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LA Trip: A Novel in Verse
This "novel in verse" tells of an Old World man's tribulations in the New World and revives as well a tradition somewhat lost from sight of a novel in verse, seen by the author as an "antidepressant" to poetry's ectoplasmic days, languishing, exhausted by a breathless impressionism.Mohammed Dib is one of the major and most prolific writers of Maghrebian literature. Among his many noted works are Who Remembers the Sea (a brutal description of the French war in Algeria) and The Talisman.
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2003
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Mohammed Dib
63 books124 followersAlgerian poet and novelist. Born in Tlemcen, Dib held various jobs as a teacher, accountant, weaver and rug designer, interpreter, and journalist before turning to full-time writing. In 1959 he moved to France, where he has continued to reside, although he returns regularly to Algeria.
With the death of Kateb Yacine in 1989, Dib became the undisputed doyen of Algerian literature. He was not only one of the first Maghrebian francophone authors of the post-World War II renaissance, publishing poems as early as 1947, but also continued to be both prolific and innovative. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Dib has constantly sought to renew and revitalize his writing. Besides being Algeria's foremost living novelist, he is a major poet.
Dib was, with Feraoun, Mammeri, and Kateb, a member of the ‘Generation of 52’, so dubbed because of the appearance in 1952 of important first novels by Dib (La Grande Maison) and Mammeri (La Colline oubliée) and sometimes renamed the ‘Generation of 54’ to refer to the major political event of modern Algerian history, the outbreak of the war of independence.
La Grande Maison, the first volume of a loosely knit trilogy (L'Algérie), is a naturalistic description of life in the streets and housing projects where the poor live. In this work the main characters are, in Zolaesque fashion, subordinate to the looming allegorical presence of Hunger. The remaining volumes (L'Incendie, 1954; Le Métier à tisser, 1957) continue to reflect Dib's left-wing social and political commitments during the 1940s and 1950s. His early novels have been widely read in Algeria and have been introduced into the school and university curricula.
Dib's work took a dramatic turn in the early 1960s when he forsook the naturalistic, ‘ethnographic’ novel for a more interiorized and oneiric discourse. His best known novel, Qui se souvient de la mer (1962), ostensibly deals with the Algerian War, but is particularly remarkable for its many-layered, surreal, and futuristic imagery. In a liminary note, Dib acknowledges the importance to his creative vision of Picasso's Guernica and science fiction, but we also find evidence of the influence of Freud and Jung in the subterranean and oceanic worlds where the action unfolds as well as in the mythic portrayal of the woman and the mother.
Dib also published, at this time, the first of a series of brilliant collections of poetry. Ombre gardienne (1961), although highly rarefied, provides an early link to the novels, for several of the texts in the collection first appeared as songs inserted into the trilogy. If the prose has evolved over the years, the poetry has, on the contrary, remained fairly consistent in style, perhaps because, as Dib once remarked, he is unable to practise spontaneous automatic writing in writing his novels—even when the result seems oneiric—whereas he often uses such procedures in composing the poems.
Dib's many novels may be divided roughly into four groups: the early naturalistic trilogy; the interiorized psychological, oneiric novels, usually set in Algeria (Qui se souvient de la mer; Cours sur la rive sauvage, 1964; La Danse du roi, 1968; Habel, 1977); the two novels of an unfinished trilogy about Algeria during the years of crisis in the early 1970s (Dieu en Barbarie, 1970; Le Maître de chasse, 1973); and the ‘nordic novels’ set in Algeria, Finland, and France (Les Terrasses d'Orsol, 1985; Le Sommeil d'Ève, 1989; Neiges de marbre, 1990). Some works defy easy classification, however, being transitional, such as some of the early short stories in Au café (1955) and Le Talisman (1966) and the at-once realistic and psychological Un été africain (1959), in which the identity quest of a young girl unfolds before the muted sounds and imagery of the Algerian War.
Dib's poems in Formulaires (1970), Omneros (1975), Feu beau feu (1979), and Ô vive (1987) are hermetic and derive much of their power from their linguistic virtu
With the death of Kateb Yacine in 1989, Dib became the undisputed doyen of Algerian literature. He was not only one of the first Maghrebian francophone authors of the post-World War II renaissance, publishing poems as early as 1947, but also continued to be both prolific and innovative. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Dib has constantly sought to renew and revitalize his writing. Besides being Algeria's foremost living novelist, he is a major poet.
Dib was, with Feraoun, Mammeri, and Kateb, a member of the ‘Generation of 52’, so dubbed because of the appearance in 1952 of important first novels by Dib (La Grande Maison) and Mammeri (La Colline oubliée) and sometimes renamed the ‘Generation of 54’ to refer to the major political event of modern Algerian history, the outbreak of the war of independence.
La Grande Maison, the first volume of a loosely knit trilogy (L'Algérie), is a naturalistic description of life in the streets and housing projects where the poor live. In this work the main characters are, in Zolaesque fashion, subordinate to the looming allegorical presence of Hunger. The remaining volumes (L'Incendie, 1954; Le Métier à tisser, 1957) continue to reflect Dib's left-wing social and political commitments during the 1940s and 1950s. His early novels have been widely read in Algeria and have been introduced into the school and university curricula.
Dib's work took a dramatic turn in the early 1960s when he forsook the naturalistic, ‘ethnographic’ novel for a more interiorized and oneiric discourse. His best known novel, Qui se souvient de la mer (1962), ostensibly deals with the Algerian War, but is particularly remarkable for its many-layered, surreal, and futuristic imagery. In a liminary note, Dib acknowledges the importance to his creative vision of Picasso's Guernica and science fiction, but we also find evidence of the influence of Freud and Jung in the subterranean and oceanic worlds where the action unfolds as well as in the mythic portrayal of the woman and the mother.
Dib also published, at this time, the first of a series of brilliant collections of poetry. Ombre gardienne (1961), although highly rarefied, provides an early link to the novels, for several of the texts in the collection first appeared as songs inserted into the trilogy. If the prose has evolved over the years, the poetry has, on the contrary, remained fairly consistent in style, perhaps because, as Dib once remarked, he is unable to practise spontaneous automatic writing in writing his novels—even when the result seems oneiric—whereas he often uses such procedures in composing the poems.
Dib's many novels may be divided roughly into four groups: the early naturalistic trilogy; the interiorized psychological, oneiric novels, usually set in Algeria (Qui se souvient de la mer; Cours sur la rive sauvage, 1964; La Danse du roi, 1968; Habel, 1977); the two novels of an unfinished trilogy about Algeria during the years of crisis in the early 1970s (Dieu en Barbarie, 1970; Le Maître de chasse, 1973); and the ‘nordic novels’ set in Algeria, Finland, and France (Les Terrasses d'Orsol, 1985; Le Sommeil d'Ève, 1989; Neiges de marbre, 1990). Some works defy easy classification, however, being transitional, such as some of the early short stories in Au café (1955) and Le Talisman (1966) and the at-once realistic and psychological Un été africain (1959), in which the identity quest of a young girl unfolds before the muted sounds and imagery of the Algerian War.
Dib's poems in Formulaires (1970), Omneros (1975), Feu beau feu (1979), and Ô vive (1987) are hermetic and derive much of their power from their linguistic virtu
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 28, 2021
Ah. Poetry.
Three more books of poems sit upon my night stand.
What are they doing there?
Mocking me?
Ah. That's it precisely.
Poetry.
Every time I read poetry I am reminded that I am wholly insufficient in my understanding of it. Novels and short stories, even postmodern or literary acts of contortionists whose double-jointed prose are published simply to bend the readers joints out of place are much more comprehensible and thus, more explainable for me. How do I review poetry when I don't understand it?
Yet in some ways, poetry is like music. Music is more accessible to me than poetry. Of course, my understanding of music is much different to the musician, professional or otherwise, but I can pick out tunes that I like and even appreciate the musical qualities of songs or genres that I'm not particularly fond of. Poetry is in some ways like that. I can pick out the lines that I like and even appreciate the stanzas that I'm not particularly fond of. The hardest part is when poetry becomes too much like jazz and I get lost in either the arrhythmic or atonal droning of an author whose craft is above my head. I like jazz and sometimes I go too deep into that pool and I feel like I'm drowning. The metaphor here is being stretched to it's breaking point because I am not double-jointed. If I'm not careful I'll become disjointed, like you, who is reading this. Still, after nearly drowning or after putting my joints back into their proper place I find myself looking at the pool, wanting to swim. This book is a duel language book. I haven't learned my lessons about deep ends.
Seriously though, how do I review poetry when I can barely even define it for myself. Paul Vangelisti, the translator of Dib's French poems, wrote an afterword to the book that gave me a little clarity, gave me some swimmies, if you will, so I could tread the deep end a little better. I think the metaphor has fully broken by now. He wrote, "for me Dib revealed poetry as an ultimate inability to communicate". As I don't understand poetry I can at least understand my lack of understanding and poetry's, "force and energy spring from this very lack". The books of poetry may very well be mocking me from my nightstand, but I cannot understand them because they are not truly communicating.
Going back to the musical part of my mixed-metaphors and terrible analogies, I'd like to highlight a few of the verses that Dib's uncommunicative words resonated with me. Some because the imagery that Dib used felt profound; most because they were pretty melodies that I happened to like.
In the category of pretty melodies we have, from Sitting Here:
"Occupied with living, making
a collection of memories."
from Innocence:
"dreams the sphinx who blabs"
from Freeway:
"One waits for nothing but the word End."
from Too Human:
"New world so new
that you don't know if you like it."
While the lines from Freeway and Too Human could have fallen in the other category, the one dealing with the profound, I arbitrarily decided that they shared more in common with the former than with the following. The strange thing about profundity is that it can change depending on one's circumstances. Had I come across Freeway or Too Human on another day I might have categorized them differently in my mind. Money, money, money by ABBA is pretty philosophical when you divorce the lyrics from the pop.
On the profound side though I have two poems to highlight: Games and The Blue Dress. In Games, Dib writes:
"Them, is the public.
And we, we play out our life
for Them. A public that changes.
But we, not. We the same.
We play out our life for Them."
I struggle with this because the musical quality of the words is simply not as entertaining as the aforementioned pretty melodies. The discordant words struck a chord with me for some reason. We who do not change play out our life for they, the public who is ever-changing. How true is that? At the end of the poem Dib wonders what they were there for. Were they there for their money?
In The Blue Dress he writes,
"Time is nothing but trouble
sitting, he comfortably
and on the same train you
standing, like an extra".
This poem struck the deepest of all in my mind, forcing me to read the poem and even the stanza over and over again, something I don't particularly relish doing. Time is the star, I am the extra. How painful is that? I don't like how much this resonated with me. I don't always like that I like ABBA either. Yet, I have three books of poetry sitting on my nightstand and a half dozen ABBA records on my shelf.
I think this review has gone on long enough. I believe I have sufficiently proved that I have an ultimate inability to communicate. Ah! Does that make this review poetry? Or, is this some poetical fallacy that I am unwittingly committing?
Three more books of poems sit upon my night stand.
What are they doing there?
Mocking me?
Ah. That's it precisely.
Poetry.
Every time I read poetry I am reminded that I am wholly insufficient in my understanding of it. Novels and short stories, even postmodern or literary acts of contortionists whose double-jointed prose are published simply to bend the readers joints out of place are much more comprehensible and thus, more explainable for me. How do I review poetry when I don't understand it?
Yet in some ways, poetry is like music. Music is more accessible to me than poetry. Of course, my understanding of music is much different to the musician, professional or otherwise, but I can pick out tunes that I like and even appreciate the musical qualities of songs or genres that I'm not particularly fond of. Poetry is in some ways like that. I can pick out the lines that I like and even appreciate the stanzas that I'm not particularly fond of. The hardest part is when poetry becomes too much like jazz and I get lost in either the arrhythmic or atonal droning of an author whose craft is above my head. I like jazz and sometimes I go too deep into that pool and I feel like I'm drowning. The metaphor here is being stretched to it's breaking point because I am not double-jointed. If I'm not careful I'll become disjointed, like you, who is reading this. Still, after nearly drowning or after putting my joints back into their proper place I find myself looking at the pool, wanting to swim. This book is a duel language book. I haven't learned my lessons about deep ends.
Seriously though, how do I review poetry when I can barely even define it for myself. Paul Vangelisti, the translator of Dib's French poems, wrote an afterword to the book that gave me a little clarity, gave me some swimmies, if you will, so I could tread the deep end a little better. I think the metaphor has fully broken by now. He wrote, "for me Dib revealed poetry as an ultimate inability to communicate". As I don't understand poetry I can at least understand my lack of understanding and poetry's, "force and energy spring from this very lack". The books of poetry may very well be mocking me from my nightstand, but I cannot understand them because they are not truly communicating.
Going back to the musical part of my mixed-metaphors and terrible analogies, I'd like to highlight a few of the verses that Dib's uncommunicative words resonated with me. Some because the imagery that Dib used felt profound; most because they were pretty melodies that I happened to like.
In the category of pretty melodies we have, from Sitting Here:
"Occupied with living, making
a collection of memories."
from Innocence:
"dreams the sphinx who blabs"
from Freeway:
"One waits for nothing but the word End."
from Too Human:
"New world so new
that you don't know if you like it."
While the lines from Freeway and Too Human could have fallen in the other category, the one dealing with the profound, I arbitrarily decided that they shared more in common with the former than with the following. The strange thing about profundity is that it can change depending on one's circumstances. Had I come across Freeway or Too Human on another day I might have categorized them differently in my mind. Money, money, money by ABBA is pretty philosophical when you divorce the lyrics from the pop.
On the profound side though I have two poems to highlight: Games and The Blue Dress. In Games, Dib writes:
"Them, is the public.
And we, we play out our life
for Them. A public that changes.
But we, not. We the same.
We play out our life for Them."
I struggle with this because the musical quality of the words is simply not as entertaining as the aforementioned pretty melodies. The discordant words struck a chord with me for some reason. We who do not change play out our life for they, the public who is ever-changing. How true is that? At the end of the poem Dib wonders what they were there for. Were they there for their money?
In The Blue Dress he writes,
"Time is nothing but trouble
sitting, he comfortably
and on the same train you
standing, like an extra".
This poem struck the deepest of all in my mind, forcing me to read the poem and even the stanza over and over again, something I don't particularly relish doing. Time is the star, I am the extra. How painful is that? I don't like how much this resonated with me. I don't always like that I like ABBA either. Yet, I have three books of poetry sitting on my nightstand and a half dozen ABBA records on my shelf.
I think this review has gone on long enough. I believe I have sufficiently proved that I have an ultimate inability to communicate. Ah! Does that make this review poetry? Or, is this some poetical fallacy that I am unwittingly committing?
April 22, 2013
I was a bit disappointed since I like Dib's Tlemcen so much. French on the left facing page & English translation by Paul Vangelisti on the right facing page. I started out reading in both languages, then switched to reading through entirely in French & then rereading entirely in English. Useful format if one doesn't read French, but I didn't find that reading a second time in English amplified the reading experience significantly. Purportedly a novel in verse form, L.A. trip does have setting, characters (narrator/protagonist, lover Jessamyn, & an anonymous "black boy"), but little to no action (whether interior or exterior) or narrative.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews