Foe, by J.M. Coetzee

Foe, a reimagining of Robinson Crusoe, tells the story of a female castaway who washes ashore on an island inhabited by ‘Cruso’ and Friday. The female castaway is later rescued (with Cruso, who dies on ship, and Friday) . She seeks  out a writer, `Foe’ and asks him to write the story of the island.

This passage is from early in the book, on the island, after Cruso has described how Friday’s tongue had been cut out when Friday was a child. She has asked why:

Cruso gazed steadily back at me. Though I cannot swear to it, I believe he was smiling. `Perhaps the slavers, who are the Moors, hold the tongue to be a delicacy,’ he said. `Or perhaps they grew weary to listening to Friday’s wails of grief, that went on day and night. Perhaps they wanted to prevent him from ever telling his story: who he was, where his home lay, how it came about that he was taken. Perhaps they cut out the tongue of every cannibal they took, as punishment. How will we ever know the truth?’

`It is a terrible story,’ I said. A silence fell. Friday took up our utensils and retired into the darkness. `Where is the justice in it? First a slave and now a castaway too. Robbed of his childhood and consigned to a life of silence. Was Providence sleeping?’

`If Providence were to watch over all of us,’ said Cruso, `who would be left to pick the cotton and cut the sugar-cane? For the business of the world to prosper, Providence must sometimes wake and sleep as lower creatures do.’ He saw that I shook my head and went on. `You think I mock Providence. But perhaps it is the doing of Providence that Friday finds himself on an island under a lenient master, rather than in Brazil, under a planter’s lash, or in Africa, where the forests teem with cannibals. Perhaps it is for the best, though we do not see it so, that he should be here, and that I should be here, and now that you should be here.’

On first reading I liked Cruso’s line about the cotton and the sugar cane. Rereading this passage, it’s as much  about the power of the story-teller to define reality, which is the real subject of the book.

Gates of Eden, by Ethan Coen

Gates is a collection of stories from Ethan Coen, one of the filmmaking Coen Brothers. My favorite story, Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland, is a monologue of a record company executive. He is the victim of a crime, and he is answering a question from a police officer along the lines of “Do you know anyone who would have a reason to do this to you?” The list of possible suspects turns out to be quite ling. Here the exec discusses Kenny Ramen, a muscian whom the exec signed when they were both small-timers.

Now? Oh shit, he’s not doing anything now. He started worshiping that guru, fuck, what’s his name. Amdor something, Amdor Saachi-Wannabe. Something. What he hell is it? Yeah, and Kenny changed his name to Farhad something or other, wears a towel on his head and smiles all the time. Weird smile. Like his underwear binds. I am the One, or maybe I got jock itch, or something or other. Haven’t seen him in years. Fucking guy moved to Jihad, I think. Is that a city? Sits there in his fucking tent all day contemplating his herd of camels. I guess this would be suburban Jihad. Outlying Jihad. Greater fucking Jihad. Although I hear he takes his jet to Frankfurt twice a year to get his teeth cleaned. Poor Kenny. Talk about disappearing up your own asshole. Me and Don Bogardus used to laugh about it. Well, I used to laugh about it. Don is kind of a tight-ass.

I mean, I know Kenny’s thought process. After Traveler came out he had all the fucking money in the world, and all the fucking pussy in the world, you know, more pussy than Jesus. And the apostles. And he figures, Whoa, wait a minute, pussy on demand and I’m still not absolutely positively perfectly fucking happy—what the fuck is going on? I thought that was it, man. So where do I get the whole thing, the orchestra seat, man, the absolutely-positively-perfectly-fucking unimpeded seat on the contented fucking aisle? Where do I sign up for that happy horseshit? And if you’re not too bright—and believe me, officer, Kenny Ramen is a dear guy but no A.F. Einstein—then you start listening to these sharp son of a fuckheads selling tickets to the absolutely-positively-perfect-fucking- happy what have you. And bango, next thing you know you’re sitting in some shithole country where they don’t let you drink alcohol and the girls smell like homefries.

Seek, by Denis Johnson

Seek is a collection of Denis Johnson’s non-fiction writing. The following passage comes from ‘Hippies,” a wonderfully dyspeptic account of his visit to the Rainbow Gathering, a seven-day festival in the woods of northwest Oregon. He and is traveling companion, Joey, have just bought $100 worth of mushrooms:

It makes me sort of depressed to report that as we accomplish this exchange the man actually says “far out, dude.”

We now possess this baggie furl of gnarled dried vegetation that definitely looks like some sort of fungi. Back at my tent I dig out my canteen and prepare to split the stuff, whatever it is, with Joey while he finds his own canteen so we can wash it down quick. And here is why I can’t permit myself even to try and coexist with these substances: I said I’d split it, but I give him only about a quarter. Less than a quarter. Yeah. I never quite became a hippie. And I’ll never stop being a junkie.

For a half hour or so we sat on the earth between our two tents and watched the folks go by. In a copse of trees just uphill from us the Ohana group had started a drum circle and were slowly hypnotizing themselves with mad rhythm. Joey revealed he did, in fact, eat these things once in a while and probably had a tolerance. He wasn’t sensing much effect.

“Oh,’ I said.

In a few minutes he said, “Yeah, I’m definitely not getting off.”

I could only reply by saying “Off.”

I was sitting on the ground with my back against a tree. My limbs and torso had filled up with a molten psychedelic lead and I couldn’t move. Objects became pimpled like cactuses. Ornately and methodically and intricately pimpled. Everything looked crafted, an inarticulate attention worked at every surface.
People walked along a trail. Each carried a deeply private shameful secret, no, a joke they couldn’t tell anyone, yes, their heads raged almost unbearably with consciousness and their souls carried their bodies along. 
“Those are some serious drums.”
Anything you say sounds like the understatement of the century. But to get all hyperbolic would be to hint dreadfully at the truth that no hyperbole whatsoever is possible—that is, it’s hopelessly impossible to exaggerate the unprecedented impact of those drums. And the sinister, amused, helpless, defeated, worshipful, ecstatic, awed, snide, reeling, happy, criminal, resigned, insinuating tone of the message of those drums. And above all we don’t wish to make the grave error of hinting at the truth of those drums and then, perhaps, give way to panic. Panic at the ultimateness—panic at the fact that in those drums, and with those drums, and before those drums,and above all because of those drums, the world is ending. That one is one we don’t touch—the apocalypse all around us. These concepts are wound up inside the word “serious” like the rubber bands packed explosively inside a golf ball.

“Yeah, they sure are,” Joey says.