Ethan reads 2014

[ethan]

Fortunata and Jacinta - Benito Perez Galdos
Two women in 1870s Madrid.  Jacinta, who comes from a wealthy upper class family, marries her cousin, a handsome, charming man about town. The other woman, Fortunata, comes from the lower classes. Her beauty enraptures every man who gazes upon her, including Jacinta's husband, who turns out to be quite the selfish cad. The novel concerns the intertwining of the two women's lives, but it is also a fascinating panorama of Spanish culture teeming with vivid characters. Every page comes alive under Galdos's unique artistic power. Many scholars have proclaimed this the best Spanish novel of the 19th century. For me it's simply one of the greatest novels I've ever read.

Domestic Manners of the Americans - Fanny Trollope
A nearly destitute Mrs Trollope comes to the US with three of her children in hand (son Anthony stays behind in England) attempting to make her fortune. She settles in Cincinnati for two years (1828-29), but her business fails, and after further travels on the east coast she returns to England to write what turns out to be the first of many bestsellers. She does not like America to put it mildly (too much tobacco spitting, whiskey drinking, and uncouth manners).

Liberal reform is in the air back in England, and this book seems to be written as an aristocratic screed warning the British public of the pernicious consequences that resulted from following Thomas Jefferson and his idiotic ideas of equality and democracy. In between the diatribes, however, exists some beautiful examples of travel literature. The trip (1830) up the Hudson River Valley, across the Erie Canal to Niagara Falls is magically evoked. And I'm afraid Trollope captures elements of the 19th century American character (as she sees it) that may have lingered on, into the 21st century - an excess of materialism, a tendency to religious extremism, a need to proclaim superiority over all other orders of civilization, along with a need for all others to confirm this superiority.

Two Serious Ladies - Jane Bowles
These two serious ladies jump the rails, leaving their safe and secure lives behind, to drift into whatever comes their way. I had difficulty locating the beat of their adventures, as the impulse to self-obliteration puzzles me. Jane's husband Paul wrote a more famous novel, The Sheltering Sky, and if you have read that, or seen the movie, think of Kit's (Debra Winger) quixotic behavior after Port (John Malkovic) dies, and you'll get the idea. Jane wrote terrific dialogue so her only novel is still entertaining in a weird sort of way.

The Edwardians - Vita Sackville-West
A young Duke in early 1900s England wants to jump the rails, too. He feels suffocated by what's expected of him, the rigid life that is planned out for him. He's excited by the modern world, wants to find his way in it, have new experiences, rather than drown in the hoary old feudal past. There are some beautiful descriptions of his great estate (a fictionalized version of Sackville-West's ancestral home, Knole House) which the Duke truly loves, so his dilemma is intense. Sackville-West would in later years disparage this novel (her most popular), but I found it very satisfying in a Masterpiece Theater-ish sort of way.

Voltaire In Love - Nancy Mitford
Voltaire's enduring love, Emilie, was his intellectual equal. She translated Issac Newton at a time when his ideas were disbelieved among French scientists. She also studied and wrote books on philosophy, amazing accomplishments for a woman of her day. The couple were devoted to each other for decades. Emilie was married to a Duke, who accepted the dicey situation, and the three of them lived comfortably together for most of those years. When Voltaire tells Emilie that he is no longer capable of physical love, she takes on new lovers. Voltaire had actually become besotted with his niece, who soon becomes his lover (unbeknowst to Emilie). No middle-class morality for French aristocrats of the 18th century! Voltaire is one of the all-time great charismatic celebrities, and Mitford captures him (and Emilie) well in her short pop history.

Edited April 1, 2014 by ethan

[frankie]

How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain de Botton

Doesn't quite live up to its title but chock full of fascinating anecdotes and insights, inspiring me on to vol5, The Captive. I'm not convinced a book can change one's life but it can heighten one's perception of the world around us, as Proust's novels surely do. Botton's chapter on how Proust encourages us to recognize the beauty in the everyday and seemingly banal, of developing one's own sense of discovery, is a pip. If you ever get the urge to climb the literary mountain of In Search of Lost Time, Botton provides an excellent entry point. (thanx, frankie, for the recommend)

 

Ooh, I'm very happy you read it and liked it Yes, not likely to change one's life, but it did manage to make me very curious about Proust, and it was just such a delight to read the book. And like you said, it's a great way to get started on Proust

[ethan]

^ And for anyone who wants to take the plunge into Proust, I recommend the modern Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way to start off. I've sampled a bit of it, and it is significantly more readable than the older translations.

[ethan]

Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
One of the aspects of 19th century novels that I love is how artistic the overall contours often are, especially with Eliot. I was disappointed with Daniel Deronda, but I can't stop thinking about Eliot's intentions and designs. The brilliant first chapter encapsulates much of what I most liked - Gwendolen at the roulette wheel ("everything in life is a gamble"), under Deronda's disapproving gaze (he's a stranger to her then), which shakes her, and compels her to question her shaky moral code. This initial encounter is replayed in various guises thereafter.

Unfortunately, Eliot overindulges her tendencies to philosophize, and much of the dialogue struck me as stilted and overwrought. It's really two novels, the heavy philosophy and dense discussions of Zionism (and the saintly Jewish characters) being one, and the familiar Victorian marriage-and-money plot the other (should Gwendelon marry a  cold hearted aristocrat to save her family from poverty?). When the two strands intersect in the Deronda/Gwendelon scenes, they achieve such a bizarre intensity that they overshadow the rest.

Speedboat - Renata Adler
In the afterword Adler is quoted as saying that when she began to write fiction, she wanted to employ the traditional type narratives (presumably Eliot's among them) that she so enjoyed reading. But she found herself unable to do this, those intentions didn't jibe with what she felt as the fractured nature of modern life. In Speedboat she replaces the timeworn conventions with a dizzying pile-up of short disconnected anecdotes, packed with irony and alienation. Each one is entertaining and readable, but I can't recall any of them after only a few days. Hidden deeply between the lines exists a barely discernible plot, but with no real emotional payoff, it doesn't resonate.

An Armenian Sketchbook - Vasily Grossman
Grossman had written a large novel (Life and Fate, 1961) that was critical of the Soviet system. When the censors got hold of it, they put the novel in jail, and banished the novelist to Armenia. He was to translate a thousand page epic into Russian even though he knew not a word of the Armenian language. When he arrives in the capital, Yerevan, he is stunned by an enormous statue of Stalin, constructed on a hilltop (Stalin's head caressed by the clouds), oppressively dominating every sightline in the city. The last chapter is a long, fascinating account of a traditional Armenian-style wedding, in which Grossman beautifully evokes the human impulse to brotherhood, a primal feeling beyond the talons of even the most horrible of despots. Grossman sadly didn't live long enough to see the liberation of Life and Fate, which is now considered one of the great novels of 20th century Russian literature.

Edited April 22, 2014 by ethan

[frankie]

^ And for anyone who wants to take the plunge into Proust, I recommend the modern Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way to start off. I've sampled a bit of it, and it is significantly more readable than the older translations.

 

I'm probably going to read the books in Finnish, but I've written down that recommendation in case I do end up wanting to read the books in English, thanks

[ethan]

The Fat Years - Chan Koonchung
Life in China in the new millennium. The plot has some sci-fi elements, but mostly it's about a group of dissidents trying to discover just how the Communist Party regime has managed to pacify China's giant population. The novel doesn't satisfy as  a thriller, burdened as it is with some dense economic discussions. The group end up kidnapping a high Party honcho hoping they'll force him to divulge some inside info. Instead he gives them a humbling, realistic lecture on the demands of the new world order, convincingly defending the absolute (and practical) need for authoritarian rule. The kidnappers are stunned by the logic of his arguments. As our western democracies recover (hopefully) from some significant bumps in the road, it may be beneficial to ponder the appeal of this alternative approach to the future.

The Rebel Angels - Robertson Davies
The first volume of The Cornish Trilogy,  a dark satire of higher learning, a novel of ideas as well as an intellectual romance. It's set in an Anglican university in Canada full of scholarly jealousy, envy and ultimately murder (gypsies, too). Very entertaining.

Three Masters: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky - Stefan Zweig
An ecstatic homage from one novelist to his literary heroes. I purchased this mostly for the Dostoevsky chapters. His dark brooding, the questioning of God/no God etc. perplex my relatively rosy imagination. Zweig supplies some interesting perspectives and infectious enthusiasm needed for my soon-to-be reading of The Idiot.

Beauty on Earth - Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz
Ramuz was a Swiss novelist who wrote in French in the first half of the 20th century. An 18 year old beauty, raised in Cuba, orphaned by the death of her father, travels to a mountainous Swiss village to live with her uncle. Her presence disrupts the tranquility of the village, her beauty sought after by every man in sight. Ramuz had a unique style with powerful painterly imagery, impressionistic, somewhat similar to Virginia Woolf.

Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill
Love. Marriage. Children. Adultery. It's an oft-told tale. Offill eshews the straightforward approach, offering instead a scrapbook of memories, quotes, poetic interludes, advice. The central question of modern life - "How does it feel?" - is confronted. The novel is short, can be read in a couple of hours, and, despite the slightness, much of it is quite affecting.
 

Edited April 15, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

The Good Life Elsewhere - Vladimir Lorchenko

Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe. As depicted in this novel, the population is demoralized and eager to escape. Italy, with its supposed high wages for menial work, becomes in their imagination, the Promised Land. Priests form Crusades with thousands of pilgrims armed for illegal entry on horseback. Others build makeshift airplanes and submarines from the rusty remains of farm tractors for their journey. It's Marx Bros. type insanity, where all the elaborate gags, unfortunately, have tragic endings.

 

Definitely, Maybe - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

A short, Soviet-era sci-fi novel that takes place in one apartment building occupied by scientists and mathematicians who have ventured too close in their work to uncovering secrets which some entity (alien?) wants them to stay clear of. It's a series of conversations with the victims sitting around a table trying to size up their options. Do I yield to the powers and abandon my life's work, or not? It's a bit too static and claustrophobic (probably intentionally) but the embedded sub-texts, that were necessary for literature from this era, are sure interesting.

 

The Gray Notebook - Josep Pla

Pla was a Catalonian writer who chronicled the major events of the 20th century in his journalism and essays. When he was 21-22 years old in 1918-19 he kept a journal, set both in Barcelona where he was finishing up his law degree, and back in his small home town where he seeks refuge from the great influenza epidemic that followed WWI. The journal was re-worked and polished decades later. I found it spellbinding, striking some of the deepest chords I've encountered in describing what it feels like to be young, disappointed with oneself, unable to see a discernible future in ones dream (for Pla, writing) but still so alive, with a sense of wonder, to the world around him. This is the first English translation of his works (thanks nyrb), it's so unique, hopefully more of his 40 volume collected works will be translated.

 

Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi

Boy (a girl, 20yrs old) escapes the clutches of her abusive rat-catching father in NYC. She takes the next bus to the end of the line, which turns out to be a small Massachusetts town. Set in the 1950s, the first half is a meandering portrait of the town, with Boy slowly fitting in to its peculiar rhythms, marrying a widower who has a secret, not revealed until Boy has his child. Oyeyemi has ambitions to create a modern fairy tale (Snow White) concerning racial and gender identity. But there's too many awkward plot contrivances and sketchy character motivations to lend much weight to her design. One of those novels that really should have been longer and more developed.

 

A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell

A road novel set in the deep South full of quirky people, funky adventures, and lots and lots of booze. The humor is rich in spots, but there is no normal to counter the relentless zaniness and the shenanigans soon sink into a numbing tediousness.

Edited April 23, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

When the World Spoke French - Marc Fumaroli

In the 18th century almost all educated people of the western world spoke French. This book surveys many of the significant figures of the time in indelible portraits, including Benjamin Franklin whose time in Paris far exceeded what I remembered and whose celebrity status rivalled Voltaire's. Each chapter ends in examples of their letters and diaries (people expressed themselves so well in those days) originally written in French despite the nationality. Although this is a very learned history with many references going way over my head, there is still much left for the general reader, it's actually entertaining in spots, with a magnificent translation by the poet Richard Howard.

 

The Captive - Marcel Proust

Volume five of In Search of Lost Time. Some say you only need to read the first four volumes because the last three were released posthumously without Proust's final revisions. But I'm glad I soldiered on as the story is getting progressively strange and interesting. Poor Albertine is being kept as a (semi) captive at the narrator's house. He spends most of the first 200 pages analyzing the level of Albertine's mendacity (he believes she is untruthful in her denials of her attraction toward other women). Their relationship never fully rings true but his monumental male jealousy sure does. Each volume features a long set piece, a dinner party usually, and there is a great one in The Captive full of delicious satire and intrigue. Then Proust offers a cliffhanger ending worthy of a 30s Hollywood serial.

 

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - Yukio Mishima

There is a dreadful scene early on in which a band of disturbed young boys kill and disembowel a kitten. I finished the novel because it has literary value, but no more Mishima for me.

 

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Plath (like Mishima) was a death by suicide author. This is her only novel, and I found it surprisingly lightweight and comic given the tragic contours of her life. Plath's account of her stay in the asylum reminded me that I lived through a time when electric shock treatments and lobotomies were administered to the severely depressed. Hard to believe.

 

The Grifters - Jim Thompson

Thompson is sometimes described as the "dimestore Dostoevsky" of pulp fiction. The small-time con-man hero is beset by the strategems of his devious and deadly mother, as well as by a devious and deadly mother figure. An Oedipal conflict times two! But compared to the other Thompson novels I've read, The Grifters is relatively sane. His weirdly memorable books became popular with moviemakers in the 90s, and The Grifters adaptation with Anjelica Huston and John Cusack is much the best of them.

 

The Double - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Here's the real Dostoevsky in a short novel written before all the chunky masterpieces. I'm a sucker for the doppleganger theme, I often wonder if there is another me out there (people have told me Alan Alda!). Mr. D. in later years found this early work pretty awful, but Nabokov (who generally disparaged Dostoevsky) hailed it as "perfect". I'd say near-perfect.

Edited May 5, 2014 by ethan

[pontalba]

Nice reviews!  I've only read one by Thompson, The Killer Inside Me.....really good stuff.  And I definitely have to get to The Double!  Thanks.

 

Have you ever read any of Bill James?  I've only read a couple, but thought he was pretty good.  http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Bill%20James&search-alias=books-uk  Scroll down to the Harpur and Isles Mysteries.

Edited May 4, 2014 by pontalba

[ethan]

Nice reviews!  I've only read one by Thompson, The Killer Inside Me.....really good stuff.  And I definitely have to get to The Double!  Thanks.

 

Have you ever read any of Bill James?  I've only read a couple, but thought he was pretty good.  http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Bill%20James&search-alias=books-uk  Scroll down to the Harpur and Isles Mysteries.

I have never read any of Bill James' books. Putting him to the top of my mystery wish list. Thanks.

 

One of my favorite Thompson novels is Pop. 1280. The adaptation of that novel was called Coup de Torchon with Phillipe Noiret and Isabelle Hupert directed by Bernard Tavernier. It's a full fledged masterpiece by any standard. Tavernier changed the location from the American South-West to Africa in a great example of a successful transition of book to film.

[ethan]

Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
This novel has become part of the literary canon of 20th century literature. It's experimental in form. A reader can choose to read the first 56 chapters (where the essentials of the story are told) and forget the additional 100 short chapters (which expand the story). Or, read it hopscotch style which begins chapters 73-1-2-116-3-84 and so on. I chose this second approach, it wasn't as off-putting as you might expect. I had more trouble connecting with the story line, a heavy dose of 1950s style bohemian alienation.

The Clown - Heinrich Boll
The protagonist is similar to the one in Hopscotch. He can't cope, whines too much, is deeply estranged from the norms of his society. He is doomed by his ideal of romantic love, an ideal he himself deliberately destroys. Both novels have great literary qualities, well worth reading, beloved by many. I just have problems enduring self-obsessed, self-pitying (anti-) heroes.

A Dreambook For Our Time - Tadeusz Konwicki
The protagonist here suffers authentic angst, withstanding the Nazi and the Bolshevik onslaught as they ravage Poland in WWII. Life and death decisions had to be made almost every day. Imaginative, mesmerizing, and mysterious are some adjectives that apply to this great novel. The central question confronted is how is it possible to go on and live a sane life when one's memories are swarming with confusion and trauma. An overwhelming reading experience for me.

Capital in the 21st Century - Thomas Piketty
An extraordinary study, prodigiously researched, profoundly depressing, explaining the root causes of income inequality in the wealthy countries during the last couple of centuries through to the present day. In the USA example, the current steep curve toward the greatest inequality ever known has little braking interference. The egalatarian spirit which once flourished has been dead in the water since the Reagan Revolution. We're becoming the country we once rebelled against - an 18th century England with an entrenched aristocracy who owned all the land, the US in the 21st century with an entrenched super-plutocracy who will have all the wealth due to minimally taxed financial windfalls. Piketty, who wrote this for the general public rather than other economists, offers some solutions but they seem utopian in today's cynical climate. The winds of change can shift unexpectedly and quickly, but not likely anytime soon.

Edited June 25, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark
A slender novel from Sparks with a tragic veneer you can sense on every page. It's 1945, a young woman's dorm in London, set between VE and VJ Day. Sparks beautifully evokes the dynamics of friendships and rivalries within the group. The male suitors come to court a specific girl but end up falling for the overall female ambience. The "slender means" describes the monetary condition of the girls, but also refers to svelteness, a significant attribute as it turns out, in relation to a narrow bathroom window.

An Unofficial Rose - Iris Murdoch
An early novel from Murdoch (her fourth, 1963) presenting a group of characters obsessed by their passion, near slaves to love. Some seek form, others freedom, others manipulate from the sidelines. It's an entertaining mix, with room to ponder the moral dilemmas of somewhat repressive attitudes, soon to be upended by the Swinging Sixties.

Imagining Characters - A.S. Byatt, Ignes Sodre
I stumbled across this in a used book store and was surprised to discover that in the last year I had read five of the six novels discussed - Mansfield Park, Villette, Daniel Deronda, The Professor's House, and Beloved. An Unofficial Rose is the sixth. I loved the conversational structure with Byatt and Sodre (a psychoanalyst) giving close readings with impressive perceptiveness. There's a good bit of Freud, the emphasis mostly on fairytales and dreams. The chapter on Daniel Deronda is superb. I just read the novel and was mildly disappointed, now I feel like re-reading it to discover all that I missed.

Good-bye To All That - Robert Graves
Graves'(I, Claudius) autobiography up to 1929, but mostly covering his front-line experiences during WWI. The dry, matter-of-fact, anecdotal approach gains a harrowing power as the trench warfare (everybody dies) goes on and on. While on leave in London in 1916 (two years into the War) he watches incredulously as Lloyd George whips the public into a patriotic frenzy, while a generation is being slaughtered only a few hundred miles away. That might be reason enough to say good-bye, but there are others. The post-war portraits of T.E. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy are very engaging.
 

Edited June 1, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

I better start catching up, cause catching up is hard to do.

 

The Lifted Veil - George Eliot
An early novella, the only instance of Eliot using a first person narration. It contains elements of the supernatural, the narrator seeing specific events in his imagination which eventually come to pass exactly so. Eliot had a real life interest in this, as did many intellectuals of her time. She even includes a scene in which a dead person is briefly brought back to life by a blood transfusion. Besides all that, it's a story about marital discord and one can identify traces in it of the great stuff to come.

The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy
Another crackpot novella, marital discord to the max leading to insane jealousy and murder. A train traveler regales his fellow passengers with the story of how he brutally murdered his wife, suspecting her of infidelity. He has been pardoned, as the court rules that the wife's adultery exonerates him. Along with his grisly tale comes odd philosophical rantings arguing, for example, that married couples should remain life-long celibates. Tolstoy in an afterword affirms that these ideas have become his own. He may have gone off his rocker but he was nevertheless a great storyteller.

Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman
A majestic novel, WWII seen from the Russian side, in structure and theme modeled after War and Peace. Grossman walked the walk, a journalist who covered the Battle of Stalingrad and the first to reach a German concentration camp at Treblinka and report back to the rest of the world. Oodles of characters, everything including the German side and the gas chambers is covered. Stalin and Eichmann make chilling cameo appearances. Harrowing at times but a very rewarding read.

Barley Patch - Gerald Murnane
A much admired Australian autobiographical novel that left me cold. Murnane had given up writing fiction for fifteen years and Barley Patch is an attempt to figure out why he decided to return. Most readers see great beauty in his effort, but I found it humorless and self-obsessed.

Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne
Probably the funniest fiction I have ever read. It's famous for the endless digressions, but the most surprising aspect is that the narrative voice is so modern, you might think Sterne walks among us. Also famous for the concept of the hobby-horse, that personal quixotic obsession that helps one make it through the dark night of the soul. Tristram himself turns up briefly in the second half, it takes half the novel to get to his birth. Uncle Toby and Tristram's father pick up the slack with absolute hilarity.

The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante
A woman gets abandoned by her husband and is left with two children and a lovable pooch to take care of. She begins to wallow deeper and deeper into her victimization. The pooch and one of her children grow gravely ill but she doesn't seem to notice or even much care. I think I'm meant to understand her, I'm not really sure, she seemed so despicable and narcissistic to me there wasn't a chance anyway. The worst novel I've read this year.

Edited June 18, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

Martin Chuzzlewit - Charles Dickens

Some magnificent descriptive passages of city streets, the wind, night-coach rides on bumpy roads battle a creaky structure with abrupt plot shifts and weak character development. The last few chapters are nearly unreadable as Dickens glorifies goodness on every page whilst padding the word count.

 

What's Bred in the Bone - Robertson Davies

I enjoyed this even more than Volume 1 of The Cornish Trilogy. The time period (mostly between the Wars), the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the shady Art world, the family history stuff, all compelling.

 

The Comforters - Muriel Spark

Fascinating mix of meta-fiction, The Ladykillers and the mysterious intersection of madness and religion.

 

Robinson - Muriel Spark

Sparks second novel (The Comforters was her debut). A woman writer is trapped on a desert island with three very odd men after a plane crash. As usual, Spark sets up genre expectations (here a murder mystery) only to deflate them at the end, a technique I once found annoying but now find interesting.

 

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter - Cesar Aira (Argentina)

Senselessness - Horacio Castellanos Moya (Honduras)

The Misfortunates - Dmitiri Verhulst (Belgium)

Faces in the Crowd - Valeria Luiselli (Mexico)

Budapest - Chico Buarque (Brazil)

The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris - Leila Marouane (Algeria)

 

All of the above are entries in Three Percent's World Cup of literature http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=11552 coinciding with the real thing. These are first round winners, fairly short and easy to read, entertaining in a performance art kind of way, clever in their playfulness with literary devices. The Aira novella is the stand-out, a story of a painter roaming the desolate Argentine pampas in the 1800s searching for inspiration who gets struck by lightning (twice!) during a storm after which the surreal takes over.

Edited June 30, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

The Missing of the Somme - Geoff Dyer
The more I read of the Great War the more stunned I am by the enormity of the calamity. Dyer is excellent at integrating the literature that the war spawned (especially the poetry of Wilfrid Owen, who was killed a week before the armistice) into the collective memories of the survivors. I want to get to Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory soon.

The Duchesse De Langleais - Honore de Balzac
Balzac depicting romantic love as a hopeless form of insanity, a bit shaky here, as the Duchesse's transformation from coquette to cloistered penitent isn't very believable. The opening and closing scenes though are Balzacianly brilliant.

 

 

A Mid-year recap

I made it to 78 books by June's end, one half of 156, which averages out to 3 a week. I tried not to skimp on quality as I pursued quantity. It sounds like an excess but when I figured it all out I averaged about 3 hours a day reading, not that difficult once you retire. And I'm making up for many years of only 3 books a year, my brain mostly mush during my working life.

One of the highlights of the first half was reading the nominated novels for the Daphne Awards all published initially in 1963. It's a great way to experience the past, to take a specific year and feel what people felt then, they did things differently a half century ago, and it can grant one a calmer perspective on the present. I'm also in the middle of The World Cup of Literature (mentioned in the above post) it's enlightening to see how contemporary novelists from many different countries approach their craft.

The revelations of the first half included the discovery of the great 19th century novelist, Benito Perez Galdos, whose two novels, Fortunata and Jacinta (very long) and Dona Perfecta (relatively short) I highly recommend. Also A Dreambook For Our Time by Tadeusz Konwicki, my choice for the Daphne Award, which deserves a place in the literary canon of the 20th century.

I have a bunch of trilogies (and longer) to finish up - The Cornish Trilogy, The Old Filth Trilogy, The Langdon Quartet, The Cairo Trilogy. And two volumes left of In Search of Lost Time, coming soon. I have to stifle my urge to return to my beloved Trollope and his Palliser novels until I finish those. I've read a lot of rewarding non-fiction, especially books covering the era of the Great War. 40% of the novels I read were by woman writers, that comes naturally now. And I am reading through all the novels of Muriel Spark chronologically plus her autobiography although that will filter into next year.

So, good reading to all through the sweltering summer and the glorious fall!


 

Edited July 1, 2014 by ethan

[Athena]

I hope the second half of 2014 will be just as good to you reading-wise as the first half .

[ethan]

^Thanks Athena and the same wish to you!

 

I'm about to start a coursera course on the French Revolution in a few days and I noticed that they are offering a replay of a course I took last year titled The Fiction of Relationship taught by Arnold Weinstein of Brown University. It starts September 1st and I highly recommend it, the best course on literature I could ever imagine, Weinstein is such a brilliant teacher. One doesn't have to participate in the essay exercises, watching the lectures and especially the seminars is sufficient reward, the discussion forums are lively, and it's free. Here's a link https://www.coursera.org/course/relationship

Edited July 2, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

The Map and the Territory - Michel Houellebecq
I only knew of Houellebecq  as to his bad-boy reputation (politically incorrect to the max) so I was surprised how sweet and humane this novel was. It's mostly about an unconventional artist who first gains notice by photographing Michelin road maps, and then makes a fortune with a series of paintings depicting modern man (and woman) at their work. Houellebecq is fan of Balzac (and Dickens) so not only does he deliver a convincing depiction of the artistic impulse, but also an analysis of the modern economic forces that determine our fate. He includes himself as a character, a very funny and self-deprecating portrait, even imagining his own death, a grisly and grotesque one, that sets off a brief police procedural. It's a bit formless at times, but always entertaining.

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone - Sasa Stanisic
After an initial struggle I ended up really liking this. It's a strange mixture of impressionism and sentimentality. It got rolling for me when the Bosnian War of 1992 erupts in the narrator's (and Stanisic's) home town of Visegrad on the banks of the Drina and a site of ethnic cleansing. Serbian troops, among other crimes, threw dead or injured Bosniaks off the famous Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge built by the Ottomans in the 1500s (the same bridge featured in Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina, it survived the war). The narrator's family eventually escapes the conflict by emigrating to Germany. He is a young teen then, the last third of the novel is ten years later when he returns to visit friends and relatives who survived, the heartbreak piles up, but it's of the genuine sort.

 

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Edited July 9, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

The Fugitive - Marcel Proust
One more volume to go. I'm going to read a short biography, Proust in Love by William Carter, before I proceed. The most surprising aspect of In Search of Lost Time has been the homophobic attitude of the narrator especially in the second half. He goes on for hundreds of pages trying to decide whether Albertine (his love captive) does or does not have homosexual tendencies, and if so, exactly when and where  they were manifested. Other characters come in for similar speculations. Not nearly enough beautiful passages in this volume to redeem the tedium of these long digressions.

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East - Scott Anderson
A brilliant narrative and of the half dozen WWI era books I've read recently, this one is by far the best.The fairy-tale like story of the quixotic Lawrence shines out against the ignorance and blindness of the conflicts major players, this despite warts and all, a life compelling and tragic. Anderson also provides a clear account of tangled Middle Eastern intrigues that still intrigue, oil and Zionism among them.

By Night in Chile - Roberto Bolano
An elderly Chilean priest on his deathbed reviews the major events of his life with regret. The most chilling scenes occur when he recollects the eerie evenings he spent with Pinochet, the brutal dictator of Chile, who has enlisted him for education in the essentials of Marxist philosophy. The priest has no discernable political views but is nevertheless haunted by his complicity. Bolano sustains the confessional mode brilliantly and this short novel serves as an excellent intro to his work. It emerged as the ultimate victor in Three Percent's World Cup of literature.

The Man in the Wooden Hat - Jane Gardam
Volume Two in the Old Filth trilogy. Gardam writes this one from the wifes perspective, the first one was from the husbands. It's an interesting approach, one that Marilyn Robinson uses to great effect in Gilead, Home and her forthcoming Lila. Gardam explores a marriage that has a secret that none of the principals ever discuss or acknowledge, it festers below the surface of their quite proper lives. Unfortunately there's not much drama in the plotting despite a nifty revelation in the closing pages.

Memento Mori - Muriel Spark
A group of aged characters keep receiving anonymous phone calls with one simple message "Remember, you will be dying soon." The calls serve to exacerbate already existing tensions among family and friends. Spark is at her most effective in the psychological dimension, how we respond to dilemmas, both of the moral and scary sort. Many of her fans regard this novel as her best (I would choose The Girls of Slender Means, so far). Although I'm not quite yet in the "aged" category, it unfortunately looms just around the bend, and every time my cell phone rang while I was reading this, I gave a start.

Edited August 20, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

Reading For the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks
Brooks from now on will be a mainstay of my literary education. He uses structuralism-lite and a whole lot of Freud to illuminate such worthies as A Sentimental Education, Heart of Darkness, The Red and the Black, Great Expectations, Absalom, Absalom! and a few others. Brooks is most convincing, moving really, in explaining why human beings need stories told to them, how we process narratives, and then reconstruct them in our imagination to make sense of our own lives.

A Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert's elegy to his (lost) generation, the idealism in the revolution of 1848 dissolving within the relentless march of time. I loved how he took familiar Balzacian set-ups and perversely subverted them with anti-romantic non-resolutions. I may prefer Balzac's fury to Flaubert's resignation but this is nevertheless some kind of great novel.

Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
I was jarred by how lurid, potboiler revelations were used as end points to the dense hi-brow prose and the sophisticated experiments with narrative voice. The Gothic overload is staggering right up to the penultimate scene, a haunted house, set afire, occupied by secret intruder.

 

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Marlowe travels deep up an African river to find Kurtz, a company agent who appears to have gone native, and discovers "the horror, the horror." The prose has tropical heat but after many readings I've not yet been able to buy Kurtz as either a credible character or symbol.

 

Oil on Water - Helon Habila
Habila overpopulates his novel ( a modern variation of Heart of Darkness) with stock Hollywood stereotypes but he is very effective in conveying the environmental and spiritual destruction that has been wrought upon his native land (Nigeria) by unbridled capitalism.

 

Edited August 20, 2014 by ethan

[pontalba]

Re Absalom, Absalom!.......LOL, Gothic, exactly.  This was my introduction of Faulkner, and the first line hooked me for life.  If Miss Rosa isn't one of my relatives, she certainly is her doppelganger!

[ethan]

I read Light in August last year, pontalba, and I was really surprised how over-the-top the plot was, more so in Absalom.  If you strip away Faulkner's modernist trappings you are left with stories that easily fall into the range of gothic noir writers like David Gaddis. Brooks points out that Faulkner loved detective novels (he contributed to the snappy dialogue in The Big Sleep during his Hollywood stay) and his novels can be read as a search for clues, uncovering the secrets, onion-like, a disturbing new revelation every few chapters. In Absalom Quentin is then the (reluctant) detective, Shreve representing the reader mesmerized by the tale.

Edited August 20, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

The Duel - Anton Chekhov
I've seen productions of all Chekhov's major plays but this was my first piece of fiction. It has the same kind of vibe, a particular glow, human and life-affirming.

Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
For some reason I assumed that "lucky" was meant ironically but no matter how hard the hero tries to self-destruct he ends up rewarded for his unconventionality. A real person in a world of boobs. Amis writes terrific dialogue, a very funny novel.

Experience - Martin Amis
The father/son relationship in this memoir is very affecting, a tribute to Martin's famous father, Kingsley, but also to the indispensible role that children play in the scheme of things. Lucy Partington, his cousin, who disappeared at age 21 and was found years later as one of serial killer Ted West's brutalized victims, haunts many of the pages. Some of the best bits are in the copious footnotes, not to be skipped over. Also not to be missed is the interesting cameo from the real life Rachel of Martin's first novel, The Rachel Papers.

The Mad and the Bad - Jean-Patrick Manchette
A wild ride of a crime novel, like reading a Hollywood movie, superficial but action packed. James Sallis in his introduction compares Manchette to Hammett and Chandler. I didn't detect any of that, so bare bones was it, but I wouldn't mind reading a few more before making up my mind.

Prisms - Theodore Adorno
A collection of essays by the great cultural critic. Many of his arguments went way over my head but I don't regret taking the challenge. The final chapter on Kafka was less abstract so I could appreciate the brilliant analysis.

Edited August 4, 2014 by ethan

[ethan]

The Magic Skin - Honore de Balzac
This falls into the Philosophical section of the Human Comedy and has left me quite a bit to mull over. A young man, on the verge of suicide, is given a section of a donkey's skin, which has magical powers. Every time a desire is fulfilled the skin shrinks, and the young man's life is shortened. I liked how Balzac contrasted the two female leads, archetypes, the cold, endlessly beautiful, unobtainable Duchesse, and the poor, too-good-to-be-true, endlessly devoted little one, pre-Dickens. The ending is truly remarkable.

The Lyre of Orpheus - Robertson Davies
I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as I did the first two of The Cornish Trilogy, it got  somewhat bland, overly civilized, kind of like Canada.

The Ballad of Peckham Rye - Muriel Spark
Reads like a ballad. An odd fellow descends on a Scottish village, does odd things, stirs up lingering discontent, and is perceived by some to be the Devil. There's an emptiness, more an incompleteness, in Spark's fictional world, which may perhaps indicate the absence of a Savior.

Edited August 14, 2014 by ethan

[frankie]

I'm very late to this, but I wanted to just wish you a great and fabulous and bookfilled and well deserved retirement! I'm happy you get to read a lot more now and can put those gray cells at work, not having to worry about work Enjoy!  ​