"After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose j"After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances."
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A shortcut I use when thinking about a novel, and it IS a shortcut, is to imagine fitting the book I've just read within a series of other books, or as a color made from mixing several books together. It is childish, rough, and only gets me part of the way there, but it is a start (even if it is an adolescent start). I also, with a book I am unfamiliar with, try to avoid poisoning the well by reading reviews or opinions about it. I want to come to it clean, fresh, to see it for a moment with my own eyes.
So? What books did I mix for this one? For me it was a combination of Peter Pan, Heart of Darkness, and Lord of the Flies. Yeah. Wrap your head around that. It was, however, more poetic than any of these. The prose was like a fever dream. Some of the scenes in Jamaica were lush and magical. It was told with colors seen from a child's eyes, events were described through the experience of a child. It wasn't just a trick. Hughes mastered this. He didn't condescend to children. He didn't put them on some victorian pedestal. He measured them by age, by experience, and oriented his story accordingly.
The story really is about the loss of innocence (oh, and an earthquake), but as much it is a story about how resilient children are to that loss of innocence (oh, and an alligator). How much children live in the now and wrap that now in myths. Hughes gave the children in this novel the right to be human, to deal with complexity in their own way. I'm still buzzing a bit from how much I really dug this novel. I'm glad I read it and am still surprised I was never exposed to it before....more
"A noble spread of sails, upon my word" - Patrick O'Brian, The Fortune of War
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There is a danger in writing a review of these books too soon after"A noble spread of sails, upon my word" - Patrick O'Brian, The Fortune of War
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There is a danger in writing a review of these books too soon after finishing them. If it is possible to describe my reception of a book of literature as somehow the equivalent of love, these books by O'Brian would certainly be a top contender for one of the great literature loves of my life. No. This isn't Shakespeare, but often even Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare. But these books are something. They are beyond prose and art. There is a lift that I get from them that is hard to translate adequately. All I have to do is look at the edge of one of these books after I've finished it, and I've absolutely abused it with sticky notes and post-it tabs. There are just so many fine turns of phrase, observations, and witticisms that I don't want to lose. The edge becomes as layered as Caesar's hair.
As always, I love O'Brian's attention to Aubrey and Maturin's friendship and how he further explores the two very distinct aspects of manliness and honor, war and intelligence, love and loyalty. Captain Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin present very two idealized, but also very human, studies. Much like Johnson's pictures of birds, presented to Dr. Maturin "gives us not the bird, for no bird ever had this brilliant clarity in every member, but the Platonic idea of the bird, the visible archetype of the turkey-buzzard", these character studies of these two binary, nautical protagonists gives the reader not just men, but the archetype of men. It is done with grace, beauty, humor, and at moments - perfection.
One of the other parts of this particular book I adored was its focus on the American Navy during the War of 1812, specifically around Boston and Nantucket. I spent a day in Nantucket this last Summer and also spent an afternoon snooping around the USS Constitution. I loved reading O'Brian describe the coast around Boston, the town of Boston, and the USS Constitution, and finally the battle between the HMS Shannon and the USS Chesapeake on 1 June 1813....more
"But I was forgetting -- all is grist to your grisly mill..." - Patrick O'Brian, Desolation Island
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I'm only five books into this series, but I m"But I was forgetting -- all is grist to your grisly mill..." - Patrick O'Brian, Desolation Island
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I'm only five books into this series, but I must declare that I love these books like I love ice water on the beach, or hot chocolate with a warm blanket on a Fall night. Rarely do I find a writer that amazes and seduces me with his/her technical skill, prose, poetry, and sense of humanity. I've said the same thing of John le Carré, but I really do feel that when a lot of the bones and books of our modern classics are dead, bleached, buried and forgotten, this series will be still published, read and loved.
Patrick O'Brian captures a certain dynamic element of what it means to be alive, to love, to kill, to scheme, and to befriend. The relationship between Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin is one of the great friendships in literature EVER. I say that after ONLY reading 1/4 of the series. I can't imagine that O'Brian can sustain this level of resonance, but I have said that before when I first heard Bach's Violin Concertos. I had still yet to discover all the other pieces Bach had in his repertoire. I am older and humbler now. I am prepared to be humbled by future O'Brian masterpieces....more
"You cannot blame the bull because the frog burst: the bull has no comprehension of the affair" - Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command
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This is"You cannot blame the bull because the frog burst: the bull has no comprehension of the affair" - Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command
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This is my fourth Aubrey/Maturin novel (obviously) and I have yet to read one that I wasn't completely in love with. There is just too much to love about O'Brian's writing: his knowledge, his wit, his humor, his details, his affection for all his characters, his various digressions. Some of my favorites in this book:
- Dr. Maturin's discussion with Mr. Farquhar and Mr. Prote on the poetics of law - Dr. Maturin and William McAdam's discussions about medicine and mermaids (Manatees and dugongs) - Commodore Aubrey and Dr. Maturin's discussions about his temporary assignment as Commodore. - Food - Dr. Maturin the Naturalist's pursuit of eggs, drawings of aardvarks, etc. - Dr. Maturin's thoughts on Aubrey's character, surveyed against Captain Corbett, Lord Clonfert, Captain Pym, etc. - Dr. Maturin's addiction to Laudanum compared with McAdam's issue with alcohol. - Commodore Aubrey's explanations of figures of speech in the Navy (e.g. the devil) - the general horror of war, even triumph, shown by Dr. Maturin
Many of the best lines and best observations are made by Dr. Maturin, which is by design. It isn't that Captain/Commodore Aubrey is without wit, intelligence, or even genius, but he is a man of action. The brilliance of the design of these books is with these two you get the action and the observer. It isn't that simple and often O'Brian will reverse the roles or combine the two for perspective, but it still is a useful structure for a long narrative.
This novel came out in 1977 and I'm still convinced that there was some deeply secret relationship between Patrick O'Brian and Gene Roddenberry. It might be the universe delivering a weird twin, but there is something similar in the way these stories seem to fit the mood and temperature of Star Trek. I even get a Captain Kirk vibe from Jack Aubrey and a Leonard "Bones" McCoy vibe from Stephen Maturin (with a bit of Spock thrown in as well). Since the first M&C book came out in 1969 and Star Trek first came out in 1966, it is a hard sell to say that one really influenced the other, but both were being created over the same time. Anyway, I love thinking there is some secret back and forth between these two pioneers of 20th-Century maritime fiction....more
Volume 5: 17. The Commodore - November 15, 2017 18. The Yellow Admiral - November 28, 2017 19. The Hundred Days 20. Blue at the Mizzen 21. 21 (Unfinished Novel)...more
“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” ― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
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There are some books that are just MEANT to be“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” ― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
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There are some books that are just MEANT to be illustrated. Where the poem seems part of the earth. Part of the poet. Part of the sky and the stars!
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This book feels good. The binding is tight. The pages are thick. Even the cover contains multitudes. It is beautiful and rough. I rub it against my chin and it calms me. But wait. I haven't even opened the book yet.
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I see Whitman as a Giant American; a giant American sphinx. Composed with grass. Posed with grass. Posed. Winged. Ready to fly.
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I start to flip through pages. The pages seem to grab each other in prayer. Or perhaps, they hide. They seem to want you, dear reader, to peal them apart and slip your finger's gaze into their pretty jaws.
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Some drawings are modern. Some pages full of words and others seem to float with simple lines, spare words, in a space that is made for both the visual, the sound, and the tap tap tap of the verse, the heartbeat of the sky.
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Other pages seem crowned, like a womb at 40 weeks. Ready to burst with life and words. Your eyes start to play with you. You see the pictures dance. You keep reading the same lines again and again. Lost in a sea of beauty, an ocean of vitality, an amniotic sac of life.
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This is one of those books that allows you to flit and fly from page to page; sink into the folds or fly back into your chair or bed. It almost feels like a drug. You, lovely reader, are lifted from the folio to your own dreams. You are possessed by your own images.
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Sometimes it even gets to be too much. You pull back. It isn't a bad trip. It is just too rich. A chocolate that demands a pause, a honey that ambers in the cold. You, sweet book nerd, need time to drink it. You need time to absorb the poem and the visuals.
How will you explain these charges to your wife, crazy, compulsive book buyer? The $18.45 for Heart of Darkness she will understand, but you just spent over $200 for a 1st edition Matt Kish Moby-Dick. What whale are you hunting now?
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You did it. Didn't you? Don't deny now. You have gone too far to stop. You are already down the rabbit hole. You also bought Zak Smith's Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow? Don't you feel smug? Yes, you spent less on this than the Moby-Dick, but ye gads son -- you have children to rear, to feed, to send to college. Thank God, gods, mothers and all that is HOLY you don't drink, or they would be writing about your yak purchase.
Go to bed. Sleep tight. Dream of spiders, bats, whales, and rivers; dream of poets, writers dead and writers hiding. Dream of art and fiction and the artists who dream big, draw daily, and produce such charming fetishes to your favorite books....more
"The Lord's anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years." -- Numbers 32: 13
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"To be sure, Bush's Second Inaug"The Lord's anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years." -- Numbers 32: 13
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"To be sure, Bush's Second Inaugural qualifies as a thoroughly American text, the president reiterating sentiments voiced by more than a few of his predecessors. Yet the speech also bears the unmistakable imprint of self-indulgent fantasy, of sobriety overtaken by fanaticism. Bush's expectations of ending tyranny by spreading American ideals mirrored Osama Bin Laden's dream of establishing a new caliphate based on Islamic principals. When put to the test, the president's vision of peace gained by waging preventative war had proven to be just as fanciful as bin Laden's and harry less pernicious. As adversaries, truly they were made for each other." -- Andrew J. Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East.
Ouch!
Dr. Andrew "Skip" Bacevich is a national treasure. He is fairly unassuming in person. He would pass for a conservative banker, a thoughtful pastor, or reserved high school principal if you just happened to see him sitting across from you on the Amtrak from North Station to DuPont. But step out of line, and just his gaze alone would stop you in your tracks. He could stare down a bear, perhaps stop a shark in Hawaii with just his gaze. Obviously, I exaggerate. I'm not sure how wildlife would react to retired Colonel Bacevich, but the couple times I met him when he was commanding the 11th ACR in Fulda, Germany ... well, let's be honest ... he scared the shit out of me. And I don't intimidate easily. Even the 17-year-old version of me.
Anyway, enough wind-up. This book isn't flashy. It isn't full of new revelations. It is just solid military and historical scholarship and probably one of the key historical pieces on the military adventurism of the United States in the Middle East since the Carter Administration. Bacevich isn't a lawyer, but this book seemed to me basically an airtight legal brief exploring: 1) what motivated the United States to act as it has in the Middle East? 2) what both the civilians an the military tried to accomplish there? 3) Regardless of what US policy makers and military planners wanted to do, what actually happened there? 4) What are the consequences of US policy towards the Middle East? What have our wars wrought?
This is a book everyone needs to read. If our military adventurism has continued to roll on, not just in the Middle East but Africa and to a smaller degree in South America and Asia, we need to understand why we constantly seem to screw it up. How are we as citizens going to hold our leaders (both in the Military and in political office) to account if we don't seem to really give a shit. Less than one percent of our citizens have been involved directly in these wars, but the wars have affected all of us. We all pay the monetary debt and burden of the Billions and even Trillions wasted in stupid wars, we pay the moral debt for the blood left on the battlefield, the wounds brought home, and the citizens killed to further American interests when we have no sense any longer exactly what that interest is.
We are trapped in generational, perpetual wars in the Middle East and to what end? Most of the Neo-Con arguments should have been put to bed with the absolute failure of America's longest two wars. We seem to have left both Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and Libya less stable than we found them. We keep sending our damn military bulls into foreign Pottery Barns and we don't seem to grasp WHY exactly we are doing it or HOW the hell we can get out.
Anyway, this is a must read from a philosopher/historian of the highest order. It is his masterpiece. Read it, and weep....more
"I'd never felt more human than I did when my mother lay in bed, dying."
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"This was not the not the frailty of a man who is said to be 'only huma"I'd never felt more human than I did when my mother lay in bed, dying."
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"This was not the not the frailty of a man who is said to be 'only human,' subject to weakness or vulnerability. This was a wave of sadness and loss that made me understand that I was a man expanded by grief." ― Don DeLillo, Zero K
I first jumped into DeLillo's unique, hypnotic prose when I read Mao II. His words swelled for me like a sacred mantra. There were other writers before that seduced me, that blew me away with their measured writing, or their erratic narration, but DeLillo was something else. His prose is poetic, weird, haunting, searing. Images grow and then dematerialize. He hints at the future, creates a fabric of tension, and pulls back. Each of his books seems to push towards a vision of our end. He looks at the refuse of civilization, the excesses of capitalism, "the end zone of ancient time". He is a dark worm, pushing through the dirt and the grime and the dark caverns created by our existential rot.
The last couple books DeLillo delivered seemed to be experimentations, theories, unfinished paintings that hint at the ground DeLillo loves (technology, paranoia, death, history, humanity, religion). With this novel, DeLillo seems to have perhaps not jumped up to his highest shelf. (See MII, WN, L, U), but close. This is a book that belongs next to Falling Man, End Zone, Americana*, the Names*.
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I don't want to give too much of the book away, but as I read this unsettling novel, I kept on thinking of modern-day technology pharaohs. My brother and I were having a conversation the other day about how the life of a millionaire and a billionaire isn't that different. There is just so many things you can literally buy. Even when they are buying expensive shirts and pants the styles and cuts for those worth $100M and those worth $100B aren't going to be THAT different. Yes, the billionaire might own an Island instead of just a home, but ultimately, the billionaire can't live in more than one home at a time. The millionaire might be able to buy $4000 pants when you and I can only, rationally, expect to buy pants in the $40 - $140 range. However, the Billionaire isn't able to just add a couple zeros to the millionaire's pants. There is no market for $40,000 pants. So, the average $B$ lives about like the average $M$, except in a couple small ways.
Death, or the desire to escape death, may be one of those places where only those with significant, GDP-sized capital, can tread. Thus those with wealth that involves 9+zeros become the modern-day pharaohs of death. They are the only ones with the capacity to fight against the dying of the light with money, medicine, and technology. Money absolutely has become their god, and perhaps in 10, 15, or 20 years their GOD might actually deliver them from death. Instead of pyramids of stone, we might see pyramids of stainless steel and ice. Frozen mummies surrounded by bytes instead of jewelry and gold, these modern-day pharaohs may one-day-soon be waited on by high-priests with PhDs in computers science; the ceremonies and rituals of religion will be replaced with a transhumanist incantations and rites.
But when our modern-day pharaohs side-step death, what does that exactly mean as far as life? That is the territory of DeLillo. Listen to his prose prayers, and prepare yourself for salvation, death, and perhaps even eternal life.
* I'm going here by reputation not experience since I have yet to read these two....more
The last volume (1668, with 128,000 words; 1669, with 52,500 words) and last years of Samuel Pepys' famous diary.
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So, after 9 volum C'est fini!
The last volume (1668, with 128,000 words; 1669, with 52,500 words) and last years of Samuel Pepys' famous diary.
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So, after 9 volumes, 3,100 pages and 1,250,000 words covering 10 years (1660-1669, I am done. And so too, finally, is Pepys:
"And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be any thing, which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb. are past, and my eyes hindering me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in short-hand with my own hand.
And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!"
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In 1668 Pepys finds his eyes are getting daily worse. Which, for a man like Pepys who draws so much satisfaction from reading and writing is a real burden. He starts trying different things (having servants and family read to him, limit his reading, limit his writing, using paper Tubes, eye drops, limiting drink, etc) to satisfy his eyes.
The Parliament has been investigating the Navy office and he has to respond to the Committee of Accounts (concerning Prizes) and the Committee for Miscarriages to the Parliament (concerning tickets). His speech before Parliament was so well taken that several people report to Pepys that his speech was "best thing they ever heard" and that he "got the most honor that any could have had opportunity of getting", even that Pepys was "another Cicero."
It might be vanity, but I loved seeing him buying Montaigne's essays in March and Hobb's Leviathan in September.
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Things also shift for Pepys late in October of 1668 when Pepys' wife walks in while he is "embracing the girl [Deb Willet, the maid to Mrs Pepys] con my hand sub su coats; and ended, I was with my main in her cunny." Pepys is sorry, indeed, but not repentant. He likes Deb, likes his freedom, likes the strange, but now that he has been caught with his hand, literally, in the maid, his wife requires him to only go out with his servant or her. So his ability to travel alone and grope has severely been limited. Vexing.
While Pepys' position and reputation with the King and in the Navy continues to increase, the deterioration of his eyesight and health requires him to take a vacation and stop writing in his diary. His diary ends in May of 1669.
Afterwards, to give his eyes a rest he travels to France with his wife. She, unfortunately, ends up getting sick in France and dies of a fever shortly after they get back in late 1669. Pepys lives a good and comfortable life both with work and retirement (member of Parliament, Master of Trinity House, President of the Royal Society). Pepys dies almost 34 years after his diary ends in May of 1703.
A good tribute to Pepys is found in an entry by Pepys' contemporary and fellow diarist John Evelyn who writes in his diary about Pepys's death:
"1703, May 26th.
This day died Mr. Sam Pepys, a very worthy, industrious, and curious person, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the navy, in which he had passed thro' all the most considerable offices, Clerk of the Acts and Secretary of the Admiralty, all which he performed with great integrity. When K. James II. went out of England, he laid down his office, and would serve no more, but withdrawing himselfe from all public affaires, he liv'd at Clapham with his partner Mr. Hewer, formerly his clerk, in a very noble and sweete place, where he enjoy'd the fruits of his labours in greate prosperity.
He was universally belov'd, hospitable, generous, learned in many things, skilfd in music, a very greate cherisher of learned men of whom he had the conversation . . . .
Mr. Pepys had been for neere 40 yeeres so much my particular friend that Mr. Jackson sent me compleat mourning, desiring me to be one to hold up the pall at his magnificent obsequies, but my indisposition hinder'd me from doing him this last office."
1. For Alter. To you Robert. I lift my pen. א 2. And work to compose tonight before midnight a Sunday psalm.בּ
3. I read your bPseudo Psalm #149
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1. For Alter. To you Robert. I lift my pen. א 2. And work to compose tonight before midnight a Sunday psalm.בּ
3. I read your book in bed and in the bath. ג 4. I read it until I fell asleep until my fingers pruned. ד
5. I read it while listening to songs of Patti Smith. ה 6. I read it while listening to songs of Frank Black. ו 7. I read it while listening to songs of the Cult and Floyd. ז 8 But LOVED reading it while listening to just the iambs of my heart. ח
9. I loved the book, with its thin red ribbon and thick white pages. ט 10. I loved the book, with its context commentary, and poetry. י 11. I loved your footnotes and the transparency of your work. כּ 12. Your struggles and stumbles, your power and poetry. ל
13. I love that inside your brain spins a poet, an Hebrew scholar. מ 14. That inside your heart beats a mystic, and an intellectual. נ
15. I listened to the King James with my kids in the Morning. ס 16. But later, I alone would study Alter in the Evening. ע 17. I would feather the edge of Psalms with Post-It flags. פּ 18. To mark a line of poetry that pierced me to the core. צ 19. To mark a footnote that quickened my reading. ק
20. I long to face Alter's Wisdom Books and 5 Books of Moses. ר 21. I have yet to start Alter's David Story or Ancient Israel. שׁ 22. I am old, but too shall conquer since Robert Alter is older and the Old Testament older still. תּ...more
“Lust and learning. That's really all there is, isn't it?” ― John Williams, Stoner
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“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him t“Lust and learning. That's really all there is, isn't it?” ― John Williams, Stoner
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“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.” ― John Williams, Stoner
If one considers the total professional output of John Williams, it is pretty difficult to find his equal for sheer brilliance. Each of his 3 major novels (Stoner, Butcher's Crossing, Augustus) is diverse in style, tone, and approach, but each seems to possess a unique beauty and quiet, often undersold magnificence.
I really feel I could return and feast on his novels again and again (and rereading ANYTHING is usually a nonstarter with me). This is a novel that is so good, if you could plan to finish your life reading one book, if the minutes of your life were timed delicately, planned to the page, you could end your life by reading the last sentence of 'Stoner'.
'Stoner' stands as a novel that spans the time between WWI and WWII and presents a narrator and character, a simple son of the soil, a Don Quixote without a Sancho, who seems to fail at most of life's battles, but upon close inspection his very life, and thus by extension, all of our very lives, also represents something as beautiful as a distant nebula and sweet as mountain water. The struggles, the disappointments, the pains, are all made heroic by Stoner's stoicism. Even in mediocrity there exists greatness, and in failure lodges the seeds of greatness. Death, in the final analysis, is not a period but rather an ellipsis, a tragic falling short, and finally an epic omission for both the meek and the triumphant....more
"Fight, bleep, or hold the flashlight" - Elmore Leonard, "Impressions of a Murder"
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This novel was tight as a futtock shroud, smooth as Mai Noi "Fight, bleep, or hold the flashlight" - Elmore Leonard, "Impressions of a Murder"
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This novel was tight as a futtock shroud, smooth as Mai Noi silk, sharp as the turns on Col de Braus, and hard as a boiled egg. I finish reading Elmore Leonard and I want to be him, just for a second. Now look: Chandler, Cain and Hammett are absolutely the Holy Trinity of crime; the Father, Son and Holy Ghosts of Noir. Leonard, however, is both the Word and death's echo. He is the ultimate end, the great inevitable, the voice in the void. His dialogue alone would be scary in its perfection, but you drape that shit on his plot and it is magical.
He sets this novel up from the title. City Primeval' was inspired by both 'High Noon' and Leonard's early Western fixation and Leonard's own work with The Detroit News and writing a piece called "Impressions of a murder" that he wrote for The Detroit News Sunday Magazine. Anyway, there really wasn't anything I didn't love here....more
"And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe thaBook 1: A Death in the Family
"And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor."
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First, let me say something about this novel (and I'm assuming the next five novels) that is both simple and genius. This is a weird book. It captures the reader because it falls into a funky zone between memoir and fiction. He is telling secrets. Opening the dirty closets. Cleaning the shit out of an old house. It is exhibitionism of sex, shit, death, life, etc., but it is also a clear reflection. So much of the power of this novel for me is a direct response to how clear I see myself in his exposure. I read about his relationship with his brother, his father, his girlfriends, his mother and I see myself. I see his thoughts on music and art and I think, hell, that is me too. I know it isn't, but that is the trick. Knausgaard uses these forms, or creates this form, in his novel that he fills with his own memories and history and soon you are seeing yourself in these same locks.
Structure/Forms/Locks
In his novel he mentions that great literature is structure or form first. He talks about this about half way through the book:
"For several years I had tried to write about my father, but had gotten nowhere, probably because the subject was too close to my life, and thus not so easy to force into another form, which of course is a prerequisite for literature. That is its sole law: everything has to submit to form. If any of literature's other elements are stronger than form, such as style, plot, theme, if any of these overtake form, the result suffers. That is why writers with strong style often write bad books. That is also why writers with strong themes so often write bad books. Strong themes and styles have to be broken down before literature can come into being. It is this breaking down that is called "writing". Writing is more about destroying than creating. - p195
Add this to Knausgaard's view of time and I think we get a hint at how he writes, and perhaps, what makes this novel so great:
For, while previously I saw time as a stretch of terrain that had to be covered, with the future as a distant prospect, hopefully a bright one, and never bring at any rate, now it is interwoven with our life here and in a totally different way. Were I to portray this with a visual image it would have to be that of a a boat in a lock: life is slowly and ineluctably raised by time seeping in from all sides. Apart from the details, everything is always the same. And with every passing day the desire grows for the moment when life will reach the top, for the moment when the sluice gates open and life finally moves on. At the same time I see that precisely this repetitiveness, this enclosedness, this unchangingness is necessary, it protects me. - p 33
So, I see his novels as a combination of these ideas, something like below:
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Eugenides captures this construction perfectly in his review in the New York Times:
"Knausgaard’s life is a grab bag of events and recollections, and he uses whatever is handy. He doesn’t lie or make things up (so far as I know). But the selection process he subjects his memories to in order to fulfill the narrative demands of his writing rises to a level of considerable artifice. Other writers invent; Knausgaard remembers. His raw materials are more authentic (maybe), but the products they create no less artful."
Knausgaard's life/history/experience is the water he fills his locks with; the paint he paints his story with. It isn't history. It isn't autobiography. It isn't even good memory. It is art imitating life....more
"Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all."
- Patti Smith, M Train
[image"Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all."
- Patti Smith, M Train
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My second Patti Smith memoir. This one was more experimental and nonlinear than Just Kids (which still wasn't exactly linear). It was filled with dreams, detective shows, talismans, cats, constant travels, coffee, more coffee, missing things, memories, loose threads, graveyards, hotels, photographs, and miles and miles of beautiful, lyrical Patti Smith prose. In the end, Patti Smith made me cry. She took these dreams and random memories, periods of loneliness and melancholia, artists and lost things and brought them together into a coherent love note to life, art, and love. She stitched together ideas and travel and talismans of her life into a coherent and moving exploration of things, belief, and creativity. God it was beautiful. I want to be Patti Smith when I grow up. ...more
“We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.” ― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
A near perfect novella, carv“We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.” ― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
A near perfect novella, carved into a near perfect book; a beautiful thing. That is all I have to say about that. Well, perhaps a literary/geologic inequality as a postscript:
"This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government "This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend." -- Abraham Lincoln's First Message to Congress, at the Special Session. July 4, 1861.
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One of the best histories I've read during the last couple years. I went in knowing, kinda, what I was getting into. '1861' was published in 2011 150 years after the start of the Civil War. Obviously, it was going to be about the start of the Civil War, duh. But the book is more than that. It is chapter, by chapter, a series of vignettes that try to capture the complexity and details of our nation at the start of the Civil War, during that fateful year. One chapter focuses on Major Robert Anderson and the officers and men who held Ft Sumter. Another chapter explores the 1861 from the perspective of James Garfield, an Ohio professor and preacher, later General and President, Another chapter follows Elmer Ellsworth, a charismatic Ohio youth who becomes a Colonel in charge of a flashy group of recruits modeled on the French Zouaves. Another beautifully written chapter relates the experiences of Jessie Fremont and the young reverend Thomas Starr King, who passionate Californian's who were largely responsible for keeping California in the Union. The book is filled with these stories, amazing all, that weave together like a giant flag or tapestry of our history. It isn't a book of battles as much as it is a book of people and one year. This is a book that couple be optioned seven or eight times. I can imagine several of these single chapters being made into amazing movies, but still, it seems impossible that any movie, or other art form could capture the elements found within this book as artistically and beautifully as Adam Goodhearted did with this masterful classic. ...more
"All this information," I say. "Yet the world is more mysterious than ever." - Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles
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Seriously, these stories BREAK me. "All this information," I say. "Yet the world is more mysterious than ever." - Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles
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Seriously, these stories BREAK me. Johnson pulls each story's string to the point of breaking and then plays them beautifully with precision and dexterity. 'Interesting Facts' about crushed me -- so good
[Pause, breathe]
Blown away by every single page and every story. Seriously, I might just have to put back on my white shirt and name badge from my 19 yo missionary days and go door-to-door evangelizing about Adam Johnson's book. "Have you read Adam Johnson?" "I know Adam Johnson is True." "A man get nearer to God by reading Adam Johnson's short-stories than any other fiction writer, save perhaps McCarthy". Oh, fine. That is probably an exaggeration, but still, GOD, these stories were amazing. Scary even. Like being transported to a foreign land and buried alive. He captures the language of the other and once you get on his train there is no getting off. OK. Perhaps again I am exaggerating. Perhaps, I am caught up in a convert's euphoria. But I'm not new to Adam Johnson. I've read The Orphan Master's Son and loved that too....more
"God puts earth far away from heaven because even he can't stand the smell of dead flesh. Death is not a soul catcher or a spirit, it's a wind with no"God puts earth far away from heaven because even he can't stand the smell of dead flesh. Death is not a soul catcher or a spirit, it's a wind with no warmth, a crawling sickness." -- Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings
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First, it is hard to push all that is into this novel into a bottle. So, I'll just say it felt like some weird hybrid of (here is my brief history of seven fathers/mothers): James Ellroy (think Jamaican Tabloid), Don DeLillo (think Libra), Zadie Smith (think Shiny Teeth), Elmore Leonard (think Get Singer), Roberto Bolaño (think Savage Possy), Gay Talese (Think Bob Marley has a Toe), and with the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez.
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Anyway, this novel seemed to grab me and I didn't want to let it go. There was power and pull in this novel. It attracted and repelled me at the same time. I wanted to read it, but I didn't want to finish. Just as I would fall into the mix of the dialogue, I would be pushed back out. It wasn't easy and wasn't always fun, but it was constantly amazing. It really did, emotionally, feel like I was reading one of Ellroy's best novels. It could have been Ellroy's Underworld USA #4. This was also a master juggling a bunch of themes and textual ideas. James framed this twisting story of violence, place, race, poverty, power, drugs, sex, language, and death in a funky way (but not too funky and I'm not going to give it away). It reminded me of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem 'Constantly Risking Absurdity':
Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience ..."
James puts it all out there. And he tends to hit most of his marks, and the ones he doesn't hit perfectly can also be excused because of the difficulty of what he is trying to pull of. This wasn't a perfect novel, but it was a perfect thrill.
"Deliver my soul from the sword; my love from the power of the dog." - Psalms 22:20
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"Art can't decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene abs"Deliver my soul from the sword; my love from the power of the dog." - Psalms 22:20
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"Art can't decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene absurdity or an absurd obscenity. In either case, it's a tragic, bloody farce." - Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog
Like most book series, I began the Power of the Dog series backwards. I read The Cartel first and this one second. Ass Backwards. But It didn't feel like I was reading it in reverse as much as just digging deeper.
Don Winslow's look at the Mexican Drug War/US War on Drugs is told through the primary perspective of Art Keller, a lone wolf, obsessive DEA agent. But the story actually has four (or five) primary narrative threads. There is Art Keller - DEA, Nora Hayden - High class call girl, Father Prada - Catholic Bishop/Cardinal, Adán Barrera - Cartel/Federation head, and Sean Callan - Irish gangster and hitman. These characters are all suffering from their own needs, their own stories they can't seem to escape, and their own cold pragmatism. These are characters that seem all able to survive through a pragmatic realism and a cold calculation that both allows for their survival but also contributes to the suffering around them (Father Prada excluded).
Like in the best of Le Carré, the best parts of these novels contemplates the evils committed by bureaucracies trying to maintain control (the Catholic Church) or power (Mexican government), or ideological visions (CIA and DEA). It is a dizzying hole to look down when you start thinking of the evil that gets perpetrated in the name of Apple Pie and God.
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Obviously, this is fiction, especially the actual narratives around Art Keller, etc. But like the best of Historical Fiction, it is able to convey the temperature and altitude of the real world it is describing. Often good historical fiction provides an understanding that almost surpasses good history or biography in relaying the truth about certain situations. 'The Power of the Dog' and 'The Cartel' together do this for the Mexican Drug war. Close your eyes after reading these novels and you almost can see how close to the truth these fictions can be. Classic historical fiction does this by fictionalizing the primary characters and activities, but keeping the setting and the scenes as close to reality as possible. This series puts Winslow next to Norman Mailer, John Le Carré, James Ellroy, and Alan Furst in the historical fiction/thriller category....more
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