“Vollmer has entered a strange phase. He spends all his time at the window now, looking down at the earth. He says little or nothing. He simply wants to look, do nothing but look. The oceans, the continents, the archipelagoes. We are configured in what is called a cross-orbit series and there is no repetition from one swing around the earth to the next. He sits there looking. He takes meals at the window, does checklists at the window, barely glancing at the instruction sheets as we pass over tropical storms, over grass fires and major ranges. I keep waiting for him to return to his pre-war habit of using quaint phrases to describe the earth: it’s a beach ball, a sun-ripened fruit. But he simply looks out of the window, eating almond crunches, the wrappers floating away. The view clearly fills his consciousness. It is powerful enough to silence him, to still the voice that rolls off the roof of his mouth, to leave him turned in the seat, twisted uncomfortably for hours at a time.
The view is endlessly fulfilling. It is like the answer to a lifetime of questions and vague cravings. It satisfies every childlike curiosity, every muted desire, whatever there is in him of the scientist, the poet, the primitive seer, the watcher of fire and shooting stars, whatever obsessions eat at the night side of his mind, whatever sweet and dreamy yearning he has ever felt for nameless places far away, whatever earth sense he possesses, the neural pulse of some wilder awareness, a sympathy for beasts, whatever belief in an immanent vital force, the Lord of Creation, whatever secret harbouring of the idea of human oneness, whatever wishfulness and simple-hearted hope, whatever of too much and not enough, all at once and little by little, whatever burning urge to escape responsibility and routine, escape his own over-specialization, the circumscribed and inward-spiralling self, whatever remnants of his boyish longing to fly, his dreams of strange spaces and eerie heights, his fantasies of happy death, whatever indolent and sybaritic leanings, lotus-eater, smoker of grasses and herbs, blue-eyed gazer into space – all these are satisfied, all collected and massed in that living body, the sight he sees from the window.
‘It is just so interesting,’ he says at last. ‘The colours and all.’
I feel this sums it all up…”Something like Orbital indicates beauty through its lyricism, but lacks the strangeness, poignancy, and philosophic vitality of something truly beautiful.”
Something truly beautiful has dimension. The concept prevailing through the narrative feels less dimensional and without any tension to create a spark it falls a wee bit flat. The prose is beautiful but overall the novel itself drifts just as the space station does.
Interesting take. I did enjoy “Orbital,” was astounded by it. But something lingered, and I think it was that choice to stay on the surface, at a remove. Maybe an artistic choice, to mirror the astronauts’ remove from Earth? When I was a kid, as a piano student, I heard a prodigy play Chopin’s “Fantasy Impromptu,” a piece I aspired to learn. The performance was technically brilliant, but even at 12, I could tell something of depth was missing. An emotional core. “Orbital,” for all its breathtaking, virtuosic prose, does have that effect. The quality of the writing itself goes a long way to make me think and touch my emotion. In the end, though, the reserve of characters (and author) to engage with deeper questions has meant this one didn’t stay with me.
I'm with the other commenters that I am unconvinced by the final judgment and also by the terms on which it is made. However, this is a definite step up in TMR quality of review, albeit still with the tediously exhausting need to complain about institutions for existing and how somehow they are obligated to respond to the critic's personal bugaboo. And this sentence just stopped me cold: "For the past decade, our cultural conception of any art form has allowed it but two functions: the “commercial” art of escapism and the “serious” art of political fablemaking." What the hell does or even can this mean? It is as vapid a claim as the author claims that Orbital is making on our attention.
Particularly weird is the claim that the novel wants to be read as a prose poem and then the apparent dismissal of being able to do so doesn't really hang together for me. It sounds like you want more explicit political discourse in your prose poem, which seems absurd unless you actually liked those parts of the Cantos?
Finally, your reference to Prophet Song being a bad reqrite of The Road leaves me personally baffled. As a person of certified bad taste per Ross Barkan, I might as well go all in and note that McCarthy was a dreadfully overrated and overvalued writer who basically reached his apogee with Blood Meridian, and then, the same way that James Ellroy wrote himself into incomprehensibility after the LA Quartet, simply coasted on regurgitated Faulknerisms that lazy critics ate up. He never published a good book after Blood Meridian, and if your measure of literary quality is the Road your critical apparatus is extremely suspect.
Thank you for cleaning the space. Both critic of the critics and hopeful appreciation of where could be "literature" ( which should not be between quotations mark). Also how not to relate to Musk's willingness to dis-orbit the Space station. Sorry, for returning to the political in a piece that did so well evading it!.
I enjoyed the review, but I wasn't convinced by its conclusion that Orbital fails in every respect except that of prose style. It has left me with a vivid sense of what orbital free fall is like as a mode of existence. It might not have much to say about the ontology of the earth, but the elusive ontology of extraterrestrial being shimmers on every page.
On the explicitly philosophical level, however, I agree that it falls woefully short. The worst moment for me comes at the end of orbital 10, when Shaun, ostensibly a devout Christian, muses that the dog in Las Meninas is 'the only thing on the painting that could vaguely be called free'. If you want one of your characters to have this thought, surely the Christian would be absolutely the least plausible choice? Why have a Christian character at all, if this is the kind of thing he thinks?
If a contemporary novel "fails in nearly every estimable facet beyond the rhythm of its sentences and its adherence to its form," it has still accomplished more than 90% of contemporary novels.
Good review. I don't agree with the pov on the publishing industry or the politics in the novel but beyond an honest disagreement there, this is a good review.
Very interesting, but I left the essay a bit unsatisfied. Towards the end you pose the problem: what should literary fiction look like, now? Presumably you think Orbital isn't it, but shouldn't Orbital, and the committee, get more credit for trying to find new form? What else might you say about form, if superficial if pretty lyricism does not cut it?
Poetic, lyrical prose, often hard to characterize: James Wood honors that kind of read of the novel: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/orbital-samantha-harvey-book-review
I hardly found his review "saccharine" ... Read it, others ... and then decide ...
“Vollmer has entered a strange phase. He spends all his time at the window now, looking down at the earth. He says little or nothing. He simply wants to look, do nothing but look. The oceans, the continents, the archipelagoes. We are configured in what is called a cross-orbit series and there is no repetition from one swing around the earth to the next. He sits there looking. He takes meals at the window, does checklists at the window, barely glancing at the instruction sheets as we pass over tropical storms, over grass fires and major ranges. I keep waiting for him to return to his pre-war habit of using quaint phrases to describe the earth: it’s a beach ball, a sun-ripened fruit. But he simply looks out of the window, eating almond crunches, the wrappers floating away. The view clearly fills his consciousness. It is powerful enough to silence him, to still the voice that rolls off the roof of his mouth, to leave him turned in the seat, twisted uncomfortably for hours at a time.
The view is endlessly fulfilling. It is like the answer to a lifetime of questions and vague cravings. It satisfies every childlike curiosity, every muted desire, whatever there is in him of the scientist, the poet, the primitive seer, the watcher of fire and shooting stars, whatever obsessions eat at the night side of his mind, whatever sweet and dreamy yearning he has ever felt for nameless places far away, whatever earth sense he possesses, the neural pulse of some wilder awareness, a sympathy for beasts, whatever belief in an immanent vital force, the Lord of Creation, whatever secret harbouring of the idea of human oneness, whatever wishfulness and simple-hearted hope, whatever of too much and not enough, all at once and little by little, whatever burning urge to escape responsibility and routine, escape his own over-specialization, the circumscribed and inward-spiralling self, whatever remnants of his boyish longing to fly, his dreams of strange spaces and eerie heights, his fantasies of happy death, whatever indolent and sybaritic leanings, lotus-eater, smoker of grasses and herbs, blue-eyed gazer into space – all these are satisfied, all collected and massed in that living body, the sight he sees from the window.
‘It is just so interesting,’ he says at last. ‘The colours and all.’
The colours and all.”
- Don DeLillo, “Human Moments in World War III
I feel this sums it all up…”Something like Orbital indicates beauty through its lyricism, but lacks the strangeness, poignancy, and philosophic vitality of something truly beautiful.”
Something truly beautiful has dimension. The concept prevailing through the narrative feels less dimensional and without any tension to create a spark it falls a wee bit flat. The prose is beautiful but overall the novel itself drifts just as the space station does.
I appreciate this critique. Thank you.
Interesting take. I did enjoy “Orbital,” was astounded by it. But something lingered, and I think it was that choice to stay on the surface, at a remove. Maybe an artistic choice, to mirror the astronauts’ remove from Earth? When I was a kid, as a piano student, I heard a prodigy play Chopin’s “Fantasy Impromptu,” a piece I aspired to learn. The performance was technically brilliant, but even at 12, I could tell something of depth was missing. An emotional core. “Orbital,” for all its breathtaking, virtuosic prose, does have that effect. The quality of the writing itself goes a long way to make me think and touch my emotion. In the end, though, the reserve of characters (and author) to engage with deeper questions has meant this one didn’t stay with me.
I'm with the other commenters that I am unconvinced by the final judgment and also by the terms on which it is made. However, this is a definite step up in TMR quality of review, albeit still with the tediously exhausting need to complain about institutions for existing and how somehow they are obligated to respond to the critic's personal bugaboo. And this sentence just stopped me cold: "For the past decade, our cultural conception of any art form has allowed it but two functions: the “commercial” art of escapism and the “serious” art of political fablemaking." What the hell does or even can this mean? It is as vapid a claim as the author claims that Orbital is making on our attention.
Particularly weird is the claim that the novel wants to be read as a prose poem and then the apparent dismissal of being able to do so doesn't really hang together for me. It sounds like you want more explicit political discourse in your prose poem, which seems absurd unless you actually liked those parts of the Cantos?
Finally, your reference to Prophet Song being a bad reqrite of The Road leaves me personally baffled. As a person of certified bad taste per Ross Barkan, I might as well go all in and note that McCarthy was a dreadfully overrated and overvalued writer who basically reached his apogee with Blood Meridian, and then, the same way that James Ellroy wrote himself into incomprehensibility after the LA Quartet, simply coasted on regurgitated Faulknerisms that lazy critics ate up. He never published a good book after Blood Meridian, and if your measure of literary quality is the Road your critical apparatus is extremely suspect.
Thank you for cleaning the space. Both critic of the critics and hopeful appreciation of where could be "literature" ( which should not be between quotations mark). Also how not to relate to Musk's willingness to dis-orbit the Space station. Sorry, for returning to the political in a piece that did so well evading it!.
I enjoyed the review, but I wasn't convinced by its conclusion that Orbital fails in every respect except that of prose style. It has left me with a vivid sense of what orbital free fall is like as a mode of existence. It might not have much to say about the ontology of the earth, but the elusive ontology of extraterrestrial being shimmers on every page.
On the explicitly philosophical level, however, I agree that it falls woefully short. The worst moment for me comes at the end of orbital 10, when Shaun, ostensibly a devout Christian, muses that the dog in Las Meninas is 'the only thing on the painting that could vaguely be called free'. If you want one of your characters to have this thought, surely the Christian would be absolutely the least plausible choice? Why have a Christian character at all, if this is the kind of thing he thinks?
If a contemporary novel "fails in nearly every estimable facet beyond the rhythm of its sentences and its adherence to its form," it has still accomplished more than 90% of contemporary novels.
No plot, no conflict. What’s the point?
Fair critique
when did they land on the moon? don't remember that at all. is it me or you?
the booker has moved from Bad Young Man in the 1970s-90s (itself problematic) to comfy mumcore this century
Good review. I don't agree with the pov on the publishing industry or the politics in the novel but beyond an honest disagreement there, this is a good review.
Very interesting, but I left the essay a bit unsatisfied. Towards the end you pose the problem: what should literary fiction look like, now? Presumably you think Orbital isn't it, but shouldn't Orbital, and the committee, get more credit for trying to find new form? What else might you say about form, if superficial if pretty lyricism does not cut it?
thank you for this. I went from reading to skimming to throwing away. A truly terrible use of ink and paper.