Tag: Books

Mystery box (Books acquired, 17 May 2023)

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One of my oldest friends (by which I mean friend I’ve had for a long time, not, like, old, although we’re both getting up there, although by no means old, but I suppose certainly definitely no longer young, middleaged, I guess, although when we were young we would have thought ourselves now (middleaged) old)

—one of my oldest friends Patrick sent me a mystery box of books earlier this week. Highlights include The Evergreen Review Reader (begins with William S. Burroughs and ends with Kathy Acker, two writers Patrick introduced me to way back in seventh or eighth grade), a graphic history of the Beats by Harvey Pekar et al, and a signed copy of Ronald Sukenick’s Long Talking Bad Condition Blues. Thanks PT!

A review of Trey Ellis’s polyglossic satire Platitudes

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Trey Ellis’s 1988 debut novel Platitudes begins with a typical metatextual conceit: the novel-within-a-novel gambit. Our story starts with Earle, a nerdy, idealistic high school sophomore who lusts after True Love (and some sex if he can get it). After about a dozen pages though, the “author” shows his hand. Depressed divorced Dewayne Wellington is Earle’s creator, and he’s stuck in his novel-in-progress Platitudes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what more to write,” Wellington declares, before soliciting help from his readers.

Wellington soon receives manuscript pages from bestselling author Isshee Ayam, who transplants his story from 1980s Manhattan to 1930s rural Georgia. When Wellington introduces worldly and gorgeous Dorothy as Earle’s romantic foil, Ayam’s rhetorical interventions take on a new intensity as the two authors duel to guide the spirit of the novel-in-progress.

The plot threads and styles intertwine, with Wellington’s experimental mode clashing with Ayam’s “Afro-baroque” style (as Ellis described it in a 1989 Los Angeles Times profile). A parodic pastiche of competing Black American artistic voices, Platitudes ultimately synthesizes polyglossic tones into a strangely endearing romantic comedy. Sharp but breezy, ironic and earnest, and utterly metatextual yet soaked in pathos, Ellis’s first novel seems to be an overlooked late-postmodernist gem.

Although Platitudes remains in print (via Northeastern University Press’s New England Library of Black Literature series), I have never seen it mentioned along with its contemporaries—books like David Foster Wallace’s 1989 collection Girl with Curious Hair or Bret Easton Ellis’s 1987 novel The Rules of Attraction. Instead, Ellis’s novel seems to be connected more often along with the works of Ishmael Reed, particularly his 1986 novel Reckless Eyeballing.

Reed’s novel concerns an experimental playwright who finds his career under attack from feminists. As Itabari Njeri pointed out in the LA Times profile mentioned above, many readers “assumed that Ayam is a thinly veiled Alice Walker and that Wellington is the novelist, poet and playwright, Ishmael Reed.” Ellis told Njeri that he hadn’t read Reckless Eyeballing until after he finished Platitudes. He also stated in the profile that he hadn’t read Walker’s The Color Purple. Before I read the Njeri profile I was almost certain that Ellis was parodying (lovingly though at times sharply) Reed and Walker.

Ayam’s “Afro-baroque” style is a particularly purple prose, telegraphed in the oh-so-unsubtle titles of her bestsellers: Chillun o’ de Lawd, Hog Jowl Junction, and My Big Ol’ Feets Gon’ Stomp Dat Evil Down. Here’s the first sentence of Ayam’s version of Platitudes:

Earle awakened to a day as new and as fresh as Mama’s hand-starched and sun-dried petticoat, a huge, plain garment as large and as fresh-smelling as the revival tents that bloomed every summer along Route 49 in Lowndes County, Georgia.

What an awesomely bad awesome sentence! The simple sentence is there: “Earle awakened,” but the adornment tacks on and on, a traffic jam of adjectives glommed onto a simile growing out of another simile, like a lichen that grows on a moss that grows on a rock.

Here’s Ayam’s next sentence:

Yes, from out of those wide Baptist thighs, thighs that shook with the centuries of injustice and degradation, thighs that twitched with the hope of generations yet unplanted, thighs that quivered with the friction of jubilant, bed-thumping, and funky-smelling lovemaking, emerged Earle.

“I’m speechless, Ms. Ayam,” responds Wellington by post after receiving her pages, and offers up as a return gift a list of Earle’s favorite things (to be sung to the tune Coltrane’s take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein song):

All kinds of tanks, Janey Rosebloom, Cream of Wheat, neighbors, Corinthians, toast-r-waffles, his own bean-fart vapors,

A tightly-tucked-in-bed,

Chef Boy-Ar-Dee

Schefflera, balsa wood, and Pay TeeVee.

Eff. Ay. Oh. Schwarz, lingerie straps, cowboy boots and hats.

Sunggle sacks, Chap Stick tubes, BeeBee guns, and films!

Sci-fi, cars, dance—Slurpees.

This list, printed in the console font that demarcates the many other lists, charts, menus, etc. that populate Platitudes then gives way to a brick list paragraph in whatever font Vintage Contemporaries are printed in. This second list might also comprise some of Wellington’s (and perhaps even Ellis’s?) favorite things, and includes “Jamaican accents, cleavage, efficiency, artificial cheese-food product” and

the way a pretty woman’s high heel dangles insecurely from the big toe of the crossed leg always near falling or—from a slight kick—flying spike-over-toe—an exotic Oriental weapon; but never doing either, just dangling, the toe of the shoe covering just enough to promise…

The back-and-forth of the two authors plays out as a personification of the tensions between two modes of Black literature that Ellis seeks to parody, synthesize, and ultimately transcend in Platitudes. While appreciative of the traditions and anti-traditions that came before him, he sought something new in his novel. A year later after the publication of Platitudes, Ellis published his essay “The New Black Aesthetic” in the journal Callaloo. Here, Ellis argued for a new kind of Black arts, evoking the concept of a ludic “cultural mulatto,” an artist free to borrow from both tradition and popular culture alike: “We no longer need to deny or suppress any part of our complicated and sometimes contradictory cultural baggage to please either white people or black,” Ellis declared in his essay.

Platitudes is not an essay—far from it—but it does enact the radical hybridization that Ellis put forth in his New Black Aesthetic manifesto. In his LA Times profile, Ellis declared Platitudes an “anti-novel,” adding that “It’s satirical and primarily about language performance, which has its own delights, as opposed to traditional narrative.”

And yet there is a traditional narrative here. Call it boy meets girl or coming of age or classical-in-the-Aristotelian-sense comedy or whatever you want, but Platitudes offers its reader a satisfying conclusion without selling out the ambiguities and ironies that course through its 180 or so pages.

In his back-cover blurb for Platitudes, Ishmael Reed wrote: “I was zapped by Trey Ellis’s humongous talent. His book, Platitudes, is delightfully rad.” Zapped and delightfully rad are perfect descriptors, and I feel like I’ve neglected to share enough of Ellis’s prose, which at times approximates linguistic channel surfing (at one point, quite literally). The book is both fun and funny, and while the book has not been neglected in academia (Christian Schmidt devotes a chapter to it in his study Postblack Aesthetics, for example), it deserves a wider readership from those who enjoy satirical postmodern novels. Highly recommended.

Bernardo Zannoni’s My Stupid Intentions is a brash and brilliant picaresque fable

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A few pages into Bernardo Zannoni’s brash, brilliant novel My Stupid Intentions, our narrator Archy and his eldest brother Leroy have the following conversation about their youngest brother Otis:

“Are you cold?” he said.

“I’m hungry.”

“Me too. We could eat Otis. He’s small, and weak.”

Otis is small and weak, but his brothers ultimately elect to remain hungry and not consume him. A few pages later, Archy falls from a tree, leaving one leg permanently lame. He then engages in sexual intercourse with his sister Louise. And poor Otis? “I’m going to die because I’m not growing,” he declares at the family dinner. This prediction quickly proves true. Archy is then sold into the service of a writer named Solomon for the low price of one and a half chickens.

Perhaps, having put forth details in lieu of a bigger picture, I should backtrack:

My Stupid Intentions (I miei stupidi intenti) is Bernardo Zannoni’s first published novel. It won the 2022 Campiello Prize, and is now available in English thanks to translator Alex Andriesse and publisher NYRB. I enjoyed all 211 pages of it.

Archy, the narrator of My Stupid Intentions is a beech marten, a kind of mustelid similar to a weasel or ferret. My Stupid Intentions is Archy’s life story—and it is crammed with life, with nerve, joy, terror, anger, and discovery.

I mentioned some names above, mostly of Archy’s family members, but we can dispense with them now. The most important character in Archy’s life is Solomon, an old fox who has learned to read and write. Solomon’s ability to cipher makes him a market nexus for the animals of the forest, who come to him to trade in goods like chickens, eggs, and vegetables. A fiercely loyal dog named Joel protects Solomon and their enterprise (Joel claims that Solomon rescued him from a wasp’s nest when he was an infant). Crippled Archy soon finds his place in Solomon and Joel’s routine, even venturing out with Joel to collect delinquent accounts.

In time, Solomon teaches Archy to read and write. They begin with the business, keeping track of customers’ debts, but soon advance to the bible. Here, Archy learns about God and comes to despise him: “Why had he inflicted this pain upon me? Why wasn’t I a man? Hadn’t I sought him, hadn’t I been on his side?”

In knowing God, Zannoni seems to suggest, Archy and Solomon become imbued with a consciousness otherwise unavailable to animals. The curse of this consciousness is the revelation of mortality. While other animals comprehend that death exists, they do not, at least from Archy’s perspective, fully understand what death entails. Understanding his own mortality is Archy’s curse, and his agon with God weaves through the novel’s bright and dark adventures. In one of the novel’s most poignant moments, Archy, unable to provide succor to his friend Joel, offers him an illusion, a proper telos for his dog’s soul:

He went off searching for a place that didn’t exist, beyond the wrong mountains, where no three rivers parted ways. He would wander all his life, clinging to a spurious hope, the only thing that made him keep going, like a phantom. I am terrified to think he may still be out there, searching. I am terrified to think he may have realized he has been damned to a pointless existence, a life of grasping at smoke. I am terrified to think I have been crueler than God.

My Stupid Intentions is full of cruelties and heroics. There are bandits and thieves and duels. There is a strange underground club for maimed and toothless animals to huddle together. (“Even in their loneliness, their exhaustion, their absence of appetite, they did not think they were going to die, and absurdly I envied them.”) There are doctors and apprentices and violent brigands—again, Zannoni’s novel bristles with life, teems with a propulsive energy.

This energy pulses at both the sentence and paragraph level in Andriesse’s nimble translation. The book’s jacket summary describes My Stupid Intentions as a “picaresque fable,” and it indeed rockets along with picaresque energy, its sharp turns often made even sharper by an ironic quip from Archy.

As for the “fable” bit…well, any story with anthropomorphic animals might be called a “fable,” especially if there is a moral dimension highlighted. Archy’s complaint against God is direct yet ultimately ambiguous. I didn’t catch a didactic whiff from Zannoni. My Stupid Intentions is more complex than Aesop’s fables; it has more in common with the visceral reality of Richard Adam’s novel Watership Down or the zany violence of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox (especially in Anderson’s film adaptation). My Stupid Intentions also reminded me strongly of Neko Case’s nature songs, some of the essays in Joy Williams’ collection Ill Nature, Disney’s loose, picaresque 1970’s take on the legend of Robin Hood, Russell Hoban’s inimitable novel Riddley Walker, Brian Jacques’ Redwall books, and Italo Calvino’s novel The Baron in the Trees.

My Stupid Intentions is also a book about writing, a kind of self-creating document, Archy’s autobiography in action, a sort of funny animal Künstlerroman. If there were any urges on Zannoni’s part to give into postmodern cleverness here, to play with the metatextual nature of his tale, not a trace of such frippery is evident. The novel is, for all its twisting and turning and snapping, wonderfully and refreshingly straightforward. There is nothing stupid about this book. I loved it. Highly recommended.

 

A review of The Stronghold, Dino Buzzati’s novel of deferred hope and ecstatic boredom

Edwin Turner1 Comment

Dino Buzzati’s 1940 novel Il deserto dei Tartari (retitled The Stronghold in Lawrence Venuti’s new English translation) takes place in an unidentified time in an unidentified country. Our protagonist is Giovanni Drogo, freshly graduated from an unspecified military academy and ready for a thrilling life of combat and adventure at his new post, Fortezza Bastiani, a fortress at the border of the Tartar steppe. He and his fellow soldiers wait in the hope of attaining glory.

And they continue to wait.

The nebulous Tartars repeatedly fail to appear, offering only the vaguest hints of their alien existence. The soldiers of Fortezza Bastiani live a life of anxious monotony, their desires and hopes for the heroics of war flattened by the boredom of day to day life. It’s all very existentialist.

From the opening pages of The Stronghold, Buzzati conjures a strange but familiar world, usually telegraphed in brisk, unadorned prose (a style he honed in his career as a journalist). Everything is slightly off, slightly anxious. Initially, a reader might chalk the disquieting style up to our viewpoint-character Drogo’s own hesitancy as he enters into a new life as a military officer, but we soon find ourselves in an uncanny realm.

The world of the fortezza is somehow simultaneously dull and enthralling. Consider Drogo’s first glimpse of the fortress:

Fortezza Bastiani was neither imposing, with its low walls, or beautiful in any  way. Its towers and ramparts weren’t picturesque. Absolutely nothing alleviated its starkness or recalled the sweet things of life. Yet Drogo gazed at it, hypnotized, as on the previous night at the base of the gorge. And an inexplicable ardor penetrated his heart.

This “inexplicable ardor” is nevertheless ambiguous in its penetration; after learning he is nominally free to choose a different, perhaps more invigorating post, Drogo elects to transfer from the fort. However, his commanding officer suggests that he stay for four months to avoid bureaucratic problems with the higher ups. That four-month season of waiting turns into a lifetime of waiting. And then waiting some more.

Drogo and his fellow soldiers hunger for the glory of contesting the Tartars, an enemy they know utterly nothing about. Like almost every sociopolitical, cultural, and even technological detail in The Stronghold, the specific nature of the Tartar enemy is collapsed into something closer to a fairy tale or a rumor. Vague and dreamlike, the Tartars are not a geopolitical entity; they are not even an other, but rather the figment of an other, the kernel of a dream that promises action. And this dim promise keeps the soldiers waiting at the Fortezza:

From the northern desert would arrive their fortune, the occasion of their exploits, the miraculous hour that befalls everyone at least once. Because of this vague eventuality, which grew increasingly uncertain with time, grown men wasted the best part of their lives there.

The narrator, hovering in Drogo’s consciousness, imagines an interlocutor explaining to one of these soldiers that his “entire life will be the same, utterly the same, till the very last moment” — and then imagines the hypothetical soldier’s response: “Something else must come to pass, something truly worthy.” Drogo here believes he has grasped the “transparent secret” of the soldiers of the Fortezza, but also imagines himself an “uncontaminated onlooker.” But it’s too late. Drogo too has committed to waiting for something else to come to pass.

Nothing comes to pass—or nearly nothing. (One might read The Stronghold as an extended riff on Kafka’s wonderful parable “Before the Law.“) However, this is not to say though that Buzzati’s portraiture of tedium is itself tedious. The boredom he conjures is an ecstatic boredom, anxious and writhing, exploding in strange, magical moments of hallucinations and night terrors.

In one of the novel’s most extraordinary sequences, “fragile apparitions, quite like fairies” enter Drogo’s dreams, bearing away to some spectacular land Drogo’s fallen comrade who is now converted to a child dressed in a rich velvet suit. In another episode, a mysterious horse appears from the desert, sending the men into fits of hope and despair culminating in a horrific incident that underscores the absurdities of military rigor. Late in the novel, a much-older Drogo’s desire for action, for something to come to pass, tips into near-comic paranoia, as he and a younger officer fool around with a telescope to no avail.

After all this waiting in hope, The Stronghold concludes with a devastating Kafkaesque punchline which I shall not spoil here.

It will be clear to most seasoned readers that Kafka was an influence on Buzzati even without Venuti’s afterword, which details Buzzati’s admiration for the Bohemian writer. Buzzati does not ape the older master so much as evoke the same state of anxious alterity we find in texts like “The Great Wall of China” and The Castle. Stepping into The Stronghold, one is reminded of other branches of the Kafka tree, like Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes, Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, and Albert Camus’ The Stranger, among many others.

Like many Kafkaesque works, one might be inclined to fob his own allegorical readings onto The Stronghold. In his afterword, Venuti points out that early English-language readings of Buzzati’s novel tended to interpret Il deserto dei Tartari as an anti-totalitarian tract. Il deserto dei Tartari was first translated as The Tartar Steppe by Stuart Hood in 1952, and many of its contemporary critics read the novel against the backdrop of the Cold War.

While praising the “remarkable accomplishment” of Hood’s translation, Venuti differentiates his own “historically oriented interpretation” of the novel; namely, his attempt to more emphatically underline Il deserto dei Tartari’s “latent critique” of fascism. Venuti points out that “Hood had twice rendered the generic ‘stivali’ (boots) with the politically marked term ‘jackboots,'” adding, “I tripled its use.”

Venuti also discusses at some lengths his choice to change Hood’s title. He writes that Buzzati initially wanted to title the book La fortezza, but this name was rejected by the novel’s publisher who worried it might be misunderstood by the reading public. In his attempt to further historicize his translation (and differentiate it from Hood’s), Venuti elected to remove Steppe from the title fearing it “might be taken as an anachronistic reference to the Soviet Union.” He also avoided The Fort or The Fortress as a possible titles, worried they might underscore Buzzati’s “debt to Kafka’s The Castle.” Venuti eventually settled on The Stronghold, suggesting that this title helps to emphasize the “cult of virility championed during the Fascist period” while also “conveying the sheer tenaciousness of the soldier’s heroic fantasies, as well as their inability to escape their debilitating obsession.”

I haven’t read Hood’s translation of Il deserto dei Tartari, but I appreciated Venuti’s, which, as I pointed out above, takes place in an unidentified time in an unidentified country. The novel’s eerie, fable-like quality—a quality that resists historicity—is what most engages me. Buzzati’s book captures the paradox of a modern life that valorizes the pursuit of glory (or at least happiness) while simultaneously creating a working conditions that crush the human spirit. We can find this paradox in Herman Melville’s Bartleby or Mike Judge’s Office Space; we can find it in Antonio di Benedetto’s Zama or Mike Judge’s Enlightened; we can find if in David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King or Dan Erickson’s recent show Severance. I could go on of course.

Some of these boredom narratives seek to assuage us, or make us laugh or cry—in recognition, spite, pity, despair, or hope. Some of these boredom narratives find resistance in art, or in just plain resistance. Buzzati’s novel offers something more like a warning. It is not possible to be an “uncontaminated onlooker” in one’s own life. It’s not enough to wait forever, even if we wait in hope.

The Stronghold is available now from New York Review Books.

Father Fairing’s Sewer Rat Parish | Thomas Pynchon

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They were entering Fairing’s Parish, named after a priest who’d lived topside years ago. During the Depression of the ’30s, in an hour of apocalyptic well-being, he had decided that the rats were going to take over after New York died. Lasting eighteen hours a day, his beat had covered the breadlines and missions, where he gave comfort, stitched up raggedy souls. He foresaw nothing but a city of starved corpses, covering the sidewalks and the grass of the parks, lying belly-up in the fountains, hanging wrynecked from the streetlamps. The city—maybe America, his horizons didn’t extend that far—would belong to the rats before the year was out. This being the case, Father Fairing thought it best for the rats to be given a head start—which meant conversion to the Roman Church. One night early in Roosevelt’s first term, he climbed downstairs through the nearest manhole, bringing a Baltimore Catechism, his breviary and, for reasons nobody found out, a copy of Knight’s Modern Seamanship. The first thing he did, according to his journals (discovered months after he died) was to put an eternal blessing and a few exorcisms on all the water flowing through the sewers between Lexington and the East River and between Eighty-sixth and Seventy-ninth Streets. This was the area which became Fairing’s Parish. These benisons made sure of an adequate supply of holy water; also eliminated the trouble of individual baptisms when he had finally converted all the rats in the parish. Too, he expected other rats to hear what was going on under the upper East Side, and come likewise to be converted. Before long he would be spiritual leader of the inheritors of the earth. He considered it small enough sacrifice on their part to provide three of their own per day for physical sustenance, in return for the spiritual nourishment he was giving them.

Accordingly, he built himself a small shelter on one bank of the sewer. His cassock for a bed, his breviary for a pillow. Each morning he’d make a small fire from driftwood collected and set out to dry the night before. Nearby was a depression in the concrete which sat beneath a downspout for rainwater. Here he drank and washed. After a breakfast of roast rat (“The livers,” he wrote, “are particularly succulent”) he set about his first task: learning to communicate with the rats. Presumably he succeeded. An entry for 23 November 1934 says:

Ignatius is proving a very difficult student indeed. He quarreled with me today over the nature of indulgences. Bartholomew and Teresa supported him. I read them from with me today over the nature of indulgences. Bartholomew and Teresa supported him. I read them from the catechism: “The Church by means of indulgences remits the temporal punishment due to sin by applying to us from her spiritual treasury part of the infinite satisfaction of Jesus Christ and of the superabundant satisfaction of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the saints.”

“And what,” inquired Ignatius, “is this superabundant satisfaction?”

Again I read: “That which they gained during their lifetime but did not need, and which the Church applies to their fellow members of the communion of saints.”

“Aha,” crowed Ignatius, “then I cannot see how this differs from Marxist communism, which you told us is Godless. To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities.” I tried to explain that there were different sorts of communism: that the early Church, indeed, was based on a common charity and sharing of goods. Bartholomew chimed in at this point with the observation that perhaps this doctrine of a spiritual treasury arose from the economic and social conditions of the Church in her infancy. Teresa promptly accused Bartholomew of holding Marxist views himself, and a terrible fight broke out, in which poor Teresa had an eye scratched from the socket. To spare her further pain, I put her to sleep and made a delicious meal from her remains, shortly after sext. I have discovered the tails, if boiled long enough, are quite agreeable.

Evidently he converted at least one batch. There is no further mention in the journals of the skeptic Ignatius: perhaps he died in another fight, perhaps he left the community for the pagan reaches of Downtown. After the first conversion the entries begin to taper off: but all are optimistic, at times euphoric. They give a picture of the Parish as a little enclave of light in a howling Dark Age of ignorance and barbarity.

Rat meat didn’t agree with the Father, in the long run. Perhaps there was infection. Perhaps, too, the Marxist tendencies of his flock reminded him too much of what he had seen and heard above ground, on the breadlines, by sick and maternity beds, even in the confessional; and thus the cheerful heart reflected by his late entries was really only a necessary delusion to protect himself from the bleak truth that his pale and sinuous parishioners might turn out no better than the animals whose estate they were succeeding to. His last entry gives a hint of some such feeling:

When Augustine is mayor of the city (for he is a splendid fellow, and the others are devoted to him) will he, or his council, remember an old priest? Not with any sinecure or fat pension, but with true charity in their hearts? For though devotion to God is rewarded in Heaven and just as surely is not rewarded on this earth, some spiritual satisfaction, I trust, will be found in the New City whose foundations we lay here, in this Iona beneath the old foundations. If it cannot be, I shall nevertheless go to peace, at one with God. Of course that is the best reward. I have been the classical Old Priest—never particularly robust, never affluent—most of my life. Perhaps

The journal ends here. It is still preserved in an inaccessible region of the Vatican library, and in the minds of the few old-timers in the New York Sewer Department who got to see it when it was discovered. It lay on top of a brick, stone and stick cairn large enough to cover a human corpse, assembled in a stretch of 36-inch pipe near a frontier of the Parish. Next to it lay the breviary. There was no trace of the catechism or Knight’s Modern Seamanship.

“Maybe,” said Zeitsuss’s predecessor Manfred Katz after reading the journal, “maybe they are studying the best way to leave a sinking ship.”

The stories, by the time Profane heard them, were pretty much apocryphal and more fantasy than the record itself warranted. At no point in the twenty or so years the legend had been handed on did it occur to anyone to question the old priest’s sanity. It is this way with sewer stories. They just are. Truth or falsity don’t apply.

From Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel V.

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Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, but just the punctation

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( ) . ‘ ; — — . ; — — ; — — ; ‘ — — ; . ? — — ‘ . , . ‘ . , ‘ , ! ‘ . – ; – ; . . — — . , ‘ ? . , ‘ ; , , , . ” , ” – , , ; ; ‘ . ” ‘ , . . , . . – ! – ! ” ” – ! – ! ” , , . , . ” ? ” . , . ” ? ” , . ” ‘ , ” . . ” ‘ — — , ‘ — — , ‘ . . , . ” ” , . ! ” , ‘ , . , , , . , , , , , — — — — , . , , , , . , , — — . ? . — — . . . . , . ” . , ? — — — — , — — ” . , . ” , – – — — — — ” ” . ” , . . . , – , – , , . . . ” ? ” , . ” ‘ ! ” , . ” ‘ . ‘ , ‘ . ‘ ! ” , . ‘ , . ” ! ” , . , , . ‘ , . – , – , . ‘ , ” , ” , , — — . , , — — . ” . , ” . — — ” ? ” , . , . ” … ” . . ” , ” , , , ; , ; . , ; , , , – , . – , ; ; , , . ‘ , , . : ” . ” . ‘ ( ) ; ( ) ; — — , , , — — , , , – , , . . ‘ — — , . , . . . ” , ” . , . , . , . , , ” . . ” . ; ; . , , . . . . ” , ” ( . ‘ , , ) . ” , ” . , , , , . , . – . . – ( ) . . . , , – . . . ; , . ‘ – . . . . . – . . . – . . , . ” . ” . , , . , , , , . . . . , . , , . ” ! ” . . , . , , , . , – . – . ‘ , — — , . . , . , , , . ; . . , . , , . , . , , . , . . , . ” ‘ , , ” , , ” ‘ – . ” . ‘ . , – — — , — — ‘ . . , – , . . ” , ” . , . , ” ‘ , , . . ” ; . , . — — ‘ . – , , , ‘ , – , ‘ – . ( ) , , , , . – — — ‘ — — , , – , . , . , . — — — — . ‘ — — — — . , — — . . . . , , ; ; , . . , . ; , . – , , – , . — — , . . , . . , , . , . , . . , . . – , . , , . . . . , , – , . . . . , , , , , . ” , ! ” . . ” – , . , ” . , . ‘ , , : ” – , . . ” . . . ? : ” , , ! ” . . , – , ; , , . , , – , , , , ‘ , . ‘ . , , , ‘ , . — — — — , , , , , … , , ; , , , ; , , ; ; , ; , , — — . , , , ” … … . ” , . ” . , , ” . – . , , , , . . ? . ” ” , ? ; , . , ” . . . , ” , , , , , , – , , . ” , ” . , , ” ‘ ‘ ‘ , ‘ ” … . , , , – . . ” , , ” . , – , ” ‘ … … … ” , , – – , , , , , , , . , – . . ; , , , — — . ” , ” , ” ‘ . . ” . . ” . … , … , , ” . . . , . ” , ” . ” . ” ” , ” , . ” , ” . , , ” , . ” ” , ” . ” ? ” . , . ” , , ” , . , , , . ” – , ” . , , . . , , , . – , – ‘ ( , ) . – , , . , . , . ; … . . ? — — . ( ) , ( ) , . . . , . , , , — — ! , , ! , , , ‘ . , … , … , , … — — — — . , . – — — . , . — — — — … . . . ‘ . ( ) : ” , ‘ ” ? : … . , , , — — — — , , , , , ? . , , . . , , — — , , . , ‘ – , , : ” ” ; . ” … ” , ; , . , – , , , – , – . . , , , , , , , . — — ‘ — — . . , ‘ , , , ? , ? , , , . , , , . . ; ; . , , , , , , . , , . — — – — — . ; , . – ; , , . … — — , , — — . , , . , ‘ ? – — — ; — — . — — , . , . ‘ — — ? , ( , , – ) , – . , — — , ; , – – . . , , , , , ( — — , ) , . — — , , , , , . . , , ‘ . . ‘ ; ; , , . ” , ” , . , , , – , . ” , ” . . ” . ? ” . ; , , , — — . . . . . . , , , , , . , . . , , — — . ” , ” . , , , , , , . , . , , , , , , , — — — — ” , , ? ” , . ” ‘ , , ” , . . . . , , . . , , , — — . , . . — — . , . . . . — — ? , – , , – ? ? ; , , . , , . ” , ” , ” . ” . – , . . ‘ . , . , . ; – — — — — . ” ‘ ‘ ! ” . , , . ” , , ! ” , . ” , ! ” ” ! ” , — — . ” , ” , – , — — — — , — — ! , , ? , , ? . . . — — . , , , . ; . . , , , — — — — ; ; ; ; ‘ ; — — ” , , ” . . . — — — — — — — — — — , , , , , , , — — , , , , , . , , , , , . , – . — — ; , , – . ‘ ; , , . , , , . , , ; ; , , , . . ” ‘ , ” . , . , , , , — — ‘ . , , , . ” – – – , ” , , , . ” – – – ! ” , . ” ‘ ‘ , ” . ” . ” . , . , – , , , … ” ‘ , ” . ” ‘ , ” ( , ) . ” , ” . ( . ) ” , ” , . ” ? ” . ‘ . ” ‘ , , ” . ” , , ‘ ! ” , , . ‘ . , , . ” … … ” . , . ; ; – . , . ‘ , , ‘ ; ; ; ‘ . , . ‘ , , . , . ; , , ; , – . . ‘ . ; ; , , ; ; — — , — — ” ? ” ; ; ‘ , , . , ; ; ; ; ; . , ‘ . , — — . , , , , ‘ . . , , – . , ; . – , . [ – ; , ] , , , , , , ; , . , , , ; , . ; . , ; ; ; . ‘ ; — — , , ; . , , , , ( ‘ , , ) , ! ! ” . ” ; . , , ; ; ; ; . . ‘ . , , , , – , , , , , , , . . ‘ , , , , , , , , , , , . — — . , . , , – , . , , ; ; . , , — — — — ‘ , . , ‘ , , . ” , . ‘ . , ‘ ? ” , , , , , ” ” — — , , , , ; , ; ; , ; . . ; — — — — , , , , . . , ‘ , , , , , , — — ‘ . . , , , , . , , , , ; , , , , . — — — — ? ” ? ” , , , , ‘ , , , , , , , , , , . . . , , , , : ” , ? ” — — , , ‘ . , , , . , . , , . , , , , ; , . , — — , , , , , . , , , , , ‘ , , — — . ” ‘ ‘ , ” , , . , , . . . ? – , , , , , , , , ; . ; . , . , , , , . . ? . , , , , ; , , ; ; , — — , , — — ; ; ; , , . : ” — — ! — — ! ” , , , , , , . . , – , ; , , ‘ . . — — , . , — — , , , , ; , , , , , . ? — — — — , ! ‘ . , , , , , , — — , , . , , , , — — , ; , , , , . , , , . ; , . . , – , ; , , , — — . , – , — — — — . . , . , , , . ? ? ? ? , — — , ; , . ‘ — — , , , , – . . . ; ; , – , , . , ? . . . ; ; , ( ) ; ; – ; ; , , , . , , , , , , , , , , . , – , ? ? ? , . . ” … … . ” ? , , ; . ” ” — — . , , , , . , , , , . ” . ” ‘ . . . ” , ” . , . , , . ” , , ” , ‘ . ; . , . . . — — , , , . , , , , , , ‘ . ‘ . . – . . . , , , . , , , , : ” — — — — – . ” ‘ , , – ? , , , . ! – – . , , , , , , , – , . , , . , ; . . , , , , . , ; ; — — . – . . , . , , , , , . . – – … . , . . , , . . . ; — — — — ? , ; – – ; , , , , . ; , , ; ; ; , , , ; . . , , , , , , , . , , — — ! . . , ; . , , , . , — — , , — — , , . , . , , , , , ; , , – , , , , . , , . , , . , , , . ; , , . , – . ? . . , . . . ‘ , , ‘ , ; . ( ) … . . ‘ . ‘ . ‘ , … . ‘ . ” … ” . . , , , ; . ; ; , , , . , , . ; . – . . ” ‘ , ” . . ” … ” . ; – . , , , , ? ” … ” . ” , ” , . ” . ” , , , , , — — , — — , , , , , – , , , ‘ , . ” , ” , ” . ” . ” ‘ ‘ ? ” . ” , ” . ” , ” . ” , ” . ” , ” . ” , ” , ” . ” ” ‘ ‘ , , ” . ” ‘ , ” . ” — — ‘ — — ” ” , , ” , . ” ‘ … ” . ” ‘ … ” ” ? ” . ” — — – , ” . ” ‘ , ” . ” ‘ , ” . ” , ” . ” ‘ . ” ” . ” ” ? ” . ; , , , . / * ” : ; ; , , ” * / . ” / * , ? ” * / . ; , , ; , , , . / * ” , , , ” * / . , ; ; . / * ” , ” * / , , , , . ‘ ; ; – – ‘ , ‘ , , . , – ; , , . . ; , , , . , . . . ‘ . , , , … , , . . ; . , . . . , , , – . ; ; , . , , , ‘ , , ‘ . . ” — — . ” ” , , . ” ‘ . , . . , . , – . , . , , . , , . ‘ , ‘ ‘ , . , . , , . , , . . , , , . , , , , , , . , , . . , , , , , , ‘ , . ‘ . , ‘ . , , . , . … . , . , – . , . , , , . , , . ‘ . . . ” . ? ” . , . , . . . ” , . , ” . , . ‘ . . . ” , ” . . ” … . , . ? ” – . , , . ; ; , , . . . . . . ( ; ) . . . . . . . ; . . . ; ; ” , ” . . ” ‘ — — ‘ , ” . . . . ‘ . ” , , ” ; ; . . , , . . ; ; , , ; . . . , . . . , , . . . ‘ . . , , , . , . , ; , ; , , , . . ; . . – ; , , . , , . ; – . . . . . , , , , , . – , , , — — — — — — — — . , , , . , , , , . , , – , . . , , , , , . – . . – ! , – . , , – , – – . ‘ . . . . , , , , . ” , , ! ” . , , ” , , ” ‘ , . . ‘ , . : ” , , . , ‘ ? … . ” , , – , . , , , – , . . . . ” , ? ” . ” . ‘ . ” . . ” , ” , ” … . ” , , . ” ? ” . ” . ” . . ” , ” , , . ” — — . . , . ” , . . ” , ” . . . , . ” , . , ” . ” . . ” ” — — , . , ” . ” ; , ” . ” , . . ” ” , ” . . ” ‘ , ” . ” … ” . ” , ” . , . . , , , ; , , , , . . ” , , ” . , ‘ . ” ? ” . ” ? , ” . . ” , . ‘ . ” ” ‘ . ” . . ‘ . , , : ” , , , … . ” ” , ” , . . . ” , ” . . – . ” , ” . ” , ” . , . ” … . ? ” – . ” , ” . ” , ” . ” , , ” . . ” , ! ‘ ! ” , . ” , ” , . . . ” ! ” . . ” ! ” . . , . ” … ” . ” ‘ … ” . ” , ” . ” , ” . ” , , , ” . ” . … ” . ” ‘ , ” . . . ” ‘ , ” . ” . ” ” ? ” . ” , ” . . ” , ; , ; , ; … ” . ” , ” . ” , ” . ‘ . ” ? ” , . ” ‘ — — ? ” . ” , , ” . . ” ? — — . ” ” , , ‘ , ” . ” , ‘ . ” ” ‘ , ” . ” , ” . ” ? ” , . ” ! ” . – . . . , , – . . . ” ; , ” . , . . ‘ , . ” , . , ” , , . . ” , ” . . , ; . ” , ” . . ” , ” . ” . ” ” , ” . . ” , ” , . ” – . ” ” … ” , … ” , , ” … , ” , ! ” . ” ? ” . ” , ” . , , . ” , . ” ; . . ” , ” … . ” ‘ … ” . ” , ” . , , . ” ‘ . ” ” ! ” , . ‘ . ” , ” . . ” ‘ — — ‘ ! ” . ” ‘ ! ” ” ‘ , ” , . . ” ! ” , . – , , , . ; . ” , ” , , , ‘ . ” , ” , . ” … ” , ” … . ” ” , ” , . ” … ” , ” , , ” , , . ” … … ” . . ” , , ” , . ” , ” , . ” , ‘ , ” . ” , , ” , ; . ” ‘ — — , ” , , . , , . , . ” ! ” . ” ? ” . ” , , ” . . ” , , , ” . , , – , . . , . ” – , ” . ” – , ” . ” – , ” . : ” – , . ! ” ” . ! ” . , . ” ! ” ” , , ” . . ” , ” , . ” , ” , , ” ‘ , ” , . , , – . ‘ , , , . ; . — — , ‘ — — ‘ , — — . , , , – , , . – . , , . ” , ; , — — , ! ” . ‘ . . . . ‘ . ‘ . . . ; , , , — — ” , ” ” . ” ; , , , — — . , ‘ , — — , . , , , , , . ‘ , , . , , , , … . ? . . , , . , ‘ ; ; . . . , , . — — . ‘ , , . ‘ , , . , ‘ , , , , , , , , … . , , . ‘ . ‘ , . ” ‘ ? , … . ‘ ‘ ? — — — — … . ? , ! ” — — — — … , , , , … , , ; . . ‘ , , ; ; . , ‘ , , ; , – , , , . . ; ; ; ; ; , . , , , , – , . ; . ; . , . , , , . , , , , ‘ , . , , , , ; . , , , , , . ” — — ‘ ” — — . — — , , , — — , , , , , , . – ‘ , , , , — — , — — , , , , ‘ , , , . . ; , , , . , , , , , , ; ; ; , . , , . , , – – – – — — , , , , . ” ? ? ? ” . ‘ . . . ; ‘ . . , . , ( ) , ; , — — , ( ) , . – , , , , – , . – , , ; , ; . , , ; . , ‘ , ; , ; … … , . , ; , , , . . . — — . — — ; ‘ ; , ; ; ? , ‘ , ‘ — — ‘ — — ; , , , . — — . ! , ; , : – ; . , – – , , . . ” ! ” . ” ‘ ! ” ; , . ” ; , ” , . . . ” ! ” , ; . , , , , , . , ; ; ; . . . , . — — , , , ; , , — — ‘ , , . . , , – . . . — — – — — . ( . ‘ , . , ) , , . , ; , ‘ , . . , – , … . ” ” — — . ” – . ” ” , ” , ” – . ” . , , : ” ” ( ) . ” ” … , , , , , , . ? – . ? ( ‘ ) . — — , . . ? ” , ” . ” . , , ‘ … ” . . . , ! ” , , , ” , , ” ‘ — — ‘ ” — — ? . , ‘ , , , , . . ‘ . , , ‘ , ” , ” , ‘ … . . ” , ” , : ” , . ” . . . ‘ ‘ , . ; ‘ . ; … . , , – . , . , . , . , , , . , — — , , , — — ? . . . ( ” ‘ – . ‘ . , . — — . — — . ” ) ” , , ? ” ( ” . — — — — ‘ . ” ) ” ‘ , . , … . ” ( ” . , , . ‘ . ‘ . ! ” ) . ” ? ” ( ” ‘ ? ” ) , – , ‘ . — — — — — — — — , – , , . , — — ; ; ; . — — , , ‘ , ‘ , , , ‘ . . , , , — — , , , ; ( ) ; . . ” , ” , ‘ , . ” , ‘ . ” . , , . ‘ . . — — ; ; — — . . ” ‘ . ‘ ! ” . ; . , ‘ . . . , – . . — — – . . , . . . , , , , , ; ; . ‘ , , – , – . , , , ; ; ; . ” , ” , , ” ‘ ! ” — — , ; , . – . ‘ ; , . , ” ” . – . , , , . . ” ‘ ! ” , , . , , , . . . ” , ” , , , ” . ” . . , , – . . ; , . ” , ” , ‘ – – , ” . ” — — , — — ‘ , ‘ ‘ , ( ‘ ) , ‘ . — — . — — ; ? , , . , ; ; , , . . . , , , , . ” , ” , ” . ” . , – , . . — — — — , , , , , , , , , , , , ; ; . . . , , ” , ” ; , , – … . . . . , , , ; ; . . . , , . ; – . , . — — , – , , , , ‘ , . ‘ , . , , , , . , ‘ ; , , . , , , ; , , . ? , : . , , ; , , ; . , , , . – . , ; ; ; ; , . . . ; ; ; ; ‘ , , ( ) , – . . , , . . , , ; ; . ‘ . . , , . . ( ) , — — — — ; , , , , , — — , . ; ; . , . ? . . , – ; — — , , , , , . . , , . . – . – . . . . , . . . , — — — — , . . , . , , , . , – , . . . . , , , , , . : ” ? … … . ‘ … . , . ” . ” . ‘ … . , ‘ ? … ” . ; . – ‘ , — — — — . ? , ‘ . ” ‘ — — … ” . ” ‘ ‘ , . ‘ . ” ; ; . ” , … ” . . ” – … … … … ! ” ! . . . . . — — ” , , ‘ . ! ? , ! ‘ , . . . ” . — — . , . . . . . – . . ” ‘ , ” . , , . ; ; . ? ? , ? ? . , , , , , . , . ; ; ‘ ; ‘ . ? — — . , . ! ‘ — — . , , – . , , , . . . , . , , , , , , – , , , , , , . ” ‘ , ” . . . . – . , . , , ; . . , . . ‘ , , , , ; ‘ , . , , . . , , – , – , , , ” ‘ , ” , , . . . – , . ; , . . . . , , . , , , . . ; ; . . , . ; ; ; — — . , , ; — — ‘ , , ‘ . . ‘ ; , , . . — — — — . . . . , , , . ‘ , ‘ , , . , , . . ; . , , , , , — — , , ‘ . ; , ? — — . . . ; , , . , . . , , – , – , . ‘ – , , , , . ‘ , , . , , , , , – , . . , , : / * ‘ , * / , , . ! , , , . ” , ” . , , — — . . . . ; , . ” , ” . ” , ” . . ” , ” . , , . . ” , ” , , ” ‘ . . , ” , . , , , , ” — — , . ” ” , ” . , ” . ! . ” ” ‘ ? ” , . ” … ? ” . , . ” … ” . . ” ‘ , ” . , ” . ‘ . . ” ” ! ” . ” , ” . . ” , ” . ” , ” . ” , ” , , ” . ” ” ? ” . . ” , ” . . ” . ! ” , . ” . . , . ? — — , — — , . . ! , . ! ” ” ‘ , ” . . ” , ” . ” , . , ‘ … . ” ” ‘ , ” . . ” , ” . ” … . . , . ” ” ? ” . . ” , ” . ” ? ” . . ” , ” . ” ? ” . . ” , ” . ” , ” . . ” ? ” . . ” … ” . ; . ; ; , . ” — — ” . . . , , , : ” ! ” ” ! ” . ” — — . ” ” , , ” . . ” . ” ” ? ” . ” — — ‘ … ” ” . , , ” . ” — — ! ” . ” ‘ , ? ” . ” . ” ” ? ” , . ” ? ” . ” , . ” ” ‘ , ” . ” , ” , . ” , . ‘ , . . ” ” ‘ , . , ” , . ” ‘ ? ” / * ” ? ? ? ” * / . , . ” , ” , , – . / * ” , ; . , ” * / . ” ! ” , ; ; . ” ? ” . ” , ” . ” ? ” ” . ” ” . . . . , . . … ” . ” ‘ . . ‘ ? , , — — , — — , , — — , , , — — . . , . , . — — , ” , . . ” ? ” . . ” . , ” . ” . ” ” , ” . . ” . , ? — — — — . . , ? ” . , , . , . ” ? ” . ” , . . , ” . . – . . , , , , , , ” . — — . . — — . — — . ” ” , ” . , . . – , , , , , , , . , , , , … . ” , ? ” … ” , . ” … , , ; – ; ‘ ; ; : ” — — — — — — , ” , , , , . , ; , , , , , , – , , . , ‘ , , — — ‘ , , . , , , , , ‘ , , , — — — — ‘ , ; ; , , . . ” , – ? ” ; ” ‘ , . . . , . , , ‘ , . ‘ . , , . , . . — — ” . . , , , ( , , ) , ‘ , ” , ” — — . . ; , . , , — — , , , – ‘ . . ” , ” , . ‘ ; ; ; ; . ; , , , , , ; . , , — — , — — ? — — , , , . ‘ . , , , , , , ; ; ; , , . ; , , , , – – . . – . ; , , . , , . – , , . , , , . , , , , , . , — — , , , , . . , , . — — , – , , , , , . , ; ; – — — ‘ . — — , , , — — ‘ ‘ . , , . , ‘ ; ; . , . , — — . , , , . . ” , , ‘ ? ? ; … . ” . . , … , – , ; ? , , — — ? ? . . . ” , ” , , , , ? , , ? , , – , , , , ? ; , , , — — ? — — . , . . . – . , , , – , ( ) , , , . ! ; , . . . . ; . ; . ; , ; , , . ‘ . — — . , , , , , . . . . — — ; — — — — . , , , – , . . , , , – , – , ( ) . ‘ . . . . , , , , . . ; ; ; ; . ; , ; , , , , . . . ‘ , ; — — , , ; — — , ; . ” ‘ ! ” , ‘ ? , . . , — — ‘ . , , . , . . . , . , . – . . … . . ; ; – ; ; ( , ) — — , , . ” — — , ” . , . ; . ? ” , ” . , , , , , , , , ‘ , ‘ ‘ , ( ) ‘ , , ; ; – , , , , — — . . . , . . ‘ , ( ) . . . – , . ; . . . ; . . . . . – . ‘ , , . . — — — — , . , ‘ ? . – . . , . . , , , . . – . – . , , . . , , . – . , — — . ; , , , . . – , , , , ‘ , . ; ; — — , . , , , – , — — ? . ? — — , ‘ . . . , . , , . ( ! . . . ‘ . ) . . . . , , , ; . ! , , . ‘ . , . , , . . . . — — . . , , ‘ . – ; , . — — . . . . . ‘ . . … . ‘ ‘ … . , , … . … . … . … . … . . … . . . . , , , . . . . . ( , ) , . , , ; ; , , . ( ) , ; . , , . ; . , . . ‘ . , ; . – , ; – – ; . , , . , , ‘ , . ” ? ” , . ” ‘ , , ” ‘ . , . . ” ” — — ” ” — — . , . — — . , , , , . , , , , . . ‘ , , , , , , . , , ; ; , , , , : ” ! ! ! ” – , , . . , , , , , , . ; , , , , ” , ” , , , , . , . . . , , , . , , , ; ; , – — — . . , , , . , ‘ , . . ; ; , ? , : : ” , ” , ” ” ” ” ” , ” ” . ” ; . ( , , ) . ” ” — — , , , — — – . ( ” ‘ , ” ) . ” , ” ; ” ” — — , . ” , ” , , , — — — — ; , , — — — — , . ” – ‘ , , ” , ; , , . . . ” , , ” , . , , , – , . – . — — , – . ” , ” , . ‘ , ‘ ? . , , , , , , ‘ , . . ” , ” , ” . ” , , , , . , , , . ‘ . ” , ” . . . . . . . ; ; . ; . ” , ” . , ‘ ; ; ; . ” , ” . ” , ” . ‘ ; ” , – — — ” ” – , ” , . ( , , ‘ ? ) ” ” — — ” ” — — ” , ” . , . ? . , ? , , , , , , – ( , ) , , , . , , – . ” ? ” . ” , ‘ — — . ” ” ‘ , ” , . ‘ , … . , . — — – . . , , , . , . ‘ , , , . . ” ‘ ‘ , ” . ” . ” ” ? ” . . ” – ? ” , – . ” , ” , . ” ‘ , ” . ” , ” . , . . . . ; ; . , , ( ) , , , . , . ” ” ‘ , . , – ; ; , . . ‘ ‘ . . , , – , ? , , — — , , . , . , ” , ‘ , ” , . — — ( ” ! ” ) , . ‘ , , ” , ” , . , ” — — . ” , . . , , , , , . — — , , ‘ . — — — — , , , , , , , . , — — ! . , , . . . . ‘ . — — — — ” , ” , ” ‘ ? ” ! , . , , , . . ? . . ; , ‘ . ‘ . . – ; , – . ? , — — — — . , . , . . . . ‘ . . . . . . , , , . . , , . – , , , , ( ) , ( ) . – . , , , . . . . — — , ! , , . . . . , , , ; , , , , . , , . ” ‘ , ” , . , . , . . — — , . , . . . . . . , , ; , , ; , . ‘ – ; – . . ; . . ( ‘ – ) ‘ , , . — — , , , . , , , — — . – . . . — — , , ‘ , . ; – . , . ; . . , , , . ; . – , , – , , — — , , , , . , . ‘ ‘ ; , , , , ; ; . , ; ; ; , ” ! ! ” ‘ . . . . , , ‘ , ‘ ; , ‘ . ; , , – , , ” ! ” , , , , . . , , , , ( ) , , , . . ‘ . ‘ ‘ , ‘ , , . , , , , , ; ; , , – , . , ; ; . , , , . ? ” ‘ . ” ” ? ” ” . ” , . . ‘ , , ‘ , ‘ , , , , : ” , , ‘ . ” … , . ‘ . , . , , , , . ; . , . ” ” , . , , , ‘ ‘ . , , , , . . – . , ( ; ) . ” ? ” , , , , , . ” , , , ” , , . . . ” , ” ( ) . , , , – , . – , ‘ , , ‘ . , , , , . — — , , … . . ‘ . , , , , , . ( ) . , – , . . , , . ; ; ; . , . . – ; – ; ; , , , . , . , , – – . . , – . , . . , , — — . . . , , ‘ . , . ; . , , , , , . , , , , , . . . . , . . . , , . ; . ‘ , , . – . ? ? , , , , . . . ; ; — — . , , , , , , , , , . . – . . ‘ . , . , . , . . , , , – , , , , ‘ , , , . , . , – , , , ‘ . . . , , , , . ‘ . , , . , . . ; . ; ; ; ; . . . , . ” , , — — , ‘ , ” , , , . , , , . . , , , , . . , , . ; . ; . . , , . – . ; , . , – , , , ; ; — — , , . . , – , , . . , , , , . , ; ; ; . , , , . . . . . . – . ” , ‘ , ” . , , , — — , , , . ‘ , , , , . . . , , . . . , , . , . ‘ . . . , . . . , , , , , , , , , . ” , , ” , . ” , ” . ” , ” . . . , – , : ” ! ” . , , . , , , ; ; ” ‘ , ” . . . , , , , , . . , , ( – , ) . , , , , – ; , — — , . . ” , ” , . ‘ , , , , ? , , , , , , . – . , . . — — , ; ; . . . . , , . . , , , . , , . . , , , . . . – . . . ; . ; . – . . . ‘ . , . , . . , , , . , . , — — ‘ — — – . , , , , ; — — , . ! , . . . . ” , , ‘ , ” ‘ . ” ‘ , ” , ; . ” , ” , ‘ . . ” , ! ” . , – . ” . . . . ” . ; . . . . , , . . ? , , , , – . ” ? ” . , . ” . . , ” . . . , , . , . , , ; ; ; ; . , , , , ? , . , , , , , , , . . . . — — . . . , , , , , . ” , . ” ” ‘ . — — ” , , , , , . ” , ” , – , – , , ” ‘ ‘ ” ; . ” ‘ ! ” . ” ‘ , , ” , – . — — ‘ ! ‘ , ‘ ? , ; , , – ” ? ” . ‘ . . . — — , – . — — , . , ‘ ‘ . . . ‘ — — ‘ , . . , , ; – ! . . ; . . , ; – , , — — , . ; ; , , ? ” , ” , . . ‘ , , — — . ( ) . . ‘ — — ; , , — — – , , – . . , , . . , . — — , – . , . – ; ; ‘ , , , ; . , , ; , , . . . ” , ” , – – . , ! . ; ; ( ) , – , , . , . , , , — — . . . . . ” ‘ ? ” . ” . ” – ; ; . ? ” , ” . – ? . ; ; ; . — — . ” ? ” . ” , ” . , , . . — — . . . . . , , . . . – . – , – – . . ; . – . . ? . . . , , , ( ) , — — . ” , ” . , ” – . ” ( , ; – ; , , ) , , , , , , , , . . – , , . , . . ( , ‘ , . ) ” ‘ , , ” , , , , . ” , , ? ” , , . , , . ” ? ” . ” , , ” . ” , ” . . ” ‘ , ” . ” ‘ . ‘ ” … . ” ‘ ‘ , ” . ” , ‘ . , ” . ” , , ” . ” . ‘ , . ‘ . . ‘ , ‘ ” , , – . ” , – ! ” . ” ‘ , ‘ ” , . ” , ” , . ” ? ” ” – , ” . ” , , ” . ” , ” . ” . . . ‘ ? , . , ‘ ? ” ” ‘ , , , ” , , , ‘ . ” ‘ , , ‘ ” , . ” – – … . , ” . ” ‘ . ” . , . ; , . ; ; ; . ” , , ” , ” ‘ ‘ . … ” … ” … . ‘ . . — — , . ” ” ‘ , ” , ” . , ‘ , . ” . ” ‘ , . ” . ” , ? ” . ” ‘ , ” , . ” , , ” , . ” ‘ , ” . ” ‘ ‘ , ” , . ” . ‘ . ‘ . ‘ … ” . ” , ” , . ” ‘ … ” , , , , . ” , ‘ . . . . . , … . ” . ” ‘ — — ‘ , ” . ” , ” . ” ‘ . ” . ” , . , . . , . . ‘ . . . — — ? ‘ . – , . ” ” ? ” . ” ? ‘ . , … . ” ” , ” . ” ‘ ? ” . ” , . ” ” … ” , . ” … ” ” , ‘ , ” . , . , ‘ . ” ! ! ” . ” ! ” , – . ” , ” , . , , . . . . – . , ! – , . , , ; ; ; – . , , – . . ” ? ” , . ; ; . ” ? ” , . ” , ” ; . , . – , , . ” ‘ , ” , . ” ‘ , ” , . ” . . — — … . ‘ ” ; . . ” ‘ , ” . ” ? … , , ‘ . — — ‘ ? — — ‘ . ‘ . — — … ” ” , ” , . ” ‘ . ” ” , ‘ , ” , . ” ‘ . ‘ . ” ” , ” . ” , ” . ” ‘ , ” , . ” ‘ . , . ” ” , . ‘ . , ? ” ” ‘ , ” . ” ! ” . ” . ” ” , , ” , ” ‘ . ” ” , ” . ” , ‘ . , . . . ” ” — — – ” . ” ‘ , ? , . . , — — ‘ . ” , , , ; . . . . ‘ . , , , , . — — . , , , ; , — — ; ; , , , , , ; ; , , . , , , ‘ . , , , , , , , . . , — — – ” ‘ , ” . , . ” … ” . , , , ” … . ” . . , ; ; . ” , ” . , , . , . ” , ” . . ” . ” . . ” ? ” . . ” , ” . . . ” , ” . , . ” ‘ , ” . ” , . ” ” , ” . . ” , , , ” . . . — — . ; . ” , ” . , . , , . , . ” ! ” . . . , . . – . . ; , , . . . . . , . . , ? . . , . , , , . ” , . , — — ” . . , ? . ‘ – ? . , , , ? . . – ” , ” , . , , ” , ” ” . ” , , , , . . , , , — — , . . , , . , , – . . , , , – . – , – . , , , . , . , , ” ! ” , ; , ; . . . . . , , . ” … , ” . , , ” . . ” ” , ” . . . . . . . . ‘ . , , , . , , — — ? ? , , . — — . , , . , . — — . ; – , . ‘ . . – , , . , . , , , , . , . , – , . . . . . , – – , . , , , , . , , . , ‘ . , , . — — — — . , . , . ” , ” . ” , ” , ” , ” . . , . — — . , , , , , , . . ; – . . — — . – , . , , — — , . . , . , . … . — — — — ‘ … . ” — — , ” , , — — , , , , . , , . ” ! ” , ” ! ” . – , . , ; ; ; ; ; ‘ ; ; ; . – ; . ? , , . , , , , , . ‘ ; — — — — . . . ( ) — — , , , , — — ; — — . . ; . — — , — — ; ” ” ; , , ; , , . , , . , , , ; ; . ” ‘ ‘ , ” . . . . . . – , — — — — , . , – , , , , , , . . . , , – , , , , . ” – , ” , . ” . ” , , . , , . . , , . — — , ? — — . , ‘ — — , , — — , . ; . ? , — — , , , , , – , . , , . , , , ” , ” . , ” ” ; . . , – , . ” , ” , ” . ” ” , , ” , . ” ‘ , ” , . , , , , , , , ‘ . ” , ” . ” . ” — — ‘ . , ‘ , , . . ‘ . — — ‘ , , , , ‘ . ‘ . , , , , , . — — , , ‘ , . . ” , ” , ” — — ” — — , . . ; ; , . ; — — , . , , ; , . ; ; ‘ ; . ; . . , — — — — ? — — — — ” , ” , , ” ‘ . ” , . ; ; ; — — — — , , , — — . . ” , ” . , ” — — — — . . , . , ” , , , . ” . ” — — — — , , , . ! . . . . . , , , , . , , . , , , . ; . ” , ” . . . , , , – . ” , ” . . ; ; ; . ; . ; . ” , ” . . ” , ; … ” ” , ” , . , . ; , , ; – – , — — , , , – , , — — , . ; . , , ; – , , , , . ” , ” , . . . ‘ . ” , ” . . ” , ” , . ( ” , , ” . ) . , ; . , , . , ( , ) , , ( , ) , . , , , . ” ! ” . ” ? ” , . ” , ” . ” . ” , , . . . ; . ( — — ‘ ? ) ‘ ; ; ( ) ? ” , ” , ” ” — — , , . , , – – , . . . . ” , ” , ” , ” . : ” . , , . ” , , , ” , ” . . . ; ; , , , . , , , , , . — — , , . ‘ . . . . , . , , , , — — ‘ . . . , , , , , , . . . , , , , , , , . ” , ” . , , . , , . , — — , , — — ! ! ! . ” , , ” , ‘ . ‘ , , , . ” , ” , ” . ” ” , ” . ” . ” ” , ” . , ‘ , , , , . – , , . ; . ” , ” . , . , . ” ‘ , ” , . ; , , , , ” ‘ . ” ; , , . ” ‘ , ” . ” ‘ – – ‘ ; … ” . . ; ; ; . ; ( , – , , , , , , , , – , ) , , . , , . ” ! ” ( ) . ” ! ” ( ) . ” … ! ” . , . , . ! ; . . ” , ” , , . . , . ; . . , . , , , , , ; , , ; , , . ; , , , ( ) ; , , . , , , , , , , , , . . , , , , , . . , — — , , , — — ; , , ( ) . , , , , ; , , , , . ” , , , ” , . ” , ” – . , . ; . . . , . . ” ‘ , ” . ” . ” ” ” , , — — — — — — ” ‘ — — — — ‘ — — , , , , ” — — , , , , , , , ‘ , . ; ; ; ; , , , , . ; , . . . ; ; . . ‘ , , , , , , . . ? . . . , , , . , ; ; ; . ( — — . ) . , , — — — — ; , , ‘ . . . ; ; , , — — ? . . ; . ! , , . , , , — — , , , , ; , . ” — — ! ” . . ” , ” , , . ( , ; . ) ” , ” , , . ( , , . ) , , , – . . , . , . , , , , , , . , , , , . . ; – ; , , , . — — ( . ) ‘ ; ; ‘ — — . ” ! ” , , , , , , ; ; . ” , ” , , ” ? — — ? ” , , , , , , , , , . , , , , , — — . ( . ) — — , , , , . ” , ” . , — — , , . , , . ; , ( ) ; ; , — — , ” , ” , ” . , . ” , — — ( , ) — — . . . . ” , ” , , , ” . . ” ” ? ” . ” ‘ . ” ” , — — . , ‘ . , ” , , . ? – ? . , , . , , . , , . . , ; , . , ‘ , . – . , — — , . ? , ( – ) ‘ , , ; , – , ‘ — — . ! , . , , — — . ‘ . . — — . ” … ” . ” , ” . , ” . ” , ‘ , . ” , , ” , ” — — . ” . — — , ‘ . ” ? ” . ” , , , ” . . ” ‘ . ” ” . ” ” , ? ” ” , ‘ . ‘ . . ” ” , . , ” . , , ” . ? , . ” . , , . — — — — – , , , , . , . ( , — — ) . ; ( ) . , , , , , , , – . , , , , , , . . , . , – ; , , – . . , , . ; . , , — — . ” ? ” , – , – . ” ? ” . . , , ; . , ( ) . ” ! ” , . , ” ! ” . . . . , . ‘ . , . ; ; . . . , , , . , . ” , ” . , . , — — — — , , , . — — . . . ” ? ” . ” , ” . , . ” , ” , . . . ” – , ” , , . . , , – : ” , — — ‘ ? , — — ? ” , , , , , , — — . , , . – , . ” , ” . ” . , … . … . … . ” ” , ” . ” . ” ” ‘ , ” . ” , ” . ” – . ” ” , ” , . . ” – , ” . ” ‘ – — — ? ” ” ? ” ” , ” . ” ? ” . ” . ” ” , ” . , , — — . ” , ” . ” — — . ? — — ! ‘ . . ” . ” ? ” . ” , ” . — — — — ? . ” ‘ , ” . ” — — . ‘ — — ! ” . ” … ” . ” , , ” . ” , ” , ” ? … . ” ” , ” . ” . ” . , . . . , . — — . ” , ” . ” . , ” . ” , ” . . ” , ” . ” . . ” . . ” , , ” . ” , … ” ” . ” ” ? ” . ” ! ” . . ; ; . , ; . , ; , . ” ‘ , , ” . ” — — , ” . ; — — . . , , . , , , . ‘ . ” , ” . ” . ? ” ( . ) . . . — — — — — — — — . . . . ; . , . – , . ‘ , , , , — — , ! — — . . . ; ? ; ; ? , ? , . ‘ – . ‘ . . , ( ) , – ; , , . . , , , ” ? ? ” ” ? ? ” , , – . , , ‘ : ” , ? ” — — ‘ . ” ? ? ” , ; ; , , – – . — — . . . , . , . , , , , . — — , , , — — . , , ; . ‘ , . ‘ . ‘ . , , . , – , — — , , . , , , – – , — — . , – , , , ? . ” , ” . , . – , . ( ) , , ” , ” , , , . . ( – ) , , . , , , . ; ; ; ; ; . — — — — , ; ; . ; ; ; ; . ; ; – . . , ; – ; – ; . – ; ; ; , , , , ‘ , ; ; ; . ” , ” . ; ; . , , . ” , ” . ; , , ; . ” , ” . ; , ; , ; ; , , . ” , ” . ” ” , , , , , , . ! ! ; ; ; , ? ” , ” . . , — — ; ; ( ) . ” ? ” . ” ? ” ” ‘ , ” . ” ‘ . , ” . ” ? ” ” , ” . , ; ‘ . ” ! ” . . . , , , , — — , ! — — , , ; ; ; ; . ‘ ? ‘ — — ‘ — — ‘ ? ? . , . — — — — , — — , ” ” — — . ” ! ” , . — — — — . , , , — — — — ” , ” ( ) . — — , . . — — , . , , ; , , , . ” , ” , . . ” , ” . ” — — – ” . . ” ‘ , ? ” . ” ‘ ? ” — — , , . , , . , . … , — — . ” ‘ , ” , ” . ” ? ? , , . ” ! ! ” ; . , , ; ; ‘ ; , — — ? — — . . . , , , . ; – . ” , ” ; . ” , ” , , , . ; . ‘ ; . ( ” ! ! ” . ) ” ‘ , ” . ” , ” . . ; ; , , . ” ‘ … ‘ ” . ” , . ! ! ” — — — — — — . ; . ” , ! , . ! ” , , , , , . ” – ! ” . – . ” – ! ” — — , , . , , , , , , . ; ; , , . ; ; – ; ; ; , , , . ‘ , , , , , , . , , . . . . . ‘ . , . ; ; ; ; , — — , , , ; , , . ; , , – , , . , , . ; ; , , . ; ; — — — — . , , . ; , , , ; . . . ” ‘ , ” , . ” . ” . , , , , , . ? , ( ) . ” , ” , ” . ” . . . ” ? ” , . ” , ” , – , ” . ” . ; , . ” ‘ , ” , . — — ? ” ! ” , – . ” , ” . ” ? ” ” , , ” – , . ” , , ” . ” . . . . ” – – , , , . , , , , ; . , . , ‘ , , . , , , ‘ , . . — — , , , – . ( ) , , , ; , , ; , , ( ) – , , , ; . ” ‘ , ” , , , — — ; , , , . ” . , ” . ” , ” , , . ” . ” . ” ? ” , . , , , . ; ; ; . ; , , – , , , , , , . , , , . ; — — ; ; ; ; ; , , . ; . – . ; ; ; ; ; ; . , ( ) , , , . , , , – , , , , – , . , , – . — — , – , – — — . , , ; , ; , , , , , , , , ; . , , , . , ; ; – ; , , , , , . , , – . , , . , , ; ; , , , , . ? , , . . , – , . , , . ” , ” . . ” ‘ ‘ , ” . ” . ” ; ; , , . ” , ” . , , ” … ” ” , ” – , ” . ” ” — — ” , ‘ , ” — — ? ” , , — — ” , ! ” . ; ; . ” ‘ , ” , , ; , , . , , . , , – , , – . – , ‘ . . , . – , . . , , , , . ” ! ” . , . ” ! ” . . ” ! , ” . . ” ‘ — — , ” , . . . ” ? ” . , . . , , ; , , , , , , , — — — — ( ) ; . ‘ . ; ; – ; ; , , . . – . – ; ; , , , . . . , – , , , , . , . . ” ? ” , , , . ” , ” . ” . ” , , , . , ; . ? ? ? . . . ” , ” . ” . . ? ? ” , ‘ . . , , . , ; ‘ . , – , . – . ” , ” . ‘ . . . … . , ; . – , . . ‘ . ‘ . , , , . . . ” ! ! ” , . . ” ! ” , . . ” , . ? ” ‘ .

 

Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, but just the punctuation.

The Letters of William Gaddis (Book acquired, 1 Feb. 2023)

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Ten years ago, Dalkey Archive published The Letters of William Gaddis. Edited and introduced by Steven Moore, Letters functions as an ersatz autobiography or a one-sided epistolary autobiographical novel. As a public-facing author, Gaddis was hardly a Pynchon or Salinger, but, in a 1986 Paris Review interview, he did stick by the hero of his first novel The Recognitions, contending,

What’s any artist but the dregs of his work[?]: I gave that line to Wyatt thirty-odd years ago and as far as I’m concerned it’s still valid,

Wyatt, and Gaddis, wanted to know “what people want from the man they didn’t get from his work.” The Letters offers some answers—close to 700 pages of them in the new NYRB edition of the book that includes “over two dozen new letters and photographs.”

Portrait of William Gaddis, Julian Schnabel, 1987

I first read The Letters of William Gaddis slowly between 2014 and 2019 as an e-book (both legit and samizdat). Moore organized the collection around Gaddis’s five books, and I found myself often distracted, opening up the the volumes to find parallels between life and art (or moments where WG outright stole from reality). I’d never actually held the Dalkey edition, but I wanted to get a comparison, so I asked my librarian to engage in some hot library on library action, and I now have the University of Central Florida’s copy in my possession. The hardback volume is missing the jacket, which featured Julian Schnabel’s 1987 portrait of Gaddis on the cover.

The new NYRB edition, perhaps more appropriately, features Gaddis’s self-portrait as cover art. The black, gold, and red, as well as the extra-large dimensions (by NYRB standards) match the NYRB versions of The Recognitions and J.R. It’s longer and a bit smaller than the hardback Dalkey, but the print is about the same size.

I’ve decided to cover the book at my own pace; I’ve reread the first two sections, “Growing Up,” and “The Recognitions,” which covers 1930-1955. I remembered pretty much all of it, and my judgments remain the same: Gaddis is an unrepentant mama’s boy, his sweet ma Edith is the early hero of the book, quick to send money and books. Angry Young Man Gaddis is more Otto than Wyatt, but he can sling sentences with the best of them—and that’s the joy of The Letters: the writing is really, really good.

Like I said though, I’ll cover the volume at my own pace. I’ve got notes prepped for the first two sections, and I aim to get those blogs out sooner than later. In the meantime, here’s the publisher’s blurb, almost certainly Moore’s writing, updated just a tad from the Dalkey:

Now recognized as one of the giants of postwar American fiction, William Gaddis shunned the spotlight during his life, which makes this collection of his letters a revelation. Beginning in 1930 when Gaddis was at boarding school and ending in September 1998, a few months before his death, these letters function as a kind of autobiography, and also reveal the extent to which he drew upon events in his life for his fiction. Here we see him forging his first novel, The Recognitions (1955), while living in Mexico, fighting in a revolution in Costa Rica, and working in Spain, France, and North Africa. Over the next twenty years he struggles to find time to write the National Book Award–winning J R (1975) amid the complications of work and family; deals with divorce and disillusionment before reviving his career with Carpenter’s Gothic (1985); then teaches himself enough about the law to produce A Frolic of His Own(1994). Resuming his lifelong obsession with mechanization and the arts, he finishes a last novel, Agapē Agape (published in 2002), as he lies dying.

This newly revised edition includes clarifying notes by Gaddis scholar Steven Moore, as well as an afterword by the author’s daughter, Sarah Gaddis.

 

Still Life with Plaster Head and Books — Felice Casorati

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Still Life with Plaster Head and Books by Felice Casorati (1883-1963)

JG Ballard Bingo

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On Gwendoline Riley’s First Love, a spare, precise study of passive-aggressive cruelty, abjection, and sublimated dreams

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I forced myself through the last half of Gwendoline Riley’s 2017 novel First Love wondering if I actually liked her latest novel My Phantoms, a book I read just a few weeks ago.

(What do I mean to capture in the puny verb like?)

The material of First Love will be familiar to anyone who’s read My Phantoms, and I kept mentally underlining the similarities: first-person narrator, woman, living in London, a city she is culturally alienated from; bad parents–abusive asshole dad, narcissistic dippy mum. Vegetarian cooking.

Like My Phantoms, First Love is a slim, spare, precise study of passive-aggressive cruelty, sublimated dreams, and lowered expectations. Pervading the novel is a general sense that one would prefer not to get stuck in a corner with any of these characters at a party, let alone end up living with one.

The thrust of First Love (one wouldn’t call it a plot, which isn’t a negative criticism) is something like this: Neve, a thirty-three-year-old writer (who makes some money teaching) is married to a man named Edwyn, who is a generation older from her, and suffering a heart condition. His heart condition has left him close to death at least once, but it also doubles as a symbol for his trashed spirit: Edwyn’s heart condition is that Edwyn has the heart of an asshole.

Edwyn belittles and abuses Neve, condescends her feminism, and generally bullies her. Most of the abuse is verbal, but sometimes it is physical. The abuse is always awful though—an abuse of spirit, of love.

Riley announces the themes of this awful “love” by the novel’s fourth paragraph:

We don’t talk much in the evenings, but we’re very affectionate. When we cuddle on the landing, and later in the kitchen, I make little noises—little comfort noises—at the back of my throat, as does he. When we cuddle in bed at night, he says, ‘I love you so much!’ or ‘You’re such a lovely little person!’ There are pet names, too. I’m ‘little smelly puss’ before a bath, and ‘little cleany puss’ in my towel on the landing after one; in my dungarees I’m ‘you little Herbert!’ and when I first wake up and breathe on him I’m his ‘little compost heap’ or ‘little cabbage.’ Edwyn kisses me repeatingly, and with great emphasis, in the morning.

There have been other names, of course.

‘Just so you know,’ he told me last year, ‘I have no plans to spend my life with a shrew. Just so you know that. A fishwife shrew with a face like a fucking arsehole that’s had…green acid shoved up it.’

‘You can always just get out if you find me so contemptible,’ he went on, feet apart, fists clenched, glaring at me over on the settee. ‘You have to get behind the project, Neve, or get out.’

What’s the project? you might wonder, as does Neve—well, it’s not “winding up” Edwyn and “feel like shit all the time!’”

Does Edwyn actually feel abused by Neve’s behavior?

Riley certainly gives the man plenty of opportunities to vocalize his self-pitying and abusive rants. The central totem Edwyn hangs his anger on is an episode in which Neve drank alcohol excessively and vomited (apparently) all over the couple’s apartment. Riley does not depict the episode because Neve, natch, cannot recall it. The bits we get from it involve Edwyn’s violence, his anger. An ugly and true recollection of the sweaty abject reality of a hangover.

Much of First Love is mired in abjection—sweat and grime and piss and shit. Early in the book Neve and Edwyn exchange reminiscences of their young mothers on the toilet, Neve’s suffering IBS, Edwyn terrified of “The thundering waterfall of her first piss” in the early morning. “Terrifying. I thought bodies were terrifying.”

The abject reality of bodies and filth repulses Edwyn, and he buries his repulsion into a store of misogynistic tropes and curses that explode with more ugly frequency as First Love progresses. “You live in shit, so we all have to live in shit, is that right?” he demands of Neve, who he repeatedly accuses of slovenliness, filth. For Edwyn, Neve’s apparent uncleanliness is also related to her Northernness, underscoring the novel’s themes of class and place. Neve herself capitulates, reminiscing:

But was anybody clean back then? When I think of my friends’ houses, they weren’t any less filled with shit. Here were cold, cluttered bedrooms, greased sheets. The kitchens were a horror show: ceilings bejewelled with pus-coloured animal fat, washing-up sitting in water which was spangled like phlegm. Our neighbour’s house, where we went after school, was an airlocked chamber smelling of bins that hadn’t been put out. There was a long skid mark, I remember, on one of the towels in their bathroom. It was there for three years.

So—I did grow up in shit. It was no slander.

Shit, filth, stupidity, dishonesty. (Mother looking up slyly from a crying jag.)

I did use to be sick a lot. No slander, though Edwyn didn’t know it.

Edwyn doesn’t know fucking anything. I was relieved in the novel’s final moments, where the narrative disappeared him.

But now and so I go back to the beginning of this riff and see the opening clause, I forced: I did force myself to finish First Love, poison cup. And, that second sentence up at the top: Did I like the novel? No. Reading it hurt. Riley offers up raw reality, ugly, abject, mean. The novel is well-written, which I don’t mean pejoratively: no seams show, and thematic resonance carries from minute details: dialogue, concrete imagery, minor moments that coalesce into an abject portrait of sick “love,” messy and cruel. I am so happy that I’m now outside of the thing.

Quelques Books: More of My Favorite SF Novels and Films — Moebius

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Illustration for Frankenstein — Bernie Wrightson

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Illustration for Frankenstein by Bernie Wrightson (1948-2017)

Aw, kick him, honey | Gérard DuBois illustration for Blood Meridian

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Illustration for Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian by Gérard DuBois. From the Folio Society edition of Blood Meridian.

A review of Hilary Mantel’s novel Beyond Black

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In Hilary Mantel’s 2005 novel Beyond Black, a fat psychic named Alison endures the harrowing torment of a collective of ghosts she calls the Fiends, the spirits of cruel men from her childhood. When a young, aimless woman named Colette comes into Alison’s life and assumes managerial duties for her career, Alison’s bilious past comes to a head. Colette engineers more and better gigs for Alison (the death of Princess Diana causes a huge spike in business), who, despite her genuine psychic talents, must nonetheless run the kind of scam the “punters” in her audience crave. Colette and Alison soon move in together, buying a new house in a quiet, boring suburb outside of London; their prefab homestead is drawn in sharp contrast to the slums of Aldershot where Alison grew up–the novel’s second setting. As Beyond Black progresses, contemporary suburban Britain increasingly crumbles into Alison’s grim, greasy past in Aldershot. Alison’s chief tormentor is, ironically, her “spirit guide,” a mean little man named Morris, a one-time frequent customer for Alison’s prostitute mother. Alison, like many victims, has suppressed much of her grotesque childhood, but it’s hard to black out everything with psychic baggage like Morris weighing her down. In time, more and more of the Fiends reemerge, forcing Alison to confront her mother and the abuse they both suffered at the hands of those awful men. As the book lurches to its chilling climax, Alison asserts independence, casting out her metaphysical and psychological demons.

At its core, Beyond Black asks what it means to be haunted and how one might survive an abusive past intact. A slim specter of a character named Gloria floats through the book. The Fiends, whose vile antics are sometimes compared to a gypsy circus, have dismembered Gloria with the old saw trick. In Alison’s memory, pieces of Gloria are scattered around her childhood home, parceled out, fed to dogs, transported in boxes at midnight, hidden. Alison’s awful mother frequently alludes to Alison herself being “sawed up,” a metaphor that dances on the literal as we come to realize that the old drunk has pimped out her daughter repeatedly. Mantel’s novel investigates the return of the repressed, and although she gives us something like a happy ending, the book’s central thesis seems to be that pain cannot be abandoned or hidden, but only mitigated through direct confrontation.

The book’s humor does nothing to lighten its grim subject–if anything it exacerbates and confounds the darkness at the heart of Beyond Black. Mantel’s gift for dialogue fleshes out her characters (even the spectral ones), and while the book aims for a satirical tone at times, its characters are too richly drawn to be mere cutouts in a stage production. Mantel’s satire of contemporary English life is sharp and bleak; you laugh a little and then feel bad for laughing and a page later you’re horrified. It’s a successful book in that respect. It’s one real weakness is in the character of Colette, whose voice gives way to Alison’s past by the book’s end. This is actually no problem, as Colette’s narrative life is not nearly as interesting as Alison’s psychic traumas; Colette is, however, catalyst for the changes in Alison’s life. It would’ve been nice to see more resolution here, but I suppose Beyond Black hews closer to real life here, with all its messy loose ends.

I chose to read Beyond Black because I enjoyed Mantel’s recent Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall so much. The books have little in common other than being well-written and tightly paced, and I think that anyone who wanted more Mantel after an introduction via Wolf Hall would do right to pick up Beyond Black. Recommended.

[Ed. note—Biblioklept first published this review in 2010. RIP to Hilary Mantel, who died “suddenly but peacefully” yesterday at 70.]

Reading Girls — Helene Schjerfbeck

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Lukevat tytöt (Reading Girls), 1907 by Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946)

Ann Quin’s Tripticks (Book acquired, 15 Aug. 2022)

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I’m a big fan of Ann Quin. Her last novel, Tripticks, is reissued this month from the good folks of And Other Stories. Here is their blurb:

First published in 1972, Ann Quin’s fourth and final novel was a radical break from the introspective style she had developed in Three and Passages: a declaration of independence from all expectations.

Brashly experimental, ribald, and hilarious, Tripticks maps new territories for the novel – aspiring to a form of pop art via the drawings of the artist Carol Annand and anticipating the genre-busting work of Kathy Acker through collage and gory satire.

Splattering its pages with the story of a man being chased across a nightmarish America by his ‘first X-wife’ and her ‘schoolboy gigolo’, Tripticks was ground zero for the collision of punk energy with high style.

And Other Stories seem to have preserved the original style of Tripticks—it has the look and feel of a punk zine—mimeographed, collage-oriented, pasted together: little surreal comic strips and Pop Art explosions juxtaposed against lists and riffs.

Here’s one of Carol Annand’s illustrations:

And a little list:

Read an excerpt here.

My review of Quin’s first novel Berg.

My review of Quin’s third novel Passages.

End of July blog

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It is the end of July 2022 and I am on the seventh day of quarantine in my bedroom. I tested positive for COVID-19 again on Friday, and while I feel fine for the most part, the first few days of the illness were a fog. I had always thought I’d catch up on reading or watching films if I were to catch covid, but my brain didn’t work that way. Instead, I played a lot of online chess, losing a lot more than usual, with the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings films on in the background on an old laptop.

Over the past few days I’ve felt a lot better, and have been able to retain what I’ve read. A lot of that reading consisted of essay drafts for the online Summer B classes I’m teaching, which come to end very soon. But last night I was able to jump back into Vladimir Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard, in translation by Max Lawton (forthcoming from NYRB next year). It is simply amazing, a totally fucked up wild ride that’s impossible to summarize. Here’s a brief description from Max (via email): “The reader should be confused and it should hurt—then feel fucking good. This isn’t gloppy OLDOSEX; when reading Sorokin, we’re fucking nostrils with forked dicks (or—getting our nostrils fucked by the same).” THE READER SHOULD BE CONFUSED AND IT SHOULD HURT—THEN FEEL FUCKING GOOD! Yes!

I have a big stack of books in the room, including several by Sorokin. They form a big stack only because I stacked them up to take the picture below to accompany this blog; previously they were in smaller stacks or strewn or in a basket to the right of my bed.

There’s a lot of Sorokin in the stack, but not Max Lawton’s Blue Lard translation, because it doesn’t exist in a hard copy in English. Day of the Oprichnik (trans. Jamey Gambrell) was good, but the language wasn’t nearly as rich as the language of Telluria—although Oprichnik felt like it could fit into Telluria, or at least the same universe. I got Their Four Hearts in the mail yesterday, and Ice a few weeks ago, but haven’t dipped into either.

Other thoughts on the stack: I felt well enough yesterday (aided by two coffees and a prednisone) to write something on Dashiel Carrera’s debut novel The Deer. I brought the Turgenev back here when I first tested positive with covid because it was on a stack on my coffee table of books I was ostensibly going to get to or needed to review. I read Blixa Barged’s Crosswise Europe back in June and couldn’t really think of anything to say about it. I had it out because I’ve been meaning to mail it to a friend.

I must’ve acquired the copy of McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses on 14 July 2022, right before I left for a week in Washington, D.C. (the trip that undoubtedly resulted in the covid). I know the date because I posted some cool book covers on twitter that day.

I had painted our living room that week, which involved cleaning, moving, and sorting three ladder bookcases. I ended up culling about forty titles, and I took maybe half of those to the used bookstore on the fourteenth and turned them into a first edition hardback of All the Pretty Horses.

I wrote about acquiring Fernanda Melchor’s Paradais (and covid) in D.C. After I finish Blue Lard, this is on deck. Also in the stack but unread: Amina Cain’s A Horse at Night. Ugo Tognazzi’s The Injester is a cookbook from Contra Mundum. I read Anthony Michael Perri’s The Lonely Boxer earlier this month and need to write a review of it (it’s good!). The bottom three books (Powell, Lispector, O’Connor) I picked up at an estate sale two weeks ago (wrote about it here). I tried reading one of the Powell stories on Tuesday (or Wednesday?) but couldn’t focus.

Wedged in the middle there is a Grove Press edition of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot that I had been destroying in office hours back in 2014. I had really been enjoying writing over it and posting pics of the pages I’d done, but someone wrote in to tell me that it was corny and for some reason that really got to me and I stopped. I was younger then (obviously); if someone did that today I’d probably ignore it completely.

I opened the book just now; I’d left off on page 24, although the last one I posted on the blog was page 22. Here is page 22:

20140626-162657-59217614.jpg

I’ll do page 25 now.

Here is page 25:

Not my best work, but I enjoyed the process!

So there’s the stack.

So, end of July, ass end of summer. There were positive times—hanging with extended family on the Fourth of July week on the beautiful Florida Gulf Coast (my now not-so-little cousins actually still wanted to play D&D). Some nice museum visits in D.C., some good reads in between. But July came in with a host of draconian Supreme Court rulings that seem to push the U.S. more steeply towards an outright autocracy in the making and closed with my spending over a week in quarantine, and the only good thing about the global heatwave that’s burned up the month might be that it seemed to wake a few people up to a future that’s already here. So, yeah, fuck July.