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Tentatively, A Convenience
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Born
in Baltimore, The United States
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October 2007
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https://www.goodreads.com/tentativelyaconvenience
Thanks to the idiocy of Goodreads policy my books are no longer easily found & do not all appear here. Instead, 5 of them appear under "Tentatively a Convenience": https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... .
My name is "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE". It is NOT "Tentatively, A Convenience". The completely disrespectful push for conformity is on. Such 'normalization' of my spelling, wch I've been using since 1979, is a symptom of what I call "AU", Artificial Unintelligence - both that of algorithms wch can't possibly cope w/ the human imagination & that of robopathic humans - say the type of person who studied creative writing w/ a professor who isn't a creative writer & who isn't published. This type of person then proceeds to learn 'how to be Thanks to the idiocy of Goodreads policy my books are no longer easily found & do not all appear here. Instead, 5 of them appear under "Tentatively a Convenience": https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... .
My name is "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE". It is NOT "Tentatively, A Convenience". The completely disrespectful push for conformity is on. Such 'normalization' of my spelling, wch I've been using since 1979, is a symptom of what I call "AU", Artificial Unintelligence - both that of algorithms wch can't possibly cope w/ the human imagination & that of robopathic humans - say the type of person who studied creative writing w/ a professor who isn't a creative writer & who isn't published. This type of person then proceeds to learn 'how to be creative' in a completely uncreative way & goes on to not be a creative writer or to be published either but to still be convinced that they're qualified to edit actual published actual creative writers. That's a form of regrettably delusional behavior fostered in them by their inability to educate themselves outside of potty training.
Alas, some GoodReads fiend has removed my date of death! I had it as "September 3, 1953" - before my date of birth so that my death won't happen in my lifetime. Some humorless GR person must want me to die. Foo on them.
Making matters even worse, my bk "footnotes" has been removed from the database here & I'm now listed as the author of "15" bks instead of the correct SIXTEEN. "footnotes" was still for sale online the last time I checked so I highly recommend getting a copy before they disappear altogether.
OTHERWISE, please read this extensive interview w/ me by poet/essayist Alan Davies as part of "Otoliths 27" ( http://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/20... ). It's a DOOZY, I promise. It'll also hopefully be published as a small & cheap bk
ALSO, my friend Anthony Levin-Decanini has started an excellent new (as of mid 2013) improvising series called "Crucible Sound" in Pittsburgh at Modernformations Gallery & I was honored by his interviewing me regarding improv for his relevant blog. I quite like the interview & I hope you do too. Here's the link for part 1:
http://cruciblesound.blogspot.com/201...
& the link for part 2:
http://cruciblesound.blogspot.com/201...
I hope you find it interesting enuf to subscribe to the blog & to check out the other programs. If you're in or nearby Pittsburgh, PLEASE ATTEND THE CRUCIBLE SOUNDS! Things like this don't last forever, but while they do they can be quite lively!!
The photo of me is by my friend Julie Gonzalez. Maybe someday I'll write a bio in here but, in the meantime, I'll just sign w/ some of my email signature:
electronically signed,
He-Who-Has-Written
Amir-ul Kafirs
Some tenuous beginnings of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory):
(for all x)x = (for all x)x (Anything is Anything)
(A Double Negative As Not A Positive)
(A finite quantity represented as a set containing
an infinite quantity of its subdivisions
(such as its subdivision in terms of rational numbers)
does not equal the same finite quantity
represented as a set containing an infinite quantity
OF A DIFFERENT DEGREE of its subdivisions
(such as its subdivision in terms of irrational numbers).)
m + n does not equal n + m is isomorphic to x
the ceiling of x is greater than or equal to the ceiling of the ceiling of x
(Enough is Enough)
The Formula o ...more
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Tentatively, A Convenience
As far as I 'know', most of these questions have been created by Goodreads staff to stimulate the 'Goodreads authors' to make public statements that m…moreAs far as I 'know', most of these questions have been created by Goodreads staff to stimulate the 'Goodreads authors' to make public statements that may be of interest to people ON Goodreads. That's all well & good. The questions are generic & more or less irrelevant to my actual praxis but that's ok. I aim to please. SO, how DO I deal with writer's block?
1st off, I don't have "writer's block". EVER. Or any other kind of creative block. Why don't we hear about "Composer's Block" or "Pornographer's Block"? Maybe the writers who have writer's block are simply impotent, people w/ no ideas worth translating into texts in the 1st place.
2nd. when I see a writer's block I want to carve it, I want to carve a swan into it & watch it melt. Is that sadistic? I don't think so, the writer's block isn't able to feel pain. Or is it? There's always Hylozoism. Maybe the writer's block is ALIVE! Did you ever think of that you insensitive impotent sniveling writer?!
3rd, when I see the writer's block I wonder whether it's a Rubik's Cube. Maybe I just need to twist those little facets until everything lines up, until everything is 'perfect'. But what wd it say to US if it cd talk? 'Please, STOP, my reactive arthritis is killing me'?
4th, there's always the risk of getting the writer's block PREGNANT. I've known thousands of deadbeat writer's block dads. Sure, they act like they're completely comfortable w/ having knocked up a block, a chip off the old block.. but are they really? Look out for those furtive glimpses at table corners, room corners.. They're thinking of the wee ones.. & that one night stand when they had to PROVE to themselves that they weren't impotent, when they were going to stick it to that writer's block no matter what it took. But did they think further? NooOooOoooOo.. Bad plotting, bad narrative structure, no outlining, no thinking of how-it-wd-all-end. (less)
1st off, I don't have "writer's block". EVER. Or any other kind of creative block. Why don't we hear about "Composer's Block" or "Pornographer's Block"? Maybe the writers who have writer's block are simply impotent, people w/ no ideas worth translating into texts in the 1st place.
2nd. when I see a writer's block I want to carve it, I want to carve a swan into it & watch it melt. Is that sadistic? I don't think so, the writer's block isn't able to feel pain. Or is it? There's always Hylozoism. Maybe the writer's block is ALIVE! Did you ever think of that you insensitive impotent sniveling writer?!
3rd, when I see the writer's block I wonder whether it's a Rubik's Cube. Maybe I just need to twist those little facets until everything lines up, until everything is 'perfect'. But what wd it say to US if it cd talk? 'Please, STOP, my reactive arthritis is killing me'?
4th, there's always the risk of getting the writer's block PREGNANT. I've known thousands of deadbeat writer's block dads. Sure, they act like they're completely comfortable w/ having knocked up a block, a chip off the old block.. but are they really? Look out for those furtive glimpses at table corners, room corners.. They're thinking of the wee ones.. & that one night stand when they had to PROVE to themselves that they weren't impotent, when they were going to stick it to that writer's block no matter what it took. But did they think further? NooOooOoooOo.. Bad plotting, bad narrative structure, no outlining, no thinking of how-it-wd-all-end. (less)
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How to Write a Resumé - Volume II Making a Good First Impression 2nd edition
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Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory)
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Not Necessarily NOT Very Important
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HiTEC (Histrionic Thought Experiment Cooperative) "Systems Management"
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The Kavyayantra Press Reading Series: "vii"
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Puzzle Writing
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But Not Limited To:
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THE SCIENCE (volume 1)
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Yet Another Slow-Burning Feast of a Few Months Mischief in the U.K., Maybe (A Partial(ly) Epistolary Account of Non-Non & Non-Participation, Maybe)
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review of E. C. Tubb's Eloise by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 23, 2026 O, K. This is #12 in the Dumarest of Terra series. Once again, the title is a woman's name & there's a picture of a woman's face on the front cover. I have to compliment review of E. C. Tubb's Eloise by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 23, 2026 O, K. This is #12 in the Dumarest of Terra series. Once again, the title is a woman's name & there's a picture of a woman's face on the front cover. I have to compliment the artist, George Barr, for depicting the woman somewhat faithfully to the description in the story. I reckon the challenge in writing series is to keep the continuity going, Dumarest's obsessive quest for Earth, etc, & to make a new story fresh. "Travelling Low, doped, frozen, ninety percent dead, lying in caskets meant for the transportation of beasts; risking the fifteen percent death rate for the sake of cheap transportation." - p 41 That's something I've read about in every story. It's understandable why it has to be repeated but it still gets a bit boring. In this case, he did something that I've never seen him do before: use a technique that was common to Philip K. Dick, e.g., & many others: have 2 parallel storylines that eventually converge. This also begins from the Cyclan, his enemy's, POV & Dumarest doesn't come in for awhile. "An ancient emperor would have felt gratification at the extent of his rule, but Nequal could feel so such emotion. And there was no need of personal ambition. To be Cyber Prime was to be at the very apex of his world. Even to be a part of the Cyclan was to be a part of a near-invisible empire which would, in time, dominate every known fragment of space." - p 7 ""One man," he said. "Moving as a molecule would move in a heated gas. One man among billions, moving from world to world, and he has been warned. At first, when unaware he held the secret he could have been taken, had due importance been given to the matter. Now, warned, his is on his guard." "And dead cybers proved it. Cybers and agents both; those who had come close, those who had been careless. They had paid the price for underestimating the man they sought." - p 14 Eloise is trapped on a planet in a city where there's a periodic "knelling" where the population count is kept stable by taking adults to turn into robotic slaves called "Monitors" when new humans are born. The inhabitants are brainwashed into accepting this, not as death, as a desirable transformation. Eloise & her friend Adara, have low knelling numbers that indicate a probable demise for them. "To remain calm. To accept what has to come. The teachings of a lifetime— why had they failed him now? ""fifteen . . . sixteen .. sev -" ""Sixteen, Adara! Sixteen!"" - p 32 "Engrossed with memory she had heard no sound and, as always, the Monitors were silent on their padded feet. She turned, looking at the thing. Seven feet tall, a body made of articulated plates, limbs, torso; all in a parody of the human frame. The face too, cold, hard despite the paint, the eyes elongated curves of crystal. Starlight shone on the figure in a cold effulgence, accentuating the chill of the night." - p 36 Dumarest & Eloise don't meet for awhile. All of these stories have brutal action in wch Dumarest shows extraordinary strength & integrity when encountering extreme trials & violence as well as obsessive love from a woman. In this story the space craft he's escaping from the Cyclan in gets caught in a warp & spit out to crash on an ice world where he & his companion come very close to dying from hardship. I found Tubb's description of this hardship very compelling & convincing. "He broke off as the lights quivered. A shrill hum came from the bulkheads; a thin sound, rising, penetrating, hurting the ears. Abruptly the ship seemed to twist in on itself; the edges of the compartment turning into curves, the bulkheads into corrugations. ""Dear God!" screamed Shalout. "We're in a warp!" - p 47 "Somewhere a sun had died, matter imploding, condensing: torrents of energy hurled into space, agglomerations of incredible forces which distorted the very fabric of the continuum. For eons, perhaps, they had drifted; some to be caught in the gravitational well of other suns, to destroy them in turn or to be absorbed if weak enough. Others had merged with alternate patches of drifting energies, to conglomerate into areas in which normal laws did not apply. "The Stryast had touched one. ""A warp!" Shalout screamed again. "We're dead!"" - p 48 The ship has crashed, Dumarest & his companion Arbush leave the wreckage to cross snow & ice to try to find a city. They have no idea what planet they're on or whether there's a city to be found. "They reached the bottom of the cliff as shadows thickened in the gullies, and the summits of the peaks flared with the dying light of the sun. Night caught them in the labyrinth and they found a narrow crevasse into which they huddled, as they ate rations warmed over a tiny fire. ""How long, Earl?" Arbush leaned forward a little as he sat, his face limned by the dying embers. "How far have we travelled today? Twenty miles? Ten? How long before we find a city?" ""As long as it takes." ""Until the food runs out. The fuel. Until one of us falls and kills himself. Until the cold gets us both. Well, no one promised that it would be easy."" - p 70 Dumarest & Arbush manage to barely survive their trek across the ice. They're rescued by the Monitors & taken into the city. Eloise & Dumarest meet & Eloise falls in love w/ him. Adara, who's in love w/ Eloise, is deeply upset by this. ""Eloise, you're mad. Ever since Earl came, you've been acting strange. Don't you realize what you're doing?" ""I'm living!" she flared. "Don't you understand? Living! For the first time in years I've met a real man, and to hell with you and everything else. Get me some more wine!"" - p 104 Tubb's depictions of women usually impress me as realistic & rooted in deep experience. One fact of this is expressed in a recurrent theme represented by the below quote: "Her face held an expression he had seen before. The feral anticipation of sensuous delight; the titivation of yielding to the demands of a man who would no longer have cause to restrain his appetite. Such creatures were to be found in every arena, harpies feeding on overstimulated emotion; willing to be degraded, humiliated, eager to pander to every bestial desire." - p 112 A computer runs the city, Dumarest has to befuddle it to lower its efficiency of oppression: "He said, "The next thing I say to you will be the truth." A pause, then he added, "Everything you have heard or learned is a lie." "If the truth, then the penultimate sentence had to be a lie. But if it was a lie, then the ultimate sentence could not be the truth. "A paradox which would not have occupied the attention of a man for longer than he cared; but for a machine based on the iron rules of logic it presented a problem which had to be solved." - p 126 This was one of my favorite Tubb bks I've read so far. The initial excursion across the ice impacted me almost as much as Jack London's "To Build a Fire". It seems relevant to this review, however, to state that I've been ruefully observing lately how much of the culture I consume is negative, brutal, etc.. - whether it's movies (most often) or literature there's so much violence & so little humor. I don't think it's entirely b/c that's what I seek out, I think it's b/c that's what there's so much of. E.G.: I'm originally from BalTimOre & I've been watching the docudrama called "The Corner" b/c while I lived in BalTimOre I was very preoccupied w/ how the widespread heroin addiction degraded life in general. SO, it's educational.. but so GRIM. ...more |
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review of Lloyd Biggle, Jr.'s All the Colors of Darkness by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 23, 2026 People often use the expression "comfort food", that's never really meant much to me. It seems that the idea is that certain foods in one's lif review of Lloyd Biggle, Jr.'s All the Colors of Darkness by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 23, 2026 People often use the expression "comfort food", that's never really meant much to me. It seems that the idea is that certain foods in one's life have positive instantiations that are reinstantiated when one eats the food again. Let's say that every day before going to school as a child one's mom made scambled eggs for breakfast. Are scrambled eggs then "comfort food" for one later in life? It seems to me that somehow Biggle's writing is 'comfort reading' to me - not b/c I'm reinstantiating w/ it (after all, he's a relatively new writer for me) but b/c there's something about the style & the content that seems confortable & positive for me, as if it's rooted in good memories of childhood. This is only the 3rd Biggle bk I read & I liked it very much, reading it seemed like a 100% positive thing to me even tho it doesn't necessarily meet criteria such as: advanced writing technique, deep learning. I breezed thru, only writing 3 reviewer's-notes-to-self. That means I won't have much to say about this. A company invents a teleportation machine enabling instantaneous transportation to any destination - & it's not even expensive. As such, it's a threat to all other transport. It's also sabotaged from the beginning & the main plot of this story follows Darzek, a detective, trying to figure out what's happening. "Confusion raged about one of the demonstration transmitters. An elderly lady had thrust her umbrells through ahead of her, and then balked at following it. She hauled frantically on the umbrella, two feet of which protruded at the far platform. The umbrella did not yield. The combined eloquence of six guards finally persuaded the lady to push her umbrella the rest of the way through and follow it. "Darzek watched her waddle away, a frown clouding his good-looking face. The temperature was ninety-five, there was no rain in sight, and—why an umbrella? Protection against the sun? ""Down, boy," he told himself. "Who do you think you are? A detective?" "A moment later a high school girl changed her mind after curiously thrusting one arm into the transmitter. She hung helplessly, her forearm extending from the distant receiver. Her screams rang out shrilly above the din that filled the terminal. A guard finally shoved her through, and she scampered down the steps and darted furtively away. In the fracas the guard also stuck one arm through, and had to move on to the far platform. The crowd hooted." - p 21 What's so 'comforting' about this writing for me? There's a sense of humor, there's imagination. Maybe those 2 things remind me of an earlier era of my life. The bk's copyrighted 1963, I wd've been 9 or 10. Formative yrs. Was there a certain type of humor, a certain type of imagination more common at the time? Darzak disappears. There's an explosion on the moon. No-one puts the 2 together. "["]The explosion on the Moon, that's what. The government says we didn't do it, and the Russians have just gotten around to claiming they didn't do it, and everyone is accusing everyone else. It's all very confusing."" - p 74 Well, some ETs enter the picture & Darzak is interacting w/ them. "Zachary's mention of humanity's good fortune at having only two sexes had startled Darzek into mental immobility. Could it be possible that the aliens had three, that there were two male sexes, and Ysaye was the second–useful, even essential, but fiercely resented?" - p 125 Well, that's pretty interesting, eh? Esp in the light of contemporary emphasis on gender plurality, not so common in 1963. What can I say? You shd read this - but only after reading at least 10 of my bks. After all, you have to get yr priorities straight. ...more |
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review of Michael Ruby's The Mouth of the Bay by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 15-22, 2026 The complete review will appear here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticR... if & when I get around to creating the webpage. Once again, I find myself review of Michael Ruby's The Mouth of the Bay by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 15-22, 2026 The complete review will appear here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticR... if & when I get around to creating the webpage. Once again, I find myself somewhat stymied to write a review of poetry. I might read more poetry than most of my friends, I take it for granted that at least some of my poet friends read more than I do. Then again, I hearken back to something a local poet aquaintance named Peter (?) sd to me a few yrs ago: we had a conversation along the lines of: Peter: 'Do you read poetry?' Me: 'Yes, I review it too.' Peter: 'Even most poets don't read poetry.' His point being that poetry is very unpopular even among the people who write it. Is that true? It seems to me that it might very well be - &, yet, there're plenty of poets & plenty of poetry publications. Then I think of a publisher I know of who publishes small very cheap-to-produce poetry bks - it seems to me that their intention is to get a reduction in the cost of their own bks by meeting a quota for that reduction w/ the printer. Then they get the poets to buy copies of their own bks from the publisher so that, ultimately, the poet takes on the burden of expenses. But I digress (& start a sentence w/ "But"). I learned about Michael Handler Ruby by reading an article of his entitled "POEMS BASED ON SOUNDS" in the OPEN SPACE POST issue. Ruby's description of how he's written some of his poetry appealed deeply to me: "I first became interested in composing poems based on the sounds around me in the late 1980s. I remember listening to a long bird soliloquy while visiting Owen Andrews in Alberene, Va., among the abandoned limestone quarries, in April 1988. I recorded part of that soliloguy. I immediately saw that birdcalls, with their strings of syllables and pauses, could easily be "translated" into the syllables, words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs of language. The lines and stanzas of poetry. On the spot, I conceived a birdcall-based drama, named after Chaucer's Parliament of Fowles, of course." - p 108, OPEN SPACE POST. Almost everything in Ruby's article wd be potentially useful to quote here so I'll have to practice some self-restraint. The point is that Ruby listens & then 'translates' what he hears into the words that consitute his poems. To my mind, that enables his poetry to be both vaguely referential AND nonsense. I like that coexistence. The 1st poem in The Mouth of the Bay is: "ELEA "There's no beginning and there's no end There's a beginning and there's an end There's a beginning and there's no end There's no beginning and there's an end" - p 11 The back cover explains this thusly: "The Mouth of the Bay begins with the wisdom of the Eleatic philosophers on the coasts of southern Italy and Sicily—"There is no beginning and there is no end"—and their calls for purification. Ruby writes the words that appear in his mind when he repeats sayings of Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Empedocles amd others." ""PURIFICATIONS" —Empedocles Purifications mesmerize the likeness of good and bad The twelth lecture on ergonomics The first lecture on cryogenics Transgenics Purifications elevate the severance From the need To premiumize the sacred" - p 18 Now, I looked online to cf Empedocles (in English translation) to see if I cd find any parallels w/ Ruby's text, maybe just the word "Purifications". I didn't find any easy parallels so I chose the beginning to quote: "Ye friends, who in the mighty city dwell Along the yellow Acragas hard by The Acropolis, ye stewards of good works, The stranger's refuge venerable and kind, All hail, O friends! But unto ye I walk As god immortal now, no more as man, On all sides honored fittingly and well, Crowned both with fillets and with flowering wreaths. When with my throngs of men and women I come To thriving cities, I am sought by prayers, And thousands follow me that they may ask The path to weal and vantage, craving some For oracles, whilst others seek to hear A healing word 'gainst many a foul disease That all too long hath pierced with grievous pains." - https://ia801507.us.archive.org/4/ite... It's not known to me whether Ruby was reading Empedocles in the original Greek or in English. I'm assuming the latter. If I were familiar w/ the Eleatic philosophers I might find these 'variations' more compelling in contrast. Later, still among the Eleatics: "soda—ice cream— privacy—myasthenia gravis— prostate—regatta— soda—dodo— propane—sandwich shop—" - p 26 I don't want to find 'meaning' in these poems, I don't want them to resonate w/ me on a discursive level - that wd ruin the fun. Nonetheless, thoughts of drinking too much soda & eating too much ice cream mke me think of Diabetes Type II, thoughts of myasthenia gravis make me think of a friend's mom who my friend & I think became so afflicted b/c of a covid-19 vaccine. Are we then dodos? We leave the Eleatic philosophers: "FOGHORN (two notes, then a pause) Mortification Premiums Insieme Tutto" - p 34 Now, this is where it starts to get more interesting for me. To quote Ruby's OPEN SPACE article again: "In the early 2000s, in Maine, I wrote a second long poem called "Wave Talk," this time listening to the small waves on the rocks near the mouth of Frenchman Bay. I also began a series of poems called "Foghorn" or "Distant Foghorn," where the sounds of a two-tone foghorn displace words within me." - p 111, OPEN SPACE POST Coincidentally, around the time I'd learned about Ruby's process, my collaborator AG Davis remade the soundtrack for my movie "Blue Knob, Time Raveller" ( https://archive.org/details/771.-blue... ) by using what he told me is called "AI Diffusion". If I understand it correctly, one imputs a sound file, the AI Diffusion 'dissolves' it in white noise & then outputs a new sound file of a nature similar to the original but w/ a new spin on it. The person doing the inputting apparently has some options about what they want the spin to be. I found the results to be highly entertaining & hilarious. Ruby's process of listening to environmental sounds & turning them into language evoked by them in his mind struck me as a similar process to the AI Diffusion. In fact, the process being so similar was coupled w/ my reaction to the bk's cover to create a state of suspicious ambiguity for me. The cover image is of a lighthouse w/ what appears to be some columns superimposed over it. The colors are subdued. The cover design is credited to Geoffrey Gatza. I don't particularly like it but the problem here, for me, is that it doesn't seem like an artwork generated by a human, it seems more like AI art. This might be a classic 'Turing Test': If I can't tell whether the art is human or AI generated then maybe the hypothetical AI shd be accepted as of human value. The thing is, I'm admittedly biased against AI as in no way equal (& certainly not superior) to human thinking (& action) - SO, liking this bk, wd I be a complete fool if it turned out to be primarily AI generated w/ all explanations being bullshit? There are quite a few Foghorn poems here. I like imagining Ruby listening to the horns & 'translating' their sounds into words, approximately 2 syllables or words (but not always) per foghorn note. "DISTANT FOGHORN (from memory) Ryan illustrates world position open horseback timely crossout" - p 92 "DISTANT FOGHORN solitude handwork icicles syllogism" - p108 "FOGHORN The wrong load of horses Singes my tooth prays with disregard" - p 116 "DISTANT FOGHORN without random lightening the see will purple all Randy Tolliver bond and all sorry allowance" - p 126 "FOGHORN There's no reason For this spray Hold the tooth To face the sauce" - p 131 "FOGHORNS AND WAVES Without our certainty Without this dawn Oftentimes Refer to the port Refer to the time" - p 134 Wch brings us to the waves, another fertile source for reading into. "More important, that same summer at the Woods' house in Manchester by the Sea, Mass., I was listening to waves at Singing Beachand noticed that the sounds could displace apparently unrelated words within me, usually conversational fragments, as opposed to poetic phrases. During the next few years at my mother's house near Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton, N.Y., I wrote the long poem "Wave Talk," following the roughly 12-hour cycle from one high tide to the next." - p 108, OPEN SPACE POST Can't you just imagine it? Reading into the sound of the waves? That appeals to me more than describing the waves. The long poem "Wave Talk" appears in The Mouth of the Bay & begins thusly: "1. Don't do it You're gonna find out about it Like I said Like I said Go ahead and do it Go a-HEAD Maybe I wanted to tell you I wanted to tell you for a long time and now I'm going to" - p 36 Imagining the waves talking to the poet in this way amuses me. Despite the unusual nature of how the words originate the layout is mostly in fairly straight-forward stanzas. BUT, then there's "RAINDROPS ON A PAGE". This has each word on a separate non-justified line, what I'd call "Field Writing". Taking each word to be placed there by a raindrop, this is the closest thing to a Concrete Poem in the bk. Fog & waves are like the AI Diffusion's white noise. "AN ISLAND ALMOST INVISIBLE IN THE FOG A magazine A hamburger Help Orion Bring me cereal Muskrat Breath A breath Bring me there The Torah The whole fog" - p 52 Ok, maybe it 'doesn't matter' but it still effects my affect: "Orion" instead of "Onion", "Breath" followed by "A breath", "The whole fog" instead of "The whole hog". "II ELEMENTS" begins w/ ELEMENTS & I'm reminded of the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay. " Rocks Water Islands Mountain Sky Sun" - p 57 "Elements" goes thru different forms. By p 60 it's reached this: "The ape castigates our record The ape hazards a trifle for petunias toffee for sorrows harps for eyebrows" - p 60 Earlier I wrote: "I don't want to find 'meaning' in these poems". Perhaps, I sometimes feel like meaning is a type of prison (so why am I writing this way now?). I've had an interior dialog debating the relative comparative merits of exactitude 'vs' ambiguity. I like them both. I have no intention of rejecting either in favor of the other. Nonsense can help erase over-determinism. Not wanting "to find 'meaning' in these poems" indicates that I get more out of their performing a function other than descriptive. Open-ended evolution, not a dead end. &, then, whaadya know? From pp 72-78, w/in the same longish "Elements", we're back to field writing again. The last word on p 73 is "Ime" wch I interpret as 'I me'. So what? "Ime" might throw the reader for a moment, does reading 'have to be' a continually flowing experience w/ no obstacles to divert one's attn? Boooooorrrrrrrr-rrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnnggg. Is this a peb- ble under yr mental foot? "Elements" goes on, changing en route: "Lives first in my spine drinks the spiral placemat informs the debate tolerates shrinkage you've fried now egg living dodger polished Roger rescue you know the Sioux talk reciprocate each more so criminal eye for an eye the building several screws bruises stiffens thickens. "Solves our motion pause for pitch regulation infomercial Tabasco the plinth the Bilbao in this mushroom the Baumeister of this dream sleek whithout protection for hollow tock almond regular tennins broth and silver mushroom of rust pell-mell and dislocated to start" - p 80 For me, there's a joy to be gotten from stringing together words windfall rot indignation Indian Nation not exactly free association for the sake of generating combinations not likely to be encountered in discursive writing. I don't know if that was part of Ruby's process above but that's what I find in it. I'm not talkin' Stream of Consciousness, y'know? I'm talking about something more composed. "BLUE FIELDS" stretches from pp 87 to 91. We're back to field writing, somehow this surprises me every time. The number of words per page varies substantially per page: 3 words on p 88, 13 on facing 89. I ask myself: 'Is it random?' by wch I don't really mean "random" I mean non-systematically determined. I tell myself that it wdn't be if it were my writing - but that's not necessarily true. The point is: I'm inclined to think that Ruby just put down the number of words he was feeling - but I don't want to take that for granted, there may be a system I'm being insensitive to. Has there ever been a poet who'd resist puns? "TRANS POSITION": This one consists of phrases/sentences ending in blanks of varying lengths, presumably to be filled-in by the reader, most in parentheses. The 1st: "They're not going to ___________________________" - p 95 They're not going to inhale seal blubber to prove their.. ""IF WE COULD DO WHAT THE WHITE BIRDS DO" —Marsden Hartley If we could place the song where it belongs on the tree, apply a little red paint, a little banana If we could run the heart factory, the heart and lung factory" - p 104 Who? An American Modernist painter, poet, & essayist. I don't know his work. Now, if I see a bk of his work that's affordable to me I might just pick it up thanks to Ruby. "THE BLUE WATER for Clark Coolidge 1 The blue water rises for lines bests seven hodges records a houseboat in its sign language, you know how the orison pools through sign language headwaters" - p 114 Who? I've read quite a few of Coolidge's poetry bks & I've liked them very much in much the same way that I like this Ruby bk - they're elusive to me. Perhaps In fact, I keep imagining shooting an interview w/ Coolidge while he's still alive - although shooting one post-mortem might be even more interesting. There're poems that use what one might call "list poem" structure - but not w/ a dogmatic rigor. "PURIFY ME Purify me of little borther hilltown raspberry soup & annelids & sizing ramps to polish the laminated toystore hallways candlemaker fragment figment" [..] "Purify me of football binding arbitration hello at onion balls" [..] "Purify me of smoke forever & ever amen inside the hard practical sandwich shop & all-night prostitutions" - p 111 This system continues for all 3pp of the poem (pp 111-113). What is one to make of this? I usually enjoy this form whether it's discursive or non-discursive. It gives a cumulative drive to the language, as if there's a physical force to it. THE BLUE WATER uses a similar strategy that uses variations. "The blue water" is replaced by "The blue hearts" (p 115). This 'works for me' somehow w/o having to have 'meaning': it creates a continuity. The full line is "The blue hearts place maker", that cd be "heart's pacemaker", the ambiguity enables multiple meanings to co-exist &/OR for 'no meaning' to exist. "SOUNDS OF A FOGGY COAST The Ralph runs the song sock Yes for dressing Yes for the sandwich of dreams And fur" - p 119 More words that appear in the place of white-noise-like nature sounds. I like imagining the weather conditions as something that the words are 'pulled from' (or sounds that're displaced in the poet's mind by words). It's as if one sharpens one's focue & finds the words popping out, The Mouth of the Bay speaking to the attentive listener. "THE BLUE COMPELS for Tom Raworth 1 The blue compels sign language right holidays Parsifal" - p 122 I have yet to read Raworth, as far as I can recall, but his name has always had a presence in my mind b/c my friend Anselm Hollo referred to him in my company on multiple occasions as one of his favorite poets. "WAVES Without a doubt the song proceeds infinitesimal in its advances roguish parallax I think you'll find a certain savoir faire right or wrong in this inning to pearly the pellets prepped and consolidated Is this, is this the honest-to-goodness four-way harp and promised follicle of invention inveterate attention retention intention And they're, they're presumed illegitimate and holdover process the polished hostler to persuade the pillbox the parallel onions and toy with olive sundown sandwiches" - p 128 Are the italicized parts the waves coming in & the non-italized the waves going out? Not if their cycle is regular.. but I'm tempted to read it that way anyway. "CLOUDS OVER FRENCHMAN BAY Treg me them beasts Epp those base quadrangles" - p 133 I tend to like writing for its vocabulary. I've written several (many?) works that explore this area - such as my "Puzzle Writing". Some readers seem to get bothered by seeing a word they don't know. Sometimes I look the words up: "Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are a specialized subset of T cells [..] that maintain immune system homeostasis, prevent autoimmune diseases, and enforce peripheral tolerance by suppressing excessive immune responses." - AI Overview "EPP most commonly refers to Environmentally Preferable Purchasing , a U.S. EPA program that helps federal agencies procure sustainable products to reduce climate impacts and pollution." - AI Overview Well, I'll be dagnabbited all to Heck if there isn't another poem w/ the same name (not that I object, mind you)! "CLOUDS OVER FRENCHMAN BAY Fluttering friar taskmaster and accountant Blame skeleton" - p 137 When I think of reading things into clouds I think of August Neter "One Monday at noon, in a provincial capital, next to a barracks, an "apparition" appeared in the sky: At first I saw a white spot in the cloud, very near by – the clouds all stood srtill – then the white spot withdrew and remained in the sky the whole time, like a board. On this board or screen or stage pictures followed one another like lightning, maybe 10,000 in half an hour, so that I could absorb only the most important only with the greatest attention. ...more |
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review of Peter May's The Black House by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 1 & 4, 2026 The only bk I've previously read by May was Entry Island. I got it as a murder mystery, wch it was. I got The Black House as a murder mystery too.. but it was, review of Peter May's The Black House by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 1 & 4, 2026 The only bk I've previously read by May was Entry Island. I got it as a murder mystery, wch it was. I got The Black House as a murder mystery too.. but it was, 1st & foremost, a tragedy, a series of tragedies - the mystery part of it was very secondary. May's a Scottish writer & the story takes place mainly on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. I lived in Scotland for 3 mnths in 1988. I had an excellent time there, wch was largely due to the hospitality & creativity of my English host, Pete Horobin - but also due to the friends I made there - people such as VEX & LAW (the excellent painter Laura Ann Walker) & Kenny Murphy Roud. I found everyone I knew there to be friendly & inspired. Contrarily, I have a good friend who lived in Scotland for something like 8 yrs, married to a punk musician, who found the Scottish people to be generally dour & humorless, a grim lot. It seems that this bk speaks more of that grimness than it does to any positivity. There's a pronunciation guide before the story proper begins. I'm grateful for that. I find Gaelic to be difficult to decipher (& Welsh even worse!). E.G.: "Mamaidh" is pronounced "Mammy". The main character, Fin, lives on the mainland but is originally from the Isle. He 'escaped' when he was 17 or 18 to attend university in Glasgow. He didn't take to attending school so he eventually became a policeman & worked his way up to detective. He's disatisfied w/ this, tho, & is attempting to pursue education in the hope of moving on from being a policeman. "He should of gone to bed hours ago, but it was imperative that he finish his essay. The Open University offered his only means of escape, and he had been procrastinating. Foolishly," - p 5 Mantion of the "Open University" caught my attn b/c it's also mentioned in a bk I wrote while I was living in Scotland & I associate it w/ cultural radicalism. "As Scotland's national university for widening access to higher education, we provide supported online learning to over 19,300 students across Scotland. We are open to everyone, regardless of age, income, geography and background. "The majority of our students study for free with a part-time fee grant and top-up funding. No qualifications are required to study most of our modules and students can build up a qualification by registering for one module at a time." - https://university.open.ac.uk/scotland/ "The majority of our students study for free with a part-time fee grant and top-up funding. No qualifications are required to study" - do you get that? Is there anything like that in the US? Not that I know of, not in capitalist America where attending university, if you can manage it as a poorer person, means getting in debt for the rest of yr life. Fin gets assigned to a murder case in the Isle b/c he's from there & there might be a connection to a murder he's investigating in Edinborough. "the conversation turned toward the murder. ""First of the new millennium," Gunn said. "And we only had one in the whole of the twentieth century." ""Well, let's hope this is the last of the twenty-first. Where are post-mortems usually held?"" - p 34 One murder on the Isle in one hundred years!!!!! Amazing. May gets across the small town claustrophobic mentality of island life w/ what strikes me as great realism. At the same time that the story lays out tragedy after tragedy it also has a matter-of-factness to it that gets across a 'life-goes-on' attitude that ameliorates the tragedies somewhat. I have an interest in island life b/c, amongst other things, being surrounded by water appeals to me. However, I made a couple of movies on islands in the past few yrs & my impression on one of them was that the people were too intolerant of difference for me to ever want to live there. Fin's arrival on Lewis immediately leads to an openly expressed dislike of him by his commanding officer there. ""Why do you think Smith's not attending the PM himself?" ""Maybe he's squeamish." ""I don't know. A man who uses that much aftershave can't be too sensitive." ""Aye, right enough. Most corpses smell better than he does."" - p 41 Have you ever noticed that the people who complain the most about the way other people naturally smell reek like an ocean of formaldehyde themselves? May's very good w/ details. Here's a selection from the post-mortem: ""It's interesting, you know, how little pressure it takes to strangle someone. You don't have to stop them breathing, just prevent the blood draining from the head. The jugular veins that carry blood away from the head only require about four and a half pounds of pressure to cut them off. Whereas the carotid arteries carrying blood to the head require about eleven pounds to put them out of action. You'd have to apply about sixty-six pounds of pressure to cut off the vertebral arteries, and thirty-three pounds to choke off the trachea.["]" - p 48 The murdered man had made just about everyone's life miserable, the motivations for killing him abounded - including an accusation of rape. ""But I have to be honest with you, Mr. Macleod, there was no blood on her, or her clothes, and there was no outward indication that she had been forced to the ground on a wet night. There was no bruising visible on her arms, her clothes did not appear to be wet or dirty."" - p 96 A central shock for Fin is being told that the boy he thought was his former best friend's is supposedly actually his. The police are trying to get DNA samples from every potential suspect in the area but Fin's hypothetical son has an articulate reason for being opposed to this. ""I'm not doing it," Fionnlagh said. and they all stopped and looked at him. ""Why not?" Artair demanded. ""Because it's the thin end of the wedge." Fionnlagh's face flushed with a strange passion. "The beginnings of a police state. We're all going to end up on a database somewhere, identified by a DNA bar code, and we're not going to be able to do anything or go anywhere without someone knowing why or where we've come from, or where we're going to. You'll end up getting turned down for a mortgage, or life insurance, because the insurance company thinks you're a bad risk. It'll all be there on the DNA database. Your granmpa died of cancer, or maybe there's a history of heart disease on your mother's side. You'll get knocked back for a job because your prospective employer's discovered that your great-grandmother spent time in a mental institution, and your bar code looks a hell of a lot like hers."" - pp 189-190 I agree w/ that. A very important part of the story is an annual excursion by 12 men to an island where nesting fumal petrels, aka Gugas, exist in the tens of thousands. These dozen men go there to kill the legally allowed 2,000 of these hatchlings to make available as a luxury food. The young people who go are there for the experience as a rite-of-passage. This practice actually occurs. Again, the details are fascinating. "As we blundered among them it was impossible to escape the vomit of the fledgling petrel chicks, an involentary response to our sudden and unexpected presence. Their vile green bile spattered over our boots and oilskins as we passed, the stink of it almost as bad as the shite that coated every treacherous surface." - p 214 May manages to throw in some ancient prophecy too. "The Brahan Seer had written, When men in horseless carriages go under the sea to France, then shall Scotia arise anew, free from all oppression. The Channel Tunnel had been the merest twinkle in Margaret Thatcher's eye when he and his father were flying kites on the beach, and not even the most ardent nationalist could have predicted then that a Scottish parliament would be sitting again in Edinburgh before the end of the century. Coinneach Odhar had been burned to death for witchcraft nearly three hundred years before any of it." - p 243 May even manages to squeeze in some 'People's History': "Lews Castle was built in the 1870s as a mansion house for Sir James Matheson. He bought the Isle of Lewis in 1844 with the proceeds from the opium he and his partner William Jardine had imported into China, turning six million Chinese into hopeless addicts in the process. It's strange to think that the misery of millions led to the transformation of a tiny Hebridean island thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, or that people and their land can just be bought and sold." - p 269 May really has the misery down. This was excellent, esp if you love tragedy. Me? I prefer the absurd, a sense of humor. Still, I give May his due. In his acknowledgments he writes: "I must also offer thanks and congratulations to John Beatty for his book Sula: The Seabird Hunters of Lewis, which provided me with a wonderful photographic and written record of the annual pilgrimage made by the men of Ness to cull two thousand guga on the island of Sula Sgeir. And I would like to give a special thanks to the people of the Isle of Lewis for their generosity and warmth during my five years filming on the island and during my researches for this book." - p 399 "filming on the island"? That got me curious so I looked online for it & got ambiguous answers but it appears that the BBC made the Lewis Trilogy into a dramatic TV series. ...more |
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Feb 04, 2026 08:57AM
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review of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Positive by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 7, 2024E.V. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJJTMGWG/... This cd be called my 23rd bk. In 2005, my friend Julie Gonzalez & I were each being self-critical b/c of our n review of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Positive by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 7, 2024E.V. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJJTMGWG/... This cd be called my 23rd bk. In 2005, my friend Julie Gonzalez & I were each being self-critical b/c of our negative complaining attitudes. We were sick of ourselves. I proposed that we keep Positive Diaries in wch we'd comment on our every day, listing only what had happened positive during the day. While such a thing may appear 'effortless' in writing it wasn't always easy. I wrote my diary for a yr & then stopped, it seemed like I'd kept it up long enuf. At the time I found the process somewhat boring so I filed away the diary & didn't think about it much. I DID, however, recommend keeping such a diary to people I talked w/ who had a similar problem w/ excessive negativity. In general, I think the diary was a good idea. Over the decades, I toyed w/ the idea of publishing Positive but generally rejected it as being not that fascinating of a read. Recently, I changed my mind. I love my other bks but I have to acknowledge that for most readers they're probably a bit too difficult. Positive's purpose & way of presenting that purpose is an easy read, the bk's fairly short, the size of the bk is easy to carry, & the price is as cheap as I cd make it. All in all, I've tried to make this my most accessible bk - maybe it's so accessible that people will criticize it as too simple. I think it's not only a fun read, both for people who're friends of mine in the bk & for people who don't know me or those friends, but also one likely to stimulate an introspective positivity in the reader. Here's how I promote it on the bk's back cover: From August 1, 2005, to July 31, 2006, the author kept a Positive diary in which he only made entries of positive things that happened to him that day. The purpose was to counteract his self-diagnosed negativity. It's the author's opinion that this helped him develop a much-needed positive attitude in the face of everyday aggravations such as abusive work conditions. In retrospect, rereading it 19 years later, it's also made him realize just how good his life was even during some severely trying times. It's hoped that people reading this will reflect on their own lives in a similarly positive way. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE was born Michael Frederick Tolson in Baltimore on September 4, 1953. Being a natural-born anarchist he developed his resistance to what he felt were oppressive social systems by using creativity & absurdism to subvert & undermine what he observed to be the hidden and not-so-hidden infrastructures for maintaining an inflicted class structure. This involved associations with like-minded people such as Language Poets, SubGenii, free improvisors, Neoists, and miscellaneous other avant gardes. His death on September 3, 1953 has left people confused. ...more |
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review of E.C. Tubb's Zenya by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 28, 2026 This is the 11th bk in the Dumarest of Terra series & the 6th one I've read & reviewed. I'm basically just reading them b/c I read Tubb's Moon Base 1st & wanted to read more review of E.C. Tubb's Zenya by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 28, 2026 This is the 11th bk in the Dumarest of Terra series & the 6th one I've read & reviewed. I'm basically just reading them b/c I read Tubb's Moon Base 1st & wanted to read more by him & these Dumarest of Terra bks crossed my path. I was starting to get a bit sick of the series by the last one, Jondelle, but now I'm more enthusiastic than ever (whoever ever is). As I wrote in my Jondelle review ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ): "This is the 5th of the Dumarest of Terra series that I've read. Three of the previous ones were titled after women characters, two of those covers had pictures of the women. Jondelle is titled after a boy character who gets kidnapped & the image on the cover of the boy's face is sexually ambiguous & cd be taken for an image of a girl or a young woman." Zenya brings the title back to a name of a woman character & the cover image is of a woman's face. In the past, the women were mostly positive characters, here, Zenya is more than a bit deranged & unsympathetic. She does, however, follow the pattern of falling in love w/ Dumarest. "She was tall, with a mass of golden hair raised and crested in an aureole above her head. Thick strands ran from her temples, cut and shaped into upcurving points which accentuated the high bones and slight concavity of her cheeks. Her jaw was round, with a determined hardness, and her lips were full, the lower pouting in betraying sensuosity. Her eyes were deep-set, glowing amber, wide-spaced beneath arching brows, their upward slant giving her the appearance of a watchful cat." - p 5 "She said softly, "Yes, Earl? And . . . ?" ""Nothing," He recognized the expression in her eyes, the look of an emotional vampire eager to feed on tales of blood and violence." - p 10 Despite his wariness, Zenya succeeds into sucking him into the world of her powerful maniacal family. ""If they are not with us, they are against us." ""Which must include a lot of people," he said dryly. "Does Aihult Chan Parect operate on that principle?" ""Naturally, Earl. What else?" "There were other ways, and far less dangerous than the one that led to inevitable paranoia. Delusions of grandeur coupled with a persecution complex that led to a total inability to trust a living soul." - p 32 Earl Dumarest is cornered more & more by Aihult Chan Parect, the family patriarch, until Parect informs him that he can't escape Parect's will b/c of an operation that's been performed on him. "["]A little device which I am sure you will appreciate. Should you break your word, or try to run or disobey me in any way, it will be activated. And then, no matter how you hide, the Cyclan will be able to find you. You will signal your presence like a star in the sky."" - p 50 The Cyclan being Dumarest's ongoing nemesis. Dumarest goes to another planet on a mission for Parect. When he arrives, he becomes a member of the local military engaged in a war that Dumarest is to lead. It's gradually discovered that some of the war deaths are from 'friendly fire'. "Hamshard said shrewdly, "Sir, do you think the action we spotted, the shooting and noise, was the result of hysteria? That they were firing at the air and at each other?" ""You think it possible, captain?" ""Well, sir, they were a pretty high-strung bunch. If they thought they saw something, landed, got confused with shadows, and then my men coming toward them—yes, sir, I think it possible." ""Well," said Dumarest, "we'll soon find out."" - p 92 Even tho Dumarest is highly accomplished in the 'art of violence' he's basically anti-military. His violent abilities are a keystone to every story. But, making it more interesting for me, so is his ethical philosophy. "He had seen the results of military castes on a dozan worlds, and all had followed a path that led to the inevitable destruction of all that was kind and gentle. When respect became equated with force, only brutality could hope to survive." - p 128 In the interest of not giving away too much, I haven't told much of the story. The overall plot is what pleased me here &, for the 1st time in the Dumarest stories I've read, the SF gets a bit more conceptual. ...more |
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Jan 28, 2026 12:56PM
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review of Lloyd Biggle, Jr's The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 22, 2026 I got interested in Biggle's writing when I read his The Fury Out of Time (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) review of Lloyd Biggle, Jr's The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 22, 2026 I got interested in Biggle's writing when I read his The Fury Out of Time (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). I liked that one very much. I liked this one even more. In fact, I liked it so much that I'm going to give it a 5 star rating even tho it doesn't live up to what I might call the 'Finnegans Wake Standard', meaning it's not particularly adventurous in terms of innovative writing. One cd say that this is a fable about the conflict between people who appreciate beauty & people who don't. As usual, I think about my own life. I'm often in conversation w/ people in wch I find them to be mentally numb. Things that I wax enthusiastic about arouse no reaction in them. That's almost across the board w/ everyone. I find people to be generally insensitive & unappreciative. When my own work gets 'reviewed' the things that people say are so incredibly stupid that it amazes me. They take things that they clearly have no understanding of & act as if that's b/c there's nothing there to understand, as if the work is just the product of random derangement rather than extremely careful & inspired complexity. Oh, well. Biggle's fable expresses this lack of sensitivity wonderfully. His protagonist, a cultural surveyor, soon learns that the people he's hypothetically working w/ are oblivious to the marvelous works of art that surround them. "["]One of the paintings is a portrait of a musician. Do you know which one I mean?" ""I seem to recall—" ""Good. The musical instrument is a plucked chordophone, which for the want of a better term I'm calling a harp—though it's totally unlike any harp I've ever seen or heard of. It has a beautifully carved frame, and the strings are stretched from the perimeter of a globular sounding medium to converge in a sort of dragon's head that ornaments the top of the instrument." He paused. The coordinator was gaping at him wide-eyed. "What I want to know is this: what musical scale does that instrument employ?" ""I'm—" The coordinator's throat bulged as he tried to swallow. "I'm afraid I don't know." - p 10 The coordinator is the head of 2 teams whose intention is to democratize the planet they're on. Team B is on the continent on wch there's been no success. It's also the continent from wch the paintings came. The coordinator shd, hypothetically, be an expert on the conditions on that continent since Team B has been trying to clandestinely subvert the monarchy there for 400 yrs - &, yet, he's never really looked at the paintings & knows nothing about the music - b/c, to him, they're of no interest, irrelevant. Forzon, the protagonist, accidentally finds a Team B member who plays the instrument in question. "["]This one is a torru, a woman's instrument. It's tone is well-suited to the boudoir but is much too delicate for concert use." ""A marvelous, whispering tone," Forzon said. He got to his feet and bent over the torru. The slender strings were of some tightly twisted fiber, white and—every fifth string—black. He plucked them gently, one at a time. "It's an inflected pentatonic scale!" he exclaimed. "Primitive, and at the same time highly sophisticated. Curious."" - p 15 Biggle was a musician as well as a writer. It shows. Forzon goes to the continent where he's expected to help surreptitiously foster democracy & is almost immediately captured. He escapes & finds refuge in a farmhouse. "He cautiously descended the ladder. The naked child was playing in a net suspended from the ceiling; she gazed at him with a wide-eyed, coy charm, and gurgled and cooed when he made faces at her. The woman was at work in the fields, driving the ungainly beast ahead of a farm implement. The man was nowhere to be seen. "The paintings caught Forzon's eye, and he moved a bench to a corner of the room and sat down to study them admiringly. Art of that quality, in an ordinary farmhouse!" - p 46 Forzon makes contact w/ the underground Team B where it's speculated why he was so immediately set upon on his arrival. "["]Rastadt gave you the Larnorian language, dressed you as a Larnorian priest, and even outfitted you with the most extreme form of Larnorian nose, all of which was mailiciously contrived to make you as conspiscuous as a horse in a flock of sheep—which is an old Kurrian saying, except that Kurrian horses aren't horses and their sheep are even less like sheep, but it will do. To the Kurrian peasant a Larnorian priest is—" ""I know. Now I know. A bogyman."" - 57 Forzon notices that the Teacm B leader, Leblanc, has disguised his cover story poorly b/c he doesn't understand the deeper aesthetics. ""What's wrong with my family album?" Leblanc demanded. ""I insist that the natives of Kurr display paintings primarily because they love art and enjoy looking at it, and no lover of art would place his cherished collection in this corner. The light is terrible. You don't even have taper brackets here, and in the daytime the only decent light is at the other end of the room. You might as well hang it in a closet."" - p 66 Do you ever go into someone's home & realize that they don't have any bks or musical instruments? & then realize that you're probably not very compatible w/ them? ""Come and look," Forzon said. ""I really don't see—" "Look!" "Each took a turn at the window, shrugged, returned to his seat. Ann remained the longest, alternately peering at the sunrise and directing sidelong glances at Forzon. "Finally she turned away, and Forzon said sharply, "That won't do. You looked, but none of your admired it." ""Does this have something to do with the plan that you don't have yet?" Leblanc asked. ""It has something to do with the reason none of Team B's plans have worked. Team B doesn't understand the people of Kurr. It won't until its agents take the time, now and then, to admire a sunrise."" - p 102 There's good reason to want to undermine the monoarchy. Forzon is caught & put in a dungeon. "He looked up and caught his breath. The lofty ceiling was supported by enormous pillars that flared like the exterior walls of houses. Pillars, walls, ceiling—every place the light from the guards's torches touched glowed with swirling color. Never in his wildest imaginings could he have conceived of such a dungeon. Its sheer beauty overwhelmed him." - p 145 Forzon eventually triggers a rebellion based on the people's love of culture. I cd use something like that. ...more |
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review of E.C. Tubb's Jondelle by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 21, 2026 This is the 5th of the Dumarest of Terra series that I've read. Three of the previous ones were titled after women characters, two of those covers had pictures of the wom review of E.C. Tubb's Jondelle by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 21, 2026 This is the 5th of the Dumarest of Terra series that I've read. Three of the previous ones were titled after women characters, two of those covers had pictures of the women. Jondelle is titled after a boy character who gets kidnapped & the image on the cover of the boy's face is sexually ambiguous & cd be taken for an image of a girl or a young woman. I reckon that marks a change in Tubb's formula, the love interest is secondary, the boy is foremost. There's an implied undercurrent of sexual predation to the kidnapping. Dumarest stumbled across the 1st kidnapping attempt & intervenes. "A woman, he thought, a girl, then corrected the impression as he saw the tableau ahead. Not a girl, a child, a small boy pressed tight against a wall." - p 10 This being a Dumarest of Terra novel there's bound to be a love interest w/ a woman of exceptional qualities. This one just got killed off quicker than usual. "He turned and looked at the woman. She was tall, with a closely cut mane of dark hair, her dark eyes holding a hint of amusement and something of anticipation. Her figure was full and lush beneath a dress of some brown fabric belted at the waist. He[r] feet were bare in leather sandals, her hands broad, the fingers long and tapered. The hands of a sculptor, he thought, or those of a surgeon. Unabashed by his nakedness, he stood and met her eyes." - p 13 The woman notices that Dumarest is malnourished. He explains. ""Six months working in a mine and skimping on food," he said dryly. "Then riding Low. It isn't the best way to stay in condition." - p 14 That was his life between series #s 9 & 10. So far, there hasn't been a direct connection between any of the series individual bks that I've read. Dumarest goes thru quite a few experiences between each bk & they basically start as if their predecessor didn't exist - except for the recurring tropes. Dumarest hires a group of desperate men to help him retrieve Jondelle, the kidnapped boy. When one of the men gets weak, Dumarest gets tough & shows no sympathy. "At dawn one of the men complained of his ankle. It was swollen, tender to the touch. Dumarest ripped up a shirt and bound it tightly, then fashioned splints with a crossbar to take the strain. Wincing, the man rose, testing it. ""I can't do it. I'll have to ride." ""You'll travel like the rest. Nurse the ankle and use the other foot—and this time be more damn careful." "The man was stubborn, "I ride or I quit. Leave me some of the food and one of the lances and I'll make my own way back." ""You don't ride and you don't quit,"" - p 82 Dumarest arrives at the city stronghold where some of the kidnappers came from, a city where everyone is violently insane, & he encounters a solipsist. "["]Therefore what I touch must be an illusion. I will summon my mental powers and dissolve it, send it back to the chaos from whence it came. The purity of my mind must not be contaminated by unreal phenomena. Begone!" "Dumarest stepped aside and the man walked past, mouth wreathed in triumph. ""Thus I have yet more proof of the ascendancy of my mind. The universe exists because of my wish.["]" - p 98 Woman #1 is out of the picture, here comes Woman #2. "She was long and slim with a ripe maturity which had fleshed her bones so that the sweep of thigh and calf matched the swell of hips and breasts. She wore a wide belt of crimson leather studded with gems, pantaloons of some diaphanous material, softly yellow, caught at the ankles and slit so as to reveal the flesh beneath. Her torso was bare aside from a short jacket, open at the front and on high above the waist. Beneath it her breasts, high, proud, showed their soft rotundity." - p 100 This description of breasts as "proud" seems quite common to me. I find it appealing in an absurd way. What, exactly, are the breasts proud of? Did they get a good grade on a math test? In every novel, Dumarest makes some sort of philosophical statement that I can agree w/. He represents values that he's constantly being forced to fight for, usually killing in self-defense. "["]A Man cannot be blamed for his nature, but some men go too far. Money becomes their god, their only reason for being, and, when it does, they stop being human.["]" - p 154 One of my sayings is "When Money's God, Poor People are the Human Sacrifices." I enjoyed reading this bk but I can't really say I recommend it. Of all the available SciFi in the world I'd rank this fairly low. ...more |
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review of Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's Reliquary by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 20, 2026 This is a thriller. I've only read a few thrillers, they don't generally interest me, the more SciFi they are the more I'm likely to read them. In review of Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's Reliquary by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 20, 2026 This is a thriller. I've only read a few thrillers, they don't generally interest me, the more SciFi they are the more I'm likely to read them. In this case, I have to admit that I was sucked right in from the get-go. The opening scene is of a novice police scuba-diver swimming in a sewage-filled area where the muck is so thick the diver can't see. As if that's not bad enuf, he finds 2 skeletons. The description of the misery of all this is very impressive. "Beneath Fernandez's open suit, Snow could see a T-shirt with the Police Scuba team's unofficial motto: We dive in shit and look for dead things. Only this time it wasn't a dead thing, but a massive wrapped brick of heroin, thrown off the Humboldt Rail Bridge during a shootout with police the previous night." - p 6 One of the reasons why I was so easily engrossed in this is b/c the settings are so akin to settings in my own life. "assistant curatorship at the New York Museum of Natural History, wasn't always in the midst of some new round of budget cutting. And the more the Museum got into financial trouble these days, the more it seemed to rely on show instead of substance. Already, Margot had noticed the early buildup for next year's blockbuster exhibition, 21st Century Plagues." - p 20 This is a sequel to a bk entitled Relic, wch I haven't read, & many of its main characters, such as Margo, are from that bk. I worked for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History from 2009 'til 2018 & we did at least one exhibit in collaboration w/ NY's Museum of Natural History so that connection immediately struck home for me. Even mentioning "blockbuster exhibition"s rang true - not so much b/c of the Natural History Museum but b/c of museums in general, of wch I worked for more than 7. One of the recurring characters is a reporter named Smithback. The discovery of the skeletons leads to Smithback's investigating of the tunnels under NYC where he managed to meet a leader of some of the underground population named "Mephisto". ""No! You should feel honored, scriblerian. This is as close as I have been to the surface in five years." ""Why is that?" Smithback asked, groping the darkness for the microcassette recorder. ""Because this is my domain. I am lord of all you survey." ""But I don't see anything." "A dry chuckle rose from the hole in the cinder block. "Wrong! You see blackness. And blackness is my domain. Above your head the trains rumble past, the surface dwellers scurry on their pointless errands. But the territory below Central Park—Route 666, the Ho Chi Minh trail, the Blockhouse—is mine."" - p 47 Exploring railroad & mining tunnels (etc) has been important to me. As a child I went into large storm drain pipes in an area near where I lived that were part of an in-progress housing development. As a teenager I'd walk thru an in-use railroad tunnel at Patapsco State Park. As an adult I explored the tunnel that went from the Maryland Institute College of Art to what became the Camden Yards stadium & I established what I called the "BalTimOre Underground Club" (BTOUC) (1982-1983) there where I held at least 2 major events. Then there was the PSBBTOUC (Paris Suburban Branch of the BalTimOre Underground Club) (1984) in the ancient Roman mining tunnels under Paris. This was followed by the GSBBTOUC (Glasgow Suburban Branch..) (1988) in an abandoned subway stn under the botanical gardens. None of these explorations & activities of mine were anything close to what's under NYC but I've always had an interest in them. Smithback spies on confidential police proceedings regarding the skeletons & the ensuing discovered murders. He hides in a museum projection booth to enable him to overhear what's happening in the lecture hall that it serves. "The projectionist came in from the control room, his features narrowing as he saw Smithback. "You said—" "The journalist waved his hand. "I know what I said. I didn't want to make you any more nervous than you already were. Here." Smithback pulled a twenty out of his wallet and handed it to him. ""I wouldn't take it, except the Museum's salaries are ridiculous; you can't even begin to live in New York . . ." the fellow nervously stuffed the bill into his pocket." - p 122 Ha ha! I worked as a projectionist for the Andy Warhol Museum &, to a much lesser extent, for the Carnegie Museum of Art. My 1st paycheck from the AWM was for something like $26. Believe me, I can relate to the "salaries are ridiculous"! Pendergast, another recurring character, is an FBI agent w/ improbably perfect skills. "Pendergast smiled slightly. "Trading in local commerce tends to keep the natives peaceful." ""Drugs?" D'Agosta asked in disbelief. "Pendergast nodded, opening his coat. In the gleam of the penlight, D'Agosta could make out several tiny pockets stitched into the filthy lining. "It appears that virtually everyone down here is or has been an addict of one kind or another." His finger moved from one pocket to the next. "I have an entire pharmacopeia here: crack cocaine, methylphenidate, Carbrital, Seconal, military-grade Blue 88s. They may well save our lives, Vincent. They saved mine on my first descent." "Pendergast dug into one of the small pockets and pulled out a slender black capsule. "Biphetamine," he said. "Known in the underground fraternity as a black beauty."" - p 157 The FBI agent & his accompanying police officer, D'Agosta, have entered the underground to try to meet Mephisto so that they can find out more about the murders. The Mole people are adamantly against police & Mephisto decides to put these 2 to the test by getting them to eat "track rabbit", rats that live underground, to see whether they're who their disguises say they are. "He watched with mingled horror and relief as Pendergast, without hesitation, raised the rat and put his lips to the gash in its flank. There was a sharp sucking sound as the rodent was eviscerated. D'Agosta felt his gorge rise. "Licking his lips, Pendergast set the newspaper and its burden in front of their host. ""Excellent," he said simply. "Mephisto nodded. "Interesting technique." ""Hardly." Pendergast shrugged. "They spread a lot of rat poison around the Columbia service tunnels. You can always tell by tasting the liver whether it's safe to eat."" - p 166 Does that mean that the liver tastes 'off' if it's poisoned? I wish Pendergast had been more specific. The extent of the tunnels is enormous. Assuming this to actually be the case, it fascinates me. The work that must've gone on underground in NYC must've been almost incomprehensibly massive. Why? What was the vision? How did they manage to organize so much machinery & so many workers? It seems almost impossible, like building the pyramids. "Pendergast nodded. "Even on my first trip, I was astonished at the vastness. I felt like Lewis and Clark, setting out to explore unmapped territory." ""You don't know the half of it. There's two thousand miles of half-dug tunnels, and another five thousand miles still in use. Underground chambers, sealed up and forgotten." Hayward shrugged. "And you hear stories. Like about bomb shelters, secretly built by the Pentagon in the fifties to protect Wall Street types. Some of them are still stocked with running water, electricity, canned food. Engine rooms filled with abandoned machinery, ancient sewers made from wooden pipes. An entire freakin' lost world."" - p 183 Ok, so this bk has the Natural History Museum & the tunnels for me to relate to but making matters even better for me, personally, it throws in a conceptual artist, something I sometimes think of myself as. ""They're never supposed to touch," he said in a wounded tone as he fussed with the strings. "D'Agosta stepped back. "What is this, some kind of experiment?" ""No, it's an artificial environment, a reproduction of the primeval jungle that we all evolved in, translated to New York City." "D'Agosta looked at the strings in disbelief. "So this is art? Who looks at it?" ""It's conceptual art," Kirtsema explained impatiently. "Nobody looks at it. It's not meant to be seen. It is sufficient that it exists. The strings never touch, just as we human beings never touch, never really interact. We are alone.["]" - p 188 Now, that description of a fictitious conceptual artist seems more than a bit tongue-in-cheek & I suspect that the authors don't like conceptual art. Still, if there's a sequel to Reliquary maybe it shd center around this guy & not have any murders. It cd be called R - implying that it's the sequel to Luther Blissett's Q. Of course, w/o the murders they'd lose their readership. As our heroes try to figure out what's going on hypotheses appear that have an extremity potentially matching the facts. "["]This may sound crazy, Lieutenant, but the fact is there are many substances in nature—hormones, for instance—that cause startling transformations like this. It's not as bizarre or unusual as it sounds. There's a hormone called BSTH which turns a caterpillar into a butterfly. There's another called resotropin-x. When a tadpole gets a dose of that, it turns into a frog in a matter of days. That's what's happening here, I'm sure of it. Only now, we're talking about changing a human being."" - p 234 That's one of my favorite parts of this bk, something to think about. Why, in my neighborhood, Spit'n'Polish Hill, there's a young woman who turns into the Werewolf of Polish Hill by placing a small dog on her shoulder - just to avoid talking w/ an old man. That, too, is probably hormonal. Eventually, the moles are tear-gas smoked out of their underground refuge. "Suddenly, another manhole cover popped free closer to the march, and a series of gaunt figures clambered out, disoriented and coughing." - p 326 I'd credit the authors w/ staying somewhat close to the believable when describing prosaic parts of the story. In this case, tho, having had personal experience w/ removing manhole covers, one doesn't just "pop" one free, they're very heavy. Now, granted, the one that I pulled off from above was made heavier by concrete on it - so heavy that it bent the metal meat hook we were pulling it up w/, I think that manhole covers in general are too heavy to easily push open from underneath, let alone "pop" them. From the "Author's Note" at the end of the bk: "While the events and characters portrayed in this novel are fictitious, much of the underground setting and population are not. It has been estimated that as many as five thousand or more homeless people have lived in the vast warren of underground tracks, subway tunnels, ancient aqueducts, coal tunnels, old sewers, abandoned stations and waiting rooms, disused gas mains, old machine rooms, and other spaces that riddle underground Manhattan. Grand Central Station alone sits above seven stories of tunnels, and in some places the underground works extend more than thirty stories beneath the city. The Astor Tunnels, with their elegant stations crumbling into dust, actually exist, on a smaller scale and under a different name. No comprehensive maps exist of underground Manhattan. It is a truly unexplored and dangerous territory." - p 463 "The authors are indebted to the book The Mole People by Jennifer Toth (Chicago Review Press, 1993). Readers interested in the factual account of the subterra incognita of Manhattan are urged to read this excellent, thought-provoking, and at times frightening study." - p 464 & I've had that bk since it came out & STILL haven't read it yet. SO, I went to look for it in my overcrowded personal library.. & didn't find it. ...more |
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The cover here is for a different edition than the one I read. Usually, I'd add my edition so that the image cd be correct but I'm not doing that today. review of Lloyd Biggle Jr.'s The Fury Out of Time by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 5, 2026 The cover here is for a different edition than the one I read. Usually, I'd add my edition so that the image cd be correct but I'm not doing that today. review of Lloyd Biggle Jr.'s The Fury Out of Time by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 5, 2026 I got this bk b/c it was one of two that I found in a bkstore that were both $1.50. I only had $3 & some change. I'd never heard of Biggle. The title seemed like something imposed on the author for commercial reasons by the publisher, although I have no idea whether that's true or not. I had low expectations. As it turned out, I loved it!. It's a time travel novel, a genre I'm very fond of, & it might be one of my favorites w/in this genre. This was very inspired, very imaginative. Biggle's plot is full of entertaining characters & twists & turns that keep things lively from start to finish. His main character, an astronaut whose career was cut short by the loss of a leg, has a sense of humor & ethics & adventure that make sure he, & the reader, never have a dull moment. I was so enthusiastic about this that I've bought 4 more novels by him since. In general, I found the writing fun. "He shaved slowly, dressed himself slowly. It was afternoon when he finished, but he had no hunger. "Nor any thirst. He had never experienced a craving for drink. He drank only when he had nothing better to do, which was, unfortunately, almost always." - p 7 "The colonels were arguing again, but Haskins was paying very little attention to them. He was really interested in only two kinds of people—those who could tell him what he wanted to know, and those who could do something he wanted done." - p 20 That reminds me of H. Beam Piper, whose writing I've been reading recently. A mysterious vessel appears, causing a swath of destruction. It is accompanied by an anomolous betterfly. "["]Tell me this, Professor. While this future butterfly is evolving, what changes might take place in the human race?" ""What a question to ask a lepidopterologis! Oh, I vaguely recall some speculation on the subject. The man of the future may be totally bald. Vestiges such as the appendix and perhaps the tailbone might disappear altogether. There may be changes in the teeth, as one devastating result of the civilized diet. The feet will be modified by the corrosive restrictions of shoes. Experts have produced long lists of such things, but I don't remember much about them except that they always gave me the impression that I'd rather not be around to meet their subject."" - p 40 Our hero, having reasoned that the vessel is a time machine, is chosen to pilot it back to the future from whence it came - to diplomatically convince the future people to not send any more time machines back again b/c of the destruction that its "Force X" causes. The news of all this having leaked out to the press there's a great hubbub of pros & cons. "The screaming headlines, the thousand variations on the thought 'WHAT DOES THE FUTURE WANT FROM US?" And the absurdly speculative answers: natural resources, slaves, markets, havens from atomic holocausts . . . absurdly speculative, and at the same time terrifyingly plausible." - p 78 Karvel, the protagonist, has a flippant sense of humor throughout, tempered by a sensitivity to the sufferings of others. ""We're going to name an air base after you. Thought you'd like to know." ""One in Antarctica, I suppose. I'm glad I won't be there to hear the speeches."" - p 83 Karvel reaches the future from wch the time machine had come at some point. He inadvertently wreaks massive destruction, including of human life. A mob rushes for him but he's rescued by a pilot in an air vehicle. "The pilot returned to offer Karvel a bowl of deeply browned balls of food. He accepted with a nod of thanks, and cautiously placed one in his mouth. It disintegrated into a thick paste before he could begin to chew it. A highly appropriate food, he thought, for a people who had no teeth and—what was it the report had said?—no stomachs. "Prechewed and predigested meat balls," he told himself wryly." - p 94 There being no language in common, Karvel & his hosts must learn how to speak to each other. "That night he received more lessons, or perhaps the same lessons. The sterile muttering of the walls blended grotesquely in his shapeless dreams with the haunting screams from the devastated city and Lieutenant Ostrander's youthful laughter. The next day he fancied that he had a precarious grip on a word or two, but he could think of no adequate way to test his knowledge. Were they saying, How is your breakfast, when they brought food? Or Eat this quickly so we can get back to work? Or May your digestive efforts be bountiful? Was it a blessing that they intoned with his first sip of mush, or pointed commentary on his table manners?" - p 100 Biggle really thought things thru. There're various nation states, all semi-autonomous from each other except for trading. There's an "Overseer" that the nation states approach for ultimate decision making. The Overseer lives on the Moon but comes to Earth when needed. The Overseer lusts for Karvel's language teacher. He also has the power to basically get whatever he wants & has a harem on the moon. ""Dunzalo might not let her go. She has a fairly high number. She's Languages 9-17, and she seems to be an accomplished scholar." ""She's one of the bearded ones, too. I suppose there's a taboo involved—life pledged to learning, or some such thing. I'll look it up. But these Earth cities will trade anyone, if they're offered enough. Languages 9-17, is it? I'll trade for her the next time I go to Dunzalo. She's even worth a special trip. Lovely thing—what she must look like without that beard! On second thought, though, maybe I like her better with it on."" - p 144 This next touch was so inspired that I include it even tho it's a bit of a spoiler. "Karvel stepped forward cautiously as the Shuttle settled onto the city's tallest tower. The leg was no longe merely joined to him. It was his servant, it obeyed his wishes; but he continued to regard it as a honored guest, in delicate health, rather than as a member of the family. He babied it." - p 152 This is a wild ride. W/o giving too much away, he joins forces w/ some non-humans called "Hras". Here's a bit about their eating habits: "He learned that they had no sensation of taste, as he understood it; nor did they have any means, or any necessity, of chewing their food. In actual fact, they chewed it with their hands and placed it directly into their stomachs." - p 189 All in all, this was so absolutely wonderful that if his other work lives up to it he's going to enter my pantheon of SF greats ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Reviewe... ). It's fantastic to've been reading SF for 60 yrs or so & to just be discovering Biggle now! ...more |
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Jan 06, 2026 11:42AM
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What sort of books do working class readers enjoy? Clearly all books! but OK if we are thinking reading in a class conscious way, what might we highli What sort of books do working class readers enjoy? Clearly all books! but OK if we are thinking reading in a class conscious way, what might we highlight to other working class readers. This might be books by working class writers; it might be books about working class lives or jobs or themes; but it might be something else! ...more
Oulipo
— 15 members
— last activity Mar 09, 2011 04:49AM
Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, Harry Matthews, etc.
Feb 04, 2023 08:07PM
Feb 05, 2023 02:41AM