Bruno Shulz's Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass

After reading this interview I was curious about the aforementioned book. In Bangkok, glancing over the shelves in a used bookstore, I picked this out with a little astonishment. I've since set it aside until today. After going through a couple pages, I realised this is not going to be an easy read.

I am a fan of the quick read because you get the shape of the book that you then fill with the second or third readings. The first reading is the "to taste" reading, to try on for size all the things the book throws at you and see whether it fits. The approach did not work when I read Kathy Acker's Great Expectations or Gravity's Rainbow. It does not work reading Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass.

I can't read this book in a conventional way, I need to dig under the words and see what's there. I'm less sure of whether it is the book that is making me slow down or the way I have learned to respond to this kind of writing.

Coming soon: Notes on Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism has eluded me for a long time. Blast you, Northrop Frye! I'll get you next week! I have a new strategy this time. I have been saving up my observations and soon enough, I will write them down. Stay tuned for results on this ground-breaking practice.

Amy Hempel's The Harvest

This is the short story that Chuck Palahniuk refers to in the LA Times article. I found the actual printing that Palahniuk refers to and although it appears the story continues until the break down of the story, it actually ends with the sequence that begins with "As soon as I knew that I would be all right"

The last part is the author talking about the writing of the story. In The Quarterly Spring 1986, this is somewhere else in the magazine.

Thoughts on Watership Down

This post contains spoilers about Richard Adams' Watership Down. If you haven't read it, give it a chance. Below, you will find a response to a second reading of Watership Down, which I had read for the first time a little under six years ago.

I told a co-worker one day that I specifically read the ending of Watership Down to cry and he said he believed that. I wanted to see if this was still the truth. Also, I read Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces a couple months back. As if Richard Adams intended all the allusions to myths, I kept thinking back to how there were epigraphs from Greek myth to some chapters. One chapter even quoted the Joseph Campbell book.

Adams' presents folk tales as sacred myth. It is never mentioned but there is the suggestion of a creation story for rabbits. It is fascinating that a way of life is formulated from the folk tales of Brer Rabbit.

There were times when the story got me and I am caught up in the pleasure of reading an adventure story. When Bigwig is defending the burrow from General Woundwort and he let' s slip that he has to wait for his chief rabbit to give him further orders. Bigwig who has just handed General Woundwort his chewed ass. It is delicious how fear splits the Efrafran rabbits, terrified of a chief rabbit tougher, more relentless and aggressive than him. How this chief rabbit is lame and diminutive in stature and his claims to leadership are persuasiveness and willingness to listen.

The introduction of Hazel also got to me. I love that these rabbits, are marked out by actions like licking each other to heal wounds and lying together to keep warmth in a burrow. Hazel and Bluebell are introduced after bolting for cover at a false alarm. I love how a reader can think at one instant, "how cute, it's a rabbit!" and then at another instant, "I admire them". I love how a character who is both a rabbit and a human is resolved in the head of the reader and there is no flaw.

I found it interesting how much of the novel had to do with problem-solving. There is a certain goal that must be achieved. How can we reasonably do so in the allotted time? And so the emphasis given to using a door like a boat or a bird to do reconnaissance. The rabbits themselves question how ridiculous these things sound. I appreciated how this felt like lived experience.

I must have been confused at the story of the Black Rabbit of Inle. I found it strange that the Black Rabbit allowed El-ahrairah, the king of rabbits, his wish when he did not win against the Black Rabbit in any of the games. I was confused with the lesson that El-ahrairah learnt as a result of the encounter with the Black Rabbit.

This time, I felt it closely ties to the ending of Watership Down. When Hazel is in the dark burrow and he feels that there is a rabbit next to him, unsure which one it is. For all Hazel knows, it is the Black Rabbit of Inle, the embodiment of death for a rabbit. But there is warmth in the coversation between Hazel and the rabbit. I thought it was clear that this rabbit was El-ahrairah, ready to take Hazel away to die peacefully. I don't think I gave enough credit to how shaded the unknown rabbit was.

It made me think that El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit were the same person depending on your acceptance of death. This time, I did not cry at the ending.

Survey says, Watership Down has more levels than I can deal with. The more I read into Classical literature, the more Watership Down will repay a third reading.

Disappoint

I do reading around the classics and at one point, discover I spend more time reading about classics than actually reading them.

There is a large body of criticism to go with the body of work that is considered literature and some of it has to do with the definition of literature. I'm not interested in anything definitive but I do want to share two articles that I keep coming back to, months after I have read them the first time.

An book review by Johnathan Franzen (The Corrections) for Alice Munro's Runaway. (NY Times: Subscription required)

An article by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) about author Amy Hempel and the minimalism technique in literature.

Two things struck me from the articles. One is that writers do not try and conceal the fact that they are fundamentally telling the same story over and over again. They overcome this by becoming very good at telling this one story. The other thing was that each sentence contributes to the overall mood of the story. If you remove a sentence, then the mood changes. Inside this story, the mood is purefied. Every sentence is vital. A popular critical phrase to describe this kind of storytelling is, "a loyalty at the level of the sentence".

Andre Dubus, an author in this tradition, wrote Killings on which the movie In the Bedroom is based. Two days ago, watching this film I caught this line, said by Sissy Spacek that is now my
favorite line in movie, "Come fall, you're on a plane. Are you taking them with you?" The movie can be seen as a series of power games between the family members, they want very specific things and never say what they want. The title, In the Bedroom, refers to a part of a lobster trap where the lobster is held intact in the cage, this is why you have to check lobster cages every couple of days because if the bedrooms get too full, the lobsters rip each other to bits. The extension is that a house is a trap and we find this house full of power struggles and games.

It's a poor excuse to talk about the technique of literary minimalism. I haven't read the actual short story but it seems too crafted to have been a filler line. There are implications that flower out of the phrase. The invitation, "come fall" is pointing out foolish behaviour yet being respectful in it's brevity. I love the flatness of the offer, "are you taking them with you?" saying at once, "the choice is yours" and "you have no choice".

The writer suggests detail. Maybe all this second hand reading can produce something valuable. Thinking out loud.

Sideways: The Novel, Rex Pickett, St Martin's Griffin, 2004

You can tell Rex Pickett identifies his occupation as being "screenwriter." The way he writes: paragraphs of setting the scene, drawnout flowery descriptions of gardens and rolling hills not seen since the Victorians. He wants you to be seeing the movie, not reading the book.

I would rather have been seeing the movie again, rather than having read this book.

In a word? Pretentious.

In two words? Totally sucky.

In case you don't know what the book's about: two guys go on a road trip through Californian wine country. Jack's about to get married. He's charming, fun, doesn't take life too seriously. Miles is a depressive, struggling writer, with a wine obsession. The book is, in a nutshell, about that week, and the lead up to the wedding. Throw in some sexy ladies, pinot noir and a 2 star motel, and that's their week.

Okay, okay - I admit it. I read the book after I saw the movie. For one reason only - I enjoyed the movie, but I detested the characters. An afternoon spent eating oranges and browsing the eyesore that is Amazon.com led me to reviews of "the book is much better than the movie!" and "I liked the characters more". I wanted more depth. I wanted to know more about the motivations of these characters - aside from the fact he's poor as hell, why does Miles steal from his mother? Why is Jack so promiscuous? How can it be that a week before his wedding he feels no guilt about new sexual conquests? What are these guys doing?

This book is the middle-aged man equivalent of Judy Blume. No wait ... I love Judy Blume. Rather, I did when I was 12, but now she seems simplistic and lame. His writing style is woeful. Just, God-awful.

There is one exception to the almost complete crapulence of this book.

A few days after I finished reading it, I was walking from my home to the supermarket. I saw two guys standing in the street, talking. Perhaps a little older than me, pretty casual looking. For the first time in my life, I was actually curious about the conversation between two ordinary men. That has never happened before! I just wanted to know what these two guys were talking about, how they knew each other, and simple stuff like that. So maybe I see men in a slightly altered way.

I could be much nicer about this review. I could. But the truth is, I'm a crotchety 24 year old law student, with not a lot of money to live on week to week, and I blew 25 dollars on kindling. As one of my friends said to me "that was a pretty brave thing to do, to actually buy that piece of crap".

Brave, no.

Stupid, yes.

1.5 out of 5 stars, motherfucker.