Downsize, Upscale?

 My oldest son is a Spartan. He does very much with very little. I've often said that if I were to have to survive an apocalypse, I'd want him by my side. He's incredibly resourceful, loves to learn new things, and is excellent at figuring out how things work. All of my kids share that trait to one extent or another, but my oldest son . . . well, he's a Spartan in all the good ways.

When he was young, we were a resource-poor family. I was an undergrad when he was born, but when he was a toddler and young child, I was either in graduate school or had just dropped out. We didn't have much at all. I recall one month where, for several weeks, we subsisted mostly on beans and rice, because that's what we had. I'm guessing that those formative years of "want" were what spurred him to make do. 

Now I'm older and more financially secure. We live comfortably in the middle class, pretty much right in the middle, if I understand American salaries correctly. We have what we need and a good amount of what we want. Well, maybe not a "good" amount. Sometimes, when I'm not struggling with having been brought up in the '70s and '80s, when conspicuous consumption became a reachable norm for the middle class, I think I have just a little too much. But just a little.

I think back to times when I had less. And, without growing sentimental or nostalgic, I think I can say that I was only slightly less content than I am now. Any discontent back then really arose from not having enough to meet all of my family's needs, having to go into debt to survive - you know. You know. If you've never been there, well, don't say so because I have a hard time respecting people who haven't gone through hard times, whether financially, emotionally, or with health issues. I like fighters who've had to fight.

But I look around me and I think that maybe I've become a bit too spoiled. 

For example: Books. As you can tell, I review a lot of books. And I own physical copies of almost all the books I own. I think I've actually reviewed a digital book maybe three times? The other book reviews here (and there are a few) were all from physical books - probably 90% owned by me (the other 10% would be library books I borrowed). Now, I have a wishlist of books. But it's only 20 books long at any given time. I use Goodreads to maintain my list. But I do not allow myself more than 20 books on my "to be read" shelf. Otherwise, I just have a long list of books I'm never actually going to read. Besides, forcing myself to only have 20 on the list makes me REALLY think about what I want to read. 

And yet, I think I have more than I need. 

I've promised myself to re-read some of those books. And I have a nascent plan to read some of them in close proximity to each other to see what that does to my brain and my creativity. For example, I want to re-read Robert Graves The White Goddess at the same time I re-read Hamlet's Mill (which I have not reviewed here yet). These books are thematically similar-ish, but far enough apart to cause some fruitful cognitive dissonance, to trick the brain into seeing new patterns and angles heretofore unforeseen, in this case involving themes of myth and myth-creation.

Other groups of books I plan on re-reading together:

Piranesi + The City of Dreaming Books (I haven't reviewed the latter, but I feel that the tone in both of these books is very similar, at least in the corners of my memory they are - we shall see)

Lost Knowledge of the Imagination + The Secret Life of Puppets + Hieroglyphics + The Spectacle of the Void (I almost think this could be a bibliography for an undergraduate college class on . . . what, exactly?)

Swann's Way + Finnegan's Wake (neither of which I have read in full. This pairing might kill me.)

etc.

You get the idea . . . 

In order to keep my focus, I'm going to have to resist the temptation to buy new books. And I still plan on keeping my "to be read list" down to 20 books and no more. 

So my tentative plan is this: I will read the books I physically have and not order new books. When i have read through all the books I physically have now, I will concentrate on re-reading books in the combinations I've listed above and a few others. I think I might try this (deep breath) for . . . a year? I honestly don't know if I can make it. But I have to try.

Extending this further, I will try to forbear from buying (even deeper breath) new roleplaying supplements or games. And new vinyl records.

Do I just hate myself? Maybe. But I also think that if I hold off on those things and use what I already have, a few things will (hopefully) happen.

1. I will learn to more fully appreciate what I already have.

2. I will utilize what I have in new ways, especially as I "use" the media vis-a-vis each other to explore new brain spaces.

3. I will be forced to create more. If I want something new to read, I'll need to write it myself. If I want a new game or adventure to play, I'll need to make it myself. If I want new music - well, that one's easier because of bandcamp and youtube, but really, I'm hoping to force myself to pick up that darned guitar and play it more often.

4. I will save my monthly allowance that I would normally spend on books, games, and vinyl and save up to buy myself some things I've promised myself I would get but never have: a working old timey typewriter, for instance. Or a *decent* phonograph (do they even call them that anymore?) and speakers, along with some wishlist vinyl. 

5. As part of this effort, I will sell some or give away the books I feel I don't really need anymore. And I've got some knicknacks and gewgaws that I thought were a great idea at the time that I can sell on Ebay and maybe save even more for a final splurge at the end of this exercise.

It's going to be my turn to be the Spartan. We'll see how I fare.

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Pollen: A Novel in Black and White

 

Pollen: A Novel in Black and White by Beresford Egan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pollen is a novel, a work of art, really, from the delicious prose to the lavish black and white illustrations by the author and artist Beresford Egan, to the stunning presentation by publisher Sidereal Press - a novel that unfolds in so many ways, revealing itself in a long, slow burn that takes the reader by surprise, in time, like a frog discovering it's being boiled after having hopped into a nice cool pan of water on a heretofore unlit stove. That's not to say that there is any degree of deus ex machina here, no, not at all! There is a natural progression of attitudes and events, but they are handled so deftly that one realizes what is happening and damns their lack of foresight, only right before the consequences strike.

The narrative mostly centers around the actions of one Lancelot Daurimer, "man of the world" as they say, a dilettante, a scoundrel, an aesthete. At times, one sees aspects of Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, at others, Huysman's Essientes, and others, Wilde's Dorian Gray. And yet, he is his own man, a man who changes throughout the novel while, in the end, remaining very much himself. Lance Daurimer is one of the most compelling characters I've read in many, many years. He reflects us at our cruelest, our most irresponsible . . . and our most repentant and most vulnerable. For me, this carried a strong emotional resonance with my own life and the changes I have undergone through the years. In some ways (but, thankfully, not all), I am Lance Daurimer. I understand that this novel is semi-autobiographical for Beresford Egan, and one can tell that the depths of pain and self-loathing that are laid out on the page come from the author's personal experience. Egan was exorcising some demons here, but it never feels self-indulgent.

It is clearly evident that Egan paid careful attention to his text while writing and editing it. For example, the banter between Lance Daurimer and Vernon Batty is quite good. It feels natural, but on very close examination, you can see the grammatical and metaphorical craftsmanship with which it was created. I wish we had more dialogue like this in more (post?)modern literature. Dialogue can be witty and baroque and yet still feel natural if the characters participating in it are both cynical and humorous. Egan rides the razor's edge between the decadents and the modern without missing a step. though it was written in the 1930s, it feels like it is bridging the gap between the 1880s and the 1920s. But it does so without self-awareness; fluidly.

For all its cynical humor and wit, this book is definitely not a comedy. Even if it was to take a strong turn into comedic channels and stay there till the end, the laughter would always be echoed by a sense of sorrow and loss. The pain here is quite real, as we learn in the conversation between Daurimer and his father. The dialogue here is brilliant, even in its own darkness. Pollen is complex and requires something on the part of the reader: the ability to unpack and examine the growth of character (not just Daurimer's, it should be noted). Though it reads smoothly, it is not an "easy" read. One might be forgiven for thinking the book is much less than it is if the reader doesn't read the book to the end. This is one that rewards the reader who sticks it out to the end, not because of any surprise ending, but because at the end of it all, the reader can look back and fully appreciate what Egan has built here in all of it's elegance and depravity.

While there really is no "weird" or "fantastical" element, Daurimer has a daytime vision in which he sees "Lucifera," the feminine aspect of the devil himself. What decadent-leaning novel would be complete without a hallucinatory manifestation of Lucifer's feminine aspect? It goes with the territory, N'est ce Pas?

Egan's illustrations are possibly the "weirdest" feature of the book. One should probably expect this from the same author who drew illustrations for one of the more beutiful presentations of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. Most of it would be considered quite risque in 1930s England, though Egan eschews pornography, per se, in the concluding essay "Black and White Art - What Is It?" which Sidereal rightfully saw fit to include after the book's conclusion. This essay actually tells quite a bit about what Egan was trying to do with Pollen without referring to Pollen at all. It was not to take sides with good or evil at all, but to side only with Art, erasing the man-made lines between "good" and "evil". In this novel, he has quite definitely succeeded.

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If you like my writing and want to help out, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!