Codex Seraphinianus

Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Imagine that Stepan Chapman, M.C. Escher, Albrecht Durer, and Salvador Dali were locked in an underground dungeon with an infinite amount of art supplies and only LSD to eat. Suddenly, a wayward creator-god shows up with a genetic splicer set to randomize the mixing of species and common objects, creating before the artists a set of real-life models from which they might take inspiration.

Codex Seraphinianus is a natural history of the surreal, a book that truly defies categorization. It is reminiscent of the old Harper's Magazine Travelers Companion, a 19th-century anthropological survey, a modern biology and environmental science textbook, and a series of travel brochures. The asemic script that runs throughout merely heightens the strangeness of the volume. The language seems familiar, but is utterly alien. There's obviously something being explained, though one is never quite sure what.

Sections in the work display flora, fauna, environmental or biological cycles, mechanical systems, modes of transportation, modifications to human anatomy, different forms of dress and dwelling places of what one must assume are more primitive peoples, a taxonomy of human heads, maps, pictures of notable places and historically-significant events, and costumes of whatever culture is being represented.

The wonder of this book is that it doesn't constrain the reader with any kind of imposed narrative. You are free to interpret the drawings and text in any way you like. Here, there are no wrong answers and the representations merely serve as stepping off points for the imagination. Getting to the end of the book, one finds that it is just a beginning. And isn't that one of the finest compliments that can be given to a book?

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The Yellow Birds

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My dad was a cold warrior, serving in the Air Force from before my birth to well into my adult years. Part of that time was spent serving in Vietnam and Thailand (and, yes, there was combat in Thailand at the time) where he was a radio operator who also served on base defense whenever his base was attacked. Apparently, this happened a few times in his stay in Southeast Asia. As a boy, being a boy, I asked my Dad "Dad, did you ever get a purple heart?". He responded "No way! I kept my ass down! That's what the Army's for." When I (insensitively) broached the question: "Did you ever kill anyone?" He responded "I don't know. I shot at a few people, but I was too busy keeping my head down to see whether or not I hit them. The Security Police and Army detachments did most of the dirty work. We just laid down fire to keep the enemy pinned."

Still, Dad felt the after-effects of combat. When we lived in the Philippines, there was a collision at an intersection where we were waiting at a four-way stop. Dad, more scared than I've ever seen him before or since, opened the car door and hid under the steering column. Even at that young age, I knew that this wasn't normal.

Dad's fine now. Has been for years. But I've often wondered what he would be like had he been in heavy combat for longer periods of time. Now, there are plenty of people who have seen combat and come out unscathed, perfectly healthy, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I'm not an alarmist about what combat may or may not do to a person's psyche. No one is doomed to an unhappy life for having been on the front lines. On the other hand, I've personally seen some bad cases of PTSD, some stretching out for many, many years. Some of my earliest memories are those of seeing wounded soldiers, incoming from Vietnam, getting off the medivac helicopters at the base where we lived in the Philippines. It took years before I realized why they were all bandaged up, some on stretchers, some with gauze completely covering their eyes. Now I realize that red and white are not colors you want to see on a soldier. Thankfully, these guys were already stabilized on the hospital ships out in Cam Ranh Bay and were going home, now, or at least back to the States, where they would try to pick up their lives again with what was left of their bodies and souls.

So when my son's best friend stated that he was joining the Marines, I was concerned. It's probably the right decision for him, and he's going to be a helicopter munitions crewman, not the most dangerous job, to say the least. Still, I worry about him.

The Yellow Birds didn't help.

This is as disturbing a novel as you'll read about war. The horrors of the Iraq war were bad enough to see from news reports flashed into my living room, but to see it from the inside out, as it were, from the perspective of a soldier in the thick of it, was difficult to digest.

Mechanically, the book is outstanding. My only complaint was that the poetic framework of the book was sometimes exposed, as in the multiple, rapid fire use of the word "and" to try to push the narrative down into a stream of consciousness channel. ". . . and . . . and . . . and . . .". Powers seemed like he was trying too hard to be poetic. It was too clever. Too contrived. Thankfully this only happened a few times.

But there is some beautiful prose in this novel, prose that contradicts the ugliness of the situation. The very personal voice of the narrator is buried in the impersonal, unfeeling circumstances:

I'd been trained to think war was the great unifier, that it brought people closer together than any other activity on earth. Bullshit. War is the great maker of solipsists: how are you going to save my life today? Dying would be one way. If you die, it becomes more likely that I will not. You're nothing, that's the secret: a uniform in a sea of numbers, a number in a sea of dust. And we somehow thought those numbers were a sign of our own insignificance. We thought that if we remained ordinary, we would not die. We confused correlation with cause and saw a special significance in the portraits of the dead, arranged neatly next to the number corresponding to their place on the growing list of casualties we read in the newspapers, as indications of an ordered war . . . Of course, we were wrong. Our biggest error was thinking it mattered what we thought. It seems absurd now that we saw each death as an affirmation of our lives. That each one of those deaths belonged to a time and that therefore that time was not ours. We didn't know the list was limitless.

It's this sense of being caught up in something bigger than oneself that informs the entire novel. There is a feeling of inevitability to the events that occur, an existentialist cosmic mockery of the individuals who think they are their own agents, that they control their own destiny; shades of Orwell's 1984 and the works of Lovecraft, though this fiction feels closer to a memoir than to the fantastical hyperbole of its more speculative cousins. This is grounded in the banal. This feels real:

I thought of my grandfather's war. how they had destinations and purpose. How the next day we'd march out under a sun hanging low over the plains in the east. We'd go back into a city that had fought this battle yearly; a slow, bloody parade in fall to mark the change of season. We'd drive them out. We always had. We'd kill them. they'd shoot us and blow off our limbs and run into the hills and wadis, back into the alleys and dusty villages. Then they'd come back, and we'd start over by waving to them as they leaned against lampposts and unfurled green awnings while drinking tea in front of their shops. While we patrolled the streets, we'd throw candy to their children with whom we'd fight in the fall a few more years from now.

From the foregoing quotes, you might think that this book is short on hope. You'd be right. It's a downward spiral into meaninglessness and despair, a vortex of emotional numbness. This is not for the faint of heart. But I still recommend it. It's difficult to review this book without becoming a little pedantic, so please excuse me for a moment as I point out one of the reasons you should read the book. Read it, and the next time it's election day, ask yourself whether or not you should go vote. And think carefully on the consequences. Think on the blessing of freedom, including freedom from war and its effects. This book might just cause you to more carefully weigh the alternatives at your disposal and choose wisely. Who knows? With your marker hovering over a check-box in the voting booth or with your hand poised over the phone and the phone book open to your congressman's number, you might just be preventing the sequel to this book from ever having to be written. Though I have little faith that there will be a cessation to the series of war, one of these books is enough for a lifetime.

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ADDENDUM: The same day I reviewed The Yellow Birds, THIS came out on yahoo news. One of the creepiest coincidences of my life. Disturbing and not very reassuring. 

The Point of Honor: A Military Tale

The Point of Honor: A Military Tale by Joseph Conrad
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Traveller was kind enough to point me to this tale of a pair of French duelists who meet several times regarding their “point of honor". Though I felt the beginning was rather long and seemed to drag on a bit, the story itself elicited more emotion out of me than I had expected. I’ve often wondered what thoughts went through a man’s head when he knew he was going to die in a duel, and Conrad does a great job of portraying just how one might feel, given those circumstances. Like any work of its time, there is more than a little melodrama when we peek into the characters’ thoughts, but Conrad also shows surprising restraint, as well, in that his characters don’t seem like they’re overacting too much when presenting dialogue. There is a movie version of this story, directed by Ridley Scott (so it has to be pretty good, right?), that I will now have to see.

As some might know, I fence, when I have the time (very rare nowadays), so I take particular interest in works about swords and swordsmanship. I’ve written a story or two myself about the same. Most works are rather cursory in their accounts of the combat itself, and The Point of Honor is no exception. I suppose that Conrad might have learned how to wield a saber while in the Merchant Navy, though I’m not sure of this.

In any case, what stands out is not the descriptions of the fighting, but what the men are feeling (or not feeling) before, during, and after the fight. Of course, the duel itself is merely the reinforcement of cultural norms expressed through the use of arms. If I were smarter by half, I could go on about this, but suffice it to say that the duel, social expectations of French society at the time (read Balzac, if you want more on this), and the intensity of emotions felt by the characters throughout are all part of a self-perpetuating cycle. These two men are truly “caught up" in events that lay beyond their control. But this sword, as they say, has two edges. By participating in the forbidden duel itself, the men kick against authority (all discreetly, of course) while, at the same time, reinforcing the social walls that forced them into this long, slow game of cat and mouse in the first place.

Despite the seeming inevitability of the duelists’ ongoing encounters, the end is a bit of a surprise and is quite satisfactory. Though there are other books about dueling that are much more thorough, none of them delve so deeply into what it means to be a human duelist.

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A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The American Review:

At times, I find beauty in dissonance. Take, for example, my eclectic music collection. I have my share of soothing music: new age, quiet electronica, and so forth. I have some popular mainstream music, mostly from the '80s. Some funk, some reggae, ska, a bit of trance and techno. Yes, there's the heavy metal, punk, classic rock from my youth, and even a little progressive death metal. And, amongst it all, a good dose of 20th century classical pieces by such composers as George Crumb, Arvo Part, and Krzyzstof Penderecki played by several performers, including my favorite, the renowned Kronos Quartet.

Now, I don't revel in atonal music all the time. But once in a while, I just have to “blow the tubes,” as they say, and crank up the stereo a bit. I'm careful to do this when the wife and kids aren't around. The kids can take everything but the modern classical stuff. And my wife, well, she's no metalhead, let's put it that way, but she is a fantastic piano player . . . of the more normal classical pieces and jazz.

So why? I often ask myself, do I glory, at times, in the inglorious? Well, I have no good answer, save for the need is there. To quote 15 year-old Alex, the narrator of A Clockwork Orange, “what I do I do because I like to do”.

Of course, I’m not addicted to ultra-violence like young Alex. Sure, I had my share of dalliances as a 15 year old, but rape and brutal beatings of the elderly were not on my list of things to do, much less murder. I can count on one hand the number of actual fights I was in. Still, I can relate to the devil-may-care attitude, or at least I could have related, as a teenager. So, though I don’t condone any of the heinous acts that Alex and his “droogies” (friends) participate in, I can see where the attitude comes from. I probably shouldn't say this, but while I could never find myself doing the thinks he does, I could, as an American teenager living in England back in the '80s, find myself feeling the way he feels. I do remember.

But now I’m all grown up (ostensibly). I’m a responsible husband and father, I hold a day job, contribute to my church and community, I vote, clean up the yard, donate to public radio, all that stuff. And maybe that’s the reason I like some dissonance in my music once in a while or, in this case, in my literature. It reminds me of a younger age. Not that I want to go back and do it over again. I don't. But occasionally I've an urge to . . . indulge myself. Thankfully, all it takes is the right music or the right book and I'm set straight again.

Whatever the cause for my itch, Burgess has scratched it with A Clockwork Orange. Possibly the most brutal “coming of age” novel I’ve read, A Clockwork Orange sets up a society and a narrator full of conflict and chaos. Alex, along with many other teenagers, rule the night in what may or may not be a socialist police state. I’m reminded more of Mobutu’s Zaire than Stalin’s Russia, in this case. The government isn’t so much in total control as it’s allowing chaos to foment in a semi-contained manner (in Mobutu's case, geographically contained to Eastern Zaire, in Burgess' case, temporally contained to the night). Kids run the streets after sunset, but only because there aren’t as many police (or "millicents") out during the night as there are during the day (according to Alex). It’s all a sort of dysfunctional dystopia that can’t make up its mind how to administer power and leaves it up to a lackadaisical police force (some of whom are ex-gang members) to abuse those who are the most disruptive to society.

The language of the novel is also dissonant. "Nadsat" or teenager talk, is a sort of creole admixture of Russian terms, Gypsy words, and an immature bit of baby-talk. At first, I found myself flipping back and forth from the text to the glossary in the back. After a chapter, though, I fell into the rhythm and found myself rather enjoying the strangeness of it all. In fact, once you've "got the rhythm," it's a little hard to let go. The voice of the novel lingers in the reader's head long after the book is closed. I found myself dreaming, at times, in nadsat.

Then there’s the narrator himself. He’s a lover of classical music, but a thug to the utmost. His two-faced approach to life leaves the reader wondering “who is the *real* Alex and is he truly capable of reform?” In the end, (view spoiler)[the answer is “no”. You can take the man out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the man. (hide spoiler)].

The British Review:

. . . Then there's the narrator himself. He's a lover of classical music, but a thug to the utmost. His two-faced approach to life leaves the reader wondering “who is the *real* Alex and is he truly capable of reform?” In the end, (view spoiler)[the answer is that in time, maturity, the mere plodding march of chronology, wears down the deadly inner-demons that even brainwashing cannot purge. There is a certain inevitability to the track of life, an inescapable softening that cannot be averted. (hide spoiler)]

The Universal Review:

In the end, Burgess posits the existentialist notion that change will impose its will when it wills it. Life itself says “what I do I do because I like to do”. Fight against it, if you want, or give in. Life doesn't much care. But does that mean you shouldn't?

Coda:

And here I come full-circle. Internal dissonance is a part of me. That doesn't mean I embrace it all of the time. But I don't entirely shut it out, either. One might say I flip-flop between the American and the British ending. So, for me, reading A Clockwork Orange was more than just a reading. It was an exploration of what it means to be me, both the beautiful and the ugly, the sacred and the sinister, the tame and the wild. I can't say whether I like the American ending or the British ending better, though I'm glad I read them both. They are two sides of the same coin, a coin that, for me, continually flips through my psyche, flashing through the years, never really landing: heads or tails?

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The Elephant Vanishes

The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some authors excel at writing novels. Others excel at the short form. A few are equally adept at writing novels and short stories. From my reading of The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami is not one of those people. Here’s why:

Murakami’s novels are lush affairs. By that I mean that his proto-typically lazy character has time. Time to develop interests, time to contemplate deeply, time to be affected, to become . . . something. The short form, by its very nature, does not allow the same luxuries. So when Murakami’s prototypical ambivalent protagonist shows in a short story (which they often do, in this collection), the results are unspectacular. What one might consider “breathing space” in a Murakami novel, a place where the reader can coast through the reading before returning to the more meaty, idea-heavy sections, becomes a void in his short work. Unfortunately, once in the void, there are two options: float silently away into space or explode as the vacuum’s pressure differential kicks in. More often than not, these types of stories simply fade away into an unsatisfying whisper. I can appreciate the difficulty in transitioning from one form to another. I started off as a short story writer, then pushed my way through novellas, then novels. It’s not an easy task to switch from one mode to another, and I’ve failed myself, many times. My notebooks are full of half-finished longer work and ideas that never really coalesced into full-formed novels. Murakami seems to have the opposite problem, soaring in his novels while stuttering in his short stories.

Thankfully, there are exceptions.

The collection starts off well enough with “The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women,” an ethereal tale about a loveless marriage and a strange encounter in the lot of an abandoned house. This literary dream is the sort of thing Murakami is famous for, and rightfully so. This is a story that wraps itself around your head and doesn't let go.

“The Second Bakery Attack,” incidentally, the second story in this volume, is a downright wacky escape from responsibility, one of those adventurous, spur-of-the-moment, nearly psychotic events that you've always wanted to orchestrate, but never had the guts to carry out. It's a rampage, of sorts, but a darkly funny rampage.

The story “Sleep,” about a woman who loses the ability to sleep and seems to be none the worse for wear because of it, could have been brilliant. But the ending was terrible. It was just too abrupt and jarring, like the evil twin of deus-ex-machina descending out of an unseen trapdoor in the ceiling to drop on the reader with an unwarranted assault of the intellect. Reading this ending, I felt insulted. So much wasted potential!

“Barn Burning” had the tone of The Great Gatsby, but nowhere near the same depth of substance. A good story, but not great.

My favorite story of the collection was “A Window”. This one blew my socks off. It is one of the shortest works in the volume, and the most powerful. The main character is a young man who is hired to read and edit letters sent to him by women who want to become better writers. There's little to excite in the plot itself, but the emotion is deep and often poignant. Absolutely the most moving story in the book. This is one that should be anthologized for the sake of the next generation of readers.

“The Dancing Dwarf” came in a close second. It is a modern fairy tale, replete with spiritual possession, diabolical contracts, and the dire consequences of living up to such a contract. This one pushes beyond magic realism into the realm of fabulism. Its mood is different than any other story in this collection, truly horrific, and I wonder if Murakami couldn't fit this into a collection of darker work. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

The title story is a very interesting tale, ostensibly about a vanishing elephant, though I suspect that the impetus for the story came from questions about quantum mechanics, probability, and scientific observation. But those philosophical underpinnings lie beneath many folds of pachyderm skin. As the elephant vanishes, the implications grow. A fitting ending to a short-story collection, no?

While the stories I've mentioned are strong and would have made an excellent collection on their own, the others detract from the “oomph” I like in short story collections. I'm a bit disappointed, to be honest, but the stronger stories hold the overall product up at an acceptable level. Don't bust the bank to purchase a copy, but do seek it out at your local used book store or library. It's worth that much, as well as a few hours of your time (if you're a slow reader like me). Recommended, with reservations.

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Artifactual Books

I love a good book. By that, I don't just mean the words on the page. I love the book-as-artifact, the object itself, which, if carefully and properly created, impresses by its mere presence. I'm talking about a book that makes the room in which it lies better, no matter where it is. While I realize that there are a few trade paperbacks that are of a high quality (isn't that what the Philip K. Dick Award is all about?), I'm looking for something really special, something you're likely not going to find at your chain bookstore and only rarely at the best independent bookstores. Oftentimes, these books feature the work of obscure and experimental authors, but not necessarily.

Some small presses put out a special edition or two that are truly outstanding. Savoy Books' A Voyage to Arcturus is a good example of this. Yes, Savoy puts out some other great books, including my favorite book on writing, Michael Moorcock's Death Is No Obstacle, but nothing quite reaches the grandeur of A Voyage to Arcturus. The 2002 edition of Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, published by Prime Books, is one of the finest books in my library. But Prime hasn't done anything nearly as nice before (definitely) or since (so far as I know).

So what publishers consistently bring out the finest artifacts as books? I'm sure there are a few that I am not aware of, probably several that are no longer in business. This sort of thing requires an investment, and, as I understand the publishing industry, shoestring budgets are the rule, rather than the exception. Besides, these sorts of books are oftentimes very expensive to produce and, therefore, there are few who can afford to buy them. Margins are thin and the audience is small. It's very difficult for a publisher to sustain business, given these constraints.

Thankfully, a few small presses persevere. I'm not sure if they have wealthy investors or if the owners are really keen on losing money. Maybe they've discovered some super-secret business model that defies Keynesian economic principles. But, money aside (a LOT of money aside), here are a few must-sees.

For consistency of presentation and quality, I am partial to Tartarus Press.  Their ouvre is that of dark fiction, well told, in an understated, crisp format that never fails to impress. Truth be told, if I had to have all of my books in one physical format, I would pick Tartarus to do the job. I've commented on their edition of Gustav Meyrink's The Golem. Tartarus books are, in a word, elegant. Once you've picked one up, you'll be able to spot one on a crowded bookshelf in a flash. They are the supermodel of books, so far as I'm concerned.

Atlas Press has been putting out a number of strange works, all expertly presented, for some years now. Of special interest are their Special Editions, including a numbered and slip cased edition of Hermann Nitsch's The Fall of Jerusalem, which includes a trifolded map of the subterranean city in which the Dionysian drama takes place.

Finally, Ex Occidente Press is producing some fine books, if you've got the money to spend. Like Atlas, their tastes run to the transgressive and obscure, but with a more contemporary tilt.

Thankfully, the internet makes these works attainable, at least in terms of having the ability to obtain the books, despite the price. There are few bookstores that can and actually do physically carry these volumes (and others like them)  and I'm guessing that these bookstores are likely only located in the largest metropolitan areas. Though they do not, so far as I know, carry titles by the publishers mentioned above, I'd still recommend that those passing through southern or eastern Wisconsin stop in at Woodland Pattern bookstore, in Milwaukee, for a taste of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Speaking of which, it's probably about time I made a trip back there. Hmm. Time for a road trip?

If you know of any others, I'd love to hear about them!

ADDENDUM: Since I posted this a month ago, I have stumbled on the wonderful textual artifacts produced by Egaeus Press. They look beautiful and I am hearing some great things about them from reviewers whom I respect a great deal. Oh, how I wish I had more cash for spending on fine books like this!

ADDENDUM 2: When it rains, it pours. It's my lucky week for finding publishers of beautiful limited editions, I guess. I have the delight of having "discovered" Centipede Press and their fantastic limited edition books. Their (sold out) edition of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War looks like a treasure. Anyone want to trade for my trade paperback edition? It's in really good shape!

Amazon, Goodreads, Questions . . . and an answer

Not long after the acquisition of Goodreads by Amazon, I posted a rather skeptical open missive questioning the future of one of my favorite websites. Here is a portion of the email I sent to Goodreads in regards to my questions, under the subject heading "RE: Goodreads Joins the Amazon Family":

What does this imply, in terms of authors reviewing other author's work? Will the same restrictions be placed on Goodreads authors reviewing other authors' work, the same as Amazon has done? What assurances can we have that this will NOT happen?

What of works that are now published exclusively on a platform other than Amazon, such as Smashwords? Will the corporate interests of Amazon disallow reviews of such books?

Please take a moment to address these questions.

I was surprised, frankly, to get a direct response. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, given how . . . well, good Goodreads has been in the past.  Maybe my pessimism had let me believe the various conspiracy theories that are floating out there about how the acquisition must have already corrupted Goodreads. While more level-headed people are taking a "wait and see" approach (myself included), there are some who have run away from Goodreads virtually screaming, as it were.

So here is a measured and intelligent response from Kate Erickson, Customer Care Manager at Goodreads:

Hi Forrest,

I'm so sorry for the delayed response to your inquiries.  To clarify, we have no plans to change our reviews policy. All of your reviews and ratings will remain here on Goodreads.  And we’ll continue to be a home for all types of readers, no matter what books you love to read or how you love to read them.  You will still be able to review any book that you've read, even if it isn't available on Amazon.  As for the links to retailers, we have no plans to change these.  And it’s important to remember that members always have the freedom to choose where to buy their books – it’s their decision.

I hope that helps to allay your concerns, but please let me know if you have any further questions.

Best regards,
Kara

Kara Erickson

Customer Care Manager

Goodreads.com

Now, while I find the last sentence to be a little bit of an artful dodge (really, only a little bit), I'll say that this response has done a lot to put my mind at ease. Call me a sucker, but I believe her, at least for now. Again, I'm taking a wait and see approach, like many of you are, but I feel like I can ease back in my chair just a bit while watching the transition take place. Who knows, maybe we'll all end up enjoying the ride?