The Lord Of Misrule A Poetic And Prose Memoir Of Old New Orleans lord of misrule - tattersalls - lord of misrule p,2,f; 3,h;.
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Territorial restrictions may be printed on the book. I finished it on Saturday; it was a very good book, but it certainly isn't the 'book of the century', IMO. I haven't read or heard The Talking Heads. I see that iTunes has audiobooks of Talking Heads and Talking Heads 2 , so I'll download these once I get back to Atlanta I'm using the hotel's wireless network and don't want to divulge my credit card number.
I bought the books by the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra because of the upcoming Nobel Prize for Literature announcement on Thursday; Larry lriley posted in the Prizes group that The Complete Review has named Parra as the winner of this year's prize. In addition to Freedom I also finished Pulp by Charles Bukowski on Saturday, his last novel, which is a spoof of pulp fiction the main character is a private detective named Nicky Belane. I found it to be a tedious and not very amusing read, and I'll give it two stars for now.
I'll review both books later this week. Oct 4, , 5: I knew you would have bought loads while you were here. I'm trying to decide if Foyles are now officially a chain seeing as they are opening another branch in London. If they are a chain, maybe I need to avoid them now as I used to try and avoid Borders! My favourite Talking Heads is the Lady of Letters. It makes me sob every time I hear it. I'm interested to hear what you make of Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire - I live just down the road from Hackney so I'm interested to find out more about the area.
I haven't read any Sinclair before but one of my friends hates his writing with a passion! Oct 4, , 8: Said they'd have new copies by Friday and call me but. Didn't realize it was an Oprah choice, but I won't hold that against it. I heard the Radio 4 interview where Franzen noticed the problem. How fun to have that version of the book. After seeing the lists of your recent haul, I have to say that if I ever take up cat-burglary, your house is my first target. Please disregard the large moving van parked behind the hedge. Oct 4, , 9: So, don't run out and scarf up Parra's books just yet although I'm enjoying Antipoems: Foyles is opening another bookshop?
Where will the new one be located? Dreaming in Chinese isn't an Oprah's Book Club choice, but her web site did highlight it as an interesting book for September: I read one or two reviews of Dreaming in Chinese on LT, but I first heard about the book from this web site.
The Guardian has several articles about the snafu, and I first learned about it from a tweet from Guardian Books. The new version is supposed to be released in the UK today; from what I've read, the US initial release contains the final draft of the novel. Uh oh; I'd better cancel my trip and call ADT to install an alarm system at home! I will probably read it too, someday. Oct 9, , 8: He and his wife May have three children: Darren, a famed but restless journalist with a quick temper; Shirley, who has irked her parents by marrying a black African and dating a black Briton of Jamaican descent after her husband's death; and Dirk, the youngest sibling, whose small size and smaller ambitions mark him as a failure compared to his brother.
The neighborhood, once populated by white working class Britons, has now become home to immigrants from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and other parts of Europe. Alfred loathes these newcomers, even the noisy yellow "foreign" birds that have taken over the park, as they are not truly British, but he generally keeps his emotions and feelings in check. However Dirk, who worships his father and fully embraces his beliefs, views all nonwhites as threats, blames them for his personal failures, and hates them with a seething fury.
The White family is thrown into crisis when Alfred collapses while on duty. The family rallies around his sickbed, but deep wounds that have festered for years are brought into the open, which creates almost unbearable stress within each member. Dirk is the most deeply affected of all, as his grief over his father's illness is compounded by the realization that none of the rest of his family understands or cares about him. Fueled by rage, fear and hopelessness, he seeks to exact revenge on those whom he hates the most, the 'coloureds' that have made his life a living hell.
The White Family is a spectacular novel about a white working class family in a multicultural London that no longer seems to accept or appreciate them. The characters are richly portrayed, and this reader felt sympathy for even the most dislikable characters. I could hardly put this book down after the first 50 pages, and I won't soon forget these characters or Gee's wonderful narrative. Other than a slightly disappointing last few pages this book was nearly perfect, and this is easily one of my favorite novels of the year. Oct 9, , 3: Poems by Ai My rating: This is the last collection of poems by this award winning poet of mixed descent African-American, Japanese-American, Native American , who died this spring, which consists of narrative poems about people from various backgrounds struggling to survive against difficult odds: Each poem in itself is powerful, but as a whole the collection contained too much pain and despair for me to enjoy this work.
The poems are published side by side in Swedish and English, and consist of 18 mostly light pieces, such as "Two Cities": Two Cities One each side of the strait, two cities one blacked out, occupied by the enemy. In the other the lamps are burning. The bright shore hypnotizes the dark one. I swim out in a trance on the glittering dark waters. A low tuba-blast pushes into me. It's a friend's voice, Take your grave and go.
These poems were beautifully written, but were too light to leave a significant impression on me. Oct 9, , 7: Wow, the White Family sounds really great. I'll have to add that to my wishlist. Oct 10, , 8: I agree about The White Family. Will look for it. Oct 11, , I've been on another book buying frenzy imagine that! I bought these books last weekend at City Lights: Part two of last weekend's City Lights haul: Making Waves by Mario Vargas Llosa: A collection of essays over a 30 year period that won the National Book Critics Circle Award in On Argentina by Jorge Luis Borges: Borges writes about his homeland in a variety of essays, stories and excerpts from books.
Eleazar, Exodus to the West by Michel Tournier. Next, a second trip to City Lights on Friday: An early novel , which is a "bitter and melancholy allegorical farewell to an Argentina from which he would soon be permanently self-exiled". A new release of this novel, which is a satirical and humorous look at the life of a Haitian immigrant to Montreal, who writes a novel about his life and loves. Genesis by Eduardo Galeano: The first novel in his Memory of Fire trilogy about the Americas from their birth to the present day, which is a "giant, colorful mosaic of hundreds of stories depicting the clashes between the Old World and the New".
Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa: I wasn't expecting to find any MVL novels at City Lights, but most of his most highly regarded novels were there, including this one, which I didn't own; it's a novel about contemporary Peru, set in a remote Andean village where the Peruvian Army is battling the Shining Path guerrillas in a town that trusts neither side. Tradition and the Black Atlantic: This is a guide to the world of cultural studies, which begins with the British theorists of the s and s and examines cultural theory from Edmund Burke to Frantz Fanon to Spike Lee.
A "starkly honest portrait of people caught up in the drive to write and of the personal bargains and self deceptions that such an ambition can entail. I hadn't heard about this biography of John Coltrane's second wife until this morning, when I received an e-mail from avaland about the book. City Lights had just gotten this book in stock, so I added it to my pile. The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, A Life by David Lawday: I saw this amongst the new nonfiction books and had to get it, after seeing "Danton's Death" at the National Theatre last month.
Everything and Nothing by Jorge Luis Borges: A collection of the best of Borges' stories and essays. Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley: A novella originally published in , which is a romantic comedy about a female bibliophile who believes that her love of books can rescue her from a life of servitude. A novella about a literature professor who improvises a bedtime story for his step-daughter while he anxiously awaits his wife's return from art class, who recounts their lives in detail. A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton: I had meant to buy this while I was in London last month; the author spends a week in Heathrow Airport, recording his observations, and lives to tell his tale.
How to Be an Existentialist: A 'concise, witty, and entertaining book about the philosophy of existentialism'; I am interested in existentialist thought, but I had to get this book after reading its subtitle. The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett: I was stunned and thrilled to see the transcript of the play I saw at the National Theatre last month prominently displayed at Green Apple Books.
White Coat Black Hat: A venture into 'the uncharted dark side of medicine', which shines 'a light on the series of social and legislative changes that have sacrificed old-style doctoring to the values of consumer capitalism'. This book was on my wish list, and I was pleased to see what looks to be a brand new copy sold for half price as a 'used' book.
This thread is more dangerous than a trip to my own favorite independent bookstore! So many other tempting things on your new acquisitions list--thanks for sharing Wow, lots of wonderful sounding books here. As I commented on your other thread, I loved Death in the Andes. So many other tempting titles, I hardly know where to begin! But how on earth do you plan to carry all these books back to Atlanta?
I was nearly stymied by a mere six extra books to take home on the train from Boston. Wow--and I'm with Rebecca--how are you getting all of these home? You're such a great customer at City Lights--do they give you free shipping? Oct 11, , 1: Oct 11, , 6: Thank you very much for making me feel that my book-purchasing during my short trip to NYC has been moderate!
I think the count is at 8 or 9 so far, although I do have two days to go. I've seen books from this series in Borders and independent bookstores in the US. If they fit in there then they'll fit into my Columbia Sportswear duffel bag, so I'm in good shape either way. The vast majority of these books are small, as I intentionally avoid buying larger books or those I can easily get in Atlanta e.
I'll try to read of the smaller books every day, and sell them back to Green Apple Books or give them to interested LTers before I go, to lighten the load a bit. Shhh The two guys I know best at City Lights will give me a free item, generally a book bag or hat, every so often, particularly after a major purchase. They both know me on a first name basis and that's before they see my name on my credit card , so I think it's far to say that I'm one of their better customers especially one who lives over miles away!
Right, Char; this is definitely my biggest book haul since I started coming to SF on a regular basis times per year every year since , although this year I'll only make it here twice. I will make one more stop to the Annex at Green Apple Books and at least one more visit to City Lights before I leave, but I'll have to be very selective on my purchases maybe books from either store.
Oct 12, , Two book bloggers are hosting a week of reading books published by New York Review Books. I've accumulated a couple of dozen NYRB books over the past couple of years but have read hardly any of them, so I'll definitely participate in this challenge. I had planned to read The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig before the end of the year, so I'll at least read that book during that week. Oct 12, , 6: I've read lots of NYRBs and own lots more Ihaven't read, so I'll think about doing this depending on where I am in my other reading at the time.
Oct 12, , 7: Wow, Darryl, that is a haul! I'll be careful when emailing you about new books now: I read her My Driver last year and thought I'd like to read another of hers sometime. Oct 13, , Three short reviews of three short books: This novella consists of ordinary stories about every day lives, and in Zambra's delicate hand these characters are allowed to slowly develop and mature.
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Perec does not analyze, he only observes, which made for a mildly interesting but somewhatdisappointing read. A Week at the Airport: The author is employed by the owner of Heathrow Airport, given free reign to its new Terminal 5, and encouraged to freely record his observations. He writes about passengers he meets, and expounds upon their lives, loves and past encounters; the airport workers, from the president of British Airways to a restroom attendant; the structure and layout of Terminal 5; and the various and abstracted experiences of being in an airport and flying.
Reading this book was an interesting contrast to the Perec book, and what made this a much more interesting read for me was de Botton's personal and philosophical statements and his behind-the-scenes look at the functioning of a modern airport filled with passengers and employees from various lands and different backgrounds. Oct 13, , 1: The finalists for this year's National Book Awards have just been announced: Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Dower, Cultures of War: An Education in War Poetry: Well, I've only heard of some of these, but I think I could come up with some other books I think should be finalists if I put my mind to it.
Oct 13, , 2: I own the Carey and the Yamashita from the fiction list, and have heard about the Shriver and the Krauss; the Gordon won't be published until next month. I'm surprised that Freedom by Jonathan Franzen didn't make this list, given all of the hoopla about it "novel of the century", etc. I Hotel looks interesting; it's a historical novel about an actual hotel in San Francisco, and it is about the Asian-American civil rights movement in the Bay Area.
I'll read it at the end of this month.
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I'll look for Ignatz and check out the other poetry collections at City Lights today or tomorrow. I haven't heard of any of the nonfiction books, and I don't read YA literature. Oct 13, , 6: I'm seriously flirting with literary prize fatigue here; however, this is my favorite new award. The shortlist for this year's Wellcome Trust Book Prize, which celebrates the best fiction and nonfiction books written about medicine and literature, was announced last week: Oct 21, , 4: Lane is a biochemist at University College London, and in this book he "argues that there are 10 such inventions and explores the evolution of each.
Not surprisingly, each of the 10—the origin of life, the creation of DNA, photosynthesis, the evolution of complex cells, sex, movement, sight, warm bloodedness, consciousness and death—is intricate, its origins swirling in significant controversy. Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life , as I'd like to get back to reading more books about science.
Oct 22, , 6: Lennie Less is an accomplished British jazz saxophonist who is about to turn 50 in October , and is reasonably happy, as he is in a comfortable marriage and his music has provided him with personal satisfaction and material comfort. One day he watches a hostage drama taking place in a nearby town, and recognizes the intruder as Maxie Lermon, an American activist that he met years ago, as he was the lover of a Nadia Emmerson, a woman he also loved. He wants to be of some assistance, knowing that the man has a violent streak and might kill his hostages.
He meets up with the teenage daughter of Maxie and Nadia; she concocts a risky plan to bring the hostage drama to an end. Lennie, who is cautious to a fault, has reservations about the plan, yet cannot completely distance himself from the woman he once loved, and the young girl he has become enamored with. Despite an interesting story line I found this book to be quite disappointing, as I could not empathize with any of the characters, and I found Lennie, the main character, to be selfish, wishy washy and thoroughly annoying.
Fortunately this was a short novel, but it's one I would not recommend. In today's Guardian Sarah Crown, the editor of the paper's online book section, announces the creation of a new project, Fiction Uncovered , whose goal is to highlight books by the best UK writers whose work has not received much attention or recognition. The project will select and announce eight books next spring, which will all receive promotion by major booksellers and other outlets.
Oct 23, , Should be entertaining to see what others consider "much attention or recognition. Oct 28, , Jonas Woldemariam, the American born son of Ethiopian immigrants, has recently lost his teaching job in Manhattan and separated from his wife. He seeks to recreate his late parents' journey from Peoria, Illinois to Nashville, Tennessee, in an effort to learn about their lives and to understand his own confused and troubled past.
Jonas was born in the Midwest, not quite American nor fully African, and he is ostracized and treated as an exotic by his classmates and neighbors. His home is not a sanctuary, due to his father's violent outbursts towards him and his mother, and he copes by internalizing his thoughts and feelings, and making himself as invisible as possible to his father.
He obtains a bachelor's degree in literature, moves to New York, and takes on a series of odd jobs. While working at a center that provides legal aid to recent immigrants he meets Angela, an African-American law student, and the two eventually marry. Angela loves Jonas, and through her connections at work she is able to get him a job teaching English literature at a private Upper East Side school.
On the surface it would seem as though Jonas would be content; however, his self isolation and inability to express or articulate his feelings and his frequent tendency to lie or spout half-truths frustrate Angela, who throws herself into her work and spends less time with her husband as a result. After the couple separate, Jonas finds himself completely alone, as he has no friends or family.
He has no clear sense of who he is or what he should do now that he is completely free. He realizes that he must go back to the past, to recreate his parents' journeys and lives as best he can, in order to determine what he should do with his life. How to Read the Air has some roots in the author's past, as he did grow up in Peoria, but it is far from an autobiographical novel.
On my initial reading I was somewhat lukewarm toward this book, despite its beautiful writing and richly portrayed characters, mainly because I could not identify or understand Jonas. However, after reading several recent interviews of Mengestu and thinking about the book over the past few days, I have come to appreciate it much more, as I find that this book, and its protagonist, have a lot to say about the life of an immigrant to America, along with anyone who finds himself caught between cultures or engaged in a struggle of self discovery.
The book is filled with melancholy, yet it ends on a hopeful note, as Jonas is a sympathetic character despite his many flaws and shortcomings. Thanks for the review, Darryl. I've been looking forward to reading How to Read the Air , both because I liked his earlier novel so much and because I read a story in The New Yorker that was an excerpt from this book I think , during the time the protagonist was a teacher. One of the things I liked so much about The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was its depiction of immigrant life, so I'm glad that Mengetsu continues that thread in this new work.
His only surviving "heir" is his great-nephew Francis, a 14 year old boy who prefers to be called Tarwater. Mason kidnapped Tarwater as an infant from his nephew Rayber, the boy's uncle and a schoolteacher who lives in town, in order to baptize and educate the boy in order to make him a prophet of God.
Mason tells Tarwater that, upon the old man's death, his duty will be to baptize Rayber's mentally retarded son Bishop, so that he may be saved from his morally corrupt parents and "burn clean" Rayber's eyes into realizing the errors of his secular ways. After the old man's death Tarwater is pleased to be released from Mason and his fanatically religious beliefs, and is eager to return to the home of his uncle Rayber, although he is angry that his uncle failed to rescue him from the old man.
However, once Tarwater sees Bishop, he is both tormented and repulsed by the boy, and finds himself deeply and internally conflicted by the old man's dying wish and his own desire to escape his destiny. Compounding his torment is his uncle's fervent wish to provide Tarwater with a secular education, which causes Tarwater to angrily reject his uncle, who he sees as someone who prefers to talk than to act.
The tension and strong emotions build over several days, until Tarwater finally acts on his passions. The Violent Bear it Away is a classic Southern gothic novel, with its dark and at times disturbing narration, with its overlying theme being the conflict between religion and secularism, and the violent reaction that often results. This was a powerful book, but I found it to be more predictable and overwrought than her first novel Wise Blood , which also explored similar themes.
Oct 28, , 5: The narrator of this novella is a young Haitian man who is living in a dodgy apartment on the rue Saint-Denis in Montreal along with his African roommate Bouba, the "Black Buddha" of the city. Despite its short length I found this book to be tiresome and less than believable, filled with trivial discussions about literature, jazz and black-white relations in Montreal and in the United States. Oct 29, , I bet in my local bookstore they would put it in the 'self-help' section.
As I noted on your other thread, this book falls into the category of books whose titles are the best thing about them. Oct 30, , Oct 30, , 9: The winners of the American Book Awards, which "recognize outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America's diverse literary community", have been announced: Gutierrez, Live from Fresno y Los: Robinson, editors, Poems for the Millennium: Quincy Troupe and Katha Politt More info: Oct 31, , 9: Journals by Mahmoud Darwish My rating: Mahmoud Darwish was a prominent Palestinian poet, activist, and editor who won several literary awards and international peace prizes.
This collection of standard and prose poems, fragments and journal entries was written just prior to his death, and was published in English by Archipelago Books last year. The pieces in this collection are deeply personal, reflecting on his youth and the wisdom that comes with age, and include grim and sorrowful poems about the Palestinian struggle along with playful and witty takes on everyday life. Here is a representative poem from this collection: If we want to We will become a people, if we want to, when we learn that we are not angels, and that evil is not the prerogative of others We will become a people when we stop reciting a prayer of thanksgiving to the sacred nation every time a poor man finds something to eat for his dinner We will become a people when we can sniff out the sultan's gatekeeper and the sultan without a trial We will become a people when a poet writes an erotic description of a dancer's belly We will become a people when we forget what the tribe tells us, when the individual recognises the importance of small details We will become a people when a writer can look up at the stars without saying: Oct 31, , Interesting list of titles and authors, most of whom I've never heard of!
Oct 31, , 5: Jean-Paul Sartre's autobiography was published in English in , the year that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and it focuses on his early childhood and the influences that led to his decision to become a writer. Sartre's father died when he was an infant; as a result he and his mother Anne-Marie moved back into her parents' house on the edge of Paris.
As an only child, the young Jean-Paul was nurtured and sheltered by his mother and his grandparents, and his greatest influence as a child was his grandfather Charles Schweitzer, a professor of German literature and nephew of the Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer.
The Reading Series
Sartre's initial years were spent in near complete isolation from other children, and he began to read voraciously at an early age, with his greatest influences being the adventure stories that his mother and grandmother gave to him, to the chagrin of his grandfather. He began to play act stories that he created based on his reading, and soon he began to write stories about these adventures. In his later childhood his grandfather's teaching and reading became more influential, and he supported his wife and daughter in encouraging Sartre to pursue a career as a writer.
The autobiography is divided into two long chapters, Reading and Writing. The first chapter is by far the most interesting, as Sartre introduces us to his family and the joys of his young childhood. However, the last half of the book was far too long, with an overemphasis and overanalysis of his early writing and its influences, with only minimal attention given to his outside life, his family and the few friends that he made. Despite a promising beginning I found The Words to be a disappointing and somewhat unenjoyable read, due to its lack of balance and Sartre's choppy and disjointed narrative.
Nov 11, , 5: Been on my TBR pile for a long, long time. I love Sartre's novels. Nov 16, , These awards are "presented to published writers of African descent by the national community of Black writers. However, I did find tweets about the ceremony from feliciapride, who was in attendance. According to her, these are the winners: New and Collected Poems by Haki R. The Life and Times of an American Original this year, and would highly recommend both books.
New and Collected Poems to my wish list. Nov 16, , 7: Darryl, when I read this review of Thelonius Monk I was hoping that you might read it and then reflect on whether you found it fair. Nov 18, , 8: Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel laureate, died in June at the age of The winners of this year's National Book Awards were announced last night: The Fontainebleau Dream Machine which appears in The Long Poem Anthology pairs poems with collages as well as captions which parody the convention of poem and illustration. Thus "the 1st Frame shows" but "the 3rd Frame hides " , "the 15th Frame pre-figures" and "the 18th Frame" offers no explanation at all.
Like the hot air balloon that recurs as a motif in each collage, the poem moves with the drift of its lofty language and surreal associations. Instead of progressing in a straightforward fashion from A to B, the poem offers new and unusual perspectives on a motif as it traces its circuitous path. In this sense, the balloon is similar to the moth in Blaser's poem. It is "the gift or the dictated"—that is, the found object that becomes the "one dominant musical note or image" 32 Blaser, " Statement" on which the artist performs variations.
However, operating from a painterly sense of the serial, Kiyooka is more self-conscious about critiquing his own framing practices. His poems and collages emphasize their extravagant mode of composition, as Christian Bok observes: Kiyooka performs a surrealist exercise that explores the parataxis of the unconscious through an associative logic of jumpcuts and dissolves. The technological images of both the cinema and the balloon intersect in the semiological genre of a comic-strip, whose bubbles of thought drift through a pageant of frames.
As Eva-Marie Kroller observes, The Fontainebleau Dream Machine "attempts no less than a wide-ranging, dialectical, and often humorous critique of history in general, and art in particular, as a grand scheme of self-delusion" "Roy" Both sublime artwork and encyclopedic prank, Kiyooka's serial poem un frames its own technique in order to further the sense of shift in the serial narrative. Keeping all these influences in mind, from the variatio of the lyric sequence to the recursive phrasing of Spicer's serial poems, from the collage of genres in Kamboureli's long poem to the overlay of words and images in Kiyooka's photoglyphic texts, let us proceed to the novels themselves and examine how Ondaatje, Bowering, Kogawa, Marlatt, and Carson draw from their long poems in order to pattern their novels.
By studying the recursive symmetries in Ondaatje's imagery, Bowering's circumlocutions, Kogawa's concentric narratives, Marlatt's quest narratives, and Carson's academic apparatuses, I will demonstrate that these authors create lyrical fiction as an extension of their established poetic practice. Un framing Narrative Solecki: Very few people want to talk about architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe and that sort of thing? No, just in poems and novels. There has been a great change in what "structure" is in a poem or in a novel. Ondaatje, " Interview" In this interview with Sam Solecki, Ondaatje does not clarify what he means by the "great change" in the structure of poems and novels.
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Although Solecki observes that Ondaatje's "longer works have resisted easy categorization" , and other critics refer to his "Booker-winning novel-poems" Pyper, "Morgue" , it remains unclear what Ondaatje considers the relation of poetry to the novel to be. In the interview, Ondaatje refuses to slot his novels into one category and asserts that " i f you're writing a novel then you're writing against what you know the novel is" This chapter will examine how Ondaatje repeats and builds on the image of the frame picture frames, windows, doors, mirrors in his long poems the man with seven toes and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid , as well as in his first novel, Coming Through Slaughter The frame functions as a self-reflexive motif in these books, because Ondaatje works against the expectation entrenched by the epic tradition of continuous narrative in the long poem and novel by shaping his narratives as series of discrete but interrelated frames of poetry and lyrical prose.
This chapter will focus specifically on Ondaatje's fascination with un framing the visual series and transforming it into a song cycle. For example, in the man with seven toes, Ondaatje frames his narrative as a series of individual lyrics loosely based on the "Mrs. Fraser" series of 34 paintings by the Australian artist Sidney Nolan.
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Stressing the mythical dimensions of Nolan's art, Ondaatje expands on the Aboriginal dimension of the Mrs. Fraser legend11 and transforms the painted series into a song cycle. Alluding to the Songlines of Aboriginal myth, the long poem changes the setting of the legend and maps a new poetic territory using ballads and lyrics.
Because song cycles work by correspondence and repetition, rather than by linear connection and continuous plot, the poet fashions a disjointed narrative using clusters of lyrics that connect through motifs and recurring themes. The woman's body is the physical link between the separate lyrics because her story of survival is inscribed upon her skin "like a map" man This simile connects the woman's story to traditions of European cartography and colonialism, as well as to Aboriginal traditions of body painting and Songlines.
The narrative becomes a kind of secular walkabout, in which the mapping of the violent encounters between the woman and the inhabitants of the desert evolves into a cycle of songs which she performs. Ondaatje elaborates on this dynamic between the visual series and the song cycle in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, which is an aggregate of lyrics, prose anecdotes, photographs, and interviews that critics frequently liken to a "picture album" because of its disjointed, visual style Hutcheon, Canadian ; see also Nodelman The poet-outlaw perceives the world in arrested images, even as he avoids arrest himself.
He portrays himself evading portraits—or rather, the mysterious Canadian "orchestra" Billy 84 shaping Billy's song cycle present him in this manner. The Canadian artists disturb the fixity implied in a conceit citing photography by constructing a song cycle about mythmaking, rather than about the historical figure. In Coming Through Slaughter, Ondaatje personifies the dynamic between the song cycle and visual series in the friendship between the jazzman Buddy Bolden and the photographer 35 Bellocq.
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The fictional encounter between these two historical figures is structured around the image of the broken frame, which is a trope that represents the synthesis of the artists' respective talents, as well as the process of frame-making and -breaking in Ondaatje's writing. Thus, the dynamic between the song cycle and visual series—which begins as a relationship between source material and adaptation in the man with the seven toes and evolves into a trope in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid—functions on the level of metaphor, character, and form in Coming Through Slaughter, where the design of the novel is clearly shaped by the rhetorical techniques that Ondaatje developed in his long poems.
For example, Ondaatje displays an enduring interest in the architectural order of classical and neo-classical buildings, such as the Vil la San Girolamo in The English Patient and the Wickramasinghe house in Anil's Ghost. The vaults, arches, and portals in these abandoned buildings possess a certain elegance, but they are also laden with explosives and targeted by revolutionaries. They provide a temporary shelter for the artist, but they are not a secure destination.
After apprenticing in the forms of classicism, Ondaatje's artist-figures apply their skills to the task of undoing the social order that these buildings represent. Thus Patrick, the protagonist of In the Skin ofa Lion, attempts to dynamite the neo-classical Toronto Water Works, on which he has laboured. In the same novel, Ondaatje dramatizes the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct, and transforms the webbed girders of the bridge into a "main character" and "love objec[fJ" Ondaatje, "Where" However, he contrasts the romance of bridge construction with Patrick's bombing of a Muskoka resort that caters to the Toronto elite.
The shifting perspectives, self-reflexive tone, and length of "Spider Blues" suggest a re-alignment in Ondaatje's poetics in which he elevates an image into a conceit and then takes it apart. This un framing strategy recurs in many of the heavily anthologized poems from Rat Jelly , including "The Gate in His Head.
In [Ondaatje's] poetry since , and more so in his non-lyric works, we have seen him seeking the unrested form he requires" "Ondaatje" Bowering argues that the poem represents a move away from Ondaatje's "habit [ It's an artifice, it's a chair, it was made by somebody" "Moving" , and that somebody Ondaatje prefers to call "an artisan" instead of a "poet" Whereas Bowering regards "The Gate in His Head" as transitional, Stephen Heighton considers the poem "a kind of manifesto; it is a clear assertion about what poetry should be and how it can fly by the nets of language" Heighton However, one should note the element of paradox in Heighton's reading of this pivotal lyric.
The poem is a clear assertion against clarity: Like Carson, who believes that paradox is the essence of desire, Ondaatje sees paradox as a productive force, precisely because it is not restive. From the perspective of un framing, Ondaatje's most concise architectural vision appears in "House on a Red Cliff," a lyric from his collection of poems, Handwriting. Such dualism and irresolution also characterize the concluding stanzas of "House on a Red C l i f f: The long, the short, the difficult minutes of night where even in darkness there is no horizon without a tree just a boat's light in the leaves Last footstep before formlessness 68 38 These stanzas contrast long and short, light and dark, horizontal and vertical to bring one object into focus against another, but the images ultimately gravitate towards obscurity and silence.
The drift is entropic. Ondaatje's fascination with the dissolution of form stems from his desire to keep the conclusions of his poems open: It's something more; [ In his search for an open form, Ondaatje admits to being influenced by bp Nichol's "morality, how you have to lead the audience into your own perceptual sense, but then having a responsibility to lead them out again" " Interview" A close examination of Ondaatje's first book-length poem, the man with seven toes, will demonstrate that the author leads his readers into the framework of Nolan's paintings and then leads them out again by unframing the visual series and transforming it into a song cycle reminiscent of an Aboriginal Songline.
In a interview with Solecki, Ondaatje explains that he based the man with seven toes on a series of paintings by Sidney Nolan on the Mrs. Ondaatje reprints the Maclnnes account at the end of the man with seven toes, effectively sharing with the reader most of what he knows about Mrs. Fraser, since only a modest selection of paintings from the Mrs. Fraser series is reproduced in Ondaatje's sourcebook, Sidney Nolan: Fraser was a Scottish lady who was shipwrecked on what is now Fraser Island, off the Queensland Coast. She lived for 6 months among the aborigines, rapidly losing her clothes, until she was discovered by one Bracefell, a deserting convict 39 who himself had hidden for 10 years among the primitive Australians.
The lady asked the criminal to restore her to civilization, which he agreed to do i f she would promise to intercede for his free pardon from the Governor. The bargain was sealed, and the couple set off inland. At first sight of European settlement, Mrs. Fraser rounded on her benefactor and threatened to deliver him up to justice i f he did not immediately decamp. Bracefell returned disillusioned to the hospitable bush, and Mrs. Fraser's adventures aroused such admiring interest that on her return to Europe she was able to exhibit herself at 6d a showing in Hyde Park, man 44; see Maclnnes Ondaatje's placement of this synopsis at the end of the man with seven toes both frames and unframes his narrative.
It provides a basic plot line for his lyric sequence, which is largely unintelligible on first reading because it was originally written for dramatic performance. The sequence refuses all background commentary, proceeds in brief imagistic fragments, and switches voice without warning between three different speakers: To borrow a metaphor from Stephen Spender in his catalogue introduction to Nolan's series, Ondaatje's lyrics are "visible links in the chain of an invisible narrative" n.
However, although the painted and poetic series are interlinked, they are not the same narrative. The Maclnnes synopsis goes some way to framing the man with seven toes retroactively, but it cannot be used as a rigid template for plotting Ondaatje's sequence. Ondaatje's heroine is not shipwrecked off the Queensland Coast; rather, she chooses to get off a train in the middle of the Australian outback.
Lost in the arid landscape, the woman escapes starvation by being adopted by a tribe of Aborigines, which is an aspect of the myth barely treated by the painter and not represented in Sidney Nolan. Ondaatje's heroine makes a pact with a convict named Potter, not Bracefell, and the poet concentrates on the sexual and violent aspects of the couple's journey.
Nolan, in contrast, gives their wanderings an Edenic quality and emphasizes the woman's betrayal of the man. Only the middle section of Ondaatje's narrative—the swamp scenes and the convict portrait —appear to derive from Nolan's paintings. Ondaatje thus unframes the narrative basis of Nolan's series and incorporates certain lyrical and mythic 40 elements from it into his song cycle.
The Maclnnes synopsis helps to make sense, retroactively, of the overarching narrative and theme. However, on second reading, one reaches the synopsis and realizes that Ondaatje has largely rewritten the Mrs. Elsewhere, Ondaatje's cavalier treatment of source material has caused critics such as Arun Mukherjee to condemn his blatant "misuse of historical figures" Fraser herself altered her story to suit syndication Alexander Furthermore, the paintings Ondaatje uses as his source material "only vaguely suggest the stories and myths they are associated with" Lynn Nolan veers away from history towards myth, since his source, the Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle, is already "Embellished with engravings, portraits and scenes illustrative of the narrative," as its subtitle makes clear.
Ondaatje proceeds even further along this mythic tagent and both artists clearly regard the dismantling of previous narratives as part of their imperative to create anew. The train hummed like a low bird over the rails, through desert and pale scrub, air spun in the carriages. She moved to the doorless steps where wind could beat her knees. When they stopped for water she got off sat by the rails on the wrist thick stones.
The train shuddered, then wheeled away from her.
She was too tired even to call. Though, come back, she murmured to herself. The first 41 sentence is a run-on. The gaps in syntax and storyline widen with the appearance of the Aborigines: Not lithe, they move like sticklebacks, you hear toes crack with weight, elbows sharp as beaks grey pads of knees.
Maps on the soles of their feet 13 Ondaatje leaves the linear train of thought behind in the first lyric and arranges his poem spatially, in blocks of images that combine to form a literary map. Like the picture frames with which Ondaatje is obsessed in Billy and Slaughter, the map doubles as a way of seeing and a way of writing.
It is the first of many metaphors and analogies from the visual arts that Ondaatje exploits in his book-length works. By writing a lyric sequence inspired by Nolan's paintings, Ondaatje engages in an ekphrastic process that reverses Nolan's own method. Just as Ondaatje works with maps and photographs, "literary and visual impressions have always gone hand in hand in [Nolan's] work" Lynn 7.
He has illustrated Shakespeare's sonnets, translated and illustrated Rimbaud, and exhibited his famous Ned Kelly series alongside excerpts from his literary sources. A voracious reader, Nolan spoke "frequently, until as late as , of becoming a poet" Lynn 8. He wrote "short, condensed attempts at poetic prose" and his "habit of writing down visual impressions rather than making preliminary graphic, or painted, sketches" B. Robertson 37 persisted throughout his career. The conjunction of Nolan's paintings with Ondaatje's poems therefore produces a movement that can be summarized as Verse: Re Verse, except that this reversal of direction in genre does not retrace the same narrative path.
Under close examination, the connections between Nolan and Ondaatje prove to be stronger in style than in content. Nolan's painterly example shows Ondaatje how to combine lyricism with narrative by developing myth in a series of imagistic fragments. For example, in the swamp scenes evocative of Nolan's paintings, Ondaatje's tone is clipped but his metaphors are layered and dense: Then swamp is blue green, the mist sitting like toads.
Leaves spill snakes their mouths arched with bracelets of teeth. Once a bird, silver with arm wide wings flew a trail between trees and never stopped, caught all the sun and spun like mercury away from us 23 With its vivid imagery and narrow narrative scope, this lyric fits into the larger series like a segment of a storyboard for a film.
It offers a succession of glimpses, rather than full-blown descriptions. It "relies on a form made up of brief self-contained, often cinematic, lyrics each of which explodes upon the reader with a single startling revelation" Solecki, "Point" , just as Nolan combines an intense lyricism with "a commitment to sudden moments of revelation" In fact, Ondaatje made a proposal to the National Film Board of Canada to adapt the man with seven toes as "cinema verite in the desert," but "they couldn't see it as one" Ondaatje, " Interview" Nolan, for his part, "never made films, but in the early s he was convinced that new forms of myth [ While at work on his Ned Kelly series, Nolan "wrote glowingly of Walt Disney, describing things as though they were sequences from films.
As he struggled with his canvases, he dreamed of film, a medium not 'bounded by four straight lines, colour that moves while you watch it and music at your elbow into the bargain'" Sayers Nolan's storyboard technique connects his series to 43 film, but it also recalls the "early Renaissance panels that showed various stages of a saint's journey or martyrdom" Lynn Although it "is rare for a series of paintings on a single theme and treated with [such] a sustained, lyrical intensity [ Nolan and Ondaatje thus develop similar cinematic and lyrical techniques, but they produce two different "films.
Nolan's paintings exhibit a facination "with plastic rhymes, with the repetition of similar shapes: There may be no logical connection when these are placed side-by-side, but the variations are always there setting up parallels" "Afterword" Thus, Ondaatje's opening simile of the train humming "like a low bird" introduces an image pattern that echoes throughout the song cycle. The bird imagery becomes increasingly masculine and sexual when Potter gives his name and a "bird screeche[s] hideously past" The woman notices that he has a "cock like an ostrich" 32 , echoing her observation on the previous page that the eyelids of birds are "fresh as foreskins" These phallic birds give the penultimate lyric in the collection a distinctly erotic overtone: She slept in the heart of the Royal Hotel 44 Her burnt arms and thighs soaking the cold off the sheets.
She moved fingers onto the rough skin, traced the obvious ribs, the running heart, sensing herself like a map, then lowering her hands into her body. In the morning she found pieces of a bird chopped and scattered by the fan blood sprayed onto the mosquito net, its body leaving paths on the walls like red snails that drifted down in lumps. She could imagine the feathers while she had slept falling around her like slow rain 41 The dream-like image of white feathers falling around the woman while she sleeps raises the question of whether the entire poem is in fact her dream.
For example, noting that the Aborigines resemble "figures of a delirium" more than real people, Travis Lane remarks that "[i]t is as i f the poem is her dream and Potter, the title-hero, the chief figure of her dream" If the woman is indeed dreaming, the bird imagery follows a pattern of dream formation identified by Schemer16 and cited by Freud: Fraser onto figures from her own experience.
Certainly the nightmarish rape scenes and the castration images of the bird in the fan and Potter's severed toes invite a psychoanalytic reading of the narrative. Ondaatje encourages this reading with the statement that a writer "has to be on the border where [ However, Nolan's influence, as well as the 45 prominent role given to the Aborigines, suggests another interpretation that is more relevant to the broader discussion here.
Reassessing the man with seven toes toward the end of her article, Lane argues that the long poem "presents not a dream so much as history as a dream" This interpretation raises the question of whether the poem presents, not so much a dream, as a secular Dreaming. The seeds of this Dreaming are already sown in Nolan's series, which aimed to create myth from comparatively recent Australian legends and reflected a particular post-war ideology. In the s, Nolan acted as a contributing editor to Angry Penguins, a review of literature and the arts which "represented the spirit of experiment, of cosmopolitan modernism opposed, for example, to the Jindyworobaks, a literary group which felt that European civilisation and its discontents could be replaced by a return to the myths and environment of Australia's original inhabitants" Lynn In retrospect, the chief editor of Angry Penguins, Max Harris, remarks that the "time had come despite Patrick White's later theory of environmental alienation to express a white man's 'dreaming' in terms of poetry and painting" M.
By "dreaming," Harris refers to the Aboriginal myths detailing the creation of the universe, which map the Australian landscape through "Songlines": As every story or Dreaming relates to a particular feature of the landscape, series of stories create a track across the land connecting these places and the mystical happenings associated with them. These ancient tracks, which are called Songlines, go in all directions crossing the entire continent and initiated men and women can travel along these Songlines and interact with people from other tribes. Corbally Stourton 21 Ondaatje's series of lyrics creates a mythical track across his literary landscape, but there is a visual expression of this Dreaming that complements its oral performance.
One of the principal methods for representing a Dreaming is body painting, which is "looked upon as a great skill, and women practice it widely in most communities" Corbally Stourton In the Royal Hotel, 46 Ondaatje's heroine creates a kind of body painting from the physical legacy of her journey as she moves her fingers over her skin. Having tracked across large portions of the outback, she traces the curves of her body "like a map," which connects her to the Aborigines who had "[m]aps on the soles of their feet.
The autoeroticism of the concluding lyric recontextualizes this tradition. The woman both embodies her history and dreams it into the present in altered form. Fraser as "an Australian version of Atwood's Susanna Moodie, gradually developing from a situation in which she is alienated from the land to the point where she is one with it" "Point" Fraser, in her various incarnations, has become a kind of Great Ancestor to White Australian art 1 S and literature in the same way that Moodie has achieved mythic status in Canada.
The stories of both women serve as archetypes of the European immigrant experience. Nolan's later portraits of Mrs. Fraser have more in common with the Jindyworobaks, as Nolan represents the legendary woman using the design configurations of Aboriginal rock painting.
Ondaatje, similarly, borrows from Aboriginal traditions to make his heroine a figure of oral history. She becomes a legend immortalized in song, like Potter, whose first appearance inspires a bush ballad: Potter was a convict brought in on the GLITTER DAN they landed him in Adelaide in a week the bugger ran The bounty men they came for him they looked for sixty weeks but Potter lived on wolves and birds down in Cooper's Creek 20 47 This passage supplies another example of Ondaatje's freewheeling use of historical details.
The reference to Cooper's Creek alludes to an entirely separate myth, the tragic deaths of the Australian explorers Burke and Wills, which itself distorts the facts: Burke and Wills are popularly believed to have died in the desert when in fact they were camped by Cooper's Creek, with no shortage of water, in an area where local Aborigines easily obtained a varied and adequate diet.
But by focusing on the horrors of the desert, these myths generated both national martyrs and an expectation that White Australians "deserved" the land and anything else they could wrest from it, as minimal recompense for the sufferings and death of their heroic representatives. Haynes 33 In contrast to the explorers, who were arrogant in their goals and ignorant in their means, Potter moves easily between European and Aboriginal cultures and so forages and survives. Nolan also painted a series about Burke and Wills, but he represented them as awkward and incompetent figures, not heroes.
This fact suggests that Ondaatje gives Bracefell the name of Potter because the man with seven toes is a pottage of Nolan's various series on Mrs. Fraser, Burke and Wills, Leda and the Swan, and outback hotels. While Potter's exploits are recorded in the rollicking ballad forms of the outback, the woman's song begins with a melodic verse from the Scottish ballad, "Waly, Waly": When we came into Glasgow town we were a lovely sight to see My love was all in red velvet and I myself in cramasie 42 In contrast to the pastoral themes of traditional Scottish ballads, Ondaatje adds two stanzas full of urban images that stress the industrial environment of Glasgow.
In this setting, the attraction of the woman seems to be her connection to Aboriginal culture and its traditions of oral performance: Three dogs came out from still grey streets they barked as loud as city noise, 48 their tails and ears were like torn flags and after them came girls and boys The people drank the silver wine they ate the meals that came in pans And after eating watched a lady singing with her throat and hands 42 Whereas the real Mrs. Fraser exhibited her scars in London's Hyde Park, Ondaatje's woman sings and acts out her songs.
The crowd comes to hear the woman, Ondaatje implies, because the Scots are also a clannish people with "wild rivers" coursing beneath their rational "calm": Green wild rivers in these people running under ice that's calm, God bring you also some tender stories and keep you all from hurt and harm 42 Like the Aborigines, the Scottish audience responds enthusiastically to storytelling in song, and their industrial present only heightens their fascination with the mythic past.
By staging the man with seven toes as a dramatic performance at the Vancouver Poetry Festival in and at the Stratford Festival in , Ondaatje aimed to reach his audience in a similar fashion. This interpretation presupposes that Ondaatje had some interest in Aboriginal culture in I am confident that Ondaatje was familiar with the concepts of the Songline and 90 walkabout, but he does not allude to any specific Aboriginal myths in the man with seven toes. Rather, he tends to collapse myths into myth: I am interested in myth.
Making it, remaking it, exploding. I don't like poems or works that cash in on a cliche of history or a personality. I don't like pop westerns and pop Billy the Kids. Myths are only of value to me when they are realistic as well as having other qualities of myth. Another thing that interests me about myth is how and when figures get caught in myths. The association of Billy the Kid with Ned Kelly in this paragraph is striking because Ondaatje has stated that he was 49 "previously interested in Nolan's Ned Kelly series" before he began the man with seven toes " Interview" Like Billy, Nolan's Kelly is "a protean figure responding to Nolan's changing styles and attitudes" Lynn Also like Billy—who was not included in the general amnesty for the deaths incurred by the Lincoln County War—Kelly "began as a joking saint and as an icon-figure of justice and revenge" and eventually became "a lonely resister, a protester without a programme, carrying out ritualistic murders whose original cause has been forgotten" Lynn Nolan himself identified Kelly with Billy and, while living in New York, travelled to see "the pageant of Lincoln in New Mexico where the story of Billy the Kid is enacted" because the harsh landscape "kept Kelly fresh in his mind" Cementing this connection, Ondaatje links the two outlaw myths in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by borrowing Kelly's famous helmet motif from Nolan.
Ondaatje's "picture of Billy" 5 , the empty picture frame that opens and closes The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, strongly suggests the square black helmet worn by Nolan's outlaw. Although the historical Kelly wore his iron helmet only once, the head of Nolan's outlaw appears as a black square with an eye aperture in every panel from the Kelly series. Nolan fashioned and re-fashioned the helmet motif until it became "as important in Nolan's work as [ Kelly's helmet, forged against a day of doom, but finally encompassing Kelly's ruin, epitomizes Kelly's destiny.
In the paintings the helmet is a mask; in the paintings about the helmet and face are almost one, and in in a painting where Kelly and a horse almost sink in a swamp, the ruddy face transforms the helmet into a fleshy cube. Lynn 28 Kelly's helmet becomes his identity even as it hastens his demise, just as Billy's absent portrait thematizes the pursuit, capture, and escape of the outlaw. The real Kelly gang hammered metal ploughshares into bulletproof helmets and body armour in preparation for a shoot out with police, which they lost, in part because the weight of their armour prevented their escape.
Similarly, Ondaatje's Billy shoots portraits and jails his adversaries in his stories, until he himself 50 is jailed and, later, shot. Thus, Ondaatje follows Nolan in matching the outlaw's portrait to his way of perceiving through windows, peepholes, riflesights and of being perceived inside the frame of the artwork, as a "framed" criminal. Such frames-within-frames focus the audience's vision telescopically, as Nolan makes explicit in the picture of "Mrs. Fraser ," where the "grey surround makes the scene appear to be caught in the lens of binoculars" Maclnnes Narrowing the focus also limits the narrative panorama and privileges a particular viewing subject in the manner of a lyric.
Thus, in attempting to sustain the allusiveness and intensity of the lyric voice without sacrificing the momentum of narrative, Ondaatje takes a cue from the way that Kelly's helmet creates "rhythm and passage over time" Sayers Not only does the helmet allow the Kelly legend to be told with the minimum of anecdotal elaboration, but it is also used as an icon of multiple emotions. Through the aperture the eyes blaze with revenge, droop with regret, are haunted with remorse or fade into weary introspection.
Sometimes the aperture shows only the land and the sky. This, with the uniformly black, flat silhouette of the helmet, is an optical device to create a vivacious, tangible area in contrast to the smudgy details. When the landscape is concentrated in the aperture—like a picture within a picture—it crystallises, epitomises the impact; at the same time the helmet creates a focal point and gives cohesion to the scattered, dispersed landscape.
Lynn 29 In Billy, Ondaatje's settings are sparsely detailed, his characterizations anecdotal, and his scenes brief, but he introduces the frame as a recurring composition to create continuity and emotional focus. By placing the empty frame at the beginning of his text, Ondaatje invites his audience to read Billy through this perceptual lens.