It was sharp and exquisite and deliciously painful

Every day that passed nibbled away some of my meager capital of happiness. That isn't the right word, but as I can't find another, and as people are always talking about happiness, I am obliged to make do with the word myself.

The Train, by Georges Simenon, has been nibbling away at my conscience since I put it down over a week ago.

It turned out not to be the book I expected it to be, and it is all the finer for it.

I had expected some kind of psychological suspense, some small mystery — the sort of thing I've come to expect from Simenon. Man walks away from his ordinary life, to finally really start to live. And on the other side of the tracks he discoveres life with prostitutes and other criminal elements; he may become involved in crime, even murder, himself. What the reader generally discovers is the seedy side of of an ordinary mind. It's what happens when you give in to impulse, desire, your baser instincts; when you let the monster of existential dread crawl out of a tiny crevice in your brain, the monster sets up house and governs your affairs.

That's what most Simenon novels feel like (his romans durs).

Early on it dawned on me that The Train was not a typical roman dur. It was some kind of war story, and potentially, since Marcel is riding a train going god knows where, and his story becomes entwined with that of a Jewish woman, a story about the Holocaust — not the sort of thing I like reading about, although far more horrific than any "horror story" in the conventional sense.

But the book isn't that either.

Altogether my impression, when war broke out, was that fate was playing another trick on me and I was not surprised for I was practically certain that was going to happen one day.

This time it wasn't a microbe, a virus, a congenital deformity of heaven knows what part of the eye — the doctors have never been able to agree about my eyes. It was a war which was hurling men against one another in tens of millions.

The idea was ridiculous, I realize that. But the fact remains that I knew, that I was ready. And that waiting, ever since October, was becoming unbearable. I didn't understand. I kept wondering why what was bound to happen didn't happen.

What was bound to happen didn't happen.

Marcel is not led to his death. He does not commit murder or consort with prostitutes. In fact, he doesn't even walk away from his life — at least, not in a very deliberate way.

The story: As Nazi tanks approach, Marcel's family takes the decision to leave, or rather they go with the flow, and end up leaving, just like everybody else. They board the train, but Marcel is separated from his pregnant wife and his little girl. And Marcel doesn't seem to know how he feels about this. And when Anna boards the train, Marcel starts to feel a little differently.

Anna's mysterious and exotic, and maybe a little dangerous. But she is also a very sympathetic character, for whom the cicumstances may be consequential.

It's a distressing novel because it's about doing the right thing, and it forces you to consider what the right thing is. How often when we do the right thing is it the socially expected thing, the socially accepted thing? Doing right is an adherence to social norms and standards; it has very little to do with being good. Often, "right" and "good" coincide. But it's devastating when they come into conflict.

The horror in this novel is subtle. It has very little to with Nazis or with war, although both contribute to the circumstances in which this particular horror thrives, when man forgets his social contract and his actions are less than human. It's somewhat understandable that when you know the Nazis are coming, your social order starts to fall apart, but the savage animal acts, man against man, are not made more agreeable by acknowledging their source.

So. Here I am talking about brutality, but the novel doesn't really show much evidence of it. It's subtle. Simenon's subtle. It's like this. For example. The train is packed with people wanting out, some have tried to bring all their belongings, others have brought the wrong belongings. And the barmaid favours someone with her favours, and under cover of dark they have sex, right there on the train, inches away from everybody, and really, aren't there more important things toward which to be directing one's attention and energy. The scene (and this sort of behaviour recurs) is not particularly long or lurid, but it's somehow... indecent. And even though it registers on Marcel as such, he starts not to care. And so the slip into something less than civilized.

"Even so, we shall probably never see anything we leave behind again..."

The idea didn't upset me. On the contrary, it filled me with a sort of somber joy, like that of destroying something you have patiently built up with your own hands.

Marcel was a sickly child, till he grew into a sickly youth. He spent years in a sanatorium, and somehow survived to become a weak man. He sheds his home, his material possessions, his family, and his dignity. The thing he clings to and protects with the most fervour is his spare eyeglasses, but one day he stops caring about even that.

I am not ashamed to say that I was happy, with a happiness which bore the same relation to everyday happiness as the sound produced by passing a violin bow across the wrong side of the bridge bears to the nomal sound of a violin. It was sharp and exquisite and deliciously painful.

But perhaps that is also the day he truly loses sight of his life. He is unable to discern what is right, what is good, what is happiness.

Somehow, everything lost comes back to him. (The compass he never had remains lost to him.) When the novel ends, Marcel has "a wife, three children, a shop in the Rue du Chateau." And such an ending was devised to leave a very bitter aftertaste. It's all wrong, but other choices would've been wrong too. All those savage, inhuman acts are still there — when the war is over we are not better people; merely we can manage to apply a shinier veneer.

Maybe Marcel should've lived a different life, maybe he would've been happier then, truer to himself — but probably not. Contrary to the publisher's blurb that Marcel confronts "a blood-chilling choice," rather it is existential spleen–chilling.

[I read this book as part of RIP VI. Had I known more about the story I'd've seen that it doesn't really fit my idea of a chilling autumn read. However, the story is psychologically, morally disturbing, and a very powerful read.]

Out of print

I'm not what you'd call an impulse shopper. I've wanted one of these t-shirts forever, but which one? It had to be a design I liked and a book I loved. Something that expressed something about me. Finally, a day came when I felt I deserved a little something, and about a year and a half after first hearing about these tees, I decided. The Master and Margarita.

The shirt is thin, but it's a good-quality print, and the cut and the feel make for a remarkably comfortable fit. I love it.

(I'm fairly certain now that I want to dress my daughter in Darwin's Origin of Species, but I'll have to think on this for another month or two.)

And, for every purchase, a book is donated to a community in need.

I did in fact read The Master and Margarita (by Mikhail Bulgakov), but it must've been a lifetime ago. I remember Pontius Pilate and the politics of the crucifixion, and something about a cat, bearing some resemblance to my actual cat, but little else. I've been wanting to reread this for several years now, and now I'm really going to have to, so as not to appear a fraud.

An e-version of the translation by Richard Pevear is widely available under a creative commons license.

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret

I got kind of excited last month about there being a new Ondaatje. I got caught up in the hype, and I think I even said, "Ooohh, a new Ondaatje!" But then I thought, wait, do I even like Ondaatje, I don't remember. So by the time I actually picked up The Cat's Table, I had mentally prepared myself for disappointment. It took but a few pages before I was all, oh, Ondaatje, I remember, he's good.

The cat's table is that table in the dining room positioned furthest away form the Captain's table, reserved for those passengers of least consequence. And this is where 11-year-old Michael gets to sit during his 21-day journey from Ceylon to England.

[My mother would've made a similar journey, but she would've been a few years older, a few years earlier. I must ask her about it.]

There's not much happpening in this book. It is a novel — a voyage — of discovery: of passing the time, hearing stories, and plotting adventures, of fast friendships, unknown territory, and gossip. (It's a lot like how I remember camp to be: bonding intensely with a group of strangers over a relatively short period, and making your own fun.) As readers we overhear the passengers' stories and see certain events and have to piece them together much as Michael does.

[O]ur table's status on the Oronsay continued to be minimal, while those at the Captain's Table were constantly toasting one another's significance. That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.

The thing I take away from this novel is how children's experience of things, of life, is always somewhat removed from anything like an adult reality. There. That was a hard sentence to write. I almost said a child's experience is childish, or naive, or incomplete, and that's not exactly true. It's still a perfectly full and true and valid experience, just different.

I think The Cat's Table has this in common with The Fragile Mistress, which I read earlier this summer. In both cases, the "children" are exposed to situations that are beyond their ability to understand them, not because of their age exactly, but because they're not privy to the whole story and have to fill in the blanks by themselves, and the logic drawn upon to smooth over the gaps varies if you're 8, 11, 14, or 39.

You have to be careful with these things. See, I was once a child myself, and there's some stuff I remember, and some stuff I learned. I remember overhearing someone say, about me, you can't expect her to understand, she's just a child (I was almost 8), and I remember being very angry about this. I learned that grown-ups often underestimate children, at least in terms of their capacity to grok. So now I try very, very hard not treat children like children.

[Just this weekend my daughter did something crazy, but I maintained my composure. I heard their voices, her and the girl from a neighbouring cottage, coming through the trees. I didn't know there was a path through these woods, I thought you had to go by the road to access her cottage. Maybe they're coming along the shore, rock-jumping — tricky, but doable since the water level's low. Then I see them, paddling their canoe up onto our tiny shore. And I was horrified! that someone let them — an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old — paddle themselves across the lake. Of course, nobody let them — the canoe was there, and inspiration struck. And then I saw that the both of them were life-jacketed, and the 10-year-old actually seemed to know what she was doing, handled the canoe with more ease than I could, and was very confident in instructing Helena on what to do. So I plastered a smile over my horror, and deep down felt a little proud, happy for her for embarking on her own adventure. Then they paddled out to where J-F was fishing before returning the canoe to its point of origin.

What was my point? Oh, yes. To the 8-year-old mind, canoeing across the lake seemed very reasonable. It is a valid and beautiful experience, and Helena will remember it very differently from how I will.]

The Cat's Table is by far my favourite of the few Ondaatje novels I've read. While the language of the others was more beautiful, more poetic, it also sometimes works to keep the reader at a distance. The Cat's Table, however, is a straightfoward exercise in storytelling, and I was charmed by it. There's nothing pretentious about it, and I recommend it as an entry point to Ondaatje's work.

You might like to give a listen to Jian Ghomeshi interviewing Michael Ondaatje. I met Michael Ondaatje once, at a fundraiser for world literacy — he was a notable attendee, and there were signed copies of The English Patient up for auction. (Come to think of it, Jian was there too, but I didn't meet him, he was the musical entertainment.) Someone actually introduced us while we were milling around near the bar. I had not read anything of his at this point. We made small talk — the weather? travel? — while we drank our drinks. We didn't talk about books at all.

Barefoot

Late at night, after the specially invited First Class passengers had left the Captain's Table, and after the dancing had ended with couples, their masks removed, barely stirring in each other's arms, and after the stewards had taken away the abandoned glasses and ashtrays and were leaning on the four-foot-wide brooms to sweep away the coloured swirls of paper, they brought out the prisoner.

It was usually before midnight. The deck shone because of a cloudless moon. He appeared with the guards, one chained to him, one walking behind him with a baton, We did not know what his crime was. We assumed it could only have been a murder. The concept of anything more intricate, such as a crime of passion or a political betrayal, did not exist in us then. He looked powerful, self-contained, and he was barefoot.

Cassius had discovered this late-night schedule for the prisoner's walk, so the three of us were often there at that hour. He could, we thought among ourselves, leap over the railing, along with the guard who was chained to him, into the dark sea. We thought of him running and leaping this way to his death. We thought this, I suppose, because we were young, for the very idea of a chain, of being contained, was like suffocation. At our age we could not endure the idea of it. We could hardly stand to wear sandals when we went for meals, and every night as we ate at our table in the dining room we imagined the prisoner eating scraps from a metal tray, barefoot in his cell.

— from The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje.

A cat's life

I've been working from home quite a bit over the last month, for various reasons. As with any situation, it has its pros and cons. The drawback that most perturbs me is the paranoid feeling that the second I leave my post — whether the chosen premium location of the day be the bed, the sofa, or the kitchen table — I am usurped.

***************

The feline section of this article on Literary Pets is slight, but I am delighted to learn that Alexandre Dumas had a cat who "each day greeted him in the street as he returned from work." I had a cat who used to do that.

***************

I'm currently reading The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje. It is enchanting, like your grandfather recounting his childhood adventures (or so I imagine). "What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power."

Men of honour

I did it. I finished something by Conrad (The Duel).

Colonel D'Hubert himself, hardened to exposure, suffered mainly in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty in supplying the deficiency. But to loot a pair of breeches from a frozen corpse is not so easy as it may appear to a mere theorist.

Even though I thought it quite funny in spots, there were times I thought this novella dragged. I don't think I'll be trying Nostromo anytime soon, but I believe the curse is finally broken.

This ebook includes a lot of supplementary material, about this story and about duelling. I haven't worked my way through all of it, but I was delighted to discover that the historical duel on which Conrad based his story took place between two French officers, Fournier and Dupont. Being that I live with a Fournier, upon learning this tidbit I can better appreciate the grandiose sense of honour and justice that might lead to the sort of decades-long standoff Conrad described.

A trick of the light

A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny, was a wonderful discovery for me, and the perfect first read for me of RIP VI. It's a detective novel with lots of traditional elements: a sleepy village, eccentric characters, a troubled police inspector (well, they're all troubled, aren't they? — and this one may be less tortured than many). It's not exactly a locked room, but the list of possible suspects is limited to a fairly small group. And there's a big reveal at the end, on a stormy night.

The story: A body's found in Clara's garden, the morning after the big party celebrating Clara's art show. That's pretty much it, but you don't need anything more.

Clara's an artist, so it's natural that she should be surrounded by other artists. And critics and art dealers and a poet. It makes for some wonderful digressions on the nature of art, how much of it inspiration versus hard work, the subjectivity of its value.

One clue leads to an AA meeting, and the cast is then filled out with alcoholics. That leads to some interesting discussions about finding your happy place, whether it's possible for a person to change, and when are people really themselves. And forgiveness, and doing things for the right reasons.

While most of the story takes place in the fictional village of Three Pines (it almost makes me want to take a drive through the Eastern Townships to pinpoint it), Chief Inspector Gamache does have to come into the big city, Montréal (avec un accent), to take care of some business. I do get a kick out of encountering familiar stomping grounds in fiction. (I figure I live about halfway between the Inspector's place edging Outremont and the victim's apartment in the Plateau.)

The thing about this book: it made me feel very smart. Not in a look-at-me-I'm-reading-War-and-Peace kind of way. And not in a I-figured-out-whodunnit-by-page-23 way either. (I've always been really crap at figuring out whodunnit.) But in the way I recognized clues, the way my mind wandered down certain paths. The thing is: I know I was led down these paths, in the way clues and characters were smoothly, elegantly revealed.

The reader may guess, but the reader won't figure it out, as some vital information is withheld. But this does not detract from the pleasure of reading this novel.

I don't have many benchmarks when it comes to mysteries. This book feels a little like Agatha Christie, but not so dated. It doesn't have the verbal flair of Fred Vargas — the conversations and observations here are just as philosophical, but toned down, more natural — but then it doesn't get carried away either with the unbelievable, sensationalistic, or just plain weird plot stuff that Vargas gets away with. It is exactly what it sets out to be, and that's more than can be said for some other mystery books (for example, Erasing Memory, by Scott Thornley, which I read earlier this summer) that veer off into thriller territory or gawd knows what.

A Trick of the Light proved to be very comfortable and very comforting.

Agent Lacoste was exhausted. She wished she could take her bowl of café au lait and a croissant, and curl up on the large sofa by the fireplace. And read one of the well-worn paperbacks from Myrna's shop. An old Maigret. Read and nap. Read and nap. In front of the fireplace. While the outside world and worries receded into the mist.

A Trick of the Light is Penny's seventh book in a series of mystery novels featuring Chief Inspector Gamache. Let me assure you that it stands perfectly well on its own, but it does refer to previous cases and it's evident the characters are evolving. I'll be looking up her previous books. If A Trick of the Light is any indication, they're the perfect thing to have on hand for a rainy day.

Altogether loud and sensuous, almost phonetic

This month's issue of Words without Borders includes a fresh bunch of Polish poetry:

only i am, Justyna Bargielska
Alterity, Jacek Dehnel
I Wish I Had a Master, Julia Fiedorczuk
Old-Fashioned, Edward Pasewicz
Adjectival Poem, Piotr Sommer
Bugging, Piotr Sommer
Utensils Shrink, Piotr Sommer

These poets are new to me, with the exception of Sommer, who is fast becoming a favourite.

This from "Bugging" (in the sense of eavesdropping; I would've translated the title differently, maybe "What's Overheard," or "The Overhearing" to preserve the nounishness, but hey, I passed on the poetry translation career option years ago):

Bah, wires can chirp almost as well,
so it's easy to confuse them. It's altogether loud
and sensuous, almost phonetic.
[...]
And no way to avoid the brown-eyed gaze of the pansies,
which have all but disappeared now from the flower beds,
forced out by nasturtiums and marigolds. No flower beds either.
All the hazel eyes are rotting now underground.

RIP VI

It's been a few years since I followed along with Carl's annual autumnal Halloween-mood-based challenge, Readers Imbibing Peril (RIP). The goal is to celebrate books that might be classified in the following genres: Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. Dark fantasy. Gothic. Horror. Supernatural.

I'm pretty noncommittal with respect to reading goals, but sometimes it just feels right.

Having just come off 5000 pages of political romance, I'm looking to switch gears and clear my way through some of the books that inadvertently got set aside. As it happens, a number of them fit the above-mentioned categories.

A Trick of the Light, Louise Penny. Mystery (of the cozy variety). I was drawn to this book by the Montreal backdrop.

The Train, Simenon. Psychological suspense. Because I think Simenon's amazing.

The End of the World in Breslau, Marek Krajewski. Noir mystery thriller. I read the first of this series a few months ago and was struck by the unique setting — 1930s Nazi-run Wrocław.

Eyes to See. Joseph Nassise. Creepy supernatural suspense horror thriller. This one's a review copy. Heck, I'll give anything a try. And the cover looks pretty demonic.

And this might be the year I pick up Shirley Jackson's classic, The Haunting of Hill House.

Fire and ice

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one."

This series of books alone, with its vast array of characters, offers a reader hundreds of lives: lords, princes, queens, whores, fools, pawns, swordsmen, witches, holymen.

I've finished A Dance with Dragons, book five of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. This series has been quite the unexpected 5000-page diversion for me these last few months. I'd planned on reading all sorts of things this summer. Instead I found myself embroiled in the politics of Westeros.

I've been reading it sunny days on the boat, rainy days curled up on the sofa, late into the night, with my morning coffee. Sure, I read a few smaller novels alongside these, but the world of A Song of Fire and Ice has sprawled across my summer.

The standout book for me is book three (A Storm of Swords), but each of them has its key events and players and shifting tides.

A Dance with Dragons had a lot of hype to live up to. I'm disappointed that this book had almost nothing about Arya, whose storyline and current circumstances I find most intriguing. There's little about Cersei and Jaime, nothing of Sansa or Sam. But instead Martin returns us to Tyrion and Jon, whose respective stories had been ignored in book four. One thing I dislike about this book is the new trick of naming chapters coyly (for example, The King's Prize, or The Blind Girl) instead of owning up immediately to the character perpective being taken as has been the tradition so far. But I guess the suspense ultimately pays off.

I'm devastated that certain people die.

The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. Summer dug up a severed arm, black and covered with hoarfrost, its fingers opening and closing as it pulled itself across the frozen snow. There was still enough meat on it to fill his empty belly, and after that was done he cracked the arm bones for the marrow. Only then did the arm remember it was dead.

This series is addictive. The world is detailed, the characters (most of them) are fully three-dimensional. Life here is ethically complicated. There are bits that drag, but Martin always kept me wanting to know what happened next. I'm already looking forward to The Winds of Winter.

Conrad and me

"Drop this! I won't fight with you. I won't be made ridiculous."

"Ah, you won't?" hissed the Gascon. "I suppose you prefer to be made infamous. Do you hear what I say? ... Infamous! Infamous! Infamous!" he shrieked, rising and falling on his toes and getting very red in the face.

My grade 11 history teacher wore a brown leather jacket, Lennon specs, and a beard. He was a Harley-riding born-again Christian. Mr Osgan encouraged all sorts of strange ideas. For example, we did a unit on Ancient India, which may not sound so strange in these enlightened times, but back in my day, the classes of my peers were essentially limited to the big three: the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.

Naturally, the course material lent itself to discussion of philosophy and religion, and really, that's all your typical hormonal teenagers really want to talk about. I don't think it was just me; most kids thought he was pretty cool, laid-back, like, he got it, man.

He'd go off on all sorts of interesting tangents. It seemed to me they were all about road trips, and meeting hippies and drinking tea and playing sitar. No, he probably didn't tell us any stories quite like that, but he may as well have, man, that was totally the aura he exuded.

For some reason, Mr Osgan seemed to think I was pretty bright, and he gave me A++s (that's double pluses) on my essays. I wrote something on Lucretius and Epicureanism. Then there was this thing on Pythagoras's Table of Opposites and how Pythagoras was clearly(!) influenced by Eastern philosophy. I had to present that to the class. Mr Osgan told me he was giving me bonus points for having conducted the whole seminar barefoot, that it somehow enhanced the material. But I hadn't given it any thought. I was just reckless that week. That was the week my mom went to visit my sister, and I stayed home alone with my big brother, though you can't really say my brother was very present. I had friends over, and stayed out late, and didn't prepare for my project at all. I just left my shoes somewhere, or my feet hurt or something. It was spring, and warm and sunny.

Anyway, before all that stuff, on the very first day of class — history was my home room — Mr Osgan had us fill out some basic information about ourselves, things related to culture and language and religion, I think, and we had to respond to something like, I dunno, "How would you describe yourself," or "What do you want me to know about you?" — something like that. And I remember I wrote that I was "a prolific reader" and I think I was going through my Somerset Maugham phase and I said something about that, but then I worried a long time, for days, about whether I'd used the word "prolific" correctly.

So Mr Osgan notes that I'm Polish, and he starts to tell me, and the whole class, about Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, aka Joseph Conrad, and how remarkable it is that he should write so remarkably well in a language (English) other than his mother tongue (Polish), and, really, I should read him. I'm pretty sure he noted Nostromo as being particularly good. And then he went off on a tangent about some commune where they drank tea and read Conrad or something.

Shortly thereafter I had my very own copy of Nostromo (did our rinky-dink local bookstore actually have it in stock? did my mother special order it for me?). I'm sure Mr Osgan noticed me carrying it around for a while, but he had the sense never to ask me about it.

I still have that book somewhere. Dogeared at page 17. It bears the distinction of being the first of very few books I never finished.

University was a lot harder than high school. In first year, I was a math and philosophy major, but everyone still had to take English. Everyone was tested and placed according to their abilities. I was exempt from all the basic grammar and composition stuff, and ended up in a lit survey course, which was one of the very few lit courses I took in university.

Of course, Heart of Darkness was on the syllabus, and nothing in the world could convince me to read it. I'm not sure I even tried. Maybe I tried. Maybe I read a page. I'm pretty sure I didn't even try. I totally faked it. I hadn't even seen Apocalypse Now.

And I've felt this gaping lacuna in my literary education ever since.

I tried to read Nostromo again later, in my twenties, which served only to grant it the the distinction of being the only book I never finished twice.

Enter The Duel. I received my e-book for free when I subscribed to Melville House's mailing list (offer no longer available).

Conrad's Duel. It's funny! And absurd — the extent to which honour may be insulted and defended. I'm not quite finished, but finish it I will. I may even try Nostromo again.

Thank you, Melville House, for reconciling me to Joseph Conrad. Otherwise this standoff might've lasted to the death (mine).

Congratulations, Frances, for all the extraordinary reading you accomplished this month — the Art of the Novella reading challenge — and thanks for the nudge in this direction.

Sorry, Mr Osgan, that I never appreciated Conrad the way you hoped I would. But look at me now.

Saying these words the chief spun round to seize the truth, which is not a beautiful shape living in a well, but a shy bird caught by strategem.

It ran out of my arms and eyes like lightning

First, let me say that this is my favourite of all NYRB Classics book covers to date. The image (Susan Bower, Downhill in a Pram) is wonderfully eerie and funny and wicked all at once (kind of like the novel itself).

I'd love to recommend this book — The Pumpkin Eater, by Penelope Mortimer — but, honestly, I haven't the foggiest to whom. I suspect that those people who would find it engaging and relevant are also likely to find it emotionally difficult, and I'm not sure I want to wish that on anyone.

I took my time with this novel; 222 pages but it took me a couple weeks. Having reserved it for my commute (A Dance with Dragons is a bit cumbersome to be lugging about on the metro), I read it in 15-minute spurts here and there, and since I've spent several days working from home lately because of my knee injury, well, it took even longer. This book bears the distinction of having ruined my day, on at least two occasions. I'd come home fuming: I can't believe Jake, what a jerk! So it's a book that manages to spill its emotions over into real life.

We never know the narrator's name. She's on her fourth marriage and has a lot of children — we don't know how many, and Dinah's the only one of them with a name. And she wants another one.

The novel starts off on her therapist's couch, and through flashbacks and choice glimpses of her day-to-day, Mortimer touches on not only (obviously) marriage and motherhood, but also depression, (in)fidelity, sexuality, abortion, sterilization, death, fulfillment (all kinds), and the Cold War. Throw in some complicated relationships with her own parents. Oh, and the nature of happiness. Heavy stuff, but the voice is honest and witty.

Bear in mind that The Pumpkin Eater was originally published in 1962, and it still feels a bit scandalous. It reads a lot like Doris Lessing, and maybe a little bit like Sylvia Plath (but without so much hysterical exuberance).

I realized that for the first time in my life I could make love without danger. Danger? For the first time in my life I could make love. It was an amazing thought, as though I suddenly had the gift of tongues, the ability to fly. I could hardly contain my love, it ran out of my arms and eyes like lightning. "Be careful," Jake said, "You'll hurt yourself." I laughed till the tears came and it really did hurt. "You're crazy," Jake said. "What's the matter with you?" "Nothing. I love you. I've been such a fool."

This novel asks what more do people want — from marriage, from life, from other people. What more can you possible want when there isn't any more? This is it, it's all there is. Some people derive happiness from that; others...

It's said that we're born alone, and that we die alone. The fact of the matter is that ultimately, no matter how many lovers or children, or friends or parties or marriages, we also live alone, though some of us by our natures feel it more keenly than others, and some circumstances make it more keenly felt.

Reviews
– Daphne Merkin's introduction to the NYRB Classics reissue, in Slate
– NPR

I learned from Emily that this novel was made into a movie. The introduction confirms this (I tend to save these for last, as I've been burned a couple times, by if not exactly spoilers then too much information), and informs me that the screenplay was by no less than Harold Pinter. I'm betting it's worth looking up.

One must seek to become human and to love the fact of one's humanity

Inspired by NPR's recent list of top 100 science fiction and fantasy books, a coworker and I have been comparing notes on our respective SF educations, and trying to help each other other close up some gaps. So I was scanning my shelves the other night, looking for a copy of something or other, and was delighted to find a beat-up old paperback, which I immediately set about rereading.

The War Hound and World's Pain, by Michael Moorcock, is not on NPR's list (though, his Elric saga is). My copy was printed in 1982, and it's likely I acquired and read it that same year, or the year after. The pages are severely yellowed, the spine cracked, with whole sections of pages breaking free of their gluey bonds, and the book smells intensely of that used-book-shop smell, though it's only ever been used by me, and a friend or two (the books on either side of it don't smell at all). I wrote my name inside it; I recognize my highschool penmanship.

The language of the book, quite deliberately, is stilted and somewhat formal, to mimic the style of a journal as written in 1680. I am surprised that my 13-year-old self would've got on with it. But it must've been hard to resist the callout on the back cover:

WITHIN A WITHERED FOREST, IN A PALACE RICH AND DESOLATE, A MAN LOVED A WOMAN — AND MADE A PACT WITH SATAN!

Now, at 13, I'm sure I knew about the holy grail, King Arthur, Monty Python, and all that, but I think I thought of it more as a treasure quest — the "holy" part of it eluded me.

Yet, I connected with this book. (I've held on to it for almost 30 years, and think of it as a favourite, but haven't really examined why until now.) I read it at a time when I no longer believed in God (hadn't done so since I was 4), I was mystified by the hold organized religion had over so many, and it was increasingly difficult to come up with excuses to get out of church on Sunday mornings (without resorting to the actual truth and devastating my mother). At the same time, this book opened my eyes to the curiosities of religious mythology — I realized I could be interested in and educated about religion and religious culture without actually being religious, without taking sides. (And so began a lifelong fascination with the story of Lilith.)

So in retrospect, I think this novel helped me to consolidate my atheism, to begin to glory in my humanness, to be true to myself.

"All I have learned, lady, is to accept the world's attributes as they are. I have learned, I suppose, an acceptance of my own self, an acceptance of Man's ability to create not sensations and marvels but cities and farms which order the world, which bring us justice and sanity."

"Aha," she said. "Is that all you learned, then, young man? Is that all?"

"I think so," I said. "The marvellous is of necessity a lie, a distortion. At best it is a metaphor which leads to the truth. I think that I know what causes the World's Pain, lady. Or at least I think I know what contributes to that Pain."

"And what would that be, Ulrich von Bek?"

"By telling a single lie to oneself or to another, by denying a single fact of the world as it has been created, one adds to the World's Pain. And pain, lady, creates pain. And one must not seek to become saint or sinner, God of Devil. One must seek to become human and to love the fact of one's humanity."

I became embarrassed. "That is all I have learned, lady."

"It is all that Heaven demands," she said.

I still don't believe in heaven, but I am glad to be reminded of von Bek's lesson in humility and humanity.

Restless as maggots

When Jake and I were first married — after the three eldest children had been taken away — we lived together in the evenings. Like actors, our lives began when the curtain went down. We ate and quarrelled and made love, cooked and drank and talked through the night, while the audience slept. Then, beginning with Dinah, the children began staying up later. They needed help with homework. They needed food. They needed conversation. They needed more and more of our lives. In a useless attempt to keep something for ourselves, we gave them bed-sitting rooms, television sets, new electric fires; but at eight o'clock, then nine o'clock, then ten o'clock they would be sitting in a patient row on the sofa preparing to talk to us or play games with us or perhaps just watch us, their eyes restless as maggots, expecting us to bring them up. My guilt and Jake's exasperation loaded the atmosphere until, to me, it became unbearable. But the children breathed it in placidly. There were now more great bored ones staying up in the evening than there were small, manageable ones asleep with their teeth cleaned. The nurse went off duty, as she called it, at half past seven, seldom failing to remark that she had had a twelve hour day. We went out, in order to be alone, to the great dirty pub on the corner, to the cinema, anywhere where we might be anonymous and behave, if necessary, unsuitably to our age and situation. That night, after I came home, there was no question of going out. We waited, with bad grace and burning impatience, for them to go to bed.

At last, lingeringly, with sad backward glances at the glorious day, they went. They could well look after themselves, but because I had been away I went about picking up socks, opening windows, telling them to hurry, tucking them in. Encouraged, they clung to my hand, each jealous of another, demanding to know about death and sex and other subjects which they hoped might interest me. When one of them pestered unduly, another would demand that I was left alone; when one of them called for me to go back and listen, another said crushingly, "You are a beast, can't you see she's tired." By the time I left Dinah, dazed by the possibility of a Supreme Being, my longing to be alone with Jake had cooled and hardened into a longing to forget, to postpone, to sleep.

— from The Pumpkin Eater, by Penelope Mortimer.

I'm guessing (with desperate hope that I am not alone) that anyone with children, no matter how many, will find something to relate to in this passage.

Artificial silk

I'm sure Hubert didn't see me, but it still hit me like a bullet — his black coat from the back and his fair neck — and I had to think of our outing to the Kuckuckswald, where he lay on the ground with his eyes closed. And the sun made the ground hum and the air was trembling — and I put ants on his face while he was sleeping, because I'm never tired when I'm with a man I'm in love with — and I put ants in his ears — and Hubert's face was like a mountain range with valleys and all and he would pucker his nose in a funny way and his mouth was half open — his breath came out of it like a cloud. And he almost looked like a looney, but I loved him more for his sleepy face than for his kisses — and his kisses were quite something, let me tell you.

The Artificial Silk Girl, by Irmgard Keun, was written in 1932 in Germany. An English translation was recently republished by Other Press.

Comparisons to Bridget Jones' Diary and Sex and the City totally miss the mark. A single girl's romantic-sexual adventures in the big city — there the similarity ends. Bridget, Carrie, and friends are fun-loving, ambitious, independent-minded (and Doris is all these things), but they are at times (often) also pathetic. Doris, on the other hand, the eponymous artificial silk girl (a woman should never wear artificial silk when she's with a man, it wrinkles too quickly), is tragic. She shares more with Holly Golightly (both the literary and film versions) and Letty Fox.

[I haven't given a whole lot of thought as to what I see as the difference between pathetic and tragic. I'm using these words with their common meanings, not as precise literary terms. I dunno, I just feel there's a difference. Kind of like what Arthur Miller said.]

Doris is of a time where women were out in the world, they could make a living if they had to, or if they wanted to. When the novel opens she's working in an office ("True education has nothing to do with commas!"). But that's not to say it was easy. Opportunities are limited, and it's hard to be taken seriously.

Then there's love.

If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has this pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch.

Contemporary chick-lit heroines should be sobered by Doris's account.

So this novella makes for a fascinating historical document as regards women in society, circa 1930. But it also paints a vivid picture of a certain slice of society in immediately pre-Nazi Germany, and it's impossible to read the comments about Jews (Doris didn't care if you were or you weren't, but some of her men did) and about politics without a historical eye.

Doris toys with the idea of educating herself about politics, but it bores her, and it never really sticks. But I wouldn't say she is clueless abut politics; simply, she prefers not to bother with it, it's too much trouble. ("Politics poisons human relationships.")

Is there any reason to read this book, then, aside from its historical interest? I think, yes, for its voice. Certainly, it would've been unique in Keun's time. And it's still fresh now, and fairly compelling.

**********

Keun has a gift for startling images. I highlighted several of these:

"Dear God, my letters are trembling on the paper like the legs of dying mosquitoes."

"He had the voice of a bowling ball that made my blood run cold."

"And with my last paycheck, I bought myself a honey brown dress with smooth pleats, quiet and serious, like a woman who forgets to laugh when she's being kissed by someone she likes."

"There's someone playing the harmonica next door with his forehead as crumpled up as his life."

"It's not always the face that makes a whore — I am looking into my mirror — it's the way they walk, as if their heart had gone to sleep."

They sit moony, staring up at the bloody blue

I'm very excited to be finally starting A Dance with Dragons! I was pretty ambivalent about book 4 (A Feast for Crows) for the first few hundred pages, but some of the newer characters did manage to draw me in and pull me along.

I must say I found the violence in that book somewhat more difficult to stomach (Asha Greyjoy. Brienne.). It didn't feel gratuitous exactly, but since the nature of it has changed (has it? or am I just now noticing it?) it's natural that my relationship with it has changed too. In addition to genuine concern for character outcomes, I'm driven along now also by sick curiosity.

Anyway, the final couple hundred pages of book 4 made it all worthwhile (Arya — I love that kid! Cersei — I hate that bitch!). Every now and again I bemoan that these books are ssooo llooonng, but it's been great to have something so escapist to turn to over the last week as I've spent time in several waiting rooms and was otherwise housebound (torn meniscus), and for the coming week as well, since all childcare plans for the final days of summer have gone to pot.

I'm still a bit puzzled by the labels this series of books is associated with: epic fantasy, high fantasy, magic. To my mind, the books read like historical romance, with a bit of other stuff thrown in.

The fantastic creatures that "people" the books are not the kind humans rub shoulders with at the village fair. The creatures are outsiders to the established social world. That nudges the books toward horror. The elements of magic — isolated incidents — are looked upon with great scepticism. The creatures, the magic, the shamanism, the supernaturalism, they are not viewed as the normal state of the world. This is nothing like the Piers Anthony or Michael Moorcock I read in my youth. In many ways, this world feels more real, more like our own.

I'm betting that the page count covering all those traditionally fantastic elements is paltry relative to the thousands of pages of "history" being related.

So it comes as a surprise (even a treat) that the prologue to book 5 should look more closely at one of those fantastic/horrific aspects.

Dogs were the easiest beasts to bond with; they lived so close to men that they were almost human. Slipping into a dog's skin was like putting on an old boot, its leather softened by wear. As a boot was shaped to accept a foot, a dog was shaped to accept a collar, even a collar no human could see. Wolves were harder. A man might befriend a wolf, even break a wolf, but no man could truly tame a wolf. "Wolves and women wed for life," Haggon often said. "You take one, that's a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you're part of him. Both of you will change."

Other beasts were best left alone, the hunter had declared. Cats were vain and cruel, always ready to turn on you. Elk and deer were prey; wear their skins too long, and even the bravest man became a coward. Bears, boars, badgers,. weasels . . . Haggon  did not hold with such. "Some skins you never want to wear, boy. You won't like what you'd become. "Birds were the worst, to hear him tell it. "Men were not meant to leave the earth. Spend too much time in the clouds and you never want to come back down again. I know skinchangers who've tried hawks, owls, ravens. Even in their own skins, they sit moony, staring up at the bloody blue."

How to be by yourself in a furnished room with chipped dishes

So they have courses teaching you foreign languages and ballroom dancing and etiquette and cooking. But there are no classes to learn how to be by yourself in a furnished room with chipped dishes, or how to be alone in general without any words of concern or familiar sounds.

— from The Artificial Silk Girl, by Irmgard Keun.

I'm almost done this short novel, and I have her After Midnight lined up to read soon.

For a little bit about Keun, her books, and the climate in which they were written, see:

Deutsche Welle: "But Keun's "The Artificial Silk Girl" is more than just a diary of dancing and dalliances. It also contains subtle but scathing commentaries about life under the rising Third Reich."

Melville House Publishing: "Much fiction has been written about the Nazis in the years since World War II, but it is incredibly rare to have a novelist of Keun’s talents and first-hand knowledge describe the day-to-day reality of an evil empire while it was still in power."

The Millions: "She was a best-selling debut novelist at twenty-six, published a second bestseller a year later, was blacklisted by the Nazi regime and in exile by the spring of 1936."

Sarah Blogwell's Bake: "She observes all: an eternally naïve narrator who misunderstands what is going on, but who — of course — really understands more than anyone."

Walk through polaroids of the past

Her shoes off and her quick feet wild

In the moonlight, there was an edged beauty to my mother. The round woman looked glamorous against the barren debris, the garbage, and the graves, her bosoms asserted themselves into the stenchful air, amid the corrupted stone. Her presence was like a narcotic in this dirty place; the earth rose, aroused, swirls of dust that turned to intoxicating waves of wind and imagination. I envisioned her dancing in one of her silk dresses, her shoes off and her quick feet wild, a rough star of the underground with all her boyfriends. I could see my shadow when I looked into the stone, the throw of moonlight on the graves. I was so small against the large female person who was my mother sometimes and sometimes this character from the past, as sultry and sexy as any character I might read about in the British romance novels left in the closet at One Metadulah Street. Even in the ugly field of forgotten deaths here, she looked radiant and carnal — her rippling flesh, freckles and broad, full-lipped face. It was dizzying, death and decay and my mother's perfumed, sex smell.

[...]

The evening wind went through the underside of my sandals like a tongue, my legs were shorter than hers, I thought, and I put my hand under my shirt to feel my breasts. I put my hand to touch the tiny bumps that I hope will make me like her. I studied my mother against the moonlight and the sky which made this place, like all of Israel, horrible and stunning at the same time — the graves that were strips of brittle stone, and the desiccated, naked ground.

— from The Fragile Mistress, by Leora Skolkin-Smith.

The Fragile Mistress is the retitled, repackaged, slightly expanded reissue of Edges, O Israel O Palestine. It's a slim novel, poetic and compelling.

It's a coming-of-age story, but on a few different levels: Liana's 14 and has travelled to Israel with her older sister and her mother. She witnesses a traumatic event, but also experiences a sexual awakening and falls in love. Liana's also grappling with a host of mommy issues; as much as she feels humiliated and embarrassed by her mom, she also admires her and is drawn by the mystery of her womanhood.

Israel is also coming of age in this novel. It's 1963, and there's a water war developing. There are soldiers and snipers, checkpoints and barbed wire. There are stories of the Haganah.

Quite wisely in the final chapter, a kind of epilogue, on her return to Israel some 20-odd years later Liana recognizes that she hadn't fully understood the politics of the time. Her experiences — the events, the terrain — "had my own face back then, too, my physical confusions, my formlessness."

So it's not exactly a political novel, but Israel is always present.

In the afterword, Skolkin-Smith writes:

Most potential readers, I thought and perhaps still believe, wouldn't even know there had been a world before the state of Israel was formed in 1948 or that this world included Jews, including many non-zionist Jews who coexisted peacefully with their Arab neighbors.

It makes for a vibrant backdrop and, ironically, an almost apolitical one.

The language is strong — in a rawly poetic, carnal way — sometimes almost uncomfortably so. At time it reads like the diary of a petulant adolescent, but this is fitting. Some passages verge on excessive, but taken as a whole, this is a tight novel with no extraneous bits.

Excerpt.

Spotless against the dirty sky

He couldn't go on walking until three in the morning, so he stopped along the way at cafes. A few people would be standing around a horseshoe-shaped counter, their lives suspended. Some dreamed as they drank their coffees. Others, with their elbows on the counter, stood empty-eyed over empty drinks. Nothing but magic, it seemed, would bring them back to life.

As in many Simenon novels, the protagonist antihero of The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, one day walks away from his life, steps out of himself, or possibly into himself for the first time.

Luc Sante in his introduction points out that Kees Popinga, as well as his boss before him, is something of a Flitcraftian character. That Flitcraft phenomenon is the thing that first drew me to the fiction of Paul Auster (City of Glass, but other of his works too), and it is a recurring theme in Simenon's romans durs. My fascination with this phenomenon — that's me fighting the impulse to just walk away, transferring my energy into a curiosity about the sort of people who just walk away. I mean, what kind of people do that? (And I happen to know that people do do that.)

"Just use the sink in the hall to wash up. I hope you don't mind noise, because you're going to hear train whistles all day and all night long. We're right next to a train yard."

She shut the door behind her. Kees went to the window and pressed his face against it; in the dimming light, he could make out train tracks leading to infinity, train cars, whole trains, and at least ten locomotives, from which the smoke rose up spotless against the dirty sky.

He smiled, stretched, and sat down on the bed. Fifteen minutes later, without even bother to undress, he was fast asleep.

"The smoke rose up spotless against the dirty sky" — I love that. It's so... opposite.

The train's a recurring motif; I guess it works kind of like a siren call on Popinga — the draw to leave, to be removed from wherever it is that he is, and with the appeal of the suggestion of something a little untoward happening behind drawn blinds on a train in the night.

A typo in the early pages leads to a great deal of confusion (the date should be the 23rd, not the 28th, of December); but the fact that the novel takes place over the holiday season also works to enhance the sense of loneliness and the sense of being shut out of life — Popinga's own life, but also everybody else's.

This novel performs wonderfully a bunch of things I learned from James Wood about how fiction works. We're asked to sympathize with this character from the start, and page by page he becomes more unlikable. We are as confused as he is when we first hear about Pamela's death.

The violence and other criminal acts happen off-screen, so to speak; but this is consistent with Popinga's self-delusion. It's as if he blacks out certain events, or isn't fully present in them. (I'm reminded of Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square.)

I've eased off my rush through Simenon's material — too much existential grittiness over too short a time is difficult to stomach, psychically speaking — but my fascination with the spirit of his roman dur continues to build.