Claire and Stefanie win The Savage Detectives and 2666 respectively, both books by Roberto Bolaño. Email me with your snail mail addresses and I'll get these books out to you as soon as I can.
I did finish reading 2666 a few days ago, but I'm having a hard time carving out the mental space to write about it. It's a bit anticlimactic, to have finished. I've been refraining from reading other people's thoughts on the final part, so that my own impressions remain unadulterated, but I'm thinking now it may help catalyze my ideas.
I started reading (and am almost finished) The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story, by Hanan Al-Shaykh, and it's very romantic and exuberant and easy to be swept up in.
Life is kind of weirdly busy recently, and I'm having a hard time keeping up and staying focused.
More as it develops...
Monday, October 05, 2009
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Remembrance of things Proust
It's a hundred years ago about this time of year that Marcel Proust holed himself up in a cork-lined room to begin writing A la recherche du temps perdu.I have little to remember of Proust, as my copy of Swann's Way lies (mostly) unread under my bed (though I did read the first 30-odd pages about 20 years ago (and I don't remember them)).
But last week I received in the mail an unsolicited review copy of Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time: A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past, by Patrick Alexander, which has me thinking I should hole my own self up in a room to write a masterpiece. Or at least maybe I should consider finally reading what Proust came up with.
The Guide is somewhat meaningless to me at this stage, but from this side of the memory of an experience I haven't had yet, it looks like it might be useful: apart from the requisite section summaries, there are character lists, plenty of photos, a history of France (or the relevant bits anyway), and a map.
I hereby pledge to follow this Guide when the time comes to actually read Proust, quite possibly in the new year. (I'm afraid my dance card is pretty full until then.)
In the meantime, I'll be warming up to the reading of the book itself with the following activities:
Proust101: A one week course on all things Proust, free, via Twitter, starting October 1, 2009, and being repeated October 8, 2009. I am subscribed — I'll let you know if I learn anything.
ProustLive: The masterpiece will be tweeted, starting October 15, 2009.
And there's always the Proust Questionnaire, which I've been meaning to try out on a friend or two.
To learn more about the Guide, or read about how it came to be, or for hordes of Proustian resources, visit the website.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Nick and Juliet
I first heard about Nick Hornby having a new book out from Maxine (Petrona), who highlighted a couple key points in a then recent Bookseller interview:
There have been about 3000 reviews of the book in The Guardian already, generally positive but also rather unenthusiastic. That pretty much sums up my view.
It's about a guy obsessed with a reclusive rockstar. Which you just know can't be good for this guy's girlfriend.
John Keenan likes the fact that Hornby offers a sensitive and moving portrayal of a woman. (Big deal! He's done that before, and so have plenty of writers.)
This is a pretty neat aspect actually, and on another level as well — in how we forge online identities in forums or develop email relationships.
Interview, National Post:
I'm not sure I agree. I think, generally, the sketch has more scholarly value than aesthetic. And it's just as true for literature, but as Hornby notes the scraps are easily lost.
Listen to the podcast of Q, September 29, in which Nick Hornby asserts that anyone is qualified to be a critic and declares he'd rather be a pop song than a symphony.
Actually, this is a pretty interesting interview, possibly even better than the novel, covering many of the same issues — the nature of art and art criticism, and artistic integrity, and what famous people can get away with.
Let's not kid ourselves. This is chick lit, albeit in a fictional reality somewhat tempered by the author's male perspective. It's reasonably well written, and I think Hornby writes relationships pretty well:
I prefer some of Hornby's other novels, but Juliet, Naked is a quick and thoroughly entertaining read that won't tax your brain too much, which seems to be exactly what Hornby was going for.
His new book, he says, epitomises the English "can't do" spirit. "It's a sad book because there's a sense of people who have not achieved what they wanted to achieve with their lives."
On similar, refreshingly pragmatic grounds, he has a go at the "lit snobs", otherwise known as the "literati". "I completely understand people's reluctance to pick up a literary novel that is not going to entertain them in the 30 minutes they have before they go to sleep at night. I think the world of books forgets that because so many of us do our reading during the day. That's a luxury so many people forget." Hornby has written about these themes of accessibility on his blog, saying that writers who challenge their readers without entertaining them sometimes forget that readers are people with "jobs and worries and dependents, people who are tired after a hard working day or week."
There have been about 3000 reviews of the book in The Guardian already, generally positive but also rather unenthusiastic. That pretty much sums up my view.
It's about a guy obsessed with a reclusive rockstar. Which you just know can't be good for this guy's girlfriend.
John Keenan likes the fact that Hornby offers a sensitive and moving portrayal of a woman. (Big deal! He's done that before, and so have plenty of writers.)
The second reason I enjoyed the novel more than any of Hornby's previous works, is the playful postmodern approach to the nature of fiction. Duncan's internet-based quest to uncover the truth about Crowe's retirement gives Hornby licence to have lots of fun with the fact that such endeavours produce a blizzard of egregious facts which take on a life and meaning of their own. Hornby produces faux-Wikipedia entries for Crowe and demonstrates how the insertion of one red herring can result in a fish farm of false information. Meanwhile Annie goes in search of her own truth about the relationship between life and art. Her hesitant probing produces profound conclusions about the artifice behind all artistic endeavours.
This is a pretty neat aspect actually, and on another level as well — in how we forge online identities in forums or develop email relationships.
Interview, National Post:
It's strange, Hornby agrees, that in music, rarities and bootlegs are coveted by fans; in movies, deleted scenes and outtakes are regularly included on DVDs; in the art world, something like a Picasso sketch is worth millions; but literature doesn't really function in the same way.
"I think it used to before computers," he says. "You can get The Waste Land with all Ezra Pound's notes on it, the Jack Kerouac On the Road on the scroll. There is stuff like that around. But really, the trouble with computers is it just goes. There really isn't such a thing as a manuscript anymore."
I'm not sure I agree. I think, generally, the sketch has more scholarly value than aesthetic. And it's just as true for literature, but as Hornby notes the scraps are easily lost.
Listen to the podcast of Q, September 29, in which Nick Hornby asserts that anyone is qualified to be a critic and declares he'd rather be a pop song than a symphony.
Actually, this is a pretty interesting interview, possibly even better than the novel, covering many of the same issues — the nature of art and art criticism, and artistic integrity, and what famous people can get away with.
Let's not kid ourselves. This is chick lit, albeit in a fictional reality somewhat tempered by the author's male perspective. It's reasonably well written, and I think Hornby writes relationships pretty well:
She took the CD out of its plastic sleeve and put it into the portable player they kept in the kitchen. But instead of pressing the "play" button, her finger hovered above it for a second. Could she really listen to it before he did? It felt like one of those moment is a relationship — and there enough of them in theirs, God knows — that would look completely innocuous to an outsider, but which were packed with meaning and aggression. Annie could imagine telling Ros at work that Duncan had gone absolutely nuts because she played a new CD when he wasn't at home, and Ros would be suitably appalled and disgusted. But she wouldn't be telling the whole story. She'd be telling a self-serving version, omitting the context. And, of course, it would be legitimate to feel bafflement and outrage if Ros didn't understand, but Annie knew Duncan too well. She understood. She knew that playing the CD was an act of naked hostility, even if anyone peering through the windows wouldn't be able to see the nakedness.
I prefer some of Hornby's other novels, but Juliet, Naked is a quick and thoroughly entertaining read that won't tax your brain too much, which seems to be exactly what Hornby was going for.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Saint Peggy
Margaret Atwood rocks!
I have to admit, I had a tough time at first giving myself over to her new novel, The Year of the Flood — it was exactly the wrong mood to follow my other recent reads. And I felt like I was somehow morally obliged to like this book.
I've already mentioned how awed I was by the marketing machine moving this book. I wonder how much the average reader feels it though. I'm coming to think I see it only because I'm already plugged into those channels, the blogging and the twittering and the books pages.
The more it goes, the more I see it less as marketing and more as... I don't know... something between style and lifestyle. It's less directly about buy this book and more about here's some interesting information about urban bee-keeping, which has only a very little to do with the novel as a whole.
So the whole promotional angle is pretty unique and turning out to be pretty powerful, I think. I guess one can't really go wrong when publishing a Margaret Atwood novel, so there's a lot of creativity and freewheeling energy about it. How refreshing that the author tour is not a staid reading of an excerpt in some awkward space of a big-box bookstore; it's an enactment, an event. (Now let's promote lesser-selling authors this way!)
I find myself since closing this book putting light around people. And generally feeling kind of, well, floaty and flaky, kind of hippy, like I should get back to the earth. Not that I would actually give up eating red meat or anything.
But it's like this. I loved this book. I think my initial hesitation, my scepticism about this book is, in a way, built into the novel's structure. The two main viewpoints we follow are those of Toby and Ren, each of whom is brought into the fold of God's Gardeners in less than ideal circumstances, and in no way due to their having found anything remotely like God. They are grateful for the kindnesses but irreverent as concerns the core beliefs. They're basically good people, but they find the work of the Gardeners laughable; they're there by accident. But in the end, they're really more "Gardener" than any of them, in spirit and in practice. And I feel like that kind of describes my relationship with this book.
Do I need to tell you anything about the premise? The near future, gene-spliced creatures roaming the landscape, society fractured into haves and have-nots, the haves generally working for and living in the compounds of biotech corporations. The world is seeing various ecological disasters, resulting in migrations and the breakdown of social and economic structures. (Did anyone see Earth 2100? Kind of like that.) And there's a Plague, one following many caused by mutated viruses, that devastates the human population. Oh, do I love a dystopia!
In case you don't already know, Margaret Atwood is sharp. Throwaway lines are loaded with sociopolitical commentary:
She can be laugh-out-loud hilarious:
And she still has everything of the philosophical poet about her:
I love the ease with which she transcribes the cadence of a woman's mind. I became aware of this particularly with Cat's Eye, but it's probably there in her earlier novels too. (I studied Surfacing in high school, and that put me off early Atwood, but maybe I'll go there again some day.) Maybe it's because I'm female, and Canadian, and living in this time, that I relate to how Atwood writes, but I think it's something very special, and it's not a matter of how she captures dialogue, though she does that too, but really of grasping the flow of thoughts.
Notable reviews
Ursula K LeGuin, in the Guardian:
(I wasn't a big fan of Oryx & Crake, by the way. Some interesting ideas, but as a novel it was a little cold. I am now, however, really keen to revisit it. (TYOTF can be read and enjoyed independently of O&C.))
Jeanette Winterson, in the New York Times:
(Right. Did I mention? Genetically engineered humans!)
About the roadshow
The Guardian
Bookpuddle
Podcasts
The Next Chapter.
Q, September 18, 2009, in which Atwood asks Jian Ghomeshi if he even knows what a hippie is (God's Gardeners are not them).
Give thanks to Saint Peggy for clear-sighted literature! Let us sing!
I have to admit, I had a tough time at first giving myself over to her new novel, The Year of the Flood — it was exactly the wrong mood to follow my other recent reads. And I felt like I was somehow morally obliged to like this book.
I've already mentioned how awed I was by the marketing machine moving this book. I wonder how much the average reader feels it though. I'm coming to think I see it only because I'm already plugged into those channels, the blogging and the twittering and the books pages.
The more it goes, the more I see it less as marketing and more as... I don't know... something between style and lifestyle. It's less directly about buy this book and more about here's some interesting information about urban bee-keeping, which has only a very little to do with the novel as a whole.
So the whole promotional angle is pretty unique and turning out to be pretty powerful, I think. I guess one can't really go wrong when publishing a Margaret Atwood novel, so there's a lot of creativity and freewheeling energy about it. How refreshing that the author tour is not a staid reading of an excerpt in some awkward space of a big-box bookstore; it's an enactment, an event. (Now let's promote lesser-selling authors this way!)
I find myself since closing this book putting light around people. And generally feeling kind of, well, floaty and flaky, kind of hippy, like I should get back to the earth. Not that I would actually give up eating red meat or anything.
But it's like this. I loved this book. I think my initial hesitation, my scepticism about this book is, in a way, built into the novel's structure. The two main viewpoints we follow are those of Toby and Ren, each of whom is brought into the fold of God's Gardeners in less than ideal circumstances, and in no way due to their having found anything remotely like God. They are grateful for the kindnesses but irreverent as concerns the core beliefs. They're basically good people, but they find the work of the Gardeners laughable; they're there by accident. But in the end, they're really more "Gardener" than any of them, in spirit and in practice. And I feel like that kind of describes my relationship with this book.
Do I need to tell you anything about the premise? The near future, gene-spliced creatures roaming the landscape, society fractured into haves and have-nots, the haves generally working for and living in the compounds of biotech corporations. The world is seeing various ecological disasters, resulting in migrations and the breakdown of social and economic structures. (Did anyone see Earth 2100? Kind of like that.) And there's a Plague, one following many caused by mutated viruses, that devastates the human population. Oh, do I love a dystopia!
In case you don't already know, Margaret Atwood is sharp. Throwaway lines are loaded with sociopolitical commentary:
[...] but I also had to do something so I might as well get an education. That's how they talked about it, as if an education was a thing that you got, like a dress.
She can be laugh-out-loud hilarious:
Bernice said the West Coast was perfect for that because although they all did stuff like yoga and said it was Spiritual, they were really just twisted, fish-crunching, materialistic body-worshippers out there, with facelifts and bimplants and genework and totally warped values.
And she still has everything of the philosophical poet about her:
There was a close-up of her dead face, looking more gentle and peaceful than I'd ever seen her look in life. Maybe that was the real Bernice, I thought — kind and innocent. Maybe she was truly like that inside, and the fighting we used to do and all her sharp and unpleasant edges — that was her way of struggling to get out of the hard skin she'd grown all over herself like a beetle shell. But no matter how she hit out and rage, she'd been stuck in there. That thought made me feel so sorry for her that I cried.
I love the ease with which she transcribes the cadence of a woman's mind. I became aware of this particularly with Cat's Eye, but it's probably there in her earlier novels too. (I studied Surfacing in high school, and that put me off early Atwood, but maybe I'll go there again some day.) Maybe it's because I'm female, and Canadian, and living in this time, that I relate to how Atwood writes, but I think it's something very special, and it's not a matter of how she captures dialogue, though she does that too, but really of grasping the flow of thoughts.
Notable reviews
Ursula K LeGuin, in the Guardian:
The personality and feelings of characters in Oryx and Crake were of little interest; these were figures in the service of a morality play. The Year of the Flood is less satirical in tone, less of an intellectual exercise, less scathing though more painful. It is seen very largely through the eyes of women, powerless women, whose individual characters and temperaments and emotions are vivid and memorable. We have less of Hogarth and more of Goya.
(I wasn't a big fan of Oryx & Crake, by the way. Some interesting ideas, but as a novel it was a little cold. I am now, however, really keen to revisit it. (TYOTF can be read and enjoyed independently of O&C.))
Jeanette Winterson, in the New York Times:
As ever with Atwood, it is friendship between women that is noted and celebrated — friendship not without its jealousies but friendship that survives rivalry and disappointment, and has a generosity that at the end of the novel allows for hope. Atwood believes in human beings, and she likes women. It is Toby and Ren who take the novel forward from the last page, not the genetically engineered new humans.
(Right. Did I mention? Genetically engineered humans!)
About the roadshow
The Guardian
Bookpuddle
Podcasts
The Next Chapter.
Q, September 18, 2009, in which Atwood asks Jian Ghomeshi if he even knows what a hippie is (God's Gardeners are not them).
Give thanks to Saint Peggy for clear-sighted literature! Let us sing!
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
How do you say, "thank you"?
With books, of course! To share some of the awesome literary love I've been experiencing lately, I'd love to give away a couple of books to a couple of readers: The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, and 2666, by Roberto Bolaño (in the newly released 1-volume paperback format).
Both books are brand new, fresh from the publisher (Picador). They have been thoroughly sniffed and have the feline paw of approval (the cat's a bit of savage detective herself). Since I already have well-worn copies of these, I'd like to pass these on (but I'm keeping the cat).
Here's a non-exhaustive list of some of the awesomeness that abounds:
The ARCs I've been receiving as a result of Twitter announcements and contests — I actually don't really understand Twitter, or how people use it, or how I should best make use of it, but will love it for now for at least this thing. The contest I won at Bookeywookey (Ted has weird and wonderful literary interests, happily sometimes intersecting with my own). The love from Susan at Pages Turned. The great group of people I stumbled upon who have been reading 2666 this summer, and their respective blogs. The dramatic spray of raspberry pink gladiolas on my kitchen shelf, which has nothing literary about it — I just love them and they make me happy! The Infinite Summer and how it (along with the subject of its attention, Infinite Jest) has sparked heartfelt conversations in both blogland and real life. The book drive I kind of got roped into organizing at work after I not so seriously proposed the idea, never expecting anyone to actually like the idea, as a means of not only raising some money for charity but also clearing some much-needed closet space; the fact that coworkers are bringing in their books to contribute to the cause (and I am trying very hard not to judge them by their cast-offs); the fact that other coworkers are actually buying these books; the fact that, being that I'm kind of in charge, I kind of get first dibs, and in this way I came to have an unread copy of Geek Love, which a bunch of people say is like their favourite book ever and now maybe soon I'll maybe be in a position to understand why; the fact that it turns out that Tony is not representative of my coworkers' mentality when he says, "Are you guys only selling, like, reading books?" (by which it turns out he meant something like, "as opposed to reference manuals"); the fact that it seems more coworkers read, and think, and breathe outside of this office space than I previously imagined; the fact that I had a conversation with a near stranger about Anna Karenina. Also, the fact of Generosity, by Richard Powers, the reading of which brought on my own kind of quasi-spiritual breakdown in recent days. Thanks, you crazy, messed-up world — even when I feel like I'm getting the raw end of the deal and times when work is stupid crazy and times when I want and can't have just 10 quiet minutes all to myself and times when I wish my sister lived around the corner so we could go out for wings and beer, somehow everything always turns out OK. Rather mysteriously, really.
If you are interested in receiving either The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, or 2666, by Roberto Bolaño, state your preference in the comments section and tell me why you want to read it for your name to be entered into the drawing. This giveaway is open to anyone, anywhere. You have until midnight, October 2, 2009, to state your case. I'll announce the recipients shortly thereafter.
By that time, I should be finished reading my own copy of 2666! I fully endorse both these books as being worth the time and effort.
The Savage Detectives
Comments.
Excerpt: Stars like holographic projections.
Excerpt: Two islands.
Comments.
2666
Excerpt: Separate and interminable suburbs, with comments.
The part about the critics.
The part about Amalfitano.
Excerpt: A walk on the beach.
The parts about Fate and about the crimes and a vast introductory digression in which I compare and contrast 2666 and Infinite Jest.
Thanks!
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Love is cheap
Helena tells me she's going to remember yesterday forever!: It was the best day of her whole entire life! And I'm the best mommy ever!
Because!: after an un-fun morning of broken-down-refrigerator clean-up and unenthusiastically embarking on a previously planned shopping expedition (the girl needs pants! and she's really picky about her pants!) in the only time window available in the foreseeable month, I agreed that we could allow ourselves (I mean, her) a few fun minutes to browse the dollar store, and there I actually endorsed and funded the acquisition of a bow and arrow for a whole buck twenty-five.
I suspect she'll forget this day well before I do.
Because!: after an un-fun morning of broken-down-refrigerator clean-up and unenthusiastically embarking on a previously planned shopping expedition (the girl needs pants! and she's really picky about her pants!) in the only time window available in the foreseeable month, I agreed that we could allow ourselves (I mean, her) a few fun minutes to browse the dollar store, and there I actually endorsed and funded the acquisition of a bow and arrow for a whole buck twenty-five.
I suspect she'll forget this day well before I do.
Friday, September 11, 2009
First time
She was at least 75 years old, a frail stick figure with a punk shock of white on top and an orange lipstick to match her jacket.
Some days more than others, inexplicably, the métro platform is more zoo than the quiet order of harmless commuters still half asleep and on their way to work. This was one of those days.
I navigated the hub, the point of transfer to another line. She was frantic to latch onto a face, and she chose mine.
Does this train go to...? Her voice trailed off, unable to maintain the volume her eyes bespoke. I had to ask her to repeat the question, the place names. Yes, I assured her.
Oh good, she smiled. It's the first time I ever take the métro. The train pulled up and we squeezed into the car.
I nodded her a reassurance when I disembarked a few stations later. She was still smiling, with all the nervous trepidation of a child on her first day of school.
I've been taking the métro for years. I'd like to believe that I'm pretty good at not letting adventures pass me by, but I'm hoping there'll be something left for me to try for the first time when I'm 75.
Some days more than others, inexplicably, the métro platform is more zoo than the quiet order of harmless commuters still half asleep and on their way to work. This was one of those days.
I navigated the hub, the point of transfer to another line. She was frantic to latch onto a face, and she chose mine.
Does this train go to...? Her voice trailed off, unable to maintain the volume her eyes bespoke. I had to ask her to repeat the question, the place names. Yes, I assured her.
Oh good, she smiled. It's the first time I ever take the métro. The train pulled up and we squeezed into the car.
I nodded her a reassurance when I disembarked a few stations later. She was still smiling, with all the nervous trepidation of a child on her first day of school.
I've been taking the métro for years. I'd like to believe that I'm pretty good at not letting adventures pass me by, but I'm hoping there'll be something left for me to try for the first time when I'm 75.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Dinner theater
Mason Mason asks the obvious. "Why don't we write online? Aren't journals just dead blogs?"
Russell has prepped three days for this question. He defends private writing against writing for any stranger with a search engine. "I want you to think and feel, not sell. Your writing should be an intimate meal, not dinner theater."
— from Generosity, by Richard Powers.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
The parts about Fate and about the crimes and a vast introductory digression in which I compare and contrast 2666 and Infinite Jest
I left off from Roberto Bolaño's 2666 in order to read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest along with a couple thousand other people in the Infinite Summer reading group project. Plus, I really needed the breathing space, after all the rape, murder, and mutilation of part 4.
Weirdly, there are various unpleasantnesses to contend with in IJ as well. But they are deeply human and emotional, and so kind of cathartic. The murders in 2666, on the other hand, are numbing.
Right. So. I'd actually started in on the next and final part, and wanted and still want to speed ahead. But this is a weird little exercise in restraint for me, cuz I'm more about the go with the flow whatever feels right when it comes to reading, yet I want and feel it's important to think a little about what's going on in 2666, to figure it out, to draw it out — not in the sense of prolonging the experience but rather more to engage in conversation with and see it become itself. And it feels right to do so, so I'm going with that.
Also a bit weird w/r/t reading 2666 interlaced with IJ is this urge to compare and contrast these 2 books, or at least the experiences of reading these 2 books, when really they're almost not at all alike apart from their size. As part of an Infinite Summer roundtable, Kevin Guilfoile said, "During the Tournament of Books I said about Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 that in order for a novel to be a masterpiece it probably also has to be at least a little bit terrible. I said that with some tongue in my cheek, although compared to Infinite Jest I found 2666 to be a lot less ambitious and a lot more terrible." I found myself feeling a bit defensive about this, being as I was pretty fresh off a deep immersion in 2666 and at that point still well behind the IJ schedule. But I've had a very different kind of engagement with the books. And I'm temporarily thinking he may be right.
There was a tipping point with IJ: there came a page when something clicked, it made some kind of sense, I got it, and everything that came before was richer and being informed by what came next. I am still waiting for such a point in 2666, fully expecting it never to come. 2666 is definitely the more cryptic of the 2 novels. It started with a fairly heavy mood, and this has been maintained to the two-thirds mark, which is what necessitated my need for a little breathing space away from it; something hangs over this book, some impending doom, and that's fine — great actually — it's lofty and poetic and mysterious — but to what end?
Where does this leave me? Recognizing that the ambitions of these books are different (I think). Apples and oranges. Un cheval, une patate.
They are both, I realize now, somewhat surreal — in that kind of slippery, Lynchian sense of the word — and dreams figure quite prominently in both, with that vaguely nightmarish hint of something slipping between the known realm and someplace generally left untapped. Ironically (and let's ignore whether I'm using that term correctly), while IJ is set in the near future, or an alternate now, I found it much easier to relate to, to accept these characters as real; 2666 is based in our world (and inspired by true events), yet I'm not connecting with the characters, our view of which is quite controlled, filtered, distant (and the same could be said w/r/t its plot) (and this distance serves its own purpose — I merely comment on the fact of it).
Also, a Lovecraftian horror, as Jonathan Lethem pointed out:
In IJ there's a face in the floor, and the black, billowy triangle-ish shape of horror, as easily attributable to Lovecraft as to Lynch.
IJ has earnestness, and a fair bit of humour. 2666 has... I want to say poetry, but I don't think that's quite true, not the way the language in Bolaño's short novels sings with awe about our nobler purpose or the dirt under our fingernails. But, OK, it has this "quality" about its language, and this other admirable thing I can't think of any other way to describe but mood.
The Part about Fate
I didn't much like The Part about Fate, being part 3 and one of the smaller parts of 2666. There's some good stuff in there, which I'll get to in a minute, but this is the way I feel about this part and let me see if I can figure out why that is.
It's not about fate as destiny; it's about American Oscar Fate, whose real name is Quincy Williams, and I don't know why they call him Oscar Fate at work, but they do — maybe it's his chosen pen name as a journalist. Well, maybe you could say the whole thing really is about fate, the name must've been chosen deliberately, symbolically, and I wonder whether it was Fate in the original Spanish or whether the name was translated.
It starts with the death of his mother. Then there's the death of a coworker. He has odd dreams, and starts to occasionally vomit, here and there fairly randomly. Aggressive snippets of movies, of television, or other people's conversations seem to accidentally infiltrate his consciousness, which for the most part is pretty blank, or maybe numb (with grief? exhaustion?) or lost. Something about rap music and suicide and misogyny.
Fate is on assignment to interview Barry Seaman, a former Panther who did some serious prison time and published a book of ribs recipes. Seaman now mostly gives lectures, one of which Fate attends, and it discusses Danger, Money, Food, Stars, and Usefuleness in a fairly random, disconnected way; Seaman stretches to segue very clumsily from one topic to the next — it's almost a stream of consciousness, and I have the impression some of his audience may perceive his mental workings as profound, but I think it's merely primitive. Seaman has the air of a prophet about him, and I don't mean to diminish how "interesting" his speech is, but the lecture as a whole doesn't really fit together; as is the case with many prophets, maybe it's for the audience to find their own significance in it. Seaman does, however, profess an apreciation of metaphor and love for reading, with a deep fondness for An Abridged Digest of the Complete Works of Voltaire.
Fate is reading The Slave Trade. He heads to Mexico to cover a boxing match, the story his dead coworker was supposed to be on. Fate witnesses a couple of Camaros (which I now know figure in the part that follows) and starts hearing about the killings in Santa Teresa.
Absolutely Santa Teresa is the fringes of society. (Fate wants to do some reportage about the situation, but his editor's not interested.) So this, finally, is the heart of Bolaño's ambition: to reveal the avoidance.
(As I'm sitting here rethumbing these pages, I realize how many hints there are of things to come, characters and scenarios we will meet again. Of one personage, a suspect: "He has the face of a dreamer, but of a dreamer who's dreaming at great speed. A dreamer whose dreams are far out ahead of our dreams." I'm suddenly seeing all sorts of commonalities with IJ — the fragmentation of the narrative, a cubist view, an other-dimensional perspective, the problem of the speed at which we process experience. This part about Fate is in fact much more vital to the whole than I'd initially given it credit. Oh, and: both writers reference David Lynch quite extensively.)
They talk about the end of the sacred, which I take to mean something like intimacy and connectedness in the way we engage with our world.
And so Fate is immersed in the seamy underbelly of Santa Teresa. I'm not sure whether the boxing match serves a purpose other than as a plot device to bring this journalist to Mexico.
I see now that The Part about Fate begins with its end:
(Aztecs turn up again on page 473: “The Aztecs cooked posole with pieces of human flesh.”)
The Part about the Crimes
The Part about the Crimes is a grotesque and fairly disjointed inventory of the gruesome crimes occurring in Santa Teresa.
The following passage is from early on in this lengthy part. I love the way it dances around the space, the focus flitting from the two people engaged in dialogue to the figurants (a word I would not have used before having read IJ) in the room, wafting through the subject of the conversation itself and describing (the way you describe a geometric figure) the relationships within that space.
The Penitent is a desecrator of churches, probably unconnected to the murders, but it's all connected, isn't it? I bookmarked this passage when I first read it more than a month ago, but I think it might highlight yet another theme, which is somewhat illuminated, I see now, by the conversation in part 3: What is sacred?
But the murders! Bolaño took as his basis for 2666 real events in Ciudad Juárez: According to Amnesty International, as of February 2005 more than 800 bodies had been found, and over 3000 women were still missing. Bolaño gives us a repetitive forensic detailing. I lost count of how many murders (rather, murder victims) he describes, but there are many. To read this was a mind-numbing experience. I found myself more than once thinking, oh, another murder, just like all the rest, I'll just skim this bit, it's just another body, which is kind of the point Bolaño is making, that these women and girls have been dehumanized, by their killers and by the authorities, not to mention the society as a whole that brought the bulk of them to live on the fringes of society in the first place, and it's a startling revelation as a reader to realize that I also am guilty for failing to see each victim as uniquely human.
Bolaño at least offers us occasional glimpses of the lives they led when they were last seen. He is giving them a kind of voice. (It is the lot also of Florita Almada, television seer, to be giving the girls of Santa Teresa a voice. She appears alongside a ventriloquist.)
There are patterns, there must be patterns, but they are hard to discern. Then there are murders that break from the pattern and establish new patterns. More murders, they follow an old pattern. Newer patterns emerge that are a combination of previous patterns. It's clear no one person is responsible.
Surely some investigator must see patterns too. You'd think. (The very young and ironically named Lalo Cura — la locura, lunacy — is perhaps the clearest-seeing of the lot.) But no investigation lasts more than a few days. Most (all?) of the cases are shelved. No one seems to care.
Could all these men, could this whole culture of men, in separate and multiple incidents, of their individual accords, and maybe some of them conspiratorially, could they be killings their own wives, sisters, daughters?
Are the murders simply being ignored, or are they being covered up?
Adam Kirsch writes the following in his review, "Slouching Towards Santa Teresa: Roberto Bolaño's utterly strange masterpiece":
While the title "2666" is often thought to refers to a year, this review reinforces my impression that the "666" portion of it is critical, as in a 2nd coming of 666.
Clearly Haas is a scapegoat, but he's also very creepy.
More dreams!
There's a psychic connection between Florita and Haas. I'm thinking the book she describes (pages 431-433) that faithfully depicts the shepherding experience was written by Haas (aka Archimboldi?).
There's some recurring imagery: the crater, the abyss.
This oasis of horror in the desert ("The desert is an endless sea." p 559), as if by meteor a great evil embedded itself there in the earth.
I lost track of many character's names and their backstories: druglords, reporters, government officials. In my brief re-skimming of this part a month after my first read-through, different portions are jumping out at me as significant. I suspect this truly would be a book much richer on rereading, being informed by the knowledge of how it all comes together.
A favourite sentence: "The scarred moon still shone in the sky" (p 401).
Weirdly, there are various unpleasantnesses to contend with in IJ as well. But they are deeply human and emotional, and so kind of cathartic. The murders in 2666, on the other hand, are numbing.
Right. So. I'd actually started in on the next and final part, and wanted and still want to speed ahead. But this is a weird little exercise in restraint for me, cuz I'm more about the go with the flow whatever feels right when it comes to reading, yet I want and feel it's important to think a little about what's going on in 2666, to figure it out, to draw it out — not in the sense of prolonging the experience but rather more to engage in conversation with and see it become itself. And it feels right to do so, so I'm going with that.
Also a bit weird w/r/t reading 2666 interlaced with IJ is this urge to compare and contrast these 2 books, or at least the experiences of reading these 2 books, when really they're almost not at all alike apart from their size. As part of an Infinite Summer roundtable, Kevin Guilfoile said, "During the Tournament of Books I said about Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 that in order for a novel to be a masterpiece it probably also has to be at least a little bit terrible. I said that with some tongue in my cheek, although compared to Infinite Jest I found 2666 to be a lot less ambitious and a lot more terrible." I found myself feeling a bit defensive about this, being as I was pretty fresh off a deep immersion in 2666 and at that point still well behind the IJ schedule. But I've had a very different kind of engagement with the books. And I'm temporarily thinking he may be right.
There was a tipping point with IJ: there came a page when something clicked, it made some kind of sense, I got it, and everything that came before was richer and being informed by what came next. I am still waiting for such a point in 2666, fully expecting it never to come. 2666 is definitely the more cryptic of the 2 novels. It started with a fairly heavy mood, and this has been maintained to the two-thirds mark, which is what necessitated my need for a little breathing space away from it; something hangs over this book, some impending doom, and that's fine — great actually — it's lofty and poetic and mysterious — but to what end?
Where does this leave me? Recognizing that the ambitions of these books are different (I think). Apples and oranges. Un cheval, une patate.
They are both, I realize now, somewhat surreal — in that kind of slippery, Lynchian sense of the word — and dreams figure quite prominently in both, with that vaguely nightmarish hint of something slipping between the known realm and someplace generally left untapped. Ironically (and let's ignore whether I'm using that term correctly), while IJ is set in the near future, or an alternate now, I found it much easier to relate to, to accept these characters as real; 2666 is based in our world (and inspired by true events), yet I'm not connecting with the characters, our view of which is quite controlled, filtered, distant (and the same could be said w/r/t its plot) (and this distance serves its own purpose — I merely comment on the fact of it).
Also, a Lovecraftian horror, as Jonathan Lethem pointed out:
As the four become sexually and emotionally entangled, the puzzle of their devotion to a writer who declines their interest — declines, in fact, ever to appear — inches like a great Lovecraftian shadow over their lives.
In IJ there's a face in the floor, and the black, billowy triangle-ish shape of horror, as easily attributable to Lovecraft as to Lynch.
IJ has earnestness, and a fair bit of humour. 2666 has... I want to say poetry, but I don't think that's quite true, not the way the language in Bolaño's short novels sings with awe about our nobler purpose or the dirt under our fingernails. But, OK, it has this "quality" about its language, and this other admirable thing I can't think of any other way to describe but mood.
The Part about Fate
I didn't much like The Part about Fate, being part 3 and one of the smaller parts of 2666. There's some good stuff in there, which I'll get to in a minute, but this is the way I feel about this part and let me see if I can figure out why that is.
It's not about fate as destiny; it's about American Oscar Fate, whose real name is Quincy Williams, and I don't know why they call him Oscar Fate at work, but they do — maybe it's his chosen pen name as a journalist. Well, maybe you could say the whole thing really is about fate, the name must've been chosen deliberately, symbolically, and I wonder whether it was Fate in the original Spanish or whether the name was translated.
It starts with the death of his mother. Then there's the death of a coworker. He has odd dreams, and starts to occasionally vomit, here and there fairly randomly. Aggressive snippets of movies, of television, or other people's conversations seem to accidentally infiltrate his consciousness, which for the most part is pretty blank, or maybe numb (with grief? exhaustion?) or lost. Something about rap music and suicide and misogyny.
Fate is on assignment to interview Barry Seaman, a former Panther who did some serious prison time and published a book of ribs recipes. Seaman now mostly gives lectures, one of which Fate attends, and it discusses Danger, Money, Food, Stars, and Usefuleness in a fairly random, disconnected way; Seaman stretches to segue very clumsily from one topic to the next — it's almost a stream of consciousness, and I have the impression some of his audience may perceive his mental workings as profound, but I think it's merely primitive. Seaman has the air of a prophet about him, and I don't mean to diminish how "interesting" his speech is, but the lecture as a whole doesn't really fit together; as is the case with many prophets, maybe it's for the audience to find their own significance in it. Seaman does, however, profess an apreciation of metaphor and love for reading, with a deep fondness for An Abridged Digest of the Complete Works of Voltaire.
Fate is reading The Slave Trade. He heads to Mexico to cover a boxing match, the story his dead coworker was supposed to be on. Fate witnesses a couple of Camaros (which I now know figure in the part that follows) and starts hearing about the killings in Santa Teresa.
In the nineteenth century, toward the middle or the end of the nineteenth century, said the white-haired man, society tended to filter death through the fabric of words. [...] Most human beings existed on the outer fringes of society. In the seventeenth century for example, at least twenty percent of the merchandise on every slave ship died. By that I mean the dark-skinned people who were being transported for sale, to Virginia, say. And that didn't get anyone upset or make headlines in the Virginia papers or make anyone go out and call for the ship captain to be hanged. But if a plantation owner went crazy and killed his neighbor and then went galloping back home, dismounted and promptly killed his wife, two deaths in total, Virginia society spent the next six months in fear, and the legend of the murderer on horseback might linger for generations. [...] [They] weren't part of society [...]. What happened to them could be written, you might say, it was legible. That said, words back then were mostly used in the art of avoidance, not of revelation. Maybe they revealed something all the same.
Absolutely Santa Teresa is the fringes of society. (Fate wants to do some reportage about the situation, but his editor's not interested.) So this, finally, is the heart of Bolaño's ambition: to reveal the avoidance.
(As I'm sitting here rethumbing these pages, I realize how many hints there are of things to come, characters and scenarios we will meet again. Of one personage, a suspect: "He has the face of a dreamer, but of a dreamer who's dreaming at great speed. A dreamer whose dreams are far out ahead of our dreams." I'm suddenly seeing all sorts of commonalities with IJ — the fragmentation of the narrative, a cubist view, an other-dimensional perspective, the problem of the speed at which we process experience. This part about Fate is in fact much more vital to the whole than I'd initially given it credit. Oh, and: both writers reference David Lynch quite extensively.)
They talk about the end of the sacred, which I take to mean something like intimacy and connectedness in the way we engage with our world.
And so Fate is immersed in the seamy underbelly of Santa Teresa. I'm not sure whether the boxing match serves a purpose other than as a plot device to bring this journalist to Mexico.
I see now that The Part about Fate begins with its end:
When did it all begin? he thought. When did I go under? A dark, vaguely familiar Aztec lake. The nightmare. How do I get away? How do I take control? And the questions kept coming: Was getting away what he really wanted? Did he really want to leave it all behind? And he also thought: the pain doesn't matter anymore. And also: maybe it all began with my mother's death. And also: the pain doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't get any worse, as long as it isn't unbearable. And also: fuck, it hurts, fuck, it hurts. Pay it no mind, pay it no mind. And all around him, ghosts.
(Aztecs turn up again on page 473: “The Aztecs cooked posole with pieces of human flesh.”)
The Part about the Crimes
The Part about the Crimes is a grotesque and fairly disjointed inventory of the gruesome crimes occurring in Santa Teresa.
The following passage is from early on in this lengthy part. I love the way it dances around the space, the focus flitting from the two people engaged in dialogue to the figurants (a word I would not have used before having read IJ) in the room, wafting through the subject of the conversation itself and describing (the way you describe a geometric figure) the relationships within that space.
What is sacrophobia exactly? Juan de Dios Martínez asked the director. Teach me a little about it. The director said her name was Elvira Campos and she ordered a whiskey. Juan de Dios Martínez ordered a beer and glanced around the bar. On the terrace an accordion player, followed by a violinist, was trying to attract the atention of a man dressed like a rancher. A narco, thought Juan de Dios Martínez, although since the man had his back to him, he couldn't say who it was. Sacraphobia is fear or hatred of the sacred, of sacred objects, especially from your own religion, said Elvira Campos. He thought about making a reference to Dracula, who fled crucifixes, but he was afraid the director would laugh at him. And you believe the Penitent suffers from sacraphobia? I've given it some thought, and I do. A few days ago he disemboweled a priest and another person, said Juan de Dios Martínez. The accordion player was very young, twenty at most, and round as an apple. The way he held himself, however, made him look at least twenty-five, except when he smiled, which was often, and then all of a sudden it was clear how young and inexperienced he was. He doesn't carry the knife to hurt anyone, any living thing, I mean, but to destroy the sacred images he finds in churches, said the director. Shall we call each other by our first names? Juan de Dios Martínez asked her. Elvira Campos smiled and nodded. You're a very attractive woman, said Juan de Dios Martínez. Thin and attractive. You don't like thin women, Inspector? asked the director. The violinist was taller than the accordionist and she was wearing a black blouse and black leggings. She had long straight hair down to her waist and sometimes she closed her eyes, especially when the accordeonist sang and played. The saddest thing, thought Juan de Dios Martínez, was that the narco, or the suited back of the man he thought was narco, was hardly paying any attention to them, busy as he was talking to a man with face of a mongoose and hooker with the face of a cat. Weren't we going ot call each other by our first names? asked Juan de Dios Martínez. You're right, said the director. So are you sure the Penitent suffers from sacraphobia? The director said she'd been looking through the archives at the asylum to see whether she could find some former patient with a case history like the Penitent's. She hadn't come up with anything. If he's as old as you say he is, I'd guess he's been institutionalized at some point. The accordion player suddenly started to stamp in time to the music. From where they were sitting they couldn't hear him, but he was making faces, working his mouth and eyebrows, and then he ruffled his hair with one hand and seemed to howl with laughter. The violinist had her eyes closed. The narco's head swiveled. Juan de Dios Martínez thought to himself that the boy had finally gotten what he wanted. There's probably a file on him in some psychiatric center in Hermosillo or Tijuana. It can't be such a rare case. Maybe he was on medication until recently. Maybe he stopped taking it, said teh director. Are you married, do you live with anyone? asked Juan de Dios Martínez in an almost inaudible voice. I live alone, said the director. But you have children, I saw the pictures in your office. I have a daughter, she's married. Juan de Dios Martínez felt something release inside of him and he laughed. Don't tell me you're already a grandmother. That's not the kind of thing you say to a woman, Inspector. How old are you? asked the director. Thirty-four, said Juan de Dios Martínez. Seventeen years younger than me. You don't look more than forty, said the inspector. The director laughed: I exercise every day, I don't smoke, I drink very little, I eat right, I used to go running every morning. Not anymore? No, now I've bought myself a treadmill. The two of them laughed. I listen to Bach on my headphones and I almost always run three or four miles a day. Sacraphobia. If I tell my colleagues the Penitent is suffering from sacraphobia, they'll laugh at me. The man with the mongoose face rose from his chair and said something into the accordionist's ear. Then he sat down again and teh accordionist's mouth screwed up into a pout. Like a child on teh verg of tears. The violinis had her eyes open and she was smiling. The narco and the woman with cat face bent their heads together. The narco's nose was big and bony and aristocratic looking. But aristocratic looking how? There was a wild expression on the accordionist's face, except for his lips. Unfamiliar currents surged through the inspector's chest. The world is a strange and fascinating place, he thought.
The Penitent is a desecrator of churches, probably unconnected to the murders, but it's all connected, isn't it? I bookmarked this passage when I first read it more than a month ago, but I think it might highlight yet another theme, which is somewhat illuminated, I see now, by the conversation in part 3: What is sacred?
But the murders! Bolaño took as his basis for 2666 real events in Ciudad Juárez: According to Amnesty International, as of February 2005 more than 800 bodies had been found, and over 3000 women were still missing. Bolaño gives us a repetitive forensic detailing. I lost count of how many murders (rather, murder victims) he describes, but there are many. To read this was a mind-numbing experience. I found myself more than once thinking, oh, another murder, just like all the rest, I'll just skim this bit, it's just another body, which is kind of the point Bolaño is making, that these women and girls have been dehumanized, by their killers and by the authorities, not to mention the society as a whole that brought the bulk of them to live on the fringes of society in the first place, and it's a startling revelation as a reader to realize that I also am guilty for failing to see each victim as uniquely human.
Bolaño at least offers us occasional glimpses of the lives they led when they were last seen. He is giving them a kind of voice. (It is the lot also of Florita Almada, television seer, to be giving the girls of Santa Teresa a voice. She appears alongside a ventriloquist.)
There are patterns, there must be patterns, but they are hard to discern. Then there are murders that break from the pattern and establish new patterns. More murders, they follow an old pattern. Newer patterns emerge that are a combination of previous patterns. It's clear no one person is responsible.
Surely some investigator must see patterns too. You'd think. (The very young and ironically named Lalo Cura — la locura, lunacy — is perhaps the clearest-seeing of the lot.) But no investigation lasts more than a few days. Most (all?) of the cases are shelved. No one seems to care.
Could all these men, could this whole culture of men, in separate and multiple incidents, of their individual accords, and maybe some of them conspiratorially, could they be killings their own wives, sisters, daughters?
Are the murders simply being ignored, or are they being covered up?
Adam Kirsch writes the following in his review, "Slouching Towards Santa Teresa: Roberto Bolaño's utterly strange masterpiece":
At the same time, Bolaño manages to suggest that the violence in Santa Teresa is something much more than a local crime wave. One of the characters who looms into individuality, out of the anonymous crowd of the dead, is Klaus Haas, a German-born American citizen who is imprisoned by the Mexican police as a scapegoat for the murders. He may or may not have killed a woman — Bolaño never lets us know for sure — but he is certainly not "the Santa Teresa killer," if only because the murders continue after he is arrested. Yet when Sergio Gonzales, a journalist reporting on his case, calls Haas in jail, Bolaño writes that over the phone line he "heard the sound of the desert and something like the tread of an animal." It is an understated but clear allusion to Yeats' "The Second Coming," where the poet sees "somewhere in sands of the desert/ A shape with lion body and the head of a man," and asks, "what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
In this indirect fashion, Bolaño hints that Haas is, if not an anti-Christ, at least a sign of the times: a beast whose advent signals some cosmic realignment. It is just one of countless moments in 2666 that suggest the metaphysical dimension of Bolaño's vision. The attentive reader will be reminded of a remark by a minor character in the novel's third section, some 200 pages earlier: "No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them." And then she might remember a strange dream that Espinoza, one of the critics, had in Part 1, in which "he could see the still, bright desert, such a solar yellow it hurt his eyes, and the figures on horseback, whose movements — the movements of horses and riders — were barely perceptible, as if they were living in a world different from ours, where speed was different, a kind of speed that looked to Espinoza like slowness, although he knew it was only the slowness that kept whoever watched from losing his mind."
While the title "2666" is often thought to refers to a year, this review reinforces my impression that the "666" portion of it is critical, as in a 2nd coming of 666.
Clearly Haas is a scapegoat, but he's also very creepy.
In his dreams he saw himself walking the corridors of the prison, the different cell block, and he could see his eyes like a hawk's as he strode that labyrinth of snores and nightmares, aware of what was going on in each cell, until suddenly he could go no farther and he came to a stop at the edge of an abyss (since the prison of his dreams was like a castle built on the edge of a bottomless abyss). There, unable to retreat, he lifted his arms, as if beseeching the heavens (which were as dark as the abyss), and tried to say something to a legion of miniature Klaus Haases, speak to them, warn, them, impart advice, but he realized, or for an instant he had the impression, that someone had sewn his lips shut. (p 488)
More dreams!
What are you trying to say to me? asked Sergio González. That here in prison they know I'm innocent, said Haas. And how do they know it? asked Haas. That was a little harder for me to figure out. It's like a noise you hear in a dream. The dream, like everything dreamed in enclosed spaces, is contagious. Suddenly someone dreams it and after a while half the prisoners dream it. But the noise you hear isn't part of the dream, it's real. The noise belongs to a separate order of things. Do you understand? First someone and then everyone hears a noise in a dream, but the noise is from real life, not the dream. The noise is real. Do you understand? (p 450)
There's a psychic connection between Florita and Haas. I'm thinking the book she describes (pages 431-433) that faithfully depicts the shepherding experience was written by Haas (aka Archimboldi?).
Haas like to sit on the ground, against the wall, in the shady part of the yard. And he liked to think. He liked to imagine that God didn't exist. For three minutes, at least. He also liked to think about the insignificance of human beings. Five minutes. If pain didn't exist, he thought, we would be perfect. Insignificant and ignorant of pain. Fucking perfect. But there was pain to fuck everything up. Finally he would think about luxury. The luxury of memory, the luxury of knowing a language or several languages, the luxury of thinking and not running away. Then he opened his eyes and contemplated, as if in a dream, some of the Bisontes, who were moving around the sunny part of the yard, the other side, as if they were grazing. The Bisontes graze in the prison yard, he thought, and that calmed him like a fast-acting tranquilizer, because sometimes, though not often, Haas started the day as if his head had been pierced with the point of a knife.
There's some recurring imagery: the crater, the abyss.
Shortly after they left the ranch they passed an enormous black stone. On the stone Lalo thought he saw a Gila monster, motionless, staring into the endless west. They say that stone is really a meteorite, said Pedro Negrete. In a gully, farther to the north the Río Paredes curved, and from the road the tops of trees were visible like a green-black carpet with a cloud of dust hanging over them were Pedro Rengifo's cattle came to drink each afternoon. But if it was a meteorite, said Pedro Negrete, it would've left a crater, and where's the crater? When Lalo Cura looked at the black stone again in the rearview mirror, the Gila monster was gone. (p 399)
This oasis of horror in the desert ("The desert is an endless sea." p 559), as if by meteor a great evil embedded itself there in the earth.
If it had been up to her, everyone around her, the shadowy figures on the edges of the photograph, would have disappeared instantly, and so would the room, the prison, jailers and jailed, the hundred-year-old walls of the Santa Teresa penitentiary, and all that was left would be a crater, and in the crater there would be only silence and the vague presence of the lawyer and Haas, chained in the depths. (p 591)
I lost track of many character's names and their backstories: druglords, reporters, government officials. In my brief re-skimming of this part a month after my first read-through, different portions are jumping out at me as significant. I suspect this truly would be a book much richer on rereading, being informed by the knowledge of how it all comes together.
A favourite sentence: "The scarred moon still shone in the sky" (p 401).
Generosity abounds
Every day, the last few weeks, I rush to check the mailbox. I've been waiting and waiting and waiting.
Amid the usual bills and flyers I've had a couple nice surprises — for example, review copies of Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked (I like most of his other novels better than this, but still breezy and delightful) and Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood (slowgoing, so far — I'm not in the right headspace for it, but maybe the upcoming cottage weekend will resolve that).
But I've been waiting for something in particular. And yesterday it came!
I pulled it out of the mailbox, and when I recognized the publisher's address, the world ceased to exist. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god" as I carried it reverentially into the house. Bag dropped off my shoulder, I let other mail slip to the ground. Child babbling incoherently in an auditory distance (she's right beside me, but she sounds like I'm underwater). My fingers fumbling at the pull tab. J-F said "You look like a junkie who just scored 10k of crack-cocaine. Do they send that by mail?" They do. It is.
Richard Powers' Generosity, about the genotype for happiness.
The blurb asks us, "What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments?"
I've been grappling with the problem of happiness for some 30 years. I think this feeling — when you open the mailbox and find an advance reading copy of a novel with an astounding premise that taps one of your own life obsessions by a guy who wrote one of your favourite books of all time — is something akin to it.
Amid the usual bills and flyers I've had a couple nice surprises — for example, review copies of Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked (I like most of his other novels better than this, but still breezy and delightful) and Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood (slowgoing, so far — I'm not in the right headspace for it, but maybe the upcoming cottage weekend will resolve that).
But I've been waiting for something in particular. And yesterday it came!
I pulled it out of the mailbox, and when I recognized the publisher's address, the world ceased to exist. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god" as I carried it reverentially into the house. Bag dropped off my shoulder, I let other mail slip to the ground. Child babbling incoherently in an auditory distance (she's right beside me, but she sounds like I'm underwater). My fingers fumbling at the pull tab. J-F said "You look like a junkie who just scored 10k of crack-cocaine. Do they send that by mail?" They do. It is.
Richard Powers' Generosity, about the genotype for happiness.
The blurb asks us, "What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments?"
I've been grappling with the problem of happiness for some 30 years. I think this feeling — when you open the mailbox and find an advance reading copy of a novel with an astounding premise that taps one of your own life obsessions by a guy who wrote one of your favourite books of all time — is something akin to it.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Peaches
So yesterday, yesterday an urge came over me, an urge to buy a record album (do people buy those anymore? a CD? what if you download it, what do you call it?) that I've been thinking about for some time, and it's ridiculous how much I've had to think through this purchase — a $20 purchase! — I mean, I'm a grown-up with a decent income etc, I spend more than that on coffee in any given week — thinking about how I could get it cheaper if I ordered it online, except I'd have to wait days for it to be delivered, which is extra dumb, cuz I've been contemplating this whole thing for weeks already, or how about I just download it and have it instantaneously?, but though I buy some songs that way it's just so ephemeral and what if some faceless corporate power decides I'm listening to the wrong sort of music and having remote access to my music library decides to modify my behaviour by removing some potentially subversive influences?, and besides, I need a CD for the car, right?, cuz this is a great roadtrip type of CD, so even though we have one of those iPod adapter thingies to play it in the car, the couple times we used it for some reason it wasn't so easy because like you can't charge it up and play it at the same time or something like that, so I decided finally: CD it would have to be, and yesterday, well, yesterday afternoon I decided I wanted it now — I'd been sitting there all day, at my desk, and all through lunch, I ate my sandwich at my desk, powering through this project, and so I needed a break and I wanted this CD now, now was the time, so I stepped out over to the record store (do we call them that anymore? music store? entertainment needs centre? you know, the HMV) and I headed downstairs and there I saw the most amazingly beautiful and truly weird thing: there's this guy at a listening station, which is more like a semicircular customer-service counter with like maybe 5 plug-in set-ups, and he's a fairly small man but taking a lot of space; he's like 50-ish, wearing a faded red t-shirt, ballcap, and salt-and-pepper beard, and he's totally rocking out to whatever it is he's sampling at the listening station, playing the most vigorous air guitar I can ever recall witnessing, and you got the feeling he wasn't sampling a new release out of curiosity, he was in for the duration, with some classic album by his favourite band, he couldn't possibly be here on his coffee break, he was so fully in the music, it was a sight to behold, and so I picked up this album I'd so been wanting, being, by the way, Peaches: The Very Best of the Stranglers, which truly does represent their very lovely best, and I browsed a bit, and tried to find out what song was playing overhead, but I can't remember the snippet of lyrics now that had me in thrall, and I daydreamed a bit, or loitered really, just figuring out which route I should take back to the office so I could pick up a good, not average, cup of coffee on the way, and I paid for my CD, and on my way out Mr Air Guitar was still going strong and completely oblivious to the fact that he was at a listening station on the lower level of a chainstore, and this is a beautiful thing.
There was a chill wind, but on my return walk, the sun was at my back boring a hole through my shoulder, it felt like, even while my arms were bathed in cool.
The workday finished, toute la gang headed across the street for the annual company-wide summer 5 à 7. A cocktail this and a caesar that, it was well after sept that The Project took hold, to amass (from, eg, early leavers, pregnant women) sufficient drink tickets (44) in order to be able to order a bottle of champagne, but so we (well, mostly I — I admit, The Project was totally of my conception) negotiated this to a lesser number (23) for a bottle of French vin mousseux but not of the Champagne region, with even enough tickets (2) left over to get someone else a martini, and I had an interesting chat with a heretofore unknown coworker about Infinite Jest.
And I've been listening to my new record album CD all day.
What ever happened to Leon Trotsky?
There was a chill wind, but on my return walk, the sun was at my back boring a hole through my shoulder, it felt like, even while my arms were bathed in cool.
The workday finished, toute la gang headed across the street for the annual company-wide summer 5 à 7. A cocktail this and a caesar that, it was well after sept that The Project took hold, to amass (from, eg, early leavers, pregnant women) sufficient drink tickets (44) in order to be able to order a bottle of champagne, but so we (well, mostly I — I admit, The Project was totally of my conception) negotiated this to a lesser number (23) for a bottle of French vin mousseux but not of the Champagne region, with even enough tickets (2) left over to get someone else a martini, and I had an interesting chat with a heretofore unknown coworker about Infinite Jest.
And I've been listening to my new record album CD all day.
What ever happened to Leon Trotsky?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Reading in transit
We are all of us pressed against the metro door. I am between a bongo-playing bongo player, with his bongo, and a robe-wearing, Krishna-reading Krishna. He is reading about spiritual development.
I am reading Maud Newton's suggested reading list with regard to doubt.
I see someone at the next door reading Firmin, in French. I want to shout out, Hey, I think I know you. Are you a rat too? But I don't.
We are all of us travelling in the same direction — for five minutes our lives follow the same physical path — but we are going to different places.
I am reading Maud Newton's suggested reading list with regard to doubt.
I see someone at the next door reading Firmin, in French. I want to shout out, Hey, I think I know you. Are you a rat too? But I don't.
We are all of us travelling in the same direction — for five minutes our lives follow the same physical path — but we are going to different places.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Infinite speculation
So at some point, about a week ago, I was ready to say this is an awesome book, this Infinite Jest, and while I spent much of the first couple hundred pages admiring it, I was also somewhat confused and not really relating to it.
But I'm done now. (I checked the Infinite Summer reading schedule at about that point and freaked out to find that I was a whole week behind, what with having forgone other reading in a concerted effort to catch up and stay the course, but then I realized I'd gotten my dates wrong and I was in fact a week ahead of schedule, by which point, being page 600+, I was kind of hooked and felt compelled to barrel through to the end.)
So but, right, I'm done now, and yup, awesome book.
To those of you who think it's an intimidating read (and it does have that reputation, and its imposing physical size adds to this perception) and demands a serious time commitment and intense mental focus I say, yeah, whatever. For me, well, I just don't have 3 weeks of uninterrupted time where I don't have to go to work and interact with my family and make sure the child is sufficiently clothed and fed and watch some dumb movie and have this dental implant procedure over and done with once and for all and shop for school supplies and hang out at the community pool and drink pisco sour on the balcony (not necessarily in that order). Because, life, you know; you gotta do those things. And as much as some nights I'd like to stay up and read till 4 in the morning, as engrossing as any book is, it's rare if my eyelids can stay propped open beyond midnight, and then well I'd still have to get up at 7(-ish) and my day would be totally fucked. So, if not now, when? I'm glad to read 3 pages on the way to work, and 3 more on the way home if there's room enough to hold open the hardcover without jabbing some stranger's shoulderblade, and maybe as many more with coffee after lunch on a slow day at work, with a few minutes to check the Infinite Summer forums to see how my impressions measure up against others' and maybe more importantly to check that I haven't missed the significance of some scenes (or missed a scene altogether) what with having to change metro lines, and it's worth lugging this heavy, heavy book around (though some days I did think it was stupid to do so when there's this other novel, a slim little paperback, I've been dying to read), but hey, I really did want to know what the hell was going to happen to Gately (et al). Two pages or 5 minutes at a go does not mean not being able to be immersed and attentive. It doesn't take time or space to give yourself over to something or take something out of it; it just takes now.
Bits of this book are very funny, and it's undeniably clever. The cleverness, with the vocabulary and the footnotes and the historical references and literary allusions, may rub some people the wrong way, as I think it did me the first time I picked the book up, like all it's about is David Foster Wallace writing look-at-me-I'm-so-clever. But at some point (no, I'm not sure what that point is) it dawned on me how desperately earnest it was; I don't know how he did it (how do you convey earnestness? can it be feigned?) — not plot, or even character, more like tapping into something essential about how the mind works with all its messy body and emotion — and you can't (shouldn't) fault something just for being (or even obviously trying to be) smart when that's just a byproduct of representing something real. Also, some bits are horrific. And on the whole, Infinite Jest is overwhelmingly sad.
It's about tennis and Quebec separatism and mass consumerism, but mostly it's about addiction and about being trapped inside your own head.
(People have been speculating about whether Infinite Jest will be read 100 years from now. It's already dated, very firmly grounded in the 1990s. And it's quite unique in being a world that's so now. I can't think of many big sprawling (re-)imagined worlds that weren't written with the perspective of hindsight. Maybe Dickens. But then there's this near-future element. Umm. What was I getting at? It's unique and rich, and people should (will) continue to read it. It's not my favourite book of all time, but it ranks high on the gut-wrenchingness scale.)
On the whole, I don't find this book to be very quotable, at least not in any meaningful kind of way. There are vast sections that could be held up independently for appreciation (like pages 157 through 169, particularly the bit about Brando — and I get the feeling DFW wholly embraced a kind of Stanislavski method of writing) but it's not easy to distill just a few sentences that embody the whole of the humour or the poignancy.
But if there's anything like a single point to this book, maybe this is it:
How the novel ends is a bit of a puzzle, and I hope it's not a spoiler (avert your eyes now if you care) to say that, what with the fragmented chronology, the end is given to us at the very beginning. And once having reached the end in state of befuddlement, I had to start over again.
To those of you who've read the book and/or those who find my rambling on some level entertaining I address the following disjointed thoughts and questions:
Mario's first birth is described on page 312. What the hell does that mean? It's implied there is a second birth of the Incandenzas' second son. There is no "rebirth" of Mario later described. Or is it that Mario ("Booboo") was dismissed by the family, being so physically deformed as to not be a son at all, in which case the later-born Hal might be considered the real second son? But glimpses into their family life doesn't bear this out at all.
I love that a quarter of the bus was yellow-highlighting copies of Abbott's Flatland (p 281). That's a fascinating little work of dystopia, and I think here it's a nice little clue about how the ghost/wraith works, but also kind of allegorical, that there's always another dimension, or layer, or step, or goal, beyond this one, that realization on this plane, actualizing in the moment, is nothing when viewed from another angle.
Orin needs women "to fall so terribly in love with him they'd never be able want anyone else" (p 634). This need develops sometime after his break-up with Joelle, and it's akin to the power of Joelle's own beauty and the compulsion of the Entertainment. Did some one event trigger it? Death of his father, some realization about his mother, what?
What was the first emergency room incident Hal refers to (p 16) about? This would've taken place a year back, he says, about the time the novel leaves off. Plain old breakdown, or to do with Pemulis's stash? Does it matter? Is this when he meets Gately? Do he and Gately really dig up Himself's head, or is this something that happens metaphorically or on another plane of consciousness? Does it matter?
"I have become an infantophile" (p 16). I don't think that statement can be taken literally. But. Lover of infants. Hal stumbled on the men's meeting, and while I found this scene uncomfortable (as did Hal) and didn't much see the point of it except for Hal's continuing circling around his addiction problem, I now see it as pivotal. This is the thing that makes him start to regress. This is where he starts to get inside Himself's head. (And that's where the Entertainment is, inside Himself's head, whether literally or metaphorically. He killed himself to destroy the master copy.)
In the Year of Glad, Hal has become what he'd feared (p 694):
In the end (the novel's beginning), Hal becomes human.
He thinks of the Grief-Therapist ("Something smells delicious."), the Moms, the soups over the microwave. What if Hal ate Himself's head? (I mean metaphorically, I suppose.) At least, it's something he wanted to do (but couldn't let himself do?).
"Call it something I ate." Metaphorically this is exactly what he did when he came home from the men's meeting and immersed himself in viewing all his dad's cartridges.
This is Hal finally grieving.
But I'm done now. (I checked the Infinite Summer reading schedule at about that point and freaked out to find that I was a whole week behind, what with having forgone other reading in a concerted effort to catch up and stay the course, but then I realized I'd gotten my dates wrong and I was in fact a week ahead of schedule, by which point, being page 600+, I was kind of hooked and felt compelled to barrel through to the end.)
So but, right, I'm done now, and yup, awesome book.
To those of you who think it's an intimidating read (and it does have that reputation, and its imposing physical size adds to this perception) and demands a serious time commitment and intense mental focus I say, yeah, whatever. For me, well, I just don't have 3 weeks of uninterrupted time where I don't have to go to work and interact with my family and make sure the child is sufficiently clothed and fed and watch some dumb movie and have this dental implant procedure over and done with once and for all and shop for school supplies and hang out at the community pool and drink pisco sour on the balcony (not necessarily in that order). Because, life, you know; you gotta do those things. And as much as some nights I'd like to stay up and read till 4 in the morning, as engrossing as any book is, it's rare if my eyelids can stay propped open beyond midnight, and then well I'd still have to get up at 7(-ish) and my day would be totally fucked. So, if not now, when? I'm glad to read 3 pages on the way to work, and 3 more on the way home if there's room enough to hold open the hardcover without jabbing some stranger's shoulderblade, and maybe as many more with coffee after lunch on a slow day at work, with a few minutes to check the Infinite Summer forums to see how my impressions measure up against others' and maybe more importantly to check that I haven't missed the significance of some scenes (or missed a scene altogether) what with having to change metro lines, and it's worth lugging this heavy, heavy book around (though some days I did think it was stupid to do so when there's this other novel, a slim little paperback, I've been dying to read), but hey, I really did want to know what the hell was going to happen to Gately (et al). Two pages or 5 minutes at a go does not mean not being able to be immersed and attentive. It doesn't take time or space to give yourself over to something or take something out of it; it just takes now.
Bits of this book are very funny, and it's undeniably clever. The cleverness, with the vocabulary and the footnotes and the historical references and literary allusions, may rub some people the wrong way, as I think it did me the first time I picked the book up, like all it's about is David Foster Wallace writing look-at-me-I'm-so-clever. But at some point (no, I'm not sure what that point is) it dawned on me how desperately earnest it was; I don't know how he did it (how do you convey earnestness? can it be feigned?) — not plot, or even character, more like tapping into something essential about how the mind works with all its messy body and emotion — and you can't (shouldn't) fault something just for being (or even obviously trying to be) smart when that's just a byproduct of representing something real. Also, some bits are horrific. And on the whole, Infinite Jest is overwhelmingly sad.
It's about tennis and Quebec separatism and mass consumerism, but mostly it's about addiction and about being trapped inside your own head.
(People have been speculating about whether Infinite Jest will be read 100 years from now. It's already dated, very firmly grounded in the 1990s. And it's quite unique in being a world that's so now. I can't think of many big sprawling (re-)imagined worlds that weren't written with the perspective of hindsight. Maybe Dickens. But then there's this near-future element. Umm. What was I getting at? It's unique and rich, and people should (will) continue to read it. It's not my favourite book of all time, but it ranks high on the gut-wrenchingness scale.)
On the whole, I don't find this book to be very quotable, at least not in any meaningful kind of way. There are vast sections that could be held up independently for appreciation (like pages 157 through 169, particularly the bit about Brando — and I get the feeling DFW wholly embraced a kind of Stanislavski method of writing) but it's not easy to distill just a few sentences that embody the whole of the humour or the poignancy.
But if there's anything like a single point to this book, maybe this is it:
It is now lately sometimes seemed like a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring that way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately — the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of plunging into. Flight from exactly what? These rooms blandly filled with excrement and meat? To what purpose? This was why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions why and to what grow real beaks and claws. It was kind, in a way.
How the novel ends is a bit of a puzzle, and I hope it's not a spoiler (avert your eyes now if you care) to say that, what with the fragmented chronology, the end is given to us at the very beginning. And once having reached the end in state of befuddlement, I had to start over again.
To those of you who've read the book and/or those who find my rambling on some level entertaining I address the following disjointed thoughts and questions:
Mario's first birth is described on page 312. What the hell does that mean? It's implied there is a second birth of the Incandenzas' second son. There is no "rebirth" of Mario later described. Or is it that Mario ("Booboo") was dismissed by the family, being so physically deformed as to not be a son at all, in which case the later-born Hal might be considered the real second son? But glimpses into their family life doesn't bear this out at all.
I love that a quarter of the bus was yellow-highlighting copies of Abbott's Flatland (p 281). That's a fascinating little work of dystopia, and I think here it's a nice little clue about how the ghost/wraith works, but also kind of allegorical, that there's always another dimension, or layer, or step, or goal, beyond this one, that realization on this plane, actualizing in the moment, is nothing when viewed from another angle.
Orin needs women "to fall so terribly in love with him they'd never be able want anyone else" (p 634). This need develops sometime after his break-up with Joelle, and it's akin to the power of Joelle's own beauty and the compulsion of the Entertainment. Did some one event trigger it? Death of his father, some realization about his mother, what?
What was the first emergency room incident Hal refers to (p 16) about? This would've taken place a year back, he says, about the time the novel leaves off. Plain old breakdown, or to do with Pemulis's stash? Does it matter? Is this when he meets Gately? Do he and Gately really dig up Himself's head, or is this something that happens metaphorically or on another plane of consciousness? Does it matter?
"I have become an infantophile" (p 16). I don't think that statement can be taken literally. But. Lover of infants. Hal stumbled on the men's meeting, and while I found this scene uncomfortable (as did Hal) and didn't much see the point of it except for Hal's continuing circling around his addiction problem, I now see it as pivotal. This is the thing that makes him start to regress. This is where he starts to get inside Himself's head. (And that's where the Entertainment is, inside Himself's head, whether literally or metaphorically. He killed himself to destroy the master copy.)
In the Year of Glad, Hal has become what he'd feared (p 694):
Hal, who's empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he's really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.
In the end (the novel's beginning), Hal becomes human.
He thinks of the Grief-Therapist ("Something smells delicious."), the Moms, the soups over the microwave. What if Hal ate Himself's head? (I mean metaphorically, I suppose.) At least, it's something he wanted to do (but couldn't let himself do?).
"Call it something I ate." Metaphorically this is exactly what he did when he came home from the men's meeting and immersed himself in viewing all his dad's cartridges.
This is Hal finally grieving.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The waterless flood
Margaret Atwood has a new book coming out in a few weeks, The Year of the Flood, the website for which launched this weekend.
The new novel is a simultaneouel in relation to the dystopian Oryx and Crake, featuring some of the same characters in an overlapping timeframe. I look forward to reading it, and I expect I'll be revisiting some of O&C as I do so.
(Read an excerpt from The Year of the Flood.)
The new website is a marketing marvel. Beyond promoting the book, a CD of associated "hymns" (lyrics by Atwood, and which figure in the novel), and related merchandise (t-shirts and totebags), it's selling environmental awareness.
Part of me is sceptical. Ultimately, it's all about selling books. But it's commendable that Atwood is taking her message (whatever exactly it might turn out to be) quite seriously, and putting her money where her mouth is.
For example, in embarking on tour to promote the book, she's publicly pledging to keep her carbon footprint to a minimum (she's taking a boat to England!), stay only in hotels that have environmental policies, and avoid bottled water.
Among the many links of interest on this website, two in particular caught my eye:
Victimless leather. Grow your own! Not sure how I feel about this. We've so much moved away from adorning ourselves with leathers and furs that being able to grow your own brings us back to a world where it's valued. I can see this encouraging poaching among those who can't afford the genetic synthetics.
Ecoburial. This is totally the way I want to go. Turned into dry pink crumbs, for easy and safe composting! Read about the environmental drawbacks of both cremation and traditional burial on the Promessa website.
Atwood will be blogging while she's on the road.
(You can also follow her on Twitter, where she repeatedly proves just how funny she is, in 140 characters or less: "I made a typo [...] 'Imperonating' is pretending to be Evita." "Good thing not me in charge of world!")
Now just to see what The Year of the Flood is actually about...
The new novel is a simultaneouel in relation to the dystopian Oryx and Crake, featuring some of the same characters in an overlapping timeframe. I look forward to reading it, and I expect I'll be revisiting some of O&C as I do so.
(Read an excerpt from The Year of the Flood.)
The new website is a marketing marvel. Beyond promoting the book, a CD of associated "hymns" (lyrics by Atwood, and which figure in the novel), and related merchandise (t-shirts and totebags), it's selling environmental awareness.
Part of me is sceptical. Ultimately, it's all about selling books. But it's commendable that Atwood is taking her message (whatever exactly it might turn out to be) quite seriously, and putting her money where her mouth is.
For example, in embarking on tour to promote the book, she's publicly pledging to keep her carbon footprint to a minimum (she's taking a boat to England!), stay only in hotels that have environmental policies, and avoid bottled water.
Among the many links of interest on this website, two in particular caught my eye:
Victimless leather. Grow your own! Not sure how I feel about this. We've so much moved away from adorning ourselves with leathers and furs that being able to grow your own brings us back to a world where it's valued. I can see this encouraging poaching among those who can't afford the genetic synthetics.
Ecoburial. This is totally the way I want to go. Turned into dry pink crumbs, for easy and safe composting! Read about the environmental drawbacks of both cremation and traditional burial on the Promessa website.
Atwood will be blogging while she's on the road.
(You can also follow her on Twitter, where she repeatedly proves just how funny she is, in 140 characters or less: "I made a typo [...] 'Imperonating' is pretending to be Evita." "Good thing not me in charge of world!")
Now just to see what The Year of the Flood is actually about...
Monday, August 17, 2009
Remote control
Bedtime is a confessional state. Individuals praying to their Gods. Between lovers. For Helena when I tuck her in.
"You know how some boys like pink? And they play with dolls?" OK.
(In theory, we are a generation enlightened beyond such stereotypically gendered roles; but in reality, today as always, boys gravitate toward some things, girls toward others.)
"Well, I really like cars."
"..."
"I'd really like to have some cars to play with."
"..."
"Like Nicholas. Nicholas has hundreds of little cars."
"..."
"And a garage. I'd like a garage to keep the cars in."
*****
We'd been together a little over a year — J-F and I — when another birthday of mine rolled round. It was quite evident from an afternoon phonecall that he'd forgotten. I don't know who finally clued him in — maybe a coworker, or maybe I dropped the hint myself.
Unusually that day I got home from work before he did. Doubtless he was scouring every inch of every store on the 7-block route from office to home for a suitable gift.
He arrived finally with a large package. I don't recall if it was wrapped. I do remember examining the box, and even as I was opening it hoping the box was just a box, a decoy, and despairing that it wasn't.
Not many interesting shops between the office and home, I know, but of all the options available at RadioShack, I wonder that he couldn't find something more sentimental than a pair of remote-controlled sports cars. (Any gadgety lusts I ever have harboured weren't of an automotive variety.) He thought they'd be fun for playing with the cat. Only one of the car–remote sets came equipped with batteries, and the trial run, on carpet, was less than stellar.
I kept the set boxed and untouched for days, thinking he might exchange it. He did not. Finally I closeted it, along with my anger. I never did tell anyone what he got me for my birthday; it was just too ludicrous.
*****
Almost a dozen years and at least three domiciles later, the cars are out of their box and freshly batteried, and the anger has dissipated. The new cat is about as impressed as the old cat, but the girl is ecstatic.
"You know how some boys like pink? And they play with dolls?" OK.
(In theory, we are a generation enlightened beyond such stereotypically gendered roles; but in reality, today as always, boys gravitate toward some things, girls toward others.)
"Well, I really like cars."
"..."
"I'd really like to have some cars to play with."
"..."
"Like Nicholas. Nicholas has hundreds of little cars."
"..."
"And a garage. I'd like a garage to keep the cars in."
*****
We'd been together a little over a year — J-F and I — when another birthday of mine rolled round. It was quite evident from an afternoon phonecall that he'd forgotten. I don't know who finally clued him in — maybe a coworker, or maybe I dropped the hint myself.
Unusually that day I got home from work before he did. Doubtless he was scouring every inch of every store on the 7-block route from office to home for a suitable gift.
He arrived finally with a large package. I don't recall if it was wrapped. I do remember examining the box, and even as I was opening it hoping the box was just a box, a decoy, and despairing that it wasn't.
Not many interesting shops between the office and home, I know, but of all the options available at RadioShack, I wonder that he couldn't find something more sentimental than a pair of remote-controlled sports cars. (Any gadgety lusts I ever have harboured weren't of an automotive variety.) He thought they'd be fun for playing with the cat. Only one of the car–remote sets came equipped with batteries, and the trial run, on carpet, was less than stellar.
I kept the set boxed and untouched for days, thinking he might exchange it. He did not. Finally I closeted it, along with my anger. I never did tell anyone what he got me for my birthday; it was just too ludicrous.
*****
Almost a dozen years and at least three domiciles later, the cars are out of their box and freshly batteried, and the anger has dissipated. The new cat is about as impressed as the old cat, but the girl is ecstatic.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Delayed gratification
I am finally on schedule and, according to the page count set out at Infinite Summer, 52.something% of the way through Infinite Jest, and inching forward.
And being that a good portion of the novel is set in a tennis academy, and a good portion of those scenes actually has to deal with the philosophy and psychology of tennis, and that in my associated literary travels this week, I had the good fortune to read for the very first time The Federer Essay, I am truly unreasonably excited to know that Roger Federer will be in Montreal for the Rogers Cup this week and I might be able to witness, albeit through a TV screen, a Federer-Nadal showdown similar to what DFW described.
But the book. Is thoroughly entertaining! I'm loving this experience. I'm a far way off from calling this the greatest piece of literature the world has ever seen, and at this juncture I firmly doubt that I will ever reread it in its entirety (although I concede certain sections are worth coming back to, for their hilarity or their clarity, whether vis-a-vis the world at large or as a key to the book's intracoherence). Maybe this really is a novel for this generation (my generation? one slightly younger than my own?).
To this point, the book offers some powerful insight into the addiction-addled mind. I particularly appreciate Gately's God problem: what if the Higher Power in the 3rd of AA's 12 steps to which one is supposed to turn oneself over is one you have absolutely no concept of, let alone believe in? (Which extended passage, starting at p 442, also leads us to a "What the fuck is water?" moment, later retold again in that awesome commencement address.) I mean, how does an atheist deal with all the God-crap in AA? Do atheists not go to AA? Or do they go through the motions, lying to others and themselves? Neither course of action really seems viable in terms of kicking an addiction. What if you're addicted to God? Is there a support group for that? (But I guess a lot of people don't see God-dependence as a kind of problem.)
(Here's a tangent: Did you know some people actually get unbaptized? Really, I know a guy. Which paradoxically maybe attributes more importance to the ritual than the unbaptizee intends. It's not like a pact with the Devil that must needs be broken. If God's a nonentity, the whole thing's kind of null and void already.)
It's Marathe and Steeply's quasi-philosophical mountaintop discussion that really holds the book together for me. It makes clear the wider political backdrop as well as some of the themes (ah yes, delayed gratification, recognition of the thematic importance of which is itself a kind of delayed gratification) through which most everything else slowly comes to make some kind of sense. There's this fabulous exchange regarding America's pursuit of happiness, and freedom, and the reader is well aware that there's a difference between "freedom from" and "freedom to," so there's no earth-shattering insight proffered — the gist of these discussions has been voiced in countless homes, classrooms, dorms, automobiles, grocery-line checkouts, dentist offices. But it's made kind of hilarious through the Separatist's use of a hypothetical problem of two individuals vying for the only-available single-size serving can of Habitant soupe aux pois.
I've had opportunity to reflect this week on the nature of the group reading experience — a local journalist interviewed me w/r/t my participation in the Infinite Summer project. And my conclusion, which should come as no surprise, is that I mostly love it.
Sure, some forum participants go on about (or namedrop, at any rate) Wittgenstein, but whatever. The book is not about Wittgenstein, and I don't know that DFW meant for it to be read about Wittgenstein (Who knows? Maybe he did. He was undoubtedly an Extremely Bright Guy, with knowledge of Wittgenstein, but whether he consciously meant to represent what all Wittgenstein was about...?) But hey, go ahead and point out whatever scene of Infinite Jest as the ultimate illustration of Wittgenstein's linguistophilosophical thought; it's just that at some point the conversation stops being about Infinite Jest, which was kind of the original point, so it can get kind of tiresome.
(Did anyone ever see Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein? That made way more sense to me than anything the kids, or the profs, ever said about the big W at school.)
Yeah, I don't know. The journalist asked me whether the forum was an opportunity for showing off, and whether it was elitist. Mostly no, mostly it's a support group. And I'm grateful for being made aware of connections I might not otherwise make on my own.
I don't see this reading as a chore or as a homework assignment; I'm not hung up on page quotas or having to contribute meaningfully on an Important Topic. But I do acknowledge that I'm reading more carefully than I've read many books this year (even if I'm not writing any more articulately on the subject), and that's a good thing to do sometimes.
And being that a good portion of the novel is set in a tennis academy, and a good portion of those scenes actually has to deal with the philosophy and psychology of tennis, and that in my associated literary travels this week, I had the good fortune to read for the very first time The Federer Essay, I am truly unreasonably excited to know that Roger Federer will be in Montreal for the Rogers Cup this week and I might be able to witness, albeit through a TV screen, a Federer-Nadal showdown similar to what DFW described.
But the book. Is thoroughly entertaining! I'm loving this experience. I'm a far way off from calling this the greatest piece of literature the world has ever seen, and at this juncture I firmly doubt that I will ever reread it in its entirety (although I concede certain sections are worth coming back to, for their hilarity or their clarity, whether vis-a-vis the world at large or as a key to the book's intracoherence). Maybe this really is a novel for this generation (my generation? one slightly younger than my own?).
To this point, the book offers some powerful insight into the addiction-addled mind. I particularly appreciate Gately's God problem: what if the Higher Power in the 3rd of AA's 12 steps to which one is supposed to turn oneself over is one you have absolutely no concept of, let alone believe in? (Which extended passage, starting at p 442, also leads us to a "What the fuck is water?" moment, later retold again in that awesome commencement address.) I mean, how does an atheist deal with all the God-crap in AA? Do atheists not go to AA? Or do they go through the motions, lying to others and themselves? Neither course of action really seems viable in terms of kicking an addiction. What if you're addicted to God? Is there a support group for that? (But I guess a lot of people don't see God-dependence as a kind of problem.)
(Here's a tangent: Did you know some people actually get unbaptized? Really, I know a guy. Which paradoxically maybe attributes more importance to the ritual than the unbaptizee intends. It's not like a pact with the Devil that must needs be broken. If God's a nonentity, the whole thing's kind of null and void already.)
It's Marathe and Steeply's quasi-philosophical mountaintop discussion that really holds the book together for me. It makes clear the wider political backdrop as well as some of the themes (ah yes, delayed gratification, recognition of the thematic importance of which is itself a kind of delayed gratification) through which most everything else slowly comes to make some kind of sense. There's this fabulous exchange regarding America's pursuit of happiness, and freedom, and the reader is well aware that there's a difference between "freedom from" and "freedom to," so there's no earth-shattering insight proffered — the gist of these discussions has been voiced in countless homes, classrooms, dorms, automobiles, grocery-line checkouts, dentist offices. But it's made kind of hilarious through the Separatist's use of a hypothetical problem of two individuals vying for the only-available single-size serving can of Habitant soupe aux pois.
I've had opportunity to reflect this week on the nature of the group reading experience — a local journalist interviewed me w/r/t my participation in the Infinite Summer project. And my conclusion, which should come as no surprise, is that I mostly love it.
Sure, some forum participants go on about (or namedrop, at any rate) Wittgenstein, but whatever. The book is not about Wittgenstein, and I don't know that DFW meant for it to be read about Wittgenstein (Who knows? Maybe he did. He was undoubtedly an Extremely Bright Guy, with knowledge of Wittgenstein, but whether he consciously meant to represent what all Wittgenstein was about...?) But hey, go ahead and point out whatever scene of Infinite Jest as the ultimate illustration of Wittgenstein's linguistophilosophical thought; it's just that at some point the conversation stops being about Infinite Jest, which was kind of the original point, so it can get kind of tiresome.
(Did anyone ever see Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein? That made way more sense to me than anything the kids, or the profs, ever said about the big W at school.)
Yeah, I don't know. The journalist asked me whether the forum was an opportunity for showing off, and whether it was elitist. Mostly no, mostly it's a support group. And I'm grateful for being made aware of connections I might not otherwise make on my own.
I don't see this reading as a chore or as a homework assignment; I'm not hung up on page quotas or having to contribute meaningfully on an Important Topic. But I do acknowledge that I'm reading more carefully than I've read many books this year (even if I'm not writing any more articulately on the subject), and that's a good thing to do sometimes.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Tomato
Today Helena plucked one ripe little tomato off its vine — the first of the season — and popped it in her mouth. Her face radiated with exquisite ecstasies.
Here are two of our monstrous tomato plants pictured with the tall, silly 6-year-old in question for a reference point of size:
Our little balcony garden doesn't yield much — we have a basket of strawberries (which fruit is almost exhausted), a couple herbs (for sprinkling on salads), and six such tomato plants (haul to come!) — but it manages to provide one mouthful of pleasure (whether it's destined for her mouth or mine is a complicated matter, the politics of which I won't discuss here) on a near daily basis, and that's plenty.
Here are two of our monstrous tomato plants pictured with the tall, silly 6-year-old in question for a reference point of size:
Our little balcony garden doesn't yield much — we have a basket of strawberries (which fruit is almost exhausted), a couple herbs (for sprinkling on salads), and six such tomato plants (haul to come!) — but it manages to provide one mouthful of pleasure (whether it's destined for her mouth or mine is a complicated matter, the politics of which I won't discuss here) on a near daily basis, and that's plenty.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Monsterpiece Theater presents
Hamlet! Words, words, words:
It don't get classier than this. Me love Danish!
It don't get classier than this. Me love Danish!
Monday, August 03, 2009
My ambiguous position
So I've been trying to read a poem here and there, to keep my mind, my life, you know, poetic and all, and I have this volume of Janusz Szuber, whose work I'm strangely attracted to, that I keep turning to over the last couple months, and I'm stuck on this poem:
So I love this poem. Not sure why. I think mostly because I'm a big fan of olives. And it makes me hungry, and a little hungry for something more than food. But also it confuses me, because I think it's saying the olive, or any portion of this glorious meal, is not the ideal object, even though I rather think it is, but I can't help but wonder if not this, then what? This food is a distraction of some sort. And I feel like I'm being chastised for even thinking about olives, even though he's the one who brought them up. So what's this ideal object I'm supposed to be after (well, the narrator thinks he ought to pursue it, and it's implied that this is a most worthy goal all of us should aspire to)?
What is baiting us, trying to catch us out? How can this meaty olive not be the ideal object, end in and of itself? As if it's freedom from the olive that is to be desired.
Caught in the Net
For supper I ate my favorite goat cheese
Sprinkled thickly with pepper and covered with onion slices,
From a jar I forked pitted olives,
Meaty, dripping aromatic brine.
Chewing and carefully mixing all those ingredients
I felt more and more acutely my ambiguous position
Of one caught in the net, the trap, charmed by the bait,
Not even trying to possess the ideal object.
So I love this poem. Not sure why. I think mostly because I'm a big fan of olives. And it makes me hungry, and a little hungry for something more than food. But also it confuses me, because I think it's saying the olive, or any portion of this glorious meal, is not the ideal object, even though I rather think it is, but I can't help but wonder if not this, then what? This food is a distraction of some sort. And I feel like I'm being chastised for even thinking about olives, even though he's the one who brought them up. So what's this ideal object I'm supposed to be after (well, the narrator thinks he ought to pursue it, and it's implied that this is a most worthy goal all of us should aspire to)?
What is baiting us, trying to catch us out? How can this meaty olive not be the ideal object, end in and of itself? As if it's freedom from the olive that is to be desired.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
