– XLII –

Life is an endurance test: jobs, other people, and of course, yourself.

What the Bee Knows

Hello Gentle Reader,

“Parabola: The Search for Meaning,” often shortened to “Parabola,” was one of those wonderfully curated publications. A quarterly publication which explored the nature and history of mythology, folklore, and their ancient and continued attempts to define and delineate some meaning to existence, the world, and the undefinable concept of the human condition; but also, their continued inspiration and parabolic employment in literature and beyond. It was lovingly published by the not-for-profit organization, The Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition. Contributors included renowned writers and poets such as: Robert Bly, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Pablo Neruda, Ursula Le Guin, and Italo Calvino; in addition to academics with expertise in the Jungian discipline of psychology, ecology, folklore, philosophy and a myriad of other subjects. “Parabola,” however, didn’t draw them in for their literary talents or their scholarly integrity and academic acuity; but rather they were framed within the perspective of ‘The Seeker,’ continually traveling, wondering, and pondering in awe and curiosity of the human condition, and the need and capacity to create myths, stories, and narratives in order to explain, frame, and order not only their existence, but understand it in relation to the greater world and by extension the universe. A unique feature of each issue of “Parabola,” was how each issue sought to concentrate and ruminate on a particular subject. For example, the first issues defining theme in 1976 was “The Hero,” subsequent subjects and themes covered were, “Magic,” “Rites of Passage,” “Inner Alchemy,” “Mask and Metaphor,” “Holy War,” “Guilt,” “Words of Power,” “The Knight and The Hermit,” “Liberation & Letting Go,” among a plethora of a back catalogue full of eccentric subjects. The publication’s themes were eclectic, expansive, and inspiring, in addition to being multifractional, whereby they could be examined and re-examined from a myriad of perspectives and angles. Unfortunately, “Parabola: The Search for Meaning,” became yet another casualty to a changing publishing industry as it clangs through time, and its final issue was published in April of 2025. The final theme was “The Mystery of Time.” An early and frequent contributor to the magazine was the writer, P.L. Travers, who is fondly remembered and beloved for being the creator and writer of the famous “Mary Poppins,” series of novels.

As a writer, P.L. Travers maintained a distant relationship to the idea of children’s literature, going so far to refuse and refute all attempts to classify, categorize, or characterise her work as that of a children’s writer. Travers went so far as to publish an essay in The New York Times titled: “I NEVER WROTE FOR CHILDREN,” (in all capitals for added effect). In the essay, Travers hovers over the subject of children’s literature, but rather than land a punch or mount a reasonable defense of why she is not a children’s writer, she instead skirts the issue as much as possible, and in doing so adds further fog and uncertainty to the already amorphous identity that children’s literature encompasses. P.L. Travers is less interested in assembling a case to fend off and is far more interested in conjuring an exasperated sense of mystique. Whereby, logically, if the subject cannot be defined, how can she be charged with dabbling in it? When Travers decides to rapier into the realm of polemics, she’s pointed in her flèches, accusing publishers and booksellers of being the real culprits for the need to delineate literature between the realms of adulthood and children; expressing further exasperation when books are placed into age groups:

“[. . .] I see books labeled for “From 5 to 7” or “From 9 to 12,” because who is to know what child will be moved by what book and at what age? Who is to be the judge?”

While Travers is thankful that some children have indeed found her books and were kind enough to read them, she maintains she never wrote with them as the intended target audience. A point further illustrated when P.L. Travers invokes other children’s writers from Beatrix Potter to Lewis Carol and Maurice Sendak. In particular, Travers summons forth Beatrix Potter’s own defense and annoyance at being defined and equally dismissed as a children’s writer: “I write to please myself!” P.L. Travers remains, however, not necessarily offended in the continued review and appraisal of her work as a writer of children’s literature, but rather how demeaning this is not only to her as a writer, but also to children or adults who decide to enjoy the work, and engage with the sense and spirit of being ‘childlike.’ Regardless, P.L. Travers maintains the position she is not a writer concerned with the literary habits of children; but instead, a practitioner and devotee to myth and folklore. No different then The Brothers Grimm and the Ancient Greek orators. What saves Travers from entrenching herself into an indignant position is her attitude towards children and their readings. Rather then being disdainful and dismissive of the book’s children read or are interested in reading; Travers instead decries the malpractice of editors, publishers, and booksellers attempts to corral them into predefined notions of age-appropriate material, the aptly aforementioned labels: ‘From 5 to 7,’ or ‘From 9 to 12.’ Travers rather encourages and supports children having the agency and curiosity to explore all books that they want to read and to enjoy them as is. After all, children like all people are interested in stories and if the story is entertaining enough, compelling enough, or thrilling enough, they will happily appropriate it for their own enjoyment, and as far as Travers is concerned no greater compliment can be provided to a writer. Ultimately though, P.L. Travers perceived literature as a dragon’s hoard of treasure, vast and unmanageable, which just so happens to lack any sense of curative objective. What unites it as a whole is an appreciation for language and the ancient act of storytelling.

Throughout her life, P.L. Travers earned the distinction and reputation of being described as a serious and sharp writer, equal to a fire-breathing dragon crowned with curls, who did not suffer fools kindly. She was not the sing-song nanny, defying gravity by sliding up bannisters, utilizing a spoonful of sugar to soften the harshness of reality. No, that tinseled whimsical abomination (by Travers view) was the product of the commercialized imagination of Walt Disney and his film adaption of Travers’ beloved “Mary Poppins.” Speaking of which, it is no secret that P.L. Travers hated what had been done to “Mary Poppin,” with the film adaption, bleaching away the darker elements of the Edwardian nursey and the sharper characteristics of the titular nanny, and replacing them with an over confectioned frivolous showgirl. It comes as no surprise that this would be the first and only film adaption of the series in Travers’ lifetime. It has been resurrected as a musical, which Travers characteristically laid out stipulations for; while a film sequel was released, it is considered an original continuation of its own, not another adaption. It’s difficult to imagine Travers warming up to either of them. The damage was done though, when people hear or think of “Mary Poppins,” in any fashion they imagine a whimsical and charming character, rather than the stern but kind and orderly nanny Travers had created. Regardless, “Mary Poppins,” remains P.L. Travers most famous work and creation. The character, novels, and the film adaption inevitably made her a wealthy woman during her lifetime. Despite this, Travers maintained that her preoccupation as a writer was far more interested in folklore and mythology, which predated the publication and popularity of “Mary Poppins.” This is further supported by the fact that during the Second World War, and in the employment by the now defunct U.K. Ministry of Information, Travers lived for five years in the United States, and for a period of two summers lived amongst the Navajo, Hopi, and Pueblo peoples, taking an interest in their myths and folkloric traditions. In interviews and articles, P.L. Travers presented herself as more folklorist and scholar of myth, which is what ultimately led me to hunt down her collected essays and reflections on myth, symbol and story: “What the Bee Knows,” which is compiled of essays, articles, and interviews she contributed to “Parabola.”

First and foremost, P.L. Travers is no rhetorician or polemicist. The essays of “What the Bee Knows,” are not distant clinician observations or scholarly studies. They are not the musings of an anthropologist’s investigation gradually piecing together a portrait of a society and culture. Nor are they a detailed report outlining the autopsied ins and outs of the fairy stories and myths after scrutinizing examination. No, quite the opposite in fact. They’re strange and bewildering musings. Where other writers and essayists keep a healthy distance between themselves and their subject; Travers, however, openly acquainted herself with them, becoming drenched and overcome; until ultimately, she is anointed a disciple. The essays unapologetically wade into the esoteric. Often, P.L. Travers’ literary voice became more concerned with evocation and enchanting in orientation; loose and easily overtaken by oneiric interpretations or freefalling into some unconscious and interior fantastical realm or other imaginings or day dreams. The expectation of a severe, pithy, and acerbic no-nonsense writer, were quickly thwarted, when greeted by what could only be described as some performative act, where P.L. Travers conceals herself in the persona of some Madam Zelda figure at a séance table, complete with crystal ball, incense burners and overstuffed cushions. Throughout her life, Travers viewed herself on a quasi psych-spiritual journey, often under the tutelage of individuals and gurus such as A.E. (George William Russell) to George Gurdjieff, among others. Rather than review and analyse her pursuit of abstruse fulfillment, Travers instead indulges into a variety of thematic concerns as if they were writing prompts, revealing some critical thought or literary admissions, in addition to autobiographical details, and more ethereal ruminations of the subject at hand. It’s a mixed bag, and often delighted in being more hermetic than enlightening. By the time I read through the first batch of essays and reached the interview titled: “Where Will All the Stories Go?” It became apparent that the conversation between Travers and Laurens van der Post was exclusively between them, and had no room for an interloper like myself. Truth be told, it’s barely tolerable to read someone engaged in a sermon of the mystical; it is completely indigestible when two individuals hoard the handcar and pump it into the depths of the mines of mysticism, extolling all the minerals, gems, and subterranean surprises, while your stranded at the entrance of the alleged cave of wonders. 

“What the Bee Knows,” provides a different facet to P.L. Travers bibliography, one which is always overshadowed by the indomitable figure of “Mary Poppins.” While I had hoped it showed the serious and scholarly talents of Travers, the supposed literary analysis she often insinuated about in her interviews, but instead was met by a writer who seemed far more interested in being swept up in the tempests of the primordial storms of mythmaking, symbol, and story. While they were often interesting at times, one too many veered towards the musings from a psychedelic trip, not necessarily engaging and lacking a concrete structure in which readers can properly orient themselves to the topic at hand. There is no doubt P.L. Travers was sharp and incisive, her interview with The Paris Review presents her as such. While her essay with The New York Times presented her ability to both dismiss the notion of children’s literature from the perspective of a writer who had often been designated one; but rather then offend and dismiss children as readers, Travers in turn defended their own right to explore and read the books they come across, to search out and enjoy the stories that compelled them, regardless if it was deemed age appropriate or other wise. Yet, “What the Bee Knows,” never quite lands with any impact. In abandoning itself to the ethereal otherworldly calls of fairy or the unconscious wellspring, the lack of tether is a disservice, whereby Travers authorial perspective is overwhelmed by the subject matter and is then swept out to some strange sea. “What the Bee Knows,” could have benefited from a concrete clinical perspective, or dialed back the sermons of esoteric occultism and enchantment, the devotional defenses of a fevered disciple, and instead sought a more grounded way to explore an otherwise interesting and compelling subject, that of myth, symbol, and story.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

 

For Further Reading

 

P.L. Travers, The New York Times: "I NEVER WROTE FOR CHILDREN,"

 

We Do Not Part

Hello Gentle Reader,

Pathos is the nucleus of Han Kang’s literary oeuvre. Han’s preoccupation to explore the intensity of the human conditions emotional landscape, retains a particular interest towards mankind’s proclivity to perpetrate and engage in violence. Violence of course comes in a variety of forms, be it: physical, political, psychological, emotional, or spiritual. Han cartographs the trajectory of violence and its subsequent fallout and consequences with a pathologist’s dedication to understand; while always stopping short of entertaining any notion of diagnosis. Violence, as far as Han Kang can summarize is not an activity or action strictly unique to human beings. It is a forceful consequence of life itself. An otherwise existential and natural fact. Practically primordial. While human beings though remain unique in their ability to enterprise and invent new modes, methods, and means in which to perpetrate, retaliate, and engage in acts turned arts of violence. As far as society and people are concerned, violence is mere natural consequence and tool encompassing change. For example, the guillotine remains one of the most striking images of violence inspiring terror to provoke political and social change and subdue opposition to its progressive purposes and ideals. The guillotine, with its brutal function, was defended for its perceived ethos and humanistic approach. Its engineering ensured the condemned were executed with mechanical precision, minimizing the follies and mistakes of manual executions; while denying executioners their petty pleasures. As such, the guillotine was deemed the most humane form of execution for its swiftness and indifference. A tug of the rope, the drop of the blade, and the deed is done. No different then hanging, public burning, or any other form of decapitation, the guillotine was also a crowd pleaser. A public spectacle where people crowded to coo, jeer, and awe at, delighting in the bloodied spectacle. As for someone like Robespierre, who had their initial hesitations towards employing violence in order to ultimately achieve the French Revolutions goals for rationale rule and enlightened governance, before embracing it as the means in which to further purify the revolutions ideals by deposing tyranny. In turn, the despotism Robespierre curated around him, and his liberal embrace of political violence alienated his former allies and would-be supporters, until at last Robespierre found himself beneath the metallic glare of the guillotine.

Designating pathos as the stellar core of one’s literary preoccupations is riddled with challenges and pitfalls. Especially for Han Kang’s unapologetic surveying of violence as an inherent natural and existential factor of the human condition. Poor writing, terrible execution, and no sense of planning, means the work is always teetering on the precipice of melodramatic hysteria, sensationalism, hyperbole, and such mawkish second-hand emotion, that any actual weight and discussion of these elements are lost within the white noise of a writer who has no control or appreciation of their subject matter, and therefore has no business or talent writing about the subject. Writers who perilously dive into the cavernous landscape of emotional spelunking, are often lost within their subject, which overpowers their work with solicitous sentiment. There is nothing as frivolous as a writer whose work panders for affecting responses from their reader. Its feeble as it is cheap, with no literary quality or hope of redemption. Thankfully for Han Kang, her use of language is what steers her novels from becoming moored and mired within the swamp and ruin of such frivolity. Han’s literary language relies on brittle lyricism to make its case, avoiding smouldering on shock value sensationalism, or lingering to long wallowing into caricature of melodrama. In “Human Acts,” Han wrote about the inherent violence of the Gwangju Uprsing with a frankness towards the real human cost; while ensuring she can sketch out the sinew to other episodes and perspectives ensuring the narrative was capable of moving forward, without chewing on the macabre and grotesque details. In an opening chapter, the boy recounts the makeshift morgue being used to house the bodies of the dead. The bodies washed. Their details and identities recorded. Han reticently observes these moments with their resolve and resilience, not in the death of the participants, but the care, order, and administrative efficiency taking place in managing the deceased. In one scene though, to offer a glimpse or understanding of the events which had previously taken place and a foreshadowing to the events that will take place; Han describes one body whose neck has been sliced open by bayonet. The red of the wound and the uvula dangling at the back of the throat. The image speaks for itself. Han does not insulate further with brutalist imagery or extrapolate beyond; the scene stands alone. The same tactics are employed in, “The White Book,” a deeply personal and autobiographical novel, whereby Han recounts the tragic circumstances of her older sister’s birth and death, juxtaposing it against a writer who’s on a retreat in Warsaw, Poland, who reflects on the city’s decimation and destruction during the Second World War and the process of it being rebuilt. Woven throughout the narrative is an inventory of white objects and poetic philosophising on the colour white, the nature of grief, loss, and the fragility of the human condition. The sparsity of the work, the ellipses and its elliptical nature ensure it’s a short fragmentary meditation, provides enough space for the work to breathe in its poetic intensity, without becoming indulgent in solipsism.

Han Kang’s skill in utilizing figurative language effectively, restraint, and literary maturity to understand and veer towards subtlety, when writing about subjects which are inherently flavoured with a heightened degree and level of poignancy, and detail historical acts of brutality and violence, it is safe to assume that her most recent novel to be translated, “We Do Not Part,” would once against showcase Han’s curated control of her brittle lyricism and dedication to probing the enduring question of violence and its relationship to the human condition, by recounting a brutal atrocity that had taken place within contemporary Korean history. Instead, “We Do Not Part,” didn’t quite land its punches or find its footing. “Human Acts,” was a symphonic novel. Structured around the political uprising and subsequent crack down and slaughter in the city of Gwangju, the novel spiraled outwards, showcasing how the events that took place within that city continue to reverberate, and how those consequential effects persist with the families of victims, and are felt within the society at large, and remembered within a societal and collective consciousness. This gave, “Human Acts,” a concrete structure, a scaffolding if you will, in which the novel continued to build off and gain momentum. The second chapter of the boy’s soul’s desperation to get home to say goodbye to his mother before the sun rises, remains an exhilarating piece, showcasing Han’s talents to propel a narrative with a sense of emotional urgency, while remaining coldly distant, to ensuring the impacts landed organically rather than manufacturing the required responses. In “We Do Not Part,” the prose became overladen with cumbersome repetition, and lacked the necessary focal point in which to take off. Instead, Han’s fragile lyricism became lost within the white noise of its own production. Or if more preferable, lost within increasingly tiresome descriptions of snow and wind. Throughout the beginning of the novel and continued well after, the prose and sentences became increasingly episodic, simply describing “then this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened,” as if Han found it difficult to find the natural rhythm or flow to propel the narrative and instead described minute actions and responses as they happened in a manner of a play by play.

In addition, “We Do Not Part,” lacks the concrete structure of “Human Acts,” where the symphony bloomed; instead, “We Do Not Part,” is more ephemeral, lacking the gravity to anchor it. Instead, the novel is characterized as more of a singular flame within a non-descript room, whose light exists only to showcase the dancing flickering mercurial shadows shifting, twisting, and changing on the wall and ceiling, as they always remain imperceptible and constantly in motion. This is perhaps the biggest downfall of “We Do Not Part,” as the novels prose became increasingly circuitous. Crossing and crisscrossing the same ordeals. Treading and retreading the same territory. Kyungha’s snow ridden odyssey through Jeju Island to get to Inseon’s remote village and home, should at once be filled with tension and urgency to save the bird; instead, it becomes lugubrious and laborious. Leaving many readers to wonder: what’s the point? Then there is the premise of the novel. “We Do Not Part,” draws out getting to the discussion of the massacre that took place on Jeju Island, and when it finally reaches this pinnacle, Han appears to cram all her research and testimony into the island’s tragic history and unresolved grief into the last three quarters of the novel. It also became increasingly apparent, that Han only started to find her footing as the novel began to conclude. Her lyricism became sharper, clearer, and far more engaging. Kyungha’s moaning and wallowing ceased, beyond a few non-descript comments about the cold and chill; but in the delirium of the later components of the novel, Kyungha thankfully became less perceptible, without commenting on her ailments, or projecting a sense of longing companionship on an elderly passerby.

“We Do Not Part,” is Han Kang’s longest novel (which is currently translated). In previous novels, such as “Greek Lessons,” Han showcased herself as a master of the slow burn, gradually delving into the psychological interior of her characters, her prose penetrating and image rich, provide enough bait and tackle to string readers along. The same can be said of the “The White Book,” whereby the personal—even private—nature of the work is tolerated because Han is sparing. The waxing prose of Han’s book allows it to ruminate and contemplate the nature of loss, grief, and their relation to love, and in turn the kernel of guilt that is felt with the understanding that her life is only made possible because of the death of her older sister. Once again though, Han’s prose is psychologically acute without being self-indulgent. Its evocation comes through a layering of images and an association of images, and the metaphors produced from there. “We Do Not Part,” lacks this in its first half to three quarters. The novel would have benefited from being moulded and shaped more; pruned and sharpened with greater scrutiny. Instead, the rambling meandering roundabout journey became vacuous and vapid. “We Do Not Part,” could have employed a more concrete structure, instead of relying on snow which is unreliable, as it drifts, blows, and accumulates, and sadly the novel got lost within the ether of it, becoming colourless and anesthesia inducing. “We Do Not Part,” is disappointing, and rightfully so, because Han Kang can do better and has proven as much; furthermore, the assertion to call “We Do Not Part,” Han’s masterpiece, is misguided as it is disagreeable.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– XLI –

Education is not everything, but it is a component of opportunity. At the very least: it makes you more interesting.  

Edmund White Dies Aged 85

Hello Gentle Reader,

While it’s not a term that I appreciate or endorse, regardless of the younger generations attempts at remediation of it, The Chicago Tribune is correct in defining Edmund White as “the godfather of queer lit[erature],” a sentiment echoed by Alan Hollinghurst, who described White as “The Patron Saint of Queer Literature.” More specifically, White brought the gay experience to forefront as a serious literary topic and discussion. While not necessarily gentrified to the point making it more agreeable with the prevailing ideas of romance and sexual relations; White’s work did abandon the shock value transgressions of Jean Genet, and instead embraced a more eloquent and measured commentary on the gay experience and love, both within the confines of oppression and need to confirm or fit in, to the freedom of liberation with all its boundless beauty. In order to do this, Edmund White often mined his own catalogue of experiences. His monumental trilogy, which started with “A Boy’s Own Story,” recounts the coming out tale of a gay adolescent during the 1950’s, this would later be followed up with “The Beautiful Room is Empty,” and “The Farewell Symphony,” which chart the young man’s course through the 60’s and into the horrors of the AIDs pandemic as he approaches middle age. The hallmark of Edmund White’s career was a luxuriance of style, which has been praised by both Alan Hollinghurst and Colm Tóibín, who both agreed that White’s candor and openness regarding discussions and descriptions of sex and sexual exploits, does not need to be framed withing a pornographic manner, but can be discussed within the context of beauty and romance as its heterosexual counterpart is. This may also come from the fact that Edmund White was as much a scholar as he was purveyor of novels, having written biographies on Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Proust, and the aforementioned Jean Genet. In 1977 he co-wrote the book “The Joy of Gay Sex,” to provide a how-to guide for the other half, and took its cues from the monumental book “The Joy of Sex.” Of course, “The Joy of Gay Sex,” and the subsequent Gay Liberation, was cut short by the arrival of AIDs, which burned through the gay community like wildfire. Through essays, novels, biographies, and memoir, Edmund White continued to curate an environment, whereby homosexuality could be discussed within any terms, be it literary or otherwise; but, as Colm Tóibín also pointed, White was a great surveyor of city life, a true connoisseur of the urbane, and his work could capture the colour, light, and personality of a city. His legacy is monumental in a myriad of writers choosing to explore such relationships and lifestyles. “A Boy’s Own Story,” is a classic alongside James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” and Jean Genet’s “Our Lady of the Flowers,” which inadvertently or otherwise set the foundation for a whole generation of future writers to write about gay relationships and love, with all its nuances and complexities.

Rest in Peace Edmund White.

 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Dies Aged 87

Hello Gentle Reader,

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o will always be remembered and acknowledged as one of the greatest giants of contemporary African Literature. A revolutionary literary master, whose life and work sought to not only emancipate Kenya from colonial attitudes and lingering influence, but remediate and restore African languages into established and official literary canons, and became renowned as one of the most fervent and zealous advocates for traditional languages to be reintroduced not only in daily life but also in official capacities and cultural institution. This advocacy and in turns political engagement often had consequential effects on the writer’s personal relationships. In one firebrand essay Ngũgĩ criticized the legendary and venerable Chinua Achebe’s perspective that writers can ‘Africanize,’ and subvert the colonial languages of English and French to their own will. The two writers’ relationship became tense after that. There’s a hint of irony in this as well, as Chinua Achebe was instrumental in getting Ngũgĩ’s debut novel, “Weep Not, Child,” published. In turn, “Weep Not, Child,” is the first English language novel to be published by an East African writer, and was originally published under the name James Ngugi, which would later be abandoned in favour of a revitalized name he took, to push back against any lingering sentiment of colonialism and push for greater nationalism and Kenyan identity based on tradition and folklore. Literature and politics often went hand in hand for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, whose efforts to inspire, facilitate, and maintain a proud nationalistic African identity and pride, one founded on the principles of independence, often came with violent consequences. While his earlier works were written in English, by 1977 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o began to write and publish solely in the Kikuyu language. Additionally, while Ngũgĩ’s earlier novels were preoccupied with criticizing the colonialism of the English, subsequent novels were equally scathing of an independent Kenya, which Ngũgĩ accused of becoming the old guard in a new form, full of elites who had all but abandoned the everyday Kenyan. The publication and staging of the play “I Will Marry When I Want,” found Ngũgĩ imprisoned without trial by then then president of Kenya. While imprisoned Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote his first novel in Kikuyu “Devil on the Cross,” which was drafted on toilet paper, as the writer was denied any other writing materials. While he was later freed by the new president, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o remained an unofficial political opponent to the government, and while attending a book launch in London, the writer learned of an impending plot to assassinate him back in Kenya, which led to a 22-year period of self-imposed exile. When returning to Kenya after this exile, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was welcome back as a hero, but was later brutally assaulted in his home, while his wife was violently raped. Regardless of the political violence thrust upon him, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o remains a pioneering writer and intellectual, whose promotion of indigenous languages has spurred movements seeking to preserve them. Yet sadly, as in the case of many writers before him, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was also considered a perennial Nobel Laureate in waiting, but as in the case of other magnificent writers never received the award. Regardless, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o literary reputation is safeguarded even without the award. Ngũgĩ will be remembered and studied for years to come as a vanguard and powerful force which sought to move African literature away from mere concept or theoretical possibility to a subject of serious study, and in turn working towards capturing, preserving, and promoting indigenous languages for future generations.

Rest in Peace Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Paul Durcan Dies Aged 80

Hello Gentle Reader,

Paul Durcan is yet another giant of Irish poetry. Ireland does seem to produce exceptional writers with a particular proclivity towards poets. Paul Durcan’s career is of no exception. Since his debut in 1967, Durcan proved himself to be an original voice, whose poetry was oppositional and adversarial as it rallied against authority, oppression, and intolerance. This took place for Durcan on both a level of the individual against society, but also the individual against the family; and while Paul Durcan loved Ireland and celebrated the absolute majesty of the Irish culture, he was not afraid to confront its failings either with brutal and eviscerating satire. Don’t mistake Paul Durcan as a poet whose work is infused with the dour atmosphere of the pissing rain of the emerald, complete with the iron chokehold of the catholic church on the eternal soul; or poems kneeling into states of subjugation, confessing, and performing acts of penance and repentance, only to be followed by rallying cries of independence turned cries of mourning due to the senseless of the violence and the human cost. Durcan’s poetry was at ease in unfurling into flights of fantasy and slipping into the surreal. Paul Durcan’s poetry readings were equally highly regarded for their intensity; while on the page Durcan is often regarded as being unpolished – a component of the poet’s style and charm – but in live recitations, the came through, the immediacy in which the poems were composed capturing the complexity and palpability of their subject, were reawakened and disseminated to the assembled. Paul Durcan’s early ambitions to become a poet is now part of his biography and legend, in part because it captures the senseless brutality and savagery of mid-century modern psychiatry, whereby the young Durcan was institutionalized by his father (a respectable, though difficult and abusive judge) for his literary ambitions under the vague diagnosis of ‘clinical depression,’ whereby for the subsequent years the young Durcan would be subject to 27 rounds of electroconvulsive therapy (shock therapy), in addition to god knows what other cocktail of drugs that were administered. According to Durcan himself, he was fortunate to get through ordeal without being lobotomized. Despite the complications felt towards Ireland, Paul Durcan was often an instrumental figure in founding and creating institutions that promote and protect Irish culture such as Aosdána; and his poetry is often found in the school curricula. Paul Durcan is a classic Irish poet, with his formidable wit and indominable spirit, whose love for Ireland is equally tempered by its unsentimental criticism of it.

Rest in Peace Paul Durcan.

 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– XL –

To be beyond reproach is to be dead. 

Alice Notley Dies Aged 79

Hello Gentle Reader,

Alice Notley is a poet whose name immediately elicits responses such as: difficult, challenging, uncompromising, and exacting. One might even go so far as to describe Notley as that academic poet. One whose vision is so esoteric it can only be appreciated and understood after it has been sufficiently autopsied by bespeckled professors in tweed jackets with elbow patches, who through sufficient reading and dissertations can distill the essence of the poetry into a cohesive summary with authority. In her early career, Alice Notley was lumped together with the Second Generation of the New York School of Poetry, famous for being the antithesis of the Confessional Poets. Their poetry was concerned with looking towards external stimuli rather then inwards, and their style was marked for its more cosmopolitan flare. Notley refuted being classified neatly with this chronological time stamp, and her poetry expanded far beyond the limitations of being considered a poet of the Second Generation of the New York School of Poetry. As a poet, Alice Notley is admired for her continued change of form. No two collections are alike. There is always a sense of seeking a new beginning. Notley’s poetic and thematic range moved form discussions of and tropes of popular culture, to scenes of the everyday, to ruminations on literature philosophical matters. In the later periods of her work, Alice Notley’s poetry collections became elaborate pieces of architecture, moving away from the poems being singular constructs wrangled into collection, and instead poetry collections became unified as a whole, devoted to a particular subject or engrossed in a specific form. “The Descent of Alette,” is considered a landmark piece of text, showcasing Notley’s poetic evolution. “The Descent of Alette,” is a single epic poem framed as a feminist critique of the epic poetry genre and tradition. As the panoramic new and selected poetry collection “Grave of Light,” provides the most adequate summarization of Notley’s bibliography “[. . .] work that includes intimate lyrics, experimental diaries, traditional genres, the postmodern series, the newly invented epic, political observation and invective, and the poem as novel,” which only shows just the breadth in which Notley wrote and her continued innovate approach to expanding and exploring the possibilities of poetry. It comes as no surprise to readers and lovers of poetry, why Alice Notley was often considered one of the greatest writers of the form.

Rest in Peace Alice Notley.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The International Booker Prize Winner 2025

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years International Booker Prize winner is Banu Mushtaq with her short story collection “Heart Lamp.” This is the first time the International Booker Prize has been awarded to a short story collection. “Heart Lamp,” is comprised of twelve stories selected from over 50 stories housed in six collections, written over the past 30 years. All of those stories were translated from Banu Mushtaq’s native Kannada which is the official language of Karnataka, a south western state of India. The stories of “Heart Lamp,” chronicle the lives of women living in patriarchal society. Of all the shortlisted titles, “Heart Lamp,” was seen as a worthy but dark horse contender. Many wrote off its chances of receiving the award because it was a short story collection, which as a form had not been honoured yet. As for the judges, according to the chair Max Porter, they deliberated for six hours, arguing before unanimously agreeing on “Heart Lamp.” Porter, also praised the collection of stories for being special in the terms of its politics, and while her quickly amended his statement to steer it away from being viewed within the lens of an activist literature, or the judges purposefully endorsing any book which supports their sociopolitical attitudes, sympathies, or causes; it inevitably exposes what made this year’s longlist and shortlist ultimately disappointing.

This year’s judges appeared to have inflected social justice commitments to their evaluations. Both the longlist and shortlist were coated in a veneer of aggrandizing social commentary over purely literary evaluation. While many congratulations are in order for Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi, whose translation of the stories has gained special praise, and the winning work “Heart Lamp,” which is exceptional to having been the first short story collection to win the award.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Jane Gardam Dies Aged 96

Hello Gentle Reader,

Of contemporary English language writers who could be described as quintessentially English, Jane Gardam would be of them. A writer of the social comedies and absurdities of suburban and middle-class life; the kind of novels which are scoffed at by today’s youth, who dismiss them as genteel and milquetoast. The otherwise polite and unassuming novels of their parents and grandparents, which completely lacks their appetite for what they perceive to be socially conscious issues and attitudes, reflecting their egregious and self-righteous ideals, all the while fortifying them. They therefore miss the cunning curated delights of Jane Gardam, whose novels can be described as orchestral in approach, with critics often gently lamenting that the busyness of a Gardam novel, with all its ensemble characters and multiple narrative threads waterlog the narrative with such saturation that the point and plot gets lost. Jane Gardam, however, remained an astute observer of the everyday, the mistaken timid and common middle-class existence, with its misconceived paltry concerns; but what Gardam captured, was intimate portraits of social comedy and emotional depth of those people within this class structure. In other words, a full-bodied narrative of the human condition in the 20^th century. Despite this, Jane Gardam’s literary career is often regarded as being strangely overlooked and underappreciated beyond the borders of the United Kingdom, which comes down to the fact that Gardam was not a writer who could easily be categorized, no different then Doris Lessing or Penelope Lively, whose bibliographies are equally diverse in form, format, preoccupation, and theme, but maintain a certain affinity to psychological acuity and insight. To their credit and circumstance, both Doris Lessing and Penelope Lively are often first viewed within the context of the twilight years of the British Empire. For Lessing it was the now defunct colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and for Lively it was British Egypt. Afterwards though, Lessing became a firebrand and iconoclast, social barometer and critic, scrutinizing a civilization through the century; while Lively tended to novels dissected personal memory in contrast to official history, foibles and follies of individuals, and the quiet intimate dramas of everyday people. As for Jane Gardam, there remained a sense her sensibilities were English through and through. Still Gardam was shortlisted for the Booker Prize with her novel “God on the Rocks,” recounts a summer of awakening for one girl between the wars. It’s a masterclass novel in psychological and emotional cartography, whereby Gardam proves that the larger the tapestry and the competing perspectives only adds to the text. Sadly, it was beat out by the begrudged novel “The Sea, The Sea,” by Iris Murdoch. Of course, Jane Gardam’s reputation is said to rest on her “Old Filth Trilogy,” with the titular first novel “Old Filth,” beloved as a tragicomic character study. The subsequent novels in the trilogy, “The Man in the Wooden Hat,” and “Last Friends,” continues the study from different perspectives, providing an otherwise encompassing and comedic perspective of old age, and the bittersweet tinge of memories. Other memorable novels include “Crusoe’s Daughter,” which is often described as Jane Gardam’s most political novel in context, but remained fixated on the psychological realities of the main character, Polly Flint, who finds continual reprieve in the story of Robinson Crusoe, as her own life is one marred and shipwrecked by tragedy and circumstance.
 
Rest in Peace Jane Gardam.
 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

 

– XXXIX –

All ideologies and idealists are inconveniently confronted with harshness of reality.  

Mario Vargas Llosa Dies Aged 89

Hello Gentle Reader,

It is difficult to imagine the Latin American Boom without the late Julio Cortázar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes, or Mario Vargas Llosa. These vanguard writers followed Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, and Miguel Ángel Asturias, continuing to push and elevate the southern continent to forefront of literary ingenuity in addition to being unapologetically committed commentary on political issues of the time; and while Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” is considered a monumental text of the boom and a defining novel of magical realism, the contributions of Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa are no less remarkable or trifle. Mario Vargas Llosa is credit for bridging the initial critical assessment of the Latin American Boom with the ‘old world,’ literary establishment, with his critical assessment and study of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1971. Their short literary friendship, however, was short lived as they were engaged in a physical altercation by the mid 70’s. the cause of the feud remains unknown. As a writer Mario Vargas Llosa was unapologetically prolific, writing in a variety of genres and forms, which ranged from epic, to historical, to comedic, to murder mystery, to essays and criticism. Vargas Llosa’s debut novel “The Time of the Hero,” showcase the authors prodigal talents for experimentation and complex narratives, as the novel itself utilizes multiple narratives and points of views in a non-linear fashion detailing the cruelties of a military academy education, while providing an examination of issues regarding hierarchy, matters of masculinity as a social and common culture institution, and secrecy. “The Time of the Hero,” is viewed within the context as an examination and reflection of Peruvian society as a whole. Of course it was the novel “Conversations in the Cathedral,” which catapulted Mario Vargas Llosa to literary stardom. Once an again, Vargas Llosa blended and experimented with narrative and structure within the novel, cementing Mario Vargas Llosa as one of the defining figures of the Latin American Boom, and being considered one of the great innovators (and soon to be controversial) writers of his generation. In his younger years, as is typical fashion, Mario Vargas Llosa was politically motivated and outspoken often for left-wing and Marxist oriented causes, including being a supporter of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. However, Vargas Llosa became disenfranchised with these movements, souring on Castro, after the Padilla Affair. More interesting, however, Mario Vargas Llosa would later take a run for president, but was destroyed in the race and never ran for public office again. His later years of political engagement included more intense focus on supporting right-wing causes and movements, a far cry from his youthful political enthusiasm. Throughout his extraordinary life and career, Mario Vargas Llosa accumulated a reputation of being an unrelenting giant, a force of nature whose work had the conviction and confidence to achieve greatness, and by 2010 Mario Vargas Llosa receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Now dead at 89, Mario Vargas Llosa’s legacy both literary and politically are intertwined and create a controversial and at times difficult legacy to reconcile if not completely appreciate.

Regardless, Rest in Peace, Mario Vargas Llosa, who indeed lived a very eventful and adventurous life.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The International Booker Prize Shortlist 2025

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years International Booker Prize left a lot to be desired, when the original longlist was announced. While it captured a noteworthy title, such as Mircea Cărtărescu’s “Solenoid,” it was easily overwhelmed by titles of an otherwise socially inclined statements which either reduced their literary values, or worst yet, were poor substitutions for no literary value at all. The shortlist whittled down the original longlist to six books. While I had hoped the diamonds which did make it on the longlist would inevitably make their way to the shortlist, only a couple were so lucky. The following is this year’s shortlist:

            Solvej Balle – Denmark – “On the Calculation of Volume 1,”
            Vincenzo Latronico – Italy – “Perfection,”
            Anne Serre – France – “A Leopard-Skin Hat,”
            Banu Mushtaq – India – “Heart Lamp,”
            Vincent Delecroix – France – “Small Boat,”
            Hiromi Kawakami – Japan – “Under the Eye of the Big Bird,”

The obvious and most questionable omission on this year’s shortlist is Mircea Cărtărescu’s “Solenoid,” which was also the by far the largest and perhaps the more complex novel included on this year’s prize longlist. “Solenoid,” previously won the International Dublin Literary Award last year. The fact that it was omitted from the shortlist raises a few eyebrows; but I am sure there’s a pettiness to literary awards. The International Booker Prize judges may not want to be seen following in the shadow or footsteps of the  International Dublin Literary Award; just as it can be speculated that they declined to include both Olga Tokarczuk and Han Kang on this years longlist with their recent released novels “The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story,” and “We Do Not Part,” because they’ve either already won the award previously, and have since won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Still the absence of “Solenoid,” feels odd, not just because it was expected to be on the shortlist, but because Mircea Cărtărescu’s novel is unapologetically Borgesian in scope and style with its complexities, while employee heavy dosages of Kafkaesque absurdity.

It is good to see Solvej Balle on this shortlist with her novel, “On the Calculation of Volume 1.” In my own personal opinion, I think, Solvej Balle, Vincenzo Latronico, and Anne Serre, are this year’s contenders. Solvej Balle incorporates both style and narrative in a unique novel which has been described as the literary equivalent to “Groundhog Dog.” While, Vincenzo Latronico’s reimagining of Georges Perec’s 1960’s novel “Things: A Story of the Sixties,” explores the Instagram nihilism of todays millennial generation. Anne Serre’s novel “A Leopard-Skin Hat,” is a more personal novel, sketching the affections of a friends unyielding and undying love for a complex woman whose battling her own personal demons. Serre’s novel recounts a complex life vacillating between hope and desolation, and a brilliant life ultimately cut short due to this.

As in the case of this year’s longlist, this year’s shortlist also leaves a lot to be desired. The judges for this year’s award in turn gave the impression of weighing social justice commitments or commentary to their evaluations, which ultimately may have seen a lot of worthy books and novels dismissed because they did not sufficiently meet this criteria. Of course, that being said I am not privy to the judge’s rubric in how they assessed and weighed the nominated books, and as such ultimately my opinion is personal and of speculative nature; but this year’s lists seemed to be coated in a veneer of aggrandizing social commentary over purely literary evaluation.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Eastbound

Hello Gentle Reader,

Traveling by train occupies a visage of the old-world travel, one of privilege and genteel inclination. Conjuring images of first-class cars and dining cars, full-service amenities, providing the transitory composition of the comforts of home in the compact, perfect for the individual whose life can be encapsulated in carry on, a requirement for the lifestyle of transit, continually in motion propelling ever further into the distance. Before the expansion and commercialization of air travel, trains were the only way to efficiently and effectively mauver through landscapes. They were the logistic marvels, carrying cargo and passenger alike, on predestined serpentine tracks, they zipped and zagged along, whizzing by onto new horizons. Passenger car rail travel still operates and exists, but remains a European reality, an otherwise densely populated and developed luxury, benefiting a smaller surface area with a denser population. In the case of Canada, commuter rail and passenger rail have all but fallen out of fashion. A few still exist, but are exuberant and luxuriously priced journeys for the locomotive aficionado; while daily commuter trains have come under considerable criticism and scrutiny as passengers of the service have criticized the services habitual tardiness and consistent deliverance of inconveniences, further compounded by a lack of infrastructure investment and upkeep, in addition to preventive maintenance, which only exasperates delays and cancellations. The national railways of Canada, long since privatized, hold only profit in their eyes with shareholders in their ears, exist only to ship freight from one end to the other; moving people is no longer in their portfolio. No, the Canadian mode of cross-country travel is one of independence, the demand for control of one’s asphalt destiny, the long-haul road trip, the dreaded endless car ride. Piled into the backseat with siblings or the overflow of luggage, most Canadian children would be familiar to the term ‘close quarters,’ as they endured and rode onto the expanse of the frontier, passing through villages, cities, and the sense of endless driving into a yawning landscape of boundless space, punctuated with pits stops where one relieves themselves and stretches their legs, before resuming their motorized voyage once more, where bon voyage is aptly replaced with: on the road again. Of course, road trips became a symbol of freedom and wanderlust, popularized by the Beatniks and Jack Kerouac’s celebratory novel of the open road, “On the Road,” which traced the cartography of youthful hedonism as it embraced the discombobulation and disorientation of perpetual transience and movement as a state of being in the pursuit of adventure and meaning in a postwar world. The indefinite sense of dislocation of space in motion, and the claustrophobia of shared travel within the liminal space between departure and destination, are beautifully captured by Maylis de Kerangal’s novel “Eastbound,” which recounts the happenstance chance encounter between two individuals, who in sharing a train ride, find their journeys intertwined within one another, and become comrades and accomplices in a shared escape; at first by a sense of intrigue and interest, fueled by sympathy, later soured into disgruntled entanglement, fortified by the aggressive desperation and plea, until finally resolved  with an understanding that the moment of turn off and turn back had long since past. 

Maylis de Kerangal is a French writer whose novels trace and recount with intensity the proclivities of the human condition, ordained towards ingenuity, innovation, and creativity, which inevitably entangles itself within the catchall term of occupation. Through topics which range from cooking, to painting, to engineering, to surgery and organ transplants, de Kerangal places each subject beneath the microscope and drills into the essence of each preoccupation, revealing and unfurling the subjects beyond their immediate and palpable realities, whereby Maylis de Kerangal traces their incognito and ethereal connections to the human condition and the indominable spirit of human achievement and the capacity for creation. Through a literary style that maneuvers effortlessly between breathless breakneck sentences, which skip like stones across the surface, never sinking into the mire of superfluous detail, while sketching and describing the facts and figures of the matter with cinematic grace. Inevitably this means de Kerangal is compared to a documentary filmmaker in a literary sense, whose voluptuous literary language encapsulates and celebrates the achievement of craftsmanship, while exploring through broad brushstrokes the interior of the characters. The exploration of the private interior is the hallmark of “Eastbound,” as it traces the mismatched duet of two unlikely travelers who find themselves aligned and then bound together on the Trans-Siberian Railway, cutting through almost a quarter of the Earth’s circumference.

Aliocha is the first. A conscripted solider who is described as but a boy who has still to fill out the uncertain adult man’s body that he has developed into. Aliocha finds himself amongst the other conscripts, crowded and cramped together, their rowdiness disguising their own anxiety of their impending service as they zip along the far eastern reaches of Russia into the unknown. None of them know where their end destination is, while each of them plots and discusses the way they escape, when they unload at stations they crowd and herd together smoking in close knit groups, never straying far from the shadow of the train and their nearing, albeit unknown, destination, before returning to their compartment:

“He’s posted at the far end of the train, at the back of the last wagon in a compartment slathered in thick paint, a cell, pierced by three openings, that the smokers have seized immediately. This is where he’s found himself a spot, a volume of space still unoccupied, notched between other bodies. He has pressed his forehead to the back window of the train, the one that looks out over the tracks, and stays there watching the land speed by at 60km/h—in this moment it’s a wooly mauve wilderness, his shitty country.”

Then of course amidst the crowded chaos, Aliocha is casually assaulted, a premotion of what brutalisation awaits of wherever he is going, as the train maneuvers through the endlessness of the Russian far east, described as a “enclave bordered by the immensity,”:

“at the end of the rails, there will be the barracks and the diedovchina, the hazing, and once he’s there, if the second-year conscripts burn his dick with cigarettes, if they make him lick the toilets, deprive him of sleep or fuck him up the ass, no one will be able to do anything to help [. . .],”

Enter Hélène the French expat who finds herself on the same train as Aliocha. Rather than feeling conscription, however, Hélène is abandoning her Russian boyfriend, Anton, who in turn has returned to Russia to accept a position at a hydroelectric dam. For Anton this is a homecoming, but for Hélène, who is alluded to being more oriented to the metropolitan, finds herself alienated and isolated within the aforementioned immensity of Siberia, its rugged rustic terrain and provincial qualities, which inevitably have her pinned as a foreigner, which forces her to board the first train out, which happens to be train barreling eastbound to Vladivostok, a roundabout return to France. The encounter between Aliocha and Hélène is a chance once, shared by observing the emptiness of Siberia as it statically flies by the moving train:

“But they don’t move, standing before the pane of glass which is like a movie screen for them, where everything stirs gently, molecular as terror and desire, and then suddenly the night tears open and the landscape hardens outside, clean, geometrical, pure lines and new perspectives, the end of the organic night, the forest rises up in the razing light of dawn, and it’s still the same forest, the same slender trees, the same orangey trunks, a forest identical to itself to this extent is insane [. . .],”

Aliocha’s desperation for desertion, to be spared his conscripted fate, is what compels him to reach out to Hélène, who doesn’t see a beggar or victim of circumstance, but merely an individual in transit, a fellow runaway. Be it pity or sympathy, Hélène is complicit and extends a generous hand to the young conscript. What follows is a brisk and tense narrative. Neither Aliocha or Hélène can communicate wholeheartedly with either one and bumble enough understanding through a smatter of Russian and pantomime. Maylis de Kerangal doesn’t bother detailing the breakdown in language or failure of communication, instead de Kerangal captures their understanding through furtive effervescence and the context of experience. Via narrative, de Kerangal moves between intimate fixation on both Aliocha and Hélène, engaging in detours into their past and psychology, providing enough insight to understand their motivations and their present predicaments, to broad brushstrokes of cinematic detail describing the landscape in transit, or a roiling boil of images capturing the essence of the situation. One beautiful cascading passage, reveals all the Russian images and stock characteristics Hélène had collected and collated when she had envisioned Russia; while the imagined planetary woman of Aliocha, showcases just how out of place the conscript is within the grit reality of military service. Maylis de Kerangal prose is the true gem of the novel, however, which is pitch perfectly translated by Jessica Moore. The sentences skip with breathtaking speed, a parade of images which remain airy and ethereal, never becoming excessive or voluble, teetering on the void of superfluous loquacious meaninglessness, and are stitched together with seamless perfection. “Eastbound,” is a gem of human drama. A mastery of narrative which strikes a balance of beautiful prose with compelling narrative, an absolute pleasure to read.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– XXXVIII –

Small rebellions, slight transgressions, insignificant indiscretions, everyday trespasses. This is what you live for.

The Great Concert of the Night

Hello Gentle Reader,

In a recent interview discussing the enduring legacy of his monumental novel, “Never Let Me Go,” within the twenty years retrospect, in addition to the threat posed by artificial intelligence, Kazuo Ishiguro casually and self-effacingly dismissed the notion that he is a great writer of prose. Despite heralding from a generation of writers, who were considered by some to be the literary equivalent of the Brat Pack: Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and Salman Rushdie; Ishiguro insists he is not a master craftsman of prose. While it can be considered a modest and humble remark, there is truth in Ishiguro’s confession. Despite not being a great stylist, Ishiguro shaped his literary acumen for perspective to his advantage, and has distilled the same eternal subjects through distinct and powerful narrative voices. The stoic and emotionally stunted English butler Stevens of “The Remains of the Day,”; the observant and resigned Kathy H. of “Never Let Me Go,”; the manufactured but curiously driven and attentive Klara of “Klara and the Sun.” Each narrator infuses the book with their own perceptions and observations, recounting the events with a slant and a decent dosage of irony and unreliability. Ishiguro’s novels, rely on the particulars of a singular narrative voice to shoulder the weight of the work and provide readers with an intimate tour guide narrative to reveal and unfold the event. Kathy H.’s memories from her time at Hailsham to her complicated relationships with her friends Ruth and Tommy, shadowed by their pre-destined fabricated existence whereby they will inevitably donate and then be completed. Kind words for what is organ harvesting and death. Yet its Kathy’s impermanence and her memories which explore the complex ethical dilemmas and dimensions posed by cloning, and further questions regarding the nature of what it means to be human and the nature of the soul. Klara from “Klara and the Sun,” is the singular reason the novel is successful. Klara is generous and gregarious company for readers. A mass-produced android referred to as an Artificial Friend or (AF), Klara colours the narrative with a fresh perspective, one of sustained curiosity and distant curiosity of human nature, all while being sophisticated enough to avoid naivety, while companionable enough to be dismissed as overtly mechanical and unengaging. Kazuo Ishiguro’s narrators are what enliven his novels, providing them the necessary colour and depth to explore the inherent absurdities of the human condition. As for prose, Ishiguro’s novels are noted for their crystalline and agreeable quality, which are woven through the distinct character and narratives of each novel. Readers would be hard-pressed to find Kazuo Ishiguro exploring the limitations of literary forms. Kazuo Ishiguro remains by far one of the more successful introspective writers of his generation; and while Ishiguro may incorporate pastiches from other genres, be it science fiction, fantasy, or detective tropes; the literary preoccupations remain conventional in approach and execution. In contrast, Jonathan Buckley, is a writer who writes with a distinct character voice, but also explores new and unusual ways in which to explore the nature of narrative, and the pliable ways in which it can be deconstructed and reconstructed; while also exploring the very artifice of narrative as a byproduct of language, one which remains uniquely human in function in the attempt to instill order on events, in addition to attributing meaning to them.

“The Great Concert of the Night,” takes the form of a journal composed over a year by David, a curator of the fictional small independent museum, the Sanderson-Perceval Museum, located in the South of England, whose collection specialises in historical oddities and scientific and medical curiosities. Despite its eclectic collection complete with macabre backstories, the Sanderson-Perceval Museum suffers from a lack of attendance and steady patronage. It is not uncommon for David to note the number of visitors, including if there are none at all. In turn, David’s journal operates in the same temporal manner as a museum. Fragments and episodes are frequently filled with reflection, distraction, speculation, and a casual observation complete with disjointed and sporadic remembrance, which are recalled without the context of time, but braided throughout the narrative. In turn, the fictional Sanderson-Perceval Museum comes to represent both a defined temporal landscape and a character within the novel. It is one of the places David provides any real concrete detail over. It is also at the Sanderson-Perceval Museum that David first encounters the ever-intriguing and charming Imogen, whose presence occupies and haunts David. Imogen remains an eternal subject who David routinely reflects and reminisces over throughout “The Great Concert of the Night.” The title is an English translation from one of the fictional films Imogen appears in: Le Grand Concert de la Nui, and remains a personal favourite of Davids; who first introduces Le Grand Concert de la Nui to readers as he watches it on New Years alone by himself, the film projects an ethereal image of Imogen, one encapsulated within the artifice of film which both comforts and torments David.

As a narrator David is formal and fussy; his digressions are erudite and distant. While journal is curated and crafted to provide commentary on Davids own tastes and curiosities, they reveal little about David’s own biography. Throughout “The Great Concert of the Night,” David remains a passive figure. Resigned and reclusive, he occupies the space of spectator, keen to observe, collect, and if at all possible, preserve events and people outside of the perishable realities of time. Throughout the novel reflections are woven with historical detail, anecdote, inconsequential personal memories and inventory of the Sanderson-Perceval Museum. Memories of Imogen retain a particular fondness and melancholy, where gradually readers are slowly introduced to the various versions of Imogen, as produced by both family members, friends and colleagues, to her own admissions, and the different characters she played as an actress. A former lover describes Imogen’s ability to “disassemble,” as uncanny, whereby she has ultimately “mortgaged herself.”  In some fragments David recounts watching a commentary and interview by a director who worked with Imogen. David as a character is at his finest when his stage-managed museum curator visage loosens revealing the contempt he has towards the bloated egotism and sense of self-importance of one director of Imogen’s films, Antoine Vermeiren, whose unironic self-congratulatory praise is sardonically captured by David and not only disseminated to the reader but shared in turn. This same cynicism is directed towards Val, the new partner of David’s ex-wife Samantha, a life coach whose counsel and advice can barely be called cheapened sage wisdom or rehashed half-baked psychoanalytical insight. Instead, its discounted wholesale wellness practices, complete with all the social media buzz words repackaged in the farce of charlatan self-help rhetoric parading itself as professional service. Then there is William who zigs and zags through David’s notebook like a reoccurring asteroid, but he provides further depth and insight into Imogen, her ability to graceful empathise, it not at the very least, charmingly approach all individuals. Williams theories and metaphysical ponderings maybe far fetched, but he works at getting David outside of himself.

Imogen remains the focal point of David’s journal. There can be no denying David’s infatuation and enduring love and admiration for Imogen; but despite it, Imogen remains elusive, shifting and mercurial. Perhaps its due to Imogen’s profession as an actress and her inherent talent to disassemble herself which continually ensures she remains undefined. Imogen would later affirm that she viewed even her own sense of self as merely an alias, an artificial construct or persona embodied and never quite her own. Life unto itself appears to be a series of scenes or stage plays for the versions of Imogen to come into being. Even when dying of cancer, requires Imogen to assume a role, the stoic and strong woman languishing on her deathbed, in order to make her mother proud. “The Great Concert of the Night,” is a novel which pieces together inconsequential details gradually to reveal a larger picture, in a manner similar to that of a constellation. David’s journal imprecisely recounts and remembers events as they happen, and not necessarily in chronological order. They are laced with excursions and citations from Marcus Aurelius, Blaise Pascal, and Hildegard von Bingen, as well as the fictional films, and proprietor of the Sanderson-Perceval Museum. David’s journal captures the granules of details, curating in the dust an exquisite portrait of miniature that is equally eclectic as the Sanderson-Perceval Museums exhibits. However, there remains no defining portrait of Imogen within the recollections. Fragments and remnants only providing insinuation of character. Imogen remains elusive and ethereal, refusing to be entirely defined and transfixed. Then there is the question of what David’s relationship with Imogen really entailed. Was it one of lovers or perhaps more platonic? Often it appears David is the worshiper, and who can blame him. What is revealed showcases Imogen as never lacking in charm, charisma, or approachability. She comes from the finer stock of pedigree and was educated perfectly and oriented to slip and maneuver through social settings with the fluidity of a brainless jellyfish. Yet, Imogen is one of contradictions. An actress who has no interest in entertainment; who dismisses the contrived nature of theatre and despised the reward of applause, yet in turn held no qualm with nudity or engaging in scenes which were explicitly pornographic in everyway but name, or participated in an orgy, while David resigned himself to the comforts and confines of observation. Acting for Imogen was the ability to shapeshift, and much like a cephalopod, Imogen changes colour and texture throughout the text, which makes her an enduring point of fascination, not only for David but for readers who delight in her quick wit and mordant honesty, which is juxtaposed against others, be it the pompous pretense of Vermeiren or the superficial commerce orientation of Val’s guided self-help practices.

Befitting a novel written as a personal journal, “The Great Concert of the Night,” emulates the capriciousness of memory, often without the context of time. Individuals and characters are introduced without orientation or exposition, and effervescently return throughout the novel, as if upwelled from the sedimentary of personal memory. Jonathan Buckley has been quoted to having said that plot is not a defining feature of his writing and he’s correct. “The Great Concert of the Night,” abandons the conventions of narrative and its editorial fashioning’s and cuttings to create a linear narrative. In turn Jonathan Buckley delights in deconstructing the architecture of plot and narrative and revels in the ruin and details left behind. “The Great Concert of the Night,” is both collage and constellation like novel, plot is abandoned and instead the shape of a narrative and story of an uncertain love affair form from the perspective of David and what he choses to codify within his journal, which may attempt to encapsulate or at the very least capture the essence of Imogen. Yet just as Imogen had operated by designed throughout her life, her essence or at the very least the components of her character were beyond collating, and her life became increasingly elaborate and performative based, existing in the transience of impermanence. “The Great Concert of the Night,” showcases Jonathan Buckley as a writer’s writer, a writer who enjoys playing with literary forms; the limitations and conventions of narrative; all the while putting plot and story on the back burner. For Jonathan Buckley how the events are told or described or perceived is far more interesting than what happened. Furthermore, the multitudes of perspectives continually proves that what happened, remains ultimately undefined. I certainly agree with John Banville and Ian Sansom, wondering why Jonathan Buckley isn’t more widely known and appreciated for his innovative work. As for the faults and frustrations with “The Great Concert of the Night,” come at my own expense, having not sufficient amount of time to devote to the work consistently to appreciate and maintain an adequate understanding of whose who within David’s world. Here is to hoping Jonathan Buckley is will start to gain more appreciation as a writer, having won the Novel Prize in 2022 for his novel “Tell,” maybe he’ll finally secure a place on this years Booker Prize with his newest novel “One Boat.”

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Dag Solstad Dies Aged 83

Hello Gentle Reader,

While Jon Fosse and Karl Ove Knausgård occupy the public imagination as the best Norwegian writers, Dag Solstad predates them, and it can propose and litigated, it is from Solstad’s own literary shadow, these two writers found their own foothold abroad. Dag Solstad was the quintessential mid-century modern Norwegian writer. As was common of the generation, Solstad’s politics were unapologetically in their far-left orientation, the intellectually fashionably vogue Marxist thought, and during the 1970’s was a member of the Maoist Workers’ Communist Party. Dag Solstad’s literary contributions continued to evolve throughout his career, but first gained recognition for exploring existential themes within his work, with his signature droll sense of humour.  Solstad’s early work captures the bewildering and encompassing despair of the human condition, when it is faced with the complexities of a world deprived of the theological ordinances of God or church, and thereby mortals are left to their own devices to shape and fashion a sense of fate or purpose to their own life. Such is the vacuous void Nietzsche left behind when he declared “God is dead,” and nouveau and chic French writers and philosophers—be it existentialist or absurdist—sought to take the edge off the biting bitterness of nihilism. Dag Solstad is also a great writer of prose. Admired by both Peter Handke and Per Petterson, Solstad has always been the gold standard of prose in Norway. Karl Ove Knausgård is no exception, having gushed about Dag Solstad’s writing. Writers are always quick to praise Solstad’s intelligence coupled with his elegant prose. In the English language, Dag Solstad has always been revered and reviewed as that staunchly late modernist, which is further supported by the few novels of Solstad which have been translated into English. “Shyness and Dignity,” is one such existential novel, whereby another usual and ordinary day for Elias Rukla, an Ibsen scholar, becomes a catalyst and revelation to his awakening of a world which no longer recognizes his life’s work or its merits have all but fallen out of favour and fashion with the world, and in turn he's sleepwalking through life. After an uncharacteristic fit of rage, Dag Solstad autopsies the complications of a man who has become alienated not only from culture, politics, and society, but also humanity unto itself. Whereas the novel “Professor Andersen’s Night,” is the quintessential existential murder novel, exploring the realms of a man frozen in indecision, when he's confronted with an abhorrent crime. “Armand V,” showcases Solstad’s ability to shift gears towards engaging with political in his signature style, the novel prompted the then Foreign Affairs Minister to even pen a review of the novel in response to Norway’s support in the United States war in Afghanistan. throughout his writing career, Dag Solstad remained one of the great writers of his generation, a writer of ideas and philosophical thought, one of the last great experimentalists.

Rest in Peace Dag Solstad.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 

M. Mary

Athol Fugard Dies Aged 92

Hello Gentle Reader,

Athol Fugard was a giant of South African literature, in the company of equally important and politically conscious and engaged writers such as, Nobel Laureates Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee, Breyten Breytenbach, Andre Brink, and Antjie Krog. Where the others were respected and critically acclaimed novelists, poets, journalists, and essayists, Athol Fugard was a prominently remembered and renowned as a dramatist, whose plays were legendary for their unapologetic political dimensions and critiques of apartheid South Africa. Fugard’s dramatic texts portrayed the oppressive realities of the segregation policies of South Africa’s apartheid system, and their cruel psychological damage the system brought on not only individuals but in intimate relationships. The political cruelty and injustice were a palpable and yet ephemeral source of torment for all citizens of the state, but was designed to exactingly torturous to the black populace. Working as a court clerk in the 1950’s, Athol Fugard witnessed daily, the discriminatory viscousness of the apartheid system, which was facilitated and administered by a venomous and faceless bureaucratic system that was instrumental in not only maintaining apartheid as a system but its continued application. Athol Fugard is often compared to the late Czech playwright turned politician, Václav Havel for his searing portrayal of bureaucratic sponsored authoritarianism under the Soviet Union. Unlike Havel though, Fugard escaped imprisonment due to this own ethnicity and a sociopolitical hierarchy that elevated his stock beyond the majority of the populace; of course, Fugard’s passport was confiscated and his works were subject to book burnings and barred productions of his plays. Further complications of course came from the fact that Athol Fugard incorporated black actors within his work and refused to allow his plays to be staged for segregated audiences. Rehearsals were raided by the police; actors’ names were taken down in writing and many-faced persecution. Posters often listed the players by previous characters they played in attempt to hide their identities. After apartheid ended, as Nadine Gordimer put it, the only subject for “white liberal,” writers had run its course, but Athol Fugard continued to write about the country’s attempt at restorative justice and truth and reconciliation, and later plays were regarded for their philosophical and contemplative approaches. While regarded as a political and agitative writer, the real success of Athol Fugard success came from incorporating political dimensions into otherwise human and ordinary realities. Apartheid may not be named, but its presence oozes through the play, stifling the atmosphere, closing in the walls, to the point its an invisible and asphyxiating presence with an iron chokehold on the characters, depriving them of decency, courtesy, and justice. This is what makes Athol Fugard not just another run of the mill “white liberal,” writing about apartheid in South Africa, but a dramatist who captured the complexities of political oppression in the daily lives of those weighed down by its constant looming presence. Athol Fugard will be remembered as a dramatist who captured horrors of racial segregation in South Africa’s apartheid system and how it infected everyday relationships, homes, and interactions.

Rest in Peace, Athol Fugard.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary