Take a photo of a barcode or cover
glenncolerussell's reviews
1456 reviews
The Crazy Corner by Jean Richepin
Jean Richepin (1849-1926) "It was, in fact, thee most extraordinary parrot, not only that my eyes had ever encountered but that my imagination would ever have been able to dream up, so old, ugly, thin, bald, scrawny, featherless, bleak, dull, colorless, misshapen, pitiful, wretched, shabby, dilapidated, lamentable, implausible, asthmatic, phantasmal, emaciated, and problematic was it." From Richpin's tale, The Parrot.
Each of the forty-five stories translated, annotated and introduced by author/French literature expert Brian Stableford makes for fun reading, lots and lots of fun reading, crazy, horrible fun reading – not that common in the world of literary fiction. But then again, Jean Richepin was not a common author -tall, broad-shouldered, with a head of curly black hair and full curly black beard framing large, blazing gold-blue eyes, dressed in velvet jacket, scarlet sash and pants and boots of a Hussar soldier, he was a larger-than-life flamboyant literary artist, an outlandish nineteenth century top-hatted cross between, say, Salvador Dali and Allen Ginsberg who refused to belong to any one literary school. I feel a personal connection to the author – in a way, I see him as my spiritual older brother.
Again, these crazy stories of his defy category; they contain elements of naturalism but he was not a naturalist; they contain qualities of fin-de-siecle decadence but he was not a decadent; they contain a touch of horror but he was not a writer of horror fiction. So what else can we say about his stories? Well, for one thing, the stories collected here are short – with the exception of a forty-pager and a thirteen-pager, all the stories are about five pages. They all have a dab of ghoulishness and cruelty and we can encounter, among other monstrosities, such things as madness, nightmares, fiends and witches. Also, they nearly all contain an unexpected twist at the end. More could be said generally but I will focus on the following Richepin tale to convey a more specific taste of what a reader will find in this collection:
The Enemy
The first-person narrator of this story is a graphologist, that is, a specialist in inferring character from handwriting. We read the opening lines, “The name engraved on the visiting-card did not strike any chord in my memory. On the other hand, the few lines traced after the name in question immediately and irresistibly rendered me sympathetic to the unknown visitor. Those lines, in fact, revealed on graphological analysis, without the slightest possible hesitation, a noble, dolorous and desperate soul. Without a doubt, the man who had written those lines was not lying in affirming that he had come to ask for mental assistance in a matter of life and death.” In a way, all of these Richepin tales are about life and death. Hey, what do you expect from our larger-than-life author?
The narrator/graphologist receives his visitor and sees from his gaze that his is, indeed, noble, dolorous and despairing. The visitor goes on to tell him how he is being persecuted by a most abominable enemy. Through this interchange, the narrator listens to this gentleman’s pleas of not being mad but concludes he is, in truth, definitely dealing with a case of insanity, more specifically a case of insanity involving delusions of persecution.
And why does he conclude thus? Because he sees this gentleman has the wealth to effectively deal with any real flesh and blood persecutor and the good-looks and noble bearing to deal with any female, ergo, his enemy is purely imaginary. The gentleman instantly reads the narrator’s thoughts and not only replies but insists the enemy haunting him is truly human and made of flesh and blood. And when the narrator asks for more specifics, the gentleman relates how his enemy underlines the faults of his verse in pencil; his enemy renders odious the woman he loves; his enemy spits on the food he eats.
Rather than saying anything further and possibly spoiling the ending of this story, let me pause and note how there was one thinker much admired by the French decadent fin-de-siecle writers, a thinker who held the imagination of cultured, educated people of the time in his grip: German pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, hater of ordinary work-a-day life and spoiler of romantic love. It doesn’t take that much to see how the gentleman in this story, who by nature wants to write romantic verse, love women and enjoy the everyday round of life, is haunted and tortured by Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy.
This is but a modest take on one of these amazing, remarkable, wonderful, marvelous, outlandish, mind-blowing, bizarre tales. Should I go on? I think not, as it should be clear I highly, highly recommend this book by one-of-a-kind author, Jean Richepin.
5.0
Jean Richepin (1849-1926) "It was, in fact, thee most extraordinary parrot, not only that my eyes had ever encountered but that my imagination would ever have been able to dream up, so old, ugly, thin, bald, scrawny, featherless, bleak, dull, colorless, misshapen, pitiful, wretched, shabby, dilapidated, lamentable, implausible, asthmatic, phantasmal, emaciated, and problematic was it." From Richpin's tale, The Parrot.
Each of the forty-five stories translated, annotated and introduced by author/French literature expert Brian Stableford makes for fun reading, lots and lots of fun reading, crazy, horrible fun reading – not that common in the world of literary fiction. But then again, Jean Richepin was not a common author -tall, broad-shouldered, with a head of curly black hair and full curly black beard framing large, blazing gold-blue eyes, dressed in velvet jacket, scarlet sash and pants and boots of a Hussar soldier, he was a larger-than-life flamboyant literary artist, an outlandish nineteenth century top-hatted cross between, say, Salvador Dali and Allen Ginsberg who refused to belong to any one literary school. I feel a personal connection to the author – in a way, I see him as my spiritual older brother.
Again, these crazy stories of his defy category; they contain elements of naturalism but he was not a naturalist; they contain qualities of fin-de-siecle decadence but he was not a decadent; they contain a touch of horror but he was not a writer of horror fiction. So what else can we say about his stories? Well, for one thing, the stories collected here are short – with the exception of a forty-pager and a thirteen-pager, all the stories are about five pages. They all have a dab of ghoulishness and cruelty and we can encounter, among other monstrosities, such things as madness, nightmares, fiends and witches. Also, they nearly all contain an unexpected twist at the end. More could be said generally but I will focus on the following Richepin tale to convey a more specific taste of what a reader will find in this collection:
The Enemy
The first-person narrator of this story is a graphologist, that is, a specialist in inferring character from handwriting. We read the opening lines, “The name engraved on the visiting-card did not strike any chord in my memory. On the other hand, the few lines traced after the name in question immediately and irresistibly rendered me sympathetic to the unknown visitor. Those lines, in fact, revealed on graphological analysis, without the slightest possible hesitation, a noble, dolorous and desperate soul. Without a doubt, the man who had written those lines was not lying in affirming that he had come to ask for mental assistance in a matter of life and death.” In a way, all of these Richepin tales are about life and death. Hey, what do you expect from our larger-than-life author?
The narrator/graphologist receives his visitor and sees from his gaze that his is, indeed, noble, dolorous and despairing. The visitor goes on to tell him how he is being persecuted by a most abominable enemy. Through this interchange, the narrator listens to this gentleman’s pleas of not being mad but concludes he is, in truth, definitely dealing with a case of insanity, more specifically a case of insanity involving delusions of persecution.
And why does he conclude thus? Because he sees this gentleman has the wealth to effectively deal with any real flesh and blood persecutor and the good-looks and noble bearing to deal with any female, ergo, his enemy is purely imaginary. The gentleman instantly reads the narrator’s thoughts and not only replies but insists the enemy haunting him is truly human and made of flesh and blood. And when the narrator asks for more specifics, the gentleman relates how his enemy underlines the faults of his verse in pencil; his enemy renders odious the woman he loves; his enemy spits on the food he eats.
Rather than saying anything further and possibly spoiling the ending of this story, let me pause and note how there was one thinker much admired by the French decadent fin-de-siecle writers, a thinker who held the imagination of cultured, educated people of the time in his grip: German pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, hater of ordinary work-a-day life and spoiler of romantic love. It doesn’t take that much to see how the gentleman in this story, who by nature wants to write romantic verse, love women and enjoy the everyday round of life, is haunted and tortured by Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy.
This is but a modest take on one of these amazing, remarkable, wonderful, marvelous, outlandish, mind-blowing, bizarre tales. Should I go on? I think not, as it should be clear I highly, highly recommend this book by one-of-a-kind author, Jean Richepin.
Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's by Jay Spencer Green
Painting of Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin by artist John Frazer
Breakfast at Cannibal Joe’s dances an Irish jig at the intersection of Jonathan Swift-like scathing satire, Eddie Izzard/George Carlin stand-up routine and saga of a lovesick, drug and liquor fueled romantic. Sound maddening? It's more than maddening, it's Jay Spencer Green’s entertaining doozy set in the city of Dublin. Get ready for spirited laughs and sombre reflections. Among the many heteroclite and gut-busting highlights, I'll throw the spotlight on the following:
Joe Chambers: Our narrator and hero is an American CIA operative managing a publishing company in Dublin as a front for the CIA. Joe was in Athens but got kicked down and out due to one false move with the wife of a European leader; Joe was married but his own wife took off with a leader of an occult religion. Why do bad things happen to a good guy like Joe, such an intelligent, perceptive, quick-witted man who is also devastatingly handsome? Well, in Dublin, Joe can at least get his hands on some good quality drugs – and he truly needs those drugs because his heart still yearns for his budding rose, his long lost wife Ellie.
Sinéad O'Shea: Joe’s assistant at his publishing house, Ms. O’Shea is Irish and single and quite the wit herself. During her interview to get the job, Joe asks her what jobs she finds the hardest and more tiring, Sinéad replies: “Anything involving independent thought. I think I’m at my best when I know what I’m supposed to be doing. That way, I can do what I’m told, get paid, go home, and forget about work. There’s a reason why it’s called a job.” You gotta love an Irish lass who can match someone like Joe serve for serve. Actually, the team of Joe and Sinéad, or maybe I should say Sinéad and Joe, is one of the more hilarious bits of the novel. Any time Sinéad popped up on the page, I slowed down to linger over each pithy exchange.
Ah, Friendship: All flavors and varieties of zip, zap, zup laced with drinking and drugs between Joe and his buddies. Yet again another fun, funny part of the novel: the waggish ways in which Joe talks about his buds. Here’s vintage Joe on a guy named Delia: “At best of times, the Irish are masters of obtuseness. Delia approaches English side on, like a winking crab sketched by a drunken Picasso.” And here’s our captivating Mr. Chambers on another pal: “Frank isn’t exactly annoyed unless it’s something trivial. He’s as cool as an Eskimo’s fart when it comes to taking lives. That’s what makes him one of Western Europe’s finest torturers.”
Dumpy Domicile: The many colorful images, metaphors and anecdotes Joe comes up with in describing Dublin will never find their way into brochures and pamphlets to attract tourists. Among my favorites: “These canals were once the pride of the city. One city councilor even proposed changing the city’s coat of arms to include a dead dog and a shopping cart. These days, like the councilor, the canals are just full of shite.”
Stand-Up Novelist: What gives the jokes their particular zing is their context within the novel’s unfolding storyline. You’ll have to read for yourself to get the full impact but let me share a one-liner, no, make that a six-liner: “Back when I lived in Athens, I was always getting shot at. Islamic fundamentalists, Marxist revolutionaries, anarchist insurrectionists, disgruntled neo-Platonists. Dublin, not so much. When was the last time you saw video footage of a kidnapped U.S. citizen denouncing his country’s use of Shannon airport for rendition flights or America’s continued deployment of tourist buses along Nassau Street or its creeping cultural imperialism? Never, right? The Irish are such pussies.”
The Stuff of Sticky Notes: Lists abound from beginning to end, enough lists to satisfy any reader’s taste, from Hee Haw lowest-denominator to the more erudite and intellectual. Two examples from the later, the list of little known facts about Bertrand Russell: On Sunday mornings, he used to make prank phone calls to Malcolm Muggeridge pretending to be the voice of God; for his Ph.D. thesis of 1904, he presented an irrefutable argument that demonstrated his own non-existence. He was consequently denied his doctorate by the board of examiners at Cambridge. - Jay Spencer Green's academic training in philosophy exerts its influence in amusing ways.
Politics: Let’s not forget Joe and a number of his buddies work for the CIA, after all. The nasty business of surveillance, sneaking and snooping are all part of the government’s game. Even the less than technically competent Irish government plays this shrouded sport, as noted by Joe when he reflects on his friend’s need to work with a bunch of fumbling Jackeens: “In Frank’s case, coordinating activities with his Irish counterparts is complicated by the fact that there isn’t really an equivalent to the CIA; no Seamus Bond, no Double-O’Siobhan. What secrets do the Irish have that are worth protecting?”
Pace: Humor is all about practice and timing. A lesson every stand-up comic and author learns, usually the hard way. Jay Spencer Green’s background includes a spat as a stand-up comic and, since he knew he wanted to be a writer at the age of eight, writing and writing and more writing, many thousands of hours writing, writing an entire stack of unpublished and unpublishable novels. But the payoff was big: Breakfast at Cannibal Joe’s is a very funny book. I truly fancy a book where I can frequently laugh out loud. I haven’t laughed as hard since I read master Russian satirist Vladimir Voinovich’s The Fur Hat last fall. And that’s really saying something as I’ve read many dozens of books since.
Language: Other than a smattering of Sinéad O'Shea’s verbal Irish shillelaghs, there’s none of that Irvine Welsh mauling of the English language into local dialects. This book is written to be read - I mean, if your literary aesthetic includes light comedy and black humor, you don’t want your readers tripping over lingo, dialect or idioms. An added kick for those who want to work their vocabulary chops, at the start of one day, Joe shares the new words he would like to learn, including: bhent – a downward spiral; swiviet – a state of extreme agitation; grutch – to begrudge; darry – to weep spontaneously or for no apparent reason. Yes, indeedy-do, these words tie in to the story as Joe is agitated, begrudges his fate and feels like weeping since he is on a downward spiral.
More Great News: Jay Spencer Green’s new novel Fowl Play, set in Manchester, England, is recently released. Additionally, the author is currently hard at work on Manuel Estimulo's Fascist Book of Everything, a novel in the form of an encyclopedia drawing on such varied sources as Don Quixote, Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas, Henry Root's World of Knowledge and zombies, On a personal note, I can't wait to see if any of those zombie references are to Night of the Living Dead.
Jay Spencer Green lives his robust life in Dublin and specializes in transgressive social satire
"How many CIA operatives does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to take out the old light bulb, one to put in an acceptable replacement, and one to fabricate the evidence proving that the old light bulb had weapons of mass destruction." - Jay Spencer Green, Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's
5.0
Painting of Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin by artist John Frazer
Breakfast at Cannibal Joe’s dances an Irish jig at the intersection of Jonathan Swift-like scathing satire, Eddie Izzard/George Carlin stand-up routine and saga of a lovesick, drug and liquor fueled romantic. Sound maddening? It's more than maddening, it's Jay Spencer Green’s entertaining doozy set in the city of Dublin. Get ready for spirited laughs and sombre reflections. Among the many heteroclite and gut-busting highlights, I'll throw the spotlight on the following:
Joe Chambers: Our narrator and hero is an American CIA operative managing a publishing company in Dublin as a front for the CIA. Joe was in Athens but got kicked down and out due to one false move with the wife of a European leader; Joe was married but his own wife took off with a leader of an occult religion. Why do bad things happen to a good guy like Joe, such an intelligent, perceptive, quick-witted man who is also devastatingly handsome? Well, in Dublin, Joe can at least get his hands on some good quality drugs – and he truly needs those drugs because his heart still yearns for his budding rose, his long lost wife Ellie.
Sinéad O'Shea: Joe’s assistant at his publishing house, Ms. O’Shea is Irish and single and quite the wit herself. During her interview to get the job, Joe asks her what jobs she finds the hardest and more tiring, Sinéad replies: “Anything involving independent thought. I think I’m at my best when I know what I’m supposed to be doing. That way, I can do what I’m told, get paid, go home, and forget about work. There’s a reason why it’s called a job.” You gotta love an Irish lass who can match someone like Joe serve for serve. Actually, the team of Joe and Sinéad, or maybe I should say Sinéad and Joe, is one of the more hilarious bits of the novel. Any time Sinéad popped up on the page, I slowed down to linger over each pithy exchange.
Ah, Friendship: All flavors and varieties of zip, zap, zup laced with drinking and drugs between Joe and his buddies. Yet again another fun, funny part of the novel: the waggish ways in which Joe talks about his buds. Here’s vintage Joe on a guy named Delia: “At best of times, the Irish are masters of obtuseness. Delia approaches English side on, like a winking crab sketched by a drunken Picasso.” And here’s our captivating Mr. Chambers on another pal: “Frank isn’t exactly annoyed unless it’s something trivial. He’s as cool as an Eskimo’s fart when it comes to taking lives. That’s what makes him one of Western Europe’s finest torturers.”
Dumpy Domicile: The many colorful images, metaphors and anecdotes Joe comes up with in describing Dublin will never find their way into brochures and pamphlets to attract tourists. Among my favorites: “These canals were once the pride of the city. One city councilor even proposed changing the city’s coat of arms to include a dead dog and a shopping cart. These days, like the councilor, the canals are just full of shite.”
Stand-Up Novelist: What gives the jokes their particular zing is their context within the novel’s unfolding storyline. You’ll have to read for yourself to get the full impact but let me share a one-liner, no, make that a six-liner: “Back when I lived in Athens, I was always getting shot at. Islamic fundamentalists, Marxist revolutionaries, anarchist insurrectionists, disgruntled neo-Platonists. Dublin, not so much. When was the last time you saw video footage of a kidnapped U.S. citizen denouncing his country’s use of Shannon airport for rendition flights or America’s continued deployment of tourist buses along Nassau Street or its creeping cultural imperialism? Never, right? The Irish are such pussies.”
The Stuff of Sticky Notes: Lists abound from beginning to end, enough lists to satisfy any reader’s taste, from Hee Haw lowest-denominator to the more erudite and intellectual. Two examples from the later, the list of little known facts about Bertrand Russell: On Sunday mornings, he used to make prank phone calls to Malcolm Muggeridge pretending to be the voice of God; for his Ph.D. thesis of 1904, he presented an irrefutable argument that demonstrated his own non-existence. He was consequently denied his doctorate by the board of examiners at Cambridge. - Jay Spencer Green's academic training in philosophy exerts its influence in amusing ways.
Politics: Let’s not forget Joe and a number of his buddies work for the CIA, after all. The nasty business of surveillance, sneaking and snooping are all part of the government’s game. Even the less than technically competent Irish government plays this shrouded sport, as noted by Joe when he reflects on his friend’s need to work with a bunch of fumbling Jackeens: “In Frank’s case, coordinating activities with his Irish counterparts is complicated by the fact that there isn’t really an equivalent to the CIA; no Seamus Bond, no Double-O’Siobhan. What secrets do the Irish have that are worth protecting?”
Pace: Humor is all about practice and timing. A lesson every stand-up comic and author learns, usually the hard way. Jay Spencer Green’s background includes a spat as a stand-up comic and, since he knew he wanted to be a writer at the age of eight, writing and writing and more writing, many thousands of hours writing, writing an entire stack of unpublished and unpublishable novels. But the payoff was big: Breakfast at Cannibal Joe’s is a very funny book. I truly fancy a book where I can frequently laugh out loud. I haven’t laughed as hard since I read master Russian satirist Vladimir Voinovich’s The Fur Hat last fall. And that’s really saying something as I’ve read many dozens of books since.
Language: Other than a smattering of Sinéad O'Shea’s verbal Irish shillelaghs, there’s none of that Irvine Welsh mauling of the English language into local dialects. This book is written to be read - I mean, if your literary aesthetic includes light comedy and black humor, you don’t want your readers tripping over lingo, dialect or idioms. An added kick for those who want to work their vocabulary chops, at the start of one day, Joe shares the new words he would like to learn, including: bhent – a downward spiral; swiviet – a state of extreme agitation; grutch – to begrudge; darry – to weep spontaneously or for no apparent reason. Yes, indeedy-do, these words tie in to the story as Joe is agitated, begrudges his fate and feels like weeping since he is on a downward spiral.
More Great News: Jay Spencer Green’s new novel Fowl Play, set in Manchester, England, is recently released. Additionally, the author is currently hard at work on Manuel Estimulo's Fascist Book of Everything, a novel in the form of an encyclopedia drawing on such varied sources as Don Quixote, Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas, Henry Root's World of Knowledge and zombies, On a personal note, I can't wait to see if any of those zombie references are to Night of the Living Dead.
Jay Spencer Green lives his robust life in Dublin and specializes in transgressive social satire
"How many CIA operatives does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to take out the old light bulb, one to put in an acceptable replacement, and one to fabricate the evidence proving that the old light bulb had weapons of mass destruction." - Jay Spencer Green, Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's
334 by Thomas M. Disch
“The end of the world. Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.”
― Thomas M. Disch, 334
Thomas M. Disch’s 1974 novel, a mix of science fiction and Zola-like social realism, eyeballs 334 East 11th Street, New York City, home to a teeming mass of miserable, poverty-stricken occupants of a 21st century multistory apartment beehive - Thomas Hobbs's philosophy of life as nasty, brutish, and short on a continual supply of amphetamines. Sorry to report, much of Disch's disturbing futuristic world has become harsh reality for huge chunks of our current-day population.
Forty-eight chapters, five long and forty-three short, feature interlinking snapshosts of a dozen or so men and women bound by their common plight of sordidness and desperation. To share a glimpse of what a reader is in for, below are commentary on two of the chapters: first, a longer one, a tale about college student Birdie Ludd in battle with the forces of darkness; and the second, a shorter tale, a vivid sketch of an outing at a most unusual art exhibit:
THE DEATH OF SOCRATES
Birdie Ludd has finally made it out of high school (P.S. 141) into one of New York City’s colleges only to sit in class listening to a professor on a TV yack nonstop about the life of Dante and how nearly everyone according to the Italian author’s Inferno will be tormented in hell, most certainly all the Jews.
When a Jewish girl in the class says that doesn’t seem fair, the professor’s assistant simply replies there will be a test on the covered material. As Birdie is quick to recognize, none of what he is being force fed has any relevance to his everyday life and since teaching is done by television, there is absolutely no possibility of dialogue or a lively interchange of ideas; rather, he is required to simply swallow and regurgitate what he is given.
Summoned to the front office, a Mr. Mack informs Birdie his score on the mandatory state test of “twenty-seven” was a mistake and Birdie is now being reclassified as a “twenty-four,” which means he will not be allowed to father any children. Poor Birdie! He complains it isn’t his fault his father has diabetes. But we learn there are more factors to consider, things like Birdie lacking any exceptional service for the country or the economy.
Additionally, we read how Birdie losses points because of his father’s unemployment pattern but gains a few points “by being a Negro.” Goodness, sound like Disch’s futuristic world has the deck stacked against blacks. What else is new? Perhaps not so coincidentally, Philip K. Dick's novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, also published in the 1970s, maps out genetic engineering geared to eliminate the US black population.
Birdie pens an essay for class entitled Problems of Creativeness, that ends “Another criteria of Creativeness was made by Socrates, so cruelly put to death by his own people, and I quote, “To know nothing is the first condition of all knowledge.” From the wisdom of that great Greek Philosopher may we not draw our own conclusions concerning these problems. Creativeness is the ability to see relationships where none exist.”
Read carefully, this essay reveals a highly imaginative, creative, intelligent mind buried under bad English and disastrous inner city public education. Thus the title of Disch’s tale, The Death of Socrates, bestows a double meaning. As they say, a mind is a terrible thing to waste – and observing the social forces crushing Birdie Lund’s brilliant mind makes for one sad, profound story.
Although Birdie is squashed and squeezed by cramped urban seediness, our young man has the capacity to perceive beauty radiating, glowing on the inside, even in dumb vending machines and blind, downtrodden faces. And, as to be expected, he has to continually fight through mass media and pop culture saturation – singing the words of commercials and viewing the movement of autos and ships as if moments from movies and television shows.
One of the saddest endings I’ve ever encountered: Highly intellectual, sensitive, aesthetically attuned Birdie Lund feels trapped no matter which way he turns. As a last resort, he sees but one option open to him. Here are Disch’s concluding words: “The same afternoon, without even bothering to get drunk, he went to Times Square and enlisted in the U.S. Marines to go and defend democracy in Burma. Eight other guys were sworn in at the same time. They raised their right arms and took one step forward and rattled off the Pledge of Allegiance or whatever. Then the sergeant came up and slipped the black Marine Crops mask over Birdie’s sullen face. His new ID number was stenciled across the forehead in big white letters: USMC 100-7011-D07. And that was it, they were gorillas.”
A & P (2021)
Lottie is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at an exhibit were there are rows and stacks and pyramids of cans, boxes, meats, dairy, candy, cigarettes, bread, fruits, vegetables – all with individual brand names. Juan is so delighted just to be with her here at the museum. For Lottie, this is a time of perfection, one she wishes she could hold forever: “The real magic, which couldn’t be laid hold of, was simply that Juan was happy and interested and willing to spend perhaps the whole day with her. The trouble was that when you tried this hard to stop the flow it ran through your fingers and you were left squeezing air.”
Juan picks up a carrot that has the look and feel of being real but, of course, as part of the art exhibit, the carrot is not real. Visitors were given instructions as they entered the exhibit on what they would see and how to appreciate the art. The food and containers and cans are all fake, no matter how “real” they look – the Met’s tape said so, thus it must be true. But Juan insists, at the top of his lungs, that the carrot is real. One of the guards strides toward Juan and both he and Lottie are thrown out.
We can all recognize how this unusual art exhibit takes Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and Campbell Soup Cans and expands the concept quantitatively. Arthur C. Danto has written extensively on how Warhol’s creations herald in the “death of art” in the sense that objects of art are no longer separate from everyday objects, no longer special pieces like landscape oil paintings or marble sculptures; rather, the art world defines what is and what is not art. Traveling uptown from his downtown cockroach infested 334 mega-apartment, Juan doesn’t buy into the art world’s artificial distinction. Damn, it’s a carrot! A subtle Thomas M. Disch comment on the would-be state of the visual arts in the years following Warhol and the “death of art.”
Again, these are but two of forty-eight chapters. I hope I have whetted your appetite to sample more of Disch's novel. Special thanks to Goodreads friend Manny Rayner for alerting me to this forgotten classic.
"He knew without having to talk to the rest that the murder would never take place. The idea had never meant for them what it had meant for him. One pill and they were actors again, content to be images in a mirror."
- Thomas M. Disch, 334
5.0
“The end of the world. Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.”
― Thomas M. Disch, 334
Thomas M. Disch’s 1974 novel, a mix of science fiction and Zola-like social realism, eyeballs 334 East 11th Street, New York City, home to a teeming mass of miserable, poverty-stricken occupants of a 21st century multistory apartment beehive - Thomas Hobbs's philosophy of life as nasty, brutish, and short on a continual supply of amphetamines. Sorry to report, much of Disch's disturbing futuristic world has become harsh reality for huge chunks of our current-day population.
Forty-eight chapters, five long and forty-three short, feature interlinking snapshosts of a dozen or so men and women bound by their common plight of sordidness and desperation. To share a glimpse of what a reader is in for, below are commentary on two of the chapters: first, a longer one, a tale about college student Birdie Ludd in battle with the forces of darkness; and the second, a shorter tale, a vivid sketch of an outing at a most unusual art exhibit:
THE DEATH OF SOCRATES
Birdie Ludd has finally made it out of high school (P.S. 141) into one of New York City’s colleges only to sit in class listening to a professor on a TV yack nonstop about the life of Dante and how nearly everyone according to the Italian author’s Inferno will be tormented in hell, most certainly all the Jews.
When a Jewish girl in the class says that doesn’t seem fair, the professor’s assistant simply replies there will be a test on the covered material. As Birdie is quick to recognize, none of what he is being force fed has any relevance to his everyday life and since teaching is done by television, there is absolutely no possibility of dialogue or a lively interchange of ideas; rather, he is required to simply swallow and regurgitate what he is given.
Summoned to the front office, a Mr. Mack informs Birdie his score on the mandatory state test of “twenty-seven” was a mistake and Birdie is now being reclassified as a “twenty-four,” which means he will not be allowed to father any children. Poor Birdie! He complains it isn’t his fault his father has diabetes. But we learn there are more factors to consider, things like Birdie lacking any exceptional service for the country or the economy.
Additionally, we read how Birdie losses points because of his father’s unemployment pattern but gains a few points “by being a Negro.” Goodness, sound like Disch’s futuristic world has the deck stacked against blacks. What else is new? Perhaps not so coincidentally, Philip K. Dick's novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, also published in the 1970s, maps out genetic engineering geared to eliminate the US black population.
Birdie pens an essay for class entitled Problems of Creativeness, that ends “Another criteria of Creativeness was made by Socrates, so cruelly put to death by his own people, and I quote, “To know nothing is the first condition of all knowledge.” From the wisdom of that great Greek Philosopher may we not draw our own conclusions concerning these problems. Creativeness is the ability to see relationships where none exist.”
Read carefully, this essay reveals a highly imaginative, creative, intelligent mind buried under bad English and disastrous inner city public education. Thus the title of Disch’s tale, The Death of Socrates, bestows a double meaning. As they say, a mind is a terrible thing to waste – and observing the social forces crushing Birdie Lund’s brilliant mind makes for one sad, profound story.
Although Birdie is squashed and squeezed by cramped urban seediness, our young man has the capacity to perceive beauty radiating, glowing on the inside, even in dumb vending machines and blind, downtrodden faces. And, as to be expected, he has to continually fight through mass media and pop culture saturation – singing the words of commercials and viewing the movement of autos and ships as if moments from movies and television shows.
One of the saddest endings I’ve ever encountered: Highly intellectual, sensitive, aesthetically attuned Birdie Lund feels trapped no matter which way he turns. As a last resort, he sees but one option open to him. Here are Disch’s concluding words: “The same afternoon, without even bothering to get drunk, he went to Times Square and enlisted in the U.S. Marines to go and defend democracy in Burma. Eight other guys were sworn in at the same time. They raised their right arms and took one step forward and rattled off the Pledge of Allegiance or whatever. Then the sergeant came up and slipped the black Marine Crops mask over Birdie’s sullen face. His new ID number was stenciled across the forehead in big white letters: USMC 100-7011-D07. And that was it, they were gorillas.”
A & P (2021)
Lottie is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at an exhibit were there are rows and stacks and pyramids of cans, boxes, meats, dairy, candy, cigarettes, bread, fruits, vegetables – all with individual brand names. Juan is so delighted just to be with her here at the museum. For Lottie, this is a time of perfection, one she wishes she could hold forever: “The real magic, which couldn’t be laid hold of, was simply that Juan was happy and interested and willing to spend perhaps the whole day with her. The trouble was that when you tried this hard to stop the flow it ran through your fingers and you were left squeezing air.”
Juan picks up a carrot that has the look and feel of being real but, of course, as part of the art exhibit, the carrot is not real. Visitors were given instructions as they entered the exhibit on what they would see and how to appreciate the art. The food and containers and cans are all fake, no matter how “real” they look – the Met’s tape said so, thus it must be true. But Juan insists, at the top of his lungs, that the carrot is real. One of the guards strides toward Juan and both he and Lottie are thrown out.
We can all recognize how this unusual art exhibit takes Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and Campbell Soup Cans and expands the concept quantitatively. Arthur C. Danto has written extensively on how Warhol’s creations herald in the “death of art” in the sense that objects of art are no longer separate from everyday objects, no longer special pieces like landscape oil paintings or marble sculptures; rather, the art world defines what is and what is not art. Traveling uptown from his downtown cockroach infested 334 mega-apartment, Juan doesn’t buy into the art world’s artificial distinction. Damn, it’s a carrot! A subtle Thomas M. Disch comment on the would-be state of the visual arts in the years following Warhol and the “death of art.”
Again, these are but two of forty-eight chapters. I hope I have whetted your appetite to sample more of Disch's novel. Special thanks to Goodreads friend Manny Rayner for alerting me to this forgotten classic.
"He knew without having to talk to the rest that the murder would never take place. The idea had never meant for them what it had meant for him. One pill and they were actors again, content to be images in a mirror."
- Thomas M. Disch, 334
A neve do almirante by Álvaro Mutis
The New York Review Books edition contains the seven linked novellas by the great Colombian poet and novelist Álvaro Mutis. I'll be posting a review of each novella as I move through the book, both under the combined NYRB edition and each of the separate volumes listed in Spanish.
THE SNOW OF THE ADMIRAL (La nieve del almirante)
For John Updike, The Snow of the Admiral is “rendered so vividly as to furnish a metaphor for life as a colorful voyage to nowhere.”
Maqroll the Gaviero - our intrepid trekker. The bulk of The Snows of the Admiral consists of a very personal diary written by the Gaviero (the Lookout) chronicling his journey up the Xurandó River through jungle in a diesel-powered barge. Xurandó, such an apt name for Álvaro Mutis's fictional river since the sound and spelling blend in so well with a number of indigenous Amazonian tribespeople: the Xipaya, the Xiriana, the Txikao, the Kaxarari.
How much can a reader cherish Maqroll? The Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas threatened to sue Mr. Mutis if he ever killed off his beloved character. And Álvaro Mutis himself spoke of Maqroll as if he were a living person. After reading The Snow of the Admiral, the first of seven linked novellas forming The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, I likewise treasure the Gaviero and plan to join him on all his other quests right to the final paragraph of this 700-page modern classic.
Such passion for literature, Gonzalo Rojas! Likewise, John Updike, myself, and I’m supremely confident many other readers hold a special place for author Álvaro Mutis’s colorful, lovable voyager.
There's also that fascinating story behind the publication of The Snow of the Admiral: Back in 1986, the Columbian author, age 63, is editing one of his prose poems and realizes it “wasn’t a poem but a piece of a novel.” Then, with a sense of fatigue, Mr. Mutis processed to write a prose narrative and send the manuscript to his Barcelona agent along with a note telling her “I don’t know what the devil this is.” She replied back informing him what he wrote was “quite simply a wonderful novel.” And, give praise to the gods of literature, over the next five year, Álvaro Mutis proceeded to write six more short novels about Maqroll. Quite a feat for an author who spent a forty-five year career publishing not novels but poetry.
The New York Review Books edition of The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll is ideal - in addition to all seven novellas published together in English for the first time as one book, also included is an informative introductory essay written by Francisco Goldman, himself a celebrated novelist and friend of the author.
In his Introduction, Mr. Goldman relates the time when Álvaro Mutis spent his entire two week vacation sitting in a garden reading a stack of Charles Dickens novels morning until night. As Mr. Mutis told Francisco Goldman directly: “A real influence is an author who communicates an energy and a great desire to tell a story. And it isn't that you write like Dickens, but rather that when you read Dickens, you feel an imaginative energy which you use to your own ends.” Worth mentioning since many critics reading about Maqroll’s tropical river journeys compare the author to Joseph Conrad but it is Charles Dickens who is the prime influence for Álvaro Mutis.
Turning to The Snow of the Admiral, I’ll never forget in the first pages the narrator relating his purchase of a rare volume from a Barcelona secondhand bookstore only to notice tucked inside the back cover a diary written in tiny, cramped handwriting, a diary written by one Maqroll the Gaviero during his journey up a jungle river.
Likewise, Maqrill’s description of the captain as always semi-inebriated from steady drinking that keeps him in a state of euphoria alternating with a drowsy stupor; the mechanic, an Indian who speaks to the captain in a mixture of different languages; the pilot who reminds Maqroll of a menacing character from Little Dorrit (Álvaro Mutis and his voracious reading of Charles Dickens!); Maqroll’s fellow passenger, a calm blond giant speaking with a Slavic accent.
Or, when one nightfall, after the barge’s propeller hits a root, they’re forced to pull up on a sandy beach and a family of beautiful, tall, naked natives with their hair cut in the shape of a helmet and their teeth filed to points appear unexpectedly. And that night, Maqroll is aroused from a deep sleep by the Indian woman and shortly thereafter enters her and feels himself sinking into a bland, unresisting wax, all the time a putrid stench clinging to his body.
And yet again the way in which Maqroll recalls his own recurrent failures and how he, at least in his own mind, keeps giving destiny the slip. Also the Gaviero's recounting his various vivid dreams and fantasies along with establishing certain precepts, among which “Everything we can say about death, everything we try to embroider around the subject, is sterile, entirely fruitless labor. Wouldn’t it be better just to be quiet and wait? Don’t ask that of humans. They must have a profound need for doom; perhaps they belong exclusively to its kingdom.”
Then there are major episodes of the voyage, among which an old-style Junker seaplane landing near the barge and the appearance of a stern major who immediately takes complete control, the illness of Maqroll himself and his report of the near-death experience, the surprise encounter at Maqroll’s destination far up the jungle river.
But more than anything, the lush, poetic, intoxicating language, the full expanse of what it means to write sublime prose. Obviously, all those year Álvaro Mutis wrote his poetry exerted a profound influence on his writing his novellas. To take but one spectacular sentence as an example:
“I could discover that my true home is up there in the deep ravines where giant ferns sway, in the abandoned mine shafts and the damp, dense growth of the coffee plantings covered in the astonishing snow of their flowers or the red fiesta of their berries, in the groves of plantain trees, with their unspeakably soft trunks and the tender green of their reverent leaves so welcoming, so smooth: in the rivers crashing down against the great sun-warmed boulders, the delight of reptiles that use them for their lovemaking and their silent gatherings; in the dizzying flocks of parrots that fly through the air, as noisy as a departing army, to settle in the tops of the tall cambulo trees.”
After reading The Snow of the Admiral (the name of a memorable eatery for Maqroll, by the way), I was inspired to come up with the following quote: "Great literature is the opium of the book reviewer." I highly recommend joining Maqroll’s trip upriver. Completely addictive.
Special thanks to Goodreads friend Fionnuala for her engaging review of The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll that inspired me to start reading. Link to her review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1297736919?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
Colombian author Álvaro Mutis, 1923-2013
5.0
The New York Review Books edition contains the seven linked novellas by the great Colombian poet and novelist Álvaro Mutis. I'll be posting a review of each novella as I move through the book, both under the combined NYRB edition and each of the separate volumes listed in Spanish.
THE SNOW OF THE ADMIRAL (La nieve del almirante)
For John Updike, The Snow of the Admiral is “rendered so vividly as to furnish a metaphor for life as a colorful voyage to nowhere.”
Maqroll the Gaviero - our intrepid trekker. The bulk of The Snows of the Admiral consists of a very personal diary written by the Gaviero (the Lookout) chronicling his journey up the Xurandó River through jungle in a diesel-powered barge. Xurandó, such an apt name for Álvaro Mutis's fictional river since the sound and spelling blend in so well with a number of indigenous Amazonian tribespeople: the Xipaya, the Xiriana, the Txikao, the Kaxarari.
How much can a reader cherish Maqroll? The Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas threatened to sue Mr. Mutis if he ever killed off his beloved character. And Álvaro Mutis himself spoke of Maqroll as if he were a living person. After reading The Snow of the Admiral, the first of seven linked novellas forming The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, I likewise treasure the Gaviero and plan to join him on all his other quests right to the final paragraph of this 700-page modern classic.
Such passion for literature, Gonzalo Rojas! Likewise, John Updike, myself, and I’m supremely confident many other readers hold a special place for author Álvaro Mutis’s colorful, lovable voyager.
There's also that fascinating story behind the publication of The Snow of the Admiral: Back in 1986, the Columbian author, age 63, is editing one of his prose poems and realizes it “wasn’t a poem but a piece of a novel.” Then, with a sense of fatigue, Mr. Mutis processed to write a prose narrative and send the manuscript to his Barcelona agent along with a note telling her “I don’t know what the devil this is.” She replied back informing him what he wrote was “quite simply a wonderful novel.” And, give praise to the gods of literature, over the next five year, Álvaro Mutis proceeded to write six more short novels about Maqroll. Quite a feat for an author who spent a forty-five year career publishing not novels but poetry.
The New York Review Books edition of The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll is ideal - in addition to all seven novellas published together in English for the first time as one book, also included is an informative introductory essay written by Francisco Goldman, himself a celebrated novelist and friend of the author.
In his Introduction, Mr. Goldman relates the time when Álvaro Mutis spent his entire two week vacation sitting in a garden reading a stack of Charles Dickens novels morning until night. As Mr. Mutis told Francisco Goldman directly: “A real influence is an author who communicates an energy and a great desire to tell a story. And it isn't that you write like Dickens, but rather that when you read Dickens, you feel an imaginative energy which you use to your own ends.” Worth mentioning since many critics reading about Maqroll’s tropical river journeys compare the author to Joseph Conrad but it is Charles Dickens who is the prime influence for Álvaro Mutis.
Turning to The Snow of the Admiral, I’ll never forget in the first pages the narrator relating his purchase of a rare volume from a Barcelona secondhand bookstore only to notice tucked inside the back cover a diary written in tiny, cramped handwriting, a diary written by one Maqroll the Gaviero during his journey up a jungle river.
Likewise, Maqrill’s description of the captain as always semi-inebriated from steady drinking that keeps him in a state of euphoria alternating with a drowsy stupor; the mechanic, an Indian who speaks to the captain in a mixture of different languages; the pilot who reminds Maqroll of a menacing character from Little Dorrit (Álvaro Mutis and his voracious reading of Charles Dickens!); Maqroll’s fellow passenger, a calm blond giant speaking with a Slavic accent.
Or, when one nightfall, after the barge’s propeller hits a root, they’re forced to pull up on a sandy beach and a family of beautiful, tall, naked natives with their hair cut in the shape of a helmet and their teeth filed to points appear unexpectedly. And that night, Maqroll is aroused from a deep sleep by the Indian woman and shortly thereafter enters her and feels himself sinking into a bland, unresisting wax, all the time a putrid stench clinging to his body.
And yet again the way in which Maqroll recalls his own recurrent failures and how he, at least in his own mind, keeps giving destiny the slip. Also the Gaviero's recounting his various vivid dreams and fantasies along with establishing certain precepts, among which “Everything we can say about death, everything we try to embroider around the subject, is sterile, entirely fruitless labor. Wouldn’t it be better just to be quiet and wait? Don’t ask that of humans. They must have a profound need for doom; perhaps they belong exclusively to its kingdom.”
Then there are major episodes of the voyage, among which an old-style Junker seaplane landing near the barge and the appearance of a stern major who immediately takes complete control, the illness of Maqroll himself and his report of the near-death experience, the surprise encounter at Maqroll’s destination far up the jungle river.
But more than anything, the lush, poetic, intoxicating language, the full expanse of what it means to write sublime prose. Obviously, all those year Álvaro Mutis wrote his poetry exerted a profound influence on his writing his novellas. To take but one spectacular sentence as an example:
“I could discover that my true home is up there in the deep ravines where giant ferns sway, in the abandoned mine shafts and the damp, dense growth of the coffee plantings covered in the astonishing snow of their flowers or the red fiesta of their berries, in the groves of plantain trees, with their unspeakably soft trunks and the tender green of their reverent leaves so welcoming, so smooth: in the rivers crashing down against the great sun-warmed boulders, the delight of reptiles that use them for their lovemaking and their silent gatherings; in the dizzying flocks of parrots that fly through the air, as noisy as a departing army, to settle in the tops of the tall cambulo trees.”
After reading The Snow of the Admiral (the name of a memorable eatery for Maqroll, by the way), I was inspired to come up with the following quote: "Great literature is the opium of the book reviewer." I highly recommend joining Maqroll’s trip upriver. Completely addictive.
Special thanks to Goodreads friend Fionnuala for her engaging review of The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll that inspired me to start reading. Link to her review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1297736919?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
Colombian author Álvaro Mutis, 1923-2013
Clark Gifford's Body by Kenneth Fearing
American novelist and poet Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961)
Clark Gifford’s Body is a forgotten classic of postmodernism, a novel not well received at the time of its first publication in 1942 and virtually unknown ever since. Thank you New York Review Books (NYRB) for this 2006 edition which includes an informative introduction by critic Robert Polito. And let me tell you folks, if you are interested in reading political noir in an experimental fictional style, this is your one-of-a-kind book.
As a way of underscoring "postmodern" and "experimental" below are several postmodern, experimental features of this story revolving around and hovering over one central event - the attack and takeover of a series of radio stations by Clark Gifford and his anti-government followers, a takeover leading to twenty years of war:
Reaction Against Established Forms
Rather than telling the story in conventional start-at-the-beginning-and-move-forward linear progression, the novel hops and shifts back and forth in time, covering reflections, reports and events before, after, and during the attack, ranging from thirty years prior to thirty years after as well as including more than two dozen first-person narrators from military officers and executives to town residents and those actual participants in the attack.
Incorporates Many Varieties of Texts Directly
Among the novel’s thirty chapters, we have a written proclamation, a letter, a monthly magazine article, a series of press service flashes and three different newspaper articles. Chapters focus anywhere from years before the attack to years following the attack. To take but one example, here is a quote from a monthly magazine: "What sort of man was he, this Clark Gifford who plunged a continent for twelve long hours into the abyss of terror and despair? What lay behind the philosophy that waked children screaming in their beds, set housewives to shuddering, and caused even strong men to falter -and as casually as you or I would push the button of a light switch secure in the safety and sanctity of our own home?"
Erosion of Boundaries Between Subjects Usually Studied Separately
One would find it nearly impossible to approach Clark Gifford’s Body from distinct, self-contained perspectives, since, when it comes to history, social theory, philosophy or political science, the novel is an undifferentiated postmodern jumble. Here is a bit of philosophy from one General F. Johan Esteven: "I have no sympathy whatsoever with the terrorist methods employed by "Colonel" Gifford. In my opinion, Gifford should be tried by court martial and shot." Ha! Now that's very generous of you, General Esteven! Why not save the state some money and simply shoot Clark Gifford?
Postmodern Experience of Space and Time and the Leveling of Differences
With all the shifting back and forth through time and place, a reader has the sense people and events of this novel are coated with a layer of hazy gray fog; there is the buzz of sameness about it all. Where are we? What was the year of the attack? Sure, there are a couple of sports references, a general is off playing golf, a standard fare kind of guy muses on how fall is the season for football, but there is nothing more specific. Welcome to postmodern country, a bland-land and flatland, to be sure; we could be anywhere at any time, since, after all, no one location is any different from all the others.
Pastiche Rather Than Parody
Here is literary critic Fredric Jameson on the use of pastiche in postmodernism: “Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language, but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody’s ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic.” This description fits Fearing’s novel like a custom made suit, a novel for the most part both humorless and free of satire, a novel that does anything but suggest there is an alternative, more "normal" culture and society anywhere else in the world.
All in all, there was something strangely compelling about Clark Gifford's Body that made me want to keep turning the pages. Perhaps it was the constant freshness of perspectives, each chapter offering a new voice, a different mode of communication, a new narrator with new expectations and challenges interlaced with all the other characters. But, whatever the reasons, this was an intriguing read, one with its own unique flare and a book I would wholeheartedly recommend.
Kenneth Fearing was a novelist ahead of his time. He was also a sensitive artist who suffered difficulty both as a child and then as an adult who eventually turned to alcohol. Other than his crime noir novel, The Big Clock, also republished by New York Review Books, Fearing’s fiction and poetry are all but forgotten.
5.0
American novelist and poet Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961)
Clark Gifford’s Body is a forgotten classic of postmodernism, a novel not well received at the time of its first publication in 1942 and virtually unknown ever since. Thank you New York Review Books (NYRB) for this 2006 edition which includes an informative introduction by critic Robert Polito. And let me tell you folks, if you are interested in reading political noir in an experimental fictional style, this is your one-of-a-kind book.
As a way of underscoring "postmodern" and "experimental" below are several postmodern, experimental features of this story revolving around and hovering over one central event - the attack and takeover of a series of radio stations by Clark Gifford and his anti-government followers, a takeover leading to twenty years of war:
Reaction Against Established Forms
Rather than telling the story in conventional start-at-the-beginning-and-move-forward linear progression, the novel hops and shifts back and forth in time, covering reflections, reports and events before, after, and during the attack, ranging from thirty years prior to thirty years after as well as including more than two dozen first-person narrators from military officers and executives to town residents and those actual participants in the attack.
Incorporates Many Varieties of Texts Directly
Among the novel’s thirty chapters, we have a written proclamation, a letter, a monthly magazine article, a series of press service flashes and three different newspaper articles. Chapters focus anywhere from years before the attack to years following the attack. To take but one example, here is a quote from a monthly magazine: "What sort of man was he, this Clark Gifford who plunged a continent for twelve long hours into the abyss of terror and despair? What lay behind the philosophy that waked children screaming in their beds, set housewives to shuddering, and caused even strong men to falter -and as casually as you or I would push the button of a light switch secure in the safety and sanctity of our own home?"
Erosion of Boundaries Between Subjects Usually Studied Separately
One would find it nearly impossible to approach Clark Gifford’s Body from distinct, self-contained perspectives, since, when it comes to history, social theory, philosophy or political science, the novel is an undifferentiated postmodern jumble. Here is a bit of philosophy from one General F. Johan Esteven: "I have no sympathy whatsoever with the terrorist methods employed by "Colonel" Gifford. In my opinion, Gifford should be tried by court martial and shot." Ha! Now that's very generous of you, General Esteven! Why not save the state some money and simply shoot Clark Gifford?
Postmodern Experience of Space and Time and the Leveling of Differences
With all the shifting back and forth through time and place, a reader has the sense people and events of this novel are coated with a layer of hazy gray fog; there is the buzz of sameness about it all. Where are we? What was the year of the attack? Sure, there are a couple of sports references, a general is off playing golf, a standard fare kind of guy muses on how fall is the season for football, but there is nothing more specific. Welcome to postmodern country, a bland-land and flatland, to be sure; we could be anywhere at any time, since, after all, no one location is any different from all the others.
Pastiche Rather Than Parody
Here is literary critic Fredric Jameson on the use of pastiche in postmodernism: “Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language, but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody’s ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic.” This description fits Fearing’s novel like a custom made suit, a novel for the most part both humorless and free of satire, a novel that does anything but suggest there is an alternative, more "normal" culture and society anywhere else in the world.
All in all, there was something strangely compelling about Clark Gifford's Body that made me want to keep turning the pages. Perhaps it was the constant freshness of perspectives, each chapter offering a new voice, a different mode of communication, a new narrator with new expectations and challenges interlaced with all the other characters. But, whatever the reasons, this was an intriguing read, one with its own unique flare and a book I would wholeheartedly recommend.
Kenneth Fearing was a novelist ahead of his time. He was also a sensitive artist who suffered difficulty both as a child and then as an adult who eventually turned to alcohol. Other than his crime noir novel, The Big Clock, also republished by New York Review Books, Fearing’s fiction and poetry are all but forgotten.
The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell by Jorge Amado
Quincas Wateryell’s double life, his wife and children prayed for him after he called them vipers and, without so much as a glance over his shoulder, walked out of his respectable middle-class home forever. And to think, such an obedient, meek husband and father, a former exemplary employee of the State Rent Board; the derelicts, tramps, hobos, gamblers and prostitutes in the squalid neighborhoods of his second life all loved him, their first and foremost shinning star of seedy bar and sailor skiff (Quincas’ great-great grandfather was a captain and Quincas could feel the sea in his blood), through ten glorious years of carousing, marathon card games, rum drinking and thousands of debaucheries, their leader, Daddy, great pal and hero would spin his new life around a squalid flophouse where he would occasionally crash in his bare, dingy room furnished with sagging, moth-eaten cot; leader and pal, Daddy and hero (did I previously mention his roles? If so, it bears repeating), his arms always spread wide, embracing down-and-outers against all odds, his open heart, his warm smile, rum-fueled fire sparkling in his eyes - all this is noble, splendid, spirited, liberating and caused his family endless embarrassment and shame.
A friend recently wrote me saying how another world-renowned author from Brazil couldn’t hold a candle to the storytelling of Jorge Amado. It’s hard to argue with this statement since Jorge's nearly thirty novels, astonishing literary masterpieces loved by millions of readers, from intellectuals and esteemed critics to workers in the field, prove Jorge to be among the world’s foremost storytelling giants.
And please do not underestimate this Jorge Amado novella under review – its less than one hundred pages contain more sheer energy, excitement and euphoria, joy and jubilance than an entire shelf of works many times its length penned by a good number of other authors.
The spirit of wild, intoxicated Dionysius has an undeniable presence on every single page. If you are not yet acquainted with the author, this little gem is the perfect place to imbibe some Jorge Amado storytelling splendor. Set your spirit free!
5.0
Quincas Wateryell’s double life, his wife and children prayed for him after he called them vipers and, without so much as a glance over his shoulder, walked out of his respectable middle-class home forever. And to think, such an obedient, meek husband and father, a former exemplary employee of the State Rent Board; the derelicts, tramps, hobos, gamblers and prostitutes in the squalid neighborhoods of his second life all loved him, their first and foremost shinning star of seedy bar and sailor skiff (Quincas’ great-great grandfather was a captain and Quincas could feel the sea in his blood), through ten glorious years of carousing, marathon card games, rum drinking and thousands of debaucheries, their leader, Daddy, great pal and hero would spin his new life around a squalid flophouse where he would occasionally crash in his bare, dingy room furnished with sagging, moth-eaten cot; leader and pal, Daddy and hero (did I previously mention his roles? If so, it bears repeating), his arms always spread wide, embracing down-and-outers against all odds, his open heart, his warm smile, rum-fueled fire sparkling in his eyes - all this is noble, splendid, spirited, liberating and caused his family endless embarrassment and shame.
A friend recently wrote me saying how another world-renowned author from Brazil couldn’t hold a candle to the storytelling of Jorge Amado. It’s hard to argue with this statement since Jorge's nearly thirty novels, astonishing literary masterpieces loved by millions of readers, from intellectuals and esteemed critics to workers in the field, prove Jorge to be among the world’s foremost storytelling giants.
And please do not underestimate this Jorge Amado novella under review – its less than one hundred pages contain more sheer energy, excitement and euphoria, joy and jubilance than an entire shelf of works many times its length penned by a good number of other authors.
The spirit of wild, intoxicated Dionysius has an undeniable presence on every single page. If you are not yet acquainted with the author, this little gem is the perfect place to imbibe some Jorge Amado storytelling splendor. Set your spirit free!
Un bel morir by Álvaro Mutis
"For his part, the Gaviero had begun to receive regular visits from a dark-skinned young woman with black, very expressive eyes and a strong, sinewy, but slim and well-proportioned body. Her name was Amparo María . There was something of a Circassian princess about her that he found extraordinarily attractive."
Un Bel Morir - The third in a series of seven novellas forming The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by the great Columbian author Álvaro Mutis, the only one in the series not written in intimate first person.
Why the switch in voice? Maqroll is an older man in this tale – a specific age is not given but one can infer the Gaviero is in his sixties. Perhaps an objective third person narrator provides a more panoramic lens, an opportunity to step back and view the arc of Maqroll’s entire life from a distance.
In similar spirit, perhaps also it is no coincidence Un Bel Morir returns to the landscapes of Maqroll's childhood - in and around a river town near coffee plantations nestled in the Andes Mountains, a small town by the name of La Plata (not the city south of Buenos Aires in Argentina). This is a tale of high adventure, a thriller with a cast of colorful characters. Here are several:
Doña Empera: Blind old woman who runs the boardinghouse where Maqroll spends an entire two months lolling about, paying visits to the local tavern or in his room overlooking the gently murmuring, tobacco colored river where he occasionally reads about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi or from a two volume set containing letters of the Prince of Ligne. On occasion the Gaviero will even read aloud to Doña Empera, a trusted and knowledgeable source of information on all matters relating to La Plata, including the young women who come down from the mountains to provide companionship for men.
Anparo Maria: Columbian Aphrodite with a stern, fierce Gypsy air, a lady of few, well-chosen words who hungers for affection. And she receives what she’s after every time she pays a visit to the Gaviero. Is it any surprise this sensual lovely and the aging adventurer form a bond of the heart? At times Anparo Maria reminds Maqroll of Flor Estévez and at others Ilana Grabowska (Readers will be familiar with Flor from The Snow of the Admiral; Ilana from Ilana Comes with the Rain). The Gaviero considers Anparo Maria a gift from the gods, in all likelihood at this point in his life, the last he will receive.
Jan van Branden: Over the course of several evenings between drinks down at the town tavern, this burly red-bearded Belgium talks Maqroll into transporting equipment up a mountain as part of a railroad project. The Galviaro smells a rat. Is van Branden really Belgium? Does he, in fact, have a background in engineering? Are those crates loaded with railroad equipment or something highly illegal and maybe even dangerous? He initially vacillates but ultimately surrenders and accepts the proposition. Hey, the Gaviero might be old but he still has the fire of risk and adventure in his soul. After all, sitting around the boardinghouse reading books to an old blind woman strikes him as a less appealing alternative. He reflects: “The real tragedy of aging lay in the fact that an eternal boy still lives inside us, unaware of the passing of time.”
The Helpers: Rancher Don Anibal offers hospitality and seasoned advice as the Gaviero makes his way up the mountain. There’s danger around every bend. Maqroll is joined by Zuro, a young man who proves an invaluable sidekick, an expert mule driver, desperately needed as mules are carrying the load. On one trek up Zuro warns Maqroll, “Be careful of your sleep, Señor. You need to stay alive. In the barrens altitude the exhaustion make you dream a lot. It’s not good for you. You don’t get your strength back, and they’re never good dreams. Just nightmares. I know what I’m talking about: the foreigners who came to try mining all went crazy and tried to murder each other in the tavern or drowned themselves in the whirlpools in the river.”
Men in Uniform: The Gaviero usually has had to deal with both the police and the military at one point or the other during the misadventure part of his adventures. Never a totally satisfying or pleasant experience but Maqroll knows the drill only too well – either cooperate or in all likelihood lose your freedom or even your life. On this mountain adventure it isn’t any different. He’s seen it many times before. He is brought before a Captain Segura who demands his orders be followed without exception and a Captain Ariza who demands he repeat his story over and over without deviating from the truth. Follow orders? Repeat the truth? Fortunately Maqroll the Gaviero comes through as Maqroll the Gaviero – a most satisfying reading experience.
Lastly, permit me to underscore the sumptuous language and exquisite storytelling. There's good reason fans of Maqroll cherish Álvaro Mutis' cycle of seven novellas. And I'm sure Un Bel Morir is high on the list.
Columbian author Álvaro Mutis, 1923-2013
"As a consequence, all the van Brandens in the world only verified his ineluctable solitude, his impregnable skepticism when faced with the intractable vanity of all human enterprise, of everything undertaken by those unfortunate blind creatures who come to death without ever having suspected the marvel of the world or felt the miraculous passion which fires our knowledge that we are alive and that death, without beginning or end, a pure, limitless present, is part of that life."
5.0
"For his part, the Gaviero had begun to receive regular visits from a dark-skinned young woman with black, very expressive eyes and a strong, sinewy, but slim and well-proportioned body. Her name was Amparo María . There was something of a Circassian princess about her that he found extraordinarily attractive."
Un Bel Morir - The third in a series of seven novellas forming The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by the great Columbian author Álvaro Mutis, the only one in the series not written in intimate first person.
Why the switch in voice? Maqroll is an older man in this tale – a specific age is not given but one can infer the Gaviero is in his sixties. Perhaps an objective third person narrator provides a more panoramic lens, an opportunity to step back and view the arc of Maqroll’s entire life from a distance.
In similar spirit, perhaps also it is no coincidence Un Bel Morir returns to the landscapes of Maqroll's childhood - in and around a river town near coffee plantations nestled in the Andes Mountains, a small town by the name of La Plata (not the city south of Buenos Aires in Argentina). This is a tale of high adventure, a thriller with a cast of colorful characters. Here are several:
Doña Empera: Blind old woman who runs the boardinghouse where Maqroll spends an entire two months lolling about, paying visits to the local tavern or in his room overlooking the gently murmuring, tobacco colored river where he occasionally reads about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi or from a two volume set containing letters of the Prince of Ligne. On occasion the Gaviero will even read aloud to Doña Empera, a trusted and knowledgeable source of information on all matters relating to La Plata, including the young women who come down from the mountains to provide companionship for men.
Anparo Maria: Columbian Aphrodite with a stern, fierce Gypsy air, a lady of few, well-chosen words who hungers for affection. And she receives what she’s after every time she pays a visit to the Gaviero. Is it any surprise this sensual lovely and the aging adventurer form a bond of the heart? At times Anparo Maria reminds Maqroll of Flor Estévez and at others Ilana Grabowska (Readers will be familiar with Flor from The Snow of the Admiral; Ilana from Ilana Comes with the Rain). The Gaviero considers Anparo Maria a gift from the gods, in all likelihood at this point in his life, the last he will receive.
Jan van Branden: Over the course of several evenings between drinks down at the town tavern, this burly red-bearded Belgium talks Maqroll into transporting equipment up a mountain as part of a railroad project. The Galviaro smells a rat. Is van Branden really Belgium? Does he, in fact, have a background in engineering? Are those crates loaded with railroad equipment or something highly illegal and maybe even dangerous? He initially vacillates but ultimately surrenders and accepts the proposition. Hey, the Gaviero might be old but he still has the fire of risk and adventure in his soul. After all, sitting around the boardinghouse reading books to an old blind woman strikes him as a less appealing alternative. He reflects: “The real tragedy of aging lay in the fact that an eternal boy still lives inside us, unaware of the passing of time.”
The Helpers: Rancher Don Anibal offers hospitality and seasoned advice as the Gaviero makes his way up the mountain. There’s danger around every bend. Maqroll is joined by Zuro, a young man who proves an invaluable sidekick, an expert mule driver, desperately needed as mules are carrying the load. On one trek up Zuro warns Maqroll, “Be careful of your sleep, Señor. You need to stay alive. In the barrens altitude the exhaustion make you dream a lot. It’s not good for you. You don’t get your strength back, and they’re never good dreams. Just nightmares. I know what I’m talking about: the foreigners who came to try mining all went crazy and tried to murder each other in the tavern or drowned themselves in the whirlpools in the river.”
Men in Uniform: The Gaviero usually has had to deal with both the police and the military at one point or the other during the misadventure part of his adventures. Never a totally satisfying or pleasant experience but Maqroll knows the drill only too well – either cooperate or in all likelihood lose your freedom or even your life. On this mountain adventure it isn’t any different. He’s seen it many times before. He is brought before a Captain Segura who demands his orders be followed without exception and a Captain Ariza who demands he repeat his story over and over without deviating from the truth. Follow orders? Repeat the truth? Fortunately Maqroll the Gaviero comes through as Maqroll the Gaviero – a most satisfying reading experience.
Lastly, permit me to underscore the sumptuous language and exquisite storytelling. There's good reason fans of Maqroll cherish Álvaro Mutis' cycle of seven novellas. And I'm sure Un Bel Morir is high on the list.
Columbian author Álvaro Mutis, 1923-2013
"As a consequence, all the van Brandens in the world only verified his ineluctable solitude, his impregnable skepticism when faced with the intractable vanity of all human enterprise, of everything undertaken by those unfortunate blind creatures who come to death without ever having suspected the marvel of the world or felt the miraculous passion which fires our knowledge that we are alive and that death, without beginning or end, a pure, limitless present, is part of that life."
Hundertwasser: 1928-2000; Personality, Life, Work by Harry Rand, Wieland Schmied
Austrian artist Hundertwasser (1928 –2000) - One of the most unique artists of the 20th century. His work spans the fields of painting, architecture and environmental protection.
With HUNDERTWASSER, Taschen has published one of the most beautiful art books I have ever seen – hundreds of full color illustrations of the artist’s painting and architecture along with a number of photos of the artist himself. Trust me here, folks, this sumptuous book is a feast for the eyes and inspiration for the soul. The accompanying text, background information on the artist’s life and commentary on the artist’s work, is provided courtesy of art historian and art lover, Wieland Schmied. To share but a small sampling, below are several Wieland Schmied quotes along with my modest comments:
“Hunderwasser went his way alone. He was, literally, what is often called a “rugged individualist.” He never joined a group, a movement, a party. He always made a point of being on the sidelines.” ---------- I can appreciate the artist avoided groups and movements once he became an adult since circumstances forced him as a young boy to escape persecution as a Jew (his mother was Jewish) by joining the Hitler Youth Movement (his father was Catholic).
“It was not easy to communicate with Hundertwasser. He was always lost in thought, a dreamer wrapped up in himself, his thoughts ranging far afield. Sometimes you would have to repeat something three times before he noticed and replied. He could tell a story enthusiastically and suddenly lapse into profound silence.” ---------- Most understandable: in the same spirit as a novelist living in the world of his or her characters, an artist with such a vivid, singular vision would live full time in the swirl of color and form.
“Hundertwasser built new structures or rebuilt existing ones, designing new facades and changing the outward appearance of existing buildings.” ----------- For the artist, all humdrum structures were but raw material for his vast imagination and ability to transform a stock grey world into something more vibrant, organic and teeming with colors.
“Hundertwasser was a living contradiction, an introvert who displayed his inmost feelings to the world – an extroverted introvert, if there is such a thing.” ---------- Hundertwasser possessed two key ingredients for what it means to be a great artist: a fertile interior life and a desire to communicate an ever expanding, explosive vision. Many are the artists and writers I’ve had the opportunity to meet who struck me as just that: extroverted introverts.
“Hundertwasser’s paintings, I felt, radiated an incredible feeling of happiness. Was it the harmony of the colors which so affected me or the joy of inventiveness. Was it the childlike, innocent world view expressed in them or the combination of a fairy-tale atmosphere and elements of the real world?” ---------- To answer your question, Wieland, I think it is a combination of all those qualities that would bring a smile to any viewer’s face: aura of happiness; inventive combination of colors; innocence of a child and craftsmanship of a master.
The artist wrote this: “We extinguish the last true, pristine and many-faceted spark of life that stirs in our children and in ourselves, first with the poison of our educational system and then by conformist dictates. Our educational system is systematic lethal destruction. We are born into a column of grey men marching towards a colorless, trivial collective.” ---------- These words of the artist bring tears to my eyes. In many respects, this was my own experience of education in elementary school right through high school. Hundertwasser created many works of art specifically with children in mind. And if anybody questions just how colorless, monotonous and utilitarian our cityscapes, compare our thousands of cheerless urban apartment boxes with Hundertwasser architecture.
Hundertwasser apartment house in Vienna, Austria
“Hundertwasser loved colors – violent and gentle colors, their intensity, their contrasts, and their harmony. Colors defined his life. He like to surround himself with colors, he collected objects for their colors, he liked to wear colorful socks, colorful belts, colorful scarves and colorful caps, and his ship had colorful sails.” ---------- As striking as the colors are in his prints and on the web, I’m quite sure the colors are that much more potent when seen in person.
‘The spiral had already been prefigured by several motifs – by the way Hundertwasser painted cheeks on his faces, the portholes of steamers, the wheels of buses, lorries, and trams as if they were formed of concentric circles and, finally, by the splendid forms of the trees.” ---------- The spiral was one of the aspects of the artist’s paintings that particularly attracted me when I first had an opportunity to make his acquaintance years ago.
5.0
Austrian artist Hundertwasser (1928 –2000) - One of the most unique artists of the 20th century. His work spans the fields of painting, architecture and environmental protection.
With HUNDERTWASSER, Taschen has published one of the most beautiful art books I have ever seen – hundreds of full color illustrations of the artist’s painting and architecture along with a number of photos of the artist himself. Trust me here, folks, this sumptuous book is a feast for the eyes and inspiration for the soul. The accompanying text, background information on the artist’s life and commentary on the artist’s work, is provided courtesy of art historian and art lover, Wieland Schmied. To share but a small sampling, below are several Wieland Schmied quotes along with my modest comments:
“Hunderwasser went his way alone. He was, literally, what is often called a “rugged individualist.” He never joined a group, a movement, a party. He always made a point of being on the sidelines.” ---------- I can appreciate the artist avoided groups and movements once he became an adult since circumstances forced him as a young boy to escape persecution as a Jew (his mother was Jewish) by joining the Hitler Youth Movement (his father was Catholic).
“It was not easy to communicate with Hundertwasser. He was always lost in thought, a dreamer wrapped up in himself, his thoughts ranging far afield. Sometimes you would have to repeat something three times before he noticed and replied. He could tell a story enthusiastically and suddenly lapse into profound silence.” ---------- Most understandable: in the same spirit as a novelist living in the world of his or her characters, an artist with such a vivid, singular vision would live full time in the swirl of color and form.
“Hundertwasser built new structures or rebuilt existing ones, designing new facades and changing the outward appearance of existing buildings.” ----------- For the artist, all humdrum structures were but raw material for his vast imagination and ability to transform a stock grey world into something more vibrant, organic and teeming with colors.
“Hundertwasser was a living contradiction, an introvert who displayed his inmost feelings to the world – an extroverted introvert, if there is such a thing.” ---------- Hundertwasser possessed two key ingredients for what it means to be a great artist: a fertile interior life and a desire to communicate an ever expanding, explosive vision. Many are the artists and writers I’ve had the opportunity to meet who struck me as just that: extroverted introverts.
“Hundertwasser’s paintings, I felt, radiated an incredible feeling of happiness. Was it the harmony of the colors which so affected me or the joy of inventiveness. Was it the childlike, innocent world view expressed in them or the combination of a fairy-tale atmosphere and elements of the real world?” ---------- To answer your question, Wieland, I think it is a combination of all those qualities that would bring a smile to any viewer’s face: aura of happiness; inventive combination of colors; innocence of a child and craftsmanship of a master.
The artist wrote this: “We extinguish the last true, pristine and many-faceted spark of life that stirs in our children and in ourselves, first with the poison of our educational system and then by conformist dictates. Our educational system is systematic lethal destruction. We are born into a column of grey men marching towards a colorless, trivial collective.” ---------- These words of the artist bring tears to my eyes. In many respects, this was my own experience of education in elementary school right through high school. Hundertwasser created many works of art specifically with children in mind. And if anybody questions just how colorless, monotonous and utilitarian our cityscapes, compare our thousands of cheerless urban apartment boxes with Hundertwasser architecture.
Hundertwasser apartment house in Vienna, Austria
“Hundertwasser loved colors – violent and gentle colors, their intensity, their contrasts, and their harmony. Colors defined his life. He like to surround himself with colors, he collected objects for their colors, he liked to wear colorful socks, colorful belts, colorful scarves and colorful caps, and his ship had colorful sails.” ---------- As striking as the colors are in his prints and on the web, I’m quite sure the colors are that much more potent when seen in person.
‘The spiral had already been prefigured by several motifs – by the way Hundertwasser painted cheeks on his faces, the portholes of steamers, the wheels of buses, lorries, and trams as if they were formed of concentric circles and, finally, by the splendid forms of the trees.” ---------- The spiral was one of the aspects of the artist’s paintings that particularly attracted me when I first had an opportunity to make his acquaintance years ago.
Bunch! by David R. Bunch
I have the good fortune to own a copy of this rare, out-of-print collection of thirty-two dark, offbeat short stories by David R. Bunch, an author who despised smooth, slick, shallow, gadget-crazed 1950s American society.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why Mr. Bunch's writing did not attract a wide readership during his lifetime and why his books have not been reprinted: too acerbic, too heady, too morbid and much too weird for even many avid fans of weird fiction and New Wave science fiction. As the author states directly: “I’m not in the business primarily to describe or explain or entertain. I’m here to make the reader think, even if I have to bash his teeth out, break his legs, grind him up, beat him down, and totally chastise him for the terrible and tinsel and almost wholly bad world we allow.”
After reading this collection, I feel a bit beat up myself, although my bones and fingers are working well enough to share the following comments on this batch of Bunch:
In The College of Acceptable Death the narrator/instructor opens his lecture with a string of demonstrations, beginning with the slicing up of copies of dachshunds nose-first through a baloney slicer. He moves on to having a copy of an oil-soaked man walk into a furnace, his body exploding in flames, all the while screaming in agony (the furnace is made of glass so students will not be deprived of any of the grizzly details). Following a number of other in-your-face demos, the instructor goes on to say these terrors are not part of death but part of your own thoughts in your own life here and now. Then, as a grand finale, the students directly participate in a classroom ritual decidedly more grotesque and bizarre. Ah, college, David R. Bunch-style.
With In the Time of Disposal of Infants, garbage collectors scoop up all those unwanted, less than acceptable, grimy parts of life that detract from the happy, antiseptic, perfect family world of the 1950s, as per the below illustration. Atop the list of what's to be collected for the rubbish heap and taken away - unwanted infants and old people.
In one tale a roomful of success-driven cigar chomping workaholics addicted to speed and greed gladly step on a conveyor belt so they can have the ultimate experience of rapid-fire moneymaking– to be whammowhooshed; in another, the narrator robs graves so he can kick heads around in his apartment as if they were volleyballs; and in yet another, two old guys who hate the younger generation watch as a mysterious sky-train lures all the town’s children aboard and returns to its home planet. Later that evening, those two oldsters are down in a cellar, wondering if the other guy is a spy for the aliens.
The author no doubt had a repugnance for the conventional, well-worn, persuasive language of billboards, magazine ads, television commercials and news coverage in the home of the brave – all formulated to sell the American way of life. Of course, Bunch wrote in his native tongue but he devised his own rhythms in writing sentences that combine straightforward, accessible Midwestern English with the quirky and dense. Here’s the way In the Complaints Service begins: “I’m not a pleasure-crowded man with a feel-suit, lounging back in one of those big-deal bubble-dome homes soaking up sensations. I’m a Servicer. Been in some phase of the Complaints Service for about forty years, and proud of it too.”
The narrator goes on to explain what the Complaints Service actually does: “Complaints Service, in short, is what our modern pleasure-loving people require to complete their kicks in modern living by, pardon the expression, kicking about what they think is lacking in modern life. And when we get a complaint about a pleasure lack we just send out a crew and a machine to fix things up.”
You may ask: How is this done? He goes on to tell us about a recent job where he lives and works – “out here in Brave New Hap – the happiest, most modern, the most complete country in the world.” The job runs something as follows: a husband and wife are upset at one another. The Complaints crew rushes out with their latest equipment to instantly turn upset into happy happy pleasure time. The equipment does its job and the crew leaves as the couple retreats to the bedroom for a round of intimate titillation.
Scratch the surface and we have a tale of secret police using force to ensure American citizens strictly adhere to entertainment and pleasure, force that shares much in common with the ruthlessness of the Gestapo eliminating opposition to the Nazis within Germany. I also detect hints of Philip K. Dick’s mid-1960s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the Mood Organ, a machine where a user can set the dial for anything from stimulant or tranquilizer to a state of sexual bliss.
Both DRB and PKD anticipate the extensive use of drugs in our modern world to control behavior, for example giving children Ritalin who suffer from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD).
I suspect many readers of my review will not be able to put their hands on a copy of this long out-of-print collection. However, there is good news: David R. Bunch’s other collection of stories, Moderan, will be republished by New York Review Books in August. David R. Bunch – an author with a unique voice and a unique vision. I highly recommend making his book part of your personal library.
5.0
I have the good fortune to own a copy of this rare, out-of-print collection of thirty-two dark, offbeat short stories by David R. Bunch, an author who despised smooth, slick, shallow, gadget-crazed 1950s American society.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why Mr. Bunch's writing did not attract a wide readership during his lifetime and why his books have not been reprinted: too acerbic, too heady, too morbid and much too weird for even many avid fans of weird fiction and New Wave science fiction. As the author states directly: “I’m not in the business primarily to describe or explain or entertain. I’m here to make the reader think, even if I have to bash his teeth out, break his legs, grind him up, beat him down, and totally chastise him for the terrible and tinsel and almost wholly bad world we allow.”
After reading this collection, I feel a bit beat up myself, although my bones and fingers are working well enough to share the following comments on this batch of Bunch:
In The College of Acceptable Death the narrator/instructor opens his lecture with a string of demonstrations, beginning with the slicing up of copies of dachshunds nose-first through a baloney slicer. He moves on to having a copy of an oil-soaked man walk into a furnace, his body exploding in flames, all the while screaming in agony (the furnace is made of glass so students will not be deprived of any of the grizzly details). Following a number of other in-your-face demos, the instructor goes on to say these terrors are not part of death but part of your own thoughts in your own life here and now. Then, as a grand finale, the students directly participate in a classroom ritual decidedly more grotesque and bizarre. Ah, college, David R. Bunch-style.
With In the Time of Disposal of Infants, garbage collectors scoop up all those unwanted, less than acceptable, grimy parts of life that detract from the happy, antiseptic, perfect family world of the 1950s, as per the below illustration. Atop the list of what's to be collected for the rubbish heap and taken away - unwanted infants and old people.
In one tale a roomful of success-driven cigar chomping workaholics addicted to speed and greed gladly step on a conveyor belt so they can have the ultimate experience of rapid-fire moneymaking– to be whammowhooshed; in another, the narrator robs graves so he can kick heads around in his apartment as if they were volleyballs; and in yet another, two old guys who hate the younger generation watch as a mysterious sky-train lures all the town’s children aboard and returns to its home planet. Later that evening, those two oldsters are down in a cellar, wondering if the other guy is a spy for the aliens.
The author no doubt had a repugnance for the conventional, well-worn, persuasive language of billboards, magazine ads, television commercials and news coverage in the home of the brave – all formulated to sell the American way of life. Of course, Bunch wrote in his native tongue but he devised his own rhythms in writing sentences that combine straightforward, accessible Midwestern English with the quirky and dense. Here’s the way In the Complaints Service begins: “I’m not a pleasure-crowded man with a feel-suit, lounging back in one of those big-deal bubble-dome homes soaking up sensations. I’m a Servicer. Been in some phase of the Complaints Service for about forty years, and proud of it too.”
The narrator goes on to explain what the Complaints Service actually does: “Complaints Service, in short, is what our modern pleasure-loving people require to complete their kicks in modern living by, pardon the expression, kicking about what they think is lacking in modern life. And when we get a complaint about a pleasure lack we just send out a crew and a machine to fix things up.”
You may ask: How is this done? He goes on to tell us about a recent job where he lives and works – “out here in Brave New Hap – the happiest, most modern, the most complete country in the world.” The job runs something as follows: a husband and wife are upset at one another. The Complaints crew rushes out with their latest equipment to instantly turn upset into happy happy pleasure time. The equipment does its job and the crew leaves as the couple retreats to the bedroom for a round of intimate titillation.
Scratch the surface and we have a tale of secret police using force to ensure American citizens strictly adhere to entertainment and pleasure, force that shares much in common with the ruthlessness of the Gestapo eliminating opposition to the Nazis within Germany. I also detect hints of Philip K. Dick’s mid-1960s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the Mood Organ, a machine where a user can set the dial for anything from stimulant or tranquilizer to a state of sexual bliss.
Both DRB and PKD anticipate the extensive use of drugs in our modern world to control behavior, for example giving children Ritalin who suffer from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD).
I suspect many readers of my review will not be able to put their hands on a copy of this long out-of-print collection. However, there is good news: David R. Bunch’s other collection of stories, Moderan, will be republished by New York Review Books in August. David R. Bunch – an author with a unique voice and a unique vision. I highly recommend making his book part of your personal library.
The Boundry by Russell Edson
Is this Russell Edson's commentary on FOX news? It certainly appears that's the case.
THE DUMMIES
A contortionist had twisted himself in such a way as to be suddenly sitting on his own knee.
His wife said: What's that on your knee?
Embarrassed, the twisted contortionist said, It my dummy.
Why is it sitting on your knee?
I'm making it talk.
And what is it saying? she said.
It's saying what I give it to say.
But why do you need a dummy, when anything it says you're saying anyway? she said.
Because I'm a ventriloquist.
But every time the dummy speaks you both move your lips. So who can tell which dummy is the dummy who's making the other dummy speak?
5.0
Is this Russell Edson's commentary on FOX news? It certainly appears that's the case.
THE DUMMIES
A contortionist had twisted himself in such a way as to be suddenly sitting on his own knee.
His wife said: What's that on your knee?
Embarrassed, the twisted contortionist said, It my dummy.
Why is it sitting on your knee?
I'm making it talk.
And what is it saying? she said.
It's saying what I give it to say.
But why do you need a dummy, when anything it says you're saying anyway? she said.
Because I'm a ventriloquist.
But every time the dummy speaks you both move your lips. So who can tell which dummy is the dummy who's making the other dummy speak?