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Ether
A bearded man in a badly soiled suit known only as The Stranger wanders an apocalyptic landscape on the fringes of a dying metropolis, looking for a way to "get back on top." Thwarted and rejected at every turn by old friends and strangers alike—even by the author of this novel, whom he visits repeatedly in unsuccessful attempts to determine his own narrative—his impotence and rage are expressed in acts of seemingly senseless violence. The various characters he encounters on his journey—a pack of sadistic boys, skinheads who beat him senseless, a deaf-mute woman who tries to heal him, a sidewalk preacher, and a deranged man who identifies him as The One—avoid or abuse him, or attempt to follow him. Entertaining, disturbing, and wildly intelligent, written with sinister humor and great compassion, Ether reflects on the possibilities and consequences of forgiveness, the problems of faith, and the trials of creation. "Like a David Lynch movie transcribed by Pierre Reverdy, it's a brilliant and unforgettable book, written somewhere between sleeping and waking."—Chris Kraus, author of Torpor "This is an intense, intelligent novel that paints a vivid picture of an America that most of us refuse to see, are afraid to see. This is real art."—Percival Everett, author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier "A book that's both pure as snow and filthy as dirty, with the lovely detachment of ice. Like Beckett, Ehrenreich has the talent of being particular and general at once, and thus steps outisde of time"—Lydia Millet, Pulizer Prize finalist for Love in Infant Monkeys "Ether is a dark and powerful work, with disturbing metaphysical overtones. Ben Ehrenreich is a gathering power in the literary land."—John Banville, author of The Infinities "Ben Ehenreich transforms the brutal human and urban blight into a landscape of cosmic battle. Ether is a dark, complex, richly written, beautiful novel. It is a rarity in American fiction today."—Frederic Tuten, author of Self Fictions "Ether, perhaps even more than his previous novel, The Suitors, shows Ben Ehrenreich unafraid of storytelling that is terrifically bold and sly."—Sesshu Foster, author of World Ball Notebook Ben Ehrenreich is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer. Ether is his second novel.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
6 people are currently reading
201 people want to read
About the author
Ben Ehrenreich
16 books104 followersBen Ehrenreich is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer. His fiction has been published in McSweeney's, Bomb, and Black Clock, among other publications. His novel, The Suitors, was published by Counterpoint in 2006 and received widespread critical attention. In 2011 City Lights Publishers brought out his novel Ether.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 19, 2012
before reading; I already love Ben Ehrenreich -- The Suitors was beautiful, and he had that story about squid and the end of the world in a McSweeney's a ways back that broke my heart. Plus he made a Spotify playlist of inspirations for this book, which is full of enough lovely things (Nico, Nina, Lucinda, Joy Division) that I will overlook his inclusion of 50 Cent.
after reading: I paid full price for this book, which I never do, and so I am really mad that I didn't holy-motherfuck love it. In fact, I kind of hated it. It was just so heavily, heavily symbolic. It was plodding and emotionally distant, with characters who didn't have names (there was "the stranger" and "the tall and fat man" and "the bagman" and things like that, which became almost immediately cumbersome and annoying), and all this meta stuff where the character like haunts the author and talks to him and gets angry when he won't reveal things.
It was also often like a magicalization of homeless people? I mean it seems obvious and a little tired to elevate the crazies to mystics, to me. I hated The Fuck-Up, but the thing I remember about that book was how real he made it that a "regular" person, through a series of bad decisions and bad luck, could wind up homeless and helpless and destitute. Ether takes as given that lots of people are homeless and crazy, instead of delving into the hows and whys, and then bestows a kind of scary inherent idiot-savant spiritualism on them, kind of. Argh, I'm doing a bad job of explaining this.
Lots of people will like this a lot, I imagine. I, meanwhile, am still waiting for him to do something half as spectacular (and tangible) as that squid story from McSweeney's.
after reading: I paid full price for this book, which I never do, and so I am really mad that I didn't holy-motherfuck love it. In fact, I kind of hated it. It was just so heavily, heavily symbolic. It was plodding and emotionally distant, with characters who didn't have names (there was "the stranger" and "the tall and fat man" and "the bagman" and things like that, which became almost immediately cumbersome and annoying), and all this meta stuff where the character like haunts the author and talks to him and gets angry when he won't reveal things.
It was also often like a magicalization of homeless people? I mean it seems obvious and a little tired to elevate the crazies to mystics, to me. I hated The Fuck-Up, but the thing I remember about that book was how real he made it that a "regular" person, through a series of bad decisions and bad luck, could wind up homeless and helpless and destitute. Ether takes as given that lots of people are homeless and crazy, instead of delving into the hows and whys, and then bestows a kind of scary inherent idiot-savant spiritualism on them, kind of. Argh, I'm doing a bad job of explaining this.
Lots of people will like this a lot, I imagine. I, meanwhile, am still waiting for him to do something half as spectacular (and tangible) as that squid story from McSweeney's.
January 18, 2018
A stranger wanders around a desolate urban landscape peppered with cameras which may or not work. During his travels he encounters a number of characters who live on the fringes of society all of whom we readers have an opportunity to meet a chapter or two before the stranger and so know more about them than he ever does or cares to; he’s not exactly a people person. Most are unnamed—the bagman, the preacher, the three skinheads—but two he goes out of his way to see do have names that’ll be familiar to most of us: Gabriel, from whom the stranger retrieves a package wrapped in oil-stained brown paper and bound with twine, and Michael (apparently a law-school student), whom the stranger reminds about an oath he once swore. Other than a general description—he wears a ragged while suit and sports an equally ragged beard—we learn little about the stranger other than he’s eager to “get back on top,” that and, oh, and he’s not real. We know that because occasionally his author—and, perhaps, the author of the book we’re reading—takes over the narrative and has imaginary exchanges with the stranger who appears and disappears as if he was a ghost.
So, who’s this stranger then? If Gabriel and Michael are now fallen angels would that make the stranger the Devil? Possibly. He’s intolerant, cruel and destructive enough but astute biblical scholars know that the god of the Old Testament also comes across as quick to judge, overly-harsh and even unjust at times.
In 1995 Joan Osborne sang:
The problem is the stranger ends up getting separated from his parcel—he’s beaten up by three skinheads who maintain he’s called them Jews—and the rest of the book is spent with him (or Him) trying to find it and the bagman and a motley collection of down-and-outs—there may be an apostolic dozen (I never counted)—trying to find him (or Him).
It’s all very interesting. And it held my interest. Where was he going with all this? How many TV shows like Lost have we sat through hoping to get all our questions—or at least our most pertinent questions—answered in the last episode? And that’s what this felt like. Was I ever going to find out about the stranger? Was the stranger ever going to find out about the stranger? After suffering through the parable about the little boy ends the stranger isn’t impressed:
What, for me, makes this book stand out is the language. Even Beckett never described detritus so lovingly and in such detail. Normally I get irritated by excessive descriptions but not here. Far from it. Typically when people use ‘biblical’ as an adjective they mean something on a large scale as in “a flood of biblical proportions” and yet moments like that in the Bible are comparatively rare. This is not symphonic writing in the grand Romantic tradition; this is biblical-with-a-small-b; this is scratchy modern chamber music for the soul.
So, who’s this stranger then? If Gabriel and Michael are now fallen angels would that make the stranger the Devil? Possibly. He’s intolerant, cruel and destructive enough but astute biblical scholars know that the god of the Old Testament also comes across as quick to judge, overly-harsh and even unjust at times.
In 1995 Joan Osborne sang:
What if God was one of us?Gods in human form are a popular enough trope—the main character in The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick, is, in actuality, the Judeo-Christian God who’s lost his memories in a car accident—and, of course, the Bible itself is the ur-example especially if you’re of Catholic persuasion and believe Jesus to be God the Son. We never really learn enough about the stranger to know for sure. Sure, he clearly remembers his past even if he isn’t one for sharing; it’s his future he’s more interested in. This is part of an exchange with the author:
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin' to make his way home?
When I open the door to my office, the stranger’s sitting there. He’s at my desk, in my chair. His suit is gone. He’s wearing just a blanket. He doesn’t look much better, but he’s dry and most of the blood is gone. My papers, which I had left in neat stacks on my desk, have been scattered all around the room. They’re crinkled and torn, as if a parade had just passed through. The stranger leans and retrieves a sheet from off the floor. He reads aloud, his voice striving for ridicule but too weak to pull it off. “Why all this hiding?” he scoffs. “Why night at all? Why this filth and darkness?” His fingers tremble as he tears the page in half. He pulls another page from the mess at his feet and reads, “It’s okay baby wake up baby it’s okay.”The author won’t (or, most likely, can’t) and instead tells him a story, a parable really, about a little boy who’d never been born but who always remained a little boy:
I take the page from his hand, smooth its creases with my thumb. “How long have you been here?” I ask.
“Long enough,” he says.
“You do know, don’t you, that I can always print another copy?”
He swivels around to face me. “I want to see the end.”
“I haven’t written it.”
“Tell it to me.”
To shake off the grasp of solitude, he taught himself to build things. He built castles out of young, green twigs, cities out of chewing gum, bottle glass and sand, whole planets out of fish scales, clay and rubber bands. He tossed his planets in the air sequentially and blew at them one by one out of the corner of his mouth until they spun in wide ellipses round his head.”That’s about as clear as it gets. If the stranger is—or was—God then who or what brought about his downfall? We’re never told and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the now. Now he has the parcel. After he’s retrieved it he flags down a bus where he encounters the bagman who shows great interest in the package:
The stranger interrupts me. “So I’m this little boy?” he asks.
“No,” I tell him. “You’re not a little boy. You’re a scared old man. Now listen.”
“Trade ya,” he said, his voice deep and hollow, echoey.Yeah, that’s the kind of things gods say in their abounding wisdom but never nearly as clearly as they could.
The stranger turned his head to his left and regarded his neighbour with a cool curiosity. “Trade me what?” he asked.
The man with the bags gazed upward and searched the air above his head. “All of this,” he replied, as if biting off each word. “All I got.”
“For what?” the stranger asked.
“All you got.”
The stranger considered the offer. “You want what I have?”
His interlocutor’s yellow eyes returned to the package on his lap. They did not blink. The bagman nodded.
The stranger shook his head. “You cannot have what I have,” he said. “But I will take what’s yours. All that’s yours is mine. Do you understand?”
The bagman thought for a moment, then nodded his assent. “Okay,” he said. He stared hard at the tank-topped shoulder of a woman three rows up. He gripped his knees with both hands. “But what do I get?”
“You get to carry it,” the stranger said. “You get what you need.”
The problem is the stranger ends up getting separated from his parcel—he’s beaten up by three skinheads who maintain he’s called them Jews—and the rest of the book is spent with him (or Him) trying to find it and the bagman and a motley collection of down-and-outs—there may be an apostolic dozen (I never counted)—trying to find him (or Him).
It’s all very interesting. And it held my interest. Where was he going with all this? How many TV shows like Lost have we sat through hoping to get all our questions—or at least our most pertinent questions—answered in the last episode? And that’s what this felt like. Was I ever going to find out about the stranger? Was the stranger ever going to find out about the stranger? After suffering through the parable about the little boy ends the stranger isn’t impressed:
He tries to laugh but it sounds more like he’s swallowed something wrong. “So I should thank you,” he says. “All of this is for my benefit. For my betterment.”I’m not sure it ever was. The problem with most narratives is we generally assume the character we encounter in the opening few pages—the exception being those murder mysteries where we witness the victim’s demise first—is the book’s protagonist and it throws us off when we invest time focusing on what later we realise are minor or, at best, supporting characters. Well, the stranger is who we meet in the opening chapter and so I (not unreasonably) assumed this was his story. His, of course, is only one of the stories we get to hear. I’ve mentioned a few but there’s also the deaf-mute, the old man, Pigeon, the long-haired girl, the four nasty little boys and the fat boy’s grandma, the twin cripples, Martha also known as Marty, the prostitute and the man with the eye patch. They take up a lot of the book. But if you’re looking for God in this text you don’t have to look far; he’s actually right there on the page: the author. He’s the one who created this twisted world and he’s the one who decides on everyone’s fate. The setting appears apocalyptic but then maybe the whole book is one giant parable made up of “[t]he ordinary apocalypses that join to make a day.” You’ll have to decide that.
“No,” I tell him. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not about you anymore.”
What, for me, makes this book stand out is the language. Even Beckett never described detritus so lovingly and in such detail. Normally I get irritated by excessive descriptions but not here. Far from it. Typically when people use ‘biblical’ as an adjective they mean something on a large scale as in “a flood of biblical proportions” and yet moments like that in the Bible are comparatively rare. This is not symphonic writing in the grand Romantic tradition; this is biblical-with-a-small-b; this is scratchy modern chamber music for the soul.
October 17, 2011
Ether by Ben Ehrenreich is like baklava, a multi-layered delight. Are things as they appear, or not? How do we see the world, the universe? Is God the Devil, or is the Devil God? Are we in the midst of the Apocalypse or is this just business as usual? Ehrenreich deploys his prose as a maestro conducts an orchestra, with the appearance of effortlessness, even though we know a lot of work and thought went into it. And a lot of thought goes into reading it, too.
October 13, 2020
Might as well start this one out with the plot summary: A man (who the book calls the stranger, but all of the book’s characters could pretty rightly be called the stranger) may or may not have used to have been a very powerful man in something of a dystopian (or, maybe then, it was not dys- but u-) future. And now he walks around for a while and meets other down on their luck sorts. Except this whole thing takes place inside the narrator’s dreamworld (all books, obviously do, but this one calls attention to that fact). The stranger comes into the narrator’s “real” world and visits a few times. The jacket says the stranger wants to know what’s going to happen to him, but little is ever actually discussed in these scenes (or, for that matter, ever). Nothing much really happens. I mean, the whole world may burn down, but it’s not that big of a deal.
I really wanted the dystopianness to be the stranger’s fault. Like he used to be so powerful that he could bring the whole world crashing down, but this was never explored.
Also never explored: why the narrator feels the need to create this world, to deal with his problems (whatever those may be beyond not sleeping too well and being less than thrilled with his wife (though he never calls the woman who snores next to him his wife, I’ll run with the term)), by creating these characters. Why, in general?
Strange that the jacket proper noun capitalizes The Stranger, but the internal text does not. I feel like the book would have been a solid 10% better had The Stranger been capitalized throughout as it would have made that which was tame more foreboding.
I want to be angry at the suddenly lesbian because of a harrowing experience (this is happening, apparently, with the car up on the sidewalk), but a sentence like, “They told each other jokes composed entirely of kisses that tickled them more than any joke they’d heard before,” makes it tough.
But then again. The first time I read that sentence, I was like, whoa. Then I re-read to write it out and I was like, is this the same sentence that just floored me? And now, typing it, I rolled my eyes at myself. So. I had this thought, but didn’t write it down because I decided it’d be hard to articulate, but bear with me here. Okay?
There’s something so easy about making points in language like this. Ehrenreich barely stitches together coherent thoughts for the most part. It isn’t stream of consciousness, but it is kinda cloudy, a little wispy and tenuous. Here’s where the point is hard to make. I’d have to re-type out at least a page to give you the jist of what I mean. And I’m not going to do that. Because even then, you agree with me or you disagree and there’s not much I can do in terms of persuasion.
Now. Couched within these clouds are points about consumerism, loneliness, modern life. If I typed them here, you’d be like, so what? big deal, what’s your point? But, because they come in the spaces between these soft clouds of thought, they seem so striking, borderline revolutionary. Is that fair? I don’t know.
It’s like a lightsource in the distance when it’s pitchblack at night. Of course it’s going to stand out.
This may be why the joke-kisses line hit me so hard the first time, but quickly lost its effect.
If all these disparate characters come back, no way will I remember any of them. If they don’t come back, why are they here?
Mostly this ended up being untrue. I remembered them all, with the exception of a few of the gang the reverend and bagman accumulate for like a page, which, seriously, why were they there?
That pretty much sums up my feelings in general: Why were they there?
I really wanted the dystopianness to be the stranger’s fault. Like he used to be so powerful that he could bring the whole world crashing down, but this was never explored.
Also never explored: why the narrator feels the need to create this world, to deal with his problems (whatever those may be beyond not sleeping too well and being less than thrilled with his wife (though he never calls the woman who snores next to him his wife, I’ll run with the term)), by creating these characters. Why, in general?
Strange that the jacket proper noun capitalizes The Stranger, but the internal text does not. I feel like the book would have been a solid 10% better had The Stranger been capitalized throughout as it would have made that which was tame more foreboding.
I want to be angry at the suddenly lesbian because of a harrowing experience (this is happening, apparently, with the car up on the sidewalk), but a sentence like, “They told each other jokes composed entirely of kisses that tickled them more than any joke they’d heard before,” makes it tough.
But then again. The first time I read that sentence, I was like, whoa. Then I re-read to write it out and I was like, is this the same sentence that just floored me? And now, typing it, I rolled my eyes at myself. So. I had this thought, but didn’t write it down because I decided it’d be hard to articulate, but bear with me here. Okay?
There’s something so easy about making points in language like this. Ehrenreich barely stitches together coherent thoughts for the most part. It isn’t stream of consciousness, but it is kinda cloudy, a little wispy and tenuous. Here’s where the point is hard to make. I’d have to re-type out at least a page to give you the jist of what I mean. And I’m not going to do that. Because even then, you agree with me or you disagree and there’s not much I can do in terms of persuasion.
Now. Couched within these clouds are points about consumerism, loneliness, modern life. If I typed them here, you’d be like, so what? big deal, what’s your point? But, because they come in the spaces between these soft clouds of thought, they seem so striking, borderline revolutionary. Is that fair? I don’t know.
It’s like a lightsource in the distance when it’s pitchblack at night. Of course it’s going to stand out.
This may be why the joke-kisses line hit me so hard the first time, but quickly lost its effect.
If all these disparate characters come back, no way will I remember any of them. If they don’t come back, why are they here?
Mostly this ended up being untrue. I remembered them all, with the exception of a few of the gang the reverend and bagman accumulate for like a page, which, seriously, why were they there?
That pretty much sums up my feelings in general: Why were they there?
February 18, 2015
Beautiful and bewildering "Biblical noir."
In his own words, here is Ben Ehrenreich's Book Notes music playlist for his novel, Ether:
1. Gang of Four, "Ether"
This one may seem obvious, but it's not just the title that gets it on the list—it's that screaming bass and the song's furious insistence on the "dirt behind the daydream," counterposing "the happy ever after" with "H-block torture" and "each day more deaths." Fantasies of transcendence smash up against very human nastiness. What to do but spit and shake and bang your head, maybe write a novel?
2. 50 Cent, "U Not Like Me"
In an earlier draft I used two verses from this track as an epigraph. They made it as far as the galleys: "Mama said everything happened to us was part of God's plan/So at night when I talk to him I got a gun in my hand..." The line still makes me smile, but in the end I decided that it might incite too literal a reading of the book, which features a god-like character treated with considerable suspicion and hostility by an author-like character. I switched it out for a snippet of Mahmoud Darwish's poem "Mural," which, because it is more oblique seemed far more direct. Nonetheless.
3. Nico, "Little Sister"
Early in the novel, a deaf-mute woman who lives alone in a shack above the railroad tracks rescues an injured hummingbird from a dumpster and does her best to nurse the bird to health. It doesn't work out. In the animated version (I'm working on it, but I draw very slowly), she dances through an empty warehouse district in the hours before dawn, skipping through the potholed streets, the bird in her palm, her skirts rising as she spins and sings along with Nico: "Turn to fly, go away/Little bird, please don't stay."
4. Mickey Newbury, "Sunshine"
That chapter ends with the sun rising, painting the world in gold. Sadness can be beautiful, and often is. This song begins with a solid 15 seconds of bird-chirp sound effects, then Mickey's Newbury's mournful voice: "Sunshine, you might find my window, but you won't find me." Never has despair been so welcoming, so gorgeous: "Sunshine, as far as you're concerned, don't be concerned for me."
5. Hank Williams, "Cool Water"
Oh, Hank. Most of the characters in this novel—even and perhaps especially its putative author, by which I don't mean myself but the character who plays that role on the page—are searching for something, trying to somehow bring sense to the world, to their suffering and aloneness. This song captures that search and the thirst that spurs it better than any other I know. "All day I face the barren wastes without the taste of water." Tell 'em, Hank. "The nights are cool and I'm a fool,/each star's a pool of water."
6. Joy Division, "Disorder"
I don't know if I could have made it through high school without this. When I was 19, I lost most of my favorite tapes, including Unknown Pleasures, in a fire. I gave the album a well-earned rest for about a decade, have rediscovered it every couple of years since. It more than holds up. That first line ("I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand.") could belong to more than a few of the characters in Ether. So could the song's breakneck race towards total collapse.
7. The Stooges, "L.A. Blues"
Ether is not set in any actual city, but its setting inevitably draws on my experience of Los Angeles, where I've lived for 14 years. Most people who don't know L.A. have funny ideas about the place. Ideas involving movie stars and other dull urban animals. Iggy Pop knew better. No lyrics but screams here, guitars like cats fighting, drums to break your spine with. Home.
8. The Buzzcocks, "I Believe"
I want to release a musical edition of Ether that works like those birthday cards that play a song when you open them, except my version would play this song only while you're actively turning the pages and maybe also when you put down the book to get a drink of water or wine or to pee or do whatever it is you're doing, but the song will only play once you're already in the other room and barely can make it out. What if I just quote the first line? "In these times of contention it's not my intention to make things plain."
9. Amen Corner, "If Paradise Is Half as Nice"
A long-haired teenaged girl finds herself in love with her best friend, a short-haired teenaged girl. In between kisses, they hear this song: "If paradise is half as nice as the heaven that you take me to, who needs paradise? I'd rather have you."
10. Pere Ubu, "Final Solution"
My best friend in high school broke into some poor bastard's car, stole the guy's entire tape collection and gave me the too-weird discards, which included a fair amount of Pere Ubu. I still feel a little bad about it, but mainly grateful. Those tapes eventually led me to Alfred Jarry's door, and thence to a whole new world. That's how things worked in the crappy suburbs in the days before the internet. You wanted culture, you had to steal it. Or make it yourself. Anyway: the yearning. Wipe the world clear to the horizon. "Don't want a cure, I want a final solution." Noise noise. The short-haired girl bugs out, tells the long-haired girl she can't see her anymore. If the long-haired girl's car had a tape deck, it would be blasting this song, over and over again. Except that some fucker stole her tapes. And her radio.
11. Bauhaus, "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything"
The long-haired girl falls in with a crew of pilgrims: a stuttering sidewalk preacher, an ill-kempt man in a sweater knit with reindeers, twins in wheelchairs, an old man, a silent prostitute, a cockatiel. They march in ever-widening circles through alleys and convenience store parking lots, empty fields, suburban boulevards. This song plays. Is everything too much to ask for? Or too little?
12. Lucinda Williams, "World Without Tears"
"How would bruises find a face to lie upon?" Lucinda drawls, all lazy-like, slurring it out almost spitefully. "How would broken find the bones?" What would country singers do without tears? What would writers do? Unemployment's bad enough already. At least leave us our misery.
13. Nina Simone, "Sinnerman"
More running, more wandering. Everyone's running in this book, even when they're sitting still. Not just in this book perhaps. Running to or running from? No rock to hide you and when the river's not bleeding it's boiling. Same goes for the sea. Keep running, sinnerman. I'll meet you there.
14. Fol Chen, "In Ruins"
Department of alternate endings. I'll try not to give too much away: if things had worked out differently and the stranger and the deaf-mute had hit it off a little better and pranced out into the burning night, this would be their soundtrack.
15. John Cale, "Big White Cloud"
If I succeeded in squeezing into Ether even a microgram of the longing, joy and melancholy beauty that burst out of every measure of this song, I will die content. "Oh I love it/Yes I love it/Oh I love it so ..."
Source: http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/a...
In his own words, here is Ben Ehrenreich's Book Notes music playlist for his novel, Ether:
1. Gang of Four, "Ether"
This one may seem obvious, but it's not just the title that gets it on the list—it's that screaming bass and the song's furious insistence on the "dirt behind the daydream," counterposing "the happy ever after" with "H-block torture" and "each day more deaths." Fantasies of transcendence smash up against very human nastiness. What to do but spit and shake and bang your head, maybe write a novel?
2. 50 Cent, "U Not Like Me"
In an earlier draft I used two verses from this track as an epigraph. They made it as far as the galleys: "Mama said everything happened to us was part of God's plan/So at night when I talk to him I got a gun in my hand..." The line still makes me smile, but in the end I decided that it might incite too literal a reading of the book, which features a god-like character treated with considerable suspicion and hostility by an author-like character. I switched it out for a snippet of Mahmoud Darwish's poem "Mural," which, because it is more oblique seemed far more direct. Nonetheless.
3. Nico, "Little Sister"
Early in the novel, a deaf-mute woman who lives alone in a shack above the railroad tracks rescues an injured hummingbird from a dumpster and does her best to nurse the bird to health. It doesn't work out. In the animated version (I'm working on it, but I draw very slowly), she dances through an empty warehouse district in the hours before dawn, skipping through the potholed streets, the bird in her palm, her skirts rising as she spins and sings along with Nico: "Turn to fly, go away/Little bird, please don't stay."
4. Mickey Newbury, "Sunshine"
That chapter ends with the sun rising, painting the world in gold. Sadness can be beautiful, and often is. This song begins with a solid 15 seconds of bird-chirp sound effects, then Mickey's Newbury's mournful voice: "Sunshine, you might find my window, but you won't find me." Never has despair been so welcoming, so gorgeous: "Sunshine, as far as you're concerned, don't be concerned for me."
5. Hank Williams, "Cool Water"
Oh, Hank. Most of the characters in this novel—even and perhaps especially its putative author, by which I don't mean myself but the character who plays that role on the page—are searching for something, trying to somehow bring sense to the world, to their suffering and aloneness. This song captures that search and the thirst that spurs it better than any other I know. "All day I face the barren wastes without the taste of water." Tell 'em, Hank. "The nights are cool and I'm a fool,/each star's a pool of water."
6. Joy Division, "Disorder"
I don't know if I could have made it through high school without this. When I was 19, I lost most of my favorite tapes, including Unknown Pleasures, in a fire. I gave the album a well-earned rest for about a decade, have rediscovered it every couple of years since. It more than holds up. That first line ("I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand.") could belong to more than a few of the characters in Ether. So could the song's breakneck race towards total collapse.
7. The Stooges, "L.A. Blues"
Ether is not set in any actual city, but its setting inevitably draws on my experience of Los Angeles, where I've lived for 14 years. Most people who don't know L.A. have funny ideas about the place. Ideas involving movie stars and other dull urban animals. Iggy Pop knew better. No lyrics but screams here, guitars like cats fighting, drums to break your spine with. Home.
8. The Buzzcocks, "I Believe"
I want to release a musical edition of Ether that works like those birthday cards that play a song when you open them, except my version would play this song only while you're actively turning the pages and maybe also when you put down the book to get a drink of water or wine or to pee or do whatever it is you're doing, but the song will only play once you're already in the other room and barely can make it out. What if I just quote the first line? "In these times of contention it's not my intention to make things plain."
9. Amen Corner, "If Paradise Is Half as Nice"
A long-haired teenaged girl finds herself in love with her best friend, a short-haired teenaged girl. In between kisses, they hear this song: "If paradise is half as nice as the heaven that you take me to, who needs paradise? I'd rather have you."
10. Pere Ubu, "Final Solution"
My best friend in high school broke into some poor bastard's car, stole the guy's entire tape collection and gave me the too-weird discards, which included a fair amount of Pere Ubu. I still feel a little bad about it, but mainly grateful. Those tapes eventually led me to Alfred Jarry's door, and thence to a whole new world. That's how things worked in the crappy suburbs in the days before the internet. You wanted culture, you had to steal it. Or make it yourself. Anyway: the yearning. Wipe the world clear to the horizon. "Don't want a cure, I want a final solution." Noise noise. The short-haired girl bugs out, tells the long-haired girl she can't see her anymore. If the long-haired girl's car had a tape deck, it would be blasting this song, over and over again. Except that some fucker stole her tapes. And her radio.
11. Bauhaus, "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything"
The long-haired girl falls in with a crew of pilgrims: a stuttering sidewalk preacher, an ill-kempt man in a sweater knit with reindeers, twins in wheelchairs, an old man, a silent prostitute, a cockatiel. They march in ever-widening circles through alleys and convenience store parking lots, empty fields, suburban boulevards. This song plays. Is everything too much to ask for? Or too little?
12. Lucinda Williams, "World Without Tears"
"How would bruises find a face to lie upon?" Lucinda drawls, all lazy-like, slurring it out almost spitefully. "How would broken find the bones?" What would country singers do without tears? What would writers do? Unemployment's bad enough already. At least leave us our misery.
13. Nina Simone, "Sinnerman"
More running, more wandering. Everyone's running in this book, even when they're sitting still. Not just in this book perhaps. Running to or running from? No rock to hide you and when the river's not bleeding it's boiling. Same goes for the sea. Keep running, sinnerman. I'll meet you there.
14. Fol Chen, "In Ruins"
Department of alternate endings. I'll try not to give too much away: if things had worked out differently and the stranger and the deaf-mute had hit it off a little better and pranced out into the burning night, this would be their soundtrack.
15. John Cale, "Big White Cloud"
If I succeeded in squeezing into Ether even a microgram of the longing, joy and melancholy beauty that burst out of every measure of this song, I will die content. "Oh I love it/Yes I love it/Oh I love it so ..."
Source: http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/a...
December 26, 2024
4 1/2 stars
September 25, 2011
What an extraordinary book--funny, dark, twisted, eerie and profound. It wasn't at all what I expected, completely took me by surprise, has been haunting me since I put it down a week ago. It grabs you right away, but gets stranger, more complicated and more sadly wonderful as it goes. The plot follows a character identified only as the Stranger who, you eventually figure out, is God, but is in a pretty bad way: powerless and alone, trying hard to get "back on top." The novel follows him and the various down-and-out characters who encounter him, who either follow him, avoid him, or seriously abuse him. All of it takes place on the edges of a collapsing city, in a world a lot like ours but worse, exagerrated in some aspects and mildly surreal. The main strand of the narrative is interrupted periodically by meta-chapters in which the book's author directly addresses the reader and is visited by his main character. In the hands of a lesser writer this might be a disaster, but Ehrenreich is deft and skillful enough that he more than pulls it off, and those chapters push the book from simple God-bashing (though there's nothing wrong with that...) to a more textured and painful investigation of the creative act, literary as well as divine. If this all sounds too heavy, it's also hilarious, though admittedly in a super-dark way. And the writing is gorgeous, every word. Highly recommended.
February 19, 2017
A poetically written novel about the search for truth and grace in a world with much ugliness. The stark unflinching look at casual cruelty in the world almost stopped me from finishing this book, but I could not turn away from his heartbreakingly beautiful writing. I loved, but also loathed for its sadness, the way he was able to describe in detail the small everyday ways in which people, animals, insects, struggle to survive each second, minute, hour of each day.
I read the first chapters slowly, then put it down bc I wanted to savor each sentence. But when I went back to it, I realized that this book is more a quest to find meaning in life, and I had to go back and reread it from the beginning.
While all the characters are loosely interconnected, I found that it is better to treat each chapter as its own small nugget of insight.
I read the first chapters slowly, then put it down bc I wanted to savor each sentence. But when I went back to it, I realized that this book is more a quest to find meaning in life, and I had to go back and reread it from the beginning.
While all the characters are loosely interconnected, I found that it is better to treat each chapter as its own small nugget of insight.
November 21, 2011
I got to see the author read from this book at City Lights Bookstore & Publishers. My friend loved the book but I hadn't read it yet. His writing is wonderful, and there isn't a single wasted line in this book. It's dreamlike and full of symbols. I had to ponder what the author was trying to say through this story, but nevertheless the story rang with the power of fiction being used to speak to deeper and unspeakable truths. I think this book is the author wrestling with a God that he finds disinterested and egomaniacal. Although I don't feel that way at all, theologically, I do know what that feels like and this is a beautifully written book from an important American writer.
August 1, 2016
"Ben Ehenreich transforms the brutal human and urban blight into a landscape of cosmic battle. Ether is a dark, complex, richly written, beautiful novel. It is a rarity in American fiction today." -Frederic Tuten, author of Self Portraits: Fictions and Tintin in the New World
"A compact work of biblical noir...like Bambi directed by Quentin Tarantino....In Ether God is one of us: fickle, self-obsessed, senselessly malicious....Drink in Ehrenreich's sculpted sentences ... language for the weary and the dispossessed, the rich or the poor. Have a seat; stay awhile."
-Los Angeles Times
"A compact work of biblical noir...like Bambi directed by Quentin Tarantino....In Ether God is one of us: fickle, self-obsessed, senselessly malicious....Drink in Ehrenreich's sculpted sentences ... language for the weary and the dispossessed, the rich or the poor. Have a seat; stay awhile."
-Los Angeles Times
February 18, 2012
a little to precious for my taste and the backstory unfolds so slowly that i stopped reading about 1/2 way through
December 17, 2011
It's been described as Biblical Noir and I can't do better than that. All too brief but definitely worth a visit...
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April 22, 2012Reading for my panel at the LA Times Festival of Books!
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