. Spinning .

Please do forgive the expletive on the prior lit posting, but it was quite an awesome reading experience.

I realize that I’ve missed several things in this book, though I got so much out of it that it would have been a literary overdose to absorb it all.  The ending remarks:

Evil is even, truth is an odd number and eath is a full stop. (p. 314)

I never quite got the number thing, though it seemed like the Pooka ran his life by it.  The other thing that might have gone over my head at the time is that while I picked out the elements of writing, it was intended by O’Brien to be a spoof thereof, and likely a good poke at the reviewers and literary critics of his time.  The entire book is written with the rules in mind, knowing the borders, and then merrily dancing over and under and around them.

O’Brien’s close to the story is a happy one for the young narrator/writer, for the author Trellis–despite his ordeals, and for us as readers.  I feel that he is even saying, in his closing paragraphs, that every one is different, every one of us has quirks and talents and flaws.  Now there’s no deep meaning to O’Brien’s words–he wants us to take them as he gives them to us and interpret it for ourself.

I’m so happy that I was prodded into finishing this novel.  The premise that we needn’t go by the opinion of others as to what has literary value is b.s.  The first half of the novel would never have rolled into the wonder of the second for me had I not been encouraged to continue.  Thanks, guys.

Holy Shit!  What did I just read?

This book was the most amazingest I’ve ever, ever read.  I’ll have to read the last three pages again–I swept through them with a fever as I crossed into yet another of O’Brien’s worlds.  Gut reaction to the whole?  One of my favoritest now that I’ve made my way through it. 

And while I’ll do a better Finale post, I’ll state right now that it will be read again and maybe even againer.  Since I, even in my closest reading, somehow missed the title within the pages.

One of O’Brien’s techniques throughout the book–or at least, one assigned to at least one of his writers–has been to illustrate the show versus tell instruction.

On his smallest finger Orlick screwed the cap of his Waterman fountain-pen, the one with the fourteen-carat nib; when he unscrewed it again there waas a black circle about his finger.

Symbolism of the foregoing: annoyance.  (p. 282)

By inserting an "author’s" note below a statement, he is telling us what he is showing.  On our own, we would have picked up Orlick’s annoyance at being interrupted in his writing by his fiddling with the pen cap.  These "notes" appear as if the author jogged them down to himself.  Neatly done.

Getting towards the end of the book–which story though, I’m not quite sure–and the author Trellis is on trial and being judged by a panel and jury of his characters.  It seems their complaints are of what he has made them be and represent.  From Slug Willard:

In what manner were you compelled to address Mr. Furriskey?

In guttersnipe dialect, at all times repugnant to the instincts of a gentleman.

You have already said that the character or milieu of the conversation was distasteful to you?

Yes.  It occasioned considerable mental anguish.  (p. 285)

I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules of writing, brought up recently by his death.  Included was this, at No. 1:  "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted."

O’Brien is making this rule even more emphatic; clearly, don’t piss them off.

Mesmerizing, amid all the wounds inflicted by the Pooka on his maker; how can a writer write such agony to another?

Interesting too, that when the son of Trellis–an author in his own right–leaves the room, the other characters–Shanahan, Furriskey–insist upon sending the father Trellis back into a scene for more punishment.  Rewriting?  Editing? 

Or is it a reflection of the need in every man to write; the old "I have a book in me" mentality.  Clearly though–at least to me–the  metaphor.  Will Trellis, half-bled out by one fall from a window, bled the rest by yet another, survive his broken body while his mind is still intact?  Like Wiley Coyote, he keeps coming back for more.

How shall I take this in my own decisions?

Has everybody who’s read this book gotten this far still wondering what the damn title means?

O’Brien now captures the full extent of fictional character rights to have Trellis’ own "son" write a story to punish Trellis the author.  Ahah–O’Brien has tapped into the fear of every author whose characters make their own way across narrative without any rein of control!

This is surely the book most meant for a writer to read, outdoing any of the how-to’s I’ve ever read. 

He takes it even further, as Furrisky and Shanahan egg Orlick Trellis on in more and more devious ways to destroy their creator:

I’m after thinking of something good, something very good unless I’m very much mistaken, said Furriskey in an eager way, black in the labour of his fine thought.  When you take our hero from the concrete-mixer, you put him on his back on the road and order full steam ahead with the steam-roller.

And a very good idea, Shanahan agreed.

And a very good idea as you say, Mr. Shanahan.  But when the roller passes over his dead corpse, be damned but there’s one thing there that it can’t crush, one thing that lifts it high offa the road–a ten ton roller, mind!…

Indeed, said Orlick, eye-brow for question.

One thing, said Furriskey, sole finger for true counting.  They drive away the roller and here is his black heart sitting there as large as life in the middle of the pulp of his banjaxed corpse.  They couldn’t crush his heart!  (p.240)

Now if that’s not a metaphor for the editorial job done on an author’s precious manuscript, I don’t know my metaphors.

Ah, what would a novel be without an editor?  O’Brien amazes us once again by providing our narrator with a critique on his novel from his friend Brinsley.

From a perusal of the manuscript which has just been presented in these pages, he had expressed his inability to distinguish between Furriskey, Lamont and Shanahan, bewailed what he termed their spiritual and physical identity, stated that true dialogue is dependent on the conflict rather than the confluence of minds and made reference to the importance of characterization in contemporary literary works of a high-class, advanced or literary nature.  (p. 230)

Of course one can’t help but find it amusing that even while plowing new trails in contemporary literature, O’Brien provides his own critiquer to explain the rules of "advanced" literarary nature.

But is his character correct in his opinion?

Well either I’ve reached a slightly more accomplished level of reading, or I simply don’t have a clue and made a mountain of a molehill.

My last posting made a point of the threads of conversation in the inner world of narrative.  The almost melody of several themes going on in parallel streams were wonderfully natural in this unnatural world.  O’Brien, after getting us to the endpoint of the characters’ journey, jerks us out and plops us into the primary world of the narrator in the middle of a meeting of his uncle and a few friends at the house.

The perfectly normal situation of a committee meeting planning a event becomes a metaphor for the more restricted bonds of society as the uncle demands adherence to the rules of order.  This is nearly laughable; communication among a group of men of similar background and interests–at its simplest, human–needing to follow methods of communication.

I am so very glad that I was intrigued, embarrassed, teased, intimidated, and frankly pushed into continuing on with this novel.  It is a true delight for the mind and ear.

They also did not hesitate to promise him sides of hairy bacon, the mainstay and the staff of life of the country classes, and lamb-chops still succulent with young blood, autumn-heavy yams from venerable stooping trees, bracelets and garlands of browned sausages and two baskets of peerless eggs fresh-collected, a waiting hand under the hen’s bottom.  (p. 184)

Sight, scent, taste, touch, and hearing (if read aloud); all senses fully satisfied by the above which is just a small portion of a scenario in which the travelers (Pooka, the Good Fairy, cowboys, etc.) are simply attempting to "beguile" a man into walking on his own two feet.

In the meantime, at least two separate conversational threads are still going on among the members of the group, and from there (hypertext alive and well!) the discussions can turn off onto a different path on a single word.  This is such a touch of realism (think of your own conversations with friends) smack dab in the middle of a totally unreal setting (monster, fairy, cowboys in a strange land of jungle and thorns). 

Absolutely delightful.

Getting back on track here with the literary life; spring birdsong and sunny evenings albeit cold can overcome the deepest down of soul.

Voice is a bit of a question; voices often come from characters themselves if that is their way, if they are self-created.  So if story is in first person pov, then author–writing in this manner, just what he is told–has a different job to do.  He has to get the tone, the emotion, the thoughts and values of the character put down in words that display those traits and ideals.  No, he can’t write down everything the character says because here the author must be editor instead. Then too, he must provide the fill-in narrative, how the character moves and acts and reacts to what is going on.  He is a mouthpiece, only drawing upon his own skill to relay a story.  He must do his character proud.

I love the way that O’Brien lets his characters take over in At Swim-Two-Birds.  There is so much to learn here that it is almost overwhelming to read it in all the capacities a reader can employ.  For besides the many voices among the pages of the novel, are all the voices in between–those of the reader. 

Made myself take some time out from trying to justify (or rather, discover the obvious) the spending of $100k against a house the fiduciary claims to want to buy for $264k today to do some reading.  What a delightful point in the story to come into at this time.

If I get out of this pocket, said the Good Fairy in a thin voice, I will do damage.  I have stood as much a I will stand for one day.  (p. 176)

This is the story within a story within a story.  What the narrator of O’Brien’s book is having his character’s character write.  A Pooka, a Fairy, a couple of cowboys, all speaking together and yet with several conversations going on at once.  But it’s not just the layers of time that separate this novel, but the time element and the variety of characters all combine to make it an exciting time. 

I find myself going back to the  beginning of the book to assure myself that O’Brien wrote this in 1951.  The style of writing of the main or primary story is similar to what I would consider to be 19th century in its formality and language, as well as the described dress and habits of the characters.  Now we go into the narrator’s character of Trellis the author, and from there into this fairy tale-like group of Pooka and the Good Fairy.

I can’t help but wonder at times if O’Brien was on drugs during this writing, the ideas are so out of the norm and creative.  Not pot surely, since he’d have spent a month alone pondering the title and never gotten this masterpiece written.  Truly intriguing, and particularly at this point of the tale, enchanting.

In this epitomy of metafiction, we’re bound to get lost if we wander too far away for too long.  O’Brien makes sure that we don’t:

Trellis’s dominion over his characters, I explained, is impaired by his addiction to sleep.  There is a moral in that.

(…) He is a great man that never gets out of bed, he said.  He spends the days and nights reading books and occasionally he writes one.  He makes his characters live with him in his house.  Nobody knows whether they are there at all or whether it is all imagination.  A great man.  (p. 139)

(…) Very unexpected things happened, I said.  They fall in love and the villain Furriskey, purified by the love of a noble woman, hatched a plot for putting sleeping-draughts in Trellis’s porter by slipping a few bob to the grocer’s curate.  This meant that Trellis was nearly always asleep and awoke only at predeterminable hours, when everything would be temporarily in order.  (p. 141)

Hah!  We tend to indeed live with our characters surrounding us as we write, and yet the thought never before had occurred to me just how they might turn the tables and gain the upperhand.  I’m personally very free with my characters and allow them to go where they might; might this be dangerous?

O’Brien’s ideas and perceptive insight into narrative are so complex, and yet so deceptively simple as to be genius.  He reminds us now and then of who is who and in what plane of structure so that we can note the connections and accept them; after all, the author himself (the one created by O’Brien) is telling them to us in a fairly detailed fashion.  Shall we doubt the author’s author?

There may be an underlying "moral" to this situation as the character states.  Does sleep in fact create a looseness or flexibility so different than our waking state of control?  Or is he perhaps referring to the mind at sleep being so much more dramatic, more free-flowing with ideas that dreams are of what literature should be composed?

Yes, I’m at that point.  Halfway through and it’s gotten to me.  While I’m awed by the skill and intrigued by the methods, I’m just not into the story(ies) enough to deep-read this one right now. 

It’s a personal thing; my mind has been taken up by other things that claim the good part of me that seeks the enjoyment of reading and writing and life in general.  Until one of the bigger weights is off my head, it’s still difficult to concentrate on things that deserve the attention but are not vital time-wise to expend on them.  I’m amazed at this book, and hate to leave it–right now I see it as a guide to writing, and in particular, writing hypertext fiction.  O’Brien almost lays it right out as a pattern for consideration.  He tells us what’s going on with multi-layers and characters taking over story and going their own way once birthed.  He has them fighting their creator, the author.  It’s great stuff.

But it’s wasted on one such as me.  I’m going to skim the rest, just to see if I can pick it up further into the story without getting bogged down with the language and escapades that don’t appear to present plot as much as entertainment and interest.

May the Great God of Literature forgive me.

What is amazing about this book is the skill with which O’Brien changes voice in this three-ring circus.  Especially with what he throws at us.  Here is a short bit from the first person pov narrator, a university student:

Biographical reminiscence, part the fourth:  The further obtrusion of my personal affairs at this stage is unhappily not entirely fortuitous.  It happens that a portion of my manuscript containing an account (in the direct style) of the words that passed between Furriskey and the voice lost beyond retrieval.  I recollect that I abstracted it from the portfolio in which I kept my writings–an article composed of two boards of stout cardboard connected by a steel spine…(p. 69)

Then, in Furrisky’s story, the cowboys and Indians arrive:

The whole place was burning like billyo in no time and out came Red wih a shotgun in his hand and followed by his men, prepared if you please to make a last stand for king and country.  The Indians got windy and flew back to us behind the buckboards and go to God if Red doesn’t hold up a passing tram and take cover behind it, firing all the poeople out with a stream of filthy language.  (p. 80)

While Ireland is still the setting, the change in lifestyle, era, and tone is within the language, not just in the descriptions.  We’ve got trams and buckboards within the same sentence.  We’ve got O’Brien’s characters changed by situation and environment, but by his opening suggestion, the characters maintain their basic traits–pulled out of the wings and thrown on stage to become what they are.

It should be obvious by now that I’m not exactly enthralled with this novel–though I am in awe of the workmanship.  Kind of like a Polish (or any other, really) traditional costume that is breathtaking in it’s brilliance of design and needlework, but in another place and time, merely gaudy.  Believe me here; I’ve worn one.

But I’m forcing myself to read–admittedly slowly–because it coincides with my project in the new media format.  O’Brien weaves four stories–related only by authorship–yet gives enough of each so that we don’t forget while we’re off on one of his other paths.  He seems to gradually get us used to the characters so they’ll sit well in our minds.  Then again, he threw them all at us in the very beginning of the novel with a warning that this is what the book was all about.  Note that we have no particular choice in the paths we take in this strictly text tome.  If we choose to hop about–and we can, I suppose–we’ll get even loster (sic) than some might be.  This brings me to another train of thought–why some of us don’t particularly go wild over hyperfiction.  But that post is still festering in my mind, wanting to heal itself before I rip open the wound of self-revelation.

I think that what doesn’t draw me into the stories is O’Brien as a writer of story.  I think his brilliance is in the performance, if not the play.