Posts Tagged ‘Edgar Allen Poe’

“Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003” by Roberto Bolaño

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

This collection of non-fiction pieces is a treasure-trove for anyone who has read Bolaño’s fiction and who came away smitten by the author’s vibrant, mercurial, poetic voice.

Some elements of Bolaño’s novels and stories — their settings, aspects of their storylines, their narrators or chief protagonists, and their spirit of inquiry — are grounded in autobiography. This is especially true of the novels, “The Savage Detectives” and “Antwerp.” Bolaño’s friend and literary executor, Ignacio Echevarria, who has assembled the 125 pieces found in “Between Parentheses,” addresses this subject in his helpful Introduction to the book: “This volume amounts to something like a personal cartography of Roberto Bolano and comes closest, of everything he wrote, to being a kind of fragmented ‘autobiography’.”

Stated more broadly, there was, for Bolaño, no bright line between fiction and non-fiction.

What this means is that seasoned readers of this author will comfortably enter and enjoy the world of these essays, speeches, newspaper columns, travel articles, and other occasional pieces. If the reader perceives anything different it is that here the voice they have come to expect — opinionated (“plagiarists deserve to be hanged in the public square”), argumentative (a writer friend praises John Irving, but this is “an enthusiasm that I don’t share”), passionate (his love for his soon-to-be-orphaned son shines bright), and a bit of a rapscallion (“one of the best ways to steal . . . I had learned from an Edgar Allen Poe story”) — is even closer to the essence of “I, Roberto Bolano.”

In a piece from 1999, the autodidact Bolaño declares: “I’m much happier reading than writing.” His admiration is clear whenever he’s able to mention that this friend or that acquaintance “has read everything.” As for the scope of his own reading and interests generally, this is demonstrated by a nine-page Index that completes “Between Parentheses.” The Index contains the names of over 600 persons, including musicians, filmmakers, and artists. But mostly there are authors, among whom is a strong contingent of Americans Bolaño read with critical fervor.

These pieces were written during the period after he had been diagnosed with a fatal liver disease that in 2003 would take his life. It is no surprise, then, that a theme he returns to time and time again is the question of what constitutes a well-lived life. When describing someone’s accomplishments, for example, if he wants to impart his ultimate compliment he will write, “. . . and he was also a good man.” (George Orwell is one such man.) His critical gaze does not spare himself, his foibles and his imperfect works. In contrast, politics holds little appeal (although there are a few columns about the situation in his native Chile). When, in the final piece in the book, he is asked by an interviewer what things bore him, he answers: “The empty discourse of the Left. I take for granted the empty discourse of the Right.”

We learn that “By Night in Chile” was originally titled, “Storms of Shit.” He tells us we should consider “The Savage Detectives” to be “a response, one of many, to `Huckleberry Finn’.” At one point he declares: “Everything I’ve written is a love letter or a farewell letter to my own generation, those of us who were born in the 1950s.”

There’s his easy humor too. Attending a poetry reading, Bolaño notices the auditorium is “filled up with freaks who seemed to have just escaped from a mental asylum, which incidentally is the best audience a poet can hope for.”

His free spirit is everywhere. In speeches and essays ostensibly devoted to a specific subject, he wanders off path, pursuing diversions that lead to further diversions, which then are interrupted by a confessional revelation, or an informal bit of chat. The reader wonders, is this explained by a discovery Bolaño made as a youthful soccer player, now revealed to us — that he was “left-footed but right-handed”?

The aphoristic bent so characteristic of his fiction is on constant display: “Writers write with their hands and their eyes.” “Crime seems to be the symbol of the twentieth century.” “Literature is basically a dangerous undertaking.” “Books are the only homeland of the true writer.” He speaks of the impact of “fate — or chance, that even fiercer beast.” Every few pages a striking declaration stopped me short, such as this biographically-grounding insight capping his interpretative essay on “Huckleberry Finn”: “Twain was always prepared to die. That’s the only way to understand his humor.”

It occurs to me that it might be said that Bolaño, like the American visual artist Robert Rauschenberg, found himself most productive, most freely communicative, when operating in the gap between art and life. There’s a good chance you’ll discover, while reading “Between Parentheses,” that this interstitial volume gives as much pleasure as anything else you’ve read by this author.

About this book as physical object:  It is compact but not small, feels sturdy and is comfortable to hold. The book is signature-bound, a traditional bookbinding method that has the practical effect of allowing the opened book to stay flat for your perusal, rather than springing shut. (Your hands don’t have to fight this book; it will likely survive use without warping.) The impression I come away with is that the editor and publisher meant for it to become a permanent addition to your library — a plan Bolaño, who was covetous of his personal collection of books, surely would be pleased with. There is no dust jacket, however. Using the same design approach it applied to “Antwerp,” the publisher, New Directions, has chosen to emboss the title, author, translator (the consistently excellent Natasha Wimmer), and other information on the front and back covers, this time using a striking, iridescent raspberry color on a black ground. In addition to the helpful Index, the editor has supplied an 11-page Sources section, with explanatory notes (Bolaño had filed copies of most of the original texts on his computer).

.

An alternative version of this review appears on Amazon, here.

“Pym” by Mat Johnson

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

.

.

The first thing you’ll probably want to know is whether you should read Poe’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” before picking up Mat Johnson’s “Pym.” The answer is, that’s not really necessary. Johnson helpfully devotes 15 pages in the second chapter of “Pym” recapping the plot of Poe’s solitary novel and discussing its still-debated meaning. This background is all you need to appreciate this new, inspired-by-Poe, piece of imaginative fiction.

The novel’s narrator, Chris Jaynes, is a recently dismissed professor of African-American literature. He believes Poe’s enigmatic novel, maddeningly obsessed with motifs of black and white, is the talisman that can open up our understanding of race in America, especially the nature of “Whiteness, as a pathology and a mindset.” He seeks to discover, through literary detective work, “the primal American subconscious, the foundation on which all our visible systems and structures were built.” Sleuthing leads to grand adventure. Jaynes assembles an all black crew of six for a voyage to Antarctica to find “the great undiscovered African Diasporan homeland.” This quest is set within a satirical framework that allows Johnson to launch sallies against a slew of social and political targets.

A caution: You’re probably better off not reading reviews of “Pym” found in the mainstream press and magazines — or avoiding, at least, the type of review that spends paragraph after paragraph exposing too much of the plot, revealing too many of the critic’s favorite scenes, highlighting too many jokes and puns (for example, this one). I mean, please. “Pym” is a novel whose twists and turns and revelations you yourself deserve to encounter (and judge) afresh, without prior interference. Set aside those reviews for reading once you’ve finished.

One reason I enjoyed “Pym” is a nostalgic one, frankly. If you’re a reader of a certain age you remember living through what now appears, in hindsight, to have been a golden era of the American satirical novel. There once was a tribe of writers who yanked our chains, social and political. I’m thinking of the years that saw the publication of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” and “Our Gang,” and the works of Terry Southern, John Barth, Gore Vidal, Robert Coover and others. First among them was Kurt Vonnegut, who sustained a long career of telling common truth to ignoble power. Who is extending that satiric tradition into the current day?

Based on the antic fun and strength of “Pym,” Mat Johnson may come to join that assembly of noble writers. The intelligence behind his satire is combined with a hearty sanity that reminds me of Vonnegut, especially.

– – – – –

A version of this review is posted on Amazon, here.

Some amazing photos of the real Antarctica can be found here.

.

Frank Gehry Scores Big With Disney Concert Hall

Monday, May 4th, 2009

As with all great works of architecture, Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (completed in 2003) richly rewards visitors willing to engage their senses, reconnoiter the structure, enter its interior courtyards, experience the squeeze and release through tight and open spaces, enjoy its forms and gestures, admire its skin in changing light, absorb its physical beauty, and breathe sympathetically with its rhythms.

Professional photographers of the structure usually try to capture the totality of its iconic presence, highlighting the mass of shapes Gehry based on sailing, “wing on wing, the wind behind you.”

gehry-disney-concert-hall-la-4

Rarely is the building photographed from a ground level perspective directly across South Grand Avenue.  (In the photo above, you see a bit of the street’s asphalt in the lower left corner.)  This may be for the simple reason that the six-lane corridor is a noisy crossing, a sorry, off-putting, quotidian presence estranged from the visionary building emerging from its flank.  Then too, Gehry fans may be avoiding photographing the site from that perspective for fear of adding support to a common criticism of Gehry’s designs: that his buildings do not seem to relate “organically” to their surroundings.  And yet by standing on the east side of South Grand Avenue you’ll find yourself in the best position to see a defining architectural detail.

Google Maps, through its street view function, allows you to “walk” — or more accurately, to “drive” — past the street level facade.  Unfortunately, individual photos taken from the drive-by Google Van are of disappointing quality, as evident in the two screenshots below.

resized-gehry-1

resized-gehry-22

Flickr and other photo sharing sites contain pictures with finer resolution.  Here is a virtually identical shot, from a slightly more oblique angle (credit: core.formula on Flickr):

gehry-disney-concert-hall-la-1

Finally, here is a full frontal shot, apparently taken from across the street (the ideal vantage point), looking straight-on at the sidewalk entrance to the building:

gehry-disney-concert-hall-la-3

All four photos include the detail that is of interest to me.  Focus for a moment on the base of the composition and the single, wide, rectangular shape that swoops across and projects outward from the building.  Of the dozen or so curving pieces or individual “sails” that comprise the skin of the structure, this one stands apart somehow.  Viewed unkindly, you might conclude it is an afterthought, an empty, ungainly, tacked-on piece, a doodle, a patch protecting the lowest portion of the building.  I disagree.  I think  it is different for a reason.  There are clues, if we open our eyes.

This particular piece has a more subtle rotation, is less of an arabesque, and more of a standard shape, than the other pieces.  Although made of unadorned sheet metal (stainless steel), it manages also to look like a blank billboard, floating with no apparent support above glass walls and doors.  Stretched horizontally with a slight incline from left to right, the entire form seems to be lifting up to grant you entrance to the ground floor.  Viewed in isolation, it is a kind of tabula rasa.

So, if the other individual pieces are whimsical cut-outs, enjoyable for their own sakes, what extra meaning does this frontal plane possess?  What does it remind you of?  What is it referencing?  Or, to ask the question another way, what do you want to project upon it?

One reference, consistent with the theme of the building as a whole, might be to a nautical flag flowing in a sustaining light breeze.  Although this is a reasonable thought, I think Gehry’s intention was something else entirely.

On closer inspection you notice ten horizontal lines of crimping, ten visible seams if you count the top and bottom edges as “lines.”  (This is best seen in the next-to-last photo above; in person, the lines are even more plain to the eye.)  As a matter of engineering, of course, these lines are merely the residue of a structural technique binding expanses of sheet metal, lapping the pieces together.  You may also notice that scores of  individual stainless steel sheets are the constituent notes making up the whole.  These small units (rectangles positioned horizontally) together compose a similarly-shaped, but much larger form.  This may be an example of a phenomenon mathematicians call self-similarity.

The horizontal, seamed striations lend a pronounced grain to the convex swoosh, reminiscent of Roy Lichtenstein’s brushstroke paintings and prints from the mid-1960s:

sp_229950_ho_dali_2

lichtenstein-brushstroke-painting-1

So we have an unfurled nautical flag and the choreography of a painter’s brushstrokes — both suitable ideas to associate with the architecture of this cultural center.   But I return again to the singularity of that expansive sheet above the entrance, to its discernible separateness even while it participates in the dance of the overall composition.  I think it wants to communicate something on its own.

It wants to sing.

Step back a moment and ask, What is the purpose of this complex building?  To house a particular form of art: music.  Philosophers devoted to the study of aesthetics consider music to be the highest form of art.  Music is unencumbered by the compromise of physical form.  It avoids constraints afflicting sculpture, dance, and architecture.  Goethe declared that architecture is frozen music.  It would not be surprising if a thoughtful and gifted architect such as Frank Gehry, tasked with designing a grand physical container for music making, were to choose to comment on this subject somewhere in his design of the Disney Concert Hall.  I think what Gehry decided to say is writ large in that floating blank sheet with ten horizontal lines.  Or, inching closer to the answer, he’s saying something ought to be writ large there.

As in Poe’s The Purloined Letter, the object of our search may be hidden in plain sight, so obvious that it becomes all too easy to overlook.

Remember that Gehry is a leader in adopting new tools to assist in the visualization, modeling, and execution of his visionary designs.  A man who cares passionately about the tools of architecture would no doubt reflect on the tools of the sister art, music, that his commission has bound him to serve.  (A side note: When I attended the final performance of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s inaugural season at Disney Hall, I saw Gehry and his wife in their customary seats; the architect is an inveterate concert-goer.)

What I believe Gehry has chosen to emblazon across the entrance to his work is a replica of — an homage to — the essential tool for the communication and dissemination of music.  Here is the transformation:

grand-staff-1

grand-staff-31

grand-staff-42

The Grand Staff of music — a framework upon which notes are marked in relation to ten lines, five above middle C and five below — has in Gehry’s hands become a grand architectural gesture.  Remember also that this place is the Walt Disney Concert Hall — a place where imagination, creativity, and engineering magic can turn a pre-scored skin of metal into a giant treble clef (there to hold an unfolding melody) and an equally giant bass clef (there to host a supportive harmony).

A place where music begins.

_________________________________________________________

UPDATE 07-13-2009:  A different Lichtenstein print, created in 1995, recently came to my attention.  Roy and Frank, humming the same tune:

roy-lichtenstein-composition-iv-1995-screenprint-13-by-19-inches-edition-of-120

walt-disney-concert-hall-20-wikipedia