Jack Rock

The first of everything

Revisado: 01-16-20

Ms. Miller is such a gifted writer, she can evoke an entire scene with only a couple of words. It's such a pleasure to read such lovely and well crafted writing. These books, as I see there are several, which combine Greek mythology with hystorical novel, with a touch of romance novel, are extraordinarily fun and entertaining to read, as well as being educational to a degree since Ms. Miller weaves in actual stories and details of the gods, demigods, and mortals who live in the traditions of the Classical Greek myths.
Her vivid writing brings in familiar names from the stories of 'The Iliad' and The Odyssey', the Trojan war, Hercules (Heracles) Jason, Zeus, Athena, Artemis, Brave Achilles and his male lover ( ! ), and many other gods and mortals. She breathes life and actualization into them all and tells their stories now extended and extrapolated into the insider stories we've never been privy to before. I have to add that in this audio edition Perdita Weeks, the narrator (master reader/story teller) has the perfect voice and inflections and humanity to bring all of these characters to life. Her performance of this book is perfect. I will not be able to hear her voice without thinking I'm hearing the true voice of Circe. It's really just an excellent combination of story and voice. I hope to hear her work on other audio books in the future. I just love Ms. Miller's work and intend to read all of her books as soon as humanly possible. I'm pretty sure I'm in for a few really fun rides!

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Stream of consciousness stuff

Revisado: 12-12-19

It starts with an intriguing alternate universe, A Tesseract structure, reminiscent of the cold metal pipes of the children's exercise gym, which children call "monkey bars." A real, existing actual structure, situated in a nighttime empty playground, in a randomly located middle school somewhere in Middle England, or Middle Earth. Photo Realistic scenes begin to appear. They are luminous, as though projected on panels of not quite white, perhaps even time-yellowed bed sheets. These are draped over the children's gym, the "monkey bars' and held in place by a constant low-grade wind.
The thread of the admittedly intentionally fractured narrative can at first be dropped then recovered in a few paces. In this dreamlike, vision-riddled place it's hard to remember practical existential things like following a string. For me, perhaps only for me, though I'm not so special, and therefor I find the idea of mine being a unique experience unlikely; Not being able to find, or even ascertain if there is a string or thread holding this eccentric structure together begins increasingly to become a problem.
I try lying back, both clothed, and naked, and letting this watery light shower rain down on me. It is like the multitudinous drops of water in a rather heavy night-time rain shower, if one can imagine them catching the light from an occulted movie projector. The projected images begin to form and coalesce into loosely connected three-dimensional "Pointillist" images. Imagine 1936, an empty street, It's single street-lamp weakly fighting the ever-timely struggle against the creeping and insinuating darkness. All of this takes place, is improvised, no blocking, against the flats, and scrims, and backdrops of "The Night." Almost conscious, fated never to find 'enlightenment,' The Living Night. The kind which is pervasive, and "which", or should I say "whom"? Inhabits scenes as though he is another character in the play. A mute, yet conscious character who hovers, quite literally in all the shadows.
So set that and forget it.
Shall we proceed toward the requisite plot? Gertrude Stein (if you will excuse the jarringly intrusive but necessary parallel) said that her books were like Cubist paintings, at least that was the ideal she strove for. (And here another jolting interposition) Picasso said that an ideal Cubist painting would be like "a picture of a guitar, without the guitar." And I've found from my personal perusal of a cross section of Cubist works, that nothing can be ascertained of the whole by exploring what might be called a "linear narrative" which one expects in normal "figurative" or "illustrative" paintings. Stein’s challenge of herself to write books which were genuine Cubist works, is, with close inspection, a very great and apparently almost insurmountable challenge. With "writing,” which is in its very nature “Linear,” to create the kind of work which theoretically “must” involve a kind of random access. The reader come-viewer dipping somehow into one region of a painting, then moving the attention to a splash of green 4 inches (0.1 m) down and to the left, then back to the first look, a box of vertical black bars, the eyes shift, then taking note of the glimmering light bulb seemingly imprisoned there. The physical glass, metal, and wire comprising the bulb's earthly body can find no escape, but what of its beams of light? Is 'that' freedom, or is it simply naive hope, naive pointless wishing, naive faith in something unnamed? And perhaps even, unnameable...
Only after exploring all of its "moments" can one find by sweeping randomly across the surface of a Cubist painting, then imposing this "sweep" again and again, refocusing, then unfocusing the eyes at times, even allowing the painting to offer up what "It" wants to show. In essence abandoning self will, allowing the flooding of the senses, can one then begin to appreciate what otherwise looks only like an abstract representation of disjointed and sometimes unpleasant points of interest scattered within the frame of the painting, only then, can one at last come to some tentative conclusion about what that entire experience of exploration can be "summed up" into. We are, remember, "Linear" oriented thinking creatures. Time moves seemingly from the horizon before us, and following an invisible arrow, moves toward us and then disappears behind us as only a memory. Most of us would be hard-pressed to imagine a world in which darkness and light were not the visual and conceptual polar opposites which seem to define a dualistic world. It is indeed quite a challenge to imagine any circumstance where the opposite of "up" is not "down." But if we remove ourselves as a center point of awareness, and imagine infinite space with not one single point of central reference, it becomes quite easy to imagine a situation where there is no up or down. And with regard to "light" and "dark" we already see an almost infinite number of gradations which exist between black and white, likewise in the visual mix is the infinity of assorted colors we are able to perceive.
One more step and we're there...
With faith in empirical truth, or at least faith that things which we can not personally experience do actually exist, think now of the bar seeming to end with black on one end and white on the other. Slowly extend the terminus of the bar out into space by trying to imagine now, Ultra Violet, X-Rays, Infra-Red, and remember that all sorts of spectra of Radio and Television Waves, Micro-Waves, Gamma Rays. And simply "know" that although we can not "see" "hear" or "feel" these designations for certain locations on the scale, they are vibrations which are all part of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. And, "EVERYTHING" we see, feel, and hear, and in fact, the infinite vibrational patterns which new science seems to show, are in fact themselves what every thing in the Universe really "IS") Dualism; up, down, left, right, black, white, day, night, is just a set of handy designations which "seem" empirical only because they fit the limitations of the parameters of the senses of the creatures called Human who in the present epoch are the dominant species on a life bearing planet, (one of trillions) which exists in a relatively undistinguished location in the Galaxy, "Milky Way" (also one of trillions).
"What does it mean?"
is the naive but understandable question which (for the average person and even for many artists) insists upon a rational answer. Demands one in fact. If a person does not sheepishly give in and walk away with the very disconcerting cold comfort of the answer which says; "It's Art. I guess it must be "Good" I don't understand it but I'm just an average person. That's how "Art" is. People who know about it can understand it.") The 'average person' goes on apologetically to say; "I'm sorry, I like pictures I can understand, like lakes, and trees, and clouds, and 'People"! I like pictures of people who look like people!" "But my opinion doesn't matter. I just don't know about "Art". But I'm sure the people who've studied it are right and it's really "Good" Never mind me, I'm just dumb, I guess."
The idea of 'capital 'A' "Art" actually triggers quite a bit of negative self appraisal, including guilt, and feelings of abject inadequacy (when the matter of judging) and appraising "Reality" as depicted in most "Modern" Art, raises its Chimera head in discussions of what is "Good" Art or "Real" "Reality".
An entire group of people can be in consensus about not liking a particular work of art. And yet all will agree that their dislike in other words, their "Judgement" of what is "Real" or "Good" or "True" in reality is negligible, unimportant, even, worthless! Again, even though all of them agree! They will console each other by identifying as "simple people" but qualifying this attribution with; "But what I think doesn't matter." "Those who know about Art say it's "good" so I'm sure it is, I just don't understand it.
Intelligent people, when it comes to capital "A" Art, will actually think of themselves as inadiquate to judge reality. They may see a bottle of urine in which a Christian cross is submerged and because it sits in a legitimizing setting like a museum or gallery they will to some extent yield their own opinion that it (the "Art" piece in question) is at its heart empty of real meaning. They may believe that the "Artist" is using the obvious implicit insult to some Christians as a rather Juvenal tactic for eliciting anger, and best of all potentially, nay, almost certainly and absolutely (one hundred Exclamation Marks) it will be "SHOCKING" And "Shocking" is absolutely equivalent to "Meaningful". A "Shocking" "A"rt piece is sitting at the pinnacle of what Art is all about. Isn't it?
People who "Un-wisely" express an opinion that the "Art" in question is shallow, has little value other than to shock, or dismay, or in point of fact it would be unwise for any uninitiated soul to posit "ANY" negative opinion not couched in the complex "insider" lingo of "isms" ("isms" which are lavishly employed in most prestigious or authoritative Art magazines and journals), the opinion spouting average Joe, or 'ignoramus" in the vernacular of the titled and degree'd, will instantaneously be beset by vitriolic, and defaming exclamations by those who DO speak that abstruse patois. (The primary purpose in my idiotic opinion of the "Ism" language is to exclude the non-speaker, the "provincial" and also of course to determine by merit of fluency in the "in-crouder" dialect of the intelligentsia, of frequenters of the galleries, and the museums, graduates of the Art school, "must be schmoozing savvy", pretenders to the "Artist" shop-worn crown. Although he'd really made the scene, I doubt that Vincent, in his flaming heart of hearts, really meditated too very much on the strict defining talking-points of "Post-Impressionism”, "Neo-Impressiomism", “Modernism", what? "Synthetic-Post-Impressionism”. Was this obscuring 'dreck' turning the lights off in his head at the moment he was setting a Murder of Crows to startle in flight over an unharvested field of wheat. Was the possible gun shot which startled the crows an intentional prescience in the painting, or a subconscious knowledge of things to come?
But I digress…
The illustrious Alan Moore with his doubtlessly impressive I.Q. Score, is, it is potentially true, simply vastly smarter than your's truely. Maybe in this massive work he's hidden secrets worth a second try. Well actually a second try of many second trys.
I followed his trail of neo-Madeleines, the kind made by Nabisco. I thought I saw his visions well, and pretty clearly, although "darkly" though a glass. Though perhaps I'm wrong I felt overwhelmed by the massive Angels of beurocracy. Suddenly the air was ponderous and thick. When everything was re-pressurized there was still something off about it. I've found that if I tell my truth, before I know it, it's growing horns and finns. There was a storm the other day. Oh yes, this has naut to do with you, "excuse our mess" but I know you don't like it when the camera somehow swings away from your face in its finder, Some people beat me up, and knocked out all my stuffing, then the wind came up, and then the rain. In short I'm feeling battered. The bruises are the inside kind. Although I'm looking healthy, I'm feeling like a criminal, although I've stolen nothing.
I hope you are amaized if not amused by my pathetic humble scribblings, I tried to write a fair review, though the book was not to my likeing. If my non-normal style is too much for you I've written a small synopsis, a compression of all those extranious words. I tried to keep it simple. So here it is, and at this point I'll bid you fond adieu. Be safe, "safe home" and all those words of parting. Indi Rock - - - here is the synopsis as promissed: The book Jeruselam a weighty tome. Is quite abstract in it's style, and rather hard to follow. It opens darkly in a place, something like the nineteen thirties, then at the point where the reader is riding happily along, abruptly what you thought was a path turns into a giant world of strange visions, and angels with beautiful massive arms and chests, who walk barefoot, and smell so nice. Then there are allusions to the Bible. And in whom will you like to reincarnate. And a Choir or maybe a Corp-oration all run hands on by giant angels. At this point I became so confused, and thought of other lovers, which is to say I thought of other books I was already reading. And books which offered so much pleasure. All ready and at hand, I only had to pick one. Then my axiom came into play: "Give a book a hundred pages. If it's still taking more than it is giving, put it down and walk away. It's really just that easy." And so I did, and so I say this book may be something wonderful, but for someone else and not for me. That is the whole amount of what I have to say now. Good bye, Fare well, Take care, Asta la vista....

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No holds barred. A beautiful view of the terrible.

Revisado: 12-12-19

What first comes to mind is the excellent narrator. His voice seems so integral to the book, at this point (having heard it all) it's impossible to imagine the story without him. He adopts the prevailing accents, and individual voices of the Mumbai slum in which the lives of the various people in the book are trapped. Normally I dislike adopted accents in audio books so much I will return the book without finishing it. Thinking, "what a shame, a potentially good book ruined by a bad, hammy narrator." However, in this case the accent seems to be one well known, or native to the narrator. The cadences and speech patterns of the people in the story are not those of a native English speaker, and the words themselves would lose much of their flavor without the accent and speech patterns with which they were originally spoken. Conveyed as though by direct audio/video telephone line from the original characters, through the talented story telling voice of the Narrator. So this time (almost uniquely in my experience with audio books) I like the accents, (the author's) the storyteller's accented speech, brought vividly to life by the Narrator, because the accentation seems not only genuine, but integral to the speech of the characters, and indispensable to the entire work. The narration which flawlessly "becomes" the voices of the characters, is superb, excellent, essential. And on this last note, I mean about my use of the word "characters", upon listening to the authors note, (self spoken) I learned that she had followed these people whom she's portrayed in the book, followed them around, lived in their shadows in real life! These people actually exist, are even called by their own names as named in the book. The story seems so fluid and is so dramatic I'd assumed this was without question a "novelized" version of life in the Mumbai slums. Surely the conversations between multiple people must be a work of fiction. But in fact, according to the author, she followed these very real people around for a year, was with them when the events recorded happened, saw these things unfold in real time. And she recorded them verbatim, meaning wrote down every conversation appearing in the book. I "do" believe her, but the book flows so beautifully, it seems while reading it, while experiencing it, it could only be a 'novel' of great accomplishment, beauty and stature. And yet it is, it would seem, all, every word of it true! No wonder this author won the Pulitzer prize, though I'm not clear that it was for 'this' book. In any case she is of 'that' caliber as a writer of great talent and skill. I believe I will remember the people of the Mumbai slums, (as people I've actually met, and actually come to be familiar with), I will stop and wonder, how is Abdul doing? Did he ever get his iPod? What about Zarunisa? Did her quest to get Calu to better himself and stop stealing ever pay off? Oh, my god! I'm brought up short as I remember, Calu died. But how could that have happened? As I feel very real shock at the news of Calu's passing, life goes on in Mumbai, in it's pitiless slums. And i begin to go about my business as do the people who knew him. Life has to go on, I guess, or it just simply does, as we all eventually learn, sadder but wiser. I feel that for many years, and likely for the rest of my life, I will continue occasionally remembering, and wondering, "is 'so-and-so' still alive? What is she doing now? It will be as if I had been there, and seen these events, and walked with the people whose lot in life it was to live them out. Inexplicably, physically, or mentally somehow I traveled there to Mumbai, for a few weeks, or months of real time, and witnessed these sometimes terrible truths for myself. These events and people, they are alive in the words of this book, captured forever like small creatures in amber. A trick not easily pulled off. And in fact, they are alive in this, our, the world's actual physical reality, somewhere on the other side of the horizon, of the sphere of this planet. They have continued on living, moving on along the timeline from the place where I last knew them, their last known location. Where they once lived out their lives within the covers of this book.

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A disappointing plaver

Revisado: 11-22-19

I so enjoyed Crime and Punishment narrated by this narrator, Constantine Gregory. It seemed like a neat perfect match between narrator and book. But ,this match mr. Gregory and The Idiot was rather flawed. Most bothersome was his reading of womrn , as there are prominent female characters in the Idiot it was really troublesome. He simply is not able to raise his pitch as he does without sounding like an old biddy. This is a particular problem when he is speaking the words of a woman purported to be the most alluring and beautiful young woman in Moscow. I found it just impossible not to envision a 67 year old spinster, Black sack of a dress, thin grey hair pinned into a tight bum. As to this that Dostoevsky has written a fragmented book in which I was never able to pick it the thread. I was indeed never quite so happy to reach the end of a book. Perhaps the fractured plot was Dostoevsky's fault or perhaps it was just an off the mark performance by the narrator. I will never know as I've had quite enough of the Idiot at this point. I'm moving on to the countless other books on my list to read.

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Failure to finish

Revisado: 11-22-19

I disliked the narrator and the content of this book so intensely that I returned it rather quickly and have expunged it from my memory. Thus it would be unfair for me to say anything further about it. Sometimes we just meet someone whom we dislike on sight. Frankie Langdon in her incarnation as this book it seems is just one such person.

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Well... She's a sociopath...

Revisado: 11-22-19

In the author's description of her diagnosis she mentions grandiose confabulating as one of the symptoms. It is possible to consider the possibility that some of the more wonderful and intriguing recollections and accounts of her nature and its fantastic expressions in her life might possibly be qualities the author might have if her ideals were actualized in reality. It would be a mistake however to let this color ones entire opinion of the author's veracity while reading this book. There are confessions which I believe are likely not effected or are outside of the purview of the question of veracity, Things like reactions to events, or feelings about interactions specific to someone with a sociopathic mind are not the sort of data particularly amenable to distortion by grandiose imaginings. Of course just as I believe she herself predicts about the reactions of readers to her story, I found myself disliking her, to the extent that I avoided the book for a week. It may also be that the narrator Bernadette Sullivan is doing such a good job of sounding emotionally neutral and somewhat overly confident that her voice reads as "cold" and a bit unnervingly "emotionless", or perhaps I should say, "compassionless." This is the reason I gave her performance 5 stars and the story only 3. Ms. Sullivan's performance made me feel I was listening to the sociopathic author reading her own work. But as my reading progressed I found myself recognizing a number of sociopath traits in myself. M.E. also predicts this for a number of her readers. But I believe it is a common human characteristic to have a number of different personalities, so to speak, perhaps some of them sociopaths, which alternate throughout the day, and are taken together as a conglomerate entity, equaling one person, one personality. My version of this is already somewhat more compartmentalized than the average person, but that is a matter for my own "Confessions" book, should I ever write one, In the end I found it to be a quite interesting look into the decidedly different mind translation of the field of reality, which we all quite unconsciously interpret in our own way. The difference being that an average person's emotional experience of a situation is close enough to that of another average person that the reality experienced "seems" to be the same one. It is in fact the same causal world experienced by a deep sea fish which "sees" with a self generated field of electromagnetic energy, However it's clear that the fish's view of things, though equally valid, is radically different from the average human perceived experience. We think that because someone approaches us in a human body, that the person is essentially experiencing the same world that we are. This can be quite a profound misapprehension. In any case though I can not say I "enjoyed" the book, I found it truly interesting, and it is provocative to now compare the "set" of sociopath characteristics outlined in the book against people that I see all around me, including myself.

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Modern burn

Revisado: 10-25-19

As an old-school burnout it took some time for me to see that these millennial generation burnouts were not just describing loosing faith in their career dream. I worked 18 to 20 hour days for 8 years doing extremely high stress creative work in an international known theater where deadlines were sink or swim, literally for the whole theater. At the time I resigned I knew that if I didn't stop I was literally going to have a stroke or a heart attack. My burnout was my body, mind, and soul having worked with engine's running red hot and over speed limit for thousands of miles, for years. If my life were a car it would be a smoking hulk.
I approached this story with an open mind but for the first half I wasn't sure these people weren't just describing frustration plus stress, coupled with a lot of college debt worry. They are describing being burned out essentially right out of college, or after looking for work in their field, and finding none. It seemed that intense frustration leading to despair, coupled with the extreme constant worry over almost insurmountable debt, whatever that state is, it's what they call burnout.
I can see why older non millennials might think this is indicative of a sort of laziness. However we have to consider that there are far more humans on this planet than ever before, with less employment options, and huge competition for what professional jobs there are. Getting into the creative professions was never particularity easy but with seemingly everyone wanting to do digital content creative work I imagine the feelings of hopelessness around seeking work there must seem insurmountable. There is also the new employment paradigm of contract work over permanent situations being the new normal. So everything else they've described plus perpetual insecurity and no expectation of stability or income. I wouldn't like to do it! I think the semantics between generations is different over the word "burnout".
I'm any case it was interesting to hear what the beginning of the 21st century is offering its grown children to live on. I can't say I have any envy over it. And I did learn a couple of new words like, "permalance" I hope I got that right. But what it means makes me a little sick at heart just thinking about it.

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Compelling chase + satisfying conclusion

Revisado: 10-23-19

The chronological description of the crimes and their details draw the reader into the seeming inner circles of the historical investigation. Then segues into where those decades old leads stand today (at time of writing). Then suddenly tragically Michelle dies, book unfinished, what next? There is a post-scriptum which avoidance of a spoiler requires me to leave undescribed, but it will make a revelation beyond Michelle's conception of her book which is both poignant and satisfying.

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OK Pulp horror

Revisado: 10-07-19

A woman alone in a big old house is compel!ed to find the answer to its secret. It's a plot and essentia!ly a book I've read a number of times before. Entertaining for an evening, and on to the next.

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Relistening with another narrator

Revisado: 10-05-19

I trudged, and struggled, and persevered through this version with Simon Vance narrating. Although I've enjoyed Mr. Vance's narration on other titles, those with male primary characters as it happens, I just couldn't stand this book with him reading it. All the way through to two-thirds done, I thought it was the book I hated, but kept going because this book is so highly esteemed by so many people. The reason I want to read it to begin with is the fact that I found it appearing at the number one place on several online lists of the greatest books ever written. In fact the first book reader I know to whom I mentioned my list of classic books to read, said that it was his favorite book of all books he'd read. So, why do I hate it so? Perhaps I'm just a bit thick, but it was not until today that I thought to listen to samples of other narrators reading it. I got it into my head that I required a female voice for this book. In fact, I'm convinced, though I haven't put it to the test yet, that this book must have a woman's voice, though written by a man and not exclusive in female and male characters. I listened to samples of perhaps 9 of the versions available here (how splendid to have so many to choose from) and chose Davina Porter as my voice of choice. My review of that version will tell the tale of whether it is indeed Madame Bovary herself whom I detest or simply the particular voice who speaks her story. She certainly can not be blamed for that. Perhaps in the edition I've chosen she will shine as brightly as reported by others who've read her legend. I'm also entirely chuffed that my chosen version is a full two hours longer than the average play times of all the others. In printed books, movies, pieces of music, and audio books the longer the duration the more pleased as a cat with a canary am I. Now, time will tell.

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