“I shall try to fly by those nets.”
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a James Joyce work focusing on his character Stephen Dedalus. I personally enjoyed this book more than Dubliners as a whole; although, I would say some of the stories in the collection were on par. Portrait is one continuous story with no odd breaks or even flashbacks, except for maybe via a diary section that appears at the end.
The story starts with baby Stephen, and a delightful series of sentences about a moocow. I am of the mind that this makes for the best introduction to a story ever. “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo…” Is that not fantastic? Anyway, the narrative has been described as the “gestation of a soul through language.” I agree with this idea because as Stephen develops as a person, it relates directly to his concept and relationship to language. He goes from being a rebellious though somewhat timid youth, to a young man of religious upbringing, to a sinner, to a devout Catholic considering the priesthood, to a non serviat who, although he has renounced the church, wishes to be a priest of the imagination.
He has these deep emotional reactions to words, which are interesting. Especially notable is an overwhelming pang at the word faetus inscribed on a college desk. He actually physically feels words–an idea that fascinated me in the book.
The themes run rampant, from irony in the church, to ideas of power, to nationalism, and of course language…there are too many to list. Anyway, that’s my brief rant about this book. It is not an easy read, but I sincerely enjoyed it, and I would recommend it to someone who likes Joyce, is interested in English literature, and people in general. It is a very thought-provoking work.
You can snag it for $9, here.
I recommend the Viking Critical Library (Penguin) edition with the text, criticism, and notes. The editor for that edition is Chester G. Anderson. It’s a little harder to find but worth it.
This Story is Unlikely
Here it is, finally, my first book review for the Argus:
You have a death sentence. There are thirty days left to live because a disease with no name and no foreseeable cure has made you its home. This is the story of Ambrose Zephyr, told by C.S. Richardson in his novel, The End of the Alphabet, published by Doubleday. Obsessed with letters and the alphabet since he was young, Ambrose with his wife Zappora Ashkenazi set off to see the world from A to Z.
C.S. Richardson has worked in publishing for over twenty years and been recognized with the Alcuin Award (the highest ranking award for book design in Canada) on several occasions. This design talent shows in his own book, which has a pleasant look and feel that makes it easy on the eyes and comfortable to read.
The true mastery of the novel, however, is in the narrative voice. Richardson’s words weave a tapestry of life and love that spans years, while the story situates itself within a month, “give or take a day.” To simply call the work clever would be to shortchange the brilliance of the catharsis that comes from the completeness of the story. In terms of genre, I am forced to call it somewhere along the lines of a slice-of-life narrative, but it does not become trapped by the formulaic pitfalls readers are accustomed to seeing in that style. Instead, once the readers are given a typical setup that would be expected, they are told pointblank “that this is not that story.”
Besides a unique and gently guiding narrative voice, the novel brings an intriguing minimalist etiquette to the table. Dialogue is emphasized by brevity, and other conventions, such as quotation marks and most speech tags are simply dropped. Still, the book suffers from no moments where the events are fuzzy or unclear. It is an easy story to follow, painful only because of the reader’s developing relationship with Ambrose and his inevitable death.
Of course, the alphabet theme is recurrent throughout the novel as well. It provides the structure for the book with chapter title being letters. It also provides order to what the couple does, where they go, what they see. At times it fails them—they miss E is for Elba entirely. And the idea that Ambrose and Zappora’s wonderful life together cannot be contained inside so structured an environment sets in. At times the alphabet even becomes frightening as it is internalized by Zappora, nicknamed Zipper: “Z is for Zipper. T is for terrified. H is for hopeless.”
Though the couple’s travels do span the globe, I would not highly recommend this book for the reader in search of a thriller or something action-packed. The book does not focus around down to the wire, last minute breaks for the best in life. Rather, the pace changes between easy-going and hectic when it fits the circumstances, and the read-through feels comfortable. The End of the Alphabet is the sort of novel you can keep on your nightstand and take a few pages from before bed. Overall, it is a quick read but also enjoyable and emotional. At only 119 pages with generous spacing, it will not take the average reader long to finish the story. Yet because the book is brief, it allows for multiple readings without any strife. And odds are you will want to reread Richardson’s novel, from A to Z. Few books provide so much in so little time.
*all quotations are taken directly from The End of the Alphabet © 2007 by Dravot and Carnehan, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I obviously didn’t add an Amazon.com link in the original review, but click here, if you care to buy the book. It has a weird price, $11.53.
..falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling…
One of the various books I’ve knocked down in a day and consider myself to have bragging rights about having done so is James Joyce’s Dubliners. The short story collection is only 224 pages long, but the depth and density of the work is immense. The play on language about language, the manner of thinking that you develop through the stories, and how it all plays out are amazing. Now, that being said, some of the stories are entertaining, some are intellectual, and some run on the dull side. This is not a book for everyone. I’d recommend it for people who are interested in the power of language and the ways in which it can be manipulated (and don’t want to read Ulysses), which should be anyone involved in the English field. There are two things in particular I enjoyed about this book:
1) Joyce stops stories short. He leaves you hanging. The fragmentary glances of characters make them seem more real because we know these characters the way we know real people. We don’t get every little detail about their lives ever, which is how some people write stories, but while knowing so much detail might make motivation and the like more understandable, it does not make the characters feel any more alive.
2) Along those same lines, Joyce writes in and out of characters’ perspectives. While there is a distinct narrative voice it reflects the character it is regarding, so smarter characters use big words and beautiful poetic lines even when they’re absolutely wrong about what they’re talking about; whereas, a ditzier character such as Lily, the caretaker’s daughter in “The Dead,” will be described as “literally run off her feet.” It is of course impossible to be literally run off your feet, but it’s the way that she would describe herself from a third person perspective, so that is what we read.
This is a phenomenal work of literature, but it is also very literary, and some people will neither care nor enjoy the stories. Still, I recommend at least going through and trying to find one or two of the stories that you might like and reading through them because there is a good variety of tale-telling and a little bit of something for a diverse group of people. Amazon.com carries the Norton Critical edition for $11.25 here. Although, I recommend the Viking Critical edition edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz with the criticism in the back (really good articles), if you can find it.
A Conclusion
Here is the final piece of the “Ars Eschatologica” poem. I hope you enjoyed this rather lengthy trip. I’m not sure if this poem will face revision and/or possible publication in the future. I am rather fond of it; although, I do believe if this were extended into a series there would be happier parts. As it stands, you’ve reached the end.
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Coming Up to the Close
We’re getting very near the end of “Ars Eschatologica” now, and while I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, it isn’t quite over. We still have yet to dance to the sounds of the torture gin and end where we began.
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Midnight Snack
Here’s just a little bit of “Ars Eschatologica” at the end of the day (even though I’ll probably post again in an hour). Enjoy!
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On Torture
Continuing with posting the pieces of my “Ars Eschatologica” as I have time, I’m putting up another section. This is a turning point in the poem and is the only part where there is regular streaming dialogue (there are various narrator characters if you’ve noticed that show up in bold or the storyteller who tends to show up in italics; not that either of those are completely consistent or a reliable guideline for reading the poem, but just to give you something to go on if you haven’t picked up on it already). I would also like to point out that this is the first fixed version of this dialogue because there were some consistency problems in the earlier draft. This is also more stylized, and I like it that way; in the original draft, the individual lines were spaced pretty much the same way top to bottom but were just right and left aligned rather than placed individually (which I have to do anyway for the blog).
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The Pursuit
Here’s an older poem written around the time of “sitting on tatami mats”. I didn’t like it as much and never put it up, but since I plan on maybe putting up some stuff from high school just for fun, I’m not as worried about this as that.
“The Pursuit”
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Cutting Room Floor
MILK AND HONEY:
This is my confessional.
Because I haven’t asked God for forgiveness in a long time,
And I’m not sure he’s really in charge anymore.
“Sir, when Sybil said we were all spots on mother’s crystal…what did she mean? Why do you insist on not responding?
Originally this was a major part of the “Ars Eschatologica” poem. There was a character named Milk and Honey, who was basically symbolic of existence and wandered the vacant earth, observing it devoid of life. He also couldn’t die and thus got from the UK to America by walking across on the ocean floor, etcetera. There would’ve been a big part with him pulling a Groundhog’s Day and trying to commit suicide repeatedly… If I ever expand the poem into a series, this would likely be how I would pursue it, but as it stands I have no such immediate plans, and this is all that remains of that original concept that I could find. There’s probably a giant pile of prewriting somewhere and other poor, initial attempts at trying to come up with interesting situations for him to experience.
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Preface Part 1
Part 2 Part 3
Part 4 Part 5
Part 6 Part 7
Part 8 Cutting Room Floor
Early Post 1 Early Post 2
And a Little Bit Extra
This is a really short bit from “Ars Eschatologica” because it comes right before a delightful conversation/game that’ll be in the next post. The last post took me an hour to format, and it’s still different from the original; although, I do like some of the necessary changes (to make the poem fit in the blog) for aesthetic reasons that slightly differ from why I made the choices I did in the original version. Anyway, this part should only take a few minutes to format, which is kind of like me trying to reinvigorate myself to get through posting this.
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Takin’ Out Chunks
Here comes the third piece of “Ars Eschatologica,” and it’s a bit longer than the last section. It’s mostly a continuation of the last section, which transitions into and also builds some of the other parts of the next section. I’m subconsciously planting ideas in your brain!
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The Firing Squad Reloads
Part two of the über-poem:
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Snowdrifts for the win!
So, I’m posting up my giant end of the world poem, and I wanted something happy. I came across a picture taken during a big snow we had on campus last year and decided that I would write a haiku about it. Because it was awesome. A link to the picture is here. It was taken by friend of mine who has it on her deviantart site.
Haiku #Snow
The tree fell in all directions
And we scattered to avoid what would certainly mean our death
But found joy beneath the scattered branches
The First Silent Explosion
Here is the first part of the Ars Eschatologica poem after the preface:
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Ars Eschatologica
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It’sa doozy…
At the end of last semester I wrote a rather lengthy poem for a final project in my upper level poetry course. I finally decided to try and put it up. The intent is that it is read as one continuous piece, entitled Ars Eschatologica. The title means the “foundation for end of the world logic” or something along those lines (that is the translation I prefer, and use). I’ll be putting it up in pieces as the formatting is hard for me to handle in posting and will take some time, as well as the poem is just long. I will post the parts in order, so if you’re reading it, you’ll have to start with the oldest post at the bottom and work your way up. First, here is the preface, which is also considered part of the piece.
Preface:
This is it. There are no last vestiges or bastions that can weather this through until a day of rest. But what has happened is not inexplicable. In fact, it can be readily conveyed, but the implications of what it all means are what this new telling of the twilight offers up. Some things are obvious to us all, while more personal reflections may reveal truths that are buried not within just the poetry but the heart. Life is supposed to be valuable. When there are no waking minds to speak of, will life still merit this value? You don’t have to come along, but if you do, it is only fitting that you know the destination. You deserve a fair chance. But don’t be downtrodden—there are still things that shine. Existence still has a familiar aftertaste. The poetry is woeful, and so you need to know that it must dare to hope because it cannot go on the only way we might think it could. Hold out to the end before telling yourself what you want to hear. I’m hoping you won’t soon be able to forget what was once laid out before you.
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Preface Part 1
Part 2 Part 3
Part 4 Part 5
Part 6 Part 7
Part 8 Cutting Room Floor
Early Post 1 Early Post 2
