Intimacy changes the scale of the universe

Yes, she thought, this is one reason I always come back to these beds, because intimacy changes the scale of the universe, folding down the vast and overwhelming horizon until there is only the small world that is my body, upon which toothsome storms, sweating floods, and soulful earthquakes break their might forces, and I lie ravaged and raw and blissfully alive.

It starts with a witch, Zoya, and her paramour prey.

Another plotline follows Will and the misunderstanding that ensues when he confirms that he works for "the agency."

These stories are joined by love, of course, and the police investigation into the gruesome end of Zoya's victim (even while the chief investigator is turned into a flea) threads them together.

Babayaga, by Toby Barlow, is a fairly impossible sounding novel. Part fairytale, part police procedural, part madcap comedy, part love story. And all Paris.

It should be noted that George Plimpton is the inspiration for one of the characters central to Will's comedy of errors. George Plimpton, who cofounded The Paris Review 1n 1953 Paris, was also known as an agent of influence for the CIA, who funded the Review through the Aga Khan, as it was used as a cover for agency activities. Really. I'm not making this stuff up. And neither is Toby Barlow. If I hadn't known better, I might've thought this plot was stretched a little too far.

The witchy part of the novel draws on Slavic folklore for inspiration, and we follow Zoya and her elder through parts of Russia and Poland. But witches are not born; they are created. By men, one might say. There's a feminist bent to their power.

When doubts arose in Zoya's heart, and over the years they intermittently did, Elga seemed to have a knack for showing up by her side, consoling Zoya with blunt woodland wisdom, explaining how it was all righteous, even merciful. "It is only fair and only just," Elga would say. "Men have dragged us by our hair through the ages, and whether they give us crumbs or bright, shiny rocks, they truly give us nothing at all. If you have not opened your legs for them so that they could crawl out as babies or crawl in as men, then they will leave you to starve like a dog on the street. So now we are done playing the way they want us to play. Now we are moving to music they cannot hear, to a rhythm they cannot understand. They call it madness and we call it truth and find me the magistrate you can trust to judge between the two? Bah. So we dance on, we dance on."

Though they are clearly criminals, it's hard not to feel sorry for them in their circumstances — Zoya for being a (relatively) young and naïve romantic, and Elga simply crazy from age and the horrors she's lived. Zoya's motivation is not always clear, but we love her as much as Will does, and all is forgiven.

There are several (twelve) witches' songs that interrupt the text. This element didn't work for me at all. They suggest neither rhythm nor tune, too cryptic and disordered to work as ballads, too specific and banal in their lyrics to feel like laments, nothing incantatory or enchanting about them. Clearly they are songs sung by witches, but they don't settle on a perspective — witch or human, inner or all-seeing. They neither bring insight nor cause intrigue. They have no charm. (These songs have quashed any temptation I might've had to check out Barlow's werewolf novel, Sharp Teeth, written in free verse.)

Witch songs aside, it's a fun book, a quick read, that tugged at my heart strings to rip my romantic streak a little wider.

A sentence I love: "There, finally, she spotted the police car, parked like a turtle sleeping in the sun, waiting to be cracked open for its meat."

Excerpt.

Reviews
Los Angeles Times:
"The blend of James Bond, folk tale, Gogol's humor and surrealism with a corny French detective and a young man's love story all improbably works."

Washington Post:
"Toby Barlow's Babayaga is a novel that asks not to be taken too seriously. This is its most fundamental mistake."

Down in the tub, man, you know who you are

"You know what I like most about this city?"

"What?" Will asked.

"The tubs," Flats said.

"The tubs?" said Kelly.

"Yeah, the bathtubs," said Flats. "See, when I was growing up down South, we didn't have any kind of proper tub or shower or bathroom, we were, you know, what's the word for it?"

"Poor," said Red.

"That's right. That's the word. Flats smiled. "We were poor. Dirt poor. So I won't even tell you how we washed up back then. But in the army, they put us in those big shower rooms with all the other men. It was all right, but it was the military, so how good could it be? But now, here, in my little flat, I have got this white Parisian-style tub, and I tell you it fits me like a glove. I dig getting in there, crouching down and scrubbing in all my nooks and whatnot. I tell you, it keeps me familiar and intimate with every bit of myself. You take a shower, your head is up, far away from everything, lost in the clouds, but down in the tub, man, you know who you are."

— from Babayaga, by Toby Barlow.

I read about a book a week. Compared to many book bloggers, that's not a lot. But given that I am not involved with the book publishing industry in a professional capacity, many people, namely several of my coworkers, are blown away by the volume of books I consume.

But let's take a page average: say, 350 pages a novel. That's 50 pages a day. I manage maybe 10 pages per commute — I have a relatively short commute, but factor in a couple minutes of platform waiting. Another 10 pages in the morning, relaxing with coffee or while waiting for coffee (why would I choose instead to confront the news of the day, reality, bleary-eyed?; I have the rest of the day for that), or in the bathroom (gasp!). Some 20 pages in bed before I drop of to sleep.

Weekends take away commute reading, but allow for a little bit of lying in. Also, reading while waiting for the laundry cycle to end, or while supper simmers. Rainy days are even better, allowing for longer guilt-free stretches of reading.

And I have recently rediscovered the joys of the bubble bath. More time to read, of course.

I have a family. I even have a social life, occasionally, though a quiet one (let's say that for the most part, my family is my social life; I like hanging out with them). I still watch television and movies, maybe a little less than some people. The time I spend online is fairly limited and controlled (that is, I don't surf randomly; I have particular destinations in mind).

Yes, I consume books at such a rate that sometimes I don't retain plots beyond a few days. Sometimes books are a simple entertainment. But for this, I have time.

Nobody paused to notice

Vidot made a small tsk-tsk sound. He never liked to share information about cases he was investigating. He was relieved that the tale of the Parisian man impaled impossibly high on the irons about rue Rataud, had so far, miraculously, not appeared in the local papers. He did not need the attention. He would have thought an incredible death like that would have headlined as the crime of the year, but Mitterrand's scandal, Cuba's charismatic young Fidel Castro, and the ongoing unrest in Algiers continued to eat up the headlines. Vidot thought these were indeed amazing times, when a man could be hung high on the street with a spike through his neck and nobody paused to notice.

— from Babayaga, by Toby Barlow.

The past several weeks I've been enjoying a free subscription to a national newspaper. I don't usually go in for sales pitches for this type of product, but: free! and no commitment! Besides, I've always admired people who manage to read the paper daily (my other half among them). I've never considered myself sufficiently well informed on current events (adequately, perhaps). So, I thought, I would read the newspaper and become smarter.

I have realized a few things these past weeks:

• I know more than I think I do. It seems that through osmosis and the generally passive process of clicking through on random assortments* of links (i.e., in my non–newspaper-reading life), I learn more than nothing.
• Print newspapers are full of ads. They are not as annoying as online ads, however, and sometimes they are interesting to read. They also contribute to bulking out the page count and the sense of accomplishment for having plowed through it all.
• Print newspapers have more contributions from the community than I remember, beyond letters to the editor. They solicit personal essays, reviews, and opinions. They are often as pointless and as poorly written as the commentary the online world is reputed to have.
• "This day in history" qualifies as "news," worthy of page 2. I suspect there is a long tradition of this, with the intent of educating the public or fuelling water cooler discussion by providing a common touchpoint. But, really?
• It is enjoyable to read the newspaper with my morning coffee, but no more so than doing a crossword puzzle with my morning coffee, or checking my email and online news with my morning coffee.

While not especially witty or significant, the above passage (Babayaga: a tale of spies, Paris, and witches!) stands out for me.

What qualifies as news? What gets lost amid the din? Amazing times indeed.

*Random assortments tend to be in fact vaguely directed, given that I gravitate toward certain websites, and within those sites only certain items on certain subject matter will capture my attention, etc. In general, I do not play dice with the Internet.