Отдавна бях слушал за тази книга и вече мога спокойно да кажа, че разбирам цялата истерия покрай нея.
Нейтън Хил излиза на сцената с изключително силен дебют. Романът му допира извънредно чувствителни теми за съвременното (предимно) западно общество като: вълненията и движенията през 60те в Америка, културната и социална ситуация на неолибералното общество, кризата на съвременните дисфункционални семейства, кризите на идентичността и нейното изграждане, в по-слаба степен кризата на съвременното образовани и цялостната девалвация на знанието, фрагментаризацията както на живота, така и на личността в нейните отделни проекции върху различните плоскости на разслоената виртуална и автентична реалност.
Едно от нещата, обаче, които правят книгата добра и силна литература, е връзката, която е прокаране между съвременността в различните ѝ проявления – клутурни, социални, политически, лични, и по-дълбоките митологемни корени, изразени в препратките към норвежкия паганистичен фолклор. Този похват не е никак нов – още в аничната трагедия хоровете представят случващото се в тривиалния всекидвевен свят на езика и през кода на митологичното, надчовешкото и вечностно-ориентираното. Хулио Кортасар в “Лотарията” по същия начин опозира тривиалното скучновато ежедневие на произволни хора, спечелили екскурзия на кораб, незнайно от кого, незнайно накъде, спрямо екстатичните изстъпления на екстрасенс, през чиито видения се разкодира метафизичната структура на слуващите се мистериозни събития и създаващите се връзки между участниците.
Тук това разкодиране се преставя чрез два основополагащи нордически мита, които поставят фундамента на всичко случващо се в живота на главния герой и неговата родова история (отново трагически похват от Античността). Вплитането на митовете като матрица, върху която се изгражда романът, разибра се води до очакваното циклично преповтаряне на съдбовни моменти и катаклизми в семейната история на главния герой – запален геймър и преподавател по литература в Американски университет. Ако тук някой подушва мотивът за ескейпизъм – прав е. Идеята за бягство, за прекъсване на трагическото преповтаряне на историята е дълбоко заложен в романа и смея да кажа, че на вид сладникавия финал все пак се оказва много добро, макар и леко кинематографско решение.
На ниво разказване книгата е приятна, добре ритмизирана с относително подобни по дължина глави, което, поне според мен, е хубав плюс, който откривам все по-често в съвремената американска литература. Това, което често откривам като нещо не съвсем по вкуса ми, бяха понякога твърде разкъсаните епизоди, в които сякаш беше заложено много повече на случването, на хаотичното превключване на картини, отколкото на литературизирането, на вглеждането и преживяването на ситуацията.
На моменти Нейтън Хил използва твърде клиширан език, който дразни, но който, от друга страна, може да бъде идеално обяснен, разбран и оправдан спрямо контекста, в който е използван (примерно в разсъжденията на плитковата, комерсиална представителка на студентската маса).
Четох английскитя оригинал и по-долу добавям любимите си моменти. За щастие съвсем скоро книгата се появи и на български, почти месец преди очаквания 4 3 2 1 на Остър. Споменавам това, защото Nix/Хала ми е приятна прелюдия към титаничния труд на Остър и намирам, че е чудесно, че двете книги се появяват така кратко една след друга от нас.
За Остър ще разказвам отново скоро.
***
The mall’s overwhelmingness was meant to replace your imagination. Forget trying to dream up your desires; the mall had already dreamed them up for you.
You have to be careful,” Pwnage said, “with people who are puzzles and people who are traps. A puzzle can be solved but a trap cannot. Usually what happens is you think someone’s a puzzle until you realize they’re a trap. But by then it’s too late. That’s the trap.
Have I ever told you about the ghost that looks like a rock?” she said. “No.” “My father told me about it. He said you could find it on beaches sometimes back home. It looks like a normal rock, like a little stone covered with green fuzz.” “How can you tell it’s a ghost?” “You can’t, unless you take it out to sea. If anyone takes it onto the ocean, it’ll get heavier the farther you travel from shore. And if you’re really far, the ghost will get so heavy it’ll sink your ship. They called it a drowning stone. “Why would it do that?” “I don’t know. Maybe it’s angry. Maybe something bad happened to it. The point is, it gets too big for you to carry anymore. And the longer you try to carry it, the bigger and heavier it gets. Sometimes it can get inside you and it gets bigger and bigger until it’s too much. You can’t fight it anymore. You just…sink.
Every life has a moment like this, a trauma that breaks you into brand-new pieces.
Moments when she failed in front of other people, or moments when she felt the potential to fail in front of people—these could trigger an attack. Not every time, but sometimes. Frequent enough that she had adopted a certain self-protective behavior: She became a person who never screwed up. A person who never failed at anything. It was easy: The more afraid Faye felt on the inside, the more perfect she was on the outside. She blunted any possible criticism by being beyond reproach.
The flip side of being a person who never fails at anything is that you never do anything you could fail at. You never do anything risky. There’s a certain essential lack of courage among people who seem to be good at everything.
And this fact, the quickly coming end of the semester, has lately been filling her with dread. Because she loves the clarity that school brings: the single-minded purpose, the obvious expectations, how everyone knows you’re a good person if you study hard and score well on exams. The rest of your life, however, is not judged in this manner.
Time heals many things because it sets us on trajectories that make the past seem impossible.
and fame tends to attract more fame. Like wealth tends to build upon itself, so too fame, which is a kind of social wealth, a kind of conceptual abundance.
All places seemed equally horrible because the thing they never mentioned about traveling in your retirement is that in order for it to work you must, at the very least, be able to endure the person you’re traveling with.
How easily a simple façade can become your life, can become the truth of your life.
Museums would be a good choice because of the enforced silence.
Sometimes what we avoid most is not pain but mystery.
Remember that evolution is value-free. It’s not what’s best, it’s just what survives..
“What’s true? What’s false? In case you haven’t noticed, the world has pretty much given up on the old Enlightenment idea of piecing together the truth based on observed data. Reality is too complicated and scary for that. Instead, it’s way easier to ignore all data that doesn’t fit your preconceptions and believe all data that does. I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe, and we’ll agree to disagree. It’s liberal tolerance meets dark ages denialism. It’s very hip right now.”
Listen, Samuel, really, voice of experience here? It’s a terrible burden, being idealistic. It discolors everything you’ll do later. It will haunt you constantly for all time as you become the inevitably cynical person the world requires you to be.
He thinks it’s disallowable that the places of life’s most important moments continue going on looking like themselves, unaffected, simple facts that resist the imprint of the stories happening around them.
When Samuel was a child reading a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, he’d keep a bookmark at the spot of a very hard decision, so that if the story turned out poorly, he could go back and try again. More than anything he wants life to behave this way.
Pwnage once told Samuel that the people in your life are either enemies, obstacles, puzzles, or traps. And for both Samuel and Faye, circa summer 2011, people were definitely enemies. Mostly what they wanted out of life was to be left alone. But you cannot endure this world alone, and the more Samuel’s written his book, the more he’s realized how wrong he was. Because if you see people as enemies or obstacles or traps, you will be at constant war with them and with yourself. Whereas if you choose to see people as puzzles, and if you see yourself as a puzzle, then you will be constantly delighted, because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone’s life, you will find something familiar. This is more work, of course, than believing they are enemies. Understanding is always harder than plain hatred. But it expands your life. You will feel less alone.
Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in our own story that we don’t see how we’re supporting characters in someone else’s.
But Faye’s opinion is that sometimes a crisis is not really a crisis at all—just a new beginning. Because one thing she’s learned through all this is that if a new beginning is really new, it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid. If you’re not afraid of it, then it’s not real change