Do you see what I see? (Hallucinations: Oliver Sacks)

     Oliver Sacks. Hallucinations (2012) A posthumous work assembled from Sacks’s notes and drafts. The result is a somewhat gappy discussion and occasionally rough style, but it still adds up to what to me appears a thorough survey of what’s known and unknown about hallucinations.
     Hallucinations are illusions, but they are almost always known to be illusions. Neurological research shows subtle differences between perception, illusion, hallucination, and memory. All involve the brain areas of sensory perception, but the limbic system and the frontal cortex behave differently. While we generally think first of visual hallucinations, hallucinations happen for every sense, as do illusions. Sacks as usual uses case histories to demonstrate the nature of different types of hallucination.
     I learned much. One thing is that the zig-zagged glittering visual aura that precedes most migraines is probably more common as the sole symptom of migraine. (Variations of it also precede epileptic seizures.) Since I experience that aura myself roughly once every other month or so, this information is somewhat reassuring.
     Another interesting fact is that people deprived of sight (even temporarily) experience visual hallucinations. These are oddly similar both in the content and in how the content changes over time.
      But mostly what I learned reinforces the hypothesis that the brain constructs the experience of what we are pleased to call reality. The centre of that experience is the self, the “I”. Sensory deprivation changes the “I”, not merely what the “I” sees or doesn’t see. Many people who lose their sight eventually are no longer able to remember their past visually, for example. But memories are at the core of our sense of self. We are not only our present experience, we are our memories.
     Another very good read. Recommended. ***½

The Best of Herman (Jim Unger)

 Jim Unger. The Best of Herman (1993) A re-read, and as pleasurable as before. Whatever role Herman plays, he’s always the schlemiel that never quite wins, who faces defeat at everything he attempts. But he never gives up. His life skill is endurance, and sometimes wry, sometimes realistic, sometimes grudging acceptance of the losing hands life deals him. Herman is Everyman. The effect is an odd kind of hope. If tomorrow doesn’t appear to shape up as any better than today, at least we can hope that it won’t be much worse. Whatever disaster is heading our way, it will be at least survivable. ****

When People aren't What They Seem To Be: Prayers for the Dead (Faye Kellerman)

Faye Kellerman. Prayers For the Dead (1996) Prominent and much admired heart surgeon Azof Sparks turns up nastily dead in a back alley. He was not what he seemed to be, nor are his family, which misleads Detective Lt Peter Decker. Rena’s long-ago connection with the family complicates the case, as do the usual attempts by family members to protect each other.

     Kellerman’s casual incorporation of the details of practiced Judaism is one of her strengths. But it’s her characters that impress me most. Even the secondary ones have unguessed depths. It’s the (I think deliberately) incomplete backstories that make the characters believable. We never fully understand or know the people that are closest to us, let alone those we know merely as acquaintances or regular figures in our daily rounds. We know most fictional characters better than we know most real people. But not in Kellerman’s books. The mysteries of being human are central to her fictions. I feel that although the criminal has been found, their motives are never fully understood. A satisfying read.***

Rilke's Duino Elegies.

Rainer Maria Rilke. Duino Elegies (Translated by C. F. MacIntyre, 1961) Rilke worked on the Elegies for decades. In German, it’s his skill in using German syntax to compress meaning, to generate subtly variable rhythms, rhyme, and echo. MacIntyre has attempted to give us an English version of Rilke’s syntax and sound play, and for the most part succeeds.
     The book prints German and English on facing pages, so comparison is easy. Rilke ruminates; his declamations pretend to public speech. Hence the label, Elegies.

     A random sample (from the Sixth Elegy):
Wunderlich nah ist der Held doch den jugendlich Toten. Dauern
ficht ihn nicht an. Sein Aufgang ist Dasein; beständig
nimmt er sich fort und tritt ins veränderte Sternbild
seiner steten Gefahr.
 

     MacIntyre’s translation:
Strangely near is the hero to those who died young.
Permanence does not tempt him. His rise is Being.
Steadfastly he goes onward and enters the changed constellation
of his perpetual danger.
 

     My translation:
Curiously close is the hero to the youthfully dead. Persistence
 does not affect him. His rise pure existence; forever
he takes himself off and steps into the altered star sign
of his perpetual peril.
 

    Rilke is difficult, inexhaustible. He repays repeated reading. I’m glad to have MacIntyre’s translation, not least for his giving us a sense of Rilke’s sound. Its play against my own understandings increases both insight and pleasure. The introduction is a good overview of the poems with some glimpses of Rilke's life. Recommended. ***

The Eternal City and eternal human vice: When in Rome (Marsh)

 Ngaio Marsh. When in Rome (1970) Alleyn is in Rome working with the Italian police on international drug-smuggling. Focus of interest is a British citizen, Sebastian Mailer, aka Il Cicerone, his moniker as a tour guide for what we nowadays call “curated” excursions to the more obscure attractions of the city. Alleyn joins the tour. Mailer turns up dead. Alleyn investigates with and in parallel to the Italian cops. The solution is ambiguous: Alleyn knows who killed Mailer, but the snaring of a few important drug-dispensing crooks makes that solution a footnote.
     An above average Marsh. I enjoyed the wry observations on the sleazier aspects of international tourism, and Marsh’s slick use of stereotypes to propel the plot. This novel would make a good TV thriller-cum-travel advertisement. A radio dramatisation is available online. ***

Christmas in the country, a diplomatic incident, and a mistake in a cemetery: Three more by Marsh.

I;m reaching the end of my re-reading of Marsh's books. Here are three n more reviews.

 

Ngaio Marsh. Tied Up in Tinsel (1972) It’s Christmas Season at Halberds Manor. Hilary Bill-Tasman, its proprietor, has collected a troupe of distinguished guests, including Troy. Collection of rarities is his passion. He has hired paroled murderers as his servants. So when his uncle’s manservant ends up dead, they appear to be the prime suspects. Alleyn, Fox & Co. of course prove otherwise,. We’re treated to another of Marsh’s reliably entertaining confections, an once again the comedie humaine is the focus of her narrative. Caste and class cause ructions, family secrets obscure the trail, personal quirks and shame prevent candid testimony. Well-done, with plausible psychology animating both the guilty and the innocent. Average for Marsh, hence **½
 

 

 

 

Ngaio Marsh. Black as He’s Painted (1974)
Bartholomew Opala, erstwhile classmate of Alleyn’s, now President of Ng’ombwana, an obscure but important African nation, barely escapes assassination at a lavish entertainment designed to publicise the excellent effects of his politics. Samuel Whipplestone, a retired Foreign Office civil servant with African expertise, helps Alleyn. Lucy Lockett, a small stray black cat, not only captures the heart of Samuel, but leads to the crucial clue that unravels the knot. A well-done puzzle, a handful of characters that break the boundaries of their stereotypes, and a cast of villains that suffer satisfyingly poetic justice, combine to make up a better than average Marsh. Entertaining read, especially if you like cats. ***

 

 

 

Ngaio Marsh Grave Mistake (1978) The title alludes to the exhumation that provides the final link in the chain of proof. The setting is an English village of the type that exists only in detective novels, but which nevertheless resonates with the ring of truth. Class and the desire for respectability, enough locally provided services and goods, traditional community organisations shaping and regulating people’s lives, polite refusal to acknowledge the secrets that everybody knows, all these and more create an abstract idealisation of England that no longer exists but still exerts enormous influence. Property is valuable, inheritances matter, old relationships between families have to be respected, and so on. And polite reticence and unwillingness to pry allows people to pretend to be what they are not.
     Like other Golden Age detective novelists, Marsh sketches what was then contemporary life. Her novels have now become historical novels, a kind that any current author could not achieve. I enjoyed this reread. Above average for Marsh. ***

Imagine a Bird (poem)

I hope there's no paywall to prevent you reading this article in the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/opinion/eliot-waste-land-poetry.html

My response to it is this poem, which I wrote in 2014. (Yes, the photo at the bottom is of a cardinal). 

 

Imagine a bird

The backyard, mud and snow, sad grey-green grass.
Imagine a bird impossibly red in this monochrome landscape.

I remember a woman in a red coat
surrounded by schoolboys in blue blazers.

Words spill from me,
cadence and echo carving time.

I want to paint an impossibly red robin
ablaze in the dimming light.

 (Copyright W Kirchmeir 2014)