Barbara Gowdy, The White Bone

I read The White Bone not long after it was first published in 1998, and I re-read it last week. I have not read another novel like it, and recommend it to everyone. A capsulized description would be something like: A sad and heroic quest story written from the perspective of African elephants. Gowdy heavily researched the lives of these creatures, and she tried very hard to get into their heads, bodies, and culture for this story. Of course, if you are a human who populates your story with non-human animals, some  anthropomorphization is inevitable, and often it's the whole point. Watership Down, for example, is as I remember it a tale featuring rabbit characters who are a lot like humans. Gowdy is after something bigger here, but because we humans cannot actually get into the heads and bodies of other creatures, the results must be judged as an act of imagination, as literature. 

The philosopher Thomas Nagel's famous essay asked "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" and his conclusion as I understand it is: we simply can't know. Gowdy uses story-telling to try to convince you otherwise, at least for elephants. Humans, by the way, do figure in her story, and for the She-ones (elephants), it is we, fallen creatures, who are alien and inscrutable, not to mention cruel and dangerous. You can hardly blame them for thinking so.

Reading roundup

Two by John Banville  

The Untouchable
The Sea

I've now read each of these novels twice. They are deservedly praised. Of the two, I think The Untouchable is Banville's masterpiece: a virtuosic, unsettling though often humorous fictionalization of the life of Anthony Blunt, one of the Cambridge Five. The first-person narrator and protagonist, Victor Maskell (Blunt), has led a double life along many dimensions– as a spy for the Soviets and closeted gay man– and his deceptions definitely extend to himself. It is also a twisted story of unrequited love. Especially, it is a glorious exercise in style– I found myself wanting to read many of the sentences over again, wondering just how Banville pulls it off, page after poetic page.

The Sea, another novel written as a first-person reminiscence, is shorter; exceptionally well written and structured as well. In the end, the plot didn't quite convince me. Still, a fantastic book.

Three Japanese novellas

Snow Country
Yasunari Kawabata

Kitchen
Banana Yoshimoto

The Emissary
Yoko Tawada

I had read Snow Country before. It is justly regarded as a classic. The Kitchen is perhaps a trifle, but delightful. The Emissary is a near-future dystopia, deliberately quirky... too deliberately, in fact. 

Miscellaneous "entertainments"

A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles

A Certain Justice
P.D. James

Luminous
Sylvia Park

Exordia
Seth Dickinson

Of these, the P.D. James is– unsurprisingly– the best read. Nasty victim, nasty suspects... Dalgliesh and Miskin, getting it done. The Towles book is sweet, but the writing did not "cast a spell," as the blurb promised. The last two, sci-fi books, received some critical accolades, which goes to show that sci-fi critics have low standards and/or are starved for good literature. Luminous is a robot book, with a somewhat interesting kid robot character and a fairly perfunctory dose of family drama. But how many indifferently written disaffected robot books can you read? Exordia is a sprawling pull-out-all-the-stops alien encounter hard sci-fi meets woo-woo sci-fi with extended high-tech battle scene mess. I suppose it is the beginning of a series that I won't read.

Lisa Mezzacappa 5(ish)

Mezzacappa, a Bay Area-based bassist and composer, has assembled a kind of dream group, which I had the pleasure of hearing last night in Palo Alto. It was one of the best sets of music I have heard in a long time. The audience was– to put it mildly– sparse, but at least the performance afforded the band an opportunity to rehearse some pieces for Mezzacappa's upcoming residency at The Stone in New York, where one hopes the locals are a little more likely to turn out for some cutting edge improvisatory music. If you have the opportunity to hear them, do go.

Last night 5(ish) was a sextet, with Aaron Bennett on tenor, Kyle Bruckmann on oboes/electronics, Mark Clifford on vibes, Brett Carson at the piano, and Jordan Glenn on drums. The music is jazz, sorta... a structured soundscape that leaves space for individual and collective improvisation. At first listen I thought of Patricia Brennan's recent, fantastic album Breaking Stretch, but that album is more horn-heavy and rhythm-forward. Mezzacappa's ensemble has, if anything, more percussion, with drums, vibes, and Carson a decidedly percussive pianist, but the compositions– and percussionists– go for texture. It gets interesting when the two percussionists join the bassist in bowing their (metal) instruments.

Everybody in the band is a first-rate musician, playing challenging music that shifts from composed unison lines to odd rhythmic counterpoint. Bruckmann's rattles and chirps on the electronics fit right in, as did his oboe. Mark Clifford was a revelation, as was Jordan Glenn on the drums.

If I had one wish, it would be that the band devote a few more minutes of their set to swinging hard. As they showed in the evening's waltzy finale, they are more than capable. But that's a quibble.

If you have to ask...

Nice.... Thanks guys... 

 

The still explosions on the rocks

On the trail to Rancheria, above Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite.

Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, RIP

Two of the all-time greats. Sad week, when both of these guys die along with U.S. democracy.