The Phoenix Network:
 
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 

Which was fine

Jessica Anthony's pleasantly disturbing Convalescent
By SAM PFEIFLE  |  September 2, 2009

books_JAnthony-art_main

HEAVY INTO METAPHORS Jessica Anthony's The Convalescent

There are probably 10 or 15 reviews I could write of Jessica Anthony's The Convalescent. Leitmotifs populate the book's 240 pages like thick, black hairs on the back of an old man's wrinkled ass.

What? That particularly off-putting simile? It's what Portlander and USM prof Anthony pounds you with from page one: the grotesque, odd, ill-seeming, and foul. Everything that is other — as personified in Rovar Pfliegman, the book's first-person narrator and ultimate loner.

Perhaps the best indication of Anthony's talents is that you can become Rovar and not be repulsed by yourself. Despite his every attempt to make you run from him screaming, you can't possibly stop hearing his voice. It's a book you can crush in one sitting that doesn't really even have a plot. A book you could read backwards, starting with the last chapter and finishing with the first, and enjoy almost as much.

As Pfliegman's oral history of the Pfliegmans (a German-named tribe of Hungarians) unfolds, stretching from the generation before him back as far as 1000 years, we bear witness to the most downtrodden of people — "the weakest among you" — and see proof that perhaps the meek shall inherit the Earth.

At its core, TheConvalescent is a creation myth, an exploration of where history, religion, memory, and invention overlap in the Venn diagram of the past. How do we look on the past? Do we see the heroes and conquerors as driving history forward, or, as Rovar postulates, "Isn't it for the protection of the weakest members of our race that all good change happens in the world?" Hasn't society moved itself forward primarily to eliminate poverty, hunger, disease, and pestilence, those things that feast on the weakest among us? What, then, is at the core of progress? Is it true that those things we label as most vile and distasteful are in fact the most vital and impactful?

The Pfliegmans are the species humanity evolves past.

Maybe the most cliché of creation myths is that of the butterfly that flapped its wings in Africa (or wherever) and created a hurricane (maybe a typhoon). Anthony rides this metaphor hard, the meekest creating the most powerful and beautiful, like Ken Kesey's turtle. Like the twin wolf-son Romulus who offs his brother Remus to become king of Rome (there's actually a minor wolf meme here, but it's kind of undeveloped). Like the son who joins his father by dying for the sins of humanity (a stigmata one, too, and sacrifice).

books_JAnthony-hed_main

Jessica Anthony

Sometimes the metaphors are extremely heavy-handed. I think we got that he was Ellison's Invisible Man. (Does "I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century" sound like a midget Hungarian living in the heart of white-bread Virginia, populating a bus that doesn't run, in a field about to be turned into a subdivision, selling stolen meat at discount prices?) We didn't need him physically wrapped in bandages to trumpet that other invisible man. We didn't need the word "Imago" defined, on its own transitional page, to complete the butterfly analogy.

But the bludgeoning is part of the point. Anthony loves being over the top. One of Rovar's ancestors quite literally births the Danube; its source is her amniotic fluid. What do the Pfliegmans do at their leisure? "[W]e were lazing about on our backs, smelling our skins, chewing our toenails for breakfast. Peeling fleas from our long strands of hair." There are parts of the book I read with my shirt over my nose to guard against the vividly depicted stench.

Anthony is a strikingly good sentence-level writer, highly literary and even very funny (expert swearing in historical dialogue, especially). What will you make of the Kafka-esque finish? That's going to be a personal thing. Kind of like whether you're a meat eater or not.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam_pfeifle@yahoo.com.

JESSICA ANTHONY |reads from The Convalescent | McSweeney's | 240 pages | $22 | at Longfellow Books, in Portland | Sept 3 | www.twitter.com/jessicaanthony

Related: Owning her identity, Deep impact, Dead like me, More more >
  Topics: Books , McSweeney’s, Ken Kesey, Longfellow Books,  More more >
  • Share:
  • Share this entry with Facebook
  • Share this entry with Digg
  • Share this entry with Delicious
  • RSS feed
  • Email this article to a friend
  • Print this article
Comments

ARTICLES BY SAM PFEIFLE
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   PAIN MAKES YOU BEAUTIFUL  |  September 09, 2009
    With all the success Dead Season have had, perhaps their greatest talent lies in their unflappable honesty, their unwavering self-confidence. At times, their songs, full of introspection and naked emotion, are like being forced to stare at the sun. The instinct to blink is strong.
  •   WHAT OF THE BEATLES?  |  September 02, 2009
    Spouting off during downtime in an interview with jazz drummer/composer Steve Grover, I once put forward my ill-researched idea that the third song is almost universally the best song on a great album.
  •   WHICH WAS FINE  |  September 02, 2009
    There are probably 10 or 15 reviews I could write of Jessica Anthony's The Convalescent . Leitmotifs populate the book's 240 pages like thick, black hairs on the back of an old man's wrinkled ass.
  •   SECOND SUMMER  |  August 26, 2009
    Summer's over, the kids are getting back to school and I'm loath to turn the seasonal page. The music's been terrific. New discs by Spencer and the School Spirit Mafia, Grand Hotel, dilly dilly, Samuel James, and Gypsy Tailwind have highlighted the depth and breadth of our local talent and the return of shows on the pier has reminded many of us just what a great summer town this can be.
  •   BOOK OF SAMUEL, VOL. 3  |  August 19, 2009
    It's so easy not to think about the music Samuel James makes much at all. Built from the very pillars of American music, it's easy to dismiss it as an homage, a throwback, a curiosity. And it is all those things, with James's ageless voice — he could be 20 or 80 — and variety of stringed instruments that scoff at modern technology.

 See all articles by: SAM PFEIFLE

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2009 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group