Three by China Mieville

Overview

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China Mieville is an author who has been on my reading list for a long time. He came recommended by friends and by many reviews. I finally decided to take the plunge. I read his three most recent novels. Brief reviews follow. He is as good as his reputation. His novels are strange, intriguing and often beautiful.

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The City The City

Think of Berlin before the fall of the wall. East Germany separated from West Germany, each half of the city with separate politics, economics, destinies. Now imagine a city just as divided as Berlin was, but with the wall existing purely in the mind. The citizens of one city are walled off from the citizens of the other city by a reinforced habit of thought. Each citizen carefully "unsees" the citizen of the other city, even while avoiding the vehicles and pedestrians of the unseen city. Clues in clothing styles and architecture help with the unseeing, and a secret police force called "The Breach" enforce the separation.

The story begins with a murder investigation: a prostitute, seemingly, dispatched and then dumped in a garbage filled lot in one of the cities. It seems a simple case, but a couple of things don't add up. The chief investigator is too good to let it go. He follows the leads to find links to a revolutionary movement, a possible breach and the conspiratorial myth of a third city that somehow exists in the interstitial boundaries between the other two.

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In many ways this novel is a classic detective story, but with an underlying strangeness that gives it an odd, somewhat disturbing beauty.

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Kraken

There is a secret London, filled with cults and strange religions each with their own gods and their own particular apocalypses. There are also, in this secret London, people with Knacks and powers. All are on edge because a giant squid has mysteriously vanished from its display in the Museum of Natural History. Somehow this disappearance is a preamble to a total apocalypse nobody wants.

The protagonist of the novel, Billy Harrow, is a curator in the section of the Museum that housed the squid. After its disappearance, he is sequestered by a squad of police who specialize in cults. He escapes to find out for himself what is going on. He quickly finds himself immersed in the secret London underground and especially in the cult of the Kraken itself.

In many aspects the novel reminds me of the work of Neil Gaimen, especially Neverwhere. In fact it often seems like an attempt to out Gaimen, Gaimen. That being said, it is an enjoyable novel. The cults and religions are intriguing. There is suspense, humor, and occassional flashes of poetry

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Embassy Town

Of the novels reviewed here, this is the most complex and interesting. It is about "Language" both literally and metaphorically. The novel takes place on a planet at the edge of navigable space. The atmosphere is toxic to humans, but the aliens, known to the local human population as the Hosts, have made an area livable for human colonists.

The Hosts speak "Language," a very peculiar speech. For one thing, the Hosts have two throats and speak simultaneously through both. The Host can only understand language spoken by living sentient beings., Recordings or synthesized speech are incomprehensible to them even when it reproduces the sounds of words perfectly.Secondly, Language can only express factual statements. It cannot express contrary to fact conditions. There is no "what if." Language cannot lie.

Humans have created genetically engineered clones called ambassadors who can speak simultaneously and be understood by the Hosts. The Hosts too have tried to expand their Language to communicate better with the outsiders. The use real people, set up in situations that can be used as similes--metaphore is beyond them.. The narrator of the novel is such a person. As a child she was used to create the simile, "she who ate what was put in front of her."

Language is visceral to the Hosts, so much so that a new ambassador's voice accidentally becomes an addictive narcotic. To free themselves from it the Host must either horribly mutilate themselves or learn to lie.

A bit of a Rant

I have read many articles in the past few years bemoaning the loss of standards in higher education, and, in particular, the loss of a common cultural set of references. I think the source of much of the complaint is really a reaction to a loss of privilege and the decline of the "educated" class.

A university education used to belong to only a few: those that had the money and those who demonstrated the intellectual abilities to get money in the form of scholarships. The educated few shared a common experience and a shared vocabulary. They read the same "classics", got the same basic science and math, the same basic economics. Out of this group came all the lawyers, bankers and politicians, the men who made the laws, enforced them and controlled the money. Life was good for the educated class of mostly white men.

All this was lost because of the democratization of education. The first serious blow came at the end of World War II with the enactment of the GI bill. Suddenly tens of thousands of men who would not naturally have been able to attend a university were able to. Worse, they believed their children should have the right to attend too, and ideally, all children should have the right to attend the university of their choice.

The universities became crowded with those who were "different, " who did not fit into the culture of the educated class. They were dissatisfied with the classical curriculum and wanted "relevant" education, focused on current issues and employment.

The final blow to the educated elite came with the explosion of the Internet and the democratization of knowledge itself. Now anyone could access the classics (previously available only in expensive university press editions). But more, they could access literature, philosophy, history and political thought from a myriad of cultures. The net effect was to diffuse the set of common cultural references so dear to the educated class. No longer could you count on someone catching a reference to Thucydides or the Book of Job.

To "cultural conservatives this is a defaming of all that is holy, a cultural disgrace, a loss of core values. But what they are really upset about, though they will not admit this even to themselves, is a loss of privilege and power, the loss of a world where they knew all the cues and their position was secure.

Personally, I see the diversification of culture as an increase in richness. The more cultures, the more languages, the more literatures, the better. I love ancient Greek and Latin literature and now, thanks to efforts like Tuft's Perseus Project, I have access to most of it for free. In addition I can access Arabic, Chinese, and African literature. The loss of a set of common references is small compared to the enormous richness of new reference and new vistas. The belief that somehow one culture's literature and languages are somehow superior to other culture's literature and languages is just another form of racism. Democracy in politics and in culture is messy and can be frightening, but is worth the journey.

A Little Rhyme

I have always avoided end rhymes. It was one of the those things that a contemporary poet just didn't do. I did, however, often sneak in internal rhyme patterns. I would do things like have the last word of one line rhyme with the middle word of the next line, or other more intricate patterns. Part of the pleasure of poetry to me is the puzzle aspect. Making the pieces fit into some arbitrary structure.

Lately I have been committing two cardinal sins: playing with end rhymes and playing with traditional metric feet. I stooped so low as to write a sonnet:


I imagine that you stand beside me
in meadows high on quiet mountain slopes
where hawks wing in the skies above and see
beyond the horizon of our small hopes
and fears. So much that I would tell you now
if only speech were left on my dull tongue
I would tell vast legends of what and how
it should have been how it should be sung
if sung as I dreamed it sung, but facts
are not as one would wish however strong
the wish. Instead we must accept our acts
and live the consequences, even wrong
in mountains where the sky itself would start
I imagine worlds with us no more apart

No challenge to Shakespeare here.

And then I worked on an elegaic piece--elegaic in the sense that it imitates, in some sense, Latin and Greek elegaic metric. Classical elegy consited in a dactylic hexameter followed by a pentameter line 6/5. In English one could argue the iambic pentameter is equivalent the the classical dactylic hexameter, culturally if not mathematically. So I wrote a metric of a iambic pentameter followed by a iambic tetrameter, with each couplet rhyming. This is my first experiment:

some think with every decision the world
divides—a new world formed, now curled

beside this one, each possibility
explored. Whatever can, will be.

In some parallel world just beyond reach
all that we let get away, each

lost moment, not lost, each failure unmade.
So, in another world, you stayed.

A flock of honking geese wings over head
the rain will arrive before bed

this afternoon spent staring out windows
the dry grass stirs as the damp breeze blows.

Just to be clear, I am not really obsessing about some lost love. The poems just seemed to trend that way.

I tried to avoid direct end stops on the rhyme. Most lines are enjambed, meaning you read through the line to the next. Also there is usually a caesura in the line after the couplet, a pause that keeps the poem from becoming too sing song--or so I hope.

The gist is that is is fun sometimes to play with traditional metrics.

Coming soon--at least I intend. This blog has been offered in fits and spurts--reviews of several books. I have been on a reading jag of late. Included in the reviews will be three books by China Mieville, The Information by Gleick, and a book about the city of Alexandria, among others

Finnegan's Wake 2

The second sentence, or not quite a sentence, the first of three, clauses shall we call them, each separated by a colon. (Grammatical structures are a bit fluid in the Wake.)


Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war:

"Sir Tristam" is both Tristam Shandy--the 18th century novel that most resembles Joyce in its scope and it's stylistic and linguistic playfulness--and Tristam (Tristan) of the medieval romance Tristan and Isolde. (Isolde will maker her appearence in a few paragraphs.) The "violer d' amores" is a stringed instrument, the tenor of the violin family, having six or seven stopped strings and an equal number of sympathetic strings, according to the dictionary. More literally it is the viol of love, and seems to stand in apposition to Tristam. "The short sea," the north sea? The British Channel? "Passen-core" recalls "passenger" but also passage, pass--I am sure I am missing some pun on another language. "Core," of course, means that it is central, this passage, re-arriving, having arrived and left and arrived again from "North Armorica."

"Armorica:" armor, amore, America, at least a three part pun. But what does it all mean? It supplies Tristam with his armor and his love, it may also express a complex attitude toward America, the home of so many Irish expatriots.

"Just as the Isthmus of Sutton separates Howth from the rest of Ireland, so the Bosphorus separates Europe and Asia..." (http://www.finnegansweb.com/wiki/index.php/Europe_Minor)

"wielder fight:" wield, fight, also, perhaps, welter weight as in a boxer. "penisoltate:" penis o late, pen isolate, peninsula.

The gist: Tristam is back to fight his war.

Finnegans Wake: First Sentence

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

The first sentence of Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce, though, actually, it is the end of the last sentence of the book:

A lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

And so the beginning is the end in this infinite circle of a book ( "a commodius vicus of recirculation")

The question arises why one should read this book, this book of the night, that revels in it's own obscurity, a book that focuses on the confused, vague images of a mind in various stages of sleep. Personally, I would say don't read it unless it entertains or amuses you. I am not a big advocate of must reads or should reads. Despite, or perhaps because, I received a classical education, I have very little respect for traditional educational paradigms. I rather like the wilderness of Internet learning, where each person can develop their own idiosyncratic path, their own canon. I feel no need to defend the classics. If they are indeed classic, if they still speak, they will find audience; if not, let the chaff fall where it will.

That being said, Finnegan's Wake amuses and entertains me. I intend to work through it sentence by sentence in this blog. I won't catch everything, in fact, I will probably miss more than I find. But I will entertain myself, at least. Consider it my form of sodoku. A mental exercise to stave off eventual Alzheimer's.

It won't be the only thing in the blog and I will label each blog that focus on the wake "FWake" so they can be asiduously avoided.

So, the first sentence. . .

Stephen's name, from Ulysses is hidden here: "st Eve and." And also Eve and Adam, according to Genesis, our progenitors, and the first of us to take the fall.

"riverrun," "swerve of shore to bend of bay, " refer to the landscape of Dublin, the river being the Liffey. A vicus was a civilian Roman settlement, but more importantly, it recalls Vico Giambattista an Italian thinker from the 1660s who wrote a book called "The New Science" that contains speculation on many things including the origins and evolution of human language. Commodius just means spacious, a settlement that can accommodate many--one such as Dublin perhaps. The use of the Latin terms for a settlement along side modern Dublin binds the past to the present in a circle of time.

Howth Castle lies close to the village of Howth, Fingal County in Ireland. It is the ancestral home of the line of the St Lawrence family (see: Earl of Howth) that died out in 1909. From 1425 to 1767 the title had been Lord Howth, holding the area since the Norman invasion of 1180. It is now held by their heirs, the Gaisford St. Lawrence family.

So Wikipedia.

The initials HCE in "Howth Castle and Environs" appear in many forms though out the book. Appropriate that the first appearance should be in the first sentence.

Public Poetry

A gray morning, sitting at the Starbucks in Lakewood, south of Tacoma, waiting for my son to finish his class. A world away Egyptians are celebrating into the dark. Mubarak has resigned. It is a fragile moment. It could herald the birth of a democracy or a new dictatorship. Let us hope the Egyptian people maintain their energy and focus long enough to see it through, long enough to develop the institutions that will preserve their victory.

As is my want, I wonder if poetry has any vital place in the public sphere; if it has any role in such events. Song does, that sometimes step sister of poetry. The Egyptian streets are full of singing. But poetry?

There have been times and places when poetry was on the lips of those who were involved in momentous, public acts, but I do not have a sense of that for this time, this place. Poetry seems relegated to the private, at most a meditation on the public, a reflection on such actions.

(I think of the cryptic, intensely private poems Celan wrote that were inspired by events in Israel)

I do not know the Egyptian literary scene, and my reflections may only reflect my sense of American poetry. The question is open. Is it possible in this time and place to have a legitimate (as opposed to sham, shallow, favor currying) public poetry?

Stray thoughts in a Starbucks

Sitting in a Starbucks in Lakeside, south Tacoma. Jazz on the radio. Conversations. The hiss of the expresso machine. Traffic outside. Tall grasses in a planter swaying and rustling in the wind. Rain on the tables and chairs on the patio. The traffic light bleeding red on the wet pavement. I am waiting here until my son finishes his class up at Pierce college.

I am typing this on my IPad, not the best tool for writing, but it does have the virtue of slowing me down, of making me pay more attention to each word. Sometimes I have thought that we would write better if we had to pay for each word we used. Think how carefully we would choose each word. Think how much thought we would give to whether what we had to say was worth the price. Though maybe not. Those compelled to write would write no matter what.

InterestIngly, I have written prose on the IPad, even have begun a short story, but somehow I can't imagine writing a poem on it. The feel is wrong. (I actually stll prefer pen and paper for poetry--and not just any paper. It has to have the right texture and qualities. I wonder if that says anything about the relevance of poetry to the contemporary world--or does it rather just say something about me.) Maybe that will change. Maybe I will write a series of IPad poems just to do it.

Trumpet and piano now on the background music mix. The rain continues. I should do something worth while today, but probably won't.

The day's coffee lingers bitter on the tongue. A good bitterness. It is the taste of what keeps me going.

It is time to pick up my son.