Assessment of The Eleven Thousand Rods

The Eleven Thousand Rods by Guillaume Apollinaire was the first book I read in 2017. What a doozy of a book! Reading surrealist literature is like playing Russian Roulette. Some times your going to get fascinatingly weird books like Rene Daumal's A Night of Serious Drinking or Andre Breton's classic Nadja. Other times your going to get disgustingly weird books like this or Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye.

There is something admittedly admirable about Apollinaire's craftsmanship in this book. It is obviously well written. But, it isn't a fun read. It's not quite as gross as Bataille's Story of the Eye. But, I think that is only because it is so over the top and because Apollinaire obviously has a sense of humor. If there was any humor in the Story of the Eye I completely failed to see it. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone I didn't wish to scar. (That is not some error of omission in that last word. I didn't accidentally leave off an 'e'.)

I won't quote much of this book here because I'm a bit embarrassed to admit to having read it. But, as a testament to the craftsmanship in Apollinaire's work and as a nod to his sense of humor (which is funny, but again embarrassing to admit I find it funny), I will note one thing. After engaging in a bit of murder and worse Mony (the main character) slips off the train. "The double murder not he Orient Express supplied the papers with news for six months. The murderers were not found and the crime was attributed to Jack the Ripper, whose back's broad enough" (Apollinaire, 53). I laughed an audible laugh at this line. There are a lot of little asides like this in this twisted novella. I'd write more about it; but, I must go shower...

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

Oh boy. What a grind it was to finish this one. First of all, there is no denying that this is truly a phenomenal book with incredible insights and Joyce does an amazing job of putting you into the story as a fly on the wall who can use every sense to imagine being in the story. We see, hear, feel, taste and smell alongside Stephen Dedalus. Secondly, I find much of Stephen Dedalus to be extremely boring. That may be sacrilegious, but I fear and fear not the repercussions of that sentence.

After I finished the book I did some reading and found that Joyce had originally submitted this as a treaty on Aesthetics. I found his take on aesthetics to be interesting. "-Art, said Stephen, is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end" (Joyce, 207). In fact, Stephen's entire conversation with Lynch about art, aesthetics and beauty is fascinating. His contention that beauty should create a stasis between pity and terror rather than a kinetic emotion is an interesting and dispassionate notion. I think it is wrong, but it is at the very least thought provoking. His take on false art producing kinetic emotions like desire and loathing is something to take into account. Sadly, his attempt to get his thoughts on aesthetics was unpublished and he housed it in this semi-autobiographical tale that had more boring parts than interesting ones. I guess he accomplished his goal and left me in sort of a stasis, offering few kinetic emotions about his book. 

One of the few times I felt kinetic emotion was during the retreat section when the priests were calling for repentance so that no soul would suffer eternal damnation. In my mind's eye I recalled terrifying sermons from the retired senior pastor who gave such terrifying images of hellfire and brimstone I prayed nightly to escape such a fate. Tears and stress overtook me overtime he preached this message and I can't imagine hell much scarier than as he put it. I empathized with Stephen as he struggled with repenting and the notion that he had done to much to escape this terrible fate. "What did it avail to pray when he knew that his soul lusted after its own destruction?" (Joyce, 103-104). I understand that line on a visceral level. I also understand his wrestling with faith throughout the book, though I find my ending point to be vastly different than that of Stephen's. 

I found that like Daumal in A Night of Serious Drinking Joyce also sends a jab to the nose of reason. While Daumal called reason the off-loading of the responsibility to think, Joyce calls reason a pollutant. "A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind and then there flew hither and tither shapeless thoughts from Swedenborg on the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect and of how the creatures of the air have their knowledge and know their times and seasons because they, unlike man are in the order of their life and have not perverted that order by reason" (Joyce, 224-225).

Joyce unleashes a stinging attack on Protestantism in the back end of the book. Much of this book houses an Irish history that I don't fully know and can't fully know. It concerns self-rule and the religious trappings of a Protestant-Catholic war that has obvious political overtones. But, I do, even as someone who isn't Catholic understand his criticism of the disorganized way in which protestantism worships and structures there fragmented theological opinions. "I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost selfrespect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?" (Joyce, 243-244). I don't agree that faith is necessarily an absurdity nor do I find Protestantism illogical. But, I do find and struggle with the fact that Protestantism is so incoherent and crave some of the symmetry and logically soundness behind Catholicism. 

Lastly, I found this line to be sadly beautiful in its composition and meaning. "The past is consumed in the present and the present is living only because it brings forth the future" (Joyce, 251). I find that restlessness and striving to be endearing, but also wearying. 

I heard only the hum of silence

A Night of Serious Drinking by René Daumal was fantastic. It was a very enjoyable read; and, for those of you following this blog it should come to no surprise to you that I enjoyed it as it is yet another surrealist work of literature. The book is basically satirical in nature and like Voltaire, it's satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. And like Voltaire, Daumal's pace is incredibly rapid and absurd. There is a whole host of good satire on philosophy, theology and the human condition throughout the book and it is slam bang full of fantastic one-liners. One such example concerns a simile about suicide (which isn't really a laughing matter but is darkly humorous nonetheless). "There are aerial battles where sound waves bounce back on themselves, start spinning and whirl between heaven and earth, like the indestructible regret of the suicide, who halfway down from the sixth floor all of a sudden no longer wants to die any more" (Daumal, 19).

Again, my obsession with writing a good space/time travel piece saw me take some inspiration from what I was reading. In Daumal I found this passage which I might make use of somehow. "'It's the same here as anywhere else, but here it's made quite clear: space is generated by need. Let's say you'd like to take a walk. You simply project in front of you the necessary space which you walk across and when. The same with time. Just a s spider secretes the thread down which she climbs, so you secrete the time you need to do whatever you have to, and you proceed along this thread which is visible only behind you but usable only had of you. The key its in working it out properly. If the thread is too long, it goes into loops and if it's too short, it snaps'" (Daumal, 38). Future Modern Ancient Greeks stuff.

The builders of a fantastic house were describing it to the protagonist of the story and I had an audible chuckle when they told him about the climate controls. "The temperature is kept exactly at the ideal level for the ideal human organism as defined by our experts. It is the only temperature at which nobody feels comfortable: some shine and others sweat" (Daumal, 45). That's funny!

The definition of reason given in this book is another funny passage. "Reason, n., an imaginary process onto which the responsibility for thinking is off-loaded" (Daumal, 55). It's funny because those who are slavishly devoted to reason are often more dogmatic that those slavishly devoted to a certain comprehension of a religion. It's good sarcasm.

In describing a certain group of people in the asylum, the guide tells the protagonist these people are called The Nibblists. Upon reading the guide's description I realized I might be exactly who the guide was describing. "They spend their time retailing imaginary lives in writing. Some relate what they themselves have experienced and attribute it to characters of their invention so that they might avoid their obligations and indulge all manner of impertinence. The others, through their characters, live out everything they would like to have experienced themselves, in order to have the illusion of having really experienced it" (Daumal, 57). Guilty as charged.

Chapter 20 in part 2 as a whole is hysterical. But, the best line in the chapter is "philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks" (Daumal, 59). The humor in this statement is dark and finds its relevance in its truthfulness.

Lastly, Daumal makes reference to Homer and his hero Ulysses. Upon listening to intellectual conversations so tantalizing the protagonist of this story remembers the warnings of his guide. Suddenly, he takes action. "But, remembering the companions of Ulysses, I stuffed those ears with thick plugs of common sense, and, listening with another ear - my trust ear, my only good ear - I heard only the hum of silence" (Daumal, 77). What a good line.

While I still think that I enjoy Queneau more than any other surrealist authors, A Night of Serious Drinking is up at the top of my list. I look forward to reading other books by René Daumal.