Here I Am

This is my fourth attempt at reviewing Here I Am and it shall be my last. (You can tell I’m serious because I used the word ‘shall’.) I wish I could blame my writer’s block solely on Jonathan Safran Foer’s brick of a book, but I cannot; my brain is working against me. Nine-ish months ago, I started taking a new medication and slowly (so slowly I didn’t clock it until now) it began turning off all the switches in my brain. Now it’s an empty abyss in there, filled only with self-recriminating echoes.

When I cracked opened Here I Am, I was looking for comfort, much like when I reread Never Let Me Go. They have their flaws, but Foer’s previous two novels, Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, are lyrical and beautiful and tragic and cathartic – and that’s what I was expecting from Here I Am. Something to pull my heart from chest still beating, as I used to say.

In one iteration of this post, I started writing a comparison between this novel and Foer’s previous two novels; in another, I embroidered together snippets from reviews that say what I would say if I had all my faculties and my brain weren’t an echo chamber. Both attempts bored me, which is an accurate reflection of how I felt reading most of the book, but why should I take out my pain on you, dear patient reader?

Let’s start at the beginning: Here I Am is the story of the Bloch family, a Jewish family living in contemporary Washington, DC. Although there is no one main character, the novel spends a lot of time in the head of Jacob, himself the head of a nuclear family that includes his wife Julia and three sons Sam, Max and Benjy. Other characters include Jacob's extended family members: his father Irv, his mother Deborah and his grandfather Isaac, as well as his cousin Tamir and Tamir's sons Noam and Barak.

At first, I had a soft spot for the three boys in the novel – children have so little power in a story, particularly the story of their parents' marriage, but by the end of the novel, I wished they'd stop speaking and thinking. Precocious is the probably best description, but it goes beyond that. These children say and think things that children simply do not say or think. Granted, the same is true of Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but you’re prepared to overlook that failing because that book is so beautifully written.

Let’s go back to that cast list. Notice anything? Female characters are few and far between – and don’t expect too much from those that do appear; ‘main’ character Julia is so flimsy she's transparent. She serves mostly as Jacob's foil: reacting to his almost-infidelity, having her own almost-affair, punishing their son Sam, forcing Jacob to put down his dog and forcing an end to the no-man's land of their marriage. Then, at the end of the novel, she provides a convenient opportunity for Jacob to reflect on his life and wrap things up in a neat little bow.

The character I enjoyed the most, oddly, was Tamir. He's pretty offensive, but he's a straight shooter and he's in the unenviable situation of being unable to get home while his son fights in a war he feels he should be part of too. We learn details about him organically, while the grown man-child that is Jacob bemoans his gilded life that, if anything, he is ruining single-handedly but with zero self-awareness despite the ode to navel-gazing that is this book.

I keep comparing Foer’s novels, whether I mean to or not, but it occurs to me that the rambling, sentimental, lyrical style in Foer's previous books hides the weaker points of his writing, like dialogue – perhaps the author chose this book as a vehicle to confront his weaknesses, as much of it comprises lines and lines of dialogue like the longest play ever written. The conversations his characters have are stilted and, frankly, bizarre – surely, surely, no human person has conversations like this.

However, the comparison could begin and end with extent: the novel is 571 pages to their 200-odd. That’s 300 or so wasted pages in which the writer circles a lot of themes, but doesn't stop to focus on most of them, giving the reader a kind of slow whiplash. As Alexander Nazaryan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "This novel badly needed an editor who lacked tact and wielded a machete."

There’s probably more to be said about Here I Am – about the themes of religion and being Jewish in a modern world with its many distractions, or about Jacob with his hidden script made up of mostly notes like ‘HOW TO PLAY ANGER’ – but I’m bored again. I’m bored of writing about this boring book and editing my posts about this boring book and reading other reviews about this boring book.

A Canticle for Leibowitz: Part 2 of 2

What is the attention span of a gnat? I am figuring that we find out its life span and divide that into something objective, like the attention span of a fly, or by the amount of time they can spend on a single task. Then we could wander through a few academic halls and land up considering the consciousness of tiny flying animals or fall through the moldy hall that is when a baby becomes a person. As you may have surmised (and as intended) you may have noticed I have a short attention span, which I would compare with that of a gnat's - no, I will compare it and tell you it is two minutes and 3.2 seconds, because I can and I did.

I have also realised that I have said 'would have' a few times today. There are three 'have's in that sentence alone. What the heck is the point of that word? (And before you get snarky, you, I am well aware there is a linguistic answer, but my point still holds because this is my blog and if I say a gnat can only focus on a single task (as defined by me) for two minutes, that is valid.)

So, I finished A Canticle for Leibowitz by sheer force of will. My opinion hasn't changed. Although the structure is interesting, the symbols are heavy-handed. I could not empathise with a single character until the last 2% of the book, but by then I could also not subjugate my lack of suspension of disbelief. (I am really trying here. Whenever I want to point out how illogical something is and that it is a result of laziness not plot, I hear the 'eh' of Dwight from The Office every time he wants to point out something illogical - usually to do with bears. It builds up at the back of the throat and pops from the nasal cavity like a buzzer in a game show.)

This isn't a spoiler, unless you are inclined to belief: the book is set over centuries upon centuries, where humans build up their technology over and over to a point when they can create nuclear bombs. How? How could this happen?

Geologists tell us (although this may be a fringe group of rogue scientists who do not believe in pollution) that the poles are overdue for a shift, whereupon north becomes south, confusing swallows, polar bears and brown bears, as well as pirates and hopefully radar linked to bombs. It may or may not kill us (dust storms, rampaging polar bears and swallows, bombs). Also, (and FYI) a certain degree of climate change is normal, judging by the ice age and the fact that Europe was a desert. (Interesting point: the size of dinosaurs was only possible because the density of the air was lower than it is now.)

Given this was written in the 60s, this would take us way into the 5000s, when (hopefully for the planet) we are extinct, because, entropy. More than a few of the surviving populations would have some kind of mutation (not the X-men kind, but if I could choose, something that gives me the ability to sprint and climb like a mountain goat, because, zombies) from the recurring nuclear bombs, which they would need anyway for the fittest, which no offence, cannot be almost exclusive to monks!

Here's another meaty one for the academics: technological determinism. This book assumes a single pinnacle of human discovery and creation. Bombs, intercoms, phones, planes etc. But a) I can imagine oh so many alternatives, like, what if we discovered the more eco-friendly (and therefore smarter) solutions to electricity, fuel and, errr, general human habitation, first? And b) does this 'pinnacle' really make society 'better'?

This a controversial topic and my gnat brain has moved on. Name of the Rose depicted a monk and a monastery in Italy that captivated my imagination. In this book I met three monks I did not like or only learnt to like in the very last pages of their chapter. It is one thing to kill off characters like a gnat flaps its wings and another thing to just move me to another monastery and then tell me they died of old age while I wasn't looking. It, in fact, makes me care less about your very stupid because they are very human characters. I have compared my brain to a gnat more than once today, therefore your argument is invalid.

Initially my foray in the world of insects was intended to justify A List. First, I did not want to talk about that book of invalidities as it shall be known from now on. Second, I am already bored, so I figured that bullet points would be more my speed. Since this argument is so very compelling, I shall add A List now, in the same blogpost, because I do not feel like writing out more than one tweet.

In the spirit of the above review (don't groan, you) I am going to pick five of the least dis-believable books I have read. I will however use short phrases instead of full, therefore very boring sentences.

1. A Canticle to Liebowitz
2. A Stranger in a Strange Land: life on Mars, general 60s-like (and spirited) shenanigans, a human taking on the physical abilities of another species as if sprinting like a cheetah were a combination of will and absence of will
3. Heart of Darkness and Atomised: more a lack of liking and an abundance of hatred than of disbelief
4. Zoo City: animal familiars that appear when you commit a crime, the final scene
5. Her Fearful Symmetry: ghosts, the characters' complete absence of character, other characters, plot - all of it, narrator (and all this from the writer who made me believe in time travel!)

While we're at it, let's add Gulliver's Travels

I always feel the need to point out that magic is meant to be compatible with physical laws, like gravity and the conservation of mass. Even zombies have an (albeit loose) explanation! So if something that didn't exist before is magicked into existence and it is made of atoms, where were those atoms before? Because so many other tricks rely on the existence of atoms - and I do not mean an interpretation of quantum laws, because *insert game-show sound effect*. Oh, I'm overthinking? Well - ok, the gnat has flown off.

In other words, if an animal familiar appears, was it lurking around waiting for you to do something awful? Is it missing from a zoo somewhere? Is it a manifestation of some communal judgement? Someone, somewhere, must have a clue - must have noticed a trend of disappearing animals - even if it isn't yet verified. And what trend is there regarding the type of crime considered worthy of a (really awesome - and if you're handing them out I'll take one) animal? Legal, societal, religious? Just one real clue, please. (I also want the awesome inseparable animal. Imagine walking down the street with a tiger, a polar bear, a tortoise, a wolf - do they come in extinct too and if so, hello, black rhino.)

Impressive - my attention is holding more like a fly battering itself against a window. (As I typed that, my bunny sat on my stomach, so maybe I am sorted. Still, a polar bear? I adore polar bears.)

What a meandering post. I think the most meandering I have ever written. Perhaps this is a good thing, because it gives me more wiggle room in future. To sum up: every book mentioned in this post, except for the Umberto Eco, is ridiculous. According to the woman with her gnat in her skull. The unconscious doesn't restrict itself to dreams. Do you see it? I asked for a polar bear when I had already been given a gnat. Does the extent of the crime affect the size of the animal? Could an insect be a familiar? That seems a bit of an anticlimax. Like this conclusion. (I walked right into that one.)

I should know better

I should know better. Haven't I been down this road? And haven't I dragged you with me, just to hear you scream? (Solidarity is what I mean. Scream in solidarity.) Suffer for your art. Lesson learnt. Do what you love. Learnt and burnt. (It rhymes. Stop thinking so much.) Language is a fickle thing, swayed by plays on words. Live what you love and vice versa. Maybe I enjoy testing platitudes, maybe I am just otherwise and maybe there is a teeny tiny origami-ed singularity of... hope... living in a swamp of nihilism. Unlikely, right? Maybe it's just a stagnant pond.

I have struck out on my own, hypothetically earning money by writing. Yes, for a living. Yes, hypothetically for a living. Yes, I know. I should know better.

For those you who are new to said screaming, a publisher in Italo Calvino's novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveller explains, unasked, that a reader should never be a publisher. He leaves his claim hanging, for you to fill in the gaps. For me, it was a) realising that most of the manuscripts you thumb through are just that: a dirty thumbprint as well as an exercise in egoism - you are not discovering Yeats or Morrison; you are packaging products that are shelved and bought and shelved, and to be followed by the sequel, and b) the previous point (I got ahead of myself) about packaging.

See, words and books are the altar at which I scrutinise and decode and generally worship with the nit-pickiness of the editor I am. I am an editor and writer. In the most fundamental existential and religious sense (although I am told this is not possible, I live to be otherwise). A career is something you do to fund your existential crises - and that discord is exactly how you come to be good at your job (and, to be crass, to make piles of money you can use to line your published novels with).

Hang on. Something is out of sync in this tirade. What is it? Is it my bleeding wounds? My rampaging cynicism? My unfed facetiousness?

Bear with me, now. Perhaps this is an old song, taught to me by a long-dead bird (it may be under my bed cuddled by a self-satisfied cat named Selina the Psychopath). Perhaps I am older, bolder and uglier, better poised to defend my altar without necessarily dying in the process. This cannot be. If it is, my days and nights will run together (ok, that began yonks ago); I will hum while I do chores; I may actually finish my novel and at some point I will be... content? Sorry, I dropped my laptop as the shivers paralysed my motor skills. 

A writer is nothing without discontent. Every story has a complication or infinite; every award-worthy literary novel has complication, anti-climax and a resolution that is both unknowable and for you to find out. All writers are cynical, vaguely hostile, isolated and definitely not in any way wealthy. Or even just head-above-water not-broke. Or so volumes of novels and biographies, and degrees of terrabytes of movies tell us.

Virginia Woolf or Marianne Keyes? That is my choice? Oh deity of my absolutely fictional altar, I am just going to hide out under it for a while with you, if that's ok? I don't take up much space. Especially when I have dehydrated myself with hours of bawling.

I still protest the word plays that skip like Little Bo Peeps through this post. Partly because that is just tempting Murphy (remember last week when I left my house keys in my car, which was being serviced, or when I forgot my wallet at home and was already in a queue and had to beg the parking office to let me out, or when I left my lights on at work and had to call for a jump start at 23:00 on a Sunday evening? I have seen him in pyjamas, folks. Pyjamas) and partly because life is more complicated than seven words (which in itself nullifies that clause).

Ok, ok, since you are that insistent I will crawl out from underneath this altar and write everything and only enjoy it a medium amount of much. I will also desist from the crazy meandering of this post.  I will stop crying if you stop screaming. I will not overanalyse how much I do enjoy writing (insurance is more interesting that you think, you). I will do all of this, but I will take my imaginary deity with me. We have a novel to finish. And it needs to be complicated and unresolved.

The Luminaries

I finished Madaddam. I don't want to talk about it for a while. Which probably means, at the most, four days. Since then, predictably, I have been in a book rut, with reading block and written wordititis (official diagnosis - look it up, after I have created the Wikipedia entry). Granted, this may or may not have something to do with the books themselves. Spoiler alert (post-alert, but you should know better when reading this blog).

Particularly The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It isn't a trilogy but it feels like one.

It is beautifully written. So beautiful that it may have been written during the late-ish 19th century. Which is the point, because it is set in the 19th century in a gold mining town in New Zealand, which is arbitrary, unless you're a Post-modernist adopting a vintage voice for effect. The effect being full blown reading block.

As I write this, I am conscious that Mr Murakami sits on my dresser, carving a space for itself in the wood using gravity and its density. That's less a block than terror.

In varsity, my least favourite courses were on Romantic and Victorian literature. (Predictably though, I enjoyed Gothic literature - Wuthering Heights and Turn of the Screw. Ghosts as the projections of psychological neuroses and social dysfunctions, notably patriarchy? Strangely, I am iffy about Jane Eyre for the same reasons, but passionate about Wide Sargasso Sea which was a Post-modernist feminist 'prequel' to Jane Eyre. Basically the wife is victimised which is a prerequisite for moral indignation. Go feminism.)

Back my Point, which is a winding, perhaps circular path, and perhaps just me plowing through bush until I hit my toe on something. I am barefoot. Yes, ok, carry on. The prose of The Luminaries is as winding as my posts. I am 17% through my Kindle version. So far:

A man wanders into a hotel bar in a town with one main road and a jail. The men already in the room have gone to great lengths to keep everyone out of the room and they're not very good at disguising this. (When you fake-read a paper, move your eyes. Amateurs.)

Said man is interrogated and brought into their confidence.

So they embark on a story in a story (we're on 12% at this point and I think, thank goodness, the narrator is finally going to introduce the conflict).

But NO! We learn about everyone's business in this town and very little about the important stuff. Or what I presume to be important, because it could turn out the missing dress case is the important stuff. I don't care. Mislead me. Just mislead me with something.

See, what I disliked about Pope, Coleridge and Wordsworth (I never even touched Swift because I could feel it was boring from a distance. Wish I had had the same premonition about Heart of Darkness) was that they padded. Seriously, that's a cloud. Your poetry, like a cloud, drifts over and above the poem without actually having a relationship with the poem, except to the extent that it blocks out the sun sometimes. The sun also being tangential to your existence fyi.

My argument is tenuous, I see that. But equally tenuous is the link between my attention and the author's waffling.

You obviously noticed I said books earlier (take the credit for being observant, you). I never finished V. I never finished it because it was too soon after The Goldfinch; if I didn't read it for one day I forgot what had happened and had to reread the fifty pages before it, and because, I confess, when I reread the synopses, I realised I had no idea what was going on. That disappointment was like thinking you understood a sentence in Ulysses and realising you had transposed two words in your head and it makes no sense now, but with less street cred.

On the up side, I realised I don't just read for themes and characters - insofar as they relate to themes - as I have always believed. I do care about plot. I want an introduction, conflict, exposition, climax and resolution. I want to be tossed around by the tide in addition to being conscious of the chill of the waves, the foam in my nostrils and that I can't feel my toes or fingers.

The Luminaries was nominated for the Mann Booker Prize and V is a classic. So, the books themselves are not bad. I assume. Book people aren't easily bribed, because there's no benefit for the briber. I can see the value of Pope, Coleridge and Wordsworth (not Swift or Conrad - the cartoon version of Gulliver's Travels is creepy (why do people not see this?) and Conrad cannot write (why does no one see this?)), but I just don't value them.

I have always said it's dangerous to review a book before you have read it. Or made it past 20%. But then I wouldn't have anything to blog about. Look forward to my retraction. Or the repetition of certain metaphors, because as a writer, I believe extended metaphors are important. Not more important than plot but more important than spelling (Word can fix that).

Here is my conundrum (not my Point): my novel is almost entirely observations and walking to and from places. Various characters never reappear and others merely haunt the novel. I don't pad, because there is nothing to pad, except my own interests. Is that daring or uninspired? Exposition or just conclusion? Meh, as long as no one finds this blogpost, they will never know and hopefully some misguided professor will assign my novel and pretend she understands it for street cred. I won't believe her unless she compares me with Swift (not Conrad, never Conrad)).

PS. The cover pics won't load so you will have to do without.

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." 

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.

Stranger in a Strange Land: Part 1 of 2

Once again, I demand your patience. Yes, demand! A reviewer should never review a book when she has not finished said book. She should also never review a book straight after finishing. But a) rules only apply 75% of the time, b) rules bore me 75% of the time and c) Stranger in a Strange Land could be divided neatly into two Kindle singles, the second of which would be filed under a different category - some synonym for 'strange, even for science fiction'.

Despite my claims to unconventionality (literally), this is the 25% of the time when I seem to have introduced my topic in, um, the introduction. Don't worry, no doubt I will have meandered by the conclusion. But just where will I meander to, huh? The mind boggles.

The conundrum here is: What happened to the author, Robert A Heinlein, when he had completed 46% of the book? Here's a clue - or a red herring - he published the book in 1961, a few years after he had written it. Before that, he had written children's books (heavens!). Did he write it and then realise he could use dirty words and sex and indulge in aesthetic, political and humanist dialogues, under the guise of the free love espoused by people who didn't shower or wash their hair (I want to say something nasty here but shall refrain. Unlike Heinlein)?

Enough suspense. I am hungry and my leftovers from dinner are a-calling. From the fridge. I should probably get it checked it out then.

Space travel deposits and then 20-ish years later reclaims a human raised on Mars by, yes, Martians. Martians we now know to be either fossilised single-celled somethings or invisible. These somethings are an advanced civilisation who live for more than 100 years and once they die they become Old Ones who talk to and guide the living Martians. They can control pretty much everything: their minds, growth of their bodies, objects around them and so on. They can also die on command (!), called 'disorporation', and make things not be by reducing them to singularities. (This might also explain why they're invisible to dear Curiosity.)

The Man from Mars (nicknamed 'Mike') automatically becomes the richest and most powerful man ever, through some series of silly laws that are sillier than the ones the colonialists imposed. He finds refuge in the home of a philanthropist named Jubal, who is surrounded by lascivious women and two willing servants, who gets him out of his mess by handing power over to the Secretary General of the world. After Mike makes some policemen disappear (the official story is they got lost. Yes. In a suburb).

Aaaaaand this is where the bar at the bottom of the Kindle screen says '46%'. It should also say 'end of Book One - proceed to the book labelled 'strange, even for science fiction'?' In Martian, 'grok' means something apparently indescribable in human language but, to take some liberties, seems to be a verb for true understanding, where the objective truth and our subjective delusions meet. (Did I mention the Martians are highly advanced? Also in the way of the spirit. That's how they control things. (They sound like hippies to me.)) I don't grok Book Two.

Mike adapts quickly to human life, but he doesn't grok it. So he takes his show on the road, together with someone else's sweetheart. He begins to speak with all the idioms and double entendres of a fluent English speaker raised in America. He also delivers monologues on the philosophies of religion and human relationships, between orgies that to him symbolise having a glass of wine together, and trips to the zoo. And he still can't make or understand a joke.

Meanwhile, back at Jubal's ranch, amid pregnancy (implied to be the progeny of the Man from Mars) and a wedding with - wait - a celibate Muslim (shock, horror!), the ranch-owner delivers his own monologues on the philosophy of aesthetics, with so much passion that I am beginning to suspect the author is speaking through these characters. I fell asleep at this point.

At the end of Book One, I thought, this is unusual: to continue past what feels like the climax and resolution of the novel. Fun; it reminds me of Star Wars (that's a compliment). Sometimes it's best to stop while you're ahead (one valuable rule).

As I said, a reviewer should never pass comment before the end of the book. (Note this, my future reviewers. It's not polite.) Maybe there will be a plot development that says (from the author): "I know this has all been a bit much to stomach and I apologise for offending the sensibilities of sensible people. Here is why I did it and see, it works! Continue reading and praise my book in your blog post." Perhaps just an endnote. Even a footnote.

It won a pretty impressive prize, a Hugo Award (not a Booker or a Nobel though), if you're impressed by that sort of thing. Neuromancer won the same award in 1985 and I thought that was grand (seriously, no one has answered my question). (Also, did you know that they give out the award to films and that Jurassic Park won in 1992? Don't roll your eyes - deny you watch the repeats when they come on the movie channel, I dare you.)

Brontosaurus had been my favourite dinosaur since I was a child. Even though he may not exist. I like an underd-ino (har!)

Essentially (because this is the most conventional post I have written in a while, I will summarise My Point(s) - even though I am listening to Thom Yorke!) the characterisation reduces to the author's opinions (mostly negative) of the human race, thus losing the subtlety of Book One and makes it grand. These opinions are dated: diatribes on modern art, misanthropism, religion as akin to commercialism, how media distort reality and so on. We have heard them and read them ad nauseam. People waiting to cross the road talk about this!

Essentially (revised) in Book Two we're being preached to. By characters who think that orgies are a valid way to encourage social empathy. Granted, Mike is revealing (haha) social norms and mores for what they are: artificial. But that's a little ridiculous from a man who will choose the moment he will die - sorry, discorporate - and believes he is being educated by ghosts. Norms and mores are necessary for the existence of any life form with a brain. Watch your pets introduce themselves to other pets.

Having potentially stuck my foot in my mouth, I am going to finish the book and hopefully not have to retract this post (I won't delete it, that seems unethical somehow, like copying a picture of a model from a website and uploading it as your profile pic. Yeah, I'm talking to you). At the very least, I will grok the philosophies of aesthetics, economics and human relationships in the 60s. I always wanted to take that course at varsity, but it conflicted with the rest of my schedule.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers

Never judge a book by its cover? Psssht. The design of the cover tells you what genre it is, what type of reader the marketing department thinks will buy the book, how much the publisher was prepared to spend on the book, what the reviewers said and whether they can be trusted (the publication they write for)... And the title and author's name, of course. Then there's the blurb...

I never read the blurb. So many words that tell you nothing about the book. Unless you're in it for the plot. Are you? Do you read the 'new fiction' stacked at the front of the book shop? Head shaking, patronising sigh. No, no. The 'new fiction' up front is the stuff with plot in it. Plot... Pssssht. What you want are characters, ideas, revelation. You're looking for the next life-changing read.

So, you speed past the piles of ghostwritten and skeletal books, to the shelf of 'new fiction'. No, no, not the bestseller list. Have you been listening, like, at all? Around the shelf to the back of it. Ah, here is the real new fiction. The runts of the litter, the ones that will follow you around convinced you are some kind of deity from which freedom flows. These are the dogs - books - that will wrestle a bear to protect you.

(c) brusselspictures.com. Let's play find the reader.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers does not rest here. You zoomed past him 5 seconds ago.

Ok, ok, so 'new fiction' has its own place in the world of literature. It reaches many more people than new fiction, and what we really want is people reading. Because people who read are intelligent people, empathic people, empowered people. Yes, and democracy is a real thing. Did you know that a certain bestselling author, who produces one book every six months, actually uses ghostwriters? He gives them the plot, they write it, he overwrites and to the publisher it goes.

Luckily we live in societies that worship diversity (by which I mean the people who can host fundraisers and plonk pretty minorities in their ads and hire against a checklist of the previously disadvantaged that they still need), so you are free to stop at the front of the shop and pick up one of those books whose author's name is in bigger type than the title. And I shall not judge because I can't see you from behind the shelf and I am too busy playing with puppies.

I tricked you. Where do you think The Solitude of Prime Numbers is resting? Do you think it's at the front, flouncing its skirts? Ask yourselves how many seconds it will take to walk back to Raptor or Sally's Sonnet or whatever else is dancing in the window. Actually, ask me, because I actually know. 10 seconds! (I timed it. I don't have a watch but I can count, you.) Which means - ta dah! - that The Solitude of Prime Numbers is somewhere in between. Maybe hanging from the ceiling by some duct tape or held up by some poor staff member whose arm is beginning to atrophy.

The cover is made up of four layers: The first is a picture of a girl sitting on a bench. The second is a picture of a river with some water flowers reflected in the water, Monet-style but not quite. The third is a set of geometrical diagrams drawn in thin lines. Finally we have the title and the author's name, as well as the words 'haunting, bestseller,stunning'. In other words, the design is literally layered, suggesting the novel is the same.  But then there is that line-up of words that are worn through with use.

Marketing speak. Love it. There's more on the back cover but I won't bore you. The blurb? I didn't read it before I opened the book. Now, I realise, it reveals the entire plot except for the last 15 pages. Luckily, this book is about characters as much as plot, which is why it is permitted to hover in the centre of the room, caught between readers' judgements.

The novel focuses on two main characters: Alice and Matthia, both of whom suffered childhood tragedies and grow up with normal self-destructive tendencies like not eating and cutting oneself. Several other characters flow through like undercurrents, each with their own self-destructive tendencies. The plot focuses on the friendship of these characters, mostly in retrospect and with the importance we attach to single moments in our lives.

In psychology speak, they become co-dependent. They fill the void that would normally be filled with said self-destructive tendencies. Well, really, they just shove them aside.

The author treats the psychologies of the two characters with such empathy and understanding, especially Matthia. It is through Matthia that the promise of the philosophy of mathematics, posed in the title, comes through. (To be honest, I think it was the phrase 'Prime Numbers' that hooked me.) Although a lot of the book is dedicated to the characters' disorders, somehow we learn more about the characters themselves than just a list of their symptoms.

And this isn't a Jodi Picoult version of tragedy; these are the everyday lives of two afflicted characters, to whom little happens bar their early traumas. (So, don't worry, no one's sister dies unexpectedly at the end. That all happens at the beginning...)

But, see, here's the thing. Nothing happens... (I ain't a hypocrite - hear me out.) The characters meet and then we bound through their lives at intervals of a few years, sitting in their brains while they contemplate what is, was and might be. Then whoosh we're off again. We're tripping over loose ends and generally 

contemplating the angst that prevents us from ever having a real relationship with another human being - or, in fact, just saying what we bloody well are thinking - and everyone is just a step away from mental meltdown.

Then we have the last 15 pages not covered by the blurb. To give the author, marketers and reviewers the benefit of the doubt, I think maybe it's meant to be a happy ending. It only looks that way if I squint. If I squint, I can also appreciate that at least the blurb accurately describes the, errr, plot, which is really an accomplishment in the days when people can't spell without spellcheck.

Hush, now, here's a free lesson. Always judge a book by the first paragraph. This is the paragraph the author has slaved over, trust me on this. It should always leave a mystery hanging in the air, a mystery you want the answer to. That is a good book. (Except for once, when it turned out the editor must have known this and really crafted the first paragraph, because the rest was just badly written.) This good book may not be on display at the front of the shop, the cover design may be shoddy because no one really expects it to sell and, really, it may be a runt born from a runt. But have you never watched a Disney movie?!

The first paragraph of The Solitude of Prime Numbers hides the novel's mystery, letting us wonder what exactly it is until the very end. The paragraph focuses on a young Alice, does hint at the atmosphere of angst that each page coughs up, like a smoker's breath. You know this is not going to be a happy story. I was distracted by the reference to prime numbers in the title, thinking this novel was going enrich me. I probably would not have read it if I had read the first paragraph. But it's hanging in the middle of the shop if you want it.

Orbiting The Swan Thieves

There should be space in the title The Swan Thieves for a joke about how the book stole hours of my life. See, it's too far out of orbit. Also, I feel a bit mean saying that - it's a bit harsh and I could have chosen to steal my time back. Am I a sop? I am overthinking again, wasting more precious time, but this is why you love me. Well, you would if you met me. What does my foible have to do with a joke that spins in a wide orbit?

Scientifically, the joke couldn't sweep too far an orbit from the book (which we're assuming is the centre of the system), because once it moved out of the centre's 'range', it would careen into space like an asteroid. So either: the joke is skimming the very edge of the book's sphere of influence or it is floating around, unconnected with anything.

More time, floating away.

Luckily this ramble careens us back into orbit: The Swan Thieves is, like its predecessor The Historian, an unconventional mystery. In Elizabeth Kostova's first novel, we chased the legend of Dracula - at arm's length because the sources of this legend are prone to mutilating people and I am squeamish. In her second release, I think the mystery is a painter's obsession with a woman who lived more than 100 years ago. He has a psychotic meltdown, tries to destroy a painting and then refuses to speak.

Because, obviously, all artists are, to put it nicely, crazy. (You'd hate to know what other words come to mind.) Obviously. The painter is a nicely rounded set of stereotypes, which is actually a relief from the painful touchy-feely-ness of the other characters and the unethical absurdities of a teacher hooking up with a student (I suspect because he needed food and shelter), and a psychiatrist marrying his patient's ex-girlfriend. Oh and so much more that I can't reveal without spoiling the plot.

I said, "I think" because halfway through the mystery shifts, although honestly I don't know where it went, nor do I really care. The mystery petered out, without a single vampire swishing around in the shadows. Imagine, an Impressionistic painting chasing you through a psychiatric hospital. Not a Cuckoo's Nest hospital but a clean and accommodating one. When you turn around, there is nothing behind you except for a hint of a frame and the flash of a brushstroke in the moonlight.

Maybe I'm biased by The Historian, and this novel isn't meant to be creepy. (Although, as I mentioned, it is creepy in other ways.) Maybe it is meant appeal to to readers of a more sensitive disposition, who are moved to tears by flowers blooming and children bullying each other on a playground. Maybe they fancy they are the epitome of another artist stereotype: the delicate waif writing dedications to urns and then dying. Poetically. Tragically.

Again, I feel I am being glib. At about 90% of the way through the book were a few pages in which I felt the author extended the promise of her first novel: her descriptions were more focused and so more was left to the reader's imagination. My glibness is a product of my disappointment in a novel of the same breeding of The Historian and with this potential. (This novel was more a book-club read than serious literary fiction, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, because the writing catches you in its orbit and doesn't spend time describing your fellow jokes' eyebrows in epic poems first.)

The novel also reminded me of how much I used to enjoy painting and drawing. I even went out and bought a set of pencils. (Which has been opened and the pencils touched, you. Once. But once more than in 13 years.) So, despite my whinging about the amount of adjectives and adverbs and nonsense, some of it had an effect on this reader.

Recitation complete. No questions. We have all wasted enough time. I have appointments to keep: being chased down the corridors of a hospital and waning over a desk piteously. Eventually I'll have to choose one stereotype, I suppose.

Also, I'm distracted, dear reader. First, I have just started The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which I have been eyeing for years and found two days ago in a secondhand bookshop I often go to. On the one hand, the novel was originally written in Italian by a professor in particle physics; on the other hand, the first few chapters are underwhelming - not one paradox or brain-popping theorem or just the number 15 (my favourite). Let's bet on my final ruling. Because I am completely objective, I will be the bookie.

Second, I want to post about Ayn Rand's Anthem, but this is a heady topic, and my head is still annoyed. I used to look down on people who take her philosophies so seriously. I understand. Oh, I understand. Maybe you want to read it before my next post and you can share my annoyance. (If you empathise though, stay away. Only kidding. Let's discuss this and then someone will hold you down and I will smack you (I may need a few tries - my arms are my weak spot).)

I think we left orbit a while back.

The Bourne Identity

Coincidentally and before I begin (because what is an hour of blogging without the joy of making you suffer for my art), I started reading We are Now Beginning our Descent last night. It's written by James Meek, that Meek who rocked my world in People's Act of Love (no sighing!) and then whipped up some blinding dust with Drivetime. That Meek. Review pending so check back regularly. Please.

The main character describes his forthcoming novel (they're all interminably forthcoming, aren't they? It's like a separate genre) to a "socialist Scottish [and drunk] poet":

"It would subvert the genre by making America the enemy - not a group within America, but the American government, the American majority and the American way [yay, no Oxford comma!]. American characters would be portrayed as cliched, two-dimensional, ignorant caricatures, while their European counterparts would be wisecracking, genuine, courageous..."

And here, folks, you have an introduction that breaks all the rules. Consider it a prologue, an epilogue, maybe even epigraph. Or just a really bad introduction justified by literary terms that make it difficult for you to say so without looking stupid. Either way, I did it on purpose. Yep.

Onwards. To slide seamlessly into the book isolated in the title of this post: The Bourne Identity is not that novel. The book is a spy thriller (if you haven't watched the movies with Matt Damon 2.0 except better than the original), written in the 80s. America in the 80s was a mirror of the 2000's: run by a Bush, hostile towards the Middle East as suited them and proudly materialistic.

Or so says History.com. I dunno, I was only just born. All I remember is the fashion. *shudder* Best only resurrected as a memory.

In this example of  popular literature, the Middle East and Russia - sorry, Soviet Union - are noticeable only by their absence. The Vietnam War does feature, as the heinous crime it was, as does South America. You see, the enemy is 'Latin' and the protagonist recognises him only by his dark skin. (Apparently there are no other 'dark-skinned' people in Europe, at least not in the 80s.) So add subtle racism to the list.

The American government gets some left-wing *%$# thrown at it - the novel even satirises a meeting of the intelligence elite, but absolves them later through traitorous violence. The object of the tirade then shifts to a single American group and later a single American man. The Europeans...? Mostly deceitful, playing a game many centuries old, that Americans have no place interfering with.

And the real enemy? One man, manipulating a network of assassins, messengers and crude murderers. I always find this idea, like the Illuminati, fascinating. How? Just how? Maybe, to continue the theme, the man represents the fear of people, individuals, all around us. This man could be anyone. Although, as the saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. (This man, though, is not that man. He is objectively the personification of evil. Obviously. I mean, he's 'dark', right?)

I'm not perfect either, though: I am slipping into harsh reviewer mode, because destroying is easier than creating.

It is easy to see why the novel is popular. I confess I was caught up in the idea of Europe as the playground of spy games and the romance of two beautiful people, with imagining myself as this brilliant strategist whom others envy and whom these same others are afraid of. The action moves fluidly (though the plot is a bit more porous) and there are different types of action. All good. After all, escapism is the objective of a novel like this.

But, to slip back into reviewer mode, the other thing I cannot stomach is the portrayal of the female character. She is strong in one sense: she is an economist and her insight becomes crucial to Bourne's strategies. But she is also what literary snobs (like myself) call a 'Madonna figure'. (I have this image of Bourne clutched to her bosom like the prophesied child in the Pieta. Yikes. But that's essentially what the metaphor comes down to.)

She is supportive, fine; imagine her arm is slung across his back, his arm on her shoulders (as it is at one point. He recovers remarkably quickly). Creepily supportive; see above. She has Stockholm Syndrome; in the first portion of the novel, he spends a lot of time threatening and beating her with a gun to her head. She believes in his goodness; even though he spends a lot of time before the novel as a crazy, gun-toting mourner in the jungle. And she is beyond moral approach and naive; no evidence here except her patronising and whiney appeals to him to believe in himself.

But I am reading to much into it (pun!). I mean, this isn't We are Now Beginning our Descent. Although I am only 50 pages into it, I am caught up in the author's self-reflection, the meaningless of war and how we cope with trauma. The main characters are rounded out by what they don't say and why they say what they say, whether male or female (granted, the main character is male, so the perspective is slightly skewed). It isn't People's Act of Love, but so far, it's engaging and escapist.

(See, I'm not a total snob. Well, I am, but I can justify it.)