This is some good shit. Imagine Bukowski without his distracted and shameless sexual excursions. Imagine more Knut Hamsun than anything: the starving artist’s survival, the simultaneous self-aggrandizement and belittling self-hate, the very, very clear introspection which is brutally honest from all angles. A feverish, I-am-going-to-regret-writing-this-later quality haunts every punctuation mark. All sentiment is unabashed until it’s too late. The misogynistic habituation which betrays just how much women terrify Arturo Bandini is repeated over and over again. It is shamelessly expressive; a great read if you can forgive the Holden Caulfield mindset of the protagonist.
Why You Should Read It
If you are a female and perhaps still puzzled at the macho-absurdity of the male psyche, this book grants a glimpse into many universal themes of a man trying to prove his potency. Also, having been an ex-control freak myself (aren’t we all in some way?), the ending is so much more satisfying to me. There’s something in letting go that welcomes misery and sadness, but is ultimately always the right move. You are just fooling yourself and abusing others if you think you are actually in control of anything other than yourself…anyways.
Death is another reason why you should read this book; it’s as if Fante can both inject life and personality into figures that are so lifelessly living out their days. You have Bandini’s neighbor who steals milk, livestock, and is constantly taking out liquor loans, and who has long since given up on advancing in life. He has stagnated.
This is juxtaposed with Bandini who at times considers himself to have life by the horns–and yet, once confronted with any mild setback, he exists on the same plain as his steak-stealing neighbor. He writhes and wriggles himself free of the discomfort of waiting for his manuscripts to be approved and for money to be sent his way. My recent career in freelancing has introduced me to the sensation, and it’s not fun.
But in addition to all of this, Fante manages to say so much in so little words. A ton happens in the very slim novel.
With Bukowski, the only things that happen in his books are sex and physical abuse.
With Knut Hamsen, there is less urgency. A large portion of Hunger is devoted to finding food.
With Fante, readers are introduced to one of the most enigmatic, wild-and-restless duos of recent memory. And there is so much urgency and fight in Bandini, right up until the point that the dust wins. And the Los Angeles wind, the desert, the earth, the shaking quake of the tectonic plates beneath him, threatens to steal the inertia of his ambitious typewriter fingers. But there’s peace in that. Eventually. Bandini will find peace in the chaos.
Did I tell you the story about the giant, man-eating lizard?
This book has struck me as a far more readable Gravity’s Rainbow–the latter being one of the most notorious start-and-stop books to line shelves since James Joyce strayed from writing somewhat simplistic short stories. And yet this book gave me fits when I first attempted it around seven years ago.
My current paperback copy (appendix included) is 1152 pages long. I poured through a good 550-600 of those pages in two weeks. To compare, when I downloaded the eBook version circa 2011, I didn’t reach the 500th page for close to three years’ time. And then, I abandoned it to that lonely, neglected, digital, literary waiting room where it still sits unread and unappreciated like most of my other non-physical books.
So, to start, this was a good read. But I will only recommend it to those who are like me: a person with a penchant for looking at technical things (high-level mathematics, physics, computer science) with wide-eyed giddiness while simultaneously crossing eyes to look jealously at those who truly understand those abstruse concepts.
Basically, the book is geek porn when it is; when it isn’t, it reads like a pretty standard, albeit purposefully convoluted tale of treasure, computers and submarines. And no one is going to argue that this book deserves to win a Pulitzer, Nobel, or Booker. Stephenson isn’t attempting to write that book. He writes a novel like Michael Crichton would with a dash of David Mitchell thrown in with its multiple timeline trajectory, seasoned with World War II action and cryptographical intrigue. The whole thing is a mishmash; in my opinion, Cryptonomicon is a novel of ideas disguised as one of the most ambitious Clive Cussleresque, treasure-adventure stories ever written. It is a very smart, experimental, slow-boil, postmodern, WWII-Grandpa novel with very caring, laborious descriptions of computer science and math thrown in.
Now, I have heard people complain about the structure of the novel; personally, I loved it. I don’t mind the mental masturbation and geeky circle-jerk sessions that Stephenson chaperones. Because often it feels like he is being pressured into including some pretty impressive displays of technical know-how just to cater to his “people” in the geek cosmos. Maybe I am jealous that I wasn’t invited to the circle-jerk fiesta because I am not a part of Stephenson’s inner circle. But hey, I am just being honest; that’s what it seems like to me!
Overall, I enjoyed the book. Definitely found myself speed-reading the last 8th of the story though. It was kind of a slog and could have been ended sooner.
I have trouble concentrating when I am hungry. If I haven’t had a square meal for hours, my thoughts hone in on satiating my appetite. Trying to write while in that state of mind becomes difficult. I feel flighty. My word choice is bizarre and nonsensical. Thesis statements elongate to thesis papers. I try to do too much. I make claims mid-paragraph that go unsupported in later text. I finally eat and look back on my work, only to keep most of it out of laziness.
I can’t imagine going for days without eating and then having to rely solely on writing for the next meal–never to have enough food to put me back in the black, artistically speaking. And although this book is hard to read because of its monotonous and exacting framing of poverty, art, and the absurdity of existence, I think it’s absolutely essential reading for anyone who romanticizes starving artists.
So, why should you read this very weighty tome of 134 pages (trust me, there is enough substance inside to trick the brain into thinking it longer)? Because, for me, this book is life boiled down to its bare bones; it takes questions about the meaning of life and makes a very unassuming but satisfying stock from the boiled-down, bare-bones ingredients that Knut Hamsun is forced to work with. It’s a three-dimensional exhibition of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Questions of “where will I sleep” and “what will I eat” trump the more privileged ruminations of the well-fed: those questions that occur after a lavish meal at a cafe, where one’s needs are satisfied and the mind extends outwards to tackle the unknown…far away from the fixations of the here and now. Essentially, this book turns the mundane need for sustenance into an epic undertaking. Something so human, so taken for granted in my own life, drives the actions and motivations and ideas of the autobiographically-inspired Knut Hamsun. It gets funny, it gets weird, it gets boring; but, through the hunger-pang-haze the protagonist stumbles through, we are bequeathed fragments of lucidity and beauty to counteract his bleak circumstances.
I also like how Hamsun tackles the aspirations of the artist. For Knut, survival was the means to a greater end. Satiation wasn’t just for feeling comfort and to lesson the pain of an empty stomach. For when one hunger was satisfied, the next still rang true. The physical state of hunger was lessened when food was provided, either illegally or from random acts of pity by various Norwegian citizens. But the hunger to write, to create, to satisfy a deeper facet of the self, was still as prominent when the grape vine was low enough for consumption. This book shows a balancing act between differing hungers: the writer and the human. And eventually, Knut seems to come to terms with the fact that to be hungry is to be alive. It catalyzes action, it fuels dreams, and perhaps only if he could install a dimmer switch on the intensity of his own appetite would he finally find enough peace to finish a damn writing or two on time.
Uh oh, my literary Geiger Counter is showing a reading of “Self-Help nonsense”. My device is telling me to drop it and get away as quickly as possible. It’s saying that even close proximity is dangerous and that I need to put the book down and read some of the hard sciences instead.
I wonder what’s going on in the world of Astrophysics these days…
*Goes to local library. Makes a show of checking out 3-4 books on Astrophysics. Checks out “Flow” as well. Puts the book at the bottom of the pile to hide guilt. Winks at cute librarian. Gets weird look. Reassesses life. Rinse, wash, and repeat.*
Alright, I have a confession to make: I have a weakness for pop-psychology books. They are fine to me. I think the softer sciences are just as interesting as the more rigid, empirical sciences that produce more quantifiable results. Terms like “psychic energy” and “flow” don’t bother me so much. If you present me an idea and terminology to go with it, I will do my best to learn the language you are communicating with.
Over the years I have went from growing up in the church, to rejecting all things religious, to being a fundamental supporter of the sciences, to scoffing at the humanities and social sciences, to changing my tune about them, to studying the humanities, to getting caught up in Post-Modernism, to rejecting Post-Modernism, to returning full-circle to the psychological and mythic benefits of religion, and by association, the more mystical qualities of these cultural artifacts, to still not believing in the “truth” of said religions and myths, but sharing an appreciation for their cultural and psychological significance, to finally being secure enough in my thinking so that I can entertain all kinds of ideas, and see the benefits in them, without actually being offended by how farfetched some of them are, and to openly reading a book about channeling an internal energy mentioned in just about every Eastern philosophy since their inception centuries ago.And this last sentence is the most important thing I’ll highlight in this review: what Csikszentmihalyi is saying has been said before a thousand times, in a thousand different ways. He admits this and it is that admittance that kept me reading.
Long story short, we need to focus more. And to do that, even though it’s one of the hardest things to do in this world full of distractions (I have 16 tabs open on my browser right now), is worth it for harboring the ability to live life well on a qualitative basis. Thus, the knowledge and advice from ancient Babylonia to Marcus Aurelius is that we can be happy through our own efforts. We have known this for a while now, but we don’t put in the incredible effort to do so. That’s the moral of the story, we need to find the things in our life that we care enough about to focus on without fail. We need to work extremely hard, but our work and hobbies can provide the roadmap to a life of contentment. “Flow” is supposedly the driver.
What the author (already tired of pasting that multi-syllable beast of a name) defines as “flow” is a complete immersion in an activity, where the act itself becomes the reward, and where consciousness is so focused on the task at hand that time melts away, and sadness, depression, anxiousness about the stressors in life, uncertainty, etc. is momentarily suspended because they are irrelevant to performing whatever it is that is so demanding your attention. Sounds like a simple concept. One that is so commonsensical that I find myself scratching my head at the reality that a 200+ page book was written about it.
The book feels like a justification for 25 years of research and expertise. There are some interesting forays into neuroscience and psychology that interrupt the flow of the prose quite frequently, and maybe I’m a little daft, but it took me a long time to find a concrete definition for what in the hell “flow” actually was. Perhaps the author was just teasing the concept to get me to keep reading, and of course, along the way I would have to make annyoing pit stops on his multi-disciplinary highway. Clever bastard.
But returning to my inability to grasp the concept of “flow”: Was it a chemical cocktail (adrenaline+ endorphins = flow?) produced at the right moment of concentration? Was it a fleeting instant only experienced by professional athletes, musicians or daredevils? Was it a skill that could be cultivated by the average Joe or Joanne? Had I really experienced it? A subset of it? A watered down version of its true form?
And I’ll admit it, I’m still not entirely convinced I understand the concept. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to the book…but regardless, the past week has been very interesting in my attempt to practice cultivating “flow”.
Recently I made a word document with no apparent logical structure that measures certain “records” I have been trying to break. I loosely organized a few categories that I’m trying to get better at: writing, reading, fitness feats, skateboarding, music, chess, to name a few. I’ll focus on music, writing, skateboarding and fitness for the time being. First though, a self-indulgent rabbit trail on my personal experience with music
~~~~~
My musical career has consisted of learning the drums at age twelve. I started jamming with friends a few years later. We started shitty punk bands with power chord dominant song structures, and we changed our band’s name at least once a month. That was fun, but largely unfulfilling. I practiced all the time by myself and got to a pretty respectable level of skill, but I never really felt like I was “in the zone” while I played. Drumming just came naturally. It wasn’t challenging, didn’t require a lot of focus. I had the intuition to play and yet be distracted by thoughts and stimuli around me. I quickly grew bored; My playing was sporadic and unfocused. In short bursts I could play the shit out the drums for a few measures, but I quickly tried to add cymbal catches, or ghost notes where they didn’t belong, syncopation, etc. It wasn’t until I learned how to play bass guitar that I chilled out and started focusing.
For me, bass was challenging because it didn’t come naturally to me. I really had to focus. And when I started to improve in ability, just playing the right root notes for a whole song, could send me into another dimension of focus. I played bass in another punk bad, tried my hand at guitar, got pretty good, joined other bands, did solo stuff, and the ability to focus carried over into future drum playing. I would play drums for church, in a folk band, in a short-lived reggae band, etc, and the ability to lose myself in playing, in what I guess could be considered a “flow” state, is still there to this day. And it really does make me happy for a short period. It’s a definite pick-me-up. So recently I have been trying my hand at playing music with even more mindfullness and focus, as a result of reading this book. And I gotta say, despite the skepticism and criticism that I struggled with, I feel more accomplished as a result.
I’ll try to combine the rest of the highlighted elements because this post has gotten away from me…
Basically, over the past week or two, I have set goals for myself in the gym, skateboarding, writing, and reading, and I do my best to reach a level of focus that makes shattering those goals possible. I realize that the end result is satisfying but fleeting in its ability to grant lasting happiness. The point is to tap into the focus and block out consciousness. The author states that consciousness is the culprit of unhappiness. So, by his definition, being in a flow state of extreme focus, more and more, with the occasional record to break or goal to make, is a sustainable long term goal. Addiction to the flow state is a pitfall to overcome, but overall, with grace and balance, your life can become more rewarding, accomplished, and full of a deeper sense of happiness as a result of learning how to channel your focus. One more rep in the gym, squatting 10 more pounds than last month through a deliberate focus, solving 6 chess tactics in a row instead of 5, writing 3000 words a day for a personal goal (with the help of fifteen minute timers), doing 10 tre flips in a row, etc. You can slow down your life and experience “flow”.
I mean, I guess. It has been working for me during this short time I have tried to “focus more.” We will see how long I can really keep this up though. Maybe there is something to this whole idea.
My rating: 3.5
A roundabout look at “mindfullness” and focus with surprisingly influential ideas that I have had a fun time applying. The book could have been shorter though. Despite my skepticism and self-admitted guilt (pretentiousness and ego checking in here) towards sometimes picking these types of book up, I found the experience a fruitful one. Recommended to all who feel like time is slipping away during your day-to-day. Won’t change your life, only you will. Insert trite one-liner here. Namaste. Do work son. Focus more.
(This post focuses on one of the many issues raised in Baldwin’s classic book The Fire Next Time. I tried my best to say something worthwhile, but I’m afraid that I may have indulged in the practice of “saying nothing in a profound manner”.)
~~~~~~~~~
Some reassuring voice in my head tells me that I’m not prejudiced, that I come from a place of tolerance and peaceful coexistence with everyone. I was schooled in the liberal arts and wrote an A- essay on the concept of Double Consciousness. Some of my best friends in life have been African American. I can safely say that I get a pass on the seemingly perpetual marginalization of an oppressed people, right?
Wrong…
I have read W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, as well as James Baldwin. I’m pretty much an expert on the plight of the black man and woman in a predominantly Anglocentric America. One of my favorite albums of all time is Illmatic. I adore hip-hop and grew up listening, mimicking, and for a short time acting like I was a part of the culture, albeit my favorite group growing up was the Beastie Boys. And recently, not coincidentally, my favorite movie was Get Out directed by Jordan Peele. Also, the best TV show I have seen in the past year or so has to be Atlanta, a comedic look at the diverse culture and economy of rap, directed, written, and starring the extremely talented Donald Glover. All of these honest to god artistic affiliations somehow make me less prejudiced, right?
Again, wrong…
Now, even though my tone is facetious, and all of these artistic connections with black culture in my life are 100% true, I don’t seriously profess to truly know what it’s like to be an African American. I’m not an expert on the plight of African Americans. I don’t get a pass just because I grew up with black friends (half-black mostly) who partially introduced me to their culture. I believe the cylinders of my unconscious still fire at half-speed and keep me a large distance away mentally, in a socio-cultural context and in daily life. I have a deep respect for African Americans, but lack a very obvious and robust empathic understanding of their cultural suppression. And very recently my eyes were pried opened to this fact; it made me very attentive to this issue. And more so, James Baldwin reinvigorated this issue with this book.
It seems that all of the aforementioned “proof” of my anti-racial personality are all just examples of a subtle Negrophilia, manifested as “tolerance from a distance”, ungrounded in actual understanding, but nevertheless still a celebration of the black culture I look at from afar. I haven’t been “down the line” as James Baldwin calls it (42). I have a deep appreciation for Jazz and the Blues, but I don’t really feel the “sensuality” of the music, I don’t understand how to “renew myself on the fountains of my own life” (43). And how would I exactly? Coming from a privileged, white, middle class family, it’s hard to feel the sensuality, “ironic tenacity”, and uncertainty of the daily events depicted in the black music of Baldwin’s heyday. And dare I say, I can’t exactly identify with it personally. So I sit back on the fringes, collect artifacts of black culture and appreciate them from a distance, while the true context intrinsic to the art is lost on me, and will always be truly unknown to me: the solidarity and cultural significance that inspired the art to begin with will continue to be elusive.
Now, this isn’t a self-hating, white-bashing diatribe meant to completely belittle my own position or efforts, it’s only meant to function as a tell-tale critique of my own imperfect ability to analyze an ethnicity that I will ultimately never truly understand. In short, my claim is that a self-professed ignorance towards this picture as a less dangerous position than its opposite. That is, to tout absolutes and an understanding of black culture just because you have been “a fan” of it, or feel like you understand it better than the majority because of your honest efforts, is extremely dangerous. And therein lies a paradox: when does an effort to understand and establish a unity or harmony through mutual understanding actually become harmful instead of positive? I’m not exactly sure.
It certainly does seem counterproductive to get complacent with mere Negrophiliac appreciation instead of an open-eyed analysis of what can be done to ease racial inequality and skewed perceptions. But an appreciation for African Americans in music, film, art, writing, etc. seems to be better than not having appreciation for those aspects of culture. Right? Maybe I made a false equivalency somewhere. But can’t there be both? I think that appreciating black culture, making an honest effort to bridge differences, but not touting absolute understanding is a productive recipe for increasing interracial unity.
Baldwin says, in the letter to his Nephew, that keeping identities separate is extremely important, as a way of preserving cultural heritage and the solidarity of a race (my interpretation of what he said, perhaps I’m wrong). So, moving closer to unity and harmony could be best approached by never acting or assuming your efforts to understand will be good enough; leave well enough alone and have understanding in the differences, but make an honest effort to celebrate the culture without making assumptions that you really “know” what you are talking about–unless you are apart of the group in question. He also reminds his nephew to never try to become like a white person (8). To flip this advice to the white person, I think it’s only insulting to assume that because you are white, and an aficionado of black culture, that you are somehow closer to African Americans as a result. The major point is to understand the differences, makes sure the black man and woman are no longer the “fixed star” and “immovable pillar” of our Anglocentric constructions, and to provide equal opportunity and thought for the differences and uniqueness of each ethnic group (9)
Now, take all of this with a grain of salt. I read this book and wrote a review a couple days later without taking as much time as I could have to digest and truly work through my argument.
My rating: 4.5 out of 5. A concise look into many issues of race with Baldwin’s signature grace and ease of communication. It was a page turner for me, that also managed to tackle concepts of history, race, religion, economics, art, and just about everything else that we encounter through life.
I read this short work in one go in my brother’s apartment in Oklahoma City. It only took one sitting to take it all in. And I immediately started a second read through after finishing. The sponge in between my ears had soaked up the last of my older brother’s Old Rasputin and we had just finished playing one (of many) heated games of Risk on his Xbox. My other older brother was there also, as well as a friend from Phoenix who worked in an airport and had the tendency to utilize the perks of being able to jump around from state-to-state literally on a day-to-day basis.
While I got some space and over-analyzed my many shortcomings at world domination (I lost every game of Risk pretty easily), my brother commented on how much he loved the strategy of the game, how it was like Chess in many ways.
I, the self-proclaimed defender of the beauty and perfection of Chess, shook my head smugly at the false comparison. There were just too many factors of chance at play with Risk, and when it came down to it, there were many aspects of strategy regarding Risk, but there was also a lot of luck involved. Chess on the other hand is relentless in its power to hold you accountable for every move you make–chance was left at the doorstop. If you lose at chess, it’s always your fault.
I had been converted over the years to join the Cult of Chess, despite occasionally wallowing in my maladroit abilities. I’m really not that good, but there’s a constant interest that keeps me playing anyways, and that generates a healthy respect for the grandmasters and masters of the chess world. I love reading about the sacrifice, discipline, intelligence, wisdom, strategy, and obsession the game asks of its very best players. And when my brother crudely compared Risk to Chess, I remembered that I had brought with me a short, 84-page translation of Stefan Zweig’s story on the subject. I decided to read it, sprawled out on the floor of my brothers apartment, amid the loud din of drunken jokes and boasts, during a much-needed four day weekend of debauchery and relaxation.
Now, this story functions largely as a metaphor, and not as a opportunity for chess lovers to get off at lavish descriptions of well developed games. Chess is only used as a vehicle for a much larger message being portrayed. I’m not entirely sure of the intricacies of that message, but I can provide some crude thoughts on what I noticed. The most prominent features of the story are: Nazi Germany’s attempt at world domination and those who resisted their tyrannical reign, the role of the imagination, the infinite, and of course the psychological effects of being obsessed with chess.
To start, a brief synopsis will be provided:
What do you get when an author writes a story about a lengthy train ride and adds diverse characters? Usually, in the right hands, you get an interesting trip through the spectrum of possible psychological profiles. And this is the case in Chess Story. The author very easily renders the most interesting facets of each player’s personalities in the story.
We have the “simple-minded savant” turned world champion of Chess, the braggart with delusions of grandeur, the soft-spoken protagonist with a very keen attention to detail, and the star of the story, the oppressed and psychologically scarred Doctor B. who has a very interesting history with chess and who is by design crucial to the central chess game that is played.
Basically, the plot hinges on the braggart challenging the world champion to a game of chess. The champion is indifferent, often making his moves and pacing around the car of the train the game takes place in. Within the interim of decided moves, a stranger starts whispering the right positions to counteract the champion’s relentless offensive. The champion is out of earshot, he doesn’t suspect that he is actually playing a far better player, until he puts it together. The champion draws the match. And once the less than adept players catch whiff that they are in the presence of not one, but two very skilled players, they demand to know how it’s possible that this man could have possibly drawn a match against the world’s best player. This is when the true story starts, and it was the complexity and depth of his story that leaped out at me.
Doctor B’s description of the psychological torment he suffered through, and how chess saved him, despite fracturing his identity in the process, was worth reading through a couple more times. And through a hellacious tour of the infinite and timeless, Doctor B becomes a seasoned player out of necessity to keep his sanity.
He is taken hostage by the Nazi’s but instead of being sent to a concentration camp, he is sent directly into the maw of the beast: the Gestapo headquarters. He was sent there for “the most exquisite isolation imaginable” (41). What at first seemed a reasonable place to stay, in comparison to the horrible conditions of a concentration camp, became a display of “complete nothingness, physically and psychologically” (42). The room has a bed, a washbasin, a barred window, and nothing else. No books, no newspaper, no object for a mental stimulation, just a whitewashed void capable of ripping apart every seam of his being through the monotony of nothingness. He describes it likes this:
“You waited, waited, waited, thinking, thinking, thinking, until your temples throbbed. Nothing happened. You were alone. Alone. Alone” (43).
And in one of the most devastating portions of the book (to me at least), he explains that he almost wished he had been sent to a concentration camp instead, because he would have at least “seen faces…a field, a cart, a tree, a star, something, anything,” instead of the “terrible sameness” of his hotel room (46). The “pressure of nothingness” is so great that he expresses a wish to be crammed together with other breathing bodies in a FUCKING concentration camp, even though the outcome was especially grim and the circumstances were bound to be horrific (46).
But alas, hope springs for Doctor B in the form of a stolen chess anthology, which details 150 of the most famous games from a diverse array of seasoned chess players. And the remedy for timelessness and the pressure of nothingness becomes a book of already played chess games. A book that recharges the psychological batteries of the Doctor, but at a price.
After a few months, our hapless hero grows bored of every memorized chess match. He estimates that he has worked through each game a dozen times. Soon he looks to his own creativity and imagination, he looks internally to the deep recesses of his mind. He starts to play against himself.
He describes the absurdity of battling ones self. To truly look to win against yourself and divide some tangible part of your identity as a means for company, produces a strange sensation he calls “artificial schizophrenia” (62). Playing through the master’s game was nothing but an act of “recapitulation” , but to enact a “self-division” made for ample opportunity to lose one’s “footing and fall into the abyss” (60-61). And he eventually does slip, but his trip to the abyss generates the opportunity to escape the clutches of his oppressors. He wakes up in a hospital and the Nazi’s deem him unfit for conveying any sort of reliable information.
He has escaped. He used his imagination to fight against a largely unimaginative and rigid tyrannical mechanism that was Nazi Germany, and the final chess battle, conveniently, the world champion who can’t imagine a chess board and who is an oaf away from the 64 black and white pieces, is beaten. But this isn’t without a price. Doctor B’s psychological identity has splintered. One game with the champion is all he can take before exhibiting the same symptoms he had back in his hotel room of nothingness. And although the timelessness he tapped into, the void, the ability to truly imagine and survive through the extreme channeling of the mind has allowed him to triumph through sheer will, he lost something valuable along the way.
I won’t deny that I have trouble understanding this book. There are other books I would rather be reading right now, but that is the product of my own laziness. To pick up another book in place of this one, would exemplify my constant need to dabble in as many new ideas as possible, without actually ever committing to the chain of synapses that produce an elevated state of focus.
These kinds of thoughts were constant when I started the book, but it didn’t take a lot of time to become enamored by Markson’s labor of literary love.
The reason I know that I don’t understand and can’t appreciate it fully, is the fact that I almost felt like I was missing out on something obvious throughout the whole book. It started to bug me. I know that to fully grasp the concepts, I would have to study up on Wittgenstein and maybe Heidegger, but the experimental flesh of it made me feel like I didn’t waste my time grappling with the prose.
The female protagonist demands the reader to understand the limitations of language, much like Wittgenstein would tell you that we only play language games. In one instance, she proved to me that her thoughts are the product of “understanding” one language and being ignorant of many.
Through the medium of the words, she confused me. Having jumped into the book with a healthy dose of trust, I assumed that the words she spoke were true. Maybe she IS telling the truth, just indirectly. At first, it’s believable to think that she has traveled abroad and it’s not far-fetched to take her word regarding the twisted trivia she spouts. Only later (through a very exhaustive thought process), do we get a larger picture.
She is using her writing to remember and also analyze memory as a larger entity. Through Markson’s enumerable allusions, that I’m too deft to understand, she lives a solipsistic life that fascinatingly delves into the concepts of loneliness, history, art and the nature of language. Or is she actually lying the whole time? Or is it an autobiography about a crazy woman, doing crazy things?
I’m still at a loss for words trying to wrap my head around all of this.
I often had the idea that she is an old lady reminiscing about her younger years, but the tragic events she has long grappled with, have left her psychologically scarred. She is determined to write and try to make sense of her life and slipping memory. All alone, no family whatsoever, she is grasping for any semblance of happiness. She is so withdrawn inside her mind, that she has a hard time remembering the facts she is certain she knows.
To paraphrase Markson:
When one’s telephone still functions, it is possible to be as alone as when it doesn’t.
I have no idea if any of these words make sense. Can I pretend that they do, just so I can get back to some less challenging reading material?
It takes a unique writer to make a story that reads like a angry thought and ends up taking the reader on a tilt-a-whirl of happenings at the same time.
Partly autobiographical and partly fiction; The ramblings of a hyper-conscious pessimist. To call Ferdinand a pessimist is to not take away from his character at all. To see through his polished spyglass of a mind and to soak up the misfortunes that followed him (or maybe that he choose to follow) was just his Quixotic quest in life. Maybe Quixotic isn’t the right way to describe his quest in life, if anything, the realism of his disposition was constantly warring with his improbable reluctance to conform to an identity that he could easily grasp…Or maybe I misinterpreted the whole point of his book and I can now assume that the loud clawing noise on my door is the ghost of Céline, violently cursing me in French under his breath, and soon to be asking for the closest Brothel.
It seemed like he wanted nothing more then to figure out how brave he could become. He found meaning in the absurdity of life and I doubt he would have ever found contentment with material riches. He just wanted to find enough resources to dull the constant throbbing of his consciousness.
Sex, sex, sex. He could shut himself off for that pursuit. and his prowess at creatively constructing phrases to describe that pursuit, betrayed his constant thought about it.
“There’s no tyrant like a brain.” A poignant quote from a man who experienced a great deal and was all too aware of the consequences of being alive. Being thoughtful was a burden and being poor was a surefire way of mucking up the sad reality of life.
His anger and comedic habits of poking fun at the most serious things in life are kind of comforting to me. Irreverent yes, but don’t we all take life a little too seriously at times; and for those who feel that life is devoid of meaning, you might as well entertain yourself to stay sane.
Bibliotropism 