While the Women are Sleeping by Javier Marías

The stories of Javier Marías have a surprising tendency to sneak up on the reader again long after reading them.
It is as if after being absorbed, the stories gestate in the back of the mind and then jump out again and demand attention, requiring that they be pored over again.
In the stories in While the Women Are Sleeping, events are often superfluous to meandering musings and speculation as the narrators are forced into new states of mind and gnawing obsessions by what they have experienced or what they have just been told.
Each story usually ends with the narrator (and quite often the reader as well) sitting at a tangent from the direction their life had been heading at the start of the story.
Quite often there is a vaguely supernatural element, such as when a beggar curses a man who shunned him or a ghost seems to correspond with the son of her dead lover.
And this is where the questions start to plague the reader. The story has been read, absorbed, and reflected on and, with a whimsical chill of satisfaction, understood.
Then a day or so later while driving to work, or cooking the dinner it comes back with an unanswered question . . . “But how did he . . .?” or “How could she do that if . . . ?”
A case in point is the story “One Night of Love,” in which a son starts to receive letters from a woman who says she was his late father’s lover and that he has still not joined her six months after his death. She says this is because the son, who narrates the story, buried his father rather than cremated him.
As an incentive to the son to arrange for his father to be disinterred and cremated, the woman offers the son a night of passion with her.
He does not take her up on the offer but arranges for the cremation. A few days later he receives another letter in the woman’s handwriting, which he leaves unopened and which smells faintly of the cologne that his father used to wear.
Even after two or three readings, just when you think you have got what Marías is playing at, he will throw up a fresh surprise and new unanswered questions.
The Madrid-based writer, translated in this collection into English by Margaret Jull Costa, has a rare ability to haunt the imaginations of his readers.
He is more than just a storyteller—he’s a manipulator of the psyche who can jolt his readers into new states of perception.
This review was first written for and published by the New York Journal of Books.

New Selected Poems and Translations by Ezra Pound

Reading Ezra Pound can be a demanding experience as he often slips into French, Spanish, Italian, or ancient Greek—using the Greek alphabet of course. Occasionally the reader will also be confronted with a sequence of Chinese characters or even an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic.
His frame of reference is broad as well, drawing on poets and their works from the times of the Roman Empire, and ancient China right through to 20th century Europe.
Yet his verse flows with a musicality that carries the reader along on a well-cushioned boat traversing a torrent of obscure, often archaic, cultural influences.
From simple two-line observations to sprawling quasi epics, Pound can charm and frustrate.
He is one of the major poets of the 20th century, an American who spend most of his adult life in Europe—apart from the 12 years of course that he was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital in his homeland for allying himself with Mussolini’s Fascists during the Second World War.
He was a confidant of T. S. Elliott, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemmingway, W. B. Yeats, and James Joyce.
This volume is comprehensively indexed, translating the non-English passages and elaborating on the more obscure references.
It includes a generous representation of The Cantos, which Pound began working on in the 1930s and continued adding to until his death.
This selection represents the work of a poet who was closely involved with the canon of classic western European literature, not only as a reader but also as someone who was aware that he was adding to it.
He was equally as comfortable with Chinese themes, tropes, and verse forms and adapting them for the English language, both mimicking them and translating other writers.
Perhaps the shortest poem in this selection is “In a Station of the Metro,” it’s title a stanza itself, sums up what to expect from Pound:
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
Striking imagery, deftly delivered in a tightly written, rhythmic sequence of words that feel as if they were just waiting for Pound to put them in that particular order.
Reading Ezra Pound is not meant to be easy but this selection—which includes commentaries by John Berryman and T. S. Elliott as well as editor Richard Sieburth—helps make him just a little bit more accessible.
This review was written for and first published by the New York Journal of Books.

Coming soon...

Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Dr Zhivago is a big book, physically and in terms of its themes, multi-stranded storylines and historical backdrop. It is a character-driven novel whose subjects live intense, interweaving lives set against the great sweep of early 20th century Russian events.
At its heart is the eponymous Dr. Yuri Zhivago and his relationship with two women: his wife Tonya and his lover Lara. A supporting cast weaves in and out of the novel, manipulating, inspiring, intimidating, interacting and sometimes simply just being in the vicinity of the central trio.
Although the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, and subsequent civil war in Russia form an historical backdrop, their keynote events are hardly mentioned. It is history’s impact on individuals that concerns Pasternak.
However, Zhivago struggles to maintain his individuality at a time when individuals are regarded as canon-fodder to be sacrificed by Czarist Russia in its war against Germany while those who survive find themselves thrust into a fledgling society ruled by the Bolsheviks who regard concepts such as individualism as outdated and dangerous.
Zhivago and those close to him are mere bit-players in the huge social upheaval in which they are being swept along, but Pasternak plucks them from obscurity to dissect their psyches and put a human perspective on the times in which they live.
As millions die during wars and famine, Zhivago is torn between his love for Tonya and Lara and the betrayals that this inevitably brings. His poems, collected at the end of the novel, serve as an alternative narrative, charting his internal obsessions and yearnings.
This is a new translation by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky a novel that is already well established in the canon of great 20th century fiction. For those who have copies of the translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari on their shelves it is tempting to occasionally compare the two versions.
A key passage is one in which Zhivago reflects on the death of the woman who raised him and how this family tragedy and the emotions it stirs in him can be transformed into something positive.
In the 1958 translation by Hayward and Harari the passage reads: “In answer to the challenge of the desolation brought by the death into the life of the small community whose members were slowly pacing after him, he was drawn, as irresistibly as water funneling downwards, to dream, to think, to work out new forms, to create beauty.”
While Pevear and Volokhonsky render this as: “In response to the devastation produced by the death in this company slowly walking behind him, he wanted, as irresistibly as water whirling in a funnel rushes into the deep, to dream and think, to toil over forms, to bring forth beauty.”
Both translations work as an image of the poet reworking a real life tragedy to write verse, but the new translation seems to suggest that this is an innate “response” by Zhivago, rather than a considered “answer.” And then there is the more psychologically nuanced image of water (experience) rushing “into the deep,” with all its inferences of the subconscious, as opposed to the water merely “funneling downwards,” while in the just-published version he “brings forth beauty (poems)” rather than simply creating them.
Perhaps such detailed comparisons are reading too much into what is simply a fresh perspective on Pasternak’s original Russian text. But then Zhivago is, as was his creator, a poet and a complex person whose story lends itself to poetic prose that brings to life the various layers of his persona and the psyche that lies behind it.
At its simplest level, this new translation, extensively annotated to explain the more obscure references, is a welcome opportunity for anyone who has already read Dr. Zhivago to revisit it and experience a richly rewarding fresh take on an epic tale. For those coming to it for the first time it is a chance to read one of the greatest novels of all times.
This review was written for and first published by The New York Journal of Books.

Hooleygan by Terri Hooley and Richard Sullivan

Music impresario, punk raconteur and bar room philosopher Terri Hooley has just published his life story in a book that captures the essence of his character – anarchic, dishevelled and hugely entertaining.
Probably the most surprising thing about Terri Hooley’s autobiography is that it has taken so long to be written.
The man who discovered The Undertones and whose record label put Northern Ireland back on the musical map in the late 1970s has never been too shy when it comes to talking about his own life.
But then someone who once punched John Lennon at a party, was told to ‘eff off’ by Bob Dylan and – ahem – smoked with Bob Marley, definitely has a story to tell.
Hooleygan, co-written with Richard Sullivan, recounts all those incidents but also gives much more depth to one of Belfast’s best-known characters.
Interspersed with Hooley’s own reminiscences are first-hand testimonies from those who have worked with him, who know him best and those whose lives and careers became inextricably linked with his.
Brian Young from Rudi, Greg Cowen from the Outcasts, Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol, John O’Neill of The Undertones and director John T Davis, who made the film Shell Shock Rock, all contribute.
Sitting last week in his Good Vibes record shop in Belfast’s Wine Tavern Street ahead of the book’s publication, Hooley admits that telling his life story quickly became something more than simply recounting anecdotes from his past.
“I found it very difficult talking about friends who had died,” he says.
The early chapters of the book will contain the most surprise for those who thought they knew Hooley. His mother was a deeply Christian woman whose brothers were members of the Orange Order.
By contrast his English-born father was a life-long socialist and atheist.
“He was a staunch trade unionist and proudly boasted that he was the first person to sing The Red Flag in Belfast City Hall,” Hooley says.
“But his trade union activities caused problems for me and my brother. We used to get beaten up when he was standing as a Labour candidate in East Belfast. People thought Labour were a republican party.”
Hooley says his own political radicalisation was driven by global events, rather than those closer to home in Belfast.
“The Cuban missile crisis [in 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war] really affected me,” he says.
“Then later in the 1960s I became involved in campaigns for nuclear disarmament and against the war in Vietnam.”
“I definitely got caught up in the whole hippie thing and started producing magazines with poetry and articles that tried to capture that.”
It was the Sex Pistols singer John (Johnny Rotten) Lydon who said “never trust a hippy” but Hooley says the punk movement, which emerged a decade later after ‘the summer of love’ was a natural progression.
“A lot of the people who used to go to the first punk gigs in Belfast at the Harp Bar, where former hippies,” Hooley says.
In 1977 he opened his first record shop in Great Victoria Street and it became a gathering place for many of the young punk bands that were beginning to form in Belfast.
“In the 1960s there were about 60 clubs in Belfast were you could go and hear live music from bands like Them with Van Morrison and Taste with Rory Gallagher but that all ended with the Troubles,” he says.”
“But in the 1960s there was never a record industry here. Bands had to sign to English labels and many ended up being exploited. I wanted to put Northern Ireland back on the musical map in the 1970s and give the bands that were emerging an outlet here in Belfast.”
Hooley set up The Good Vibrations record label and began releasing records by Rudi, The Outcasts and, most famously, Teenage Kicks by Derry band The Undertones.
Hooleygan co-author, Sunday World deputy editor Richard Sullivan, says that Hooley’s influence was an entirely positive one during the height of the Troubles.
“Belfast was a very dark place in 1977 – literally. There was not a light on in the city centre,” Sullivan says.
“It is no exaggeration to say that Terri and Good Vibrations kept a lot of people, on both sides, out of jail by pointing them towards music instead of getting involved with paramilitaries.”
Sullivan says the whole tone, design and layout of Hooleygan is an attempt to reflect its subject – pictures, text, ink scratches and scraps of graffiti nestle side by side on the pages.
He has done his job well and perfectly captured Hooley’s tone and his sometimes rambling sentences when he veers off from what he was first talking about into a totally different anecdote before eventually coming back to his main point.
“I didn’t want a standard book, with picture galleries in the middle. Terri’s life has been chaotic. He is a person to whom things just happen and I wanted to reflect that,” Sullivan says.
Hooleygan – Music Mayhem Good Vibrations, by Terri Hooley and Richard Sullivan is published by The Blackstaff Press, £14.99.

I wrote this for the Irish News and it was published on Friday October 1. www.irishnews.com.

For an interview I did with John O'Neill from The Undertones and various others, including Terri, about the Good Vibarations record label click here.

In Search of the Multiverse by John Gribbin

The scales of time and distance that are involved in astrophysics and quantum science can often leave me floundering and disorientated.
The idea that there at least 1,000 billion stars in our own Milky Way and an equivalent number of galaxies, each on average containing a similar numbers of stars to our own, in the visible universe is astounding.
It gets worse when you also have to struggle with the concept that all those suns – and presumably thousands of billions of planet that orbit them as well – all emerged from a point that at one stage was many times smaller than an atom.
It is impossible to conceptualise yet fits in perfectly well with the most up-to-date theories of how our universe began.
However, John Gribbin piles on the conceptual anguish as he theorises that our universe may be just one of many, numbering much more than a mere 1,000 billion. The figure he comes up with is an estimated 1 with 500 noughts after it.
There is no way this can be demonstrated by observation, but the existence of a multiverse stands the scrutiny of science and, according to Gribbin, is a logical outcome of what we know about the physics of our universe.
Alternative universes may be separated from ours by a miniscule spacial distance, although in one of a possible seven other dimensions than the three we are used to as a result of quantum splits.
He also theorises that new universes could be created by black holes in our universe which are in fact gateways to an entirely new universe. Indeed out universe may be the result of a black hole in another universe.
Gribben runs through all the various theories that allow for a multiverse in this immensely readable book.
Although some of the physics that he draws on to back up his arguments was well beyond me he is good at trying to flesh out his ideas in laymans terms.
A glossary at the back explains the recurring scientific terms.
The last chapter was the most bizarre in which he speculates that our universe may actually be the result of intelligent design – not by an omnipresent deity but advanced alien civilisations.
This is not a sci-fi geek writing here but a respected physicist.
Yet he pays homage to those science fiction writers who speculated on such scenarios and about the existence of the multiverse long before it became a viable scientific theory.
Michael Moorcock, one of the few science fiction writers I like (and former poet-in-residence with Hawkwind), gets a nod.
Not mentioned by Gribben, but the best fictional take on his theory that I have read was The Number of the Beast by Robert A Heinlein in which four interdimensional travellers navigate through a multiverse with three spacial dimensions and three time dimensions, creating a total of six which can be raised to the par of six to the par of six... creating a multiverse based on the biblical number of the beast.
Gribben does mention a story called The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges in which he speculates that each choice made by every human results in a split in the universe and that results in a constantly branching multiverse in which versions of the same people are living a whole series of alternate lives.

A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell

Jakob Sammelsohn hovers on the fringes of central European history, meeting real life figures and becoming caught up in landmark events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

He is a peripheral figure who seems to epitomize the dilemma for European Jews of that era, wanting to belong but at the same time trying to stay in the background in case they attract too much attention to themselves.

He meets Sigmund Freud and ends up romantically involved with one of his patients—a woman who is inhabited by the spirit of Jakob’s second wife, whom he was forced by his father to marry when he was 12, and who took her own life on their wedding night.

Freud is portrayed almost as a Sherlock Holmes-type figure, able to deduce the life story of those he meets, their preoccupations and phobias, based on the briefest of conversations.
Ghosts and angels mingle with the real-life historical events and Skibell’s fictional creations over nearly 600 pages.

He uses highly stylized prose to portray the intellectual milieu in which his character moves, and while this does work for the overall tone it can grate sometimes.

This is a brave novel, not unafraid to undertake big themes and ideas but it does suffer from being overwritten, with pages upon pages that seem to go nowhere.

Skibell has a tendency to take a joke or humorous situation and run with it. Jakob’s father speaks only in Hebrew, and only using direct quotes from scripture. These are transcribed in the novel in both Hebrew, with their English translation and scriptural citation alongside.
It is absurdist, deliberately so of course, however, it comes across as being clever first time round but showing off after a while. The chapters when Jakob become involved in the Esperanto movement suffer from the same overindulgence.

Criticisms aside this is a hugely accomplished novel, unafraid of taking its readers into the fields of psychology, linguistics, reincarnation, and the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto.

A Curable Romantic is a book that has you constantly Googling events, movements, and characters to see if they are historical realities or Skibell’s fictional inventions.

A Curable Romantic has tangible depth and a well-defined sense of time and place, its comic tone creating an uneasy tension as the story moves into the darker aspects of 20th century European history.

However, it might have been a much better read if it had been more tightly written, with less meandering prose.
This review was written for and first published by The New York Journal of Books..