Summer running

With June ending, it's the perfect time for one of my favorite passages from Ray Bradbury:

It was June and long past time for buying the special shoes that were quiet as a summer rain falling on the walks. June and the earth full of raw power and everything everywhere in motion. The grass was still pouring in from the country, surrounding the sidewalks, stranding the houses. Any moment the town would capsize, go down and leave not a stir in the clover and weeds. And here Douglas stood, trapped on the dead cement and the red-brick streets, hardly able to move.

From Dandelion Wine, the re-reading of which should be a summer ritual.

Lord of Light

Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light is a triumph, and proof that science fiction can be much more than just description of gadgetry. It features cynical interplay of terrestrial religions on an alien planet after colonization by a space ark. The first colonists to awaken subdue the world, and after a period of time, set themselves up as members of the Hindu Pantheon, through both technological and supernatural means. The other passengers on the ark are awakened more gradually, and are placed in a rigid caste system (are there any flexible caste systems?). With reincarnation (through technology) a reality, the populace is held in check with a form of Hinduism that is literally true -- their station upon rebirth is determined by the deeds and thoughts of their past life, and the gods are manifest in the world.

Kurt Vonnegut opens Cat's Cradle with "Anybody unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either. So be it." Regardless of the original veracity of Hinduism, Lord of Light is set in a world where much of it is literally true -- so when a member of the First chooses to oppose the system, what better path than to sow the seeds of Buddhism, especially given how the two religions have intersected in India in the past? (Later in the book, the would-be Buddha concedes that he had considered Christianity and Islam, but "crucifixion hurts!", and Islam and Hinduism didn't mesh all that well in the original India) Sam, as he prefers to be called, takes Vonnegut to heart -- "He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god."

Lord of Light has an odd narrative structure -- the novel opens in its present day, then tells the back story in a flashback, which lasts more than half of the novel, and from which we emerge mid-paragraph. While jarring, it's quite effective, as it gives the sensation of being woken from a dream, which is appropriate, given the experience of one of the characters at the beginning of the novel.

One of the characteristics of Zelazny's work that I enjoy the most is his use of humor. Early in the novel, there's one of my favorite descriptions of life native to an alien planet in all of sci-fi:

"Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak.
"Yes, and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape, then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect."
"Oh? And what may that be?"
"It is not a supernatural creature."
"But it is all those other things?"
"Yes."

Not that the focus of Lord of Light is wordplay, but it features such dialogue throughout the text, which helps make the characters more believable -- they're literally trying to overthrow Heaven, which in the hands of a less capable author, could lend itself to a heavy gravity. Zelazny is comparable to Bradbury in this respect -- he's descriptive (this novel contains one of the most well choreographed fight scenes I've ever read) without being overbearing. Essentially the only complaint I can make is the ending, which, given the material, is oddly appropriate.

Pale Fire

Nabokov's Pale Fire is an oddly structured novel that Jorge Luis Borges would have rendered in a few sentences, as when describing an imagined writer's oeuvre: "He produced a novel containing a 999 line poem in four cantos by a fictional poet, a kind of latter-day Robert Frost, as well as extended commentary by a supposed friend of the poet, who weaves his own, unrelated story into the commentary, and appears to be a madman. It is unclear whether the poet or commentator exist at all (in the world of the narrative), or if one is the invention of the other -- (the poet concocting his own biographer, or the madman dreaming up a poet, to give background to his ravings), or if both are the creation of a third, hidden character."

Careful reading and much scholastic debate seems to confirm that the final hypothesis laid out above is correct, or at least that the commentator (Professor Charles Kinbote) is fictitious. The poet (John Shade) may actually exist in the world of Pale Fire, but the commentator appears to be the invention of a third party, a view endorsed by Nabokov himself. (This raises the interesting question of whether or not we should consider an author's statements outside a piece canonical -- I would say no. I remember a Hemingway story where Hemingway states that a character would kill himself after the events depicted, but, like Kinbote, I'm currently working without a library.)

One of the blurbs on the back of my edition of Pale Fire describes the novel as a "centaur work", which I would disagree with -- while the long poem is clearly essential to the novel, it isn't very good; Shade's Pale Fire, while containing occasional jewels (such as lines 1-4)

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Live on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

Is mostly written in conversational verse, much of it addressed to the poet's wife. Perhaps it's part of the joke that a man supposed to be second in stature to Frost among American poets would produce nearly 1000 quotidian lines, but calling this a centaur work is appropriate only if the horse is lame, or the man is mad.

Not that the novel isn't brilliant, because it is -- I read it as a satire of self-important academics, but regardless of Nabokov's intentions, it's pure absurdist fun. Kinbote's bitterness and defensiveness in the Foreword almost reveals his madness, but the slow, subtle progression of his deterioration is masterfully unfolded. Additionally, the Index following the Commentary allows for ease of reference from Note to Note, and reveals details not explicated in the text. While some early reviews criticized Pale Fire as incoherent, I can't agree. While flipping from poem to Commentary broke the verse's rhythm (Kinbote recommends buying two copies and mutilating both to allow for easier reading!), in the case of subpar verse and engaging commentary, I don't think that's cause to complain.

Short Story Review - "Dentist"

"Dentist" is probably my favorite story from Roberto Bolaño's short story collection Last Evenings on Earth. It concerns a writer (presumably one of Bolaño's alter egos, of which many of the collections protagonists seem to be) visiting a friend's hometown. The friend is the titular dentist, and the narrator wonders why he (the dentist) chose to remain in his hometown, rather than move to Mexico City, as do many Mexican intellectuals. As the story opens, we learn that the writer had been planning on relaxing, as his life was in a transitional period, but his friend is quite distraught, due to the death of a patient at a free clinic he volunteers at.

The story seems to be an allegory for Bolaño's feelings on art -- or at least Bolaño setting out a set of aesthetics for comment. The following passage is preceded by the dentist's encounter with a painter whose work he admires. An awkward misunderstanding results in the dentist being insulted, and then beaten up when he attempts to recover. After recounting this to the writer, and railing against the painter, the writer observes that this is a singular anecdote in a man's life, and doesn't discredit his work. The dentist responds as follows:

But that’s where art comes from, he said: life stories. Art history comes along only much later. That what art is, he said, the story of a life in all its particularity. It’s the only thing/that really is particular and personal. It’s the expression of and, at the same time, the fabric of the particular.
And what do you mean by the fabric of the particular? I asked, supposing he would answer: Art. I was also thinking, indulgently, that we were pretty drunk already and that it was time to go home.
But my friend said: What I mean is the secret story.
With a gleam in his eye he stared at me for a moment. The death of the Indian woman from gum cancer had obviously affected him more than I had realized at first.
So now you’re wondering what I mean by the secret story? asked my friend. Well, the secret story is the one we’ll never know, although we’re living it from day to day, thinking we’re alive, thinking we’ve got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn’t matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don’t realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another and we don’t realize that’s a lie.

Immediately afterwards, the dentist begins waving someone over to their table -- an Indian boy, named Jose Ramirez, who he clarifies to the writer that he'd met through his clinic. The boy seems like a relatively unremarkable adolescent, who's clearly the product of poverty, and already has spent significant time working in the fields -- his hands are "iron". On their second meeting with Ramirez, it's revealed that he is a writer as well, and the dentist regards him as a major talent: "And then my friend declared that there were very few writers alive on par with the boy sitting there before us. I swear to God: very few." The writer, rather than tacitly agreeing, expresses doubt, which results in the confirmation of the dentist's assertion. The boy is truly a singular talent.

The story closes with the writer and the dentist waiting in the dentist's clinic for a patient who never shows.