State of Affairs

I need to write a review for Phillip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. I also need to write about fifteen billion Discworld book reviews. At some point I'd like to write an L-Space update about all the comic book series I'm collecting in trade paperback format.

Now I've written this I'll have to do it, obviously. Self-motivation!

Charles Bukowski- Tales of Ordinary Madness

Tales of Ordinary Madness

Virgin Press

Charles Bukowski

1983

Other Bukowski Reviews; Post Office - Factotum - Women - Ham on Rye - Tales of Ordinary Madness - Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“to ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you, something else is hurting you - that's why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can't think, or madhouses or mechanical cunts or 162 baseball games in a season. or vietnam or israel or the fear of spiders. your love washing her yellow false teeth in the sink before you screw.” 

After the disappointment of The Face of Another, my next choice of reading material was an intentionally safe one; picking from three Charles Bukowski options and coming out with another collection of out-there articles, in a similar vain to Notes of a Dirty Old Man. Like Notes..., Tales of Ordinary Madness collects a range of short pieces originally published in magazines and underground newspapers, from 1967-1975, with no stated theme or narrative in common than Bukowski's individually brilliant explosive style.

Though Bukowksi is probably more well-known in the twenty-first century for his poetry and novels like Post Office, his bibliography of miscellanea is extensive; as someone who struggles to hold his brain together long enough to compose a four paragraph review of somebody else's work Bukowski is both my hero and antithesis. As such each of his many collected volumes have a parade of timeless essays and short fictions to present, and Tales of Ordinary Madness is probably my favourite of those I've yet read. Bukowski deviates from short stories to essays to self-portraying thinly veiled memoirs with equal ease, and this collection offers a good variety in style, thankfully preventing the intensity of thought Bukowksi presents from becoming overwhelming.

If you've experienced Bukowski before then you should know what to expect from his style and subjects, and if you haven't then this book would surely be a great introduction. The blurb on the book cover describes him as 'the godfather of lowlife literature', which is absolutely accurate. Each of his main characters (all of whom are essentially just variations upon the author himself) deal in the most disgusting, debased, drug-infested and morally-corrupt circumstances, as he presents an America drowning in its own debauchery. There is no happy ending, sometimes not even a plot, but Bukowski's narration bounces electrically from point to point, his vitriol unstoppable as he observes the decaying wreck of a once great empire. His humour is so black that it's impossibly to accurately determine what is and isn't a joke; my favourite story Rape! Rape! demonstrating that in the most offensive way possible.

In conclusion, obviously Charles Bukowski isn't for everyone, and if you're the type easily offended through text then he's clearly not for you. For anybody else looking for an uncensored artistic rant at the world through the medium of uncompromisingly vile short segments, if Hunter S. Thompson's not hardcore enough for you, then Chuck Bukowki's the man you need. He'll shake your brain up and make you enjoy it.

Kobo Abe- The Face of Another

The Face of Another

Penguin Modern Classics

Kobo Abe
1964 (Japanese)/1966 (English)

“Of course, according to one theory a mask is apparently the expression of an extremely metaphysical aspiration to give oneself a kind of transcendental disguise, for the mask is not simply something compensatory.”

Apologies, these reviews recently all seem to start in the same way; I first read a book by insert-name-here a long time ago, and because I'm very haphazard it took me five years to read another one. This one isn't going to be any different, I'm afraid, though it should be a lot shorter than recent efforts because I just didn't care enough about this book to put in any more effort than that. On to the next paragraph;

Anyway, I first came in contact with Kobo Abe about six years ago, in the legendary Aberystwyth Town Library, not long after I'd read my first taste of Haruki Murakami and was enthused enough to pick up anything remotely Japanese-looking (which, thanks to the unfortunately limited range, led to just Ryu Murakami and Kazuo Ishiguru). That first Abe book was the memorable The Woman in the Dunes, a short novel of a man trapped against his will in a strange desert town. I liked it so much I made a mental note to read more from the author. About five years later, I ordered The Face of Another from our overlord the great Amazon, and about six months after that I started reading it.

Part of the delay included confidence that I was going to really enjoy it. It comfortably hit all of the hipster bookmarks I needed, and promised to further entice me into the lengthy bibliography of a well-regarded twentieth-century author. The novel's plot ticks all of the boxes too, with a potentially chilling and intricate plot; a distinguished scientist suffers extensive, horrific facial burns in a laboratory accident that makes normal every day life impossible. After contemplating his fate, he endeavors to create a detachable, indistinguishably perfect mask to allow him to live a normal life. Though successful, suddenly he begins to learn of the real-world possibilities that come with the mask, and of the imminent identity crises that inevitably comes with his new face.

 While this idea intrigued me in concept, in practice I found The Face of Another to be unfortunately dull and meandering. Though there's nothing wrong with self-analytical, perhaps existential and deconstructive character analysis in the face of an incredibly unlikely possibility, in the world of the unnamed scientist it far too quickly becomes laboured and self-indulgent. I enjoyed the early parts of the book, before the character has his mask, especially as he discussed aspects of his plan with disbelieving doctors, once he begins to experience his identity shift it became very boring. It's possible to compare the concept to Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but it's a world away from the drive and dynamism of that. A more modern comparison could be to Paul Auster's City of Glass (from The New York Trilogy), but where Auster's incredible tale of confused identities felt vivid and alive against the backdrop of a shifting parallel New York, The Face of Another feels stagnant and dull.

So, no recommendation for this book from me. Though published as a Penguin Modern Classic, the novel flatters to deceive, not taking full advantage of the premise and mistaking self-indulgent self-analysis for interesting philosophical musings. I would like to re-read The Woman in the Dunes at some point and hopefully it's as good as my simple memory recalls, but until then I'm in no rush to jump into Kobo Abe's bibliography.