It's that kind of simplistic thinking that creates fanatics."Īsterios Polyp, you see, was one such fanatic.
"Well, you know, in life, things are seldom either/or. Indeed when Ursula Major first appeared I thought she might have been a seductress, but instead she shows an astute understanding which gives Asterios an uncommon pause for true self-reflection: At first both appear feintly ridiculous: Ursula with her Earth Goddess / Shaman shtick, rearranging Polyp's room as auspiciously as possible according to his birth date (including a table upside down and a chair on its side!) Stiffly with his malapropisms when defending his country's history ("That's a fragrant lie!") or voicing his approval when his wife offers to take Asterios on a picnic ("Knock yourself up!"). Key to this is Stiffly Major, the kind and decent man who takes him in, and his voluptuous wife, Ursula Major, all swirls and curls and curvy floral dresses. For as Asterios picks himself up, spends his last cash on a bus ticket to the remote town of Apogee, and within half an hour resourcefully acquires a new room to rent from an employer to work for, he finds his new, warmly lit environment sufficiently nurturing to reflect on what he has lost and why. This is his life, the life of Asterios Polyp, and it's about to go up in smoke.įrom here on in, the story like everything else is split into two, before and after the fire alternating, the one informing the other.
In his bedroom an equally dishevelled middle-aged man watches homemade video recordings from an enormous library over and over again. Pots and pans pile up in the sink just as the bills pile up on the occupant's desk. Its potted plants have wilted or died and its floor is strewn with the detritus of convenience foods, bottled beer and thrown-off dirty laundry. It begins halfway through under a breaking thunderstorm, in a Manhattan apartment wrecked by neglect. Certainly its punchline had me howling outloud with laughter, and I don't know how many reviewers will concentrate on this aspect, but it is a comedy. It's deliciously funny, immaculately composed and rendered with a witty attention to the smallest of details. Oh, comicbook of the year without a shadow of a doubt. The more something is recalled, the more the brain has a chance to refine the original experience, because every memory is a re-creation, not a playback." "Every memory, no matter how remote its subject, takes place "now", at the moment it's called up in the mind.
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