#32: Sevgi Soysal, Eliane Brum, & Samuel Becket
Hello again. I feel like I’m really reading again. Life is cool and getting better. My job is fine, the new Zelda is fun, I ride my bike and swim almost every day, and I have been able to make a lot of time for reading.
A huge congratulations to my dear friend Albert on his recent graduation from Harvard Divinity School. What a fucking guy.
Dawn by Sevgi Soysal
A feminist prison novel in a tripartite burst; capture, torture, and release. Reading this only a couple months after having read The Jakarta Method, Dawn feels like a Turkish case study of anti-communist crusade and the hegemonization of liberalism. Soysal gets at the Kafka-esque claustrophobia that so many of us who earnestly long for and attempt to work towards a better world experience: “The police have released her. But still she isn’t free. Nor can she ever be. She must stay inside.”
Banzeiro Òkòtó by Eliane Brum
I wavered so much while reading this book. Without hesitation, I will say that it’s great and invaluable. Without hesitation, I will add that there is so much to be critical of.
Eliane Brum is a white, Brazilian journalist who moved to the Amazon riverside community Altamira at some point in the 2010s. Her stated goal is to “unwhiten” her mind, to undo the “forgetting” that she deems inherent to white ontologies (as opposed to the indigenous or the communities of descendants of runaway slaves that live along the Amazon). There’s tons of psuedo-transracialism in here that would be ripe for some sort of social media takedown. My bigger complaint lies in briefer, more subtle moments of bemoaning the adoption of the Altamira community embracing amplified music or some other adoptions of “white” technology/culture. These moments smack of patronization, in the same way that Levi-Strauss felt guilt introducing writing to the Nambikwara, an indigenous group in Brazil. Derrida mockingly deconstructed Levi-Strauss’ patronization in Of Grammatology and Levi-Strauss never talked to him again.
On the other hand, Brum offers a stellar synthesis of knowledges and worldviews from indigenous communities and quilombos, as well as excellent reportage on the construction (and resulting human destruction) of hydroelectic dams, land seizing grileiros (who use cricket urine to make fake land deeds look ancient enough to be legitimate), Bolsonarism and the shortcomings of Lula, and so much more. She offers an accessible philosophy of what it means to recenter the Amazon, in politics and in ourselves. I’ve got a real soft spot for the linguistic turn, and Brum is all about language. A recentering of the Amazon reveals new understandings of concepts of rich/poor, hope, and more. It’s hard to write about such an expansive book in a readable amount of space. Just read it if you’re into books like Braiding Sweetgrass and you can forgive the fact that this one is written by a very sincere white woman who occasionally slips into patronization.
Molloy by Samuel Becket
I dare me to say something new about Beckett or Molloy. I can’t. What even happened here? I don’t know. The physically decayed Molloy wanders around on his crutch and bike, suffers a Kakfan encounter with the police, much like in Dawn, sucks on stones to quench his hunger, ponders a way to make sure that no stone of his 16 goes unsucked before one is sucked a second time, and little more. The second part of the book sees a private detective named Moran set off in search of Molloy, go increasingly mad, physically decay, and arguably become Molloy. The book becomes a Vico-styled loop. In fact, Beckett spent years editing Finnegans Wake for Joyce which took Vico’s New Science as the structure for the plot. The loop of Finnegans Wake makes a mockery (or celebration) of existence and it’s clear that Becket is up to something similar. However, Beckett’s mockery strikes deeper as a result of removing all affect from his prose.
“For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.”
Stay tuned for more of the Beckett trilogy, some Gaddis, and more.