Ahmad Faris al-Shidyak (1804–1887)

This is a provisional review, because this is only the first half. But I can imagine no better book for my goodreads friends than this one: underappreciated classic? Yes. In translation? Yes. Rabelaisian tradition, but with a hefty dose of Arabic learning (and mocking of such learning)? Yes.

If you're still not on board, I can expand. This is a novelized autobiography, in which our main character, "the Fariyaq", kind of wanders around Lebanon and Egypt and some other places, and he's a copyist and a poet and really, really, really obsessed with language. None of this is even remotely the point, though. The point is the unstoppable wallowing in literature and life.

If you're still not on board, consider that the first chapter is mostly an apology for the book, which foresees people complaining that the book is alternatively incomprehensible, and filth. One defense is to say, well, the stuff you don't understand is so great that the filth pales in comparison, so don't complain too much. The other is to say "I know many a noble churchwarden whose virtues are acknowledged among men and yet has no compunction about referring to "things quivering," "things rounded,"... the thick, raised pudendum and the raised, thick pudendum, the pudendum thick of lip, the vulva huge, the vulva mighty, the vulva long of clitoris... the glans, the "knotty rod," the man with a strong penis, the "thick stick," the large glans, the tip of the glans if it's broad, the edges of the glans, the donkey's glans... to "stick the kohl-stick in her kohl-pot," to "furrow" her, to "push" her, or to "ram it in all the way to the hilt."

The whole list is four pages long, that's only the first ludicrously over the top, imaginative, hilarious, discomforting list in this half of the novel.

If you're still not on board, I don't know what to say.… (more)

Such aggravation can not be quieted, and such itches cannot be scratched, without creating either a flap or a second skin.

The reader will find an ongoing accrual of skins and experiences along with an already and ongoing buffering of resistances. There is a simultaneous sheen and scar. The reader parses, scrolls, and remains astonished and somewhat lost. Are there really that many relevant terms? Recoiling and heaving with both delight and frustration, the reader pushes on -- it is written. The book floated along my horizons for months. Misgivings about toting it abroad left it gestating. It bursts with lists and grammars of wonder and futility. There are whispers of both Shandy and Tom Jones, but I felt its bosom cousin remains Burton's Anatomy. A few intrepid souls here point to how a grasp of the Koran is of integral assistance.… (more)