Blueprints.

The road I'm on right now - quite literally through the bowels of Milton.
(Click on the thumbnails for a better view)

Hopefully this doesn't somehow constitute academic misconduct.

Milton.

...time may come when men
With angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare:
And from these corporeal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit...
(5.494-97)

After about three months of no concentrated Milton, I decided that today was the day that 'work' (an English Literature degree is never really 'work' is it - and anyone who says it is, is taking themselves too seriously) was going to happen. Thankfully, it did. Up at 8, and to work at 10, my productivity only impeded by a man doing horrible phlegmy coughs on the other side of the room, and a (most likely homeless) man asleep, mouth wide open, snoring. Luckily someone must have complained, because a young lady quickly came to wake him up, and whispered a few cautionary words to him. It was only then that he produced a blue polyethalene bag, and began to eat spring onions out of it. Bizarre.

Anyway, that's all beside the point really. It seems slightly ridiculous to be writing to the world (wide web) about my fairly mundane trip to the library. Maybe I'm writing this because I'm somehow proud of myself, in a more than pathetic way, for having actually done something, other than reading for pleasure, or breaking out of my usual trend of getting to the library in order to boycott work in favour of reading other books. It comes as a relief to me that I finally seem to have an idea. It was only last night that I was moaning to a friend about my 'hopeless' situation. But I think I have something. The quality of which is debatable, but it is an idea, it can be worked on. Obviously I don't want to broadcast my whole idea on the internet, but it centers around the digestive processes (both mental and alimental) which operate within Paradise Lost, on various levels. Hence the quote above. My notes are littered with these little diagrams of stomachs and cosms with annotations within them. I wish I could take a picture of them, they look pretty cool. (If I do say so myself). It's also pretty entertaining to be reading about such childishly funny things like poo and farting. And Milton's own view on these things, as poo and farting are topics which (believe it or not) are worryingly common in his collected works. It is most explicitly mentioned in De Doctrina Christiana, but you can also find references to both of these things in Areopagitica, Lycidas, and of course in Paradise Lost.

I decided a few weeks ago to do a Milton tour around London (NERDY I KNOW) and visited the site of his old house in Bread Street, now the site of imposing glass office blocks, St. Paul's where he was taught and bought his books, and also Whitehall where he worked for many years of his life. I wish I could say that seeing the places that constituted Milton's world were in some way remarkably inspiring, but unfortunately, that was not the case. Although after re-reading parts of the poem today I think I have re-entered a 'love' phase, which is good for work. I just hope that the 'hate' phase doesn't swing around too soon behind it. The more I read of it, the more I feel that it is most definitely a poem to be tackled in small sections. Really small sections. Ideally probably no more than 50 lines in an evening. But obviously at this stage time won't allow for that. I wonder if there's some kind of 'Read Paradise Lost in a year' scheme, like they do with the bible. That'd be good. I always worry that I'm going to ruin my enjoyment by having to read big sections in short periods of time.

Nothing else to report.
Hopefully I can get something on paper soon.

To quote Satan himself:

"...Nor think thou with wind
Or airy threats to awe whom yet with deeds
Thou canst not..."
(6.282-84)

Seems pretty relevant in considering what I've just done - talking rubbish about my essay for which I have very little to show.

I do solemnly swear

... that I will go to the library tomorrow and think for an hour or two about this essay.

(Only then will I continue to trick myself into believing that reading any books published in the 21st century and written by American authors constitutes 'work')

Just finished Netherland by Joseph O' Neill. I'll post a review as soon as I've given it some thought. Until tomorrow's designated library time I might as well start on the next novel - All My Friends are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman.

Oh, and, I started using goodreads again. Check it out - www.goodreads.com/garethaleddavies

Black Hole - Charles Burns

--Review of Charles Burns'' graphic novel Black Hole - with lots of shiny pictures as promised--

I have to admit that I am somewhat a comic book rookie. In high school I remember the craze of bringing in ultimate spiderman for the 10 minutes of compulsory reading school used to enforce on a wednesday morning. I remember reading a few of these, but never really getting into them. I always disregarded comics as a kind of illegitimate art form. One which could never say anything profound, but was a pass-time of those who found regular novels 'too boring' or inaccessible. Oh, how I was wrong. The first graphic novel I ever read was The Complete MAUS, last christmas. Since then my opinions have changed. But this entry isn't about MAUS, (as much as I would love to sing its praises almost endlessly - it really is great), it is about Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole. I picked up Black Hole solely because (like Eeeee Eee Eeee) it is on my postmodern fiction module next term (I am being a good student this time, and getting prepared). I knew nothing about the book before I picked up a very well read copy from the library.

The novel tells the story of a group of teenagers who are affected by a sexually transmitted disease which causes them to physically mutate. These mutations aren't particularly obvious in some cases. One woman grows a tail, another man grows a second mouth towards the base of his neck. They may not be obvious, but they're pretty gruesome nonethteless. The disease can be contracted through either sexual contact, or a mixing of bodily fluids. The one really creepy thing about the bug is that it causes affected characters to shed their skin. The novel follows the actions of two main characters, one male - Keith, and one female - Chris, and switches between the two, offering a sexually balanced tale, a form which works surprisingly well. We experience through the course of the comic how these two characters contract the bug, and the aftermath, which results in them becoming social and physical outcasts who are forced to go to various lengths to either hide themselves or get away from other people.

All of the illustrations are monochrome, like the successful MAUS comics. Burns' style, however is much more clean cut and precise than Speigelman's making many of the panels incredibly impressive and almost vibrant in their contrast. This novel could essentially be classified as horror, or teen horror, or by some as B-horror. The high contrast of images suits this genre so well, because it adds a sense of startling postmodern realism to many of the more graphic scenes (i.e. the skin shedding, but most of which I shouldn't speak about for fear of ruining the book) which you might not get with a more sketchy style. The very realistic drawing style however, combines with a very creative and unconventional ordering of panels. Burns at his most impressive makes use of the seperate panels to depict one area of a whole picture. It is hard to explain in words, but basically you get whole but fragmented images (such as the one directly below). There are also two or three occasions where a very 'rules of attraction-esque' technique is used whereby two halves of two different faces lain side by side make a whole. This creativity also manifests itself in the chapter headings, which are far from conventional, usually consisting of an image of something, mysteriously framed in an expansive black page. (None of the chapters are numbered, and none of the pages are either).

Burns seems very keen (like Tao Lin does in Eeeee Eee Eeee) on not keeping to a completely linear plot development. But whilst Tao Lin completely confuses the order of events in the novel, Burns at least retains a strong sense of direction - his confusion of time comes through the retrospective thoughts of characters, and the gaps of time between the events in each chapter (which we, as readers, in some cases, are encouraged to estimate for ourselves). You find at some points that because of the two interlinking plots, that of Keith's and that of Chris', one will sometimes seem to move faster or have more gaps than the other. Which means that events will take place, and then after the events have taken place, the character will back track on what happens directly before that event, but only after it has been told (I hope that makes sense). The effect is that you are encouraged to re-interpret the information you've been given, and consciously re-order things. Burns doesn't really use this technique to much effect though, it's not as if any assumptions you may make about these characters are overturned by their then retrospective indulgences, in order to perhaps overturn stereotypes the reader may have had, or expectations (though I realise this is very difficult and requires a lot of psychological insight into the reader and their expected thought process whilst reading).

Black Hole is clever in its use of the concept of the sexually transmitted mutation, an idea which could easily have been very cheesy - but Charles Burns does his idea justice (even if it does come across as a bit of an 'in your face' allegory for AIDS). The concept of the bug is manipulated so that it allows the author to enlighten us as to the reasons why one may become a high-school outcast. Many of those who contract the bug become deviant not only because of their disease, but due to their personal natures. It's hard to elaborate further without ruining the plot, but Burns highlights in particular those with bisexual sneaking into homosexual tendencies, and to an extent (and I am wary to say this), those with a tendency towards bestiality. But the novel isn't as skin deep as just correlating physical mutation and the outsider status. It gives us a psychological insight into this status, coming most prominently from the character Dan, a boy who was 'unpopular' in school and forced to leave because of his mutations. There is a lot in there that I haven't yet seen, I'm sure of it. I'll be reading it again in a few weeks when I have had time to think about it in more depth.

From a personal perspective, its one of the most enjoyable things I've read in months (honestly). I had to discipline myself not to read the whole thing in one sitting. Unlike MAUS (excuse my constant references to it) the artwork seems more purposeful. MAUS is almost a comic which relies more on its speech than its imagery (probably a big claim to make). But Black Hole is incredibly different, the artwork and the way it is presented plays an active part in the storytelling process. It is more than a straightforward comic (like MAUS), it actually is a great work of art, and would be a beautiful book to own, even to just look at the pictures (many of them amusingly vaginal - and a selection of which can be seen in my previous blog post on the novel). The story is engaging and the concept is well thought out and executed. As I said, there's a lot in there, from sexual deviance, to critiques on high school shootings, and even the holocaust if you want to push it that far. Mind you, it's not for everyone. If you're not into horror you my want to steer clear. But what strikes me most, and what I'm still most impressed with is the layout of panels and the effects of different types of panels including whole page images, strange zoom effects, and the bizarre portrayal of dreams in comic format. It really is more than your bog-standard comic. I rate it highly.

Eeeee Eee Eeee

"It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat"

Just finished reading Tao Lin's debut novel Eeeee Eee Eeee. What can I say? It is unlike anything I've ever read before. It is on my reading list for a module I'm taking next term in twenty-first century post-modern fiction. I was surprised to find that Tao Lin is relatively unknown, with a close cult-ish following. I could use many adjectives to attempt to describe this novel - but I'm not sure that any one could do it justice, or that using many would help clarify Eeeee Eee Eeee at all. The novel could be pigeon-holed as being kind of surreally hyper-existentialist. It is almost Beckettian in its minimalism and snapishness. The novel seems to focus (of course you could make a massive claim -probably the most valid one- that there is no focus) on American collective identity through repeated turns of phrase and slang, as well as shared names and a sense of a depressive loss of individuality. By far the most confusing instances in the book (and the most notorious) are the set of unexpected conversations with talking bears, hamsters and dolphins . . . one of which result in a bear named Andrew, and a man named Andrew realising that they share the same name (and therefore identity?) It's a witty novel, without a doubt, with laugh out loud humour which will make you wince with its sarcasm. It is often a confusing read, but nevertheless one which does not leave you feeling out of your depth, or as if you've failed to understand something along the way. You learn very quickly that you just have to accept that that's the way it is. Eeeee Eee Eeee is a difficult novel to review, solely because it has no driven start to finish plot, it has talking animals, and is constructed in such a novel way. To present a plot synopsis would be ridiculous - in fact it would almost defy the way in which the novel is written. Tao Lin's prose is is aware of its fragmentation, and in being aware manages to smooth out the fragments and somehow fit them together into a coherent, flowing and whole piece of work (excuse my mosaic-esque analogy). Time itself is fragmented in the novel. It is only in the closing chapter of the novel, that we find out what happenned in the protagonist (dare I call him one) Andrew's life before the novel began - information which would surely be expected within the first few pages, to introduce us to him. The timeline of the book is indeterminably linear, but it is the indeterminability of its linearity which causes those questions to creep in, and for the rational part of the mind to be tempted to organise and make sense of what comes where, to try to establish a time/space linearity which we expect from most novels.

Needless to say (post-blurb), it is a peculiar novel. But amongst the mayhem, the teleporting bears, the murder of Elijah Wood by a dolphin, and the secret passages which lead to a secret animal world, are concerted criticisms on political apathy, identity loss, herd mentalities, terrorism and depression. Many of the reviews I've read have disregarded it for its alleged art-school pretentiousness. Pretentious or not, it is a novel which is engagingly short, easy to read, and seems to simplify, but still accessorise the genre of bizarro fiction while kind of fitting in with the glossy Generation X writers. I don't know if I'd go as far as labelling it 'literature' or saying that it was particularly enjoyable, or 'good', but it certainly is a breath of fresh air and unlike anything I've read before. (N.B. Just because it's refreshing doesn't mean it isn't strange and sometimes seems disconcertingly self-conscious...in fact Gawker magazine said that he is "perhaps the single most irritating person we've had to deal with" YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED).

I'm sure I'll be reading some of his other stuff as soon as I can get my hands on it anyway. He is certainly an interesting writer, even if I'm not sure what I make of him yet. Eeeee Eee Eeee has really confused me a great deal.

His new novel Richard Yates is released on September 7th (with speed and cunning).
Maybe if I enter enough of the competitions on his FRUSTRATINGLY TITLED BLOG (perhaps testimony to his being irritating), I'll be able to win myself a copy!

Glamorama

After an awful week whereby I have probably just scraped a pass on my french exam, missed a Milton seminar, and missed the deadline for the Milton proceedural essay (with no ideas, no plan, having done no research), for some reason I have decided I need escapism. My mind feels all cloudy. Too much stuff has happenned this term. I just need time to relax and tackle Milton in my own time. Deadlines are not going to work. Anyway, I'm not sure how wise this 'escapism' is. I need to be immersed in work and work ethic - but alas, this is what is keeping me sane -

Hopefully his new novel Imperial Bedrooms is just as good. Luckily for me it comes out the day I go to America.

Leviathan

This week for my Milton class I was set extracts from Hobbes' Leviathan. He writes the sort of things that as a self-indulgent depressive teenager I would have loved. Forgive me for quoting this section - it is so wonderfully, (and not even spuriously) pessimistic. It seems that I haven't completely let go of that part of me...

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherin men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

True?

Of Man's First Disobedience and the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree...

Currently re-reading Milton's Paradise Lost, in preperation for the coming term. I forgot how mindblowing some of the description is. So disorientating, and so epic.
This section - Satan persuades Sin to open the doors of hell, in order for him to corrupt mankind.

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She opened, but to shut
Excelled her power; the gates wide open stood

Amazing. I'm not going to deny that much of the poem is rather dull. It can be difficult to get through. But Milton's Satan, and the frequent bouts of frankly amazing description completely make up for it. This is one to re-read. His prose works . . . maybe not so much. The ridiculous names, like Areopagitica, Tetrachordon and Colasterion sound like Mars Volta song titles . . . if only they were as interesting.
-Farewell for now.
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THIS IS NOT AN EXIT

Quiet Please - No Mobile Phones

Sitting in Derwent computer room, no natural light, two other ill looking men, and the mechanical chatter of keyboards. My essay grinds to a halt . . . seven hundred words in and . . . nothing. On the plus side, this summer is shaping up to be a good one. I have (about . . . well, you could say exactly 3 minutes ago) sent off my application to the Study China Programme. A course which consists of three weeks of intensive Mandarin lessons in Shanghai over summer. Everything is paid for, except for the flights. If all goes well I will be travelling to three continents this year. Pretty impressive, seeing as I've only been to two in my whole life. Those being Europe (pretty inescapable really), and North America - having travelled through Canada two years ago. Hopefully I can save up enough money to afford it all.

In other news I have my final (possibly ever) shift at blockbuster tomorrow, which will no doubt consist of an eight hour shift boxing various things up, and packing things away. Although I moan about it, I will miss that place. A customer even wrote me a letter yesterday. Here it is :

To whom it may concern,

Please note, I would like to express my utmost disappointment at the closure of this store. Gareth has always been so friendly, it's a shame.

Sonia 17/04/10

Fairly harmless and to the point, but charming and sweet nonetheless. It is nice to know you'll be missed. Anyway, I must leave now. This room is too claustrophobic, especially on a sunday. Farewell for now
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THIS IS NOT AN EXIT

Back to York

And so I find myself back in . . . York, in an unreasonably busy and noisy library. For real, there are men with drills and everything, and a strange kind of outside lift thing which makes a siren noise every time it moves. Granted, that is pretty cool, but it's so damn loud! This blog post is my attempt to stray away from trauling through pretensive books about J.M.Coetzee, and the 'South African Problem' - not that I'm implying that there isn't a problem, but I just can't get into it. I am coming to realise that Disgrace, by Coetzee, is probably one of the most complex novels I've read. It masquerades under this subtle clarity of style, as something straightforward and plain to see. But it raises all these different questions about the characters, questions which contradict each other but have to be considered simultaneously. And the sentences are so simple that you feel inclined to question them. I'm sure there is still a lot going on beneath the text that I simply can't see. Blerugh. I seriously can't wait until this essay is out of the way... you have no idea, this book is frying my brain. Anyway, I will be spending the next week living in the house alone (maybe not something you should admit on the internet?) Already I am convinced that there are many ghosts in my house and that someone must be turning lights on when I'm asleep. Well, hopefully I'll survive. More concerning is the fact of having little human contact. I'll see how it goes.
But for now, back to work.
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THIS IS NOT AN EXIT