Brooks Hansen. The Chess Garden.

Brooks Hansen’s The Chess Garden is about the spiritual life of Dr. Uyterhoeven, which is detailed through twelve letters, in a form of an allegory, written to his wife who in turns reads them to the town they’ve called home. To call this novel allegorical fantasy sounds, to my ears, dismissive, so I’ll refrain. The book is a marvel of invention, of ideas, and of heart. Its end I find thematically similar to John Crowley’s Little, Big, though Hansen’s novel is not quite on the level of that masterpiece.

The novel’s structure is one of its biggest strengths, and one of its few flaws. It switches between the Dutch doctor’s wife and town, his biography, and his startling letters. They fit perfectly together, much like the golden leaf cloaks pieced together by monks in the Antipodes, the imaginary land the doctor visits. But I call it a flaw due to the tediousness of the biographical sections, which I concede are necessary, but, at times, a bore to get through. It’s partly due to the dry, detached manner of Hansen’s prose style. The style works in perfect conjunction with the fantastical elements, in a restrained way that casts them as almost natural, be it the wax-dripping candle trees, the large silver lake, or the chasm of a thousand tumbling dice.

The imaginary, star-shaped land the doctor visits, the Antipodes, is populated with game pieces, mostly chess pieces, but not exclusively so. As his adventures begins, events seem to happen random, with an eye more for imagery than plot, until Hansen introduces key elements and things that happened prior are cast in a new light. The island hosts a group the doctor calls vandals, who wish to destroy goods that are the essence of goods. So if you have the good cane and destroy it, the usage of a cane – its function and purpose – is lost to memory. The doctor sides against the vandals, and it isn’t until later that he understands the need to abandon earthly goods. This is where the spirituality kicks in. Overall, Hansen handles the topic rather well, except for one incredibly awkward scene when Dr. Uyterhoeven speaks of Christ and discusses his own spiritual life. Despite the embarrassing conversation, Hansen finds more effective means to convey his message, such as in the words of one character: “What matters won’t change. What changes don’t matter.” Which is the essence of this very spiritual book, not to mention the nature of the afterlife – at least in the Christian sense.

Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë



To call Jane Eyre a feminist text is to insult women. To call it a feminist novel is to insult literature. And to call Charlotte Bronte a writer is to insult civilization. Might as well call Hitler a humanitarian.



Jane Eyre is divided into roughly three parts, which I will summarize in one sentence: It is about an abused orphan who falls in love with a man who keeps a woman upstairs that bites others. The plot isn’t very surprising or subtle, nor is it of much interest. As a child, Jane Eyre is neglected and abused at her adopted home and later at a boarding school. Life gets better as she ages and as she later takes employment under a Mr. Rochester.



Yes, Mr. Rochester is the same man Jane falls into a deep, unconvincing love with, the same man who shelters a mad-woman upstairs. All is revealed in a ridiculous plot twist. Yet, while Jane’s feelings never changes for Mr. Rochester, she is forced to abandon him due to propriety’s sake. This begins the third section, which details another boring plight in Jane’s life. She improbably meets up with relatives, though the fact isn’t uncovered until later. When it is discovered, her cousin immediately proposes to Jane. All of a sudden, her being blood-relation makes her eggs viable – I don’t know why.



Unsurprisingly, Jane rejects the proposal and seeks out Mr. Rochester once more. Mr. Rochester, though now wife-less, is blind and crippled, which, according to Bronte, makes the once superior man now on equal footing with Jane. Yeah… this novel was certainly revolutionary.



There is only one reason I can celebrate Jane Eyre’s existence and it’s due to her younger sister’s rebuttal, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. So successful was Anne’s rebuttal that upon her death Charlotte repressed it. Thankfully, readers can now rightfully be disgusted be Charlotte’s works and then feel redeemed by basking in Anne’s glow.




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My Cats.

Penelope.


Penelope, crouched.


Penelope, asleep.


Odysseus.


Odysseus, hiding.


Odysseus, found.


Odysseus, hello.

Lynne Truss. Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss



Finished 9/3/08



Lynne Truss’ book takes its title from an old joke, which is conveniently reprinted on the dust jacket:


"A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
'Why?' asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
'I’m a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'"



The joke aptly summarizes Truss’ comedic tone, and her dead-serious approach to punctuation, which she reveals, again from the dust jacket, in this quote: “So, punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.”



I’m a stickler for punctuation, at least for myself. From a sense of pride and ascetic pleasure, I craft correspondence, emails, and even text messages while strictly adhering to rules of punctuation and spelling. Editing, at times, is a sense of pleasure for me. I will not go so far to say that a misspelled, improperly punctuated email or text message is insulting to the reader; however, one can’t help but wonder, if the writer put so little thought into their writing, what about other aspects of their lives? For one so in love with written language, it is a difficult, narrow path remaining tolerant. As a rule, I abstain from being judgmental based on a person’s lack of punctuation skills. Truss, however, does not.



The vandalistic anecdotes and random assortment of historical trivia are the life of Truss’ book of the “zero tolerance approach to punctuation.” She notes times of defacing public property to add and remove apostrophes and hyphens. Her justification, which she details through historic examples and writers’ diatribes, is that without punctuation, that humble guide that instructs how to read the written word, language would breakdown to chaos and ambiguity. And she’s right, as one can see in the example above. A misplaced comma renders an entirely new meaning to the sentence.



Yet, one cannot fill a book on this premise alone, no matter how many pages she has of anecdotes. Thus, she recites basic rules for different punctuation and why it is worth saving. Sadly, it is here that book breaks down and becomes uninteresting. I admire her attempts at keeping things interesting. Many of the examples are bizarre sentences, either by her hand or borrowed. For those not as familiar with the rules of grammar, this would be a good addition. For others, there are more formidable guides, which, in all likelihood, are already owned by them.



If this book left me with anything, it was an intense desire to read more George Bernard Shaw. The man’s theories are just fascinating.




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Mark Ovenden. Transit Maps of the World

Transit Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden



I’ve discovered a love for oversized coffee table books. Unwieldy troves of trivia, in them novelty wins. I’d buy one browse it for a couple months. They’re books to enjoy slowly, over time, digesting niblets of facts on some geeky, specialized subject. Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World fills this niche, it makes the journey worthwhile.



In the preface, he smartly defines a transit system. Urban transit maps remain the book’s primary focus, though, while questionable to some, he defends the inclusion of other mixed systems – those with above ground as well as below ground transit systems.



The book is divided into six zones or sections, the first three of which being the richest. The zones are further divided into cities. Ovenden details histories, from the inception of a city’s urban system to its recent model and also includes proposed plans. These biographies of the cities are filled with beautiful reproductions of the maps as they change, grow, and become standardized.



Yes, standardized. Not only is the book interest in the development of the urban systems, but the maps themselves. Some include topography, landmarks to orient travelers where they are aboveground. Standardized, for cleaner looking maps, rids itself of topography and settles instead for standard angles, equal station distant, black station ticks with open circles, among other practices. The book becomes even more interesting where the cities take risks on the maps, trying out a new design. Some experiments early on are phased out, others became the standard.



For most major cities, the development of the systems started in the late nineteenth century, where exponential population growth created demand. Faced with the population surge above, engineers went underground. This was when the maps appeared. The systems grew, some massively. During the Depression, many plans were scrapped, and some systems were put on hold indefinitely. Several of the cities in the later zones had plans before the Depression, but were hit so hard that nothing was done until as recently as twenty years ago.



The book, for all its geeky pleasure, is not serendipitous. After such richly detailed early zones, the latter zones feel included simply for the tagline across the front cover: “The World’s First Collection of Every Urban Train Map on Earth.” It drags once you understand the transit map’s history and trajectory. Even Ovenden has to devise creative ways to say the same thing over and over.



But for novelty value, the book is worth it.


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Don DeLillo. Cosmopolis.

Cosmopolis: A Novel by Don DeLillo



Finished 8/22/08



DeLillo is not known for intricate plots. His books are about ideas. This is where he thrives. This is the compensation for an apparent lack of trajectory, or at least a tight;y-paced plot, mostly. But when he abandons all plot and instead engages the character in a series of random conversation, even his thematic issues lack. There needs to be propulsion in his novels, direction. Without, he gives us the lackluster Great Jones Street about a recluse rocker who does nothing but sit in an apartment building. The characters who visit actually seem to offer a moderately interesting plot, but there is no action. The sloth protagonist lies around, bored, and the reader feels the same.



In Cosmopolis, DeLillo offers the same dull albeit silly snapshot: A billionaire rides across town in a limo for a haircut. Yes, a haircut. The trip takes all day due to a presidential visit, a funeral and an assassination attempt… by pie. Yes pie. A pastry assassin makes living, or at least attempts to construct a point, by hitting celebrities in a face with dessert. Odd asides such as this give the book a humorous buzz, but it’s all superficial.

The only ideas that float by worth any acknowledgement is the overabundance of information. Portions of it reminded me of Warren Ellis’ great Transmetropolitan set in the near distant future where human vices have grown as technology advanced. I mention the graphic novel series because it’s the only worthy venture my mind took while reading Cosmopolis. And I love DeLillo.



This is the type of book where DeLillo opens himself up to criticism. Everything he’s faulted for, on full display within. There’s the funeral of rap star Brutha Fez that tightropes between weighty seriousness and farce. Mildly compelling sequence, memorable for how straight-faced he approached the scene despite how ridiculous it all was underneath. Yet one must the point where it culminates with this dozy of a line: “When people die, you weep.” A writer, who’s made a name on modern cultural insights, gives us that profound little nugget. What in the absolute fuck. Avoid.




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Harry Crews. A Feast of Snakes

Part of me hates this book. Hates the characters, their slithery morality and unfulfilled aspirations, hates how the emptiness, the vacuum left is filled with the coiled hissing forms of snakes and how it gets under the skin and into the stomach and bowels. I acknowledge the power and intensity Harry Crews has at his command, but I do not admire his A Feast of Snakes.

Each year in Mystic, Georgia, Jon Lon organizes the Rattlesnake Roundup, a festival that attracts a denizen of unsavory gypsies, thrill-seekers, and drunkards. They arrive in campers and Winnebagos, setup wares, fight dogs, partake in a beauty pageant, and set fire to a thirty-foot-tall snake. So yes, it’s a hillbilly version of the wicker man.

‘Hillbilly’ is an appropriate term, since the Jon Lon’s plight plays out as hillbilly angst. That’s because Jon Lon cannot find love. Not in his wife, his inamorata, his children, his friends, his family, his job, or his position as organizer of the Roundup. No, Jon Lon only laments for the past and his former glories of high school football star and his old girlfriend. One wonders how Jon Lon expects to find “true love” if his definition involves atm, which Crews graphically describes in one of many vile, foul, and cruel sex scenes. So Jon Lon is stuck operating the liquor store once owned by his father and spends most of the day drinking and bitching at his wife. His father isn’t much different except that he bitches at his daughter since his wife killed herself years ago.

The whole book is foul and cruel. Foul because Crews revels in shock. Cruel because Crews casts a hateful eye on all his citizens and puts them through the wringer. Even Lottie Mae, the sole redeeming subplot in the entire novel, is brutalized, driven insane, and disturbed by snakes before she is able to exact an even crueler revenge.

Lottie Mae, a young black girl, is the object of the sheriff’s desire. The sheriff Buddy is a mangled man, a landlocked hillbilly pirate, I guess, with his peg leg. His real leg he lost in ‘Nam. Buddy, too, laments the past for he, too, was once a football star. Most of the male characters were. Now he occupies his time by carrying snakes, one in a sack and the other in his pants. Yes, that is a metaphor Crews pounds in your head, over and over. The phallic nature of snakes. The sexual connotation of Eve’s temptation, of the snake in the garden. And on and on.

I’m exaggerating somewhat, since the snake metaphor is one of the few things Crews deftly handles, despite the overkill. His similes and his prose, however, are dull, at least in the first half. Let me quote a little gem here describing Jon Lon’s wife: “Two inches below her navel her belly just leaped out in this absolutely unbelievable way.” Well, that’s absolutely unbelievable! But it gets better: “she looked like she was carrying a basketball under her dress.” A basketball, no kidding!

The dialogue, mostly in dialect, is authentic, though I questioned some of the intentional misspellings. And the prose does get better in the second half, lyrical at times, but he still stumbles over similes. With obvious imaginative powers, why does Crews stumble with similes?

Rereading what I wrote, I’m shocked I haven’t mentioned the violence. The book’s back cover notes that Crews covers the vices of “adultery, castration, suicide, and murder.” This list, of course, leaves out bullying, rape, drunkenness, drunken driving, fights, lies, animal brutality including mutilation and dog fighting, racism, sexism, abandonment, kidnapping, battered wives, neglected wives, paraphilia, madness, delusions, feces fascination, religion bashing, and idleness. All of which are ingredients for an instant cult classic!

But yes, there is a lot of violence, a lot of touting of masculinity and then more violence. One could posit that Crews argues against masculinity and its corrupting power, which is true. But Crews idealizes athleticism in a well-rendered scene of weight-lifting and dick-measuring, which in the south is how one determines the pecking order. The equivalent of dogs sniffing the other’s rectum.

Despite the Southern Gothic nature, it’s rather insulting for readers to cite Crews alongside the masters Faulkner and O’Connor. Both incorporated humanity in their works, dealt with underlying problems in the south, and both, in the end, were redemptive, even if at times it was a freak show. Crews, however, is just a freak show. With the exception of Lottie Mae, who’s in so little of the book and so distant from the main thread, A Feast of Snakes has little value, which disappoints me since Crews does have intensity as a writer.

Marianne Moore. Complete Poems.

What led me to purchase Marianne Moore’s collection was when I reviewed facsimiles of her work. I cannot recall the name of the poem, but I do recall its several shapes and sizes as it shifted on the page, often with several years between revisions. Stanzas were formed, reformed, indented, and centered only to be un-centered later. Lines were enjambed and words sliced so its last syllable fell to the next line.

I fell in love with Moore the editor. So I bought her Complete Poems with the hope to glimpse her revisions over the years. It wasn’t until later that I discovered this was her Deathbed Edition, which collected poems already revised perhaps a dozen times, while excluding versions seemed deemed less-worthy.

One must wonder why I bitch about a collection that plays like a ‘Best of’ album. My only defense is that I wanted total immersion of her poetry, much like I get with the ‘Complete etc.’ collections.

All-in-all, I reckon it’s a silly complaint. Moore has a poetic sensibility beyond most I’ve read. Her poems are enigmatic and dense, incorporating thoughts and facts and magazine snippets from all across the board. The notes at the end are a helpful in enlightening the condensing and maybe even a little stealing Moore had done. Her mind encapsulated a formidable, even intimidating range of subjects and technical knowledge.

But often the meaning and purpose of her poems are utterly overwhelmed by her musicality. The tight composure of each poem, from its aesthetic beauty on the page to its harmonious sound when recited aloud, astonishes. And it will be what calls me back to her works.

There is a really nice interview in The Paris Review:
http://www.theparisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/4637

Car Collision in Mexico.

Beer and cycling don't mix.

Dutch man injures posterior in mooning accident

Wed Jun 4, 1:11 AM ET

UTRECHT, Netherlands - Utrecht police say a 21-year-old Dutch man is recovering after a "mooning" that went horribly wrong.

A police statement says the man and two others had run down a street in Utrecht with their pants pulled down in the back "for a joke."

It says that at one point the 21-year-old "pushed his behind against the window of a restaurant" that broke and resulted in "deep wounds to his derriere."

The statement released Tuesday says police detained the three men after the incident Sunday morning. But the cafe owner decided not to press charges after the men agreed to pay for the broken window.

The injured man was treated for his injuries at a nearby hospital.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080604/ap_on_fe_st/mooning_mishap

Jerome K. Jerome. Diary of a Pilgrimage.

The joy of any Jerome K. Jerome book is not the destination but the journey itself. I take that back – the joy of any Jerome book are the digressions and tangents during the journey. He lacks the descriptive detail of, say, Mark Twain or even the later Jack Kerouac. In fact, as travelogues, they’re dull and insipid. Jerome’s strengths are his humorous anecdotes, underlying sarcasm, and the orchestrated, snowballing comedic scenes

His second published work, Diary of a Pilgrimage involves a journey. J. (what the narrator calls himself) and B. head to Germany for the Oberammergau Passion Play, a performance that lasts seven hours.

“Will you come?’ B. asks.
Jerome answers:
I pondered for a moment, looked at my diary, and saw that Aunt Emma was coming to spend Saturday to Wednesday next with us, calculated that if I went I should miss her and might not see her again for years, and decided that I would go.

All of Jerome K. Jerome’s characters are selfish, sarcastic, argumentative, lazy, and Anglo-centric. Consider this characterization in his most famous novel, Three Men in a Boat (1889): “That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.” Nowhere is a better summation of his characters.

Consider the scene when the travelers enter an overbooked carriage with every seat reserved by passengers’ luggage. After some shifting (not to mention moralizing), the two break the unspoken rule of luggage laid means seat saved and take one for themselves. The scene’s joy isn’t until another passenger arrives and also shifts luggage for a seat, a maneuver that infuriates the narrator to berate the culprit, despite having done the same.

The humorous tone of the novel, or diary, changes after the Passion play, for obvious reasons. Jerome is very earnest in his Christian beliefs and I, at least, acknowledge the sentiment and emotions put forth in the performance’s description, though I don’t agree with the beliefs. Its structure is a flaw that almost sinks the book.

Yet all his books seem to have such flaws. Three Men in a Boat is dulled by its insistence to be a travelogue and record well-known landmarks of the River Thames. There is also the aimless wandering of his much later Three Men on the Bummel, which is a journey with no destination. Jeremy Nicholas, President of the Jerome K. Jerome Society, summer it up best:

The trump card that Bummel lacks, and which makes Three Men in a Boat what it is, is the River Thames.... It provides the framework for Jerome's discursive narrative. He can stray from the present adventure as much as he likes...but the river holds the whole thing together and gives the book its satisfying unity. The best television situation comedies rely on this same device, a world with clearly-defined parameters. A ramble through Germany and the Black Forest does not provide that.

The key to the passage, I think, is the reference to television situation comedies: That is what to expect from Jerome. Nothing deep or profound, but the comedy is strong enough to shake giants.

Untitled -- Revised from 5/20/08

Cobra poised,
hood flaps,
stoic eyes,
flit and dance.
Balloon afloat,
flit and dance,
string trails
behind.

Both disrupt
breath,
lungs, all
things oxygen.

Be it bite.
Or swallowed latex.

Gasp, hoarse
flutter
and thorax
numb,
paralyzed.

Perhaps
Mechanical Ventilation.

Artificial lungs
supply
artificial air
in limbs,
in mind,
everything.

Naked pilot, flight attendant arrested in woods

Tue May 20, 5:22 PM ET
HARRISBURG, Pa. - An airline pilot was found hiding behind a shed wearing only flip-flops and a wristwatch as a nighttime romp in the woods with a flight attendant ended with both under arrest, police said.

Jeffrey Paul Bradford, 24, and Adrianna Grace Connor, 24, both employees of Pinnacle Airlines Inc., were at a diner on the outskirts of Harrisburg on Sunday night before they apparently decided to walk into the woods, police said.

"They told the officer they wanted to go do it in the woods, essentially," said Lower Swatara Township police Sgt. Richard Brandt. "That's the best answer they had."

The two somehow became separated, and people who live in the neighborhood summoned police around 9:30 p.m., saying they had seen a naked man and an intoxicated woman.

A helicopter with heat-seeking equipment was called in, and Bradford was discovered hiding behind a shed shortly before midnight.

Bradford, of Pittsburgh, was charged with indecent exposure, public drunkenness and other offenses. Connor, of Belleville, Mich., was charged with theft from a motor vehicle, public drunkenness and other offenses; police said she took a flashlight from a neighbor's vehicle.

A spokesman for the Memphis, Tenn., airline said the two were suspended while the company investigates.

The office of District Justice Michael John Smith, where Bradford and Connor were arraigned, said they were not represented by lawyers. Telephone listings for them could not be located by The Associated Press.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080520/ap_on_fe_st/odd_naked_pilot

(A helicopter with heat-seaking equipment. For two drunk, naked individuals.)

Untitled (5/20/08)

Balloon afloat,
flit and dance,
poised as a cobra,
hood flaps,
stoic eyes.

Both disrupt
breath,
lungs, all
things oxygen.
Gasp, hoarse
flutter
and thorax
numb,
paralyzed.

Perhaps
oxygen-masks.
Artificial air,
artificial life
in limbs
in mind,
everything.

Thomas Pynchon. Mason & Dixon.

I admit I’m not exactly a fan of Thomas Pynchon – not by any stretch of the imagination. Having read five of his six current novels (Against the Day being the reminder), I’ve only liked two with any confidence: Gravity’s Rainbow and, the novel I just finished, Mason & Dixon. The former was a success due to the wild invention, the extremity of the sexual exploits, and the melancholic, inevitable end. For a novel seemingly without plot, Pynchon was able to do with ambitious themes and ideas what Thomas Wolfe accomplished in You Can’t Go Home Again. Sadly, Vineland was a face slap after Gravity’s Rainbow, which is why I put off Mason & Dixon for so long.

And I kick myself for prolonging the experience. Mason & Dixon is extravagant beyond measure and the linear lives (meaning Mason & Dixon have verifiable paths in history) give Pynchon much, much, much needed discipline.

The novel is written in pseudo-18th century prose. With most Nouns Capitalized and short-hand used extensively. I do wonder how the novel would’ve read if I hadn’t immersed myself in William Blake’s letters beforehand, or even the works of the Bronte sisters.

Part of me wishes to sum up its style and move on. But the style is not merely a parlor’s trick. Sure, there are gems such as “he emerged coprophagously a-grin” or the wonderfully overlong descriptive paragraph I can sum up in a few brief words: Stomach’s too big to see Dick (i.e. his). Yet the rich language thrilled me. But more than that, the novel is rich in the minutia and ideas of another time and, though I want to say “another place,” I recognize the milieu, no matter how strange and eerie and bizarre it is.
This is America with warts displayed and otherworldly Vegetation eaten and/or smoked.

The Pre-revolutionary Life was tough for all. While the colonists (who, coincidentally wrote history (another Pynchonian theme)), expressed their hardships in exquisite detail, Pynchon gives voice to those who’ve been clamoring for a chance oh so long. Of course, in the end, Pynchon only hints at the brutalization of colonialism, just as he hints at a Jesuit conspiracy and even sentiment (did I say hint? I mean irrevocably botch – He wouldn’t know emotions if the Continent whole landed atop his Head). Yes, I find it a fault in Pynchon that he only hints but never really delivers. He does so in all his novels. Some praise him for it and others deride him. My honest opinion is that he pussyfoots around ideas he should hammer out.

But, ‘tis the way of Pynchonland. Dense prose and impenetrable dialogue. True meanings merely alluded but never outright mentioned. The novel does present a rarity in more well-defined and rounded characters, but who reads a Pynchon novel for those? No, it’s for the oddities like the Learned English Dog, who actually talks and whose initials offer an innovative gag; and for the mechanical duck – a marvel in its own time – moreso in Pynchon’s rendering. I could, almost hyperbolically, say the duck itself carries the full weight of the novel. Obviously I’d be short-changing the book, but rarely in fiction have I encountered such a twisted imagination at the possibilities of an object that once existed, and the novel is rich with such possibilities