Fiskadoro

This is a post-holocaust tale published in 1985, just before the end of the Cold War. It's a mythopeic and hallucinatory work that questions the nature of reality, especially when memory fades and history is lost.

Fiskadoro is a 12-year-old boy living near Key West, now renamed Twicetown after being hit by two missiles carrying nuclear warheads. The warheads were duds.

Life is simple and uncouth, facilitated by the forgiving climate, the sea loaded with fish, and the debris of a pre-holocaust world. People use odd names, like Flying Man and King David Rat, and speak a mangled patois: "All I own do is gepback home."

Woven into the narrative are several journeys, the most important of which are the first two:

1. Fiskadoro, an Orpheus-like figure, is being taught how to how to play the clarinet by Mr. Cheung. He's captured by swamp-people who erase, among other things, his memory.

2. Mr. Cheung's grandmother was one of the last people to escape from Saigon before it fell to Communist forces. Now she is scarcely cognizant of her surroundings. Her long ordeal is described in detail.

3. Mr. Cheung himself travels to another island in pursuit of knowledge--a book that will explain the nuclear holocaust. He "believed in the importance of remembering."

4. Mr. Cheung's half-brother is "a famous, almost legendary figure" whose current name is Cassius Clay Sugar Ray. He recounts an odyssey to the mainland where he and his shipmates are captured by gamblers. He wants to obtain the drug used by the swamp-people to obliterate memories.

Fiskadoro is not a slice of sci-fi. It is a gritty surrealistic tale, closer to a novel like Fishboy by Mark Richard than McCarthy's The Road or Atwood's Oryx and Crake.

The author, Denis Johnson, is an award-winning poet and novelist. Some of his other novels are Already Dead, Recusitation of a Hanged Man, and Tree of Smoke.

Fiskadoro had nothing against the grandmother except that the whole time she sat there, every time, she smoked a long cigarillo backward, with the lit end resting in her mouth and the spit dripping down to darken the other end, the end she should have been smoking. Maybe this was how they smoked their cigarets in the old days...

Radio Cuba

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking is a writer of cosmological space westerns, the most famous of which is this book, A Brief History of Time. His use of literary devices such as imaginary time and virtual particles makes our universe seem like the world of Bizarro in Superman comics, or an updated version of Alice in Wonderland.

Characters

First of all there’s Newton, a rather nasty fellow who pursued counterfeiters all the way to the gallows. Einstein was much nicer, but he disliked gambling, especially with dice. Heisenberg couldn’t make up his mind about anything, Godel proved nothing was provable, and Feynman said everything was possible. Fortunately most of these guys have a sense of humour, like the comedy team of Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow.

The villains of the book are as odd a bunch as you’ll find this side of a pack of cards. There’s a secret society of Mesons, and a couple of clowns named P-Brane and Glueball, and the weak but chubby Massive Vector Bosons.

Then there’s the Quarks, a slippery bunch named after a passage in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and described by Hawking as “somewhat metaphysical.” Thus did modern literature influence particle physics – not just in the trivial matter of names, but in the very subjectivity of existence.

Or to put it another way, stream-of-consciousness helped pave the way for quantum mechanics.

Plot

This is your basic coming-of-age story.

Quotes

A black hole has no hair.

String theory is rather like plumbing.

The universe is the ultimate free lunch.

The total energy of the universe is exactly zero.

Why do we remember the past but not the future?

An ordinary particle moving forward in time is equivalent to an antiparticle moving backward in time.

Black holes are not really black.

The Author

In my copy of this book, the previous owner had left a newspaper clipping dated 1995. It announced Hawking's second marriage. His first wife was quoted as saying that Hawking “is in the grip of forces that he can’t control.”

Of course, that is literally quite true. In 1963 he was diagnosed with ALS and given no more than two years to live. Yet despite being almost completely paralyzed and no longer able to speak, he's become a world-famous theoretical physicist and cultural icon. He’s addressed NASA, experienced zero-G, and appeared on numerous TV shows, including a famous episode of ST:TNG.

His picture on the book’s cover -- a crumpled body against a backdrop of stars -- sums up the pathos of human existence.

A Brief History of A Brief History

1988 - A Brief History of Time
1996 - The Illustrated A Brief History of Time: Updated and Expanded Edition
1998 - A Brief History of Time: Updated and Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition
2005 - A Briefer History of Time (with Leonard Mlodinow)
2008 - A Brief History of Time: 20th Anniversary Edition

More Cosmological Westerns

Interested readers might try the Shrodinger's Cat trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson, and The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics by Leonard Susskind.

The Road to Oxiana

In 1933 an Englishman named Robert Byron began a pilgrimmage to Persia, or what is now called Iran.

His main interest was Islamic architecture, and one of his goals was to reach the ancient river of Oxus (now called the Amu), which at the time marked the boundary between Afghanistan and the former USSR.

His description of this journey has been called the first modern travel book for its unique combination of humour, erudition, and splendid writing. His influence on Bruce Chatwin is immediately obvious.

One of my favourite passages, which even my schoolboy French was able to comprehend, takes place in Damascus:

“Guide, Monsieur?” Silence. “Qu’est-ce vous désirez, Monsieur?” Silence. “D’où venez-vous, Monsieur?” Silence. “Où allez-vous, Monsieur?” Silence. “Vous avez des affaires ici, Monsieur?” “Non.” “Vous avez des affaires à Baghdad, Monsieur?” “Non.” “Vous avez des affaires à Téhéran, Monsieur?” “Non.” “Alors, qu’est-ce que vous faites, Monsieur?” “Je fais un voyage en Syrie.” “Vous êtes un officier naval, Monsieur?” “Non.” “Alors, qu’est-ce que vous êtes, Monsieur?” “Je suis homme.” “Quoi?” “HOMME.” “Je comprends. Touriste.”

It's a silly passage, but a good example of Byron's irrepressible wit, which runs throughout the book.

Sadly, the places he visited (Iran under Reza Shah, Afghanistan with Russia menacing the border) are no less volatile today. When he learns a rumour is circulating that he works for the Secret Service, he remarks prophetically, "Next time I do this kind of journey, I shall take lessons in spying beforehand. Since one has to put up with the disadvantages of the profession anyhow, one might as well reap some of its advantages, if there are any."

Back in England he spoke out loudly against the policy of appeasement, and in 1941 agreed to work for British Intelligence. The ship he set out on to return to the Middle East was torpedoed before it arrived. He was only 36.

The edition of The Road to Oxiana pictured above contains excellent introductions by Rory Stewart and Paul Fussell, as well as maps and several B&W photos of the buildings that Byron sought out.

If you enjoy travel writing, read this book.

Untitled

Outside, the city was lurching into stunned awareness. The clockwork began to turn, motors gasped like asthmatics, and smoke dribbled into the sky. People appeared on the streets as though propelled from cuckoo clocks, only to be packed into subway cars like cans on a conveyor belt.

Through this turmoil trotted Danny, as unconcerned as a hound free of its leash. He moved along board fences plastered with posters and curses, and came to a rail line which he followed over a canal of oily water by means of a blackened steel bridge.

This brought him to a section of the city composed of puffing factories and battered warehouses, and then to a suburb of row after row of grimy houses.

All day he walked, until at length the skyline rose behind him and the impatient grunting of autos diminished.

Computer Fungus

It was inevitable that this would happen, that an organism miles in length would eventually find its way here, a dump clogged with circuit boards. The fungal mat sent forth rhizomorphs that explored the fibreglass substrate and traced the metal rootlets within. The mycelium took on a geometrical shape, and the fruiting bodies became boxy and cubical with gills that resembled the metal vanes of heat sinks. Soon digital spores drifted across the landscape, and, after warm summer rains, hackers roamed the forest looking for mushrooms to incorporate into their computers.

Gravity's Rainbow

"A great steaming slagheap of a novel." That's how David Quammen puts it in one of his essays.

Paragraphs go on forever, scenes and POVs blur into an endless torrent. Characters flicker past with names like Lloyd Nipple, Ronald Cherrycoke, and Blodgett Waxwing. Four hundred of them, including an octopus and a guy who can change the colour of his skin. Take a trip down a toilet, throw pies at airplanes, relax at the Casino Hermann Goering.

When you come up for air you're dazed and blinking, disoriented by the encyclopedic detail, nasty sex, strange conspiracies, acronyms and aliases, druggie humour, snippets of German, and doggerel like "The Penis He Thought Was His Own."

Oh, and don't forget the formulas:

So Is It Any Good?

Imagine Richard Brautigan and Henry Miller co-writing an entire season of The X-Files and you'll get a notion of what to expect. Portions of the novel are absolutely brilliant. But it is such a convoluted work that you'll need to read it several times to get a handle on it. You'll need to study it. But look on the bright side. Master the book and you'll be able to teach the sucker at university.

Search for the word "Vsesoynznyy" in Google Books and read 2 or 3 pages for a sample of Pynchon at his best, an inspired mixture of farce and erudition.

Now decide. Is this, as some feel, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century? Or is it, as the 1974 Pulitzer committee said, "unreadable, turgid, overwritten and obscene"?

Need Help?

You can buy Steven C. Weisenburger's A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel. You can also check out the following sources on the Web:

Character Index
Gravity’s Rainbow Wiki
NY Times review by Richard Locke
Ultra-Condensed Version by Glenn Davis
Some Things That “Happen” (More or Less) in Gravity’s Rainbow by Michael Bell

Edward Whittemore

A forgotten author whose work reminded me very much of Pynchon is Edward Whittemore, author of the hard-to-find "Jerusalem Quartet," which consists of Sinai Tapestry, Jerusalem Poker, Nile Shadows, and Jericho Mosaic. I've only read Jerusalem Poker, but I'd definitely put it in the same ballpark as the two Pynchon novels I've read, V and Gravity's Rainbow.

Whittemore was apparently as inscrutable as Pynchon.

Life of Johnson

The greatest achievement of Samuel Johnson, the most famous man of English letters, was the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, a task that he accomplished almost single-handedly.

He is also remembered for:
• his essays in two periodicals, The Rambler and The Idler
• an influential edition of the plays of Shakespeare
• a series of biographical and critical sketches called Lives of the Poets
• a novel called Rasselas, which he wrote in a week
• a travelogue called A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

But that’s not all. He was a celebrity in his own time, not just as a literary figure, but also as a conversationalist who could deliver incisive, well-formed sentences on any subject, and so loved verbal combat that people were sometimes were afraid to open their mouths around him. He had an almost oracular status.

Johnson achieved fame despite the handicaps of poverty and ill health. He was afflicted with scrofula, gout, dropsy, depression, asthma, weak eyes, and odd compulsive behaviour later diagnosed as Tourette’s Syndrome. He was forced to leave Oxford without taking a degree due to lack of funds, and later in life was arrested for non-payment of debts.

When he was 53, Johnson met a young Scottish man named James Boswell, and they formed a deep and lasting affection for each other. "Bozzy" immediately began recording Johnson’s conversation with the ultimate aim of producing a biography. The result is a work that has transmitted Johnson’s fame through the centuries.

Life of Johnson

First published in 1791, Boswell’s work has been called the most famous biography ever written. It's also one of the longest -- my edition clocked in at 1400 pages, not including an 90-page index. There are some rather dry stretches, due in part to issues that are no longer relevant, and to a style of writing that can be pompous and long-winded. And at times Boswell injects more of himself into the book than is warranted. For example, he launches into a lengthy defense when Johnson criticizes his Latin.

What I enjoyed most about this book was seeing Johnson's human side, particularly his wit, courage, and generosity. This great grotesque man is worthy of our respect and study. I was left with a desire to dig deeper into his writings, and to read a more modern biography.

In search of the latter I found this excellent article in The New Yorker.

Life of Boswell

Boswell was a likeable but somewhat aimless fellow, who during the course of his life met some of the greatest minds who ever lived. He was literally a student of Adam Smith at the University of Glasgow. During his travels on the continent he met Rousseau and Voltaire. Back in England, as part of Johnson’s circle of friends, he was on familiar terms with Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was also acquainted with David Hume and Laurence Sterne, and chatted with Captain Cook at a dinner party.

Thus it comes as something of a shock to learn that Boswell was a compulsive drinker, gambler, and fornicator. He was also a failure as a lawyer.

Open Net

In 1977 George Plimpton put on the pads for the Bruins in a pre-season game against the Flyers. He was 50 years old and could barely skate.

The team welcomed him by cutting the bottom out of his underpants and applying a smelly substance to the rest of his clothes.

As coach, Don Cherry serves up lots of colourful quotes, especially when talking about hockey legend Eddie Shore, who once called a meeting with players and their wives and ordered them to cut out the sex.

He would tie his goaltenders to the crossbar to keep them from going down, and make them practice alone in an empty arena, without a puck. He told a player who was in a slump to part his hair on the other side of his head.

Other observations recorded by Plimpton:

Phil Esposito on Gilles Gratton: "The craziest player we ever had. Spaced out. One night he wouldn't play because the moon was in the wrong part of the sky."

Don Cherry on Boom-Boom Geoffrion: "He referred to himself by his nickname. In a restaurant, he'd announce, 'Boom-Boom is pleased. Boom-Boom likes this chicken.'"

John Wensink on Keith Magnuson: "The poor man. He ran into one punch after another."

What Bobby Orr's knee looked like: "A bag of handkerchiefs."

And my favourite, from a fan: "It's hard to throw an octopus with pinpoint accuracy."

A fast, entertaining read.

True Grit

The novels of Charles Portis are alike in their southern voice and setting, their humorous dialogue and eccentric characters.

Where True Grit differs from the others is that it takes place in the past -- during the 1870s after the American Civil War.

It's an anti-western.

Mattie Ross is a 14-year-old girl whose father has been shot down by a hired hand named Tom Chaney.

She sets out after him with a Texas Ranger named LaBeouf (pronounced "LaBeef"), and a one-eyed federal marshall named Rooster Cogburn, who eats corn dodgers and drinks "double-rectified busthead."

On one level the book reads like a YA novel, particularly at its climax, which involves a cave inhabited by bats, snakes and a skeleton.

But it is rescued from this one misstep by great dialogue, Mattie's pungent observations, and an ending that is far from treacly.

A sample:

I sat at one corner of the table between her and a tall, long-backed man with a doorknob head and a mouthful of prominent teeth. He and Mrs. Floyd did most of the talking. He traveled about selling pocket calculators. He was the only man there wearing a suit of clothes and a necktie. He told some interesting stories about his experiences but the others paid little attention to him, being occupied with their food like hogs rooting in a bucket. "Watch out for those chicken and dumplings," he told me. Some of the men stopped eating. "They will hurt your eyes," he said. A dirty man across the table in a smelly deerskin coat said, "How is that?" With a mischievous twinkle the drummer replied. "They will hurt your eyes looking for the chicken." I thought it a clever joke but the dirty man said angrily, "You squirrelheaded son of a bitch," and went back to eating.

The book contains laudatory quotes from Esquire, The New York Times, The Saturday Review and from Jonathem Lethem, Roald Dahl, and Walker Percy (the man who saved A Confederacy of Dunces from oblivion).