Notes from a bottle

by Evan S. Connell

A collection of anecdotes, scraps of history, arcane lore, and unfamiliar quotations on the condition of man and the world he lives in.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Evan Shelby Connell Jr. (August 17, 1924 – January 10, 2013) was a U.S. novelist, poet, and short-story writer. His writing covered a variety of genres, although he published most frequently in fiction.

In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."

Connell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. Connell, Sr. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. He had a sister Barbara (Mrs. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. Bridge (1959). He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in Sausalito, California for decades.
(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Bruce Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't want to sully the experience with my half-baked enthusiasm and love of this work. It is a masterpiece. A little known work read by few, published almost anonymously, but enjoying a long life and ardent supporters once it is found and read. It shames and hurts me to think that a book like this could be disregarded while a piece like Franzen's The Corrections can be called a masterpiece and read by hundreds of millions (if the number of books in print is any indication). Franzen is literature's gaudy tart, accentuating his appeal with base amplification of his limited virtue by measure of truth and beauty. Connell, to conclude the female analogy, is the most beautiful woman you will ever lay eyes on between pages. If you finish this book, you will not like it; you will not have enjoyed it; you will love it forever, returning again and again to grab pages here and there, the book having this profound vivification that allows re-reading, similar to the great poets and the great spiritual literature of our species.

[carolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a really weird book
should you read it? if you want to
did i understand it’s deeper meaning? absolutely not
will i elaborate? no

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is to be understood that there exists
a mystic correspondence between the organs of the body
and the several parts of the universe.

I don't know how much of this is drawn from texts within the reach of Connell's reading, or how much modified, but it's a fascinating long poem reaching throughout history in short epigrammatic and anecdotal bursts.

My friend, the Historian, has explained
how his most fertile pods quite often are those
wherein coexist seeds out of curiously varied fields;
and yet, contrarily, he added, I do not mean
we bring necessarily into closs conjunction
processes that obviously are disparet. Not, that is,
for this condition but none other.

Yesterday someone mentioned animals
and things sensed in darkness, and told me
a man's work should have the feel of a carving
in oak. If, he explained, it is meant to endure
and retain some characteristic meaningful
to future generations, it must at every cost
give evidence of the passage of time,
of meditation, and of skill in excess of mere
dextrous facility. Having said this he paused;
I supposed he had concluded. Then he said
an heraldic device is not easily chiseled.

Wheat has been thrown in the harbour. Whose fault is this?

The ancient Cretans had no word for panic,
nor knew of it in any sense.

[Nzcgzmt · Rating 4 out of 5]

After many years of procrastination, I finally finished reading this epic poem by Evans Connell. The poem consists of fragments of diverse themes, spanning from historical trivia, astronomy, occult, mythology, among others; hence the name "notes from a bottle". Fragments belong to the same theme are scattered across the entire poem. For example, the Viking exploration of the North America is deliberately sprinkled throughout the poem. Once read as a whole, these elements start to form coherence.

Thematically, the poem is quite dark. Connell depicted human existence as Sysyphus, one of folly and futility. He also repeatedly attacked Christianity. That said, the scope of esoteric knowledge is quite remarkable, from the Dancing Plague of 1518, to St Teresa's pierced heart, to Paracelsus's introduction of black hellebore to pharmacy.

As a poem, naturally there are beautiful bits here and there. For example:

"I believe in the value of gold, which is sunlight petrified by the activities of time." (Connell 2013, 37)

and:

"I am told of a peasant who, one morning when mists
lay across his field,
picked up a feather that had dropped from
the great horse, Pegasus; who placed the feather
in his cap and abandoned the world
for a dream." (Connell 2013, 70)

and:

"There is no faith more impenetrable than skepticism;
nations fail with the complicity of citizens." (Connell 2013, 137)

Although I think it is a piece of work worth digesting, this type of read is not for everyone. Nonetheless hats off again to the English language master. I hope he finds solace.

[Daniel Gualtieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a book that I can claim to have understood; it is, however, a brilliant piece of literature that I will be returning to in the future. This is a book-length, somewhat fragmentary poem that darts in and out of nearly every nook and cranny of the last two thousand years of human history, and maintaining a consistently powerful interest in humanity, particularly the dark, ugly side of humanity. The poetry is beautiful, and the amount of historical research and reading that must have gone into such an all-encompassing work is astounding; historical texts are weaved seamlessly into new words with an incredible grace. This was not an easy book to read, and I am still trying to understand what, in the end, it was truly *about*, but I do know that it was beautiful and worthwhile. A very large amount of time well spent.

[Mira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dense and impossible to read in large chunks, sometimes annoying, and most of the time brilliant. Not for everyone, that's for sure. If you read it two to five pages at a time you'll be okay.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully constructed narrative told by a master story-teller whose stylistic prose, powers of imagination, standards of craftsmanship and use of metaphor is simply unmatched and may be un-match-able by the present-day chronicler. Picturesque passages, the trials and tribulations of social outcasts as seen from the inside, self-made adventurers, battle-tested and wind-blown by the unforgiving elements, setting sail to unknown shores, driven by an insurmountable will to triumph in the face of adversity. A poetic embrace of the past-present-future as a unified whole, answering "Yes" to the question, "Does History Repeat Itself," "Who am I to say" to the companion question deliberated in the Book of Job, "What is justice?" Smuggle this journal and to the beach, fix a compass to the raft's mast, and cast away with the wind, fall to the lure of the siren's song.

[Don Kenobi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought this book 35 years ago in an antique book shop just round the corner from "The Dome" - the Old church in the center of Utrecht Netherland. Strangest book I ever read =- written mainly in half-nonsensical quatrains. I couldn't tell what was fiction and what wasn't. Because I had a little volume of Nostradamus's work which I'd just perused, I sometimes tried to find hidden meaning to the verses laid down on its pages.

The book was really old at the time I bought it. Like super old. I wonder where it is now....

Dear Whoever has it now,
That book is worth a little fortune now - might want to sell it - let me know your price!

#DK


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous

[Bob Scheidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most transformative books I have ever read. It felt like I was back on one of the many pilgrimage trails of the world that I have walked.

[Mo Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge.

[MD · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this classic multiple times. It is dazzling. No literary comparisons--except Connell's later Points of a Compass Rose.