“We were aware that the visible earth is made of ashes, and that ashes signify something. … And we see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all. We are aware that a civilization has the same fragility as a life. … Everything has not been lost, but everything has sensed that it might perish.”

–Paul Valery
from “The Crisis of the Mind”

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In an interesting (to people like me) bit of analysis, Andrew Seal writes about Infinite Jest:

Specialized knowledges pervade the book—tennis, recreational drug use, optics, burglary, even punting (surely the most narrowly specialized position in football). But one of the more (in)famous elements of “research” in the novel is the filmography Wallace includes in endnote 24. In the age of IMDb, we might be apt to forget that the filmography is (or was) actually a highly specialized and intensely laborious feat of archival research, but the almost eight-and-a-half pages of James O. Incandenza’s collected works should surely remind us that a filmography is actually the product of research, and not Googling.

Yet there was, of course, no research necessary for composing this “artifact”—having no basis in reality, everything in it is a pure product of imagination. Yet Wallace never seems comfortable simply acknowledging that the imagination that produced it is his own. In just about as many ways as possible, Wallace continually disrupts the filmography with secondary or tertiary commentary to let us know that he’s looking at it from the outside too: I kept waiting for that click where the self-distancing irony would drop away and, as with Borges or Pynchon or Bolaño or even (especially) Auster, you get a real note of dread or mystery where the author seems to have been finally convinced of the reality of his artifice. Even in the last entry, which is about The Entertainment itself, there are three skeptical footnotes embedded.

And a bit later concludes:

Most of Infinite Jest, I think, does not do this approximate deconstruction act; the bulk of it is what can be defined as specialist realism—which I think is actually a broadly popular mode of writing. I don’t think very many people mind writerly ostentation by itself: there are simply far too many popular authors who are grossly ostentatious for this to be the case. And readers of all kinds are capable of showing enormous patience with heavily-detailed and at times rather tedious passages of questionable importance to the overall novel. “Specialist realism” is not terribly problematic to most readers, and is often even considered enjoyable. (Consider, here, Wallace’s enthusiasm for Tom Clancy: there is not as great a distance between the two as one might think.) This mode of writing, however, sometimes slips into a different mode of writing that is indecisively subversive—a lukewarm irony that I think turns nearly everyone off. This is present, too, in Infinite Jest, and in order to have a conversation among people who really like the book and people who can’t get through it, I think it’s necessary to begin by separating this lukewarmness from the specialist realism that actually makes the novel so captivating.

Wallace may have had very well-thought-out, very theoretically smart reasons for trying to have things both (or more) ways, for trying to be indecisive, but there are lots of things which are really theoretically well-grounded which are simply annoying. I’m sure there are folks who think that the lukewarm ironical mode is really brilliant and is actually the most brilliant thing about the novel. I’d be happy to hear those arguments, but I want to make clear that I don’t really find this lukewarmness all that much of an obstacle to enjoying the book. So please, don’t confuse me with attacking Wallace or “hysterical realism” or any of that stuff.

The interesting question is how intentional the “lukewarm irony” (not sure I like the term; I have nothing better… and I think Wallace was jesting with the list that mentions Clancy, though the point still stands, but in a way I’m not sure matters much). I guess I’m squarely straddling the fance. Is it intentional? Just about every bit of it. Could Wallace have achieved the kind of distance that Borges did? I don’t think so. I think that inability is a fundamental characteristic of the fiction because it was a fundamental characteristic of Wallace’s philosophy– of language, of story and of life.

What was fascinating about Wallace’s work– to myself and many others– was this absurdly heightened self-consciousness, which many of us share, paired with such incredible gifts, which most of us don’t. In this respect Wallace’s life might have been a train wreck. But a beautiful (why do I keep thinking of Ballard’s Crash here?) sometimes elegant one. Wallace crashed. We all do. But what a way to delve deep into what I believe to be an inescapable part of the (excuse me for this) postmodern condition! Borges would be a very different writer were he writing now. In fact, I’m not sure he could be Borges at all. And I think he’d agree, though he might– Pierre Menard style– create a better Borges than Borges himself.

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[“Neptune Chasing Coronis” (Giulio Carpioni)]

Just some brief reading notes on the rest of Book II of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Callisto
Another Jovian rape and another victim who pays the price. Unlike Phaethon, who is the personification of hubris, Callisto appears to do nothing wrong except find herself unable to fend off the most powerful of the gods. Be that as it may, Ovid does fault her trust in Diana:

“…she [Callisto] was Diana’s soldier,
and no nymph pleased the goddess more than she did,
there on Mount Menelaus: but influence
cannot be counted on to last too long.”
(II:571-574)

We’re going to see the theme of a son hunting his transformed parent in much more gruesome form soon.

Coronis (the Raven)
Alaska is the land of Raven myths. Tlingit culture, in particular, is informed by a mythology referred to as the Raven Cycle and the Raven is—depending on the story—either the Creator of the world or a trickster. In this myth the Raven is Caronis, transformed by Athena into a crow to escape the obsessive clutches of Neptune:

“I called upon the gods and men for aid,
but no one was around to hear my cries;
a virgin’s plight aroused the virgin goddess
and she delivered me: I stretched may arms out
and they began to darken with pinfeathers;
I tried to tear the clothing from my shoulders
but it was feathered, rooted in my skin;
I strove to beat my bare breasts with my hands,
but found that I had neither hands nor breasts.
I tried to run but now I glided over
the unrestraining surface of the sand,
and soon I soared aloft, high in the air…”
(II:803-814)

Ovid also works in a lesson that I found echoed in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in a different form. As Ovid puts it:

“All birds should be reminded by my loss
not to seek trouble by loquacity,
and not to bring bad tidings to the boss”
(II:784-786)

I wonder if Ovid’s is the first of the raven myths to be recorded? The ubiquity of the raven as a central figure of myth across a wide variety of cultures is noteworthy.

The name Coronis is also interesting… the Carrion Raven (rather than the Common Raven) has the scientific name (Corvus Corone), derived from the latin “caro” meaning “meat.” A connection?

Aglauros
Ovid is fond of extended metaphors. I sometimes get the feeling that he’s showing off a bit, but why not? I enjoyed this example, which opens this segment:

“The winged god gave them the once-over
as they returned, and, altering his flight plan,
made after them in a wide, sweeping arc,
as when that swiftest of all birds, the kite
has glimpsed the entrails of the sacrifice–
but while the priests are crowded round, it fears
to fly too near, yet fears to fly away,
so hovers high above its longed-for prey;
just so the nimble Mercury in flight
made circles over the Acropolis.”
(II:988-995)

It’s fitting that Aglauros—who vows she “will not move” until Mercury has been thwarted—is turned to stone, a transformation described in another marvelous passage:

“…a chill crept down her extremities
and pallor drained her body of its color;
as cancer, that incurable disease,
spreads its roots widely while it makes its way,
infecting healthy tissues from unhealthy,
so lethal winter gradually came
into her breast and closed the passages
of life and slowly suffocated her;
she no more tried to speak, and if she had,
would not have found a passage for her voice.
       Her neck was turned to rock. Her features hardened
until she sat, a bloodless effigy;
nor was that stone white, but stained as by her soul.”
(II:1130-1142)

Jove and Europa
I have to admit that this segment made me laugh and shiver at the same time. There’s something off in the eroticizing of Jove-as-bull, but it’s so over the top that I had to laugh:

“He is as white as the untrampled snow
before the south wind turns it into slush.
The muscles stand out bulging on his neck,
and the dewlap dangles on his ample chest;
his horns are crooked, but appear handmade,
and flawless as a pair of matching gems.

[…]

At first she [Europa] fears to get too close to him,
but soon approaching, reaching out her hand
and pushes flowers into his white mouth.
      The lover, quite beside himself, rejoices,
and as a preview of delights to come,
kisses her fingers, getting so excited
that he can scarcely keep himself from doing it!”
(II:1174-1189)

And, as usual, Ovid slips in a piece of sage advice:

“Majestic power and erotic love
do not get on together very well
nor do they linger long in the same place…”
(II:1161-1163)

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For various reasons, I am no longer maintaining Cosmopoetica. The contact form still works and past content will remain available for reference purposes.

There is no reason to worry about me.

I thank all of you for your time and attention over the past four years!

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In case you need to get pumped up:

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[image by FlickrJunkie]

I think I may have lost my companions on the voyage through Ulysses, a loss I am feeling most keenly after reading this and the previous sections… I would love to know what they make of them.

Episode 15 is loooong, by far the longest of the book. And it reads, to me, as one long Freudian meander in the minds of Leopold and Stephen. The episode is a long, intermingled series of drunken hallucinations by Bloom, Stephen and an fictional other whose presence allows each to reflect on scenes and words they couldn’t have seen. The impossibility of the perspective– from a logical perspective– is mirrored in the impossibility of the play itself as one that could be staged, being rife with stage directions that couldn’t be implemented and descriptions that the staging and dialogue could never convey to the audience… when they aren’t novelistic rather than dramatic.

A few examples:

(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)

(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half of one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)

ZOE: Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.

(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)

THE MALE BRUTES: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro) Good!

Parallels with the Circe section of The Odyssey aren’t particularly clear to me beyond the hallucinations being like the enchantment of Circe. The hallucinations and dream-episodes are heavily Freudian– Bloom’s hallucinatory episodes are largely full of sexual guilt, the most significant of which finds him transformed into a female pig, dominated by “Bello”– a male version of Bella, mistress of a brothel; Stephen’s work darkly around his torment regarding God. At first the division between Bloom and Stephen’s hallucinations is clear, but it becomes more difficult to tell the two apart, each having in their own dreams ideas and thoughts of the other as well as scenes and images they weren’t privy to. This points to, I think, that these may in part be a kind of hallucinatory dream of Ulysses the novel itself, as an attempt to represent as wholly as possible an entity.

It’s a bit hard to tell what “really” happens in this episode. Bloom follows Stephen and Lynch, temporarily loses them when he steps off at the wrong stop, and stops to buy a snack (pork, which he feels guilty about purchasing at all, much less eating) that he feeds to a dog before wandering to the brothel, where Stephen’s presence is confirmed by a prostitute named Zoe.  Stephen, who is already there, is drunk and gives Bello more money than is needed even for he and Bloom, before dancing drunkenly and finally smashing the chandelier with his walking stick in an attempt to fend off his mother’s ghost. Bello calls the police and tries to charge Stephen too much, at which Bloom intervenes. When the police arrive Stephen is physically accosted at which point Bloom again tries to help him, getting knocked unconscious.

The point of recapitulating the material plot is to show how it reinforces a central theme: Bloom becoming closer and closer to Stephen, seeing in him his lost son, and trying to protect him while Stephen is only partially aware of the gravity of Bloom’s feelings, being too consumed with thoughts of his mother and his spiritual difficulties. Bloom saves Stephen twice, more or less, only to end up on the floor, his wits knocked out of him, dreaming of his lost infant son.

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[image by Ali K.]

The trade of war is over, there are no more battles,
but simple murder is still in.
The No God, Time, creeps his way,
universe after universe, like a great snapping turtle
opening its mouth wagging its tongue
to look like a worm or leech
so deceived hungry fish, every living thing
swims in to feed. Quarks long for dark holes,
atoms butter up molecules, protons do unto neutrons
what they would have neutrons do unto them.
The trade of war has been over so long,
the meaning of war in the O.E.D. is now “nonsense.”
In the Russian Efron Encyclopedia,
war, voina, means “dog shit”;
in the Littré, guerre is “a verse form, obsolete”;
in Germany, Krieg has become “a whipped-cream pastry”;
Sea of Words, the Chinese dictionary,
has war, zhan zheng, as “making love in public,”
while war in Arabic and Hebrew, with the same
Semitic throat, harb and milchamah, is defined
as “anything our distant grandfathers ate
we no longer find tempting– like the eyes of sheep.”
And lions eat grass.

–Stanley Moss
from The New Yorker, Dec. 2008

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Via Darren Barefoot comes this Ze Frank video. Not safe for work, but it made me laugh. “Brain Crack” indeed…

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[Ben Folds pic by deovolenti]

Through a chain of circumstances too complicated to recount, I discovered a Paper Cuts Blog playlist by Nick Hornby, perpetual resident on my “reliable favorite authors” shortlist, in which he alluded to collaborating with a favorite musician of mine: Ben Folds:

4) Jen and Justin, Ben Folds. You can’t hear this song at the moment, and I’m hoping you never will. … One of my side-projects this year (and it’s been more fun than I want to admit) is to attempt lyrics for Ben Folds’s next album, and even if nothing comes of it, I have learned more about the craft of songwriting from the e-mails I’ve been getting than from just about anything I’ve ever read. Most of the time I’ve been sending over words that he’s going to try to set to music; occasionally we’re working the other way around, and I’ll try to fit a lyric to an existing melody. This tune has one of Folds’s most heart-melting choruses, which, considering his melodic gifts, means it’s as pretty as a pop song can be.

I do hope to hear some of these songs. A bit of searching and I ended up at Hornby’s blog (I had no idea he had one!), where he confirmed that the collaboration continued:

…I’m writing the lyrics for a Ben Folds album, which he’s recording in Dublin in December. I wasn’t going to mention this, on the presumption that it will never happen, but my writing partner seems confident enough to have talked about it already, and if he thinks something will come of it, then (deep breath) so do I.

Hornby goes on to answer those who might wonder why Folds wants anyone to write lyrics for his next album:

Ben, as you may know, is quite capable of writing his own lyrics, but I think he fancied a rest, and anyway he, like me, wants to have as much fun as he can in his chosen medium while there’s still fun to be had. Ben got in touch after I’d written about Smoke in 31 Songs/Songbook, which is how I ended up contributing a song to ‘Has Been’, the mad and great William Shatner album he produced.

I’ve never heard of Songbook, but after a quick perusal it went right on my “must get ASAP” list– Hornby writing from the heart on music is second only to Hornby writing about books (am I the only one who read The Believer primarily for Hornby’s– and the Polysyllabic Spree’s– “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column?).

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Not being one to let the obviousness of a tradition stand in my way– and fully aware that I should be more thankful more often– I join the long list of those concentrating on thankfulness today.

Being thankful reminds me at once of my great fortune and my great shortcomings. The things I am most thankful for I am largely unworthy of. Despite gross paternal unevenness my children continue to be gifts beyond measure. In the face of constant social malfeasance I have more people I can confidently call friends than ever before.

I’ve been blessed with a good job that many others could do better and a host of colleagues and compatriots across the globe that continue to accept me for no discernible reason and regularly inspire me.

I’ve done little to deserve any of these gifts, which make each that much more valuable. This year, like the last, I continue my quest to learn to focus on today, not to descend into despair at thoughts of the past nor cower in consideration of the future. I’ve yet to make a concrete step towards enlightenment: I remain– always, often, or in turn– depressed and despairing, contemptuous, quick to take offense, manic and impetuous, slothful, fearful of failure, scared of success. In every way incomplete, I’m able each day to find a reason to make it to the next.

In this era of connection, the things that sustain me can be found by following my footprints, digital and analog: the people and ideas I come back to again and again in this blog and its less touchy-feel brother, my twitter friends, the subjects of my flickr photos, my blogroll and feed subscriptions, my snail-mail and email correspondents. There are too many to list each individually– I’d surely accidentally overlook someone– and the proof of my feelings is in my continuing interaction. Someday I hope to have something more to give back!

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[image by occhiovivo]

OK, so this is section that broke my back the first time I “read” (and the depth of my engagement that time demands the scare quotes) Ulysses, and it very nearly did so again this time. With this section the usefulness of the annotations hit an all-time high. The stylistic changes of the prose– the progression from early- to late-style English– are obvious, but the specifics of those styles largely alluded to me. As I have them noted from the annotations, the sequence is writing in the style of:

• Early Roman (“Arval”) incantation
• Romans Sallust and Tacitus (in the mode of literal translation)
• Medieval Latin prose chronicles (in the mode of literal translation)
• Angle-Saxon e.g. Aelfric
• Middle English, ala Everyman
• The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (John of Burgundy or John with the Beard)
• Thomas Malory e.g. Morte d’Arthur
• Elizabethan prose chronicles
• John Bunyan e.g. Pligrim’s Progress
• 17th century diarists John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys
• Daniel Defoe
• Jonathan Swift e.g. A Tale of a Tub
• Joseph Addison and Richard Steele e.g. essays in the Tatler and the Spectator
• Laurence Sterne e.g. Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
• Oliver Goldsmith
• Edmund Burke (and possibly Dr. Johnson and the earl of Chesterfield)
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan
• Junius
• Edward Gibbon
• Horace Walpole e.g. The Caste of Otranto
• Charles Lamb
• Thomas De Quincey e.g. The English Mail Coach
• Walter Savage Landor e.g. Imaginary Conversations
• Thomas Babington Macaulay
• T. H. Huxley
• Charles Dickens e.g. David Copperfield
• Walter Pater e.g. The Child in the House
• John Ruskin
• Thomas Carlyle
• Dialect, slang (Joyce described it in a letter as “a frightful jumble of pidgin English, nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken doggerel”)

The changes in style were easy to spot, but the only specifics I guessed while reading were Lamb, Huxley and Dickens. I had a good idea about Ruskin, but couldn’t come up with the name on my own.

I’m not so sure what the point of this stylistic progression is. The basic topic of the chapter is birth, though as the different styles of the writers are affected, each goes off on a tangent that would be suitable to them: Huxley makes a scientific examination, Lamb and Dickens paint sentimental portraits, etc. I suppose the progression of the language from the earliest, stilted literal translation to the chaotic human musical of contemporary slang and dialect is itself a kind of conception and birth of language.

In The Odyssey this is the episode in which Ulysses remaining men disobey his orders and feast on oxen belonging to the Sun god Helios, an act for which all but Ulysses– who is asleep when it happens– are slain by Zeus. There is recurring cattle imagery in this section of Ulysses (including the news that the diseased cattle referred to by Deasy in his letter and discussion with Stephen earlier, are going to be slaughtered and Buck’s story of eating the meat of unborn cattle), but the more important symbolic parallel is sacrilege. As Ulysses’ men perform a sacrilegious act in killing and eating the cattle, so does the crowd gathered at the hospital– including Bloom and Stephen Dedalus– speak in a sacrilegious manner about conception, pregnancy and birth. The isolation and torment of both Leopold and Stephen are made obvious here– neither fit well with the conversation, both are frustrated by thoughts of their sometime nemeses, Molly and Buck Mulligan.

By the end of the section, Bloom clearly feels some kinship with fellow outsider Stephen and explicitly attempts to rescue him from the boorish group, but Stephen is drunk and doesn’t respond to his overtures. The occasion of Mina Purefoy’s birth has become an occasion for crossed connections: Bloom thinking of his lost son and developing an attachment to Stephen while Stephen is drunk with both spirits and thoughts of his lost mother… a role Bloom can never satisfactorily take on.

Various tidbits throughout the chapter were interesting enough to underline because of the language and/or the discrete sentiment, such as the prose inspired by the possibly opium-inspired De Quincey:

“Twilight phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa.”

which is made all the more skin-crawling by the associated annotation, which describe the upupa, “or hoopoe” as:

“…a bird that lives on the flesh of corpses and lines its nest with human excrement.”

Interestingly in the same section Joyce presages, though in a different way, a modern scientific phrase, the “cold interstellar wind.”

Elsewhere, Joyce notes, continuing the thread of Theosophy, that:

“It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.”

Only to change-up abruptly into Huxley-style scientific description that leads to a most direct form of determinism:

“It is interesting because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways.

[...]

An ingenious suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature’s vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet unascertained.”

Until the section finally ends with a slang-filled, minstrel-style call to spiritual awakening after a chapter filled largely with profane conjecture:

“Come on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that’s my name, that’s yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He’s on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He’s the grandest thing yet and don’t you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You’ll need to rise precious early you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He’s got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.”

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[image from litmuse; created by Jonathan Day]

Ah, the infamous Gerty MacDowell. This is one section of Ulysses that has remained in my mind from the first reading and even before I had started considering the Homeric parallels, thinking instead of Gerty in light of Hamlet’s mother Gertrude, an analogy that I still can’t carry much further than the idea that– at times– Gerty is seen as a potentially corrupting force in Bloom’s life.

But I’m beginning to recognize the brilliance of Joyce’s technique here, particularly in resisting the temptation (as I imagine it) to represent this crucial episode through the stream of consciousness of either character. This allows Joyce to at once erase any doubt about what is actually physically happening in the chapter while at the same time retain the essential ambiguity, indecision, and inconsistency that is human nature as Ulysses portrays it. I remember a long argument about Proteus erupting as to whether, in that section, also on the beach, Stephen was actually masturbating (this comes up altogether too much in discussions of the book, though not for good reason) when his “release” was at least represented as urination. There is no doubt in this chapter what Bloom is doing, entranced at the sight of young Gerty. But in adopting the “marmalady” style of the worst kind of romance novel, Joyce couldn’t have made the potentially titillating any less so. And with literal fireworks lighting up the sky at the climax of Stephen’s not-so-hidden activity, I couldn’t help but think of sappy pop songs invoking fireworks and “afternoon delights.”

And this episode is bulging with symbolism, textual parallels and allusions. As ornate and overly-written as the prose is at time, Joyce equals it by hanging layer after layer of reference on it as well. Gerty is Nausicaa, of course, in small detail as well as her function in the plot. Gerty, like Nausicaa, is particularly beautiful, with notably fine hair, and shares duties washing clothes. Bloom, as Ulysses, is in desperate need of comfort– rather than being shipwrecked, Bloom is described by Gerty as “soulwrecked”– and stumble across the beautiful maiden who rescues him.

At the same time, Gerty is clearly a Mary-like figure, again subtly and not so subtly presented as such: she wears a “Child of Mary” badge and as Bloom gazes upon her and masturbates the members of the church are praying to the statue of Mary for comfort. She even wears blue garments– the color Mary is traditionally depicted in. This parallel adds to the recurring tension in this section (and in the book) between the beauty and sustenance of sexual relationships and the notion of sex as being dirty or degrading… what could be worse than masturbating to an image of the Virgin Mary?

What struck me most about the depiction of Gerty this time around, though, was her physical lameness. Of all the characteristics of Bloom that have– or should have– bothered me, his reaction upon seeing Gerty’s lame gait felt the worst:

Slowly, without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Cissy, to Edy to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and slippy seaweed. She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly because—because Gerty MacDowell was…

Tight boots? No. She’s lame! O!

Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That’s why she’s left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn’t know it when she was on show. Hot little devil all the same. I wouldn’t mind. Curiosity like a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses.

The recapitulation of the orgasmic ‘O’ and Stephen’s assessment transformed him for a moment in my estimation into something completely foreign and distasteful, much like I imagine the effect of crying out an unintentional racial epithet while making love to someone of that race.

What came to my mind when her limp was revealed was Cocteau’s famous– and most apt– formulation that “beauty limps.”

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[photo by Walt Jabsco]

A strange, strange section of Ulysses (I should get my terminology straight– these aren’t properly books, but section doesn’t accurately represent the degree to which each is different from one another. Part? Episode?). There are two Cyclops represented: the unknown first-person narrator (the “I” or the “eye”– get it?) and the real brute, called only Citizen (also the name of one of the prominent Dublin newspapers). 

Citizen is an oafish, somewhat terrifying figure, viciously anti-Semitic and rabidly pro-Home Rule. Bloom– a Jewish non-drinker who refuses to pitch into the one-sided discussion without examining other viewpoints– is the odd-man out in pretty much every way. At the same time, various imagery and vocabulary invokes Bloom as a Christian figure, even Christ himself.

No interior monologue remains in this section. The narrator, obviously unreliable, presents one viewpoint, the Citizen another. Interspersed throughout the section are at least 25 sections parodying various styles from tales of Irish myth to newspaper editorials, from court proceedings to heavy-handed fiction. Joyce doesn’t stop with manipulating the style– the content of the parodies aren’t the material of the direct narrative, but different events altogether– a courtroom trial, a hanging– depicted in a manner ranging from the fanciful to the outright absurd. Most of the parody sections were pretty tough going… overwritten and often including a litany of names and references that came in such a flood I finally gave up on even tracking them superficially in the annotations. The only relief was when humor intervened, as in a section documenting the lead-up to an execution(!):

he delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the semiparalysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Virága Kisászony Putrápesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocent -generalhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness. An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among the F. O. T. E. I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of Ireland’s patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs, scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were resorted to and blows were freely exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable MacFadden, summoned by special courier from Booterstown, quickly restored order and with lightning promptitude proposed the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally honourable for both contending parties. The readywitted ninefooter’s suggestion at once appealed to all and was unanimously accepted.

[...]

Quietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless morning dress and wearing his favourite flower, the Gladiolus Cruentus. He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate—short, painstaking yet withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the land of song (a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o’clock.

There’s clearly something happening here with the evolution of Bloom’s character– besides the allusions making him a kind of Christ-like figure he also wins a 20-1 (Ulysses was gone for 20 years) bet on a horse called “Throwaway” which echoes Ulysses’ escape from the Cyclops by punning that his name is actually “No Man.” I’m just not sure what that something is.

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[art by mikem1115]

This is a late update; I finished the “Sirens” section of Ulysses almost three weeks ago and have finished two more section since. As a result, I have only my marginal notes and poor memory to work from and what sticks in my mind most is the style and structure.

In “Sirens” the internal monologue and stream-of-consciousness remain only as artifacts– stylistic tics. There are strange interjections of various kinds: Stephen Dedalus’ internal thoughts appear out of nowhere, as do other, unknown, semi-objective viewpoints that bring to question any accuracy of portrayal or description.

But it’s the structure of this book that is most fascinating even in my relative ignorance. The section opens with 60+ fragments, all(?) of which recur in context later. Some recur in a slightly modified form, as in the first line:

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing, steelyringing Imperthnthn thnthnthn.

Which shows up later split into two different pieces:

Bronze by gold, miss Douce’s head by miss Kennedy’s head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel.

[...]

—Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she threatened as he had come.

The annotations indicate that this chapter has as its structural foundation the “Fuga per canone” or “A fugue according to rule,” which:

…has three classes of subject: 1) Andamenti, a complete melody, beautiful in itself; 2) Soggetti, a short passage with a characteristic interval; and 3) Attaco, a short figure, usually staccato.  In the opening section of the fugue the subject is presented together with the answer and a repetition of the subject in a different key (if there is to be a countersubject it is introduced in this section).  The next section, the exposition, is a complete statement of the subject(s) and/or answer(s) by all the voices.  This is followed by the “free” middle section; the climax then presents the subject in its most exciting aspect; and the coda concludes the fugue with the “desire for home.”

I get, then, that the opening lines are presented and then repeated later in a different key. But the rest really eludes me. In fact, I find the explanation quoted to be a bit problematic in itself!

Other aspects of the musical motif, reflecting the music of the sirens, did make themselves known. The section is heavy on musical voices: trilling, giggling, jingling, bells, singing, bells, drumming. Joyce even goes so far as to inject stage directions in the vein of musical direction:

She laughed:

—O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots?

With sadness.

The symbol of the Sirens has gotten a bad rap in our culture, where they are usually represented as women luring men to their doom with a carnal song. In fact, though, what the Sirens tempt those who pass with is actually knowledge– the ultimate knowledge of all things that have been and will be. The moldering bones beneath them aren’t victims who’ve been used up by the Sirens and cast away, but the remains of those who gave in and were given exactly what they wished for and rotted away, entranced, as people would starve to death in front of the television consuming the Infinite Jest in David Foster Wallace’s book. This allure is much more significant and troublesome than mere physical beauty.

In this section of Ulysses, the Sirens are indeed beautiful barmaids who are watched closely by the patrons who come near, but as their profession warrants they are privy to many secrets and thus possessors of many different kinds of knowledge. Miss Douce practically erntrances Bloom; Miss Kennedy plugs and unplugs her ears in a clear echo of Ulysses’ actions. But Cowley and Dollard and the rest are Sirens as well, who– despite their being old and used up and disenchanted– beguile everyone in the bar with their love songs, making Bloom wish for more whenever they stop. It isn’t the beauty of the songs or the singing, but the promise of knowledge of true love that is enchanting. Ultimately Bloom has to escape from each of these siren songs, watching Miss Douce for a measure too long before escaping form the bar altogether.

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The comments on my post regarding Adam Kirsch’s essay have been quite interesting. It’s clear that I didn’t convey my point particularly well and that some responded without reading Kirsch’s whole piece, relying instead on my clippings. Those that did read the whole piece found other things to disagree about! I want to look more closely at a few aspects of the discussion. First: the bugaboo of recognition.

It’s a mistake to read Kirsch’s essay as positing that recognition is the sole motivation of writers. If anything, he partly makes a case for the opposite, recognizing that Gessen’s book and blog were problematic precisely because they spoke solely to a desire for recognition rather than a desire to make great art. But Kirsch rightly notes, also, that recognition is part of the reason that people publish. Does anyone who publishes– whether on a blog or with a small press or with a mainstream publishing house– maintain otherwise? If so, why publish at all? And if so, why not do so anonymously so as to remove the constant cultural tendency to consider the author?

Recognition is at the heart of attention. I agree, as does Kirsch, that writing solely for recognition is a problem. But it’s not just an important motivation for publishing, it is important in another way. Recognition matters because it’s a necessary ingredient for some proposed new (or newly evolving) art forms, such as Elizabeth Adams’ proposal regarding a new kind of essay. Adams, who objected strongly to Kirsch’s talk of recognition proposes that:

“…essays on blogs are actually evolving into something new, precisely because the medium invites give-and-take with readers instead of the open-and-shut exposition of a theme that is the essay’s traditional form.”

Where does that give and take come from if not from readers? Attentive readers come, in part from recognition and at the same time they are providing recognition. Recognition and attention are aspects of the same phenomenon. This phenomenon is one that all writers who publish are promoting: the apprehension of their work by another. In fact, writers who publish don’t just want apprehension, we want engagement. And we hope for a manifestation of that engagement, particularly if new participatory forms of writing are going to emerge.

Even if we don’t buy (or have yet to see) the evolution in practice that Adams talks about– which is fodder for a completely different post– attention and recognition remain symbiotic partners. Some writers, myself included for a long time, had an almost allergic reaction to the term. “We write because we have to,” we cry. And we do. But it’s likely that we have various motivations for writing, not just one, and even if recognition isn’t part of the motivations for creation, with publishing it almost certainly is. We publish to communicate in some way, and communication involves attention, which necessarily is and creates recognition. I don’t believe it’s philosophically coherent to maintain that we aren’t interested in recognition while at the same time publishing, linking to our blogs in our signatures, linking to our publications (online and off), and promoting a new era of participation and the benefits of that era to education, artistic forms, etc.

Of course I recognize the old argument chestnuts have some– and sometimes complete– validity: the problem of writing primarily (there is no “sole” motivator) for recognition and the negative connotation that is attributed to the term “recognition” (as opposed to attention). But I think it’s important to consider the issue, not as a motivator for one’s writing, but in recognition of the fact that recognition and attention is a phenomenon that is itself undergoing significant change… which was one of the reasons I recommended that Kirsch read Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody, which in part recontextualizes certain formulations of attention and recognition, such as celebrity.

In retrospect I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s still amusing that the discussion of recognition and artistry took over when I found that the least interesting aspect of two thoughts spurred by Kirsch’s piece (writers and social networks; future forms and artistry in the age of the collective).

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[photo by midorionna]

I can’t decide if Adam Kirsch really, really gets it or if he’s so wrong that he’s almost bent back around to righzt, wormhole fashion. The whole essay on writer’s aspiration, fame, and the age of blogs and the Internet is worth a read, but here’s a taste that made me think:

The Internet has democratized the means of self-expression, but it has not democratized the rewards of self-expression. Now everyone can assert a claim to recognition—in a blog, tumblr, Facebook status update. But the amount of recognition available in the world is inexorably shrinking, since each passing generation leaves behind more writers with a claim on our memory. That is why the fight for recognition is so fierce and so personal.

Yet the bloggers who were so indignant at Gessen’s attempt to engross more than his share of recognition did not direct their indignation at literature itself. They did not want to dismantle the prestige of “being a writer,” but to claim it for themselves; they did not want to end the economy of scarcity but to move individually from the camp of the have-nots to the camp of the haves. In this they are like the snobbish narrator in Proust, whose fascination with aristocratic titles reached its height at just the historical moment when titles became completely meaningless. They are not revolutionaries but social climbers.

If that is the case, then the best strategy for writers in the age of the Internet may be to ignore the Internet and look down on it. If print is a luxury, make it a rare and exclusive one; if literature is antidemocratic, revel in its injustice. Make sure that the reward of recognition goes to the most beautiful and difficult writing, not to the loudest and neediest. Above all, do not start a blog, for the non-writers who wish they were writers will only despise you for choosing to meet them on their own ground. As one of the commenters on Gessen’s blog put it: “get off the Internet as soon as you possibly can. Every second you stay online…another 18-28 year old (that coveted demographic!) loses all respect for you.”

Kirsch definitely needs to read Here Comes Everybody which would provide further– and more insightful perspective– in the idea of celebrity and ego in the era of social media and networks. There’s both irony and revelation in the fact that Kirsch’s piece is fully available online, certainly managed by some kind of content management system… how is it different from a blog again (outside of a very narrow conception of blogging and an unseemly devotion to technological determinism)? Perhaps only really in expectation and execution– Kirsch himself clearly has a readership in mind that he feels bound to and, judging from this article, no plans to respond to even the keenest comments whose tenor and substance themselves belie his assertions.

That being said, the question of why we write and who we write for is never far from my mind, as is our place at the controls of the great participatory machine. I’m both suspicious of those who maintain that desire for recognition– or even readership– doesn’t play into the nature of their creation and cognizant that new intellectual and social currency is being coined for a multitude of new realms. I largely agree with Henry Gould, a fine poet, who asks in the comments:

… but is the desire for recognition really the essential motivation underlying art and poetry?

Major writers have certainly pointed in that direction. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes). “Fame is the spur…” (Milton). But my guess is that even these exalted figures were voicing their views, not while at the pitch of creative composition, but in a moment of analytical distance & fatalism.

And then goes on to answer himself:

No one will deny that fame & fortune (along with anonymity & failure) are fickle, illusory, and at the same time pervasive social factors; but this state of affairs does not mean one must accept Fame’s (& Adam Kirsch’s) seductive argument, that Fame is the actual SOURCE of artistic making.

My primary quibble being the repeated insinuation that there is “a” (single or essential) motivation or source for artistic making. Where Kirsch sees bloggers as hungering for recognition, it seems as likely to me that many publish their without any real hope or thought of gaining readers precisely because the field is so large that they expect to be swallowed up. But as I believe all writers recognize, there is something important about writing “out” that differs from private journaling and letters tucked away unsent… even if there is no expected or desired reader at all.

Generalization is always dangerous, but rarely more intensely so than in talking about a group as diverse and widespread as “blogs” and “bloggers.” Perhaps writers do and don’t want recognition, do and don’t think of their readers… and maybe this is true of all writers, bloggers included. But at the same time, while I believe we are (or should be) in control of the technology, it undeniably takes effort and creates an interactive context that places deep and different demands on the finite resource of our creative concentration. Given this, perhaps those who posit less engagement for better writing are correct, just for the wrong reasons.

Kirsch’s final paragraph tickled me, veering off as it does into prose poetry:

So too with the virtual mind of the inconceivable future. When it looks for traces of us, it will not turn to novels or poems, but to e-mails, blogs, and Facebook pages. Mind will treasure these evidences of its own past, and devote all its infinite resources to interpreting them. And because it is infinite, it will have more than enough attention to give to each of our lives. Even the least articulate of us will become the focus of a kind of ancestor cult, subject to the devoted meditation of innumerable intelligences. The first will be made last, and the last first. At last, the scarcity of recognition will give way to the plenitude that has always been the mark of the messianic age. If only we could be certain that this was the future we had in store, no poet would ever have to write another line.

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image “borrowed” from stlog

Donald Finkel is one of those poets I’ve yet to get around to seriously reading but whose poems stand out enough that I actually remember them long after serendipitously discovering them in journals such as The Paris Review and The Chicago Review. Finkel’s name also comes up regularly in conversations and interviews with poets, courtesy of his reputation as a fine, fine teacher and his long-term association with Washington University.

Recordings (Part 1 and Part 2) of a tribute to Finkel are fun to listen to and give you a glimpse at the high esteem in which Finkel was held. Also of interest are profiles of Finkel in STLtoday and the St. Louis Beacon.

Here are a few of his poems:

“Burden”

Nouns were the first to slip away.
Was it because they were easier to forget,
or the most dispensable?
Funerals back then were milling
with nouns whose names he’d forgotten,
if he’d ever met them.
Evidently, somewhere out there
a swarm of improper nouns
had prospered and multiplied.
Odd nouns came knocking every day
looking for work, till the old bard
left off answering the door.
Verbs were beasts of another persuasion.
For a while some stayed behind,
pacing the halls or curled on the living room sofa.
But they had to be fed. Some nights
they sank their claws in his thigh
when they were hungry.
As the last syllable crept away,
he felt a peculiar lightness,
like the wisp that rises,
from a smoldering wick—
as if words were the burden
he’d been bearing, all his life.

–Donald Finkel
From: Cortland Review

“The Invention of Meaning”

In the beginning was the hand
and the poem of the hand,
a breathless trope, a floating hieroglyph,
seamless as water.

Then the hand spoke, and the hand said
“Let there be meaning,” and the meaning sang:
“Let there be love,” and the hand
shaped itself another hand of clay.

Now, where there had been
but one meaning, there were two.
So the hands wrestled all night
till they saw it was pointless.

So together they shaped themselves
a cunning tongue, to arbitrate.
Now, where there had been two meanings,
there were three.

And the hands wrung one another,
abashed, and the tongue took over.

–Donald Finkel
From: Natural Bridge

 

“The Ape Who Painted”

Toward the end of his painting career, Congo was
producing excellent circles, but nearly always filled them
in immediately.
     –Alexander Alland, Jr., The Artistic Animal

from time to time he would pause
to examine an apple, turning it
in his long, sensitive fingers, or fish
a dust-mouse gently from under his bed
not a hair displaced
or moon for hours, sprawled on his favorite tire
praying to his thumb
how fortunate we are to have captured on film
this miraculous thumb, in full career
sweeping in a great assured acc from left to right
trailing a gleaming Indian Red parabola
counterclockwise, following its own law
tailing up again, toward its beginning
deftly dividing out from in
then filling carefully the bowl of zero
with precious red, horizon to horizon
toward the end, the painter’s cage was strewn
with fallen suns, great bloody periods
pages from some cosmic calendar
while he grew more taciturn than ever.

–Donald Finkel
From: What Manner of Beast

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The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be–
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

–Robert Frost

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“All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be kind and thoughtful, even to be polite, nor for an atheist artist to consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his worm-eaten body, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much skill and refinement by an artist destined to be for ever unknown and barely identified under the name Vermeer. All these obligations, which have no sanction in our present life, seem to belong to a different world, a world based on kindness, scrupulousness, self-sacrifice, a world entirely different from this one and which we leave in order to be born on this earth, before perhaps returning there to live once again beneath the sway of those unknown laws which we obeyed because we bore their precepts in our hearts, not knowing whose hand had traced them there–those laws to which every profound work of the intellect bring us nearer and which are invisible only–- if then!–- to fools.”

–Marcel Proust
from The Captive

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You know that guy who you didn’t invite to your party but shows up anyway, wielding his guitar like a blunt musical instrument, trying hard to be soulful, earnest, totally in love with music but totally and absolutely horrible at making it? That’s me playing chess. I love the game… to the point of literal obsession at times in the past. I enjoy reading about the history, the players, the intrigue and the contretemps. I play through games and solve puzzles. I’ve built and given up gigantic databases. I’ve played online, offline and through correspondence on paper and electronically. I own a variety of boards and tournament sets and clocks. I’ve bought But I’m just not very good at it!

For the past five years or so I’ve almost completely avoided playing for fear that the obsession would set in again… but I haven’t stopped reading about the game. Following is a selection of the greatest chess books I’ve ever read (in no particular order).

Zurich: 1953 (David Bronstein)

I prefer creative, attacking chess ala Mikhail Tal, Bobby Fischer, Paul Morphy, and David Bronstein remains one of my favorites. But what makes this book special is a combination of high-level play and Bronstein’s fantastic annotations. For readable but accurate annotations for players at all levels, there was none better. Bronstein’s annotations are not packed full of variations– he prefers plain language musings– but this isn’t a book intended for Masters to prepare for the next tournament. Bronstein clearly enjoys himself while providing a keen perspective on every game, and the way his affection for the players and the play shines through makes this a must-have.

The Search for Chess Perfection (C. J. S. Purdy)

C.J.S. Purdy was an Australian and Correspondence World Champion whose writing has developed a cult following amongst devotees of the game. And for good reason: in addition to having a strong grasp of the game, Purdy is a fine prose stylist. This is one of those books that has relatively deep annotations in places but that can be just as easily read for pleasure without a board in sight or in mind. Purdy spends a lot of time delving into the psychological aspects of the game and the importance of developing a coherent system for approaching each game, move, and decision.

The Sorceror’s Apprentice (David Bronstein)

Bronstein’s other classic work, this book has it all, opening with 40 of his favorite combinations in “figure out the next move” style, followed by a section of about 50 annotated games featuring Bronstein’s clear analysis and fun stories and anecdotes about the game, tournaments, and players involved, then another section of 50+ games featuring enough diagrams to be playable without a board, and finally a section of 75+ games that Bronstein considered “picturesque.” In between each section are prose pieces about Bronstein’s life and career.

Chess Explorations (Edward Winter)

These two volumes (Chess Explorations and Kings Commoners and Knaves: Further Chess Explorations) feature a compendium of the most interesting entries in Edward Winters’ famed “Chess Notes” series. Winters is a well-known chess historian who delights equally in discovering new and interesting historical facts on his own and skewering the poor writing, shoddy history, and shameless lifting that has long been a habit of many chess writers. As far as I know, no one actually knows who Edward Winter is, but that added bit of mystery is unneeded… his fascinating work ranging from true historical discovery to amazing oddities– and everything in between– more than speaks for itself. There are two more volumes in the series I don’t yet own…

My 60 Memorable Games (Bobby Fischer)

Bobby Fischer was a maladjusted prodigy who turned into a raving, cracked anti-semite… but he was also arguably the best chess player that ever lived, champion of a bold, attacking style whenever possible and without being one-dimensional, and an iconic, controversial figure who remains to this day the symbol of chess in much of popular culture. I love Fischer’s style of play and his way with words. He didn’t write many books, but this is a classic. In this memorable book– written before Fischer ascended to the World Chess Championship and long, long before he slowly went mad– Fischer examines some of his greatest victories, often not just beating his opponent but completely and utterly dominating him.

Profile of a Prodigy (Frank Brady) and Bobby Fischer Goes to War (David Edmunds)

Fischer is a fascinating character and these two books cover his life and career from childhood to his winning of the 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavik. Brady’s writing is that of a seriously interested journalist, full of anecdotes and stories that don’t delve too deeply into anything disturbing. Edmund’s thick book is really a book of history and politics and creates a rich counterpart to Brady’s coverage of the ‘72 match with Spassky, delving deeply into the antics of Fischer, Spassky, their seconds, and (thanks to the end of the Cold War) the Russian delegation, the KGB and much more. I’m tempted to call Bobby Fischer Goes to War the definitive entry in the long list of books about Fischer and the ‘72 championship match. Look for analysis of the games themselves elsewhere (has any other match been so scrutinized?)… but everything else is here.

The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal (Mikhail Tal)

Of the players in the modern era, Mikhail Tal stands at the top of my personal pantheon alongside Bronstein and Fischer. As a player he was fond of the speculative attack and the shocking sacrifice, employing famous moves that won the game despite often being found unsound later when analyzed outside the pressure of a real-time game. As a writer he is funny and sharp. If you’re looking for serious analysis of many of Tal’s games, look for the three volume set of his complete games, but if you want great stories and insight into the game interspersed with carefully selected games and positions, this book is one of the best going.

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