![The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon.
It was this book that introduced me to Killdeer - or perhaps it just provided me with the name. Killdeer (for me, but also for the book’s protagonist) is an act of duality, where you are constantly hiding and showing yourself concurrently. Prostituting your talents, while remaining hidden. As a child, women & lover I’ve been practising Killdeer for many years, perhaps you are too.
The book itself is wonderful read, it’s comprised of ‘three parts’ like an old fashioned Austen novel, and I finished it in three nights subsequently. It deals with identity and sexuality deftly in a manner that puts other authors to shame. It’s not a easy read, if you’re shy of homosexuality you should probably put the book down (and this blog by that matter..) but it’s not the contested issues of homosexuality, incest and culture that makes this book exciting - the most enjoyable part is the use of language. I have many books where the narrator is disenfranchised from the language they are using, and this often provides you with the most beautiful lines of poetry haphazardly slipped into speech.
“Looking for who I am is who I am.”
The harsh but elegant utterances of our character bends the language most of us are overly familiar with into something new and bewitching. Like a still life piece, it’s stagnant and draws the eye to dilation - but then, at the end of the day it’s the same old piece of cloth, clock and wine that we all own. I also enjoyed the hark back to Kafka that you can’t help but run into whenever reading about identity. The above quote instantly put me in mind with David Foster Wallace:
“And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka’s wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance. It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humor but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get — the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke — that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home”
-David Foster Williams on ‘Kafka’s Funniness’. (At some point I will do another poster on David Foster Wallace himself, and I will link it HERE).So in conclusion of my short book review, Tom Sanbauer’s work is a wonderful example of writing something for yourself which others can enjoy immensely. There’s been discussion about whether he has ‘the right’ to explore some of the taboos that feature in his books, but that is a different conversation to have. If you want to know if this book a good one, then it has my blessing. If you want to know if it’s politically or factually correct, you’ll have to ask someone with far less white privilege than myself.-a foot note, here’s a link to a review done by some important magazine. I’d advise you not to read it, or any other reviews, unless you can be sure that they don’t give away integral plot. But, if you’d rather not heed my warning, off you go. [x]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3m9lltD3d1rs9j2so1_1280.jpg)
The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon.
It was this book that introduced me to Killdeer - or perhaps it just provided me with the name. Killdeer (for me, but also for the book’s protagonist) is an act of duality, where you are constantly hiding and showing yourself concurrently. Prostituting your talents, while remaining hidden. As a child, women & lover I’ve been practising Killdeer for many years, perhaps you are too.
The book itself is wonderful read, it’s comprised of ‘three parts’ like an old fashioned Austen novel, and I finished it in three nights subsequently. It deals with identity and sexuality deftly in a manner that puts other authors to shame. It’s not a easy read, if you’re shy of homosexuality you should probably put the book down (and this blog by that matter..) but it’s not the contested issues of homosexuality, incest and culture that makes this book exciting - the most enjoyable part is the use of language. I have many books where the narrator is disenfranchised from the language they are using, and this often provides you with the most beautiful lines of poetry haphazardly slipped into speech.
“Looking for who I am is who I am.”
The harsh but elegant utterances of our character bends the language most of us are overly familiar with into something new and bewitching. Like a still life piece, it’s stagnant and draws the eye to dilation - but then, at the end of the day it’s the same old piece of cloth, clock and wine that we all own.
I also enjoyed the hark back to Kafka that you can’t help but run into whenever reading about identity. The above quote instantly put me in mind with David Foster Wallace:
“And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka’s wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance. It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humor but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get — the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke — that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home”
-David Foster Williams on ‘Kafka’s Funniness’.
(At some point I will do another poster on David Foster Wallace himself, and I will link it HERE).
So in conclusion of my short book review, Tom Sanbauer’s work is a wonderful example of writing something for yourself which others can enjoy immensely. There’s been discussion about whether he has ‘the right’ to explore some of the taboos that feature in his books, but that is a different conversation to have. If you want to know if this book a good one, then it has my blessing. If you want to know if it’s politically or factually correct, you’ll have to ask someone with far less white privilege than myself.
-a foot note, here’s a link to a review done by some important magazine. I’d advise you not to read it, or any other reviews, unless you can be sure that they don’t give away integral plot. But, if you’d rather not heed my warning, off you go. [x]
