it was the best of times, it was the worst of times

there's a line in a halou song that says something about being nostalgic while you're still living it. great lyrics. i've certainly had moments that are awesome and then suddenly upsetting because you realize it will soon be not-so-awesome. but aside from in-the-moment nostalgia...  nothing makes a person feel more old and tired than the sweet pain of regular-old nostalgia. even when you know 'it' wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, you still yearn to have that spot, that ambiance of your life, back. and then you feel like a dweeb, because seriously, who yearns. now i'm sure you're wondering what reminded me of whatever i'm missing? fooled you! i miss all kinds of things, but nothing in particular at this moment. what got me thinking on nostalgia itself was a perfect sentence in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is quickly becoming my soul mate. 


i regret that i haven't read it before, or perhaps i thought i had, but i most certainly have not, because among all the brilliance and YES moments i've had with this novel (i'm barely 50 pages in, for crying out loud), this line hit me like it was cut with cocaine:

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

good thing i was in the tub, because i had to let that one sink in. and it of course got me thinking on the tiny amount of life i've experienced, and tiny bits of stuff i know, and the insignificant, perfect moments i've had. these things shouldn't make me sad. and then i remembered a great article i read a while back that made me smile at nostalgia. it's called Do Happy: Be Your Nostalgia, by Lori Deschene. i highly recommend it. she speaks about how it's easier to live in the past than the present. what was and what could be are easier because they aren't. it goes back to the idea that between where you are and where you want to be there is a sh*t ton of work. 


but she speaks about how we shouldn't dwell because there is so much out there to be experienced, why would we bother wasting the time we have on things we've already done and places we've already been? while this is uplifting and enlightened, i still teary (like crying, not ripping) thinking on my past. 


ginsberg saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness. i just want to see the best minds of my generation. and allen ginsberg's generation. oh man, that would be one crazy party.

all truth is crooked, even time is a circle.

ooh literary theory, i will make you accessible if it's the last thing i do. how much does perspective have to do with truth? think on't a minute. let that percolate.... ok, here we go. instead of getting lost in the story, some stories require that you lose yourself. if a story depends on its reader's interpretation and effort to make sense (or meaning), it is not complete until the reader reads it and constructs his or her own meaning from it. 

the concepts of where a work of literature sits in history, the author's intentions, and what the reader brings to the text are not new. they are, however, SO MUCH FUN. especially since every stinkin single person is so flingin'-flangin' different. this brings into question all kinds of super-stimulating ideas about accuracy of history depending on author (the victor writes the history books, etc.), and the applicability of the message (to place oneself in a character's shoes, the character must wear the same size). i have no intention of addressing all this today, but i wanted to start here so that i can drill down and show you what happens when you play with 'what really happened' in a story if the author gives you multiple perspectives.

Julio Cortazar's 62: A Model Kit employs an open stylistic form that demands that the reader actively participate to construct meaning. even more unique, this postmodern strategy is taken one step further by the inclusion of an elusive type of "other," called in the novel the paredros. it has no direct translation - it's an egyptian term meaning something like 'one who sits beside,' but consider the paredros to be the 'other,' 'attendant,' 'alternate,' etc. somewhat companion, somewhat voyeur. ooooooo blowin' your mind!


to give you just a tiny bit of an idea of what the book is "about"... it's to do with a group of friends. and they hang out. and talk about stuff. and theeyyy like each other and have little trysts. they have silly conversations and deep conversations. there are arguments. one character is named Feuille Morte (french: dead leaf) and never speaks. you will recognize things. they have mutual ground.. called the City. not necessarily A city, but perhaps where ever they are all together or sharing something... is home. ok, i realize it's still super vague. here's some of the copy on the back flap:

First published in English in 1972 and long out of print, 62: A Model Kit is Julio Cortazar's brilliant, intricate blueprint for life in the so-called "City." As one of the main characters, the intellectual Juan, puts it: to one person the City might appear as Paris, to another it might be where one goes upon getting out of bed in Barcelona; to another it might appear as a beer hall in Oslo. This cityscape, as Carlos Fuentes describes it, 'seems drawn up by the Marx Brothers with an assist from Bela Lugosi!' It is the setting where the usual restraints of traditional novelistic order are discarded and the reader is taken on a daring and exiting new experience of life itself.  

the OTHER!
characters within the novel speak to and about their paredros, yet the reader is left to assemble an idea of what or who this is. Likewise, the reader is left to assemble a great amount of "plot" throughout the novel, as the surrealistic prose not only moves back and forth through time, but also merges physical cities into one pseudo-metaphysical City. the narcissitic "i" suggests that so much is required of the reader in this novel that the reader becomes the paredros of the text, the ultimate Other, mediating the text itself. the one who defines what the book is and isn't.


as the title implies, 62: A Model Kit requires some assembly. Cortazar makes a number of postmodern literary moves throughout the text, beginning with the first sentence:

Not a few readers will notice the various transgressions of literary convention here.

how kind of him to forewarn the reader that the novel will follow no realistic concept of time or meaning, and that whatever tale the reader ends up constructing out of it will be 

the book he has chosen to read.

while the reader must finish the novel by creating coherence and making connections between characters and events, she or he also essentially becomes a part of the novel, acting as 'the other.' the one outside the situations, apart from the characters, is the only one who can see all and find a way to create meaning from an otherwise disoriented set of individual events and thoughts. does this give you any new perspective on history? nonfiction? anything anyone ever tells you, ever? ok, ok, ok.


so you have something to make you read the awesomeness of this book... the narrative beings with by easing the reader into this sense of interconnected/connectedness (not quite as confusing as it sounds). our (first) narrator overhears a remark in a diner just as he's glancing inside a book he bought, and for some pages the reader is lead through a labyrinth of jumbled memories and connections. one critic explained it eloquently as

the unpacking of the resonances and associations embedded in that simple moment of eavesdropping.

this narrator thinks on the causal relationship between past events, friends, and even the book he chose to buy 'with the tacit certainty that [it] would be lost forever in the bookcase.' already a vague relational metaphor is made. while he reflects on the relationship between his opening a book he never intended to read to a specific page while overhearing the 'fat diner,' the reader of 62: A Model Kit is still pondering Cortazar's point of the previous page regarding this book being 'the book has chosen to read.'


back to how we each bring something unique to a text... Cortazar plays with this all over this fantastic novel, allowing his characters to be as jumbled and unique as his readers. there are so many things in this novel that can be connected (or not) and it takes the reader to tie them together. that's a lot of work. but so much fun. 


oh, and so it makes possibly a tiny bit more sense, the title of this post is from Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra.

some people are better off dead.

i recently came to the realization that i probably have some sort of attention disorder or overactive brain or something. i listen to music while i do just about everything, and it was pointed out to me that listening to music while reading is just CRAZY. that had never really occurred to me. i also watch tv while i troll the intarwebz, and read or watch old episodes of friends while sweating all over my exercise bike. and i'm currently screening some new artists i think i like while i write this. YOU'RE weird. but seriously, pairing appropriate music with what i'm reading is neat. it enhances the experience. like fun drugs or something probably. and while this is not the main point of my post, it's a sub..point... i guess. 


i actually made, not a mix, but a mp3 cd of a number of albums (in their proper track-ic..-al.. order) to listen to whilst reading the book about which i shall soon tell you. the albums on the cd are:

• kate bush - the dreaming
• halou - wholeness & separation
• thom yorke - the eraser

now, based on that information, assuming you're familiar with any/all of them, do you have any idea what kind of novel i'm going to talk about? well. i'll help! it's noir fiction. 'member the talented mr ripley? patricia highsmith wrote the book offa which that was based (and a whole slew of others about matt damon or whatever; i havent read 'em). she also wrote Strangers on a Train (her debut novel, also made into a movie by alfred hitchcock, and though i love him, that movie makes no sense: read the book.), which i will sneakily force upon you now.


to enhance your experience, listen to the following song while you read the rest of my blathers. i give you Strangers on a Train by Lovage. oh yeah, that's good stuff. 

on to the story. highsmith's thing is proving that anyone is capable of despicable acts, that the very quotidianness of any old life can hide within it a plethora of situations in which we might make one little choice, followed by another, leading to a transformation of character just great enough that we might do something HORRENDOUS. read: awesome. 


you know when you get really mad and want to punch something? what about when you're not that kind of mad, but you're steeped in that sort of simmering-distaste where your brain tells you revenge stories and you smile? well, everyone has those moments. and sometimes, people go so far as to act on them. but not normal people right? not you or i. certainly not. never ever ever. ever.


this haunting novel's main character, Guy (i know, right? just some guy named Guy. might as well be Dude, or Hey.), is an ordinary fellow. he meets another ordinary fellow on a train (Bruno) and they have a chat. Guy is in the middle of an icky divorce - his wife is a real bummer; plus she gets in the way of (aka: makes him feel guilty about) his mistress. Bruno pretty much hates his dad. lets bond over anger! that's a good way to start a lasting and fruitful friendship! their bond begins with Bruno's personal questions, which Guy answers, and is a little surprised that he answers. 

they come from a string of short, to-the-point get-to-know-you questions. note the short questions and short answers. feeling each other out... and note Guy's reactions to Bruno and to his own reactions to Bruno's questioning. also also also check out how much information Bruno is getting out of Guy. enough to make anyone guarded and a liar, i tell ya. cheggidout:

'You married?'

'No. Well, I am, yes. Separated.'

'Oh. Why?'

'Incompatible,' Guy replied.

'How long you been separated?'

'Three years.'

'You don't want a divorce?'

Guy hesitated, frowning.

'Is she in Texas, too?'

'Yes.'

'Going to see her?'

'I'll see her. We're going to arrange the divorce now.' His teeth set. Why had he said it?

Bruno sneered. 'What kind of girls you find to marry down there?'

'Very pretty,' Guy replied. 'Some of them.'

'Mostly dumb though, huh?'

'They can be.' He smiled to himself. Miriam was the kind of Southern girl Bruno probably meant.

'What kind of girl's your wife?'

'Rather pretty,' Guy said cautiously. 'Red hair. A little plump.'

'What's her name?'

'Miriam. Miriam Joyce.'

'Hm-m. Smart or dumb?'

'She's not an intellectual. I didn't want to marry an intellectual.'

'And you loved her like hell, huh?'

Why? Did he show it? Bruno's eyes were fixed on him, missing nothing, unblinking, as if their exhaustion had passed the point where sleep is imperative. Guy had a feeling those gray eyes had been searching him for hours and hours. 'Why do you say that?'

'You're a nice guy. You take everything serious. You take women the hard way, too, don't you?'

'What's the hard way?' he retorted. But he felt a rush of affection for Bruno because Bruno had said what he thought about him. Most people, Guy knew, didn't say what they thought about him. 

too much more to get the point where 'hard way' is explained as pretty much 'high hopes and let downs.' but ok, enough teasing. and that's in the first chapter. intrigued? Guy's just an average Joe, yes? Bruno's pretty average, unless you look really deep into that conversation and then, yanno, keep reading.... well let me intrigue just a tad further. you ever befriend someone who gets a little too attached a little too fast? like.. you get along and everything, but like in that one episode of Seinfeld with the pool guy, this person just keeps calling and showing up and wanting to hang out... now imagine that person is a very bored, very smart, psychopath. who knows an awful lot about you. 

keeping in mind that highsmith likes proving that absolutely anyone is capable of murder, i'll let you make your own assumptions and preconceptions about this novel, but please don't think you have any idea how it "ends." i am not in the habit of reading this type of novel. the psychological thriller type. but man, i dug this one because i got to me. it's familiar, and because of that it just gets more and more eerie and disturbing. kind of like requiem for a dream or basketball diaries, but with no drugs - just manipulation and circumstance. it makes you sit and stare and look like this for a while. and then you stop answering personal questions.