Cloud Atlas book review ?? Well not really ...

So my first review. First of all, I will not give star ratings, but I find it just too hokey to impose such a simplistic system on something as complicated as a novel. Also, I'm not so interested in writing a review as opening a discussion with some of my FB friends. This has turned out a bit longer than expected so I am putting up on my blog instead.
Let's start with this: for the last six months I have had reader's block. Besides reading the news, I have been unable/unwilling to sink my mind into a good novel. This is something which normally comes quite naturally to me. I began quite late. I didn't much like reading until I was about 11. But since I discovered the Chronicles of Narnia (which I recently reread and found rather awful) in 6th grade I have become a voracious reader.
My main source of pulp as an adolescent was SciFi and Fantasy. So I have at the same time a weakness and a highly critical eye of Literature parading as either. Dorris Lessing and Margaret Atwood have been doing this for years and they do it oh so well. One could argue that Pynchon's novels are a form of fantasy. But there are others who seem to have no grasp of the idea of creating a world apart. Philip K Dick once defined Science Fiction as any story based on some precept which is not true in our world. I like that definition. It gives a great amount of leeway, but I would add that writing good SF&F requires being consistent with those precepts which you have changed. If you are talking about some post-apocalyptic world two thousands years in the future, there should not be any working guns and cans of food just lying around (I'm thinking of Houellebecq). Or if there are, there had better damn well be a reason for it. Of course this is not just true of SF&F, it is true of any story. But for me, these inconsistencies become even more jarring in the context of SF&F. When you are writing about so called reality, there is already a certain cadre which you are constrained to write within. Outside that cadre where anything is possible, those aspects different from reality will stick out. If one then contradicts that change on the next page or chapter, the reader will be more conscious of that change. That makes for unpleasant reading. Also, it doesn't take much craft to change the rules whenever it pleases the author, s/he might as well be one of Borges' monkeys whacking randomly at a typewriter.
A good SFF author has craft. S/he creates a world where there are rules which define how things happen. The rules do not have to be stated obviously (often the case in mediocre SFF); they simply become apparent as the story unfolds. I think that craft is the right word, because on top of any beautiful language (which we can argue is another kind of craft) or great ideas, the craft of story telling is what get to us. The story may be long or short, fragmented or convoluted, new or riffed; but without the story there is no story. That's just my opinion. I love everything post-modern, contemporary, or just plain whacked. But when I put a book down without finishing it, which does not happen often, its usually because I can't find any story worth following.
Many SciFi/Fantasy writers have taken the opposite path going from Pulp to Lit. This is what took me in that direction. There is no artificial line and it's exact location can be difficult to define but the passage does exist. If you look at Moorcock's early books, some them really are crap. I mean crap in terms of writing style. They are Heroic Fantasy novels, and as Heroic Fantasy they are excellent if you're an adolescent who wants to escape from the world of concrete and shopping malls. They are not badly written (like the ultra lame Da Vinci Code which continuously made me want to vomit all over it), but there is nothing in the writing which makes you sit back and take a deep breath and say oh wow to yourself. But as his career continued, there is more and more construction in his writing, until you get to something like Byzantium Endures which just blew me away.
Ok so, enough of all of that. What about The Cloud Atlas? Well I think I'll have to get to that in the next installment. If anyone has any comments about what I said as related to Cloud Atlas or as related to anything else, please feel free ...

And we begin again ...

Been a while, but little by little the fever is growing again. The sound of my fingers on the keyboard. I can hear the clicking and it is sweet to my ears. The honey on my morning toast and the bandstand buskers in my ears. With all the imperfections for all of us to see and hear. The notes are not distorted by the sound of the wind and the seagulls nor the overhead airplanes. Each sound has a part.
What perfect performance? Anyone can play the right notes, strike the right cord. I take a thousand photos with my digital camera and one will be the perfect picture. Who cares !! Are we to become no more than monkeys striking on the keys. Where is the texture? Where is the depth ? Where can we feel the grit of the art we are living? Where is the soul behind that picture?
Where does the meaning come from?
I am thinking of Heidegger and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I think we are in age where Quality is tending to disappear. Where is the Craft and Intent? There is nothing wrong with the technology itself (thanks Mr Pirsig). I am not a Luddite. But Pirsig spoke of accepting technology at a time when it had not yet completely surrounded so much of our daily lives. I can accept that as well, but it is not because I am writing on this Blog and making my thought available to all and sundry across the world, that the quality of what I am writing is any better. The quality of my work can only be brought on through the quality of my spirit which is engendering this work.
Plastic surgery and body improvements. The perfectly sculpted master-piece that some surgeon has created kept in shape by personal trainers, high energy proteins, weeks at the spa ...

A little bit ragged

Too tired to practice singing
Too manic to cook, or more exactly so manic that I cooked two things wrong instead of cooking one thing wrong
Then tried to calm down, then ate two much of one the things I cooked wrong
Then cleaned
Then thought about drinking whiskey
Then sang Pete Seger
Then cried

The throat vibrates with melody
moving from Pete to Bono and back
my stomach feels too full
i am getting a little obsessive about what I eat
keep thinking I should be losing weight
keep seeing my stomach as huge and unsightly
but the vibrating make it better
rock myself a lullaby while I wake
hush little crazy don't you cry
someone's gonna save you from the falling sky

disconnected ... my small nest with the big TV
haven't read anything substantial for a few months
scraps of news ...
two minutes of television ...
a page of 30 year old humor is enough

constant adolescent daydreaming
everything is always a few months from now
what motivation can be found
even cooking has become a chore
use the food before it goes bad
try to make something that makes me feel good about myself
don't waste
but that locks me into the two rooms
maybe it is time to go more again
worried about bread
do I have enough for breakfast, will it still be fresh
what bullshit
the winter night coming on
the depressing short days bitter wet chill

Into the Wild ...

Just finished watching Into the Wild by Sean Pean.
My age ... my generation. The guy was 5 months older than me. Clearly disturbed, clearly brilliant ... like so many people I know/knew. I was down in Bogotà when he was on his way out west. I got back to states to finish school, and he was already heading north. I was walking the streets of Paris as he was starving in his Magic Bus. Somewhere in between, we both saw the first Gulf War announced on live television. Both of us disconnected already from that country. Both of us on our journey otherwhere. He in his way and I in mine. Both of us fleeing our parents and the culture of hypocrisy that we grew up in. The parents change, mine did at least. It seems that his did as well, though he did not live to see. The culture remains the same.
The enemies change now, shifting ever more quickly just like computer chips. Ahhh when I was a young man we knew who the enemy was: those god damn pinko facist commies. Whatever the hell that means. But that's what I was. Think different: you're a commie. Sounds like a joke doesn't it, and it half was. And it half was not. Any idea which did not fit, put you into the category of those who were unamerican. Was it worse in the fifties? Perhaps legally. As a teenager, with the added weight of adolescent conformism, it all remained about the same.
I came out of high school ... feeling superior? But nowhere to go with it? I don't know. It was only when I left the country that my possibilities seemed to open. When I came back after a year in Colombia, I was already gone. I was already a stranger in my country. Un etranger. The colony had been implanted in out minds. Even if I hadn't been with N, I would have blown off somewhere. Maybe just like supertramp. Maybe going to France saved me from a similar doom. I was weaker of course, I never would have given the money to charity, but that would not have stopped me from following a similar spiral.
In any case, the film is beautifull, there are scenes that made me cry simply from the beauty of the image. Like when he is shaking his head as he bathes, the beaded water spinning out under the sun. Breathtaking.

Wine Tasting - Ma Terre - Blanc

Ma Terre by Henri Milan. Vin de Table, because he does what he wants. 13210 St Rémy de Provence. White wine, though I have the red as well. I'm starving, so this is not the best time to be doing a tasting, but I'm trying to stay in the habit.
A quick swig of water to rinse the mouth.
A very orangey yellow. Very deep. A slight smell of calvados or apple tart. Maybe some anise seed behind that. It's making me think that it's going to be sweet, but I don't think that it will be in fact.
Yeah it's the anise seed and apple tart smell that makes me think of powdered sugar. Will it be spicy? No but it almost tastes like apples. Not sweet, but you couldn't say lemon, it's definitely apple.
Only had a chance to have a sip, cause then I went out. Corked up right. I'll try it again tomorrow.

There I am staring over my glasses. One eye always closed to the sun. I don't know why. One of my eyes always closes in the sun and the other closes in the water. Never understood ... sometime people ask me ... as if it were something strange. Well I guess it is a bit strange. Like windshield wipers? No that's a a Kenneth Koch metaphor. Was that his name. Talking about frozen peas in the supermarket, when what he wanted were canned peas. Those were the days when it came ripping out of my fingers. Have I let it all go to waste? Nevermind, go on, go on.
So one eye is open. Looking over my glasses. The day after a party. Out in the suburbs of Paris. We had already moved up to Brussels. This the first year. So it must be the summer of 2005. That first year was lonely. We just did it. We picked up our shit and went to Brussels. We didn't know anyone. We barely knew anything about Belgium. We had each been there for a weekend or two and that was all. But I knew I wanted to get out of Paris. I had been waiting to move for so long. I loved Paris, but I wanted it to stay that way. We just weren't that organized. Somehow other people managed to do all sorts of things and we did not. We got ourselves in debt. We changed jobs and had dinner parties. We were attacked by crazy neighbors and their dogs. People threw bleach at us.
We spent hours walking through Paris. Doing nothing ... just walking. Sometimes the same places. Sometimes halfway across the city.
But it was time to go. I wanted to go. I wanted to see someplace else. Live a different life. I wasn't looking for better, just different, just new. The ultimate new fangled gadget. A new life in a new city.
I got fired and Prague was too far. So Brussels. We decided one day. A week later I was in a hotel already working. A month later we had an apartment like we'd never had in our life. The next summer we were on our way. We both had jobs, we were making lot's of money. We had sold my apartment in Paris for twice what I had paid for it. We had cleaned up all of our debts and still had money in the bank. We had beautiful things and we were buying more. I hadn't realized it yet, but I was going past where my parents had gone. For O it was different, she had already done that. We were not rich, but there were no more worries. We bought what we wanted.
There is a memory of the first New Year's Eve. It was awful. It had begun so well. An absurd taxi ride to IKEA to buy furniture for the apartment. We were laughing. We were doing things right. We were in and out of IKEA in 45 minutes. It was a world record. The taxi driver was laughing with us. We would finally have bookshelves and a desk. We were making our home. And then we went to dinner and were nasty to each other the entire night. She called me a cheapskate. I did everything not to raise my voice, but I spoke to her viciously. We were still so alone. A friend here or there, but mostly just the two of us. Constantly together.
As the summer came, it changed. We began to meet more people. We began to explore the city. We became experts. Our friends came to see us from Paris. We walked for hours on end across Brussels. Eating samosas and oysters and drinking beer at every corner. And the big art deco buildings in the city center became familiar ... easy on the eyes. When you go past that one, you're just about at the café you want to go to next.
And so when we went back down to Paris it was triumph. We were happy and sucessfull. Paris was just to see friends and faire la fête. Life was so much better back in Brussels. I must have been a total bore, expounding on the wonders of the simple life of Brussels. I surely still am at times. And I miss it. Going down to get fries on a Sunday evening down at Flagey. The smell would reach me all the way across the square. Waiting in line, the rich odor ... I would be drunk on fries and samurai sauce. A bottle of Duvel on the way back. The greasy paper spread on the table, the spicy mayonnaise dotted across the fries ... orange and beastly but so delicious.

Just another night (revised by my future self)

coming home to a clean tidy apartment
doing what needs to be done
check my mail
stand on that machine
pump my legs
stare at the TV

work, work, sweat
as the sun goes down
this is the right thing to do

take a shower
let the water fall and fall
listen to the music

my body is taut
my mind is clear
this is good

now I will drink some wine
i will eat the food which I prepared last night
i am clean
i am born again
the food is the right food
the wine is the right wine
the music is the right music

then why do I shake
then why do I cry
why do I lean against the wall searching for the arms which are not there to embrace me

i am strong
i am setting up my life again
i am putting things in their place
i am moving step by step
i am following the instructions
i am dotting the lines
everything will all fall into place

but when?
and what if I fall ...