She wants her cup of stars.

Recently, te_amo_azul introduced me to the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. A few weeks ago I finished reading her collection of short work, Soulstorm. Frequently I find with translations of literature from cultures not my own, the process of reading is much slower for me—it’s not that the work isn’t good so much as that I’m trying to make synaptic leaps across things that don’t translate well or cultural disparities that I then have to process. 

( the rest of the review... )

 Last Wednesday I finished The Keep by Jennifer Egan, who is one of my most favorite writers currently.

WARNING: Some minor spoilers below. I don't think it's anything that'd ruin the whole book for anyone, but beware if you crave the surprise. I placed the main spoiler at the very end and marked it with a warning, so you can just read down to that spot if you want.

It may be obvious to many that I have a certain obsession with 1) the social psychology of bullying and 2) crimes perpetrated by adolescent girls, so it should be no surprise to anyone that my most recent read was Under the Bridge, which chronicles the true story of the murder of Reena Virk in Vancouver B.C. Reena was beaten by a large group of teenagers; when they finally let up, two of the teenagers went back to murder her. It was pretty much the kind of stupid-ass impulse-control crime that you'd expect from a teenager with rage issues, much less a gang of teenagers (who amusingly think they are Crips, even though they are resoundingly white and living in Vancouver B.C.). The tragedy is that they were too young to realize the very good reasons a person would want to control those impulses.

...Moby, that is.

Still plodding my way through the damn whale of a book. I love it except when I get exhausted by it. The plot and the philosophies are very engaging, but I do admit to being bogged down a bit in the cetology. I'm taking it slow so I can enjoy it, though. Even the whale chapters are very telling.

The most fascinating thing about Melville in my opinion is the subjectivity he allows for. Considering a longtime passion of mine is epistemological skepticism in American literature (I wrote a thesis on it years back), I find so much in the writing that excites me. People have this idea that the whale is a heavy-handed metaphor, but that simply isn't true (there'd be no sense in three fourths of the book being about cetology if the whale weren't, in the end, at least in part a damn whale). Melville's symbols are instilled with a flexibility I've never seen in a big metaphysical novel--they bow to the beholder without losing their own integrity. The whale for Ahab means something that a whale should not mean. That's the premise of the entire book, in fact--a mistaken metaphor. For Ahab it's the symbol of his own mortality, his own fallibility. It's the thing that will make him immortal if conqurered, or at least make him like a god. He projects his own symbolism onto something that is bigger than a symbol--onto nature itselfAhab's mistake isn't so much hubris as a mistake of interpretation (if I sound too much like Stanley Cavell stop me here).

Anyway, I'm still pretty far from the end, but I keep finding odds and ends that make me very excited. There's a touch of Montaigne-style skepticism in Ishmael's relationship with Queequeg--it's remarkably humanizing for 1851. The friendship between the two is contingent less upon any PC white guilt business than on the willingness to be skeptical--Ishmael's ability/desire to disregard the prevailing beliefs of his own culture regarding Queequeg's and vice versa. They have a funny storytelling moment where Ishmael is rolling his eyes about some weird Maori cultural idiosyncrasy when Queequeg eloquently tells his new friend about an American naval captain invited to a Maori wedding who mistakes the blessed marital punchbowl for a fingerbowl and is roundly laughed at (Melville tells it better but you get the point).

Beyond a cultural skepticism, there is an interesting dynamic of suspended belief: "Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye." Even the interpretation of certain prose conventions are called into question. Regarding the symbolism of a whale's tale: "So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels."

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call Melville a skeptic, even assuming we can believe Ishmael's beliefs reflect his own. But there is a certain humility and a desire to see things free of their stigmas and preconceived beliefs that is pretty incredible. Plus Melville is a lot fucking funnier than I would have guessed.