Such thoughts are roused by a tiny new little book, a mere slip of a thing, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, from Kurt...
If, in modern times, melody could disappear from music and recognizable image from art, is it possible that the novel can also, at long last, grow free of its imprisoning burden of “story”?
As far back as 1927, E.M. Forster wished for that very thing, lamenting in Aspects of the Novel that “Yes- oh, dear, yes – the novel tells a story…[And] I wish that it was not so, that it could be something different – melody, or perception of the truth, not this low atavistic form.” It may be that all true art struggles against the confines of its own medium – and the more intense the struggle, the greater the art. In fiction, the escape from “story” goes back at least to Laurence Sterne, with his hilarious blank pages in Tristram Shandy. And there was of course Gertrude Stein, who carried the effort about as far as possible, while Virginia Woolf strove valiantly in the name of truth against the fossilizings of tale. In our own time the “story-novel” has pretty clearly run out of steam, functioning no longer as art at all but, high-brow or low-, as a form of entertainment (or infotainment) entirely content within its old shoe of a medium. And yet maybe, as a result, something new is afoot – the stirrings again of the anti-novel. There’ve already been the “experimental” novels of, say, Alain Robbe-Grillet or the late Natalie Sarraute. But those, all art and no play, have grown dusty and are gone. So consider just a few recent treasures from current rebels against the old “he said, she said” novel – Julia Blackburn’s The Book of Color; Gordon Lish’s Arcade or How to Write a Novel; Ben Marcus’s The Age of Wire and String; Jason Schwartz’s A German Picturesque; David Markson’s Reader’s Block. Little known? Little sold? Little recognized? Ah, yes, but their day may come.
Such thoughts are roused by a tiny new little book, a mere slip of a thing, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, from Kurt Vonnegut, that great and resilient writer who more than any other has labored to pierce the rusty armor of “story,” coming up with book after book of wit, depth, hilarity, profundity, grace, and sorrow. This little one is no exception, but you’d better grab it – it’s so very tiny – before it disappears altogether. Like, maybe, the novel.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2000
ISBN: 1-58322-020-8
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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