Indivisible (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents) by Fanny Howe

by Fanny Howe

This odd, transcendent and triumphant novel published in 2000 completes a quasi-autobiographical, radically philosophical series of fictions Howe began with First Marriage, published in 1972. Like Howe, Henny's life spans the tempestuous multi-racial world of hipsters and activists in working-class Boston during the 60s and its subsequent fall-out. On the verge of religious conversion, Henny, the book's narrator, locks her husband McCool in a closet so that she might talk better to God. Then she proceeds to make peace with the dead by telling their stories. Lewis, Henny's true love, is a wheelchair-bound black activist and political journalist whose working-class mother is jailed when the group's cache of explosives is found in her home. Then there's their wealthy friend Libby, who crosses the globe in search of enlightenment and spiritual peace. Guiding these characters on their journey are figures as divergent as Nietzsche and Bambi, Marx and St. John of the Cross. As Christopher Martin writes in Rain Taxi, Henny's function as a narrator is to hoist the entire structure of the novel onto her brittle, uneven shoulders and deliver all the embarrassing facts directly to us, her reader/God -- only then do we realize the full breadth and beauty of the narrative Howe has surreptitiously constructed all along. "I have not the least doubt that [Fanny Howe's] work is parallel to Paul Auster's..." --Robert Creeeley

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Literature, Novels, The United States Of America, Essays

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Fanny Quincy Howe was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. She was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Howe wrote more than 20 books of poetry and prose. Her major works include poetry such as One Crossed Out, Gone, and Second Childhood; the novels Nod, The Deep North, and Indivisible; and collected essays such as The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life and The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation.
Howe received praise and official recognition: she was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize by the Poetry Foundation. She also received the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition, her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets for the most outstanding book of poetry published in 2000. She was a finalist for the 2015 International Booker Prize. She also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Village Voice. She was professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book at the library because I'm a Chris Kraus nerd, and I am constantly searching for anything from the Semiotext(e) Native Agents series. So I found 'Indivisible.' This book is incredibly strange, the writing is incredibly strange, I am in love with this book. Although the back cover of the book talks about Henny's Catholicism and locking her husband in the closet, none of these things become clear until the very end. It's a lifelong journey and struggle to keep her best friends and one true love close to her, fostering children but really wanting her own, running from an abusive partner, the dichotomy of activism and betrayal, and the act of mothering others for nothing in return. I put down this book, and I wish Henny the best, I miss her, and I want to write Fanny Howe a letter telling her all of this.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

the first line of this book is “I locked my husband in a closet one fine winter morning” (iconic) and it just gets better from there. strange & mystical & divine. i loved it and I want everyone to read it and then talk to me about it

[Masha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly a gift to literature. To consciousness. Every word is worth cracking open and being opened by.

[Emily Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Instantly one of my favourite books of all time

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indivisible is one of those luminous books whose content seems ill-fitted to its form. One wonders if, fundamentally, philosophy and story work in opposition to each other; if what is wise and what is entertaining are eaten and digested by two completely different mouths.

Because even brilliant Fanny Howe can’t seem to make all this richness of observation and insight come together as a novel. Chapter by chapter I noticed the struggle for coherence. There are characters and events, yes; but ultimately it is about the searching metaphysical interiority of Henny and is thus ordered, as the mind is, by means of a submerged scheme or pattern. We intuit the pattern but aren’t privy to it. As Henny writes, “There is a kind of story... that glides along under everything else that is happening, and this kind of story only jumps out into the light like a silver fish when it wants to see where it lives in relation to everything else.”

Reading Indivisible is learning to watch for that silver fish. At its worst, the novel can appear driven by a kind of free-association, rife with non-sequitors. At its best, this very looseness of style yields gems. These are enough to make the reading worthwhile. Fanny Howe says in an interview that her novels “shatter toward poetry,” and I think they do. There is such momentum to her searching heart that it could not shatter any other direction. In passage after passage we get a sense for the force of her desire. Here’s Henny again: “Since all dying is a kind of murder by this world, I would like to be able to declare, ‘I served another world.’ Just to have been true to one desire would have been enough for me, the rest of it all is so confusing.”

[Caroline]

this is a crazy ass book but i really enjoyed it, thank you jackson ringley for the rec. about the narrator i repeatedly thought "wow i really hope i do not end up like her". if you're into a highly lyrical highly nonlinear novel this is a great one

[Brian Thatcher]

It started slow and I almost stopped altogether. It’s fragmented so, while the beginning was interesting, it took awhile to gain momentum. But what kept me turning the pages was the beauty and depth. Even though it never became a page-turner, I was addicted. And the last section took all these stories that existed in different times of this persons life and let’s you feel like momentum and that it all really was one story rather than fragmented realities. In a way, it’s like memory, mismatched and out of sync, remembering different times that overlap in non-linear order.

It’s also a book about faith. But not in maybe the way you’d think.

[Emily Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m obsessed

[michal k-c · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not fair to call this a "poet's novel" since I can think of at least five other novels by Howe and at this point I feel like her prose has outgrown the popularity of her poetry (unfortunate, imo). I like when this novel mainly feels like an exercise in exploring the surfaces of nothingness and less when it is in plotting mode. I suppose this highlights something observed by Shklovsky in an essay about prosaic vs poetic cinema: the poetic form emerges from technical-formal moments supplanting semantic moments to resolve a composition (which is why "plotless" is associated so heavily with "poetic"). Need to read the other Howe novels in the Radical Love set

[Rachel Zehr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I continued reading the book because I wanted to understand the opening sentence ("I locked my husband in a closet one fine winter morning"). At several places the writing felt brilliant and lucid, but most of it remained brilliant and incomprehensible to me.

[Mia Bauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I were to write out the praise I have to offer this book it would read as hyperbolic, cheap. But it would not be hyperbole.

[alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

magical

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you convey the profound in words without reducing it somehow? How use words to say honestly what can't quite be said in words? This is what happens in this strangely beautiful book. There is a strong narrative, a story, but it takes a while to get into it. And there is a kind of stream of consciousness style, interspersing ancient texts as the narrator grapples with meaning. Yet there is nothing high flown about the story. It is basic stuff of a particular life, one that the individual wants to matter. This is a book to return to. But I can understand why it seems not to have had a wide acceptance.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to begin with trying answer the question posed: What do I think of the book? I was often swept away by passages and thoughts, by the author’s specific actions with a particular series of events. However, I found that a spoty plot structure left me feeling disconnected to the sweep of the book.
Howe’s thoughts on religion, on one’s approach to the spiritual, the contradictions she identifies in a life – all were very engaging. As a whole, I didn’t feel the book was whole.
While worth a read, I would look to other, more-fully engaging novels first.

[Ellie]

What words? If I tried to explain exactly what this book does - how off-kilter it throws you, again and again, how it reads like a storming emulsion of incarnation and transcendence - I would give up and go back to the beginning, confused by how curious it left me - in both senses of that word.

[Ellie Lynn]

What words? If I tried to explain exactly what this book does - how off-kilter it throws you, again and again, how it reads like a storming emulsion of incarnation and transcendence - I would give up and go back to the beginning, confused by how curious it left me - in both senses of that word.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. Transformative. Thank god.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

life-affirming

[Setsuko S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this, at first, was like listening to a long lost recording of John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, a recording of dubious sound quality, where the tape recorder has been placed behind the bar and forgotten about, the barman subsequently taking it home as lost property, where it was discovered, 40 years later, by his recently bereaved widow as she was clearing out his stuff. On the recording you can just about make out the two icons duelling back and forth with the occasional shriek of laughter from a lady in the audience paying more attention her date than to the music and on first impressions you can´t blame her as you wonder if the musicians are drunk, did they forget to tune up, are they ok, have they lost their minds, as what appears to be bum notes are popping up with alarming frequency and you feel an urge to stop the music and go home, I repeat, stop the music and go home but you don´t because you already are home, in your living room, in your favourite armchair and you continue listening because to pull the plug on Coltrane or Dolphy is unthinkable, a sacrilege and the problem can´t be with them, it must be you, so you keep listening and after a while (which, incidentally, is why live tracks by the likes of Coltrane and Dolphy are so long) the power of the music begins to emerge, the savage and brutal back and forth begins to make sense, although sense is the wrong word, there is no sense here, there is a only a feeling, and this feeling takes you by the scruff of the neck and drags you along and the next thing you know you are soaring, you are no longer sat in your living room, in your favourite armchair, you are in a dirty sweatbox of a basement jazz club, probably in New York, maybe the Five Spot, or the Village Underground, the great men are right in front of you and you observe them in wonder, it´s as if a higher power is communicating though their instruments but not in a language that can be understood, in a language that goes beyond banalities such as understanding, you can only let go and lose yourself in the magic and only later you will recall with shame your less than favourable first impression. That is what it was like reading this book by Fanny Howe. Well, sort of. At first I found the sentences jarring, bum notes were frequent, the metaphors askew, as if square pegs were being forced into round holes but there was something there that told me to keep going, a vague sense of beauty buried in the discord, and after a while the clouds began to part and the square pegs began to fall inspired into their round holes. I will not claim to have detected the presence of higher powers when reading this book, that would be a stretch, because Howe is not Coltrane or Dolphy, but she is a damn fine writer and once I'd given her words the time they deserved to shine I was carried along by the luminosity of her prose and even found myself slowing down to chew over the enigmatic phraseology and the inner search of the protagonist. In short, excellent book, give it time.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The dialectics of the 20th century (determinism versus choice) is as old as the hills. But today I realized that a choice can be wrong. I used to think otherwise. Now I see that choices are so difficult because people know that they can make the wrong ones. But I think that if a choice is made against you to reject you, your work or your love, for instance-it can't be wrong. It can't be wrong because it would always come to that, anyway. Sooner or later, you would be rejected by that party.
And you would suffer throughout the whole process. So in a way what happens to you is pre-determined, but what you do to yourself is a choice.”

“The word "mother" is meant to be associated with love and caretaking that follows giving birth to a child. But it also means the love and the care-taking as processes in themselves. Therefore a father can be a mother. At its best, the point of the word "mother" is that it is a quality, not a condition or a situation. So let's say "motherer" instead of mother.
These types are treated badly often, abandoned or exploited. For a while their children reward them with love and kisses, but then the children, like burdens, cause them pain. You have to learn to want nothing in return for anything you do, in order to be an ideal mother. Ideal as in irreproachable and independent. I think that a motherer could be a very positive role-model in our society if she or he really developed its qualities into revolutionary ones.
But this person would still have to love-in a fatal way-someone else. Child, baby, or full-grown person. Why? A motherer is willing to die for the other and she or he is more independent in her spirit than anyone who doesn't love. She has eliminated the desire for rewards by the time she is a real motherer. And of course this is the essence of liberation because it is the opposite of what society wants people to want. If you had a society of motherers who didn't care if they died, who had no interest in rewards, and who just wanted to play all day, what would happen to this world?”

“Mary returns because she can't get over what the world did to her child.
She is like one of those traumatized ghosts who still believe they are alive and completing a task. Mary knows that people have made images of her suffering in a terrible world. She knows that some of us understand her. Nothing can comfort her as a mother. She comes again and again, saying ‘This didn't happen!’ holding her baby up. She carries that baby everywhere. Sometimes you see with the dead that it is all inside out. The sheet that is drawn over the secret inner body of the person is stripped away and you see what was buried but living all along.”

“What is sad to discover is that events in this world are both pre-determined and whipped up at the moment they are occurring. People are bewildered by this paradox unless they can grasp the difference between time and timing. It is like the way they write out their calendar make predictions and watch events unfold according to plan .... and then it all goes wrong and a choice becomes necessary. The choice seems to exist outside of the layout of time;”

[C.C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m rating this five stars because I think it’s original and worth reading, even though the nonlinear narration did cause my attention to flag here and there. Still, worth reading for some incredible lines that will stick with me for a long time, and for Howe’s interesting perspective on religion, race and caretaking.

I have the Semiotexte edition from 2022 and as other reviewers mentioned it does have a lot of typos. Since the writing style can be a bit challenging at times anyway, it really doesn’t help to have to guess at the correct wording and punctuation.

[Max Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I’ve ever read. Horrifying and beautiful and nonsensical yet completely coherent by the last page. I’m completely changed by this book and wish I could really put to paper how I’ve felt reading it but I don’t think anyone but fannys exact words in the book could. Thank you fanny howe

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of u will never understand that the escalation of passivity occurs when a person fears for another person so deeply she can’t move but ur in my prayers

[Maggie]

Art.

[Zeke Cambey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful lots of questions too many adverbs shocking ending

[Alina Zabedovskaia · Rating 1 out of 5]

сори, я ничего не поняла из прочитанного

[Denna Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love when poets and thinkers write fiction - they craft verbal acid trips indifferent in how they leave their readers unguided on journeys that can only end with mental explosion and gutted egos. Time to gulp down everything Fanny has ever written with a soup ladle, full well knowing I will be scalding my mouth, throat and innards in the process.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

hits harder the second time after becoming a mother

[Michael Bernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite of the four or five Howe books I’ve read.