Acquire Chimera Depicted By John Barth Edition
текст върху книгата: sitelink wordpress. c
И високият естет от класическата епоха, игодишната циничка, но все пак и сантиментална, от женски пол отг, които съществувт редом у мен, намериха пълно удовлетворение в тази книга и в трите ѝ новели. Истинско пиршество за сетивата и ума, още повече, че така силно обичам древногръцките митове и легенди, защото детството ми бе обгърнато от тяхната мистична аура. Сега виждам друг прочит, който дори е надскочилте ми години, защото все още не съм в етапа на Персей от новелата и дано никога не го достигна, уви, май е невъзможно. Ще си позволя странен аналог темите, които се развиват тук, са уелбековски, само дето са ситуирани в реалията на античните митове, което, от наша гледна точка, не ги прави толкова непристойни и арогантни тези епитети не са обида, аз боготворя Уелбек.
Много има какво да се каже за новелите и за стила на Джон Барт, който ме спечели веднага и поради това незабавно си намерих още няколко негови книги. За постмодернизма са характерни върховна ерудиция и енциклопедичност, които обаче да бъдат изтръгнати от обичайното и чрез уникален авторов поглед да им се придаде изцяло нова форма и вид. Това се постига с голяма дълбочина на съжденията и безграничен мисловен хоризонт, както и чрез умения за опериране с материал, който е необозримо поогромен от нас самите като хора, творци и отделни личности.
Препоръчвам новелите на хора, които често разсъждават за живота и върху себе си, както и ценители на експеримента, нестандартното и предизвикателното. Особена среща. Изключително зле подготвена се усетих за тази книга, защото познавам старогръцката митология доста повърхностно. От друга страна адски ми допадна идеята на Барт за мъжа герой, който, потънал в унеса на собствената си история и глас, отрязва всички достойни жени край себе си.
Мъчна за четене ми беше, но изобщо не съжалявам за предизвикателството.
За пореден път поздравявам "Лист" за интелигентния избор на заглавия и хармоничността между текст и корица. Много е освежаващо издателство да не робува на жанрове и стилове в оформлението. Мислех си, че съм прочела не еднадве странни книги до този момент, но след "Химера" съм възторжено вдъхновена, че винаги зад ъгъла те дебне някое литературно гурме! Delusions of DemiGodlike Grandeur
In this collection of three chimerical novellas, the middleaged “author” indulges his fantasies of virility and fears of impotency in the garb and guise of sitelink“Tales ofNights” and Greek mythological tales.
As an exercise in “belletristic masturbation”, its more flop than master stroke:
"To the artist himself, however minor his talent, imaginative potency is as crucial to the daily life of his spirit as sexual potency.
. . "
Dunyazadiad as Retold by John Barth in the Style of Robert Coover
"When wed had enough of each others tongues and fingers, Sherry and I called in the eunuchs, maidservants, mamelukes, pet dogs and monkeys then we finished off with Sherrys Bag of Tricks.
"Afterwards, Sherry kissed me and said dreamily, 'Little Doony, pretend this whole situation is the plot of a story were reading, and you and I and Daddy and the King are all fictional characters.
In this story, Scheherazade finds a way to change the Kings mind about women and turn him into a gentle, loving husband, Its not hard to imagine such a story, is it Now, no matter what way she finds whether its a magic spell or a magic story with the answer in it or a magic anything it comes down to particular words in the story were reading, right And those words are made from the letters of our alphabet: a coupledozen squiggles we can draw with this pen.
This is the key, Doony! And the treasure, too, if we can only get our hands on it! Its as if as if the key to the treasure is the treasure!'
"As soon as she spoke these last words, we suddenly found ourselves amid the librarystacks of the humble tidewater abode of a genie.
He didnt resemble anything to be found in our land or in Sherrys bedtime stories for one thing, he wasnt frightening, though he was strangelooking enough: a lightskinned fellow of forty or so, smoothshaven and bald as a rocs egg.
He was tall and healthy and pleasant enough in appearance, He seemed as startled as we were, His cheeks and nose were red flushed with embarrassment he looked at the stubby little magic wand he held in his fingers, and smiled a friendly smile, You should have seen him drop his pen, for that magic wand which was in fact a magic quill which had shortly before contained a fountain of ink inside had just about run dry when we appeared
"Sherry and I looked at each other.
The Genie didnt seem dangerous, Like Shahryars, the Genies life was in disorder, Caught so blatantly in the act, he wished neither to repudiate nor to repeat his performance: he aspired to go beyond it toward a future he was not yet attuned to and, by some magic, at the same time go back to the original springs of narrative.
Presently he seized my sisters hand and dumbfounded us both by declaring his lifelong adoration of Sherry and me, a declaration that brought blushes to our cheeks,
"Our bespectacled host was a writer of tales, he said, in a land on the other side of the world from ours, in which we now found ourselves.
His own fictions were mimicries, pallid counterfeits of the authentic treasure of my sisters Thousand and One Nights, He confessed, Ive made use of it a thousand times, if only to conjure up images of you both in my mind, Evidently, he was in this condition when we first translated to his land,
"So far from harboring a grudge against womankind like the gynocide that was ravaging our country, he was distractedly in love with us, his brace of until now, imaginary new mistresses.
"Sherry said to the Genie, You have it in your power to save my sisters and my country, and the King too, before his madness destroys him.
All you need to do is supply me from the future with these stories from the past, I imagine you expect what every man expects who has the key to any treasure a woman needs,
"Before the Genie had time to respond, we reassured him that neither of us objected, if this was his desire, Indeed, Sherry, who was at least nominally committed to Sharyar, proposed to the Genie, I have to let Shahryar take me first after that Ill cuckold him with you every day at sunset if youll tell me the story for the night to come.
'
"Sherry took from her earlobe a gold ring worked in the form of a spiral shell, The Genie accepted it joyfully, vowing to spin from it, if he could, as from a catherinewheel or whirling galaxy, a golden shower of fiction,
"Then the Genie kissed us both the first male lips Id felt except Fathers, and the only such till yours, and we three hugged each other excitedly all that night and for the next week, until one morning I believe it was the seventh day he taught us the magnificent effect of a golden shower on his stubby little magic wand.
"Sherry said, Making love and telling stories both take more than good technique, but its only the technique that we can talk about,
"The Genie agreed, addressing himself to me: Heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal, Dunyazade so does heartless skill, But what you want is passionate virtuosity, We undressed and fell to toying with him, And so it was that later as the Genie spun his tale, that he revealed to us the marvelous Position of the Genie, as well call it, that even a man whos gone through virgins like breakfasteggs will think himself newly laid, et cetera.
Whats more, its a position in which the woman does everything, her master nothing except submit himself to a more excruciating pleasure than hes ever known or dreamed of.
No more is required of him than that he spreadeagle himself on the bed and suffer his wrists and ankles to be bound to its posts with silken cords, lest
by a spasm of early joy he abort its heavenly culmination, et cetera.
"To be joyous in the full acceptance of this denouement is surely to possess a treasure, the key to which is the understanding that Key and Treasure are the same.
There is the sense of our story: the key to the treasure is the treasure, "
Perseus with the Severed Head of Medusa
Perseid as Retold by John Barth in the Style of Robert Coover
Perseus Its after midnight.
Im twentyfive and scared. Will you make love to me
Im a hero, I indicated with a sweep: Virtuoso performance is my line of work,
I was no poet, I reminded her merely a man with a tale to tell, Lots of sex in this story:
I fetched her couchward, . . And tried Calyxa then and there on my altarcouch, . . I touched her lean little buttocks she flowed at once, most womanly, She was in rapture I dont say this out of vanityUsed as I was, as king and mythic hero, to a fair measure of respect, I was unused to reverence.
I flopped, after never once failing done Andromeda in seven thousand nights an alarming prospect for the nymphed eternity ahead,
Youre leaving something out, she ventured,
I supposed to her, not unbitterly, that nymphs like herself were accustomed to a rounder rogering from the deities they attended,
Was I really so naive as to equate lovemaking, like a callow lad, with mere prolonged penetration
Calyxa flipped my flunked phallus, O, youll be heavenly once youre aroused, I can see that,
It doesnt matter, she said, several times in each of the days and nights that followed, Its just being with you I love, Perseus it really is one of my dreams come true,
On the second morning, one finger was permitted to touch her thigh, Soon after, she removed my dexter hand, thereby putting an end to my idle handiwork, it being an article of her creed, even with deities, to allow no sheepish, merely dutiful clitorising.
Would it please you if I kissed your navel once again I asked, goblet in hand, Take a chance! Guzzle and go down! she instructed me, I blushed and did.
Dutifully she opened, but looked away the while, none of her usual frank inspection of our coupled parts,
A little up and to your left, My pert priestess was an astute guide to what pleased her, Godhood was okay.
When I raised me up to watch whither hot Calyxa now, I saw the same spiral stitched in purple on the bed, And miracle of miracles! when the sprite sprang nimbly aspread that nether spiral and drew to her tanned taut tummy dazzled me, I perceived that her very navel, rather than bilobular or quadrantic like the two others I best knew, was itself spiriferate, replicating the infinite inward wind both above and below the finite flesh on which my tongue now feast.
She liked few pleasures more than the chains of orgasms Ammon could set her catenating,
Never since my first nights with Andromeda, so long years past, had I couched so lively, lean and tight a miss, . . Calyxas skill bespoke much prior experience, Gaily she enjoined me from pout, Believe it or not, I was a virgin till twentytwo,
Id have moved offtop, to beside her, better to manifest our parity, but she had extraordinary grip,
She spun to me merryfaced and teareyed and kissed me hard enough to fetch me at last fulllength into her precinct proper if only for a moment, as Id thresheld once again my offertory.
But we were pleased.
With real appreciation I kissed her from crown to sole, which flexily she enjoyed, I stroked her out of dreams into drowsy liquefaction, here it comes again, climbed with her to our first full fillment, She held my face close for examination while we finished pulsing, I pleased her in my way quite as well as Ammons frisk fierce fucks,
I did she did there is a surfeit of sex in the story no help for it we verged on much and didnt cross the verge, No more my merry priestess, Calyxa solemnly sat up and by the light of the altarlamp watched me drip from her to the spiraled thread,
When she drifted back into the soundest of sleeps, I left my priestess leaking love, and tiptoed out, Sorry, love, and good evening,
Bellerophoniad as Retold by John Barth in the Style of Robert Coover
'Bellerophon can have Corinth the way he has me, by taking it, whenever he wants to.
'
I Bellerophon rammed her Sibyl flat into the honeysuckle in the grove,
In another telling our initial intercourse was a paradigm of assumed inevitability, This latter vision was my first clear evidence that I was flying now above mere panorama, into prescience, It happens that our separate ways lead to the same bed, where we spend a wordless, tumultuous night together, full of tumblings and flexings and shudders and such, exciting enough to experience but boring to describe.
Unseemly Perversions Perpetrated or Recognised by the Author
"Several other things also perplex us, sir, . . namely your unseemly perversion of professorial privilege to the ends of selfaggrandisement and/or abasement, Plus it's a piece of male chauvinist phallusworship, . .
"I grew bored to death with Bellerophon, . . It's not Mystery and Tragedy, but confusion and fiasco, d'accord This endless story of yours, An empty temple for an imitation hero, Some dream of immortality. It's preposterous, not monstrous. Even its metaphoric power is slight, It goes without saying that this and everything else you say goes without saying,
"Not mortal me, but immortality, was the myth, To be read by a limited number of 'Americans', not all of whom will finish or enjoy it, If your immortality depends on this piece of writing, you're a dead pigeon, . . Got that, Dad What marsh did you say we're falling into That tidewater's coming up fast,
"There's the sink there's the quag there's the slough of my despond, . . Set me free of both the mire and the myth, . .
"Stop gnashing your teeth, Take it or leave it, . . It's a beastly fiction File. Forget. Throw back in the river, No need to prosecute or reply, . .
"NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN, . .
"Dum dee dee, Heroes aren't what they used to be, Quit your thmirking. Thtop!
"Here's where I leave you, . . Goodbye. "
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