Rubicon Beach

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Rubicon Beach

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1absurdeist
Mar 4, 2012, 1:57 pm

"I guess I’m turning out to be a novelist of the ‘80s. I tried to be a novelist of the ‘70s. This may be a time that responds to something I’m doing. I’m a guy who grew up on movies and rock ‘n’ roll and books, and all of these things had an equal impact on me. Fusion has to take place in terms of the alchemy of your own creativity, and your own head, and to use a grand term, your own vision. And maybe that’s what’s happened (in the ‘80s). It’s the result of a lot of people growing up with all these influences and finding that those influences have consciously produced something that has not been seen before."

A quote from Steve Erickson in his 1987 BOMB interview (hot on the heels of Rubicon Beach's, his second novel's, publication), with James Mx Lane.

Full Interview here.

2absurdeist
Mar 9, 2012, 2:27 pm

My favorite line from Rubicon Beach so far is, "He told himself he was inching closer to the poem of no return."

3Quixada
Mar 9, 2012, 2:52 pm

I love that!

4absurdeist
Mar 9, 2012, 6:23 pm

I think you'll love the book! Erickson's imagery is just unbelievable. Paranormal imagination. And the images stick long after you've read them. Like the sand dunes inundating the freeways of downtown Los Angeles, or the telekinetic cats in communion with one sensitized woman, to name just a couple, from the book I finished over a month ago, Days Between Stations. Rubicon Beach is chock full of more unique, even prescient observations.

5absurdeist
Modificato: Mar 15, 2012, 12:22 am

Insightful interview with Michael Ventura during the summer of '86 on Rubicon Beach, a novel I'm enjoying more and following much better than his debut, though I'm not positive I'll be able to claim it's a better novel than Days Between Stations, good as it is:

Phantasmal America

I have a good friend who once wrote me this tortured letter about whatever love affair he was going through at the time and I wrote back and said, “You’ve got to remember, Fred, that a lot of people go through their lives never feeling anything at all.” And that’s what these books are about. It’s easy to go numb. It’s the easiest thing in the world. And these are characters who will not go numb. They’ll slap themselves silly to get the feeling back. To keep the blood going. To keep even the worst nightmares alive -- because at least that’s a dream. It may be a bad dream but it’s a dream, and it’s better than no dream.
~ Steve Erickson

6Jesse_wiedinmyer
Mar 15, 2012, 1:14 am

Hmm. Having only read Tours, Rubicon and Days Between Stations, I'd probably put them in roughly that order for favorite to least so far.

7absurdeist
Modificato: Mar 15, 2012, 12:26 pm

I'm with you on Tours of the Black Clock. Among his first three, it's his most accomplished. I remember a scene toward the end where the imagery so leapt off the page it was like reading in 3-D.

Rubicon, with its three distinct novellas, separate storylines in each, with only the first two novellas or parts of the novel readily connectable (since the content of the third precedes the events of the first two), isn't as unified in its structure as Days. That's probably the main reason I'd rate it mildly higher than Rubicon as a novel. But enjoyment-wise? They're still neck and neck in my book.

8Quixada
Mar 23, 2012, 12:32 am

I am on page 52 of Rubicon. Very good so far, but nothing mind blowing yet. Very interesting the idea of radios being outlawed but the buildings giving off a cacophony of music. Darkly beautiful.

"A major writer is in our midst. Pynchon, Nabokov, DeLillo - Steve Erickson has approached their heights." - The Wall Street Journal

Does anyone agree with this quote? Pynchon? Nabokov? I think it is a little overboard.

9Jesse_wiedinmyer
Mar 23, 2012, 1:23 am

I'd probably put him over DeLillo. And around there with Pynchon. Then again, I haven't read anything by Pynchon since Mason & Dixon. I get the feeling with Erickson that he's so far out there, it'll take a bit of time for everyone else to catch up.

10absurdeist
Modificato: Mar 23, 2012, 1:35 pm

I think the key word in that blurb there, Jo, is "approached".

I get why reviewers do that, to create buzz, to increase the import of a writer they like who has flown under the radar for far too long, but I think it sets up Erickson for some anticlimax among new readers, comparing him to those icons. Erickson is in his own league, just like Pynchon or Nabokov are in theirs, because he isn't trying to reach any other summit besides his own. The comparisons start unraveling between he and a Pynch or Delillo upon closer inspection. I like that he gets mentioned in the same breath with them though. There's been mutual admiration among these writers for decades.

"Darkly beautiful" is so apt a description of the book. I should note too, having finished it, that the third part doesn't necessarily precede the first two parts chronologically, as I mentioned above, as time becomes increasingly malleable and hard to pin down exactly what era we're in, the further you travel through the book.

11Quixada
Mar 26, 2012, 8:53 am

I am well into the second section now. Erickson is a novelist, but he is definitely a poet also. I am now officially "blown away" by his writing.

12absurdeist
Modificato: Mar 26, 2012, 4:49 pm

Hear hear, Jo! It's those Nerudian and Baudelarian influences casting their poetic glows, like dappled light through Oak leaves, upon his darkly evocative pages.

Here's what I think might actually serve, though it's in rough draft scattered from, a portion of the review I may or may not write (assuming I'm ever able to completely organize it adequately) of Rubicon Beach:

"In between awakening and complete awareness, within the waning fog of dream's disintegrating curtain, where sleep laps luminously upon the tidal lagoons of consciousness, overarching your consciousness, corridor-like as it is, wild jungle vines -- alive -- seeking to slither down and poke and scratch you awake out of your raft floating downstream with no destination other than towns to be duped, duped, duped, though in being duped so many times, their dupe metastasizes into the duper's abrupt doom, so do be warned out of your melancholic snooze through these moody, putrid river waters hanging with vines and snakes: this, all this, is the ambiguous, murky, treacherous, but deceptively pleasant, disorienting realm one encounters in reading Rubicon Beach.

En route, up river of the book, can you explicate "the poem of no return"?, standing there in mud flats of the beach that doesn't exist but one day a tsunami may return? Can you deduce, in your canoe, with I hope your mathematical prowess, the Number of no return? It's a new number that exists somewhere between nine and ten. Can you ride the mystery train up sea from the shores of no return, to the Giant Oak, riding on rails built on water through the red tunnel of the moon, strange earthly emanations audibly abound, to the Rubicon gothic-like mansion (dare you enter it like you did before?) populated by memories disguised as flesh and blood, if they're not in fact corpses and ghosts. Will you understand the Big Oak's significance at the apparent terminus of the mystery trains' track; that the end might not be the end but rather the beginning to the Frontier of No Return? What exists beyond the Oak and the Mansion, beyond the point of no return? Invisible realities, some quantum physics-type parallel universe we sense peripherally but not really see? Or more delusions and madness out there in the beyond, more certain death?

Consider the face of no return in "Catharine" (not her real name but given her by her employer whose last housekeeper was also named "Catharine") Poor, orphaned woman born on that jungle river, born, according to her soon-to-be-murdered father, with no "voluptuous virtues, except her face", but a woman no matter now robustly or curvaceously stunted her body might be, in time makes an art out of her survival, sculpting hyper-adept skills of communication out of the stone of silence, despite not knowing the English language, and using whatever perceived weaknesses she might present and instead turning them on their heads into strengths that enable her to maintain her strict adherence to a ferocious independence no matter what entangled predicaments she encounters, whether it's her first kidnapper, hitchhiking goofs, being smuggled into the states in the backs of cars and vans, and soon ditching her coyote captors only to have to face all those sharks wearing suits on Sunset and Wilshire Blvds who see blood in Catherine's haggard hair and bare feet... Catharine will thwart their exploitative advances all: the photographers, the hustlers, the movie moguls and talent scouts. Who needs them? Because she may be the most powerful woman who's ever lived, but lacking belief in her face, saddened by the lack of her having any "voluptuous virtues", doesn't yet comprehend her full power -- not yet understanding that her face is the most potent face, the most powerful weapon in the world -- a weapon she'll soon learn to use like an ax or meat cleaver -- an indescribable face some men can't even look at for fear they'll be consumed or decapitated by it, lost in its dizzying depths of no return, while others devise their devious plans for Catharine's face's exploitation for their own selfish gains in photography and high end modeling and the movies!, branding their perfect doll-woman possession the most powerful if not most beautiful, seductive woman whos ever lived, a woman so out of any man's league she's remained virginal all this time, untouched by hands or by greed, but a very wounded woman grieving her murdered father who'd foolishly lost his daughter in a game of cards when they lived on that dangerous river and couldn't prevent the Con-Man kidnapper from stealing her from him; she, "Catharine", who was the sheer essence of that jungle Utopia they once lived so serenely in and is now gone forever.

Catharine's face reminds me of the station portals from Erickson's debut, Days Between Stations. It seems like Erickson took a leap and personified his first novel's stations, replete with that mystifying, inanimate light source with no known electrical or natural outlet, and instead evolved the idea of the inanimate stations into being select human stations, like Catharine, human station extraordinaire, transmitter of power and beauty and justice, since as Lake notes late in Rubiocn, "there is a number for justice," but without skin and bones vitally infused with the number, the number is impotent. I see Catharine imbued with that same sourceless station light of precognition -- that light that originates from all times yet likewise journeys beyond all times, so that Catharine exists concurrently in the confines of this phantasmal novel traveling at times on some vortex train track that can transport her here or there in the right now just as swiftly as it can accelerate her forward in the future, but not so far that they she can't decide to wait for her character cohorts sometime in the past, beyond the river.

Whatever Erickson's fictive universes, they've all started making more time non-linear sense to me when I'm reminded what Erickson said he learned from Faulkner in that time in a novel's narrative doesn't beat to the click of a clock, but rather, keeps pace to some metronome of memory. I paraphrase it, but it helps a lot in more enjoyably navigating Steve Erickson's novels.

13Quixada
Mar 26, 2012, 4:30 pm

Amazing review! It fits the feel of the novel perfectly. It would definitely be a Hot Review.

14theaelizabet
Mar 26, 2012, 5:58 pm

I'm so intrigued by Erickson and am ready to read more. Where should I turn next? Thoughts?

15absurdeist
Modificato: Mar 27, 2012, 1:29 am

13>Thanks, Jo,! Working on one in progress. In lieu of one incomplete, here's a snippet defining the kernel, I hope, of Rubicon Beach:

"In between awakening and complete awareness, within the waning mist of dream's disintegrating shroud, where sleep still laps luxuriously, tranquilly for a time, its anesthesia tide emptying out the shallow estuary of unconsciousness; and the first eyelid's slit of luminescence, or the first inkling of fog barely lifts, when nascent sounds converge while smudged visions remain blurred: this hypnotic nocturnal/pre-dawn plateau separating la la land and wakefulness by the minutest of perceptual tendrils: this Tendril in its ambiguous precipitousness and all too treacherous (yet transient) high wire act ... It is in this deceptive and disorienting Tendril of perception slicing blackout from eyes open .... It is in this fine line tendril dividing reality clean from fantasy, or consciousness clean from sleep, or life from death, where the journey and experience of Rubicon Beach exists."

>Thea, you can probably begin anywhere. I'd mildly warn though if Our Ecstatic Days (2005) caught your attention, just be sure and read The Sea Came in at Midnight (1999) first, as the former is a direct sequel of the latter, though the way Erickson works, you're not going to be lost if you read Ecstatic Days before The Sea.

I've chosen, excepting These Dreams of You, to read his work from the beginning, and to proceed through it chronologically. His characters from early books regularly pop up in later books; ideas he outlined early get fleshed out later; his view of Los Angeles evolves novel to novel, certain local settings and establishments reappear in later novels .... that's the main reason I started this year with his first novel and am moving on, book by book, year by year, excepting his new one, all the way through.

Jesse has mentioned he thought Tours of the Black Clock (1989) was a great place to start for him.

I would recommend either Days Between Stations 1985; Rubicon Beach 1986; or The Sea Came in at Midnight But I've read great things about Zeroville (2007) too. I doubt you'll go wrong starting with any of them.

I'm also finding his political/autobiographical/fictionconfabulations in Leap Year: A Political Journey to be very fun and insightful reading. American Nomad, one I've not yet read, chronicles, in similar fashion as Leap Year, Erickson's across-the-U.S.A. reportage of the 1996 presidential campaigns.

16absurdeist
Modificato: Mar 27, 2012, 3:28 am

...and it just occurred to me, thea, before I hit the hay for the night, that if you didn't want to commit fully to Days Between Stations, you could opt for The Vintage Book of Amnesia that contains a ten page excerpt from DBS, as a way to test ride the novel before driving it off the lot. Looks like that anthology might be one worth pursuing just for itself anyway!

17Jesse_wiedinmyer
Mar 27, 2012, 3:01 am

I'm assuming that there's some Lethem in there, too?

18absurdeist
Mar 27, 2012, 3:28 am

Yep. Besides editing the anthology & writing its intro, he included his story "Five Fucks".

19theaelizabet
Mar 27, 2012, 8:48 am

Thanks, 'Freeque for the helpful response.

20absurdeist
Modificato: Mar 27, 2012, 12:32 pm

You bet. But aren't you going to tell us which one you're leaning toward reading next? I can't stand the suspense! I don't think Jesse can either!

Also, I failed to mention that maybe Arc d'X (1993) would be an interesting place to start also, especially in light of the brouhaha of Anthony Burgess' controversial review we've touched on recently.

I've read that Amnesiascope (1996) is considered his most autobiographical novel. Not yet read that one, though the farther I get into These Dreams of You, I'd be surprised if it doesn't usurp Amnesiascope as being his most autobiographical novel to date.

21Quixada
Modificato: Mar 28, 2012, 11:16 am

I am at the point now where Llewellyn took Catherine to the party, punched the photographer, and his wife found his screenplay manuscript only to discover it was poems instead of a screenplay. The poems that Cale found in the previous section. I found the part about Llewellyn's career path rather boring, but as soon as it got back to Catherine living in his house, it got interesting again. The part about Llewellyn's career path didn't even feel like Erickson was writing it. It felt like someone else wrote it.

I am beginning to wonder if Erickson saw (or even met) a Spanish girl in real life that he became fixated or obsessed with that inspired this.

22Quixada
Mar 28, 2012, 1:28 pm

Parts of the house are moving! The front door moved six feet. One of the upstairs windows moved. Whole rooms are moving. Freaky!!! Or should I say "freeque"!!!

23LolaWalser
Mar 28, 2012, 1:52 pm

I actually witnessed something like that, in California. Crrrrrreeeeak---oops, can't close the bathroom door right now. Crrrrraaaaak--okay, now you can. And a few more inches down the hill you go.

24Jesse_wiedinmyer
Mar 28, 2012, 1:55 pm

To be fair, we all witness that in our daily life. Most of us recognise a bit more agency and will in those changes than the denizens of Erickson's novels, though.

25LolaWalser
Mar 28, 2012, 1:58 pm

Wait, who's we? I swear my place in Tronna don't move. Good old Canadian shield!

26Jesse_wiedinmyer
Mar 28, 2012, 1:59 pm

Plate tectonics, Walser.

27LolaWalser
Mar 28, 2012, 2:12 pm

That's right!

28absurdeist
Modificato: Mar 28, 2012, 11:06 pm

21> The part about Llewellyn's career path didn't even feel like Erickson was writing it. It felt like someone else wrote it.

You could be on to something there. I wouldn't doubt he purposely tweaked or maybe numbed down his writing style here and there, especially if it might enhance the hypnotic effect Catharine was having on Llewellyn.

It's freaky, yes, that house was built on a paranormal fault line!

29Quixada
Mar 30, 2012, 7:55 am

Lake and Cale are in a boat headed toward the lighthouse. Who is in the lighthouse?!? Is it Catherine??? No, wait, don't tell me!

30Quixada
Mar 31, 2012, 10:01 am

Well that was a bizarre ending. The train ride. The room in the top of the tree. But to say that anything by Erickson is bizarre is quite unnecessary. Of course it is.

"She shuddered with the bedlam of unsounded chimes."

Brilliant novel. Amazing really. I miss Catherine already. Thanks Freeque for recommending it.

Now I am off to read Samuel R. Delany's Hogg. I will report back from that nocturnal side of reality.

31theaelizabet
Modificato: Mar 31, 2012, 11:03 am

>15 absurdeist: The interlibrary loan system coughed up Zeroville first, so I'm going with it. I read the first few pages. Travis Bickle in Hollywood? Can't wait to find out, but first I want to finish The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and I've got A.S. Byatt's newest sitting next to me, calling out.

ETA, you and jodavid make Rubicon Beach sound tempting ... maybe soon.

32urania1
Mar 31, 2012, 8:53 pm

I do not have Rubicon Beach.

33Jesse_wiedinmyer
Apr 1, 2012, 5:51 am

Fuck you.

34urania1
Apr 1, 2012, 11:40 am

Jesse,

Back at you :-)

35Jesse_wiedinmyer
Apr 1, 2012, 3:04 pm

:)

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