*Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra -William Shakespeare
The seminal difference between Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth lies not in their action, nor in their intention, but in their conclusions. The last we see of Lady Macbeth is when she is frantically trying to rue away her bloodstained hands,“Out, damned spot,” she begs. But, she realizes, “What’s done cannot be undone.”
Whereas Cleopatra is left, indeed, with the ultimate cleansing, self-martyrdom. Having done no irreparable wrong, she kills herself to both avoid becking to Caesar and to join her deceased lover. Both Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth are, in terms, in the end, “unsexed.” Lady Macbeth bats away her sex so that she can find the fortitude to murder. Cleopatra, on the other hand, achieves the consummation of her sex through the love and anger shared between her and Antony. The diabolical difference between LadyBeth and Cleopatra, is that Cleopatra ends life unsexed and Lady Macbeth is, in the end, resexed. When Cleopatra dies, she uses as weapon an asp. Obviously symbolic of what it took women to become women, or to become at least ashamed of being so, instead of beggaring to the temptation of the snake, this time, she (woman/Cleopatra) delivers her own coup de (grace)innocence, and seals herself forever with the mark of conscience, the, in fact, ultimate mark of purpose, suicide.
“My resolution’s placed, and I have nothing
Of woman in me. Now from head to foot
I am marble-constant; now the fleeting moon
No planet is of mine.”
and,
“I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life.”
She walks away from life Cained. She leaves tattooed by the beast (purpose/potential/possibility), but, she walks upright.

Lady Macbeth, however, attempting to trump her womanity, succumbs to the beast (p/p/p, or, conscience), and is left imprisoned. Both her man, and the man in her, fail her: Macbeth cowers to a ghost and is then killed by Macduff, while she herself concedes her masculinity to tears.

Two more from Antony and Cleopatra:
“There’s beggary in love that can be reckoned.”
“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.”

*The Road

The Road -Cormac McCarthy
The Road is not a transcendent novel. It is not philosophy, fact, nor harbinger. It is not a moral or a prophesy. It is an artifact.
Could you say that a recovered amphora is transcendent?
But what relic has function?
If an amphora could tell a story then why would men tell stories?
Then what does the amphora do?
It promises.
And so does this book.
It promises of civilization. Of life. And of God.
“Look around you, he said. There is no prophet in the earth’s long chronicle who’s not honored here today. [to his son] Whatever form you spoke of you were right.”

Again, read an entire McCarthy novel in less than 24 hours. Again, sick. Again, what is the opposite of devastation?
The book started with the typical Cormac off-colored descriptions…“like some… [simile of something godly, ghastly or obscure].” And the dialogue was spitting off the skillet.
But a few times Cormac was off target with sentences like, “A blackness to hurt your ears,” which is, itself, painful, beautiful, but McCarthy stresses the prose a little too much, and adds, “with listening,” [A blackness to hurt your ears with listening] which is obvious, redundant, and, in the author’s own standards, long-winded.
“Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.”
The truncated, perhaps often truncheoned, diction of The Road was less abrasive and simpler, almost sweet, inquisitive, than what is found in even the most recent of his novels.
“On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world. Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?”

And as the reviewer in The Economist pointed out, we are not short of the Cormacian stylism, “The snow fell nor did it cease to fall.” But sometimes he broke out of his fashion and was dead on good, “The nights were blinding cold and casket black…” and, this cold, miniature, Melvillian chapter, addressing the reader, pointblank, “Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.”
This sentiment is perhaps the completion of an oeuvre. But despite the blood splattered, the insanity, and the fear of ten novels, a play and a screenplay, in both of his septuagenarian works we are left with a modicum of hope. Of promise. The finish of No Country was the story of a man who built a stone water trough that would last ten thousand years. Did it last the cataclysm that forced father and son to take to The Road? Probably. Just like the promise of the amphora will last.

And in The Road the author’s voice never felt as obvious as in moments when the writing itself was choked:
“When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”
and
“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

*The History of Love

The History of Love -Nicole Krauss
As long as the lightness keeps itself light… But how does it do that? What is the pretence is to shining? Why would a dark soul even try to write a book?
By the end of the novel I was impressed. The plot complicated delightfully and resolved like the crack of a blossoming sweet pea.
What was so perplexing was the ever-present question: Can I take this book seriously?
Very far from meta-fiction, removed from slapstick, off-track of drama, oft-too-puerile for a love story, full of tricks and quips, The History of Love, unbelievably, came to itself, and what I finally gleaned from Krauss was the simple joy of writing.
It won’t keep you up nights, but, quick and charming in a great way.
“her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”
“When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end.”

*Monkey

Monkey –Wu Ch’Eng-En – translated by Arthur Waley
A blurb from The Nation describes the book as a “combination of picaresque novel, fairly tale, fabliau, Mickey Mouse, Davy Crocket, and Pilgrim’s Progress.” I would add to that list The Divine Comedy, The Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn, 1001 Arabian Nights and modern political satire. But despite the seemingly esoteric description, it is a light, breezy novel. The reader doesn’t need to know who Lao Tzu is to laugh when he pinches Monkey and tells him “Be off with you, be off with you, and don’t let me find you hanging round here [heaven] anymore.” The reader doesn’t need to have a few University years of Chinese fiction or philosophy under the belt before laughing at Monkey stuffing himself with the Jade Emperor’s peaches. Nor, even, does the reader need to be steeped in morality, for, though having early attained immortality and, we all know, on fast track for Buddhahood, Monkey still likes to crack a dragon joke before clobbering one over the head with his cudgel in “a real garlic-pounding blow that will finish him off for good and all.”
Waley’s translation flows lightly, using a vernacular that is simple, easy and inviting, and, at the same time, reminiscent of the sagacity of the veteran Boddhisatvas, many of whom make guest appearances. It is a beautiful, wild, fun story centered around a stone-born ape, aka Monkey, aka “Aware of Vacuity,” who tromps the world over in search of mischief, power, peaches, sacred texts and enlightenment. Strikingly similar to 1001 Arabian Nights in both form, wisdom, and content.
“I wonder whether a knowledge of the True Scriptures would not cause some improvement in them? Do you yourself possess those scriptures?’” asked the Bodhisattvas! ‘Yes, three baskets of them,’ said Buddha,” and the journey began…
“Tripitaka said nothing, but only pointed again and again at his own heart.”
“He who does not believe that straight is straight must guard against the wickedness of good.”
“’I will rise on my cloud-trapeze,’ said Monkey, ‘and force my way into the southern gate of Heaven. I shall not go to the Palace of the Pole and Ox, nor to the Hall of Holy Mists, but go straight up to the thirty-third heaven, and in the Trayasimstra Courtyard of the heavenly palace of Quit Grief I shall visit Lao Tzu and ask for a grain of his Nine Times Sublimated Life Restoring Elixir, and with it I shall bring the king back to life.’”
“A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth.”

*The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses -Salman Rushdie
The short opening chapter was so elegantly written, so coherently conscious, and fresh, that I was verily disappointed that the novel extended into cutesy, half-forged post-modernism. I see how he is Pynchonesque. I see how he adopts a cultural headline, a modern trend or a big name and transplants it in a seemingly timeless style of writing. I see how people like to read “serious” fiction that mentions Goldie Hawn. What I don’t see is how Ayatollah Khomeini denounced and threatened to execute a man for such an ephemeral book. Topically, it may be profound. But even children play with big words and we don’t condemn them for their constructions, or mistakes. I can see how easily this pertinent novel could be so swept into the realm of important literature… it’s because we want it to be good, we want it to matter, we want to understand the human condition, and so when any skate comes mountebanking, we’re quick to throw down our cash. No, I didn’t finish it. Pertinence and quality are very different animals.
“How does newness come into the world? How is it born?”

*New Arabian Nights

New Arabian Nights -Robert Louis Stevenson
Wholly without the charm, wisdom, ancestry, longevity, vibrancy or wit of the “old” Arabian Nights. The pleasure mostly came from imagining Borges so enjoying them as a boy. I suppose there may be a place for these tales, resting in historical literary scholarship, obscure theses, or middle childhood.

*Arabian Nights

The Arabian Nights: Tales from A Thousand and One Nights -translated by Sir Richard F. Burton
Though the collection is incomplete (this edition contains only the “most famous and representative” tales from the entirety), the compendium outshines any expectation or foreknowledge of the stories and is choc with the marvelous wit of ancient Arabian storytelling. The stories have an underbidding theme all alike, good is good and evil is evil, Allah is all and always and man and manhood will be sundered, for without fail comes with the tail of every tale “the Destroyer of delights and Severer of societies, the Plunderer of palaces, and the Garnerer of graves.” Reminding sundry-reader that, despite diamond caches and throes of love, all is vanity of vanity, and only the story will exist for aught. The structure of each of these stories is thematically similar: a poor man happens on a souterrain of riches, he is espied by someone of evil, foul play ensues, a moon of moons of a beauty entrances one and all, a jinn sneaks out of a signet ring, the enemy is bewitched, and the hero is consummated with love and gold. Or, the reverse. Or, the inverse. But what is unique to each of these stories is the complete freedom of happenstance. A man fishing in a pond nets a monkey. A marooned sailor flies with a giant bird to freedom. A man blind in one eye runs into another blind in one eye and they run into another blind in one eye. Ali-Babba overhears an eponymous password to a storehouse of plunder. Everything and anything goes. As well with the language, in “fairest favour and formous form,” Sir Burton spares no joyance of neologism coined, alliteration aligned or rhyme rhymed. The text is bedight with proper consciousness of Shaharazad, “for interest fails in twice told tales,” and “Words cannot undo the done,” as we are gently and thematically reminded of the bookends: the murderous king and the maiden, Shaharazad’s “fictitious” fight for survival. The stories that have so obviously leaked into our culture, Aladdin, Ali-Babba and the Forty Thieves, are so much richer, more profound, and less coddling than our cartooned interpretations (as is also the case with the Grimm and Andersen tales). In the end, it is obvious that nor King nor author nor Queen is the hero. None save the stories themselves and the love of the telling will live on.

*Iphigenia among the Taurians

Iphigenia among the Taurians -Euripides
Good to be reminded of the genre. The Deus-ex-Macchina. A tale much reminiscent of Arabian Nights. Short, sweet, full of trickery, chicanery, the fear of God, brotherly love and a happy ending.

*The Orchard Keeper

The Orchard Keeper -Cormac McCarthy
Finished with his public works and ready for the upcoming novel, “The Road,” this fall. The Orchard Keeper was published in 1965 when McCarthy was only 32. Wonderful to see the lessons that he learned, not only about writing, but about life. Mostly it was unfocused, characters more ideas than characters. Wit precedenting depth. The writing was similarly esoteric, sesquipedalian, but without the punch of his later work. It is like a sword-swallower hesitating mid-throat. Which smarts, but is the only way to establish scar that will afford a lifetime in the trade. He took, in this novel, entire paragraphs to glean the beauty of the sunset when in his later works he does so in a few words and moves back to the character. Nonetheless, striking.