Some notes on "One Sentence Says It All"

After my essay ( "One Sentence Says It All") came out on Sunday, I was alerted to some other Very Long Sentences.

1) On her blog, translator Lisa Hayden Espenchade mentioned a recent one-sentencer, "Alain Mabanckou’s very readable and funny Broken Glass, translated from the French by Helen Stevenson."

2) Ashur Etwebi, a Libyan poet and novelist, told me about his novel Dardanin, published in Cairo in 2001, which consists of one 113-page sentence. "Many Libyan critics dealt with it as wast[ed] writing. For me I wanted to see if it can be done and I think yes it can be done, but then you maybe will be the only reader." (As a character says in Joseph Weisberg's novel 10th Grade, VTS—Very True Statement.)

3) The novelist Richard Grossman e-mailed me about the 70-page (!) sentence fragment in his novel The Book of Lazarus.

4) My friend Sung J. Woo Facebook-posted me (is that a term?) about Donald Barthelme's story "Sentence," of which Lorrie Moore wrote:

Language is seen as having its own random and self-generating vital life, a subject he takes on explicitly in the story “Sentence,” which is one long never-ending sentence, full of self-interruptions and searching detours and not quite dead ends (like human DNA itself, with its inert, junk viruses), concluding with the words “a structure to be treasured for its weakness as opposed to the strength of stones.”

(Another VTS.)

5) Finally (??), Patrick Ahern e-mailed me: "Camilo José Cela wrote a 303-page one-sentence book called Cristo versus Arizona. It is in Spanish and was published in 1988 by Plaza y Janes of Barcelona. It has no chapter (or other) breaks. There is a period at the end." (I have a Cela somewhere on my shelves...but it's not this one.)

I'm hoping people will turn up more...e-mail me at info@ed-park.com if you've got other favorites that I didn't mention...

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Other notes: I originally planned to write about books that were one sentence or one paragraph long, and wanted to use this line of Gertrude Stein as a lede: "A Sentence is not emotional a paragraph is". I soon realized that I had my hands full, and thought it best to stick to the former. (Also, I was still trying to figure out what Stein meant—no surprise!)

I did manage to read two one-paragraphers for the piece before closing that route): Roberto Bolaño's By Night in Chile (amazing) and Jean-Christophe Valtat's 03 (a little thin).

I also started going through Thomas Bernhard* a bit—fittingly, the same issue of the NYTBR features Dale Peck on Bernhard; annoyingly, I did not receive my (pre-blizzard) Sunday Times!




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*In particular The Loser, which starts off with a few shorties and then, while still on the first page, begins its epic paragraph. Glenn Gould is a character in The Loser, and I thought it was interesting that Gould's performance of "The Well-Tempered Clavier" inspired Friedrich Dürrenmatt's "novella in 24 sentences."

El Secreto

There is an unwittingly funny passage in the Spanish edition of Ignacio Echevarria's introduction to "El Secreto del Mal," a still-untranslated collection of Roberto Bolano's stories, a passage that could easily have been cribbed from one of Jorge Luis Borges' metafictions or, more to the point, from one of Bolano's. Echevarria observes that Bolano's work is "governed by a poetics of incompleteness." Bolano tends to interrupt his stories with other stories, and those with other tales in turn. He spends page after page building tension, then mischievously buries the climax or neglects it altogether. This makes it difficult to determine, Echevarria laments, which "among the pieces that he did not end up publishing can be considered finished." —Ben Ehrenreich's review of 2666 in the L.A. Times

Literary Tupac-ism, or the case of the posthumous authors

Brandon Stosuy wrote in the VLS a few years back:

In 2001, W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz had barely hatched when its expat German author died in an auto accident near Norwich, England. The book came of age in its creator's absence. As a steady stream of miscellany, new translations, and critical exegesis in books about World War II has emerged, Sebald's posthumous trajectory resembles, of all things, that of slain West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur. An Inside a Thug's Heart/Campo Santo mash-up is a pipe dream, but both artists' beyond-the-grave success is a lesson in memory's resonance and Sebald's refrain that the dead are still around us (cf. Shakur's "How Long Will They Mourn Me?").

[An aside: Can someone please tell news websites to stop adding automated-seeming hyperlinks to every other word? Like, I really want to jump to all instances of "Long Will"???]

I thought of literary Tupac-ism twice recently—upon seeing the ARC of yet another Roberto Bolaño book, and again on reading Charles McGrath's piece on the afterlife of Stieg Larsson. I seem to remember (and seem to remember noting somewhere, perhaps on this blog) someone saying that even the unfinished stuff on Bolaño's hard drive could be considered for publication—their very incompleteness a commentary on his fate/career. (And I remember noting, as I note again now: Did I just this make this up? Can anyone find this? I think it was a tiny thing in a TLS...maybe in that "J.C." column.)

The most tantalizing part of McGrath's piece is the existence of a fourth, unfinished novel on Larsson's hard drive, which is in the possession of his longtime partner Eva Gabrielsson (who is at loggerheads with his father and brother over his literary estate)...

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I'm also reminded of this recent NYT piece about the late Yiddish writer Chaim Grade; his widow Inna Hecker Grade's recent passing means that more scholars and translators might have the opportunity to work on his writings. (She was notoriously difficult with those interested in translating her husband's work, resulting in less exposure and ironically causing his star to dim.)

The story rang a bell, not because I'd ever heard of Grade, but because last year I read Joseph Epstein's short story "Beyond the Pale" (which is in the 2010 edition of The Best American Short Stories) about a young Time reporter whose interest in Yiddish leads him to pursue a great but obscure writer named Zalman Belzner. Belzner's wife, Gerda (= anagram for Grade!) is so loyal to the idea of her husband's greatness that she defeats every attempt at translation and proselytizing. (Like Irma, she's staunchly anti–Isaac Bashevis Singer.)

To be continued...

Londoners! Invisible Library to disappear soon...

Some nice pics of people scribbling in the Invisible Library are up at Londonist. And here's what the site has to say:

Sometimes we hear of an idea that's so brilliantly simple, we wonder why nobody's tried it before. And so it is with the Invisible Library exhibition at Tenderpixel on Cecil Court. The illustration collective INK have chosen 40 books that don't exist in the real world - only within the pages of other, real-world books - and brought them to life by illustrating their covers.

But it doesn't stop there. These books are unwritten, apart from the opening or closing pages, and you're invited to go in and add to their stories. The exhibition's already been running for several weeks so if your creative juices aren't running, you can always read what others have done (we recommend taking a look at Oolon Colluphid's "Who is This God Person, Anyway?", part of which has been filled in by someone who's clearly never read any Douglas Adams). Other fake works come from Roberto Bolano, John Wyndham and Vladimir Nabokov.

Invisible Library runs until 11 July at Tendepixel, 10 Cecil Court WC2N. Gallery open Tuesday-Saturday 10.30am-7pm. For more information, visit Tenderpixel or INK Illustration's websites.

Le Cool

Nestled between the old bookshops of Cecil Court is the Invisible Library. Its shelves are lined with books that don’t exist, but have appeared in other books. Rachel Gannon, Fumie Kamijo and Chloe Regan of the INK collective were inspired by The Invisible Library blog, and have taken works such as those of the prodigious Benno von Archimbaldi, from Roberto Bolano’s 2666, and made their imagined versions. They have asked real authors to begin writing some of the stories inside, and they invite the public to do the same: yes, you can take books from the shelves and scribble. ‘We do quite a lot of book illustration in our day-to-day work,’ Rachel told me at the opening, as visitors perched with pencils and scratched their heads for good opening lines. ‘So this felt like a natural progression.’

—Le Cool (London)

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for November 12, 2008

I. Everything and nothing: In Slate, Dzyd Jessica identifies a headline habit at the NYT:

Consider: "Bigger Is Better, Except When It's Not"—a 2007 article looking at body size in sports. "Smaller Can Be Better (Except When It's Not)"—a tech piece from 2004. "A Marriage Penalty, Except When It Isn't"—on couples and the tax code, 2003. This is the Times headline as koan, inviting readers to suspend in-the-box thinking and seek enlightenment below the fold. The style presents thesis and antithesis; it embraces binary thinking yet disavows it; it builds dichotomies and collapses them. There are good uses of this technique, except when there aren't, as a sampling from the last three months attests.

II. New Triple Canopy.

III. The return of Pinakothek—vintage Sante:

"Florence" has reached our couple two decades after its release through the medium of oldies radio--a medium of chattering middle-aged men, audibly overweight, short-sleeved even in the dead of winter, who are capable of putting on the spookiest sides without seeming to notice the weirdness as they jabber on about trivia before and after.

(Thanks to Levi for the nudge)

IV. Speaking of Sante: I'll be on an LWC panel with him and some others on 11/22 (Sat.) at 11:45 a.m. The topic? "From Blogs to Books and Back." Back—to what, blogs??? Then do I get to go back again, to books?

V. Speaking of Levi: More Bolaño material at I've Been Reading Lately. And here he imagines Maud Newton's flight, via Anthony Powell.

VI. Annnnnd...one last time: Me + Heidi + Alec Baldwin + Will Eno + more = tonight.

Wednesday Ourobori

I. From a review of 2666: "In 2666, Bolaño has created the literary equivalent of the snake swallowing its own tail. Upon completing the book, you may feel tempted to go back to the beginning and start all over again--a remarkable claim for a work that approaches one thousand pages in length." (Via Levi)

II. Joshua discovers Ouroboric gold. (It's...kind of gross...)

More Bolaño!

Dzyd Lev reviews 2666 for the Seminary Co-op's The Front Table...

And Sarah points out that Lev Grossman (Dzyd status: unknown) hits on the novel's Friends-y naming convention for Time:

The 898 pages of 2666 are divided into 5 parts, and it will give you some idea of the book's tone, rigorously literary and ridiculously informal at the same time, to know that those parts are titled "The Part about Fate," "The Part about the Crimes," and so on, as if they were Friends episodes. (The flawless translation, by Natasha Wimmer, is appropriately loose and relaxed.) Part 1 is called "The Part about the Critics."

I am not going to read any reviews until I finish the book!

The One About the Posthumously Translated Masterpiece

Irreverent thought: Titles of sections of Bolaño's 2666 ("The Part About the Critics," "The Part About Fate," etc.) inspired by titles of Friends episodes?

Another candidate for Name of the Year — "Every human name"

"Dr O'Dor":

The research into the evolution of deep-sea octopuses was part of a programme called the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML), explained Don O'Dor, CoML's co-senior scientist...

The species could all be traced back to a shallow-water octopus called Megaleledone setebos, which is only found in the Southern Ocean.

Dr O'Dor added that the BAS researcher's work also enabled her to identify how changes in the region's ocean played a pivotal role in the development of the new species, especially the emergence of a "thermohaline expressway". —BBC

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That great Lethem review of 2666!!! Begins with Philip K. Dick...has some HPL ("the puzzle of their devotion to a writer who declines their interest — declines, in fact, ever to appear — inches like a great Lovecraftian shadow over their lives")...and DFW, and Denis Johnson...and then:

Bolaño has been, because of his bookishness, compared to Jorge Luis Borges. But from the evidence of a prose always immediate, spare, rapturous and drifting, always cosmopolitan and enchanted, the Bolaño boom should be taken as immediate cause for a revival of the neglected master Julio Cortázar. (Cortázar’s name appears in “2666,” but then it may seem that every human name appears there and that Bolaño’s book is reading your mind as you read it.)

UPDATE: Dzyd Ben reviews 2666 for the L.A. Times.

License to ille

1. Paper Cuts' Gregory Cowles on Carpenter's Gothic: "Gaddis is not in fact all that difficult."

2. Dzyd Levi on his defining summer '08 reads, Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and Gary Indiana's Do Everything In the Dark.

3. Dzyd Paul on McCain's repetition of "my friends" (in Slate): "Like Dole's use of the dissociative third person—or illeism, a propensity also shared by Elmo and the Incredible Hulk—this year's obsessive invocations to friendship invite scrutiny."

Beans and ancestors

[Typed out this morning to Levi Stahl, after finishing Richard Stark's partly-Buffalo-set The Outfit, luxuriously reading late into the night]

Just woke up from a dream in which a letter from Roberto Bolaño (to one of his translators) mentions Buffalo....The letter appears in the latest Triple Canopy.* The translator's letter mentions Buffalo and Niagara Falls, saying, "Of course, since you had only been in the country two days, I can't expect you to have visited either of these places," and mentions how nice it was to have him over for dinner. [He had apparently been in the U.S. recently, for the first time.]

Bolaño's letter is a marvel. He begins by saying, "Believe it or not, I had to travel to Buffalo as soon as I arrived, and had the opportunity to visit the famous Falls," and mentions a few local details that make it clear he did make the trip. Then he digresses on the wonderful dinner salad she prepared, writing that, curiously enough, every ingredient in the salad had some connection to a place in his life. The beans were from Venezuela, as were some of his ancestors; he lived for a time in Mexico, where the cheese was from, etc.




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*I must have been thinking of this.

Charisma carpenters

The Play Generated Map and Document Archive is dedicated to the online preservation of hand-written game-related ephemera, particularly those pertaining to RPGs (D&D, etc.) and computer games.

(Via Linksmeister General Thomas.)

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I highly recommend the Zadie Smith piece in the new Believer! I kept nodding my head in agreement and recognition, grinning, etc. Wise but fleet!

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I guess I'll be bringing Bolaño on tour!

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"It was definitely one of those nights when dinner was better than the play." —Light Reading