August 15, 2007
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
I don’t claim to have a sure grasp on Steven Hall’s novel The Raw Shark Texts. If I did claim such a thing, you’d probably know I was lying, or just stupid, and even the Raw Shark Texts discussion forums make clear that straight answers are not close at hand.
Steven Hall’s first novel exists as a conundrum, a puzzle and a maze. Eric Sanderson wakes up prone on a living room floor, devoid of memory, and the only clue offered out of this predicament is a letter he wrote before, signed “The First Eric Sanderson”. This latest Eric Sanderson therefore must follow subsequent clues and put pieces together to recover his identity. Such a neat little premise is complicated, however, by the fact that Eric’s conciousness has been attacked by a “conceptual shark” and that Eric remains under threat.
A conceptual shark? Constructed of the words and ideas it feeds upon, this shark is the concept of a shark quite similar to the shark you now see in your mind as a consequence of the words and ideas I’ve just given you. And so not entirely farfetched after all. Hall’s novel stands as metaphor for what language and ideas can do, the power of books. Notes Eric Sanderson, “it was possible to create a maze from stacked, written-on paper. Bizarre, unlikely, stupidly time-consuming and dangerous, but, yet, possible.” Which, with his novel, Hall has demonstrated.
Of course in addition to the metaphor, this book’s literal function is essential. The Raw Shark Texts is an adventure. When Eric Sanderson makes the preceding remark, he is in fact crawling through an underworld maze actually constructed of stacked telephone directories. Under threat from his conceptual shark and with the clues from the First Eric Sanderson, Eric has descended into this world of “unspace”, in which he can be relatively safe from his predator. He teams up with a girl called Scout who has her own motives for involvement, and together they’re looking for a way to defeat the shark and save themselves.
There is something, albeit undeniably clever, of the “look ma, no hands!” variety about this book. Steven Hall seems intent on demonstrating the innumerable powers a book is capable of, employing typefaces, codes, images, and even a flipbook. In lesser hands this postmodern extravaganza might have been rendered quite hollow, narratively speaking. But no, Hall is not so cheap. The best trick of all is his story: Eric Sanderson’s entire plight is the result of errors made in a fury of loss after the death of his girlfriend Clio. And that Hall’s conceptual people, his conceptual love, that this stack of written-on paper so managed to break my heart and have me longing for appropriate resolution is a testament to Steven Hall’s skill as a writer. It serves to underline his entire thesis: that a book really is a most powerful thing.
August 14, 2007
Counting the steps to the door of your heart
There was an instant during “Distant Sun” where the whole world was perfect, and we were swaying, singing. The lullaby that is “Don’t Dream It’s Over”. Their new songs sounded just as good as the ones I know best, and I had to shut my eyes a few times. Crowded House was amazing, and I don’t think I ever appreciated what a live show could truly be. What an absolutely beautiful night.
Coming up is my review of The Raw Shark Texts, and it’s fortunate that I’ve had some time to attempt to get my head around it. Also a review of The Big Book of The Berenstain Bears. Find out what it is to be continuing the aquatic theme with a reread of Margaret Drabble’s The Sea Lady.
Short stories here in The Guardian. As one who gave up on The Bible at the part where Noah’s son finds him drunk and naked, the arguments for and against its readability hold interest for me. “Firstly, there’s the simple point that if the Bible really were the word of God, you’d think that He would be able to make it more interesting”. Jeffrey Eugenides on Middlesex in its second life.
“Do you climb into space?”
August 13, 2007
All the melons I have taken for granted
The garden education continues, and this afternoon my world view shifted. We had harvested our first cantaloupe, minutes off the vine we were each eating half at the table, and it dawned on me how much work this little melon had done to come to life. Not to mention the work we’d done to further that life, and I considered the abundance of energy involved, and here we were about to devour it in mere minutes. I thought of all of the melons before that I’ve taken for granted, and how strange it is that we rarely think hard about what we eat. And the melon even tasted different after that. I think I’ll think harder now. And the fruit was lovely, delicious, and absolutely precious.
August 13, 2007
Piedust Memories
I’ve been too busy having fun lately to take pictures, and so I bring you one of my favourite shots from our trip to England in June.
This weekend has stretched long with the fun. Someone gave Stuart tickets to We Will Rock You for Thursday eve, and fun was had. Friday evening we met up with Natalie Bay for an authentic Japanese meal at Ematei, followed by authentic ice cream from Sicilian Sidewalk Cafe. Saturday evening was a housewarming at the gorgeous new abode of a certain Ms. Kim Dean (special guest appearence by E. Smith). And then today, a whole day with the future-Smiths. We went out for Chinese food, and then came back to ours for a game of Scrabble on the porch while the rain poured down. And I won! Word I longed to be a word was “piedust”. Best actual word of the game was “zygote”, and Carolyn and Steve didn’t get too angry when Stuart and I cheated (I handed him a tile in the bowl of popcorn). They stayed over until the sun came out, and then dinner was tea and freshly baked scones and jam, which would have been perfect had I not added too much salt. Everyone was very understanding though, and copious dollops of jam rendered them absolutely edible.
Now reading The Raw Shark Texts. I think I will be up quite late tonight reading to get to the very end.
Tomorrow night we’re going to see Crowded House!
August 9, 2007
Art arrived today
Today I received a print of my favourite painting ever: Fisher Price Mother Russia by Kirsten Johnson. Nothing has ever been more brilliant. And I am looking very forward to it hanging it up, having it adorn my walls forevermore.
August 9, 2007
Claudia's room
I wish I could say that I read well as a child. That I not only precociously toted Shakespeare around, but actually read him. That I delighted in the classics: Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. I definitely regret throwing a tantrum the year when I received Swallows and Amazons for my birthday, instead of The Truth About Stacey. I did manage some good contemporary fiction: Jean Little, Judy Blume, Norma Klein, Berniece Thurman Hunter, Betty Miles, Marilyn Sachs. And of course there was LM Montgomery, and I covetted anything at all with her name attached. But in general, my taste in books was crap. If I have children I will have to work very hard to remember that bad reading is not necessarily a lifelong affliction. Archie comics were once my heart’s desire, and now I have an MA in English lit, so anyone can turn around. If I could get over The Babysitters Club, there is hope for us all. And just to show how far I’ve come, I give you this blog, in which a young librarian revisits the BSC novels she devoured in her youth. Her reviews are terribly funny, the books are atrocious, and the blog is addictive.
Thanks to Leah for the link.
Update: In related news, everything we ever learned from Judy Blume is profiled here.
August 9, 2007
The non-presence of friends
“I have been careful to give Alicia a few friends. It’s curious how friends get left out of novels, but I can see how it happens. Blame it on Hemingway, blame it on Conrad, blame even Edith Wharton, but the modernist tradition has set the individual, the conflicted self, up against the world. Parents (loving or negligent) are admitted to fiction, and siblings (weak, envious or self-destructive) have a role. But the non-presence of friends is almost a convention– there seems no room for friends in a narrative already cluttered with event and the tortuous vibrations of the inner person. Nevertheless, I like to sketch in a few friends in the hope they will provide a release from a profound novelistic isolation that might otherwise ring hollow and smell suspicious.” –Carol Shields, Unless
August 8, 2007
Golden tomatoes and blue potatoes
Now rereading Carol Shields’s Unless, her masterpiece. I reread this book every summer, an amazing experience that allows one to, for example, pause and ponder the first paragraph for about ten minutes straight. It’s also sad and heartening to be reading this book after having read her book of letters with Blanche Howard in June. I also still maintain that this book is a treatise on novel-writing, which is very exciting seeing as I am returning to my own novel in just a few weeks after this summer of short stories. Anyway, I am enjoying this much the same way I always do, but also differently, of course.
I liked Michael Holroyd’s exasperation with author acknowledgements, as much as acknowledgements are the first part of any book I read. I also enjoyed Holroyd’s sister in law AS Byatt’s treatment of Middlemarch, which you might recall I read for the first time and fell in love with earlier this year. Byatt’s Possession is being “twinned” with Middlemarch for the Vintage Classic Twins Editions, which were brilliantly introduced to me here at dovergreyreader scribbles.
And it’s been nearly a week since I mentioned the garden last– you all must be on the edge of your seats! For your information my husband is now reading Animal Vegetable Miracle and is more obsessed than I was. We revisited the brilliant Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market and brought home tons of wonderful stuff, including blue potatoes and blackberries. We did a harvest of our garden tonight, and brought in two enormous bowls of tomatoes of all kinds– the window sill is crowded. Tomorrow night I am going to attempt a golden tomato sauce.
August 8, 2007
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
“People assume those in mourning aren’t thinking clearly,” explains Clarissa, the heroine of Vendela Vida’s novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. “Ha! My brain was a razor. A flesh-eating predator.” With prose stripped so bare, this spare and understated narrative follows Clarissa on a journey to Lapland after she learns the man she called her father wasn’t her father at all. Her other relationships are similarly hollow: her brother has Down’s Syndrome and doesn’t communicate; her fiance says he loves her and she pretends to be asleep; Clarissa’s mother disappeared when she was fourteen, leaving her in a bakery because, as the woman at the counter reported, “she got tired of waiting.” Clarissa is incredibly alone, but all the while this thought runs through her head like a mantra: There must be someone else… There must be someone I’m closer to.
Seeking this “someone” Clarissa escapes to the north of Finland, directed by clues to her real father’s identity. What follows is a quest of sorts, but one much diverted, exhausted. It’s fascinating, however, to learn more about this part of the world so unknown to me and Vida paints a sense of place so well– a place which lends itself to this “razor-sharp prose” in its own barreness. Reading this story was a curious experience however– I was not ultimately sure that I liked it. The prose, the choice and spare details, the traumatized voice all seemed much like what would be found in a short story, and to have it sustained for the length of a novel didn’t feel quite right. A certain superficiality seemed the result, but then, oh, I read the end. The end of this novel is magic spun out of gold– surprising, risky, realized and incredibly satisfying. Casting the entire novel in a different light than I’d been viewing it in all along, and the fact was I loved it. Which I couldn’t have told you twenty pages from the end, but from the final sentence, clearly it was so.
~And when I would hear people say that you can’t start over, that you cannot escape the past, I would think You can. You must.~
*Check out Tim’s review of this book at Baby Got Books.
August 7, 2007
August
“Every year, the bright Scandinavian summer nights fade away without anyone’s noticing. One evening in August you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden it’s pitch-black. A great warm, dark silence surrounds the house. It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstilll; nothing withers, and autumn is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness. The can of kerosene is brought up from the cellar and left in the hall, and the lamp is hung up on its peg beside the door.” –Tove Jansson, “The Summer Book”
