Gloucesterbook (Gloucesterman)
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See all Product description. Kindle Edition File Size: Drawbridge Press 28 March Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a product review. Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon. Interesting, that is, if one counts personal ineptitude, eccentricity, and a loose regard for sexual constraints as interesting aspects of human life. Underlying all these frailties and follies is the need for money, a matter of great and possibly corrupting sense in some of the major figures.
In a book in which there are no heroes, there is one proximate villain. This turns out not to be Arthur Halmboyd, part owner of the sprawling Parity business conglomerate but Father Christopher Lucey whose pursuit of money and power, when not otherwise occupied with his pursuit of young men, beclouds the purpose of his calling, and the existence of his two-monk monastery compound. I prefer to give the 17th century credit rather than to trace Bayliss's indebtedness to 19th century English and American authors who tried to go as far they could with long words, long sentences, long paragraphs, and long and repetitious attempts at humor.
Even though Bayliss wrote a book in the vein of the 17th century"The Anatomy of Melancholy" by Robert Burton and "Religio Medici" by Sir Thomas Browne, he alluded frequently to works by 19th century author Herman Melville to extend or enhance episodes. Melville's novel "Redburn" gets the most recognition, though the titles, if not the contents of other works "Omoo", "White Jacket", "Mardi" "Pierre" and "Clarel" get occasional nods.
Some of Bayliss's sentences defy comprehension; that is, no doubt what he wanted them to do. Here is but one of many examples; "Before even the Controller foresaw that usury would interbreed with advertising and amusements to disqualify manufacturing as the golden goose of free-enterprise prosperity when lending money at interest would no longer be justified primarily as a facilitation of production or distribution, and private debt would be universally urged to usurp thrift as a national virtue, with the lure of demotic credit cards that profit not only original gatherers of savings, and the financial retailers but also a cascade of middlemen in manifold money-changing and commission taking long before the nation was actually possessed by such a self-defeating economy, the Classic Order of the Vine as well as the Petrine workers and a few scholastic theologians was attempting to define in terms of Christian doctrine the sin of usury as overpowering the cannibalism of mass consumption.
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Bayliss's pet names for some of his notables are momentarily amusing: Ezra Sterling Ezra Proud and T. Eliot but, in the long run, they could have been left out. According to my read the Irish poet William Butler Yeats gets more mention than any other writer. These allusions have to do with Yeat's love of Maud Gonne, his theatrical aspirations, contempt for his audience, and his interest in the occult.
In the sections devoted to the Classic Order of the Divine, Saint Anselm of Canterbury becomes an ideal or standard by which Fathers Lancelot Duncannon and Christopher Lucey measure themselves or Bayliss measures them. Though one can be sure of few things in regards to the many ambivalences in this novel, both priests appear to lack the dignity, courage and fidelity of their mentor, not to mention the monastic vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.
At first I was inclined to take the religious intentions and practices of the Tudor-Petrine, read Anglican, Classic Order of the Vine and its often-mentioned opposite, the Pentecostal Brotherhood of the Peaceable Kingdom, located in the deepest Amazon, as serious meditations and proscriptions for living a better life.
Like the treatment of love, or more precisely amorous attachment, the treatment of religion is so cavalier and tongue- in-check, that I am now inclined to doubt its psychological and metaphysical value. Of course some have claimed I think it was Saint Augustine! Though Caleb Carcist, Bayliss's central mouthpiece, is more muddled, confused and opportunistic than Hamlet, many accessory characters also appear in mocking guises.
Who in this novel doesn't wear cap and bells? A glossary or computer would come in handy for no matter how minor or insignificant a character may at first appear to be, he or she is sure to make additional appearances, or if not that to be the source of additional jokes.. Typically what may at first seem like an exalted ascent to the sublime becomes a noisy decline to the dump. This second volume along with the first and no doubt the third if it ever appears are lessons in the art of contretemps. Since the style is beset with so many twistings and windings, there are moments when slogging one's way through does not seem worth the effort.
Unlike Henry James or Marcel Proust sentences are generally short and there are few dependent clauses that follow dependent clauses. Bayliss appears to have taken his reader's exasperation into account. In a manner reminiscent of Henry Fielding, author of the often-bedded "Tom Jones", Bayliss perks up interest by introducing sexual passages. Actually there is more talk about sex than consummations, but when these do occur they are hilarious.
- Three Little Beavers.
- Edge of Allegiance.
- Her Kenya Sunrise: An Interracial Romance.
- Gloucestertide (Gloucesterman) eBook: Jonathan Bayliss: www.farmersmarketmusic.com: Kindle Store!
Page after page delineate Caleb's yearnings for Lillian Cloud, the mother of his child who prolongs a no-touch flirtation, or for Gloria Keith, his bored and sexually accessible landlady, or for Belle Cingani,a free spirit and a writer who collects male partners as easily as picking up apples. These three women decide when the coital moment is possible. For all Caleb's longing, women do the seducing, though, since he is so drab and puny, their attraction is mysterious.
Maybe the women like the talk of sex more than the practice. Fortunately for him Caleb is well versed in badinage. A rare critic and possibly reader has made the point that Bayliss seems to be condemning modern life for its greed and the capitalist system which is its predominant form in the United States as somehow destructive of qualities which are aesthetic or that would lead "pilgrims" on voyages of creativity and discovery; not to mention the system's likelihood or certainty of booms and busts..
Yet "pilgrim", meaning tourist, and "kilroy"; meaning driver of heavy rigs transporting frozen fish, are two of the most derogatory terms in the book. Since so many of the characters, from whatever persuasion, are held up to ridicule, I do not find Bayliss's scorn for modernity to be altogether the case. He is fascinated by the intricacy of machinery and the chicanery of the free market as reflected in the quasi-legal machinations of the Graveyard, read Wall Street.
Bayliss shows how the lending and borrowing of money and the charging of interest can lead to moral and physical failure or to hypocrisy and commends Catholicrats Democrats , despite backslidings to Return on Investment ROI , and deprecates Protesticans Republicans , who don't backslide as they are already happily there. As Caleb asserts sometimes proudly and sometimes sotto voce, he is a member of the Resistance.
Bayliss delights in describing scenes and scenery in Gloucester, Massachusetts but he also delights in describing scenery in locations outside Gloucester. Drawbridge Press January 1, Language: Print edition purchase must be sold by Amazon. Thousands of books are eligible, including current and former best sellers. Look for the Kindle MatchBook icon on print and Kindle book detail pages of qualifying books. Print edition must be purchased new and sold by Amazon. Gifting of the Kindle edition at the Kindle MatchBook price is not available.
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Bayliss's highly innovative and polymathic novels employ a vast vocabulary, contain mathematical and philosophical puzzles, and avoid pop culture references in favor of historical and mythological allusions. Bayliss was putting the finishing touches on the final novel, Gloucestermas, when he died in at the age of Hear the many voice gathered in. English Choose a language for shopping. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web.
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Jonathan Bayliss
Please try again later. As Shakespeare said in another context, "It out Herods Herod, pray you avoid it. A writer, any writer, strives to express ideas some of which may be elusive.
It is better to climb mountains than to look at them. As the poet Robert Browning said "a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for? Yet, having said this there is much in his contradictory divagations to give the reader pause. I think especially of the observations about the effects and after effects of the atomic and hydrogen bombs or the effects and after effects of over-population. These indictments are proclaimed in the last chapter though almost everything about biological as opposed to human sex written before leads up to them.
By advocating the use of contraceptives and vasectomy Bayliss is aware that he is subverting the purposes of Nature, yet by defying determinism, or its synonym predestination, he is asserting his ability to make up his own mind and to do as he wishes. The enigmatic motto taken from Richard Henry Dana at the end of the book was written by an abolitionist who supported the emancipation of slaves, yet in the twist or is it gyre?
I doubt very much that these readings would make it any simpler. At times, however, I have made my own simplifications.
In this spirit I offer the following as suggested narrative lines: The central and for the most part only character is Michael Chapman. Except for Caleb Karcist, his disciple, accessory characters and even Caleb are viewed through Michael's stream of consciousness. Of course, many of Michael's thoughts apply to Bayliss, but the reader should focus on the character rather than on the author.
Michael is self-educated and has a remarkable ability to recall bits of everything he has read and seen and to put them into a shifting mosaic as he traverses his outer and inner worlds. He is the husband of a woman called Ruth who is one of the Ruths who figure in the novel as objects of his desire, whether this desire be real or imaginary. Perhaps as with his wife when his desire is most real it is most imaginary and that is the reason why he and his wife harmonize only when their separate longings and imaginings coincide.
The book has two highpoints. The first occurs when Ruth, the wife, takes the man's role and rapes her husband, though the rapee achieves a peak of enjoyment that he may not have experienced in ordinary forms of coitus. This concupiscent melee, the reasons for it, and its results are steeped in irony. For some this incident and others of a like nature may smack of pornography. I can see why adolescents or young curious and poorly informed girls and boys, or men and women may experience salacious thrills by reading these pages For me it was not thus as I have read so much of a similar nature before and as life itself has already shown me the needs and extravagances of sex.
If the reader wants another Henry Miller or D. Lawrence exulting in the exchanges of connubial bliss this is the place to find it. To me the second highpoint was more mysterious and lasting than sexual euphoria. This was an incident that occurred to Michael while serving as a radio operator on his LST during a typhoon off a Pacific atoll. In the midst of this stormy scene Michael hears music coming from a record player owned by a superior officer which he later thinks comes from Bizet's Carmen, though it is not the too often heard Toreador song, and he has an esthetic sensation that comes from parts of his body or his mind that are not dominated by what he calls Mr.
I am willing to let this episode stand out because it is so compellingly told. The book is balanced by a party that Mike's colleagues give him on his thirty-fourth birthday, which happens to be very didactic, because, like the autocrat he is, Michael expounds on his favorite cultural subject the uses of ritual and myth and by another party at the end of the book, this time given by Mike.
At this later party Michael does not expatiate but, internally if not externally, he has thoughts about world devastation and over population that accord with his vasectomy. Ironically, however, his wife Ruth has presented him with a fourth baby that like the third, who had unaccountable blond hair, may or may not be his.
Editorial Reviews
When he is not collaborating with Michael on a treatise about tragedy and the role of the hero in society, Caleb has a tempestuous affair with Hecuba a seemingly free-loose woman who is engaged to Silver Fox, a gangster impresario, with the understanding that she must produce a child. Unbeknown to Caleb, at least at first, this is the reason for their assignations. Hecuba's situation is thus like wife Ruth's who wants a daughter so she can reproduce a successors to herself boys simply won't do.
Hecuba gets her old-man "godfather" and also her baby, while Ruth gets her baby with or without Caleb's assistance, for Michael has had a vasectomy, but it turns out to be a boy. Michael's thoughts about this are not given, but, taking everything we know about him.
After author Bayliss tires of calling Michael an archangel, he refers to him as a horned owl so there is indeed a possibility that he is a cuckold. The subject of humor as an engrossing dynamic and life as a game is dropped thereafter for both Michael and Caleb concentrate on the plays and prose of William Butler Years. Michael's various esthetic and philosophical ideas occupy the book's syllabuses. I take this flashing display of ideas casually as it means more to Michael and Bayliss than it means to me.
I think the meditations lead toward art for art's sake, which is to say that man's creative imagination is greater than any other faculty he may have to cope with urgencies, such as earning a living or procreating his kind. Our servants will do that for us. PROLOGOS may be exhausting, but also, more often than not, it stimulates the reader due to the verve, playfulness and invention of its continually changing prose.
Editorial Reviews. Review a learned, intellectual, and demanding work - although it is never Gloucesterbook (Gloucesterman) by [Bayliss, Jonathan]. Jonathan Bayliss was an American novelist and playwright who lived and wrote in Gloucester, Bayliss's Gloucesterman tetralogy explores the concepts of mythology and ritual throughout history; Gloucesterbook and its sequel Gloucestertide create a fiction-world out of Gloucester similar to the Wessex of Thomas Hardy.
While it is risky to say this, I think Bayliss was a process-oriented philosophy who like Heraclitus thought everything was constantly changing. This accounts for the shifts in Michael's consciousness, from high to low, from absurd to reasonable, from slang to pedantry. Unlike his other books Gloucesterbook and Gloucestertide, as far as style goes, I think the main inspiration for this book was Francois Rabelais c.