Sunday, January 30, 2011

... Freedom for the reader ...

... the reader made short work of last year's hot bestseller and suspects, in the imaginative way the mind operates when the clever-cortex is activated, that if Jonathan Franzen had been born say, a beaver, his talents would have led him to build a dam colossal enough to re-route the Potomac ...

... environmentalists would make pilgrimages for academic observation and satellites would transmit infra-red imagery for news-channel telestrators ... Jonny Beaver would trigger an eco-event and media sensation simultaneously, cause celebre for The Nature of Things ... instead, God gave Franzen a pen, and judging by the protracted detailing in this latest novel Freedom, more than one replacement ink cartridge was bestowed on him too ...

... of course, the reader concedes, in this iPad and keyboard era it's nigh unto impossible to find ink cartridges if you need to replace them, but he'll keep the pen and ink metaphor to sub for laptop and RAM ... suffice it to say, the result is a comprehensive work of modern fiction, prolific with vivid characters who are all fascinating in their ordinariness and riveting in their familiarity ... an exercise in guiltless literary voyeurism, difficult to put down or look away from ...

... it proves less difficult to remove the cottage-country slip cover to proclaim FREEDOM in bold silver letters from the book spine ... "when is Martin Luther King Day?", comes the overheard whisper from somewhere over there as the hefty, black hardcover holds steady at optimum distance from the reader's bespectacled face ... a slight torque on the little word "is" implying something more than the question ordinarily might convey ...

... in fact, there's no call to mention MLK ... the reader's expectation of a civil rights angle, given the connotative associations of the title with themes of struggle, proves way off the mark ... but, there is civic passion in the prose and redemptive realism to the relevant narrative, held aloft by contemporary dialogue, believable character development and honest airing-out of other peoples personal struggles ...

... Walter and Patty Berglund and Richard Katz are not perfect people, in the same way the reader is not, nor you, or you ... or Bono or Princess Di, or Jonathan Franzen ... but the yin and the yang of each fictional life is laid out here across the long chapters, illuminating individual and intertwined storylines to support the contemplative hypothesis that no-one is all good or all bad except Bernie Madoff (who, in fairness, isn't mentioned either) ...

... Franzen completes the pastiche by tracing both male and female psychologies across generational lines - what a concept! - to follow relationships between adults and their offspring, evolutions within friendships and marriages and to see how the dance of life can wheel and turn from waltz to rhumba to tap to freestyle and back, over time, without missing a beat ...

... in the 1972 Jamaican film The Harder They Come there's an aha moment for Jimmy Cliff's character, Ivan, wherein he casually coos "revolutionary to raass" when he recognizes the potency of his exploits ... and, while "revolutionary" is the kind of broad stroke Franzen eschews in his writing, and avoids in his self-promotion, this is exactly how I imagine he's feeling these days as a Katzian figure on the cover of Rolling Stone! ... well okay, it's a TIME magazine cover, but that gives him rockstar balls to dangle like Stephen King or Norman Mailer ... or Richard Katz ...

... "aw shit", the reader mumbles, noticing the reference to his own thoughts in a too-long sentence in the preceding paragraph, effectively outing himself as this writer ... then again, like some twists-of-fortune in the novel, this is forgivably predictable ... "so sue me," but don't judge me for bitin' the guy's style, it's intended to flatter, and I'll take the largesse just in case the Freedom Road to Oprah's attention is (no torque applied) paved with Middle American philosophy, soft sell and third-person syntax ...

Friday, January 21, 2011

... orchid obituary ...

... when I wrote of her gerberas, no sign then to know
of approaching energy-shift, at the yard where they grow ...
but alas, one of those incontrovertible facts is,
sadly true what they say about death ... and taxes ...













... still, I know that blessed garden will continue to thrive,
the orchids alone will keep Joyce's spirit alive,
'cos that's another fact about this life that we're given,
it counts when you make beauty while your being is livin'.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

... Barack dip dem in di healin' stream ...

hear parable people ... mi tun on TV dis mornin',
hol' a coffee an' a food and go fi sweep out di house ...
when mi look fi di broom me si seh a two broom in deh,
one new-bran' stiff broom, an' a old mash-down soft one ...
I tek up the two a dem an instantly memba wha' granny seh,
how "new broom sweep clean" an', "old broom know corner"...
same time, man an' man come pon TV a big-up Obama,
an' a labba-labba how Uncle Sam a gwaan,
when BADAM! ... it lick me ... clear as day ...
certain sittn suppose' to brush wit' new broom,
the odda res' have to caress with the sof' one ... den,
mi mind jump to Joshua, wid di famous Rod-of-Correction ... 
likkle mos' mi apoplexy to vision Prezi a brandish two broom,
mi seh! ... laugh an' kiki keep up inna livin' room a mornin' time!
"sweep dem Barack sweep dem, sweep dem in di healin' stream"
















- JAMAICAN GLOSSARY -
"labba-labba"- chatter, "likkle most"- almost, nearly,
"kiki"- laughter, "lick"- hit,
"Dip Dem in di Healing Stream"- popular Jamaican Folk song

Sunday, January 9, 2011

... flee from hate, mischief and jealousy...

... I had no intention of starting the year on a heavy note because the outlook for me depends on positive vibrations, but news of the shooting and loss of life in Arizona this weekend touched a long-exposed nerve ... in the U.S.A., a country with so much to offer the world, there are some baffling smoke signals ...

... "life is one big road with lots of signs" ... this 1979 Bob Marley lyric from the strident anthem "Wake Up And Live" goes on to advise ... "flee from hate, mischief and jealousy" ... Bob's focus was on metaphorical signs and scriptural prophecy rather than literal letraset and amateur calligraphy ...















... it's either naive or deliberately negligent to overlook the connection between the election of the first African American to the highest office in the land and the overt vitriol that comes to the fore when progressive energies meet conservative resistance in the current political tug-o-war game ...

... inflamed passion can manifest as insanity in ways stranger than fiction and it gets even more distressing when people (who should know better as citizens of the self-proclaimed leader of the free world) resort to calling for (or alluding to) gruesome deaths for holders of opposition viewpoints ...

















... democracy, as fair a blueprint for governance as humankind has yet devised, needs to see itself as just that, a man-made template that requires periodic updates in the manner of today's state-of-the-art electronics ... other countries have experimented, the time is past-due for U.S.A. Democracy 2.0 ...

... after centuries of not-entirely-proportionate division of assets, the U.S. is now left to deal with a quest for equilibrium ... while it's understood that there'll be disagreement along the way, surely there is nothing to be gained by obstinately defending a right to bear ever-more-destructive firearms instead of voting towards enlightened alternatives ... even compromise would be improvement, but no, we must adapt for hollow-points and Glock semis because founding fathers decreed it for a bygone age ... some floundering fathers continue to decree it, with defensive and offensive rationale, while the walking-dead in America and it's regional slipstream continue to live nine-millimeter lives ...
















... in this part of the world we are able to lean on the democratic cornerstone of Freedom Of Speech but do we really require an M-16 to defend that right in a mall parking-lot or at a tea-party? ...

... it doesn't take deep contemplation to imagine what some people feel at the sight of a confident Michelle Obama, speaking freely as FLOTUS, when simian references recall another lingering archaic notion intended to injure ... elsewhere there's the oblique approach, but the words you twist to make your own today may return to haunt your tomorrow ...
















... I saw a re-run of "Bowling For Columbine" last week ... the shock factor has diminished significantly since first release due to repeated cases of people "going postal" and the hawkish stances staked-out by the paradoxically called "right-wing"...

... Limbaugh disciples and ilk, with clear kneejerk reactions to a wave of first-time-evers in American politics, unquestionably kindle brush-fires that feed on the feeble minded and potentially trigger actions like the barbaric attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents ... tell it like it is ...





















... despite the proliferation of signage, or maybe because of it, the astounding reality of Palinite sophistry will not have the power to ultimately carry the day, I predict ... common sense tells me so (to reclaim a favoured phrase from the pipsqueek braintrust), but it is also possible that the sign-makers could worsen matters by learning to spell, correctly pronouncing "nuclear," "Iraq" and "Ahmadinejad," while re-loading a full ammo magazine into a semi-automatic weapon before getting shot or subdued ...

... an afterword-to-the-wise of A(mer)ri(ca)zona ... don't shoot that sheriff (Dupnik) ... check his post-event remarks, then resume the Bob lyric ... "riiise, from your sleepless slumber"...