I read 25-30 years ago and didnt like it. I thought it rambled. This time I saw the artistry, the existential circus, its been said all the people areI read 25-30 years ago and didnt like it. I thought it rambled. This time I saw the artistry, the existential circus, its been said all the people are depressing, theyre all bad people. Selfsih, I think a friend called them. Who isnt?
Theyre all fucked, and yet they arent. Its life. Kits behaviour after Port dies is strange, I dont onow anyone who would act like this, close....but not that extreme. Dealng with, coming to terms with death is hard, if you think about it, remove the clutter, the mental toys, the supports, take it all awayand look it square in the face, then eat it. digest it. And , its not a one time job. Youve got to reaccept this death thing , ad nauseum...until it actually occurs. Accepting anothers death is not as hard as our own , but its not the accepting thats hard, its the end of a relationship that defined you, its gone now. The mind must change with this , if not it breaks down.
Kits lost her shit. I had forgotten her rapes, marriage to the Muslim, her fuckng the black, the catatonia at the end. She didnt care after Poet died,maybe she wantedto join him. She put herself in situations where she could die. Bowles wanted a novel on two levels, the physical plane and the existential....the descriptions of the desert, of the people, the descriptions of Kit and Ports inner jungles, of Tunners shit mind, the Americans and their incessant yapping, the mom and son, Tunner, sick fuckers youd not want to meet in the States.
Kit and Port seem to not really live, to be in their lives, Bowles says exactly this....and its there, just moving , drinking, sex, sleep, the petty annoyances, the lusts, the fears, the whole shebang, life... Death and loss, it is a dark book, but hard to put down. Beautiful language. ...more
Strictly for EW. An old man retells his life and we listen, young and reckless, he foolishly is responsible for a monks death. The monk returns as a gStrictly for EW. An old man retells his life and we listen, young and reckless, he foolishly is responsible for a monks death. The monk returns as a ghostto tell him he will die every day of his life intil he becomes a monk because his mother promised him to God. and, the entire story, he kills , he becomes an alcoholic, hes a good man, he chucks his soul for instant pleasures, he suffers,
The story is unlike anything else in Russian literature. Its not moralistic like Tolstoyor Dostoyevsky, its not calm, cool, showing itself in glances like Chekhov, no humor like Bulgakov or Erofeev, there is some skazki elementa, tale elements, tall tales always are infused with magical realism, they wouldnt be tales to tell, this has magical realist elements but they dont stick, this is a tale, one expects an angel to fly and deflect bullets, one expects Tatars to sew chopped up horse hair into your soles , so you are hobbled to them, a slave, for ten years, choose a wife or two, good day, брат...
His mother died giving birth to him and swore the boy to God and n the end, he literally has nowhere else to go except a monastery, even there, the world, owned by its Prince, sends demons , large and small, to mess with him, even from the holy place he is exiled, in a sense, sento Solovki, in the far north, to pray at the relics of two saints.
I read Lefty/ Steel Flea back when I was the only CPUSA member with calluses n calluses, with a pedigree in lumpenproletarian angst, 1991-93, farcicalI read Lefty/ Steel Flea back when I was the only CPUSA member with calluses n calluses, with a pedigree in lumpenproletarian angst, 1991-93, farcical, cute. This, however, begins with the narrator sitting you down to tell you " people round here get crazy, we remember them with chills, sometimes"...and Leskov outdoes Dostoyevsky on the gloom scale, if there was an award for most serotonin stolen from a work of art, this does it....Blood Meridian may be the ultimate, up with the Bible, but this novella, the same form and pace as Legends of the Fall, has the feeling of a tale told to you, an intimate telling, fireside, tipsy, dark. You know half the people mentioned and a father in law, a husband, and a child, a sensitive mollycoddled child is suffocated, all in the name of lov---lust. Everything changes, the light love affair becomes heavy with the sin of murder, three times over, they did it as a couple and once caught, he turns on her, the handsome, now branded with the three letters for kriminals sent to Siberia, n his pretty boy face that has got him droves of tail, he goes for the 19 year old coquette, his ex is bent , sad as all get out, the weather worsens, they wait by the river and cross with the ferry, and and the ending just swallows your mind. ...more
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