maria-riga

[maria-riga]

Michel Houellebecq - Annihilate

“He wasn’t feeling much, no pain at all, more like a kind of pity for himself, and also, what alarmed him most, was the feeling that he was draining. Maybe this is how you feel, he thought, with heavy bleeding”.

Reading Houellebecq’s book made me think that the writer played a prank on us. Finishing it, I imagined Houellebecq siting comfortable in his house, devouring the recently published reviews with a daemonic smile on his face, murmuring to himself “what idiots! They bought it right away!”.

 Even though some shreds of sensitivity were encountered in his past books, this one is so full of it, making this exponential increase similar to the discharge of volcanic lava, which in absence of easy and uninterrupted exit bursts in festive eruptions, covering the unsuspecting passer-by, with the permeating and infiltrating substance.

Likewise, “ Annihilate“ grabs the reader, leading him/her to a smooth reading, making him/her part of the writer’s insistent and almost obsessive (obvious in all his books ) existential quests, all of them having to do with such subjects as immortality, death, old age, suicide, sexuality and sickness, as well as his social and political quests, integrating into his plot, the anxiousness for the future of humanity, the globalization, social movements existing on the verge of democratic structures, surrogate motherhood, public health systems, adoption and so many others, which permeate the plot not as an end in themselves but as a necessary part of it. Houellebecq manages to philosophize, just by describing what he sees every day. By touching the surface, he makes us see what is lurking beneath it, like a gifted magician, able to immerse into the water without wrinkling its surface.

Having earned the title of a cynical, Islamophobic, misanthrope he is in a position to be able to express great sensitivity without being characterized as soppy by his critics.

The main character of the book, loses gradually his cynical surface, revealing underneath an emotional and frightened human being. Paul looks like a more sophisticated Florian, Houellebecq’s main character of “Serotonin”.

 Paul’s confession to his father, at a moment when he, hit by a stroke, cannot be at the receiving end of the confession, brings to the surface Paul’s fear of exposure. Paul laments, fears, avoids, fucks, tries, struggles, hesitates while at the same time scolds and insults. He is the absolute Houellebecqian character.

Houellebecq is strict and does not tolerate pointless sensitivities when creating his characters. He likes to build them slowly, adding pieces while the plot evolves, proceeding from a superficial description to a deep psychological view of their personalities. The novel is built based on Paul, which is the central character, but around him the reader gradually meets a handful of nicely sketched secondary characters, which help to bring forth Paul’s most humane self.  

 The book, as I already mentioned above, moves in two directions. The reader is informed upon the start, about some you tube videos, depicting a highly accurate “virtual killing” of the minister of finance. A number of cyber-attacks will be launched as the plot unfolds, appearing in the book, side by side with the events of Paul’s life, the right-hand man of the minister. Progressively the balance lifts from the political to the personal.

 After all, the social situations described in the book have direct repercussions to all the character’s personal lives. Through the story told in this book, the huge issue of the inadequate public health system and the social position of the older citizens is depicted. In the affluent society of today, old age has no place. Old and invalid people without the necessary economic means, are hidden in hellhole institutions and left there to die. Cancer is killing more and more people over sixty creating patients totally dependent on a system that is unable to satisfy their needs. Houellebecq chooses to speak of an illness, which mercilessly forces its victims to face their own death. An illness difficult to endure due to the tormenting prolongation of life, as a result of the existence of new medical cures and all this happening in an era in which man is raised as a selfish monad, unable to accept the immortality of his flesh and deprived of a metaphysical continuum.

  “The true reason behind euthanasia is that in reality we cannot tolerate old people, we do not even want to know they exist, that’s why we park them in special institutions away from public view. Most people today believe that the value of people diminishes with age, that the life of a young person and even more, of a child weighs considerably more than the life of a very old man…”

 On the other side, some people’s love, companionship and hope for the “life after death” (a hope which is also obvious in his novel “The Possibility of an Island, 2005”) make illness a little bit more bearable. Houellebecq, the bad kid of literature, surprises us with the importance he attaches to human sentiments, going so far as equating the sweet effect of morphine to the power of love.

  “And then, he continued, there are people that are being loved until their last day on earth, people in a happy marriage for example. It is not the rule, believe me. Anyways, I believe that the morphine pump is useless, love should be enough, besides, if I remember well, you are not so fond of IV drips.”

  The plot of the novel is enriched with Paul’s dreams, which are thrown upon the reader without previous notice, so as to make him sympathize and understand the existential feeling of despair that these instill in Paul, upon the realization of his absolute inability to control the basic facts of his life, these being his birth and dying. Dreams appear before our rational self, connecting it with the atavistic strength of our non-rational elements.

The nightmarish scenario of the cyber-attacks, the inability to control aging, the difficulties of relations, the dead end of politics, illness. Reality couldn’t be bleaker. But inside this chaos there is something. This something is what you least expect to find in a Houellebecqian novel. A hymn to the enemy of his cynic view, a hymn to life.

Houellebecq combines the rejection of “political correctness” with his writing mastery, realism with poetry and nihilism with hope. Improbable though it is to win some kind of award because of the aforementioned rejection, he sure has won the love of the public, which fanatically supports and awaits the publication of each of his books.

 A marvelous book. Along with his other fans, I am waiting for his next one. Even though he declared this to be his last one.

  “The huge forest extended before them, was not standing still, a gentle wind moved the leaves, and this smooth move was much more comforting than total stillness, the wood seemed like being moved by a subtle breathing, way more smooth than any other animal breathing, bereft of any tension and any feeling, different though from lifeless being, more fragile and tender, an in-between stage between matter and human, it was the  quintessence of life, life away from pain and strife.  It was not though a reminder of eternity, this was not the point, but when you got lost looking at it, death lost its importance.”

The extracts were translated by me, from the Greek translation of the book.

[maria-riga]

Klara, Adam and Frankenstein’s monster

In Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, the monster gains gradually and painfully a sense of his distinctiveness. On the contrary, Adam in Ian MacEwan’s “Machines like me” seems to view his difference as a privilege. Klara in Kazuo Ishiguro’s book “Klara and the sun” constrained and without expressing neither distress nor satisfaction, brings to mind the almost non-human self-control, of “Remains of a Day” butler, in the most famous of Ishiguro’s books.  

Though in a different way, the three books are concerned with the eternal philosophical questions of the essence of human nature, and its ability to reproduce itself. Three great writers create three different anthropoid versions, highlighting this way human’s nature complexity.  

MacEwan’s Adam, newly bought and free of his namesake’s original sin, is sitting naked in Charlie’s kitchen, waiting like an empty sac, to be filled with human-like properties which will make him more of a person and less of a mechanical robot. Adam will result to be “almost” human, programmed to learn and be perfected. Along the way he will present human feelings, appearing to fall in love with Miranda, a young neighbor. An artifact of Alan Turing, who is (in the book) alive and kicking during the 1980’s, Adam is acquiring feelings through a computer software which permits him to continually auto-correct himself.  Having discovered Haiku poetry and Shakespeare’s work, he draws the conclusion that in a future society, literature will be redundant. Things happening by chance, tragic or comic situations, descriptions of misunderstandings and non-rational behavior will be of no use in a future society, in which privacy will be an unknown word and irrational thought, inexistent. Along with these, inexistent will be the writer’s imagination.

Frankenstein’s monster must discover everything on his own. He puts clothes on because he is cold, learns to speak through observation, sees himself for the first time on a calm water surface and acquires conscience through men’s stare. Shelley, being a 19th century writer, before even the hint of the 4th industrial revolution was present, builds a more “humane” and a less mechanistic character than those of MacEwan’s and Ishiguro’s books. The monster’s unsatisfied need for social recognition and inclusion makes him break down and wonder about his “otherness”.

«Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?”

His monstrosities are the result of passion. He kills because he was denied love and affection, his crimes are a cry for help. Revenge - a non-logical passion- is what feeds him, something which is incompatible with the rules of Artificial Intelligence.

Klara learns how to “behave”, being placed on a central street’s window shop, in a way that will make her desirable and sellable as an Artificial Friend (AF) to some lonely child. Part of her education is the acceptance of her demeaned position, subservient to humans, leaving her no room for the slightest ontological queries. Contrary to the monster’s psychological state, Klara seems to have no feelings. The reader though recognizes the “proper” feelings for each situation, and empathizes. Our empathy gives Klara her human substance. The absence of Klara’s feelings makes them point out their necessity. Klara, in Ishiguro’s book operates like a black hole of lost feelings.

Frankenstein calls his creation daemonic holding it responsible for its actions. But is a non-human being bound by ethical laws? Adam, following his built-in “ethics”, makes some -painful for some- decisions. Are these decisions morally reprehensible? Being a technological creation, Adam does not possess the ability of human discrimination and adaptability. He believes that there is always just one right way.

Is Adam daemonic when he breaks Charlie’s arm, trying to prevent his deactivation by him or he is just legally defending himself? Does a mechanical artifact have a right to being alive?  

Klara agrees to be part of some semi-ethical plans of Josie’s mother. Can Klara, an Artificial Friend, programmed to serve humans, be held responsible for consenting to these plans? Can man be both the creator and the victim? And who is responsible at the end of the day for the artifact’s actions?

Under those blurred lines people and machines move under an “unmoved mover” sun, who is functioning as a life giver, as the face of God and as a hope giver, reminding us Beatrice’s sun, a sun which only she can look face to face.

Klara is able to look at the sun through it’s seven and later three reflections on some broken glass leaves (numbers semiological important), being aware that the sun’s face is reflected differently on each of these pieces of glass. Klara discovers/creates the divine, hoping that this power will heal Josie, her human friend, from an illness produced by genetic modification treatment.

Klara: “the sun’s reflection, though still an intense orange, was no longer blinding and as I studied more carefully the Sun’s face framed within the outermost rectangle, I begun to appreciate that I wasn’t looking at a single picture; that in fact there existed a different version of the sun’s face on each of the glass surfaces, and what I might at first have taken for a unified image was in fact seven separate ones superimposed one over the other as my gaze penetrated from the first sheet through to the last.”

On the other side, Adam describes his own transcendental relation with light through the charging process, finding light not in the sun but in the electrons running inside the electric cable.

“You can have no idea, what it is to love a direct current. When you’re really in need, when the cable is in your hand and you finally connect, you want to shout out loud at the joy of being alive. The first touch- it’s like light pouring through your body. Then it smooths out into something profound. Electrones Charlie. The fruits of the universe. The golden apples of the sun.”

Frankenstein’s monster, confined to a hiding place during the day and circulating only through the night, is blinded by the sun’s healing light, ascribing to it “divine” qualities.

Frq: “Soft tears again bedewed my cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the blessed sun which bestowed such joy upon me”

Three creatures moving under the sun, characters of three books which put humans in the place of God. Three different characters, beings with or without human essence, unable to integrate, doomed to eternal wandering, like shadows in Dante’s Divine Comedy in search of their own limbo.  Outside all categorization, religious or natural, in God’s image, but free from Rousseau’ and first men’s Adam’s bonds, they are the victims of human hubris, paying for it with their slow or sudden perish.

I enjoyed reading all three books, but each of them left in my heart a different mark. Writing about them gave me a chance to give a second reading to Shelley’s, Frankenstein, placing it on the top of the list. Isiguro’s reading resembled the enjoyment of a well matured wine, ‘Klara” is hard to decipher like a well-kept secret while MacEwan wrote a book which moves like Adam’s cable electrons, highlighting one more time his mastership as a writer.

[maria-riga]

Max Porter – Grief is the thing with feathers - Lanny

My relationship with books is special. When I “meet” a new book I immediately feel if this book is intended for me. A mere glance at the cover, along with a quick browsing inside, is enough to convince me of this book’s power over me. If I was a follower of the supernatural I would believe that there was a transcendental reason creeping behind all this.

 So that is exactly how, about a year ago, my first meeting with Max Porter’s book, “Grief is the thing with feathers” took place.  And it was not a match made in heaven. Don’t get me wrong. Everything about it, was perfect. A reliable publishing house, a wonderfully made cover page, great paper feeling (I would appreciate a more intense paper odor) and a “catchy” title.

 I came across this book many times. I put it up, glanced at it and then always chose another one.

But it seems that life, permitting chance, protects us from the limitations of our choices, hitting us in the face sometimes with what we have just rejected.  This way life, scolding us for being too certain for our righteousness, imposes on us what otherwise we would have missed.

 I never came to choose this book, but a friend of mine gave me “Lanny”, Max Porter’s latest book as a gift. A book for which I hadn’t heard a word up until then (maybe my ears were closed for this particular writer). This friend also emphasized that she bought it following my favorite bookshop’s advice.

 To make a long story short, the book was a charm. As I proceeded reading it, my reservations not only came crushing down, but were also transformed into admiration through my strolling, side by side along with Dead Papa Toothwort, around the alleys of this little village. Old-Acanthus is a spiritual mythological being, born and raised in this village, being everywhere and nowhere at the same time, guardian of our childness, guardian of Lanny, and a living hope inside this dying universe. I moved from there to his first book, a true ode to grief, a deeply touching and at the same time highly optimistic text, a beauty in paper.

How can someone describe the loss of a mother? How else? Exactly as Porter does. Putting wings on it.

Therefore, reading Porter on reverse, first book last, I immersed myself in his magical universe. Porter is original, without getting out of his way to be, his writing gives off a scent of a 21th century magical realism, and produces unforgettable poetic images while digging for the true meaning of things, using as his sole materials earth, air, childness and fable.  He really blows a fresh wind to modern English literature, he is the necessary addition, the new blood in the world of books.

 Both of his books deal with feelings, stripped out of anything which could get in the way of authenticity, and about problems and situations of the modern world such as climatic change, family and social relations, stereotypes, and prejudices along with the importance of art as expression, extension, and creator of our inner self. Porter managed to implore simplicity and complexity, to smooth out crudity and transform ignorance to knowledge. His books form an oasis inside contemporary commercial society.  

 If – by chance – you do read his books, I would recommend reading them while taking a walk, sitting on a bench or lying on your bed. Take it as a medicine, many times a day.