Jim Grimsley

The Instrumentality of Mankind by Cordwainer Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The strangeness of Cordwainer Smith as a writer only deepens when one reads the story of Paul Linebarger, who is the person behind the pseudonym. The stories of Smith are exotic, a glimpse into a distant future, an imagining that humans go on and on for tens of thousands of years, iterating ourselves into a civilization in which there is not quite a government but in which there is definitely a structure, an instrumentality of humans that stands behind everything else, that intervenes when necessary, with a brutal swiftness, for reasons of its own. Yet in stating this so directly I violate Smith’s own method of telling a story, which is more in tune with the fable, and in which we glimpse the instrumentality in dozens of ways throughout the short stories here. It is as if Olaf Stapledon developed an interest in narrative and wrote fiction rather than the sweeping future histories he created. All the stories here are classics of early science fiction; he was revered by his contemporaries. They are dated in their approach to women, which is their worst aspect. But character was not what Smith was about; he wrote big, strange ideas into his stories, in language that evoked a distance in time, a richness of future in which men become something else. His ideas, though, are singular. “When the People Fell” is a good example. The story is about China dropping millions of its people onto Venus in order to colonize it -literally dropping them out of the Venusian sky, knowing that most of them would die, but aware that this brutal act would create a great leap forward in which the planet would instantly become Chinese. Yet the act is simply presented, in detail but without a speck of emotion other than bemusement, as if a godlike historian were recording it all. Reading his work in a body, one sees the threads connecting them all, rich and intricate and hard to describe because they exist in themselves so fiercely, so densely. His fiction predicts the work of Philip Dick, echoes with Kafka at moments, but stands alone in terms of its elements. At its heart it is, in fact, work that is preoccupied with Christianity; Linebarger, for all his mastery of psychological warfare, knowledge of realpolitik, and vast experience among the powerful, was devout. Like all the other elements of his writing, the spiritual moments are small, vivid, and uncanny.

So I am a cautious optimist at times within a framework of low expectations in general, and today I am thinking, well, white people expressing outrage about racism is not a new phenomenon. But it has never made any particular difference. My own included. So am I to believe that this time something will be different when the world moves on to another topic? As it is certain to do. I have read so many posts and essays about white reactions to the killing of black people by police. Such sensitivity. But will it make a difference? Take action, they say. I do understand the wisdom of the advice. But the first action ought to be a good long self examination. Because most of the white people I am reading are posting about other people’s racism, or about racism in general, or about all the myriad things that issues like this raise in the human mind, which jumps up at an outrage, agitates a bit, then slowly returns to its well-worn path. The racism people can do something about is their own. But people are buying books and watching movies and giving the appearance of learning. This time could be different, I hope. And I do honestly hope. But I am leery of hoping too much. The tide is always turning, that’s why it’s a tide.

Dreams of Sleep by Josephine Humphreys
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the second Josephine Humphreys book I read and the first that she wrote; this is sparely beautiful in tone and the prose flows so simply and cleanly. The novel has a deeply meditative quality and also has the freshness of a first book, tooled and polished and refined. Even when I have read all of a writer’s work, as I have with Humphreys, I usually have a special fondness for the first book, and that remains true in this case. The plot is among the simplest to describe, the travails of a marriage that has lost its glow, the fear of infidelity, the fear of loss; a book you’ve read a thousand times, and yet in Humphreys’ hands it becomes effortlessly fresh and new. We remember that each marriage succeeds or fails in the specific terms of the people who are in it, and further, that the magic of a normal life, the struggles of the kind of people we see everyday, are anything but ordinary. This book will always have a special place on my shelf.

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have read the Seidensticker translation three times and this one by Royall Tyler once. The novel itself is superb and deserves its reputation in every way. It is a good idea to read more than one translation since more than one can be good, and each gives a new glimpse of the book. Borges wrote that this is the beauty of reading translations in the first place, since each translation brings something new. That is certainly the case in the Tyler version of the book, which does away with Seidensticker’s use of names in favor of something closer to the Japanese text, in which the identity of a character is often hinted at rather than made explicit. Genji is such a soft, flowery hero, clouded in perfume and surrounded by such lush finery. He becomes a menace at times, visiting a woman, wooing her, taking her to his home, sometimes by force; but in the novel she swoons, resists, swoons some more. I have heard this called the earliest novel in the world, and its author is a woman of the Imperial court. The book is difficult to describe, built out of intimate events, processions, celebrations, dances, feasts, poetry contests; the portrait of a life of consummate sensuality and beauty emerges. It is not a book for you if you are looking for an adventure story or if you don’t enjoy history, because the book is as much a history lesson (for me, anyway) as it is a masterful experience of fiction.

Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ford is a puzzle for me; he has such a sublime sentence gift, and he maintains it at such a level. The series of books here is masterful in so many ways and puzzling in others. Never try to read it in a hurry and never try to hurry it. The leisure with which he forms this vision of the era of the Great War can be maddening, though in my case I gave way to it and learned to love the grace and fullness. Ford draws out the fullness of every moment, and there are many passages that I remember with a rare clarity, even though it has been a few years since I read the books. There is the long passage in the trenches and in the hotel in the middle novel, Christopher and Sylvia; there is Christopher’s brother in the third novel, having stopped speaking, lying abed under a tent outdoors; there are the parties in the first novel; there are more, too many to name really, so that the reading, in hindsight, proves its worth. If one can deal with the pace of the narrative, its intricate trodding through each moment, this is a wonderful experience. Masterful in many ways. But it has such a gut-deep flaw running all through it, the character of Sylvia, the utter venom with which she is written. There is so little balance to that portrait, even when Ford attempts sympathy for her. It’s not that she’s uncomplicated or a type; she is a character who is hated very deeply by her author. At least that what was what I thought. Spoiled the book for me, though I finished it, and still appreciated the artistry. This was the first time a book struck me in this way, though it’s happened much more often as I age.