FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.
Writing about World War II, in a fictional sense anyway, is tricky. Its real life horror is well documented, for one, so it’s hard to find much new to say. It’s also a difficult subject within which to inject fictional characters and events without cheapening the tragedy. It should be a writer’s dream: a looming, charismatic villain…the large-scale restructuring of an empire…a world populated with victims, bystanders and heroes…classic battles…and the ultimate, incredible triumph of the good guys. But, instead, it’s a minefield. After all, when the real-life version of events appears to adhere so strongly to classical form, what can a writer do but oversimplify?
It’s easy to write war wrong, and with the possible exception of Vietnam there’s no war more clearly ingrained in the social consciousness than World War II. The bar has been set, but — oddly enough — it’s been set by the way things actually played out in the world we currently inhabit, and not by the artists who have sought to set their stories there.
Cheapening tragedy is something we do all the time, whether it’s a school shooting trivialized by the media so that we don’t wonder if, maybe, unhinged American citizens don’t need to be carrying assault weapons everywhere they go, or the mass extermination of six million Jews being used as the backdrop for some saccharine love story. We do it easily.
Effective war writing is much harder. We already know the main players, the key events, and the general chronology. We know where it takes place, we know the major moves made by each side, and we know who won. There’s not much room to play with the formula, and if you don’t play with the formula then what’s the point of setting your story there?
Yet three of my all-time favorite novels utilize World War II as their backdrop: Gravity’s Rainbow, Catch-22 and Mother Night. And each of them, not coincidentally, tell stories that really do use World War II as a backdrop. All three novels feature active participants on both sides of the conflict, but their own conflicts are internal: struggles over their understanding of self, over their identity, over their place in a world that could allow this largely unseen tragedy to unfold. They all also, interestingly, all take place at the height of the war. It’s already come too far by the time we meet any of these characters, and they’re already scrambled. We watch them piece themselves back together again…or not. World War II is not cheapened. It’s there, unfolding, seething, devouring in the background. The characters that we follow in these novels are too small to deserve our attention…but that doesn’t mean they cease to exist. They’re beyond insignificance in a world with greater problems than they’ll ever have…and yet their personal problems are everything. Some of them come out the other side stronger for the conflict. The rest come out ruined and undone.
That’s how you write a World War II story that works. Don’t set it in a concentration camp, because there’s nothing you can say that won’t cheapen the reality. Don’t set it in Hitler’s bunker, because those aren’t characters you’d be able to handle. And don’t inject some American superhero into the conflict to help turn the tide in favor of the Allies, because there are real-life heroes who lived and died to do exactly that themselves, and they don’t deserve to be replaced by your self-serving cartoons.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying I was nervous about reviewing 28 Bunkers by Elizabeth Braun. Especially after both of the previousbooks I reviewed by self-published authors were total garbage. Braun had an uphill struggle ahead of her, but I liked 28 Bunkers. In fact, there are a lot of things about it that I really liked.
It’s not without its issues, but don’t worry, we’ll dwell on the positive aspects as well, if only because it’s a relief to finally have some.
28 Bunkers is a story, according to its back cover matter, about an American fighter pilot named Ray who flees to Canada so that he can enlist with the RAF and do his part for good. It’s actually, however, about Erich and Gerda Müller, a German couple who live in Ludwigshafen, which receives particular attention from Allied bombers due to the presence of high-priority target IG Farben.
It’s impossible for me to review this book intelligently without giving away at least one large spoiler, and that’s this: around a third of the way through the book, Ray dies. His plane is shot up by enemy fire, and while he makes an emergency landing in a farmer’s field his plane flips over and he dies of his injuries. Just like that, the character who has been set up as both protagonist and audience surrogate is gone. Dead. No longer alive.
He is replaced in the narrative by a second American flier, named Tom. Ray was a bit green and so eager to do the right thing that he took to the skies before his country even wanted him to. Tom, on the other hand, is a family man, with a loving wife and children waiting for him at home. Shortly after we meet Tom he receives mail similar to that which Ray received…a crayon drawing of himself from a younger relative. We also find out that he sent home similar Christmas gifts to his loved ones. It feels here as though Braun is doing something very brave in a narrative sense, setting up these pilots as individuals, but ultimately allowing their details to blur so that we, as readers, can see them as unwittingly interchangeable. After all, if one pilot dies, the Allies simply send up another. As a writer, if one protagonist dies Braun simply sends in another.
Unfortunately this isn’t a pattern she sustains throughout the book, which makes it feel like a grand stroke of metatextual bravery that is toyed with but never quite comes to pass. For that reason it’s difficult to see her roster of Allied pilots as much more than personifications of the good-heartedness and loyalty that may have been misguided in particular cases but ultimately won the war. That’s a disappointment because with just a small tweak, the stakes could have been raised substantially, and the moral could have been a bit more complex.
Instead the best writing is reserved for the Müllers, who find their simple lives dismantled, piece by piece, by their coincidental proximity to an important target. Erich and Gerda raise their children Emilie and Lukas amidst the ongoing destruction, and though their optimism wavers they never lose sight of the fact that though this isn’t the world they’d choose to live in, it’s the only one they have. Their chapters, which alternate with those centered upon the American fliers, are interesting little character studies, with wrinkles added with appropriate pacing…just as they adjust to their latest setback, something else makes a great impact on their lives, and it’s not always a bomb. It’s Uncle Matthias returning home from the war, one-armed and gangrenous. It’s Irene and Michael, two children with nowhere to go, being added to the family by bureaucratic oversight. It’s Lukas being drafted to shoot down Allied planes. It’s — in short — always something.
And it’s also the best writing in the book, because it manages to use the real-world horror of World War II as an effective backdrop for some very personal stories. We hear about Hitler on the radio, just as the characters do. We see German Jews shut down their places of business and flee the country, but the reason is too horrific to spell out. And we’re privy to the gallows humor that gets them by. The war is real, but life must go on…and whatever that might entail today is different from what it might entail tomorrow.
The title refers to the 28 bunkers that still stand in Ludwigshafen, but not all of them play a role in the story. Instead the book contains 28 chapters, and I’d like to think of the title as referring to these 28 pockets of humanity amidst the chaos, where life goes on even when it doesn’t. With some tweaking, 28 Bunkers had the potential to be great. The American flier chapters are good, but suffer from unnecessarily lowered stakes. The German family chapters are far better, but characters sometimes end up speaking like news bulletins in order to remind the reader of where in the war we are at any given time.
None of these criticisms are particularly important ones, but I do think they represent the difference between effective writing and great writing.
Braun makes a special note of the fact that the three main American fliers are all based on family members and their actual stories, while the Müller family is of her own invention. Let that stand as further evidence that the best World War II writing comes with inventing conflicts on the sidelines. Braun may have wanted to pay tribute to the actual heroes in her lineage, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the real tribute comes where it’s least expected, with two parents terrified of what every new day will bring, who nevertheless have to hold their world together for the children who will inherit it.
It’s worth reading. But it always seems to be reaching for an even higher standard, and I do wish it managed to get there.
FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.
So this is what I was originally planning for Valentine’s Day…only I planned for it around five months in advance and then forgot to do it. It’s a collection of love songs from Thomas Pynchon’s novels. I’m a huge Pynchon fan (DID YOU KNOW THAT??) and the little original ditties he embeds in his text are like charming, reliable life-rafts amid the glorious, chaotic sprawl. And I’ll be honest…every time I’ve picked up a new Pynchon book I’ve looked forward to the songs the most. They range from silly to clever to genius, and, in some way, I love them all.
When I used to run a different (much more personal) blog, I posted The Love Songs of Thomas Pynchon for Valentine’s Day, and it very surprisingly became the most popular post on my site. I have no idea why, but it was certainly a great feeling, and with that site long gone I thought I’d post it again. This time I’m including a few songs I left out of the first post — no real reason, I just wasn’t as big a fan of them — and I’m including the love songs from the two novels that have come out in the meantime. So this is much more complete.
Pynchon deliberately blurs lines between love, lust, friendship and fondness, so there are a few arguable love songs that were left out, and maybe a few that leaned in another direction that might have crept in instead. But here you go. In some cases Pynchon assigns his own song titles, but he usually does not. Any song titles that I’ve taken the liberty of assigning are in brackets, so blame me if you don’t think they’re appropriate. I’ve also left in a few textual moments if I felt they contributed to the “feel” or understanding of the song. Otherwise they were trimmed out for the sake of easier reading.
I hope you enjoy. Reading Pynchon is a blast, and his songs are a huge part of that. Some of them are silly, some of them are genuinely moving, and some of them are just absurdly fun. I threw in a gorgeous interpretation of “The Eyes of a New York Woman” at the end, just because it’s wonderful…and it’s always fun to get a glimpse into how these songs sound to somebody else. I can only ever hear my own versions, in my own head. And I hope you enjoy the ones you hear, too. Happy late Valentine’s Day.
“Serenade” The Crying of Lot 49, p27
As I lie and watch the moon
On the lonely sea,
Watch it tug the lonely tide
Like a comforter over me,
The still and faceless moon
Fills the beach tonight
With only a ghost of day,
All shadow gray, and moonbeam white.
And you lie alone tonight,
As alone as I;
Lonely girl in your lonely flat, well, that’s where it’s at,
So hush your lonely cry.
How can I come to you, put out the moon, send back the tide?
The night has gone so gray, I’d lose the way, and it’s dark inside.
No, I must lie alone,
Till it comes for me;
Till it takes the sky, the sand, the moon, and the lonely sea.
And the lonely sea…etc. [FADE OUT.]
["Little Grass Skirt"] Vineland, p63
Whoa! Come ‘n’ let me roll that
Little grass skirt,
In the Zig Zag, of my em-
Brace!
Light on up, With th’
Flame of love, take
The frown right, off o’ your face!
Put it in a roach clip,
Pass it to and fro,
In between your lips and let th’
Good smoke flow, oh
It won’t cost much, and
It ain’t gonna hurt, just
C’mere with that uh little, grass skirt!
["Esther's Nose Job"] V., p111
Have I told you, fella
She’s got the sweetest columella
And a septum that’s swept ‘em all on their ass;
Each casual chondrectomy
Meant only a big fat check to me
Till I sawed this osteoclastible lass:
[Refrain]:
Till you’ve cut into Esther
You’ve cut nothing at all;
She’s one of the best, Thir,
To her nose I’m in thrall.
She never acts nasty
But lies still as a rock;
She loves my rhinoplasty
But the others are schlock.
Esther is passive,
Her aplomb is massive,
How could any poor ass’ve
Ever passed her by?
And let me to you say
She puts Ireland to shame;
For her nose is retroussé
And Esther’s her name….
For the last eight bars she chanted “No” on one and three.
“The Englishman’s Very Shy (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p184
(Bloat):
The Englishman’s very shy,
He’s none of your Ca-sa-no-va,
At bowling ladies o-ver,
A-mericans lead the pack–
(Tantivy):
–You see, your Englishman tends to lack
That recklessness transatlantic,
That women find so romantic
Though frankly I can’t see why…
(Bloat):
The polygamous Yank with his girls galore
Give your Brit-ish rake or carouser fits,
(Tantivy):
Though he’s secretly held in re-ve-rent awe
As a sort of e-rot-ic Clausewitz….
(Together):
If only one could al-ly
A-merican bedroom know-how
With British good looks, then oh how
These lovelies would swoon and sigh,
Though you and I know the Englishman’s very shy.
["For Susannah"] Mason & Dixon, p143
I was only sixteen, upon your wedding day,
I stood outside the churchyard, and cried.
And now I’m working for the man, who carried you away,
And ev’ry day I see you by his side.
Sometimes you’re smiling,– sometimes you ain’t,
Most times you never look my way,–
I’m still as a Mill-Pond, I’m as patient as a Saint,
Wond’ring if there’s things you’d like to say.
Oh, are you day-dreaming of me,
Do you tuck me in at Night,
When he’s fast asleep beside you,
Are those Fingers doing right?
How can Love conquer all,
When Love can be so blind? and you’ve got
Bradley on your Name,
And Mason on your Mind….
["Cheap Romance"] Vineland, p281
Whoo! is this the start of a
Cheap ro-mance,
Nothin’ much to do with
High fi-nance,
Is it th’ start of,
Another cheap ro-mance?
(Here Scott Oof, as he had for thousands of identical renditions, filled with a phrase stolen from Mickey Baker on “Love Is Strage” [1956].)
This hot tomato’s lookin’
Mighty sweet,
Uh just th’ thing to git me,
Off my feet,
Oboy, the start of,
Another cheap ro-ho-mance!
Yep — looks like the start of
Another cheap ro-ho-
Ma-a-a-a-ance…
Gits ya thinkin’, is it
Me, or is it mah
Pa-a-a-a-hants?
Well cheap romance is my
Kind of thing,
Uh just in case you were
Wondering,
“Is it the start of,
Another cheap ro-wo-mance?”
["Be My Hottentot Bondsman Tonight"] V., p252
Love’s a lash,
Kisses gall the tongue, harrow the heart;
Caresses tease
Cankered tissue apart.
Liebchen, come
Be my Hottenton bondsman tonight,
The sjambok’s kiss
Is unending delight.
Love, my little slave,
Is color-blind;
For white and black
Are only states of mind.
So at my feet
Nod and genuflect, whimper for me:
Though tears are dried
Their pain is yet to be.
“Pavlovia (Beguine)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p232
It was spring in Pavlovia-a-a,
I was lost, in a maze…
Lysol breezes perfumed the air,
I’d been searching for days.
I found you, in a cul-de-sac,
As bewildered as I–
We touched noses, and suddenly
My heart learned how to fly!
So together, we found our way,
Shared a pellet, or two…
Like an evening in some café,
Wanting nothing, but you…
Autumn’s come, to Pavlovia-a-a,
Once again, I’m alone–
Finding sorrow by millivolts,
Back to neurons and bone.
And I think of our moments then,
Never knowing your name–
Nothing’s left in Pavlovia,
But the maze, and the game….
["The Austo-Hungarian Blues"] Against the Day, p915
No need for feel-ing so down,
Just spend a night-on-the-town,
The-Dan-ube won’t, look-so blue–
not if you do, like I do–
Just get on out-to-the ucca,
Take a stroll up–the a-ve-nue,
You’ll find that ci-ty beat puts-a
–Synco-pation in-your shoe,
Find-one-of-those
Austro-Hun-gar-i-an ladies,
So super-ficially deep,
Down where the gi-golos creep,
Too full of rhyth-m to sleep,
All-you-need’s-a
Good-time girl from the K and K,
Who can’t tell you if it’s night or day,
And slip away on a cruise, from
Those Austro-Hungarian blues!
["Love Never Goes Away"] Gravity’s Rainbow, p294
Love never goes away,
Never completely dies,
Always some souvenir
Takes us by sad surprise.
You went away from me,
One rose was left behind–
Pressed in my Book of Hours,
That is the rose I find….
Though it’s another year,
Though it’s another me,
Under the rose is a drying tear,
Under my linden tree….
Love never goes away,
Not if it’s really true,
It can return, by night, by day,
Tender and green and new
As the leaves from a linden tree, love,
that I left with you.
["Cutie in a GTO"] Inherent Vice, p78
Thought I musta been hallu-cinating,
Waiting at the light she called to me, “Let’s go!”
How am I supposed to refuse an 18-
Year-old cutie in a GTO?
We took off north, from the light at Topanga,
Tires smokin in a long hot scream,
Under the hood of my Ford Mustang, a
427 cammer runnin just like a dream–
[Bridge]
Grille to grille, by the time we hit
Leo Carrillo [Horn section fill],
And it still, wasn’t over by Point Mugu–
Just a Ford Mustang and a sweet GTee-O,
In motion by the ocean,
Doin what the motorheads do.
Shoulda filled-up when I got-off, the San Diego, it’s
Been pinned on empty for the last ten miles,
Next thing I know she’s wavin hasta lu-ego, flashin
One of those big California smiles–
Bummed out on the shoulder, couldn’t feel bluer,
Here comes that familiar Ram Air blast,
What’s that on the front seat, right next to her,
It’s a shiny red can full of high-test gas–
So we grooved, back on down, past
Leo Carrillo [Same horn fill],
Grille to grille all the way down to Malibu,
Just a Ford Mustang and that sweet GTee-O,
In motion by the ocean
Doin what the motorheads do….
["P's and Q's"] V., p307
It is something less than heaven
To be quoted Thesis 1.7
Every time I make an advance;
If the world is all that the case is
That’s a pretty discouraging basis
On which to pursue
Any sort of romance.
I’ve got a proposition for you;
Logical, positive and brief.
And at least it could serve as a kind of comic relief:
[Refrain]
Let P equal me,
With my heart in command;
Let Q equal you
With Tractatus in hand;
And R could stand for a lifetime of love,
Filled with music to fondle and purr to.
We’ll define love as anything lovely you’d care to infer to.
On the right, put that bright,
Hypothetical case;
On the left, our uncleft,
Parenthetical chase.
And that horseshoe there in the middle
Could be lucky; we’ve nothing to lose,
If in these parentheses
We just mind our little P’s
And Q’s.
If P [Mafia sang in reply] thinks of me
As a girl hard to make,
Then Q wishes you
Would go jump in the lake.
For R is a meaningless concept,
Having nothing to do with pleasure:
I prefer the hard and tangible things I can measure.
Man, you chase in the face
Of impossible odds;
I’m a lass in the class
Of unbossable broads.
If you’ll promise no more sticky phrases,
Half a mo while I kick off my shoes.
There are birds, there are bees,
And to hell with all your P’s
And Q’s.
["On Yashmeen"] Against the Day, p598
Her idea of banter
Likely isn’t Cantor,
Nor is she apt to murmur low
Axioms of Zermelo,
She’s been kissed by geniuses,
Amateur Frobeniuses,
One by one in swank array,
Bright as any Poincaré,
And…though she
May not care for Cauchy,
Any more than Riemann,
We’ll just have to dream on…
Let
it occur in spots in
Whittaker and Watson–
Unforeseen converging,
Miracles emerging,
Epsilonic dances,
Small but finite chances,
For love…
“Julia (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p248
Ju-lia,
Would you think me pe-cul-iar,
If I should fool ya,
In-to givin’ me–just-a-little-kiss?
Jool-yaaahh,
No one else could love you tru-lier,
How I’d worship and bejewel ya,
If you’d on-ly give-me just-a-little-kiss!
Ahh Jool-yaaahhhh–
My poor heart grows un-ru-lier,
No one oolier or droolier,
Could I be longing for–
What’s more–
Ju-lia,
I would should hallelujah,
To have my Jool-yaaahh,
In-my-arms forevermore.
["Constables in Love"] Against the Day, p679
You know, it’s…
Only copper propa-
gaaaan-da, that
Policemen never woo, woo, woo!
–You
Know I’d be just as cud-dly as a
Paaaan-da,
If only-I-knew,
You wan-ted-to-cud-dle-me too! E-
-ven in Ken-ya, Tangan-yi-ka and U-
gaaaan-da,
It’s not that unheard of…
Coz it’s a
Proper crop o’propa-
gaaaanda, that
A flat-tie can’t fall in love!
“Just Like a William Powell” Vineland, p162
Oh it’s like layin’ bricks, without a trowel,
Like havin’ a luau, with no fish ‘n’ poi,
When you’re just like, a William Powell,
Lookin’ for some, Myrna Loy!
And just think of how Tarzan, would start to how-l,
If he only was hangin’ out, with Cheetah and Boy –
I feel like th’ alphabet, without a vowel,
Like Flatfoot Floogie, with only one Floy –
Guess I’ll just, throw in the towel,
Aw I’ll never find the, real McCoy,
Just another William Powell,
Lookin’ for that Myrna Loy….
“Too Soon to Know (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p198
It’s still too soon,
It’s not as if we’d kissed and kindled,
Or chased the moon
Through midnight’s hush, as dancing dwindled
Into quiet dawns,
Over secret lawns…
Too soon to know
If all that breathless conversation
A sigh ago
Was more than casual flirtation
Doomed to drift away
Into misty gray…
How can we tell,
What can we see?
Love works its spells in hiding,
Quite past our own deciding…
So who’s to say
If joyful love is just beginning,
Or if its day
Just turned to night, as Earth went spinning?
Darling, maybe so–
It’s TOO SOON TO KNOW.
["A Deutschesüdwestafrikaner in Love"] V., p282
I know what you want,
Princess of coquettes:
Deviations, fantasies and secret amulets.
Only try to go
Further than you’ve gone
If you never want to live to see another dawn.
Seventeen is cruel,
Yet at forty-two,
Purgatory fires burn no livelier than you.
So, come away from him,
Take my hand instead,
Let the dead get to the task of burying their dead;
Through that hidden door again,
Bravo for ’04 again; I’m a
Deutschesüdwestafrikaner in love…
["Mister Farenheit"] Mason & Dixon, p552
Say, Mister Farenheit,
She doesn’t treat me right,
Wish you could warm up that Lady of mine,–
Look at you, on the wall,
Don’t have a, care at all,–
Even tho’ our love has plung’d,
To minus nintey-nine,– now, Doctor
Celsius, and ev’ryone else, yes,
Say, you’ve plenty to spare,–
Don’t let us freeze, can’t you
Send some Degrees, from where-
-Ever you are, out there,–
Damme,
Mister Farenheit,–
Here comes another night,
I shall once again be shiv’ring through,
With no help from your Scale,
‘Tis all Ice and Hail, and
I’ll turn-into a Snow-man, too.
["Dance it Away"] Gravity’s Rainbow, p558
And all the world’s busy, this twi-light!
Who knows what morning-streets, our shoes have known?
Who knows, how many friends, we’ve left, to cry alone?
We have a moment together,
We’ll hum this tune for a day…
Ev’ryone’s dancing, in twi-light,
Dancing the bad dream a-way….
["Durango Dove"] Against the Day, p202
Out on the wind…
Durango dove,
Ride the sky,
Dare the storm….
We never once
Did speak of love,
Or I’d be free,
And a long time gone….
When the lamplight
Comes on in town,
Rings and rouge,
Satin gown…
Oh, but my
Lost…
Durango dove,
Do they believe it all,
The way I do?
Would they fall
Into your sky,
Even die,
Dove, for you….
["A Girl in Cuxhaven"] Gravity’s Rainbow, p639
I dream that I have found us both again,
With spring so many strangers’ lives away,
And we, so free,
Out walking by the sea,
With someone else’s paper words to say….
They took us at the gates of green return,
Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why–
Do children meet again?
Does any trace remain,
Along the superhighways of July?
["Teenage Romeo"] V., p387
Little teen-age goddess
Don’t tell me no,
Into the park tonight
We’re going to go,
Let me be
Your teen-age Romeo….
“Serge’s Song” The Crying of Lot 49, p120
What chance has a lonely surfer boy
For the love of a surfer chick,
With all these Humbert Humbert cats
Coming on so big and sick?
For me, my baby was a woman,
For him she’s just another nymphet;
Why did they run around, why did she put me down,
And get me so upset?
Well, as long as she’s gone away-yay,
I’ve had to find somebody new,
And the older generation
Has taught me what to do–
I had a date last night with an eight-year-old,
And she’s a swinger just like me,
So you can find us any night up on the football field,
In back of P.S. 33 (oh, yeah),
And it’s as groovy as it can be.
["A Loser at the Game of Love"] Gravity’s Rainbow, p684
Just a fool-who-never-wins, at love,
Though-he-plays, most-ev’, ry night…
A loser-to-the-Ones, Above,
Who stack-the-cards, of wrong, and right….
Oh, the loser never bets-it-all, and-he never-plays, to win,
He knows if-once, you don’t-succeed, you can al-ways lose-again!
Just a loser at-the-game, of love…
Spending night after night a-lo-o-o-one!
["Cape Girl"] Mason & Dixon, p80
Oh,
Cape Girrl,
In the Ocean Wind,
Fairer than the full Moon,
Secret as a Sin,–
You’re a,
Light Lass,
So the Lads all say,
Sitting on your Stoep, hop-
-Ing Love will pass today…
You keep your Slaves about,
As don’t we all,
Yet no one in love is brave,
And even a Slave may fall…
In love with,–
Cape Girl,
When South-Easters blow,
Thro’ my Dreams, I know,
To your Arms I’ll go,
Cape Girl, don’t say no.
["My Singing Bird of Spitalfields"] Against the Day, p684
Oh, Sing-
-ing Bird,
Of Spital-fields–
How lonely i’-all-feels,
Wiv-out your mel-
o-dee! When shall my
Brick Lane bunt-ing
Chirp-again,
To my throbbing-brain,
Her dear refrain,
Soft-leee? Al-
though it’s spring
In Stepney, so-we’re-told,
Here in my
Heart-it’s-cold
As any-win-
try sea–until my
Singing Bird of
Spit-alfields,
Perched on her lit-tle heels,
Comes trip-ping back,
To meee!
–(My dar-ling),
[D.C.]
["Es Posible"] Vineland, p343
Mention…[rattle of bongos] to me, [picking up slow tropical beat] “Es posible,”
And I won’t need a replay,
My evening, is yours….
Yes that’s all, it takes, Incre-íble,
Would it be so…ter-reeb-lay,
To dare hope for more?
¿Es posible?
Could you at last be, the one? Increíble,
Out of so many mil-lyun,
What fun,
If you [bongo rattle, as above] would say, “Es po-ho-seeb-lay,”
While that old Mar Carib’ lay
‘Neath the moonlight above, Es posible,
Increíble,
It’s love…[fill phrase such as B-C-E-C-B flat]
It’s love…[etc., board-fading]
["Skyful of Hearts"] Inherent Vice, p337
There’s a skyful of hearts,
Broken in two,
Some flyin full fare,
Some non-revenue,
All us bit actors
Me him and you,
Playin our parts,
In a skyful of hearts…
Up there in first class,
Ten-dollar wine,
Playing canasta,
Doin so fine,
Suddenly, uh-oh,
Here’s ‘at No Smokin sign
That’s how it starts,
In a skyful of hearts…
[Bridge]
To the roar of the fanjet…
You went on your way…
I’ll sure miss you, and yet…
There ain’t much to say…
Now I’m flyin alone
In economy class,
Drinkin the cheap stuff,
Till I’m flat on my ass,
Watchin my torch song
Fall off the charts,
But that’s how it goes
In a skyful of hearts…
["The Eyes of a New York Woman"] V., p145
The eyes of a New York woman [he started to sing]
Are the twilit side of the moon,
Nobody knows what goes on back there
Where it’s always late afternoon.
Under the lights of Broadway,
Far from the lights of home,
With a smile as sweet as a candy cane
And a heart all plated with chrome.
Do they ever see the wandering bums
And the boys with no place to go,
And the drifter who cried for an ugly girl
That he left in Buffalo?
Dead as the leaves in Union Square,
Dead as the graveyard sea,
The eyes of a New York woman
Are never going to cry for me.
Are never going to cry for me.
I do know that its full title is The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension but that was too long for WordPress.
That’s all I know about what I just watched, because I have no idea what I just watched.
It’s about some brain surgeon who performs experimental surgery, but that doesn’t tie into the rest of the movie at all. The movie focuses more on this same man’s career as a rock musician / physicist / comic book hero / cosmic adventurer / crash test dummy / sex symbol, but that doesn’t tie into it really, either. I have no idea what I just watched.
This is a movie I’ve been meaning to get around to for some time. Mainly because it immortalized in film Yoyodyne, the shady corporation known to literary geeks like myself from The Crying of Lot 49. That means that this film is one of very, very few that could possibly be said to take place within the same universe as any of Pynchon’s works, and that’s worth a recommendation in itself. As an added bonus, one of the characters employed there in Lot 49 was first introduced in Gravity’s Rainbow, which itself featured a character whose ancestors we meet in Mason & Dixon, a-and…I’ll stop myself there, suffice it to say that this indirectly ties the film not just into one of Thomas Pynchon’s books, but — by virtue of intratextual connectivity — the entire Thomas Pynchon oeuvre.
Of course, none of that factors into the plot here, which finds Buckaroo Banzai driving through a solid mountain, only when he comes out there’s a sort of alien fetus attached to the underside of his car, but that can’t be very important because it never comes up again. So the President of the United States calls him up to congratulate him on finding the alien fetus or something but it’s not really the President…it’s an alien from a race that wants to destroy Earth (and doesn’t live inside of mountains so I guess it’s a different alien species to the alien species that includes the alien fetus Buckaroo found on the underside of his car, which makes sense because if you destroy Earth you destroy those mountains AND THEN WHAT). But these aliens that prank called him don’t actually want to destroy Earth, they’re exceptions to the rest of their species, so they electrocute Buckaroo through the phone line and make him write equations on his hand. I have no idea what I just watched.
There’s also, of course, the Wes Anderson connection, and as Steve Zissou Saturdays kick off next weekend, I thought it would be worth seeing the film from which Anderson borrowed the end credits sequence for The Life Aquatic.
He also, I can see now, borrowed the electrical kiss from this film for Moonrise Kingdom. I’m glad he borrowed these things, because I can understand them in their reappropriated contexts. Here, I have no idea what I just watched.
Buckaroo and his band / fellow spies / sex people have to stop the aliens before they destroy Earth, which all started because a long time ago John Lithgow got flung through a wall by a go-kart, obviously. Christopher Lloyd is one of the aliens and that’s about the only thing that makes any kind of sense to me.
I have no idea what I just watched.
And while Buckaroo is at a club playing that rock and roll that the kids love so much, he hears Ellen Barkin crying so he says ELLEN BARKIN WHY ARE YOU CRYING and she tries to shoot herself while he plays a sad song so she goes to jail and he lets her out, because I guess he has that authority as some guy from the 80s who plays Zeppelin covers at a club, and it turns out she’s the identical twin of his ex-wife, who died in some way that nobody cares enough about to explain. So he hangs out with her for a while and puts her in mortal danger, because the aliens can spit spiders and Ellen Barkin is wearing a dress.
Seriously, what the fuck did I just watch? Jeff Goldblum is in it, too, eerily foreshadowing his future roles in the film of anybody who thinks to ask him. He doesn’t do much apart from dress like a cowboy and say to Buckaroo something to the effect of I’M SORRY I DID EVERYTHING I COULD DO TO SAVE HER and then Buckaroo is sad and almost accidentally orders war with Russia, but it turns out she’s just fine so Jeff Goldblum was trolling him I guess. I have no idea, no idea, no fucking idea what I just watched.
If you have any idea what I just watched, please let me know in the comments.
I had something else in mind for my second Noiseless Chatter Spotlight, but the fact that it’s getting pre-empted at the last minute is pretty appropriate considering its own pedigree, so I don’t have too much regret that I’m instead spotlighting a computer game from last year called The Binding of Isaac.
The Binding of Isaac has been the subject of some conversation today, as Team Meat, the game’s developers, have announced that Nintendo has declined to sell the game through its downloadable software services. That should come neither as a surprise nor as an announcement worthy of much discussion at all, and yet an awful lot of otherwise quiet people sure have a lot to say. NintendoLife’s news article on the announcement has over one hundred comments already, as of this writing, and it’s rare that anything but the most controversial news items get anywhere near that much discussion. And that’s not taking into account the forum post on the same topic that spans several pages.
But what’s controversial about Nintendo choosing to pass on hosting a game in its marketplace? Games — and developers — are declined all the time. Granted, we usually don’t hear about it, but there’s something unique here. There’s something about The Binding of Isaac that commenters, gamers, people feel the need to chime in about. It’s not a topic that can be allowed to pass without remark. This is a game that everybody has an opinion about, even those who haven’t played it, and believe me, brother, if somebody mentions the game in any context, you’re going to hear everyone else’s opinion, too.
The comments on the article linked above are fairly evenly split between “this game is art and Nintendo has no right to deny gamers access” and “this game is filth and Nintendo was right to decline.” My opinion is somewhere in the middle: this game is indeed art, and Nintendo was also right (or at least had a right) to decline.
There are three separate, but related, identities that we need to consider when we discuss this game: firstly, The Binding of Isaac as a piece of entertainment, followed by The Binding of Isaac as art, and finally The Binding of Isaac as a product.
We’ll start with looking at it as a piece of entertainment…or, even more simply, as a game.
The Binding of Isaac is a Flash-based game of survival and exploration, with a heavier emphasis on the former than the latter. Its obvious reference point is the original Legend of Zelda for the NES, which it references visually throughout the game, and from which it takes many of its gameplay features, such as the finding and using of items, the treasure boxes, and the periodic boss battles. It’s a love letter to that video game classic in the same way that Team Meat’s earlier Super Meat Boy paid homage to other such early masterworks as Super Mario Bros., Mega Man and Castlevania. Team Meat knows their medium’s history, and they are quite content to package affectionate — and lovingly monstrous — reactions and responses to them as new games.
While many gamers (and, indeed, people) see such grotesque subversion as a cheap method of getting attention for a game that might not otherwise have seen a large audience, the fact is that neither Super Meat Boy nor The Binding of Isaac stop there. While shock for shock’s sake is instantly wearisome, the over-the-top bloody nightmare of Super Meat Boy revealed itself to be a brilliant and well-designed journey through clever stages and creative boss encounters. And The Binding of Isaac transcends its scatological obsession with the grotesque and hideous to become a game about games, a game that isn’t so much about survival as it is about what it means to survive. It doesn’t just push boundaries…it questions deeply the experiences we have between the boundaries we already know. It raises questions we never thought to ask, and it answers them exceedingly well. It’s designed to look like The Legend of Zelda, but its intention is to remind you of other, very different, things from your childhood: trauma, confusion, loneliness, frustration, and that feeling we’ve all had at least once — and which we all can remember so vividly if we conjure up the memory again, or have it conjured up for us — that the world is a cruel place that never wanted us here to begin with.
As you can see, we’re already drifting into a discussion of The Binding of Isaac as art, so allow me to just get the following out of my system: many times I’ve seen people shrug and say something to the effect of, “Art is in the eye of the audience.” This is their way of saying that, hey, maybe they don’t understand something, but somebody else might, and to that hypothetical somebody else, it might be art. In other words, art is subjective. Not as an experience, but as a classification. That, my friends, is bunk.
I think it’s pretty clear in the case of most works of art that they are, in fact, works of art. What it communicates to you might be entirely different from what it communicates to me, and it may not communicate anything to either of us, but art as a classification is pretty easily sniffed out by anybody who makes a legitimate attempt to engage the material.
The strawman in this argument is always something along the lines of, “Oh, they could smear excrement all over the wall and call it art, but I wouldn’t.” In reality, very few examples of actual art would be anywhere near that obtuse. Somebody indeed might call some poop on a wall art, but they could also call a cow a vegetable. There’s no law stopping them from doing so…it’s just up to us as individuals to know that they’re incorrect, whether deliberately so or innocently confused. Either way, they’re wrong, and the cow doesn’t become a vegetable to one person and not another, simply because that’s what somebody said it was.
Art is recognizable because it has notable conflagration of themes. The components of the work of art, whatever the medium, mean something. The absence of other components also means something. The fact that they’re arranged in whatever way they’re arranged means something. Art, in other words, has meaning. We can argue all day about what that meaning is, but we shouldn’t be arguing over whether or not a meaning can be experienced.
The Binding of Isaac is obviously a deliberately crafted piece of art that is not only consistent unto itself (and therefore free of the nonsensical “shit on a wall” brush-off) but its themes are plentiful and overt. There’s no question that The Binding of Isaac has meaning. You may interpret it to be something other than I interpret it to be, but the foundation for interpretation has been laid, and sturdily.
Isaac, as a character, is a little boy who lives with his highly religious mother. The plot of the game sees poor Isaac fleeing through the basement to escape his mother, who believes she’s been called by God to re-enact the biblical account of Isaac and Abraham. Isaac fights monsters and his own psyche (often both at the same time) and uses his tears as projectiles. His sadness manifests itself as the pitiful creatures that he attacks, his mother-inherited disgust for his own physical form is reflected in the piles of dung and hideous representations of human body parts scattered around the dungeons. Between levels Isaac is haunted by a randomly summoned memory of himself being humiliated by his mother or his peers. Isaac is a damaged soul, and so is his mother. The difference is that Isaac is on the receiving end. He is powerless. He has no weapons, and he has no clothes. He seems doomed to fail. Due to the random nature of the game, he often is. There’s enough in that brief synopsis to unpack for weeks. This game has something to say. It may not always be sure what it wants to say at any given time, but that’s okay…we’re not always sure about what we’re hearing.
The strongest corollary for me here is Pink Floyd’s masterpiece concept album The Wall. The overbearing mother and the feeling of isolation and worldly entrapment are parallel themes between the two works, and just as Pink Floyd hooks unsuspecting listeners with the familiar rocking satisfaction of “Young Lust” or the anthemic sadness of “Comfortably Numb,” only to bombard them with far more complicated, despondent and often impenetrably central songs and cycles once they’re too far in to escape, The Binding of Isaac seduces that area of our brain that loved The Legend of Zelda and would love to play a gross parody of it…only to strip, disarm and humiliate us, and then force us to fight our way back toward the light…any light.
A work featuring such a questionable representation of God should certainly cause us to question the nature of God ourselves. No, not necessarily in real life, but within the universe of the piece of art. Does God exist there? Isaac’s mother thinks so…but Isaac, in the situation from which we are trying to free him, probably shouldn’t. What kind of God would really command this? Or is there no God? Or is there a God who was misinterpreted? Or perhaps a God who doesn’t even realize any of this is happening to one of His creatures.
The game seems to suggest, I’d argue, an absence of God. After all, one of the first differences Legend of Zelda fans will notice is the lack of a definite map. Every time the game begins, the levels are generated randomly. Bosses are mixed up, items are scrambled or missing, and sometimes a good portion of the areas will be inaccessible, because the game didn’t provide you with the key you needed before you found the door. The Legend of Zelda had a God. (Or, actually, three goddesses.) Things were reliable; Hyrule was a fixed commodity with an unseen force holding it all together. One room always led to another, and with enough time and practice, you could come to know what to expect. There was a heavenly constant that maybe couldn’t help you out of every jam, but could at least prevent the universe from reknitting itself beneath your feet, and leaving you in a completely different place from what you were logically led to expect.
The Binding of Isaac has no such presence. Every step is fraught with danger, and while you may stumble blindly into the next room to find a helpful upgrade, you’re just as likely — or, probably, more likely — to find a powerful foe you’re ill-equipped to conquer. You can’t rely on your memory, and Isaac can’t count on your familiarity with his predicament. Every time you play the game, the poor kid is cast into an entirely different world of entirely different chaos. And it’s brilliant.
I think people question games like The Binding of Isaac as art because they’re obscene. (It explains their shit-stained-wall fall-back, too.) There’s some bizarre sort of reluctance to allow obscenity and art — as classifications — to intermingle, and I’m not sure why that is. Something might be obscene, they feel, or something might be art, but it certainly can’t be both. It’s an almost — ahem — puritanical outlook, and it’s dreadfully incorrect. We’ll touch on each of these pieces again in the future, I’m sure, but take a look at the Holy Trinity of Obscenity as Art: Ulysses, Lolita and Gravity’s Rainbow. From masturbating in public to pedophilia to the sexual consumption of human excrement, these books can often be utterly repugnant. And yet there’s a beauty in that repugnance. It’s not the stories they tell, it’s how they’re told. It’s not the content, it’s the context. It’s not the detail, it’s the meaning. They represent masterful artists painting repulsive portraits in language we can’t help but feel moved by. The Binding of Isaac is moving in its helplessness, in its despair, and in its ruthless, relentless tragedy. It’s an unpleasant experience, but it’s beautifully executed.
It’s also, however — getting to our third point about The Binding of Isaac as a product — unsellable. At least that’s how Nintendo feels, and, as much as I respect the game, I have to agree with their decision. They are, after all, a business first and foremost. Publishers were reluctant to touch the novels listed above, and while it might seem fun to point at the obscenity trials that plagued the comparatively-tame Ulysses, they had a point, and that point was to accurately reflect the opinions of the other human beings who occupied the world around James Joyce. Yes, many of them found Ulysses to be gorgeous and important, but others found it to be disgusting and downright criminal.
Again, I’d argue that no matter what they felt about the book, they had no right to claim it wasn’t “art.” They did, however, have every right to boycott the publisher, and Joyce, and anyone else associated with the book. After all, as consumers, their strongest vote is always in their wallet. They could stonewall publication, protest shops that carried it, and burn extant copies in the street. That much was their right. They had no right to claim it wasn’t art, but they had every right to decide they’d rather not share a world with it.
The Binding of Isaac is a difficult to stomach game that both subverts and perverts one of the best known stories of the Bible. It skewers blind faith, it punishes a naked child, and it repulsively de-sanctifies the human body. It’s mean-spirited and cruel, determinedly evil and unapologetically crass.
But it’s art. And while art has every right to a spotlight at an exhibition for those who wish to see it, it does not have an inherent right to be offered as a digital download beside the classic NES games that inspired it. Nintendo has decided that it would rather not place The Binding of Isaac in a shop next to Super Mario Bros., and I can’t say I disagree with that decision, or that I’d have made it differently.
I think it’s a great game. I think that a lot of gamers will be missing out on it because of Nintendo’s decision. But I can’t begrudge them, because as a product, it’s a bonfire and a public relations nightmare waiting to happen. Ulysses found a distributor, and so has The Binding of Isaac. The distributors who turned them down turned them down for a reason, and I respect them for that. In neither case did the reason have anything to do with withholding a work of art from those who might want to experience it; it had to do with staying in business. And, as businesses, that wasn’t a totally ridiculous decision.
Nintendo just said they’d rather not sell it. They never said it wasn’t art.
FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.
