(no subject)

[lhexa]

Here's a reposted list of responses and impressions from the superb novel The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, by Victor Pelevin. (The book is mainly about foxes, by the way.)

• Seducing someone via a theological argument seems like the hottest thing ever.


• Pelevin has a good excuse for creating a character that us humans can actually relate with, in the explanation of the foxes' memory. I'm glad he thought of that, since excessively human non-humans are a pet peeve of mine.


• Not once did A ever express a desire to become human. Finally. I get really sick of all the quisling foxes in literature and film.


• I'm adopting "heads and tails" as an affectation.


• The best comparison I can think of for A's attitude toward classic literature is with Nietzsche's attitude, which is intensely personal, making all the great insights in those works seem like gestures of friendship toward the reader, and making all the great errors seem like outright betrayals. Of course, A has a better reason than Nietzsche to think that way. :>


• The characters' conversations about great (and not-so-great) authors were not abstract discussions thereof but ones that related them intimately to the characters' lives, which I take to be a sign of an author who has himself been deeply shaped by such predecessors.


• Pelevin's (via A's) approach to Buddhism is markedly an outsider's. The satori-like (and somewhat Socratic) exercises seem composed by rote, and at times almost a recitation of dogma. Since these appear more toward the end, it was a bit of a disappointment, but not much of one.


• I like that foxes receive plenty of explanation, and werewolves almost none.


• Pelevin managed, in a tiny passage, to exactly encapsulate the arrogance, boyishness, confidence, and enthusiasm that I associate with wolves, namely in the letter to Alexander from his mentor ("Transform! WOLF-FLOW!"). I burst out laughing when I read that, and at several other moments too.


• The sense of humor is one that I find myself starved of in American entertainment, and one that I'd like my own to approach: critical and perceptive without being cynical, spiteful or malicious. In particular, A's attitude of simultaneous fondness for and weariness with Russia was expressed in some great ways, and I also dug the way every fox spoke disparagingly of her own native country.


• I felt I learned a few subtle things about Russia, though one can get the same from any good book set in a foreign country and written by a native thereof.


• The book kept me from completing my grading when I should have. :P


• The story uses a displaced structure that was once brought heavily to my attention by an amazing professor, with the story being told by a character in the story. You can see the same thing in Heart of Darkness, Steppenwolf, and scads of Poe stories. I've come to associate the technique with highly personal writing, as though it adds a barrier or layer of protection to the actual author.


• It seems to be unfortunate that I haven't read Lolita yet, because there was a heavy subtext (sometimes not-so-sub text) about A's appearance that I could sense but not follow.


• Those damn Taoist exorcists! Okay, so there was a cultural touching point there that I simply don't know, as I also noticed that a Korean anime about a fox (Yobi, I think it's called) there was a Taoist exorcist. I would like to know the common lore, but things like that aren't well-suited to internet searches.


• It's a shame noone can hold his own against A in an intellectual debate, since when she does let loose the effect is dazzling.


• Damn good book. I've already passed it on to some local friends. I will bite whomever calls it pretentious.

Oh, and some favorite quotes that I bookmarked while reading:

"I always avoid arguing with people, but this time I just exploded and started talking seriously, as if I was with another fox."

"'And what do I smell of?'
"'I can't really say... Mountains, moonlight. Spring. Flowers. Deception. But not a wily kind of deception, more as if you're having a joke.'"

"In the north of England there are several privately owned castles where aristocrats are bred from the finest stock and raised specially for hunting by foxes -- the output isn't all that large, but the quality is excellent."

"Foxes have a fundamental answer to the fundamental question of philosophy, which is to forget this fundamental question."

Comments

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Oh God, I'm going to have to finally read Ulysses. I am told that it is an ordeal.

*slaps forehead* Okay, I'm appalled that I forgot this one, given that it's my favorite damn book. Foxes only appear fleetingly (though frequently) in it, sadly, but it still offers insight: Thoreau's Walden.

In Walden (just as in Pelevin's book, come to think of it), foxes represent a state of yearning to transcend one's society, which of course ties into Thoreau's themes. And as a result, they are hunted beasts. In fact, that result also makes them demonic, since being demonic (as seen somewhat bluntly in some old Indian tales about asuras) is one way of seeking to overcome or transcend one's society. The most relevant quotes:

"Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated."

Think about Pelevin's story of the encounter between A and the Yellow Master. The concurrence is amazing, though of course A went further than other foxes.

Damn character limit. Continued below.

[rax.livejournal.com]

In Walden (just as in Pelevin's book, come to think of it), foxes represent a state of yearning to transcend one's society, which of course ties into Thoreau's themes. And as a result, they are hunted beasts. In fact, that result also makes them demonic, since being demonic (as seen somewhat bluntly in some old Indian tales about asuras) is one way of seeking to overcome or transcend one's society.

Thank you for explaining to me what I've been up to for the last year or two. Mirroring you, "Oh God, I'm going to have to finally read Walden." :)

The state of yearning to transcend one's society is totally what Stephen Dedalus is up to, too, with some additional complexity in relationships to family and time (which I think Rich gets almost-right). Demonic. Hm. I'm going to have to sit with that one for a while. Thank you again. Wow.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Glad I can be of such use! After mulling over my own statement for awhile, though, it seems I wrote it to express the difficulty for me in inheriting Walden. Walden is a scriptural work, but one that describes foxes as demonic. (This description's a biblical tradition, as it turns out.) So, how can one be a vulpine student of that book?