A Perfect Vacuum Read Online Free PDF Page B

Wendy Mae could therefore have undergone normalization only if she at one and the same time had taken on
realness
and
inapproachability
for him.
    To the classic tale of the star-crossed lovers united in the end, Marcel Coscat has thus opposed an ontological tale of the necessity of permanent separation, this being the only guarantee of a plighting of the spirits that is permanent. Comprehending the full boorishness of the blunder of the “third leg,” Robinson (and not the author, that’s plain!) quietly “forgets” about it in the second volume. Mistress of her world, princess of the ice mountain, untouchable inamorata—this is what he wished to make of Wendy Mae, that same Wendy Mae who began her education with him as a simple little servant girl, a domestic to replace the uncouth Snibbins.... And it was precisely in this that he failed. Do you know now, have you guessed why? The answer could not be simpler: because Wendy Mae, unlike any queen,
knew
of Robinson and loved him. She had no desire to become the vestal goddess, and this division drove the hero to his ruin. If it were only
he
that loved
her,
bah! But she returned his feelings.... Whoever does not understand this simple truth, whoever believes, as our grandfathers were instructed by their Victorian governesses, that we are able to love others, but not ourselves in those others, would do better not to open this mournful romance that Monsieur Coscat has vouchsafed us. Coscat’s Robinson dreamed himself a girl whom he did not wish to give up completely to reality, since
she
was
he,
since from that reality that never releases its hold on us, there is—other than death—no awakening.

Gigamesh
Patrick Hannahan
(Transworld Publishers, London)
    Â 
    Here is an author who covets the laurels of James Joyce.
Ulysses
condensed the
Odyssey
into a single Dublin day, made Circe’s infernal palace from the dirty laundry of
la belle epoque,
tied the bloomers of Gerty McDowell into a hangman’s noose for Bloom the traveling salesman, and with an army of four hundred thousand words descended upon Victorianism, which was demolished with all the stylistics that lay at the disposal of the pen, from stream of consciousness to trial deposition. Was this not already the culmination of the novel, and at the same time the monumental laying of it to rest in the family sepulcher of the arts (in
Ulysses
there is music, too!)? Apparently not; apparently Joyce himself did not think so, inasmuch as he decided to go further, writing a book that is supposed to be not only the focusing of civilization into a single language, but also an
omnilinguistic
lens, a descent to the foundations of the Tower of Babel. As to the brilliance of
Ulysses
and
Finnegan’s Wake,
which attempts the infinite with double-barreled audacity, we neither affirm it here nor deny it. A solitary review can now be nothing but a grain cast upon that mountain of homages and imprecations that has grown over both books. It is certain, however, that Patrick Hannahan, Joyce’s countryman, never would have written his
Gigamesh
if not for the great example, which he took as a challenge.
    One would think that such an idea would be doomed to failure from the beginning. Doing a second
Ulysses
is as worthless as doing a second
Finnegan.
At the summits of art only the first achievements count, just as, in the history of mountain climbing, it is only the first surmounting of walls unsealed.
    Hannahan, tolerant enough of
Finnegan's Wake,
thinks little of
Ulysses.
“What an idea,” he says, “packing the nineteenth century of Europe, and Ireland, into the sarcophagal form of the
Odyssey
! Homer’s original itself is of doubtful value. Why, it is your comic book of antiquity, with Ulysses as Superman, and the happy end.
Ex ungue leonem
: in the choice of his model we see the caliber of the writer. The
Odyssey
is a pirating of
Gilgamesh,
and bastardized to suit the tastes of