. Spinning .

Cripes, I don’t know. After finishing this I went back to the front of the book to glance through 50 pages of accolades for Conrad by such notables as Hemingway, Trilling, Woolf, Forster. Somehow I think I’ve missed something in my own reading of this novel.

Yes, the writing was good, in my humble estimation, but was it outstanding? I didn’t think so. There were at least six or seven different mentions of “heart of darkness” or some semblance of it, that I can’t imagine any other title being chosen for this book. The social implications of the story have changed drastically over the century but do still hold value as historical commentary as well as insight into human nature as well.

The concept of the narration being taken over by one of the characters as he tells the story is unusual and works well, as it gives the reader a more rounded picture of the storyteller, Marlow, than could have been gained by restricting this to a first person narrative alone.

Here’s where I might have a problem and why I didn’t catch half the depth of story and meaning that the other comments lay out. The references to Kurtz throughout the books gives us dribs and drabs of insight into the man who Marlow is looking forward to meeting. However, when he finally does meet him, it is so brief, so distant, with such little actual dialogue but made up more of the movings of a very sick man who is still holding onto his little kingdom, that I didn’t really grasp that this was the main focus of the story. Yes, I did get the fact that Kurtz is both loved and hated, that he was both a wonder and an evil man, that the change is all due to his placement in the wilds of Africa, and that Conrad is giving us a glimpse into the nature of man’s interaction with man on both a savage and sophisticated level. But I didn’t grant Kurtz the importance that I evidently should have, focusing instead on Marlow and reading the changes he was undergoing rather than the example of Kurtz.

Why? For two reasons. First, I don’t personally take anyone’s word as anything more than opinion on someone else. I spent the whole book waiting for Kurtz to reveal himself. He barely did, then he died. Secondly, for me, when you start a book out with five or so men gathered together and one begins to tell a story in such a way that it is like unburdening his soul, then I looked to him to provide the drama, the changes to character, the story, as I would look to any I considered the protagonist. While Marlow was obviously affected by the whole adventure, I’m still not quite sure why he was so affected by Kurtz. It seemed almost a man-crush, such as the Russian harlequin definitely had on Kurtz.

I’m glad I did get to read this classic. Was it good? Yes. Was it great? I’m not so sure, despite the high praise from Hemingway et al.

A nice and neat example here:

(…) and, as if by enchantment, streams of human beings–of naked human beings–with spears in their hands, with bows, with shield, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest.  (p.74)

Though I questioned the “poured” connection to a face, it is a feasible reference if one considers the mouth, and a spew of words, or vomit, or whatever. I rather liked the concept particularly of the “dark-faced and pensive forest,” as Conrad has already established the forest (jungle?) as having a heart, thus anthropomorphism of the setting is becoming a metaphor for an evil being.

Conrad nicely ties this back in a few paragraphs later:

(…) and almost at the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was vanishing without any perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest that had ejected these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn in a long aspiration.

Conrad surprised me in the middle of Marlow’s stream of dialogue with this scene, in which Marlow has finally reached Kurtz’s station, but instead of being met by Kurtz, is met by a young man dressed in harlequin-patched suit and who apparently has nursed Kurtz through several illnesses, but reveals the evil, hard, side of the trader even as he defends and idolizes him. As Marlow learns much about Kurtz that reveals a much different image of the man, he idly looks at the station through a pair of binoculars.

You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then I went carefully from post to post with my class, and I saw my mistake. These round knobs were not ornamental by symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing–food for thought and also for the vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house.  (p. 71)

Human heads. And as the young man explains, the unfortunates are those who Kurtz had considered rebellious.

While I’m not quite sure why this novel was classified as a must-read in classic literature, I suspect that it is for the insider view of a culture that most people of the more civilized world had no concept of, that wild and dark arena where the Africans had been brought out of as slaves, were looked upon as savages, where people still referred to them as “niggers” with no malicious intent. Where indeed, Kurtz, a most civilized European, has become a savage man.

Well, maybe not narrative sequence exactly, but a gap in the flow that sent me back several times to check if pages were stuck together and I’d missed something. Now I often read while watching TV or thinking about something else so that I’ve upon occasion stopped to realize that something doesn’t make sense because while I’ve read every word, I’ve not absorbed any of it, or been aware of what I was reading. Sort of like driving automatically without thinking about steering.

But this was in the middle of an action scene (the first, really), in Section 2, where Marlow is caught in a fog and then in a narrow passageway with the steamboat and is attacked by natives on shore. Then, all of a sudden, the object of his extreme curiosity, the trader, Kurtz, is being discussed as if Marlow has already met him. So I went back a few times, thinking perhaps two pages were stuck together and my mind seamlessly filled in the gap without concentrating.

No such thing. This is the way Conrad has written it and while I understand completely that since Marlowe is telling a story, he has every right to jump around in his thoughts. His spiel about Kurtz here is actually an afterthought brought about by the sudden danger of the situation and the death of his steerman, a native who was at least loyal as he was simple in his position. It is perhaps, then, a more natural and realistic dialogue then had he stuck point to point with a timeline. After all, all stories told in past tense have established a history, the end of the telling is merely choice.

Okay, so here’s an image that Conrad presents most eloquently:

The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending a single blade.  (pg. 41)

I’m not sure whether it’s my deep immersion in the flash fiction/short story world by both writing and reading this genre, but I’ve had a very hard time for over a year to stick with and breeze through any novels. It’s true, I don’t really breeze through anything I read, since I read for pleasure as well as learning and seek meaning and appreciation of writing styles from anything I read. Just can’t seem to follow more than a couple pages at a time with longer stories or novel-length fiction, and I hope I haven’t ruined my abilities to enjoy the pleasure of novels by seeking immediate gratification and basing my reading on the different style.

That said, I still found it a bit tiresome to read something that appears to go on for pages what I feel could have been said in a sentence. Joseph Conrad’s style of writing is excellent, and yet it’s gotten tedious to me.

There’s the unusual setup of the group of men sitting around a ship at night while one of them begins to tell his story of his recent journey to captain a ship down in Africa. The opening scenario is quite nice, with the men being described as “The Lawyer, the Accountant, the Director,” which in a single word, compartmentalizes these gentlemen versus the character called Marlow–who will be the narrator of the story to be told to these others. The book also starts out in first person, the narrator being among the listeners, and Marlowe’s story, also first person, is then crafted through the use of quotation marks and goes on for chapters before being occasionally brought back to the present scenario of the men listening to the story.

Talk about Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn brouhaha with the word “nigger,” this book as well liberally uses it, since the setting is in the late nineteenth century and slavery has just been overcome, yet in Africa, the cruelty and abuse continued far from the reach of civilization. The word itself, as spoken by Marlow, is not really an expression of racism but rather a commonly accepted designation of black men. Marlow himself seems to be shocked by the ill treatment of the Africans who are being used as carriers into the interior of Africa by the wealthy traders. Marlow seems to have a need to get this story out, yet he finds himself telling his companions in the darkness of night cover. In truth, the narrator appears to perhaps be the only one listening as the others may have fallen asleep.

There are some interesting characters that Conrad brings into the adventure, and he draws them so well. In fact, the character of a white trader named Kurtz is someone that dribbles into the flow of the story long before Marlow has bet him.

I believe that the value of this book, aside from Conrad’s fine writing, may well be in the secrets that seeped out into the reading world from the base of Africa, where a different system of social intercourse and equality still reigned.

The third section of this book starts with a poem and these opening lines:

two lines of horizon

ornament letters plastic sign

What better way to describe a journey taken by bus, by train, by car, where the land scape moves by as you’re sitting still? Rushing by, needing to be absorbed by the eyes in consecutive blips and transmitted to the brain to be all sorted out.

In These Laws of Space and Time, the journey is once again told within the characters’ action. Who has not wondered about that stranger sleeping next to you, his head nearly on your shoulder as you watch cities, countries fly by. But there is always a thread of common ground that we hold between us and even in the few minutes of journey that’s shared, it is found.

Dorothee’s constant awareness of time and space as they pertain to place in this book shows up here, in The Buddha, the Dharma & the Sangha:

Towns are made of h0uses and streets. To get from one place to another, you either walk, or take a car. Rivers are crossed by bridges. Streets connect to other streets that connect to other towns. That is what I learned when I was a child.

And then proceeds to have her illusions tested when crossings are instead made by boat only. Here too, misconceptions of dangers both in place and in time are forewarned. The traveler must adjust to new languages but also to traditions and things that are locally known. Ginger tea may not be ginger tea as we know it.

The best thing about these stories and poems are the manner in which Dorothee selects what she writes about. It’s not a vision of environment and scenery, but rather the constant that visits the new and discovers what is different, and what is the same.

World traveler, artist, writer, designer, entrepreneur, all these hats that Dorothee Lang wears are just as common to each of the pieces here as the innate humanness of mankind. Each of the pieces have been published elsewhere and brought together in this collection that stands as a tribute to the curious traveler.

In the final pages, Dorothee gives us insight into the process of putting together this collection, and it is surely as interesting as the journeys themselves. The sorting, the selection, the tying in of place, space, and time through organizational threads is a wonder of art in itself.

in transit may be purchased through Blue Print Press.

(Photo courtesy of Dorothee Lang)

Always on top of my pile of “to reads,” this small book of stories of travels has been teasing me for a few months now. Unfortunately, my reading has lately been limited to online short stories at Fictionaut, at 52/250, and other small literary communities and journals. One of this year’s goals is to get back into reading books–real books, whether from my overflowing bookshelves or via Kindle for Mac.

Dorothee Lang is the editor of Blue Print Review where she’s graciously published a few of my stories and images, as well as Daily sPress where she reviews small press publications and publishes at Blue Print Press. Her work in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and art and photography has been widely published in many literary journals. She is listed in the Electronic Literature Directory for early work in new media form. Via emails, she’s become more of a friend. Living in Germany, we’re a distance away. There is one other difference between us that’s obvious: Dorothee travels, has knowledge of foreign places that I’ve only read about. in transit comes out of that understanding of living and traveling in places that may or may not ever become “home.”

The opening page of the book is a listing called “being in transit >>>” that really is a poem:

(being in transit >>>)

is an art in itself

is easy

is good for drivers

is the ruin of all happines

The list goes on, but what I believe she is saying here is that it is what it becomes for the traveler, if in compliance with the purpose, or if it does not indeed answer the question raised by the motion.

The small book is divided into four sections: Germany, Europe, USA, and Asia. Each has a few poems or stories inspired by an itinerary of the journeys. There are leaps in time as each makes its impression. Dorothee’s writing (the book is in English, Dorothee is fluent in both German and English) is clear and precise, yet brings in the mood via her choice of words:

There is still an hour of time left when we arrive back at the Alexanderplatz, but most of the others are there already too. We are sitting on the steps of a fountain guarded by stone snakes, waiting for the bus to arrive, to take us back to our hotel in the Westside. Overhyped and dazed, we pull the unused bills of Ostmark from our pockets and start to turn them into planes, into boats that drown in the snake fountain.

Dorothee takes on subsequent trips to different parts of Germany, and there is a thread of distance of time as well as of space. At one point she visits a museum where she recognizes a particular work of Donald Judd that she has seen before though she hadn’t been to this place. The resulting conversation with a museum attendant brings in once again the element of spaces, of how one looks at things, of how one’s perspective changes over time.

While the section on Germany was written mainly in first person, the next on Europe goes into third. Pool Sides, set in Spain in 2004, is a feeling. Reflection, simple setting but so much deeper in meaning. The last paragraph, where the character returns to the pool in the early evening, says much:

The shadows of the palm trees are stretching from the one side of the pool to the other now. Soon they will disappear all together. She makes a mental note to buy the music she heard in the afternoon. Yet there, in the fading light of the sun, she can neither remember the song, nor the thing she hoped to find there.

In Harlequin, set in France in 2006, Dorothee reveals a relationship through dialogue of a couple on vacation. Through detail, through the wondering over a gecko being alive or fake, the two characters are exposed.

The final offering in this section, Hotel Universe, is an exquisite drawing of lines and people via avenues and streets, the texture of roadways and the crossing of daily lives.

Next: The U.S. and Asia

(Photo courtesy of Dorothee Lang)

…there was a time when I was posting an average of 4 posts a day for years. Reading books one after another and sharing my reactions, even dropping the book to grab the laptop for a special phrase that just got me. I haven’t read a book in months–started several, but none finished.

No excuses, it’s not like I haven’t been reading. Probably an average of 50 short stories a week on Fictionaut (though I haven’t had a chance to keep up the last several weeks) and 52/250, a weekly theme-based series where we all write a flash piece. (Check out this week’s issue–I have a story called Regardless, but the title art is something I worked up in Photoshop.)

I’ve been working on lots of projects, hypertext and traditional short story form, a textbook, and artwork. Rejections aren’t as devastating when acceptances roll in sometimes too. It’s been a tremendously successful (or what I consider successful!) year and I suppose that brings confidence to keep at it.

I’ve been learning new things to expand my writing and graphics into the new media field little by little. I know I’d learn a lot faster if I took classes but this picking folks’ brains and struggling through on my own does bring its own sense of accomplishment.

But yes, I do need to continue my pursuit of fine literature and will be adding some more posts here as I finally get back into gear.

Finally got back to a bit of reading this weekend and I started with something tiny–micro, in fact–but huge in literary excellence.

Dorothee Lang is an editor, publisher, artist, and writer. She wears all her many hats when she travels and turns the experiences of her journeys into something like this. Transition is “a micro collection of stories + poems” as Dorothee describes it. I might tend to call it a collection of poetry. From the opening piece, Silver, we have:

And she kept dreaming of huge cities filled with streets filled with houses filled with colors and shadows.

The language between poetry and story is what bridges the gap of genre. What would differentiate them is the intricate placement and relative sparsity of words that Lang uses in her poems. headed is a poem that moves quickly, lines and directions pointing us through it, as stanzas themselves are arranged in carefully thought-out visual form.

The Sun She, The Moon He fairly sings to the reader. It is a vision of the world as seen through a small space of a window, but as with all of Dorothee’s work, there’s so much more beneath the surface.

The longest piece is the final one, a short story called Exchange Rates that hints of magical realism, of traveling in foreign places, of the differences in culture while man’s nature remains the same within us all.

There are more works included in this fantastic little collection. Oddly enough, while I sat reading it in the comfort of my own living room, I could see it as a great little book to take on a short trip. The pieces are just long enough, just short enough, to invite reading in short and thoughtful bits of time. The images last beyond the reading, when one would look up and think on the words as new things pass by in the windows. It’s a book about travel. It’s a book about being home.

Dorothee’s book can be obtained at her Blue Print Press site, where other fine publications are available, including her longer work, In Transit (which I’ll be reading and reviewing very soon), and work by Nora Nadjarian, and Michael K. White.

Transition is fine writing about moments caught in time. It is a lovely little journey between here and there.

After forcing my way through this, I must say that there was no great Ahah! moments that pulled me to the keyboard to share and had there been, I think I would have held off out of spite.

I’m just not into the garbled silliness that the story attempts to unravel. For one thing, I never got friendly with the protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Her tendency towards self-reflective rather uncaring attitude failed to grab me. For another, her name–as well as all the other characters in the book–were so obviously symbolic and unreal that they started to make me grit my teeth as soon as I hit them.

There is a jolly romp through California as Oedipa, named executrix along with a lawyer named Metzger who comes across as rather mindless (this part was believable) run into all sorts of schemes and characters that would more likely fill a lifetime rather than mere months (or however long it was–I lost track). It’s a story meant to provoke thought (another problem I had here, the used book had copious margin notes in a cramped writing I could not decipher so they were merely distraction) but one of intrigue as well. I just didn’t like the mishmash style of Pynchon’s writing and so there really was nothing but pure determination to keep me reading through the end.

The end, which didn’t finish the adventure nor the question of characterization in its final sentences. I will pull out Thomas Pynchon’s “V” some day, but not real soon.

Was coming down the homestretch this afternoon, going through the last twenty or so pages at a fairly steady pace since something was actually happening now. In the middle of this action, while the end is in sight with a big secret revealed and the whole Sutpen clan history ready to be finally laid to rest with a bang, I catch this:

“Wait,” Quentin said. “Let’s drive up to the house. It’s a half a mile.”

“No, no,” she whispered, a tense fierce hissing of words filled with that same curious terrified yet implacable determination, as though it were not she who had to go and find out but she only the helpless agent of someone or something else who must know. “Hitch the horse here. Hurry.”  (p. 365)

Leave it to Faulkner to drag out that final end to the story by making Quentin and Miss Rosa–who is an old 65–abandon the buggy and walk a half a mile to the mansion. Faulkner adds to the drama by having them walk the distance, tire, stumble in the dark, and add to the anticipation of the reader as to what they will find there, simply by extending the span of time it takes them to get there. Almost a movie ploy, Faulkner manages it within pages of a novel.

Overall, the writing is eloquent and yet almost to the point of overwriting. There is the repetition of the main story by several different characters (as well as told to and by other characters to them) so that we get a different slant on the story and something different is revealed in each telling. Whether it be fact or feeling, the characters are the focus of Faulkner’s story. The narrative is the story of one man who comes to town, buys up a lot of land to build a mansion because he’s learned late in life not only the difference between black and white but between rich and poor. Then he finds a wife–though we find out he already has a wife and son hidden away and abandoned but taken care of with money because she had an eighth of Negro blood. Well, this son grows up and meets the established son, is pushed into an engagement with his own sister, but retreats because the acknowledged son loves him and refuses to believe his own father when he tells him the truth. Except that part about the Negro blood…

Typical also of Faulkner is the passing down through generations the secrets and often the repeated acts that add drama to a Southern family during the war years. The stories are loaded with sex but not for sex’s sake but more importantly, the aftereffects of each coupling that causes the problems.

Faulkner writes with passion and emphasis on detail. He wants the reader to feel, to comprehend the trials of his characters. Faulkner requires a patient reader who understands that even under the worst possible circumstances, the most horrific scandal, the most important part of the story is within its characters.

This, Chapter 8, has to be the toughest one yet. It took me a while to figure out that Quentin and his roommate, Shreve are telling the story yet again, but from a perspective of guessing and imagining what might have taken place. This seems on the edge of metafiction as they are “rewriting” the story that even so, has been changed so many times in this novel just from the various points of view. It’s an interesting technique, yet it is even more difficult to follow because of its speculative nature. And, of course, Faulkner’s manner of rambling on.

Such as this:

Because Bon would know what Henry was doing, just as he had always known what Henry was thinking since that first day when they had looked at one another. Maybe he would know all the better what Henry was doing because he did not know what he himself was going to do, that he would not know until all of a sudden some day it would burst clear and he would know then that he had known all the time, what it would be, so he didn’t have to bother about himself and so all he had to do was just to watch Henry trying to reconcile what he (Henry) knew he was going to do with all the voices of his heredity and training which said No. No. You cannot. You must not. You shall not. (p. 342)

And honestly, it doesn’t end there but continues in this vein for a few pages yet.  But here’s a succinct way of showing Fulkner’s style:

(“Listen,” Shreve said, cried. “It would be while..)  (p. 339)

And again:

(…) then Henry said suddenly, cried suddenly: (p. 342)

Why say it once when twice will do?

While it is the at the core of his style, Faulkner’s use of metaphor and simile are weird. The purpose of these elements of writing are to give the reader a quick, readily recognizable, usually visual, word or phrase that will explain a statement by the comparison: sharp as a razor, flat as a board, a body of steel, etc. But here’s what Faulkner does with simile:

“(…) and he said how he thought there was something about a man’s destiny (or about the man) that caused the destiny to shape itself to him like his clothes did, like the same coat that new might have fitted a thousand men, yet after one man has worn it for a while it fits no one else and you can till it anywhere you see it even if all you see is a sleeve or a lapel”  p. 245

Quentin is recounting his father’s words of his grandfather’s conversation with Sutpen, and so, describing Sutpen’s thoughts on destiny. Comparing it to the fit of a coat is appropriate for Sutpen wore the same clothes for years and the explanation makes the reader make the connection between Sutpen’s opinion and his actions–though Faulkner takes care of doing that for us as well.

What intrigues me is that many find Faulkner so difficult to follow, yet here he is explaining even his similes.

Faulkner does tend to like a small crew as his protagonist personality–perhaps a makeup of the raw textures of each that bring together a specter of a main character that is an extension of each, and a representative of man.

Each is defined by interaction with others, reaction to events, and in this particular novel, by another character’s version of a situation in which the character played a part. Notably unusual is the retelling of the whole background by Shreve, a college roommate of Quentin’s. Faulkner is giving us more information via this path, put in the way that a listener (or reader for that matter) might recount what he has heard to insure that he has understood it well. But so much more is revealed in the retelling, new facts, new perspective, even as Faulkner follows the story in time and allows for side trails while reinforcing the history already laid out.

It also is telling of the characters. In Chapter Six, we’ve gotten a bit more background on Quentin himself; back to his childhood investigation of the Sutpen homestead in decay. Pieces come together from what he remembers and what he has been told.

The characters in a Fulkner novel are always strangely tied together through blood, loyalty, environment. In this case, Judith, who was only engaged to marry Charles Bon before he died, takes in the child of his common law wife and while keeping him there at the estate, still does him no favors in the way he is treated for he grows up resentful of both his Negro and his white background.

Faulkner uses his characters as links to each other. Particularly with the offspring of affairs versus marriage, the lines are traced through the years to braid into new generations. The use of a college roommate of Quentin’s to retell the story brings to mind the college friendship of Sutpen’s son Henry, and Charles Bon, where so much of the drama has started.