A Momentary Taste of Being

I remember liking this very much in college and my recollection of the line of the story was quite vague, so I wanted to reacquaint myself with it.  And what I can say of it is the Death in Venice is a book by a young man that is best appreciated by young men.  The concerns and themes of the novel are such that I left off reading with a sense of, "Well isn't that quaint."  All of the angst and the sturm und drang about art and the purpose of art and the artist as person and the artist as artist--in the light of the remainder of the 20th Century (this was published in 1911) is simply irrelevant.  That said of the book presents us with a quaint artifact of the passions of the early 20th century. On the other hand--the read them--the prescient and exceedingly creepy theme of leibestod--often identified with the "homoerotic" element of the story remains powerful and awful--particularly in light of where this particular Germanic obsession wound up in history.  Whi...

The acquaintance of most with this cycle of sonnets is confined to a single line--oft quoted and oft played upon: "How do I love thee, let me count the ways. . . "  Most have not gone to the effort to find this entire poem (number 43 in the series) nor to understand the poem in its context--the lives of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.  Often it is sandwiched between ornate covers with disturbingly mawkish imagery and a vaguely threatening Helen Steiner Rice sort of presentation.  The prospect, from that one line alone is daunting--shall we enter the den of the grey-eyed harridan who composed this in her draughty loft? But make no mistake about it--this is one of the most powerful sonnet cycles in the language.  Only Shakespeare, and perhaps Rossetti have written more powerful poems--and Shakespeare's is not a single cycle to an end--just a sequence of some of the most beautiful poetry written. The poetry is not in that single line, but all the way t...

By now Neil Postman is old news, even to those who first met him through the aegis of this blog.  However, to achieve closure, a review is in order, a sorting out of those stray thoughts and ideas that fleet-footed flee the mind at the first possible moment unless they are capture, more or less intact, through the medium of a review or some stray scribblings dedicated to them. Postman's book is one that everyone would profit from reading, even if one disagrees with the central thesis.  And we must be very careful to state what the central thesis of the work is because there are those who would have us extend that thesis to realms beyond what Mr. Postman intended in this small work.  It is possible that in other works he expanded upon the central thesis of this one; however for our purposes, the thesis of Amusing Ourselves to Death is that the television medium has irreversibly altered the nature of political discourse in America and in the world.  Several times Mr...

Catching Fire is first, but not only, a more-than-capable sequel to Hunger Games . It is written in the same taut, no-nonsense style as the first and clips along at only a slightly slower pace--and slightly slower is right for the things Ms. Collins wants to continue to explore--violence and the roots of violence, society and when you must accept its mores if not its morals, identity and loss, and other kindred topics. The most important point I want to make is that although Ms. Collins seems to be as popular as Stephanie Meyers, she is by no means in the same class with her and their close association on many fan sites does a bit of injustice to Ms. Collins, who is a most capable writer. I start to read one of her books and have a hard time putting it down, for sleep, for miles, for driving, to and from places. I can't explain what the attraction is.  Perhaps you are so engaged with the characters it is hard to part from them--you are so wrapped up in their dilemmas and problem...

Thanks in large part to the recommendations and comments of the great many bloggers in Literary Land, I have come upon some wonderful books to read both this year and last.  Without Mr. Myers, I would have left The Believers on the shelf and have missed a really fine book as a result.  That is only one example among many--another blogger alerted me to Amellie Nothomb, and so forth.  But Maeve Brennan was for me my own discovery.  Ever since I found the very short novel The Visitor on the shelf of the downtown Kissimmee library (from which it subsequently vanished without a trace) I have a been a fan, seeking out Ms. Brennan's work wherever I could find it.  And I have found only one book on the library shelves-- The Springs of Affection , from which I have posted numerous times. Ms. Brennan's art takes the form of chronicling unhappy marriages--deeply unhappy people married to one another and seemingly unable to live without one another, but relentlessly an...

Okay.  How to start this review. Perhaps a couple of facts. Flew home Friday night.  While Sam was at dance Saturday visited the library. Read Hunger Games Saturday.  Sunday, visited the library again to pick up the sequel. Yes--it was that good.  I've long known that when you want to read some really fine fiction you should head over to the juvenile and YA shelves.  Unlike adults, children and young adults have no patience with writing that is not engaging and fulfilling.  They have no time for books that wind around and around and around and come out . . . nowhere. So, I have to say that without reservation Hunger Games is one of the finest pieces of fiction, adult, YA, children's I've read in a while.  Engagingly written from the point of view of Katniss--a young lady living in District twelve the novel tells the story of the Hunger Games --a brutal means of reinforcing the central power of Capital City in the nation of Panem.  Every ye...

It is one of my great regrets in life that I often come late to the table.  I have read two other Madeleine St. John novels and picked this up right before my trip and was drawn in.  In preparing to write a brief review, I looked her up only to find that she died in 2006--what a shame, because I, for one, could do with a great many more books like this one. Most of Ms. St. John's novels are simple domestic dramas--sometimes tragedies, but in this case a kind of uxb planted firmly in the middle of a loving marriage which inexorably changes the marriage.  Flora Beaufort and her husband Simon are a happily married couple when Flora visits France with their three children while Simon stays behind to become embroiled in an affair with a young accountant.  Flora returns home and begins to take more seriously the question of God and religion which disturbs Simon deeply.  He tries to control the direction of this while carrying on the affair. From these contours you...

As you may have discovered here, often these reviews are merely a summation of what has been posted over several days or weeks.  Last night I finished reading Ms. Heller's book and find myself today with the task of rendering some synopsis of my experience which will translate my delectation and delight or my onerous task into a distillation of recommendation. Let's dispense with that immediately--Ms. Heller's book is one of the best recent books I have read in the past year.  (I don't want to try to compare it to Mrs. Dalloway, Ulysses , or The Sun Also Rises , all rather daunting companions in the literary way.)  I think I say enough when I note that while it hasn't replaced Yiyun Li's The Vagrants in my affections, it has certainly risen to thosse heights--heights marked by a desire to reread the book almost immediately to catch what wasn't caught the first time through. The story, such as it is, is simple enough, Audrey Litvinoff's husband Joel ...

Perhaps it would be a good idea for me to contextualize how I came to finish this book to forestall any complaints or misapprehensions about the insufficiency of my review.  Yesterday, I took Sam (my son) to Disney Hollywood Studios so that he could ride Rockin' Rollercoaster a record (for him) 21 times.  The park was crowded, more so than is expected for a week this far from Christmas in December, and the waits were long (at first) and even though we ended up with six fast pass rides and two cast-member accompanied entrances, it took the whole day to finish the challenge.  And so, I had the leisure to sit and read. (On good days, because of my sinuses, I can manage that particular Roller Coaster once--on bad days it's better not to think about it.)  Because Wolf Hall is something of a tome to haul about, I opted for M. Le Clézio's slender volume. The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts consists of 11 short stories, each superb in its own right, all bound together by...

It was not until I had finished the book and allowed it to rest overnight that I realized one of the major triumphs of this skillful first novel by Yiyun Li--she managed to allow the reader to forget, for a moment, fact and history as we knew them--until she was ready to slap us in the face with them at the end of the novel--reminding us of what happened in the real world. The novel is wonderfully constructed and centers around the aftermath of the arrest and trial of a counterrevolutionary "criminal."  To say much more than this would give away too much of the main line of the story.  But it isn't in the main contours that this novel has its greatest interest.  The real interest lies in the careful development and revelation of the characters, in their transformation, and in their interactions. In fact, there are so many characters, so fully developed, following so many different story lines and fates, that you might term this an "ensemble novel."  It's d...

I first encountered the name Amélie Nothomb at Tony's Book World and given the high recommendation there and elsewhere concluded that I had better get cracking.Given my fondness for all things Japanese, Fear and Trembling seemed like a good place to start. Fear and Trembling is the story of a young woman of European ancestry who has spent a great deal of time in East Asia applying for and receiving a job with the Japanese firm.  The story centers around her progressive discovery of the sense of Japanese Business culture and her attempts to accomodate it. No matter what she does to please her supervisors, most of them come back with insults and criticisms of her work.  This sets the mood and the tone of the book: from Fear and Trembling Amélie Nothomb Mister Haneda was seion to Mister Omochi, who was senior to Mister Saito, who was senior to Miss Mori, who was senior to me. I was senior to no one. You could put this another way. I took orders from Miss Mori, who t...

I had only recently become acquainted with William Trevor in the form of The Hill Bachelors when I recommended reading this to the small book group I am part of.  One of those book group members stops by often, and so I must be very careful with what I say and how so as not to ruin any of the book for her.  However, that shouldn't be too difficult because this is not so much a book run by plot and story as it is a book suffused through and through with character and individual history. Love and Summer is the story of a young married woman who discovers the thrill of being in love for the first time--with a man not her husband.  In the hands of lesser writers, we would have had far too many intimate details of this liaison.  But Trevor is less interested in the details of the affair than in the details of the lives of the people involved.  In the course of this short history, we learn about the past of at least six characters--the lovers, her husband, a brot...

I first became acquainted with Mr. Gaiman's work through the illustrated Sandman stories and while I enjoyed these very much, I must admit that I did not follow the legions of fans into the world of his fiction and novels.  Apparently that was my loss.  Last year I picked up Coraline and found it one of the creepiest things I had read in years.  And yesterday I picked up The Graveyard Book .  While it didn't raise goosebumps the way Coraline did, it has its own special charms. The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody Owens, a young boy adopted by ghosts in a local cemetary after he wanders away from the house where the rest of his family has been killed.  Having been welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Owens into the family they always wanted to have, Nobody is granted the Freedom of the Graveyard and is watched over by Silas and a host of others.  Owens grows up in the cemetary and, naturally, has any number of adventures there. The writing is, as usual with ...

I've posted excerpts from Liquidation over the past few days, and now comes the time to make some estimation of the book as a whole.  It's very difficult to do, not because I don't know how I feel about it, but because it is difficult not to gush and enthuse. I don't know enough about Mr.Kertész's opus to say whether this is a major or minor work in it.  Regardless, it is a major work of lliterature and one that parades a seemingly endless set of influences and patterns throughout.  B., a writer and a translator and one of the rare few born in Auschwitz/Birkenau and surviving to adulthood commits suicide.  Those he has worked with, his ex-wife, his lover, and those closest to him (although I'm not certain that any one of these people could be called a friend) are affected by this in different ways.  The protagonist of the book Kingbitter is searching for a lost manuscript that he is certain exists.  Much of the book is told in the form of a clairvoyant ...

Having now completed the very short novel, indeed novella, The Visitor , I am quite eager to read everything else written by this author.  It is with some relief that I can report that much is still in print . I will probably seek out the books of short stories one by one.  In the afterword to the novel, the editor suggests that The Visitor is an excellent place to start for an introduction to the themes of Maeve Brennan's fiction.  To this, I cannot speak, but it certainly is an excellent introduction to a writer of enormous power. The Visitor is the story of a young woman who returns "home" to her Grandmother's house after the death of her mother in Paris.  She returns with the intent to stay, however: from The Visitor Maeve Brennan "Grandma, what did you mean just now, 'only for a visit'? I was really hoping to stay here for good." Mrs. King turned to her. "No, Anastasia. That's out of the question. You kept the flat there, di...

Because I'm in a dreamsome mood, let us suppose for a moment that some unnamed someone were to approach me on the street say, yesterday, and were to say, "We need 500 words on Dubliners , stat.  We're doing to press next Thursday.  I'll need them by Tuesday if we're to set them."  (Why they should say such an unaccountable thing, I cannot begin to imagine, but it's my dream, so let's let that be for a moment.)  And let us also say that this mysterious someone offered me both monetary remuneration and copies of the monumental study of which this 500 words is to be a part  (or more likely, the bird-cage liner that needs a filler.) Let us suppose this bolt from the blue.  What then, would I do? Before anything else I would sit down and read three stories from the collection--the three that, for whatever reason, have left an indelible impression on me.  (Actually four--but let's start with three).  First, I would pick up "Araby,"  next I ...

What might I say to encourage and every one of you to go and seek out the marvelous little story?  Well to start, it's by Herman Melville, and if there were ever disincentive to an act, I'm sure that name is it.  But in charity, let us avert our eyes from the educational system that taught us this aversive behavior and say that there is always time to recover from early traumas. Give him time and undivided attention, and Herman Melville will repay you--often in the form of a story like no other. And, this story is it. The difficulty is how to entice without revealing too much?  Perhaps a description--take "The Fall of the House of Usher," strip it of its lovely excesses, bathe it in a briny solution for an hour or two, flip it on its head, and voila , "Bentio Cereno." Not helpful, you say.  And you're right.  So, what if you take Treasure Island , strand it in the doldrums, have a desert island with a thousand axe-wielding Fridays. . . okay, I admit ...

For a long time, I've felt an odd affinity to Joyce Carol Oates.  It is odd in the sense that while I do not like most of her stories, I often found myself in love with her prose, which is so mutable and so perfectly attuned to where she is going in her stories.  I've read only a very small portion of her opus (which is of Dostoevskian proportions and makes one wonder about the temporal lobe epilepsy theory).  I found a sort of spiritual home in this book because her view of the writing life, and my own coincide on all major points. Let's start with an essential: from "What Sin to Me Unknown" in The Faith of a Writer Joyce Carol Oates Not "realism" (a convention most people believe to be primary) but a kind of "surrealism" is the mode of storytelling that seem to have predated all others. Legends, fairy tales, ballads, the earliest preserved drawings and other works of "primitive" art are not at all realistic but magical, with...

I've posted some excerpts from this volume in previous days.  As I finished the book last night I noted several more that I would like to share. A fair portion of the end of the book (two or three labeled sections) are devoted to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife. A Moveable Feast is an autobiographical reflection on the Paris Years of Ernest and Hadley (his first wife) Hemingway. In the course of it we meet Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, Sylvia Beach, F. Scott Fitzgerald and a host of others including either Hilaire Belloc or Alistair Crowley, depending on whether or not you believe Ford. Reading it, I reflected that if Hemingway were your friend, he would be a good friend indeed, and if he were not, well he might still seem so depending upon how dense you are. Critics fault Hemingway's late prose for becoming a parody of the taut style he developed early in his career; but to my ignorant ears, the prose in this book did not sound that way.  There are o...

William Trevor has been known to the rest of the world for some time as one of the premier creators of short fiction. I have managed to remain ignorant of him for lo, these many years, much to my own detriment and sorrow. And this ignorance is just a symptom of a wider systemic problem.  In a world where thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of books are released each year, how in the world does one keep track of all the worthy writers?  Perhaps that is a question for another post.  For now, a review of Mr. Trevor's book. The Hill Bachelors collects twelve stories on subjects as varied as the trails and traumas of a monk's vocation ("The Virgin's Gift)", the painful aftermath of Irish Independence and "the troubles" that eventually resulted in it ("Low Sunday, 1950"), a professor who discovers (or not) that rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated ("Death of a Professor"), and a Belfast con-woman's play for more mone...