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2012/2
Peter Heigl: Mystiek en Drugs (126p.)
Peter Heigl’s Mystiek en Drugs (originally Mystik und Drogenmystik – has not been translated in English) reminded me of how much I like to read non-fiction, which was my staple between 2000 and 2004, later to be replaced by fiction.
In this pleasant little book (which fell into my hands in a derelict bookstore downtown Ghent while waiting for the windshield of my car to be replaced) and after examining the evidence, Peter Heigl concludes that to the question whether psychedelics can induce genuine mystical experiences (similar to those described within the world’s major wisdom traditions) the answer is an affirmative yes, and proceeds with investigating the ethical, religious, and philosophical consequences. Naturally, such genuine mystical experiences are the exception rather than the rule (in one experiment only the experiences of 6 out of 206 participants classified), and require not only a proper dosage and setting, but most importantly a proper ‘set’ as well, i.e. for the recipient to be in the possession of a well-integrated personality structure, and an open and creative mindset already pre-disposed to religion and spirituality.
According to some sources, psychedelics are even what boosted man’s outlook from animistic to mystic/religious to begin with; otherwise said, in the psychedelic experience lies the kernel of all religious feeling and thought. The Aryans who conquered India carried Soma with them which they had gotten acquainted with in their native Central-Asian highlands, and which became a key element in Vedantic religion. As the Aryans further penetrated the Indian lowlands (where Soma didn’t grow), they developed yoga to foster the same psychological conditions (conducive to spirituality) as Soma had done before. (In a remarkable reversal, Timothy Leary much later dubbed LSD the ‘yoga of the West.’)
2012/1
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath (476p.)
I used to score books here on the Mountaintop, as in Alberto Moravia The Conformist 9 Mountaintops, until one night I woke and sat, beads of sweat lining my forehead, in panic at the thought of so much foolishness, the talentless a posteriori bookkeeping of someone else’s a priori talent. I got myself a hand pick (Steinbeck: a han’ pick) and tore apart the cabinet, only retaining the top drawer, 10 Mountaintops, in which I had previously stored away (out of the last four years of reading only) Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, Don DeLillo’s Underworld, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and to which I’m now adding John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck busies a colloquial version of American English which might intimidate fair-weather readers not used to reading in English (‘something’ as ‘somepin’’), but it fits the Joad family wonderfully well, a hardened family of sharecroppers forced to flee native Oklahoma (Dust Bowl) during the Great Depression, migrant Okies on the way to California, a tale of unspeakable suffering in times of a changing economy.
Steinbeck himself quoted that “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires,” but maybe even more so The Grapes of Wrath is as powerful an anti-globalization statement (50 years before globalization became mainstream in the mid 80s), as Animal Farm is against communism or 1984 against totalitarianism.
Nobel Prize Literature 1962.
For those who have nine minutes to spare (I think you should): Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello (RATM) in a brilliant live rendition of Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, named after the main character in The Grapes of Wrath.
(Hard times on Wall Street, hard times on Main Street.)
I got this picture out of De Muur, a Dutch quarterly (and literary) cycling magazine, of which I had ordered the January 2011 edition because it contains an anthology of cycling literature, compiled by Arthur van den Boogaard, who is in the picture, together of course with the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient, the great John Maxwell Coetzee (in front) – wearing ONCE cycling tights (very 90s again) and riding a Bianchi road bike (no doubt colored ‘Celeste’ (Italian), ‘Selest’ (English), or Bianchi Green for the rest of us – the oldest bicycle company on the planet), both tights and bike on borrow as Coetzee was on a visit to Amsterdam, as a writer, not as a rider.
2011/27
Scott Young: Neil and Me (379p.)
Scott Young’s Neil and Me is a rare case of a biography written by the dad on the son, the dad being Canadian sports journalist Scott Young, the son being Neil Young, rock ‘n roll’s creative genius who over 50 years has built himself a career in rock only equaled by Bob Dylan, and this without compromising himself once. With his falsetto voice and acoustic guitar, Neil Young might come across as outdated to the younger generations, but I have listened to his music on tape, vinyl, CD, and MP3, and I would through streaming too were it not that accessing Spotify requires a Facebook account. His Live Rust album really got things going for me back then, a quarter of a century ago – I’m getting old.
Neil Young has three children, two boys and a girl, and while there is no genetic component to cerebral palsy, both his boys suffer from it, Zeke mildly, Ben strongly. Amber, his girl, has epilepsy. There are a lot of nice passages in Neil and Me about what it means or can mean to be a father, but otherwise, I’d say Neil and Me is for the fans really, which I am. The front cover says ‘A gem in the library of rock’ – I’m still hoping to discover that gem one day.
Get his Live at Massey Hall album (1971).
(Rumor has it that Neil Young is in the process of writing his autobiography. Panic among the Young fans as it might detract him from working on his Archives series – the definitive, comprehensive, chronological survey of his entire body of work.)
NY holding Zeke at a 1974 San Francisco Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young gig.
2011/26
I. S. Toergenjew: Vaders en Zonen (334p.)
As a father I didn’t get anything practical out of Toergenjew’s Vaders en Zonen (Fathers and Sons in English), but who cares as Vaders en Zonen is a hallmark of Russian Realism, supposedly the first wholly modern Russian novel. It is very well written (1862), by the most western of the Russian writers (as a troupe they marched through 19th century literature leaving only crumbs behind), who because of his western leanings entertained difficult relationships with both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Good!
2011/24
E. F. Schumacher: Hou het klein (283p.)
Everything Schumacher (an economist) argued against in his Hou het klein (‘Small is beautiful’ in English), which brought him international fame upon publication in 1973, has gotten considerably worse since. Schumacher’s pleas for decentralization, smaller scales, and intermediate technology have simply been washed away by the tides of globalization, and because of this Hou het klein has a bit of an outdated ring to it, even though in his root cause analysis Schumacher is spot on: positivism and myopic economic thinking have pushed out the larger metaphysical belief systems which had kept these two culprits in check before. Friends, we are without story, a predicament without precedent in the history of mankind, and this in a time of convergence.
Schumacher has further elaborated on this theme in his Guide for the Perplexed (1977), which I read on the train back from London, somewhere late 2004, beginning 2005.
On the positive side: most of Schumacher’s ideas have filtered through into the mainstream by now. You could say the knowledge is there, but maybe we only learn from our mistakes, as individuals, as a collective.
2011/23
David Van Reybrouck: Congo (582p.)
Maybe the effect is somewhat less strong these days, but there was a time (a few decades ago) when almost every Belgian had an uncle, ant, or other relative doing something in Congo, proud Belgium’s former colony, and the brainchild of King Leopold II, who once famously said of his own citizens “petit pays, petit gens” (“small country, small people”), which is why he perhaps got himself a colony to begin with.
My dad was born in 43, completed his studies as a teacher at age 20, and subsequently left Belgium to teach in Congo three years, between 63 and 66, which nicely corroborates his claim to have seen Mobutu taking over, seated atop a tank – it must have been November 65, the start of Mobutu’s decades-long dictatorship, during which he sucked his country dry.
David Van Reybrouck’s Congo is a history of Congo from 1870 (Stanley and Livingstone) up until now, related the way I like history to be related: anecdotally, through the people that actually lived it. (As a result, Congo at times feels more like a work of fiction rather than non-fiction; Van Reybrouck has also published as a novelist.)
In the end, for all its 582 pages, Congo never is less than captivating, is well-written, well-researched, fun, loads of fun, and a great re-hash as well. It really says a lot when a non-fiction tome of nearly 600 pages becomes a bestseller. Great!
To you all Anglo-Saxons: watch out for the English translation, to be published by Harper-Collins.
2011/22
Javier Marías: Een Hart Zo Blank (316p.)
I’m a passionate reader because I’m passionate, and even when I like a book less, I will usually stick with it until the bitter end. Last year I finished 96% of a brilliant 47 books; this year the percentage finished is down to 68% only. I can partly explain the pattern by having chosen more books of a regional nature this year (Morel – Portocarero – Van Damme), rather than of international nature. (It is what it is.)
I only made it to page 153 of Javier Marías’s Een Hart Zo Blank (in English: A Heart So White). I didn’t like it obviously, and if I have to explain why (which is what I typically try to avoid), I’d have to point to the unhappy marriage between fiction and essay pervasive throughout Marías’s prose (at least in this book).
Javier Marías is a successful contemporary Spanish writer who won the important Premio Rómulo Gallegos (1995).
If I were to sum up what racking my brain for over twenty years has taught me, it’d be first that it ain’t much, and second that just about everything comes in twofold. The world is a great place the world is a bad place (I’m sure you’re familiar with the motions), my head in the clouds my feet on the ground, Biggie and Tupac.
And so the answer to most of life’s questions, big or small, is almost always ‘both’. The world is a great place and a bad place. Writing a novel is done both by a constant pondering on the structure (how will it end?), as well as by the disciplined applying of one’s writing talent, bottom-up, a blank page, the house is clean, no music, just you and inspiration (the Tao of writing).
I’m writing this short discourse as an apology for the somewhat rather dull bookish affair the Mountaintop has been lately. The reason is that I’m spending more time writing away from the Mountaintop, at a different pace (slower), in a different language (Dutch), the other half to the so many top-down ideas for books I have entertained over the years.
The other thing is: I can’t write about myself anymore, at least not in a diary/blog format that is. Longtime visitors to the Mountaintop will remember the grueling exercises in self-exorcism. I’m ready to spin all that off into different formats, or to at least give it a try.
2011/21
Marcel Proust: Tegen Sainte-Beuve (279p.)
I bought this book on a whim: it looked good, I had never read anything by Marcel Proust before, and as an avid reader, I had already quite a few times stumbled upon references to Proust, more precisely to his reputed talent for extended descriptions. This talent for extended descriptions is maybe why the pièce de résistance of Proust’s career, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, amounts to 7 parts, over 3000 pages, more than 200 characters. It earned Proust his place among not only the French or 20th century greats, but simply among the greats. (Tegen Sainte-Beuve has been published in English as Against Sainte-Beuve.)
Marcel Proust wrote Tegen Sainte-Beuve prior to A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. In fact, Proust wanted to vent his opinions about Charles Sainte-Beuve, France’s most important 19th century literary critic, started writing about him through the form of essays as well as through a more narrative form, and these latter efforts eventually spilled over into his opus magnum A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. As such, Tegen Sainte-Beuve (which combines both the essays as well as the narrative efforts on Sainte-Beuve) offers a unique glimpse into the world of a budding writer searching for his form, which I guess all writers have to do sooner or later. That is also Tegen Sainte-Beuve’s main merit, beyond which it is certainly a publication at the fringe (not suited for the beach).
