Lily Hoang's THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION part 3

[See Parts 1 & 2 for my considerations of Lily's prose style.]

The plot of this book is fascinating: it spirals. There is a clear linear progression toward the Golden Tree and to and away from The Evolutionary Revolution. However, we keep going back and forward in subplots that run throughout the book. In short, we move forward at the same time that we spiral from side to side in subplots in this fabulist world populated by many subspecies of humans.

Before getting further into the implications of this book, we need to take a step back and consider the reading experience itself. The chapters are 1/2 to 2 pages long, and are often discontinuous. They leap about among four or five subplots. (This is the spiraling I spoke of earlier.) Lily is quite merciful with her reader in that she always gives good hints to resituate us into a plot when we suddenly return to it at the beginning of a new chapter. Now, the plots do (seem to?) come together in the end. One plot concerns an Emily who grows wings on her thighs, another the Sylvester twins, who are connected to each other and treated as freaks at circuses. And so on.

A larger mythic substructure asserts that the earth was once all fresh water, no land. The species we now call "man" lived in the sky and slept on the fertile moon. "Man" was all female. Down in the waters was a nasty, vengeful form of humanity, mermen. It would seem that they are all connected twins. For reasons not entirely clear, "man" becomes sexualized, then leaves the moon and attacks the mermen unmercifully, until they are all dead. What remains of them today is in the salt in the ocean.

How do we know such things? Through the poets, storytellers, and prophets, of course. But they are problematic. It was the poets' job to retain "the stories of the past in the various cavities of their bodies" (28). Politicians and wealthy families kept poets to help them with their affairs. There was only one problem. The poets were a jolly sort, lovers of mischief and "misconstrued facts." This means that one of the fundamental sources of knowledge about the past is unreliable.

Storytellers couldn't be trusted anymore than poets. And neither could prophets. So what we have is a fabulist society built on these myths that might be "full of shit" as Lily puts it. So what is this book? An elegantly written pile of shit?

Not entirely. It's also about connectivity. It's about the joy of stories, of language, "the symphony of disagreements" (229). Of wondering about the past and future of the planet, of us, of everything. Sometimes it's not the truth that matters so much, it's the webbings of stories upon stories, giving meaning, distraction, perspective.

Ultimately, it seems to me that Lily shows a humanity to be capable of incredible destruction and incredible creativity, a creativity not based on simple truth and fact-finding. But on the tussle of individuals, cultures, and societies in the disagreements and agreements.

As Lily points out, the scope of the environmental difficulties in front of us might not get addressed in time. But, then again, stories can take us most anywhere.

Lily Hoang's CHANGING

I love this novel. Yes, I like this book and I am impressed by it, but more importantly, I love it.

Let me explain: this book is unique, touching, intimate. It almost feels autobiographical, but it is not. On page after page Hoang's riffs on Jack and Jill and other nursery rhymes, on romantic relationships, on cruelty and tenderness, on family, feel so intimate that to not love them would seem inhumane.

Changing, a 2009 Pen America Award Winner, is based on the ancient Chinese uber-text I-Ching or Book of Changes. The book is composed of 64 hexagrams, each one with six stacked horizontal lines. Some lines are composed of just one dash (­—) an­d some are two (--). The unbroken lines are associated with yang, the creative principle, and the broken with yin, the receptive principle.

For our purposes, it is enough to know that these 64 hexagrams refer to combinations of concrete natural phenomena; namely earth, mountain, water, wind, thunder, fire, swamp, and heaven. For each hexagram, the first three lines refer to one of these phenomena and the second three refer to another. (This is how we get the number 64; there are 64 such possible combinations.) Water, as an example, is composed of a broken line followed by a solid line and another broken line, respectively.

To use the I-Ching for divination, you ask a question then randomly pick a number. Studying that hexagram should help you understand your question better. In an appendix at the end of the book, Lily says that she wants the book to be read that way. For all practical purposes, we can assume that the book need not be read sequentially.

Hoang's book is a new translation of the I-Ching. And it works by, for each hexagram, riffing off of its implications for two pages. (i.e. Each chapter is two pages.) A chapter is divided into six blocks of text, three on one page and three on the other. Some of these blocks are broken into two columns and others are completely solid. They correspond to the broken or solid lines in the hexagrams.

To see what Lily does with three hexagrams, go here. Note that there are six text blocks under each hexagram, and that in the book a page break takes place between the third and the fourth ones. Since it is easilly accessible on the net, I will use this excerpt as an example of what happens throughout the book. I will concentrate on the first one, "Obstruction."

The most direct discussion of the hexagram itself is in the text block that begins "This hexagram is not..." Since heaven is the ultimate creative force (with its three solid lines) and earth the ultimate receptive one (with its three broken lines), it would seem that this hexagram would be water. But it is not: it is obstruction or barricade. Hoang imagines the Princess Jill living in a castle behind a moat. Where did this come from? Throughout the book, in every discussion of a hexagram, Lily goes into Jack and Jill at one point. What's more, other nursery rhymes and fairy tales are quoted. So here, Jill is a princess, evoking all sorts of other tales. This quoting while riffing is very similar to what many jazz artists do, who, while soloing, "quote" the melodies of other songs as a playful and generative act.

This riffing and quoting occurs throughout this excerpt and throughout the book. Each chapter is composed of more than six riffs on the title coming from different imagist, allegorical, and conceptual frameworks. For an example of an allegory, look at the text block beginning "That us lovers..." The whole piece is about the narrator's inability to play chess well and, by implication, the lover's "clean" ability. This is an allegory about the narrator's difficulty with bringing intense emotional scenes (what else could the chess game suggest other than arguments, stressful decisions, an inability to be decisive?) to a conclusion. Perhaps they tend to fester.

Other text blocks under this hexagram are equally interesting. If we remember that with the bottom three lines we are dealing with ultimate receptivity, the block beginning "Impossible for the great..." becomes fascinating. It is a paean to the Taoist idea that the insignificant and nonfunctional (the traditional example is of a severely bent tree) will not be hurt. Here we see how crafty and impossible to catch are the small ones. The very nature of ultimate receptivity implies a strength, an ability to take powerful pressure and yet still remain. The total obstruction of the receptive is impossible (and this is also in keeping with the Yin Yang philosophy) no matter how hard anyone tries.

In the long text block beginning "Memory of the city..." Lily works the notion of water and rain as obstruction once again. Using conjunctions, repetition, and agrammatical structures she causes us to plunge down the text block like heavy rainwater. And it ends with the rye comment "before we're real stuck." The playfulness in this section is quite typical. There is a bouyancy to this novel in spite of its many tragic elements: cancer, growing old, homophobia, racism, breaking from family, and so on.

The playfulness, perhaps, comes from the the conception or intuition that animates the novel, the use of the I-Ching— coupled with the wildly free, agrammatical style. What's more, the play seems inexhaustible. Each chapter could be discussed for hours in terms of how Lily is riffing off of the hexagram. In the sections of the hexagram "Obstruction," she deals with memory, fear, sadness, definitions, Heaven, Earth, small vs. great, family, translating, allegory, and housing. All in two pages!

What's more, this intricately textured novel is not dense. There is so much room to breathe, so much tenderness — the mother lying next to a sick little girl and asking her to give the illness to the mother, and the little girl not wanting to get her mother sick; lovers hearing "how sounds move in groups to our ears"; & Jill walking "into a forest & there she sang with rabbits & birds & a very charming prince overheard melody. And there is tremendous pain — cancer and chemotherapy, racist comments aimed at the little girl and her parents, love affairs breaking apart, a young man almost completely rejected by his family because of being a homosexual. Each of these, returned to again and again under different hexagrams, causes us to read each text block in at least two ways: one in relation to the hexagram it is under, and the other to the other text blocks under different hexagrams that deal with the same issue.

I love this novel because of its tenderness, its playfulness, its ability to look at some of the most horrible aspects of experience yet not despair. To read this novel and inhabit its world is to feel that almost anything can happen, and it might be horrible. It also might be beautiful. But in that very randomness is the possibility for a a spaciousness and openness that is the source of endurance, perseverance, play, and good fortune.

Joshua Cohen interviewed by Lily Hoang

I first came across Joshua Cohen’s work a couple years ago at AWP. I walked by the Starcherone Books table and asked editor Ted Pelton which book he would recommend. He handed me a bunch, and luckily, among those was Cohen’s A Heaven of Others. What struck me then (and continues to strike me every time I read his work) is what an incredible badass he is. For one, he’s an amazing writer. His words are quite literally delicious. But beyond that, he’s the most prolific writer I know (and I know some crazy prolific writers!). Still shy of thirty, he’s got four books in print, one on the way from Dalkey Archive, and tons more sitting either on a physical or virtual shelf. Cohen is a powerhouse, but don’t take my word for it. Go buy one of his books. You won’t regret it.

So yeah, here’s an interview with him:

LH: Something that really strikes in about your writing is the very distinctive voice your characters have. In A Heaven of Others (from here on out known as Heaven), the narrator has an extremely urgent voice, one that compelled me to read faster & faster, until I was practically skimming. (Then of course, I had go back and read the whole thing over again to really savor the language!) Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto (known as Cadenza), however, has a much more patient narrative voice. Can you tell me more about the development of these narrators in particular? Please feel free to talk about your other works as well.

JC: The voices of both my novels are fictions within fictions, and, as that, they're opposites: The voice of A Heaven of Others is that of 10-year-old Jonathan Schwarzstein of Tchernichovsky Street, Jerusalem. The voice of Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto is that of Laster, an octogenarian, perhaps nonagenarian, concert violinist from eastern Austro-Hungary. Again, both are fictions, meaning both are ultimately Me. I think what I've done in all my books so far comes, primarily, from speech rhythm. The rhythm of how I want to speak. How I speak to myself. As for echoes, A Heaven of Others derives from poetry, especially 20th century Hebrew poetry (Dan Pagis), and German-Jewish poetry (Paul Celan), while Cadenza comes from comedy, and despite its typographical trickery owes more to the history of the novel, and much, specifically, to Saul Bellow.

LH: A lot of your writing seems to deal with your—or rather your characters'—Jewishness. What role has that played on your writing?

JC: The more I'm asked this question, the more I want to say that my "Jewishness" is a result of laziness - or, of not thinking enough.
But, it's not that I can't think of anything else to write about, it's just that this comes naturally. I don't think there's ever a reason to do anything against one's nature.

LH: In "The Site of Memory," Toni Morrison writes that "imagination is bound up with memory" (119). To what extent do you think memory plays a role in your fiction? Or does it?

JC: I don't know that Toni Morrison essay - or is it a book? - but I'll say I agree: I'm just not sure how she delimits "memory." The things that have happened to me are as much my memory as what's otherwise called "cultural memory." Certainly imagination begins in a reinvention of one's own life, but that reinvention, for me at least, immediately starts in with a rewrite of my family, of grandparents and origins, of an idea of "community," or of "a people."
To be specific: The terrorist explosion of A Heaven of Others begins outside a shoe store, which I based on my memories of a particular shoe store (Fischer's Shoes, formerly of Margate, NJ; the owner used to give every child who came in a pretzel). Once I knew that my book's Jerusalem store had to be a Shorefront shoestore, all those old cultural tropes - or "memories" - came; following, as it were, in experience's footsteps: the Sinai take-off-your-shoes-you're-standing-on-holy-ground, the barefoot Wandering Jew, Auschwitz's shoe-stack, the Israeli (and hippie) sandal.

LH: It seems like today, we're inundated with coming of age stories. They're hot. They've been hot and will continue to be hot. And yet, Heaven is in many ways an anti-coming of age coming of age story. Were you purposely playing with the genre? How so? Do you imagine his growth and development (not in a physical sense, of course) after death?

JC: I don't know how to answer this question in a short paragraph (to answer fully, I'd have to get away from genre-talk; there are just too many - ridiculous, nonliterary - differences between contemporary memoir, and something like Joyce's Portrait, or Proust, or Goethe's Werther), so I'll just say this, and hope it's enough: Maturity has often been defined as consciousness of death. But for Jonathan, being already dead, being murdered, and at such a young age, maturity has to be defined as consciousness of life: The knowledge of what he's lost, what's been left behind with the shoeboxes and parents.

LH: There are a ton of synonyms for the same word, whether it be experimental, conceptual, innovative, avant-garde, etc. Do you consider yourself one--or any--of those terms? Is there a term you prefer? That is, how would you describe (or even label?) your writing?

JC: I prefer the term "living." I am a living writer. That said, the rest is not commentary, as Rabbi Hillel would have it - no; the rest - "the experimental," "the innovative" - is marketing. And pisspoor marketing, too!

LH: Nabokov argues that in order to really bask in the glory of a book--a book of genius--a reader should not read with her head or heart but with the spine. Is there any way you would want your readers to read your books?

JC: With a bookmark. A friend of mine is freakish. She never uses a bookmark - nothing, not an envelope or paper scrap to hold her place - she just remembers what page she's reading. When she closes a book, she closes it, kicks it off the bed, under the couch, and is never worried that she'll "lose her page." So, instead, maybe that's what I want: A reader who doesn't fold the corners of pages, but rather folds the corners of her mind.

LH: What's next? What are you working on now?

JC: A novel's already finished, Two Great Russian Novels. That's still seeking a home. And there's a collection of short things about New York, Bridge & Tunnel (& Tunnel & Bridge). That's finished, too, also homeless. Other than that, "essays for rent." For the past two years I've kept a Genizah (www.joshuacohen.org/stories) - a place where I put up scribbles needing some air, get them out of the house.
Here are two of the more recent:

Virus
One knee must always be higher than both elbows. Both feet should be kept on the ground (floor, bed).
Your mouth must be open. One finger of each hand must be bent, but only at one knuckle (each).
It should be three p.m. or later. And your hair must be long. One eye must constantly wink at the other (infected) person.
This might be the only way to contract the virus.

My Newest Site

Joshua Cohen was born in New Jersey in 1980. He is the author of four books, including two novels: Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, and A Heaven of Others. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

You can find out more about him at: www.joshuacohen.org

[Lily Hoang's first book, Parabola, won the Chiasmus Press Un-Doing the Novel Contest in 2006. She's also the author of Changing (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008) and the forthcoming novels Invisible Women (StepSister Press, fall 2009) and The Evolutionary Revolution (Les Figues Press, 2010). Her eBook "Woman down the Hall" is available through Lamination Colony and her chapbook "Mockery of a Cat" is forthcoming from MudLuscious. She's an Associate Editor of Starcherone Books and teaches at Saint Mary's College in Indiana.

Lily was interviewed about her novel Parabola on this blog. Click here.]