

I received a complimentary copy of The Saint, by Oliver Broudy, the recounting of days he spent travelling with a very charismatic man who happened to be very rich and a collector of Gandhi memorabilia, only he's not just a collector, he's a spiritual disciple, and this leads to all kinds of moral paradox: cuz there's this tension between means and ends, he's a rich man helping the poor; and it makes for a fascinating study of where ego fits in the world, and the tremendous ego required to achieve complete self-erasure; and it brings to the forefront the audacity, the crazy logic, of forsaking the value of actual individuals for some principle of greater good.

It's quite a compelling tale, and very thoughtful, and thought-provoking, and I expect I'll have a bit more to say about it yet. Among other nuggets: "age is the bitter process by which we gradually learn to aim low."

I'm suspended in this mood where I have to believe that this confluence of events holds some significance. That this stone in me is the detritus of gritty reality, that I will filter a new reality from my experience.

Planet Earth

2011-03-24T20:41:00.002-04:00

Not sure anything can top the understated weirdness of the original video, but now it's Lynchian.

Imagination was a filter for wondrous transformations

2011-03-22T18:13:00.001-04:00

The patient Herbert Anwaldt had survived "the house of torture", as he called the psychiatric clinic on Marien-Allee in Dresden, for already five years, thanks to his imagination. Imagination was a filter for wondrous transformations; the nurses' jabs and punches became gentle caresses, the stench of faeces became the scent of a spring garden, the cries of the sick became baroque cantatas and the shabby panelling frescoes by Giotto. Imagination obeyed him. After years of practice, he had managed to tame it to such an extent that he had entirely extinguished in himself something, for example, which would otherwise not have allowed him to survive incarceration: desire for a woman's body. He did not have to "extinguish the fire in his loins" like a sage from the Old Testament — that flame had long ago gone out.

Imagination did, however, betray him when he saw small, busy insects scuttling across the room. Their yellowish-brown abdomens flitting in and out of the gaps between the floorboards, their flickering antennae sticking out form behind the washbasin, the individual specimen crawling on to his eiderdown: a pregnant female dragging a pale cocoon, or a handsome male holding its body high on quick limbs, or the helpless young tracing circles with thin feelers — all this would lead to Anwaldt's brain being shaken by an electrical charge of neurons. The whole of him would curl up painfully, flickering feelers would burrow into his skin and he would be tickled, in his imagination, by thousands of limbs. He would then fall into a fury and was a potential danger to other patients, especially since the occasion on which he had discovered that some of them were catching insects, putting them into matchboxes and hiding them in his bed. Only the smell of insecticide would calm his jittering nerves. The matter could have been dealt with by transferring the sick man to another hospital — one less infested by cockroaches — in another town, but here unanticipated, bureaucratic obstacles wold present themselves and successive heads of clinic would forsake the idea. Doctor Bennert had restricted himself to transferring Anwaldt to a private room disinfected somewhat more frequently. In periods preceding the swarming cockroaches, the patient Anwaldt would be calm and occupied himself for the most part by studying Semitic languages.

— from Death in Breslau, by Marek Krajewski.

I'm not sure how this book first came to my attention, but it's been on my list of books-I-really-should-look-up-someday for years. And something made me think to look it up this weekend, so now I have a copy (electronic), and I'm reading and loving it.

Polish noir, they say. Morally ambiguous characters and sordid settings. Reminiscent of Simenon, only there's a little more going on in the plot department and the evidence of living in a Nazi state is a little more in your face.

Plus (as if that's not enough going for it!), it's set in Wrocław (or Breslau, as it was known prior to the end of WWII) — a town I have some familiarity with.

Double plus, I think the cover design for this series of Krajewski's novels (all set in interwar Breslau), from Quercus Publishing, is spectacular (to the point that I'm coveting actual print copies).

I'm only about 40 pages in. The murder case — involving hints of sexual perversion, scorpions, and ancient Syrian script, on a train car — has just been closed to everyone's satisfaction — everyone being the police department (chief of which is a prominent Freemason), the recently installed Nazi officials, and the victim's father (a connoisseur of esoterica) — except maybe that of the convicted Jew. I suspect we're not quite done yet.

Lately

2011-03-20T23:08:00.004-04:00

I found myself recently reading Caspian Rain, by Gina B Nahai, because somehow or other, the subject of Jewish Iranians came up at work. It happens that I work with a number of Iranians, and for some reason or other someone non-Iranian was saying something like, "But you don't have Jews in Iran, do you," and I thought, "How ignorant," and one of the Iranians proceeded to set this fellow straight on the matter. But it made me think, how did I know this, and is this a common piece of knowledge or is it privileged, and how did I come by this knowledge?

And I remembered having read Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, by Gina B Nahai, the story of a Jewish family living in the ghetto of Tehran, with a twist of magic realism about it. That's about all I remember about the book. That and the fact that I loved it, and oh, how it made me cry and cry and cry. I wept oceans reading that book, that summer. That was just about the time I figured out I was pregnant.

So I wondered what else she may have written, and thus I embarked upon Caspian Rain. I enjoyed it, but I can't really recommend it.

I love it for the glimpse it gives of Iranian Jewish life at a certain time and place, that place otherwise being a relatively inaccessible and mysterious one. I have a thing for the Middle East, which isn't entirely logical or explicable. I have little to no interest in the politics and history of the region. It's not exactly the "culture" that I'm drawn to, though it's to do with a poetic and storytelling tradition. A thousand and one nights, and all that. A sense of exoticism that may not be founded in anything real.

Anyway, Caspian Rain starts off as a kind of love story, and it's lovely, pushing all the right buttons with me. The narrator relates the story of her parents. About halfway through, the novel turns to centre around the narrator herself, the hardships she's suffered as a result of her parents' relationship being so strained but also because of her medical difficulty (well, let's just call it that for the sake of expediency). And then it felt like the novel was trying to be two different stories, and they just didn't work that well together. And it felt like the author was trying too hard to be poetic and vague and deep, and it stopped working for me, and the last page was terrible.

I'm currently reading A Polish Book of Monsters. I have mixed feelings about it so far, and I suspect I'll have a lot to say about it when I'm done, not least being regarding the problem of how one defines "monster."

Also, I've spent far too much time this weekend considering what ebook I should use my coupon to acquire. Should I actually get the book my boss recommended to me? I finally decided yes, because so many other people had esteemed it, and because it's set in an ad agency, which fact I hadn't recalled from the original commotion surrounding this novel but is a selling point with me. But then no, because the coupon couldn't be used for books from this publisher, so I could buy this book at any time, I wouldn't be saving any money by doing it today. (But I did buy some Polish noir.)

I'm missing loving a book right now. I need a book to really love.

But I found a plant for my office. And mostly I'm happy I spent most of my weekend hanging out with the kid, shopping for rainboots and almonds.

Solid or hollow

2011-03-16T18:57:00.000-04:00

It's strange, how a person carries around the shadow of those that matter most to her. You can always see it — that presence, or its absence — in the eyes, in the movements of the hands, in a person's laugh. You can see it — if an old woman had a father who loved her when she was a child; if a teenage girl has a best friend she knows she can run to. You see it in the way people move and speak, in the subjects they choose and the things they avoid, in the way they appear solid or hollow, certain or plagued with doubt.

— from Caspian Rain, by Gina B Nahai.