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Kristin #1
The Sea Came in at Midnight
God invented millennia for writers like Steve Erickson. Erickson's previous books have buried L.A.'s freeways in sand, set bonfires in Paris streets, and hitched along for the 1996 presidential campaign. In terms of madness, doom, and sheer human folly, what could possibly be left? Plenty, as it turns out. As The Sea Came in at Midnight opens, 17-year-old Kristin works in a Japanese "memory hotel," where despite her so-so looks she's in high demand. As an American, "Kristin represents the Western annihilation of ancient Japanese memory and therefore its master and possessor, a red bomb in one hand, a red bottle of soda pop in the other." After one of her best clients expires in the booth, she finally tells him her own story--which turns out to be quite a tale, involving escape from a millennial suicide cult and nude solitary confinement at the behest of a man known only as the Occupant. Add in the novel's other threads, which span 40 years and include a dream cartographer, a chaos-based calendar, time capsules, and both real and faked snuff films, and you have a heady mixture indeed. Fans of Erickson's unsettling, dreamlike style are legion, and they won't be disappointed in his latest take on the End Time, Blade Runner-style. But in a way, the millennium is beside the point; with a plot like this one, a mere flipping of digits seems so much apocalyptic icing on the cake. Combing a lyrical surrealism with a jittery, jump-cut technique, Erickson writes like the 21st-century heir of Pynchon and DeLillo. --Chloe Byrne
272 pages, Paperback
First published April 6, 1999
About the author
Steve Erickson
65 books439 followersSteve Erickson is the author of ten novels: Days Between Stations, Rubicon Beach, Tours of the Black Clock, Arc d'X, Amnesiascope, The Sea Came in at Midnight, Our Ecstatic Days, Zeroville, These Dreams of You and Shadowbahn. He also has written two books about American politics and popular culture, Leap Year and American Nomad. Numerous editions have been published in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Greek, Russian and Japanese. Over the years he has written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Conjunctions, Salon, the L.A. Weekly, the New York Times Magazine and other publications and journals, and his work has been widely anthologized. For twelve years he was editor and co-founder of the national literary journal Black Clock, and currently he is the film/television critic for Los Angeles magazine and teaches writing at the University of California, Riverside. He has received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and twice has been nominated for the National Magazine Award for criticism and commentary.
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November 6, 2019
this review is for all of the people "following my reviews." i don't know who you are. you don't message me or comment on my reviews or vote for them. i don't know what you are getting out of this relationship. the only thing i can think of is that you are waiting for me to make the first move and review something just for you. so here it is: read this book. this is one of the best books i have ever read, and it is out of print, (although its sequel is still in print—go figure) so you are going to have to work for it. and once you have it, you are going to have to work a little bit more to get everything out of it you possibly can. even though i am going through a phase with the teen and baby books, this is where my heart is. it's not a long book, but it is a deceptively intricate and layered book, which will unfold like one of those vagina dentatas and snap you up. it does for me what i thought House of Leaves was going to do for me, until that ended up being ultimately unsatisfying like a nicely-wrapped empty box. this book is the real deal. i can't give up plotpoints, because the real shivery cerebral excitement comes from slowly understanding its echoes and the seams. now stop following me and go read it.
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November 12, 2017
“…and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps…” Revelation 14:2
Apocalypse and mankind: some are waiting for it impatiently, some are terrified by it and some just don’t care. The Sea Came in at Midnight is an apocalyptic mystery rich in the elements of magic realism: “She understood, after all, that a dream is a memory of the future,” and it is sardonically dark.
There is no apocalypse without violence and atrocity. And there is no apocalypse without weirdoes and freaks.
There is no apocalypse without evil and bestial cruelty, sexual depravity, pornography and prostitution are the intrinsic parts of evil.
Apocalypse is always near but life always wins.
Apocalypse and mankind: some are waiting for it impatiently, some are terrified by it and some just don’t care. The Sea Came in at Midnight is an apocalyptic mystery rich in the elements of magic realism: “She understood, after all, that a dream is a memory of the future,” and it is sardonically dark.
There is no apocalypse without violence and atrocity. And there is no apocalypse without weirdoes and freaks.
Well, Kristin said to herself, I’ve now met a lifetime of psychos in a week and a half.
There is no apocalypse without evil and bestial cruelty, sexual depravity, pornography and prostitution are the intrinsic parts of evil.
It was evil. It was far beyond any quaint notions of mere depravity, far beyond anything even an apocalyptic age would comprehend, beyond a terrorist’s bomb or a genocidal rampage or a nuclear holocaust, because it was clearly a chair for an execution, and an execution performed for no other reason than to give pleasure to someone, somewhere, watching it.
Apocalypse is always near but life always wins.
January 29, 2011
i started reading this book for two reasons. first, i'd already read another of erickson's novels (tours of the black clock), and thought it was great, and second, i know it's one of karen's favorite books.
i have always read a lot. in fact my mother tells people that when i was born, i came out reading a book. i have no idea how many books i've read, but it's definitely over 5000. i read mostly fiction, mostly novels. i like the vast majority of the books that i read, because i know what kinds of books i like, so i read those. and there have been quite a few books that i have actually loved. but up until now, i've always been at least slightly disappointed in every book that i've read, because i've always been searching for the perfect novel and have never found one. until now. this is it.
so anybody, make that everybody, who appreciates brilliant writing should read this book. now. although i will warn you, you have to pay attention while reading it. for a long time there are a lot of threads that seem disconnected but everything comes together brilliantly by the end. take my word for it.
and one more thing...it's absolutely ridiculous that this book is not included in the 1001 books you must read before you die book. in fact it's a complete travesty.
i have always read a lot. in fact my mother tells people that when i was born, i came out reading a book. i have no idea how many books i've read, but it's definitely over 5000. i read mostly fiction, mostly novels. i like the vast majority of the books that i read, because i know what kinds of books i like, so i read those. and there have been quite a few books that i have actually loved. but up until now, i've always been at least slightly disappointed in every book that i've read, because i've always been searching for the perfect novel and have never found one. until now. this is it.
so anybody, make that everybody, who appreciates brilliant writing should read this book. now. although i will warn you, you have to pay attention while reading it. for a long time there are a lot of threads that seem disconnected but everything comes together brilliantly by the end. take my word for it.
and one more thing...it's absolutely ridiculous that this book is not included in the 1001 books you must read before you die book. in fact it's a complete travesty.
May 10, 2012
Naked:
Undisguised
Honest
Alone
To my regret, although not great regret because I despised this book within the first ten pages, Steve Erickson is:
point-misser:
Seventeen year old girl Kristin is described as precocious...
Precocious:
The author just tells you that they are special.
Oh yeah, so point-misser, as she tells it is missing the point of the thing and this is distinguished from not being able to see that there's a picture at all. (Kristin is not a point-misser because she misses the view. I still like that Erickson names his female characters the same as my sisters. Lauren was in Days Between Stations.)
Naked in this book is devoid of clothing. If The Sea Came In At Midnight had the heart that it should have had beating in its chest, instead of telling me it was, it would have been about being naked. Truly naked as in vulnerable as in you could see the heart turned out and the stomach that does or doesn't ingest, the veins and the spine. People facing each other as they really were.
Chaos, Occupied, Time-capsule, coincidence, fate, saving, apocalypse
Definition. The Sea Came In At Midnight is about definitions. Carl, the Occupied, hides in his time-capsule, behind his calendar of "the apocalypse" and those supposedly life altering events. Representation. That they would affect EVERYONE because of him was not surprising because-
Oh yeah, I forgot why to say why I despised this book within the first ten pages:
Besides her intelligence and empathy, being American also makes Kristin more valuable to the hotel's clients. As an American, she's considered by Japanese men a natural conduit of modern memory. As a daughter of America, Kristin represents the Western annihilation of ancient Japanese memory and therefore its master and possessor, a red bomb in one hand, a red bottle of soda pop in the other.
Fuck no! You can't get more Mariel definition of "You're not going to get consideration of the world and other people" than the fucking westernization of Japan (again! I hate this sooooo much. You could call it a personal pet hate of mine. I seriously wanted to cry when I saw again and again and again book blurbs and reviews dismissing beautiful books and people within as merely that in my all Japan, all the time period of 2011). Kristin works as a memory prostitute in Japan. Okay, so ALL PEOPLE in Japan cannot possibly have memories of their own and because the author TELLS me that Kristin is empathetic and intelligent (he says this a lot and I never once saw it) I'm supposed to believe that too. Egotistical author bullshit. Of course, Kristin is a rapist and a raper and the naked truths of this are also overlooked (everything about Kristin is overlooked just as she walks out of a mass suicide cult as overlooked). Maybe, I don't know, there is more to people than one thing. Maybe she's not super special and what she does and how she interacts matters more than clutching a fucking vessel!
Later on the book throws in some of Owen Pallett's second favorite fascist's loss when the emperor declares that he is in fact not God. Still, I call author bullshit. Yukio Mishima's The Sound of the Waves is one of the most simple and purest loves that I have ever known. I don't understand how anyone can read that and not get totally pissed off that we're supposed to swallow that other people aren't themselves because of a bomb! Yearning for romantic love, parental approval... Kristin pats herself on the back for this or that and it is a total lie. She wanted his approval. She thought about her mother. She wanted to be desired. Why wouldn't a Japanese person want the same things even if their culture changed? For fuck's sake cultures change! Countries are occupied. People are raped. Bombs are dropped. Earths shatter. If nothing else happens then the story is something else.
I'm back to naked now. Kristin answers an ad to The Occupants request for a yes girl. She is desperate, or so she says. I read Kristin as a doesn't want to make decisions girl more than anything else. When I was seventeen (longer) I stayed in a horrifically abusive situation because I was terrified of what the unknown would be like (I didn't believe that I could survive in it, or deserved better). Kristin, though, APPARENTLY is oh so intelligent and wise to shit because she carries some fucking books in her book bag. She is NAKED because she doesn't wear clothes while she waits for The Occupant to fuck her. Total control. She just manages to find his house again after she leaves even though she was blind folded.
In some shitty Murakami (my definition of this is Murakami books that are shitty as opposed to the Murakami books that I liked. I hated Dance, Dance, Dance and Kafka on the Shore) style the Occupant has magical semen that gives Kristin dreams. Kristin doesn't dream. Oh wait, she does dream. Kristin doesn't dream.
The Occupant does this you're just my hole on accounts that his wife left him and taking their baby with her. I don't give a shit if she did leave him with the baby. If a person will not give a shit about fucking a hostaged girl (room 7 not willing like Kristin. Bastard!) in a hotel room on a regular basis there is something else going on with him then if Steve Erickson tells me if he "saves" the wife or not, if he "knows" that the only thing to "save" him is their dead daughter and then she "left" him in his "sleep". Ask for forgiveness but don't listen for the answer.
His wife is precocious too (except for the teddy bear. Since when is looking for connection a separation from development? If your story is going to be out the whole wide world and being alone in it?). She speaks in definitions instead of expressions. She is naked without the meaning. Her job is as a stripper. If the father who defined her without understanding would come into the club and see her standing naked on the table top in her high heels all those meanings would become obsolete, the book says. If only this book had understood naked in the right way. It wasn't because they were exposed. You have to look at what you are seeing! If the father would not look then it didn't matter where she was or what she had on. Isn't it just so easy to throw around shit like this and say it would happen even if it doesn't feel true at all? I hate that so much. The writing was on her door from her father. Carl is labelled "Occupied" on his door. He writes a date on Kristin's arm. Labels are so easy, right? Huh.
I have a way of describing something that I don't belong in as "Secret world of the pretty people". For this book I would use it as someone just "knowing" something that I can't know. Like if someone is pretty then someone assumes their worth and place in life and that's it. Sex fantasy without a face. I do not belong in the secret world of the pretty people. I don't have the faith to believe in its existence and I'm glad that I don't. I would rather know people then look for some bench marks of worth. An author isn't going to go around saying this or that is just oh so important. Mariel is so fucking smart. She just KNOWS this is true. Sure, no need to earn any of it. It's just that easy.
Have you seen movies that cheat you out of the emotional pay off with some dumb montage scene so they can just tell you stuff happened instead of earning it with delicious build up that you can believe with your own senses? For an example take The Libertine from 2004. Johnny Depp plays John Wilmont, the Earl of Rochester. Samantha Morton (my favorite) is Elizabeth Barrett the first natural actress on the stage. Men always played women parts historically. She was to be a real woman as played by a man carving his no strings to hold me down puppet out of her wood made flesh. It could have been wonderful to see how he teaches her how to play real women on stage. It could have been so good to see how he connects with this women through their art. They montaged it. A series of scenes set to music of them working together and then bam we are told they are in love. A motherfucking cheat, I say. No way. You don't get to do that to me! (I would have loved to see John Malkovich in that part on stage. He originated the role, in fact.) 'Midnight' montage effects me again and again and I resent it like crazy. You don't get to do that to me! Carl/The Occupant realizes he misses his dead baby and that would have been the key to everything. Kristin just outgrows her nakedness. No! Not that I ever believed that her nudity was anything other than an outfit she could tell herself she wanted to wear. Did she expose herself to anyone? Did a soul or heart get opened up? No. Did I see the bond between Kristin and the Occupant that he couldn't control other than that they didn't touch each other at all, merely existed in the same house? Nope.
What is the meaninglessness of events? Or meaning of events between people if the people will not be them as they truly are? I don't care if Kristin hugs a time capsule and dreams. What are the dreams? If Erickson tells me that her mother didn't dream and that she didn't dream then how do they feel in the morning when they wake up? If the Occupant was haunted by the missing parts of his life that he couldn't go on then how did he get up if he couldn't depend on them to keep the hole empty?
It's possible that concepts don't do it for me. I said as much in my review of Crash that I wrote the other day (I repeat myself in my reviews all of the time. All I want is to be spoken to like a real person and not just spoon fed shit). At least Ballard had something to say about how people avoid human connections even if the coldness was not something I feel. I felt that Erickson avoided the connections and avoidances himself by missing the point of the nakedness. You know, too busy clothing with "meaning". It isn't chaos!
He had been vaguely aware recently of crossing into that realm of life when the memory of a thing is more magical than the thing itself, when the memory of the dream that didn't come true is more powerful than the life that did.
I have felt this too. Sighs. I could try to dream about Saki/Angie and Carl/Occupant and their baby. But then there are those scenes when he just doesn't tell her that he wants a baby. She refuses to tell him about her past and demands that he tell her his so that she has the upper hand. I don't feel upper hand. Why does that have to be true?
I like Steve Erickson, though. I admire Murakami too for taking chances. Sometimes I can feel outer space as well as the insides. It's just I think this is like one of the shitty Murakami books that had no meaning at all, to me, and was more of an excuse to jerk off to some idea that I didn't get (secret world of the pretty people?). A fake movie set house front of an inside. (At least Erickson didn't have nearly as much semen flying everywhere and all of those rock hard cocks.) (I like that Drew's review also said that about Murakami too because I had been thinking that before I read his review.)
It was almost a truth when he remembers that she might have left him because she finally saw a monster in bed beside her. A self portrait: monster. Too little, too montaged. I'm not a conceptual girl. I want to see things with my own eyes. I don't care if everyone is connected to each other or not. Erickson's Days Between Stations was also about fate and that thing. I read it like they were fucking themselves over by refusing to take a choice. I liked that book because I could read it like they were doing it to themselves. Too much trying to say it is something else. Chaos. Dreams. Coincidences. He didn't say "yes". He didn't go back to look for them. He didn't look at anyone else. Westernization of Japan! The world isn't fucking one person and whomever you decided was the key to yours (Angie and then the kid). It's not chaos if you stay in the hole. What's occupied about that? That's "vacant", if you ask me.
I only feel something about Carl's dreams of his daughter in theory. Why was the stupid calendar taking up so much time instead of that? Isn't it just point-missing? Why was it all about him?
I had written a review of this book before (I've already forgotten when) and deleted it because I didn't care about it. I wrote another review that I never posted that was despair and that wasn't the voice that I wanted to send out. So what if many goodreads friends whom I admire so much loved this book to pieces? I don't want to doubt myself and what speaks to me because then I've got nothing. It may well be that I'm wrong but these are still the only eyes I've got to rely on. I don't know if this review will mean anything to anyone. It does seem to be almost universally loved (and those who didn't love it didn't not love it for the same reasons as me, I don't think). Okay, that's enough. I'm so sick of me. I didn't reread any of the pro-reviews because I don't want to feel sad that I don't fit in the The Sea Came In At Midnight loving world.
I hate to feel left out and I feel that way all of the time. Why does the world have to be big and not about heart and stuff? Is at least recognizing naked something, when you see it, something? Being naked is hard.
Undisguised
Honest
Alone
To my regret, although not great regret because I despised this book within the first ten pages, Steve Erickson is:
point-misser:
Seventeen year old girl Kristin is described as precocious...
Precocious:
The author just tells you that they are special.
Oh yeah, so point-misser, as she tells it is missing the point of the thing and this is distinguished from not being able to see that there's a picture at all. (Kristin is not a point-misser because she misses the view. I still like that Erickson names his female characters the same as my sisters. Lauren was in Days Between Stations.)
Naked in this book is devoid of clothing. If The Sea Came In At Midnight had the heart that it should have had beating in its chest, instead of telling me it was, it would have been about being naked. Truly naked as in vulnerable as in you could see the heart turned out and the stomach that does or doesn't ingest, the veins and the spine. People facing each other as they really were.
Chaos, Occupied, Time-capsule, coincidence, fate, saving, apocalypse
Definition. The Sea Came In At Midnight is about definitions. Carl, the Occupied, hides in his time-capsule, behind his calendar of "the apocalypse" and those supposedly life altering events. Representation. That they would affect EVERYONE because of him was not surprising because-
Oh yeah, I forgot why to say why I despised this book within the first ten pages:
Besides her intelligence and empathy, being American also makes Kristin more valuable to the hotel's clients. As an American, she's considered by Japanese men a natural conduit of modern memory. As a daughter of America, Kristin represents the Western annihilation of ancient Japanese memory and therefore its master and possessor, a red bomb in one hand, a red bottle of soda pop in the other.
Fuck no! You can't get more Mariel definition of "You're not going to get consideration of the world and other people" than the fucking westernization of Japan (again! I hate this sooooo much. You could call it a personal pet hate of mine. I seriously wanted to cry when I saw again and again and again book blurbs and reviews dismissing beautiful books and people within as merely that in my all Japan, all the time period of 2011). Kristin works as a memory prostitute in Japan. Okay, so ALL PEOPLE in Japan cannot possibly have memories of their own and because the author TELLS me that Kristin is empathetic and intelligent (he says this a lot and I never once saw it) I'm supposed to believe that too. Egotistical author bullshit. Of course, Kristin is a rapist and a raper and the naked truths of this are also overlooked (everything about Kristin is overlooked just as she walks out of a mass suicide cult as overlooked). Maybe, I don't know, there is more to people than one thing. Maybe she's not super special and what she does and how she interacts matters more than clutching a fucking vessel!
Later on the book throws in some of Owen Pallett's second favorite fascist's loss when the emperor declares that he is in fact not God. Still, I call author bullshit. Yukio Mishima's The Sound of the Waves is one of the most simple and purest loves that I have ever known. I don't understand how anyone can read that and not get totally pissed off that we're supposed to swallow that other people aren't themselves because of a bomb! Yearning for romantic love, parental approval... Kristin pats herself on the back for this or that and it is a total lie. She wanted his approval. She thought about her mother. She wanted to be desired. Why wouldn't a Japanese person want the same things even if their culture changed? For fuck's sake cultures change! Countries are occupied. People are raped. Bombs are dropped. Earths shatter. If nothing else happens then the story is something else.
I'm back to naked now. Kristin answers an ad to The Occupants request for a yes girl. She is desperate, or so she says. I read Kristin as a doesn't want to make decisions girl more than anything else. When I was seventeen (longer) I stayed in a horrifically abusive situation because I was terrified of what the unknown would be like (I didn't believe that I could survive in it, or deserved better). Kristin, though, APPARENTLY is oh so intelligent and wise to shit because she carries some fucking books in her book bag. She is NAKED because she doesn't wear clothes while she waits for The Occupant to fuck her. Total control. She just manages to find his house again after she leaves even though she was blind folded.
In some shitty Murakami (my definition of this is Murakami books that are shitty as opposed to the Murakami books that I liked. I hated Dance, Dance, Dance and Kafka on the Shore) style the Occupant has magical semen that gives Kristin dreams. Kristin doesn't dream. Oh wait, she does dream. Kristin doesn't dream.
The Occupant does this you're just my hole on accounts that his wife left him and taking their baby with her. I don't give a shit if she did leave him with the baby. If a person will not give a shit about fucking a hostaged girl (room 7 not willing like Kristin. Bastard!) in a hotel room on a regular basis there is something else going on with him then if Steve Erickson tells me if he "saves" the wife or not, if he "knows" that the only thing to "save" him is their dead daughter and then she "left" him in his "sleep". Ask for forgiveness but don't listen for the answer.
His wife is precocious too (except for the teddy bear. Since when is looking for connection a separation from development? If your story is going to be out the whole wide world and being alone in it?). She speaks in definitions instead of expressions. She is naked without the meaning. Her job is as a stripper. If the father who defined her without understanding would come into the club and see her standing naked on the table top in her high heels all those meanings would become obsolete, the book says. If only this book had understood naked in the right way. It wasn't because they were exposed. You have to look at what you are seeing! If the father would not look then it didn't matter where she was or what she had on. Isn't it just so easy to throw around shit like this and say it would happen even if it doesn't feel true at all? I hate that so much. The writing was on her door from her father. Carl is labelled "Occupied" on his door. He writes a date on Kristin's arm. Labels are so easy, right? Huh.
I have a way of describing something that I don't belong in as "Secret world of the pretty people". For this book I would use it as someone just "knowing" something that I can't know. Like if someone is pretty then someone assumes their worth and place in life and that's it. Sex fantasy without a face. I do not belong in the secret world of the pretty people. I don't have the faith to believe in its existence and I'm glad that I don't. I would rather know people then look for some bench marks of worth. An author isn't going to go around saying this or that is just oh so important. Mariel is so fucking smart. She just KNOWS this is true. Sure, no need to earn any of it. It's just that easy.
Have you seen movies that cheat you out of the emotional pay off with some dumb montage scene so they can just tell you stuff happened instead of earning it with delicious build up that you can believe with your own senses? For an example take The Libertine from 2004. Johnny Depp plays John Wilmont, the Earl of Rochester. Samantha Morton (my favorite) is Elizabeth Barrett the first natural actress on the stage. Men always played women parts historically. She was to be a real woman as played by a man carving his no strings to hold me down puppet out of her wood made flesh. It could have been wonderful to see how he teaches her how to play real women on stage. It could have been so good to see how he connects with this women through their art. They montaged it. A series of scenes set to music of them working together and then bam we are told they are in love. A motherfucking cheat, I say. No way. You don't get to do that to me! (I would have loved to see John Malkovich in that part on stage. He originated the role, in fact.) 'Midnight' montage effects me again and again and I resent it like crazy. You don't get to do that to me! Carl/The Occupant realizes he misses his dead baby and that would have been the key to everything. Kristin just outgrows her nakedness. No! Not that I ever believed that her nudity was anything other than an outfit she could tell herself she wanted to wear. Did she expose herself to anyone? Did a soul or heart get opened up? No. Did I see the bond between Kristin and the Occupant that he couldn't control other than that they didn't touch each other at all, merely existed in the same house? Nope.
What is the meaninglessness of events? Or meaning of events between people if the people will not be them as they truly are? I don't care if Kristin hugs a time capsule and dreams. What are the dreams? If Erickson tells me that her mother didn't dream and that she didn't dream then how do they feel in the morning when they wake up? If the Occupant was haunted by the missing parts of his life that he couldn't go on then how did he get up if he couldn't depend on them to keep the hole empty?
It's possible that concepts don't do it for me. I said as much in my review of Crash that I wrote the other day (I repeat myself in my reviews all of the time. All I want is to be spoken to like a real person and not just spoon fed shit). At least Ballard had something to say about how people avoid human connections even if the coldness was not something I feel. I felt that Erickson avoided the connections and avoidances himself by missing the point of the nakedness. You know, too busy clothing with "meaning". It isn't chaos!
He had been vaguely aware recently of crossing into that realm of life when the memory of a thing is more magical than the thing itself, when the memory of the dream that didn't come true is more powerful than the life that did.
I have felt this too. Sighs. I could try to dream about Saki/Angie and Carl/Occupant and their baby. But then there are those scenes when he just doesn't tell her that he wants a baby. She refuses to tell him about her past and demands that he tell her his so that she has the upper hand. I don't feel upper hand. Why does that have to be true?
I like Steve Erickson, though. I admire Murakami too for taking chances. Sometimes I can feel outer space as well as the insides. It's just I think this is like one of the shitty Murakami books that had no meaning at all, to me, and was more of an excuse to jerk off to some idea that I didn't get (secret world of the pretty people?). A fake movie set house front of an inside. (At least Erickson didn't have nearly as much semen flying everywhere and all of those rock hard cocks.) (I like that Drew's review also said that about Murakami too because I had been thinking that before I read his review.)
It was almost a truth when he remembers that she might have left him because she finally saw a monster in bed beside her. A self portrait: monster. Too little, too montaged. I'm not a conceptual girl. I want to see things with my own eyes. I don't care if everyone is connected to each other or not. Erickson's Days Between Stations was also about fate and that thing. I read it like they were fucking themselves over by refusing to take a choice. I liked that book because I could read it like they were doing it to themselves. Too much trying to say it is something else. Chaos. Dreams. Coincidences. He didn't say "yes". He didn't go back to look for them. He didn't look at anyone else. Westernization of Japan! The world isn't fucking one person and whomever you decided was the key to yours (Angie and then the kid). It's not chaos if you stay in the hole. What's occupied about that? That's "vacant", if you ask me.
I only feel something about Carl's dreams of his daughter in theory. Why was the stupid calendar taking up so much time instead of that? Isn't it just point-missing? Why was it all about him?
I had written a review of this book before (I've already forgotten when) and deleted it because I didn't care about it. I wrote another review that I never posted that was despair and that wasn't the voice that I wanted to send out. So what if many goodreads friends whom I admire so much loved this book to pieces? I don't want to doubt myself and what speaks to me because then I've got nothing. It may well be that I'm wrong but these are still the only eyes I've got to rely on. I don't know if this review will mean anything to anyone. It does seem to be almost universally loved (and those who didn't love it didn't not love it for the same reasons as me, I don't think). Okay, that's enough. I'm so sick of me. I didn't reread any of the pro-reviews because I don't want to feel sad that I don't fit in the The Sea Came In At Midnight loving world.
I hate to feel left out and I feel that way all of the time. Why does the world have to be big and not about heart and stuff? Is at least recognizing naked something, when you see it, something? Being naked is hard.
November 24, 2012
Oops, looks like I'm the only goodreader who hated this pretentious male fantasy. How many more edgy, slightly SM or even completely SM relationships will we be presented with by male authors, in each of which the S part of the relationship is the man and the M part is the woman, and the man remains clothed and the woman is mostly unclothed, and the man is older and the woman considerably younger? By contrast with all this Blue Velvet, Last Tango in Paris, Secretary-style art, porn is blazingly honest.
February 19, 2010
On the final day of 999, an entire village of Armorican peasants awaited the imminent millennial ocean flood in dozens of wooden boats perched atop poles - an entire village but one. One thousand years later, another congerie of dazed believers march, lemming-like, to embrace the dawn of the third millenium by way of free-fall off of a thousand foot cliff on the California coast. In both cases, the chiliastic fever burned itself out unrealized: it will take a different sort - those with no faith whatsoever - to perceive that arbitrary measurements, etched by a desperate humanity, have little binding power upon the maelstromic movements of the universe's darkling rhythms.
Erickson's sixth book, a bloodstained paean to a century of chaos regnant, moves through its two-hundred and sixty pages with a kinetic, elegiac energy, a breathless sprint through blackened hallways in an unknown maze, where the brief illumination of intermittently kindled memory only serves to limn the unrecognized sameness of the labyrinthine route before temporarily blinding its travelers through the savage brilliance of its quenching. The story mirrors its subject matter with its sudden shifts in perspective, person, place, and time; yet all of Erickson's sprawling cast are connected to one another, sometimes by blood, sometimes by lust, but more often by an inability to dream - to taste the memory of the future - that is caused by their being touched by the cold, death-rattle finger of Chaos.
In The Sea Came in at Midnight, two dates hold a place of pivotal importance for the fixing point of its new millennium: the atomic blast that leveled Hiroshima, temporarily creating a earthen sibling for the sun, a flashpoint hell in which Japan's God was snuffed out and its memory-riven modernity began; and the Paris riots of May, 1968, in which a discordant horde of inexplicably angry, unfocussed students and workmen squared off against unexplainably angry, unfocussed authority. At the peak of the Parisian outburst - the prom dance of twentieth-century nihilism - a single gunshot rings out, a shot whose echo will ricochet insistently throughout the following decades, a whipcrack reminder of the nodal point of the true birth of the next thousand years. Wall-covering maps attempting to anchor the fluctuating vortices of apocalypse and those touched by the Kiss of Chaos; time-capsules, containing the most trivial and banal of personal objects, that exert an irresistible allure to a memory-starved populace; lurid peepshows upon the shadowy world of extreme pornography; and the return of Davenhall Island, Erickson's ghostly, barren Chinatown that functions as a dimensional sinkhole for the tortured ghosts that wander in and out of dreams even as time threshes backwards and forwards, are but part of the tour through the bizarre that makes up the novels main attraction.
This is my fourth book by the Los Angeles native, and probably the one with the strongest writing. Published in 1999, Erickson manages - through the surreal, hypnotic, and humorous textures of his syntactical painting, the eerie and sinister strangeness of the shimmering poetry that encompasses his style - to create fascinating characters inhabiting his miasmatic chimera of a world. All of them are spiritually wracked and sexually voracious - they ooze the confused decadence that seems to be the resinous aftermath of the belief in unbelief, the lack of faith in anything other than the self, that has come to define so much of the modern age. The introductory quotation by Kierkegaard, taken from Fear and Trembling, about the courage of Faith, is an exquisitely apt entranceway to the following darkness. If the book is dominated by the malignant, dispiriting, and corrosive effect of Chaos, of the omnipresent threat, or promise, of an apocalyptic wiping away of millennia of accumulated stain and grime, it is only because so many seek that Chaos with the fervent eagerness of a lover.
The father of one of the main characters, a Japanese-American girl named Saki-Angie, was in the habit of hanging one-word cardboard signs on his daughter's door to express what he perceived her current behavior and actions to reflect: the final one, left hanging in stark accusation year after year, was succinctly marked LOST. The same sign could be hung around the necks of virtually every inhabitant of The Sea Came in at Midnight as they struggle against the rising apocalyptic tide. Not until the realization of the futility of belief in death, the worship of annihilation, has taken hold, and the awareness has set in that such belief and worship should be aimed toward life - to seek the warmth of the womb and not the chill of the grave - will the sea's floodwaters finally begin to recede.
Erickson's sixth book, a bloodstained paean to a century of chaos regnant, moves through its two-hundred and sixty pages with a kinetic, elegiac energy, a breathless sprint through blackened hallways in an unknown maze, where the brief illumination of intermittently kindled memory only serves to limn the unrecognized sameness of the labyrinthine route before temporarily blinding its travelers through the savage brilliance of its quenching. The story mirrors its subject matter with its sudden shifts in perspective, person, place, and time; yet all of Erickson's sprawling cast are connected to one another, sometimes by blood, sometimes by lust, but more often by an inability to dream - to taste the memory of the future - that is caused by their being touched by the cold, death-rattle finger of Chaos.
In The Sea Came in at Midnight, two dates hold a place of pivotal importance for the fixing point of its new millennium: the atomic blast that leveled Hiroshima, temporarily creating a earthen sibling for the sun, a flashpoint hell in which Japan's God was snuffed out and its memory-riven modernity began; and the Paris riots of May, 1968, in which a discordant horde of inexplicably angry, unfocussed students and workmen squared off against unexplainably angry, unfocussed authority. At the peak of the Parisian outburst - the prom dance of twentieth-century nihilism - a single gunshot rings out, a shot whose echo will ricochet insistently throughout the following decades, a whipcrack reminder of the nodal point of the true birth of the next thousand years. Wall-covering maps attempting to anchor the fluctuating vortices of apocalypse and those touched by the Kiss of Chaos; time-capsules, containing the most trivial and banal of personal objects, that exert an irresistible allure to a memory-starved populace; lurid peepshows upon the shadowy world of extreme pornography; and the return of Davenhall Island, Erickson's ghostly, barren Chinatown that functions as a dimensional sinkhole for the tortured ghosts that wander in and out of dreams even as time threshes backwards and forwards, are but part of the tour through the bizarre that makes up the novels main attraction.
This is my fourth book by the Los Angeles native, and probably the one with the strongest writing. Published in 1999, Erickson manages - through the surreal, hypnotic, and humorous textures of his syntactical painting, the eerie and sinister strangeness of the shimmering poetry that encompasses his style - to create fascinating characters inhabiting his miasmatic chimera of a world. All of them are spiritually wracked and sexually voracious - they ooze the confused decadence that seems to be the resinous aftermath of the belief in unbelief, the lack of faith in anything other than the self, that has come to define so much of the modern age. The introductory quotation by Kierkegaard, taken from Fear and Trembling, about the courage of Faith, is an exquisitely apt entranceway to the following darkness. If the book is dominated by the malignant, dispiriting, and corrosive effect of Chaos, of the omnipresent threat, or promise, of an apocalyptic wiping away of millennia of accumulated stain and grime, it is only because so many seek that Chaos with the fervent eagerness of a lover.
The father of one of the main characters, a Japanese-American girl named Saki-Angie, was in the habit of hanging one-word cardboard signs on his daughter's door to express what he perceived her current behavior and actions to reflect: the final one, left hanging in stark accusation year after year, was succinctly marked LOST. The same sign could be hung around the necks of virtually every inhabitant of The Sea Came in at Midnight as they struggle against the rising apocalyptic tide. Not until the realization of the futility of belief in death, the worship of annihilation, has taken hold, and the awareness has set in that such belief and worship should be aimed toward life - to seek the warmth of the womb and not the chill of the grave - will the sea's floodwaters finally begin to recede.
January 31, 2012
Like House of Leaves, but NOT good. Well, it's pretty accomplished, I guess. But I had serious problems with it. Where to begin?
When you have several different narrators, they're usually different characters with distinct voices. In this, Erickson has three female narrators (Kristin, Angie, and Louise) who are all pretty similar: they're hardened, secretive, empowered loners who can take care of themselves except when there's literally any guy around. When there's a guy around, they all have a weird submissive streak that, to be honest, totally reeks of authorial fantasy. And on a related note, I realize this is an alternate universe to some small degree, but since when do all women go around nymphomaniacally raping men in their sleep? I'm not buying it.
I was also promised Swiss-watch levels of complexity in the plot. Apparently, though, they don't make Swiss watches like they used to. A. is actually B.'s father? C. is actually D.'s daughter? Now, I'm no real writer, and I don't mean to belittle Erickson's accomplishment as a whole, but I do think pulling out conspicuous coincidental meetings between long-lost relations is a pretty cheap trick, most often seen in canonical (and also lesser) fantasy novels. And Star Wars. Not to mention the fact that all these little seemingly-random meetings basically undermine what I'd understood to be the central premise of the book, which I won't spoil, although really, it shouldn't even matter.
For me at least, there are two ways a book can be difficult. The first is in its language, e.g. Ulysses or The Recognitions. It's pretty difficult to read pages and pages, but if you can understand each individual page, you can understand the whole book. This is usually rewarding. The second is in ideas, e.g. Kafka on the Shore. You can be reading along just fine, understanding what's going on, but at the end, you say, well, that was kind of an interesting story, but what was it actually about? This is often not as rewarding, and T.S.C.i.a.M is totally guilty of it. Like I said above, the theme or premise that was being harped on for the first third of the book seems to be totally dismantled by the end, and doesn't get replaced by anything. And what even happens at the end is anyone's guess.
So why did I even read this? For the sordid descriptions of sexual deviance (the world's first snuff film, whorehouses featuring blindfolded semiconscious women dangling from hooks, Stockholm-syndrome exhibitionism, etc. ad naus.)? For the cold cerebral challenge of interpreting a chaos-based calendar whose very premise is a contradiction in terms (if chaos determines everything, what good is trying to keep track of anything?)? For the cheap thrills associated with deducing a relationship between two minor characters that will probably be stated explicitly later on anyway?
I don't know. You tell me.
When you have several different narrators, they're usually different characters with distinct voices. In this, Erickson has three female narrators (Kristin, Angie, and Louise) who are all pretty similar: they're hardened, secretive, empowered loners who can take care of themselves except when there's literally any guy around. When there's a guy around, they all have a weird submissive streak that, to be honest, totally reeks of authorial fantasy. And on a related note, I realize this is an alternate universe to some small degree, but since when do all women go around nymphomaniacally raping men in their sleep? I'm not buying it.
I was also promised Swiss-watch levels of complexity in the plot. Apparently, though, they don't make Swiss watches like they used to. A. is actually B.'s father? C. is actually D.'s daughter? Now, I'm no real writer, and I don't mean to belittle Erickson's accomplishment as a whole, but I do think pulling out conspicuous coincidental meetings between long-lost relations is a pretty cheap trick, most often seen in canonical (and also lesser) fantasy novels. And Star Wars. Not to mention the fact that all these little seemingly-random meetings basically undermine what I'd understood to be the central premise of the book, which I won't spoil, although really, it shouldn't even matter.
For me at least, there are two ways a book can be difficult. The first is in its language, e.g. Ulysses or The Recognitions. It's pretty difficult to read pages and pages, but if you can understand each individual page, you can understand the whole book. This is usually rewarding. The second is in ideas, e.g. Kafka on the Shore. You can be reading along just fine, understanding what's going on, but at the end, you say, well, that was kind of an interesting story, but what was it actually about? This is often not as rewarding, and T.S.C.i.a.M is totally guilty of it. Like I said above, the theme or premise that was being harped on for the first third of the book seems to be totally dismantled by the end, and doesn't get replaced by anything. And what even happens at the end is anyone's guess.
So why did I even read this? For the sordid descriptions of sexual deviance (the world's first snuff film, whorehouses featuring blindfolded semiconscious women dangling from hooks, Stockholm-syndrome exhibitionism, etc. ad naus.)? For the cold cerebral challenge of interpreting a chaos-based calendar whose very premise is a contradiction in terms (if chaos determines everything, what good is trying to keep track of anything?)? For the cheap thrills associated with deducing a relationship between two minor characters that will probably be stated explicitly later on anyway?
I don't know. You tell me.
November 13, 2022
"Things never happen in slow motion like people say. Things always happen much faster than people can know or comprehend. what happens in slow motion is the memory of the thing later; it's surprisingly vivid, rendered in more detail than seemed possible to register at the time."
Llegué a Steve Erickson gracias a la Editorial Pálido Fuego, a los que nunca podré agradecerles lo suficiente que en su momento me recomendaran "Dias entre estaciones" (sobre todo), un punto de inflexión que llegó en el momento adecuado porque la cabeza me estalló en el mejor sentido. Cuando comienzo una novela de Erickson enseguida siento como si me encontrara en casa porque hay una serie de conceptos recurrentes que se repiten en sus novelas, por lo menos en las que he leído hasta ahora y cuando esos elementos empiezan a aparecer, la inmersión es inmediata.
"The Los Angeles he drives through now routinely anticipates apocalypse the way other cities routinely anticipate nightfall; no one is a citizen of Los Angeles, in Los Angeles everyone is a citizen of his dreams, and if he doesn't have any dreams he's a nomad."
Por ejemplo, no es que sitúe sus historias en un mundo fantástico pero la atmósfera con la que impregna su universo tiene un tono medio irreal y onírico durante el cual el lector se llega a preguntar si realmente lo que cuenta podría llegar a existir, y yo diría que por muy extraordinario que sea lo que esté contando, la base, la esencia, se centra en las emociones que giran en torno al deseo, el amor y el sexo, y esto es muy real; sus personajes suelen estar algo perdidos y es esta continua búsqueda lo que da a sus historias un tono entre enigmático y misterioso. Por otra parte hay conceptos recurrentes que se repiten una y otra vez en sus historias: las estaciones de tren (en París sobre todo) y los trenes que sirven como una metáfora quizá para que algún personaje pueda pasar a una dimensión desconocida, a ese otro punto de inflexión en el que dará un cambio fundamental que le hará avanzar a ese otro nivel de su vida. Otro elemento recurrente es su juego con las franjas temporales, que pueden parecer saltos en el tiempo pero no son más que una excusa para que se vayan cruzando personajes esenciales, del pasado y del presente, algunos se encuentran y otros se cruzan casi sin reconocerse aunque se hayan pasado media vida pensando el uno en el otro…, se cruzan pero no se reconocen, o se encuentran y siguen sus caminos por separado. La verdad es que me encantan estos elementos que se repiten continuamente en sus novelas, la localidad francesa de Wyndeaux o la continua mención al color azul, representado icónicamene en el abrigo azul, un abrigo que cuando aparece, el lector familiarizado con Erickson, ya sabe que se encuentra en una novela tipicamente ericksiana.
"Life, she says, life's really just a process of trading on your most valuable commodity, isn't It? Intelligence, strenght, talent, charisma, beauty…"
En las novelas de Erickson esta atmósfera entre surrealista y onírica convierte algunos momentos en ráfagas elípticas donde el lector tiene que terminar de ensamblar una escena, y eso es gracias a que Erickson construye momentos, con los que el lector se podría identificar perfectamente con algún personaje, así que de esta forma, le da al lector las herramientas para que termine de encajar alguna escena con su propia experiencia o su vida, y como ya comenté más arriba, esto puede ser debido sobre todo a que la base de sus historias se centran sobre todo en la búsqueda del ser humano de algo que se le puede escapar, llámese soledad, o el amor o quizá la conexión que tenemos los unos con los otros. Esta es la cuarta novela de Erickson que leo, y es la que más me ha recordado a mi favorita “Dias entre estaciones”, salvando las distancias. Aquí tenemos seis o siete personajes esenciales que se cruzan o no, pero todos están conectados de alguna forma en una especie de puzzle coral, algunos de ellos llevan toda la vida buscándose pero ¿se cruzarán??
"The clients of the hotel often establish relationships with certain girls in particular. Unlike the surrounding love hotels of the neighborhood, this is a memory hotel, where girls and clients trade in memory rather than sex, and by nature, memory is more monogamous than desire."
"The sea came in at midnight" comienza en Tokyo donde Kristin, la protagonista, trabaja en un hotel de la memoria: aquí los hombres pagan para contar sus vidas a mujeres jóvenes; es una manera de recuperar o revivir de alguna forma sus recuerdos, un hotel diseñado para abordar la decadencia de la memoria colectiva japonesa después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Kristin ha hecho un trato con uno de los clientes, un anciano médico japonés, le había prometido que una vez que el terminara de contar sus recuerdos, ella aunque solo tiene dieciocho años, le contaría su vida. El cliente muere aquella misma noche esperándola en la cabina de la memoria, y cuando Kristin lo encuentra en la cabina, decide cumplir su promesa y allí, comienza a contarle su vida a un ser inerte:
"She remembers how she promised that when he finished telling his story, she would tell him hers; and for alll the promises of his life that were broken, none more devastating than the ones he made to himself, she can't bear to break this last one."
Kristin empieza su historia en el momento en que se va de casa entre otras cosas por su incapacidad para soñar: "Since I've never had a dream, one night I woke and went looking for one.” Se une a una secta que cuando es consciente que planea un suicidio en masa justo al final del año 1999, se vuelve a convertir de nuevo en fugitiva cuando se niega a saltar por el acantilado. A partir de esta huida, la vida de Kristin pasa a una aventura de supervivencia hasta que responde a un ambiguo anuncio de un periódico, interpuesto por un hombre que se hace llamar El Ocupante.
"So there I am standing by the road somewhere north of Sacramento, with only the clothes on my back and my books, Brontë and Cendrars and Kierkegaard in a cloth bag..".
El momento en que una desesperada Kristin se cita con El Ocupante una noche de lluvia para conseguir el empleo del anuncio, es uno de los momentos más atmósfericos e inquietantes que he podido leer en cualquier novela de Erickson. Kristin comenzará a vivir con el Ocupante ¿prisionera? mientras el trabaja obsesivamente en un calendario milenario que vaticinará una especie de apocalipsis en un futuro cercano. Durante el encierro de Kristin su relación con el Ocupante va poco a poco transformándose en una especie de necesidad mutua. La casa contiene una habitación secreta, al más puro estilo David Lynch, donde Kristin tiene prohibida la entrada.
"She notes that the number written on her body has now almost completely faded. It's located right above her hip and it says 29.4.85. to anyone else seeing this number on Kristin's body, it might be a secret a code or a combination. It's even something of a mystery to Kristin. The man who wrote it there in a indelible black marker ink two months ago didn't know what it meant either..."
[...]
"The terrible sounds that sometimes came from the secret room, the crashing and trashing like a trapped animal, were always left behind, locked away, when he emerged. When he emerged, all he brought with him was the look in his eyes, anguish invaded by fury..."
[...]
”..as though the pain radiating from behind his hot blue eyes propelled him through the day and his work,
Sometimes he would lie on the sofa or his bed holding his head on his hands, his unblinking eyes focused straight ahead of him as though he was staring into a piece of blue sky lodged in the ceiling above waiting to catch a sight of something."
Toda esta sección durante la cual convive con el Ocupante en su casa, es fascinante por todo lo que contiene de obsesivo, inquietante y turbador sobre todo por el misterio que envuelve al personaje del Ocupante, que colocó el anuncio para llenar un vacío dejado por su esposa, Angie, una bailarina de striptease oriental. A partir de aquí la novela se irá abriendo como una abanico y se revierte en una novela coral, porque pasará de la historia de Kristin, a la historia del Ocupante,
"I waited for her the next day and the day after that, and the day after that...I drove to the desert. I drove to the sea. I drove to México. I drove to the Mojave. I drove to Las Vegas. I drove to Monumento Valley. I drove from Santa Fe to the Continental Divide. I drove from the Rockies to dormant Canadian volcanoes..."
y a su vez él enlazará con la historia de Angie, la bailarina de striptease,
"He rhapsodized about her smile more than her body, and seemed to mean it, and she was still too young to understand that men always love a woman's smile more than her body, even if they neither confess nor know it."
y conoceremos a Louise y Mitch, realizadores de peliculas porno reconvirtiéndose luego en hacedores de snuff movies, para centrarse en Louise Blumenthal y su obsesión por su pasado:
"So Louise became something more profound than tormented: she became haunted. Having trafficked in the sort of memories people had spent thousands of years trying to forget, and the sort of dreams they had spend thousands of years trying to awake from, she had wandered at will and without accountability on the apocalyptic landscape of the imagination."
y llegaremos hasta Carl, el experto en mapas, que acabará haciendo un mapa del Amor No Correspondido:
“Now that Carl thinks about it, it was the Map of Unrequited Love that got him fired. It was his most subjectively conceived and tenaciously renedered cartographic triumph, inspired by a secretive Asian Girl who dumped him at the time; he was around twentysix, he cant even remember her name.”
El cambio de perspectiva de un personaje a otro es uno de los elementos típicos en una novela de Steve Erickson, los narradores van cambiando, y el puzzle que en un principio parece confuso, va delineándose de tal forma que las conexiones entre personajes se van ensamblando a través del espacio y del tiempo. Hay personajes que buscan la redención, otros buscan escapar a sus sueños y otros como Kristin, buscan poder soñar: "She understood, after all, that a dream is a memory of the future."
"I haven´t dreamed about it once, that's rather stranger, isn't it? In fact, I haven't had any dreams at all since it happened. It isn't like when I wake I've forgotten my dreams, even when you forget your dreams, you still have a feeling of having dreamed, don't you? You still know you've dreamed.·"
[...]
"She wanted desperately to sleep, but she also wanted to avoid sleep at all cost. She kept waking herself, until that evening she couldn't keep awake anymore. Then, asleep in the chair, she had the dreams of Marie from Minneapolis,...
She dreamed of Marie from Minneapolis and woke weeping; she continued to have the dreams on and off for the next year..."
En definitiva, que Steve Erickson ha vuelto a fascinarme con sus personajes frágiles, su mundo único y alternativo, que por otra parte no es muy diferente del que vivimos, y con esta forma particular que tiene de convertir su texto en una imagen que se queda ya grabada. Los personajes aunque conecten, aunque se amen, siempre están alejados, pero hay momentos fugaces, ráfagas temporales en los que parecen vivir momentos de felicidad pero es ilusorio porque volverán a alejarse después de cruzarse. "The Sea came in at midnight" es una novela profundamente poética sobre la búsqueda de identidad, sobre los sueños, sobre la memoria que fabricamos, pero sobre todo es otra historia de personajes perdidos que en un mundo caótico a veces consiguen encontrar su propio orden. Maravilla.
"He had been vaguely aware recently of crossing into the realm of life when the memory of a thing is more magical than the thing itself, when the memory of the dream that didn't come true is more powerful than the life that did."
[...]
...because one must live with the death of a dream afterward in a way that one never has to live with the death of one's own' life, the death of a reason for living..."
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...
Llegué a Steve Erickson gracias a la Editorial Pálido Fuego, a los que nunca podré agradecerles lo suficiente que en su momento me recomendaran "Dias entre estaciones" (sobre todo), un punto de inflexión que llegó en el momento adecuado porque la cabeza me estalló en el mejor sentido. Cuando comienzo una novela de Erickson enseguida siento como si me encontrara en casa porque hay una serie de conceptos recurrentes que se repiten en sus novelas, por lo menos en las que he leído hasta ahora y cuando esos elementos empiezan a aparecer, la inmersión es inmediata.
"The Los Angeles he drives through now routinely anticipates apocalypse the way other cities routinely anticipate nightfall; no one is a citizen of Los Angeles, in Los Angeles everyone is a citizen of his dreams, and if he doesn't have any dreams he's a nomad."
Por ejemplo, no es que sitúe sus historias en un mundo fantástico pero la atmósfera con la que impregna su universo tiene un tono medio irreal y onírico durante el cual el lector se llega a preguntar si realmente lo que cuenta podría llegar a existir, y yo diría que por muy extraordinario que sea lo que esté contando, la base, la esencia, se centra en las emociones que giran en torno al deseo, el amor y el sexo, y esto es muy real; sus personajes suelen estar algo perdidos y es esta continua búsqueda lo que da a sus historias un tono entre enigmático y misterioso. Por otra parte hay conceptos recurrentes que se repiten una y otra vez en sus historias: las estaciones de tren (en París sobre todo) y los trenes que sirven como una metáfora quizá para que algún personaje pueda pasar a una dimensión desconocida, a ese otro punto de inflexión en el que dará un cambio fundamental que le hará avanzar a ese otro nivel de su vida. Otro elemento recurrente es su juego con las franjas temporales, que pueden parecer saltos en el tiempo pero no son más que una excusa para que se vayan cruzando personajes esenciales, del pasado y del presente, algunos se encuentran y otros se cruzan casi sin reconocerse aunque se hayan pasado media vida pensando el uno en el otro…, se cruzan pero no se reconocen, o se encuentran y siguen sus caminos por separado. La verdad es que me encantan estos elementos que se repiten continuamente en sus novelas, la localidad francesa de Wyndeaux o la continua mención al color azul, representado icónicamene en el abrigo azul, un abrigo que cuando aparece, el lector familiarizado con Erickson, ya sabe que se encuentra en una novela tipicamente ericksiana.
"Life, she says, life's really just a process of trading on your most valuable commodity, isn't It? Intelligence, strenght, talent, charisma, beauty…"
En las novelas de Erickson esta atmósfera entre surrealista y onírica convierte algunos momentos en ráfagas elípticas donde el lector tiene que terminar de ensamblar una escena, y eso es gracias a que Erickson construye momentos, con los que el lector se podría identificar perfectamente con algún personaje, así que de esta forma, le da al lector las herramientas para que termine de encajar alguna escena con su propia experiencia o su vida, y como ya comenté más arriba, esto puede ser debido sobre todo a que la base de sus historias se centran sobre todo en la búsqueda del ser humano de algo que se le puede escapar, llámese soledad, o el amor o quizá la conexión que tenemos los unos con los otros. Esta es la cuarta novela de Erickson que leo, y es la que más me ha recordado a mi favorita “Dias entre estaciones”, salvando las distancias. Aquí tenemos seis o siete personajes esenciales que se cruzan o no, pero todos están conectados de alguna forma en una especie de puzzle coral, algunos de ellos llevan toda la vida buscándose pero ¿se cruzarán??
"The clients of the hotel often establish relationships with certain girls in particular. Unlike the surrounding love hotels of the neighborhood, this is a memory hotel, where girls and clients trade in memory rather than sex, and by nature, memory is more monogamous than desire."
"The sea came in at midnight" comienza en Tokyo donde Kristin, la protagonista, trabaja en un hotel de la memoria: aquí los hombres pagan para contar sus vidas a mujeres jóvenes; es una manera de recuperar o revivir de alguna forma sus recuerdos, un hotel diseñado para abordar la decadencia de la memoria colectiva japonesa después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Kristin ha hecho un trato con uno de los clientes, un anciano médico japonés, le había prometido que una vez que el terminara de contar sus recuerdos, ella aunque solo tiene dieciocho años, le contaría su vida. El cliente muere aquella misma noche esperándola en la cabina de la memoria, y cuando Kristin lo encuentra en la cabina, decide cumplir su promesa y allí, comienza a contarle su vida a un ser inerte:
"She remembers how she promised that when he finished telling his story, she would tell him hers; and for alll the promises of his life that were broken, none more devastating than the ones he made to himself, she can't bear to break this last one."
Kristin empieza su historia en el momento en que se va de casa entre otras cosas por su incapacidad para soñar: "Since I've never had a dream, one night I woke and went looking for one.” Se une a una secta que cuando es consciente que planea un suicidio en masa justo al final del año 1999, se vuelve a convertir de nuevo en fugitiva cuando se niega a saltar por el acantilado. A partir de esta huida, la vida de Kristin pasa a una aventura de supervivencia hasta que responde a un ambiguo anuncio de un periódico, interpuesto por un hombre que se hace llamar El Ocupante.
"So there I am standing by the road somewhere north of Sacramento, with only the clothes on my back and my books, Brontë and Cendrars and Kierkegaard in a cloth bag..".
El momento en que una desesperada Kristin se cita con El Ocupante una noche de lluvia para conseguir el empleo del anuncio, es uno de los momentos más atmósfericos e inquietantes que he podido leer en cualquier novela de Erickson. Kristin comenzará a vivir con el Ocupante ¿prisionera? mientras el trabaja obsesivamente en un calendario milenario que vaticinará una especie de apocalipsis en un futuro cercano. Durante el encierro de Kristin su relación con el Ocupante va poco a poco transformándose en una especie de necesidad mutua. La casa contiene una habitación secreta, al más puro estilo David Lynch, donde Kristin tiene prohibida la entrada.
"She notes that the number written on her body has now almost completely faded. It's located right above her hip and it says 29.4.85. to anyone else seeing this number on Kristin's body, it might be a secret a code or a combination. It's even something of a mystery to Kristin. The man who wrote it there in a indelible black marker ink two months ago didn't know what it meant either..."
[...]
"The terrible sounds that sometimes came from the secret room, the crashing and trashing like a trapped animal, were always left behind, locked away, when he emerged. When he emerged, all he brought with him was the look in his eyes, anguish invaded by fury..."
[...]
”..as though the pain radiating from behind his hot blue eyes propelled him through the day and his work,
Sometimes he would lie on the sofa or his bed holding his head on his hands, his unblinking eyes focused straight ahead of him as though he was staring into a piece of blue sky lodged in the ceiling above waiting to catch a sight of something."
Toda esta sección durante la cual convive con el Ocupante en su casa, es fascinante por todo lo que contiene de obsesivo, inquietante y turbador sobre todo por el misterio que envuelve al personaje del Ocupante, que colocó el anuncio para llenar un vacío dejado por su esposa, Angie, una bailarina de striptease oriental. A partir de aquí la novela se irá abriendo como una abanico y se revierte en una novela coral, porque pasará de la historia de Kristin, a la historia del Ocupante,
"I waited for her the next day and the day after that, and the day after that...I drove to the desert. I drove to the sea. I drove to México. I drove to the Mojave. I drove to Las Vegas. I drove to Monumento Valley. I drove from Santa Fe to the Continental Divide. I drove from the Rockies to dormant Canadian volcanoes..."
y a su vez él enlazará con la historia de Angie, la bailarina de striptease,
"He rhapsodized about her smile more than her body, and seemed to mean it, and she was still too young to understand that men always love a woman's smile more than her body, even if they neither confess nor know it."
y conoceremos a Louise y Mitch, realizadores de peliculas porno reconvirtiéndose luego en hacedores de snuff movies, para centrarse en Louise Blumenthal y su obsesión por su pasado:
"So Louise became something more profound than tormented: she became haunted. Having trafficked in the sort of memories people had spent thousands of years trying to forget, and the sort of dreams they had spend thousands of years trying to awake from, she had wandered at will and without accountability on the apocalyptic landscape of the imagination."
y llegaremos hasta Carl, el experto en mapas, que acabará haciendo un mapa del Amor No Correspondido:
“Now that Carl thinks about it, it was the Map of Unrequited Love that got him fired. It was his most subjectively conceived and tenaciously renedered cartographic triumph, inspired by a secretive Asian Girl who dumped him at the time; he was around twentysix, he cant even remember her name.”
El cambio de perspectiva de un personaje a otro es uno de los elementos típicos en una novela de Steve Erickson, los narradores van cambiando, y el puzzle que en un principio parece confuso, va delineándose de tal forma que las conexiones entre personajes se van ensamblando a través del espacio y del tiempo. Hay personajes que buscan la redención, otros buscan escapar a sus sueños y otros como Kristin, buscan poder soñar: "She understood, after all, that a dream is a memory of the future."
"I haven´t dreamed about it once, that's rather stranger, isn't it? In fact, I haven't had any dreams at all since it happened. It isn't like when I wake I've forgotten my dreams, even when you forget your dreams, you still have a feeling of having dreamed, don't you? You still know you've dreamed.·"
[...]
"She wanted desperately to sleep, but she also wanted to avoid sleep at all cost. She kept waking herself, until that evening she couldn't keep awake anymore. Then, asleep in the chair, she had the dreams of Marie from Minneapolis,...
She dreamed of Marie from Minneapolis and woke weeping; she continued to have the dreams on and off for the next year..."
En definitiva, que Steve Erickson ha vuelto a fascinarme con sus personajes frágiles, su mundo único y alternativo, que por otra parte no es muy diferente del que vivimos, y con esta forma particular que tiene de convertir su texto en una imagen que se queda ya grabada. Los personajes aunque conecten, aunque se amen, siempre están alejados, pero hay momentos fugaces, ráfagas temporales en los que parecen vivir momentos de felicidad pero es ilusorio porque volverán a alejarse después de cruzarse. "The Sea came in at midnight" es una novela profundamente poética sobre la búsqueda de identidad, sobre los sueños, sobre la memoria que fabricamos, pero sobre todo es otra historia de personajes perdidos que en un mundo caótico a veces consiguen encontrar su propio orden. Maravilla.
"He had been vaguely aware recently of crossing into the realm of life when the memory of a thing is more magical than the thing itself, when the memory of the dream that didn't come true is more powerful than the life that did."
[...]
...because one must live with the death of a dream afterward in a way that one never has to live with the death of one's own' life, the death of a reason for living..."
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...
September 7, 2010
Literature already makes me put on my dunce cap and massage my eyebrows in preparation for knitted confusion, but this one more so than others. I'm not sure what happened in the book. Several stories intricately pulled together, sometimes talking at you and something observing next to you, a lost woman, a lost man, another lost woman, several lost people, why don't they just talk it out oh yeah then it wouldn't be Literature, huh?, something about missing the present because of focus on the end of the world?, hmmm...huh. What? At the end, a gleam of hope. I think.
I don't understand. But I can see it's beautiful.
I don't understand. But I can see it's beautiful.
Want to read
January 20, 2016OMG, a bright end to a crappy week is coming here to discover that the amazing and multi-talented karen has found a copy of this book for me! Double and triple yay!
Here is to amazing people who find hard-to-find books!
Here is to amazing people who find hard-to-find books!
July 31, 2012
I expected the book to be about “In the final seconds of the old millennium, 1,999 women and children march off the edge of a cliff in Northern California, urged on by a cult of silent men in white robes. Kristin was meant to be the two-thousandth to fall. But when at the last moment she flees, she exchanges one dark destiny for a future that will unravel the present.” I mean, since I copied and pasted that from the “blurb,” it’s a reasonable assumption, right? Let me spoil the first 25 pages for you. One night this 17 year old, Kristin, wakes up and decides to find a dream. Literally, figuratively, a dream. Literally, she has never had a dream when she sleeps; figuratively, I’m sure she’s looking for some dream to chase/pursue. After waking, she goes to the only hotel in her small island home, finds a random guy passed out drunk in his room, and then she fucks him. Of course he had an erection because “a man has an erection when he dreams,” and she wants this dream because “a dream is a memory of the future” (12). Next Kristin travels over to mainland California and “there [she is] standing by the road somewhere north of Sacramento, with only the clothes on [her] back and [her] books—Bronte and Cendrara and Kierkegaard in a cloth bag—when the whole emigration comes around the bend” (16). And so because this suicide-lemming cult of women has lost one of the perfect 2,000 members along the way, Kristin just joins up. When they make camp at night, she again sleep-rapes one of the male priests thanks to his dream-erection. The next day when the women are led off the cliff by the priests who have scythes, Kristin is the only one quick enough to outrun them. Sure she escaped, but now she’s stranded. Luckily a pair of lesbian murderers picks her up and brings her to the penthouse of the guy they murdered. After stealing their car and high-tailing it out of there, she finds herself in LA with no money. She considers prostitution, but that might upset her sense of “morality or aesthetics” (25.) Either way, she has no problem answering a creepy ad in a newspaper from a guy, only ever named as Occupant, to live with him and be his meat-hole (I know, a disgustingly vulgar term, but that’s really all she is and all he wants). And that’s the end of the cult aspect, which I thought would be a major plot point.
Got all that? Good because that’s the first 25 pages. The remaining 225 are pretty similar, just with different characters: the Occupant is obsessed with creating a new calendar all based on the dates of random acts of tragedy; a woman gets into porn with her husband, sleeps with her brother, and creates the first snuff film; a girl runs away from home, becomes an escort, is almost murdered, but escapes when she recognizes “it was clearly a chair for an execution,” (112), leaving me to wonder what the hell did that chair look like?. Of course, all of these people are connected in the most bizarre ways, most of which they do not know about. In that way, it’s a poor man’s Cloud Atlas, devoid of the verbal flourishes and lacking developed characters for the reader to actually care about.
Of course, it’s definitely more a book to be read for theme rather than plot. But when characters say things like “Make me do what I can barely bear to do…something nearly as depraved as I am” and then meet up with “a debauched couple who had nothing but money and looks and antics” (91) it becomes more of a poor man’s Pahlaniuk (or, to be fair, on par with anything Pahlaniuk has written recently). If one of the themes is that we live in a nihilistic age where morality is just another debunked grand narrative, the bizarre lunacies and depravities of the characters are just too…bizarre? Over the top? Uninteresting? Boring? I guess I’m trying to say that a good theme would be revealed more subtly, and the “in your face” nature of this actually disinterested me.
Finally, another primary theme causes me to liken this to a poor man’s White Noise (although since I wasn’t really all too fond of that, for me it’s just a regular White Noise ). Much of the “bad faith” that comes in this current “age of chaos,” really an age in which each individual has his/her own “private millennium,” is related to the loss of memory. (Get used to all that mumbo-jumbo if you’re gonna read this.) “The flow of Western memory had been tainted lately, the pure grade-A stuff being cut with something unidentifiable but particularly toxic” (158). Okay, so maybe it’s just the fact that every reviewer’s blurb declares Erickson to be a new Pynchon/Delillo coupled with the word “toxic” in that sentence that forced my mind into that connection. Speaking of reviewer’s praise I must add, “Excuse me, Wall Street Journal, but Erickson does not ‘approach the heights’ of Nabokov.” In fairness, reading that in the cover flap may have annoyed me from the outset.
If I were to write a five star review of this, however, it would sound something like this. This is a postmodern masterpiece. Erickson captures what it is like to live in an age collective truth has been replaced by chaos and true faith has been supplanted by each individual’s private millennium of isolation, solipsism, and grand quest for meaning. This is brilliantly symbolized in scenes such as the Occupant being locked in a room for seven years and a naked girl being bound, blindfolded and suspended, thereby being forced to find the only meaning that she can in the recesses of her mind. Erickson sums up the human tendency, no human need, to ascribe some meaning to the events that unfold around us, especially those that are most tragic. While one character’s obsession with senseless, world-wide tragedies illuminates the utter chaos and lack of meaning that governs—(or does not govern at all)—life, Erickson manages to instill a ray of hope. The various, brilliant inter-connections amongst the characters suggest that there is some grand design or fate or god or purpose that, like the characters, we just can’t see; it suggests that maybe the postmodern era is actually one of clandestinely ordered chaos. But that's for you to decide because what it all boils down to is the stark truth that “Everyone is his own millennium. Everyone is his own age of chaos. Everyone is his own age of apocalypse” (234). Powerful stuff.
Some Crappy Lines
-“Louise pulled away from Marie, who was looking at her with great sadness. ‘Stop looking at me that way!’ Louise said. ‘Stop looking at me with great sadness!’” (140).
-“But then he noted that all the numbers of the code that preceded the coordinates were prime ones, which is to say numbers that could be divided only by themselves” (184).
Got all that? Good because that’s the first 25 pages. The remaining 225 are pretty similar, just with different characters: the Occupant is obsessed with creating a new calendar all based on the dates of random acts of tragedy; a woman gets into porn with her husband, sleeps with her brother, and creates the first snuff film; a girl runs away from home, becomes an escort, is almost murdered, but escapes when she recognizes “it was clearly a chair for an execution,” (112), leaving me to wonder what the hell did that chair look like?. Of course, all of these people are connected in the most bizarre ways, most of which they do not know about. In that way, it’s a poor man’s Cloud Atlas, devoid of the verbal flourishes and lacking developed characters for the reader to actually care about.
Of course, it’s definitely more a book to be read for theme rather than plot. But when characters say things like “Make me do what I can barely bear to do…something nearly as depraved as I am” and then meet up with “a debauched couple who had nothing but money and looks and antics” (91) it becomes more of a poor man’s Pahlaniuk (or, to be fair, on par with anything Pahlaniuk has written recently). If one of the themes is that we live in a nihilistic age where morality is just another debunked grand narrative, the bizarre lunacies and depravities of the characters are just too…bizarre? Over the top? Uninteresting? Boring? I guess I’m trying to say that a good theme would be revealed more subtly, and the “in your face” nature of this actually disinterested me.
Finally, another primary theme causes me to liken this to a poor man’s White Noise (although since I wasn’t really all too fond of that, for me it’s just a regular White Noise ). Much of the “bad faith” that comes in this current “age of chaos,” really an age in which each individual has his/her own “private millennium,” is related to the loss of memory. (Get used to all that mumbo-jumbo if you’re gonna read this.) “The flow of Western memory had been tainted lately, the pure grade-A stuff being cut with something unidentifiable but particularly toxic” (158). Okay, so maybe it’s just the fact that every reviewer’s blurb declares Erickson to be a new Pynchon/Delillo coupled with the word “toxic” in that sentence that forced my mind into that connection. Speaking of reviewer’s praise I must add, “Excuse me, Wall Street Journal, but Erickson does not ‘approach the heights’ of Nabokov.” In fairness, reading that in the cover flap may have annoyed me from the outset.
If I were to write a five star review of this, however, it would sound something like this. This is a postmodern masterpiece. Erickson captures what it is like to live in an age collective truth has been replaced by chaos and true faith has been supplanted by each individual’s private millennium of isolation, solipsism, and grand quest for meaning. This is brilliantly symbolized in scenes such as the Occupant being locked in a room for seven years and a naked girl being bound, blindfolded and suspended, thereby being forced to find the only meaning that she can in the recesses of her mind. Erickson sums up the human tendency, no human need, to ascribe some meaning to the events that unfold around us, especially those that are most tragic. While one character’s obsession with senseless, world-wide tragedies illuminates the utter chaos and lack of meaning that governs—(or does not govern at all)—life, Erickson manages to instill a ray of hope. The various, brilliant inter-connections amongst the characters suggest that there is some grand design or fate or god or purpose that, like the characters, we just can’t see; it suggests that maybe the postmodern era is actually one of clandestinely ordered chaos. But that's for you to decide because what it all boils down to is the stark truth that “Everyone is his own millennium. Everyone is his own age of chaos. Everyone is his own age of apocalypse” (234). Powerful stuff.
Some Crappy Lines
-“Louise pulled away from Marie, who was looking at her with great sadness. ‘Stop looking at me that way!’ Louise said. ‘Stop looking at me with great sadness!’” (140).
-“But then he noted that all the numbers of the code that preceded the coordinates were prime ones, which is to say numbers that could be divided only by themselves” (184).
July 17, 2022
Steve Erickson's The Sea Came in at Midnight is a conspiracy web of lives lived across a half century into the new millennium. As the story unfurls across several characters and the myriad ways they don't know that they know each other, Erickson plugs in musings on time, apocalypse, chaos and the informal structures of the world that hold us all together: a power of coincidence that creates meaning across the eons.
If you've read Erickson's other fiction, then you're familiar with his set dressings and dream-like swimming prose style that glistens in the silvery twilight of a crepuscular sky. In this novel, coincident encounters stretch across a half century (marked by the 1968 protest in France as the starting point of this "new millennium") to tell the story of Kristin, a young girl who escapes a death cult's ritual suicide in California to find herself working in a "memory hotel" in Tokyo, retelling her life to a deceased patron.
Erickson's novels succeed in how they flow through space and time in ways illogical but perfectly sound to the reader--life passing as experience rather than fractions of signs on ticking clocks or revolutions of the sun. In The Sea Came in at Midnight, the familiar defamiliarizes and the reader is left drawing conspiracy maps of the various characters and all of their coincidental relations, at once bewildering but pat in its dream logic.
As always, a pleasure to read and live in the mind of this American Master.
If you've read Erickson's other fiction, then you're familiar with his set dressings and dream-like swimming prose style that glistens in the silvery twilight of a crepuscular sky. In this novel, coincident encounters stretch across a half century (marked by the 1968 protest in France as the starting point of this "new millennium") to tell the story of Kristin, a young girl who escapes a death cult's ritual suicide in California to find herself working in a "memory hotel" in Tokyo, retelling her life to a deceased patron.
Erickson's novels succeed in how they flow through space and time in ways illogical but perfectly sound to the reader--life passing as experience rather than fractions of signs on ticking clocks or revolutions of the sun. In The Sea Came in at Midnight, the familiar defamiliarizes and the reader is left drawing conspiracy maps of the various characters and all of their coincidental relations, at once bewildering but pat in its dream logic.
As always, a pleasure to read and live in the mind of this American Master.
September 21, 2015
Let's say I'm faithlessness made flesh, the modern age's leap of faith stopped dead in its tracks, fucking around with apocalypse and chaos only because in some broken part of me, among any wreckage of honor or altruism or commitment of compassion, or the bits and pieces of moral vanity, I really believed the abyss was always just the playground of my imagination, and I was its bully.
The errant effects and disputed origins of the drugs would have been more central; however such causal chains were lost amidst the shrieking of the John Zorn playing overhead. Mr. E stepped back into an alcove, nearly door-stopping an Asian woman explaining her theory of Brakhage to her snoring Nordic boyfriend. Oops, he muttered, but only to his soul. One day, he droned, I'll write a perfect novel, one which captures the amniotic insanity of cinema and how we are nascent suicides forever reaching out in the dark, afraid of the admission cost for our ugly demeanors. A novel like that At The Drive-In song about eating their young. Oh, of course, I'll have to situate punk somewhere in this birth of tragedy, Apollo on our doorsteps with an evil eye. That's heavy, dude, he mused. Maybe I should prime the pump by spraying out a novel about memory-geishas and milk carton children: that would be a hoot.
The errant effects and disputed origins of the drugs would have been more central; however such causal chains were lost amidst the shrieking of the John Zorn playing overhead. Mr. E stepped back into an alcove, nearly door-stopping an Asian woman explaining her theory of Brakhage to her snoring Nordic boyfriend. Oops, he muttered, but only to his soul. One day, he droned, I'll write a perfect novel, one which captures the amniotic insanity of cinema and how we are nascent suicides forever reaching out in the dark, afraid of the admission cost for our ugly demeanors. A novel like that At The Drive-In song about eating their young. Oh, of course, I'll have to situate punk somewhere in this birth of tragedy, Apollo on our doorsteps with an evil eye. That's heavy, dude, he mused. Maybe I should prime the pump by spraying out a novel about memory-geishas and milk carton children: that would be a hoot.
September 2, 2016
Steve Erickson is not in my inner circle. I mean, I have a strong warmth for him, but he's not an author whom I slaver for, whose works I read again and again. He's more someone I read and very much enjoy (with reservations: more on that later) and kind of forget about until someone or something jolts me into recall. Zeroville is the one I loved the most, but again, with reservations — although, as often happens, my memory of how much I loved it (TONS) differs by a good degree from what I myself said about it, which was that I liked it pretty much. Why does that happen what is wrong with my brain etc. etc.
I don't know what made me get this one at this time. I mean, the book is old(ish) and long out of print and nothing particular in my life would have pulled me toward it, yet here we are. My main motivation must have been for some reason coming back across this splendid review by my sweet bookfriend Bill, who is rarely so effusive.
Anyway. It's a great book, and Steve Erickson is so, so, so smart. It has that style of nested stories like a set of parentheses where first it's about this girl and then it's about her mother and then it's about her mother's estranged husband, on and on and opening and opening, and then there's an about-face toward the middle and they're picked back up and closed, or some of them are anyway. It's a bit like Cloud Atlas, except where that one was so rigidly formatted that it felt like a big dumb gimmick, this one is just like walking through the world meeting this person and then that one and then that one. It's also intensely steeped in place — several places: 1970s New York, 1960s Paris, 1980s Madrid, 1990s Tokyo. And he does this brilliant thing where each character is both a lead in their own story and a supporting or background character or even just a vaguely glipmsed extra in someone else's, so you're constantly stopping to figure out how this fits with that in the timeline or out in the world.
The story twines and twines, in this beautiful braided way, from revolutionaries to punks to snuff films to sexual deviants to apocalyptology. At one point I had a thought, a fully formed sentence in my head, This is like reading Don Delillo, and then I flipped the book over and of course that's in the first line of the back cover copy, "secret heir to Pynchon and Delillo," so there are no original thoughts and I am not so clever.
Really, it's the fact that I'm not so clever that keeps me from truly loving Erickson. Because everything he writes is so intensely layered, so intricately constructed, and I am just not a careful enough reader to really really get it all. It's always clear that much of the brilliance takes place on the margins, between the lines, down unseen cracks that I just can't find, and so I know I'm missing things, both large and small, and that's a bummer and also leaves me occasionally totally bewildered and just, therefore, not lost in the book and its genius.
But I will keep reading him, once in awhile, whenever it occurs to me that I ought to do so.
I don't know what made me get this one at this time. I mean, the book is old(ish) and long out of print and nothing particular in my life would have pulled me toward it, yet here we are. My main motivation must have been for some reason coming back across this splendid review by my sweet bookfriend Bill, who is rarely so effusive.
Anyway. It's a great book, and Steve Erickson is so, so, so smart. It has that style of nested stories like a set of parentheses where first it's about this girl and then it's about her mother and then it's about her mother's estranged husband, on and on and opening and opening, and then there's an about-face toward the middle and they're picked back up and closed, or some of them are anyway. It's a bit like Cloud Atlas, except where that one was so rigidly formatted that it felt like a big dumb gimmick, this one is just like walking through the world meeting this person and then that one and then that one. It's also intensely steeped in place — several places: 1970s New York, 1960s Paris, 1980s Madrid, 1990s Tokyo. And he does this brilliant thing where each character is both a lead in their own story and a supporting or background character or even just a vaguely glipmsed extra in someone else's, so you're constantly stopping to figure out how this fits with that in the timeline or out in the world.
The story twines and twines, in this beautiful braided way, from revolutionaries to punks to snuff films to sexual deviants to apocalyptology. At one point I had a thought, a fully formed sentence in my head, This is like reading Don Delillo, and then I flipped the book over and of course that's in the first line of the back cover copy, "secret heir to Pynchon and Delillo," so there are no original thoughts and I am not so clever.
Really, it's the fact that I'm not so clever that keeps me from truly loving Erickson. Because everything he writes is so intensely layered, so intricately constructed, and I am just not a careful enough reader to really really get it all. It's always clear that much of the brilliance takes place on the margins, between the lines, down unseen cracks that I just can't find, and so I know I'm missing things, both large and small, and that's a bummer and also leaves me occasionally totally bewildered and just, therefore, not lost in the book and its genius.
But I will keep reading him, once in awhile, whenever it occurs to me that I ought to do so.
December 26, 2017
Though I thoroughly enjoyed this book I will be the first to say that it's not for everyone...however for fans of China Mieville or David Mitchell you are likely going to find something to enjoy here. A mix of magical realism and an incredibly gritty version of present day Erickson covers the lives (and often the deaths) of a number of constantly intertwining characters (in fact sometimes I felt I needed a flow chart to keep up with the relationships) - Kristen, the Occupant, Louise, Angie, Carl and others - most of the characters share both a need to connect along with a feeling that they "care nothing about anyone but themselves and were unable or unwilling to interact with any other human being" perhaps because they have little in common other than being parts of the chaos (and an odd reverence for the female orgasm).
As with the best of DeLillo, I can't say that I understood all the connections, but I enjoyed the dreamy feel, the excellent prose and the genuine feeling of discovering something new.
******OK, how is it possible that I forgot that I read this book. It wasn't until I started coming across highlighted passages that I realized I must have. My brain....it's going. I'm about halfway through, but I'm moving on to something new.
As with the best of DeLillo, I can't say that I understood all the connections, but I enjoyed the dreamy feel, the excellent prose and the genuine feeling of discovering something new.
******OK, how is it possible that I forgot that I read this book. It wasn't until I started coming across highlighted passages that I realized I must have. My brain....it's going. I'm about halfway through, but I'm moving on to something new.
December 20, 2018
why was this even in my tbr list
October 30, 2010
Masterpiece. A spell of regret and loss permeate the lives of six or more characters who seem to have no relationship to each other. The axis of the story is the new millenium, which one character places in Paris of 1968. That's when the chaos began for him personally. Erickson shows a slide into alienation that starts closer to midcentury and permeates the life of everyone by the year 2000. Deep beneath the question of 'What's missing?' are the answers some of these people find in their odd quest. Many of the characters are involved in pornography, attracted by easy money and avoidance of love. But each one yearns for what's missing, the abandoned child for his/her mother, the mother/father for her/his child. The pieces fall together, but not all the reader's questions are answered. It reads like reality.
March 19, 2015
The first Erickson I've read that I didn't really care for, although it's now probably been 20 years since I read Days Between Stations, Rubicon Beach, and Tours of the Black Clock.
Pluses: An (expected) dreamlike narrative, that structurally does some lovely limited POV hopping throughout the middle, as the story segues from one character to another, following them and their stories. The narrative flows right along in this way.
Minuses: So much of the sex stuff feels very problematic now, rapish male fantasy. It all made one of the main characters so off-putting that it basically ruined the book for me. It's like Game of Thrones volumes of rape and sex thrust into a tiny literary novel. When the narrative returned to this character (The Occupant) toward the end I really grew frustrated.
Pluses: An (expected) dreamlike narrative, that structurally does some lovely limited POV hopping throughout the middle, as the story segues from one character to another, following them and their stories. The narrative flows right along in this way.
Minuses: So much of the sex stuff feels very problematic now, rapish male fantasy. It all made one of the main characters so off-putting that it basically ruined the book for me. It's like Game of Thrones volumes of rape and sex thrust into a tiny literary novel. When the narrative returned to this character (The Occupant) toward the end I really grew frustrated.
September 3, 2016
this is the kind of book i'm going to come back to years and years later, when i have thrice the experience i hold in my memories right now. even now, having scratched only the surface of it, this book is just so fucking... ugh i don't know, it just is. you'll know when you read it, okay? in that sense, it's like silently and very fast. so this is basically what i have to say of this book.
also, don't read this in one go, is my advice.
also, don't read this in one go, is my advice.
February 2, 2018
I had hoped to write a little something about how incredible this book is, but it’s hopeless, my powers of articulation are not nearly up to the task, and besides, I’m too busy walking around with a silly grin on my face in the throes of the after-glow of finishing a really, really great book. Almost as great as These Dreams of You (but not quite).
October 5, 2009
As much as I loved the idea of the personal millennium and the apocalyptic calendar, I could not handle the constant (and seemingly uncritical) sexual violence perpetrated against women-who, of course, come pretty close to enjoying it. ugh.
May 10, 2017
This is probably the best book that I've ever read that I could recommend to absolutely no one that I know.
April 2, 2021
The Sea Came in at Midnight is the type of book that isn't great, but that could be the subject of an interesting lit grad paper. It has lots of recurring imagery (calendars, maps, dreams, pregnancy, the apocalypse), it references a plethora of other writers as well as numerous historical tragedies, its world is strange and full of sleaze with some minor elements of the fantastic, and all the various characters & incidents intersect and connect into one big web like a lunatic's conspiracy corkboard. You can take all this and spin some thesis statement about Erickson tapping into the fear and cultural corrosion permeating society at the turn of the millennium, or perhaps something about the eternally occurring apocalypse that humanity can't seem to do without and how that can be made manifest through fiction, or how about some banality on how we're both the center of our own story but also not important at all. But, though I could cobble something interesting together for the sake of a good grade, The Sea Came in at Midnight didn't make me care enough to really dive in and think about it deeply.
Don’t get me wrong, the book isn’t bad. It’s mostly well written, with some good descriptions of Tokyo right off the bat. Its first main character is also compelling; the young girl navigating this desperate world and acting as a magnet for suicide cults, murderers, and the mentally unstable, who you slowly realize through dropped hints is part & parcel of the setting. However, The Sea Came in at Midnight only focuses on this character for a small portion of the book, the rest focusing on characters that are more bizarre but less interesting. Once you realize that this is the type of book where the author is going to shoehorn in interconnectivity at every opportunity, a lot of events become predictable (how will she get to Japan? Oh the narrative mentions a Japanese guy in the neighborhood, now I can see it coming a hundred pages in advance). Erickson’s chief concern in this book seems to have been constructing the big knot of all the different characters, not making their journeys compelling.
Reading The Sea Came in at Midnight I couldn’t help but think that it was a worse version of Bleeding Edge. Pynchon certainly had some advantages over Erickson here. Erickson published this book in 1999, so he had to imagine what the turn of the millennium would be like. Pynchon gave himself 13 years of perspective before he penned his take on this time period. Also, while Erickson is a good writer, Pynchon is in another league when it comes to prose. Pynchon wouldn’t be caught dead publishing a dud like Erickson’s line “[i]n the ruins I was both her pimp and john, selling her to myself.” Beyond those advantages, though, a key difference was one that both authors had control over: tone. In presenting his improbably interconnected world, Pynchon didn’t take it too seriously. He breezed past all the unlikely coincidences, so that by the end it almost felt tongue-in-cheek. Erickson, in contrast, treats everything in his book being connected as Serious Business, which is exactly the wrong tone to take with such an underwhelming writing exercise. The most damning difference is that overall Bleeding Edge was fun to read, while The Sea Came in at Midnight wasn’t.
Most of The Sea Came in at Midnight is thoroughly okay. Erickson is a strong enough writer, and the first part of the book with its sympathetic character builds up enough narrative momentum and goodwill, that it’s a while before the book starts to drag. Once you’re far enough into the book I expect a certain type of reader will enjoy seeing all the connections get revealed, but if you’re savvy enough to recognize that this parlor trick is actually quite cheap then not only will it fail to grab your interest for the book’s back half, it will also make many things foreseeable and less interesting. Overall, you’re better off reading Bleeding Edge. 3/5.
Don’t get me wrong, the book isn’t bad. It’s mostly well written, with some good descriptions of Tokyo right off the bat. Its first main character is also compelling; the young girl navigating this desperate world and acting as a magnet for suicide cults, murderers, and the mentally unstable, who you slowly realize through dropped hints is part & parcel of the setting. However, The Sea Came in at Midnight only focuses on this character for a small portion of the book, the rest focusing on characters that are more bizarre but less interesting. Once you realize that this is the type of book where the author is going to shoehorn in interconnectivity at every opportunity, a lot of events become predictable (how will she get to Japan? Oh the narrative mentions a Japanese guy in the neighborhood, now I can see it coming a hundred pages in advance). Erickson’s chief concern in this book seems to have been constructing the big knot of all the different characters, not making their journeys compelling.
Reading The Sea Came in at Midnight I couldn’t help but think that it was a worse version of Bleeding Edge. Pynchon certainly had some advantages over Erickson here. Erickson published this book in 1999, so he had to imagine what the turn of the millennium would be like. Pynchon gave himself 13 years of perspective before he penned his take on this time period. Also, while Erickson is a good writer, Pynchon is in another league when it comes to prose. Pynchon wouldn’t be caught dead publishing a dud like Erickson’s line “[i]n the ruins I was both her pimp and john, selling her to myself.” Beyond those advantages, though, a key difference was one that both authors had control over: tone. In presenting his improbably interconnected world, Pynchon didn’t take it too seriously. He breezed past all the unlikely coincidences, so that by the end it almost felt tongue-in-cheek. Erickson, in contrast, treats everything in his book being connected as Serious Business, which is exactly the wrong tone to take with such an underwhelming writing exercise. The most damning difference is that overall Bleeding Edge was fun to read, while The Sea Came in at Midnight wasn’t.
Most of The Sea Came in at Midnight is thoroughly okay. Erickson is a strong enough writer, and the first part of the book with its sympathetic character builds up enough narrative momentum and goodwill, that it’s a while before the book starts to drag. Once you’re far enough into the book I expect a certain type of reader will enjoy seeing all the connections get revealed, but if you’re savvy enough to recognize that this parlor trick is actually quite cheap then not only will it fail to grab your interest for the book’s back half, it will also make many things foreseeable and less interesting. Overall, you’re better off reading Bleeding Edge. 3/5.
August 24, 2021
"Poiché non avevo mai fatto un sogno", comincia, "una notte mi sono svegliata e sono andata a cercarne uno."
Il mare arriva a mezzanotte è un romanzo postmoderno di Steve Erickson e in Italia è pubblicato da Bompiani.
Tutto parte dal punto di vista di Kristin, quella che potremmo definire la protagonista del testo, che vedendo un articolo su un suicidio di massa di duemila persone, riflette sull'inesattezza di questo dettaglio: lei lo sa bene.
La storia è molto particolare e impossibile da anticipare bene senza raccontare troppo: i punti di vista si susseguono, collegati tra loro, mostrando e svelando poco a poco.
La trama non è lineare, viaggia avanti e indietro nel tempo continuamente tramite ricordi, flashback, racconti e cambi strutturali. Ad un certo punto vi chiederete se avete letto bene o cosa vi siete persi, per questo vi consiglio di fare particolare attenzione durante la lettura o, ancora meglio, segnarvi le date importanti per i diversi personaggi.
Uno degli aspetti meglio riusciti del testo è quello di avere molti misteri ma riuscirli a svelare e a risolvere (anche se in modo inaspettato) con un ottimo ritmo: non ci sarà mai un momento in cui saprete tutto, persino sul finale avrete bisogno di riflettere per capire tutto ciò che avete letto e a reinterpretarlo con la nuova chiave di lettura che vi verrà fornita.
Lo qualifico come romanzo postmoderno proprio per la sua struttura atemporale, ma anche per il forte simbolismo che contiene. Oltre ad essere fondamentale la tematica dell'Apocalisse (che spesso va a braccetto con il genere postmoderno) troverete riferimenti alla memoria, al sogno, al futuro, alla Scena e alle armi. Non posso essere più specifica per non anticiparvi troppo ma, se siete lettori del postmoderno qui troverete terreno fertile per il vostro interesse. Se, invece, non lo conoscete, potrete comunque apprezzare pienamente il testo, ma se volete approfondire la tematica apocalittica vi consiglio il libro Il senso della fine di F. Kermode.
In resto della recensione su https://www.leggoquandovoglio.it/libr...
Il mare arriva a mezzanotte è un romanzo postmoderno di Steve Erickson e in Italia è pubblicato da Bompiani.
Tutto parte dal punto di vista di Kristin, quella che potremmo definire la protagonista del testo, che vedendo un articolo su un suicidio di massa di duemila persone, riflette sull'inesattezza di questo dettaglio: lei lo sa bene.
La storia è molto particolare e impossibile da anticipare bene senza raccontare troppo: i punti di vista si susseguono, collegati tra loro, mostrando e svelando poco a poco.
La trama non è lineare, viaggia avanti e indietro nel tempo continuamente tramite ricordi, flashback, racconti e cambi strutturali. Ad un certo punto vi chiederete se avete letto bene o cosa vi siete persi, per questo vi consiglio di fare particolare attenzione durante la lettura o, ancora meglio, segnarvi le date importanti per i diversi personaggi.
Uno degli aspetti meglio riusciti del testo è quello di avere molti misteri ma riuscirli a svelare e a risolvere (anche se in modo inaspettato) con un ottimo ritmo: non ci sarà mai un momento in cui saprete tutto, persino sul finale avrete bisogno di riflettere per capire tutto ciò che avete letto e a reinterpretarlo con la nuova chiave di lettura che vi verrà fornita.
Lo qualifico come romanzo postmoderno proprio per la sua struttura atemporale, ma anche per il forte simbolismo che contiene. Oltre ad essere fondamentale la tematica dell'Apocalisse (che spesso va a braccetto con il genere postmoderno) troverete riferimenti alla memoria, al sogno, al futuro, alla Scena e alle armi. Non posso essere più specifica per non anticiparvi troppo ma, se siete lettori del postmoderno qui troverete terreno fertile per il vostro interesse. Se, invece, non lo conoscete, potrete comunque apprezzare pienamente il testo, ma se volete approfondire la tematica apocalittica vi consiglio il libro Il senso della fine di F. Kermode.
In resto della recensione su https://www.leggoquandovoglio.it/libr...
January 27, 2014
This was my first Steve Erickson novel, and I must say that it will be my last. This novel is rife with babble about memories, chaos, faith, and dreams, but it only tangentially addresses these themes with murky symbolism. I must admit that I am generally wary of these types of books that profess to make some sort of grand statement about a theme, but The Sea Came in at Midnight surpassed grand statements and went straight into pretentious dreck territory. I am interested in exploring our modern conceptions of dreams, faith, chaos, etc., but Erickson only brushed the surface of these topics and sacrificed more thorough exploration for shoddy plot development wherein all the characters are connected in contrived ways (maybe coincidence is another one of the themes that Erickson tried, but ultimately failed, to address?).
The protagonist, Kristin, was unbearably perfect in that she's a teenager who's sexually precocious and has the intelligence to read and appreciate Kierkegaard (this kind of character is my own personal annoyance, however). The other characters were equally gag-inducing, especially the Occupant who is written as some brooding genius that is so talented in bed that he causes women to experience their own personal chaoses (as evidenced by the story about his communist ex-girlfriend). Towards the end, he becomes even more horrible and fashions himself as some type of savior of prostitutes. This would all be semi-excusable if the book wasn't drenched in rape and non-consensual dominant/submissive relationships. These reprehensible sexual relationships are supposed to serve as some kind of connection to the concepts of dreams and chaos, but they just left a bad taste in my mouth. There is no message to be had about a book where the men can have sexual pleasure on demand whereas the women's inability or unwillingness to have orgasms is a huge thematic point. It is abundantly clear that this book was written by a man.
There were some aspects of the novel that were interesting and that I would like to have seen be a larger part of the narrative, such as the memory hotel that Kristin works at and the time capsules. Certainly, these types of books are not predicated on silly things such as plot or character development, but I feel that Erickson could have made beautiful statements about memories and dreams if he had 1) stuck to just these two topics, 2) focused more on the memory hotel/time capsules, and 3) cut out the overly cooked protagonists (sexually precocious Kierkegaard-loving teen; immensely depraved pornographer that bases his career on snuff films; brooding alcoholic with a largely useless apocalypse map; etc.; etc.)
In conclusion, I only read this book through to the end because I spent money on it ($1.99 on Amazon!). If I hadn't spent money on it, I would've binned it about 30 pages in.
The protagonist, Kristin, was unbearably perfect in that she's a teenager who's sexually precocious and has the intelligence to read and appreciate Kierkegaard (this kind of character is my own personal annoyance, however). The other characters were equally gag-inducing, especially the Occupant who is written as some brooding genius that is so talented in bed that he causes women to experience their own personal chaoses (as evidenced by the story about his communist ex-girlfriend). Towards the end, he becomes even more horrible and fashions himself as some type of savior of prostitutes. This would all be semi-excusable if the book wasn't drenched in rape and non-consensual dominant/submissive relationships. These reprehensible sexual relationships are supposed to serve as some kind of connection to the concepts of dreams and chaos, but they just left a bad taste in my mouth. There is no message to be had about a book where the men can have sexual pleasure on demand whereas the women's inability or unwillingness to have orgasms is a huge thematic point. It is abundantly clear that this book was written by a man.
There were some aspects of the novel that were interesting and that I would like to have seen be a larger part of the narrative, such as the memory hotel that Kristin works at and the time capsules. Certainly, these types of books are not predicated on silly things such as plot or character development, but I feel that Erickson could have made beautiful statements about memories and dreams if he had 1) stuck to just these two topics, 2) focused more on the memory hotel/time capsules, and 3) cut out the overly cooked protagonists (sexually precocious Kierkegaard-loving teen; immensely depraved pornographer that bases his career on snuff films; brooding alcoholic with a largely useless apocalypse map; etc.; etc.)
In conclusion, I only read this book through to the end because I spent money on it ($1.99 on Amazon!). If I hadn't spent money on it, I would've binned it about 30 pages in.
May 16, 2016
I wasn't sure what to expect when I ventured into this web that Erickson created… but Wow! I am pleasantly surprised! I thoroughly enjoyed this and desire more from this author!
I was brought here after reading a review that stated if I enjoyed Kathe Koja's writing, that I would probably enjoy Erickson, they were absolutely right! But mind you: they are both unique to their own style and really shouldn't be compared. Honestly, I normally wouldn’t have reached for a novel of this genre, had it not been referenced to a similar style of Koja, because she is one of my favorite authors ever!
So that all being said, don't expect this story to be spoon fed to you, you will actually have to work for it, and you MUST pay attention to all the intricate details.
I am not here to spill the beans on what the plot is, you must find it out yourself!
I really enjoyed how this story flowed from one character to another, so effortlessly. It almost seemed like you walked hand and hand with an individual- exploring their world and their point of view. You begin to start caring about them and are so curious to find out more. But! -- then they are introduced to a new character, and then you are abruptly forced to venture down a new path with the new character, while you remain longing after the previous character who left you behind. Until you are so burning with curiosity to learn about this new character, BUT! - Then we meet a new person who intertwines with our original character …. And so the cycle seems to repeat every time we meet someone new, we then explore their world and their backstory and point of view.
All this continuously happens while in the background the author is spinning a web that somehow connect all the characters with each other by the end.
I can see how some did not "get" this story. You didn't take your time to absorb it and think. I bet my review doesn’t even make sense to you… that is why you should read it! I bet you are burning with curiosity, as I was, and still am!
It is like Easton Ellis crossed paths with Kathe Koja and produced an abstract story in which you must work to interpret the outcome in order to feel satisfied.
It was heart wrenching at times, but not overly depressing where you absorb any negativity.
It makes you feel a bit frantic and nerve wrecking and at times even a bit emotional, all while forever burning with curiosity and the desire to dig into these character’s brains.
I plan to read a bunch more from this author, his style is so original and different from the norm!
I was brought here after reading a review that stated if I enjoyed Kathe Koja's writing, that I would probably enjoy Erickson, they were absolutely right! But mind you: they are both unique to their own style and really shouldn't be compared. Honestly, I normally wouldn’t have reached for a novel of this genre, had it not been referenced to a similar style of Koja, because she is one of my favorite authors ever!
So that all being said, don't expect this story to be spoon fed to you, you will actually have to work for it, and you MUST pay attention to all the intricate details.
I am not here to spill the beans on what the plot is, you must find it out yourself!
I really enjoyed how this story flowed from one character to another, so effortlessly. It almost seemed like you walked hand and hand with an individual- exploring their world and their point of view. You begin to start caring about them and are so curious to find out more. But! -- then they are introduced to a new character, and then you are abruptly forced to venture down a new path with the new character, while you remain longing after the previous character who left you behind. Until you are so burning with curiosity to learn about this new character, BUT! - Then we meet a new person who intertwines with our original character …. And so the cycle seems to repeat every time we meet someone new, we then explore their world and their backstory and point of view.
All this continuously happens while in the background the author is spinning a web that somehow connect all the characters with each other by the end.
I can see how some did not "get" this story. You didn't take your time to absorb it and think. I bet my review doesn’t even make sense to you… that is why you should read it! I bet you are burning with curiosity, as I was, and still am!
It is like Easton Ellis crossed paths with Kathe Koja and produced an abstract story in which you must work to interpret the outcome in order to feel satisfied.
It was heart wrenching at times, but not overly depressing where you absorb any negativity.
It makes you feel a bit frantic and nerve wrecking and at times even a bit emotional, all while forever burning with curiosity and the desire to dig into these character’s brains.
I plan to read a bunch more from this author, his style is so original and different from the norm!
January 15, 2011
Wow.
This is one of those rare books that is short in pages but unending in its impact. It's a book that seems easy, until you realize it only seems that way because its more difficult ideas are so inaccessible to you that all your mind can do is try to avoid them, and then of course Erickson will not let you avoid them forever; a book that seems predictable, until you realize that you don't understand chaos, and then of course that you never can or will; a book that seems to be saying one thing until you realize that you're a short-sighted idiot, and then of course that the things it is saying don't really have a beginning or an end.
The deceptively complex and interwoven narrative follows a number of people around the world, recounting their seemingly random connections to one another and the void that exists between them in spite of these inexplicable bonds, and by extension exploring similar voids that exist between us (the people of the non-fictional world) and our own coincidental encounters. As a narrative it succeeds above and beyond expectations. As a study on time, memory, dreams, chaos, order, coincidence, love, identity, and emptiness-- an exceedingly ambitious handful of big ideas that might come across as trite in another author's voice-- it soars, swells, explodes in brilliant light and comes to rest somewhere above us, where we can see it and try to understand it, but never touch it. Where another author might trudge through these ideas heavy-handedly, relaying to readers the obvious that had probably already occurred to them, Erickson's strength is in the many words he does not say about the ideas. The negative space, so to speak, where for him these ideas reside.
I might be waxing poetic here, but there is such a grounds for it. This is a remarkable novel, unfortunately out of print. I'd gotten it for Christmas years back, having asked for it blindly after reading the synopsis, and only recently did I discover that the bit which drew me in was just the beginning.
Do yourself a favor: find a copy of this book, any way you can. The effort this will take will render the experience even more profound when you read it.
Note: Only do the above if you are eighteen or older. Anyone who does it younger does so at their own risk. This is not a "soft" book.
This is one of those rare books that is short in pages but unending in its impact. It's a book that seems easy, until you realize it only seems that way because its more difficult ideas are so inaccessible to you that all your mind can do is try to avoid them, and then of course Erickson will not let you avoid them forever; a book that seems predictable, until you realize that you don't understand chaos, and then of course that you never can or will; a book that seems to be saying one thing until you realize that you're a short-sighted idiot, and then of course that the things it is saying don't really have a beginning or an end.
The deceptively complex and interwoven narrative follows a number of people around the world, recounting their seemingly random connections to one another and the void that exists between them in spite of these inexplicable bonds, and by extension exploring similar voids that exist between us (the people of the non-fictional world) and our own coincidental encounters. As a narrative it succeeds above and beyond expectations. As a study on time, memory, dreams, chaos, order, coincidence, love, identity, and emptiness-- an exceedingly ambitious handful of big ideas that might come across as trite in another author's voice-- it soars, swells, explodes in brilliant light and comes to rest somewhere above us, where we can see it and try to understand it, but never touch it. Where another author might trudge through these ideas heavy-handedly, relaying to readers the obvious that had probably already occurred to them, Erickson's strength is in the many words he does not say about the ideas. The negative space, so to speak, where for him these ideas reside.
I might be waxing poetic here, but there is such a grounds for it. This is a remarkable novel, unfortunately out of print. I'd gotten it for Christmas years back, having asked for it blindly after reading the synopsis, and only recently did I discover that the bit which drew me in was just the beginning.
Do yourself a favor: find a copy of this book, any way you can. The effort this will take will render the experience even more profound when you read it.
Note: Only do the above if you are eighteen or older. Anyone who does it younger does so at their own risk. This is not a "soft" book.
November 30, 2016
Recently I gave myself a treat by buying a stack of cheap second hand books off eBay. They had all been on my to read list for a long time, most of them so long that I’d forgotten precisely why I intended to read them in the first place. The summaries all seemed intriguing, however, so I decided to trust my past self. I must say, the first three have been rather a let down, this one especially so. From the blurb, I anticipated that this novel would be a literary examination of the apocalyptic atmosphere of the millennium. Perhaps it thought it was, but what actually dominated it was men sexually abusing women. All the main female characters were sex workers at one time or another and horrible things happened to all of them. The main male character, the so-called Occupant, was a rapist. He rapes several women during the novel, although these are not explicitly acknowledged as rapes by the narrative. Frankly, I have a big problem with that. Although the writing was good quality and the complex looping chronology quite interesting, I did not see why so much sexual abuse was remotely necessary. In short, all the male characters were hateful and all the female characters suffered for it, to no literary end. It’s so depressing to start a novel full of hope that it will be enjoyable and enlightening, only to be blindsided by intense and sustained misogyny. Just like bloody Hemingway all over again. The two stars are for the intricate chronology, which deserved to be populated with better character arcs.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 114 reviews