THE DEEP ONES: "The Beak Doctor" by Eric Basso

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THE DEEP ONES: "The Beak Doctor" by Eric Basso

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2housefulofpaper
Sep 10, 2019, 3:12 pm

I'll be reading this from The Weird. Re-reading to be accurate. The links in >1 gwendetenebre: were useful in having the write mindset, i think. I've mentioned before that I struggle with surrealism and absurdism in fiction. Part of it comes from the way I was taught in school, maybe - the expection that you should be able to work out what a story or poem "means". That leaves no scope for works that just "take the top of your skull off".

3housefulofpaper
Sep 14, 2019, 6:19 pm

This doesn’t seem quite so revolutionary as the folks at Weird Fiction Review are suggesting.

I first encountered most literary movements through the lens of science fiction, but some were more obscure than others (to me). Luckily authors doing their own version of Alain Robbe-Grillet and the Nouveau Roman (or their editors) were kind enough to signpost what was going on.

I guess it’s too long to safely copy and paste, but take a look at Robbe-Grillet’s Wikipedia entry. The section headed “style” discusses hm being ‘“realist” or “phenomenological” in the Heideggerian sense”…”often repetitive descriptions of objects replace…the psychology and interiority of the character”. The reader must “slowly piece together the story…”resembles the experiences of psychoanalysis”…the result “resembles…a cubist painting”.

“The Beak Doctor” definitely reminded me of those works, many of them from the New Wave school that had a British home in New Worlds magazine when Michael Moorcock was editor in the ’60s.

I think I've expressed this opinion before: well, I still think cinema does this better than literature. The visual language of cinema, even mainstream Hollywood, is all telling visual images, non-verbal clues, jump cuts, switches between characters, information withheld for dramatic purposes, and so on.

The story did make me think of the movies at times. Eraserhead might be a contemporary parallel with points of similarity. Actually, the story looks more conventional in places - the prankster and his henchmen seen like the thinly disguised outlaws or hoodlums of a Western or Gangster (or maybe “social issues” melodrama), respectively. The set-ups for the sleepers in the Round House and the Cinema (sorry, Movie Theater :)) are eerie but in a post-apolcaylptic 1970s way, somehow. It’s also showing its age in the medical details - even someone who takes their medical knowledge just from the TV would surely be thinking that the sleepers need more medical attention than that. Bedsores, just for starters...

To be honest I have to confess that I may not be giving this novella a fair assessment. I was , I confess, trying to read it as a narrative about an event in the world. I guess, if it’s a cubist painting or a course of psychoanalysis, it’s not going to give up many (any?) secrets at the first or second encounter.

So far, my superficial understanding is this: there’s a cool-looking but rather ineffectual figure (but is the medieval plague doctor get-up anything other than a sign of mental breakdown on the part of the titular character?) creeping, or stumbling, through a confusing fog-bound city which - to me - conjures up the irising-in closeups of client cinema as much as it does that microscopic focus on surface and on sensory impression that are hallmarks of the Nouveau Roman. The city - is it recognisable? I wondered is it a West Coast city - San Francisco? - is suffering a terrible, surreal epidemic of a kind of sleeping sickness (preceded by a full-on fantasy disintegrating decease). The infrastructure doesn’t seem to have broken down as much as would be expected - water and electricity are still being supplied, bars have drink and presumably food. Current events in the UK are focusing my mind on that, you can be sure. Is there really much more than that or is it pretty much all surface? I’m reminded of the ‘80s comic book Mr X which had a cool premise (by accident or design a variation on “The Beak Doctor”) but which never really went anywhere (disclaimer - I only saw the initial run).

What I haven't digested yet, are the shifts of focus to other characters. The jump cut to taking medication to stay awake. The old man in the library. The apparent circularity of events. Is this, in fact, all inside a dream? Do I want to invest the time on going back to this novella again (and again?). To be honest I'm not sure.

4RandyStafford
Sep 15, 2019, 2:21 pm

>3 housefulofpaper: You are much more patient than me. I rather loathed this one with its tedious, interminable descriptions which emphasized the patterns of light and seemed to be, in the frequent references to "pimpled" to incoherently tie the body of the city to the body of the plague victims, i.e. diseased.

I took it as a way too long disquisition on the social atomisation modern urban life can bring. We see little in the way of love or compassion from anyone in this story.

>3 housefulofpaper: Your third paragraph nicely highlights the differences between the Schulz story and this one. Both are surrealistic, but Schulz actually produces a story interesting to read if enigmatic. Basso's story is a chore to get through. Since I regard psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience and don't like cubism, I'm not going to be favorably disposed to a story created using ideas from both.

As for literary experimentation, I'm reminded of the quip (I first came across it from the old book reviewer for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Baird Searles, that "Experiments in art, like experiments in evolution, usually fail."

5elenchus
Edited: Oct 7, 2019, 9:47 am

@housefulofpaper does a stellar job of outlining both what I (think I) read so far, in terms both of plot and impression; and, the effect it has on me. Is it worth reading? Uncertain, but I've decided it's worth finishing, so I'm plodding on.

I'm still working my way through, driven by a sense that there is something here that I will enjoy, but not getting it immediately or consistently. Patience is the keyword for me, and partially I took that as a challenge because my external situation is pressuring me to steamroll through, get the goods, and leave ... which I don't like generally, and certainly not from reading. When I forced myself to slow down, accept that I was going to be far, far behind deadline, and just pay attention, it began to be more rewarding.

The one additional observation I have now is that the narrator offers a more straightforward description of events when he's with another character. When he's walking along by himself, it's as if he's fighting the sleeping sickness himself and the description becomes so Robbe-Grillet-like. From that standpoint, there's more consistency in the narrative than at first I was seeing.

Guess I'm leaning more toward >3 housefulofpaper: than >4 RandyStafford: on this one, but I'm not done yet.

ETA Finished finally and I'm duly impressed by the atmosphere and prose stylings, but the story still leaves me baffled. A good part of that was me getting used to the style, but another fault was my inability to read with any regularity. As a novella, it's not surprising I wouldn't be able to complete it in a single sitting (though that isn't by any means unreasonable to attempt), but I had no pattern or established routine at all. I could tell at the end there were references to earlier events or descriptions, but couldn't for the life of me remember what they were. So this needs another reading from me.

6elenchus
Oct 2, 2019, 3:52 pm

I just notice (or reminded myself after noticing when this thread was first posted) that the Online Version is an excerpt. Much, much shorter, just as Weird. Instructive for thinking what the kernel of the novella is (at least, as understood by the person responsible for excerpting).

The interview, also at WeirdFictionReview.com, indeed the full editorial cycle on Basso, is equally interesting.