[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.
Showing posts with label The Evolutionary Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Evolutionary Revolution. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Lily Hoang's THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION part 2
As a writer, I will forever have an affection for the close reading of prose and poetry. For me, nothing helps me on the micro-elements of my craft than paying close attention to what others, whom I respect, are doing.
Just in case any readers are unfamiliar with the "intentional fallacy," I'll explain it in the next two paragraphs. Oftentimes, close readers pick up stuff that is clearly there but was not intentionally placed by the author. This often happens to me not only with the small stuff, but large scale themes as well. Friends of mine, some of whom do not often read literature, will frequently see something that is evident in the work on the thematic level that I never picked up on.
All this is to say that a close read for me is not an effort to read a writer's mind, it's an attempt to see how he or she works the language as a craftsperson. The degree of intentionality is not important in a close reading ( though it certainly is in more autobiographical & historical readings of literature).
I want to look at four sentences on page 132.
"It is not because we want to regress that we explore the past. That would be a complete mischaracterization of our intentions. Nor are we the type to look back upon yesterday with a milky, romanticized eye, an eye that does not scrutinize, an uncritical eye.
"Rather, we look to the past because we must find the errors of our ancestors."
First, I want to emphasize that what is being said here about why we may study history is not necessarily Lily's beliefs. Point of view in this book is complicated, to say the least.
What interests me is that we have four sentences, only two of which have commas. One of those, however, is just after a brief introductory word, so it hardly counts. For all practical purposes we have three fairly simple, very short sentences without commas. Then, in the middle of these three, comes a very long one with three commas central to the expressive power of the sentence.
These commas contain the phrases that help explain the metaphorical "eye" with which this "we" looks at the past. There's an insistence on completely denying the romanticized mind by not having the sentence end at the first "eye," but having us readers hover over its negation for an extra half sentence.
On top of that is repetition and rhyme. "Eye" is repeated three times, the rhyming syllable "ize" twice in this one sentence. There is a tremendous determination to keep the word and the sound "eye" before us for the entire lingering, last half of the sentence.
She does this with no awkwardness, and nothing feels forced. I read to the bottom of the page and felt that something remarkable had happened, so I went back to look for it. I think she is able to keep the emphasis so strongly on "eye" without sounding clunky largely through her rhythms (I will not do a traditional scan, but I looked at it from that view point and there does seem to be some interesting emphases that come up) and her long consonants. When we get to the last half of the sentence hard consonants are usually buried within words, where they lose some of their fricative power, and she begins words with soft consonants.
In short, she draws us through the heavy repetition in the last half of the sentence by using rhythm and sound. The heavy repetition helps to thoroughly negate the "romanticized" way of looking at the past.
My next entry on this book will be a review of the book itself.
Just in case any readers are unfamiliar with the "intentional fallacy," I'll explain it in the next two paragraphs. Oftentimes, close readers pick up stuff that is clearly there but was not intentionally placed by the author. This often happens to me not only with the small stuff, but large scale themes as well. Friends of mine, some of whom do not often read literature, will frequently see something that is evident in the work on the thematic level that I never picked up on.
All this is to say that a close read for me is not an effort to read a writer's mind, it's an attempt to see how he or she works the language as a craftsperson. The degree of intentionality is not important in a close reading ( though it certainly is in more autobiographical & historical readings of literature).
I want to look at four sentences on page 132.
"It is not because we want to regress that we explore the past. That would be a complete mischaracterization of our intentions. Nor are we the type to look back upon yesterday with a milky, romanticized eye, an eye that does not scrutinize, an uncritical eye.
"Rather, we look to the past because we must find the errors of our ancestors."
First, I want to emphasize that what is being said here about why we may study history is not necessarily Lily's beliefs. Point of view in this book is complicated, to say the least.
What interests me is that we have four sentences, only two of which have commas. One of those, however, is just after a brief introductory word, so it hardly counts. For all practical purposes we have three fairly simple, very short sentences without commas. Then, in the middle of these three, comes a very long one with three commas central to the expressive power of the sentence.
These commas contain the phrases that help explain the metaphorical "eye" with which this "we" looks at the past. There's an insistence on completely denying the romanticized mind by not having the sentence end at the first "eye," but having us readers hover over its negation for an extra half sentence.
On top of that is repetition and rhyme. "Eye" is repeated three times, the rhyming syllable "ize" twice in this one sentence. There is a tremendous determination to keep the word and the sound "eye" before us for the entire lingering, last half of the sentence.
She does this with no awkwardness, and nothing feels forced. I read to the bottom of the page and felt that something remarkable had happened, so I went back to look for it. I think she is able to keep the emphasis so strongly on "eye" without sounding clunky largely through her rhythms (I will not do a traditional scan, but I looked at it from that view point and there does seem to be some interesting emphases that come up) and her long consonants. When we get to the last half of the sentence hard consonants are usually buried within words, where they lose some of their fricative power, and she begins words with soft consonants.
In short, she draws us through the heavy repetition in the last half of the sentence by using rhythm and sound. The heavy repetition helps to thoroughly negate the "romanticized" way of looking at the past.
My next entry on this book will be a review of the book itself.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
1/3 through Lily Hoag's THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION
Before starting this book I thought, "No, Lily could not possibly do it again." She has written two terrific books in the last couple years, Parabola (Chiasmus) and Changing (Fairy Tale Press). Finally, Les Figues has just come out with The Evolutionary Revolution, a wild fabulist book where a number of remarkable things happen, among them females living in the sky and eating on the fertile moon at night. So far in my reading, it would seem she did it again.
Since I am not finished with the book, I would just like to share some of Lily's fine prose at this point. She writes in very short, half-page to two-page chapters that are often discontinuous. In one, entitled "Merman's Dream," these sentences appear:
"Emily is caught in a merman's dream..Once, she tried to sing, to comfort herself, but her voice came out as soft cashmere ... Then, out of nowhere, she hears him singing. His dream is a muted song and Emily uses her fingers to draw out the lyrics, which she must translate into Man, and when she has, she will be able to talk to the merman...Emily doesn't know about the merman's vengeful nature. She doesn't know that the merman isn't dreaming at all, that he's letting her think he's dreaming so she can waste the little breath she has left in interpretation. He has no problem killing little angels...He laughs broadly. Emily hears this. She thinks it's another clue to help in her escape."
This parable about interpretation, which I take to suggest that interpretation often has absolute limits beyond which is profound misunderstanding, is part of a larger narrative in the book about mermen and women with wings on their thighs and wax on the eyes. It's a remarkably inventive book, sentence after sentence right on. I am looking forward to the rest.
Since I am not finished with the book, I would just like to share some of Lily's fine prose at this point. She writes in very short, half-page to two-page chapters that are often discontinuous. In one, entitled "Merman's Dream," these sentences appear:
"Emily is caught in a merman's dream..Once, she tried to sing, to comfort herself, but her voice came out as soft cashmere ... Then, out of nowhere, she hears him singing. His dream is a muted song and Emily uses her fingers to draw out the lyrics, which she must translate into Man, and when she has, she will be able to talk to the merman...Emily doesn't know about the merman's vengeful nature. She doesn't know that the merman isn't dreaming at all, that he's letting her think he's dreaming so she can waste the little breath she has left in interpretation. He has no problem killing little angels...He laughs broadly. Emily hears this. She thinks it's another clue to help in her escape."
This parable about interpretation, which I take to suggest that interpretation often has absolute limits beyond which is profound misunderstanding, is part of a larger narrative in the book about mermen and women with wings on their thighs and wax on the eyes. It's a remarkably inventive book, sentence after sentence right on. I am looking forward to the rest.
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