Book Review: Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

 

Title: Smoke and Mirrors

Author: Neil Gaiman

First Published: 1998

Genre: Fiction, Short Story Collection

Smoke and Mirrors is, summarily, an interesting collection of short stories and poems from Neil Gaiman. Though most of the works in the collection have been published in magazines and anthologies, a handful of these gems have never appeared in print. I suppose this ‘unveiling’ of ‘never-before-seen’ works, this illusion of exclusivity, is all part of this book’s allure.

But to me, what really makes Smoke and Mirrors an irresistible piece of fiction is how it shows the development of Gaiman’s writing. In creating a pastiche of past works, the author creates a roadmap to his success—success being defined within the confines of this paragraph as finding one’s voice and reaching a specific caliber of writing.

Gaiman makes the reader’s journey easier by writing a lengthy introduction that discusses the origins of each work. I say lengthy, because there are about 30 works in Smoke and Mirrors, and a summary of each one’s backstory is carefully typed out by the author himself. Though these works aren’t arranged chronologically, you can find each story’s original publication date on the notes section of the book. By going back and forth between the notes section of the book and the actual story, one gains perspective when it comes to the shifts, improvements, and general changes in Gaiman’s writing style.

Another thing I loved about this book is the variety it offers. To be honest, I’m not particularly keen on Gaiman’s tech-centered works or his brand of erotica (which isn’t bad, really… just unexpected),            but I do love his fantasy and detective stories. As for his poetry, I found his sestina to be absolutely superb. The rest, I felt, would’ve been better fleshed-out as shorts rather than poems.

All in all, I found Smoke and Mirrors an interesting and exciting read worth recommending to all Gaiman fans and lovers of the Strange.

 

Grade: A-

Free Verse: Letter to Sylvia – by Kristel Marie Pujanes

An Open Letter to Sylvia Plath – by Kristel Marie Pujanes

I

 

Sylvia, dear Sylvia,

Where do you hide?

I have rifled through the leaves of your memory,

Hunting down words, unearthing

Your anagrams, the loose codes

Of your alliterations, mounting the apex

Of your imagination. Thumbing through

Text, I have expanded my parentheses;

Cut thumbs with metaphors—

Bled disappearing ink: written letters

You’ll never receive. I’ve buried

Each and every note—under

Beds, under stairs, under stars,

I have hallooed the Sandman and sent

My regards. And still,

Your meaning eludes me.

 

II

 

Sylvia, dear Sylvia,

Where do you hide?

I have sought for your person

In every sylph of a woman,

Every self of a child.

I have scoured through

Each and every disguise.

Now every intersection is another dimension

Where they say you’ve lived,

Where they say you’ll die. Over

And over again.

I refuse their ill substance,

Their ill-timed lies: yours is a truth that cannot die.

It becomes the valley, the trenches, the sky.

And the tree that knows

Every spectrum of color, every pulse of light.

 

III

 

Sylvia, dear Sylvia,

Why must you hide?

I have grown grey traversing

the avenues of your memory,

the grand maze of your mind.

I have chased your shadow

For miles and miles. Seeking your tone

In every conversation that starts with “I…”

Or every phrase that ends with “wither,” or

“pure,” or “white.”

The years thin over time.

I tire of this barren pursuit. Crouched:

I grow cold for your solitary moon—

Your solid weight. Your promised effacement,

The delivery of my child, my fate.

And still I wait. 

 

 

Her Husband: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, A Marriage. By Diane Middlebrook

 

Title: Her Husband

Author: Diane Middlebrook

Genre: Non-Fiction, Biography

First Published: 2003

Pages: 350 (with the bibliography but sans the index)

I feel somewhat obliged to inform the reader that this isn’t so much a book review as it is a raw reaction to work, which I consider greatly illuminating. It’s no secret that I’ve been a big fan of Sylvia Plath’s for years. I have such few passions, but the brightest flame that’s got me alit from the very marrow of my bones is Poetry.

And since that life-changing day in high school when my Creative Writing professor read Mirror in class, since I caught a glimpse of the White Goddess in the echoes of the person and works of Plath, I have looked up to the infamous poetess as a child looks up to its idealized mother. In her works, I’ve found the impossible benchmark to my writing.

What I love about “Her Husband” by Diane Middlebrook is that it shatters this extreme idolatry by, in a way, demythologizing Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. What Middlebrook does is she does away with the blame game, refusing to paint Hughes in any other light than what one can discern from both his and Plath’s memories and writings. Through extracting the very essence of the poets’ works and revealing memories from close friends and relatives, the author explains the nature of Plath’s and Hughes’s relationship. One learns that beyond the obvious erotic and magickal pull between these poets, you have this mutually beneficial writing relationship where one calls and the other answers through poetry and prose.

The book also reveals intimate details about Plath, Hughes, and their relationship. We learn about their quirks, personal interests, fears, insecurities, and even their pet names for each other. I guess those details were the most jarring of all. We always seek to unveil our champions, to get under their skin. Find out what makes them tick. I wonder, is it human nature to cringe at the sight of their humanity too? Perhaps cringe is a strong word, but the intimate baring of Plath and Hughes in this book had me feeling a bit ‘uncomfortable’ for a while. It felt as if I’ve waded in the sea of their memories, an unwelcome visitor scared to be treading such private waters. But what can one expect from a good biography? And this one is one of the best biographies I’ve read, after all.

One of the most surprising ‘reveals’ in the book was how Plath actually liked Wevill the first time they met. Wevill had even gone out of her way to get Plath a small gift after they met. Of course, this only served to make the entire thing even more tragic for Plath. It was particularly heartwrenching to read about the humiliation Plath must’ve felt immediately after the split. On the day Hughes packed up to leave their home, she interrogated him about his relationship with Wevill:

“Where had he been? Why had he tricked her? Did he mean to abandon his children? How much money had he spent? How good was sex with Assia? Unfortunately, he answered her questions—‘fed me the truth with leer after leer,’ she [Plath] told her mother. (p.183)

There were certain points in the book where one wondered how Hughes could stand to hurt Plath that way. Obviously, the attraction between Assia and Ted must have been immense for both to act so recklessly as to ruin their marriages. At times, it was easy to paint Hughes as the ‘bad guy.’ But Middlebrook handles this dilemma (this tendency for immediate bias) deftly. She does this by presenting Hughes’s side by quoting a letter Ted had written for his brother:

“The one factor that nobody but close friends can comprehend is Sylvia’s particular death-ray quality,” Hughes wrote to Gerald. “In many of the most important ways she’s the most gifted and capable and admirable woman I’ve ever met—but, finally, impossible for me to live married to.” (p.180)

Hughes had grown restless, the way he was restless before he met Plath. The man and the woman pulled away from each other as the writers in them continued to draw from their wellspring of shared experiences. Eventually they had to call it quits, though Hughes claims that weeks before Plath’s death, a reconciliation may have been in the works.

We all know about Plath’s final creative burst and her tragic death. But this book also talks about Hughes and how he dealt with both Plath’s and Wevill’s suicides. How, after being forced into the role of the ‘relic husband,’ Hughes finally came to terms with being Plath’s collaborator and conduit even after her death. I think it was this point when he began creating his most ‘honest’ and vulnerable works. I’ve always admired Hughes’s writings, but I’ve felt that his latter works were less cerebral, less swathed in obscurity, but more meaningful—more relatable. And that’s a big thing for me.

All in all, I think this is one of the most skillfully written, revealing, and unflinching biographies about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. It’s a great read if you love Plath, Hughes, or poetry (and its processes) in general.

Rating: A+

Featured Poem: Wanting to Die by Anne Sexton

Note: In my opinion, this is one of Anne Sexton’s best works. Inspired by Sylvia Plath’s death, this poem resonates with perception. It rationalizes suicide as a form of addiction—an idea agreed upon by Plath and Sexton. Sexton refers to suicide as an ‘unnameable lust.’ She likens suicides to carpenters who never ask ‘why build.’

In the poem, there is an effort to resist death’s calling. But ultimately, the desire for death (as something equated by the persona to happiness) appears strong and relentless. At the end of the poem, Sexton touches upon the most blatant promise of suicide—unfinished business.

Wanting to Die

by Anne Sexton

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.

I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.

Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.

I know well the grass blades you mention,

The furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.

They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,

Have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,

Have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,

Warmer than oil or water,

I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle-point.

Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.

Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don’t always die,

But dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet

That even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!—

That, all by itself, becomes a passion.

Death’s a sad Bone; bruised, you’d say,

And yet she waits for me, year after year,

To so delicately undo an old wound,

To empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,

Raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,

Leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

Leaving the page of the book carelessly open,

Something unsaid, the phone off the hook

And the love, whatever it was, an infection.

 

Image from: LitStack.com

Book Review: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Title: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Author: Jennifer Egan

Genre: Fiction

First Published: 2010

Uncategorizable, experimental, but like most of its characters, unsinkable—A Visit from the Goon Squad breaks the usual mold of Fiction, then comes out victorious in its ultra-realistic portrayal of life. This Pulitzer-winning (2011) offering from Jennifer Egan is told in a non-linear (time-wise) and non-traditional format.

Is it a novel or a pastiche of short stories? Whatever it is, it’s one complex and gripping piece of literature that engages the reader and commands the reader to sit still and pay attention. Blink and you might lose the thread that links all the stories together. What Egan does in A Visit from the Goon Squad is she gives you glimpses of the lives of a number of highly different, and yet, interconnected characters. Okay, that’s oversimplifying it. She doesn’t give you a glimpse of their lives as if you’d know each character at a single glance. She lets you in on specific moments of the characters lives, and encourages you to put two and two together.

Mind you, this isn’t a piece of fiction that you can breeze through without going back a page or two to digest what’s going on. And yet, that’s what keeps the reader (this one, at least) hooked. You’ll end up trying to guess who’s next. Which minor figure in the current chapter will become the next chapter’s main protagonist? How does this character figure into the whole story, if ever, there was a ‘whole story’?

Now, normally, I would attempt to give you a brief summary of the book—and give me a second or two, and I will try—but it might be an ambitious attempt on my part when it comes to this one. You might just have to trust me when I tell you that this is a book worth reading. Either way, here goes nothing: [SPOILERS AHEAD]

A Visit from the Goon Squad starts off with a 20-something woman named Sasha, and her attempt to curb her kleptomania. We learn in the next chapter, that she works as Bennie’s personal assistant. Bennie is a recording executive whose mentor, Lou, discovered him when he was a bassist in his high school band, Flaming Dildos. Lou had a bit of a fling with Jocelyn, Bennie’s bandmate, who was also the sort-of girlfriend of Scotty (their guitarist). Of course, this was all before Bennie married Stephanie, a PR agent who tried to bring back the flagging career of the aging has-been rockstar, Bosco. Bosco, seeing something special in Stephanie’s brother, Jules, decides to give him the exclusive story to his ‘suicide tour.’ We learn that Jules actually has the writing chops for this story, after all, he was a former journalist whose career ended when he tried to rape a Hollywood starlet named Kitty Jackson. Kitty, will eventually work with La Doll, Stephanie’s former boss, as La Doll tries to soften the image of a foreign genocidal general. La Doll, who was once the toast of Hollywood, saw the collapse of her fascinating career during a huge PR spectacle that was simply too hot to handle. Of course, during the time of the PR fiasco, Sasha would’ve been a young prostitute in Naples—right before she went back to college where she met her future husband, Drew. The two will eventually move to the desert to raise their two kids. As for Bennie, at the end of the book, he would’ve found a way to bring back Scottie’s career through working with Alex, an old fling of Sasha’s.

So, Complex? Oh, YES. Confusing? Yup, a bit. Compelling? Definitely. All in all, this is a book that I highly recommend to anyone looking for a good read.

Grade: A+

Featured Poem: Pursuit by Sylvia Plath

 

Possibly Sylvia Plath’s most erotic poem, Pursuit was written almost immediately after the great poetess met her handsome husband-to-be, the poet, Ted Hughes. The poem presents the image of the persona (Plath) as being the prey of this powerful, irresistible, and ultimately destructive panther (Hughes).

To see herself as a type of prey to the biggest seducer of Cambridge (1), and to acknowledge the possibility of destruction under the hands (paws?) of this powerful predator is very telling of the gut-pull, the incredible attraction between two of the world’s greatest Literary minds. Plath knows the danger of this attraction, which is why the persona in this piece attempts to run, to bolt each door behind her—all the while knowing that the running is futile.

There is also that fear of becoming one of the ‘charred and ravened women,’ which she describes in the poem. But despite this knowledge, this fear, she too is drawn to the panther. Her blood ‘quickens, gonging in (her) ears.’ That, perhaps, shows how the magnetic pull between them is beyond the persona’s control.

And of course, there is that telling second line: “One day I’ll have my death of him.” Self-fulfilling prophecy? That is still debatable. The way I read it, it is Plath’s acknowledgement of the depths of her emotions for Hughes.

 

Pursuit

By Sylvia Plath

 Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit.

RACINE

 

There is a panther stalks me down:

One day I’ll have my death of him;

His greed has set the woods aflame,

He prowls more lordly than the sun.

Most soft, most suavely glides that step,

Advancing always at my back;

From gaunt hemlock, rooks croak havoc:

The hunt is on, and sprung the trap.

Flayed by thorns I trek the rocks,

Haggard through the hot white noon.

Along red network of his veins

What fires run, what craving wakes?

 

Insatiate, he ransacks the land

Condemned by our ancestral fault,

Crying: blood, let blood be spilt;

Meat must glut his mouth’s raw wound.

Keen the rending teeth and sweet

The singeing fury of his fur;

His kisses parch, each paw’s a briar,

Doom consummates that appetite.

In the wake of this fierce cat,

Kindled like torches for his joy,

Charred and ravened women lie,

Become his starving body’s bait.

 

Now hills hatch menace, spawning shade;

Midnight cloaks the sultry grove;

The black marauder, hauled by love

On fluent haunches, keeps my speed.

Behind snarled thickets of my eyes

Lurks the lithe one; in dreams’ ambush

Bright those claws that mar the flesh

And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.

His ardor snares me, lights the trees,

And I run flaring in my skin;

What lull, what cool can lap me in

When burns and brands that yellow gaze?

 

I hurl my heart to halt his pace,

To quench his thirst I squander blood;

He eats, and still his need seeks food,

Compels a total sacrifice.

His voice waylays me, spells a trance,

The gutted forest falls to ash;

Appalled by secret want, I rush

From such assault of radiance.

Entering the tower of my fears,

I shut my doors on that dark guilt,

I bolt the door, each door I bolt.

Blood quickens, gonging in my ears:

 

The panther’s tread is on the stairs,

Coming up and up the stairs.

 

Note: ‘Biggest seducer in Cambridge’ came from the book, ‘Her Husband’ by Diane Middlebrook.

 Image: wallpapers.free-review.net

Coping with Quarter-Life Crisis: The Importance of “ME time”.

All too often, we get caught up in the stress of the everyday. Your to-do list keeps getting longer, as the hours for leisure become shorter. You’re spread too thin, and understandably, you’re starting to feel overwhelmed. At this point, every task feels insurmountable.

Here’s the thing—most people would probably tell you to keep your head down and soldier on. That usually works, until you’ve reached your breaking point. When you’re on the verge of a meltdown, soldiering on won’t do the trick. Trust me, you simply won’t have the focus to continue the task at hand. It’ll take you a while to claw your way out of an anxiety attack—and that ‘while’ may just be time that you don’t have.

If you’re like me and most other people, you don’t have the luxury of taking the next few days off to ‘recuperate’—in the spiritual sense, at least. Sick Leaves don’t cover soul maladies—they should, in my humble opinion, but preserving your mental health is hardly your company’s main priority. So instead of ‘nurturing’ or at least tolerating the presence of an impending meltdown, I’d say just prevent its onset.

One practice that has significantly lowered my stress levels in the last few months is this: I always set aside at least 15 minutes of “ME time” everyday. A little peace and quiet may not seem like much, but it’s actually a great way for you to ‘regroup’ in times of immense stress. It also feels incredibly nice to not have to think of anyone else. You know, to put yourself and your needs first, at least once a day.

It doesn’t matter what you do during your “ME time”, as long as you spend it quietly. Whether it’s having a quick cup of joe in the pantry or enjoying a hot bath, the objective is to find time to relax your mind and your body. Look at your “ME time” as a type of sanity break. You know, something that will keep the office meltdowns at bay.

As a general rule, I don’t like bringing work stress into my home life. So back when I still had an office job, I used to spend a lot of time in my car—not driving, just sitting in the dark, ignition turned off, and breathing. I’d close my eyes, and in my mind I was releasing whatever pent-up stress or ill feelings I’d accumulated at work.

I also see my bath time as ‘sacred.’ I love hot baths and long showers—simply because I get to be alone with my thoughts. Most of my ideas for poetry and prose come to me while I’m shampooing my hair or brushing my teeth. If you have more time in your hands, try meditating, praying, grounding, or chanting.

So, there you have it. “ME time” works wonders for me, hopefully, it’ll work for you too.

image: wikipedia.org