Palimpsest

Imaginarium, a dream emporium! Caress the tales and they will dream you real. A storyteller’s game, lips that intoxicate. The core of all life is a limitless chest of tales. Let’s dream of Palimpsest, by Catherynne M. Valente.

Synopsis:

In the Cities of Coin and Spice and In the Night Garden introduced readers to the unique and intoxicating imagination of Catherynne M. Valente. Now she weaves a lyrically erotic spell of a place where the grotesque and the beautiful reside and the passport to our most secret fantasies begins with a stranger’s kiss.…

Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse—a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They’ve each lost something important—a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life—and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Having enjoyed some of Catherynne M. Valente’s other fiction, I decided to give Palimpsest a try. This story follows the adventures of four random people who, after having sex, find themselves transported in their dreams to the strange city of Palimpsest, which is wonderful and terrible by turns. Chapters set in the city give information about it and follow the protagonists’ adventures there, while chapters set in the real world explore their waking lives and their quest to find a way to stay in Palimpsest permanently.

This book… was weird. Not just in the sense that it belongs to the genre commonly called “weird fiction”, but also in that it was really hard to make sense of. The wild and disconnected descriptions of Palimpsest verged on nonsensical at times, and in any case constituted more of a setting description than an actual narrative. The protagonists, meanwhile, were such concentrated bundles of flaws an neuroses that I found it difficult to form any attachment to them. They were interesting mainly in the sense of a real bad traffic accident: you might stop to gawk, but on the whole you’re better off keeping your distance.

In the end, I didn’t “get” Palimpsest; it was just too weird for me. Thus, I give it my rare “square root of two stars” rating, for books too irrational to be scored rationally.

Final Rating: √2/5

The Broom of the System

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore – tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore – clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” Let’s sweep up The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace.

Synopsis:

Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Sometimes, I’ll hear someone recommend a book and pick it up without any real idea of what I’m getting myself into. Such was the case with The Broom of the System. Hearing it called an example of great American literature, I decided to give it a try. It was only after picking it up that I realized the author was David Foster Wallace, famous (infamous?) for the incomprehensible doorstopper Infinite Jest. That’s right: I had once again found myself in the deep waters of postmodernism without a life jacket.

The plot, if it can be called such, follows Lenore Beadsman as she attempts to deal with various crises in her life: her troubled relationship with her neurotic boyfriend Rick Vigorous; unwanted romantic overtures from her boss Norman Bombardini; the mysterious disappearance of her grandmother from a nursing home; the telephone lines of her workplace being hopelessly scrambled; and her pet parrot starting to speak excessively. However, I can’t really say that this is what the book is “about”, as it is constantly skewing off on tangents – detailing, for instance, Rick’s bizarre sexual nightmares, or rejected manuscripts submitted to his publishing house – and it’s probably all supposed to just be symbolic anyway. Symbolic of what, I couldn’t say.

This book has all the trademarks of incomprehensible postmodern literature. There are the ridiculous characters names, like Biff Diggerence and Candy Mandible. There are the offhand references to philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein. There are the chapters which switch to strange styles, like long exchanges of dialogue where the speakers are never identified, or being presented in the form of a transcript. And there’s the complete lack of anything that could be called resolution or closure, to the point of ending abruptly mid-sentence.

Needless to say, I am completely incapable of giving something like this a meaningful review. Fortunately, I have a special rating for wholly irrational pieces of prose such as this. Thus do I bestow The Broom of the System with a score of square root of two stars.

Final Rating: √2/5

Kerious Pye #1: The Seventeenth Pocket

There are loved ones in the glory whose dear forms you often miss; when you close your earthly story, will you join them in their bliss? Will the circle be unbroken, bye and bye, bye and bye? Is a better home awaiting, in the sky, in the sky? Let’s put the eight ball into The Seventeenth Pocket, by Hargus Montgomery.

Synopsis:

Researchers are close to the most controversial discovery of all time – communication across the death barrier. While millions eagerly await the breakthrough, some are terrified of the consequences. When one young patient befriends Arden McGivven, the quest to cross the death barrier takes a completely unexpected turn.

The Kerious Pye series recounts the expeditions of an ancient Order of worldly Explorers.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Since I’ve introduced the new rating of “square root of two stars” for books which are just too bizarre and incomprehensible to give conventional reviews, I can now go back and review some books which I’d previously dismissed as unsuitable for reviewing because I just couldn’t understand them. And right at the top of that list was The Seventeenth Pocket.

I first learned about the Kerious Pye series when I saw a synopsis for the second book, The Bureau of Dangerous Matter. It seemed to be about a group of alien explorers from another dimension, one with different fundamental laws and where matter does not exist, becoming trapped in our own universe. I did gather that it would likely be a very weird story. However, I had just finished reading the Orthogonal trilogy, which is also set in an alternate universe with different physical laws. Those books had been challenging in places, true, but I’d made it all the way through and found them quite enjoyable. I figured this series would be something like that, except that the aliens from the alternate universe would actually interact with ours – something that didn’t happen in Orthogonal. So, I happily got the first book of the Kerious Pye series – and discovered just how wrong I was.

The Seventeenth Pocket is about pharmaceutical companies developing a drug which allows living people to speak with the dead. Which might make for an interesting story of an entirely different sort; except that in this case it’s bad and must be stopped. Because, apparently, if too many people take the drug, it will cause a psychic resonance which will rip a hole in the fabric of the universe and unravel reality? I wasn’t quite clear on that point. Really, it was hard to understand anything that was going on in this novel; because the majority of it was focused on the bizarre, rambling, pseudo-philosophical discourses of Arden. Which is where the irrationality comes in; because while I think he was supposed to be deep and insightful and in tune with the hidden truths of the cosmos, he just comes off as incomprehensible. What’s the sound of one ice-cream koan clapping? And the parts with him just kept going on and on and on, instead of focusing on potentially interesting stuff like how the world is being changed by this revolutionary new ability to speak to the dead.

By the end, needless to say, I was no longer interesting in continuing on to The Bureau of Dangerous Matter. Which is kind of a shame, because that’s the one that I was interested in to begin with. But there isn’t exactly a large market for these books, meaning no chance of getting one from the library; and after blowing a chunk of cash on something that turned out to be hopelessly obtuse, I’m not exactly in a hurry to purchase what will more likely than not end up being more of the same. Maybe if I was a lot richer and had a lot more free time on my hands, I’d take the chance; but c’est la vie.

Final Rating: √2/5

Half Life

Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you. Maybe Black Mesa. That was a joke, ha-ha, fat chance. Face it, everyone: Half-Life 3 is never coming out. But that aside, let’s take a gravity gun to Half Life by Shelley Jackson.

Synopsis:

Nora and Blanche are conjoined twins. Nora is strong, funny, and deeply independent, thirsting for love and adventure. Blanche, by contrast, has been asleep for twenty years. Sick of carrying her sister’s dead weight, Nora wants her other half gone for good – a desire that takes her from San Francisco to London in search of the Unity Foundation, a mysterious organization that promises to make two one. But once in England, Nora’s past begins to surface in surprising and disturbing ways, pushing her to the brink of insanity and forcing her to question her own – and Blanche’s – grip on the truth.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

My search for new and interesting literature sometimes takes me to strange places. I find myself reading works which are a bit outre, a bit avant-garde. Sometimes my exploration of post-modernist strangeness is rewarded with a shining gem such as House of Leaves. Sometimes, however, I stray too far from shore, and find myself drowning in the dark depths of Dadaism. And the book which I intended to review today turns out to hail from one such benthic abyss. Here, for your edification and reading pleasure, is a sample passage from Half Life:

Moo moon oh moo, Mama mnemonymy Mom. A cowboy going hell for leather roped two long horned cows together. One was black the other red they gored each other then both were moo moo moo moon. How now brown cow. Death where is thy moo. Mnemonymy on on on Mom moon Mom

Day! Oh I apron you do that. Would you consider knocking?

Ha check you decided Tamal is really working mine oeuvre. Next I’m pick someone with a nigh chaffeur re: voice. Low voice get loss I DMV ant noise. You miss dove notice that car stair Rio sound Timmy. The trouble cutthroat the hinge in sound. In the future no less a bear attone. Jew want me toga tread aver for you? Yeah snow! Leaded Jew haven’t mine? No you don’t. Stay outfit. It’s your few neural. Can I close this? I’m closing this. Bang! Cow.

– Half Life

Feel free to re-read it as many times as you need in order to get a grasp on it. I myself feared that I’d been struck with sudden-onset dyslexia, or was experiencing post-traumatic flashbacks to Feersum Endjinn.

Lest you accuse me of misleading you, I should point out that this sample is not representative of the book as a whole. In fact, I would not claim any given page of the book to be representative of the whole; for it strives to be weird in not just one way, but in every way.

The plot, insofar as I could determine, and inasmuch as the book could even be said to have a plot, concerns a world where the incidence of birth of conjoined twins greatly increased following the first atom bomb test. These “twofers” have become their own significant subculture: facing discrimination, holding Pride parades, and so forth. The main character, Nora, is a twofer whose conjoined twin Blanche has been vegetative for years, and who seeks out an underground organization to perform an illegal operation to remove Blanche’s head from their body. Beyond that… well, your guess is as good as mine. Here, maybe this excerpt will shed some light on matters:

“When the two coils of its bifurcated structure are joined, and Agent White and Agent Black meet in a single point bearing every resemblance to a period or full stop, the Device will, not ex- or implode, but un- or anti- or deplode, restoring the lost sadness to our riven world.”

– One and a Half, Half Life

Did that clear anything up? I think it’s supposed to be symbolic, or metaphorical, or possibly allegorical. But as to what it means… Look, I think it’s time to face facts: a man needs to know when he’s beaten. This book has defeated me. I don’t have the first clue as to how to go about reviewing this. I can’t even begin to understand what it’s about. I can only shake my head in confusion and set sail back for the sun-lit shores of more conventional and comprehensible literature.

Normally, I end my reviews by giving the book a rating of one to five stars. In this case, however, natural numbers seem insufficient to express my sheer bewilderment and confusion. Therefore, I have decided to bestow my first rating of “square root of two stars” – because an irrational book deserves an irrational rating. And yes, faithful readers, this does mean that I’m opening the door to using that rating on other books, thus allowing me to review a number of books which I’d previously rejected from consideration due to being too damn weird.

Final Rating: √2/5