Books 2009: Andrew Crumey - Mobius Dick

About eighteen months ago I read Scarlett Thomas' The End of Mr Y. I really enjoyed it and recommended her to several people. I regret doing that now I've read several books by her. Earlier I wrote this:

I do not know why I’ve read three Scarlett Thomas novels because if you take away the colourful packaging of a) metafiction (”The End of Mr Y”), b) anti-consumerism (”PopCo”) and c) popculture (”Going Out”) you get pretty much the same novel.

New Age health solutions? Check. Schrödinger’s cat? Check. Main protagonist being into her math puzzles? Check. Slightly deviant sexual orientation painted in a fairly vague way? Check. C-category drug use? Check. Vegetarianism or some variant upon it? Check. Internet featuring heavily? Check.

Andrew Crumey's novel, Mobius Dick, has me hoping that I have found the novel I thought I had in my hands when I read The End of Mr Y. It is a dazzling, original novel which defies easy categorisation (postmodern metafiction? science-fiction? thriller?). Like Thomas' book, Mobius Dick takes its cue from theoretical physics, the idea of parallel worlds and the intersection between literature and science. However, unlike Thomas, Crumey is in full control of his material and does not take the reader on unnecessary detours (although getting to the "end" is quite a roller-coaster ride).

Will I read more Crumey novels and discover he is a one-trick pony much like Ms Thomas? I hope I'll end up discovering a new favourite author. Right now it feels as though I have. Explaining the plot of Mobius Dick terrifies me slightly, so suffice to say that it feels like a bit Jorge Luis Borges mixed with David Mitchell and a dash of early Alasdair Gray. Heady.

Poetry Animations

This is both very cool and just a bit creepy. Jim Clark, a "videographer" based in London, has animated photos or paintings of long-gone poets, paired the animations with poetry and you get things like Lord Alfred Tennyson "reading" his Ulysses:

While I'm sure some of the animations will be removed due to copyright violations (Sylvia Plath? TS Eliot? Oh yes, their estates will be in touch), Jim Clark has many excellent (and, again, creepy) videos uploaded to YouTube. Try some of these:

+ John Donne: Go Catch A Falling Star + Ezra Pound: The Year Puts On Her Shining Robe + W.H. Auden: Musee des Beaux Arts + John Keats: Ode To A Nightingale

A good reminder that poetry is as much about hearing as it is about reading. And just a touch disturbing.

PS. Uncanny valley, anyone?

Sighs and Cheers

It has been one of those nights. I was ready for a quiet night with my two knitting projects, sat down and I've had one minor mishap after another. My Norwegian Woods, which you can see to your left, started to go seriously wonky. If you follow the pattern link, look at the top part. See how the lace "branches off" to alternating sides? My lace didn't alternate sides and I didn't realise it until I had done a full 20-something repeat because I was very silly. No lifelines, of course, so I'll be tinkering/unknitting tomorrow (and possibly during the weekend too). Then I tried on my top-down sweater and stitches came undone and I'll have to play "catch them live stitches!" tomorrow as well.

One of those days..

..

.. except I just checked my email and was bowled over when I realised that T. (a good internet friend of mine) has bought a plane ticket from dark and gloomy Scandinavia, so she can help me celebrate my birthday next month! We've never met, so it's extra super-exciting and brilliant.

Addendum

We got our Xbox 360 back from repairs today.  Other Half cradled it in his manly arms and smiled. I kid you not.

Structures Lost and Found

Two links: Abandoned Russian Lighthouses - a series of crumbling structures in beautiful natural surroundings. Add a healthy dollop of poverty and tragedy:

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unattended automatic lighthouses did [the] job for some time, but after some time they collapsed too. Mostly as a result of the hunt for the metals like copper and other stuff which were performed by the looters. They didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign and ignored them, breaking in and destroying the equipment.

The Linguistic Diversity of Europe - an interesting, if brief, look at how the linguistic landscape (literally!) may have looked as long as six millennia ago. Ringe makes a good case for how he constructs it (as we have very little, if any, hands-on evidence, obviously) and the comments are interesting too. I'm a sucker for (Proto-)Indo-European linguistic archaeology, anyhow even if that makes me sound vaguely geeky.

Do You Believe In Faeries?

If you are familiar with the history of photography or an Arthur Conan Doyleaficionado, you might recognise this photograph. It is one of the five Cottingley Faeries photographs.

In the early 19th century, photography was regarded as an instrument of truth. The camera couldn't lie. When Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths took the first two Cottingley photographs in 1917, their photographs were taken as proof that faeries existed. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a noted Spiritualist, approached the girls a few years later, gave them a new camera and asked them to take more photos of the faeries. The girls obliged.

Nowadays it is difficult to understand how anybody could be hoodwinked by the photographs. The faeries look like cut-outs and the lighting is noticably "off". Quite apart from the Arthur Conan Doyle connection (and the inevitable "How could the creator of the world's most famous detective be fooled by this?!" question), these photos were arguably some of the first to trouble photography's truth claim.

Elsie and Frances denied faking the faeries for most of their lives, but eventually owed up in the 1980s when both were dying. I was reminded of the Cottingley photographs when I was watching BBC's Antique Roadshow this past Sunday. Frances' daughter and grand-daughter showed up with the original photographs and the camera which Conan Doyle had given the girls. What struck me was not so much the estimated value of the photographs and the camera, but rather how the Cottingley incident had impacted an entire family. Frances' daughter, now an elderly lady, visibly struggled to admit her mother had deceived an entire world. When asked, both the daughter and grand-daughter maintained the fifth and final photograph was genuine - but the grand-daughter looked as though she was protecting her own mother from an unbearable truth.

Photography has changed so much since two girls went down to the bottom of their garden and found faeries. Ellie pointed me towards a series of images from Google Earth which are staggeringly beautiful (particularly the one with the elephants). Make sure to explore the linked images to Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Everest.