A hackneyed theme... or is it?

"Vanitas"  Attributed to Juan de Valdés Leal

A hackneyed theme, but the expressions in the owl's eyes is worth a moment.
 
Rather than "vanitas", the theme I see represented here is melancholy and tragedy.  Considering our condition in this sphere, our aspirations are not vanity, but instead expressions of courage, faith, and an earnest character. When combined with gentle manners, stillness and keen thoughtfulness, our work is profound in every possible way.

Professor Hodges and his copy of Echoes

My International Authors colleague Horace Jeffery Hodges is considering where on his bookshelf to place his copy of Echoes, as well as considering where to place it in the cannon of world literature, or so it would seem.  Please click HERE.

Professor Hodges and daughter Sa-Rah

After Echoes

The manuscripts of volumes II and III  of the Invisible Tower Trilogy are in good form.  I am cautiously optimistic I will be able to have both books out--possibly published simultaneously--by mid-Summer, 2019.

Although I am not presently committed to publishing them at the same time, the "aesthetic dynamics" of the trilogy suggest to me that this could be a good idea.

Meanwhile, Emantaions 7 is at T-minus six weeks and counting...

Joyriding the Maelstrom: L. Sterns Newburg reviews Echoes

L. Sterns Newburg has posted an Amazon review of Echoes. Here it is:

Joyriding the Maelstrom

This book is quite a wild ride. Ostensibly a novel centered on a protagonist named Bronson Bodine, in fact it presents a kaleidoscope of images and scenes that function at one level as an episodic narrative that seems to perpetuate the tropes of speculative fiction, and in at the same time, in a Nabokovian manner, plays post-modern games that subvert those old tropes.

It is constructed out of narrative blocks that are apparently disjointed, but which cohere to form an image of what seems to be a mythic presentation of the modern technological hero -- but it keeps mutating from bloc to bloc, ultimately leaving us with questions about those tropes, and the world they represent in the kaleidoscopic fragments.

What ultimately gives the work its unity is Kaplan's prose, which is his most persuasive tool, and his rather Nabokovian sense of humor, which produces genuine mirth at the most unexpected places.

I do not know if the author intended the work to use the paste-up method of Burroughs and Ballard, but there are aspects of the book that remind me of that technique. However, the book is persistently and eloquently without verbal murkiness, and there seems nothing gratuitous or random about the work, even at its most poetically puzzling.

I look forward to seeing the next volume. I'd give this volume of the proposed work a 4 1/2, but I have hopes for the subsequent volumes.

Please click HERE to visit the US Amazon page for Echoes.

"Descent into the Maelstrom" by Harry Clark, 1919

Highbrow behavior, beliefs, and values

Review: M-A Berthier's Some Rumor of Strange Adventures

Some Rumor of Strange Adventures is challenging at many levels. For some readers, these challenges could represent a problem appreciating the novel. In most cases, however, the author’s extraordinary skills allow him to succeed, and regardless of how very close he comes to the edge of the aesthetic cliff. The book is set on the campus of a curious provincial university that somehow (miraculously, some would say) represents both a first-rate learning institution and a swamp of academic grotesques. The fictional Jason Gould University does not read like a contemporary institution—the professors seem far too competent in their fields, as well exhibiting an eclectic understanding of the humanities that seems like a survival of a by-gone era, if not actually the expression of author Berthier’s own broad reading and knowledge. A person who is as intellectually expansive as the professors in this novel would not be a professor, but rather a savant of some kind who would be unsuited for an academic life and academic politics; a person like Berthier, in fact, who, in addition to being a polyglot possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of European literature, is a PhD in Physics working “at a high level” in Silicon Valley. One wonders if Berthier is representing a liberal arts college of the 1960s or 70s (evidently drawing upon his own experience), and as well using the setting of a university to exercise his own vast learning and his own critical views—which are acerbic and, in the final analysis, aberrantly amusing. Now, I don’t wish to imply these characteristics in any way represent blemishes upon the surface of the story; nor is there anything anachronistic about the “old school” feel of Jason Gould University—the narrator makes it very clear that the story he tells describes events taking place thirty years before.

Another challenge readers will encounter is the protagonist--with the absurd name Nimrod Rothschild--who, in addition to coming from a criminal family, is himself a violent sociopath with “liberated” sexual mores, which moreover are as unbridled as his ability to rapidly absorb—and formulate opinions upon—the most abstruse bits of learning his professors can throw at him. This incongruous juxtaposition of narcissism and erudition is perhaps the author’s most striking and challenging achievement. Along these lines, bear in mind, too, that this is not a romance or a narratological battery of psychological conceptions. Indeed, it is a fiction rooted in that “modern” prospectus of the novel that the most boring prig should approve—Henry James, say, would admire this work for its formal mastery. Nevertheless, this novel exceeds its grounding in modernist aesthetics, and one wonders if, just maybe, Berthier is pulling—that is YANKING--the legs of the very same specialists he finds himself among, and whom he represents.

Enjoying a novel is a matter of taste; nevertheless, in the case of a true work of art, it is incumbent upon readers to set aside their aesthetic preferences and, come what may, allow an author to produce his effects. Peculiar intellectual combinations, anti-heroes, and transgressive scenarios are not always successful strategies, and sometimes they can fail miserably. In this novel, however, Berthier is able to achieve notable (dare I say “new”?) artistic effects, which will interest serious readers of cultured and intelligent literature.

Please click HERE to view the Amazon page.

A Colonial Adventure

Loire 130 hydroavion by Standa Hajek

Pauvre Pierrot (1892)

Modernist Dream, Redux

“We're in the business of designing buildings for businessmen who put up buildings for other businessmen.”

    --Architect Richard Roth, Jr., quoted in Meredith L. Clausen, The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream, p.185.

Echoes reviewed on Amazon France

The French Amazon page for Echoes has a new review of the book.  Here it is:

I really enjoyed Echoes. It recounts the deliriously slapstick adventures of Bronson Bodine, the Invisible Tower's top (not‒so‒secret) agent as he battles his (and possibly our) archenemies who are... Well, we're never quite sure who. Then again, we never really learn what the Invisible Tower is... Or the true motives of their enigmatic, less than human leader, Eddie Allan...

Echoes, I should point out, is the first volume of a trilogy.

What really scotched me was the vigour of author Carter Kaplan's imagination. Of course, there are influences: Bodine might be a second‒cousin‒not‒so‒far removed of Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius and, at one point, he (Bodine) gorily dissects a Lovecraftian monster ‒ as surgery is one of Bodine's many destructive enthusiasms, expect other characters to fall fodder to his scalpel. But Carter Kaplan transcends his influences by the incandescent quality of his prose, his wit, and a gift for satire the equal of anyone.

These odd, funny, non‒sequitur chapters make me think of elaborately crafted artefacts cast upon our shores from some fifth‒dimension tsunami... Well worth your picking up.

Please click HERE to view the page.

Please click HERE to visit the US Amazon page for Echoes.

Quick Report

I find if you work it right you can get energy out of editing. If you feel good about the work, it pulls you along. It really helps when the people you work with are excited about the project, too. 

Meanwhile, it is important not to get behind the "power curve". If you don't pace yourself, you can be like an airplane in a dive without sufficient speed or thrust to pull up. This Summer, I worked on my novel Echoes and Emanations 7. The novel was giving me energy but I was still putting energy into it, and also putting energy into E7, which calls upon a different set of creative energies. A novel is your own world, your own ontology.  On the other hand, a complex and sprawling collaboration like Emanations requires working with and around other peoples' energies and ontologies.  Not a difficult task, but one especially has to respect the "power curve" when working in this (the editorial and collaborative) mode.

Anyway... When school started end of August I was knackered. From August to mid-October, I was performing involved textual manipulations for Emanations 7--it has been necessary to format some of the text in PDF, and then paste the text (as jpeg images) into the master file. The manipulations meant I had to to "think backwards" as I prepared and pasted the images into the book. I'll leave that to peoples' imaginations. Suffice it to say that E7 will have some pretty intriguing stuff in it. The book will offer really strong writing and curious images, and also it will be an innovative object in its own right.

I am waiting for two illustrations, and then the interior of the book will be done.  The art work for the cover is ready, and the cover will come together quickly.  Stay tuned.

Bell 222 Haiku

Throbs rising in pitch
Shifting aircraft leaves the Earth
Leaping into ascent

Acceleration
Landing gear retract smartly
Thundering  image

Streamline enclosure
Circumscribed by whirring lift
Flashing through the sky

Might impress the Gnostics...

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein

Two perspective studies of the 21 cm Kanone Eisenbahnlafette

Hayabusa-2 Telemetry

The Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft has been busy investigating 162173 Ryugu, an asteroid in near-Earth orbit. To view telemetry from the spacecraft, please click HERE.

Mothra Haiku

Magic fairies sing

“Mothra, justify our cries!”

Shadow in the Moon

Day is born from night

A giant moth lays her egg

Promises are made

Tokyo Tower

Bracing the fibrous cocoon

Patient larva waits

Mothra will emerge

From a caterpillar dream

Cherry blossom time

Colors in the sky

Sweeping winds across the bay

Mothra’s curled wings spread

Dr. Serizawa Haiku

Godzilla must go
Dred oxygen destroyer
Serizawa weeps

Facts, data, a choice
Scientists humble themselves
Loss and departure

Echoes at the WAH Center Permanent Collection III Opening

In an October 15 posting, I advised Highbrow readers that the "Permanent Collection III" show at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center was opening this weekend.  My International Authors colleague Bienvenido Bañez, Jr. has sent along the following images of my new novel Echoes, which made it to the floor of the exhibition.

 To purchase Echoes, please click HERE.

Bestiary of Philosophical Conceptions: #179 Emergent Materialism