Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

An excerpt from J.M. Coetzee’s upcoming novel, Diary of a Bad Year, recently appeared in the New York Review, and it’s available online. The form of the story is intriguing: the text alternates between a book being written by the protagonist and his attempts to speak with a wildly attractive woman living in his building. Coetzee is always in perfect command, and adopts different voices well, so I think the alternations could work over the length of the novel. Here is a snippet from the “essay” portion:

The Seven Samurai is a film in complete command of its medium yet naive enough to deal simply and directly with first things. Specifically it deals with the birth of the state, and it does so with Shakespearean clarity and comprehensiveness. In fact, what The Seven Samurai offers is no less than the Kurosawan theory of the origin of the state.

The writer-protagonist is laying out an extended argument, using many authors and examples to speak broadly about the origins of the state. The “essay” will then be interrupted by his first-person voice:

She has black black hair, shapely bones. A certain golden glow to her skin, lambent might be the word. As for the bright red shift, that is perhaps not the item of attire she would have chosen if she were expecting strange male company in the laundry room at eleven in the morning on a weekday. Red shift and thongs. Thongs of the kind that go on the feet. 

All told, Diary of a Bad Year is fine reading, and does exactly what an excerpt should do: pique interest for the whole of the text.

Against Behe (and the followers of Venus)

Two aspects of Lucretius’s On the Nature of the Universe that most impress me are his unflinching materialism, which easily avoids despair, and how well his observations about the universe have stood the test of time, despite the fact that two-thousand years of science have made mincemeat of his theories. Take, for example, this lovely passage, which could easily be a response to a current view that is presently very popular and “controversial,” intelligent design. Lucretius has been explaining the movement and shape of atoms, and he begins a new section with this gem:

In the face of these truths, some people who know nothing of matter believe that nature without the guidance of the gods could not bring round the changing seasons in such perfect conformity to human needs, creating the crops and those other blessings that mortals are led to enjoy by the guide of life, divine pleasure, which coaxes them through the arts of Venus to reproduce their kind, lest the human race should perish. Obviously, in imagining that the gods established everything for the sake of men, they have stumbled in all respects far from the path of truth. Even if I knew nothing of atoms, I would venture to assert on the evidence of the celestial phenomenon themselves, supported by many other arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine power: it is so full of imperfections.

the one who says “I”

Booklog: Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey
J.D. Salinger
Read: 7.3.07
Rating: Very Good

I suspect that most readers have a work of fiction they turn to for comfort and rely on for encouragement; Franny and Zooey has, for many years, been mine. I suspect that the time is coming when it will be replaced by some as-yet-unknown book, but Franny and Zooey has served me well for six or seven years, and I will be sad to see it supplanted.

I typically read Franny and Zooey right after reading The Catcher in the Rye, during the summertime, when I am in a state of mental disarray. I admit that it is often reading The Catcher in the Rye that puts me in a state of mental disarray — or at least pushes me further into one — so it’s only fitting that Franny and Zooey should be part of the solution. If The Catcher in the Rye is an dear choleric friend whose monologue reveals the sadness of life, Franny and Zooey is the older, more detached, friend who has “been through it” and can offer a charming, almost inspirational antidote.

That being said, Franny and Zooey does not hold as much meaning for me as it once did. The revelations at the end, that the fat lady is Christ himself, for example, now seems a little silly, and a lot unhelpful. Now the earnestness of Salinger’s prose, which is hopelessly clever and heartwarming, is the main attraction. I do not grow tired of the narrative voice adopted by “Buddy Glass,” nor do I lose any affection for the two main characters. It’s an affection that Salinger himself clearly shares: I can’t think of a writer who is more obviously fond of his characters, which makes his narrative voice of the loving older brother a particularly good choice.

Franny and Zooey is a deeply spiritual book, in a way that most works of modern fiction don’t dare to be. The personal religious hodge-podge adopted by the Glass family is deeply personal and idiosyncratic, specifically in that it rolls religion and the making of art into one giant ball, rolling it towards the phony disappointments of life, trying to knock them all down at once. The target is familiar from The Catcher in the Rye, with the adversarial word here being “ego” instead of “phony.” Like its predecessor, Franny and Zooey rails against the superficial, the surface, and anything that you could call “the earthly.” My paraphrase of the problem is: “What can one do without feeling like a terrible phony? without hating it?” The “answer,” or at the very least the coping mechanism, presented here, is this:

The artists only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.

Singleness of vision. A sense of personal goodness, and the ability to pursue it despite the phonies that surround you, and the phoniness that is within in. Is this a satisfactory nugget of wisdom? I used to think so, and I still do think it’s helpful. But I think it’s appropriate that as I age, I find more enjoyment in Salinger’s art itself than in his pronouncements about what it should be.

Correct!

Emerging from weeks of inactivity, I decide to take a quiz, the results of which approach the reason for my weeks of inactivity:

You’re Mrs. Dalloway!

by Virginia Woolf

Your life seems utterly bland and normal to the casual observer, but
inside you are churning with a million tensions and worries. The company you surround
yourself with may be shallow, but their effects upon your reality are tremendously deep.
To stay above water, you must try to act like nothing’s wrong, but you know that the
truth is catching up with you. You’re not crazy, you’re just a little unwell. But no
doctor can help you now.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Booklog: The Natural

The Natural
Bernard Malamud
Read: 6.27.07
Rating: Fair

Sometimes a book disappoints, either because it does not live up to the expectations I held before I began reading, or because it displays signs of promise early on only to falter towards the middle and/or end. Alas: The Natural was disappointing in both ways.

As moviegoers know, The Natural is a baseball story. What the reader should know is that the novel on which the movie is based is less a baseball story than a quintessentially American tale of myth, heroism, and failure — topics that are perfectly suited to post-war era baseball, the Golden Age of America’s greatest sport. In this near-mythic setting, Malamud chronicles the rise, fall, second rise, and final fall of his folk hero, Roy Hobbs, in a winning (at first) style that attempts to create a folk mythology with vernacular-laced, stripped down diction. The style takes some getting used to, but after a few early successes, I took to it, and it seemed that Malamud had really accomplished something. Take this sentence for example, that describes the third strike that the young Roy Hobbs tossed to strike-out “the Whammer,” baseball’s leading hitter:

The third ball slithered at the batter like a meteor, the flame swallowing itself. He lifted his club to crush it into a universe of sparks but the heavy wood dragged, and though he willed to destroy the sound he heard a gong bong and realized with sadness that the ball he had expected to hit had long since been part of the past; and though Max could not cough the fatal word out of his throat, the Whammer understood he was, in the truest sense of it, out.

This is very nice, and I underlined with great relish, looking forward to another 200 pages of Malamud’s folk hero-mythology.

So what went wrong? First of all, Malamud has no ability to describe the sport that is his main subject. When his style strays from the mythic into the descriptive, it’s clear that he hasn’t really understood baseball and how it is played or spoken of. It’s possible that his slang is accurate — hard to tell, since it’s fifty years old — but when he writes about the game itself or the people who play it, it’s hard to read. A deeper problem is that Malamud’s folk mythoheroic style is dense and murky by default, especially in regard to his characters and their motivations and thoughts. Roy Hobbs is clearly meant to be a vague figure, but this is very problematic, for his choices and his character, especially his love affairs, are what drives the book’s plot and meaning.

The Natural’s failures are oddly appropriate to its structure, and analogous to its hero: it begins with an appealing strength and freshness, and surges during its early career, only to stumble when it should clinch. The book’s final act is a disappointing failure, which is richly ironic, given that disappointment and failure are the book’s main themes.

Reading Scared

This remark from The Modern Word rather perfectly captures my feelings about reading The Recognitions — I am still reeling:

The Recognitions makes one so terrifyingly uncertain about the “unique” or “authentic” nature of experience and art that upon finishing it one cannot be sure one read a novel, as either term may be suspect.

The Reason for the Peloponnesian War

I’ve never posted a video on this blog before, but there’s a first time for everything. Here is theorist/philosopher Slavoj Žižek talking about why loves theory:

Via the Continental Philosophy blog.

Booklog: The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
Read: 6.17.07
Rating: Excellent

This is the fifth or sixth summer in a row that I’ve read The Catcher in the Rye, and that’s in addition to my canonical reading in high-school, so by now it feels a lot like meeting up with a friend I only see once a year: I notice how I’ve changed since the last encounter, and even how the text itself reads differently each time. Many of you likely read this book as a teenager or student, and found yourself identifying with Holden Caulfield in a way that was both exciting and a little frightening. As a result of so many people having this experience, the text has acquired a connotation that I really don’t think it deserves, that of being synonymous with “teenage angst” or some other such foolishness. Those who come to it with a more critical eye tend to realize that Holden, in addition to being a uncertain teenager, is mentally unstable and clearly suffering from heavy depression (don’t forget that he clearly mentions that he is writing from a sanatorium at both the very beginning and very end of the book — something that is easy to forget as he tells his actual story); this reading, The Catcher in the Rye as a chronicle of depression, is, I believe, equally dismissive and unhelpful.

A good exercise when reading The Catcher in the Rye is to distinguish between the things Holden says and does that display signs of depression and those where he is simply unable to cope with someone or something being phony and unbearable. In the latter case, Holden is deconstructing social norms and exposing them for the exercises in affectedness they really are. For example, having to say “Glad to have met you” to someone you’re not at all glad to have met. Most of us are able to do and say things that we know to be phony without any trouble: either because we’re not thinking about it, or because we know that “that’s just what you do.” Any of you who were even mildly rebellious teenagers know that once you start fully understanding why adults act the way they do, it’s hard not to get really upset about it and want to forge into a new way of being.

Further, it’s helpful to think of Holden’s struggles with “phonies” as an example of the trouble we all have — young people especially — of dealing with the problem of “other people.” How do we know what others are thinking? Are the really saying what they mean? Usually, it’s best not to overanalyze, but once you start thinking about motivations and the masquerades that hide them, it’s not hard to cast every action and word into a cynical light. Then there is the problem of trying not to do or say anything phony yourself — and the confusion that results when you do — as you learn how to see yourself in the eyes of another, combined with the rather low opinion of yourself that results, and you have a hell of muddle. No wonder Holden is depressed.

Many of things about himself and the world that Holden does not understand could be easily dismissed by a detached, analytic viewer (not that this would help him feel any better). To take a simple example: it’s not mystery why he necks with girls he considers “terrific phonies,” even after promising himself he won’t do it again — he’s a teenage boy. More meaningfully, his attachment to his sister Phoebe and his life-dream of being “the catcher in the rye” who saves kids from falling off a cliff, is clearly a psychological result of his younger brother Allie dying not too long ago (Holden himself almost seems to recognize this). It wouldn’t be hard to view the entire novel through this lens: Holden is overly attached to childhood and its innocence, and can’t get along in the adult world until he achieves some sort of “closure” about his brother’s death. Fair enough, but this reductionist view — and others similar to it — is not very edifying, and it certainly doesn’t begin to explain why the novel is so incredibly good.

For, as you read, you can’t help but agree with Holden and his observations: surely boys at pep schools are really mean, headmasters do favor rich parents over poor ones, and the way people act when going to see highly-regarded theater is completely absurd. You and I know this, but we don’t take it as hard as Holden, because he’s depressed. Holden’s unreliability and lovability as a narrator are inseparable. Sure, he’s deeply depressed, but he’s also deeply perceptive, and right about the world more often that not. The trouble, obviously, is his reaction to it.

At the end of the book, Holden receives a lecture from his old teacher, Mr. Antolini, in which he encourages Holden to go back to school and become a scholar:

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused or frightened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, many of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

Indeed. Mr. Antolini’s words may seem a little trite, but they’re probably just the right thing for Holden’s teenage ears. Neither deep depression nor the certainty that everyone is a ruthless phony is a new idea; the truth, as Holden is right on the verge of knowing, is much more complicated, and irreducible. It’s a lesson we could stand to learn, too.

Booklog: Blankets

Blankets
Craig Thompson
Read: 6.8.07
Rating: Very Good

It’s a rare thing, reading a book that aligns so closely with one’s own experience. It’s also deeply unsettling. As I turned the pages of Craig Thompson’s admirable Blankets, I couldn’t help but marvel at its resonance with my own teenage years. If I aligned the text with my own life, the point for point matches wouldn’t be all that many, but a heavy handful of the scenes and episodes depicted so perfectly in Blankets were eerie in their similarity; I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reliving key events that are now distant memories.

Craig Thompson’s 582-page “illustrated novel” works back in forth in time between the childhood of the narrator (also named Craig Thompson, so this clearly borders on memoir) and his senior year of high-school, when he meets and falls in love with a girl named Raina. Thompson has said that his novel is primarily about the experience of sleeping with someone for the first time, and it is a love story first and foremost, but the teenage Craig’s emergence from a childhood full of fervent evangelical Christianity is what gives Blankets its emotional depth. Craig and Raina meet at a Christian winter camp: she is clearly, of the two, the less enraptured of the with the whole scene, and her free-loving attitude brings Craig out of his half-committed, half-doubtful shell. Sadly, the week too quickly comes to an end, and the new lovers — who are clearly infatuated with each other but not willing to assign the “girlfriend/boyfriend” label — must part: Craig lives in Wisconsin, Raina in Michigan. They commence a fruitful correspondence, sending sketches (Craig), poems (Raina), mix-tapes, and letters to one another, before Craig arranges a visit to Raina’s house over Christmas break. This one-week of pure bliss, as the two savor in each other’s company as only first-time lovers can, is the book’s centerpiece.

Raina’s parents are newly-separated, and planning to divorce: this unfortunate circumstance gives the young lovers a glorious stretch of unsupervised freedom. One the second day of the visit, Raina asks Craig to sleep in her bed, so that they do not have to say goodnight and part ways, and he hesitates but agrees after they decide to set the alarm for 5 am so Craig can slip back into the guest room undetected. This stretch of panels was my favorite part of the book, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tearing up as I read. As Raina is getting ready for bed, Craig changes into his pajamas and he recites appropriate Bible verses to himself: “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that commiteth fornication sinneth against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18); “Can a man take fire into his bosum and his clothes not be burned? — Can he go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:28). He begins to sweat as he considers his fears, but then Raina reenters, and on the next page she is drawn as an angel in white, and Song of Solomon comes to Craig’s mind: “All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you. You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes” (4:7,9). After a night of pure bliss (there is no fornication; they merely fall asleep in each other’s arms), Craig returns to the guest room, offering prayers of thankfulness to God. He stops to think, “Perhaps I should feel guilty” but realizes that this is false; he in fact feels “as clean and pure as the snow” which is falling outside.

Blankets beautifully tells the story of a young man who overcomes his upbringing, and the feelings of distrust towards the earthly and the body that dominated it. Through a tale of new love and self-discovery, Craig emerges victorious, triumphing over the limited, demeaning world-view that shaped his childhood. I could offer a few passing critiques about Thompson’s style and the few times his sweetness becomes saccharine, but instead I’ll say this: if you’re looking to break into the world of graphic novels, but don’t consider yourself a reader of comic books, Blankets would be a fantastic place to begin.