Now reading...

[BillF]

I was also on some long flights this weekend. I reread Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, which I think is a solid novel about an artist thinking over her past and the traumas of childhood that helped shape her art. Somewhat curiously, her relations with her parents and brother were very solid, but she was tormented by a small group of "friends." It goes into other aspects of her life as well, and might fairly be called a feminist take on the bildungsroman tradition. Perhaps my favorite part of the novel is how she describes the outskirts of Toronto getting more developed.

Even I experienced this in my little hometown where the open field we crossed to get to school turned into a whole bunch of houses the last time I was back. There was a "huge" woods behind the school where we would explore for hours. I assume much of that is also developed. I also can't imagine my wife letting the kids wander around for hours on their own, even in relatively safe Vancouver.

Very much echoes my experience. During my childhood I lived in the suburbs of Cardiff, Sunderland and Leeds. In each case there were fields within a few yards of our house, all of which have now been built on. Revisiting via Google Street View often brings a shock! (Apologies to final preposition freaks! )

[jazzbo]

Matthew, I've read the Chandler about four times over three decades and it's fascinating, I get something new and different out of it each time.

Right now

[paul secor]

Bruce Chatwin's Utz

[Pete C]

[Pete C]

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. This is really a great novel. There's not much action, but Chandler explores major emotional issues in this book. It stuck me at the end that why Philip Marlowe in so invested in Terry Lennox is not so much because of the mysteries of friendship, but rather Marlowe was getting a look at his own inner life through the mirror of his relationship with Lennox. This Lennox who has no depth or reality to him, as Lennox himself says: "In here, he [Lennox] tapped his chest with the lighter -- "there isn't anything. I've had it, Marlowe. I had it long ago." I think what's haunting Marlowe about his relationship with Lennox is the worry that he, Marlowe, is just like Lennox: He's had it, there's nothing in his life, Marlowe is empty. It struck me that the ending in Robert Altman's movie of this book is a literal rendition of what Marlowe did emotionally to Lennox at the end.

Yeah, that's Chandler's deepest, most emotionally complex novel. The classics that precede it are great, but he ups the ante here.

He lost his wife and essentially his career shortly after it was published.

In 1954 Pearl Eugenie (Cissy) Chandler died after a long illness. Heartbroken and drunk, Chandler neglected to inter Cissy's cremated remains, and they sat for 57 years in a storage locker in the basement of Cypress View Mausoleum.

After Cissy's death, Chandler's loneliness worsened his propensity for clinical depression; he returned to drink, never quitting it for long, and the quality and quantity of his writing suffered.[5] In 1955, he attempted suicide; literary scholars documented that suicide attempt. In The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, Judith Freeman says it was "a cry for help," given that he called the police beforehand, saying he planned to kill himself. Chandler's personal and professional life were both helped and complicated by the women to whom he was attracted — notably Helga Greene (his literary agent); Jean Fracasse (his secretary); Sonia Orwell (George Orwell's widow); and Natasha Spender (Stephen Spender's wife), the latter two of whom assumed Chandler to be a repressed homosexual.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler

In each case there were fields within a few yards of our house, all of which have now been built on. .. (Apologies to final preposition freaks! )

Upon which all have now been built. Not.

[ejp626]

In each case there were fields within a few yards of our house, all of which have now been built on. .. (Apologies to final preposition freaks! )

Upon which all have now been built. Not.

You can sidestep the rule sometimes -- "all of which have now been developed." As a rule, I don't get too hung up on such rules, but if it is nagging at me, I do try a rewrite. (In all these examples, the phrase is passive, which is also to be avoided... )

[Head Man]

I came to Paul Auster after reading that he was married to Siri Hustvedt, who is probably my favourite contemporary author. Although I gave up on his New York Trilogy this one has really got me hooked. Well written, with a good plot I really need to revisit his other work when I finish it.

[ejp626]

I came to Paul Auster after reading that he was married to Siri Hustvedt, who is probably my favourite contemporary author. Although I gave up on his New York Trilogy this one has really got me hooked. Well written, with a good plot I really need to revisit his other work when I finish it.

Obviously, your experience may vary, but most of Auster's work is more like the New York Trilogy than Brooklyn Follies. Still, you might like The Invention of Solitude, or at least the first half which is about Auster's father.

[A Lark Ascending]

A good one volume history. Neither romanticises nor demonises.

Just started:

[BillF]

[Pete C]

Still, you might like The Invention of Solitude, or at least the first half which is about Auster's father.

I'm not a big fan of Auster's fiction, but that's a brilliant book, especially the first part. I taught it once in a course on experimental nonfiction. Before Hustvedt he was married to one of my favorite writers, Lydia Davis, who is the mother of the son the other half of that book is about.

[jlhoots]

Carlos Fuentes: The Death Of Artemio Cruz

[Pete C]

Carlos Fuentes: The Death Of Artemio Cruz

One of those guys I can appreciate but have trouble reading. Too grand & maximalist for my taste. He was teaching in the writing program at Columbia my first semester in 1978, but being a rookie I didn't get my first choice of workshop instructor and was stuck with a total mediocrity named Hilma Wolitzer (whose daughter Meg has subsequently eclipsed her).

[ejp626]

Carlos Fuentes: The Death Of Artemio Cruz

One of those guys I can appreciate but have trouble reading. Too grand & maximalist for my taste. He was teaching in the writing program at Columbia my first semester in 1978, but being a rookie I didn't get my first choice of workshop instructor and was stuck with a total mediocrity named Hilma Wolitzer (whose daughter Meg has subsequently eclipsed her).

I've not read all that much Fuentes, but I did like Christopher Unborn (wonder if I'd still like it).

[kinuta]

The Troubled Man - Henning Mankell

Suitably downbeat end to the Wallander series. LeCarre meets Ingmar Bergman. I wish they would lose the Sir Kenneth picture, it ruins the cover.

Case Histories - Kate Atkinson

Excellent, full of witty insights. I wonder how the following Jackson Brodie books compare to this ?

[ejp626]

In the midst of Findley's Headhunter. Definitely an interesting read (or rather re-read). Findley imagines Toronto if Kurtz (from Heart of Darkness) was released from his book and ended up in charge of a mental hospital. Not sure how that came together in his imagination, but interesting.

Just completed Carol Shields Various Miracles, which is a collection of short stories. Most of them didn't grab me. Still, I decided to pick up her earlier short story collection The Orange Fish when I saw it at the library.

Happy Bloom Day everyone! There may be a thread devoted to it, but here is as good as anywhere. I've actually read Ulysses twice and may tackle it once again (in 5+ years). BBC Radio 4 has done a reading/dramatization of much of it (not the entire thing) and the podcasts can be downloaded for approx. 2 weeks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ulysses

[BillF]

Just completed Carol Shields Various Miracles, which is a collection of short stories. Most of them didn't grab me. Still, I decided to pick up her earlier short story collection The Orange Fish when I saw it at the library.

Happy Bloom Day everyone! There may be a thread devoted to it, but here is as good as anywhere. I've actually read Ulysses twice and may tackle it once again (in 5+ years). BBC Radio 4 has done a reading/dramatization of much of it (not the entire thing) and the podcasts can be downloaded for approx. 2 weeks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ulysses

Very much liked Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries and Larry's Party and less so Unless, but haven't tried the short stories.

I must be among the millions who have read bits of Ulysses, but not the whole book.

[A Lark Ascending]

I must be among the millions who have read bits of Ulysses, but not the whole book.

Me too!

Heard bits of that BBC version last night, drifting in and out of sleep. Sounded intriguing but I can't imagine I'd be any more successful reading it now - I like a narrative!

Just started this:

I love Gaddis on the Cold War (though not always his conclusions!); thought this a good way to kick start yet another year teaching the topic.

[BillF]

I must be among the millions who have read bits of Ulysses, but not the whole book.

Me too!

Heard bits of that BBC version last night, drifting in and out of sleep. Sounded intriguing but I can't imagine I'd be any more successful reading it now - I like a narrative!

Just started this:

I love Gaddis on the Cold War (though not always his conclusions!); thought this a good way to kick start yet another year teaching the topic.

Nice to know the Cold War is now history! Was even more gratified to realise that Thatcher was already history ten years ago when she appeared on my daughter's school history syllabus!

[A Lark Ascending]

Nice to know the Cold War is now history! Was even more gratified to realise that Thatcher was already history ten years ago when she appeared on my daughter's school history syllabus!

From the preface to Gaddis' general account of The Cold War, where he explains why he decided to write a one volume survey:

EVERY MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY afternoon each fall semester I lecture to several hundred Yale undergraduates on the subject of Cold War history. As I do this, I have to keep reminding myself that hardly any of them remember any of the events I'm describing. When I talk about Stalin and Truman, even Reagan and Gorbachev, it could as easily be Napoleon, Caesar, or Alexander the Great. Most members of the Class of 2005, for example, were only five years old when the Berlin Wall came down. They know that the Cold War in various ways shaped their lives, because they've been told how it affected their families. Some of them - by no means all - understand that if a few decisions had been made differently at a few critical moments during that conflict, they might not even have had a life. But my students sign up for this course with very little sense of how the Cold War started, what it was about, or why it ended in the way that it did. For them it's history: not all that different from the Peloponnesian War.

Edited June 17, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

Nice to know the Cold War is now history! Was even more gratified to realise that Thatcher was already history ten years ago when she appeared on my daughter's school history syllabus!

From the preface to Gaddis' general account of The Cold War, where he explains why he decided to write a one volume survey:

EVERY MONDAY AND WEDNESDAY afternoon each fall semester I lecture to several hundred Yale undergraduates on the subject of Cold War history. As I do this, I have to keep reminding myself that hardly any of them remember any of the events I'm describing. When I talk about Stalin and Truman, even Reagan and Gorbachev, it could as easily be Napoleon, Caesar, or Alexander the Great. Most members of the Class of 2005, for example, were only five years old when the Berlin Wall came down. They know that the Cold War in various ways shaped their lives, because they've been told how it affected their families. Some of them - by no means all - understand that if a few decisions had been made differently at a few critical moments during that conflict, they might not even have had a life. But my students sign up for this course with very little sense of how the Cold War started, what it was about, or why it ended in the way that it did. For them it's history: not all that different from the Peloponnesian War.

Reminds me of Philip Larkin's words in his introduction to All What Jazz (1970), a collection of his jazz criticism articles. He imagines his audience as "fathers of cold-eyed lascivious daughters on the pill, to whom Ramsay McDonald is coeval with Rameses II".

[ejp626]

I must be among the millions who have read bits of Ulysses, but not the whole book.

Me too!

Heard bits of that BBC version last night, drifting in and out of sleep. Sounded intriguing but I can't imagine I'd be any more successful reading it now - I like a narrative!

It's not the easiest thing in the world for sure. In general, I find that the extreme snobbery and exclusiveness of the high modernists hasn't served them well. 'Oh, you mean I have to have a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature and even read a bit of Greek in order to understand your work? Pass.'

And Joyce is by no means the worst. I keep looking at my copy of Pound's Cantos, saying why did I order this? I will never read through the whole thing. My goal for this year is to skim it once and take it to a bookshop. As it happens, I was reading (probably in the Guardian) that some editors have spent 20 years revamping Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. It's just coming out on Penguin. I even had it in my Amazon basket, and I said to myself -- what are you doing -- you will never in your life finish this book. And I came to my senses just in time.

[jlhoots]

Jo Nesbo: Snowman

[Jazzmoose]

The modernist poets may be annoying and pretentious, but the highlight of my schooling was when I was called on to read the second half of A Game of Chess from The Wasteland and proceeded to do so in my best Pythonesque housewife voice...

[Matthew]

The modernist poets may be annoying and pretentious, but the highlight of my schooling was when I was called on to read the second half of A Game of Chess from The Wasteland and proceeded to do so in my best Pythonesque housewife voice...

What is that noise now? What is the wind doing? Nothing again nothing.

Edited June 18, 2012 by Matthew