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cruelspirit's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
After finishing Gravity’s Rainbow back in October I wanted to take a bit of a break from reading Postmodern fiction. I was eager to jump back into something else in the genre but I didn’t want to move on too quickly from this monolithic book. While that is the case, I also have been excited to get into this book, In Transit ever since I bought it last summer. I think two months was a pretty respectable layover between the two.
In Transit is a 1969 postmodern, metafictional novel written by the Irish author Brigid Brophy. I came across this book by chance looking at Open Books amazing collection of Dalkey Archive books. I bought this based on the description which highlighted a few favorite things of mine to read; 1960s Postmodern metafiction, an obscure work of mystery and intrigue, linguistics, an exploration of gender, an exploration of syntax and the written word, and a setting of an international airport. Even just two of these concepts in combination would have my interest peaked but this felt too good. In the last six months since buying it, it's been on my mind in anticipation of finally reading it.
So what is In Transit? This book is split into four parts. The first part opens with our protagonist at an airport in Italy. They navigate their way to the transit lounge and Brophy does an amazing job describing this airport, painting it in ways most people would not have previously considered an airport to be.
An airport is a transitive state. No one lives at an airport and unless you work at a kiosk or gate you do not go to the same spot on a daily basis. The airport is not an end destination but a conductor from point A to B. Everyone you see at the airport is also going from one place to the next and is most likely not taking the same route as you. This state of transience and middleground is explored further through language, which is where we get to a lot of the Postmodern writing.
Brophy utilizes the 235 pages that make up this book as a literary playground. I haven’t read a book with as great a wordplay as as this since reading Rick Harsch’s The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, and I haven’t seen a play with form and syntax like this since reading Philip Freedenberg’s America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic. Those are much more modern works so I wouldn’t compare them any further than my own reading experience but I found similar components of what I liked about the writing in those here in this book.
Brophy does a lot with syntax that I haven’t seen somewhere else. One of my favorite elements are these bracketed sections. She will enclose a segment of a sentence with brackets and give you two options to pick from for how to interpret the sentence. These are used in a variety of different ways. An early example goes as follows:
“There you are: fixed in your high (by several thousand feet) chair or wedged into your push (by jet engine) chair, dependent on h{a/u}rried n{u/a}nny’s finding a moment to play attendant to you.” -page 19.
It’s almost like Brophy is providing you with a “choose your own adventure” to complete the sentence and how you see fit to interpret it. Astute readers will take both interpretations into account but this is a smaller facet of the grander scheme of the novel. Blurring the lines between two binaries.
During this time Brophy also utilizes the setting of an international airport to explore the multilingual aspect. Pointing out signs in three different languages, she introduces you to this concept of language as having more interpretation than just what can be expressed in English. A prominent component of this is the gendered nouns of various other Latin derived languages; a hint towards what’s to come.
Part one closes with our protagonist listening to an Italian opera in the lounge waiting for their flight, contemplating the Italian meanings and how that applies to their Irish upbringing. This book helps if you are someone interested in linguistics and knowledgeable of various languages and cultures. I would particularly highlight Italian and Irish for this reason of understanding the character more so. This opera goes on for so long that our character has missed their flight and eventually comes to the realization that they don’t know what gender they are.
Parts two and three are spent following our protagonist as they try to determine what gender they are with societal signifiers but no clear conclusion is made. For a moment the character will come to one conclusion and all pronouns and language are shifted to male but then that conclusion will be dismantled by some new revelation and then everything will shift to female. This process will keep happening until no sense of confident conclusion can be made.
Switching from Pat to Patricia, our protagonist ends up in a lot of wacky scenarios. These moments feel very Pynchonian. I will remind those reading this review that this book came out four years prior to Gravity’s Rainbow. Maybe it’s just because I have read that book so recently but I was amazed by how similar it felt reading this. Pynchon had written V and The Cry of Lot 49 by this time but nothing in those books comes close to how wacky some of these scenarios feel (maybe the alligator chase scenes in V). A favorite standout moment from this section is having our Protagonist end up on the baggage conveyor belt area of the airport and coming upon the collection of workers who are all women and are referred to as the “lesbian underground”. This secret society, conspiracy also have a very Pynchon feel to it.
I reference Pynchon a lot here as he is the author of contemporary to Brophy that I’ve read the most of. I also see a lot of similarities to John Barth in the writing here, particularly in the syntax and experimentation of form.
You also can’t talk about an Irish Postmodern author without talking about Joyce. While I haven’t read any of Joyce’s wilder works yet there is a clear connection here and In Transit is not shy from referencing that point.
Part four is dedicated to the exploration of a group of revolutionaries hijacking the airport. These revolutionaries are set on blurring the binary between masculine and feminine, a task started by following our protagonist and now implemented on a wider scale. Once again, the setting of an airport is a perfect vehicle for this narrative. Whether it be the monitors that once told departure and arrival times being used to project messages by this group or the collision of two planes as a metaphorical culmination of our two binaries being thrown together and jumbled up in the end.
Going into this book I was expecting some dated outlooks to gender considering the time period it was written in. I’m a big fan of Sci Fi and experimental literature from this time, which comes with the issue of a lot of dated outlooks on gender, sexuality, and race. Considering this factor, I was surprised how little of it felt off by today’s standards.
Granted I am not a Gender Studies expert, but I found Brophy’s outlook here to be quite modern and one akin to a lot of gender fluid and non binary perspectives we hear about today. I’m not sure how much of these ideas were explored in her time but I think this book really could do well with more people of our time reading it.
In 1969, gender roles were a lot more strict. The binary of masculine and feminine were a lot stronger and the way Brophy collides the two in this book is something to admire. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if our protagonist was male or female. As the revolutionaries in the final section proclaim “WE ARE ALL HUMAN AND HUMANS ARE ALL THOROUGHLY NICE PEOPLE”- page 231.
In our traditional society we are made to hold masculine and feminine at two polar opposite ends of the spectrum and never are they two intertwined but of course that is not reality. You don’t have to be nonbinary or gender fluid to inhabit both masculine and feminine traits. I don’t care what you say, you could be the most “masculine man” or the highest of “femme females” and you probably still exhibit some level of thought or action that could be attributed traditionally to the other end of the spectrum.
This book really upholds the “gender is a spectrum” concept and that is something I have felt long before picking up this book. It is amazing to see that idea conveyed so well here in a book from over 50 years ago. Beyond this overall theme this is just an amazingly written and constructed novel. Sure there are probably some elements that could be smoothed over and there is a lot I missed here on a first read but that is the marker of any great Postmodern work. I’ll leave this review with a section of text that really stood out to me. The double meaning of the words is something that I’ve marveled at ever since reading it and I would go so far as to say, these works are better constructed than many full novels I’ve read.
“She could see, chalked on the concrete in vast letters, two inscriptions, one on each side of the flap she was headed for.
The left read
WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE.
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE
BUT YOUR LABOUR PAINS
The right complimented the doctrine with
WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE.
YOU HAVE EVERYTHING TO
GAIN - IN PARTICULAR,
YOUR DAISY CHAINS.” -Page 132.
k_h_83's review against another edition
2.0
I honestly don't know what to think of this novel. It was just painfully slow with a few good puns (and a lot of mediocre ones). Most of all did the random parenthesis, capital letters, language changes, and unindicated changes of points of view/focus bother me just too much to properly enjoy the witty and interesting observations of the main character.
capitaens's review against another edition
4.5
I bloody loved it and good thing I did because I wrote my final exam on it. It's absolutely bonkers but in a way that's SO fun with all the little plays on words, juggling with genre, and transgressing gender boundaries in every possible sense. One day I'll reread it without a deadline and then I'll try to find all the little clues, references, and puns hidden in there.
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