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.)

Who's afraid of Samuel Beckett?

Way back when (yes, it was a long time ago), I was an undergrad discovering (literally mining, it felt to me as it feels to every young'n) the works of great (and minor) authors who described parts of my world. Grand, twisted, confusing, unfair, ironic if irony were unstructured, but poetic. (See previous post.) Like medication wrapped in a plastic capsule, the world is easier to swallow when mangled into black typeface. That was when I rediscovered my desire to write.

Every great writer (I hope?) has to first be a bad writer. (I'm ready to fight for this illusion.) The assignment for that  month's creative writing workshop was to write a one-act play. So, I wondered why one might hate a colour. A colour is like a number - innocuous - but still, I do not like the number 7. Even numbers have a pattern (please, tell me you know what that is) and so do primes, but odd numbers in general?! Their only pattern is that they aren't evens!

Can you explain your own reactions to innocuous things? And I'm not referring to favourite colours, which are based on preference, aesthetic. I'm talking about a judgement on something that is by nature exempt from judgement. So, is my explanation above really an explanation? Or is it hidden within the black typeface?

Dear reader, the point is a-coming. Hang in there.

The protagonist of my play is afraid of the colour red, as above. She is in the queue of a bank (clearly not the red one) and breaking the rules of All Queues: talking to people around her, with no reason; commenting on their clothing; skipping places; revealing very intimate information; and questioning the rationale behind All Queues.

Her real motivation is to confront a man who she sees the vortex of every trauma in her life. But the plot of the play is not the plot of this post.

One of the other workshoppers (very knowledgeable but irritatingly so) was intrigued by the pattern of my characters, by the misanthropy and the tragic, self-deprecating humour. She recommended I read Watt by Samuel Beckett. I was racing on the adrenalin of inspiration and dutifully had to have that book. I ordered online and it arrived, in Russian-doll squares of cardboard and bubble-wrap.

The production specs tell you this is something different (though I could not have told you how at the time - please note this, cynics of the influence of an experience of a book). The cover is clouds of dark puce, which fold into the ghost of a man and his suitcase at a train station, facing down the tracks. The title is written in yellow caps in a stark and thin font, as is the name. The surname dwarfs everything. This is a writer of stature, it says.

The cover is matt laminated. (Expensive and a risk, because the film comes off at the corners after a while.) The paper is thicker than the usual 70 gsm and yellowed. (Thicker paper is again expensive and paper nowadays is often acid-free because acid yellows the paper.) The type and layout is old-school, and the design leaves wide margins at all four sides. (The typeface is a thick, calligraphic serif font, which takes more space than a modern, cleaner font, as do the margins. This means more pages and more expense.) The last two points suggest that this a reprinting of the original film - also suggested by the copyright date on the imprint page, which would need to be renewed with each edition.

Where on earth does one find a printing press that prints this outmoded format? None that I know of.

I'm getting carried away. You can ignore that entire paragraph if you like. My point is, this is a work of substance, immune to time. Remind you of any other author? Another author I am afraid to read? Yep, James Joyce and Beckett were friends - groan - friends!

As with Ulysses, I have not read Watt, ten years later. It sits comfortably on my bookshelf, between Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and Alexandra Fuller's The Legend of Colby Bryant, part of a section dedicated to books I will read next. (Next being a comfortably indeterminate word.) I have a reading eye larger than available leisure time, so this shelf grows like a creature from Aliens.

At least I have read 90 pages of Ulysses, set schedules and worn the cover a bit. Watt is pristine, which is why I can wax lyrical about its specs. I pick books to read depending on my mood. But when you are feeling dark and deep, does it make sense to read something equally or perhaps more dark? In those moods (in this mood) I pick something wherein the characters kill the fantastical bad... things... (projection intended), where the moral high ground is easy to identify and where I can fixate on seemingly indestructible things like direwolves and dragons.

But this is not the real reason, although whatever sense of self-preservation I have does revolt at the idea. You know my tired complaint, the one I can actually do something about, but am afraid to. I have not published. Yet. But there's another, less obvious one. I have not accomplished. This book reminds me of myself before I graduated into the big bad world (although I would argue I already a foot in the muck and felt the promising squelch).

My play was not very good, although it has some redeeming points, but I never wanted to be a playwright. I also have never really bothered with plot except as a coat hanger for my characters' baggage. Now here is a mentor for my characters, to help me make them great - standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. But I have to accept that, at first, they won't be. They won't be giantific - they will be dwarfish - subjectively dwarfish.

Will reading Watt help me feel more optimistic or less? Will I get farther than I have with Ulysses? (Will I understand more of it? Come'n, you didn't understand 95% of it either.) Will I remember how it felt to be so sure of success that I was prepared to fail? And will I finally find some balls and write the damn thing?! It may be a while before we find out, so hold on, kids.

My impossible life as Jane Eyre

Hello, old friend. Why don't you ever age? We look alike but I have two wrinkles now (I swear the one appeared the morning of my 30th birthday), frown wrinkles, only on one side, the left, like my smile. No, my smile isn't one-sided, jokester; you know what I mean, it's crooked. Unbalanced, lopsided, displaced? Huh, another two differences where we thought there was none. (The second being your obliviousness to nuance. Not yours, hers.) From congruence, to similarity, to a single acquaintance in common.

What am I talking about? Who are you talking to?

Oh, her... I forget she's there sometimes. It's a bit creepy the way she stands behind me, staring over my shoulder at what I haven't done, so I prefer to let her entertain herself. While she's at it, she really could lend a hand, but if she moved, maybe the illusion of symmetry will backflip to, well, what's like symmetry (har!) but with less in common? A straight line. Perhaps. I'm not convinced.

We'd be less alike. I've covered this. Moving on.

Dissatisfaction. We're Generation D. 'The sky's the limit,' say rolly-polly creatures of cute, dopey babies and fogged landscapes caged in black frames or in handwriting poised improbably in mid-air. 'Shoot the moon and bruise yourself against stars' (FYI stars are waaaaay further away than the moon, so I'd advise you go for one or the other). 'There's no such thing as impossible.' (Uh, yeah there is. Walking to the moon unaided, for one. At the very least, there's improbable. The moon elevator, for two.)

It's the Care Bears' fault. My first piece of evidence is the style of the memes above. My second piece of evidence is that I cannot identify another such set of liars in my life. Preschool teachers are the last to whisper such things while they wipe bottoms. The ones I have met, anyway. Ask one. Tell her her kids are 'cute', that they can scrawl honeyed sayings, that they are set to walk to the moon and/or shoot it. I heard her snort on word two.

The Care Bears could slide down rainbows (another impossible feat) and shoot glittered things from their chests. Apart from the fact they were talking bears, they talked in much higher voices than even a Spectacled Bear's growl. Third piece of evidence and slam that gavel, You.

I don't want to be purple or furry or live on a cloud (impossible). I would however like what I was promised: everything. On second thought (not really, because we've talked about this before, you and I. Just nod) literature has to shoulder some of the blame for those ridiculous memes. Alice in Wonderland, The Enchanted Wood, Nancy Drew and the Secret Seven... Possession, The People's Act of Love, As I Lay Dying...

Life is the sum total of the possible. The possible is, in my experience, either horrible or boring. I'm not looking for much: just some Aristotelian tragedy, Gothic martyrdom and a Shakespearean script. How am I supposed to be Jane Eyre without a mad woman in the attic and the burnt ruins of my love? (I could do without Mr Rochester, the ridiculous man. I'll take Jason Bourne.) Yeah, thanks, Care Bears. Since you predate reading, you can slide this all back up that rainbow.

Ok, so possible. I'm gonna go with boring - it's the yellow card. Other side. Yes. My novel and I are pretending we don't notice the other, like two acquaintances who can't remember each other's names. My career... perhaps we all feel like we have more to give than anyone wants? The ideas are flying from our ears and hovering near the ceiling, but hey, at least they have wings. The absence of a personal life here is the absence of a personal life.

Generation D. Ah, and here's some tragedy to chew on: we don't give up. (That 'd' is a bit of a stretch, I grant you.) Even now, my spirit is rallying, tripping the tragic martyr who never ages from the stage. Care Bears swoop in, bearing their burdens, and shoot glitter at the darkness. They swap the yellow card for a purple one, but they confiscate the script. I'm allowed the impossible, provided it isn't literary.

The Magic of Reality

"How we know what's really true." (We don't and nothing, she said, discombobulating? discorporealising? dematerialising!) But Philip Pullman says it's better than Bill Bryson's tome and Ricky Gervais says he knows enough science now to write his own book (the same book, I'd think, but maybe he can get the illustrations redone. Or just done. And insert some witticisms). I don't enjoy detective thrillers (that's what the blurb says it is), but I do enjoy popular science.

A popular science book is an odd choice for a plane ride when you're aweary and the airline has ignored your many pleas (ok, barbs) for help (ok, vengeance). My Kindle I had mislaid? misplaced? left on the hotel bed! I slept through the flight anyway.

The Magic of Reality is basically a much much (much) thinner A Short History of Nearly Everything, but it focuses on answering specific questions that a layman with a high school F in science might ask. Mostly because she has forgotten. Perhaps intentionally. "What is a rainbow?" was enlightening. (Har!) Also "What are things made of?" because it is about atoms. Atoms, people - person. Endlessly fascinating.

As a friend pointed out, this type of book will be bought by this type of reader. It's pitched at young people, to improve 'scientific literacy'. Only if your parents are scientists or you are failing science and have bought every study guide on your and the nearest continent (via Amazon.com obviously). Chances are you spend your nights hunched over something that steams or rattles, with a single study lamp that casts a halo of light around you. The equivalent of reading after bedtime under your bed covers.

There is one other reason you might read this book. The reason I have held off mentioning the author until now. (Was I sneaky enough? Or did you cotton on in paragraph 2? That's usually where it happens. Yep. Blogger Stats tells me so. No, not really. We're waiting for the pupil tracking implants. Not, not really.) It's one of the reasons I chose this book for my aweary, vengeance-d, Kindle-less flight. Richard Dawkins.

I hesitate here, wondering whether his name should begin a paragraph, have a whole paragraph to itself (room to stretch) or be hidden as it is. Should it even be on the cover of the book? Although endorsements from two other famous atheists would still be a giveaway.

Richard Dawkins is a famous - infamous - scientist. Yes, scientist. Contrary to popular opinion, he is not a professional atheist. We don't have popes. And if we did, he already has a job. Writing. (He's written more books than Danielle Steele. Ok, not quite. But still.) Notice how this is the first thing we tackle? No review says: "Bill Bryson tackles a range of subjects with thoroughness, but the airy-fairy-I-feel-'energy'-in-the-landscape factor is annoying." (Which he did FYI. And I was annoyed FYI.)

But this is actually relevant. If you had been consistently challenged over something like this with the virility of someone who feels passionately about something (feels, folks), would you be defensive or would you brush it off? Not being a saint, I would do the former. I might actually start graffiting walls or wearing leather jackets or hanging out in the hipster part of town. (*&$@ I already live there.)

Or poking at my bullies from the pages of my book. With a tone. You know the one. The one with feelings behind. The Magic of Reality is a good book and it addresses some of the fallacies in the Bryson book. Even though the book covers things I have already read about, precisely because I enjoy this type of book, the explanations and metaphors have changed how I visualise the concepts, so they are easier to pull out and elucidate at any moment. He has also given me better ways of evading? excavating? elucidating! them.

However, the 'true' here is between science and myth as explanations for, well, the world. You guessed it, with specific digs at Christianity. Enlightening sometimes, but often bullying. The true I was looking for was objectivity and our subjective viewpoint - not our experience of the world as metaphor, but what we can assume to be objective when our viewpoints are subjective.

Like the light spectrum and colour pondering, about whether colour is perceived differently by different people. (Answer is no FYI.) Or the tree falling soundlessly in a forest pondering. (Yes.) The philosophy of science pondering. (Maybe. All of the above. Who knows.)

Looking at it, that's a tall order for a book aimed at teenagers. If Pullman got away with blatant criticisms of Christianity without a peep from people with feelings though...

Both these authors capture a youthful exuberance (more abundant than the petty digs, I promise) at the world and how it can be explained. Even when talking about some of the myths, you can almost see Dawkins bobbing up and down with excitement. And if he graffitis a few walls, it's because he is so excited about the jigsaw puzzle of the world and being able to describe it, that he cannot contain himself. Feelings, again. Like colourful parasites.

So perhaps I did get what I was looking for in this book. I wanted someone to help me draw the line between subjective and objective. Until then, I view the world with suspicion. Dawkins didn't give me a slice of chalk and ruler; he gave me a glimpse of what it is like to view the world with excitement instead.

World War Z

The book, not the movie. There's a book? There is a book. From the movie poster alone, I can tell they do not tell the same story. Well, ok, there are zombies (the book discourages this moniker, only partly tongue-in-cheek). But the story is definitely not told by Brad Pitt. (I can tell because of the accent.) And the story is in every other way almost completely different.

So, I haven't actually watched the movie. Everything in this post is anecdotal or based on Wikipedia (PS. open source geniuses, 'encyclopedia' is spelt 'encyclopaedia') or based on the movie poster with the remarkable visual illusion that we can see the curve of the earth.

The book is good. Read it. It sounds much better than the movie. It's a book, so it never is what it says it is. Or says it is about. The book is not really about zombies. To my mind, they don't feature except to propel the plot. The story is told entirely in transcripts collected by a man who works for the UN and never reveals where he was during the war. Like a professional researcher. (This isn't sarcasm or a plot hint. Researchers should really remain separate from their subject. Like anti-Jane Goodalls or -Pitts.)

This movie and its main character are just such easy bait.

Wait for it... Did you get it?

Because it is a report, World War Z is set after the zombies have been brought under control. (Hint: a zombie is by definition dead and therefore cannot be brought back to life. Gross. So yes, by massacring them.) The researcher travels around the world to meet key members of the resistance, who tell their stories, some about failures (most) and some about successes. The stories are technical, moving, military, esoteric, pathetic and disturbing.

Together they make a picture of how we behave in crises. Most of our behaviour is reactionary, I'm afraid. Some of it is a modern hubris, a belief that primordial threats guided by random desire can be destroyed by weapons and strategy, like night and the lightbulb (and a generator, obviously). Bravery is often pure instinct; but instinct is also reactionary.

Another common reaction is to blame. Most of the accusers are justified, but this is easy to say in hindsight. Again, reactionary.

It's easy to take the moral high ground in this story - become its saviour (my hint is: zombie's can't climb - get it?). I often take issue with dystopian novels, in that they assume the worst of human nature. Not all of us are going to start eating each other to prove our status in what is essentially the same world as our ancestors and animals live(d). You don't find tears running down their bones because they were hunted by lions and hyaena. That's life.

But you are at least one of these people (and no, not Brad Pitt, who from the sounds of it drags trouble behind him on a leash). The reactionaries. And, likely, a corpse.

If you protest (reactionary), consider that the novel contains hints of the HIV pandemic and racial segregation. How have you reacted when met with these 'wars'? Jumped to the front line? Sacrificed yourself? Found something else to blame? Hightailed it up a tree? (Smart.) This. Is. Life. There is some war right on your doorstep. Maybe this novel is about the worst of human nature.

Segregation was, predictably, the one I identified with the most, in both Israel and South Africa. Especially given my home town is point 0. We are introduced to the man who conceived the most effective strategy to end the war - and also the most horrific. He is a psychopath (not in the murderer sense, but in the clinical sense: he lacks emotions, which makes him a great strategist). He was also one of the architects of apartheid.

These facts alone - even without more back story - make me think twice. More times, in fact. I don't know. There is no right answer. This isn't even an issue of subjectivity. What justifies such brutality? The ends? The ends justifies the means? I can't endorse that. But do I want us (humanity) to live or die? I would have said I didn't care - this is life - but then why am I turning this around in my brain?

Again, take note that I have not watched the movie (although in a sense I have because I have watched other such things featuring other such headline names). Yet, I have a string of other jokes to tell and disjunctions to point out. But that is less interesting (?) than the conclusion of this movie and another, and their books. In I am Legend utopia follows in the wake of dystopia. So much work to be done blah pop another grape in my mouth.

This is life. Life doesn't award you some oasis in green and leafy parks, at the centre of which is the Fountain of Youth. (Fittingly mythical, but one that men with an eye on knighthood killed themselves to... not find.) Life (my life, at least) is philosophical crises, as well as physical ones. Some personal and some social. What is humanity? Where do you fit in? And what would you do to maintain your status quo? Is it worth maintaining?

PS. The definition of futility

The definition of futility

Stupidity or futility? Sometimes they're the same thing - but not synonyms. Maybe just cousins so far removed that the only have one gene in common anymore: ginger hair or astigmatism or bad taste in men. They never meet (in the dictionary) but they are unwittingly reunited here. Not by me.

No, they are being reunited by the most powerful book in English literature.

It's also long, but definitely not the longest. Agaat and Song of Fire and Ice, even in Kindle form, were weights that strained my thumb and index finger. Crime and Punishment literally bruised the web between those two fingers. Google is indecisive (personification intended, because none of us are responsible for our statements here, right) about the longest novels, and they all hurdle the 1 000 page mark as if this were the Olympics. On the podium are Proust, Ayn Rand, Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace. I genuinely think they haven't accounted for Ms Marlene van Niekerk.

Now I'm purposefully stringing you along, because I anticipate your doubt, your accusations of hubris, your dire prophesies, and your own stories about stupidity and futility.

Suspense cut like a ribbon around a statue: I am about to read all 4 000 pages of In Search of Lost Time by Michel Proust. Nah, not really. Ribbon still intact. The title is deceptive (I'm thinking dinosaurs here), but apparently a lot of nothing happens except a brief affair, perhaps unconsummated.

Now, really, scissors in hand and no glue. Ulysses by Joyce. Ribbon is taken up by wind and blown into the crowd. James Joyce. He deserves that Bond-esque calling card.

I received this copy for my birthday and tried twice to read it. The first time, I confess, I understood nothing, except something about milk, a dog, and two poorer and wealthier college boys who are friends. I wanted to believe in this book. I want the anecdotal character of the man to be alive in his books. I believe in the Modernists, with an indefinable emotion best represented in the cave of Passage to India.

I am a Modernist born with Post-modern baggage.

The second time the milk, the dog and the relationship between the boys stood out. But more than that: I discovered a whole new way of using language. Scoff - I have done it myself. Don't justify the scoffing with Portrait of an Artist - I did too. But Ulysses...

I am trying to find you an example of the best of his prose, but it can't be extracted without being meaningless or trite. The story may jump in some places and delay in others, but every sentence is inseparable from the next. The sentences are short but tight: a design lecturer once told me that the best design is not the one with the most elements, but the one from which you have removed every element except the ones you need. That's Joyce. If he doesn't need a verb, preposition and so on, he doesn't use it.

So why did I stop re-reading? Joyce's may not be the longest book, but it is a weight even for the reader. By 90 pages I was exhausted. The denseness of the prose is its genius, but also the thing that turns the reader away, clutching the ribbon. Based on my last attempt, I think each chapter needs to be re-read to be understood on even the most superficial level of plot.

Ribbon blown away, like a plaster ripped off.

You have noticed the title again and are wondering whether I am prophesying my own failure. (After all I predicted your scoffing.) You know the saying: Stupidity is failing, and then using the same methods and expecting a different outcome. Or is it futility? Stupidity, futility - they're more closely related than their birth certificates indicate.

Because maybe the more you beat at a brick wall, the bricks begin to crack and crumble. Maybe one brick loosens enough for you to pull out, and your fingers toughen and once you've weakened the base, the rest crumbles too. It may take longer to pull down the Great Wall of China than it took to build. But did the job need to be done any faster? And I'm guessing that when builders had only completed a thousandth of the wall, someone commented about the job's futility.

This analogy, I realise now, describes the writer's efforts more than mine. Many people thought he was a profiteer and others tolerated him. I can compile some nasty reviews based on Portrait myself. But he trusted his instincts and wrote prose that would not change the needle on a balance scale. I suppose it's a bit like knowing there is treasure on the other side of the wall and that there is only one way to get there. Well, there are always more options, but reading Sparknotes defeats the object of the exercise.