Monday, March 23, 2015

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Aldous Huxley, Island

Aldous Huxley, Island
Harper & Row, 1962

As I read ‘Island’ I thought, “Wow, this is just the book for the world as it is right now” -- and I assume that readers have felt that way for all of the fifty-plus years this book has been in print.

‘Island’ is a tribute to the care and attention that is possible even now, as Big Oil, Wanton Destruction, Fake Spirituality and Sheer Nonsense roll in with their final victory, their FINAL final victory, bigger even than yesterday’s final victory.  Appreciation and real care remain not just possible but inescapable -- at least for those who are paying attention.

This book is intensely full: so many ideas, griefs, hopes, plans, theories, varieties of mischief.  It’s easy to imagine Huxley, terminally ill by this time, saying, “What the hell!  I’m putting it all in.”  Thus it’s natural that ‘Island’ succeeds far better as a mass of ideas, passions and energy than as a traditional plotted novel.  Seamlessness and efficiency are not the point.

I enjoyed this book a lot, was glad I read it, and this is despite loathing the first chapter, disliking the second, and thinking, “Oh, no.  Oh, God.  He must have been fond of D.H. Lawrence.”  (Yep, I guessed right...)  When, in the midst of the drama, we are treated to 35 pages on Huxley’s educational theories, I wanted to say, “Aldous!  Dude!  Reconsider!”

I ended up cheering the book because Huxley is so daring and so determined to include everything -- death, disease, loss, fury, grief, as well as five dozen theories, and the nature of ultimate reality -- you know, in case you had any lingering doubts about the nature of ultimate reality.  A dying man, he clearly used this book to instruct himself how to die.  To me, that’s stunning.

One more thing: nowadays it often seems that Huxley is the private property of New Age spiritual types -- after all, Eckhart Tolle refers to this book.  Thus, I was surprised to discover that there is nothing Huxley is better at than exposing the delusions, self-aggrandizement and sheer madness of self-proclaimed spiritual people.  Chapter 5, with its scary and hilarious portrait of the Rani, is the crown jewel of this novel.  I assume that Huxley meant to lampoon Theosophical types, as well as the devout ladies who clustered around the Vedanta Society in the mid-20th century.  I was chagrined to discover that the Rani seemed exactly like many of today’s New Agers and Neo-Advaitins.  (Like Huxley, I attempt to navigate contemporary Buddhist and Hindu traditions without becoming either nuts or a jerk.  It ain’t easy.)  To judge from Huxley’s portrait of the Rani, it appears that self-delusion has not needed to learn any new tricks -- the old tricks still work just fine.


Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

Édouard Levé, Autoportrait
translated by Lorin Stein
originally published in French in 2005
Dalkey Archive, 2012


In the noble and under-utilized lineage of Sei Shonagon and Joe Brainard, here is Édouard Levé’s Autoportrait.  Each sentence is a fresh start, “I” is the touchstone, but the point is not so much to trumpet the self as to endlessly give it away.  Like Joe Brainard’s “I Remember”, Autoportrait is an act of generosity, an intimate act.  Here is the self, its memories, habits and preferences, endlessly raveling and unraveling, appearing suddenly and disappearing to make way for whatever is next.

Autoportrait is 117 pages of unbroken text.  It may be daunting to not see a paragraph break, a place to take a breath, but this book is utterly and helplessly readable -- the only trouble is when you try to stop.  

On page 9 Levé writes, “In India, I traveled in a train compartment with a Swiss man whom I didn’t know, we were crossing the plains of Kerala, I told him more about myself in several hours than I had told my best friends in several years, I knew I would never see him again, he was an ear without repercussions.”  Reading Autoportrait is just like that -- I felt I was that man on the train, intimate from the start, hearing Leve’s memories, preferences, anguishes and tics in a rush.  (He mentioned never having had gay sex so frequently I wanted to tell him, “Come here, sweetheart, let’s tic that box already.”)

When I reached the end I wished there was more, so immediately I read it again.  After reading it twice -- because Levé writes he would be glad to live his life a second time but not a third -- I wished that this could become an established and recognized form: “the autoportrait” in honor of Leve.  It seems to me that the autoportrait is in some ways superior to the memoir, because it is closer to life than the story of it.  The autoportrait presents the “I” as it actually is -- an unstable, flickering, changeable multitudinous semblance, instead of one big unified project.  Think of how much better we would understand people and eras if we could sprinkle across time people like Sei Shonagon, Joe Brainard, Edouard Levé, and if autoportraits could be written, instead of the inherently misleading memoir: Chapter One, My Highly Promising Childhood.  

Inevitably, I had to try writing an autoportrait of my own and, sure enough, once the process got underway it seemed to turn to turn up much that was fresh and alive, as well as truths seldom glimpsed in the “official” version of me and who I’d like to think I am.  (* If anyone else has tried this, or knows others who have, I would like very much to read the result -- please contact me!)  

This book is unnervingly poignant because it appears to include both Levé’s suicide and how it might have been averted.  I am certain that reality was not so simple but reading this I could not help but wish that I could hurry back in time to 2007, to the final ten days between when Leve delivered his final manuscript (“Suicide”) and when he ended his life.  “Excuse me, sir, here is your ticket to India, it’s business class but you must leave tonight.”  

As that is not possible, we are left with this brilliant and fascinating small book, crammed with digressions, illuminations, and possibilities.  May it be read and emulated.

Friday, March 06, 2015

Who Will Save the Stories of Lucia Berlin?

Lucia Berlin, So Long
Black Sparrow Press, 1993

When I was 23 years old this was my favorite book.  Then as now, I was peculiarly strict about what should be read when and where -- there were books for the morning or the afternoon, for dawn, sunset or midnight.  There were the books that were right when accompanied by two strong cups of coffee, by casual distraction or complete exhaustion.  There were books that were right for the toilet, for the cafe, or for the bus.  So Long was the only book I had that I felt I could be read anywhere, at any time.  Even when I read it in the nightmarish waiting room of Denver’s public health clinic, this book didn’t condescend to me, it always granted to me its kind, funny, sad, wise company.

I discovered the stories of Lucia Berlin in the classroom of the legendary Bobbie Louise Hawkins, who had been a friend of Lucia’s and said that her writing was a hidden American literary treasure.  For months I carried this book everywhere and read it all the time.  I adored it.  Almost twenty years later, I reread the stories and -- Bobbie spoke the truth.  These stories are a treasure.  Like Chekhov or Saramago, these stories are profound instructions in the practice of compassion.  Anyone who reads and reveres Grace Paley or Alice Munro has got to read these stories -- but how are they are going to be able to do that?  The Black Sparrow Press books were heroic undertakings but they are fragile books and increasingly hard to acquire.  These are brilliant stories -- how are people going to be able to find them?

When I started rereading this book, I could find no evidence of a rescue mission, a book in the works.  Lucia died more than ten years ago now.  The neglect of her work since then seems as universal as it is senseless and maddening.  Checking again a few weeks later, I am astonished.  I find rumors that Macmillan is going to publish a Selected Stories of Lucia Berlin titled A Manual for Cleaning Ladies with an introduction by none other than Lydia Davis.  If this is true, then it is magnificently good news.  If the project flounders, we will be guilty of allowing the stories of an unsung American master to disappear.  May the rumors be true!  I hope very much that the re-discovery of the stories of Lucia Berlin is, at last, about to commence.