TRIAL BY INK:
From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing
Biography of the author Yahia Lababidi: Internationally-published aphorist, poet and essayist with writing translated into Arabic, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Italian. Latest book is a collection of 21 literary and cultural essays "Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing"
BOOK REVIEW
By Mary Ann Stackpole
I read TRIAL BY INK by Yahia Lababidi because a friend asked to review the book. I’m not so sure I’m qualified to write a review. But what I lack in bone fides, I no doubt make up for in sheer chutzpah in asserting my opinions.
Mr. Lababidi’s book was a thoroughly beguiling experience. I don’t know if English is his first language (he’s of Egyptian and Lebanese descent), but he has a felicitous talent for artful turns of phrase. His book of essays is divided into three parts: “Literary Profiles and Reviews,” “Studies in Pop Culture,” and “Middle Eastern Musings.” Of these, I found the first part the most engaging, mostly because, initially, I found the juxtaposition of two literary giants decidedly disconcerting.
“Literary Profiles and Reviews” deals primarily with comparing and contrasting Friedrich Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde. It was, on the face of it, a stretch, at least for me, a classic case of pushing the literary envelope. And the author, to my enormous delight, pulled it off.
In fact, in after-thought, Mr. Lababidi may have stolen a march on both Nietzsche and Wilde, who spent their careers writing and living on the edge, and this section is an interesting rumination on the heartbreaking reality of two original minds damaged by hubris. I have never liked Wilde, purely and simply because of his preciosity. And reading Nietzsche wounded my Judeo-Christian sensibilities (God forbid there be humans beyond good and evil!). But Mr. Lababidi has painted a portrait of two brilliant minds waylaid by their very brilliance, and he’s made an incisive comparison of their lives: wasted by choice in Wilde’s case and, perhaps by chance in the case of Nietzsche.
Chapter Four of Part I is an apposite interlude, an essay on Susan Sontag, an admired literary rebel with many causes, who was an icon of political and literary controversy in her time. I think she sits in good company both by virtue of her iconoclastic writings, and her unconventional sexual history.
Parts II and III deal with a polymorphous and pluralsistic world, which I suspect appeals to Mr. Lababidi. I also suspect a subtext in many of his essays, which posits art as a personal derangement or as an excuse for flouting social and moral laws. That assumption did not survive the hectic, hormone-driven emotionality of my adolescence (another reason I don’t like Wilde. I matured: he did not, and I’m probably jealous!) Art is, if anything, an ineffable fulfillment of the humanity of an individual, a special gift which enriches personhood. Who knows what the tragic lives of Nietzsche and Wilde might have been, if they had not been kissed by these special gifts?
Part II deals with pop culture and pop icons. It is a section of considerable variety, and Mr. Lababidi is obviously familiar with and immersed in contemporary culture and idols, including Michael Jackson. Again, Mr. Lababidi’s verbal legerdemain managed to hold my interest in spite of the fact that I am a lover of neither pop art, nor the cult of personality. There is a chapter which does NOT belong in this section: “Notes on Silence” should be in “Middle Eastern Musings.” The author is dealing with the wisdom of the desert fathers which flowered from their silence: and with the possible exception of Cohen and Morrissey, I doubt that silence constitutes even a fraction of the sensibilities of the denizens in this noisy physical and psychic habitat of pop. Another essay, “Crises and their Uses” makes sense here, except that Mr. Lababidi failed to mention the almost universal fall-back when a pop icon encounters crisis: the omnipresent reality show.
There wasn’t enough of Part III: “Middle Eastern Musings.” I do love to travel, and while the budget constraints of my chronically hand-to-mouth existence prohibit physical journeys, there are always the memoirs of those who have felicitously wandered in foreign climes. These chapters introduced me to the culture and personality of the Middle East in a way that only a native could, lovingly and without blinking. And it isn’t just the differences that arrest one’s attention. Strange as their language may be to a foreigner, weird as some of their habits may seem, there are just too many similarities to be alienated from them.
Opening the book was like opening a trunk on that rainy, aimless afternoon when you head for the attic, and start rummaging through generations of memory, a delicious experience in revelation and nostalgia. Thank you, Mr. Lababidi.
Mary Ann Stackpole, an avid reader, also writes. She has written and produced plays for public television, and, has been known to whip out a few bodice rippers for a few bucks.
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