The Visitor opened about a year ago, at a time when few "awards-minded" films are released. It was one of the first movies to open in 2008 with an Oscar buzz attached to it, for lead actor Richard Jenkins. Jenkins was nominated, and a few weeks ago he lost out to Sean Penn. I could have tried to rent Milk last night but I was just assuming it would be not be available. I watched The Visitor on Starz On-Demand last night, very tired due to a reckless Friday night which involved 3 hours of sleep, at best, thinking, "Well, I'll probably fall asleep but it's supposed to be good, so I should at least try...."
I'm very glad I decided to do that, and I did not fall asleep. I am writing about it on Flying Houses because this is the kind of movie that gets forgotten about by the public at large and flits around on cable for months or years--perhaps like The Station Agent, McCarthy's only other film which he wrote and directed, which is supposed to be quite good, and which I've never really tried to see. The Visitor is a very good film--the only criticism I can make is that it tends to view the world through rose-colored glasses too much. Not in its conclusion, or portrayal of law enforcement procedure--but in its total disregard to issues of cost of living.
Richard Jenkins plays Walter, an economics professor at Connecticut College, who is summoned to New York to present a paper at NYU which he co-authored, though he really just read it and attached his name to it. The woman more responsible for it is in the throws of late-stage pregnancy, and so he agrees to go to New York, where it is casually revealed that he keeps an apartment--for the last 25 years. I understand that tenured professors make pretty good money, but still, a home in Connecticut, and an apartment in New York that he almost never goes to--that's the first offense. He finds two people living in his apartment, Syrian musician Tarek, and Senegalese jewelry-maker Zainab. At first they flip out because they think it's their place--they've been rented it by a man named Ivan, who is only mentioned by name and never explained, offense #2. Walter feels bad for them after they leave, because they've been polite and understanding, and tells them they can move back in and stay for a few days.
He goes to the conference at NYU, which are certainly some of the best scenes in the film. The Kimmel Student Center is used to excellent effect in the film. He goes to Washington Square Park and starts to listen to the drummers playing the bongo on the bottoms of buckets. He later finds that Tarek plays the bongos, and after being taught a few lessons, realizes that the drums are one of his great undiscovered loves. These are some of the other best scenes--for about twenty minutes--perhaps minutes 20 through 40 of the film--it can seemingly do no wrong. Never mind that Tarek and Zainab are supposedly looking for an apartment--who knows how they'd be able to afford it--but because it doesn't come to fruition it is not enough to call if offense #3. You can't help but be happy for Walter, who is such a cut-and-dry figure at the beginning, and who develops this very real, dare-I-say heartwarming friendship with Tarek and his girlfriend, who is oddly standoffish at points.
The turning point of the film occurs after the drum circle performance at Central Park, another one of the best scenes. In the rush to get through the subway turnstile, Tarek gets his giant drum bag stuck at an interval after it has locked, and he casually steps over it. A note on turnstile hopping: I do not know if I have done it in New York, but I definitely did it in Paris a few times, where it is commonplace enough that I saw a few other people do it, generally at night. I might have done it once in New York, but the manner in which Tarek is stopped is something very real and frightening and you really just want to curse the hell out of the subway police. Definitely one of the most emotional parts of the movie, and Jenkins plays the part of powerless advocate at just the right tone. Later Tarek is brought to a correctional facility in Queens, and then for the final arc of the film, his mother arrives from Michigan because she believes that her presence alone in the city will help get him out.
Another great scene is when Tarek's mother, Mouna, meets Zainab and asks, "Show me what you liked to do in the city with him." And they ride the Staten Island Ferry, because it's a free boat ride, and because you can point out where the WTC used to stand, even if you didn't get to see it in person, and because you go right by the Statue of Liberty, which is certainly a major symbol in the film. Later there seems to be a relationship blossoming between Walter, a widower, and Mouna, a widow, but the film never veers into sacharrine unrealistic notions of romance, and is all the more powerful for it.
While the set-up may be a bit unrealistic for monetary reasons, and while the issue of illegal aliens in the U.S. is given a rather elementary surface examination, The Visitor is still a film that everyone should see. It will make you happy in ways you didn't expect, and it will make you really start to care about the characters, whether you recognize the manipulative quality or not. That extra 20% in income taxes that Tarek and Zainab avoid having to pay is maybe just what they need to make living in NYC work out alright. I think the film could have presented the other side of the issue, at least slightly, just to give a voice to the other side, but it is still an important film politically, because it calls for revision of U.S. immigration policy, which has only become more strict and harsh since 9/11. What happens to Tarek is upsetting, and while he may not technically be allowed to stay in the country, there still should be some way to allow him to become a naturalized citizen before such life-shattering actions are taken. Jenkins voices these emotions in such a way that you don't disagree with him, and while it is up for debate whether he deserved the Oscar, he clearly deserved the nomination. While this is definitely a "message film," it's not a boring or inappropriate one, and the last shot of film is memorably great. It may not seem like the most exciting movie from a synopsis standpoint, but it deserves to be given a chance by everybody.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Trail of the Dead - Jon Evans
As a formatting issue, Flying Houses reviews music with the band name first and the album title after the dash, and books with the title first and the author's name after the dash. This is because it just seems like the journalistic standard. That new Franz Ferdinand album might make for a confusing review or the Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified could be the same.
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (a.k.a. Trail of the Dead) have put out their newest album last week and a review can be found here http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/149323-and-you-will-know-us-by-the-trail-of-dead-the-century-of-self and if I were myself from a couple years ago I would probably be taking the long walk down to Reckless Records to buy it, but I digress. Their secret new album is called "Jon Evans" and is coming out later this year, in a move not unlike Radiohead's "Kid A"/"Amnesiac" release schedule. Naming their album after a person is a curious move, but does not come as a total surprise after one of their earlier songs that staked out their reputation, "Mark David Chapman" was similarly-titled, not to mention "Baudelaire."
But "Jon Evans?" Who is Jon Evans? Well, he is a writer. A real living person. "Dark Places" is his first novel. He has written four more. Here is what a short biography on a book site says about him: Jon Evans is the son of an ex-pat Rhodesian father and Canadian mother and was born and raised in Canada. He has travelled extensively all over the world and works as an IT consultant between trips. He currently lives and works in San Francisco.
The Trail of the Dead have created a concept album based around this man's life. Does it come close to Zen Arcade or Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness or Cursive's Happy Hollow? Sadly, not. However it is a very original idea that should not be discounted. The first track on the album is about a guy named Paul Wood who goes hiking on the Annapurna Circuit in Malaysia. He and his friend from South Africa are hiking around a mountain and they discover a dead body with Swiss Army knives in his eyes. The man's name is Stanley Goebel which immediately makes me think, Nazi.
But Stanley is actually a fellow Canadian of Paul's (whose name is actually Balthazar) and a pretty good guy on all accounts, and Paul continues home to San Francisco in the second "movement" of the album, titled "California." There he works as an IT Consultant, and soon the economy topples and Paul gets laid off. Conrad Keely must be trying to make a statement about the current state of global society. Now all art will be about desperation, poverty, and human resilience. It works in this case, as Paul uses the opportunity of unemployment to solve the mystery of this murder--because here's the kicker--two years earlier, his girlfriend Laura had been murdered--in the same way! With knives in her eyes!
Probably the best song on the album is "Cookie Monsters" which involves Paul's attempt to track down the killer via posts made to a secret online page where the identity of the murderer is revealed. One of the rules of the game he plays is to only log onto the page at public terminals and then to delete all the browsing history before he leaves--but he forgets to delete the cookie history too! Since Paul is an IT Consultant he knows all of these secret tricks to online pseudo-hacking and eventually hatches a plan to lure the murderer back to Africa, where Laura's murder took place, while recruiting several old friends from the overland trucking trip to Africa that the first murder happened during.
Since Keely & Co. have constructed such an elaborate plot for their album, it is very difficult to discern the majority of the action in the story. Only if you read all of the lyrics from beginning to end will the story come through at all, and even then it seems vague. Just hearing Keely try to sing songs about all of this complicated subject-matter makes for an unforgettable listen.
Finally, Paul stages a dramatic conclusion during the song "The Pillar of Hercules" that ends the story on a happy note. Not to be outdone, Trail of the Dead close out the album with the revelation of Jon Evans--the author of the story about their album about Paul Wood--and how he is a successful mass-market paperback writer that won an award for his debut novel and now finds himself blocked, and so is forced to go back into more IT work than writing. For the originality of the material, Trail of the Dead have released their most essential album since Source Tags & Codes, one that will capture the attention of adventure-seekers and serial killer-hunters and superhero-impersonators everywhere. Their conceit is not to be outdone, and the humor they reveal displays a side of the band that will be totally welcome in indie rock circles everywhere--total disregard for audience expectations and totally random musical ideas. It's weird, but it's usually compelling, though not as good as the greatest concept albums of all time, still an album that should rank in the top 20 of 2009. At the very least, it's a gift for Jon Evans, the real writer, who will no doubt be amused that a pretty popular band has decided to write an album about him. They even make another prescient observation--the only band Paul mentions liking is Prodigy, and Prodigy released their first new album in five years (since Evans wrote "Dark Places," actually) the same day as their other recent album, "The Century of Self." You've got to hand it to them--they definitely don't lack any ambition.
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (a.k.a. Trail of the Dead) have put out their newest album last week and a review can be found here http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/149323-and-you-will-know-us-by-the-trail-of-dead-the-century-of-self and if I were myself from a couple years ago I would probably be taking the long walk down to Reckless Records to buy it, but I digress. Their secret new album is called "Jon Evans" and is coming out later this year, in a move not unlike Radiohead's "Kid A"/"Amnesiac" release schedule. Naming their album after a person is a curious move, but does not come as a total surprise after one of their earlier songs that staked out their reputation, "Mark David Chapman" was similarly-titled, not to mention "Baudelaire."
But "Jon Evans?" Who is Jon Evans? Well, he is a writer. A real living person. "Dark Places" is his first novel. He has written four more. Here is what a short biography on a book site says about him: Jon Evans is the son of an ex-pat Rhodesian father and Canadian mother and was born and raised in Canada. He has travelled extensively all over the world and works as an IT consultant between trips. He currently lives and works in San Francisco.
The Trail of the Dead have created a concept album based around this man's life. Does it come close to Zen Arcade or Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness or Cursive's Happy Hollow? Sadly, not. However it is a very original idea that should not be discounted. The first track on the album is about a guy named Paul Wood who goes hiking on the Annapurna Circuit in Malaysia. He and his friend from South Africa are hiking around a mountain and they discover a dead body with Swiss Army knives in his eyes. The man's name is Stanley Goebel which immediately makes me think, Nazi.
But Stanley is actually a fellow Canadian of Paul's (whose name is actually Balthazar) and a pretty good guy on all accounts, and Paul continues home to San Francisco in the second "movement" of the album, titled "California." There he works as an IT Consultant, and soon the economy topples and Paul gets laid off. Conrad Keely must be trying to make a statement about the current state of global society. Now all art will be about desperation, poverty, and human resilience. It works in this case, as Paul uses the opportunity of unemployment to solve the mystery of this murder--because here's the kicker--two years earlier, his girlfriend Laura had been murdered--in the same way! With knives in her eyes!
Probably the best song on the album is "Cookie Monsters" which involves Paul's attempt to track down the killer via posts made to a secret online page where the identity of the murderer is revealed. One of the rules of the game he plays is to only log onto the page at public terminals and then to delete all the browsing history before he leaves--but he forgets to delete the cookie history too! Since Paul is an IT Consultant he knows all of these secret tricks to online pseudo-hacking and eventually hatches a plan to lure the murderer back to Africa, where Laura's murder took place, while recruiting several old friends from the overland trucking trip to Africa that the first murder happened during.
Since Keely & Co. have constructed such an elaborate plot for their album, it is very difficult to discern the majority of the action in the story. Only if you read all of the lyrics from beginning to end will the story come through at all, and even then it seems vague. Just hearing Keely try to sing songs about all of this complicated subject-matter makes for an unforgettable listen.
Finally, Paul stages a dramatic conclusion during the song "The Pillar of Hercules" that ends the story on a happy note. Not to be outdone, Trail of the Dead close out the album with the revelation of Jon Evans--the author of the story about their album about Paul Wood--and how he is a successful mass-market paperback writer that won an award for his debut novel and now finds himself blocked, and so is forced to go back into more IT work than writing. For the originality of the material, Trail of the Dead have released their most essential album since Source Tags & Codes, one that will capture the attention of adventure-seekers and serial killer-hunters and superhero-impersonators everywhere. Their conceit is not to be outdone, and the humor they reveal displays a side of the band that will be totally welcome in indie rock circles everywhere--total disregard for audience expectations and totally random musical ideas. It's weird, but it's usually compelling, though not as good as the greatest concept albums of all time, still an album that should rank in the top 20 of 2009. At the very least, it's a gift for Jon Evans, the real writer, who will no doubt be amused that a pretty popular band has decided to write an album about him. They even make another prescient observation--the only band Paul mentions liking is Prodigy, and Prodigy released their first new album in five years (since Evans wrote "Dark Places," actually) the same day as their other recent album, "The Century of Self." You've got to hand it to them--they definitely don't lack any ambition.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Dishwasher - Pete Jordan
A few years ago (in 2006) I hated my job so much that I typed something into Google like, "My job sucks." It brought up a few results, and the one I ended up clicking on was an account of a guy taking a bunch of dishwashing jobs, even though he seemingly hated them. It struck me as hilarious that someone would willingly subject themselves to low wages and back-aching conditions just to enjoy the minimum responsibility possible.
A couple years ago (in 2007), I was at a bookstore in Nantucket where Doctor Faustus caught my eye. I read the first chapter and decided I needed to own it. At the same time, my younger brother had found a book himself--Dishwasher. Remembering the online writings I had found, I put two and two together and decided that it must be the same guy. Apparently he had gotten a book deal. It was published in 2007 after all. I told my brother to get it, and he did. He enjoyed it, and now I had a chance to read it, and I am here to report that it is quite enjoyable, and thought-provoking in ways one might not expect.
If there is any problem with this book, it is that dishwashing really is the primary subject. People might think this makes for a boring book. But it is not--it may not be one of the best books I have read in the last year, but it is certainly way above average. So there is not really any problem with it, but people may initially balk at the idea of reading about dishwashing. It could make for boring subject matter, but Pete Jordan is idiosyncratic and ethical enough to wrap his story in a rather engaging context--that is, his quest to wash dishes in all 50 of the United States. Does he accomplish his mission? Will Sufjan accomplish his?
Having worked in a restaurant (as a waiter, not a "pearl diver," which probably robbed me of a little extra enjoyment out of the book) I can understand that jobs in the food service industry are prime fodder for literature. There is just something about feeding people, and the personalities that get involved in that pursuit, that combines to make for memorable episodes. Pete meets many people along the way as he attempts to fulfill his quest through the years of 1989 - 2001, but most of them are seemingly fans of his zine "Dishwasher," which released 16 issues. To have gained such a popular following with his zine is a huge achievement, but Pete does not consider himself a writer. He considers himself a dishwasher who happens to write.
In an age where all the dream jobs seem to be stacked in competition, and life resorts towards constant disappointment and disillusion, Pete's story is a breath of fresh air. It is easy to get a dishwashing job anywhere--though few of them end up being ideal. In his best gig, he works in an Alaskan fishing town over the summer, works 120 hours a week (padding his hours which doesn't faze his boss), receives health insurance, and makes around $1,000 a week. In the early 90's or whenever this took place, that's not bad at all. Sure it's an insane amount of hours, but his room & board is also covered, and is a 30-second walk to his workplace--the dishpit. He seems to gravitate toward Portland, OR many, many times. He finds many readers of his zine there, and meets his future wife who happens to work at a store where it is sold. He goes to New Orleans and tries to disprove the common perception that only black people are allowed to wash dishes there while white people must be the waiters. He dishes on an oil rig, which is close to breaking his fundamental rule that every dish job must include the ability to leave at a moment's notice. The number of times he gets hired and the number of times he quits is insane. He generally gets every free meal he possibly can out of each of his gigs, and beyond that he keeps a generic macaroni & cheese box cut-out art piece which includes all the different brands that he has tried. He dishes at two different communes in Missouri, also intriguing scenarios. He provides accounts of former dishwashers turned famous personalities--Malcolm X, George Orwell, Jay Leno, Sidney Poitier, Larry Flynt, Richard Gere, Ronald Reagan, Bruce Lee (sic), Little Richard, Alex Chilton, and several others I am forgetting. He is not blind to the objective appeal of the position--he is well-aware as he reveals here:
"I guess he was worried that dishwashing would be considered too low class. After all, in an opinion survey of 1,166 adults who were asked to rate the status of 740 occupations, dishwasher ranked #735. Only envelope stuffer, prostitute, street corner drug dealer, fortune teller and --#740--panhandler rated lower. What appealed to me about the job--that low status--was the very thing that embarrassed my dad." (75)
He also finds out the answer to Charles Bukowski's question, "What woman chooses to live with a dishwasher?" He also makes an appearance on David Letterman--sort of. Overall, this was a breezy book that provided a good share of laughs and always intriguing accounts of real life. I read it in a few days and didn't like putting it down very much. It's also a good example of zine culture, which sadly may die out as things like this very blog tend to overrun that noble and old-fashioned pursuit. Writing a blog post is so much easier than printing out a new zine and shopping it around to independent bookstores and selling it for 50 cents. I suppose it's all a matter of how much stock you put in real printed material.
Well now Dishwasher Pete lives in Amsterdam and is apparently writing a book about bicycling around that crazy city. I'm sure that will be enjoyable as well. As a final word, I can only say that if you hate your job, this is a good book to read--and probably a good book to read on lunch breaks, as I did.
A couple years ago (in 2007), I was at a bookstore in Nantucket where Doctor Faustus caught my eye. I read the first chapter and decided I needed to own it. At the same time, my younger brother had found a book himself--Dishwasher. Remembering the online writings I had found, I put two and two together and decided that it must be the same guy. Apparently he had gotten a book deal. It was published in 2007 after all. I told my brother to get it, and he did. He enjoyed it, and now I had a chance to read it, and I am here to report that it is quite enjoyable, and thought-provoking in ways one might not expect.
If there is any problem with this book, it is that dishwashing really is the primary subject. People might think this makes for a boring book. But it is not--it may not be one of the best books I have read in the last year, but it is certainly way above average. So there is not really any problem with it, but people may initially balk at the idea of reading about dishwashing. It could make for boring subject matter, but Pete Jordan is idiosyncratic and ethical enough to wrap his story in a rather engaging context--that is, his quest to wash dishes in all 50 of the United States. Does he accomplish his mission? Will Sufjan accomplish his?
Having worked in a restaurant (as a waiter, not a "pearl diver," which probably robbed me of a little extra enjoyment out of the book) I can understand that jobs in the food service industry are prime fodder for literature. There is just something about feeding people, and the personalities that get involved in that pursuit, that combines to make for memorable episodes. Pete meets many people along the way as he attempts to fulfill his quest through the years of 1989 - 2001, but most of them are seemingly fans of his zine "Dishwasher," which released 16 issues. To have gained such a popular following with his zine is a huge achievement, but Pete does not consider himself a writer. He considers himself a dishwasher who happens to write.
In an age where all the dream jobs seem to be stacked in competition, and life resorts towards constant disappointment and disillusion, Pete's story is a breath of fresh air. It is easy to get a dishwashing job anywhere--though few of them end up being ideal. In his best gig, he works in an Alaskan fishing town over the summer, works 120 hours a week (padding his hours which doesn't faze his boss), receives health insurance, and makes around $1,000 a week. In the early 90's or whenever this took place, that's not bad at all. Sure it's an insane amount of hours, but his room & board is also covered, and is a 30-second walk to his workplace--the dishpit. He seems to gravitate toward Portland, OR many, many times. He finds many readers of his zine there, and meets his future wife who happens to work at a store where it is sold. He goes to New Orleans and tries to disprove the common perception that only black people are allowed to wash dishes there while white people must be the waiters. He dishes on an oil rig, which is close to breaking his fundamental rule that every dish job must include the ability to leave at a moment's notice. The number of times he gets hired and the number of times he quits is insane. He generally gets every free meal he possibly can out of each of his gigs, and beyond that he keeps a generic macaroni & cheese box cut-out art piece which includes all the different brands that he has tried. He dishes at two different communes in Missouri, also intriguing scenarios. He provides accounts of former dishwashers turned famous personalities--Malcolm X, George Orwell, Jay Leno, Sidney Poitier, Larry Flynt, Richard Gere, Ronald Reagan, Bruce Lee (sic), Little Richard, Alex Chilton, and several others I am forgetting. He is not blind to the objective appeal of the position--he is well-aware as he reveals here:
"I guess he was worried that dishwashing would be considered too low class. After all, in an opinion survey of 1,166 adults who were asked to rate the status of 740 occupations, dishwasher ranked #735. Only envelope stuffer, prostitute, street corner drug dealer, fortune teller and --#740--panhandler rated lower. What appealed to me about the job--that low status--was the very thing that embarrassed my dad." (75)
He also finds out the answer to Charles Bukowski's question, "What woman chooses to live with a dishwasher?" He also makes an appearance on David Letterman--sort of. Overall, this was a breezy book that provided a good share of laughs and always intriguing accounts of real life. I read it in a few days and didn't like putting it down very much. It's also a good example of zine culture, which sadly may die out as things like this very blog tend to overrun that noble and old-fashioned pursuit. Writing a blog post is so much easier than printing out a new zine and shopping it around to independent bookstores and selling it for 50 cents. I suppose it's all a matter of how much stock you put in real printed material.
Well now Dishwasher Pete lives in Amsterdam and is apparently writing a book about bicycling around that crazy city. I'm sure that will be enjoyable as well. As a final word, I can only say that if you hate your job, this is a good book to read--and probably a good book to read on lunch breaks, as I did.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Annotated Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Ed. Alfred Appel, Jr.)
To kickstart what deserves to be one of the truly momentous posts on Flying Houses, I submit to you a (n expurgated) journal entry dated March 9, 2002:
"3.9.02 2:10 PM (on a bus)
Iowa is dreary. I am not really in Iowa yet, still in Illinois actually, but this landscape is exactly what Iowa will be like, and it is dreary.
I am on my way to Iowa to visit (...) I think we are still in Illinois. This writing interrupts my reading of Lolita, so it must be worth it. Ideas pondering lately:
-What is fiction or drama? I mean, what is the purpose in it?
(...)
I was expecting a beautiful sunset (Ed. corrected author's error of "sunrise") amongst the barrenness of Iowa and I hope the stars are out tonight.
1. What is fiction? There seems to be no point to fiction. If you ask a person who loves fiction as much as I do, they will say fiction is about the evocation of beauty. What is beauty? Empathy + hope + present-time happiness + an unfading beautiful memory + ephemeral joy + (we are in Princeton, IL now, I saw the sign. I have heard of this place before but I have never seen it until now. That can be construed as a thing of beauty.) inspiration + justice (circled with an arrow pointing to the squared passage 'why everyone loves a happy ending, because we love the character so and we see they deserve the best.') + brilliant observations + respect + fun and happiness w/out the knowledge that it will end!
Thus, beauty is proof of a divine presence, and to see or experience beauty is to see or experience God or whatever construct we have created. Two things:
-I believe in myself (for I see the world through my eyes and I know I am experiencing whatever life I create and so on.)
-I believe in God because everything that is must have been created (Before Big Bang, unmovable mover (Aquinas said that), etc.) Everything else (in the world) can either be:
a) logical and mundane
b) divinely influenced
....
A) There is logic to everything. Logic of human emotions (which seem mysterious and divine) can be unlocked by looking into the chemicals of your body. The mind, I, is really the only mysterious/divine thing about the human being that cannot be unlocked by science or explanation. We have this much to go on for proof of divinity. If part two to "two things" does not suit you, do not believe it. It is obscenely logical almost so much that we might discount it. But perhaps b/c of my Christian upbringing, my view of the depths of the universe, etc. I suppose that even of God's existence I cannot be sure, but if he does exist, there is a more hopeful view of humanity to be had, since the will to create is always a benign one (at least to oneself) and for the best of your creation. People do not have babies to torture them, usually. Authors do not want their books to fail, usually. It is these "usuallies" that reveal why part 1 of "two things," Descartes philosophy, is the most true thing we can hope to learn. Part two is a mystery that we cannot be fully sure of, I suppose. But we are sure of ourselves.
In the search for God, the knowledge that "I exist" will prove to be the most fruitful of any other explanations we can come up with. The only other explanation that I can find for proof of God, is randomness and randomness may be just that, but it could also be proof of a divine presence or predestination or whatever you call it. 8.18.01, which nearly began this once-black book, and now appears near the end, is an example of that randomness. If the encounter had happened on the most remote point on planet Earth, then I would be inclined to say that predestination is true, though unbelievers would still be able to call it chance/randomness. I will talk about the other things at a different time. My hand hurts. I will mention that handwriting yields better writing than typing because I believe there is an automatic filter in your brain that forces you to say exactly what you want to say in the fewest words. It's called laziness."
Why include this bizarre philosophical tangent in a review of Lolita? This was my first time reading the book. I read it a second time at some other undisclosed point (sophomore year in college--a year later?) and now several years later read it a third time, after purchasing this annotated edition from a Barnes & Noble in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. I cannot resist:
"3.11.02 5:00 PM (on express Metra train to Wilmette)
Made it back from Iowa. Read Lolita the entire time! Had = 40 pages left - got through about 20. Was thinking too much. Nabokov = great writer. Everything falls into place perfectly. Commercial work of art! (Note: FSF is not in small bookstores where the likes of Heller and Nabokov are...FSF is less popular, is he not as good?) I read 20 pages of Lolita for about 5 hours. That is 4 pages per hour or 15 minutes per page. The fact that I did not get bored at that rate shows just how good Nabokov is. Mind you I had other distractions. Nonetheless, quite an experience."
Have you read Lolita? Of course you have. If you haven't, go to the library now, or the bookstore now, and borrow or buy a copy. It is a necessary experience. I will address those who are vaguely aware of its existence and yet shun it based upon its subject matter later. Of course, if you don't care about literature then you need not read it, but I don't feel that you would be reading this if you didn't care about literature.
I include these excerpts from my first ever "serious" journal to illuminate the process that a great work of literature can have upon a less articulate mind--total exhilaration. To witness Nabokov at his peak is to feel the desire to achieve one's own peak as well. Before I enter into proper review mode (as much of a joke as that may be from the concept of this blog) I would like to point out the fact that, while reading Pale Fire (almost exactly one year ago from today, on lunch breaks at work at "J & C" in L.A.--also one of the first posts on Flying Houses), my co-workers would ask me, "What are you reading?" And I would explain the book, which has a complicated plot, and then try to interest them slightly by saying, "It's the follow-up to Lolita (which may or may not be accurate)." And they would say, "What's Lolita?" And I would say, "What?!" I went around the office and asked everyone if they had heard of the novel, and to my amazement none of them had. My partner, a Filipino barely a year into the United States, came closest when he said, "Isn't she a porn star?" One of my other co-workers who had majored in English vaguely recalled it, and said she had never read it, saying, "Why would I ever want to read about a pervert anyway?" More on this later. Needless to say, a generous portion of the present-day American populace is probably unaware that the novel even exists, further proof that we are responsible for the current mess we all find ourselves mired within in this dismal post-2000 A.D. world.
In case you are culturally uneducated, Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert, a man who writes this "confession" or "memoir" from a prison cell as he awaits his trial for the murder of a man that need not be spoiled by reviews. He recounts his early life, his first love, his first marriage, and his subsequent emigration to America in the 1940's, where he had been assigned a teaching position at a certain college named Beardsley, and how he had become a boarder at a home in New England for the summer before he was to begin, and how he had fallen in love at first sight with a "nymphet," the daughter of the woman renting him his room. He recounts how he would try to get closer to the girl, eventually going so far as to marry her mother, and to even consider drowning her in a lake, until Fate takes matters into its own hands and grants him his wish. What follows is a long road trip across the United States with the girl, a temporary stop for employment at Beardsley, another road trip, and finally, loss and disillusion. What follows after that I had even forgotten about this time around--a more appropriately-aged girlfriend, a plan for revenge, and a "moral apotheosis." The story should be well-known but perhaps has faded into a vague cultural myth. Two films have been made from the novel, which may be addressed later, and significant scholarship has followed the novel over the past fifty plus years.
"3.9.02 2:10 PM (on a bus)
Iowa is dreary. I am not really in Iowa yet, still in Illinois actually, but this landscape is exactly what Iowa will be like, and it is dreary.
I am on my way to Iowa to visit (...) I think we are still in Illinois. This writing interrupts my reading of Lolita, so it must be worth it. Ideas pondering lately:
-What is fiction or drama? I mean, what is the purpose in it?
(...)
I was expecting a beautiful sunset (Ed. corrected author's error of "sunrise") amongst the barrenness of Iowa and I hope the stars are out tonight.
1. What is fiction? There seems to be no point to fiction. If you ask a person who loves fiction as much as I do, they will say fiction is about the evocation of beauty. What is beauty? Empathy + hope + present-time happiness + an unfading beautiful memory + ephemeral joy + (we are in Princeton, IL now, I saw the sign. I have heard of this place before but I have never seen it until now. That can be construed as a thing of beauty.) inspiration + justice (circled with an arrow pointing to the squared passage 'why everyone loves a happy ending, because we love the character so and we see they deserve the best.') + brilliant observations + respect + fun and happiness w/out the knowledge that it will end!
Thus, beauty is proof of a divine presence, and to see or experience beauty is to see or experience God or whatever construct we have created. Two things:
-I believe in myself (for I see the world through my eyes and I know I am experiencing whatever life I create and so on.)
-I believe in God because everything that is must have been created (Before Big Bang, unmovable mover (Aquinas said that), etc.) Everything else (in the world) can either be:
a) logical and mundane
b) divinely influenced
....
A) There is logic to everything. Logic of human emotions (which seem mysterious and divine) can be unlocked by looking into the chemicals of your body. The mind, I, is really the only mysterious/divine thing about the human being that cannot be unlocked by science or explanation. We have this much to go on for proof of divinity. If part two to "two things" does not suit you, do not believe it. It is obscenely logical almost so much that we might discount it. But perhaps b/c of my Christian upbringing, my view of the depths of the universe, etc. I suppose that even of God's existence I cannot be sure, but if he does exist, there is a more hopeful view of humanity to be had, since the will to create is always a benign one (at least to oneself) and for the best of your creation. People do not have babies to torture them, usually. Authors do not want their books to fail, usually. It is these "usuallies" that reveal why part 1 of "two things," Descartes philosophy, is the most true thing we can hope to learn. Part two is a mystery that we cannot be fully sure of, I suppose. But we are sure of ourselves.
In the search for God, the knowledge that "I exist" will prove to be the most fruitful of any other explanations we can come up with. The only other explanation that I can find for proof of God, is randomness and randomness may be just that, but it could also be proof of a divine presence or predestination or whatever you call it. 8.18.01, which nearly began this once-black book, and now appears near the end, is an example of that randomness. If the encounter had happened on the most remote point on planet Earth, then I would be inclined to say that predestination is true, though unbelievers would still be able to call it chance/randomness. I will talk about the other things at a different time. My hand hurts. I will mention that handwriting yields better writing than typing because I believe there is an automatic filter in your brain that forces you to say exactly what you want to say in the fewest words. It's called laziness."
Why include this bizarre philosophical tangent in a review of Lolita? This was my first time reading the book. I read it a second time at some other undisclosed point (sophomore year in college--a year later?) and now several years later read it a third time, after purchasing this annotated edition from a Barnes & Noble in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. I cannot resist:
"3.11.02 5:00 PM (on express Metra train to Wilmette)
Made it back from Iowa. Read Lolita the entire time! Had = 40 pages left - got through about 20. Was thinking too much. Nabokov = great writer. Everything falls into place perfectly. Commercial work of art! (Note: FSF is not in small bookstores where the likes of Heller and Nabokov are...FSF is less popular, is he not as good?) I read 20 pages of Lolita for about 5 hours. That is 4 pages per hour or 15 minutes per page. The fact that I did not get bored at that rate shows just how good Nabokov is. Mind you I had other distractions. Nonetheless, quite an experience."
Have you read Lolita? Of course you have. If you haven't, go to the library now, or the bookstore now, and borrow or buy a copy. It is a necessary experience. I will address those who are vaguely aware of its existence and yet shun it based upon its subject matter later. Of course, if you don't care about literature then you need not read it, but I don't feel that you would be reading this if you didn't care about literature.
I include these excerpts from my first ever "serious" journal to illuminate the process that a great work of literature can have upon a less articulate mind--total exhilaration. To witness Nabokov at his peak is to feel the desire to achieve one's own peak as well. Before I enter into proper review mode (as much of a joke as that may be from the concept of this blog) I would like to point out the fact that, while reading Pale Fire (almost exactly one year ago from today, on lunch breaks at work at "J & C" in L.A.--also one of the first posts on Flying Houses), my co-workers would ask me, "What are you reading?" And I would explain the book, which has a complicated plot, and then try to interest them slightly by saying, "It's the follow-up to Lolita (which may or may not be accurate)." And they would say, "What's Lolita?" And I would say, "What?!" I went around the office and asked everyone if they had heard of the novel, and to my amazement none of them had. My partner, a Filipino barely a year into the United States, came closest when he said, "Isn't she a porn star?" One of my other co-workers who had majored in English vaguely recalled it, and said she had never read it, saying, "Why would I ever want to read about a pervert anyway?" More on this later. Needless to say, a generous portion of the present-day American populace is probably unaware that the novel even exists, further proof that we are responsible for the current mess we all find ourselves mired within in this dismal post-2000 A.D. world.
In case you are culturally uneducated, Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert, a man who writes this "confession" or "memoir" from a prison cell as he awaits his trial for the murder of a man that need not be spoiled by reviews. He recounts his early life, his first love, his first marriage, and his subsequent emigration to America in the 1940's, where he had been assigned a teaching position at a certain college named Beardsley, and how he had become a boarder at a home in New England for the summer before he was to begin, and how he had fallen in love at first sight with a "nymphet," the daughter of the woman renting him his room. He recounts how he would try to get closer to the girl, eventually going so far as to marry her mother, and to even consider drowning her in a lake, until Fate takes matters into its own hands and grants him his wish. What follows is a long road trip across the United States with the girl, a temporary stop for employment at Beardsley, another road trip, and finally, loss and disillusion. What follows after that I had even forgotten about this time around--a more appropriately-aged girlfriend, a plan for revenge, and a "moral apotheosis." The story should be well-known but perhaps has faded into a vague cultural myth. Two films have been made from the novel, which may be addressed later, and significant scholarship has followed the novel over the past fifty plus years.
What makes Lolita so great? Well, the story for one, is very delicately and perfectly imagined. The characters are quite unforgettable as well. But ultimately, few will disagree that the primary strength of the text is Nabokov's use of language. There are almost no other novels that can compare with the dazzling display up for interpretation here. He truly "puts on a clinic," to use a rather hackneyed phrase. There are moments of heartrending beauty--lines I cannot forget like the closing lines of the book--"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita." (309) Closing lines that can even put the great last lines of The Magic Mountain to shame. There is also the last meeting with Lolita, one of my personal favorite scenes in the novel--"hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby, dreaming already of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D.--and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else." (277) Words that send shivers down my spine as I read them. "'Lolita, I said, 'this may be neither here nor there but I have to say it. Life is very short. From there to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.'" (278) Words that give a higher-meaning to life. "I covered my face with my hand and broke into the hottest tears I had ever shed. I felt them winding through my fingers and down my chin, and burning me, and my nose got clogged, and I could not stop, and then she touched my wrist. 'I'll die if you touch me,' I said. 'You are sure you are not coming with me? Is there no hope of your coming? Tell me only this.' 'No, she said, 'No, honey, no' She had never called me honey before." (279) I could go on quoting parts from every single section of the novel, but just recognize, you are unlikely to read a novel as emotionally satisfying, despite its ignominious qualities, as this one.
Which makes Appel's notes somewhat disturbing. What he uncovers is a whole other book's worth of material. Appel was a student of Nabokov's at Cornell in the early 1950's, while he was about to write this great novel, and himself is still a professor (an aging one but as far as I am aware, still active) at Northwestern University--which on a more personal note, really attracted me to their PH.D program in English--only I am not enough scholar for academia, as badly as I would like that opportunity. He wrote the excellent introduction to the text from Wilmette, IL on May 21, 1990, when I was no more than several blocks away, a 7-year-old playing in my parent's front yard. What is disturbing about Appel's notes are not the erudition he displays in unlocking the hundreds, maybe a thousand, allusions to other literary texts, true stories, 1940's and 1950's culture, Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll, Carmen, Robert Browning, Freud, Shakespeare (as we find out, Nabokov is obsessed with him--which is fitting as he is arguably the greatest writer since him), and surprisingly and most interestingly of all, James Joyce and Ulysses. There is a reference to the Ulysses trial on obscenity charges. There are references to stream-of-consciousness literary stylings. Appel supplies tantalizing stories about Nabokov's and Joyce's friendship:
"In a 1966 National Education Television network interview, Nabokov said the 'greatest masterpieces of twentieth-century prose are, in this order: Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's Transformation, Bely's St. Petersburg; and the first half of Proust's fairy tale, In Search of Lost Time.' 'On fait son grand Joyce after doing one's petit Proust,' reads a parenthetical statement in Ada, added to the manuscript by gently derisive Ada herself. 'In [her] lovely hand (p. 169). When Vera Nabokov saw some of the opened pages of the annotator's copy of Lolita, the typeface barely visible beneath an overlay of comments in several colors of pencil and ink, she turned to her husband and said, 'Darling, it looks like your copy of Ulysses.' Although there are strong artistic affinities between Joyce and Nabokov, he dismissed the possibility of formal 'influence.': 'My first real contact with Ulysses, after a leering glimpse in the early 'twenties, was in the 'thirties at a time when I was definitely formed as a writer and immune to any literary influence. I studied Ulysses seriously only much later, in the 'fifties, when preparing my Cornell courses. That was the best part of the education I received at Cornell' (Wisconsin Studies interview) (407)
From there, Appel tells the story of their abbreviated friendship, and it is hard not to wonder what Joyce would have thought of Lolita, as I think it fairly ranks alongside his masterwork confidently. What is disturbing about Appel's notes are that, Nabokov is such a genius, that he overshadows anything anyone else believes they could ever capably accomplish--and he does so with such gusto, such confidence, such dare-I-say arrogance--that one begins to have a more complete picture of the artist than one would like--and it can be depressing for a reader that has writing dreams of their own to witness someone with such contempt for so many otherwise well-appreciated literary works (I am thinking of a couple flippant comments about Thomas Mann--don't speak badly of my Thomas!). To top it all off, he is a butterfly expert, and Lolita is not about wanting to sleep with underage girls so much as it is about using that subversive context as a kind of challenge to oneself, to write about appalling items so beautifully that it can rank as a cultural landmark. The fact that Nabokov never received the Nobel Prize for Literature (or even the Pulitzer, I believe) goes to show that, once again, people are idiots:
"Such recondite materials reminds one of Lolita's reputation, among non-readers, as a 'pornographic novel,' and also underscores how Nabokov has had the last laugh in more ways than one. In Speak, Memory, Nabokov writes about the 'delusive opening moves, false scents, [and] specious lines of play' which characterize the chess problem. The subject matter of Lolita is in itself a bravura and 'delusive opening move'--a withdrawn promise of pornography. The first one hundred or so pages of Lolita are often erotic--Lolita on H.H.'s lap, for instance--but starting with the seduction scene, Nabokov withholds explicit sexual descriptions, while H.H., trying to draw the reader into the vortex of the parody, exhorts us to 'Imagine me: I shall not exist if you do not imagine me' (p.129). 'I am not concerned with so-called 'sex' at all,' H.H. says (p.134); Nabokov, on the contrary, is very much concerned with it, but with the reader's expectations rather than H.H.'s machinations.
'Anybody can imagine those elements of animality,' he said, and yet a great many readers wished that he had done it for them--enough to have kept Lolita at the top of the best-seller list for almost a year, although librarians reported that many readers never finished the novel. The critics and remedial readers who complain that the second half of Lolita is less interesting are not aware of the possible significance of their admission." (441)
This finally brings me to my final point concerning "prudish" readers: I think ultimately it is more suspicious to avoid reading it because of its subject matter than it is to praise it to the heavens, as I am doing. Though there may be a few passages (probably about 3) that might be difficult to get through due to disturbing content--there is one indisputable truth about perverse confessions: the reader may be satisfied that the narrator is keeping nothing secret. "Nothing is sacred" goes a cliche, and so none of Humbert's emotions strike one as being false. These kinds of books, as I may have stated before (see Black Postcards review), are ultimately more revealing and "useful" than other more typical romance stories, which always is sure to make a significant contingent of its audience to groan at its maudlin, saccharine, potentially fake, or false overtones. It is rather difficult to be cynical about Lolita.
One final note concerning the annotated edition--if you have never read Lolita before, I would highly recommend reading the text without reading the notes first. The notes are the truly wonderful pleasure of this edition, but if you are obsessed with reading the notes (I am thinking of my experience with Infinite Jest) you run a sharp risk of getting frustrated with moving so slowly through the story. Read it once, note-free, then read it again, note-enhanced. This will always rank in my top 5 favorite books of all time. I hope at this point, after everything has been said, it doesn't reflect poorly on me as a human being. One wonders about the rights we enjoy as Americans if that thought is too deeply fixed in our minds.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks - Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is the great lost book based upon the event that provided the stimulus to launch the careers of the most influential American writers of the latter half of the 20th century, the Beats. Anyone who is a fan of the Beats and is aware of the Paris Review interview features on their website may have noticed that this book is mentioned in both Burroughs's and Kerouac's interview with that esteemed publication. At first it seems like a novelty to me--a collaboration between WSB and JK--it might be interesting but it couldn't be anywhere near as great as the books they were famous for. My sister gave it to me for Christmas, and I was excited to read it, but I was more eager to read The Magic Mountain (since I knew it would take a while). After I began it, I almost didn't want to read it because I was enjoying it so much and wanted to savor every single one of its 200 pages.
It is a fast-paced read and it is quite different from any books by either author. They alternate (pretty much) from chapter to chapter, with two different narrators--Will Dennison (for Burroughs) and Mike Ryko (for Kerouac). They do keep with their habit of barely fictionalizing their work. But this was written in 1944 or 1945, when Kerouac was only 23 and Burroughs was just 30. The two of them would not become famous for twelve or more years. Their styles are not quite exactly what they would become--but they are not that far off. Kerouac's style is not as "poetic" as it would later be, and is more imitative of Burroughs dry, stark, noir-style diction, which is not far off from Queer or Junky. Forced to pick between the two writers in this text, I would lean in the direction of Burroughs. His chapters seem slightly more precise--but that is not a dig at Kerouac. On the whole, this is a truly excellent novel that demands to be read along with all of the other classic Beat Generation books like Naked Lunch, Queer, On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, and Howl.
The story is a thinly-veiled account of the story about Lucien Carr and David Kammerer, who are named Phillip Tourian and Ramsey Allen (called Al throughout the book). Tourian is 17 and Al is 40 or so and smitten with him. This is not really that far off from Queer. There are not as many prevalent drug themes, and the setting is New York City, mostly around Greenwich Village. Tourian is about to join the Merchant Marines with Mike Ryko, but certain things seem to keep getting in their way of shipping out. Meanwhile, Al hangs out with Will Dennison, Mike Ryko, Phil, a few girls named Barbara (Phil's girlfriend), Janie (Mike's girlfriend), and Agnes. Their parties are very much in the same vein as those frequently described by Kerouac in his books. Eventually, something very serious happens--more serious than anything in any of the other books. The proximity that Kerouac and Burroughs had to this event makes for a truly shocking tale, and it is not hard to understand why they wrote about this scenario so often.
The afterword by James Grauerholz is an excellent piece of literary biography. That will explain everything about this book that you need to know, but you should read the book first. Just trust me--it's a significant work of art that hasn't seen the light of day due to very serious issues of privacy and public image. More shocking and to the point--Grauerholz wrote the afterword in June of 2008--only 8 months ago! I had just finished my post on Desolation Angels on this very blog and was about to dip into Buddenbrooks! So, along with Snuff and How Fiction Works and Dead Boys, ATHWBITT is one of my most "immediate" reviews on this blog, purely by chance.
I don't want to find any quotations to give a sense of the style. Most of this book is dialogue and eschews long-winded description or poetic diversions. You just have to trust me, this book is a fantastic document. If anything, it just goes to show how work that is rejected for publication can hold great, truly significant, value. I feel like this book was rejected more for its at times hardcore language (though it has nothing on Naked Lunch, for sure!) than its lack of literary merit. Just another reason to hate the publishing industry for going after stuff that "works" and "sells" when there are much more important books being written that don't "deserve" to see the light of day because the public at large (generally held to be, ahem, a bit closed-minded about certain matters) will not provide a profitable enough audience. Excuse me while I go puke with that thought in my mind.
It is a fast-paced read and it is quite different from any books by either author. They alternate (pretty much) from chapter to chapter, with two different narrators--Will Dennison (for Burroughs) and Mike Ryko (for Kerouac). They do keep with their habit of barely fictionalizing their work. But this was written in 1944 or 1945, when Kerouac was only 23 and Burroughs was just 30. The two of them would not become famous for twelve or more years. Their styles are not quite exactly what they would become--but they are not that far off. Kerouac's style is not as "poetic" as it would later be, and is more imitative of Burroughs dry, stark, noir-style diction, which is not far off from Queer or Junky. Forced to pick between the two writers in this text, I would lean in the direction of Burroughs. His chapters seem slightly more precise--but that is not a dig at Kerouac. On the whole, this is a truly excellent novel that demands to be read along with all of the other classic Beat Generation books like Naked Lunch, Queer, On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, and Howl.
The story is a thinly-veiled account of the story about Lucien Carr and David Kammerer, who are named Phillip Tourian and Ramsey Allen (called Al throughout the book). Tourian is 17 and Al is 40 or so and smitten with him. This is not really that far off from Queer. There are not as many prevalent drug themes, and the setting is New York City, mostly around Greenwich Village. Tourian is about to join the Merchant Marines with Mike Ryko, but certain things seem to keep getting in their way of shipping out. Meanwhile, Al hangs out with Will Dennison, Mike Ryko, Phil, a few girls named Barbara (Phil's girlfriend), Janie (Mike's girlfriend), and Agnes. Their parties are very much in the same vein as those frequently described by Kerouac in his books. Eventually, something very serious happens--more serious than anything in any of the other books. The proximity that Kerouac and Burroughs had to this event makes for a truly shocking tale, and it is not hard to understand why they wrote about this scenario so often.
The afterword by James Grauerholz is an excellent piece of literary biography. That will explain everything about this book that you need to know, but you should read the book first. Just trust me--it's a significant work of art that hasn't seen the light of day due to very serious issues of privacy and public image. More shocking and to the point--Grauerholz wrote the afterword in June of 2008--only 8 months ago! I had just finished my post on Desolation Angels on this very blog and was about to dip into Buddenbrooks! So, along with Snuff and How Fiction Works and Dead Boys, ATHWBITT is one of my most "immediate" reviews on this blog, purely by chance.
I don't want to find any quotations to give a sense of the style. Most of this book is dialogue and eschews long-winded description or poetic diversions. You just have to trust me, this book is a fantastic document. If anything, it just goes to show how work that is rejected for publication can hold great, truly significant, value. I feel like this book was rejected more for its at times hardcore language (though it has nothing on Naked Lunch, for sure!) than its lack of literary merit. Just another reason to hate the publishing industry for going after stuff that "works" and "sells" when there are much more important books being written that don't "deserve" to see the light of day because the public at large (generally held to be, ahem, a bit closed-minded about certain matters) will not provide a profitable enough audience. Excuse me while I go puke with that thought in my mind.
Bands I Would See if I were going to Coachella this year
In my post about the Merge Records stuff, I briefly mentioned that I would not be able to attend Coachella this year, much to my dismay as the lineup was rumored to be quite good, and as it landed rather serendipitously over my birthday weekend. Disneyworld it is, for better or worse, and all along my last day there, I will be thinking about how I could be having much more age-appropriate fun for a significantly better value than expensive theme parks, expensive hotels, expensive dining--but then again I am not paying for this trip, so I shouldn't complain. If I were still in California, I would be in the desert this weekend without question, and I nearly want to kill myself for the impossibility of making the trip from the midwest. The only thing that keeps me from tearing my hair out is the promise of another Pitchfork festival, which will hopefully continue to provide excellent lineups--I don't see why it would not. Still, you cannot beat the Woodstock-y atmosphere of everyone needing to camp in the same location, somewhere in the middle between L.A. and Las Vegas.
These are all the sets I would try to see if I were going:
Paul McCartney (just because)
Morrissey (undoubtedly)
Franz Ferdinand (because I've never seen them live and like them okay)
Leonard Cohen (because he is legendary)
Girl Talk (if there was nothing else on and if I wanted to try to pick someone up)
Silversun Pickups (just because I lived right by the plaza they named their band after)
Crystal Castles (because I am listening to them right now and they are cool)
M. Ward (if there was nothing better on)
The Hold Steady (because they're an awesome band, particularly live)
A Place to Bury Strangers (because I've wanted to see them a little bit)
---nobody else the first day---
TV on the Radio (would be very nice to see in that atmosphere)
Fleet Foxes (just to see what all the fuss is about)
Amy Winehouse (ditto--more interesting than the Killers at least IMO)
Henry Rollins (yes! now get offered gobs of money for a Black Flag reunion next year!)
Hercules and the Love Affair (are supposed to be good)
Superchunk (because they might be my favorite band-one of the highlights of the lineup)
Liars (awesome!)
Bob Mould Band (because it's the next best thing to Husker Du)
---nobody else on the second day---
My Bloody Valentine (one of the best live experiences of my life--too bad they're almost last)
The Cure (I've always wanted to see them, they rule)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (debuting new material--are always fun)
Paul Weller (because I really like the Jam)
X (another huge highlight--been dying to see them for years)
Fucked Up (are really sweet--I predict they will play P4K though)
No Age (not the most exciting band live, but still wonderful)
Throbbing Gristle (just because)
OK, so 26 bands I really want to see for the hefty price tag of $269+fees. If I weren't going to Disneyworld, I would drop the cash (that I really don't have) on this. To me, it would be worth it. Coachella in 2004 was a wonderful experience--even if I did it totally the wrong way--and because of that I would love to go back and do it the right way now that I know what it's like. For anybody who hasn't been--you should go! And if you need any advice on how to prepare, drop me a line and I will give you a few tips.
These are all the sets I would try to see if I were going:
Paul McCartney (just because)
Morrissey (undoubtedly)
Franz Ferdinand (because I've never seen them live and like them okay)
Leonard Cohen (because he is legendary)
Girl Talk (if there was nothing else on and if I wanted to try to pick someone up)
Silversun Pickups (just because I lived right by the plaza they named their band after)
Crystal Castles (because I am listening to them right now and they are cool)
M. Ward (if there was nothing better on)
The Hold Steady (because they're an awesome band, particularly live)
A Place to Bury Strangers (because I've wanted to see them a little bit)
---nobody else the first day---
TV on the Radio (would be very nice to see in that atmosphere)
Fleet Foxes (just to see what all the fuss is about)
Amy Winehouse (ditto--more interesting than the Killers at least IMO)
Henry Rollins (yes! now get offered gobs of money for a Black Flag reunion next year!)
Hercules and the Love Affair (are supposed to be good)
Superchunk (because they might be my favorite band-one of the highlights of the lineup)
Liars (awesome!)
Bob Mould Band (because it's the next best thing to Husker Du)
---nobody else on the second day---
My Bloody Valentine (one of the best live experiences of my life--too bad they're almost last)
The Cure (I've always wanted to see them, they rule)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (debuting new material--are always fun)
Paul Weller (because I really like the Jam)
X (another huge highlight--been dying to see them for years)
Fucked Up (are really sweet--I predict they will play P4K though)
No Age (not the most exciting band live, but still wonderful)
Throbbing Gristle (just because)
OK, so 26 bands I really want to see for the hefty price tag of $269+fees. If I weren't going to Disneyworld, I would drop the cash (that I really don't have) on this. To me, it would be worth it. Coachella in 2004 was a wonderful experience--even if I did it totally the wrong way--and because of that I would love to go back and do it the right way now that I know what it's like. For anybody who hasn't been--you should go! And if you need any advice on how to prepare, drop me a line and I will give you a few tips.
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
How to begin. I had stated in my review of Buddenbrooks that I wanted to go out and buy The Magic Mountain from a local bookstore in L.A. last June, or July, whenever it was, immediately after finishing that masterpiece. An interesting review might compare these two novels--these two works, along with "Death in Venice," that are most responsible for Mann's Nobel Prize in Literature. It is clearly stated in several instances to be awarded specifically for the feat of Buddenbrooks, but students of great literature will recognize that these three works comprise the bulk of this great author's contribution to the canon of Great Books. That is not to say that I will not be reading The Confessions of Felix Krull sometime soon, nor many other shorter works, but I do seriously question whether I will ever have the courage to attempt Joseph and His Brothers.
Which is better--Buddenbrooks or Magic Mountain? Oh, that is hard. As for a "typical" novel, Buddenbrooks is more easily enjoyed. It certainly is no typical novel, but it presents the typical elements of literature in a more digestible form. It is slightly more "safe" than this novel, but there are more heartbreaking elements that might cause one to weep amidst reading. There are many death scenes as well, and most of them quite memorable. Not as many death scenes in Magic Mountain--three major ones. Enough with the comparison.
Published in 1924, The Magic Mountain concerns one Hans Castorp, 24, but soon to be confused about his actual age, even shortly after his arrival at the eponymous locale, a.k.a. Sanatorium Berghof, presided over by the melancholic, amateur painter of oils, Director Behrens, and his assistant given to "psychic dissection," Dr. Krokowski. Hans travels to the town of Davos-Dorf by train in order to visit his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, a soldier recently afflicted with tuberculosis, dutifully following the rules of the house in order to recover as quickly as possible. But that is more difficult than it seems. Indeed, the doctors in charge of the sanatorium are quite possessive of their patients, and often extend their length-of-stay for three months or six months at a time, into what soon seems an endless illness. Hans Castorp feels left out the first few times the doctors and nurses visit all of the other patients in their rooms and pass his over, and soon he is examined by Director Behrens and diagnosed as anemic, and as having a "moist spot" on his lung. Originally intending to visit Joachim for three weeks, he is soon told that he should stay confined to his bed for the next three weeks, and should stay for at least another three months.
But he soon realizes that life is not so bad at the Berghof. There are five exquisitely prepared meals a day, and a splendid lounge chair on the balcony off his room, where he observes the house rules of the "rest cure," which is instrumental in clearing the body of toxins through the immaculate purity of the alpine air. He soon meets an Italian literary scholar, Lodovico Settembrini, who never changes his clothes and always talks about how he is a humanist, and who initially annoys Castorp, seeing him as an "organ grinder" in a dream, but who eventually grows on him and becomes his mentor and one of his best friends. A variety of other fellow patients are introduced. There is Frau Stohr, a table mate of Castorp, who is constantly mixing up words and is regarded as one of the lesser intellects (to put it kindly) at the sanatorium--also probably the source of the greatest humor in the novel. There is Herr Albin, who receives his own "mini-chapter" but who never figures prominently in the novel, despite longevity. Castorp first becomes aware of him when he is causing a ruckus, playing show-and-tell with his revolver on the common lounging area, which Castorp can hear from his balcony during rest cure:
"'But why? Why do you have it, then?' several trembling voices asked with foreboding. 'How horrible!' one voice suddenly cried--and Herr Albin nodded.
'I see you're beginning to understand,' he said. 'And in fact, that is why I keep it handy,' he went on lightly, after first inhaling and then exhaling a great quantity of smoke, despite his recent bout with pneumonia. 'I keep it at the ready for the day when all this malarkey here gets too boring and I shall have the honor of paying my final regards. It really is very simple. I've studied the matter at some length, and I have a very clear idea about how to pull it off.' (Another shriek in response to the words 'pull it off.') 'The region of the heart is out of the question--it's rather awkward to aim there. And besides, I prefer snuffing out the conscious mind on the spot, and can do so by applying one of these pretty little foreign objects to this interesting organ...' And Herr Albin pointed with his index finger to his close-cropped blond head. 'One aims here'--Herr Albin pulled the nickel-plated revolver from his pocket again and tapped the barrel against one temple--'here, just above the artery. Slick as a whistle, even without a mirror.' (93)
There are several others as well, but none more mysterious and disquieting than Frau Clavdia Chauchat, a Russian that slams the door every time she arrives for a meal. Hans is initially put off by her unrefined manners, but eventually cannot stop looking at her, until they carry on a very subtle relationship strictly governed by eye contact at meals, and perfunctory greetings in the hallway. The manner in which his obsession grows, and finally reaches its manifestation in language, after a coincidental appointment in the house X-ray room and the lightened spirit of a Mardi Gras party, is truly an exercise in anticipatory tension--a very tactful method that all those amateur writers unacquainted with Mann would be well-served to observe--economy being the unsettling virtue of contemporary literature that it is, giving sway to unrealistic situations of slapdash romance. Perhaps more intriguing is the germ of Castorp's longing for Clavdia, unveiled in the "Hippe" mini-chapter, whence it has already been mentioned that Hans dreamt of a day in the schoolyard and a person he saw there that reminded him of Clavdia on some indefinite level, and where Hans derives the connection in his mind of his former schoolmate, Pribislav Hippe, whom he knew when he was 13 and once quite meaningfully asked to borrow a pencil from. His attraction to Pribislav is rendered almost unthinkably, but is not far off from the opening segment of Mann's other great short story, "Tonio Kroger":
"The thing was that Hans Castorp had his eye on young Pribislav for a long time, had chosen him from among all the boys in the bustling schoolyard, those he knew and those he didn't know, had been interested in him, had followed him with his glances--should one say, admired him?--in any case, observed him with ever-growing sympathy. Even when walking to and from school, he looked forward to to spotting him among the other boys, to watching him talk and laugh, to picking out his voice from a good distance--that husky, opaque, slightly gruff voice. Granted, there was no sufficient reason for this sympathy--particularly if one disregarded such things as his heathen name, his status as a model pupil (which, indeed, could have played no role whatsoever), or those Kirghiz eyes, which from time to time, in certain sidelong glances, when gazing at nothing in particular, could darken, almost melt, to a veiled dusky look--but whatever the reason, Hans Castorp did not worry about the intellectual or emotional basis of his reaction, or even what name he would give it if he had to. It could not be called friendship, because he didn't really "know" Hippe. But from the start, there was not the least reason to give it a name; the furthest thing from his mind was ever to talk about the matter--that would have been most unlike him and he felt no need to do so. Besides, to give it a name would have meant, if not to judge it, at least to define it, to classify it as one of life's familiar, commonplace items, whereas Hans Castorp was thoroughly convinced at some subconscious level that anything so personal should always be shielded from definition and classification." (142)
When later Clavdia is asked for a pencil in order to attempt the drawing of a pig with his eyes closed, one is almost caught off guard by the fact that the same gesture is made to these two separate entities which become so tied in Castorp's mind that he even later tells Clavdia that he knew her before. Regardless, they do not have their hotly-anticipated tete-a-tete until page 400, and with Clavdia leaving the next day, only to return a couple years later with a traveling companion, Mynheer Peeperkorn. One would expect this personality to take up the role of villain, but Mann recognizes this trope, even spells out that expectation in the text, and instead reveals him to be a "brother" to Castorp.
So this novel is mainly about two things: Castorp's pursuit of Chauchat and his education under the tutelage of Settembrini, and later, Herr Naptha. Much is made of these two characters in all scholarly studies of this work, and indeed if one were to write a paper on this book, several of their exchanges would be prime fodder for interpretation. At its most surreal level, this novel is an allegory of the European situation in the seven years leading up to World War I. To take it even a step further, one could almost sense the growing totalitarian urge of Germany, even though it was published nine years before Hitler would ascend to chancellor of the country. In one of his philosophical duets with Settembrini, Naptha hits upon a few unsettling phrases:
"Whereupon 'youth in search of light' was forced to watch as Naphta took each argument, one after the other, and wrung its neck. He ridiculed the philanthropist's reluctance to shed blood, his reverence for life, claimed that such a reverence for life belonged to only the most banal rubbers-and-umbrellas bourgeois periods, but that the moment history took a more passionate turn, the moment a single idea, something that transcended mere 'security,' was at work, something suprapersonal, something greater than the individual--and since that alone was a state worthy of mankind, it was, on a higher plane, the normal state of affairs--at that moment, then, individual life would always be sacrificed without further ado to that higher idea, and not only that, but individuals would also unhesitatingly and gladly risk their own lives for it. His good adversary's philanthropy, he said, was aimed at robbing life of all its difficult and deadly serious aspects; its goal was the castration of life, and the same went for the determinism of its so-called science. The truth was, however, that determinism could never abolish the concept of guilt--indeed it could only add to its terrible gravity." (546)
In the introduction to the text A.S. Byatt states, "Naphta, Jew, Jesuit, connoisseur of the irrational, the anarchic, the nihilistic, is closer to Mann's own vision, which itself is closer to Nietzsche's strong pessimism than to the hopefulness of the Age of Reason," (xii) and so I expected Naphta to lend greater excitement to the pedagogic sections with Settembrini, but truth be told, these were not the most compelling portions of the work to me. Whether by the prospect of my own intellectual limitations, or those of our age, the majority of the words spoken by these two characters flew clear over my head. Only Settembrini's intended contribution to an encyclopedia where he has been commissioned to summarize all of the examples of human suffering portrayed in the history of literature captured my attention, but that is more of a tangent than a central storyline. The final scene with Naphta and Settembrini is certainly compelling, however, one of the best scenes in the novel, but I do not want to spoil it. Instead, there was one particular notion spoken by Naphta that did provide me with great catharsis, following a mention of Rousseau's notion of man in his primal state:
Which is better--Buddenbrooks or Magic Mountain? Oh, that is hard. As for a "typical" novel, Buddenbrooks is more easily enjoyed. It certainly is no typical novel, but it presents the typical elements of literature in a more digestible form. It is slightly more "safe" than this novel, but there are more heartbreaking elements that might cause one to weep amidst reading. There are many death scenes as well, and most of them quite memorable. Not as many death scenes in Magic Mountain--three major ones. Enough with the comparison.
Published in 1924, The Magic Mountain concerns one Hans Castorp, 24, but soon to be confused about his actual age, even shortly after his arrival at the eponymous locale, a.k.a. Sanatorium Berghof, presided over by the melancholic, amateur painter of oils, Director Behrens, and his assistant given to "psychic dissection," Dr. Krokowski. Hans travels to the town of Davos-Dorf by train in order to visit his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, a soldier recently afflicted with tuberculosis, dutifully following the rules of the house in order to recover as quickly as possible. But that is more difficult than it seems. Indeed, the doctors in charge of the sanatorium are quite possessive of their patients, and often extend their length-of-stay for three months or six months at a time, into what soon seems an endless illness. Hans Castorp feels left out the first few times the doctors and nurses visit all of the other patients in their rooms and pass his over, and soon he is examined by Director Behrens and diagnosed as anemic, and as having a "moist spot" on his lung. Originally intending to visit Joachim for three weeks, he is soon told that he should stay confined to his bed for the next three weeks, and should stay for at least another three months.
But he soon realizes that life is not so bad at the Berghof. There are five exquisitely prepared meals a day, and a splendid lounge chair on the balcony off his room, where he observes the house rules of the "rest cure," which is instrumental in clearing the body of toxins through the immaculate purity of the alpine air. He soon meets an Italian literary scholar, Lodovico Settembrini, who never changes his clothes and always talks about how he is a humanist, and who initially annoys Castorp, seeing him as an "organ grinder" in a dream, but who eventually grows on him and becomes his mentor and one of his best friends. A variety of other fellow patients are introduced. There is Frau Stohr, a table mate of Castorp, who is constantly mixing up words and is regarded as one of the lesser intellects (to put it kindly) at the sanatorium--also probably the source of the greatest humor in the novel. There is Herr Albin, who receives his own "mini-chapter" but who never figures prominently in the novel, despite longevity. Castorp first becomes aware of him when he is causing a ruckus, playing show-and-tell with his revolver on the common lounging area, which Castorp can hear from his balcony during rest cure:
"'But why? Why do you have it, then?' several trembling voices asked with foreboding. 'How horrible!' one voice suddenly cried--and Herr Albin nodded.
'I see you're beginning to understand,' he said. 'And in fact, that is why I keep it handy,' he went on lightly, after first inhaling and then exhaling a great quantity of smoke, despite his recent bout with pneumonia. 'I keep it at the ready for the day when all this malarkey here gets too boring and I shall have the honor of paying my final regards. It really is very simple. I've studied the matter at some length, and I have a very clear idea about how to pull it off.' (Another shriek in response to the words 'pull it off.') 'The region of the heart is out of the question--it's rather awkward to aim there. And besides, I prefer snuffing out the conscious mind on the spot, and can do so by applying one of these pretty little foreign objects to this interesting organ...' And Herr Albin pointed with his index finger to his close-cropped blond head. 'One aims here'--Herr Albin pulled the nickel-plated revolver from his pocket again and tapped the barrel against one temple--'here, just above the artery. Slick as a whistle, even without a mirror.' (93)
There are several others as well, but none more mysterious and disquieting than Frau Clavdia Chauchat, a Russian that slams the door every time she arrives for a meal. Hans is initially put off by her unrefined manners, but eventually cannot stop looking at her, until they carry on a very subtle relationship strictly governed by eye contact at meals, and perfunctory greetings in the hallway. The manner in which his obsession grows, and finally reaches its manifestation in language, after a coincidental appointment in the house X-ray room and the lightened spirit of a Mardi Gras party, is truly an exercise in anticipatory tension--a very tactful method that all those amateur writers unacquainted with Mann would be well-served to observe--economy being the unsettling virtue of contemporary literature that it is, giving sway to unrealistic situations of slapdash romance. Perhaps more intriguing is the germ of Castorp's longing for Clavdia, unveiled in the "Hippe" mini-chapter, whence it has already been mentioned that Hans dreamt of a day in the schoolyard and a person he saw there that reminded him of Clavdia on some indefinite level, and where Hans derives the connection in his mind of his former schoolmate, Pribislav Hippe, whom he knew when he was 13 and once quite meaningfully asked to borrow a pencil from. His attraction to Pribislav is rendered almost unthinkably, but is not far off from the opening segment of Mann's other great short story, "Tonio Kroger":
"The thing was that Hans Castorp had his eye on young Pribislav for a long time, had chosen him from among all the boys in the bustling schoolyard, those he knew and those he didn't know, had been interested in him, had followed him with his glances--should one say, admired him?--in any case, observed him with ever-growing sympathy. Even when walking to and from school, he looked forward to to spotting him among the other boys, to watching him talk and laugh, to picking out his voice from a good distance--that husky, opaque, slightly gruff voice. Granted, there was no sufficient reason for this sympathy--particularly if one disregarded such things as his heathen name, his status as a model pupil (which, indeed, could have played no role whatsoever), or those Kirghiz eyes, which from time to time, in certain sidelong glances, when gazing at nothing in particular, could darken, almost melt, to a veiled dusky look--but whatever the reason, Hans Castorp did not worry about the intellectual or emotional basis of his reaction, or even what name he would give it if he had to. It could not be called friendship, because he didn't really "know" Hippe. But from the start, there was not the least reason to give it a name; the furthest thing from his mind was ever to talk about the matter--that would have been most unlike him and he felt no need to do so. Besides, to give it a name would have meant, if not to judge it, at least to define it, to classify it as one of life's familiar, commonplace items, whereas Hans Castorp was thoroughly convinced at some subconscious level that anything so personal should always be shielded from definition and classification." (142)
When later Clavdia is asked for a pencil in order to attempt the drawing of a pig with his eyes closed, one is almost caught off guard by the fact that the same gesture is made to these two separate entities which become so tied in Castorp's mind that he even later tells Clavdia that he knew her before. Regardless, they do not have their hotly-anticipated tete-a-tete until page 400, and with Clavdia leaving the next day, only to return a couple years later with a traveling companion, Mynheer Peeperkorn. One would expect this personality to take up the role of villain, but Mann recognizes this trope, even spells out that expectation in the text, and instead reveals him to be a "brother" to Castorp.
So this novel is mainly about two things: Castorp's pursuit of Chauchat and his education under the tutelage of Settembrini, and later, Herr Naptha. Much is made of these two characters in all scholarly studies of this work, and indeed if one were to write a paper on this book, several of their exchanges would be prime fodder for interpretation. At its most surreal level, this novel is an allegory of the European situation in the seven years leading up to World War I. To take it even a step further, one could almost sense the growing totalitarian urge of Germany, even though it was published nine years before Hitler would ascend to chancellor of the country. In one of his philosophical duets with Settembrini, Naptha hits upon a few unsettling phrases:
"Whereupon 'youth in search of light' was forced to watch as Naphta took each argument, one after the other, and wrung its neck. He ridiculed the philanthropist's reluctance to shed blood, his reverence for life, claimed that such a reverence for life belonged to only the most banal rubbers-and-umbrellas bourgeois periods, but that the moment history took a more passionate turn, the moment a single idea, something that transcended mere 'security,' was at work, something suprapersonal, something greater than the individual--and since that alone was a state worthy of mankind, it was, on a higher plane, the normal state of affairs--at that moment, then, individual life would always be sacrificed without further ado to that higher idea, and not only that, but individuals would also unhesitatingly and gladly risk their own lives for it. His good adversary's philanthropy, he said, was aimed at robbing life of all its difficult and deadly serious aspects; its goal was the castration of life, and the same went for the determinism of its so-called science. The truth was, however, that determinism could never abolish the concept of guilt--indeed it could only add to its terrible gravity." (546)
In the introduction to the text A.S. Byatt states, "Naphta, Jew, Jesuit, connoisseur of the irrational, the anarchic, the nihilistic, is closer to Mann's own vision, which itself is closer to Nietzsche's strong pessimism than to the hopefulness of the Age of Reason," (xii) and so I expected Naphta to lend greater excitement to the pedagogic sections with Settembrini, but truth be told, these were not the most compelling portions of the work to me. Whether by the prospect of my own intellectual limitations, or those of our age, the majority of the words spoken by these two characters flew clear over my head. Only Settembrini's intended contribution to an encyclopedia where he has been commissioned to summarize all of the examples of human suffering portrayed in the history of literature captured my attention, but that is more of a tangent than a central storyline. The final scene with Naphta and Settembrini is certainly compelling, however, one of the best scenes in the novel, but I do not want to spoil it. Instead, there was one particular notion spoken by Naphta that did provide me with great catharsis, following a mention of Rousseau's notion of man in his primal state:
"'--we, for our part,' Naptha continued, 'are perhaps no less revolutionary than you, but we have always deduced, first and foremost, the supremacy of the Church over the secular state. For even if the state's ungodliness were not branded on its brow, one need only note a simple historical fact--that its origins can be traced to the will of the people and not, like those of the Church, to divine decree--and thereby prove that the state is, if not exactly a manifestation of evil, then at least a manifestation of dire necessity and sinful shortcomings.'
'The state, my dear sir--'
'I know what you think of the nation-state. 'Above all else, a love of the fatherland and a boundless hunger for glory.' That is Virgil. You amend him with a little liberal individualism, and call it democracy; but your fundamental relationship to the state remains completely untouched. You are apparently not disturbed by the fact that money is its soul. Or would you contest that? Antiquity was capitalist because it idolized the state. The Christian Middle Ages clearly saw that the secular state was inherently capitalist. 'Money will become our emperor'--that is a prophecy from the eleventh century. Do you deny that it has literally come true, making life itself a veritable hell?'" (475-476)
Indeed I am hard-pressed to consider any other work of literature that may hold more manifold philosophical inquiries than this one. Perhaps The Republic may be a more intimidating work on the whole. I am sure that works of pure philosophy by Hegel or Nietzsche or Heidegger or Schopenhauer are far more difficult to read than this text. As far as novels go, with a regular plot and storyline, comic and tragic elements, "beautiful characters" and "beautiful words" as Settembrini and brewer-patient Herr Magnus mock, conflict and resolution, rising action, falling action, etc., this work may contain more pure genius than any other single item in that category. How does one classify it--the dust jacket says something about Hans Castorp spending seven years at a sanatorium where he "succumbs to the lure of eros and the intoxication of ideas." What is the conflict? How to get out? He does not want to get out--until a rather abrupt thunderbolt strikes, so to speak. What is the rising action? Arriving, the first several pages of the book? Or rather, the painstakingly slow seduction of Frau Chauchat? I would love to read a query letter that Thomas Mann might compose for this book.
There are still greater pleasures yet to be discussed. The mini-chapter "Snow" (the book is separated in 7 larger chapters and perhaps two dozen mini-chapters) is a remarkable account of nearly freezing to death after an exploration of the alpine region on skis, complete with one of the more superlative dream sequences ever captured in literature. The trilogy of Mynheer Peeperkorn mini-chapters, not counting the "Vingt et Un" mini-chapter which recounts a raucous evening party, fit the tone near the end of the novel almost perfectly. Peeperkorn can barely speak. He speaks, he is a "personality" of great import, but he never seems to say anything, his words have no meaning. And yet what opportunities there are to talk about drugs:
"Hans Castorp smoked. Frau Chauchat likewise indulged in filter-tipped cigarettes that she took from a Russian enameled box decorated with a speeding troika, which she had laid within easy reach on the table; nor did Peeperkorn scold his neighbor for yielding to the pleasure, though he did not smoke himself, never had. If they understood him correctly, the consumption of tobacco was, in his opinion, one of those over-refined pleasures, the cultivation of which meant robbing the simpler gifts of life of their majesty--gifts and claims to which our emotional vigor scarcely did justice as it was. 'Young man,' he said to Hans Castorp, fixing him with his pale gaze and subduing him with a cultured gesture, 'young man--whatever is simple! Whatever is holy! Fine, you understand me. A bottle of wine, a steaming dish of eggs, pure grain spirits--let us first measure up to and enjoy such things before we--absolutely, my dear sir. Settled. I have known people, men and women, cocaine-sniffers, hashish-smokers, morphine addicts. Fine, my dear friend. Agreed. Let them. We should not reprove or judge. And yet for what should come first, for what is simple, grand, direct from the hand of God, for such things these people were all--settled, my friend. Condemned. Cast out. They failed to give such things their due. Whatever your name may be, young man--fine, I knew it, but have since forgotten--depravity lies not in cocaine, not in opium, not in vice as such. The unforgivable sin lies in--" (670)
Aside from Peeperkorn's jumbled thoughts on intoxicating pleasures, early on there is a mention of Hans Castorp's own feelings on smoking, which should be used in some magazine advertisement nowadays:
"'I don't understand,' Hans Castorp said. 'I don't understand how someone can not be a smoker--why it's like robbing oneself of the best part of life, so to speak, or at least of an absolutely first-rate pleasure. When I wake up I look forward to being able to smoke all day, and when I eat, I look forward to it again, in fact I can honestly say that I actually only eat so that I can smoke, although that's an exaggeration, of course. But a day without tobacco--that would be absolutely insipid, a dull, totally wasted day. And if some morning I had to tell myself: there's nothing left to smoke today, why I don't think I'd find courage to get up, I swear I'd stay in bed. You see, if a man has a cigar that burns well--and obviously it can't have any breaks or draw badly, that's really terribly annoying--what I'm saying is, that if a man has a good cigar, then he's home safe, nothing, literally nothing, can happen to him. It's the same as when you're lying on the beach, because there you lie on the beach, you know? and you don't need anything else--no work, no other amusements. Thank God, people smoke all over the world, there's nowhere you could possibly end up, as far as I know, where tobacco's unknown. Even polar explorers lay in a good supply of smokes to get them over their hardships--that's always struck a sympathetic chord in me whenever I've read about it. Because things can go very badly--let's assume, for instance, that things would go miserably for me--but as long as I had my cigar, I'd carry on, that much I know, it could bring me through anything.'
'All the same, it's a sign of a rather weak will,' Joachim said, 'to be so dependent on tobacco...'"(55-56)
Though this is quite a serious book taken as a whole, when each scene is scrutinized down to its most basic elements, it is quite comic and absurd. Take for instance, one of the final mini-chapters, "Highly Questionable," which features Ellen Brand, a new patient with supernatural powers, who is called upon to contact ghosts in two different scenes. By the time that you have made it this far into the book, you may be compelled to believe anything that is written in it, and a scene which demands such unreasonable suspension of disbelief is temporarily rendered profound. That is ultimately the effect of reading The Magic Mountain--the reader becomes "one of us up here" and distances themselves from the real world, forgetting their former prejudices and adopting a tableau of renewed convictions. Sprinkled throughout, there are little utterances which cannot fail to capture one's sympathies. One particularly broken character, Herr Wehsal, who shares Castorp's obsession with Chauchat in an even more pathetic condition, reminded this reader too much of himself and inspired a moment of self-reflection:
"'Did you see,' he asked, 'how she was making fun of you, because you had to ride alone with me? Yes, yes, that's her way of adding insult to injury. Does it annoy and disgust you all that much to have to sit beside me?'
'Pull yourself together, Wehsal, and refrain from such ugly comments,' Hans Castorp rebuked him. 'Women smile on all sorts of occasions, just to smile. It is pointless to worry about it every time. Why are you forever cringing and writhing? Like all of us, you have your good points and your bad. For example, you play the music of Summer Night's Dream very prettily, and not everyone can do that. You must play it again soon.'
'Yes, there you sit offering me your condescending advice,' the wretched man replied, 'and have no idea how much insult is in your consolation, that you only humiliate me all the more with it. It's easy for you to offer comfort from your high horse, because even if you look rather silly at the moment, at least you had your chance once, and were in seventh heaven, good God, and felt her arms around your neck--good God, just to think of it burns at my gut and tears at my heart--and, then, knowing full well all that was granted you, you look down on me in my wretched torment...'" (732-733)
As we come to the close of this lengthy review, I urge you all to find some time in your busy lifetime to seek out this text and experience it for yourself. It took me nearly a month to read it from start to finish and it was certainly the highlight of this particular January. As the cold dawdles and the responsibilities of life continue to squeeze one in its vise, it is quite an escape and a relief to enter a world where rest cures are the rule and the cultivation of the body and mind are the loftiest goals. It would be hard to name this the single greatest book I had ever read, but it certainly makes for a strong case.
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