As She Climbed Across The Table (1998) - Plot & Excerpts
Virtual Reality with a Philosophical BentThis is a re-read of one of my favourite novels. I’ve rated it five stars both times, but the rating assumes that you have a philosophical bent. If you don’t, it might come across as hopelessly abstract and removed from any reality that you know.If you do have, it might strike you as a stimulating and amusing work of post-modern fiction.It’s an homage to and pastiche of novels by Lethem’s immediate predecessors such as John Barth’s "The End of the Road" and Don DeLillo’s "White Noise" that deserves to stand proud in their company.A Universe in a University LabSuperficially, the novel is a fiction about academia.The narrator, Philip Engstrand, is a Professor of Anthropology at the fictitious University of North California. His partner is Alice Coombs, a particle physicist who is working with Professor Soft, a Nobel Prize-winner, to create a "baby universe" or a "universe in your backyard" a la the real life theories of Edward Farhi and Alan Guth.Within this relationship, we also have two distinct cultures: the humanities and science, although perhaps there is a point where cosmology can be seen to cross the boundary between the two, to climb across the table.Despite the academic and scientific context, the novel is at heart a romantic comedy. Lethem’s prose is dry, but heavily ironic and humorous. Early on, Philip says to Alice:"I feel an initial singularity…pressed against your spherical symmetry."Scientific DetachmentAlice ignores his flippancy, preoccupied with the "false vacuum bubble" that Soft has managed to create.For Soft has ignited a new inflationary universe in the lab, only it has stalled and failed to "detach" from this universe.Instead, it has developed a breach or a wound akin to a wormhole that allows communication between the two worlds. Alice refers to the breach as a portal. It’s a rabbit hole that might lead to a wonderland of her own. Despite the objectivity of her background as a scientist, she can’t help but think of it subjectively. She’s lost the ability to "observe without consciousness", to "observe without subjective judgement". She falls in love with this thing and becomes "estranged from humanness".Where and to what the portal leads informs the rest of the novel. An Explosion of MetaphorDespite the fact that they have created a baby universe, it has ceased to inflate:"It has stopped being an ‘event’...Now it’s defined by its failure to ‘happen’. An absence. A lack."Henceforth, this baby universe is known as "the Lack". It’s a breach, a gap, a gulf, a hub, a void. Increasingly estranged from Alice, Philip contemplates:"The lack was obviously an explosion of metaphor into a literal world. I felt a secret kinship with it."How We Avoid Each OtherBoth Philip and Alice have their own relationship with the Lack.It's not just a cosmic void. In a way, it comes to represent the distance, the void between two humans.If we are intimidated by the void, we will never form a relationship with whatever lies on the other side.In order to form a relationship, we must communicate across the table, into and through the void. We must explore. We must step into the unknown. We must reach out blindly. We must take risks. We must intimate. We must offer soft intimacies. We must reveal vulnerabilities. We must risk harsh judgments and rejection. We must turn our backs on pride to win love’s rich rewards. We must overcome and defeat the suspicion and jealousy that can undermine love:"I pictured Alice guiding blind hands to her breasts. Nipples hard like Braille."Bizarre Love TriangleEven once we’re "in" a relationship, it can have its own vulnerabilities. As Philip reveals:"...when I feel distance between us, it’s like there’s something wrong between me and myself. I feel a gulf in myself."Hence the kinship with the Lack, even though it is the cause of the distance, the gulf between Philip and Alice (unless in reality we can infer that Alice herself, her "Lack-love" is the subjective cause). Love as a System, a UniverseDetermined not to lose Alice, Philip resolves to "teach her human love again", if and whatever way he can. And so we have the set-up of the novel.An early attempt proves to be fleeting. I want to mention it, not from a plot point of view, but so as to highlight the tongue-in-cheek earnestness with which Lethem describes the attempt:"I crawled across the margin of floor and held her. I put my arms around her shoulders, my face in her hair. We cried together. Our bodies made one perfect thing, a topological whole, immutable, complete, hollows turned to each other, hollows in alliance. We made a system, a universe. For a moment."Ironic as the language is, you can see a mock attempt to bridge the gap between the two cultures of science and the humanities.The Metaphysical LackSoft and Alice discover that they can communicate with the Lack. They position a table adjacent the wormhole and slide objects and messages across it. The Lack accepts some things (which disappear) and rejects others (which remain on the table). In a way, it communicates by a binary yes/no system. Eventually, the physicists believe they’re able to infer the interests and taste of the Lack.Philip adopts an almost Kantian approach to the Lack:"You seem to be saying that Lack is a metaphysical phenomenon. So I should be just as qualified as you to uncover his meaning. If he is, as you say, interested in the idea of things in themselves. Meanings. Texts."The novel shifts from physics to metaphysics.One of the physicists proves to be a subjectivist:"Consciousness creates reality. Only when there is a mind to consider the world is there a world. Nothing before, except potential. Potential this, potential that. The creation event, the big bang – it was the creation of enormous potential, nothing more...[There’s no world where there isn’t a mentality to consider a world…There’s just a gap…a lack.] Consciousness writes reality…wherever we look we find reality forming in response...I think there is a principle of conservation of reality. Reality is unwilling to fully exist without an observer. It can’t be bothered. Why should it?"You have to ask whether the baby universe stalled so that somebody could look at it. It was waiting for us to catch up and observe it. Alternatively, to the extent that it might be sentient, the Lack might have stopped to observe us and develop its own meaning. And it achieved this through the portal that Alice became.Sorry, I have to stop now, before my brain explodes. Goo goo ga joob.Do You Love Me? Do We Love One Another?From Alice’s point of view, perhaps then the Lack simply represented an Other with which she fell in love, and thus might have caused her to fall out of love with Philip.However, in a way, she was also what the Lack loved. She was the Lack’s Other. She was the source of its meaning. She was the Other’s Other. She loved what the Other loved, and the Other loved her. So ultimately, love brings us back to a love of ourselves, an affirmation or validation of self.We are each our Other’s Other. When we love one another, we love ourselves. Conversely, if we don’t love ourselves, it’s difficult to love one another.Only when we feel affirmed or validated, can we feel love. Only then can we escape metaphysical fantasy and return to the reality of love.I Touched Your Hand Across the TableThis is the sort of physical and metaphysical journey that Lethem takes a reader on.I have to commend both the imaginative scope of the novel and its execution. In it, Lethem writes with total command of subject matter, language and tone.This novel is worth climbing across the table for.SOUNDTRACK:Beatles – "I am the Walrus"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI-tkI...New Order – "Bizarre Love Triangle"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uEBuq...Frente! - "Bizarre Love Triangle" [Cover]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ1c9E...The Human League - "Don't You Want Me"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPudE8...The Human League - "Don't You Want Me" [Live Mime]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EHpoz...Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – "Do You Love Me?"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJTjsV...Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – "Do You Love Me?" [Live in Berlin]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XXUdu...
for better (and of course, definitely worse) I was in New York City around the turn of the millenium. one of the appeals of city life is the illusion it gives of "centrality." certain Manhattan movie theatres have day-before national release distribution of motion pictures (I saw Sophia Coppola's LOST IN TRANSLATION a day before Michigan and Arizona); every once in a grand while a internationally-renowned celebrity walks non-chalantly past you on the sidewalk; author readings; Central Park and Bryant Park concerts and screenings; planned media events. By merely living on that oddly shaped 8 x 22 mile shaft called Man-hattan, you can almost pretend to yourself that you yourself are an important VIP, that your thoughts, readings, friendship circles and whatnot are part of some grand intercontinental network, that you are a tastemaker, that your recommendations in cabs and at the Hudson Hotel bar will be overheard and passed along the great chain of people-to-people information.as far as literature goes, Motherless Brooklyn was one of those set-in-New-York, released-first-in-New-York authorial event-incidents that mark the grand metropolitan life. people Paul Auster and Jennifer Egan are in many ways simultaneously part of the social fabric of the city they document, and if you're just off the Southwest Airlines flight from Portland, you can far more impress any suitable females if you actually recognize Auster or DeLillo. I passed Woody Allen on the street and disdained him. the support crew shot me a look of worship. but sometimes the phenomenoa goes both ways. what can you do with three people on the subway have 'Motherless Brooklyn' out? how do you react to two hours of conversation at a Lexington Avenue Starbucks about JL? possibly you blowback--i.e., you pooh-pooh the perfectly competent book.I'm almost suspected my current 3-star *** on Brooklyn is a result of all that. didn't I speed-read through it? wasn't it a majority-decision bookclub choice (always a recipe for insipidity)? for whatever reason, even though I haven't seen a copy of the book for some years I ranked it at 3. Girl in Landscape wasn't that a somewhat understated but subtly delightful 4? again, agh, I don't have a copy off-hand. have to safe-rank it at the 3 and await getting another dog-eared copy. Fortress of Solitude, on the other hand, probably a high-3 regardless. some passages that are authorial reminscence rather than authorial construction. ding-ding points on that.the point of all this long-winded meandering is that I think I'm 'compensation' rating this at the 5. if I cheated Lethem out of a 1/3rd star on Brooklyn and possibly as much as the full star on Girl, I guess that adds up to the 4.2 or 4.3 this book deserves and counter-ways to the full 5. this would put Lethem at the apparently appropriate 3.75 or whatever, and although it opens up the possibility I will later up-rate Girl and then ease down here, for now, we'll hold it at the 5.arguments for 5:*light, 'post-modern' piece; no heavy going anywhere, no*literary form of a Wes Anderson movie; literary form of I-heart-Huckabees 'existential detective' motifs*very skillful (shouldn't be under-rated) mixing of genres: campus novel meets pomo-philo piece meets light allegory*numerous allegorial rereads: substitute 'love' 'death' 'chance' 'time' 'sex' 'ravine' 'adulthood' for Lack and you have, voila, seven new novels!arguments for 4 or below:* short, just 224 pages* treatment of post-modernism vs. physics as top negative reviewer on entry notse has been handled--and with more depth/complexity* Lethem edges close to shocking but never quite crosses over?so, here's the 5 for now, prone to a possibly slight edge-down to 4, but under no circumstances a 3; a strong, short, punchy Lethem.
What do You think about As She Climbed Across The Table (1998)?
What do you do when the woman you love falls for a void she mistakenly creates in a physics experiment? How can one compete with flawless nothingness, when the human experience is one made from flaws, from words not coming out right and actions never quite going to plan? This brilliantly clever concept, the sort you chide yourself for not coming up with, turns into a story that is maybe too clever for its own good.For a book that is, ostensibly, all about the way in which we search for meaning in nothingness it provides very little vacant space for the reader to play in. Every element of the metaphor is said aloud, then double-stressed with wordplay; overly-intellectual literature written with the assumption that its readers can't think for themselves. Too often the characters and emotion get lost and this starts feeling more like a textbook than a novel. A not entirely uninteresting textbook, but the dry, academic approach loses some of what makes this idea special.See, despite the clear correlation in the concept this isn't actually an existentialist text. It's not overly interested in lacks themselves, but rather the way in which we work to fill them. We created heaven to fill the lack of space, science to fill a lack of knowledge and maybe, it asks, we create love to fill the lack between us. It's a corrosive but rather compeling idea: that love is something we build up in our brains, that we fall more for our idea of a thing than the thing itself, spiralling down a self-reciprocating cycle of being in love with being in love. It's a shame that Lethem gets so caught up in the cleverness of his concept, because a version of this book that focused on finding the ways in which the story elucidates our real experiences - rather than this one, dedicated to teasing out the relevant theories - could have been amazing. There are still moments of insight and a strong sense of humour to be found amongst the shows of intelligence that hint at this other, better book, but they are few and far between. In a way though this kind of thinking is exactly what he is warning against: before something exists it has the potential to be perfect, but as soon as its born it starts breaking. This is the version of the book that actually exists, and if you can look past the inevitable flaws it has some interesting things to say and does so in an entertaining way.
—~
I'm not one of those people who read every book by my favorite authors, although I probably should. Having loved both 'Motherless Brooklyn' and 'Fortress of Solitude' (and I seriously mean loved), I really couldn't resist this post-modern love story with Lethem's attendant literary trickery.The story is a bizarre love triangle, with the twist that the third side is represented by a curious cosmological entity named only "Lack." Tongue in cheek existential feminism, anyone? There is so much going on here, it's dizzying. And because of that its just too much. Like a bright child who wants to dazzle all the time, ASCAT (for short) fizzles a bit. A breezy style hides the complexity, but there's just a bit of unfocusedness that makes this not-quite-a-gem.Still, love/haters of academia and Lethem fanboy/girls will absolutely love this.
—David Rim
Lethem's writing feels like a memoir, which is great, in some ways, except for the fact that his protagonist is dealing with something totally impossible. The narrative, to me, seems more like an experiment of Lethem than an honest effort at telling a story, but what I got out of it was more thought-provoking than other novels I've read.Any number of theories could support the genesis of this novel. I mean, there must be reasons for the -almost- exclusively professorial and academic lives of his characters. Lethem's diction is also fairly casual because the protagonist is a professor in the humanities. I initially was annoyed by this, but in retrospect, Lethem wanted the exclusionary attitude to suffuse his novel, from love, to profession, to even the notion of it being a bad idea to deliver a potentially high-brow story that easy for readers to understand.Maybe Lethem intended to try making a readable and very simple narrative snazzy with some weird physics experiment gone wrong. Maybe he wanted women (and humans, in general) to be so easy to place on the axes of some relationship spectrum. That was mostly innocuous to me, though, because I figured writing a story this way could let other issues fall into the foreground...While being riddled in pseudo-science and unlikely experiments, Lethem's protagonist considers and acts on on thoughts that are often partially-informed by either sentiment or expectations based on sentiment. This makes the protagonist quite real, and quick to read. I give this 4 because I was sort of surprised at the end, but, it's more because I think Lethem was messing around with his writing here, to give us something memoir-like, but, also, ridiculous.
—Matt
