The Other Side (Dedalus European Classics) (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
I don't know if I really liked this or not. It pretty much bored me to the backs of my eyeballs and then showed me what those dangly nerves looked like in my pasty white hand. I started reading The Other Side weeks ago. Forcing myself to finish reading it today pretty much made me want to cry in a violent revolt. Mariel people rise up against their oppressors! We mental people come from all corners of this wide mental land in peace. Please, it shouldn't be this hard. That's what the spokesperson said but they killed the messenger. "They" was some big shadowy figure. You know how "They" always is in these suffocating scenarios. Pardon me, I haven't been sleeping much at all and I am coming from invisible germs on sweaty palms and stomach numbing nerves. The Other Side didn't fucking help one little bit. The doctor didn't say to read this so it's not really his fault. The nurse was a fucking bitch, though, and I'm sure she would have made some mouth noise I could have construed as an invader from the evil mental lands across the gray mass seas.There's a letter delivered across bureaucratic lines of remember when we were lads in framed portraits destined to sit on some doily covered dresser to remind the housekeeper that someone once swaddled us in doily-like baby clothes? Remember when the administration head counted our just on time mustachioed and arpeggios? Come on, it's me! Patera! So I've got this "Dream land" that is pretty much my own country and shit. You can come live here. Mariel went into a lawyer coma over this reading of the will style part and didn't wake up until after the waaaaay more boring than the extensive train travel part of Christopher Priest's The Prestige (that was kind of interesting in the way of a guy who could make a home out of not being home, and falling love with moving tracks off the rails of those obstructed by Ben Franklin's kite sky writing). If I don't remember what the hell happened at any time in my life between this part of the book and today it isn't my fault. I lost it with the missing luggage. If I was one of the kids who fucked up on the first hour of my visit to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory I might feel like this. The Dream Land is a paper cut kind of festering. Shit, if they want shitty neighbors I can give them shitty neighbors. So the old lady who would cross the street to avoid the pointing finger lady from The Princess Bride (y'know, the one who calls Princess Buttercup on her unfaithfulness) complains about noises at uncomfortable hours of the day. I used to live on a floor above the "hospice apartment". They are dying of cancer and you still don't have a whirring noise at three a.m. It still sucks when they try to come inside. Where's the community, other than some grumbling about coughs not other worldly people stuff? Patera hovers over with the promise of his invitation. Come on, I invited you, man! Money won't protect you. You know that other land place where missing socks go? That's where Clay Davis' empty pockets turn up. My money too. The artist with his burned out bulb of worldly and dreamy wonder is returned to sender. Did you forget to put on the address? The Dream Land was like that, to me. Like not going anywhere. The bitchy nurse says some shit now about how that was the point, Europe after WWI, blah blah blah. Haven't you done enough for today? Crush my soul with your regulation shoe later. Patera's head floats higher and higher. It is emptier than a kite from the dullest kid at the candy factory and the skies are black of currents. I don't understand making him the great and powerful Oz.Wife, gone. People, never there. Artist, abandoned. Dreams... I don't even know if I'm asleep. I didn't care about Patera at all. Moving there at his behest made no kind of gut sense to me. The stethoscope has got nothing. I took a look at what other reviews said. Blah blah blah Jung and the collective subconscious. I don't want to think too hard to come up with this means this or this means that. You'll make me cry, I swear.I didn't care. That's what happened. Blah blah blah Kubin was a pessimist and tortured small animals in his youth (I thought that was a serial killer sign but what do I know?). Blah blah blah he was an artist and The Other Side was his only novel. This is what I liked about The Other Side: (Oh yeah, i forgot to say I read this translated and not in the original German. The German may be perfect for all I know.)I liked the written descriptions of what would have been drawings. There are illustrations in the book but I liked the descriptions better than the drawings. I could feel how the artist would sniff like a blood hound to run away from the blood rushing in the ears that don't pick up mutual cries. He could presmell what they might smell like in his paranoia. I didn't like being told that they all belonged together in spite of that. Okay, maybe I liked the drawings better because that was a total lie. Another voice from my peanut gallery: I liked how one man would give a look like a man who had fallen off a cliff. I could see that. I am thinking a lot these days about how one would write visuals that walk the tight rope of truth without ruining it by over defining it. Oh yeah, that's what The Other Side does too much with this Patera and Dream Land fixation. Better to throw shit at the wall and get your responses out of it. "Hey, bitchy neighbor chick. Come here often?" and discuss how the brown turd represents how much the world at large sucks. The wall says you can't leave. The shape of the turd is like one of those clouds that looks like a bunny rabbit if you look at it the right way.I don't know. I got bored of trying too hard to look that hard. Other than the way the artist would describe things as if he could paint them it was too much like trying to slap some name on it. Or I just don't feel that good and don't really WANT to analyse this that much. I think I already feel too much that bad stuff that happens is a collective will, anyway. The artist might have seen the omens in the ABC spagettios but did they spell the same in the other most important meal of the day? That bad things that happen is a deliberate act to silence another voice, yeah. Communities suck. Villagers abuse their dinner forks. If I saw it in a dream that didn't mean I could have stopped it from happening. I'm too late to this gallery to predict karma. I don't want to hear tongues click. I have a lizard tongue, apparently. It was probably from when I made dead lizards dance as a four year old (my biographer says so). Kubin says he'll see me on the other side, then. Noooo, but you were soul boring! Click, click, click. That's the bright flash lights of hell diagnosing danger, danger, danger.Am I just naive in that art and personal responses and shit? Intent is art and then there's where you run with it. Something about this collective unconscious in a burned to the ground village made me feel so tired.
A moderatley amusing story of a dream society (in a Lewis Carrol nonsense vein) soon degenerates into a whole lot of gore and misery in the decadentist mold. A blurb on the front describing the novel as a satire of capitalism rings particuarly hollow - Kubin seems interested, above all, in painting gruesome pictures of man's depravity, and not very intent on political allegory. Which is fine if you're into that sort of thing, but it does drag a bit, and at a certain point the glee the author takes in the book's relentless violence starts to feel futile as well as uncomfortable. In early 20th century Europe, the question about this sort of stuff was still "should one be allowed to write it?"; Kubin was on the right side of history in doing so, and today this is no longer an issue. But to a 21st century reader the more pressing question is not of permission but of substance - why write it? And on that level, to this reader at least, Kubin delivers no interesting answers.
What do You think about The Other Side (Dedalus European Classics) (2000)?
Ho comprato questo libro perché mi piacciono gli incubi di Kubin. Mi piacciono gli incubi che Kubin disegnava, intendo. Evidentemente, gli incubi che scriveva mi piacciono meno. I disegni di Kubin sono visionari, sono incubi, sono malati, sono atroci, sono cupi, tetri, allucina(n)ti, sono bellissimi. Questo romanzo è delirante (come i suoi disegni), ma senza grazia, senza arte. È troppo, tutto concentrato assieme. Ho retto bene e anche apprezzato la prima metà, dopo mi è diventato insostenibile. È solo il risultato della sua crisi psichica, credo. I suoi disegni, invece, sono arte pura.
—Marina
Nothing short of amazing. I have wanted this book for so long but because it is out of print had difficult tracking it down. I was fortunate enough to be given a beautiful copy on Saturday evening. I adore Kubin as an artist and no less as a writer. Because it has been translated from German it is difficult to tell the actual quality of writing style but the story alone is enough to fall in love with it. It's a hugely underrated novel. My edition from 1969 is the first edition to have his complete autobiography included. It also contains his original illustrations. It was reprinted a number of times since it was written (around 1909 I think) with more and more of his autobiography added - obviously as he wrote it. I would recommend it to anyone with a slightly morbid imagination or an interest in him as an artist. I don't understand why it is not more widely known.
—Olivia
È uno di quei libri che sembra tagliato con l'accetta precisamente a metà o quasi una prima parte interessante, scorrevole , scritta davvero bene. Una seconda parte decisamente troppo onirica , kafkiana, ma Kafka nacque dopo in tutti i sensi. Non ho ben capito se questa netta divisione abbia o meno un senso logico o sia solo frutto della fantasia malata di Kubin. Sembra che abbia ripercorso tracce della Divina Commedia , partendo dal Paradiso ( entrata nel regno del sogno) , passando per il Purgatorio( una stasi catatonica nel regno) e finendo con l'Inferno ( il totale delirio nel regno del sogno).Probabile che Kubin abbia iniziato la sua opera sano, ma che l'abbia finita in un momento poco felice della sua vita. Peccato perché per buona parte del racconto questo libro ha rasentato la perfezione.
—Nilo Di Stefano
