Posts filed under 'The Ten Pillars'

the ten pillars: the alexandria quartet

I’m collecting my series The Ten Pillars of Modern Literature here on the blog. I thought this would be a good one to post next, since I’ve recently started reading Tunc, a later book by the same writer.

I’ve tried some of Lawrence Durrell’s post-Alexandria writing before and I’ve never made it through anything. Maybe his writing changed, or maybe I just lost my taste for it.

But every once in a while I try again.

 
The Alexandria Quartet
By Lawrence Durrell

When Pulp Fiction came out, many people commented about the language and the violence, but what I was most excited about was the structure. Similarly, when I’ve read things about The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, the emphasis has been on his florid language, but what I noticed most about those novels was the structure as well.

The first book, Justine, tells about the narrator’s life in Alexandria, including his girlfriend Melissa, and the affair he was carrying on with Justine, the wife of a friend of his.

In the second book, Balthazar, the narrator finds out that Justine was not in love with him at all. He was the “beard,” so that her jealous husband wouldn’t find out about her real lover. This causes him to go back and re-examine everything he described in the first book in the light of that new information.

The third book, Mountolive, is in the third person, involving many of the same characters, including Justine’s husband and his family, and the narrator of the first two books barely appears. It takes place during the same timeframe as the first two.

The final book, Clea, moves forward in time and shows what happened to some of the characters after the other books (though the fate of some of the characters is left ambiguous).

I never made a conscious decision to use this technique, showing something and then showing it again with more information (backing the camera away from the action, as I think of it), but I’m sure this is where I got the idea. I was reading quite a bit of Durrell when I started writing what turned into U-town, my second novel.

To dump a reader right into everything going on before and during the Kingdom Come gig at the Quarter would have just been confusing and annoying. So, I showed it first more or less from the point of view of Chet (who was outside most of the events), then later I show it from Pete’s viewpoint, including the events of that afternoon and the aftermath of the gig itself, then after that I show that there was a major person in Pete’s life at that time who didn’t happen to be at the gig itself, and then later still I show the earlier part of that day.

And throughout the whole book, of course, I show what happened after that night.

So, intentionally or not, definitely a big influence.

Add comment July 9th, 2015

the ten pillars: the diamond age

Brian Buckley has a series on his blog called “moments of transcendence.”

His definition:

Sometimes, when you’re reading a story, you come across a part that gleams in golden ink across the page. It isn’t merely insightful, or moving, or clever, or funny, or brilliant. At the risk of sounding dramatic: it leaps from the book and pierces your soul. You laugh, or shiver, or cry, or merely sit, transfixed. You remember this fragment long after you’ve forgotten the plot and the author and even the title. “This is it,” you say. “This is why we make art.”

I’ve been thinking about this, and what immediately came to mind was this:

from The Diamond Age (spoilers):

[Nell] climbed up the last flights of stairs and emerged onto the building’s roof, exhilarated as much by the fresh air as by the discovery that it was completely deserted. She walked to the edge of the roof and peered down almost half a mile to the street. […] After a minute or two, she noticed that something akin to a shock wave was making its way down the street far below, moving in slow motion, covering a city block every couple of minutes. Details were difficult to make out at this distance: it was a highly organized group of pedestrians, all wearing the same generally dark clothing, ramming its way through the mob of refugees, forcing the panicked barbarians toward the picket line of the Fists, or sideways into the lobbies of the dead buildings.

Nell was transfixed for several minutes by this sight. Then she happened to glance down a different street and saw the same phenomenon there. […] they spread into many-pronged formations, arranging themselves with the precision of a professional drill team, and then charged forward into the suddenly panicked and disorganized Fists, throwing up a tremendous battle-cry. When that sound echoed up two hundred stories to Nell’s ears, she felt her hair standing on end, because it was not the deep lusty roar of grown men but the fierce thrill of thousands of young girls, sharp and penetrating as the skirl of massed bagpipes.

It was Nell’s tribe, and they had come for their leader. Nell spun on her heel and made for the stairway.

[…] many girls rushed in from all sides, each adding her small strength to the paramount goal of hoisting Nell high into the air. Even as the last remnants of the Fists were being hunted down and destroyed in the nooks and corners of the lobby, Nell was being borne on the shoulders of her little sisters out the front doors of the building and into the plaza, where something like a hundred thousand girls—Nell could not count all the regiments and brigades—collapsed to their knees in unison, as though struck down by a divine wind, and presented her their bamboo stakes, pole knives, lead pipes, and nunchuks. The provisional commanders of her divisions stood foremost, as did her provisional ministers of defense, of state, and of research and development, all of them bowing to Nell, not with a Chinese bow or a Victorian one, but something they’d come up with that was in between.

Nell should have been tongue-tied and paralyzed with astonishment, but she was not; for the first time in her life she understood why she’d been put on earth and felt comfortable with her position. One moment, her life had been a meaningless abortion, and the next it made glorious sense. She began to speak, the words rushing from her mouth as easily as if she had been reading them from the Primer. She accepted the allegiance of the Mouse Army, complimented them on their great deeds, and swept her arm across the plaza, over the heads of her little sisters, toward the thousands upon thousands of stranded sojourners from New Atlantis, Nippon, Israel, and all of the other Outer Tribes. “Our first duty is to protect these,” she said. “Show me the condition of the city and all those in it.”

They wanted to carry her, but she jumped to the stones of the plaza and strode away from the building, toward her ranks, which parted to make way for her. The streets of Pudong were filled with hungry and terrified refugees, and through them, in simple peasant clothes streaked with the blood of herself and of others, broken shackles dangling from her wrists, followed by her generals and ministers, walked the barbarian Princess with her book and her sword.

* * * * *

This is one of my favorite moments in any book I’ve ever read. It’s near the end of The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and I won’t explain all the background (it takes Stephenson some 475 pages to get to this point), because I’d rather urge you to read the book. But I will say that it’s been a big influence on my writing.

This is part of a rather disorganized series I’ve been working on for many years, called The Ten Pillars of Modern Literature. Some of them are here on this blog, and I’m thinking I should add the rest, though I’m somewhat concerned that when I pull them all together there will be more than ten…

2 comments July 1st, 2015

the ten pillars: creatures of light and darkness

Based on what I've read, Roger Zelazny wrote this book for his own pleasure, and later Samuel R. Delany persuaded him to publish it. It starts as if it's going to be "Lord of Light II," based on Egyptian mythology instead of Hindu, but it quickly becomes obvious that it's not.

For one thing, Zelazny creates his own mythological characters to exist alongside Osiris, Set and Anubis, such as the Steel General who has fought throughout history on the side of the oppressed. He is periodically destroyed by his enemies, but he is always rebuilt by people who need him. Sometimes he's a robot wearing a ring of flesh, sometimes he's a man wearing a ring of iron. There is also Typhon, a god who appears as a shadow of a horse and who may be a black hole.

There is also quite a bit of dry humor, and a chapter in verse.

It's not Zelazny's best work, but it's a fascinating and unpredictable ride. It's interesting to see how much wilder he was when he thought nobody was looking (though some of his later work also goes in this direction – age can make you more fearless).

Oh, and it includes the Agnostic's Prayer:

"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."

Add comment May 7th, 2012

the ten pillars: the time of your life

A few years ago, as I talked about here, I was planning to write a chapter set entirely in a bar. I looked at plays set in a bar, but I found that what I was really looking for was The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan, which I'd seen years earlier and which had drilled its way into my brain. The chapter ended up being "The Dream, Now."

A morning and a night in a bar in San Francisco in 1939. The Depression is everywhere, and war is about to start. Various characters (a cynical man with money, a man hoping for another chance with the woman he loves, a hooker with stories about a successful history in burlesque, a comedian and dancer with jokes nobody laughs at, and others) "come and go and say what they must say." Sometimes they hardly interact at all, each is so wrapped up in his or her own fantasies or hopes or dreams. But at times they connect.

An earnest young man (in a bow tie) named Dudley R. Bostwick pines for a woman named Elsie Mandelspiegel, and this seems like a running joke until Elsie finally arrives and they reunion is so moving that even Nick the bartender chokes up.

Reading and seeing this again recently (and, miracle of miracles, the stage production I saw a million years ago is available on DVD), I made the connection with why I like it so much.

A bunch of characters and storylines, all advancing and intertwining, stories about realists and dreamers, it's like a Robert Altman movie. Or, really, Robert Altman made a lot of movies that were like The Time of Your Life.

I'm quite pleased with the chapter, by the way. It's in the middle of the novel U-town, but I think it can be read by itself.

2 comments September 26th, 2011

the ten pillars: dhalgren

Many years ago I was asked to write a series of short reviews of science fiction novels that I thought were particularly deserving of praise. The first one I chose to write about was Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, even though it was not in print at that time.

This is the review I wrote:

Dhalgren By Samuel R. Delany (1973, 879 Pages)

When this novel came out, I had several friends who were real science fiction fans. They were in science fiction clubs, put out APAs, and went to conventions (all things I didn't do, though I did read a lot of science fiction). From what those friends told me, this book (coming after some very popular short stories and the novel Nova, which they all loved) was quite controversial when it came out. They all read it (or at least started it, some quit half way through), but it was not popular.

Too long. Too experimental. Maybe even too downbeat. Science fiction closer to William S. Burroughs than Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the science fiction fans that I knew back then were not reading Naked Lunch or Nova Express, I can tell you. Or Ulysses or Finnegans Wake for that matter (Delany deliberately evokes Joyce here, as he did in other works from this period). Nor were they reading Gravity's Rainbow, which was also published in 1973. Delany's novel is more similar to Pynchon's than it is to any other "science fiction novel" published that year.

In a year that might or might not be 1975, a loner comes to a city called Bellona. Some disaster has happened there, cutting it off from the rest of the United States. The outside world has mostly forgotten about Bellona, out of sight and out of mind. There are only a relatively few people left living there (many were killed in the unspecified disaster, many of the survivors moved away). There's no gasoline, only sporadic electric power, no official law or government. The sky is covered in clouds of smoke that hide the sky (and, in the one moment there is a break in the smoke cover, two moons are visible).

The loner has no name. This could be a cliche, but Delany carries it off by making him an individual from the beginning, (with almost all of his memories, he just can't remember his name) and by focusing most of his attention on what he's seeing, not on him. Not having a name only bothers him from time to time. People start calling him Kid (spelled Kidd in the first half of the book, Kid in the second half). He finds a notebook (many of its pages already written on) and uses the blank pages to write poems. Eventually he loses track of which pages are his writing, since all of them seem to relate to his experiences.

There are cities in literature which function almost as characters as well as settings. Dublin in Joyce's Ulysses is one type of example, Personville/Poisonville in Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest is another. Bellona (the city is mentioned in other of Delany's works from this period as well) is really part of the fabric of the book. There are a lot of people who stayed there after the disaster, either gamely pretending things were still more or less normal, or using the complete freedom to live in some way they couldn't otherwise. And some people (like Kidd, it seems) have come there because of what's happened. It's a way for them to reinvent themselves, either for a while, until they feel like returning to their real lives, or because they just don't fit in anywhere else.


Later, I wrote more about Dhalgren:

While I am always willing to hold unpopular opinions (that Casino Royale [1967 -- not the Daniel Craig one] is a great movie, that the supreme achievement in music since the year 1900 is the organ break from Del Shannon's "Runaway," that radio was not really improved by adding pictures to it, etc.) it is always gratifying to find out that at least some of those opinions are shared by others.

I've been raving about Dhalgren since it was published. I'm perfectly willing to continue to do so without any help or encouragement from anybody else. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to come upon The Ash of Stars, the first book of critical essays about Delany's writing that I've seen. Of course, I immediately read the two essays about Dhalgren.

In reading these essays I am struck by two things. One is the number of references (mostly deliberate) in my book to Dhalgren (some of them have been there for so long that I forgot where they came from). The other is the extent to which I am, in doing this, following Delany's lead, since Dhalgren is full of references to other works (and to various mythologies and even some real people), including the references to James Joyce (and, of course, Ulysses is full of these types of references as well).

There turns out to be a bit of serendipity to all this referencing, by the way. "Bellona" in Dhalgren is a city on Earth (in his book Triton it is a city on Mars). I have used the name for a country on Earth (we'll pay a visit there eventually), where there is a war going on, a war which some of my characters follow and others try to ignore. It turns out that, according to one of these essays, the name Bellona is from Roman mythology. She was the sister of Mars, and was the goddess of war.

And was mentioned in Finnegan's Wake. Damn.

Anyway, if what I am attempting here is simply an accurate representation of the inside of my own brain, it becomes increasingly obvious that the brain in question has never been exactly the same since reading Dhalgren.


The series "The Ten Pillars of Modern Literature" originally appeared in the novel U-town. It will be re-posted here on an irregular basis.

1 comment September 19th, 2011


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