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A Field Guide to Reality
Eliade Jencks knows the only reason people call at midnight is to tell you someone has died. Professor Solete was one of her few friends. Perhaps her only friend. But his friends don't think much of her - a vague, scruffy waitress, impatient with philosophical onanism at parties. Naturally, they're horrified to find out that Solete has left her his Field Guide to Reality.
The Guide has taken on legendary proportions among the celebrated minds of Oxford. The work of a lifetime, it purportedly advances Solete's great philosophical Theory of Everything and even defines the very nature of reality. A big, important book. Only, they can't find it.
So, baffled, grieving, and slightly annoyed, Eliade sets out on a quest for the missing manuscript, and falls down a rabbit-hole of metaphysical possibility. From a psychotropic tea party to the Priests of the Quantum Realm, she trips her way through Solete's wonderland reality and, without quite meaning to, bursts open the boundaries of her own.
In this clever, darkly ironic and moving novel, Granta Best of Young British author Joanna Kavenna displays fearless originality and dread wit in confronting the strangeness of reality and how we contend with the disappearance of those we love.
Beautiful original drawings by Oly Ralfe illustrate this haunting tale of bringing light to an empty room
The Guide has taken on legendary proportions among the celebrated minds of Oxford. The work of a lifetime, it purportedly advances Solete's great philosophical Theory of Everything and even defines the very nature of reality. A big, important book. Only, they can't find it.
So, baffled, grieving, and slightly annoyed, Eliade sets out on a quest for the missing manuscript, and falls down a rabbit-hole of metaphysical possibility. From a psychotropic tea party to the Priests of the Quantum Realm, she trips her way through Solete's wonderland reality and, without quite meaning to, bursts open the boundaries of her own.
In this clever, darkly ironic and moving novel, Granta Best of Young British author Joanna Kavenna displays fearless originality and dread wit in confronting the strangeness of reality and how we contend with the disappearance of those we love.
Beautiful original drawings by Oly Ralfe illustrate this haunting tale of bringing light to an empty room
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 7, 2016
14 people are currently reading
466 people want to read
About the author
Joanna Kavenna
17books156followersJoanna Kavenna is a prize-winning British novelist and travel writer.
Kavenna spent her childhood in Suffolk and the Midlands as well as various other parts of Britain. She has also lived in the United States, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.
These travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which was published in 2005. It was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award in that year, and the Ondaatje Prize, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2006. Described by the The New York Review of Books as "illuminating and consequential," it combines history, travel, literary criticism and first-person narrative, as the author journeys through Scotland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic and Greenland. Along the way, Kavenna investigates various myths and travellers' yarns about the northerly regions, focusing particularly on the ancient Greek story of Thule, the last land in the North. Before The Ice Museum she had written several novels that remain unpublished.
Kavenna has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College, Oxford and St John's College, Cambridge. She is currently the writer-in-residence at St Peter's College, Oxford. Themes of the country versus the city, the relationship between self and place, and the plight of the individual in hyper-capitalist society recur through Kavenna's novels and in some of her journalism.
She has written for The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Observer, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, among other publications.
Kavenna is now based in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria and has a partner and two young children.
Kavenna spent her childhood in Suffolk and the Midlands as well as various other parts of Britain. She has also lived in the United States, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.
These travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which was published in 2005. It was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award in that year, and the Ondaatje Prize, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2006. Described by the The New York Review of Books as "illuminating and consequential," it combines history, travel, literary criticism and first-person narrative, as the author journeys through Scotland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic and Greenland. Along the way, Kavenna investigates various myths and travellers' yarns about the northerly regions, focusing particularly on the ancient Greek story of Thule, the last land in the North. Before The Ice Museum she had written several novels that remain unpublished.
Kavenna has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College, Oxford and St John's College, Cambridge. She is currently the writer-in-residence at St Peter's College, Oxford. Themes of the country versus the city, the relationship between self and place, and the plight of the individual in hyper-capitalist society recur through Kavenna's novels and in some of her journalism.
She has written for The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Observer, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, among other publications.
Kavenna is now based in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria and has a partner and two young children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
May 10, 2018
Q: ‘We are made of stardust,� he said. ‘Isn’t that strange?� (c)
Q: ‘I’ve already visited a hippy,� I said. ‘And why do you academics always talk about dope?� (c)
Q:
They looked at me with sorrow in their eyes, and poured more tea.
Psychotropic tea.
I hadn’t even considered the possibility.
Events thereafter were a little strange.
...
Just remember, if it eats you, it’s not actually real.
...
And whatever you do, just keep calm. (c)
All mindbenders are welcome to read this quirky, murky and compulsively readable fusion of reality and fantasy.
Psychedelic and inviting the reader into obscurity.
Wonderfully mind-twisting dialogue.
Q:
Aristotle (384�322 BC) Obsessive list-maker, had the ear of a great king.
Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175�1253) Futurologist, wizard, mind-bender.
Iris McConnell (1980�) Believes that the present does not exist.
John Locke (1632�1704) Argued that we are inherently blank.
Lord Priddy (date of birth unknown) Fan of psychotropic drugs and cricket.
Caspar Overson (1958�) Believes that everything must be more Ψ.
Albert Einstein (1879�1955) Found that reality remained mysterious, despite everything. (c)
Q:
Life in thirteenth-century Oxford is hard and dangerous. The homicide rate exceeds modern-day Bogota. Each year for every hundred monks attending the university (all students must be in religious orders), three are murdered, fifteen die of dysentery, and twenty-six run away to London.
The gates of the town close at dusk. (c)
Q:
Grosseteste is also known as Grossteste, Grostest, Grostet, Grosthead, Grouthead, Grostede, Greatheade, Grosteheved, Greateheved, Grosehede, Grokede, and Goschede. In this era, spellings are not fixed and the creative possibilities are endless. Yet Grosseteste of the mutable and at times suggestive name has more pressing matters to deal with. He is transfixed by mysteries. How do we see what we see? How do we know that what we see is real? Besides, he cannot fix himself in time. He ricochets from one continent to another, across the centuries. He wonders at times if he is mad. (c)
Q:
Tradescantian Ark (c)
Q:
I came to Oxford on the advice of my mother. In those days I really listened to her. Then it became clear, life was not her specialist subject after all. She was clinging on, like anyone else. Like everyone. Spilling out theories. Still, at the time � in the days when her words fell as exhortations from a deity, adamantine, to be obeyed, I heard her saying, ‘Thou shalt go to Oxford.� She thought the atmosphere would lift me up, I would be transformed. Osmosis. Or virtuous contagion. I’d catch cleverness, like a desirable malady. All her years of disappointment � erased! (c)
Q:
When you work in a café you are transfixed by the weird routines of regular customers and how in general we cleave to repetitive protocols. Of course your own day is repetitive because the same meals must be served at the same times, and people want coffee and croissants in the mornings and then strangely not in the evenings and they want soup at lunchtime but never at breakfast. The same people emerge at the same time each day, with very slight discrepancies. Then there are the freak occurrences, anomalies that distinguish one small day from the next. The man who weeps loudly in the corner and the old woman who has dyed her hair pink and green, and the boy in the buggy who squawks like a parrot and so on. These interruptions into the general order allow you at least to refer your day into anecdote, so if anyone is kind enough to ask you can say, ‘Yes, today a boy squawked like a parrot,� rather than merely oppressing them with ongoing recurrent minutiae that they can imagine anyway. (c)
Q:
He was thereby intrinsically paradoxical and presumably impossible. Despite his logical unlikelihood he turned up every day, and he was consistent and extraordinary at the same time. ...
We were nothing to each other, of course, except two sides of a Janus head, youth and age, or insignificance and significance, or half-formed failure and full-formed success and so on. ...
(c)
Q:
‘Her name was Asta Rose,� he said. ‘Isn’t that a beautiful name?�
I said it was.
‘Asta means beloved,� he said. ‘She was a professor at the university, as well, she worked on cosmology and astrophysics.� Solete was a philosopher, he explained. So together they had encompassed the dying past and the unknown future. And yet, the stars are the past anyway, I knew that didn’t I? Billions of years old. The past beyond humanity.
‘My wife,� said Solete, ‘always said that once summoned, life always lives, in some way, in particles, and the revelations of quantum physics are that we are eternal, if we only alter the concept of what “we� must mean.�
‘It hardly helps with death,� I said. ‘Quantum particles. You want the person, not the particles. If they are elsewhere that’s fine but you can’t find them. Speak to them.�
‘I know,� he said. ‘I understand.� And I believed him. (c)
Q:
They were the war dons, the ones who postponed their careers to go away and fight. (с)
Q:
Robert Grosseteste, scion of the ancient world, rose to the successive mornings, looked through the open window and saw the river issuing onwards always onwards to the sea. He observed the slow drift of the seasons. The world turning, and time seeming to circle round and round and, yet, his bones creaked in the mornings when he rose and he looked at his hands and realised again, the impossible strange dream � he was old.Color est lux incorporate perspicuo . . .
Colour is light incorporated in a diaphanous medium. But what is diaphaneity? (c)
Q:
Bacon also advised his fellow mortals to protect themselves from malevolent forces, which might destroy them. Do not be exposed, said Bacon, to the rays of dubious planets, and to the inconstant and feminine Moon. (c)
Q:
The moon sailed into the sky like a silver balloon � I took care not to become transfixed. We are of the sun, Grosseteste wrote. Therefore, we must turn away from the enticing silver moon. But why? Why stand in the sunshine only? Why defame the beautiful and melancholy moon? I thought about Bacon with his countless theories. I had lost the diaphanous realm, or transparency. (c)
Q:
The baboons are sacred and when they bang their chests you bloody well listen. Or you get eaten. (c)
Q:
‘Why do you make pinecones, and not anything else?� I asked.
‘First of all, why anything? Why get up? Why get off that chaise longue? Why not just sink into it forever?� (c)
Q:
He was quite charming, but capricious. So he had an edge to him, as if at any moment he would abruptly cease to be charming. (c)
Q:
I wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere else, and so I became a sculptor. (c)
Q:
Port sat, beating time with his small expressive hands, and explained to me that the lady pinecone has two sorts of scale. Fishy-pinescale. Quite beautiful. And the lady pinecone has the bract scales, which are leaf-like, and the seed scales which send the elemental issue upon the wind, to burgeon new life, new numerical sequences. The further beauty is that the scales are arranged in a spiral � the ancient iconographic symbol of renewal and fertility. Pinecones open and close to disperse seeds, and for further functions which are botanical and not symbolical and less intriguing to us. When the cone has descended from the tree and lost its attachment to the life-renewing branch, it continues to open and close, depending on whether the forest floor is damp or dry. Closed, damp. Open, dry.
He opened his hands and closed them to indicate the opening and closing of a pinecone. The sun flickered through the blinds and forged pinecone-shaped shadows on the carpet. Dust drifted, along the beams of light. (c)
Q:
But the world itself is defined and orchestrated by the pinecone, and its buried symbolism lurks within everything. It is associated with fertility, rebirth, sexuality, and also the deepest impulses of the inner eye, spiritual revelation. The integral reality of the Self.
Now Port hit his stride. He was escalating. The entire room was a pinecone, and he was a pinecone and now he explained to me that reality was a pinecone as well. If you weren’t a pinecone, you were essentially not real. I felt myself fading at the edges as he showed me Marduk, the Sumerian god, who was holding a pinecone. (c)
Q:
The pinecone was, Port explained, the navel of the world. Omphalus. In the original stories, the world emerged from primordial chaos. (c)
Q:
‘Words are terrifying. They are not real. I prefer shapes.� (c)
Q:
An eccentric sculptor, who spent his life remaking the natural world. Crafting unnatural versions of objects that nature made, effortlessly, spontaneously. It was parody, or a creation fantasy. Or, he liked pinecones. Certainly, that seemed to be undeniable. (c)
Q:
‘You’ll be lucky if she’s there,� he said. ‘Or unlucky.� (c)
Q:
‘Transparency is an aspiration,� I said. ‘But wouldn’t it be strange, if you could see things clearly? I mean, all things?� (c)
Q:
‘Well what do you know? You’ve spent the afternoon discussing pinecones.�
‘With a man who actually resembled a pinecone.�
‘Well, that’s even more ludicrous.� (c)
Q:
She had considered and quite frightening eyes, and she turned them on me so I was flamed by the fiery force of her gaze, as she looked us up and down. (c)
Q:
Hypatia imagined the starry expanse wherein reside the forces of the universe, interior virtues. In line with the teachings of Plato and Plotinus, she believed that there is an ultimate reality, beyond the reach of thought or language. In life, we may aim towards this ultimate reality, yet we can never fully grasp it and it can never be precisely described.
Hypatia was staggeringly beautiful, but she also took drastic measures to disperse the effects of her beauty on her students.
...
Hypatia, in her study, in a room overlooking the sea.
...
Hypatia is less moved by dust, but particles and integers fill her with awe. She believes you might relay the mysteries of the universe in numbers. And yet, this is not invention, she claims; it is an acknowledgement of the eternal realities. Numbers are inherent to the mystery around her. The mysteries are mathematical and numbers recur throughout nature � in the repetitions of the planet, as it turns in space, and in the repetitions of the diurnal round, twenty-four hours, light and darkness. Referring back to Ancient Babylonians, Sumerians, long lost tribes again, Hypatia understands that there are twelve hours in the day, twelve hours in the night, and, with reference to the later work of Ptolemy, sixty minutes in an hour, sixty seconds in a minute. Her finite life is composed of increments. (c)
Q:
Thought must be constrained by truth, of course. (c)
Q:
And that’s why when people knock on my door in the dwindling dusk, with the cold winds blasting in from the north I tell them to go away. Unless they have good reason to come and see me. (с)
Q:
‘The fool thinks he is wise, the wise man knows he’s a fool,� said Cassavetes. ‘Then you have the wise man, who knows he is a fool, and therefore occasionally gets confused and consorts with genuine fools who are infinitely more foolish than he is � because of course he is not a fool but a wise man, after all.� (c)
Q:
The moon was beautiful and injurious, I had been told. The moon invoked a shadow religion, the old religion of the pagans, who were snuffed out by marauding tribes with their new censorious gods. (c)
Q:
you can sit and chant by the river, and if this consoles you then that’s fine, but it does nothing to change the bewildering permutations of reality around you. (c)
Q:
‘No one ever gets over the death of a parent,� he said.
‘But you carry on. You are even happy, often, and you realise this is what your beloved parent would have wanted. They didn’t want you to spend the rest of your life bereft and forlorn. They birthed you and hoped that you might be happy despite mortal asperities and despite any further vicissitudes that might be reserved particularly for you. It is of course completely usual.� (c)
Q:
I hadn’t expected the usual platitudes. Not from this shuffling wind-chilled man. (c)
Q:
You’re a scholar. You’re a professional fraudster.(c)
Q:
Again, I was late. Subliminal reluctance. Hardly even subliminal. Reluctance ingrained into my being. There were things I wanted to say back to these vociferous hordes, but I wasn’t sure they really wanted to hear them.Well, sir � perception is a prevailing mystery of thought.
I didn’t think that would go down well at all. (c)
Q:
I was trying to explain to the chrysanthemum that I really wanted to leave, but no meaningful sounds came out, just inchoate gibberish, and, anyway, who knew what language this flower spoke, and whether it spoke any language at all. For a while I was wondering quite seriously how best to communicate with a gargantuan flower and then with a jolt I realised this was completely insane and it was impossible to communicate with a flower at all, however large it was, and even if it was the focal point of the entire universe. (c)
Q:
I couldn’t align my intentions with my actions. (c)
Q:
Just to the edge of the blackness, I said. Only the edge, then the city lights begin. (c)
Q:
Lights and shadows, spinning faster and faster, and each time reality turned it became just somehow less real, and more like a vast region of formlessness, everything elided � (c)
Q:
I was still quite dislocated from the objects around me.
...
As we walked, I became progressively more confused. That was unfortunate because I had been fairly confused when we began the walk. (c)
Q:
Of course, the cold, his general hypothesis that coats were evil, or whatever his theory of the coat. It wasn’t quite the time for sartorial philosophy. I understood. I didn’t understand at all. Anything. Even coats were becoming strange and controversial. I carried on, and on, and I felt something like � resistance? My own? ...
As he lay there, frills biting at his ankles, with a more general suggestion that he was in total existential disarray, I thought � he’s lost, and he didn’t even drink the tea! (c)
Q:
Into a rising storm, we walked. ...
‘It’s been very difficult, since you died,� I said.
‘I’m sorry about that,� he said. He was very far away. (c)
Q:
After the mild tribulations of the night, I felt it was important to keep a grip on things. Things must be gripped and kept exactly where they should be and where they usually are. I was to become a stalwart of reality. (c)
Q:
If you’re standing there, refusing to accept that a reality is real, then there’s not much point making any assertions at all. Your assertions are, presumably, part of the unreality and therefore not real either. So you’re back to the beginning. (c)
Q:
‘Do you even know where you are? You’re nowhere! That’s where!� (c)
Q:
‘Which freaks? There have been so many.� (c)
Q:
‘It’s not even fair. I’ve led a blameless life. I’ve never been one to experiment. I’ve maintained what I felt was a steady and incremental path through life. Nothing out of the ordinary. Even when my father died, I never went off the rails. Solete saw that. He knew! And to send me to the fucking chrysanthemum people, it was a mean trick.� (c)
Q:
At a college, an old wooden door creaked open, affording us a glimpse of a frost-white quad, students moving slowly in their halcyon enclave, carrying books. (c)
Q:
Shades and shadows and � I was thinking that we always make adjustments. People vanish, and yet, we continue, we assimilate impossible events. We call them normality even though they are madness indeed! (c)
Q:
Sometimes silence is less dangerous than speech.
This seemed to be one of those times. (c)
Q:
A sign at the door said: ‘Quantum Futures.�
‘More prophets,� I said.
‘I haven’t met any prophets,� said Yorke. ‘At all.�
‘You need to drink the tea.� (c)
Q:
Here the numerical realm was worshipped.
... Everything was made of chrome, except the walls, which were covered in these screens, with prophet freaks enunciating silently. Secrets so esoteric we couldn’t hear them.
... where there was a practical particle accelerator and a time crusher and a universe expander and then something else, that I was told was a chair. I could sit here, without being projected across the ethersphere and exploded into photons. (c)
Q:
‘Depths of the night,� he said, informatively. (c)
Q:
Everyone kept saying it would be fine. It was so reassuring, this general chorus of optimism, that I started to forget the impossible events of the night. In the daylight realm, we reassert ourselves, we say, ‘This can be� and, ‘This cannot be.� Diligently, I applied myself. (c)
Q:
We all stood, watching the beams of light progress, and occasionally fade. When the sun went behind a cloud, shadows spread from the walls.
When the sun returned, the dust shone like fire. (c)
Q:
Meanwhile dust shone, reality shifted in line with the movement of clouds � light and shadow . . .
Unknown layers of time, immeasurable theories, and worlds, and realities, simultaneously represented and effaced. (c)
Q:
Clouds of dust descended, and were flamed into brightness, and then faded again. Individual particles shone, and then became assimilated into a general cloud. I thought of Cassavetes and her muttered phrase. Millions of years is the name . . . Otherwise said, millions of years is the name . . . I thought about the vastness of measurable time, and those who dwell for a while within the linear frame. And then they are dispersed? Who knows?
...
Solete said he had failed. And yet � I wondered if this was merely the failure intrinsic to anything. All comes to dust. And he would have failed, harder and worse besides, if he had lied and created his mendacious, adamantine book. The more he discovered about reality, the more he understood that he could never define it, absolutely. (c)
Q:
The thing about Solete’s chamber of dust, the main thing, was that it was incredibly beautiful. It gleamed and sparkled. It was the crazy beauty of particles that are normally invisible, of diaphaneity. We stood there, whirled around with remnants, and traces, and the abandoned schemes of Solete. He had gone mad, or he had perceived infinity. He had gathered everything, and lived within the richness of his contemplation and, in the end �
He refused his former truths, and went beyond them �
To the infinities of quanta, or atomies.
To the anonymous reaches of time and space. (c)
Q: ‘I’ve already visited a hippy,� I said. ‘And why do you academics always talk about dope?� (c)
Q:
They looked at me with sorrow in their eyes, and poured more tea.
Psychotropic tea.
I hadn’t even considered the possibility.
Events thereafter were a little strange.
...
Just remember, if it eats you, it’s not actually real.
...
And whatever you do, just keep calm. (c)
All mindbenders are welcome to read this quirky, murky and compulsively readable fusion of reality and fantasy.
Psychedelic and inviting the reader into obscurity.
Wonderfully mind-twisting dialogue.
Q:
Aristotle (384�322 BC) Obsessive list-maker, had the ear of a great king.
Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175�1253) Futurologist, wizard, mind-bender.
Iris McConnell (1980�) Believes that the present does not exist.
John Locke (1632�1704) Argued that we are inherently blank.
Lord Priddy (date of birth unknown) Fan of psychotropic drugs and cricket.
Caspar Overson (1958�) Believes that everything must be more Ψ.
Albert Einstein (1879�1955) Found that reality remained mysterious, despite everything. (c)
Q:
Life in thirteenth-century Oxford is hard and dangerous. The homicide rate exceeds modern-day Bogota. Each year for every hundred monks attending the university (all students must be in religious orders), three are murdered, fifteen die of dysentery, and twenty-six run away to London.
The gates of the town close at dusk. (c)
Q:
Grosseteste is also known as Grossteste, Grostest, Grostet, Grosthead, Grouthead, Grostede, Greatheade, Grosteheved, Greateheved, Grosehede, Grokede, and Goschede. In this era, spellings are not fixed and the creative possibilities are endless. Yet Grosseteste of the mutable and at times suggestive name has more pressing matters to deal with. He is transfixed by mysteries. How do we see what we see? How do we know that what we see is real? Besides, he cannot fix himself in time. He ricochets from one continent to another, across the centuries. He wonders at times if he is mad. (c)
Q:
Tradescantian Ark (c)
Q:
I came to Oxford on the advice of my mother. In those days I really listened to her. Then it became clear, life was not her specialist subject after all. She was clinging on, like anyone else. Like everyone. Spilling out theories. Still, at the time � in the days when her words fell as exhortations from a deity, adamantine, to be obeyed, I heard her saying, ‘Thou shalt go to Oxford.� She thought the atmosphere would lift me up, I would be transformed. Osmosis. Or virtuous contagion. I’d catch cleverness, like a desirable malady. All her years of disappointment � erased! (c)
Q:
When you work in a café you are transfixed by the weird routines of regular customers and how in general we cleave to repetitive protocols. Of course your own day is repetitive because the same meals must be served at the same times, and people want coffee and croissants in the mornings and then strangely not in the evenings and they want soup at lunchtime but never at breakfast. The same people emerge at the same time each day, with very slight discrepancies. Then there are the freak occurrences, anomalies that distinguish one small day from the next. The man who weeps loudly in the corner and the old woman who has dyed her hair pink and green, and the boy in the buggy who squawks like a parrot and so on. These interruptions into the general order allow you at least to refer your day into anecdote, so if anyone is kind enough to ask you can say, ‘Yes, today a boy squawked like a parrot,� rather than merely oppressing them with ongoing recurrent minutiae that they can imagine anyway. (c)
Q:
He was thereby intrinsically paradoxical and presumably impossible. Despite his logical unlikelihood he turned up every day, and he was consistent and extraordinary at the same time. ...
We were nothing to each other, of course, except two sides of a Janus head, youth and age, or insignificance and significance, or half-formed failure and full-formed success and so on. ...
(c)
Q:
‘Her name was Asta Rose,� he said. ‘Isn’t that a beautiful name?�
I said it was.
‘Asta means beloved,� he said. ‘She was a professor at the university, as well, she worked on cosmology and astrophysics.� Solete was a philosopher, he explained. So together they had encompassed the dying past and the unknown future. And yet, the stars are the past anyway, I knew that didn’t I? Billions of years old. The past beyond humanity.
‘My wife,� said Solete, ‘always said that once summoned, life always lives, in some way, in particles, and the revelations of quantum physics are that we are eternal, if we only alter the concept of what “we� must mean.�
‘It hardly helps with death,� I said. ‘Quantum particles. You want the person, not the particles. If they are elsewhere that’s fine but you can’t find them. Speak to them.�
‘I know,� he said. ‘I understand.� And I believed him. (c)
Q:
They were the war dons, the ones who postponed their careers to go away and fight. (с)
Q:
Robert Grosseteste, scion of the ancient world, rose to the successive mornings, looked through the open window and saw the river issuing onwards always onwards to the sea. He observed the slow drift of the seasons. The world turning, and time seeming to circle round and round and, yet, his bones creaked in the mornings when he rose and he looked at his hands and realised again, the impossible strange dream � he was old.Color est lux incorporate perspicuo . . .
Colour is light incorporated in a diaphanous medium. But what is diaphaneity? (c)
Q:
Bacon also advised his fellow mortals to protect themselves from malevolent forces, which might destroy them. Do not be exposed, said Bacon, to the rays of dubious planets, and to the inconstant and feminine Moon. (c)
Q:
The moon sailed into the sky like a silver balloon � I took care not to become transfixed. We are of the sun, Grosseteste wrote. Therefore, we must turn away from the enticing silver moon. But why? Why stand in the sunshine only? Why defame the beautiful and melancholy moon? I thought about Bacon with his countless theories. I had lost the diaphanous realm, or transparency. (c)
Q:
The baboons are sacred and when they bang their chests you bloody well listen. Or you get eaten. (c)
Q:
‘Why do you make pinecones, and not anything else?� I asked.
‘First of all, why anything? Why get up? Why get off that chaise longue? Why not just sink into it forever?� (c)
Q:
He was quite charming, but capricious. So he had an edge to him, as if at any moment he would abruptly cease to be charming. (c)
Q:
I wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere else, and so I became a sculptor. (c)
Q:
Port sat, beating time with his small expressive hands, and explained to me that the lady pinecone has two sorts of scale. Fishy-pinescale. Quite beautiful. And the lady pinecone has the bract scales, which are leaf-like, and the seed scales which send the elemental issue upon the wind, to burgeon new life, new numerical sequences. The further beauty is that the scales are arranged in a spiral � the ancient iconographic symbol of renewal and fertility. Pinecones open and close to disperse seeds, and for further functions which are botanical and not symbolical and less intriguing to us. When the cone has descended from the tree and lost its attachment to the life-renewing branch, it continues to open and close, depending on whether the forest floor is damp or dry. Closed, damp. Open, dry.
He opened his hands and closed them to indicate the opening and closing of a pinecone. The sun flickered through the blinds and forged pinecone-shaped shadows on the carpet. Dust drifted, along the beams of light. (c)
Q:
But the world itself is defined and orchestrated by the pinecone, and its buried symbolism lurks within everything. It is associated with fertility, rebirth, sexuality, and also the deepest impulses of the inner eye, spiritual revelation. The integral reality of the Self.
Now Port hit his stride. He was escalating. The entire room was a pinecone, and he was a pinecone and now he explained to me that reality was a pinecone as well. If you weren’t a pinecone, you were essentially not real. I felt myself fading at the edges as he showed me Marduk, the Sumerian god, who was holding a pinecone. (c)
Q:
The pinecone was, Port explained, the navel of the world. Omphalus. In the original stories, the world emerged from primordial chaos. (c)
Q:
‘Words are terrifying. They are not real. I prefer shapes.� (c)
Q:
An eccentric sculptor, who spent his life remaking the natural world. Crafting unnatural versions of objects that nature made, effortlessly, spontaneously. It was parody, or a creation fantasy. Or, he liked pinecones. Certainly, that seemed to be undeniable. (c)
Q:
‘You’ll be lucky if she’s there,� he said. ‘Or unlucky.� (c)
Q:
‘Transparency is an aspiration,� I said. ‘But wouldn’t it be strange, if you could see things clearly? I mean, all things?� (c)
Q:
‘Well what do you know? You’ve spent the afternoon discussing pinecones.�
‘With a man who actually resembled a pinecone.�
‘Well, that’s even more ludicrous.� (c)
Q:
She had considered and quite frightening eyes, and she turned them on me so I was flamed by the fiery force of her gaze, as she looked us up and down. (c)
Q:
Hypatia imagined the starry expanse wherein reside the forces of the universe, interior virtues. In line with the teachings of Plato and Plotinus, she believed that there is an ultimate reality, beyond the reach of thought or language. In life, we may aim towards this ultimate reality, yet we can never fully grasp it and it can never be precisely described.
Hypatia was staggeringly beautiful, but she also took drastic measures to disperse the effects of her beauty on her students.
...
Hypatia, in her study, in a room overlooking the sea.
...
Hypatia is less moved by dust, but particles and integers fill her with awe. She believes you might relay the mysteries of the universe in numbers. And yet, this is not invention, she claims; it is an acknowledgement of the eternal realities. Numbers are inherent to the mystery around her. The mysteries are mathematical and numbers recur throughout nature � in the repetitions of the planet, as it turns in space, and in the repetitions of the diurnal round, twenty-four hours, light and darkness. Referring back to Ancient Babylonians, Sumerians, long lost tribes again, Hypatia understands that there are twelve hours in the day, twelve hours in the night, and, with reference to the later work of Ptolemy, sixty minutes in an hour, sixty seconds in a minute. Her finite life is composed of increments. (c)
Q:
Thought must be constrained by truth, of course. (c)
Q:
And that’s why when people knock on my door in the dwindling dusk, with the cold winds blasting in from the north I tell them to go away. Unless they have good reason to come and see me. (с)
Q:
‘The fool thinks he is wise, the wise man knows he’s a fool,� said Cassavetes. ‘Then you have the wise man, who knows he is a fool, and therefore occasionally gets confused and consorts with genuine fools who are infinitely more foolish than he is � because of course he is not a fool but a wise man, after all.� (c)
Q:
The moon was beautiful and injurious, I had been told. The moon invoked a shadow religion, the old religion of the pagans, who were snuffed out by marauding tribes with their new censorious gods. (c)
Q:
you can sit and chant by the river, and if this consoles you then that’s fine, but it does nothing to change the bewildering permutations of reality around you. (c)
Q:
‘No one ever gets over the death of a parent,� he said.
‘But you carry on. You are even happy, often, and you realise this is what your beloved parent would have wanted. They didn’t want you to spend the rest of your life bereft and forlorn. They birthed you and hoped that you might be happy despite mortal asperities and despite any further vicissitudes that might be reserved particularly for you. It is of course completely usual.� (c)
Q:
I hadn’t expected the usual platitudes. Not from this shuffling wind-chilled man. (c)
Q:
You’re a scholar. You’re a professional fraudster.(c)
Q:
Again, I was late. Subliminal reluctance. Hardly even subliminal. Reluctance ingrained into my being. There were things I wanted to say back to these vociferous hordes, but I wasn’t sure they really wanted to hear them.Well, sir � perception is a prevailing mystery of thought.
I didn’t think that would go down well at all. (c)
Q:
I was trying to explain to the chrysanthemum that I really wanted to leave, but no meaningful sounds came out, just inchoate gibberish, and, anyway, who knew what language this flower spoke, and whether it spoke any language at all. For a while I was wondering quite seriously how best to communicate with a gargantuan flower and then with a jolt I realised this was completely insane and it was impossible to communicate with a flower at all, however large it was, and even if it was the focal point of the entire universe. (c)
Q:
I couldn’t align my intentions with my actions. (c)
Q:
Just to the edge of the blackness, I said. Only the edge, then the city lights begin. (c)
Q:
Lights and shadows, spinning faster and faster, and each time reality turned it became just somehow less real, and more like a vast region of formlessness, everything elided � (c)
Q:
I was still quite dislocated from the objects around me.
...
As we walked, I became progressively more confused. That was unfortunate because I had been fairly confused when we began the walk. (c)
Q:
Of course, the cold, his general hypothesis that coats were evil, or whatever his theory of the coat. It wasn’t quite the time for sartorial philosophy. I understood. I didn’t understand at all. Anything. Even coats were becoming strange and controversial. I carried on, and on, and I felt something like � resistance? My own? ...
As he lay there, frills biting at his ankles, with a more general suggestion that he was in total existential disarray, I thought � he’s lost, and he didn’t even drink the tea! (c)
Q:
Into a rising storm, we walked. ...
‘It’s been very difficult, since you died,� I said.
‘I’m sorry about that,� he said. He was very far away. (c)
Q:
After the mild tribulations of the night, I felt it was important to keep a grip on things. Things must be gripped and kept exactly where they should be and where they usually are. I was to become a stalwart of reality. (c)
Q:
If you’re standing there, refusing to accept that a reality is real, then there’s not much point making any assertions at all. Your assertions are, presumably, part of the unreality and therefore not real either. So you’re back to the beginning. (c)
Q:
‘Do you even know where you are? You’re nowhere! That’s where!� (c)
Q:
‘Which freaks? There have been so many.� (c)
Q:
‘It’s not even fair. I’ve led a blameless life. I’ve never been one to experiment. I’ve maintained what I felt was a steady and incremental path through life. Nothing out of the ordinary. Even when my father died, I never went off the rails. Solete saw that. He knew! And to send me to the fucking chrysanthemum people, it was a mean trick.� (c)
Q:
At a college, an old wooden door creaked open, affording us a glimpse of a frost-white quad, students moving slowly in their halcyon enclave, carrying books. (c)
Q:
Shades and shadows and � I was thinking that we always make adjustments. People vanish, and yet, we continue, we assimilate impossible events. We call them normality even though they are madness indeed! (c)
Q:
Sometimes silence is less dangerous than speech.
This seemed to be one of those times. (c)
Q:
A sign at the door said: ‘Quantum Futures.�
‘More prophets,� I said.
‘I haven’t met any prophets,� said Yorke. ‘At all.�
‘You need to drink the tea.� (c)
Q:
Here the numerical realm was worshipped.
... Everything was made of chrome, except the walls, which were covered in these screens, with prophet freaks enunciating silently. Secrets so esoteric we couldn’t hear them.
... where there was a practical particle accelerator and a time crusher and a universe expander and then something else, that I was told was a chair. I could sit here, without being projected across the ethersphere and exploded into photons. (c)
Q:
‘Depths of the night,� he said, informatively. (c)
Q:
Everyone kept saying it would be fine. It was so reassuring, this general chorus of optimism, that I started to forget the impossible events of the night. In the daylight realm, we reassert ourselves, we say, ‘This can be� and, ‘This cannot be.� Diligently, I applied myself. (c)
Q:
We all stood, watching the beams of light progress, and occasionally fade. When the sun went behind a cloud, shadows spread from the walls.
When the sun returned, the dust shone like fire. (c)
Q:
Meanwhile dust shone, reality shifted in line with the movement of clouds � light and shadow . . .
Unknown layers of time, immeasurable theories, and worlds, and realities, simultaneously represented and effaced. (c)
Q:
Clouds of dust descended, and were flamed into brightness, and then faded again. Individual particles shone, and then became assimilated into a general cloud. I thought of Cassavetes and her muttered phrase. Millions of years is the name . . . Otherwise said, millions of years is the name . . . I thought about the vastness of measurable time, and those who dwell for a while within the linear frame. And then they are dispersed? Who knows?
...
Solete said he had failed. And yet � I wondered if this was merely the failure intrinsic to anything. All comes to dust. And he would have failed, harder and worse besides, if he had lied and created his mendacious, adamantine book. The more he discovered about reality, the more he understood that he could never define it, absolutely. (c)
Q:
The thing about Solete’s chamber of dust, the main thing, was that it was incredibly beautiful. It gleamed and sparkled. It was the crazy beauty of particles that are normally invisible, of diaphaneity. We stood there, whirled around with remnants, and traces, and the abandoned schemes of Solete. He had gone mad, or he had perceived infinity. He had gathered everything, and lived within the richness of his contemplation and, in the end �
He refused his former truths, and went beyond them �
To the infinities of quanta, or atomies.
To the anonymous reaches of time and space. (c)
November 30, 2017
Discovering the work of Joanna Kavenna has been one of the highlights of my reading year, and this might well be the best of the three books I have read, all of which are very different.
This one is an original and deliciously playful concoction, fusing fact, fiction, physics and philosophy, set in an Oxford in which colleges have been merged and renamed, for example the main setting Nightingale Hall shares the location and many of the characteristics of Magdalen College
Oxford is such a bizarre environment that it is very easy to satirise and caricature, but Kavenna is equally at ease summarising the history of ideas about the meaning of reality, and specifically the nature of light. The book is liberally sprinkled with atmospheric illustrations by Oly Ralfe.
After a brief prologue set in the time of Robert Grosseteste, who was reputed to be the University's first Chancellor, the main plot starts by introducing Eliade Jenks, who earns her keep as a waitress in a museum cafe, where she encounters an old professor, Solete, who is a regular there, and who also lives in an old house built for Grosseteste. I especially enjoyed this description of his presence at the cafe:
So Solete was a ritual presence, but was sufficiently odd to be interesting every day. He was therefore intrinsically paradoxical and presumably impossible. Despite his logical unlikelihood he turned up every day, and he was consistent and extraordinary at the same time.
Eliade receives a midnight phone call from the college informing her that Solete is dead, and has left a box which his instructions say can only be opened by her. The college's staff believe this relates to the masterwork also entitled "A Field Guide to Reality" that Solete has been working on for years.
The box turns out to be empty, but Eliade begins a quest to investigate what Solete meant, which leads her into a bizarre tour of the various experts and crackpots that Solete knew, each one explaining their ideas and how Solete saw them. This allows Kavenna to draw some lovingly grotesque caricatures, while giving her heroine a tour of philosophical and scientific history, which is also a blend of fact and fiction. The ending is very satisfying, but I won't spoil it by describing it here.
I have been on a very lucky streak with my reading - in the last couple of weeks all of my books have been brilliant in different ways, and once again I am left with no option but to award another five star rating.
This one is an original and deliciously playful concoction, fusing fact, fiction, physics and philosophy, set in an Oxford in which colleges have been merged and renamed, for example the main setting Nightingale Hall shares the location and many of the characteristics of Magdalen College
Oxford is such a bizarre environment that it is very easy to satirise and caricature, but Kavenna is equally at ease summarising the history of ideas about the meaning of reality, and specifically the nature of light. The book is liberally sprinkled with atmospheric illustrations by Oly Ralfe.
After a brief prologue set in the time of Robert Grosseteste, who was reputed to be the University's first Chancellor, the main plot starts by introducing Eliade Jenks, who earns her keep as a waitress in a museum cafe, where she encounters an old professor, Solete, who is a regular there, and who also lives in an old house built for Grosseteste. I especially enjoyed this description of his presence at the cafe:
So Solete was a ritual presence, but was sufficiently odd to be interesting every day. He was therefore intrinsically paradoxical and presumably impossible. Despite his logical unlikelihood he turned up every day, and he was consistent and extraordinary at the same time.
Eliade receives a midnight phone call from the college informing her that Solete is dead, and has left a box which his instructions say can only be opened by her. The college's staff believe this relates to the masterwork also entitled "A Field Guide to Reality" that Solete has been working on for years.
The box turns out to be empty, but Eliade begins a quest to investigate what Solete meant, which leads her into a bizarre tour of the various experts and crackpots that Solete knew, each one explaining their ideas and how Solete saw them. This allows Kavenna to draw some lovingly grotesque caricatures, while giving her heroine a tour of philosophical and scientific history, which is also a blend of fact and fiction. The ending is very satisfying, but I won't spoil it by describing it here.
I have been on a very lucky streak with my reading - in the last couple of weeks all of my books have been brilliant in different ways, and once again I am left with no option but to award another five star rating.
July 27, 2018
In the wake of her father's death, Eliade Jencks strikes up a friendship with Professor Solete, a regular presence in the Oxford café she waitresses in. When Solete passes away, he (much to the consternation of his colleagues) leaves her a box which is believed to contain his masterwork, A Field Guide to Reality. But when the box is opened, there is nothing inside. Is the book missing, or is this Solete's idea of a joke? Either way, the (non-)discovery sets Eliade, and occasionally the others, off on a winding journey to find Solete's magnum opus, guided only by a scrap of paper on which he has written seven enigmatic clues.
The Oxford of A Field Guide to Reality is not-quite-real. No doubt those more familiar with the city will be able to pin down the differences with greater precision, but one obvious change Kavenna makes is to replace the university's colleges with halls. They have names like Nightingale, Pie, Unicorn and � my favourite � Perilous. Street names are similarly altered, though Mesopotamia, the island where Solete's house stands, is real. And while John (here Jeremiah) Tradescant is a real historical figure, the Tradescantian Museum, in whose café Eliade works, is at least a partial invention. Describing and illustrating an altered place, the book is literally a Field Guide to its own mysterious setting.
The Oxford of A Field Guide to Reality is also smothered by a thick layer of mist, a detail that adds to the story's startling unreality. I revelled in this atmosphere, which makes everything feel more magical, like the characters are walking through clouds and suspended in a place that is not of this world. Gargoyles looming out of the murk, fog swirling on canal banks and around limblike branches. It's often hallucinatory, at one point literally so, but Eliade's pragmatism is grounding. This is a story about examining what the meaning of reality is, but it's also about discovering that the answer is eternally mutable.
An incomplete list of books this reminded me of: by Scarlett Thomas; and by L.R. Fredericks; Ned Beauman's writing in general; by Jostein Gaarder.
A Field Guide to Reality is a bundle of charming contradictions, a book of immense intelligence and philosophical humour which somehow has the easy and enchanting readability of an adventure story for children � there are shades of Alice in Wonderland, His Dark Materials and even Harry Potter about it. Eliade, both playful and sardonic, is a uniquely beguiling storyteller.
| | |
The Oxford of A Field Guide to Reality is not-quite-real. No doubt those more familiar with the city will be able to pin down the differences with greater precision, but one obvious change Kavenna makes is to replace the university's colleges with halls. They have names like Nightingale, Pie, Unicorn and � my favourite � Perilous. Street names are similarly altered, though Mesopotamia, the island where Solete's house stands, is real. And while John (here Jeremiah) Tradescant is a real historical figure, the Tradescantian Museum, in whose café Eliade works, is at least a partial invention. Describing and illustrating an altered place, the book is literally a Field Guide to its own mysterious setting.
The Oxford of A Field Guide to Reality is also smothered by a thick layer of mist, a detail that adds to the story's startling unreality. I revelled in this atmosphere, which makes everything feel more magical, like the characters are walking through clouds and suspended in a place that is not of this world. Gargoyles looming out of the murk, fog swirling on canal banks and around limblike branches. It's often hallucinatory, at one point literally so, but Eliade's pragmatism is grounding. This is a story about examining what the meaning of reality is, but it's also about discovering that the answer is eternally mutable.
An incomplete list of books this reminded me of: by Scarlett Thomas; and by L.R. Fredericks; Ned Beauman's writing in general; by Jostein Gaarder.
A Field Guide to Reality is a bundle of charming contradictions, a book of immense intelligence and philosophical humour which somehow has the easy and enchanting readability of an adventure story for children � there are shades of Alice in Wonderland, His Dark Materials and even Harry Potter about it. Eliade, both playful and sardonic, is a uniquely beguiling storyteller.
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February 21, 2022
Has all the ingredients for a five-star rating but seems slightly undercooked. Could easily have borne another 100 pages and slightly too frenetic, a whistle-stop tour of locales (and characters) worthy of a longer stay. Really impressive, funny (very irreverent, punctures hubris at all available opportunities), thought-provoking and original. Manages to both poke fun at and celebrate the kind of maverick that might believe pinecones and chrysanthemums contain the secret to existence. (It would also seem simultaneously to be a defence and castigation of philosophy of all persuasions, so it has its cake and eats it -- concurrently, in different parts of the multiverse.)
'The spine is the tree of life. The staff. Each one of us has life within us. Creation within us. And at the tip of the staff, at the end of the spine, is the pineal gland. A small endocrine gland, as the contemporary scientists define it, producing melatonin, which affects the circadian rhythms. Sleep and waking, rise and fall. It is shaped like a pinecone. The ancients may not have known this. Or perhaps they did � those embalming lizard men who kept their famous dead so pristine. To enunciate the grave regions of antiquity � and the contemporary formulation of the brain � nearly all vertebrate species have a pineal gland. Yet not the hagfish. And alligators don’t have pineal glands and perhaps this is why they are destroyers and indeed hateful. Little eyes. The ancients regarded the pineal gland as the third eye. The sacred all-seeing register of the human being. Of being in general.
‘The pineal gland is the only region of the brain that is not divided. It is whole. Integral. And of course you know about Descartes who tried to link the tangible world with the spiritual world, through this tiny gland in the brain. The pineal gland was the seat of the soul, he argued, and therefore where the material and the immaterial might merge and belong, briefly, to each other’s remit. This was how Descartes solved his philosophical problems.�
With the pinecone. It was completely logical and no longer surprising. I submitted entirely to the argument. I had no choice. As we sat in the lighted dust of his room, as the sparkling dust settled on pinecones, as the dust was illuminated, Port said that Descartes had enforced the ancient distinctions between the material and the spiritual world, and now we call this Cartesian Dualism. Mind versus body. The church was delighted, and Descartes was spared from censorship, or death. Meanwhile Descartes, who was after all, attempting to be rigorous about his binary division of the universe, realised that if the mind and body were resident in entirely different regions � one physical, one immaterial � then there was no logical way in which they might interrelate. Thus, how could the mind influence the body? How could the mind have dominion over mute matter, and so on? How could the ensuing project of the enlightenment, man as lord of nature, have any meaning at all?
‘Perfectly, and beautifully, Descartes crafted a fudge,� said Port. ‘A big fat fudge. You understand? You understand what I mean by fudge?�
He was leaning towards me. He was intent on the definition of fudge. His pinecones were glistening in the light, surrounded by swirls of illuminated dust.
‘Descartes fudged his philosophy, so he might live. And thus the pineal gland was rendered once more integral. Always integral. This thing of myth and physical embodiment. A thing both physical and immaterial. The little pineal gland, said Descartes, was where the impossible occurred, and the mind communed with the body. Immateriality with materiality. And the church wandered away, nodding its clerical heads and Descartes breathed a sigh of relief. Is not life absurd and beautiful at the same time?�'
'The spine is the tree of life. The staff. Each one of us has life within us. Creation within us. And at the tip of the staff, at the end of the spine, is the pineal gland. A small endocrine gland, as the contemporary scientists define it, producing melatonin, which affects the circadian rhythms. Sleep and waking, rise and fall. It is shaped like a pinecone. The ancients may not have known this. Or perhaps they did � those embalming lizard men who kept their famous dead so pristine. To enunciate the grave regions of antiquity � and the contemporary formulation of the brain � nearly all vertebrate species have a pineal gland. Yet not the hagfish. And alligators don’t have pineal glands and perhaps this is why they are destroyers and indeed hateful. Little eyes. The ancients regarded the pineal gland as the third eye. The sacred all-seeing register of the human being. Of being in general.
‘The pineal gland is the only region of the brain that is not divided. It is whole. Integral. And of course you know about Descartes who tried to link the tangible world with the spiritual world, through this tiny gland in the brain. The pineal gland was the seat of the soul, he argued, and therefore where the material and the immaterial might merge and belong, briefly, to each other’s remit. This was how Descartes solved his philosophical problems.�
With the pinecone. It was completely logical and no longer surprising. I submitted entirely to the argument. I had no choice. As we sat in the lighted dust of his room, as the sparkling dust settled on pinecones, as the dust was illuminated, Port said that Descartes had enforced the ancient distinctions between the material and the spiritual world, and now we call this Cartesian Dualism. Mind versus body. The church was delighted, and Descartes was spared from censorship, or death. Meanwhile Descartes, who was after all, attempting to be rigorous about his binary division of the universe, realised that if the mind and body were resident in entirely different regions � one physical, one immaterial � then there was no logical way in which they might interrelate. Thus, how could the mind influence the body? How could the mind have dominion over mute matter, and so on? How could the ensuing project of the enlightenment, man as lord of nature, have any meaning at all?
‘Perfectly, and beautifully, Descartes crafted a fudge,� said Port. ‘A big fat fudge. You understand? You understand what I mean by fudge?�
He was leaning towards me. He was intent on the definition of fudge. His pinecones were glistening in the light, surrounded by swirls of illuminated dust.
‘Descartes fudged his philosophy, so he might live. And thus the pineal gland was rendered once more integral. Always integral. This thing of myth and physical embodiment. A thing both physical and immaterial. The little pineal gland, said Descartes, was where the impossible occurred, and the mind communed with the body. Immateriality with materiality. And the church wandered away, nodding its clerical heads and Descartes breathed a sigh of relief. Is not life absurd and beautiful at the same time?�'
July 21, 2018
‘A Field Guide to Reality� seemed like an excellent book to read to counterbalance , as indeed it was. This illustrated poetic short novel concerns a young woman living in Oxford who inherits a mysterious legacy from a professor. This sends her on a quest to discover the nature of reality and distract herself from grief and mundane daily life. The dreamlike, atmospheric narrative constantly references the long history of attempts to describe what is real. Oxford in the mist is evoked and illustrated beautifully. The only part that seemed far-fetched to me was that Eliade walked everywhere rather than cycling. Despite its short length, I found the whole thing compelling and delightful: beautifully written, witty, and strange. It hooks you from the very first page, which was in fact :
‘A Field Guide to Reality� reminded me of the (which evokes a similar sense of Oxford), as well as (which also strikes a perfect balance between words and pictures), maybe even 's writing. My reading experience was one of pleasant escapism, which is perhaps strange given that it is ostensibly an enquiry into the nature of reality. Still, the narrative wanders through esoteric and scientific answers to the questions it raises before carefully refusing to select any final answers. This makes for both aesthetic and intellectual enjoyment, somehow.
Life in thirteenth-century Oxford is hard and dangerous. The homicide rate exceeds modern-day Bogota. Each year for every hundred monks attending the university (all students must be in religious orders), three are murdered, fifteen die of dysentery, and twenty-six run away to London.
The gates of the town close at dusk.
Walter Raleigh has not yet visited the New World and there are no potatoes or tobacco. The staple foods are bread, porridge and gruel. Meat is expensive and only the rich are assured of a reliable supply. Because of the Eucharist, bread is endowed with particular status and is consumed regularly, incessantly-
With deleterious physical effects and perhaps to the general despond of all:
‘A Field Guide to Reality� reminded me of the (which evokes a similar sense of Oxford), as well as (which also strikes a perfect balance between words and pictures), maybe even 's writing. My reading experience was one of pleasant escapism, which is perhaps strange given that it is ostensibly an enquiry into the nature of reality. Still, the narrative wanders through esoteric and scientific answers to the questions it raises before carefully refusing to select any final answers. This makes for both aesthetic and intellectual enjoyment, somehow.
December 8, 2017
Must be a coincidence but I have just read two books questioning what is reality.
This one is sort of based in Oxford and debates philosophy, physics, light, reality versus perception, historical figures, time travel and why an acorn is shaped as it is.
It is a clever book, the author is obviously very talented but at times the Alice-in-Wonderland nature of the story just lost me.
This one is sort of based in Oxford and debates philosophy, physics, light, reality versus perception, historical figures, time travel and why an acorn is shaped as it is.
It is a clever book, the author is obviously very talented but at times the Alice-in-Wonderland nature of the story just lost me.
October 26, 2018
Certainly original, and for most of the mind-bending trip, it is both very enjoyable and enlightening. There are a couple of sections, though, where I found it not only hard to follow, but downright incomprehensible, even on the lowest level of just following the plot, let alone some high-brow philosophy and quantum physics. But I persevered, and it more or less all makes sense in the end. I'd be interested in reading some of Kavenna's back list.
February 4, 2018
p. 151: Just remember, if it eats you, it's not actually real.
August 12, 2016
This is my first Joanna Kavenna novel and I was gripped straight away by the intriguing plot and narrative. She gets you into the story fairly quickly and I was immediately caught up in the mystery of the late Professor Solete and his lifetime’s work on ‘The Field Guide to Reality� and his investigation into nature of Light. Even stranger was his odd bequest to Eliade Jencks, a waitress in the museum cafe whom he has befriended. The professor’s friends believing it to be the whereabouts of his missing manuscript are astonished when Eliade finally lifts the lid on an old wooden box …�.
Eliade embarks on a surreal detective quest in a search for the supposed missing manuscript ‘The Field Guide to Reality�. She stumbles through a succession of bizarre encounters with a collection of strange characters, who feed her clues and prompts, or in the case of one group, psychotropic tea which sends her off on a hallucinogenic dream to the centre of the universe and back. From Plato and Aristotle, Druids and ancient symbolism to the present weird happenings and final resolution, this tale rattles along never dropping the pace and intrigue. I particularly liked her descriptions of the old town of Oxford and the surrounding marshes and woods which are wonderfully evocative and painterly.
I like the way she writes - direct, unfussy and quirky. Her descriptions of the various oddball characters are funny and very visual.
I also really enjoyed the book’s layout and the moody illustrations of Oly Ralfe, which helped to convey the mood and mystery of the quest, almost in the style of a children’s story book.
I would thoroughly recommend this unusual book and will be investigating more of Joanna Kavenna’s work.
Eliade embarks on a surreal detective quest in a search for the supposed missing manuscript ‘The Field Guide to Reality�. She stumbles through a succession of bizarre encounters with a collection of strange characters, who feed her clues and prompts, or in the case of one group, psychotropic tea which sends her off on a hallucinogenic dream to the centre of the universe and back. From Plato and Aristotle, Druids and ancient symbolism to the present weird happenings and final resolution, this tale rattles along never dropping the pace and intrigue. I particularly liked her descriptions of the old town of Oxford and the surrounding marshes and woods which are wonderfully evocative and painterly.
I like the way she writes - direct, unfussy and quirky. Her descriptions of the various oddball characters are funny and very visual.
I also really enjoyed the book’s layout and the moody illustrations of Oly Ralfe, which helped to convey the mood and mystery of the quest, almost in the style of a children’s story book.
I would thoroughly recommend this unusual book and will be investigating more of Joanna Kavenna’s work.
August 7, 2016
Personally I cannot find fault with this book! It’s original, engaging, witty, informative, enlightening and enhanced by Oly Ralfe’s wonderfully evocative illustrations. It reads as a novel but within it is a subtle philosophy guide book!
The book itself is a perfect size � very pleasing to hold. The copy I was sent to review is hard backed and it also turned out to be the perfect length! Funny that!
If you like a book that is well written, questions human perception of� well, everything, has an array of interesting characters and their equally interesting � or bizarre � theories then this is the book for you! I will certainly be searching out other works by Joanna Kavenna as I thoroughly enjoyed her writing
The book itself is a perfect size � very pleasing to hold. The copy I was sent to review is hard backed and it also turned out to be the perfect length! Funny that!
If you like a book that is well written, questions human perception of� well, everything, has an array of interesting characters and their equally interesting � or bizarre � theories then this is the book for you! I will certainly be searching out other works by Joanna Kavenna as I thoroughly enjoyed her writing
June 27, 2017
A proper reaction to basically all of Western philosophy, awed and spiky at the same time. And a beautiful book as a designed thing - the illustrations deepen the mood, and even the typeface is perfect. (There's a note on the baseline grid. Don't read this on Kindle.)
July 14, 2019
If you are not a scientist, give this book to your scientist friends. If you are a scientist, give it to your non-scientist friends.
And keep a few copies for yourself, floating around the house like dust.
And keep a few copies for yourself, floating around the house like dust.
March 3, 2024
This books receives 5 stars from me, and yet I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. It's ~different~ in form and style, a risky choice of the author's - but it worked well for me. I couldn't wait to sit down and read it. I loved the waffling setting (1200s and 2000s Oxford), the illustrations (I looked forward to turning pages to see them), and the trippy feeling of being swept into another world that is just as (more?) confusing as your own.
I haven't come away with any firmer ideas about reality and I love that too. The characters were haphazardly splayed across the pages - I felt simultaneously aloof from them and kinship with them. The book made me laugh out loud in multiple places, which is a big deal. Ugh I also just love Oxford so that's a super bonus.
"Reality - whatever the hell is around you - doesn't fall into neat little categories - Light/Shadow. Right/Wrong. Good/Evil. Dead/Alive. Reality is aligned somehow with Light but you don't know what light is and no one else does either. Whatever they pretend! However many equations they thrust upon you! So therefore reality is multiple and even still unknowable - and you seek to bind it and confine it at your peril. And yet, you keep trying! You want the thing, the single thing! The grail! And yet, reality is myriad and legion. And - you are destined to fail. ... It has failed and yet I am glad."
I haven't come away with any firmer ideas about reality and I love that too. The characters were haphazardly splayed across the pages - I felt simultaneously aloof from them and kinship with them. The book made me laugh out loud in multiple places, which is a big deal. Ugh I also just love Oxford so that's a super bonus.
"Reality - whatever the hell is around you - doesn't fall into neat little categories - Light/Shadow. Right/Wrong. Good/Evil. Dead/Alive. Reality is aligned somehow with Light but you don't know what light is and no one else does either. Whatever they pretend! However many equations they thrust upon you! So therefore reality is multiple and even still unknowable - and you seek to bind it and confine it at your peril. And yet, you keep trying! You want the thing, the single thing! The grail! And yet, reality is myriad and legion. And - you are destined to fail. ... It has failed and yet I am glad."
March 18, 2022
Strange and beautiful, trippy and over-wrought, blending past, present, and future, philosophy and life and odd narrative choices
August 18, 2016
Eliade Jencks, a young waitress in Oxford, is befriended by an elderly professor who leaves her his masterwork “A Field Guide to Reality� on his death. This greatly displeases his academic colleagues, but a more important issue is where exactly is the Field Guide and how will she know when she’s found it. Eliade travels the byways of Oxford on the trail of the Guide and meets some interesting people on the way.
I was sent this book by the Real Readers programme and probably wouldn’t have come across it otherwise. As a physical object it’s very attractive � hardback with many hand-drawn illustrations and high quality paper. In these days of e-books it’s nice to read such a beautifully-designed book.
Having finished it I’m really not sure what I was reading and what it was about. There’s a dream-like quality to much of the book and it seems to be constantly on the verge of turning into several different genres, but then never does. Oxford is portrayed as beautiful but not necessarily welcoming and there’s much use of the pathetic fallacy (the weather reflecting the inner feelings of the characters). It felt different from most other books I’ve read but I think the secret to enjoying it is letting yourself go with the flow and not worrying too much about where the book will take you.
I liked Eliade as a character but the book doesn’t tell you much about her and I would have liked to know more about her life before we meet her here. The academic characters aren’t portrayed particularly kindly and Oxford appears to be entirely populated by eccentrics (this may be truer to life than it appears!). Professor Solete is larger than life and a great deal more likeable than his colleagues, though just as eccentric.
It seems to me that the book is entirely about grief and how we cope with it (or don’t). There’s a search for answers after a death, but ultimately the planet continues to revolve and we have to carry on. Great minds have applied themselves to the reasons for life and death coming up with many theories, but none of their thinking changes things. Life is life and ends in death but while we still remember the people we’ve lost they’re still with us.
I enjoyed the book, even though I was puzzled by it, and would recommend to others looking for something a bit different.
I was sent this book by the Real Readers programme and probably wouldn’t have come across it otherwise. As a physical object it’s very attractive � hardback with many hand-drawn illustrations and high quality paper. In these days of e-books it’s nice to read such a beautifully-designed book.
Having finished it I’m really not sure what I was reading and what it was about. There’s a dream-like quality to much of the book and it seems to be constantly on the verge of turning into several different genres, but then never does. Oxford is portrayed as beautiful but not necessarily welcoming and there’s much use of the pathetic fallacy (the weather reflecting the inner feelings of the characters). It felt different from most other books I’ve read but I think the secret to enjoying it is letting yourself go with the flow and not worrying too much about where the book will take you.
I liked Eliade as a character but the book doesn’t tell you much about her and I would have liked to know more about her life before we meet her here. The academic characters aren’t portrayed particularly kindly and Oxford appears to be entirely populated by eccentrics (this may be truer to life than it appears!). Professor Solete is larger than life and a great deal more likeable than his colleagues, though just as eccentric.
It seems to me that the book is entirely about grief and how we cope with it (or don’t). There’s a search for answers after a death, but ultimately the planet continues to revolve and we have to carry on. Great minds have applied themselves to the reasons for life and death coming up with many theories, but none of their thinking changes things. Life is life and ends in death but while we still remember the people we’ve lost they’re still with us.
I enjoyed the book, even though I was puzzled by it, and would recommend to others looking for something a bit different.
August 22, 2021
This novel is a great exercise in how to be trippy but accessible. It's incisive and has a natural build to its weirdness, eventually hitting bat-shit. It's like a quantum universe Alice in Wonderland that explores reality, light and perception. It's heavy on philosophy and science and light on plot, yet still has a narrative momentum to it. And I loved the illustrations throughout the book; it’s such a cool touch to have and really elevates the reading experience (and allows you to get through the book faster). The story's fun, interesting and stimulating, but it left me wanting more. There was an unfulfilled sense at the end of the book, though it was a novel all about reality being an enigma and how there's no way to fully quantify it, so that feeling made sense. Still, I wish it was longer so it could've been even trippier or dove deeper into the subjects it was exploring. Also, it tried to show it had heart and was saying something grief and father figures, but I really didn't think this was delivered upon to its full potential. All in all, a really good read, but it's only something I'll want to revisit for its philosophy and structure, and not so much its plot or delivery.
July 28, 2021
I may have enjoyed this book better if I had read it high. Comprised of hallucinogenic content and physics - it's definitely not to be read sober, especially if your taste does not align with such content. (Harry Potter/ Alice in Wonderland fans could enjoy it sober). As a reader who enjoys deep characters - I found the characters as bland as plain omelettes -sufficient but not good enough - though I do think the author tries here and there to add depth, it didn't seem to work for me.
The story as a whole did not necessarily impress me, but I feel what deserves credit is the language and exuding philosophy that is formed in somewhat perfectly structured and thought of syntax. I think that's what kept me going too, Joanna Kavenna hook (for me) is the journey the protagonist Eliade takes in search of 'late Solete's' , "Field guide to reality" - and the crazy hallucinations on the way.
I'd recommend this because I feel different people will have wayyy different views - like how in the book er body tries to perceive 'reality'.
Do read and let me know your thoughts! :)
The story as a whole did not necessarily impress me, but I feel what deserves credit is the language and exuding philosophy that is formed in somewhat perfectly structured and thought of syntax. I think that's what kept me going too, Joanna Kavenna hook (for me) is the journey the protagonist Eliade takes in search of 'late Solete's' , "Field guide to reality" - and the crazy hallucinations on the way.
I'd recommend this because I feel different people will have wayyy different views - like how in the book er body tries to perceive 'reality'.
Do read and let me know your thoughts! :)
September 4, 2016
I thought this was rather self-regarding, what with the portentous title, the meant-to-be-wonderful-but-in-fact-quite-dreadful illustrations and the how impressive really, if we're honest, tour d'horizon of philosophy from ancient Greece to modern Oxford with which the ?novel begins (for the trope of the continuity of static space over changing time, see Iain Pears' infinitely better The Dream Of Scipio).
The plot concerns the protagonist's search for a lost book, the last work of a magus-like philosopher genius who has bequeathed it to her in his will (to the chagrin of the cyphers who are his academic colleagues). As she embarks upon and continues her quest for clues to the whereabouts of the mysterious Field Guide To Reality, her story (naturally) contrives to produce in the reader's hands the very book she is meant to be looking for. Yawn.
The plot concerns the protagonist's search for a lost book, the last work of a magus-like philosopher genius who has bequeathed it to her in his will (to the chagrin of the cyphers who are his academic colleagues). As she embarks upon and continues her quest for clues to the whereabouts of the mysterious Field Guide To Reality, her story (naturally) contrives to produce in the reader's hands the very book she is meant to be looking for. Yawn.
July 19, 2016
Wonderfully written prose, and enjoyable characters, but ultimately left me feeling unsatisfied. I think perhaps the authors appearance on Radio 4 alongside Roger Penrose and Marcus du Sautoy gave me false hopes as to the depth of the philosophy underlying the plot. An entertaining read, nonetheless.
December 6, 2016
The ending was ever-so-slightly disappointing, but the wintry philosophy, cosmic chrysanthemum trip, and alternate-history Oxford just about makes up for it. I read this after getting to hear Joanna Kavenna speak in person and I thought she was great, so am really looking forward to reading more of her books.
April 18, 2017
I loved this book! It felt quirky, which is always a good thing, but highly readable too. I loved the main characters of Eliade and Anthony, and enjoyed the other, mostly bizarre, characters, including the city and its weather.
Read
October 1, 2016I'm not really sure how to rate this one,it's a very pretentious and comes across as quite self satisfied but it's also engaging and amusing at times.
July 28, 2021
Dessert for Scholars
This book is a delightful peripatetic satire and a humorously compassionate reflection on reality and on our attempts at understanding reality, with gorgeous illustrations that enhance the experience especially when reading a print copy.
Eliade, whose name predestines her to become a(n amateur) historian of ideas, embarks on a quest for a book entrusted to her, whose title lends the title of this novel. She is accompanied by a don, Anthony, perhaps not coincidentally named after the patron saint of lost things. As books of history of philosophy take you through a walk from thinker to thinker, in the same way the two ‘detectives� visit the strangest persons, each with a prevailing theme. We meet a proponent of the pinecone vision of the world, curators of a museum of answered questions, an archivist of Hypatia, and priests of the quantum realm, in often hilarious and grotesque scenes. We learn that if the giant chrysanthemum eats you, it is not actually real.
More than the “thing� Solete the testator created, it turns out the field guide is the very process of discovery Eliade and Anthony experience together in their search of the elusive, paper-based guide.
In a charming and playfully erudite style, the novel shows how puerile and speculative a purely theoretical quest for knowledge can be. But it also delicately reminds us of the price of knowledge, of how many � often silly-looking � milestones needed to be reached to have it; of how many bridges needed to be crossed that may have seemed dangerous at a certain time yet inevitable in retrospect.
This book is a delightful peripatetic satire and a humorously compassionate reflection on reality and on our attempts at understanding reality, with gorgeous illustrations that enhance the experience especially when reading a print copy.
Eliade, whose name predestines her to become a(n amateur) historian of ideas, embarks on a quest for a book entrusted to her, whose title lends the title of this novel. She is accompanied by a don, Anthony, perhaps not coincidentally named after the patron saint of lost things. As books of history of philosophy take you through a walk from thinker to thinker, in the same way the two ‘detectives� visit the strangest persons, each with a prevailing theme. We meet a proponent of the pinecone vision of the world, curators of a museum of answered questions, an archivist of Hypatia, and priests of the quantum realm, in often hilarious and grotesque scenes. We learn that if the giant chrysanthemum eats you, it is not actually real.
More than the “thing� Solete the testator created, it turns out the field guide is the very process of discovery Eliade and Anthony experience together in their search of the elusive, paper-based guide.
In a charming and playfully erudite style, the novel shows how puerile and speculative a purely theoretical quest for knowledge can be. But it also delicately reminds us of the price of knowledge, of how many � often silly-looking � milestones needed to be reached to have it; of how many bridges needed to be crossed that may have seemed dangerous at a certain time yet inevitable in retrospect.
September 21, 2021
Dull and uninspiring. This read like a high school writing project, maybe for a college prep class. A little google-ing here, a little Wiki-ing there, some Philosophy 101 mini-bios, and some quirkiness to boot, because I am not only an author, and smart, but also artistic. I even have an artist(ic) friend to supply (nice B&W) art for my smarty-artsy-quirky book! Not a novel idea (pun intended, always) and rather mundane. I would bet Kavenna is a smart person and/or wants people to know/think that, but this book would be a poor example to utilize. And to be even more frank (franker? that sounds weird...), just because as a reader you don't know any of the author's references does not make the book smart or intellectual, it pretty much says you don't read philosophy and suchlike books, which is fine, but again, for those who have/do/will the factoids in this pamphlet-ish thing are rather basic and hardly mental warfare. To make matters worse, it isn't even a good example of a fictional word, to be honest. All said, I was nonplussed considering the praise, and had hoped for something more in depth and less commonplace.
June 5, 2017
The subject matter is really interesting, but I'm not sure there was much more clear thought that went into the planning of this novel. The characters feel really quite artificial to me - they are there to provide a framework for this exploration of historical ideas. Eliade herself I found completely unbelievable - it seemed like she was moseying through some kind of holiday, preserving a wry detached sense of humour which jarred given the situations she often found herself in. There seemed to be some kind of flirtation or attraction between her and the scholar tasked with finding Solete's book (I can't even remember his name...), despite there being zero apparent chemistry between them. Hey, it wasn't a horrible book, in fact it was mildly enjoyable, but I expected more based on the press reviews, which have been reasonably gushing
December 27, 2017
A book about light and dust and shadows, surreal in something of a Lewis Carroll way, set in a somewhat reconfigured Oxford, with bit parts for Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste and Alhazen. A book which quotes Maxwell's Equations and Schrödinger's Equation (among others) and debates the number of colours in the rainbow. A book about loss and living with loss.
Carefully wrought though the writing is, there's humour and a lightness of touch to it. I particularly liked this short sequence:
'Lord Priddy is the leader of the society,' said Thea.
'Another blissfulle patriarche,' I said. They looked at me
with sorrow in their eyes, and poured more tea.
Psychotropic tea.
I hadn't even considered the possibility.
Events thereafter were a little strange.
Carefully wrought though the writing is, there's humour and a lightness of touch to it. I particularly liked this short sequence:
'Lord Priddy is the leader of the society,' said Thea.
'Another blissfulle patriarche,' I said. They looked at me
with sorrow in their eyes, and poured more tea.
Psychotropic tea.
I hadn't even considered the possibility.
Events thereafter were a little strange.
March 16, 2019
Somehow, I thought I would enjoy this more than I did. I cannot be sure that the problem is with the book, which is beautifully written and illustrated. Perhaps I was not receptive to what it had to offer and perhaps I shall read it again one day with different expectations.
What is actually present is a humorous Alice In Wonderland journey down a philosophical rabbit hole, with added Zen and quantum. Where I seem to be parting company with the book is that the insights and the philosophy seem to be a bit glib.
I may well be wrong and may have missed something.
What is actually present is a humorous Alice In Wonderland journey down a philosophical rabbit hole, with added Zen and quantum. Where I seem to be parting company with the book is that the insights and the philosophy seem to be a bit glib.
I may well be wrong and may have missed something.
February 3, 2025
I’m living for Joanna Kavenna’s books, even those I don’t fully get. Field Guide to Reality was witty, philosophical, and strange in all the best ways. Professor Solete dies and leaves the mystery of his last book, his life’s work, to a waitress. Together with a few academics, she must find this Field Guide to Reality. Deep conversations, walks in a city draped in fog, trips to the underworld and through light and physics ensue. It’s a wonderful book that I’m looking forward to re-reading later on.
April 3, 2019
An interesting book, clever ideas, but I found it somehow unsatisfying. The characters were not as well rounded as I would have liked; the situations a little tenuous. I did like the descriptions of Oxford, and of the weather, and the determined nature of the main character.
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