Kanley Stubrick by Mike Kleine
My rating: 3/5 cats
“why are you watching aeroplanes,” she
says, in the form of a question with no
question mark.“It seemed interesting at the time, I don’t
know—I was bored.”“yeah?”
“Yeah, I was bored, but it might—I think it
may get better, I don’t know.”
this is one of those ‘three stars cats for me, probably more for you’ ratings in which i acknowledge my own shortcomings, and how i am not equipped to appreciate a particular genre or style of writing, in this case…hmmm….surrealist stream-of-consciousness? literary bizarro? poetry-inspired flash fiction? arthouse film trapped in prose? whatever the style pleases itself to be called, i am missing the particular brain-lobe required to process things that are highly stylized, and while i can identify the appeal and skill of works on the more experimental side of art, i frequently struggle with what i’m meant to be taking away from the experience. i’m a medium-dumb american: i don’t need bang bang boobies to keep me invested in a book or film, but there’s a certain, let’s call it european sensibility (i.e. all those films greg made me watch until my furrowed brow and very vocal reactions closed that chapter on our friendship), that leave me cold. (there are some exceptions: Last Year at Marienbad, The Mirror, Fanny and Alexander, but lord knows why i love those and barf all over Mouchette. feel free to speculate wildly—i’d like to know myself)
and while this isn’t european; the author is from west africa and the names in the book are all japanese, although the action is a bit of a globe-hop, there’s that elevation of style and symbol over narrative that makes my brain a little fizzy.
it’s just under a hundred pages, many of which are only half-filled with text, and it’s image-heavy snippets in which the mission statement seems to be: Things disappear because there is nothing to hold them in place. it’s not that i hated reading it, but it frustrates me as a reader to have the story be so close to my grasp, but maddeningly elusive.
He reads some things on the
Internet and joins a cult.The cult—they’re somewhere
in Canada.He learns to speak English—
basic words.The cult leader, his name is
Jkxrrtyfjjvvxzdrxrgkwnkkppfft.Jkxrrtyfjjvvxzdrxrgkwnkkppfft is
bald and likes to talk a lot about
what happens after things die.Jkxrrtyfjjvvxzdrxrgkwnkkppfft says
words like spirit and flower and sister
and animal and incarnate and saviour.he never really gets what
Jkxrrtyfjjvvxzdrxrgkwnkkppfft
is talking about, really, but
appreciates what he is going for.
i can relate.
it’s intriguing, but not, ultimately, illuminating, and i wish my brain was better at appreciating things like this, because i know there are all sorts of folks out there for whom this will be an easy five-star read, and i wanna be one of the cool kids, but my brain just won’t let me.
They’re watching Kanley Stubrick
and He’s asking her what she
thinks of American culture.“i don’t get it,”
she says.“What do you mean—
what is there to get?”
bang bang boobies.
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