Lutz Seiler’s Star 111 (Book acquired, early Sept. 2024)

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I have a big pile of books recently acquired that I haven’t made enough time to attend to; the most recent of these is Lutz Seiler’s Star 111, forthcoming in English translation by Tess Lewis from NYRB. Here’s their blurb:

Star 111 (the name of a popular East German transistor radio) begins with the world turned upside down. It is the fall of 1989. The communist government of the GDR is losing its grip on power. Carl Bischoff, a very young man, trained as a bricklayer, now a college student, is abruptly recalled by his parents to the small town in the middle of nowhere where he grew up. His hardworking unprotesting parents inform him, that with the border open, they intend to leave the country and check into a West German refugee camp. Will Carl to look after the house and take in the mail? They promise at some point to be in touch.

Deserted by his parents, Carl has no idea what to do. Then he packs the family car and heads to Berlin, where he joins a group of squatters led by a shepherd with a goat. Carl participates in the anarchic life of an anarchist commune, and keeps his distance too. He has all sorts of things to learn about himself and others. He is hungry for sex and love and sometimes simply hungry. He worries about his parents. He wants to be a poet.

Star 111 is a story about unforeseen ends and new beginnings, about different kinds of families, biological and improvised, and one innocent young aspiring poet in pursuit of experience at a moment in history when everything is about to change and nobody knows how. A tender, entrancing, and comic tale of youth and adventure, it is a book that looks back on the history of our time to ask the most fundamental of questions: what does it mean to lead a good life?

 

Just asking | David Foster Wallace

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“Just Asking”

by

David Foster Wallace

First published in The Atlantic, 2007

Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea* one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?* In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?

In the absence of such a conversation, can we trust our elected leaders to value and protect the American idea as they act to secure the homeland? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Patriot Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property safer—are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don’t even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?

FOOTNOTES:
1. Given the strict Gramm-Rudmanewque space limit here, let’s just please all agree that we generally know what this term connotes—an open society, consent of the governed, enumerated powers, Federalist 10, pluralism, due process, transparency … the whole democratic roil.

2. (This phrase is Lincoln’s, more or less)

The Scalphunters | An excerpt from an early draft of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

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The Spring 1980 issue of Northwestern University’s literary journal TriQuarterly included an early version of a chapter from Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian. The TriQuarterly excerpt, published as “The Scalphunters,” is essentially Ch. XII of the finished 1985 Random House publication of Blood Meridian with some minor differences.

Consider, for example, the following paragraph–the seventh paragraph in “The Scalphunters” —

When the company set forth in the evening they continued south as before. The tracks of the murderers bore on to the west but they were white men who preyed on travelers in that wilderness and disguised their work in this way. The trail of the argonauts of course went no further than the ashes they left behind and the intersection of these vectors seemed the work of a cynical god, the traces converging blindly in that whited void and the one going on bearing away the souls of the others with them.

McCarthy significantly expands the passage in his final revision, underscoring Blood Meridian’s theme of witnessing:

When the company set forth in the evening they continued south as before. The tracks of the murderers bore on to the west but they were white men who preyed on travelers in that wilderness and disguised their work to be that of the savages. Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings. The trail of the argonauts terminated in ashes as told and in the convergence of such vectors in such a waste wherein the hearts and enterprise of one small nation have been swallowed up and carried off by another the expriest asked if some might not see the hand of a cynical god conducting with what austerity and what mock surprise so lethal a congruence. The posting of witnesses by a third and other path altogether might also be called in evidence as appearing to beggar chance, yet the judge, who had put his horse forward until he was abreast of the speculants, said that in this was expressed the very nature of the witness and that his proximity was no third thing but rather the prime, for what could be said to occur unobserved?

Perhaps the most jarring difference though is that in “The Scalphunters” McCarthy refers to his erstwhile protagonist not as the kid but as the boy. Here’s a longish passage from The TriQuarterly edit to give you a taste of that flavor:

Brown let the belt fall from his teeth. Is it through? he said.

It is.

The point? Is it the point? Speak up, man.

The boy drew his knife and cut away the bloody point deftly and handed it up. Brown held it to the firelight and smiled. The point was of hammered copper and it was cocked in its blood-soaked bindings on the shaft but it had held.

Stout lad, ye’ll make a shadetree sawbones yet. Now draw her.

The boy withdrew the shaft from the man’s leg smoothly and the man bowed on the ground in a lurid female motion and wheezed raggedly through his teeth. He lay there a moment and then he sat up and took the shaft from the boy and threw it in the fire and rose and went off to make his bed.

When the boy returned to his own blanket the ex-priest Tobin leaned to him and looked about stealthily and hissed at his ear.

Fool, he said. God will not love ye forever.

The boy turned to look at him.

Dont you know he’d of took you with him? He’d of took you, boy. Like a bride to the altar.

Read “The Scalphunters” here.

“The Darlette” — Henri Michaux

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“The Darlette”

by

Henri Michaux

translated by Richard Ellmann

The Darelette is found in dry and sandy terrain. It is not a plant but an agile beast, corseted and boned unlike any insect, fat as a rat and long as one, if the tail is included.

If a man jumps on her last segment (there are three), it may well break if the animal has not arrived at adult age.

Since the inside, under walls as thick as a little finger, does not contain any essential organs, the wounded beast continues her walk with her abdomen pounded to jelly and her walls breached. She is a beast who fears no one, eats snakes, and goes to suck the udders of cows which do not dare move.

The ditch spider makes war on her successfully; it winds around her, overwhelms her with threads; as soon as she is paralyzed, it pumps her out completely through the ears.

Her rosy ears and her eyes and her internal organs are the only tender parts of her body.

It pumps her out completely through the ears.

Mass-market Monday | Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker

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Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon. Penguin Books (1973). Cover desgin by David Pelham. 268 pages.

Here is the first paragraph of Star Maker:

ONE night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill. Dark heather checked my feet. Below marched the suburban lamps. Windows, their curtains drawn, were shut eyes, inwardly watching the lives of dreams. Beyond the sea’s level darkness a lighthouse pulsed. Overhead, obscurity. I distinguished our own house, our islet in the tumultuous and bitter currents of the world. There, for a decade and a half, we two, so different in quality, had grown in and in to one another, for mutual support and nourishment, in intricate symbiosis. There daily we planned our several undertakings, and recounted the day’s oddities and vexations. There letters piled up to be answered, socks to be darned. There the children were born, those sudden new lives. There, under that roof, our own two lives, recalcitrant sometimes to one another, were all the while thankfully one, one larger, more conscious life than either alone.

More David Pelham covers here.

Baquiné — Marcos Irizarry

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Baquiné, 1967 by Marcos Irizarry (1936–1995)

Portrait of Kafka — Adolph Hachmeister

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Portrait of Kafka, c. 1967 by Adolph Hachmeister

“In the Woods,” a very short story by Ron Loewinsohn

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“In the Woods” by Ron Loewinsohn
The woodsman plods up the hill with his axe on his shoulder. He works for a lumber company and never sees the man who signs his checks, but his knowledge of the trees he euts down is their smells in the air become suddenly dusty around him, the squirrels and small birds who live in their branches, the squeak his axe makes as he pulls it out of the tree, the feel of his shoulders and arms as he swings, with his feet planted firmly and widely. This morning he saw the lovers lying on a bed of moss in the clearing behind him, but he didn’t stop. They were fully clothed and as they slept he saw the naked sward between them rusted to a sliver. They have been there forever, he knew, tho he’d never seen them before, with the light coming down thru the branches playing on them there as if they slept at the bottom of a lake. He will think of them once or twice as he climbs into the truck with the others, or just before he lifts a french fry to his mouth. Then someone will speak to him and he’ll answer with his mouth full, while we are haunted by the image, the two bodies filled with repose like a lake in the mountains. The two young people with perfect features fill our dreams, fill them to overflowing, even before we reach sleep, plodding toward it, shaking our heads on the pillow, reaching out to the watch, running our fingers thru our hair again, and hearing in the darkness the sound of our swallowing. And they the two lovers asleep on the mossy bank—what do they dream of? They dream of us. Their dreams are haunted by us straining our eyes in the dim light, our stomachs knotted with anxiety, spilling the drink and wiping it up, sweating and reaching for the branch, feeling the bark and smelling the sap, wanting each other in the empty room and letting our face fall into our hands, aching and hanging on. They dream of the woodsman, the actual woodsman and the dust be raises.  

Moebius’s cover illustration for Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano

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Cover illustration for the French translation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano, 1975 by Moebius (Jean Giraud, 1938–2012)

Nude with Book — Zinaida Serebriakova

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Nude with Book, 1940 by Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967)

Mass-market Monday | John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle

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In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck. Penguin Books (1979). Cover design by Neil Stuart. 313 pages.

John Steinbeck’s underrated and under-read novel In Dubious Battle seems like a good Labor Day mass-market pick. Perhaps Steinbeck’s most radical novel, In Dubious Battle details the fight for better working conditions during the Great Depression in California’s fruit orchards. The hero is young Jim Nolan who joins a labor strike organized by the Communist Party (one of the Party’s officials is named Harry Nilson). Jim is taken under the wing of the veteran organizer Mac McLeod; the pair drive a plot that focuses on the sometimes violent conflict between the workers and the landowners, who use the police and hired thugs to attempt to break the strike. Steinbeck, as is often the case with his serious novels, caps In Dubious Battle with a devastating conclusion, the final line a howl that does not end, its dash carrying the battle into the future, our own future: “Comrades! He didn’t want nothing for himself—“

And Life Anew — Rita Kernn-Larsen

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And Life Anew, 1940 by Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904-1998)

“Wife in Reverse,” a very short story by Stephen Dixon

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“Wife in Reverse”

by

Stephen Dixon

 His wife dies, mouth slightly parted and one eye open. He knocks on his younger daughter’s bedroom door and says “You better come. Mom seems to be expiring.” His wife slips into a coma three days after she comes home and stays in it for eleven days. They have a little party second day she’s home: Nova Scotia salmon, chocolates, a risotto he made, brie cheese, strawberries, champagne. An ambulette brings his wife home. She says to him “Wheel me around the garden before I go to bed for the last time.” His wife refuses the feeding tube the doctors want to put in her and insists she wants to die at home. She says “I don’t want any more life support, medicines, fluid or food.” He calls 911 for the fourth time in two years and tells the dispatcher “My wife; I’m sure she has pneumonia again.” His wife has a trach put in. “When will it come out?” she says, and the doctor says “To be honest? Never.” “Your wife has a very bad case of pneumonia,” the doctor in ICU tells him and his daughters the first time, “and has a one to two percent chance of surviving.” His wife now uses a wheelchair. His wife now uses a motor cart. His wife now uses a walker with wheels. His wife now uses a walker. His wife has to use a cane. His wife’s diagnosed with MS. His wife has trouble walking. His wife gives birth to their second daughter. “This time you didn’t cry,” she says, and he says “I’m just as happy, though.” His wife says to him “Something seems wrong with my eyes.” His wife gives birth to their daughter. The obstetrician says “I’ve never seen a father cry in the birthing room.” The rabbi pronounces them husband and wife, and just before he kisses her, he bursts out crying. “Let’s get married,” he says to her, and she says “It’s all right with me,” and he says “It is?” and starts crying. “What a reaction,” she says, and he says “I’m so happy, so happy,” and she hugs him and says “So am I.” She calls and says “How are you? Do you want to meet and talk?” She drops him off in front of his building and says “It’s just not working.” They go to a restaurant on their first real date and he says “The reason I’m being so picky as to what to eat is that I’m a vegetarian, something I was a little reluctant to tell you so soon,” and she says “Why? It’s not peculiar. It just means we won’t share our entrees except for the vegetables.” He meets a woman at a party. They talk for a long time. She has to leave the party and go to a concert. He gets her phone number and says “I’ll call you,” and she says “I’d like that.” He says goodbye to her at the door and shakes her hand. After she leaves he thinks “That woman’s going to be my wife.”

Illustrated manuscript page from Alasdair Gray’s Lanark

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An illustrated manuscript page from Alasdair Gray’s novel Lanark. From the Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department.

Afterword — Chester Arnold

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Afterword, 2009 by Chester Arnold (b. 1952)

Santa Sangre — Moebius

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Sante Sangre, c. 1982 by Moebius (Jean Giraud, 1938–2012)

Mass-market Monday | Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer

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The Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe. Timescape/Pocket Books (1981). No cover designer or artist credited. 262 pages.

While no cover artist is credited, Don Maitz is the artist for this edition of The Shadow of the Torturer, as well as for the other three books in Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun tetralogy. Maitz is credited on the dust jackets of the original hardback first editions (Simon & Schuster) of the series.

The Book of the New Sun is absolutely astounding.

From Peter Bebergal’s 2015 New Yorker profile on Wolfe, “Sci-Fi’s Difficult Genius”:

For science-fiction readers, “The Book of the New Sun” is roughly what “Ulysses” is to fans of the modern novel: far more people own a copy than have read it all the way through. A surreal bildungsroman, the book centers on a character named Severian. Trained as a torturer on the planet Urth, where torturers are a feared and powerful guild, Severian betrays his order by showing mercy, allowing a prisoner to kill herself rather than be subjected to his terrible ministrations. He then wanders the land encountering giants, anarchists, and members of religious cults. He eventually meets and supplants the ruler of Urth, the Autarch.

The four books that make up the series are sometimes vexing. A wise reader will keep a dictionary nearby, but it won’t always prove useful. Though Wolfe relies merely on the strangeness of English—rather than creating a new language, like Elven or Klingon—he nonetheless dredges up some truly obscure words: cataphract, fuligin, metamynodon, cacogens. The setting appears medieval, but slowly we tease out that what is ancient to these characters was once our own possible future. A desert’s sands are the glass of a great city, and the creaking steel walls that make up Severian’s cell in the guild dormitory is likely an ancient spaceship. Reading “The Book of the New Sun” is dizzying; at times, you become convinced that you have cracked a riddle, and yet the answer fails to illuminate the rest of the story. Wolfe doesn’t reveal the truth behind any of the central mysteries explicitly, but lets them carry the narrative along. At first, one hopes that they will eventually be resolved. Ultimately, they become less important than Severian’s quest for his own truth.