The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not Your Typical Lad

This is an odd little book, but one that is hugely rewarding.

There is a trend in English writing towards "lad lit", by way of imitation of "chick lit".

Most chick lit that I’ve read (e.g., Kathy Lette – nobody does upwardly mobile English bourgeois quite like an Australian) seems to be at home in its genre, whereas most lad lit seems to me to be lost in imitation, as if the author was writing down to this level, while waiting to be discovered and offered the opportunity to write something more ambitious and literary.

Otherwise intelligent men descend upon this genre in the hope of generating some fame and filthy lucre (which might fund their indulgence in literary fiction), whereas women engage in it as either writer or reader with a sincerity and pleasure that men cannot seem to match.

"The Debt to Pleasure" is not quite lad lit. John Lanchester is made of Sterner stuff. He has been restaurant critic of the Guardian and deputy editor of the London Review of Books. He has a formidable intellect and presumably has a qualification akin to a Classics Degree from Oxford. He knows about food and alcohol (as does any quality journalist), but like the best authors he knows both how to write and how others write and have written before him. He also has a wicked sense of humour.

The Cook, the Critic, the Brother and His Biographer

Lanchester’s first person narrator, Tarquin Winot, is an entertaining and erudite food critic.

For about half of the novel, he outlines some favourite menus and tells wonderful stories about each course. If you’re a foodie, he’s just the sort of person you might love to sit next to at a dinner party.

Only, as he reveals more about himself, you start to realise there might be a reason he seems to have no spouse or partner. In the second half, we see him flirting shamelessly with Laura, the young female biographer of his sculptor brother, Bartholomew. His authority diminishes as he demeans himself and he becomes a more and more unreliable narrator.

Tarquin Winot has been compared with Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert. My reading of "Lolita" might be flawed, but I never felt that Humbert was unreliable. I felt that he was telling his truth and that it was transparent right from the beginning, even if it was distasteful.

Tarquin descends in our esteem the more we learn about him. If by half way through the novel we feel that we have befriended him, by the end of the novel we question our judgement and want to scamper away with our tail between our legs. I read the novel in 24 hours and, to the extent that my relationship with Tarquin was a one-night stand, it was one I regretted in the morning, at least metaphorically.

The Raw and the Cooked

The novel is easy to read, but there is a nice sophistication working beneath the surface.

On the one hand, it explores the cultural rivalry between French idealism and English empiricism, not just in food, but in philosophy, art and literature.

On the other hand, it works within a structuralist framework suggested by Claude Lévi-Strauss, that of the raw and the cooked.

In the novel, the cooked is civilized, while the raw is primitive or barbaric.

The first half of the novel is founded on formally structured menus. However, in the second half, the structure is abandoned, order breaks down, and relaxation, spontaneity and chaos take over.

Events descend into what the French, the Italians and the Americans would respectively call a debacle, a fiasco or a fuck-up.

Civilisation requires structure, we must be cooked and served in the correct sequence. If we seek psychic liberation, if we are only half-cooked, we, men in particular, will go off, like Tarquin, half-cocked.

Nevertheless, Lanchester quotes Walter Benjamin (without expressly identifying the source of the quotation) to the effect that “Every act of civilization is also an act of barbarism.” Perhaps, the distinction between civilization and barbarism is illusory? Perhaps, Tarquin symolises the illusion?

Eros and Thanatos, Love and Death

At first, Tarquin embodies the qualities of a sophisticated and knowledgeable bon vivant, one who enjoys the good life. By the end of the novel, he is quite the opposite.

Tarquin recalls a conversation with his sculptor brother in which he (Tarquin) contrasts the artist with the murderer:

"...one of the impulses which underlies all art is the desire to make a permanent impact on the world, to leave a trace of selfhood behind…to leave a memento of himself...

"The murderer, though, is better adapted to the reality and to the aesthetics of the modern world, because instead of leaving a presence behind him – the achieved work, whether in the form of a painting or a book or a daubed signature – he leaves behind him something just as final and just as achieved: an absence. Where somebody used to be, now nobody is.

"What more irrefutable proof of one’s having lived can there be than to have taken a human life and replaced it with nothingness, with a few fading memories?"

Das Ich und das Essen

Tarquin continues:

"If the artist’s first desire is to leave something behind him, his next is simply to take up more space – to earn a disproportionate amount of the world’s attention. This is routinely called ‘ego’, but that term is far too mundane to encompass the raging, megalomaniacal desire, the greed, the human deficiency that underpins the creation of everything from a Matisse papercut to a Faberge egg...

"...[the truth] is not that the megalomaniac is a failed artist but that the artist is a timid megalomaniac, venting himself in the easy sphere of fantasy rather than the unforgiving arena of real life…

“Why don’t people take Bakunin more seriously? Destruction is as great a passion as creation, and it is as creative, too – as visionary and as assertive of the self."

And so he concludes:

"The artist is the oyster and the murderer is the pearl."

It’s interesting that this philosophical and aesthetic debate occurs within the framework of food.

It’s almost as if the self is the Ego (das Ich) and everything else external, but food and alcohol that we consume, in particular, is the Id (or das Es).

To stretch the credibility of the argument even further, in German, Tarquin pluralises das Es, until it becomes das Essen (i.e., food).

I am what I eat, I do what I eat, and red meat implies a capacity to kill in order to survive.

Not Just Desserts

While "The Debt to Pleasure" is as entertaining, if not more so, than most English lad lit, it also reveals that Lanchester can write.

If nothing else, he has admirable influences.

While some might find the comparisons odious, I would place this very English novel midway between the French Marcel Proust (1) and the American Paul Auster, with a large dollop of Nabokovian playfulness and a sprinkling of Peter Greenaway.

I’m looking forward to his later works, including "Capital".



(1) One sentence occupies the whole of pages 198 and 199, only it flows so well in the Proustian manner, you don’t notice its length, until you get to the end of it (TWSS, anyway).




W.H. Auden's Martini

Tarquin Winot: "As a subsequent refinement [on the seven-to-one martini of Beefeater gin and Noilly Prat vermouth of my aesthetic period], I borrowed W.H. Auden's technique of mixing the vermouth and gin at lunchtime...and leaving the mixture in the freezer to attain that wonderful jellified texture of alcohol chilled to below the point at which water freezes...the Auden martini is not diluted in any way...a 'silver bullet'."



In Search of Auden's Martini

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/artic...



W.H. Auden's Martini Haiku

Could any tiger
Drink martinis, smoke cigars,
And last as we do?



Heston Blumenthal's Version of Apicius' First Century Recipe for Calf's Brains with Rose Petals

http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes...



"The Imperfect Enjoyment" by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

This is the poem from which the title of the novel was derived:

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/...



The Debt to Pleasure

Once is not enough,
Why does heat desert your flame?
Is there then no more?


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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

DJ Ian's Sunday Evening "Tell Me What You Really Think"


Mitchell's Hollow Horn Plays Wasted Words

I’ve tried to understand this novel.
Let me tell you how very much I've strived,
But from my humble little hovel,
It seems to me horribly contrived.

Like, what about the self-conscious display
Of inordinate lit’ry prowess?
Applied for amusement and for play,
It’s the ultimate in high-browness.

He’s in Haruki’s artistic debt,
High up there defying gravity
And recursive time without a net,
Oh what gimmicky depravity!

Such "belletristic masturbation"
Served in mind-expanding proportions
Invites a surgical truncation,
So foxy ladies get their portions.

Mitchell smacks of hippopotamus
When one would expect an elephant.
His homonyms are synonymous.
Does that make him sound intelligent?

When it comes to writing, I prefer
Economy and austerity,
Not for me smug buffoonery or
Polysyllabic dexterity.

Now you've heard this missive for a while,
It’s true he has so much greater fame,
Though I don’t envy his success, I’ll
Crawl upon the author to exclaim:

Foresake all your post-modernist tricks
For pseudo-intellectual dicks!
David Mitchell, "you’re prolix, prolix,
Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!"



IAN GRAYE'S PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL REVIEW

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...



SOUNDTRACK

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "We Call Upon The Author to Explain"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQtsO2...

Rilo Kiley - "Portions for Foxes"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtNV3p...


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Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DJ Ian Digests the Classics in 50 Words or Less


Every time this French geezer has a piece of sponge cake, he remembers some tart who sponged off one Charles Swann many years ago. (1), (2), (3)





(1)(view spoiler)[A guy at the patisserie said she also had a bun in the oven, but he thought that might have happened in the second book. (hide spoiler)]

(2)(view spoiler)[Psychologists call this Involuntary Memory. Monty Python calls it Word Association Football. (hide spoiler)]

(3)(view spoiler)[And I don't mean in un jacuzzi. (hide spoiler)]


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Pie: A Global History by Janet Clarkson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Damn Fine Pie

I know author Janet Clarkson,
She sure does make a damn fine pie,
As well as any other food
She turns her hand (and mitten) to.


The Life of Pie

I'll try pies from all round
Until my health forbids.
Varieties abound,
But if they're well prepared,
I like both ones with lids
And with their contents bared.

While my verdict's open,
If they could be compared
And you must know my ken
About which better fared,
Then I prefer it when
The types of pie are squared.


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The New Life by Orhan Pamuk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Blood on the Tracks

Every one of us is a potential criminal, a potential killer, a potential murderer.

The question is: what circumstances would justify the crime, what situation would warrant us murdering someone?

If someone attacked one of our children, would we attack the assailant? If we went to war, would we kill for our country?

If the past was at war with the future, would we kill for the sake of the past, or would we kill for the sake of the future?

Well, the past is always at war with the future, so what are we going to do?

Will we kill, or will we sit back and wait for the war to end?

How can a war between the past and the future ever end?

How can we not kill?

Is Nature at war with Modernity? Is Realism at war with Modernism? Are Realism and Modernism at war with Post-Modernism?

Would you kill for Post-Modernism?

Regardless, come inside.

Up Against the Wall

I struggled with this novel for almost a half of its length. Perhaps a less patient or persistent reader would have thrown the book against the wall.

However, if I had done so, I would have missed out on one of the greatest reading experiences I have ever had.

Everything I read about the novel in advance, not much apart from the blurb, suggested that it was a post-modernist work. However, this did not reconcile with the words in front of me.

Initially, it came across as a jumble of very realist descriptions and lists and highly abstract concepts, occasionally in alternating paragraphs.

The narrative seemed to hop up and down on one foot, before passing arbitrarily to the other, for a while, and then back again.

A Life of Crime

I read on, puzzled, then finally I started to realise that I might now have all of the pieces, at which point a picture started to assemble in front of me.

I had done a lot of the work, but the author had placed the pieces there for me, like clues.

Turkish author Orhan Pamuk worked like a criminal, leaving enough clues for me to find, so that I could eventually identify the culprit myself.

"The New Life" might be metaphysical, it might be meta-fiction, but it also has many of the qualities of crime fiction.

Around chapter 13, it all came together, after which it was a roller-coaster ride. The last 100 pages just blew me away.

Skimming through my notes in order to compose this review, I realised just how subtle and widespread were the clues.

If you can be bothered to read the book once, I’m sure it will repay a second reading.

For a long time I questioned whether this was a minor work by a Nobel Prize Winner, alternatively did he really deserve the Prize?

Having finished, I feel this novel is a major achievement, regardless of where it stands in his ouvre.

"I Read a Book One Day"

The first paragraph announces the novel’s intentions:

"I read a book one day and my whole life was changed…It was such a powerful influence that the light surging from the pages illumined my face; its incandescence dazzled my intellect but also endowed it with a brilliant lucidity.

"This was the kind of light within which I could recast myself; I could lose my way in this light; I already sensed in the light the shadows of an existence I had yet to know and embrace…

"It was with dread that I became aware of the complete transformation of the world around me, and I was overtaken by a feeling of loneliness I had never before experienced – as if I had been stranded in a country where I knew neither the lay of the land nor the language and the customs."

Within 24 hours, the narrator, a 22 year old engineering student (whom I won’t name), has fallen in love and is seeking out the truth of the book, the “meaning of life” and therefore a "new life":

"Love was every bit as devastating as the light that surged from the book into my face, proving to me how substantially my life had already gone off the track."

Enlightened Guidance

At first, I suspected that the book must have been a political tract like “The Communist Manifesto” or a religious Holy Book or a counter-cultural tome like those that proliferated in the 60’s and occasionally more recently ("Eat, Pray, Rebel").

However, Pamuk doesn’t reveal much about the contents of the book, even its name comes late in the novel, if it can be believed.

Instead, we learn about it by its effect on its readers. They become converts, though because of its nature, they are secretive. They disengage from mainstream life.

From the outside, they appear to be radicalized and subversive. Conservative political and religious groups feel threatened and start to attack back, one ultra-right group even killing a number of readers. They track down those who are "off track".

In just a few pages, we are plunged into a metaphysical battleground, although absent detail of the rival belief systems, it’s hard to determine who is Good and who is Evil.

Perhaps this is the way it’s meant to be. Perhaps this is the way it always is.

How are we to know who to side with? Perhaps we shouldn’t side with any side? Perhaps both sides are equally culpable?

And so we read on...

On the Road, In a Bus

The narrator and his friend, Janan (Arabic for "heart" or "soul" or "soul mate"), embark on a spiritual journey or odyssey through the Turkish countryside.

Their quest takes them on the road, off the beaten track, away from urbanized Istanbul.

They spend months travelling by public bus, trying to find the other realm hinted at in the book.

Roads join different people and parts of the country.

The bus is a symbol and vehicle of modernity and modernism that drives us toward our destination, our destiny, the future.

We start our journey from home, but as soon as we depart, our home is in the past. We are cut off from our former lives, we are cast loose. The bus cannot take us back home into the past, it can only take us inexorably toward a collision with the future. Just as we seek out spiritual integrity, things start to disintegrate. We fall apart.

Nature Versus Television

So the quest makes us witness to the battle between conservative, unpretentious, rural Turkey’s Islamic tradition and the apparent way of the future, the rapid and pervasive influence of Westernised commercial culture.

Rural Turkey is symbolized by Nature in the form of almond, chestnut, walnut and mulberry trees.

In contrast, the West pervades Turkey through television, radio, movies, advertising; even railway travel is viewed as an unwelcome, external, alien influence that detracts from tradition.

"If today in this town… the virtue of living an ascetic life is considered shameful...it’s because of the stuff brought in from America by that mailman, the buses, and the television sets in the coffeehouses."

The Other Side

The narrator meets Mehmet, a former lover of Janan, who has also read the book, but turned his back on its message about a brand new world:

"World shmorld...it doesn’t exist. Think of it as tomfoolery perpetrated on children by an old sap. The old man thought he’d write a book to entertain adults the same way he did children...

"...if you believe it, your life is lost...

"Believe me, at the end there is nothing but death. They kill without mercy…There is nothing to pursue to the end…just a book. Someone sat down and wrote it. A dream. There is nothing else for you to do, aside from reading and rereading it."

Illumination

Can it be true that, in our search for enlightenment, we might only find darkness and despair? Isn’t the path to wisdom and contentment illuminated?

Can we find our own way out of our predicament? If we get lost, how will we be found? Who will find us?

Does this dilemma only apply to adolescents and young adults? 22 year olds like the target audience of Japanese author, Haruki Murakami?

Perhaps not:

"We are not here to represent youth...but to represent new life."

Can an entire nation like Turkey find itself in this predicament?

Especially at a time in Turkey’s history when it wishes to become a member of the European Union?

Ironically, while everyone is skeptical about advertising, posters proclaim:

"Happiness is being a Turk."

Who are we to believe?

A Labyrinth of Reflections

By this point, the novel appears to have abandoned any pretense to unadulterated realism.

It has more in common with the Magic Realism of South America, not to mention the dream-like aspects of Franz Kafka’s "The Castle" and Mikhael Bulgakov’s "The Master and Margarita".

Bit by bit, we are forced to contemplate, suspect, negotiate and reconcile truth, reality, spirituality, imagination, coincidence, memory, beauty, love, happiness, death and terror.

Love provides some solace:

"Love is the urgency to hold fast to another and to be together in the same place. It’s the desire to keep the world out by embracing another. It is the yearning to find a safe harbour for the human soul.

"The only piece of heaven I was sure of was the bed where I was lying next to Janan."

Still, as we reflect, we are surrounded and confused and trapped by a labyrinth of our own reflections.

We can’t even safely look at our own image in a mirror. We are afraid of what we might see or learn there. We can’t even trust love.

Check Mate

The novel highlights the clash of cultures between Islam and Western-style Capitalism.

While Pamuk writes about it in a strident manner, he does so through the mouths of his characters.

It’s hard to tell whether Pamuk personally is anti-West or at least regrets the impact the West has had on Turkey’s heritage and culture.

"The West has swallowed us up, trampled on us in passing. They have invaded us down to our soup, our candy, our underpants; they have finished us off..."

"We have no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skyscrapers, and supersonic transports. Let them have their radio and their colour TV."

Yet, Pamuk doesn’t just defend, he counter-attacks.

He highlights how much impact Islamic culture has had on the West.

For example, Pamuk reminds us that the chess term "checkmate" comes from the Arabic "shah mat"
("the king died").

The word "caramel" (which relates to a subplot of the novel) also derives from the Arabic words "kara" or "cara", which means "dark".

Nobelesse Oblige

Should Western readers feel personally challenged or threatened by these claims and attacks?

I don’t think so. We are subject to the same forces of Capitalism in the West.

In every neighbourhood in every city or rural area in the Western world, Consumer Capitalism ("the Dealers’ Conspiracy") has bought up or destroyed local products and brands, all in the name of efficiency and global recognition, but at the expense of local character.

It’s just that Capitalism treats the Third World worse than its own backyard.

Pamuk resonates, because he criticizes what many of us in the West have grown to accommodate.

He is brave, when we are complacent.

Perhaps this is why he was awarded the Nobel Prize?

Mehmet-a-Fiction

I originally questioned how appropriate it was to describe "The New Life" as Post-Modern.

However, the further it progresses, the more it becomes self-referential.

The narrator addresses not just "the Angel", but the Reader, us.

He even calls into question whether the narrator might be an unreliable narrator (in a scene that reminded me of the Magic Theatre scene in Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf"):

"So, Reader, place your faith neither in a character like me, who is not all that sensitive, nor in my anguish and the violence of the story I have to tell; but believe that the world is a cruel place."

Most importantly, Pamuk questions whether the novel is a tradition of the West that cannot be replicated in Turkey or what the West calls "the Middle East":

"Besides, this newfangled plaything called the novel, which is the greatest invention of Western culture, is none of our culture’s business...

"I have still not quite figured out how to inhabit this foreign toy."

By Machinist or By Hand?

Pamuk uses the character Doctor Fine to question Literature:

"Considering that the pawns and tools of the Great Conspiracy assail us, either knowingly or unknowingly, through books and literature…we ought to take precautions against printed matter…The culprit is not only that particular book, the book that snared my son, but all the books that have been printed by printing presses; they are all enemies of the annals of our time, our former existence.

"He was not against literature that was scripted by hand, which was an integral part of the hand holding the pen…the books Doctor Fine opposed were those that had lost their glow, clarity, and truth but pretended to be glowing, clear, and true. These were the books that promised us the serenity and enchantment of paradise within the limitations set by the world..."

The irony is that, whatever the view of Literature, all of the views conveyed in Pamuk’s novel itself operate within Western literary traditions, well at least, within the tradition of Post-Modernism.

Finally, within the framework of Post-Modernism, there is the dual interest in the fracture of life, perception and time:

"Life is so fractured…TV abounded in gunshots, passionate lovemaking, shouts and screams, planes falling out of the sky, exploding gas tankers, all sending the message. No matter what, things must be smashed and broken."

At the same time, the author and the reader are both concerned to reverse the fracture, by way of integration of the material in front of them:

"I discerned encoded whisperings between texts from which I could detect their secrets; and putting these secrets in order, I constructed connections between them..."

The Bus Timetable

Any transport system must define three things: our destination, the intervening stops and the timetable.

Any journey or quest must comply with the same rules, even a spiritual one:

"My restless soul which did not know respite was struggling to get somewhere or other, like some bus driver who had forgotten his destination."

Without a destination, how else can we define our journey?

However, Pamuk also emphasises the difference in approach of West and Middle East:

"Our timetables and timepieces are our vehicles to reach God, not the means of rushing to keep up with the world as they are in the West...

"Timepieces are the only products of theirs that have been acceptable to our souls. That is why clocks are the only things other than guns that cannot be classified as foreign or domestic.

"For us there are two venues that lead to God. Armaments are the vehicles of Jihad; timepieces are the vehicles for prayer...

"Everyone knows that the greatest enemy of the timetable for prayers is the timetable for trains."

Speak, Memory

There is much that I cannot discuss, because of a concern about spoilers, not so much factual spoilers, but thematic spoilers, given the manner in which Pamuk skillfully lays out his metaphysical tale.

However, like Proust (and Nabokov) before him, Pamuk is concerned with the concepts of time and memory:

"I was about to discover the single element common to all existence, love, life, and time..."

There is only one life, this one.

There is only one "new life", that is, any life that there might be after death.

There is only the present, the past does not exist, except in our memory.

There is no paradise on Earth other than what we create ourselves.

We must make do with this one life.

Transcendence

Love and life are attempts to transcend time. They seek eternity, of love, of pleasure, of happiness, of fulfillment.

However, the paradox is that, when time stops, the journey ceases and the destination confronts us:

"We had embarked on this journey to escape time.

"This was the reason we were in constant motion, looking for the moment when time stood still. Which was the unique moment of fulfillment. When we got close to it, we could sense the time of departure...

"The beginning and the end of the journey was wherever we happened to be. He was right: the road and all the dark rooms were rife with killers carrying guns. Death seeped into life through the book, through books."

Fractious Time

Time is not infinite. It is finite. Or our share of it is finite. We are mortal and our life is finite. Life must end, either by design or by accident:

"What is time? An accident! What is life? Time! What is accident? A life, a new life!"

So, ultimately, accidents, fractures in time and intention, are fundamental to the narrative drive of "The New Life":

"So that was life; there was accident, there was luck, there was love, there was loneliness; there was joy; there was sorrow; there was light, death, also happiness that was dimly there."

Ultimately, Pamuk, through an Earth-bound Angel of Desire, urges patience, counsels that we take our time:

"Your hour of happiness will also strike...Do not become impatient, do not be cross with your life, cease and desist envying others! If you learn to love your life, you will know the course of action you are to take for your happiness."

Accidentalism

Contrary to Western belief, life is not solely defined and governed by intention, deliberation and purposiveness, it must accommodate the accidental, both fate and fortune, both the unplanned and the unexpected.

In a way, Pamuk is reassuring the Middle East (as we call Turkey and its surrounds) that the best way to protect yourself against the Occidental is to embrace the Accidental.



Extremely Spoilerish Postscript

It is continuing to frustrate me that I was unable to discuss some major themes of the novel, for fear of offending the Spoiler-Sensitive.

While they are fresh in my mind, I will write down some brief notes.

Please do not read these notes if you have not read the book.

It is important to me that any reader experience the metaphysical journey that the book takes a reader on.

(view spoiler)[The narrator's name is Osman. Although Mehmet is Janan's former lover, Osman regards him as a contemporary rival for her love.

Janan possibly represents the heart and soul of humanity. Thus, the rivalry is a clash of cultures seeking to win over at least the people of Turkey, if not humanity as a whole.

Having initially fallen for the ideas in the book, Mehmet rejects the apparent modernity of its vision. Still, if only to earn an income, he hand copies the novel, which perpetuates its life, and complies with the apparently Islamic acceptance of a book that has been written by hand, rather than printed by a machine.

While Mehmet's adherence to tradition seems to be less extreme than that of Dr Fine (his blood father), he still seems to represent Turkish tradition.

Dr Fine believes that his son has been killed in an earlier bus accident. He gives his "new son", Osman, a gun with which to kill the followers of the book.

Osman decides to use it to kill Mehmet, thus killing both tradition and his double (who has been using the name Osman), his rival in love.

In effect, Osman must kill Nature and Realism in the name of Modernity and Post-Modernity, Modernism and Post-Modernism, a New Life and a Post-Life.

At the end, Osman learns, via his own death by bus accident 13 years later, that there is no New Life on Earth. It has all been in his mind, the imaginary world created by a reader in response to the book. There might however be an After Life.
(hide spoiler)]


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Embassytown by China Miéville
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Proem: In Which an Ambassador Iangrayetiates Himself With His Host With Impunity

Is a simile
Like a metaphor?
I cannot espouse
This figure of speech.
This not unlike that?
One word a signpost?

Can this be that, or
Would subject object?
How could I be you?
Worse still, you be me?
Well, I know my place,
I'm not one to boast.

I am, like, content
To be just a guest,
Sometimes arriving
First and leaving last.
Not competitive,
Neither least nor most.

A figure of speech,
An Ambassador,
If you please, beyond
Compare and contrast,
Bearing messages
For you dear, mein Host.



A Story about Language

In a way, every work of fiction is about language, at least to the extent that it applies language to the telling of a story.

However, China Mieville’s "Embassytown" is about the very nature of language and how it both separates and bonds people.

At its heart is a deep knowledge of linguistics (far greater than my superficial understanding).

However, Mieville’s special talent is to weave this knowledge into an exciting adventure story based on linguistic concerns.

It’s a fascinating novel in the way some of us might have been fascinated by Umberto Eco’s "The Name of the Rose" or Don DeLillo’s "The Names" (note the word "name" in both titles) or would have been fascinated if a decent writer had got their hands on the religious and historical themes behind "The Da Vinci Code" (not "name", but "code" this time).

If Tom Hanks can star in a film of an unfilmable novel like "Cloud Atlas", then surely he could help bankroll a film of this novel?

Now that I think of it, if that novel was an Atlas, then this one is a Thesaurus.

It’s about what we can learn about humanity from the differentiation, synonymity and antonymity underlying language.

The Language of Diplomacy

Embassytown is a diplomatic enclave in a City on another planet ruled by the Ariekei or Hosts.

There are human and other Ambassadors and Diplomatic Staff here and, as is the custom, they have to find ways to communicate with each other, despite language differences.

In the ordinary course of events, there could be disputes, and resolutions have to be developed, negotiated and agreed. It is the nuts and bolts of diplomacy that we mere mortals can only dream of.

"Ambassadors speak with empathic unity. That’s our job."

[I once dreamed of being a diplomat and took a university course designed to qualify me for entry, but they started taking diplomats hostage around this time and I lost some of my enthusiasm. Still, I socialized within a diplomatic community for several years.]

Language As She is a Spoke in the Wheel

To the extent that a common language (such as English) is not used, diplomacy must operate at the intersection of two or more languages.  We have to observe and respect nuances and exercise caution so as not to offend our hosts with inadvertent connotations or discourtesy.

We are always on tenterhooks or tender hooks.

You can imagine that when two languages first encountered each other, a lot of work had to be done to identify commonalities.

Was the grammar similar? What words meant the same thing? What are your words for "dog" or "girl"? What are our words?

It Semed Like a Good Idea at the Time

This is where a knowledge of semiotics might help an understanding of the novel.

Let's use the word "dog" as an example.

The word is a "sign" or a "signifier", and it "signifies" what society knows to be a dog. The social understanding of the concept relies on convention.

But a "dog" could mean a whole lot of different types of dog, which are all within the convention. These "dogs" are all within the scope of the "signified".

The words are therefore signs or vessels that carry meaning that is influenced by society and convention.

If I say "dog", however, I might be thinking of my dog Charlie, who is small and white, while you might think of your dog, Wilbur, who is big and black.

Our language is flexible enough to accommodate this personalisation of the signified.


 


Ariekei Thought and Speech

Contrast this with how the Language of the Ariekei Hosts operates.

The word for them is a funnel or a "referent" to the original thought.

This thought occurs within the mind of a Host.

Host-on-Host communication is therefore, presumably, much closer to unadorned or unmediated thoughts communicating through funnels.

If a Host "said" dog, its thought might actually be small, white Charlie dog, and the funnel or referent would ensure that another Host saw and understood small, white Charlie dog, consistently with the thought.

The meaning or signification of the word wouldn't be [as] social or conventional. It would be more specific to the "speaker" or "thinker".

Indeed, it’s arguable that there is only "referral" and no "signification" at all.

We leapfrog the social and conventional, and go straight from thought to thought.

Hence, the Hosts' "speech is thought".

What Lies Beneath a Language

This linguistic process lies beneath the Ariekei fascination with similes and, ultimately, with lies.

The transparency of their thought dictates total sincerity, therefore an inability to lie.

"This" must mean "this" and "this" only (not "that" or "more than this").

A simile requires one thing to mean or imply another.

A simile therefore requires social convention to imply meaning into the words of a speaker that a listener can infer.

The Ariekei just do not get and cannot replicate this process

Similarly, the Hosts can't think of a concept without Language.

As a result, they can't conceive of falsity.

To be confronted with a lie is an impossibility that is capable of giving them a brain explosion analogous to an addictive psychedelic "god-drug" experience.

Abstraction, Action and Interaction Behind the Language

The process also raises the issue of what they can imagine:

"What imaginaries any of them could conjure at all must be misty and trapped in their heads."

How can they think without words?

Are they just taking "snapshots" of the Real?

Can they entertain abstract thought?

Are they limited in what they can think and speak?

Is their world primarily one of action in the real world, not so much abstraction within the world of the mind?

Does the primacy of individual action limit collective or social interaction?

Can there only be dispute and coercion without cooperation?

Language Channels Into Sects and Cults

This is pretty much the back story of the novel.

The front story is intimately concerned with these ideas, and to say more would risk thematic, if not plot, spoilers.

Suffice it to say that a lot happens at the intersection of the two languages.

And it involves interaction, misunderstanding, dispute, negotiation and more.

At a macropolitical level, there is a sense in which language is shown to be an agent or vehicle of control.

How we think limits our potential and our aspirations.

The restraint on thought breeds obsession, which is channeled through religious and political sects and cults.

It is difficult to achieve informed unity and community:

"Those rebels must be a fractured community, without speech, if they were a community at all. Language, for the Ariekei, was truth: without it, what were they? An unsociety of psychopaths."

Freedom and vibrancy require change, and the novel is a dynamic exploration of the change that can occur at the interface.

Woman as Simile

Just as linguistics and political philosophy inform "Embassytown", consistent with China Mieville’s earlier novels, there is an explicit promotion of and support for the active role of women in social and political life.

The narrator is a woman, Avice, who describes herself as a "floaker", a more dynamic version of a modern-day "slacker" who embodies "the life-technique of aggregated skill, luck, laziness and chutzpah that we call floaking."

In the eyes of the Ariekei, she is their principal simile:

"The girl who was hurt in darkness and ate what was given to her."

Yet, despite the technical linguistic interests of her sometime husband Scile, Avice is the true social and emotional vehicle for the communication and rapport-building between the disparate groups and the progress of the narrative.

She is effectively both communicator and problem-solver, not to mention a pretty adept flirt.

Notwithstanding her lack of overt ambition, she would make a pretty good diplomat, if not one necessarily obedient to the powers that be.

Ultimately, what appeals to me so much about China Mieville is his ability to juggle sophisticated intellectual themes, genre demands, convincing worlds, interesting characters and well-paced adventure action.

While the themes of the novel are within my core literary and cultural interests, I admired his skill at bringing the project together with such aplomb.

I was always conscious that there was a puppeteer making this entertainment happen, but he has an uncanny knack of doing it in such a way that you don’t notice him or the strings.

I’d like to call Mieville a "floaker" of some sort, but as Avice’s lover, Bren, says of her at the end of the novel:

"You’ve never floaked in your life."




Genesis (A Very Old Woman's Tale)
(Thanks to Spanish Dancer and Weaver)


In the beginning was god. There was just it, and it was alone. Well, it had to be because it was everything.

God was a genius, but there is no point in being a god-like genius, unless there is company who appreciates it.

So god made woman, to reduce its workload. It intended woman to be the origin of everything else in the universe, which had formerly been god.

Woman would take what had been god and turn it into something else.

The presence of woman was required to make a difference.

So woman differentiated between things.

Having made things, she decided to invent language and words, so that she could give everything a name and put everything in its place.

Woman rejoiced once this was all done, but it was not enough. She needed a challenge. She thought about it for a few days and nights, at which point she decided to make man.

She was feeling reckless. Her intention was to make something almost her equal, but not quite, with whom she could flirt, after which she could birth and care for a child.

Upon the arrival of man, woman looked at him and could not determine whether her project had been a success.

Woman decided not to make it too easy for man, so she played hard to get.

Eventually, man worked out that the way to get woman’s attention was to call her a goddess and worship the very ground she walked on, at which point both woman and man lost interest in god, and it retired hurt.

While woman was birthing, man also lost interest in woman, and never really worshipped her the way that he had beforehand.

Having espied his face in a pond, man liked what he had seen, and decided to revive and re-make god in his own image.

He then made a church with other men and excluded woman from any secret god business.

By this time, woman had realised that when man said she was like a goddess, it was only a simile and he did not mean that she was the real thing, even though a simile is a kind of metaphor.

Many years later, woman made a man called China Mieville for her own entertainment.

China is cute, sensitive, strong, intelligent, talented and has tattoos. He knows what a simile is, but he also knows how to treat a woman as a goddess.

Man is still trying to work out why woman is reading so much genre fiction.

China Mieville continues to write, while man ponders his predicament.





SOUNDTRACK

Roxy Music - "More Than This"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9PAuW...

Lyrics (Bryan Ferry):

I could feel at the time
There was no way of knowing
Fallen leaves in the night
Who can say where they´re blowing
As free as the wind
Hopefully learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning
More than this - there is nothing
More than this - tell me one thing
More than this - there is nothing
It was fun for a while
There was no way of knowing
Like a dream in the night
Who can say where we´re going
No care in the world
Maybe I´m learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning
More than this - there is nothing
More than this - tell me one thing
More than this - there is nothing.

View all my reviews

A Postmodern Belch by M.J. Nicholls
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What Would Happen If I Tried to Enter Someone Else’s Novel?

Earlier this year, this triplasian 333 page volume was delivered to my modest residence by a vehicle whose only identifying marks were a muted trumpet logo and the acronym W.A.S.T.E. (I think that's an acronym? MJ, help me).

My wife, FM Sushi, was typically suspicious that I had received a parcel from somebody called "Lulu", well "Lulu.com", to be precise.

Knowing my private affairs as she does (she manages my Gmail account for both remuneration and entertainment), she enquired, "Doesn't W.A.S.T.E. normally deliver the books you get from that vamp, Oedipa Maas?"

My explanation that Lulu was a vanity publishing outfit was less than persuasive. Or so it seemed.

Then she turned the book in her hands, ran her delicate fingers along its spine and laughed, revealing that she had been pulling my leg all along.

"M.J. Nicholls? I've read some of his reviews." Her smile reminded me of a shark about to attack. "He has a lot of qualities a man could be vain about."

I couldn't work out whether there was an element of admiration in her remark.

She has never complimented one of my literary efforts like that. Well, to be honest, any of my efforts. (She is the inspiration for my well-honed sense of modesty.)

Some time afterwards, I noticed that the book had gone missing.

I looked in our recycling bin, to see if she'd accidentally thrown it out with the packaging. No. She had spared it the fate of most of my metafiction.

Then as the temperature plummeted with a mid-morning storm and I realised I needed something warmer than my Big Lebowski t-shirt, I went into our bedroom and noticed that she had put MJ's Meisterwerk (I learned this very useful word from Scribble, or was it Nathan, or MJ himself?) on her bedside table.

Not only that, she had removed half a dozen "you must read this" books I had recommended to the library downstairs.

When I quizzed her about the pile of literary tips, including one on "corporate personality' that Bird Brian had rated five stars, she replied, "I don't need to read them." I waited for the shark again..."I've already read your reviews...and they were quite enough, thank you."

Again, I wasn't sure whether this constituted flattery, but she soon cleared that up.

"In fact, in some cases, I think your review was longer than the book."

"Bullshit," I declared, defiantly. "That was only 'Infinite Jest', no others. And that was the whole point!"

Determined to further injure my pride, she added, "Then, I suppose, you have to count the footnotes, too."

It was clear that FM Sushi was getting ready to settle in with MJ.

I await the outcome of her dalliance reading with interest, so that I can complete my non-anal excel spreadsheet containing the reading schedule for my to-be-read list. (I have to work out where to slot it in between several volumes of Proust.)

Strictly on the QT, I also await the imminent arrival of my black vinyl summer pyjamas.

I must keep an eye out for the postman's scooter. Or should that be an "ear out"?

Who knows what FM Sushi would think about a package from "Victoria&LolitasSecret.com"?

Its logo is a muted strumpet. Or two, if I recall correctly.

In the meantime, I'm giving this novel one star.

I'm not increasing it, until MJ gives me my wife back.


A Straight Swap

"I’ve come to return your thistle," Horrold (AKA M.J. Nicholls) said, finally, this morning.

"Thistle? No no no, Horrold. When she left me, she was a full woman thing. With woman things."

"Nice ones, eh?"

"I want her back. In the state she left me. She belongs to me."

"I propose a straight swap. You give me a good review, I’ll give you your wife back."

"I can’t guarantee a good review. I haven’t read the book yet."

"What about a good review from your wife then?"

We both turned to FM Sushi. She nodded.


FM Sushi’s Review

This book reminded me of a man’s penis.  Could it have been any better if it was longer? Would I have missed anything if it was shorter? In both cases, the answer is no.

These views might come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with my husband and who will therefore know me as someone who is content with the merely adequate.


DJ Ian Interviews Postmodernist Author MJ Nicholls

This is an edited version of an "interview" DJ Ian did with the "author".

As much as he loves MJ Nicholls, DJ Ian's job was to stay out of the way as much as possible and let him riff in his own words (all, well, most, of which derive from his book and not a "real" interview between a "real" DJ and a "real" author).

DJ Ian: Today in the studio I have "author", MJ Nicholls, whose novel sees Man, not to mention Woman, rise from the Primordial Slime to the Postmodern Belch. Welcome, MJ.

MJ Nicholls: Thank you.

DJ Ian: You say this is a postmodern novel, but the word on GoodReads is that it is a self-indulgent exercise in distracting postmodern bullshit. It is vapid and pointless. None of the invention, playfulness, wit or erudition of postmodernism are present here. In short, it’s boring.

MJ Nicholls: That’s bullshite, obviously. I’m here to bulldoze the boredom. To pile-drive the prose. To bedeck the slow indulgent bits of the novel in a regalia of quirks and lunatic tendencies. I'm here to irritate, invigorate, to confront.

DJ Ian: So your agenda isn’t just some undergraduate pisstake? It’s more ambitious?

MJ Nicholls: You could almost say, postgraduate. The initial conceit was that it be would be the book to end all books, to debook the book so to speak. I wanted to create a new superstructure of literature and pave the way for future generations of artists and thinkers...an uberbook.

DJ Ian: Marvin Amiss wasn't particularly impressed...

MJ Nicholls: We come from different schools of writing – he the highly disciplined Oxford school of stylistic obsession (an endlessly searching desire to achieve a state of beyond Nabokovian eloquence) – while I am content to be a playful satirist/humorist, lounging on the sidelines poking fun at literary styles and idioms.

DJ Ian: Another criticism that has been levelled at your work is that it is onanistic.

MJ Nicholls: I think a certain amount of onanism is essential to any postmodern work, perhaps even the author/reader relationship.

DJ Ian: The problem is, once you've started, you have to know when to stop.

MJ Nicholls: I think you're right. The aim is to stop before it gets out of hand. I like to think I've learned the knack.

DJ Ian: How would you describe the sense of humour of the novel?

MJ Nicholls:It’s a dazzling postmodern comedy – a jocose, absurdist riptide of indulgent piffle and boogerdash...

DJ Ian: You seem to take the piss out of your role as the author?

MJ Nicholls: Throughout the course of this book, I spin a continual reel of self-deprecating humour, harping on about how talentless and worthless the author is, and how his novel is a one-joke idea stretched to the last gasping crumb of credibility.

DJ Ian:You also deprecate the three characters in your novel who believe they are the authors of this fiction?

MJ Nicholls: Exactly, their ideas and values seemed to revolve around cheap exploitation and crude humour.

DJ Ian: Some critics attack the novel for what they call its “perverted exuberance”. It seems to be preoccupied with voluminous vaginas and cocks. There are so many gigantic genitals in sight, a la Robert Coover, it becomes banal.

MJ Nicholls: Well, you know when something is so imposing and grand, it becomes banal. Like a skyscraper or a stretch limo. An extended sandwich with five fillings. Leaves you feeling stuffed for months. That’s how I feel about Harold’s penis...If anything, his penis is a metaphor for the supersize mentality cutting a riptide through our occidental culture.

DJ Ian: What about Lydia’s vagina?

MJ Nicholls: I was hoping someone would ask me that question. Initially, I treated her vagina with a certain degree of curious immaturity.Then it switched to adulation...the flipside of this vagodeification was that Harold performed a series of masochistic, phallocentric mating rituals, whereby he slung his schlong around a series of opaque imaginings of Lydia, hoping to woo her vagina into a kind of self-basting translucence, hungrily awaiting the elixir of his cock.

DJ Ian: It sounds narcissistic...

MJ Nicholls: Lydia is just as narcissistic as Harold.  The male characters and I were besotted with this combative, self-important narcissistic hostess of narrative discontent. I wanted somehow to become her torrid lover...Unfortunately, I myself personally, M.J. Nicholls, wasn't a character in the novel. Strictly speaking.

DJ Ian: So, would you like to be a character in one of your novels?

MJ Nicholls: Pretending to be a fictional character is much better than pretending to be a "real" human being.

DJ Ian:What does it take to be a character in one of your novels apart from voluminous genitals?

MJ Nicholls:You have to suffer. Harold existed in a dark bedroom of alienation, cut off from all forms of emotional connection with the ‘real’ world. This is because, like me, Harold is a troubled genius; a perfectionist freak with an agoraphobic bent.

DJ Ian:Is "A Postmoderm Belch" autobiographical?

MJ Nicholls: All I can say is, those reading "A Postmodern Belch" aren’t reading fiction, they’re reading what it’s like to live inside a fiction, and to make fiction one’s reality.

DJ Ian: One of the characters describes the novel like this: "No narrative, no characters, no readers. You’re up the creek, honey…completely lost in the wilderness of your own thoughts." What is your response to that?

MJ Nicholls: This novel is an endlessly regenerating entity, driven by a constantly self-updating stream of tychistic possibilities, arcing out into a million directions with merely the tweak of one sentence. Or, as you might say, "if u right it different it cum out different".

DJ Ian: Many readers, including FM Sushi, were delighted to reach the end of your novel.

MJ Nicholls: A theme of the novel is a kind of end-of-the-novel and end-of-the-world rapture. There is a state of unlimited unhappiness derived from the knowledge that the book is finally about to end.

DJ Ian: What does your novel say about you as an author?

MJ Nicholls: I am a prisoner of the postmodern condition.

DJ Ian: What about your characters, who seem to have a mind of their own?

MJ Nicholls:They don’t exist, obviously. They’re all merely a product of my imagination. Their entire world is a complete fabrication.

DJ Ian:They seem reluctant to meet their author?

MJ Nicholls: As we are reluctant to meet our maker.

DJ Ian: What do you mean?

MJ Nicholls: They are refusing to learn the name of their creator. In human terms, it’s like refusing to discover the identity of your God, to unravel the entire mystery of the universe.

DJ Ian: Your writing is highly self-conscious.

MJ Nicholls: I struggle to write a sentence that is not in some way blatantly aware of itself. Can there exist one prized four-word sentence of perfection that defines all that has been committed to paper since words were invented from logs and twigs?

DJ Ian: Is there one sentence that defines the true mission of your book?

MJ Nicholls: Buggered if I know.

DJ Ian:Is that the sentence or is that your answer?

MJ Nicholls: That’s for the author to know and the reader to find out.

DJ Ian:Well as you say in the novel, you’re still a fuckodicious poncificator. Thank you for joining us.

MJ Nicholls: Thank you for having me, though I don't feel like I've been had. You have the gentle hands of a true belletrist.


View all my reviews

In Praise of Love by Alain Badiou
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Let me confess straight away: I am in thrall to Alain Badiou, a French philosopher who was born in 1937 and therefore in 2013 is 76.

I make no pretence to objectivity in this review.

I share his interests, love and politics, culture and philosophy, and his analysis accords with my predisposition.

What has he done? He’s defined a worldview with which I wholeheartedly agree in 104 pages of passionate, pristine prose.

Reading it has been the most amazing and life-changing experience of my postgraduate, autodidactic life.

Unbeknown to me, I have been searching for this man all of my life.

Socrates:"Anyone who doesn’t take love as their starting-point will never discover what philosophy is about."

I Think, Therefore You Don’t Exist

Descartes:"I think, therefore I am."

Notice anything about this sentence?  The first person pronoun is used twice. There is no "you"! There is no "we". There is no "us". There is no narrative. There is no love. There is only "solitary consciousness".

Boring! Philosophy, lift your game!

Immanuel Kant later postulated that we could never truly “know” the Other or the exterior, objective world.

And that type of approach resulted in solipsism! You don’t exist, except in my mind!

When I hold you in my arms, I know intuitively that that’s not true.

Half of these philosophers lacked adequate personal experience in sex, desire and love, or felt guilty about it.

Help! We need a philosopher to sort this out. Better still, a French one. One from the Continent.

Let’s give this gentle homme a chance…

Random Encounter

Let’s assume that you exist. "You think, therefore you are."

See, that wasn’t that hard, was it?

Now, let’s assume that it’s just the two of us on Earth. Somehow, we meet each other at a party. We enjoy our "Encounter". It’s a "Magical Moment". It’s an "Act of Randomness".  Later, we will describe it as our "Random Encounter".

What am I going to do with you? What are you going to do with me?

How do we describe our relationship?

Is This Love or Desire?

I venture the word "Desire".

Alain Badiou: "Desire is immediately powerful...Desire focuses on the Other, always in a somewhat fetishist manner, on particular objects, like breasts, buttocks and cock."

Suddenly, you say, "I don’t like the sound of that. What about Friendship, what about Love?"

Me: OK, but what is Love?

Alain Badiou:  "Love is a quest for truth.

I mean truth in relation to something quite precise: what kind of world does One see when One experiences it from the point of view of Two and not One? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of Difference and not Identity? That is what I believe Love to be."

You: Can you have both Love and Desire?

Alain Badiou: "If you declare your Love to each other, Love includes and embraces Desire."

Me: Pardon?

Alain Badiou: "Love, particularly over time, embraces all the positive aspects of Friendship, but Love relates to the totality of the Being of the Other."

You: What do you mean by "the totality of the Being"?

Alain Badiou: "I mean the totality of your Being. All of it, everything. All of you. You. Your heart, your soul, your mind, your body."

Me: What about Sex?

Alain Badiou: "The Surrender of the Body becomes the material symbol of that totality."

You: "Sorry, what do I have to Surrender?"

Alain Badiou: "Surrendering your body, taking your clothes off, being naked for the Other, rehearsing those hallowed gestures, renouncing all embarrassment, shouting, all this involvement of the body is evidence of a Surrender to Love. It crucially distinguishes it from Friendship. Friendship doesn’t involve bodily contact, or any resonances in pleasure of the body."

Me: So, if I declare my Love, she will Surrender??

Alain Badiou: "Within the framework of a Love that declares itself, this Declaration, even if it remains latent, is what produces the effects of Desire, and not Desire itself. Love proves itself by permeating Desire."

I look at you. You nod.

Commitment

You: Tell me you love me then.

I look at Alain. I look back at you. I say, "I love you."

Alain Badiou:  "A declaration of "I love you" seals the act of the Encounter, is central and constitutes a Commitment."

Me: What am I committing myself to here?

Alain Badiou: "You’re committing to Love, which I describe as a   ‘Two Scene’".

Difference and Identity

Alain Badiou: "Starting out from something that is simply an Encounter, a trifle, you learn that you can experience the world on the basis of Difference and not only in terms of Identity.

"In Love, at the absolute Difference that exists between two individuals, one of the biggest Differences one can imagine, given that it is an infinite Difference, yet an Encounter, a Declaration and Fidelity can transform that into a creative Existence."

You: "We don’t have to be mirror images of each other. We don’t have to be identical. Like Doppelgänger."

A Two Scene

Me: What do you mean by a ‘Two Scene’?

Alain Badiou: "Love involves a separation or disjuncture based on the simple Difference between two people and their infinite subjectivities.

"This disjuncture is, in most cases, Sexual Difference.

"When that isn’t the case, Love still ensures that two figures, two different interpretive stances are set in opposition.

"In other words, Love contains an initial element that separates, dislocates and differentiates. You have Two. Love involves Two. A ‘Two Scene’.

"Precisely because it encompasses a disjuncture, at the moment when this Two appear on stage as such and experience the world in a new way, Love can only assume a risky or contingent form.

"That is what we know as "the Encounter". Love always starts with an Encounter.

"Love is evidence we can encounter and experience the world other than through a solitary consciousness.

"The issue of Separation is so important in Love that one can also define Love as a successful struggle against Separation."

Me: "So it’s a bit like a three-legged race? We have to stick together. We can’t continually pull away or in opposite directions. We have to work out a mutually acceptable way of moving ahead, without One dragging the Other against their Will."

Truth Procedure

Me: "How are we supposed to deal with our Differences?"

Alain Badiou: "The answer comes down to ‘Truth’".

"I believe that Love is what I call a "Truth Procedure", that is, an experience whereby a certain kind of Truth is constructed.

"This Truth is quite simply the Truth about Two: the Truth that derives from Difference as such. And I think that Love - what I call the 'Two Scene' - is this Experience.

"In this sense, all Love that accepts the challenge, commits to enduring, and embraces this Experience of the world from the perspective of Difference produces in its way a new Truth about Difference."

Construction

Alain Badiou: "Love isn’t simply about two people meeting and their inward-looking relationship: it is a Construction, a life that is being made, no longer from the perspective of One but from the perspective of Two. And that is what I have called a ‘Two Scene’."

You: "So Love is more than Love at first sight?" You looked at me as you said it.

Alain Badiou: "Love cannot be reduced to the first Encounter, because it is a Construction.

"The enigma in thinking about Love is the duration of time necessary for it to flourish. In fact, it isn’t the ecstasy of those beginnings that is remarkable.

"The latter are clearly ecstatic, but Love is above all a Construction that lasts."

Me: So Real Love transcends the Randomness of the first Encounter and outlasts it.

Point by Point

Alain Badiou: "I go along with the miracle of the Encounter, but I think it remains confined, if we don’t channel it towards the onerous development of a Truth that is constructed Point by Point".

Me: What do you mean when you say "Point by Point"?

Alain Badiou: "A 'Point' is a decision point, a point when you have to decide how you are going to deal with a situation, a particular moment around which an Event establishes itself, where it must be re-played in some way, as if it were returning in a changed, displaced form, but one forcing you 'to declare afresh'.

"A Point, in effect, comes when the consequences of a Construction of a Truth, whether it be political, amorous, artistic or scientific, suddenly compels you to opt for a radical choice, as if you were back at the beginning, when you accepted and declared the event.

Me: So having a made a Commitment, something might happen, a challenge, a problem, a dispute, that requires a decision, you have to negotiate and agree a resolution? You make a new Commitment or you refresh the original Commitment?

Alain Badiou: "Yes. We could say that Love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first serious disagreement, the first quarrel, is only to distort Love.

"Real Love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world."

A Work of Love

Me: "You say the Truth Process is ‘onerous’. It sounds like hard work. Isn’t the act of falling in Love enough?"

Alain Badiou: "‘Onerous’ must be taken here as something positive.

"There is a work of Love: it is not simply a miracle.

"You must be in the breech, on guard: you must be at one with yourself and the Other.

"You must think, act and change. And then, surely, Happiness follows, as the immanent reward for all that work."

Me: So Happiness is an Earthly reward for the effort we put into our Love. We earn our Happiness from Love’s Labours.

Jealousy

Me: Does being Jealous prove that you’re in Love? Or does it mean you’re just obsessive?

Alain Badiou: "Good question. On this point, I disagree profoundly with all those who think that Jealousy is a constituent element of Love.

"The most brilliant representative of the latter is Proust, for whom Jealousy is the real, intense, demonic content of amorous subjectivity.

"Jealousy is a fake parasite that feeds on Love and doesn’t at all help to define it. Must every Love identify an external rival before it can declare itself, before it can begin? No way! The reverse is the case: the immanent difficulties of Love, the internal contradictions of the Two Scene can crystallize around a third party, a rival, imagined or real.

"The difficulties Love harbours don’t stem from the existence of an enemy who has been identified. They are internal to the process: the creative play of Difference."

Combative Love

Alain Badiou: "Selfishness, not any rival, is love’s enemy. One could say: my Love’s main enemy, the one I must defeat, is not the other, it is myself, the 'myself' that prefers Identity to Difference, that prefers to impose its world against the world re-constructed through the filter of Difference.

"We must demonstrate that Love really does have universal power, but that it is simply the opportunity we are given to enjoy a positive, creative, affirmative experience of Difference."

Me: So it’s OK to have differences of opinion as long as you recognise and permit Difference and don’t seek to impose the Identity of One on the Other. Differences of opinion are actually healthy?

Alain Badiou: "Christianity substitutes devout, passive, deferential Love for the Combative Love I am praising here, that earthly creation of the differentiated birth of a new world and a Happiness won Point by Point.

"Love on bended knee is no Love at all as far as I am concerned, even if Love sometimes arouses Passion in us that makes us yield to the Loved One."

I Believe in Miracles

You: Why does falling in Love seem like such a miracle? Is Love more than a chance meeting with the Other?

Alain Badiou: "Love remains powerful, subjectively powerful: it’s one of those rare Experiences where, on the basis of Chance inscribed in a moment, you attempt a Declaration of Eternity.

"The moment of the miraculous Encounter promises the Eternity of Love, though what I want to suggest is a concept of Love that is less miraculous and more hard work, namely a Construction of Eternity within time, of the Experience of the Two, Point by Point."

I Will Always Love You

Me: Is Love forever?

Alain Badiou: "If 'I love you' is always, in most respects, the heralding of 'I’ll always love you', it is in effect locking Chance into the framework of Eternity.

"The Declaration of Love marks the transition from Chance to Destiny, and that’s why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright.

" ‘Always’ means ‘eternally’. It is simply a Commitment within time."

Me: For an Atheist, Love can’t endure beyond death.

Alain Badiou: "There is no fabulous world of the afterlife. But Love, the essence of which is Fidelity in the meaning I give to this word, demonstrates how Eternity can exist within the time span of Life itself.

"Happiness in Love is the proof that Time can accommodate Eternity.”

Fidelity

Me: What do you mean by 'Fidelity'? Does it mean more than the simple promise not to sleep with someone else?

Alain Badiou: "The initial Declaration of 'I love you' is a Commitment requiring no particular consecration, the Commitment to construct something that will endure in order to release the Encounter from its randomness.

"By Fidelity, I mean: I shall extract something else from what was mere Chance.

"I’m going to extract something that will endure, something that will persist, a Commitment, a Fidelity.

"And here I am using the word 'Fidelity' within my own philosophical jargon, stripped of its usual connotations. It means precisely that transition from Random Encounter to a Construction that is resilient, as if it had been necessary.

"In Love, Fidelity signifies this extended victory: the randomness of an Encounter defeated day after day through the invention of what will endure, through the birth of a world."

Me: So the Construction of Love gives birth to a new world comprised of and between the Two. And Fidelity is designed to ensure that that world endures.

Politics

Me: You talk about Politics in the same way you talk about Love.

Alain Badiou: "Real politics is that which gives enthusiasm. Love and Politics are the two great figures of social engagement.

"Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with Love, two people. So Love is the minimal form of communism.

"By 'communist' I understand that which makes the ‘held-in-common’ [ed: 'shared'?] prevail over selfishness, the collective achievement over private self-interest.

"Love is communist in that sense, if one accepts, as I do, that the real subject of a love is the becoming of the couple and not the mere satisfaction of the individuals that are its component parts. Yet another possible definition of love: minimal communism!"

Me: How do Politics and Love differ?

Alain Badiou: "Politics constitutes a Truth Procedure, but one that centres on the Collective.

"Political action tests out the Truth of what the Collective is capable of achieving.

"What are individuals capable of when they meet, organize, think and take decisions?

"In Love, it is about two people being able to handle Difference and make it creative.

"In Politics, it is about finding out whether a number of people, a mass of people in fact, can create equality.

"The problem Politics confronts is the control of Hatred, not of Love. And Hatred is a passion that almost inevitably poses the question of the Enemy.

"In other words, in Politics, where Enemies do exist, one role of the organization, whatever that may be, is to control, indeed to destroy, the consequences of Hatred."

Fraternity

Alain Badiou: "What on earth is 'Fraternity'? No doubt it is related to the issue of Differences, of their friendly co-presence within the political process, the essential boundary being the confrontation with the Enemy.

"And that is a notion that can be covered by internationalism, because, if the Collective can really take Equality on board, that means it can also integrate the most extensive divergences and greatly limit the power of Identity.

"The theatre is a community and the aesthetic expression of Fraternity. That’s why I argue that there is, in that sense, something communist in all theatre."

Art and Theatre

Alain Badiou: "Only art restores the dimension of the senses to an Encounter, an insurrection or a riot. Art, in all its forms, is a great reflection on the Event as such.

"Theatre is politics and love, and more generally, about the two intersecting.

"The theme of Love as a Game is crucial in the Theatre, and that it’s all precisely about Declarations. It is also because this Theatre of Love, this powerful Game of Love and Chance exists, that I have this love for the Theatre.

"The relationship between the Theatre and Love is also the exploration of the abyss separating individuals, and the description of the fragile nature of the bridge that Love throws between two solitudes."

Harmony

Me: The reconciliation of your Love and your Politics meant a lot to you.

Alain Badiou: "I realised that conviction in Love and Politics is something one must never renounce.

"That was really the moment when, in between Politics and Love, my life found the musical chord that ensured its harmony."

Endurance

Marxism has always endeavoured to construct a worldview on the foundation of Labour that fulfilled and rewarded the Worker.

To achieve this goal, it had to overcome the Alienation inherent in Capitalism.

Communism in practice never succeeded, because it simply replaced one oppressor with another, the State.

While Badiou still claims to be a Communist, he seems to be a Communist in the Atheist sense of trying, in the absence of God and an Afterlife, to create a Heaven on Earth.

An essential component of this worldview is Love, both at a personal and a political level.

It’s fascinating that his philosophy attributes great value to work and effort.

In Love, as in Politics, as in Employment, if we want something, we have to work for it.

Success is the reward for Effort.

In both Politics and Love, the reward is a Happiness that will last and endure.

Epigrams

The following epigrams are either the express words of Badiou or my paraphrase of his propositions.

1 Love includes and embraces Desire.

2 Love is what we construct on the foundation of our Differences.

3 Love is the birth of a new world constructed and shared by two different people.

4 We deal with our Differences, point by point, one at a time, for the duration of our Love.

5 It is our effort that makes Love endure.

6 Happiness is the reward for the effort we put into our Love.

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The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Poet of the Interior Journey"

There was a time in my 20’s when I was obsessed with Hermann Hesse. I was a Hesse Obsessor. After all, he was regarded highly enough as an author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.

Something now lures me back to the novels I read then, "Siddhartha" and "Steppenwolf". However, I thought I would try this one as a "wedgie" or stopgap between more ambitious projects.

In truth, this is more a novella than a novel.

Even burdened by a 30 page introduction by Dr Timothy Leary (he coined the term "Poet of the Interior Journey" for Hesse), it’s less than 110 pages long.

So, is it any good? Yes, well, it's OK.

The Home of Light

There is a suggestion in the title of the novel that, in order to gain spiritual awareness, you must head towards the East.

However, this is not a purely geographical concept. For the West, it doesn’t necessarily mean Asia. It is a metaphor:

"We not only wandered through Space, but also through Time. We moved towards the East, but we also travelled into the Middle Ages and the Golden Age."

The East is where the Sun rises. The East is the Home of Light, the Home of Enlightenment. Even more simply, it is Home:

"Throughout the centuries it had been on the way, towards light and wonder, and each member, each group, indeed our whole host and its great pilgrimage, was only a wave in the eternal stream of human beings, of the eternal strivings of the human spirit towards the East, towards Home."

Wisdom and spirituality are not just found in the East, they are found at Home.

Lost Pilgrims

One other thing is implied: we can embark on our spiritual journey individually or we can travel as a collective.

Whichever way we choose, each of us can stray and end up a lost pilgrim.

The collective pilgrimage of Hesse's characters appears to fail and they feel disillusioned, worthless and spiritless:

"There was nothing else left for me to do but to satisfy my last desire: to let myself fall from the edge of the world into the void – to death."

For them, the confrontation with the void ushers in a suicidal impulse.

The Inevitability of Despair

All along, there is but one enemy, Despair.

The protagonist HH’s ambition to write a book about his adventures is based on his desire to escape from Despair:

"It was the only means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide."

Despair is not just the experience of Depression for an Individual. It is not just something that the mentally imbalanced suffer from.

All of us have to confront Despair every step of our spiritual journey. In Hesse's eyes, it's a necessary part of the journey:

"Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side."

The Freedom to be Happy

Along HH’s path, he imagines the source of his temporal Happiness:

"My happiness arose from the freedom to experience everything imaginable simultaneously to exchange outward and inward easily, to move Time and Space about like scenes in a theatre."

Note the fluidity, not just of Space, but of Time, hence the earlier allusion to the Middle Ages and the Golden Age.

You can see the appeal to Timothy Leary, who speculated [inaccurately in my opinion] that Hesse wrote the novella while on drugs.

Home is Where the Soul Is

Once again, Hesse's spiritual journey transcends geography:

"Our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times."

The Journey to the East is not just a journey to Asia, but an Interior Journey, a Journey that begins and ends at Home and with the Self.

This is where we will find true Happiness.

The Disappearing Self

In any spiritual journey, as with any other, we have to be cautious of spoilers.

However, within the theistic framework of the novel, each individual member of the group must merge with the God figure:

"He must grow, I must disappear."

The enemy of Spirituality is the persistence of the Self or Selfishness.

Ultimately, it seems that Hesse’s message is that we must transcend the Self, embrace a Universal Love and become one with that Love, if you like, a God.

We don't need to go elsewhere to achieve this.

The best place to seek the Self and Universal Love is at Home, the Home of the Soul.


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Robyn Hitchcock – “Goodnight Oslo”

“Goodnight Oslo” invites comparison with “Ole Tarantula” because, even though Robyn Hitchcock has done umpteen solo albums, this is the second consecutive album on which he has used the Venus 3.
It’s starting to look like a long-term configuration.
I’ve read one report that this is Robyn’s “sunniest record in ages”.
On the strength of my first few listenings, I have to disagree.
If “Ole Tarantula” was light, “Goodnight Oslo” is dark.
If the former was the White Album, the latter is the Black Album.
“Ole” was built around a metaphor that life extends from birth to death via food and sex.
Although some of the songs were personal (e.g., “Underground Sun” and “N.Y. Doll”), most were abstract but witty explorations of this metaphor.
Even the more personal and poignant songs were about other people in Robyn’s life.
“Goodnight Oslo” seems to be more personal in that Robyn is singing about his life and not just observing the lives of others.
Over the course of the album, another metaphor emerges: that of saying goodbye to old habits and world views.
Robyn seems to have come to the realisation that he/we have to change, move on, get out of our shell, shed our skin.
While “Ole” contained fatherly guidance and gentle warnings (e.g., that “this Briggs might explode”), “Goodnight Oslo” seems to recognise that something has gone wrong, that this Briggs did actually explode.
It’s not for us to know whether this trauma is personal or cultural.
Robyn could be writing about the global economic crisis and the massive personal implosion that could and will happen for many people.
On the other hand, there are many references to ill health, addiction and distrust.
While overall “Ole” was playful and flippant in the way it treated its metaphor of life and death (in Shakespearean terms, “all’s well that ends well”), “Oslo” returns to the playing field to find that “all is not well”.
“What You Is”
The opening track is a mid-tempo soul groove that hints of Marvin Gaye, Al Green and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
It even has some great girl group backing vocals and psychedelic shack-style guitar.
Initially, I wasn’t sure why Robyn had chosen it to start the album.
It’s a relatively polite and ineffectual throwaway, but it grows on you.
Lyrically, it suggests that you can transcend your past and your origins:
“Well, you've got to come from somewhere
“But you don't have to go back there, anymore.”
“Your Head Here”
The second track is a slightly faster jangly pop tune that reminded me of a cross between “Green Grow the Rushes” and “Echo Beach”.
It seems to be about the need to be alone occasionally, but I might be wrong.
“Saturday Groovers”
This song starts off with some fun harmony vocals, but almost immediately breaks into a classic T Rex riff.
I was initially quite annoyed that it didn’t take the musical influence anywhere, but on reflection that’s taking the song too seriously.
It seems to be about how beautiful young people can waste the opportunity of youth (by grooving on a Saturday afternoon) and one day wake up years later with “emphysema, heart disease and gout”. How can you take that seriously??!!
It’s yet more lightweight, tongue in cheek fun.
But three songs in, I’m wondering whether there is going to be any substance in this new effort.
“I’m Falling”
Fortunately, “I’m Falling” starts to hint of the qualities that are yet to come.
It’s a slower tempo and a more earnest vocal delivery.
There are beautiful intertwined guitars and harmonies, both of which prove Peter Buck’s point that you don’t have to move away from guitars to embrace the potential of vocals:
“There’s a thin line between being well and being ill.
“There’s a thin line between what you are and what you aren’t
“I’m afraid of loving you
“And you’re afraid I can’t
“I’m falling now
“I’m falling
“I’m falling now
“You’re calling”
There’s more than a hint that one of the great pleasures in life is to cross the line, to take a risk, to get outside your comfort zone, even perhaps to transgress.
“Hurry for the Sky”
The pace increases substantially on this Dylanesque country and western shuffle.
Its target is the urban cowboys who have ridden roughshod over real people in their quest for massive wealth and fame:
“You can easily confuse
“Money with success
“Success is always relative
“Money is acute
“Money is absolute
“Money in your dress
“I am in a hurry for the sky”
The album has climbed out of its rut and is on a roll.
“Sixteen Years”
This track is slower and more atmospheric, making great use of the interplay between Robyn and Peter’s guitars.
It seems to be about the break-up of a sixteen year old business relationship. (or is it a sixteen year old addiction?)
Money, trust and humiliation are front of mind:
“Sixteen years
“And all I got was pie
“Sixteen ways
“To shrivel up and die.”
“Up to Our Nex”
This track lightens the trend of the album.
It’s overtly romantic (“we’re up to out nex in love”), yet the underlying message is “Forgive yourself, and maybe you’ll forgive me”.
It makes great use of distorted guitars and horn arrangements.
“Intricate Thing”
Another song about love.
“Love between a woman and a man
“Is an intricate thing
“You’re not just friends
“You’re not just bodies on the sofa
“And when it’s over
“Will you speak to each other again?”
There are some nice horn arrangements, a la the band Love.
And I like the way Robyn rhymes “sofa” with “it’s over”!
“TLC”
Not tender loving care, but a TLC of another kind:
“Tryptisol. Librium. Carbritol.”
A cocktail of drugs that has apparently proven fatal in the case of Nick Drake and Brian Epstein.
The beginning (or continuation?) of the drug and addiction theme.
“Goodnight Oslo”
The title track is the last song and the longest song on the album.
Having arrived at the end, I’ve realised how much my impressions of the album as a whole have been influenced by this one song.
There is a compelling, almost military beat from the drums.
The guitars are fantastic, as usual for anyone who has been lucky enough to witness the Venus 3 live.
A cello interjects occasionally and to good effect.
This is a song that will grow over time to be a favourite in Robyn’s catalogue.
Something weird happened in a room in Norway in 1984. Morris was there. Robyn was there. Amphetamines might have been there.
Something started then and possibly kept on going, until recently or perhaps for 16 years.
It’s tempting to speculate about drug addiction, but I know nothing about Robyn’s predilections.
It could even be about cigarette smoking. His interviews are replete with references to the Smoke Age.
Whatever, the song is about finally working up the courage to say no. To give it up, to break the habit, to shed your skin, to start again.
Overall, if life is the stretch between birth and death and time is limited, there is more to be done than food and sex.
The positive in “Goodnight Oslo” seems to be that, during our time on Earth, we can do better than amphetamines and nicotine.
We can make time for relationships and trust and love, even if occasionally we end up on the sofa as a result!