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Shirley Jackson, whom you've probably read, think "The Lottery" (High School Required Short Story) - in which lots are drawn and a person is stoned to death. The Claustrophobia of Small Towns, similar, in it's way, to "The Wicker Man" and others such.
"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" covers the same themes, only it's unreliable narrator, Mary Katherine Blackwood, while 'of' the town that loathes her lives in a world so far removed...
The walls close in as you read, and the dialogue, simple, forceful, the events, well, something "had" to happen and then again nothing did, there are no surprises, merely you are there for the slow exposition of events...
And, when you read it - you know her, some version of her, some person that is seemingly twice, thrice removed from the world around them, here - well, Nelson, there are many such. But in this there is a certain gradual increasing horror, the events not to be spoken of yet everyone is aware, the hatred slow-turning to compassion...
It was masterfully written, although I did not enjoy it so much, but that is not to say it wasn't a masterpiece.
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So for a laugh I tried to read the last book I posted ... I couldn't make it past 50 pages. I mean, this guy, he could give out his own "Bulwer-Lytton" prize. And I don't know what this prestigious literary award is about, presumably everyone who can write a book receives at least 3...
Anyhow, here's a fair sampling of his prose:
"A west bound train approaching the bridge on the other side began howling like a wolf looking for a bitch in heat. Its black metal sides had just been washed by hostlers in the C.P.R. Roundhouse at Nelson and it had a sleek, sweaty shimmer as it led a small following of faithful cars. Large drive rods jerked swiftly up, down and around, masturbating clouds of steam and white smoke to seed the sky. As it came onto the bridge the noise was deafening and the belching smoke tangled in steel bridge girders. The engine drove swiftly past, vibrating the earth's foundation and rumbling the span violently. High above them the engineer waved and blew the whistle shrilly, orgiastically."
I want you to know I embellished nothing.
Or this, when he's mudding out his mine:
"The muddy mixture went clattering down the slope and lay on the white surface like excrement from a dinosaur with diarrhea"
From here we get to the love scenes...and I won't do that you. I couldn't do it to myself.
Anyways, a fair sample, I scanned ahead in it, my god what drivel!! I can't finish it.
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Found this in the thrift shop the other day and had to share:
They say "don't judge a book by it's cover" but in this instance the title was enough. Imagine how pleased I was to flip it and find out it was a local historical novel?!
It's actually signed inside by the author, whom Google could tell me nothing about (a search found a similar book by a different author, found the same book but ascribed a different author to it, so...?? How does this even happen nowadays?)
Anyways, if the title and blurb on the back didn't tell me all I need to know, to go farther down this road would be cruel.
Fun, but cruel. I might give it a read but I doubt I'll be reviewing it anytime soon...
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He violates every Taboo, and I should too, and while I'm not opposed to pornography (literary, otherwise) he does push my buttons a bit. First of all, the flavour, not mine exactly. And second of all, while I appreciate his transgressive approach I prefer Henry Miller - wherein he only goes so far, enough to generate social outrage, but then drops it and moves it on in other directions. Burroughs, well, he's obsessed.
But this - as Burroughs himself observes - is the point - to so habituate us to what is taboo, forbidden, that it becomes the new normal. And maybe he was warning us, only - well, look at the world, we all missed the point.
It took me a while to get his humour, interspersed as it was with his gruelling pornography and philosophy, Jokes like “Bumsell”, the French Aristocrat, a hundred others, his time-jumping, the references to “Bring out your dead” - Python, or Carlos Castaneda, juxtaposing Beau Brummel and Somerset Maugham, referencing “Psychic discoveries behind the Iron Curtain”, following a narrative that jumps freely and without warning between countries and and characters and times and points of view can be a bit difficult. He's formidably well read, informed by and given the initial chapter that somehow put me in a different time and setting, Kim Carsons in the Wild West, I’m stuck, confused, but that was his intention, by design, high comedy when you can bypass the violent imagery, and I forget that for a time we were contemporaries, he died in 1997, damn, I could have probably found him in Tangiers when I visited and paid my respects, although, being younger and considerably more handsome probably would have had my admiration misconstrued, his obsession with Centipedes, young admirers, heroin...
I'm reading him in the library, coming to the lurid bits, feels a bit like surfing pornography on a screen where everyone can see, so it has to wait until I’m home, I want no protesting that “it’s not to my taste”, yet despite all this he's a genius that reminds me of Thomas Pynchon, he's inspiring me, referencing countless rabbits that I waste far too much time pursuing...
His ideas, brilliant, he's - despite being a junkie - considerably more alert, attuned, than I am (Heroin VS Alcohol, Heroin +10).
And I have to remember that all this knowledge was hard-won through book learning, watching films, television, no internet then, and I can appreciate how few references I’m probably getting, how my appreciation only sees but a portion of the whole man, and I'm in awe.
So, a long read, although when I got a few pages in it flew quicker, and while I'm reading the books painfully out of order I'll come again to them, in order next time, and try and make sense of his philosophy, admirable and demanding a bit more of my attention than I have to spare...
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I needed this, lyric, light, poetic, humorous, romantic. A break from William S. Burroughs, who's brilliance is undiminished but whose taste in romance is very much at odds with my own.
The cover, orange, with a black and white photo of the author (droopy handlebar moustache, long greasy blonde hair) beside a beautiful woman in a trench coat, both leaning up against a stone pillar in front of what could be the library described in his book. And the woman, in her trench coat, buttons placed so as to represent the nipples of her breasts if it were removed, perfectly slouched. I'm intrigued enough to suspect that it's some juvenilia doodled by a previous owner, but attempting to erase it does nothing. Merely a good photo that gives some indication of both the era (1966), the author, and the love interest Vida.
The library, staffed by the narrator, is a repository for first editions, unpublished manuscripts dropped off by unpublished authors, at all hours. All manner of authors bring their cherished manuscripts there to place them upon the shelf, including Richard Brautigan himself (a clever trick, also done frequently by Cendrars, to introduce himself in the third person into the novel...).
And the book meanders from there.
Read more on Brautigan here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brautigan
And read about the library it inspired here: https://cchmuseum.org/brautigan-library/