Let me just start with the obvious. Only Revolutions is a visually stunning and beautiful book. The words are arranged in such a way that I am certain that an audio version of this book (if it were possible to make) would actually sound like music.
But, this book is nothing like The Crying of Lot 49. In fact, it makes Lot seem positively Zoetrope (i.e. story driven). In Revolutions, there is no real narrative. None, that I am able to follow (in fairness, it might be there for the super, super smart).
It is as if, while writing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce had gotten hit extra hard with a crazy stick and repeated the style of the lines from the first page (over and over again) throughout the entire novel.
For example, and, I suppose, some would see this as praise, Only Revolutions sounds like lines from the first page of Portrait (forever):
His father told him that story: His father looked at him through a glass. He had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: She sold lemon platt. (3)
Does that make any narrative sense to you? Maybe?
But, see, this is the thing.
Even though Portrait picks up and I once resorted to purchasing an extremely attractive hardcover version as an incentive to finish it, I have never been able to understand Portrait (despite writing an excellent paper on the role of the father figure in said novel).
Why? Because, it is beautiful, but hard to follow.
Stephen had turned his smiling eyes towards his friend’s face, flattered by his confidence and won over to sympathy by the speaker’s simple accent. (247)
Mesmerizing.
But, this is supposed to be about Revolutions. So, I’ll leave you with this (and maybe quote it a couple of other times in 2007):
Though bets are still cast,
Buccaneers on a roll, while
Caterers circle and Top Hats,
Stickpins all blingbling, continue
their stroll. At least I’m
with her, carry these trembling wings from the ball.
She knots up my hair, slurps
on my shoulder, so sobsloppily
tortured with shame and
remorse, though I’m the only one here to blame of course. (95, I think)
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