THE LITBLOG CO-OP

Angrily Yours---Letters from the Yellow Quarter

Comrade:

I am not certain if you will get this post.  Not that it matters to these cunts in Pneuma, much less you, but in the time before the Rearrangement, my name was Jerry Segundo.  My father, so my mum told
me, was a man named Bat.  He was in the radio business. He died before I was born.  I believe he drank himself to death.

They transferred me here from the Red Quarter three years ago.  Three wankers threw me into a dark and dim cell and called me wild, brutal, and impulsive.  Insert your bullshit modifier of choice.  I didn't give a toss.  Of course, you and I know, comrade, that we were just too damn honest for these puritanical pricks. I suppose the fact that I wanted to invert their smug, sanctimonious smiles and teach them a few things about reality had something to do with my relocation.  I didn't go quietly.  Did you, comrade?  I'm pretty sure you screamed.  I would have loved to be there.  I heard from some unreliable face-ache and a bird who had a nice pair -- oh, did I have her later and get her to join our cause! -- that your fingernails scratched against the walls as they dragged you away.  That's the spirit!  As for me, all I really wanted to do was be left alone in the library to read the collected works of Rupert Thomson, the bloke who predicted it all many years ago.

I hope you got that CD-ROM working.  I didn't hear a "Ta" on your end, but that's just typical of a fellow ponce in the Yellow Quarter.  Never mind that I had to pull a few strings and snap a few necks to get you that laptop.  Did you check out the archived website on the disc?  The LBC?  Crazy shit, eh?  People were actually allowed to express themselves on this thing called the Internet.  Of course, it was mostly anoraks and spacecases with a lot of time on their hand.  Back in the days when you didn't have to smuggle books across the border.  Never underestimate the White People for such illicit purposes.

Anyway, the disc should tell you all you need to know.  That Thomson's books were overlooked, that there was an effort on the part of these people called "litbloggers" to champion them, and that his warning against the Rearrangement was largely ignored.  A pity too, because I found it a gripping book.  Never mind the ratty edges, but I've enclosed a dog-eared copy for you to flip through.  Do tell me
what you think.

Angrily yours,

Norman Harris


Oi Norman,

They're probably still picking my nails out of the wall.  I can't believe they stuck you in the Red quarter first.  Me, they had me in the green quarter first---amongst all those poncy melancholics.  Me!  Can you believe it?  Shows what the bleeding government knows.  I got tired of all the crying.  And don't get me started on the Museum of Tears. Our taxes pay for that shite. They came for me after I bashed a few heads in---realized their mistake, they did.

Before the great "Rearrangement", I was Diane Ferbisher.  I lived with my Ma and Da.  Now I go by just plain Milly.  I don't know what's happened to my parents.  Hope they kept them together, though if I know those bastard goverment types, they split them up just for spite. My folks fell in love when they were sixteen, see, and they never stopped acting like two teenagers.  Right embarassing when I was growing up.  I don't liking thinking about them much. 

I'd never 'eard of this Thomson bloke before I got that CD-ROM.  How did he forsee this mess?  And those LBC nuts? They never got tired of hearing themselves talk, eh?  I'll tell you what, we're better off not being able to express ourselves. If I had to sit and listen to evey bloody wanker wax on about themselves and all their feelings, well, I'd have done something long ago. That disc you sent kept me busy for weeks. 

I rightly enjoyed that book you sent--course it was dirty as all get out, what with having traveled via the White People.  But once I cleared some of the muck off it and let it air out, I sat down for a good read.  What a focking bright chap, that Thomson.  He had the right idea, gettin' out while he could.  I'll be sending some books back your way.  Distribute them as you see fit. I'll see that this CD-ROM of yours gets into the right hands too.

Don't let those bastards get you down,

Milly

Notes from the Green Quarter

Although melancholia originated in black bile, the authorities rejected black as a defining colour.  It had too many negative connotations.  They drew on earth instead, which was the melancholy element, and which was generally personified in ancient iconography as a woman in green garments; it was to the Green Quarter, therefore, that melancholic people would belong.

Is it true that we are "characterised by introspection, pessimism, and an inclination towards the intellectual"?  Perhaps.  As true as anything else here, as true as anything we can say is true, because "truth", of course, is a slippery idea.  It gives me pain, it makes my liver hurt.

It was late now, almost one in the morning, but lamps still burned in many of the windows. This was a land much troubled by insomnia...

I find it easier to write at night, after the rest of the world has gone to sleep.  There's something alive in my mind then, something that during the day is covered in fog and listlessness. 

Night figures prominently in Divided Kingdom, and I am not ashamed to admit I found the night scenes preferable to the day.  There is a lyricism to them, a lyricism tinged with a certain ... what word will do? ... horror? cynicism? absurdity?  (The problem with words is that they let us down.  Perhaps everything we rely on lets us down because everything we rely on is built, finally, from words.)

I didn't take up smoking, but I drank and wept with the rest of them, and I laughed the peculiar, giddy, almost hysterical laughter of the melancholic.

I think Divided Kingdom is a profoundly funny novel, but funny in a rare way -- not the funny that makes you giggle, but the funny that wounds your soul.  It's funny in the way Beckett is funny, or the way Buster Keaton's face is funny, topped by that ridiculous hat.  I never laughed while reading Divided Kingdom, but what else could we call it but a comedy?  How can you not laugh at the thought of Brendan, who is convinced he is made of butter, and will melt soon if he is not careful?  And yet his delusion, so believable, so full of yearning, only made me want to cry out against a world where such people are not given love.

In recent years, Iron Vale had become home to the Museum of Tears, and it was the inalienable right of every melancholic, no matter where they might live, to have a sample of their tears stored within the museum walls.

Moments of Divided Kingdom brought tears to my eyes, which, despite my melancholic humour, is a rare thing for a book to do.  There are moments so accurate, so forceful in their quietness, so haunting that a few tears seemed a small price to pay. 

Or perhaps it is simply that I tended to read the book late at night.  It's always easier to cry at night, when the world is silent, and there is no escape from recognizing how truly alone we are, our beings caged within our skin and bones.

"Think about happiness for a moment, Martin," Clarise said.  "Can you remember being happy?"

Horowicz let out a snort, as though he found the question absurd.

There was a fundamental problem with happiness, Clarise went on, quite unperturbed.  Happiness had a slippery, almost diaphanous quality.  It gave nothing off, left nothing behind.  Grief was different, though.  Grief could be collected, exhibited.  Grief could be remembered.  And if we had proof that we'd been sad, she argued, then we also had proof that we'd been happy, since the one, more often than not, presupposed the other.  In preserving grief, therefore, we were preserving happiness.  The Museum of Tears stood for much more than its name might initially suggest.  It wasn't just to do with rows of identical glass bottles -- though that, in itself, said a lot about equality, if you thought about it.  It was to do with people trying to hold on to such happiness as they had known.

Grief is deeper than happiness, because it lasts.  That is what we see all around us, the lasting effects of grief -- we call them poems and songs, we call them late-night parties, we call them shadows and dust.  What is Brendan's delusion but a scream of grief, a metaphor drowning him in insane literalness.  (I, too, am made of butter, Brendan, and I too may melt into nothing.)  Happiness is ephemeral; sorrow stays with us and haunts us to our dying days, because all our days are filled with dying.  The only truth is death.

A boy could balance on one leg for hours.  A man could make a book from his wife's shoes.  A couple could stand on a road in the middle of the night and call their son's name, only to have him turn his back on them.  Candles burned in windows all year round, memorials to those who had gone but were not dead.  There were very few who didn't live in the shadow of some separation or other.  The divided kingdom was united after all, by just one thing: longing.

I longed for Divided Kingdom to continue, I longed for an ending full of guns and explosions and utopia, but it's a better book than that, a more honest one.  I won't give the ending away here, but I will say a number of my less melancholic peers found the end unsatisfying or bewildering.  They are wrong.  It is a glorious end; ambiguous but suggestive, rich with possibility but not blind to the reality the book creates.

There are other things I could say, but what good would it do?  I could praise the brilliant idea of the White People or the magnificence of so much of the prose, particularly the evocations of the natural world.  ("Natural" world I should say, for what shall we say is nature and what is not?  But that is an argument for another day.)  It's not like you'll agree with me.  (No-one ever does.  They keep me around because I amuse them enough that it's not worth throwing me out into the wilderness from which I came.)  You will make up your own mind, and your opinion will be calibrated by your desires and your griefs, your memories of happiness and your experience of longing.  I'll leave you now with some words written by a failed poet, a lifelong denizen of the Green Quarter who scribbled these words on a scrap of paper to become, like him, a fragment tossed to the breeze at night and lost to the ages, as everything is lost:

longing outlives lust
dry earth in the wind

the rain held my breath
when yesterday collapsed

shadows in darkness
old footprints, muddy dreams

The Divided Kingdom: The Blue Quarter Speaks

I think that I could not march under the peacock flag. So brash, so bold, I think perhaps I’d trip over a shoelace and be lost forever. Nor would the salamander be right. So graceful, yet so angry. I do not choose violence.

The rabbit, perhaps, would be fine. They say those under the Green flag aren’t right, but I think they’d be okay. Quiet. Not too much fuss. Not so worried about making decisions – sometimes a body wants to consider all the sides for a while. The Red Quarter, they move so briskly, so self-assured, like they always know what’s right. The Yellows? Seems to me that if a mountain stands in their way, they just knock it over. Doesn’t seem right, does it? You don’t want to just go and change the natural way things are.

I don’t remember much about why it happened, but someone said it would be better if we made Kingdom more logical. They did studies, and I can see that it makes sense, dividing us by our natural tendencies. They know these things; we do not. Before, there was too much tension, too much strife. Our new way reduces all of that. We get along now. At least we get along here in the Blue Quarter. We understand each other. We don’t try to make ourselves into what we aren’t.

Do You Have Questions for Rupert Thomson?

I'm pleased to announce that Rupert Thomson, author of the LBC nominee Divided Kingdom, will be appearing here on Monday between 12:30 PM-2:00 PM PST, 3:30 PM-5:00 PM EST.  If you have any specific questions for Rupert, leave a comment to this post and Rupert will reply to them during his blogging time.

Winter Nominee #5: Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom

I first read about Rupert Thomson from Maud Newton.  She wrote a post about leaving her newly received galley of Thomson's upcoming Divided Kingdom on a plane.  Serendipitously, an advance copy made its way across my desk that very afternoon.  Trusting her opinion, I decided to take a look.  Immediately the premise stood out:  Thomson imagines the UK divided into 4 quarters, each corresponding to one of the medieval humors. The Red Quarter is for the sanguine, the Blue Quarter for the phlegmatic, the Yellow Quarter for the violent cholerics, and the Green Quarter for the melancholics.  At first you think, 'how hokey!', but Thomson is a good enough writer to pull this off.  In fact, I've since read several of his other books and now think he's a brilliant writer. He's not very well know in the states, but I spent most of the holiday season trying to hand-sell this book to customers.  When I was picked to nominate a book for the Winter 05 Read This!, I didn't have to think very hard. 

The novel begins with the "reassignment," the beginning of this radical social experiment: one night the government removes the narrator from his home and assign him a new one.  Each citizen, in fact,  is assigned to a new quarter according to their personality.  Borders between the quarters are then sealed and guarded.  Renamed Thomas Parry, our hero ends up in the relatively powerful Sanguine quarter, where he grows up to be a successful civil servant.  Knowledge of the other quarters comes to him only through innuendo and rumors.  In fact, contact with other quarters is forbidden, since it leads to contamination.

Trusted by his superiors, Parry gets the job of helping individuals who have been wrongly assessed and move them to new quarters. With this job, he's one of the few with permissino to cross borders and see other quarters. One night in the Blue Quarter, a bomb goes off and he flees in the confusion. He travels through the rest of the kingdom,  meeting a diverse cast of individuals. Finally, he returns to the Sanguine quarter as one of the unassigned "White People."

Does this sound too far-fetched?  Or too sci-fi for you?  One of the wonderful things about Thomson's writing is the way it defies categorization.  It's too cerebral for sci-fi, too plot driven for the literary set, too stylistic for those who just want a page-turner.  It fits into only one category in my mind: excellent fiction.

February 13th through February 17th will be Divided Kingdom week.  We have a podcast of Ed interviewing Rupert Thomson.  And we'll be posting according to our humors that week as well.  You can discover your "quarter" here.