The Pale King - David Foster Wallace (2011)

Wow.  At first I was guessing this was published in 2014, before I looked into the copyright page.  I thought this was going to be one of the more "up to date" reviews, but I guess I'm four years late.  Law school can do that to you.  Then again, would I have ever even read this book if it weren't for my friend that sent it and suggested we form a "book club" and read it together?

I mean, I own Infinite Jest, but only got through about 400 pages on my first attempt, and maybe 150 on my second.  I will finish that book the next time I try.  I considered picking it up this morning, needing a new book start on, before What I Talk about When I Talk about Running comes in from the CPL.  But I wanted a lighter messenger bag for a change.  This is the 3rd book out of the last 4 topping out over 500 pages.  I picked up Disgrace instead.

Imponderables aside, the thoughtfulness of the gift both impressed and imposed an urgency upon me.   The Pale King will not make the Best Books list of this blog, but it is up near that territory.  I'm not sure it would be there, for me, in its finished form either, just because of the lukewarm feeling I get about Infinite Jest.  It's something I feel I should respect and admire, but just can't really bring myself to enjoy reading.  This is getting to be a loaded topic, because it brings up criticisms of DFW like those of BEE, who said he was a "fraud" or "full of shit" or something, because he read a biography of DFW that discussed how he did not have much love for BEE, but still recognized him as an influence on his own writing.

This would probably be a much better book if DFW were able to complete it, mainly to see what he might do next.  As much as this seems unfinished, at almost 550 pages it seems pretty representative of what the overall quality might have been.  Parts of it seem lop-sided, but on the whole it seems about 80-85% finished to me.  I suppose it all depends on how long DFW intended it to be.

For sure, it is an audacious concept for a book, and a perfect one for him: a paean to boredom.  Make the boredom of the everyday lives of IRS examiners in Peoria, IL in the late 70's and early 80's into fine literature.  I was about to write 1985, but I don't believe this story necessarily takes place in 1985.  It's so impressionistic that the "plot" seems secondary to the background sketches of the other characters.

It's not even clear what the "plot" really consists of, but it may consist of Claude Sylvanshine and David Foster Wallace's orientation to their IRS posts in Peoria.  It's hot and they ride in a bus that is a repossessed and re-purposed ice cream truck.  One person sweats an egregious amount.  There is some idle chatter with two other employees.  They go, and DFW gets mixed up with another David F. Wallace (who is older and much more valuable in terms of skill set) and gets introduced by the "Iranian crisis," who gives him a blow job in a janitor's closet.  He also glimpses the face of Glendenning, who is basically in the highest post there, who looks at him sympathetically or some related way because DFW has a horrible skin condition that causes most people to look away.  And that's pretty much it, though there may be other characters on that bus ride near the beginning of the novel.

DFW is a character in this novel.  Ostensibly, it is a memoir:

"Plus there's the autobiographical fact that, like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist,' i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.  My specific dream was of becoming an immortally great fiction writer a la Gaddis or Anderson, Balzac or Perec, &;c.; and many of the notebook entries on which parts of this memoir are based were themselves literarily jazzed up and fractured; it's just the way I saw myself at the time.  In some ways, you could say that my literary ambitions were the chief reason I was on hiatus from college and working at the Midwest REC at all, though most of that whole backstory is tangential and will be addressed only here in the Foreword, and very briefly, to wit:" (73-74)

Here, Wallace describes how he paid off his student loans by writing papers for his classmates, and how his school became aware of it.  This is the first part of the novel that feels truly "great."  It is classic DFW, by which I mean it includes footnotes and his trademark erudition.  So yes, certain sections of The Pale King, I would say, are as good as anything DFW has ever done.

This is a great chapter because Wallace could pretty easily convince a person (that didn't know what year he was really born and couldn't do math) that the story is, in fact, true.  One thing I like about his writing is that it captures the essence of reality.  A reader can identify with it on a different level than anything before.  The details--the minute details and almost paranoid insecurities that we all must worry about from time to time--are so readily evoked that DFW appears God-like.  This one of those books that takes you out of your head a bit, and oddly shapes your life around it.

One part, for me, was extremely touching.  One quick background detail, for exposition: from April 2008 through August 2008, I lived in a small bungalow-like studio in Silver Lake, on a hill just off of Sunset Boulevard.  Across Sunset Blvd. was a foot sign.  My friend (the same one who sent me this book) remarked upon it and I agreed it was strange, funny, cute and iconic in its own way.  It was certainly a landmark.  After I left L.A., he sent me an article once about how this sign had actually influenced several fiction writers, such as Jonathan Lethem and DFW.  I immediately thought, "I am chosen.  I was meant to live there, to know that."

Then came page 163, which will from hereon in be christened the "LSAT test," not unlike the "420 test," except that instead of requiring mention because of some relatively direct reference to pot (and while there is a fair amount of "drug material" in this book, it does not pass that test--though page 420 does detail one of the more sensorily-powerful scenes in the novel), it will need to evoke feelings of my life that might be different if I hadn't taken the LSAT and scored a 163:

"I remember rooming in a high-rise UIC dorm with a very mod, with-it sophomore from Naperville who also wore sideburns and a leather thong and played the guitar.  He saw himself as a nonconformist, and also very unfocused and nihilistic, and deeply into the school's wastoid drug scene, and drove what I have to admit was a very cool-looking 1972 Firebird that it eventually turned out his parents paid the insurance on.  I cannot remember his name, try as I might.  UIC stood for the University of Illinois, Chicago campus, a gigantic urban university.  The dorm we roomed in was right on Roosevelt, and our main windows faced a large downtown podiatric clinic--I can't remember its name, either--which had a huge raised electrified neon sign that rotated on its pole every weekday from 8:00 to 8:00 with the name and mnemonic phone number ending in 3668 on one side and on the other a huge colored outline of a human foot--our best guess was a female foot, from the proportions--and I remember that this roommate and I formulated a kind of ritual in which we'd make sure to try to be at the right spot at our windows at 8:00 each night to watch the foot sign go dark and stop rotating when the clinic closed.  It always went dark at the same time the clinic's windows did and we theorized that everything was on one main breaker.  The sign's rotation didn't stop all at once.  It was more like slowly wound down, with almost a wheel-of-fortune quality about it where it would finally stop.  The ritual was that if the sign stopped with the foot facing away, we would go to the UIC library and study, but if it stopped with the foot or any significant part of it facing our windows, we would take it as a 'sign' (with the incredibly obvious double entendre) and immediately blow off any homework or supposed responsibility we had and go instead to the Hat, which at the time was the currently hip UIC pub and place to hear bands, and would drink beers and play quarters and tell all the other kids whose parents were paying their tuition about the ritual of the rotating foot in a way that we all appeared nihilistically wastoid and hip.  I'm seriously embarrassed to remember things like this...." (163)

This turns out to be a videotaped interview with "Irrelevant" Chris Fogle, and it is one of the standout portions of the text.  His father is employed by the City of Chicago as a "cost Systems supervisor," and dies in a horrific CTA accident.  The description of the ensuing litigation with CTA is very accurately rendered.  He grows up in Libertyville, IL and references a number of other towns on the north shore, including Winnetka (a clothing store--Jack Fagman--which his family had patronized since 1964, and which may or may not have existed).  It is basically about the moment that he discovered his calling in life--to serve the IRS.  It details a chance encounter with an Accounting professor at DePaul, and how it took him off the path of serial college enrollments, drugs, and the "wastoid" lifestyle.  In short, this is classic DFW.

Another notable section near the end focuses on a conversation between Shane Drinion and Meredith Rand, two other IRS employees, at a bar's happy hour on a Friday.  Drinion is cyborg-like in his communications, but Rand is relentlessly confessional.  The subject matter of this scene is also touching and personal to me, as I wrote my second novel in between 2007 and 2008, finishing most of its rough draft shortly before DFW committed suicide.  It is heartening to think that we might have been compelled to write about the same topic for similar reasons:

"'I didn't know why I did it.  I'm still not sure, except he taught me that trying to analyze it or understand all the whys was bullshit--the only important thing was knocking it off, because if I didn't it would land me right back in the psych ward, that the idea I could hide it with bandages or sleeves and keep it a totally private thing that didn't affect anybody else was arrogant bullshit.  And he's right.  No matter where you do it or how carefully you do it, there's always a time when somebody sees something and says something, or when somebody is funking around in the hall and pretending to beg you to cut algebra and go to the park and get stoned and climb on the statue of Lincoln and grabs your arm too hard and some of the cuts open up and you bleed through your long sleeves, even if you've got two shirts on, and somebody sends for the nurse even if you tell them to fuck off and it was an accident and you'll just go home and get it seen to at home.  There always comes a day when somebody sees something in your face that tells them you're lying and then the next thing you know there you are, in a lit room with your arms and legs uncovered, trying to explain yourself to somebody with zero sense of humor, actually a little bit like talking to you right now.' With a quick tight smile." (468-469)

While these chapters--DFW's delayed "foreword," the story of "Irrelevant" Chris Fogle's revelation, and the conversation between Meredith Rand and Shane Drinion--are my personal favorites from this book, I hasten to add the caveat that they also go on too long.  Another similarly great chapter is about a young man (who later rides next to DFW on the way to the Midwest REC) who sweats profusely during periods of anxiety.  It is tremendously entertaining and profound in its sensitivity to human nature, but the situations are truly mined to the depths for details.  This may or may not have been a casualty of the incompleteness of this novel.

This sort of seems to be characteristic of his work in general, though, with another one of his chapters ending in the middle of a sentence.  I am not sure how you could provide appropriate closure for Infinite Jest, though I believe Joyce achieved it with Ulysses, which one really must mention in the same breath.  Because if you subscribe to the belief that Ulysses is the greatest English language novel, then I think you will also enjoy DFW to the max.  I don't always, but I think I can appreciate the generic expectations of a reader that sort of begs for a little bit of "guidance" from the author.  DFW definitely provides that "guidance" at certain points, and it is refreshing.  But other parts of this book are about as difficult as Infinite Jest.

My opinions on this book have been adequately dispatched, I believe, but please feel free to comment below, as this truly is the first post on Flying Houses spurred by participation in a book club.

On Writing - Stephen King

There is a literary agent named Nathan Bransford who runs his own blog and asks questions of his readers. I have read his blog for the last several years and often attempted to follow his advice, concerning query letters usually. I sent him one query letter, received a message of zero interest (but thanks for reading the blog!), and now I only read it when I'm super-bored.

Last time I was super-bored, he asked the question, "What is the one book a person must read in order to make them into a better writer?" There were over 200 comments. The comments on Flying Houses are usually porn links.

Many of the comments suggested Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, a book I read my senior year in high school that I remember very little about beyond the practice of using index cards and beyond the advice that no one ever makes a living off their writing, ever. So I suggested Ulysses for fiction and Bird by Bird for non-fiction. And nobody cared.

The reason I mention this question is that Stephen King's On Writing appeared more on that list than any other volume, and by a longshot. So I thought, it must be something really special, I must check it out. SO, I did that, and while it is a perfectly decent manual on the way to "start taking writing seriously" which includes other interesting variations (memories of growing up, memories of nearly dying after being hit by a car, commentary on The Elements of Style) of course it contains plenty of the sad realities I always hate to associate with the "art" of writing--the commercial aspect, the "less pretentious" aspect.

Oeuvre rule: what I have read by Stephen King, I read thirteen years ago. The best thing I ever read by him was The Long Walk, which merits mention in one sentence of On Writing (King does say it was "pretty good"). I did not like The Shining as much as the movie. In general though, I never really got into him. Of course I've seen a bunch of the movies that his writing has spawned (1408 deserves special mention as it occurs near the end and is one of his most recent adaptations) but I am not a huge fan of his writing for one reason: not that he's a "hack," but he can do pretty much whatever he wants, he has to be one of the most fabulously-well-to-do writers ever to exist, and he chooses to write stories and novels of the supernatural---which he claims, at base, are about reality---but I'm sorry, as a "realist," his work bores me. I want to read about real people making real decisions about their real lives, not how best to outthink a madman in a snow-covered hedge maze.

And not that his writing is "low-brow," but, I don't think he's going to compete for the Nobel anytime soon. I will mention that in the last five years it seems like, I don't know, King has moved into more elite company as far as "serious" writers like Richard Ford/Don DeLillo/Philip Roth go. He had his own interview in The Paris Review and more "highbrow" writers pay attention to his redoubtable success. But I'm still going to say King's success shouldn't mean much to people of my generation. None of us are ever going to be published except on our blogs and we should all rent out a private island for a writer's retreat, make some purple kool-aid, print out everything we've ever written, start a giant bonfire and drink the stuff. One of us may have an idea like Carrie, but no one is ever going to buy that novel, again. Even though "bullying" seems like quite the hot topic now.

But what did I think of this book? I liked parts of it. And I didn't like most of it--because I've heard it all before. Since it comes from King, one is apt to put more stock in it, I suppose. There are several quotes I would like to comment upon.

#1: Passive Voice
"Messrs. Strunk and White don't speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but I'm willing to; I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe. There is no troublesome action to contend with; the subject just has to close its eyes and think of England, to paraphrase Queen Victoria. I think unsure writers also feel the passive voice somehow lends their work authority, perhaps even a quality of majesty. If you find instruction manuals and lawyers' torts majestic, I guess it does." (116--he then goes on to discuss why "The meeting will be held at 7," should be changed to "The meeting's at 7.")

This is just dumb. I use the passive voice more than I should. If anything I consider it dangerous, not safe, because every single teacher I've ever had has said "don't use the passive voice" (and don't use "to be" verbs--which I particularly hate). I don't think it lends my writing a sense of majesty. I do it when the "active" voice sounds awkward. Writing teachers will tell you that active voice is never awkward. That is my complaint about the majority of this text: King does have special advice to give, but instead he falls back on filling his book with the trite suggestions of writing manuals everywhere--and while I am more apt to believe it, coming from him, it makes me sad. The only thing that doesn't make me sad is when King says, "I know, I know. Damn." (note: that is the exact text of an e-mail Roger Ebert once sent to me on the subject of not being able to see Requiem for a Dream as a 17-year-old)

The next comment comes on the subject of daily routine:
"As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this goal low at first, to avoid discouragement. I suggest a thousand words a day, and because I'm feeling magnanimous, I'll also suggest that you can take one day a week off, at least to begin with."

First of all---how come he never mentions the thing about ending sentences with prepositions?--and second of all, he says he reads four to six hours every day on top of the 2,000 words he sets as a limit for himself. I do not disagree with setting a word limit. If one is doing NaNoWriMo, one must do at least 1,200 words every day. No days off! I did NaNoWriMo and I could do 1,000 words a day, when I wrote that third book in November of 2008, my life was not especially painful, just boring in the extreme when I was not actively engaged in creating the text. Because I knew I had to set aside two hours every day to do it. Putting a deadline on it put everything in perspective, and while I finished the majority of the rough draft by December, I did not finish the entire rough draft until April or May of 2009. That is what urgency can do for you.

But I want to ask you: don't you think King finds it easier to spend 90% of his life writing when he has been paid so much for it? I have been paid zero dollars, so why should I think the next twenty-seven years will be any different? As I've said, things are getting worse in the publishing industry. It's difficult to commit yourself to something that may be as fruitless as seeking the Fountain of Youth. That said, I wouldn't trade my four unpublished babies for anything else. Even if they never make me money, they exist as proof that I am not an empty shell of a human being. I'll write, but I'll never write the way King recommends until I have the time for it, and the patience.

Around page 163, King discusses how he came up with the idea for Misery. Earlier in the text, he talks about Carrie and connecting the idea of telekinetic powers with menstruation (which some girls had reported near the time of their first period) and bullying and on this point, I found him quite salient. There was the origin of a story, clearly defined. I am surprised that he does not mention the irony of his car accident with Misery--I think it was too obvious for a joke. When discussing his own work, King makes his most intelligent points. The same can be said for most Paris Review interviews: when a writer discusses generalities, I am apt to dismiss; when they discuss specifics, I am apt to listen.

The most incredible aspect of King's career is his ability to mass-produce literature, and he gives insight into that process in one telling detail:

"A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The more interesting situations can usually be expressed by a What-if question:
What if vampires invaded a small New England village? (Salem's Lot)
What if a policeman in a remote Nevada town went berserk and started killing everyone in sight? (Desperation)
What if a cleaning woman suspected of a murder she got away with (her husband) fell under suspicion for a murder she did not commit (her employer)? (Dolores Claiborne)
What if a young mother and her son became trapped in their stalled car by a rabid dog? (Cujo)

He later talks about characters "doing things on their own" and how it can be weird, but exciting, and how it can make things easier on a writer. I have experienced that phenomenon a couple times and so I do not disagree with King there. I don't disagree with his notions of plot, either, nor detail, nor sticking to "he said/she said,"--but I do disagree about his hatred of adverbs. Pick your battles. I always use adverbs and people tell me they're ugly. Well guess what, you're ugly. I mean that facetiously, of course. There's a reason why they exist in grammar textbooks.

The part I like best about On Writing comes near the end, near page 240 where King discusses his friend "Frank," who is an amalgamation of three writer friends he has known, who all had some decent success in college with writing, published a couple stories in their early-to-mid twenties, and eventually published novels as they neared thirty. This is the single best part of the book for anyone looking to "make it" and I would imagine that it is the part so many were thinking of when they commented on Nathan Bransford's blog question.

Obviously it's not easy to "make it" unless you put in the kind of effort that King dictates, and it's well and good that there won't be dilettantes who make it on luck rather than work (though you'll never stop me from believing they exist), but King still makes it look too easy. Just getting a story published is hard enough these days, forget about ever getting to the point where an agent will care about your query. King states like many before him that all a writer needs is some talent, pluck, determination, and a copy of Writer's Market.

I'd rather say that a person needs to be depressed, possibly suicidal, traumatized by some early life experience, very shy, lonely, and guilty in some way to be a writer. Those are the sort of stipulations I prefer. You can be lazy and still consider yourself a writer. You have the personality of one, right? All you need to do is put in the practice. Not so hard. Until you realize that practice ends nowhere. Like shooting free throws endlessly. You make 70 in a row, and no one witnesses it but yourself. You're a better free throw shooter than Lebron James, but only when no one is looking. You will never be Lebron James because he is 6'8'', 240 and he is paid hundreds of millions of dollars to put in his practice every day and you are paid $13/hour to push paper and what small leisure time you have, you'd rather put in to relax than suffer more frustration. I can't wait until I am rich and famous and can write my own book about writing.

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle - Vladimir Nabokov

An excerpt from The Paris Review interview with Vladimir in 1967 (two years before the publication of Ada):

Interviewer: If you had the choice of one and only one book by which you would be remembered, which one would it be?

Nabokov: The one I am writing or rather dreaming of writing. Actually, I shall be remembered by Lolita and my work on Eugene Onegin.

And yes, in an ideal world, every class in American literature post-World War II or "postmodern" literature would feature Ada and not Lolita. But Ada is 625 pages long--a bit heavy for an undergraduate assignment. Let us hope that grad students at least will study this work for years to come, as it surely makes a larger "statement" than Lolita, or any other book by Nabokov for that matter. You'd have to hold a gun to my head to ask which novel is the best, but the simple answer is time. If you have the time, Ada is the best. If you don't have as much time, Lolita is best. If you have even less time, Pale Fire is best. And if you have even less time than that, Pnin may be your best option. However, Pnin is the only one of those four that may disappoint a reader because it does not reach the heights of the other three. All three are masterpieces, and Ada is the most redoubtable and grandiose of all.

So now--the difficult and fun question--what is Ada about? When I brought it with me into my restaurant of work all of my co-workers expressed intrigue as to the nature of the story of such a big book. If I only had a short time to describe it, I would say, "It's about incest." And if I had a long time, I would say, "It is a one hundred year love story and if you thought Lolita was risque, well, Ada is way worse."

And it's true--Ada does not quite portray illegal sexual abuse as in Lolita--but its descriptions of sex are far more graphic, about twice as crudely clever, and arguably more offensive. Now, why more offensive?

The main character is Van Veen, born in 1870, firmly implanted in my mind after spending three months in his company. Van has a cousin, Ada, whom he meets in 1884. She is two years younger than him. Actually they might be more than cousins. To what degree they are related I will not explain--but let me just admit that it was one of the many points that I was unclear on after finishing the book, and so I had to re-read the first 20 pages, where I did find my answer.

And this is another important point to mention: Ada is probably the most difficult Nabokov book to read. Apart from its intimidating length, the first 50 pages in particular pose a great challenge to the reader. Think 100 Years of Solitude but without the weird magical realism--and keep in mind that though the first 50 pages go as far back as great-great grandparents, of special importance is the description of Van's and Ada's parents--Demon and Aqua, and Daniel and Marina--who it seems incredibly, are 2 twins married to 2 twins, further complicating the family tree.

But who is Van? Van comes from an affluent family. He walks on his hands when he is fourteen. He is an acrobat. He visits his cousins for a summer at Ardis, their estate in the northeast...in Maine, is it, spelled Mayne?

Van lives on Antiterra (or what we might call "Earth"), in Estotia, which is the U.S. and Russia combined. Much of the time he lives in Manhattan. It's necessary to mention that Ada occurs in a parallel universe, or utopia, and this is hinted at in the very first line of the book, which is a reversal of the extremely famous first sentence of Anna Karenina. Happy families are not all alike--they are actually "more or less dissimilar" (3)--and unhappy families "are more or less alike"(3)--not unhappy in their own way. Ada is not science-fiction though--a reader will primarily notice that something is vaguely askew, and their investigation into the element that alters from "reality" as we know it will often yield epiphanies or profund ruminations on the nature of existence. This topic will be revisited later in the review.

Van goes to visit Ada for the first time in 1884, and lo and behold, they fall in love. This is really the moment at which Ada becomes easier to read. Because up until this point, I had no clue what direction this novel was going to take. The long sequence in Ardis is perhaps the major part of the novel itself, also the most risque part.

Why offensive? Because Van and Ada "discover" each other at an age that most today would deem premature--12 and 14--and the descriptions of their "embraces" hold very little back--in fact, they are probably more explicit than any of the later scenes involving prostitution, which is legalized. There is also the "taboo" nature of their relationship, obviously, but for a clear example, witness the "barn burning" scene (not a reference to Faulkner, I imagine), referenced perhaps a dozen times in the course of the book, with its first display in this nearly unthinkable moment:

"'Van, poor Van,' she went on in the narrow voice the sweet girl used when speaking to cats, caterpillars, pupating puppies, 'yes, I'm sure, it smarts, would it help if I'd touch, are you sure?'
'You bet,' said Van, 'on n'est pas bete a ce point' ('there are limits to stupidity,' colloquial and rude).
'Relief map,' said the primrose prig, 'the rivers of Africa.' Her index traced the blue Nile down into its jungle and traveled up again. 'Now what's this? The cap of the Red Bolete is not half as plushy. In fact' (positively chattering), 'I'm reminded of geranium or rather pelargonium bloom.'
'God, we all are,' said Van.
'Oh, I like this texture, Van, I like it! Really I do!'
'Squeeze, you goose, can't you see I'm dying.'
But our young botanist had not the faintest idea how to handle the thing properly--and Van, now in extremis, driving it roughly against the hem of her nightdress, could not help groaning as he dissolved in a puddle of pleasure.
She looked down in dismay.
'Not what you think,' remarked Van calmly. 'This is not number one. Actually it's as clean as grass sap. Well, now the Nile is settled stop Stanley.'" (126-127)

The "Ardis" section of the book almost exclusively takes this tone, and perhaps this is one of my very few criticisms of the book: this section can nearly firmly be categorized as "erotica." The first two hundred pages of this book (so 1/3 of the whole) follow Van and Ada as very young teenagers trying to figure out different places in the palatial estate to experiment with each other's bodies. It is perhaps worth noting that both characters are ridiculously precocious, to the point that practically no one today would be able to match their intelligence or powers of articulation. See first review ever on Flying Houses for similar example (third paragraph of post): http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/doctor-faustus-thomas-mann.html

So it seems to me that during "Ardis" (or Part 1, as it were, which actually goes up to page 350) Nabokov is overly preoccupied with unsettling the reader's expectations, and the episodes become rather repetitive. There is the important introduction of the third major character, Lucette, Ada's younger sister by two years. Eventually Lucette becomes the primary voyeur of their escapades. And it is unclear to what extent she becomes involved in anything resembling or approaching a menage a trois with them, but later on, oh around page 400, she comes to visit Van about fifteen years later in Manhattan, and she reveals a secret that even Van doesn't know about, and to me this constitutes one of the most over-the-top scenes in the book.

After Part 1, the book concerns itself a bit less with sex, and a bit more with Time, the intricacies of Antiterra (and Terra, which we might call "Heaven" or "Mars" (i.e. another planet that could house a civilization)), and the manner in which Ada and Van hope to spend their adult lives. They cannot be married for various reasons they give at many different moments. Ada does marry. Van does not. Van sleeps with hundreds of women (most of them prostitutes). They write letters back and forth. They meet every fifteen or twenty years, often drastically altered by time. Van becomes closer with Lucette for the majority of the remainder of the novel.

A lot happens, but one chapter I cannot figure out (Part 2, Chapter 3) is basically a description of how prostitution came to be legalized in Estotia (or Antiterra? I'm not sure.) -- and it basically has nothing to do with the rest of the story, so I found it amazing. It is quite risque, but also hilarious, particularly the wrinkle introduced into the common paradigm of the "whorehouse":

"One clause in the Rules of the Club seemed to indicate that Eric, though frenziedly heterosexual, had enjoyed some tender ersatz fumblings with schoolmates at Note (a notorious prepatory school in that respect): at least two of the maximum number of fifty inmates in the major floramors might be pretty boys, wearing frontlets and short smocks, not older than fourteen if fair, and not more than twelve if dark. However, in order to exclude a regular flow of 'inveterate pederasts,' boy love could be dabbled in by the jaded guest only between two sequences of three girls each, all possessed in the course of the same week--a somewhat comical, but not unshrewd, stipulation." (369-370)

Also of personal interest: Van attends school at Chose, and this description of "Note" does seem to indicate that the master himself was aware of those bizarre institutions of the northeast selling elitism. Of course, they are the finest schools, and that Van attends one fits perfectly with his character--which is, a spoiled brat, who automatically starts off with more money than he would ever know what to do with. Van is not the most likable character. For one, he has a pretty sketchy major romantic relationship in his life. For two, he is an "arrogant bastard." For three, he seems to take pleasure in psychologically (and intellectually) torturing those closest to him in life. The most likable things about him are that he is an excellent tipper and that he is a scholar and thinker of the highest level.

He retires at an early age and spends the majority of the next decade working on what will become his greatest masterpiece, The Texture of Time. But I am getting ahead of myself: what does Van do? It's rather difficult to pin down, but he is a psychologist that studies bizarre disorders related to the comprehension of time and memory. Nabokov displays learning on the topic, and much derision towards Freud (Froid), which is par for the course. He becomes a doctor at Chose, and lives in Manhattan, while frequently traveling to Switzerland for various examinations, procedures, and investigations.

There is the matter of Ada's sister, and Ada's husband, and many of the other characters in the book: Cordula, Demon, Marina, and Mme. Lariviere, Ada's governess who becomes a famous author that is almost definitely a stand-in for Guy de Maupaussant. But they are incidental. There is one major suicide that takes place near the end of the book that is one of the most effective methods I have ever read of making sure that you will be dead. The scene is horrifying and one might almost call it beautiful.

And there is no shortage of beautiful writing, which is why this is Nabokov's greatest: amongst the greatest quantity in his oeuvre, some of the greatest quality is to be found. One could argue that Lolita is a more concise, consistent, high-quality read, but for its sheer ambition and leisurely methodology, Ada is that all-too-rare book that actually eclipses Lolita. If anyone was going to do it, it would be the man himself!

It is hard to find quotable passages, but there are at least two of incredible beauty. One of them comes from what is arguably the most famous chapter in the book, which is a literary experiment on the level of Joyce or Mann (who eventually we will get around to discussing again), a "chronography" for lack of a better term, highly abstract, potentially positively sleep-inducing, and replete with notions that could be discussed for hours. The other takes place at a crucial moment, whose spoiler will be avoided in the interest of an open view:

"...Hunched up in a last band of low sun, on the bench where he had recently fondled and fouled a favorite, lanky, awkward, black girl student, Van tortured himself with thoughts of insufficient filial affection--a long story of unconcern, amused scorn, physical repulsion, and habitual dismissal. He looked around, making wild amends, willing her spirit to give him an equivocal, and indeed all-deciding, sign of continued being behind the veil of time, beyond the flesh of space. But no response came, not a petal fell on his bench, not a gnat touched his hand. He wondered what really kept him alive on terrible Antiterra, with Terra a myth and all art a game, when nothing mattered any more since the day he slapped Valerio's warm bristly cheek; and whence, from what deep well of hope, did he still scoop up a shivering star, when everything had an edge of agony and despair, when another man was in every bedroom with Ada." (480-481)

The other passage I recall occurs when Van comes to as close a synthesis as his Texture of Time is bound to relate, which bears a slight resemblance to the final scene in Waking Life:

"...This act of attention is what I called last year the 'Deliberate Present' to distinguish it from the general form termed (by Clay in 1882) the 'Specious Present.' The conscious construction of one, and the familiar current of the other gives us three or four seconds of what can be felt as nowness. This nowness is the only reality we know; it follows the colored nothingness of the no-longer and precedes the absolute nothingess of the future. Thus, in a quite literal sense, we may say that conscious human life last always only one moment, for at any moment of deliberate attention to our own flow of consciousness we cannot know if that moment will be followed by another. As I shall later explain, I do not believe that 'anticipation' ('looking forward to a promotion or fearing a social blunder' as one unfortunate thinker puts it) plays any significant part in the formation of the specious present, nor do I believe that the future is transformed into a third panel of Time, even if we do anticipate something or other--a turn of the familiar road or the picturesque rise of two steep hills, one with a castle, the other with a church, for the more lucid the forevision the less prophetic it is apt to be. Had that rascal behind me decided to risk it just now he would have collided head-on with the truck that came from beyond the bend, and I and the view might have been eclipsed in the multiple smash." (585-586)

Nabokov's knowledge of quantum physics or quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity is tested, and while I am unable to ascertain its verisimilitude, it seems clear that real physicists would take issue with some of Van's pronouncements, but on a purely artistic and linguistic level, while proving quite difficult, this chapter is ultimately more essential than any other part in the work.

There is not much else about Ada that requires reportage. It is for mature audiences only, it is a very challenging read (it took me longer than any other book on Flying Houses, though there were mitigating circumstances...)--and on a purely coincidental level, during the course of my reading this novel, my life became rather strange and heartbreaking. I recommend Ada more highly than any other book on Flying Houses--but I have decided, that when I leave, in August, for Brooklyn, I will do a top 10 books on Flying Houses list. All 3 of Nabokov's masterpieces will be included. 3 by Thomas will be there too.

And so our review ends--but it is not quite over because there is this issue to resolve. I would almost do a different post for this discussion but Ada still figures in conversation. Basically I just want to quote more from The Paris Review interview. I will post a link here. http://www.theparisreview.org/media/4310_NABOKOV.pdf Read it. I am perverting all of The Great One's notions. To witness the genius contained in the responses is to regard the enchantment of a bygone era, when writers were more like gods than people.

That is not to say that I do not take issue with any of his responses, and I wish he were able to respond to my accusations/criticisms on this count, because I really would appreciate the education, which is no longer of this earth. In particular, a phrase he has created, so to speak, and that was quoted at length in his obituary in the New York Times in 1977, primarily because it contains the ultimate zinger against Thomas, which is quite rude, I think, to include in an obituary (shame on you, newspapers of the intellectual elite):

Interviewer: What is most characteristic of poshlust in contemporary writing? Are there temptations for you in the sin of poshlust? Have you ever fallen?

Nabokov: "Poshlust," or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar cliches, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature--these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as "America is no better than Russia" or "We all share in Germany's guilt." The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases as "the moment of truth," "charisma," "existential" (used seriously), "dialogue" (as applied to political talks between nations), and "vocabulary" (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name--that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost's favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers, building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene stinkbirds, objects trouves in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls. There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots--all of it as corny in its own right as the academic "September Morns" and "Florentine Flowergirls" of half a century ago. The list is long, and of course, everybody has his bete noire, his black pet, in the series. Mine is that airline ad: the snack served by an obsequious to a young couple--she eyeing ecstatically the cucumber canape, he admiring wistfully the hostess. And, of course, Death in Venice. You see the range.

It is an all too rare occasion that the words of a dead writer from more than forty years ago make me want to cry in defense of another. I cannot stand by silent any longer. I will admit this: Nabokov is probably a better writer than Mann. He has many more books to his name. Both have an equal number of masterpieces (as I have indicated earlier)--and I do have to say that Thomas is the more consistent than the two--you can pick up a Nabokov book and not be sure you're going to "get it" or not--and with Thomas, provided you stick with him the whole way, you will at least "get it." They lived to a similar age. Thomas is older by more than twenty years. They both fled to the U.S. in the wake of totalitarian regimes. They lectured at schools like Princeton and Cornell. And arguably, they wrote very similar "most famous" books about taboo desire-- and evidently, Nabokov thinks Thomas is quite a fraud. Now, I will not argue that Death in Venice is better than Lolita. That's a losing battle I am not willing to fight. But to insist that Death in Venice is "poshlost?" Coming at the end of that tirade makes the statement all the more offensive.

Perhaps Nabokov is actually stating that Death in Venice is his other "bete noire" in the series, in addition to the airline ad, but I doubt it. His contempt for Thomas knows no boundaries. His airline ad, then, is the one element in Ada that I find annoying: Van's virility, his energy, and especially his relationships with all female characters, I find quite offensive. If anybody is interested in prolonging stereotypes about men not being able to be friends with women unless they are sleeping together, or only possible en route to sleeping together, then we have a very difficult "truth" to overturn in our future. I would prefer not to be lumped in with a gender that dictates bodily pleasure accompany regular discourse if it happens to be with the opposite sex. Of course Van does love Ada and does not leer at any other women when they are together. But it's the element in Van, and often Nabokov's other characters that I wish he would not portray with no explanation.

I totally disagree with Nabokov's assertion that Death in Venice is poshlost. Its merits as a work of literature are debatable, but it is certainly not cliched (though many might consider it vulgar), some may consider it "trash" but I don't believe it is "corny," I don't see how it is an imitation of an imitation--it is extremely original and unprecedented--um, just asking, but would Lolita exist without Death in Venice?--it may be "crude" but it is not "moronic," it is the opposite of Philistinism, it may contain "bogus profundities" depending on your view, but I do not find it to be "dishonest pseudo-literature" in any sense. Sometimes I think Nabokov is more interested in piquing the reader's interest with his acid-tongue criticism than giving a more transparent view of his "rules" for "sucessful art." I am hard-pressed to think of a more idiosyncratic figure in relation to criticism of any sort.

That criticism notwithstanding, Nabokov is The Great One and I will continue to worship him as I would a god. I wish he would have a higher opinion of Thomas so that I would not feel so foolish as to canonize him as well. But they belong together, as I lump them in the final page of my second novel, as they complement one another so thoroughly: a German and a Russian, a rebel against the Nazis and a rebel against the Soviets, a Nobel Prize Winner and a notorious iconoclast, intellectual giants both (though one might disagree) and careers that I would be more than happy to experience firsthand. I would have to favor Nabokov's life over Mann's, the Nobel notwithstanding, due to its rather fabulous and incredible nature. Not that either is within my grasp--but I must say--who amongst us bloggers in 2010 America debate the superiority of Nabokov over Mann? Very few, and so I would hope, that while I am sure neither cared much for their "immortal reputation," that if they were able to review blog posts beyond the grave, they would be able to make up and be friends and realize that few others beyond their years were able to equal their heights, and that this comparison would cement their work as essential, in the 21st century.

Ulysses - James Joyce

Any discussion of Ulysses in 2009 must begin with the obvious: the Modern Library. Of course, this novel occupies the #1 slot of the "100 Best Novels" according to "The Board." According to "the Readers" it is #11. According to anyone that is not an English major, or a highly pretentious literary dilettante, it is unrecognized. It is obsolete. Or rather, it is highly regarded, but mysterious. Of all the books I have read there is only one other that can be put in the same class with it, and that would be Infinite Jest. Now, I gave up on Infinite Jest after about 300 or 400 pages (and I intend it try again in 2010), and I gave up on Ulysses after about 120 pages about 9 years ago. I still remember going to stay over in Hoboken, NJ, the night after going on a guided tour of what would become my alma mater, and remarking to my hostess for the evening that I tried reading the book, but that I didn't understand any of it, except for the phrase "ineluctable modality of the visible," and she said it was an impressive phrase nonetheless.

That phrase opens up Chapter 3 out of 18 (and just so you know, I had to go back and mark all 18 chapters tonight after finishing, so that I could be sure I properly understood the boundaries of this work), and it is one of the most commonly associated "things" with the book--I believe because it is about as far as most people get:


"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see." (37)

Let us backtrack a moment. One of the most intelligible parts of my edition of Ulysses is the foreword by Morris L. Ernst and the decision by Judge John M. Woolsey, lifting the ban on Ulysses on December 6, 1933. Woolsey provides as fine a lens through which to view the novel as anyone:

"Joyce has attempted--it seems to me, with astonishing success--to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious. He shows how each of these impressions affects the life and behavior of the character which he is describing." (xi)

He also mentions that it is "not an easy book to read or understand" and that understatement seems typical of the writing practiced by legal professionals. Now, okay, I have yet to read a single volume from D.H. Lawrence or Joseph Conrad or William Gaddis, but let me just say that Ulysses is the hardest book I have ever read, and only Infinite Jest can compare (in my own experience) but a comparison of the two will have to wait for another time.

This will be a different sort of review for Flying Houses because most of the passages that I intend to include are not especially for beauty, but rather as examples of the difficulty its audience will find in trying to attain a coherent interpretation of the text. To some this may seem pointless, or pessimistic, but I am trying to look out for the average reader here. Most people will be able to understand at least a few parts of this book (after about page 450 it becomes noticeably easier on the eyes), but few will see the point in struggling towards the end.


Who struggles towards the end?
English majors and highly pretentious literary dilettantes, once again. I really don't think anybody who says, "Oh Ulysses is my favorite novel" is telling the truth, but rather showing off. It does not offer much pleasure for the reader. That it was banned on the grounds of being obscene or pornographic--written for the purpose of igniting the sexual excitement of the reader--is laughable. Oh, parts are certainly pornographic, but there is plenty of obscure vocabulary, irrelevant detail, confusing changes of scenery, randomly introduced characters, and, well, what seems on the surface to be PURE NONSENSE, to keep 99% of the general public at bay. Those looking for a more transparent thrill will find it here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/02/annotated-lolita-vladimir-nabokov-ed.html, it must be noted, #4 on the above-mentioned list. Of course that volume, along with Naked Lunch and our present topic, generally comprises the trifecta of the most notorious banned books. Ulysses has much in common with Naked Lunch, but its degree of obscenity---on a scale of 1-10, Naked Lunch is about a 9, and Ulysses is about a 5--but the percentage of the actual text that is obscene--that is where they differ. Ulysses has nearly as much politics in it as sex. Naked Lunch has nearly as much drugs in it as sex.

But that is not a bad starting point to understanding the type of book Ulysses is--that is, like Naked Lunch or Infinite Jest. It's not very straightforward. These writers (Joyce, Burroughs, Wallace) are capable of straightforward storytelling, but it appears they find it boring. They experiment with form (Ulysses chief virtue, in my mind, is its sheer creativity; Burroughs obviously did the "cut-up" thing; and Wallace has his footnotes, though Salinger, among others I am sure, also did those, but not to the same degree, I am sure), they end up alienating a ton of readers, but they don't care and they end up creating some of the most enduring masterpieces of the English language--or at least the most controversial or provocative.

Ulysses takes place on June 16, 1904 and is billed as an extremely loose interpretation of The Odyssey. Here is the plot as far as I can remember. There are two main characters, well, three: Stephen Dedalus (formerly featured prominently in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), Leopold Bloom, and Mrs. Marion Tweedy "Molly" Bloom. The third does not make her appearance until the final chapter but should be included as a main character because of the nature of that final chapter. The night before, Stephen stayed over at his medical student friend Buck Mulligan's boarding house, and the novel opens with them preparing to have breakfast. They drink together a lot and sometimes go to see whores. Stephen is about 22 and an English professor. The first three chapters, part I, detail his early morning. Chapter four and part II opens up with Leopold Bloom, wanting to buy a kidney from a butcher, preparing to to attend his friend Paddy Dignam's funeral. He goes later, and so does Stephen's father, Simon Dedalus, who apparently is very well respected about town. (But then later it appears they are actually poor? The first of many confusing interpretations I am bound to make.) After the funeral, he goes to a museum, but if this part is included in "present tense" in the novel, I missed it completely. He goes to a bookstore. Stephen's sister is there, I think. Later he goes to the beach, around sunset, and there is a girl named Gerty there.

It is at this point, the scene with Gerty on the beach, that the novel became tolerable to me. This section was the first part that I could truly call beautiful. Joyce switches perspectives from Gerty to Bloom as they regard one another from a distance. Bloom is the "strange man" that Gerty is attracted to, oddly trying to expose herself to him. It seems that Bloom is a big fan of looking up girls' skirts. Gerty is with a friend, and two toddler twins playing. There is a church service going on nearby (I think?). What is beautiful about this section is the way Joyce suddenly introduces the human element, with straightforward description. It reminded me of something I might read in Mann, albeit without the exhibitionism. At the end of the scene it is revealed that Gerty has a certain disability, and the manner in which this is discovered makes for arguably the most heartbreakingly beautiful moment of the novel. This is also apparently the masturbation scene, but I did not catch it. This is the 13th chapter in the novel, which ends roughly before page 400, and the moment at which the novel becomes palatable.

Though chapter 14 is pretty much impossible to read, chapter 15 is almost 200 pages long and takes the form of a play script, which makes it quicker to read. This is also a protracted scene in a whorehouse, which made me think, "Okay, so this is where it starts to get obscene." Yeah right! On the surface this seems like it would be one of the easier parts of the novel, but it is just as confusing as anything that came before. This is finally where part II ends. Chapter 16 and the beginning of part III involves Bloom taking Stephen away from the whores and into a cabman's shelter, drunk, and here, finally, the novel becomes understandable all the way until the end. Chapter 17 and 18 are definitely the two best parts of the entire book, in my opinion. 17 involves Bloom taking Stephen back to his house to recuperate--but the form of this chapter is what makes it so great, and allows Joyce to offer his most profound ruminations on the nature of existence.

But chapter 18 is the most fucked up part of the entire book-- and in case you didn't guess, the obscene part. Anybody that flips through Ulysses and sees that the final sixty or seventy pages appear to be one unbroken paragraph without punctuation might wince and feel that it is the final push of complexity before being freed of the chains that are this novel, but that is not the case. Actually, incredibly, this is the most transparent episode in the entire book. Bloom has gone to bed, and crawled beside his wife Molly--and Molly contemplates their life together as she tries to fall asleep. She also contemplates the many, many men she has cheated on her husband with, and this primarily comprises the "dirty" part of the book. And it does get quite dirty, but I don't think anybody that is able to read that far is going to be morally offended by it.

Finally, the last two pages of the book are incredibly beautiful. It is one of the most perfect endings I have ever read in my life. So it is worth it to get there.

But along the way, believe me, you will have to fight every urge to give up. The first twelve chapters of the book should make most people do that. Still, I have to point out that this book is extremely important for writers, and anybody who considers themselves a writer should force themselves to read all the way to the end, whether they understand it or not. The Wikipedia page is very helpful on this novel, but I didn't read it until I was finished.

Why is this book so important for writers specifically? Joyce's creativity. Chapter 7 of this novel takes the form of a series of newspaper headlines, and this form was mimicked by me when I was just 18 in the first essay I wrote for college, and many people found it quite good. The play format of Chapter 15 is not necessarily anything new, but the hallucinatory nature of this part is way ahead of its time (but so is this http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/12/faust-johann-wolfgang-von-goethe.html, our 1 year anniversary...sigh). The form of Chapter 17 has to be one of the most original devices ever employed in literature. Finally Chapter 18 should teach anyone that thought literary experimentation reached its apotheosis with the Beats a lesson. Also anyone that thought punk rock was an original idea in 1976.

Joyce also predates the MFA contingent with their lists of things:

"From his girdle hung a row of seastones which dangled at every move of his portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the Ardi Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Rose, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O'Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M'Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshall MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castille, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo, Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker, Herotodus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare." (296-297)

Right there, if you ever need to think up a name for a character if you are writing a piece of fiction, go to this section of the book. This is one of at least three ridiculously long paragraphs containing tons of names. I don't understand anything about it.

Probably the most useful way to read Ulysses, in my opinion, is to go through it with a pencil or pen, and circle or underline every word that you do not know. You will find hundreds, I promise you. Perhaps a thousand. Some of them are made up, but you will be able to increase your vocabulary greatly if you make the effort to look up all of those words in a dictionary. The problem is that most of these words are obsolete anyways, and no one uses them anymore, and if you use them other people will just think you are being pedantic.

Another note about this text--it would help to have a grasp of Irish history. Do you know who Parnell is? I don't. Parnell is mentioned enough in this book to be considered a character. It is almost like people writing the name Bush in America one hundred years later. Except I think people will know who Bush was one hundred years from now. People will remember 9/11 for a while.

That is another thing about this book--its prophetic quality. Disaster in New York. Thousands killed. Read it and you'll understand. There are a few other instances of Joyce predicting future events. The Holocaust is not predicted per se, but the words "concentration camps" appear, and a lot of anti-semitism directed towards Bloom, who is part-Jewish.

But do not be discouraged, and push through to find beautiful parts such as this:

"For Gerty had her dreams that no-one knew of. She loved to read poetry and when she got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely confession album with the coral-pink cover to write her thoughts in she laid it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did not err on the side of luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean. It was there she kept her girlish treasures trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her child of Mary badge, the whiterose scent, the eyebrowleine, her alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to change when her things came home from the wash and there were some beautiful thoughts written in it in violet ink that she bought in Hely's of Dame Street for she felt that she too could write poetry if she could only express herself like that poem that appealed to her so deeply that she had copied out of the newspaper she found one evening round the potherbs. Art thou real, my ideal? it was called by Louis J. Walsh, Magherafelt, and after there was something about twilight, wilt thou ever? and oft-times the beauty of poetry, so sad in its transient loveliness, had misted her eyes with silent tears that the years were slipping by for her, one by one, and but for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and that was an accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it. But it must end she felt. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would make the great sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his thoughts. Dearer than the whole world would she be to him and gild his days with happiness. There was the allimportant question and she was dying to know was he a married man or a widower who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the land of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But even if--what then? Would it make a very great difference? From everything in the least indelicate her finebread nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen woman off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men, with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he was in mourning for from the days beyond recall. She thought she understood. She would try to understand him because men were so different. The old love was waiting, waiting with little white hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes. Heart of mine! She would follow her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free." (363-365)

There are not many other very good reasons to read this book beyond the desire to witness a genius at work--and there are those that will persist in stating that Joyce is no genius, but a nut. And okay, from everything I've read or seen about Finnegan's Wake, it may have turned true--but Ulysses is not the work of a mind that has lost touch with its genius. It may have lost touch with populist sentiment, or the desire to be understood, but it is a work of genius, and near the end, as near the end of this contemporaneous novel of nearly the same length (http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/01/magic-mountain-thomas-mann.html), the reader forgets their preconceptions and just starts believing whatever the author writes, as fantastic as it may be, the author becomes the final authority on God, the universe, and the nature of existence:

"He believed that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating these conditions?

There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and death: the monotonous menstruation of simian (and particularly) human females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis from infancy through maturity to decay." (697)

And here, when Bloom and Stephen are regarding the stars, near the end of the narrative, perhaps a commentary on the discovery of the atom:

"Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?

Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in the cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatazoa: of the incalcuable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by the cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached." (699)

I don't care to type much more, but here is an excerpt from the final chapter. To my mind, the primary merit of the final chapter is the way in which a single character is fully evoked, without reservations. Of course, Molly is unfaithful, but so is Bloom, and the nature of their adultery is arguably the most bittersweet, painful revelation of this entire work. They are compatible, so they stay together. But Molly is so tired of Bloom, and Bloom can be a lech at times--their adultery is almost approved. Bloom is still the more sympathetic character in the final chapter, as Molly contemplates how she would like Stephen to come around more often afterwards, for obvious reasons:

"Im sure hes very distinguished Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck besides hes young those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathing place from the side of the rock standing up in the sun naked like a God or something and then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all day long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to listen theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock there so simply I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and white he looked with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its only like gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs of men I supose never dream of washing it from 1 years end to the other most of them" (775-776)

In this final chapter, Joyce gets to the point that I have always thought I knew something about--that is, burying the sordid detail underneath a mountain of text, so that the reader will have to do the work to get there, so that it is almost like a secret or dirty joke that cannot be uttered aloud. Ulysses is obscene, but only really after about 700 pages, so no one should be bothered by it. It is not an affront to public morality more than any other book has been in the past, because barely anyone that is part of "the public" will be exposed to it. And there can be much value in a frank discussion of sexual mores, particularly in the 1920's, and mixed in with that, there can be real instances of proto-feminism:

"I dont care what anybody says itd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and killing one another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop sure they wouldn't in the world at all only for us they dont know what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where would they all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now out at night away from his books and studies and not living at home on account of the usual rowy house I suppose well its a poor case that those that have a fine son like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was watching two dogs up in her behind in the middle of the naked street that disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to have buried him in that little woolly jacket I knitted crying as I was but give it to some poor child but I knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it was we were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into the glooms about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it was somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so silent I used to love coming home after dances the air of the night they have friends they can talk to weve none either he wants what he wont get or its some woman ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no wonder they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have makes us so snappy Im not like that" (778-779)

I have said all I can on Ulysses, I think. I recommend it, but primarily for writers. I do not know if I will ever read it again. I might, but only if I wanted to write a novel that was a very loose retelling of the story, the way this was a very loose retelling of that older, classic story, which can be read by almost anyone. If anything, it made me want to re-read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. Perhaps in 2010, those will appear on Flying Houses, and perhaps Infinite Jest will too. But don't hold me to that, please.

Hiatus

Flying Houses will be going on hiatus--for a little while at least.

The reason is similar to the last hiatus--at the beginning of 2009, due to the consumption of The Magic Mountain (http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/01/magic-mountain-thomas-mann.html). Underworld (http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/04/underworld-don-delillo.html) should have been a hiatus too, but I consider modern novelists to be less daunting than those born in the 19th century.

Now, I expect to read another book about law while on vacation in Florida in the next couple of weeks, and that may inspire a post--but beyond that, the reason this time is Ulysses--generally considered one of the monumental works in the history of letters. I am about 200 pages into it--or 1/4 of the way through. I expect to be finished by Thanksgiving, or Christmas (hopefully by 2010 I will be able to consider myself "sort of well-read.")

In the meantime, be strong. This is a difficult period in our history and I am sure by the next time I post something even more messed up will have happened to the world. Flying Houses will not save us all, but it is a pleasant distraction, is it not?