A complex, tangled masterpiece. Really this is probably closer to four stars but I can’t bear to give it less than five. Difficult in theme and subjecA complex, tangled masterpiece. Really this is probably closer to four stars but I can’t bear to give it less than five. Difficult in theme and subject but radiant in language—the writing sings, it wails. Characters are deep and intricate and the world through which they move pushes up against them at every turn, the way the world pushes up against all of us, the way we have to steel ourselves just to be people in this world, like walking in the wind.
I think every book that is good—I mean, really good—feels like a death when it’s finished. Feels like a loss, an end, but puts you in mind of things tI think every book that is good—I mean, really good—feels like a death when it’s finished. Feels like a loss, an end, but puts you in mind of things that are true and real, centers you, sets life in ever clearer relief as opposed to death and nonexistence and shitty books. The pleasant sting of being alive bright in your breast like a muscle being worked for the first time in weeks, or like a long deep slumber after a trying day.
I’ve just finished this one, not even three minutes ago, and I feel that aimless languor that comes when you get to the end of a book you’ve grown to adore, that book-drunkenness giving way to a book-hangover, where things feel simultaneously unreal and incredibly, astonishingly tangible. A tiny death, with the grief and melancholy that entails, and the determination, and the gratitude that this day at least belongs to you, even if no other future day has yet been promised. You’ve taken something into yourself even if you can’t name it; something is different, even just slightly. And that dramatic desire to walk out to the lake and rest on the shore until evening, thinking and dreaming and crying a little bit but mostly giving thanks, silently, for the simple fact of being alive and not dead, not yet, and hopefully not for a long while either. This is what a good book can do. Does. Did, for me, today....more
In 1977, NASA launched two space probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, and sent them hurtling off into the cosmos to gather data on the planets and their mIn 1977, NASA launched two space probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, and sent them hurtling off into the cosmos to gather data on the planets and their moons and whatever else there was to be found. Both probes have officially entered interstellar space, out beyond the solar system, and Voyager 1 is currently the manmade object that has travelled furthest from Earth.
The probes were each carrying, aboard all their scientific instruments and delicate data-collecting architecture, a record made entirely of gold.
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They're intended as a message for any extraterrestrials which may come across them, encoded with all sorts of information meant to display what life on Earth is like: people speaking various languages, sounds of thunder and ocean waves and rain and wind, birdsong, laughter, music from J.S. Bach to Chuck Berry; photos representing scientific discoveries, architecture, food, landscapes, portraits, scenes of daily life.
Per Carl Sagan's Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium,
The Golden Record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of Ann Druyan. During the recording of the brainwaves, Druyan thought of many topics, including Earth's history, civilizations and the problems they face, and what it was like to fall in love.
While it would've been impossible to do so—the probes were launched in 1977 and the book published a year later—I would've included Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual somewhere on the Golden Record. Le Monde called it the novel of the decade but I'd go even further into senseless hyperbole and call it the novel of the century. It doesn't have a great recognition factor compared to other books (say, The Quran or The Collected Works of Shakespeare). And, as opposed to a book that's more representative of humanity as a whole, it's incredibly specific, entirely taking place within an apartment building in Paris' XVII arondissement on June 23rd, 1975 around 8PM—its cultural references are niche and occasionally intentionally abstruse. So why would I place it on the single furthest relic from Earth as an offering to the extraterrestrials to understand mankind?
I think it encompasses more of that indescribable thing called Life than encyclopaedias four times as thick. In its remarkable specificity and astounding level of detail, it somehow hits upon themes and subjects that are so universal and crucial.
Naturally, a book like this doesn't lend itself well to summation. I wouldn't even know where to begin. The Goodreads description calls it "an unclassified masterpiece" and... yeah, that pretty much sums it up. In a way, it touches nearly every genre. The literary structure of Life: A User's Manual is, essentially, a collection of descriptions of apartments in a building, broken up by anecdotes connected to these descriptions (the summary of a book somebody is reading, a character's family history, what became of a room's previous tenants). Imagine a massive, intricately detailed still life, a cross-section frozen in time, reality paused and coolly picked apart. These anecdotes range from the hilarious to the tragic to the sweet to the flat-out absurd. A trapeze artist who refuses to come down from his perch; a wealthy couple who steals for libidinous pleasure; an autodidact who only discovers academia in midlife; a murder-suicide preceded by years of simmering revenge; a millionaire who succumbs to a shockingly complex scheme to rob him of his wealth. And then there are more quotidian stories: a motorcycle accident; a raucous birthday party; a group of friends stuck in the lift; a woman slowly losing her mind to dementia. Both of these, the dramatic and the mundane, are the sorts of scenes that make up our lives in all their patchwork mess of love, beauty, boredom, misfortune, triumph, quiet fortitude...
"Sometimes Valène dreamt of cataclysms and tempests, of whirlwinds that could carry the whole house off like a wisp of straw and display the infinite marvels of the solar system to its shipwrecked inhabitants; or that an unseen crack would run through the building from top to bottom, like a shiver, and with a long, deep, snapping sound it would open in two and be slowly swallowed up in an indescribable yawning chasm; then hordes would overrun it, bleary-eyed monsters, giant insatiable mouths: the wood would crumble, the stone would turn to sand, the cupboards would collapse under their own weight, all would return to dust." (p. 219)
It's difficult to convey just how precisely Perec crafts this place, its residents, its interiors and its rumours and its history. He seems obsessed with lists. We read an exhaustively enumerated list comprising the contents of a wine cellar, pages of sale listings in a hardware catalog, entire letters, a survey of the remnants left on the floor the morning after a party (a chapter that I inexplicably loved, although it's essentially just a list of various old foods and misplaced ties and crumpled wrapping paper). He specifies the exact shade and hue and texture of a couch, the precise size and cut of a ring, the appearance and history behind any piece of art hung on a wall. Rarely is one person noted and left alone; often we will hear about their father, grandfather, their unlucky great-great aunt, the circumstances regarding their brother's will; or their relation to other tenants, the concierge they particularly dislike because of some long-ago tiff or the baby they give to the cleaning lady to watch or their jaunty steps down the stairs as they take down the garbage bags.
This book presents such a close facsimile to real life with its texture and detail that we're left with the question: Why read this book at all?
You could just as easily take a minuscule survey of your own house or apartment complex, its history, the stories of its inhabitants, their family trees, the minute details of its decor and architecture, set it in an imitation of Perec's voice, and it would likely look a lot like Life: A User's Manual. In fact, there were many times I looked something up that was mentioned in the book only to find that Perec had completely fabricated it, and done it so masterfully that it didn't cross my mind for a second that, for example, the supposedly storied Carel van Loorens was not a real man at all. Which begs the same question I mentioned before. Why read a book that so cunningly imitates real life without being literally real? (That is to say that the apartment building it describes does not exist, nor in fact does Rue Simon-Crubellier, the street on which Perec places it.)
I don't know. I don't know why we read fiction that's close enough to reality that it becomes virtually indistinguishable. But it doesn't feel pointless, somehow; it feels like an exercise in empathy, in rediscovering the beauty in the mundane and the endless complexity and strangeness of fellow human beings: their obsessions, pathologies, dreams, fears, hobbies, losses, hopes. I can't give you a good reason to read this book or any book like it (if books remotely like it do indeed exist). I can just tell you that I read it and adored it and feel like a better person for having done so—these are the easiest five stars I've ever given....more
Right, so there's a lot of places to go with this play, in terms reviewing it. Lots to work with. Because The Pillowman is about a lot of things—rage,Right, so there's a lot of places to go with this play, in terms reviewing it. Lots to work with. Because The Pillowman is about a lot of things—rage, childhood trauma, art, violence, stories, symbolism, the subconscious. But I think I've found something which ties all of those things together, so that's what I'm going to focus on here: surrogacy.
I'm not talking about having a baby for someone, I'm just using it in the general sense of the word—the state of being a surrogate. Being a stand-in for someone else. As humans, more of our lives are spent making people surrogates than we'd like to think. How often do we take our anger out on the people who don't deserve it? How often do we take a liking (or a disliking) to someone because they remind us of someone else? How often do we (even subconsciously) make others the conduit for our pent-up pain over events in the past, over the fucked-up things our parents did and said or over the way we were bullied, how often do we take that simmering rage and, when it finally boils over, direct it not at the people who hurt us but at others quite unconnected with the original act?
Quite often, I think.
If this all sounds more than a bit Freudian to you, I understand. A lot of the concepts explored in this play are certainly of that nature. There's a lot of talk about childhoods and children, and all I could think about was how the act of killing a child is often imbued with such psychological and moral weight because of how the murderer sees his own self in the child, how the act is not, to him, a murder, but a mercy—how he sees himself and he destroys himself, and by doing so he tries to prevent himself from ever having existed at all because he so hates the knot of grief and rage and brokenness he was turned into because of his own childhood.
Not that I'm pardoning child murderers. Although pardoning child murderers is a very real topic in The Pillowman, which is why I brought it up in the first place. So in case you haven't already guessed, you probably shouldn't read this play if you have any especial sensitivity regarding the death or torture of children. Well, I suppose every human person with a soul has this sensitivity, but I guess I just mean that you shouldn't read this if you can't handle that being a main component of the story. This isn't horror, so the intent isn't to frighten or repulse you, but these things certainly happen while Martin McDonagh is spinning a tale as terrible as this one.
Writing is an important motif here, unsurprisingly since the protagonist is a writer and the plot concerns the implications of his stories. But here again we find surrogacy. What is writing but extended symbolism and self-exploration? Sounds masturbatory; probably is. Characters are not always surrogates for real people, sometimes they’re surrogates for ourselves, the parts of ourselves we can’t bear to analyse via classic introspection or therapy—the parts of ourselves who hate our parents, hate ourselves, desire obliteration more than anything—so we extract them and place them into little symbolic people made of words. It’s a dark take on the act of fiction writing and I wonder if Martin McDonagh believes it himself, or if Katurian Katurian is more of a nightmare, where the things we know and understand are horribly darkened and twisted up.
And violence against surrogates even runs through the subtler details of The Pillowman. Consider the tale of the Little Green Pig and the fact that Katurian works for a butcher, something which is only mentioned once in the very first scene. Or the parents in The Little Jesus, how they compare to Katurian and Michal’s parents, and Ariel’s, and what became of all three sets.
Every character in this play is guilty of surrogacy to some degree. The detectives who initially seem so boneheaded and brutish reveal their internal struggles and worldviews through some fantastic dialogue and monologues, and they both have a propensity to channel their anger and grief and unleash it on people who represent those that have hurt or abandoned them.
And maybe the person who creates surrogates is a victim themselves, cycles of abuse and of psychological trauma without outlet. If this sounds unbearably depressing to you, that’s because it is, but the last scene of the play holds some hope in that regard, some light. Not much, little more than a pinprick or the flicker of a candle from a mile away, but it’s enough, I think. The world is dark, McDonagh tells you. So perhaps the candle is just there to emphasise the darkness surrounding it.
I’m being vague about everything because you really should just read this play. (You can do so for free here.) It hits you like a punch in the gut—especially the titular story—but my god is it exceptional. Here’s a perfect balance between the cerebral and the concrete, a story that doesn’t forsake character development for symbolism and meta-fiction, which is philosophical and thought-provoking but also just a great tale. It seems perverse to say I loved The Pillowman, and if you read it you’ll understand why.
It's hard for me to write a real review of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches because I finished it a few minutesWell that really was something.
It's hard for me to write a real review of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches because I finished it a few minutes ago and I'm dying, dying to start part two, Perestroika, which is sitting right next to me. But let's try anyway. Quick and dirty, no funny business.
This play is something special, and I knew that almost immediately. Reading the cast of characters page was a bit of a trip at first—it includes a drag queen-turned-nurse, two ghosts, a rabbi, Ethel Rosenberg, an Eskimo, an imaginary travel agent, and an angel, among others. But don't let that turn you off, because it is really, really, really good, and not as bizarre as you might think.
Right off the bat, the dialogue is superb. The way the characters speak and interact feels so real, and this isn't something I'd normally comment on but Kushner's use of punctuation is very effective, it gives a really good indication of the cadence of the lines without actually having to put any parenthetical direction into it. Everyone has a unique way of speaking, too, which is something I notice playwrights tend to struggle with without resorting to drastic accents or overly emotive stage cues.
And every character felt like a real person (not just the ones who actually were, like Roy Cohn & Ethel Rosenberg). It's stunning, truly, how well they're fleshed out despite the length of the play (far too short! I want more!) and the fact that they all have to share the spotlight. They transcend stereotypes in beautiful ways, their words are powerful but human, and the conversations they have are anything but easy and pleasant. They react to heartbreak and disease and confusion the way real people do, they don't act like characters in a play. And there wasn't a single one I disliked, not even the ones that act despicably or forsake the ones they love, because I can understand every one of them, and I can relate to something deep at the core of each one.
There are touches of surrealism, or magical realism at least—a mutual dream scene, a brief foray into Antarctica, divinity-induced arousal. But it really is remarkable how well these blend in with the rest of the piece, and even though they're clearly more fantastical, they feel no less real. I don't think I've ever pictured any play more clearly in my head than this; I had vivid mental images of every character, I could visualise the split scenes (another playwriting tactic Kushner uses to great effect here), I could see the heavenly light and the angel breaking out from above on the very last page, I could hear the triumphant sublimity of the chorus, Hallelujah!, Hallelujah! Glory to!
The whole play cultivates this incredible feeling of something coming, of being right on the very cusp of something profound and terrifying and blindingly beautiful, something unknown but all the more powerful for the not knowing. There's this sense of upheaval, of things set in motion, of being swept up into the awe-inspiring heart of mankind and everything we are. The climax comes at the very end, which of course leads right into part two, but the building anticipation is anything but unsatisfying. What is coming? What is on the other side? What is this grand, sublime thing that has come to save us or smite us, is it plague and damnation or salvation and "softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace"? What will happen when it arrives?
HARPER: I'm undecided. I feel... that something is going to give. It's 1985. Fifteen years till the third millennium. Maybe Christ will come again. Maybe seeds will be planted, maybe there'll be harvests then, maybe early figs to eat, maybe new life, maybe fresh blood, maybe companionship and love and protection, safety from what's outside, maybe the door will hold, or maybe... maybe the troubles will come, and the end will come, and the sky will collapse and there will be terrible rains and showers of poison light, or maybe my life is really fine, maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise, or maybe not, maybe it's even worse than I know, maybe... I want to know, maybe I don't. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it's killing me.
In all this praise I realise I haven't yet answered the big question: What is Millennium Approaches actually ABOUT? Hard to say. I suppose I could just say "the 1980s" or "the AIDS crisis" and that would technically be true, but it wouldn't be much truer than saying the Statue of Liberty is a decently-sized figurine or the Grand Canyon is a large crack. It just doesn't cover it. Yes, the four main male characters are all homosexual; yes, two of them have AIDS; yes, it takes place in New York City in 1985/1986; yes, there's a drag scene and a gay sex scene and several dying-of-AIDS scenes. But the subtitle really says it all: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. A significant part of Angels in America is about homosexuality, certainly, but rather than ending the theme there—homophobia is bad, AIDS is bad, that's all folks thanks for coming—Tony Kushner uses it as a jumping-off point to explore the complexities of love, justice, identity, religion. And he does so beautifully.
If or when you get the chance, read this play. It is not to be missed....more
I loved it. I thought it was absolutely bloody spectacular. Vonnegut has such a keen sense of the interplay between realism and absurdity, tragedy andI loved it. I thought it was absolutely bloody spectacular. Vonnegut has such a keen sense of the interplay between realism and absurdity, tragedy and hilarity. If I were pressed to describe The Sirens of Titan, I suppose I’d call it a story about purpose.
It’s my nineteenth birthday today. It’s 8:33 PM. I’m in a cabin in New Hampshire, looking out at the forest, and the soft, pinkish-yellow light of a post-storm sunset is glowing through the canopy like twilight on Titan. If I close my eyes and listen really close—I can hear the universe singing....more
”You should have come back. It would have been all right.”
“I know,” Andrews said, “But I thought I couldn’t. And then I was too far away.”
For what sta
”You should have come back. It would have been all right.”
“I know,” Andrews said, “But I thought I couldn’t. And then I was too far away.”
For what started out as a cross between “manifest destiny” and “go out into the wilderness and become your truest self” as told through a long and impossibly arduous buffalo hunt, I never expected Butcher’s Crossing to be as moving as it was, or for it to take down those very concepts with such stunning brutality.
Williams’ prose is incredibly descriptive and vivid, so much so that by the time the hunt has come to its end, the reader feels as weary and changed as the characters do. What could be painfully dull is kept interesting by focusing on certain “movements” during the trip, from the parched days spent without water, rambling blearily over the dusty plains, to the frigid winter spent shivering within the bellies of the very animals they slaughtered with abandon in the fall.
The characterisation is subtle and wonderful. You get so caught up in this story of going out to chase a dream which eventually becomes a story of survival that, like the protagonist with which you witness the events, you hardly notice the changes until they’re laid bare before you, and you’re left reeling, wondering if these ghastly people have been warped by this terrible journey or if it’s simply revealed their true selves.
Butcher’s Crossing is not an easy book. At times, it is as gruelling and harsh as the expedition it follows. But it’s also starkly beautiful and packed with fascinating subtext, both historical and philosophical, which makes the journey more than worth it....more
This book feels, for lack of a better word, classic. Not classic as in Frankenstein or Beowulf or To Kill a Mockingbird, but classic as in timelessThis book feels, for lack of a better word, classic. Not classic as in Frankenstein or Beowulf or To Kill a Mockingbird, but classic as in timeless. Now, don't get me wrong, I like innovative literary devices as much as the next girl. I've read short stories from the perspective of feet. Hell, I read The Road (in which there is barely a plot to speak of) and loved it.
But every once in a while I feel the need to shake off all those new bells and whistles and just get back to basics. I want to lie back and have the author tell me a story, one where I can fall headfirst into the world it describes and be completely under the spell of its colourful characters. I want to feel like a child, sitting at the knee of a loved one, listening to wild fancies and wondrous tales. I want my stories vast and I want them sprawling- I want journeys, fights, backstories, villains, heroes, daring escapes, vows of revenge. The Shadow of the Wind, The Hobbit, The Princess Bride- books like these are my comfort food. Books that are classic and familiar but still feel special; books that are heartfelt but thrilling; books that have the Holy Trinity of plot, characters, and style, and that marry them all together to create a world, a time, or a moment that I'll never want to leave.
The Lies of Locke Lamora delivers all of these things splendidly: a provocative, edgy setting; well thought-out cultural and religious customs that weren't a bore to read; a hero to root for; a villain that's bad but oh so good, evil of the proper, moustache-twirling sort. Usually, I revel in the grey areas- antiheroes, punch clock villains, semi-antagonists, man vs. self- I love the interplay of elements of light and dark. But every now and again I want clean cut, I want good and evil battling it out on a grand, dramatic stage, but I still want it nuanced and unpredictable, which Scott Lynch covers beautifully.
The writing, too, was gorgeous, the kind you can slip into and pass hours reading, totally and utterly immersed. The Duchy of Camorr is a deliciously dangerous and delightfully corrupt city of olde- with shades of Riften, Renaissance Venice, Red London, and Florin City*. I felt like I was being guided through the winding alleys, taverns, holes-in-the-wall, and mansions of Camorr by a funny, knowledgeable guide who showed me all the facets (good and bad, seedy and sumptuous) of the city. I watched women battling gigantic sharks, I saw bloodbaths, I experienced massive floating markets, lavish skyscraping terraces, dank dens of villainy. Corridors of razor-sharp roses, thieving cellars below temples, shifting docks- all described so clearly that you'd swear you've actually been there.
And, in a way, you have.
Because, in reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, you become a citizen of the crazy city of Camorr- you're party to all sorts of schemes, swindles, and plots, standing in the corner and watching the lives of a vast array of characters unfold and tangle in the most spectacular of ways.
I smiled so many times while reading this book, and I broke down into tears too, but they never felt like the cheap heartstring-pulls so many contemporary novels use today in lieu of genuine emotion. This book kept me guessing, laughing, wondering, and- above all- craving more. I won't say much about the plot or characters specifically (it's so much more magical when you read it yourself) but it involved theft, revenge, fighting, comradery, tricks, secrets- all the good stuff- and doctors, alchemists, nobles, priests, assassins, gangs, and, of course, bands of thieves.
[image] Gentlemen Bastards!
If I may point out a few details I loved, I thought the "fantasy" elements were woven in artfully. There's alchemy, but I really liked how it was talked about in more scientific terms rather than magic. There are people called Bondsmages who are basically the Siths of wizards- they cause pain, control animals, do mind tricks, all that sort of thing, but they never seemed gimmicky or too much "ye olde magicka." The format of the story was lovely- a main storyline with several well-placed interludes about Locke's childhood, certain colourful events in Camorr's history, the working of the city's underworld, or even spending a little time inside the head of a secondary character. Also, let it be known that this has the greatest ending to anything I have ever read, ever, so don't worry about being disappointed by a lackluster finish- I thought it was brilliant.
All in all, a richly told, wonderfully executed, positively delightful tale. It was just... charming. It just made me happy in so many ways, and it felt new despite the fact that it really is a return to the tried-and-true aspects of sprawling fantasy, done marvellously well. Like I said above, classic but fresh, drawing from its predecessors but still special in its own right, which I think is an especially difficult thing to master.
Because nowadays I believe we value writing far more than storytelling, and every now and then I need a charming thief (Locke), an unwittingly brave hobbit (Bilbo), or a suave bookseller (Fermín) to comfort me. Sometimes (but certainly not all the time) I want a clear hero and a clear villain- because in a world where so much is mired in the grey, a little bit of black and white can go a long way. These books, for me, are the equivalent of a favourite armchair. They may not be of the very highest quality, but they are warm, cosy, incredibly enjoyable and with the perfect, comfortable mixture of firmness and fluff. Everybody needs books like these, the ones we can fall back on time and time again and never get tired of, books that feel very much like the emotional equivalent of peeling your socks (or pants) off after a long day of work. Many people find that fluffy, cute romances do the job for them, and that's just fine. But me?
Well, I'll take a rakish thief any day of the week.
*I might have made a status update saying this (I have a feeling I did), and I loathe being redundant, but as of right now I can't see my status updates. It happens sometimes, especially as of late, but eventually it resolves somehow. Ah, Goodreads- the site with more bugs than an overzealous entomologist.
Read for the 2016 Popsugar Reading Challenge: "A book that's more than 600 pages."