Fantastic Metropolis

The first five choices, four books and a film, all link to Benjamin or Kafka; at the end I’ve included a book of poems, another film, and last but not least, the two Carol Emshwillers I read this year. I’d never read Emshwiller, but then Paul di Filippo compared my writing to hers in a review of Green Music, and I was taken with the beautiful covers of the Small Beer Press releases at Wiscon a couple of years ago. I didn’t buy them at the time, already having too many books to lug back across the border, but I eventually ordered The Mount and Report to the Men’s Club, and you should too; you won’t regret it. Having read her, I wouldn’t say we’re cut from the same cloth exactly, but that, perhaps, we till neighbouring fields. And now to the boys. Beyond the magnificent Carol, it seems to be mainly guys who have thrilled me this year.

1. Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, Larry McMurtry

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Texas novelist and screenplay writer of The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove takes on the memoir form. This slim volume of essays on writing and the writing life begins on a very hot day in a Dairy Queen in Texas, as McMurtry reads Walter Benjamin’s essay on the storyteller, drinking lime Doctor Pepper, and looking around what has come to replace the village feed n’ seed as a rural gathering place, wondering if there are any great oral storytellers left in Texas, or for that matter, in densely cultured Europe, so antithetical to the lonely dust-ridden expanses of Texas. In various chapters McMurtry describes the differences between an oral tale and a novel, his cowboy ancestry, how his bypass surgery altered his personality, negatively affecting his ability to read, and how he came, unlike his forebears, to be a herder of books instead of cattle. McMurtry has worked most of his adult life as a professional book scout; he is glad, he says, he didn’t become a professor as he hates being bored, and there are better eccentrics to meet in the rare and used book trade than there are in academia. He discusses his friendship with Susan Sontag, a brain bag if there ever was one, and the somewhat alarming or at least eye opening fact that there are security people in airports now who don’t know what his typewriter is. As to why he wrote his memoirs in longhand, McMurtry theorizes the distance from mind to page is shorter when writing by hand, something napkin scribblers are likely to agree with. An utterly charming book, largely because it is not full of writing tips, although many such can be gained by careful examination of his wonderful exacting prose.

Illuminations, Walter Benjamin

Rediscovered in the eighties, Benjamin is now an icon, considered one of the foremost cultural theorists of the twentieth century. Because of the time of writing, his essays are blessedly free of terms arising from French theory in all its forms. His prose is nevertheless challenging and dense, demanding a careful read. Benjamin’s ideas are deft, original, startling. On each page a line springs out to be savoured all day, its cleverness, its poetry to be remarked upon. For instance, I’m currently ruminating upon his idea that the demise of the oral storyteller was linked to the emergent middle class denial of death. Benjamin’s Kafka essay is especially useful, as Kafka can easily be read as a proto-speculative writer. He relates a conversation between Max Brod and Kafka. “We are nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that come into God’s head…our world is only a bad mood of God, a bad day of his,” Kafka said. Brod said, “Then there is hope outside this manifestation of the world that we know.” Kafka smiled. “Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope–But not for us.”

The Complete Stories, Franz Kafka

Unclassifiable to this day, Kafka might be seen as, among many other things, a precursor to urban fantasy. Born in Prague in 1883, of German Jewish descent, Kafka’s best known work is The Metamorphosis, published in 1916. His best known novel, not included here, is The Trial, made into a film by Orson Welles in 1962. Kafka’s stark images of decrepitude, decay and transmogrified insects, of shabby officialdom and cruel powerful fathers border on the supernatural. So many stark and drearily detailed and profound images; one could borrow from them forever and never run out. A writer who like the existentialist Albert Camus (who not surprisingly claimed him as a great influence) refused to deny the dark in the world, his courageous careful examination yet offers hope precisely because he refuses to turn away. An excellent compendium which includes all the stories published during his life as well as those Brod published posthumously against Kafka’s wishes, but luckily for us.

The Street Of Crocodiles, Bruno Schulz, Celina Wieniewski (translator)

I haven’t actually read this in years, but seeing the Brothers Quay film reminded me of its dense creepy gothic imagery. Happily it’s remained in print; I shall have to get a copy post-haste as it’s a book I need to have in my permanent library. Kafkaesque, although apparently Schulz didn’t cite Kafka as an influence.

Schulz, writing about Rilke’s poems, might well be describing his own book: “The existence of his book is a pledge that the tangled, mute masses of things unformulated within us may yet emerge to the surface miraculously distilled.”

Of Schulz, Robert Fulford wrote: “On the landscape of literature, Schulz occupies a small valley, somewhere between Borges Peak and Mt. Kafka. A maker of myths, he’s now a myth himself.” He has been hugely influential on such contemporary writers as Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick, even though his output was small: two author-illustrated collections of short stories. The Street of Crocodiles is also called Cinnamon Shops; the second work is titled Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.

While the Fulford essay is excellent, discussing among other things the Theatre de Complicite production of The Street, I much prefer Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s fiercely affectionate tone: “He found beauty in darkness because there is beauty in darkness; what in Kafka is a plaint in Schulz is a celebration.”

Bruno himself should have the last words: “The most fundamental function of the spirit is inventing fables, creating tales.” Indeed. “Poetry happens,” he said, “when short-circuits of sense occur.”

Street Of Crocodiles, The Brothers Quay

Stellar beside the banal releases of the American market; this animated film is more original and more disturbing than any number of Hollywood horror films. Each frame abounds with a superfluity of creepy images, much like the pages of Schulz’s book. An homage, and worth seeing even if you haven’t read The Street of Crocodiles.

The Eye, The Pang Brothers

A young Hong Kong woman who has been blind since early childhood undergoes a corneal transplant; regaining her vision she discovers she has learned to see not just what’s in front of her but queasy images of unknown origin. Going on a long quest to Northern Thailand with her psychotherapist turned friend, Mun learns the story and troubled fate of her donor. Gifted/cursed by two kinds of sight since her operation, Mun makes the brave choice to attempt to heal the ghost/donor. The Eye owes a lot to The Sixth Sense, and like that film which it in many ways supersedes, it isn’t a cheesy Hollywood style horror/supernatural film but a genuinely creepy and beautifully shot dissertation upon serious themes of suicide, the nature of the afterlife or spirit world, and the moral necessity, at times, of believing in the impossible. Great score, too, and watch for the American remake as Tom Cruise has bought the rights. Apparently the Pang Brothers’ first film, Bangkok Dangerous is likewise remarkable.

The Voice At 3:00 A.M., Charles Simic

If you don’t like poetry, read no further. On the other hand, you might be pleasantly surprised. Simic concerns himself with big questions of metaphysics, God, The Soul and so forth, and firmly pins them to the ground with gorgeous clever imagery and a slightly apologetic black humour. Lots of ghosts, and other speculative content too, such as the young couple who may or may not have wandered into a painted landscape in the midnight museum. This is a selection from many of his collections including The World Doesn’t End, and Walking The Black Cat.

Simic is a god among poets, having won the Pulitzer. He might be referring to his award in these lines:

I’ve heard I’ve been made the official match vendor
Of the great dark night of the soul

Pretty much. And we need those tiny flares, too.

The Mount, Carol Emshwiller

Creepy, creepy, creepy, but not only creepy: Emshwiller writes about affection’s many subtly divergent guises better than anyone. This astonishingly original meditation on power should be on everyone’s reading list. While it’s ostensibly an alien invasion story, it functions as parable. One of the few honestly eye opening novels I’ve read.

Report to the Men’s Club, Carol Emshwiller

My highest adjectival praise, at least in conversation, is yummy and delicious, as if books were meals, which of course in a way they are. Apparently, when making lemon or other artificial flavours, chemists choose, for economic reasons, to copy only a very few of the chemical chains which make up the source. This is why artificial lemon or vanilla tastes so flat compared to the original. We all know what cherry flavour tastes like, and we all know it’s nothing at all like fresh ripe cherries. Emshwiller uses only authentic flavours in her cooking. The tastes are three-dimensional, and there are a lot to choose from. Aside from which her descriptive excursions into the connective tissues between writing and family life are apt. Sometimes a little too apt.

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Ursula Pflug is author of the novel Green Music (Tesseract Books, 2002). She is also a playwright, arts journalist and short story writer.