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screen_memory's Reviews (234)
A return to Chejfec and his wandering narrators. This novel, like Chejfecs others, centers on the thoughts and memories of a perambulating narrator, although the duty of narration seems to be shared with (presumably) memory itself in certain scenes, denoted by italics. The prose seems melancholy as always - this is perhaps unavoidable when contending with memory, one of the most fragile, delicate, and at once both marvelous and tragic aspects of our existence - leaving one to imagine the perambulating narrator looking out at the sensory world and looking inward to the illusory reality of memories with a somber expression.
A somber expression quite deserved, since the cause for the narrator's wonderings centers on the disappearance of a friend, known as M, who was kidnapped amidst political turmoil in Buenos Aires, and who the narrator imagines dies in an explosion occurring early in the narrative. Distance figures heavily in the narrator's musings. It is distance which gives a journey its purpose. It is distance which makes the arrival worthwhile. It is distance which allows the images of one's past to flower from the soil of memory.
Distance and distance alone is the paramount condition for the very existence of the narrative: Without M's disappearance and supposed death - without the enigma of his absence; his distance from his friend like the unfathomable and immeasurable distance of one planet from another - there would be no occasion for the existence of the text.
"The truth is, there comes a time when the recovery of memories becomes a path riddled with obstacles." Our memories form a sort of narrative of our lives, and we make sense of our experience and piece each fragmentary memory of our life into the grand mosaic through stories, through retellings and recollections of moments long or recently past. It is with some despair that we might recognize these records as a sort of fiction since they are of doubtful authorship, and since their authenticity remains indisputably in question; since we cannot trust memory to serve as an objective record of experience. But we may enjoy our memories as a sort of lived fiction, each of them pieced together like pearls on a fraying string, or pieced across multiple lengths of thread like vignettes, like chapters of the life of a character bearing a name identical to our own. This is what I believe The Planets means to emphasize: A return to what has passed, a return to memory as an attempt to make sense of the chaos and indeterminacy of the present; an encounter with the fiction of a life lived and still living.
A somber expression quite deserved, since the cause for the narrator's wonderings centers on the disappearance of a friend, known as M, who was kidnapped amidst political turmoil in Buenos Aires, and who the narrator imagines dies in an explosion occurring early in the narrative. Distance figures heavily in the narrator's musings. It is distance which gives a journey its purpose. It is distance which makes the arrival worthwhile. It is distance which allows the images of one's past to flower from the soil of memory.
Distance and distance alone is the paramount condition for the very existence of the narrative: Without M's disappearance and supposed death - without the enigma of his absence; his distance from his friend like the unfathomable and immeasurable distance of one planet from another - there would be no occasion for the existence of the text.
"The truth is, there comes a time when the recovery of memories becomes a path riddled with obstacles." Our memories form a sort of narrative of our lives, and we make sense of our experience and piece each fragmentary memory of our life into the grand mosaic through stories, through retellings and recollections of moments long or recently past. It is with some despair that we might recognize these records as a sort of fiction since they are of doubtful authorship, and since their authenticity remains indisputably in question; since we cannot trust memory to serve as an objective record of experience. But we may enjoy our memories as a sort of lived fiction, each of them pieced together like pearls on a fraying string, or pieced across multiple lengths of thread like vignettes, like chapters of the life of a character bearing a name identical to our own. This is what I believe The Planets means to emphasize: A return to what has passed, a return to memory as an attempt to make sense of the chaos and indeterminacy of the present; an encounter with the fiction of a life lived and still living.
Holy shit this book was good, but yo, this book made almost NO sense, but therein lies the marvel. This novel demands much of the reader, and it becomes exceedingly difficult to tell if the language is literal or figurative between lines or, hell, even within the same line; characters assume numerous forms, like the narrator/Humberto/Mundito who's an aged, ugly creature, a well-dressed writer, an infant, and one of the aged nuns living in the Casa, a sort of convent where an order of old nuns take care of orphan children.
Reversals and shifts in identity occur by abstract means or arbitrarily; Humberto takes a bullet meant for a politician, Don Jeronimo, and thereby becomes Don Jeronimo which leads to his making love with Jeronimo's wife, Ines, impregnating her, and consequentially negating the actual Jeronimo's potency. But another reversal is told to have happened later in the text: Ines became Peta Ponce, an old ugly nun covered in warts. These reversals result in the birth of an ugly creature who Humberto is tasked with isolating with other freaks and monsters so the child thinks himself normal, but this means that Humberto, of lesser ugliness, becomes the freak and struggles with the resulting alienation and solitude.
The novel is described as a "haunting jungle," but I believe the narrative in certain ways parallels the Casa the major characters inhabit, that labyrinthine structure in which children vanish, whose walls collapse in earthquakes and thunder storms, and in whose somber rooms the aged pass away, and all of these passages are sealed off, hidden away as if they never existed, though they are returned to at various points in the circumbound narrative, each time with varying details and changes in identities which composes a portrait of a much different reality than the one we came to know through earlier passages.
It isn’t clear where Mundito or Humberto came from - his origin stories are many - or from whom he was born - his mothers are multiple - or if he is himself the ugly creature born from his tryst with Ines (who may or may not be the prospective saint, Iris, who may or may not have conceived of the child through immaculate conception), but it was written that he was tasked with writing the false history of the world he was creating to shelter his son (himself?) in. I wonder if this confused and puzzling narrative was not pitiful Mundito’s attempt to mythologize his own origins, or to rewrite the either tragic or terribly plain story of his birth and his and Ines' lives, or to canonize himself in the history of the false, bizarre world he may or may not have created.
Which of the possible realities are true? Perhaps all of them. Which of them false? Perhaps all of them. But therein lies the joy: The world and its false mythologies are new to us. We are able to enjoy a world without bias, with our conceptions of what is false and true exploded, and our expectations obliterated. Simply put, we are free to encounter the world in all of its fantastical novelty. Magical realism without its primary constitutuent leaves us with nothing but realism, a realm of diminished possibilities we all know well enough, which we have suffered and endured for long enough; a world which cannot rival a world lush with or haunted by the fantastic. No answers are given in the text, but that is all for the best since that which becomes known loses its magic, and so the world loses much of its marvel since that which is marvelous is that which can only be seen in partial form by spark or flicker of intuition but whose full-bodied figure remains relegated to the shadows, unilluminated by the light of understanding.
Reversals and shifts in identity occur by abstract means or arbitrarily; Humberto takes a bullet meant for a politician, Don Jeronimo, and thereby becomes Don Jeronimo which leads to his making love with Jeronimo's wife, Ines, impregnating her, and consequentially negating the actual Jeronimo's potency. But another reversal is told to have happened later in the text: Ines became Peta Ponce, an old ugly nun covered in warts. These reversals result in the birth of an ugly creature who Humberto is tasked with isolating with other freaks and monsters so the child thinks himself normal, but this means that Humberto, of lesser ugliness, becomes the freak and struggles with the resulting alienation and solitude.
The novel is described as a "haunting jungle," but I believe the narrative in certain ways parallels the Casa the major characters inhabit, that labyrinthine structure in which children vanish, whose walls collapse in earthquakes and thunder storms, and in whose somber rooms the aged pass away, and all of these passages are sealed off, hidden away as if they never existed, though they are returned to at various points in the circumbound narrative, each time with varying details and changes in identities which composes a portrait of a much different reality than the one we came to know through earlier passages.
It isn’t clear where Mundito or Humberto came from - his origin stories are many - or from whom he was born - his mothers are multiple - or if he is himself the ugly creature born from his tryst with Ines (who may or may not be the prospective saint, Iris, who may or may not have conceived of the child through immaculate conception), but it was written that he was tasked with writing the false history of the world he was creating to shelter his son (himself?) in. I wonder if this confused and puzzling narrative was not pitiful Mundito’s attempt to mythologize his own origins, or to rewrite the either tragic or terribly plain story of his birth and his and Ines' lives, or to canonize himself in the history of the false, bizarre world he may or may not have created.
Which of the possible realities are true? Perhaps all of them. Which of them false? Perhaps all of them. But therein lies the joy: The world and its false mythologies are new to us. We are able to enjoy a world without bias, with our conceptions of what is false and true exploded, and our expectations obliterated. Simply put, we are free to encounter the world in all of its fantastical novelty. Magical realism without its primary constitutuent leaves us with nothing but realism, a realm of diminished possibilities we all know well enough, which we have suffered and endured for long enough; a world which cannot rival a world lush with or haunted by the fantastic. No answers are given in the text, but that is all for the best since that which becomes known loses its magic, and so the world loses much of its marvel since that which is marvelous is that which can only be seen in partial form by spark or flicker of intuition but whose full-bodied figure remains relegated to the shadows, unilluminated by the light of understanding.
This was a blind buy, and it definitely paid off. I've never read a Slovene author before, but I can see that there is definitely credence to the claim that Jancar is one Slovenia's most notable authors.
Gregor Gradnik moves from his native Slovenia to New Orleans to serve as a teacher's assistant for a creative writing professor whose priorities in teaching include never using exclamation points - "Never!" - to never to begin a novel with a dream as Jancar shows himself guilty of, and his work on a theory of melancholy as a physical emanation; as manifesting in black humours and other aberrations in the body.
From here, Gregor enters into relations with other academic acquaintances, a few other odd denizens of New Orleans who populate the nearby bars, and the cockroaches that populate his dingy apartment (One of them also named Gregor; Gregor Samsa) run by an idiotic landlord out of a slapstick who first founds a School for Creative Laughter as a psychological means of relieving his guilt over drunkenly striking a woman, then, once that fails, creating a love powder as a means of easing out of his involvement with selling heroin.
The plot in numerous ways is defined by parallels and, by necessity, the distance between each parallel - between America and Slovenia, his love interests in both countries, New Orleans' culture of celebration and the more somber, funerary disposition of his homeland.
After suffering his feelings as an outsider in New Orleans, Gregor finally ingratiates himself in the social dynamic of his colleagues/friends only for them to all move away and move on. Then, following an aborted attempt at following his American love interest and her partner to New York, the book nears its tragic climax when Gregor returns to somber Slovenia after receiving some bad news. Fantasies of his triumphal return are underscored by the stark reality in fevered cascades of language in the final pages, and the novel comes to its tragic, alienating end.
Gregor Gradnik moves from his native Slovenia to New Orleans to serve as a teacher's assistant for a creative writing professor whose priorities in teaching include never using exclamation points - "Never!" - to never to begin a novel with a dream as Jancar shows himself guilty of, and his work on a theory of melancholy as a physical emanation; as manifesting in black humours and other aberrations in the body.
From here, Gregor enters into relations with other academic acquaintances, a few other odd denizens of New Orleans who populate the nearby bars, and the cockroaches that populate his dingy apartment (One of them also named Gregor; Gregor Samsa) run by an idiotic landlord out of a slapstick who first founds a School for Creative Laughter as a psychological means of relieving his guilt over drunkenly striking a woman, then, once that fails, creating a love powder as a means of easing out of his involvement with selling heroin.
The plot in numerous ways is defined by parallels and, by necessity, the distance between each parallel - between America and Slovenia, his love interests in both countries, New Orleans' culture of celebration and the more somber, funerary disposition of his homeland.
After suffering his feelings as an outsider in New Orleans, Gregor finally ingratiates himself in the social dynamic of his colleagues/friends only for them to all move away and move on. Then, following an aborted attempt at following his American love interest and her partner to New York, the book nears its tragic climax when Gregor returns to somber Slovenia after receiving some bad news. Fantasies of his triumphal return are underscored by the stark reality in fevered cascades of language in the final pages, and the novel comes to its tragic, alienating end.
The narrative perpetually lingers on the cusp of a word, an expression, a quality; something emanant yet inexpressible or irretrievable, something so nearly lost to memory until...until...yes, the prose slowly, gradually, charms the essence from the abstract - a figure in the midst of formation, emerging from the marble - and, at last...it is on the tip of the tongue, hesitating before the threshold of - of what was it? - ah...experience, or perhaps memory; all things which, if left unexpressed, eventually resigns to the obsolescence of memory, recedes once more into the abstract until...until....
Sarraute's Here seems a meditation on the delicate interstices of language and thought, language and memory, language and consciousness. How does one make sense of experience when language proves its impotence, when all it offers is a cracked and blemished mirror through which to reflect on the past? Hesitations abound; the infrastructure of thought meanders and inevitably collapses before language can reach a resolution..
There is a poetry to Sarraute's prose that I loved and which hooked me immediately; a poetry born of vulnerability, delicacy, and the slow and languid stream of language. You know when you start nodding off during reading and lapse into these momentary spells that are like a dipping of the toes into the surreality of dreams? Naturally, it's time to shift positions or move around a bit to shake off the haze of an approaching sleep and return to reading when you're more mentally present, right? but, funny enough, that teetering state of consciousness complemented the prose, and I allowed myself to enjoy these disparate but separate aesthetic experiences - wading through the tranquil waters of Sarraute's prose in some moments, and floating through the somnolent stream of dreams in others.
Sarraute's Here seems a meditation on the delicate interstices of language and thought, language and memory, language and consciousness. How does one make sense of experience when language proves its impotence, when all it offers is a cracked and blemished mirror through which to reflect on the past? Hesitations abound; the infrastructure of thought meanders and inevitably collapses before language can reach a resolution..
There is a poetry to Sarraute's prose that I loved and which hooked me immediately; a poetry born of vulnerability, delicacy, and the slow and languid stream of language. You know when you start nodding off during reading and lapse into these momentary spells that are like a dipping of the toes into the surreality of dreams? Naturally, it's time to shift positions or move around a bit to shake off the haze of an approaching sleep and return to reading when you're more mentally present, right? but, funny enough, that teetering state of consciousness complemented the prose, and I allowed myself to enjoy these disparate but separate aesthetic experiences - wading through the tranquil waters of Sarraute's prose in some moments, and floating through the somnolent stream of dreams in others.
I first read New Juche (Stupid Baby) when I ordered a handful of titles from the small publisher Amphetamine Sulphate, and it was surprisingly more well-written than I was expecting (I don't expect the most literary bent from musicians/noise boiz-cum-authors), so I ordered Mountainhead soon after. There are a few scenes bordering fiction that pretty much solidify that this is not to be taken as total autobiography.
This novel continues the general themes of Juche's Stupid Baby - sex tourism in Thailand, failed and failing relationships with the locals, the vicissitudes of life in Bangkok - although this narrative is centered in the mountains of Northern Thailand. Similar filth, depravity, and abasement occur here across Juche's travels in Thailand and Cambodia, and a few run-ins with the criminal world and the police, notorious for extortion.
Juche has a penchant for the poor and the abject, hence his constant acquaintance and relations with prostitutes, as well as those most would deem undesirable, to put it gently. But here in Mountainhead this sexual communion is shared with the landscape as well - Juche frequently masturbates in nature, and, in one scene, ejaculates onto the sand, collects the congealed glob of earth, rubs it on his face, then puts a portion of it in his mouth. Erections abound as well, as though the beauty of the mountain itself compelled him to sexual arousal.
Juche is a photographer as well, favoring the ugliness and desolation of local environs and their inhabitants, although here pictures of the mountain serve as visual refrains between chapters so that we might relish the beauty of the natural landscapes Juche himself has become so enamored with and aroused by, to the literal point of sexual release.
This novel continues the general themes of Juche's Stupid Baby - sex tourism in Thailand, failed and failing relationships with the locals, the vicissitudes of life in Bangkok - although this narrative is centered in the mountains of Northern Thailand. Similar filth, depravity, and abasement occur here across Juche's travels in Thailand and Cambodia, and a few run-ins with the criminal world and the police, notorious for extortion.
Juche has a penchant for the poor and the abject, hence his constant acquaintance and relations with prostitutes, as well as those most would deem undesirable, to put it gently. But here in Mountainhead this sexual communion is shared with the landscape as well - Juche frequently masturbates in nature, and, in one scene, ejaculates onto the sand, collects the congealed glob of earth, rubs it on his face, then puts a portion of it in his mouth. Erections abound as well, as though the beauty of the mountain itself compelled him to sexual arousal.
Juche is a photographer as well, favoring the ugliness and desolation of local environs and their inhabitants, although here pictures of the mountain serve as visual refrains between chapters so that we might relish the beauty of the natural landscapes Juche himself has become so enamored with and aroused by, to the literal point of sexual release.
Hegel writes, simply, that, though there can be an infinite variety of *here's* when saying "here is ___, consciousness readily understands what is being referred to as *there*, even though, if one were to turn around, the tree that was *there* now becomes a house; one knows regardless the *here is ___* remains the tree. In Watt, however, language labors to specify the *here* against all other possible *here's* to a particularly exhausting degree.
*Disclaimer* Nothing said here is meant as a condemnation. I've said before that frustration is often a credible aesthetic goal.
Beckett's is a literature of exhaustion (no relation except ideational to Barth's essay) - it is a deliberate aesthetic effect. The exercise of language in this novel is to some gobsmacking degree mathematical (to say nothing of the talk of square roots of cubes and cube roots and other such nonsense) to the effect that sometimes dozens of qualitative permutations are included in the interest of exactitude, so no quality or possibility of action is excluded from consideration; e.g. reference the picture of text posted in this post - this went on for two and a half pages.
Watt, whether it was intended to or not, demonstrates language's incredible fallibility, its deficiencies, its astounding obsolescence; exhibited by Beckett's unfathomable ability to, through his characters, speak or converse to an exhaustive degree and yet still have said absolutely nothing at all. Or, similarly, unbelievably long paragraphs will follow focusing solely on, say, what combination of footwear or lack thereof Watt might wear with mention of every single possibility - a shoe on the left foot, a boot on the right; a boot on the left, a shoe on the right; barefoot on the left...etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
In seeking exactitude, the neurotic, obsessive, and terribly over-introspective Watt inches no closer towards it; the absolute impotence of his language, its total lack of substance and stolidity, leads to its obsolescence and inevitable collapse. Watt is incapable of contemplating the slightest course of action without dragging the reader through the detritus of a mind absolutely ravaged by incontinence, thus the novel largely serves as a litmus test to just how much absurdity and meaninglessness a reader can willingly suffer in pursuit of an aesthetic experience.
*Disclaimer* Nothing said here is meant as a condemnation. I've said before that frustration is often a credible aesthetic goal.
Beckett's is a literature of exhaustion (no relation except ideational to Barth's essay) - it is a deliberate aesthetic effect. The exercise of language in this novel is to some gobsmacking degree mathematical (to say nothing of the talk of square roots of cubes and cube roots and other such nonsense) to the effect that sometimes dozens of qualitative permutations are included in the interest of exactitude, so no quality or possibility of action is excluded from consideration; e.g. reference the picture of text posted in this post - this went on for two and a half pages.
Watt, whether it was intended to or not, demonstrates language's incredible fallibility, its deficiencies, its astounding obsolescence; exhibited by Beckett's unfathomable ability to, through his characters, speak or converse to an exhaustive degree and yet still have said absolutely nothing at all. Or, similarly, unbelievably long paragraphs will follow focusing solely on, say, what combination of footwear or lack thereof Watt might wear with mention of every single possibility - a shoe on the left foot, a boot on the right; a boot on the left, a shoe on the right; barefoot on the left...etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
In seeking exactitude, the neurotic, obsessive, and terribly over-introspective Watt inches no closer towards it; the absolute impotence of his language, its total lack of substance and stolidity, leads to its obsolescence and inevitable collapse. Watt is incapable of contemplating the slightest course of action without dragging the reader through the detritus of a mind absolutely ravaged by incontinence, thus the novel largely serves as a litmus test to just how much absurdity and meaninglessness a reader can willingly suffer in pursuit of an aesthetic experience.
My favorite local bookstore, Myopic Books, has a section near the register consisting of Open Letter and Archipelago books, among other small presses, and this unknown title by an unknown author seemed promising - described as surreal and absurd with a comparison to Beckett, although I noticed more distinct ripples of Chejfec and Ugresic's novelistic essayism in her Museum stretching across the narrative pond. Echoing the Ugresic comparison, this brief novel is a sort of museum of *prehistoric* sorts - an archaeological excavation site; a cave turned museum full of paintings and earthenware centuries old, objects which prompt the narrator to ruminate over man's seemingly lifelong endeavors to document and archive his own existence - "Man will only ever address himself to man, in a closed circuit, man finishes in man. Let us add that the permanence of his fictive identity relies on a conscious effort that must not slacken at any cost, nothing objectively establishes it, it will remain fragile and contestable until the end."
The narrator contemplates particular paintings and the techniques and materials that have allowed them to be preserved for thousands of years. Rock formations are analyzed as well; the centuries-long evolution of the world and its geographical features alongside man's evolution as told through the gradual union of stalagmites and stalagtites forming a single unbreakable column.
The narrative is one of digression which interrupts the main theme (which is...?) told by a migratory mind who offers no clear thread to follow, although this isn't quite like Carole Maso's frustrating and directionless Mother & Child; the thread at some moments shimmers by light of Chevillard's flickering torch, promising to lead us deeper into the narrative cave.
The narrator contemplates particular paintings and the techniques and materials that have allowed them to be preserved for thousands of years. Rock formations are analyzed as well; the centuries-long evolution of the world and its geographical features alongside man's evolution as told through the gradual union of stalagmites and stalagtites forming a single unbreakable column.
The narrative is one of digression which interrupts the main theme (which is...?) told by a migratory mind who offers no clear thread to follow, although this isn't quite like Carole Maso's frustrating and directionless Mother & Child; the thread at some moments shimmers by light of Chevillard's flickering torch, promising to lead us deeper into the narrative cave.
I don't often enjoy short stories, but I made an exception for Gombrowicz and I was not disappointed. Both Gombrowicz and Goytisolo are purveyors of the absurd, but Goytisolo's world is one of extraordinary violence - it is a world of unfathomable heaviness - whereas Gombrowicz' is extraordinarily light - all instances of violence, even cannibalism, accomplish an effect of humor, and are often the initiatory steps of a narrative Rube Goldberg machine that sets off a causal chain of circumstances which grow increasingly absurd.
Gombrowicz' universe is not so fantastical as much as it is situated on a fundament of logic that makes no sense in the world as we know it; it is based on a system of logic endemic to Gombrowicz' strange universe. In one story, a bored spectator of a tennis match fires a gunshot at the ball in mid-flight, after which the match becomes a mimetic performance - the players mime as though the ball were still in play (it just occurred to me that Michaelangelo Antonioni may have found influence from Gombrowicz for the closing scene of Blow Up). The bullet continues its trajectory and tears through the throat of a spectator on the opposite side. His wife, distraught, exacts her vengeance on the gunman via proxy - unable to reach the gunman, she slaps the man seated next to her who begins seizing. The audience, who would no doubt fall into hysterics or madness, or, at the very least, shock, in the world as we know it, erupt into cheers at the spectacle; so much more enthralling than the tennis match which prompted the gunman to open fire.
If anyone is ever in need of a respite from shouldering the weight of more demanding novels, of narratives of indescribable weight or seriousness, I would suggest a visit to Gombrowicz' world. He is what I call a vacation read - not a novel to be read at beachside, but a novel which can alleviate the exhausted consciousness after a round of more serious, more heavy literature (not to suggest Gombrowicz' books are mere trifles; they should be treasured and relished, but they present themselves to be enjoyed in their own peculiar manner).
Gombrowicz' universe is not so fantastical as much as it is situated on a fundament of logic that makes no sense in the world as we know it; it is based on a system of logic endemic to Gombrowicz' strange universe. In one story, a bored spectator of a tennis match fires a gunshot at the ball in mid-flight, after which the match becomes a mimetic performance - the players mime as though the ball were still in play (it just occurred to me that Michaelangelo Antonioni may have found influence from Gombrowicz for the closing scene of Blow Up). The bullet continues its trajectory and tears through the throat of a spectator on the opposite side. His wife, distraught, exacts her vengeance on the gunman via proxy - unable to reach the gunman, she slaps the man seated next to her who begins seizing. The audience, who would no doubt fall into hysterics or madness, or, at the very least, shock, in the world as we know it, erupt into cheers at the spectacle; so much more enthralling than the tennis match which prompted the gunman to open fire.
If anyone is ever in need of a respite from shouldering the weight of more demanding novels, of narratives of indescribable weight or seriousness, I would suggest a visit to Gombrowicz' world. He is what I call a vacation read - not a novel to be read at beachside, but a novel which can alleviate the exhausted consciousness after a round of more serious, more heavy literature (not to suggest Gombrowicz' books are mere trifles; they should be treasured and relished, but they present themselves to be enjoyed in their own peculiar manner).
I should have shelved this and gone with Lispector while I had the chance. I tore through this on a plane ride home and didn't have much fun doing it. For as *natural* as the setting and the imagery is, this novel did not seem rooted in anything. It's a series of surreal and disjointed narrative vignettes. "A meditation on life and death"? Okay, sure. I didn't really see it. The novel "follows a mother and child as they roam through wondrous and increasingly dangerous psychic and physical terrain" - but to what purpose? The novel is plotless, which I would be a hypocrite to complain about, but it seems directionless as well. The novel seems as though I could skip about the pages and still have as good an idea of what the hell's going on as opposed to reading it page by page, which is to say most of the time I had no idea what the hell was going on. Maso's prose stylings are admirable, and her imagery is vivid and inventive, but I'm not often an advocate for elevating style above all. I’m not much interested in a novel that seems as though it could have been written by drawing cut-out narrative snippets from a hat. It's a stylistic mosaic that doesn't produce a coherent image. I feel like I should’ve liked this. OOPS - oh, well. That's all. See ya.
The last of Goytisolo's anarchonistic, disjointed and surreal writings for me (for now). The book opens with a tale describing the enormous, thin-legged witch on the book's cover stomping about the city causing widespread destruction and casting curses of AIDS and plagues (I believe that this witch-hatted figure is the personification of a nuclear bomb that is detonated later in the novel).
The narrative shifts from churches and cities and shelters where those covered in buboes and dying from the plague suffer their slow demise. The solitary bird, infected with its grievous diseases, is sealed away so that it does not contaminate others. This is the solitary bird, stricken by dangerous and toxic ideas, exiled and sealed away to avoid contaminating the minds of others who might suffer the plague of ideas possessed by the independent thinker.
The novel weaves through disjointed perspectives from a number of unnamed figures, and the tone shifts between them, from the somber to the ecstatic; from the miserable to the joyous, all in Goytisolo's familiar serpentine style, and in an indistinguishable pastiche of visions, dreams, and dreams within dreams.
The narrative shifts from churches and cities and shelters where those covered in buboes and dying from the plague suffer their slow demise. The solitary bird, infected with its grievous diseases, is sealed away so that it does not contaminate others. This is the solitary bird, stricken by dangerous and toxic ideas, exiled and sealed away to avoid contaminating the minds of others who might suffer the plague of ideas possessed by the independent thinker.
The novel weaves through disjointed perspectives from a number of unnamed figures, and the tone shifts between them, from the somber to the ecstatic; from the miserable to the joyous, all in Goytisolo's familiar serpentine style, and in an indistinguishable pastiche of visions, dreams, and dreams within dreams.