Yeah...

#. Date completed: Title by Author. # of pages.

1. 1/16: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. 190.
2. 2/4: Don Quixote: Part One by Miguel de Cervantes, trans. Edith Grossman. 449.
3. 2/10: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. 240.
4. 2/17: The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story by Glenway Wescott. 108.
5. 2/21: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aíra. 87.
6. 3/1: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Delmore Schwartz. 202.
7. 3/22: Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver. 526.
8. 4/17: Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño. 227.
9. 5/12: The Assistant by Robert Walser. 295.

Nah...

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

At the conclusion of Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell's journalistic evocation of living in poverty in Paris and London, the writer admits--with an air of humility found throughout the book--that, despite the harrowing experiences he's encountered, he feels as though he doesn't really understand the people who are forced to live in poverty. At first, this seems like false modesty, as the preceding 180 pages have described in detail the revolting conditions in which the impoverished of the time and place were forced to live and work (if they could find any) and a fairly broad cast of colourful characters living on the margins of society. However, in comparing Down and Out with other authors' takes on similar subject matter (Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, Céline's Journey to the End of the Night, everything by Jean Genet, Charles Bukowski, etc.) it becomes clear how little Orwell really does understand, or at least how obvious or intuitive is his view of this world. Orwell seems fundamentally detached from the poverty he lives in, giving the impression of, if not outright slumming, at least allowing himself to slip into poverty because of an academic interest in the subject rather than being genuinely forced to live that way. The journalistic approach is ultimately what makes Down and Out a less convincing work than many others in this genre; neither the characters nor the events have the same vitality as they do in other books.

not gonna do it?

I was merely responding to your "yeah..."

so you're gonna do it?

Nah...

First Part of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, trans. Edith Grossman

I have no idea how to write about this. In a way, it is monumental--suddenly, in reading this seminal text, an entire tradition (i.e. Spanish-language literature) with which I am passably familiar has taken on a heretofore unknown context. Much of what I love in Roberto Bolaño, Juan Rulfo and others begins here: a mishmash of styles (high culture, literary criticism, shit jokes (literally)), ambiguous characters, a bizarre sense of humour stemming from a tension between ideals and reality, episodic narrative (to a fault, maybe). I have but two complaints, one or both of which will presumably be rectified when I read Part Two. First: the lengthy digressions in the narrative (including a novel picked up in an inn and maybe a half-dozen multiple-chapters-long back-stories for characters met along the way) basically bring the main story to a halt toward the end of Part One; I won't count it up but I would estimate at least 2/3 of the last 150 pages is taken up by these digressions. It wouldn't be so bad--hell, the majority of The Savage Detectives is digressions and I love it--if the digressions were actually interesting. Apart from the novel found in the inn (which is where Lothario comes from, something I did not know) the side stories are basically boring romances. Maybe I'm being too harsh. They're fun to read. But there's not much there, and really no reason to have so many of them when they're all basically the same thing. Anyway. My second complaint (which I also make half-heartedly) is the occasional one-dimensional presentation of characters, specifically women: every major female character in the book is beautiful, a paragon of modesty, wholesomeness, intelligence, etc. The characterization just got boring after a while--it really is one after another, every woman getting described in those terms. I had a similar issue with the characterization of Don Quixote in one-dimensional terms early on (the point that he is mad is made over and over and over again in the first 100 pages or so) but after a while his character gets much more complex, his essential intelligence coming through whenever issues of chivalry aren't at hand.

I will refrain from saying more until I read Part Two. When I will do that, I don't know yet. It's on hold for now as I get to some easier reading.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

Just what the doctor ordered. Tiring (somewhat, and absurdly prematurely) of my Classics project, I went to the bookstore and, on the phone with my dad, picked out five (20th c., obviously) books: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by Cesar Aira (which I originally discovered at our old bookstore in Toronto and shortly thereafter by Jimmy), The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story by Glenway Wescott (a more or less random pickup, recommended by Susan Sontag and published by NYRB--very excited for it), two short story collections (Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme and The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor) and this, Walker Percy's first novel, The Moviegoer.

I was hooked from the first page. Where Don Quixote and brief excursions into 19th c. French lit. had felt mildly chore-like even as I enjoyed it, The Moviegoer was a blast from start to finish. The casual (and casually profound) writing instantly and persistently drew me in to the story of a New Orleans stockbroker dealing with the existential malaise brought on by family, friends, societal pressures, his experiences in the Korean War and his constant ruminations on life in general. What ultimately sold me on the book is the balance between Camus/The Stranger-esque existentialism (which borders, it must be said, on the schematic--the narrative illustration of a preconceived notion rather than a great work of literature per se) and an appreciation of character and event that is, as the situation warrants, comic and fraught with pathos. Percy's blending of those two styles is something I've never seen done so masterfully. I feel that this is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

You talked me into looking that up on Amazon and among the list of "Customers Who Bought This Also Bought" was The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. I chuckled.

oh weird! i guess they're both southern. or something.

southern indeed. I read both of them when I was in the south. All I could manage to read by WP was The Second Coming and part of The Moviegoer.

The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story by Glenway Wescott

An admission: the notion of an almost unknown American expatriate author living and writing in France in the 1920s and 30s really appeals to me. If the books by said author happen to be published by NYRB and hailed as masterpieces by Susan Sontag, let's just say I am very, very interested. Such (obviously) is the case with this book, The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story by Glenway Wescott. Of the many American expatriate writers who have come to prominence--Miller, Stein, etc.--the one Wescott is closest to, in my experience, is definitely F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Pilgrim Hawk reads like an incident in The Great Gatsby as seen by a particularly idiosyncratic observer. The story, such as it is, concerns an afternoon at the house of a wealthy young woman, Alex. Staying with her is her friend Alwyn Tower, the narrator of the book. Arriving at the house unexpectedly are Alex's friends, a middle-aged Irish couple named Cullen, accompanied by Mrs. Cullen's pet hawk. The hawk dominates much of the conversation over the 100-odd page novel, various characters (guardedly) reading meaning into it, relating the hawk and its habits to people and their habits. Boiling under the surface of this brief narrative are ruminations on relationships of many different kinds--the platonic relationship of Alwyn and Alex, the love and jealousy of the Cullens, the ways in which the two sets interact with each other and one on one (a lengthy section is dedicated to a monologue given by Mr. Cullen to Alwyn as the two women see to household matters), and, around the edges of the story, the "help": Alex's servants Jean and Eva (a Moroccan couple) and the Cullens' chauffeur, Ricketts: their story remains elusive to the very end. What really makes the book work is the writing, taking this banal premise and turning it, by way of off-handedly exquisite sentences, aphorisms, perfect structure, etc., into a diagnosis of relationships worthy of Flaubert or Renoir.

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aíra

Mini-narrative about a quixotic quest for art and beauty interspersed with the surreal, grotesque, comic and elegiac? YES PLEASE.

I'm reading this book I found in my house, it's just called Stories and has the stories by Jean Stafford, John Cheever, Daniel Fuchs and William Maxwell that, apparently, their respective authors held in the highest regard. I think it's out of print, can't find the cover (not that it's much to look at) anywhere. I want to keep track of the stories as I go along. I will do so here.

"The Liberation" by Jean Stafford - Very different from the kind of writing I'm used to reading, little obvious stylization, mostly urbane and concise, kind of journalistic almost. The story is about a youngish (late 20s) woman trying to escape from her domineering aunt and uncle in small town Colorado to her fiancé who teaches at Harvard. Lots of issues are at play: Western chauvinistic attitudes towards the East (and vice versa), the protagonist's feeling of impotence in her family's house and freedom in her remembrances of trips to New England, wondering if her decision to leave the West is based on love for her fiancé or personal rebellion. The twist that brings the story to its conclusion is saved from melodrama by the ambiguous effect it has on the protagonist: she is at once devastated and empowered with a resolve she had lacked prior to that moment. A very interesting story. A side note: I was skeptical, thinking about the story afterward, of the characterizations of the main character's aunt and uncle - could people really be that passive-aggressive, that chauvinistic, that closed-minded? - until I remembered my ex's experience when she visited her family in rural Nova Scotia: she described them in almost exactly the same words as Stafford characterizes the old folks in this story. Maybe I should get her to read it. She'd probably like it.

"In the Zoo" by Jean Stafford - Not as interesting as "The Liberation", but a nice read nonetheless. Two girls, orphaned at a young age, are sent to live with Mrs. Placer in her boarding house in small town Colorado (the same one as in "The Liberation"). She and her tenants are markedly similar in attitude to the aunt and uncle in "The Liberation"; the girls don't have much going for them, looked down on because they are orphans, from out of town, not very bright, and living with the notorious Mrs. Placer. They make friends with a drunken Irishman named Murphy who has a house full of animals. He gives them a dog, who is very nice until Mrs. Placer corrupts it. The girls are devastated. They go to Murphy to set things straight. The dog kills Murphy's monkey. Murphy kills the dog. Fast-forward, the girls have destructive, unhappy lives until Mrs. Placer dies and they get their shit together. It's convincing enough but I think it would have been better if it hadn't taken place over such a long time and hadn't employed such an air of (ambivalent, it must be said) nostalgia. Engaging more with the day to day reality of the girls' lives after the setup (as opposed to bluntly stating it) could have been more effective.

"Bad Characters" by Jean Stafford - Less interesting again. Very prosaic. Meh.

I'm also reading Flannery O'Connor's Complete Stories. Going to keep some short notes on each story here so I don't forget them.

"The Geranium" - Old man from the South is living with his daughter in her NYC apartment. Apartment across the street has a geranium that reminds him of home. A black man moves into the building. This troubles the old man. Very much a character portrait, the story moves from the present to the old man's reminiscences. Small incidents abound.

"The Barber" - Man in South supports a "niggerlover" in the Democratic primary. At the barber's, he is humiliated by the barber and others who support the more conservative candidate despite not really having a grasp on his policies but being swept away by his rhetoric and character. Main character spends a week preparing an essay with reasons why he supports his candidate. Comes back to the barber and recites it. No one is convinced. Not even the black boy who works there. Interesting portrait of ineffectual liberalism and backwater backwardsness.

"Wildcat" - Blind old man remembers being a blind young man feeling emasculated as he is made to stay with the old women as a wildcat terrorizes the town. In the present, there is another wildcat attack. He tells the young men to stay at home to kill it, to no avail - they go out to hunt it down. He smells it and gets inside in time. A cow is killed. He says I told you so. Rightfully so.

"The Crop" - Lady (spinster?) is an aspiring writer. She writes a story about a farmer and his wife working hard to get a good harvest only to have a storm of biblical proportions ruin their dreams. Their baby, born at that precise time, provides the merest glimpse of hope. It is obvious the woman has no idea what she's talking about as she expresses, at the end, her detestation of people she sees on the street who match the description of her characters. She also doesn't know anything about farming. Silly lady.

I'm also reading In Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Delmore Schwartz. (I have a much older edition than the one shown; the picture is the same but takes up more of the cover and is sepia-toned (though that might just be from age).)

"In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" - I read this several months ago so my memory of it is vague but I remember being kind of blown away by it. Very poetic and dreamy. Kind of about lost illusions, if I remember correctly. And what a great title! So cynical...

"America! America!" - Very different from "In Dreams..." but also, as it turns out, more typical of Schwartz's style. I also read this months ago so my memory of it isn't perfect but it's about growing up Jewish in Depression-era NYC.

"The World is a Wedding" - Longer than the previous two stories put together, this one is sort of an episodic novel-in-miniature. It's even divided into chapters. Maybe kind of like a play. Anyway it's about a group of young Jewish (I assume) intellectuals in Depression-NYC. Some of them have jobs, some of them think their geniuses (and are told as much by others) so don't have jobs and just write plays or short stories that never get performed or published. It's pretty great.

"New Year's Eve" - The style of this one is so funny. It's about people going to a New Year's Eve party that no one but the host is excited for. Basically every line of dialogue is followed by an explanation of what they were actually thinking. Everyone is embarrassed about everything. Kind of tragic but kind of hilarious. The three more normal stories really remind me of Woody Allen. Or Eric Rohmer. Lots of analysis of character. It's great!

"The Commencement Day Address" - A reclusive historian gives a commencement day address to a large group of students, parents and teachers. He ends up going on a pessimistic rant about history being driven by material desires. It's a weird one.

"The Track Meet" - Closer in style to the title story than anything else in the book. Weird dreamy thing about an American showing an Englishman America. Shit doesn't go so good. Nice story.

"The Child is the Meaning of This Life" - Another sort of epic one, like "The World is a Wedding". The least interesting story of the bunch. It would have been a good novel; as it is, it's all plot, with characters quickly described rather than illustrated dramatically (with a couple of exceptions there basically aren't "scenes" in this one, which is kind of annoying, and is why it would have been a good novel--the plot's all there, there's just very little drama).

"Screeno" - Nice ending.

IN SUM: Nice! Up with Dubliners (Joyce) and The Burning Plain (Rulfo) as among my favourite short story collections.

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

Oh he's just the greatest, you know.

Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño

Essentially a book entirely dedicated to an aspect of Bolaño's writing that I had never really taken into consideration before - literary criticism, particularly of made-up authors, movements and tastemakers - and one that honestly doesn't appeal to me isolated as it is in Nazi Literature in the Americas. Towards the end of the book I was thinking about where it fits in to the Bolaño canon. Clearly The Savage Detectives and 2666 are in a different realm from the rest of his work, while The Romantic Dogs, as a book of poetry, is something else entirely, which leaves Nazi Literature in a sphere with Bolaño's other short (i.e. regular-length) novels, Distant Star and Amulet. (While there are many others, these are the only ones I've read; there are also his short-story collections, which might be a better comparison for Nazi Literature, but I haven't read them either - I'll get to them soon enough). Until the last section, I really didn't know what to make of Nazi Literature, but in the last section I realized it must be my least favourite Bolaño, the reason being the last section was by far the best in the entire book, and was itself a sketch that was expanded into Distant Star. So there's that. All in all, an enjoyable enough read as is always the case with Bolaño (and I was in dire need of a fix), but apart from the last section not at all in the same league as his best work.

The Assistant by Robert Walser

This was great. I need to start reading more.

Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories

(not actually the edition I have, presumably it's all the same stories)

"Billy Budd, Sailor" - real good, I like Melville's writing, he uses good words

"The Piazza" - weird story (fantasy?? about going up a mountain?? and meeting a strange girl?? i dunno) but I really do like his words

"Bartleby" - SO GOOD but i knew it would be but SO GOOD

so are you about to start Moby Dick?

Glad to see your reading again....did you give up on ulysses?