{"id":115538,"date":"2024-09-23T17:07:05","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T16:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/?p=115538"},"modified":"2024-10-18T14:11:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T13:11:56","slug":"through-the-labyrinth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/through-the-labyrinth\/","title":{"rendered":"Through the Labyrinth"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Oscar Mardell.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jen Calleja, Goblinhood: Goblin As A Mode<\/a><\/em> (Rough Trade Books, 2024)<\/p>\n

At the outset of \u2018Green: On Emblematic Emerald\u2019, the first of the six, brilliant essays in Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode<\/i>, Jen Calleja<\/a> describes a \u2018game-for-one\u2019 inspired by the Ornament Room in Walter Murch\u2019s Return to Oz <\/i>(1985):<\/p>\n

I always look for green objects in charity and antique shops. It\u2019s a particular kind of green I have in mind, a kind of deep jade, or, if made of glass or plastic, emerald. It\u2019s so I have one particular thing to search for among the junk rather than aimlessly browsing; it\u2019s a microcosm of how I experience the whole world all at once and often need a key to navigate it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the essay reads like a scaled-up version of this game. Shaken by the loss of her mother, by the coronavirus pandemic, and by \u2018the constantly rising threat of climate crisis,\u2019 Calleja attempts to negotiate the world itself by treating it like a giant charity shop and scouring it for \u2018green objects\u2019 \u2013 from King Charles\u2019 appropriations of Green Man iconography to an avocado bathroom suite, from Marie NDiaye\u2019s 2005 novella Autoportrait en vert<\/i> to Kermit the Frog\u2019s \u2018It\u2019s Not Easy Being Green\u2019. The initial attempt, however, appears to end in failure: \u2018Green\u2019 concludes with Calleja stopping before a shopfront in Hastings and lamenting, \u2018Of the dozens of green objects in the window, not a single one was perfect. I continue to wait for a sign from the universe that I should return to the world\u2019. Nevertheless, it goes on to provide Goblinhood<\/i> with its modus operandi: over the five essays and seven poems which follow, Calleja proceeds to rifle through television, film, the internet, art, literature, and herself, not just for green things in general but for goblins and the goblinesque in particular. Here, the goblin isn\u2019t simply Calleja\u2019s subject but her thread through the maze, her guide to a world experienced \u2018all at once\u2019.<\/p>\n

Of course, that world is a very familiar one. Goblinhood <\/i>offers an acutely-observed depiction of an over-mediated cultural landscape that has become resistant to hierarchy and compartmentalisation. In Calleja’s hands, the public (celebrity gossip) blurs into the private (being pressured to strip by a boyfriend\u2019s friend) and into the publicly-private (David Bowie\u2019s widely-known but rarely-discussed penchant for underage girls). The persistent (the Medusa myth) spills over into the ephemeral (everyday conversations) and into the persistently ephemeral (throwaway videos that last forever online). Trash media (meme culture) melds with High Art (Philip Guston) and with trash-as-art (Tracy Emin\u2019s My Bed<\/i>). Even the horrifically real (the genocidal siege on Palestine) oozes into the virtual (social media), into the make-believe (hand puppets), and eventually into the dizzying maelstrom between the three (viral videos of Palestinian child-survivors narrating their trauma to marionettes). But the way through it all is eventually led by goblins.<\/i><\/p>\n

In December 2022, \u2018goblin mode\u2019 was named Oxford Word of the Year. \u2018Coincidence?\u2019 asks Calleja. Perhaps not, given the goblin\u2019s unrivalled aptitude for bog trotting, for making it out of the quagmire.<\/p>\n

Much of this aptitude comes down to the fact that goblins are extremely hard to pin down. Just prior to \u2018Green\u2019, Calleja explains:<\/p>\n

Defining a goblin is tricky: \u2018they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments, and appearances depending on the story\u2019 and can be anything from \u2018household spirits to malicious, bestial thieves\u2019, often having \u2018magical abilities similar to a fairy or demon, such as the ability to shapeshift\u2019. How would I define \u201cgoblin\u201d? I, like many others, consider it an umbrella term. Anything that behaves mischievously and in its own best interest, that is bold and all body, could be a goblin. We can also be made into goblins, stalked by goblins, whether we like it or not. Some things are out of our control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

True, a fair bit gets included under this umbrella term. \u2018All puppets are goblins,\u2019 declares Calleja at one point in the collection. Elsewhere she insists that \u2018clowns are goblins,\u2019 that \u2018Steve [from the NBC series Hannibal<\/em>] is a goblin,\u2019 and (my personal favourite) that \u2018AI is a goblin\u2019. But this, of course, is the secret to the collection\u2019s success. Goblins can be turned into the key to everything, but only because they were already all-inclusive. The result is something akin to Philip Roth\u2019s Portnoy\u2019s Complaint<\/i> or Katharina Volckmer\u2019s The Appointment<\/i>: a virtuoso exercise in free-association \u2013 only the speaker is racked not by sexual anxiety or Kollektivschuld<\/i> but by X and Netflix.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE REVIEWER<\/strong>
\nOscar Mardell<\/a> is a teacher and writer from T\u0101maki Makaurau \/ Auckland. He is the author of Delirious New Lynn<\/em>, forthcoming from 5ever Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rest of the essay reads like a scaled-up version of this game. Shaken by the loss of her mother, by the coronavirus pandemic, and by \u2018the constantly rising threat of climate crisis,\u2019 Calleja attempts to negotiate the world itself by treating it like a giant charity shop and scouring it for \u2018green objects\u2019 \u2013 from King Charles\u2019 appropriations of Green Man iconography to an avocado bathroom suite, from Marie NDiaye\u2019s 2005 novella Autoportrait en vert<\/em> to Kermit the Frog\u2019s \u2018It\u2019s Not Easy Being Green\u2019. The initial attempt, however, appears to end in failure: \u2018Green\u2019 concludes with Calleja stopping before a shopfront in Hastings and lamenting, \u2018Of the dozens of green objects in the window, not a single one was perfect. I continue to wait for a sign from the universe that I should return to the world\u2019. Nevertheless, it goes on to provide Goblinhood<\/em> with its modus operandi: over the five essays and seven poems which follow, Calleja proceeds to rifle through television, film, the internet, art, literature, and herself, not just for green things in general but for goblins and the goblinesque in particular. Here, the goblin isn\u2019t simply Calleja\u2019s subject but her thread through the maze, her guide to a world experienced \u2018all at once\u2019.<\/p>\n

Oscar Mardell<\/strong> reviews Goblinhood<\/em> by Jen Calleja<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115538"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115612,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115538\/revisions\/115612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}