G A N Z E E R . R E V I E W S

prose

by Jorge Luis Borges o-o-o

Not quite a collection of short fiction as much as it presents blueprints for approaching fiction, often very grand, interestingly-structured fiction. The reviews of fictitious non-existent books are my favorite in the collection, but there are only a handful of those, and the rest is mostly pretty straight fiction which I didn't get much out of. Not that I didn't like them, they just mostly went over my head. Tedious read, despite how slim the book is (179 pages). Very often I would find myself rereading a sentence I'd just read just to make sure I understood what I had just read and after multiple attempts still not sure that I fully know what I'd just read. Lots of clunky sentences, the reading of which is the literary equivalent of chewing abhorrently tough meat. It's a shame, because you know there are some really great ideas supposedly being expressed (the ones I could understand for example touch upon stories nested within stories, as well as infinite stories that end where they start, and stories told backwards). You can feel you're reading something great but you can't quite grasp it most of the time. This leads me to believe that it may be a translation issue I've encountered here. The edition I have is the Penguin edition featuring translations by Andrew Hurley, which I admittedly nabbed because I preferred the cover design (not the image featured above, that's my interpretation). My experience with Hurley's translation however is prompting me to consider acquiring the Grove Press edition which features translations by Anthony Kerrigan, Anthony Bonner, Alasteir Reid, Helen Temple, and Ruthven Todd. Perhaps then I can compare both and adequately assess whether the issue is one of translation, or the actual ideas expressed in the text, or my very own brain.

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#prose #fiction

by Italo Calvino o-o-o-o-o

You are about to read Ganzeer's review of Italo Calvino's IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER, a book which Ganzeer devoured in a week and immediately upon completion couldn't wait to write his impressions of, the task he is embarking on at this very moment. In doing so, however, he must be careful not to spoil too much of the plot or even concept for you, because he's very aware of the added enjoyment he derived from not knowing anything about the book other than it being authored by Italo Calvino, and he didn't have the slightest idea of the compounded surprises that awaited him within its pages. How sad it would be if he were to deny you the opportunity to experience the same thrill he got from the unexpected events that unfold in the novel. Is it even possible to write a proper review without giving anything away though?

“Yes,” Ganzeer hears, “you can do it.” He looks around but there is no one in sight. Who said that? Where did it come from? Was it you, dear reader? Did you notice your lips moving? Or was your response communicated by other means? Ah, the metaphysical freeway that cerebrally connects writers and readers, of course. Why use any other means when such a connection exists? The existence of this special pathway is of course understood, given that every writer must have naturally started out as a reader. Of course, not every reader necessarily becomes a writer, but every reader by definition contains within them the receptacle for potential literary insemination.

Very well, Ganzeer agrees, he shall attempt to write just enough about Calvino's WINTER's NIGHT to entice you to want to read it while still ensuring that you will still enjoy reading it if you do in fact decide to read it. But where to start? His frame of mind upon exiting the novel is not at all the same as his frame of mind upon entering, and having just finished reading it, he is certain to relay an impression of the book you may find a little at odds with what you encounter upon starting it. Perhaps, the best thing Ganzeer can do at this point is find an early impression of the book he might've noted somewhere, and paste it right here in the body of this post unchanged and unedited. Yes, he decides, that is exactly what he will do right now.

Italo Calvino's IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER may just be the most post-modern book I've ever laid hands on. It's about an apparently misprinted book, whereby every other chapter seems to belong to a completely different book. In that regard, it can be quite challenging to get into, but in so doing it held up a mirror to me and reminded me of a thing I did in THE SOLAR GRID, in which I relegated the half of each chapter to what may seem like a completely new story, until much later you discover that it is all in fact one story. Which made me realize how challenging I must've made it for readers too.

Sticking with Calvino pays off though, because by around the 75-page mark, you're hooked, and the brilliance of Calvino's ploy begins to dawn on you like eureka.

Dear goodness, Ganzeer, what are doing? What part of not wanting to divulge too much of the book entails even hinting at what might occur several dozen pages into the damn thing?

Never mind any of that, reader. The only thing you really need to know about Calvino's WINTER'S NIGHT is that it is luscious bait for any lover of books. It will do things you may not have known books were capable of, but in the end may just create a convincing enough argument that it is actually doing the only things books are really capable of, and as such is very much a must read.

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#prose #fiction

by Bob Dylan o-o-o-o-o

I'd like to think you don't have to be a Bob Dylan fan to get a kick out of this book, but it's hard to say for sure given that I am in fact a big Bob Dylan mark. With that being said, I don't hold everything Dylan puts out on a pedestal, and I can in fact get a little critical about the bulk of his output. This is something to be expected in regard to the output of any artist who just so happens to be so goddamn prolific. Much has been said and written about Dylan's life, but not a whole lot has come out of the man's mouth himself, which makes this book incredibly revelatory even if one thinks they know everything there is to be known about Dylan. I'd go as far as mark this book as one of the best written autobiographies in existence.

Understandably, the period of Dylan's life that is typically covered at nauseum is the early-to-mid sixties, when Dylan seemingly skyrocketed to fame overnight and put out what are still considered his greatest hits within the span of a couple years. Dylan has lived a long and interesting life though with a lot of great stories and observations to go with. He is wise not to dwell too much on the sixties given how much it's been covered already, save for a few key moments and interactions here and there. On which note, Dylan's recall is fucking astounding. He remembers being allowed to crash at someone's apartment in those early New York years and is able to remember precise titles of some of the books on the shelf, how some of the readings affected his mind, pulling out specific passages and recalling some of the conversations he had about them. His descriptions of time and place are atmospheric with so few words and he is able to put you right in his shoes and frame of mind. His retellings are for the most part not chronological, and that makes sense because that's not how memory works. He will often remember meeting someone say in the sixties and then tell a story about things they ended up doing together many years later before jumping back again, and you, the reader, will find yourself piecing together a beautiful mosaic that grows more elaborate and astounding with each new addition. Dylan dedicates a good chunk of the book to what you might describe as his development; all the things that might've happened as well as all the material he was exposed to that left a lasting impression on his person. People he met too, and the interactions he had with them. He even recalls when television was barely introduced in his hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, and how multiple homes shared a single telephone line. What a mindfuck it must be to have grown up with that and be alive today with high speed internet and pocket phones with social media and streamable music captured out of nowhere. It's already a mindfuck for the rest of us.

I think anyone with even a nominal interest in music—even if not a Dylan fan—would certainly be interested in this book. Dylan is very viscerally able to recall times when lyrics stormed through his mind like a hurricane, as well as other times when the well of inspiration was painfully dry, sometimes for years. There are parts where he talks about music theory, coming upon what he believes to be a new formula or approach that will open pathways to great new exciting things, but then those visions could sometimes get fuzzy and elusive when it finally came time to make something. One of my favorite chapters was his recollection of the time he recorded NO MERCY in New Orleans, an album I have no love for. The experience of recording the thing makes it clear why. Despite Dylan feeling inspired by New Orleans (some really great passages about the city and walking down its streets), and the producer he was to work with for the first time, in addition to a really great band that was put together for him, things just aren't quite clicking. The entire experience is plagued by trying time and time again to get at something but never quite arriving at it. It's a tale of out of sync wavelengths, collaborators that don't quite jive despite their immense skill, and the terribly illusive nature of inspiration. I imagine anyone who's ever engaged in any creative endeavor would get a kick out of it.

Bob Dylan's CHRONICLES is also a great sourcebook of other works of great artistry. He rattles off numerous albums and musicians—some I'd heard of for the first time—and talks about what aspects of them had an effect on him and what that particular effect was. He talks about books as well, and even about film in a few of instances. He's apparently a big fan of movies, so much so that there are a few times in the book where he'll mention going into a movie theatre all by himself to watch a movie just to get out of a creative funk (or life funk even) and how sometimes one particular scene just might do the trick. Dylan's knack for lyricism has clearly been internalized (I mean, not surprising, right?), so much so that you can almost hear a kind of singsongy ring in almost every sentence. You may just come out of reading it with a dash of musical swagger in how you speak and write yourself. I note that a few reviews, especially on Goodreads, seem to be screaming “plagiarism” without any actual mention of what other writing Dylan may have plagiarized. So I can't speak to whether or not that is true, but even if it were, I have a feeling that said readers may not quite understand the nature of the folk tradition and how said tradition has had an impact on Dylan's thinking or how he writes, and as such I don't doubt that there are numerous turns of phrase in the book that may have been heard or read elsewhere. Turns of phrase and the use of specific terminology aside though, there is no doubt that there's nothing unoriginal about Dylan's life story and his own experiences, all of which are beautifully committed to paper in this here volume. And I for one really hope we get a Volume 2 and 3 to carry forth the tale. I'm sure the man's got a lot more to tell still.

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#prose #nonfiction

by Albert Camus o-o-o-o

A man's mother dies. That right there puts you in the state of mind he might be in. Camus doesn't tell you what state of mind that is, nor does he tell you a lot of things. That's what's great about Camus' writing, he spoon-feeds you nothing, and instead prefers to paint a general impression of things and lets you make heads or tails of it however your mind can muster. His sentences are short, telegraphic, unadorned, yet he is able to create a great deal of mood.

THE STRANGER's plot is thin and may at first seem like a series of meandering, inconsequential happenings; i.e. this happened, and then I did this, and then I went over and spoke to that person, etc. By the end of it however, you realize there was a grand design all along, which isn't unlike how life itself tends to unfold a lot of the times. It is indeed a book about life, its joys and complexities, and how it can all be taken away based on societal perceptions and judgement. A slim, seemingly inconsequential tome that leaves you contemplating long after you're done reading it.

My only dislike is how the protagonist, a Frenchman living in occupied Algeria not unlike Camus himself, only ever refers to locals as “the Arabs”. But it now occurs to me that this may have been intentional on Camus' part, an attempt to illustrate how not entirely great people can still warrant a fair degree of sympathy.

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by Kim Stanley Robinson o-o-o-o

May just be the best climate-fiction novel in existence, certainly the best climate-fiction novel I've ever read. It is for the most part a problem-solving novel, and I like that. Robinson is able to make the uphill battle involved in all the bureaucracy and policy-making and head-butting that would ostensibly constitute the seemingly impossible task of reversing climate change read like a rollicking adventure without ever once diverging from keeping it grounded in realism. Robinson also seems to have a genuinely global perspective, which comes across very believably and in a way that is not easily accomplished. Central to the narrative is also an assassination plot and an unlikely friendship that add a good dash of thrill to the narrative and help guide the entire story through. It is only at the very end that Robinson loses my interest, from chapter 100 onward, after all the damage to the planet is successfully reversed and the protagonist retires from her position, we spend several chapters following her around, meandering from place to place not really doing anything of great interest. At that point, the whole purpose of one's inclination to pick up the book at all, the “Ministry for the Future” stuff, has long passed and successfully been put to paper. What happens after that is just so pointless and boring and to my mind wouldn't really be of interest in any novel of any genre for any reason. It's a shame so many chapters were written to end what is otherwise a fantastic novel on the blandest note imaginable. Still, the first two thirds of the book are enough to make it essential reading.

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by Todd Hignite o-o-o-c

I'm of two very contradictory minds when it comes to this one. On one hand, it's a very important survey of America's most celebrated alternative cartoonists, and on the other hand it's kind of disappointing. Feelings of disappointment may pertain to me and me alone and may not in any way be objective in relation to the book's content at all. It probably has much to do with my expectations going into the book, expectations that manifested on the basis of the book's title (“In the Studio”). Was I wrong to expect at least a peek into these cartoonists' workspaces? Was I wrong to expect copious amounts of craft talk and process stuff? We end up getting neither, hence the severe feelings of disappointment I cannot seem to shake off. With that being said, we do get into the cartoonists' heads quite a bit, along with a looksee at upbringing and early influences, both of which I find wholly insightful. Hense, the book's importance. (please excuse the shit lighting on these pix)

The cartoonists in question are: Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, Charles Burns, Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, Seth, Chris Ware, and Ivan Brunetti. So really, a who's who of the creme de la creme of working alternative cartoonists. If you know these artists' work well though, chances are none of the work by them featured and discussed in this here tome will offer any new insight. What this book does really well though is showcase all the material they cite as influences and allow them to talk about it at length, which very few interviews get to do. I've always been keen to look at the work that influenced my influences, so that aspect of the book I find to be wholly invaluable. Crumb talks at length about obscure working-class satire magazines dating back to the 1800s, along with early MAD and Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics and Thomas Nast's work for Harper Weekly. When you see his own work laid out next to those works, it really does begin to look like a natural mélange of the stuff. Spiegelman cites old Sunday strips, Harvey Kurtzman, art nouvea, Otto Nuckel's “picture novel” from the 1930's, and uncovering “weird” comic books like Fletcher Hanks' STARDUST. And it's like this for every cartoonist's profile, with pictured samples from all their influences (although sometimes the images can be quite small), so again: a truly invaluable survey in that particular regard.

But I'm still aghast that a book titled “in the studio” wouldn't include a single studio shot pertaining to any of the featured cartoonists. And virtually nothing whatsoever on their preferred tools and approach to making the stuff they make. Even when they do actually talk about the stuff they make, it's about theme and general circumstances and the stuff you might find in any interview surrounding the work but nothing whatsoever on the process of actually making it. Where exactly is the studio aspect of “in the studio”? Despite how invaluable the book is for other reasons, I still feel cheated. Had it been called “Conversations with Contemporary Cartoonists” or some such, I likely would've expected exactly what I got and been completely satisfied with it.

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#prose #comix

Martin Booth o-o-o-o

Crabapple sent me this one after a conversation over cocktails in Brooklyn back in the summer, during which Crowley’s name was brought up. Neither of us are Crowleyites (I think) but we both have varying degrees of interest in the occult. My curiosity is a bit more recent, largely ignited by three bits of information:

  1. Modern Art had its beginnings in the occult (which—unbeknownst to the public—kinda makes modern art museums de facto temples of the occult).

  2. Most modern occult movements seem to have been triggered by the European rediscovery of Ancient Egypt (see Napoleon’s Sorcerers and Margaret Murray).

  3. Alan Moore.

Any interest I might’ve had in Crowley in particular though was largely based on what very little I knew of him; the things that make their way to you without any active research you might embark on on your own. Namely, that he was an occultist who amassed a large following after his death due largely to his efforts in self-publishing. Or so I thought. Reading this book brings every dark crevice of this wicked man’s life to light, and… it ain’t pretty. That isn't to say that the book is a negative look at Crowley. In fact, it's incredibly balanced, to the point where you might find yourself baffled by the author's ability not to comment on some of most outrageous bits in this chronicle. Those are the parts I like the most to be honest, because when the author does offer his own take on something, it can often be quite flawed. One example is when Crowley had a less than favorable opinion about the Statue of Liberty's location of New York when it was originally conceived for the Suez Canal, to which Martin Booth claims Crowley must've been misinformed. Why Booth is unaware of what is arguably common knowledge is rather surprising to me. And with that one must take caution in the passages where Booth imparts his own knowledge of history independent of Crowley. But otherwise, Booth chronicles Crowley's life from the moment of birth until death in such a masterfully exciting way, you'll find yourself glued to the book and burning through its pages with ferocious speed. It helps of course that Crowley's life was a fascinating one to say the least. It's certainly difficult to like him after reading this, so much that I question how on Earth he can possibly have a following at all. But as unlikeable as he is, there can be no dispute that his life was rather enthralling, dotted by one shitty choice after the next. There are aspects to him that I'm sure any maverick might find appealing (hello, Crabapple), like his disdain for societal norms and his inclination to oppose the culture at large at every possible opportunity. One of the bits I found most fascinating was Crowley's attempt at establishing a commune in Sicily. With someone of Crowley's incredibly poor decision-making skills at the helm, the experiment failed in every terrible way possible. But this still—along with many other aspects of Crowley's life—pits him as a leading predecessor to the counter-cultural movement that would take root in America some 40 years later! Had the details of his experiment been brought to light sooner on a mass popular scale, the utopia-seekers of the 1960's might've been able to finetune their methods and avoid making the exact same mistakes. Crowley was in fact ahead of his time in more way than one it seems, but they all seem to have filtered through the cognitive part of his brain that inevitably results in terribly poor judgement. Be it sex, publishing, mountaineering, money-management, human relations, religious exploration, travel... you always get a sense of brilliance combined with complete idiocy. It's such a dichotomy that makes for a fascinating read, even if you care not for Crowley or even the occult for that matter.

The other thing that makes this book so great is that—like the best biographies—it's an absolutely fantastic window on a tumultuous period in history. From the turn of the century to the World War I to the roaring twenties and well through World War II, all serve as a backdrop to the life of one of the most eccentric characters in human history, and you get a feel for how it must've been better than any movie or period piece could ever do justice. Down to the little fact that opium, cocaine, and heroin were readily prescribed to treat things like asthma and freakin' toothaches! It doesn't take much to deduce that likely every single person Crowley interacted with must've been at least mildly intoxicated at any given time. In fact, it probably applies to everyone we read about who ever lived between 1898 to 1950.

But that's not why you should read this book. You'll read it because it's a damn thrill, and... it'll probably make you think twice before making any horrendous life choices.

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#prose

Cormac McCarthy o

I am so utterly angry at this book. It starts off good enough until you realize that the entirety of the thing is more or less the same as the first 10 pages. And if ever you wanted a blueprint for anticlimactic endings, well then no need to look any further.

And also, the subtext in this thing? Atrocious. All it wants to do is hammer in the notion that people who work in groups as a community are vicious cannibals, and the only way to possibly survive is to persevere on your own. What a load of poorly disguised Randian egoist trash.

Avoid at all costs.

#prose

Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett o-o-o-o-o

In most of his interviews, Andy Warhol wasn't very talkative and came off as hella awkward while simultaneously being kinda snarky, often dicking interviewers around. So it's quite refreshing to be getting his take on things in his own voice. 300 pages of it, no less. Sure, you can bet the actual writing was done by Pat Hacket, but you can be equally sure that the voice behind the writing belongs to no one but Andy Warhol.

“Very few people on the [West] Coast knew or cared about contemporary art, and the press for my show wasn't too good. I always have a laugh, though, when I think of how Hollywood called Pop Art a put-on! Hollywood?? I mean, when you look at the kind of movies they were making then—those were supposed to be real??”

It's also nice to see him recount his transition from his commercial art practice to his early beginning within the gallery circuit— when he was still not quite sure of himself— before he became a superstar and way before his studio became the go-to place for every major counter-cultural figure in America.

“By the time Ivan [Karp] (who worked at Leo Castelli Gallery) introduced me to Henry [Geldzahler] (who at the time was a new young 'curatorial-assistant-with-no-specific-duties' at the Met) I was keeping my commercial drawings absolutely buried in another part of the house because one of the people Ivan had brought by before had remembered me from my commercial art days and asked to see some drawings. As soon as I showed them to him, his whole attitude toward me changed. I could actually see him changing his mind about my paintings, so from then on I decided to have a firm no-show policy about the drawings. Even with Henry, it was a couple of months before I was secure enough about his mentality to show them to him.”

But if it's the explosive Factory years you're interested in, rest assured there's plenty of that as well. One of the best things about this book though is Warhol's observations about the times. Because that is very much what the book is: a window onto the 1960's through they eyes and words of Andy Warhol. It starts off in 1960 and ends in 1969. By all accounts the 60's was a very special decade in America, and Warhol's retelling definitely drives the point home

“Everything went young in '64. The kids were throwing out all the preppy outfits and the dress-up clothes that made them look like their mothers and fathers, and suddenly everything was reversed—the mothers and fathers were trying to look like their kids.”

It gets better:

“Generally speaking, girls were still pretty chubby, but with the new slim clothes coming in, they all went on diets. This was the first year I can remember seeing loads of people drink low-calorie sodas.”

And then later:

“Since diet pills are made out of amphetamine, that was one reason speed was as popular with Society as it was with street people. And these Society women would pass out the pills to the whole family, too—to their sons and daughters to help them lose weight, and to their husbands to help them work harder and stay out later. There were so many people from every level on amphetamine, and although it sounds strange, I think a lot of it was because of the new fashions.”

So you get interesting anecdotes like that, with associations and theories only someone like Warhol would come up with; Fashion made Speed popular.

He does go on tangents throughout the book, recounting other people's stories instead of his own—which I s'pose you can say is a very Warholian thing to do, isn't it? I can imagine some people getting tired of these long tangents, but I find them to be wonderful additions to Warhol's montage of the decade.

”'I gave Bob Dylan a book of my poems a couple of years ago,' Taylor [Mead] said, 'right after the first time I saw him perform. I thought he was a great poet and I told him so... And now', Taylor started to laugh, 'now when he's a big sensation and everything, he asked me for a free copy of my second book. I said 'but you're rich now—you can afford to buy it!' And he said, 'But I only get paid quarterly.'”

These asides cover a huge roster of characters, from Dylan to Jackson Pollock to Robert Rauschenberg to Jonas Mekas to Dennis Hopper to Edie Sedgwick to Jim Morrison to Lou Reed to Nico to Mick Jagger and on and on. The tone is very conversational and often gosspiy, but it isn't all mere gossip. You learn, for example, how Warhol introduced Henry Geldzahler to a young British painter by the name of David Hockney. This was before Geldzahler became curator of American Art at the Met and way before he became Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City. And it was really before Andy Warhol himself became anything close to a cult figure, which he would start to become only 1-2 years later.

Hard to imagine the transition when you take into account the initial reception towards his work:

“When Ivan brought Leo Castelli up to my studio, the place was a mass, with the big canvases strewn around the living room—painting was a lot messier than drawing. Leo looked my stuff over, the Dick Tracys and the Nose Jobs in particular, and then said, 'Well, it's unfortunate, the timing, because I just took on Roy Lichtenstein, and the two of you in the same gallery would collide.”

And then later:

“Henry Geldzahler was also pounding the pavements for me. He offered me to Sidney Janis, who refused. He begged Robert Elkon. He approached Eleanor Ward, who seemed interested but said she didn't have room. Nobody, but nobody, would take me.”

Amidst the stories, the gossip, and observations, there's also the occasional tip.

“To be successful as an artist, you have to have your work shown in a good gallery for the same reason that, say, Dior never sold his originals from a counter in Woolworth's. It's a matter of marketing, among other things. If a guy has, say, a few thousand dollars to spend on a painting, he doesn't wander along the street till he sees something lying around that 'amuses' him. He wants to buy something that's going to go up and up in value, and the only way that can happen is with a good gallery, one that looks out for the artist, promotes him, and sees to it that his work is shown in the right way to the right people.”

He finally got his first New York show in the fall of '62 at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery (only 3 years before announcing his retirement from painting). By early '63 he'd moved his work studio from his home to an old firehouse on East 87th st, and soon thereafter he hired Gerard Malanga as his assistant, who was also instrumental in keeping Andy plugged into all the cultural happenings.

“Gerard kept up with every arty event and movement in the city—all the things that sent out fliers or advertised in the Voice. He took me to a lot of dank, musty basements where plays were put on, movies screened, poetry read—he was an influence on me in that way.”

The more things Warhol was exposed to, the more he soaked up stuff like a sponge, not just for his art, but for his very persona.

“In those days I didn't have a real fashion look yet... Eventually I picked up some style from Wynn [Chamberlain] , who was one of the first to go in for the S & M leather look.”

Perhaps some of the most interesting parts in the book is when Warhol recounts some of his efforts in film, which indeed took up the majority of the 60's despite not “bringing home the bacon” in the same way the paintings did. Even today Andy's films have yet to occupy the same place his paintings have, but in reading his retelling it's hard to think that even the most skeptical of skeptics wouldn't be able to see that there's at least a bit of genius in them. In one bit, Warhol even talks about “slow cinema” something that seems to be regaining popularity in recent years.

“That had always fascinated me, the way people could sit by a window or on a porch all day and look out and never be bored, but then if they went to a movie or a play, they suddenly objected to being bored. I always felt that a very slow film could be just as interesting as a porch-sit if you thought about it the same way.” But all in all the greatest thing about the book is that it's such a perceptive account of some of the most interesting aspects of 60's New York. There's lots on Jonas Mekas' Cinematheque, plenty on the changing neighborhoods, how the East Village was becoming all Bohemian, when the Beatles became all the rage and the Stones were having publicity issues, how fashions were quickly evolving year after year (“The masses wanted to look non-conformist, so that meant the non-conformity had to be mass-manufactured”).

I find it quite odd that in the wide array of art-related books recommended to me over the years, Andy Warhol's Popism was never mentioned once. In fact, I never even knew of the book's existence, and just happened upon it by sheer coincidence. It strikes me as essential reading to anyone interested in not just Andy Warhol, but New York's art scene in the 60's more generally, arguably the most important decade in American art and culture at large. And actually, art aside, it's an incredible telling account of the decade more generally, with Warhol's keen observations on things like fashion, music, and media. Even with Warhol's shortcomings—his obsessions with things like glamour, fame, and money, all things that come across in this here book—he still manages to do what he's always done best: hold up a mirror right in America's face.

Highly recommended.

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#prose

by William Gibson o-o-c

NEUROMANCER is not a good novel, but it is essential reading.

How do you figure that?

Well, the first thing that hits you when reading NEUROMANCER is Gibson’s inventive use of language. The opening line, which is not dialogue, not a bit of “action”, not anything pertaining to any character—but rather a mere description of a scene—is one of the most memorable opening lines in the history of literature:

The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel. And that is actually very indicative of the entire novel. The characters negligible, the story unmemorable, but the passages: sheer magic. Most of the time, they won’t mean much, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be enchanted by them anyway.

Under bright ghosts burning through a blue haze of cigarette smoke, holograms of Wizard's Castle, Tank War Europa, the New York skyline.... And now he remembered her that way, her face bathed in restless laser light, features reduced to a code: her cheekbones flaring scarlet as Wizard's Castle burned, forehead drenched with the azure when Munich fell to the Tank War, mouth touched with hot gold as a gliding cursor struck sparks from the wall of a skyscraper canyon. Gibson, like Alan Moore, admits that he’s never cared much for plot, but unlike Moore, Gibson strikes me as someone who has very little to say (at least as far as his first novel is concerned), and rather than step away from the obsession with plot (that most entertainment writers are consumed by) in favor of a story’s core concern, Gibson seems to divert his attention entirely to the musicality of words.

Case triggered his second program. A carefully engineered virus attacked the code fabric screening primary custodial commands for the subbasement that housed the Sense/Net research materials. “Boston,” Molly’s voice came across the link. “I’m downstairs.” Case switched and saw the blank wall of the elevator. She was unzipping the white pants. A bulky packet, exactly the shade of her pale ankle, was secured there with micropore. She knelt and peeled the tape away. Streaks of burgundy flickered across the mimetic ploycarbon as she unfolded the Modern suit. Even when describing action, an actual plot point in the story, Gibson gets too caught up in the rhythm of fresh-sounding words, even if they do very little to affix the mind’s eye to the scene at hand. In fact, they typically serve to do the exact opposite, eject one from the story completely and instead get swept away by the sheer aesthetics of vocabulary, meaning be damned.

It is no wonder that even admirers of NEUROMANCER have very little to say about the story, and instead prefer to lean on Gibson’s invention of the word “cyberspace.” Of course, they also stress that one has to consider the time it was written: 1984, and as such realize how ahead of its time it really was.

While yes, envisioning a completely virtual world made capable by a vast network of computer mainframes that characters plug into in order to enter and operate within is indeed a visionary stroke of genius for that time, but let’s not forget that there was some degree of precedent to that idea in things like TRON (1982). Gibson is often credited with “envisioning” the internet before it happened, but a more accurate prophecy less soaked in fantasy can be found in the networked discussion forums imagined in Orson Scott Card’s ENDER’S GAME.

But yes, “cyberspace” as a word was indeed invented by Gibson in NEUROMANCER. And the book is full of like inventions. On every other page of the thing you’re bound to come across a new word:

Temperfoam Microbionics Ultrasuede Microchannel Dermatrode Shockstave Dermadisk Wintermute

And on and on. But after a while, you get the gimmick: slap two average words together and voila! A new exciting word emerges, much like “cyberspace”, or heck, the book’s very title for that matter: “Neuromancer”.

Not to downplay Gibson’s knack for inventing new words or his ear for the musicality of unexpected words following one another. It is, after all, the novel’s highest selling point as far as I’m concerned. Possibly even its only selling point, but not one to be undermined, for it will completely shed new light on the beauty of language and give you a purely aesthetic experience from the mere act of reading sentences.

But all of that comes at the expense of story.

Is it a good novel? No. Highly recommended? Hell yes.

[Buy]

#prose