Wednesday 30 April 2014

Charles Bukowski- Women

Women
Virgin
 Charles Bukowski
1978


“I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.”

While I normally find myself spacing out works by my favourite authors, trying to extend my enjoyment, I enjoyed the last book I read by Charles Bukowski so much that it didn't take me long to pick up the other book of his sat in my to-read pile. My last encounter with Bukowski and his Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's fictional self-projection, was to read about the story of his youth and young adulthood; easily my favourite work by the author yet, Ham on Rye. Stylistically, Ham on Rye is typical Bukowski, but through its layered, rich narrative I found it to be even better; not simply within the context of Ham on Rye, but in the wider reaches of Bukowski's entire bibliography as it crucially builds a backdrop for his unique style of narration. It enabled me to look back at what I'd previously read by the author and gain a new, greater appreciation for it, and when it came to looking at my next full-length Bukowski novel of choice I'm pretty sure it made that a lot better too.

Published just two years before Ham on Rye, Charles Bukowki's Women is the third in his series of semi (or pseudo?) autobiographical novels starring the aforementioned Chinaski. In previous novels Post Office and Factotum (which I'm yet to read, shamefully) Chinaski was, at best, a complete low-life failure drinking, gambling and whoring his way through the dregs of society with no thoughts of self- improvement. Women, however, shows some of the drastic changes in Chinaski's later life at fifty-plus years after he becomes a nationally successful and very well-respected poet, while also focusing heavily on the things that don't really change for him whatsoever; the drinking, gambling and whoring. Like the rest of Bukowski's bibliography it's a completely uncensored voyage through alcoholic debauchery (although, it must be said, not a drugged-up one of the William Burroughs kind).
 
The thing that really stood out to me from this book that helped it stand out as a particularly enjoyable read within the chronology of the character was the somewhat mellowing change in Chinaski's personality, particularly in light of the psychopathic deviant of adolescence. Now in his late fifties, Chinaski's most obvious traits are still there in spades. As the title suggests, he's a rampant womaniser, the main theme of the book as he drifts from woman to woman like a deranged Casanova, and he's still very capable of furious anger, but this time, to me at least, there seemed a stronger impression of despair and shame with each failed relationship, each lurid indiscretion. Though Bukowski's fame makes it much easier for him to attract new women, his conscious grows with age and his body, ravaged by alcohol, becomes more decrepit and pathetic.

Maybe that's something to do with Bukowki's identification of himself with the Chinaski character. Bukowki's creation, control and development of his alter-ego must have been a very careful one, in terms of creating the image and atmosphere of a blurred window into a real past. Separating the truth of Bukowski's life from his presentation of this fictional one is kind of a fool's game at this point, especially for me, but I do think Women is in some part an attempt by Bukowski to repair some of the potential damage to his own image, so closely is it associated with his character. The fact that Chinaski is here roughly the same age as Bukowski suggests to me that this is the closest meeting of fact and fiction yet. With so many years removed from Chinaski/Bukowski's tumultuous youth, much (though by no means all) of the sheer aggression of the character has been calmed, or at least merged with his unending hunger for more women.

All in all, though not as enjoyable as Ham on Rye or Post Office to me, and certainly a little bit too long for its content, Women is still an alternative American classic with perfect stylistic prose. Perhaps best read after you've already encountered earlier Bukowski, it continues the development of a unique and unforgettable character that mixes reality and fiction to create a suspence of disbelief that adds an extra sharp edge to the sometimes unbelievable onslaught of self-destructive, decadent behaviour.

Thursday 24 April 2014

L-Space- Struggling with Borges

My book reading goes in line with my obsessive compulsiveness in certain ways. This blog alone is proof,, my attempt to catalogue each book I read with a short review. To some writers that amount of productivity is easy to achieve, but for me sometimes it just feels really, really hard. As a result over the past few years there have been more than a couple of novels and non-fiction books that I just didn't bother reviewing, for various reasons. One of the main ones is the nagging feeling in the back of my head that, with some of them, there's really not much to achieve. This happens a lot with older classics (most recently Marlowe's Faustus and Goethe's Faust) where I feel like even trying to place a critical eye on something that's been renowned, revered, and already picked apart by so many people already is a redundant, maybe even narcissistic thing to do.

After reading and reviewing Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam I fancied breezing through a shorter book, if anything just to try and make my to-read pile a little lighter (37 to go now I think), and so I made my third and final attempt to connect with an author whom I, in the past, have really wanted to like. He's both famous enough and esoteric enough (to me, anyway) to seem cool and reputable, as the most popular author in South American history. Like most of my books I first encountered Jose Luis Borges fairly randomly a few years ago by picking out a random title of his off the shelf of a charity shop, hoping to add him to the growing list of authors I enjoy. Ultimately though this recent third effort is likely to be my last with the author for a while. Three times I've tried to crack him, and three times I've failed badly enough to the point where I haven't bothered to review them. Hopefully these mini versions will make me feel a bit better about it.

The first Jose Luis Borges book I read was his Book of Imaginary Beings (1969 expanded edition), which on the surface of it seemed like a whimsical exercise in fantasy writing that appealed through its simplicity as well as Borges' name, I fancied it as a good entry point and having recently very much enjoyed David Eagleman's Sum- Tales from the Afterlife as a similarly-shaped collection of micro-stories. The book is simply an alphabetical trawl through 120 different mythical creatures of lore, each one assigned a generally brief paragraph dedicated to describing it, and it's as simple as that. It was, in hindsight, kind of an odd book to experience Borges for the first time with because its quirky, fleeting nature left me feeling like I'd not gotten much of an impression of Borges' writing talent overall, instead merely experiencing him writing in an atypical genre-specific style. Though I did enjoy it as a quick read I was looking forward to reading something more substantial and expressive from Borges, though ironically in the end concluded that I enjoyed it most of all of them.

The second attempt at Borges seemed more promising, the short story collection A Universal History of Infamy (originally 1935, my revised edition 1954), in which Borges writes fictional stories about real historical criminals. The stories are very short and this is a very brief collection, but they are much longer than the entries in Book of Imaginary Beings, thus giving me the chance to get a better feel of Borges' style. Unfortunately it just did capture me; from a technical standpoint he's an immaculate writer, able to portray each scenario with an expansive vocabulary, but perversely I found there to be something a little off about it all. As though he's so confident with his narrative style, descriptive and emotive that the narration offsets the characters in the stories. Though the subject matter seemed right up my alley the style and the brevity of each story pushed me away and I just couldn't connect. It's frustrating because I really did want to like this book. Maybe one day I'll pick it up again.

I finished the final Borges from my to-read pile only a few days ago, hoping that this time I'd finally get it, but it never really happened. Doctor Brodie's Report (1970)  was the most traditional collection of short stories that I read and some ways the most interesting. Famously written at the age of 70 after a gap in short story writing that lasted 20 years, this collection showed me more of Borges' voice than the prior two, thanks to its regular style of storytelling. Though I knew of Borges primarily for being such a well regarded South American literary export, I hadn't felt his cultural influences much until I read this. Unfortunately I found little I could relate to amongst these tales of Catholics in Argentina, and though I sort of enjoyed the distinctive Latin feeling (or at least my impression of it), it only worked to a certain extent. I think I was a little turned away by the religious undertones to be honest, which is hardly something to criticise the author for but isn't my cup of tea.

Ultimately I left my first looks at Borges feeling disappointed, but not completely disheartened. I do feel there's something there that's not clicking with me where I can't seem to enjoy his prose style despite knowing that it's good, if that makes any sense. There's so much stuff left to read that I doubt I'll find myself re-reading any of these any time soon, but I could still be tempted to pick up any other random Borges title that comes my way. Until then I'll be heading north of the border with my reading habits, starting with another novel by king of the low lives Chuck Bukowski.

Monday 21 April 2014

Terry Pratchett's Discworld 40- Raising Steam

Raising Steam
Doubleday
 Terry Pratchett
2013



“The aristocrats, if such they could be called, generally hated the whole concept of the train on the basis that it would encourage the lower classes to move about and not always be available.”

After somehow reaching the mid-way point (well, almost) of this little blog's travels through Terry Pratchett's epic Discworld series with Feet of Clay, I now have both the pleasure and discomfort of reviewing a new (six months old, basically new by this blogs' standards) installment for the very first time. The pleasure of course comes from my familiarity with the universe and this chance to analyse the progression of Pratchett's most contemporary ideas yet. The discomfort comes from the knowing itch in the back of my brain that's preparing me to start negatively criticising it, despite the solid fact that this is bound to annoy the majority of the people reading this and put them off ever coming to this site again. Let's preface that by saying that overall I did like it, just not as much as I wanted to.

Bringing back one of his more successful later additions to the reoccurring Discworld cast, professional swindler-turned-involuntary civil servant Moist von Lipvig of Going Postal and Making Money was a safe bet, thematically fitting perfectly with the ongoing development of the city of Ankh-Morpork. Furthermore in that respect I think Raising Steam could actually be considered a landmark novel, where the fruits of Pratchett's labour over the past ten years in pushing his fictional universe forwards technologically and philosophically come to pass with the advent of the Discworld's first railway system.
 
When a young engineering genius named Dick Simnel from the backwaters of Sto Lat brings his mastery of steam to the big lights of Ankh-Morpork, it quickly catches the eye of the city Patrician who quickly reognises the potential of the invention and places Moist in charge of its development. The idea of the railway takes the city by storm, leading to an ensemble cast of previous Morporkian characters taking supporting roles (including, of course, the ubiquitous Commander Vimes) in the excitement. Pratchett makes full use of the rich history of his own writing on almost every level, taking important plot points from recent novels like Snuff and Thud! to continue the themes of repression and equality amongst the various intelligent fantasy species of the Disc, particularly the trolls, dwarves and goblins; not something that greatly appeals to me these days I'm afraid, thanks to my disappointment with the aforementioned recent novels.

In contrast, very much appealing to me were unexpected references to other, less topical Discworld characters from legends such as Rincewind, to more surprising characters like Lu-Tze (of Small Gods & Thief of Time) and Queen Keli (Mort). I loved each and every one of these mentions, particularly early on. In fact, for the first third of the book I was very optimistic that it was going somewhere interesting, but as it progressed I became less and less of a fan due to the general direction and style that Pratchett seemed to be settling into, all of which culminated in my growing disinterest.

The real problem I had with Raising Steam, the problem relegating the book in my estimation from an interesting, progressive and worthy fortieth installment in this longest of long running series to a faltering, just-another edition really became apparent later on in the book as the direction of the plot and characters became clearer. Moist remains the main character throughout, but the main supporting (and returning) characters of Vimes, the Patrician and Harry King are heavily involved as Pratchett expands his plot from just being about the invention of the steam engine to connect with the themes of recent books regarding the wars between trolls and dwarves, and of more specific social issues in their societies.

 First of all, the selection of strong, independent and incessantly wise characters surrounding Moist (who has already been well established as a rogue genius) may sound like a fun idea on paper but in practice became very annoying to me after half the book; the constant words of wit and wisdom from so many characters; seemingly ending every conversation with something uniquely smart and analytical became quite irritating and overbearing. Stylistically I found it to have a huge effect on the book, leaving it feeling unbalanced through its selection of characters with large personalities all fighting for page space while remaining as wise and sharp as possible. It's even more pronounced when it becomes clear that new character Simnel also happens to be a straight-talking sage, as opposed to the many naive and terrified eventual heroes of past coming-of-age themed Discworld stories.

It also really didn't help me that I haven't been interested in the slowly progressing development of the dwarfs thing that Pratchett's been advancing since The Fifth Elephant way back in 1999. I've just always found it mostly dull I'm afraid, not the sort of thing I want from my Pratchett books. I suppose these past twenty or so reviews I've put together show that I'm far more interested in the coming-of-age stories revolving around the fantasy aspect- kind of odd that I'm not normally a fan of traditional fantasy literature, but then the genre is so widespread in so many aspects of popular culture that I suppose I actually am- rather than this straightforward attempt by the creator to seemingly move the core of the universe forward from a sort of mishmash of medieval and renaissance aspects into a Victorian industrial revolution. I say use the word 'core' because we're just talking about Ankh-Morpork, leaving a fuller world surrounding it.

On that note, while I was ultimately disappointed with Raising Steam overall I'm still a big fan of the Discworld universe and the work of Terry Pratchett. Maybe it's unlikely these days that he's going to fulfill my personal wishes for future books exploring and expanding the ethereal, magical aspects of the world but I'll still be picking up each new book in the series for as long as he keeps doing them.

Tuesday 15 April 2014

Work is kind of killing me right now, hence the two week gap. Not long finished reading Raising Steam, so that'll be my next piece, but no day off until Sunday. Ah well, until then...

Wednesday 2 April 2014

L-Space- A Colourless Preview

Although people catagorise reading fiction in the same vain of popular culture as films, TV, video games etc., for this writer one of the key differences that makes the former uniquely stand out is that I find it to be an almost exclusively past-based past-time. What I mean by that is that there's very little market beyond absolute hardcore fans of individual authors for upcoming books in the same vein as other mediums. A great deal of this is likely down to the fact that it's quite difficult to come up with exciting advertisements for novels, compared to the glory of film trailers, game adverts (though most of those usually have a 'not game footage' disclaimer at the bottom of the screen which makes me not want to buy it out of spite) or even for albums, since the overall appeal of a good book generally just isn't something that can be described in a short blast without lacking. There are exceptions, of course, usually resulting in massive sales for something like The Da Vinci Code, but these are few and far between.

I didn't queue at midnight for this...

This isn't something that's ever bothered me, because I think that one great feature about becoming a literature fanatic is the beautifully ever-growing realisation that there are far more unread genuine classics out there just waiting to be found than you ever might have expected. For every author you already enjoy there are three others with a similar style you might enjoy just as much. For every genre you become a fan of there are at least five other sub-genres spinning out of it waiting to offer you a brilliant new perspective on the same themes. Even if changes in the English language mean you don't particularly enjoy reading older work (and to be honest I've been getting lazier and lazier in that regard the further I move away from my past academic life) there's still an uncountable amount of amazing books from the last one hundred years out there.

But in some ways it is a bit of a shame that I very rarely get excited about new books coming out, because there's a lot to be said for the sense of anticipation arising from expectation. In the past I used to get this feeling at least once a year when Terry Pratchett announced a new Discworld book, so that when I finally grew up (a bit) and got a job I made sure I bought a new hardback copy as soon as possible. For a little while I used to do the same with new novels by Michael Crichton, until my fan love for him brought on by modern science thriller classics (by the standards of the genre) like Jurassic Park and Sphere was eroded through increasingly dull new books. As regards to Pratchett, the sheer number and apparent limitlessness of his productivity meant that the allure of a new Discworld book lost its shine over the years.

Sadly boring cover.
But what was supposed to be a short intro has gotten way out of control, so time to get to the point of this post; in five months I'm finally going to be able to get my hands on a book that I've been waiting for for about two years now- or three if you count the time elapsed since the release of 1Q84 (clumsily reviewed in its two parts here and here). A new book by the best author in the world, Mr. Haruki Murakami is almost here. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage was first announced by the author in February 2013 and arrived on Japanese shelves only two months laster. Since then I've been scouring various sources for the announcement of the inevitable English translation (I would learn Japanese but I can barely speak English), and in that time it seems to have been translated into every damned language except English, which has been really annoying me.

Regular Murakami translator Phillip Gabriel is once again translating, and I know that the reason for the wait is simply the difficulty in performing the task to the quality that fans expect. In fact a gap of a year and a half is actually the shortest time yet for a Murakami translation (Norwegian Wood had a thirteen year gap), presumably thanks to the increased interest in his work shown by the midnight openings for the 1Q84 release, so I probably shouldn't complain. And anyway, at the start of this column I was somewhat bemoaning the lack of enjoyable anticipation in the book world compared to more up-to-date media, so I really definitely shouldn't complain. Thankfully the cycle should begin again after because I'm fairly sure I read recently that Murakami's next project is already in motion, a new collection of short stories that have already appeared in various places, so that shouldn't take too long to come to fruition. The anticipation cycle continues.

 
... But I did queue at midnight for this.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Jean-Dominique Bauby- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jean-Dominique Bauby
1997

“I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.”

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was a book I picked up on a whim, mostly because it looked like an interesting and very quick read with the promise of some modern day French existentialism. I've long been trying to break down serious works of philosophy, with very limited success, and adding to my frustrations in the past were books including Albert Camus' The Plague and Jean-Paul Satre's Nausea- two books and authors known as the masters of existentialism, but whose work seemed too alien for me, though perhaps I would've fared better with the help of a tutor or some basic research rather than just diving-in head first as I did.

In the past I have  enjoyed the existentialist novels of Milan Kundera, (specifically the classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being), as well as the various elements that pop up in other literature from time to time, partially because the comparatively recent releases combine with a more approachable and humane narration, but more likely because my interests in the genre are amateurish at best and I need all the help I can get. Jean-Dominique Bauby's autobiographical modern world classic seemed to fit in to the (made up by me) category of light existential philosophy with everything going for it to begin with.

I want to see more of that jacket.
At only 140 pages (with larger than usual margins in my edition), as an autobiography it's very short, but this is really the tale of the author's second life, a tragic, poignant and at some points even uplifting one. Jean-Domique Bauby was a successful journalist and editor in his native France until one fateful day in '95 where he suffered a huge stroke that left him with locked-in syndrome, trapping him as an almost completely immobile prisoner in his own body. From then on until the end of his life Bauby could only communicate through blinking his left eyelid, doing so at the right moment to select the right letter as an assistant read through the alphabet. Through this painstaking method he composed this book, itself primarily about his life inside the hospital since his stroke.

The main thing that struck me about this book was the quality of Bauby's prose, which is really, really good, maybe as a result of having so much free thinking time to arrange his thoughts as well as possible. The books short length was likely because of the difficulty of the writing process, but this adds to the quality too, since obviously Bauby isn't able to experience many new things while trapped in his state and to be honest I think I would've lost interest if this had been a longer treatise on the same subject- the fleeting nature of his thoughts and observations add to the ethereal ambiance overall.

I'm hesitant to praise this to the extent that I've read other reviewers do, since I think they're reaching for sympathy brownie points, but I do recommend it to anyone interested in the premise as an interesting curio that should lodge itself in the back of your mind alongside thoughts of mortality and imprisonment. It's very well written, not as depressingly sad as it could have been, and a genuine one of a kind situation encapsulating a life that we probably couldn't otherwise imagine.