If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
read: circa 1997

Lost in the Funhouse reminded me of a novel I read years ago that explored the nature of writing, reading, and fiction: Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.  If on a Winter's Night is light-hearted, a fun exploration of the joy of reading, particularly the joy of discovering new books.  The book alternates first chapters of fake novels in various styles with chapters following a reader's quest - in second-person! - to find the rest of the books.  Ultimately he (you?) fails but achieves a deeper understanding, or something, I don't really remember.  It's kind of a tease but it's well done.

Lost in the Funhouse

Lost in the Funhouse
by John Barth
read: 2012

A couple years ago I was trying to start a business with my friend Mark.  The basic idea was visualizing date-based information, but Mark saw it as more than that; he saw it as part of a larger effort to replace language with something more inherently meaningful.  As you might imagine from someone who has a blog about literature, I like language, so we would often have interesting disagreements on the subject.

Mark would probably agree with the following passage from Lost in the Funhouse, John Barth's collection of loosely related short stories:

I believe literature's not likely ever to manage abstraction successfully, like sculpture for example, [...] because wood and iron have a native appeal and first-order reality, whereas words are artificial to begin with, invented specifically to represent.  [...] Well, well, weld iron rods into abstract patterns, say, and you've still got real iron, but arrange words into abstract patterns and you've got nonsense.

Barth explores this concept throughout Lost in the Funhouse: "Frame-Tale" invites the reader to literally make a Moebius strip; the Author's Note says that "Autobiography" was written "for monophonic tape and visible but silent author"; "Menelaiad" is written as a nested dialogue with seven sets of quotation marks at points; the title story is peppered with sentences like "Description of physical appearance and mannerisms is one of several standard methods of characterization used by writers of fiction."  Barth takes the rules of the short story form and twists and breaks them throughout.

I'm not normally a fan of "the novel as craft," but as Professor Amy Hungerford points out, under this exploration of narrative techniques and the nature of language is a paralyzing self-awareness that prevents "the author" (whoever that may be) from experiencing life's profound feelings in the moment.  This tension is captured best in the final line of the title story: "Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator - though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed."  This schism between artistic creation and awareness of language comes up repeatedly through the stories; it's echoed in Ambrose's detachment when recalling his sexual roleplay with Magda and in Menelais' inability to believe in Helen's love.  But then we also have "Night-Sea Journey," written from the perspective of a sperm, which reminds us that sex, too, is an act of creation.  Seen from this perspective, the linguistic gymnastics of Lost in the Funhouse are practically a cry for help, an attempt to reach understanding through exhaustive exploration when what the author really needs to do is just stop thinking and feel.

Ultimately, I didn't buy everything Barth was doing, but it was interesting, and I generally felt that the crazy techniques and structures ultimately served a purpose.  Lost in the Funhouse is a unique book.

A Night of Serious Drinking

A Night of Serious Drinking
by Rene Daumal
read: circa 2009

This is a weird book.  It's not even really a novel so much as a thought experiment.  The first third of the book begins as you might imagine a book called A Night of Serious Drinking would, with a bar full of heavy drinkers, and the narrative lucidity decays as the evening wears on and talk turns more philosophical.  The second third is a journey to an alternate universe ostensibly still within the tavern.  The final part begins with a man waking up in a spare room who comes to operate a larger machine that simulates the human body waking up.

The second third is probably the most interesting piece.  The inhabitants of the parallel universe in the   the tavern bear strong resemblance to those in our world, just taken one absurd step further.  Daumal skewers military leaders, doctors, scientists, and artists alike.  The equivalent of poets in this world are folks who try to produce completely random words utterly devoid of meaning or thought.  Architects strive to create forms of pure beauty that no one could possibly live in.  The section goes on for a while, but at times it's so clever it's laugh-out-loud funny.

A Night of Serious Drinking is an unusual novel, but it took me places few books have taken me, so on that basis I can recommend it.  (Yes, the price is ridiculous.  Don't buy it.)

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
by Jules Verne
read: 2012
Guardian 1000 Novels

Science fiction ages like no other genre of fiction.  A realistic novel is frozen in its place in time, and even fantasy novels are divorced from reality to the extent they can't be subject to retroactive criticism.  But humans are terrible at predicting the future, so any novel that attempts to do that is bound to fail.  A Journey to the Centre of the Earth doesn't place itself in the future per se, but the exploration of the earth's interior, something that was poorly understood at the time and much better understood now, comes off as quaint at best and wildly unscientific at worst.  Still, the story is interesting, and even if the interaction between the characters becomes repetitive (the narrator is a wuss!  The uncle seems irrational but ends up being right!  Hans has no expression!), it's a fun read.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
read: circa 1996
Guardian 1000 Novels

I had to read Robinson Crusoe as assigned summer reading before my junior year of high school.  It was my least favorite of all the books I had to read.  The plot outline - a mariner stranded on a desert island, relying on his wits to survive - sounds like an exciting story, but as I remember it largely consisted of lists of provisions.  Reading it was much less fun than going to the beach that summer.

The Coming Race

The Coming Race
by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
read: 2012
Guardian 1000 Novels

Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race is another "Lost World" novel.  But The Coming Race is less of an adventure story a la King Solomon's Mines and more of an allegorical societal critique a la Brave New World.  The narrator discovers an underground society composed of humanoid creatures called "Vril-ya" who have mastery of "Vril," which is kind of like "The Force" from Star Wars.  As a consequence, they have moved beyond war, needing to provide for themselves on a day-to-day basis, and many of the other struggles in our day-to-day life.  Ultimately, Bulwer-Lytton doesn't really choose sides.  There are pieces of the Vril-ya society that challenge flaws in human society; for instance, the gender roles among the Vril-ya are almost flipped, and their society has interesting means of dealing with over-population and new settlements.  But like in Brave New World, the society's advancements have casualties, as art is rendered completely superfluous and the Vril-ya seem almost passionless.  This even-handedness makes The Coming Race thought-provoking.