Fiber

Rating:
Summary: Trick up Propogandist's Sleeve
Review: One keeps waiting to get the joke. This slim volume by Rick Bass reads like Nabakov's Pale Fire, but less aware of itself. Nabakov set up his book in three sections, an extended introduction by an imaginary critic, a long poem by an imaginary poet, and a longer commentary following it. The book then, as a whole, reveals itself through its method, those sections interacting with one another, and it is left to the astute reader to uncover the irony and inconsistencies and put the story together for herself, as much from what is left out as from what is included. From the first lines of Fiber, one has a similar sense that he is being tricked, and reads for the punch-line, which never comes. Bass writes what sounds like a brief autobiography of his life in four stages (he calls them his four lives). In the first, he is a thief, but such a funny and unlikely thief that it must be made up. He'd steal boats apparently, and then, "open the boat's drain and try to sink it, or sometimes would even torch the boat, and swim back in that last distance to the shore, and then watch for awhile, in the darkness, the beautiful flaming spectacle of waste," (11). In his most recent life, he is a carrier of logs from the forest; we never hear the reason. This is fine, that he engages in these mythical activities, because, as he says in the introduction, "this book is a fiction." The problem starts with his middle life. In it, he was an artist, a writer of short stories, which he gave up long ago for certain reasons. But wait, you say, isn't this a short story which he has written? Our suspicious feeling toward the narrator has now turned to distrust. Also in that life, his wife was a visual artist. She too no longer makes art, according to the narrator. But then, this book is illustrated, skillfully, if simply, by one Elizabeth Bass, no doubt his wife. Is he lying outright? Lastly, he becomes "an activist," jarringly it seems to me. All the calm, aged wisdom of the book thus far-and it has that, a knowing lyricism which is winning and unassuming-turns to an easy and worn desperation, closing the book with something like, "nature is beautiful; especially the area around my house; we should save it; write letters to your senators and the president." While reading this, I kept thinking, "he's smarter than this," expecting the addresses to be fake, which he included for sending letters, anything to turn it around. We remember about this point that he claimed this book for fiction. Is this just a narrative device? And the plea for we readers to get involved just a way to make the narrator's world seem more credible? Maybe. For the last few pages of the book, he refers incessantly to something called "the Yaak," which he is trying to save. This is the campaign he wants us in on: Preserve the Yaak. Maybe this is entirely fiction after all. He never tells us where the Yaak is, or whether it is a mountain range, a lake, a strange ecosystem, or a town. He never tells us what state it is in (in a postscript we learn it is in Montana). He refers to it famously, like it were Yosemite, or The Rockies. This is my least favorite of amateur-ish mistakes: the thinking that everyone knows your nicknames for places (when I was a teenager working at the Olive Garden Restaurant, we called it "the O.G.," but I wouldn't refer to it as such as though it hadn't a proper name). By now the narrator has so far discredited himself that even his weary and lyrical voice-did I mention it's great writing-- cannot save him. If "the Yaak" is a real place, it deserves some kind of introduction and not to be made the butt of a joke without a punch-line.

Rating:
Summary: Trick up Propogandist's Sleeve
Review: One keeps waiting to get the joke. This slim volume by Rick Bass reads like Nabakov's Pale Fire, but less aware of itself. Nabakov set up his book in three sections, an extended introduction by an imaginary critic, a long poem by an imaginary poet, and a longer commentary following it. The book then, as a whole, reveals itself through its method, those sections interacting with one another, and it is left to the astute reader to uncover the irony and inconsistencies and put the story together for herself, as much from what is left out as from what is included. From the first lines of Fiber, one has a similar sense that he is being tricked, and reads for the punch-line, which never comes. Bass writes what sounds like a brief autobiography of his life in four stages (he calls them his four lives). In the first, he is a thief, but such a funny and unlikely thief that it must be made up. He'd steal boats apparently, and then, "open the boat's drain and try to sink it, or sometimes would even torch the boat, and swim back in that last distance to the shore, and then watch for awhile, in the darkness, the beautiful flaming spectacle of waste," (11). In his most recent life, he is a carrier of logs from the forest; we never hear the reason. This is fine, that he engages in these mythical activities, because, as he says in the introduction, "this book is a fiction." The problem starts with his middle life. In it, he was an artist, a writer of short stories, which he gave up long ago for certain reasons. But wait, you say, isn't this a short story which he has written? Our suspicious feeling toward the narrator has now turned to distrust. Also in that life, his wife was a visual artist. She too no longer makes art, according to the narrator. But then, this book is illustrated, skillfully, if simply, by one Elizabeth Bass, no doubt his wife. Is he lying outright? Lastly, he becomes "an activist," jarringly it seems to me. All the calm, aged wisdom of the book thus far-and it has that, a knowing lyricism which is winning and unassuming-turns to an easy and worn desperation, closing the book with something like, "nature is beautiful; especially the area around my house; we should save it; write letters to your senators and the president." While reading this, I kept thinking, "he's smarter than this," expecting the addresses to be fake, which he included for sending letters, anything to turn it around. We remember about this point that he claimed this book for fiction. Is this just a narrative device? And the plea for we readers to get involved just a way to make the narrator's world seem more credible? Maybe. For the last few pages of the book, he refers incessantly to something called "the Yaak," which he is trying to save. This is the campaign he wants us in on: Preserve the Yaak. Maybe this is entirely fiction after all. He never tells us where the Yaak is, or whether it is a mountain range, a lake, a strange ecosystem, or a town. He never tells us what state it is in (in a postscript we learn it is in Montana). He refers to it famously, like it were Yosemite, or The Rockies. This is my least favorite of amateur-ish mistakes: the thinking that everyone knows your nicknames for places (when I was a teenager working at the Olive Garden Restaurant, we called it "the O.G.," but I wouldn't refer to it as such as though it hadn't a proper name). By now the narrator has so far discredited himself that even his weary and lyrical voice-did I mention it's great writing-- cannot save him. If "the Yaak" is a real place, it deserves some kind of introduction and not to be made the butt of a joke without a punch-line.

Rating:
Summary: Where art meets activism
Review: Read these 50 pages, then write a letter to the people on page 56. (You will NOT be able to NOT write the letter.) This little book is a strange and wonderful thing that will move people to action on behalf of a place they have never seen.