Invisible Cages

Hmm, it's been a while. Frustrating, that.

In the meantime, I've finished Anna Kavan's A Charmed Circle. Lovely title, thanks, I think, to the unexpected way in which "charmed" ends up conveying anything but a lovely reality: this little family group is most definitely trapped in some sort of bubble of low-grade malevolence. Some power seems to be holding them all there, unable to make their respective and definitive breaks for existences less bleak—and also limits them to a pale unlikeability that represses any interesting or empathetic tendencies they may have just below the surface.

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Elles (Alone), Wikimedia

It's a nice change from those quietly victorious mannered romances, where 1) persistent adherence to "true morality" will save our steely heroine, along with the gentle facade that keeps her human; where 2) the tale’s evil or even merely shallow contingent will earn appropriate kicks in the pants from Justice; and where 3) characters are either sympathetic or not—as opposed to generally annoying, with brief periods that make you want to like a given individual, but know it’ll be an attempt doomed sooner or later to failure or willful ignorance of the facts. So although you probably wouldn’t want to hang out with any of this book’s characters (Christofferson may be an exception here), their failure to live up to some ideal standard or to commit themselves fully to the task of saving themselves is more true to life than any governess-makes-good adventure.

Part of this faithful reflection of humanity giving itself only half a shot is the skillful way in which Kavan portrays people’s absolute misapprehension of the impressions they're making on others, or of the thoughts and feelings going through the mind of whoever’s right in front of them. Beryl’s and Olive’s inability to talk to each other; the latter’s and Will’s completely different ideas of what’s going on between them; Will’s and Beryl’s mutual frustrations with each other’s misunderstood reactions; the young men’s apparent cluelessness about their own feelings—and all of the confusion remaining hidden beneath each individual’s ineptly constructed surface: generations have passed since this thing was published in 1929, but stake out a group of “young people” today, and it might seem that only the clothing and the presence of electronic gadgets have changed.

And the “old folks” are just as culpable, fallible, and insufferable as the young souls they’re supposed to be guiding. A mother whom the author gives free reign to wish her kids would go away, and openly to express her disappointment in them; a father who tries to barricade himself into book-bound isolation? You might be hard-pressed even today to find a writer willing to be so honest (as opposed to merely dramatic or hip to the latest requisite display of angst) about the fact that those bonds that are supposed to come so naturally and unconditionally are often out-and-out—and maybe even dangerous—myths.

But here’s the interesting twist: a tenuous, possibly unrealistic note of hope at the end, at least for Olive and Beryl. But it’s just that: a glimmer, and one we’re not sure is deceptive, naïve, hallucinated, or truly justified. The only way that final adjective can be applied is if – and that’s a big if—both girls get off their upper middle class butts and assert the truths they’ve discovered about themselves: their degree, at least, of power over their living conditions, their attitudes, their emotions. 

Oprah probably wouldn’t approve of this story—what amounts to Kavan’s extended reminder that the will often prefers inertia and the unpleasantness of the known to self-fulfillment. I’m guessing that’s one reason I’m so appreciative of its quietly unflinching confrontation with the realities of a species that’s anything but perfect.

Trying to Pinpoint the Dissatisfaction

Are you familiar with the frustration of attempting to describe something that doesn't quite sit right, or achieve its goal, but which does(n't) so without including any glaring beacons of wrongness that help point out specific areas of failure?

Source: Lilian Wagdy via Wikimedia Commons.

Such is the result of trying to analyze Alaa Al-Aswany's Chicago, which portrays a number of Egyptian immigrants, new and old, to the Windy City. It's an easy read, and the characters do get into situations and experience emotional and practical dilemmas that are interesting in themselves-- but there's just something missing here. I'm guessing there's more to it than things getting lost in translation into English; sure, the fact that the dialogue placed in American characters' mouths is just too stilted/formal and old-fashioned to sound believably native could have something to do with translation. But the additional fact that the story sometimes moves in a manner that makes you think the author equates good storytelling and style to simply getting the characters from one plot point to the next is probably as obvious in Arabic as it is in English.

It's a noble attempt at portraying the complexities of immigrant life; the knotty realities of corruption, power, religion, and culture; and the heterogeneity of one nation's strivers and seekers. In the end, though, it just doesn't hold up as solid fiction, maybe because the author ventured outside of what he knew well enough to create a really robust tale, and may have been overconfident about his grasp of Chicagoan/American culture.

Putting the Pieces Together

Well, it's about time I made my pronouncements on Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual. When I got started on it, I really didn't know what to expect; after all, my only exposure to his writing had come through material on that mad group of mathy wordplayers, Oulipo, and via Species of Spaces and Other Pieces.

Basically, the whole large tome involves a look at one moment in the various, not-overtly-connected lives of the dwellers of a Parisian apartment building. I wasn't aware, of course, that all of these little pictures were taking place simultaneously, but upon reaching the end of the tale, that "time frame" (if time frame it is), became clearer-- and after checking out a brief précis of the piece, it didn't surprise me. All the detailed description-- which honestly got old after a while; describing surroundings in minute detail does tell a story through objects, but begins to amount to one long list after a few hundred pages-- didn't allow for much action. You're essentially left, then, at a very brief point in time, but-- and here's the genius-- fully loaded with everything each participant is bringing to that blip, with everything a normal, quick glimpse at a person wouldn't be able to discern. Perec here is giving us the normally-impossible fullness of an individual's being within one moment, alongside his or her neighbor's equally full presentation within that same moment. The problem the author makes explicit, of course, is the fact that we can't see all of this simultaneously; in telling a situation, we're limited to separate, linear recountings of one individual at a time as a means of presenting this being who, although s/he physically ages "linearly," if that's accurate, lives as an existential something within many times and places simultaneously.

I'm aware of the fact that Perec set certain rules and limitations upon himself while writing this book; if you're interested in these challenges, Wikipedia has a list of them. At this point, the only thing about this writing arrangement that's of interest to me is the confirmation that yes, quite often, constraints cause creativity to blossom, not die. (Look at Greek tragedy, or Twin Peaks-- the latter of which I consider David Lynch's best work, perhaps because he had to confine himself to the strictures of FCC broadcast rules, and couldn't fall back [too much] on over-the-top violence.)

What really blew me away, though, was the chronology that follows the book's index-- an appendix that makes clear just how involved and deeply knowledgeable Perec was about the details of his character's lives, and about how they all fit together. My amazement was of the same genre (but I'll admit, never got anywhere close to) the level of wonder felt at reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: namely, the giddiness that ensued at the realization that someone had this all inside his brain, kept it straight, and presented it clearly and engagingly. Evidence of rare genius? I'd like to harbor the delusional fancy that the same ability resides in all-- or at least a surprising portion-- of us as well.

A Difficult Story, with Difficult Questions

Courtesy WikimediaCommons.

What to say about Phoolan Devi? Or rather, about her autobiography, I, Phoolan Devi? My reaction is more to her history, her story, and the situation than it is to a thing crafted according to a particular style-- than it is, in other words, to the book itself.

To say this is a tale of overcoming hardships would be a ridiculously insulting understatement; this is no grand quest for truth that ends with a beam of sunshine and chords of victorious soundtrack schmalz crashing over our heroine atop Maslow's pyramid. This is, in large part, an act of setting the record straight on the part of a woman who makes plain in several places that, although she doesn't consider herself or her acts (which included a lot of killing and violence, both in self-defense and in service of vengeance) "good," also refuses to apologize for acting out against much of the horror that took place over a lifetime-- years of suffering all too familiar to the victims of long-standing assumptions about certain classes and genders in some (many?) parts of the world.

Above all, the book brings to the fore the question of violence. Is there such a thing as a legitimized use of it? I'd like to call myself a pacifist-- but have a hard time arguing with a voice who, acting both for herself and others like her, really does have no other way-- not even the ability to read, write, or count up to double digits-- to right an entire system of wrongs other than by physically striking back at those who maintain that system. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. had solid educations, had connections, had the knowledge that a global press and inter/national allies could be powerful forces in their missions of change. And if nothing else, both had voices within their own communities. So, I'm not excusing Phoolan Devi's use of violence-as-remedy-- but I also can't condemn it merely by pointing to others who've led highly risky, hard-fought, but largely peace-based campaigns for justice.

If nothing else, this one's going to stay with me for a good, long while. The book might help me think through some larger questions-- but then again, the more likely prospect is that it'll do a good deal to muddy already murky waters.

The Review that Quickly Becomes a Personal Rant

To say the reading's been going slowly over the past month or so would be a laughable understatement. But behold: one tome has emerged from the stack, its contents ingested from front cover to back. The book? Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude, by Joerg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan.

Before I go into a fuller discussion of the thing, let me first make clear that we really do need to hear-- and think deeply about-- the assertions the authors are making about how religious belief and practice really need to change-- to undergo an almost complete reorientation, in fact. I'm down with that opinion 100%, especially with its main component, the need to address class as a primary element of lived faith. Without recognizing how class structure is an essential aspect of an increasingly universal status quo, both maintaining and being maintained by an essentially global oligarchy-- and without doing our utmost to change that situation-- all of our well-meaning efforts at charity, love, justice, inclusion, etc., etc., really won't amount to much. It's the establishment-shattering possibilities within religion that are at the heart of many of our spiritual traditions, and if we're to honor those traditions, we need to accept and act according to those possibilities.

Superb. Right on. Hallelujah. First problem, though: the book really should have been titled Occupy Christianity. Although the authors do acknowledge that they're only going to concentrate on their particular faith tradition, and give a nod here and there to some practices in Judaism and Islam, the title isn't quite honest in terms of the broader issue it purports to address-- namely, the need to change religious-- and not just Christian religious-- practice in general in a more justice-oriented way. This disappointed expectation (at least for me) is profoundly significant. Because as long as we continue to identify "religion" with one religion, it's a pretty short step from there to one true religion.

But anyway.

Here's another thing: for readers unaccustomed to contemporary Christian theology, the authors' assertions about the need to keep the tradition true to its justice-oriented roots might just be mind-blowing, in an admittedly fantastic fashion. Their pointing to the many ways in which mainstream Christianity/Christendom has become complicit with the (oppressive) powers-that-be might be the key to shocking some awareness into earnest Christians as-yet-incognizant of what exactly life lived comfortably within a neoliberal kingdom means. And it might also offer those newly conscious ones vehicles not only of dealing with their ensuing disorientation, and of comforting them that all is not lost, but also of providing new ways to move ahead within their tradition.

Source: Tanya Little

To those even remotely familiar with liberation theologies or the progressive Christianity of, oh, at least the social gospel and especially early feminism and post-colonialism on, these same reminders and assertions are pretty much the same thing we've been hearing all along from progressive Christians: rituals focused on active participation and personal story-telling, images of the church body (such as the starfish, prominent here) that better work to value all members and not just elevate the clergy at the expense of everyone else, "leaderfull" engagement as opposed to (apparently) any form of hierarchy whatsoever. The only difference here is that the ideas have assumed new packaging: namely, an association with the latest social justice movement and some (welcome) inspiration from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.

Maybe what feels to me like a collection of stale reminders and suggestions, though, is really just a personal frustration at progressive Christians' need to hold onto/rehabilitate symbols and figures without which their faith would apparently disintegrate. For instance, the Trinity. (Sure, it could provide the image of an interdependence of equals-- but so could an ideal commune, without having to resort to divinely ontological guessing games.) For another instance, Paul.(1) There's admittedly no way to prove my suspicions that his "service as one equal among many" (not a quote from the book or anywhere else, as far as I know), at least as presented in his letters, looks all too much like false humility and pedantry. Were we contemporaries, I could imagine my trying to escape his unctuous presence any chance I got; being around a guy who always seems to have an unsolicited lesson or admonishment ready to hand seems suspect, and produces the same creepy reaction caused by a character such as Uriah Heep or the oily preacher in There Will Be Blood. For a third instance, Timothy, and the apparent need to make excuses for his (and Paul's; why not backtrack a little) misogyny.

Why hold onto these things, these guys? Out of sentimentality? Out of a fear that peeling off one layer, then another, might lead to a void inside? There are admittedly huge problems with picking and choosing which aspects of your tradition you'll follow (any number of reactionaries' selective interpretation of who's eligible to be loved could provide a good cautionary tale about doing so). And no one's perfect; good ideas can come from execrable people, and if an individual had to be a pure paragon before s/he were allowed to contribute to society, nothing, good or bad, would ever get done. Perhaps my frustration, then, is simply with a perceived need to adorn a solid message with gilded figures-- an inability to act on an imperative (essentially, Micah 6:8: "do justice,... love kindness,... walk humbly with your God") without imagining some figurative justification for that action. An assumed belief that without some constructed image of divine exemplarity, even the thought of treating each other well could never possibly present itself, much less be acted upon.

Obviously, we've got problems. And I'm almost willing to say that whatever knocks us upside the collective head and makes us start solving them is a welcome thing. But my discomfort prevails. If the peaceful side of the ramparts involves sappy rituals and holding onto idols of our own making, well-- I'll probably choose to find a nice cozy cave once we've gained a decisive victory over the 1%.


(1) Note the difference between the early Jesus movement and the later construction known as Pauline Christianity.

Immobility-- Maybe

So, what did I glean from Daniela Crăsnaru's The Grand Prize and Other Stories? It's taken me a while to finish the collection, so even with notes, some of the earlier tales are a little hazy. Nevertheless, there's a semi-frequent theme here of missed opportunities, whether past or present, left unresolved and/or unaddressed thanks to personal inertia. Said lack of movement isn't always something for which we can hand out easy condemnation; in "The Grand Prize," for example, the protagonist's allowing a mistake to go uncorrected probably had a lot to do with legitimate fear, and permitted him to save himself in the end-- in terms of practical living conditions and lack of hassle from the authorities. The faded husband's inability to extricate himself from an unpleasant marriage in "Mr. Eugene" in part reflects his acknowledgment that he's the one responsible for getting into this situation in the first place-- and for bringing someone else along for the ride. And then there's the good husband of "About Happiness," undergoing the unsolicited realization that he has and will continue to accept a state of not-joy.

George Romney, Sketches for Languid and Prostrate Figures

We can all probably relate to being stuck, and to not knowing how-- and/or being too fearful-- to escape the situation. But is the inertia Crăsnaru describes merely individual? Are we supposed to see some larger national/cultural characterization here? I'm not familiar enough with Romanian history, especially of the post-1989 variety, to know whether I'm justified in posing this question. But when large numbers of people have a difficult, more or less common past (or even present) to face, it would be surprising if a good percentage didn't just feel like submitting to the way things are or have turned out, instead of, midway through life, making a brave foray into something completely different and assuredly uncertain.

Definitive leaps or breaks, such as the one in "The Fallen Cork Tree," may result in brief outbursts of new, even if frustratingly confusing, life-- outbursts which might also be followed up by inexplicable catastrophe. Asserting yourself to achieve just one individual thing beyond the average, as in "The European Mechanism," could culminate in the earth--or your own invention--rising up and swallowing you.(1) And so maybe it really is safer to stick to the uninspiring and predictable, to cheat yourself out of something grander in favor of a degree of security and the bits of enjoyment you can pull out of the smooth flow of foreseeable events.

The responsible thing to do would be to undertake a bit of investigation on this author: find some interviews, find some other commentary, see what her intent was. For now, though, I'm satisfied with what I've got, and feel more compelled to move on to other things. Maybe I'll cheat myself out of a variety of insights due to my own literary inertia-- but the possibly great thing about being phlegmatic in this instance is that I'm unlikely, years hence, to fall into bitter reverie and regret about the Googling I didn't do. We can hope, at least.

(1) With this particular story, though, I have to wonder what sort of commentary on striving to be part of "Europe" might be present. Especially with the semi-mysterious figure who encourages our man to go ahead with his project and his desire to claim himself as a stand-out individual, this tale has echoes of an industrialized, un-bloodthirsty Macbeth.

As Usual, the Book is Better

Jack Kerouac. Courtesy Tom Palumbo.

I'm sort of straying from the reading path here and offering my two cents on the recent film adaptation of On the Road. As one of my favorite books (and given the fact that I was a Kerouac junkie in my twenties), it was with an odd, eager trepidation that I looked forward to viewing the thing. That low-grade sense of dread came from the conviction that this book simply should not be filmed-- not necessarily because it's some sacrosanct piece of mid-century Americana, but because I can't think of a way to do cinematic justice to that weird mix of poetics, action, and camaraderie.

As expected, the celluloid (OK, I guess it'd be more accurate to say "digital") version was a pale reproduction of the pen-n-paper original. Much of the casting was weird (except for Viggo Mortensen as Bull Lee/William Burroughs) and the dialogue stilted (again, you have another problem there with the transition to film: actually making moving, visible characters talk like a book is a risky venture). What I will say the project added to all the written encapsulations of the Beats and those who tried to follow in their footsteps is some evidence of the toll all these men and their kicks took on the women involved with them-- and the ways in which a solid portion of these partiers didn't really take women as much more than vessels to attend to their sexual and sometimes financial needs. The film did do a good job of bringing some of these ambiguities to the fore, so I'll at least applaud it for that.

Still, I'd advise anyone to stick with the book.

Other works that fall into the hands-off category, where movie directors are concerned? Hopscotch (Julio Cortázar), Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace), The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen-- although I think this one's already under contract, or has had the rights bought, something). Anyone have any other thoughts on books that should stay books?