Love the one-sentence story. “…the way out is also the way in…” I take that to mean only by embracing death can you live fully—hence the title—but we fight it, become zombies, and miss so much along the route. “…the comic timing of death…” is also lovely. Thanks for a fun—and possibly enlightening—read!
I skimmed it, focusing on the proper names (God, English). You did your mum proud, and I’m guessing you picked up a pound or 3 with all those words. Well done!
I’ll be returning to this story. I’m still thinking through the lake (the lady of the lake?), the lightning, the initiation, and the subheading—is initiation into ‘the community of the human dead’ what you mean by being ‘saved from oblivion’? In which case, does your narrator achieve the salvation that eludes the Hunter Gracchus, for example? It doesn’t matter. I like the music. There are touches of Beckett’s trilogy here, no? But unobtrusive, metabolised.
I remember reading, somewhere in Beckett's trilogy, a scene where someone's mother cannot communicate (with language), and the communicative system which involves in lieu is something like "two bashes on the head with a rock for yes, one for no," or something along those lines (I express this horribly, so be it). And I was of course very taken with the whole thing "Saved from oblivion" is deliberate exaggeration but I suppose that's the meaning! I was stuck on the trilogy for a while but I think there is something "wrong" with it, that is, "it is not really like that," "it cannot be so closed." Even Bernhard is less closed. But I do think the exit - as "apparent" in this piece - cannot help but feel tagged on and illegitimate. "It is not really like that, either."
(but which I mean the closedness ends up bespeaking a desire for things to be closed rather than an observation that they are, in fact, closed (I don't think Kafka quite makes that claim but he flirts with it much more convincingly - much more closely - than Beckett. In Beckett the desire ends up being unbearable and therefore somehow pointless)
The absolute denial of the possibility of an exit was clearly a need for him, which even Wilfred Bion couldn’t psychoanalyse out of him. He loved Schopenhauer but rejected his ascetic and aesthetic ways out. And yes, I can see that you would be taken with Molloy’s concern with his mother. I’ll have a think about Kafka’s flirtations…also, your work (less here, but elsewhere) seems to make room for the erotic, as Kafka did but Beckett couldn’t (at least not in its heterosexual form)
Love the one-sentence story. “…the way out is also the way in…” I take that to mean only by embracing death can you live fully—hence the title—but we fight it, become zombies, and miss so much along the route. “…the comic timing of death…” is also lovely. Thanks for a fun—and possibly enlightening—read!
Thank you very much David
Om: the sentence never ending
A worthy stab at 21st century stream-of-consciousness. Joyce, Woolf echo throughout, and might just approve.
Cheers Michael!
have i ever read a story this good in any other 'contemporary literary magazine'?--No. absolutely brilliant
THANK YOU BEN
Even though it's in the format that I hate––one long sentence, it's very good. Hits in the gut.
love a good twist ending
This story wrapped a mist of deeper understanding around me as I too head in “that” direction. Thank you.
ahh thank you reading it Anne
Thanks for a steel prick of sadness tonight. Quite good.
I skimmed it, focusing on the proper names (God, English). You did your mum proud, and I’m guessing you picked up a pound or 3 with all those words. Well done!
The opening photograph is not nearly interesting enough to make a reader slog through so much verbiage.
The application of the category of the interesting to the sphere of aesthetics is intellectual suicide.
Ahhh good ol' Philip Traylen (this is my first time reading your work, but I doubt it'll be my last).
I could've known who wrote this without seeing the byline. Amazing.
I’ll be returning to this story. I’m still thinking through the lake (the lady of the lake?), the lightning, the initiation, and the subheading—is initiation into ‘the community of the human dead’ what you mean by being ‘saved from oblivion’? In which case, does your narrator achieve the salvation that eludes the Hunter Gracchus, for example? It doesn’t matter. I like the music. There are touches of Beckett’s trilogy here, no? But unobtrusive, metabolised.
I remember reading, somewhere in Beckett's trilogy, a scene where someone's mother cannot communicate (with language), and the communicative system which involves in lieu is something like "two bashes on the head with a rock for yes, one for no," or something along those lines (I express this horribly, so be it). And I was of course very taken with the whole thing "Saved from oblivion" is deliberate exaggeration but I suppose that's the meaning! I was stuck on the trilogy for a while but I think there is something "wrong" with it, that is, "it is not really like that," "it cannot be so closed." Even Bernhard is less closed. But I do think the exit - as "apparent" in this piece - cannot help but feel tagged on and illegitimate. "It is not really like that, either."
(but which I mean the closedness ends up bespeaking a desire for things to be closed rather than an observation that they are, in fact, closed (I don't think Kafka quite makes that claim but he flirts with it much more convincingly - much more closely - than Beckett. In Beckett the desire ends up being unbearable and therefore somehow pointless)
The absolute denial of the possibility of an exit was clearly a need for him, which even Wilfred Bion couldn’t psychoanalyse out of him. He loved Schopenhauer but rejected his ascetic and aesthetic ways out. And yes, I can see that you would be taken with Molloy’s concern with his mother. I’ll have a think about Kafka’s flirtations…also, your work (less here, but elsewhere) seems to make room for the erotic, as Kafka did but Beckett couldn’t (at least not in its heterosexual form)