Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante (2019)

A year-long collection of weekly columns in the Guardian written by the author of the Neapolitan Quartet.

Nonfiction Review: Incidental Inventions is a book I was certain to read because I must devour everything Elena Ferrante writes. Had to read even though this wasn't fiction but a series of short essays on a variety of prompts suggested by the editors of the Guardian. Wonderfully, they're written by the same voice that wrote the fiction. The essays mostly fall into two categories: glimpses of her life that often show parallels to the novels, and her thoughts on a host of significant  contemporary issues. Included in the latter is her consistent dedication to daily and practical feminism. Despite her protestations as to the necessity of anonymity to her writing, for those interested these columns provide a great deal of biography and many hints as to where the books originated. Some of these brief rambles fill out ideas from the stories and readers who subscribe to the cult of personality will find many insights into the person who wrote the novels. There are numerous references to childhood, family, and her own life story. All enriched by the illustrations. There are also purely personal confessions. In Incidental Inventions we learn that Ferrante suffers from insomnia, is afraid of snakes, has trouble digesting pizza, that she was once a heavy smoker, that as a child she "was a big liar." All of which (except the last) completely irrelevant to our reading of her books. Incidental Inventions also contains her illuminating perceptions and understanding of a variety of matters important to conversations in today's world. These subjects are subtly expressed in the novels and elaborated on and enunciated in Frantumaglia. Even in these brief essays she's always discerning, enlightening. There is much to treasure seeing her mind at work. She lives life consciously, analytically. These essays appealed to me more than the personal information as I love to see her mind work. I respect Ferrante's position that we only need to know the author through her creations, which is why when she's spilling about her own life it seems contradictory. I don't need to know those things. What does interest me is when she's expressing her opinions. I enjoy seeing a strong, intelligent mind at work, with enough common sense to bring it all down to earth. Her many comments here on literature and writing constitute a graduate seminar on the subject: "All literature, great or small, is ... contemporary." I may not always agree (my exclamation points are not as phallic as hers), but I relish and value what she has to say. The Italian view of things is all too rare in the world. I only wish an American newspaper was cool enough to publish her column as the Guardian was,. I also wonder just how much controversy these columns stirred up with her thoughts on affirmative action and the (mostly hetero) relationship between the sexes. She notes that she refuses to speak badly of other women, even those she dislikes, because she knows the trials all women endure. There was no mention in Incidental Inventions of her outing by an Italian journalist or whether she'd publish again. After the outing and given her feelings about anonymity I was afraid that she might not write again, but I've just learned that The Lying Life of Adults will be released in English in June of 2020 (the Italian edition was published in November 2019). Until then, in this short book there is a seemingly limitless wealth of epigrams to spur and provoke. And for someone who has spent many pages with Elena Ferrante, even the personal information in Incidental Inventions was as enjoyable as news from an old friend.  [3½★]

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971)

A man finds that his dreams change the world and so becomes afraid to dream.

SciFi Review: The Lathe of Heaven is short, but has Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) enjoying herself by doing what she does best. She combines an undercurrent of humor with elements that work on a serious and moral level. This kind of gentle, good natured comedy was occasionally seen in Sixties science fiction (see The High Crusade or The Technicolor Time Machine), here with a completely and resolutely average, bumbling protagonist. At first the story seemed somewhat slight, even posed against the backdrop of disastrous climate change (published in 1971 but set around 2010). But the respite of humor fades amidst the darkness, chaos, and dreams become nightmares. Le Guin is willing to address the big issues, watching civilization collapse. In The Lathe of Heaven she looks at the law of unintended consequences: how attempts at social engineering can go wrong, how good intentions can go astray, how nothing turns out quite the way we want it to. How the world may be a mass of misery, but there's no instant remedy in any larger sense and could always be worse. As did Arthur C. Clarke in Childhood's End, she wonders if perfection becomes joyless. She reminds us that humans aren't capable of being God, but making a deal with the Devil provides no answer either. The story reminded of the three wishes of the jinn, when each wish somehow flips from what was wanted and turns wrong (see the movie Bedazzled (1967 & 2000)). As I read I wondered if our protagonist George Orr was a tip of the hat to George Orwell and the story was a nod to Philip K. Dick. The Lathe of Heaven is short, quick, interesting. When finished, the book continued to grow and kept percolating through my mind. Always a good sign in a book.  [3½★]

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (1953)

Aliens come to Earth.

SciFi Review: Childhood's End is both clever and ambitious, and stunning for having been written in 1953. The book is a masterpiece of the classic science fiction plot, is wonderfully written, explores an almost infinite arc, and is interesting as a time capsule of how our lives have changed in 60 plus years. There are many science fiction plots: time travel, exploration of other planets (with possible alien contact), post-apocalyptic dystopias (caused by science), totalitarian-government dystopias (enabled by science), the computers take over, and on and on. But perhaps the classic story line since The War of the Worlds, one we can all imagine while lying in bed at night, is the inevitable alien visitation (if they can find us, that is). Here Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) presents a novel and intriguing variant on the trope. Certainly unexpected, and one that deserves to be kept under wraps. I got chills at two points: when he writes "The human race was no longer alone," and when he first described the visitors. This take on the old plot is effective because Clarke's writing rivals literary fiction: characters are rounded, realistic, motivated. Subverting expectations, the story moves slower than one generally anticipates in science fiction, being less plot-driven and allowing more space for the characters who chart the story. I hate to call a novel too ambitious, but Childhood's End lives up to its title, ranging from origin to apotheosis to extinction. For me the ending is too amazing (prepare to have your mind blown), but that may simply be because my imagination is too small. It's well worth the wild ride, though, and will encourage believers in human exceptionalism. Although it's irrelevant to the book, while reading I was continually struck by how the informed expectations of 1953 have been diverted. Living in a time that had seen the seismic Manhattan Project completed in six years or so, the sky was the limit. Yet Clarke did not see humans attempting space flight until the late 1970s, but did suggest that the apartheid government in South Africa would've been overthrown by then. Although he states that "the opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author," I think it notable that one of the first of the new rules for his fictional future Earth was one prohibiting cruelty to animals. Other predictions were the Pill and DNA testing. Beyond that trivia, however, Clarke has made a thought-provoking book that is one of the cornerstones of science fiction. A strong influence on my conception of alien visitation. At one point the narrator states, "Countless times this day had been described in fiction." There may be none better than Childhood's End.  [4½★]

Ice by Anna Kavan (1967)

Two men pursue a young, silver-haired woman at the end of the world.

SciFi Review: Ice is a weird book, that ended up being just a bit too weird for me. Anna Kavan (1901-68) wrote an interesting and experimental novel verging on science fiction, but in the end it left me with not enough there there. Told in the first person by a man (I call the Pursuer) who always follows after a delicate, silver-haired woman. Their world is surreal, unclear, unreal. The Pursuer has visions, seeing things he couldn't see, at times entering another personality. It's uncertain whether these visions are hallucinations, dreams, a form of second sight, a seeing of possible futures or alternate realities, of different planes of existence or alternate time-lines. Even madness. Kavan's characters are aware of their disjointed view of life. The young woman is "too preoccupied with her own dream world." The Pursuer "had a curious feeling that that I was living on several planes simultaneously," is "restrained by the peculiar uncertainty as to what was real," and sees "a flashback to something dreamed." "The hallucination of one moment did not fit the reality of the next ... it was reality happening in quite a different way." The uncertainty extends to the nature of the characters. The Pursuer and his mortal rival for the woman, the warden, are at once deadly enemies, best of friends, and almost the same person: "Our looks tangled together. I seemed to be looking at my own reflection ... not sure which of us was which ... I continually found I was not myself but him ... we were like identical twin brothers." Both want the woman, both are sadistic, both are willing to kill. All these bewildering facets made for slow reading as I kept going back to the beginning of a chapter to make sense of some new bit of information, but no explanation or clarification was to be found. Ice has been called science fiction. At one point the Pursuer sees partially human creatures "reminding me of mutants in science fiction stories." It's actually more a fantasy novel, today we would call it dystopian and post-apocalyptic. There are massive encroaching ice fields, the product of a seeming nuclear winter, though the speed of the glaciers makes one think of ice-nine (see Cat's Cradle (1963)): "No country was safe ... from the present devastation, which would spread ... and ultimately cover the entire planet." With the coming end of the world, the remaining countries war with each other, this conflict embodied in the Pursuer's brutal rival, the warden. Kafkaesque repressive political measures are caused by and exacerbate the effects of the approaching natural disaster. The government is closing in, as is the ice, as are the two men pursuing the woman. The writing, being deeply interior and egoistic yet often richly imagistic, is reminiscent of Anais Nin; the dead-pan statements of the fantastic also remind the reader of Kafka: "I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons," or "People whispered or cleared their throats. The jury looked tired, or bored." The silver-haired woman is the source of all desire and conflict. Yet she's desirable only because she must be, because the author sees her (or sees herself) as infinitely desirable. She has little personality beyond proclaiming her victimhood: "Victimization in childhood had made her accept the fate of a victim ... something in her demanded victimization and terror ... expecting to be ill-treated, to be made a victim." There is little that is apparently attractive in her child's body. She has no agency. The Pursuer states, "I myself did not understand my compulsion to see this girl," as the relationship "had always been painful and unrewarding." Perhaps like an addiction. They say in dreams all the people dreamed about are simply the dreamer. Here, all the characters are variations of each other, even the girl as the victim is the other side of her two abusers, who are sometimes the same person ("we were like halves of one being"). The victim needs her abusers as they inexplicably need her. The story ties in with Kavan's own life, her biography being as intriguing as any novel (being, inter alia, a lifelong heroin addict). This is a surreal, psychological thriller of a novel, but there was little "why" or personal involvement. For most of the book the characters were one-dimensional, uninteresting, cold, distant. There was little human contact. It was hard to care as the adventures were often repetitive, with the Pursuer finding the girl and losing the girl over and over. Ice is an intriguing and odd effort with a lot to talk about, but did not make an addict of me.  [3★]