frumiousb

Last book of 2008!

(Now I'm only three weeks behind with 2009. Sigh.)


*****

This was a book that moved me quite a bit and was a very timely read in terms of things that I have been considering lately in my own life. As a result, I may like it better than it actually deserves. Or I may not. I thought that it was brilliant, honestly. But I see that many find it wanting next to the more thickly plotted Anna Karenina or War and Peace.

Resurrection is a layered look at the concepts of atonement, amends, and forgiveness. The story is fairly simple in its lines. Prince Nekhlyudov is a weak but well-meaning nobleman who has lost his early ideals in the excitement and practicality of his every day life. As the book opens, he is serving his jury duty when he realizes with horror that one of the women on trial for robbery and murder was a serving girl (Maslova) who he had once seduced and abandoned. It is clear from the chance meeting that after he was done with her, she fell into a life of prostitution and poverty. In response to her situation and in his great dismay, Nekhlyudov quickly compounds his one great mistake with a second. In sorrow and regret, he decides that he will dedicate his life to making amends to Maslova.

What Prince Nekhlyudov discovers is that atonement is nothing so simple as mending the personal situation. His self-examination leads him to criticize the system that left him with the ability to so simply ruin a woman's life. Class, religion, money, land, power, gender, politics, enfranchisement, punishment, rehabilitation, security, rights-- he cannot adequately treat with her without questioning every aspect of his person and society.

I talked about this book in someone else's blog before I read had read enough of it to really comment. At that point, I thought that the book was going to be about the impossibility of amends. Maslova is quite scornful of Nekhlyudov initially. She accuses him of using her for her body in his youth and for his salvation in his middle age. She asserts that what he had done cannot be undone, and she is inevitably correct.

If I had read further, I would have realized that Tolstoy's point does not end with the impossibility of amends. Atonement may well be impossible, but it is also-- this text argues-- essential. Nekhlyodov realizes that she is right, he cannot undo his damage, but he doggedly tries and follows the path where it may go-- even as it leads him away from everything that he has ever understood. At the end of the book, he has not (of course) managed to return Maslova to any kind of pristine state. But he has found a thread of meaning that allows his own resurrection. Moreover, he submits himself to her to allow her to choose her own destiny (within the available choices).

The book never flinches from the complication of its characters. Prince Nekhlyudov is not perfect. His path is not smooth. Maslova is not a saint. They both have and retain their flaws. I also find that while the book is deeply concerned with issues of ethics and morality, it doesn't preach. Even the ending which features a meditation on the Christian commandments feels more like the natural conclusion of his personal journey than anything forced.

Very highly recommended. A great note for me on which to end the reading year.

First of all, I would like to thank eameschair for bringing this book to my attention. I will make the confession that on my own, I never would have picked it up. I'm not really sure why. Something about Patchett's narrative image has repelled me. I had the feeling that I would find her writing way too folksy and precious-- just not to my taste. Although this work is memoir, I liked it enough to think that I should give her novels a chance. Can anyone here make a recommendation in the comments what you've thought about her novels, and which one (if any) that you might recommend?

( we all know this story )

I enjoyed looking through the material I had to write about, but I didn't have the mind of a collector, and I could never bring myself to feel the proper awe or reverence for the things we sold. When you sit down to write about the catalogue that Marcel Duchamp designed for the 1947 Surrealist exhibition oin Paris, for example-- the one with the rubber breast on the cover, the celebrated bare falsie that came with the admonition “Prère de Toucher” (“Please Tourch”)-- and you find that catalogue protected by several layers of bubble wrap, which in turn have been swathed in thick brown paper, which in turn have been slipped into a plastic bag, you can't help but pause for a moment and wonder if you aren't wasting your time. Prère de toucher. Duchamp's imperative is in obvious play on the signs you see posted all over France: Prère de ne pas toucher (Do not Touch.) He turns the warning on its head and asks us to fondle the thing he has made. And what better thing than this spongy perfectly formed breast? Don't venerate it, he says, don't take it seriously, don't worship this frivolous activity we call art. Twenty-seven years later the warning is turned upside down again. The naked breast has been covered. The thing to be touched has been made untouchable. The joke has been turned into a deadly serious transaction and once again money has the last word.
pg. 216

What's your favorite work by Paul Auster?

Auster is a writer of whose work I have read a fair amount. Over the years I've picked up one after another of his books, mostly his novels and I always really like them. I think that Moon Palace and The Brooklyn Follies have been my favorites to date. (I realize that this automatically disqualifies me as a serious fan, since his serious fans don't much like Brooklyn Follies, but I think that it's both underrated and brilliant. So there.)

What do I like about him? The sense of context and history that he places around the personal moment is one big thing that I admire. He's better at that than nearly anyone. Whether that's the moment of joy with looming 9/11 as a backdrop, or whether its his characters' continual urge/effort (ultimately doomed) to separate and isolate themselves-- whatever the situation, he's somehow the writer who insists on the whole page. (Please note that this is different than using history as backdrop, something that I tend to dislike very much.) Other things that I like about him include his interest in coincidence and his love of mundane details, used appropriately.

Reading a selected prose collection of any author has its challenges-- depending on the author then what they decide to collect can range from the wonderful to the nearly unreadable. When I bought this volume, I was very curious exactly what would be included. Auster has done so much in his writing life-- criticism, translation, memoirs. They had, it seemed to me, a lot of material from which to choose.

And it is an interesting selection. The first part of the book was, for me, truly wonderful to read. The first 240 pages are taken up by the two memoir pieces, "The Invention of Solitude" and "Hand to Mouth". It is worth the money to buy this book simply to have both of these collected in one place.

It follows on with a series of True Stories, collaboration and essays of which my favorites were probably "The Death of Sir Walter Raleigh" and "Northern Lights". The True Stories are interesting as his interest in coincidence is put front and center.

The rest of the book is Critical Essays, Prefaces and Occasions. I enjoyed the critical essays, but found that I was really only able to get something out of the ones where I knew the writer or work in question. From the rest, I got good suggestions for further reading, which is a pretty good thing to get as well. I personally found the prefaces difficult to read, and I probably would not have chosen to collect them. It's too bad, because it meant that I was impatient and tired by the time that we got around to the Occasions, and many of them are really lovely-- full of sharp observations, well worth making. If I had to read it again, I would probably have skipped the Prefaces and gone straight to the Occasions. (Obviously, much depends on why you are reading the book.)

In short, I would think that any reader would get a lot from this collection. I suppose that it would add more depth if you were already familiar with Auster as a writer, but I think that a piece like "The Invention of Solitude" can easily stand on its own as a first reading experience.

Well bought and well read.

( notes )

The Doorbell Rang
Second Confession
More Deaths than One (titled And Be A Villain in the US)

I love Rex Stout. Archie and Nero had to be two of the most obnoxious detectives in the history of detective fiction. Between Nero's eating and Archie's remarks regarding women past their sell-by date, I really like these guys. When I was a young teenager first reading these books, I loved Archie and his hard-boiled ways with women. Now that I'm approaching (or even in) middle age, I can completely get behind Nero using his genius to fund reading and eating.

First a note about the omnibus edition itself. This is a very strange selection of Wolfe novels, and they are bound in a very strange order. First of all, the omnibus publishes the books in an order opposite to the order in which they were published. So, The Doorbell Rang was published in 1965; Second Confession was published in 1949; More Deaths than One was published in 1948. Publishing them in reverse order wouldn't be so bad if the books were totally independent of each other in terms of plot. Unfortunately, that's not true. Second Confession and More Deaths than One are two out of the three Wolfe books that feature Arnold Zeck-- something like Wolfe's ultimate nemesis. It's really just wrong to read them out of order, since they (at least loosely) refer to each other. So if you find yourself with this particular omnibus edition, do yourself a favor and read the novels from back to front. Trust me. You'll thank me later.

Stout is highly recommended in general. If you like intelligent mysteries and you haven't read any of the Wolfe books before then you would be in for a treat with any collection of his work.

( and each particular book )

The distance between government and its people and the them-and-us mentality it breeds, is central to any understanding of Italy. Everyone feels so badly treated, everything is so legalistic, that people feel justified in being a little lawless.
pg. 17

As mentioned before, this book was suggested by the excellent rhythmaning as a good read after our trip to Sicily this last year. It also came highly recommended by several Italian friends of mine here in the Netherlands. "Although," one of them remarked, "you could summarize the book neatly by saying that Jones hates Berlusconi."

"Is that a problem?" I asked.

She thought about it. "I hate him too, but it would be nice sometime to try to see an explanation about why people vote for him that doesn't make all Italians sound like idiots."

She may have a point. In any case, this book is quite critical of the Italian then and now Prime Minister, and that criticism informs a great deal of the text.

What I like best about The Dark Heart of Italy is that it doesn't spend its time waxing poetic about the history of art or the food. Jones combines short chapters about various episodes in Italian political and public life to build his larger arguments about modern Italy as a whole. The subjects range widely: from football to Padre Pio, he sketches scenes of dissent and corruption that stretch through the country.

It isn't a perfect book. I wasn't happy at all with the way that he (the editors?) used italics to switch between his previously published material (parts of the book initially appeared in The London Review of Books and Prospect and the text that was created for the book. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding completely what the italics were for, but I found it quite distracting and really very strange.

Still, I'd recommend the book pretty highly. It should be a particularly nice counterpoint to all the Italian travel books out there that wax poetic about the Tuscan sun and the history of pasta. I had many moments of amused recognition (particularly as he discusses traffic and Palermo) and it also helped me explain a lot what I see on my vacations in Italy.

( notes )

I apologize, but I'm about a month behind with book reviews. So I'm really going to be spamming for a week or so to try to catch up with myself.

( interesting )

Kagero Nikki
written by "Mother of Michitsuna"
translated by Edward Seidensticker

And so the months and the years have gone by, but little has turned out well for me. Each new year in turn has failed to bring happiness. Indeed, as I think of the unsatisfying events I have recorded here, I wonder whether I have been describing anything of substance. Call it, this journal of mine, a shimmering of the summer sky.
pg. 69

I've read (and enjoyed) The Tale of Genji and The Pillow book of Sei Shōnagon. The Gossamer Years was a next step for me, reading to learn more about the life of women in Heian Japan. I like diaries, particularly historical diaries, quite a bit as a reader.

The "Mother of Michitsuna" (the only name that we have for the author) wrote this book in the 10th century. It highlights the extremely vulnerable position that a woman in her class had with respect to marriage. The diaries are an account of her marriage to Fujiwara no Kaneie. Although initially their relationship prospers, it falters in the face of Kaneie's absence, her jealousy, and her inability to have more than one child. She found herself coming second to both his primary wife and his various other affairs. Since it was not expected for a husband of that period to live with his wife, she was completely dependent on his comings and goings. Both marriage and divorce were informal affairs-- a long enough cessation of attention and visits constituted a de facto divorce. The diary tells of her panic for her future and for the future of her son in between the visits of Kaneie.

( more )

Frank J. Sulloway

( unconvinced )

Many of you probably already know Dorothy Canfield Fisher, even if you don't know why. Her book Understood Betsy (1916) remains a childhood classic. Most people don't realize that Canfield Fisher was an educational reformer, and that Understood Betsy actually was part of her effort to bring Montessori education to the United States. There's no trace of the didact in the story of orphaned Betsy and her Vermont cousins, and its central message about responsibility, learning and family is still quite resonant today.

Even the people who know that she wrote children's books, aren't aware that she wrote adult novels. Her larger body of work has unfortunately slipped into obscurity today. She was quite famous in her day-- Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the ten most influential women in America.

There are probably reasons for her general critical neglect. Her books tend to focus on stories of everyday life. Common themes for her include the role of women in married life, the importance of family and personal roots, the small efforts that one can make in the face of strife and war, children and child-rearing and the fabric of rural and urban life in the US of her day. She wasn't a writer for broad experimental technique or for violent plotting.

( possibly not very hip-- more about the novel itself )