The Library

by William S. Burroughs

Reading this book makes you think all junkies are homosexuals. Old fashioned, needle in their vain, heroin addicts, the kind they used to find, feet in the air in dumpsters along my streets, subculture of freaks and drifters, I like to read about cos I never had the courage even to smoke a joint. Books that define you as a person, they keep beaconing you, so magnetic. Out of sight. My childish curiosity. Shy look, from within my safe cushioned life, at petty auto-destruction, we, as in I and world consuming geekdom, tend to mistake for freedom. Rebellion? For some exploring Arctic is a way of life, for some a visit to a museum to see the ship the afore mentioned guy froze his balls of for two years is and Adventure(tm). We like to watch the show, but would we live the life. Hell no! Otherwise I would. It's that simple. I might have an inclination, know all the pretty songs, but not really the motivation. We got people like William S. Burroughs to do that for us. Ours is slow middle class pampered decay. Tabletomania, maybe? St. John's Wort makes me sensitive to sunshine. It helps with my Serotonine level, also.

Well what did I actually learn from books, Train spotting, Go Ask Alice, Scanner Darkly? That I'm not prepared for that kind of life. Not ready to pay the price. If everybody did it, us middle class wonkers, what then, bottom would be like. Nah, I don't read to learn, well maybe just slightly. I read to relieve my fantasy, life where I'd be ready to break more conventions, inhibitions. And this angst, it's just the bitter taste of disappointment with myself, for not being able to take more risks.

Ultimately, we all end up on the same dark place.

By the way it is a damn good book, but you already knew that.

technorati tags:
addiction • beat • Burrows • drugs • generation • heroine • lunch • naked

by Will Self

Boring! Boredom! Like watching paint dry! Total disappointment. Could've said all this in half as many pages.

This one would be worthy only for the basic premise, so preposterous and yet so to the point. It's hard to see a good and original mindfuck with religion in this high and mighty. Centuries of authors shooting at easy target have take the toll. And then, it was so much more fun shooting at established spiritual values when there was someone to be scandalized, and when one actually risked being burned at the stake. Fashion is recycling, even in terms of big social questions. I will make a bold statement. We stand at the brink of slow tide of so called New Atheism creeping up down the simple, (someone would say trivial, tautological even) equation, Fundamentalism = Terrorism, so many, so called open minded free thinking people are so proud to suddenly wake up to. This book rides a wave of this suddenly uncovered obviousness. Spitting on scripture is in fashion again. Basing a civilization, forming it's fundamental values of morality, justice, even mundane aspects of everyday life around a book written ages ago in a galaxy far away, ripped out of its socio-historical context is, face it, silly. That is to say the least. It's down right grotesque. Dangerous, at best of times!

Well then, well then, so be it. Build a lab example, artificial model under the controlled circumstances to demonstrate clearly, free of any noise of our own particular heritages, the absurdity of the concept. Put it in reverse, let the rantings of misogynic, middle aged, jaded, right wing, too fast too old and, certainly overweight London Cab driver be what Bible and Koran are to us. Let him write his rantings, view of the world tainted by personal shortcomings and disappointments and bury them down under a tree. Let them then be rediscovered, at undisclosed point in future, and make them the cornerstone, this personal mental poison of his, of a new civilization struggling to arise from the muck of compulsory apocalyptic event. That is the brilliant point of this book!

Only problem is that is about only good point about it. I got choked at page one hundred and so. Its not that I stumbled on weird text message like spelling of post apocalyptic cockney. I gave up on plane English section. This book doesn't need that much of a runway. We don't need so much introduction. Anger, evil emotion, angst, we expect. How much deep description of a miserable life of a divorced cabby we need? We know he is pissed off. We know he is angry. Just let him talk, spill his disgust. Just mention his job, failed hair transplant and marital situation. Gives a day at the court and couple of rounds of his daily hustle, maybe to taste his bitter life. What we don't need his background check, what his grandpa was how he met his ex-wife. If his trouble is meant to be archetypal then don't make it unique. The crime is even worse cos the obvious target audience are members of the very same so called, western civilization, no doubt acquainted with cab drivers and woes of modern life.

Good idea ruined by crappy craft. We are very sad.

technorati tags:
Dave • novel • religion • Will Safe

Kurt Vonnegut, has died aged 84 today in New York.

technorati tags:
author • Dresden • Kurt Vonnegut • literature • Slaughterhouse 5

Srđan Valjarević

Uh, kako piše ovaj Srđan Valjarević. živi sam. Ne radi ništa. Šeta. Leči bolesne noge i sastavi priču tako ni iz čega, od beznačajnih stvari. A opet sve to nekako ispadne zanimljivo. Nikad mi ne bi palo napamet da od toga moće da ispadne knjiga, a eto njemu speva. Poneka priča, poneko zapažanje, muzika koju sluša, ljudi koje sreće slučajno i šta se vidi s njegovog prozora, i mic po mic sastavi ti celu sliku, priču potresnu i duboku. Ko bi reko da to i tako može, bez pretenzija i širokih zamaha. Pa se ja sad blesavim i probam, malo da pišem kao on. Znam neću moći da mu skinem fazon, samo majstor to ume, ali opet od pokušaja nema neke štete.

Evo stoji mi na stolu Komo, druga njegova knjiga. Čeka da je pročitam. Al' neka je, nek čeka još koji mesec. Bojim se razočaraću se. Takav sam ja sve mi brzo dosadi. A i ova prva, nekako mi se pred kraj otegla. Nek zaboravim malo, nek se uželim, biće bolje onda.

technorati tags:
B92 • Dnevnik druge zime • Komo • novel • roman • Serbia • Srđan Valjarević • Srbija

by Haruki Murakami

Sputnik of Love is a book you start to really respect only at its 3/4 mark, exactly at the point when miracle happens. It starts off cold and bare, devoid of any real emotion and the it shatters you. It just shatters you under the sheer weight of emotion, cold, wet loneliness, you share with the main character. There is no way to fight it off. You slip under it unaware, just like you were unaware of emotional detachment that preceded it. But when it's there it's there, the bitter feeling at the root of your tung. And you realize what the big trick was. That long barren introduction, list of events and memories constituting two common lives and one relationship, it was just a buildup. The emotion was always there. It just become evident with the absence of its center of gravity. An oriental martial art no doubt. Somethings become obvious only with absence of things that occluded them. We realize how some much things meant to us only when we lose them. Loss is a lens through which we define our life in a new manner. It can be rich or poor only in reference to something else. Content in one moment emotionally crippled in another, yet we move on. Just the bitter taste stays, and pain of realization.

I am tainted by prejudice. Life on the overcrowded island? I have seen Lost in Translation. Japanese minimalism. Autistic nature of certain nations? I picked up this book at random out of five other books by the same author, and I don't know if it is a good place to start reading Murakami's works. What I am sure is that it has nothing to do with homosexuality. Don't believe other critics. They are chasing the obvious. Lesbianism is just a ploy here, used to simplify the emotional interplay of characters. To streamline it. To help us focus on the bare bones of the three way emotional trap. Any other male female, hetero, homo, combination would require redundant complexity, forest of wires and wheels and cogs which would result in burlesque, requiring more explanation then the message it aims to deliver. Instead we have an elegant and deeply touching human story, which certainly transcends any particular cultural setting which my prejudiced mind might ascribe.

technorati tags:
book • greece • Greece • homosexuality • Japan • Murakami • novel • Sputnik of Love

by Truman Capote

God help me, I was just about to post one of them, sugar overload texts full of praise for Truman Capote's, In Cold Blood when realization struck me. I have all the reasons to hate both the men and the book. Marvelous thing he did, opened the Pandora's box upon us.

Application of conventional novel writing methods to reporting about a real life crime. That is the big catch here, genre bending moment. Every teacher will tell you. And that is, exactly, the brightest moment and the biggest transgression of this book. All these daytime drama biopics, straight-to-TV wannabes, Truman Capote showed them the way. And then on the end we got to wrestle with all their excrement, served to us in form of all these based-on-a-true-story flicks. But, hey, come on, just cos you've read a good book, dismantled it and saw how it was made and how it works, doesn't mean you're gonna be a great author. It's important to be first. Only then you get your chance at making history, the rest is just TV crap. We can't blame a writer for experiment running out of control.

PS.
The book it self is a marvel. Rolls down really like old fashioned movie script, with well measured tempo. It shows us just how far the same old kind of merry slackers, that Jack Kerouac & friends wrote about, could actually go. Joke is a joke, and happy hippie drifting free is a sweet lifestyle choice. But some people, it seams, don't know the difference between swiping a couple of bottles of booze and quadruple premeditated murder + armed robbery.

PPS.
No matter that I like this book so much, but all this childish fascination about violence, does it glorify it? The bloody crime it self? Well, yeah, I'm sure he was, childishly fascinated by the sheer force of malevolence of a deranged human mind.

technorati tags:
americana • book • Capote • classic • Cold Blood • crime • fiction • Kansas • murder • non-fiction • novel • review • Truman • USA

by Philip Roth

Catcher in the Rye? If I have read Portnoy's complaint in my teenage days I'd probably kill both of my parents. When you are kid the world is black and white and you believe that your momma and papa love you unconditionally and wish only the best for you, and then one day you start to redefine your relationship with them. This book is so successful cos it is universal. Everyone has anxieties, and part about being Jewish spice it up. This book transcends it's cultural frame, and at least at some point touches every human male. If anyone tells you, that it doesn't work for him, and that he never had any such fears, probably needs it the most. But then, it swings both ways. Sure, it's a great alibi. Blame all your shortcomings, your laziness, incompetence and lack of ambition on your parents. Like everyone, I've been there, and probably still am. One day I might strike the perfect balance, that mythical chord, between gratitude and anger. This one goes straight to top 10 o' mandatory school literature for the poor little pups of our Island(tm).

technorati tags:
Americana • book • Jews • novel • parents • Philip Roth • Portnoy • USA

...and not necessarily in this order:

Gateway – Frederic Pohl (horrors of exploration, survivor guilt)

Space Merchants – Frederic Pohl (overpopulation, GM food, terrorism, ecology, corporate rule)

Brave New World – Aldus Huxley (totalitarian anti-utopia)

1984 - George Orwell (totalitarian anti-utopia)

War of the Worlds – H. G. Walls (we get our asses kicked by aliens)

Clock Work Orange - Anthony Burgess [ToDo]

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury (totalitarian anti-utopia, Nazi, fear of intellectuals) [ToDo]

Ubik – Philip K. Dick (death)

Flow my Tears, Said the Policeman – Philip K. Dick (eugenics, cast segregation)

Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick (alternative history)

Clans of Alphane Moon – Philip K. Dick (we are all crazy, but so what)

Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick (junkey wisdom)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Philip K. Dick (alienation)

Dune – Frank Herbert (world politics, strategy play, evils of thinking machines, genetic manipulation, brainwashing, immortality through cloning, transcendence, genetic memory)

Solaris – Stanislav Lem (failure to communicate) [ToDo]

Books that are not Sci-Fi but we would like to pretend that they are:

Slaughterhouse V – Kurt Vonnegut (war trauma, Dresden)

Lord of the Flies – William Golding (our true beastly nature)

The Animal Farm – George Orwell (how revolutions fail)

by Philip K. Dick

Sometime back in 19th century, scientists have invented Psychology, and the immediately proceeded to invent names of all the different mental illnesses and psychological conditions they could think of. A lot of money depended on this. But, soon they discovered that they have run out of normal people to pin on them different diagnostic labels.

Hey, I guess everyone has something like this, a small and inconspicuous book that for some reason shaped your mind, made you understand something, sort out a bit of this messy world floating around your head.

Sometime in the future someone dumped a whole lot of mental patients on an uninhabited moon orbiting Alpha Centaur, in a sort of a planet wide asylum. War with neighbors erupted and colonization of the system failed. Central Government(tm) retreated with it's tail curled between it's legs, and guess who got left stranded in the middle of demilitarized zone. The ones they supposedly cared about most. Brilliant! Now, they are back and want to impose there old ways, and lock everyone back in to an asylum. But, things have changed a bit around here in all the years they were gone. A functional society has evolved, a complex society of clans and social groups based on previous mental history of each individual, and where every group has its place in social structure.

There is no going back. And who are they to tell us who is normal and who needs to be hospitalized. Who are they to impose rules and pass judgments if all of you are leaving just fine, thank you, on your own with all you peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. We are all different and unique, and as long as you don't trespass on other people's freedoms, it's nobodies business how you live your life. I guess world needed a book like thins, and not about Jews and Blacks and Gays, not loaded with history or clouded by day by day politics to teach us the true idea about tolerance. You might be to arrogant to feel any compassion to Puerto Ricans but, hey in this wide society of ours even Left Handed people were discriminated against! Next time it'll be about the way you wear your hair, oups, we already had that. Next time it'll be you!

Clans of Alphane Moons:
The Pares are people suffering from paranoia, a statesman class.

The Manses are suffering from bipolar disorder, most active class, a warrior class.

The Skitzes are the ones suffering from simple schizophrenia, a poet class, religious visionaries.

The Heebs clan consists of people suffering from disorganized schizophrenia, manual labor.

The Polys suffer from polymorphic schizophrenia, a creative element of society, producing new ideas.

The Ob-Coms are the ones with obsessive-compulsive disorder, clerks and office holders.

The Deps are suffering from clinical depression.

technorati tags:
alpha • asylum • bipolar disorder • book • depression • Dick • fiction • manic • mental • mental health • obsessive compulsive • paranoia • patients • Philip • Philip K Dick • schizophrenia • Sci-Fi • science • tolerance

by V. Nabokov

Oh, you're so mean Mr. Nabokov, playing tricks on us. You almost lured us in to your carefully crafted trap, the same way you lured that countless horde of critics. But are they to blame, silly them? They never could resist jumping on such a bait. Blame it on intellectualism, snobism if you want. But that's the only reason that we came, to be tricked and tricked in multiple way, following yet again the mind of transgressor, dirty old Russian professor. Or was he a king maybe? Was he just a figment of imagination of that poet John Shade. Or was it the other way around him the true genius, Inventor of Zambla. Oh, but that's exactly what them literary scholars do. Going down the list, iterating all possible combinations of characters and alternative interpretations of reality, each more exotic and esoteric, like they could handle any of them, sold separately. It's endless and it's tiering and it's futile, all that surgical analysis.

This book is about projecting your life, and superimposing it on unsuspecting and innocent by standards and inanimate objects. In the same way your old, nasty, Mr. Kinbot projects his own super ego upon John Shade's poem, so too they are projecting their own fancies upon your work. That is the point of this book and that is the greatest trick you pulled. I know that you are grinning now!

technorati tags:
book, • Nabokov • novel, • pale fire, • review,