Friday, June 17, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Hari Kunzru, Transmission (2005)
There's such a focus on anxiety in contemporary novels. The Corrections comes to mind, and Infinite Jest - which is about a lot of other things too, but man, is there some anxiety in that book, especially in the first chapter. Edward St. Aubyn's Mother's Milk is pretty anxious. Another common theme of recent novels is satire of a caricaturish kind: The Russian Debutante's Handbook comes to mind, The Corrections again, Zadie Smith's On Beauty or White Teeth and lots and lots of New Yorker short stories (some of them by the authors of the books just mentioned, which might seem like it doesn't count, but it adds to the subjective feeling of the pervasiveness of this kind of writing, which I grow tired of). None of these are among my favourite books (actually I haven't finished The Corrections and don't want to pre-judge, but so far it's given me a similar feeling to the others: interesting enough to go on with, but not moving). For the first hundred or two pages of Infinite Jest, I was feeling emotionally connected, but in the subsequent 800 pages flagged a little.
Transmission shares both of these contemporary preoccupations, and, as with the others, I thought at first that it might be great, then thought good. It is good, and readable, and interesting. It's about computer hacking and virus creation, ramifications of the economics of globalization, adult virgins and Bollywood.
From the first, it put me on guard that the anxiety might be coming. We meet Arjun Mehta, an innocent whose glasses are "blurred with fingerprints." He is going for a job interview, and is brought to "a waiting room filled with nervous young people sitting on orange plastic chairs with the peculiar, self-isolating stiffness interview candidates share with criminal defendants and people in STD-clinic reception areas." I was slightly hopeful that he might turn out to be an agent, and not a painful victim of circumstance, by this detail:
Transmission shares both of these contemporary preoccupations, and, as with the others, I thought at first that it might be great, then thought good. It is good, and readable, and interesting. It's about computer hacking and virus creation, ramifications of the economics of globalization, adult virgins and Bollywood.
From the first, it put me on guard that the anxiety might be coming. We meet Arjun Mehta, an innocent whose glasses are "blurred with fingerprints." He is going for a job interview, and is brought to "a waiting room filled with nervous young people sitting on orange plastic chairs with the peculiar, self-isolating stiffness interview candidates share with criminal defendants and people in STD-clinic reception areas." I was slightly hopeful that he might turn out to be an agent, and not a painful victim of circumstance, by this detail:
Above [the receptionist] a row of clocks, relics of the optimistic 1960s, displayed the time in key world cities. New Delhi seemed to be only two hours ahead of New York, and one behind Tokyo. Automatically Arjun found himself calculating the shrinkage in the world implied by this error, but, lacking even a best estimate for certain of the variables, his thoughts trailed away.And he is a bit of an agent, but not generally enough to get out of the clutches of the big bad world (is that saying too much? I try not to reveal anything, but that's a bit difficult). But at the same time, it's nice writing. I think it gets a bit rushed and slightly less artful later on, but no, it's technically pretty good throughout -- all those other aforementioned books also show good technique, resolving for me a question I had as a teenager about whether great craft was enough to make great literature.
This is an example of the slightly overdone satire that makes me wince:
It's predictable. Mostly the plot is not so predictable and is nicely paced. It disappointed me a little though, I was expecting more from the twin storylines of Arjun and Guy, based on some clues dropped in middle chapters.Guy had known even before he moved in that this was a living space that would require something extraordinary. Feeling both time- and knowledge-challenged, he had (at the suggestion of the attractive brunette property consultant) employed an agency to help him buy furniture. That way, he reasoned, he could be certain everything about his personal environment was in the best possible taste. And so the white-leather table with the cut-out airport city code motif [...] and the low-rise smuggled-teak patio furniture on the balcony; all of it was personalized, individual, signature. It was all--every sandlblasted bathroom faucet of it--him.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Midnight in Paris, Montreal
Woody Allen's new movie, Midnight in Paris, is a super fun dream of a film, reminded me of some of his older movies even though Allen's character played by Owen Wilson rather than himself. Wilson is a successful Hollywood screen writer who wants to give it up to be a novelist and live in Paris. Most of the movie is his time travel back to 1920s Paris where he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso and various others (I'd mention Dali and Bunuel, but I never figured out how to get keyboard accents on a mac). It's pure fantasy but funnily scripted and well acted and it transported me, I let myself think I was talking to Hemingway and listening to Cole Porter sing at the piano in the bar. What could be better, really? I liked that it's a fantasy that doesn't revolve around male ideals, and even the women (some of them) are allowed personalities and individual desires, and even the fulfillment of those desires. After the movie, to keep the feeling going, we went to L'Express on St. Denis, which was packed at 10 PM, and which perfectly rounded out a lovely francophile evening. I don't go there often enough, so I don't know whether it's always so full of stylish people or if it's because this is Grand Prix weekend. I'm staying in Little Italy this week, and there are sports cars (and cinquecentas) everywhere.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and the Farewell Speech
Tonight at Place des Arts, saw a Japanese play by author/director/choreographer Toshiki Okada, with English and French subtitles. Rare to see plays in foreign languages, but they do it for opera and movies all the time, so why not plays. And the six-hour Dutch Shakespeare last year was so great, and was put on as part of the same festival as this play, the Festival TransAmeriques (neither of them has any connection to the americas, so I'm a bit confused about what the festival is really about, but still very impressed with the acts it's brought over). The play is actually three short interconnected plays, Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and the Farewell Speech, which is a bit disappointing since I thought the title was pretty awesome if it was one title, but maybe it still is one title even though the pieces were written at different times, since they interlock extremely well, and are obviously meant to be performed together. Very movement-based, they are almost dance pieces. The setting is an office break room. In the first act, three temps plan a farewell party for a temp who's just been fired. The first man stands up and, with some very awkward gestures, tells his two co-workers they should all pick a restaurant, since they are in charge of organizing the party, and that although the best would be a suggestion, he has brought in a magazine called Hot Pepper that has restaurant listings (the screen behind him informs us, quoting wikipedia, that Hot Pepper is a free monthly magazine). He repeats himself, the best would be a suggestion but otherwise he has this magazine, and his gestures get bigger and more awkward, and the two women sitting down completely ignore him. The second one gets up, she says, as far as restaurant recommendations go, she thinks that Erika, the one who has been fired, once said she really liked motsu hot pot and though this is old information and might not be current, if no one has any other ideas maybe they should choose a motsu hot pot place (she later divulges that this was a lie, but she has a craving for motsu hot pot since she saw it on tv two nights ago). She is also making some really painfully awkward gestures, swinging her arms around and generally being ignored. The third one gets up and addresses the issue of it being the temps who are organizing this party. She has the most awkward gestures to date, involving pelvic rotation, and she also seems extremely shy, which makes it more embarrassing. She feels it's a task for full-time workers, but that they were given the job because they are temps too. Later, the first man says he thinks that they should organize the dinner so that the full-time people pay more. He keeps actually looking at the other two, which in some ways makes him seem like he's the most pathetic, since they do at times have some response to what he says, but they never look at him. The third woman has a later speech wondering why Erika was fired, since she had really good Excel skills, and wonders when they will be fired. She says, when it's her turn, she wants them to pick Chinese for the restaurant, and suggests they all state their preferences now.
Act two, the air coditioner, has two people, full-time workers. First, a man talks about a political talk show he likes, then a woman talks at length about how damn cold it is in the office. Someone keeps resetting the air conditioner. In response, repeatedly, the man suggests they should call the police, if the AC is such a problem. It's hard to tell if he's making fun of her or not. But he seems pretty into her, so you kind of think not. They also have the awkward motions and weirdly, by now, I'm getting very used to them, they almost seem like normal gestures. The other thing about the crazy motions is that they feel very much like they are the expression of inner feelings, where the words are so banal. They are not wild or rageful, but angular and uncomfortable, slightly sad, maybe like the movements you would make after sitting in one spot for eight hours. They are also kind of beautiful.
One distracting thing, the English and French translations sometimes really didn't match up. For instance, at some point the French says, "Mais oui" and the English says, "No, maybe not, not really." I had to first spend some time wondering whether the disconnect was intentional, then spend time pondering whether they translated the two separately from Japanese, and if so, should I be reading both languages and amalgamating them into a better composite rendering of the original? Better to have made them more similar with such a bilingual audience (but then that brings me back to the first wondering).
The third piece is back to Erika (incidentally the others all had japanese names; Erika's is the only really prominent name), who comes in and makes her farewell speech. She is dancing through a lot of it, doing an extremely endearing little bop with her knees while she shakes her balled-up fists in a circular motion near her head. She says the last almost two years, this job, have been a great time in her life, she's not sure she'll ever be this happy again. She also says she bought these shoes a long time ago, they're just plain black pumps, really, but she's grown fond of them. They kind of remind her of two penguins. Sometimes, when she is bored, she has them talk to each other. At first they didn't like each other. He would say, hey, why you following me? But then they developed a relationship and then she was pregnant, and Erika couldn't believe it, since the shoe had so recently been a little girl, now she was a mother. Then, the shoe goes into labour while Erika is at her desk, and she's worried that someone will come ask her to send a fax, but no-one does. At this point in the play, her awkward motions incorporate the stillness of just one foot, which cannot be disturbed as the shoe-penguin lays her egg. Does any of this sound like the matter of a great play (or triptych)? After having seen it, I can't go back and judge. It was awesome.
Act two, the air coditioner, has two people, full-time workers. First, a man talks about a political talk show he likes, then a woman talks at length about how damn cold it is in the office. Someone keeps resetting the air conditioner. In response, repeatedly, the man suggests they should call the police, if the AC is such a problem. It's hard to tell if he's making fun of her or not. But he seems pretty into her, so you kind of think not. They also have the awkward motions and weirdly, by now, I'm getting very used to them, they almost seem like normal gestures. The other thing about the crazy motions is that they feel very much like they are the expression of inner feelings, where the words are so banal. They are not wild or rageful, but angular and uncomfortable, slightly sad, maybe like the movements you would make after sitting in one spot for eight hours. They are also kind of beautiful.
One distracting thing, the English and French translations sometimes really didn't match up. For instance, at some point the French says, "Mais oui" and the English says, "No, maybe not, not really." I had to first spend some time wondering whether the disconnect was intentional, then spend time pondering whether they translated the two separately from Japanese, and if so, should I be reading both languages and amalgamating them into a better composite rendering of the original? Better to have made them more similar with such a bilingual audience (but then that brings me back to the first wondering).
The third piece is back to Erika (incidentally the others all had japanese names; Erika's is the only really prominent name), who comes in and makes her farewell speech. She is dancing through a lot of it, doing an extremely endearing little bop with her knees while she shakes her balled-up fists in a circular motion near her head. She says the last almost two years, this job, have been a great time in her life, she's not sure she'll ever be this happy again. She also says she bought these shoes a long time ago, they're just plain black pumps, really, but she's grown fond of them. They kind of remind her of two penguins. Sometimes, when she is bored, she has them talk to each other. At first they didn't like each other. He would say, hey, why you following me? But then they developed a relationship and then she was pregnant, and Erika couldn't believe it, since the shoe had so recently been a little girl, now she was a mother. Then, the shoe goes into labour while Erika is at her desk, and she's worried that someone will come ask her to send a fax, but no-one does. At this point in the play, her awkward motions incorporate the stillness of just one foot, which cannot be disturbed as the shoe-penguin lays her egg. Does any of this sound like the matter of a great play (or triptych)? After having seen it, I can't go back and judge. It was awesome.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008)
There's a special joy in finding a really good book by a new novelist. I mean, not new to me, but new to the world. It's especially joyful when I haven't heard anything about the book, but picked it up more or less at random (actually, it was a gift but the person who chose it, my mum, also hadn't heard anything about it beforehand). It did win the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book, Europe and South Asia category, which is certainly something, but I am increasingly of the opinion that even prizes like the Booker don't predict much, quality wise. So, I wasn't expecting much when I opened it, because I'm getting awfully used to disappointing novels and this one didn't come with a recommendation. And I disliked (and still dislike) the title. A Case of Exploding Mangoes gave me a feeling that maybe the book was playing on some kind of facile exoticism. But it is not facile in any way. It is sensitive and poetic and also tough and violent and grapples with grand political historical narrative. It nestles itself within the events of final days of Pakistan's sixth president, General Zia-ul-Haq, who died in 1988 in a plane crash. Apparently the circumstances of the plane crash were never fully discovered, so the book has a lot of room to play with.
I say it nestles itself, it lives in that narrative, but it is both about the historical events and not about them. The main character is the son of a famous Pakistani general who committed suicide, and who is now a young man in the army himself. He becomes friends with a young man quite different from himself, one not at all used to military customs. Every scene leads you one step further along into the logic of the conclusion, in which the plane comes down, but it's always clear that the protagonist's inner (fictional) life is more important, for these pages, than is the fate of the government.
The literary establishment seems, at best, suspicious about historical novels, I guess because they seem conceptually so close to genre writing, what with their interest in plot and events and capitalizing on names and fascinations already present in the reader's consciousness. I think I like historical fiction about as often as I like non-historical fiction. I really enjoyed reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009; winner of the Man Booker prize) but that was more fast-paced and plot driven. It showed an amazing amount of imagination, but the imaginative bits were interstitial, inventions about what Thomas Cromwell might have been thinking the day before he arrested Thomas More, or some other historically verifiable event. Here, the connection to plot is less central. The events, though they are capital-H History and recent, to boot, are only a small part of the life of a novel. I'm not advocating for one type or the other, and I loved reading both of them, but they are very different. Wolf Hall is more of a page turner, and A Case of Exploding Mangoes is more emotionally affecting.
I say it nestles itself, it lives in that narrative, but it is both about the historical events and not about them. The main character is the son of a famous Pakistani general who committed suicide, and who is now a young man in the army himself. He becomes friends with a young man quite different from himself, one not at all used to military customs. Every scene leads you one step further along into the logic of the conclusion, in which the plane comes down, but it's always clear that the protagonist's inner (fictional) life is more important, for these pages, than is the fate of the government.
The literary establishment seems, at best, suspicious about historical novels, I guess because they seem conceptually so close to genre writing, what with their interest in plot and events and capitalizing on names and fascinations already present in the reader's consciousness. I think I like historical fiction about as often as I like non-historical fiction. I really enjoyed reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009; winner of the Man Booker prize) but that was more fast-paced and plot driven. It showed an amazing amount of imagination, but the imaginative bits were interstitial, inventions about what Thomas Cromwell might have been thinking the day before he arrested Thomas More, or some other historically verifiable event. Here, the connection to plot is less central. The events, though they are capital-H History and recent, to boot, are only a small part of the life of a novel. I'm not advocating for one type or the other, and I loved reading both of them, but they are very different. Wolf Hall is more of a page turner, and A Case of Exploding Mangoes is more emotionally affecting.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Quote of the Day
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
From The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot
I love the lady of situations. I'm memorizing The Waste Land and am delighted at how memorization improves understanding and appreciation. I've never been a big poetry memorizer before, at least not since I was seven and my best friend Naomi convinced me to join in memorizing Shakespeare soliloquies on the verandah of the Far Cottage at Petawawa Lake.
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
From The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot
I love the lady of situations. I'm memorizing The Waste Land and am delighted at how memorization improves understanding and appreciation. I've never been a big poetry memorizer before, at least not since I was seven and my best friend Naomi convinced me to join in memorizing Shakespeare soliloquies on the verandah of the Far Cottage at Petawawa Lake.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Poem of the day
Love Is Not All
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by need and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Troublingly, I've looked at five different versions of this poem online and cannot find a consensus on the correct version (Pinned down by pain or need? well may or may well? also, two "can not"s instead of "cannot"s, which seemed v unlikely). Until I consult a paper copy, this is my best guess.
What is so strong here, for me, is the duality of the acceptance of the terrible realities of torture and want and at the same time the rejection of the human condition as struggle for basic survival. It's not taking some ridiculous position that, of course, we can all follow our passions all the time and those who don't like bread can eat cake. But it is saying there is a way, without judging others, without putting our heads in the sand, to say that we hope to adhere to a way of living that does prioritize the non-material, the truly beautiful aspects of humanity.
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by need and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Troublingly, I've looked at five different versions of this poem online and cannot find a consensus on the correct version (Pinned down by pain or need? well may or may well? also, two "can not"s instead of "cannot"s, which seemed v unlikely). Until I consult a paper copy, this is my best guess.
What is so strong here, for me, is the duality of the acceptance of the terrible realities of torture and want and at the same time the rejection of the human condition as struggle for basic survival. It's not taking some ridiculous position that, of course, we can all follow our passions all the time and those who don't like bread can eat cake. But it is saying there is a way, without judging others, without putting our heads in the sand, to say that we hope to adhere to a way of living that does prioritize the non-material, the truly beautiful aspects of humanity.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Quote of the Day
I felt fear, tininess and hunger. I decided the only way to become as big as the Big People was to begin eating.
In the infinite coffee shop, my eyes struggled to take in the polyptych menu and its thousand offerings. Eggs with legs, friendly forks and spoons marched across it. GOOD MORNING! Barnyard Suggestions . . . What! I thought. Wanna meet this chicken in the hayloft in half an hour, fella? But these were not that kind of barnyard suggestion. Here in Big People Land, land-o-lotsa wholesomeness, they were suggesting I eat the following: (1) 3 strips of bacon, 2 pancakes, 2 eggs (any style), 2 sausages, juice, toast and coffee; (2) 6 strips of bacon, 5 pancakes, 4 eggs (any style), 3 sausages, juice, toast and coffee; or (3) 12 strips of bacon, 9 pancakes, 7 eggs (any style), 1 1/2 gallons of juice, 3 lbs of toast and a 'Bottomless Pit' (which I took to be a typographical error for 'Pot') of coffee. Thus emptying any barnyard I could imagine of all life. Again I was lost. I felt I was visiting Karnak. I pleaded for half an order of toast, eight pieces.Todd McEwen, "They Tell Me You Are Big" in The Best of Granta Travel (1991).
I'm not always a fan of this kind of verbal equivalent of slapstick, but this is hilarious.
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