Vellum (2)
I started off last time talking about Hal Duncan’s Vellum, and I didn’t have time to get into my thoughts and reflections:
I found myself inspired by this book. Baffled at times, because the narrative can be difficult to follow, but profoundly inspired. There are points when it’s less like reading a narrative and more like looking at a psychedelic word-painting. I’ve just started Ink, the sequel, and it begins with a summary of Vellum that puts things into perspective - one of the reviews I’ve read calls Vellum a kaleidoscope of conjoined and disjointed images, while Ink links those images together. That’s ringing true for me. (As I started reading Ink, I found myself going “Oh! So that’s what was happening at the end of Vellum!” several times).
This is the kind of book that makes me want to do creative things. I read Duncan, and I want to write, make films, run games, craft profound or beautiful things.
I love the way Duncan tips his hat to Michael Moorocock and the New Wave of the 1960s (I’m particularly sensitive to this because the New Wave is at the core of my dissertation). In one of the realities in the later part of Vellum (after the bitmites have shredded the world into multiple synchronicitous paradigms), Jack Carter becomes an “assassin angel” fighting against a totalitarian state using “sex pistols” fueled by chi energy - the style, tone, and themes in this section are a deliberate tribute to Williams Burroughs and Michael Moorock (Jack even refers to himself as “Jerry Cornelius,” Moorock’s reality-hopping cross-dressing James Bond for the psychedelic era). I have to confess, these are my favorite moments in part two! It’s nice seeing writers keeping the Jerry Cornelius myth alive - especially when Duncan outdoes Moorcock in some ways.
Despite her goofy name, I liked Phreedom Messenger in part one. She started out as the kind of weird kick-ass character that could rope me into an entire series of books, if treated well. And her plan to play Eresh and Metatron against each other was great. Unfortunately, she gets pregnant and becomes nothing more than a faceless baby-carrier in part two. Aaarrrrgh! Why do writers create interesting and compelling female characters only to strip away their personalities and reduce them “walking wombs” in so many stories?!? (Grumble, grumble).
One of the things I’ve been chewing on is the way this book fictionalizes America’s current and future activities in the Middle East. Part of the story is set in 2017, and the “war on terror” as we know it has continued to escalate. The public face of this “war” is a cover for the struggle between Metatron’s Covenant and Malik’s Sovereigns. Metatron seems to want an unkin “demoncracy” (where all unkin are subject to a rule of law), while Malik and the Sovereigns are striving for autonomous self-sovereignty (the right to answer to no one but themselves). Both Metatron and Malik enslave others (by graving them with the Cant) in their efforts to win this war. It’s tempting to read this as a critique against both “Jihad” and “McWorld” - in Duncan’s analysis, both imperial capitalism and local fundamentalisms operate according to a parallel logic of instrumentality (they turn people into tools, means rather than ends, instruments to achieve a greater goal or greater good).
The need for a third option, then, becomes vital. Most of the main characters are rebels who refuse to side with either the Covenant or the Sovereigns.
Chewing on Duncan’s treatment of these issues, I was put in mind of Fredric Jameson’s argument (summarized by Jonathan Clark) that “the political possibility of the postmodern cultural object lies in its failure.” In Signatures, Jameson argues that many texts attempt to represent contemporary social conditions only to fail, but that failure is itself a kind of success - the very failure to map existing conditions can become a map of the circumstances that prevent such mappings. A failure of representation can itself become a representation of the forces that mystify and obscure the landscape in question.
I think this critique has relevance in Duncan’s case. Vellum constantly bombards the reader with images of the “war on terror,” brief soundbites and comments about American imperialism, and the image of an extreme religious fundamentalist building a network of terror in the Middle East. The Covenant/Sovereign war (which seems to be presented as a McWorld/Jyhad struggle) dominates the background of the story, and any time the characters are in 2017, there always seems to be a television somewhere tuned to scenes of devastation (bombings, terrorist attacks, military actions) on CNN.
The “war on terror” is thus ubiquitous in this text, but Duncan’s story critically fails to “map” with any depth the complexity of the real-world situation. There’s a half-finished gesture to encompass both American imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism as subsidiary elements in the unkin war, but this flounders (the bitmite apocalypse interrupts the whole thing, and Malik, who was one of the characters I’d have liked to seen in more depth, seems to just be forgotten). Jameson calls “historicity” a semblance or affect of history without any actual depth - Duncan deploys a “historicity” of the “war on terror” (a sense or feeling that he’s referring to historical events), but his history evades any concrete signifieds. The “war on terror” here is a dominant presence, but its presence is ultimately depthless (there is little sensitivity to the complex histories that have produced the present situation).
I think that Duncan’s representation of “the war on terror” here is a failure, but it is a failure that may have political possibility, insofar as it maps the general conditions of “incomprehensibility” that characterize this war. As someone who has recently been teaching current events (in my American Studies class), my sense is that many people experience America’s current activities (the “war on terror,” the occupation of Iraq, the buildup of hostility toward Iran and North Korea) in exactly the way Duncan describes - as a ubiquitous backdrop, an ever-present context, something happening on CNN that’s hard to look at while impossible to avoid. Yet this ur-context is simultaneously stripped of historical depth (try asking most people what Al-Qaeda actually stands for, and you’ll encounter a mess of misconceptions).
To put this thought more briefly: I think that while Vellum relentlessly deploys images of “the war on terror,” it fails to represent the conflict with sensitivity. At the same time, however, I think that Vellum (perhaps inadvertently) portrays the general incomprehensibility of the “war” with amazing accuracy.
That’s it for today! More later…
I found myself inspired by this book. Baffled at times, because the narrative can be difficult to follow, but profoundly inspired. There are points when it’s less like reading a narrative and more like looking at a psychedelic word-painting. I’ve just started Ink, the sequel, and it begins with a summary of Vellum that puts things into perspective - one of the reviews I’ve read calls Vellum a kaleidoscope of conjoined and disjointed images, while Ink links those images together. That’s ringing true for me. (As I started reading Ink, I found myself going “Oh! So that’s what was happening at the end of Vellum!” several times).
This is the kind of book that makes me want to do creative things. I read Duncan, and I want to write, make films, run games, craft profound or beautiful things.
I love the way Duncan tips his hat to Michael Moorocock and the New Wave of the 1960s (I’m particularly sensitive to this because the New Wave is at the core of my dissertation). In one of the realities in the later part of Vellum (after the bitmites have shredded the world into multiple synchronicitous paradigms), Jack Carter becomes an “assassin angel” fighting against a totalitarian state using “sex pistols” fueled by chi energy - the style, tone, and themes in this section are a deliberate tribute to Williams Burroughs and Michael Moorock (Jack even refers to himself as “Jerry Cornelius,” Moorock’s reality-hopping cross-dressing James Bond for the psychedelic era). I have to confess, these are my favorite moments in part two! It’s nice seeing writers keeping the Jerry Cornelius myth alive - especially when Duncan outdoes Moorcock in some ways.
Despite her goofy name, I liked Phreedom Messenger in part one. She started out as the kind of weird kick-ass character that could rope me into an entire series of books, if treated well. And her plan to play Eresh and Metatron against each other was great. Unfortunately, she gets pregnant and becomes nothing more than a faceless baby-carrier in part two. Aaarrrrgh! Why do writers create interesting and compelling female characters only to strip away their personalities and reduce them “walking wombs” in so many stories?!? (Grumble, grumble).
One of the things I’ve been chewing on is the way this book fictionalizes America’s current and future activities in the Middle East. Part of the story is set in 2017, and the “war on terror” as we know it has continued to escalate. The public face of this “war” is a cover for the struggle between Metatron’s Covenant and Malik’s Sovereigns. Metatron seems to want an unkin “demoncracy” (where all unkin are subject to a rule of law), while Malik and the Sovereigns are striving for autonomous self-sovereignty (the right to answer to no one but themselves). Both Metatron and Malik enslave others (by graving them with the Cant) in their efforts to win this war. It’s tempting to read this as a critique against both “Jihad” and “McWorld” - in Duncan’s analysis, both imperial capitalism and local fundamentalisms operate according to a parallel logic of instrumentality (they turn people into tools, means rather than ends, instruments to achieve a greater goal or greater good).
The need for a third option, then, becomes vital. Most of the main characters are rebels who refuse to side with either the Covenant or the Sovereigns.
Chewing on Duncan’s treatment of these issues, I was put in mind of Fredric Jameson’s argument (summarized by Jonathan Clark) that “the political possibility of the postmodern cultural object lies in its failure.” In Signatures, Jameson argues that many texts attempt to represent contemporary social conditions only to fail, but that failure is itself a kind of success - the very failure to map existing conditions can become a map of the circumstances that prevent such mappings. A failure of representation can itself become a representation of the forces that mystify and obscure the landscape in question.
I think this critique has relevance in Duncan’s case. Vellum constantly bombards the reader with images of the “war on terror,” brief soundbites and comments about American imperialism, and the image of an extreme religious fundamentalist building a network of terror in the Middle East. The Covenant/Sovereign war (which seems to be presented as a McWorld/Jyhad struggle) dominates the background of the story, and any time the characters are in 2017, there always seems to be a television somewhere tuned to scenes of devastation (bombings, terrorist attacks, military actions) on CNN.
The “war on terror” is thus ubiquitous in this text, but Duncan’s story critically fails to “map” with any depth the complexity of the real-world situation. There’s a half-finished gesture to encompass both American imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism as subsidiary elements in the unkin war, but this flounders (the bitmite apocalypse interrupts the whole thing, and Malik, who was one of the characters I’d have liked to seen in more depth, seems to just be forgotten). Jameson calls “historicity” a semblance or affect of history without any actual depth - Duncan deploys a “historicity” of the “war on terror” (a sense or feeling that he’s referring to historical events), but his history evades any concrete signifieds. The “war on terror” here is a dominant presence, but its presence is ultimately depthless (there is little sensitivity to the complex histories that have produced the present situation).
I think that Duncan’s representation of “the war on terror” here is a failure, but it is a failure that may have political possibility, insofar as it maps the general conditions of “incomprehensibility” that characterize this war. As someone who has recently been teaching current events (in my American Studies class), my sense is that many people experience America’s current activities (the “war on terror,” the occupation of Iraq, the buildup of hostility toward Iran and North Korea) in exactly the way Duncan describes - as a ubiquitous backdrop, an ever-present context, something happening on CNN that’s hard to look at while impossible to avoid. Yet this ur-context is simultaneously stripped of historical depth (try asking most people what Al-Qaeda actually stands for, and you’ll encounter a mess of misconceptions).
To put this thought more briefly: I think that while Vellum relentlessly deploys images of “the war on terror,” it fails to represent the conflict with sensitivity. At the same time, however, I think that Vellum (perhaps inadvertently) portrays the general incomprehensibility of the “war” with amazing accuracy.
That’s it for today! More later…