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The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories
Peering into the often unnoticed corners of life, Kevin Brockmeier has been consistently praised for the originality of his vision, the boundlessness of his imagination and the command of his craft. Once again, in this new collection of fiction, Brockmeier shows us a fantastical world that is intimately familiar but somehow distant and beautiful. From the touching title story, where a young, antisocial woman imagines her escape into the sky with an apparition only she can see, to the haunting story of a pastor tempted by something less than divine, Brockmeier moves effortlessly from the extraordinary to the everyday, while challenging us to see the world anew. Stunning, elegant, profound, and playful, The View from the Seventh Layer cements Kevin Brockmeier's place as one of the most creative and compassionate writers of his generation.
290 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
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1982 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Brockmeier
40 books492 followersBorn and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Brockmeier received his MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 1997. His stories have been featured in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Crazyhorse, and The Georgia Review. He is the recipient of an O. Henry Award, the Nelson Algren Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts grant.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 204 reviews
October 5, 2008
As often happens, I began this book completely enchanted. Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead was one of my three books of the year, last year, and I figured this collection of short stories would please me similarly.
The first and title story, about a housecleaner named Olivia, is written in a style that I cannot really describe but absolutely love--where every word comes to you gently, rhythmically, in an almost fairy-tale way. It's almost as though the writer is deliberately reeling you in, a little deeper into the story with each sentence.
Olivia's housecleaning job allows her to examine the bookshelves of her clients, which she likens to examining their consciences: The heart of every house was the kitchen, the soul of every house was the bedroom, and the mind of every house was displayed with hooks and thumbtacks on the walls. But the conscience of every house--she believed--the conscience of every house was the bookshelves. She was demoralized by the number of houses whose shelves held only clocks and geodes and a few back issues of TV Guide. She imagined the consciences of the people who lived there hardening into a thousand immovable facets as they sat in their armchairs and watched the minutes roll by.
She then goes on to analyze the consciences of those who read Maeve Binchy, Charles Bukowski, and D.H. Lawrence. The latter "suspect that the forbidden is not necessarily without its virtue, and so are easily persuaded that the forbidden and the virtuous are one and the same."
All of the stories are similar combinations of fact and gently floating unreality, as in the story of the woodworker who, beset by sudden fame, takes a temporary teaching post at a far-flung university. In the house he sublets during his stay, he is observed, wistfully, by photographs of the family's college-age son. This inside-out perspective--that even the seemingly inanimate portions of our lives are observing us--is something I would characterize as part of Brockmeier's sentient-universe view. In Brockmeier's stories, nothing is without meaning.
A Fable With Slips of White Paper, is about a man who finds God's Overcoat at a thrift store. The pockets continually fill with the unuttered prayers of those the man passes every day. The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device is a clever choose-your-own-adventure-story (how I have trouble with these! I want to know all of the possible permutations!) where all paths lead to the same sad, beautiful conclusion; the story of the grown-up girl featured on the cover of National Geographic; the short piece about the producer of a [once] popular Funny Home Videos television show--all start with the familiar and twist it up with oddity, but so deftly that the reader's imagination isn't aware of any effort to suspend disbelief.
Though I didn't love every story in this collection, reading Brockmeier is like taking a vacation, for me, into a world where actions actually matter and where the universe has a benevolent plan for all of its entities, even if the entities don't understand what's happening. I suppose it says something about me that I don't feel this way in everyday life.
The first and title story, about a housecleaner named Olivia, is written in a style that I cannot really describe but absolutely love--where every word comes to you gently, rhythmically, in an almost fairy-tale way. It's almost as though the writer is deliberately reeling you in, a little deeper into the story with each sentence.
Olivia's housecleaning job allows her to examine the bookshelves of her clients, which she likens to examining their consciences: The heart of every house was the kitchen, the soul of every house was the bedroom, and the mind of every house was displayed with hooks and thumbtacks on the walls. But the conscience of every house--she believed--the conscience of every house was the bookshelves. She was demoralized by the number of houses whose shelves held only clocks and geodes and a few back issues of TV Guide. She imagined the consciences of the people who lived there hardening into a thousand immovable facets as they sat in their armchairs and watched the minutes roll by.
She then goes on to analyze the consciences of those who read Maeve Binchy, Charles Bukowski, and D.H. Lawrence. The latter "suspect that the forbidden is not necessarily without its virtue, and so are easily persuaded that the forbidden and the virtuous are one and the same."
All of the stories are similar combinations of fact and gently floating unreality, as in the story of the woodworker who, beset by sudden fame, takes a temporary teaching post at a far-flung university. In the house he sublets during his stay, he is observed, wistfully, by photographs of the family's college-age son. This inside-out perspective--that even the seemingly inanimate portions of our lives are observing us--is something I would characterize as part of Brockmeier's sentient-universe view. In Brockmeier's stories, nothing is without meaning.
A Fable With Slips of White Paper, is about a man who finds God's Overcoat at a thrift store. The pockets continually fill with the unuttered prayers of those the man passes every day. The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device is a clever choose-your-own-adventure-story (how I have trouble with these! I want to know all of the possible permutations!) where all paths lead to the same sad, beautiful conclusion; the story of the grown-up girl featured on the cover of National Geographic; the short piece about the producer of a [once] popular Funny Home Videos television show--all start with the familiar and twist it up with oddity, but so deftly that the reader's imagination isn't aware of any effort to suspend disbelief.
Though I didn't love every story in this collection, reading Brockmeier is like taking a vacation, for me, into a world where actions actually matter and where the universe has a benevolent plan for all of its entities, even if the entities don't understand what's happening. I suppose it says something about me that I don't feel this way in everyday life.
August 10, 2018
I listened to this one from the Levar Burton Reads podcast.
When I first heard it, I loved it, but then thinking about how God was portrayed as not wanted to deal with humans and their problems anymore didn't sit well with me. Also, didn't anyone pray for anyone OTHER than themselves? And prayer isn't just Please. It's also Thank You, You are Amazing and I Am Sorry. Maybe the coat only got the Please prayers?
Also, the ending kinda...I don't know if I got it? Like, were the fortune cookies just the slips of paper? I was kind of hoping that the fortunes were based off of the prayers and directed to the patrons who needed words of wisdom, like answers to their prayers. But it seems like the prayers were just recycled to any old person. How was that helpful at all? A gift, a curse, it's all in how you use it I suppose.
3 solid stars. It definitely makes one think. Never I bad thing. Worth a look/listen.
When I first heard it, I loved it, but then thinking about how God was portrayed as not wanted to deal with humans and their problems anymore didn't sit well with me. Also, didn't anyone pray for anyone OTHER than themselves? And prayer isn't just Please. It's also Thank You, You are Amazing and I Am Sorry. Maybe the coat only got the Please prayers?
Also, the ending kinda...I don't know if I got it? Like, were the fortune cookies just the slips of paper? I was kind of hoping that the fortunes were based off of the prayers and directed to the patrons who needed words of wisdom, like answers to their prayers. But it seems like the prayers were just recycled to any old person. How was that helpful at all? A gift, a curse, it's all in how you use it I suppose.
3 solid stars. It definitely makes one think. Never I bad thing. Worth a look/listen.
September 1, 2017
A pretty experimental collection of short stories. As is often the case, some of these worked better than others, but saying that.. none of them especially stood out to me, and now just a few days after finishing reading I am finding it hard to recall any at all. Brockmeier writes well, however I finished several of these stories wondering what he had been trying to say and unsure what the point of them was. Many very quiet, character focused stories here.
If you enjoy short stories with a magical realism/fantasy side to them then this might be worth checking out!
If you enjoy short stories with a magical realism/fantasy side to them then this might be worth checking out!
September 21, 2012
My 14 year old self might have loved this book. My nanny would have definitely loved it. My aged, cynical, hardened, sarcastic, jaded self didn't hate it. It smells of sunshine and rainbows. It's full of sweet imagery and softness. Sometimes it made my heart remember a simpler time. I will say, any man over the age of 10 whose mind is still filled with cherries, Van Morrison, and parakeets is a treasure to behold. I wish I was in love with him. I’m glad I can still like this book.
April 21, 2008
There's something magical in each of these stories. Definitely the best thing I've read since Joe Hill.
"If only she had known when she was growing up how hard the rest of her life was going to be, how diminished, she would have been so much more joyful, so much more daring. She would have done all the things she had failed to do."
"She had the same responsibility as everybody else did: to live as softly as she could in the world."
Warning: Side effects may include dry mouth, drowsiness, and an inability to tolerate the basic conditions of life on the planet.
"The heart of every house was the kitchen, the soul of every house was the bedroom, and the mind of every house was displayed with hooks and thumbtacks on the walls. But the conscience of every house--she believed--the conscience of every house was the bookshelves. ... She came to rash conclusions about the people whose collections she perused. ... People who read Thomas Pynchon are smart but disdainful. ... People who read Tolstoy find it difficult to be alive because they are reasonable, while people who read Dostoyevsky find it difficult to be alive because they are not. ... She did not believe she would ever be capable of understanding people who read James Patterson."
"... you knew that you couldn't help them, so you decided to love them instead."
"There is a certain look she wears when she is too brittle or hopeless or beaten down by the demands of the world to sustain her disappointment in him any longer ..."
"There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world."
"Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn."
"Everything, given the possibility, would choose to be a song."
"I forget who it was--it wasn't me--who said that the three pillars of comedy are monkeys, robots, and midgets, the reasoning being that monkeys, robots, and midgets are not quite normal human beings, but they all aspire to be, which is a condition that lends itself to comedy."
"For years it had seemed her parents were playing a game of make-believe, a game that had only one rule: they would turn away from each other bit by bit while pretending everything was the same."
"If only she had known when she was growing up how hard the rest of her life was going to be, how diminished, she would have been so much more joyful, so much more daring. She would have done all the things she had failed to do."
"She had the same responsibility as everybody else did: to live as softly as she could in the world."
Warning: Side effects may include dry mouth, drowsiness, and an inability to tolerate the basic conditions of life on the planet.
"The heart of every house was the kitchen, the soul of every house was the bedroom, and the mind of every house was displayed with hooks and thumbtacks on the walls. But the conscience of every house--she believed--the conscience of every house was the bookshelves. ... She came to rash conclusions about the people whose collections she perused. ... People who read Thomas Pynchon are smart but disdainful. ... People who read Tolstoy find it difficult to be alive because they are reasonable, while people who read Dostoyevsky find it difficult to be alive because they are not. ... She did not believe she would ever be capable of understanding people who read James Patterson."
"... you knew that you couldn't help them, so you decided to love them instead."
"There is a certain look she wears when she is too brittle or hopeless or beaten down by the demands of the world to sustain her disappointment in him any longer ..."
"There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world."
"Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn."
"Everything, given the possibility, would choose to be a song."
"I forget who it was--it wasn't me--who said that the three pillars of comedy are monkeys, robots, and midgets, the reasoning being that monkeys, robots, and midgets are not quite normal human beings, but they all aspire to be, which is a condition that lends itself to comedy."
"For years it had seemed her parents were playing a game of make-believe, a game that had only one rule: they would turn away from each other bit by bit while pretending everything was the same."
May 31, 2023
I first heard of Kevin Brockmeier on the Levar Burton Reads podcast, which featured one of this collection's stories, "Fable With Slips of Paper Spilling from the Pockets." That one really captured my imagination, and I've been slowly but surely reading my way through Brockmeier's books ever since. He consistently enchants me.
Like much of Brockmeier's writing, The View from the Seventh Layer is pretty experimental in nature. There are the handful of "fable" stories, in which a whole city has a taboo against making eye contact, or some average Joe just happens to buy God's overcoat at the thrift store. Then, if you can believe it, there's an actual choose-your-own-adventure story set in the middle of the book. For real! For grownups! In a lesser writer's hands, this would be gimmicky, but Brockmeier makes it magical--and well worth reading every distinct path to the ending.
I'm on such a short story kick this year. The View from the Seventh Layer is full of great ones!
Like much of Brockmeier's writing, The View from the Seventh Layer is pretty experimental in nature. There are the handful of "fable" stories, in which a whole city has a taboo against making eye contact, or some average Joe just happens to buy God's overcoat at the thrift store. Then, if you can believe it, there's an actual choose-your-own-adventure story set in the middle of the book. For real! For grownups! In a lesser writer's hands, this would be gimmicky, but Brockmeier makes it magical--and well worth reading every distinct path to the ending.
I'm on such a short story kick this year. The View from the Seventh Layer is full of great ones!
December 28, 2008
The problem I have with good short stories is that I always walk away feeling like I've just found my new favorite author ever. Kevin Brockmeier's The View From the Seventh Layer is a collection of really good short stories.
I have only read Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead which I had also really liked, though I remember sort of waffling because I have this serious brain-block when it comes to new writers that is a throw-back to unresolved issues I have with Dave Eggers, but that's hardly here nor there.
These short stories are awesome, for lack of a better word. I found myself really enjoying the stories, wanting to be a part of them, getting caught up in Brockmeier's exquisite language and mannerisms and whole new worlds that he imagines so well. He's sort of a Ray Bradbury or Jonathan Carroll of short stories, like the sort of stories that could be considered science fiction, but they are so commonplace that I find it difficult to consider placing this book on a science fiction shelf. Some of these stories pack an incredible punch. No matter where or when the stories take place there is an overall theme of happiness, or hope, the processes in which people grow and mature. Some of straight up fables, there is an actual Choose-Your-Own-Adventure portion of the book, some shout-outs to items and music of the eighties (I personally had forgotten about the hedgehog/porcupine pencil holders even though I had one when I was younger - mine was pink).
I find it hard to pick favorites, though a couple did not stand out as much as the others (Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth for one). Andrea Is Changing Her Name is one I found myself relating to the most. The Air Is Full of Little Holes seems to be a story about Sharbat Gula, the Afghan woman photographed for National Geographic in 1985 - you know, the beautiful woman with the intense green eyes - and then again in 2002.
Kevin Brockmeier seems to be one of those new authors I wouldn't mind sitting down with and having a little chat.
I have only read Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead which I had also really liked, though I remember sort of waffling because I have this serious brain-block when it comes to new writers that is a throw-back to unresolved issues I have with Dave Eggers, but that's hardly here nor there.
These short stories are awesome, for lack of a better word. I found myself really enjoying the stories, wanting to be a part of them, getting caught up in Brockmeier's exquisite language and mannerisms and whole new worlds that he imagines so well. He's sort of a Ray Bradbury or Jonathan Carroll of short stories, like the sort of stories that could be considered science fiction, but they are so commonplace that I find it difficult to consider placing this book on a science fiction shelf. Some of these stories pack an incredible punch. No matter where or when the stories take place there is an overall theme of happiness, or hope, the processes in which people grow and mature. Some of straight up fables, there is an actual Choose-Your-Own-Adventure portion of the book, some shout-outs to items and music of the eighties (I personally had forgotten about the hedgehog/porcupine pencil holders even though I had one when I was younger - mine was pink).
I find it hard to pick favorites, though a couple did not stand out as much as the others (Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth for one). Andrea Is Changing Her Name is one I found myself relating to the most. The Air Is Full of Little Holes seems to be a story about Sharbat Gula, the Afghan woman photographed for National Geographic in 1985 - you know, the beautiful woman with the intense green eyes - and then again in 2002.
Kevin Brockmeier seems to be one of those new authors I wouldn't mind sitting down with and having a little chat.
May 18, 2010
I had high hopes after I read "Brief History of the Dead" by Brockmeier. This was a disaster in my estimation. I found none of the stories compelling, or even readable for that matter. I put it down halfway through and I doubt I will ever bring myself to finish it.
May 10, 2018
Wow, this was fantastic... what an imagination! Someone grab this man & sign him for the screenplay.
To listen in the author's own voice : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEbg...
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To listen in the author's own voice : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEbg...
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December 16, 2009
It's hard for me not to love Kevin Brockmeier. I think he has one of the most human approaches to supernatural materials of anyone out there. Whether he's writing a ghost story, a sci-fi love story, or a fable, it's all ultimately about the complexities of the human heart. The highs were really high for me in this collection. There were a couple that didn't hit, but overall, the stories felt so different from what I usually read, it was hard not to be enticed and drawn in by them. A sexy ghost! A man with God's overcoat! Maybe I still want to be told fairy tales before I go to bed (which is mostly when I read this book). Brockmeier seems know that, and he dazzles accordingly. Yet, underneath the magic, there is always some knew way of looking at reality that is equally poignant. The fables at the beginning and end were my favorites. People should write more fables. Or Kevin Brockmeier should.
March 8, 2014
I'm not a huge fan of short stories, having grown up loving novels and book series and occasionally a poem. The short stuff always seemed like there wasn't enough, like I walked away without getting my fill of the story. I had thought it was because I thought short stories just weren't great reads; now I'm beginning to think that, maybe, those short stories I had read weren't good examples.
However, I came to love Brockmeier's quirky, almost-fable stories. They were beautiful, they have wonderful and important messages--they rang true for what it means to be human. "A Fable Ending in the Sound of a Thousand Parakeets" was my favorite. To this day, I read to the end and cry at the wonderful living on of that mute through the seemingly insignificant sounds he made and his parakeets imitated.
However, I came to love Brockmeier's quirky, almost-fable stories. They were beautiful, they have wonderful and important messages--they rang true for what it means to be human. "A Fable Ending in the Sound of a Thousand Parakeets" was my favorite. To this day, I read to the end and cry at the wonderful living on of that mute through the seemingly insignificant sounds he made and his parakeets imitated.
August 27, 2015
I loved this collection of short stories. It hit me emotionally and intellectually in equal measure. So many lovely, insightful, beautifully crafted sentences; I haven't read a book this good in a long time. The "choose your own adventure" story -- yes, this book even has clever gimmicks, well done.
February 15, 2021
finished... finally
January 5, 2019
I really liked a lot of the stories in this collection. They were well written and creative. Several of the stories have a sci-fi element to them, but others are more realistic. I originally heard this author on Levar Burton's podcast where he read "A Fable With Slips of White Paper" in which a man bought God's overcoat at a thrift store and soon found the prayers of everyone in his vicinity on slips of paper in the pockets of the coat. I really liked that story a lot. I enjoyed "Home Videos" which is told from the perspective of a man who works for an America's Funniest Home Videos like show. In "The Year of Silence" a town suddenly experiences a few seconds of complete silence and the residents decide they like it so much that they start creating all kinds of infrastructure to make their town as quiet a possible. I also really liked the cleverly named choose your own adventure short story, "The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device." I really identified with the main character... maybe because it was me. I found something to like about all of the stories, even the more fantastical stories felt so real and touching and really capturing the human experience.
August 24, 2024
Kevin Brockmeier is most certainly a peculiar bird. His writings appeal to me because they have elements of the unexpected, but not in a shocking sort of way, just in a "let's see where this takes us" way. Just like in A Brief History of the Dead, his writing has a dreamlike quality which I appreciated as I don't dream much, lately (literally), and it's always interesting to see what strangenesses other people's minds can come up with.
January 12, 2014
This collection of short stories is simply sublime. There is something about the author’s voice that brought to mind the way one would approach a frightened animal - softly, slowly, and cautiously. Yet at the same time the message of most of the stories was thought-provoking in a “smack you upside the head” sort of way. That dichotomy worked, and it worked very well. The overall tone is melancholy, there are strong messages about society and spirituality, and there is a hint of the supernatural that wafts like smoke from an extinguished candle. And the quality of writing is just perfection.
My favorite stories in the collection:
The Lives of the Philosophers. A man receives an epiphany about his thesis on Thomas Aquinas and Friedrich Nietzsche when his girlfriend experiences a tragedy. This story just shattered me. It left me breathless and weepy. I had to go for a walk. I almost took the book to my sister-in-law and demand that she read the story that very second (because I knew she would understand what I felt).
A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets. A man purchases a coat at a thrift shop and discovers the pockets of the coat mysteriously fill with scraps of paper on which prayers have been written. This was such a unique concept and there was a such a quiet desperation in the story. Poignant and profound.
Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth. A priest endures a crisis of faith when he is visited by a ghost. This story is dark and gothic, and so compelling that I couldn’t look away for an instant.
The View from the Seventh Layer. A woman reflects on how her life has been impacted by a childhood visitation from an angel. I loved this story for how it was structured, in a sort of a circular, stream-of-consciousness manner. Beautiful and brilliant.
I also appreciated (but didn’t love) The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story. This one is just very very clever.
There were two clunkers in the book - a StarTrek fan fic piece and one about a television show similar to America’s Funniest Home Videos. These were awful in a “Can I tear these pages out of the book?” way. But ultimately they didn’t detract from my rating of the book because the stories I loved, I loved A LOT.
My favorite stories in the collection:
The Lives of the Philosophers. A man receives an epiphany about his thesis on Thomas Aquinas and Friedrich Nietzsche when his girlfriend experiences a tragedy. This story just shattered me. It left me breathless and weepy. I had to go for a walk. I almost took the book to my sister-in-law and demand that she read the story that very second (because I knew she would understand what I felt).
A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets. A man purchases a coat at a thrift shop and discovers the pockets of the coat mysteriously fill with scraps of paper on which prayers have been written. This was such a unique concept and there was a such a quiet desperation in the story. Poignant and profound.
Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth. A priest endures a crisis of faith when he is visited by a ghost. This story is dark and gothic, and so compelling that I couldn’t look away for an instant.
The View from the Seventh Layer. A woman reflects on how her life has been impacted by a childhood visitation from an angel. I loved this story for how it was structured, in a sort of a circular, stream-of-consciousness manner. Beautiful and brilliant.
I also appreciated (but didn’t love) The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story. This one is just very very clever.
There were two clunkers in the book - a StarTrek fan fic piece and one about a television show similar to America’s Funniest Home Videos. These were awful in a “Can I tear these pages out of the book?” way. But ultimately they didn’t detract from my rating of the book because the stories I loved, I loved A LOT.
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December 17, 2012This is not a perfect collection of stories. For instance, "The Air is Full of Little Holes," a story about the finding of "The Afghan Girl," reads like a story about a thing. Nothing feels much added. Likewise, "The Lady with the Pet Tribble," a rewriting of "The Lady with the Pet Dog," by Anton Chekov from the point of view of Captain Kirk is cute and amusing, but after ten pages of the twenty something page story, the novelty has worn off and you are reading a cute imitation of a better story.
Everything else, here, however, sparkles. The fables are startlingly true to their form without feeling trite or moralistic, stories like the title story or "Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth" tackle the fantastic in a way that is brilliant and touching and the gimmicky "The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story" not only lives up to its title but is (wait for it) excellent. I haven't even talked about "Home Videos" or "The Lives of the Philosopher," which is to say that this collection is packed with excellence, if also the occasional misfire, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the fantastic, but who prefers to look there from a point where their feet are still planted on the ground.
Everything else, here, however, sparkles. The fables are startlingly true to their form without feeling trite or moralistic, stories like the title story or "Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth" tackle the fantastic in a way that is brilliant and touching and the gimmicky "The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story" not only lives up to its title but is (wait for it) excellent. I haven't even talked about "Home Videos" or "The Lives of the Philosopher," which is to say that this collection is packed with excellence, if also the occasional misfire, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the fantastic, but who prefers to look there from a point where their feet are still planted on the ground.
March 26, 2021
Several of the short stories included in Kevin Brockmeier's collection The View from the Seventh Layer are labeled by the author as 'fables'. It's a peculiar choice of labels - my handy reference book tells me a fable is a short story designed to teach a moral lesson to children. But Brockmeier is a peculiar writer, and the odd titles of his tales are very much aligned with their equally unconventional content.
In truth, the fable has always been much more than a children's tale. The translators of the King James Bible used the term 'fable' where, nowadays we might refer to 'myth'. In the second epistle of Peter, we read of "cunningly devised fables," and the implication is that these kinds of stories are not just fanciful, but also dangerous and deceptively beguiling. A host of influential modern authors - George Orwell, Jose Saramago, Italo Calvino, Franz Kafka - have either implicitly or explicitly drawn on fabulistic techniques in crafting tales that are anything but child's play. The fable, in other words, need not be restricted to The Book of Virtues, and might even have more in common with books of vice.
The fables in Brockmeier's collection are populated by two types of individuals: those who perceive the magical and transcendent world that surrounds them, and those who go through their day-to-day routines oblivious to it - unware, apparently, that there is anything 'fabulous' (from the Latin fabulosus, of mythical proportions) in their purview. "Once there was a city where people did not look one another in the eye," begins Brockmeier's story A Fable Containing a Reflection the Size of a Match Head in its Pupil. Here citizens walk with heads downward, and when they pose for photos they look off to the side. But even in this culture of isolation and avoidance, a few daring souls will risk furtive gazes at a loved one or even engage in forbidden staring contests.
In Brockmeier's A Fable Ending in the Sound of a Thousand Parakeets a mute suffers because he can never express his innate gift for song. Instead he focuses his passion into raising parakeets, song-loving creature who chirrup happily in a way he can not. He finds endless joy and solace in the birds, and eager to share his enthusiasm, he shows up at all festive occasions - weddings, birthdays, graduations, and other such affairs - with a parakeet in a bamboo cage to offer as a gift. Here, in typical Brockmeier fashion, only a few recipients appreciate the wondrous quality of the gift, while others "has little interest in keeping a pet, but were too polite to tell him so. They stowed the parakeets away in a dimly-lit corner of their spare bedroom, or even set them loose in the woods at the edge of town." The fabulous, like beauty, is in the eye (and ear) of the beholder.
In the longest and most ambitious story in this collection, Brockmeier takes this insight to its less-than-obvious conclusion, and decides to let readers construct their own preferred narrative out of 33 story fragments. In this novella, entitled The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device, the reader must choose between two options at the end of every two pages. The tale is continued on a different page, and proceeds in a different manner, depending on which alternative is selected. Consider this the fictional equivalent of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, but with the advantage of allowing readers to go back later and see where different decisions might have brought them.
But here Brockmeier gets the last laugh. The reader's freedom to choose is an illusion. No matter which options are selected, every reader ends up at the same less-than-desirable end point. To add to the fun, Brockmeier does insert one dead end in the middle of his story fragments, but like a secret chamber in a maze, only the most perceptive readers will find their way to it. Apparently Brockmeier's readers, much like his characters, either will see the fabulous that is plain sight, or continue onward unaware of what they've missed.
Brockmeier is part of a larger movement in contemporary fiction that is rebelling against the dictates of 'realism' that have so long dominated highbrow literature. Like others of this persuasion - such as Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Lethem, Steven Millhauser, Tea Obreht, David Mitchell, Hari Kunzru, Audrey Niffenegger, and others - he refuses to recognize the boundary lines that separate genre form literary fiction. In the course of The View from the Seventh Layer, you will encounter elements of fantasy, science fiction, ghost stories, magical realism, and other non-realist or anti-realist categories. Much of the fun of this work comes from its author's willingness to trample on the rules taught in MFA creative writing programs.
Brockmeier even embraces that lowliest genre of all genres, namely fan fiction. In The Lady with the Pet Tribble, he constructs a mid-life crisis story built around characters from the TV show Star Trek. In a move that could kill the reputation of a lesser author, Brockmeier pulls off the unthinkable, and not only delivers a tale of great warmth and psychological depth, but does so via the persona of Captain James Kirk. I won't give away details, but suffice to say that you will look at Willian Shatner the same way again.
If Brockmeier can salvage shallow TV characters, there's no telling what he might not do with more promising material. I have a hunch that this writer, only 35 years old when this collection was released, merely hints at, in these pages, his full potential. Under any circumstances, he would be an author to keep tabs on, but especially so, given the shifts underway in contemporary fiction. If, as I suspect, the arbiters of taste on the current literary scene are (finally!) grasping that the fantastic and phantasmagorical aren't just for kids, they own it to themselves to take heed of this visionary storyteller, who has already made the leap into the absolutely fabulous.
In truth, the fable has always been much more than a children's tale. The translators of the King James Bible used the term 'fable' where, nowadays we might refer to 'myth'. In the second epistle of Peter, we read of "cunningly devised fables," and the implication is that these kinds of stories are not just fanciful, but also dangerous and deceptively beguiling. A host of influential modern authors - George Orwell, Jose Saramago, Italo Calvino, Franz Kafka - have either implicitly or explicitly drawn on fabulistic techniques in crafting tales that are anything but child's play. The fable, in other words, need not be restricted to The Book of Virtues, and might even have more in common with books of vice.
The fables in Brockmeier's collection are populated by two types of individuals: those who perceive the magical and transcendent world that surrounds them, and those who go through their day-to-day routines oblivious to it - unware, apparently, that there is anything 'fabulous' (from the Latin fabulosus, of mythical proportions) in their purview. "Once there was a city where people did not look one another in the eye," begins Brockmeier's story A Fable Containing a Reflection the Size of a Match Head in its Pupil. Here citizens walk with heads downward, and when they pose for photos they look off to the side. But even in this culture of isolation and avoidance, a few daring souls will risk furtive gazes at a loved one or even engage in forbidden staring contests.
In Brockmeier's A Fable Ending in the Sound of a Thousand Parakeets a mute suffers because he can never express his innate gift for song. Instead he focuses his passion into raising parakeets, song-loving creature who chirrup happily in a way he can not. He finds endless joy and solace in the birds, and eager to share his enthusiasm, he shows up at all festive occasions - weddings, birthdays, graduations, and other such affairs - with a parakeet in a bamboo cage to offer as a gift. Here, in typical Brockmeier fashion, only a few recipients appreciate the wondrous quality of the gift, while others "has little interest in keeping a pet, but were too polite to tell him so. They stowed the parakeets away in a dimly-lit corner of their spare bedroom, or even set them loose in the woods at the edge of town." The fabulous, like beauty, is in the eye (and ear) of the beholder.
In the longest and most ambitious story in this collection, Brockmeier takes this insight to its less-than-obvious conclusion, and decides to let readers construct their own preferred narrative out of 33 story fragments. In this novella, entitled The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device, the reader must choose between two options at the end of every two pages. The tale is continued on a different page, and proceeds in a different manner, depending on which alternative is selected. Consider this the fictional equivalent of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, but with the advantage of allowing readers to go back later and see where different decisions might have brought them.
But here Brockmeier gets the last laugh. The reader's freedom to choose is an illusion. No matter which options are selected, every reader ends up at the same less-than-desirable end point. To add to the fun, Brockmeier does insert one dead end in the middle of his story fragments, but like a secret chamber in a maze, only the most perceptive readers will find their way to it. Apparently Brockmeier's readers, much like his characters, either will see the fabulous that is plain sight, or continue onward unaware of what they've missed.
Brockmeier is part of a larger movement in contemporary fiction that is rebelling against the dictates of 'realism' that have so long dominated highbrow literature. Like others of this persuasion - such as Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Lethem, Steven Millhauser, Tea Obreht, David Mitchell, Hari Kunzru, Audrey Niffenegger, and others - he refuses to recognize the boundary lines that separate genre form literary fiction. In the course of The View from the Seventh Layer, you will encounter elements of fantasy, science fiction, ghost stories, magical realism, and other non-realist or anti-realist categories. Much of the fun of this work comes from its author's willingness to trample on the rules taught in MFA creative writing programs.
Brockmeier even embraces that lowliest genre of all genres, namely fan fiction. In The Lady with the Pet Tribble, he constructs a mid-life crisis story built around characters from the TV show Star Trek. In a move that could kill the reputation of a lesser author, Brockmeier pulls off the unthinkable, and not only delivers a tale of great warmth and psychological depth, but does so via the persona of Captain James Kirk. I won't give away details, but suffice to say that you will look at Willian Shatner the same way again.
If Brockmeier can salvage shallow TV characters, there's no telling what he might not do with more promising material. I have a hunch that this writer, only 35 years old when this collection was released, merely hints at, in these pages, his full potential. Under any circumstances, he would be an author to keep tabs on, but especially so, given the shifts underway in contemporary fiction. If, as I suspect, the arbiters of taste on the current literary scene are (finally!) grasping that the fantastic and phantasmagorical aren't just for kids, they own it to themselves to take heed of this visionary storyteller, who has already made the leap into the absolutely fabulous.
April 17, 2019
I listened to the short story A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets (which is a rather unwieldy title) through LeVar Burton Reads. When it first began I thought the premise was too similar to Chivalry by Neil Gaiman, but this story took the idea of a mortal finding a holy item in a better direction. In this case, a man finds an overcoat of God's in a thrift shop and discovers that prayers from nearby people appear as slips of paper in his coat pockets. Often he can do nothing about the prayers, but on occasion he is able to intervene and help certain individuals. This fable makes you realize that we never can help everybody, but we can always help somebody, and this help could make a huge difference in someone's life. So if everybody helps somebody, we might just be answering someone's prayers!
May 20, 2008
A rich, ethereal collection... Here are fables, ghost stories, romances (among them a sci-fi adaptation of "The Lady with the Pet Dog"), personal histories, anxieties of influence, and spiritual bursts -- even a choose-your-own-adventure for the soul.
Each story explores the possibilities and consequences of experiencing a truly powerful connection (no matter how fleeting) with another person; with oneself; with the universe. The writer's camera pans in and out, in and out, from character studies of startling specificity to Big Themes, and back again.
Kevin Brockmeier's imagination is seemingly boundless, as is his empathy. I also highly recommend his novel The Brief History of the Dead.
Longer review to come on FWR...
Each story explores the possibilities and consequences of experiencing a truly powerful connection (no matter how fleeting) with another person; with oneself; with the universe. The writer's camera pans in and out, in and out, from character studies of startling specificity to Big Themes, and back again.
Kevin Brockmeier's imagination is seemingly boundless, as is his empathy. I also highly recommend his novel The Brief History of the Dead.
Longer review to come on FWR...
December 28, 2008
I really enjoy Kevin Brockmeier's writing. He depicts sensory elements incredibly well, and the conceits for his more imaginative stories don't come off precious, as you'd expect.
But I have to admit, I didn't enjoy this as much as I did Things that Fall from the Sky . A couple of the stories in that collection knocked me over a bit, whereas none of the Seventh Layer stories really did. But "The Lady with the Pet Tribble" made me laugh, and "The Air Is Full of Little Holes" was surprisingly moving.
But I have to admit, I didn't enjoy this as much as I did Things that Fall from the Sky . A couple of the stories in that collection knocked me over a bit, whereas none of the Seventh Layer stories really did. But "The Lady with the Pet Tribble" made me laugh, and "The Air Is Full of Little Holes" was surprisingly moving.
October 1, 2017
I highly recommend that you listen to Brockmeier read this story, it’s absolutely wonderful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEbg...
~Pretty Spoiler-y~
This is an absolutely beautiful short story. It’s beautifully written with an interesting premise. Despite not knowing the main character’s name, you get a real feel for his character. The ending is wonderfully ambiguous and saddening. You really feel for the main character’s struggle of having power but sometimes even that power not being enough. That feeling of great lost and relief of him losing the coat. One of my favorites that I’ve read for a class.
~Pretty Spoiler-y~
This is an absolutely beautiful short story. It’s beautifully written with an interesting premise. Despite not knowing the main character’s name, you get a real feel for his character. The ending is wonderfully ambiguous and saddening. You really feel for the main character’s struggle of having power but sometimes even that power not being enough. That feeling of great lost and relief of him losing the coat. One of my favorites that I’ve read for a class.
July 18, 2008
This is an amazing collection of short stories from Little Rock's own Kevin Brockmeier. These are stories that cause you to visit places in your inner thoughts that you might never have gone before. Unique and provoking with threads of loss and what ifs, I couldn't put it down and am planning on reading his two novels. One of our bookclub members thought that he may well be the "Virginia Wolf or Wm. Faulkner" of his generation!
June 6, 2018
Another Levar Burton reads. I think I'll give him two more tries. I think the problem I have is so much of it is modern literature and modern lit just bores me with it's lack of style. This was at the same time kinda blasphamous and very Christian. Based on the idea that "everyone" prays and that's a window into their soul. It should have been humourous. It wasn't. And there were only two women, one of whom just wanted to be told she was pretty, the other suicidal.
October 26, 2013
Kevin Brockmeier's story collection is a treasure. Every single story worked for me, every one seemed wise and wonderful. Some are fantastical, some are realist, but each story is a gem. I admit to being most deeply touched by the "fables" and "Andrea Is Changing Her Name." The only disappointment is that I am near the end of the Brockmeier canon.
Read
August 28, 2020This was enjoyable.
Very much felt like it was written after watching Bruce Almighty.
But LeVar did a great job, and kept me entertained while I was making pancakes for my kiddo. Unfortunately I had to wait a week between listenings, so it took a while to finish. That is not a reflection on the story, just when I had time to listen.
Very much felt like it was written after watching Bruce Almighty.
But LeVar did a great job, and kept me entertained while I was making pancakes for my kiddo. Unfortunately I had to wait a week between listenings, so it took a while to finish. That is not a reflection on the story, just when I had time to listen.
December 25, 2012
I acknowledge the loveliness of language and image, but the stories were depressing - even those that may have been 'happier' than others. Mostly, I tried to enjoy the pretty writing and avoid too much involvement with what was going on.
September 24, 2020
Clever, taking a God complex idea and paring it down - hitting the themes of power, responsibility, and worthiness but making it fit nicely into short story format and adding just the right amount of charm - this story put a smile on my face.
June 1, 2008
Relies a bit too much on fairy-tale storybook construction sometimes, but overall a very inventive collection of short stories. The few gems in the bunch make up for the duds.
May 23, 2012
If you're looking for a great short story writer, Kevin Brockmeier is your man. However, if you are looking for his very best work as far as short stories go, I would recommend Things That Fall From the Sky over this one. Still, the first half of this collection is quite flawless. Brockmeier takes us on a journey of a town obsessed with sound and the man who was mute but raised parakeets ("A Fable Ending in the Sound of a Thousand Parakeets") to the story of a world which craves the ending of all sound "The Year of Silence"). He writes of other dimensions in a way that somehow doesn't seem hokey (The View from the Seventh Layer). There's also a grand adult choose your own adventure segment (" The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose Your Own Adventure Story") that made me remember some very fond memories of childhood.
Where Brockmeier lost me a little bit was the love affair in space "The Lady With the Pet Tribble" though he redeems the second half a bit with "A Fable Containing a Reflection" which is about a whole town that doesn't make eye contact, and "Home Videos" about breaking the cycle and system of commonplace and inane comedies that get aired on television. "A Fable With Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets" is an interesting story about a man with God's coat and who therefore gets all of the prayers meant for him.
Brockmeier manages to come up with some unique and creative ideas, which is more difficult than one might think in this day and age, and he achieves such a virtuosity with language in so much of his work. I have to review some of Brockmeier's work that I've been ruminating on for quite some time...the man makes you think and feel, which is rare indeed.
Favorite quotes:
pg. 3-4 "In this city there lived a mute, the only person who was unable to lend his voice to the great chorus of song that filled the air...In some communities there is a man who sells whistles by the courthouse or paper kites down by the river. In others there is a woman who decorates her home with multicolored lights and streamers every holiday. Usually these people are no more than small figures at the periphery of everyone's attention, but when they die, it can be more surprising than the death of a prominent leader or a renowned artist, because no one has ever regarded them carefully enough to consider what their absence might mean."
pg. 9-10 "In a thousand different tones, a thousand different inflections, they reproduced all the sounds of the mute's daily life, from the steady beat of his footsteps to the whistle of his coffeepot to the slow, spreading note of his final breath. It sounded for all the world like a symphony."
pg. 12 "Dozens of half-closed umbrellas lay discarded over the glistening brown boards, their handles glowing in the flawless white light. The local children collected them like flowers."
pg. 14 "Nothing was secure from one minute to the next. She did not remember her dreams when she woke in the morning."
pg. 14-15 "She had read somewhere that the best way to reset your circadian clock was to illuminate the backs of your knees, and so every night, after she took sleeping pills, she was careful to shield the lower half of her body from the light."
pg. 15 "Then something went wrong, and she was no longer able to concentrate on the novels she brought home with her. Everything about them seemed imaginary, insubstantial, built on a tissue of fog and lies-and not just the settings and the characters, wither, but the very words on the page. They might have been invented just that second by somebody who had never so much as set foot in the world."
pg. 19 "But the conscience of every house-she believed-the conscience of every house was the bookshelves."
pg. 20 "Olivia had heard somewhere that the hour from midnight to one o'clock was called the witching hour because that was when the witches were supposed to be active, but she had heard somewhere else that the witching hour was simply that hour of the day when everything always went wrong."
pg. 21 "Once, a tourist who had just returned from an aquatic sightseeing trip told her that there were schools of fish that followed the shadows like newborn babies trying to keep their mother in reach. He said that the fish were the color of Dijon mustard. Olivia was more interested in the clouds that she was in the water, and she was more interested in the shadows than she was in the clouds. She did not know when she had become so unlike other people."
pg. 24 "People who read Tolstoy found it difficult to be alive because they are reasonable, while people who read Dostoevsky find it difficult to be alive because they are not."
pg. 30 "As far as Olivia could tell, the structure had an unending capacity to withstand assault without suffering harm. It was as though it presented itself so modestly to the world that the world had decided it was not worth destroying."
pg. 34 "Olivia thought that surely the library was the conscience of the island."
pg. 38 "She had started out strong and beautiful, and she was not sure when she had changed. But surely anything that could change once, and change so dramatically, could swing back around and change again."
pg. 41 "The change machine? Jacob pictures something straight out of a science fiction novel, an immense apparatus of hatches, levers, and conveyer belts that allows you to step in as one human being and step out as another, in which atheists change into Christians, stock car drivers change into politicians, great beauties change into wallflowers.:
pg. 60 "And after their (Aquinas's and Nietzsche's) visions were disclosed to them, they folded their hands together and never wrote another word. They wished their ideas had never been set to paper...The past is irreparable and so is the future."
pg. 76 "We had lost some of the difficulty of our lives and we wanted it back."
pg. 82 "Other people's homes present you with the same ornate sense of emptiness. This is never so obvious as when the people who live there have gone away."
pg. 115 "See, I hate this idea that everything needs to be traded in for something else. I can't imagine a better way to waste a life."
pg. 120-121 "You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core.
Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virgina Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn."
pg. 146-147 "It will be several thousand years before the human race develops a procedure to retrieve the memories of the dead from their bodies. By then the age in which you lived will be recollected as a time of barbarism and brute physical destruction, of interest only to historians of cultural degradation. But in the name of scientific research, a few sample bodies from your century will be exhumed for memory reclamation, and among those selected will be yours."
pg. 224 "Neurologically speaking, the hiccup is just the final stage of laughter."
pg. 237 "The parchments teach us that we see the world only from the back, which is why everything appears so imperfect to our eyes. There is no leaf on a tree that is not a leaf seen from behind, no star in the sky that is not a star seen from behind, no man and no woman who are not souls seen from behind. But occasionally, by the grace of God, the world turns its face to us, uncovering its perfection, and though the glimpse we are given never lasts longer than an instant, we remember it for the rest of our lives."
pg. 248 "She would drop a joke into the conversation, and he would screw his eyes shut and grin, producing a slow growing laugh out of the privacy of his consciousness, the kind of laugh that seemed to have a bell ringing somewhere inside it."
Where Brockmeier lost me a little bit was the love affair in space "The Lady With the Pet Tribble" though he redeems the second half a bit with "A Fable Containing a Reflection" which is about a whole town that doesn't make eye contact, and "Home Videos" about breaking the cycle and system of commonplace and inane comedies that get aired on television. "A Fable With Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets" is an interesting story about a man with God's coat and who therefore gets all of the prayers meant for him.
Brockmeier manages to come up with some unique and creative ideas, which is more difficult than one might think in this day and age, and he achieves such a virtuosity with language in so much of his work. I have to review some of Brockmeier's work that I've been ruminating on for quite some time...the man makes you think and feel, which is rare indeed.
Favorite quotes:
pg. 3-4 "In this city there lived a mute, the only person who was unable to lend his voice to the great chorus of song that filled the air...In some communities there is a man who sells whistles by the courthouse or paper kites down by the river. In others there is a woman who decorates her home with multicolored lights and streamers every holiday. Usually these people are no more than small figures at the periphery of everyone's attention, but when they die, it can be more surprising than the death of a prominent leader or a renowned artist, because no one has ever regarded them carefully enough to consider what their absence might mean."
pg. 9-10 "In a thousand different tones, a thousand different inflections, they reproduced all the sounds of the mute's daily life, from the steady beat of his footsteps to the whistle of his coffeepot to the slow, spreading note of his final breath. It sounded for all the world like a symphony."
pg. 12 "Dozens of half-closed umbrellas lay discarded over the glistening brown boards, their handles glowing in the flawless white light. The local children collected them like flowers."
pg. 14 "Nothing was secure from one minute to the next. She did not remember her dreams when she woke in the morning."
pg. 14-15 "She had read somewhere that the best way to reset your circadian clock was to illuminate the backs of your knees, and so every night, after she took sleeping pills, she was careful to shield the lower half of her body from the light."
pg. 15 "Then something went wrong, and she was no longer able to concentrate on the novels she brought home with her. Everything about them seemed imaginary, insubstantial, built on a tissue of fog and lies-and not just the settings and the characters, wither, but the very words on the page. They might have been invented just that second by somebody who had never so much as set foot in the world."
pg. 19 "But the conscience of every house-she believed-the conscience of every house was the bookshelves."
pg. 20 "Olivia had heard somewhere that the hour from midnight to one o'clock was called the witching hour because that was when the witches were supposed to be active, but she had heard somewhere else that the witching hour was simply that hour of the day when everything always went wrong."
pg. 21 "Once, a tourist who had just returned from an aquatic sightseeing trip told her that there were schools of fish that followed the shadows like newborn babies trying to keep their mother in reach. He said that the fish were the color of Dijon mustard. Olivia was more interested in the clouds that she was in the water, and she was more interested in the shadows than she was in the clouds. She did not know when she had become so unlike other people."
pg. 24 "People who read Tolstoy found it difficult to be alive because they are reasonable, while people who read Dostoevsky find it difficult to be alive because they are not."
pg. 30 "As far as Olivia could tell, the structure had an unending capacity to withstand assault without suffering harm. It was as though it presented itself so modestly to the world that the world had decided it was not worth destroying."
pg. 34 "Olivia thought that surely the library was the conscience of the island."
pg. 38 "She had started out strong and beautiful, and she was not sure when she had changed. But surely anything that could change once, and change so dramatically, could swing back around and change again."
pg. 41 "The change machine? Jacob pictures something straight out of a science fiction novel, an immense apparatus of hatches, levers, and conveyer belts that allows you to step in as one human being and step out as another, in which atheists change into Christians, stock car drivers change into politicians, great beauties change into wallflowers.:
pg. 60 "And after their (Aquinas's and Nietzsche's) visions were disclosed to them, they folded their hands together and never wrote another word. They wished their ideas had never been set to paper...The past is irreparable and so is the future."
pg. 76 "We had lost some of the difficulty of our lives and we wanted it back."
pg. 82 "Other people's homes present you with the same ornate sense of emptiness. This is never so obvious as when the people who live there have gone away."
pg. 115 "See, I hate this idea that everything needs to be traded in for something else. I can't imagine a better way to waste a life."
pg. 120-121 "You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core.
Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virgina Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn."
pg. 146-147 "It will be several thousand years before the human race develops a procedure to retrieve the memories of the dead from their bodies. By then the age in which you lived will be recollected as a time of barbarism and brute physical destruction, of interest only to historians of cultural degradation. But in the name of scientific research, a few sample bodies from your century will be exhumed for memory reclamation, and among those selected will be yours."
pg. 224 "Neurologically speaking, the hiccup is just the final stage of laughter."
pg. 237 "The parchments teach us that we see the world only from the back, which is why everything appears so imperfect to our eyes. There is no leaf on a tree that is not a leaf seen from behind, no star in the sky that is not a star seen from behind, no man and no woman who are not souls seen from behind. But occasionally, by the grace of God, the world turns its face to us, uncovering its perfection, and though the glimpse we are given never lasts longer than an instant, we remember it for the rest of our lives."
pg. 248 "She would drop a joke into the conversation, and he would screw his eyes shut and grin, producing a slow growing laugh out of the privacy of his consciousness, the kind of laugh that seemed to have a bell ringing somewhere inside it."
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