James
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This Guy
by
James Lewelling (Goodreads Author)
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Just to let you know, this is now available on the kindle. I revised the text and added original artwork.
(first paragraph)
It was the very next morning that this guy conceived of his evil scheme to get even with this other guy (Ned). Though complicate...moreJust to let you know, this is now available on the kindle. I revised the text and added original artwork.
(first paragraph)
It was the very next morning that this guy conceived of his evil scheme to get even with this other guy (Ned). Though complicated—involving multiple phases and elaborate preparations for each phase—there it was the very moment he woke up, all worked out in his head, glinting in the darkness behind his eyelids like a metallic, freshly-oiled, spring-driven device...(less)
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The first thing to say about this book is that it reminds you that literature can have real power. I read this book first in 1982 as a sophomore in high school. Reading it again now was quite a shock. 1) As I was reading it this second time, I found ...moreThe first thing to say about this book is that it reminds you that literature can have real power. I read this book first in 1982 as a sophomore in high school. Reading it again now was quite a shock. 1) As I was reading it this second time, I found I remembered it in great detail but not as something I'd read but almost as something that had actually happened to me. 2) The book was the first truly serious piece of literature I had ever read. I remember being entranced as a high school but much more being fascinated by the ideas about death and nihilism and god and morality and socialism etc... In reading it the second time with half a life of experience, I realized how that original exposure--not so much the ideas as the moral drama underlying them--has haunted and informed my experience all these long years. I almost feel as if I hadn't read the book then and there, I wouldn't be the same person I am here and now. 3)the book is fantastic of course for high school or college students but even better for people with more life under their belts. Dostoevsky creates a dramatic effect in this book that is simultaneously absolutely compelling and painful to experience. What's more he does it without violence or cruelty (e.g. not like Lars Von Trier). The basic trick, of course, is rooted in Myshkin, "a perfectly beautiful man" that is one who is a) perfectly polite, b) speaks with absolute candor c) approaches everyone with unfailing compassion. It's the tension between candor and compassion that drives the effect. We are forced to see all of the characters with perfect candor--they are almost to a man infuriatingly morally vain and egoistic--and somehow (through Myshkin) simultaneously we are inspired to compassion. It's a bleeding situation in that one is constantly compelled to judge--even the tiniest falsity stands out in unflinching clarity--and at the same time feel compassion for the characters. It's almost like being asked over and over again to damn and then forgive oneself. Very difficult. I actually could not get through, as an adult, Myshkin's climactic monologue before the aristocrats in one sitting. I had to put it down and rest. 4) Lastly, miraculously, Myshkin, who at the time was taken either on one hand as a freak with a unique pathological psychology or at the other extreme as an allegorical figure (standing in for Christ), has actually become a modern "type" so to speak. You find his incarnations everywhere. From Elwood P. Dowd (of Harvey fame), to the Little Prince, to Bulgakov's historical Jesus in the Master and Margarita to (maybe it's a stretch though some of it there) Charlie Brown. He's the Nice Guy Who Finishes Last. But in Dostoevsky, he's a tragic rather than comic figure. That is, Myschkin finishes last because he's a nice guy.(less)
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This is a well plotted literary thriller. Lots of dramatic situations unfolding simultaneously: a murder mystery (of course), an extra-marital affair (of course), the death of a child (of course), a disease (of course), and child molestation (can't l...moreThis is a well plotted literary thriller. Lots of dramatic situations unfolding simultaneously: a murder mystery (of course), an extra-marital affair (of course), the death of a child (of course), a disease (of course), and child molestation (can't leave that out). I really had higher hopes for J.M. Coetzee though. He had been recommended to my by people whom I respect and he won the Nobel Prize and everything etc... Unfortunately I found, despite its considerable strengths--eg it was engaging. In his fictional Dostoevsky, Coetzee created a vivid and compelling character, and I turned the pages eagerly through about three quarters of the book, though I admit only skimmed the last fifteen pages because by then, quite honestly I'd had enough of this nonsense--this book embodies pretty much everything that has come to really bug me about contemporary literature. First and foremost, the structure is fatally flawed in an obvious way but the author seems not to care, or feel that the reader will not notice. Here the problem is Coetzee's extensive use of echoes of Crime and Punishment, most notably in the interrogation scenes between Dostoevsky and the cop Maximov, Dostoevsky's repeated attempts to get rid of "evidence," and most prominently the theme of corruption of innocence embodied in the vision of the child prostitute near the end of Crime and Punishment. At first I enjoyed recognizing the close repetition of scenes from Crime and Punishment, thinking (mistakenly) that Coetzee was suggesting the biographical sources for those scenes. It was kind of clever and one thought, sure maybe it happened that way. But then as the characters in Coetzee began to discuss Crime and Punishment itself, I realized that in the time frame of Coetzee's book, D. had already written Crime and Punishment. Now, the narrative is told in third person limited--that is the events of the story are told as if from the outside but filtered exclusively through Dostoevsky's point of view--but somehow Coetzee's Dostoevsky seems completely unaware that he is playing out scenes very closely resembling those he had already written himself! That doesn't make sense. If you take this inconsistency as intentional, you get a very bizarre piece of dramatic irony (somehow D. has forgotten his own book and is now doomed to play out the scenes he has written?; but that's not there. Clearly he hasn't forgotten his book at all as he discusses it with the other characters.) No actually. this inconsistency just represents a bit of integrity (large bit) sacrificed to produce for the reader the bookish pleasure of recognizing a literary allusion that is otherwise content-less. It's kind of a downer then to realize that the literary part of the book (and there's a lot of what looks like poetry but is actually merely portentous) is more or less ornamental. (This is even more obvious in its references to The Demons. Apparently if the characters talk about demons and spirits and the author refers to demons and spirits, well, somehow that brings to bear the reality and weight of Dostoevsky's book called The Demons, in which, oddly the characters don't, if memory serves, talk much about demons or possession at all--they are too busy living it.) The book is a costume drama and at its core actually not much more than a "relationship" story that could have been set in the 80s (1980s) and thus embodies the second thing that really bugs me about contemporary literature--the relationship story in which all the thematic import (meaning psychology primarily but also politics, of course) and 95% of the emotional weight is crammed onto the very small stage of the bedroom. It's just not fair to sex to freight every aspect of it (whether, how, and if not, why not?) as revelatory of every psychological, political and social force under the sun. (One weird flattening effect of this is exemplified in the narrator's, speaking from D.'s point of view, speculation that Nechaev, the nihilistic baddie of the piece who at that point in the narrative has arranged murders and also betrayed his associates to the police, is probably also an inconsiderate lover.) One gets the feeling, after maybe the second or third time, that no matter how portentously and pretentiously the sex scenes in the book are told, the point of them is actually quite simple and old fashioned e.g. merely to titillate when the plot starts to flag. Certainly they are spaced that way and it is undeniable, the way the book is written, that one of the sources of suspense it draws upon involves suggesting to the reader that at some point the fictional Dostoevsky, or some proxy, might actually violate a child--and that's just a bit sick. What's worse, it is probably this flirtation with the "transgressive" that convinced the critical establishment that the work was somehow important and "serious." On the other hand, it's nice that a book about Dostoevsky could make it the mainstream. It revived my interest in his work. I hope readers who have not experienced Dostoevsky's work will not either be put off from doing so or feel that they have done so already by reading Coetzee's book because Crime and Punishment, The Demons, The Idiot etc... are the real thing.(less)
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I have to give the whole thing five stars just for chapter's 9 and 10 of the first part where the town becomes suspicious of Chichikov and institutes an inquiry. There, the narrative takes on the very funny and intense absurdism that you find in "The...moreI have to give the whole thing five stars just for chapter's 9 and 10 of the first part where the town becomes suspicious of Chichikov and institutes an inquiry. There, the narrative takes on the very funny and intense absurdism that you find in "The Cloak" or "Diary of Madman" or "The Nose." The whole Captain Kopeiken digression is fantastic as is the testimony of Nozdrev--the pathological liar. Both passages work a bit like Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch. The Postmaster suggests that Chichikov's true identity is Captain Kopeikin but in the very first paragraph he tells us that the Captain had lost an arm and a leg in the war (Chichikov has all his limbs). Nonetheless the story of Kopeiken goes on and on in great detail and with ever increasing irrelevance to the matter at hand. But the more pointless the narrative becomes, the funnier it is. Similarly, the entire town (and the reader) is fully aware that Nosdrev is a pathological liar (almost everything he has said in the narrative thus far has been a lie) and yet they question him anyway and listen to his increasingly elaborate and implausible response. It's almost like he's daring the reader to believe even a single word that he says only to pull the rug out from under him or her at every occasion. It's fantastic and what's more feels incredibly vital. That brings up a second source of interest, for me, in both parts of the work. In writing the second part at least, we know almost for sure that Gogol had fallen under the shadow of the mental illness that would later kill him. (He literally starved himself to death.) He had begun to have second thoughts about his whole life, even coming to consider the writing of fiction as immoral. With this spiritual crisis happening in the background, the text takes on a kind of horrific pathos. First off, the lacunae and odd repetitions of the unfinished second part--a book that he burned twice and re-wrote one and half times before he died--suggest a consciousness in the process of disintegration. The formerly urbane Chichikov begins, for example, to repeat whole paragraphs verbatim. Even more painfully, again and again the most vital characters in the work are consistently the liars and the gourmands. Gogol does create a paragon of virtue in the person of Constantine Thedorovitch Kostanzhogio but his righteous rants can't hold a candle to Nozdrev's ridiculous lies. Lastly, the work is sprinkled with images that at first seem intended as satire but cross decidedly into a realm of horror worthy of Dante. For example, his portrait of Plushkin, the miser, after Chichikov has given him a paltry sum of money in exchange for signing over his dead serfs:
“Over Plushkin’s wooden features there had gleamed a ray of warmth—a ray which expressed if not feeling, at all events feeling’s pale reflection. Just such a phenomenon may be witnessed when, for a brief moment, a drowning man makes a last re-appearance on the surface of a river, and there rises from the crowd lining the banks a ray of hope that even yet the exhausted hands may clutch the rope which has been thrown him—may clutch it before the surface of the unstable element shall have resumed for ever its calm, dread vacuity. But the hope is short-lived, and the hands disappear. Even so did Plushkin’s face, after its momentary manifestation of feeling, become meaner and more insensible than ever.”
A man drowning in himself.(less)
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" Boy, I feel foolish. I got this on the kindle for free and thought it was the whole thing! Still it would make a great abrupt ending. I'll have to rea...moreBoy, I feel foolish. I got this on the kindle for free and thought it was the whole thing! Still it would make a great abrupt ending. I'll have to read the second half. :)(less)"
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
The Faust ending works in a very similar fashion. It's especially striking if you compare it to the ending of Marlowe's The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus. Marlowe's play ends more or less as one might expect. Faust spends his last night wishing he had never made a deal with the devil while a couple of sympathetic scholars pray for him in the next room. The devils show up and take him to Hell and then the chorus walks on to deliver the moral of this cautionary tale, reminding the audience not to "wonder at unlawful things,/whose deepness doth entice such forward wits/to practice more than heavenly power permits." The ending of Goethe's Faust is surprising, indirect and a hundred times more powerful. He prepares for it with a brilliant piece of narrative misdirection. On the surface, the narrative pull of the play is what one might expect, the increasingly exotic scenes and secrets Faust becomes privy to as a result of his partnership with Mephistopheles. However about halfway through, the plot appears to veer into what seems an inordinately long digression, Faust's seduction, with Mephistopheles' help, of the pure and virginal Margaret. Faust's feelings toward Margaret are fiendishly ambiguous. While it's clear Faust never has any intention of marrying Margaret or taking care of her longterm, his rhapsodizing monologues about her seem to suggest more transcendent "true love" than just lust. Nonetheless when Margaret's brother--ironically named "Valentine"--finds out her reputation has been ruined by the affair he disowns her, proclaims her a whore and is murdered by Faust. Thereafter the plot seems to return its main focus as Mephistopheles takes Faust off to witness Walpurgis Night, a witch convention that takes the form of a wild party. Walpurgis night is grotesque and supremely distracting. (At one point, Faust finds himself dancing with a nude witch). The audience might be forgiven for having forgotten all about Margaret, though we are reminded of her when Faust spots a witch that takes on the form of the true love of whoever gazes at her (in Faust's case, Margaret). Near the end of the festival, Mephistopheles, more or less out of the blue, informs Faustus that Margaret is in prison. Faust insists on being taken there with the idea of mounting a rescue. Here's where the Fassbinder ending begins. After all the magic and fantastic horror, we are confronted with the more mundane but much more terrifying horror of the fate of a fallen woman. Time seems to have been dilated during Walpurgis Night. More than nine months have passed, Margaret is in prison for having committed infanticide on her and Faust's illegitimate offspring. The scandal seems to also have killed Margaret's mother--though Margaret suggests that she has killed her herself. Margaret is out of her senses crying because the guards of the prison have taken the child's corpse away from her. She is still in love with Faust (though he cannot bring himself to kiss her in her present condition) and seems to regard his love for her redemptive at least in the sense that she still craves his "true love" even after all she's been through. Surprisingly, for Faust and the audience, Margaret doesn't seem to want to be rescued. Again, Goethe's romantic hero, is made to seem vaguely comic if not out and out ridiculous as he continually chides Margaret to come with him out of the prison before the guards discover him there. (He even tries to physically carry her out). But Margaret won't budge. Instead she wants Faust to affirm his (formerly) transcendent love for her. When he will not, she turns to God, confessing her guilt and asking for forgiveness. At this point the tables turn abruptly and dizzyingly (the whole universe of the play turns in fact) as Margaret fears for Faust. She "shudders" for him in his damnation. The ending is brilliantly terse. Margaret is judged, saved, Faust takes off, and the play ends with the saved Margaret crying out to the damned Faust, using his first name. All in 11 words of dialog: (MEPHISTOPHELES: She is judged! VOICE (from above): She is saved! MEPHISTOPHELES (to FAUST): Hither to me! VOICE (from within, dying away): Henry! Henry!(less)
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
1) "Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!"
What a perfect statement of th...moreTwo quotes:
1) "Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!"
What a perfect statement of the metaphysics behind the central tenet of Romantic Egoism, the beautiful dream of a completely autonomous individual, to whit the Free Spirit! One thinks of Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud..." etc...
Poor Werther! Goethe makes it pretty clear that this is a profoundly delusional state. That's sorrowful indeed! Even horrifying as Werther over the course of the book is confronted with a series of increasingly grotesque foils parodying his outlook/condition, perhaps the most frightening, Henry, "a person of the lower orders" but nonetheless--like his better, Werther--driven to distraction by a love he cannot have. Werther finds Henry wandering a hillside gathering flowers, pining for the halcyon days of his former happiness, which were not, as it turns out, the happier period of a love affair, but rather, as his mother informs us, "one whole year [he spent] quite raving and chained down in a madhouse." I emphasize the difference in social status between Werther and Henry because the social hierarchy in conjunction with Werther's rather fey gestures towards transcending it--but how do you get above a hierarchy?--form the central and cutting irony of the book. Werther seems to regard differences between the classes as a lot of nonsense made the most of by silly superficial people lacking his depth of feeling and egalitarian sensibility. At same time, Goethe makes clear through Werther's own words that Werther more or less sustains himself on the upward looking gaze of others (he is particularly at home with children) and that his egalitarianism is more a kind of magnanimosity (what a word!) that he can only bestow upon those he regards as social inferiors.
It's a cutting irony indeed. In fact, Goethe more or less spiritually disembowels poor Werther with it at the novel's climactic moment, which brings us to the second quote. So near the end, Werther finally gets his way, so to speak. He succeeds in inducing (seducing)the now married Charlotte into confessing her love for him and they smooch and everything. She then locks herself in her room distraught and Werther falls prostrate on the floor. And then Goethe throws us this incredible curve ball:
(Remember Werther has been (not altogether obliquely) threatening the reader with his suicide throughout the book and if he is to be believed at all has arrived at this last meeting with Charlotte with the intention of merely making his last goodbyes before he takes his own life. That she finally confesses her love for him and they kiss and everything while he stands on the brink of the grave is, if you take Werther at his word, a supremely tragic ironic reversal but then tragedy turns to farce.)
"Werther held out his arms, but did not dare to detain her. He continued on the ground, with his head resting on the sofa, for half an hour, till he heard a noise which brought him to his senses. The servant entered. He then walked up and down the room; and when he was left alone, he went to Charlotte's door, and, in a low voice, said "Charlotte, Charlotte! but one word more, one last adieu!"
(my italics)
What an awkward moment! Werther has finally attained his heart's free and most beautiful desire and as a truly autonomous individual it is enough that he knows she loves him; he need not become involved with her (she's a married woman after all). All that's left is to make his final goodbye and go off to blow his brains out. But then that pesky servant shows up! In the name of his beautiful sensibility, Werther can ruin a marriage, warp the lives of those around him and even take his own life. But he can't do it in front of the servants. If there is a hell for failed romantics, it must consist of an infinite extension of that awful pacing.(less)
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" Derek wrote: "hey James, good to hear from you! Glad you liked the new fish, how'd you get a hold of it? Are you back stateside? We are headed back ou...moreDerek wrote: "hey James, good to hear from you! Glad you liked the new fish, how'd you get a hold of it? Are you back stateside? We are headed back out, this time to Rome, this time for good. We'll still be goin..."
Mike Fallon sent me a bunch of journals. Yours by far was the most interesting. We are going back for the summer to the midwest (Michigan, Wisconsin) but have yet to make a feasible long term escape plan from Abu Dhabi. So we'll be back here for the next couple of years at least. It would be really cool if you visited at some point. This is is a layover point I imagine between Rome and Africa. I am finishing a big project up right now and should have some excerpts to send to Sleeping Fish in the next couple of months. Best, Jim(less)"
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"I hope you like this. It was one of my favorites. I still get the urge to mix a gin fizz every now and again. "
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4.43 avg rating — 7 ratings
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published
2006
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2 editions
4.00 avg rating — 7 ratings
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published
2008
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to:
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