Reflecting on Real Estate

 Hello Gentle Reader,

In The Guardian there was an excerpt from Deborah Levy's most recent installment of her fluid living autobiography series: "Real Estate," (past installments are: "Things I Don't Want To Know," and "The Cost of Living,") where the author takes stock and contemplates the appeal for property; a place to call home. Perhaps even an estate; so long as its not that dreary rundown apartment block left to reminisce of its former glory days, in comparison to its decrepit ill maintained present self. Such a place is for all intents purposes a dwelling – more aptly speaking – a roof over the head to keep out the rain. To describe it as a home, is an insult to the notion of what home is. Yet, Levy reflects on her desire for a home. For a real home. One with a garden were flowers bellow and bloom throughout. A patch of grass that can be described with firm authoritarian proprietorship. Where the walls reflect ownership. The entire structure and building, from foundation to roof can be classified and designated by law as: one’s own. Each room holds within its corner, nooks, crannies, and shadows the understanding of the possessive attitude. There is something singular about property ownership. Singular in that it brings stability and assurance. Sadly, these perspectives are eroded by an undercurrent of expenses, taxes, and maintenance. Regardless, when an individual owns property, they have options, and within those options’ exists sanctuary.

 

Deborah Levy's preoccupation with real estate, and the concept of wanting a parcel of land to call her own, complete with a house and conveniently a garden, is riddled with the inclination of ownership. All of this brings stability and perhaps even status. Those of bohemian notions of course snub their noses at such bourgeois pursuits. A home? A garden? Such frivolous pursuits! How suburban, antiquated, and consumerist. It is terribly unartistic. It is terribly limiting. For all that stability you might as well clip your wings and call it done with. No more freedom. No more spontaneity. No more creativity. It will be flushed and squandered. Until all you know is the baseless and tasteless routines of contemporary existence that we call life. That mediocre day job, and the pitiful title of weekend warrior for Saturday and Sunday, which inevitably will be spent on housekeeping, gardening, and the otherwise general maintenance of the home. Yet, for Deborah Levy, the fantasy of envisioning a home with a garden, and a dining table that will welcome both family and guests, is not a matter of the base pursuits deemed consumable and required of today's world. It is one of stability. Perhaps insinuating back to Virginia Woolf's words regarding a woman who writes, who will require both money and a room of one's own to do so. In the case of Deborah Levy the notion of the room is inclined towards a home. A home of one's own to call their humble abode. To become a refuge and sanctuary, and housed within its walls, a room with a desk to write at. It is not selling out into the suburban ideal. It is not doing away with the creative pursuits. It is not the abandonment of any literary inclinations. It is an act of securing oneself and finding peace within that stability.

 

For the bohemian though, renting provides freedom (at an expense). Rent is by no means a cheap affair. You are provided a roof and a door that has a lock (hopefully), with windows without a view. It will have its issues, from leaking roofs and failed appliances; but it is a roof over your head. But do not mistake your position: you are a tenant, not the landlord. Your expectation is to pay rent on time, cover the utilities (unless included), maintain the house in cleanliness and shape, and not destroy anything intentionally. The home is only yours on the lease. This contractual relationship clearly outlines the narrative in which the transaction is to operate. The power dynamics in themselves, clearly defines the place in which you occupy within this order. Yet through it all there is freedom. Rental properties—be it some boho chic shabby shack; or a concrete canister apartment building; or some rundown slum—provides freedom, its noncommittal, expendable, and very much so not your problem. On the contrary, however, by whim or thought, you can easily be evicted and left in that precarious situation of purgatory homelessness.

 

Reading Deborah Levy’s reflections and ruminations of the notion of home, brought comfort with regards to my own precarious and concerning home situation. Though it never really was my home. Such is the plight of the renter. But it was always treated as if it were my own. Though the yard work tended to be neglected. Thankfully, there is always the prying neighbour to remind me that the lawn is getting long. Though she never mentions it on a personal or casual field. No, she relays the message through a formal complaint, which is then delivered by the municipality to the landlord, or an annoyed bylaw officer to me. Come the summer, there is no one as begrudged as a cantankerous cow in her garden. Over the years, I made routine reasonable attempts at keeping up with the yard work though. The first year there was even a reasonably successful attempt at a vegetable garden, which proved to be an informative orientation in the violent virtues of gardening. Yet come the spring it will be time to fight with the lawn mower. Who through its winter hibernation refuses to start without hesitation every spring. Like clockwork the grass pushes forward to the sun, and she begins scowling at her fence like a keen starved vulture. I never knew it was spring until I saw that disgruntled gardener. This of course proves the point regarding gardening as perhaps the most incurious past times. A transient seasonal chore more than an activity of pleasure.

 

Despite the many years spent here prior, they are now concluding with no more years to come. The home was never mine. Rather it was an illusionary notion of proprietorship. Every month the rent paid, started to feel like mortgage payments, followed by the utility invoices. Through the years, the home felt like my own. However, in late April I was reminded that it was never mine in the first place. I was provided notice. Thankfully, the landlords are kind and sought to work with me providing me enough time to find an alternative, a new place to call home—be it my own in ownership, or by illusion at someone else’s leisure. It comes as no surprise that they wanted to sell. The Canadian housing market is burning with a fevor fever. It is bloated with inflation, pushing myself and others out of the running. There are concerns we have entered the dangerous stages of a housing bubble due to burst. Less savory landlords are seeking to gain profit from an influx of tenants who find themselves without home for the housewares. The cycle inevitably continues regarding the status of ownership, and its ability to provide one with both stability and options.

 

With notice provided, it is time to seek out a new abode to call home, for however long I can call it such. For those who have ever house hunted, it is an exercise of patience, coupled with haggling and often walking away. The most recent house viewed could only be described as a nightmare. The first interactions with the would-be landlord raised enough concerns on their own. He conducted a complete organ recital for his pity party. One tenant who had lived there prior made off with his washer and dryer and replaced them with less appealing and malfunctioning ones. He claimed to have replaced them. The current tenant he went on to lament, had only been in there for two months and had not paid rent, so he evicted her. Another tenant prior had allegedly burned the carpet, so he replaced it. His claims were partially found true. When asked if there any concerns with vermin such as mice, he shrugged such a question off as inconsequential. He went so far to proclaim that every house has a mouse in it. Then he changed the subject to vent his ire about the neighbour who refuses to pay their share on replacing the fence. Upon arriving at the advertised: ‘cozy,’ and ‘comfortable,’ home, I was immediately greeted by the evicted tenant who was thrilled to provide a detailed walkthrough and accountancy of her own points of contention. Even before setting foot into the house, one need only survey the front and take stock of the garbage piles that had accumulated over an undisclosed time. Defensively she explained it was not her ‘trash,’ but merely the bullshit that was left behind for her to deal with. Crossing the threshold of a home one was immediately struck by the stench of stale cigarette smoke. It hung in the air, clung to the walls, wave itself into the fabric and foundation of the home itself. The ceiling yellowed with it. The hardwood floors the landlord boasted about with pride, where perhaps a selling feature at one point. Now they were beaten, scratched, and destroyed. A kitchen disaster certainly occurred. The range above the oven was scorched and burnt. The surrounding walls charred or blackened. Though it was spacious, as it apparently lacked any concept of cozy. The paint job was lathered and slapped on indiscriminately. Further down the line, we came the famous washer and dryer—or rather washer, with water pooling around it. I thought he had replaced them.

 

Then came what may be described as a bedroom, perhaps, with a door that lacked a handle. The carpet inside of it a disgusting constellation of burn holes peppered throughout. The bathroom smelt like a urine saturated latrine. The smell, now a permanent fixture. The shower itself showcased the blackened blemishes of mold. The second bedroom was a strange, patterned vinyl flooring from the 70’s that looked as if it belonged in some pornographic bathhouse. The advertised beautiful backyard was overrun with weeds and quack grass. The shed a hoarder’s nest of pesticide, garbage, and miscellany. Apparently, someone made off with his lawnmower too, or he failed to mention it. The parging around the house had been weathered and eroded. Chipped and destroyed it needed to be dealt with. Entering back into the house, one begins to take note of the gaps within the walls, and the sunlight peering back in. Mice certainly existed within this rundown shambled shack. Then came the final recount from the evicted tenant. Apparently, the bills are overdue (a stack of blue water utility notices can be found accumulating on the counter). The previous tenant or tenants had failed to pay the water bills, and an outstanding balance is overdue, or else the water is shut off. The evicted tenant explained that he (the landlord) wants the incumbent tenant to pay the outstanding bonus. She told him—and I quote— “to get fucked.” I don’t blame her and would have said the same.

 

It took a day to get the stench of stale cigarette smoke to dislodge from my nose. While the landlord himself wanted an account of what I thought of his rental. I told him it wasn’t meant to be. He went on another vent regarding how he cannot afford it being vacant, to which I responded, but you have several people expressing interest. His bluff was caught. Regardless, anyone who did look would never pay his bloated price. You always hear of the tenant from hell, but no one ever mentions the landlords of their derelict wastelands of homes. Their housing hazards. Their neglect and refuse. 

 

In the spirit of Deborah Levy, I continue to envision and dream of a place to call my own. One that knows that facilitates and fosters the sense of ownership and proprietorship, while maintaining discretion and privacy. A home is sanctum and a sanctuary. It is refuge for the for recluse and denies entry to the would be interlopers of the world. I casually stroll through the real estate websites and envision the homes that pique my interest as my own. There's one just north of the park off a main drag, but close to a grocery store. It's an older home, but well maintained. The kitchen was recently renovated, and though I am not a great practitioner of the culinary arts or the science of baking, I can appreciate a decent size kitchen as a requirement for most cooking. The neighbourhood itself is mature and established, meaning developed trees have grown throughout, and there is a sense of character within the neighbourhood, a sense of established identity. Though if I were to envision or contemplate a dream home, the matter grows increasingly nebulous. Perhaps in the redeveloped barracks, where the row houses appear like the brick houses one envisions in London. Or perhaps a quant brick Victorian home, oh how delightful, with its period charm. Then again there's no point in contemplating the improbable and impossible. The situation as it stands blows up both those thoughts back to the back of the brain. There is a time for dreams and wishes, and then there is time for immediate consideration with the pragmatic practicalities of life.  Hopes and dreams are nice with their pinched delights, but life is a startling and shocking affair and leaves little preoccupation with the baseless daydreaming. Though if the place were to have a yard, that would not be so bad. Though don't expect flowerpots strewn across the place, though lilac bushes would be nice. They require little effort to grow and seem to handle even the greatest amount of neglect. But at least with a yard, I would be able to have a postage stamp parcel of grass to sit on. Though living close to the park, would be nicer still, that's where you can stroll; read a book on the bench; watch the birds; feed the ducks; or a place to get away from the house or the concerns of daily life, if only for a minute. There is truly something marvelous and awe inspiring about the way in which people adapt and terraform the land to their own will. Amongst buildings, houses, shopping complexes and roads, there exists parks, trees, and flowers and the natural world, which is not defeated but controlled.

 

Of course, the urban and city life was always what I aspired for. Rural roots are dusty and dreary. Riddled with nosy neighbors and gossiping Gladys’s. Perhaps though more undesirable about rural life is its alienating expanse. Heralding from the prairies there is always a consuming nothingness that hisses on the warm summer winds, or in the starved howls of winter, as they blow across the prairies. Surrounded by 'nothing,' but skies and farmers' fields, often left one wondering and planning their escape away from the crushing expanse. In the distance at night, you could always spy the light pollution of the nearby city. Its clotted orange clouds hung overhead like a smothering chandelier of light and cloud, always operating as a beacon in those dark and endless winter nights of my childhood home. Of course, when visiting one took on more moral superior dimensions; criticising the garbage left littering the streets; the rushing people who don't apologize for bumping into you; the increased probability of crime. None of this ever happened in the country. But instead, there was a pulse. There was a palpable understanding of life. Events happened in the city; people were made in the city. Lives were lived in the city. In the country one slipped further and further into oblivion, into being forgotten or unknown, until there was gossip to share over the fence. Whereas the city offered possibility and potential in anonymity and discretion. So, its city life from here on out. 

 

For now, Gentle Reader, the hunt continues. If I did not appreciate my current and soon to be previous landlords before, I am certainly filled with gratitude for them now. Though considering the situation, I cannot resent them for wishing to sell and find their rationale completely understandable, even if it is inconveniencing. Though I do believe their treatment of me has made my tastes more refined; while others would say snobbish, difficult, and picky. Yet, if I am going to spend the amount of money being advertised, then I believe my accommodations should compensate and create an environment and situation that works for me. In the end rentals refute roots and ensure that life remains unstable on the shifting sands, so a reasonable trade off should be convenience and workability; though the counter argument is always going to be, we keep the rain off your head and from being homeless, as if somehow that is a charitable statement. Where in reality it sounds almost twistedly Dickensian in the thought that one must be cruel to be kind. 

 

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

 

M. Mary

 

 

To Read an extract from Deborah Levy’s newest autobiographical prose work, please the following link to The Guardian:

 

The Guardian, Deborah Levy: "I’ve spent so much of my life dreaming of homes I cannot afford,"

The International Booker Prize Shortlist

Hello Gentle Reader
 
The International Booker Prize has announced this year’s shortlist. The six writers who have made it to this year’s shortlist are as follows: [in no particular order]
 
Maria Stepanova – Russia – “In Memory of Memory,”
David Diop – France – “At Night All Blood is Black,”
Mariana Enríquez – Argentina – “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed,”
Benjamín Labatut – Chile – “When We Cease to Understand the World,”
Olga Ravn – Denmark – “The Employees,”
Éric Vuillard – France – “The War of the Poor,”
 
The shortlist is one of both surprises, disappointments, and delights. It is not necessarily surprising to see Can Xue’s absence on the shortlist. She is extraordinarily experimental which often leads her making it to the longlist, but unfortunately for Can Xue this does not equate the shortlist. In this, Can Xue is once again the bridesmaid (if she is still part of the wedding party!) and has no chance of being courted as the bride. The omission of Can Xue is not entirely shocking, though it is disappointing. There truly is no writer working in the same capacity as Can Xue; so bold, daring, and extravagantly unconventional. One cannot help but admire Can Xue, but also see how alienating her work maybe for a literary prize.
 
More disappointing then Can Xue’s predictable (if albeit disappointing) omission is that Adania Shibli was also omitted from the shortlist with her novel:” Minor Detail.” It is not difficult to see why though. One-word Gentle Reader: Politics. “Minor Detail,” is by all accounts an extraordinarily political novel. Politics are a dirty business, and at times literature provides sobering perspective; however contrary and uncomfortable they may be. “Minor Detail,” is a novel that recounts the brutality that was exercised against the Palestinians in the 20^th Century, by recounting the rape and murder of a Palestinian woman after the War of 1948, by Israeli soldiers. “Minor Detail,” is a sharply observed novel that unflinchingly examines the horrors of history, its censor and denial, to provide a social critique of an otherwise complicated geopolitical situation. The author herself, is noted for having a highly understated and lyrical style. Her short, beautiful novel: “Touch,” is a remarkable testament to this, as it too recounted a massacre’s lingering repercussions from the perspective of a little girl, who is more absorbed in her own world, then the one around her. Regardless of the novel’s merits, the discomfort of politics inevitably weights heavily on “Minor Detail,” and Adania Shibli. It would have been a daring choice, but worthy on merit.
 
Perhaps one of the biggest omissions from this year’s shortlist is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and his epic novel in verse: “The perfect nine: the epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi.” As a first for the International Booker Prize, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is both the original author of the novel and the translator. His inclusion on the longlist was marked with jovial praise by readers and critics alike. After all Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is one of the most celebrated writers heralding from the African continent, and is considered a giant on the international literary, rumored as a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. With an impressive literary resume behind him, coupled with critical acclaim and praise, the absence of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is paradoxically surprising and predictable. Being considered one of the most cultural important and vital voices of contemporary and postcolonial African literature, there are expectations that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o will be nominated and considered for a literary prize. On the contrary, however, to award the author because of their impressive reputation, critical acknowledgements, and literary achievements, will lead to the award being considered predictable and stagnant in its perspective. This is inevitably the situation that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o faces when he is nominated and listed for a literary award. This years judges decided not to saunter down the road of predictability, and have omitted Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o from being inducted into this years shortlist.  
 
It is no surprise, however, to see Maria Stepanova on the shortlist with: “In Memory of Memory,” a unique blend of genealogy, memoir, and personal historical fiction. In Russia, Maria Stepanova has been praised as one of the most important younger writers working in the Russian language to date. The judges for this year’s International Booker Prize stated that they were drawn to writers who blurred the lines between fiction and nonfiction, meaning Maria Stepanova certainly took the cake on that account. Her novel “In Memory of Memory,” recounts her family’s history through the 20^th Century, through photographs, diary entries, letters, and imagination. To deny Maria Stepanova a place on the shortlist would have been a mistake, one which the judges for this year’s prize would never hear the end of. Though as precedence through the years recounts, mistakes can be made, as in the case when neither: Annie Ernaux or Yōko Ogawa won the prize in which they were shortlisted for (2019 and 2020 respectively).
 
In continuing with the theme of writers shortlisted who blend both essay and fiction with their shortlisted work, one does not need to look any farther than Éric Vuillard and his novella: “The War of the Poor,” and Benjamín Labatut “When We Cease to Understand the World.” “The War of the Poor,” is a short novel that traces the historical account of the religious reformer and preacher, Thomas Muntzer, through the course of the Protestant Reclamation. “The War of the Poor,” recalls very contemporary topics of money, influence, power, and hypocrisy, and reflects them through the 16^th century lens of Thomas Muntzer who revolted against class division. This parallels the continued and current class conflict that persists, leaving one to wonder if it has never ended, and only became more sophisticated; or perhaps more frighteningly so: more pacified. Benjamín Labatut on the flipside questions the path that was blazed to get us to our current societal position, in which case the author questions the scientific breakthroughs, and their ethical, moral, and philosophical dilemmas, as well as questionable acts. “When We Cease to Understand the World,” examines the lives and works of scientists throughout the 20^th Century, and the achievements they have left on the world, and still influence it.
 
Both Mariana Enríquez and Olga Ravn explore tropes, themes, and settings usually populating genre fiction. Yet in turn, they exhume and expand on these tropes with a literary flare that explores the human condition. With “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed,” Mariana Enríquez employees both horror and gothic imagery to explore an otherwise complicated and violent history of Argentina; from homeless ghosts and witches, to abandoned children. In doing so Mariana Enríquez explores the trauma and tragedy of Argentinian history, and its lingering violent effects that ripple in to the present. Olga Ravn’s novel “The Employees,” is a novel set-in space that is framed by the witness statements of employees on a spaceship. The novel questions the notion of humanity, as well as the concept of identity in relation to programmed function and the sense of purpose, as it equates to meaning. The science fiction setting provides Ravn the basis to explore these themes and preoccupations within an environment free from the comparison to current sociopolitical influences, as well as breathing fresh perspective into themes that have otherwise already been established within the literary canon.
 
This leaves David Diop and his novel: “At Night All Blood is Black,” which is perhaps by all accounts the most ‘conventional,’ novel listed on this year’s shortlist. “At Night All Blood is Black,” is about two Senegalese soldiers who fight for France on the Western Front during the First World War. The novel explores themes of conflict, survival, friendship, and guilt; while bringing to light the overlooked elements of history, recalling the diverse impact and narrative history has, but is often denied showcasing because of the authors of the official version.
 
The International Booker Shortlist certainly has its hits and a few misses. The most promising and paramount author to watch on this year’s shortlist is of course: Maria Stepanova. There can be no denying that Maria Stepanova is perhaps the favoured writer to win this year’s International Booker Prize. An established sharp and brilliant writer in Russia, Maria Stepanova’s emergence in the English language is herald with a double debut with a book of prose and a collection of poetry. Despite being the favourite to win this years International Booker Prize, precedence states this may hinder the works chances of success; as in the case of Anne Ernaux in 2019 and Yōko Ogawa in 2020.
 
Congratulations to the writers who have been shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize.
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The International Booker Prize Longlist 2021

Hello Gentle Reader,
 
The International Booker Prize has released their longlist for 2021. Last years winner was the otherwise underwhelming champion, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld with their novel, “The Discomfort of Evening.” Its difficult to not view the winning novel within the perplexing and otherwise demanding social situation facing the world, one which promotes and tolerates cancel culture; refuses the notion that the imagination is a free spirited concept, one that is not obliged by legislation or laws to fit with social agendas; and a place where social structures and norms are in a state of fluctuation, and any denial of appeasement results in cyber lynching’s, demands for cancellation and ostracization. Not to say that Marieke Lucas Rijneveld fits within this classification or is the sole pinnacle for this preposterous petulant behaviour; but it can be conceded on the superficial level that her personal characteristics played a component to her winning the prize (then again that is speculation). I do not doubt that Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is a rising star in the Dutch literary scene, who just happened to make a spectacular debut within English with their debut novel; I do question its maturity in thematic nuances when compared to Yōko Ogawa and her novel: “The Memory Police,” which I suspect was denied the prize because of its misinterpretation of being ‘topical,’ in the years of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which saw entire normal aspects of life disappeared. This truly misses the point of the novel that provides a poignant dissertation on memory, absence, loss and the philosophical emptiness that resides within these ellipses ridden spaces. Then of course there was Daniel Kehlmann with his historical epic novel, “Tyll.” Yet, in the end, there’s always a new year and a new prize.
 
This years International Booker Prize Longlist is as follows: [in no particular order]
 
Adania Shibli – Palestine – “Minor Detail,”
Benjamín Labatut – Chile – “When We Cease to Understand the World,”
Judith Schalansky – Germany – “An Inventory of Losses,”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – Kenya – “The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi,”
Maria Stepanova – Russia – “In Memory of Memory,”
David Diop – France – “At Night All Blood is Black,”
Can Xue – China – “I Live in the Slums,”
Andrzej Tichý – Czech/Polish (Swedish Language) – “Wretchedness,”
Olga Ravn – Denmark – “The Employees,”
Jaap Robben – The Netherlands – “Summer Brother,”
Mariana Enríquez – Argentina – “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed,”
Éric Vuillard – France – “The War of the Poor,”
Nana Ekvtimishvili – Georgia – “The Pear Field,”
 
Europe dominates this year’s longlist, with a couple writers from Latin America; one from the Middle East; and one from Asia. With the exception of Can Xue, this is the first time any of the other twelve writers have been included on the International Booker Prize Longlist. The books longlisted change in form, theme, preoccupation and delivery. From short story collection, to epic novel in verse, to testimonials on absence, to postmodern memoirs, and epistolary novel from the near-future space again, there is no lacking in unique perception that only cements the notion that translated literature is by all accounts, some of the greatest works of literary value being produced in the world today.  
 
Can Xue was previously longlisted with her novel: “Love in the New Millennium,” in 2019. This time around, the Chinese Kafka is nominated with her short story collection: “I Live in the Slums.” “I Live in the Slums,” is the first short story collection that Can Xue has published in a decade. It is riddled with the authors well regarded and renowned complicated, uncompromising, and dream like stores. In her usual fashion, Can Xue eschews the conventional notions of narrative such as characterization and plot. In lie she weaves a world of sublime poeticism that distorts the reasonable confines of reality in favour of intense psychological and emotional landscapes, riddled with the poignant lyricism, spiritual and philosophical exploring the vestibule that exists between oblivion and consciousness.  The short stories of “I Live in the Slums,” once again showcase Can Xue’s cracking form as one of the most daring, innovative, and original writers of todays world, who has neither competitor, rival, contender. This daring, explorative and willful experimentation in literary form is to be applauded, though it appears to make conventional critics of literature (especially in China) more concerned if vehemently vitriolic in their vindication. Thankfully through continued translation, Can Xue is able to transcend the pettiness of otherwise parochial provincial concerns and criticisms. Regardless, this blatant disregard and rebellion has made literary awards fretful and hesitant in awarding the author any award, as if pinning any such medal or award to her name would be seen as defilation as it is endorsement.
 
Its hard to forget Adania Shibli. Her debut novel “Touch,” at a mere 70 some pages, was so slight, but beautiful in the poignant poetic vignettes that make up the novel, which circle political tragedy from the vantage point of the innocent and naïve child, who fails to comprehend the catastrophe that has invaded her home and disrupted the normal routines of life. Now, Adania Shibli returns with her novel: “Minor Detail,” which is herald once again as a powerful historical novel that recounts the tragedy that has be fallen Israel. The novel utilizes detail to provide a human example of the struggles that the Palestinian people have endured since 1949. Through massacre, displacement, rape and murder, Adania Shibli writes about how history—however intangible—touches and influences the present; haunts the contemporary; and shadows those who live in the present day. These very minor details; these all but forgotten consequences become the catalyst of our becoming time and time again. Despite being or even considered an overtly political writer, Adania Shibli is a masterful writer. The politics of the situation, be it they are historical or otherwise, will inevitably be a sensitive topic that the judges will want to delicately approach and consider in evaluating the novel. Still, “Minor Detail,” proves itself to be one of the most potent novels on the list.
 
It is the first time that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been nominated for the International Booker Prize, and in a continued first, he is both writer and translator for his novel: “The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi,” which in a continued series of firsts, is the first novel to be nominated for the International Booker Prize that is written in verse. “The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi,” is an epic novel; which comes as no surprise, as it’s written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, whose literary career has been devoted the epicist experience that traces the absurdities, injustices, and tragedies of the African continent. His novels are always large in scope, and blend magical realism to depict the continent influx between tradition, tribalism, colonialism and postcolonialism. Throughout the past decades, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has received praise from all literary reviewing publication; from former President Barack Obama; and has been a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. “The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi,” takes the epicist form utilized in ancient Greek texts such as “The Odyssey,” and the “The Iliad,” and creates one fitting within the anthropological context of the African experience. The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi,” traces the inception of the Gĩkũyũ people of Africa, from a unique feminist perspective. Through a blend of folklore, mythology, poetry, adventure and allegory, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o crafts the foundry of the Gĩkũyũ language and people, in a contemporary manner.
 
The blend of memoir and fiction has precedence in being included on the International Booker Prize. In 2019, Annie Ernaux was shortlisted with her magnum opus: “The Years.” A fluid memoir turned autofiction, which traced the sociological landscape of Post-War France from the vantage point of Annie Ernaux (who remains nameless, even anonymous throughout the book), as French society, culture, values and ideals begin to shift, change, and evolve through the concluding early 20^th Century and Second World War, into the later 20^th Century and early 21^st Century. Annie Ernaux at the time was considered the strongest candidate on the shortlist, and was favored to win, the prize it ended up going to, Jokha Alharthi and her novel: “Celestial Bodies.” Now once again, Fitzcarraldo Editions finds itself longlisted for the International Booker Prize with their memoir like novel, “In Memory of Memory,” by the rising literary star of Russian Letters, Maria Stepanova. Unlike Annie Ernaux’s memoir and social studies review, criticism, and sociological overview turned historical cartography of French societies attitudes, soul and perspective from the observations of the singular as a reflection of the plural; “In Memory of Memory,” is a postmodern memoir of the personal that becomes universal, in the same fashion of W.G Sebald, there is nothing but an abundance of curiosity about ones family, which provides reflection and understanding of the changing Russian society over the past century. Truly one of the most discussed books included on the longlist, and by far one of the more unique inductions, which should surlily sate any curious reader, who is hankering for something that is both personal, poetic, and highly original in its own right.
 
Continuing on the thread of unique, original and by all accounts gender defying, one cannot ignore Judith Schalansky and her book: “An Inventory of Losses.” Judith Schalansky is not a ‘typical writer,’ in the sense that her work encompasses novel or non-fiction or poetry, but rather a more unique and niche space of being beautiful. For Judith Schalansky, books are not just a accumulation of words and sentences that create a narrative or loosely seek to provide a depiction of a moment that ruminates on philosophical components of existence within the few lines and stanza’s a poem can afford to allocate. Rather, books for Schalansky, are pieces of art work that define and redefine the conventional notions of novel and book. “An Inventory of Losses,” is of no exception. A novel recounting the twelve absent details that once existed in the world, but have since fallen into ruin or disappeared. The twelve chapters within the novel beckon forth from oblivion, these loss treasures which elapsed into non-existence without witness. Testimonials of their existence, their memories, their purpose now fading into the immaterial. Through twelve vignettes and a different style for each, Schalansky recounts and immortalizes them on the page, documenting, recording and archiving their existence and history, providing testament to their tangibility in their absence. “An Inventory of Losses,” is truly a beautiful book, and a worthy inception of the prize.
 
This years International Booker Prize has once again accumulated a unique blend of writers, from varying backgrounds; a plethora of perspectives; an enchanting exploration of different themes; discussions and dissertations on the human experience. This year’s International Booker Prize has some stalwart and strong contenders for the shortlist, it’ll certainly be a prize to watch. I expect we will see for sure: Judith Schalansky and Maria Stepanova on the shortlist. I personally hope to see Adania Shibli included on the shortlist as well; though I wonder about Can Xue, she’s experimental, unconventional and not known for compromising, which may deter the judges this year. By convention and the fact that he’s often considered a potential Nobel Laureate in contention for the award, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is almost expected to be included on this year’s shortlist. As for the others, time will tell, though Nana Ekvtimishvili and her novel “The Pear Field,” does look increasingly interesting and compelling.
For now, though Gentle Reader, we are expected to wait. Congratulations on all the authors for making it to the longlist.
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary 

Adam Zagajewski, Dies Aged 75

Hello Gentle Reader,

Throughout the 20th Century, Poland had produced some of the most remarkable poets of recent contemporary memory, such as the late: Zbigniew Herbert, Czesław Miłosz, and Wisława Szymborska. Each of these poets were different in form, theme, preoccupation, and delivery. Wisława Szymborska for example, charmed and enchanted the literary world with her graceful, penetrating and ceaselessly curious poems. With a touch of the light and heartfelt the poems are delivered in the simplest form, which betrayed the subverse manner in which they commented on the extraordinary wonders of the world. Who knew a poem about an onion, could betray such existential ponderings? In contrast the quiet graceful power exhibited by Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz maintained the reputation as one of the most intellectually and political potent poets of his generation. Miłosz eschewed accessibility in favour of esotericism; a reported point of pride that only the astute, scholarly, and initiated would be able to ponder his poetry, which comes into explicit contrast to Wisława Szymborska, whose deceptive simplicity pondered greater depths. Despite the esoteric nature of his poetry, Czesław Miłosz was a poet of grand greatness. A crown that decorated his mantel with ease. It comes as no surprise that both, Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Despite the eclipsing shadows that would certainly engulf his literary career, Adam Zagajewski wrote and published, and in his right rivaled the eclipsing celestial literary figures of Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska; not by taking and smearing their iconic status, but by writing, publishing and being read, until he to was considered a poet in his own right, on his own merit, in his own vein.

If Adam Zagajewski were to be compared to either of the previously mentioned, he would fall closer to poetic kinship with Czesław Miłosz. Zagajewski was a voyager poet, who took peculiar interest towards the poetry of historic and cosmic, continually changing, adapting, evolving in fluidity, neglecting in turn any notion of static sediment. While being an associate of Poland’s ‘New Wave,’ of poetry during the 60’s and 70’s, Adam Zagajewski’s poetry refuted, resented and eschewed the notion that poetic language needs to be grand, pompous, and praising in ceremonious conceit the great work of communism. Rather the New Wave Poetry movement sought to describe with accurate, plain, and simple language the reflections of reality as it was. A poetic record and testament of the times; it should come as no surprise that the censors and communist official stance was not approving. By the mid 70’s Adam Zagajewski’s poetry was banned from publication and censored when approved. He signed a declaration opposing the communist falsities, which would amend Poland’s constitution, forcing him into exile in Paris until the 21st Century.

Even in exile, however, Adam Zagajewski continued to publish his poetry, remaining a staunch advocate for the poetic literary realism of the collective emotions of his homeland, who once again was burned with he yoke of ideological fanaticism, bolstered by the subjugation of language to both serve political purposes, and subvert true communication and freedom of thought. The later years of his career remained true to his form, one founded on staunch collective pondering, with an acute eye and scrutiny to provided towards history, which cannot be seen as pastoral paradise lost, but waking memory and reminder of what was, in comparison to the uncertain possibilities and consequences that the future holds. Either way the world erodes, bit by bit, changing or mutilated beyond conceivable repair.

As a poet, Adam Zagajewski was often rumored to being the final member of the Polish Poets to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, where he would join Czesław Miłosz, and Wisława Szymborska. He appeared to have the credentials, in the forms of literary merit, and poetry as political opposition and dissidence. Zagajewski was a repeat frontrunner for international poetry awards and was the winner of the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Yet, sadly Adam Grajewski died March 21st of 2021, at the age of 75, without the Nobel Prize for Literature. Regardless, he stands in the Pantheon of Polish Poetry alongside his predecessors, as well as all the up and commers who are bound to grace the international literary stage in years to come.

Rest in Peace, Adam Zagajewski

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

M. Mary

Nawal El Saadawi, Dies Aged 89

 
Hello Gentle Reader,  

The term feminist has become increasingly contorted, twisted and disfigured as of late. Its overarching term embraces the good, while being pelted with the insults of its misappropriation. Perhaps in the western world, feminism has begun to being viewed and perceived with the lens of invalidity and a certain outdated sense of quality, which is now chalked up to the fervour zealotry of pettifogging myopia. As if in some unfortunate manner, feminism had completely lost its fighting spirit, its ideals, or its direction. Now placed into a position of venomous vitriol which is spat at anything or anyone who dares to provide a contrary argument to their faux pearl perspectives. Consider it - if you will - yet another milestone in the campaign of overt political correctness and its mutilating and corrosive touch, as it advocates for further petulance and outcries leading to the now designated term: 'Cancel Culture,' - as the defining ultimate concept, to what would otherwise be called a temper tantrum. Surely any feminist of previous generations looks at this demagogue militia of youth, with a perturbed disgust. How they lost not only their principle standings, but who have become iconoclasts of sensibility and human rights.

Then there is the light in the tunnel, who became firebrand freethinkers, who balance feminism with human rights, often swaying to the later in their overall theories of social egalitarianism. Such people as, Nawal El Saadawi, the Egyptian Doctor, writer and feminist activist. There was no doubt, that Nawal El Saadawi was a feminist - she wore the term with exclusive dignitary honour - but she fought for human rights as well, the very basic human rights, which were disagreeably denied to girls and women of her homeland Egypt, and are perhaps still denied on some form of outdated principle.

In her childhood, Nawal El Saadawi was to be married off, but she refused with her mother standing by her side on the refusal. She also stamped her feet at her grandmother in direct opposition, when her grandmother referred to girls as a blight, and propagated the misguided notion that boys were more worthy of the family. At the age of six, however, Nawal El Saadawi was subjected to the form of female genital mutilation; a practice that she denoted as torturous and barbaric and advocated against for the remainder of her life. Despite the perspectives held, that woman was of no consequence and had little value; Nawal El Saadawi's education was also promoted and encouraged by her family. At the age of thirteen she would write her first novel and would later become a doctor in the mid-fifties, specializing soon after in psychiatry. She would become the director of public health in the Egyptian government, but was later dismissed in the early seventies, after publishing: "Women and Sex," which documented, advocated against, and opposed female genital mutilation.

In the mid-seventies, she published "Woman at Point Zero," an account of a woman on death row in prison that Saadawi had met. By the late seventies, Saadawi once again published another novel "The Hidden Face of Eve," a recount of her time as a doctor in a small village, which recorded the honour killings, prostitution and abuse women suffered at the hands of their husbands. Critics assaulted the novel with vulture’s glee. They accused the novel of perpetuating stereotypes of Arabic women, and a slanderous smear campaign.

By the early eighties Nawal El Saadawi was rounded up as a dissident by the then President Anwar Sadat. She was imprisoned for three months, and wrote her memoirs on toilet paper, with an eyebrow pencil smuggled in by a sex worker. After President Sadat's assassination, Saadawi was released, but her work was either censored or banned from publications. Through continued death threats for religious fundamentalists and extremists, she was forced to leave Egypt for exile in the United States. Yet, even in exile, Saadawi continued to leverage criticism at all oppositional and oppressional forces at work. She decried revealing clothing and makeup, in the same fashion she opposed the veil, which irritated feminists, who selectively challenged such matters.

Throughout her life, Nawal El Saadawi, was a adamant fighter against oppressive forces, be it they are masculine or arbitrary in any manner. She was committed to truth as an ideal, as a perspective that equates justice. Anything else would never meet the mark. It is Saadawi's commitment to truth which was so startling and provides testament to her character, both literary and politically. This devotion could never be devalued as anything but. Though she never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, she was often considered a strong contender for the prize, especially after the 2018 Scandal which saw the prize postponed. Regardless, Nawal El Saadawi blazed a trail that other women of Egypt and elsewhere would need to foster, support, and continue to advocate for. Bringing feminism back to its rudimentary roots, as a movement that fights for egalitarian values, not the needless battle of myopic arguments.

Nawal El Saadawi died at the age of 89.

Rest in Peace, Nawal El Saadawi.

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

M. Mary

Philippe Jaccottet, dies Aged 95

Hello Gentle Reader,

The French language is riddled with some of the greatest writers, thinkers, and cultural cultivators. From Voltaire of the Enlightenment; to George Sand of the Romantics; to the revolutionary Charles Baudelaire; Marcel Proust whose genius was only recognized after his death; to the Twentieth Century and beyond, riddled with its extraordinary writers, poets and philosophers, such as: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Francis Ponge, Michel Foucault, Marguerite Duras, Yves Bonnefoy, and Annie Ernaux. Among them resides the recently deceased nonagrian Philippe Jaccottet. The Swiss French language poet was one of the titans of modern Francophone Literature and poetry. Through a literary career that spanned more than five decades, Jaccottet remained a constant poetic voice in the French literary canon. His poetry refused the proliferation and propagation of poetic noise, as continued stream of a hyper-monologue to mimic the image and information cacophony of the burgeoning world in the Information Age. He shunned the notion of hermetic poetic concepts, which turned poetry into a cipher, leaving readers baffled and bewildered. No, Jacoettet practiced poetry as an act of crystalline transparency, the ability to get intimate and close with the subjects, and all subsequent observations, thoughts and feelings associated with it. One may think his obsessive preoccupation with the immediacy of the landscape and nature, coupled with his straightforward poetry, made him ‘just,’ a nature poet. This is a superficial perspective with reasonable critical analysis. Nature may be a subject, but his poetry in its simple use of language perceives with a clarity and depth that reaches far into the heart of the matter, which just happens to be reflected in the natural and obstructed landscape he observed. Throughout his poetic career, the language employed by Philippe Jaccottet, became increasingly sparse in form. Critics noted his brief snapshots were reminiscent of the Japanese haiku style; continually seeking to grasp in the simplest form of language, the ephemeral and transcending reality that engulfs and surrounds. Philippe Jaccottet is one of the few living writers (upon its initial publication) to be included in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, which includes: Nobel Laurates Saint-John Perse and Andrew Gide; Milan Kundera, Nathalie Sarraute and Eugene Ionesco. Beyond being one of the most accomplished titans of French language poetry, Philippe Jaccottet was a prolific literary critic, and adamant translator of German language poets into French.

Philippe Jaccottet Died February 24^th 2021.

Rest in Peace, Philippe Jaccottet.

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

M. Mary

 

Notes from the Office

 
Hello Gentle Reader
 
The day begins at 8:00am, this means wake up between 4:30am and 5:30am, though preference is given to 4:45am and 5:00am, which provides enough time to make coffee, eat breakfast or any morsel of food in the fridge, shower and get ready through all those morning rituals. By 7:30am, its best to be out the door to catch the bus. As its winter you need to leave earlier to account for the snow ridden and slippery streets. After you get to the bus you wait until it arrives. If you are on time its late. If you are running late it’s on time. The closest transit stop to work is across the street, which is a two minuet walk; four minutes if you need to wait for the light to cross. Upon reaching the perimeter of the building its time to smoke.  This first smoke is the last gasp before entering the building. A toxic final breath of fresh air, but a ritualistic one based off routine. It should be noted addiction is structured in routine. Routines are structured in habits. Smoking just happens to be filthy one, but in this instance excusable; and on that note habits are enforced by rationale, just like the one previously evidenced. After the cigarette is butted out, its time to collect one’s belongings and trudge forward. The doors are waiting, the receptionist on guard. Upon entering its time to begin with the pleasantries of work: “good morning,” says the receptionist, and in turn you exchange the same greeting back.  
 
If one positive note can be taken from the pandemic, it’s that everyone has been provided their own office. Prior to the pandemic—as you are told—members of your business unit were placed into a ‘shared workspace,’ because other offices had to be reallocated for clients working out of the building and an increase in engineering personnel. Prior to the client move in, and the engineering personnel real estate takeover; they each had their own offices. By the time you entered the shared workspace, the atmosphere to their new landscape was fermented with soured feelings. The pandemic raged on, social distancing was brought into further question and next thing you know, here’s your own office. While they happily skirted back to their own ‘space,’ getting first pick of the available real estate, you were left with the rotten leftovers. It’s a lot like hand-me-down clothes, or any other personal austerity measure, which can only be described in the plainest language originating from the vernacular: it fucking sucks. If you are to envision the ideal office it is tucked away, best left out of sight and out of mind. It’ll be hidden down some quiet corridor or lengthy hallway, the kind of place which can be overlooked or missed upon first impressions or glances. No place is quite as ideal as being somewhere lost in the labyrinth. Past nameless offices, doors and walls; just incidentally tucked away. No that’s not the case in this instance. You get the pleasure of being the neighbor of reception, that questionable, aimless function provided by the organization and no one knows quite why. Regardless every time the door opens, every visitor that enters, you know they are there. Oh, the pleasures of being placed right in the thick of it all. You do your best not to complain—at least not out loud—while internally you scream.
 
By 8:05am you made the short jaunt from the doors, past the reception desk, to your door. Might as well let loose the first sigh, as you envision a longer more enjoyable stroll down some other hapless corridor, to some other anonymous office. You enter where you don’t bother turning the light on anymore. Before when you did, you had them dimmed down as far as they could go; everyone walked by and thought is strange the light you kept, referring to you as a mole. Now that you don’t bother with turning them on, they walk by and exclaim with concern that its so dark, are you alright? After changing your shoes and hanging up your coat, the day has begun. The anchor takes hold the minute you sit down. The dreaded time sheet. The horrible time sheet, which is more aptly known as: Time Tracking. That micromanaging piece of accounting software that demands complete abject admonishing accountability with how your day is spent. This is measured in quarter (15 minutes), half (30 minutes), three fourths of an hour (45 minutes) and hourly (60 minute) increments. Each project you touch must be accounted for with a correct measurement of time, complete with a corresponding code as to what function in your business unit you performed with that project. A variety of codes exist corresponding with specific tasks, functions and actions you may undertake for each project. This unholy marriage of time tracking, and payroll grows in the back of one’s mind like a tumor. Its weight unmistakable. Its stress unmeasurable. It throbs away. On the first day of orientation when first introduced to this software you remember that foreboding statement: “When at all possible, always reduce and avoid overhead.” This has become goal and torturous mantra in your mind. To the point your quite sure your going to have it engraved on your tombstone; which at the current rate of you smoking will arrive at an expeditated rate; and of course, you’ll pay extra for the italicization of the term ‘Overhead.’
 
If its Monday morning though, you get to waste an hour on ‘Overhead,’ doing your time sheet, complete with micromanaged accounting principles. Honestly the devil really is just an accountant with horns at this point. On Monday mornings, time is wasted on filling out the time tracking payroll time sheet, project number by project number, code with code, function with function, and time allocated entered each time. The pleasures of doing that over and over for each day from the following week is a tedious waste of time, but a welcomed one. If it is not Monday morning that routine throb in the back of the head begins its daily drum. Time to open the e-mail and begin scanning the inboxes for work, correspondence, any morsel to sink one’s teeth into to set the day on the right direction. Meanwhile outside of your door and to your right you can hear the casual talks of the ‘Office Community,’ laughing and going over their weekend events. This is a select and secular group. You have not been invited to participate yet, and most likely will not be invited in future. Furthermore, you have no interest because you have nothing in common with them, so quite your bellyaching.
 
The pandemic has raged on relentlessly. The public health crisis is now deemed a backdrop of day to day life. As cases numbers rise, deaths rise, everyone blinks and moves on. Some have greater concerns then others. You are continually told to be thankful you have a job. How long that job will last is still unknown. The pandemic has caused complications across the spectrum, including battering an already unstable and frail economy. Work is riddled with an atmosphere of dread. There’s a desire to maintain production, while projects begin concluding, and no further clients brought on, and no contracts signed. The future is bleak. Layoffs continue, and when at first, they were announced with the gravitas of mourning iron bells, the entire business has become more rogue. Its all cloak and dagger now. One day you’re at work, the next you’ve disappeared. When these ‘disappearances,’ happen, discussions are brought up in hallways and common areas. After awhile human resources graces the organization with an e-mail. Yet another boilerplate template ridden e-mail, all the organization has done, its successes in providing a safe work environment, followed by another reminder that the continued discussions and speculation about employee departures does not contribute to a positive, healthy or safe work environment and should cease immediately. Dissidence and resistance ensure it continues. It goes without saying morale is in the shits. Of course, the reason layoffs are happening is because there is a scant amount of work for anyone to cling to. Those who have it are reluctant to relinquish it. How ironic is to think that when you first started, after being recruited you were as pumped up as a peacock. Then as the pandemic began to take hold and the new reality set in, your once lustrous peacock spirit animal became a scavenging hyena. While still learning your position, you worked hard to learn and improve faster. As the pandemic raged on the scavenging hyena reduce itself to an emaciated and mangy coyote. Now pushing a year into the position and no end in sight with the pandemic, and no economic recovery certain on the horizon you are forced to face the facts, all that remains of your previous ambition is that of a tenacious cockroach. A scuttling and scurrying insect that skirts on the edges, remains in the peripheral and seeks to survive in the most austere landscapes. A cockroach would not be described as a beacon of hope. Its more a reminder of abject survival. As a subject of study, survival appears heroic even admirable in retrospect. In the present it’s a dirty business.
 
With work depleted or concluding what few scraps roll down must be immediately snatched up and held on to. Afterwards you need to ensure that the work can be stretched out; or else its back to concerns about filling the day with productivity, before the time tracking tattle tale time sheet snitches. This is a dangerous game. If you take too long on a certain task questions are raised regarding your competencies. Complete the task and work with routine expectations and its back to the dread. A common remedy prescribed is then create work for yourself. Make manageable tasks or micro-projects that will benefit the company. An endearing resolution, but in this situation doomed for failure. An organization such as this has found its success by slowly adapting with the times and maintaining a stronghold regarding templates and predefined notions of what it should be. There is no solicitation for imagination. Though to be fair it has been attempted, which in the yes of the organization carried within its sentiment the guise of revolution.
 
By 10:00am it’ll be time for a reprieve, in the form of another cigarette. This short sojourn becomes a welcome refuge from sitting at the desk and waiting for work. Afterwards it’ll be time to skirt about the office seeking out work. Like a beggar you’ll need to seek out work from your co-workers, offering assistance. To no surprise, your offer is politely declined. They’ve already snatched up their own morsels of work in which to itch away at. You may be tossed a bone or in your absence something may appear in the inbox. In the intermediate you have the chance to talk with a co-worker. Those tangent ridden narratives which move between topic are a welcomed distraction from the throb in the back of your mind. Regardless you’re on a mission to find work to pad out that time tracking time sheet software before it turns on you and states you have a variable amount of time unaccounted for. By the time lunch hits your more exhausted by the search for work and tasks to fill the day, then any actual work. After lunch that ephemeral and finite intermission, the afternoon replays the same situations from the morning. Seeking and waiting for work; debating about talking to your immediate supervisor for work; or resigning yourself to the indignation that your cockroach position demands. By 3:00pm there is another reprieve for yet another cigarette, which follows the innumerable ones burned during lunch. The final two hours of the day are the longest. Time moves slower. It creeps along at a casual pace. The throbbing in the back of your head has become such a constant companion throughout the day, you’ve almost gotten used to it. When the hour strikes 5:00pm your exhausted and distressed by the little accomplishment the day had provided, knowing full well the following days would be a continuous chain of reoccurring events.
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Patricia Highsmith’s Centenary

 Hello Gentle Reader
 
Today marks the 100^th birthday of Patricia Highsmith (January 19 1921 – February 4 1995). Throughout her life Patricia Highsmith was known as a contrarian individual. She once reflected to herself in one of her diaries, that she learned to live with the murderous rage at an early age, when her stepfather, Stanley Highsmith corrected her pronunciation of the term: “Open Sesame.” Her childhood was riddled with the usual turbulence of all unhappy childhoods. Highsmith’s biological father (Jay Bernard Plangman) divorced her mother Mary Plangman (née, Coates, future Highsmith) ten days before Patricia was born. Even before her birth, Patricia Highsmith’s life was marked with foreboding violence. It is rumoured that Jay Plangman encouraged Mary to have an abortion; while other sources state that Mary Plangman attempted to abort the yet unborn Patricia with turpentine, which she is said to have mocked Patricia with in later years for enjoying the smell of. These incidents would only foreshadow an otherwise complicated and unhappy view on marriage, family life, and human relationships. At the age of twelve Highsmith’s mother and stepfather left her in the care of a parenteral grandmother, while they jetted off to New York, to get settled before bringing the young Patricia up to join them. Highsmith described this year as the saddest one of her childhood, when she viewed that her mother had all but abandoned her. Regardless her grandmother had taught her to read at an early age, and Highsmith took full advantage of her grandmothers’ library, reading with a ravenous appetite. After this sad year, Highsmith would rejoin her mother and stepfather in New York, but their relationship was riddled with complications. Highsmith noted that Stanley and Mary would often engage in extreme fights, leaving Highsmith to wonder if divorce was on the horizon. At times her mother would pack their belongings and leave somewhere else; before returning to Stanley once again. Perhaps this is why Patricia Highsmith herself would never show any inclination towards the conventional concept of marriage and family; well that and the fact that she was a lesbian, which she held in contempt and discomfort; viewing her sexuality as a blemish of embarrassment rather than a natural component of herself.
 
In her youth, Highsmith even attended psychoanalysis therapy in order to rid herself of her sexual orientation, in order to become more conditioned for marriage. To no surprise the therapy did not work, and Highsmith never married. Though ironically in one of her many journals, Highsmith did note the following notion:
 
“Persistently, I have the vision of a house in the country with the blonde wife whom I love, with the children whom I adore, on the land and with the trees I do adore [ . . . ] My God and my beloved, it can never be!’” 

 
An otherwise odd reflection from a writer who was adamantly misanthropic, who once stated she could not write when the cleaning woman was in the house, and proclaimed her imagination functioned far better when she didn’t have to converse with others. To imagine Highsmith living some suburban ideal conventional and compromised life is not only laughable, its degrading. This being stated Patricia Highsmith would not be considered a bohemian, though in her youth she did have her unconventional moments, before her writing career had taken off in its entirety. Before, Highsmith became the Godmother of the Psychological Thriller, she first began her writing career after she graduated from Barnard College, writing scripts and scenarios for comic books. This fact was made a secret throughout Patricia Highsmith’s life and career, perhaps because the author herself did not view comic books as anything of merit or literary venture, but a mere commercial enterprise. Regardless of the authors own views on the matter, her time writing for comic books, both as an employee and freelance, were her longest stints of full-time employment before the author began to support herself off her writing alone.
 
Halfway through the 20^th century, Highsmith finally made her claim in the world with the publication of the novel: “Strangers on a Train.” The novel did moderately well for a debut, but with Hitchcock’s film adaption, Patricia Highsmith’s reputation grew, especially amongst European readers. Throughout her initial literary success Highsmith’s character had already matured. These characterizes included a resentful distaste and general disgust for food, preferring in its stead the pleasures of cigarettes and the inebriation of cheap liquor. Misanthropy was becoming a common feature of the writer, which would later be known as a hallmark trait. She viewed people with no fascination and a general tiresome disinterest. To go out in the evening, be it for dinner, socializing or drinks, would not rank high on Highsmith’s plans for an enjoyable outing. Her work ethic was also in full swing, producing in her lifetime a total of 22 novels and 8 collections of short stories, which appeared variously in magazines. Yet, after the dark tour of the almost mundane darkness that lurks within the human mind, expertly explored in “Strangers on the Train,” Patricia Highsmith wrote one of the most groundbreaking novels of the 20^th Century, “The Price of Salt,” also republished as, “Carol.” This novel was a noted lesbian story that ended with a revolutionary happy ending. The novel would not be published under Highsmith’s own name. The novel itself was riddled with the exploits of the authors own tumultuous love life with various women. Still, Highsmith refused to acknowledge the novel until the early 90’s, when it was republished under the title “Carol,” under her own name with an afterward. Perhaps it did her more service to disregard the novel, leaving it orphaned in the bookshelves, because afterwards Highsmith had begun to pen her most well-known literary creation, the talented sociopathic chameleon: Tom Ripley. Tom Ripley became the literary alter ego of Patricia Highsmith. Ripley was the literary vessel of all of Highsmith’s darker ambitions. At the time, Ripley was a groundbreaking character, a dark antihero who characters feared and abjectly admired. His ability to charm and con his way into high society was both deprived and marvelous. His ability to kill and get away with it even more allude justice, tantalized and horrified the reading public. Compromised morals or rather amorality was her favourite tropes to explore, and Ripley represented them all, with all the rewards, prestige and enjoyment life had to offer.
 
As for Patricia Highsmith, however, she was not as superficially charming as her famed antihero. As she aged and secluded herself into further isolation, fortified with cigarettes and alcoholism, Highsmith would unleash a torrent of horrors upon those who dared to get to close. Her prejudices became more vitriolic, acerbic and vocal. Lovers were disposed of unceremoniously, and viciously murdered in her novels. She ripped into anyone who dared to get too close to her, and those who either through a masochistic virtue or stupidity continued to seek her company, received greater punishment. One of the most famous stories of Highsmith’s vicious vitriol was a dinner New York, when she met with her then editor and publisher Otto Penzler. Penzler took her out to eat at an anonymous restraint in New York, where the waiter is said to make painstaking steps to ensure that Highsmith received the best cut steak on offer. In usual flare, Highsmith berated the waiter, in a theatrical display of venom and only wanted beer. Penzler is said to have recalled the event with a disgust, and is quoted to have found Patricia Highsmith a truly:
 
“[ . . . ] mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being. I could never penetrate how any human being could be that relentlessly ugly . . . but her books? Brilliant.”
 
As in due course, Penzler dropped Highsmith as a writer. When asked about it years later, Highsmith hissed at the reporter that it was due to him being a Jew, advertising her already well-known antisemitism. This was only an aspect of a myriad of horrible perspectives which included racism, homophobia, misogyny, which were all wrapped up in her general disgust towards other people and slumped together as: misanthropy. Despite these otherwise disturbingly grotesque characteristics which were wielded like weapons, those who were able to swath through her otherwise demented views, found a writer who was both dryly funny, plainspoken and in her own way even charming. Though these finer features of Highsmith, only came out after a relentlessly torrent of bitterness had been unleashed, and such a pearl of character could only be offered to those who braved the current to weather her tirades. Of course, one only got lashed with her venomous vitriol when they disturbed someone who retained an air of guarded privacy. Highsmith was known as being as reclusive as the snails she kept as company and often thwarted interviews with cat like indifference. On the more preserve and even ironic side of the situation, Patricia Highsmith was a profilic chronicler of her interior life. Through a collection of journals and cahiers, Highsmith unabashedly recounted her most intimate, darkest and personal thoughts. These journals are riddled with her bitter brew of her vicious character, where she described having sex with a man like “steel wool in the face, a sensation of being raped in the wrong place – leading to a sensation of having to have, pretty soon, a bowel movement.”
 
These diaries and cahiers were included in Highsmith’s archive, with it were appear to be in both spite and resentment she bequeathed to the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, rather than any American institution considering how her work never appealed or appetized the American reading public, in their repugnant indignation cling to their morals of justice, like a nun clutches her rosary as she faces hell. These diaries and cahiers have been reviewed and poured over by biographers and academics, who have often described them as a sojourn into the most unpleasant aspects of the most irrational and idiosyncratic mind—to be blunt: it was far from pleasant. But the research did provide a thorough understanding of their subject’s personality, perspective and psyche. Now these same diaries and cahiers are set to be released this year (2021), when the reading public will be able become acquainted with the cruel, ruthless and well fermented character of Highsmith, who it said meticulously documented, her life through a dark lens.
 
As a reader, I’ve never found Patricia Highsmith’s novels all that compelling, interesting true, but not as a compelling as the legendary misanthropy of the writer herself, and with the publication of her diaries and cahiers, those brave enough, curious enough and depraved enough will be able to get acquainted with the writer in her own words; not the distilled perspective of her tireless biographers who have painted a fair and honest portrait of the author. I for one cannot wait to be able to review the diaries and cahiers themselves, to read them with horror and delight, ensuring it becomes a tonic to ensure that one does not become equally as vicious, cruel, ugly and unbecoming. No matter how bad life will get, its best not to retrace the path already etched in the ice by Highsmith.
 
Happy Birthday Patricia Highsmith; Rest In Peace All The Same. 
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary
 

The Curiosity of Slaughter

Hello Gentle Reader 

2020 began with strong expectations. By the end of January and concluding in the final weeks of February, there were impressive impressions that life had properly adjusted into something rewarding and substantial. Gone would be the mundane ennui of the tedium and monotony of what life had become. Finally, with a career—a profession—there would be rewards to reap, purpose to have, fulfillment at long last. By the beginning of March, the peripheral pneumonic disease affecting China in January, had spread west, ripping through Iran and Italy with viral fanaticism. March became the month in which everyone understood the situation had evolved from a footnote in the east, to a certifiable global pandemic. New terms entered the language of the public domain: new reality, lockdowns, outbreaks and quarantines. Uncertainty spread faster then the disease, which had yet to make landfall; with but a few cases beginning to develop. The plan at the time to contain and disinfect, to ensure no community transmissions were taking place. Ideal, but impossible. Within weeks and months, community transmissions had taken place. Soon the definition of essential and non-essential was weighted, measured and balanced. Those deemed luxuries or convivences at best were ordered to shutter and close down for as of yet unspecified period of time. Those deemed essential were to carry on providing their products and their services. Thankfully my profession and sector of work was deemed essential, and it was business as usual. Yet with all aspects of human behaviour which is fickle and capricious, the economy quickly tanked. The uncertainty of whether or not, my new found hope in my long waited for new profession quickly fell apart. Work had all but slowed to a grinding halt. Being the newest employee meant by implication alone my head was never far from the guillotine. As other employees were laid off en masse, I was routinely spared the slaughter; though just beyond the plastic sheets and chicken wire, one could hear the butchery of the others. The outrage, the defense, the anger, the resentment. Regardless as human resources hung up their bureaucratic clever, with another life all but reduced to carnage and blood on the floor, they retreat to the shadowy recess they call their realm, only to be heard from again when they send out yet another copy and paste memo e-mail, stating the organizations response to the pandemic; never mentioning the bloodshed that had taken place earlier. Day by day, week by week, the question persisted: how long until my neck is placed on the butcher’s block. Will I to provide a defense? Show anger? Will I protest with outage? Will the aftertaste of resentment leave me embittered? Yet, day by day, week by week, my neck was spared the block; though the cleavers metallic glimmer continually flashes throughout the office. As any human resources professional would say: sometimes it is more appropriate to rule by fear, more so than anything else.
 
There is a curiosity with slaughter though. Call it pragmatism or opportunisms, those lined up behind the wiring intently listening to the butchery taken place out of sight in the back stages in the theatre of cruelty, beneath the malicious light of Artauds scalpel eye, a new dramatic set of events is set to unfold. All of those penned up for slaughter begin the process of treachery. Its survival now. One must save their hide for another hour, day, week or years to come. In their enclosure shoulder to shoulder, they begin their embittered battle to sustain themselves over those in the same predicament. How they clamour for air. Willing to trade another’s life to sustain their own. There are no hard feelings in these situations. Circumstances demand both sacrifice and homicide; whichever makes the culling easier. One cannot help but praise the nefarious, devious and predicable manner in which people will conduct themselves. Survival is a singular affair. Its not a communal effort. Under the correct conditions’ civility can be set aside. During the beginning of the pandemic, there were routine calls for comradery, fraternity and good will. Those notions now deemed sentimental, have been replaced by the desire and demand for singular subsistence, at the cost of those so-called brethren. As they say: when the chips are down, take your neighbours.
 
Since the spring there have been routine announcements listing the waves of executions. Extensive lists of names routinely laid out the recently departed. They may as well have been anonymous. Without connection or association, they meant nothing; but within those lists was always enough space for your own. Within an undefined time, one knew the possibility of their name being etched within the white space. The finality seals the deal. The punctuating measure turns possibility to tangibility, before becoming reality. As the spring slaughter burned into the summer slaying, and then ripened into the autumn harvest, one noticed the announcements had stopped. Obviously human resources, exhausted from their extermination had deemed it inconsequential to refer to the forced exodus. Their function as recruiters and executioners is enough. There is no need for routine advertisements parading the recently departed. Meanwhile the butchers block remains shows fresh coagulation. The culling continues. Whispers slither up and down the hallways of the office. Slinking shadows murmur yet another name. In hushed tones these discussions take place in corners, behind closed doors, outside and afterhours. The goal is to always remove suspicion away from prying eyes, snooping noses and eavesdropping ears. All attempts to avoid suspicion are exercised. All the while treachery as a form of survival unfolded around. It’s a sadistic device, employed in prior eras of qual brutality. Why waste the resources, the equipment and the effort to kill off the herd, when the masses are capable of doing of slaughtering themselves? Just like the kapo utilized by the Nazis in their concentration camps, an organization can devise its own workforce to turn upon itself. To tear it limb from limb. To root out and purge in its own ranks with extreme prejudice what is deemed weak; what is deemed inessential; what is designated disposable. If one is not living through it or experiencing it first hand, there would almost be admiration to this social engineering. The way in which it is efficiently crafted, deployed and executed. How each piece and pawn moves with calculated effort, causing maximum destruction with minimal effort.
 
Just as treachery is a survival technique, so too is tenacity. Tenacity is an indomitable resource. Despite routinely threatening that its exhausted and running on empty; what should be a finite resource finds supernatural reserves in which to carry on. And so, you do. Pushing back against the current. Defying the storm. Weathering forward and onward. Never loose tenacity is a rare bit advise when faced with continued adversity. Treachery slithers and hisses around. It provides relief through opioid like transactions. Each cost equals greater penance. To watch the others, turn with such avarice upon one another; to claw, tear and snare. It’s a sickening sight. One riddled with disappointment and even pitiful understanding. Their abject behaviour a product of careful circumstance, ambiance and instinctual prodding. Yet tenacity proves survival in the intermediate, even when the slurs slings and slanders find their target. Despite it all though, tenacity does not make the process easy or enjoyable; rather it becomes routinely exhausting, and increasingly apathetic. With each blow, strike and assault to one’s character, there is a deepening sense of apathy, and increased desire to flee the situation. Surely once again there must be a greener pasture; some hope, some sign, some opportunity to look forward to. So, once again the resignation and search begins anew. Though at this time I have been spared the butchers block and cleaver, the situation grows increasingly dire.
 
The year 2020 has been perhaps the most unprecedent and destructive year of recent memory. The pandemic has shown societies ability to come together, if only temporarily. The human conditions capacity for division is endless; perhaps due to the historical precedence of division being an anthropological component of society and social relations. 2020 has brought forward a lot of reflection. It has confirmed frailty. Contemplated isolation and alienation. It has undermined social structures. Tested political ideology as a cure all. While demanded medicine and science be at the forefront of the discussion regarding how to combat the disease. Overtime appreciation has been replaced with exhaustion. Exhaustion evolves into malcontent, and we all know where malcontent and discord will lead to from there. This winter is set to be darker, colder and longer, but it too will subside to spring, which blossom into summer, before ripening and reverting into autumn. At the very least, the year 2020 has been one of many lessons. The most important being: the case study regarding The Curiosity of Slaughter.   

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care 

And As Always 

Stay Well Read 

M. Mary 

John le Carré Dies, Aged 89

 Hello Gentle Reader

 
On December 12^th, John le Carré, one of the titans of the contemporary English Literature, succumb to pneumonia, dying at the age of 89. His novels were often called ‘spy fiction,’ which changed the direction of the espionage novel. No more martini’s shaken not stirred; no more intriguing quartermaster devised gadgets, devices, or subtle arsenal; no more romances with daring beautiful women. Rather the world of espionage is one draped in the incompetent realm of political machinations, made more nefarious by the creeping distress and paranoia coursing in the undercurrents of one’s life. The world of spies in a le Carré novel was one of little carnal depravity or debauchery; in its place was the slow burning sensation of wait and see. The continued game of cat and mouse, with neither knowing who is the cat and who is the mouse. The power dynamic influx. To pursue and be pursued. Where other writers—such as the famous Ian Fleming, wrote of the debonair, the high stakes, and refined lifestyles of the ever patriotic spies— John le Carré took a sobering stock of the human condition and its hardboiled complexities, complete with all of its own entrapments, shortcomings, mistakes, illusions of grandeur, self-deceiving comforts and the mercurial notions of identity. The life John le Carré was as extraordinary in its own right, but follows the cool lukewarm trajectory of his novels: carefully observed and acutely aware, where excitement may exist or legend arise, he would temper it with objective reality, the tedium and the mundane. The life of John le Carré (born David Cornwell) is immediately noted for its cuckoo and unhappy upbringing. His father was a noted con man who had ties and criminal connections and was always in debt; while his mother abandoned him when was five years old. Despite the otherwise unconventional or otherwise setback childhood, John le Carré’s father was able to smuggle him into predatory schools, and through this education, would have the education to maneuver amongst the English upper class, and study languages at university. After his studies a career in intelligence and espionage would commence, first in the Intelligence Corps with the British Army, stationed in Austria working as a German language translator of dissidents fleeing the Iron Curtain. Upon returning to the United Kingdom le Carré continued his studies at Oxford and worked covertly with MI5 observing and reporting on far-left groups with the intent of uncovering covert Soviet agents. As father declared bankruptcy in the mid 1950’s, le Carré began teaching at a preparatory school, before once again returning to Oxford and completing his degree in modern languages, and going on teach at Eaton College, and then returned to MI5. Upon returning to MI5, le Carré ran operatives, conducted interrogations, communications interception and break and enter operations. During this time John le Carré wrote his earliest works which were modestly recognized. It wasn’t until transferring to MI6 and working as a political consul and the publication of: “The Spy Who Came in from The Cold,” did John le Carré came to receive critical appraisal and enter the imagination of the public. By 1964 his career in espionage and intelligence had concluded with the leaks to the Soviet Union by the double agent: Kim Philby. From then on out, le Carré wrote works that eroded the notation that espionage was some glamorous and rewarding work, instead depicting it as the morally ambiguous, unheroic functions of political gains and interests. His novels were more psychological in their dramatic tense, then they are physical.
 
John le Carré was the sobering antidote, to Ian Fleming his literary creation, James Bond. le Carré’s characters, agents and spies were bureaucratic and unremarkable, deprived of any endowment of superhuman charm or charisma or physical prowess. In lieu they were more manipulative, depictive and ordinary. Capable of blending in with landscape, listening rather than talking and observing the comings and goings of the political machinations who they are subservient to, despite their own hesitations or concerns. Without a doubt, John le Carré moved espionage novels away from the mere ‘genre,’ categorization and into the more literary. Treating the work more literary with acute observations, psychological depictions and moral dilemmas; providing a lengthy retrospective regarding the human condition at the mercy of the self-interest competing and incompetent world powers, who have little regard or attachment to the everyday life of the otherwise common man.
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary