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#Post#: 748--------------------------------------------------
Book Review: O For Obscurity, Or, The Story Of N, Andrew Hook
By: CheerfulHypocrite Date: September 30, 2020, 11:43 am
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To begin with, Andrew Hook comes from Norwich in Norfolk,
England, on the River Wensum. Norwich was designated, in 2012,
as being a UNESCO City of Literature. Which starts the entire
tome off with high expectations. During World War II, the
Luftwaffe bombed Norwich. The heaviest raids being Baedeker
Raids on the nights of the twenty seventh to thirtieth of April
1942. The Baedeker Raids were based on the famous tourist guide
series by Baedeker. The Church of St John Maddermarket's
graveyard includes the Crabtree headstone, decorated with
pre-Christian symbols of the Ouroboros and with Masonic Square
and Compasses. Norfolk has a particularly quiet, backwater
image. Which is exactly why Andrew Hook retired there to review
and collate and expand upon the small leatherbound notebook
embossed with an N.
In six score pages, Hook manages to tell us nothing of Senada.
If this were a Biography of, say, Tony Sheridan - backing singer
to Conway Twitty and Gene Vincent - (whose refusal to allow
Sheridan to ride to the next venue in 1960 saved Sheridan's
life) - there would be intricate detail of the relationship
between Sheridan, the Beatles in Hamburg and the inevitability
of Hook writing about Senada. That would be an orthodox
Biography. What Hook has done with "O For Obscurity, Or, The
Story of N" is something remarkably different and, for anybody
interested in the Residents, something remarkably more useful.
Hook has embraced the Theory of Obscurity. Having the coded
diaries of Senada he could have simply decrypted them,
translated them and rendered them into a dull and literal
narrative. Instead, Hook simply takes the fundamental principles
of Obscurity - as lived out by N - and utilises them to inform a
Biography with so little personal detail that it is almost as if
N is absent. In terms of communicating what Senada understood
and meant by Obscurity there is no greater guide than O for
Obscurity.
There is a scene, describing a visit to the 1936 Chess Olympiad
by N. (pp 29-31) which, in compressed prose, Hook flitters over
the Estonian Paul Keres and Slovenian Vasja Pirc giving them
equivalence of significance with the Architecture of the
Nympheburg Palace, to deliver one of the most astoundingly
modern images:
"The entire hall, filled with teams from twenty-one different
countries was - in fact - participating in the largest
stop-motion animation event that Munich had ever witnessed". (p.
31).
These are the insights that are needed into the life of N., not
the colour of his socks or the pallour of his face but the
inconsequential puns of his life. Such as when entering America,
placing an o above the letter of Sex to give måle. (p. 4) An
obsolete German word still current with Baviarians in the
Twentieth Century. It translates as mark or sign or spot. It was
so faint that nobody noticed it. Which is what Hooks achieves: a
primer, a manual, a pedagogic method for internalising
Obscurity. Reading O For Obscurity, Or, The Story of N is a
manual in the praxis of Obscurity.
Hook describes that there are large gaps in the Diaries while
carefully pointing out that Senada had left large gaps on Pollex
Christi and that the Book was written entirely from Memory while
listening to the Residents' instantiation of "Pollex Christi"
(p. 120) thus ensuring the Reader is intimately aware with the
correct method for reading the book. Ideally it should be read
in a single sitting to a small audience without any breaks. The
Audience should wrap up warm and listen carefully because, as
with much of the Theory of Obscurity, their memory of what was
said is more reliable than any tome.
Hook has managed to capture the essence of what it is to be
obscure in a practical sense. From the gradual dissolution of N
from Germany as the History of Tyranny unfolds to the gentle
dissolution of N into Alaskan society as the History of Culture
collapses. There are well sketched parallels between various
parts of the life of N which make the Reader suppose that Hook
has, somehow, concocted a story around N. A kind of shield or
protection from the World. A barrier that preserves the practice
of Obscurity which, if you read the Book uncritically, allows
you to suppose a narration of a brief and marginally interesting
life. If you willingly accept that Hook has embraced the Theory
of Obscurity then you realise it is not a Biography of N but a
Handbook.
In Christian Saint's Hagiographies there is a practice of giving
a vita brevis or brief life. This is not some pared down and
bullet pointed curriculum vitae or resume for an employer. It is
a living thread through a persons life which highlights the
central meaning of what it was to be that saint. Which is the
approach Hook seems to succeed with: pulling a thread through a
brief period of time - albeit almost a century long. A brief
life.
Hook manages to touch briefly, and clearly, on the small matter
of the definition of "Obscurity". "There is no easy definition
of Obscurity" (p. x - I forget which), he claims; and then talks
of Obscurity as darkness and as obfuscation. Which, coming after
the exposition of the infra-fine detail of the life of N. acts
as the catalyst for two things: reading the book again and
discovering what obscurity really is.
The Book has a number of remarkably good puns and sleight of
hand - or pen - to produce a readable work that would stand on
its own merits absent N. - which is probably the best thing
about it. Hook has managed to write an obscure novel while
writing a decent biography. His almost imperceptable use of The
Theory Phonetic Organisation applies to Biography by putting the
words first and building up the facts from there rather than
developing the facts and working down to the biography that
makes them up. Facts being made up is the hallmark of good
literature, after all.
Scattered through with allusion to numbers stations and the
mysterious code, the Book is well illustrated with images that
seem to derive from the Cryptic Corporation Archive; and, it is
a nicely produced volume in easy to read font and just the right
size for holding and reading while falling asleep. Not as
exciting as a Sheridan Biography but actually, far more subtle
than most. Few Biographies can boast being a handbook for
becoming culturally invisible.
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