Harangue, Harangue!
Robert Olen Butler’s “Severance” is one of the most beautiful books I’ve seen in a long time. The cover is jarring, subtle and to the point; and the layout (its delicate use of black and white pages, its rough cut pages, the font and its setting) is just plain gorgeous. Too bad the rest of the book -as in the content, as in the intentions and hopes, as in its form, as in its subject matter- flails like a fish out of water. The book pruports to document the (possible) last 240 words of various subjects after being beheaded. Butler, the great scientist of our hearts and mathematician of death, came up with this neat little figure when he observed two seemingly unrelated phenomena: i. the brain functions for a minute and a half after it has been severed and ii. in an excited state, we speak at a rate of 160 words.
So, 160 x 1.5 = magic.
Somebody should take a club to the gilled Olsen and stop him from anymore slimy schtick (he’s already finished a book on postcards, a book on sex, and one on tabloids with the same set of ideas and the same vigor). Speaking of fishing and art, let’s go to the commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPc1N7kf_AQ
I think Lynch would describe this book as a small fish. Butler, if not a small fish himself, was basically a petty fisherman interested in an idea (what happens in the last minute and a half of dying?) but never let the line really sink or as is more likely to be the case, he was fishing in a sawmill pond, in a prefabricated mud hole where the Forest Circus dumps a fresh load of gen-modified fish on the first of the month. A pity because I like the idea and even the format was compelling in the first couple of heads. After awhile, however, you just succumb to another 240 words, submitting yourself to the idea that even if it’s painful, at least it won’t last much longer.
The tone, I think, is also as resigned as the reader -and may even be the cause of our resignation. There aren’t very many heads which inspire the reader, which are in any way shape or form suspenseful. Basically, Olsen adheres to the cliché of ‘your life flashing before your eyes’ in the last minutes. So what’s the result? We get famous religiosos talking about religion or the Church, we get famous revolutionaries talking politics, famous queens obsessed with naive ideas return to their childhood, etc. “Severance” breaks all the rules my dad imposes on me at family gatherings (”Don’t talk religion, sex or politics”) and demonstrates why my father would place such rules: because you’re never bound to say anything that profound about it (if you take yourself too seriously) and you’re probably not going to convince anyone to change their minds or re-evaluate their positions (it would take a Dostoevsky for such a realignment). My question for Butler is: why tackle such large subjects and such large historical personages when you have nothing to add to them, when you just rehearse what we already know or think, what can be gleaned from history books? Maybe this is the point, and if it is, I’ll leave him and his clever little po-mo smirk to themselves. But if that’s the case, why does the book seem politicized? The book, as we move closer and closer to the present and finally into the then future, becomes more and more political not only in its content but also in its tone. It seems at times to be a protest against fanaticism, but one which ultimately fails since Butler too loses his head in his book. Thought provoking, but a thought which Delillo’s “Mao II” or some of Godard’s wackier comments on the role of art accomplish with more finesse and with more humor (my favorite quote in “Tout vas bien:” “it’s more honest to make commercials;” i.e. lambasting against art film in an art film). He seems to me to have confused intentions.
The few last words that do work are sexual in nature but these are interesting not only due to their content but also because there’s a tenderness or even a transcendence in the descriptions, because we’re not being lambasted. We’re not left with what they were leaving behind but where they would like to be. No doubt this was the inspiration for his next big flop: the ideas of famous persons in the act of coitus. I’m sure there’s plenty of experience and grunts from the worldround and I sincerely hope he doesn’t try to push off something like quantum mechanics on us if he tries to illustrate what Einstein thinks about when blowing his load.
A paradox emerges like a breaching whale: the book ignores its own premises for the sake of being clever. But you’re thinking, didn’t we just say it was too gimicky and adhered too closely to its premises? We get the last thoughts of a chicken for instance (and I lie not, there’s even a ‘why’d the chicken cross the road’ joke hidden in there) which as far as I know, can’t say much of anything. People will tell you that rules are meant to be broken and I agree but he should have and could have broken them in a more enlightening and challenging way. Indeed, it seems “Severance” forgot its premise: sure we can only speak in 160 words a minute, but how many words can we think of in a minute? I would wager more. And the words he chooses! His use of language by about the tenth head is pretty stale and cliché. While he feels comfortable using American vernacular and lofty statements, we have a pretty stale narrative voice for people from other lands and from other cultures. Example: though (the narrator) Olsen flavors his palette with a number of idioms when speaking for Americans from the South or in Hollywood, there is a gaping lack of love or understanding when it comes to other cultures and other ‘less educated’ persons (such as a young Chinese girl or a Frenchy). That is, Olsen doesn’t extend himself beyond what he doesn’t know in language though he does in subject (see the previous chicken example for starters), which creates an imbalance. I think the book would have been more compelling if he stuck to various Americans who lost their heads. As Stephen King suggests, “write what you know.” And indeed that’s what I kept asking myself about Olsen. While it was clear that he had never been beheaded, I wondered if he had ever experienced intense life threatening or life changing pain. I for one have. And I’m telling you, while certain lofty ideas occur to you (you are your body), most of the time you’re thinking ‘fuck, fuck, fuck,’ 240 times over. Indeed, such plain ideas would have aided “Severance” to my mind and would have certainly made the project more humble (instead of the simplistic narrative summaries we were offered). Maybe Olsen would retort that these people weren’t in pain, that they had transcended the threshold. I’m not claiming to be a scientist, but if you’re conscious, couldn’t the pain receptors still be firing? They might get turned off in most cases, but wouldn’t they still work in others? Isn’t this what a lot of our ethics and philosophy of law is all about? A question I might direct to my local friendly neuroscientist and/or philosopher and perhaps Olsen should have (or did).
It’s hard to swallow that this guy won the Pulitzer, a NEA grant and a Guggenheim (you mean this guy is a genius??? wtf???). Who knows, maybe his other books are great. I’m willing to be proven wrong. I just find it hard to believe when he describes this as his best book (not to say artists are the end all and be all of other greatness). The fact that this guy is a ‘genius’ reminds me of the great Ives quote when he was awarded the Pulitzer for his Symphony No. 3: “Prizes are badges of mediocrity.” And it’s true, to my mind, No. 3 is a stinker. Though No. 2 and the Universe Symphony are just plain great. Actually, if you’re in Davis, California, go see the production of No. 4 on Sunday
Originally published at Bit Rate Labor. Please leave any comments there.