[Update 30 April 11: If you like this passage, check out my interview with Yuriy Tarnawsky: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3]
Part 4, “Death,” Chapter 27: “Why Is Water So Beautiful?”
It may shine like cheeks down which tears flow. It may shine like tears. It may be dark like tears. It may be dark like cheeks down which tears flow. It may be pale like cheeks down which tears flow. It may be dark like a room in which tears flow. It may be pale like a room in which tears flow. It may flow like tears. It may flow to where tears flow. It may flow to where tears flow from. It may flow like the world when tears flow. It may carry away with it tears after they fall off the cheeks down which they’d flown. It may carry away cheeks so that there’ll be no more place for tears to flow on. It may carry away rooms so that there’ll be no space for tears to flow in. It may flow past tears. It may flow past cheeks. It may flow past rooms. It may flow past clocks. It may make the sound of a clock ticking. It may move like the hands of a clock. It may move past Roman and Arabic numerals. It may be added or subtracted like numbers. It’s invisible like numbers. It’s invisible like time. It’s like time in the sense that it can be detected only through the effect it has on the material world. It’s like an idea in the sense that it can be detected only through the effect it has on the material world. It can look like a page in a book. It can cover a page like fine print. It can carry away print. It can carry away feet. It can carry away faces. It can provide a roof over one’s head. It can kill like a sword. It’s shaped like a sword. It’s shaped like an atom bomb. It can kill like an atom bomb. It can soothe like soft hands. It can mend broken bones. It can mend broken minds. It can sway like a branch after a bird has flown off it. It can sound like a bird singing. It can make a bird sing. It can sound like a telephone ringing. It can look like a telephone in an empty room. It looks like grass. It covers the earth like grass. It’s green like grass. It’s transparent like an angel’s eye. It’s shaped like an angel’s eye. It’s blue like an angel’s eye. It’s blue like an angel’s wing. It’s transparent like an angel’s wing. It can flow out of an angel’s eye. It can flow out of an angel’s wing. Angels’ wings and eyes can flow out of it. It’s parallel to angels’ eyes and wings. It’s parallel to everything. It can be compared to anything.
Three Blondes and Death is divided into four sections (Alphabette, Bethlehem, Chemnitz, Death). The first three each have 41 chapters, and describe three women that the main character, Hwbrgdtse, becomes involved with. More than half of the chapters relate dreams that these characters have. The final section, Death, has 52 chapters, and tells us more about Hwbrgdtse, but also contains meditations like the above. Each chapter consists of one long paragraph, a single block of staccato declarative sentences: “Chemnitz was at a party. She had a backache. She got it the day before. She’d apparently gotten chilled. Chemnitz’s back hurt very badly. Chemnitz had considered not going to the party. She decided against it however. This was because she liked parties too much. […]” The novel’s 451 pages, all in all, read like an absurdist coroner’s report. It’s a good example of what I mean when I talk about “an experimental page-turner”—you read one chapter, and then you can’t stop reading it, despite it not looking like anything else you’ve ever seen. It’s the kind of artwork that knows what its doing from the very first sentence, then proceeds to dazzle you with its doing it—gloriously. I wish more books were this courageous. I wish I could write something this courageous. It’s one of my favorite novels ever, by turns hilarious, erotic, sad, occasionally terrifying, bizarre, and always extraordinarily beautiful.