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006327907X
| 9780063279070
| 3.86
| 43,121
| Oct 17, 2023
| Jan 30, 2024
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liked it
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Climb aboard the murder train for a meta-mystery of mayhem, misdirection and *checks notes* murder in Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone On This Train Is A
Climb aboard the murder train for a meta-mystery of mayhem, misdirection and *checks notes* murder in Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect. Accidental author Ernest Cunningham is trainbound, riding high on the success of his memoir and dodging the due-dates of his follow-up novel on his way to a crime-writing festival when he finds himself yet again amidst a nightmare of bloodshed. Hijinks ensue. But a train full of people who plot out killing sprees and clues is bound to solve this locked-door mystery, right? This snarky, self-aware novel, a follow-up to his bestselling Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, is witty and waggish though the ending does remind me of those moments in Project Runway when Christian Siriano admits an idea is good but the execution is “overworking the fabric.” Still this is a charming whodunnit with some good twists where even goodreads reviews show up as a clue that is ultimately an investigation into murder tropes and narrative reveals as much as it is the crime at hand. But what is a desperate crime-writer to do in such circumstances? ‘If one of the six of us was to die right now, you'd have five suspects who all know how to get away with murder.’ This was the recent read for my book club and I wasn’t sure how jumping into the second novel of a series would go, but Ernest—the fictional author of the book written by Stevenson—insists this can be a starting point as long as it gives enough context to make you still want to read the first novel later (his in-world publisher only seems to give advice ‘via the marketing department’). You can certainly enjoy this without having read the first and the marketing dept apparently did well because now I do want to read the previous book. There’s a charming coyness here with the narrator addressing the reader rather directly, telling the story while also commenting on his own approach to constructing the mystery of it for maximum “mystery novel” vibes. ‘That’s why I’m talking to you like this. I am, you may have realized, a bit chattier than your usual detectives in these books. I’m not going to hide anything from you. This is a fair-play mystery, after all.’ Ernest tells us he will be entirely in earnest in his delivery. There’s a rather amusing set-up here that the previous book was Ernest’s memoir and recounting fact where he was a rather unreliable narrator but he has promised his publisher a second book which is to be a fiction novel, this novel, and insisting on being ‘a reliable narrator.’ As is often the case, the people who are loudest about being truthful tend to do so in order to deceive and the playfulness of this story comes from the ways Ernest tells the truth, but framed in a way that misdirects you from putting together the ultimate reveal at the end. Which is fun with clues such as mentioning he will say the killers name ‘exactly 106 times,’ and long discourses on the “rules” of telling a detective novel. While reading this, I spent a lot of time thinking about the aspect of this novel as a self referential examination-by-way-of-narrative. Not that this is anything new and the postmodernists have long written novels about the act of the novel in order to explore the clockwork of narrative or act of reading a book, but I’ve noticed this meta-narrative style has been recently popular when setting its sights on the mechanisms of genre. Books like How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe or, more recently, Emily Henry’s satirical look at romance tropes in Book Lovers have highlighted the thematic blueprints of their respective genres in order to look more deeply into the elements that define each genre. This is the narrative heart to Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect, with Ernest discussing the book in progress as just that: a book to be examined and each sentence picked apart to understand its function in the overall story. The book is self-aware of itself and its tropes and it makes for a rather interesting discussion on how a story like this is set up and why. We all expect twists in a detective story and Stevenson certainly delivers here. The plot performs these surprise acrobatics through a reframing of what we already know, though some of it does feel a bit contrived at the end with the twists more focused on subverting tropes or winking at the reader with a bit of a “gotcha” on technicalities. It is rather fun and I enjoyed how it is aimed as a gag on narratives, and we see how the real detective investigation here is into the mysteries in mystery novels more so than a standard detective solving a murder. Its less a whodunnit and more a “howdunnit” on mystery writing. This was quite the fun little ride. Fast paced yet very conversational (and snarky) in tone, its a novel that teases expectations and invites the reader to theorize and pour over all the narrator’s little hints and elbow nudges to see if they can get to the solution before the big reveal. Is our narrator as honest as he tells us, who wants these mystery writers dead, and did McTavish even need that face to begin with? Everyone On This Train Is a Suspect indeed, including you, dear reader. I’ve got my eye on you. 3.5/5 ...more |
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Feb 22, 2024
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1930974280
| 9781930974289
| 1930974280
| 3.74
| 2,034
| 1982
| Oct 01, 2003
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really liked it
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‘They saw the world itself as one more in an endless series of plains.’ There is a basic human instinct to look for meaning in life, to open the door o ‘They saw the world itself as one more in an endless series of plains.’ There is a basic human instinct to look for meaning in life, to open the door of reality in hopes to find of an elaborate clockwork beneath it all which we can investigate in an attempt at comprehension. This quest for meaning tends to be a journey trod through metaphysical landscapes more so than a shoulder to the wheel, making Art a valuable avenue for an abstract expedition into the heart of reality. If any of our art and philosophical probings have given us a finite answer to life’s greatest mysteries is up for debate, but it must be said that one of art’s greatest assets is the finding more and more beautiful ways to ask the questions. Gerald Murnane’s The Plains does just this by chronicling the journey of a filmmaker who has aims to look ‘for anything in the landscape that seemed to hint at some elaborate meaning behind appearances’ as he travels deep into the plains of Australia. The plains, elusive ‘vistas of vistas’ seem to endlessly flow into one another on an eternal path towards the center of Australia. While the story of this slim novel is simple—the unnamed narrator arrives in town with a fistfull of research to woo a patron into funding an aesthetic endeavour to unlock mysteries of the plains in new ways and his subsequent years there—there is a lush landscape of ideas as vast and mysterious as the plains themselves to explore. The novel is never bogged down by the philosophical meanderings and is eminently engaging and satisfying like water from the canteen of a desert traveler. The Plains is an extravagant and multi-interpretable toybox of ideas framed as a parable on the quest for meaning through art and all its aspects while our place in the world when it’s structure is viewed through the abstract, all of which is orchestrated through a brilliant prose style which marches far and wide like a heroine or hero on an epic journey. ‘I recall clearly a succession of days when the flat land around me seemed more and more a place that only I could interpret’ There is a Spanish term, Vacilando, which doesn’t exactly translate into English but encompasses the idea of a trip made for the purpose of the journey and not the destination. The Plains is that sort of novel, concerning itself more with the attempts to reach a new understanding of the reality of the plains rather than a successful breakthrough and solution. Not much happens plot-wise beyond the lengthy and full of suspenseful screw turning scene of landowners sitting around ‘the labyrinths of saloon bar’ to hear out the envisioned endeavours men have planned in order to analyze the life of the inner plains. The scene is gripping in the way one waits and waits and waits for weeks to hear word if their poem or story or what-have-you has been accepted or declined for publication. Much of the first act isn’t spent on pushing the ball of story forward but stepping back and world-building an elaborate history or artistic struggles and arguments that seem to play out in dramatic (and occasionally violent) action the way philosophical schools of thought would refute one another while simultaneously capturing their own ideas. What is eminently thrilling is the way artistic opinions are made large like sporting adversaries in a way that envisions art as a life-or-death-like matter of importance. It would seem the inner plainsman have a long history or interpretation of the plains around them and the horizon they can chase but never catch, and these varying interpretations are as polarizing as politics. ‘How did I expect to find so easily what so many others had never found – a visible equivalent of the plains, as though they were mere surfaces reflecting sunlight?’ Flash forward to the present where the war of plains-interpretation is but settling dust. Now a new wave of visionaries wishes to interpret the plains anew. Murnane offers mostly comical but thought-provoking artistic voyages such as an orchestra with each instrument played quietly and at great enough spatial distance from the other instrument so that the listener must wander the room of musicians hearing only one instrument at a time—and hardly so—to ‘draw attention to the impossibility of comprehending even such an obvious property of a plain as the sound that came from it.’ In fact, much of the novel focuses on impossibility and unattainability. We have art that reaches but cannot grasp, and aloof women the narrator can never reach, and even his film which has yet to begin filming ten years later. The process of attempts and thought formation are what matter, and it seems even the best laid plans often go awry or fail to fruition, because what is sought after will forever be beyond our reach like the horizon on the plains. We can never fulfill an answer, but only ask the question in evermore unique and breathtaking ways; the methods and awareness of a question to be asked that explores every deep and dark facet is the more fascinating story than the release of a climactic conclusion. It’s the sort of thing that puts a fire in our guts to go out and forge our own path. ‘[T]he man who travels,’ theorizes one of the landowners, ‘begins to fear that he may not find a fitting end to his journey.’ We must not fear failure and press on regardless, a hero/ine is made by their journey, without which they could never hope to achieve their crowning act. ‘We’re disappearing through the dark hole of an eye that we’re not even aware of.’ While the use of art as an exploratory device beats loudest in the novel’s chest, it is just a muscle to bring to life the larger theme of the novel. ‘Every man may be travelling towards the heart of some remote, private plain,’ says the narrator. All of us are traveling inward, like the narrator across the seemingly endless Australian plains, seeking an understanding of ourself and the world around us. The plains, mentioned multiple times per page, are the chief object here, but what stand-in they serve in the novel’s parable is widely open to interpretation. This multiple interpretative quality of every aspect of the novel is its greatest glory, giving a meta-fictional flair as the meaning is as elusive as the the meaning behind the quest for meaning is in the book. ‘All talk of a nation presupposed the existence of certain influential but rarely seen landscapes.’ The plains are often compared to mirrors, launching a gleefully cyclical thought pattern about how we reflect the world and how the world reflects us. There is much emphasis on how different the inner plains are than the outer plains, and an investigation if inner Australian constituted a vastly different community and ideology than general Australia. ‘The boundaries of true nations were fixed in the souls of men,’ says the narrator, asking the reader to consider the abstract ideas that are borders, both physically and metaphysically. The struggle is not between inner Australia and outer Australia, but any individual or idea and the grand wide-sweeping scale of existence and transferable to any form of this scenario that the reader chooses to use as a basis of interpretation. Murnane has an exquisite prose style that launches into a lengthy and healthy stroll through the linguistic countryside. ‘One of my greatest pleasures as a writer of prose fiction,’ says Murnane, ‘has been to discover the endlessly varying shapes that a sentence may take.’ This leads us on a wonderful path full of philosophical sightseeing through the examinations on the varying shapes of reality. Within the world of The Plains, everything is pregnant with the potential for meaning like a clam nearly bursting open might or might not be so from a massive pearl inside. Yet, we may only be able to posit about the clam because, try as we might, the clam can never be opened. This is not cause for sadness or defeatism, but for joy as we can forever theorize and ponder what lies within. Art is a road paved in gold towards a destination of meaning that will forever be elusive but we can take endless comfort and satisfaction at the euphoric ‘vistas of vistas’ we pass along the way. 4.5/5 ‘I lifted my own camera to my face and stood with my eye pressed against the lens and my finger poised as if to expose to the film in its dark chamber the darkness that was the only visible sign of whatever I saw beyond myself.’ ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 25, 2016
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1566893542
| 9781566893541
| 1566893542
| 3.59
| 6,386
| Apr 28, 2011
| May 13, 2014
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it was amazing
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If you dedicate your life to writing novels, you’re dedicating yourself to folding time. Literature has a seemingly magical ability to fill the cracks If you dedicate your life to writing novels, you’re dedicating yourself to folding time. Literature has a seemingly magical ability to fill the cracks of reality with fiction, creating a monument to the human condition. Valeria Luiselli’s impressive first novel, Faces in the Crowd in the English translation or Los Ingrávidos (‘The Weightless’) in the original Spanish, is a sagacious statement to the powers of literature, openly examining the mechanics of writing as if in an exhibition of regality. Adorned in the spirit of classic Latin American literature such as the trailblazing Pedro Páramo, Faces strikes a fresh pose for a new century and is surely to become canonized into the great literary tradition from which it springs. She has created a cast of characters from reality, like Federico García Lorca, and the imaginary and set them walking about the streets of New York and Philadelphia; these characters are ghosts of an age now gone that still speak as loudly and poignantly today. ‘A horizontal novel, told vertically,’ Luiselli explores the poetic gap between author and character, plunging oneself further into the realm of words and building layer upon layer of sensationally surreal mingling between the creator and the created until the defining boundaries become practically nonexistent and irrelevant. ‘the tabula rasa of the pages and plans, the anonymity the multiple voices of the writing offer me’ Luiselli offers all the glorious metaphysical and metafictional platforms of literature in her multi-layered story. A woman who never leaves home writes a novel about a younger character-version of herself as a poetry translator determined to bring her obsession with under-known poet Gilbreto Owen into print for the masses. I know I need a structure full of holes so that I can always find a place for myself on the page, inhabit it; I have to remember never to put in more than is necessary, never overlay, never furnish or adorn. Open doors, windows. Raise walls and demolish them.Luiselli probes the gaps between author and author-character, creating a writer and her written self that both are and are not the same voice. She punches holes in the paper-thing walls of reality to plaster them up with fiction much like Elizabeth Hardwick does in Sleepless Nights, except building multiple layers as author-characters create their further author-characters. She teases the assumption of a reader that the author would share similar experiences and ideals as their character, with the woman always having to remind her husband that what she is creating is actually fiction. Or is it? ‘My husband reads some of this and asks who Moby is. Nobody I say. Moby is a character…But Moby exists. Or perhaps not.’ Troubled by the gripes from her husband being unable to separate biography from fiction when he reads her manuscript, she decides to bury herself further into fiction and begins to write a novel about Owen, creating ‘a novel that has to be told from the outside in order to be read from within.’ As Owen’s story takes shape, the woman becomes less and less of a presence while Owen himself ages and thins towards physical oblivion. In One Thousand and One Nights the narrator strings together a series of tales to put off the day of her death. Perhaps a similar but reverse mechanism would work for this story, this death. The narrator discovers that while she is stringing the tale, the mesh of her immediate reality wears thin and breaks. The fiber of fiction begins to modify reality and not vice versa as it should be. Neither of the two can be sacrificed. The only way to save all the planes of the story is to close one curtain and open another...change the characters’ names, remember that everything is or should be fiction. Write what really did happen and what did not.Owen’s story is representative of the woman’s existence, or is it that the woman is representative of Owen’s? Pushing the metafiction into incredible realms of abstraction, Owen decides to write a story about the woman he sees reading his book of poetry, Obras on the subway, the book the woman is reading during the period where she keeps thinking she sees flashes of Owen’s face in the subway. The two become like ghosts haunting one another. A wonderful aspect of Faces is Luiselli’s nods to the works that inspired and function within the novel at hand. The characters visions of one another in the subway across time ('you can remember the future too') recalls a poem by Ezra Pound written when he thought he saw a fallen friend in the subway: ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd / petals on a wet, black bough.’. Pound is an inspiration to the characters within the novel, and Owen wonders if he has seen him too on the subway. Early on in the book the author-character recalls a passage from Saul Bellow where he states ‘the living look from the center outward, the dead from some periphery to some sort of center.’ Luiselli hints towards the mechanics of her own novel that features two characters dissolving towards a ghost-like state while looking ‘inward’ through their fiction towards one another. Metafictional examinations of the novel bloom all across the garden of her prose, ideas working both as the outward expression of ideas and also the roots that give the novel life. For example, the staccato structure of the short paragraphs skipping through time being both a reflection of the woman having to write in quick doses under the necessity of constant attention to her children and the author-character writing a novel solely from the post-its on which she took brief notes of Owen’s life. ‘All novels lack something or someone. In this novel there’s no one. No one except a ghost I used to see sometimes in the subway.’ While the English translation of the novel bears an apt title for the book considering all the subway visions found within, I tend to prefer the title in it’s original— ‘The Weightless’; this is a novel about losing oneself in the efforts of creating fiction, about giving way to the heavy weightlessness of words, to become the author-character instead of simply ‘the author’. Ghosts play a large role in the novel, and the ‘ghost’ of each character haunts the other layers of the novel much like how the reality of an author haunts the pages of the characters they create. ‘You are not an utterance,’ Owen is reminded by a wise friend when he questions his state as a verb tense, desiring to be the immortality of words instead of the failing flesh. Perhaps it’s right that words contain nothing, or almost nothing. That their content is, at the very least, variable.The characters are drawn towards the realm of words, of putting their souls into fiction and poetry, and we watch them withdraw from the pages as they do so. The allusion to Pedro Páramo opens the gates of interpretation to Luiselli’s literary vision of ‘ghosts’ that these characters seem to become, but, thankfully, she leaves much open to such interpretation. This is a novel that leaves threads hanging to tie to theory, a novel built of ideas and not concrete facts, the sort of literature that opens itself to discussion and advancement instead of a tidy closed casket. There are people who are capable of recounting their lives as a sequence of events that lead to a destiny. If you give them a pen, they write you a horribly boring novel in which each line is there for a reason…This is a novel about the possibilities of literature, the pathway from past to present, building on the headway of literary tradition and pressing it boldly forward to unknown futures. Luiselli does not tie up loose ends out of laziness or incompetence, but out of respect to the reader and respect to the futures of fiction. Valeria Luiselli is a name to watch for. Published when the author was a mere 28 years old in 2011, and brought to an english translation only three years later published by Coffee House Press alongside her collection of essays, Sidewalks, Luiselli delivers an early promise of literary greatness. Spanning a century and peopled with new and familiar faces, this novel is something special and deserving of the following that has been slowly building. Faces in the Crowd explores the metafictional worlds of literature and the poetic gaps between author and character and presents them in a fresh and fascinating manner. This is a novel of ghosts echoing the lessons of days past to those in the present present and the voice of Luiselli is one I hope to have haunting us all for years to come. 5/5 'By now it's an elaborate lie, repeated to myself so often that it's come to form part of my repertory of events, indistinguishable from any other memory.' [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 28, 2015
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156478861X
| 9781564788610
| 156478861X
| 3.75
| 103
| Nov 2005
| Apr 02, 2013
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really liked it
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1. The No World is all that is the case. Composer and expressionist artist Arnold Schoenberg revolutionized 20th-century music through his development 1. The No World is all that is the case. Composer and expressionist artist Arnold Schoenberg revolutionized 20th-century music through his development of the twelve-tone technique, or dodecaphony, which gives equal treatment to each note in the chromatic scale as the music sways through a series of repeated motifs without allowing any of them to dominate the composition. The No World Concerto is a staggering accomplishment for author A.G. Porta, applying Schoenberg’s music theories to literature as he orchestrates a multi-facet plot rotating through many layers of reality. Following the stories of two unnamed characters, a screenwriter and his lover, a young piano prodigy who abandons her successful career to pursue writing, Porta masterfully composes the effect of ‘two mirrors reflecting each other’ as both characters are creating works based on the lives and interactions of one another. This interaction only furthers the wonderful juxtaposition of the two, one old and one young, yet both grappling with demons of originality and self-expression in a suffocating reality of their own making. Dense with intense philosophic, musical, literary and cinematic explorations and allusions, yet never flagging in the irresistibility of his metafictionally interwoven storylines, Porta achieves his goal of a dodecaphonic novel that both pays tribute to the great, original minds of the past, while simultaneously asserting his own creative genius. [T]he screenwriter starts thinking he should imagine his script not as a series of concentric layers like an onion, but of a series of parallel planes, each successive one subsumed in the next…Should he exist in the same world in wich she moves, or should he exist in the world she imagines? A.G. Porta arrived onto the literary scene in 1984 with the novel Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce seguido de Diario de bar, co-written with a young Roberto Bolaño. After a fifteen-year period of literary silence during which he, according to Bolaño, read and reread James Joyce (who features heavily in No World, such as the nod to him with a character named Cousin Dedalus), Porta released a flurry of five novels in ten years. The No World Concerto is his first to be translated into English, and hopefully the first of many. Porta reveals himself as a master of style, impressively holding the reins on his many layers of reality as he transitions equally between each. The reader is kept unaware if they ever achieve sure footing in reality or another reflection of reality found within the two works. Is it the reality of the screenwriter, the reality of the girl, or an interpretation written by one or the other. The story is his own invention, but he knows he borrows heavily from the girl, from the stories she tells him, from the extracts of her novel she reads to him or that get delivered to his hotel, with commentaries scribbled in the margins, which he incorporates into his own narrative.Much of what either character writes comes from something they’ve observed or heard from the other, or they attribute to their characters the ideas burdening their own thoughts. This repetition of ideas, revolving through perspectives, further simulates the twelve-tone theory, and each layer of reality, each theme and motif, is given equal expression. The effect is marvelous and disorienting, yet not to the point of distraction, and it is awe-inspiring how Porta’s delivery manages to be concise, accessible and seemingly effortless. The repetition of themes, ‘a world of pure contrast between dissonance and harmony, in which pleasure is derived merely by finding different ways of resolving the conflict,’ offers an interesting, phenomenological approach to each idea. As much of what the reader learns about the girl is found through the script being written by the screenwriter—similarly, the major insights into the screenwriters present condition are revealed through the girls fictional character’s backstory—the reader develops an understanding with her nature that may not take any basis in her reality, yet it is all the reader has to build on. Each subsequent action of hers cannot be viewed without carrying with it the previously constructed notions of her, and this uncertainty casts an alluring enigmatic shroud around the character of the girl. There is, in fact, the girl herself, in pure form, which we can never meet since we can only know her as our own unique perspective of her, and the screenwriters perspective on her. Furthermore, it could be argued that she can only know her own perspective on herself, carrying with it her own preconceived notions and sensitivity towards certain aspects as well as blinders towards others. As with each idea or expression or thematic motif that is viewed repeatedly but applied differently, Porta probes the thing-in-itself with each attempt opening a different, subjective reality of impressions about the idea. What really matters is not the object in itself, whether it exists objectively, so to speak, but the fact we can perceive it at all, and perception, being subjective, is as multifarious as the number of people that comprise the human race. The juxtaposition between the screenwriter and girl is further intensified as each is primarily displayed as an expression of the other. ‘Youth is that condition of being without a past; old age, of being without a future.’The screenwriter is caught in a maze of perceived failures, feeling his life is brimming with mediocrity in a profession long past it’s golden age. This mourning for a golden age causes him to often reflect on Marcel Proust (in his script, Proust is the girl’s fathers favorite author), and opens an interesting observation into the nature of solipsism, a theme that permeates the novel. his yearning, is symptomatic of a man who’d have mourned the loss of any age, any time, because the only thing that truly vanishes is the self located there, located then, so the narrator interprets the end of his age as the end of the self, and the end of the self as end of world entire.When we find ourselves disconnected from the present, we often feel it has less value since it has less value to us. The screenwriter fears being forgotten, being an unvisited grave in the cemetery full of innovators, and his choice of a star on the rise as his protagonist speaks volumes of his desire to be relevant. The girl, on the other hand, rejects her fame and only wishes ‘to be authentic, to be true to herself.’ She rejects her school band, of which she is the star, when she fears they are selling-out, playing a game that leads to fame but not to be true to the music they play, to be another brand name (exemplified in her wardrobe consisting of only white clothing that has had the tags removed). Porta exploits the rebellious teen cliché well, and the girl is the embodiment of the quest for the thing-in-itself while rejecting any imitations. Unlike the screenwriter who studies the great minds of literature to be overwhelmed by their greatness, she views them as a mark to match with her own greatness, such as her interpretation of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Piano . She abandons piano to write, to create her own worlds in which she can explore her inner theories that nothing exists, or at least not beyond her own mind. For the girl, or at least from what may only be the screenwriters perspective of the girl, everything is a game. This statement becomes a mantra for her and her fellow band members, the young conductor and brilliant composer¹. The group frequents bars with foosball tables, and since soccer (it seemed unnecessary that fútbol was translated as ‘soccer’) is the favorite sport of the girl—having a controversial soccer star as her favorite player being a further expression of her inner nature—, it is only fitting she would enjoy a task that makes a further game out of the sport and put each player under her command. Life is a game where they control their pieces to achieve what they want, and literature becomes an outlet that satisfies the desire for creativity and control. The screenwriter fears he only creates ‘to live the lives of his characters, being that only exist in his dreams, people he’d like to be.’ On the other hand, the girl creates to assert control over the ideas in her head, her notion of the No World, ‘a name for an all-encompassing thought, the thought of which all things ultimately consist,’ which she tries to piece together a logical depiction of through the style of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. ‘5.6 The limits of language mean the limits of the no world.’ Her No World is the metafictional novel found in the novel, and one that best examines the Porta’s own mechanics (it should be mentioned again that her works may only be a product of the screenwriter’s imagination, or is the screenwriter’s works only a product of her story, ad infinitum). [I]n the explosion, thoughts began expanding outward, creating a universe that exists only within its own solitude, although it appears so real that it eventually created beings who were convinced it was real, that they were real, and so convinced were they, it was inconceivable to even admit to the possibility that all they saw around them, all they knew and loved and hated, was only a product of thought. These beings eventually thought other universes into existence…always refusing to admit to the possibility that the constantly expanding universe they lived in was just a mind that thought them into existence.There is examination of extreme solipsism, and the idea that ones creations can further create their own realities, all of which pulls the reader deeper down the rabbit hole of the multi-layered realities of the two characters continuously creating one another. In a work about originality and the genius of former figures in the arts, it is understandable that the reader would look to the book at hand to uphold the same level of creative genius. The ideas found within The No World Concerto aren’t particularly new, many of which are the solipsistic quandaries turning over in the minds of college students as they sit motionless, staring into what seems like a void in their smoky dorm room, yet it is the strikingly refreshing style that threads each idea together that more than makes up for it. When discussing the great authors, such as Joyce and Proust— there are very few proper nouns in the book and these two are only referred to as ‘he writer who revolutionized twentieth-century literature’, and the latter as ‘the novelist and cartographer of memory—the father tells the girl that they are remembered because they took what had come before them and completely revolutionized it. There are ideas in their works that have been seen before, but not executed with the all-encompassing brilliance as in their works. The screenwriter and the girl are both plagued that their ideas are not original, and that it is near impossible to come up with a completely original idea unattached from comparison with another already-done, and already-done-well idea (the girls first description of her No World with people being unaware they are aliens reminds her cousin of Leon Kowalski of Blade Runner ), yet they reassure themselves that if they handle their collection of less-than-original-ideas flawlessly, then the totality of the work will shine forth as a work of brilliance. Porta may be asserting his own self-assurances here, yet he undoubtedly has earned the right. Spiraling and metafictionally marvelous, Porta’s The No World Concerto was some of the most fun I’ve had reading a book in years. The book is not without it’s faults, particularly that Porta often gives a heavy-handed explanation of his philosophical issues and mechanics (however, the idea that it is the opposite character trying to verbalize the others ideas so they can in turn understand them is warranted justification) and that the shocking plot twists near the end seem to be unnecessarily sensational (yet, if the book is really a screenplay, then Hollywood plot twists to spice things up are another possible justification), yet No World’s brilliance hides the flaws in it’s shimmering glare. The parallel planes of plot are exceptionally engaging and the reader is more than happy to drown beneath their churning back and forth, each one receiving equal validity in the novel’s reality. Porta is a maestro, conducting his many threads together to form a fantastic literary expression of the twelve-tone theory, and keeping the reader eagerly turning pages without feeling overwhelmed by the wonderful immensity of what they hold in their hands. 4.5/5 ‘Would a mind that creates itself and everything else still have need of success and recognition? It would requite a superhuman effort at self-deception.’ [image] ...more |
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Jul 27, 2013
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Jul 27, 2013
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
0811216314
| 9780811216319
| 0811216314
| 3.70
| 3,350
| 1993
| Feb 28, 2007
|
really liked it
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I was the sole keeper and mistress of the impossible. Reality is the playground of the writer with memories and the artifacts of their past as the swin I was the sole keeper and mistress of the impossible. Reality is the playground of the writer with memories and the artifacts of their past as the swings and slides for their games. César Aira’s How I Became a Nun is a humorous jaunt through the life of a 6 year old boy—or girl—also named César Aira as s/he learns the magic of blending fact and fantasy to better understand the undercurrent of magic pulsing through plain reality. Through a lonely pilgrimage of childhood, César experiments with fiction in a preparation towards a life of being an author, a sacred undertaking of servitude to Stories much like entering the Sisterhood of Nuns. ‘Fiction and reality were fused at this point; my simulation was becoming real, tinting all my lies with truth.’ As in Elizabeth Hardwick’s exquisite Sleepless Nights, Aira blends biography (though very limited) with fiction to create a lush tale where the lines between reality and fantasy are not only blurred but become irrelevant. The narrator of this story is César Aira, but not necessarily the César Aira writing the story, who is also not necessarily the same César Aira when he is not writing the story. They share the same hometown of Coronel Pringles, Argentina and enough subtle similarities to trick the reader into stepping dangerously toward an Intentional fallacy of assuming the author and narrator are one and the same, but this is all for sport and elevates the playfulness of his often meta-driven novels. César the narrator often identifies as a girl (though once as a boy in the opening chapter), despite all the outsider characters referring to César as a boy. This opens up an intrigue of gender identification, and it could be inferred that César experienced an emasculation of sorts after the tragedy of the opening scene with his father. However, such an interpretation seems too concrete for a book with such playful transparency. It does not matter which gender the narrator is, and the novel works equally well if César is a son or daughter; in the art of fiction an author must be able to identify as many characters, male or female, and must do so convincingly for the story to be accepted into the soul of the reader. César Aira presents both as a reminder that the author’s own gender identification must be pushed aside to fully immerse into the realm of the character. ‘The transformation could go either way, reality becoming delirium or dream, but the real dream turned dreamlike in turn, becoming the angel, or reality.’ César the narrator experiments with blending fact and fiction throughout the novel, preparing for a life as an author. An important lesson is learned early on when sitting on a ledge above a prison in which his father is interned. All the prisoners were my dad, and I loved him...now I knew that love was more, much more than that. I had to become the guardian angel of all the desperate men to discover what love really was.The author must watch their characters from an on-high vantage point, and truly love them all in order to understand them and make them work. Later, César spends hours in the bedroom imagining teaching a lesson to a classroom of student, students based on his/her own classmates. Students are imagined with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia. However, ‘I hadn’t invented disorders so much as systems of difficulty. They weren’t destined to be cured but developed.’ It is an act of creation, developing problems not to solve them but to bring them to fruition as a believable aspect of the fictitious classroom. Like a good author, César learns to create individuals that also must serve as a universal idea: ‘they were nobody and they were everyone.’ And through creating and teaching, César also learns and watches ideas form as if on their own power. Like an author, César guides a story while simultaneously being guided by it. How I Became a Nun is a wonderful little novel in which no Nuns are present. Instead, the nunhood is a vague metaphor for the calling of an author, in which they must devote their lives to the name of art. Like the ‘voice of the radio within the radio’, in which the fictitious voice of God delivers a moral message at the end of a religious radio program, the author must become the radio while also hearing ‘the radio within the radio’ that is the natural growth of the story being transmitted through them. This is a fantastically humorous and brief book that manages to breathlessly juggle a wide-reaching allegory, many aspects of which I have left untouched here. Literature is one of the closest things to magic we have in our world, the sort of magic that dazzles the heart and imagination of a young child, and Aira is a masterful purveyor into this magical world. 3.5/5 My vision couldn’t be satisfied with what was visible, it had to go rushing on, beyond, into the abyss… ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Apr 13, 2013
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Paperback
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1564784703
| 9781564784704
| 1564784703
| 4.03
| 362
| Sep 1971
| Jan 01, 2000
|
really liked it
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‘There is no place for an artist here any more. He has been officially dismissed in favor of the entertainer.’ Gilbert Sorrentino mourns the artist, th ‘There is no place for an artist here any more. He has been officially dismissed in favor of the entertainer.’ Gilbert Sorrentino mourns the artist, the true purveyor of prose drowning in the growing mass of fakers and sell-outs whose false glamour makes them the candle in which the literary flies will be immolate themselves. Through the voice of his spurned narrator, each chapter dissects the little-to-no-talented lives of several archetypal artists in the 50’s and 60’s New York art world and pins the autopsy up in hilariously brutal rants. Imaginative Qualities of Actual Thingsis the perfect novel to read alongside Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet; while Rilke builds a beautiful portrait of prose to empower one down the path of good writing and places warning signs to direct away from pitfalls, Sorrentino investigates the dangerous wayward souls. Within his scathing assaults on the artistic society of his times, Sorrentino delivers a poignant satirical commentary on the forms and fixtures of both good and bad writing. ‘This is a book about destruction,’ Sorrentino’s narrator writes, ‘No tool to be found here with which to build the new society. I would say that this work is to be taken slowly, more like an antidote.’ Each crumbling life highlights the fakery and falseness that he felt plagued his world and his examinations expose the inner pretentiousness and weaknesses in us all. The comedy is rich, the voice sharp and cutting, and nobody is able to reach the other side without seeing a bit of themselves in his attacks. With any hope, Sorrentino’s message reaches the readers hearts and reminds them to purify their artistic souls and do what is right for their work. Across each chapter is an artist whose weakness in character and life is transposed into the art they hide behind. They suffer self-loathing and each other as they wed and bed their way through artistic circles. They suffer ‘the devastating strain of trying to appear happy.’ Yet, despite all their poor abilities and shameful habits, they manage to make a name for themselves while our bitter narrator, with his wealth of knowledge, remains the recipient of rejection letters. ’The support of third-rate artists should be left to those who can best support them – universities and foundations. It tends to prevent them from prostrating you with boredom as they go into their nobody-has-the-courage-to-listen-to-me act. Everybody gets a piece of the action and art remains a game for the intelligent.’Sorrentino has much to say about the art game. ‘Art as mathematics,’ he writes, ‘good students and bad. It is a matter of how one’s intelligence is fitted to the social possibilities of the environment, no?’However, Sorrentino warns against a world where it is those who succeed in their environment trump the true ‘good students’. It is a world of ‘talented amateurs’ that plague their own world with their shallowness and fakery. It isn’t just the bad authors, but those who receive them as well – the critics and readers. The attacks on critics and editors are some of the most aggressive, despite his insistence that all he really needs a good review. He writes of these critics ‘bitching, bitching, moaning about greatness, and when they are presented with it, they spit on it.’ The real artist is ‘hated and feared – these emotions disguised as admiration.’ While the critics want what is real and good, they reject it for what entertains, what sells, with no regard for the health of literature. ’There is no body of work in literature that, conceived of as some kind of diversion from the stringencies of art, will not rot and its putrescence affect the population…they think they can insult language and it not matter. I see those lusterless words putrefacting, sinking into a soured mulch that will poison the earth the writers thought to celebrate.’Art leaves a residue in the hearts of its readers/viewers where it grows in society. Sorrentino warns that as we embrace poor art in place of pure art, we allow the bad to flourish with more and more bad art while the true artist withers. We embrace it because it is easy, because it is attractive, appeals to our baseness, our sexuality, but not our intelligence. We circle the flame of fakery and burn up in the process. This book will bring about endless laughter and exhaust the ink supply of your favorite pen if you try to underline every brilliant passage. However, the characters are only funny through Sorrentino’s scathing criticisms. ‘What is more irritating is to meet real people in the street, at parties, in bars, etc., who have mad it the same way. That’s not so funny at all…’ The metafictional qualities of this novel is the true charm. Sorrentino never lets the reader drift into their illusions and consistently reminds them that these characters are just that – fictional characters. They represent the falseness he despises, and while they may be an amalgamation of people Sorrentino knew in real life, they are only ‘imaginative qualities of actual things.’ He has a gift for creating believable characters out of archetypes by always showing how he doesn’t ‘understand the motivations of these characters I’ve invented’ and having them act in strange ways that even he writes about not understanding. There is an incredibly impressive balance between creating characters that seem to walk right off the page (a few that he claims impose themselves on the novel despite his desire to keep them out of it), yet always keeping the reader grounded in their knowledge that these characters – the narrator included – are fictions. Like how a tiger in a zoo becomes an object of amusement instead of a dangerous predator, Sorrentino chains the enemies of art up in prose and cages them behind the bars of his fiction where they cannot harm us. His breaks from the story often place emphasis on his own literary devices beyond character creation. He often jokingly offers possible futures for his characters, subtly touching upon how each serves a literary purpose and chastises the plot devices that would appear as overly cliché (especially when using these devices to serve just that ironic purpose). His arrogance and exasperation against possible critiques on his style make for wonderful rants. ’But one of the basic reasons for this list is to allow numbskull reviewers to tell their readers that it is merely an avant-garde convention, employed since Joyce. Further, that the use of these lists is a method whereby the writer avoids the responsibility of narrative and plot. But this book has both narrative and plot. Subtly disguised I grant you, but there.’There is this comical heart to the novel that instructs in writing as well as deconstructs. Sorrentino’s brutal assessment of his artistic society is one of the funniest and well-written satires on American literature. While much of the allusions may seem out-dated, such as references to publishing houses from the 50’s and 60’s, the message is incredibly relevant to any writer in any era. It rewards the reader who is well-read enough to understand many of the jokes and be familiar with some of the authors lambasted within (Norman Mailer is repeatedly poked and prodded), yet it is entertaining to anyone looking for a few shots at the artistic world. Anyone and everyone receives a punch to the teeth in this novel, the reader included, and we all walk away better for it. 4.5/5 ‘Rapacity plus taste is a formidable combination, since it so often passes for intelligence. One pities the artist in a world of such predators, all of whom are deeply engaged in the arts too.’ [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 28, 2013
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Mar 14, 2013
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Feb 28, 2013
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
0811219992
| 9780811219990
| 0811219992
| 3.67
| 565
| 1996
| Oct 16, 2012
|
really liked it
|
‘Just because there had not yet been any miracles, however, didn’t mean they couldn’t happen…’ We live in a world dominated by the media. In a world wh ‘Just because there had not yet been any miracles, however, didn’t mean they couldn’t happen…’ We live in a world dominated by the media. In a world where nearly anyone can have a camera primed and ready in their pockets, where everything we say or do can be unearthed by digging around the internet, we are constantly under the threat of having any of our actions called to the table for mass public scrutiny. César Aira’s novel, The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira, written at the turn of the century as the internet media was rapidly booming, examines the shrinking place of miracles in a world where nearly anything can be scrutinized, compartmentalized, and rationalized while being broadcast to the masses. Aira, as author and narrator, unveils the plight of Dr. Aira, a producer of medical miracles, as he attempts to document his Miracle Cures while evading the skeptical eyes of the media controlled by his nemesis Dr. Actyn. In a fantastic, cyclical manner, Aira takes the reader on a highly abstract and metafictional examination of the Novel as a metaphor of miracles in a world where our reputation is foremost and fragile. [T]exts withstand time only when they are associated with an author whose actions in life—of which their texts are the only tangible testimony—excite the curiosity of posterity.One false step, one poor public display, can ruin an person forever. We place vast importance of a person’s personal reputation, which often overshadows their work. It only takes one ridiculous outburst from an actor or actress for the masses to forget the artist’s outstanding performances or only one embarrassing thread of personal detail has to surface can cause a public figures greatest works to be neglected. However, do the unsightly personal details really change the words written in a novel; the breathtaking stage delivery; the brushstrokes on a canvas? Aira, who is himself a bit shy of the public realm and rarely does interviews, fills his Miracle Cures with the public eye that is always watching and aching to witness the downfall of a fellow human. Dr. Aira’s nemesis will stop at nothing, resorting to highly elaborate play-acting in an attempt to catch a display of the ‘miracles’ on tape where they can be examines and stripped of their glory through (what he hopes to be) simple rationality and thusly destroying Dr. Aira’s glory. ‘Dr. Actyn had mobilized the mass media in his attempt to destroy his prestige.’ Whoever controls the media controls the context and therefor the message, and one can quickly understand why Aira would distrust the growing media that could ruin any artist with one out-of-context quotation, video clip or skewed representation. The doctor’s attempts at writing his miracle cures echo author Aira’s own slim novels (as does the character’s name and hometown of Pringles). Aira attempts to usher us across the distinction between the particular and the general as he, like the doctor, doesn’t blatantly reveal his ideas, but offers us a window into them through a metaphoric representation, or ‘do-it-yourself-examples’. Dr. Aira’s miracles, written in numerous, short installments, were then veiled from scientific scrutiny. he was a theoretician, one could almost say a “writer,” and the only thing that linked him to the Miracle Cures was a kind of metaphor…Hence, their miraculous charm would never coincide with any proof, and the underlying theory would be left untouched. Only by dint of useless miracles could one prevent a theory from degenerating into a dogma.Much like the numerous, short novels by César Aira (this one being only 80pgs in length), Aira is able to create many particular stories that can be unpacked to unveil a general statement towards the world. In short, the miracle cure installments are a particular of the generalization of his literary projects. The true genius of Aira is presented in the way the doctor’s miracles and literature coincide. For Dr. Aira, miracle are a work of art, much like how a novel is a work of art for César Aira. Miracles are only miracles when ‘the precise boundary between what was and was not a miracle had not yet been established.’ Through Actyn’s scrutiny, he could disenfranch any miracle by rationalizing what happened and transform the miraculous into a mere outlying—yet explainable—chunk of data for the masses to tear apart in their disillusioned fury. A novelist is under a similar scrutiny at all times, where a critic can undermine an entire book by illuminating an overlooked structural flaw. In Actyn’s world, there are no miracles, there is only cold science and reason. Under these conditions, a miracle was simply impossible. But it could be created indirectly, through negation, by excluding from the world everything that was incongruent with it occurring.Anything can occur if the forces that make it impossible are removed. Aira directs our attention to the way a novel works: any plot is possible if it is orchestrated to remove any obstacles of such-and-such event occurring. It’s as simple as putting a cellphone dead-zone into a horror plot to ensure the characters can’t simply call the police. Dr. Aira’s miracle cures (the explanation of which is quite incredible and well done, yet cannot be touched upon without ruining the novel and offering a premature explanation for his ‘labyrinthian past’ and somnambulistic nature) are reflective of the god-like abilities of an author to create and reshape reality to allow their stories to transpire. The author becomes a miracle worker of their own metaphysical universe, offering structured, realy-made, particular examples that hint at their generalizations. The trick was to put into play the greatest of encyclopedias and to compile the relevant list from that. Who could do that? The customary response, the one that had been offered since oldest antiquity was: God. And to remain with that meant Miracles would have stayed within his jurisdiction. Dr. Aira’s originality was in postulating that man could do it, too. Here’s an example that sort of fits, and a true story at that. The night I finished this short book, I had done a bit too much drinking and thinking and in some strange depressive and frustrated funk, decided to delete my Goodreads account. The second I clicked the ‘ok’ button, regret and grief exploded in me and I began cursing the world around me. Then I realized that I couldn’t navigate to any other page, or even go back to Goodreads to see the void where my reviews once were, and realized at the exact moment I clicked ‘ok’ (I rapidly went through it like ripping a band-aid off because I’m guessing I subconsciously knew I’d stop myself if I didn’t), the internet went out temporarily. In fact, by the time I got back inside from my shame-cigarette, the internet was back up and my account was still active because I had been disconnected when trying to destroy it. Jules from Pulp Fiction would call that an act of God, some would call it luck, some would state the statistic probability of losing service at that moment, some would call me a liar, etc. All I know, and all I care about, is that somehow I lost internet service microseconds before pulling the trigger. Had this been a novel I was writing, I would have shaped the reality of the novel to make the possibility of deactivation incongruous with the events that transpired, almost like playing God with my characters. In Aira’s world, Dr. Aira would have altered all the facts of reality, the ‘encyclopedia’ of reality, to ensure that the internet would have went down at that moment. This anecdote is rather irrelevant, but it felt poignant having occurred the same night as completing this book about miracles. This was a fun romp through Aira’s metafictional mind and ensured that I would be reading far more of him in the future. While An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter resided in a more grounded reality while offering a glimpse into the abstract, Miracle Cures floats in the peripheries of abstraction and looks back at how it can reshape reality. It is this abstract look that really won me over, and I am excited to learn that most of his novels (or novellas, depending on how you want to label them) are in this same vein that almost borders on magical-realism (enough so to warrant mention, but not enough so that it should frighten away any readers who interpret magical-realism as a sort of literary cancer). This book is best served to those who are already acquainted with Aira, since much of the joy comes from drawing up the parallel’s between the authorial voice and character as well as the discussions on the Miracle Cure installments, however, it can be enjoyed by anyone. Aira elevates authors to a god-like status in this tale of dodging the media’s noose and reminds us all how easily a public image can be shattered, and the lengths our enemies will go to allow the public to enjoy watching another fall from grace. 4/5 ‘The plausible had completely changed. Laughter was justified; happiness needed no other motive.’ [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 09, 2013
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May 28, 2013
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Oct 26, 2012
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
1934824062
| 9781934824061
| 1934824062
| 3.91
| 562
| 1967
| Feb 01, 2010
|
it was amazing
|
‘He who imagines will never know non-being.’ Jorge Luis Borges, the friend and protégé of Macedonio Fernández (1874-1952), once wrote that his mentor ‘ ‘He who imagines will never know non-being.’ Jorge Luis Borges, the friend and protégé of Macedonio Fernández (1874-1952), once wrote that his mentor ‘is metaphysics, is literature. Whoever preceded him might shine in history, but they were all rough drafts of Macedonio.’ Despite leaving such a legacy and impression upon Borges, The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel) started in 1925, was not published until after Macedonio's death. However, this book, far ahead of its time, proved his worth by challenging the standard constructs of novels while being a sort of anti-novel. Consisting of what Macedonio claims are two novels, the first good novel and the last bad novel shuffled together in random order, the reader finds themselves lured in and trapped as a character among Macedonio’s characters living together in La Novela. Beginning with 120pgs of prologues (or are they?) that refuse to end and continually probe the ideas of plot, character and novels in general, and followed by a cast of characters all making demands upon their author, Macedonio has created a tool-kit for his readers to build a bright future of literature. Macedonio has created a tool-kit of sorts for his readers. Found inside his book is an assortment of scene and character sketches, essays, prologues, and other musings that come together to form this ‘novelty of novels.’ Dedicating the book to the ‘skip-around reader’, Macedonio rejects any conventional form, as well as almost any novelistic conventions altogether, to create a sense of skipping around through a book although the reader goes in page order from start to finish. In fact, the culmination of the actual plot (playing loosely with that term in order to rope the actions of the characters over the course of the novel into a literary term for the sake of easily handling and examining them) is discussed in the prologues and the author even mocks a reader who would desire any sort of completion or cohesive plot. ’The reader who won’t read my novel if he can’t know all of it first is my kind of reader, he’s an artist, because he who reads only seeking the final resolution is seeking what art should not provide, his interest is in the merely vital, not in a state of consciousness: the only artistic reader is the one who does not seek resolution.’For Macedonio, the true purpose behind any work of art is the creation of it, the mechanics that build and function within it. The President residing in La Novela – a character who may or may not be the author himself, reflects such ideals by having removed all paintings from his walls and in there place set up small art studios easels so as to be able to admire the creation of art as opposed to the final piece. The prologues focus primarily upon the mechanics of literature through which Macedonio allows his characters to play out their written-on-paper lives. He explores the psychology behind the consciousness in each character, the implications of his metaphysical ideas, and most importantly, the striving of an artist to create their work. ‘The artist is he who loves everything and speaks everything,’ writes MF. The pure love for his creations pours from every page of the book, and he cannot help but constantly break the fourth wall and allow himself and his characters to address the reader. In fact, the novel is an enormous plea to the reader to subsequently create their own stories and novels. He even goes as far as urging the reader to simply edit and improve upon his own novel, provided the reader at least leave behind some small indication of the original, and from this plea it can be argued that we today have such metafictional gems as the works Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, At Swim-Two-Birds, or even If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Macedonio admits to being unable to achieve total perfection, but insists that true beauty awaits those who strive for it. Addressing his own critics, he offers several concessionary apologies for failing to achieve perfection while still delivering his final condescending remarks to critics saying, ‘I realized that all you really know is what Perfection is not.’ The reader-author relationship is critical to the novel, so much so that the reader is given their very own character to voice opinions throughout the novel, usually at moments where MF is sure to have agitated the reader through stagnation of the story from constant digressions, or due to his lofty philosophical discussions (he even goes as far as offering footnotes asserting that certain topics are sure to be indicative of a ’62 reader drop-out’). Through every cutting remark from ‘the reader’, MF assures them that there is a bigger picture behind each detail and that he is putting his whole heart and soul into the expression of ideas. Not only does the author, or one of his many authorial personas, break the fourth wall, but his characters as well. Much of the aforementioned plot, and even the prologues, consist of the characters making demands upon the author and his anxiety in being unable to meet them. He is even thwarted by characters he must leave out of the novel; the Cook, for example, was left out of the novel, so she creates her own restaurant next to the train station that would take readers to the novel (notice how metafictionally spiraling this book becomes) out of spite, causing many readers to miss their train because they cannot pry themselves away from her delicious foods. Maybegenius, a character thusly named out of MF’s insistence that an author cannot properly write a genius character in his novel if he himself is not a genius in order to provide them with the insight and wit befitting such a status of intelligence, is forever frustrated by his name as the authors own limitations are the limitations imposed upon a consciousness that should be capable of higher levels of thought. The biggest complaint lodged against the authorial creator however, is his inability to give them actual Life. To accurately address this conundrum faced by the characters, MF spends a great many pages scattered throughout the prologues and ‘novel’ to explain his theories of metaphysics and existence. The premises in which the novel is grounded are those that imply that all thought, be them dreams, the imagination or stories and novels, that contain characters (including the author/dreamer which must be a character in their own creation as a Creator character) must take place within their own space. To put it simply, and with my apologies to MF for debasing his abstruse ideas, the ideas in our head have an actual life on some plane of reality; that there is space within abstract space so that the characters we invent truly exist in a lesser form than we do on this plane of reality we create for them. Following this premise, MF argues that we can achieve eternity and defeat death as long as some part of us can still exist in the memories of others and the stories they tell. This is a rather uplifting, positive outlook, and in a way MF has immortalized himself through his book if we the reader are perceiving him as the author character who speaks to us through the book and therefore still exists in the metaphysical space created in our thoughts. Still with me? Once again, sorry for misconstruing a much greater and involved concept, however, this is the existence in which the characters living in La Novela find themselves. We are treated to interesting characters such as The Man Who Feigned To Live, a character that is often mentioned as not being in the novel, but our knowledge of his non-existence is what actually gives him existence. It is then assumed that as long as we have imagination, then we can never not exist, which leads to a further prologue on the nature of non-existence and the difficulties of explaining such concepts as that and ‘nothing’ proceeding along the basis of ‘how can we truly understand ‘nothing’ if thinking of ‘nothing’ produces some thought and is therefore not-nothing’, etc. Some of these concepts are difficult to swallow, and often the reader is sure to disagree and desire an argument. MF, being a good sport, disputes his own ideas (he gives Immanuel Kant his moment in a prologue by briefly pointing out how Kant’s ideas oppose his own) through the characters of Eterna and The Lover, both of whom see death as a finality and that only by entering a state of non-existence can life and love have any meaning. It is often difficult to ascertain MF’s true opinions on his wide barrage of ideas as he often contradicts them in other prologues and writes from multiple author-personas. Occasionally he comes across as arrogant and self-assured, and other times as sad, apologetic and frustrated. An interesting concept that springs from the melancholy of the character due to their lack of actual living, breathing Life, is that by subsequently creating their own stories, they too become a Creator. By telling stories and writing their own novels (they find the notes for the President’s book, which is a metafictional reshaping of the novel the reader currently holds in their hands) they are able to experience ‘the birth pangs’ of life for a brief interval. These ideas lead to exciting discourses on the nature of being a character, which is argued to be different than playing a role as an actor, illustrating how it can be both freeing and frustrating to be under the control of a higher power and the importance of being able to create their own stories as well. These characters are forever trapped within MF’s novel, and he insists that once the novel has ended, they all must die with the finality of ‘reading in the present’. However, they still exist in our memories, and this is his major reason why it is important to create memorable works in order for our characters to live on, and so we too as the reader/author can live on forever in the minds of our own readers. The more of ourselves we give, the more of us there is to live on beyond death, much like how a character grows and becomes more three-dimensional with each passing page adding to the growing ‘past’ of the characters. Each new action creates a sharper image of them and makes them more lifelike, yet they can never remove themselves from the page and walk around with you and I and that is their ultimate, sad fate. While The Museum of Eterna’s Novel can be rather cumbersome and difficult with the wide range of philosophical and psychological inquires that appear in random order throughout the book, as well as having no real plot to latch onto, it is still an enduring work of literature that shatters all preconceived notions of what a novel should be. By addressing what makes a novel, and by consequently not having many of those aspects in the novel at hand, Macedonio explores the possibilities in literature. Despite the thin plot, he manages to create a story that is by turns humorous and tragic, moving and romantic, as he demonstrates his characters abilities. This book is a must-read for any fans of the great Borges, or anyone with a taste for the avant-garde, metafictional or just enjoys exploring the mechanics of a book and the places such techniques can take us. From discussions of love, death, suicide and literary criticism, this novel has something for everyone. This truly is a writer’s tool-box. 5/5 ‘And now I search your portrait for the trace not of your being, but of how you are, because you are however we see you and know you.’ I highly recommend exploring his Wiki page. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 22, 2012
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Nov 12, 2012
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May 07, 2012
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
0375507256
| 9780375507250
| B00A2M3QD4
| 4.01
| 253,898
| Mar 2004
| Aug 17, 2004
|
it was amazing
|
UPDATE: looking back, this was the first “big” review I ever wrote when I first joined goodreads, and from discussing this book I met a lot of my firs
UPDATE: looking back, this was the first “big” review I ever wrote when I first joined goodreads, and from discussing this book I met a lot of my first gr-Friends that I would go on to read a lot of excellent books with. I’ve always had a soft spot for this book and am thankful of it for being what introduced me to this wonderful book community, especially at a time when I had uprooted to a new place and was very lonely. This is a weird little corner of the internet and I love it, thanks to everyone who interacts and makes this such a fun place to be. I appreciate you all. And I appreciate this book. It was one of the first I encountered a bisexual character as a main character and felt very seen, so thank you David Mitchell. And on to the original review: “One may transcend any convention,” writes Mitchell’s 1930’s composer Robert Frobisher, “if only one can first conceive of doing so.” Cloud Atlas, the third novel by English novelist David Mitchell, is the author’s bare-knuckled blow to standard conventions and literature itself. Here you will encounter six stories, linked across time, that, like individual notes of a chord, each resonate together to form a greater message than just the sum of their parts. Using a style inspired by Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler…, which I would highly recommend, and a constantly fluctuating set of language, diction, dialect, and form to flood each individual story with nuance, Mitchell delivers a work that is vastly impressive and imaginative without being impassive as each story takes on a life of its own in a perfect blending of literary musings and exciting page-turning plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat. While explaining this novel to a friend, I labeled it as being “ literary pulp ”. He protested, saying that you can only have one or the other. I agreed with him that this is typically the case, yet I insisted that Cloud Atlas was the exception to this rule. While each individual story has an exciting plot full of unexpected twists, often incorporating a Hollywood action or sci-fi style, Mitchell manages to elevate the novel into a higher realm of literature. Mitchell, who studied English at the University of Kent, receiving a master in Comparative Literature (thanks wiki!), has learned enough tricks of the trade to pull-off this sort of “literary pulp”. Each one of these stories on their own wouldn’t amount to much beyond an exciting read with a few underlying messages, but when he stitches them all together in an elaborate tapestry of time and space, a larger more profound message comes out as the reader will notice overarching themes and a careful reading will reveal a sense of symmetry and repetition between the stories. There is also a sense of an evolution of language, showing past trends progressing into our current speech, and then passing forward where corporate name brands will become the identifier of an object (all cars are called fords, handheld computers are all called sonys, all movies are called disneys), and then even further forward as language begins to disintegrate. The themes of the novel also seem to move in a cyclical pattern, showing repeating itself. As stated earlier, Mitchell was inspired by Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler in which the Reader is exposed to several different novels within the novel, each with a very distinct voice and style, only to be forever thwarted from finishing just as the action rises. Mitchell takes this idea and expands upon it, with each story ending abruptly yet still resonating in the following story, which then leads us to the next and the next until finally we reach the midpoint of the novel. I do not want to spoil too much of this novel, especially his way of each story being a part of the next, but by page 64 you will understand. There will be a paragraph that will drop your jaw and melt your mind as you realize Mitchell has something special here in his method of telescoping stories. Essentially, each major character leaves an account of a crucial storyline of their lives, which in turn is read or viewed later through history by another character during a crucial moment in their lives. An added flair is that many of the characters relate to their current events by comparing it to characters or ideas from previous stories, one character even becoming a deity figure to future generations. At the midpoint, which Mitchell describes as his “mirror”, the novel will then travel back out of the wormhole (or perhaps back in?), revisiting the previous stories in reverse order. There is a good interview with Mitchell in the Washington Post where he explains his methods. Mitchell employs other metafictional techniques, such as having his characters each reflect on the style of the novel as would make sense for their unique world. For example, Frobisher’s masterpiece composition, aptly named Cloud Atlas, is described by Frobisher as being: ”a sextet for overlapping soloists”….each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Mitchell himself calls the style to the table, asking the reader if it is really a revolutionary idea, or if it falls flat as a gimmick. There are many instances where Mitchell inserts a bemused reflection on his own work, wondering if he is actually pulling off the magic trick. Each story visited is as if cracking open the cover of a different book by a different author each time the switch occurs. There is everything from a dusty sailing journal, a hilarious English comedy, a sleek sci-fi thriller and to even an oral account of tribal warfare on the other side of the apocalypse, each with an equally intriguing cast of characters (fans of Mitchell will recognize some of them as they appear in other novels, most notably Ghostwritten which includes Luisa Rey, Cavendish and Ayr’s daughter). Mitchell does his homework and spent plenty of time researching each story to make sure the history, setting and language would all be realistic. As all but the spy-thriller story of Luisa Rey are told in first person, Mitchell has his work cut out for him to craft a unique voice for each narrator. And he pulls it off brilliantly. This attention to detail and nuance is what really sold me on Cloud Atlas. To go from Cavendish’s comical voice filled with English slang (and some hilarious instances of cockney and Scottish diction) to an oral language that shows the deterioration of speech two stories later is impressive. My personal favorite was the loquacious letters of Robert Frobisher, as Mitchell wrote this Nietzsche loving composer with the urgency and depravity of a frantic, brilliant mind that recalls characters such as Dostoevsky’s underground man or Hamsun’s narrator in Hunger. Mitchell toys with his knowledge of literature, molding each story from the recipes of classic literature. Adam Ewing is clearly a product of Melville, Cavendish’s plight echoes Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Sonmi-451 will bring to mind Brave New World or Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep? Zachary’s islander tale uses a form of sight language drawing on the oral tradition of storytelling which reflects the traditional African American stories such as the Uncle Julius tales or Equiano’s slave narratives where much emphasis is placed on the passing on of stories about ancestors. There are even small events that trigger a memory of classic works; Frobisher is passenger in a car that runs down a pheasant which is described in a way that would remind one of a certain accident involving a yellow car at the tail end of a Fitzgerald novel. He even takes a jab at Ayn Rand in the Luisa Rey story. Mitchell seems to intentionally build this novel from other novels, and highlights this to the reader most openly through Timothy Cavendish and Robert Frobisher. “You’ll find that all composure draw inspiration from their environments” Ayrs tells R.F. in one of the many passages where Mitchell talks both about his storyline, but also about the novel itself. This honing of metafictional abilities is one of his greatest strengths and the second half of the novel is full of passages that speak on many different levels. Mitchell takes no shame in “drawing inspiration” from his literary predecessors, much as each subsequent character draws on the inspiration of the past characters. He uses this as opportunities to shamelessly quote, allude, and incorporate the ideas of other writers. Nietzsche’s concept of the Will to Power and Hegel’s theories on history make up some of the strongest themes within the novel, and he gives credit where credit is due. While allusions are used for thematic reasons, some are more deeply hidden, sometimes in plain sights as Nabokov titles are used frequently, and occasionally he simply alludes to authors of each stories present time (Luisa Rey's boss was mugged after having lunch with Norman Mailer) to make them feel more rooted to the literary culture of the time much as he does with the language and descriptions. He even pokes fun at the reader a bit, acknowledging that the casual reader will not be able to pick up on these allusions, speaking through Cavendish: ”I could say things to her like ‘The most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy is a liquid’ and, safe in her ignorance of J.D. Salinger, I felt witty, charming, and yes, even youthful”. He may be using ‘youthful’ as a way of saying that he must come across as fresh and exciting and inventive, which is ironic since he openly admits to borrowing the whole novels concept from Calvino. Mitchell appreciates and rewards the well-read reader with many of these subtle ironic jokes which are sprinkled all through-out the novel. He leaves so many little gems for a reader to find if they only take the time to read in between the lines and pay close attention. One might notice how several different characters “fumigate” a foul smelling room with a cigarette, or how diamonds seem to play an important role, or which characters seem repeated throughout history beyond the main character. Bill Smoke (pure evil) and Joe Napier (an ally) seem to pop up in some form in every story. I have noticed at least four other souls that seem to migrate through time in this novel. Like a healthy, well-balanced sense of self, Mitchell seems to be aware of his weaknesses as a writer and actually uses them to his advantage, making his weaknesses some of his biggest strengths. It is clear, as the point has by now been driven into the ground, that Mitchell has aims to be taken seriously as a writer of literature, but his plots are such rapid-fire excitement with twists and turns and high climactic conclusions that he felt it necessary to be as literary as possible in all other aspects. He compensates for any other shortcomings in a similar fashion. One of the ways the characters are linked together across time (read it yourself if you want to know!) made me groan the first time I read it. Mitchell accepts that it is a corny technique and has a character flat out dismiss it as ”far too hippie-druggy-new age” and as something that should be taken out entirely. I got a kick out of this and instantly forgave Mitchell for not being subtle enough with this technique of linking characters. There are several other moments when characters question the validity of other characters, often due to the same reasons a reader would criticize Mitchell. This ability to poke fun at himself and openly address his own shortcomings gave me a far greater respect for him. He accepts that his ideas are not entirely original and counters anyone who might complain it has all been done before. Cavendish speaks for Mitchell with ”as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber. As if Art is the What, not the How! ” He wants to direct your attention to his form and writing, not just his plot and originality. He repeatedly bashes critics and the masses, essentially stating that if you don’t get this novel, then you’re not smart enough to deserve to read his work. It made me laugh. With all his cleverness and metafictional genius, Mitchell does have a few flaws that should be addressed. The main one being subtlety. He does apologize for it and poke fun at himself, but some of the major themes in this novel did not need to be called out directly. They were easily detectable in between the lines, yet Mitchell has each main character spell them out in dialogue. He seems to want to reward the clever reader, yet at times pauses and hits you over the head as if he doesn’t think you can understand. It worked since he had each character do it, applying the message of The Will to Power and the strong killing the weak to each characters situation to create a sense of symmetry, but it was ultimately superfluous, but this being my only real criticism, Mitchell isn't doing too bad. The issue of subtlety is where Calvino gets an upper hand on Mitchell, as his novel was a bit more controlled in its message and layering of meanings. Cloud Atlas is a bit more accessible than If on a winter's... but the latter is a slightly superior work in my opinion. Both novels should enter your "to read list" however. All in all, this novel is a brilliant puzzle filled with exciting characters, entertaining dialogue, and throws enough loops to keep you guessing. You will find it very difficult to put this novel down. Mitchell achieves his goal of transcending conventions and addressing the broad scope of humanity and is at times bitter, funny, frightening, paranoid, and downright tragic. Cloud Atlas is a must read, and although much of it may come across as “been there, read that”, he still keeps it fresh and unique. Plus this novel really rewards a careful reading and a bit of researching, as many of the jokes will be lost on those who don’t have a good grounding in the classics. Make sure to have a pen handy, as there are plenty of mesmerizing quotes to return to and ponder, especially in the second half of the novel. David Mitchell is most definitely an author to be read and admired.”Anticipating the end of the world is humanity’s oldest pastime” writes Frobisher, and this novel envisions a plausible, horrific future that doesn’t seem all that much different than the past. Mitchell gives us this novel as a warning, and I do hope we take it to heart. I wish this novel had credits like at the end of the film just so Reckoner by Radiohead could blast my eardrums as final lines sunk in. It would be perfect. 5/5 ...more |
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0156032112
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| 4.07
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| Nov 13, 2006
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it was ok
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In the Cohen’s film Barton Fink, Barton (John Turturro) says he believes “that writing comes from a great inner pain.” Plascencia seems to also subscr
In the Cohen’s film Barton Fink, Barton (John Turturro) says he believes “that writing comes from a great inner pain.” Plascencia seems to also subscribe to this belief In The People of Paper, as the “great inner pain” felt by the author and all his creations is the impetus for their lives and actions. This novel pushes metafiction to new boundaries and does really unique things with form, however, the novel does have its share of pitfalls as Plascencia’s obsession with the “inner pain” begins to chafe on the reader after so long. The Good The story of The People of Paper follows Federico, his daughter and EMF, a Mexican gang of carnation pickers, as they wage war on Saturn for spying on their every move. As the story unfolds, countless strange characters pop up, from a women made of paper who sleeps around, a baby Nostradamus who sees all, and lead turtles just to name a few. Saying anything more about the plot, even the smallest detail, would give too much away as this novel employs a highly creative story and it would be a shame to ruin it. There really are a lot of good things going for this novel, as Plascencia wields some rather innovative tricks, literally cutting names out of the pages (actual holes where names should be), blackening out hidden thoughts, and allowing the author and characters to comingle with each other in a way that was very fresh and new to me. It was similar to O’Brian’s At Swim Two Birds, but taken to the next level with Plascencia actually being rebelled against by his own characters. Also, the form of the book changes with many chapters having Saturn’s part in one column on the left page while two different characters have the story told from their perspective in two separate columns on the right page. Pretty cool, eh? He also uses this technique wisely, using varying perspectives to gain further insight into situations and having the reader observe events in a jumbled fashion, often learning the end of an event before the beginning of it, while making sure not to let different perspectives overlap over the same anecdote. The book reads as highly surreal and magical, and the final scene is exciting and fascinating. All in all, this book is expertly written and thankfully the gimmick does not tire or wear too thin. The (overwhelming) Bad Plascencia tries his best to dazzle you with all his metafictional finery because the actual substance of his work is where the magic of the book really begins waning. As stated earlier, the inner pain felt by all the characters, and Plascencia himself, is what drives this novel. In its opening chapter, he crafts a quirky little metaphor of the book, showing art being brought about from pain and loss. Basically, a death drives a young boy to create magnificent art that literally takes on a life of its own, akin to Plascencia’s own goal with The People of Paper. The novel then takes the reader down rough winding roads of break-up stories and heartbreaks, one after the other repetitively to the point of obnoxious, showing how love cuts deep and drives us to commit many strange and depraved acts just to rid ourselves of its heavy burden. It reminded me of that friend at the end of high school who had a savage break-up and it was all fine to hear them out and console them and support them, but as time went on and they didn’t pick themselves up and move on, instead spinning the same forlornly tirade over and over, it begins to be irritating. That’s how this novel comes across after awhile; you may find yourself wanting to shake Plascencia by the neck and tell him to ‘get over it’ because you don’t need to hear about how sad his unnamed girlfriend leaving him makes him. Every character is a sack of tears slogging across the desert trying to free themselves from their inner pain, and maybe it’s just that I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t bemoan past heartache, but it really detracted from the book for me. Also, Plascencia finds it imperative to tell you about how his new girlfriend, who is more of a person to sex the pain of his ex away with, has a massive bush. He brings it up constantly. All these supposed ‘negatives’ I have brought up all do have their place in the novel and are part of what makes it good, but there is just a bit too much of it. The book left me wanting in a few other ways as well since this is a very surface novel. There is not much lying in wait beneath the words to be untapped and I felt there was so much emphasis on the flair of the book that the subtleties and depth was greatly sacrificed. This novel could have benefited from more editing and polishing, but it is important to keep in mind that this book is very experimental, so when parts don't seem to run smoothly or things fall apart slightly to give him some credit for being original. Verdict With this novel, you must take the good with the bad. There really are a lot of good aspects, from the stunning metafictional plot, the unique forms, and outrageous cast, but the novel never really rises out from the pit of love's despair. There is hope, but there is a near endless trail of incessant wailing to get there. If you are at a point in your life where it feels good to embrace heartache, and admittedly we all go through this phase, then this book is a perfect choice for you. Had I read this a few years ago it probably would have made a larger impact on me. It should also be noted that if you pick this up, try and find the hardcover published by McSweeny’s as it is a masterpiece of art on its own. This book is worth getting through for its metafictional form, but I would suggest At Swim Two Birds or, of course, Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler… as more fruitful options. While some may argue good writing comes from this “inner pain”, it should be noted that the William Faulkner-based character of the film Barton Fink responds to this statement by laughing in his face, relieving himself on the ground, and sauntering off down the road singing drunkenly. I do not wish to draw any conclusion from that myself, so take that as you will. 2.5/5 ...more |
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Jul 2011
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3.86
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| Aug 17, 1998
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really liked it
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006091307X
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| 3.69
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| Nov 07, 2006
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really liked it
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Y’all like paranoia?
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Jan 2011
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Sep 24, 2011
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0140286802
| 9780140286809
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| 4.56
| 24,370
| Sep 01, 1998
| Sep 30, 1999
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it was amazing
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Do yourself a massive favor and read Borges. He can deliver more plot and twists in 2-5 pages than many authors do in 300. Every page will blow your m
Do yourself a massive favor and read Borges. He can deliver more plot and twists in 2-5 pages than many authors do in 300. Every page will blow your mind as you loose yourself in the brilliant labyrinth of his words. Read it. Now.
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9780088619451
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| 101,452
| Jun 02, 1979
| Oct 20, 1982
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it was amazing
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You are about to begin reading s.penkevich’s new review of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. As you sit down with your coffee in han
You are about to begin reading s.penkevich’s new review of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. As you sit down with your coffee in hand and open the review into its own window, the library phone rings. As the phone’s second faux-metallic trilling jabs into your vaguely hanging-on hangover you realize, yes, your job duties require you to forego reading and answer said phone. There are no other staff members available to answer the phone. Or there are simply no other staff members who intend to answer the phone. Perhaps another staff member is about to read s.penkevich’s new review of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, though this seems unlikely and perhaps they are about to read a far more engaging review of a novel about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog or an article on structural semiology. Whatever the case may be, decidedly, you must answer the phone. Yes, this is the library and all the pleasantries while unfortunately I do need your card number to access that information leading to a freshly placed hold on Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller as translated from the Italian by William Weaver. What great luck as this is precisely the novel you were hoping to read about yet, horror upon horrors, the small gap on the shelf you assumed had recently housed a now checked out copy of Invisible Cities does not border the novel you were looking for. Is this vacant space taunting you with a mystery of a missing novel? You return to your desk and open the catalog and being to read: “AS you are reading the card catalog description of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller—which cites it's influence on Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell who referred to the book as 'breathtakingly inventive,' but 'only breathtakingly inventive once'—you begin to notice a person standing beside you glancing over your shoulder. “Sorry,” they start in a voice that is not your voice, “but you appear to be sitting at my desk?” The statement hangs in the air with the hook of a question ready to snare your answer yet you cannot fumble out any words to snag their bait in turn. You are looking at the person who is not you but is wearing your favorite shirt that by all reasonable logic is not your favorite shit and, funnily enough, also your pants, the ones with the slight stain slightly south of the right pocket though—surely—these are not your stained pants cuffed above your weary red shoes that cannot actually be your shoes because your shoes should be on your feet. You look into the face that is, for a fact, not your face and start with an apology before the person who is you but is not you asks that, since you are here, could you at least attempt to decipher the email they have received. Do I sound so nasally and scattered you wonder yet push the concern aside when you notice the aforementioned email is querying for a review about how the works of Vladimir Nabokov inspired Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. Yes, dear reader, THE book you were looking for and also the book that the review you have been hankering to read—s.penkevich’s new review—is centered upon. You click the email and begin to read: “THERE is a man with a gun stationed just outside the window, half hidden behind an old pine covered in snow. You cannot make out much of the man, just a scowl that gleams the same as the gun barrel reflecting from the library window. Perhaps he has not seen you, and this seems to be the case as you slowly back away without him giving any indication of having seen your retreat. What rough beast slouches towards the library and for what purpose? You’ve made enemies on twitter, sure, but this seems a touch extreme even for the click mongers. In this economy, you ponder, your student loans might inspire such flashy collection action and you have been casually dodging Facebook requests for your upcoming class reunion so who can be sure. “Dead or alive” class reunion 2025? You scramble to the parking lot full of unclear guilt over unclear crimes it isn’t clear whether you committed or imagined and throw open the door of your car where, to your surprise, a bag of money rests in the passenger seat. Not just an ordinary bag, but a bag that may as well have been a Hollywood prop, a perfectly clean bag conveniently opened just enough to see rows and rows of orderly stacks of $100 bills. “You thought you’d pull a fast one,” a voice snarls to your left like it’s seen too many James Cagney flicks and likes to entertain oneself in front of a mirror, fedora in tow. You turn to meet the death-side of a gun but, as you turn, your feet slip upon a small patch of ice neither you nor your assailant had realized was lurking. You slip, taking out his right leg and as you both tumble you reach out and grab his arm in hopes of stabilizing yourself. The gun falls to the pavement and lets out a sharp crack as the man slumps over into a growing ooze of red. You’ll sort out the moral distance from this act later over a Margarita because tough times call for something fruity and fun. Not unlike your cat-print button up that is now sprayed in gore. Looking around to see if there is anyone else about, you realize your car had been parked in the exact location of the library camera blind spot. You belt into the car—safety first—and leave in a way one would hope a film version would include stray $100 bills rippling out your open window to settle upon the road amidst the freshly falling snow. No bills fly out, a pity, yet your eye catches upon a non fiscal object haphazardly placed inside the orderly bag. You pull it out to discover it is a manuscript titled “s.penkevich’s new review of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller.” Smudging the manuscript with blood soaked fingers, you open and read: “THE library backup alarm rings on your hip and you dutifully dash to the information desk where an elderly man awaits holding a tablet with the care one would a sacred relic. It indeed appears to be from a time now lost to historical record, or at least a warranty record. Hoopla or Libby, he isn’t sure which, but knows he wants it. Unfortunately the device has not been updated to the a recent enough OS and, wouldn’t you know, it is also so out of date it cannot load the launch page to update the system. You click around and to your surprise a document opens. It is titled: s.penkevich’s new review of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. You scroll down and begin to read: “THE hour timer chortles and you head back to your desk, passing the New Releases shelf. Staring you in the face is a new copy of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, recently purchased and placed amongst the other books despite not being coded in the system for such a placement. You eagerly grab it and race to fulfill the patron hold when you notice the cover bears a shiny gold foil sticker with tiny words written in a regrettable font choice that isn’t Comic Sans but isn’t NOT Comic Sans and reads: Updated with an afterword containing s.penkevich’s new review of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. You open to the afterword and begin to read… ...more |
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