Fishscale/V/: New.Entry-Transmission.Whatever.Wetnightmares.
Screamscapes.and.corporal.malfunctions//The movie theater has gone dim. The Kodak camera has lost its reel. The Mall is shuttered. The video store is closed. The soundtrack plays on the tape deck, scrambled. The Pyrex takes a nap for the evening. The national anthem plays after dusk behind a scrambled pornographic transmission. The ICE is out tonight and the night is on fire. The sky looks like a dead screen. No stars in the sky. No whistling wind. No connection. No firmware in a pushup brazier to tune into the right nocturnal frequency. Just dead space and a static filter, not even the air could be trusted with authenticity. Media never sleeps. The television stays on. It’s always on and watching us, omnipresent and instigating, a rabble rouser and a shit talker galvanizing the masses into herds and stampedes at the press of a button. A planned reaction to the insurgency of law. What have I walked into? They say revolution is out in the streets but, it’s all a mixer, a munch, a social fellatio, what have I walked into, a gaggle of geeks, gooners, meat pacifiers and skin socks – repeating what the TV eye and the cardboard says. All in step and out of order. For sincere reasons and free will – although dictated in silent vibration from the overseers Morse code. Engineered resistance to a problem that will be solved and locked down with dystopia and monitored by A.I. screws. Then. Here come the star fuckers and the vampires the celebrities and leeches. Lead by the pimps. The publicists. Celebrity cameo appearances in the back rows of protest. Kissing babies. Shakin’ hands. Only there for the photo-op and never joining rank at the frontline. Pretenders; actors; slaves to corporate rations and privilege; no gunplay, no backbone, just a game in the end. A hologram of a leg-wit-ammo, a box of blanks, rambling his gums into the void for a star on the avenue. Not here. It’s just another dead night and about this same dead time every night. They reenact and replay the same playlist and cosplay their childhood dreams. A boulevard of vapid dreamers, chipping away at the surfaces and hurling the city like feces at pigs, drones, naysayers and the npc. Nothing more but performance art against the machine. Showroom Dancers. With color commentary by your favorite content creators; jesters and critics feeding off the algorithm. Crossing their palms with silver traded in from your attention and likes; bunch of Svengalis and pied pipers in the new preachers clothes not like them but living a karaoke life in sheeple skin. A generation nursed on instant gratification through an umbilical usb cord detached from the contaminated coarse weather of reality and living one TikTok moment after another in some perverse REM sleepwalk. All copyrighted and sponsored by your elitist fascist overlords full-throttling their plans into a doomsday reset scenario and the birth of the new religion. Sponsored by oligarchs. You are all sleeping. Make it a better dreaming. Get into your phalanx formations. Red Dawn. Bravehearts. Look to your brother-in-arms. And behold leading the ranks. Not random protagonists. Imagine, just imagine under those hoods in the front. A fantasy.  – unveiled is the avengers or at least those that play them. Imagine yourselves rejuvenated with angst and righteous rage as those performers now possessed by the spirits of the IP that propelled their public image holding the line. As Christ Evans with trash lid in one hand and the stars & stripes in the other raised high; RDJrD2 in his aluminum foil iron armor inspiring courage in you. As descending from the rooftops with karambit gloves and fury in his teeth screaming to the heavens that “this is our ENDGAME!” is Hugh Jackalman too. Tears in your eyes and love swelling up in your frail chest and throats, “They’re here!” “The Avengers are here”. ”This is it!” A moment of our lifetimes when all men can lock shields and crush the oppressors under the tidal wave of change. freedom. and a better tomorrow. Something Aragonidus would say. What a dream that could be, Teen Wolves. Fleeting. Transitioning. Remixing. Getting carried away on a channel surf. The sequence again scrambled. The channel switched on everyone. All because the common man has lost his remote control. It’s been in the hand of the bad men this whole time. The bloody bag men. The usurpers. The adversary. The ones who remake, mutilate and remaster our memories and script our futures. The sky is a dead screen. The stars are blacked out. It’s just us in here and the movie rolls on. The show goes on. The empire strikes back. As everyone plays Sophie’s Choice every week on which Hot Topic to rally behind next. From the killing fields to local inconvenience. These aren’t freedom fighters this is the mob. And Rome knows its mob. How to fatten them up and keep them occupied with spectacle and gossip. The enemy knows the system. And the only responsible response is too crash the system. Crash N’ Burn. Hack the dream and make it yours.
Then. Then, I woke up. And the theaters were screening, the video store was open, the soundtrack restarted and the sky was in high resolution. What a beautiful sunset. The TV dinner smells amazing. That’s when I woke up. And forgot what I was dreaming about. //////….then WW3 began.
SamHaiNe

• Bonus: Chinatown (visual video) HaiNesVille:

Previous FISHSCALES:
Fishscale Prt. 1 – https://newretrowave.com/2018/11/20/fishscale-a-retro-flash-of-fiction-part-1/

Fishscale Prt. 2 – https://newretrowave.com/2021/08/30/fish-scale-part-2-a-nostalgic-flash-fiction/

TOP PICKS

Street Cleaner – EDGE

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Microchip Terror – Illegal Experiments II

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WOLFCLUB – Just Drive (Part 1)

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Chiasm – Missed the Noise

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Ultrakiller – Death Trap

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Baldocaster – Cult of Saturn

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Castroe – Fall into You

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Galaxy 80 – Visions

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Siamese Youth – Echoes of Tomorrow

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Frank Redux – Memory Lane

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Honorable Mentions & Singles

Literature – Stoa

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Rupert Lally – Maniac’s Almanac

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Cyberoptics – Resurgence

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Austin Archer – Now That’s What I Call a Bunch of Austin Archer’s TikTok Songs Compiled Into an Album Vol​.​1

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Ev.exi & Rhodes Rodosu – Stellae / Infinitus

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Mecha Maiko – Kitchen Floor

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LukHash – Dying Breath

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Maxthor – Into the Light

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3FORCE – Alpha Prophecy

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Korine – Sunshine

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The Playlist

Alternate history allows a reader not only to contemplate the past. It also makes one think upon the current culture and contrast its positives and negatives. This is what Kingsley Amis’s novel The Alteration does. It, however, comments on much more: the nature of freedom, dogma, and creativity, and how they interact. This winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award contrasts from the writer’s normally comic literary output. However, even though it’s not as well-known as Lucky Jim and The Old Devils, it’s one of his most thought-provoking novels.

It’s 1976, but the world of The Alteration is very different from the then-contemporary time of our world’s 1976. The Roman Catholic Church powerfully holds sway over the realm of Christendom, often dictating to the nationalistically-weak temporal powers. Technology is less developed, and Europe is in a tense cold war with the Islamic Turks.

How did this world come to be? Two pivotal incidents in our history led to this strange world: Martin Luther, the instigator of the Reformation, became reconciled to the Catholic Church, eventually becoming Pope Germanian I, and Arthur Tudor’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon ended up being fruitful, leading to a papal crusade to fight against Henry of York (Henry VIII in our world), who tried to usurp his nephew’s throne. The Church’s triumph leads to the near extinguishing of incipient Protestantism (Protestantism later flees and establishes itself in North America). This causes the arresting of further revolutions in scientific and political thought that would’ve followed.

This is the world that the novel’s protagonist Hubert Anvil is born in. He’s a ten-year-old boy who possesses a beautiful gift for music, both in singing and in composing. The Church appreciates his beautiful soprano voice, but wants to preserve it past maturity. The only option for this is castration, or as they call it in this world, alteration. Hence, one of the meanings of the novel’s title. As the time approaches for Hubert’s alteration approaches, will he submit to the authority of those desiring this operation? Or will the intrigues within the Church as well as concerns from Protestant representatives from the Republic of New England cause Hubert to change what seems to be his destiny as a castrato in service to Rome?

The narrative’s POV is third-person omniscient, but the focus is on Hubert. It’s quite a change for Amis to have such a young character as the principal character, but he does well in fleshing him out. Hubert is portrayed as innocent as a young boy would likely be, especially under the strictures of his society. However, he is not naïve, as time shows him to be perceptive and inquiring as story’s progresses. He knows that the alteration will nullify a future amorous existence and the prospect of family life even though he has limited knowledge of carnal matters. He realizes that this will lead to his living such a different life as a male after the operation, that by the time of his decision, he contemplates on his potential otherness, and how he would view himself and others would view him.

Amis populates the story with a variety of characters, whose personalities and motives this world’s history and culture has molded. Not all clerics have the same view about what they should do to Hubert. Charity motivates some, ego motivates others, while the rest see him just as a pawn in the struggle for authority within the Church. However, the characters are not cardboard cutout heroes and villains. Even the father of Hubert, who comes across as authoritarian in the beginning, comes out as sympathetic. He, just like the other characters, are who they are because of circumstances. They still though have the choice of making moral decisions despite what the unreasoning authorities may proclaim.

Is this a story of clerical authority run amok? Yes, but it’s much more. As mentioned earlier, the value of creativity when it’s submitted to dogma is another theme. Throughout the novel, there are references to many known creative figures, such as Mozart and Beethoven. We know that in our world that many of their creations were religious pieces, but the authorities did not force these works out of them. However, it’s likely that in the world of The Alteration, the creators do not produce out of religious joy coming from the heart. Instead, it comes from pressure from a Church that wants to control through fear.

Another interesting aspect is that Amis subtly disguises real 20th century political figures by as members of the Church’s hierarchy. These are men who in our world supported socialist, communist, fascist, and Nazi ideologies. What Amis is likely saying is that the desire to control people’s lives goes beyond dogma for those with totalitarian tendencies. It doesn’t matter what the cause or belief is, some just want to stamp down individuality. In a time when there is a creeping “soft” totalitarianism of PC or good-thought dogma, especially in the arts/entertainment field, this novel especially rings true.

Some may hesitate to read the novel because they feel that they lack enough of a historical background.  Or they believe that they’ll fail to understand the sprinkling throughout of Ecclesiastical Latin and religious terminology. Having such knowledge will help the novel come more alive. However, just taking your time to immerse yourself in the narrative will enrich by taking you to a speculative world that is strange but somewhat familiar.

3500 years have passed since Leto II has taken it upon himself to merge with the sandworms of the desert planet Arrakis and rule humanity with an iron fist. In doing so, he has made use of the spice ‘melange’ to read the future, and his empire has taken root to save our species from inevitable destruction. The spice, and its rarity, constitute a looming threat of energy crisis, and the prescient powers it provides serve as a grave danger to the stability of human politics.

Leto II’s empire, designed along evolutionary lines, serves as a thesis on human development. All human hierarchies, the text argues, are off-shoots of evolutionary urges toward individual and group survival. God Emperor Leto employs a vast, professional army of women, his justification being that an army of men can not be trusted to be responsible with their power in the absence of enemies to fight; they lack the maternal instinct to provide direct care to those under their authority.




He keeps the spice, already in short supply, on an even more restricted output, thus robbing his chief enemies (the various Guilds that, before his reign, struggled against one another to define human destiny) of its valuable prescient and geriatric advantages. This restriction similarly limits interstellar travel, and Leto is content to have the majority of his subjects live as little more than agrarian serfs, confined to their own villages on their own worlds, never seeing the galaxy for what it is. This monopoly and limitation on such a valuable commodity also runs parallel to another of the God Emperor Leto’s efforts; to breed a new sort of human: one who does not show up in the prescient visions of a spice-user, an invisible human, so to speak, to those with the ability to see the future in all of its possibilities.

The linchpin to all these goals, seemingly at odds to some extent with one another, is that Leto intends for his empire to fall shortly after his death. For all his efforts are not merely to provide solutions to the incoming energy crisis, nor the invasion of human space by other intelligent entities with prescient powers, but to ensure that the human race is never subject to the threat to such disasters ever again. All his repression is meant to serve as a coiling spring, which, upon his death and the empire’s collapse, will launch humanity to frontiers never before braved. Keeping the entire race more or less imprisoned upon their own worlds breeds in them the intense desire to colonize outward and explore other parts of space. The spice supply will similarly loosen and allow for this, under Leto II’s successors, whom he spends the duration of the book convincing of his plans and urging to follow them when he is gone. His new breed of invisible person will populate human space until large clusters of humanity inhabit the galaxy, safe from the threat of a genocidal and prescient enemy whom Leto has foreseen, but can not name.

And our noble Leto II, this reluctant tyrant, truly bears the cost for what he has had to do. As it is revealed, the reason his father could not accept the necessity of this plan and left it to his son was that once the God Emperor falls, this hybrid of human and sandworm must live on in the sandworms, a flicker of consciousness that can never be extinguished. It is the horrible fate of needing to scream and having no mouth – forever.




God Emperor Of Dune is not only quite relevant within its own universe, but the entire series garnered a lot of attention for its relevance to our own world, as well. The spice has served as a stand-in, variously, for oil in the Middle East (owing to the desert environment of Arrakis), the poppy fields of Afghanistan, the cocaine trade, what have you. The political dimensions bear a certain similarity to the proxy war that occurred during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Cold War geopolitics in general, from a more feudal perspective. Frank Herbert himself has talked at length that he writes so many tyrants and treats politics so ruthlessly so as to remind us who politicians really are, and what dangers a messianic figure can wreak upon civilization. In the case of God Emperor Of Dune, we see not a necessity forced upon humanity by Leto II, but one that was passed on by his father’s unsuccessful forays into ruling by prescience and religious demagoguery.

Take a step into the surreal and sober world of Dune for just a moment, you may find that Frank Herbert is trying to help us out more than he is trying to entertain us. No series has stood so high in the admiration of the science fiction community, and there’s a good reason for that.

With the successful release of the film Hidden Figures and being that it’s the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 launch disaster, I figured that I’d start 2017 with a switch to non-fiction, focusing on the critically acclaimed The Right Stuff by the New Journalism pioneer and provocateur Tom Wolfe.  When the book was released in 1979, America’s self-confidence was at a nadir.  The Watergate scandal and resignation of the president in 1974 shook people’s confidence in many of the country’s institutions; the country had retreated from Vietnam in 1975; and stagflation and the oil shortage were ravaging the economy.  The book however takes a spotlight to a more optimistic time when the space race between the country and the Soviet Union caught the world’s imagination.  The narrative, stretching from the end of the Korean War to the end of the Mercury program, reveals the trials and the triumphs of the U.S space program.

What is “the right stuff” that Wolfe speaks of throughout the book?  The candidates for the Mercury missions are fighter pilots picked from various branches of the military.  These are men with a devil-may-care attitude, with the exception of the late “boy scout poster boy” John Glenn, who is both idolized and teased by his fellow astronauts.  They drive fast and fly dangerously, seeking new thrills while trying to maintain and improve their standing in the military.  “The right stuff” is the physical and mental courage and resilience needed to not screw up when performing their duties, whether in the military, or later in the space program.  Those who don’t have “the right stuff” flame out, likely harming their career prospects in the process.  Even when the candidates are narrowed down and selected for the sub-orbital and orbital flights that entail the Mercury missions, will their mettle allow them to keep this resilience as they embark to places where only a few Russians have gone before?  Even though it’s non-fiction, the book, just like a novel, tries to keep the reader excited for what happens next, as the astronauts’ varied personalities clash with each other and affect their dealings with the outside world.

Wolfe’s narrative shows that space program wasn’t all fireworks and ticker-tape parades, although it included these, especially after a successful mission.  It was messy, political, and a bureaucratic nightmare.  In the early years of space exploration research, there was even some controversy over even the status of NASA. Initially, the space program was an extension of the military branches, particularly of the U.S. Air Force.  Then it went under civilian control.  However, military officers are the men fed into the program.  And still there are national security concerns.  If the Soviets won the space race, would they be in a position to rain nuclear bombs down on the U.S. and their allies?  What if they established a base on the moon?  Vice-President Lyndon Johnson states that “he doesn’t want to go to bed underneath a communist moon.”  And neither does the rest of the country.  So, the Kennedy administration declares in what could be called his unofficial redo of his inaugural address the goal of sending a man to land on the moon by the end of the 1960s.  As history shows, this was accomplished, though Kennedy himself did not live to see it.

Though the descriptions of the launches, flights, and returns are interesting, especially in their most harrowing moments, some of the most illuminating incidents in the book revolve around the background stories: the astronauts’ families, sudden celebrity, and the eclipsing of fame of previous astronauts when new achievements are celebrated.  The astronauts’ families are supposed to shine out before the media lens as examples of the perfect middle-class household.  But they are human like the rest of us, and occasionally, the cracks and flaws are exhibited to the world, often to the government’s chagrin.  A notable example involves the wife of John Glenn, Annie.  She had a severe stutter for the majority of her life.  Unfortunately for her, the media wanted to get insights from the astronauts’ wives, especially immediately prior and during their husbands’ launches into orbit.  During John’s launch sequence, there were some worries about potential issues, which lead to a media firestorm.  It didn’t help that Lyndon Johnson wanted to insert himself into the situation as a potential comforter to Annie.  However, she wouldn’t step outside to face the cameras, nor would she allow the vice-president inside her home to schmooze for the media outlets.  The only person she was comfortable with was her and John’s assigned reporter for Life.  John knew that his wife had extreme reticence speaking before an audience with that stammer of hers.  So, he makes a firm stand explaining that if his wife is uncomfortable, she doesn’t have to be interviewed, even by Johnson.  This flusters the media and leaves Johnson fuming over being shut down.  Pondering the narrative, one can just imagine the expressions on their faces.

In 2017, the Soviet Union has broken up, there is an international space station where nations cooperate with other, and much of current space exploration is being funded by private enterprises.  There have been great changes since the apex of the space race in the 1960s.  However, to see where the future of space exploration can take us, it’s good to look back at the past, especially at the mistakes, to see what needs to be corrected.  However, it’s also beneficial to look at the achievements.  These men of the Mercury program were pioneers of what is now, though much is now diminished in certain areas.  They were not scientists, but as they advanced through the program they had to perform their given tasks like scientists while maintaining the critical edge of “the right stuff” typical of brash fighter pilots.  Some ended up paying with their lives, like Gus Grissom, who perished with two other astronauts during the launch sequence of Apollo 1.  Others, such as John Glenn, lived fulfilling public and private lives long after they qualified to blast off into orbit and beyond.  But all these space warriors had heart and “the right stuff.”  That’s something to cheer. 

Two months back when I reviewed Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, I mentioned that the 1970 seppuku of the internationally-acclaimed Yukio Mishima overshadowed the Japanese literary world for some years afterward.  During the period between Mishima’s post-World War II literary debut and the combined commercial and critical success of Murakami in the late 1980s, obviously, there were other Japanese writers shaking up the literary world not only in their home country, but internationally as well.  One of those writers who put forth a unique perspective was the late Shusaku Endo, who was a Catholic in a land where less than one percent of the population professes Christianity.

Interestingly, his work has been getting another look as Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of his most popular work, Silence, is to be released December of this year.  However, Endo believed The Samurai to be his most personal work, a novel that expresses the conflict he felt being a religious minority in a culture and country that values conformity.  When the novel was published in 1980, the literary establishment praised it and it won the Noma prize, a very prestigious award in Japan.  The public also enjoyed the narrative; however, Endo was somewhat unsatisfied by the praise of his countrymen.  When he read the reviews, he felt that the readers just had a superficial understanding of the themes.  To many of his countrymen, The Samurai seemed to be just a gripping historical novel, rather than fiction seriously commenting on the human condition, dealing with themes of faith, loyalty, and disillusionment.

There are two main characters in the novel, Velasco and Hasekura Rokuemon, the aforementioned samurai of the title, though supporting characters greatly influence the movement of the narrative set in the early seventeenth century.  Velasco is a Franciscan missionary tending to the needs of Japanese Catholic converts in one of the few remaining Japanese provinces tolerant of Christians.  Hasekura is a poor, low-ranking samurai eking out an existence in swamplands far removed from his ancestral homeland due to political shifts from the turmoil of recent civil conflict.  Further conflict among various parties complicates matters.  Spain is trying to grow economic ties with the increasingly centralized Japan; however, the shogun’s persecution of Catholics continues to dim those prospects.  England and Netherlands seek to establish trade beachheads in Japan, which could possibly lead to another front in the Catholic-Protestant wars.  Furthermore, the Catholic Church is divided among the various monastic orders.  As seen throughout the novel, the Jesuits seek to block the efforts of Velasco primarily because he is a Franciscan missionary, while Velasco believes the collapse of Catholicism in Japan is due to the arrogant and incompetent meddling of the Jesuits in the political affairs of Japan years earlier.  Moreover, Velasco, at times, questions whether his own motives are truly pure: Does he want to build up the faith of the Japanese people? Or does he seek greatness for himself in possibly being appointed bishop of Japan?

What gets the story going is that shipwrecked Spanish soldiers need to be returned to Nueva Espana (what is known as Mexico today).  The provincial lord, along with a council of older men, thus decides to build a European-style vessel and creates an expedition to repatriate these men.  Velasco, Hasekura, three other low-ranking Samurai, their servants, and many merchants join the Spanish sailors, for each have their motives.  The provincial lord hopes to open up trade so that a port will be built that will rival another in the still unconquered western provinces of Japan.  The merchants seek profits that would abound with increased trade.  Hasekura and his samurai companions seek to restore themselves to their ancestral lands.  Believing that completing this mission will restore honor to his family name, he’s willing to leave his family and all that he knows to journey to unknown lands.  Velasco, of course, hopes that better economic ties between Spain and Japan will halt the persecution of Catholics in the land, and perhaps, he’ll be appointed as shepherd over the increasingly scattered flock.  The journey spans the globe, but things turn out unexpectedly for all as the months and years pass.

Though both Velasco and Hasekura could be viewed as self-centered by some of the actions they take, the reader ends up with sympathizing with both of them, even though they also clash with each other.  The characters are motivated men who are willing to do anything to accomplish their goals.  For both of them, this leads them to take measures that seem to be compromise to outsiders.  Though according to their own hearts, it’s not truly betrayal, as they hope it leads to accomplishment of the ultimate wills; for Velasco, it’s God’s, and for Hasekura, it’s his ancestors.  Another interesting character is the youngest samurai, Nishi.  Unlike the other Japanese travelers, he has a sincere interest in the Western culture he encounters.  It’s heartrending to know that such a vibrant personality is living at a time when he thinks that Japan is about to open up to the world, but in reality, the country is about to close its borders for nearly 250 years.

Though there is much to think about when The Samurai, it’s not a ponderous read.  Once the voyagers set sail, the reader is quickly moved along.  However, this does not mean that Endo does not pay attention to detail.  Whether you’re reading about the characters sailing on the ship, wandering around a decrepit Indian village, or looking up in wonder at the towers of Europe, you actually feel like you’re with them, sharing the same emotions.  Endo takes time to paint the scene so you’re transported back to the age of explorations; however, he doesn’t linger so much that your weighted down with superfluous detail and turned away from the emotions of the characters.  If it was longer than necessary, I believe that it could’ve become one of those numerous historical novels that get the facts all right, but seem more like a textbook than a story.  The novel is based on historical fact; however, Endo said his “purpose in writing The Samurai was not to depict the condition of Japan in the seventeenth century.”  There was really no need to, because in his mind as a Japanese Catholic, the philosophical attitude of the seventeenth century Japanese still resided in the majority of the Japanese populace of the twentieth century, and this is something with which he struggled.       

It must be out of some utterly bizarre randomness that one comes across a book which is not only having this remarkable quality of shifting and reorganizing ways of thinking about the question of potentiality of the writing expressiveness in general, but is also forcing us to believe that the fabric of reality is likely to have been woven (is being woven right now?) by threads even more dazzling with oddness than it would be possible to imagine, having a godlike insight into the nature of the non-existent things themselves. As a kind of self-contained as well as finite wholeness, Djinn, authored by the godfather of the Nouveau Roman himself – Alain Robbe-Grillet – takes us on a head-spinning journey throughout fractalic paths of feverish assumptions, rhizomic patterns of interpretations and, last but not least, kaleidoscopic infinitudes of questions and doubts regarding temporal and spatial “scenography” of the plot, the identity of a mysteriously multiplied therefore totally unreliable narrator and – what’s even more jaw-dropping – the lightness of turning the reader into one ontologically curious investigator. These are the most common phenomena that are unexpectedly and instantly conjured in the “vicinity” of the relation between the reader and the novel. So what kind of powerful genie is hiding inside this fascinating lamp?

Djinn, consisting of eight short chapters, framed by a prologue and an epilogue, at first glance presents itself as a seemingly typical spy story. We are informed that the protagonist – Simon Lecoeur – nicknamed by his peers and fellow students “Yann” – who was employed as a contemporary French literature lecturer in one of the American schools in Paris, had gone missing. Having burrowed through his belongings, the police found several traces which indicated that Mr. Lecoeur’s identity could or even should be brought into question. One of the most vivid yet simultaneously obscure pieces of evidence was a manuscript, neatly typed and left on his desk. The novella, being less than 100 pages long and comprising eight short chapters of a presumably semi-autobiographical character, described the lecturer’s unsuccessful attempt to follow a mission ordered by a mysterious woman named Jean who, in all likelihood, was a recruiter or other highly-ranked agent of a leftist, Luddite-like organization which main aim was to put an end to the enslaving hegemony of the machines. Or so it seems, at least after a couple of dozen pages, when things are beginning to get weirder and weirder…

As regards giving away other details of the plot, I wouldn’t have the heart to let myself go and get enchanted by further slips of the tongue, mainly because of the fact that the flow of the odd occurrences in the novel serves as a perfect example of how the reader should challenge him/herself to bite his/her tongue. However I suppose I’ve already bitten mine not quite as hard as I should have… Therefore, to sink even deeper inside my self-inflicted pricks of conscience, after having spilled too many beans about the novel anyway, I’m going to sin some more. At the very worst, I’ll get jinxed by the indefinable and ethereal Djinn. Or, what is more probable, I’ll get “jeanxed”…

To be completely honest, Djinn, being an anti-novel of the highest possible quality, provokes the reader to adjust him/herself to the particular sort of ‘pristine’ perceptive position. Theoretical assumptions of the Nouveau Roman, reaching its peak of popularity and influence in the 50’s and 60’s, were to abolish all the constituents associated with mimetic traits of the writing. To make a long story short, the sentences weren’t supposed to represent or show no more of the following: psychological depths of characters, descriptions of surroundings used only as a background for states of affairs happening “on” them, the causality of the events and their everlastingly strange affinity with temporality, etc. Along with Alain Robbe-Grillet, writers like Marguerite Duras, Jean Ricardou, Nathalie Sarraute and Michel Butor wanted to strip words right down to their “underwear” of non-figurativeness, to erase their previous tendencies of getting clenched between the teeth of picturesqueness. They wished to evoke and extract new functions or even “abilities” of sentences and, by doing so, construct and investigate more abstract and conceptual approaches towards drenching and, on the other hand, draining the oceanic realm of literature.

Being put under the spell of the Nouveau Roman’s charming prose, it’s impossible to wash away a conviction that Djinn was truly conjured up by some of the finest waves of Poseidon’s trident. Not to mention the fact that the most common after-effects or – putting it more playfully – after-images of reader’s confrontations with these wonderfully wordless and sometimes wordlessly wonderful endeavors are the ones which could be easily referred to as the bold dives into the wavy waters of philosophy. Especially when we are sitting breathlessly perplexed by narrative transformations which suggest that, for instance, all of Simon’s actions, which he hoped to get him finally recruited by the mysterious, technophobic urban guerrillas, could have been prefabricated or even meta-prefabricated (by who?) and then, all of the sudden – multiplied by each other (how?), almost unnoticeably overlapped (when?) with these unnamable blends of vaguely infinitesimal differences and countless discrepancies – these jungles of multi-dimensional translucent mosaics leave us with one particular feeling of constant, oscillating “drills”, “thrills”, “spills” or even “chills” inside (outside too!). And these “–ills” generate loads of questions. Which ones? I’ll leave it up to you. Or better yet – let Djinn/Jean/Jan/Yann decide for you. Frankly, these are her/his/its territorial waters…

Unquestionably, the amount of magic trapped inside this peculiar novel, when released, would be sufficient to distribute it among many other books and still the genie inside (or the Jeanie inside…) wouldn’t mind losing the plurality of its powers. As in Nabokov’s “Transparent Things” or Gombrowicz’s “Cosmos”, the source of potential hexes, curses and other alluring machinations seems unquenchable. And it’s waiting for you, pulsating with the lurking rhythm of the ebbs and flows of its own tide, to rub the lamp. Do it. You won’t have any regrets.

The wild west has caught the imagination of many, American and non-American alike, for years.  Recently, the remake of The Magnificent Seven was released, and though critics have given it mixed reviews, it shows that the western is not dead as genre.  The idea of traveling to unknown country for reasons such as bettering one’s life, escaping troubles at home, or material advancement appeals to the wanderlust of humankind.  However, wherever people go, they bring with them their natures, and much of human nature can bring forth despicable actions.  There are many despicable things going on in the world of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

The novel, published in 1985, had a similar trajectory of fame as a number of media releases during the 1980s.  As with the films Blade Runner and The Thing, critics and audiences initially gave Blood Meridian mixed-to-negative reviews.  Later, it became more of a cult classic.  Now, it’s considered a critical masterpiece not only of the western genre but of twentieth century literary fiction.  The critic Harold Bloom considers McCarthy to be one of the greatest living novelists.  What brought McCarthy to the development of Blood Meridian?  With his initial novels, McCarthy was considered to be the heir of William Faulkner.  These works, set in the Appalachian hinterlands, have the morbid character of the Southern gothic.  His more comedic-but-still dark tale, Suttree, later helped him earn a MacArthur Fellowship.  Then, for the next few years, he researched the bloody deeds of the Glanton gang, which became the foundation for the plot of his next novel.

Who were the Glanton gang?  Lead by John Joel Glanton, they were men hired by the Mexican government to hunt down Apache warbands and collect their scalps as proof following the Mexican-American War.  However, due to greed and insatiable bloodlust, they began murdering non-violent Indians and Mexican citizens.  Thus, with bounties on their own heads, the gang was pursued throughout the west until the majority met their end during an attack by the Quechan Indians.  These were men that lived for violence and died by it.  Thus, one can see why there are no true blue heroes in the novelization of those violent events of 1849-50.  That, however, doesn’t mean there’s not a sympathetic protagonist in the book.

Though the leader of the scalp-hunting expedition is Glanton, the protagonist of the story is a teenager known just as The Kid.  Brought up in difficult circumstances in Tennessee and remaining illiterate, he runs away westward to Texas, and eventually ends up in Mexico, where the gang recruits him.  During his journey, he meets characters that will drench his young mind and body in the horrors of the unrestrained amorality that seems omnipresent in the untamed landscape.  There’s Captain White, an ex-US soldier, who believes the United States has squandered their victory, and seeks to lead an expedition to claim territory beyond that was attained during the war.  There’s John Jackson, the sole black member of the scalp-hunters, whose response to prejudice is silence at times and terrific reprisal on other occasions.  An ex-priest named Tobin joins in on the crime spree, but is repulsed at the extremes of the other gang members.  There are other men such as Toadvine, who are vicious, but don’t revel in depravity as the more amoral characters.  Then there is Judge Holden, called by many of the other characters just as “the judge.”

He’s probably one of the most compelling villains in literary history.  Though his feet are planted in the dirt of the Southwest, there is something otherworldly about Holden.  First, he’s described as hairless giant of man; almost as if he was a nearly seven-foot tall infant stepping into the chaotic turmoil of the frontier.  However, this man, who’s central to the gang but clearly distinct from the others, is no innocent.  He’s cruel, without mercy, and a child predator and murderer.  He’s also the most intelligent gang member and clearly the guidance by the which the gang survives.  These are some of his chilling pronouncements: “It makes no difference what men thinks of war.  War endures.”  “War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.  War is god.”  “Moral law is an invention of mankind for the dis enfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak.  Historical law subverts it at every turn.”  Because of his vast knowledge in fields as varied as theology, law, history, biology, and chemistry, the other characters are drawn to him as a mysterious figure.  Yet, his amorality that surpasses even Glanton’s, (probably because he has codified it), in turn puts a symbolic space between him and the others of the gang.  That Holden often separates himself from the rest of the outlaws during the lull between action emphasizes his philosophical distance from the others.  Everybody, including The Kid, are ill at ease at times in the presence of Holden; and they have a reason to be, as shown in both the climax and the finale of the novel.

Blood Meridian is not an easy read.  And it’s not just because McCarthy eschews quotation marks and apostrophes, among other aspects of modern grammar.  McCarthy has a strong vocabulary reserve, and he uses it not pretentiously, but to heighten the epic/Biblical tone of the novel.  I’m familiar with a number lesser-known and less-used words in the English language, but at times, I searched an online dictionary to make sure I got the correct meaning of the sentence and situation.  Furthermore, unless you’re familiar with the geography of the Southwest, prepare to have that dictionary open, so that you can know the specific terms describing that dramatic landscape; this way, the setting is real in the mind’s eye and not some alien place.  Ultimately, it’s difficult because of the brutal and realistic content.  I hesitate to call it a revisionist western, because in some minds, that simplistically means Americans-bad, Natives-good.  In the novel, nearly all, no matter their nationality, tribe, or ethnicity, exhibit savage behavior.  Though culture affects how violence expresses itself, it’s due to the fallen nature of humankind that such cruelty occurs.  McCarthy chose the Southwest in 1849-50 for the setting of his work, but these characters could be placed in other epochs.  The bloody and senseless rage boiling up in the characters is universal and that is a terrifying thing.  Perhaps, unknowingly, we come in contact with Judge Holdens and Glantons daily, and only a veneer of civilization is holding back their ravenous instincts.    

On November 25th 1970 the most prominent Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, committed ritual seppuku after staging a theatrical protest/coup in favor of restoring the imperial system to power.  That event sent shockwaves throughout Japan and the Western literary world.  How could this writer, who was enthralled by many aspects of Western culture, take leadership in what the majority of the Japanese populace viewed as a farce of restoring the emperor’s authority?  The Japanese, who were trying to reconcile themselves to modernity and the West years after the tragedy of the Pacific War, now had to face the scrutiny resulting from that shocking event.  Is it any wonder that the country’s leading contemporary writer, Haruki Murakami, used that date as the starting point of his first three novels?

When Murakami published A Wild Sheep Chase in 1982, he already had two slim acclaimed novels to his name, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973.  Today, they are known as the “The Rat Trilogy” as all three narratives feature a person nicknamed “The Rat,” who has a friendship with the unnamed protagonist of the novels.  Although the preceding novels received notice by a number of critics, Murakami truly reached critical success with A Wild Sheep Chase.  Still, the road to his now-unrivaled status as the premier writer in Japan and a leading contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature was not without barriers.  Many leading Japanese critics viewed Murakami as inauthentic in regards to his Japanese writing style and his surreal subject matter that hinted at magical realism.  It was a different world from Mishima’s realistic fiction.  This didn’t bother Murakami as he disliked many aspects of Mishima’s character and views.

So why did he choose November 25th 1970 as a focal date for his early novels?  The legacy of Mishima was still lurking in the background.  The question lingered and still lingers for many Japanese thinkers and citizens: what does it mean to be both Japanese and Western?  It’s thus interesting that some critics believe that Murakami used one of Mishimas’s more obscure novels Natsuko’s Adventure (it hasn’t even been translated into English) as the basis for A Wild Sheep Chase.  While in Natsuko’s Adventure, a girl and a man seek to find a deadly bear, in Murakami’s work, the unnamed protagonist and his girlfriend seek to find a strange sheep.

What’s so strange about the sheep is that it has a star-shaped birthmark and it might have connections to the flow of 20th century Japanese history, particularly the rise of Japan as prosperous state post-World War II.  Thus, the protagonist journeys to discover the truth about the mystery, and weird events continue to mount along the way.  Eventually, he even encounters a sheep man, as well as his friend, “The Rat,” who has disappeared at the beginning of the narrative.

As in the majority of Murakami’s novels, the protagonist starts out as an unwilling, almost unmotivated figure.  It’s fitting that with the exception of his most-realistic novel, Norwegian Wood, all of his novels for the first decade of his writing career had an unnamed narrator.  The action falls on the character, and he is drawn away from his bored and depressing existence into a journey that he resists slightly at first, but then accepts for one reason or another.  In A Wild Sheep Chase, the protagonist is divorced, in a lackluster job with an even more mediocre partner, and spends his nights smoking and drinking.  He’s obviously in a rut, and the reader is glad that something fantastical has disturbed his “peace,” even if it’s something as strange as a woman with extraordinarily alluring ears.  Yes, his girlfriend who pushes him to accept the strange offer to search for the fantastic sheep has ears that makes people’s jaws drop; they’re that hot!

Why are sheep central to the narrative?  Sheep aren’t usually considered interesting creatures.  However, as brought out in the novel, sheep have an interesting history in Japan.  Sheep weren’t native to the country due to the climate.  However, in the nineteenth century, after the country opened up to the world, the government started importing sheep for farmers to raise as livestock.  The program was a disaster as the farmers didn’t know how to care for them, and the government failed to provide suitable information for the farmers to be successful.  Thus, the program was eventually canceled.  What does that have to do with Murakami’s view of modern Japan?  The special sheep the narrator is searching for is able to give power to even insignificant individuals by incubating in them; however, the individual is not in control, and once the sheep is done, the person is cast aside.  I believe that Murakami feels that there is some measure of incongruence between Western culture and Japanese society.  It’s not that he is anti-Western, as he has stated in interviews that Western literature has influenced him as much if not more so than Japanese literature.  Looking at his corpus of work, it’s apparent that American popular culture influenced his tastes.  However, he seems to hint that there they might be a feeling of uneasiness in the way that Japanese feel they are being viewed by Westerners.

Despite its strange elements, A Wild Sheep Chase is more grounded than his following novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, which was discussed back in April.  Its narrative is a bit more straightforward, and the length is not as daunting as that of some of his later works.  Even if you don’t want to search for meanings in the symbols Murakami uses, reading this work provides an enjoyable experience.  Honestly, much of contemporary serious literature can be a chore to plow through.  Perhaps, some of the writers feel similarly when writing their books.  Murakami, however, seems to enjoy what he is doing, and I hope he continues while the readers of his continue to see what he puts out next.        

This past February, one of the most brilliant contemporaries in the literary world passed away.  His name was Umberto Eco, who was an Italian professor in semiotics.  In 1980, he won surprising acclaim in the Italian publishing world for The Name of the Rose, and later, in 1983, he had similar international success with the English translation.  According to the novel’s publisher, it has sold over thirty million copies.  What’s amazing is not the numbers as there have been higher numbers for other works, but the fact that people for over three decades have put effort into in reading such a difficult work.  In the first few pages, one can tell that Eco was an erudite man, and that he wants you to work as hard from reading the novel as he worked in composing this page turner, which is over five hundred pages.

 The plot of the novel begins simply.  The protagonists, William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar, and Adso of Melk, his Benedictine novice, are invited to a Northern Italian monastery to attend a debate concerning matters of the Catholic Church.  However, upon arrival, there is a death of a monk, and it is a suspected suicide.  However, as William, a perceptive investigator and a former inquisitor, tries to find out why, another monk is found dead, and then another, and so on.  Thus, he, with the help of young Adso, must find out who is killing the monastery’s inhabitants and why.  Will he find out the mystery before a greater stench is raised about the monastery?  A delegation from the pope is on the way, and they aren’t entirely pleased with some of the ideas espoused by the Benedictine monastery, which is the reason for the converging of the debate.  These foul murders no doubt will lead to further pressure on the monkish community.

The Name of the Rose is a mystery, and noticing the name “William of Baskerville” and reading his character traits throughout the story, it’s obvious that Eco looked to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes as an influence.  However, the novel is deeper than a simple whodunit.  As an historical novel, it centers around various debates that occurred in early 14th century Europe concerning the authority of the pope and his relation to secular governments, particularly the Holy Roman Emperor, who was rival enough to create his own pope.  Furthermore, not even the Church is united, as the different orders of monks are opposed to one another over the notion of monkish poverty and property ownership, and some monks seek the favor of the pope, while others press for the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor.  Many also believe that the strife is one of the signs that the Apocalypse is at hand, and thus there is panic throughout Christendom.   

It was mentioned that this is a page turner, but this should be somewhat qualified.  Eco was a lover of language; he spoke five modern European languages, and he was well-familiar with the classics.  Thus, the novel is heavily sprinkled with words, phrases, quotations, and sentences from other languages.  Latin is especially prominent, which makes sense as that was the language of the Church and the educated in the medieval period.  I took four semesters of Latin in college and I have access to the internet, so discovering what something meant, and then continuing on in the novel was not too burdensome.  I thus praise those earlier readers who didn’t have such advantages, and nonetheless, persevered on despite the labyrinth of language.  As they reached the end, they must’ve patted themselves on the back.  I will say that Eco’s linguistic gymnastics is not done just to show off for it has symbolic meaning.  Eco believed in intertextuality: that works of literature are shaped by books, contemporary and past.  Thus, the Latin he uses and quotes has meaning for the monks of the novel as well as for us as modern interpreters of the mystery we see unfolding as we read.

One may get the impression that The Name of the Rose is a dry tale of literary symbolism and theological and philosophical intrigue.  The novel, however, has heart; you just have to search for it, and realize it when you’ve found it.  

Written by Christopher Fried

http://www.christopherfried.com/

As both a reader and a writer, I enjoy diverse genres of literature.  I however would have to choose mid-20th century British comic fiction as one of my favorites.  Besides various batches of metrical poetry, there is no other genre that brings such a grin to my face.  Whether it is works of Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, Anthony Powell, or this review’s featured writer, Kingsley Amis, I just can’t get enough.  I think this is due to the combination of familiarity and slight estrangement between American and British cultures.  An American reader delving into the British cultural world has journeyed to foreign milieu, but does not feel completely like a stranger in a strange land.  There is a notion of difference, but generally, not a feeling of bewilderment as when one picks up a Japanese or Russian novel without cultural context.

 When compared with other comic writers that emerged during the interbellum and post-World War II period, Kingsley Amis is probably the most accessible to an American reader, or really any English language speaker.  Although British class tension is present in a number of his works, it does not hover like a shadow over the themes as it does in other writers of the same period such as Waugh or Powell.  For one thing, Amis seemed to always fight against the biases of the British establishment, whether when he was a left-leaning basher of posh pretension during the Angry Young Man period of the fifties, or when he became a pro-American conservative in the post-Vietnam era, when it was fashionable for the British literati to declare American power as anathema.  Even in his non-fiction book on grammar, The King’s English, he readily prefers American English to that of his own countrymen as more natural and less stuffy.  Throughout his life he believed that things should be said straight forward and without a lot of bollocks as he might say.

The Old Devils, though written in his later years, shows that Amis had not lost his wit.  In addition, the novel is not just a comic gem, but it shows his most heart since his original masterpiece, Lucky Jim.  He doesn’t hesitate to laugh at the foibles of his characters, but his presentation shows that he cares for them as individual creations.  The story focuses on Welsh couples in their sixties in the mid-1980s as they handle the indignity of old age.  Interestingly, Amis set a number of his novels in Wales.  For some reason, it seems Wales gets a bit of short shrift in terms of British settings chosen by writers; perhaps, the locales of England and Scotland are both more romantic and familiar, but Amis’s prose shows that Wales shouldn’t be forgotten.

 The couples, and other locals, are in a stir because Alun and Rhiannon Weaver have returned home to South Wales after years of celebrity in London.  The Welsh have developed a complex view of Alun: he is both praised and viewed as somewhat of a phony.  Alun is a popular poet, but much of that popularity is based off his living off the legacy of the late, more critically-acclaimed poet Brydan, and his presentation of himself as the prototypical Welshman.  Basically, if a Welsh topic needs a Welsh viewpoint, the London establishment turns to Alun to pontificate on what it means to be Welsh, especially in the modern age.  Though his friends and neighbors are glad that a local son has made it professionally, they are somewhat embarrassed by the bloviating of his subject matter.  It doesn’t help that he is a selfish scoundrel who had affairs with the majority of his friends’ wives, and who begins to commence his bad habits again when he settles back in Wales.

His friends are a loveable but seemingly hopeless lot.  They spend the majority of their day hitting up establishments to indulge their alcoholic tendencies.  They are definitely not picture of good health.  Charles Norris and Peter Thomas are obese, and getting fatter.  Malcolm Cellan-Davies has stomach and teeth issues that are at a point of precariousness.  Their wives seem to have lost whatever love they had for them; it doesn’t help that the seducer Alun is back in town.  The saddest character would definitely be Peter. Fortunately, he gets somewhat of a happy ending at the conclusion of the novel; however, throughout the majority of the story, he is at the critical whims of his wife, who hasn’t been physically attracted to him in years and is at a similar emotional distance.  Some critics say that Amis modeled this portrait on himself, though Amis’s personal traits are found in aspects of all the major male characters. 

The characters try to come to terms with what has been largely wasted years.   They seem to have stopped growing emotionally since the time of their college years.  After an incident in a pub that gets the gang of old friends thrown out, the owner remarks, “You’d think [men that age] have learnt how to behave by this time.”  Looking at the shenanigans that they get themselves in, it is obvious that they haven’t (and neither have their selfish wives), and it costs one of the friends his life near the end of the novel, though you’re not surprised who dies, and it’s quite satisfactory despite your feeling somewhat attached to him by the end.  The story implies that even famous Alun has wasted much of his life.  He is a successful poet, but there is a feeling that his fame rests on being the court jester to a condescending English audience and dull Welsh public.  Does he truly embody the Welsh spirit just as Brydan, and is that something to which he should have tried to attain?  Like many of the other characters, Alun runs toward his Welsh identity and tries running away from it.  This crisis leads him to almost become a stereotype that he wishes to avoid, rather than becoming an individual, who happens to have Welsh heritage.

 This 1986 Man Booker Prize winner is considered to be the prime achievement of Kingsley’s career by his son, the also-acclaimed novelist, Martin Amis.  Though I didn’t bust out laughing as I did with his earlier works like Lucky Jim or One Fat Englishman, I don’t believe that the narrative is any less humorous.  What concerns one in old age is much different than in youth, so there should be no surprise that the style differs somewhat as well.  Reading his earlier works, it can be reasoned that Amis sympathized only slightly with his targets at that time.  Perhaps reflecting on mortality during his older years caused him however to enshroud even the most ridiculous and foolish characters with dignity in this novel.  To me, this increases the novel’s merit as a comic work, as recognition of one’s past regrets are easily more reflected upon as we age, especially when we laugh with each other rather than just at each other.