A pair of brackets is not just parenthesis

Something happened in my previous post. Something Happened. (By far my cheesiest and favourite opening lines ever.) In other words, I had just finished reading the book Something Happened by he of Catch 22, Joseph Heller. Is it coincidence that my psychoanalytic reading of Alfred Hitchcock's movies and my reading of the psychoanalytic book Something Happened coincided? Am I interested in both because I am psychoanalytically minded? (Now my favourite introduction and perhaps my best SEO-worthy.)

This is not a review and neither is it scrabble, so keep reading you!

As a writer, I am prone to using parentheses to insert a comment, joke, stage whisper or red herring. Maybe that is why I have found myself adopting the voice of the main character of Something Happened. Which somehow makes me a relation of Joseph Heller, I guess, who first adopted his voice. (I think this logic makes us married. I should look into his estate.)

Bob Slocum, the main character, uses enough brackets to move the keys from the top-right to the center of the keyboard, replacing 'f' and 'h'. He even uses them to begin (and break) paragraphs. Sometimes it seems as though these interruptions have rhyme and reason. That's a red herring. Sometimes the parenthesised comments are short: "(So who else does he have?)" And sometimes they are long: "Somehow the time passes (doesn't it, without help from us..."

Towards the end of the book, I lost a partner-in-bracket and had to move on.

My parentheses are usually jokes, sometimes self-deprecating ones. Occasionally they are instructions to you to keep reading. You. In the last post, I used the brackets to relay missing information. My sentence structure was otherwise quite normal. Conventional, I mean. Not normal. Something abducted my colons and semi-colons and long complex sentences used to convince the reader that My Point is within spitting distance. (Spitting distance?! That is not a term I'd use. I do not and never have, not even in diapers, spat.)

The legend of Oedipus is something I try to avoid contemplating, as with most of Freud's juvenile phase theories. (Of course, it is difficult to miss in Birds, but the birds are a handy distraction.) (Also, the sliver of the screenplay that I appropriated was, uh, appropriated. I did not write it. Wish I had, but did not.)

Slocum narrates the novel, in stream of consciousness. It doesn't take a horoscope to predict that a large part of the novel is about Slocum's fears. The ones he admits to and those he doesn't admit to thereby admitting to them. (With this novel in my back pocket, I'd argue that anyone's unconsciousness stream would filter into fear and the need for security. And the consciousness stream would be an algae mound repressing said fear. And somewhere in there, hunger, in the shape of fish. Too far?)

Even his humour has nestled in here. More hardy, less irreverant. Less unpredictable. (That's a joke, too.)

This has happened before. I get the tone and style, but never the award-winning books. Yet. (One day, I am going to have them write on the cover of my book, "The next Virginia Woolf/AS Byatt/Carson McCullers." And you will get the joke. But you won't laugh because it will be true. Because the Booker Prize council said so.) This is different from feeling like you have been abandoned in a book after you have closed the cover. This is like a habit. This is what comes from identifying with a character (which is oddly what Slocum does: he adopts the gestures of people he has been around). Arrgh! I must be living in a book, where all my thoughts are pirated from others.

That's it, folks. This post is about redemption. To confess to the above (initially I thought I was just confessing to appropriating a fictional character's voice). Soon I will forget all of this, until I re-read this post going through my archives (after the award-winning book in which I inherit the title of a ghost), and wonder who is appropriating the voices of my characters. And then I shall sue them for copyright infringement. After I invest in a patent troll.

The list of magnanimity

Dear reader, have you been paying attention? Have you? Here's a test: do I prefer chocolate or strawberry ice cream? You could answer: by 'I' do you mean the tapper of keys behind this blog or the one who just took a sip of coffee? When in doubt always answer a question with a question. (Just one of the many nuggets I have pilfered from The Office.)

That's not the test. The answer is obvious: chocolate. We'll tackle this later. Now, the real test is whether you have noticed that I have been speeding through some of the classics and some of the strawberry-flavoured books in my local library. Your reply? Should I have noticed? You learn well, my young padawan.

My number one survival strategy is lists, whether written down and colour-coded or mental and therefore quickly lost. This is core to my zombie apocalypse slash hunger games strategy, so I will tell you only that it involves post-its and a tree.

Anyway, last post I abused Borges' library, a really innocuous building that happens to have swallowed all eternity. Which should be paradise for us bibliophiles. (Dibs on 'F' in the fiction section. Ok, fine, 'M' then.) It isn't. It is terrifying. You've heard about the marketing study where they found that too much choice actually drives consumers away. And every salesperson knows to only give a person three options and to place the option that gives you a higher commission first.

The scale of published fiction in the last 100 years is like counting the human population since we first started practising pressing the buttons of video games with our thumbs. Confining the headcount to literary fiction, I mumble guiltily, still doesn't help. This isn't a choice between different scents of floor cleaner (FYI, no scent, especially not made-up ones like Bright Sunshine), no, this is literature!

This eternal library is a case of survival. Instead of killing zombies and other children, we must read everything. That's an exaggeration, you snort (I can hear you, through the microphone, so be please be polite about my bibliophilic delusion).

In the absence of chocolate and strawberry coloured stickers along the spines to guide my quest, I have made a list. Ok, many lists and some were colour-coded. Some are stuck on my fridge but are so faded and blotched with coffee stains you can't read them, others are pinned to a ribbon knotted onto my bedroom door handle, and some are lost in the right hemisphere of my brain, because that's where lost and found is.

The winners of this game are the titles posted on this blog, to the right >>, and those saved on my phone. The one occasion I deviated from this list ended badly, not in a zombie bite, but in disappointment. Point proven; lists are the key to survival. Also, apparently, technology.

Now that I have distracted you from the impending reappearance of the Dreaded List on this blog, here is a condensed list of my approved reads (and future reviews), gleaned mostly from the internet (the most trustworthy, obviously) and recommendations (a mixed bag, except for the ones on FB, obviously):

• 1Q84 by Haruki Marukami (unread; alternate history) I think I've bored you enough with my ravings about this and Kafka on the Shore. That's why bloggers use labels (below right)
• Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (unread; cross-genre) having read a couple of his other novels, I wouldn't rank him above David Mitchell in this category, but then I don't think many short of James Joyce could
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (read; dystopian) the character of the girl at the beginning cinched this novel for me, although I wasn't so thrilled with the book-burning
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (unread; literary) I hereby admit that I have never read this classic novel
• A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (unread; post-modern look how smart I am) we studied A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I hated it for exactly the same reason others adore it: the the iconoclastic, self-conscious self-deprecation, but I'm willing to give him another go. I'm magnanimous like that
• The Maddadam books by Margaret Atwood (two of three read; apocalyptic) post in proximity, so work, you
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson Mccullers (unread; literary) I'm magnanimous but not perfect. I hate Mccullers just a teensy bit because she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which is beautiful, at 23. Pure jealousy. I will read this but I will feel sorry for myself the entire time, so prepare yourselves
• The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain (read; noir fiction) only 116 pages but perfectly paced. I don't usually enjoy crime novels but this was a satisfying, meaty use of the conventions
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (unread; satire) I have faith but I need it because I read Cat's Cradle recently. It is a few marbles short of Philip K Dick's drug-fuelled novels. So, yes, I need it
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein (partly read; science fiction) the beginning reminds me of A Brave New World, although I can't say why. Also reminds me of the soundtrack to Lost Boys: "People are strange when you're a stranger"

My closest library loans out books for two weeks at a time. That gives me 16 weeks to finish all eight of the unread books. But don't worry, I'll sneak in some unexpected reviews just to see if you've been paying attention. You.

As She Climbed Across the Table

Bear with me, folks. I have two very unlikely books to compare, and I'm sitting in the sun on an autumn Sunday mor- - midday, and if I stand the cat will claim my cushion and I won't have the heart to move him. Keep me company, because days spent contemplating in the sun are best shared, in silence.

Speaking of silence... That Tome of Silence, Agaat (it's there, to your left, under 'today's read') where the diacritics are plentiful and so are the pages (metaphorically speaking, since I'm reading on Kindle), but the plot is not. This is not a spoiler, but a warning. At least one of the characters has the symptoms of clinical depression and no personality left to anchor herself. By turns, the farm that is the setting (Groetmoedersdrift - Google translate that one out) is a metaphor for the protagonist's... reality... and for relationships on the farm and perhaps in general.

And herein lies my real gripe with South African literature. It takes itself too seriously. 'Serious' being the operative root word here. As if it is intent on revealing the truth about humanity, in a world in which truth is undecipherable.

Deja vu.

That's the cue. As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem. I picked it up to ward off the spreading depression in the soil of the Western Cape that is 'Greet Mother's Drift'. And finished it in a few hours. I may have mentioned that I dislike the tongue-in-cheek playground of contemporary literary fiction that attempts to disguise the cynical seriousness with which it is written - a protective critique before the critics spot it. But some authors have a style that forgives this.

Perhaps its forced metaphors are tolerable because it is short. The metaphors? Can you guess? The principles of physics and quantum physics, forced into the shape of people and relationships and even settings. Ugh, how the physicists must hate us writers. (They must hate Ian McEwan the most, for his empathetic critique of their critique of our critiques in Solar. It's the lowest hand in any argument: empathising with the other person, so they aren't sure whether it's genuine or not, which the first person knows, because they're being empathetic.)

But Lethem's novel fits more comfortably than van Niekerk's does. There is a scene at the end of Possession by AS Byatt in which she observes, basically and probably badly paraphrased, that post-modernists (meaning me and every other BA student) crave to simply cease to be, to dissipate, to go gently into that good night. Right there is the sum of my desperate scrabbling, which made me stop for a second to nod.

Because, as all those tongue-in-cheek-to-catch-us-out authors are trying to express, here is a piece of science that embodies our conundrum: the world seems to be real - to possess 'truth' - but it is not. Take your moral relativity and subjective realities, pour some paraffin on them and light it. Perhaps you realise that you are replacing one paradigm with another to be able to live (because our minds need it - and that's the human condition), and perhaps not. But think of the word 'truth', think of the word 'real', and no matter how much you twist them, they are bonded to objectivity.

And here comes the inevitable 'there was this study...' I'm not asserting the 'truth' of it, only that it is a good display of my point. There was this study at some university (has anyone ever made that connection with 'universe'?) into how we make everyday decisions - reaching out for a glass of water, taking a step down one path and not another. They recorded at what level and in what sequence decisions are made in. They found that the instinctive, automatic part of the brain is triggered first, and you begin moving before the rational, supposedly decision-making part of the brain kicks in. That, in essence, you justify decisions on a conscious level in retrospect.

Paradigm. Oh I hear your chorus of hooting. Simmer down, I disclaimed myself first - look above.

Study or not, paranoia or not (and what post-modernist isn't?), your subjective reality is controlled by a part of the brain that does not consult you. Does that sound like something you really want to hold too tightly on to? You might want to check with it before your answer. Maybe by Ouija Board.

All I'm really saying here (and this goes out particularly to the physicists) is that the quantum realm offers us hope. It would give us a definitive answer. Hope. The option of dissipating into tiny particles. But also, of knowing for sure. Because despite my argument and those of my fellow writers, and in part alliance with - we don't know. Our language says there are things that are true and real, but our experience says not. So which is it? We just want to know. Even as we spit on knowledge and trample it.

I cannot relate to Agaat because (apart from the constant whinging) the characters have realities and we can see them and we can see the misunderstandings, and even though each does things they cannot rationally justify, they remain blithely unaware of the effusiveness of any kind of truth - in the moment - but justify these irrational moments in hindsight to make another complete story. An evolving one.

To me, it reads as a Romantic story - as in that era of human history where Luther has questioned religion and that question has kept rolling, on and on, with each rotation pulling up the scabs of societies' paradigms. Forcing some backlashes, some projections, some truces - in Romanticism, the transcendent was forced to earth to imbue everything that human beings have not touched. (The Modernists did the same, but with less babbling, and with more cynicism. That I get.)

Round and round the question rolls, even though my fellow writers and I like to believe we have stopped it in mid-rotation. And in a sense, in a moment that is shorter than the speed of light, we have. We have stopped it to look at it, but we are no wiser than we were before. Cynicism is a kneejerk reaction to the desecration of something you hold dear. (I know this well; I work in publishing.) It is an insufficient response to the world, but the only one that keeps us safe from being hurt again.