Monthly Archives: September 2009

Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk (2009)

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Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk

Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk

Pygmy: “Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight ___. Date ___. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operative Havoc.” Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughle indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees. It’s a comedy. And a romance.

Chuck Palahniuk. Always attempting to push the boundaries of what society deems acceptable, forever willing to explore and expose the dark, the macabre, the unmentionables hiding in the undergrowth of contemporary society. From masculine rage against the capitalist machine, to travelogues of the weird and wonderful in Portland, Oregon, to that horrifying moment of realization in “Guts“, he always manages to deliver an engrossing – heavy emphasis on the gross – highly enjoyable read. I wouldn’t claim him as one of my favourite authors, but I have enjoyed everything of his that I have read. I am in the middle of a Palahniuk binge, catching up on his books that I’ve missed out on over the years.

The first stop on this binge of the perverse is his most recent release, Pygmy. A thirteen year old unnamed operative agent from an unnamed totalitarian state is sent to the United States under the guise of being an exchange student. Through a series of dispatches told in unique pidgin English, he unveils his state sanctioned purpose of unleashing Operation Havoc upon America. The voice may be seen as a gimmick or distraction, but I found it rhythmic and managed to adapt to it quicker than expected. It is like reading an awkward Babelfish translation from English to another language and then spat back out in a mangled form of what only vaguely resembles English. There were some moments where I had to go back reread sentences once I had grasped what exactly Pygmy was talking about – that moment of illumination once it becomes clearer is satisfying.

“Along returning journey, encounter frequent memorial honoring American battle warrior, great officer similar Lenin. Many vast mural depicting most savvy United State war hero. Rotating statue. Looming visage noble American colonel. Courageous, renown of history, Colonel Sanders, image forever accompanied odor of sacrificial meat. Eternal flame offering wind savory perfume roasted flesh.”

Pygmy is incorporated into the decidedly American routines of the host family – those of the religious-like shopping experience, of the reproductive rituals of teen dating, of the consumption of religious values in church and school – and by showing these regular events through outsider eyes and language, Palahniuk makes them unusual, surreal occurrences that do not make much sense, highlighting just how meaning is arbitrary and culturally defined. Here, Pygmy takes part in a game of dodgeball:

“Immediate all student bidding for this agent warrior among team, beseeching accompany into battle of inflated latex bladders. Forced settle dispute using traditional ritual hurtling monetary coin at roof, allow final position of tumbling coin to decide: heads or tails. In capitalist nation, all is decided by money. Beyond this agent, each army assembled conscripting best physical specimen. Armies take position opposite walls gymnasium. Provisioned equal quantity inflated bladder.”

There is always the undercurrent of Palahniukian terror, violence and destruction but it is made comical and ridiculous by the bizarre and creative language. At the dénouement, there is a strong link to be made between Pygmy’s newfound attachment to his host family and country and the speech he delivers to Trevor, the bully who falls in love with Pygmy after he has violently attacked him. “No able accept how possessed of no power, helpless, so reaction bonded alliance with aggressor. Form identity with oppressor. Typical victim psychology mechanism. […] Cruel thrash become replace genuine gesture of familial affection. Violence synonymous love.” Politically controversial, of course, but an interesting consideration.

Throughout Pygmy, Palahniuk presents an indictment of capitalism through the eyes of those positioned outside of it, but simultaneously offers a celebration of the inherent weirdness and contradictions evident in such a society.

Saturday by Ian McEwan (2005)

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Saturday by Ian McEwan Saturday: Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man – a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind, a newspaper lawyer, and proud father of two grown-up children, one a promising poet, the other a talented musician. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. What troubles him as he looks out at the night sky is the state of the world – the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city, its openness and diversity, and his happy family life are under threat.

However irrational it may be, I cracked open this book expecting to dislike it. It could be a combination of the critical and popular acclaim awarded upon McEwan’s writing and the fact that I tend to not gravitate toward this sort of fiction. So I was somewhat surprised to find that I loved the writing style and the level of detail given to every aspect of Henry’s life. Saturday follows a day off in the life of a neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, as he navigates his way around London in the midst of a huge anti-war rally, from his traumatic experience mid-morning which colours his attitude throughout the day, his chance encounter with an afflicted hoodlum and a family dinner. In the first section, as Henry awakes early mid-morning and sees a plane on fire in the sky we are given insight into him, his thoughts, his work, his history and his family. In this section McEwan adequately captures that particular brand of post 9/11 paranoia, Perowne’s thoughts instantly turn to the worst possible scenario. He turns to that institution of instant reportage of the early morning news to discover more about what he has just witnessed, lightly distressed that it isn’t given too much importance.

Throughout, the writing maintains this high attention to detail. McEwan is able to inject Perowne’s thoughts as he goes about his daily actions and touches upon recollections of his past, insight into his profession, how he views the world and how it contrasts with those around him, and even how he thinks he came to hold such a position. There also seems to be a running hyper-awareness of the mediatization of experience:

He is cast in a role, and there’s no way out. This, as people like to say, is urban drama. A century of movies and half a century of television have rendered the matter insincere. It is pure artifice. Here are the cars, and here are the owners. Here are the guys, the strangers, whose self-respect is on the life. Someone is going to have to impose his will and win, and the other is going to give way. Popular culture has worn this matter smooth with reiteration, this ancient genetic patrimony that oils the machinations of bullfrogs and cockerels and stags. And despite the varied and casual dress code, there are rules as elaborate as the politesse of the Versailles court that no set of genes can express. For a start, it is not permitted as they stand there to acknowledge the self-consciousness of the event, or its overbearing irony: from just up the street, they can hear the tramping and tribal drums of the peace mongers. Furthermore, nothing can be predicted, but everything, as soon as it happens, will seem to fit.

However, this detail laden writing becomes something of a hindrance with the episode of violence upon the Perowne family. Rather than giving insight into what should be seen as a terribly traumatic experience, here it seems that Perowne is largely cold and detached from what is happening to him and his family. It is as though he is just recounting something from his past, something that they’ve already moved beyond. It could be that this is just his way of responding to the unknown, the frightening invasion of privacy and peace. It could also be a comment on how acts of terror are reported in the media, as something distant and unknowable, sanitized for our daily consumption. So while the style of writing may have placed me as a reader at an emotional distance from the turmoil, at the same time it triggered further ruminations upon the effects of doing so, and where else these effects are at work, and the implication of such distancing.

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Douglas Coupland on the “Cut and Paste” Generation

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Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland

Just for a bit of a change of pace, here’s a link to an interview with Douglas Coupland from The Guardian. I find it so fascinating just how ubiquitous his phrase/concept/idea of Generation X has become, how ingrained it is in our cultural understanding. Every other day in the conservative mainstream Australian media there is an article setting up the generational differences between the X & Y generations. I think the Coupland’s conception of generation X has become much larger than his entire body of work, he captured the zeitgeist I suppose, but lately it has just become more relevant – or an easy way of establishing otherwise difficult to pinpoint differences between the age groups. Anyway, Coupland definitely has a unique perspective on life, and he has some interesting views of the future. Here he touches upon an issue I feel strongly about (and yes, I can see the humour in me copying and pasting this particular snippet of his interview):

“I like it that people are smarter, that every-one can find facts quicker, and it does make people more interesting. But what happens – and this is the thing I’m not really sure about – when it comes to the point where people don’t actually do anything any more? They just cut and paste from things that happened in the past. You can’t download getting your hands dirty. Younger people don’t think that way, they wouldn’t mourn the passing of a manual universe – it’s just ridiculous to even think about for them – so they’ll miss something you and I have experienced. But they’ll have something else they’ve experienced too, so, um …” He tails away, lost in thought.

Obviously he is talking about the internet, but also how delicately subjective experience is. His new novel, Generation A, is released in September, and in October for Australian readers.

Just something for you to muse over on a Monday evening, an excerpt from Life After God:

I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments – we hear a word that sticks in our min-or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly-we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen-or we have an episode like the one I had with the M&M cars back at the Husky station.

And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection-certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether, one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real-this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

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As I Lay Dying by William FaulknerAs I Lay Dying: Successive episodes in the death and burial of Addie Bundren are recounted by various members of the family circle, principally as they are carting their mother’s coffin to Jefferson, Mississippi, in order to bury her among her people. As the desires and fears and rivalries of the family are revealed in the vernacular speech of the South, the author builds up an impression as epic as the Old Testament, as earthy and comic as Chaucer, as American as Huckleberry Finn.

I’m almost considering launching yet another tirade on how my Australian high school education and limited experience of studying Literature at a tertiary level never introduced me to Faulkner. I don’t know why I place such emphasis on discovering these authors within an educational setting, maybe because it seems like that is where most people tend to come across them? Then I think that I probably would not have understood these authors when I was younger, and that I am discovering them now because I am at a level where I can appreciate and enjoy them without it feeling like laborious study.

So, William Faulkner. I’ve spent a while researching Southern – mainly Southern Gothic – literature, and everything I’ve read of the genre has completely floored me. Faulkner was the huge looming giant of the genre, intimidating me with his stature and supposed difficulty.

I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time. (Addie)

William Faulkner

William Faulkner

The death and subsequent burial rites of Addie Bundren are told through the voices of her children and husband, and local townsfolk, in a stream of consciousness style. It is richly layered and complex, it approaches issues of death and of the fragility of human identity. While the stream of consciousness narrative, shifting between fifteen different characters does take time to adjust to, it is also liberating – so much of the story is left to the imagination, so much is left unsaid and the reader has to interpret. It is challenging but in a satisfying way. The characters, at the beginning, seem to be indistinguishable from one another but gradually, through nuances of speech and thought patterns, they become clearer. They all deal with their grief over Addie Bundren’s death in their own way, no matter how far from usual conceptions of grief they may be. Their actions speak of their character more than their thoughts or speech does – I’m thinking mainly of Jewel here, who isn’t really given much of a voice, and his actions are read through the other characters. While Darl is the most eloquent of the family, some of his internal monologues are just breathtakingly gorgeous. The division between the inner thoughts and the conversations between the family establishes up how secretive and set apart all the characters are.

My mother is a fish. (Vardaman)

Most striking, and I’ve been thinking about it for days since, is Addie’s chapter told from her point of view after her death. (I think Faulkner says a lot about her position in the family by only allowing her voice to be heard beyond the grave.) She speaks of motherhood and childrearing in a completely unexpected non-romanticized way. It’s confronting in that it still seems to be largely believed that motherhood and the desire for children is a trait inherent in women. Addie speaks of how she hates her children, how motherhood is just a word and doesn’t mean a thing to her, it is just something she does.

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that any more than for pride or fear. (Addie)

An intense novel, thematically and stylistically, but the images of these characters have stuck with me for days. Their struggles, their secrets. I’m really looking forward to reading more Faulkner.

(In tribute to the friendly young man who complimented my choice when I purchased this from his book stall, telling me it was his favourite book of all time.)

Book Loot: Week Ending 6th September 2009

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I was going so well, I didn’t buy anything at all during the week. Then I decided to visit the Federation Square Book Market on Saturday. It had always been on my radar, but for the past couple of years I’ve worked every Saturday so I’ve never been able to go. Oh, my! Cheap books. Good cheap books. Friendly stall-holders. Relaxed atmosphere. Cheap books bears repeating. I’m hooked. I won’t be able to afford to go every week, but I am definitely going to make it a somewhat regular book shopping treat.

Book Loot: Week Ending 6th September 2009

Book Loot: Week Ending 6th September 2009

The score:

Stepping Out: A Novel by Catherine Rey (2008)

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Stepping Out: A Novel by Catherine ReyStepping Out: A Novel: The new novel by French-Australian author Catherine Rey opens in provincial France in the 1970s, with the eighteen year old protagonist, dressed in borrowed platform shoes and a cape, and with her possessions in a plastic bag, abandoning her home and schooling, to move in with her lover Marco. Two passions fuel her rebellion: rage at the cruelties of family life, particularly those inflicted by and on her mother; and a deep commitment to the act of writing, despite the obstacles imposed by convention, provincial prejudice and the indifference of the literary world.

Enticed by the candy coloured striped cover on the “new books” shelf at the library, I picked this book up without knowing anything about it or the author. It is the story of a young woman who leaves her family to live with her older lover, and then of her struggle to assert her increasingly creatively stifled self in a world which dictated a woman’s place in the family home. It is told by the woman – Catherine, it seems this is a largely autobiographical piece, as many of the books the character publishes are also titles that the author has published, then why subtitle the work “a novel”? – in her fifties of her late teenage years. Most of it doesn’t seem to have any sort of retrospective insight into her actions, it is largely told with the arrogant girlish voice of adolescence. Admittedly, this self-awareness does come to light further on in the novel, but it is rather vague. When she writes about the act of writing and the freedom and deception involved in doing so it is interesting, but the rest of her writing does not live up to this supposed passion for the written word. Rey gets tangled up in concepts of feminism and authorship but her points never quite coalesce to make a coherent argument. She utilizes these heavy concepts without engaging in their true weight, almost like she is making mere mention of them for the sake of giving her work the illusion of depth.

If I look around for meaning, I can’t find it in any of the models presented to me: not in sancrosanct maternity, or social success, or family life, or even in a relationship. So just where is happiness hiding? Only writing comforts, compensates, lulls, offers protection and salvation. Happiness flares up in words.

This book is largely forgettable, no matter how many tragic turns her life takes. I can’t help but wonder if perhaps it is just an awkward translation as much of the prose is riddled with use of cliché and simple language. Memoir or novel,  perhaps it doesn’t matter: one woman’s efforts to overcome the tyranny of family and perceived gender prejudice and succeeding, despite numerous setbacks. Through it all she maintains a steadfast belief in her choices, and her absolute right to be able to make those choices.

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck (1961)

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The Winter of Our Discontent by John SteinbeckThe Winter of Our Discontent: Ethan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children troubled and hungry for the material comforts he cannot provide. Then a series of unusual events reignites Ethan’s ambition, and he is pitched on to a bold course where all scruples are put aside. … Steinbeck’s searing examination of the evil influences of money, immorality, greed and ambition on American drew acclaim from the Nobel Committee who hailed him as an “independent expounder of the truth.”

Before The Winter of Our Discontent, the only John Steinbeck book I have read is Of Mice and Men – which I enjoyed. Steinbeck seems to be one of those quintessentially American authors, it seems he is frequently used as a high school text. When I was in high school – a moderately sized suburban school in a lower middle-class area, not prestigious in any way – we studied mainly contemporary Australian literature, or young adult fiction that was smack-you-over-the-head heavy on themes. The only opportunity to study anything that was considered a “classic” was in Literature, I studied Sylvia Plath and Tennessee Williams, but this was stuff I was reading in my own time anyway. I wish that my school curriculum had been more diverse, more challenging. Maybe then I would have read more Steinbeck by now. (Coincidentally enough, after I’d been thinking about this for a while, Abebooks posted this article about required reading worldwide. Australia isn’t on their lists, but I’d be curious to know the differences.)

The Winter of Our Discontent follows a few short months in the life of grocery clerk Ethan Allen Hawley. His family was once wealthy and respected, but managed to lose much of their fortune. Though Hawley has little ambition or greed, the needs and desires of his family drive him to change his perspective. One thing that I loved about Of Mice and Men was Steinbeck’s use of dialogue. It flowed, he wrote as people spoke. His dialogue in The Winter of Our Discontent is supreme, whole chapters mostly of dialogue that manages to drive the narrative forward. Characters are introduced and established mainly through their conversation with Ethan.

Steinbeck paints a vivid portrait of small town America, and has a keen eye for the details of routine. The time that Ethan spends manning the grocery is filled with accurate insight into the dredge of retail work. The intimate knowledge of customers, the ability to predict the ebb and flow of business, the rapport that grows between seller and customer slowly over time.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Ethan Allen Hawley is a curious character. He is clearly educated – he mentions having spent a lot of time at college but none of that knowledge is useful to him in his work – and in the beginning he is level-headed, charming (some of the dialogue and scenes between Ethan and his wife Mary are just adorable), somewhat stoic and not at all concerned with possessions or social positions or any of the things which seem to bother his fellow townspeople. The story traces his transformation into a creature that is swayed by greed and ambition – however small and seemingly simple the greed and ambition is. I’m just not sure where this lust for money and social wealth comes from? Is it purely out of necessity for the growing needs of his wife and two teenage children? Is he trying to return to the respect that his forefathers inspired? Is it a subtle revolt against the system which has kept him working as a lowly grocery clerk? This corruption takes place in most of the characters, but we see it through Ethan’s eyes, and it his desperation that has the most effect.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.

The Winter of Our Discontent is a morality tale that forces us to ask ourselves: is the corruption of ambition worth whatever rewards it may reap?

I’m definitely going to read more Steinbeck, I’ve put East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath on hold at the library.