The Mumpsimus

Strange Horizons has now posted my review of John Clute's latest collection of materials, Stay . A taste: Even a mere glance through Stay , John Clute’s latest collection of book reviews, short stories, and lexicon entries, (or through any of Clute's books, really) will convince you that you are in the presence of genius. But a genius of what type? The type that can turn a million candy wrappers into a surprisingly convincing small-scale replica of a rocket ship, or the type that zips to the heart of a zeitgeist faster than the rest of us? Is this genius a fox, a hedgehog, an anorak? Does it sing in seemingly effortless perfect pitch, or is its singing, like that of a dog, remarkable simply for being at all? The desire to taxonomize is inevitable after reading even a few pages of Clute. He is a wild literary Linnaeus: obsessively compulsed to categorize. As someone generally uninterested in taxonomy, I have struggled to learn to read Clute appreciativel...

Hitting this parenthetical , I knew I was in the wonderful Land of Clute: --Ajvaz has made it clear he does not want the reader to be reminded of Magic Realism in his work, that his texts do not valorize any hero bearer of sigils out of the swamp nor any origin tale at the heart of the delta of tales untold-- Since the death of John Leonard , I've come to cherish Clute more than ever. I've always had an admiration for Clute -- for though my ability to embrace his ideas has often been tempered by my (quasi-irrational?) antipathy to taxonomy vs. his career of it, I love his rhythms and diction, and more than that, I love his willingness to follow the words into a realm more of sound than sense, something Shakespeare did now and then, and all the best poets, and John Leonard, too, who was nearly unique in offering that quality as a book reviewer. Nearly unique. I think of Leonard and Clute as the Jazz Johns of Bookchat. I wish they'd had the chance to play a session t...