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George Anderson: Notes for a Love Song in Imperial Time
Theo Fales is a one-time historian turned book editor who specializes in ghostwriting the memoirs of leading American policy-makers. For over twenty-five years, Theo has been helping retired generals and CIA directors justify their decisions in the first-person. One day, however, hearing a song at a colleague's memorial service, Theo has a vision: he senses, in the music, a completely different way to live. He becomes obsessed by a need to align musical time with the metre of his own life and prose. Theo's method opens onto two seemingly contradictory interior landscapes: one, a rage of identification with a college classmate who has written and signed the legal document justifying the use of torture by the US; the other, a love for the singer best known for her interpretations of the composer who wrote that vital song. Theo commits himself to the idea that only through his method will he be able to save himself. Is he mad, or has history itself lost its way?
177 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 22, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 26, 2013
A coruscating attack on human rights abuses, American foreign policy and the whole lamebrained kerfuffle that was the last war. Theo Fales, ex-ghostwriter for US military criminals, writes to Justice Attorney David Kallen about the torture of detainees undergone in 2002, suggesting a new historical method to redeem his lapses in human rights. The short text that follows is written in a sort of poetical legalese—technical language is interspersed with Dimock’s strangely affecting prose, not always in a wholly satisfying way—as Fales combines a questionnaire alongside anecdotal analysis, historical hagiography (of George Anderson—a slave who lived to over 107), and personal reflection. This is certainly an ambitious attempt and a wholly new form, except the novel itself is concise, weighted down by its legalese, and towards the end, where the 20-page legal document the Americans used to defend their torture policy is included to ram home the censure, a little pulpitty. A necessary and challenging and important novel, all the same.
May 10, 2013
(4.5.) It's hard to beat Heidi Julavits' review of this book in the NY Times Book Review.
One thing I can say is that this is a book that makes it especially clear that rating a book on how much you "like" or "enjoy" it is not really appropriate. This is not a book intended for liking and enjoying. There is even less enjoyment here than in Dimock's first novel, A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family. What is somewhat enjoyable is thinking about the book afterwards.
I also don't think this novel is quite as successful as A Short Rhetoric. However, this is another amazing novel that makes the reader think in ways one is not used to thinking. It's too bad that we had to wait 15 years for Dimock to write another novel.
One thing I can say is that this is a book that makes it especially clear that rating a book on how much you "like" or "enjoy" it is not really appropriate. This is not a book intended for liking and enjoying. There is even less enjoyment here than in Dimock's first novel, A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family. What is somewhat enjoyable is thinking about the book afterwards.
I also don't think this novel is quite as successful as A Short Rhetoric. However, this is another amazing novel that makes the reader think in ways one is not used to thinking. It's too bad that we had to wait 15 years for Dimock to write another novel.
August 16, 2014
As a review below remarks, this is truly a sui generis text: I have never read anything like it, nor do I even know where to begin discussing it, especially in the mindset I’ve been in of late. As such, I would direct interested readers to Scott Esposito’s very thoughtful review of the book in the Washington Post. For those who want to read my paltry attempt, carry on:
Dimock uses his narrator, Theo Fales, to question history, what it means to be an American when terror is the norm, how complicit all citizens are in this government-sanctioned reign of terror, and also how we can begin to fathom new and alternative histories through practicing logic based on compassion. These aren’t new questions, of course; these are the questions we all face in the world in which we now live—whether post-9/11 or post-George W. Bush, take your pick.
But Fales is writing to David Kallen, whom, as Esposito notes, is modeled on Daniel Levin whose memorandum in 2004 declared torture and punishment as enacted by the Bush regime to be lawful, despite having allowed himself to undergo torture on his own person in order to come to an experiential conclusion. Fales wonders if Kallen’s decision was coerced, and if so, why and by whom? Why would a person who could say “stop”—and who did say “stop”—when undergoing torture then declare the same methods as humane?
Interestingly, Fales doesn’t blame Kallen; instead, he sees Kallen’s memo as rooted in a kind of imperial rule that does not comprehend either complicity or reciprocity. Urging Kallen to read his letter before a meeting he sets in the future, Fales somehow manages to build not only a convincing portrait of what it means to be an American today—in logistic terms, and in the questions posed to those in positions of power—but also what forces bind us to others despite difference in cultures, ranks, power differentials, and so on.
Fales’s letter, then, becomes a kind of self-help book, with four weeks’ worth of exercises he claims to have perfected after rigorous practice himself, exercises he believes will lay the groundwork for Kallen to consider in more human terms the repercussions of his actions before they meet to discuss this in the future—especially over an imagined or fantasized discussion between the two of the state of Fallujah.
Fales latches on to the historical figure George Anderson, an African-American who was a slave, saw the end of slavery, and who lived to the ripe age of one-hundred-and-six. The discourse of slavery underlies Fales’s logic in terms of compassion and complicity, and it is also one that he joins to the musical realm: there are notes that are related to the philosophical and logic problems each week’s exercise has Kallen undertaking, notes that are related to love, a heteronormative model that Fales believes can overcome all obstacles and help build a foundation between people. (This is where Dimock lost me, if only because the book appears to privilege a heterosexual paradigm for the politics of forgiveness and change, while preventing others from accessing these necessary tasks who do not fall into, buy into, or adhere to the heteronormative model’s own hypocrisies.)
Logic problems, philosophical equations, and a lament for the “New World dead,” George Anderson manages to maneuver between and across all sorts of textual and political borderlines. This is much to its credit. However, there are also places where the repetitions and recurrences of certain exercises can make for plodding reading indeed: as a closed text, one would imagine Dimock would be better aware of engaging his reader, but at times it seems he is only aware of Kallen/Levin.
Dimock uses his narrator, Theo Fales, to question history, what it means to be an American when terror is the norm, how complicit all citizens are in this government-sanctioned reign of terror, and also how we can begin to fathom new and alternative histories through practicing logic based on compassion. These aren’t new questions, of course; these are the questions we all face in the world in which we now live—whether post-9/11 or post-George W. Bush, take your pick.
But Fales is writing to David Kallen, whom, as Esposito notes, is modeled on Daniel Levin whose memorandum in 2004 declared torture and punishment as enacted by the Bush regime to be lawful, despite having allowed himself to undergo torture on his own person in order to come to an experiential conclusion. Fales wonders if Kallen’s decision was coerced, and if so, why and by whom? Why would a person who could say “stop”—and who did say “stop”—when undergoing torture then declare the same methods as humane?
Interestingly, Fales doesn’t blame Kallen; instead, he sees Kallen’s memo as rooted in a kind of imperial rule that does not comprehend either complicity or reciprocity. Urging Kallen to read his letter before a meeting he sets in the future, Fales somehow manages to build not only a convincing portrait of what it means to be an American today—in logistic terms, and in the questions posed to those in positions of power—but also what forces bind us to others despite difference in cultures, ranks, power differentials, and so on.
Fales’s letter, then, becomes a kind of self-help book, with four weeks’ worth of exercises he claims to have perfected after rigorous practice himself, exercises he believes will lay the groundwork for Kallen to consider in more human terms the repercussions of his actions before they meet to discuss this in the future—especially over an imagined or fantasized discussion between the two of the state of Fallujah.
Fales latches on to the historical figure George Anderson, an African-American who was a slave, saw the end of slavery, and who lived to the ripe age of one-hundred-and-six. The discourse of slavery underlies Fales’s logic in terms of compassion and complicity, and it is also one that he joins to the musical realm: there are notes that are related to the philosophical and logic problems each week’s exercise has Kallen undertaking, notes that are related to love, a heteronormative model that Fales believes can overcome all obstacles and help build a foundation between people. (This is where Dimock lost me, if only because the book appears to privilege a heterosexual paradigm for the politics of forgiveness and change, while preventing others from accessing these necessary tasks who do not fall into, buy into, or adhere to the heteronormative model’s own hypocrisies.)
Logic problems, philosophical equations, and a lament for the “New World dead,” George Anderson manages to maneuver between and across all sorts of textual and political borderlines. This is much to its credit. However, there are also places where the repetitions and recurrences of certain exercises can make for plodding reading indeed: as a closed text, one would imagine Dimock would be better aware of engaging his reader, but at times it seems he is only aware of Kallen/Levin.
October 22, 2013
why can't usa have a truth and reconciliation process? even israel toys with it. south africa, guatamala, even chile (about as arrogant a people there is, next to usa that is) have used this method to actually address wrongdoing in the name of usa, which is, the people of usa. funny huh?
oh sure, we, us, have done the whole, "oohhhh, soooo sooorrrryyyyy" thing, for indians in 2010 http://www.nativenewsnetwork.com/apol... ; for blacks for slavery, jim crow, and hell any other thing we may be sorry for in 2008 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
so how 'bout torture and illegal war? sure sure, shrub and co ain;t the first ones to use terror and illegal war against other sovereign nations to... to what? make more money mainly, the best of reasons for inhuman violence and brutality.
so peter dimock puts this question to his fiction. usa is made up of all citizens equal in running usa, so all citizens equal in guilt when fat cats, in our name, torture and terrorize other countries, or pay others to do it for us.
dimock proves this point just fine and dandy, via a written set of letters to his college chum slash torture memo writer.
but then, what to do about it? dimock tries in this novel to implement a thought experiment that me/you/reader can play along with, in where we convict/vince ourselves of guilt, then atone.
it's one of the weirdest novels you may read. and could push the reader to a brink of understanding, that if not satisfying or even truthful, could convince you you are not alone in this grand ol usa. because really? what can one person do, all by themselves? see heidi julavit's thoughts on this crazy novel here http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/boo...
oh sure, we, us, have done the whole, "oohhhh, soooo sooorrrryyyyy" thing, for indians in 2010 http://www.nativenewsnetwork.com/apol... ; for blacks for slavery, jim crow, and hell any other thing we may be sorry for in 2008 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
so how 'bout torture and illegal war? sure sure, shrub and co ain;t the first ones to use terror and illegal war against other sovereign nations to... to what? make more money mainly, the best of reasons for inhuman violence and brutality.
so peter dimock puts this question to his fiction. usa is made up of all citizens equal in running usa, so all citizens equal in guilt when fat cats, in our name, torture and terrorize other countries, or pay others to do it for us.
dimock proves this point just fine and dandy, via a written set of letters to his college chum slash torture memo writer.
but then, what to do about it? dimock tries in this novel to implement a thought experiment that me/you/reader can play along with, in where we convict/vince ourselves of guilt, then atone.
it's one of the weirdest novels you may read. and could push the reader to a brink of understanding, that if not satisfying or even truthful, could convince you you are not alone in this grand ol usa. because really? what can one person do, all by themselves? see heidi julavit's thoughts on this crazy novel here http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/boo...
July 7, 2013
"In the vision I had two years ago I came to the end of myself and found other people standing there - and knew that the present was a gift of time in which to sing a true history of equal historical selves."
April 1, 2025
I really don't know that I completely understood this. I get that it's an email to David Kallen from Theo Fales, and it's about their shared complicity in supporting the War on Terror, particularly with regard to excusing the government's use of torture, and ultimately it's about Fales challenging Kallen to justify his memo legalizing torture especially after he voluntarily experienced waterboarding so he could understand just what it felt like.
The ritual, though? The exercise, the creation of the love song? Yeah, I'm gonna have to read this again. But the parts I did understand were striking and totally different from anything else I've ever read. Dimock creates entirely new structures and ideas with his writing. I'm in awe.
The ritual, though? The exercise, the creation of the love song? Yeah, I'm gonna have to read this again. But the parts I did understand were striking and totally different from anything else I've ever read. Dimock creates entirely new structures and ideas with his writing. I'm in awe.
January 4, 2023
I’m glad you read book reviews, but buying and reading this book is a much better use of your time. Just do it. The world needs more people who have read this. Don’t disappoint me, I really can’t have the current world continue much longer. If you are still reading this, you have already disappointed me. Redeem yourself.
January 4, 2018
Interesting idea but to be honest I skimmed most of it
November 16, 2013
This is one of those books that makes you glad there are publishers like Dalkey Archives out there, because this is the kind of project that is important, but kind of lacks a clear commercial hook: it's a rumination on the 2004 Bush admin report on the legality of torture, and the book contains that full report, as a kind of appendix at the back, bringing the full text of the thing into the light in a way that feels important, at least to me.
But the main core of the narrative: this is one (fictional) man's reckoning with what he understands of the US policy of torture, post 9/11, and our role as complicit or not in that experience. It takes the form of a letter written to David Kallen, the Bush admin member who authored the legal justification for torture after undergoing it himself. The narrator, Theo Fales, believes that this legal rationale was, in some way, forced on Kallen, and the letter he writes spells out a method, rooted in Jesuit reflections on Christ's suffering, that he thinks might help Kallen live with what he's done.
What follows, then, is a four week program of reading and deep reflection that will allow Kallen, and Fales, to achieve reciprocity, the recognition of the society of equal historical selves, a goal that seems admirable. Dimock/ Fales accomplishes this by introducing the story of a slave who aged out of slavery by surviving the civil war; an explicit connection is made a) between the institution of slavery and the torture of Iraqis, and b) the way both instances demonstrate our failure to live up to our standards of what America means to us. It's a meditative practice that turns on the mental creation of musical notes, in a nod to the novel's third braid, the story of a fictional black avant garde composer.
So, it's tricky, as a novel. And it's written in this strange bureaucratese that is lovely and doesn't let up, even when it's describing this very weird, semi-mystic method.
Quite a book: at once an elaborate con, but one that I think is at the same moment totally serious about its intention. A book that means to make witness at the same time it wants to shift the weight of our collective guilt.
But the main core of the narrative: this is one (fictional) man's reckoning with what he understands of the US policy of torture, post 9/11, and our role as complicit or not in that experience. It takes the form of a letter written to David Kallen, the Bush admin member who authored the legal justification for torture after undergoing it himself. The narrator, Theo Fales, believes that this legal rationale was, in some way, forced on Kallen, and the letter he writes spells out a method, rooted in Jesuit reflections on Christ's suffering, that he thinks might help Kallen live with what he's done.
What follows, then, is a four week program of reading and deep reflection that will allow Kallen, and Fales, to achieve reciprocity, the recognition of the society of equal historical selves, a goal that seems admirable. Dimock/ Fales accomplishes this by introducing the story of a slave who aged out of slavery by surviving the civil war; an explicit connection is made a) between the institution of slavery and the torture of Iraqis, and b) the way both instances demonstrate our failure to live up to our standards of what America means to us. It's a meditative practice that turns on the mental creation of musical notes, in a nod to the novel's third braid, the story of a fictional black avant garde composer.
So, it's tricky, as a novel. And it's written in this strange bureaucratese that is lovely and doesn't let up, even when it's describing this very weird, semi-mystic method.
Quite a book: at once an elaborate con, but one that I think is at the same moment totally serious about its intention. A book that means to make witness at the same time it wants to shift the weight of our collective guilt.
August 31, 2014
This little gem of a book elegantly articulates the difficulty of cohering American narratives of freedom and justice with the realities of her actions to buttress empire. An astounding, astonishing little book that I will be recommending to basically everyone I ever meet for the rest of my life.
January 24, 2016
Did I enjoy this? Not really. Did I understand it? Not fully. But I still suspect that this and Dimock's other novel, "A Short Rhetoric", are innovative and important books--in terms both of form and politics.
January 9, 2015
This is an Important Book!
Read
January 8, 2019I don't think I can rate this on first read. Or second read. Or third.
The epigraph about torture from George W. Bush got me hooked. What follows is a hypnotic, meditative, recursive experiment, one that I am not sure I absorbed completely.
Finishing the book was a little like stepping off a moving carousel, with the static ground feeling as if it should continue to be in motion.
It could be that I finished this in the early hours of the beginning of 2019, or that I had also begun "Frankenstein in Baghdad", which also deals explicitly with the violent fallout in Iraq, but Dimock's book unsettled me. The way a few words in a government report on the legal viability of (or responsibility for) torture reverberate across society and history.
So this isn't so much a review as much as it is a reminder to myself that I need to come back, reassess, regroup, reconnect.
The epigraph about torture from George W. Bush got me hooked. What follows is a hypnotic, meditative, recursive experiment, one that I am not sure I absorbed completely.
Finishing the book was a little like stepping off a moving carousel, with the static ground feeling as if it should continue to be in motion.
It could be that I finished this in the early hours of the beginning of 2019, or that I had also begun "Frankenstein in Baghdad", which also deals explicitly with the violent fallout in Iraq, but Dimock's book unsettled me. The way a few words in a government report on the legal viability of (or responsibility for) torture reverberate across society and history.
So this isn't so much a review as much as it is a reminder to myself that I need to come back, reassess, regroup, reconnect.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews