Présent by Yannick Renaud

    I realize that reviewing a French poetry book will not likely yield my blog immediate breakout popularity, but it’s worth talking about Yannick Renaud’s Présent. Based on the epigraphs Renaud curates to begin the collection, I went in expecting a series of meditations on time, but the book takes some unexpected turns that, if dark, are rewarding and command attention to Renaud’s project.

    Here’s how I read it.

    The opening epigraphs establish a series of theses. Renaud includes an excerpt from Cthulhu, la joie by Jean-PIerre Guay that reads, “Nous somme faits pour la joie et le bonheur qui sont en nous. Le reste est ténèbres, le reste est illusion.” To paraphrase the French, it’s essentially a call to prioritize joy and happiness in our lives as our core reality. Renaud also includes an extended passage from Philip Roth’s The Humbling in translation that essentially suggests to care about the instant. The moment, the moment, the moment. Nothing before, nothing after. If you could exist for a single moment, then you can go wherever you’d like. Roth acknowledges that it’s the simplest thing in the world and yet also the most difficult. 

    Two of the three core epigraphs place emphasis on the primacy of the moment, yet Renaud offers some strategic challenges that undercut the potentially hedonistic YOLO mentality that open the collection. I would be remiss not to mention that one of the epigraphs hints at this tension. From Jean-Luc Nancy’s <<Ici même à présent>>, Renaud cites, “Nous ne savons plus nous raconter à nous-mêmes. Nous n’avons plus de temps représentable – ni passé, ni avenir, ni présent.” My translation skills are poor, but essentially Nancy says that we no longer know how to recognize (or meet) ourselves; we are not able to represent times—not past, not future, not present. This incommunicability—or irreconcilability—of time and selfhood offers a challenge to the primacy of the present, which is continued in yet another epigraph for the first section of Renaud’s book: “le désert n’est jamais celui qu’on boit quand le présent se souvient du futur” (from Chien d’azur by José Acquelin). [My translation: the desert is never the one we drink when the present remembers the future]. There’s a sense of failed expectation, a disconnect between the present and the future.

    Moreover, the reference to a desert seems pointed, which leads to one of the core reasons I find Renaud’s project interesting. Often, writers explore the human dimensions and experiences of time. Consider how many poems, for instance, have dealt with the fear wasted time or calls to seize the day. Here, though, Renaud reframes these discussions to a more environmental framework. The reference to the desert in the epigraph, then, I think fits with the broader ecocritical framework of the text and challenges the presentism that feeds destructive impulses in favour of a stance towards longevity.

    This surprising turn of the temporal into an environmental direction emerges in apocalyptic language. There is a distinctly critical tone towards a collective “on” (we / us). Renaud offers a litany of our failings while (re?)empowering nature to destroy us. In one poem, Renaud writes, “On prend on craint on détruit, déluge dissout croissante la honte, racines foudroient les crânes cassants” (21). Essentially, we pillage and destroy and yet ultimately roots crush brittle skulls. The implication to me is that our failings are more embarrassing than truly disruptive. In another section, Renaud refers to “Colère gêne” (27), embarrassing anger and then refers to aspiring holy warriors (“les aspirants aux guerres saintes” 27) before suggesting land destruction: “on massacre le territoire” (27). The poem then references visions of brutality, explosions, pulverized bones and that we have died after exorcising “la splendeur ordinaire” [ordinary splendor] (27). 

    These visions of disaster and environmental destruction continue throughout the collection, sometimes more explicitly than others. Here’s a full-page example:

“Retour saison des destructions, des trompe-la-mort, gorges à peine couvertes, à peine artifice, visage peint, visage sain, géants de verre défilent avant que sans tain se voile l’averse.

On imprime l’insane, la logorrhée, le trop-plein, on persiste au-delà de sa verve, on vomit dans le dimanche des crucifiés.

On chérit la marche, contraint à baisser les yeux le ciel.” (41)

Renaud notes that the season of destruction has returned, which involves (among other things) cheating death and, my favourite line, “géants de verre” (glass giants) on parade. My understanding of Renaud’s thesis is that our focus on the present facilitates a number of destructive and thoughtless habits that allow us to “persiste au-delà de sa verve” (41)---we exist too long.

    The last line of the poem is a beautifully and philosophically put: “We cherish walking, forced to look down at the sky” (41). These strange inversions drive the collection as a whole. 

    The apocalyptic intersects with the introspective for a particularly existential effect. I’ll offer one more full page as an example:

“Ici l’entrain repose dénué des vagues euphories, on brime l’enfermement, dévore amnistie, carnage, présomption des vils, des hauts, des grats, on attise la nuisance, on prise l’effacement.

Ennui pour dompter le sable, la jeunesse, son desaveu, on rompt les cercles, l’élégance on travestit.” (37).

This is one area where Renaud refers to the effect on the human spirit of these destructive impulses. He references the spirit “dénué des vagues euphories”, essentially devoid of vague euphoria (although I also like the suggestion of nue—rendered naked?). The other imagery of confinement and carnage works alongside an assumption of the vile. Where we see an intersect, though, with time, seems to emerge in boredom. Renaud references boredom taming the sand, suggestive of an hourglass, I’m sure. Boredom is when time comes to a standstill. It seems to me an inversion of the primacy of experiencing the moment: when can the moment be experienced? When it is so slow, so boring, as to be notable. Ultimately, there’s somewhat of an optimism here in youth breaking cycles in disguised elegance—but how that is done is not really fleshed out in the collection.

    I thought Renaud’s work offered really striking imagery, rich metaphor, and snappy philosophical one liners. The first line in the poem is immediately engaging: “On imagine les portes là où pleuvent des briques” (15). We imagine doors where bricks are raining. The disconnect between doors and bricks is engaging, but also in terms of weight: the lightness or gentleness of rain combined with bricks offers an unsettling sense of impossibility. From there, the collection moves into a discussion of windows snapping shut (almost like guillotines) as “l’eau jamais ne rejoigne / la soif” (16) [essentially: water never relieves the thirst]. In the following stanza, Renaud refers to “un étang de cendre” (16), a pond of ashes that then grows larger and larger every hour. In some ways, it recalls the imagery of Ingeborg Bachmann—which is probably the most obscure reference I could make here, but you’re already reading a review about a Quebecois poet on an English blog, so…

    Before moving on, I’d like to reference a few of my other favourite lines from the collection. There are lines that resonate deeply, if abstractly. For instance, “la roue s’est inventée en roulant” (19): the wheel was invented in its rolling; there’s a temporal reference here of course in terms of the wheel of time, but also that moment-to-moment existence leads to forming the final product. In another poem, Renaud says that “on récolte poussière” (29), which means collect dust, but in “récolte” I read it more like “harvest” or “cultivate” and the more active engagement in the process seems more poignant to me. The idea of slowness that goes along with cultivating dust fits in with the temporal dimension of the work. Elsewhere, Renaud compares dawn and mischief and suggests that “qu’ombre indique piste du jour” (25), i.e. that the shadow marks the path for the day (the future encroaching back on us, perhaps?). The relationship between timeframes is critical to Renaud’s project.

 

    In terms of style, the collection is essentially one of prose poems. That said, I read the collection aloud in its French and, for all its darkness, it has some lovely aural qualities. There are repetitive sounds that have an entrancing effect, often with internal rhymes cycling through poems. A representative example is when Renaud draws on arboreal imagery and hence language. The arb-ab-abr sounds get mixed around, evoking the French arbre [tree], even when not explicitly used. For instance, he writes, “Maladies sélènes on arbore, densité calme, sifflotement, aux abrutis on cède le sort, des oiseaux les feux jaillissent du brasier” (24). Setting aside for a moment the beautiful idea of moon sickness and the apocalyptic fires reflected here, we have “arbore” and “abrutis.” While neither is a specific reference to les arbres, combined with the other imagery of the passage, evoke a tree-like spectre. Later, Renaud references “les forts on abhorre” (34). I can’t help but notice this particular trend, but there are numerous examples of lines that read smoothly.

    I’ll creep towards an ending for this review by referencing one of my favourite parts of the collection, wherein Renaud writes the following:

“Trouées dans l’heure on ne distingue plus, doigts entre les limbes, aubier fugace, de la pleine pointent percées d’étoiles qu’on aurait autrement crues mornes, soupçons cessent, accomplissent l’éveil des garçons et des filles, la nature a de ces manières.” (20)

I find this passage so rich in its sensual details. For example, the reference to the sapwood offers a poignant image. What is time if not slow and sticky sap? The philosophic bent to the poem is also engaging to me: the idea of embodying time, of it being indistinguishable and yet able to be pierced, is the kind of line that feels true, even if it’s a bit cerebral. There’s the touch of uneasy optimism in stars we “otherwise” would have considered gloomy and a decrease in suspicion. Yet, the fact that the poem closes with “la nature a de ces manières” (nature has its ways) offers a strangely ominous quality, considering the thunderous roots destroying skulls from earlier.

    This may be the most challenging French poetry collection I’ve read in recent years. It’s challenging linguistically and conceptually, but feels rich in its meditative and apocalyptic motifs. One can never be certain that they’ve understood poetry thoroughly, especially when one reads poetry in a second language. I’m sure there are nuances I’ve missed and unintended meanings I’ve projected, so apologies to Renaud and any francophones reading this review. I’m not even sure, for example, that I’ve correctly understood the thesis of the book—but if so, I think the misunderstanding is a productive one.

    Thank you for using this moment (or rather quick succession of present moments) to go on this journey with me. I hope it’s been enriching.

Milkman by Anna Burns

    When a novel is so completely original, clever, and fresh, it’s hard to know exactly where to start with a review. Falling into such a category is Anna Burns’ Milkman. While I finished it nearly a week ago, I haven’t been able to bring the right words to the experience. I’ll venture to begin, instead, by explaining why it was necessary for me to buy and read this book. It’s a delightful tripartite:

1. The vibrant pinks and oranges of the cover.

2. Its status as a winner of the Man Booker Prize (2018).

3. The back of the book, where the first two sentences read as follows: “In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one.”

    Being an aficionado of reading-while-walking, the book called my name. Despite the fact that people read from their phones while walking all the time, strangers routinely make comments—for better or for worse—on my apparently odd behaviour, so I felt a personal connection to the central character and the author immediately.

    The main character’s relatable affectation was the tip of the iceberg. As I dove into the book, I found the writing style, characters, plot, and themes of the text completely engrossing. Even though the pace of the book is slow, the narratological style repetitive, and the digressions into minutiae numerous, I felt compelled to read on. The compulsion is rare to find and, to me, is a good indicator of how finely wrought this book is.

    Allow me to begin with the premise of the story. Despite not being named, the milieu is central to the novel. The country is under immense political and religious duress; ideological divides and the resultant instability mean that many teenage citizens try to restore control over their lives by joining with local paramilitaries—and most families have at least one dead child as a result. Knowing that Burns hails from Northern Ireland biases me somewhat into believing that the story takes place in the Troubles of the 1970s, but the story has a universal quality that could easily set the story in areas of post-war strife like, say, Berlin or Palestine. Ultimately if Burns had wanted this to be an Irish-specific tale, she would have identified the city by name.

    Despite having a historical framework, I found myself frequently destabilized by the little details that pop up. For instance, middle sister’s maybe-boyfriend (this is how he is referred to throughout the novel) obtains a car part that comes from “across the water” (i.e. it’s a supercharger from a Bentley) and it’s seen as a scandal. There seems to be mistrust between both the U.S. and Russia, positioning the characters as in the midst of the Cold War, though their conflict is more localized—more immediate.

    These factors create an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion. The words of middle sister establish the framework for the story succinctly: 

“These were knife-edge times, primal times, with everybody suspicious of everybody. You could have a nice wee conversation with someone here, then go away and think, that was a nice, unguarded conversation I just had there — least until you start playing it back in your head later on. At that point you start to worry that you said ‘this’ or ‘that’, not because ‘this’ or ‘that’ were contentious. It was that people were quick to point fingers, to judge, to add on even in peaceful times, so it would be hard to fathom fingers not getting pointed and words not being added, also being judged in these turbulent times, resulting too, not in having your feelings hurt upon discovering others were talking about you, as in having individuals in balaclavas and Halloween masks, guns at the ready, turning up in the middle of the night at your door” (27-28).

The characterization of the milieu as “knife-edge” times is just excellent, and the way that middle sister characterizes those knife-edge times is wonderful. I love the deployment of a vague haze, like her use of ‘this’ or ‘that’, devoid of concrete examples. As a bit of a missed opportunity I think it would have been great to say that you worry about saying ‘this’ or ‘that’ not because ‘this’ or ‘that’ were contentious but because you  were meant to say ‘that’ when you said ‘this’ and ‘this’ when you were supposed to say ‘that’. The style encapsulates the vague haze of the society and the adopted anonymity when times are so uncertain. Characters are generally not given names; for one, certain ‘cultural’ names are forbidden, but also, given the rates of premature death, why give names beyond ‘eldest sister’ or ‘second brother-in-law’.  

    Ultimately, these knife-edge times drive the plot. While reading-while-walking, middle sister is approached by Milkman (not a milkman), who seems to have intimate knowledge of her and her family’s history. His presence is a threat in its own right, but it incites rumours that he and middle sister are in a relationship, that she is in high political standing, locally, by proximity to a paramilitary, and so on. Middle sister is already “beyond the pale” because of her reading-while-walking habits, but Milkman stalking her now makes middle sister’s mom paranoid that she isn’t getting married, incites doubt in her maybe-boyfriend (who, incidentally, it’s intimated will be on the receiving end of Milkman’s car bomb), and her local entanglements get increasingly complex.

    The main beats of the story are simple. Each chapter is rooted in one of middle sister’s interactions with Milkman and Anna Burns turns the screw each time. That said, the tangential stories provide rich characterization and ‘world-building’, as it were. Lest I give the impression that the book is predominantly historico-political, that serves as the backdrop but the story is essentially human.

    For instance, middle sister is in a maybe-relationship with maybe-boyfriend and the two are in perpetual, understated conflict. They have a routine, but not being necessarily official nor planning necessarily to wed, their relationship is in perpetual peril. It’s also a secret, which is a cause for her mother’s anxiety and feeds into the rumours that middle sister is involved with Milkman. There’s a colourful cast of characters, each of which inspire sympathy and repulsion. Off-putting to the neighbourhood, one boy is always singing doom and gloom about nuclear weapons—until he’s murdered. Another girl poisons people in the neighbourhood for mysterious reasons. The characters are provided with rich backstories in nearly every case. Even maybe-boyfriend’s parents are given a darkly comic background that made me feel invested in their lives. They decide to abandon their children to pursue careers in showbusiness:

“They had written a note, said the neighbours, but had forgotten to leave it; indeed primarily they had forgotten to write it and so had written it then forwarded it back from their undisclosed destination when they reached it, not deliberately undisclosed but because they hadn't time or memory or understanding to put a sender's address at the top. According to the postmark it was not just a country over a water, but a country over many, many waters. Also, they forgot their former address, the house they'd lived in for twenty-four years ever since getting married until twenty-four hours earlier when they left. In the end they'd hazarded the address in the hope the street itself might sort things out for them and, thanks to the resourcefulness of the street, it managed to do just that. It forwarded the letter to their offspring and this letter, after it had done the rounds of the neighbours before reaching the hands of the brothers, said: 'Sorry kids. Seeing things in right relation we should never have had children. We're just off dancing forever. Sorry again - but at least now you're grown up.' After this, there was an afterthought: ‘Well, those of you who aren't grown up can be finished by those of you who are - and look, please have everything- including the house.' The parents insisted their boys take the house, that they themselves didn't want it; that all they wanted was what they had with them — each other, their choreomania and their numerous trunks of fabulous dancing clothes. The letter ended, 'Goodbye eldest sone, goodbye second elder sone, goodbye younger sone, goodbye youngest sone - goodbye all dearr lovelyy sones’ but with no signature of ' parents' or 'your fond but lukewarm mother and father'. Instead they signed it 'dancers', then there were four kisses, after which the sons never heard from their parents again. Except on TV. Increasingly this couple would be on TV, because they proved themselves, despite middle age, exceptional youthful ballroom-dancing champions. (39)

Apologies for the lengthy passage, but I think it reflects a few of the quirks of Burns’ writing. There’s the repetitive language and sentence structures that recycle details over and over—perhaps there’s a Beckettian lilt to the work in that respect—that comes across as hypnotic, but also lively and full of personality. The ‘voice’ is so distinct, and in addition there’s a dark humour to the passage. The seriousness of the parents abandoning their children is undercut by their blasé attitudes as dancers and I find that disconnect fantastic.

    The disconnect also works in reverse. In a chilling flashback scene, middle sister’s father is in hospital and the perception of humour skews the scene darker. It’s revealed throughout the text that her father was mentally unwell, and middle sister has a distinct memory of a confession—a secret shared between them. When talking about his pain, Da mentions his backside, and “wee sisters giggled” (56). He talks about how the pain “kept coming, kept repeating, kept being awful, [his] whole life through” (56). He then expounds on his life in a self-effacing, self-abnegating way that is just awful to witness, particularly because middle sister’s mom is determinedly unsympathetic to Da’s mental illness. He explains, “there had been a recklessness, wife [...] an abandonment, a rejection of me by me that had begun years earlier — I was going to die anyway, wouldn’t live long anyway, any day now I’ll be dead, all the time, violently murdered — so he may as well have me, ‘cos he knew all along he was going to have me, couldn’t stop him from having me. All shut down. Get it over with. Not going freshly into that place of terror, which was why, wife, it never felt right between me and you” (56). It becomes clear that Da underwent significant sexual trauma in his younger years, but wee sisters don’t understand, so they continue to giggle throughout the scene. The wee sisters find humour in funny words (like “buttocks”), but are oblivious to the darkness taking place at the moment: 'Did he,' da then asked, looking straight at me and seeming for a moment fully to comprehend me, ‘Did he ...rape you, brother ... as well?’ (56). The complex family dynamic is given some additional tension, but the psychological turns are best left to the author.

    The entire novel, though, explores the psyche of characters so beautifully, with middle sister being developed particularly well. Her personality (and the milieu) comes through in the narration with an odd mix of sophistication and naivete. For instance, her vocabulary is advanced but conceptually she is still sometimes woefully innocent—for example, she sees her own life as being constructed by other peoples’ rumours, but doesn’t recognize that the same might be true of poisoner girl. That said, her consciousness of how things are is generally profound.

    There’s a section I found absolutely heart-wrenching, but too long to quote in its entirety here. Essentially, middle sister goes through a conscious process of prolonged dissociation. She actively chooses to render herself an expressionless void of a person. She recounts the process of emptying herself out over several uninterrupted pages. She likens the process to the adage told when making a face: you’re going to get stuck like that. That happens to her spiritually. Not wanting to confirm or deny rumours about her, she responds to everything with “I don’t know.” It’s a tragic passage that is elevated by Burns’ deft hand. [cf. pp. 175-179].

    Essentially, the section reflects at the individual level what middle sister had noticed of their society as a whole, but you go in with the expectation that she is somehow different, beyond the influence of her society’s deadening effect. She notes, “So shiny was bad, and ‘too sad’ was bad, and ‘too joyous’ was bad, which meant you had to go around not being anything, also not thinking, least not at top level, which was why everybody kept their private thoughts safe and sound in those recesses underneath” (91). Incidentally, this is brought up in relation to her father: “We thought, because we were told, that whenever he disappeared he was off to long hours of work, long days of work, lengthy weeks of work in some faraway town or country or, if not that, that he was seeing some specialist doctor far away because of the pains he was getting in his back. But it was mental hospitals, and it was mental breakdowns, which meant cover-up, which meant shame, which meant even more shame in his case because he was a man” (91).

    In any case, the novel revolves around themes of perception and what we are willing to admit to ourselves. In one crucial scene, a French teacher challenges one of the most basic truths we tend to learn: the sky is blue. They read a poem that gives a poetic response to the sky and nobody is willing to admit that more is possible. Using such a juvenile example as a starting place, it becomes emblematic of the text’s deeper themes: 

“Of course we knew really that the sky could be more than blue, two more, but why should any of us admit to that? I myself have never admitted it. Not even the week before when I experienced my first sunset with maybe-boyfriend did I admit it. Even then, even though there were more colours than the acceptable three in the sky – blue (the day sky), black (the night sky), and white (clouds) — that evening still I kept my mouth shut. And now the others in this class — all older than me, some as old as thirty -– also weren’t admitting it. It was the convention not to admit it, not to accept detail for this type of detail would mean choice and choice would mean responsibility and what if we failed in our responsibility? Failed too, to the interrogation of the consequence of seeing more than we could cope with? Worse, what if it was nice, whatever it was, and we liked it, got used to it, were cheered up by it, came to rely upon it, only for it to go away, or be wrenched away, never to come back again? Better not to have had it in the first place was the prevailing feeling, and that was why blue was the colour for our sky to be. Teacher though, wasn’t leaving it at that. (70-71).

In rewriting that passage, it occurs to me that there’s a thematic connection to one of my favourite books of all time, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. This refusal to admit what we secretly know—to both be told and not be told—that fills our lives with so much tragedy is illuminated here. The officially mandated colours of the sky are clearly insufficient, but because the characters feel their happiness to be so precarious that they dare not embrace that which is more beautiful. The idea of not being able to cope with the loss of the sky’s colours is a poetic, heartbreaking turn.

    The theme extends into their romantic lives. There’s a motif throughout the book of people having, essentially, a true love and then the person they actually marry for practical and political reasons. Again, its reminiscent of Never Let Me Go in that respect, but it’s articulated beautifully here in its own right. In particular, there’s a section at the end where middle sister’s mother is faced with the decision to pursue the milkman (not to be confused with Milkman, of course). He is probably her proper love, but then is essentially told by the local women to give him up so that a long-suffering woman can lay claim to him instead. It’s painful and sincere and just a beautiful turn in the final pages of the book. Incidentally, file this book under: “books that have a perfect final sentence.”

    Actually, there are so many excellent moments and vignettes throughout the book. When maybe-boyfriend criticizes middle sister for her voiding, it’s a powerful conflict. She narrates, “At first I was stumped which gave him time to fit in extra charges of an unattractive numbed state he had observed was creeping over me, that he felt was starting to invade and possess me, saying it was as if I was no longer a living person but one of those jointed wooden dollies that artists use in — which was when I had to stop him because I couldn’t bear for him to finish on my growing numbed condition only to start in on my face” (193-194). The fact that he turns on her for that is a powerful moment, followed up a few pages later [cf. 199-202] by him confronting her on her reading-while-walking habit.

    So, what is the problem with reading-while-walking? A number of characters, well-intentioned and not, challenge her behaviour. It’s largely framed as being apolitical, or anti-political, in a time that one cannot afford to be. Third brother-in-law, for example, speaks to her seriously not about Milkman, but about her reading:

“he embarked on a careful disquisition that I guessed he'd been having for some time in his head. This was on the subject of my reading-while-walking. Books and walking. Me. And walking. And reading. That thing again. [...] 'It's that I think, said third brother-in-law, 'that you should not do that, that it's not safe, not natural, not dutiful to self, that by doing so you're switching yourself off, you’re abandoning yourself, that you might as well betake yourself for a stroll amongst the lions and the might tigers, that you’re putting yourself at the mercy of hard and cunning and unruly dark forces, that you might as well be walking with your hands in your pockets–-' 'Wouldn't be able to hold the book then—’ ‘Not funny. he said, 'It's that anybody could sneak up. They could run up,' he emphasised. 'Drive up. Good godfathers, sister-in-law! They could dander up, with you — defences down, no longer alert, no longer strenuously reconnoitring and surveying the environment and if you’re reading aloud—’ [...] This was getting ridiculous. 'But if you're undertaking the unsafe procedure of reading-while-walking and cutting off consciousness and not paying attention and ignoring your surroundings…” (58).

I adore these passages (and there are several) where people voice their critiques. The idea that reading is positioned as a withdrawal is, in my mind, backward, but given appropriate attention as a criticism. I also love the phrasing and dismissive attitude of middle sister: “Books and walking. Me. And walking. And reading. That thing again” is just a perfect rejection of peoples’ criticism. When he later brings up the walking-while-reading criticism again, she starts to make objections: “‘Okay,’ I said. ‘’So if I were to stop walking-while-reading, and hands in pockets, and little night torches, and instead looked right and left and right again for dangerous, unscrupulous forces, does that mean I’ll end up happy?” (63). The sentence which follows is just brutal: ““It’s not about being happy,’ he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I’ve ever heard” (63). The way that Burns takes such a simple premise as walking-and-reading and transforms it into something so symbolic is finely crafted, especially when given voice by her central character. Again I find myself reflected in her:

“It was my opinion that with my reading-while-walking I was doing both at the same time. And why should I not? I knew that by reading while I walked I was losing touch in a critical sense with communal up-to-dateness and that, indeed, was risky. It was important to be in the know, to keep up with, especially when things here got added on to at such a rapid compound rate. On the other hand, being up on, having awareness, clocking everything—both of rumour and of actuality—didn’t prevent things from happening or allow for intervention on, or reversal of things that had already happened. Knowledge didn’t guarantee power, safety and relief—leaving no outlet for dispersal either, of all the heightened stimuli that had been built by being up on in the first place. Purposely not wanting to know therefore, was exactly what my reading-while-walking was about. It was a vigilance not to be vigilant, and my return to exercising with brother-in-law, that too, was part of my vigilance” (65).

You have likely inferred by now that this novel has a philosophical bent to it. I think—and I may be overreaching here—that classic literature walks the balance of the narrative, the aesthetic, and the philosophical. At times, the philosophical can be outright heavy handed (consider for instance the treatise George Orwell embeds into 1984). But the best novels have a gentle touch where the philosophy and the narrative compliment one another. In my mind, Burns has achieved that balance and Burns has created a classic. 

    The fog of war that surrounds the novel allows for all kinds of observations about perception, identity, fate, hope, and epistemology. I was drawn in particular to the reflections on perception and Burns’ suggestion of the jamais vu, a blanking out of that which cannot be accepted (in Ishiguro terms: being both told and not told). Middle sister is concerned about the renouncers forcing on her a comprehensive and thus conflicting opinion of them. She says:

“This is what happens when doors swing open on inner contraries. Impossible then, with all these irreconcilables, to account, not just politically-correctly, but even sensibly for oneself. Hence, the dichotomy, the cauterising, the jamais vu, the blanking-out, the reading-while-walking—even my consideration of whether to forgo the current codex altogether for the safety of the scroll and papyrus of earlier centuries. Otherwise, if unmediated forces and feelings burst into my consciousness, I wouldn’t know what to do” (113).

This willed lack of complexity is a compelling idea to consider from the perspective of epistemology and returns us once more to the idea of the sky having more than three potential colours. The way that Burns navigates the individual amid the political is so perceptive, so persuasive, I found it hard to resist. 

    Essentially. The intertwining of the milieu with the plot with the themes—and heck, even the narrative voice—makes the whole experience aesthetically gratifying in every respect, so much so that in attempting to the book justice I’m consistently failing. Milkman is a one-of-a-kind reading experience, though it would likely appeal to fans of Ishiguro for its more human themes, Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile meets Miriam Toews’ a complicated kindness for its milieu, or even Beckett or Joyce for its language. Being a book so finely honed and being a book like no other, I feel that Milkman has earned my highest praise. It’s the kind of book I want to force on all my most thoughtful friends and on all my most engaged students. I love its sweet, slow burn.

    Really happy reading! This book is an absolute achievement.

Eye on Design #05: Distraction edited by Perrin Drumm

    When you lift this book from the shelf, you immediately see its striking hot pink cover, devoid of title or authorship. The book gives no indication of what it is and instead offers fourteen impenetrable eyes staring back at you. It’s a bold move for a bold publication. Edited by Perrin Drumm, Eye on Design #05: Distraction is an arts and design magazine, offering a range of articles, interviews, profiles, and artwork with an emphasis on—what else?—design.

    The magazine takes to heart Marshall McLuhan’s adage that “the medium is the message.” Given that the theme of the issue is ‘distraction,’ the editors of Eye on Design make a conscious decision for a maximalist approach. Following their prefatory manifesto, they make use of odd breaks and text size, fake ‘pop-up’ ads linking to other articles, vibrant page colours, different paper types, and so on. It’s visually abrasive by design and works perfectly for the ‘vibe’ of the issue.

    When it comes to content, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, generally positive. The first piece in the collection is “All of the Lights: How Times Square became the glowing heartbeat of New York City” by Liz Stinson. The piece is (pardon the pun) illuminating, with footnotes giving specifications of how big ads must be, how bright, and so on: “Special Times Square signage requirement: There shall be a minimum of one #illuminated sign# with a #surface area# of not less than 1,000 square feet for each 50 linear feet, or part thereof, of #street# frontage of Seventh Avenue or Broadway” (15). It’s interesting to hear a bit of the history and the contradictions of the space, where ads are the attraction and where people stop to look, though theoretically targeted ads should be more arresting. The magazine format, perhaps, does not give sufficient space for a thesis to be developed from these observations, but I would like to have seen that premise developed further.

    Madeleine Morley’s essay, “Hands on My Hard Data: Online pornography is designed for the ultimate money shot”, is compelling for several reasons. The essay is multifaceted. On one hand there’s a discussion of the economics of the pornography industry. On another, the essay explores pornography websites as tech innovators (e.g. subscription-based content models, online credit card payment encryption, etc.) Morley mines the subject matter for broader societal commentary, including a discussion of how “ Acts that used to be marginal—kink or subcultural—have grown instantly recognizable through online indexing” (30). The rest of that paragraph discusses the way the algorithm assures people that “no one is alone with her abhorrent desires, and no desires are abhorrent” (30). Then it highlights the contradiction of how so many types of people and preferences are not represented or exoticized in a harmful way.

    But of course design is the primary purpose for the conversation. What appears to be horrible design of porn sites turns out to be extraordinarily effective: “the UX design of these sites keeps users clicking and abiding by the age-old rule of desire: The best way to keep someone interested is to keep them guessing” (27). Morley’s essay implies that the industry feeds an ever-fleeting sense of satisfaction, never being quite right or quite tailored to the user experience: impossible climax. Again I’m reminded of Jacques Ellul’s commentary on technology removing free choice for individuals. Morley writes, “In consumer culture, variety is the illusion of choice. It instills the belief that you’ll eventually find what you’re looking for. When you browse a store at IKEA, or the shelf of a supermarket, sheer overload implies that somewhere among it all you’ll find exactly what’s right for you. [...] Porn tubes function on this same seductive principle. By giving you so much—almost too much—to look at, you keep clicking and browsing, believing that eventually you’ll find your perfect clip” (27). Porn notwithstanding, this is a societal phenomenon. As one of my old high school teachers would say, “You have the choice between McDonald’s and Wendy’s—that is, no choice at all.”

    Despite the terrible design, Morley’s thesis is essentially that the distracting layout, pop-ups, etc. promote a lack of satisfaction, meaning more time on site, meaning more time that they can mine your data. The most explicitly stated thesis of the essay is provided in its final lines: “If we define what is best by that which serves its specific purpose most efficiency, and if we agree that the purpose of a data giant is to create an interface that will distract users in order to mine them, then Pornhub’s ultimate goal is easily within its reach” (32).

    Speaking of horrible design, another essay in the collection explores the “Acid Art” craze. Personally, “acid art” does little for me, but having a historical / sociological backdrop for the movement helps me to appreciate it. The art included reflects the conscious decision for clashing colours and unstomachable fonts. It’s subversive, which I always appreciate, but there’s a counter-movement that suggests maximalism will run its course like so many other trends. There are only so many possibilities. Emily Gosling quotes other artists strategically. Anja Kaiser “sidestep[s] the hallucinogenic connotations of the word ‘acid’” by saying she likes “the notion of visualizing in a biting and sour manner” (72), drawing on the subversive mode of 80s punk zines. Meanwhile, Hoppmann (Hugo Hoppmann?) “is skeptical about both the label ‘acid graphics’ and the dilution of the style as it has rocketed. ‘I don’t get really excited by it. For e, maximalism [can just be] lazy—just a lot of crazy graphics” (75-76). I really appreciate the way “Style Before Substances: A new, futuristic take on ‘acid graphics’ is well and truly here. But for how long?” gives an outline of some of these key questions in a balanced fashion.

    In a slightly more strange balance, Perrin Drumm’s piece “Queen’s Quest: The world’s first graphic computer game designer is famous for all the wrong reasons” is a profile of Sierra co-founder Roberta Williams. It’s a nostalgic piece for me, having loved and adored Sierra point-and-click and text-based games growing up. I loved gaining insight into the rise and fall of Roberta Williams’ video game career. The weird part of the essay, though, is that after pages of aggrandizing Williams, Drumm then takes the final few pages to talk about how Williams is not the feminist icon people build her up to be. It feels strangely tacked on, inorganic to the rest of the essay. I understand Drumm’s point: rewriting history to be more positive than it was, like suggesting that the video game industry wasn’t profoundly sexist, can be harmful. I get it, but that was a separate essay to what was a compelling profile.

    Claire Evans’ profile on Jaime Levy, “Picking Up the Cyber Slack”, was also compelling—though admittedly I have no familiarity with Levy’s work. Nonetheless it gives an excellent sense of her abrasive and subversive personality and the feeling of the 90s dotcom explosion. It offers a compelling case for Levy being a pioneer of the internet before the internet. 

    I won’t attempt to catalogue every piece in this collection. I’ll gesture towards a few of the short pieces that were nice but not quite incisive enough: there’s a conversation between three educators about the role of Instagram in arts classrooms, a piece about the emergence of selfies in art galleries, and a history of screensavers. Each are interesting concepts but needed, in my mind, a stronger angle or defence thereof. 

    Towards the end of the magazine, designers create art pieces reflective of their last 24 hours’ browsing history. There are some cool visualizations in profoundly different styles. One that most grabbed my attention was a wall of QR codes. Out of curiosity, I tried to scan a bunch of them—most went to Netflix and one went to a youtube link of “Bohemian Rhapsody”. I’d love to see that wall explode even further—a treasure trove or scavenger hunt: who knows what you’ll find?

    The last piece in the magazine is a quiz in the style of 90s teen magazine vomit. I loved it. It fit the aesthetic perfectly and the humorous tone was well-delivered. It asks “What Kind of Procrastinator Are You” and offers sarcastic and humorous takes on our distraction-centered economy. It was a nice amuse-bouche (does it still count as an amuse-bouche after the meal?

    To really get the full experience, Eye on Design #05: Distraction is a book that really must be seen and touched. The visual is at the forefront. The tactile, possibly influenced by Flair (there is a short essay praising Flair), sets the book as the material object it’s always supposed to have been. There are a lot of smart choices with this “distracting” text. 

    The compact 157 pages are a nice ride. There’s a fun diversity of content that can really expand some horizons and open up questions on design and its sociological ramifications. It’s pretty darn cool.

    Happy reading!

Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith

    Danez Smith’s poetry collection, Don’t Call Us Dead, finds itself at the junction of poetic genres: spoken word, “literary”, and a sprinkling of Instagram poetry. Even listing these supposedly separate categories betrays a certain bias on my part, of course, but I do think there are different ‘modes’ throughout the collection, some more successful than others.

    I appreciate that the most Instagrammable poetry is the smallest portion of the collection, as I think it’s Smith’s weakest work as presented here. There’s a poem, for example, that lists circumstances in which a white boy says the n-word for a few lines and then the other half of the poem is the n-word repeated. The poem  “fear of needles” reads in its entirety: “instead of getting tested / you take a blade to your palm / hold your ear to the wound” (40). The fact that the three lines are centre-justified don’t do it any favours. There are a spattering more, but the worst offender is -” a love story -”: “he came/over // & then he left // but he stayed” (43). Those poems feel like incomplete brainstorming to me. I know there’s a market out there for short pithy phrases with line breaks, but to me these are underdeveloped.

    Luckily, the number of performance-based pieces and “literary” pieces significantly outnumber the Instapoems. Thematically, there are essentially two or three core ideas. Many of the poems revolve around the murder of Black boys at the hands of racist white people, and especially police. Others revolve around sex—especially in relation to current technology and apps—and then by extension Smith’s experiences contracting HIV. The best poems in the collection are able to bring issues together in an intersectional way that feels lacking in the collection overall. In :every day is a funeral & a miracle”, for example, Smith refers to both police violence and the poet’s HIV positive status. After a longer depressing piece, somewhat contradictorily, Smith writes, “look, i’m not going to manufacture / any more sadness. it happened. / it’s happening” (66). The poem continues: “America might kill me before i get the chance. / my blood is in cahoots with the law. / but today i’m alive, which is to say // i survived yesterday, spent it / ducking bullets, some / flying toward me & some / trying to rip their way out” (66). It’s one of the passages that brings together the interior and the exterior threats to Smith’s life, which gives it greater weight than the single-issue poems.

    There are poems in the collection that paint an effective scene. The multi-part poem “seroconversion”, for example, develops extended metaphors in highlighting peoples’ relationships, with varying success. For whatever reason, I think Smith’s poems about sexuality and online behaviour are the most troubling and therefore most compelling. For example, “elegy with pixels & cum” is about a deceased gay porn star. It’s a disturbing piece that highlights the sexualization and dehumanization of Javier “Kid Chocolate” Brown. The piece makes me squirm in its balance of mourning and sexualization, in delving into the subject’s legacy. For instance, these lines are just brutally uncomfortable: “your mother watches you choke a man into pleasure, can’t look away, just misses her kid. / men gather in front of screens to jerk & mourn” (48). Smith tries to resist the easy judgments we might make and casts aspersions on systems designed for erasure: “i bet they had a pastor who didn’t know you do your eulogy, kid. / they turn our funerals into lessons, kid” (48). The fact that Smith continually refers to him as a kid is a further turn of the screw, offering an innocence many would see as a disconnect from his job.

    In a more personal piece, Smith co-opts dating app interactions into a poem (oh, what glorious source material for found poetry!). The piece ends up a tender reflection of the loneliness and insecurities in all of us. For example, they write of “the three men who say they weigh more than 250 pounds / fill their profiles with pictures of landscapes, sunsets / write lovely sonnets about their lonely & good tongues” (32) —again a blend of the tender and the sordid. The poem juxtaposes that sweet sadness with “men with abs between their abs [who] write ask or probably not interested in you” (32) in their profiles. Smith’s speaker’s tenderheartedness is evident partway through the poem: “the boy down the street won’t stop messaging me, i keep not responding / i thought about blocking him, but i don’t want him to think i am dead” (32). That gutting consideration of others, despite such a demonstrably impersonal medium, is a beautiful kind of sadness. The poem has a sociological focus, too, where Smith documents profiles that say “No Fats, No Fems, No Blacks” —the latter even appearing on profiles of Black men. It’s a poem for a particular historical moment; it may not be one we read 500 years from now, but it is one that is is a great representation of critical conversations of today. 

    Stylistically, there is a mix of literary and spoken-word influences. In the poem “1 in 2”, which is a reference to the fact that the CDC estimated in 2016 that 1 in 2 black men who have sex with men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, there’s a list-poem format often seen in spoken word, but the items are elevated by their literary quality. It reads as follows: “you went in for a routine test & they told you what you were made of: // -honey spoiled into mead / -lemon mold / -broken proofs / -traffic tickets / -unidentifiedshard / -a shy, red moon / -a book of antonyms / -the book of job / -a lost child unaware of its name” (61). I really appreciate the mixture of images here that helps to create a picture—to form an experience.

    Throughout the collection, there are some oft-used tropes from performance poetry and beyond. Smith, for instance, evokes the sermon-like approach of naming newsworthy (who decides that, exactly, anyway?) murdered black boys. There are images of leather boots to connote cops and murderous oceans to connote slavery. Once in a while, Smith pulls off an incredible turn. For instance, in “dear white america”, Smith subverts claims to antiracism with a haunting turn of phrase: “i am equal parts sick of your go back to Africa & i just don’t see race. neither did the poplar tree” (25). That short sentence is such a brutal allusion that offers the perfect critique of the “i just don’t see race” line racists like to hide behind. It’s the dramatic equivalent of Trevor Noah’s gibe at Tomi Lahren’s claim that she doesn’t see colour: “What do you do at a traffic light?” In that same poem, Smith paints a scene at a black boy’s funeral: “i tried, white people. I tried to love you, but you spent my brother’s funeral masking plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones” (25). Those masterful juxtapositions are one of the highlights of Smith’s style.

    At the core of Don’t Call Us Dead is somewhat of a contradiction. The title is celebratory in nature, yet the subject matter places death at the forefront. While the poems gesture toward  joy, the tone is nonetheless elegiac (even though one poem is called “not an elegy”). The collection as a whole is then a little muddled tonally, despite its streamlined and focused content. It’d be nice, actually, to see more diversity in the content of the pieces, though I understand the political and sociological impulse of the work.

    Ultimately, Don’t Call Us Dead has some real gems and some truly powerful moments. It also has some pieces that do not yet have a distinctive voice. It’s a bit of a mixed result and remains subject to the same challenge, sometimes, as film scripts: the words on the page need the performer to bring them to life. Seeing Smith perform would likely be the way to elevate this collection to the next level.

    Happy reading!