{Story} Omega - Chapter Twenty Three (5,184 Words)
Bradley Stoke
=====
Summary of whole novel
======================
Omega returns the adult reader to the world of childhood
imagination: a world populated by the fantastic, the fabulous
and the thoroughly improbable. But a world where adult
concerns of poverty, injustice, prejudice, politics and economics
are all too real. In this world, the reader is taken on a search for
the Truth in a more literal sense than one would expect. On the
way, the reader meets characters familiar to childhood who
confront this question with different formulations and very
different solutions.
The novel is a picaresque satire that takes the reader to places
that exist only in the imagination, but are also very like those of
their normal experience. The novel takes the reader to some
very bizarre places and their even more bizarre inhabitants. It is
likely to appeal to anyone who has not forgotten the childhood
pleasures of reading in bed, but is impatient with facile answers
to difficult questions.
For more: http://bradleystoke.0catch.com
Previously
==========
Beta and I travel towards the Suburbs in pursuit of the Truth.
Omega - Chapter Twenty Three
============================
Psychologically and physically exhausted, we finally came
within a furlong of the Suburbs, which stretched ahead of us as
we mounted the ridge that hid the Country from the Suburbs
and its people. Although Beta was rather less than enthusiastic
at leaving behind green fields and forests for the neatly aligned
houses on the square grid of Suburban planning, I felt a distinct
warming. I was almost home again, at last.
In front of the rows of Suburban streets was the Art Gallery, a
building I had never seen before but had often heard about,
built at a time when the Suburbs had grandiose pretensions
beyond its present status. It towered incongruously high above
modest semi-detached roofs, built on a peculiar design which
blended elements of many different ages and cultures in a
bizarre heterogeneous mix. There were Corinthian pillars,
Byzantine domes, Gothic towers, Arabic murals and, in the
long approach in front, were statues sprinkled about of its
garden lawns. A thoroughly modern Formica display attached
to its Norman arch announced unnecessarily The Art Gallery.
Beta gripped my hand tightly. "It's enchanting!" She gasped.
"We must have a look. We've got the time, and anyway I need
the rest. My feet are aching." She lifted up the sole of one, bent
back and brushed off small grass leaves that had attached
themselves there.
I nodded. "I wouldn't mind the detour myself." So we crossed
the field to the road, mounted a stile and walked along the
spotless tarmac towards the gateway to the Art Gallery
grounds. A pig was sitting in a chair wearing a dark navy blue
uniform and a peaked cap. He raised his bowed head slightly
as we approached, judged us to be harmless and dropped his
head again. We ambled along the gardens, past antique lamp-
posts regularly alternating with waste paper bins, by which
were empty benches, each distinguished by a plaque donated
by patrons of the Art Gallery. The statues on the lawn were as
miscellaneous as the architecture. Some were of great antiquity,
portraying nude men possessing incredibly muscular build and
remarkably tiny penises, and naked women of graceful
curvature and combs in their hair. Some were abstract and
suggested forms and shapes, exquisite in themselves but remote
from concrete reality. Some were composed of a jumble of
materials that might have been found on any rubbish heap, but
were put together in a harmony of shape and form.
There were very few people around. Beta remarked on this
with a frown. "Surely such a large and splendid Art Gallery this
should attract people from all over!"
I smiled. "I don't think very many people from the Suburbs are
especially enthralled by Art," I speculated. "If this were the
City, I'm sure there'd be very many more visitors." I looked
around. "Still, it's not totally deserted, so it can't be closed," I
commented indicating two eurypterids eating sandwiches on a
bench and a family of pigs playing around a statue of an
enormous scorpion whose tail was menacingly poised to strike.
"There'll be more people inside, I'm sure."
However, after passing the pig seated by the Art Gallery doors
hidden by the shadows of the tall Palladian pillars at the top of
a steep rise of steps, there seemed to be a paucity of visitors
inside the building's immense interior. Along the balcony ringing
the entrance hall, a diprotodon was viewing a set of miniatures
and a centaur was stretching his head up to look at a very tall
statue of an eminent gentleman in a frock coat at the further end
of the hall. The only other people were two very bored women
sitting behind the glass of the museum shop amongst a
collection of posters, post cards and fine art books.
The hall was not empty, though. Its impressive space was
adorned by statues, paintings and murals from all ages, in all
styles and often of quite monstrous dimensions. Huge statues
representing famous brontosaurs, scorpions, mastodons and
psammeads were dotted amongst immense paintings of naked
women, wealthy patrons, vases of flowers, triptychs of heaven,
hell and purgatory, or midgard, asgard and Armageddon.
Monstrous chandeliers swung above our heads supported by
massively thick chains and the rear view of the outspread wings
of an albatross in a dress suit.
Beta gasped. "There's so much here! Have we got time to look
at it all?"
"We'll see as much as we can," I remarked, striding past a
statue of Heracles cracking open a lion's skull with a rock, and
underneath a Pop Art painting of the Mighty Thor to enter the
smaller galleries beyond. Beta followed, her eyes darting this
way and that, at the tiled murals, the luscious geometric
carpets, the erotic statues of couples indulging in bizarre sexual
gymnastics, and grandiose canvases marked by single massive
brush strokes or an abstract mess of thickly dripping oil paints.
The whole building had an aura of reverence and silence highly
conducive to Art appreciation, locking out all mundane daily
affairs.
We walked through a series of corridors, admiring different
species of Art, through a room painted black and containing
only a single used and collapsed washing-up bottle, past a pile
of loosely arranged bricks guarded by a panoply of security
devices, and around a vista of videos featuring different views
of the same uninspiring terraced house on different times of the
day. Our eyes were dazzled by the sights, but our feet were
aching more than before we'd arrived. So much for coming into
the Art Gallery to rest.
We entered a smaller room than most, featuring modernist
paintings and sculptures from the surrealist to the abstract
expressionist, from op art to found art, from the photographic
to the neoraphaelite. In the middle of this room stood a large
canvass on an easel, behind was a man in his mid-thirties
wearing a black beret, a purple smock, and very baggy black
trousers. In one hand he held a long paint brush from which
globules of paint were threatening to drop while his arm
supported a palette kept in place by a thumb through a hole.
The Artist's long nose peeped out from behind the easel, and
he scrutinised us coming in with one eye squeezed close and
the other along the length of his arm and measured by his
upright paint brush. "Good afternoon and welcome, fellow
Ĺsthetes." He greeted us. "You come to admire and appreciate
the illustrious panoply of Art the Gallery is proud to display, I
deem?"
"It's very impressive," I admitted. "There's so much of it, and so
varied."
"Not varied enough, I believe," the Artist mused, lowering his
brush. "Many fine and illustrious schools are mysteriously
unrepresented. Great hiatuses in the grand diffuse tradition of
representational art are hidden from sight. Where, for instance,
are the metaconcretists, the neomodernists and the
protoromantics? Why such paucity of quasisurrealists, aural art
and brochure montagists? It is a disgrace they are not
represented here. Schools of art which have emerged over the
centuries - such as the Marxist school, the Feline expressionists
and the heterodoxians - not displaying their great deserved
worth."
"That's a lot of different schools of art!" Exclaimed Beta.
"Which do you practise?"
"All and every one," the Artist announced proudly. "I am willing
to employ any style appropriate to the effect I visualise and
which best encapsulates its ultimate Truth." He raised his paint
brush again and scrutinised Beta. "You are a vision rarely
encountered in these environs. A woman so unlike those from
the Suburbs who most often venture into these galleries. I
presume that the Country is your abode. Your bearing and
dress is so typical and so worthy of pulchritudinous immortality.
It would be an inestimable privilege and a precious opportunity
were you to sit for me. Your composure inspires me. I crave to
render you in oil: capture your essence, your inmost coherence
and your déshabillé. Grant me my wish, I beg."
Beta smiled, clearly flattered. "Do you want to paint a portrait
of me?"
"Most assuredly so. Future ages and cultures must not be
denied your beauty." He gestured towards a chair on which sat
a bowl of chrysanthemums and daffodils. "Pose for me here
and now. I feel the imperative to capture your soul on my
canvass. Remove the vase and flowers. My still life can be
completed another day."
"I'm not sure we have the time," Beta remarked uncertainly.
She looked at me for guidance, but I nodded. The opportunity
to rest my feet seemed quite desirable in itself. "Well, maybe
we can. How long will it take?"
"Not long at all, I assure you," the Artist said, strolling towards
the chair, picking up the vase and setting it carefully on the
floor. "Sit here. Relax. You must agree. My muse must not be
denied!"
Beta lowered herself into the chair, crossed her legs and rested
her arms on the chair rests. I sat on the padded seats provided
by the Art Gallery. The Artist walked back to his easel,
removed the painting he'd been working on and carefully
placed it against the wall. It was probably intended to be a
portrait of the flowers that had earlier been on the chair, but
except for a splash of yellow that might have represented the
daffodils there was little in the viscous broad strokes and
amorphous puddles of paint which at all resembled flowers or
vases. It seemed nothing more to me than a random mess of
oily paint.
"That's fine!" The Artist said approvingly, studying Beta with
the aid of his paintbrush. "Now put on a more solemn
expression. Remove the idle humour of your smile. Suggest
more pathos and regret. Uncross and slightly open your legs.
Lay one hand on the upper thigh. Place your other hand behind
your exceptional bouquet of hair. Slightly tilt the ankle. Raise
the wrist ever so slightly."
Beta obediently followed each of the Artist's instructions,
adopting an increasingly uncomfortable and extremely unnatural
pose. She ached with each more elaborate demand. At last, the
Artist was satisfied, while Beta was on the verge of toppling off
the chair and knocking over the vase.
"Perfect!" He said at last. "Uncompromising. Suggestive of
idyllic rural grace. Beautiful. You shan't regret this." He laid his
palette on the floor and picked up a large thick pencil which he
used to draw on the canvass. From where I sat, it was
impossible to see exactly what he was doing, but it appeared
fairly random and uncoordinated. The pencil slashed
backwards and forwards in large broad gestures, pausing
occasionally for particular minutiĹ that seemed worthy of more
attention. On occasion he raised his pencil, with the same
gesture as with the paintbrush, to measure Beta's relative height
and sometimes that of objects nowhere near Beta, including the
doorway behind him and the neon lights above our heads.
"The paintings and sculptures here are very impressive," I
remarked idly.
"You think so?" The Artist remarked. "True, they apprehend
some of the rich tradition of Art but there is such a meagre
representation of living Art. Art should be seen as it is, not
preserved like fossils and antiques. Art is of the moment:
vibrant and urgent. It should evoke the time in which we live in
all its plurality, eliciting both poverty and opulence." He
gestured towards a large canvass on the wall which consisted
of a collapsed and rather worn bicycle tyre glued on to a mass
of paint and random cuttings from women's magazines. "Like
this masterpiece, which flaunts the very essence of our time."
"It does?" wondered Beta. "It doesn't look quite as impressive
as some of the other paintings. Like that one of the pigs dancing
in a field in the main hall."
"Pigs dancing in a field? Could that be Cannelloni, or is it
Bratwurst? Such naőve art of the Vermicelli school is the very
antithesis of this Art. Whereas Puddle's classic mirrors to us the
ineluctable chaos and complexity of our age, urging one to
reassess ones very raison d'łtre and revealing, satirically and
subtly, our relationship with travel and the media, - the two
main aspects of our age - both deflated in a swirl and posture
of free thinking expression; the other is just an illusory image of
a time that never existed and probably never will."
"But we saw pigs just like that playing around a statue of a
scorpion as we came in," Beta objected, wearily holding herself
in position. "I've never seen bicycle tyres splattered amongst
paint and scraps of paper before."
"That is because you are a Country girl," explained the Artist.
"In your idyllic romantic world, all is play and nature: so to you
it seems unaffected. But to most people, deprived of tactile
sensual pleasure, the deflated bicycle tyre is more real and
more poignant. Particularly so in those City districts so poor
that the motor car rarely encroaches. The most consequential
and potent images of our time are urban and Suburban." He
lowered his pencil and leaned back to admire the lines he had
sketched on the canvass. He bent down, picked up his palette
and brush, and stood back while contemplating where to place
the first brush stroke. "Art is not intended to comfort. It should
challenge, discomfort, undermine, re-evaluate and disassemble.
Art should be a kick in the face, a punch in the groin, or a
garotting in the dungeon. It must hurt, disillusion, deconstruct
and destroy. The beholder must reel in shock, cough in rage
and splutter in incoherence."
"That's not the Art I like most," Beta argued. "I prefer Art to be
beautiful, illuminating and enhancing."
"And what is more beautiful than that!" Insisted the Artist,
diagonally tracing a broad stroke of red paint across the
canvass. "What enhances more than that which confronts rather
than comforts? What is more beautiful than chaos, disorder and
anarchy? No doubt you still subscribe to passé notions of
beauty, expressed by elegance of shape and form, harmonised
by balance between foreground and background, evoking
geometric structures of simplicity and symmetry. Surely it is
better to subvert such idealistic romantic notions, and capture
the nonlinear, nonharmonious whole of our world."
"Shouldn't Art achieve more than that?" Beta objected. "Isn't it
Science that should explore such things?"
"Au contraire," the Artist reacted. "The Scientist's r"le, and
that of the Artist, is to see and describe. The two are identical.
The difference is in the nature of that observation and
description. The Scientist is analytical and rigorous. The Artist
is impressionistic, abandoned and sensuous. The Artist and
Scientist represent two aspects of the same Truth. The Scientist
reduces the world to axioms, theories, hypotheses and
definitions. The Artist exposes its greater, irreducible whole.
While the Scientist's tools are those of matriculation and
exegesis, those of the Artist's are imagination and technique.
Long before Planck, Heisenberg and Hawking, the Artist knew
in his heart that the world was an uncertain, polydimensional,
unquantifiable sphere of space and time, driven by forces of
mathematical necessity, blown apart from an original state of
incredible density and energy. The Artist perceived the world
as random motion governed by forces of strange attraction,
evolving and devolving, swirling and revolving in no particular
direction, but mysteriously attaining shape and meaning. The
Truth exists in abstract expressionism, cubism and
deconstruction. Remove the surface and turbulent disorder
reveals its own resplendence and purpose."
"But not all Art is like that," I remarked. "Many of the
contemporary pieces here are much more real and
representational than you suggest."
"Quelle dommage! That is regrettably so. Too many Artists
shy away from the deeper and more profound truths. They
attempt to capture an unreal perfection of shape, form and
purpose which illustrate how little they fathom the higher pursuit
of Art. But, heureusement, there are sufficient who pursue a
greater quest. Not just in the visual Arts displayed here in the
rooms and halls of the Art Gallery; but also in the aural,
theatrical and olfactory arenas. There are symphonies and
concertos which dispense entirely with the need for musical
instruments, notation or structure. Novels which have
abandoned the imprisonment of language, syntax and
punctuation. Plays which are random, uncoordinated and
interminable."
"Won't they be rather boring?" Beta wondered, squinting her
face in the pain of her posture. "How can a play possibly be
worth watching if it has no plot or characters?"
"Isn't life just like that? Is it not just a directionless meandering
from birth to death? All the structure that there is in life is that
which is imposed on it by timetables, conventions and routine.
Traditional theatre betrays its imperative for accurate
representation when it suggests more form, structure and
purpose than actually pertains. It becomes nothing more than
yet another idealisation of a brutal, unpleasant Truth. Real
theatre, like real visual Art, is that which shows the
pointlessness, the waste and disorder of life: mundane,
disorganised and, yes, boring. But boredom is an inappropriate
response. Boredom is a state of mind which refuses to see the
power and beauty in the tedious, the monotonous, the
unstructured, the interminable and the anticlimactic. Boredom is
only one of many possible responses. One can also feel
annoyed, irritated, uncomfortable and somnolent. Just as one
feels emotions of enlightenment, joy, rapture and
purposiveness. When Performance Artists cover themselves in
pig swill and excrement; ride around naked on tricycles many
times too small for them; wallow in blood from fresh carcasses
from the abattoir; lie under a mass of scorpions; or regurgitate
nails and used condoms through their nostrils: then they are all
capturing the ultimate essence of life, the universe and
everything!"
"If such Art has the effect you say why is there not much more
of a response to it?" I couldn't help asking. "Very few people
ever seem to be that troubled by it."
"That is not true," the Artist assured me. "Although it is often
said that indifference is the worst fate that can befall Art: in truth
it is oppression and censorship which most bedevil it; even
when it also results in some of the most profound oeuvres. And
I am afraid the forces of intolerance and repression are even
now gathering to suppress the finest flourishes of our culture.
The religious bigots and fundamentalists damn
nonrepresentational and experimental Art as contravening an
imperative to celebrate the world. The Coition government
often threatened to deprive Art of its lifeblood of funding. And
now some of the parties who have set themselves up in
opposition to the Red Government attack contemporary Art
with a rare ferocity, as if politics were the only province of
Artistic enterprise. The Red, White and Green Parties have
always been ambivalent friends of Art. The Blue Party has
criticised Art but never threatened to destroy it.
"The Black Party show no such ambivalence. Their very
manifesto is a vicious diatribe of ignorant slander,
demonstrating a deep and wilful misunderstanding. If there
were a Black, rather than a Red, Government, no Art would be
permitted which did not feature heroic figures in classical poses
in simplistic tones and colours. Music would become a military
march, theatre would become a hackneyed expression of
propaganda and the great legacy of the Art of our century
would be pulverised into its original components. The Black
Party are danger enough, but they have been a force which has
commanded little general support beyond their widely scattered
racist strongholds. The danger, however, is exacerbated by the
Illicit Party, about which I know little but what I do know is
that their Chairman Rupert is no friend of Art. What is further
alarming is that his excitable followers have displayed their
vituperation and violence in a much more active and organised
way than the Black Party have ever done. They disrupt
exhibitions, firebomb theatres, wantonly destroy monuments
and physically attack exponents of contemporary culture."
"There seem to be rather a lot of Illicit Party supporters heading
towards the Suburbs," Beta remarked. "We saw thousands of
them marching through the Country." The Artist looked more
than a little frightened. "Did you say that there are thousands of
these hooligans marching on the Suburbs? Goodness! They
could march on the Art Gallery. They could destroy it."
"Surely, they wouldn't do anything like that," I remarked, a little
uncertainly. "They're coming to search for the Truth, not
destroy buildings."
"It wouldn't be untypical of what we've seen of them," Beta
disagreed. "Every time we come across them they pick fights
and destroy things. If they could start that fire in the forest, why
couldn't they do the same here?"
"It just doesn't seem very likely." I argued. "It doesn't seem
possible that ..."
My sentence was abruptly truncated by a loud crashing noise
from elsewhere in the Art Gallery. Beta, the Artist and I hushed
to determine what the noise could be. The Artist took up a
tense pose, his paintbrush held frozen in mid-air and his face a
deathly white. Beta's pose was actually more relaxed than it
had been for more than twenty minutes, but her expression was
no less tense than the Artist's. I tried to imagine what the noise
might have been, its echoes still reverberating down the
corridors. It sounded too close to be an aeroplane, and the sky
was far too clear for it to be thunder.
"I didn't like the sound of that at all!" Beta remarked.
"What was it?" The Artist asked.
"Perhaps it was ..." I started, but Beta abruptly shushed me,
placing a finger over her lips and a cupped hand over her ear to
gesture that we listen. I did so, and heard the distant noise of
people running about and shouts that sounded inappropriately
loud for a place associated with quiet contemplation.
"I think we should get out of here!" Beta remarked.
"I think you're right!" agreed the Artist cautiously, putting his
palette down and placing his paint brush into a glass bowl by
the side. "Whatever it was I don't know, and I don't want to
find out. There's no ..."
As if echoing the Artist's fears there was another catastrophic
crashing sound, louder than the first, accompanied by the
distinct sound of smashing glass. There came a series of self-
congratulatory shouts and yelps.
"Let's move!" Beta said, running towards me.
The Artist nodded, gazing mournfully at his canvass. Beta and I
briefly examined his painting, which really resembled Beta no
more than his previous painting resembled flowers. It seemed
nothing more than random brush strokes over a series of pencil
lines, in which it was just about possible to make out what were
either Beta's eyes or her nipples. The Artist sighed: "It would
have been a great work of art. One of my very best. It would
have redefined beauty, and captured the very quintessence of
rural innocence."
"It can't be helped," Beta said, unimpressed by the Artist's
portrayal of her. "How do we get out?"
"There's only one way, and that's the way you came in," the
Artist answered.
"Well, let's get going!" I said, grasping Beta's hand. We dashed
out of the gallery we were in, with the Artist in tow, past
canvasses and sculptures, towards the source of the
commotion. We soon came across evidence of the cause of the
noise. An abstract statue of what may have been a large pig
was lying in several broken chunks on the ground, part of it
projecting outwards through a smashed skylight. All the
paintings in this gallery were slashed by knives, several almost
to ribbons, and a pile of tyres which had previously been
mounted in the shape of a submarine were scattered widely
about.
"The vandals! The vandals!" cried the Artist in genuine distress.
"What have they done to Paella's classic sculpture? And they
haven't spared even the finest Plunkett. And that torn canvass is
the famous Tropic of Scorpio by the great Spam! How can
this have happened? Have they no soul?"
"Come on!" Cried Beta urgently. "We've got to get out!"
She ran on, with the Artist dawdling behind, in shocked
disbelief at the damage strewn ahead. A pile of bricks had been
dismantled and its constituent parts used as missiles to crack
glass cabinets, punch holes in paintings, smash the faces of
sculpted children and to lie in a heap at the foot of a chipped
and nearly unrecognisable statue of a naked woman.
"It is the Illicit Party!" Exclaimed Beta. "Look at that!" She
pointed at some coarsely sprayed graffiti across a series of
sketches of country scenes. Rupert Rules OK! read one.
The Truth! read another.
"They can't even spell!" Remarked the Artist bitterly, pointing at
the words sprayed along the length of a toppled statue: Death
To The Avent Guard!" All this Art! All this Culture!
Priceless! Immeasurable! Uninsurable! Destroyed forever! I
hate the bastards who did this! I hate, detest and loath them!"
We ran down corridors, passing only one figure: a capybara
sprawled apparently drunk by a frame that had been pulled to
the floor and its canvass torn out and ripped into shreds
scattered across the gallery. In another near encounter, we
heard the sound of shouting, chanting and destruction coming
from a gallery to one side as we dashed past without being
seen. The Artist bent his head back and grimaced as a painting
came crashing to the ground, and the glass protecting the
surface shattered into jagged fragments. Our good fortune in
avoiding any encounter with the perpetrators eventually came
to an end, and this was when we entered the main hall where
we at last came face to face with those responsible for the
vandalism.
The enormous space which had before seemed cathedral-like
in its solemn majesty and timelessness, now resembled the
aftermath of a hurricane or earthquake. Enormous statues,
including one of a scorpion, lay shattered in fragments on the
gallery floor. A statue of Superman stood beheaded over the
shattered glass cabinets in which his head was now resting. A
mediĹval triptych representing the temptation of Christ was
covered with mud and had the javelin from one of the Spartan
sportsmen embedded into its wooden surface. In amongst all
this destruction more devastation was being wrought. A group
of gorillas in black leather costumes were gleefully tossing
antique pottery to each other. Three or four small dragons were
tearing up the fabric of an enormous still life portrait of some
flowers. Others were bludgeoning sculptures and paintings with
the fragments of others. A stone club originally brandished by a
stone Samson to demolish sinners was now being used to
knock out chips from a monstrous statue of Snow White,
whose face was now abused to an extent no human could
possibly withstand. An array of video screens were smashed in
by a large weasel brandishing the stone arm of a wart hog.
The Artist stood transfixed in horror. "That was a priceless
Grillade! That was Peccadillo's finest painting! That was the
most important spiritual painting of the Parmesan School. And
that mass of paper, wood and cardboard is all that remains of
Eponymous Borscht's greatest masterpiece!"
"What shall we do?" I asked in more practical concern. It
seemed unlikely we could get across the main hall unnoticed.
"I suppose we'll just have to hope they're too preoccupied to
concern themselves with us!" Beta answered optimistically.
"But I don't really want to risk it."
We stood petrified in the shadows of the Art Gallery's columns,
unable to go forward and equally unable to turn back.
However, our indecision was resolved after not too long, less
by choice than circumstance. A group of eurypterids, some
seven or eight feet long, were throwing broken chunks of
sculpture at an enormous abstract painting just above an arch,
and although their aim was not generally very good, some of
their missiles hit the canvass, causing fragments of heavily
layered oil paint to crack off and fall as polychromatic
stalactites to the floor. The Artist mumbled to himself with
abhorrence: "Don't they know it's a priceless Schwarzstein!"
Then driven mad with Artistic rage, he burst out from where he
hid and ran towards them. "Stop it! Stop it! This is madness!
Stop it!"
The eurypterids stopped just as he had bid, but not out of
respect. They turned round and jeered at him. He also
attracted the attention of a group of hyenas who had been
chewing up a wooden madonna and a velociraptor whose
vicious claw had been shredding a painting of some naked
women having dinner in a pigsty. They surrounded him,
laughing and jeering.
"Just stop it! Do you hear!" The Artist shouted bravely. "Don't
ruin masterpieces which have survived hundreds and thousands
of years. I beg of you! Leave them alone!"
"It's a flipping Artist!" Laughed a hyena.
"A flipping avant-garde Artist, I bet!" Sneered the velociraptor.
"He's probably painted some of this stuff! What would the
great Rupert think of that?" The dinosaur clouted the Artist on
the face causing him to collapse to the floor and out of our sight
underneath the jeering predators.
Beta looked at me in horror. "What are they going to do to
him?"
"I don't think we should stay to find out!" I replied, running full
pelt across the main hall, jumping over broken statues and
glass. Beta ran behind me, and very soon overtook me,
demonstrating again her better ability to run over and around
obstacles. Our spurt took us through the main entrance, past
the shattered glass where the shop had been: its books,
postcards and posters spread torn all around the hallway. We
darted down the steps, past the blood-stained body of the pig
who had been guarding the entrance. His snout was a bloody
mess and his coat was badly ripped. He snorted mournfully as
we tripped down the steps, a pool of blood in front of him in
which could be seen the image of a bearded figure in a halo
reflected from the mural above the arch.
There were more Illicit Party supporters and others scattered
about the Art Gallery's gardens, but they were milling about
with rather less purpose, and even seemed to be in cheerful
holiday mood. Some were idly sitting around a statue of a large
bear which they showed no interest in vandalising, and rather
more in eating their sandwiches. Beta and I ran along the
pathway leading out of the Art Gallery, past the sleeping figure
of the first guard we had met, still unaware of the malicious
damage being perpetrated inside.
Once out of the Art Gallery grounds, Beta and I stood by a tall
lamp-post beside an ornamental hedge, panting and hawking in
the late afternoon sunshine.
"That was horrible! Horrible! All that destruction! And who's to
know what they'd have done to us if they'd caught us!" Beta
said through short gasps. "I hope that's the last time I get a
fright like that!"
I nodded sympathetically and sincerely. "So do I!"
For more: http://bradleystoke.0catch.com
Katie McN
I've had the opportunity to read quite a bit of your fiction and am
always amazed by your output and the consistent level of quality you
maintain in your writing. You show us an original story idea and have
created an interesting universe where you let your characters play to
their hearts content. I can see that substantial effort was required to
do this.
I read some of your earlier stories and felt the language was sometimes
stilted and overly formal. In days gone by, you filled the skies with
perfect tenses and I remember one sentence where the auxiliary verb
'had' was used three times. You no longer do this sort of thing and I
feel it's helped make your stories much more accessible to readers,
including those who, like me, prefer a more straight-forward brand of
prose.
In the distant past, I found that you relied on adverbs to bolster your
verbs in ways that reduced the value of the information you were trying
to impart. You seem to have found ways to take advantage of your
extensive vocabulary to select verbs that don't require modifiers and
the adverbs I did notice all seemed appropriate word selections.
As this is Chapter 23, I can't comment on opening and closing, but the
story is interesting enough for me to be encouraged to find Chapter 1
and look forward to where you're going to take these people.
I'd like to divide my suggestions into minor points followed by a
discussion of more fundamental issues.
The minor items first.
I'm going to provide you with the phrase where the problems occurs and
my thoughts here in order to avoid reposting the entire Chapter.
o an enormous scorpion whose -> who's
o " ... shadows of the tall Palladian pillars ... " -> I personally
don't care for multiple adjectives attempting to support a noun, but
this may be part of the style you are trying to use for the story so I
won't make any suggestions about things like this. I will point out that
there is an adjective that starts with the same first letter as the noun
and it may interfere with smooth reading of the passage.
o " ... and rested her arms on the chair rests." -> 'rested' and 'rests'
interfere with reading and you might consider changing one or the other
to another word
o "Such na久e ... " -> the second word has a special character in it
which might be a transmission problem, but is what came through to my
newsreader.
o "The Scientist's r"le ... " -> I think the second word is s typo and
should be 'role'
o " ... but there is such a meagre ... " -> I'm familiar with many of
the spelling variations in US and UK fiction. In this case I wonder if
this is one or is it a typo, or, something else?
Here are some discussion and consideration points that are based solely
on my opinion. Obviously you have your goals and objectives for the
story and I have no idea what they might be. This suggests that my
thoughts could miss the mark by a lot. Well, it's never stopped me
before. ;-)
I will never have a vocabulary as broad as yours. The words 'Bradley
Stoke' suggests to me it's time to open dictionary.com in a second
browser window in order to make my way through the story. There are some
who enjoy a story where the author challenges them with words they may
not have seen before or uses language in interesting and new ways. I
don't happen to be one of those people so I may not be the right one to
offer a critique for this chapter. I might suggest that you lose many
readers with the use of a vocabulary that is well beyond the knowledge
of most people. However, why should you care about this? You write for
your own purposes and I now realize that part of your enjoyment comes
with the use of interesting language. Instead of trying to change your
approach, I'll only offer suggestions based on what I'm guessing you're
trying to achieve.
You use many new words from your fantasy universe. Readers of fantasy
love this as they feel they are learning secrets that are not available
to the uninitiated. In this chapter I feel you overdid the use of new
words and also suggest that it might be more effective if you give your
created words the flavor of whatever it is they are supposed to identify
instead of having of just putting together a group of letters. I suggest
you make the new words easier to comprehend and pronounce so the reader
will only have to refer to the story dictionary once per word. You might
also consider using these new terms in a more judicious way.
There are many foreign terms used in the chapter. I realize that
Cervantes used Latin terms in Don Quixote which seems to have provided
some inspiration for you work here. However, he did this in a world he
purported to be equal to the one he lived in when he wrote the story and
suggested he was merely reporting on some events he was familiar with.
You've created a new world and I consider the use of a French word or
phrase to be an anachronism in such a fantasy world. It may well be that
I'd understand this better if I'd read earlier chapters so I won't labor
the point. However, it would be my opinion that you would better serve
yourself if you limited this affectation to the dialog from no more than
one character and avoided using any foreign terms in narration. For
example, when I ran across the word 'heureusement' in a speech from the
narrator, I had to scratch my head and wonder why the author decided to
show off with a term that might have conveyed information better if it
was provided in English.
You are relentless in your use of complex sentence structures to
represent your thoughts. Picaresque satire often contains examples of
convoluted wording and unusual sentence structures. I assume you are
trying to add similar touches. However, we find passages in the same
stories where there is a light touch or some other sort of counter-point
to help clear the reader's circuits as he or she moves through the
story. Here is an example that is representative of the selection:
"We walked through a series of corridors, admiring different species of
Art, through a room painted black and containing only a single used and
collapsed washing-up bottle, past a pile of loosely arranged bricks
guarded by a panoply of security devices, and around a vista of videos
featuring different views of the same uninspiring terraced house on
different times of the day."
You might consider providing the reader with some variation where you
use simpler methods of writing from time to time. The typical reader can
only maintain a high state of concentration for a limited period and
then fades out unless offered a break. Cervantes frequently provides
this sort of thing in Don Quixote (DQ) and it might be worthwhile to add
some easier going from time to time in your story. I felt like an
amateur fighter who loves the sport, but who is being so battered by a
constant stream of body-blows so instead of enjoying the experience of
the fight, he gets to the place where he can only hope the experience
will quickly end.
Your narrator and all the characters seen in this chapter appear to have
the same vocabulary. I'd suggest having one character speak with a
formal vocabulary, a couple of others be more normal and at least one
come across as a bit simple. This would allow you to play as Cervantes
does with dialog and have unexpected characters suddenly espoused deep
and meaningful statements such as the goatherd does near the beginning
of DQ. The passage from the goatherd made me laugh when I read it
because it was an unexpected surprise. You lost the ability to do this
when you had all you characters speak in the same voice. It may well be
that seeing only 5 thousand words out of more than a hundred thousand is
causing me to react to an anomaly in which case please disregard what I
say here.
Might I also suggest that your narrator vary the level of vocabulary and
sentence construction from passage to passage. I love the way Cervantes
is able to do this. His writing seems like a symphony where he takes us
to certain language highs and then brings us back to Earth where we wait
for him to take us on the next ride. I think you'd be better served with
some variation in the voice of the narrator, but once again this is only
my opinion and may be far away from your goals for the story.
I've spent more time describing suggestions than I have telling you what
an exceptional job you've done. Please don't take the volume to indicate
that I don't care for what you've done. Quite the contrary. If I didn't
care for you story, I would either say nothing or posted an "atta boy"
instead of what I offer her. Consider this post as my thinking on how
you can move from 9.5 to 10. ;-)
--
It's Me! Katie McN
<ka...@katie-mcnNOSPAM.com>
Read My Stories at:
www.katie-mcn.com
Wind River
Wonderful descriptions of the art gallery. I love the grand mix of
architectural style used for the building, and you rendered the artist's
personality well. The action at the end was a nice contrast to the quiet
museum visit at the beginning. Good chapter.
-Sue
Bradley Stoke
Thank you for your kind words.
I've always enjoyed going around art galleries, so for me burning the
place to the ground is a bit of vandalism a step too far. On the other
hand, although I enjoy modern art on the whole, I am a little
suspicious of the tendency for it to burrow into smaller and smaller
categories of interest to fewer and fewer people. I suppose that's
because in our postmodernist world, it isn't at all clear what art
should be for and what anything should mean, but it does give plenty
of scope for pretentiousness, which clearly was part of the broad
humour of this piece.
Bradley Stoke
Bradley Stoke
Thank you for your comprehensive and detailed critique of chapter
Twenty Three of "Omega". It was a delightful surprise to read so much.
I must confess I've never thought of myself as a particularly
difficult writer with an enormous vocabulary, but I guess perceptions
vary from person to person.
Actually, the notion that this story is an advance in style from my
earlier ones is a bit odd as this is actually one of the earlier
stories I'd written, and what you may have read elsewhere was probably
written later. So, it seems my writing style must be getting steadily
worse. A veritable roadblock of adverbs and past perfect tense
constructions!
However, to be fair, I do try to vary my style a bit from story to
story. This novel is written in a slightly stilted first person
narrative, trying to capture the kind of style used in picaresque
satires of the eighteenth century. I sort of felt it better suited to
irony and satire. The narrator actually has no real voice at all,
except a kind of wooden one, whereas here, as in other chapters, the
real voice of the dialogue is Beta.
The convoluted language is, in this chapter, wholly intentional. And I
suppose I should be flattered in a sense that you noticed just how
unnecessarily verbose it is. The Artist is meant to be someone who
obfuscates and confuses by too great a fondness for long words,
foreign expressions and obscure references. Don't you meet people like
that in Art Galleries every day? And there's quite a lot of invented
art movements and things. Almost all of that is done for humorous and
satirical purposes, and is intended not only as a joke on art
movements but also on the pretentiousness of the Artist.
Thank you for your kind comments on my fiction. I must admit I'd never
been aware that you'd read any of it. The fiction you might have read
may be quite different to the fiction I've posted here, and serves
quite a different purpose. Although there are some themes which are
common across the stuff I've written, like satire, humour and nudity.
Even if it is packaged with a whole load of adverbs, neologisms,
English spellings and formatting problems.
I'm glad you're making such a positive impact on AFO. Fresh voices
like yours are always welcome.
Bradley Stoke
Katie McN
On 20 Mar 2003 00:40:22 -0800 I noticed your interesting post:
As I mentioned in my critique, my opinions are clouded by my writing
interests. I'm aware of the style you are emulating in your story and
understand you've taken on a major challenge. I also realize that I'm
coming in late in the day and might have different comments if I'd read
some of the earlier chapters.
I hope you are able to use something from my post and appreciate your
warm welcome to the group.
Alaric
dialogue, and art was a change from politics.
Bradley Stoke
Thank you for your kind words. Skipping along is quite an important
thing. Too much dialogue and the story doesn't so much skip as wander,
amble and meander. However, I think there's a bit more skipping in the
next chapter. In fact, a virtual hop, skip and a jump!
I'm glad you liked the satire on art. It's difficult knowing how to
direct it, because one can so easily aim for soft targets. But I think
that there is something out of synch when art, which is supposed to
communicate and to be of our time, so often fails to be. And so much
of that art, like Tracey Emin's bed and Damien Hirst's formaldehyde
constructions, are essentially one-liners. Amusing, worth a chuckle,
perhaps slightly shocking, but somehow not quite on the scale of
Picasso's Guernica, or the magnificence of a Jackson Pollock, or the
intensity of a Giacometto.
Still, it is an interesting question where art begins? And what makes
it art anyway?
Bradley Stoke
nativelaw
"Bradley Stoke" <bradle...@hushmail.com> wrote in message
news:aaacc8d6.03031...@posting.google.com...
> Omega
> =====
>
> Summary of whole novel
> ======================
>
Hi Bradley,
I enjoyed this section, about Ahhhrt. The Artist wanting to capture Beta to
satisfy his muse, and then the desecration of art. Although I felt
conscious of the characters being placed in scenarios and made to say
certain things, I think that was effective and I felt secure in the writer's
hands. It was like looking down into one of those shoebox diasporas--wait
that's totally the wrong word but I can't find the correct one -- where it's
open on one side and you look in and watch the scene play out.
Thanks for posting, Bradley.
Andrea
Bradley Stoke
Thank you for your comments. It was interesting your notion of
characters being put in place and made to follow a set script.
Obviously, all literature does that, but I have an enormous amount of
respect for those authors who somehow manage to make the characters
they create appear to have very separate lives. I'm thinking
particularly of DH Lawrence, but there are many others who achieve
this feat, even if, like Lawrence, there is still a polemical aspect
to the fiction.
This novel is clearly at the other end of the scale. It's not remotely
naturalistic, unless you think talking animals (Alaric's number one
favourite!) have some basis in truth. But it's good fun nonetheless to
play around with settings and characters.
Thank you for your kind words,
Bradley Stoke
--
www.asstr.org/~Bradley_Stoke