Lathe-y Days

I’m glad you’ve picked a new book…I’ve been feeling positively lathe-y with no guided reading.  Get it, lathe-y…like lazy…I’ve been feeling LAZY but I decided to “riff” on the title of the new book you’ve chosen.  It’s even funnier when you realize that I have know idea what a lathe is!

According to Wikipedia it looks like this.  Oh.  That’s not very illuminating.  It looks kind of  like a sewing machine had a baby with a record player and then their offspring took a lot of steroids.  Do you think this new book is actually going to be about a lathe or will the lathe be an overarching metaphor?  (real question…do I need to do some lathe-related research in order to “get” this book?) And what exactly could a lathe be a metaphor for (metaphor for…ha!)?  Probably the modern condition.

It also appears that you’ve continued the theme of afterlife focused books.  Unless it’s heaven instead of Heaven…with titles and their indiscriminate capitalization it’s hard to tell.  But speaking of fictional afterlifes…I was completely underwhelmed by O’Brien’s description of hell.  It’s tedious and people speak in weird syntax…meh.  I was hoping that the book would never let us know when the narrator had actually died…leaving the reader to wonder if even his interactions with his pal Divney were part of the afterlife (oh wait…spoiler alert?–I really don’t understand that concept), but they made it pretty clear cut when he died.  Oh well.  Overall I thought the book was okay.

But I’m excited for our foray into sci-fi.  Cue the theremin music (and/or Will Smith’s “Men in Black”) I’m ready to get jiggy with some aliens.  (Of course by “get jiggy” I mean I’d like to do jigsaw puzzles with them).

I requested the book from my work library and apparently its now waiting for pickup (I didn’t get the email until after I left the office on Friday).  So I’ll pick it up tomorrow…and get started soon!

Until then,

Jon

P.S.  The personal Bookit Countdown has moved along to 23!  I’ll keep keeping you posted.

Second Post on The Third Policeman

Taking a page from you book, (Figuratively, only figuratively. I know how testy you get if someone starts taking pages from your books. Oh, how the “Where the heck is page 59 of The Moonstone” incident.) I’ve decided to post for a second consecutive time.

Is this due to my uncontainable excitement about everybody’s favorite philosophical farce? Is because I have many deep, insightful comments to make about Flann O’Brien’s representation of eternity? Is it because I thought of something funny and just have no other outlet for it?

Uhh…(awkward pause)…not really.

But I did finish the book, and I thought that was well worth a post.

And, while admittedly I spent the better portion of the book somewhat confused, a little bit lost, and unsure of what bicycles had to do with atomic theory, but in the end, I have to admit I liked it more than I didn’t. While not always exactly comprehensible, it was always entertaining.

Now that I’ve finished the book, I started thinking what we might read next. I thought a field trip into some classic genre fiction might be an interesting adventure, and well, hopefully, a little more straightforward. Being that I don’t read a lot of Sci-Fi, I thought choosing a book along those lines might motivate me to broaden my reading.

So here goes nothing. Up next, let’s read Ursula Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven.

Nanu-nanu*,

Justin

*Note to self: Stop equating Mork and Mindy to Sci-Fi.

A Triumphant Return

I am guessing at this point you’ve started questioning whether or not you are participating in this blog alone. In actuality, I was giving this blog a little The Third Policeman flavor. Does a blog that involves brothers discussing various books cease to exist if one brother stops posting? Does it merely dissolve into its component particles and dissipate into nothingness…

Or, I’ve been busy. (And read “busy” as “lazy.”)

Now I’ve spent the better part of the weekend reading over your last few posts. (I go quiet for a week and somebody gets prolific!) And there are two points I wanted to raise:

1. I would like to introduce to two words: Spoiler Alert.

That’s right, I innocently peruse your postings and before I know it, the cat is out of the bag and I know the ending before I even get there. Next thing you’ll be telling me (**SPOILER ALERT**–notice how it’s used) Anna jumps on the tracks, The Sting is, in fact, a sting, Marlene Dietrich is the star witness, and Bruce Willis is a ghost. (SPOILERS COMPLETE–this is necessary, but I feel it’s a nice touch.)

2. If you wanted to see pictures of my Panama Canal trip why didn’t you just ask (although I have to admit I did enjoy your adventures in dialogue. I think you really captured my essence with ” The….book. Hmmm. Yes. The book…”–”That is so me!” I thought to myself.)

The Panama Canal!

Watching that canal fill is pretty darn amazing!

By the way, congratulations on finishing the book. I have, well, a few chapters left, but I’ll be done before you know. I will have to get back to you what’s next, but it will be good.

25 And Counting

That’s right baby…cross another one off my list!  (That “baby” was a generic “baby”–I’m not calling you in the particular “baby”.)

I just finished The Third Policeman and can add that to the count to 100 for 2010!  I’ve got to go and get some dinner but thought I’d share my exultation with you.

I can’t really talk about the ending until you read it, so anytime you want to finish this book (or read a little bit more of it) I’ll be waiting.

And whenever you want to pick the next book I’ll be ready to move on (make it a short one …I’m reading to beat the clock!)

In celebration let me share what I stumbled upon this week…

It’s coming!

Go Ahead Punk, Make My Block of Gold

That’s the next world?  Color me disappointed.

I did think it was funny (not funny, like The Third Policeman funny, but actually funny) that shortly after I finished writing the last post in which I created a faux-dialogue between you and I, I read another single person dialogue in Chapter 8 (or VIII) between the narrator and his soul.  What a crazy coincidence!

That previous paragraph should be an indication of just how little I have left to say about this book…I’m giving up.  I’m no longer going to try and force myself to like this book…for me its going to remain like the TV show Friday Night Lights–I can recognize its quality, but I just can’t get drawn into the storyline.  So I’m now going to slog through the last quarter of the book…I may chortle time and again, but I’m done try to puzzle out just what the hell is going on here…this book has beaten me.

And speaking of finishing books….my goal for 2010 was for this to be the year that I read 100 books…as we close in on the last two months of the year, I decided to do a count and discovered that I still have to read 26 books to make that milestone.  That’s disappointing.   So it’s probably not going to happen.  But I’ll keep you updated on progress (because I like to pretend that someone [anyone] else cares about this random goal [my own personal BookIt!] as much as I do.).

Well twin…I’m moving forward.  I’m thinking I’ll be finishing this book sometime later this week (then only 25 more to go!–look at me keep on top of keeping you posted)…so I think you have some serious (but comical) reading to do.

Until next time,

Jon

Simulating Dialogue

I know you’ve been busy the past few weeks…so I decided (like just now–actually it was on my walk home from work) that I’d pick up some of your slack and simulate some dialogue on this blog until you have a chance to post again.   So close your eyes and imagine if you will that you and I are sitting in the same room (in my mental picturing we’re sitting in lawn chairs and the room is completely empty…except a bicycle may or may not be leaning against a wall–but you’re free to change the setting and/or seating technology).

Jon:  So how are you liking the book?

Justin:  The….book.  Hmmm.  Yes.  The book…

Jon:  The Third Policeman

Justin:  I know, I know.  I think its hilarious…especially that part when De Selby is talking about that aspect of life that he’s completely misunderstood.

Jon:  Yeah that’s a gut buster.  How about the turn the plot takes in Chapter 6…things turn positively Kafkaesque.

Justin:  As opposed to negatively Kafkaesque

Jon:  I guess I think Kafkaesque-ness is inherently negative.

Justin:  Have you ever read Kafka?

Jon:  Like the first eight pages of The Trial.  But I don’t think reading the work is prerequisite for understanding the term.

Justin:  It makes for a richer understanding.

Jon:  Regardless–what did you think when the narrator suddenly found himself accused of a crime that he didn’t commit?

Justin: …

Jon:  I wondered if it was a miscarriage of justice to accuse him of a crime that he didn’t commit in that particular instance but that he had committed and gotten away with in the past.  Is it the scales of justice evening up or being thrown even further out of whack?

Justin: Did you know that the Panama Canal opened in 1914?

Jon:  Justin are you reading The Third Policeman?

Justin:  That was two years ahead of its target date!

Jon:  Are you reading a book about the Panama Canal?

Justin:  It’s fascinating.

Jon:  Agreed!  Tell me about the water rising and falling!

End Scene.

Until the Panama Canal ceases to be enthralling,

Jon

 

Revelations About Myself

I’m going to detour this blog away from our usual high-level of literary criticism (i.e. “Proust makes my brain achy”) and alter the tenor to one of confession and navel gazing.  It will be as if F.R. Leavis were a cast member of The Real World/Road Rules Challenge.  This blog post is dedicated to me.

For as I read on in The Third Policeman I had an epiphany…a rollicking, eye-opening Little Chandler on the bridge epiphany. (I should note that I’m trying to conversationally reference a James Joyce story that I read about ten years ago, so Little Chandler’s epiphany may not have happened on a bridge…but that’s how I remember it, and I’m too lazy to fact check.  You should note that I just conversationally referenced a James Joyce story—quite the intellectual!  It’s like dinner the other night…I was asked “How was your day?”  and I responded “‘riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay.’”).

My epiphany…I’m probably about 75% couch.

That is if you buy into the Policemen’s way of thinking and what’s frightening to me as I progress in this book, is that the policemen  make more and more sense.  I find myself nodding along and then I think to myself “Wait.  Wait!  A bicycle can’t eat food!”  Do you see a connection between the crazy philosophies of De Selby and the skewed world of the policemen?  What did De Selby know?  Or is De Selby just another part of this alternative world..did nothing, in fact, every take place in the reality that we know?

Now I’ve got myself into a tizzy, and right before bed!

Well I should go decompress so I can get a decent night’s rest.  Until next time…

“The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived : she sold lemon platt.”

Adieu,

Jon

Blissful Disorientation

Your last post left me with a veritable feast for thought.

No! NO! A Smorgasborg, Yes, a veritable smorgasbord of thought. Why I filled up so much on thought-lefse, thought-aebleskiver, and thought-gravet laks, I had no room for any thought lutefisk, and you know how I get without my thought lutefisk:

Crabby.

Anyway, I got over that, but I think you raise an interesting question. Is the narrator dead? In short, I think he could be. He can’t remember his name. He’s communining with dead (Old Mathers). He’s spiritedly (is their any other way) conversing with his own soul. (The ingeniously name, Joe.)

So, it could be.

But honestly, I am really coming to think that trying to make sense of the narrative isn’t worth trouble. I think this might be a prime example of Alfred Hitchcock’s ol’ narrative standby, the maguffin.

I think Flann O’Brien is trying to convince us that this book is about one thing (the narrator’s search for his identity) so that he can sneak up on us with the real story. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that story is at this point, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really need to.

Why worry about what the story is “about” when you can just sit back and enjoy things like this description of De Selby analysis of movies:

“These are the same films which he mentions in Golden Hours (p. 155) as having ‘a strong element of repetitive element’ and as being ‘tedious’.  Apparently, he had examined them patientlypicture by picture and imagined that they would be screened in the same way, failing at the time to grasp the principle of the cinematograph.”

Ha!

For the time being I will just enjoy the blissful sense of disorientation of not really understanding what’s going on, like watching Mulholland Drive for the first time or trying to figure out why a bunch of animated moppet puppets need a nanny in Muppet Babies. (It just doesn’t make any sense!)

Sometimes its more about the journey and less about the destination.

Spoiler Alert! (Maybe…I’m Not Really Sure What’s Going On)

I think with your last post you inadvertently raise an interesting point.  Not the question of whether Orson is Mork’s soul…that’s easily dismissed from  a half-distracted viewing of even a single episode of Mork and Mindy.  Orson is Mork’s boss…to draw an analogy that’s close to your heart think of the Orson-Mork relationship as an Orkian version of Suzanne Somers vis-a-vis George Wyner in that hallmark of feminist sitcomery, She’s The Sheriff.  I think that Orson is a mid-level bureaucrat not very different from Mork’s Earthbound friend, Nelson Flavor.

But it is interesting to think of aliens and souls.  Do they have them?  If they do is the God of this galaxy their god too?  Does a soul automatically mean that there is a God?

Deep stuff Justin…it’s like talking Pam Dawber’s filmography with Emmanuel Levinas.

(On a complete sidenote…according to imdb.com Conrad Janis’s character on that show was called Fred ‘Fredzo’ McConnell.  When was he ever called Fredzo?!)

Now on to my spoiler…this may ruin an entire reading experience…so you may want to think twice about reading on (I feel a bit like Grover warning about the Monster at the End of the Book…but really (I’m serious) this may completely spoil your enjoyment of upcoming surprises (I mean it)…so be wary (exuding seriousness right now)).

Is the narrator dead?

In all the critical stuff I’ve read about the book it mentions that the book is about death…and this world of the three policeman doesn’t seem very earthbound (cf. talking corpses).  Does everyone but me know that the main character is dead…or is this a suprise that comes later.  Or is he actually alive right now and it will truly be a surprise when he dies later in the book?  If he is dead when did he die…was he dead from the very beginning or did he die somewhere around chapter two?  Or am I completely misinformed and does this book have nothing to do with death…and it’s really just about policemen and bicycles and DeSelby?

I have absolutely no idea what is going on in this book.

Random observation:  Chapter Five opens with a discussion of DeSelby’s mirror contraption and its “diminishing images”…this is echoed later on with MacCruiskeen’s chests.  I have no idea if this is important…I barely understand the words the characters are saying.

Onward ho!

Jon

Mork Calling Orson

I find it very hard to believe that your constant references to tropical detective dramas doesn’t make you the life of the party.(Why I remember when your impersonation of Figgins from Magnum P.I. used to have them rolling in the aisles.)

And, who, I ask who, does not enjoy a lively bit of James MacArthur triva? No one I know, that’s for sure! Perhaps, it’s the fact you that you lead with James MacArthur. Why, I shared the same bit of information at my bi-monthly Helen Hayes Trivia Knitting Circle, and one person cried out, “Why Honey, I think you dropped a stitch, because that was a pearl! A pearl of wisdom!”

So, I guess in the end you just have to know your audience.

Anyway back to the book. I know this is somewhat shocking, since (until this morning) I hadn’t “technically” read the book for a few weeks. Then I pick it up again, and I can’t figure out why I put it down for so long because it’s freakin’ hilarious.

Here are chapter 3′s greatest hits:

On names: “All people have names of one kind or another. Some are arbitrary labels related to the appearance of the person, some represent purely genealogical associations but most of them afford some clue as the parents of the person named and confer a certain advantage in the execution of legal documents”

Ha!

I also like the robber he meets on the road who describes life as “a certain death-trap.”

As you know, I have something of a habit of looking for narrative parallels between great works of fiction and late 70′s sitcom spin-offs. Well, I can’t help but see certain similarities between the interaction of our nameless narrator and his soul, Joe and the interactions between zany alien life form, Mork and his intergalactic contact Orson. This led to several questions:

1. Orson seems much more grounded and intelligent (albeit less zany) why did they decide to choose Mork for this intergalactic mission?

2. Is Orson really Mork’s soul?

3. Why is Conrad Janis pretending to conduct the music he is listening to on a record?

With that food for thought, I will leave you.

Na-nu, na-nu,

Justin