Passages: From The Evening of the Holiday, by Shirley Hazzard

“He was pleased to be in these beautiful places, which he had known all his adult life, with someone who gave them a new sense of being enjoyed.” (p. 62)

“When the storm began, they were all glad of the interruption. There was quite a lively conversation about storms in general. Darkness, in this long, large room lined with furniture and dim paintings, drew them closer together.” (p. 81)

“It was as if she had taken leave of her senses – or come into their full possession at the expense of her reason; as if she had no capacity to consider her actions in light of their consequences, as if she thought it could go on forever, this disregard for the eventual course of her life, and his.” (p. 110)

“‘What a lovely dress,’ he suddenly said to her. Her beauty had seemed to him so remarkable as they sat at table that he could not keep from making at least this indirect reference to it. She was wearing a simple dress of a splendid color, the sort of dress that might turn up in one of his memories.” (p. 112)

“Since his nostalgia for her was inevitable, he preferred to embark on it as soon as possible – even in her presence.” (p. 114)

He was like someone who, at the close of a beautiful day, constantly shifts his chair to enjoy the last of the light.

She said: ‘Don’t be anxious to find a reason.’

He had forgotten what they were saying. She saw that, and added: ‘To come to the end of this.’ (p. 115)

Book Review: The Fawn, by Magda Szabó

This book is about Eszter, the daughter of an aristocratic family fallen before the advent of communism, and her lifetime hatred for Angéla, who passes seamlessly from the old aristocracy to the new.

Angéla the convener of seminars, the constant presence at the orphanage, forever improving herself, her eyes glued to the copy of Karl Marx in German…and buying all the latest books on Party ideology. When people were turned away from the butcher’s because there was no meat to be had, she opened her eyes wide in astonishment and the tears flowed down her cheeks, and when she got home she took an economics book off the shelf to find out why there was nothing for sale….She had been just the same as a child, so self-sacrificing…she would always take on other people’s problems and shoulder all sorts of impossible burdens…because she always had the time and the means; she had no other business than to be the benefactor of mankind. (p. 185)

Book Review: Seraph on the Suwanee, by Zora Neale Hurston

“Putting food on the table” is what both husbands and wives do. In traditional marriages, however, the husband does it figuratively while the wife does it literally. The separateness of these two modes of devotion leads both husbands and wives to feel that they are laboring alone, and both grow resentful.

In Seraph on the Suwanee, the husband, Jim Meserve, makes clear from the outset that his view of marriage is not as an equal partnership. As he conveys “in so many words” to wife-to-be Arvay Henson, “‘Love and marry me and sleep with me. That is all I need you for. Your brains are not sufficient to help me with my work; you can’t think with me. Let’s get this thing straight in the beginning.’” (p. 35) Indeed, Jim’s idea of connubial sex is quite explicit: “‘Sure you was raped, and that ain’t all. You’re going to keep on getting raped.’” (p. 57)

As Arvay is Seraph’s protagonist, the course of her resentment at this type of marriage forms the main thread of the narrative. What’s surprising – or perhaps unsurprising, given a grasp of human nature in all its irony – is how much Jim resents it too:

‘I feel and believe that you do love me, Arvay, but I don’t want that stand-still, hap-hazard kind of love. I’m just as hungry as a dog for a knowing and a doing love. You love like a coward. Don’t take no steps at all. Just stand around and hope for things to happen out right. Unthankful and unknowing like a hog under an accord tree. Eating and grunting with your ears hanging over your eyes, and never even looking up to see where the acorns are coming from. What satisfaction can I get out of that kind of love, Arvay?’ (p. 262)

Adding complexity to this story of resentment is its symbolism, with the “cracker” Arvay representing the Old South and the hustling Jim standing for the New. Perhaps the former, sullen and parochial, can only be dragged forward by the latter, enterprising and propulsive; and perhaps this dragging does not allow for much collaboration or consultation. It’s certainly ironic that a progressive development  – the modernization of the South – should be depicted here in the context of an unprogressive marriage: Arvay finds her liberation in submission, and if any beneficial readjustment of marriage roles takes place, then I must have missed it. It may be that Hurston prizes the social and economic improvement of the South over the raising of the status of women…

…or maybe her point is that the South hasn’t quite changed enough. Otherwise, it’s very strange for Hurston to have painted Jim as such a know-it-all of a husband, only to admit in the end that hubby really does know best.

Dream: My Life as a Trespass

…I am not alone in the woman’s apartment upon my arrival, because she maintains an entourage of young fashionable people. One of them is an arrogant hippie. He serves everyone a dish of bread pudding with syrup, everyone but me. When I ask him about it, he replies that I am being punished for the rudeness of my initial greeting. He’s right: I had been a little aloof.

“OK, then,” I declare, with token defiance, “I’ll just fetch myself a glass of water.” I repair to the kitchen. However, the flat is very well fitted out, and I’m afraid of breaking something expensive, simply by my presence. I find a plastic cup, which I manage to extricate from a cabinet without causing a glass avalanche. I hold the cup under the faucet and turn on the cold water, but nothing comes out of the tap. Instead, an immaculate column of electrolyte-enhanced eau filtrée begins pouring out of a countertop purifier and splattering cacophonously upon the marble-tiled floor. 

I search in vain for a schmatte to wipe it up. 

Book Review: Autobiography of a Female Slave, by Mattie Griffith

This book was actually written in 1856 by a white woman (a Kentucky slave-owner turned abolitionist), which nearly disqualified it for adoption as my Juneteenth reading this year. However, as it is dedicated “to all persons interested in the cause of freedom,” I deemed it not entirely inappropriate.

Like many similar books of the antebellum era, Griffith’s Autobiography seeks to steal a march on slavery’s sugar-coaters by portraying the peculiar institution as the cruel, treacherous, family-destroying inferno it was. Nothing about this portraiture is controversial today, and modern readers will find it unremarkable, as harrowing as it is. Where Griffith may stand out a bit is in the special pains she takes to show that one of the greatest evils of the slave system was its tendency to undermine Christian belief and practice, for blacks –

‘When I dies, I’ll jist lay down and rot like de worms, and dere wont be no white folks to ‘buse me.’

‘No, there will be no white folks to abuse you in heaven; but God and His angels will love you, if you will do well to get there.’

‘I don’t want to go ther, for God is one of the white people, and, in course, he’d beat [us].’ (pp. 208-209)

– as well as for whites:

To impugn the justice of his Maker’s decrees was a common practice with him. He had so long rejoiced in power, and witnessed the uncomplaining vassalage of slaves, that he began to regard himself as the very highest constituted authority! (p. 235)

It may be objected that Griffith, owing, perhaps, to this religious emphasis, devotes excessive attention to white heroes, called sometimes “prophets” (p. 81) whose eyes are “saint-like” (p. 296); but the objection would be inadmissible. In the first place, given that Griffith’s task is necessarily to inspire white redemption, she never diverts from the context of black suffering. One of her book’s dramatic highpoints is the death of the Christlike “young Master,” which not only fails to yield a promised salvation but is paralleled ingeniously with the wretched martyrdom of a blameless slave. In the second place, the supposedly-heroic white people in the Autobiography are really just exhibiting basic decency. One of them admits, “I deserve no thanks for the performance of my duty” (p. 359), and of another benefactor protagonist-narrator Ann declares, “How beautifully she illustrated, in her single life, the holy ministrations of true womanhood!” (p. 347)

With this last point, Griffith is arguing that fairness toward blacks is not only a Christian imperative but a womanly one. Indeed, she makes the case explicitly (and somewhat self-referentially):

Woman, when once she interests herself in the great cause of humanity, goes to work with an ability and ardor that put to shame the colder and slower action of man. The heart and mind co-work, and thus the woman, as if by the dictate of inspiration, will achieve with a single effort the mighty deed, for the attainment of which men spend years in idle planning. Women have done much, and may yet achieve more toward the emancipation and enfranchisement of the world. The historic pages glitter with the noble acts of heroic womanhood, and histories yet unwritten will, I believe, proclaim the good which they shall yet do. Who but the Maid of Orleans rescued her country? Whose hand but woman’s dealt the merited death-blow to one of France’s bloodiest tyrants? In all times, she has been most loyal to the highest good. Woman has ever been brave! She was the instrument of our redemption, and the early watcher at the tomb of our Lord. To her heart the Savior’s doctrine came with a special welcome message. And I now believe that through her agency will yet come the political ransom of the slaves! God grant it, and speed on the blessed day! (pp. 196-197)

To Christianity and womanhood must be added the founding principles of our nation, to round out the trifecta of Griffith’s inspiration:

In no situation, with no flowery disguises, can the revolting institution be made consistent with the free-agency of man, which we all believe to be the Divine gift. We have been and are cruelly oppressed; why may not we come out with our petition of right, and declare ourselves independent? For this were the infant colonies applauded; who then shall inveigh against us for a practice of the same heroism? Every word contained in their admirable Declaration applies to us. (p. 242)

More often than not, though, American ideals – as well as Christian and womanly ones – do not so much inspire as shame, when reality falls short of them. “Give us no more Fourth of July celebrations,” declares Ann, in an especially gloomy moment, “the rather let us have a Venetian oligarchy.” (p. 375) It is mostly as sources of shame that American ideals appear in this 1856 book, driving home the lesson that shame can be an important engine of progress.

Unlike others of her era, Griffith is as egalitarian as she is opposed to slavery. “‘I do not see why Fred Douglas [sic] is not equal to the best man in the land,’” she proclaims from the mouth of a white abolitionist. “‘Might I not (if it were made a question) prefer uniting my sister’s fate with such a man, even though partially black, to seeing her tied to a low fellow, a wine-bibber, a swearer, a villain, who possessed not one cubit of the stature of true manhood, yet had a complexion as white as snow?’” (p. 79)

Finally, Griffith is an elegant writer and a prescient one:

‘Will my death-hour ever come?’ I asked myself despairingly. ‘Have I not tasted of the worst of life? Is not the poisoned cup drained to its last dregs?’

I fancied that I heard a voice answer, as from the clouds.

‘No, there are a few bitterer drops that must yet be drunk. Press the goblet still closer to your lips.’

I shuddered coldly as the last tones of the imagined voice died away upon the soft night air.

‘Is that,’ I cried, ‘a prophet warning? Comes it to me now that I may gird my soul for the approaching warfare? Let me, then, put on my helmet and buckler, and, like a life-tired soldier, rush headlong into the thickest of the fight, praying that the first bullet may prove a friend and drink my blood!’ (p. 327)

Book Review: Botticelli’s Muse, by Dorah Blume

The difference between the man of God, preoccupied by Sin, and the man of Art, preoccupied by Beauty, can be measured by how comfortable they are with their penises.

First, the man of God/Sin:

Prayer and performance had been for naught when that ugliest of all heads decided to rise with a will of its own. If he could hack it off his body, he would. (p. 283)

Next, the man of Art/Beauty:

She removed his vest, his other boot, his leggings, and all of his garments until he was naked and his maleness had grown to its full length in spite of all his best intentions.

She looked at it and let out a sound part way between a laugh and a sigh. ‘How beautiful! A bird has spread its wings to become an eagle.’

‘He wants to fly to you!…See your power.’ (p. 190, emphasis added)

Whether a woman is a temptress or a muse is up to the man and his member.

And let us say, Uccello.

Book Review: Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes, by Will Buckingham

Will Buckingham’s Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes is a collection of short stories, each based on a hexagram from the Yi jing. It traces a meandering search for meaning through a broad expanse of cultural material from Baal to Billie Holiday.

Of course the meaning of life will never quite come into focus, yet contentment is possible for all who stop focusing on it. The lesson is perhaps most obvious in #48, “The Well,” about a stranger seeking to understand his adoptive home, a pursuit that would baffle native townsmen for its pointlessness:

They live, they eat, they sleep, they make love, they move down the thousand pathways of their lives, but they never ask themselves: ‘Do I understand this place?’ If the question were put to them, perhaps, they would think for a moment, then they would recognize the question for what it was, a question born out of confusion, out of a failure to live, and they would move on. (p. 259)

As it turns out, the strange place absorbs its would-be understander’s life. Around the time he realizes that a sip from a local well yields only a cool drink and not a mystical enlightenment, he is free of his confusion, his failure to live, his strangeness.

Another one of my favorite hexagrams is #13, “Fellowship,” which is a little Rousseauian in its narration of the bland civilizing of its lioness-raised protagonist. There are copious treatments of the meaningful meaninglessness of poetry, including #28 and #42. Really, with such a cornucopia of “chance pieces,” the reader will enjoy finding his own preferred treasures.

Each of Buckingham’s hexagram-stories is accompanied by a headnote and endnotes, and these can be rather personal and chatty. Although some editors disparage chattiness, in this book, the conversational style anticipates the natural randomness of the premise and provides structure and a friendly sense of humanity. Sixty-Four Chance Pieces succeeds so well because of Buckingham’s affability as tour-guide.

In sum, this Book of Changes, like the recently-reviewed Metagestures, has made me rejoice that I am living in an age that has produced such brilliantly unconventional, refreshing, and fulfilling books.

Book Review: Metagestures, by Carla Nappi and Dominic Pettman

Metagestures, a collaboration between Carla Nappi and Dominic Pettman, is an homage to Vilém Flusser’s 1991 book Gestures (Gesten in the original German), which the reviewer has alas not read. Owing to this ignorance, I’m somewhat unclear on the significance of the gesture, which seems to me a superfluity, one step removed from more easily graspable themes. Looking through the table of contents, where the authors’ treatments of “The Gesture of Writing,” “The Gesture of Speaking,” and “The Gesture of Making,” etc. are all set out, I cannot help but see them as unnecessarily cluttered approaches to Writing, Speaking, and Making. Isn’t a study of The Gesture of Writing essentially a study of Writing?

So I guess I don’t get the gesture part. However (and here I raise my pointer finger and incline my head toward it in a Gesture of Qualifying, even though the “however” would have been sufficient), Metagestures is fresh and delightful, just the kind of experimental yet accessible literature that can reinspire a jaded reader. If there isn’t a Gesture of Being Glad I Read Something, there should be – and I would be making it now.

Nappi and Pettman take turns addressing every subject, with Nappi offering prose poetry and Pettman short stories. Actually, Nappi’s contributions nearly defy description but tend toward the shape-shifting, supernatural, and symbolic. I call them poetic because – well, check this out:

He sat on a log on the beach in the drizzle and watched the water fall toward him and pull back out again and he saw that the water had fingers that tried to grip the sand as it was dragged back into the sea and he saw tendrils in the foam on the sand as the watery women put their heads and faces down and flung their hair out to try to reach him, just a little bit, just for a little bit, before they had to leave again.

He was lonely.                                 (p. 183)

Two sentences, each a paragraph, one long, one short, balanced, exquisite, and devastating.

Pettman’s sections are more straightforward, but his take on “The Gesture of Making,” envisioning a factory where workers make do, make light, and make fun is a big smile.

Sometimes the authors’ half-chapters cross-reference, and they seem to work toward a climax of sorts in the concluding Gesture of Loving, which makes the meaning of the gesture a little clearer.

Or maybe it’s obvious throughout, as conveyed by Nappi (via Vilém):

Vilém read, and his emotions were written on his face by the twisting of ropy eyebrows and the pull of flesh and hair around his nose and chin. Eyes and skin and nostrils gathered into a text…                                                                                                         (p. 26)

Book Review: Lake of Urine, by Guillermo Stitch

Guillermo Stitch’s Lake of Urine consists of four parts. Part I, “Seiler,” describes the narrator’s (Seiler’s) obsessive persecution of homely Ms Urine, in a way that calls to mind Harry Mathews’ Tlooth and its narrator’s murderous fixation upon Evelyn Roak. It’s a twenty-page giggle.

Part II, “Noranbole,” is named for Urine’s half sister, who has made her way to the big city and now sits at the helm of the Terra Forma corporation. She seems to be the only one capable of managing anything, because she can manage anybody; and she can manage anybody because each is a nobody, a mere collection of idiosyncrasies that she is adept at manipulating. This section contains the choicest collection of corporate blatherspeak that one is likely to find. Here is a sample:

‘We need to talk about a radical rethink, Ms Wakeling,’ said Mr Perigo. ‘A sidestep, or perhaps a ninety degree. I don’t think we should exclude the possibility of a complete about-to, frankly.’

‘This could deepen the crisis exponentially,’ said Mr Amerideath, ‘sending us spiraling downwards toward some sort of upheaval.’

‘Or worse,’ said Mr Drinkwater. ‘Upwards.’

‘What about any implications for the other crisis?’ asked Mr Freeze.

‘Well,’ said Mr Deer Spirit, leaning forward so everyone could see him, ‘on the bright side, it might actually resolve that one.’

‘Ooh,’ said Vacuity, ‘that would be good, wouldn’t it?’

‘Depending on how things go, of course,’ said Mr Elderkin.

‘Of course,’ said Mr Deer Spirit.

‘And we definitely can’t salvage this?’ asked Noranbole.

‘How?’ asked Mr Star Blanket. ‘I’ve been imagineering all morning. Nothing. And I’m the head of Creative.’ (p. 49)

Part III, “Emma Wakeling,” turns to Urine and Noranbole’s mother. It is ingeniously written, alternating between two sets of chapters that move in contrary chronological order, and it provides the backstory of all the other parts. Despite the cover blurbs testifying to Urine’s hilarity, these chapters are dead serious, exploring themes of domestic abuse and neglectful parenting.

This part is also replete with author Stitch’s unique brand of performative dialogue, which, perhaps, counts as comic relief.

The pastor [Emma’s father], who liked to think of himself as an open-minded man had, as part of his ongoing efforts with the county’s wayward women, turned to psychology. He had been leafing through a copy of Dr Hans Sittlichkeit’s Mother Abandonment: causes, symptoms, and role in the development of the contemporary strumpet and one or two of the eminent scholar’s theories had struck a little close to home. As Phinoola Quigg was fussing about him one afternoon in his study, wiping pristine surfaces and rearranging decorative items, he put his quill down.

‘I would like your advice, Phinoola Quigg.’

‘Would you indeed?’ asked the housekeeper and stopped her dusting.

‘Yes. I have been reading this book – ’

‘Have you indeed?’

‘Yes. And it says here – ’

‘Does it indeed?’

‘Does it…? But I haven’t… The book is about girls, Phinoola Quigg, and how we might, with the use of cutting-edge scientifical interventions, go about the prevention of their loosening.’

‘Well, isn’t that nice?’

‘Yes, let me just… The point is, Phinoola Quigg, that I am of the opinion that some of the theories presented by Dr Sittlichkeit – ’

‘Are you now?’

‘…may pertain, indeed may pertain very closely, to our own situation, and – ’

‘Our situation?’ The housekeeper clasped her hands.

‘The situation in this house, yes. The long and short of it is that according to modern science, it would seem that young Emma would almost certainly be the better for it if she had rather more to do with her mother than is currently the case. Rigorous studies have shown as much.’

‘Have they indeed? It all sounds very clever, doesn’t it?’

‘At the very least, I think a formal introduction is called for, don’t you? That is the matter upon which I would like to consult you. The fact is, I don’t know how to go about it. I haven’t seen the woman since last October, although there is not the slightest doubt in my mind,’ and here the pastor’s voice became shrill as his eyes darted around the room, ‘that she is listening.’

‘Right, and I suppose that’ll be my job, will it?’ (pp. 116-117)

Toddler Emma’s first word had been harlot, incidentally. (p. 98)

In Part IV, it all comes together, kind of.

Lake of Urine is well crafted, meaningful, and subtler than its title suggests, drawing the reader forward and inward by making him supply what is inexplicit in its pages, showing (rather appallingly) more than telling. It is not so much a guilty as a grim pleasure.

Book Review: A Cat at the End of the World, by Robert Perišić

A Cat at the End of the World is a wondrous study of human society and the institutions of freedom and slavery arising therefrom. It draws the reader forward by means of brief chapters that alternate between plot advancement and commentary by a chorus named Scatterwind. It is mostly Scatterwind who develops the themes of freedom and slavery by noting their origins in human interactions with other species.

As Scatterwind recounts, man learned of freedom from cats:

Cats…caught mice and baby rats, and humans saw that they shared a line of interest. Cats befriended humans by doing what came to them naturally. At first they were mere acquaintances, then some children made friends with kittens and the kittens got used to human scent. When they grew up, they stayed close to their friends’ homes. They were simply there and no task could be given to them except for the ones they did anyway. No one had a reason to tie a cat on a leash because that would stop them from hunting. No one had a reason to teach cats anything apart from what they were already doing, and they saw that cats didn’t want any lessons. There was no reason to stick cats in a cage or close them off in a pen. People didn’t pay attention to whether the cats might leave. They were of no use when tied or trapped, so they didn’t bother. They could be around and hunt mice, or they could leave. Cats remained free. They were there, but were not part of the property….No one, in fact, owned a cat. (p. 133)

Conversely, slavery, or overlordship, was suggested by donkeys.

Maybe donkeys had been the catalyst; they weren’t kept for milk and meat, they were the true first laborers. When the peasants domesticated them down deep by the Nile, in the Nubia, the first pharaohs soon appeared. The donkeys later built the pyramids, together with the slaves. Sheep, goats, and cows had been domesticated before donkeys, but none of them were just workers. Was it donkeys that first gave the idea of a slave? No, not them, but the straw broke their backs, so to speak, and thus man got his idea of a worker. I saw people, those who worked the most, who knew donkeys were their brothers. But slavery, that comes from above. It is the organization from above. (p. 277)

The author’s (and/or translator Vesna Maric’s) style is accessible and fresh. Here are my favorite few sentences:

When [men] stopped believing trees had a soul, they soon stopped believing anything around them was truly alive. It was just matter. I saw that it wasn’t about the existence of spirits…but that it was about life. When human words deny the spirit of something, then it really ceases to be alive. The sprit is true life, and not the body. A body without a spirit is matter: meat, wood. (p. 309)

Like many books with classical settings, A Cat at the End of the World is permeated by a bleak sadness, perhaps born of the foreknowledge that, although freedom may triumph over slavery, its victory is often short-lived, for politics, another “organization from above,” waits in the wings.