"An old horror film contains a scene in which the young hero flees from his first encounter with Count Dracula. He runs to his local Transylvanian inn, and he orders a large schnapps to steady his nerves. As he only drinks beer, this will be his first glass of the hard stuff. He chokes on it, and declares 'This is disgusting! - why does anyone drink it?' The worldly-wise buxom young barmaid wryly informs him, 'It's drunk for the effect, not the taste.' And so it is with this book. You may dislike stream of consciousness works, you may not understand them. (You may think that it is a misprint for 'steam of consciousness'.) You may, like me, prefer to take it in small doses. However, I recommend this work to you not on the basis of 'taste', but for the effect. I should also declare that I know the author personally, and I feel it will help if I tell you that 'POI' stands for 'Protest Of Innocence'.
If James Joyce could have met e. e. cummings in a bar, and they found that they had a mutual admiration for Kafka and Samuel Beckett, and they had then collaborated on a joint project, they might have produced something like this *free* e-book. There are seven chapters and each can be read standalone. To any adventurous spirit out there, I recommend that you read chapter three first, and then maybe chapter seven. Then some others if you like.
There is gentle humour, there is frustration, there is energy and enervation. Do not be mislead by the odd spellings, they are not typos, they are meant for effect. The theme, may I be so bold as to say, is the search for meaning in life's experience. Sometimes scenes from the past coalesce in the mind, conjured by the words. Fragments of conversations float in the ether - evocations of friends and auld acquaintance. Sometimes it seems that the conclusion is that there are no answers, there is no Grand Design, life just goes on. It is a cry for faith. But the thread of meaning through it all is the beauty of music, and there is many a song lyric quotation to spot. The technique is what may be called cathartic 'pure' stream of consciousness: free association driven by sound association, rhythmic association, and the more obvious semantic type. There are some embedded poetic moments: 'towards a better kind of cynicism' - 'Get thee behind me Prime Minister' - 'why are you such a sad and lonely creature/who never deserved a moments attention from any creature/more animate than a tree?' And there are some impenetrably obscure passages, but you just need to read them out loud for the effect. After all, he has some notable forbears. Download now!
URL: http://lawt.homestead.com
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Michael JR Jose, Resident Scholar
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