Darkness at Noon (Koestler)

In an age when public speeches, the plays in our theaters, and women's fashion all seem to have come off assembly lines, arrests can be of the most varied kind. They take you aside in a factory corridor after you have had your pass checked--and you're arrested. They take you from a military hospital with a temperature of 102, as they did with Ans Bernshtein, and the doctor will not raise a peep about your arrest--just let him try! They'll take you right off the operating table--as they took N.M. Vorobyev, a school inspector, in 1936, in the middle of an operation for stomach ulcer--and drag you off to a cell, as they did him, half-alive and all bloody (as Karpunich recollects). Or, Like Nadya Levitskaya, you try to get information about your mother's sentence, and they give it to you, but it turns out to be a confrontation--and your own arrest! In the Gastronome--the fancy food store--you are invited to the special-order department and arrested there. You are arrested by a religious pilgrim whom you have put up for the night "for the sake of Christ." You are arrested by a meterman who has come to read your electric meter. You are arrested by a bicyclist who has run into you on the street, by a railway conductor, a taxi driver, a savings bank teller, the manager of a movie theater. Any one of them can arrest you, and you notice the concealed maroon-colored identification card only when it is too late.
-Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago Part 1

Most of twentieth century literature can be summed up in the following sentence:

Someone must have slandered Josef K, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.

The presence and absurdity of arrest (and Arrest) is almost constantly present throughout the entire 100 years. Most times for unknown reasons, as in Solzhenitsyn and Kafka. However, even when the reason is known, as in Camus, Banville, and Sartre, it is often just as absurd as when it is not. In fact, then the absurdity seems to come to the fore all the more, since the very question of "why me?" is even disarmed.

Darkness at Noon operates somewhere between these two. The protagonist, Rubashov, was once an architect of what we can assume is a regime similar to Stalin's (the book never explicitly states where it takes place, nor does it cite the name of the regime's leader). As things grow more and more uncertain politically he begins to realize that he could be arrested at any point--and, in fact, is (upon waking from a dream in which he is being arrested). In his dream, which he has had periodically for years, three men come to his door, drag him out of bed and arrest him without explanation (much like Josef K.). He tries to put on his jacket but the sleeve is turned inside out, and he struggles to get his arm into it until he is knocked out by one of the officers. It is at this point that he wakes up to the pounding of the officers outside his door.

The particularity of his arrest is felt throughout the Gulag type prison he is kept in--his neighbor a cell over discovers who he is and is disdainful, since Rubashov was part of the organization that landed him in prison in the first place. Despite the tension between the two, they maintain a very human relationship throughout the novel, finding common ground in the hopelessness of their mutual situations. What follows as the novel unfolds is an exploration of the way a political body evolves, gathering new blood as the younger generation picks it up from the older, and how this political body--though created by and made up of people--acts ruthlessly against the humanity of those who once represented it. Rubashov, as the older generation, is "made an example of," even though he has committed little more than second guessing himself (and spends much time in prison trying to pinpoint the meaning of this second guessing, and second guessing it as well). He searches for meaning in why he is there, and finds only absurdities which become twisted into reasons through a rigorous systematic logic which has no desire to recognize absurdities. Simply put: in a political system, the absurd does not get people to act.

The Times Literary Supplement describes it as:

"...a grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian Revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships..."

but the political significance is only scratching at the surface of the depths Darkness at Noon probes. At heart, it is almost a cautionary tale of the Hegelian, idealistic dialectic taken to its logical extreme. Though I wouldn't necessarily categorize this as distinctly "existential," I think that this concept of arrest--and Arrest (as an abrupt stop)--which runs through the twentieth century is one which is concerned primarily with existence, and particularly existence in disjunction with an Ideal. In this sense, Koestler's book is, in Kierkegaard's words: "a dialectic which always knows how to keep the problem hovering, and precisely in and through this seeks to solve it." But, to continue in Kierkegaard's words: "there is another dialectic which, since it begins with the most abstract Ideas, seeks to allow these to unfold themselves in more concrete determinations; a dialectic which seeks to obstruct actuality by means of the Ideal." That would be the dialectic which jails Rubashov, and the one which is being confronted in Darkness at Noon.

It is a simple book, and I don't mean to, myself, start with abstract Ideas and sully it by over academizing it. But there is also something in it which is wholly representative of an entire century of thought, and which shouldn't be brushed aside by saying: "its about communism being bad." Or: "its anti-totalitarianism." I don't even necessarily think that you could logically state by the end of this book that it has anything to do with the concept of communism. Like almost all writing of the 20th century, and all good writing after Kafka--from Camus to Sartre, Beckett to Banville--it is concerned with existence.

Epitaph of a Small Winner (Machado de Assis)

Probably Dona Placida did not speak when she was born, but if she did, she might have said to the authors of her days, 'Here I am. Why did you summon me?' And the sacristan and his lady naturally would have replied, 'We summoned you so that you would burn your fingers on pots and your eyes in sewing; sad today, desperate tomorrow, finally resigned, but always with your hands on the pot and your eyes on the sewing, until you wind up in the gutter, or the hospital. That is why we summoned you, in a moment of love.' -Machado de Assis

If you appreciate Kurt Vonnegut (as I hope you do), then you should do yourself the favor of tracking down what you can find of Machado de Assis' writing here in the U.S. His near complete absence from the American literary consciousness is astounding considering his is the most clear precursor to Vonnegut, who is one of the most recognized figures of American literature. Maybe there aren't enough good Portuguese translators to give the Brazilian author's work the translations they deserve, but I generally first suspect the unfortunate lack of interest in anything that isn't already canonical or a current craze. Harry Potter, Dan Brown, Twilight, Junot Diaz...come on, guys.

The levels of comparison are near infinite between Machado and Vonnegut--from the sadly humorous, resigned humanism, to the short chapters and clever title-chapter interplay--but I won't go so far as to say that Machado is the "original" Vonnegut, just that their writing is often remarkably similar. 'Epitaph of a Small Winner,' also published under 'The Posthumous Memoirs of Braz Cubas,' is exactly what the second title implies. Braz Cubas writes his memoirs from beyond the grave, going over his somewhat uneventful life in brief chunks of text which often are equally about the book being written as they are about his lived life, as in the chapter 'Deleted' (which remains in tact) where he comments: "I have half a mind to delete this chapter," and then concludes it with "Yes, I shall definitely delete this chapter."

The passage quoted earlier is in reference to a minor character who aids Cubas in carrying out an affair with the married Virgilia who he almost loved before they were married. Dona Placida, as small as her role is, typifies most of what the book gets at: the odd human comedy which allows some to putt about, carry out love affairs, find money on the street, dabble in politics and never really learn anything, while others must work themselves to death, get taken advantage of again and again and also never really learn anything. And yet, Dona Placida's hard life is significantly made easier by her abetting of Cubas' affair, as Cubas notes:

If it had not been for my illicit love, probably Dona Placida would have faced the same miserable old age as so many other human creatures. From this observation one may reason that vice is often the fertilizing manure of virtue.

The one thing which makes Cubas the "small winner" of the title, when he balances the books on his life, is his conclusion that he at least he never had a kid, thereby subjecting to no one else "the legacy of our misery" (which sounds rather maudlin out of context, I'll admit). But again, like Vonnegut, Machado seems entranced by humanity, finding it simultaneously laudable and laughable. Sure, he didn't subject anyone to the legacy of our misery, but he, as some manner of ghost, is still thinking and reliving his past life, clearly finding something of interest in it, even if it is only to destroy many sentimental notions. When his affair is finally crumbling, as Virgilia leaves him presumably forever, Cubas states: "to titillate the reader's taste for the dramatic, I ought to suffer deep despair, shed some tears, and certainly not eat. This would be romantic but not biographical. The pure fact is that I lunched much as on other days."

William Grossman, the book's translator, writes in the introduction:

In his best work, Machado is perhaps the most completely disenchanted writer in occidental literature. Skeptics generally destroy certain illusions in order to cling to others. Machado rejects everything mundane.

The choice then, he continues, is to "reject Machado or, with Machado, to reject the world." Unfortunately, based on his lack of presence in literature today, it seems as though many have rejected Machado instead of taking the second option. Too bad, too, because as Alpha 60 says: "it is our misfortune that the world is reality."

I might add that its also my misfortune that I dropped my film from the Classics of Love tour off at Rite Aid and not anywhere else because, apparently, it takes them six fucking days to develop two disposable cameras.

Women in Love (Lawrence)

D.H. Lawrence has been posthumously stricken with what are, chronically, the absolute fucking worst book covers outside of the fantasy genre. But the man sure can play some romantic saxophone!

What is so particularly displeasing about these horrible cover designs is how much they miss the feel of his writing. Its as if someone said, "this book has the word love in the title, so...let's slap a shitty picture of a Victorian woman looking forlorn on it! While you're at it, let's make the picture gauzy so it looks more romantic." Old David Herbert does have a penchant for throwing around the L word in his titles but, if this book is any example, his aim is nowhere near to soothe one with whimsical tales of ladies casting furtive glances at guys with moustaches, nor is it just a case of racy sexuality (as many people seem to think of his novels). In Women in Love, it feels as if Lawrence is trying to empty every fluttery, polite notion from the concept of love--exploding its perceived purity, and revealing it for the thick morass of sludge and emotional torpor that it is.

The plot is simple enough: Ursula and Gudrun, sisters in a small town, fall for Birkin and Gerald (respectively). One has a pretty successful go of it after some work, the other fails quite miserably. As far as plots go, this is nothing remarkable. What is quite remarkable, however, is the sheer violence of Lawrence's prose when exploring such an innocuous thing as two sisters digging different guys. It is not a common thing to read a story about a successful relationship that is described like so:

He had taken her at the roots of her darkness and shame--like a demon, laughing over the fountain of mystic corruption which was one of the sources of her being.

A constant, near occult, inhuman darkness is almost always just on the edge of the page even when the four are just sitting in a boat, or Gudrun is simply looking at a sleeping Gerald. There is an almost spiteful sense of monotony felt in Gerald and Gudrun's (mutual) attempt at love with each other, which finally gives way to the brief spat of violence that feels as though it has been lingering ominously since the first mention of any sort of human feeling in the novel. And though things do work out for one of the couples, it seems only through the process of staring into the abyss that anything emerges sound, and, though they have each other, they still both would much prefer that humanity had never existed. For how often people comment on the powerful physicality of his writing, they don't often seem to note the sheer horror of physical being he seems to uphold. Gerald's body is "a plunging, unconscious stroke of blood...the terrible plunging of his heart." In the act of loving another, Lawrence writes: "Into her he poured all his pent-up darkness and corrosive death." In a moment of extreme anger, hideously, Lawrence describes the situation by saying: "His wrists were bursting"--one of the most violently realized examples of consciousness being poured into physicality that I've read in a few years. Bukowski held Lawrence in the highest of regards and I think it is these moments of hideous prose that show exactly why. Its pretty incredible.

So, in the end, though the characters are of my least favorite type in literature (rich Victorians), the incredible violence of Lawrence's prose brings a sense of life to even those who seem the most removed from it (rich Victorians), which is something. And of the titular concept--women in love, itself?

Gerald stood still, suspended in thought.
"What do women want at the bottom?" he asked.
Birkin shrugged his shoulders.
"God knows," he said. "Some satisfaction in basic repulsion, it seems to me. They seem to creep down some ghastly tunnel of darkness, and will never be satisfied till they've come to the end."

So, please, put a picture of two doe-eyed lovers lying in a field of wheat on the cover. That seems the most appropriate thing.

The Busy Kids

Ok, so there's this now:

couldibedespised.blogspot.com

If one directs one's self there they will soon find the journals I kept while on the recent Classics of Love tour to the UK. It might take a day or so since I'll be collecting pictures and since typing up the journal I kept by hand is tedious work. But rest assured, oh, ye who read this, it will be updated soon in various parts.

Once finished with that, I will have three new entries here to put up: Women in Love (Lawrence), Epitaph of a Small Winner (Machado), and Darkness at Noon (Koestler). But that will probably take another day or so, too.

Cheers, mateys.

Rock Music

The last two albums that I really "got into" in the way that my younger self once got into, say, Left and Leaving, Pinkerton, or Lonesome Crowded West, were Separation Sunday by the Hold Steady, and Marquee Moon by Television. These were somewhat strange acquisitions for me given their decidedly capital R Rock sound, but there is something somehow exposed and earnest about them. The Hold Steady, in particular, took me forever to understand. They came at a time when irony was at the height of its too-cool-for-truth ubiquity, and I thought (understandably, I think) that everyone, including the band, liked their rock riffage in an ironic way. It's funny because it sounds like Aerosmith, but we're an "indie" band. Get it? Ha. Accidentally catching the end of How a Resurrection Really Feels and really listening to it, however, I could finally hear the sincerity behind Finn and co.'s strange desire to rock and tell good stories. That was the entry point for me. And now what I once thought was the most obvious example of irony on the album, Hornets! Hornets!, with its cromagnon Dad-rock lead riff, has actually become my favorite. I feel that ridiculous minor seventh bridge. And when the drums kick back in!...don't get me started.

The same goes for Marquee Moon and especially to its 10+ minute title track, which is decidedly Rock in its excess and blown out guitar solo proportions. Its easy to crack jokes and ridicule things like this (whether or not they intended to be ironic, The Darkness was certainly a bitter pill of pure irony in the musical landscape), but when a band does it right--when it is how the song was meant to be played--there is no explaining how right it is. The solo in the middle of See No Evil rules. It just does. This is a Rock album, and it is completely done right. Most days now I just want to listen to it over and over again, which is exactly what I did last night.



I'm coming around to my point finally. Something in Separation Sunday and Marquee Moon is very truthful--it is very revealing of their creators' desire to rock. This notion is often laughed at, made light of, Jack Black-ized. People want to lose themselves in music, but at the same time its never really very "cool" to do that. Its much cooler to like what is popular at the time, aim at being ahead of trends or at least maintain a comfortable distance from the music. Play something dancey. That way the audience will dance and they don't have to notice the musician. Put in some synth parts. That's cool! Hey, how about you play the synth while I do a dance beat? Genius! Now take a picture of me pretending to not notice the camera! Oh man, that looks boss (make sure to ironically say boss sometimes, too)! Wanna rent Juno? She mentioned Thundercats! I remember that show! So that makes it funny, right?

The way that the Hold Steady and Television really dive into these respective albums is beyond uncool. But that's also what makes them so good. That George Thorogood sounding guitar part in the verse of Friction...the downright Elton John piano part in Stevie Nix...they risk looking like a Rock fool to really go somewhere with their music, and I think that these two albums alone do more for music in general than most decades I can think of (80s, I'm looking at you). Like the very unromantic, "I want to fuck you" at the end of Lifter Puller's Nassau Colliseum, these take a chance, put themselves on the line, and completely rule because of it. You can choose to agree or disagree with me. Maybe later we can do some sexy things, take a couple photographs and carve them into wood reliefs?

When we were young, we wanted to die...

Despite this horrible picture, Low is one of the best bands I've ever heard. I forget that sometimes...

Philip K. Dick: VALIS, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

"Everything is true. Everything anybody has ever thought." -Rick Deckard



So more Sci-Fi, apparently. And really good Sci-Fi, I might add. The kind like the aforementioned 2001 and Solaris which make the case for Sci-Fi as something bigger than stories of cool aliens wars, exotic alien women, and really cool exotic alien female warriors. Sci-Fi which uses the Science in its Fiction as a backdrop against which to ask big questions and explore the fundamental nature of Man's place in a big, empty, uncaring universe.

These are my first forays in Philip K. Dick's actual writing (pictured above looking like a member of Slint, or Unwound, or some other such 90s indie rock outfit), but I'm kind of surprised at myself for not having read him much earlier since I've always liked Blade Runner, and since Mark E. Smith quotes him as such a primary influence (next to Lovecraft!). But it wasn't until my brother started to tell me about VALIS that I finally figured it was time to check him out properly. VALIS, in description, runs something like this:

Horselover Fat thinks he had an experience with God. Philip K. Dick is Horselover Fat, but he forgets that sometimes. God may be a laser. God may be a two year old girl. God may be telling Horselover Fat / Philip K. Dick to never believe in God, and God may be in the hands of technoreligous zealots. Also, the quest for God may just be a way to plug a hole in one's consciousness ripped open by the constant need to help the dying/suicidal.

It is, quite obviously, strange, but it is also really well written and chimerically creative. As with David Lynch, I think it sometimes helps to view a book like VALIS not from a purely linear or developmental vantage point, but to simply go along with the experience and admire the craft. However, I do also believe that it is possible to take this in a linear fashion without reducing it to a clusterfuck of nonsensical what-have-yous, though it would be very difficult to convince a detractor of this ("what do you mean 'Real time ceased in 70 CE with the fall of the temple of Jerusalem and started again in 1974?!"). The same thing happens when you try to tell someone who isn't digging it that you think Mulholland Drive "makes sense," but what are you going to do?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by comparison is much more straight-forward, though it also contains many strange bits that get entirely glossed over when given the Harrison Ford treatment. Also, I think that this is probably the best Sci-Fi book I've ever read. Actually it is. No probably.

Deckart (Descartes) has a much more cerebral trip hunting down the andys in this book than Ford does hunting down the replicants of Blade Runner. Though the movie makes a clear move towards "maybe the replicant hunter really IS a replicant!" DADoES goes a bit more subtler route, simply teasing out questions of the difference by-and-large between humans and androids--particularly when the androids are programmed to believe themselves to be human. I think its fair to say that Deckart, in novel form, could still possibly be a 'droid, but what the book seems to push for more is the notion of what it means to be human if increasingly the life around you is replaced with android equivalents meant to pose as life. A big section which gets cut out of the film is the status/empathy symbol of owning and maintaining an animal--which gets to the point where many people, in lieu of being able to afford real animals, buy "electric" ones to appear more successful and/or empathetic to those around them (thus the "electric sheep" in the title).

The writing is tight--neither too prosey nor too dumb-dumb-action-android-gun-fight, which works well for the simultaneously tense and ponderous atmosphere--and all in all I was highly impressed with both books, and Dick's writing in general. Now I definitely want to look into A Scanner Darkly.

Also I should mention that Bohren und der Club of Gore's album "Black Earth" is the best doom-jazz album I'm aware of. Could practically be called "Songs from the Black Lodge." Good music to have on while reading Philip Dick.