I got to the end (again) and said to myself, 'Okay, have I read this novel now? Am I done with this novel?'
And I can't answer myself.
More than any oI got to the end (again) and said to myself, 'Okay, have I read this novel now? Am I done with this novel?'
And I can't answer myself.
More than any other novel (possible exceptions: the novels of Volodine and Can Xue), the reading experience I had was like being at a concert, listening to a live performance. It is a contemporary piece of classical music. I'm hearing it for the first time. Sometimes the music grips me. Sometimes I hear repeating themes that I can grab onto and derive meaning from. But there are also intervals where I'm passively listening, and a little zoned out, having my own thoughts that may or may not be inspired by the music coming through my ears. And in the end I've had an artistic experience that swirls inside me and leaves me feeling deeply satisfied, but the experience I had may not be the experience anyone else had, and the experience was not one I could derive definitive semantic meanings from. It was not to be pinned down by words, or summarized in a synopsis, any more than music can be summarized or described as having certain definitive 'meanings.'
I enjoyed it most when I found a sweet spot where I was paying rapt attention to the words, and at the same time was allowing myself to free-associate with their meanings. I even gave myself permission to make up my own meanings, as I wished.
For instance. There is an un-openable box in this novel, and it is very small and nondescript, but, hey, what is inside? Everyone wants to know. It plagues people. They need to know but they can't figure out how to open this box. And this box seemed to fit exactly with how I was plagued to find meaning in the novel, in the words I was reading. I wanted to know exactly what these words were meant to mean. What the heck. I couldn't figure it out because the stories kept leaping and darting forth and then hiding themselves in the grass.
And then I remembered how often I personally imagine words themselves as "boxes." Words-as-boxes fascinates me. Often I find myself thinking about how each word really is just a sound or a string of scribbles, and yet we humans think of words as a kind of container (or box) for a thing we call "meaning," and how weird is that? The way we count on these word-boxes to hold a meaning inside themselves, as they pass from one human ear to the next? It's remarkable. It's not like we can open a word up and see MEANING inside there.
But was I supposed to have had this thought as I read this novel?
Who knows.
The novel travels swiftly along from one vivid scene to the next--but then upends itself, or shifts in a radical way. It was challenging and I loved it but I can't tell you what it was meant to mean. In this review I've used music as a metaphor for my reading experience, but I could just as well have said it was like abstract art. Like a Pollock painting. Beautiful, enigmatic. Whether this work is a messy accident, or completely controlled in its effect, might be a matter for debate. The point is, I never felt guided toward a certain conclusion. I was invited in, to make my own judgments. And that was a wonderful thing.
After I open the book I just need to accept that I'm in Brian Evenson's world now and he will not be held accountable for changing the rules in whatevAfter I open the book I just need to accept that I'm in Brian Evenson's world now and he will not be held accountable for changing the rules in whatever way he likes--the rules of storytelling, the rules of physics, the rules of decorum. In Brian Evenson's fictional world I'm always crawling helplessly along the liminal border between the realistic and the terrifying. You might even say that I'm a snail, crawling along the edge of a straight razor. This is my dream; this is my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving. ...more
This week I ended up reading Lucia by Alex Pheby while listening to the audiobook of Milkman. It was quite a punch to the literary gut. Both these booThis week I ended up reading Lucia by Alex Pheby while listening to the audiobook of Milkman. It was quite a punch to the literary gut. Both these books accurately and relentlessly (and, somehow, beautifully, which makes them each disturbing on a whole other level) portray how sexual abuse and predation fit so easily into what seems to be normal life on the surface.
The writing style here--an elliptical returning to a very similar sentence, for instance, with a different verb substituted, plus a very repetitive rhythm in sentence structure--seems to reinforce the actual sense of the story, and to reinforce the situation of a much older woman trying to review and understand her memory of being stalked as a child. The style reinforces for me the idea of a woman trying to pin down a very elliptical and emotionally fraught truth about her past.
But there is so much more to this story. It's also a story about way that the violence of "the troubles" has become so frequent that it has become casually accepted, as part of everyday life. People are walking around in fear for their lives, and also in fear one another, and in fear anything or anyone that deviates from absolutely normal, and it's just the way it is. How one young girl navigates her world is something to behold--because most astonishingly of all this is a book of hope. It's a book about joy. It's a book about how love wins in the end, even if the victories are sometimes tragic....more
Every other Everett novel has been a 5 star memorably great read for me, but this one was a miss. The narrator struck me as self-indulgent rather thanEvery other Everett novel has been a 5 star memorably great read for me, but this one was a miss. The narrator struck me as self-indulgent rather than sincere.
The novel is written as an interwoven story of three time frames in the narrator's life, titled "Paris," "House," and "1979."
I flat-out disliked the "Paris" chapters. I had a general cranky attitude about the story of this man skanking about with a much younger woman behind his wife's back--perhaps it's a sign of current events that I couldn't just be ok with that story line and it didn't seem to offer any new insights about extramarital relationships. It seemed cliche'.
I also thought the "House" sections were a little too standard with the portrayal of parent vs. teenager dynamics being quite average even if Everett is an excellent prose stylist. Not Everett's best.
I liked the "1979" chapters best, but they read more like chapters of a T.C. Boyle novel than an Everett novel. Boyle is a terrific writer, but in his stories everything gets sewn up too neatly for my tastes. That's how the "1979" story line felt to me. Everything got resolved very neatly, rather than getting resolved profoundly...and "profoundly" is the level of storytelling I've come to expect from Everett.
So however readable the story fell well below the terrific standard I've come to expect from this author....more
A challenging read in the best sense, where Sharif appropriates the odd language and definitions from a DOD military dictionary, taking these utterly A challenging read in the best sense, where Sharif appropriates the odd language and definitions from a DOD military dictionary, taking these utterly empty bureaucratic terms and interleaving them with stark images of violence and war. The emotional impact of these poems is deadened by the DOD terms, and then brought to shocking, contrasting life by the original language and images in other parts of the poems. The effect on me as a reader was one of disintegration and loss. I was left with an awareness that language itself has become deranged and cheapened--you see the cheapening directly in the ridiculously formal, empty military terms, but also you reach an understanding of how continuous violence deadens the reaction to any one atrocity, and where words describing any one atrocity lose their emotive power. There is a lack of faith in words to mean anything, in these poems. The poems feel like shattered pieces of meanings strewn about for me to pick up.
The collection also reminded me a little bit of Kathy Acker's fiction. Not in subject matter or even tone but rather, for its cynical, almost nihilistic take on the power of language to mean anything, to say anything. It's quite a feat to pull of an emotionally wrenching work of language while simultaneously doubting the force of language.
The collection resonated with me all the more because I have been thinking a lot about the hollowing-out of language during this US election year, where sometimes the rhetoric I hear from speeches and rallies reminds me of the 1984 gem:
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” ...more
I loved the character of Crow. There were amazing flashes of goodness throughout, and flashes of "maybe that is what it is like for some people" to exI loved the character of Crow. There were amazing flashes of goodness throughout, and flashes of "maybe that is what it is like for some people" to experience grief. I'm a little undone by the sense that it's too cute and too sparse for my taste, for it to be quite as meaningful as it is to other people. I need more doom 'n gloom with my grief. A little more lacrimosa with the whimsy and the feathers....more
It's like a miniature painting, meticulous in detail, if small in scope. One Out of Two starts out in a light-hearted way and so the ending was a littIt's like a miniature painting, meticulous in detail, if small in scope. One Out of Two starts out in a light-hearted way and so the ending was a little more heartbreaking than I expected it to be. The sisters Constitución and Gloria make choices, together and individually, that force them to give up one kind of love for the sake of another. It's a lovely story....more
this book cracked me open like a walnut. One of those messy walnuts where the nut ends up shattered to pieces in your hand. While reading I was frequethis book cracked me open like a walnut. One of those messy walnuts where the nut ends up shattered to pieces in your hand. While reading I was frequently on a vertiginous edge close to weeping, not really from any feeling with a name, just from all the feeling that was going on as I read. Part of it was a feeling of recognition. A feeling that comes from having a very long conversation with someone who expresses what you thought were your most private thoughts, who puts into words what didn't have words before. Like the feeling of falling in love, the vulnerability of it.
Nelson writes about the power of words, their power to define, their power to set limits on a thought, their power to constrain and diminish. Take "queer," for instance. Is it a kind of liberation to call my family "queer" or does it put us in a box that conforms to what others suppose it means? Does it mean something different if I call us a queer family in private, vs. when speaking with others? Or take the term "same-sex marriage;" the limitations of that utterance are fully explored here, in such interesting ways, as when Nelson writes: "Whatever sameness I've noted in my relationships with women is not the sameness of Woman, and certainly not the sameness of parts. Rather, it is the shared, crushing understanding of what it means to live in a patriarchy." If all Nelson did was remind me of the flimsy trickiness of words, of their power to obscure as much as they enlighten, then this would be a tremendous book. She does so much more....more
I enjoyed every story in the collection. A mix of themes, stories of journeys that may or may not involve spiritual elements, of families in conflict,I enjoyed every story in the collection. A mix of themes, stories of journeys that may or may not involve spiritual elements, of families in conflict, or of a test of some kind; all set in a harsh and beautiful landscape. The stories seem to both begin and to end mid-stream, and yet, to be entirely whole, exactly right.
One aspect about this collection that I really love is the way each story merges the physical world with the spiritual world in an unexpected way. The tone of the stories never wavers from the concrete, and yet miraculous things occur in the minds of the protagonists. Even life and death feel like two sides of the same river where you can cross back and forth with relative ease and without fear. "A High Lake" is a story where this easy travel from life to death and back again happens quite overtly, and where it is central to the story theme, and it was my favorite story. But there is the same, true kind of magic in each one of these stories....more
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