The Housekeeper and the Professor

Hello Gentle Reader,

Translations of Ogawa Yōko’s work into English are slim when compared to other languages. What has been translated, however, has created a sustainable growing interest. Ogawa’s most recent translated novel “The Memory Police,” became an unintentional relevant metaphor for the pandemic. A period where the slogan “the new normal,” and “return to normal,” infiltrated everyday nomenclature, framing individuals’ linguistic relationship with the events unfolding around them. This of course was a period of public health measures, mandates, and restrictions; following a cycle of lock downs and easing of restrictions, then abrupt return to point zero. Throughout the pandemic there was a continued sense of the world being reduced, redacted, or amputated. Gradually the concept of normalcy and the individuals own attachment or relationship to it, was being hollowed out. Inch by inch.  Component by component. It was reduced to a point where the whole was no longer available, let alone recognizable. In “The Memory Police,” everyday events, objects, sensations, seasons—an entire catalogue of reference points—is wormed away by the titular memory police, who through metaphysical and physical Kafkaesque edicts, reduced the island world. Birds disappear. Roses become contraband. Perfume evaporates into nothing. The inhabitants of this world accept the gradual reduction of their lives with complacent subservience, all the while acknowledging their own self is being erased in the process. “The Memory Police,” was originally published thirty years ago, and framed as an allegorical depiction of an authoritarian society subjected to absurd physical redactions of their world. The novel examined the nature of memory, the art of reminiscence, the responsibility to remember, and the dangers of forgetting. Ogawa’s “The Memory Police,” is often juxtaposed against Orwell’s classic “1984,” because its narrative revolved around a totalitarian state attempting to subjugate an entire populace to its will, exercising complete control over their lives and reality.

The two narratives diverge significantly, however, in both literary intention and execution. Orwell’s novel explores unchecked political power and the inhumane measures in which authoritarian governments will take to retain it. The threat of independent thought and language in “1984,” is the foundation of the novels premise. Big Brother, dominates through a variety of soft practices, administrative procedures, and physical controls. For example, the Thought Police manufacture and maintain a cult of personality; while mass surveillance ensures abject compliance; the Ministry of Truth, disseminates propaganda, curates historical negation, and destroys any to all information that runs counter to the states positions or party lines; while the Ministry of Love takes more physical approach in compliance, through torturing, brainwashing, interrogating, and if necessary, exterminating dissidence. Orwell’s novel journeys through the dehumanizing hellscape, proposing the question what does it mean to live in this kind of society and what are the associated costs and consequences to resist it? Ogawa Yōko’s “The Memory Police,” never traced or examined the evils of authoritarian government regimes. The bureaucratic absurdity of the memory police existed in the periphery a component of the landscape and menacing shadow circling. Ogawa, fixated the narrative on a small collective of individuals, who persevere within the oppression of their circumstance. The atmosphere is intimate and suffocating. A world completely closed off.

Self-contained worlds, liminal spaces, private interiors, and intimate narratives, is one of the defining features of Ogawa’s work. In “The Memory Police,” the unnamed island remains severed and cut off from the rest of the world. In addition to this, the narrator conceals her editor R in a small room in her house, which is described as being suspended in space. These otherwise, normal landscapes or scenes, however, are always tilted off kilter. An atmosphere of dread or menace infiltrates the narratives. A vacant lot is littered with old appliances, where a boy suffocated to death. An abandoned post office is full of kiwis. A bakery’s confectionary kingdom is tainted by a shadow of a woman buying a birthday cake for her dead son. In Ogawa’s fiction the clean uniform surface of modern conformity society is a superficial façade, one in which pulled back reveals a grotesque and unacknowledged shadow. The grotesque does not translate into extreme violence or gore. A tuner of subtle, Ogawa Yōko crafts and curates disquieting inflections tainting or revealing a shift in a character’s positioning and their interactions with the world that is slowly growing incomprehensible. Ogawa’s crystalline and placid prose is devoid of sensationalism and melodramatics, which maintains that Ogawa remains fixated on the characters perspective and their interaction with a world slowly sinking into the visceral.

Before the critically acclaimed publication of “The Memory Police,” in 2019, ten years prior a slim novel, “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” was published and warmly received by critics and readers alike. However, “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” found itself suffering from a poor marketing campaign. The late 2000’s was peak Murakami Mania with the publication of his long awaited: “1Q84,”, and publishers have (and remain) eager to capitalize on the next big Japanese literary export. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” was adored by the reading public and critics alike. Yet, the novel was marketed with a lighthearted air, playing up a narrative that could quite easily become entrapped in kitschy sentimentality and coated in sweetened saccharine sensibilities. As the novel was marketed as heartwarming and hallmark oriented, void of more serious literary concerns. Personally, I kept a safe distance from “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” viewing it with suspicion and disinterest. Similarly, the short story collection “Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales,” was equally poorly marketed, attempting to pawn off the interconnected set of short stories as horror stories, which would disappoint any reader looking for gore, dismemberment, and splattering entertainment. “Revenge,” instead explored the unacknowledged viscera beneath the complacent surface of polite society. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” is not a narrative that has been excessively sweetened. This is not a novel that could be deemed bubblegum for the mind. Just as in the “The Memory police,” Ogawa has designed a surrogate family unit for three characters, who held together by a common thread. In “The Memory Police,” it’s the subtle resistance to the authorities, by concealing R who’s capable of retaining and recalling memories, attachments, and sensations that have since been obliviated. Whereas in “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” it’s the patterns and subtle intricate beauty of mathematics.   

“The Housekeeper and the Professor,” is narrated by the Housekeeper, a single mother whose past and personal life is blanched to the point of transparency. An only child raised by a single mother, her profession is more circumstance and vocation then passionate interest. A single mother herself, the birth of her son initially caused a fallout between mother and daughter. The Housekeeper reflects on her own mother’s perseverance at a casual job, became a venue and event manager. This work ethic and ability to transfigure difficult circumstances are key survival tactics for a single mother living in a society where single parenthood is considered a moral failing where mothers endure relentless discrimination resulting in poverty and social disenfranchisement. Regardless, the Housekeeper is renowned with her agency for being amicable, agreeable, and professional, which is why she is dispatched to a client with nine blue stars listed on their card—any star is a note of a difficult client with particular needs. The Housekeeper interviews with a woman, who is hiring a housekeeper for her brother-in-law a brilliant mathematician, who lives in the cottage in the garden. The catch? Due to an automobile accident, the Professors memory stops in 1975, and his short-term memory only lasts for eighty minutes:

“It’s as if he has a single, 80-minute videotape inside his head, and when he records anything new, he has to record over the existing memories. 

Aware of his lacking short-term memory, the Professor has clipped and pinned a variety of notes to his suit, one specifically reminds him of his lacking memory. Conventional pleasantries are quickly dismissed. The Professor immediately begins to ask questions regarding shoe size and telephone number, and showcases his mathematical aptitude for not only computing but also explaining the theories and equations in practice. When the Professor learns of that the Housekeeper has a son, he grows insistently concerned for the boy’s welfare, as he’s provided great autonomy and agency, left at home while his mother works. The Professor becomes insistent that the Housekeeper bring her son moving forward, which is in violation of the agencies code of conduct. The Professor becomes smitten with Housekeeper’s son calling him ‘Root,’ due to the flatness of his head. The three become a surrogate family, which is woven through with an appreciation of mathematics and a love of baseball. The remainder of the novel recounts the episodic encounters, challenges, and trials this makeshift family encounters throughout their daily lives and interactions. Math, however, is elevated not just as a quirk for the Professor to understand and retreat into, but becomes the focal point of how he interacts and engages with the world. His memory may fail him like clockwork, but numbers and equations, their logic is never changing, remaining a constant point of comfort and security.

It’s an extraordinary feat for a writer to incorporate mathematics with such restrained, grace, and elegant beauty. The Professor finds comfort in the predictability and pattern recognition of mathematics. They are natural riddles which are solved, if only to heighten our understanding of the world. Mathematics and numbers are the foundations and the scaffolding of the universe and the natural world. Yet, their treatment by the professor is one akin to a musical or symphonic composition reaching a harmonic crescendo. Numbers are free from the follies and failures of people, and in their ordered realm they provide the Professor the means and the escape to understand the world.

“Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.”

As a teacher, the Professor is the kind of mathematics mentor everyone who has grown up to hate and avoid math (including myself) has needed. He is a complete 180 to the typical mathematics teacher who is more interested in sounding off equations and drilling quick computation. To this day a timed math drill is enough to make me panic. Yet, the Professor is not interested in the end result or the amount of time it takes one to linger over a problem, but instead to appreciate the process of contemplation, understanding the theorem in question, and how mathematics brings order to a universe which on its surface roils and boils in sustained chaos. He is far more delighted when the question produces another tangent and another question. Math becomes a sustained reaction of more questions and possible answers, but moving ceaselessly forward to heightened levels.  

There is good reason why readers fall in love with Ogawa Yōko’s “The Housekeeper and the Professor.” Ogawa ensnared a trio of mundane characters brought together by chance and circumstance, and allow their confined space to blossom into an intimate universe. A simple story of love and friendship transformed and defied the expectations that it was a novel dripping in sugared mawkish second-hand exaggerated emotion, when instead it moved beyond the immediate and into the infinite, contemplating the nature of memory but also the underappreciated poetry and aesthetic beauty of mathematics and numbers. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” is a delicate and sophisticated novel, one which never lingers over the details but continually expands within the possibilities. Airy would be a marvelous way to describe this novel, not because of its length or to insinuate its lacking robust depth or character, but because the language and style is free of ostentatious posturing. Other writers who might incorporate mathematics as metaphor or point of interest in their work, would certainly ensure it was a method to cement and confirm their own cleverness, by shrouding it further in esoteric complexity. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” may not convert any to all suffers of mathematical anxiety to open a math textbook, but it does provide the context to math’s ability to provide harmony and order to a world, especially one in which an individual no longer finds themselves instep or in time with. “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” is a masterclass in understatement that assembles a surprisingly compelling narrative about three individuals adrift in the world, finding comfort and solace within the infinite symphonic composition of numbers and the interplay within each other.

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

Food Studies

Hello Gentle Reader,

Food is a subject that is often conceived and viewed through a utilitarian lens. Food is purposeful. It is a requirement. Common knowledge dictates that basic principles of a survivable existence consist of: clothing, shelter, and food—water is addendum or partner to food. Please note, this is a survivable existence, alluding to an existence of austerity, deprived of comforts and pleasures. The history of food is in turn a history of the human race. From hunting, gathering, and forging, to rustic agricultural settlements, to prevailing feudal systems, and industrialization and so on, food and its production, has been a continual feature of human society. Now more than ever, thanks to international trade, globalization, supply chains and logistical efforts, exotic spices, fruits, and vegetables can be shared around the world. The human palate and plate are no longer segregated into regional and seasonal options, instead its spoiled for choice. Despite this, food insecurity is a rising concern. More and more people are placed in socioeconomic conditions where the basic necessities can no longer be afforded in a hyperinflated world. Shelter has become unaffordable; food is outpricing; while wages are not keeping up to meet the base standards of living. Food, from its production, distribution, consumption and unaffordability, is a key narrative component and metric to the human condition and living conditions throughout history. Despite this, food has never been a subject that I’ve lingered or ruminated over. To reiterate the point, food in my perspective is a subject of utility.

Growing up, food was never described or categorized as a cuisine or having culinary allegiances. It was—and I directly quote—fashioned as: “good homestyle cooking.” No frills. Nothing fancy. No fuss. No exceptions. No forays or detours into new territory. The food stayed true to established precedence. My mothers cooking adhered to the cooking of her own childhood, though she made several additions over the years, becoming hallmarks of the menu. Regardless, food was guided by flavour and sustenance. Soups that would chase off the chill. Hearty meals that embraced egalitarian principles and of a good-will welcoming nature. A hallmark of my childhood home dinner table was Sunday roast beef, accompanied by mashed potatoes and gravy, and glazed carrots or mixed vegetables. Other common meals included country fried steak with milk gravy, veal or pork cutlets, perogies and farmers sausage with fried cabbage, macaroni tomatoes and burger (imitation goulash), picnic ham with baked macaroni and cheese, cabbage rolls, and a variety of other casseroles; while chilies and stews were winter hallmarks. Of course, my mother’s signature homemade buns and cinnamon buns, were a well-earned delight everyone looked forward to. Other notable dishes in the repertoire, included Japanese sticky chicken, which consists flour battered drumsticks, pan fried and then backed in a sweet and sour sauce. The meat is absolutely tender melting off the bone. Serve with white rice and a mixed vegetable or fried cabbage and sautéed peppers and onions. You can also substitute the drumsticks for chicken breasts. My mother was also famous for her fried rice, an alchemical rice like goulash, happily incorporating leftover ham, chicken (or turkey), followed by fried bacon and onions, and stir-fried mushrooms, before being mixed together with rice to make a filling one plate dinner. Popular condiments include soy sauce of course, but also a few sprinkles of vinegar.

Despite growing up in a household where food was a permanent and abundant fixture, I had no interest or desire or inclination to participate or be a part of the kitchen. Cooking and baking and all other associated synonyms, was viewed as a chore, work, or labour-oriented exercise. No different then vacuuming, sweeping or washing the dishes. Its inherent relation to what was then considered ‘domesticity,’ did not enamor me to it either. I also disagreed with the notion of “good homestyle cooking,” my mother propagated, as her mother had. Homestyle cooking, became the anthem and the slogan which continually signified a small or reduced world. One of limited culture, perspectives, and more frightening, hostile attitudes towards curiosity, cultural interest, or any appreciation for artistic achievements. Homestyle cooking became representational of the otherwise small, narrow, and closed off world that I grew up in. It was a world of limited palate, no taste, and no interest in expansion. The food was routine and repetitive, with a complete lack of interest or sense of culinary theatrics. My mothers’ cookbooks were full of recipes that were routinely overlooked. Some for very good reason, such as tomato aspic. While others carried enchanting curious names such as bubble and squeak or toad in the hole—which were never even glanced at. They were dismissed right from the start based on name alone. I have since personally made bubble and squeak, and have delighted in its simple spiced pleasure, a hodgepodge pancake of mashed potatoes, blanched cabbage, roasted carrots, and onions mixed and fried as one, and served it forth as a side dish with toad in the hole, accompanied by mushroom and onion gravy. My mother praised both; all the while defending her early veto of never cooking either of them.

Recipe books may be part of the reason why food is framed within a serviceable context. Afterall recipe books are grimoires of instructions. They lay out the ingredients and subsequent quantities and measurements; provide instructions regarding preparation, mixing, and assembly; then at last cooking requirements, which included temperatures to bake and length of time. Some recipes included recommendations for side dishes or plating for presentation. Not a very exciting read. Nothing that could be called literary. If a new recipe was being tried out, they would be cracked open and referenced. The kitchen in turn would be transformed into a state of chaos, which eventually gave way to a meal. I do not, however, consider writing a recipe or a cookbook the same as food writing. If only, because I perceive cookbook authors and chefs as being more concerned with providing instructional material, not going in lengths regarding historical developments or concerned with introducing literary license or embellishments. This inevitably left me perplexed, wondering what food writing is as a literary mode of expression and exploration.

There are of course very famous literary scenes involving food. Marcel Proust’s hallmark madeleine moment, where in lush modernist gilded baroque prose, Proust recounts the act of dipping the pastry into a cup of lime tea, cascades into an overture of memory. The great Scottish poet, Robert ‘Rabbie,’ Burns, wrote a poem: “Address to a Haggis,” and is a famous Scottish poem; which now has its own ceremony commemorated and recited at a Burns Supper on Burns Night (celebrating and honouring the poet’s birthday). There are the poisonous mushroom recipes included in Olga Tokarczuk’s “House of Day, House of Night,” which publishers legally sought to mitigate by advising readers not to indulge in or attempt to cook. Cooking and food also made a subsequent appearance in Doris Lessing’s groundbreaking interior explorative novel, “The Golden Notebook,” where the material acts of life are infused with the psychological complexities of one’s personhood and emotional state:

“And now the cooking for Michael. I unroll the veal that I remembered to batter out flat this morning; and I roll the pieces in the yellow egg, and the crumbs. I baked crumbs yesterday, and they still smell fresh and dry, in spite of the dampness in the air. I slice mushrooms into cream. I have a pan full of bone-jelly in the ice-box, which I melt and season. And the extra apples I cooked when doing Janet’s lunch, I scoop out of the still warm crackling skin, and sieve the pulp and mix it with thin vanilla’d cream, and beat it until it goes thick; and I pile the mixture back into the apple skins and set them to brown in the oven. All the kitchen is full of good cooking smells; and all at once I am happy, so happy I can feel the warmth of it through my whole body. Then there is a cold feeling in my stomach, and I think: Being happy is a lie, it’s a habit of happiness from moments like these during the last four years. And the happiness vanishes, and I am desperately tired. With the tiredness comes guilt. I know all the forms and variations of this guilt so well that they even bore me. But I have to fight them nevertheless.”

I am also reminded of the peculiar nature of food in Ogawa Yōko’s work, as in the story “Afternoon at the Bakery.” Where in placid prose, Ogawa sketches the complexities of grief a mother feels over her son’s death, while observing a cake decay:

“First, the cream turned brown and separated from the fat, staining the cellophane wrapper. The strawberries dried out, wrinkling up like the heads of deformed babies. The sponge cake hardened and crumbled, and finally a layer of mold appeared.”

Food takes on a variety of visceral and grotesque forms and appearances throughout Ogawa Yōko’s work. From a woman gorging herself on kiwis, to carrots pulled from the earthen womb in the shape of hands. While in another novella “Pregnancy Diary,” food becomes both obsession and repulsion. In Ogawa’s hands, food is never quite savoury or sweet, but a metaphor and image of the otherwise mundane horrors of domesticity, the torments of feminine expectation, the delirium and break down of existence, and the gradual collapse of one’s psyche, much like the strawberry shortcake rotting on the counter. All wrapped up in prose styled in white confectionary frosting of surrealism, completely deprived of sensationalism.

This is still not food writing. Food in these scenes is either mode of narration, metaphor, image, or actionable movement. The concern and nature of the prose is not the subject of food. Food as a subject, however, has occupied the public imagination and adoration for decades now. Especially in the format of television series and competitions. As an individual who views food as a subject of utility, I subscribe to Fran Lebowitz’s perplexed viewpoint regarding the fascination with these shows. Cooking and baking competitions are confounding to me. While I appreciate their ability to showcase a chef or confectioners’ creativity, I do fail to grasp the nuanced points of the matter. Growing up, Julia Child (for instance) was a marvel to watch. But Child’s programing was not competitive in nature. The entire show (The French Chef) was bolstered by the charm and charisma of Julia Child, who invaded the homes of many, usurping TV dinners and prepackaged instant cooking, and changed how food and cooking was to be viewed, not just as a chore, but as a pleasure from conception to creation, and finally to sharing and being amongst great company. I suspect in large part, thanks to Julia Child, fine French cuisine has occupied my thoughts with almost fantasy like quality. Afterall, Child was the one who demystified the legendary complexities of French cuisine for the North American public. The legendary fickle gourmet food became accessible and approachable. Not that it ever found itself served on the kitchen table of my childhood. Still, Julia Child was a chef and cook book author, not necessarily a practitioner of food writing.

Dining out is one of those bewildering experiences. Both theatre of the gourmand and the spectacle hell of public ingesting. Dining is best done with good company. Good company and conversation will make a hell of a difference. Not only on the ambience of the establishment but on the food. All minor infractions and disappointments can be overlooked when experienced in good company. Food writing as a literary topic, began to occupy my thoughts in the late summer of last year. I was meeting up with friends at a new local restaurant for a meal and to catch up. The place itself was uninspiring. Another place that could be defined as generic or a devotee of “good homestyle cooking.” The menu consisted of the stalwart staples: a variety of burgers, from typical cheese, to bacon, to mushroom, to the loaded option; sandwiches such as ham and Swiss, club house, turkey bacon, BLT, and brisket (I believe quesadilla was included); followed by the signature entrees such as liver and onions, veal cutlet, lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken alfredo; a myriad selection of salads, and then a small menu for dessert which included chocolate cake, cheese cake, and a pie (I believe apple). This menu could easily have been repeated at any other eatery across town. I recalled having the brisket sandwich with a side of fries, and thinking to myself: this is all otherwise rather uninspired. The food is repetitive no matter where you went. Diners will routinely and without fail continually find the same menu options, regardless if they were, be it at this greasy spoon or the one three blocks away. I found the state of food in turn sad and underwhelming. It seems I am trapped in a hell styling itself “good homestyle cooking,” and I want to scream. From what I recall of the sandwich in question was what one expected. It was slices of brisket, topped with cheddar cheese, contained between two thick toasted slices of bread topped with a pickle. The waitress recommended dipping into barbeque sauce for extra flavour. The French fries were regular run of the mill deep fried fries. Though I do recall the unsettling feeling of greasiness being attributed to the meal. A sentiment shared by my company, which livened the occasion up, at which point the meal could be overlooked in favour of the conversations facilitated at the table.

After this incident I contemplated food as a literary subject. From reminiscing about Julia Child and her legendary editor Judith Jones (who wrote her own cookbook: “The Pleasures of Cooking for One: A Cookbook,”) to discovering essayists who topics of interest were food, which included the poet of the appetites herself, M.F.K Fisher and her British compatriot Elizabeth David. In their hands, food was not a subject of utility and sustenance—fulfillment and nourishment were of course intricate components to their writings, both in a physical sense but also nurturing the metaphysical soul of oneself—it also included ruminations on food within cultural and historical context, via travels, and their own perspectives on food. M.F.K Fisher remains renowned for her book: “How to Cook a Wolf,” which is often described as a survivalist guide to cookery during hardship, rations, and scarcity of resources. “How to Cook a Wolf,” remains a complex piece of work, one which completely refuses to be cook book, war protest, essay, or novel, it remains established as a book of pure literary concern and not necessarily one of cooking concern, one which routine renewed interest is reinspired with when disaster, catastrophe, and tragedy strikes. If anything, “How to Cook a Wolf,” is a testament to the necessity to live, be it purely, sincerely, or simply, the end resolve must be to live. Elizabeth David helped elevate English cooking (often mocked for its own chastising prudish Englishness) beyond the grey austerity, and postwar rationing and become enlivened with herbs and spice of foreign abodes and locales. Both M.F.K Fisher and Elizabeth David, reviewing food within a context beyond practical concerns. Food, dining, and eating was a journey not only in culinary composition, but of personal growth, an expansion of palate and perspective, and an appreciation of other cultures, histories, and people. For M.F.K Fisher, French cuisine was the catalyst that changed her world and understanding of food, far from the milquetoast food that was currently on offer in her childhood California home. Whereas Elizabeth David embraced French provincial cooking and Mediterranean cooking, introducing them to English reading public in turn.

As for myself, I’ve picked up the wooden spoon and done battle against the prevailing “good homestyle cooking,” that is the prevailing cooking philosophy of not only today, but of yesterday, and quite possibly tomorrow. I want frills. I want fancy. I want fuss. I want to enjoy good food, food that is different, pleasurable, and completely deprived of the continued philosophy of homestyle cooking. In that regard, the internet is the great equalizer. Recipes galore—though ingredients might be more difficult to come by. Regardless, I’ve expanded my culinary palate and stopped looking at cooking as a bothersome chore. However, make no mistake Gentle Reader, I would not call it a pleasure either. Before cooking came out of necessity. Lately, its more out of interest. Recent conquests included ratatouille, which I had no interest in trying due to a bad experience with aubergine (eggplants), they are bitter and tough. Turns out you just need to understand their preparation. I’ve mastered a Japanese curry, which is a hearty, sweet and extremely flavourful stew that is best served with fluffy white rice. I’ve indulged in quiche Lorraine and a marvelous fresh mustard vinaigrette salad during the summer. Perhaps my most laborious accomplishment though is my tourtière, a truly masterful meat pie, savoury and perfectly spiced. Despite its work, its a decadent dish, whose rewards cannot be overstated. In turn, I’ve also found myself enjoying the company of M.F.K Fisher and Elizabeth David, who were adamant that one should eat well without apology. To them, food is not just a matter of sustenance to be served forth, eaten, digested, rinse and repeat, it’s an act of indulgence, appreciating seasonal ingredients and the transformative power of spices and aromatics, to create lasting dishes and formative relationships. In their regard, food was best enjoyed either as a private affair or with great company. Fisher and David, are enjoyable in their treatment of food, elevating it beyond the didactic, and embracing the lyrical and the contemplative within the culinary, domestic, and kitchen-oriented hemisphere, where one doesn’t just eat what is placed in front of them without comment, thought, or any interest, but instead takes consideration regarding what it is they are consuming, and evaluating the enjoyment of it.

Understanding food within a context not just reduced to mere utility has been a delight. Its literary depictions are often imagistic and metaphorical; a springboard in purpose; or actionable material leading to further digressions and explorations. Recipe books are marvelous, but again instructional in nature. They are the grimoires to any kitchen, the necessary workbooks and study material to fashion a dinner or dessert. While, enjoying the food orientated writings of writers such as M.F.K Fisher and Elizabeth David, embrace the nuanced study of food as a subject of the individual and the societal collective. In turn beneath splendid tables spread out with a service of banquet and meal, there lurks a shadow that dodges, follows, and haunts. M.F.K Fisher in particular wrote about appetite’s, from hunger to fulfilment. The act of eating is in turn the act of taking away. The trade off, if you will. The cow is butchered to provide stewing meat; the potato is wretched from the earth to be peeled and boiled; while the oyster be it alive or stewed goes down the throat. Death is the end for us all, so you might as well eat well before the inevitable happens.

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

M. Mary


—Post Script—

For readers a little more curious about literary food and recipes pulled from the works of literature, I would recommend the “Eat Your Words,” column archive by Valerie Stivers via The Paris Review. It’s a delightful read.

N. Scott Momaday Dies Aged 89

Hello Gentle Reader,

N. Scott Momaday is often remarked and remembered as a legendary figure and foundational pillar in the Native American Renaissance literary movement, his groundbreaking and trail brazing novel: “House Made of Dawn,” was the first work by a Native American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. Originally conceived as a poetry collection, “House Made of Dawn,” shifted and evolved into N. Scott Momaday’s most breathtaking novel, which became a cornerstone for Native American studies and anthologized work. The novel incorporates circular narrative structure, common in native American oral story traditions, while introducing modernist literary techniques such as stream of consciousness, multiple character perspectives, and a disjointed narrative to trace a Native American veterans disaffected return to society in the postwar society, and his gradual spiritual remediation. The novel is complex, defying both expectations of its content, while introducing readers to literary forms and cultures that were previously unknown to them. Most importantly, however, “House Made of Dawn,” encapsulated a prevailing literary theme for N. Scott Momaday, which was self-defining and actualization. These themes were further explored in “The Way to Rainy Mountain,” an impressive literary piece encompassing history, ethnography, folklore, and poetic memoir, tracing Momaday’s Kiowa heritage. Once again, the work encompasses different compositional methods and voices to provide an overlapping understanding of oneself, time, culture and history. “The Way to Rainy Mountain,” is prescribed as rudimentary reading for newcomers to Native American culture, history, and literary composition which again showcases N. Scott Momaday as not just a writer but a keen scholar and academic. Poetry remained N. Scott Momaday’s favourite literary expression, and critics often declared his poetry exceptional and highly original. Subsequent publications broached a hybrid between poetry and prose. As a scholar, N. Scott Momaday became an expert on oral storytelling traditions, delineating the oral storytelling traditions and ritual of passing down knowledge, history, and cultural significance through tales by Native American’s is not inferior to the written or recorded text, but as much its equal if not even superior, for its roots go back thousands upon thousands of years, when language existed within an ephemeral state without material vessel. N. Scott Momaday may be remembered for his debut novel “House Made of Dawn,” and blazing the path for fellow Native American writers such as Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, and Thomas King, to enter the mainstream and occupy and be appreciated by the literary masses and establishment; but most importantly, N. Scott Momaday applied literary theory and criticism to traditional modes of storytelling and recitation, enshrining them within a literary establishment, recognizing their merit and cultural significance.

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


M. Mary

– XXIV –

When dissent is replaced with deference, the soul of society, of human achievement, and ingenuity is lost. Criticism is never pleasant, but it aerates the otherwise stagnant placid soil of mediocrity.

A Man’s Place

Hello Gentle Reader,

Annie Ernaux’s literary language is a focal point of discussion for both readers and critics. Ernaux’s language operates in complete contrast to her subject matter, which is often excruciatingly personal, bordering on the voyeuristically testimonial. It is Ernaux’s literary language which ultimately saves her work from being tarnished or decreed as tabloid sensationalism and oriented to solicit shock value reactions. By maintaining a language of neutrality, an otherwise blanche prose style, Ernaux is able to write candidly about intrapersonal and interpersonal affairs, including those of an otherwise intensly personal and private nature, be it sexual/extra-martial affairs or botched abortions. The dissociative tone employed ensures the language is bleached, starched and ironed. Then processed further and refined into a state where all the sentimentality, sensationalism, and expressionism are blanched into a state of colourlessness. This is aptly described as “clinical acuity,” as referenced in the Swedish Academy’s citation when awarding Annie Ernaux, the Nobel Prize in Literature. The rendering of exhumed and examined personal experience, relationships, and observations into a state of placid neutrality are the hallmarks of Annie Ernaux’s literary career, and are the defining features of her style and literary language. In describing her literary career, Ernaux described herself as a personal-ethnographer, and her association with sociological thought and analysis is deeply rooted in her examinations of the personal in relation to the greater social narrative, historical positioning and collective memory.  

Ernaux’s Nobel Lecture is titled and styled: “I Will Write to Avenge My People,” where Ernaux invokes Rimbaud both through the prayer and the anthem:

            “I am of an inferior race for all eternity.”

This affirms Annie Ernaux as not just a writer of purely literary interest, but a writer of sociological observation, documentation, analysis and engagement, which inevitably means it will swerve into political dimensions. Literature and political thought and opinion are not mutually exclusive. Literature is equal parts weapon, vehicle and tool of political ideologies. In return, literature is equal critic and agitator, a space of intellectual inspiration and safe haven of freedom of speech. In short: public enemy number one, for those who seek to wield unlimited political power. The words: “I Will Write to Avenge My People,” were first written in a diary of a young Annie Ernaux, affirming to the author that her literary output will be intensely focused on the inadequacies, inequalities, and perceived injustices that were leveraged against her heritage. This clearly can be reviewed in one of her monumental analysis’s: “A Man’s Place,” a short examination of her father’s life, including the prescribed social disadvantages that were leveraged against him and his struggle to alleviate himself of his circumstances and fashion himself and his subsequent family a better life.

What separates Annie Ernaux from the classic French poet Rimbaud in his statement: “I am of an inferior race for all eternity,”— is that Ernaux does not employ language as an imaginative response to transfigure and elevate situations, circumstances, and experiences into a new reality; instead, Ernaux uses language as the necessary surgical instruments and implements to dispel the fog and uncertainties of memory. All the implanted pleasantries and falsities are plucked, pulled, and weeded out. After surgical removal, begins the process of autopsy, examining the intricacies of a life deprived of sentimentality and preferable treatment. All that matters is austere honesty. As Ernaux confess, when first seeking to write a novel regarding her father as the main character, it ultimately failed due to the artistic licensing that betrayed the genuine life that her father lived and experienced. Instead Ernaux concluded, the only way she would be able to treat her father as a literary subject would be to:

“[…] If I wish to tell the story of life governed be necessity, I have no right to adopt an artistic approach, or attempt to produce something “moving” or “gripping.” I shall collate my fathers’ words, tastes and mannerisms, as well as the main events of his life. In short, all the external evidence of his existence, an existence which I too shared.

“No lyrical reminisces, no triumphant displays of irony. The neutral way of writing comes to me naturally. It was the same style I used when I wrote home telling my parents the latest news.”  

What follows is a succinct portrait of a man whose life was incubated in shade, shame, and adversity, and a quiet singular ambitious goal to rise out of pre-established social classes and predestined circumstances fitting of the time, and make a respectable life. Ernaux’s father was born at the turn of the century (1899) to a carter (farm labourer), who resisted his conditions of his social stature by exerting his masculinity. To no surprise he was a man of limited education and illiterate, and would fly into a rage if he found (or caught) his children reading. The home is described as having an earth floor and thatched roof. What today might be called a proper rustic cottage. Ernaux’s father was pulled from school at the age of 12 to begin earning his keep, working on the same farm as his father. Though the job provided minimal money (at once point described as pocket change) his position provided lodging and food (he would sleep above the stables), and his laundry would be done for him once a week. Unlike his own father, however, Ernaux’s own father was not illiterate. Regardless, pastoral farmhand life came to an abrupt end as industrialization took hold of the nation and the first World War I broke out and ended. In this time, he worked in a rope factory and would meet his future wife:

“When he came back, he never wanted to go back to “culture.” That’s how he called farming. The other meaning of culture, the spiritual one, did no good to him.”

What follows is the definitively personal caught up in the waves of the historical. The economic fallout of 1929, the Second World War and the post-war economic boom. Throughout it at all, Ernaux traces her fathers upwelling social movements, moving out of the social class of indentured farmhand and factory worker into a property owner and grocer-café owner. Despite elevating himself into a state of entry level middle class, Ernaux examines how her father’s early life of culture that is labour oriented work and its lacking manners and refined language, still dodge him and maintain his anchorage in a lower social circle. Her father’s work is not without benefit or success, as it afforded and facilitated Annie Ernaux’s own social upwelling into more sustainable economic and social classes, while granting her further opportunity to study and continue her education. Ernaux confirms through her academic aptitude and excellence is key to moving into gentrified circles. This also becomes a point of division, which ultimately emancipates herself from her father, who despite fixing a better life for himself and establishing a foundation for his daughter to move into more professional careers and obtain a proper bourgeoise marriage, she is ultimately separated from her father, loosing common ground and a sense of equality. This can clearly be seen in Annie Ernaux’s first marriage, where her husband (a man from an established bourgeoise family) does not visit her family in their small grocery-café in Normandy, as referenced and mulled over in the biting realization of the polar opposites of their worlds:

“What could a man brought up in middle-class circles—where people got degrees and cultivated the art of irony—possibly have to say to honest, hard-working people like my parents? Although he acknowledged their kindness, in his yes it would never replace a lively, witty conversation, sadly lacking in their case. In his family, for instance, if someone broke a glass, one would immediately cry out: “Touch it not, for it is broken!” a quote from Sully Prudhomme’s poem Le Vase Brisé).”

In writing “A Man’s Place,” Annie Ernaux does not remediate her father’s life, turning it into a literary feast of lyricism or poignant reminisces. It is however an account of one man’s life from hardship to eventual enjoyment, even if it takes into considerable suffering and estrangement along the way. Ernaux’s completely colourless prose is what makes “A Man’s Place,” a successful review of one’s life. By eschewing sentimentality, forced lyricism, and creating any fictional review of the life, Ernaux encapsulates her father as a complex man who rose from an era that is forgotten and limitedly documented. In one telling anecdote regarding her father’s upbringing, Annie Ernaux recounts the stark contrast between the vision and world of her father’s time as described in books to that of his own account:

“When I read Proust or Mauriac, I don’t think that they write about the time when my father was a child. His background, it was the Middle Ages.”

“A Man’s Place,” shows Annie Ernaux at her best, her literary endeavour to capture the sociological and ethnographic of the times, to examine memory without nostalgia or infused with sentimentality, but provide context, narrative, and understanding of the times. Writing about her father, provided acute observation of her father’s life and its trajectory, one that was completely different and alien to her own, but is also intrinsically woven within her character, and a part of her personal history, but also a component of the entire history of French society, but is just conveniently overlooked. In writing about her father, Annie Ernaux has reconciled the man and the memory with herself, while bring to light the class divisions and social neglect within French society, and their realities melting away in the post-war years, as more and more individuals found further and further opportunity outside of their working-class upbringing. But the question that lingers afterwards is, who is left behind?

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

M. Mary

Old Rendering Plant

Hello Gentle Reader, 

Time is experienced and rarely observable. Its passage is the thread stitched into daily life. While routinely checked and even brushed against, it’s never explicitly observed with great intensity. The tick and tocks of clocks ripple through many lives. In unison they fall back and spring forward. An individual’s relation to time is impersonable, all the while being the defining and guiding structure of their lives. No longer just the stitch of order, but the scaffolding of governance, the conductor of days, the accountancy of the hours and minutes, scrutinizer of seconds, the auditor of the rhythm of one’s life. Time and age are primordial components of the material and corporeal universe. Human beings have only provided it a shape and form beyond the celestial cycle and seasonal nature. What follows is both adaption, evolution, ingenuity and advancement. The old is not merely cast off. Not easily erased. Instead, it is readily abandoned. Its vanguard marches towards new horizons. What’s left behind is ghost and remnants. Eroded memories of former gilded ages. What immediately springs to mind is Detroit, the poster child of the post-industrialist and post-capitalist society as the world entered a new globalized era and domestic defenses and protective measures were chipped away and sold off or resourced and outsourced elsewhere (cynically of course, to locales where safety and labour laws were either non-existent or unenforced). Detroit has become that haunted city of glory and ruin. Photographic evidence, documentaries, reports, statistics, everything describes a city in continued and sustained collapse. An apocalyptic landscape of neglected infrastructure. Abandoned public works. Warehouses remain as tombstones of echoed emptiness. Homes (once beautiful thriving communities) are entombed, boarded up, haunted by memories of their past occupants, now housing squatters and the equal dispossessed and despondent within their walls. The soul of the city in palliative care. Those otherwise kind and well-meaning hands prone to fumbles and apologies. This decay. This concrete rot. This urban decomposition is not exclusive to the cities. Though remarkable in photographic evidence, conjuring the dark poetic romanticism of Poe, the capture of that otherwise urban gothic with its broken windows, water-stained concrete, bright, brilliant, and vulgar graffiti. This stillness and collapse mark the past and apprehensively looks to the horizon with uncertainty. The prairies are full of decay and desolation. The difference, where cities—beautiful urban centres of light and life—exist within their defined borders and city limits, and as beacons brighten the path and light up the sky, beckoning for all night time travelers to hither; the prairies are lost within their own all-consuming expanse. Their endless nihilistic nothingness of long blue skies and herds of clouds, to grasslands or farmlands that stretch ever forward and always onward, remaining out of the way not as a point of exclusivity, but as a mere fact of reality. Out there is the periphery. Littered amongst the afterthought of the urbane, are buildings and communities in minor key, collapsing in on themselves. Homes left abandoned. Gardens overgrown. Business closed up and boarded. Those once great cathedrals of the prairies (grain elevators) are out of step and out of time. Demolished and destroyed. Now reduced to memories and afterimages. Further along are barns and homesteads pock marked amongst the vastness as skeletal remains or fossils. In their exaggerated German expressionistic poses, they remain. This is also the world of Wolfgang Hilbig as depicted in his novel “Old Rendering Plant,” an East German community that exists in various states of industrial and post-industrial decay, in a communist society that not only facilitates this decay but orchestrates, engineers, and designs it. The social structure can only be described as one in routine deterioration.

Before Krasznahorkai László was dubbed the master of the apocalypse, the title would have easily been applied to the Wolfgang Hilbig, whose prose is dense as it is darkly lyrical, an uncontrolled monologue of stream of consciousness prose with a penchant for metaphor and repetition, refining the imagery into further and further layers, providing both observations and impressions of a community of no defining features or character, but one that exists within a state of sustained decline. Wolfgang Hilbig’s narrator is an unnamed and unidentified man, whose place within time is never placeable. At first a child left to his own devices explores further and further into the landscape, into the reaches until its dark:

“I recalled a brook outside town whose current, strangely shimmering, sometimes milky, I once followed for miles all autumn or longer, if only hoping to emerge one day from a territory confined, I’ll admit it at last, by the bounds of my weariness. 

Each exploration, each journey takes him further and further into the industrial landscape, overgrown with vegetation, and always darkening upon his return home, where in the facelessness of the apartment, he makes his excuses for routinely tardy defiance of curfew and parental parameters. Chided, scolded, and remanded to his room without supper, his childlike Odessey into the post-industrial landscape continues, taking on increasingly surreal and vicious form:

“The willows . . . seemed to metamorphose into fantastic creatures, the spawn of some freakishly fertile subsoil, ugly crippled excrescences that through their degeneration had come into power and evil.”   

All the while the vanished and the disappeared (speculated to be victims of the Stasi), become a silhouette of a shadow that routinely flints in and out of the narrators’ recollections. His family members (faceless and shapeless shadows unto themselves) sit at the dinner table, listening to the radio rattle on the list of those who have disappeared. The last fact of their presence and existence being the recitation of their names, which in one instance form as an incantation for the narrator as they drift to sleep:

“All this time the name had failed to come, remained missing…all this time other names murmured away at me, similar, barely distinguishable names, identical names that bored and sapped me, following me into my dreams to bring void and vertigo—but I knew they were still there when I woke, studding the ceiling, fading only for seconds in the darts of light that shot through the curtains, giving me a second time to fall asleep with sonorous sawing that scarcely differed from the from the sawing and rasping of the names…rasping like small but assiduous waves on the shore, trickling up the far-too-large adult bed in which I lay crosswise and head down in a swaying, spinning voyage beneath the twilight of letters impossible to dim as, beneath the moon’s burning baby-face, I drifted out on the empty, watery fields of my dreams:…seeking Schiller, Frank…Shiller, Franz. . . schiller, Franz Heinrich. . .Schiller, Franz Otto…Schiller, Friedrich…seeking Schiller, Fritz…Schiller, Gustav…”

There is no real answer for the narrator’s childhood sojourns into the landscape. One rationale provided is childhood fascination with times transition. These threshold moments of the days when the predefined expire and transfigure into a new entity. This disembodiment of time fascinates and compels in how it warps the landscape and changes the perspective. Then of course is the physical exploration for getting to the matter of the heart of darkness, the wretchedness and labourious bedrock which secures this otherwise dead society. First forays of course, provide an inventory of losses or abandonment: an old coal mine; a watermill which provides refugee for savage Easterners; but finally, the actual old rendering plant, a hellscape in its own right, encircled in a reputation that immediately evokes disgust in other residents, the workers of the plant looked upon with revulsion due to the nature of their work. They are cast out and alienated. The plant itself spews greased smoke and pollutes the brook. Despite being a manufacturing facility to render cleaning agents, the workers of the plant are described as having a particular perfume a scent all their own. As an individual with no further prospects for further education, our narrator is adrift when it comes to discussions of his future, his prospect being technical training or apprenticeship, and instead, as if by rebellion or pure carelessness decides to work in the rendering plant (Germania II). To lower himself further into the ruin, the grease smoked air of rendered and reduced animal parts, establishing himself as an outsider. What follows suit is a monologue and protest, a revolt against the communist system and the party, and all the workers of the world it supposedly represents.

Wolfgang Hilbig is a master of atmosphere, curating and disorienting it. Sentence by long sentence weaves through this slim novel, twisting and looping back on itself. “Old Rendering Plant,” is an onion like narrative, continually being peeled and returning to some dissembled focal point, before branching in another path or falling down another hole. At the heart of it lies a core rotten, greasy ridden and rendered into a noxious poison, which ironically produces the required cleaning agents to maintain the cleanliness of good home and health. Hilbig’s prose easily eclipses both Krasznahorkai László and Jon Fosse’s, being the forefather and progenitor, while happily plunging into the darkness of the existential, finding neither hope nor salvation within its darkness, but merely the parts worth reduction into the process of repurposing. “Old Rendering Plant,” is not an easy read, despite its physical length being quite consumable, Wolfgang Hilbig proves himself to be a master and wielder of the sentence, delighting in changing the form or disrupting perspective or introducing some new image and exploring its exaggerated components with frightening detail. I look forward to re-reading “Old Rendering Plant,” again in the future, and this time sitting down with the intention of reading it out loud, in order to follow and flow with the with the narrative, its cadences, its rhymes, and as well as marveling at Wolfgang Hilbig’s mastery of longwinded sentences, breathtaking in their extended strokes, the complete opposite to the pointillism of Herta Müller. It is interesting to wonder, if “Old Rendering Plant,” is allegorical in its composition? Hilbig of course denied the charge, refuting the claims that it allegorized or metaphorized the former East German state and the Stasi or the Holocaust; and while it’s easy to say that allegory is lazy interpretation, “Old Rendering Plant,” does appear to render and boil down German history from the Third Reich to the Holocaust to communist East German, as a way of expunging the past in order to greet the future, with all its grease smoke filled skies.

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

The Nobel Prize in Literature Nominations 1973

Hello Gentle Reader,

In 1973 the Nobel Prize in Literature moved beyond its pre-established borders and introduced a new continent into its purview, when it was announced that the Australian writer Patrick White was the years Nobel Laureate in Literature with the citation:

“For an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature.”

There is a somewhat tongue and cheek tone to the citation concerning the part: “[…] which has introduced a new continent into literature,”— as before receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, Patrick White was not popular among Australian readers and citizens. White’s writing was rooted in established staunch European and English literary traditions, and did not break any new ground either literary or geographically, but was a consummate novelist in his own right. Interestingly enough, Patrick White’s debut novel “Happy Valley,” was never re-issued in his lifetime, having only be reprinted in 2012, in commemorating White’s centennial birthday. “Happy Valley,” was written while White was a jackaroo, a job that his parents thought would be suitable to finally stamp out his sensitives, proclivities, and artistic ambitious for a career as a writer. In short it failed. White’s initial years as a stockman and agricultural worker of the land, proved to be dismal and unfulfilling, all the while establishing that he had neither the grit nor aptitude for the work. “Happy Valley,” in turn provides the debut of Patrick White’s European sensibilities that have been thrusted into a harsh and wild landscape that is both unforgiving and unwelcoming. Written in fragrant modernist style and producing a polyphonic stream-of-consciousness narrative stream. White made it very clear he was not a writer of egalitarian ideals, but relished in high culture with no interest in engaging in philistine merriment that was consumed and disseminated around him. “Happy Valley,” describes a remote community in the South East corner of Australia, desolate and beautiful it recounts the hardscape life of the inhabitants of the land, where everyone has a story regarding loss and loneliness and longing for escape, all the while being incapable of completely wrenching themselves from it into emancipation and liberty. Instead through distinct voices and vivid psychological cadence, Patrick White displays the characters forsake escape and resign themselves to sorrowful acceptance of their otherwise ordinary lives. “Happy Valley,” introduces the main concerns of Patrick White’s literary preoccupation with the extraordinary in the ordinary, depicted in intense psychological character studies, whereby the characters are imbued with a sense of intuitive and spiritual understanding of their otherwise pedestrian lives, which inevitably grants them further insight into their condition, by which language fails to adequately express their complexities in an external environment and so they are classified as deranged, eccentric, and delusional and cast out further and retreat increasingly inward. In this, Patrick White is a consummate psychological writer, exploring and spelunking ever further into the depths of consciousness and the interior realms of his characters.

In his subsequent novels: “The Aunt’s Story,” The Tree of Man,” “Voss,” “The Vivisector,” and “The Eye of the Storm,” Patrick White became the Australian explorer of the existential, but was still regarded in his homeland as being one with a European soul and had forsaken the ruff and tumble straightforward style of postcolonial Australia, for the complex and difficult modernism as the prevailing literary fashion of the time. In short, White’s reception in Australia would always be marked with muted response and remains so. Despite time abroad, returning to Australia and marveling at its intense geography and landscape instilled within White a sense of humility. “The Tree of man,” is considered Patrick White’s defining novel and his breakout success. “The Tree of Man,” places a microscope and focuses on the lives of the Parker family and their homestead within the Australian outback. The ordinariness of the everyday is transfigured within heightened poetic details and exploration of the psychological dimensions, proving that Patrick White had the European soul which alienated him so from the Australian literary, all the while recounting and celebrating the majestic beauty of the Australian landscape. Ordinary existence is never treated as mundane, it is heightened and exalted within a literary style that is complex and meandering to mimic the human experience of thought and relation to time. “The Tree of Man,” affirmed Patrick White as the premiere Australian modernist writer, one whose appreciation of Greek mythology as allegory, Judaeo-Christian mysticism, Jungian psychological theories, and a penchant for Joycean complexities and Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness ensure he was appreciated as a serious writer of high literary calibre.

In his award ceremony speech, Artur Lundkvist sought to balance out the Swedish Academy’s citation by both celebrating the introduction of the Australian-Oceanic continent into the literary pantheon by praising Patrick White’s exploration, display, and praise of the Australian landscape, by comparing him to great Australian pictorial artists of the time: Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale; but in turn focused on White’s literary achievements, which are less concerned with the preoccupations of Australian perspective, and instead are fixated experiences, perceptions, problems, and living situations which are intensely individualized, bypassing the provincial or national concerns, and moving into the universal and existential questioning of the human condition. In short, Artur Lundkvist praises the contrary insoluble qualities of Patrick White’s literary work, the harmonizing of the epic and poetic within the otherwise ordinary (albeit alienated/outsider) life.

As a Nobel Laureate, Patrick White’s laureateship was less political than his predecessors, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970) and Pablo Neruda (1971). This ultimately took the edge off of the prize to evade another heated debate regarding literary merit vs political posturing and pandering. The reception of Patrick White’s laureateship was equally ceremoniously without issue, and the debate within the Swedish Academy was civil. Of course, this was not the first time Patrick White had been discussed or nominated. In the year prior he was on the shortlist with winner Henrich Böll, and future laureates Eugenio Montale (1975) Günter Grass (1999). While in 1971, Patrick White was included on the shortlist along with W.H Aude, André Malraux, and Eugenio Montale.

A total of 101 writer were nominated for the award in 1973. The shortlist for 1973 was as follows:

Patrick White (Laureate for 1973)
Saul Bellow (would win 1976)
Anthony Burgess
William Golding (would win 1983)
Eugenio Montale (would win 1975)
Yiannis Ritsos

After the votes had been tallied the Swedish Academy decided on a majority that Patrick White would be the suitable laurate for the year. Saul Below with five votes was a close second, and the then Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Karl Ragnar Gierow, threw his preferable support behind Saul Bellow and Yiannis Ritsos, who got four votes. Anthony Burgess, William Golding, and Eugenio Montale each received three votes. Of these three, Eugenio Montale would go on win the award in 1975 and can be considered the last great Italian poet of the 20^th century to receive the honour. While, William Golding, the small British phenomenon of no importance (to quote, Artur Lundkvist) would go on to receive the award in 1983, and is remembered for his dreary and drab parabolic novel “The Lord of the Flies.”

It is interesting to see the Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos being discussed. No doubt his name will crop up again in the subsequent years and a debate come to head between himself and Odysseus Elytis, both with extremely different poetry differences. Despite hating being referenced as a ‘political poet,’ Yiannis Ritsos poetry was renowned for cutting its teeth in the political arena and discourse, as Ritsos was politically aligned to the left and was a documented Communist Party member. Unsurprisingly, Ritsos found himself routinely persecuted and imprisoned for his political allegiances and involvement. In 1975 Yiannis Ritsos received the Lenin Peace Prize, which the poet famously remarked meant more to him then the Nobel Prize. Over the 1970’s it is likely that Yiannis Ritsos will continue to be discussed as a potential laureate and maybe viewed as an oppositional figure to sunlight infused surrealism of his countrymen Odysseus Elytis.

Other notable nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973 included:

Elie Wiesel (32 nominations)
W.H. Auden (12 nominations)
André Malraux (8 nominations)
André Chamson (5 nominations)
Juline Green (5 nominations)
Gyula Illyés (5 nominations)
Vladimir Nabokov (5 nominations)

It has become apparent by this time, that the Swedish Academy had confirmed their resignation to disavow W.H. Auden from being considered any further due to his advancing age. Auden, in turn died September 29, 1973 at 66 years old, which by todays standards would still have put him in viable contention. André Malraux also found himself now firmly seated on the back bench of the Swedish Academy. Interesting that Elie Wiesel was nominated with such vigor, and while it does not surprise me that he was nominated, considering his monumental and poignant work “Night.” Wiesel would go on receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, not only for his literary production but for his continued humanitarian work. In the case of Vladimir Nabokov, the Swedish Academy had made their positions on his work very clear, as they found the work “Lolita,” which they found as immoral and perverse, which was the exact opposite of Vladimir Nabokov’s intentions when writing the novel.

Nominations for the 1973 Nobel Prize in literature included many future Nobel Laureates:

Eyvind Johnson (1974)
Harry Martinson (1974)
Vicente Alexiandre (1977)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)
Odysseus Elytis (1979)
Elias Canetti (1981)
Claude Simon (1985)
Camilo Jose Cela (1989)
Nadine Gordimer (1991)
V.S. Naipaul (2001)
Doris Lessing (2007)

The following list of writers were first nominated in 1973, of them, only two nominated writers would receive the award, the Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre in 1977, and the Yiddish literary master Isaac Bashevis Singer.  

Conrad Aiken (died 1973, making him ineligible)
Vicente Aleixandre (1977)
Antonio Aniante
Miodrag Bulatovic
Albert Cohen
Adolfo Costa du Rels
Indira Devi Dhanrajgir
Eugen Jebeleanu
Yasar Kemal
Zenta Maurina
Henry Miller
John Crow Ransom
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)
Pratapnarayan Tandon
Paul Voivenel
Martin Wickramasinghe
Chiang Yee
Xu You

The Swedish Academy’s deliberations during the 1973 prize also showcased a continued conversation regarding the nominations of both Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, two Swedish writers and members of the Swedish Academy. Precedence had already been set that the Swedish Academy could award one of its own members with the prize, as in the case of the moralist Pär Lagerkvist who received the award in 1951 with minimal controversy. Lagerkvist in turn was a continued nominator and supporter of both Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson. Artur Lundkvist previously expressed concerns in the 1972 deliberations of the prize:

“It is not only highly respectable but almost inevitable that Mr. Lagerkvist, as a former Swedish Nobel laureate within the Academy, in this way insists on yet another Nobel Prize for an academy colleague. But in its ultimate consequence it involves the prospect of recurring rewards to academy members, and that is something that, in my view, should be avoided. [. . .] My opinion is that one should think very carefully before awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to a Swede at all, and that in the current situation there is a special reason why this does not happen.”

In 1973, however, the pressure to consider a Swedish writer as eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature had mounted. Then Chairman of the Nobel Committee and Permanent Secretary Karl Ragnar Gierow, decided to discuss the topic in length, bypassing the Nobel Committee’s more reserved silence on the matter as a polite mere non-issue. In 1973, Gierow observed that there were only three Swedish writers whose work was assessed to meeting the standard of the Nobel Prize in Literature at the time: Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson and Vilhelm Moberg, writing:

“Also, on this year's list of proposals, they assert themselves well. Harry Martinson is not behind Ritsos in lyrical richness and is more original. Eyvind Johnson and Vilhelm Moberg measure themselves in epic power with the storytellers, who this year are in the foreground, this said in full awareness that no one is strictly measuring themselves against anyone else: there is no reliable and manageable measuring stick.”

Of course, Karl Ragnar Gierow understands the risks, noting that it could damage the reputation of the Nobel Prize and the Swedish Academy itself. Yet, the question was not a discussion of pure literary merit, but a conversation of optics and suitability. Artur Lundkvist had previously argued against the irreconcilable unsuitability of awarding members of the Swedish Academy, and while Karl Ragnar Gierow highlights the defining concerns presented by Lundkvist, he eloquently disregards them, as suitability is not a defining feature of the Nobel Prize in Literature, but literary merit, at which trumps all concerns over nationality, religion, political allegiance, race or another exterior concern. Karl Ragnar Gierow further argued against the exclusion of association of the academy or direct membership, noting that in previous years past with the science prizes, laureates from their respective academy and awarding institutions had also been inducted into laureateship, to exempt or exclude members of the Swedish Academy was viewed as unreasonable consideration on the grounds of suitability. Karl Ragnar Gierow continued with almost a sardonic tone that if the Swedish Academy (who included both a blend of academics and writers) is to punish and bar its own members from being considered on their literary ground, it should avoid appointing remarkable literary talent to its ranks, in order to spare them the voidance and exclusion of never being considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature, regardless of their literary achievements.

One can admire Karl Ragnar Gierow’s perceived level-headedness as an administrator with the Swedish Academy, both as its Chairman of the Nobel Committee and as the Permanent Secretary. I think credit should be given to Gierow for decisively steering the Nobel Prize in Literature to being a literary award, moving away from literal interpretations of Alfred Nobel’s will regarding the ambiguity of “an ideal direction,” and instead push the Swedish Academy to bypass political and ideological fracturing and review candidates on their basis of their substantial literary production, and reviewed as individuals of merit, not through the exterior lens of personal quality, be it nationality, gender, race, religious belief or political association. To further this point, Karl Ragnar Gierow acknowledged that previous laureates in the awards history would not be considered great writers, with many being mediocre decisions in hindsight and are doomed to be forgotten. Despite Karl Ragnar Gierow’s eloquent rationale and defense of reviewing nominations on an individual candidate and merit base, the fallout of the shared award in 1974 would have lasting repercussions and impact on the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Prize in Literature. 1973 provides a glimpse into the deliberations that would lead into the following year, which will surely be a rousing debate and discussions, finally providing the clarity regarding the academy’s decision to grossly overvalue their position as arbitrators of literary taste, while favouring their own members. 

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

– XXIII –

The best advice regarding parties: always make an appearance, or else you risk being talked about.

Snowflake Symmetries, Winters Romantics

Hello Gentle Reader,

Winters arrival harks a paradox of responses, both chilled delight and frost bitten embittered refute. There’s something soothing about snow in that smothering Stockholm fashion. Its ability to conceal, completely whiteout landscapes, reducing them to a sheet of whiteness. Hoarfrost in particular is a beautiful feature of winter. The trees reduced, gnarled and bared, coronated in the delicate etchings of frost and snow, an otherwise crystal crown. Frost of any sort is fickle as it is transient. Though the sun maybe slow to awaken and gradual in its rise during its respite rest, it inevitably pulls itself from the horizon and despite its distance shines, leaving the trees with their threadbare pauper appearance. The emperors’ new clothes are a marvel, though lacking in durability. This year, winter seemed delayed. An early snap of cold and snow, but it gave way to unseasonable warmth. Not that many were complaining. Golfing in November is a rare treat. Still September swirled in temperatures that simmered, while October thankfully evened everything out with bearable temperatures. Yet, November that threshold month of winter and the slatestone month of cemetery greyness, defied precedence and preconceived expectations of what is expected of it, and remained warm even tepid, while the earth took on the visage of early spring: brown and molting. All the while lacking the spirit of life and rejoiceful soulishness of that spritely season. No, in its place remained an otherwise portrait of the landscape rusted into ruin, in every way scorched earth and parched at that. As December descended there was trepidation that the trend would continue. It would have appeared that Christmas would be one of little snow, to an otherwise scant amount, or worst: a bone-dry brown Christmas. Yet, finally snow came; not in the typical hollowing and waling of a blistering snowstorm, but a nightly surprise of sustained and continued shower of snowflakes. During the duration, the portrait of russet and brown desperation, was baptized in an indifferent and silent white. The air plated in a metallic aftertaste. Of course, the science is in too, winter sunsets are superior with their clear air, cold temperatures, and the positioning of the sun. Regardless, the defining feature of winter beyond its lengthened shadows; its otherwise plain austerity; its moonstone skies and mackerel scale clouds; is its snow. The great whiteout terraforming the land, concealing and burying a world and creating and reveling in a new one. In all, an empire of sparkle and silence.

As a child and student in primary school, I (in addition to my classmates) was informed that each snowflake on the ground, in a snowbank, or flittering from the sky was singular and unique, a geometrical marvel of ice crystals which formed in the atmosphere and continued their metamorphosis until they reached their earthly destination. As students and children, each of us accepted this fact in the same fashion as we accepted that the sky was blue, or that the seasons changed. Of course, we subscribed to the belief that an ancient and immortal jolly saint flew around the world once a year in a sleigh driven by flying reindeer, delivering merriment and gifts. Snowflakes being unique and independent in symmetry, shape, and form was not a stretch of belief. If memory serves correctly, the lesson concluded with a carefree exercise of making paper snowflakes which would then be used to decorate the seasons Christmas pageant (or perhaps the classroom—the utilitarian details have since faded). Interestingly enough, this informal lesson of snowflakes never mentioned the snowflake savant, Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley, who pioneered the study of atmospheric ice crystal formation and meteorological photography, specifically that of snowflakes.

Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley does not strike one as the most romantic figure. And as a lifelong bachelor, perhaps he wasn’t. Yet an interesting man with a fascinating curiosity into the transient and brilliant world of snowflakes. Before Bentley many naturalists and mathematicians had observed and written about the geometric complexities and marvels of snowflakes, with some attempting to sketch these otherwise transient crystals. Bentley, however, became the first to photograph and capture their inherent and unadulterated beauty, amassing a collection of 5, 381 photographs showcasing the diversity of snowflake structures. Not one to be sidelined as the artistic type, Bently maintained records and recordings of the conditions and storms which formed the snowflakes, which included the length and duration of the storm, the amount of snowfall, temperature, wind directions, even the conditions of the sky itself including time, the suns positioning, intensity, and brightness. Despite this, Bently had no scientific credentials or contacts and any articles he wrote were denied publication in any scientific or academic journals and his photographs remained a secret treasure. One can only imagine the frustration and alienation Bently was subjected to in his very private pursuit. The neighbours of his farm outside of Jericho, Vermont found him eccentric at best and weird at worst. Knowing people of a certain generation and attitude, his devotion to personal freedom as a bachelor and lack of romance and martial tether would also have caused a few whispers and discussions. Still, Wilson Bently carried on photographing and documenting the conditions of his snowflake study, eventually showing his work to George Perkins, former state entomologist and geologist of Vermont, turned dean of the natural science department of the University of Vermont. Perkins assisted Bentley getting some articles and photographs of the snowflakes published in Appletons' Popular Science Monthly. The Harvard Mineralogical Museum bought 400 of Wilson Bentley’s photographs and commended Bentley’s accompanying metrological observations and recordkeeping. A private obsession gradually became acknowledged as meritable research, and not just frivolity by an eccentric and artistically struck individual. A flurry of interest followed with Bentley publishing more articles, facilitating lectures on the nature of snow crystals, and his photographs were reproduced into prints and analogue lantern slides to be used for teaching purposes. In collaboration with George Perkins, Bentley was the first individual to theorize and argue that each snowflake was geometrically independent and unique, with no two being the exact same. Despite the influx of activity, interest, publication and dissemination of his work, Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley did not achieve financial success and would continue to live and work on the family diary farm with his brother, while maintaining an intense and enduring fascination with the beauty of snowflakes, and other meteorological curiosities and phenomena. Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley died December 23, 1931 due to complications caused by pneumonia. Just before his death, Bentley received a copy of the illustrated monograph of his work specialising in the study and capture of snowflakes called “Snow Crystals,” (1931) which contained 2, 500 of Bentley’s photographs.

The story and studious personal obsession of Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley is one of winter poetry. By being a metrological pioneer in not only studying snowflakes, but capturing photographic evidence of their singular symmetries and preserving their otherwise transient existence. Bentley’s own writings on snowflakes moved between empirical observation and rationale, to ethos with equal delight. Having described ice crystals as “ice flowers,” and snowflakes as “tiny miracles of beauty,” Bentley also wrote:

            “Was ever life history written in more dainty or fairy-like hieroglyphics,”

“The snow crystals . . . come to us not only reveal the wondrous beauty of the minute in Nature, but to teach us that all earthly beauty is transient and must soon fade away. But though the beauty of the snow is evanescent, like the beauties of the autumn, as of the evening sky, it fades but to come again.”

Beyond the capture and study of ice crystals, Wilson Bentley also was the first American to record raindrop sizes, and is often described as one of the first cloud physicists. All of which was accomplished from a small dairy farm just outside of Jericho, Vermont.

The state of Vermont brings to mind the imaginings of an unspoiled New England Eden, the one mythologized and so endeared by the eternal and quintessential American Poet Laureate, Robert Frost, who through colloquial and plain language pondered existential questions of the individual lost and adrift within an indifferent universe to both the hardships and joys of mortal existence. One of Frost’s most famous poems: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” is a complex poem depicting a lonely traveler during a winter evening at the threshold of some private woods, which lead to allusions of the peace of death and perhaps the temptation of suicide, as the speaker contemplates the soft and inviting darkening woods in a snowy evening; but pushes on as there are obligations and commitments to hold. As Robert Frost put it best: “the best way out is always through.” Of course, Robert Frost is only one of the many poets and writers who have found sanctuary within the charismatic landscape of Vermont. The Soviet dissident and gulag monk Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived in exile in the tiny village of Cavendish, before returning to a post-Soviet Russia in 1994. Vermont also held an endearing place for the late October Poet, Louise Glück, whose famous poetry collection: “The Wild Iris,” celebrates the garden of Vermont life, its rustic charms and remoteness, while capturing the diversity of character and personality of its flora. While Plainfield, Vermont proved to be the inspiration for the collection “A Village Life,” even though the setting has shifted from the rustic North Eastern New England landscape to one of brilliant sun and Mediterranean seas and mountains, but the human folly, regret, and condition is empathetically the same. 

While the snow has arrived and finds itself endangered by rising temperatures, losing its virgin whiteness, its youthful cloud-land downy substance to melt and refreeze in crusted peaks of dirty meringue, I find myself thinking of Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley and his enduring appreciation for snowflakes. His love of the winter season. Though Canada enjoys to calling itself a northern nation, it has done nothing too little to develop its northern territories or protect and safeguard artic sovereignty. Canadian’s love of winter is thin to the point of borderline bitter; where the Nordic nations have an appreciation and love of winter, embracing its challenges and revelry, where in spite of its darkness they light up even further. Bentley’s studies of snowflakes and photographs have injected a sense of life back into the season, especially since the snow was overdue in its arrival, and now finds itself existentially threatened. Despite winter being a harsh season with its bitter cold and darkened skies, it is not without beauty or wonder as Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley proved with his photographs and his poetic waxing and waning lectures regard the beauty of snow, encompassing both the symmetries of snowflakes and the romantics for a season often denied such pleasures.

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