Suplexed by Eloquence

So On Beauty...very different read from our previous reads - not that that's a bad thing, I'm just getting adjusted to the intense, eloquent language and pace Zadie has prepared for us. It's interesting because her characters are ostensibly depicted in a glittered, happy life with an obvious display of despondence and discord. Lot's of "D's" I did that on purpose - because, as of now, the story is getting a "D." The writing, on the other hand, is phenomenal. Every sentence, every word, meticulously pinpricked to make sure the blood drips out ever so gentle. Every character has their own particular preponderance over whomever they speak about, or even to. These are charaters that seem plausible in a MA. setting, but I don't buy it. I guess in the Literati world, we can finagle our injustices within our family by simply avoiding them and conversing with our other intellectuals, therefore disparaging the family circle. Damn, now you have an image of "Family Circle" in your head, I should've not used that. Anyway, what I really enjoyed was the dialogue, it made it real, but how they handled the issues were faulty. Maybe things will change, I'm on page 200. Just wanted to put a "On Beauty" post on here before Subtext usurps the entire page.

I am he as you are me and we are all together

We are served by organic ghosts, he thought, who, speaking and writing, pass through this our new environment. Watching, wise, physical ghosts from the full-life world, elements of which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart. And all of them, he thought, thanks to Glen Runciter. In particular. The writer of instructions, labels and notes. Valuable notes.

p. 796


All very platonistic, things reverting to their previous forms, yet the forms retaining some aspect of the thing from which it is reverting. There is nothing new in the world. The full-life world being comparable to the ideal world of Plato of which everything in the world we live in is but a shadowy reflection. Additionally we are a dream within a dream within a dream: the dreamer and the dreamed infinitely regress into one another like reflections of mirrors facing one another. I also thought about during the quoted passage above, about M. Adler’s idea of the Great Conversation where writers talk to one another across the centuries about ideas and the world which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart.” This of course echoes Plato’s Ideals as well. We are but “walking shadows, poor players who strut and fret their moment upon the stage and then are heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”


I question the end. Kind of like adolescent writers who bring an end to a complicated plot by saying, “and then I woke up.” Does Dick work this cliché in an effective manner? Or is it just a cliché?

Make a Connection?

I thought I would try to make a connection between two quotes, wound up being three, that Dick puts into the novel near the beginning. But I couldn't. At least not off the top of my head, where I do my best thinking. So anyone want to make a stab at it.

"I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of future by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them."

from Richard the Third, the beginning: The Winter of our discontent speech. Can be read in its entirety here


Also the music playing at the mortuary in Switzerland. Here are the translations:

Beethoven: Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world
Complete lyrics here

Verdi: Day of wrath, day that
will dissolve the world into burning coals,
as David bore witness with the Sibyl.

Complete lyrics with translation here

Matryoshka Dolls

I am quickly rereading Ubik. As I go I am going to have a running commentary (or at least that is my plan), a kind of dialectical journal. I will write a quote and then digress on whatever comes to mind. This seemed to bother some of you when I did this during “Till We Have Faces,” but “Oh, Well.”

All quotes come from The Library of America edition of Ubik, unless otherwise noted.

“Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone? That for the telpaths . . . and then the queasy worry about precogs. Are your actions being predicted by someone you never met? Someone you would not want to meet or invite into your home? “ p. 616

Eerie parallel to spybot software, and unauthorized wiretaps. I wonder, as did Herbert at this point in the novel, if the fear in our world is a manufactured control that has no basis in fact. Similar to Foucault’s panopticon, where because we think we are being watched we act as if we actually are being watched thus nullifying the need to be watched because we act the way we are “supposed” to act, or rather how we are told to behave.


“In the earphone words, slow and uncertain, formed: circular thoughts of no importance, fragments of the mysterious dream which she now dwelt in.” p. 619.

Again, I am rereading Ubik, so I tend to notice details in quotes that echo/inform themes which coalesced, at least for me, more as the novel came to a close. I think this line about Runciter’s “half-life” wife is a fairly good description of the “advertising” epigrams which begin each chapter. “Ubik” being the generic name for whatever product is being sold. The ads, like advertising and news bits in which we are imbued, are of “no importance” they are simply fragments which surround our waking lives, and perhaps send their tendrils into our dreams as well. It is like the idea of James Gee in which we are all a member of a discourse community where we take on the language and the implicit and tacit ideologies of those communities. It is not that there is a formalized dogma that must be followed; but, even more insidious, we simply take on the belief systems as we take part in the community or the dream in which we dwell. This plays out in the novel as Runciter’s wife’s half-life is influenced by another stronger half-lifer and as well as who is in control of who’s reality as the novel plays out its Russian doll-like panopticon of control.

Finished!

Ok, so I finished Ubik, and I absolutely loved it. I recently finished Androids and I was intrigued, but not astounded by Dick's style, but after reading Ubik, I can see why people are so fascinated with him. I will save my comments for our day (which day is it? the 12th?) But I do have some questions. I didn't want to post the questions on the page, insofar as to not distract other readers who haven't finished the book. So, if you want to help, just go to the comments section to read the questions. Thank you.

Take only as directed.

July book (or is it August book?) as chosen ever so carefully by Carlitos

On Beauty. by Zadie Smith (Really thought about Lolita, but I am just too afraid to even touch her.)

Movie Rec. from Gripp

As I was reading Ubik I thought of a movie you guys might want to check out. It's called Primer - it focuses on the same ideals of time travel and creating time paradoxes and the like. One of the most complicated movies I've ever watched. Let me know if you watch it.