Grrrrr

Včeraj sem bil na knjižnem sejmu v Cankarjevem domu. Bilo mi je kar všeč, sejem je malo večji kot prejšnja leta in se je razlezel na tri nadstropja namesto dosedanjih dveh. Videl sem precej knjig z lepimi popusti, med njimi dve ali tri take, ki sem jih pred kakšnim mesecem kupil po običajni ceni; upam, da me bo to izučilo, da se bom v prihodnje izogibal kupovanju knjig v zadnjih mesecih pred sejmom.

Močno me mikajo Sovretovi Stari Grki, ki so zdaj s popustom za 6500 SIT namesto dosedanjih nekaj čez 9000. Mogoče bom podlegel skušnjavi in jih šel v nedeljo kupit, saj bo vstop na sejem takrat prost. Po drugi strani je vendarle bolje, če ne zapravim še toliko dodatnega denarja, sploh glede na to, da je Sovre to napisal nekje v 30. letih in je tale sedanja izdaja le nespremenjen ponatis, takorekoč faksimile. Prvič je izšla 1939 pri Mohorjevi družbi, tale ponatis pa je izdala Slovenska matica leta 2002; no, zdajle sem pogledal v COBISS in vidim, da je letošnji ponatis (2006) tam naveden posebej. Edina razlika, ki sem jo na prvi pogled opazil med tem in tistim iz 2002, je ta, da tisti iz 2002, če se prav spomnim, ni imel ščitnega ovitka, tale iz 2006 ga pa ima. Kakorkoli že, pri takšni knjigi človeka skrbi, da so od leta 1939 zgodovinarji o Grčiji verjetno ugotovili tudi že kaj novega in bi bilo nemara bolje prebrati kakšno novejšo knjigo na to temo.

Ampak, kakorkoli že, vse to ni razlog, zakaj sem se sploh spravil k pisanju tega posta. Razlog je v tem, da sem eno knjigo na sejmu vendarle kupil, in sicer Hölderlinovega Hiperiona. To knjigo sem imel že lep čas v mislih kot nekaj, kar bi rad sčasoma prebral. Res je sicer, da znajo biti tile nemški romantiki precej nekoherentni; pred časom sem prebral nekaj strani Novalisa in se zgolj čudil, razumel pa čisto nič. Ampak, kakorkoli, ne morem se upreti knjigi, ki vsebuje tako čudovit stavek, kot je: „človek je bog, kadar sanja, berač, kadar razmišlja“. Ne vem točno, kje sem prvič pobral ta stavek in izvedel, da je iz Hiperiona, ampak klofute razumu so bile pri meni vedno zelo toplo sprejete in tako sem si tudi Hiperiona nemudoma želel prebrati.

Tale slovenski prevod je izšel leta 1998; odtlej sem ga že večkrat videl v knjigarnah, vendar se mi je zdel, če se ne motim, predrag — nekako imam v spominu, da je moral stati med 5 in 7 jurji, nisem pa povsem prepričan. Enkrat sem si ga celo izposodil v knjižnici, vendar ga nisem utegnil prebrati. No, pred nekaj tedni sem ga spet videl v knjigarni za dobre tri jurje; pri tej ceni se mu je bilo res že težko upirati. Tule na knjižnem sejmu pa sem ga videl naprodaj za pičlih 2100 SIT in ga brez oklevanja kupil.

No, lahko si mislite moje razočaranje, ko sem prišel domov, vzel knjigo iz papirnate darilne vrečke, v kateri so mi jo dali, in ugotovil, v kakšnem stanju je ščitni ovitek. Na eni strani malo umazan in že rahlo pomečkan, pri enem od prepogibov spodaj kakšna dva centimetra zatrgan, nekje pa se je videla še silhueta nekakšnega listka ravno take oblike, kakršni so ponavadi listki s ceno v kakšnih trgovinah. OK, to slednje je definitivno krivda tistih, ki so mi knjigo prodali; za to, da je ovitek pomečkan in raztrgan (pa tudi platnice so na vogalih že rahlo zguljene), pa sem sprva krivil sebe, ker sem knjigo s tisto vrečko vred brez posebnih ceremonij zbasal v nahrbtnik in le-tega še ves dan prevažal naokoli v košari na kolesu. Mislil sem si, da se je knjiga pač pri tem kaj poškodovala in zgulila.

Potem pa sem na tistem mestu, kjer je ovitek raztrgan, videl, da je z notranje strani zalepljen s selotejpom! Tega pa definitivno nisem jaz nalepil tja. Zato močno sumim, da tudi za pomečkanost in umazanost ovitka nisem kriv jaz, pač pa se je knjiga preprosto njim že od leta 1998 valjala po kakšnem skladišču in so mi jo zdaj takole perfidno podtaknili.

Tudi za silhueto listka s ceno se je izkazalo, da ni posledica tega (kot sem sprva domneval), da je bil nekoč na knjigi nalepljen tak listek, kasneje pa so ga odlepili (to bi bilo pravzaprav čudno, saj naše knjigarne, naj jih pobere kuga, za razliko od tujih še niso slišale za takšne listke s ceno, ki bi se jih dalo s knjige odlepiti, brez da bi se to na knjigi kaj poznalo). Listek je bil namreč nalepljen na notranji strani ovitka, sčasoma pa je, verjetno zaradi lepila ali pa zaradi same debeline listka, nastala tudi tista silhueta na zunanji strani. Vrag si ga vedi, v čem je korist tega, da se na notranjo stran ovitka nalepi listek s ceno, sploh glede na to, da na tem listku cene ni --- listek je popolnoma prazen.

Skratka: sram vas bodi, svojat novorevijaška!!!!! Doslej jih nisem maral zaradi političnih razlogov, zdaj imam pa še dosti boljši razlog. Če kupujem knjigo od založnika, potem pričakujem, da je v popolnem stanju, oz. da če ni, pričakujem, da me bodo na to ob nakupu opozorili, ne pa da prodajajo zguljeno knjigo z zmečkanim in raztrganim ovitkom in se pri tem delajo neumne.

Jaz sem pravzaprav tam na sejmu prinesel h blagajni tisti izvod, ki so ga imeli razstavljenega na polici. Potem pa mi je ena od prodajalk samoiniciativno prinesla drugega iz neke skladovnice v ozadju, kjer so imeli še po več izvodov vsake knjige. To se mi je zdelo takrat prav dobro, ker sem si mislil, da bo tisti izvod v boljšem stanju od onega, ki je bil prej razstavljen na polici in ga je pretipala in prelistala že kopica ljudi. Potem pa dobim takšno skrpucalo. Fej.

Nauk zgodbe: ne zaupaj založnikom, pa če so še tako ugledni, in knjigo pošteno z vseh koncev preglej in pretipaj, preden jo kupiš.

Grrr.

P.S. Vem, vem, cvrl se bom v peklu, ker sem pravkar napisal skoraj 6 KB dolgo jeremijado o ohranjenosti ščitnega ovitka, za vsebino knjige mi pa dol visi. See if I care. No, saj bo tudi vsebina nekoč še prišla na vrsto. Upam, da bom vsaj kaj razumel.

P.P.S. Zdaj sem ovitek ovil v brodarta in je takoj videti malo lepše :-) Čeprav se seveda še vedno vidi, da je raztrgan in zamazan, če ga pogledaš malo pobliže.

OMG kar na pogrebu

Kaj se zgodi, ko se linka na dve različni novici pojavita eden nad drugim in se zazdita kot ena sama, zelo bizarna novica:

Kurioziteta

Včeraj sem v knjigarni Cankarjeve založbe pod Nebotičnikom opazil, da je očitno izšel slovenski prevod Mein Kampfa — videti je, da je to sploh prvi prevod te knjige v slovenščino. No, zanimiva stvar je, da je to knjigo izdala neka obskurna založba — Mavrica — za katero nisem doslej še nikoli slišal. Deluje očitno v Celju in, kot kaže, trenutno sploh nima web strani. Na nekem kazalu sem našel link na www.zal-mavrica.si, vendar ta stran zdaj trenutno sploh ne obstaja, stare verzije na archive.org pa dajejo vtis, da se je ta „založba“ ukvarjala predvsem s prodajo nekakšnih zlatih kovancev (z motivi, ki jih je narisala Irena Polanec) tam okoli leta 2000.

Knjiga je drugače precej debela in nezaslišano draga — stane skoraj dvanajst jurjev. Navzven je precej kilavega videza, ker so platnice zelo klavrne rjave barve (po drugi strani pa ima takšen izbor barve kljub vsemu nek smisel, saj je bila rjava barva nacistom konec koncev precej pri srcu). Na eni od prvih strani piše, da je izšla v nakladi 300 izvodov, vsak izvod pa je ročno oštevilčen (tisti, ki sem ga videl v knjigarni, je bil menda številka 58 ali nekaj takega). Meni se to zdi tako, kot da se je založnik odločil ‘to make a virtue of necessity’ — kaj dosti večje naklade najbrž tako ali tako ne bi mogel prodati, ceno bi najbrž tudi težko znižal, pa bo pač poskusil na ta način dati knjigi pridih ekskluzivnosti in mogoče privabiti s tem med kupce še kakšnega bibliofila.

Je pa drugače to po vsem videzu sodeč (nisem pa se v knjigo kdovekako poglabljal) čisto bona fide prevod (prevajalec je neki Marjan Furlan, ki je sodeč po COBISSu doslej prevajal predvsem razne stvari s področja zdravstva), nenavadno se mi je zdelo le to, da je knjiga popolnoma brez kakršnih koli opomb ali spremne besede ali predgovora ali česarkoli podobnega — takšno knjigo, kot je izšla zdaj, bi človek prej pričakoval v primeru, če bi izšla že tam nekje leta 1925, enako kot original, in bi bila pač z vidika bralca to v bistvu neka čisto navadna (in precej dolgočasna) knjiga spominov nekega manjšega in precej obskurnega nemškega politika. Tipografsko tale izdaja ni nevemkakšna mojstrovina, očitati pa ji pravzaprav tudi ne morem ničesar hudega. Stavljena je po mojem v kakšnem timesu ali nečem podobnem. Založnik si sicer po mojem zasluži pohvalo, ker se je uspel upreti skušnjavi po uporabi cheap thrills v obliki kakšne gotice ali kakšnih modernističnih pisav iz 30. let ali pa kakšnih kričečih barvnih kombinacij z veliko rdeče, bele in črne ali česa podobnega. Knjiga je v bistvu vpadljiva zgolj po tej svoji (takšna je vsaj videti) premišljeni in načrtni nevpadljivosti — kot da bi se trudila biti čisto navadna knjiga.

Pred časom sem že razmišljal, ali bi se lotil kakšnega angleškega prevoda, po možnosti kakšnega s kakšnimi koristnimi opombami, vendar sem si vedno premislil, ker sem že na toliko koncih slišal, da je ta knjiga napisana v zelo dolgočasnem slogu. Če bi se izkazalo, da je res dolgočasna, bi bilo škoda tratiti čas zanjo (sploh glede na debelino knjige in glede na to, da so dandanašnji zgodovinarji pravzaprav napisali dovolj drugih, zanimivejših knjig o tistem obdobju). No, sem pa vsekakor radoveden, če bo šel tale slovenski prevod dobro v promet in če si bo založnik z njim vsaj povrnil stroške prevajanja in tiska.

P.S. Iskanje naslova „Mein Kampf“ v COBISSu odkrije še nekaj bizarnosti, npr. neko 28 strani dolgo diplomsko nalogo z naslovom Mein Kampf ali Boj mladega Belšaka (tudi avtor se piše Belšak), pa knjigo nekega Adolfa Štormana z naslovom Mein Kampf ali nekoliko drugače o slovenski demokraciji. Potem pa je tu še Mein Kampf gegen die Inflation, ki jo je v samozaložbi izdal neki Josef Vastmann leta 1980 (ta publikacija me zelo močno spominja na dona Kihota — temu bi se dalo, če bi bil res živel, pripisati avtobiografijo v stilu Moj boj z mlini na veter, tale z inflacijo se sliši pa precej podobno...). :)) Drugače pa so naše knjižnice kar izdatno založene z nemškimi izdajami Mein Kampfa, in sicer iz let 1931—43, kasnejše pa nobene; ugibam, da ga v nemško govorečih državah najbrž ne smejo ponatiskovati. Pač pa je videti, da so nemško besedilo ponatisnili na Hrvaškem leta 2002 (imajo pa tudi svoj prevod iz 1999).

Hot Panda Action

Kitajci predvajajo pandam pornografijo, da bi jih spodbudili k razmnoževanju. Domnevam, da je le še vprašanje časa, kdaj jih bodo začeli zalagati tudi z viagro :))

V isti sapi so nekoga obsodili na dosmrtno ječo, ker je vzpostavil pornografski web site za ljudi.

Zaključek o tem, kdo ima na Kitajskem glavno besedo, se ponuja takorekoč sam od sebe.

I, for one, welcome our new panda overlords.

P.S. Mogoče bi moral našim novim kosmatim črno-belim lisastim gospodarjem nekdo razložiti, da za razliko od pand pri ljudeh ni prav nič nujno, da porast pornografije pripelje tudi do večjega razmnoževanja (za to slednje se sicer strinjam, da zna biti pri državi s toliko prebivalci, kot jih ima Kitajska, res rahlo neugodno).

P.P.S. Hot man-on-deer action in Minnesota

P.P.P.S. In unrelated news: Merger to create world's largest bankrupt airline :)

BOOK: Nikos Kazantzakis, "Freedom and Death" [2/4]

Nikos Kazantzakis: Freedom and Death. Translated by Jonathan Griffin. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. 057117857X. 472 pp.

[Continued from last week.]

The title

The translator and/or publishers seem to have taken some freedom with the title; the original title is something more like Captain Michales, after the central character in the book; but the English translation is titled Freedom or Death (the U.S. edition) or Freedom and Death (the U.K. edition).

But I don't really disapprove of this change of title. The central subject of the book, in my opinion, is the Cretan rising against the Turks in 1889, not just the story of Captain Michales personally, and so the translator's change of title seems fairly appropriate.

“Freedom or death” was the motto used by the Greeks in their 19th-century efforts to achieve independence: first in the 1820s, in the war with which Greece broke away from the Turkish Empire; but later also in the numerous subsequent risings in Crete, which initially remained part of the Turkish empire after the rest of Greece became independent. According to the Wikipedia, “freedom or death” is still the official motto of the Greek republic.

As for the version that is used as the title of the U.K. edition, “freedom and death”, this alludes to a passage in 14.464–5, where Michales comments that “ ‘that's what I should have written on my banner. That's the true banner of every fighter: Freedom and death! Freedom and death!’ ” I think he is trying to say that a fighter won't be able to avoid death: either he himself will get killed, or his loved ones and his comrades will, and additionally he will himself deal out death, to his enemies. Well, anyway, I think that, while ‘freedom and death’ may be a reasonable motto for an individual hero, ‘freedom or death’ is much better if you are looking for the motto of a national movement as a whole, as the people as a whole are really seeking freedom rather than death.

Freedom and death, nostalgia and melancholy

All this talk about freedom or death, or freedom and death, tends to move me into a melancholy mood. It is touching to think of the innocent days of the 19th century, when it was still possible to think of patriotism as a noble ideal, and when concepts such as a nation's struggle for freedom could inspire admiration rather than merely cynical derision and disgust. Alas, after all the horrors to which the excesses and abuses of patriotism have led in the 20th century, we in the present age are denied this luxury. At least I personally find patriotism to be a regrettable thing, and one that is hard to understand.

It's true that I am reasonably fond of my native country, but that is mainly because I'm used to it; I find its climate congenial to my taste; I am fond of its language because I clearly feel (e.g. everytime I am working on one of these posts in English) that it is the only one in which I am fully functional; and I am fond of its people, of my compatriots, not because they are particularly good or likeable people but because so many of them are f**ked up in ways similar to me. But none of these things can properly be called patriotism. I doubt I would be willing to risk my life in the name of ‘freedom or death’, the way the Cretans do in this novel, if my native country were threatened by some external enemy (or by the threat of an internal dictator, for that matter). And if I shudder at the thought of how miserable I would feel if I had to leave this country at some point and move abroad, this is not due to any patriotic feeling but simply because moving would be so terribly inconvenient and because I doubt that life abroad would be any more enjoyable.

The sort of fervid patriotism that was so deep and widespread in the 19th and even the first part of the 20th century, with flag-waving, chest-beating, declamations of rousing songs and anthems, inspires in me nothing but incomprehension and a vague sense of disgust. Isn't it obvious to everyone how this sort of patriotism facilitates countless wars, persecution and other horrors? And yet it is not at all enjoyable to live with this sort of nihilistic void inside one's heart; and that is why I am touched, sometimes even a tiny bit envious, when I see how, in the innocent days of the early- and mid-19th century, it was possible for people to feel a sense of delight, perhaps even a sense of pride, due to the mere fact that they belonged to some particular ethnic group rather than a different one.

There is another way in which the thought of ‘freedom or death’ fills me with melancholy, although this may be stretching the meaning of the phrase somewhat. ‘Freedom’ can mean many different things, of course; from the way the Greeks used it in their wars of independence, it seems that ‘freedom’ in the phrase ‘freedom or death’ refers chiefly to national freedom, to independence from foreign rule (i.e. Turkish rule in the case of the Greeks). But the other meaning of ‘freedom’ could be personal freedom, the freedom to do as one pleases. (Now of course in some sense the Greeks were also fighting for this; undoubtedly they weren't fighting their war of independence with a view to replacing the rule of a Turkish tyrant with that of a domestic one, but with a view to replacing it by a more democratic system in which the state is prevented from excessively oppresing its people.)

Well, when I think of the phrase ‘freedom or death’ from the point of view of personal freedom, it's sad to think how hollow this phrase rings today. Nowadays, most people have so little freedom as is scarcely worth speaking about. Laws hem us in from all sides; hardly anything one could conceivably wish to do is permitted. In most cases, ‘freedom to do X’ basically means ‘freedom to do X, as long as you don't mind starving, going to prison, or suffering some other sort of heinous consequence’. The vast majority of people are basically slaving their lives away for the benefit of a small handful of the rich. Freedom is beyond our reach, and as for death, we are too cowardly to choose it, either for ourselves (through suicide), or for others (through murder or revolution); and so we are left without both. A thoroughly pointless and miserable life, this.

The Cretans

These passages speak for themselves.

“There are peoples and human beings who call to God with prayers and tears or a disciplined, reasonable self-control—or even curse Him. The Cretans called to him with guns. They stood before God's door and let off rifle shots to make Him hear. ‘Insurrection!’ bellowed the Sultan, when he first heard the shooting, and in raving fury sent Pachas, soldiers and gangs. ‘Insolence!’ cried the Franks, and let loose their warships against the tiny barks that fought, braving death, between Europe, Asia and Africa. ‘Be patient, be reasonable, don't drag me into bloodshed!’ wailed Hellas, the beggar-mother, shuddering. ‘Freedom or death!’ answered the Cretans, and made a din before God's door.” (2.65–6.)

“Bertódulos [. . .] was the first man in Megalokastro [. . .] to have shaved off his moustache. At first the Cretans had supposed that smooth skin natural and were not angry. But as they realised that he shaved, they became furious. That is not possible! He is destroying the order of things! He is mixing up women and men.” (3.96.)

Bertódulos, who is not from Crete originally, finds himself present at one of Michales's week-long drinking sessions: “The eggs had already been eaten, shells and all. Now Captain Michales with a blow from his fist, smashed the pottery egg-cups and distributed them to his guests to eat. [. . .] There are three sorts of men, Bertódulos slowly explained to himself: those who eat eggs without the shells; those who eat eggs with the shells; and those who gobble them up with the shells and the egg-cups as well. Those of the third kind are called Cretans.” (4.128. Although some of us wonder if a change of the last vowel there might not be called for.)

After the ceremony in which Captain Michales and Nuri Bey become blood-brothers: “The two men wiped their knives in their hair and hid them once more in their belts.” (1.28. This is just a step away from this joke...)

Near the end of the book, just before his final stand against the Turks: “He let out a curse, picked up a stone and clasped it till the blood dripped from his hand.” (14.464.)

“Hard of approach, rebellious, harsh was this land. She allowed not a moment of comfort, of gentleness, of repose. Crete had something inhuman about her. One could not tell whether she loved her children or hated them. One thing was certain: she scourged them till the blood flowed.” (13.415. Yup, Crete's a bitch, just see 14.448 :-)) “ ‘What strength is there, what souls! For thousands of years they have struggled in this wilderness of rocks, with hunger, thirst, discord and death. And they don't bow down. They don't even complain. In the deepest hopelessness the Cretan finds redemption.’ ” (13.416.) This last passage seems somewhat inspired by Nietzsche's idea ‘what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger’, which I guess is reasonable as the wikipedia does say that Nietzsche influenced Kazantzakis' work.

Another example of this is Michales's attitude towards the lepers (2.88): “Captain Michales turned his face away. He hated to see illness. ‘Only healthy people ought to live,’ he thought. ‘What use are these?’ “

Michales' relationship with god is about as sullen as you would expect from such a character. “Always when he thought of Crete, abandoned by all, he disputed with God. A violent blasphemy pressed forward to the tip of his tongue. He did not lament before God, he was angry with Him. He asked for no sympathy, he asked for justice. [. . .] ‘But I can't fight it out with Thee, my God,’ he growled between his teeth. ‘So I shall fight it out with men.’ ” (4.147.) Religion seems to be even farther from his mind in the last pages of the book, when just before the final stand against the Turks he looks “up at the uninhabited sky high above” (14.465; this is the same passage in which he comments memorably that for fighters like him it is freedom and death rather than freedom or death).

A related take on god, this time by Michales's father, Séfakas: “ ‘Thou art a Cretan and thou shalt be tried,’ murmured the old man, and closed his eyes. [. . .] How many risings had he lived through? How often had the houses been burned, trees felled, women dishonoured, men killed! And always God had refused to turn His eyes upon Crete./ ‘Is there, anywhere in the world, justice and pity—a God?’ he cried, and struck the slate with his fist. ‘Or is He deaf and merciless?’ ” (11.341.) This passage also illustrates how patriotism in this novel sometimes takes on a nearly quasi-religious, messianic garb. Of course, if somebody said such things now, it would be hilariously funny; but in the context of the novel it works fine because the reader remembers that the story is taking place in the nineteenth century when it was still possible to take patriotism seriously. I suspect the author himself took it seriously, at least to some extent.

Séfakas continues on 11.345: “ ‘We Cretans are not like other people. We have twice as much work to do. In the rest of the world you're a shepherd. You think of nothing but the sheep. [. . .] But a Cretan thinks of Crete as well. And Crete is a great plague! It takes all you have and is always right! It demands of you even your life, and you give it, and are glad to. A great plague it is, you mark my words!’ ”

Michales on other people: “ ‘I'm beginning to think,’ he muttered, ‘that I can only be friends with horses. Yes, if Crete had wolves and boars. . . . Human beings seem to me to be nothing but pitiful idiots.’ ” (4.129.)

Michales to the Pasha's messenger, offering amnesty for him and his men if they give up their insurrection: “ ‘Let all Crete submit if it will, I am not submitting. I sh— on the beard of your Prophet!’ ” (12.379.)

Old Séfakas

Another imposing character illustrating many of the characteristics and attitudes that we saw above ascribed to Cretans generally is the old Captain Séfakas, Michales's father, a grizzled near-centenarian and the veteran of countless uprisings from 1821 onwards. “ ‘[. . .] on his wedding night, so I've heard tell, he broke three beds. Don't laugh, master, I'm telling you the truth.’ ” (13.409.) By the time our novel takes place in 1889, he is of course too old to fight, but he asks one of his grandsons to teach him the capital letters, and then proceeds to paint ‘Freedom or death’ all over his village (11.371, 12.377, 12.398–9).

I found this quite touching — nowadays that everyone is taught to read and write at a very early age, the idea of writing seems somehow obvious and commonplace to us. We hardly ever pause to think what a remarkable and wonderful invention it really is. Séfakas, who learnt to read with no small effort at the age of one hundred, was in a much better position to appreciate it: “After each letter he put his head back and admired his work. His mind could not grasp the mystery of how one could put together little strokes and curves and raise up out of them a voice—a choir of voices. How could those signs speak? Great art Thou, O Lord!/ [. . .] Wherever he found a flat, clean wall or a large door, he stopped and painted on it the magic signs. And a wall, which before had stood dumb and forlorn, now loudly announced its longing, palikare-like.” (12.377. Palikare is glossed by the translator as ‘young warrior’, 1.27.)

At some point during all this painting, he falls off a ladder (12.398–9) and dies a few days later as a result. There are many impressive and even touching passages in the pages dealing with his last days. He keeps his good humour, e.g. he jokes with the carpenter who comes to take the measurements for his coffin (13.418–9: “ ‘I want it of good timber! Have you got walnut?’/ ‘Of course, captain.’/ The old man turned to Thrásaki [his grandson]:/ ‘Can you tell walnut-wood, Thrásaki?’/ ‘That I can, grandad!’/ ‘Good! Well, make sure that Stavrulios doesn't swindle us. I want it made of walnut. Go!’ ”).

Before dying, he also invites three old comrades of his, all veterans of 1821 and the later uprisings, now in their nineties, for one last discussion about the meaning and purpose of life (13.424–35). The first one, Captain Mándakas, briefly recalls the story of his life and concludes that, while there was much fighting and killing, he was doing it for freedom (13.429). The second one, Captain Katsirmas, then recounts his life, which was mostly dedicated to bloodthirsty piracy and which he freely admits had no meaning beyond the simple Hobbesian homo homini lupus. The third one says nothing, but plays for a long time on his fiddle, during which time the old man peacefully expires. I don't pretend to be able to make any heads or tails of all these proceedings, but it was all quite moving to read.

Incidentally, during Mándakas' tale there's a handy list of most if not all the Cretan revolts up to that point: 1829, '34, '41, '54, '78 (13.428). Mándakas keeps the ears of all the enemies he'd killed in battle, preserved in a jar of alcohol. At some point he sat in a Turkish coffeehouse and ordered some charcoal for his pipe, then ran to to the mansion of a Turkish bey and killed him: “ ‘And so I got back to the coffee-house just as the waiter was bringing me the charcoal. [. . .] No one had noticed my absence’ ” (13.426), thereby providing him with a perfect alibi. I wonder if this passage is meant to be a joke at the expense of Turkish waiters, but then I doubt if the Greeks are much speedier.

One thing has to be said for that bloodthirsty corsair, Katsirmas: he is an equal-opportunity misanthrope. “ ‘I've seen millions of black men, millions of yellow men—my eyes brimmed over with them! At first I thought they all stank. I said: ‘Only Cretans smell good. And of the Cretans only the Christians.’ But slowly, slowly, I got used to their stink. I found—I found that we all smell good and stink in the same way. Curse us all!’ ” (13.430–1.)

Another touching scene involving old Séfakas occurs on 11.354–5, where he remembers some events from a previous uprising. His narrative is interspersed by an endless stream of “God rest his soul!” and similar remarks as nearly all the people involved are already dead. This is of course unsurprising, as he's nearly a hundred years old. But I find it somewhat horrible to think how it must feel if one lives to such an advanced age that all the people one used to know in one's younger years are long dead, and the events in which one has been personally involved are regarded by most people as distant history. This begins to show itself even at eighty, I guess, but at a hundred it must be really pronounced.

When he learns that his grandson got married to a Jewish woman, Séfakas turns out to be remarkably tolerant: “ ‘They say you've chosen a Jewess.’/ ‘Yes,’ said Kosmas, looking hesitantly at the old man./ ‘Nothing wrong with that, you fool. They too have souls. One God made us all. You did right. [. . .]’ ” (13.421.)

Another scene where he leaves a very positive impression is on 11.344–5, where, unlike many old people, he doesn't feel that everything is worse than it used to be in the days of his youth: “ ‘[. . .] You'll be even better than your father. Why are you goggling at me? That's what's wanted. Woe to us, if the son doesn't do better than his sire! The world would go to pieces.’ ”

All in all, I think that including a character such as Séfakas was a great idea. The patriotic fervor, to which his demon-obsessed son Michales had succumbed beyond all reasonable proportions, is present in Séfakas but in a saner amount, and his old age and experience impart to his character a mellowness and a humanity which Michales and most of the other hot-blooded heroes of fighting age in this novel sorely lack.

[To be continued in a few days.]

BOOK: Nikos Kazantzakis, "Freedom and Death" [1/4]

Nikos Kazantzakis: Freedom and Death. Translated by Jonathan Griffin. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. 057117857X. 472 pp.

Ah, Crete. Where men are men, women are scarce, and sheep are nervous. Well, scratch the latter two, there are just as many women as men in this book, and there isn't any bestiality, but the first one definitely holds — at least half the men in this book are walking talking unreconstructed textbook cases of both acute and chronic testosterone poisoning.

Before reading this book, my only encounter with Kazantzakis was the fact that I once saw the film Zorba the Greek, based on one of his novels and with Anthony Quinn in the title role. It's the movie that made sirtaki music famous. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and the last scene, with Zorbas and Basil dancing like mad on the ruins of their failed mining facility, is one of my favourite movie scenes altogether. Based on this good experience with the film, I always had a long-term intention of eventually reading some of Kazantzakis's books. Thus when I saw this copy of Freedom and Death in a bookstore at a wonderfully low price, and also saw that the blurb on the back cover seems quite promising, I bought it without much hesitation.

The story

<very mild spoiler warning>

The novel is set in Crete in the late 19th century, when it was still a part of the Turkish empire. Most of the inhabitants are Greek, although there are also some Turks (even in the countryside). At some point it is mentioned that the Turkish sultan had been required, at some earlier occasion (probably due to some uprising or some intercession by the European powers), to grant a few concessions or privileges to the Cretan Greeks, and indeed it does not seem that they are being oppressed in some particularly heinous way. They seem to be largely permitted to live according to their own principles, their freedom of religion is not interfered with; they have a school with a Cretan schoolmaster, and I guess that the education there takes place in Greek, as there is no mention of the Turkish language being used there.

Anyway, despite all this, the Cretan Greeks are rather fanatically determined to liberate themselves from Turkish rule; every now and then, they organise an uprising against the Turks, although these risings are always suppressed (2.65–6; references will be to chapter and page number because different editions probably have different pagebreaks). At the time when the novel opens, there has been an uneasy peace for several years.

Much of the novel shows very nicely how the next uprising breaks out. It isn't really some concerted, premeditated action. Rather, there is always a certain amount of violence and crime, much of it crossing the ethnic lines, and much of it motivated by the idea of taking revenge for some previous act.

One day in 1865, Captain Séfakas, a Greek, met a Turkish magnate, Hani Ali, and should have dismounted from his donkey in sign of respect, as required by the Turkish-imposed custom at the time; but he refused, and Ali therefore struck him a hefty blow with his whip. The next year, during the rising of 1866, Séfakas' eldest son Kostaros came across Ali during the course of the fighting and killed him (1.25). Ali's son, Nuri Bey, was just a child at the time, but now, more than twenty years later, he is a grown-up and ready to take revenge (2.86–7). However, Kostaros being dead by now (1.23), and Séfakas a very old man, Nuri Bey fights with Kostaros' brother Manúsakas and kills him (6.194–201).

Now, this last thing was in fact a perfectly decent duel in which Nuri had also been seriously wounded, so one would perhaps naively expect that this settles the matter, but in fact it doesn't. Manúsakas' brother Michales considers taking revenge on Nuri Bey (7.242–9), despite the fact that they had become blood-brothers in their youth (1.27–8); but he is prevented from doing this by the nature of Nuri Bey's injuries: due to an injury in the groin area, Nuri's genitalia have become useless, which from the point of view of the arch-patriarchal attitudes to which all the Cretans, both Greeks and Turks, subscribe, means that he is “ ‘no longer a man’ ” (7.243, see also 6.203), a fate for all practical purposes worse than death (“ ‘How can I take vengeance on a maimed man? What sort of vengeance is that? What does death mean for him?’ ”, 7.243). Nuri, unable to bear the shame of his injury, commits suicide (7.249).

Words of these events get around, heads grow hotter on both sides, leading to more violence (among people who have no personal involvement in the original feud but are motivated by ethnic hatred; 7.238, 8.253–5).

There are, both among the Turks and among the Greeks, some people that try to calm things down, and others that try to incite yet more violence. Eventually, massacres begin to occur (8.271, 9.279–286) and the situation escalates to such a degree that a number of Greek captains meet and decide that a full-scale uprising is the most reasonable thing to do at this point (9.297–304); so the Greeks dig up their hidden stores of weapons (most of which had already served them well in countless earlier uprisings and are by now rather hilariously antiquated, 9.304) and take to the mountains. The Turks, for their part, send a few shiploads of soldiers from mainland Turkey to help quell the uprising (8.267).

The rest of the uprising consists of some fighting and a hefty amount of senseless violence against civilians, especially the Greeks in the countryside; it seems to be a matter of course that their villages will be burnt, and many of the inhabitants killed if they do not hide in time from the Turkish soldiers. Anyway, little by little the Greeks realize that the Turkish army is too strong for them, and news reach them that they cannot expect any concrete support from mainland Greece, nor from the Great Powers (not even Russia, to which some of them look with so much hope).

The Turks are also interested in ending the uprising quickly, preferrably with the Greeks laying down their arms voluntarily rather than only after a complete and utter massacre, because the latter might attract unwelcome attention and interference from the Great Powers (cf. the aftermath of the 1875 rebellion in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which led to a war with Russia and then to the Berlin congress of 1878); 14.464. So most of the Greek captains and their warriors accept the offers of amnesty, bury their weapons again and return to the same uneasy peace that had been broken a few months earlier.

Set against this backdrop, the novel presents a number of little strands of story as we encounter numerous characters several times in the book and thus get the chance to observe their path through the tumultous events. The novel gives us many interesting glimpses into the life of a Cretan town in the late 19th century. However, the person who gets the most attention in the novel is one Captain Michales.

Initially one has the impression that Michales is just a very ardent patriot, somewhat more fanatical than the majority perhaps, but little by little we come to realize that his obsessiveness transcends any sane definition of patriotism; he often gives us the impression of a person possessed by demons, and he reminded me somewhat of the sort of romantic heroes that one encounters in Byron or Lermontov.

He seems to pretty much wilfully deny himself any joy or pleasure in life, any lighthearted fun, as if this somehow hurt the cause that the lives for, i.e. Cretan independence from the Turks (3.92). He is rather cold towards his wife (see e.g. 1.42), and as for his daughter: “From the day when she had completed her twelfth year and her bosom was becoming full, her father had forbidden her to come into his sight. For three years he had not seen her.” (1.39. The consequences of this policy can be seen in 6.189: “ ‘Who's that nice girl?’ he asked her [i.e. his wife] and indicated Renió [his daughter] with a glance. ‘I've seen her somewhere. But where?’/ Katerina sighed:/ ‘She's your daughter.’/ Captain Michales bent his head and made no sound after that.” — Curiously, the daughter seems to have internalized all this patriarchal oppression to the point where she is actually quite fond of him despite all this: “She was afraid of her father, but she loved him and was proud of him. What he did seemed to her right, and if she had been a man she would have done the same. She too would have wanted to see only her son—the girls could just creep away as soon as they heard the door open and him coming.” 1.39; and see also 1.45, 3.112, 4.134.)

Every few months Michales invites a few acquaintances to a feast lasting a whole week, during which he forces them (as well as himself) to drink almost without interruption; but the drink doesn't seem to affect him, and he merely sits glumly and enjoys a kind of dark sense of contempt at the sight of the antics and carousings of his drunken companions (3.111–2, 4.126–32).

<spoiler warning>

He similarly feels contempt for his fellow Cretan patriot Captain Polyxigis, with whom they fought together in a previous uprising. Michales respects him as a fighter and fellow patriot, but despises his cheerful disposition and his fondness for women (4.135). To Michales' disgust, Polyxigis even begins an affair with Eminé (3.109–10, 5.174–5), the wife and later the widow of Nuri Bey, the same Turkish aga whom we encountered earlier in this synopsis. Nor is Michales assuaged by the fact that Eminé is getting ready to convert to christianity and get married to Polyxigis (6.189, 7.220).

Anyway, during the course of the uprising, which both Michales and Polyxigis of course join, Eminé is at some point kidnapped by Turkish soldiers. Michales decides to try to capture her back, but in order to do this, he has to temporarily withdraw himself and some of his fighters from the defence of a besieged Greek monastery (10.327) which later falls to the Turks before Michales and his men have the time to return (10.328–9).

Michales therefore feels responsible for the fall of the monastery and the death of its abbot (although it isn't obvious to me that the presence of him and his handful of people would have made so much of a difference), he is also criticised by others for having left his post, and he is probably acutely ashamed of having done all that on account of a mere woman (10.333–8). He concludes that “ ‘she's the one to blame, she, the shameful woman!’ ” (10.338) and proceeds to murder her in her sleep (10.340), which, if you ask me, is surely a thousand times more shameful than anything she had ever done in her life.

(Another explanation for the murder is that he did it out of jealousy, 11.349, 351, but I'm not sure how likely this is as he didn't seem to show much interest in her at any earlier point; and it isn't for want of interest from her side, for she has a fixation that a man has to be a hero in order to be worthy of her, and she would no doubt prefer Michales to Polyxigis if the former had shown interest in her; cf. 7.222–5. Another explanation, which is what Michales tells to Polyxigis after admitting the murder, is that she stood in the way of their efforts to liberate Crete, 11.373, and also that “ ‘I had to kill her or you’ ”, 11.375. He may have simply regarded her as an unwelcome temptation and distraction, cf. 4.131.)

It seems to be chiefly with a view to washing away his shame at having left his post during the defense of the monastery that he later decides to continue fighting even when there is no hope left and all the other leaders of the revolt accept the fact that it's better to end the fighting and wait again for the next opportunity (11.369, 12.374–5).

Eventually he and his men are besieged on a mountaintop, surrounded by a much stronger Turkish army; in the morning before the final assault, he tells his men that there is no dishonour in leaving at this point, and most of them leave (by a hidden trail unknown to the besieging Turks), but he and some five others fight to the end (14.464–5) and get killed by the Turks in the process.

The last few pages of the novel are delightfully cathartic, a glorious bloodbath, like a movie scene in slow-motion, and in the background you can almost hear the sort of pompous choral music that would typically accompany such a scene on a movie soundtrack. I suppose that a more experienced reader than me would probably say that these are merely old tricks of the genre, but I was almost truly touched by that scene. At the very end, Michales is just in the act of shouting the motto one last time, but he has the time to say just “Freedom or . . .” at which point a Turkish bullet runs through his head and thus death comes by itself rather than just as a word (14.472).

I had a curious feeling while reading these last scenes of the story; rationally I know what utter madness and insanity such a suicidal struggle is (and it seems to me that Michales knew this as well), but at the same time I can almost feel my feet being lifted off solid ground and transported into some sort of atavistic fog in which blood spurts all round and a pointless and suicidal fight to the bitter end is somehow glorious, splendid and commendable.

</spoiler warning>

[To be continued in a few days.]

You might be a pervert if...

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...and your first thought upon seeing the word ‘drilling’ has got nothing whatsoever to do with the mining or oil industry :-)

But wait, there's more. It just gets better and better:

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Ah, spam and pr0n. Two great tastes that taste great together.

BOOK: Gore Vidal, "Myron"

Gore Vidal: Myra Breckinridge / Myron. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, 1997 0141180285. viii + 417 pp.

[Continued from last week.]

Myron

<spoiler warning>

In Myron, Myron finds himself, while watching a movie on the TV one day, sucked into the film (p. 222): he ends up in one of MGM's studios in the summer of 1948, the time and place where that particular movie had been shot. (The movie, Siren of Babylon, seems to be fictitious, but the lead actress, Maria Montez, is not; she also appears on the cover of this Penguin edition of the book.) When trying to move more than a few miles away from the studio, he hits an invisible wall, even though the local inhabitants of the area (the ones from the real 1948 timeframe) have no problems keeping on moving (pp. 237, 263, 378). But at the same time Myron is also in the interior of his TV set, and giant letters spelling out ‘Westinghouse’ can be dimly seen in a certain part of the sky (p. 255). When the TV airing of the film into which he has been sucked is interrupted for commercials, the 1948 actors and crew in the studio freeze, though Myron can still move about (pp. 360, 383); if he allows himself to be caught by the camera, this can be seen as a smudge on the resulting film. The shooting lasts from June 1 through July 31, 1948, and after that everything jumps back to June 1, a la Groundhog Day (pp. 351, 356). Cuts, fades, and other similar elements on the movie are also felt by everyone present in the studio, as brief unpleasant moments of dizziness and confusion (pp. 226–8).

And Myron is not alone in this; dozens of other people have been sucked into the film in the same way, from various years from the fifties to the seventies. They even form a whole little subculture of their own, with regular gatherings where each new arrival must tell them what has been going on in the world since the time from which the last person preceding him has been sucked into the movie (p. 267). They are led by a mysterious Mr. Williams who somehow arranges that a weekly allowance is paid to each of them, and most of them are staying in a hotel near the studio (pp. 239, 242). The ‘locals’, i.e. the inhabitants of the 1948 timeframe, find them a bit wierd but are otherwise friendly enough.

Against this surreal and nearly science-fiction background, a battle of personalities is going on inside Myron, as Myra is trying to reassert herself once again. Every other chapter is narrated by Myron, the ones in between by Myra, and similarly each of them manages to wrest control over Myron's body for a few hours.

Their purposes are completely at odds with each other: Myron is a conservative, a Nixon supporter (pp. 218, 262, 302, 309–10, 346, 349, 367–8, 378, 413), and wants only to find a way out of the film and return back into 1973, to his wife and their American-dream suburban lifestyle.

Myra, on the other hand, is obsessed by the fact that the golden age of the American film had been over by the late 1940s (pp. 220–1) and that the studio system would soon come to an end (pp. 249, 322). Her plan is to use her immense skills, talents and abilities (her megalomania has not subsided at all since the previous book, p. 221) to save the studios (pp. 337, 361, 371–3, 397), restore the golden age of Hollywood and thereby actually transform the subsequent history of the U.S. (pp. 249–50, 311, 332, 338).

It was in fact she who pushed Myron into the film: “After twenty years as a film critic, there is nothing I don't know about how to break into the movies.” (P. 221. But do critics really know this? Or is this more satire yet again?)

One of the subjects of the Myron/Myra struggle is their appearance: anatomically Myron is more or less a man (pp. 231–2), and Myra cannot get a plastic surgeon in the 1948 timeframe where he/she/they are now located, so she has to resort to makeup and drag costume; Myron on the other hand takes to eating oysters as a substitute for hormonal therapy which is also unavailable in 1948 (pp. 251, 268), and walks “like some kind of bear with arthritis to show how deeply and sincerely butch I am” (pp. 326–7). Other people around them are of course a bit confused by this curious Jekyll/Hyde-type transformations.

At some point Myron nearly discovers a way out of the 1948 timeframe, as he happens two notice two people escorting Richard Nixon towards the exit to throw him back into the 1973 world; but Myra takes over his consciousness before he could follow them and ascertain the exact location and nature of the exit (pp. 308–10).

Among other things, Myra hopes to further her plans by sodomizing one of the actors (pp. 338–43) and vasectomizing another (pp. 383–4; “my successful vasectomy of a member in good standing of the Screen Extras Guild”, p. 384). Eventually she discovers that by jumping or running really quickly into an actor from the 1948 timeframe, it is possible for one to ‘morph’ into this actor and henceforth effectively be that actor (p. 382). Myra uses this fact to take control of Maria Montez, the lead actress of the film (p. 390). She thus effectively enters the genuine 1948 timeframe, and even sees Myron as he arrives from 1973 (p. 393). As Maria Montez, she is now able to seriously take up the business of changing film history (pp. 409–9) and in fact does suceed in increasing the profits of the film somewhat (pp. 363–4).

But in the next chapter she is Myron again, a Myron who remembers how he once saw Maria Montez in real life as a ten-year old boy in 1948, and was at the time described as speaking incomprehensible gibberish — which is just the way that the speech of the visitors from the future had always seemed to the ‘locals’ of the 1948 timeframe when they were discussing things which did not belong to the 1948 timeframe (pp. 410–11).

Moments after this flashback, Myron is back in the original 1973 world from which he had been sucked into the movie at the beginning of the novel. But some of the changes that Myra had wrought seem to have stuck after all, e.g. her vasectomy of one of the actors while the film scene was frozen (pp. 383–4), who is now, an acquaintance of Myron's in the 1973 timeframe, still vasectomized (“had one of the world's first spontaneous vasectomies”, p. 415). And Siren of Babylon turns out to not have been a flop, as in the original 1973 timeframe, but a major success after all (p. 416). The book ends with a cryptic “Myra lives!”, written right-to-left (p. 417).

</spoiler warning>

Film vs. the word?

At some point Mr. Williams turns out to have nefarious plans of his own, ones totally opposite to Myra's: “ ‘[. . .] this atrocious studio—this dispenser of slick kitsch—must die. The cinema, the most depressing and demoralizing of all pseudo-art forms must be destroyed. [. . .] The Word must regain its primacy [. . .] As of 1973 worldwide box-office grosses have plummeted [. . .] and the crack in the golden bowl is once again visible to the young people of the seventies who laugh at Lana Turner as they read Holkien and Tesse and Vonchon and Pynegutt.’ ” (Pp. 385–6.)

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. On the one hand, I of course agree with him: kitsch should die, as should everything that employs artistic media but is not itself art. Thus Hollywood films should die, although on the other hand boring and depressed small-budget arthouse films, preferrably from obscure and out-of-the-way countries (Iceland comes to mind), should be encouraged (although I certainly wouldn't wish to watch any of them).

But anyway, Vidal must of course have known, as must have his readers, that if the audience really is turning away from the cinema, that is not because it is gaining a better appreciation of art, but because other media are able to provide even kitchier and more vapid entertainment. That is, if people aren't going to the movies any more, it's because they are watching TV three hours a day, not because they are consuming high art. And if they are reading at all, they are reading pulp fiction rather than belles letters. Sure, I love Tolkien's books as much as anyone, and they are a delight to read, but are they art? I doubt. Literary critics are universally turning up their noses at them. As for the other writers alluded to, I don't know them well enough to be able to judge. I have some doubts about Hesse and Vonnegut; as for Pynchon, from what I've heard about him it seems that he makes sufficiently little sense to me that he might very well be an artist. But anyway, if Mr. Williams thinks that people will turn away from movies and begin reading more books again, he's undoubtedly wrong.

Time travel

Due to this curious premise on which Myron is based — that people can be instantaneously transported into the time and space where a certain film has been made — the novel has some of the characteristics of a really fascinating piece of science fiction.

One aspect that I found particularly interesting is the fact that, by being moved 25 years back in time, Myron has been able to compare, on the one hand, the world of 1973 that he had just left with the world of 1948 into which he had now returned; and on the other hand, he was also able to compare the world of 1948 which he had once experienced as a ten-year-old boy with the world of 1948 into which he had now suddenly returned as an adult. Both aspects would make for some really fascinating comparisons if such a thing were possible in real life.

This reminds me somewhat of the legend of the seven sleepers, told touchingly in Gibbon's Decline and Fall (ch. 33): “We imperceptibly advance from youth to age without observing the gradual, but incessant, change of human affairs; and even in our larger experience of history, the imagination is accustomed, by a perpetual series of causes and effects, to unite the most distant revolutions. But if the interval between two memorable eras could be instantly annihilated; if it were possible, after a momentary slumber of two hundred years, to display the new world to the eyes of a spectator who still retained a lively and recent impression of the old, his surprise and his reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of a philosophical romance.”

It would also be instructive from an entirely practical point of view. For example, I have a firm belief that twenty or even just fifteen years ago, life was generally better in most of the reasonably developed world than it is now, owing chiefly to the fact that globalization now threatens our livelihood and the growth of state powers under the pretext of a defence against terrorism threatens our freedom and privacy. But of course, whenever I try to explain this to anyone, it turns out that my interlocutor is one of the insane acolytes of progress who firmly believe that everything is getting better all the time. They tell me that we are happier now because we have mobile phones, or because we have more cars per capita, or larger computer monitors, or whatever. I, of course, know that this is bullshit and that none of these things is genuinely conducive to human happiness, but how to prove it? If I could step instantaneously some fifteen or twenty years back in time, I could test my hypothesis at first hand.

Myron observes on p. 271: “girls in 1948 are—if Iris is a good example—a bit more gamy than they are in 1973 what with Mary-Ann's geranium vaginal spray. I don't think deodorants have been invented.” (P. 271.)

Whenever time travel is introduced in a work of fiction, it of course leads to the possibility that the usual cause-and-effect relationship between different points in time may be violated in unusual and possibly absurd ways. How to resolve this is up to the author, but Vidal here seems to refuse to take any principled stand on this issue. In this book, it's mostly difficult for the future to affect the past, but not impossible.

For example, whenever the visitors from the future talk about their post-1948 experiences, the ‘locals’ from the 1948 timeframe hear their speech as incomprehensible ‘crazy talk’ (pp. 353–4, 377). Similarly, one of the visitors, Mr. Telemachus, has brought from his future timeframe a reference book stating how much profit various movies have made, including post-1948 ones; but when he shows this book to a local, the latter is unable to read anything in it (p. 265). Yet at some point Myra does manage to convey some of this information to one of the studio chiefs in the 1948 timeframe (p. 371); and on p. 374, although what she has written looks like gibberish to the local, she is able to convey information by pointing out to the digits on a calendar.

And Myra's meddling in the film clearly does have an effect, e.g. the movie's profits increase from $1.2 to $1.3 million, and the corresponding entry in Telemachos's book changes to reflect this. Similarly we see in the last few pages that some of Myra's acts did have an effect in the 1973 timeframe after Myron's return there after all.

Overpopulation

Myra's obsession with overpopulation strikes me as somewhat silly. Sure, it's a problem, but not quite such an overbearing problem. In much of the world, population is already fairly stable, and in many other areas at least the rate of growth is slowing down. Things like the growing standards of living and the progress of women's rights make it less and less likely that people will generally decide to have a large number of children.

But admittedly these things may have seemed different in the 1970s, when this book was printed: institutions such as the Club of Rome were ringing the alarm, population growth was seen as an exponential monster straight out of Malthus (p. 316), and somebody looking back from that point in time would have seen nothing but fast population growth everywhere in the world.

Here's an example of this rather naive view of overpopulation from p. 293: “The balance between population and food supply is now undone. Starvation has begun in the Third World. According to FAO, if all the world's arable land were properly farmed and the food was then equally distributed, there would be sufficient calories for the three billion people now alive but there would be insufficient protein per capita. Result? Malnutrition for all.”

Surely this grossly underestimates the possibilities of increasing the per-hectare yields through improvements in agriculture such as new strains of plants, pesticides, fertilizers, etc. Clearly there is starvation in the third world, but then there has always been starvation in the third world, and up to a couple of centuries ago there was plenty of starvation even in the areas that are now the first and second world. But the present state of the world clearly shows that it is possible to feed not only three, but six billion people. I admit that I'm not sure how sustainable this is, however. Many of the farming practices used nowadays to achieve the required high yields are unsustainable, rely too much on fossil fuels, etc., and abandoning them may lead to worldwide starvation. But I still think that the above-quoted paragraph is too gloomy.

Anyway, Myra has a solution for the problem of overpopulation. She proposes to somehow make transsexuality trendy and popular, thereby turning most men “fun loving sterile Amazons” (p. 279) who will pose no risk of breeding (pp. 258, 278–80). “Properly presented by the media, I know that I can make the sterile fun-loving Amazon the ideal identity for every red-blooded American boy.” (P. 324.) With a view to this, she even suggests one of the MGM studio chiefs to film what would effectively be a documentary about a man-to-woman transsexual operation (p. 373).

Transsexualism

Frankly, I'm not quite sure what's the purpose of all this big deal about transsexualism. Obviously, as a solution to the problem of overpopulation it's absurd (and the problem of overpopulation itself is blown a bit out of proportions here); and of course the author of the book knew this just as all of the readers did. So what was he really trying to say? If this is satire, what is being satirized and why? If this is supposed to be somehow funny or entertaining, why am I the only one who seems to have missed the joke? I read in the wikipedia that the first male-to-female sex change operations in the U.S. were done in the mid-1960s; maybe this was a topic of high interest at the time when Vidal was writing these books?

The blurb on the back cover of this Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition seems to join in on the fun: “Thirty years later Myra has become literature's most famous transsexual—after all, this is her/his/their age.” But surely this is plainly absurd — in what meaningful sense of the word can it be said that we are currently in an age of transsexuals? I have not noticed that they have a particularly prominent role in any segment of today's society. I would hope that, as with many other groups that were previously excluded from the mainstream and discriminated against, the position of transsexuals is improving and that they are becoming accepted as equals of other people; but to extrapolate from this that this is somehow their age is simply ridiculous. And surely whoever wrote that blurb on the back cover must have known this — they must have known how outrageously and obviously silly their statement was. And yet they wrote it. Why? Is this supposed to be somehow witty or clever, or even some kind of joke? If so, what's wrong with my sense of humor today?

Miscellaneous

“I fear Maude is something of a mythomaniac—which explains his popularity on the Strip. Lie and the world lies at your feet!” (P. 274.) For another nice pun on ‘lie’, here's a limerick that I now inexplicably cannot find on the web (yet that is precisely where I must have first heard of it): “When a top-ranking Nazi was dead/ The stone showed, in letters bright read/ Simple and clear/ His completed career:/ ‘Here lies Dr. Goebbels’ it said.”

“According to police statistics, cooks are responsible for more acts of violence than are the members of any other profession except that of the police themselves.” (P. 300.)

Myra to an FBI agent (p. 333): “ ‘[. . .] Anyway, let's hope J. Edgar's having a ball or two up there in the biggest closet of them all, making it with Dillinger, a plaster cast of whose whang I am told your leader used to keep under his pillow.’ ”

Incidentally, the whole situation of Myron and his fellow visitors from the future strikes me as slightly kafkaesque. An exit apparently exists — Myron nearly discovers it one day — and yet nobody takes the trouble to actually find it and use it to leave. Everybody is somehow hopelessly inactive and stuck in the same endlessly repeating two months. But, on the other hand, I admit this may turn out to be quite reasonable. They are receiving a weekly allowance from Mr. Williams, live in decent circumstances, and don't need to do any work — why should anybody wish to escape a life like that?

There is something interesting about the frequent barbs against Nixon mentioned throughout this book. Apparently Nixon was really thoroughly vilified and disliked during his reign; and yet nowadays we hardly ever hear about him. Looking back from the distance of 30–35 years, a naive observer such as me looks at all the hoopla surrounding him and almost wonders what it was all about. And yet if you read something from the seventies, it's clear that it really was a big deal at the time. I find this somewhat comforting, as it gives me hope that the abomination that currently inhabits the White House will, thirty years from now, be remembered much like Nixon is now: as very nearly an irrelevancy and a mere distant blip on the horizon of history.

ToRead:

• Vidal's Julian, the novel about Julian the Apostate, as mentioned above.
• A debate about Myron in the New York Review of Books.

Interesting books 2

Today I went to the Frankfurt after Frankfurt book fair, just like last year. And so, again just like last year, here are a few interesting books I've noticed. Perhaps some day I'll buy and/or read some of them.

• Robert Irving, John Lundberg, Mark Pilkington: The Field Guide: The Art, History & Philosophy of Crop Circle Making.

  A book about crop circles by some of the artists that make them (see e.g. Lundberg's website, circlemakers.org). The book has been published by strangeattractor.co.uk, which are also noted for their impressively bizarre journal.

• Thomas Bulfinch: Bulfinch's Mythology.

  This is a popular and well-known 19th-century overview of classical mythology and medieval legends (those about king Arthur and his knights, and about Charlemagne and his paladins). The copyrights have of course long since expired, and the full text is freely available on the web. A few years ago I printed the whole thing out and read it, so I don't really feel a pressing need to buy a properly printed copy of this book. However, if I did, this Gramercy edition looks very appealing: a very handsomely produced book (it even has gilt edges) for a mere $20.

• Karla O. Poewe: New Religions and the Nazis.

  A book about the influence of neo-pagan cults on the rise of Nazism. Sounds like a potentially interesting addition to the books by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (Black Sun and Occult Roots of Nazism). However, some of the reviews on amazon make me a bit wary of this book (“both Poewe and Hexham are devout Christians who might have, as the book shows, allowed this to color their alleged scholarship since the book reads as an anti-cult book having little to notting to do with leading Nazis”).

  Incidentally, while browsing on amazon, I also found this beauty: Reich Of The Black Sun: Nazi Secret Weapons & The Cold War Allied Legend by Joseph P. Farrell (“A fascinating exposé proving that Nazi Germany won the race for the atom bomb in late 1944 [. . .] Joseph P. Farrell is an internationally-known author and researcher in Tesla studies and esoteric technology”). ROFTL :)

• Jeremy Black et al. (eds.): The Literature of Ancient Sumer.

  An anthology of Sumerian literature. Sounds potentially interesting, but more likely it would just bore me.

• Stephen A. Barney et al.: The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville.

  The first complete English translation of this famous early-medieval encyclopedic work and an inexhaustible compendium of curious beliefs and ‘facts’. Once again, amazon has a bizarre pricing policy: amazon.com says the RRP is $150 and sells it for $138; but amazon.ca says the RRP is $176 Canadian and sells it for just $111 Canadian, which is $98 US. The book is published by the Cambridge University Press; in Britain the RRP is £85 and amazon.co.uk sells it for £80, i.e. even worse than amazon.com. But anyway, even at $98 US, I doubt I'll be buying this one anytime soon :)

• Victoria Finlay: Jewels: A Secret History.

  Apparently this ‘history of [a thing/material/etc.]’ genre is still going strong. I must admit that a history of jewels sounds a lot more interesting than a history of cod or salt.

• Ellis Wasson: Aristocracy and the Modern World.

  Some time ago I read a bit more than half of David Cannadine's excellent book, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. This book seems to be in a similar vein, but not limited just to British aristocrats (it is also much shorter than Cannadine's), and possibly focuses a bit more on how the aristocracy is managing to adapt to the new circumstances of the modern world.

• Christopher Clark: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947.

  Frankly, I'm still not quite sure if I'm sufficiently interested in Prussia before the time of Wilhelm II to read a whole book about it. However, in the long term it might be a good idea.

• Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, Edmund Weiner: The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary.

  As is well known, Tolkien spent a year or two early in his career as an assistant on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary. This is a book about his involvement in the OED and how this affected him and his work.

• Laura J. Miller: Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption.

  It's always sad when something becomes a mere object of manufacture, trade and consumption, but it's doubly sad when this happens to a cultural artifact such as a book. Thus, I have always been slightly curious about the publishing and bookselling business, and this book sounds quite interesting.

• William Blake: The Complete Poems.

  This is the Penguin classics version, edited by Alicia Ostriker. There are at least two competitors: one by David Erdman and Harold Bloom, and one by Michael Mason (an OUP paperback with red covers, which I saw in a bookshop not more than a year or two ago, though it seems to be out of print now). I still can't decide which one would be the best choice to buy. It seems that the Mason edition has modernized spelling, and the Penguin edition seems to have just poems but not other writings, so maybe the Erdman/Bloom edition is the one to go for. The comments on amazon.com also seem to confirm this. And anyway I'm in no hurry to buy Blake's works, as I'm still very much afraid that I'll find most of them completely incomprehensible anyway.

• Lisa Rodensky: Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu.

  This looks interesting, and it's the first time I've heard of Naidu. I've already read one anthology on a similar topic, namely Karl Beckson's Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890s, but that one also included lots of prose, not just poetry. Of course, rather than buy yet another 1890s anthology, it would probably be better if I started reading the one that is still waiting unread on one of my shelves, namely Martin Secker's The Eighteen-Nineties : A Period Anthology in Prose and Verse (1948), a generously extensive anthology compiled by the man who personally knew, and sometimes in later years published, many of the protagonists.

• Velimir Grgić: Jegulje, grah, bukkake: vodič kroz japanske seks-fetiše.

  Ta knjiga ima tako čudovito bizaren naslov (in vsebino), da sem se le z največjo težavo uprl skušnjavi, da bi jo kupil. Od nakupa pa me je odvrnilo predvsem troje:

  (1) cena — stala je okoli 3200 SIT, kar se mi zdi veliko za knjižico s pičlimi 80 stranmi majhnega formata, pa še od tega je veliko fotografij (kasneje sem tudi opazil, da na superknjizara.hr ista knjiga stane le 31,20 kun, za kar Google pravi, da je enako 1010 SIT — torej nas poskuša Konzorcij prav nezaslišano odreti);

  (2) sem bolj sramežljive sorte, pa mi je bilo nerodno stopiti s takšno knjigo do prodajalk, sploh ker sta bili mladi in čedni;

  (3) verjetno lahko vse (in še več) bizarnosti iz tiste knjige zastonj najdem tudi z brskanjem po webu in prebiranjem kakšnih forumov. Na primer tole: claw your eyes out :))) [Če link ne deluje, pa poskusite iskati fcb_jap_tsscaps v Googlu.]

BOOK: Gore Vidal, "Myra Breckinridge"

Gore Vidal: Myra Breckinridge / Myron. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, 1997 0141180285. viii + 417 pp.

Introduction

Shame on you, Mr. Cliff Challenger of Bradford, UK!

When one of the judges of the U.S. supreme court died last year, Mr Challenger sent a letter to the editor of The Guardian. It was published in their September 6 edition, and says: “we must remember his part in Gore Vidal's novel Myron. As a response to a ruling on obscenity, Vidal substituted the names of the then supreme court members for ‘obscene’ words in the novel. It is funny, but I wish I could forget the phrase ‘my enormous Rehnquist’.”

I wish I could forget that phrase, too. But I couldn't, and a novel that includes a phrase like that is a novel that I simply have to read. I looked around a bit on the web and found that Myron is some sort of sequel to Myra Breckinridge, and thus decided I'd have to read both. It seems that no edition of Myron is currently in print; I eventually got a secondhand copy of this Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition on eBay. It includes both Myra Breckinridge and Myron. (It was published in 1997, and is out of print already. What kind of classic is that?!)

Alas, I've now read both novels, and nary an enormous Rehnquist seems to be found in either of them. Nor do they mention any other supreme court judges. Maybe Cliff Challenger confused Myron with some other book, or maybe he was just pulling our legs (how can you trust somebody with a name like that, anyway?). Anyway, if it wasn't for his letter in the Guardian, I wouldn't have read these two novels, and I wouldn't be any worse off for that. So, Mr. Challenger, please report to your local public school and ask the headmaster to give you six of the best for tricking innocent Guardian readers.

It is, however, true that Myron contains several instances of words that may have been considered offensive in an earlier age, and that would be suitable candidats for being replaced by names of judges. Here are the ones I found during a cursory pass through the book (there are probably other instances that I overlooked; in particular I found nothing of the form ‘my enormous [something]’): “cock” (pp. 231, 248, 300, 354), “cocksman” (p. 301), “cocksuckers” (p. 229), “cunt” (pp. 249, 300), “fuck” (pp. 273, 362, 400, 405, 407), “fucking” (p. 300), “nigger” (pp. 290, 350, 353), “shit” (pp. 270, 292, 335, 375, 381), and “whores” (pp. 335). There's also “expletive deleted” on p. 309.

As for the two novels themselves — well, they aren't bad, but they're nothing to write home about either. If it wasn't for this recommendation in the Guardian, it would never have occurred to me to read them. I was vaguely aware that Gore Vidal existed and was a very well-known author, but there are several factors that count against him. Firstly, I avoid twentieth-century literature in general, as the risk that I won't understand anything is too great. Secondly, he's from the U.S., and frankly speaking we hear so much about the U.S. all the time already that I'm really not all that keen to read their literature as well; I might just as well try to read something more exotic instead. Thirdly, the man wrote a veritable deluge of books; this always puts me off somehow: where to begin, which ones to read, and what if (FSM forbid) I should take it into my head to want to read them all?

But there's no risk of this last thing happening in this case; judging by the titles of his other novels, the only one of them that I wish to read at this point is Julian, a historical novel about Julian the Apostate. I remember Julian from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (chs. 22 and 23). In the sad years of the mid-4th century AD, by which time the Roman Empire was well on its way to a well-deserved extinction, Julian became the emperor of Rome for a few short years. Unlike several of his immediate predecessors, he was a pagan (the last pagan to hold this office, in fact) and not only had no intention of converting to Christianity but actually made efforts to roll back some of the gains that the church had made under his predecessors, and to restore the veneration of the old pagan gods and the study of the classical philosophers. But of course, it was too late by then, and his reign too brief; his efforts were doomed to fail, and Christian fanaticism triumphed, plunging the ancient world into the dark ages. The story of Julian's life as told by Gibbon is quite touching and made a great impression on me. Of course, Gibbon had the eighteenth-century philosophe's robust contempt of all sorts of religious zealotry, and especially that of the early church, so it's possible that his account of Julian's reign is somewhat biased in this regard; but this doesn't really bother me since in this case his biases correspond so very well with mine. Anyway, I would be quite interested to read a novel about Julian, and seeing that Vidal has written one, I'll try to keep it in mind and hopefully eventually buy it and read it.

Myra Breckinridge

<spoiler warning>

In Myra Breckinridge, Myra visits Buck Loner, the rich uncle of her husband Myron, who had recently committed suicide. Buck runs an acting school (and carefully (and cynically) refrains from ever telling his students the truth, namely that they have no talent and no chances of succeeding in Hollywood, p. 97). Based on wills of various relatives, Myra claims that half of Buck's estate should have belonged to Myron, and now to her. Buck employs her to teach empathy and posture at his school while the paperwork is being sorted out: i.e. while his lawyers are trying to find some way of refuting Myra's claim.

Myra is a major megalomaniac (“I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess”, p. 3; “if there is a god in the human scale, I am she”, p. 191), and among other things seems to be obsessed by the fact that the world is heading to a collapse due to overpopulation (pp. 121, 190). She also takes an interest in two of her students, a studly young man named Rusty and his shy girlfriend Mary-Ann. Eventually, under the pretext of a medical check-up, Myra gets Rusty tied down to an examination table and sodomizes him with a dildo (pp. 149–50). Her motivation for this doesn't seem entirely clear to me but it seems to be a combination of (1) a will to power and a desire to dominate (cf. p. 113), (2) a kind of revenge for Myron who, having been a homosexual, had often himself been sodomized, and (3) a hope that, by ruining Rusty's sense of manhood, she will have contributed somewhat towards delaying the overpopulation of the world (pp. 191, 278–9).

Anyway, Rusty is of course too ashamed to describe the whole experience to his girlfriend, and instead ends up in the arms of the powerful and rather sex-crazed movie agent Letitia Van Allen, to whom Myra had previously introduced him. To prevent Rusty and Mary-Ann from getting together again, Myra arranges to have Rusty and Letitia caught in the act by Mary-Ann. Mary-Ann subsequently moves into Myra's apartment and becomes quite fond of Myra, but is too prudish to take up a lesbian relationship with her.

Meanwhile Myra's certificate of marriage to Myron (needed if she is to claim her inheritance from Buck) is nowhere to be found, and she flies her psychiatrist in from New York to (falsely) swear that he witnessed them get married in Mexico; but Buck's lawyers confront her with the fact that there is no proof of Myron's being dead at all. She finally admits that she is, in fact, Myron, having had a sex change operation in Denmark some time ago (p. 182).

A pleasantly bizarre epilogue ensues. Rusty, who despite his studliness had been quite a tender lover of Mary-Ann (pp. 192–3), now turns into a violent animal, to Letitia's complete and utter delight (“ ‘Once you have known the kind of perfection that I obtained at the moment of collision with that banister, anything else is too second-rate to be endured. I am a fulfilled woman, perhaps the only one in the world’ ”, p. 208 — Letitia's affair with Rusty being thus brought to an end, he goes on to become a movie star and “a complete homosexual”, p. 212). Myra is seriously injured in a car accident and, to save her life, the doctors have to undo most of her sex-change operations. Seing that Myra is now Myron, a man, Mary-Ann agrees to marry him and they settle down to a “happy and normal life” (p. 213).

</spoiler warning>

The characters

Sure, this was an OK read. It was pleasantly bizarre and occasionally funny. But shouldn't a novel have something more than bizareness to recommend itself? There are absolutely no likeable characters in this story. Mary-Ann comes closest perhaps, but she has about as much personality as a cow so the reader cannot really identify with her. Buck is a dirty old cynic (and almost each of his diary recordings ends with his plans about his next encounter with a masseuse, preferably a different one every time). Myra is an unscrupulous power-obsessed megalomaniac and a first-order schemer and manipulator. Rusty is a borderline delinquent and at the same time sufficiently thick or sufficiently spineless to permit himself to be manipulated by Myra and unable to tell her that enough is enough. Randolph, Myra's psychiatrist, is everything you've come to know and love in your caricature psychiatrist: a puritan Jew from New York, fat and impotent, endlessly interested in the theory of sex but utterly distressed by the act itself (p. 193). Letitia — well, finally here's somebody who is not unreasonably bad, at least not more than can reasonably be expected in a film agent; it's true that she likes to sleep with the young actors she represents, but then that's not that bad after all. But still she is hardly the sort of character one could like.

I realize that this whole previous paragraph probably looks like it was probably written by some misanthrope who spends his days in a cave gnawing at his own bones (not an entirely inaccurate description of me, now that I come to think about it), but honestly that's the impression that this book's characters made on me. Probably my whole idea that a book should have some likeable characters is absurd, and has been abandoned by all serious writers at least a hundred years ago if not more. Anyway, the fact that much of the book is bizarre, that it occasionally gives you a smile, or that Myra narrates the story in an interestingly quirky style — all this is OK, but not really enough to make up for the lack of likeable characters and indeed of all positive and uplifting elements. It's a rather sordid world that these characters inhabit, and what's worse is that it is the same world that we inhabit too. It teems with energy, with lust for power and for sex, it thunders with the clashing of wills, but ultimately it's quote devoid of all purpose and direction. Fortunately for the characters in this novel, they never slow down long enough to start asking themselves uncomfortable questions about it.

But then, maybe I'm too gloomy. This book is, after all, a satire; and it's unreasonable to expect a satirist to caress you. You expect him to be drastic and armed with a whip, and I guess that we get a little bit of that in this book.

The golden age of Hollywood

One of the main themes of this book is film, and particularly its ‘golden age’ in the 1930s and 1940s. Myra is like a walking encyclopedia of film and constantly recalls titles, names of actors, notable scenes, and so on. I guess that this sort of things can mean a lot to some readers, but to me they were simply superfluous. Film, especially of the sort produced in Hollywood, is after all just a type of popular entertainment; as such, it generally has a short shelf-life, and most films and actors fall into well-deserved oblivion after a few years. A handful of actors and titles from the ‘golden age’ era are still known even to a person who, like me, was born a long time after that era was over and who never had a particularly strong enthusiasm for movies; but the majority of actors and films from that era are now simply forgotten, or, if remembered, they are remembered as mere names; the same thing will happen in a couple of decades to most of the actors and movies that are famous and popular in the present time.

All of this is perfectly reasonable and natural and there is no need to exhume dozens of now-obscure actors from the 1930s and 1940s and swoon over their performances. Thus, when Myra mentions, for the tenth time in the last ten pages, yet another film or actress that I had never yet heard of, all I can do is shrug, ignore her, and move on. I wonder why Vidal thought it necessary to insert all these references to the history of film into his novel. Perhaps he wanted to point out how obscure they are now and how fleeting their fame therefore is. Or, more likely, perhaps he was himself a movie-history buff (like Myra) and these things simply mean a lot to him. In this case other history buffs will no doubt appreciate all the obscure references to the stars of bygone days; but other readers, like me, will, at best, have to shrug a whole lot and good-humouredly indulge this silly fondness of the author for old and now forgotten names from the history of film.

Myra has very strong opinions on the golden age of film. “[F]ilms are the unconscious expressions of age-old human myths [. . .] in the decade between 1935 and 1945, no irrelevant film was made in the United States. During those years, the entire range of human (which is to say, American) legend was put on film, and any profound study of those extraordinary works is bound to make crystal-clear the human condition.” (P. 13. Yes, yes, I know. This is so over the top that it's probably intended to be hilariously funny. I get the point, although I'm not exactly falling off my chair with laughter.)

“[T]he films of 1935 to 1945 inclusive were the high point of Western culture, completing what began that day in the theatre of Dionysos when Aeschylus first spoke to the Athenians” (p. 30). “Hollywood—the source of the best of our race's dreams since those brutish paintings on the cavern walls at Lascaux” (p. 249).

I'm really not sure what to make of this incessant eulogization of a system that after all produced nothing but commercial tripe. Even if this is satire, it seems a bit much. Is it possible that there's a grain of sincerity in this after all? Could some people honestly believe that the films from the golden age of Hollywood are a great cultural achievement? Could it be that the golden age of Hollywood was one of those rare moments in history when it was possible for something to be commercially successful and a significant cultural achievement at the same time? This is rarely the case, but it isn't completely impossible, as the case of Elizabethan theatre shows. I wonder if the same can be said about 1935–45 Hollywood. I have my doubts, but maybe I'm just being blinded by my prejudice.

Myra even associates the golden age of Hollywood with the U.S. victory in the war: “1934–1945, when no irrelevant film was made in Hollywood, and our boys—properly nurtured on Andy Hardy [. . .]— were able to defeat the forces of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo.” (P. 220–1. See also p. 315.)

She is also quite enthusiastic about the even newer medium of television: “television creates a new kind of person who will then create a new kind of art” (p. 95). Alas, what we got instead was soap operas and reality shows! Take your damned idiot-box, Mr. Logie Baird, and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Buck's diaries

Buck keeps a kind of diary in the form of sound recordings, of which some of the chapters in the book pretend to be transcripts. They are written in a curiously affected style — punctuation is either ommitted or spelled out (e.g. “comma” instead of “,”), there are no paragraph breaks, and words that occur near the end of the line are split without a hyphen. Given all this, I'm surprised that he didn't give up capital letters as well. And even the printers seem to have joined in on the fun — Buck's diaries are typeset in a different face than the rest of the book! (Compare e.g. the capital ‘R’s — the shape is quite clearly different.)

Anyway, I think this is all rather silly — I guess he was trying to emphasise the fact that these recordings are taken almost straight from Buck's stream of consciousness, etc., but does this really make it necessary to trouble the readers with pages and pages without punctuation and without paragraph breaks? If Buck had been writing his diary into a notebook rather than dictating it to a sound recorder, he would surely have taken the trouble to put in at least some punctuation, and probably paragraph breaks as well. Why then, when the text is moved from one medium to another, should it be forced to keep some of the characteristics that are accidental to the first medium but decidedly out of place in the other?

This book was published in 1968 after all — I'd have thought that by then, numerous authors had already amply proved that a writer may do whatever he damn well pleases, he may write stream-of-consciousness for hundreds of pages, etc., etc., and by 1968 they might have gotten these childish pranks out of their system: they have proved their point, now how about going back to writing things that a person can, well, you know, read? Fortunately these Buck's diary transcripts aren't very long, probably less than twenty pages altogether, but the silliness of their style gets on my nerves just the same.

California

If one always looks at the U.S. from a great distance, as I invariably do, it's easy to forget that it is really a fairly diverse country, the various parts of which differ in many ways from each other and in many cases also have their own regional identity. I'm guessing that in the past, e.g. 30 years ago, when this novel was written, the differences between the regions were perhaps even a bit larger than they are now. Anyway, in the light of all this, this novel offers a few quite interesting looks at California.

Buck's school stands on the land originally bought by his father for the purposes of setting up an orange plantation (p. 21) — a welcome reminder of the fact that California was not always just a golden land of surfing, movies, and information technology.

Myra, who is originally from the east coast, takes a big dislike to the Californian dialect, especially the ubiquitous like: “ ‘like help,’ as the Californian said when he was drowning” (p. 44); see also p. 52.

“[A] typical California type: a bronzed empty face with clear eyes and that vapid smile which the Pacific Ocean somehow manages to impress upon the lips of almost everyone doomed to live in any proximity to those tedious waters. It is fascinating how, in a single generation, stern New England Protestants, grim Iowans and keen New York Jews have all become entirely Tahitianized by that dead ocean with its sweet miasmic climate [. . .]” (P. 153. I simply *love* the phrase ‘miasmic climate’.)

“[A] boy with a police record is prone to constant false arrest in the Los Angeles area where only professional criminals are safe from harassment by the local police” (p. 96). “[T]he police are quick to stop and question anyone found on foot in a residential district since it is a part of California folklore that only the queer or criminal walk; the good drive cars that fill the air with the foul odor of burning fossils” (p. 195).

“California grows its boys like navel oranges, only instead of lacking pits they lack wits.” (P. 299. It turns out that ‘navel oranges’ are the ones that always come with an underdeveloped twin orange. I've eaten them a few times but wasn't aware of the name. I must admit I always found the sight of that underdeveloped twin orange just a wee bit of a turnoff. Not exactly disgusting, but definitely not appetizing either.)

“ ‘What can I do you for . . . sir?’ That is a little joke that is popular with boys that age in California even now when the moral rot has just begun to set in” (p. 366).

Miscellaneous

“[I]t is the proliferation of private bathrooms, which has, more than anything else, created modern man's sense of alienation from others of his kind: our ancestors bathed and shat together and, all in all, relished the sharing of their common natural functions” (p. 178). And Myra is not the first to think of this; see the passage from p. 111 of Where Ghosts Walked.

Every now and then, Myra also makes some sane and reasonable observation. She correctly observes that in the modern world there is not much space for the traditional man: “there is nothing left for the old-fashioned male to do, no ritual testing of his manhood through initiation or personal contest, no physical struggle to survive or mate. Nothing is left him but to put on clothes reminiscent of a different time; only in travesty can he act out the classic hero who was a law unto himself, moving at ease through a landscape filled with admiring women” (p. 57). “[T]hey are perfectly aware that few men are anything but slaves to an economic and social system that does not allow them to knock people down as proof of virility or in any way act out the traditional male role. As a result, the young men compensate by playing at being men, wearing cowboy clothes, boots, black leather, attempting through clothes [. . .] to impersonate the kind of man our society claims to admire but swiftly puts down should he attempt to be anything more than an illusionist, playing a part.” (P. 90.)

“Until the Forties, only the upper or educated classes were circumcised in America. The real people were spared this humiliation.” (P. 99.) Myra considers circumcision to be an unacceptable act of mutilation. Although I have no personal experience with it, I suppose that this must be an exaggeration. If the practice were really harmful, it would not have become so widespread. Still I wonder what in the name of all that is decent was going on through the head of the first person who thought “now wouldn't it be a dandy idea to take a knife and slice a bit of skin off somebody's prick?”. I mean, yowl. How on earth can such a thing have crossed anybody's mind in the first place?!

[To be continued in a few days.]