Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Reticence **** David Orr, Beautiful & Pointless ***1/2

Here's proof that I'm a cliché of an over-educated elitist: A month ago, on our way to see a jazz quartet at the opera house, I bought two short books while browsing at a bookstore: an experimental novel from the Belgian literature series (Reticence) and a guide to modern poetry (Beautiful & Pointless). The show was excellent, and I enjoyed both books, which I read over the Memorial Day weekend.

The unnamed narrator of Reticence travels to a small Mediterranean village with his toddler son. It's off-season, so not many people are there. For reasons he can't explain, he doesn't feel like visiting his friend Biaggi who lives in the village. Instead, he wanders the town, visits the beach and the port, and wonders why he hasn't met Biaggi since the village is so small. He concludes that Biaggi must be avoiding him and spying on him. Then he sees a dead cat floating in the harbor and he's sure Biaggi is behind it...

Reticence is all atmosphere: the overcast weather, the secluded town, the lighthouse on the island sweeping its beam across the harbor. The narrator describes recurring events in a way that seems mysterious, and almost as if time is running backwards. It is full of lovely imagery. The dead cat reminded me of Witold Gombrowicz's Cosmos, which also has a narrator interpreting random events as pointing to a larger meaning, and also features a dead cat. The story in Reticence wraps up without coming to much of a conclusion, leading me to a review that uses the title of the next book: beautiful and pointless.

My favorite thing in Beautiful & Pointless is Orr's characterization of reading poetry as being like traveling to a foreign country:

It's not necessarily helpful to talk about poetry as if it were a device to be assembled or a religious experience to be undergone. Rather, it would be useful to talk about poetry as if it were, for example, Belgium. ... Consider the way you'd be thinking about Belgium if you were planning a trip there. You might try to learn a few useful phrases, or read a little Belgian history, or thumb through a guidebook in search of museums, restaurants, flea markets, or promising-sounding bars. The important thing is that you'd know you were going to be confused, or at least occasionally at a loss, and you'd accept that confusion as part of the experience.

Orr has a pleasant and clever writing style. Most of the points he makes apply equally to other specialized art forms (like jazz or experimental novels) as they do to poetry, but that doesn't make them less true. He gives a surprising amount of attention to the business of being a poet, of creating art that very few people outside of your mostly academic circle pay any attention to. It's an enjoyable little book, but frankly didn't make me feel like reading more poetry.

On the other hand, I probably will read other books by Jean-Philippe Toussaint. 

Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books *** 1/2

Marilynne Robinson is an unlikely author for me to enjoy, given her deep Christian themes and my solid atheism. However, first in her novel Gilead and again in this collection of essays, Robinson conveys to me a strong, hopeful worldview that takes seriously the richness of the human spirit. ("...Lacking the terms of religion, essential things cannot be said.") The word that always comes to mind when I read Robinson's work is "grace": she is a careful and subtle thinker whose prose is littered with quiet surprises.

My favorite essays in this collection argue forcefully against reductionist views of human nature, those that treat us as "mere primates" or driven by "rattish self-interest" and "essential beastliness," and for acknowledging human consciousness as "properly an object of wonder." Her approach yields novel arguments for particular social policies, regarding education especially.

When I Was a Child isn't perfect. Her essays are not well structured; they tend to wander over their subject. A couple of them are narrowly focused on issues of purely Christian interest. In moments of weakness Robinson can get strident about modern American society. But overall the book provides an attractive and compelling peek into a way of thinking very different from mine.

Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet *** 1/2

The Flame Alphabet offers a variation on William Burroughs' concept of language as a virus. In this experimental novel, language becomes toxic, causing people to become seriously ill and even die. Children are immune, so many parents do everything they can to ameliorate the symptoms and stay with their kids. The narrator belongs to a religion called "the forest Jews" whose members worship in huts hidden in the woods and receive rabbinical transmissions through underground cables. Some people blame the forest Jews for the epidemic; others think they may hold the key to a cure.

As in Notable American Woman, Marcus includes a personal tenderness not usually found in avant-garde novels of this sort. Sam's relationship with his wife and daughter provides a solid, relate-able foundation for the wild story. I wasn't always sure what Marcus was getting at, but interesting ideas shone through.

Bernadette McDonald, Freedom Climbers ** 1/2

Freedom Climbers recounts the golden age of Polish mountaineering, the 1980s and 1990s when Polish climbers set the standard in Himalayan expedition climbing despite their desperate financial circumstances. McDonald focuses on a few colorful characters in particular, especially Jerzy Kukuczka and the controversial Wanda Rutkiewicz.

As the title suggests, McDonald is more interested in the politics of climbing than the adventure aspects. She spends more time on how the climbers finance their expeditions and finagle their permits than she does describing the mountains or the climbing challenges. She covers interpersonal politics as well: who chose whom for which expedition and how that person felt about it. All of that could be interesting, but her psychological insights tend to be pedestrian and certainly don't make up for the abbreviated mountaineering action.

Geoff Dyer, Zona ***

The full title is Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room. The film in question is Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, one of my all-time favorites. The book basically describes the film and the author's interpretation/reaction to it. Here's how it starts:

An empty bar, possibly not even open, with a single table, no bigger than a small round table, but higher, the sort you lean against--there are no stools--while you stand and drink. If floorboards could speak these look like they could tell a tale or two. ... It's the kind of bar men meet in prior to a bank job that is destined to go horribly wrong.

I enjoyed the book because I love the film and appreciate the thoughts of a fellow admirer. Dyer captures the richness and ambiguity of Stalker well. His interpretation of the events is similar enough to mine that I trust his judgement, but different enough to give me new twists to consider.

If you're not a Stalker fanatic, skip Zona. If you've never seen Stalker, remedy that as soon as possible.

Julian Smith, Crossing the Heart of Africa **

Crossing the Heart of Africa follows what should be a foolproof formula: the author retraces the route of an explorer from the golden age of African exploration. In this case, Smith (roughly) follows the route of Ewart Grogan, the first person to travel the length of Africa from south to north. Why did Grogan make this trek? Officially, it was to scope out potential telegraph or railway routes, but he really undertook it in order to prove himself worthy of a rich woman he hoped to marry. His modern counterpart Smith goes on his journey in advance of his own wedding.

The combination of romance and adventure should be a winner, but it's not. On the romantic side, Smith asserts the strength of Grogan's feelings for Gertrude, but we never see them illustrated. The story of Smith's own romance is mundane, full of episodes that are surely meaningful for Smith and his wife but not interesting for us. And despite the presence of lions, elephants, head-hunters, dense swamps, and genocidal tribes, the journeys lack any narrative drive to tie together the events. I didn't get a sense of Africa, or of Grogan's character, or of how the Africa of today relates to the Africa of 1899.

Dan Chaon, Among the Missing ***

Among the Missing is a short story collection from an author whose novels I have enjoyed. The stories were written earlier than the novels, and I think it shows: while they share many of the strengths (and themes) of the novels, they seem constrained by the conventions of the literary short story. I also think that Chaon's character development skills are better suited to the longer form -- unless that's just my preference for novels over stories showing.