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This is the task Fox-Wilson tackles in her debut collection, Blameless Mouth; she sets herself the task of exploring stories about hunger, consumption, satiety & want both culturally & in her own experience. These are fundamental issues, speaking both to our overall human condition & more specifically to our situation as members of a consumer society. But the poet doesn’t stop there. She also specifically examines how these issues affect her & women in general—at its core, Blameless Mouth is deeply feminist.
Ms Fox-Wilson includes retellings—“re-visions” in a sense—of several important cultural myths. There are at least a half dozen poems that treat the creation myth & the Eden story, all from Eve’s perspective. For instance in the poem “Eviction,” which gives a title to the first of the book’s five sections, Eve describes herself as the coolheaded one, while Adam becomes hysterical about their eviction from Eden. We read:
Even then, as Adam cried
about the loss of home and work and God,
as angels watched us pack, I calculated
our rations, how long we’d remain sated,
how long the fruit would last.
This introduces a theme that is central to the book: the woman’s role as provider, & how that cultural role affects her consumption. While Fox-Wilson sees the consumerist society as preying on women in terms of body image & self-esteem, she also sees a built-in self-denial faced by women that makes them refuse to satisfy their own wants. She discusses this most eloquently in the poem “The Day I Learned the Definition of Lacuna.” Fox-Wilson writes:
I saw
all the women in my family
who came before me, trimming the fat
off their own meat, slipping the best parts
onto a child’s plate.
This poem & others with a similar thematic concern (especially “Better to Eat Us With,” which I’ve reproduced with Jessica Fox-Wilson’s permission as a companion post) can be read against “Womyn’s Center Topless Spaghetti Dinner,” “Maenads” & “Daughter to Mother.” The first of these describes a wildly exuberant spaghetti dinner at a Women’s Center, & as such seems to locate a form of healthy consumption in the midst of poems of insatiable want. “Maenads,” which immediately follows “Womyn’s Center” is a somewhat darker vision of women being free to explore their appetites. Finally, “Daughter to Mother” is an interesting re-telling of the Persephone/Demeter myth—in this case, Persephone welcomes her Underworld incarnation because the act of consumption has also given her power.
They do not ask anything of me;
their mouths forever shut. I sit
on my black throne, gorge
on the sight of all
the heavy, full bodies. I absorb
every nutrient I need
from their forsaken lives.
As in the “Lacuna” poem, again we have a dialogue between mother & daughter. This poem is preceded by a piece entitled “Things My Mother Did Not Teach Me,” which describes how the poet’s mother could deftly slice an apple. Apples again—Eve & Snow White, who appears in the poems “Waiting for Snow White” & in the very strong piece, “Inside My Glass Coffin.” This is again a mother-daughter dialogue in which Snow White’s entombment in the glass coffin is contrasted with the stepmother’s fixation with her mirror. & at that rate, Snow White’s release by Prince Charming takes on a whole new meaning in Fox-Wilson’s vision:
I was no more
a beautiful girl, captured in her prime. I was
like her, a woman imprisoned against her will,
in her own fragile and perishable body.
Blameless Mouth is a strong & engaging collection of poetry, & not simply because of Jessica Fox-Wilson’s willingness to handle deep & compelling themes. As illustrated by the quotes (& I could go on at length with examples), Fox-Wilson also is skilled in her handling of poetic language. Here are two more quotes I can’t resist:
Wrap your body in thousand thread count cotton sheets
and you can be the woman, sleeping at home, wrapped
in thousand thread count cotton sheets.
“Magazine Says: You’ve Worked Hard”
At the heart of a shipwreck
is a child
staring into a hungry mouth broken boards/splintered teeth
shiver/sink
descend into black depths,
learn to breathe water.
"At the Heart of a Shipwreck"
This is writing by a poet who has a clear conception of voice, image & rhetoric, who can convey both strong emotion & precise thought.
I give Blameless Mouth an enthusiastic recommendation. You can purchase the book on Lulu.com at this link; & don't forget to check out one of the poems from the book, "Better to Eat Us With," in the post immediately preceding this one. You also can join me in following Jessica Fox-Wilson on her excellent blog, everything feeds process.
Mr Brooks’ novel, the initial offering by Tangerine Tree Press, follows the paths of several young people in both France & England during the spring & summer of 1977. They are all seekers: looking for love, family, belonging. The narrative presents a complex weave, as the tales of these seemingly independent quests twine together to form a pattern.
At the center of this pattern, we find the story of Aurélie, a young French woman who has suffered from blindness since being in a car accident that claimed the life of her mother. The doctors can find no cause, yet Aurélie’s world has become a blur of indistinct light. On the other hand, her other senses have become heightened—the world of sound, smell, taste & touch are accentuated to Aurélie, as well as to us thru Mr Brooks’ considerable powers of description. We don’t only see the landscapes of her travels: we hear them, we smell them & taste them. Taste indeed: in fact, among its many virtues, The Alchemy of Chance is a foodie’s delight, filled with vivid descriptions of wonderful meals (I caution against reading this while hungry!), culminating in an improvised feast in a British shore town.
Aurélie is able to adapt—adaptation being an undercurrent thru the novel, particularly in the form of improvisation, whether that involves music, cooking or solving clues to a real-life puzzle. She develops her independence, relying both on her intact senses & her formidable memory, & is able to move around with a great deal of independence—so much so in fact, that she decides to take a journey by herself into the south of France to re-connect with friends & family & places she knew in her youth.
At the same time, Dafydd a Welch filmmaker is traveling to the same region in search of his brother Sean, who has gone missing in France for 10 years—estranged from the family, Sean has left his trail only thru a series of enigmatic postcards, which Dafydd must try to piece into coherency—make into a map, as it were, as maps are an important motif in the novel—Aurélie is fascinated by maps & one of her prized possessions is a map of the London Underground. Early in the novel, her father Didier converts this into a tactile map for her by inserting a push pin in each station; this action is duplicated—or twinned—later in the novel when Dafydd, who now has Aurélie as a companion & blind navigator on his search for Sean, constructs a map for her with an elaborate series of pins & wires.
But maps, as Aurélie knows, aren’t the only guides we have in this world. She is a gifted astrologer & has both Braille astrology books &, again with the help of her father, various tactile devices that make it possible for her to do sightless readings. She uses this skill to aid Dafydd in his quest for Sean—despite Dafydd’s skepticism.
But it should be noted that Aurélie’s astrology is not thoroughly deterministic—to call it this would be to impose an alien logic to it—a “male logic,” as she points out to Dafydd. It’s instead a set of opportunities, like a map—or like music. Again the notion of improvisation which, as musicians know, is a “tangible” instance of serendipity. Aurélie is also a musician in fact—a cellist—& we see (or I should say, hear) her skills as an improviser in a memorable scene in which Aurélie sits in with a “jug-rock band” in a Breton bar:
Aurélie stood up and stepped forward, discarding the bow, which she thrust down her waistband, and the dark glasses, which she stuffed down her white Indian shirt inside her bra. Her legs slightly apart, her knees slightly bent, a towering six-footer on the edge of the stage in a flowing white gypsy skirt, plucking a four-foot bright white cello strapped around her neck like a guitar, she led the band into a spine-tingling intermediate cadence, minor to major….She moved her left foot forward to tease up the pedals and slowed her playing right down, this time bending the notes like a jazz sax-player. Long and high, they soared across the room above the audience’s heads, echoed round ceiling corners and wall joints, returning to pierce the backs of their necks and shiver their spines. Then she made a quarter-turn in the direction of the bass-player, with a silent invitation to fill some empty spaces.
I quoted this at length not only because I believe it’s a fine example of Mr Brooks’ descriptive abilities, but also because it shows his belief in the power of transformation; not only does Aurélie’s improvisation transform the audience, it transforms her & the very space they all inhabit. But—& this is a crucial point in the novel—this transformation isn’t effected by Aurélie alone, but by her working in concert with the other band members. In the same way, the disparate lives come together in the narrative as a whole with transformative power.
The Alchemy of Chance is vivid—although I’ve never visited the places it describes, I feel as tho I can see them in my mind’s eye as I travel thru its pages. Its characters are vivid as well—redolent with the mixture of hope & pain we associate with young people of a certain age—mid to late 20s, say, as they are poised between the vestiges of youth & full adulthood. They know pain & loss—real pain & loss, whether it’s the loss of sight or a brother or mother or twin sister (the concept of twinning is crucial to the narrative)—but they also exist in a world that’s open to opportunities, whether for exploration in a geographical sense or an emotional one.
Mr Brooks’ first novel is a success—beyond his descriptive abilities, he is able to navigate a rather complex & multi-layered plot with aplomb. His characters are “real”—we feel we know them, & I would say especially Aurélie, who makes the narrative sparkle whenever she enters. This is a novel that will move you & delight you, & I most certainly recommend it wholeheartedly.
The novel is available directly from Tangerine Tree Press at this link; it may also be purchased thru Amazon here or Amazon UK here.
Finally, thanks to Sheila Graham-Smith of Tangerine Tree Press for giving me the opportunity to explore The Alchemy of Chance.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted a book review/appreciation—not that I haven’t been reading, but simply that my reading wasn’t connecting with ideas I could write about. However I recently enjoyed very much Picturing the Banjo, a wonderful book that was published in conjunction with an art exhibition of the same name. The exhibition & the book are explorations of the banjo’s cultural meanings.
As a musician, I think of an instrument’s “meaning” primarily in terms of the sound it creates—although in my current musical incarnation I’m keeping things simple, just playing a resonator guitar & singing, in the past (& probably future, too), I’ve considered why we might want the sound of, say, an oboe instead of a clarinet or a banjo rather than a guitar in a given arrangement. While an instrument’s overall “aura” may have played a role in some arrangements we made with the Alice in Wonder Band or Five & Dime Jazz, the sound was always the primary consideration.
But while an inst
rument’s sound is unquestionably its primary “meaning,” it’s also true that all instruments encode additional cultural meanings—all objects do, really, whether the object is a banjo or a telephone or a little red wagon. We’re all aware of this at some level, & if we think about any well-known musical instrument, we can probably begin to enumerate its cultural meanings—just to discuss some that are close to my heart, the guitar, for instance, has (most unfortunately, in my opinion) become endowed with a phallicized machismo in the wake of its deification in the rock world & in its current status as a video game “weapon” (e.g., Guitar Hero). It’s interesting to consider that 100 years or so ago, the guitar was considered a “feminine” instrument—a parlor instrument suitable for ladies in much the same way that certain instruments (the flute, for instance) have been “feminized” in our own time. The uke, on the other hand, has often served to some extent as an ironic prop (even for good players) simply because of its size & its reputation as a “toy” instrument. In a decided twist on that theme, it also seems that the uke these days is sometimes used subversively in the “Rock the Uke” & neo-cabaret movements—I’d conjecture that this also places the uke as an object in relation to the guitar, but in a way that “deflates” the latter instrument’s current cultural meaning.
Picturing the Banjo contains six essays that discuss various cultural me
anings of the banjo. Obviously, the banjo has had a most problematic symbolic life in the U.S. in terms of encoding racial issues, & this has been true since the earliest European settlements here—from Thomas Jefferson writing that “the banjar” is “the instrument proper to them” (i.e. African American slaves) thru the 19th century blackface minstrel shows & the impulse in both 20th century country & western & folk music (in the sense of the “folk movement” music) to square up the banjo’s edges & render its voice more palatable to a culture raised in the hegemony of 4/4 time with emphasis on rather straightforward underlying rhythms (for the musically inclined: 4/4 per se isn’t doomed to carry a straightforward rhythm—just listen to some of the great fingerstyle guitar players, or Jelly Roll Morton or Scott Joplin or any number of jazz greats—but culturally 4/4 tends to be dominated by either the preponderance of the “backbeat,” which at this point is pretty squared off, or the very straightforward 4/4 of much pop music).
OK, I’ll step down off the musical soapbox & return to the matter at hand. Picturing the Banjo is filled with images, & these range from paintings by renowned artists such as Mary Cassatt to popular objects such as 19th century mechanized banks & “presentation banjos,” another 19th century phenomenon involving banjos used solely or primarily as home décor. In general, the work focuses on two loci of the banjo’s cultural meaning as encoded in these images & objects—the banjo's racial & gender meanings.
To state the obvious, th
e banjo has had a long history in the U.S. as a signifier of racial meaning. The 19th century cult of the minstrel show (which extended into the 20th century in blackface production numbers in films, from Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer to Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn) was very much centered on the banjo as it created a mythic &, in fact, insensitive & racist portrait of plantation life for African American slaves. Images of this sort can be found in sources ranging from Currier & Ives prints (which are discussed in Picturing the Banjo) to early 20th century sheet music.
There is also an interesting discussion of Thomas Hart Benton’s mural The Sources of Country Music, which is displayed in Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame. In this case, the banjo is given a central but “diminished” place in the portrayal of sources—the banjo player is located at the middle of the mural but is much smaller in scale than the singing cowboy to the right or the dulcimer player & singer to the left. Apparently the banjo had played a “larger” role in Benton’s preliminary sketches. It put me in mind of a young banjo student I had who was quite incredulous when I explained to him that the banjo was African in origin; he’d thought it was “invented in Tennessee.”
But the banjo’s cultural meaning as presented in Picturing the Banjo isn’t only 
as a tool of oppression or co-option. In fact, the three most discussed images in Picturing the Banjo all present the banjo as a more positive cultural force. These images are Henry Ossawa Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson, Frances Benjamin Johnson’s photograph of Miss Apperson (used as the icon for our good friends Blueflint!) & Eastman Johnson’s Negro Life at the South.
The latter painting (from 1859) is cast as standing in opposition to the “happy plantation” imagery, & as representing an acknowledgment of African Americans as human beings with a real (as opposed to culturally mythic) life. The central banjo player isn’t portrayed in a caricatured manner, & there are a number of other “humanizing” touches, such as the lovers to the left of the painting. Interestingly, the one white person in the painting, the woman entering the gate to the right, is observing this scene from a remove. It's also pointed out, however, that Johnson's painting rather quickly became known as Old Kentucky Home, & was also re-interpreted by pro-slavery forces as buttressing their position, & was re-visited in contemporary prints that tended to revise the scene into racist caricatures. Given the historical context, even a nuanced scene such as Johnson's couldn't escape this cultural vexation.
Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson is discussed as an example of an African American artist restoring dignity to 
an object that had been caricatured. The older African American man is portrayed with a quiet dignity, lovingly teaching a child to play the banjo. One essayist, Leo G. Mazow, does have an interesting twist on this image, postulating that the painting’s dignity comes at a “sonic” price—that the quietude portrayed here suggests that there wasn’t a way of also restoring the banjo’s liveliness in the cultural context of the work’s creation (The Banjo Lesson dates from 1893).
As I mentioned, the banjo’s meanings regarding gender issues also receives attention. Johnson’s photo of Miss Apperson receives considerable discussion, as it subverts a stock image of the virginal maiden & the goddess of flowers by placing a young woman in a casual pose playing a banjo in the same context. Mary Cassatt’s painting The Banjo Lesson is discussed as a portrayal of emancipation, of women allowing themselves to take up an instrument that wasn’t seen culturally as “feminine.” In this context, however, there’s also intriguing discussion about how the banjo became transformed into a “parlor” instrument late in the 19th century; the discussion of the change in playing style from the percussive African down stroke (now known as clawhammer or frailing) to the guitar-style upward “pluck” may be of particular interest to banjoists.
Those who are interested in the banjo or 19th & 20th century U.S. art, or who are interested in the examination of cultural history thru objects will be fascinated by this work—I recommend it highly.
Pics from top:
Picturing the Banjo, "Happy on the Shelf"
Mary Cassat, The Banjo Lesson
Eastman Johnson, Negro Life at the South
Thomas Hart Benton, The Sources of Country Music
Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson
Frances Benjamin Johnson, Miss Apperson
For many years I’ve proceeded from the standpoint that our reality is largely dictated by language—whether it’s Heidegger writing about how the “rootlessness” of Western thought derives from the translation of Greek philosophy into Latin (i.e., from a concrete language into an abstract one), or thinking of the various ideas of time that are possible based on tense structures in various language—for instance, some African languages that have a more complex understanding of past time than is afforded by European languages. Our language shapes the form of our thought, & by enabling certain forms of thought & not others, it also ultimately shapes the content, & the perception that generates that content.
This is why translation is such a tricky endeavor—there’s a different perceptual & existential shape formed by each language. For instance, to take an example near at hand, the use of the general pronoun “on” in French—sometimes it means something closer to the English “one,” (as in “one does such & such”) sometimes it can mean something more like “they,” sometimes it may best be rendered by omitting a subject pronoun altogether & giving the statement in some passive form.
This is a long way of saying that I read the fascinating The Narrow Road to the Deep North by 17th century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō with an understanding that it’s simply not possible to access all of the work’s nuances. The Western mind—mine included, certainly—finds it difficult to grasp Zen thought; the Haiku form seems exotic & really doesn’t “translate” readily into English, either in terms of actually translating Japanese poetry or, in my opinion, of producing poems that really partake of the form itself. This isn’t a comment on whether or not it’s possible to write a good 17-syllable poem in English—I certainly believe that’s possible; but there’s a lot more to poetic form than rhyme patterns & syllable counts & metrical stresses—poetic form ideally crystallizes a mode or pattern of thinking. Even beyond that, the form of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, an integrated mixture of prose narrative & poetic expression (known as haibun to the Japanese) is alien to English, where we tend to like our literary genres “straight up”—novels are novels, poems are poems, & travel sketches are travel sketches: they don’t mingle. That’s not to say mixed forms don’t exist in English language writing—many folks produce them & enjoy them (myself included); they are still outside the “norm,” however.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North & Bashō’s other travel writings are formal mixtures, & in addition recount journeys that are not only actual, covering large portions of 17th century Japan (typically on foot, & not always in the best seasons for travel), but also “virtual,” in so far as they describe interior journeys that are both aesthetic & spiritual. Of course, to make a distinction between the aesthetic & the spiritual is immediately to step decisively outside of Bashō’s world, where these two categories can’t be separated.
Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North was written toward the end of his life, & describes a journey he took from his home in Edo (now known as Tokyo) into the largely unexplored northern part of Japan. Nobuyuki Yuasa writes, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North is Bashō’s study in eternity, and in so far as he has succeeded in this attempt, it is also a monument set up against the flow of time.” Bashō himself begins his work as follows (in Yuasa’s translation):
Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind—filled with a strong desire to travel.
Interestingly, the work ends with Bashō beginning another journey to view the dedication of a shrine—the journey continues as long as the poet lives in the temporal world, as the existential journey is ongoing for each of us. In a sense, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a sort of Zen Pilgrim’s Progress—as would be appropriate to Zen, it is both realistic & minimalist in style, & it isn’t allegorical in the sense that we understand the term (it's an interesting comparison because John Bunyan & Matsuo Bashō were close contemporaries—the British writer lived from 1628-1688, while the Japanese poet’s dates are 1644-1694). One could make some interesting cultural observations by comparing the “progress of the soul” described by the two works.
In a sense, Bashō is a “sightseer” on his journey—he makes a point of visiting sites of natural beauty, or of historical or spiritual significance (again, the distinction between these three types of sites is imposed, since I believe the category of “spiritual significance” would cover all three in Bashō’s mind). There’s also some aim of interacting with these sites by producing poetry in response to them. On more than one occasion Bashō expresses regret that he was unable to compose any verse at a given location. This form of disappointment is itself somewhat foreign. To move from the sublime to the ridiculous, I don’t believe it’s the sort of disappointment a tourist might experience because he/she failed to get a good snapshot at a landmark. In fact, Bashō seems most creatively restricted when he’s too excited by a given scene, as for instance occurs at the gate of Shirakawa; he tells a companion, “I had not been able to make as many poems as I wanted, partly because I had been absorbed in the wonders of the surrounding countryside and the recollections of ancient poets.” When Bashō is able to achieve a focused detachment, he does produce startling haiku, such as the following after seeing a legendary helmet at the Tada Shrine:
I was awe-struck
To hear a cricket singing
Underneath the dark cavity
Of an old helmet
Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa
Bashō is generally considered the premier haiku poet, & also an innovator both in the haibun form & in “linked verse,” which is one way of describing the Japanese form of renga. This verse form links a number of separate poems, often written by different poets, into a coherent whole. Typically the master poet would compose the haiku (called “hokku” in Bashō’s time) that began the chain. The haiku could either exist as a distinct poem or as the opening of a renga. Bashō’s most famous haiku (which isn’t included in his travel writings) could read as follows in translation:
Breaking the silence
Of an ancient pond,
A frog jumped into water —
A deep resonance.
Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa
Those who are interested can find 31 translations of this poem (including the original, transliterated to Roman letters) here. This page also provides a commentary on the poem. My understanding is that the line rendered by Yuasa as “A deep resonance” is particularly resistant to translation.
I recently read—& then immediately re-read—The Narrow Road to the Deep North in the Penguin edition translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. I read it back in my San Francisco days in a different translation, but I don’t have access to that book right now—however, I believe that edition may not be in print any longer after a bit of ‘net research. Yuasa’s translation is in print, & is very readable & engaging—I have no other objective criteria for judging a translation from the Japanese—& it has the virtue of containing four other travel sketches by Bashō: The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton, A Visit to the Kashima Shrine, The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel¸& A Visit to Sarashina Village. All of these works are short (the entire volume, including introduction, footnotes & maps is less than 170 pages), & all are absorbing. Bashō's commentary about excellence in art from The Record of a Travel-Worn Satchel is fascinating:
Saigyō in traditional poetry, Sōgi in linked verse, Sesshū in painting, Rikyū in tea ceremony, and indeed all who have achieved real excellence in any art, possess one thing in common, that is, a mind to obey nature, to be one with nature, throughout the four seasons of the year. Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon.Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa
Highly recommended for a quiet afternoon’s reading.
As faithful readers of this blog know, I was in the Bay Area a while back visiting old pal Dani Leone & several other nice folks as well. What you may not know is that Dani Leone, AKA Sister Exister, steel pan player & songster extraordinaire, is also a published author & a newspaper columnist. But like many gals who wield the pen (or the computer keyboard), Dani writes under a nom de plume, namely as L.E. Leone. As L.E. Leone, she writes the weekly “Cheap Eats” column for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which you can read online here. Recently, L.E. Leone also published a book of fiction called Big Bend thru Sparkle Street Books. You can order a copy direct from the publisher here; as far as I know that’s the only way of getting one unless you can wend your way to Dani’s quaint cottage in the redwoods in deepest, darkest Sonoma County. Amazon does seem to anticipate getting a shipment, tho.
Big Bend is Dani’s third book-length publication, tho her first under the L.E. Leone pen name. She also published an earlier book of short stories called The Meaning of Lunch, & the most original collection of restaurant reviews I’ve ever read, Eat This, San Francisco. If you’re expecting to find yourself in Baghdad by the Bay, do yourself a favor & buy this book. Collected from Leone’s “Cheap Eats’” columns, this book can steer you to some delightful & very affordable Bay Area dining. The one drawback: it’s several years old, & some of the eateries are no longer available to serve your gustatory needs—for instance, both the legendary Gravy’s in Daly City & the fabled Anne’s Café in Oakland are among the dearly departed….
But enough of that, since our main purpose here today is to talk up the virtues of Big Bend. For my money, the eight stories & one novella in this collection are all strong work. They present a coherent worldview in tales that ping-pong back & forth between a certain light-heartedness & an underlying sense of profound existential crisis. The fact that Leone’s characters are about as everyday as they can be—a drifter, a bohemian young married couple, a small town musician, a worker in a spinach processing plant—makes the angst more pungent because it’s our angst: the strange backdrop of delight & mundanity & emptiness that underlies our day-to-day existence; decisions made or not made; words said or not said; fun had or not had; love accepted or declined….
& that’s the most interesting thread to me. Because the angst itself is something we’ve all written about, back in the day; but what makes the stories in Big Bend most remarkable is the consistent theme of finding connection. Were the collection to have an epigraph, it could take the pithy E.M. Forster quote from Howard’s End: “Only connect” – though L.E. could probably find an old-time country lyric saying the same thing, & that would be even more to the point. The characters in Leone’s stories all find themselves in situations where some real connection is possible, & when this opportunity is accepted, then the character may find some solace. Connection is meaning, or at least capable of creating it. Whether this involves a boy & his father in a surreal Mexican standoff on a snowy porch, or a drifter & an adolescent girl in an asexual Lolita odyssey across the most barren stretches of the west, or a husband trying desperately to save his marriage thru the advice of his adolescent partner in a lemonade stand, the characters either stand or fall at their moment of decision.
It’s important to note, however, that there’s a lot of fun & just sheer readability in all these stories. Leone seems to write on the margins of the tall tale or the urban legend; the situations in her stories are improbable, but are consistently so in a “truth is stranger than fiction” way. Play & fun are also important in the stories—after all, these are some of our most powerful ways of connecting with others (also eating, music, & those sort of long talks that seem strangely mundane to us as eavesdroppers, but which we immediately understand would seem momentous to the characters engaged in the conversation). The stories also carry you along on a tide of plot—a feature that may not be stressed enough in serious fiction, which Big Bend most certainly is. A hint: don’t start the 60-odd-page title novellette at bedtime unless you want to be up past your usual lights out.
There are a number of memorable images here—the satellite photo of the U.S. at night, showing the places where there’s no light—a character keeps this stashed behind his van’s sun visor; the broken guitar washed up in a flood; the immigrant grandmother’s hope chest (the latter from the final story, “Hope,” which is among other delightful things one of the more arch spoofs on 1980s grad creative writing programs I’ve seen). I’d like to mention others—I especially think of the images at the end of “A Place in the Choir” & “Big Bend,” but I try to maintain a strict “no spoilers” rule here at Robert Frost’s Banjo.
Leone’s writing in this collection is very consistent—there’s no “weak sister” (Exister or otherwise) here. Still, I’m sure you’ll have a few real faves when you check the book out, as you most certainly would be well advised to do. For myself I’d especially mention the title novelette, “River Song,” “A Place in the Choir,” & “Hope Chest,” but the other five don’t trail by a whole lot.
This is very fresh, imaginative & compelling writing—so I’m just saying, head on over to www.sparklestreet.com & get yourself a copy.
As regular readers of this blog know, I was on a Borges reading spree a while back. Since then I’ve moved on to other authors (the felicitous combo of Kafka’s The Castle—a re-read—& a hot-off-the-press title from good pal L.E. Leone, Big Bend), but thru it all I’ve meant to write something about the book that started the Borges binge—The Book of Imaginary Beings, which Borges co-wrote with Margarita Guerrero in 1957; it was later expanded in 1967, & the ‘67 version was the basis of a 1970 translation by Norman Thomas di Giovanni & Borges himself. This piece is based on the di Giovanni translation, which is now out of print, & apparently difficult to obtain. A new (2006) translation has been done by Andrew Hurley (Penguin Classics); you can find a comparison of the two translations here.
The Book of Imaginary Beings has graced my bookshelves for a number of years, & I’ve delighted to use it as a reference throughout my adult life. This volume is indispensable should you need to learn about creatures such as the Burak, the Manticore, or the Squonk (& if you decide to wade into The Book of Imaginary Beings to look up one entry, chances are you’ll continue browsing until you’ve read at least a few more). Still, I don’t recall ever reading it from cover to cover before—something, by the way, that Borges doesn’t recommend; he sees the work as one readers should “dip into… at random, just as one plays with the shifting colors of a kaleidoscope.”
When read as a piece, the work does put one in mind of the Borgesian theme of imaginative acts taking on “reality,” as in his wonderful story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” in which what begins as an elaborate hoax (the creation of another world in encyclopediac detail) eventually overtakes accepted “reality.” So too in The Book of Imaginary Beings we read of creatures who (like the Burak, & several other examples) actually buttress a world, whether it’s the world of Islamic legend, the allegorical Christian world of medieval bestiaries, or even the “fictional” worlds of Kafka, Poe, & C.S. Lewis. There are also a number of examples from Asian, Latin American, Northern European & Classical legend, as well as examples from the Talmud, Swendenborg, & other mystical writings. Borges traces his creatures assiduously back to their sources, & a number of writers who folks once were expected to know, but are now by & large just names beyond any but the most specialized canons make their appearance: Sir Thomas Browne, Pliny, Richard Burton (the 19th century compiler of the 1,001 Nights, not the 20th century actor), etc. One does need to be on guard, however, since Borges occasionally throws in an “imaginary” source—this is apparently the case in the following from the work’s first entry (the "A Bao A Qu"): “This legend is recorded by C.C. Iturvuru in an appendix to his now classic treatise On Malay Witchcraft.” According to Evelyn C. Leeper on the page I linked to above, there is no such author as C.C. Iturvuru, nor any such treatise. According to Leeper, this citation has been removed from the Hurley translation, tho once might surmise this is a case of too much scrupulousness—I’d suspect Borges included the hoax attribution for a reason.
Perhaps the best way to get a flavor of the work is to read a couple of the 120 selections. The selections (which are a bit shorter than average—selections can be as long as three pages) are from the Borges-di Giovanni translation, © 1969 Borges-di Giovanni:
The Monkey of the Inkpot
This animal, common in the north, is four or five inches long; its eyes are scarlet and its fur is jet black, silky, and soft as a pillow. It is marked by a curious instinct—the taste for India ink. When a person sits down to write, the monkey squats cross-legged nearby with one forepaw folded over the other, waiting until the task is over. Then it drinks what is left of the ink, and afterwards sits back on its haunches, quiet and satisfied.
Wang Tai-Hai (1791)
The Nasnas
Among the monstrous creatures of the Temptation is the Nasnas, which “has only one eye, one cheek, one hand, half a torso and half a heart.” A commentator, Jean-Claude Margolin, credits the invention of this beat to Flaubert, but Lane in his first volume of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (1839) says it is believed to be the offspring of the Shikk, a demonical creature divided longitudinally, and a human being. The Nasnas, according to Lane (who gives it as Nesnás), resembles “half a human being; having half a head, half a body, one arm, & one leg, with which it hops with much agility….” It is found in the woods and desert country of Yemen and Hadhramaut, and is endowed with speech. One race has its face in the breast, like the blemies, and a tail like that of a sheep. Its flesh is sweet and much sought after. Another variety of Nasnas, having the wings of a bat, inhabits the island of Ráïj (perhaps Borneo) at the edge of the China seas. “But God,” adds the skeptical authority, “is All-Knowing.”
Borges points out in his “Forward to the 1967 Edition” that “[t]he title of this book would justify the inclusion of Prince Hamlet, of the point, of the line, of the surface, of n-dimensional hyperplanes and hypervolumes, of all generic terms, and perhaps of each one of us and the godhead. In brief, the sum of all things—the universe.” This is a marvelous quote to keep in mind when dipping into The Book of Imaginary Beings (or reading it cover to cover)—the imagination, in Borgesian terms, is the creator for those of us within “this mortal coil,” & while (as Borges says) “the zoology of dreams is far poorer than the zoology of the Maker,” in the larger sense of “imaginary beings” it’s the sum of what we know.
Though it apparently does differ in significant ways from the earlier translation, readers interested in The Book of Imaginary Beings are advised to seek out the Hurley translation; the Borges-di Giovanni translation starts at around $40 used on Amazon—yikes!
At various points in my life I’ve immersed myself in mystery novels. I’ll admit, I do go for the sort of high-falutin’ folks: during my days in Charlottesville & San Fran I read lots of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler (even wrote a poem while in ‘Frisco called “The Big Sleep”—warning: if you check it out, it is a two-pager), James Cain, Jim Thompson; later, I had an Arthur Conan Doyle & Chesterton’s “Father Brown,”& Wilkie Collins phase. Lately, it’s been Agatha Christie & Dorothy Sayers.
I’ve had a long-standing fascination with so-called genre writers—for one thing, writers like Chandler & Sayers & Edgar Rice Burroughs & Zane Gray & even Conan Doyle exist outside of the literary canon—by virtue of writing in a genre, they are not “literature.” This strikes me as both wrong-headed in terms of the literary establishment, & also a fact that immediately makes these writers interesting. As far as Christie & Sayers go, at their best they are each as good as any “genre” writer gets. I’ve often thought while reading Christie that if the literary establishment valued intricate plots as much as some stylistic or thematic considerations, a novel like The Secret of Chimneys, for instance, would rank very high in the canon.
Christie & Sayers are of course the two major writers from the British “Golden Age” of mystery novels. Though neither has received much attention as “serious literature,” they’re both very widely read—Christie’s books are among the very best selling ever, & the works of both writers have been successfully adapted for both television & screen (Christie’s have also appeared on stage, as she also wrote dramas). There are, to my mind, however, significant differences between the two writers.
Christie’s strength is plot. Her stories can keep you awake at night because you have to know how they end. Even readers who are familiar with her extensive & impressive bag of plot tricks are fooled by the red herrings that criss-cross thru her novels—the plots are a sort of M.C. Escher pattern of red herrings. She excelled at writing dialogue, & at her best her characters can be vivid—Tommy & Tuppence, whom she follows from youth to old age in several works are always intriguing, as is Superintendent Battle, & Bobby Jones & Frankie Derwent of Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?; of course, also at their best, Miss Marple & Hercule Poirot are captivating. There is a sense sometimes with Christie that these major characters, especially Hercule Poirot, can become a bit two-dimensional, particularly in some of the later stories (as an example I’d single out Poirot in 1972’s Elephants Can Remember). It can seem as though Christie, having laid so much groundwork in earlier stories, relies on the Marple or Poirot “franchise” to stand in for characterization; of course, while Christie apparently liked the Miss Marple character, she actually came to despise Poirot, describing him in her diary as “insufferable.” Also, thematically, Christie’s stories don’t tend to have much depth—she is interested in cultural changes occurring in Great Britain, & her writing about the transformation from Edwardian to modern culture is interesting, though her viewpoint tends toward the conservative.
Sayers was an Oxford educated classicist who became a mystery writer for economic reasons. While her mysteries were popular in her lifetime, she herself believed her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy to be her most important work; the Sayers’ verse translation is still available & respected, though it has the reputation of sometimes departing a good ways from the original. Sayers also published two books of her own poetry, & wrote both non-fiction books & essays, particularly on Christian doctrines—Sayers was a devout Anglican. She also wrote about feminist issues, particularly in Are Women Human?
For our purposes here, though, Sayers’ great creation was Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristocratic detective hero of a dozen novels & three short story collections. For my money, Wimsey is one of the great creations of mystery fiction, & on a par with Sherlock Holmes. Lord Peter is very fully realized—his shell shock, his foppishness, his athleticism, his musical talent & passion, & his keen wit are all articulated to fashion a compelling & fascinating character. The character of Harriet Vane, paired with Wimsey in four wonderful novels (Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, & Busman’s Holiday) is also vivid—an intellectual, a feminist, a “fallen woman” of sorts, who alternates between her career as a mystery writer & her longing to again be a part of academia studying Sheridan LeFanu. Secondary characters such as Wimsey’s butler (& ex-World War I comrade) Bunter, & Chief Inspector Parker (also eventually Wimsey’s brother-in-law) are also developed strongly.
There is a depth to Sayers’ writing that extends beyond her talent for characterization & her ability to effectively illustrate “local color,” whether that’s a Scottish village or an advertising agency or a woman’s college at Oxford. Some (most notably Edmund Wilson) have attacked Sayers as over-rated & as having pretensions to make the detective novel more literary. For myself I find it revealing that in Wilson’s attack, he repeatedly states he skipped large passages in The Nine Tailors (which I find one of Sayers’ best works); it does make me wonder if Wilson had come to his conclusions beforehand. Critic Sean Latham argued that Wilson “chooses arrogant condescension over serious critical consideration,” & went on to suggest that Sayers’ detractors simply had the prejudice that detective fiction can’t really be “literature”; of course, one wonders if Edmund Wilson & his ilk would extend that to include, for example, Wilkie Collins.
If you’re just getting started with either Sayers or Christie, I’d recommend the following:
Christie: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Christie often excels with first person narration—the first Poirot story); Why Didn’t They Ask Evans (brutally suspenseful); N or M? (a Tommy & Tuppence story set during World War II); The Moving Finger (a Miss Marple story, again with a first person narrator)
Sayers: Nine Tailors (this book has been compared favorably with Dickens’ Bleak House); Murder Must Advertise (a fascinating look at the advertising profession in the 30s); & any of the Harriet Vane books – Strong Poison; Have His Carcase; Gaudy Night; or Busman’s Holiday. These books are best read in order, & all are very good, but Gaudy Night especially stands out as a serious examination of feminist issues.
One of yesterday’s posts connected GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to the issue of book banning. I’m aware this is a controversial issue, & that Robert Frost’s Banjo readers may include persons of various political stripes. I’ve tried to steer fairly clear of political discourse, because it’s not part of my agenda to offend or rile anyone up; nor can I say I definitively know that when Palin asked the librarian how she’d react to a book banning request, & then subsequently fired the librarian, what she (Palin) intended by either the question or the action. I guess Ms Palin is the one who could answer that question, but I’ve found over the years that it’s best to take politician’s answers (whether the politician is an “elephant” or a “donkey”) with more salt than I typically use when cooking pasta. I’ll also say that over the years I’ve found the adage “where there’s smoke there’s fire” is true more often than not; there’s also the more surreal adage: “If it walks like a duck & talks like a duck, it probably is a duck.” On the other hand, while I don’t have the inclination to surf the blogosphere looking for all the various nuances of the issue as it pertains to Palin, I do notice some reasoned voices who don’t seem to be in Palin’s camp are willing to be open-minded, & that also seems fair.
However, Sarah Palin aside, the banned books issue is a serious & ongoing one. Culturally, we claim to value freedom of expression, but my observation has been that this value often is put aside when it includes embracing contrary views—& to some extent, this is true for folks on either side of the left-right political dichotomy we have going on—in spades—in the U.S. right now; “needles to say,” (as Eberle would say) I’m not a fan of those maps on all the news networks with their grid of red states & blue states. I’m more a believer in something along the lines of this Will Rogers’ quote: “The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.” I don’t entirely agree, but I do get his overall point.One thing worth noting about book banning: it always stems from power, & power that’s energized by fear; & for my money, these are two of the most negative motivations there can possibly be. It’s interesting, too, to note that which set of books might get banned is completely dependent on who’s wielding the power at a given time. If we look at the history of book banning, we’ll note that the lists of banned books in the old Soviet Union & the list of banned books in the U.S. aren’t all that similar—what is the same is the practice of book banning. This reminds me of the observation by some conservative commentators who weren’t consistently enamored with our current chief executive as regards the expansion of executive powers (an expansion which, in fairness, has occurred under both recent Republican & Democrat administrations)—namely, they realized that whatever new powers were granted to a Republican would also be available to a Democrat. In other words (in an attempt to preach to the uncoverted, if any such actually show up here), you’d best think about all the ramifications of a policy that endorses censorship, (or other forms of power assertion) because it may come back to haunt you at some point down the line.
One thing that disturbs me—to get on the soapbox just for a moment (hey, I am a blogger after all), is the way the “culture war issues” (if you can call them that) tend to obfuscate serious problems that need to be addressed: an apparently crumbling economy; & a related topic: a Mid-East war that—whether you agree with it or not—has to be seen as a potential “generational” conflict—i.e., it could last a loooong time, with all the consequences inherent in this—are we willing to buy this? How willing? Are we willing enough, say, to accept rationing as was done during World War II? Or a draft, as in Viet Nam—so that not only poor kids are dying in Iraq & Afghanistan? If not, why not? & if not, perhaps this is a sign that even the folks who drape themselves in the flag about this issue really don’t believe in it all that strongly…. & a related topic—like what are we going to do as oil dwindles as a fuel source & all the “drill, baby, drill” rhetoric about Alaska, etc looks to be about as effective a remedy as slapping an ace bandage on a broken back; & related to that—hey, have you noticed the interstates are getting pretty old & dilapidated, & that it’s real difficult to get anywhere by railroad, while meanwhile the government is sinking lots of $$$$ into a kinda crumbling airline industry? Infrastructure, anyone? Or the current chaos of the public school system, a system that provided education— & thus made citizens—of several generations in this country (including yours truly’s dad, who came from a poor, second generation immigrant background); & no, an escape to private schools is not the answer if we want to maintain democratic institutions (because those private schools don’t account for the folks nowadays who are in my dad’s situation)…. Thomas Jefferson said “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”Which leads me back to banned books. Because this is an issue about information & the ability to think. When one can learn only from a limited perspective, one’s mind can’t embrace difference. It’s disturbing to me that so much of the official discourse about difference has to do with its supposed corrupting influence rather than ideas such as freedom & tolerance—which I believe is practically impossible to achieve (to the extent we’re capable of achieving this) without knowledge & understanding. One thing to remember (going back to the Jefferson quote); being “well-informed” doesn’t just mean keeping up with news & current events… it means having an understanding of human diversity; having an understanding that there is a dynamic fluidity of world views & life experiences, & just because “that’s the way we’ve always done things around here” doesn’t mean that’s the only way to get them done.
It’s an important “issue”—I hate to use that over-used term in this context—so if you can, spend some time this week researching it, or better yet, reading a thought-provoking book. You can find out more about banned book week here, & can see a list of 10 banned classics here (some surprises, so check it out).
The pics show some books I selected belonging to Eberle & I, all of which have been banned at some time & place. I didn’t make an exhaustive search of our shelves—I just wanted to find a handful that were well-known &/or had been important to us as readers & writers. In case I got too clever by half with the pictures & you can’t read the titles, they are:
Top pic (l-r): Ladies Almanack-Djuna Barnes; Naked Lunch-William S. Burroughs; The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas-Gertrude Stein; Ulysses-James Joyce
Middle Pic (l-r): Moll Flanders-Daniel Defoe; Candide-Voltaire; The Rights of Man-Thomas Paine; The Scarlet Letter-Nathaniel Hawthorne
Bottom Pic (l-r): The Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck; The Well of Loneliness-Radclyffe Hall; Howl-Allen Ginsberg; As I Lay Dying-William Faulkner
Hey, folks, a new series at Robert Frost’s Banjo!—don’t worry, I’m more or less keeping track of them, & they’ll all keep turning up, hopefully not like the proverbial bad penny.
Anyhoo, although the title is a nod to “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” this has nothing to do with Fats Waller. It struck me that a goodly percentage of Robert Frost’s Banjo readers read books, & it might be fun to discuss some books I’m involved with from time to time. Leave it to me to write the first one of these about a book I’ve discovered is out-of-print. However, a Google search does show that you can pick it up from several online sources, & in some cases even for a good price.
The book is Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, edited by Andrei Codrescu—that’s right, for you aficienados of NPR who aren’t also poetry readers, the witty NPR commentator who sounds like Count Dracula is a poet & a member of the literati—actually a member of some note, as he’s a prolific writer both of poems & essays, & also the editor of a big-time literary mag (in the sense any literary mag is “big-time”) Exquisite Corpse.
Codrescu’s aim in Up Late is polemical; he wants to present poets he sees as writing outside the accepted academic milieu (which of course includes most of the writing workshop bunch). In an informative & rollicking introduction, he excoriates anthologies that mix academic & non-academic poets without any regard for the aesthetic bias/stance of any given writer; he also traces the roots of his anthology by linking it to the Grove Press 1960 New American Poetry (still available under the title The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised). Obviously, his points about “mixed” & “proper” anthologies (which, in Codrescu’s terms, present “closed poems”) are points that can be debated, but Codrescu's position does have its logic—he’s carving out a place for the poets who are non-academic & anti-literary, drawing connections between them, & establishes their overall “voice” by the sheer number of poems & poets (the book is 600+ pages, though this includes additional material like an index & mini-biographies, & it contains over 100 poets). In doing so, he includes poets from divergent schools—there are both Beats, as well as the “East Coast beats” of the New York School (2nd & 3rd generation in each case), surrealists, political poets (actually, most if not all of these poets could be said to be at least implicitly political—& political topics range from general U.S. policy to gender, racial, & sexual politics, to meditations on general cultural conditions), minimalists, & language poets.
It’s a wild & wooly bunch, & very few if any readers will like all the poets included here. However, it’s a starting point for each reader to use in discovering which poets he/she finds moving/intriguing/inspiring, & then (it’s hoped) go on to discover more about those specific writers. This is always the ”job” of any anthology—other than being a book professors & grad students can order as reading material for their hapless under-grads.
What’s the importance of a book like Up Late to the average reader? After all, poetry in the U.S. these days is such a specialized field—it’s not read very much (the last poet to be on the Times best seller list? Frost, who at this point is a few generations back….); one wonders if in fact there are as many “poetry readers” as there are self-professed “poets”: certainly the circulation for the average literary journal is so low one has to assume that a number of folks writing poems aren’t reading that many of them. Eberle talks about the time she spent in what was Czeckloslavakia back in the 80’s, & mentions that the publication of a book of poems there had about the same cultural impact as the release of a big-name movie here stateside. I actually don’t come from the school that bewails the fact movie stars, etc. are making seven figure salaries & poets are clerking in bookstores—after all, I kinda think poets are best when they’re on the outside looking in, & as has been proved abundantly in our culture, the whole fame/celebrity phenomenon is one sure way of assimilating outlaw artists. & besides, as Frank O’Hara (a VERY good poet) realized—where would we be without movie stars? Check out his poem “Lana Turner Has Collapsed!” here.
So if you want a taste of U.S. poetry from “the wrong side of the tracks,” check your local used bookstore, or an online outlet for used books & give Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970 a look-see.
