박경리: 버리고 갈 것만 남아서 참 홀가분하다

시란 것 머냐? 시를 보고 시가 인지 알 수 있는 시적인 특징은? 비유, 형상화, 운율 아닌가? 그렇다면, 이 박경리의 마지막 글은 시집이 아니다.  단어 단어로 보면 좀 뻔한 느낌도 있다.  줄들을 잘라서 챙기지 않았으면, 시라고 부를 수 없겠다.

이 시집을 읽는 동안, 능력이 있는 시인의 말을 읽는 게 아니라 80살 할머니의 마지막 말을 앉아서 듣는 느낌이였다.  연세를 드셔서 할 말 다 검소하게 하시고 헛소리를 참을성이 없으신 할머니.  박경리는 말을 꾸밀 시간과 힘이 없었나 본다.  들을 만한 말밖에 없이 철에 둔 짧은 줄 몇게 번역하기는 보람이 있지 않을까?

마음

마음 바르게 서면

If your spirit stands upright

세상이 다 보인다

The entire world is seen

빨아서 풀 먹인 모시 적삼 같이

Everything is vivid and fresh,

사물은 싱그럽다

Like a crisply starched summer jacket.

마음이 욕망으로 일그러졌을 때

When your spirit is twisted up with desire,

진실을 눈 멀고

Your eyes are blinded to truth,

해와 달이 없는 벌판

And all reality becomes a deserted field,

세상은 캄캄해질 것이다

With neither sun nor moon.

먹어도 먹어도 배가 고픈 욕망

Desire, that eats and eats and continues to hunger

무간지옥이 따로 있는가

Isn’t this the most perfect of hells?

권세와 명리와 재물을 쫓는 자

Chasing after power, honor, wealth,

세상은 그래서 피비린내가 난다

That reality reeks of blood.

~~

사람의 됨됨이

가난하다고

Poverty

다 인색한 것은 아니다

Is not all stingy.

부자라고

Wealth

모두가 후한 것도 아니다

Is not all generous.

그것은

All of that,

사람의 됨됨이에 따라 다르다

 It follows a person’s nature.

후함으로 하여

Generosity

삶이 풍성해지고

brings abundance

인색함으로 하여

And stinginess

삶이 궁색해 보이기도 하는데

An impoverished life.

생명들은 어쨌거나

All living things, no matter what,

서로 나누며 소통하게 돼 있다

Share and correspond with each other.

그렇게 아니하는 존재는

Any other existence

길가에 굴러 있는

Is that of a stone rolling beside a road,

한낱 돌멩이와 다를 바 없다

And nothing more.

나는 인색함으로

I have seen lives

메마르고 보잘것없는

Dry and worthless

인생을 더러 보아 왔다

with stinginess,

심성이 후하여

And at other times

넉넉하고 생기에 찬

Radiant and abundant

인생도 더러 보아 왔다

With generosity

인색함은 검약이 아니다

Stinginess is not thrift

후함은 낭비가 아니다

And generosity is not waste

인색한 사람은

The stingy

자기 자신을 위해 낭비하지만

Waste everything on themselves

후한 사람은

And the generous

자기 자신에게는 준열하게 검약한다

Are to themselves unflinchingly severe.

사람 됨됨이에 따라

The entire world changes

사는 세상도 달라진다

Following a person’s nature.

후한 사람은 늘 성취감을 맛보지만

The generous taste satisfaction,

인색한 사람은 먹어도 늘 배가 고프다

And the stingy eat, but are hungry.

천국과 지옥의 차이다

It’s the difference between heaven and hell.

Dino Buzzati: The Tartar Steppe

The power of stichomancy is real.  I add this book to the list of times when what I read was exactly what I am meant to have read at the moment.  I'm sure that it's no different from tarot, in that it has no particular power other than to clarify those things that we already know, but like tarot it is occasionally uncanny in its accuracy.

If my life were to have a theme, and such a thing seems vanishingly unlikely at this point, it would be that of "starting over".  The maximum I have ever been able to stay in one house, at one job, or with one person, has always been three years.  At that point, I invariably throw a grenade into my life, jettison as much as possible, and hoist my petard to a new situation.  One could easily spin a version of events wherein this habit is a symptom of cowardice and laziness, but no amount of judgement has been able to stop me from doing it.  And with one exception (you know who you are), I do not regret having done it, though I often regret not having done it sooner.

And as I sit here at a desk in my very own version of Buzzati's Fort Bastiani, the thought occurs to me that perhaps it's better to stay this time, even though the pin has already been pulled.  What would happen if I stuck around this place for another few years?  What could be the harm in at least trying something different, in the ironic situation that not trying something different is the only something different left to me?

And whether Buzati's answer is his own, or invented by this reader to fit the circumstance, is irrelevant.  If one stays on the edge of the Tartar steppe, willingly surrendering to the communal delusion that things will get better at any moment, one is invariably disappointed.  And that disappointment infects the spirit, until nothing is left but a jaundiced shadow, hoping at least to meet death bravely.

Vaclav Havel: To the Castle and Back

I fell in love with Havel the writer before I fell in love with the man.  His plays combine all the virtues of Camus, Kafka, and Beckett, but where they despaired at the idiocy of existence, Havel laughed and danced and blew raspberries--the only healthy approach. 

On a recent trip to the Czech Republic, I decided it would be appropriate to visit his grave and lay a rose, and took the chance to read this post-modernist memoir while lingering in coffee shops around the city.  I quickly went from appreciative reader to gobsmacked fanboy. 

The book itself would have been worthy of the time invested.  No formulaic memoir, this.  Havel juggles fragments of terse, frustrated emails; diurnal musings; and carefully polished interviews in a perfectly timed dance of seven travails.  It's a rare memoir that would stand up as a work of fiction.

But it was not fiction.  This remarkable life, and the remarkable way he faced it, were all real.  The protagonist of this Kafkaesque, Camusian, Becketty story existed.  It was not only in his plays that Havel gave the finger to the existential void.  Somehow, he saw what any perceptive human sees, refused to look away, and didn't go insane. 

And then he wrote it down.  And so it is not just because he was an amazing writer, thoughtful politician, and hero of his country that Havel is now one of my heroes.  It is rather because he knew what I know, felt what I feel, and somehow made it worthwhile in a way that perhaps I could be capable of someday.

All Quiet on the Western Front

The more things change . . .

This film is guilty of two things that regularly annoy me today.

Annoyance the first: Labeling something "good" (or even "great") because some individual part of it meets those standards.  There were a few things about this film that were well done--the cinematography, certain technical elements, the production design--and there were individual scenes that were either well done, or good ideas on paper.  But, and my bonnet admittedly still has a bee in it from trying to convince a coworker this very day that Gower and Middleton, while they succeed marvelously on some levels, do not deserve to be mentioned alongside Chaucer and Shakespeare, who succeed on every level, moments of brilliance do not justify overarching mediocrity.  Modern offenders: David Lynch, Ryan Murphy, Drake.

Annoyance the second: richly layered and highly talented ensembles being spoiled by the bland, wooden, inoffensively attractive lead actor.  Lew Ayres gives every last one of his lines, even those few that are not already dangerously top-heavy, with the same earnestly mild reading that one would give to a detergent commercial.  At no point does his character change, react, or express anything that could not have been given perhaps better in a telegram.  More's the pity, as Slim Summerville and Louis Wolheim give depth and texture to even the maudlin, didactic teletype that serves as a script.  I am positively disgusted by the troops of vaguely pretty boys in leading roles who clearly are there because they dampened a casting director's panties, and remain there because of the flooded undergarments of their fans. My frustration is only sharpened by the often vibrant ensembles that are forced to prop them up. Modern offenders: Stephen Amell, Henry Cavill, Kit Harington, Dominic Cooper, et al ad infinitum.  Taking the movie in question here as evidence, it would seem that the trend is nearly a hundred years old in film, likely even longer in other media, and potentially immortal.

Julia Kristeva: Revolution in Poetic Language

Until I started this book, I would have said that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was the most obtuse and inaccessible book I've ever read.  Congratulations, Kristeva, for writing something to which I have no access, and saying something that my ears are unwilling or unable to hear.  I could not say with any certainty what she wrote here, what she meant by it, or whether it has any validity (although her indebtedness to Freud and Marx argue "not").  I am nearly certain that my coworker recommended it to me as a joke, in fact, and muttered to himself as he handed it over, "Let's see this pompous ass pretend to understand it."

Many, faced with the challenge of a similarly inscrutable text, would approach it with a microscope, a dictionary, and a pair of tweezers, trying to pull apart the threads of meaning, the entangled and knotted definitions of coined words, the off-handedly knowing allusions to other works, so irrelevant or alien that they may as well be apocryphal.  But not I.  I know that what Kristeva wrote and what I read may or may not have anything to do with each other; the courtship between writer and reader always takes place on opposite sides of a glass panel--a literary conjugal visit that can only frustrate those who desire to touch solid flesh.

I do not lament this barrier.  Like all realities, it is only frustrating to the extent that one expects it to be other than it is, to the extent that one expects to ask the author, "What do you mean?" and to have her answer you in no uncertain terms.  But in Kristeva, as in anything worth reading, uncertain terms are an indispensable part of the texture.  There do exist those authors, writers of pop psychology, self-help, and how-to, who do all of the thinking for you. But there is more arousal in concealing than in revealing, and more pleasure in tmesis than in thesis.

And so the inaccessibility of a text, the opacity of that window between prisoner and visitor, is not a hindrance, but a liberty.  The more distant the author is from the reader, the freer this latter is to look at the text, not as a communique, but as a spilt deck of tarot cards: a collage of symbols that hold only the meaning one carries to them.  Insofar as Kristeva could not possibly be more distant from me, I was entirely liberated to, as Roland Barthes suggests,

". . .skim or to skip certain passages (anticipated as "boring") in order to get more quickly to the warmer parts of the anecdote (which are always its articulations: whatever furthers the solution of the riddle, the revelation of fate): we boldly skip (no one is watching) descriptions, explanations, analyses, conversations; doing so, we resemble a spectator in a nightclub who climbs onto the stage and speeds up the dancer's striptease, tearing off her clothing . . ." (The Pleasure of the Text, 11). 

And so I did. I went entire pages without worrying what was being said, waiting for some swath of flesh to peek through the layers of fabric, my wandering brain detached from my attentive eyes.  And when the author turned around too quickly, revealing something succulent in the folds between sentences, my brain snapped back to attention for a while, piecing together meanings that may or may not have actually been there.

It is not surprising that I came away from this exercise rather emboldened than enlightened.  Whether she wanted to or not, Kristeva added her semiotic chora and her semantothetic rupture to the list of dichotomies that currently propel my deeper moments.  The semiotic and the semantic, the personal self and the public self, the biological drives and the social drives, the genotext and the phenotext, all of the polarities that she isolates only fed the Taoist monster that is incubating in me.  And, whether she meant to or not, she offered a new way of resolving it.

The object (in a nearly grammatical sense) that is formed by the thetic mistakes itself for the subject that lives in the chora.  As the semantic and symbolic systems become more and more complex, the subject who originally thought them--driven by social, sexual, logical, and other drives--cannot help but become enveloped by them, and mistake itself for the object of which it speaks.  For Kristeva, this results in negativity, nothingness, and an assortment of other processes drawn heavily from discredited psychoanalytical instincts.  For me, however, it results in a different type of nothingness:  an anomie, a loss of identity, a morass of sentences of which I am the object, the desired, the valued, the appreciated, the loved.  Entangled in this accusative skein, I realize I have lost track of the nominative.  I have become Me.  Where, and whom, am I, so smothered by m-commanding case assignors that the subject now isn't even sure if he exists?

한강: 채식주의자

난 경치에 흥미가 없다. 뛰어나게 아름다운 산기슭, 협곡, 건물 앞에서는 난 십 분후 성급하게 시계를 보고 다음 어디로갈까 생각하는 편이다.  경치보다 박물관, 연국장, 축제, 전시회와 같은 좌뇌를 자극하는 걸 좋아한다.  개념, 착상, 발상이 나한테 중요해서 그런가  가만히 앉아서 감상할 인내력이 없는가 나도 모른다. 어쨌든 좌뇌를 활성하게 하는 서양식 문학 나한테 큰 매력이 있다.

동양식 문학이 완전 다르다.  高行健,村上 春樹, 등과 같은 동양 작가의 작품을 읽었을 때도 이런 생각이 든다: 나무를 보고 숲을 보지 못했네.  동양 책을 읽을 때 또는 동양 영화를 볼 때 의미를 찾느라 감상을 못하곤 한다.  

그래서 이 요즘 인기와 칭송을 많이 받아온 책을 원어로 읽는 게 다행이다. 같은 단어를 두번 사용하기 싫어하는 작가의 어희 나니도가 한국어 원어민한테도 어려울 것 같다. 심지어 들어본 적이없는 음절도 있는 책이다.  좌뇌가 미칠듯이 다룰 수 없었던 것이다. 이렇게 좌뇌에 단어가 넘쳐나는 책을 읽는 것에 좌뇌를 꺼버리고 사전을 닫고 우뇌를 켜기밖에 없었다.

이책은 무슨 의미를 갖고 있는지에 할말이 없다.  그러나 기억에서 지울 수 없을 장면, 느낌, 흥분, 감상에 대한 말이 입에서 물구나무 자라있다.

Nicholas Kralev: America's Other Army

After teaching for 10+ years, I find myself considering a career shift.  This is not at all surprising, to those who know me.  What is surprising is that I have stuck with it for this long.  I am a great teacher, I find it stimulating and rewarding, and I suppose I could picture myself doing this until I retire. 

But I have what is called in Korean 역말살 (station horse flesh), or in English "hot feet".  I have never been able to stay in the same place for more than three years.  I'm fortunate that the nature of teaching in general, and of teaching English in particular, is such that I have been able to indulge this side of myself without having to actually change fields.  All that's been required has been to change my location, friends, coworkers, curriculum, living arrangements . . . everything else.  I simply require the stimulation of starting over in a new environment and finding my way. 

The down side of this, of course, is that of always being the new guy.  Starting over every three or so years doesn't exactly lend itself to career advancement, and my resume is an admitted casserole.  If only there were a career where my particular idiosyncrasy was not such a hindrance to my general welfare.  Perhaps, even, one in which ability and eagerness to start over every three years was a virtue, rather than a land mine. 

Which is where the idea of the foreign service comes in.  Originally turned on to the idea by my friend Karen, who has been serving now for some years and is thriving, I have been doing some due diligence on the subject, rather than jumping in and hoping for the best.  The general consensus among those who know me best is that it would be a marvelous fit, so I picked up this book to dig further. 

Anything further I would have to say on the topic would likely be on the Foreign Service itself, rather than on the book, so I will limit myself to observing that Kralev's unflinching and thorough treatment of the subject has reinforced my perception:  that many of what he views as drawbacks of a Foreign Service career are to me seductive, and many of the things that one might view as drawbacks about me as a person actually would be virtues in that environment.  And so it is that I'm scheduled to take the first exam in a few weeks.  One could expect to see more books of this type here in the future, I suppose.

The Revelation of John: III

11:2,3 The precision of numbers here certainly tempts one to figure out exactly what it means.  I recall the religion of my upbringing managing to make it all about them and how awesome they were to have the only possible interpretation of anything ever.

11:4-6 Again, far too specific to resist prying just a little.  The whole vision has the flavour of a dream that one remembers in vivid detail.  Just two nights ago I awoke with the lyrics and melody of an entirely original song still lingering in my mind.  What did it mean?  And what did it mean that a man named Iain rode toward me on a blue ATV, and wanted to take pictures of me on the beach while I did a headstand?  The vibrancy, clarity, and specificity of this dream beg for interpretation . . . as do John's.

11:7-9 And as tempting as it is to leave it there, to assume that John's vision meant no more or less than my own, I can't resist sampling some modern interpretations of it--much as I would if I were reading Blake or Coleridge.  No doubt the things these men saw were only preternaturally vivid altered states, and not divinely inspired visions of the future.  Still, what if?

A trip down the rabbit hole reveals a lack of scholarly agreement on the topic of the 1260 days, as well as the identities of the two witnesses.  Many seem to feel that the latter represents a time of papal rule, starting in the time of Justinian.  But though the beginning of such a period can be supported, it seems a stretch to say that the time of papal authority ended, well, ever.  Likewise, there is a general consensus that the most likely identities of these witnesses are Moses and Elijah, but such an interpretation seems meaningless.  Are those two meant to return in some way, or is this a reflection of past events after all? I even went so far as to choke down the bile and review the propaganda with which I was raised.  It remains as I remembered: "We are the two witnesses, cause we are awesome and right about everything."

I am reminded again about my particularly vivid dream from the other night.  Taken as a whole, it is all fairly inscrutable.  But the individual elements, the source of each of those is readily identified.  I did indeed know a fellow named Iain.  And the scene of the dream too, although unconnected with that fellow in reality, was also a real place that I remember.  In fact, everything in the dream came from my real experience, or something close to it.  It is merely the juxtaposition that muddles them.  Is it such a stretch to suppose that John, in a dreaming or otherwise altered state, mashed the time period that he likely knew well from Daniel up with other, unrelated but similarly flavoured elements?   This is very much how dreams work.

11:13 And John would have also had memories of Earthquakes in Jerusalem during his lifetime (33 AD).

11:15-18 This verse presents problems for all of the literal interpretations of the 1260 days (years, according to Daniel's rules).  After the time period in question, the two witnesses are called to heaven and the Messiah takes possession of the "Kingdom of the world".  At which point, the wrath of God comes, the time for judging begins, and rewards are doled out to all who fear His name.  If this happened at the end of the 1260 days, either in 1798 or at some other time supposed by scholars, it is remarkable that the subsequent events went without notice.

12:5 This is perhaps the most significant event that John has recorded yet.  The woman giving birth!  Clearly of divine origin, she is an underscrutinized figure.  I am reminded of interpretations that this woman (conflated with similar figures elsewhere in the Bible) is actually The Holy Spirit, or the Wisdom of God.  The child she bears is irresistibly Christ-like.  The problem with all of the interpretations that spring from that is one of timing.  Is this divine birth after the second woe or Ch. 11?  If so, whom could it possibly be? And what is meant by the period of exile for this woman and her child, also conveniently 1260 days?

A lot of these problems stem from the assumption that John is seeing these events unfold in linear time.  Such a viewpoint is not only difficult here, but also in 8:4 and 9:11, to name just a few that have jumped out on this reading.  But it is not by any means the only interpretation of time.  Boethius, and all who drew from him, work from the assumption that time, when seen from divine eyes, is not linear, but simultaneous.  If one adopts such a perspective, a Tralfamadorian reading of The Revelation so to speak, a lot of these difficulties fall away, and it's rather more easy to believe that John was not just dreaming.

12:13-18 Which reinvests the reader in the fate and identity of this woman.  Her battles seem to be every bit as relevant as those of her son, even though they be unseen or metaphorical.

13:2 Approaching these visions from a Boethian perspective ertainly opens up some possibilities.  The assumption in most exegesis that I have found is that this beast is a different one than Daniel saw in his Ch 7.  Surely, since John's vision is taking place centuries after Daniel's, and presumably after the fulfillment of the latter, we are seeing a separate, still future event.  But time in visions and in spirit does not necessarily work that way.  There is nothing to prevent us from wondering if this beast is the same as Daniel's fourth beast, and whether John's attention wasn't simply grabbed by different details than Daniel was.  it's the same instinct that prompts us to wonder whether John's vision in Rev. 4 isn't simply Ezekiel 1 seen from above.  The blind men all touch the elephant in differen tplaces.  To one, it is much like a wall.  To another, like a sword.  And to a third, it is a beast with seven heads and ten horns.

13:5-9 And if we take the assumption that this beast is indeed the same as Daniel's, this is a pretty accurate description of what awaited the "saints" after John's death.

13:11-14 But here John is seeing something that Daniel did not seem to.  What arose after, propped up, and gave breath to the Roman empire after its nearly mortal blow?  Surely the papacy is a strong contender.  Strictly speaking from chronology, the Byzantine empire is also a strong candidate.

13:17 Which interpretation would mean that the symbol in question is actually the cross . . . I can't imagine that interpretation getting much traction though.

13:18 The most interesting and underanalyzed aspect of this verse is the fact that the number of the beast is "the number of a person".  What could this mean?  Is it an ordinal number?  The 666th of something?  Or some play on words, a person named Sextus or some such?  Among Eastern Emperors, there was a VI of Constantine, John, Leo, and Michael.  None of them seem to have been particularly significant though.  When I get to those rulers in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, maybe more will be clear. At any rate, the mark of the beast is not its number, as is commonly thought.  The number is in some way tied to the name.

A lot of people, and most scholars, seem to get tied up in conflating the identity of this beast with the Antichrist, assigning the latter a prominence in the scriptures that is unearned.  There is nothing to tie the two entities together, and nothing particularly identifies the Antichrist as a literal figure. Conversely, the Bible has a well-established pattern of using beasts to represent, not individuals, but entire empires.  John's two-headed beast, if one is consistent, and the name/number/mark that goes with it, seem unlikely to be that of a single person.

14:1 A prime example of how John's visions operate very much like dreams.

14:4 If these 144,000 are to be taken as a literal group of people, with a literal number, then it seems inconsistent to suppose that they are anything other than literal virgins.

14:6 I had never before stopped to suppose exactly what "midheaven" means, assuming that it just meant "in midair".  But the Greek here is literally in the middle of heaven, not air or sky, and occurs only in Revelation.  Having no concept of atmosphere, outer space, or anything beyond the literal sky, one must wonder exactly what John saw here.  An actual celestial realm, separate from full heaven?  What did it look like?  How did he know what he was seeing?

14:8 Here is our clearest argument yet for a Boethian approach to this vision (and others?).  Babylon the Great has not even been introduced yet, let alone the scene of her demise described.

14:10 This torture by fire and sulphur is used, I would imagine, to support an idea of hellfire.  But it is worth noting here that it is "in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb" that it seems to take place--in the same heaven as the rest of the chapter.

14:13 It's been a while since we heard from the Spirit in this book: not since chapter 3, and even then the words of the Spirit were second hand, conveyed by "one like the Son of Man".  In that former passage, it would have been easy to interpret it as a metaphorical or impersonal force, perhaps one of the seven that he held in his hand.  Here it is definitely given a persona, though, and agency.

14:14 Speaking of whom, here again is "one like a Son of Man".  Is it his voice that we heard in the previous verse, and by extension, was he referring to his own words in 2-3?

14:18 It's tempting to take the definite article here as a doorway into some metaphysical explication of the duties of various angels.  The idea that there is one angel in charge of fire certainly predicates some very polytheistic questions.  But the Greek here has no definite article, even though such is common in Greek--merely a relative pronoun.

15:1 I've lost track.  Which scroll, trumpet, and woe are we on?  Is this the third woe?  All of these marker seem a lot fuzzier than one could be led to believe by reading exegesis of them.

15:5 This is the only mention that I can remember of "The temple of the tent of witness".  Traditional interpretation has heaven itself as being the prototypical temple of God, not merely its location.  Is this a separate temple?  One devoted to a special purpose?  If so, for what is it the archetype?

16:1 An argument could be made based on this verse that it is the Most Holy of the tabernacle and subsequently of Solomon's Temple, the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, and by extension of the Divine presence.

 16:4 Is "The angel of the waters" merely the angel who poured the bowl into them, or is it a more managerial position?  It would not be the first time that such positions have been hinted at in this book, on both sides of the divine rivalry.

16:7 Which altar?  From back in 6:9?  Or is this the actual voice of the altar, not merely of those sacrificed on it?  What would that even mean?

16:8 All of these plagues so far seem terribly modern.  The pollution, disease, rising temperatures, vanishing marine life . . . one prone to apocalyptic thinking might have a lot of fun with these verses.

16:10 But this verse is a little more specific and a lot more obscure.  If one sees a nation suddenly plunged into darkness, not only will we have identified the "beast", but also the end chronology.

16:12 After which one would expect China to invade Iraq, I suppose.

16:16 One of my favorite misinterpretations of scripture.  Armageddon is not an event; it is a place.

16:19 Referent failure!  The last great city mentioned was heavenly Jerusalem.  Surely it is not being referred to here.  If one acts under the assumption that John meant for his vision to be understood, then his omission of identifying details means he expected his readers to be able to know what he meant by "the great city", arguing for either literal Jerusalem or Rome.  But John clearly does not give a withered fig if his audience is as confused as he must be.

16:20 Another very modern, or near future, sign.

Haruki Murakami: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

I have some good news, and I have some bad news.  And they are the same news, as they always are. During a moment of weakness in Sofia, Bulgaria, i made the mistake of letting my guard down and trusting the general good intentions of people.  I was rewarded with a stolen phone, and a bruised ego.  This cast a shadow over the rest of my European tour, and I suppose that's the bad news.  But the books I was reading, the online games with which I spent too many hours, and the constant flow of communication I used to numb my foolish brain disappeared with it.  That was the good news.  I suddenly had nothing but my thoughts to entertain me, and had to hunt down a few real books to keep that from driving me crazy.  I read five books in the final week of my trip, and each in its own way was exactly what I needed.

The good news and the bad news, in Literature as in everything, are the same news.  Books are often like tarot cards, not saying anything themselves--try though they might--but merely providing the vocabulary necessary for us to think about that which we already knew.  And so it is that what I take away from a given book is what I needed to receive from it (that's the good news), which may or may not have anything to do with what the book was really about (the bad news).  Books--and art, music, film, relationships, the whole spectrum of human experience--are powerless in the hands of the creator, and omniscient in the hands of the reader.  To say that they are as colorless as the title character of this book is an example of the liberty that one may and must take as a reader.  Murakami's meaning clearly has nothing to do with readership, literature, and interpretation.  But that is the thought that I went into the book with so that is the meaning I found.

And the characters in the book were manifestly not meant as allegories for people in my own life.  Even forced into those roles, they served only imperfectly.  None who know me would describe me as colorless, and yet I am.  I have very little identity of my own, and the colors people see in me are more often than not their own color, amplified and reflected.  I am not an empty vessel, tormented by a confusion about my own identity, but as I became Tazaki, I also wore this part of him.  And the answers that satisfied him also satisfied me, until I put the book down, and again became myself.

Umberto Eco: Numero Zero

Much like with The Name of the Rose, I feel like I must be missing something here.  Eco is widely regarded as a great writer, perhaps one of the greatest, and has legions of devoted fans.  What are they seeing that I am not?  Very nearly half of this book was themeless, plotless recountings of historical events, most of which seem to be invented, but were not.  The general impression is that Eco embarked on a long line of research, discovered the potential for a conspiracy theory, and shoehorned it into a detective novel.  Perhaps Italian audiences, being more familiar with the names dropped in huge piles on every page, were more receptive to or interested in these sort of speculations.  Perhaps the whole novel is really a cover for Eco's theory that Mussolini's death did not occur as in the textbooks.  But the entire plot he concocted as a setting for the plot he thought he uncovered was bald and superficial, offering nothing particularly inventive or engaging.

With the exception of a few character points that I found applicable to my life.  The character of Maia is described as constantly jumping trains of thought, and scarcely noticing that others had a hard time following her.  I have known, and was borne by, such people.  This was a nice way of capturing their essence.  And the protagonist may well have been me when he observes that only losers know very much.  How simultaneously true and depressing.

Ursula LeGuin: Changing Planes

This is not a book that bears up to deep scrutiny.  It begs to be read, not at a desk with a notebook at hand, but in the very place where it was inspired and set:  the misery, irritation, and suffering of an airport. 


I have always hated airports.  Everything about them seems designed to inspire contempt, and the moment a human enters one of these infernal portals, she or he is primed with a hatred for fellow travelers and becomes by virtue of that disgust a perfect target for the glowering disdain of all the similarly affected pilgrims around.

While the conceit of the book is inspired, the book itself is not particularly so.  Each of the stories told here was worth telling, but perhaps some of them were worth telling at greater length.  None of them were long enough to have said anything, and merely glanced at rather heady and poignant questions: to what extent are each of us an individual?  Do our traditions serve or enslave us?  What is the nature of language?

But it only paused long enough at each moment to ask the question, never long enough for an answer to be an option.  And perhaps that was for the best.  Who wants to read the Critique of Pure Reason while enduring the misery we call air travel?  Certainly not I.  I'm glad I read this on the way to Brussels instead.

Vincent Van Gogh: Peach Tree in Blossom

It's likely a surprise to no one that I approach Art much as I approach Literature. Books and paintings can be merely appreciated: viewed or read, judged as pleasing or not, and then set aside.  But Art and Literature offer a deeper pleasure: that of being understood.  Works that deserve to be included in these capitalized categories are very much like stacks of old transparencies, such as one used to find in the middle of encyclopedias, each system of the human body printed on a separate plate, and then bound together as a unit.  One could certainly look at the stack and see the marvelous, complicated unity of the system, but what sort of barbarian would stop there?  Who could resist lifting away the topmost plate and seeing what lie underneath?

The trick is to find the loose corners, the passages that don't seem to fit with the rest of the work, the words that an author uses more or differently than she or he might have, Coleridge's eyes, Eliot's Iphigenia, and in this case, Van Gogh's shadows.  I wrote years ago about Van Gogh's curious affinity for Bunyan, and how that author was a loose edge that allowed one to lift a layer of the artist's work and see a bit of what was underneath.  The gist is that Van Gogh seemed to see himself in Christian, the eponymous pilgrim, and many of his paintings can be seen as an allegorical journey.  I was quite pleased with this analysis at the time, but had merely lifted up the first layer.

As I walked through the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, I was not even looking for a new analysis.  I didn't expect to find any dogeared corners, any loose edges begging to be lifted up, but I found one, and it is this painting.  I walked past the rows of haystacks, the sunflowers, the Dutch working class who were turning into the potatoes they ate, but was stopped in my tracks when I came to "Peach Tree in Blossom".  Something was not right about it.  It didn't make sense, and I stared at it for some minutes trying to put my eye on exactly what was different about it.  Wasn't it just like all the others?  But no, it was all wrong.  The shadows were all wrong.  

Where is the light source in this picture?  It seems to be a low sun off canvas to the left.  The tree in the back is casting a long shadow on the fence, and the palette is that of near sunset.  But the tree in the front.  Its shadow is cast directly underneath.  Was this a mistake?  Where is this other light source?  And why does it not catch the tree in the background?  And the tree itself is uniformly lit.  Seemingly from the front.

An impressionist would never have done this.  Monet et al were fastidiously faithful to the light they saw.  But Van Gogh was creating an expression, not an impression.  This was not the light he saw; it's manifestly impossible for the shadows to have been cast in this way.  And it is not as though he was incapable of or averse to capturing realistic shade. 

Note how faithful to the single light source he is in this self portrait.  In fact, all of his self portraits have this quality, and nearly all are from this angle (it is worth noting that self portraits as an artist, by title or with an easel are nearly all from the opposite angle).  Having lifted up this corner, one begins to notice other inconsistencies.

What is the difference between these two sunflower still lifes?

The former, by Monet, has a clear light source and casts a shadow.  The latter is manifestly impossible.   There is light in the picture, as seen from the reflection on the vase, but it has two strange features:  it is cast from directly in front of the painting, and its shadows do not follow the laws of nature.  This was not a light he saw; it was a light that lived only in the mind of the painter.  

Once attuned to this inconsistency, one sees it everywhere.  I noticed it again at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin in "Le Moulin de la Galette":

The shadows here are all over the place.  In fact, there is only one possible source for the light in this painting, and again it is directly in front of the canvas. The figures on the left are casting a shadow to the right.  Those on the right are the opposite.  And the figure in the rough center is casting a shadow directly underneath or behind.  The light is coming from behind the artist, and by extension, the viewer.

Or is it?  Such a mental placement works for "Le Moulin", but it can't account for "Sunflowers" or "Peach Tree".  There is no literal light source that would behave that way.  The light in these paintings cannot be literal.  And what about when Van Gogh tries to capture an actual light?  Say, a candle?

This candle casts no shadow!  Such a thing is possible because this is not a painting of a candle.  It is an allegorical portrait of Gaugin.  An artist.  A light without a shadow.  The light in Van Gogh's paintings is not coming from behind him.  It is him.  No wonder that the only realistic shadows he painted were on his own face.  And when you look at a Van Gogh, you necessarily adopt his perspective.  You see what he saw, and you know what he knew:  that the light is not coming from behind you; it is you. You are the light in Van Gogh's paintings.  You are the traveler.  You are the pilgrim.  You are the candle, as much as he was, and the shadows you cast are bizarre, irregular, and unreal. 

Kurt Vonnegut: Galapagos

Usually when a one realizes how a trick is done, the magician's spell is broken.  Not so with Vonnegut.  I have read enough of his work that a pattern has become clear:  each book succeeds on the deft juggling of three tricks.  Each of his maneuvers is a staple of writers everywhere; none of them is unique to this writer. But a combination of his refusal to repeat himself--never executing any of his moves in the same way twice, a wildly creative imagination, and a fearless willingness to take seemingly absurd premises to a satisfactory conclusion, causes each of his books to come out as a fully realized, unique philoso-literary tapestry that is part of a greater multiptych.

Trick one: An amusing orthographic or lexical innovation.  In Galapagos, this is manifest as an asterisk before the name of characters who are about to die.  Because why not?  The asterisk in Breakfast of Champions was used in the same way to entirely different, rather more intestinal ends.

Trick two: A driving structural conceit.  In Galapagos: the story is gradually revealed to have been written by the ghost of a dock worker.  In the air.  With his immaterial finger.  See also: the memoir conceit of Bluebeard, the novel within a novel of Champions, etc.

Trick three, which is not really a trick: A brilliant and insightful kernel of truth about the way Vonnegut sees the world and existence, and which invariably happens to be something this reader wanted or needed to hear.  In Galapagos, the central idea is that everything bad that ever happened is because of our big, dumb, human brains and our need to do something with them.  How true!  Even now, I can be seen wondering about what this book means and how to analyze it, instead of glorying in its humor and aphorism.  And as soon as I hit publish, no doubt I am going to start using all my extra brain on the problem of what I should do with my life, what is my purpose for existing, and what on earth I mean by "I" anyway.  How silly these big brains of ours are!  How unnecessary and troublesome!  Who can doubt that it would be better swim all day, rut in the sand without wonder, and then fart wetly to the unanimous laughter of our peers?

Dante Alighieri: The New Life

This brief volume didn't offer me a lot of literary pleasures in and of itself.  The type of love Dante enshrines here is of dubious character, for one thing.  I have, once or twice, felt the sort of overpowering obsession, the worshipful adoration that he tries to capture.  The object of such love very nearly seems like a gift from heaven; he can do no wrong, is free from flaws, and light seems to radiate from his very face.  But I have an advantage over Dante: those whom I have seen in such a light didn't die before I learned the truth.

Dante calls this experience "love", but he does so seemingly without consciousness of the blurriness of that word.  It is a cliche, but nonetheless a useful one, to draw attention to the fact that "I love pizza" and "I love Pablo" are referring to two very different things.  Any objective observer, or even a compromised one who knows of what ze speaks, will recognize in Dante's rapture something much more closely resembling the former than the latter.

Too often, we say, feel, or think that we love something, when in fact we merely desire it.  Did Dante love Beatrice?  How could he have?  They scarcely met.  This is not to say that his feelings for her were not real, or that they were not as powerful as he describes, simply that he has misidentified them.  I, for my part, love sushi in the sense that I desire it.  I love Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, in the sense that I can never seem to get enough of them.  I have even told myself, in the literal sense of the thought arising in my mind unbidden, that I love Pablo.  This too turned out to be more accurately called desire.

Which begs the question "what is love?" The answer to that question is beyond both the scope of this reaction, and perhaps beyond my capacity to write about in any medium.  But I feel confident in my assessment that it is equally far from Dante's capacity to have written at the time of The New Life.