The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

I’m not really sure where to begin with Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, so the first page seems as good a place as any. The first thing you’ll notice is the second person narration. You wake up. You might as well go back to sleep. The second paragraph reads as follows:

You were born without a heartbeat and kept alive in an incubator. And, even as a foetus out of water, you knew what the Buddha sat under trees to discover. It is better to not be reborn. Better to never bother. Should have followed your gut and croaked in the box you were born into. But you didn’t. (3)

I find that most books in the second person write about “you” as a generic figure, a featureless pronoun that the reader can insert themselves into. So, it’s interesting that Karunatilaka posits such a specific detail about “your” birth. As the first page progresses, “you” become even more defined, you quit art class, you played chess, and so on. Then Karunatilaka does something really interesting: you’re given an imaginary business card. It tells you your name (Maali Almeida) and your qualifications (“Photographer. Gambler. Slut.”).Consequently, you are simultaneously yourself and an other: both “you,” the reader, and the character, Maali Almeida.

Far later in the book, there’s a passage that illuminates this narrative choice and reveals the cleverness of Karunatilaka’s voice as a writer. Before explaining in full, I’ll just briefly mention that the book deals with the afterlife and reincarnation and fate and spirits and all that jazz. At a critical moment in the story, “you” (Maali Almeida) narrate that

Humans believe they make their own thoughts and possess their own will. This is yet another placebo we swallow after birth. Thoughts are whispers that come from without as well as within. They can no more be controlled than the wind. Whispers will blow across your mind at all times and you will succumb to more of them than you think. (346)

The novel has shown the ghosts influence the living and calls into question the idea of free will, so it’s actually kind of a masterful touch that from the outset of the novel “you” are thrown into a situation where you’re not in control of your own identity. This is all the more relevant because—and here there are some spoilers—people are given the chance to reincarnate. In the after-after life, you are able to take various drinks with different effects: one makes you forget everything, one makes you remember everything, one is for if you’d like to forgive the world, one is if you want to be forgiven, and one is for if you’d like to go where you most belong (370). This idea of being sent to where you most belong, without memory, is essentially the set-up of the novel. You are thrust into an identity that is not your own and of which you have no memory. The use of the second person is a clever way of forcing you into the same fateful circumstances as the dead who took that drink.

Of course, all of this is getting kind of obscure if I don’t tell you the plot. Maali Almeida is Sri Lankan and worked as a photo-journalist. At the time, Sri Lanka is divided and numerous factions are fighting for its future. One chapter provides a helpful primer for the different forces at work. It outlines the LTTE (The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), the JVP (The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna), the UNP (United National Party), STF (Special Task Force), IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force), UN (United Nations), RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). All of those main players seem willing to slaughter civilians to meet their goals and the STF will abduct and torture members of the JVP or LTTE. Essentially: everyone is getting killed.

I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that I have no previous knowledge or association with the history of Sri Lanka. I have no horse in the race, as it were, so I could easily align with Almeida’s views and I feel like I was learning about something hitherto unfamiliar. The flip side of it is that I had a hard time following the ever-increasing number of characters. Given the number of characters and types of characters in the book (more on that momentarily), it was hard enough to remember their names let alone their political affiliations and motivations.

These motivations prove both critical and not to the story. I won’t be spoiling too much by revealing that you seem to have been murdered for political purposes. In fact, one of the highlights of the novel is following the mystery surrounding your death and watching the detectives investigating your disappearance. The detectives and your friends are in a race to solve your disappearance—and you’re up against the clock, too, because you only have seven moons to decide how you’re going to spend your afterlife.

Karunatilaka constructs an entire world for the afterlife, complete with its own rules and conventions. As a result, the novel would likely fall into the magical realism genre, likely alongside the likes of Salman Rushdie, given the historical subject matter. I can’t adequately summarize all the elements of Almeida’s afterlife, but it resembles a vast bureaucracy with multiple levels and departments. People seem to retain signs the physical of their deaths—a suicide bomber shows up like puzzle pieces jammed together, for instance—-but do not remember the circumstances around their deaths. They are also given a choice: they can go into The Light, which they can know nothing about, or they can linger and try to decipher their lives. They can only drift on the wind to places where people are discussing them and it’s only under special circumstances that they can communicate messages to the living—namely, they have to take special classes in the afterlife that are not guaranteed to work, or subject themselves to the wills of demons and lesser demons. One particularly menacing figure hunts vulnerable people, hoping to absorb them into its grotesque body for a thousand moons. It’s sometimes a bit of a challenge to keep track of which character is which er…species?

I like the way Karunatilaka incorporates politics and theology alongside one another. The characters voice skepticism about the prospects of the afterlife—even when they’re dead—which yields a cheeky effect. God or Whoever (both capitalized in the text) are nowhere to be found and there is no definitive answer into which religion is right. In fact, the afterlife bureaucrats have lines that they need to feed the religious to make them stop bickering in the check in line. They also have political disputes and commentary, like how one boy notes, “even the afterlife is designed to keep the masses stupid [...] They make you forget your life and push you towards some light. All bourgeois tools of the oppressor. They tell you that injustice is part of some grand plan. And that’s what keeps you from rising against it” (13). The intersection of politics and the afterlife proves a thoughtful milieu for the text as a whole.

Aside from the high-concept afterlife and the political intrigue, the characters, or at least the central characters, are well-developed, flawed, and likeable. Maali Almeida is a gay man with a huge list of hook-ups and hang-ups. He cheats on every partner he has, has a terrible gambling addiction that relates to the end of his life, and he has a cynical charm that is hard to resist. The dark humour of the book is often refreshing. There’s even some jokes written into the text (“The nuns at Bridgets are very liberal. You know you can kiss a nun once [...] But don’t get into the habit” (146). Those touches of humour also help to connect with the characters.

The characters are often likeable in their own ways, or at very least sympathetic. Maali’s boyfriend DD was mistreated consistently when Maali was alive, but watching him act as a detective of sorts to solve the murder is a compelling hook, especially since he works alongside Maali’s best friend Jaki. The dynamic between them is quite nicely developed. Even the real villain of the book is finely developed, if a little belatedly. When we finally reach Maali’s murder scene, it’s engaging like a James Bond movie.

In terms of plot, the book has its ups and downs. The start of the book is immediately engaging and the quest to find Almeida’s killers is riveting, funny, and dark. There is soon after a quest to find Maali’s photos—-ones that expose corruption and genocide, along with a secret pack of nudes—and his negatives, and the conflict that develops around that journalistic documentation of the ‘83 massacre is pretty compelling. Various factions vye for the ownership of the photos and negatives. I would argue, though, that there is a fair amount of excess in the book. The middle part is a bit slow, given that you have so many demons to contend with. It’s like going on various subquests before moving on to the final boss. That said, the last fifty pages are an action-packed thriller, involving torture, a race against time, a suicide bomber, ghosts influencing extreme behaviours, and confronting politicians and their protector demons. There is a twist, a bit lacklustre, that reveals the central killer, and then an effective denouement. The conclusion of the book was a satisfying end, bringing the threads of the plot together nicely and, as much as I advise writers against the self-aggrandizing habit of presuming to know the afterlife, it did feel like a pretty strong finish—an emotional that contends with death and moving on. It’s an effective conclusion.

The Seven Moods of Maali Almeida won the Booker Prize in 2022 and I can certainly see why. It’s an ambitious and imaginative work that deals with matters of historical significance. Like Maali’s attempt to document the war, the book bears witness to the human consequences of human conflicts.

I admit that it took me longer than expected to get through the book. I initially loved it, and then at the hundred page mark (roughly), I felt like I needed an extended break. Returning to the book later, I found the pace was a little slower than its initial blast. Did I like it? Yes. Did I love it? Not exactly. It’s very competently written with a compelling premise. I feel like it just needed to be pared down a little bit to focus on the fundamental elements. Those fundamental pieces to the work shine: the key characters, the high concept, the mystery of Maali Almeida’s death, the broad strokes of the strife in Sri Lanka. The non-fundamental meanders—the specific demon types and afterlife bureaucracy, the Crow Man.

In any case, it was pretty good and if you pick up The Seven Moods of Maali Almeida, I wish you happy reading!

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

    

        Oh no. I’m going to have to reread In Search of Lost Time, aren’t I?

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton is an interesting nonfiction project, bordering between biography, self-help, and literary criticism. Some of its key topics are creativity, perception, suffering, and wellness, and I have to say, if not entirely practicable, it’s an entertaining read.

Part of what makes the book so entertaining is Botton’s tone. While his work is informative, the selection and presentation of details is outright funny. For instance, Botton explains how Proust took a job at a library and eventually got fired after five years, since he ultimately only worked about one day a year. The way Botton presents the detail is just a fun pithy approach. Similarly, I couldn’t help but laugh when reading about reviews of Proust’s work. When he started writing In Search of Lost Time, he sent it to friends and publishers and Botton quotes peoples’ indifference and rage comically. One publisher was incensed by a sentence that went on for forty-four lines of text. At least a few complained that after four hundred pages, they had no idea where the book was going (and it’s implied that Proust didn’t either.) One of Proust’s friends sent a letter praising the book for its excellence, and how she continually re-read the passage about his first communion—a part that didn’t exist. Botton also notes the cultural legacy of Proust via a contest that Monty Python hosted where people needed to summarize In Search of Lost Time in fifteen seconds while wearing a bathing suit. I like embracing the absurdity of Proust’s project like that.

It’s not all laughs, of course. Proust dealt with some pretty significant health issues (of which many were skeptical), for instance. Botton outlines Proust’s diet, sleep habits, and digestive problems, and about how his severe allergies limited his life. In a rare moment where Proust is critical of his mother, he says she likes to be his nurse and hates when he is well. Later, Botton outlines the factors leading up to Proust’s death, his refusal to take doctors’ orders, and implies that he essentially brought about his own death. It’s pretty dark.

Aside from the literary biography aspect of the work, the book is branded—even in its title—as a kind of self-help book. I wouldn’t say that the book entirely delivers on that promise. Early in the book, Botton provides an excellent breakdown for reasons for reading in general, using passages from Proust’s books and letters to support the benefits. That catalogue of reasons for reading is beautifully developed and Botton offers some personal commentary that I found touching as a literary work in its own right. He discusses how part of why we read is that we find parallels in our own lives. He talks about how In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, the second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator falls in love with Albertine and the narration draws parallels to other figures that he knew. Botton describes the various figures in his own life with whom he sees parallels in Proust’s characters. It’s refreshing to see someone’s personal connections on the page like that; it felt relatable in that respect.

Another section that really stood out to me is the commentary on Proust reading the news. At the time, there were news briefs that offered a quick account of an event. Proust came across one involving a murder and wrote a piece that linked it into a literary tradition, offering sympathy to its characters, and so on. He expanded on the sparse details and really paid close attention to its emotional core. The same principle existed in his letters; his mom pushed him to write more, annoyed that she received only the most cursory details of what time he slept, and so on. There’s an ethos of paying attention and of trying to find non-standard phrases to describe experience. In fact, Proust had a great disdain for bourgeois stock phrases that signalled culture. Instead, he was devoted to the particular and unique. Every rainstorm is different, for example. And all of this from expanding on newspaper details!

If the book delivers on its promise of How Proust Can Change Your Life, it is in this notion of paying attention to the particular. It comes to form a ethical stance towards life, to give nuance to every sensation. Botton returns to a similar idea in the final chapter of the book. He documents the number of people who try to visit key locales in In Search of Lost Time, like Combray or the shop that makes the madeleine that inspired Proust’s reminiscences. Heck, I went to Paris to finish reading In Search of Lost Time. To return to the point, Botton sees this practice as a peril: it is us trying to insert ourselves into books. We are trying to live out the experience of someone else, rather than let ourselves have experiences worth communicating. Botton notes that Proust inspires an ethics of attention where it is the “quality of vision” and not “the object of view.” It isn’t what we’re looking at that matters, it’s how we look at it.

Essentially, the book is a compelling case to be original, caring, perceptive, and responsive to others. I admit that it touched a place in my heart and pulled Proust back to the surface. There is so much humour and tenderness in Proust’s work, his biography, and Botton’s account narration that it makes a compelling case to return to Proust’s oeuvre and really give it the time it deserves.

Happy reading; happy living!

The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher

       Mark Fisher is a force. I have to admire the broad range of his interests and approaches, and in The Weird and the Eerie, Fisher latches onto something more literary than his work about politics or music. The text begins with establishing the distinction between the weird and the eerie, with a large difference being that the “weird” is strange but ultimately explicable whereas the “eerie” has an unusual effect because there is an ontological or epistemic gap. There is some kind of missing knowledge that prevents its comprehensibility. Later, Fisher comments on the grotesque, as well, suggesting that it inspires both laughter and revulsion—the laughable and that which cannot be laughed at as a subset of the weird. The definitions are somewhat useful, somewhat flexible. 

To make the distinction clear, Fisher summarizes and analyzes a range of texts, ranging from H.P. Lovecraft to H.G. Wells to Daphne DuMaurier to Margaret Atwood to the British serial Quatermass, the films of David Lynch, the novel and film Under the Skin and the work of Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan. The book is a wonderfully considered primer for weirdness and eerieness as a concept and, given its refreshing brevity, I can’t help but feel it could have gone even further—in fact, when I finished reading it, I went off to explore some of the media Fisher references, and then I immediately re-read his book and still feel like there’s more to say, especially with respect to posthumanism. For instance, if we are alien to ourselves, if our intentionality is ambiguous, how does that impact our conceptions of agency in any number of realms of our lives?

If you’re interested in discussions of horror, eeriness, alienation, the uncanny, identity, time, and capitalism (capital is eerie in that it does not exist in any substantial way but can produce any number of effects), there’s a lot to discuss here. Fisher is consistently insightful regarding his media selections. From here, I’ll comment on some individual sections and share a few insights. 

I have very limited exposure to H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve read a story or two, but they never really resonated with me. As I have mentioned before, a great critic gives me a fresh perspective or new appreciation for works, and Fisher does just that with Lovecraft. In particular, I really appreciated his commentary on how Lovecraft incorporates actual history and simulated scholarship into his work to create “ontological anomalies.” Fisher notes, for instance, how there are many people who have sought out The Necronomicon in libraries, despite it being a fictional text. Fisher notes that “by treating really existing phenomenon as if they had the same ontological status as his own creations, Lovecraft de-realizes the factual and real-izes the fictional.” I find that such an interesting phenomenon, especially in seeing how it developed into works like House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, for example. He also comments on the fragmentary quality of Lovecraft’s references to The Necronomicon as being the core factor in being seen as real, as though the incompleteness gives it its reality effect. It is more real by seeing only the citations, rather than providing a full text. I am fascinated by this reality-effect and “ontological displacement” that gives text their own autonomy from their author. 

Fisher’s characterization of texts often makes me want to read them; for example, Daphne Du Maurier’s story “Don’t Look Now” and H.G. Wells’ “The Door in the Wall” are newly enticing. The latter is compelling since the notion of portals and passageways to other places frequently holds its own power, but Fisher’s remarks about the man who continually sees the door but does not go through it give the story an entrancing quality that encourages me to read it. In a similar vein, Fisher comments on doors and curtains in the work of David Lynch, with particular reference to Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire. I have memorable experiences of watching both works, and Inland Empire was a particularly visceral viewing experience, given how sick I already was at the time. When Fisher remarks that Inland Empire is an “ontological rabbit warren,” it re-ignited an interest in the film for me and much of it started to click into place. Is it a coincidence that the climax of the film involves watching rabbits in miniature and weeping to a silent sitcom?

On the topic of Inland Empire, Fisher suggests that people are defined by their spaces. Our identities are unstable because when we enter new places we have new identities, new roles to fulfil. When we go down rabbit holes and become new people, the implications are deeply important, philosophically. This could also be connected to Fisher’s commentary on Freud: the psyche is failures of presence (the unconscious) and failures of absence (the drives “that intercede where our free will should be.”

This discussion of something where there should be nothing and nothing where there should be something gets linked to some compelling readings of Daphne Du Maurier’s “The Birds” and Christopher Priests novels, with which I am unfamiliar. The discussion of the collapse of time in Daphne Du Maurier’s work gives me another angle from which to analyze her work, which is convenient, given that I have another one of her collections ready on my shelf. I appreciate the doublings (indeed, I’ve read Du Maurier’s double novel The Scapegoat) and the agency that seems to exist beyond our perception where it ought not be. I also appreciate the discussion of echoes in Venice as an eerie effect in Du Maurier.

From a literary standpoint, Fisher also has a knack for pulling texts to the fore that often go unnoticed or that seem, in my mind, to be underappreciated in the academy. For instance, his chapter on Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay and its film adaptation is very intriguing, despite my never having heard of it before. Similarly, the novel and film adaptation Under the Skin get their own chapter. After reading The Weird and the Eerie, I immediately the film version directed by Jonathan Glazer and I thought it was a masterpiece. I’m surprised it is not discussed more often. Fisher gave some angles for considering the film, and going into the film with his views in mind enhanced by viewing without overshadowing the thoughts that came to mind throughout. I was inspired by the eeriness of the film and had a wealth of ideas for essays to come.

When Fisher comments on Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of Under the Skin, he offers an astute and engaging observation: the adaptation adds gaps, for instance by removing the interiority of Scarlet Johannson’s character that would need to be integral to the novel. The idea of an addition being an omission is very interesting to me, of course, because a negative becomes a positive in a strange ontological switch. It’s a shame that Mark Fisher is no longer with us; from what I understand about Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, Fisher would have found it fascinating and well-worth commentary.

All of this and I didn’t even get to mention the commentary on The Shining as a kind of alien eerie film or Interstellar as being eerie in its deployment of love as a scientific force, despite its risk of seeming facile. The discussion of both films is somewhat against the grain of how  I normally hear the films talked about, which enriches my experience of both what I have seen and what I have not.

In brief, Mark Fisher is insightful and inspires me to read more, view more, and think more. Reading the book twice didn’t even feel like a chore—I felt enriched each time and the book successfully maintained my deep interest in Mark Fisher himself as a thinker. I’ll likely need to report some more on his work very soon.

All the best and happy reading!

Empire's End by Peter F. Crowley

  Before I jump into a review of Empire’s End by Peter F. Crowley, I should explain how it came into my hands. Recently, I took a trip to Boston and when I go on vacation, I try to buy a poetry collection by a local poet as a souvenir, of sorts. I was lucky to discover that Boston has a book store that focuses exclusively on poetry: The Grolier Poetry Book Shop, which is coming up on a century of existence. I loved seeing thousands and thousands of poetry books on floor-to-ceiling shelves in a cramped room (in my estimate, max occupancy is approximately 5). Amid those shelves was one labelled “Local Authors”, so I went about my perusal and the design of Crowley’s book stood out. And so it came home with me.

Crowley’s collection tackles contemporary issues, including the January 6th insurrection, the rise of AI technologies, and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. There’s a clear political impulse here to critique, among other things, capitalist exploitation and toxic work cultures, but it Crowley maintains a poetic impulse that is sometimes lost on more overtly political works. Crowley borders the line of being bombastic, but more often than not veers into the surreal, offering strange connections or unusual imagery to help evoke a response.

As a result, readers are left with two choices for Empire’s End: to root oneself in the images and do the tough work of parsing them, or to let the poems fly by and try to claw your way to a touchstone. I admit that I was mostly in the latter camp, focusing on the big ideas and repeated motifs (Crowley loves eyelids, for instance), with an occasional poem forcing me to linger.

Let’s examine, for a moment, the poem “Dreamless.” It begins with two words on two lines: “plateau-eyed / wasteland.” There’s a kind of deadness to open the scene. Then, in a new stanza, a new start seems to emerge: “shades utter minced light / eyes crawl from bed / the bathroom’s barren walls / reach into flesh, / asking it to sing. / The flesh has been gorged, / leaving entrails / in the night’s imploding eclipse // And the mirror / is a wasteland” (37). The agency of the scene is largely ascribed to the environment, but the thing being acted upon is often unclear. Shades let the light in, almost conspiratorially. Then “eyes crawl” from the bed and the “bathroom’s barren walls / reach into flesh”—but whose flesh? The idea of an “imploding eclipse” is also a challenge, an inversion inverted. Ultimately, perhaps it’s the mirror that is being acted upon, taking everything into view. The consequences of the scene are less clear. The scene is evocative, but it doesn’t really demand that I sit with it because I’m not clear on the significance of the scene to a speaker or human entity.

There is another poem that potentially illuminates this one. In “Coming to”, a prose-poem that ends with a stanza that reads as follows:

Sometimes, as he gains self-consciousness and an understanding of surroundings, I have a déjà-vu of traveling the same path, stumbling, tripping and not knowing but, with maple syrup slowness, gaining a sense of things before losing it all again, on days when the sky does not share” (47).

The passage sets up an episteme that seems place-centered. “Self-consciousness,” taken literally as awareness of oneself, emerges alongside an “understanding of surroundings.” Further, there’s a sense of memory attached to place—the speaker is “traveling the same path,” but even when the path is the same, it is fraught with error—”stumbling, tripping and not knowing.” In a sense, Empire’s End offers such landscapes that are at once familiar, though they remain difficult to traverse. The landscape-poems demand “maple syrup slowness” and, once parsed, it appears that the speaker gains “a sense of things before losing it all again,” just like the reader. Each poem is a new challenge that emerges. In reference to the previous poem, though, where there does not appear to be a human cognition of significance, here Crowley refers to “days when the sky does not share,” establishing the primacy of the environment over the speaker. Perhaps that is the key to “Dreamless,” offered as a touchstone in “Coming to.”

I admit that I have some suspicions of what Crowley is up to, but much of his work remains oblique to me, so I rely on such touchstone poems. I’ll refer to a poem late in the collection simply titled “The good poem.” It’s possible that the title is intended ironically, but for the sake of argument let’s assume that Crowley is sincere. The first stanza seems to illustrate Crowley’s writing ambitions and dramatize them in a short eight lines. The first stanza offers the wild juxtapositions, imagery, and political impulses that propel his work: “An angelic blossom consuming the night / A lark performing trapeze acts / A servant killing their master / A fruit devolved into seed” (75). The second stanza takes a different turn: “Knowing that the woodrat’s ripped out throat could’ve been you! / To know birth is an accident and life absurd. / To live with this buried in neural pockets of ghost-formed words. / To transfer to paper the universal thousand-pound cinderblock weight” (75). The final line about transferring a thousand-pound cinderblock weight to paper implies to me a deep pain that needs to be dealt with. The “ghost-formed words” seem to suggest a meaninglessness to language, but the contrast of the pain being placed into words on the page is an effective elevation, however tenuous, of the poetic project. It implies that the violence and unfairness of the previous lines can be dealt with through the poems.

The dark cynicism the pieces comes through elsewhere, sometimes in the form of questions. In the poem “Older corrosion,” the central premise is clear: “When we get older, we corrode” (59). The rest of the poem discusses our decay and the impulse to preserve ourselves. If there were a way to pass ourselves on or extend ourselves without corrosion, it seems tempting. The Utopic sort of ideal quickly takes a dark turn, pointedly offered through two juxtaposed questions: “What of the pigs, whose heads were severed, / though kept alive for hours post-mortem? // But should our dead selves be forever curated / On our daughters and grandsons’ backs?” (60). These questions point towards the darkness in our impulse for longevity, especially with reference to the pigs, presumably subject to the will of human beings. If we are in the same position of captivity and imprisonment, what value is there in prolonging our existence? And, even if we were successful, is it right to force the subsequent generations to curate our lives? Even in the metaphorical sense, is it right for the past to be shouldered by the next generations? It’s a provocative set of questions that seem to imply their own answer, however darkly.

To conclude, let’s examine for a moment the collection’s namesake as a final sample of Crowley’s work. Here is the first stanza of “Empire’s End”:

It is the end of empire.
I walk in circles around
my block like an amnesiac,
avoiding people like the plague.
Our hospitals held in
ransom to tomahawk missiles
and silent-blooded drones,
at last, get a trickle.

We can see the political consciousness that impels the poems on full display here: reference to empire, avoiding people “like the plague” during covid-times, the reference to hospitals and tomahawk missiles (like in Palestine, perhaps?), and so on. The second stanza repeats the idea of empire coming to an end, noting that “Truth died long ago — / if indeed it ever lived” and “today we believe anything: / That an apple ate the sky / That a pear has eyes” (15). In the third stanza, Crowley reference the end of war alongside the end of empire, the sense of privation that comes along with aggression: a return to paradise. Immediately after suggesting a paradise, though, Crowley suggests that it was a “huckster” that “unmasked the entire charade.” In this references to post-truth life and the charade of a paradise we didn’t really have, I can’t help but feel a connection to a certain president with an antediluvian slogan. It results in, in Crowley’s words, an “unmasking.” The end of empire still retains its darkness. Even without empire, there is darkness. In the final stanza, Crowley notes of the unmasking: 

But first there is a steep fall,
like a drunk collapsing
on shards of glass.
No longer is the horror over there.
And when awakening from corona
with power inebriation dissipated:
things are far different


it is the end of empire. (16)

I suppose there is much to discuss in terms of the final lines: “things are far different // it is the end of empire” (16). I can’t help but sense a certain irony here. All of the supposedly generative capacities of empires have faded away, and what is left? More of the same—perhaps as though empire is never about its generative capacity. Despite all of the “awakening from corona” that took place, I can’t help but feel that things both are and aren’t different. As though we’ve reverted to a previous reality, as though whether empire exists or not is immaterial.

Despite the bleak revelations sometimes offered in the poems, I can’t help but think that there’s an optimism at the core of the poetic project. I feel like if we were truly defeated we would not write poems about our concerns. We write only when there is something to be done, that the poems can mean something—can take action. So, with that in mind, I’d encourage you to give Crowley’s poems a chance and then take to the streets to liberate yourself and others from the tyranny of empires.

Stay strong and imagine the possibilities. Happy reading!

Trilogy by Jon Fosse

Earlier this year I read Jon Fosse’s Septology, an absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking masterpiece. So, when I found Trilogy in the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I felt I had to read it and, while it didn’t quite reach the same highs of Septology, it was still an excellent work that is probably a better entry point to Fosse’s work for the uninitiated and intimidated.

The plot of Trilogy is much more straightforward than that of Fosse’s longer work. Wakefulness, the first book, is about a young couple, Asle and Alida, who are about seventeen years old and who find themselves expecting a child. They have fraught relationships with their families and are seeking somewhere to live, which proves difficult when people see Alida’s swelling stomach. They need to make use of Asle’s deceased father’s boat, but another man with claim to it arrives, preventing them from leaving. Fosse applies a light touch and has Asle kill the man off-page, hiding it from Alida before stealing the boat so that they can escape to Bjørgvin. When they arrive, they expect to find easy boarding, given the higher population and number of houses, though in fact they are continually turned down, first by an old woman, then a young woman, and then others in between. Ultimately, Asle kills once again when they return to the first old woman’s home. They occupy her home and when it is time for Alida to give birth, they discover a core irony, alongside the audience, that Fosse delivers beautifully. A man from town tells Asle where the midwife lives—the home where Asle and Alida are now staying—and so Asle has to lie and say nobody answered. Then, a second midwife needs to be brought in and Asle’s guide is confused when he brings the new midwife to the home of the old midwife. Asle and Alida then have their child, Sigvald.

In Olav’s Dream, the second part of Trilogy, Fosse continues the story in a mostly linear timeline following the previous book’s events. Olav’s Dream is probably the most interesting part of the three. It begins with the revelation that Asle and Alida are now going by the names Olav and Åsta. Alida seems to go along somewhat blindly to the plan, which is odd given that she supposedly is unaware of Asle’s murders. In any case, Asle / Olav is clearly haunted by guilt and is aware that they could be caught at any moment. The tension of the book escalates when an old man starts following Olav, calling him Asle, implying that he knows what he has done and is ready to expose him. Meanwhile, Olav sees a man who has purchased a beautiful yellow and blue bracelet and he decides he needs to buy one for Alida. The old man asks Asle to buy him a drink, essentially blackmailing him into silence, but Asle ignores him, refusing to accept his name. Instead, the man guides him to where he can buy the same bracelet. He is successful in getting the bracelet, but ultimately loses it when he is intercepted and drawn before a court, tried for multiple murders, and executed on the spot.

The third section, Weariness, peters out somewhat. In Olav’s Dream, Alida expresses deep concern that Asle will not come back. She has a terrible premonition which comes true; it’s a parallel to her father, who also disappeared. In Weariness, we find that she is alone with Sigvald. When she goes looking for Asle, she hears for the first time that he is deceased. She then finds a yellow and blue bracelet—the same that Asle had purchased—and immediately knows that it is a gift to her from Asle. It solidifies their connection across time and space and the border of life. Then, Alida meets a man who offers her a place to stay in exchange for her being a servant to him. She debates before agreeing and the novel ends with their journey to his home.

While the story is straightforward, what shines in Fosse’s work is his style. There’s repetitiousness in the phrasing that gives the work a beautiful cadence. It also elevates the doubling that happens throughout the book—doubling of names, doubling of crimes, doubling of circumstances (like Asle and Alida’s father both disappearing), doubling the bracelet, doubling a fiddle, and so on. Conceptually, the work is delivered immaculately.

Actually, to return to Olav’s Dream for a moment, there’s a moment of doubling that is presented with such a sinister tone. In the first book, Asle and Alida seek shelter in the home of a young girl. She returns in the second part, recognizing Asle and attempting to seduce him in front of her mother; she exposes herself to him and tries to coax him into staying. The way she returns and tries to draw Asle away that turns the screw to make her all the more villainous and foreboding, especially because the old man is already there as a threat, as well.

In fact, the section Olav’s Dream works so well because there is a kind of dream logic that governs it. There’s no explanation for why the old man knows who Asle is. The timeline becomes somewhat fraught, given that the young woman from earlier returns now, seemingly as an adult. The fact that Asle is brought before a jury and executed within a few pages—it’s a Kafkaesque collapse of time. It’s hard, actually, to identify what part of Olav’s Dream is a dream. The old man seems to be the kind of figure that emerges in our dreams to haunt us, appearing out of nowhere. There’s a kind of dream logic where the repetitiousness just sort of works out. Asle meets the old man, goes and buys a bracelet, and returns and finds that the old man is still there, begging for a drink. Even the fact that the main characters have new names seems to emulate that experience I’m confident we’ve all had where we’re in a dream and “it was me but not me” and “you were you, but didn’t look like you.” It’s these strange essences that seem to percolate throughout the entire text so much that it appears to be entirely a dream or entirely real—and perhaps the word “dream” of the title is Olav’s ambition to get Alida a bracelet to marry her in spirit.

Fosse’s lack of punctuation and narrational style also contribute to the surreality of the text. I’ll point to a moment in the dialogue where the use of pronouns conflates identities and confuses sense in a way that allows a singular text to expand in ambiguous registers. Here’s the moment when Asle responds to the old man’s taunting:

My name isn’t Asle, Olav says

and he hears the Old Man saying that no, no it isn’t, of course his name isn’t Asle, he says
No my name is Olav, Olav says
So your name’s Olav, the Old Man says
Olav, yes, Olav says
Yes Olav’s my name too, the Old Man says
I’m the one who’s called Olav, not you, he says
and he holds up his tankard to Olav
Me, he says
Yes, Olav says (74)

The reason I find this so compelling is because Fosse does not rely on standard patterns of dialogue, so it confuses and doubles identities. The narrator states that Olav says his name isn’t Asle, giving credence to the idea that he is literally Olav. The first few lines of dialogue here seem to go back and forth, but when the Old Man reveals that his name is Olav too, it forces us to re-read “Olav, yes, Olav says” immediately before: which Olav do we have here? Also, notice how Fosse forces us into a non-linear reading; the future revises the past. But, when we get to the line “I’m the one who’s called Olav, not you, he says”---who is the “he” of this sentence? Is it the Old Man reasserting that he knows Asle is not named Olav? Is it Olav accusing the man of lying? I’m tempted towards the former, especially because of the “and” of the “and he holds up his tankard to Olav.” Then, “Me, he says” and “Yes, Olav says” seems to be an admission of sorts—unless it’s a repetition. Perhaps all four of those final lines cited above are all about the Old Man.

It’s those kinds of ambiguities I find so exciting in Fosse’s work in general. Further, there’s a circularity that comes about in his work. For instance, in Weariness, we get this passage, now being focalized through Alida’s daughter, who seems to have seen her ghost:

it was as if everyone really wanted to tell her what kind of man her mother had been with, and what was true and not true of what they told her was difficult to tell, of course, for they talked about Asle in Dylgja, that he was a fiddler, like his father before him, that he had taken her mother by brute force and gotten her pregnant, although she was only a chid herself, and that he had taken her with him after first having taken the life of her mother, that is, her own grandmother, that’s what they said, but if that were true, no nobody knew, that’s what they said, but if that were true, no nobody knew, and no it couldn’t be like that, it was probably just the sort of thing people made up and talked about, Ales thought, and then, they said, the gossippers said, he strangled a person of his own age so he could steal his boat, that was supposed to have happened at the boathouse where his father had lived, in Dylgja, and then, in Bjorgvin, he’s supposed to have strangled several others before he was caught and hanged, that’s what they said, but it couldn’t be true, her mother, Alida, could never have been with a man like that, a brute like that, never in this world [...] (128)

In this passage, there is another review of some of the similarities in the central characters’ lives. It’s as though there’s a fatedness to their existences that is handed down. What is also notable is that Asle struggles with the storytelling practices that give her access, or perhaps don’t, to truth. The boundary between true and untrue “was difficult to tell.” Some of the details seem to be confirmed by the narrator—Asle was a fiddler, as was his dad. Other details seem more questionable; the narrator does not specifically say that Asle took Alida by force, and Alida’s own inner monologues seem to suggest a genuine love. The fact that there are “gossippers” that tell the awful stories about Asle is intriguing, particularly because the murders happen “off-stage,” as it were. Asle says he is going out and comes back wet, probably having killed the man with the boat. Asle tells Alida to go into a room and she picks out and sees his hand covering an old woman’s mouth. These synecdoches seem straightforward enough, but there is no certainty when the narrator refuses to actually show the violence directly.

When Ales imagines her mother, Alida, in the home she now resides, she can picture all of the furniture and the kitchen set up, and so on. There’s a sneaky line that seems to resonate beyond itself in that narration. Ales’ narration states, “that, that’s so long ago, something that doesn’t exist, something that has never really existed even if it has and Little Sister lying there so pale and gone and never will her pale face, her open mouth, her half-open eyes, disappear for her, she will always see it, because Little Sister became ill and died and everything went so fast” (127). Fosse deals with time in a compelling way, as I tried to outline above, where things that are in the past might as well not have existed—so much so that it is “something that has never really existed even if it has” (127). That single line is so evocative for assessing the narration of the text. It points to that obscure boundary between truth and falsehood. The coincidences and resonances between space and time never really existed, even if they had. It’s an intangible uncertainty toward what exists and yet doesn’t. There’s a coincidence about Alida finding the bracelet as a gift from Asle, for example, and yet it is precisely what it was intended for—it both is and isn’t what was and wasn’t.

I fear at this point I’m beginning to spiral into conjecture of some kind of extranarrative truth that devolves into ambiguity. Trying to put it together logically is not likely to be successful, though Trilogy remains less obscure than Septology, but the ambiguity is productive and engaging in its own right. Jon Fosse’s book is wonderful. There is so much to talk about and it would be well worth studying the book in-depth. While it lacks some of Septology’s emotional core, the focus on plotting a story is an interesting shift to witness. I imagine this text will resonate with more people and I definitely encourage you to read it.

Happy reading!