READIN

Wednesday, August second, 2006

I am ripping my way through The Keep -- it is utterly mesmerizing reading. Danny's paranoia and half-hearted fight against same has me nodding in sympathy; I'm anxious to find out what links his story up with Ray his author's.

posted evening of August second, 2006: Respond
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Tuesday, August first, 2006

Tristram is born, maimed and misnamed; and I am lapping the reading group. So let's leave him to his own devices a little while, when A White Bear puts up her Volume II post I will return there. In the meantime: this weekend I read a book review that interested me very strongly. So today, when Jennifer Egan's The Keep was published, I went by Coliseum Books and picked it up. (I believe it is the second book I have ever bought on the day of its publication, the other one was Mason & Dixon.)

Started the book on the way home and am being blown away by it. Funny, this is the second book I've read recently in which the protagonist is just my age. (The other was Absurdistan.) This is giving me a funny sense of generational presence that I have not felt before. (Note -- Shteyngart is indeed my coeval; Egan is a couple of years older than I.)

Ellen read Egan's Look at Me previously, and doesn't remember much about it except that she loved it, and thinks she has it around the house.

posted evening of August first, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Tristram Shandy

Sunday, July 23rd, 2006

So I found the last hundred pages or so of Bleak House really unsatisfying. The quality which I think had really drawn me in about the rest of the book -- which was the airy, meandering way of storytelling, the tangential ramblings along the various paths of the story which led seemingly by accident to the revelation of some connection, somehow furthering the plot -- disappeared and was replaced by a driving, all-too-visible narrative structure. The last really affecting moment in the story, for me, was the discovery of Lady Dedlock's body. -- And even by then it had lost a lot of what I was reading for.

But the two things which really put me off about the ending were Mr. Jarndyce's bequeathing of Esther unto Allan -- which just took the inhuman quality of their relationship about three steps too far for me -- and the final chapter, in which Esther sounds like a sanctimonious prig.

I liked the resolution of the court case a lot; but the discovery of a new will among Krook's papers really added nothing, really seemed like a lame excuse for a little extra suspense at the end.

posted afternoon of July 23rd, 2006: Respond
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Friday, July 21st, 2006

I realized this morning, why I have such a strong visual picture of Lady Dedlock -- she is the only character in Bleak House who I really feel like I can see her face, or at least for whom the image of her face remains constant. This morning (oddly at the moment when Esther beheld her dead) I figured out the face I am seeing is Margaret Dumont's! And I think she would be a well-cast in the role of Lady Dedlock. Great! Groucho can be John Jarndyce and Chico will shine as George Rouncewell; and Harpo I can see in no other role than that of Dr. Woodcourt. It would be a beautiful movie.

Update: Also, Zeppo as Richard Carstone.

posted morning of July 21st, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Charles Dickens

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

At the party last night, Roy reminded me of my initial aim in starting this blog (and this website in general), which was to write about the books I am reading. Well, and, right now I am reading one that I'm finding just lovely, very moving, to wit Dickens' Bleak House.

It is hardly the perfect book I suppose -- I find myself thinking as I read it that there are too many lucky coincidences -- and I think I will notice even more such when I reread it and have the various threads of narrative more firmly in mind. I think that is the principal failing of the story. But with disbelief suspended, what a lovely story it is! The poetry of Dickens' language and the acerbity of his wit make for a world I can spend all day thinking about.

Also: I think the story is very sentimental in places; but it is sentimental in such a way that I respond emotionally, which I am finding pretty unusual. I felt a tear in my eye when Jo was dying -- when I was talking with LizardBreath last night she said she didn't really respond to that, Jo was just the poor orphan who dies, rather than a fully human character; and I could see what she meant, sort of -- but it worked on me. So whatever.

Next up: A White Bear is going to be conducting a discussion of Tristram Shandy. So I will read it! I started to back in 1999, it was the very first book written about on this web site. So here I am full circle! Nice.

posted evening of July 20th, 2006: Respond

Friday, May 26th, 2006

🦋 Characters

I am reading Dickens' Bleak House now -- it is a book that has been on my shelf for many years, one that was spoken of very highly on the Pynchon-l and that I've always been resolved to read sometime. It's proving easier going than I expected, with plenty of laughs and a plot that is only occasionally obscure. But there are so many characters! It's a little hard to keep track of who, say, Mr. Guppy is, who has not been mentioned in the past 50 pages or so, when he pops up.

So the Unofficial Moomin Characters Guide has given me an idea -- a general purpose, web-based database utility for keeping track of characters in a book or series of books. I don't think this would be very difficult to do and it seems like it would come in handy.

posted evening of May 26th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Moomins

I'm very happy to see that Drawn and Quarterly will be bringing out five volumes of Tove Jansson's Moomin comic strips. First one is due in September!

posted afternoon of May 26th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Tove Jansson

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

🦋 Nice, nice, very nice

This weekend I finished Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart. This book is derivative -- I can hear bits of at least Pynchon, Vonnegut, and Heller in Shteyngart's style -- and its own spark of original genius as well. It is sort of a Catch-22 updated for the invasion of Iraq. What really struck me about it was, it was about the first book I've ever read that struck me as a generational anthem for my specific age group -- Shteyngart is two years younger than me as are his narrator and central characters -- I could see myself and the people I went to school with in the situations of the book, absurd though they were.

I bit into the sturgeon kebab, filling my mouth with both the crisp burnt edges and the smooth mealy interior. My body trembled inside my leviathan Puma tracksuit, my heroic gut spinning counter-clockwise, my two-scoop breasts slapping against each other.

Misha's descriptions of food and of his obesity work as metaphor on a number of levels -- the only one I can really express is the most obvious surface symbolism of greed and rapine, but trust me that there is a lot more than that going on under the surface. And a bonus quote for the Mineshaft crowd (to whom I very enthusiastically recommend this): when Dror is describing the focus group they held to see if they could get the American public interested in an invasion of Absurdisvanї, he says,

We showed pictures of Absurdis, Congolese, and Indonesians at play, picking fruits, frying goats, and so on. More problems. The Congolese are clearly black, so that strikes a chord with all respondents. Like them or not, you got plenty of blacks in America. The Indonesians have funny eyes, so they're Asian. Probably work hard and raise dutiful children. Good for them. Then you get the Absurdis. They're sort of dark, but not really black. They look a little Indonesian, but they've got round eyes. Are they Arabs? Italians? Persians? We finally settled on "taller Mexicans," which is another way of saying we're fucked.

Something notable: the book centers on "the second week of September 2001", but the famous events of that week are never mentioned.

On the ride home I read some of Cat's Cradle, and was quickly reminded of what an extraordinary book it is. I must have read it through 20 times between the ages of 14 and 19, I know much of it by heart. One of the central wampeters of my karass.

Update: Also look at this essay of Shteyngart's, on reading Philip Roth and particularly Portnoy's Complaint. A fine piece.

posted evening of May 16th, 2006: Respond
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Thursday, May 11th, 2006

🦋 Ooh look at this!

I'm back in Modesto for a few days, visiting my parents, and how exciting! The book that I have looked through my old bookshelf for every time I have been back here, but never found, just jumped out at me this time. It is Cat's Cradle, with a self-portrait by Mr. Vonnegut on the title page, and an inscription: "FOR GOOD OLD JEREMY ----- (signed) Kurt Vonnegut OCT 12 88"

posted afternoon of May 11th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Cat's Cradle

Friday, April 7th, 2006

Guns, Germs and Steel serves as a really good prophylactic against romantic nostalgia -- the evolution of society depicted in the "Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" chapter does not at all make you want to go back to the days of egalitarianism.

posted morning of April 7th, 2006: Respond

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