Kamby Bolongo Mean River

by Robert Lopez

Kamby Bolongo Mean River, Robert Lopez’s hypnotic second novel, is the story of a young man who finds himself confined and under observation, the subject of seemingly pointless tests. His only link to the outside world is a telephone that will not dial out. During the occasional calls he receives, usually wrong numbers, the narrator remembers his former life growing up in Injury, Alaska with his Mother, an often unemployed single parent, and his older brother, Charlie, a sometime boxer, sometime actor. Throughout the course of this extraordinary novel, the unwilling captive draws his life-story in stickfigures on the walls. From the difficulty of his birth, to his sickly childhood, to adventures with his brother, the narrator depicts his crazy life, which is at once fascinating and heartbreaking. The one memory that haunts him is that of watching a movie about slaves on television and how that one slave, the one for whom Kamby Bolongo Mean River meant freedom, would never relinquish the idea of returning home.

Genres: Fiction

177 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Reviews

[Sabra Embury · Rating 5 out of 5]

On a Saturday I went to a performance space in Park Slope called Barbes for a Blake Butler reading. This where Robert Lopez read the first few pages of his latest novel: Kamby Bolongo Mean River to a tight crowd of about fifty people.

The reading was energetic, and the story easy to follow, but what really impressed me into buying the book, and reading the rest for myself, was the poignant voice of a debilitated, young narrator--explaining simply, and literally: the events encompassing a life infested with constant headaches and phone machine protocol.

“I like it when the phone keeps ringing and you hope the answering machine answers and you say to yourself please don’t pick up the phone please don’t pick up the phone and then the machine finally answers and you know it is the machine by the way the machine pauses before saying thank you for calling I am not home right now I have a headache but if you leave your name and number I might call you back soon.”

At first it’s easy to assume there’s something off about the narrator of Kamby Bolongo: perhaps he’s Autistic, or schizophrenic; as more and more information is revealed about his early life as a sick child, involving his relationship with his single mother and older brother, the more compelling it is to compile the events that brought him to his current place of respite, which ultimately reveals itself to be a mental institution.

Alone in a room with self-drawn stick figure chalk drawings on walls to keep him company, and the faceless bodies coming and going, the only connection the narrator has to the outside world is a telephone which receives calls from ambiguous sources, but will not dial out.

“Here is a room with four walls and one window and almost nothing else. Yes I have a table and chairs but there is no television or air conditioner in here. Yes I have a phone and it does ring sometimes but whose doesn’t is what I have to say.”

What’s also noticeable is a deliberate lack of punctuation, or more specifically…commas. One way this is effective is that it adds a sense of urgency to the thoughts being assembled and shared by the speaker, as well as a sing-song rhythm to the anecdotal flashbacks quilting the story together.

Another explanation for the lack of commas is that it flattens out that sing-song rhythm creating a layered almost toneless voice undulating with bittersweet nostalgia.

Even before the reading, when I met Lopez and asked him what his novel was about, he said: Well, I could say it's about 180 pages, but I won't.

The story is a first person journey dipping present and past incidents into a hybrid of revelations which become more and more obvious through the use of repetition. With observations such as, “I think I have lived an entire life beside the point but even this is probably beside the point,” Kamby Bolongo is as much a complex story about a skeptic within a life of complacency and limited communication--as it about a boy whose a big brother, Charlie, used to give incredible soliloquies when he wasn’t drinking milk & raw eggs for breakfast.

And as more revelations unravel--the narrator's almost telepathic feeling confessions, mixed with sharp delusions of reality are brought into a structure which serves a way to find an unshakable place within the introspective mindset.

This makes it no surprise that blurbs for Kamby Bolongo compare Lopez to the likes of Samuel Beckett and Gordon Lish, as well as garnering praise for "joyful wit to be all his own."

Lopez has created something unique and humorous in his novel which is about…well, 180 pages. But the 180 pages read hot and swift only to expand with cooling its thoughtful quips, disguised by sparse and simple language. As with the effect of a good poem, a funny country song about mom and her shotgun, and a quote from Plato—all swirled into captivating novel.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

i mean what language satisfies like lopez language satisfies?

[Luna · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are first impressions and then there are what you're left with when you're finished. The thing I was most drawn in by from the beginning was the voice. Spare and repetitive and hypnotic, with just the right amount of humor and tenderness. The narrator is so tender and child-like, yet not. But I think what is more interesting to me is concept of language and how this narrator is so fixated upon tones vs words, or I guess, what he says early on about the meanings of things between words. There's a ton of white space in this book. That's not unintentional. The beginning of the book makes somewhat of a plea; the end in which perhaps weeks, months, years, decades go by is filled with increasing quiet, until we have that last sentence. And then silence. It's the kind of silence that made me want to go back and reread, because now I wanted to search for what was hidden in all the other silences.

That doesn't make a shit ton of sense, does it?

[Tarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ridiculous, dark, meaningful, hilarious, gripping, and completely unique. Never read a book quite like this one. Super loving Robert Lopez these days.

[Marcel Côté · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man locked in an observation room draws stick figures on the wall. They took his uniform away so he is naked. He has a rash on his thighs and needs to powder his groin. He gets phone calls, sometimes from the doctors observing him, sometimes perhaps random wrong numbers. He reminisces about his brother the failed boxer, the most horrible Mother in literature, and his idyllic childhood along the shores of the kamby bolongo (which means river!) in Injury, Alaska.

Nothing in particular happens, in a hypnotic rhythm like listening to waves in a seashell. 200 pages later it's all over, and the dysfunctional narrator gives you his nuggets of wisdom distilled from a life on medication. Nuggets like these. "I will say the words are important less than half the time and it's better to listen to what's between the words and behind them." "I will say there is no end to what stick figures can do on a wall."

This book is pretty much perfect for what it is.

[Clark Knowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A spare and surprising book. Does all sorts of things people tell writers not to do all the time. Little by way of specific landscape or detail, loads of repetition, short paragraphs, contradictions--but it was fascinating and I couldn't stop reading. I felt in turns aggravated and moved by the narrator. I'd say that easily a quarter of the sentences begin: "Should the phone ring..." It's quite hypnotic. The last third of the book is quite intense, and the narrator reveals more and more, even as the story grows more fantastical. Lopez really seems to be doing something different here--far different than most contemporary writers. I recommend the book.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this one and the ejoyment becomes cumulative as you go along and progressively more information is revealed by the very disturbed and unreliable narrator.

I liked it a bit less than Lopez's first book, Part of the World, however because the earlier work seems more original while the newer one shows maybe too much indebtedness to Gordon Lish.

Can't wait to see what Lopez comes up with next time around.

[Caleb Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

I managed 54 pages and simply couldn't continue. After having read just under 1/3 of the book, I didn't feel there was enough pushing me to continue. I respect the cut-and-paste style of the narrative as well as the direct, emotionless tone, but I feel it needs to be handled better in order for me to invest in an entire novel.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A punishingly good book somewhat encumbered by a title that's almost as ridiculous out of context as it is poignant within.
Reads (as I remarked to my uncle the other day) a bit like David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress played in a different key.

[in8 · Rating 5 out of 5]

great read, i go into more here:
http://5cense.com/10/travel_notes.htm

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

i'm gonna need another read on this. or, at least, it still needs to sit in my head for a while before it all comes together.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://this-is-not-poetry.blogspot.co...