Baby on Brain: notes on reading Percival Everett, Urs Allemann & Amos Tutuola

I've had baby on the brain lately. Not that we're planning on having one, but it seems everyone else is & the last few books i've read seem to have to do with babies in some shape or form—from Urs Allemann's Babyfucker to Percival Everett's Glyph.

My «baby» is in Sussex right now & i'm here in the cold of Rome at 4:49 a.m. wearing my parka inside. The only light is coming from the screen i'm writing on. It's funny how people call their partners, those that make babies, babies. Like Joey Ramone claiming the KKK took his baby away. Why do we assume it's his sweetheart & not a baby baby? I think i read somewhere that the song is actually about Johnny taking Joey's girlfriend away from him. I'd look it up on Wikipedia to verify, but it's blacked out, which is maybe a good thing. Who needs fact.

What if snopes.com got debunked? Would that make everything they debunked, bunk? I brought this up over tacos the other night, with some friends who didn't speak English as their first language. In explaining what «bunk» was i realized that debunking something doesn't really make it bunk. And it doesn't help to look it up in the dictionary either.

& i'm pretty sure none of the Ramones had rugrats. That wouldn't have been pretty. Technically I should've said «.... none of Ramones had rugrats», but it sounds funny without the definite article. Like Ramones, my baby & i have opted for memetic propagation rather than genetic propagation. My newborn is at the printer as we speak, being delivered. Not that it's «mine»—it's its own being.

Even though i've christened this papered neonate as its own being, you might argue it's not the same, because «real» fleshy babies are born with the ability to turn around & spawn more of the same. Though i could argue that book-babies can also propagate & recreate themselves by planting memes in other people's heads, who will in turn author more book-babies with mutated memes from the parental book. This is one of the driving forces behind Ark Codex ±0, that it's like a Frankenstein stitched together from other books. I literally «took a page» from other books & rejigged them to tell whatever story you want to hear.

The other newborn Calamari hitting the streets as we speak is Chiara Barzini's & Chiara is also pregnant with a real child (in fact the book is dedicated to the father & the unborn child who already has a name, Milly).

But this all isn't why i started this post with baby on the brain. I think what started it was reading Percival Everett's Glyph last month. I hadn't read any Percival Everett before, but had read this & that about him, so when i saw the used book somewhere recently i bought it. The protagonist in Glyph is a baby born with language knowledge. Which is to say, a baby that is unable to express himself any differently than a normal baby, but who understands everything as an adult would. A mute 4-year old genius. It's a bit of a stretch, but it sets the stage for all sorts of interesting philosophical speculations. In baby Ralph's own words: «I was a baby fat with words, but I made no sound.» Baby Ralph has normal parents who are at first unaware of his condition (though his mother keeps feeding him books of poetry & philosophical treatises). We are treated to the cerebral what-ifs of a baby reading & digesting Derrida & Wittgenstein & all the musings & implications that come with it.

A baby with the mental capacity but not the physical capacity, but self-aware of his helpless condition, reliant on adults, to be fed or bathed, to not be stuffed in a weighted sack & dropped in a lake. «The idea of my own drowning made me more interesting to myself.»—baby Ralph says. «I hated the helplessness, the doorknobs so far above my head, not being able to completely trust my sphincter muscles.»

The catch is that although Ralph can't speak, he can write (though he usually chooses not to)—this seems a bit contrived, but the whole thing is so why not accept it? Ralph amuses himself by dreaming up imaginary conversations with dead poets & philosophers, or by silently judging & disagreeing with his father, a hack philosopher who has Roland Barthes over for dinner. Between chapters, Everett provides us with diagrams to illustrate some of the ideas floated both in the story (in Ralph's cognitive development) & in the subject matter he is reading, like this:

And we also get interspersed philosophical musings from Ralph, woven into the story:

«There are no signs. There are only differences between signs.»

& while his wunderkind ability enables him to understand all these «adult» topics, he is also smart enough to see through all the bullshit & rip Barthes a new asshole.

There's a plot to it, as you'd expect—the baby's talents are discovered & a series of kidnappings ensues, everyone scheming to find ways to exploit baby Ralph's talents & Ralph the whole time unable to help himself. Some amusing & at times hilarious scenes come from the drama (you can only imagine the look on the woman's face who reaches into a stranger's babystroller to pinch a baby's cheek & is handed a note that says: «Help me! I am a kidnapped baby and this woman is not my mother. We have no relationship beyond captor and captive. Please get help.»)

Oh & btw, the baby is black, as is the author. Which makes scenarios like the one above even funnier (as his captor was white). That's the cool thing about Everett, I don't know about his other books, but his blackness is only a sidenote with this book, not something he always needs to remind you of, like other African-American writers. This lack of attention to this detail (except to point it out at times when society deems it an issue) is the best way to make others realize that the color of your skin is only a big deal if you make it into one. Otherwise it is just another attribute to an otherwise strangely brooding & troubled existential baby:

«The anxiety produced by my anticipation of its onset was dreadful, and so the two accompanying enemies, anticipation and anxiety, were in their way worse, for they were present at all times boredom was not. Books helped, but I was so voracious and ravenous a reader that I was hard-pressed to stay ahead of the beast. On occasion I would latch onto an idea that was all consuming, but the anxiety that the absorption would pass detracted from the full pleasure of the experience. Finally, I was a sad baby, frequently amused, often pleasantly puzzled, and intensely arrested by subjects, but sad, beaten-down by my own demons.»

Another passage I particularly liked, in light of the writing of Ark Codex ±0 (waiting for a flood at the north pole & thinking about primal language) was this:

«Clockwise is a direction and so is south, but if one continues in a clockwise direction no progress will be made. And no one ever comes from clockwise, though people often turn south or to the south or from the south. The words on the page always travel in the same direction, whether left to right or right to left or up to down or, as in the case of short-cut seeking, bad poets, clockwise or counterclockwise in the shape of a gull. But there is no direction simply because the words on the page and meaning knows no orientation and certainly no map. Meaning is where it is and only where it is, though it can lead to anyplace. Confusion, however, is necessarily only in one place and looks the same regardless of where it stands in relation to meaning. Being confused always looks the same and it comes from clockwise.»

& all sorts of other morsels for thought are delivered in this book, including a finale of «Ralph's Theory of Fictive Space: an appendix within the text for the purpose of serving the last sentence». I'll definitely be looking out for more Percival Everett.

I also recently read Babyfucker by Urs Allemann. As the title suggests, it's about a guy who fucks babies. I guess someone had to write this book, just like someone had to paint a canvas white & call it art. Or someone (Jonathan Swift) had to go write a book about eating babies & call it satire. Let's just hope Babyfucker isn't adapted for the screen anytime soon. But as a book it's interesting to think about—the language. Like Everett's Glyph, it sets the stage for deeper explorations, paragraphic probings into the guts of language. Babyfucking is about as extreme as it gets. Sure, you could say it's just an attention-seeking ploy—to see how offensive & controversial you can be—but it also reveals a lot about the power of language, if anything to offend.

By explicitly stating these words, Allemann milks them of harmful intent, reducing them to meaningless morphemes.

«A beautiful word. Suck it dry. Throw it away. Abandon that thought. Prefer to just keep saying my sentence. I fuck babies. Inflate the sentence. Try to make it burst.»

I mean, we're all adults here. We know the drill about sticks & stones. The question is, is it interesting enough once said? & what kind of sick fucks feel the need to read such things? If it wasn't such a short little book, translated by Les Figues Press (which I deeply admire), I probably wouldn't have. But I heard him out. Should you? I don't know, I suppose some interesting things were said while he was busy fucking the babies, but there are plenty of other fish to fry. Like perhaps Assisted Living by Nikanor Teratologen, equally «not for the faint of heart» & which Blake Butler (who has more tolerance for these things than me) so eloquently reviewed in Vice.

Or The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town by Amos Tutuola, which I also just finished reading. Definitely a book worth sinking your teeth into. It's not really about a baby, though, but rather the lack of one. It's about a guy who's wife can't conceive so he travels to this remote town to find this witch-herbalist to help him with this problem. Back in the 80s when I read My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, I was eager to read more Tutuola & i remember not finding much else (beside The Palm-wine Drinkard, which it now always seems to be bundled with). Back before we had the internet & you had to ask around at bookstores & whatnot. But it seems, thanks to the internet, more & more of his works keep surfacing (this particular one copyrighted 1981). Not that I got it off the internet, but rather i think i found it in a used bookshop either in Dublin or Sussex. This book has more of the raw & insane myth-making that you'd expect from Tutuola (i talk more about his Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts here).

It has the usual Tutuola trappings—a hunter goes on a journey & encounters all sorts of supernatural & hostile beings along his way, distracting him from his original quest, which in this book is to get juju so he can knock up his wife. It's the wild creations that Tutuola comes up with along the way that are mind-blowing & make it all the worthwhile. Though how much credit he gets for «creating» these figments of imagination is questionable—it has been said that he borrows liberally from Yoruba folktales in spinning his yarns. Hats off if he does, I say. One new angle to this book is that the narrator is splintered into two different minds & a memory, each separable & at odds against one another throughout the book.

«Although I had two "minds" in me, the first one which was in the left was not so reliable sometimes. It misled me to do wrong things, but its advice was useful sometimes. But the second one which was in the right was very reliable. It spoke the truth always. Whenever both of them deserted me when I was in dangers, my "memory" never deserted me and it did not fail or forget to record down the offences which each of the two "minds" committed.»

Whenever faced with a predicament, his two minds would trick him to act rashly against his will, one way or another. Tutuola has a funny detached way of writing (such as putting things in quotes like in the above passage) that makes it all more believable & convincing, like the story is something that came to him verbatim in a dream or from his subconscious, something he has no control over—he just tells it like it happened to him, in a reportorial matter-of-fact tone. He'll often be really specific about things (like say he walked 1200 meters instead of saying «about a kilometer,» as if he is documenting his discoveries in some sort of psychogeographical field notebook for the Yoruba subconscious. Here's how he describes the boobs & arms of a stout, many-breasted woman he encounters:

«Each was about sixty centimeters long and was thicker than a tube of thirty centimeters' diameter. Though each was tapered as well, its nipple was more than ten centimeters in diameter. Each of her arms was very thick from the shoulder to the elbow and was about eighty centimeters in circumference. But the elbow was thinner than the shoulder and wrist. The muscle from each of the shoulders to each of the elbows was swelled out very high, and was as hard as a stone.»

And he continues on, describing the body & the head that looked «like an image carved by an unskilled man.» As in his other books, he'll be very detailed over a mundane period of a few minutes, but then just gloss over a few critical years time in one sentence, giving a strange quality to the passage of time. He even introduces his own (Yoruba?) unit of time called a «twinkling», which he uses regularly (even in increments of say, a «sixtieth of a twinkling»).

Another thing worth mentioning, that ties in with the baby-theme of this post, is Tutuola's narrator keeps referring to himself as a «Born and Die Baby», who had «betrayed many fathers and mothers of their property». The repercussions of which (his betrayal of these otherwise innocent mothers & fathers) would keep coming back to plague him on his quest. And yes, he refers to mothers & fathers in the plural, as if acknowledging the long line of parental beings that got him to this singular, dead-end existence.

What really struck me more than ever with this book is how hostile & menacing the world (the bush) that Tutuola inhabits is. Not that he doesn't encounter threatening & malicious beings in his other books, but it seemed everyone he encountered was out to get him. (& could this be said to be typical of the Nigerian psyche?) After a dozen or more of these violent encounters—fighting powerful & evil forces against all odds—i must admit i started to get a bit bored. But then again James Bond movies & video games bore me eventually for the same reason. Lets face it, we all know who will win before the fight is over. Albeit in Tutuola's case, he can be quite clever in getting his heroes out of sticky situations, though usually (& conveniently) it involves using some sort of juju.

Sometimes the forces that haunt him are demonic monsters (like the Crazy Removeable-Headed Wild Man, whose head Tutuola steals & carries around on a stick for the rest of the book as a sort of totem, reminiscent of Lord of the Flies), but at other times the ominous forces are more nebulous, like a strange shadow that envelopes him:

«As I sat in the centre of the shadow which had already been drawn to a great height in the sky, I looked at each of the six ropes very well, and I saw that each was real thick shadow as well. Having seen this again, a great sadness and depression covered both my "minds". I was so discouraged at this time that I determined that if I could be free from this incident or destructive happenings, I would discontinue my journey to the town of the Witch-Herbalist, but I would return immediately to my town.»

The fact that his language is awkward & at times grammatically «incorrect» only adds to his unfettered conviction. You can't make this shit up. And another thing he does is he often puts «etc.» at the end of lists, like he's in a frenzy to get it all down on paper & you the reader should get the idea, you should fill in the blanks, complete his sentences. This haunting scene as he was fighting the Crazy Removeable-Headed Wild Man:

«As both of us were still pushing each other here and there in the hut which had caught fire, I saw hundreds of various kinds of large heads, arms, short legs, broad ears, wild eyes, round black bodies, etc. which were hung on the walls of his hut, and all were very horrible to see.»

While it is written as narrative, at times you feel detached from the body doing the speaking, like having an out of body experience, hovering just above the body with the narrator, as in this passage:

«As I dropped my head drowsily, unexpectedly I saw that my breast down to the lowest part of my belly was parted to left and right as if it was cut with a sharp knife. Both parts were equal. My breast had hardly parted when I saw that I had become a baby, a baby just like a 'born and die baby'. Then I stood up and walked from the parted breast onto the ground. As soon as I walked from the breast to the ground, I turned my face to my former body which was now lifeless. But when I had looked at it for some twinklings, I hastily turned my back to it as if it was a hated thing for me.»

Despite these body detachments & his fracturing into multiple minds, one thing he (Tutuola, the narrator) can't seem to shake is his omnipresent consciousness. Not to reveal too much of the plot, but yes, after years of trials & tribulations, he finally reaches the Remote Town & meets the Witch-Herbalist who gives him some specially concocted soup to take back for his wife with the explicit warning to NOT eat it. But even as she tells him this, like the silly rabbit he knows he won't be able to resist & sure enough (spoiler alert) he nonchalantly (against the advice of his "second mind") cooks some up & just eats it. T.I.A., as they say in Africa. Just like this whole Concordia fiasco is so typically Italian. «I fell into the lifeboat.» & what happens after he cant help but to help himself to the soup? HE gets pregnant!

He manages to get himself unpregnant (with the help of the Crazy Removeable-Headed Wild Man's severed head). & in the end he purges his two minds & memory in front of a judge (his «kidney») & they have it out in a surreal courtroom setting—his memory accusing his two minds of deception & betrayal. And his two minds counter-suing with claims of desertion. Exorcised of his two minds & memory & his self-judging kidney, he becomes merely the «Possessor», am empty shell. No punishment can be handed down which does not effect this Possessor, so a sort of mistrial is proclaimed. But does his wife have a baby in the end? For that you'll have to read it yourself.

                                                      ©om.Posted 2012 Derek White