Steve Erickson's Rubicon Beach

Five of the many possible signs you might be interested in reading some Steve Erickson:

1. You're interested in literary representations of father/son relationships.
2. You're interested in literary representations of gender and gender relationships.
3. You like characters who travel a lot.
4. You regret.
5. You need to be surprised.

Finished Rubicon Beach tonight. Six down, one to go. And I have to finish that last one this week, by Friday night. I'm headed to Chicago for the weekend for the Pitchfork-curated Intonation Music Festival, where I fully expect that in a park full of bone-thin tight-shirt-clad indie kids, I will feel like the fattest, oldest man alive. It's going to be awesome. But yeah, this Steve Erickson kick, it's been a great trip, but it's time for it to come to a close. Maybe calling this weekend my deadline for completion is a bit arbitrary, or maybe not. It feels right. It feels like, after setting down the last book, it will be good to hop in a car for six hours to go stand in the sun for two straight days, listening to lots of awesome bands play a whole lot of awesome music. Seems like the best physical external-space way to escape the emotional mental-space I've been wrapped up in for the last three months. Er, excuse me? It's only been about two and a half weeks? That's a bunch of crazy talk, my friend. A whole bunch of crazy talk.

There's a reason why I think you should read some Steve Erickson but not pull a crazy and try to read all of him at one time, and it goes back to reason number five, above. Steve Erickson is a writer who will surprise you: you'll be reading from page to page and then the next page he'll whisk the ground out from beneath your feet, replacing it gradually over the next few pages with a whole new ground, one you'll get a firm footing on just in time for him to crack it open with a literary mallet, sending you hurtling down towards some other ground, buried beneath the second ground and floating right above the first. So it's not that he ever becomes formulaic--by the time I was on my fourth book, Arc d'X, I was still damned amazed at how where I'd started was well after where I was going and how everything in between all meets up at yet some other point seemingly unrelated yet intrinsic and vital all along though I'd never known its existence; the tendrils of dream-knots coming together for brief whispers that send ripples and chasms up and down the lengths of themselves.

But even then there eventually becomes a point where surprise becomes somehow less surprising--however surprised you are by the unexpected, you kind of knew it was coming all along. Which is kind of the headspace I found myself in about midway through Rubicon Beach, when I was reading along and enjoying myself but not letting myself get pulled away by the book. There's a point in the middle when I realized I'd just been seamlessly flown from the story of a girl living in the jungles of South America to the story of a Hollywood screenwriter whose life was success despite his own personal failures. There were plenty of surprises and odd details that had come before that that I'd liked, but it took a certain amount of a conscious mental gasp to realize just how remarkable it all was, right there in front of me the whole time. I enjoyed the story much more after that, having given my mental space a good rattle and a firm shake.

I suppose this is the sort of thing you're likely to run into with any writer or mode of writing you immerse yourself in, which is why I think that experimental fiction alone is not vital. My oft-mentioned friend Chris, having recently read Our Ecstatic Days, is currently reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and I think that's a perfect pairing of novels to be read in succession. I don't know if he knows the surprises in store for him with Ishiguro's book--I sure as hell didn't tell him, but, you know, kids these days with their internets and their freedoms and all. Big surprises of Ishiguro's book known or not--the two books both work in realms of surprise entirely distinct, and, yet, revelatory, I think. One book's "Wow" factor relies on the tricks of the post-modern canon wedded to shocking forms of story-telling; the other relies on good old fashioned narrative and detail. And yet I'll posit that for all their distinctiveness from each other, the two books aren't so far apart in spirit. Like seeing the fireworks as awesome, then looking down to watch them light up the face of someone you love; or, or something. I don't know. I'm very tired.

Point being: I can't wait to see how all this Erickson affects the way I perceive other books, other modes of storytelling. The mental stretching of it, and all that. Also, did I just use the word "posit" in casual blogging? What the deuce? Next thing you know, I'll be all, making interesting points, and stuff. Good grief.