frumiousb

(Yes, my first Sunday Salon post in several months. I am distractable.)

Some years ago, I burned myself out on Auster. I read one book, Moon Palace and then I started reading his work compulsively-- ripping through everything that I could find. It was sort of like eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches for three months. Very satisfying, but quite difficult to look at the jar after that. And then I left him alone. I ignored newly released books. I wanted nothing more to do with the man.

Then two years ago, someone gave me The Brooklyn Follies right after it came out. I sighed, but read it. I liked it a lot more than most of the critics and fans. I was back on the slippery slope.

Then this year I picked up and read a copy of his collected prose. And I was doomed. I've started reading everything that I can get my hands on. And re-reading.

The New York Trilogy was one of the first things that I read by Auster, and one of the most dearly beloved. Rereading City of Glass was an interesting experience. I wondered whether I would find the same things moving, whether I would still like it as much. I knew that my reading experience would be affected by Auster discussing why he had written the book in his collected prose.

In the end, I found that my own experience of grief/tragedy deepened my connection with Quinn. His need to find threads in the seemingly random is something that I understand better now-- it added some holdfasts to the text that I had lacked before.

It remains a great book.

hy read it if you haven't already? Detectives, writers, identities, loss, intrigue, mistakes, death, sex and consequences. (Putting these things in a line gives the wrong impression, but read it all the same.)

I'm curious whether I'll burn myself out again on Auster a second time.

Any writers who you read in waves? What happened to you when and if you went back a second time?

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I'm still reading the Tacitus (Annals of Imperial Rome) in the midst of all my packing. It is *dense* with images and taking me forever to get through. At this rate it will take me another couple of weeks to finish the thing. There are so many absorbing little scenes that I find myself deep in the book for quite some time before I realize that I've only gotten through a few pages. Normally I'm a natural speed reader, but some books just hit me this way.

I'm pretty sure that I'm not reading it as it is meant to be read. No pretense at erudition. I'm actually reading it as a great collection of little Roman anecdotes. I suppose that I should be caring more about the Big Picture history of it all, but I'm absorbed with the murderess who was found with poison in her hair.

Lots of packing today as well-- so a busy day!

After that setup, Betty took a deep breath. “And I feel, where were you, God, when we needed you? I've come to the thoughts now that if there is a God, it is either not a loving God and I want nothing to do with Him, or once we are born and are on earth, God has no control over our lives. If He has no control over our lives why bother to pray to Him? And I have not been to church except twice when I had to go to a baptism and a wedding. I'm not interested in religion. If I'm somewhere and people say the Lord's Prayer if I can get by without even saying it, I'd rather not. I don't go to church and I don't miss it and I don't care to go again and I want nothing to do with God. I wouldn't actually call myself an athiest because I can't say there is no God. I just don't know that. But my feelings are, if there is, it's not the kind of God I'm interested in. I feel like, shit on you, God. You shit on me, the hell with you, God. I'm still feeling that way after fourteen years, and that was one big definite change in my life.”
Pgs. 167-168

Rather drear reading for a rather drear Sunday, my fellow Sunday Salon-ers (and others).

After our first and only child was stillborn two years ago, I had a whole raft of books on grief and loss recommended to me. Some were practical-- after a baby dies kind of stuff. They had advice on how to stop my milk, what to do for a funeral, what to expect in terms of attitudes in the world around me. Some books were more philosophical-- I think about something like Lewis' A Grief Observed. Now that I'm two years into the journey, I'm starting to reach for the more...sociology-based studies, I guess. What does grief do to your mind over time? How does mourning affect your every-day life in the long-term? I'm starting to take solace from a more objective look at the loss of a child.

Finkbeiner's book is in the third category. She, herself a bereaved parent, began a project to find out what the long-term effect the death of a child had on his or her parents. Through a combination of interview and information, she takes us through subjects like changes in relationships (to spouses, other children, God), changes in priorities, affect on what the parents want and expect from the world. She does a thorough and comprehensive job. I could identify with a lot of what I read in the book. I found it moving and informative.

Unforunately, I know that a fair amount of this people come to my blog because of Google searches on preeclampsia, HELLP, or stillbirth. I feel that I do need to warn you with this recommendation that Finkbeiner rather explicitly does not deal with infant loss. Only one of the parents featured in the book had suffered loss of an infant-- and even she had to lose more than one to apparently make her eligible for inclusion. (Do you hear a note of bitterness in my voice? There probably is one. I've learned the hard way that there are hierarchies even among the bereaved.) This book is primarily looking at the loss of older children. That said, I found that I recognized many of the same changes that Finkbeiner discusses, so it was still useful to me. Your mileage may vary.

This is also not a book to help with the practicalities of immediate grief or to give short-term assistance to someone whose friend has lost a child. Think of this more as a map for the later years-- a compass, if you will.

Sometimes I confess that the whole project of books on grief and mourning baffles me, even as I reach for them myself. What is it that I'm looking for here? Reassurance that what I feel or felt is normal? What value does normal have in such circumstances? I don't know the answer to this question, but I keep reading.

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I have to confess that Stafford was a writer who I only knew of because of her famously stormy relationship with Robert Lowell. When I saw one of her books available second-hand, I was delighted to finally have the chance to read some of her work.

Boston Adventure is the story of Sonie Marburg, a young girl who grows up on the seaside longing for the calm and cool lights of Boston. Where most young girls want love and adventure, Sonie only wants to be a prim old maid just like her idol, Miss Pride of Boston. Miss Pride is a regular summer guest at the hotel where Sonie's mother works, and Sonie longs to belong to her, go home with her, be part of her family. Her own family is not what it should be. Her mother is a mad Russian who lives in a constant state of resentment against men and her life in America. Her father is a German cobbler, weak and eventually ultimately absent. Nothing about her own life, her parents' passion and beauty, appeals to her.

Eventually Sonie gets what she wants (or thinks that she wants). She goes to Boston with Miss Pride as her Ward and companion. As you expect, what she finds there is not exactly as she imagined. The major themes in the story: class and identity, the American notion that talent/intelligence can lift you above your born station, immigration, madness, the different kinds of desire. If there's a one sentence point that I could distill, it would be something like a meditation on how every choice has a price.

I am really interested, now, to read the short stories by Stafford. I really loved this book, but it wasn't perfect. There's something a little bit odd about the pacing-- particularly in the Boston section. It is almost as though having gotten Sonie to Boston, Stafford had a difficult time with her life there. As a reader, there was a long dangerous becalmed section that was very nearly frustrating. I've seen this kind of pacing issue before in the novels of short story writers, and it makes me rather more anxious to read her short work.

She's a very good writer. I really loved her long looping sentences and the strong visual nature of her descriptions. Really delicious prose.

This was an emotionally difficult book in some ways for me. I wasn't escaping from the same kind of madness as Sonie, for sure, but I experienced my life and my decision to go to Bryn Mawr as a very similar kind of conscious escape. I wanted to find the cool and gracious people of the world. The folks who didn't have rotting bathrooms or cousins with ten children. It's sort of usual to say that you discover that those people don't exist, but as Sonie finds out-- that isn't true. It's more complicated than that. They *do* exist and you *can* live like that-- sort of. But there's a price for everything, sometimes too high of a price. I wish that I could have read the invisible other book-- what happened to Sonie once she finally outgrows Miss Price. If she does.

Anyhow, I would recommend the book. The introduction by Anita Brookner is good, but more useful after you have finished the novel.

Several questions:

There seem to be two or three different biographies of Stafford available. Can anyone recommend one in particular?

Has anyone read other work by Stafford that they can recommend to read next?

I was feeling badly, as I dislike being so late with these yearly reading lists. However, I now notice that I am precisely one day earlier than this time last year. If I continue with this trend, I should be on top of my reviewing in time for the year's change in around 20 years.

I continue to enjoy using this blog to read and review books. I'm sorry to those of you who find it tiresome (and I know that you're out there), but as I like to remind myself and you at the beginning of each new year: This journal is more for me than it is for you.

click here for the whole year.

click here for the ones that I particularly recommend. I'm not going to do a top 10 list-- it was a pretty good year for me and 48 of the books that I read are particularly recommended.

( more, if you're bored )

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 )

It's been a while since I have made a Sunday Salon post. I'm afraid that this fall was rather more focused on doing things on Sunday rather than reading things on Sunday. But after a December of travel (Borneo!) and visitors and everything else, I have finally found myself with a weekend for leisurely reading.

Yesterday I finished a Margery Allingham mystery (Tiger in the Smoke), which was sheer luxury. Today I felt the need to pick up something a bit more weighty, and have been reading Turgenev's First Love and Other Stories. Very affecting pieces-- nearly too affecting. I had to put the book down after reading one story about a peasant who is forced by his landowner to kill his dog-- the one thing that he has in the world to love. Terribly enough, the introduction notes that this was based on a true incident from Turgenev's life.

It occurred to me while I was reading that while I've read a fair amount of Russian literature in the last years-- Pasternak, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Akhmatova, Mandlestam-- none of it is really more recent than the 1930s. I know a bit more about theater later than that period, but virtually nothing about literary movements or writers. (edited to say: I have read Solzhenitsyn, although I forgot about it when I first made this post since it was some time ago.)

I have so many smart and well-read people on my friends list and out there in the Sunday Salon that I thought that someone has to be able to recommend some modern Russian writers (the need to be available in translation, sadly) for me to read. It seems unfair that I basically stop with the Russian revolution.

Any ideas? Also, any suggestions about what to read next by Turgenev? I can already tell halfway through this book that I'm going to need to read more.

Happy Sunday reading!

I have not been the most active Salon participant in the last few weeks-- life has contrived to strip time and interest for reading away from me. But this Sunday I intend to correct that-- a good day for reading this morning.

I'm currently reading The Dark Heart of Italy, by Tobias Jones. (This was a recommendation from rhythmaning, so thank you for that.) We've done a reasonable amount of travel in Italy during the last year, so this is a pretty fascinating book to read. For a change, it doesn't focus on food and churches. Jones so far has looked at language, politics and football. It makes for a welcome difference. As I was reading last night, I kept annoying B. by telling him interesting anecdotes that I picked up from the book-- always a good sign.

As I sit here and read this morning, I have a big fat cat on my lap. The other cat has spent this morning pulling at a piece of loose flooring which she has decided makes a good toy. B. is still asleep-- got in at 3:00am after going out with an old friend visiting from NY.

It's going to be a nice lazy reading Sunday. Hope that you all are enjoying the same.

I'm actually enjoying my rainy stay-at-home Sunday too much to write a very long Sunday Salon post. I've been curled up with Volume One of The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine (trans. William Granger Ryan) for nearly a week now, and I'm hoping to finish it today. (This book was a medieval best-seller. It tells stories of the saints-- he mixes the more official versions with stories of miracles and magic.)

I honestly expected this book to be kind of a slog, but it's really delightful. It's a bit like reading the red, blue, green and yellow fairy tale books all in one long big row. He starts each saint's entry with a really wonderful made-up explanation of what the saint's name means. I'm almost to the end of the volume and it is getting a tad repetitious. After refusing the sacrifice to the pagan gods, the saint is lowered into a tub of molten lead but because of the angels of the lord it feels only as a warm bath, etc. So I think I'll give it some time before I order and read volume two.

But it is really wonderful to put a source behind so much of medieval art. I'm sure that you're dubious, but it's actually a great read on a day like this one.

Enjoy your Sundays, everyone!

Today is a most excellent day to do nothing at all. Autumn has moved in with a vengeance, and put paid to any thoughts that I might have had that I could keep wearing my summer raincoat a little bit longer. We've had wind, cold rain & even a bit of hail.

Unfortunately, tonight I need to go out for an appointment that I cannot cancel. An old friend who I'm actually looking forward to seeing, but as she live in Rotterdam it requires the car and moving about and putting on grownup clothes and I'm less excited about that. It will also be an evening completely in Dutch, which I can do just find but must confess that I dread when feeling lazy.

I've been sick in bed all week and gotten a fair amount of reading done, although the virus made me querulous, critical, and peevish. I'm currently reading The Terror, by Dan Simmons. This was a recommendation from a friend of mine who knows that I have quite a sweet tooth for horror and that lately I've been looking for things in the genre which I can still enjoy. There was a point where it felt like horror books and films were generating some really exciting stories and ideas, but either I've gotten too old to appreciate it or the genre has changed again. There's probably some economic lesson in there about the demise of horror tracking with the demise of supermarket paperbacks, but I can't say that for sure.

I've read Simmons horror before, with Carrion Comfort. I found it tediously long and emotionally manipulative. So that's not encouraging.

Anyhow, if I had realized before I ordered the book that this would be an arctic explorer book, I'm not sure that I would have picked it up. (I generally avoid reading reviews for a book before I read it, particularly if it was a personal recommendation.) I have to confess that I often think of these as Boys in Boats novels; they often leave me behind, if not leave me cold. Once I realized what I was reading then I really did contemplate the 776 pages with a sinking heart-- esp. since so far Simmons takes a clear and true delight in all the grotty details of life onboard ship. I've also written in the past about my general issues with historical fiction. But, ah well. These long books are a good read on a day like this, so I'm going to stay the course-- if you'll forgive me my own maritime metaphor.

So far it's interesting enough, although I'm a little too lazy for his shifting time perspective. I keep having to jump back to check the dates, and this annoys me. If this Simmons book doesn't impress me, this will the last work that I try by him regardless of the recommendations.

Good morning, everyone. I have every intention of a having a pleasant day today, and have just emerged from a long hot bath in which I have been happily reading The Flowers of Friendship: Letters Written to Gertrude Stein, edited by Donald Gallup.



The book was published in 1953, and while I am enjoying it there are some mightily odd edits.

First of all, Gallup cuts the letters to Stein liberally. It's a personal thing for me, but I prefer the complete thing (unless parts are cut to protect privacy). I find the ...'s scattered throughout the text quite distracting. Also, unless I'm really mistaken, the selection and cuts in the section about Stein's early life seem to imply that Stein was romantically involved with Leo Solomons (a classmate with whom she researched automatic writing). The way that the letters are arranged and given which passages are highlighted leads to the possible reading that she was even considering marrying him before his untimely death.

I find this...unlikely. I have to rather wonder whether this tone wasn't left in to soften Stein for the reader in 1953.

In any case, I'm now up to letters sent her in the early 1920s. Lots of Hemingway in this period. I'm looking forward to reading it throughout the day.

*****

This has been an extremely out-of-sorts week, in which I have behaved like someone dropped on her head. Suddenly scheduled and then canceled trips. Canceled trips suddenly rescheduled. I'm behind on work, spaced social appointments, and generally was not At My Best. Too little time for either reading or relaxing.

I did manage three reviews this week-- an odd assortment:

Leadership and the One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard
Volk's Shadow, Brent Ghelfi
Maigret's Boyhood Friend, George Simenon

*****

Hope that you all enjoy your Sunday!

I'm not going to have much more time to read this fine Sunday, but I've enjoyed my time this morning before B. gets out of bed. Today is the Open Monument Day in the Netherlands. Over 3000 monuments across the country open their doors for free today. We're planning on visiting some of the 17th century canal houses in the center-- the ones that you always mean to visit, but never do.

Anyhow, I'm currently reading John Gardner's The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. By most stretches of the imagination, I'm not a young writer. But I had never read the book and am slowly trying to be a Gardner completist.

Gardner is something like an old family friend who I never actually got to meet. He came from the same small town as my father, was a contemporary of my aunts and uncles, and was the author of my father's favorite book: The Sunlight Dialogues. Given that my father hated to read (dyslexia), that's quite a compliment.

I'm enjoying the book. I do not actually always agree with ideas on reading and writing, but I get the feeling that he must have been a really inspiring teacher. What I like best so far is that I can hear his voice-- grumbling, opinionated, affectionate.

I was away much of this week, so not much time for book reviews. But I did manage to discuss The Zimmermann Telegram, by Barbara Tuchman.

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I'm currently reading The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle and still trying to get through reviews for the books that I read during my vacation.

I find the Doyle difficult to read, despite being well-written. I know where the story is going to go, and although until now he has handled the predictability with delicacy, spousal abuse isn't a subject that I enjoy. I also find myself wondering what motivated Doyle to write from the perspective of an abused cleaning woman. So far, it seems to work, but I have trouble not finding it somehow suspect. This is unfair of me. I realize that. But still.

I haven't read any Doyle before this, and I'm enjoying the texture of his writing.

Full review when I'm done and have had a chance to digest.

*****

Reviews this week of quite a few genre books:

Entombed, Linda Fairstein
Forest Mage, Robin Hobb
South of Hell, P.J. Parrish
Hell to Pay, George P. Pelecanos
Triptych, Karen Slaughter

For me, in the last resort, Alexander's true genius was as a field-commander: perhaps, taken all in all, the most incomparable general the world has ever seen. His gift for speed, improvisation, variety of strategy; his cool-headedness in a crisis, his ability to extract himself from the most impossible situations; his mastery of terrain, his psychological ability to penetrate the enemy's intentions-- all these qualities place him at the very head of the Great Captains of history. The myth of the Great Captains is wearing rather than these days, and admiration for their achievements has waned: this is where we too become the victims of our own age and our own morality. Viewed in political rather than military terms, Alexander's career strikes a grimly familiar note. We have no right to soften it on that account.

Philip's son was bred as a king and a warrior. His business, his all-absorbing obsession through a short but crowded life, was war an conquest. It is idle to palliate this central truth, to pretend that he dreamed, in some mysterious fashion, of wading through rivers of blood and violence to achieve the Brotherhood of Man by raping an entire continent. He spent his life, with legendary success, in the pursuit of personal glory, Achillean kleos; and until very recent times this was regarded as a wholly laudable aim. The empire he built collapsed the moment he was gone; he came as a conqueror and the work he wrought was destruction. Yet his legend still lives; the proof of his immortality is the belief he inspired in others. That is why he remained greater than the measurable sum of his works; that is why, in the last resort, he will continue an insoluble enigma, to this and all future generations. His greatness defies a final judgment.
Pgs. 487-488

I've been reading a reasonable amount of history lately, and I was starting to get worried how much of it has left me rather cold. Either I find that I can't engage with the writing, or else I find the thesis of the writer poorly supported. I had started to get the bad bad feeling that my problem with historians was more about me than about the history itself.

Luckily, just about that point I picked up a Really Good History Book. Excellent and apparently well-respected as history and delicious to read as a book. It doesn't talk down to the readers; it doesn't pretend to know more than it possibly can do. The prose is very good. The logic and structure of the book are clear and well-ordered. I really enjoyed reading it and felt that I learned a lot.

I'm talking about Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C. by Peter Green. I'll say a little bit more about the book after the cut.

But first before I talk about this book in specific, I'd like to get some recommendations from you all in general. What are your favorite history books? Which are the tomes that you felt made history come alive for you without engaging in unforgivable narrative indulgences? To give you an idea, I like Simon Schama, Barbara Tuchman, Braudel, and Amin Maalouf.

( and onwards to the book itself )

Okay. I just got through a section in which he explains that with the third child born to he and Thérèse, he really had a crisis about whether to abandon it or not. But in the end, he decided to do so and had it left at the Foundlings Hospital. He went on to do this with five children in total, he claims. He explains this because he wants to make the point that now, looking back, he can see that this was a mistake. However, he sees this as an understandable and good-natured mistake and quite in contrast to that of another person in his memoirs who tells the rest of the world what Rousseau had done with the children. He finds his abandonment to likely death of five infants to have been quite normal, but thinks that telling anyone about this little peccadillo was blackest betrayal of the worst kind.

(The editor notes that at the time of writing, the mortality rate for those kind of abandoned infants was extremely high-- something Rousseau certainly would have known.)

I think that I'm going to write a book review and paint my toenails. I can't stomach much more of this today.

Generally I use my Sundays to wrap up recent reading experiences and calmly think about books from the lofty perch of a safe overview. And I probably will go on to write some reviews today. I have quite a review backlog left over from the summer vacations, including some ARCs which I really need to write about. However, I faithfully try to use my Sunday Salon time to talk about my main reading activities of the day. And I must tell you, dear reader, that reviews are not at the center of my thoughts.

This frustrating annoying lump of wood byproduct that Rousseau called The Confessions is occupying the bulk of my mental energy. When I read the introduction (which was kind of a typical blah blah blah introduction) I noted the "early autobiography blah blah blah" "influence on Proust blah blah blah". And, see, I should have paid attention when he talked about the influence on Proust because then I would have had an inkling how much the narrator of The Confessions was going to irk me. I'd like to borrow an image from the much wiser oursin and think for a moment about book characters who make me want to smack them with a codfish. There is, of course, our friend from A la recherche du temps perdu. There is Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. And now there is the remembered Rousseau in The Confessions. My holy trinity of characters who deserve a codfish.

I'm a little more than halfway through the book right now, and it's taking me quite a long time to read. This is because I get annoyed and have to put it down after reading much less than I might ordinarily read. Today I have promised myself to struggle to get through more pages than I have been able to do so far on a daily basis.

I just got to the point in the book where he recounts how he convinced his mistress of subnormal intelligence (Thérèse Lavasseur) to dump their bastard children at a Foundling Hospital rather than embarrass him in an attempt to raise them. I don't call her subnormal because she puts up with Rousseau. Rather, I call her subnormal because by his own accounts she is unable to tell time or name the months of the year. (edited to say: of course, we only have Rousseau's word that Thérèse was "simple-minded". As this clearly would have been a compliment for him and as it fits with some of his ideas about women and instinct, it is certainly suspect.)

This charming episode comes after his time in Venice in which he cheerfully shares an anecdote where he and a friend bought a pretty eleven year old girl with the intention of debauching her once she reached a decent age of maturity. However, Rousseau reassures us that by the time he left Venice he was so fond of the child that he believes he would have ended up defending her virtue instead of taking it. But, since he had to leave Italy, he isn't sure how the story ends.

Or there was the part where he stole a ribbon from a household where he worked. When caught, he blamed a young servant girl for the theft and says that she gave him the ribbon as a gift. He was believed, and she was dismissed with a bad name. He excuses himself by saying that he had stolen it to give to her and wished that it was the truth that she had stolen it to give to him. He feels bad about it, he tells us, but not too bad.

On the one hand, I keep telling myself that none of us would come off wonderfully well if we wrote a warts and all confession of our sinful selves. On the other hand, he is just so whiny and difficult to like. Even when he isn't being criminal, depraved or irresponsible, his impassioned fluting about his dear "Mamma" (Madame de Warens) make me wish that he would go back to debauching young girls or exposing himself at public fountains (he does that too, in his younger days).

Oh well. He asks us, as readers, not to judge until we make it all the way through the volumes. I will do my very very best to hold up both sides of that contract-- both the not judging part and the making it all the way through part. I am more likely to succeed with the latter than the former.

Anyone out there actually finished The Confessions? Does it get less irritating?

Given everything going on in Georgia and Russia right now, it kind of felt like the completion my Dostoevsky experience was a good use of my Sunday Salon time.

The Possessed (otherwise known as The Devils) the third book that I have read by Dostoevsky. The mandatory Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov were the first two. As usual, I seem to have read the translation which is controversial, largely for being dated. My book is the 1930 Modern Library edition, translated by Constance Garnett. This was the first translation, and the translation is also the reason for the variance in titles with the book. Apparently scholars find The Devils or Demons to be closer to the author's original edition.

Issues with the translation aside, it is a timely read. I actually enjoyed it the most of the three Dostoevsky novels. Although far from intended as primarily humorous, I found it often very funny. If you think of it as a kind of political comedy of manners, then you won't be very far from the truth. (I'm sure that comparison is horrifying somebody, somewhere. Apologies.)

The political sensibilities of the different characters swirl in a palette of nearly slapstick ineffectiveness except in the ability of all to foster discussion. It's as though the writer's stint in Siberia left him with a general distaste for religion of every stripe. The uncomfortable sternness of Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin dominates the novel as the only possible choice of morality. And it doesn't seem to be the most pleasant choice, if I look at the various critical text about the book that uses words like "sociopath" to describe him. I actually felt enormous sympathy with Stavrogin. With the exception of Shatov, he seemed to me the only character in the novel whose treatment by Dostoevsky wasn't ruthlessly satirical. Positioned as he is between his sympathies, his upbringing and his influences the distorted actions seem much more understandable. Sometimes perhaps a bitten ear is the only reasonable explanation. I'm not sure what that says about my mood or personality that I found Stavrogin understandable, but there you go.

The Wikipedia-fueled Internets tell me that The Possessed was originally two novels-- the story of a real political murder combined with a religious book with Stavrogin as the main character. Given the source and the lack of citations, I am not actually sure if it is true. However, I have to say that if it is true than it was a stroke of genius on the part of the author. Stavrogin's struggles with conventional morality would have risked being self-indulgent and dull without the backdrop of the inane political wrangling. On the other hand, without him, the book would have been a dated satire on contemporary Russian politics-- of interest to scholars and academics. Married, the two aspects feed each other. It seems to me to function very well as a novel.

There is undoubtedly much to say about many of the characters. It is a mistake to see only Stavrogin, or even Stavrogin and Shatov. I'm still in the process of chewing through what I feel/think about characters like Kirilov and Maria Timofeevna Lebyadkin. I may need to re-read to say anything smart about the rest.

As I said, I like this the best of the Dostoevsky that I have read. I found Crime and Punishment terribly lugubrious and too much drama. I must say that I read The Brothers Karamazov when I was far too young to really appreciate the book and it lost me fairly effectively. I am thinking that it might be a good idea to circle around and reread it sometime soon. I kept having distant echoes of that work as I read this one. I have the feeling that I might understand it better now.



( one more semi-related thing-- large image )

As I write this, I have recently finished Mortal Love and am trying to marshal my thoughts about the book. I am currently reading The Stolen Child, by Keith Donohue, and find myself this morning thinking at least a little bit about (to steal from Max Luthi) the nature of fairy. I'm not sure if it is a coincidence in my recent reading or a genuine trend, but there seem to be a whole lot of people reinterpreting the Fair Folk for our modern times. And, happily, they are doing so in really interesting ways.

Writers like Tom Deitz, Emma Bull, R.A. MacAvoy and Charles de Lint were one generation earlier in reworking the fae. And I have to admit that I was never very comfortable with the results. Their urban urchins and backwoods Georgia elves never seemed true. It sounds a little mad to criticize a fantasy novel for being escapist, but there you go. Although their novels contained elements of danger or strangeness, the point seemed more about making the mysterious familiar than anything else. Their fae are good lovers, if a little unpredictable. They are only dangerous to the people who deserve the danger. The Unseelie Court exist, but can always be held back by a combination of good humans and the Seelie court working together.

(I may be a bit biased here, because I have a particular dislike for urban fae (despite enjoying the occasional de Lint) that is strongly fueled by an impatience with moonlit neo-Celtic torc-wearing Wiccan types. I generally love MZB to pieces, but The Mists of Avalon did the world a great disservice.)

Here's my thing. Faerie should be frightening. They shouldn't be just like hippies, but with little horns and wings. They aren't evil, because evil makes them too human. They should be Other, and fundamentally poison to humans who are foolish enough to cross their path. I can believe in mutual curiosity. I can even believe in the lone creature who makes the jump across the gulf to the other side. I can't, however, believe that this ever works out well for anyone involved.

Although I have some quibbles with Mortal Love, which I'll get to later, Hand seems to get that aspect of fairy very well. Not love or will can heal the difference between mortals and the fae. I buy a little bit less her notion that much art has been inspired by grief at the difference, but okay-- that's not so obnoxious and fits with the theme.

The Donohue also seems as though it is going to fit well with this theme (although I haven't gotten to the end yet to know for sure). I was trying to think which other books I really admire for their treatment of fairy. I would say The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick. That's a rather explicit subversion of fantasy, and I like it very much. King Rat by China Miéville isn't bad, although I'm not sure that it is much more than a darker version of The War for the Oaks. I actually also really like how Simak treats fairy creatures. But then, I really like Simak and his project is generally something completely different with this kind of thing.

What about you? Do you like seeing fairy lore treated in fantasy/speculative fiction? What do you think about it and what are some of your favorite/least favorite books on the topic?



( more mundane review of the Elizabeth Hand )

This morning, as I get ready to fly to Wisconsin to see my sister, I have been puzzling over this idea about what makes science fiction classic.

Well, to be honest, what I've really been doing is finishing To Open The Sky by Robert Silverberg. So let me spend a moment on that first. As some of you who follow my reviews know, one of my projects lately has been re-reading the fantasy and science fiction books that I enjoyed as a child. That project led me back to the Majipoor Series and Robert Silverberg. Of all of those books, Silverberg is one of the few authors whose work really stood out for me as still being every bit as good as I remember. So lately I have been looking for second hand copies of Silverberg's other books to see if I liked them just as well. To Open the Sky is the first in that effort.

I really enjoyed the book. It is a heady mix of religion, overpopulation, schism, transformation and hope. It took me surprisingly long to read the slim volume (203 pages, in my edition). My only quarrel at all with it was that it sometimes felt a little bit of interconnected short stories more than a novel. And that, dear reader, was exactly what it turned out to be. Wikipedia tells me that To Open the Sky was a fixup of stories originally published by Frederik Pohl in one of his magazines.

What got me thinking about the post today is that Wikipedia also notes about Silverberg that "in 2004 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America". And then I wondered what a grand master was, really. Perhaps just in the genre, perhaps in everything. I'm not sure yet. Sometime a few weeks ago, I did one of those book list memes, this time supposedly the best 100 Science Fiction Novels of all time. In the debate that followed, I kind of set the following thoughts for myself:

• I might be able to make a list of the 100 best science fiction authors, assuming that I had read them all.
  
• I might also be able to make a list of my favorite 100 science fiction books. Although that would take some thinking, honestly.
  
• I do not think that I believe in a list of the 100 best science fiction novels.

So, in other words, I tend to believe in the Grand Master concept, but not in the best books concept.

Here's a question-- can a book be great, even if a writer is not what you would class as "Great"? Can a writer be great if they turn out a lifetime career of solid, but not spectacular books?

Anyhow, if you'd really like to muse on that subject, you should go take a look at sartorias' thread on Greatness. She's much more eloquent than I am.

Have a good Sunday, and I'll see all of you in the flyover states later in the day!

This is another book from my Grandfather's collection of mysteries. I've been slowly reading these since my father died and his belongings were largely moved here.

One of the first things that I did when I finished with this book, is Google "John L. Benton" to try to get some information about the writer. Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot of information about John L. Benton out there, and what information there was seemed to contradict itself. According to one source, John L. Benton was a pen name for Thomas Albert Curry. Another site lists John L. Benton as the pen name for Norman A. Daniels. This was more than a little confusing, since both of these men apparently used quite a variety of pen names. Thomas Albert Curry, for instance, seemed to write quite a few novels as Romer Zane Grey, son of the famous western writer.

More was clear when I found a listing of short stories written by John L. Benton. The listing contained a brief note that Benton was a house pseudonym of the magazines. "His" work was published in a variety of places-- G-Men Detective, Black Book Detective, Triple Detective, Detective Novels Magazine, Thrilling Detective, Popular Detective, etc.

So, no evidence that a real John L. Benton ever existed.

The most popular stories by John L. Benton featured someone called the Candid Camera Kid. This is what the web has to say about the character:

The Candid Camera Kid, sometimes known as Jerry Wade, appeared in Detective Novels from 1939 to 1945. Jerry Wade arrived in "the city" armed only with his camera and looking to get a job at a local newspaper. He is handed an impossible assignment and solves it with aplomb, getting both the job and the nickname "the Candid Camera Kid." Wade used his Kodak Bantam Special to take pictures of everything that came along; when what he sees has to do with crime, as it usually does, he solves it, and when the crooks come at him with fist and knife and gun, he turns into a "wildcat." He was a 26-year-old short, wiry red-head. The blonde and pretty Christine Stuart is the newspaper's crack reporter, and she teams up with Jerry on various cases and becomes his girlfriend. Wade is aided by Sergeant Orr of the local P.D., who values Wade's contributions. (source)

This novel features a different character: Duane of the FBI. This character only seemed to exist in novels from what I can find online (although one of the Duane of the FBI books makes a note that it is a "G-Man Detective Story"). However, the publisher of the book-- Gateway Books-- seems to have specialized in pulp fiction expansion or revision.

Interestingly (to me, anyhow) Gateway Publishers was also a publisher that existed to publish books to lending-libraries. There is an interesting web site about the phenomenon here. That makes sense to me because nearly all of my grandfather's books so far (with the exception of the Perry Masons, which he bought new) have been discards or sale items from local libraries and lending libraries. He wouldn't have had very much money at the period in which he was buying these, but clearly had a serious sweet tooth for pulp fiction of various kinds. I do wish that Pa had saved the dust covers when he bought the books because I was kind of shocked to see that if I had this book with even an indifferent quality dust cover then I could sell the thing for $70.00 or more. But, alas, no dust cover.

The novel itself is of indifferent quality, honestly. I enjoyed it. (I seem to have inherited my grandfather's sweet tooth for pulp.) Enjoyment, however, doesn't make it a standout in the genre. If I compare it to something like The Bandaged Nude, then it seems a poor knockoff in comparison. Duane of the FBI is tough and cynical. The young and enthusiastic are fodder for evil. The villains are vicious and suitably foreign. A good use of a few hours, but nothing more. The plot centers around a string of deaths of prominent art collectors. When Duane is able to link them to a similar string of art thefts, a sinister pattern begins to emerge.

( some margin scribbling )