Ethan reads 2013

[ethan]

A Portrait of the Artist at a Young Age - James Joyce
I read this as a warm-up for Ulysses, one of those mega-bricks of high literature I instinctively look away from whenever encountered in bookstore jaunts. Infinite Jest is another. But mega-bricks aren't as intimidating in e-book form and if I can read Proust, can Joyce be any more difficult? The main character in Artist is Stephen Dedalaus also one of the three main protaganists in Ulysses. We experience his very Catholic upbringing, struggles with his father's financial difficulties, and ultimately his crisis of faith. The centerpiece is a hell-fire-and-brimstone sermon that scares the bejesus out of Stephen causing him to contemplate the priesthood for his life's work. Artistic impulses win out. This novel is an early experiment in the technique of stream-of-conciousness, so aped throughout subsequent literary history it struck me as a bit quaint here in it's infancy.

The Samurai - Shusaku Endo
An historical novel set in the early 1600's concerning the voyage of a Catholic priest and three Japanese envoys to New Spain, and then Europe, seeking to open up trade routes in exchange for the freedom to prostelytize the Catholic religion in Japan. The culture clash aspects are fascinating (this is based on a true story) and the depiction of the harrowing sea voyage is intense. But the quartet are simply being used by their cynical political and religious institutions for their own selfish ends, and the hapless envoys are being further exploited by the ambitious priest who dreams of becoming Bishop of Japan. Endo suggests that faith is a purely personal matter that exists beyond institutions and zealots, Christ's message meant for the downtrodden and lost.

Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates- Patrick Leigh Fermer
The second volume of Fermer's long walk from Holland to Constantinople in 1932-33 when he was but 19 years old. It's a grand and romantic notion, most would say crazy. Hitler has come to power and much of the mitteleuropa he tramps through will be devastated by the coming war. Fermer writes this in the 1980s from his diaries and letters so there is an elegiac tone to the magical moments he spent in the castles and woods of Hungary and Transylvania. Fermer is a beautiful prose stylist in his descriptions of nature and people, colorful adjectives pile up, I had to consult the dictionary for quite a few. The final volume of the journey was never completed but the remaining fragments will be published next March.
 

Edited October 5, 2013 by ethan

[ethan]

The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro
I read everything by Ishiguro a few years ago except for this one. I skipped it due to the 'Kafkaesque' label that most reviewers applied to it. After about 50 pages it seemed more Twilight Zone than Kafka and I wondered how Ishiguro could possibly extend this otherworldly conceit to over 500 pages. Gradually, I bought into the dream-like world and by the finish I actually craved for more. It will probably replace Never Let Me Go as my favorite of his novels. So imaginative, sad and very funny. In fact, one of the funniest passages I've ever encountered occurs toward the conclusion, when an orchestra conducter, whose wooden leg has just been amputated by an obtuse surgeon, limps onto the stage for the most important concert of his life, using an ironing board as a crutch, a board that just can't seem to stay latched.

Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell
A Victorian novel very similiar in plot and theme to Trollope's Doctor Thorne which I read earlier this year. Gaskell is quite good with irony and characterization. Molly, the main heroine, is fetching but sometimes too pure and good to be true. Her step-mother, and especially her step-sister Cynthia, steal the show with their finely and humorously delineated human flaws. Although it lacks Trollope's mastery of plot and comic design, it never bored me, and both her Cranford and North and South look like future reads.

 

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Edited October 7, 2013 by ethan

[ethan]

The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri
The story of two brothers in India, one is executed by the police for his revolutionary activities in the1960s. The rest of the novel concerns how the remaining family members never really recover from the tragedy. I was frustrated at times reading this, there are very few characters while covering over half a century. I kept hoping Lahiri would slow down a bit. At times it seemed like I was reading well-written biographical sketches on wikipedia. Lahiri does provide a very effective ending though, a secret revealed that sheds significant light on what has come before. I also like the way she handled the theme of how the revolutionary impulses of the 1960s have faded into memory. As someone who came of age during that period, I find it quite haunting.

The World of Yesterday - Stefan Zweig
A beautifully written ground level description and analysis of the times (1890s-1940s) Zweig lived through, and what times they were, as well as an accounting of his prodigious literary career. So there is limited personal information but many indelible portraits of other famous artists he knew. And little clue as to Zweig (and his wife's) suicide, although this memoir was completed right before. He was on the run from the clutches of Hitler, and says in his suicide note that he despaired over the total destruction of culture in his beloved Europe. Zweig was hugely popular in his lifetime, world-wide, mostly for his novels, one of which was adapted into the romantic Hollywood classic Letter From an Unknown Woman.

A Time to be Born - Dawn Powell
This is set in NYC as WWII is breaking out, and contains a thinly veiled, unflattering and very funny portrait of Clare Booth Luce, called Amanda here, a total narcissist worthy of comparison to Undine in Wharton's Custom of the Country. It has the same brittle, bitchy veneer and even charm of Luce's famous play and movie The Women, so in some way it ironically seems as much homage to Luce as castigation. Powell is mentioned by Rory in an episode of Gilmour Girls in which she bemoans how neglected Powells' novels are. Gore Vidal and Edmund Wilson championed Powell's work and she is definitely worth discovering if you enjoy sharp edged satire, or how it was for young women to make the grade in a big city in a far-off age.

The Levant Trilogy - Olivia Manning
I found this to be as entertaining (maybe more so) as Manning's The Balkan Trilogy which I read earlier this year. It's the story of a young married couple (he works as a teacher for the British Institute) who barely escape the Nazi Army first in Bucharest, then Athens and, in these volumes, Cairo. Lots of oddball ex-pats keep popping in and out, but at heart it's an examination of a fragile marriage intruded on by terrifying historical events. I confess to falling for the wife, Harriet Pringle, much as I once did for Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady, and often felt like wringing her husband Guy's neck for his obtuseness in neglecting such a treasure. An attitude I think Manning slyly encourages. Many of the same eccentric characters return in the Levant novels for an encore. I groaned when I realized this trilogy would include battle sequences (I liked the way Manning kept the terror always somewhere over the mountains) but surprisingly they turned out to be as well-described as any such scenes I've read. Just a great chronicle of an amazing time.

[chesilbeach]

I read The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig and thought it was a very different type of war story to any I'd read, but very good.  I've been meaning to search out more of his books, although I'm not a big reader of memoirs or biographies, so I think I'll be looking for more novels, but if you haven't read The Post Office Girl, I'd certainly recommend it.

[ethan]

I read The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig and thought it was a very different type of war story to any I'd read, but very good.  I've been meaning to search out more of his books, although I'm not a big reader of memoirs or biographies, so I think I'll be looking for more novels, but if you haven't read The Post Office Girl, I'd certainly recommend it.

I'm planning on reading a couple of Zweig's novels soon and will include The Post Office Girl. Thanks for the recommendation.

[ethan]

Three disappointments last week but I was overdue.

 

Harvest - Jim Crace
The setting is a pre-Industrial English farming village far off the beaten track during the period of the Enclosure Acts (1750 - 1860) although no date is specified. These acts, somewhat analagous to modern hostile takeovers, enabled the one percenters to transform (in this novel) a wheat and barley farming community into a sheep farm thereby eliminating the need for local farmers who had been there for generations. Conflict ensues including pillorying and witchcraft accusations. Crace writes very melodious prose and creates a rich convincing atmosphere. But the first person narration grew increasingly oppressive with its downcast, self pitying tone and the story, which held promise, kind of fizzles away. This is the second of the novels on the short list of this years Man Booker Prize I've read. The Luminaries, which won, is up next.

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Two stories intersect in a stream-of-conciousness flow of impressionistic perceptions. One story concerns preparations by Mrs Dalloway for an aristocratic dinner party; the other the travails of a shell-shocked veteran of the recently concluded Great War. Everything occurs within the framework of a single day with some backstory. The novel is certainly "beautifully written" as they say, but the pieces of the literary puzzle didn't gibe together too well for me, especially the abrupt demise of poor Septimus, the disturbed ex-soldier. I much prefer To the Lighthouse.

The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
Dysfunctional family life in post-WWII Japan. This novel struck me as earnest but lifeless, oddly enough, as there were some strands of potential drama within the endless mundane dialogue. Kawabata was the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize and I probably should read some more of his stuff which has been compared to haiku. The contemplative mode of story telling is a bit of a struggle for me.


 

Edited October 22, 2013 by ethan

[bobblybear]

It's a downer to read several bad books in a row. Hopefully your next few reads will make up for it.

[Athena]

Sorry to hear you read three books in a row that you didn't really like that much. I hope your next reads will be better.

[Kidsmum]

Three books in a row is a real mojo killer i'd be tempted to opt for a safe bet for my next read. I haven't read any Jim Grace but i do have Being Dead on my TBR pile & i have Mrs Dalloway as well 

[willoyd]

Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates- Patrick Leigh Fermer

The final volume of the journey was never completed but the remaining fragments will be published next March.

 

They have already been published as The Broken Road.

 

Having disliked A Time of Gifts and loved Mrs Dalloway, maybe we should use each other as contra-indicators?! (Having said that, we both seem to think the same about Elizabeth Gaskell, and I would also rate To The Lighthouse in front of Mrs D.).

[ethan]

1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War - Charles Emmerson
An excellent global snapshot of 20 major cities in the year before the Great War. A relatively placid ante-bellum time compared to the dark years preceding the US Civil War or WWII. Nobody could forsee the dire possibilities that would come to fruition a year later. With the 100 year anniversary, there are and will be a spate of new books dissecting the conflict. This book doesn't cover the causes and I'm searching for a modern interpretation, having read Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August many years ago.

The Liberal Imagination - Lionel Trilling
His early essay collection from 1950 touching mostly on literature. Some of his assumptions seem dated from the perspective of our more reactionary age. But he is very insightful on Fitzgerald and James, and I enjoyed his defense of the novel from the accusations that the form had died, not much different than some contemporary pronouncements, 60 years on.

The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
This was simply a lot of fun to read, so rich in comedy and exaggerated yet endearing characterizations, especially Sammy and his old man, Mr. Weller. My favorite chapter was the joyous Christmas Eve celebration at Squire Wardle's, presumably the first instance of Dicken's popularization of the holiday.

Edited December 7, 2013 by ethan

[ethan]

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

The adolescent angst, so authentic in The Secret History, struck me as a bit tired in the early sections. Theo, the 13yo hero, loses his mom in a terrorist bombing, he's hauling around a priceless stolen painting, and he's stuck with a charismatic loser of a Dad. So although there is much to be anxious about, the zeitgeist seems more 80s than aughts, and the drug orgies grew depressing. Tartt almost lost me somewhere in the eerie desert outskirts of a nearly abandoned housing project in Vegas. The narrative gave out vibes of having been worked and re-worked, condensed, the prose often paper thin, I occasionally had to resist the temptation to skim.

But once Theo returns to NYC, the novel gains its bearings, especially after the jump cut to Theo as grown-up crooked antique furniture dealer. Tartt is adept at refashioning pulpy material into mysterious meditations on existence and fate. She never flinches or becomes self-conscious in her story telling, fully embracing incident, coincidence and plot twists. Even in the bumpy parts one can be swayed along by the mesmerizing quality of her confessional tone.

The Theo in Amsterdam chapters are the best thing she has ever written, careening from a thrilling shoot-out, to a powerful and deeply sad depiction of physical and psychic exile, to a final plot twist, both breathtaking and highly satisfying. The overarching themes in all three of her novels - of estrangement, the irresistible urge to isolate oneself from "normal" life, the romantic yearning for transcendence, the damage done by the secrets we carry within ourselves - are here beautifully expressed.



 

Edited December 7, 2013 by ethan

[Marie H]

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

 

The adolescent angst, so authentic in The Secret History, struck me as a bit tired in the early sections. Theo, the 13yo hero, loses his mom in a terrorist bombing, he's hauling around a priceless stolen painting, and he's stuck with a charismatic loser of a Dad. So although there is much to be anxious about, the zeitgeist seems more 80s than aughts, and the drug orgies grew depressing. Tartt almost lost me somewhere in the eerie desert outskirts of a nearly abandoned housing project in Vegas. The narrative gave out vibes of having been worked and re-worked, condensed, the prose often paper thin, I occasionally had to resist the temptation to skim.

 

But once Theo returns to NYC, the novel gains its bearings, especially after the jump cut to Theo as grown-up crooked antique furniture dealer. Tartt is adept at refashioning pulpy material into mysterious meditations on existence and fate. She never flinches or becomes self-conscious in her story telling, fully embracing incident, coincidence and plot twists. Even in the bumpy parts one can be swayed along by the mesmerizing quality of her confessional tone.

 

The Theo in Amsterdam chapters are the best thing she has ever written, careening from a thrilling shoot-out, to a powerful and deeply sad depiction of physical and psychic exile, to a final plot twist, both breathtaking and highly satisfying. The overarching themes in all three of her novels - of estrangement, the need to be isolated from "normal" life, the romantic yearning for transcendence, the damage done by the secrets we carry within ourselves - are here beautifully expressed.

 

That was a very good review ethan  . I have been toying with the idea of reading The Goldfinch, it now is even more so after your last paragraph. Very evocative of serious feelings of angst, whether teenage or adult life  .

[Paul]

Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon

Not one of Pynchon's major works but still entertaining and often quite moving. If you're not already a fan though, you might want to pass it by. He's definitely the love/hate author of our times.

Hi Ethan,

I've been enjoying your capsule descriptions of books very much (especially those I have already read), now that I am catching up after a long time away. It was the Pynchon, however, that really caught my eye -- so brief and so accurate. I've been reading Pynchon lately trying to come to terms with him and why that love-hate relationship is so emotional. Just now I'm half-way through Bleeding Edge and enjoying it in a medium way, neither loving nor hating it but at least following the story with an open mind. I was wondering why you think there is a love-hate split; I have certainly encountered it in discussions of earlier books of his, and I was wondering if you'd have any inclination to expand on your thought.

Some people say he is THE author of our time.

Paul

Edited December 7, 2013 by Paul

[ethan]

That was a very good review ethan  . I have been toying with the idea of reading The Goldfinch, it now is even more so after your last paragraph. Very evocative of serious feelings of angst, whether teenage or adult life  .

 

Thanks for the kind comment, Marie. I think anyone who enjoyed The Secret History will most likely enjoy The Goldfinch, but it is a very long book.

Edited December 8, 2013 by ethan

[ethan]

Hi Ethan,

I've been enjoying your capsule descriptions of books very much (especially those I have already read), now that I am catching up after a long time away. It was the Pynchon, however, that really caught my eye -- so brief and so accurate. I've been reading Pynchon lately trying to come to terms with him and why that love-hate relationship is so emotional. Just now I'm half-way through Bleeding Edge and enjoying it in a medium way, neither loving nor hating it but at least following the story with an open mind. I was wondering why you think there is a love-hate split; I have certainly encountered it in discussions of earlier books of his, and I was wondering if you'd have any inclination to expand on your thought.

Some people say he is THE author of our time.

Paul

 

I'm glad, Paul, that you are finding some of my descriptions interesting. As for the love/hate reaction to Pynchon, that's a vast subject.

 

I think much of the hate emanates from the disappointment with the later works, from Vineland on. The haters feel they have been hood-winked, that Pynchon became, and perhaps always was, a literary fraud. The excessive jokiness and one-dimensional comic book veneer, all the crazy names and acronyms, not only grated, but were a cover for a drug-addled mind with nothing to say.

 

But the author/reader connection, really a conversation, is a mystical one. Once on the same wavelength, a reader can recognize the imperfections, overlook them, maybe find them endearing, and still receive the full jolt of participating in a rich imaginative experience. I love Pynchon's pathos, his metaphysical dreaming, his humour, the way he is able to alter my perception of the world around me. Mostly, I love his sense of wonder, his curiosity, his lament for the brevity of our mysterious existence. That's a lot of upside to counterbalance, and far surpass, the weaknesses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2013 by ethan

[bobblybear]

I think anyone who enjoyed The Secret History will most likely enjoy The Goldfinch, but it is a very long book.

 

Nice detailed review.   I enjoyed The Secret History very much and so I'm also looking forward to reading The Goldfinch. I'm just waiting for it to come down a bit in price!

[Paul]

I'm glad, Paul, that you are finding some of my descriptions interesting. As for the love/hate reaction to Pynchon, that's a vast subject.

 

I think much of the hate emanates from the disappointment with the later works, from Vineland on. The haters feel they have been hood-winked, that Pynchon became, and perhaps always was, a literary fraud. The excessive jokiness and one-dimensional comic book veneer, all the crazy names and acronyms, not only grated, but were a cover for a drug-addled mind with nothing to say.

 

But the author/reader connection, really a conversation, is a mystical one. Once on the same wavelength, a reader can recognize the imperfections, overlook them, maybe find them endearing, and still receive the full jolt of participating in a rich imaginative experience. I love Pynchon's pathos, his metaphysical dreaming, his humour, the way he is able to alter my perception of the world around me. Mostly, I love his sense of wonder, his curiosity, his lament for the brevity of our mysterious existence. That's a lot of upside to counterbalance, and far surpass, the weaknesses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response re love-hate and Pynchon. You mention many features of his writing that excite responses in me, one way or the other. But first a bit of general history. He and I are almost the same age, give or take a few years, and we have seen the same modern history and have had many of the same experiences, even to the point of starting out life working in the aerospace industry long ago. From there we have gone separate ways and lived two lives, each with our own personalities and reactions to the same world and local events.

 

One scholar I read suggested that Pynchon, through his series of novels, was writing nothing less than a counter-cultural history of the United States. Well, I have not generally resonated with the counter-cultural outlook in recent history, so I often feel that, whenever Pynchon pokes his plainly visible social-cultural-and-political attitudes in my eye, I am not so much part of his target audience, but am instead the actual target of his animosity in his writing. By now, I have heard so much stereotypical cant on the topics that any more is just boring and tiring (although not many readers comment on that aspect of his writing).

 

Second, I have to say my reaction to his humor is only lukewarm. His smart-alecky tone and deliberate (stereotypical) ethnic touches, in particular, tend to leave me cold. His most recent pun: "One cannoli hope so" is clever, but gee whiz. /groan/.

 

Switching to the positive side, I think he is truly imaginative and his narrative descriptions are amazingly accurate renditions of what his keenly perceptive eyes see in a scene or locale. His catalogues, when he isn't sporting around and writing parody, are beautiful lists of telling detail, all scrupulously accurate and relevant. His serious passages are the genuine factual article. I am a New Yorker and I have not seen better vignettes of the New York environment. So, high marks there.

 

His characterizations strike me as so-so (or, perhaps better, as hit-or-miss) and the story telling in Bleeding Edge so far seems to me like one long comic strip of flat characters and snappy dialog.  But the story does read along.

 

He has been rumored for the Nobel Prize and I am curious to see how that works out. If not, I can see why not; if so, there are also substantial arguable reasons in favor.

 

Lately, I have been on a Pynchon jag, with a view to understanding his attraction among his fans. I had tried all of his books, and could never get into any of them, but I am now finishing up his shorter writings: Slow Learner, Lot49, Vineland, Inherent Vice and, now half-way through, Bleeding Edge (where I eagerly look forward to seeing his writing skills applied to 9-11).

 

Perhaps, one day, I'll be trying Gravity's Rainbow but, for the moment, I think I will have had enough.

 

It seems we have areas of agreement and non-agreement, Ethan, naturally, but I sincerely appreciate seeing your views of his strong points. At least we seem to be reading the same author and I'll be reading with a different eye.

 

Pleased to make your acquaintance,

Best regards

Paul

　

　

　

　

Edited December 9, 2013 by Paul

[ethan]

Great post, Paul! Nice to meet you too.

 

My history with Pynchon - I read V when I was in college in the late sixties, immediately re-read it, and did the same with Gravity's Rainbow when it was published, so I was a major fan. When Vineland appeared almost 20 years later, I put it down after about 30 pages, it seemed so inferior to what I had expected. And I also skipped Mason/Dixon. But I was drawn towards Against the Day and felt a need to re-visit my first literary love. I think AtD is every bit as good as the two early novels, maybe better. I went back and read Vineland, still have mixed feelings about that one. I recall David Foster Wallace's reaction to a friend "it seems Pynchon has spent the last two decades smoking weed and watching children's cartoon shows." I enjoyed Mason/Dixon much more.

 

I think the Nobel is unlikely, his reputation has been sliding for thirty years. He's not serious enough (at least on the surface) to qualify, judging by the recent writers who have won the award that I have read. He'd get my vote.

[Paul]

Great post, Paul! Nice to meet you too.

 

My history with Pynchon - I read V when I was in college in the late sixties, immediately re-read it, and did the same with Gravity's Rainbow when it was published, so I was a major fan. When Vineland appeared almost 20 years later, I put it down after about 30 pages, it seemed so inferior to what I had expected. And I also skipped Mason/Dixon. But I was drawn towards Against the Day and felt a need to re-visit my first literary love. I think AtD is every bit as good as the two early novels, maybe better. I went back and read Vineland, still have mixed feelings about that one. I recall David Foster Wallace's reaction to a friend "it seems Pynchon has spent the last two decades smoking weed and watching children's cartoon shows." I enjoyed Mason/Dixon much more.

 

I think the Nobel is unlikely, his reputation has been sliding for thirty years. He's not serious enough (at least on the surface) to qualify, judging by the recent writers who have won the award that I have read. He'd get my vote.

 

 

 

Ethan,

I really appreciate your kind and balanced responses.  Elsewhere I have run into such personally disparaging flak from fans when I have posted views different from theirs, that now I just stay away.

I will perhaps have my own love-hate relationship with Gravity's Rainbow when I try it, since my life (now retired) has been connected with the defense establishment in one way or another, and I can see no mercy in his characterizations.  But my temperature doesn't rise as much anymore so perhaps it is finally safe for me to try it.  Be interesting to read what a vehement outsider thinks, even if I think I have already heard most of it.

I'm not sure that I personally would put it as strongly as Wallace, but Pynchon sure has chosen a particular vein to mine after his early (and different) Slow Learner.

Still not up to 9-11 in Bleeding Edge, but it is coming -- now a few days into September and can't be many pages more. (Although, with Pynchon . . . )

 

Best regards for the Holidays if we don't post before then

Paul

Edited December 9, 2013 by Paul

[ethan]

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

 

A peculiar historical novel with a convoluted mystery plot, cold and dispassionate in its tone. Some of it reads like a legal treatise, the most compelling section a courtroom drama in which many of the loose ends are tied up. And there are lots of loose ends. I had to chuckle when at about the halfway point, and I was mostly lost in the who-did-what-to-whom-and-when-did-it-happen department, Catton has one of the principal characters recapitulate the plot for us who are slow. I was even then somewhat mystified, and I still haven't figured out who killed the main villian, but I'm working on it.

 

I also had the sense that as a reader I was being played, much as most of the characters play each other. This is faux Victorian fiction land, the satisfaction comes from the quality of authorial performance in replicating beloved conventions, ala Dickens, but with a 21st century wink. Catton measures up well to the technical challenges in creating historical versimilitude and intricate narrative structure. Despite it lacking the emotional engagement of a real Victorian novel, I was never bored, and I'm impressed enough by her talent to want to read her first novel, The Rehearsal.

Edited December 13, 2013 by ethan

[pontalba]

Very interesting review, Ethan.  Glad I've got it on my kindle already.

[ethan]

The best review I have found yet of Bleeding Edge, from Joshua Cohen in Harpers. For Paul and whoever else might be interested. I'll quote the last paragraph because it's a pip.

 

http://harpers.org/archive/2013/10/first-family-second-life/

 

 

Bleeding Edge, however, offers an indication that Pynchon has finally given up on seeking the soul of the nation his family helped found. For Pynchon — the embattled bard of the counterculture, disabused of all allegiance — the last redoubt has become the family, and the last war to be waged is between our virtual identities and the bonds of blood; a war to keep the Virtual from corrupting the Blood, if not forever, then for time enough to let the lil’ Ziggy and Otis Tarnow-Loefflers of this world live with the merest pretense of freedom (childhood). Pynchon understands that in the future there will be no secrets, no hidden complots — everything will be aired and any second life, whether in the cloud or in the firmament, will be despoiled or denied us. Adult sanity, then, must depend not on the lives we make online, but on the lives we make off it — our kids — on how we love them, and how we raise them, and the virtues and good-taste imperatives we pass on to them from our progenitors. Smirk if you’re a smirker and claim this as the conclusion of an embourgeoised aging-hippie novelist gone soft (or of the mafia and the Jews), but I’m not sure whether Pynchon means this emphasis on consanguinity in the spirit of salvation or of damnation. It is, regardless, sweetly sad. Sweet and low-down sad. The online moguls have tried to persuade us that we’re not losing a nation, we’re gaining a world. Pynchon proposes that both are mere second lives, fakes. Only family is real.

Edited December 14, 2013 by ethan

[ethan]

Very interesting review, Ethan.  Glad I've got it on my kindle already.

 

One of the great aspects for me of the e-book, pontalba, is how accommodating the devices are for gargantuan novels. The Luminaries checked in at 849pgs, my previous book, The Goldfinch, at 755 pgs. I just downloaded The Last Chronicle of Barset by Trollope to complete my readings of the Chronicles. The previous volumes were long but I just discovered the final volume checks in at 928 pgs! In the past these doorstops would intimidate me every time I picked them up. Now I breeze through them.

Edited December 15, 2013 by ethan

[Paul]

 

The best review I have found yet of Bleeding Edge, from Joshua Cohen in Harpers. For Paul and whoever else might be interested. I'll quote the last paragraph because it's a pip.

 

http://harpers.org/archive/2013/10/first-family-second-life/

 

"The online moguls have tried to persuade us that we’re not losing a nation, we’re gaining a world. Pynchon proposes that both are mere second lives, fakes. Only family is real."

 Hi Ethan,

Many thanks for what sounds like a very interesting link.  I haven't read it yet, but that last line you quoted is certainly food for thought.

It would take more than my imagination (evidently) to write all the thoughts in the final paragraph you quote, but I guess I can think back and see the origin for the final thought in the book.  It seems like an awful lot of reading to get there, though, if that was the major point.  So I guess now that means I really I should read the entire review.  Sounds like a good one.

 

PS Pynchon's  9-11 was a vast disappointment.  There was no human dimension to speak of (eek!), just a peg on which to hang chitter-chatter about conspiracy theories.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Paul