What exists, exists

There just came a moment when I began to look around me with different eyes and I saw a city that looked strange to me, a pretty city, very neat, very luminous, very clean, a city in which everybody greeted me affably.

Why did I have that sensation of emptiness then?

I began looking at my house too and I asked myself why it was my house, what connexion there was between these rooms, this garden, this wrought-iron gate adorned with a brass plate bearing my name, and me.

I looked at Armande and I had to keep telling myself that she was my wife.

Why?

And the little girls who called me Papa . . .

[...]

What was I doing in a peaceful little town, in a charming comfortable house among people who smiled at me and cordially shook my hand?

[...]

And I was the only one to see the world in this way, the only one to be troubled in a universe that had no idea of what was happening to me.

In fact, for years and years I lived without being conscious of all this. I had scrupulously done the best I could, everthing I had been told to do. Without trying to know the reason. Without trying to understand.

A man must have a profession, and Mama had made a doctor of me. He must have children, and I had children. He must have a house, a wife, and I had all these. He must have distractions, and I drove a car, played bridge and tennis. He must have vacations, and I took my family to the seashore.

[...]

We have been so conditioned to think that what exists, exists; that the world is really as we see it, that we must do this or that and never act otherwise . . .

I shrugged my shoulders.

— from Act of Passion, by Simenon.

Just like David Byrne shrugs his shoulders through Once in a Lifetime. Yes, Georges, there is water at the bottom of the ocean.

So here's an obvious similarity between what might be my favourite pop song ever and Simenon's romans durs, with which I'm mildly obsessed: How did I get here?

I was afraid I was losing my Simenon mojo, right when I need it most. I set aside Tropic Moon, which was starting to feel like homework, and was richly rewarded with Act of Passion.

Act of Passion is told in the first person, taking the form of a letter from Charles Alavoine, a successful doctor, written from his prison cell, to the judge who presided over his trial for murder. It is not a confession or an apology; merely he wants to be understood.

The mystery is first how he should come to abandon his comfortable life, and then how when living his second comparatively idyllic life — poorer but in love, and feeling finally alive — he should be driven to murder the object of his affection.

That's all and it's not all, your Honour. It is all because nothing happened that was not perfectly commonplace. It is not all, because for the first time I was hungry for a life other than my own.

The song Once in Lifetime calms my general life-panic, gives me the feeling that everything's going to be OK (just once in a lifetime ask yourself these questions? just once in lifetime step outside of yourself? just once in a lifetime take a once-in-a-lifetime chance?). But when a Simenon character asks these questions, steps outside of himself, takes a bite out of life, things spiral out of control and go horribly, horribly wrong.

You are afraid, to be precise, of what has happened to me. You are afraid of yourself, of a certain frenzy which might take possession of you, afraid of the disgust that you feel growing in you with the slow and inexorable growth of a disease.

Mad Men gets literary again

Season 5 of Mad Men is off to a fine start. Episode 1 culminates in a surprise birthday party for Don. And it's a fabulous party: drinks for everyone, boys looking at girls, marijuana on the balcony, a little yé-yé, and a heated political discussion in the kitchen that references in great detail Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo.

[I read Johnny when I was about 14 and it blew my mind. And boy, do I know it — talking about that book is a great way to kill a party. But then, at 14, I was going to a different kind of party.]

No blatant literary references in episode 2, but I couldn't help but pick up a little Lolita vibe as Lane Pryce obsessed over a photo of aptly named Dolores.

Maybe it's a sign that Simenon is too much on my mind, but it strikes that a couple characters are potentially deeply Simenonesque.

Pete Campbell, junior partner. I don't find him sympathetic, or even likeable, but mostly he's just trying to catch a break. He tries hard. In these episodes I'm noticing a look in his eyes. When he rides in to work on the train in the morning, there's a look like it might be his last ride, he's not riding home ever again. When he returns to his suburban home one evening there's a look of "how did I get here?" (I mean, "how the hell did I end up here?") and for a moment I thought he might snap his wife's neck.

Lane Pryce, finance guy. British, but also deeply sympathetic. He keeps wanting to step out of his box, but always ends up squarely in his box. Now he finds a wallet, finds a photo inside the wallet, calls about returning the wallet and talks to the girl in the photo, returns the wallet, but keeps the photo. It's so small, but it's a transgression, and it's pervy. The others may topple secretaries over their desks, but Lane's innocuous actions are more loaded. My money's on Lane absconding with the company funds. For a girl.

Now, all the characters cross lines, social and ethical. So why do I point to these two as typical Simenon antiheroes? For most of the characters, their morals fall whichever way the 60s are blowing. They fill an immediate need, resolve an immediate problem; they scratch an itch. They're not, on the whole, acting out of any deep-seated unhappiness; they're just reacting. But these two! It's like they're prodding some existential bruise.

Is Simenon colouring the way I look at the world? Am I reading too much into Pete and Lane? Are they any different from the rest of the Mad Men? What do you think makes them tick?

See my list of books referred to in Mad Men's first 4 seasons.

Comparing two books

I'm not sure to what extent it's fair to compare these two books: These Days Are Ours, by Michelle Haimoff, which I read recently and about which I have mixed feelings, and The Bellwether Revivals, by Benjamin Wood, which I'm not quite halfway through and which I'm loving.

There are some superficial and thematic similarities. Haimoff writes about recent college grads, while Wood's characters are largely still students. They both deal with privileged classes among whom there's an interloper — a regular, working guy. Both feature several social events. Same time period.

So why is it that I really like the one (Wood) — I think it's literary, I can't think of a better way to spend these cold, grey March days — and I'm so quick to dismiss the other (Haimoff) as chick lit (or something like it)? (And when I apply these labels, have I already made my judgement?)

For starters, it's clear to me that The Bellwether Revivals has a plot. I'm not entirely sure where it's going, but things are happening, and I want to know what happens next.

These Days Are Ours has less plot — a lot of chatting and meeting up, but not much to drive the reader, beyond wondering whether she'll get the job she interviewed for and which guy should she end up with — more an over-arching theme of directionlessness. In one sense, the novel might be said to be clever for its mostly plotless form matching its content.

For another thing, I'd much rather attend one of Wood's dinner parties than Haimoff's. The Bellwhethers (for that is the name of the family of interest) actully talk about ideas, like mind-body dualism. Hailey's crowd talks small talk, about people, clubs, nothing much at all. Come to think of it, they do as much texting as talking, and I think this reflects the depth of their engagement. Haimoff writes about people of influence; Wood writes about people of intelligence.

When I say I prefer Wood's book then, is it because I like the people in it better? Do people in real life talk about mind-body dualism and debate the existence of God at the dinner table? Yes, but how many? Is Haimoff's dinner conversation more realistic?

Is either book an accurate reflection of the society it takes on? Can they both be right? Is this New York (Haimoff) versus London (Wood)? Haimoff's feels like a small novel, about a small character at sea, small perhaps in contrast to New York and 9/11. Wood's novel feels big and important even though the story doesn't go far beyond the circle of friends. Is Haimoff too subtle for me to appreciate?

I wouldn't be comparing these books at all, I don't think, if it weren't for that I'm reading them within a couple weeks of each other.

I can't wait to get back to The Bellwhether Revivals.

These days

I'm not sure what it is that initially drew me to These Days Are Ours, by Michelle Haimoff. The story follows Hailey, a recent college grad, jobless and somewhat directionless — drinking, supping, and hooking up — in post-9/11 New York City. Haimoff sounded kind of smart, and I thought I could relate to directionlessness.

But it turns out I have little else in common with a privileged Jewish 20-something-year-old, born and raised in New York to famous and connected parents.

It's Catcher in the Rye meets Sex and the City, which made for pleasant vacation reading, on planes and poolside. While I was certainly engaged by the writing, I'm not sure what, if anything, lifts it above chick lit. Or maybe, at 20-something plus 20, I'm just too old to appreciate this kind of story — not exactly coming-of-age, not exactly maturing into adulthood... although, I guess there's something to how 9/11 made us all grow up in a way.

In the supplementary material at the back of the book, Haimoff states:

Often female character fall into the Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha, Miranda paradigm where one is the outrageous one, one is the uptight one, etc. But in real life, women are much more nuanced than that. While the characters in the book have their moments of outrageousness, uptightness, etc., these qualities don't define their personalities. It was important to me to have the dialogue between female characters be almost interchangeable. When my friends and I talk, we often can't remember who said what funny thing or who came up with which insight. These chracters are the same way.

I think it's true to a degree, but (and maybe it's my age showing again) I think my groups of friends over the years have consisted of distinct personalities. If not their qualities, what does define their personalities then? And even if real people do blur together sometimes, I expect more definition from art. I mean, character! Or is Haimoff saying that literature should strive for more realism?

Or maybe real people don't have distinct personalities anymore (let alone character).

The rain of your city

Every time I went to Caen it rained. And I liked the rain of your city. I like it for being fine, gentle and silent; I like it for the halo it throws around the landscape, for the mystery with which, in the twilight, it surrounds everybody you meet, especially the women.

— from Act of Passion, by Simenon.

I like the rain of my city too.

Blue Metropolis 2012

The Blue Metropolis Literary Foundation this morning held a press conference to announce its line-up for the 2012 Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival. The Festival once again changes venue this year. It will be held at the Opus Hotel on Sherbrooke, April 18-23.

This year's theme: Le pouvoir des mots [The power of words]. This comes through strongly in the emphasis on the children's portion of the festival, promoting literacy and the culture of reading in youngsters. (I'll see if I can get my daughter to attend an event and report on it.)

The 2012 programming for the main festival has a couple main areas of focus. One is Cuban literature, and the other is crime writing.

The 2012 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix winner is Joyce Carol Oates, who, coincidentally, has a large body of crime-related novels. She will be awarded the prize at a special event on Saturday, April 21. (I have not read any Joyce Carol Oates. Where do you recommend I start?)

(Past winners include some of my favourite writers: A.S. Byatt, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster.)

Noteworthy:

• Read Dating (literary speed-dating)
• Collaboration with Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (several events will be held at the Grande Bibliothèque)
• Shoe Stories, a fundraising event (books! and shoes! — two of my favourite things!)
• Read & Ride, a cross-promotion with the Société de transport de Montréal, encouraging the use of public transportation, so you can read on your commute

For those of you who are unable to attend, I will be blogging the festival, so you can live it vicariously through me. I'll have access to several events and festival participants. So let me know if you have an interest in a particular event and I'll see about attending it for you. (For those of you who are able to attend, well, maybe we can compare notes.)

Finally, I'm excited to announce that I'll be hosting a Lunch and Literature event: A Georges Simenon Salon, at noon on Sunday, April 22. Held in the Koko Restaurant, the event itself is free but the purchase of lunch is required.

If you've ever read Simenon — whether his romans durs or his Maigret novels — please come out for lunch and contribute to the conversation. I've nurtured a mild obsession with Simenon since I first discovered his romans durs about a year and a half ago, and I'm curious to know what other readers see in him.

Sadly, I cannot attend the panel discussion on translating David Foster Wallace (Scott Esposito is on the panel), as it conflicts with my Simenon lunch.

You can find full program details on the festival's website (which has been given a long overdue facelift).

Also check out Programming Director Gregory McCormick's blog, Azure Scratchings, for more festival-related news and commentary.

Infinity as a limit

Then he smiled into her eyes and asked, in the dry academic tones of an astronomer discussing a theoretical point with a colleague. "How long do you suppose I can go on loving you more every day?" And he devised for her a calculus of love, which approached infinity as a limit, and made her smile again.

The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, is one of the most fantastic books I've read in some time — the kind where I spent much of my non-reading time not only wishing I were reading it, but talking about various concepts in it to anyone who would listen.

Such concepts include:

• A habitable planet in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri, a planet with three suns, and three distinct dawns and sun settings, and the visual this creates in my head (especially on the tail of having listened to poetic descriptions of a comparable setting in an audio version of Solaris) is mind-blowing.
• The privatization of orphanages and the common practice of a kind of indentured service, whereby orphans or other unfortunates could be educated and put to work, and in limited circumstances could buy out the rights to their life from the person or coporation who de facto owned them.
• Anthropological linguistics, and an alien grammar that voices a distinction between objects that are seen and objects that are not seen or nonvisual, this latter category including both things that are temporarily out of view as well abstract concepts.
  

  "The ability to speak a language perfectly does not necessarily confer any linguistic understanding of it," Sandoz said, "just as one may play billiards well without any formal understanding of Newtonian physics, yes? My advanced training is in anthropological linguistics, so my purpose in working with Askama was not merely to be able to ask someone to pass the salt, so to speak, but to gain insight into her people's underlying cultural assumptions and cognitive makeup."

  (One of the most common questions I had in response to telling people I studied linguistics was, So how many language do you know?. Aurgh. I wish I could've replied as succinctly as Sandoz.)
• A world economy in which Polish zloty are a valued currency.
• The whole Jesuit mystique, and that there be a religious order that might put academic pursuit before God. I feel compelled here to mention the time I met three Jesuits in a bar in Krakow, a couple of whom were visiting from Ireland and were working on translating Ulysses into Polish, and we proceeded to drink bottles of vodka together and talk about rescuing 20th-century Polish literature from obscurity, and they told stories about the Pope, among other things, and I decided, hey, Jesuits are cool.

The Sparrow is about first contact, but like all the best science fiction novels, it's deeply philosophical. While it fully realizes a completely believable yet wholly alien society, it's as much about our own cultural assumptions. It also envisions a future where religion and space travel are both going strong, and where the ideas of God and of alien life are not mutually exclusive.

Once, long ago, she'd allowed herself to think seriously about what human beings would do, confronted directly with a sign of God's presence in their lives. The Bible, that repository of Western wisdon, was isnstructive either as myth or as history, she'd decided. God was at Sinai and within weeks, people were dancing in front of a golden calf, God walked in Jerusalem and days later, folks nailed Him up and then went back to work. Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple choice question. If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs,or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.

Speaking as an open-minded atheist, albeit one raised Catholic, I was worried at times that the novel might end up siding with the existence of God. Although some characters do side with God, most of them maintain a healthy skepticism and some sway between belief and nonbelief, with the very reasonable attitude that "it's difficult to tell from the way people behave whether or not they believe in God." However, it is my one criticism of the novel that there is no affirmed atheist in the bunch.

So, yes, there's much discussion of faith in this book, and I hesitate to recommend it to some of my atheist friends, but I'm pretty sure I'll go ahead and recommend it anyway.

The characters in this novel are delightful — I want them all over for dinner next weekend. Despite most of them having had difficult upbringings, they're all very smart and energetic and lively, that it's only as I write this that I realize they may be a little too good to be true. But, boy, did I enjoy spending time with them. One thing that struck me, and I guess it ties in with the God question, whether life is random or by design, is that most of them had experienced an event in their life about which you could say they were picked up out of their life (by a person) and dropped somewhere else entirely. And I think this is awesome. To some degree I think it's true of all of us, that people nudge us onto paths that lead to vastly different places than we might otherwise have ended up in, and then there's something like love, which can transport you to a completely different life. (Well, how did I get here?)

Russell did write a sequel to The Sparrow, but I've heard from other fans that it is disappointing. I may pick it up someday, but I'm quite content for the time being to let The Sparrow stand alone in my head.

Highly recommended for sci-fi fans.

On the other hand, if you like your fiction realistic but are the least bit SF-curious, I think you'll find this group of characters so vivid and likeable, you'll willingly follow them to another planet.

Three minds

Yesterday I attended a vernissage — the showing of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, illustrated by Claudia Gómez, a friend of mine.

Many of you may recognize the title as a poem by Wallace Stevens. While I wasn't previously familiar with the poem, I was delighted to find that it is the source of lines that I do hear cited occasionally.

Claudia chose to illustrate the poem with a series of drawings in pen and ink, black and white. There is an obvious Native American influence on these, but Claudia mixes it with something that reminds me of William Morris — the kind of patterning that would lend itself well to woodcuts, textiles, wrought ironwork. The lines have a great deal of movement and something I can describe only as musicality — a lilt and a wonder.

I've heard of the blackbird in Stevens' poem as being interpreted as God (and this puts me in mind also of The Beatles' Blackbird), but there's also something very common about the bird — it's not hard to believe that the bird is just a bird, which because it is so common lends itself to being used in the formation of analogies. The blackbird is not usually associated with bad luck, but might be a sign of vigilance.

One stanza in particular of Thirteen Ways speaks to me, and I'm happy to have acquired a print of Claudia's interpretation of it.

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

I don't know what it means. It's so beautifully simple.

I like this stanza because I often say I'm of three minds myself. But it also reminds me of the time the priest came to dinner after my father died, and he tried to explain the Trinity to me in terms of Kratynski the mother, Kratynski the sister, and Kratynski the little girl. I want it on the wall of my current life, where my own family trio lives.

Library at sea

I'd brought plenty of reading material with me, but as a public service to you, I embarked on a bit of research while on vacation. Yes, boys and girls, I've sailed the high seas — where by "sailed" I mean lounged by the pool with a margarita in hand on a boat so big you can't feel it moving, and by "high seas" I mean just the one Caribbean sea — and made my way, after a midmorning round of miniputt and margaritas, across the boardwalk, past the carousel, through Central Park, picking up another margarita en route, to scope out the library on the 11th deck (which housed nothing else worth remarking) — all so you wouldn't have to.

So just what exactly does the library of luxury cruise ship have to offer?

Monica Ali and Margaret Atwood through Iain Banks and JK Rowling to Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Mostly in English, though I spotted a few Spanish and French titles (unless all the foreign-language books were out on loan?).

There's a key posted to explain the system by which the bindings are colour-coded. A solid half of the library is fiction, but there are healthy sections of biography, history, travel, and self-help. I counted 15 books on ships and navigation.

You sign out a book by recording it in the log book by the door, but essentially it works on the honour system. There's a drop box for returns. Presumably there's an employee assigned to straightening up and reshelving.

In the few minutes I spent there, I saw a handful of people come and go, to browse, check out, and return books.

I had expected a flourescent-lit metal shelf strewn with tattered paperbacks. I found instead a cozy, traditional wood-panelled study quite at odds with much of the larger-than-life bluster splayed across the other 17 decks.

I spent most of my days as close to the sun and the water (and the bar!) as possible, but if I were confined to the boat for months, I'd be relatively content to have this library at hand.

Faith in the old human brain

"Humans," said R. Daneel, "have their own peculiar make-up. They are not as reasonable, in many ways, as we robots, since their circuits are not as preplanned. I am told that this, too has its advantages."

The first and only time (till now) I read Isaac Asimov was as a kid, some 30 years ago. I read I, Robot then, and I felt my young brain stretched in exciting ways.

Since then, I learned that Asimov is revered by some as a god, and this intimidated me.

Someday, I thought, I'll get around to The Foundation Trilogy, even though it sounds so big and... foundational. But I have a coworker now egging me on to check off the sci-fi classics, and she's acting as my supplier of sorts. What a surpise to see the trilogy wrapped up in three slim volumes.

But of the handful of Asimov my coworker lay before me, I opted first for The Caves of Steel, based on the reference in a blurb to a "womb-city" and, of course, the cheesy cover art.

I was afraid it would feel dated — the language, the science — but it's highly readable and inventive (some quaint concepts of, for example, data storage are easily forgiven).

The story concerns a murder investigation, which appears to be related to strained human–robot relations.

The most surprising thing about this novel — and I think it's telling that I find it surprising at all — is the sense of optimism Asimov conveys — for science, humanity, the future. (There's a hint of religion in it, a guiding Christian principle, but I'll call it a brand of humanism.)

Baley muttered, "Eight billion people and the uranium running out! What's unlimited about it?"

"What if the uranium does run out. We'll import it. Or we'll discover other nuclear processes. There's no way you can stop mankind, Lije. You've got to be optimistic about it and have faith in the old human brain. Our greatest resource is ingenuity and we'll never run out of that, Lije."

"Be sensible"

More quotable bits from of The Doll, by Bolesław Prus, which I'm now done with and which I thoroughly enjoyed.

P 208:
Izabella loved the world of drawing-rooms to distraction; she could only quit it for the grave, but as each year and month passed by, she despised people more and more: she found it inconceivable that a woman as beautiful, virtuous and well-bred as herself could be deserted by that world, simply because she had no money.

P 250:
Izabela and Wokulski had just appeared at the end of the path.

Tomasz eyed them attentively and only now did he notice that these two people looked well together, both in height and movement. He, a head taller and powerfully built, stepped like an ex-military man; she, somewhat slighter, but more graceful, moved as if gliding. Even Wokulski's white top-hat and light overcoat matched Izabela's ash-coloured wrap.

"Where did he get that white top-hat?" Tomasz wondered resentfully. Then a strange notion occurred to him: that Wokulski was a parvenu who ought to pay him at least fifty percent on the capital lent him, in return for the right to wear a white top-hat. But in the end he only shrugged.

P 281:
"Don't mention higher aims to me," Wokulski cried, banging the table, "I know what I have done for those higher aims, but what have they done for me? Is there no end to the demands of the oppressed who allow no rights to me? I want for the first time to do something for myself . . . My head's full to overflowing with cliches that no on ever puts into action . . . Personal happiness — that's my obligation now . . . otherwise I'd shoot myself, if I didn't see something for myself ahead, other than monstrous burdens. Thousands of people are idle, but one man has his 'duty' towards them . . . Did you ever hear anything more abominable?"

P 345:
Politics are still much the same: continual uncertainty.

P 358:
"You are a philosopher," Wokulski muttered.

"Indeed, I am a Doctor of Philosophy of two universities," Jumart replied.

"Yet you play the role of . . . ?"

"A servant, you were going to say?" Jumart interposed, smiling. "I work, sir, in order to live and assure myself an income when I grow old. I care nothing for titles: I have had so many already . . . The world is like an amateur theatre, where it is not done to insist on leading parts but reject minor roles. In any case, all roles are good, providing they are well played and not taken too seriously."

P 537:
"Helena . . . my child . . . But you aren't . . .?"

"His mistress? No, I'm not, because he hasn't asked me. What do I care for Mrs Denowa or Mrs Radzińska, or my husband who has deserted me? I don't know what has come over me . . . I only feel that this man has taken away my soul."

"Be sensible, at least . . . Besides . . ."

"I am, as far as I can be. But I care nothing for a world that condemns two people to torture, simply because they love one another. Hatred is allowed," she added, with a bitter smile, "stealing, killing — everything is allowed, except love. Ah, mama, if I am not right, they why did not Christ say to people "Be sensible" instead of "Love one another"?

P 539:
"But making money isn't your concern!"

"Why isn't it? Not everyone can be a poet or a hero, but everyone needs money," said Szuman. "Money is the larder of the noblest force in nature — human labour. It's the 'open sesame' at which all doors fly open, it's the table-cloth on which one can always find a dinner, it's the Aladdin's lamp, by rubbing which everything one wants is to be had. Magic gardens, splendid palaces, beautiful princesses, faithful servants, friends ready to make sacrifices — all these are to be had with money."

Rzecki bit his lip: "You were not always of this opinion," he said.

"Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis," the doctor replied, calmly. "I've wasted ten years studying hair, I spent a thousand roubles publishing a brochure a hundred pages long and . . . not even a dog remembers it, or me. I will try to devote the next ten years to financial operations, and am convinced in advance that people will love and admire me. Providing I open a drawing-room, and keep a carriage."

P 600:
With deep emotion he revived in his memory the Life of St Genevieve, the Rose of Tannenburg, Rinaldini, Robinson Crusoe and, finally, The Thouasand and One Nights. Once again it seemed to him that neither time nor reality existed any longer, and that his wounded soul had escaped from the earth to wander in magic lands where only noble hearts beat, where vice did not dress up in the mask of deceit, where eternal justice ruled, curing pain and rewarding injustices.

And here one strange point impressed him. Whereas he had drawn the illusions which had terminated in the dissolution of his own soul from Polish literature, he found solace and peace only in foreign literatures. "Are we really a nation of dreamers?" he wondered in alarm, "and will the angel who touched the pool at Bethesda, surrounded by sick people, never descend upon us?"

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

I think I can let these fine bits of wisdom and wit speak for themselves. As with many long and engrossing novels, I found I was noting fewer passages as I progressed through the book, not because they were absent — on the contrary, I'd've liked to mark up every other page — but because I was just too wrapped up in the story and dying to know what happened next to bother to stop for a pencil or a sticky note.

There are a couple really interesting debates toward the end of the book, one on the place of Jews in Polish society, the other on the place of women.

Part of me insists on comparing this book to War and Peace — the length, the Napoleonic fervour. There's some Middlemarch in it too. The quest for meaning and substance.

In War and Peace, the aristocracy was shown to be in decay, and if it were to survive, it must find resolve in its Russianness — forsake the French language, reclaim the hunt, know its people, its foods and its dances.

I am surprised to find that The Doll, the Great Polish Novel, fails to offer up an analogous Polish identity. But perhaps this makes it more realistic in representing a country that had been wiped off the map. The aristocracy is dying, but rather than cling to any sense of nationhood, Wokulski emerges as a prominent member of a new class in a world based on commerce. He is ready to erase national boundaries; global trade seems to demand it.

All this, plus the talk of science — the possibility of flight using gravity-defying metal materials, hydrogen compounds as weapons — makes this novel feel very forward-thinking.

We never do get to know Izabela very well. But then, neither does Wokulski. We increasingly sympathize with Wokulski, even as he's shown to be weak. I get the sense he was born a little too early to be a successful businessman, a little too late to be an innovative scientist; he chases the wrong dreams at the wrong times.

There's a good deal of humour, intrigue, and romance mixed in with the history lessons. A Polish classic, The Doll deserves a wider audience and should appeal to fans of nineteenth-century literature with a sociopolitical sensibility.

Literary sentence

A judge in Utah is sentencing people to read books, like Hugo's Les Misérables, not as a punishment, but as a tool.

For example,

Fernando Infante, who will be 20 this May, is an inmate at the Cache County Jail. He was already incarcerated last year on burglary and theft charges when he was charged with stabbing another inmate, causing serious injury.

Willmore said the state did not want to see Infante go to prison because of his young age. But he had few options, due to the violent nature of his crime.

So, Infante is now in maximum security at the Cache County Jail, where he sits in a jail cell 23 hours a day. However, because Willmore did not want him to do nothing but watch time go by, he ordered Infante to read as many books as he could during his incarceration.

Every 10 days or so, Willmore gets a letter from Infante, who tells him about the books he has been reading.

"I am able to see how he has grown and changed, how he applies himself to a character and sees the changes he can make in his life," Willmore said.

Helena is starting on a similar program herself this week. The student teacher has asked that each of the students write her a letter about the book they are reading.

I guess we're all of us, criminal or not, sentenced for life. Maybe it's why I do this. Read, and blog about it, I mean. Maybe I'm supposed to learn something.

Cruising

Eight days in the Carribean, hotel nights and plane flights on either end. Three ports of call, including one major 11-hour excursion. A party of eight, including in-laws, a sister I see all too rarely, and my 9-year-old child. Oh, and! my other half, with whom the rare commodity of romancing is something of a luxury these days.

So how many books do I bring?

It's taken years for people to get me on a cruise. I never thought it was the vacation style for me, and then I read David Foster Wallace's "Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise," which only solidified my horror at the prospect. A horror of being trapped, on a boat, with 5000 people of the type who go on cruises. But here I am.

They say it's heaven — a deck chair and a book. I believe it. I just don't see it as easily attainable. But I'll try. I have options as follows:

• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell — It's a flipback!, so it's ultraportable! How could I not bring this? Only, I'm not sure I'm actually in the mood to read it.
• These Days Are Ours, Michell Haimoff — A review copy, a post 9-11 thing. I'm not sure I want to read about the post 9-11 thing, but both the book and the author sound pretty smart.
• The Man Who Wasn't Maigret, Patrick Marnham — Library book. I probably shouldn't bring a libary book on a cruise.
• The White Horse Inn, Georges Simenon — Another library book. I'll have to renew the loan so I can read it when I get back.
• Tropic Moon, Georges Simenon — I have a little Simenon project going on right now, only I'm not at liberty to divulge details just yet.
• Act of Passion, Georges Simenon — I really do need this, for research purposes. I should bring some Simenon.
• Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett — Comes highly recommended by Oprah and my mother-in-law, which recommendations I regard as dubious. But it's also the best book ever according to the coffee girl whith whom I chat about books. And then a coworker pressed her copy on me. Also, we recently introduced Carcassone to my mother-in-law, and she says it reminds her of this book, for which reason I'm now deadly curious.
• The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov. Only I might read this before I leave.

Those are the ones I haven't pushed into dusty corners.

Then there are the e-books I've been loading up on:

• Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (I love the TV series.)
• Impromptu in Moribundia, Patrick Hamilton
• Spurious, Lars Iyer
• Phantoms of Breslau, Marek Krajewski
• The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa (readalong, anyone?)
• The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
• The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson

This time next week I'll be leaving on vacation. Maybe I'll get to read a little. Or maybe I'll just spend all my waking hours at the champagne bar.

A hideous commerce

"It looks to me as if Wokulski is . . . in love, as it were."

The doctor stopped dead on the pavement and, leaning on his stick, began laughing in a way that attracted the attention of the (fortunately) few passers-by: "Ha ha! Have you only just made that monumental discovery? Ha ha! This old fellow pleases me . . ."

It was a ridiculous joke. However, I bit my lip and retorted. "It was easy to make that discovery, even for someone . . . less skilled than I am (I think I caught him there!). But I prefer being cautious even in supposing things, Mr Szuman . . . In any case, I never dreamed that such an ordinary thing as love could bring about such havoc in man."

"You are mistaken, old man," the doctor replied with a gesture. "Love is an ordinary thing in nature and even to God, if you like. But your stupid civilisation, based on Roman views long since dead and buried, on the interests of the papacy, troubadours, asceticism, the caste system and such-like rubbish has turned a natural feeling into — guess what? — a disease of the nervous system! Your supposedly chivalrous and romantic love is nothing more than a hideous commerce based on dishonesty, which is very properly punished by the lifelong imprisonment known as marriage . . . Woe to those who bring their hearts to such a market-place! How much talent, even life it devours . . . I know this very well," he went on, breathless with rage, "for although I'm a Jew and will remain one till the day I die, I was nevertheless brought up among your people and was even engaged to marry a Christian girl . . . Well, and they forced us to make so many compromises in our plans, they watched over us so tenderly in the name of religion, morality, tradition and goodness knows what else — that she died and I tried to poison myself . . . A man as clever as I am, and as bald."

He stopped again on the sidewalk. "Believe me, Ignacy," he concluded in a hoarse voice, "you will not find anything as vile as human beings, not even among the animals. In Nature, the male belongs to the female who pleases him and whom he pleases. So there are no idiots among the animals. But among us! I am a Jew, so am not allowed to love a Christian woman . . . He is in trade, so he has no right to a well-born lady . . . And you, who have no money, have no right at all to any woman whatsoever. Your civilisation is rotten! I'd gladly perish, provided its ruins came down on top of me . . . "

— from The Doll, by Bolesław Prus.

Ah, love. Well, you think it's about love, but then it's about politics. But for Ignacy, everything is about politics, even when it isn't.

I'm about halfway through and find myself fully invested in these characters and their lots, despite the overuse of ellipses (as a punctuation mark, I mean — see excerpt above — not a narrative device). It fills me with horror that Wokulski might be led to ruin by love, or something like it.

Izabela to this point is not quite the cold-hearted bitch I was led to anticipate; she is oblivious to some concerns and at times thoughtless, but this is because she is a product of the class system, not because she is inherently evil.

There's a flashback in which there's much drinking and Wokulski agrees to jump off a bridge, which is reminiscent of an early scene in War and Peace, where the young pups dare each other to drink out on the window ledge. It's funny and life-affirming and mildly horrifying (the scene, I mean, but maybe also the story in general), but seen through Ignacy's eyes, it's all political.

My love is away this week, so I'm off to bed with my book.

The feelings of frozen hearts and the dreams of unfeeling heads

Some quotable bits from the first 205 pages of The Doll, by Bolesław Prus, with a few thoughts.

P 10:
At eight in the evening they closed: the clerks went off, and only Rzecki remained behind. He made out the day's accounts, checked the cash, planned his activities for the morrow and wondered whether everything had been done that should have been done that day. For he paid for any neglected duties with insomnia and dismal dreams of the shop in ruins, of the final decline and fall of the Bonaparte dynasty and with the thought that all the hopes he ever had in his life were only nonsense.

"Nothing will ever happen! We're doomed, and there's no hope," he groaned, tossing on his hard mattress.

— I find this is pretty funny, though perhaps in other times it was normal to feel such strong concern for the state of one's nation, or one's political heroes.

P 36:
Then they sat down to supper, at which mouths ate, stomachs digested and little shoes under the table talked about the feelings of frozen hearts and the dreams of unfeeling heads. Then they would separate, to regain their strength for the dream of life in real sleep.

— I love this. The mouths, stomachs, shoes are disembodied! There are a few passages (and a dream sequence among them) that border on surreal.

P 43:
At this point the conversation ceased; it had been in Polish, copiously ornamented with French, which made it resemble a face disfigured by a rash.

— How very insulting. I'm guessing French would be used among the aristocracy, as a sign or education, worldliness, fashion. But whose point of view is this in the conversation between Izabela and her countess aunt? Is it Izabela's view? Does she view the aristocracy of which she is a part with disdain? Or is this the stamp of our omniscient narrator?

P 49:
"And is there no war on today? It is the weapons that have changed, that's all. Instead of an axe of scythe or scimitar, they fight with roubles. [...]"

— A pretty progressive thought for 1878, no?

P 65:
What a stupid life!... We're all of us chasing a dream in our hearts and it is not until the dream escapes us that we realise it was an illusion.

P 72:
"Experts say first love is the worst," Wokulski murmured.

"Not so. After the first, a hundred others are waiting, but after the hundredth, there's nothing."

— Wokulski's got it bad. His every move — financial, social, charitable — is to attract her attention.

P 99:
"[...] They insist you want to kill the industry. Is the competition you are creating really so dangerous?"

"It is true," Wokulski replied, "that I have three or even four million roubles credit with the Moscow manufacturers, but I do not yet know whether their products will suit our market."

"A huge sum of money, to be sure," the Prince murmured. "Do you not see a genuine threat to our factories in it?"

"Not in the least. I see only an insignificant decrease in their own immense profits, which are no concern of mine. My duty is to concern myself with my own profits and give my customers good value; for our goods will be cheaper."

— There are a lot of similar discussions throughout. Wokulski clearly sees that the factory owners are exploiting their workers and their customers.

P 120:
Gradually the smoke died away. As far as the eye could see we saw what looked like scraps of white or navy-blue paper scattered in disorder on the trampled grass in various places. Several carts were moving around the field, and some people were placing these scraps in them. The rest remained. "So this is what they were born for," Katz sighed, leaning on his rifle, overcome by melancholy.

— This battle interlude — the Hungarian uprising of 1849, which many Poles joined — reminds me a little of War and Peace. It is particularly sobering for Rzecki, the old clerk in Wokulski's shop, his illusions of the glory of war, of purpose, being stripped away.

P 125:
During the entire journey I felt as though the quilt over my knees was more densely populated than Belgium.

P 138:
This young man proved to me, by quoting very clever people, that all capitalists are criminals, that the earth ought to belong to those who cultivate it, that factories, coalmines and machines ought to be the property of everyone, that there is no God or Soul which priests invented to trick people into paying tithes. He added that when they start the revolution (he and the three "prikashchiki"), then we shall all work only eight hours a day, and enjoy ourselves for the rest of the time, even though everyone will have a pension when old, and a free funeral. Finally he said that paradise will not come to this world until everything is held in common: the earth, building, machines and even wives.

— "Work only eight hours a day"! Damn Socialists.

P 158
"[...] They are all somewhat scatterbrained, as you will have noticed, but they're men of good will . . . They want to do something, they're intelligent and educated — but they lack energy. A sickness of the will, my dear sir, their whole class is affected by it . . . They have everything — money, titles, respect, even success with women, so they want nothing. But without that urge, Mr Wokulski, they cannot help becoming tools in the hands of new and ambitious men . . . We, my dear sir, we still want many things," he added in a still lower voice, "they are lucky to have found us . . . "

P 192:
"Well, and what have you to say to all this, doctor?"

"Only what I have already said," Szuman replied, "we're approaching the fifth act. Either this is the end of a gallant man, or the start of a whole series of follies..."

"And the worst sort, for they will be political," Mr Rzecki interposed.

— Wokulski has demanded satisfaction, so there is a duel! Barely a third through the novel, we can be fairly certain this is not his end, but rather as Szuman suggests merely the beginning of his end. I almost missed the insult and the challenge, they were so underplayed. Wokulski's head is so full of love that other, significant events happen in a blink.

I have not quoted here from the 5-page encounter with Izabela's cousin, Julian Ochocki, scientist, and his obsession with flying machines, which surely would prove to be a turning point for the world. But there was more to the conversation than that. Something about it was bitter to Wokulski, reminding him of pursuits he'd given up. I expect we'll meet Ochocki again.

Coincidentally I've been dipping into David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years this week, and it's complementing my reading of The Doll in terms of the role of usurers and the development of a class of tradesmen. It casts a light on Wokulski's sense of financial and moral obligation, and how closely they are tied.

Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost

Official site.
A bit of background.

It's joyful and thought-provoking, beautiful, and even funny at times. It's a "documentary," but without much dialogue — it's all about the dance, in the studio, on stage, and out onto the streets. The floating trams of Wuppertal are a marvelous backdrop. It's in 3D, directed by Wim Wenders, and nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best documentary feature.

Aging and memory are major themes in the works that are excerpted. The dance is deeply psychological (and with a touch of absurdity), the more so for humans being cast alongside basic elements — cascading water, flinging dirt, blowing leaves.

I dragged the family to see it this weekend, and we all loved it. J-F was astounded to discover that modern dance could be so meaningful (having seen Lalala Human Steps with me years ago and being unimpressed by the repetitiveness, and in contrast to, say, Cirque du Soleil, which ultimately is about feats of strength) — he is currently considering giving up his career in the civil service to join a dance troupe. The 9-year-old says it was very cool, so don't hesitate to take your kids — expose them to something a little out of the ordinary while saving yourself the expense of arts centre tickets. See it.

Lalka

Finally I'm reading The Doll, by Bolesław Prus. It stands as the Great Polish Novel (according to people who know better about these things than I do), but it wasn't until I actually cracked it open that it intimidated me.

It's 1878, and it's all Napoleon III, Bismarck, Gambetta, on top of which, it's set during the Partitions, and while I understand the fact of the partitions, it's hard to appreciate the logistical reality of them—how it affected people's heads, their language, culture, politics, their day to day. And when we're dealing with a main character who participated in the 1863 Uprising and was sent to Irkutsk as a result, and then went off to make his fortune in the Russo-Turkish war, I get the feeling the political background might be a little bit important.

[My grandparents were born some years after the events of this novel take place, but still in unPoland. Their day to day, their schooling, was German, yet they remained Polish, if nationless. I cannot fathom what that childhood might've been like.]

So even more so than with War and Peace, or The Red and the Black, I feel I am out of my depth.

But! I've looked a few things up, reread a few passages, passed the 50-page mark (of 683), and wishing I could stop the world so I could sink into it for a few uninterrupted days.

Izabela, our allegedly cold-hearted bitch of a heroine, is reading Zola's latest novel, A Page of Love.



Jacek Kaczmarski's song of the novel in the above clip is illustrated by scenes from Wojciech Has's 1968 film adapatation.

Księga zdarzeń zawsze otwarta w połowie

Wisława Szymborska, 1923–2012, whose poem "Love at First Sight" was put to song and used to great effect in Trois Couleurs: Rouge.

Problems of universal importance

Proud Beggars, by Albert Cossery, is a very funny book, and proved to be a delicious palate cleanser after having read a couple detail-intensive historical novels that went on a bit too long.

Written in 1955, Proud Beggars is surprisingly fresh, and in light of the Arab Spring, its revolutionary spirit can be viewed as relevant — not exactly prescient, but insightful into a simmering antiestablishment, life-affirming attitude.

It's set in Cairo, and in the second chapter there's a murder in a brothel. We know who did it — this is no police procedural or cat-and-mouse tale.

The story is about three friends, barely concerning itself with how they are implicated in the murder.

The novel starts with Gohar, who lives ascetically in a single room in a slum. He wakes to find it flooded and determines that the best course of action is to do nothing and wait for a miracle. But he's freaking out, so finally he makes a run for it, and only once he's well away from the building does he realize he's left his drugs behind, but he's too freaked out to go back. He spends the rest of the day affected by paranoia and hallucinations and sudden clarity and withdrawal, trying to track down his dealer. He dreams of finding passage to Syria where he can spend his days frolicking through fields of hashish. He gave up his professorial gig at the university some time ago; his literary talent now earns him some coin at the brothel, for to "write the love letters of illiterate whores seemed to him work worthy of human interest."

Yeghen is (he seems to think) a very ugly man, which quality is deemed to be central to his character, that of romantic and poet — a popular poet, a populist poet, giving the people voice in the people's own language. He makes his living by dealing drugs and, no doubt, engaging in other nefarious activities.

El Kordi is a revolutionary in his head, but by day he plays the role of government clerk:

It was eleven in the morning. Seated behind his desk in the Ministry of Public Works, El Kordi was growing bored watching the flies buzz about. The large room, lit by high windows and containing several desks behind which other clerks were labouring, was as odious to him as a prison. It actually was a sordid kind of prison, where one was in eternal contact with common-law prisoners. El Kordi would have accepted being in prison, but in a private cell, as a political prisoner. His rancor against such overcrowding derived from noble, aristocratic instincts of which he was not at all aware. He was embittered by the lack of privacy that became intolerable in the long run. How could he reflect at ease on problems of universal importance in front of these dusty, congealed figures devoted to unending slavery? To protest against this injustice, El Kordi abstained from practically all work, intending thereby to show his disapproval and his spiritual independence. But since no one noticed his protest, he grew bored.

[...]

From his chair, he distractedly contemplated his sorry colleagues and thought he saw the chains of slavery everywhere. These constraints imposed on his freedom several hours each day made him extremely sensitive to the sorrows of the oppressed masses of the universe. He stirred in his chair and sighed loudly. Some of the slaves, seriously occupied with their work, raised their heads and gave him a look full of incomprehension. El Kordi answered these sad looks with a kind of aggressive pout. He despised all of them. The revolutions would not be carried out by this wretched breed. They'd been there several years — how many, no one could say — rooted to their chairs, covered with dust, with their mummified faces. A veritable museum of horrors. At the thought that one day he might be like them, El Kordi shivered and felt like leaving at one. But then he told himself that it wasn't yet a decent hour to go, and so he stayed on quietly being bored.

Besides the motley trio, the investigating police inspector is himself quite a character, a man of peculiar habits and aspirations. He rounds out the novel's absurdities and brings it to a perfect close.

Along the way, adding to the rich tapestry of impoverished Cairo life: Yeghen's mother ("She was skilled in the art of distilling sadness; she spun misery like a spider its web."); the consumptive whore El Kordi intends to save; and Gohar's limbless beggar-neighbour and his jealous wife.

Despite the material poverty of the surroundings, there's a freedom of spirit and life-is-beautiful vibe throughout the book, and it's more than implied that such joie is absent among the oppressors, and only through relinquishing bourgeois extravagances can one know what is truly important. Of course, so many ideas are turned upside down in this book; ironically, the dead whore's life isn't given much value at all — she's of no consequence, just a casualty of the revolutionary ideas of a few self-important, if beggarly, men. So it seems Cossery is mocking the life-is-beautiful attitude as much as he's embracing it. Either way, it's something to smile about.

The novel has been adapted to a graphic format (French original, Mendiants et orgueilleux), extracted in Words without Borders.

The taste of the Russian peasant

The thespian side of Elizabeth's soul! Hunger for the awe lighting up visitors' faces when they reached her presence, having passed through the enfilade of staterooms connected through carved and gilded portals. Hunger for the gasps of astonishment at the soft browns and yellows in the Amber Room. Shades of ebony touching on the color of dark honey, through which she, the queen bee, floated in her luscious dresses, her high heels sliding on the polished mosaics of the floors. "How vulgar, Varenka," Catherine had murmured. "She has the taste of the Russian peasant she will always be."

The Winter Palace, by Eva Stachniak, is a historical novel centering on the rise to power of Catherine the Great of Russia, from the time she arrived at the court of Empress Elizabeth, at the age of 15. Catherine is a mythic character, but the truth is I know very little about her.

Her story is told through the eyes of one of the maids at court, Varvara, the orphaned daughter of a bookbinder, whose main duties revolve around the transmission of information, or, more bluntly, spying.



I wanted to love this book, but didn't. A little over halfway through I toyed with the idea of abandoning it. After all, I know the story ends in a coup and Catherine's ascension to the throne. I think the only thing that pulled me along was the introduction of the character of Count Poniatowski and the connection to Polish history, though I think my curiosity would be better served by a biography or history text.

The tagline — "behind every great ruler lies a betrayal" — is a little misleading; there is no single betrayal on which events hinge.

It was not believable to me that Catherine would suddenly have so much support, at court, among the Guard, after having lived so much on the sidelines, out of the court's and public's eye. Her life was fuller, of course, than we are allowed to see (and the novel is weaker for us not seeing it).

That's one of Varvara's epiphanies, but she comes off as rather pathetic for not having realized earlier that her status was not unique, for not having questioned some sources of information or the nature of other relationships. For someone in the know, she knows very little. Similarly, I don't buy Varvara's grief for her husband, and the characterization of her relationship with her daughter feels forced. It's too bad that we experience all the novel's events through someone whose characterization is relatively weak.

There's a disconnect between her perception, Catherine's story, and what I think the reader is intended to come away with.

About the palace cats.

Excerpt.