[b.1901 - d.1968] Died of heart failure.
"What I do never affects anyone else. I don't behave in an embarrassing way. And a clean white power is not repulsive; it looks pure, it glitters, the pure white crystals sparkle like snow."
[Except when you think the people standing in the road are hallucinogenic apparitions and getting run over by your car won't hurt them because they're not real.]
A collection of 15 short stories. All of which are worth reading, even the weaker ones, and none of them are happy or will make you feel good. Sometimes they will make you feel awful. I think, actually, all the stories are about feeling awful. They are connected short stories (the ones I like best), with a principal female character who is going thru a lot of shit. She is suicidal, addicted to heroin, lonely, and gets into strange relationships with odd, disappearing men.
Here, Anna Kavan is really just writing about herself and she does it well, if melodramatic at times. But I liked how melodramatic it was. For example:
"I've never enjoyed my life, I've never liked people. I love the mountains because they are the negation of life, indestructible, inhuman, untouchable, indifferent, as I want to be. Human beings are hateful; I loathe their ugly faces and messy emotions. I'd like to destroy them all."
This pessimism and anger is found frequently throughout the book, but something so blatantly misanthropic like that quoted above is actually a little humorous after a while. You get taken thru the horrible existence of this one girl, her hatred and fear of life, and you feel emotionally drained after reading it. You are afraid to admit that you can identify with this character or at least you can understand her and she makes you understand, because Kavan writes with an extreme honesty and bravery.
My Three Favorite Stories:
1.) Fog - I liked this because I often feel psychotic when driving and the weather often matches my state of mind. The story is a waking nightmare, one in which reality is pushed away as the woman comes out of her foggy denial. It's ironic that she uses heroin to maintain a semblance of sanity, but she appears sane only in her inner world, to herself.
2.) World of Heroes - The story that comes nearest to being pleasant. The person who called Kavan a feminist on the cover of this book obviously didn't read this story. Atypical doesn't equal feminist. I liked it because our central character finds herself some outcast friends and drives around the world with them. Sad ending, as usual.
3.) Zebra-Struck - Relationship story. The closest Kavan comes to a love story. The character identifies herself as a mutant. Struck by cosmic rays, she is something inhuman. But in her alienation, she becomes exclusively dependent on a married man much older than her who gets some sort of perverse delight in making her depend on him.
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| Don't look into her eyes!!! |
Year published: 1970. Pages: 155.
