The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

 

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In my quest to "use what I have," a subset of "minimalism," I'm digging back into books that I have read before, but not yet reviewed. I believe I picked up this (now very beat up) copy of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy as an undergraduate at BYU. I don't exactly remember why I chose this book. I think I just spotted it on a bookshelf in a used bookstore near campus, read the back copy, and decided to give it a try. I was a humanities major as an undergrad, so it behooved me to read "classics," and this was one classic that I had never heard of until that point. I was young and dumb then and didn't have the toolkit to really analyze literature quite yet. I was building that toolkit.

Turns out, for this novel, I didn't need a toolkit.

Because Tristram Shandy defies analysis.

Plot? You've got to be kidding. The main character isn't born until page 170.

Setting? The vast majority of the story takes place on the grounds and house of the Shandy estate, though several pithy journeys wind their way into the narrative. There is a section on France (largely dismissive and with much of the "action" taking place at night, unseen by Tristram himself).

Speaking of which: Action: If you're looking for acts of heroism, you'll hear some referred to, mostly by Corporal Trim, the (extremely lovable and innocent) servant of Tristram's Uncle Toby. These are viewed with a simplistic eye and lack any of the bombast of most modern thrillers. Teh highest levels of excitement are reserved for 1) references to battles in which characters (most notably, Uncle Toby) have been wounded, 2) arguments between servants and, sometimes, their masters, 3) arguments about the birth of the boy and his naming, and 4) philosophical arguments.

Philosophy? The novel is lousy with it, but philosophers are often misquoted (whether intentionally or not is difficult to tell), misidentified, and their words maladjusted to whatever argument is being presented at the time (which is coming from Tristram's father most of the time).

Culture? Here we are hitting something important and, ostensibly analyzable. But who has time to learn all the mannerisms of mid-18th century England? Thankfully, the novel is also lousy with endnotes (and I don't mean "bad" when I say "lousy," I mean "infested, as with lice"). It's a whimsical window to the England of the 1700s. America didn't even know what it was missing.

Structure? Ah, mmm, about that . . . the only structure here is digression. It reminds me of the time as a grad student I had to learn to read French, after having studied German for four years and Swahili for two. French . . . has no structure. Everything is an exception. This drove me absolutely batty. In fact, "French for Reading Knowledge" is the only class I ever failed in college. It doesn't help that the teacher had us construct sentences from scratch for the final, something we were never taught and never instructed to study. We were taught to read, which I could do pretty well. But then the final came and we were supposed to construct a bunch of sentences from nothing in French. I'm still pissed about that one. Anyway, after studying the firm rules of German and Swahili grammar, with a couple of idioms sprinkled here and there (and easily recognizable, for the most part, from context), I was thrust into the spaghetti code of French "grammar", where, I will repeat, everything is an exception, with very few rules that I could fathom.

But as much as I hate(d) French, I love the digressions of Tristram Shandy. And this lack of structure, this worship of the digression, is by design. To quote Sterne:

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; - they are the life, the soul of reading; - - - take them out of this book for instance, - - you might as well take the book along with them; - one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer; - - - - - he steps forth like a bridegroom, - bids All hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.

The heart and soul of the book, then, is The Digression. Not just those used by the author in creating the "story," but also by each individual character in telling tales of yore, quoting philosophers (poorly), and even in the manner in which they read certain treatises and tell certain tales, themselves full of digressions.

And what of the characters? Here is where Sterne hits his highest notes, particularly in the characters of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, two grizzled veterans, stout of heart and dedicated wholeheartedly to their "hobby horse" of large-scale reproductions of military campaigns in which they participated. I really fell in love with these two warm-hearted characters and their banter, which, of course, spilled into, yes, even more digressions.

Speaking of the "hobby horse," here Sterne, though a pastor, is far from innocent in his insinuations. This novel is bawdy. Thoroughly so. To the point that I am shocked that Sterne didn't lose his clerical office. As any shrewd Englishman would, however, he hid the bawdiness in euphemism, some of the most clever euphemisms I have ever heard (and I was raised around soldiers who would make you question the physical ability of one to stick one's body parts into the suggested receptacle - the physics are staggering).

So, I say pishposh to all the deep post-modern analysis of the academy. This is a novel that is meant to be read and enjoyed, not dissected and analyzed. It's a morass of facades, innuendo, and false leads, baroque in its segues and sidestreets, and all the more beautiful for its chaotic complexity.

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Journey Across Breath/Tragitto Nel Respiro

 

Journey Across Breath/Tragitto Nel Respiro by Stephen Watts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Watts prose-poem straddles the line between fiction and non-fiction, much as the mountain environs that serve as both a setting and character are an interstitial zone, suspended between nations. Time is not only fluid here; it is a swirling, mangled time"line" tied up in itself at odd angles, where chronology is dictated by the mind of the observer. Here, one can see family members as they were long before the observer was born, or as they will become after the subject has died. It is a dance, not of Chronos, but of Kairos, with the participants and the music ever-changing, but all of a theme. This pseudo-memoir is the perfect coffee table book, if your coffee table is a half-rusted folding table next to a ratty wooden bar stool in a concrete building with a rough-hewn door and without glass in the window-panes in the Italian alps. But this little cottage must be warm with family and laughter and tears, all stirred together by Watt's exquisite penmanship.

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Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

 

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This may be my favorite Philip K. Dick novel to date. It's got all the "typical" trappings of a Dick novel: Dystopian setting, drugs that really do alter reality, flying cars, synthetic humans - but the sappy title isn't just treacle. There is some real emotional depth to this story. Even more so than The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. This is one of his later novels and one wonders, after this foray, what emotional depths he might have plumbed had he lived longer.

This work is, as one would expect from Dick, complicated, mystifying, even misleading, at times. But here, I'm not just referring to the plot, I'm referring more specifically to the characters. All of them evoke sympathy, pity, and annoyance, at the least, downright loathing, at worst. There really is not one "stock" character here; even the most "vanilla" of the bunch, Herb Maime, shows an underlying depth of psychological complexity burbling under his seeming obsequiousness. And though the action largely follows along with the actions (and inactions and reactions) of Jason Taverner, one might argue that the real central character is Police General Felix Buckman. Or perhaps it is Buckman's sister-wife, Alys, who we learn has perhaps inadvertently caused the reality-shift that Taverner suffers. Honestly, it's difficult to tell who the "main" characters are, as all have a level of complexity and plot-involvement that might argue for their position as protagonist.

If this seems like a hopelessly-twisted story of hopelessly-twisted people . . . it is! And the strangest thing of all: Dick claimed that most of this book was non-fiction. Yes, you read that correctly. Now, Dick's psychosis is well-known, as is his chronic drug use. So, you might just blow this statement off as crazy-talk. And maybe it is. But if you are one of the many people who suspect that there just might be something to the Mandela Effect, well, you can see how the author could have viewed this book as largely non-fiction. Of course, the Mandela Effect had not been named as such when Dick wrote the book (Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island at the time the book was written), but the idea of multiple universes laying one on top of the other, or side by side, with the possibility of a cosmic slip in-between realities and timelines, is one of the foremost features of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. In essence, it is the plot.

Furthermore, the emotional depth and complexity of these characters were not created at an intellectual remove from the pen. They seem to emerge as organic, living beings, people, or at least reflective of people, who Dick knew and loved (and lost). Really, the science fiction here is merely a (multidimensional) doorway into a world of love, pain, guilt, self-doubt, and forgiveness, with spaces of emotional numbness in-between. Here, the inner world is what matters, and the outer world, or, more appropriately, outer worlds (and the slippages between them) is merely a catalyst for human emotion, a window into the soul.

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Gravensteen's Weapons

 I love to travel. The Wanderlust is a core part of who I am. I was born "overseas," as a child, I moved every three years or so, and when "overseas" my family travelled for vacation as often as possible. 

One natural consequence of travel is to come home with photos to remind us of the good times we had and the interesting places we saw. Technology makes it easy to take as many pictures as we want. However, I've found that looking through a screen at the things that are immediately around me forces a one-step remove from the actual experience. I intentionally try to limit my screen time while on vacation; after all, why would I travel halfway across the planet just to be online? But, despite my best efforts to analogize, I'm often sucked into the camera eye and miss the saturation of experience that can occur while I am immersed in a new place. So, I've made efforts to limit how many pictures I take while travelling. Of course, I'll take some photos, but whereas I might have taken a hundred photos a day in the past, I've tried to limit myself to something more like half of that. Even then, I have a lot of photos to "dump".

This last April, I was able to travel to Germany for work. After this, my wife and I took a week-long stay in Belgium. We were "stationed" in Antwerp - our Air BnB was literally 100 feet from the train station - and travelled out to Ghent, Bruges, and up to The Hague, Netherlands. I took a lot of pictures that week, as Belgium has some of the most beautiful architecture I've ever seen. When I look at the photos on my phone, I'm overwhelmed. So, I am trying to parse out these photographs into batches that are a little more digestible in order to blog a bit more clearly about my trips.

We'll start with Castle Gravensteen, AKA Castle of the Counts in Ghent. I'll include pictures of the castle itself in another post (or posts). 

Being a dutiful D&D nerd, of course I toured the castle! And, of course, I took photos of some of the weapons displayed there. This shows maybe half of the weapons there (again, I tried to limit pictures so I could actually enjoy the experience in the moment). For you other D&D nerds, hopefully this will provide some inspiration for your own games. Or, perhaps you might just enjoy the beauty of these killing tools. 

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The Wander Society

 

The Wander Society by Keri Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretentious? Yes. But I like pretentiousness. But I actually LIKE pretentiousness in writing. Sure, it's a little "twee" at times, but so what? Keri Smith is living her best life. Get over yourself.

What he have here is non-fiction disguised as fiction. It's a handbook, really, an eclectic mix of false story that entices one into the Wander Society. There is a touch of armchair philosophy and a lot of practical types on how to be impractical, which is a wonderful undertaking. Whimsy is the heartbeat of everything you'll find in this work. If you take yourself really seriously, you are going to be seriously disappointed.

My favorite sections were "The Wander Society's Tactical Guide" and, most importantly, "Assignments/Research/Field Work". These are were the rubber (of your soles) hits the road (or the dirt or mud or gravel). This is what I was looking for when I first heard about this strange little book. Before reading the book, I had already implemented my own brand of "Leave Behind," as Smith names it, a calling card, if you will, and a tribute to life, death, and the struggle between the two. It's been exactly a year since I started the practice of beautifying death on the trail, and, in fact, I laid a garland on a critter this afternoon. Poor little guy! If I don't memorialize his little life, who will?

This book has also helped me as I do my best to go analog and ditch the smart phone. Walking, especially wandering (there is a difference) is a great way to immerse oneself in analog, as long as one is willing to turn their phone off or leave it at home while on the trail. It's a beautiful, horrifying, lovely world. Look up from your screen for a while and take it all in. The Wander Society can be used as a tool to help you learn how.

Remember "Solvitur Ambulando" and "non omnes qui errant perditi sunt"!

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Urx Quonox

 

Urx Quonox by Adam S. Cantwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm reading the Occult Press version, gifted to me and signed by Adam, 37/120 limited edition. Thanks, Adam!

I'm a big sword and sorcery fan, have been since the mid-70s, reading Savage Sword of Conan and the old Howard paperbacks. Here, with Grasm the Barbarian, Cantwell has taken S&S to a higher literary level, the inevitable evolution out of pulp and into thinking-man's writing, and I'm here for it.

If Robert E. Howard had cast aside all prudery and collaborated with William Burroughs, this might start to approximate the style of "The Monarch in Disarray," but this tale is much more transgressive, visceral, and psychedelic than that. It's a decadent sword & sorcery tale, pushed to carnal extremes with an emphasis on the sorcery and its deeper effects on the psyche. Grasm > Conan, maybe. The writing is head and shoulders above Howard's.

Another story of Grasm the Barbarian, "Scream of the Bluejay," is a barnacle-encrusted sea-salt soaked rope of a tale about revenental vengeance. While the center of attention in the story isn't the barbarian, it says much about him and twists in such a way as to wring out more of his past. It's a clever tale of sword and sorcery, of regret, betrayal, and murder; a hideously glorious, horrifically beautiful tale.

The final entry in the Grasm trilogy, "Cities Below the Strand," again puts an emphasis on sorcery over swords. No swords are drawn in this tale, but there is a deep cut of nihilism here, particularly as regards both the past and the future of Grasm himself. This is a small window into what could be a large, inglorious panorama both for the barbarian himself and for his world as a whole. Hearts die, nations collapse, the world keeps spinning.

Three tales about the same person, but exploring different aspects of his past, present, and future. Grasm learns about Grasm even as we do. I want to continue this journey!

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Des Lewis' Brainwright and My Writing

 Here, a very brief post, a mere link, really, to Des Lewis' Forrest Aguirre and the Brainwright for my old age. As some of you know, Des is a master of reviewing works of fiction in such a way as to re-present the work to new audiences by offering a detailed analysis that is less explanatory and more exploratory, not ingesting and regurgitating the material, but painting a picture of a painting with other eyes. His reviews are a kaleidoscope, zooming in and out, lensing, coloring, sometimes distorting to catch images out of the corner of the intellectual eye that one would otherwise miss. As I said, they re-present the work in fully self-sufficient strokes.

Now Des has examined his reviews through the lens of what I will call a Deep-Observational Engine, which takes the whole of his output (which has a vast and riddling complexity) and twists the kaleidoscope on the reviews themselves. For my own work, this is fascinating to me. I have no argument with the conclusions, but note that many of the threads presented here were not anything intentional on my part. Some were, of course, but some are just organic threads that emerge through my writing process from somewhere deep inside. When I read the review, it gives me reason to reflect not only on my work, but on myself. I think back to "where I was" in life at the time I wrote each of those stories, and I can see windows back into my own experience (the experience of living, not writing) two steps removed from my own biased analysis of myself. It's a refreshing view and lends perspective that I otherwise wouldn't have.

As always, Des: fantastic. You are a modern Wizard.

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