The Corrections

Last post, about orange vegetables, I described The Heart of Darkness as like watching a man die, slowly. Of Typhoid Fever or something equally dreadful. How prophetic. Whatever the blurb may say, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen is about a man dying, slowly, breath by breath, embarrassing incident by embarrassing incident. However, he hasn't stepped foot on African soil (which we all know is the same over all one billion square kilometres), so he is dying of getting old, and there is no racism.

Unless you consider that there is not a single black person in the whole novel. (An Asian woman pops in, but doesn't speak and I think is referred to as 'that Asian woman' at the end, and some Eastern Europeans beat each other.)

Ok, I'm being glib again (the pitfall of many a writer who reviews rather than writes). The book is too long to only be about one man dying. Initially, the novel tricks us into believing it is about the family: one daughter, two sons and his wife. Each has a chapter dedicated their lives and how they became so dysfunctional. Dysfunctional? Dissatisfied. Dysfunctional and dissatisfied.

We have the poor former academic and screenwriter who tends to just not be around, the wealthy social-climber whose wife and children are ganging up on him to convince him he is depressed and paranoid, the successful and morally liberal chef with a string of affairs behind her. Uplifting slices of Americana. That said, each chapter felt too short, as if I had come close to understanding the source of their dysfunctions but not quite. Apart from making stupid choices and being in destructive relationships.

Speaking of destructive...! Enid, the dying man's wife, is three like symbols in a casino at two in the morning. There is a tussle between bully and victim in every relationship in the novel, with many people being both. Enid casts herself as the latter, to justify her constant nit-picking and earsplitting squeals of excitement (almost audible, especially if you have a Kindle) and guilt-inducements. I think we are meant to concur, overall, but I got stuck on the splitting of my ears.

Glibness, again! But every novelist knows (and I speak from no experience) that when you claim to slice up a small-town suburb and trace these households to their now-scattered children, you set yourself up for flak. For this to work, your characters have to be relatable and dysfunctional. But only a specific segment of your audience will relate. Unless you're David Mitchell or William Faulkner.

To poke a pin in my own balloon (I hate the sound of bursting balloons as much as I hate champagne corks popping, so I'm going to ask you to do this for me), I enjoyed the story of the disgraced academic, even when it got really dire, and felt like the second half of his story could have been a standalone, satirical novel (set in Lithuania, it chronicles the naive paternalism of the West and the corresponding downfall of wealth and social stability in the country, where stability is corruption in all forms - what a blurb!). I briefly felt empathy for the other two children, but then they said something.

Are you bored yet? A long novel should not feel long. Its redeeming qualities should not just be extended themes and social critique. (Which is bad news for all aspiring novelists, but better we all know now.) It should grab you by the collar for long enough for its themes and critiques to settle in an unused fold of your brain. My favourite novels have been those about which I learnt more by writing about them and emptying out my brain's folds.

Since I am dishing out writerly advice:

• Dystopia is all the rage now. He could have cast Chip (the academic) as the wisecracking pilot, Gary (the social-climber) as the stoic captain, his wife as the dissident in the team, Denise (the chef) as a woman soldier with something to prove, Enid as the squealing civilian they pick up and Alfred (the dying man) as the dying man. Like Will Smith in After Earth but less... coherent. If you stick in some visible threat to freedom, like slobbery aliens that have arrived on the planet on a fragile pretence, you have a novel!
• Post-modernism dictates that our writing (we) discusses itself (our writing) and posts signs to remind you it knows it is an illusion but cast said sign in doubt because an illusion cannot know. Divide the novel into biographies that refer to the others and thereby... ok, I'm still bored.
• Turn the novel into a screenplay! Production houses love this kind of family-haunted-by-its-own-dysfunctions things. They can cast Jennifer Aniston as Denise and shoot long scenes where nothing happens and instead we listen to the birds and planes and bees and children playing. The novel effectively ends with the most depressing of Christmases - which is film gold.

I'm torn between the first and second, so no doubt, Mr Franzen, you are too. I'm glad to hear you regret the Alfred-lax-bowel plot device and I now regret my glibness. I look forward to the movie, because I don't think your agent will go for the Margaret Atwood angle, although if you ever change your mind...

This is the most fun I have had in my relationship with The Corrections. I may read Freedom (his latest novel) just to have an imaginary paternalistic conversation with the author. Maybe that novel is Chip's satirical account of the relationship between America and Eastern Europe. Maybe it will feature racial diversity, maybe a laser gun, maybe even Typhoid Fever. Or maybe it will be a slice of American life, because clearly this is at the heart of all philosophical discussions. Clearly.

Some books are like orange vegetables

Oh, don't worry - the dinosaurs were a one-time gush of hindsight. Don't we all think "What if...?" and imagine we are world-renowned doctors or engineers... or archaeologists? Since world-renowned archaeologists are rare, perhaps (wait for it) extinct(!), I would have my pick of endorsements: concentrated sugary drinks aspiring to be fruit juice, outdoors wear, watches or casinos. I imagine I would be famous for uncovering the metal skeleton of a robotic dinosaur, somewhere with a temperate climate, hot water and fuzzy duvets. ('Imagine' being key when considering my mental health. I don't really believe my car could transform into a laser canon-wielding Autobot and my best friend. Unfortunately.)

Ok, ok, I'm done. But remember this when next your inner child pipes up because you confiscated her toys.

For cutting me short (you), here is a list (even the word sounds ominous, as if a vowel has been snatched from between the 's' and 't', and so the book lists (har!) to one side). A listing list of books I hate. Truly hate. We say things like "I love your blend of wit, sarcasm and cynicism" or "I loved reading Night Film" when really (as someone pointed out to me) 'love' is an emotion belonging to relationships that is best wielded with caution (you may lose something, like a vital organ). With animate beings. Not made of metal.

But 'hate' is more versatile. It covers everything: "I hate orange vegetables" or "I hated reading Atlas Shrugged" (not really. Because I haven't read it yet). Listing the things you hate is easier and more productive than listing the things you love. Unless you are one of those unblemished souls who have yet to encounter the pains of hindsight. "I am soooo happy for you," I mumble through clenched teeth. Also, 'love' and 'hate' are not exact opposites: I hate orange vegetables, but that doesn't mean I like yellow ones (actually, they fall in the same class, like poisonous caterpillars).

While I could do this all night (I am a font of positivity tonight because I only had two cups of coffee today, followed by a chocolate muffin), you no doubt have many Important Things To Do today, after this Very First Important Thing (reading my blog, you!). But first a quiz to see whether you have been listening, or are just a good guesser: rank these books from Hate to Tolerate to... Love.

A   Something Happened by Joseph Heller
B   Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
C   Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
D   The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

You know me too well: D is a red herring. If you have been studying my blog (I am offering a course on Coursera next semester), then you know I am still reading The Corrections and have not formed a clear opinion although I can predict bouts of boredom and character bashing. The other three you can figure out yourself (you need to earn your credits) by looking left and then all the way down to the bottom, to the cloud of gnat-like tags.

My point is that the bit about love does not apply here because I love all books, even the ones I love to hate. Books stand apart from all reason. In towers that by the laws of physics should topple over but by the laws of knowledge and 70 gsm paper and PUR binding don't. And way in the distance is a stack of 10 books, like children being disciplined, but children who deserve to be in juvenile detention. From weathered top to sand-encrusted bottom, they are:

1. Atomised by Michel Houellebecq. This is hands down the most gratuitous collection of violence and sex called a plot I have ever. Ever. Read. Although the conclusion (only worth two pages or so) is enlightening, it will never clean those blackened charred nerves in my prudish brain. The copy sits on my bookshelf and I do not know what to with it. Read only if you can read American Psycho in one go.
2. Boyhood by JM Coetzee. The writings of my favourite 'refugee' have in the last decade experimented with memoir (ah, how post-modern) and how memory is at least partly fictionalised and vice versa. This memoir about Coetzee's childhood is enlightening - most children become less egoist as they grow up and encounter a more selfish world. Not him! No! He is the character from Disgrace, which is deeply disturbing. There is a second, sequel, apparently. Read the Wikipaedia page instead. 
3. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein. See above. You know where to look.
4. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. We studied this book in my first or second year, as part of a course in post-colonialism (they picked topics for which they had lecturers, methinks). A man travels to the swamps of Africa where he meets mute, lazy Africans and decisive colonialists and catches some illness, from the swamps, but doesn't die. I agree with Chinua Achebe (he says Conrad was racist (which I think is a no-brainer) and other people say he was a product of his times (which were racist)), but partly because the prose is exhausting, like listening to a person on the brink of death breath for days and days. And days. And days. Read Achebe's criticism instead.
5. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Confession: I have never read the adult novel, but we did study it and that was enough to remind me why I didn't like the children's version. I don't know why I don't like the children's version, actually, except that it is creepy. This man lives among pygmies and giants, whose communities he will never be part of. The pygmies and giants have a beef with each other, but why they would bother to fight each other when neither has anything the other wants is beyond me. Then there are some other societies with unpronounceable names (except Japan) and with minute political subtexts that, frankly, I don't care about. Read the picture book.
6. Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin. I was sick when I read this weighty book (weighty because it was printed on paper that 'bulks' well i.e. looks thicker). Desparately sick. My sinuses were attacking my brain again and then relying on my lungs for cover and my throat had been lacerated in the war and my stomach was marching in protest. And I was alone over a long weekend with not even a cat to comfort me. I thought I felt bad. Then I read this book. And realised that I was living a dream life because life in China is apparently unbearably bad. All the time. But the real dream life is in America with apartments and fast food and Oprah. Read only when you are the kind of calm that can stare down a refugee camp during a civil war.
7. Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers. Another varsity setwork, but part of our third-year Post-modern course (we worked our way along the eras). This book is so consciously self-conscious and reflexive and self-deprecating and full of the apathy of the children of the last 25 years and oh so smart and oh it knows it's oh so smart and all the rest of these things. Describing it and why I hate it is like a rabbit hole. What upset me (and was supposed to) was that he was so glib about serious issues. I think that there are some topics that should only be played with under extreme circumstances and then sparingly. Cancer is one of those. Considering what a great writer he is, this could be overlooked, except he sews up all his writing with his smartness, and very little truth. Read and add snarky comments in the margins.
8. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Oi, this one... I read this the year between advertising college and my first year of my BA. It almost put me right off studying literature (actually my intention was to study Applied English but then they moved the course to the education faculty and I hoped no one would notice the 'literature' bit). This novel is as long as the winter spent on that mountain. Which is very cold and is cold in other ways, because this is literature and literature uses metaphors. I did not have the energy to watch the movie but I hear it is shorter than the book. Watch the movie.
9. She's Come Undone or The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. Contemporary American authors have the Suburb Disease. This disease is an ill-defined malais suffered by people who have enough of everything but have a nagging feeling that this is somehow not enough. The first book is about an obese women and the second about 9/11. That is all I remember. There is a third novel, which is excluded here because I enjoyed the ending (and no, not just because it ended!). Read only if you have lots of time to squander.
10. The People's Act of Love by James Meek. Because I did not and will never write this book. Read and read and read...

Disclaimer: These comments became far more sarcastic and perhaps nasty than originally intended, and all are meant to be taken with a pinch of salt (from the sandy seashore as you reach to pluck no. 10 from its unruly peers) and your own opinion, except Boyhood, because I mean that and could be nastier. I can think of at least one person who will disagree with my opinion of every book, except Atomised, because I do not fraternise with such people. And look, not once did I write: I hate this book with the voltage of the lights in Wanderers Stadium. I didn't write it, but I thought it.

I also thought: "I love Kafka on the Shore" and "I would love my car to transform into a laser canon-wielding Autobot and my best friend." 

The immortality of dinosaurs

Saturday, late afternoon. That time of week when I write and post a new blog entry, which according to my tags will be a mixture of a review and musing. I like to think of each post as a Socratic dialogue using books as a vehicle. (‘Think’ being as far from reality as ‘hope’ and ‘belief’ – see here’s a bit of epistemology! And a homespun epigram: Hope is not a strategy. Take that to the bank, you.) This is when you open your RSS feed or a plain old browser in anticipation of said dialogue. Or will do, now that you know when I post.

All of this is an attempt to distract you while I figure out what I am going to write about. See, most of what I have read this week is techie news and a little of The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (about which I have still to develop an opinion). Then I thought, I can dust off one of the oldies, like Anthem by Ayn Rand, even that scene in A Passage to India by Henry James, where the protagonist undergoes an existential crisis in the dark of a cave.

Really what I want to talk about is the new Transformers movie (which looks epic, and fyi, is a discussion of good and evil, and to what extent violence is acceptable for a good cause. Ok, really it is a developed-world justification for violence as a necessary good where the moral values are patriotism and democracy (sarcasm hand)) and dinosaurs. Dinosaurs also often carry the weight of humanity’s sense of impending doom, which has a parallel in the fear of our own mortality when a character suffers, transferred to the security of your immortality when said character dies (and you don’t) onscreen or in a book.

I won’t, though, because I realise that the market of functioning adults for whom the event of the year is a movie based on a children’s series, is niche. (Although, seriously folks, they are AI robots that can transform into fast cars, mid-air, and Optimus Prime’s voice could convince me to buy ostrich steak for the good of the world (I am a vegetarian, but when I ate such things, ostrich meat was my least favourite).

Dinosaurs, though, are a different kind of steak. When I was young (most of primary school and the beginning of high school), I wanted to become an archaeologist (now, even spelling the word was a feat for a young’n so jest not). This was after my dreams of becoming a ballerina (I stopped dancing at about the time I was moving into point shoes), marine biologist (I am terrified large bodies of water), writer (no money) and teacher (no money) became unrealistic. (I was getting to the age when reality foisted itself on me – I later banished it.)

I used to draw cartoons of a dinosaur family, comprising improbably of a T-Rex and a Brontosaurus (that fairy of the dinosaur world) in primary and secondary colours. I say cartoons but they were not funny, even though my parents laughed hollowly at the last frames. I had playing cards, magazines, posters (alongside point shoes, Roxette and exercises meant to alleviate my short-sightedness) and a glow-in-the-dark skeleton that you could take apart and piece back together (I have one now too, but it doesn’t glow).

Funnily enough, Chrome shows a dinosaur when it can’t find an internet connection to open a website, as it is doing now.

So I was going to become an archaeologist, a less unrealistic goal - except that I have always hated Geography. And didn't have an affinity for Maths and Science. Which a teacher felt obliged to tell me as parent evening loomed. As I do, I acted as though this was old news (as if I simply didn't want to peel the tape from the walls when I peeled off the dinosaur posters). Although I can agree with one relevant point: I can imagine crawling around in the dirt with a tiny paintbrush searching for fossils for about the length of a workday. Then I would want a hot shower with extra hot asap followed by a bed with a fluffy duvet. Ok, I could scrap the bed and consider a tent, but I still want hot water. And in the morning I want to go home.

I later toyed with become a graphic designer (I lasted one year at advertising school, which is a real thing - I suspect the last year involves seminars in capitalism and the ills of empathy) (no money, except in advertising) and journalist (no money).

Book publisher! This way I could make close to no money with integrity. Assuming a loud voice and looking around: No, not really haha (whispering: but kinda). And then I specialised in Maths. Because I have no affinity with it (sarcasm hand).

This tortuous walk through careers loved and lost has become My Point, although my initial point was that dinosaurs (and transforming robots) are a) epic and b) that functioning adults who love one or both can come out of the closet now because nerds are taking over the earth.

In a last-ditch attempt to convince you that dinosaurs deserve your respect and adoration, consider the latest obsession with dragons in the wake of Game of Thrones. (FYI, in my youth I also taped up pictures of dragons, and drew pictures of dragons, but not funny ones, because you don’t make fun of dragons or dinosaurs (except in that T-Rex-making-the-bed meme, but we could count that as an awareness campaign for dinosaurs whose terrifyingness, fundamental to their survival, is undermined by their short and weak arms)).

Focusing. You like dragons, right? (Everyone likes dragons, duh.) Dragons are like dinosaurs except that:

• they breath fire
• they can fly (even if this is scientifically improbable - birds the size of emus and ostriches are too heavy to fly)
• they are fictional, and
• they can be tamed.

Tame creatures lack the fearsomeness of wild creatures, even the herbivores (ever gotten up close to a river buck?). Mostly, because, well, they’re tame. But even if I were in a theme park devoted to dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park I would not so much as scratch a belly, even if it were a stegosaurus.

The crack in this discussion (yes, this is a serious discussion, you) is that, well, dinosaurs are extinct, so we can’t know if we'd be able to break them like mustangs (probably) and the view in the rear mirror concentrates history so that we can tame its population in adjectives and metaphors. Dinosaurs ‘ruled’ the earth (they didn't give it up because they were weak – I’d put our chances against an asteroid at very low, even if we did maroon someone on it with a bomb) before we did.

So we give them names and even personalities - but we don’t tame them. (We don't tame robots either and I suspect the Transformers are humouring us. Fictionally, I mean. Obviously.) Buffered by time, they come to represent strength that is both familiar (lizards and things) but unfamiliar in sheer size (literally, because the composition of the air was different there and allowed for animals with a bulk that would crush them like a can today). They represent consistency, adaptation and diversity, and the fear that humanity could be wiped out remorselessly and without warning.

Also, dinosaurs didn’t embark on a consistent campaign of destroying the natural habitat and enslaving each other in the name of survival of the fittest. They just killed and ate each other in the name of survival of the fittest. And they couldn't use language so they didn't really conceptualise this either. Luckily for them, they didn't have to fight us for survival, though. I’d take my chances with the asteroid. The End

Night Film

Yesterday I posted on Facebook that I was suffering from a "serious book hangover", because every strong emotion must be validated on a social media network, followed by a couple of memes, because memes explain how we feel better than we do and they are usually funnier and have pictures. Within minutes, notification of the first comment rang from my smartphone, always a boost for the self-esteem. Then another and another. Yay! The memes worked! And my friends have been well-selected and therefore shall never be cullled. (Don't get any ideas of starting a competing blog, you.)

In a ripple effect, I will now explain myself here and then post the link on Twitter, thereby closing the circle (get it?). The book is Night Film by Marisha Pessl. In my mind the release of this paperback is linked with that of Donna Tartt's Goldfinch, because they have both come out at the same time and I read the previous releases of both authors at about the same time (which may have been years apart, actually, because memory plays poker with distance and then doesn't bother to put the cards back in the correct order) and they are both very thick.

Which brings me to Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas, which also belongs in this card suite of time.

To make this brief (and leave more time for meandering during which I contemplate My Point), the original books I read were: Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Pessl), The Secret History (Tartt) and The End of Mr Y (Thomas). My memory deals me a three-of -a-kind, all queens, when reminiscing about these books. Even if they weren't actually dealt in the same hand, I am jealous (in the words of a friend) that someone else (you, maybe) gets to read them for the first time, because they demanded my attention and rewarded me with something like the feeling of wielding magic, from somewhere around or in my intestines.

Context explained, let's waddle back to Pessl, because she is starting to kick up a fuss. (She is very famous now and doesn't have time to waste playing poker. Also, I am kicking her ass.)

Topics was a pink trade paperback (that understudy for the new-release hardcover, which broke its spine falling through our wallets), the cover textured (I think? My memory needs to be de Bono-ed), with a rose bundled with branches of leaves on the cover. It was a bookclub (yes, you heard me!) book, so the cover was fraying into sheets of paper. This cover is almost everything the book isn't, except for a sentimental corner of the protagonist's personality.

Night Film is a Kindle ebook, black and white. The paperback cover is cascading squares of black and white anyway, with a portion of a face starting back at us from the middle. It doesn't do the book any justice, except in the way the plot of the book sounds when summarised in the blurb. The book is more multimedia than 'hard copy', except that the price of the paperback poked holes in my wallet looking for lose change. (Always justifying my choice to download a book - oh, I admit it, I am guilty! And thrifty.)

Both books are murder mysteries, but Night Film develops and rediverts the acrobatics with quantum physics that Topics performs (perhaps because Pessl was lectured by a professor who explained the laws of atoms and Newton, and the different mystery of the Grand Unifying Theory). No, I am not going to tell you where it rediverts it, because that will ruin half the fun.

Night Film is about a disgraced journalist, Scott McGrath (great Scott!), who investigates the suicide of a young woman, Ashley Cordova, the daughter of the same man disgraced himself to get near. Stanislas Cordorva is a film producer with a cult following, in more ways than one. Both this man and his daughter are like fairytale animals appearing before you: they would fascinate, scare and probably disgust you.

In a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys twist, McGrath teams up with two youngsters who have both had encounters with Ashley. All three are desperate to catch that fairytale animal, as if it would foretell their fates. As a young'un, I would angle my open Nancy Drew into the crack of light escaping from the door or lie on the carpet before the threshold, ready to run back to bed when the real world came to check I was asleep. Night Film is like that Nancy Drew paperbook: it demanded my attention and then... left me. Gutted.

It has more in common with Nancy Drew novels: the three unlikely sleuths follow a cooling trail, each lending some trait to the investigation, smelling out even the cold leads. The mystery comes to seem mysterious, as if some dark magic is involved. Shadows hitch on splinters, children's toys are desecrated and then replaced, entire buildings of people vanish. Their lives are threatened, again by people who seem to have supernatural powers. When the mystery seems solved, the solution so simple and the one lead they didn't smell out, it isn't.

Loose ends flail like live electric wires.

Occasionally, I have recommended someone read Topics, but only half-heartedly. The power it had over me seemed like an anomaly. Because, you see, these novels have a plot. A Nancy-Drew plot, with post-modern Nancy-Drew characters and leads. Everyone knows that a Substantive Novel has no plot. Plots are for sorbet reads, classics or pseudo-substantive novels. Not Literature. The heart of these books are what made me desperate to investigate alongside my single-minded, justice-bound sleuth as a child and the questions without answers I am interested in as an adult.

If you have not read a Nancy Drew novel (bringing tears to my eyes), find the children's section in the nearest shop or library, and pretend it is for a younger cousin. Or don't pretend. Hold your ignorance and your willingness to rectify it as an adult, high. (Tell them I sent you. They won't care. But tell them anyway.)

I miss Scott McGrath (platonically, trust me) as if he were a neighbour who had moved away. I feel separations between the other characters just as keenly. The mysterious of the mystery doesn't bother me, though I would prefer if its pieces were sorted in piles and catalogued. The ending feels... right, even as it feels like a betrayal. What doesn't feel in balance is that I have been left behind.

The American greats, and Oprah

When Oprah added William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to her bookclub list as a summer read, said bookclub gulped and shrivelled in the path of The Establishment's raucous laughter. The plebs fell for it and sales of books by Faulkner increased (I know because I sold a few to unwitting fans of Marianne Keyes and Jodi Picoult). This was after the James Frey A Million Little Pieces, which he sold as memoir but was really almost entirely made up, and the 'almost entirely' is debatable.

This introduction is a red herring, but now you know that I know what I'm talking about. To add to your store of Oprah trivia, her bookclub really did shrivel (maybe not gulp). (Although it did come to life again a few years ago. Because, this is Oprah.) Put those two facts together, bind them with logic, and you realise Oprah rarely actually read the books she touted - they were chosen by assistants and publishers' publicists. (What they were thinking when they included Faulkner is a mystery.)

I recently tried to read The Sound and the Fury, but read no further than three pages (read being a misnomer: I daydreamed through three pages - I cannot remember a thing). I don't abandon books after I have committed to them, ever. Even Atomised, and that was at least as traumatising as something I saw in the supermarket the other day (and which shall forever remain wordless, so don't even ask).

Oprah generalised that 'Faulkner is the greatest American writer, like, ever' (sure, along with Hemingway, Twain, Poe, Steinbeck, McCarthy...). But I would imagine even the most stalwart Faulkner fan would harbour a teensy bit of bitterness at having to work so hard to read for fun. I felt that, at present, the only author deserving of that degree of effort is James Joyce. (We have a tempestuous relationship. He channels through the book on my dresser and I ignore his cursing.) He was using up my time with Joyce, even though I haven't so much as picked up the cursed (har!) book in six months (I was polishing the furniture).

Imagine if Oprah had nominated The Odyssey... Now there is a book to bury a bookclub near to the centre of the earth.

Having said this, I am a Faulkner fan (and a Joyce fan - I swear I will finish that book one day, you Irishman!). As I Lay Dying is on my list of books that will haunt me for life. Ok, no, it is silly to lay claim to choices in your future. It haunts me and I hope it haunts me for life (at least because there are way worse types of ghosts to be haunted by... Actual ghosts, for example). In two sentences, the characters sum up the world for me in a Cormac McCarthy-worthy musing:

"It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end."

The book is set in the American south, among a po' family, the matriarch of which has just died. The novel tells of the the family's efforts to arrange her funeral, which chiefly consist of couriering her body on the farm's wagon to another, more affluent part of the family. Really (because this is how literature works), it is about the relationships between the characters, how they live, their relationships with the matriarch and the wisdom that comes from being po'.

That last bit is facetious, but Rousseau's Noble Savage is still alive and well, just now living in shacks constructed from the cardboard of cellphone ads. Faulkner can be forgiven, by historicity, but what is our excuse?

To climb up that tree of great American authors (figuratively, because I tried to climb a tree the other day and found I no longer have the muscles), Faulkner inspires the work of Toni Morrison, the sun of Oprah's universe together with Maya Angelou and her dogs. We studied Morrison every. single. year. of my degree, largely because one of our lecturers was Obsessed with her. Because of this I can name every novel she has ever written, have read them, and know that she is a frightening woman who use to be an editor at Faber & Faber and now terrifies undergrads.

I would sell organs to be terrifying. Or to work at Faber & Faber (I would even volunteer my services as a fridge-cleaner. Someone would see the obsessive way I scrubbed at stains hidden under shelves and would know me for a perfectionist and would let me edit manuscripts so they could take the credit and I would be happy).

Morrison's characters are almost exclusively Southern, African-American, discriminated against, they discriminate against and tattooed with mythology. Slavery, chauvinism, racism, all the meaty -isms. Her novels are uplifting and inspiring, and (I'm going to be serious now) brilliant. Songs of Solomon is my favourite and Paradise my least favourite. Where Faulkner plays devil's advocate, Morrison pursues abuse single-mindedly, creating her own mythologies.

Now, along the way up that greatness tree, we missed two brown-tipped offshoots (like that of the bamboo in my bathroom), titled Zora Neale Hurston and Carson McCullers. I am starting to feel like I am trailing in Oprah's shadow - Oprah ('s assistant) picked books from both authors for her bookclub. In fact, Hurston is (allegedly) her favourite author. Huh, perhaps I and The Establishment have been overly judgemental. Though, still, Faulkner?

Carson McCullers has featured on this blog, more than once, so for equality's sake (it's election day!), let's stick to Hurston. I read Their Eyes were Watching God a couple of months ago, set in... if you have been reading carefully, you, you can guess... yes, the American south, that muddy well of discrimination and abuse (drinking game: take a shot every time this post uses 'discrimination' or 'abuse'. Or 'southern'. Or 'and') and muddied vowels. In this book, the abuse is persistent but limited to the background.

Written in the vernacular (like As I Lay Dying), the novel tells the story (a secondhand account of her telling of the story) of a woman from her childhood to the death of her husband. Based on your cultural dips into Faulkner and Morrison, you expect a certain theme and for a while Hurston gives it to you, until she begins to channel Faulkner, and soon we know that we are all abusing one another, which makes for another less than uplifting tale, but a poignant one.

Zora Neale Hurston, not on Oprah...

At this point, I am wondering why I have read so many of the American greats, when the first great South African title I think of is Cry the Beloved Country (partly because it is long and long equals great, obviously) and authors are Nadine Gordimer and Andre Brink (neither of whom write... enjoyable fiction). (JM Coetzee? This is one of the few instances where man and work deserve to be equated. In short, there is no need to bolster his egoism by acknowledging him.) Oh, and a couple of Fugard's workshopped plays.

(Please don't redirect me to African fiction, because Chinua Achebe is about as close to Nadine Gordimer as spaghetti is to curry.)

While I want to tell you that I am replacing my to-read list with South African greats, to rectify this situation, I would be lying, and why lie in cyberspace? Every culture seems to have an inflection in its writing, some style that is unique. American fiction is vast, given its very nature as a land of immigrants made up of many states. These four authors have been chosen, by me (and Oprah), artificially, by the links I make between them. And perhaps the same could be said for Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Calvino and Eco, Marquez and Bolano.

South African fiction, especially the political works - sometimes it feels like they're all political - is dry. Metaphors are like kites tied to a fence, like wallflowers that can't dance, like colours mixed into a muddy brown. These works remind me of the Karoo, which I think of fondly but would not live there. When I read, I want to be tossed around, not by emotion, but by the acrobatics of the words. I read to read. To consume the experience and feel bloated with it - and the only way a plot can catch up is to jump and freefall.

We don't have an Oprah (I don't have a TV, but no, whatsherface who used to have an afternoon show on SABC 3 does not count), so there is no one to nominate setworks for the nation to read over the December holidays. If we did, what would she pick? Disgrace? Confessions of a Gambler? Agaat? Fiela se Kind? Maybe Coetzee would admit that his fiction is actually straight-up memoir. We definitely need an Oprah.

Stranger and Stranger: Post 2 of 2

"Stranger and stranger," cried Camilla (she was so much surprised that for the moment she forgot to think up a better title).'

I didn't write this - I typed it. Har! Ok, it isn't original nor is it a decent appropriation of Alice's surprise in Wonderland. In the original (and funny) version, this prim little miss is so surprised she has forgotten 'her grammar', saying 'curiouser and curiouser' when the correct superlative is 'more curious'. (I have just unfunnied it. But wait, there is more funny to come.) She is surprised because her neck is growing longer - nothing else, just her neck - and all she can think about are her shoes and who will tie them. Granted, she is 10 years old or something and has probably just learnt to tie her shoes.

Now my title is not grammatically incorrect or funny. I am not surprised and my neck is still the same length as this morning, I think (I don't measure it regularly or at all so if I really wanted to be sure I'd have to compare photos, but I'm pretty sure it's still the same length). My title should tell you I am confuzzled. Again, this is not a word I am coining. It is a type of confusion, I suppose (I have never had to define it before), where you understand all the factors and reasoning, but that doesn't help you grasp it any better.

Like (sorry, folks), smoking. I don't understand it. I mean, I understand that it's addictive and that people often start out as teenagers due to peer pressure or because they think they look cool (update: not even James Dean in a leather biker jacket leaning on a fast car looks cool smoking) or because it reduces stress or because it smothers food cravings. But come on, we're a smart generation. We know better. You know better.

What confuzzles me is why someone would voluntarily imbibe tar, knowing they are imbibing tar (and bleach and rat poison), which a) is tested on animals (look that one up, you; I have nightmares about that rat) and b) destroys entire forests when factories are built (nevermind the oceans and lakes when the stuff spills). To look like James Dean on a bad day. Voluntarily. There is a link I am missing.

Anyway, that is confuzzlement. Perhaps this post is confuzzlement.

To recap, Stranger in a Strange Land is about Mike the Martian. He is physically human but a sociological 'stranger' and that 'strange land' is Earth. The Martians are a highly evolved civilisation who leave their young to survive or not before welcoming them back into the fold. (That way they weed out the weak ones.) They believe in ghosts. They also can 'discorporate' at will (die) (my favourite bit) and then their friends eat the body  (anyone catch that pun? Probably my best).

There doesn't seem to be a hint of irony in the judgement that human behaviour is largely an arbitrary set of rules designed to prevent human beings from achieving... I have no idea what noun to ascribe to the Martian ideal. Nirvana?

I'm being sarcastic here because I'm all riled up over the animal testing, so find some salt and throw it over your preferred shoulder.

Literature that was revolutionary at the time seems dated a few decades later. I have said this before, in defence of EM Foster (back off, you, that's sacred ground you're about to trample on, literally). Free love was revolutionary in the 60s (a bit like Google will seem in 50 years, after the second Silicon Valley crash). It was Mike's solution to human problems, not the Martians', because by all accounts they are as ugly as salmon and have the mating patterns of.

Mike doesn't have any of the cynicism that I and probably you (else you're in the wrong place, bud) have (I scoffed and rolled my eyes more the further I read). He can set up a telepathic and empathic link between his followers (yes, what happens next is exactly what you think happens next) so that they can access his superhero powers (lifting things and making policemen disappear and, well...) and his Martian bond between his body and let's-just-go-with mind. Ta da, emotions like jealousy discorporate.

I dunno. I can't imagine feeling less jealous because I'm in my partner's brain, and I really, really don't want him in mine.

Maybe my resistance to Mike's spirituality is only proof of how constrained I am by human mores. Well, of course! I yell. Followed by, no, I don't think so. Both. Because human beings need a framework, whether political, familial, social or religious. It's the details of the framework that can be awful and constraining, not the framework (unless your framework is cannibalism. Like Mike's).

Look, no one's stopping me from setting up a hovel... in a hovel, but then I must accept that no one's going to come to my aid when it falls down. I'm sure Mike could have constructed a lovely hovel in no time and without twitching a finger joint, and then rebuilt it, and filled it with followers. But he would just be replacing one framework with another (are you really asking me to choose between democracy and free love? The former has health care and builders to rebuild my hovel, and the latter has the power of the mind, and my mind is a scary place without entrusting my life to it).

Let us sidewind back onto the path. A path. I wrote in the last post that Stranger in a Strange Land can be divided into two distinct books, but that perhaps I was being unfair in judging the second when I hadn't finished. I have finished it, I have let a few days pass, and I stand by my judgement. (Always trust your instinct.) You may be out of salt by now, so you guessed this, I'm sure. No review can end well when it begins with smoking.

Now I think the second book is even worse than I first suspected, especially when compared with the first. Which had a plot. And character consistency. I am confuzzled about how one author can write both books - and in one book! - how it won a Hugo Award and how this book finds itself squished up with 1984, We and A Brave New World on 'best of' lists. I am confuzzled about the editor and publisher who let the book end like that (I won't spoil it - but I will warn you). I am confuzzled about why I read past that 46% (don't).

A common excuse for sci-fi writers is that they were tripping or psychotic at the time, maybe both. According to his Wikipaedia bio, he embraced that stereotype and wandered into Wonderland every once in a while. That might explain the monologues about how awful the modern world is. But Philip K Dick used to write a novel in two days while high on LSD and he wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Perhaps I am judging Heinlein harshly, based on one bad experience. But I don't think so because that's how I got into this post.

Now I am irritated and need a good book to read.