R.I.P. José Saramago, author of Blindness and Seeing.

Unfortunately, I had the pink cover...

I’ve been reading a lot of post apocolyptic books as of late for no discernable reason. The titles have simpy been the ones I’ve been interested in or found their way into my hands. Recently, I’ve read The Road by Cormac Mccarthy, The Possibilities of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, some other titles that allude me at the moment and now, I’ve just completed The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway.

Before I use the wrong words to describe the book, I should just start by reminding myself that this was a very good book… 512 pages of hardcover goodness.

If I had to compare it to some of my past favorites, I would have to say it’s a cross between Oryx and Crake (with its two men’s destinies locked in a seemingly endless struggle while the world ends around them) and Snow Crash (with his fantastically brash “I could give a shit about good writing” tone of voice and references to martial arts). That said, those are two books I really love, so if you smash them together, throw in some interesting twists and make the whole thing feel a little closer to a good blockbuster movie (not too much, mind you) you’ve got the fantastic read that is The Gone Away World.

Of course, many of the lady readers may not latch on to all the male centric issues it raises around relationships, but perhaps they’ll be able to see past that and simply relish the deeply satisfying story itself.

This being Nick’s first novel, I need to remember to check out his next. Especially since I loved the end of his acknowledgements where he wrote: “on to the next one.”

There’s a line in José Saramago’s All The Names that reads:

“Meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit,… while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide…”

The funny thing about that line is that is basically sums up my experience reading this book I picked up a month ago.

Saramago so masterfully fills this book to overflowing with metaphors, observations, misdirection, mazes, and more that I found myself a bit overwhelmed by the ever changing “sense” of the novel and focusing more on what would happen next in the plot. And when I was done, I almost felt dumb. As though I’d missed the many, many, many points Saramago was expertly, but also cryptically laying out before me. It’s really the type of novel, I’d probably have to read 2 or 3 times to feel comfortable with the material, which is amazing considering how short the book is. (Unfortunately, for me I guess, I don’t really read books more than once.)

Hmm, maybe I am dumb. I don’t know, but I probably should remember to try to read more studiously if I want to come away with more than who did what.

On a side note, reading through another Saramago novel made me realize more and more just how ham-fisted that play based on Blindness was. Oh well…

Yeah, Kurt Vonnegut died today at age 84. From the Times obituary: “, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ ‘Cat’s Cradle’ and ‘God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater’ caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan… Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.”

Just some history to remember.

I hadn’t read Steinbeck since I was a kid in high school. For some reason, I remember liking The Pearl and hating to the point of not finishing (and I assume doing poorly on some test) The Grapes of Wrath. Anyway, I picked up Tortilla Flat since there was not much else to read in my place and it was so short. I’m glad I did because I loved it. It had the feel of a sitcom the way the stories were short self-contained vignettes chronocling the rise and ultimately the fall of Danny and his paisano friends Pilon, Pablo, Big Joe, Jesus Maria and the Pirate who live in squalid poverty and blissful idleness near Monterey, California.

The writing really reminded me of the writing style in Blindness by Jose Saramago (boy I write about this guy a lot it seems).

I ran out today and picked up a couple of Steinbeck collections to save myself from buying all the individual books plus a couple of Saramago titles (All The Names, which I plan to read next, and The Cave).

Now I just need to remember to read all this stuff. I also shouldn’t forget to pick up Cannery Row.

So, after just remembering Blindness the other day, I saw in my weekly Time Out that there was a new play adapted from Jose Saramago’s Nobel Prize winning novel. I loved this book, and although I had my doubts based on a skimming of the New York Times review (I hate reading reviews and generally never even look at them, unless I know nothing about a show) I bought some tickets to the Sunday night showing.

Long story short, the play was engaging for the hour or so it lasted, but carried almost none of the weight the novel expertly maintains, but never belabors.

The most important thing missing from the equation, for me, was the narrator. His telling of the story, with his many asides and feeling of a regular Joe talking about an extraordinary circumstance, was so amazingly key to the overall mood and accessibility of the work, that omitting him turned the story into little more than a particularly harsh episode of Lost.

That said, I should remember that I did enjoy the show.

And I should, also, remember to check back at the theater at 59 east 59th for the other show running right now called Attic which was adapted from an originally Japanese play about a company that sells tiny attics for people to use for escaping reality.

One additional item that happened perhaps as a result of not playing video games in September was that I managed to read a good book during my daily subway commute. Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta is a collection of stories in the spirit of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as told by characters stuck spending the night snowed into a Japanese airport after having to make an unscheduled landing.

The stories start out semi-normal, but their imaginativeness quickly spirals out of control into the fantastic. A woman in love with Robert DeNiro’s illegitimate son can turn into Madison Avenue shops by eating magical Oreo cookies, a guy creates a Japanese sex doll that turns on him after learning how to be a woman by surfing the internet, another woman is followed across thousands of miles by a bird whose wings have been cut off, a poor guy inflicted with a plant growing inside him takes an immortal being with him when he dies, a young Indian woman makes plants grow exponentially whenever she sleeps and more. (I’ve actually already forgotten some of the stories although not because of their lack of worth, but rather because of my lack of memory.)

Anyway, one of the early stories really stood out to me was about a guy who saved the people of the world from losing their memories by being a receptacle for everyone else’s memories (both good and bad) until he overflowed releasing the memories back out into the world. I wish I had a guy like that hanging onto my memories I so quickly forget until I need them….

Oh well, I should remember to read more books.