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Elevating the Ordinary: Gravity vs. Karl Ove Knausgaard

5 February 2019 By darkviolin

It’s a legitimate writing class exercise to ask new writers to write about the ordinary — to elevate, inspire, observe, to counter the downward pull of the overexposed and unprepossessing. Considering how much of the world fits that category (hence the label InsideTheOrdinary), most of the similes are too readily available and the easy analogies frozen into monochrome.

One is sympathetic when reading that when Karl Ove Knausgaard was working on a passage about slugs, he was distracted by reading a few book reviews of his earlier work — including one calling his earlier Spring a “poetic mummy blog.” This thread-breaking is not dissimilar to the challenges facing readers. The rough outline of the project is both similar and different from the diarist / blogger frame. There is the occasional timestamping (which is rarely salient), as well as self-exhortation to reveal and to tease out insight from surroundings, utterances, facts. Because this overt self-discipline is essential to writers, this is an oft-repeated theme for “thinking aloud.” It can also become routine.

But then, at times, come the enlightened passages, even when revisiting this very topic: the dictum that “literature should be personal but not private,” the “paradox that the writer has to compromise his or her personal truth, that is to create an ‘I’ with which he or she doesn’t fully identify, in order to express something that may be true for others.”

Just how much and what type of focus should be applied to his sort of intellect is where opinions may vary. A chapter on wasps becomes a treatise on anthropomorphism, written in a single, long paragraph. In one sense, how could it be otherwise? In autumn, the wasps all die save the queen, who goes into hibernation “like the sole survivor of a great catastrophe.” Slugs, dogs, mosquitoes, ladybirds, mackerel, butterflies, plums, salt and ice cream come in for similar — but different, chapter-level treatment. There are also more abstract chapter titles, “Tears” and “Repetition,” for instance, but the theme of human life seen against the broader phylogenetic canvas often recurs, as with this commentary on banana flies:

To a banana fly, life is like a duty watch. When its watch is over, someone else takes its place. What the banana flies are watching over is what once brought them across from the other side, that shadow of life which the possess and which lives on in others when they themselves are swallowed up in vinegar and return to being motes of dust.

The theme of mortality and evanescence recurs often, but it’s not the whole of Summer. A chapter is devoted to an ill-fated bicycle ride with a son, a dialog with a daughter about a Justin Bieber song is interpreted, and when thinking about Sting’s music, that it had become “a force of defense,” and allowed him to “shut myself up within my emotions, shut myself up within the light, and if music was a key, then I had used it to lock the door, not to open it. A shield of elation, that is as good a description as any of the manic state.”

In part, the entertainment within Summer is the juxtaposition of the ordinary, sometimes prosaically mapped, with erudition and patience. The erudition will deter some, and fascinate others who will be put off by the recitations of ordinary. Be prepared to encounter Swedenborg, Charlie Chaplin, Homer, Charles the Twelfth, Ovid.

Still, while he writes that “one of the tasks of literature [is] to remind us of our insignificance and make us understand that our own way of producing meaning is merely one of the many possible in the world, along with that of the forest, the plains, the mountains . . . ” — there is a melancholy, fearful tone which is never fully submerged. Summer, like the season it marks, is as much about the heat of dissipation and as it is of lawn sprinklers and cherry trees that push back with a stubborn, if not irresistible delight. Summer is less about writing than about attention. As Knausgaard says to one of his children,

In about six hours you will wake up, cheerful and contented, ready for a new day in which nothing of what awaits you will surprise you.

A pre-release copy of Summer was provided by Penguin Press via Amazon Vine.

The Little Clan of Literate Discourse

13 January 2019 By darkviolin

Read fast, as this literate world grows more little by the day

In the world imagined by Iris Martin Cohen, would the sometimes mysterious fascination of Little Women be revealed? Perhaps by a character about whom the narrator writes is “desperate for solace?” Or would the narrator keep the secret by simply telling the story in Little Women dialect? That oppression or persecution by peers was simply a matter of being born at the wrong time, and thereby justifying a rush “into the open [sic] arms of classic literature?” Was hanging out in Baker Street so appealing that it was Conan Doyle, not Holmes and Watson who seemed fictional? Not to mention vulgar contemporaries?

More to the point, are the enough readers interested in a character who insists that books “define her life?” They’re not busy catching up with the latest streaming show? Exchanging selfies on Instagram? They are the ones who will bob and weave with the prose, as in:

Ava found the shame of her lie dissipating rather quickly in the benevolent glow of the fast-descending hibernal twilight and the promise of seeing Ben again so soon.

While at times this reviewer is himself desperate for “the casual entitlement of vertical parity” with worthwhile, enviable acquaintances and adversaries, for someone who might call out my “distinctive aesthetic” or conversations in which the participants bemoan their “desultory attempts” at topics less “pedestrian,” the world drawn in The Little Clan seems even more little after sinking a few feet beneath its waves.

Here’s a character sick of being told to read Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf. If this sentiment inspires, or reverberates somehow, this is a must read. Soliloquies and extended passages of contemplation — hoped-for by this reviewer given the synopsis — are rare; this literate world is primarily a social, not a literary construct in the Kate Braverman tradition.

Still, read fast, as this world seems to grow smaller by the day.

Review copy kindly provided by Park Row through Amazon Vine.

What passes for perverted is normal, and vice versa: a review of Jen Silverman’s The Island Dwellers collection

12 November 2018 By darkviolin

There is such a thing as a credible joke — one based in astute observation, irony, paradox. Such humor lies at the opposite end of puns: it’s richly semantic. If credibility matters, do read this collection. You’ll be laughing, but the laughter is razor sharp. Even the titles in this short story collection by Jen Silverman are barbed: “White People” and “Surveillance” refer to challenged, even anxiety-ridden characters trapped in circumstances of their own making.

Occasionally the rapier in The Island Dwellers softens, such as at the end of “Surveillance,” but by then one anticipates the sympathy moving to ridicule, like a dark-haired woman slipping from jogging clothes into a slinky evening dress. Maybe after she’s jotted a few notes in a journal.

Consider this musing by the narrator in “White People”:

I imagined a life in which we lived together, maybe in Portland, and we’d wake up and he would stretch while I wrote, and later we would work in the garden and then cook together, and then take our two dogs for a walk. I imagined Elias’s mother coming to visit, from Venezuela. She might be wary of me at first, and I would understand that — perhaps the only white people she knows have been her employers. But I would be so warm and so welcoming that eventually she really would feel that mi casa was su casa. And she would would say to Elias, “‘What a woman you’ve found!’ She would say, ‘She’s like one of us’” (p. 98).

The lesson of Silverman’s acutely authentic, high fidelity portraits? That what passes for perverted is normal, and vice versa.

If anything, Silverman risks depicting a place in which she alone is left standing while the rest of us toil obsessively over tasks whose importance is to be judged only by the humor she uncovers in those obsessions.

But take a breath, steel yourself for the coming zingers and chuckle your way through an enormously witty collection.

Whether or not we see ourselves in the witty outlines Silverman sketched, her eye for foibles, fads and fun reveals the lethality of a quirky genius at work — perhaps toiling in Apartment 2B, since 1B and 3B are busily occupied by characters from “White People.”

This book review of The Island Dwellers by Jen Silverman was made possible by a copy provided by Random House through Amazon.

Sync with the Inefficiencies of Time

27 August 2016 By darkviolin

A review of The After Party, a poetry collection by Jana Prikryl (Tim Duggan Books | Crown, 2016).

In this poetry collection by Jana Prikryl, multiple voices strive to be heard. They include the casual (“I mean there was literally nothing I could do”), the symbolic (“Mr. Dialect”), and the winged “Parked magenta Lumina, / aluminum awning wool shoulders / of a coat shrugged on to run across the street / for milk await / the formal wear of snow, / remove from adjectives.”

What buoys this work most is ruminant abstraction, shown in “remove from adjectives.”

Such as this, from “Thirty Thousand Island,” a long poem:

Within the unflagging wringing concentration
that even a dippy vessel wants
in these waters

waits a state of mind not so much passionate
as cold in its stamina

as synced with the inefficiencies of time,
fused down into its crevices of scale,
happy in its specificities

True, there are also concrete specifics, as in this passage from “Siblings and Half Siblings”:

We sisters had the Vondörfer hair,
pink with ripples and electrodes in the right places,
wavy orange stuff environing our faces.

There’s a genealogical or genetic reference in the latter, but a paraphrase of “synced with he inefficiencies of time” would likely not be resolved by Prikryl family interviews.

Prikryl’s reflective voice shines in passages such as this from “To Tell of Bodies Changed”:

While a substance of landscape, mineral,
leaches into blood vessels
quietly steadily, meaning in this case
nothing is damaged;
extravagance of umbrella pines
propping their fingers under the bonus horizons
of the hills, redundancies
boosting the city’s resemblance to itself.

Snips from other poems: “regifting a responsibility,” and “The earth knows Andre Breton, / compiles ingenuous personalities in its fevered correspondence.”

In Dan Chiasson’s affecting review of this collection, which has much to recommend it, he writes that “Language in this enchanted book sometimes seems to have an independent intelligence.” It’s a complimentary but ultimately puzzling observation. Is this intelligence in the poem the intelligence of a unique character? Can the language be autonomous from writer and reader? A poem can take on many roles, but giving it agency is stretches autonomy too far.

In “New York New York” the poet’s intelligence is what preempts seer, scene, interpreter in the framing:

what meets me then
walking one island
or other

and in this scenario
I am half
the actor

stage and screen
whose moves
wow the well read

what meets me then
old flame
sufficiency

The sufficiency here is the sureness of the poet as framer.

Annotation or Drift

In this uncorrected proof copy, there are a few references at the end, such as to Wikipedia’s entry for “tidal locking.” But readers will have to look to English Lit for annotations of “the notebooks of STC.”

Annotation is handled well in “The Moth,” which provides a Science magazine quote or paraphrase at the outset. Poets and editors of same, take note. Hyperlinks aren’t only for the daily news. To refer to “quantum bits” with a specific analogical mapping, best to ensure that readers know this is a concept in physics (the qubit), not just a poet’s lightweight use of “bits” in a turn of phrase.

Despite the many questions these poems raise, then either leave unanswered or summon more research resources than seem feasible, there are gems to be found scattered hanging in the gallery of this collection. Whether these stanzas leave you curious or simply impressed with the intricate clockwork of Prikryl’s mind, it is a worthwhile voyage into loss, but not one will not leave you adrift without music or hope.

The book is dedicated to Ms. Prikryl’s brother Voyta, who in 1995 died suddenly, and far too young. He insinuates himself into many a stanza as more than filial fact or fate.

Acquiring Humility by Accident

24 April 2016 By darkviolin

NY Times reviewer Gregory Cowles remembers the late Jim Harrison with a few sentences from Harrison’s novella “The Ancient Minstrel (Grove Atlantic).

In a lifetime of walking in the woods, plains, gullies, mountains, I have found that the body has no more vulnerable sense than being lost. . . . It’s happened often enough that I don’t feel panic. I feel absolutely vulnerable and recognize it’s the best state of mind for a writer whether in the woods or the studio. Your mind feels a rush of images and ideas. You have acquired humility by accident. Feeling bright-eyed, confident and arrogant doesn’t do this job unless you’re writing the memoir of a narcissist. You are far better off being lost in your work and writing over your head. You don’t know where you are as a point of view unless you go beyond yourself. It has been said that there is an intense similarity in people’s biographies. It’s our dreams and visions that separate us. You don’t want to be writing unless you’re giving your life to it.

Image credit and poetry citation from Cartel – “The Minstrel’s Prayer” by Jin Thai | Flickr

You’ve Doubled Down on Extinction: Standout Blacklist Script by Dave Thomas

1 December 2015 By darkviolin

Photo: Blacklist Crispin Chandler - via the Blacklist Wiki

Sir Crispin Chandler (Harry Yulin) in The Blacklist via Blacklist Wiki and NBC

Sometimes great writing lurks in otherwise ordinary landscapes. That was the case for the following speech by Raymond Reddington (James Spader) in a November 2015 episode of The Blacklist. Spader, whose character Alan Shore enjoyed regular excellent declamation opportunities in Boston Legal and The Practice somewhat less often gets the chance to do the same in The Blacklist. In this episode, his antagonist was a cryogenic evildoer Sir Crispin Campbell ( played characteristically well by veteran Harris Yulin).

Perhaps you’re familiar with the old saw ‘You can’t beat the house.’ No matter how many poor souls you turn into popsicles, the fix is in. The world in which you awaken will be one incapable of sustaining human life, and why? Because at the critical tipping point, one tragically quixotic megalomaniac cannibalized humanity of the very minds that might have been its salvation. You see, if you were a betting man you would understand that now trumps later every time. The future is a sucker’s bet, a maybe, a contingency, a what-if; the only thing that is real is the present. And you’ve plundered it, robbed it of the very geniuses that might have averted the dystopia you so fear. . . Congratulations, you’ve doubled down on extinction.

Death … Mish mosh. It’s just a process, right?

Writing kudos to Dave Thomas @TheDaveThomas, in this work reminiscent of Paddy Chayefsky. Any regrets? Sure. That Campbell had not been given a better chance to respond, resulting in a delightful bit of repartee, albeit with the same predictable action-script outcome.