I recently read Dead Cars in Managua by Stuart Ross. I read it and then I went and read I Cut My Finger. Both of these books are fantastic. His work surprises me. Not because it confounds my expectations. Because the flow of the text changes course unexpectedly. It is delightful always. Even when the subject is a tragic one.
The quality of the writing is superb. I think Stuart Ross is sublime. And I spoke about I Cut My Finger in my previous post. There I spoke generally about how great his writing is. And it still applies with this book too. I read this one before the other one and it got me quite excited to read the other one. And when I read the other one I had to say a lot about the writing because I was so full from having read it.
I was quite excited by his writing over all. And particularly by the time I read I Cut My Finger because there was so much writing there that goes beyond the book. So what I want to say about this book is about the way the book is a book. It still is writing that goes beyond being just a book. But this one is a book more than the other one. Because it’s put together in a separated way. There are three sections. Are they parts? They are not really parts. They weren’t composed as parts. It doesn’t seem as if they were in any case.
So what is interesting is do they go together? Well, they always go together when they’re put together. But do they work together well? They work together well in the way that things that are not obvious become apparent when different sections are put together. Different things in each section become apparent from the way the other sections inform them, just by being next to them. It’s like negative space revealing things when coming into contact with some other thing. You need three elements to make this work, and that’s how many elements there are in Dead Cars in Managua.
Order is important. The title is important. Dead Cars in Managua is the name of the book and the name of an element. It is the first section in the book. The other sections are called Hospitality Suite and You, a Person. There is another aspect of the book’s title, but it is a bit confusing. The aspect of the book’s title that is a bit confusing is Punchy Poetry. I think this was an afterthought. It was explained to me, but I don’t remember. But looking at it I can see that it is out of place. Anyway it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is the three sections and their titles and how the first one is the title of the book.
The three sections are treated differently, and the first section is the most different, and that is the title of the book. There are pictures in the first section. These pictures are important because they’re pictures of the objects in the title. They are pictures of dead cars in Managua. So you can see the way that any thing is hardly ever just a thing.
The next two sections are subdivided into different pieces. Hospitality Suite has 20 parts. Then You, a Person turns out not to really be a total section, but really the first bold piece of a separate section that is a run of pieces. The run of pieces isn’t numbered. They are titled and have page numbers. So the third section is sort of like a book of pieces on its own with a title piece in bold that just happens to be first. The first piece in this section is the title piece because it’s first. It only is a title piece because it’s bold. And because there were two sections before it. What does any of this matter?
It only really matters because it is a book. And it only really is a book because there is an author’s note. Well, it doesn’t really matter, I don’t think, that there is an author’s note, it still would be a book. But because there is an author’s note it makes a special point. And it’s all about the way the author had discovered that it is a book.
The author’s note is all about the way a book becomes a book even when you think it’s not a book at first. At first you just might think that there are different kinds of pieces being put together in a book. It could just make a book in the ordinary way of making books of poetry or short pieces. Which are not strictly speaking short stories. (I’m not so sure I know what a short story really is any more.) But then it happened that the pieces came together and defined themselves as parts. Then the book became a book in a peculiar kind of way. It was surprising to the author. This is special. At least to me it is. Because it signifies a moment when the work is beyond the control of the author. The work takes on a life of its own. It has its own presence. And this can be exciting for an author.
Is it exciting for a reader? When they know, then it can be interesting and curious. I do not know if it will be exciting. As an author, I do sympathize, and so it is exciting for me in that way. And then as someone thinking about something being built and how much of it’s design and how much of it is accident, and how beautiful and wonderful the tension between those things can be, I get excited thinking about that. I am very interested in how any author thinks about the way they’re writing, and how anything turns out, and what they think of that, especially if it’s different.
It all makes sense together. There are the ways that any group of things make sense when they are related to death and family and creating anything. There is the death of objects and the death of people, family, and the birth of any understanding, which is meaning understanding through creating something in a group, through a field of influence like heritage and legacy. The third section is a classic dialectical moment. It’s awful to say that, but it truly is, and it isn’t awful really, it’s rather beautiful. It’s not it’s fault that the word dialectical sounds pretentious. It never says this word. I do. So the fault is mine. I could have said resurrection, but I think that would be worse. I could have said aufhebung or sublation but that is far more pretentious even and more awful. I could have said transcendent and that would almost be quaintly anachronistic as far as talking about literature is concerned.
So what can I say? It all makes sense. The third part gives you back something. It shows the way that things come back. Things go away and things come back. People go away and the spirit of them that you cherish comes back to you through other people when you let it happen. And oddly enough it shows itself through things.
You see, things have a very important place in Stuart Ross’s work. They have a way about them. They have character. They are the way that something that’s mysterious is carried from somewhere to somewhere else. They hold something mysteriously. They make things manifest, mysteriously. They show up. They just show up surprisingly. They play a vital role in his work.
It is the thing about his work that really fascinates me. The role that objects play. And the way that there is play between people and objects. People becoming more like objects. Objects becoming more like people. But really the object is like a transfer point. Really, the object is like writing. Writing is the object that the objects play the role of. It is a kind of vessel of both the spirit and the absurdity of that. And the absurdity of our investment in the object. And the way that gestures and relationships with things and with other people get all mixed together in ways that are absurd, fantastic, surreal, poetic, benign, malignant and etc. A crazy dream or a nightmare sometimes too.
So it is a book. It is writing. It is all related to itself. So it really is a book and it all makes sense that it’s together. Because it shows the different ways that everything that happens can be transferred, translated, related, represented, can just come out and be apparent, afterwards, even though you didn’t mean it to. It did it on its own. Then what do you do? You take note of it.
There is a way that a lot of the last pieces are like music. And I am very struck by the author’s admission of a method that is very musical to me. Starting with a line and then adding on another one and so on until it stops on its own or when something big outside forces it to stop. This is music in the sense of improvised music, of course. I don’t mean pop songs. Although pop songs might be writ like that sometimes and some day might be honoured for their being so.
Anyway, I really love this book and think it’s really great.
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