Advice to Extraterrestrials

If these ETIs really do exist, most of us would have to admit that they have terrible timing. Humanity is fractured, bellicose, paranoid. It's the cosmological equivalent of having a guest come to the door when you're in the middle of a knockdown, drag out fight with your spouse, there are lines of coke on the coffee table, and your pants are down around your ankles. It isn't the failure to communicate that fascinates me: it's the implication that these ETIs appear to have no interest in communication at all. And we humans, vain, egotistical creatures that we are, can't help but take that a little personally.

--Axiom's End, Lindsay Ellis

Indeed, if you are listening, extraterrestrials, I would advise at the very least that you avoud visiting the United States any time soon.

Katabasis

On equipping for a trip to hell and back: 

She had flashlights, iodine, matches, rope, bandages, and a hypothermia blanket. She had a new, sparkling pack of Barkles' Chalk and every reliable map of Hell she could find in the University library carefully reproduced in a laminated binder. (Alas, they all claimed different typographies--she figured she would get somewhere high up and choose a map when she arrived). She had a switchblade and two sharp hunting knives. And she had a volume of Proust, in case at night she ever got bored. (To be honest she had never gotten round to trying Proust, but Cambridge had made her the kind of person who wanted to have read Proust, and she figured Hell was a good place to start.)

--Katabasis, R.F. Kuang. 

I have been eagerly looking forward to starting R.F. Kuang's new novel, Katabasis, waiting only to finish the Indonesian language version of Stephen King's Misery first, which I have now done. (And which by the way, is far creepier than I remember it being, and creepier than the movie as well. I first read Misery many years ago, and so my memory of the novel itself was a bit vague. I remembered the movie version better, for I had seen it more recently and I have seen it more than once. But the movie, as I now realize, left out a number of truly chilling details.) 

But back to Kuang...

Katabasis, in ancient Greek, means The story of a hero's descent to the underworld, and this is quite literally, not at all figuratively, what Alice, the hero of this novel, and her sidekick Peter do in this delightfully comical tour of the nether regions, guided on their way by the necessarily imperfect knowledge and wisdom, the tartarology, of the ancient greats--Dante, Orpheus, Plato, Aeneas and the rest of the whole crew--Oh, and throw in TS Eliot, though not so very ancient. By page 6, where the bit about Proust appears, I was laughing out loud, and I've been chuckling ever since through the next 130 pages or so. 

For a literary person, or one familiar with academia, this novel touches a symphony full of familiar chords. It is kind of like Kuang's previous novels, Babel and Yellowface, only on hallucinogenic drugs. On the other hand, it will surely be unsatisfying to those who enjoyed her fantasy trilogy, the Opium Wars (which I did not. Sorry, R.F.).

I love the playfulness here, the tongue in cheek humor, the vast sweep of literary, religious, and philosophical references all spilled out across the narrative plane like tiddlywinks in the search of a stable pattern. Who knew that the twisting path through Hell would lead to such pleasant reading!

Too Much Sun

A few days ago, the Russian man who was renting the house behind mine, which is owned by Louise and Wayne, came to my door late at night to drop off the key with me, as he was moving out. I was to hold it for Wayne. 

So far so good. 

The following morning, the maid who works at the house behind mine, and whom I have seen many times and occasionally had a chat with, came to my door asking for the key, as she was going to clean up after the Russian had departed. 

Still no problem. 

The problem waited till that night, when the maid showed up once again to return the key. This time, however, I thought she was my maid, Kaka, for some reason. I have been expecting Kaka to come to my house on Friday to do cleaning here, so after taking the key, I mentioned this.

Friday, right, right? I said. 

Friday? 

Yes.

Here?

Yes.

Why?

The poor girl's consternation was clear, but not so clear, in truth, as mine. My mind was working. What's happening here? it asked. What am I missing? Wait, is this in fact Kaka?

Slowly, sludgy gears grinding in my mind, I put it together. This was not Kaka. This was not my maid. She would not be coming here on Friday 🤪

Oh. Sorry, I said. I'm confused. 

She patted me on the shoulder, smiling sympathetically. 

You got too much sun at the beach today, Bapak.

Here in Indonesia it is called pikun. In English we call it senility.