What do you think?
Rate this book
Verbivore
196 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1990
63 people want to read
About the author
Christine Brooke-Rose
42 books101 followersChristine Frances Evelyn Brooke-Rose was a British writer and literary critic, known principally for her later, experimental novels. Born in Geneva and educated at Somerville College, Oxford and University College, London, she taught at the University of Paris, Vincennes, from 1968 to 1988 and lived for many years in the south of France.
She was married three times: to Rodney Bax, whom she met at Bletchley Park; to the poet Jerzy Pietrkiewicz; and briefly to Claude Brooke. She shared the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for Such (1966).
She was also known as a translator from French, in particular of works by Robbe-Grillet.
NYT obituary.
She was married three times: to Rodney Bax, whom she met at Bletchley Park; to the poet Jerzy Pietrkiewicz; and briefly to Claude Brooke. She shared the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for Such (1966).
She was also known as a translator from French, in particular of works by Robbe-Grillet.
NYT obituary.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 5, 2013
You wake up tomorrow and your garden is overrun with newspapers. Before your brunchtime enema and lunchtime jazzercise, you pick up one of the weedy papers and read the headline: ALL BOOKS TO BE REPLACED WITH CAT GIFS. You snort derisively, because derisive snorts are your favourite, and return to the lounge to text your friends about how busy you are all the time, because you fill your life with mediocrity and work hard to maintain consistency in your dreary life choices. The next day you swing by the library to return Steve Covey’s How to Be An Even More Mediocre Bastard and notice all the books have been replaced with cat gifs. You browse the former Classics shelf and see an assortment of cats in historical garb with such captions and JANE EYRE IZ NO PUSSY and I HAZ A BLEAK MOUSE. You are not bothered either way because there’s a new bandwagon pulling up outside and a gang of smirking conformist pygmies are beckoning you towards them, and they have doughnuts and soda, and it would be rude not to join them, even if their squinty shifty eyes look like death.
July 28, 2013
This meview is brought to you by Why Are Less Productions, Suite Dezzibel, 13 Ray Dio Close, Intracommunercial Way, Wrything Falls, Bavarois, Krautl-End.
The return of Zipmann (two Ns since twinnings of Man) that is to say .... Isabel and John Ivor Paul aka Zab und Jip in another mind-b .... where the prota .... types endlessly onto .... speaks interruptedly via ... amidst repeated meet .... world economy knees brought ... drowning not waving waves washing soundless ... humanity thrives on simulations ... Oprah opfered seifen states ... tech? No logo chewed up spat out flattened tense ...
...Black screen. Blank dots, with millions of white bytes disappearing into the intersperse. Universally studied infinitely.
************
Christine Brooke-Rose once not-so-famously and all the more stingingly for its mildness dismissed Lawrence Durrell as "Poor Durrell". She would have found the joke amusing when told of certain post modernist sensibilities shared with him, had she been foddered as he has been (although who reads Durrell now?). Verbivore, the third in her own tetralogy, is an exemplar of author-fractured states, not in any pseudo-psycho search for wholiness, but as vehicles to present a multifaceted perspective on the (d)evolution of language in the presence of teachknowlowguys - and yes, she rears her feminist head since the villains in the machine are unapologetically labelled Alphagoi transmuted durch the pox voculi as Alphaguys (is she kinder in her bequeathing Logfag to the numerous etymologically ignorant?). Like Durrell, she re-deploys her characters across the same shifting scenes to reinforce learning through repetition - but there the similarities end, for Durrell remains concentrated on sense of (dis)place and sick amore amidst cultural symbiosis, while Christine Brooke-Rose has other ovations to incubate.
To dispel certain not-as-yet-founded rumours that multilingams are bound in Verbivore - language plays en dehors English are few and far Between, and she remains ostensibly true to her constraints (present tense, no dialogue punctuation, narrative buoyed by characters orating across the footlights). Her work around (cheat sheet for the reader) is the sliding dialogue which is never drama scripted, and her choice of carrying characters to justify their own idiotsyntactical speech patterns, in which they all function as various versions of our eponymous invisible author. Thus, consistent in both content and structure; Christine Brooke-Rose' theory of literary criticism profoundly influences her embodiment of fiction, and her fiction illuminates the careful thinking and logic with which she has constructed her theory. Expect acutely witty content; delight and immersion in a story-teller's dexterity remains a prima facie justification for putting aside her concerns with form, since although Verbivore is cyclical, with all the hallmarks of explorative literature, it does not demand from the reader, as Christine Brooke-Rose never did, acknowledgement or analysis of such. If only pure entombanement (see the origin of inter/enterren/terra to appreciate the loss of freedom entertainment encourages) is sought, it is provided here in full sci-fi laffing me, sure, and for the sillyarse student of metafictrixion, this is one of her easier introductions to both her theory of literary criticism and her self-imposed constraints.
The return of Zipmann (two Ns since twinnings of Man) that is to say .... Isabel and John Ivor Paul aka Zab und Jip in another mind-b .... where the prota .... types endlessly onto .... speaks interruptedly via ... amidst repeated meet .... world economy knees brought ... drowning not waving waves washing soundless ... humanity thrives on simulations ... Oprah opfered seifen states ... tech? No logo chewed up spat out flattened tense ...
...Black screen. Blank dots, with millions of white bytes disappearing into the intersperse. Universally studied infinitely.
************
Christine Brooke-Rose once not-so-famously and all the more stingingly for its mildness dismissed Lawrence Durrell as "Poor Durrell". She would have found the joke amusing when told of certain post modernist sensibilities shared with him, had she been foddered as he has been (although who reads Durrell now?). Verbivore, the third in her own tetralogy, is an exemplar of author-fractured states, not in any pseudo-psycho search for wholiness, but as vehicles to present a multifaceted perspective on the (d)evolution of language in the presence of teachknowlowguys - and yes, she rears her feminist head since the villains in the machine are unapologetically labelled Alphagoi transmuted durch the pox voculi as Alphaguys (is she kinder in her bequeathing Logfag to the numerous etymologically ignorant?). Like Durrell, she re-deploys her characters across the same shifting scenes to reinforce learning through repetition - but there the similarities end, for Durrell remains concentrated on sense of (dis)place and sick amore amidst cultural symbiosis, while Christine Brooke-Rose has other ovations to incubate.
To dispel certain not-as-yet-founded rumours that multilingams are bound in Verbivore - language plays en dehors English are few and far Between, and she remains ostensibly true to her constraints (present tense, no dialogue punctuation, narrative buoyed by characters orating across the footlights). Her work around (cheat sheet for the reader) is the sliding dialogue which is never drama scripted, and her choice of carrying characters to justify their own idiotsyntactical speech patterns, in which they all function as various versions of our eponymous invisible author. Thus, consistent in both content and structure; Christine Brooke-Rose' theory of literary criticism profoundly influences her embodiment of fiction, and her fiction illuminates the careful thinking and logic with which she has constructed her theory. Expect acutely witty content; delight and immersion in a story-teller's dexterity remains a prima facie justification for putting aside her concerns with form, since although Verbivore is cyclical, with all the hallmarks of explorative literature, it does not demand from the reader, as Christine Brooke-Rose never did, acknowledgement or analysis of such. If only pure entombanement (see the origin of inter/enterren/terra to appreciate the loss of freedom entertainment encourages) is sought, it is provided here in full sci-fi laffing me, sure, and for the sillyarse student of metafictrixion, this is one of her easier introductions to both her theory of literary criticism and her self-imposed constraints.
Read
July 23, 2023A sequel of sorts to Xorandor, Verbivore returns to Jip and Zap in their late 30s as another (perhaps more of the same) disruption occurs in world communication. What was cutting edge tech for these computer age Whiz Kids in their early teens has long since evolved into continuing difference. Zab is a German politician, for example!
All of Brooke-Rose's novels are, to some extent, about language--especially how small subsets of communicators within a larger system adjust/alter/invent their own words/meanings. As Jim and Zab pursue the 'truth' behind Verbivore, they slip naturally into the hexadex slang of their "13k" youth, the resulting clash between the minds that invented the language and the minds now using it being among the more amusing aspects for a reader who is now 30 years older than he was on first reading.
Among the amusing elements of this novel include the planet-wide loss of electronic communication and the continued existence of the Soviet Union (even after the real time fall of the Berlin Wall, though before the actual moment of the return of the USSR to Russiahood). I like, in particular, the idea of a "Gorbachevgrad" in these years "a few decades" past 1984. Brooke-Rose has no difficulty imagining change; in this scenario, the 1990 novel imagines continuity which, in fact (if there is such a thing) did not happen.
All of Brooke-Rose's novels are, to some extent, about language--especially how small subsets of communicators within a larger system adjust/alter/invent their own words/meanings. As Jim and Zab pursue the 'truth' behind Verbivore, they slip naturally into the hexadex slang of their "13k" youth, the resulting clash between the minds that invented the language and the minds now using it being among the more amusing aspects for a reader who is now 30 years older than he was on first reading.
Among the amusing elements of this novel include the planet-wide loss of electronic communication and the continued existence of the Soviet Union (even after the real time fall of the Berlin Wall, though before the actual moment of the return of the USSR to Russiahood). I like, in particular, the idea of a "Gorbachevgrad" in these years "a few decades" past 1984. Brooke-Rose has no difficulty imagining change; in this scenario, the 1990 novel imagines continuity which, in fact (if there is such a thing) did not happen.
July 8, 2015
The sequel to "Xorandor". To be honest I found that book quite tiresome when I read it (my first CBR), if I hadn't encountered "Life, End Of" afterwards I might not have persevered with her books.
It's 22 years later. Jip and Zab are now adults, but only marginally more bearable than when they were a pair of Enid Blyton characters who liked to talk nadsat to each other. You don't need to remember the plot of the earlier book too well as it gets recapped, though it's hard to see why anyone would be reading very far in to this if they didn't already know it. This time around the silicate intelligences are interfering with wave-based communications, and demanding humans reduced the amount of information-pollution they put out.
If we date "Xorandor" to its publication year of 1986 then this is set in 2008, uncannily coinciding with an actual world crisis caused by overloaded networks. As with "Amalgamemnon", it's interesting to see how CBR is not far off the mark in anticipating future times. Electronic media are dominating and reshaping the texture of life, writers ("wordprocessors") are marginalised; the humanities are entirely banished from universities (only slightly too early with that prediction); automation has produced increasing amounts of unemployment; China is on the rise but the threat of nuclear war has receded; Glasnost was temporary and the Russians are back to being unfriendly (this was a common expectation in the late 80s); "Post-socialism" is the big idea in politics and all the western parties have converged on the same consensus. So I score it as at least 8/10 for prescience.
It's 22 years later. Jip and Zab are now adults, but only marginally more bearable than when they were a pair of Enid Blyton characters who liked to talk nadsat to each other. You don't need to remember the plot of the earlier book too well as it gets recapped, though it's hard to see why anyone would be reading very far in to this if they didn't already know it. This time around the silicate intelligences are interfering with wave-based communications, and demanding humans reduced the amount of information-pollution they put out.
If we date "Xorandor" to its publication year of 1986 then this is set in 2008, uncannily coinciding with an actual world crisis caused by overloaded networks. As with "Amalgamemnon", it's interesting to see how CBR is not far off the mark in anticipating future times. Electronic media are dominating and reshaping the texture of life, writers ("wordprocessors") are marginalised; the humanities are entirely banished from universities (only slightly too early with that prediction); automation has produced increasing amounts of unemployment; China is on the rise but the threat of nuclear war has receded; Glasnost was temporary and the Russians are back to being unfriendly (this was a common expectation in the late 80s); "Post-socialism" is the big idea in politics and all the western parties have converged on the same consensus. So I score it as at least 8/10 for prescience.
April 23, 2017
Not terribly strong. Even Xorandor was better.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews