The Faded Sun Trilogy (Kesrith, Shon'jir, Kutath) by C.J. Cherryh: 4-1/2 stars

The Faded Sun Trilogy by C.J. Cherryh

The reading of this book (these books) was well-timed for me. It was so apt and I was so engrossed that the household grew jealous of the book: my youngest tried to take it apart, and, when that failed, the cats tried to eat it on two separate occasions. But I would not be turned away, and I was well-rewarded.

Pertinent quotes for me:

"We do not despise your knowledge," said the she'pan. "We simply do not desire it." (p. 125)

He found no limit to what senses could absorb. He felt. He was not numb. He only wished to be... (p. 185)

And from the war there were also men like himself, thousands like himself, who did not know what they were, or from what world; war-born, war-oriented. War was all his life; it had made him move again and again in retreating from it, a succession of refuge creches, of tired overworked women; and then toward it, in schools that prepared him not for trade and commerce but for the front lines. His own accent was unidentifiable, a mingling of all the places he had lived. He had no place. He had for allegiance now nothing but his humanity.

And himself. (p. 322)

All, all those little lights which were suns, and some cloudy aggregates of suns, themselves reduced to dust motes by distance which reached out from himself, who was the center of the universe, and then not- an insignificance, less than the mote of a world, far less than a sun, infinitely less than the vast galaxies, and the distance, the cold, deep distance that never stopped, forever. (p. 513)

He understood one rule, that waste was death; that what one gave the desert it never gave back, to world's end.

He did what he knew to do, which was yield nothing. (p. 571)

Of course, the meaning is to yield nothing that you need, which is implied since the he is of a kind that do not encumber themselves with anything but what is needed- the absolute bare minimum. Determine what that is, hold it to you, and never, no matter what, let it go. Let everything else in the world go, freely and without grief, but never what you need.

Time was not... like beads on a string, event and event and event, from which Darks could sever them, breaking the string. There was only the Now, which extended and embraced all the Past which she contained and the pan'en contained, and all the past which had brought Kutath to this moment; and all the future toward which she led.

She was not single, but universal; she inhaled the all and breathed it through her pores. She Saw, and directed, and it was therefore necessary to do very little, for from the Center, threads ran far. It was that, to believe in one's own Sight. There was no anger, for nothing could cross her. There was no true pride, for she was all-containing. (p. 594)

Humans[,] accustomed to the factual instabilities of their perceptions, even lied, which was to give deliberate inaccuracy to memory, past or future. They existed in complete flux; their memories periodically purged themselves of facts: this was perhaps a necessary reflex in a species which remembered things that had not yet happened and which falsified what had occurred or might occur. (p. 603)

Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov, 5 stars

I know there is a lot of controversy about this book. Whether or not you are inclined to believe it, the work is marvelous nonetheless. And there is truth in it, profound truth, lasting truth- even if you consider the book to be a work of fiction.

This is definitely going in my permanent library.

How can you complain that it's hard to find a "fresh approach"? What is it, a wallet full of money? Can you find a "fresh approach" walking down the street- someone drops it and you pick it up? .... [Y]ou can't find a fresh approach; it has to find you. A fresh approach to music, as I have seen time and time again, usually come to those who have a fresh approach to other aspects of life, to life in general. (p. 72)

At least, it always seems that everything is different today from what it was yesterday. And it will all be different tomorrow. No one knows how, but it will be different. (p. 108)

When he was talking about torture, including the torture of animals, this phrasing caught my attention:

I see a desire to drag animals down to the level of man, so that they can be dealt with like men. (p. 124)

He deals quite a bit with the treatment of the Jews. There is little humor in it, except in this passage, which is simply so absurd:

Recently I went to the Repino station to buy a lemonade. There's a little store, a stall really, that sells everything. There was a line, and a woman in the line, who looked very Jewish and had an accent, began to complain out loud. Why is there such a line, and why are canned peas only sold with something else, and so on.

And the young salesman answered along these lines: "If you're unhappy here, citizeness, why don't you go to Israel? There are no lines there and you can probably buy peas just like that."

So Israel was pictured in a positive way, as a country without lines and with canned peas. And that's a dream for the Soviet consumer, and the line looked with interest at the citizeness who could go to a country where there are no lines and more peas than you could want. (p. 158)

Ah, and it was mentioned that in a backlash against the West, French bread was renamed "city" bread. Everyone is always renaming food to show their disdain for those poor French. (p. 173)

Advice with sardonic insight:

Don't try to save humanity all at once, try saving one person first. It's a lot harder. To help one person without harming another is very difficult. It's unbelievably difficult. That's where the temptation to save all of humanity comes from. And then, invariably, along the way you discover that all humanity's happiness hinges on the destruction of a few hundred million people, that's all. A trifle. (p. 205)

The event described on pages 214-215 is quite horrible, beyond words. And yet it happened.

On censorship:

Soviet man has withstood everything: hunger, and destruction, and wars - one worse than the other- and Stalin's camps. But he won't be able to take that chapter from The Possessed, he'll crack. (p. 269)

Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, by Fritz Haeg , Diana Balmori, Rosalind Creasy

Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, by Fritz Haeg , Diana Balmori, Rosalind Creasy

For if lawn mowing feels like copying the same sentence over and over, gardening is like writing out new ones, an infinitely variable process of invention and discovery.

/Michael Pollan, Why Mow? (p. 35)

Wonderful book. Especially if you are American.

Innerfar by Gerhard Kopf

Innerfar by Gerhard Kopf

Actually the book I have contains both Innerfar and Bluff, or Southern Cross, by Gerhard Kopf. But I’m going to read a library book before I get back to Bluff.

To oversimplify, greatly, and to leave out the cultural significance which is everything but which I am not yet able to describe sufficiently: a once-famous poet turns up in a psychiatric hospital for dementia and schizophrenia, nobody quite realizing who she is, and nobody being able to tell when she is completely disoriented or when she has her moments of absolute clarity and insight which she often expresses in allegory, quotations, or poetic storytelling. This is juxtaposed with the narrator’s remembrances of earlier times with the poet.

The editing in this book is a bit off- sometimes they forgot periods and such, and this was in the afterword by the translator so I know it wasn’t part and parcel of the novel experience. It didn’t make too much difference, the story being so liminal; it just added to the disorientation. Still, one would think they could have attended better.

From reviews (on the linked Amazon page):

Loss and fulfillment cohabit uneasily in the novel as Kopf purposefully blurs the distinction between reality and fantasy, truth and illusion, in order to make a rather Romantic point about the redemptive powers of the imagination.

[T]he book is a search for identity through memory and storytelling.

Here are two quotes from the book that both vie to be my favorite:

Every breath taken is an omission (p. 79)

&

“Praised be the subjunctive and its knight Talander.” (p.102)

(Now I must read August Bohse, who wrote under the pen name Talander.)
and my favorite passage:

Even at the table the doctor has her notebook ready. The murmuring is mentioned as well as several times the expression: “Sausage in your eye.” Also that the patient then points in turn at the sausage slices on the plate and at her left eye, which she has closed.

She kneads false teeth out of the bread.

Carefully she makes the incisors and the jaw teeth, molds a lower jaw- the likeness is astonishing.

Suddenly and unexpectedly she shoves the creation in her mouth.

The doctor asks, writing down at the same time:
“What are you doing, Mrs. Piloti?”

“You don’t play with your food.” Nurse Angela has a serious expression on her face.

“My father always used to say that before he went to Billi. Billi, my teddy bear. But you can see what I’m doing.

I’m making a mouth shoe.”

(p. 55)

It’s a trip. At one point, I was reading such as the above (basically the whole novel is like this), and thinking how familiar it seemed somehow, when son interrupted to tell me, apropos of nothing, that a bank is a wolf house that sells money. And then I looked around at my life with a different perspective and realized why the story was so familiar after all.

But I am not disconsolate at all. That would be out of place.

Finally experience has overtaken longing. Out of the reconciliation of reality and dream she draws unending strength. (p.110)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: 4.5

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This is, indeed, a pretty amazing book.

I was young when it came out, too young to be reading novels like this, so I missed it then. I’ve heard about it, though; in fact, I can’t remember a time before I heard about it- it was always ubiquitous, in the background, taken for granted. It never therefore occurred to me to read it, because I never paid attention to it, never consciously realized it as an option.

Rather ironic, given the nature of the main character, the narrator, one who has been stripped of identity and human existence.

And given the nature of the story itself, bringing to light the cultural assumptions we don’t even realize we have- like the light bulb we never think about until it goes out, or starts flickering. It’s not as if we don’t know there is a light bulb; we just have never thought about it before, because it was always there.

“Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, ‘How can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?’”

Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

The Handmaid’s Tale is powerful and probing and well-done. I won’t say it’s profound- it isn’t, although the questions it raises are- but it’s very good at revealing human-ness and underlying issues. It makes you think, and pay attention.

It reminds me of Orwell’s 1984:

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

but also V for Vendetta:

“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.”

It also brings to mind the very real stories of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, South Africa under Apartheid, and many others, some of which are still unfolding around us- including our own.

Our own story, the one we write, is the one we have the most say over. We should be paying more attention. Works of art like this bring culture to our attention, into a place where we can think and talk about it.

Art destroys silence. /Dmitri Shostakovich

From The Handmaid's Tale:

Not a dandelion in sight here, the lawns are picked clean. I long for one, just one, rubbishy and insolently random and hard to get rid of and perennially yellow as the sun. Cheerful and plebeian, shining for all alike. Rings, we would make from them, and crowns and necklaces, stains from the bitter milk on our fingers. (p. 275-6)

I feel this way. I don’t have the particular problem of being denied access to dandelions, as I let them grow and they will always grow if you let them. But this description, this is why I love dandelions, too. They are my favorite flower. They are free and glorious and come complete with crowns and wishes, salad and tea.

Sometimes I look around the city and am overwhelmed with the wish for dandelions everywhere- bursting forth from cracks in the sidewalks, between concrete steps, along the sides of the roads where asphalt meets the curb. Forests of dandelions, knee-high, shoulder-high, rising up, sundering all.

Sandburg wrote, “I am the grass, let me work.” The grass will bury the dead, subsume the ghosts, restore innocence to the world.

I respect the grass. (I grok grass.) But I think something wilder is needed this time around. Something that we won’t simply tame and use to our advantage, so as to feel even more like gods- something that, instead, will untame us. Slip us out of culture and dogma and back into childhood and possibility and the joy of just being human. I think we need dandelions.

A poem

They borrow books they will not buy.
They have no ethics or religions.
I wish that some kind Burbankian guy
Would cross my books with homing pigeons.

---Carolyn Wells

The Invention of Everything Else, by Samantha Hunt: 4.5 stars

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

Wow.

When I first heard about this book, I knew I had to get it. I mean, it’s Tesla, okay? That meets my requirements right there. But the reviews were so promising, and indeed I was so excited about it, that when it arrived in the mail, I daren’t read it, because my expectations were so high.

So it sat on my bookshelf from April 2009 until now. And yet I think that I could have opened it immediately and it would have fulfilled even the ridiculous obligations I had laid out for it then.

Nikola Tesla, Samuel Clemens, John Muir- together at a dinner party? Need there be more to keep my interest? How about a realistic sense of history, even in a fictionalized account? How about a style of writing that is at once straightforward, simple, elegant, and lyrical? Characters (besides the famous ones) that are well-developed and enchanting. A plot that continues to unfold, inevitably, even as you wish it stopped or transformed. Imaginative explorations that gave me chills.

And then THIS gem on page 240:

I didn’t care what they had said. I didn’t believe them. Who are government men to tell the truth? I held on to the file. I had sat very straight during the interview as though I was Bess the landlord’s daughter, the landlord’s black-eyed daughter with a shotgun tucked just below my rib cage, primed to go off if I exhaled too vigorously. I answered their questions, but there was very little to tell.

It made me think that, yes, this book reminded me of that poem (Alfred Noyes's The Highwayman), and that song (sung by Loreena McKennitt)- indeed, the feeling one gets from reading this book is not unlike that of listening to a ghost story.

And yet, as magical and otherworldly as it might seem at times, it is still grounded- any good story about Tesla would have to be both. He may be a ghost, but he’s just as real in death as he was fantastical in life.

“[T]here is only one world. This one. The dream is real. The ordinary is the wonderful. The wonderful is the ordinary.” (p. 84)

And, indeed, if you don't understand this, you will not understand the book. It will go right over your head.

I've found the right word, and the reason why I kept thinking about Marilynne Robinson's work in comparison (in addition to Kafka's [Amerika], which could almost *be* the story of Tesla, poor soul):

Ethereal

What was it to suddenly come awake? To suddenly fall asleep? Particularly while Freddie was standing there just beside him? What would she think of him if he were to stretch out underneath one of the pine massifs that are not really pine massifs but street lamps? To take off his shoes and dip his feet into a brook that might have trickled across the island of Manhattan two hundred years before but had since been staunched and subverted by culverts, bubbling up as a filthy puddle, a sparrow's oily bathtub? What was it to suddenly come awake? It was terrifying. Yes, he thought. I am terrified, but I don't want it to end. If time is so porous that a full-grown man can slip inside it while holding fast to the hand of his wife, what then can he rely on at all? The solidity of a hand? He doubted it. (pp. 102-3)

Oh, yes. Ethereal is the perfect word for this book.

The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words, by Deborah Tannen: 2-1/2 stars

The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words by Deborah Tannen

Preaching to the choir. Only she’s much less skeptical about the intentionality of it all, at least on certain levels, than I am.

And goodness, but so many words to say this. Repetitive and not really all that illuminating.

I know; I sound very critical, and after reading this book I should be more collaborative or supportive or what have you. I actually agree with much of what she says, which is why I shouldn't feel like I had to wade through all of that, like it was more of an obligation than a free pursuit.

I guess if you have no idea what she is talking about, or if your first response to the idea of America as being rife with antagonism is a reflexive denial or dismissal, then this is the book for you.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

This was perfect to go along with The History of the English Language which I am following right now.

You'd think these subjects would be mundane (the making of dictionaries, the history of English), but they involve humans, and humans are all batty as hell.