Literature
Here are some words about words.
Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes
What’s that? Equal parts compelling character study and societal critique? Yes please, yes ta.
Via his journals and “progress reports”, we follow Charlie Gordon’s arc from an intellectually disabled, ostracised young man to a bona fide genius and back again. The whole shebang orbits two crucial questions:
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What is intelligence?
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Why do we value it?
Such is the quality of the premise that Daniel Keyes needn’t answer those questions. Throughout Charlie’s story, Keyes poses a scintillating series of juxtapositions for us to mull on our own time. Before the experimental surgery, Charlie’s inability to gauge social cues made me agonise for his vulnerability but somewhat envy his ignorance. Following the surgery, his new ability to take moral stances represents both a blessing and a burden.
And what of Charlie’s insatiable thirst for knowledge? "I’m in love with my own intelligence – I can’t get enough of it." Exponential intellectual progress doesn’t necessarily turn his fortunes. Even when his savvy and esoteric smarts far exceed those overseeing the experiment, he’s still looked at as a lab rat akin to the titular rodent. The microscope looms and lingers over Charlie, stifling his ability to explore and express his newfound potential.
And then, just like that — with the same swiftness as Algernon’s own regression — Charlie quickly returns to his initial state. Is that state isolated and forlorn or blissful and anonymous? Are we better off unable to read and fundamentally kind or quick on the uptake but prone to malice? Do we now value so-called ‘intelligence’ more than we do warmth and willingness?
Perhaps the emotional core of this novel — powerful and perplexing as it is — seems all the more pertinent now given the state of the world. (Spoiler: it’s run by so-called intelligent people, several of whom seem staggeringly stupid. Blessed monolith figures of complete disregard.)
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Mariana Enriquez
As a gaunt young man, I was captivated by the idea of drastically subverting a norm or somehow overstepping a limit. That’s not to say I threw bricks at windows and taunted my elders; far from it — I was a very good gaunt young man.
But in the arts, anything that ticked those boxes in some way — personal, sexual, cultural, legal, geographical or otherwise — was entirely fascinating. Quite naturally, then, I wrote my dissertation on transgression in literature. And to this day, the works of Dostoyevsky, Palahniuk, Hamsun, and Hubert Selby Jr remain some of my favourites.
So imagine my sordid glee when a friend handed over The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and gave me a wee breakdown of what to expect. Mariana Enriquez’s debut of short stories spans haunted playparks, vile lust, savage vengeance and cannibalistic fandom. Its twisted, visceral visions of modern urban Argentina focus on fringe players and unthinkable dynamics.
In other words: transgression abounds. What a flavour.
Every story in this collection has a gruelling but entirely enthralling premise, and all but one take place (or don’t take place) in Buenos Aires, a city with its own fair share of dark history. I was there in 2023, and felt very much moved by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. These women’s sons and daughters are desaparecidos, a baffling, agonising consequence of several military juntas and The Dirty War. Every week, these mothers gather and make their case for justice, but justice lingers and sneers in the shadows. Every day — still! — they grieve the tragic ripples of a suppressive dictatorship.
But all that is to say: you needn’t look particularly far to find Enriquez’s angle. Even without local context, there’s something enduringly intriguing about rebellion, paranoia, fame, pain, and confusion. And what makes The Dangers of Smoking in Bed so captivating is as much its macabre themes as their proximity to reality. Maybe the same can be said for transgression generally; we like to imagine a world where natural, social, and judicial laws fall by the wayside. Or do we?
I must do, because I loved this little book. It’s not escapism so much as a mirror — cracked and warped — held up to society. The author’s moreish, conversational style has you from the opening lines of each piece, as a vague normality lingers just long enough for you to wonder what brooding grey cloud inevitably looms.
The Overstory
Richard Powers
Is it something of a tired literary trope to introduce a selection of disparate characters and then weave a narrative this way and that to bring about their overlap? Cloud Atlas comes to mind. I’ve enjoyed that two or three times now, and only somewhere slap-bang in the throes did I realise it wasn’t penned by Mark from Peep Show.
I digress.
The Overstory threads together seemingly unconnected characters extraordinarily well.
Important disclaimer — it’s long, and it’s a commitment. In fact, I found it a slow-burner, to start. That’s not a slight on the writing, but more a result of my regular gluttony in the feast and famine freelance cycle. For the first 300-or-so pages, each character is introduced in short-story-esque style. Some span centuries in scintillating prose; others, just a single sensuous hour. Every one is engrossing in its own right, but the very nature of the structure permits you to put the book down when a new tale begins.
What are we dealing with? A kid who continues his ancestors’ documentation of a blight-resistant chestnut tree on the family land. The rise and plight of an ambitious young coder from an immigrant family. An enigmatic, back-from-the-dead woman guided by voices of light. A student of social psychology. A U.S. Air Force sergeant saved by a tree. A lifelong botanist who discovers the richness of communication amid wildlife. And more. You get the gist: it’s a disparate account of the human condition in all its whimsical, wicked richness.
And it’s masterful writing from Powers, whose relative verbosity paints vivid pictures. These journeys form the understory, all held together by the true protagonist: the overstory — trees. Beautiful bloody trees. Their majesty and magnetism are the novel’s raison d'etre. Their importance and incredible intricacy unite the narratives as the characters confront the world’s general disregard for these grandiose pillars of nature.
So yeah, trees take top billing in this ecological epic — forests, firs, stumps, mulberries, maples, redwoods, oaks, and chestnuts — but the wild world as a whole pulses through every page. It’s a frightening, filmic tale of ecosystems we’re bulldozing at will, and the unglamorous balance we’re perpetually failing to find. Among the tragedy, treachery, and terrifically moving passages, here are some things that stuck with me:
1. What we make from a tree should be more useful than the tree itself. That’s a tall task, but one Powers’ print certainly manages. Each turn of the trunk-formed page brings you further in line with the message: don’t take these age-old glories for granted; respect them and protect them.
2. The idea that preserving our planet’s wildness is somehow at odds with human ‘progress’ is unconscionable. The characters question this backwards mantra, and remain obstinate amid authority and oppression. Their frustration fuels ours. It’s never simple or clear-cut or preachy — but it’s provocative to the nth degree.
Make this compulsory reading for politicians. Stick it on the curriculum everywhere. Bark its importance from the canopies.
Sorrow and Bliss
Meg Mason
This novel aptly captures the vagaries and challenges of existing when you didn’t ask to exist. Reading it, your chief frustration — a total testament to Meg Mason’s 4D prose — is not knowing whether to strongly dislike the protagonist, Martha, or to empathise with her perpetual plight.
Through Martha, Mason explores themes of forgiveness, sisterly love, and the generational suppression of mental health issues. The devil is in the details: observation, rumination, and contradiction. Moments of humour and silliness — shafts of light, as it were — are soon backhanded by anguish. All of this is compounded by the unreliable narration — what’s being said, and what’s a result of fallible memory?
Martha’s husband, Patrick, is stoic and sturdy one moment, but often without gall the next. In other words: he too is deeply human. His presence serves to sharpen the irritation you feel towards the protagonist, just as the other family members alternately stimulate, swerve, and support her.
But there are interesting stylistic choices beyond the character study. Mason never names Martha’s eventual diagnosis. Why? “It didn't matter. Plus, I wanted the reader to experience some of Martha's frustration — it's right there, but just out of grasp.”
That omission also lends the novel another degree of inclusivity. The whole piece captures the zeitgeist pretty damn well, with Martha’s woe a microcosm of society’s epidemic ennui.
Witty, worrying, and absolutely worth the read.
Electric Kool Aid Acid Test
Tom Wolfe
I feel great. There’s a 40 minute stretch of time wherein the sun hits the sky opposite my bedroom window — that grubby old goose. The finest tidings unto the giant power-orb, honestly, because it shifts ever-so-slowly across and casts me in its warm glimmer as I read the post-beat revelations. Just there in that cushty little sunslot I’m satisfyingly susceptible to all the excellent, erratic prose of Wolfe’s account — of Kesey and the Merry Band of Pranksters with the Hell’s Angels at La Honda, and the sun beyond the window works in straight lines whilst the fun bus rolls on Furthur in irregular meanders.
My bright eyes cross accounts of swinging sixty debauchery, a conclave akin to a new-religion striving for transcendence, chaos, or somewhere in between. I trace immersive descriptions of camaraderie and free-glo frenzy, documented in the style of New Journalism; all the while my muscles ache somewhat from a visit to the gym and a cycle-cardio summit and the dust, the sheer quantity of living moving minutiae catches this glorious light in this glorious 40 minute window and I feel as thankful as one is likely to on a Sunday.
The Hell’s Angels give way to the Beatles which gave way to an Anti-War Rally and the Pranksters, led by the insatiable Kesey, press onwards frenetically, captivatingly, toe-to-toeing with some of the biggest individuals and collectives of the zeitgeist. Somewhere between the outset and the accumulating culmination — publicised ‘acid tests’ (big, all-in parties going after ‘intersubjectivity’ and the dissolution of individual ego) — well, Wolfe steps away to do a few bits and Kesey’s been in exile, but soon enough they return to being very much on the bus with new characters here, there and everywhere between Mexico and the U.S. It’s a piece of non-fiction that exemplifies creative, journalistic storytelling, just as much as it’s a piece of non-fiction that documents the zenith of counterculture.
I may not have as extensive experience as I’d like reading Wolfe’s contemporaries and followers, but I certainly have a fervent enough admiration of his work to refer to him as the master of the non-fiction form, a genuine pioneer out front, packed to his underrated rafters with pen and notepad, never covered but always there, and I found myself again — upon finishing reading this piece — wanting to source and read another immediately.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Tom Wolfe
The great patron of New Journalism with his own fictional goldmine, a sprawling novel of American culture in an (ongoing) age of avarice, disruption, tension, impunity, and vulnerability. Wolfe’s fiction writing draws massively on the artistic workings of seeing and commenting, of journalistic reporting and the trails of consideration it takes one down. His preface refers to the difficulty of finding content, and thus drawing it from all around. Indeed, all fiction is just non-fiction that’s been given a wee wiggle. He claims the challenge he faced here was creating characters. Challenge conquered, Thomas. We meet Sherman McCoy (a bond broker on Wall Street, with wandering loins and green eyes) as well as a deputy power of attorney or lawyer or some such role surnamed Kramer who is fearful of the justice system because of its cynicism, absurdity, and prejudices. (Pliant youth, pliant adults). These two separate lives build momentum and cross later down the line. It’s a classic rope-a-dope.
Tom Wolfe is a literary master on the whole but his dialogue is especially great. He paints incredibly vivid pictures through conversations — of 1980s New York, its greedy little mits, its fiery financial surges, its riptide of racial injustice and its legal system based on favours. The novel (which was released in serial form originally and thus every chapter is a compelling twist or progression on that which came before) follows this Sherman fella, this WASPy bond broker with his aristocratic chin and chiselled frame and untouchable position on the pedestal of society. It follows him until he hits a young black man with his car in the Bronx and his entire world comes crashing down as the social contract comes into question and his social death comes to fruition. Though I’ve read little Dickens in my time (some literary scholar you, Sam), I sense that Wolfe is to painting America in the tumult of the late 20th century what Charles was to the chaos of early Victorian London.
Ouuuehhww all the trials, tribulations, injustices and immoral manipulations explored in groundbreaking, fluid, immersive style. Blessed be the Wolfe! Howl with him! Within and between the (dis)integrity of journalism, fuckeries of finance and thoughts of the blind woman on social strata, there is a tale of a man descending into pure survival mode when all the chips are down, losing living life and becoming an example for other powerplays and schemes. Though pretty reprehensible, Sherman does earn a tiny tiny amount of sympathy on the odd page. That is a testament to Wolfe’s prose. We’re back here again. His sharp, smart verbals and perpetual scene-setting give us outstanding insight into a sort of grubby underbelly, an underlying psychology of selfishness, fear, and sphere of influence that transcends professions. Well, and decades, it would seem.
Ends and Means
Aldous Huxley
Huxley opens accounts by discussing the many intentions and abilities of literature, as well as his intended course with this particular number. The ends and means, you say.
His intellectualism. His poise. His writing with characteristic boldness about the state of society (economic, political, hell, you name it he’s probably covered it in some capacity), and just what remedies the world of 1937 may call upon to avoid perpetual conflict and discord. Strikingly, many of the concerns in its chapters and essays were legitimised only a couple of years later by the lead up to, boiling point of, and consistently horrid events of WWII. Honestly, his social commentary seems even more striking now. What’s changed? Let me rephrase — what, of genuine meaning and value, has changed?
I tended to repeatedly envisage his being sat writing it, grumbling amidst his own era of constant nefarious shoulder rubbing. There is a lot of discussion of war, and when you consider it — there hasn’t been any extended period since it was written in which peace and prosperity have stepped out of the mud and the murk and the filth for long enough to be done away with. Something especially commendable is Huxley’s denouncing of geopolitical initiatives, governmental ineptitude, large scale organisations and their singular intent. He focuses instead, where he can, from the outset and throughout, on the individual. On the idea of the ‘non-attached’ citizen as the ideal, peaceful citizen. Any large scale reform is ineffective without the sincerity of those pushing for it and ultimately implementing it. All in all, there aren’t many words to read that don’t resonate one way or another with my own life and its trajectory. Of course I refer to being schooled, going to university, getting a job, doing better at it, earning more, getting higher higher higher whilst all the while getting entirely lower and more confused. Anywho, he shifts from smart (albeit half-baked) manifestos for socio-political reform slap bang back to the individual’s role in it including comments on theology, belief and the body/mind dualism. A lot of the notes on education are probably the most poignant I’ve read on balmy summer evenings next to slow flowing waters of the Thames. Education is the only thing that can drive us sideways, and it doesn’t seem prone to any sort of change. How on earth he managed to put all of these components together in a coherent body of work is beyond me. Bravo.
Island
Aldous Huxley
It’s hard for me to comprehend let alone convey in any set of arbitrary symbols just how extraordinarily well Aldous Huxley both comprehended and conveyed the excruciating gorgeous nuance of what it means to be human. Island is an astonishing piece of literature — a vision of idyllic life piercing and soothing precisely because of the backdrop of our own time. Attempt to do its sprawling sense some justice, I dare ya.
Huxley was an explorer and a spiritualist, engaging with various religious movements and mind-altering drugs during his life in pursuit of truth, light, hope, understanding, or all of the above plus far more. This novel focuses on twists to traditional Eastern religiosity. Its narrative hinges on characters experiencing or taking on a holistic approach to interaction, self-fulfilment and education. This is offset by a pragmatic and empathetic approach to population, medicine and possession. In his conceptual exploration — the last completed piece before his death — Huxley explores hypnotherapeutic remedies, the shunning of materialism, and the seamless marrying of western science and eastern Mahayana Buddhism. Of course, these are all just words, just inadequate symbols I’m jotting down to try and qualify the experience of reading his work and consulting the thoughts of his life, his analytical take on society in the form of one far removed. In Island, he essentially formed a remedial fiction to the qualms of Ends and Means.
Anyway, what a terrifically enlightening, harrowing and poignant commentary on social and human life. The final few pages will stick with me for as long as my sub-par cranium will allow [see Memory]. Will, after getting to know the pivotal Palanese and tracing their culture with fine inquisition and accelerating acceptance, takes some Moksha medicine. The descriptive passages! The account of hallucinogenic, mystical experience. The empowerment and confusion and dread and sheer compassionate joy. The scenes of Will (eyes closed and eyes open, encountering both the Essential Horror and God itself) put a blissful carpet beneath the growing tensions in Pala, hint at the futility of it all, and then start to waver again in the face of it, as Murugan and Rendang’s army announce a United Kingdom and exploitation of oil resource and an inevitable dimming of idealism. Quite the final hurrah, Aldous.
Libra
Don DeLillo
I haven’t read DeLillo before, but his prose is so far very rich; jumping between character establishment and zeitgeist commentary early doors, I sense, is vital to the kind of busy book and cataclysmic subject matter: Oswald’s involvement, the post cold-war tension, the political grandiosity and the ultimate death of Kennedy. The bounds of creative non-fiction are stretched but isn’t that what defines the genre, lends it such a compelling position at the canon’s fringes? It’s not a short book. God I bet you feel like you’ve read it now, no?
So how will the CIA representatives conduct their clandestine meetings to bring Cuba back into the equation? Into the big bubbling fun conspiracy? How will Lee Harvey Oswald harness his communist sympathies and distinction from the normal kids his age? Well we know the answer, but the processes and the politics and the multiform personal journeys are the vital parts in this piece.
Some indeterminate day I sat by the river under the sun, across and somewhat safe from the chilly breeze. There, I finished it. Having delved very heavily into its fine form for a stretch of four days, life crept inevitably up on me and kind of stemmed smooth progress. However fractured, this hiatus didn’t ruin the reading experience. Lee’s leftist sympathies and the conspiratorial whispers of the security services brush shoulders and overlap and culminate in that ultimate tragic 6 seconds and the key message, I guess, is that history is formed of characters as rich and tragic as the acts they’re known for. That context is king, but it’s quite naturally skimmed. The weaving of narratives sometimes lost me, as did the multitude of conspirators and other characters, but those points are likely more down to my method of reading than to DeLillo’s expertise, because in all honesty there is a cleverness and an attention to detail in his craft that I perhaps have not seen in creative non-fiction since In Cold Blood. Onto the next one.
White Noise
Don DeLillo
Sure to be darkly funny and bitingly on-the-nose.
Yep, it’s so bloody good. The combination of comedy and darkness in its coverage of death. How discovery and death interact. Our course through life is but a collation of data and impulses and exchanges that ultimately lead somewhere we either never really understand or actively ignore at our peril. The author’s voice is marvellously run through with irony and absurdity but also the most astute observation of the human swede — all its outlandish turns and common perceptions. He’s a quite brilliant writer. It’s quite brilliant. Did I mention the novel in a positive light at all?
It takes me back — in one way, another, or plenty more still — to my studious years. Getting my oversized shnoz right deep into literature was something I loved, by and large, notwithstanding the depth of philosophy that saw me dip in motivation to live. Mind, what was catalysed by certain literary or contemplative passages back then has still accompanied me a wee whiff since, so we'll put no blame on DeLillo or his wonderful peers. The following quote pretty aptly ties in to the topic of my dissertation (transgression being an upward spiral, never mind) and to my enduring intrigue in human limitation:
‘I think it’s a mistake to lose one’s sense of death, even one’s fear of death. Isn’t death the boundary we need? Doesn’t it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit’.
So there’s been an airborne toxic event, one fella teaches Hitler Studies, and plenty of pagetime has been given to the dissection of filmic car-crashes (as re-affirming, rather than crass). There’s been many typically obtuse philosophical conversations with Jack’s son Heinrich. Then there’s been the biggest plotline, I suppose — that of Dylar. Dylar is a sort of undeterminable, (un)achingly precise drug that negates one’s fear of death. And that is what the narrative progressively revolves around: negotiating that primal understanding of mortality whilst trying to get on with it all.
On the topic of death, actually, I remember being told to step outside of a hotel room when I was what? 6? Older? The year or moment or location eludes me, but I remember coming back in and Ma being in tears and Dad being super sad but supportive and trying to elucidate to two youngish kids that their grandad had died, and me and my sister — well actually I can’t account for her so I won’t lump her in with me — well, I was obviously shocked and saddened but was I so through reading the room? Distraught through a sort of desperate by-proxy, looking at my own mother in bits and then glancing to my sister (and I can see my face now in some sort of out-of-body retrospective way) trying to get a read on the gravity of the fact, of what death actually ultimately spells out besides its totality? It’s so very odd looking back on it now. Was it my first real experience of death? Must’ve been. My first memory of it, at least. The fringes of my recall are hazy but I can make that much out, and I remember the sort of muted, docile vibe the next day. There was a big lawn out the front of the B&B or guesthouse or whatever it was we were staying at (big white building, I think). The lawn had freshly mown grass on it and my sister and I ran ahead playing and jostling and all the rest of it, and the freshly mown grass got into the little gaps between our shoes and our feet, and we went on, and I remember my Ma and my Pa walking behind hand in hand.
So White Noise is a provocative piece, yes. Give it a go.
Crime & Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Justifies in every line its revered position in the literary canon. I see no great merit treading on the toes of countless thousand scholars, for they’ve delved into and ruminated on its themes far better than I’d ever be able to. LET ME SAY THIS. The depth of its philosophy, and the myriad of moral questions only served to heighten my misunderstanding and wonder of the world. Lashings of gasoline. Time after time, as well! Fuel to the fire of gnawing, recurring interior questions and patches of upset. Timeless prose that steps beyond its context and into the heart of the human condition. Lyrical passages and points that one can apply wholeheartedly to modern day soul-searching, to modern day incarceration, to modern day woes. I was struck by Raskolnikov’s outlook on action and consequence, and the arguments for determinism. I was, during this series of days, I guess, feeling a lack of control.
Notes from Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The unceasing river of thought and emotion that has led to this point right here is likely to remain just as unceasing, perhaps with a somehow heightened pace or ferocity of ceaselessness over the next, hm, 60 odd years. Adulthood. ClassSSSSsss. A horrid hyperbolic exclamation to open some literary commentary but what less can be expected when the focus of attention is Notes from Underground. I have read this grim little wonder three or four times, and am yet to figure out whether the writing/speech/questions in its pages give rise to new interests and pursuits, or whether they entirely dampen any sense of individuality I may have clung on to. Why so?
Well, because Dostoyevsky — in covering the isolation, destitution, alienation and anger of our unnamed narrator — points to the matters that dwell in nastier corners of every heart. His concerns about society are just as apt, just as painful and pertinent now as they were over 150 years ago, in a different language, culture and country. This very fact could prompt me to focus my attention somewhere other than the page (exciting!), because the prose in this novella — as in other canon-defining wonders — is just too good to replicate or overcome (bleak). Goodness me Fyodor, you really did have one of the most ingenious, articulate literary minds, didn’t you? Huh! Didn’t you!!!! But hang on why on earth would I stop scribing? Why would I make haste while the sun hides behind a dense cloud? A lot of the writing I do is a remedy for memory, no doubt, but there’s more to it than that. There must be? Fortunately I need not consider this at any great length because someone’s done it for me. Here’s a typically existential excerpt for you. Lucky lucky thing,
And also this: why, actually, do I want to write at all? If not for an audience, then couldn’t I simply go over everything just in my mind, without putting it on paper? Right enough. Yet it will somehow be more solemn when put down on paper. There’s something more impressive about it, there will be more judgement of myself, it will be in better style. Besides, I may in fact get some relief from writing it all down. Today, for instance, I am particularly oppressed by a certain memory of long ago. It came to my mind vividly the other day, and ever since then it has stayed with me like an annoying tune that won’t leave you alone. And yet you must get rid of it. I have hundreds of such memories; but at times one will come up out of the hundreds and oppress me. For some reason I think that it will leave me alone once it is written down. Why not try, then? Lastly, I am bored, and I never do anything. And writing things down actually seems like work. They say work makes man kind and honest. Well, there’s a chance, at any rate.
Right on. I never do anything.
No but there’s something therapeutically vital about materialising in words on paper or on screen the invisible, potent strands we call ‘thought’, or ‘worry’, or even ‘memory’. Having something to read back on is important, no? Writing shit down may rejig the strands now and at points in the future, reminding you that you’re more than immediacy; you’re more than the hand that reaches out for something at any given moment.
Notes from Underground is so dark and so utterly conscious of being read that any response bubbling from its cynical turns is already known by the figure with the pen, and thrown back at you with a kind of one-upmanship that at once humbles you and leaves you wanting more. What a tasty little recipe for great literature.
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What a journey.
Dmitry (referred to often as Mitya) is the elder of Fyodor Karamazov’s sons. He is the least graspable and picturable of the offspring in the novel’s earlier stages. Ivan, the middle son, is a writer of revolutionary notions and has the ability to engage/debate with just about anyone. Something of a polymath? An article of his that has come under discussion already is the relationship between the State and the Church. It is in this intelligent, seamless way (and others like it) that Dostoyevsky plops in dense passages of philosophical, political, and theological musing. He doesn’t break the narrative to introduce commentary, it’s all in situ. Alexey (Aloysha) is the youngest of the three, a somewhat enigmatic but altogether respectful character who manages to capture the admiration of nearly everyone he comes into contact with. He is, initially, a religious novice at the monastery of Elder Zossima. Names! Namesy names names. As is typical of Dostoyevsky’s fiction, they come and go thick, fast, thin, narrow, slow, wide, and otherwise. I struggle to keep up. Tiny brain me. Brilliant brain, his.
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It’s exquisitely written. There’s a battle for Katerina between Ivan and Dmitry, and the latter brother also has a thing with Grushenka, and all these characters are nuanced and manipulative, glanced at through the incredibly complex quiet of Alexey, who observes and laments and conspires. Fyodor Karamazov himself is perhaps one of the most wild and repugnant characters I’ve encountered, well, in any literature. The intelligence of Dostoyevsky’s descriptions sit akin to his scrutiny of religious legitimacy, a questioning that motivates and scores the peregrinations of those surrounded by it. Tackling — scrap that — enjoying such a seminal beast of a novel has been a sporadic undertaking. That’s never been my favourite way to read. Unless it's short fiction or vignettes or travel tales. Then it’s fair game, right. But with longer pieces I like to get my conk lost and get a grasp and do a few four hour stints that take me a further 150 pages and then it feels like you’re digesting and digging a piece rather than piecing together patches. Nonetheless.
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A section, chapter, or maybe even entire part of particular note documents the younger life and learnings of Father Zossima. Its persistent, poetic recalls (albeit relayed through the narrator) help elucidate the very course of human and moral existence, covering all the complexities of cause and effect that brings one to being a devoted ascetic monk, a religious figure of nothing but kindliness.
Alas, no masterpiece is so without big decisions and crunchy conflict. Father Zossima dies, and the tumultuous circumstances following his death push Alexey into a state of incredible flux and sensitivity; he seeks out a remarkable mystical encounter with the spiritual essence of his deceased elder, committing himself further to a life of extraordinary devotion to faith and its spread. Meanwhile we’re thrust headfirst into all the qualms and conundrums of Dmitry’s pursuit of Grushenka. The number of names, subplots, relationships and encounters (subtle & grandiose) are enough to make you spin, but I got into a solid habit of flicking back through pages to tales bygone when they once again rise to emotional pertinence. The parables, religious metaphors and psychological study of faith are pervasive and fascinating, serving as a narrative thread that places you and keeps you hooked. There’s something in that.
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Stick with me. By this point, we’re getting to the crux of the action (if such a remarkably rhizomatic affair can be judged to have a ‘crux’). Dmitry has just been picked up in the town where he’d gone to fetch Grushenka from her old lover, and he’s been picked up by officers accusing him of patricide. He did batter Grigory (the father’s beleaguered servant) a bit but, well, and but of course masterfully, there’s a smart little gap in proceedings meaning we don’t know who was the cause of Fyodor Karamazov’s dead body and how it came to rest rigid on its back in his bedroom. We know the delirium of love and of hate, of religion and of atheism, and that humanity can be just as delirious and dangerous irrespective of those allegiances. Hereafter, the narrator starts to oust Ivan as slightly off-mark when it comes to sanity, for he’s having conversations with an apparition — a smart devil's advocate. So the Dad’s dead, the eldest son is in the throes of questing and prosecution, the middle son is losing it, and the youngest is still mourning the death of his spiritual guide. Nice content.
It is a novel that manages to explore the beauty and cruelty of family, love, faith and more, each in astonishing complexity and somehow in equal measure. The final hundred or so pages document the arguments of defence and prosecution at Mitya’s trial, and are as remarkable as the many hundred that precede them. The trial becomes less about the patricide itself and more about a remarkable potential of doubt, about the ability of the human spirit to interpret information, to dissect and explore it, about the innumerable strands at work, a network in fact, within that very human spirit. Dostoyevsky’s work is in many ways a case of its own, a valuation of the workings of belief, drawing on evidence (empirical and otherwise) as well as all the frailties and fallacies of human emotion. A marvellous passage towards the end — spoken by the eloquent defence attorney Fetyukovich — covers the semantics of fatherhood, of earning the right, the role, not just by begetting a child but doing a duty by it. As an author and as a thinker, Dostoyevsky deserves the title ‘father’, and in as close to a God related way, too, for not just the writing he produces, but for the centuries of provocation it has stirred, and continues to stir.
It is an absolute pleasure. I don’t need to say that its acclaim is justified; such a confirmation is a callous underappreciation of its brilliance. For damn certain, Dostoyevsky is up there with Huxley on the list of my favourite authors. All I read of his pushes me to question and cherish life.
Opening Skinner's Box
Lauren Slater
Opening Skinner’s Box should be rebranded Opening Sam’s Eyes or Stimulating Sam’s Brain, despite its insular specificity and the 10/10 likelihood that such a move would alienate potential readers the world over.
What’s it about? What is it? How did it do that? What do you see? What’s that squidgy thing up there got to say for itself then?
Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. This book covers some of them. It covers them real captivating n that. So if you’re wrapped up comfy and want to let your brain let your eyes trace words across a page and prompt thought about the very thing allowing it all to happen, then delve into these smart stories of social pressure, authoritarian attitudes, diffusion of responsibility, behaviourism, predetermined decision-making, truth shading, lie rendering, and much more alike. It’s a very well written account of inquisitive minds, some pathologies, some hasty experimentation, and some enduring discoveries. Why’s it well written, you ask. Well because she wrote it well. Descriptive flair, meet readability and wisdom. You will be forming a new vigilante group. We want you to go out and flick the patellas of anyone missing a beat. Accessible language, oui si yes, but also intricate and detailed and grounded in some remarkable science.
WHAT IS MORE INTERESTING THE BRAIN? There would be nothing? Anthropic.
From Slater’s ‘conclusion’, I noted this:
‘What is science? Is psychology science? Is it fiction? Is it philosophy?...the experiments, many of them anyway, may be best understood as kinetic philosophy, philosophy in action’.
No need to comment on that. Have a pleasant day.
HHhH
Laurent Binet
A non-fictional account of the deplorable action and eventual assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Nazi’s secret services, intertwined with passages by the author on how he came about the information necessary to write the book, and his own personal struggle with remaining true to what’s deemed historically accurate. I studied this book in my Creative Non-Fiction module. It is excellent. It is. Not only in outlining the heritage and motives of Heydrich, but also in providing the reader with an idea of what can be faced by one attempting to write about history with intelligence and truth, but also with flair and drama.
Binet managed to do both of the things that he professed to want to do:
1. Stay true to his subject matter: I was taken aback by the depth of research, the richness of knowledge of Heydrich, his numerous heartless inferiors and, of course, his few barbaric superiors. Operation Anthropoid is not something I was familiar with in any sense, so it was, in a bitter sense, pleasant to learn of Gabcik and Kubis and Valcik and their selfless heroics. The pertinence of history and its forgotten folk, immortalised.
2. Allow the form to flourish: There are certain artistic privileges in the craft of writing a novel. In fact, there is complete, baffling freedom. Many of these liberties are not necessarily applicable to the writing of historical or creative non-fiction. What this text did was provide a grand ol’ guideline for what kind of issues one may face when tackling the non-rewritable valleys of history. Yet he also does it with complete aplomb; fillers, embellishments and conjectures are respectful and remarkable, giving the story an otherwise impossible roundedness.
Invisible Monsters
Chuck Palahniuk
Palahniuk was one of my favourite writers for a very long time on account of his crass and classic nihilism. Wonder-provoking stuff. Blessed be the complete pointlessness. People may or may not know Palahniuk as the author of Fight Club, which Fincher took and turned and enhanced with tight direction and a stellar cast. Invisible Monsters first became apparent to me before I’d even read that prior book or seen its movie. In my early twenties, I guess it was (thus I can only conclude that I was late to the party), I became rather immersed in the pop-punk, electronica, baroque mingling genius of A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Doesn’t take a bunch of rudimentary research to find that many of the album’s fantastic lyrics were inspired by this novel and this writer. I think it’s up there with the quickest I’ve read something, and yet I felt so reluctant to finish that when I got to the penultimate page I turned it upside down and read it all backwards in gobbledygook, just for the fun and games and so I could write it down here. So here’s a review of Invisible Monsters, backwards and upside down.
Palahniuk captures such a spectrum of modern day concerns, from psychological frailty to gender, and from the vacuous modelling industry (albeit in absurd irony) to sexual abuse. His characters are multi-dimensional yet inconsequential in the wake of the subject matter. I get the feeling they are designed as vessels for raw truths, conduits to literary takeaways. Come to think of it…isn’t that all characters ever are? Isn’t that all any of us ever are?
Choke
Chuck Palahniuk
And so continues the agonising ease with which you can access Palahniuk’s language and societal scrutiny processes. Another novel that borders on being irritatingly compelling. Think I missed lunch two days in a row because I was incapable of placing it down on the arm of the chair for longer than, say, four and a half minutes. Oh god yeah if you’re reading it of an evening and you’re about two thirds through it the chances of you being bothered to go and cook dinner are minimal, so you just scran on some artichokes in oil or some wafer thin ham straight out the packet. With both, you make sure you’re chewing good and proper. Or do you?
In this novel sits pretty the familiar, Palahniukian (?) essence of cynicism. Customarily self-loathing and bleak, Victor Mancini is a sex addict and con artist that actively plays out as though he’s choking half way through meals to lure a ‘Good Samaritan’, who he then goes on to exploit. Mancini, it seemed to me, was a product not so much of his incessantly depressing environment (a calculation that can be pointed at many of Palahniuk’s characters), but rather of his incessantly deplorable matriarch. Despite all of his eyebrow-raising takes on the world, you’re somehow, anyhow inclined to sympathise with him, principally on account of the way he recounts his youth. Of course, as plopped down on page, this guy is a ginormous con man and certifiable piece of shit, rendering him slap bang in the heart of unreliable narrator territory. The result? You come out of it not quite knowing what to think. Aaaand that’s precisely why I love the author so much. Chuck Palahniuk’s works are a major reason that I honed in on ‘transgressional fiction’ in my final year of study. I wrote my dissertation on it. That achingly human sense that we roam around with odd and widely-accepted limits set against us. Limits of conduct, physicality, achievement. To transgress is to overcome, to shun perceived norms and perhaps even veer into the realm of ‘taboo’. What better basis for compelling writing? What better grounds for fascinating living?
Requiem for a Dream
Hubert Selby Jr.
Make no mistake, this is a disturbing and damn good depiction of a dark corner of contemporary society. Addiction in its numbness and its grittiness. Addiction in its perpetual cruelty and its fleeting, vacuous joy. Good god with a barrel of small feet, the thing is just wrought with so-called “limits”, but very few remain by the end. A barricade of taboos are explored, flirted with, transgressed and ultimately dissolved in a dizzying run of degradation by the four core protagonists, spanning everything from heroin and sex to diet pills. A regular frenzy of ideologies and imagined societal constraints that they’re either conscious and discarding of or entirely oblivious to.
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The style and vernacular are more difficult components to analyse. Hubert Selby Jr. spurted the work out in a sort of mild mania befitting of its contents, opting for swift drafting and high-speed scenes over adherence to grammatical norms.
We trace four New Yorkers as they lose their way, succumbing to their (perceived) nefarious inclinations and going on to frequent, in various degrees, institutions of therapy and rehabilitation, parties of baseless debauchery, dark corners and sooty social circles. If you want a nice hit of bleakness for a few days one sunny British summer, delve into it. If you’ve not yet — watch the movie. Aronofsky squeezes like four times the average number of cuts into a movie, with sharp, smash shifts that allude to frenetic desire and the hopeless hook of vice. Cast is crazy. Clint Mansell’s score is a stirring, haunting wonderpiece.
Chasing the Scream
Johann Hari
This one ‘ere be one of the most difficult books to put down since some Palahniuk affairs of yesteryear. It contains not only incredible, immersive, and thoroughly informed non-fiction writing, but the subject matter — well, let’s just say it is or should be of profound interest to anyone a) of this generation and b) the inclination to think:
Drugs.
What I hadn’t realised until I read it was just how rife the apparent ‘issue’ of drugs has been throughout history, and just how the last century’s War on Drugs has made matters significantly worse than pre-prohibition. That’s obviously the author’s polemic, but it’s also perhaps mine. Case studies include biographical accounts of leading figures (both on the prohibition side and its drug-using/selling counterpart) in the War, such as Harry Anslinger and Arnold Rothstein. Hari articulates fascinating plights and personal politics, from street-users and addicts around the world to staunch policymakers. And they touch a nerve. We trace the powerplays of Mexican cartels and New York corner runners, as well as the work of Portuguese reformists and the somewhat glittering national response to decriminalisation there. Reading it is to re-think and to re-evaluate. It paints the notion of addiction in a more nuanced yet clinically clear way, from the outset, than the view of most governments and so many of the general population…
In short, it’s one of the most insightful journalistic pieces I’ve read in a long time, if not ever. I had a strong debate with my parents about the issue of drug legality (or lack thereof), and what could be done to change the seemingly hopeless, perpetually worsening issue. I am with Hari — in the camp FOR decriminalisation/altogether reforming our approach to drugs and addiction. I’m in this camp one third because of my own experience, one third because of the things I have seen, and a strong final third because his argument is so articulate and irrefutable.
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(Yes I am aware Hari has a pretty cloudy past in terms of journalistic veracity, and there's no doubt that this piece isn't a tell-all, be-all bible for the issue, but it covers key theories and postulations we shouldn't ignore).
It seems mindless to continue persecutions and prosecutions and ostracisation that only widen disparities between addicts and those enforcing laws on them. Being unable to get a job because of a criminal record courtesy of having a small bag of weed on you (a hyperbolic example, but a legitimate one) means you’re not going to spend your time working and contributing to society; there’s potential there for falling into deeper issues of addiction with stronger drugs. Not regulating drug provision means ‘criminals’ and gangs are in charge. The drugs they sell are both more impure and more dangerous. People lose their lives/fall deeper. It goes on. Absolute minefield of a topic and you’re unlikely to ever agree entirely with someone you discuss it with, but this book traces and takes down so many poignant points vis à vis the War on Drugs. I have recommended it to a lot of people.