Michael Gira - a collection of short pieces, or wild fantasies, that take surrealistic organ distortions, drug-infused hallucinatory sexual nightmares and grotesque organic urban-machinery delusions, to whole new levels. A dark and disturbing read, but an incredibly poetic and amazingly crafted one

M. Gira, The Consumer, 2 13 61, 1995.

This is a trade paperback book published by 2.13.61 of Los Angeles, California. This weird-press offering is both deliriously repulsive and very well-crafted. It's a collection of short pieces -- sort of like stories, but more like wild fantasies -- that take surrealistic organ distortions, drug-infused hallucinatory sexual nightmares and grotesque organic urban-machinery delusions, to whole new levels of "Whoa! Can't believe I'm actually eating lunch while reading this." Reminiscent of J. G. Ballard in his Crash/Atrocity Exhibition phase, or else J. K. Huysmans on an ether binge in Los Angeles. It is Gira's first short story collection and it is divided into two parts, the first being "The Consumer", a series of short stories from the early 1990s, the second, "Various Traps, Some Weaknesses", made up mostly of prose-poems and vignettes, all dating from 1983–1986. (Many of these earlier stories had previously been published by SST Records as Selfishness) The stories contain many disturbing images and scenes including incest, identity loss, murder, self-hatred, rape, and both mental and physical decay. The author, Michael Rolfe Gira (born 1954) is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, author and artist. He is the main force behind the New York City musical group Swans and fronted Angels of Light. He is also the founder of Young God Records.

Michael Gira is best known as the front man for the confrontational experimental rock band Swans. I personally became familiar with him through the band he formed when Swans broke up around the turn of the century, Angels of Light.

In addition to songs, Gira has also dabbled in writing short stories. His first collection of short stories, The Consumer, was published in 1995 through Henry Rollins’s 2.13.16 press. Now out of print, used copies go for some very hefty prices online.

The Consumer is divided into two parts. The first part, called “The Consumer,” consists of short stories written between 1993 and 1994. The second part, called “Various Traps, Some Weaknesses, Etc.” consists of pieces written between 1983 and 1986 and is mostly prose poems, flash fiction, and vignettes.

The sound of the Swans music is dark, brooding, and, especially in the earlier releases, harsh, abrasive, and violent. Gira’s fiction is no different. The reader is immediately hit with this in the very first story, “Empathy.”

A man living in a dilapidated house welcomes his sister into his home after she returns from an asylum. We learn that she’d been incarcerated for murdering their parents and she seems no better after her stay. He suspects that she simply wandered out. Despite that, he’s happy to see her and begins an incestuous relationship her, nailing his doors shut to keep the outside world out.

A number of the themes throughout the book are established here. Abjection as a means of escape, sexual deviancy, loss of identity, and the urban decay of Los Angeles. Almost all the stories either explicitly or are implied to take place in L.A. and Gira’s L.A. is like a post-apocalyptic hellscape. It’s full of horrible, broken people, everything about the city has decayed away, and there seems to be little hope for any sort of recovery.

This is especially present in the story “The Young Man Who Hid His Body Inside A Horse, or, My Vulvic Los Angeles.” A young speed freak murders his drug dealer and steals his money and speed. He takes the cash and drugs and rents a squalid room where he hides away and sniffs the speed endlessly. Soon, a massive riot breaks out which results in horses from a nearby farm rushing into the city. In his tweaked state, he kills one of the horses and hides in its guts for protection.

This story reads to me like a mix of Hubert Selby Jr. and Samuel Beckett. The former for its portrayal of the people on the lowest rung of society and the latter for its absurd and intentionally “pointless” narrative. The speed freak draws into himself more and more to deal with his surroundings and addiction. Eventually, he returns to the closet thing to a womb he can find.

The semi-titular story, “The Consumer, Rotting Pig,” is told from the perspective of an incredibly obese man obsessed with the degeneration of his own body, with growing fatter, and with the media. There is some pitch black humor here as he goes into detail about his sexual fantasies, which involves things like cutting out a rock star’s heart and using it as an “Acujack” (a masturbation toy).

The story is divided into five parts. The first part introduces Rotting Pig and his obsessions. The other four parts are notes written by him and go into what would be his ideal life, how he learned to speak, his sexual desires, and who he believes himself to have once been.

“My Prescription for Happiness” is the most fascinating part to me. Here, Rotting Pig expounds on what his ideal life would be. He imagines himself suspended in a vat of warm human blood, breathing and eating through tubes, and his eyelids replaced by small screens that transmit images directly into his eyes. His feces and urine would be allowed to fill the tank until he floated to the top and died.

Rotting Pig wants nothing but to consume, being nothing but a lifeless consumer until he rots away for good. This parallels a number of the lyrics themes on the debut Swans album, Filth. Consuming and satisfying base desires until it results in self-destruction.

The story I found most disturbing is “The Coward (II).” A drunk lives with his brother, sister-in-law, and their daughter with no direction in life. He believes his niece may actually be his daughter as he had slept with his sister-in-law around the time she would have been conceived. Despite this, he still neglects taking care of her, resulting in the young girl being raped in her own home.

This story shows a deep disgust both with the people who actively cause harm and those who stand by and allow it to happen, but it doesn’t feel preachy or moralizing. It’s simply an observation, and an extremely disquieting one at that.

“The Ideal Worker,” a prose poem, satirizes the Protestant work ethic by portraying a husk of a man who wants to be nothing but a pliable puppet at work because of his self-hatred. I can only imagine how shitty Gira’s job was when he wrote this.

“A Trap” is a flash fiction piece in a similar vein about a person seeking personal obliteration. A woman calls random men asking them to come over and have sex with her. When one agrees, she resists hoping to make him get violent with her. Instead, he loses his erection and leaves, leaving her frustrated and still wishing for obliteration through violent sex.

The Consumer is a dark and disturbing read, but an incredibly poetic and amazingly crafted one. The book is incredibly rare, but worth tracking down. People who are already fans of Swans should certainly read this, but I also highly recommend this to anyone seeking well-written transgressive literature. - Ben Arzte

https://silentmotorist.media/2018/12/26/the-unreprinted-the-consumer-by-m-gira/

Johnny Stanton - a fantasy wound in book form, written without thumbs and employing an amalgamation of mangled manuscripts, including the works of Conan the Barbarian, yet it reads as seamlessly as a dream, in which the dreamer never questions the oneiric logic, the lesional loggia, and one becomes a passive observer, an eager believer in this shared phantasmagoria of gored phantasms

Johnny Stanton, Mangled Hands, Tough Poets Press, 2021.

"Johnny Stanton's Mangled Hands is such an oddity that it confounds description or comparison. . . . [It] is so unusual and original that many readers with a serious interest in fiction will find it liberating." - Bob Halliday, The Washington Post

"For years, Manged Hands was passed among New York poets and fiction writers in manuscript form, and its author, Johnny Stanton, developed an underground reputation as one of the most gifted writers of the generation directly influenced by the New York Poets. . . . Mangled Hands stands between Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude in style and spirit."

About Johnny Stanton: Johnny Stanton was born in 1943 in Manhattan, the son of Irish immigrants from Galway. He was an altar boy and Eagle Scout who attended Catholic schools & eventually graduated from Columbia University, where he fell in with many poets and writers of the New York School, including Kenneth Koch, Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, and Paul Auster. He published many of them, some for the first time, in his Siamese Banana Press, which started as a newspaper in 1972 and ended as a performance gang in 1978. He is the author of many short stories and the novel Mangled Hands, neglected by critics yet highly acclaimed by the readers who discover it. He has lived in the East Village for 30 years with his wife, the poet Elinor Nauen, a cat (currently Lefty), and a lot of art.

I interviewed Johnny Stanton and his wife, the poet Elinor Nauen, here.

“Ancient stories of black darkness and terrible falls plugged the holes in my body…”

Mangled Hands is a fantasy wound in book form, written without thumbs and employing an amalgamation of mangled manuscripts, including the works of Conan the Barbarian, yet it reads as seamlessly as a dream, in which the dreamer never questions the oneiric logic, the lesional loggia, and one becomes a passive observer, an eager believer in this shared phantasmagoria of gored phantasms. As “words dripped from his wounds,” all that we see or seem is indeed a dream.

The plot follows the plight of Tarcisius Tandihetsi, an adolescent Native American of the Huron tribe who is returning home with a French trading party via the Great River. In addition to having a traditional, biological father, he has a Father in a priest referred to as Blackrobe, for like most of the boy’s kith and kin, he has converted to Christianity, a belief system that possesses as much power in this world as the mythologies of the tribes. In the middle of the river, the party sees the ill omen of a diabolical beaver removing its skin and it’s not long until they are captured by their archenemies, the Poison Snake People. They’re hairless except for fur on the soles of their feet and their palms and, supernaturally, they live in Tardis-like kettles and have the ability of ecdysis.

This tribe is led by a Judas or even Luciferian figure formerly of the Huron, Snake Tooth, an impossible apostate who had been “born during a festival of bad dreams, therefore everyone feared him. When he was three years old he was already building gigantic torture fires….” During their journey as captives heading for the village of the Poison Snake People, they encounter other tribes and creatures, such as the naked stone giants: “Each of these monsters was as tall as a tree. The lower half of their bodies was large and heavy, their legs were as thick and solid as deep-veined stones. Their upper bodies were light and airy like tree branches growing out of their heads. Each branch was a long arm with many hands and fingers. Their heads were the middle part of their bodies, joining together the upper and lower halves…. […]Their hairy manhoods were pointing straight out from just below their stomachs, but it was also just below their chins, which jutted out and down, so it looked like they had bushy beards and were about to smoke long tobacco pipes. Their skin color was a mixture of rock gray and tree brown.” Oh, and they can breathe fire out of their ‘pipes.’

Although the Poison Snake People join forces with the Killer Yellow Dogs and the Antler Face People, there is a looming enemy that is a threat to all, the mysterious invisible animals of oracular origin: “‘…as the Giant Snake in the earth dies, bits of its flesh fall off, and each little bit becomes an invisible animal.’” These sharp-toothed demons slowly become desensitized to their acrophobia and begin to climb like apparitional acrobats onto the terrestrial plane.

The Poison Snake People and their captives do eventually reach the village where Tarcisius Tandihetsi barely survives gory torture and transmogrification, though at times he is almost treated as one of them and even gets to observe and participate in some wholly strange games, such as Whip Lash and Snake Eyes. To play the latter exophthalmic game, “The Snake warriors knelt behind separate bundles of red and green feathers as tall as mounds of snow. There were no teams flying back and forth…every player depended on their own eyes, which seemed to be shaking inside their heads. Each warrior in his turned popped out his eyes as far as he could. […] The Snake eyes would float ever so slowly to the wet ground, and while they were still in the air, the warrior from a kneeling position with a quick flick of the wrist tried to stick as many feathers as possible into his two or three eyes. They could also throw out as many dead eyes of eaten captives as they had saved…”

Indeed, there is animating cannibalism, bodies are dismembered and remembered, genitals are molested and mutilated, and amid the Poison Snake People’s brutality, anatomy is its own necromancy, for—peace pipe war pipe—Mangled Hands is a hashish feather fever dream on the muscled back of a galloping night mare. Of course, the most symbolic maiming occurs in the form of Blackrobe’s mangled hands, which echoes those of the historical missionary Isaac Jogues who interacted with the Huron as well as the Iroquois and other tribes, and the final echo is that of Christ’s mangled hands after iron nails were ran in through his palms.

Is this first-person account of a beautiful and brutal paracosm true? All we know is the declarative sentence repeated almost mantra-like at the end of each chapter: “I, Tarcisius Tandihetsi, say so.”

Soft-spoken and compressed with wonderful mythological and philosophical implications, this realization of hallucination reminded me of Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, except Stanton’s novel is about a Huron boy in the 16th century rather than a Nigerian boy in the 20th. Uncannily enough, the works of Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola are also evoked without intention.

Prose-wise, there is no wordplay here as such, for the words-phrases-sentences were mostly played with behind the ‘seens,’ fondled and nobbled to make a mosaic that sayeth surreality reigns supreme, featuring a quincunx of juxtapositions and a medley of replicating muses: feathers, slime, hair, teeth, smoke, blood, etc.

In somewhat Lynchian fashion, characters sometimes speak in semi-non sequiturs and mystical mumbo jumbo which is a product of eavesdropping upon a mythopoeic and confabulating confab. I was even at times reminded of the sparse and potent poetry of Barton Smock, such as when a character articulates this in relation to the looming threat: “If it’s a word, it’s not an animal. And if it’s an animal, its voice won’t reflect light, so you can escape from its language.”

I found it difficult to escape from the mesmurmurizing language Stanton has crafted in this, his only novel, begun in the late 60s or thereabouts and finally published, thank the gods, by Sun & Moon Press in 1985, and of course such a masterpiece was ignored by the ever-unreliable literary community. But if you breathe life into this invisible book, it will surely breathe life into you.

I, George Salis, say so.

https://thecollidescope.com/2020/09/27/mangled-hands-by-johnny-stanton/

Abi Palmer - a sharp, original evocation of chronic pain, the strangeness of being in a body, and the incomprehension and sometimes cruelty of the able bodied

Abi Palmer, Sanatorium, Penned in the Margins,

2020. 

https://abipalmer.squarespace.com

A young woman spends a month taking the waters at a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest.

On her return to London, she attempts to continue her recovery using an £80 inflatable blue bathtub. The tub becomes a metaphor for the intrusion of disability; a trip hazard in the middle of an unsuitable room, slowly deflating and in constant danger of falling apart.

Sanatorium moves through contrasting spaces — bathtub to thermal pool, land to water, day to night — interlacing memoir, poetry and meditations on the body to create a mesmerising, mercurial debut.

There is a dreamlike quality to Abi Palmer’s exquisite Sanatorium. In lucid, gorgeous prose, she tells the story of a body, of illness and of navigating the complicated wellness industry; but ultimately this is a book about what it means to be alive. A striking, experimental debut that will stay with me. - Sinéad Gleeson

Sanatorium is such an intricately structured book, combining memoir and poetry to hypnotic effect. Palmer creates a space entirely new and oddly familiar — embodied, startlingly direct and, by turns, claustrophobic and expansive. A prayer, a spell, a confession, a vision; the book morphs like the chronic pain it meticulously portrays with the clarity and confusion of an hallucination vs the confusion and clarity of life precisely observed with wit and intelligence. An urgent debut, alight with ideas — I loved every page. - Luke Kennard

I'm blown away... a sharp, original evocation of chronic pain, the strangeness of being in a body, and the incomprehension and sometimes cruelty of the able bodied. - Rebecca Tamás 

Also using a mix of memoir, image and poetry is artist Abi Palmer in her debut, Sanatorium (Penned in the Margins). An account of her stay at a rehabilitation spa in Budapest, she brings the actuality of her physical pain vividly to life, communicating its texture viscerally and without pity. - Rishi Dastidar

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/28/best-poetry-books-of-2020

The states of physical and metaphysical are so well drawn, they capture an essence of what it can be like to not be of this world while your body is firmly under the influence of gravity ... This is a beautifully constructed book full of important thoughts, lyrical poetry and prose, and stunning imagery that immerses the reader entirely.  - Louise Kenward, Spooniehacker

Memoir and poetry in a mesmerising debut. - David Nicholls

Abi Palmer didn’t know she was writing a book when she started Sanatorium. Having received a grant from Arts Council England to explore what it means to be a disabled artist, Palmer traveled to a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest, which she refers to as an “institution-deluxe.” Documenting her journey, she kept video diaries to stave off the pain she experiences from the physical act of writing. Once home, Palmer continued her recovery using a one-hundred-dollar inflatable blue bathtub, which is essentially a character in its own right in the book. As Palmer explains, “The tub becomes a metaphor for the intrusion of disability: a trip-hazard, sat in the middle of an unsuitable room, slowly deflating, and in constant danger of falling apart.”

Palmer’s work regularly explores her experiences living with psoriatic arthritis and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and her debut book centers firmly on her body, as well as out-of-body experiences, and an ever changing understanding of what it means to be disabled. Alongside Sanatorium, which was published in April by Penned in the Margins, Palmer created Crip Casino, an interactive gambling arcade parodying the wellness industry and institutionalized spaces, which has been displayed at the Tate Modern, Wellcome Collection, and Somerset House.

As two writers with chronic illnesses, Abi and I spoke about her work from our respective beds, which is pretty romantic when you think of it. We discussed the creative process and disability, the creation process of the Sanatorium (which included the aforementioned video diaries, dictation, and other forms of writing), and launching the book during the COVID-19 pandemic as a disabled artist.

Read the interview here:

https://therumpus.net/2020/07/the-rumpus-interview-with-abi-palmer/

One of the most striking elements of Sanatorium is its emotional honesty. How easy or difficult do you find writing about your own experience?

That’s a good question. In general I’ve never really thought about the book in terms of emotional honesty. I’m a real over-sharer anyway, and I say whatever comes into my head. I find it really easy to describe elements of my actual physical body, because I have to talk about my body all the time. I’m so used to being explicit and frank about things other people might regard as private. My body is so often policed and watched – by doctors, by my care team, by the state. I already feel like there’s no privacy there, by the very nature of being a sick person, my body is constantly being observed and scrutinized.

One area I really struggled with was writing experiences of mysticism and out-of-body experience. I wanted to write about hallucination as a form of floating. But when it came to it, I did a lot of talking about the idea of having hallucinations, dancing around the concept, but I was really, really afraid of actually writing out a real hallucination sequence.

This was partly because the out-of-body experiences I have experienced are almost all ineffable – it’s impossible to put them into words. But more than that, they’re the most private thing I own. Where I could apply language to them, I was terrified of exposing a part of my subconscious that I hadn’t processed fully: what if I revealed something I didn’t mean to? I spent a lot of time engaging with other female and genderqueer mystics to make sense of how they described their own experiences. St Teresa of Avila, Johanna Hedva, Margery Kempe. It felt more and more like the lesson I was being offered was “surrender” – just lean in to it. All of it – the fluid, mushrooming, ghostly madness of it all. I think that was a good lesson for me.

But I definitely had a small moment of fear just before it was published when I felt like, “Oh, God, everyone is going to see me naked!”

read more here:

http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2020/10/what-if-i-revealed-something-i-didnt-mean-to-interview-with-abi-palmer/

José Rizal - the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance to European colonialism, and Rizal became a guiding conscience—and martyr—for the revolution that would subsequently rise up in the Philippines

José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not), Trans. by Harold Augenbraum, Penguin Classics, 2006.                              


In more than a century since its appearance, José Rizal's Noli Me Tangere has become widely known as the great novel of the Philippines. A passionate love story set against the ugly political backdrop of repression, torture, and murder, "The Noli," as it is called in the Philippines, was the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance to European colonialism, and Rizal became a guiding conscience—and martyr—for the revolution that would subsequently rise up in the Spanish province.

A scorching expose of the Spanish government's corruption and abuses of power, this novel is famed as a catalyst to the Philippine Revolution. Noli Me Tangere was the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance to European colonialism written from the point of view of the oppressed. Its passionate tale of an idealistic young Filipino's challenges to authority plays out against a backdrop of repression, torture, and murder. Author Jose Rizal (1861-96) was a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which gave voice to a population that had simmered with resentment during three centuries of Spanish rule. Rizal paid with his life for his outspoken writings; a century later, the martyred author remains a symbol of Philippine nationalism as Noli Me Tangere takes its place among the revolutionary classics that have influenced history. Jose Rizal (1861-96) was a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for his homeland. Rizal's writings helped spark the Philippine Revolution against the colonial Spanish government, and he was executed as a rebel. Today he is regarded as one of the Philippines' greatest heroes, and Noli Mi Tangere is required reading in Filipino schools.

"The two most astonishing features of Noli Me Tangere are its scale and its style. Its characters come from every stratum of late colonial society (.....) Its pages are crowded with Dominicans, shady lawyers, abused acolytes, corrupt policemen, Jesuits, smalltown caciques, mestiza schoolgirls, ignorant peninsular carpetbaggers, hired thugs, despairing intellectuals, social-climbing dévotes, dishonest journalists, actresses, nuns, gravediggers, artisans, gamblers, peasants, market-women and so on. (...) The novel's style is still more astonishing, for it combines two radically distinct and at first glance uncombinable genres: melodrama and satire. For all its picaresque digressions, the plot is pure melodrama. (...) It is impossible to read Noli Me Tangere today in the way a patriotic young Manileño of 1897 would have read it: as a political hand grenade." - Benedict Anderson, London Review of Books

The novel that sparked the Philippine revolution In more than a century since its appearance, Josi Rizal's Noli Me Tangere has become widely known as the great novel of the Philippines. A passionate love story set against the ugly political backdrop of repression, torture, and murder, 'The Noli,' as it is called in the Philippines, was the first major artistic manifestation of Asian resistance to European colonialism, and Rizal became a guiding conscience-and martyr-for the revolution that would subsequently rise up in the Spanish province. This fine new translation of Noli Me Tangere includes an extensive introduction and notes that draw on a wealth of Rizal scholarship. 'A beautiful new translation . . . Augenbraum's introductory essay is smart and sensitively written, providing great background for Rizal's rich, moving novel.' - Jessica Hagedorn

The pen is mightier than the sword, they say, and it is not often that one has the opportunity to read a novel that has forged an independence movement. Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) (1887) by José Rizal is such a book, for although its author advocated reform not independence, the novel was so instrumental in articulating a Filipino identity that it provoked resistance against the Spanish colonial regime. Ostensibly it is a love story, but one set against a backdrop of repression and violence. Rizal would be dead within ten years, executed by firing squad in Manila. But his novel has lived on…

The author’s satirical intent is evident in the very first paragraph:

Towards the end of October, Don Santiago de los Santos, who was generally known as Captain Tiago, gave a dinner party that, despite its having been announced only that afternoon, which was not his usual practice, was the topic of every conversation in Bimondo and neighboring areas, and even as far as Intramuros. In those days Captain Tiago was considered the most liberal of men, and it was known that the doors of his house, like those of his country, were closed to no one but tradesmen or perhaps a new or daring idea. (p5)

The Spanish authorities who read this book in the 1880s could be in no doubt, then, about this challenge, and Rizal had the church in his sights too. On the same page his narrator says of Captain Tiago’s house that he doesn’t think that the owner would have demolished it ‘because this sort of work is usually reserved for God or nature, which has, it appears, many projects of this type under contract with our government’. The book is a savage critique of the church, exposing brutality, venality and sexual exploitation of women. The clergy are shown to encourage ignorance, superstition and social inequity on a grand scale. And above all, the church conspires with the colonial authorities to ensure acquiescence in the status quo.

The plot is simple but portentous. Crisóstomo Ibarra, a wealthy young man, returns from overseas study determined to do good for his people and to marry his childhood sweetheart, María Clara. But his father, Don Rafael has died in prison. He was wrongly accused of a crime, and his body desecrated because he was said to be a heretic by the local clergy, Fr Dámaso (who has his own nefarious reasons for doing so). Ibarra endures insults about his father and an attempt on his life while trying to build a school that will empower the local people and lead to progress. A patient, prudent man, he stoically tolerates obstacles to his plans until there is one insult too many and he loses his temper, invoking the wrath of the church and shocking the local people who have been cowed into submission by the clergy.

Ibarra has powerful friends who admire his love of country and the respect he upholds for his father’s memory – and his wealth protects him too for a while. But it all ends badly, very badly indeed. The light, mocking tone of the early chapters gives way to darker and darker moments as the perfidy of the clergy is revealed.

Although the serious intent of the work never falters, in some ways the story resembles a 19th century melodrama with black-and-white characterisation. Ibarra is handsome and noble, while María Clara is a model of virtuous Filipino womanhood. There are two clearly discernible villains who don’t comply with Vatican rules about celibacy; and there’s a cynical host of supporting villains as well. But at its best some of the supporting figures of mockery are as a good as anything you’d find in Dickens, notably Doña Victorina and her charlatan doctor husband who illustrate the vacuous nature of Manila society.

Parts of the novel are rather florid and there are some declamatory sections where Rizal gives his characters the opportunity to articulate anti-colonial political views at considerable length. Overall, however, this is a remarkably accomplished first novel with a well-controlled sense of mystery to carry the impetus onward. By law, all secondary school students in the Philippines study this novel (in either Tagalog or English), and although it’s quite long at 428 pages, I suspect that they would enjoy it. I certainly did! - Lisa Hill

https://anzlitlovers.com/2011/09/29/noli-me-tangere-touch-me-not-by-jose-rizal-translated-by-harold-augenbraum/

Noli Me Tangere begins with the return of Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra to his homeland, the Philippines, after almost seven years in Europe. His father, Rafael, was a wealthy and powerful man, but Ibarra had long had no news from him, and only learns his father's fate on his return: he had been involved in an altercation that had led to the death of a tax collector, and Rafael's enemies had taken advantage of the situation to pile on him: "because of his wealth, his confidence in justice, and his hatred of anything that was not legal or just, they ruined him"; he had died in prison almost a year earlier. Adding insult to injury, the local head priest, Father Dámaso, had had the body dug up, ordering it to be transferred to the Chinese cemetery (though they never got that far with it, dumping it in a lake instead).

Ibarra returns to his homeland full of hope and enthusiasm. He is a true believer, and while the news of his father's fate hits him hard, it does not shake his fundamental faith; nor does, for quite a while, what else he sees and experiences. He's long clung to what was drilled into him, a pure -- or naïve -- faith in the fundamentals:

I love my country, the Philippines, because I owe it my life and my happiness, and everyone should love his country. I love Spain, the country of my forefathers, because, in spite of everything, the Philippines owes it her happiness and her future, and will owe them to her. I am Catholic, I maintain the pure faith of my parents and I don't see why I need to bow my head when I want to lift it up, to deliver it to my enemies when I can bring them down.

Ibarra had left his childhood sweetheart, María Clara, behind when he left for Europe, but, reünited, they promise nothing has changed. As Ibarra tells his fiancée:

To me you seemed like a fairy, a spirit, the poetic embodiment of my homeland, beautiful, simple, loving, frank, a child of the Philippines, that beautiful country that brings together the great virtues of Mother Spain and the fine qualities of a youthful people, as you, in all your being, bring together the finest and most beautiful facets of our two races; so your love and the one I profess for my country have melted into one ...

If María Clara remains his ideal, the reality of the Philippines he is confronted with soon can't help but to be disillusioning. As Old Tasio -- known as Tasio the Philosopher (and Tasio the Madman ...), the story's old wise man, known for his: "odd ideas and his strange manner of dealing with people" -- notes; "The Philippines is in a fog !" It's not just moral clarity that is lacking; foundations and function are increasingly mired in ugly murk.

In particular, the powerful (Catholic) Church is and its officials seem to act only out of self-interest, clinging to their power, at whatever cost. They do worry -- "We will lose everything, as we did in Europe ! And what's worse is that we are the instruments of our own destruction" -- and immediately have concerns about the return of the son of Rafael Ibarra. There is some hope that he'll simply come into the fold: his union with the daughter of the important local, Captain Tiago, looks promising: "With a wife and father-in-law like them we will have him body and soul. And if not, he declares himself an enemy". But, from the first, not all from the local order are fully on board, notably Father Salví -- who also creepily lurks and leers around María Clara, obviously lusting after her .....

Most of the novel is set in and around San Diego. Ibarra wants to help the locals, carrying on his father's work, and his first great project is to build a proper school. Local education is, for now, in the hands of the Church and, as Ibarra learns from the local schoolmaster, an abomination, with the schoolmaster's sensible attempts at reform -- such as not relying on beatings -- undermined by the local priests. (Violence against others, particularly those in a subservient position, is nearly ubiquitous here -- to the extent that even rewards are structured around it: at one point the local ensign wants a man captured and encourages his soldiers to find him by promising that whoever: "grabs him will get no whippings for three months".)

Ibarra is warned that he has to stay on the good side of those with power if he wants his plans to succeed:

All your efforts will crash up against the parish walls if you so much as undo a friar's belt or wrinkle his cassock. The magistrate, on the smallest pretense, will deny tomorrow what he has conceded today. Not one woman will allow her child to attend the school, and then all your work will be counterproductive. It will disillusion everyone who wanted to try a noble undertaking.

Ibarra is intelligent and quite capable, getting things done. But he does have blind spots, unable to see just how corrupt much of this society he is now back in is. So also, even well into the story, he is surprised when he is warned:

"For your own safety you need your enemies to think you are unprepared and trusting."

Ibarra drew back.

"My enemies ? Do I have enemies ?"

It is well into the story that Ibarra meets Elías, a fugitive with strong opinions about what needs to be done. Elías is in debt, of sorts, to Ibarra after that first dramatic encounter, but also sees in Ibarra someone who might side with the people in what he understands is already a much larger conflict. Despite the mounting evidence of how much is wrong, Ibarra still finds it difficult to conceive of taking on the system head-on, even as Elías encourages him:

"It's true. By ourselves we're nothing. But take up the people's cause, unite the people, don't ignore their voices, be an example to the rest, give then the concept of what one calls a nation !"

"What the people are asking is impossible. We have to wait."

""Wait ! To wait is to suffer !"

"If I asked for this, they would laugh at me."

"And if the people back you up ?"

"Never ! I will never be the one to lead the multitude to get by force what the government does not think opportune, no. If someday I see this multitude armed, I would place myself on the side of the government and fight it, because I cannot see my country in this type of chaos. I want good for it, which is why I built a school. I seek it in education, for forward progress. Without light, there is no path."

"Without struggle there is no freedom either !" Elías answered.

"Well, I don't want that kind of freedom !"

"Without freedom there is no light," the boatman replied animatedly. "You say you now little about your country, I believe. You don't see the preparations for struggle, you don't see the cloud on the horizon. Combat begins in the sphere of ideas, to descend into the arena, which will be colored with blood.

Despite Ibarra's caution and unwillingness to embrace the cause, Elías is devoted to him and acts as a sort of shadowy protector. It is Elías who warns him about a plot against him at the benediction ceremony at the cornerstone-laying for the school building -- "don't get too far from the priest, don't go down into the trench, and don't go near the cornerstone, and you'll go on living" -- and then about the much larger and more consequential conspiracy: "that will be attributed to you in order to get rid of you". Ibarra can't bring himself to flee as suddenly as Elías advises, and so he does get caught up in the plot to take him down; afterwards, when the dust settles, it is also Elías then who manages to spring him from his prison -- a scene that Rizal, surprisingly, doesn't narrate in all its drama but rather just mentions incidentally.

Only in being set up and sacrificed by the powers that be does Ibarra finally come to realize the truth of the situation, the plight of the Philippines and its people:

Now misfortune has ripped off my blinders. Solitude and the misery of prison have shown me. Now I see the horrible cancer gnawing at this society, rotting its flesh, almost begging for a violent extirpation. They opened my eyes, they made me see the sores and forced me to become a criminal!

He means to take action now, even as Elías encourages him to flee to safety and a comfortable life abroad (while acknowledging that he can't bring himself to abandon his country). Elías does what he can to get Ibarra to safety in the dramatic conclusion of this storyline -- but Rizal leaves open-ended what will become of Ibarra. (The novel's sequel, El Filibusterismo, picks up and continues the story, years later.)

While Ibarra and his slow realization of the true conditions of the Philippines make for the heart of the story, Noli Me Tangere also extends considerably beyond that. Ibarra and María Clara's love makes for an accompanying romantic storyline, the natural and obvious union thwarted by circumstances and those that are opposed to it (notably lecherous Father Salví). At one point, Ibarra is provoked by Father Dámaso and lashes out at him, leading to his being excommunicated -- and forcing Captain Tiago to break his daughter's engagement, the devout man warned by Father Dámaso that if he didn't: "he will condemn me in this life and the next". While the excommunication is reversed -- Ibarra still does have some powerful friends and connections, even in the Church -- the union looks to be ill-starred, and another suitable husband is found for María Clara. And ultimately any possible union with Ibarra is derailed when María Clara is essentially blackmailed by the man who is her real father -- as it turns out she is not actually Captain Tiago's daughter. María Clara is just one more thing that Ibarra loses in the final reckoning; like the family home burning down, it is tragic but also clears the way for his final turn to true rebel, as he has nothing left that might hold him back.

There are other storylines in the novel, too, notably that of the poor woman Sisa, "wife of a heartless man who tries to live for her sons while her husband has gone off and gambles on cockfights". She lives an hour from town, and her young sons, Basilio and Crispín, work in the church in San Diego, barely eking out much of a living with their pay constantly being docked and suffering general abuse from their superiors. Accused of theft, the family suffers greatly and their lives spiral out of control, the desperate mother losing her mind; the final chapter of the novel is set on Christmas Eve, Basilio reünited, in the most tragic way, with his mother. (This is essentially the closing scene of the novel, but Rizal does include an Epilogue, quickly running through what becomes of some of the other characters as well.)

There are also chapters in which a variety of other characters come to the fore, from the downright comic, such as the pompous Doña Victorina and the husband she dominates (and whom she forces to pretend is a medical doctor), or the cruel military wife, Doña Consolación. Some of these character portraits can, in part, feel like padding to the main stories, but they are quite well done, Rizal clearly enjoying himself in spinning out these smaller side-stories. Other figures, such as Old Tasio, are more closely tied into the main storyline -- but, yes, Noli Me Tangere is a very crowded and at times overly-busy-seeming novel.

It takes a remarkably long time for Ibarra to accept that the rot is so deep that radical change is called for -- and that the institutions that hold sway over the country are not capable of seeing to the necessary change. When he returns from Europe, he understands: "The country these days is an organism that suffers from a chronic illness" -- but he looks to the government to take the lead in trying to remedy that. And despite his experiences with the Church leaders in San Diego, he long remains convinced:

To preserve the Philippines it is absolutely necessary to go on with the friars, and in our union with Spain lies the well-being of our country.

Old Tasio suggests that change is increasingly in the air, making the case that:

Nowadays, we in the Philippines walk three centuries behind the cart, we have barely emerged from the Middle Ages, which is why the Jesuits, who are so reactionary in Europe, seen from here represent progress. [...] Yes, now we are entering a period of struggle, I say, you are: our generation belongs to the night, we are exiting. The fight is between the past, which has grasped and grappled with curses the tottering castle of feudalism, and the future, whose triumphal march is heard from afar in the splendors of a nascent rainbow, bringing good news to other countries ...

Ibarra returns to the Philippines having seen, first-hand, a more advanced Europe, and among the lessons that he learnt is: "that a people's prosperity or misery lay in direct proportion to its freedoms or its inhibitions" -- but he long remains blind to just how limited the freedoms are for the population he returns to. He believes some simple, obvious steps can help advance the Philippines -- education, above all, as witnessed by his dedication to building a school -- and over the course of the novel he only very slowly comes to realize that the entrenched powers that be -- especially the Church -- are a much greater hindrance to progress and the well-being of the people than he imagined.

Noli Me Tangere is somewhat oddly paced -- not least in how slowly it dawns on Ibarra how much is wrong, and then his sudden, final transformation. Rizal offers excellent scenes of town life and politics -- not least the power of the Church over local life and decisions ("one has to obey the head priest", the locals understand) --, or scenes of action, such as the boat ride when Ibarra comes to know Elías or the laying of the school-cornerstone. Much of the story is full-blown melodrama, including the affecting story of Sisa and her sons -- arguably rather excessive, but given how much Rizal packs into his novel it mostly works alright in the overall flow. The romance with María Clara can feel a bit underdeveloped, but that's in part also because she is used so very much as a pawn in the story, her fate tossed this way and that by Rizal as events unfold -- but with elements such as Father Salví's very creepy obsession with her neatly woven into the story.

As translator Harold Augenbraum points out in his Introduction: "Few people in the book communicate -- or pray -- effectively, and Rizal's portrait of linguistic and religious infirmity languishes on both banks of colonialism's broad gulf", as language plays a significant role throughout the book, with locals and the colonists having at best limited command over each other's languages; there are numerous strong scenes of what amount to confrontation, in which one or another language is forced onto another, any possibility of actual communication taking a back seat. (This extends to a comic scene, late on, in which Latin phrases and expressions are tossed back and forth.) This is one of the more intriguing aspects of the novel, and nicely worked into it by Rizal.

Noli Me Tangere is a bit of a messy social and political novel -- though Rizal fortunately manages to avoid the didacticism that can really bog this kind of novel down. Attention often slips away from the main storyline, as Rizal tries to build an expansive novel in the grand European tradition; it's not a bad thing, and makes for many of the novel's most engaging scenes, but even as it helps make some of his broader point regarding the degradation of this society and abuse of power it doesn't all feel tied together closely enough. Ibarra also too long remains blind to too much around him, with the eye-opening itself then very quickly presented in the novel's closing chapters, with Rizal oddly not focusing closely on, for example, Ibarra's experiences in jail. The sudden transformation -- "misfortune has ripped off my blinders" -- is fine as a final, dramatic blow, but it's striking how little before then was convincing to Ibarra -- and how suddenly convincing this experience is.

Noli Me Tangere is an ambitious novel that feels torn in a few different directions -- holding together, but just, in all its sprawl. Rizal's enthusiasm is infectious, and he shows considerable talent both with humor and tragedy. If (many) parts tend towards the overly melodramatic, the constant change of pace and focus easily keep the novel from sinking too deep in that (though there are times when it is a danger...).

Uneven though it is, Noli Me Tangere is a strong piece of work and a fascinating consideration of late nineteenth century Philippine life and circumstances. - M.A.Orthofer

https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/filipino/rizalj1.htm

José Rizal, El Filibusterismo. Trans. by Harold Augenbraum, Penguin Classics, 2011.


In the spirit of The Count of Monte Cristo and Les Misérables, a major new translation-José Rizal's stunning continuation of Noli Me Tangere.
José Rizal was one of the leading champions of Filipino nationalism and independence. His masterpiece, Noli Me Tangere, is widely considered to be the foundational novel of the Philippines. In this riveting continuation, which picks up the story thirteen years later, Rizal departs from the Noli's themes of innocent love and martyrdom to present a gripping tale of obsession and revenge. Clearly demonstrating Rizal's growth as a writer, and influenced by his exposure to international events, El Filibusterismo is a thrilling and suspenseful account of Filipino resistance to colonial rule that still resonates today.
"This portrayal of Filipino life gives permanent interest to these books. The characters are taken from every branch of society, including the Spaniard of noble ideals and the native of barbarous instincts. We are not sure that psychologically these people are very deeply or acutely drawn; but their exteriors at least are real and vivacious. If we do not carry away from among them any lasting friendships, we do gain a picture of life in the Philippines that is varied and complete." - The Nation

"The author's shafts of attack are directed especially against the friars. He is unhesitating in his exposure, however, of whatever he believes to be evil in Philippine society. His style is clear, ironic, sometimes picturesque. (...) The Reign of Greed is written with more political force and less charm, and is almost without incident." - The New York Times Book Review


 El Filibusterismo is the sequel (of sorts) to Rizal's Filipino classic, Noli me tangere. It is set some thirteen years after the events of the earlier book, and many of the figures from Noli figure in it. Noli is, of course, dominated by Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra and his ideals for a better future for the Philippines -- including fostering education as a means of improving the lot of the Filipinos. In both novels the corruption of those in power, and especially the friars -- representatives of the powerful Catholic Church -- is repeatedly shown and attacked.
       At the beginning of El Filibusterismo Ibarra is supposed to be long dead, and in his stead Simoun is introduced, a jewelry merchant whom little is known about. The wily merchant clearly has big ambitions -- and quite possibly the means to accomplish them -- though he plays his cards close to his vest. For good reason, too. One man learns his biggest secret early on (and the reader surely will have guessed it, too ...) -- but Simoun trusts that his secret is safe with him: "Like me, you have accounts to settle with the rest of society".
       Simoun reveals that:
I've traveled the world over and worked day and night to amass a fortune to carry out my plan. Now I've come back to destroy that system, to shatter the corruption, to push it to the abyss to which it rushes without even its own knowledge, even if it means a tidal wave of tears and blood. It has doomed itself, but I don't want to die without seeing it in tatters at the bottom of the cliff.  
       What Simoun rages against is a sclerotic system in which a few wield great power and use it to hold the masses back. Education -- which few have access to, and which in practice turns out to be a beating (or numbing) into submission -- and claims of moral authority, in particular, are among the ways the friars and the nation's elite maintain complete control. They even take pride in the fact that: We're not like the English and the Dutch who, in order to maintain the people's submission, make use of the whip ... We employ softer, more secure measures. The healthy influence of the friars is superior to the English whip. 
       It makes for a largely docile if frustrated population, with almost no one daring to voice even the slightest criticism, or admit to any thought that is not in lock-step with those in power, as:
Here any independent thought, any word that does not echo the will of the powerful, is called filibusterismo and you know well what that means. It's madness for anyone to have the pleasure of saying what he thinks aloud, because he's courting persecution. 
       Simoun is convinced now that open filibusterismo does not suffice; stronger measures are called for -- and he has the plan(s) to overthrow the existing order and mindset. Yes, he has the grandest revolutionary visions:
When the poor neighborhoods erupt in chaos, when my avengers sow discord in the streets, you longtime victims of greed and errancy, I will tear down the walls of your prison and release you from the claws of fanaticism, and then, white dove, you will become a phoenix to rise from its still-glowing ashes. A revolution, woven in the dim light of mystery, has kept me from you. Another revolution will return me to your arms, bring me back to life, and that moon before it reaches the height of its splendor, will light up the Philippines, cleansed of its repugnant trash -- 
And later:
Tonight those most dangerous of tyrants will rocket off as dust, those irresponsible tyrants who have hidden behind God and the state, whose abuses remain unpunished because no one can take them to task. Tonight the Philippines will hear an explosion that will convert into rubble the infamous monument whose rotteness I helped bring about. 
       Twice the novel builds to a climax, to the promise of incredibly violent upheaval -- an explosion into revolution -- only for the grand plans to implode. Rizal takes his characters to the brink of a violent overthrow of the existing order -- and then draws back, returning to the historical Philippine reality. There are a variety of reasons for why the plans are not carried through as originally intended, but certainly Rizal's own message (as also expressed by characters in the book) is that violence is not the preferred solution, and that, while change is necessary, it should come about peacefully and sensibly. So while the novel does not provide all the simplistic cathartic satisfactions of utopian revolutionary fiction -- wishful thinking fiction -- in its realism, admitting to the near-overwhelming might of the powers-that-be (while also condemning them through and through as base and corrupt), it is a more quietly effective work of literature.
       El Filibusterismo is a social-critical work, with many chapters and scenes set pieces that show just how corrupt and debased this society -- and especially high society, and the friars -- have become. Or rather: remain -- since, as one character notes, if after three and a half centuries of 'education' and leadership by those in power this is all it's come to ... well, that's a pretty sad and sorry indication of how very wrong the approach has been from the get-go.
       Occasionally, Rizal is too specific in his prescriptions and moralizing -- the case for education, and in particular for teaching Spanish, is a good one, but Rizal tries a bit too hard to weave that repeatedly into the narrative -- but it's the stray stories, illustrative of excess and corruption, that ultimately prove most distracting. Some of these are very entertaining, and some of the points both amusing and well-made, but ultimately Simoun is left in the shadows too much of the time. Almost too powerful a figure, it's understandable that Rizal did not constantly want him at the fore, but he's certainly the figure readers want to hear and see more from. Meanwhile, Rizal also isn't quite willing to allow other significant figures, such as Basilio (who becomes a doctor) to take a more prominent place in the narrative either.
       While much of the social criticism here is specific to a time and place, enough is certainly universal; Rizal was also clearly well-versed in the European fiction of the time, and El Filibusterismo is certainly comparable to -- and often more entertaining -- than much of the social fiction coming out of Europe at the time.
       A passionate work, verging sometimes on the melodramatic, El Filibusterismo is an entertaining document of its times, and a fine novel. If Noli me tangere remains the best introduction to the modern Philippines, El Filibusterismo is nevertheless a worthwhile follow-up. - M.A.Orthofer

David Letzler - While mega-novel text is often intricately meaningful or experimental, sometimes it is just excessive and pointless. On the other hand, mega-novels also contain text that, though appearing to be cruft, turns out to be quite important. Letzler posits that this cruft requires readers to develop a sophisticated method of attentional modulation

David Letzler, The Cruft of Fiction: Mega-

Novels and the Science of Paying Attention,

University of Nebraska Press, 2017.

What is the strange appeal of big books? The mega-novel, a genre of erudite tomes with encyclopedic scope, has attracted wildly varied responses, from fanatical devotion to trenchant criticism. Looking at intimidating mega-novel masterpieces from The Making of Americans to 2666, David Letzler explores reader responses to all the seemingly random, irrelevant, pointless, and derailing elements that comprise these mega-novels, elements that he labels “cruft” after the computer science term for junk code. In The Cruft of Fiction, Letzler suggests that these books are useful tools to help us understand the relationship between reading and attention.

While mega-novel text is often intricately meaningful or experimental, sometimes it is just excessive and pointless. On the other hand, mega-novels also contain text that, though appearing to be cruft, turns out to be quite important. Letzler posits that this cruft requires readers to develop a sophisticated method of attentional modulation, allowing one to subtly distinguish between text requiring focused attention and text that must be skimmed or even skipped to avoid processing failures. The Cruft of Fiction shows how the attentional maturation prompted by reading mega-novels can help manage the information overload that increasingly characterizes contemporary life.

"David Letzler's wonderfully titled book, The Cruft of Fiction, turns its attention to those passages of novels that are apparently pointless or redundant, and which we expect that readers would normally skim. These passages are what Letzler terms the 'cruft' of fiction."—Alice Bennett

“The Cruft of Fiction is a major contribution to the study of post–World War II fiction, as well as a striking new account of how novels—in particular so-called ‘big novels’—work. It is a truly pathbreaking account of contemporary fiction that will appeal to formalist, historicist, and other varieties of critic alike.”—Andrew Hoberek

David Letzler’s The Cruft of Fiction sets out to do many things. It is at once a study of “mega-novels,” or lengthy books with encyclopedic scope, and a hypothesis about how readers process difficult prose. It offers close readings of texts as varied as Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881) and Dorothy Richardson’s novel sequence Pilgrimage (1915–67). It also shares new insights about some of the usual suspects of encyclopedic fiction, including Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Roberto Bolaño, and David Foster Wallace. Skeptics may wonder how such a broad agenda coheres into a principal argument. I am not entirely convinced that it does, but I do find plenty to admire in Letzler’s analyses. The book’s point of departure is provocative and smart. Borrowing a term from Internet culture, The Cruft of Fiction suggests that what separates mega-novels from other big books is their “cruft,” which stands for overwritten, redundant, trivial, or unreadable text. Cruft has no purpose. In literature, cruft does not advance a plot or communicate anything valuable; it only distracts from those parts of a text that do have meaning. Letzler argues that the novels he discusses contain much cruft, from Flaubert’s detailed catalogs to Gaddis’s chunks of noisy conversation, and so they challenge readers to refine the ways they distribute their attention, moving from narrative elements that require careful processing to similar-looking text that can be skimmed or skipped without much loss.

Letzler positions his study between two contrasting views on the mega-novel genre. Critics either situate its eccentric forms in the long history of unconventional fiction, or argue that its excesses render visible the complexities of contemporary experience. Since neither side can explain what cruft adds to narrative, Letzler suggests that we need to find better ways to articulate how some pieces of text resist interpretation “without falling into the fallacious argument that the reproduction of chaos constitutes a meaningful response to a chaotic world” (9). Of course, across the wide spectrum of literary criticism, scholars have already found ways to express that point. Even within the boundaries of Letzler’s corpus, reader-oriented studies of recalcitrant text can be traced back at least to Jonathan Culler’s study of Flaubert, in which Culler argues against “the basic activity of ‘recuperation’ which one’s critical discourse performs.”1 Letzler’s decision to favor genre criticism over a narratological approach does not detract from the quality of his analyses of encyclopedic fiction. I mention the precedents, however, because Letzler tends to overstate his conclusions.

The six chapters in The Cruft of Fiction cover different generic categories associated with mega-novels: the dictionary, the encyclopedia, life writing, Menippean satire, episodic narrative, and epic and allegory. Each chapter features close readings of passages from two or three books. Together, these typify how cruft functions. The dictionary chapter, for example, reveals that the mega-novelists’ desire “to expand the boundaries of language” often degenerates into useless text—but “useless” for a reason (30). Letzler demonstrates how Gaddis’s J R (1975) buries some of its most meaningful plot elements under a flood of irrelevant dialogue and jargony language, making it an especially rigorous test of our attention-modulation skills. In a convincing move, he then shows how a similar principle underlies Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), which—although much simpler on the surface—repeats itself to such extremes that it will likely exhaust any reader. Balancing between revelation and noise, these novels narrativize how hard it often is “to distinguish between our most insightful and most nonsensical thoughts” (53). The ultimate dictionary novel, in this sense, is Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939). In the chapter’s finale, Letzler zooms in on the Wake’s opening pages to show how their extraordinary blend of linguistic lushness and redundancy confronts us with the “entirety” of language—the possibilities it engenders as well as the restrictions it imposes (62).

Connections like these are surprising and revealing, and Letzler makes good use of them while he builds his arguments. In similar ways, the encyclopedia chapter draws both on Bouvard et Pécuchet and Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) as it explores how fictional encyclopedism engages the reader’s ability to order and retrieve information. The chapter on life writing does not involve any life-writing theory, but the parallels between Richardson’s Pilgrimage and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962) illustrate that the most inclusive representations of consciousness still suppress some aspects of experience while they accentuate others. Even the chapters on well-trodden paths in studies of maximalist literature, such as Menippean satire and episodic narrative (an umbrella term for the picaresque and the frame tale), adjust entrenched opinions while they refer to an extensive list of novelists (names that I have not yet mentioned include John Barth, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, Georges Perec, and Haruki Murakami). The Cruft of Fiction overreaches, however, when it tries to gather its eclectic materials under one heading. Letzler makes a considerable leap when he claims that crufty novels can teach us to better handle the information overload we meet in everyday life. The argument from “cognitive training” (23) implies a surprisingly functionalistic take on literature, one that is based more on intuition than evidence, and I do not see how it transcends the critical fallacies that Letzler attacks throughout the book. Perhaps this is the fallacy of Trying To Do Too Much. Sometimes, cruft is just cruft.

Letzler is a determined reader, and it would be unfair to suggest that he could have done even more work. But the mega-novel is a much-discussed genre, and the discussion mostly revolves around literature in English. Despite its nods to Flaubert, Perec, Bolaño, and Murakami, The Cruft of Fiction does not correct that bias. Letzler finds an elegant solution by writing that his corpus is not representative but only reflects instructive examples of how cruft works. Most often his Anglophone lens makes perfect sense (although, as a speaker of Dutch, I did enjoy his suggestion that James Joyce invented the word “aardappel” [30]). The fact that Letzler only reads in English becomes more suspect, however, when considering his habit of generalizing the work of other critics and then pitting his arguments against them. Since this approach ignores vast bodies of work on those novelists who did not write in English, The Cruft of Fiction at times feels oddly disconnected. - Toon Staes

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/697604