Book Cluster

Scene [clutches “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” tightly against chest while lightly sniffling in foetal position in empty bathtub]

Oh hi. I didn’t hear you come in. Stress. STRESS! Everyone is taught that they experience it to varying degrees in all facets of their life (work, relationships, body image, money for retirement, raising the kids right, etc.) One of the ways a person can relax is reading a book. This is not that post.

Back in the day, I was fascinated by the philosophy and it was dominated by The French. I loved reading/not understanding the likes of Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, Baudrillard and others. Heady times, heady times. One guy that did grab my attention was Michel Foucault. He was brilliant. I’ve read “Discipline and Punish” a few times and it resonates louder each time I do so. His writing about the Panopticon in particular seems remarkably prescient to me. He comments on a prison structure (conceived by Jeremy Bentham) that allows an unseen individual to survey (to look at) a percentage of the total prisoners under his care without said prisoners knowing for sure that they are being observed. The internalization of potential surveillance has to create some sort of internal, low-level stress, don’t it? Oh hey, NSA!

Next up is The Ogre by Michel Tournier. I should read this a second time but, gawd, I don’t think I can do it. This is a narrative about a French gentleman with odd obsessions that finally finds his comfort zone/thrives in a Nazi-occupied castle. He obsessively catalogues children that he mistakenly thinks he is saving. This was Tournier’s attempt at portraying the psyche (at the individual level)  that allowed Hitler’s brand of National Socialism to thrive. Although it has nothing to do with the novel, the movie ‘The White Ribbon’ by Michael Haneke mines the same territory.

The last stressful read is John Hawkes ‘The Blood Oranges’. On the surface this is a story about two (sort of) swinging couples on an island. Published in 1970, this is seemingly an indictment of the ‘free love’ era of the late 60’s. That’s what I thought after the first read. The prof that I had at the time kicked me in my metaphorical nuts when I ventured this opinion. This novel is so much more than that. The damn narrator drags you into his world view and won’t let you go. Unrelenting, grotesque solipsism never felt so not good!

Give these works a whirl! [in low voice] The drinks are on me.