Xman

by Michael Brodsky

A cryptic tale of Xman's adventures in New York City as he is confronted by a series of the city's more peculiar residents

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy

539 pages, Hardcover

First published January 17, 1987

Reviews

[I Am · Rating 1 out of 5]

“…a long act of dissimulation.”
Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle


THE BEGINNING

I began Xman several months ago, read up to about page 20, and dropped it. The beginning, though somewhat interesting in tone, didn’t do much for me—was not a page turner—seemed like something I might return to with greater zeal.

THE MIDDLE

I picked the book up 4 days ago determined to finish it (thanks Orpheus (on YouTube)/Charles Beauregard (on GoodReads) for reminding me of this monstrosity), and now that I have…

My problem with this book is that it is a SLOG. A greater slog than the sloggiest bits of Ulysses and Naked Lunch. Eventually I reached some passages where the author explains the goal of his book:

“In any case you may be wondering why I call them FartSchlocka Brothers in one caption and Shitkopfer Father in another. Don’t worry. The building blocks of a story should issue in contradiction. This happens, alas, all too rarely, but when it does it proves conclusively that the story is not a slavish mirror of scullion-riddled reality but a self-contained entity doubling back on, at war with—and thereby fortifying—itself.” (354)

So, okay, Brodsky doesn’t want to represent reality, he wants to create a self-contained entity that wars with itself. Like Xman who loathes himself and constantly creates his own failures. But that doesn’t give me much to work with.

THE END

Much later, on pages 527-529 (ten pages from the end, goddamn it!), does Brodsky finally reveal his “master design” of this book that’s required no small or medium-sized feat of willpower to get through:

“Xman—I’m going to give it to you straight from the shoulder—when a man proclaims as loudly as you that he needs advice the key is either to abstain or furnish knowledge but in a form so strange it produces an utter and paroxysmal decentering of the assimilating organism: This form of knowledge-presentation is in fact the purest form of subtracting the inessential, the crude, crass, nasty, brutish and, alas, not short enough. The true teacher presents knowledge as strangeness with contours and facets that do nothing so much as disorient the jaded recipient although ultimately he may very well find he had more than enough equipment for assimilation of the quondam unassimilable. With such knowledge-presentation, the novice-pupil is suddenly required to undergo data with all of his being. As Roland Barthes told me in Warsaw when we thought of blowing up the wheat commissariat, Landowska played Bach with far more than her fingertips. In any case, it is a paroxysmal undergoing that must take place. Once the pupil has somehow surmounted the blessed resistance of its matter—most beautiful word in the language: Resistance—he can—you can—be said to have assimilated knowledge. Nothing by the way, dearest Xman, comes to fruition without the most ungovernable resistance to the aim, professed or simply sniffed out with outrage.”

So Brodsky gets that this technique of decentering and disorienting the reader is “not short enough,” but he claims that it’s the purest form of knowledge-presentation (is this why reviewers referred to him as the heir to Beckett?), and that nothing good comes without resistance. What’s the good I the reader am supposed to get? What assimilated knowledge did I receive? All I feel is that I wasted my time reading a depthless (his word) work.

“An occasion for undergoing—strenuous undergoing—whereby the initiand ultimately lives the phenomenon—in this case true work—with a force and vitality beyond whatever mere depiction may offer. The true work should—should have—both provoked and stymied—resisted—the initiand’s undergoing of its depthless depth. But I see I will never live to play out my commitment to the true work. Don’t you see, slobs that you are, the true work as a form of direct communication—yes, direct communication—would have circumvented the dilemma of direct communication by forcing recipient—pupil—spectator—to undergo even more strenuously than the producer. There is a message buried in the heart of the true work as there was an insidious intention buried not so very deep within the heart of every stimulus with which you had the audacity to afflict me on my way to this point. […] There is a message—a result—buried at the heart of the true work but the communication of this result does not cancel self-activity—undergoing—of personal appropriation on the part of spectator/consumer-pupil. And the result—the message—knows it will always be misunderstood and is able to assimilate all misunderstandings. In short, only with the true work is there a message—a direct communication—but the direct communication is precisely the receiver’s sinuous undergoing of direct communication.”

So it seems it’s the classical “the message of the book cannot be summarized because it is the book itself with all its meandering and complexities.” This information, coming so late, does not make amends for the experience of the slog. Was I, the reader, supposed to suffer as much as Xman did during the act of reading? If so, then bravo; I certainly felt as shitty as one must feel who is self-loathing and a complete failure at everything. But how substantive is this? What have I gotten out of this reading experience? … … …

I would only recommend this book if you satisfy all the following criteria:
A. If you are very knowledgeable in the field of philosophy.
B. If you are interested in the most extreme literary experimentation.
C. If you are fine with the possibility of hating almost every second of reading.

There of course were several sentences or short sections which I liked, but they were too few to make up for the rest of it. The epigraph certainly suits the book: but who likes being deceived with no payoff?

WORDS THAT ARE REPEATED DOZENS BUT SEEMINGLY HUNDREDS OF TIMES

uniqueness, captions, personal project, diagnosis, label
termites, order, rage, monolithic, gratuitous
kaleidoscope, true work, Procrustean bed, pretense, offscreen space
passivity, comeuppance, unlocalizable, paroxysmal, apotheosis, marginalia
terrorism, self-loathing, slagheap, symptom, bracket, straitjacket, labyrinth
dream time, wage slave, upsurge, impersonation, prostration, heterogeneity
homogeneity, hierodule, sagittal, utterance, anastomosis, vengeance, privity
hausfraus, slime, excruciation

A NOTE

I noticed over 50 typos in my copy. Either the proofreaders/editors were incompetent, or what is more likely is that THEY COULDN’T READ THE ENTIRE THING WORD FOR WORD. I don’t blame them.

[Braden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Rocko's Modern Life putting on a Beckett play

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the late 80s, I remember seeing Michael Brodsky's books in the small bookstores around Cambridge. It wasn't until a few years ago that I ordered a cheap copy of Xman online, and I just got around to reading it.

Here's the story of Xman, a stultifyingly self-conscious cipher moving to New York City to become unique and pursue his true work. Unfortunately, frustrations and failures accompany him. Throughout the vast city he's pursued by the numerous avatars of a pair of verbose psychotics who divert him from his goals and recruit him into a band of saboteurs that make the feckless revolutionaries of Dostoyevsky's Demons look like al Qaeda.

Brodsky has updated the overwrought Beckett monologue, and this book is stuffed with long existentialist ramblings by self-aware and improbably articulate characters. Brodsky also has Beckett's black humor, so the monologues have wit and structure. They seem overwrought at first, but as you get into them you realize there's a brilliant and hilarious theatricality that makes them hypnotic.

Reading Xman was a unique experience. If you're in the mood for something very unconventional and brainy, Brodsky may be the author for you.