03. Overnight trains & feeling strange
In a weird cool twist of fate (and by fate I mean appointments at the Czech Embassy, an interview, an overview of my bank account….hard work) I obtained a temporary residency visa to the Czech Republic.
There will be lots more on life in another country later. For now, it feels a little too closely held to my heart to write about publicly, especially when I am writing this from a place of safety/comfort. To speak of relocating again, when so many in the world are struggling right now - especially those in Ukraine and Gaza - feels too privileged to speak of currently.
A snippet of what I learned from this experience:
You may not put your feet up on the seat, even when you are taking an overnight train from Prague to Warsaw and need to do an interview at the Czech Embassy at 7 am in the morning. Sleep is allowed, if you sit bolt upright like a zombie. I get it but at the same time sleep deprivation makes me into a monster.
The idea of a “cup of coffee” is different from country to country. I got used to ordering an Americano, or a cappuccino. I fell in love with espresso in Italy, especially when chased with a little thimbleful of water. But when I ordered an Americano at a Slovakian train station after hiking in the Tatras Mountains, what I received was a cup of hot water with some literal coffee grounds sort of stirred in. The gentleman next to me had ordered a shot of vodka and sipped it quietly while a Christmas episode of The Simpsons played on the TV behind the bar.
I could not help but purchase some of my favorite novels in their UK paperback form at one of the English language bookshops in Prague, even though I had them on my Kindle already. By this time I was living firmly on my Czech salary, but was still willing to pay the equivalent of 20 US dollars per book. And yes, I read Kafka and Kundera and Hirotka and Klima. But I also needed some comfort books okay?
Inspired by Petya Grady’s post on her personal literary canon, I will write about authors/novels that have inspired me, bit by bit. I’m starting with the weirdest novel in my canon, apart from Bora Chung’s CURSED BUNNY. (Thank you, Petya for the inspiration!)
GEEK LOVE by Katherine Dunn
I purchased more than just this novel. But this novel stands out to me because it is difficult to “pair” with other books. Usually I like to read books in conversation with other books. I cannot help but create a syllabus. Example: The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Babel by R.F Kuang, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. The academy/institution/power structure disrupted by the individual/other.
GEEK LOVE was Katherine Dunn’s only work, so it can be viewed much like Emily Bronte’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS. It’s stunning, engrossing, frequently actually obscene by today and yesterday’s standards, and one of the best depictions of family and love besides….any of the Russians (particularly Lenin’s interior monologues!).
The novel is about a couple who run the Binewski Family Carnival. They supply their carnival with “freaks” (used in the 80s sense to describe people with personality defects or social handicaps) by way of imbibing and ingesting harmful substances while Lillian, one half of the Bineswki couple, is pregnant. She is also the resident “geek” of the carnival, the one tasked with entertaining the audience by biting off the heads of live chickens.
(Perhaps my first real book essay should have been on my author Terry Pratchett or my other favorite author Diana Wynne Jones…or my next novel on my TBR list, The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton.)
Using your own children as freaks in a carnival, children who have been purposefully harmed in the womb, is terrible on paper. But these children are beloved for their strangeness, they are treated with love and adoration and purpose. The narrator, Olympia, is a bald albino hunchback. She describes the rise and downfall of the Binewski Family Carnival with tenderness and wonder.
“There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-l “There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-life devotees.
“Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull.”
Eventually, the family propensity for strangeness manifests itself as a cult of personality centered on Arturo, the oldest son, in bizarre ways. But underneath the strangeness is a family who love and protect each other. When I finished this novel for the third time, I was sitting on a bench by the Vltava River, reeling after a breakup. I had had an argument with him about this novel, in which he argued that I should stop rereading books and move on to new ones. This is not why we broke up. But it seemed a precipitous step toward the breakup. Why move on, I asked, when you could enter again into a world in which family is important, significant? Where being strange is seen as a blessing, not a curse?
Recommendation: If you like weird literature but GEEK LOVE is too weird for you, I strongly recommend Kelly Link. She is known for her magical realism short stories, notably Get in Trouble (finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize) and her recent novel The Book of Love.)
Question: What have you read lately that has moved you? What book has saved you during a time of uncertainty/struggle? What is the last book you read by a body of water?
Editor’s note: I know fiction doesn’t really “do well” on Substack but I’m going to try anyway. Expect to see a new tab up top with Fiction you can read/critique/ignore.