Reviews
Not A Wake: A dream embodying (pi)'s digits fully for 10000 decimals by Diana Keith, Michael Keith
zellapaige's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
First, I would like to thank Storygraph user lawrence_retold for the review that ultimately convinced me to read this book after it had spent months languishing on my TBR. In particular, I would like to thank lawrence_retold for the last line of that review, which I am sure will live rent-free in my mind for the rest of my life. That line is, "I find it also sets its own kind of standard for experimental writing, poetry especially. If I’m reading something especially obtuse, I now wonder: would the words here fare any worse if they were somehow made to encode the digits of pi?" And now that I have slogged my way through the distinct ten sections of Not A Wake, I can say that I fully agree with lawrence_retold, this book sets a standard for the bounds of creative writing. Specifically creative form writing. Without the playful nature of the form in this book, I don't think anyone could make an argument for the literary value of the collection. Even the sections of this book that made me want to individually pull every hair on my body out are artful in their use of poetic forms. The book is innovative and maddening.
Section four (one of the hair-pulling sections) specifically left me a bit slack-jawed at the ingenuity of its form. The section is written to look like dozens and dozens of couplets where the first line of each couplet is left justified and the second line of each couplet is right justified. It took me reading the first page of the section several times to realize that the whole section was actually meant to be read twice separately rather than once together. All the left justified lines are meant to be read through once entirely separately. Then you start the section over again and only read the right justified lines.
As a collection of poetry, this book is probably not worth the paper it's printed on. The poem sections (and the book as a whole) lack any sense of narrative, storytelling, or even a single clear message. As an experimental writing manifesto, of sorts, this book contains a multitude of thought-provoking forms and concepts to be explored. All that said my rating for the book is a bit of a shot in the dark, far more than average for form and interest, and far less than average for traditional literary value.
Section four (one of the hair-pulling sections) specifically left me a bit slack-jawed at the ingenuity of its form. The section is written to look like dozens and dozens of couplets where the first line of each couplet is left justified and the second line of each couplet is right justified. It took me reading the first page of the section several times to realize that the whole section was actually meant to be read twice separately rather than once together. All the left justified lines are meant to be read through once entirely separately. Then you start the section over again and only read the right justified lines.
As a collection of poetry, this book is probably not worth the paper it's printed on. The poem sections (and the book as a whole) lack any sense of narrative, storytelling, or even a single clear message. As an experimental writing manifesto, of sorts, this book contains a multitude of thought-provoking forms and concepts to be explored. All that said my rating for the book is a bit of a shot in the dark, far more than average for form and interest, and far less than average for traditional literary value.
lawrence_retold's review against another edition
3.0
Not a Wake surprised me in the end: for a long time, I was predicting I was going to rate it a scant two stars. Sections five and six, out of the book’s ten (each of which approaches a different literary genre), were quite tough going; but, the last four sections played a large part in redeeming the thing as a whole for me.
The book is really a tricky work (as anyone who gets up to section ten might realize); I think it has plenty more depth of meaning than is first apparent. But: the meaning itself is tied up in that of randomness and nonsense. The constraint Keith imposed on himself, that of making the number of letters in each word in his book encode a digit or two of pi in a certain way detailed in his introduction, might seem like the literature-denying tomfoolery of a dabbling mathematician; but, as his website www.cadaeic.net makes clear (through whose Scrabble poem at http://www.cadaeic.net/scrpoem.htm I first discovered him), no one writing these days seems to have cornered the market on constrained writing more than Michael Keith. To me, Not A Wake partakes of the serious experimentation of the (often also constrained) writing of that monolith, [a:John Cage|47403|John Cage|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1236828378p2/47403.jpg].
The net effect of Keith’s “pilish” (as he calls the constraint he uses here) might ultimately boil down mostly to a rather longer-than-usual average word length in his writing, but I find its effect to be profound regardless. Knowing the length of each of Keith’s words to have been practically predetermined, I find I pay substantially more attention than usual to each of his word choices, even when compared to those in most poetry. While reading this book, the part I kept returning to was section three, entitled “Dream Haiku”: somehow Keith manages to marry what’s recognizably a haiku aesthetic of transience (if not haiku’s syllable counts) to his “pilish”.
That said: I did almost drop the book in frustration when I reached section five, “Dream-of-Consciousness”, which was even more disconnected and nonsensical than anything that had come before. Keith does not, indeed, show his full command of pilish narrative until the following three sections (and the narrative of section six, "Dream on Film" — however well-written — is awful as a story), and I thought he’d simply gone lazy as a writer during “Dream-of-Consciousness”. I was only able to make it through that bridge of asses by a process of loosening my mind from expected associations to an even further degree than was previously necessary, or something like that, anyway.
Then, by the end of the book, I had managed to regain enough faith in Keith as a writer that I swallowed wholeheartedly things like his constraint-flagellating paraphrase of [b:A Tale of Two Cities|1953|A Tale of Two Cities|Charles Dickens|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344922523s/1953.jpg|2956372]’ opening in section eight. Retroactively, it then seemed that Keith had had more control than I’d given him credit for in the earlier sections, and had simply enjoyed playing with levels of nonsensicality — again shades of Cage, with his belief that art should ape nature in its disconnectedness.
Ultimately, I’d feel it to be a shame for readers who enjoy literature for its form, specifically, to dismiss Not a Wake out of hand. With all its nudges and winks, it’s more experimental and form-breaking than that now-acknowledged master [a:Georges Perec|15923|Georges Perec|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1535549107p2/15923.jpg]’s [b:A Void|28294|A Void|Georges Perec|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388699493s/28294.jpg|2310135]. Yes, I do feel that it’s not as successful an experiment; I do feel that Keith could have steeped himself more in simple literature before diving in to write it. But, I find it also sets its own kind of standard for experimental writing, poetry especially. If I’m reading something especially obtuse, I now wonder: would the words here fare any worse if they were somehow made to encode the digits of pi?
The book is really a tricky work (as anyone who gets up to section ten might realize); I think it has plenty more depth of meaning than is first apparent. But: the meaning itself is tied up in that of randomness and nonsense. The constraint Keith imposed on himself, that of making the number of letters in each word in his book encode a digit or two of pi in a certain way detailed in his introduction, might seem like the literature-denying tomfoolery of a dabbling mathematician; but, as his website www.cadaeic.net makes clear (through whose Scrabble poem at http://www.cadaeic.net/scrpoem.htm I first discovered him), no one writing these days seems to have cornered the market on constrained writing more than Michael Keith. To me, Not A Wake partakes of the serious experimentation of the (often also constrained) writing of that monolith, [a:John Cage|47403|John Cage|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1236828378p2/47403.jpg].
The net effect of Keith’s “pilish” (as he calls the constraint he uses here) might ultimately boil down mostly to a rather longer-than-usual average word length in his writing, but I find its effect to be profound regardless. Knowing the length of each of Keith’s words to have been practically predetermined, I find I pay substantially more attention than usual to each of his word choices, even when compared to those in most poetry. While reading this book, the part I kept returning to was section three, entitled “Dream Haiku”: somehow Keith manages to marry what’s recognizably a haiku aesthetic of transience (if not haiku’s syllable counts) to his “pilish”.
That said: I did almost drop the book in frustration when I reached section five, “Dream-of-Consciousness”, which was even more disconnected and nonsensical than anything that had come before. Keith does not, indeed, show his full command of pilish narrative until the following three sections (and the narrative of section six, "Dream on Film" — however well-written — is awful as a story), and I thought he’d simply gone lazy as a writer during “Dream-of-Consciousness”. I was only able to make it through that bridge of asses by a process of loosening my mind from expected associations to an even further degree than was previously necessary, or something like that, anyway.
Then, by the end of the book, I had managed to regain enough faith in Keith as a writer that I swallowed wholeheartedly things like his constraint-flagellating paraphrase of [b:A Tale of Two Cities|1953|A Tale of Two Cities|Charles Dickens|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344922523s/1953.jpg|2956372]’ opening in section eight. Retroactively, it then seemed that Keith had had more control than I’d given him credit for in the earlier sections, and had simply enjoyed playing with levels of nonsensicality — again shades of Cage, with his belief that art should ape nature in its disconnectedness.
Ultimately, I’d feel it to be a shame for readers who enjoy literature for its form, specifically, to dismiss Not a Wake out of hand. With all its nudges and winks, it’s more experimental and form-breaking than that now-acknowledged master [a:Georges Perec|15923|Georges Perec|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1535549107p2/15923.jpg]’s [b:A Void|28294|A Void|Georges Perec|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388699493s/28294.jpg|2310135]. Yes, I do feel that it’s not as successful an experiment; I do feel that Keith could have steeped himself more in simple literature before diving in to write it. But, I find it also sets its own kind of standard for experimental writing, poetry especially. If I’m reading something especially obtuse, I now wonder: would the words here fare any worse if they were somehow made to encode the digits of pi?
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