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Jose Saramago came into my life at a time after college when I thought all new discoveries in literature were over. I thought that I would no longer see new books that thrilled me the way they did before. I was out of the loop, and no longer in the know on good new authors.

I hadn’t read very much Portuguese literature, I had read Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet and several of his volume’s of poetry in the nineties for some of my classes in modernism at MSU. I really liked the Book of Disquiet. It is a book that everyone should read even if they only worked one day in an office. But I was walking through borders in 1998 and saw a table full of Saramago’s books, and I saw the title The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. I got all excited by the title being a Pessoa fan. By that slight turn of fate I began reading almost all of Saramago’s work. I was fortunate enough at the time to be running the Literary mag Turtleneck.net with my mate Josh Messer and we decided to do a piece on Saramago, I was fortunate enough to have Harvest send me several review copies of Saramago’s other books. I’ve read almost everything at this point, though I haven’t finished, (ironically death with interruptions).

Saramago’s writing is so unique, and so ahead of the curve it defies imitation. His values as a writer and a human being seem clear to me after having read so many of his books, but when you think about them they are beautiful in their simplicity.

• Respect for one another as individuals regardless of class. Each one of Saramago’s books dealt with class and how it shapes our place in this world despite the fact that each of us has some greatness in us. Most of his characters came from relatively humble beginnings, though some of his stories certainly involved royalty. (Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of the Siege of Lisbon). But for the most part relatively simple lives led his stories, the Doctor’s Wife-Blindness, Senhor Jose-All the Names, Silva-The History of the Siege of Lisbon
• Beware simple answers to complicated questions. Blindness still haunts me to this day. Some parts of it are so terrible, but so well written that I would like to reread it soon. I never saw the movie because I loved the book so much. The idea that Blindness could be a plague that affected a whole nation is pretty genius, but the country’s reaction to it in the story to lock everyone up who was afflicted is par for the course in his novel’s where governments and institutions leap to very simple conclusions to very complicated phenomenon they don’t understand and to me this is the big take away. If Saramago had written a novel about BP it might come off sounding a little too much like reality.
• Don’t let your leaders lead you to your doom. Same as above, but Seeing, Blindness, and the Stone Raft, leave you with the feeling that trusting people merely because they are in charge is a foolish, foolish, thing to do. There are some very talented and smart people in government, but for everyone one of those, there are 100 knuckleheads collecting a paycheck.
• Life presents beauty in simple things. The idea that the iberian peninsula could break off and float around the Atlantic is a clever idea and one that any author worth their salt wishes they thought of first, but what pulled it off was the five middle aged guys in the rickety car driving further inland who found companionship, and love despite the unrooting of the laws of physics, the same was true in Blindness with the Doctor’s wife, who bearing witness to all of those atrocities managed to remain both sane and human.

Saramago’s contribution to humanity and literature can’t be underestimated. The fact that he won the Nobel Prize was a validation of his work that was well deserved. In the words of Shakespeare, “we won’t look upon his like again, I fear.” I can only hope that his ghost, like Pessoa’s in the Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis visits us occasionally through the ether.

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For those that don’t know Patrick O’Brian’s works, and who may not have read my other posts on Aubrey/Maturin, I will quickly summarize. Patrick O’Brian over the course of several decades wrote 21 books based on Lord Cochrane an active frigate captain in the Napoleonic wars.

The novels depict the life and adventures of two characters Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, and Dr. Stephen Maturin. Jack obviously is the model for Lord Cochrane. Stephen is pure genius invention on O’Brian’s part. Jack is the man’s man, fighting captain eager to win fame and glory by capturing prizes and winning battles. Jack who picks up trigonometry and calculus later in life becomes a master sailor and navigator, which also allows him to become a brilliant naval tactician. While Stephen a Catalan/Irish physician is a natural philosopher and an intellegence agent for England against Napoleon. Due to his mixed parentage and keen intellect he speaks French, Catalan, Castillian, some Portuguese, Latin and Greek, and knows the name of every bird and beast that can walk, fly, or swim.

I began the Aubrey Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian with zeal. I pushed through the first 10 books two years ago. As I got closer to the end I slowed down, wanting to savor each book like chocolate. But alas, I have finished the whole box in one sitting like a glutton. Now I am only left with splendid memories in my head of each book. Moments where my life was full of stress and I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer, I would get out of bed and go to my reading chair in the living room, flip the light on, and open one of Patrick O’Brian’s novels. Aubrey and Maturin managed to collapse the weight of life long enough for me to decompress and finally fall to sleep, dreaming of our dear HMS Surprise at sea, with a fine top gallant breeze moving her along at 10 knots and only deep blue under hull for a thousand miles in any direction. For those of us that have played at sea, the wind and the waves put us at ease. It gives us a sense of joy to be in an environment so wild, so tempestuous, and ultimately that free.

Some of the best days in my life have been on open water with the wind at my back away from complications on land. Both Aubrey and Maturin as characters were deeply flawed. But their friendship and their ability to go to sea allowed each of them to endure O’Brian’s sometimes malevolent story driven machinations.

Here are but a few (spoiler warning) :

• Aubrey is accused of defrauding the London Stock exchange and is disrated from the navy and thrown in the pillory.
• Aubrey looses his fortune to a fraudulent prospector who misleads him into believing there is Silver on his property
• Stephen in the grips of a serious Opium addiction accidentally kills a man during surgery
• Stephen while trying to evade French intelligence services is forced to allow a small Mediterranean town to believe he has a mistress, which of course is instantly reported back to his wife Diana. Who consequently runs off to Sweden with a handsome young army officer.
• Once reconciled Diana and Stephen have a child while Stephen is at sea. The child turns out to be autistic which causes Diana to abandon the child and run off with a new lover.
• Once reconciled again. Diana dies in a carriage accident on the way home from the Harbor.

With each of these knife wounds, it’s easy to see why going to sea might provide some refuge. And while listed out like this above, it looks melodramatic, O’Brian’s style is often to portray these events out of narrative, and characters often discuss them after they’ve occurred. The force of the novel’s is in my opinion in the portrayal of two very flawed, but seemingly real characters. Jack who is Dionysian, and Stephen Apollonian. Jack represents the baser instincts that crave food, women, wealth, and violence. Stephen craves knowledge, wisdom, and peace. Also each possesses certain traits. Jack is open, honest, friendly and eager to please. Where Stephen is quiet, introspective, sullen, if not mercurial. I’ve said this before, but the reason why this works so well, is that no one person is all of these things, and we see a little of ourselves in each character.

All in all, I of course enjoyed every battle and cutting out action and would reread each many times trying to picture in my head how each ship would tack, and jibe to gain an advantage. I love hearing about quick tacks and raking the other ship’s stern to cut up their rudder, rigging, and sails. Often the HMS Surprise was outmatched against larger more heavily armed ships, and it was a master stroke of writing to continually hammer home the fighting qualities of Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, and his crack crew who could fire three broadsides in five minutes to the other ship’s two.

I also found great delight in Stephen’s subtle schemes and discoveries as an intellegence agent for the Navy. His diary written completely in code, and his ability to walk off the ship and in most cases begin to blend in wherever he was.

Some might dismiss these novels as pure genre trash, but I would challenge any reader to find better examples of character development. Not to mention that the character development takes place through 21 books. I’ve certainly read other books that have moved me as well. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Jose Saramago’s Blindness, William Faulkner’s-The Sound and The Fury, Cormac MacCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. However, finding 21 books that capture your imagination so vividly, conveys so much information about life in another time and another place with such accuracy is not likely to happen again in my lifetime.

The last unfinished Novel, simply titled 21 left me feeling a little sad that O’Brian couldn’t finish it. It felt like someone got a bite out of the last chocolate right as I was ready to take a bite.

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Out of all of William Gibson’s Novels, “Spook Country”:http://www.amazon.com/Spook-Country-William-Gibson/dp/0399154302/ref=pd_sim_b_shvl_title_1/102-4362146-7999342 is the least evocative. A lot of Gibson’s now all too common critics read and loved Neuromancer for its impenetrable descriptions of the ephemeral and then unknowable internet, (or cyberspace), the vague chic of apathetic criminal characters, and the all too potent tincture of drugs, sex, and violence.

I was certainly among the throng of disaffected youth who read and loved the early books when I was fifteen, had a punk rock hair-do, wore a black trench coat and wanted to punch authority figures. Certainly because of William Gibson I became more literate. But I was not among the hordes of disappointed cyberpunks who’ve been gravely disappointed by Gibson’s move towards more mainstream fiction; I am merely disappointed in the lack of narrative cohesion, snappy dialog, and pointed cultural observations.

“Pattern Recognition”:http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-William-Gibson/dp/B000MGAHY6/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4362146-7999342?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192037420&sr=8-1
was a terrific novel. It was full of good characters, good dialog, and the Gibsonian specialty- the culture technology intersection. Gibson’s knack is recognizing where technology and culture have created something unique. Where as with his novels previous to Pattern Recognition he was writing in what he dubbed as speculative fiction, we would call it science-fiction. He moved into the present with Pattern Recognition and is firmly fixed there for Spook Country as well. The move to the present did not jar or upset me with Pattern Recognition.

Cayce Pollard and her allergic reactions to poor branding was in complete synch with where we were at as a culture. Globalization, marketing, brand recognition, and the interference or inevitability of anything and everything become merchandise or marketable spoke to me. I wish I’d thought of the character with the allergic reaction to Tommy Hilfiger first. But he also spookily worked in 9/11 in a way that did not seem hokey, or overworked. A character walked into the tower, and a ghost walked out to haunt Cayce. It was subtle and effective. Cayce’s zen statement to ward off bad mojo has stuck with me since reading the novel, “he took a duck in the face at 200 knots.” Also no one can ever forget, L-O-M-B-A-R-D. Loads of money but a real dickhead, which referred to Hubertus Bigend. Hubertus was a gift of a character, sinister in all the ways one might imagine a real person to be, but with a pearly white Tom Cruise smile.

I was pleasantly surprised by Bigend’s triumphant Belgian return. However the three intertwined narratives of Tito, Hollis Henry, and Milgrim don’t really compliment or contrast each other. The whole novel never really gels. We do have a few good moments where Gibson makes us chuckle at his cleverness. But his characters don’t pop, the narrative never reaches that point where the book created an inner moment for me the way his other books have. This failure is probably due to a few things. The first is not the lack of cyberpunkness, but the fact that the author’s knack of finding the precise moment to comment on a unique cultural technological nodal point (to use the Gibson term for a paradigm shift) was missing. The use of the i-pod as a storage device was unsurprising and commonplace. The idea that art could be locative and part of blended reality was also sort of commonplace and unsurprising. I never got that spooked feeling about seeing River Phoenix’s ghostly corpse outside the viper room. And for anyone who has used google maps street view, it just wouldn’t surprise the reader.

His commentary on the finances of the Iraq war and the intelligence community are also interesting, but hardly earth shattering.

Milgrim as a Junkie seemed to be purely a passenger for the novel and a vehicle for Brown, who was far more interesting as a character but lacked the definition the reader wished to see. His sermonizing was if anything was “under the top” and could have acted as more of a counter point to the “old man” to act as yin-and-yang, but alas this never developed.

Tito and Bobby Chombo were both alas pale comparisons to Bobby from Count Zero, or the Vat Grown Ninja Assassin from Neuromancer.

Hollis seems to be more of an archetype from Gibson now. He seems to be developing a pattern for his female characters now where they are delicate and sensitive, slightly daring, but rely on an older wiser male for their insight into the world’s inner mechanics. For Pattern Recognition Cayce relied on the not quite film maker boyfriend, and Hollis seems to rely on Inchmale.

The reveal at the end of the novel, just didn’t offer the payoff for the effort spent reading through the three disparate narratives. And Bigend as a result of his inclusion somehow seemed less sinister and more banal.

Hopefully Gibson finds his stride again, providing he feels he’s lost it. Certainly this book is not representative of his other works. Idoru and Pattern Recognition are still two of my favorites.

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Just like running a marathon, writing a novel takes discipline. I can speak from experience on both. I do both in a mediocre fashion. The question is, are you fit enough to do it? Can you write 1666 words per day to total 50,000 words?

I think I can do it!

I wrote my first bad novel this way. So I am going to do another!

I think I’m limber enough, verbose enough, and driven to drivel enough to do it again. So here I go. I will all self doubt and all thought to quality and editing out the door and just let it all hang out. So stay tuned for updates.

I am keeping in mind I can’t even type 600 words a day in this thing, but what the hey.

Just to get me pumped up I thought I might post my heroes, I did note as I was collecting the images that they are all men, a lot of them dead, and most of them white. So bring on the thwackem sticks you ladies of heck!!!

The textual onslaught starts on Nov 1!

*James Joyce*
White, Irish and dead. Famous for Ulysses, a great thematic work of one single day in Dublin through the eyes of a Jewish Ad Man and his alter ego Stephen Dedalus, there are some juicy bits sprinkled throughout that got him in trouble. His book of short stories, Dubliners usually gets read by more college students. I like it all, it’s basically a great ride.

*Gabriel Garrcia Marquez*
I named my son for this man. One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera are two heavy duty hitters on any day. I love how his stuff puts you somewhere far away, and then starts putting all sorts of slightly off-kilter subjects that make it slightly more than fiction, and somewhere just below mythology.

*William Gibson*
I spend more time quoting this guy than just about anybody else. He hits all the keys on the piano in the right order almost everytime. He has progressively gotten better from Neuromancer on up. Some folks pine for the cyberpunk days, but I find myself really, really impressed with Pattern Recognition. Because I work in advertising now this is a must read for ad folks. Top quote for the week, more of Gibsonism really, LOMBARD, (loads of money but a real dickhead).

*Jose Saramago*
I never thought I’d find myself deeply indebted to a Portuguese communist atheist. But everything is more than the sum of it’s parts. I of course place no value judgement on his beliefs, but my middle class, upbringing certainly wouldn’t lend itself to his ideals. I think Blindness, The Stone Raft, and A History of the Siege of Lisbon are some of the finest books ever written. Blindness especially makes the list. No book since I’ve been an adult has wrenched my heart so badly as that book.

More dead white males later…

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I watched “Born into this”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342150/ last night. It is a documentary about the late poet Henry Charles Bukowski Jr.

I sometimes forget how much I really loved this guy. There are times I am sure I would have hated to have him as a friend. But as a poet, what he stood for, what he endured, his courage, and his art, he is the shining example of a poet.

This poem below was not one I had in my collection. He read the poem below during the film and it really struck me. I remember as a young man that this is exactly how I felt about myself and my place in the world.

I think I have gained some perspective and think more benevolently of my fellow man for the most part, but you have to give it to Charles Bukowski for being able to put this to paper. And this to me speaks to an America where people only care about themselves. Everything is down to the bottom line. All that matters is wealth, cars, how big your house is, how big your piece of the pie is. We don’t care about the little guy. We don’t care about things that enhance life. We only care about things that sustain life.

There will always be a need for folks who are able to enhance the meaning of life rather than just sustain it. You have to have something to make the ride worth it. Poetry enhances life, gives meaning to the little things, and clarifies the big things with the one thing that separates us from the baboons with the coconut bikini’s… poetry. Bukowski was one of the best.

*The Genius Of The Crowd*

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

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I used to think that every word out of my mouth was funny, wise, or whimsically beautiful. I used to feel impervious to criticism. Participating in writer’s groups and workshops will steel you for some pretty mean shit. But the idea that you have something worthwhile to say that other people would be interested in reading would necessitate a certain amount of arrogance. But I never looked for validation for what I was doing.

Now I do look for validation from time to time. Ironically as I’ve gotten older it’s been more about the poetics of motion than verbal and written. I used to occasionally seek guidance from peers and professors for my writing.

In general as I look back at the last 5-6 years, I’ve taken myself a bit too seriously, almost to the point where If something isn’t hard to do, or learn, I don’t even care about it. I’m always attempting to break away from the pack, in my own mediocre way. Is it all an attempt to be noticed by Laura? She never cares how many new rolls I can do, or how fast my last race was, or at least she lets me think that to keep me humble.

I love the line in All the Pretty horses, (if you know anything about me, yes I mean the book, and not the movie), where John Grady Cole breaks his wild horse in the pen, and he starts to ride it, almost strutting in front of the stable fence. “Because John Grady loved to ride the horse. In truth he loved to be seen riding the horse. In truth he loved for her to see him riding the horse”.

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Last post got me to thinking about the defining moments in any young man’s life. I am blessed in my own way to know what that moment was in my father’s life, or at least what he has told me that moment was. And in sharing that moment with me, I have a better grasp on what it means.

My dad, born in Minneapolis Minnesota in 1946 to Keith Gordon Wikle and Lucille Poole Wikle September 14th. My grandfather was pursuing his Phd at the University of Minnesota in Metalurgical Engineering. After completing his studies the family finally settled in Oak Harbor Ohio. My dad had what I would call the prototypical late 50′s early 60′s small town experience. He decided to pursue the Navy and an engineering degree like his father at the University of Michigan. But pretty soon he realized that he had neither the inclination or the interest in engineering and switched to business. Joined a fraternity (sigh), Sigma Chi, now banned on campus in Ann Arbor. He met my mom Sandra Reimer, from Gross Pointe Michigan, his freshman year. And they began dating pretty quickly.

In the summer preceding his senior year, 1967 the summer of love. The year before he would ship out as an ensign in the US Navy to Vietnam, my dad decided to ride cross country on his 1962 Triumph T100. He left Ann Arbor in late May with my grandpa’s gas card and a change of clothes. He set out like Ulyssess into the west. And this trip is the one I always hear him talk about. Those moments from the trip that come first in his mind, at least from all outward appearances. The long flat expanse of the plains on the first few days, the climb through the rockies, or ultimately; riding across death valley through a sandstorm. He always describes with particular relish how he left the desert with one side of his body sunburnt. He watched in slow wonder as the sand blasted the british racing green paint off the gas tank during that long day in the sun.

I’m sure there’s more to it than this… But all young people have that one road trip that stands out like no other, and his from the sounds of it was one heck of a road trip. He always talks about doing it again when he’s retired. I hope he gets to do it.

What those moments mean to him I can only speculate. But I can say what I think they meant. He got to roar over the country on a sweet bike for a summer before life took over. He got to be a rebel for a short while before becoming Lieutenant K Wikle for four years. Not that I think he regretted his military decision. But he’s always been a respectable rebel in a lot of ways. And maybe I want that too. His views on life always crack me up, he votes republican categorically but is socially liberal in every way that makes people who are republican cringe. I guess I am pretty far left of the line, but what do you expect from a guy who read Gramsci?

If I ask myself what my defining moments were prior to family, responsibility, jobs, houses, wives anything, I’m not sure what I would list at the moment. It seems there are so many lost moments prior to Laura, Gabriel, and Isabella. Certainly the time I spent abroad stands out as one of my biggies, but maybe they just set me up for later events.

Maybe another list is in order I dunno?

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In the icelandic sagas, the characters have particular concern for the thinning of the blood from their fathers. Sons tried to measure up to fathers. And it was considered very grave if men failed the muster of their genealogy. Or if their fathers were particularly bad men, they did everything possible to break the bad blood with some great deed.

We all wonder if we measure up to the deeds and feats of our parents. Or if maybe we are the runt of the breed. My drive for certain physical and intellectual accomplishments has grounds in this.

My father turns 60 this year, and I can’t say if I measure up or not? Certainly I feel like I have some things under my belt. But I wonder if there is some final accomplishment that will put me at ease with myself, or if I will always feel as if I am a visitor in Valhalla?

What feat will grant me acceptance into that personal valhalla?
A marathon under 3:30?
An elbow roll?
Surfing the biggest waves out there?
Another book?
Raising a decent family?

I don’t know?

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I’ve been reading the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey/Maturin series, of the _Master and Commander Far Side of the World_ movie fame. I can truthfully say I like the movie. Though the story in the film has an incindental if not tangential relationship to the texts it purports to be translated from. But the actual novel, Far Side of the World, 10th in the series, has one great line I’ve been mulling over for the last week or so, “Jack liked others and expected to be liked in return.” This speaks to a virtue in character I hope I possess. Whether or not that virtue is returned in kind is another matter. This line while trivial, speaks to me in particular.

Jack Aubrey in the novels is an indomitably cheerful man. Despite hordes of personal setbacks, troves of financial difficulties and the general stress of being in command of a Frigate during time of war; he generally is kind and good natured and very difficult to discourage.

Granted Jack can be dimwitted on land, but in his own habitat he is very capable, and often very successful. I wonder if in my own small way, I am the same as Jack, a blundering buffoon on land, ready to shoot himself socially, fiscally, and politically in the foot at any given opportunity. But with wind in his rigging, and blue sea underneath him, there is no one who can stop him.

I hope to find plenty of blue water soon and to hear the hum of the wind in the rigging.