(Not to be confused with trying to blog, which is an altogether different, but perhaps related, sort of problem.)
Somehow, and I think this is out character for me, I've been reading myself into a hole.
Book I'm desperately trying to finish:
— The Manuscript Found at Saragossa, Jan Potocki.
It's big! I didn't realize just how big, because I'm reading it as an ebook, but the print version comes with 656 pages. You kind of lose sight of your progress through a book when it's electronic. Yes, there are page numbers (which I haven't entirely figured out — numbers corresponding to, I believe, the print edition's page numbering appear in the right margin (522 now), but there's another set of numbers at the bottom showing that I am currently at 544-545 of 654, which numbering must include, I'm guessing, the print edition's table of contents, introduction, etc), but your progress isn't tangible in the way your finger measures what's been read versus what's yet to be read when it holds your place as you carry your book from one reading spot to another. This really does bring a new dimension to losing oneself in a book.
Books I'm also reading, but no, not really; I stopped reading them so I could finish Potocki:
— Parrot & Olivier in America, Peter Carey, which I was really quite enjoying.
— Granta: Sex, which I was also enjoying in rather a different way (I'll be writing more about this).
Book I bought (in eformat) because I couldn't help myself, fully intending to devour it straight away, but which is sitting patiently awaiting Potocki's completion:
— The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson.
Books I've "temporarily" set aside:
— The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann. I love this book! I just need time to read it. I think I'm about halfway. I've been reading it in spurts, and that mostly seems to be working, if you think dropping it for 2 months at a time is OK (which I'm not sure I do).
— Memories of the Future, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. I loved the first story, but I broke off during the last, longish story when I realized I was reading the words but none of them were making any impression on me. This book deserves better from me.
Books I'm considering reading in the near future, like starting tomorrow:
— The Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson, which is fucking huge. I've had these books forever, and they've been propping up my tenuously attached bedside shelf, but now Girl Detective is reading them, and while I can't really get excited about them, I kind of feel like this is the right thing to do, to take advantage of a group reading (and thereby morale-boosting) opportunity — it's now or never. Is anyone else reading along? Has anyone previously read this trilogy? Advice, strategies, warnings are welcome.
Books that I am allegedly still reading; no, I could never abandon them!
— The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction, Ghalive Lahnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami. I started reading this in January 2008. And I think it's amazing. And the flavour of the Saragossa manuscript puts me in mind of it.
— The Collected Poems, 1956–1998, Zbigniew Herbert. Well, poetry. I'm just not trying hard enough.
— The Last Supper, Paweł Huelle. I'm in the wrong headspace for it, but I don't know what the right headspace might be, nor where I could find it.
— A Perfect Vacuum, Stanisław Lem. I couldn't help but dip into it once I'd finished Imaginary Magnitudes, but then I restrained myself, thinking that, as an anthology of reviews of nonexistent books, it would make a great companion read to Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas (also sitting on my shelf for well over a year now), if only I could clear sufficient mental room to tackle them both in tandem.
That's not to mention the other various books lying round the house that I have not started and which I fully intend to get read this year (including, for example, the dauntingly large Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day and JG Farrell's Singapore Grip).
Observation:
Five of these books are Polish, in one way or another. Krzhizhanovsky wrote in Russian but is considered ethnically Polish (a typically Polish surname rendered in Cyrillic and then into English); Potocki, a Polish nobleman, wrote the Manuscript in French. (The three others are Herbert, Huelle, and Lem, in case you're wondering.)
Book that I'm craving:
Something small and light and finite.
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
No one's gonna take me alive
Reading "The Duchess of Medina Sidonia's Story," which gives way to "The Marqués de Val Florida's Story," told along with "Hermosito's Story," as related within "The Gypsy Chief's Story," over the course of the twenty-seventh through twenty-ninth days of the adventures recounted in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki.
Listening to "Knights of Cydonia," as told by Muse.
Listening to "Knights of Cydonia," as told by Muse.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Because I am a girl
Why I love this campaign from Plan Canada...
Because Helena shushes me every time it plays on TV (a lot, again, lately). Because she is rapt by it. Because she waits for the end of it — "It only takes one girl to change the world. Are you the one?" — so she can declaim "Yes!" to anyone within earshot.
Because Helena shushes me every time it plays on TV (a lot, again, lately). Because she is rapt by it. Because she waits for the end of it — "It only takes one girl to change the world. Are you the one?" — so she can declaim "Yes!" to anyone within earshot.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
What you may find in Saragossa
She opened the door and we found ourselves in underground vaults, beyond which was what looked like a silver lake, but was actually a lake of quicksilver. The princess clapped her hands, and a boat propelled by a yellow dwarf appeared. We stepped into the boat, and I saw that the dwarf's face was of gold, with diamond eyes and a coral mouth. In other words it was an automaton who rowed through the quicksilver with his little oars and skilfully made the boat skim along. This novel pilot took us to the foot of a rock whch opened up to allow us to pass into another chamber, in which there was the amazing spectacle of countless other automata: peacocks spreading enamel tails which were studded with jewels, parrots with emeralds for plumage flying above our heads, negroes made of ebony proffering golden platters laden with ruby cherries and sapphire grapes. There were numerous other astonishing objects in these magical vaults which stretched further than the eye could see.
At that moment I was unaccountably tempted to repeat the word "paradise" to see what effect it would have on the princess. I yielded to this fatal curiosity and said, "Signora, one can truthfully say that you are living in paradise on earth."
The princess smiled in the most charming manner and said, "So that you can better judge the delights of this place, I shall introduce to you my six ladies-in-waiting."
She took a golden key from her belt and opened a huge chest which was covered in black velvet and decorated with solid silver.
When the chest was opened, a skeleton appeared, who came towards me in a menacing way. I drew my sword. The skeleton ripped off its left arm and, using it as a weapon, launched a furious attack on me. I put up a good fight, but a second skeleton emerged from the chest, tore a rib off the first skeleton and hit me over the head with it. I grabbed it by the throat but it clasped me in its fleshless arms and tried to throw me to the ground. I managed to get clear of it, but a third skeleton emerged from the trunk to join the other two. Then the other three appeared. Seeing no chance of coming away alive from so unequal a combat, I fell to my knees and begged the princess to spare me.
The princess ordered the skeletons to return to the chest, then said, "Romati, never forget as long as you live what you have seen here."
As she said this she grasped my arm. I felt it burn to the bone and I fainted.
— from The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki.
It was written around 1800 in French by a Polish nobleman, but wasn't published in its entirety during his lifetime.
It's a novel of frames. Kind of like Arabian Nights, with a touch of Don Quixote about it (for its adventuring and metaphysical aspects), and maybe even Perec's Life A User's Manual (not sure exactly why — some of the flavour has seeped from one reading to the other), only more macabre. Loving it!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Sunflower
I'm reviewing Sunflower, by Gyula Krúdy, as part of the Spotlight Series tour featuring New York Review Books. Visit the Spotlight Series tour page for links to dozens of reviews of fantastic NYRB Classics. See also the interview with their managing editor.
**********
Sunflower, by Gyula Krúdy, is a remarkable book featuring some deeply weird prose.
Mostly it's about the love affairs of a handful of characters living in and around Budapest in the early 20th century.
Eveline, the 22-year-old woman who flees the city for her house in the country, to escape thoughts of her former fiancé; Kálmán, said lover, who is gambling her money way; Álmos-Dreamer, a 40-year-old bachelor country aristocrat who pines for Eveline and is quite literally wasting away with romantic longing; Malvina Maszkerádi, a friend staying with Eveline, who outwardly appears modern and worldly, but who fears engaging in life — her ideal love is an ancient, calmly virile tree, to whom no man can compare; Pistoli, patron of village Gypsies, whose three former wives ended up in the madhouse, now determinedly wooing Miss Maszkerádi, much to her consternation.
We encounter their lovers, former lovers, the lovers of their former lovers, their ancestors, their ancestors' lovers, ghosts, and fortunetellers.
There's not much by way of plot speak of. The narrative shifts focus often and with such intensity that it seems unlikely to return to a character once it's moved on, but we do achieve a sense of resolution regarding those people we come to care about.
Sunflower reminds me of the Russians: the lush tone with which Turgenev paints his scenes, the portraits of aristocrats (in particular I'm thinking of Dostoevsky's wry touch in The Gambler), and Tolstoy, well, I'll get to that.
Beyond all the romantic intrigues, Sunflower is about the meaning of life and death. Krúdy sets out to tackle the issue of "Why bother to set out in life when it was over so soon?"
There are sufficient tales told throughout the novel to show that death in itself should prove no obstacle to achieving romantic (or sexual) fulfillment. While Eveline in her confused state of mind clings to life's sidelines, Kálmán grabs life by the balls (with mixed results), Álmos-Dreamer straddles both sides of death's divide (proving its inconsequence), and Miss Maszkerádi is paralyzed by some combination of fear, boredom, pointlessness.
While Sunflower often flirts with morbidity, it is deeply fecund and organic.
There's an episode that stands out as the heart of the book, to my mind, serving much the same function as does Natasha's dance in War and Peace. In this sense: the scene doesn't really match the rest of the book and yet seems to be the book's whole reason for being. Natasha's dance sings her Russianness, the Russianness of all of them, peasant, servant, or aristocrat, whether a traditionalist or someone with modern views, it strips that all away to allow something organic to manifest itself. And here in Sunflower is this Gypsy serenade, unacceptable to the Miss Maszkerádi's urban attitude, her sense of social decorum, clashing with her modern views. Mr Pistoli, a rustic bon vivant, breaks down her defenses, with music, wine, words. And Miss Maszkerádi rises to his bait, gives herself over to it, which gives way to revelry, each of them playing a trickster while fully enchanted, for a few hours at least. It's a lovely scene, full of erotic potential, where something gypsy and Hungarian and human is being realized. Sadly, the moment passes.
The comparison of Gyula Krúdy to Bruno Schulz is a valid one (at least, what I've read of Schulz), both in subject somewhat preternatural and how the language feeds the senses.
Krúdy's language is dense with images and, it seems to me, secret meanings — that is, it manages to create an aura of the surreal, the otherwordly, and the erotic, without contrivance. The opening pages have the feel of a gothic romance, but this mood rather quickly congeals into something much thicker, pervading the very air these characters breathe, often in a disconcertingly creepy way.
How quickly some images (at first even banal) can take a sinister turn. For example: "Miss Maszkerádi's steely-glinting eyes appeared as serene as an idol's or a maniac's. (p 89)" Or (my favourite sentence of the book): "Meanwhile Risoulette stood in the door, bewildered, like a woman who has spilled kerosene on her skirt but cannot find a match. (p 138)"
Many pastoral scenes meander in and out of dark crevices.
The sunflower, of course, turns to follow the sun, turns toward life. We are the sunflower at the window, gazing in. Eveline watches the sunflowers, while being one much of the time herself, rooted in her place and rotating to seek out a life source outside of herself. By autumn, she comes to bask.
Sunflower is a wonderful but demanding novel. It serves as the perfect bridge between 19th-century Russians and 20th-century surrealists. If you give yourself over to it, it is magical and profound.
Resources
Excerpt
Review: Los Angeles Times
The Babel Guide to Hungarian Literature
HunLit: Multi-lingual Literature Database of the Hungarian Book Foundation — Gyula Krúdy page
UNESCO Literature & Translation: Napraforgó (Sunflower)
Hungarian Literature Online: the goddess in Sunflower
Hungarian Literature Online: interview with John Bakti
"Woman as Goddess in Krúdy's Sunflower," by John Bakti
A note on the cover
The cover image comes from a photograph by Witkacy, a turn-of-the-century Polish playwright, painter, drug-experimenter, philosopher... all-round artist extraordinaire... you get the idea. The photo is of Jadwiga Janczewska, his fiancée, who committed suicide (he himself committed suicide many years later). I'm not sure what about the cover I want to say, really, apart from that it feels connected and appropriate that Witkacy's work would appear in connection with Sunflower. I've seen some of his plays as well as movies based on his work; he had a strange and strong sense of Polishness, which might be considered parallel to Krúdy's Hungarianness, and an absurdist (and quite possibly morbid) sensibility. He and his work both were pretty fucked up for their time. Witkacy also championed the work of Bruno Schulz, to whom Krúdy is compared. Somehow, this cover fits.
**********
I've previously written about the following NYRB Classics:
The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares
Clandestine in Chile, Gabriel García Márquez.
My Fantoms, Théophile Gautier
Uncle, JP Martin
Uncle Cleans Up, JP Martin
Letty Fox: Her Luck, Christina Stead
Chess Story, Stefan Zweig
Et cetera
**********
"Let crazy life rush headlong on the highway for others; we shall contemplate the sunflowers, watch them sprout, blossom, fade away. Yesterday they were still giants, but now, in autumn, they are thatch on the roof."
Sunflower, by Gyula Krúdy, is a remarkable book featuring some deeply weird prose.
Mostly it's about the love affairs of a handful of characters living in and around Budapest in the early 20th century.
Eveline, the 22-year-old woman who flees the city for her house in the country, to escape thoughts of her former fiancé; Kálmán, said lover, who is gambling her money way; Álmos-Dreamer, a 40-year-old bachelor country aristocrat who pines for Eveline and is quite literally wasting away with romantic longing; Malvina Maszkerádi, a friend staying with Eveline, who outwardly appears modern and worldly, but who fears engaging in life — her ideal love is an ancient, calmly virile tree, to whom no man can compare; Pistoli, patron of village Gypsies, whose three former wives ended up in the madhouse, now determinedly wooing Miss Maszkerádi, much to her consternation.
We encounter their lovers, former lovers, the lovers of their former lovers, their ancestors, their ancestors' lovers, ghosts, and fortunetellers.
Sunflower reminds me of the Russians: the lush tone with which Turgenev paints his scenes, the portraits of aristocrats (in particular I'm thinking of Dostoevsky's wry touch in The Gambler), and Tolstoy, well, I'll get to that.
Beyond all the romantic intrigues, Sunflower is about the meaning of life and death. Krúdy sets out to tackle the issue of "Why bother to set out in life when it was over so soon?"
There are sufficient tales told throughout the novel to show that death in itself should prove no obstacle to achieving romantic (or sexual) fulfillment. While Eveline in her confused state of mind clings to life's sidelines, Kálmán grabs life by the balls (with mixed results), Álmos-Dreamer straddles both sides of death's divide (proving its inconsequence), and Miss Maszkerádi is paralyzed by some combination of fear, boredom, pointlessness.
"I can't resign myself to the fact that I live in order to die some day. I'd love to step off this well-trodden straight and boring path. To somehow live differently, think different thoughts, feel different feelings than others. It wouldn't bother me to be as alone as a tree on the plains. My leaves would be like no other tree's. [...] (p 88)"
While Sunflower often flirts with morbidity, it is deeply fecund and organic.
There's an episode that stands out as the heart of the book, to my mind, serving much the same function as does Natasha's dance in War and Peace. In this sense: the scene doesn't really match the rest of the book and yet seems to be the book's whole reason for being. Natasha's dance sings her Russianness, the Russianness of all of them, peasant, servant, or aristocrat, whether a traditionalist or someone with modern views, it strips that all away to allow something organic to manifest itself. And here in Sunflower is this Gypsy serenade, unacceptable to the Miss Maszkerádi's urban attitude, her sense of social decorum, clashing with her modern views. Mr Pistoli, a rustic bon vivant, breaks down her defenses, with music, wine, words. And Miss Maszkerádi rises to his bait, gives herself over to it, which gives way to revelry, each of them playing a trickster while fully enchanted, for a few hours at least. It's a lovely scene, full of erotic potential, where something gypsy and Hungarian and human is being realized. Sadly, the moment passes.
The comparison of Gyula Krúdy to Bruno Schulz is a valid one (at least, what I've read of Schulz), both in subject somewhat preternatural and how the language feeds the senses.
Krúdy's language is dense with images and, it seems to me, secret meanings — that is, it manages to create an aura of the surreal, the otherwordly, and the erotic, without contrivance. The opening pages have the feel of a gothic romance, but this mood rather quickly congeals into something much thicker, pervading the very air these characters breathe, often in a disconcertingly creepy way.
How quickly some images (at first even banal) can take a sinister turn. For example: "Miss Maszkerádi's steely-glinting eyes appeared as serene as an idol's or a maniac's. (p 89)" Or (my favourite sentence of the book): "Meanwhile Risoulette stood in the door, bewildered, like a woman who has spilled kerosene on her skirt but cannot find a match. (p 138)"
Many pastoral scenes meander in and out of dark crevices.
But cock's crow signals the arrival of those never-glimpsed vagabonds who stand stock still under your window in the dead of night, with murder in their hears, guilt and terror in their eyes. Come morning, they regain their original shapes and turn into solitary trees at crossroads or hat-waving, curly-haired young travelers with small knapsacks and large staffs, humming a merry tune and marching bright-eyed toward distant lands to bring glad tidings, fun and games, new songs and youthful flaring passions to small houses that somnolently await them. There they sit down at the kitchen table, earn their dinner by telling glorious tall tales, help pour the wine, chop the wood, nab the fattened pig by the ear; they also repair the grandfather clock that had not chimed in forty years and leave in the middle of the night, taking along the young miss's heart as well as her innocence. How enviably cheerful the lives of these vagabonds who pass your house at cock's crow after a night of sleeplessness . . . As if their knee-deep pockets contained some seed they drop in front of the window, to sprout into a yellow-crowned sunflower; no sooner are they gone than it is already tall enough to peek through the window pane. While, inside, the young lady of the house is already fast asleep, like Aladdin in the enchanted cave. (p 15)
The sunflower, of course, turns to follow the sun, turns toward life. We are the sunflower at the window, gazing in. Eveline watches the sunflowers, while being one much of the time herself, rooted in her place and rotating to seek out a life source outside of herself. By autumn, she comes to bask.
Sunflower is a wonderful but demanding novel. It serves as the perfect bridge between 19th-century Russians and 20th-century surrealists. If you give yourself over to it, it is magical and profound.
Resources
A note on the cover
The cover image comes from a photograph by Witkacy, a turn-of-the-century Polish playwright, painter, drug-experimenter, philosopher... all-round artist extraordinaire... you get the idea. The photo is of Jadwiga Janczewska, his fiancée, who committed suicide (he himself committed suicide many years later). I'm not sure what about the cover I want to say, really, apart from that it feels connected and appropriate that Witkacy's work would appear in connection with Sunflower. I've seen some of his plays as well as movies based on his work; he had a strange and strong sense of Polishness, which might be considered parallel to Krúdy's Hungarianness, and an absurdist (and quite possibly morbid) sensibility. He and his work both were pretty fucked up for their time. Witkacy also championed the work of Bruno Schulz, to whom Krúdy is compared. Somehow, this cover fits.
**********
I've previously written about the following NYRB Classics:
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Marking my place
At first, how convenient, I thought. On my morning commute without any effort at all I was being reminded what day it was. (Yes, this is a good thing because, yes, I need reminding.)
This worked particlarly well in January. The bookmark was dedicated to one book in particular — the book of the month — and it was useful to track the days while I was on vacation.
February's bookmark is still encased in Memories of the Future. Every time I pick this book up, I feel like I'm travelling in time.
March, April, May have been shifting. They've occupied several books, often at the same time. I no longer no what day it is.
I think it's time I detached the calendars, freed myself from time constraints. My place in a book must remain outside time.
The future of the book
Some three weeks ago (more! what day is this, anyway?) I headed out to the 12th Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival to attend a panel discussion: "The Future of the Book."
(It's the only event I attended this year; there was no author in particular that I was clammering to see, but I feel obliged to experience the benefits of great cultural events taking place near me, no matter how much I'd rather nap.)
On the panel: Yvonne Hunter, director of publicity and marketing at Penguin (Canada); Kim McArthur, publisher and president of McArthur & Company; and Andrew Piper, prof at McGill, author of Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age, and blogger.
The discussion was moderated by Paul Kennedy, wearing a Habs jersey.
I was going to report on this panel discussion immediately after the fact, and then I wasn't going to bother, and now I am, because of an overwhelming sense of confusion. That is, I came out of that talk a bit confused, the discussion had a vague and shifting focus, and the panelists themselves didn't seem very certain about anything. Now that it's sat with me for a few weeks, I see that this muddleheadedness is really the point, evidencing the confusion of the industry as a whole.
I'm sure that's not news to a lot of people. Me neither. But it's one thing to read about the industry here and there, the uncertain financial futures of independent booksellers and publishers, that reading is on the decline, the problems associated with digital rights management, etc; quite another to be in a room with industry professionals and see them shrugging their shoulders and shaking their heads.
So, this is me, not really reporting on anything at all, just saying, "Aurgh."
The state of things today is that boundaries are being knocked down, between writers and readers, between publishers and distributors. There's consensus among the publishers that they're losing the middle — you're left with big-money authors and weird little niche markets; the rest is dross.
Briefly they discuss the potential for technology to change the reading experience, particularly for children, where it can be an enhanced learning experience, and also for encyclopedia-type reference books. (Great! But then they're not books anymore.)
Of course, no one believes that books will ever be driven to extinction; although in some ways, they are being transformed into something like fetish objects. (I think the word "fetish" is taken by some people in the audience (as evidenced by their comments) to be something stronger, weirder, and more offensive than it ought to be. Everybody seems kind of scared by this.
Here's something I hadn't thought of: Ebooks can't be remaindered (the whole concept of which, I learn, was introduced during the Great Depression). Too bad for me and my bargain-bin hunting ways, but I'd've thought the industry would love that. Did you know it's normal to expect 50% returns on Maeve Binchy titles?
(None of the publishers who send me review copies is equipped to send review copies as ebooks.)
The "plan" then is to feed all those profits from your bestsellers back into the editorial process; if you don't need printing and warehousing and distribution, the savings will better serve the author–editor relationship. The role of the publisher can now morph into that of nurturing young talent. (Which is what I always thought it was supposed to be, that that's what the bestsellers afforded them to do; I'm not sure how digital changes this.)
(But this is kind of contrary to the kind of anecdote I regularly read, that editorial input is below expectation, and copyediting often nonexistent. I really don't think they know what they're talking about.)
I sat in a room of well over 100 people, most of them older than me, most of them gasping at the revelations of the Orwellian-like capabilities of Amazon to get inside your Kindle and track your every movement. Clearly they all like books, panel included; in fact, the panel were quite nostalgic about the physical book, about how you take them to bed and to the beach, and I was really surprised at all their trepidation.
My sense of it is this: They are too easily confusing content with form. They are feeding into each other's romantic nostalgia for physical books. In their defense of physical books, they are fetishizing them, and trying to preserve a market while resisting a brave new one. (I must say, the Penguin rep seems genuinely concerned with ensuring authors get a fair shake out of the deal). There's a weird emotional blockage at work that's preventing everyone from seeing clearly and getting on with business.
I'm not really sure what I want to say here. Sorry for not being coherent, but neither is the future.
Vaguely related matters
Five different reading devices, championed by five different readers.
Some answers to some common complaints.
The future of reading at the PEN World Voices Festival.
Amazon tracks Kindle habits.
Kobo also tracks how you read.
(It's the only event I attended this year; there was no author in particular that I was clammering to see, but I feel obliged to experience the benefits of great cultural events taking place near me, no matter how much I'd rather nap.)
On the panel: Yvonne Hunter, director of publicity and marketing at Penguin (Canada); Kim McArthur, publisher and president of McArthur & Company; and Andrew Piper, prof at McGill, author of Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age, and blogger.
The discussion was moderated by Paul Kennedy, wearing a Habs jersey.
I was going to report on this panel discussion immediately after the fact, and then I wasn't going to bother, and now I am, because of an overwhelming sense of confusion. That is, I came out of that talk a bit confused, the discussion had a vague and shifting focus, and the panelists themselves didn't seem very certain about anything. Now that it's sat with me for a few weeks, I see that this muddleheadedness is really the point, evidencing the confusion of the industry as a whole.
I'm sure that's not news to a lot of people. Me neither. But it's one thing to read about the industry here and there, the uncertain financial futures of independent booksellers and publishers, that reading is on the decline, the problems associated with digital rights management, etc; quite another to be in a room with industry professionals and see them shrugging their shoulders and shaking their heads.
So, this is me, not really reporting on anything at all, just saying, "Aurgh."
The state of things today is that boundaries are being knocked down, between writers and readers, between publishers and distributors. There's consensus among the publishers that they're losing the middle — you're left with big-money authors and weird little niche markets; the rest is dross.
Briefly they discuss the potential for technology to change the reading experience, particularly for children, where it can be an enhanced learning experience, and also for encyclopedia-type reference books. (Great! But then they're not books anymore.)
Of course, no one believes that books will ever be driven to extinction; although in some ways, they are being transformed into something like fetish objects. (I think the word "fetish" is taken by some people in the audience (as evidenced by their comments) to be something stronger, weirder, and more offensive than it ought to be. Everybody seems kind of scared by this.
Here's something I hadn't thought of: Ebooks can't be remaindered (the whole concept of which, I learn, was introduced during the Great Depression). Too bad for me and my bargain-bin hunting ways, but I'd've thought the industry would love that. Did you know it's normal to expect 50% returns on Maeve Binchy titles?
(None of the publishers who send me review copies is equipped to send review copies as ebooks.)
The "plan" then is to feed all those profits from your bestsellers back into the editorial process; if you don't need printing and warehousing and distribution, the savings will better serve the author–editor relationship. The role of the publisher can now morph into that of nurturing young talent. (Which is what I always thought it was supposed to be, that that's what the bestsellers afforded them to do; I'm not sure how digital changes this.)
(But this is kind of contrary to the kind of anecdote I regularly read, that editorial input is below expectation, and copyediting often nonexistent. I really don't think they know what they're talking about.)
I sat in a room of well over 100 people, most of them older than me, most of them gasping at the revelations of the Orwellian-like capabilities of Amazon to get inside your Kindle and track your every movement. Clearly they all like books, panel included; in fact, the panel were quite nostalgic about the physical book, about how you take them to bed and to the beach, and I was really surprised at all their trepidation.
My sense of it is this: They are too easily confusing content with form. They are feeding into each other's romantic nostalgia for physical books. In their defense of physical books, they are fetishizing them, and trying to preserve a market while resisting a brave new one. (I must say, the Penguin rep seems genuinely concerned with ensuring authors get a fair shake out of the deal). There's a weird emotional blockage at work that's preventing everyone from seeing clearly and getting on with business.
I'm not really sure what I want to say here. Sorry for not being coherent, but neither is the future.
Vaguely related matters
Five different reading devices, championed by five different readers.
Some answers to some common complaints.
The future of reading at the PEN World Voices Festival.
Amazon tracks Kindle habits.
Kobo also tracks how you read.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The creaking of the deathwatch beetle
Eveline's insomnia proved to be of long duration.
If you are sleepless in the big city you may gain some consolation from street noises that tell you there are others who find no relief in the night. But in the village the midnight hours can drive you to distraction, their slow passage as sluggish as the creaking of the deathwatch beetle. You may well imagine yourself a portrait of an antique ancestor hanging on the wall, whose wide-open eyes must contemplate one generation after another. The years whiz by with the wind and the rain, the rumbling storms, the migrating birds, the unctuous words of the priest and the mourners' bent heads by the open grave, stallions collapsing in a heap and fine old watchdogs laid low to rest, serving maids who were once young and fair, and tumbledown fences, desolate wishing wells and overgrown gardens... One after another, the years whoosh by. Only the insomniac looks on with open eyes, like a cadaver who forgot to die. A fine dust descends from the moldering ceiling to cover everything: bright faces and haymaking hips, merry neighbors, springtime smiles, flashing white teeth. Transience squats by the foot of the bed like a moribund, faithful old servitor. And the hand reaches less often for the thirst-quenching goblet.
At last the roosters began to crow.
— from Sunflower, by Gyula Krúdy.
I will be posting about Sunflower on May 22 as part of the Spotlight Series tour for New York Review Books Classics — a whole week featuring reviews of those sexy NYRB books!
Monday, May 10, 2010
The future is now
I'd decided to treat myself to an ereader as soon as the Kobo became available in black. I've read all about it, know the specs, etc, but some purchases I want to turn over in my hands before I buy. So this weekend I tried one out in-store.
The Kobo is bigger and lighter than I expected it to be. Page-turning was a little slow, but I hear that's typical of all devices using eInk technology. I went around in circles, navigation-wise, for a bit, but that circle is limited, and though it was taking longer than I wanted to figure things out, I'm sure I would've done so eventually. I left the store determined to have one; if I couldn't convince anyone to get me one for Mother's Day, I would pick one up for myself on Monday.
As it happens, I hardly had time to sing its praises at home before I had in my hands an altogether different ereader (because allegedly, I'm the best mom ever).
The Sony Reader Touch Edition is about twice the price, and I'm not entirely convinced I'm worth it. Undeniably, however, the look and feel of the Kobo is cheap by comparison. The Sony has more weight to it (kind of a negative), but this heft also confers solidity. I can imagine the Kobo being easily cracked, and the buttons not registering your intended actions. The Sony is a quality piece of hardware. (And the eInk seemed to move faster on the Sony in my own home than in-store and under sales pressure.)
Getting started
The Kobo comes preloaded with 100 books, which had had me excited — with it, I could get started straight away. On the other hand, those books are public domain — presumably I could track down and download those public domain titles I'd actually be interested in reading to any ereader I pleased.
(Has the meme propagated yet? What are the 100 books preloaded to the Kobo? How many have you read and how many do you actually intend to someday read? Now I'm kind of curious to know what they are.)
The Sony reader wasn't quite ready to use starting out of the box. First you have to charge it up. Then you have to find something to read.
This reader comes loaded up with about a dozen samples: 5 are in a Germanic language I can't read, and there are 2 fantastic classic novels in French (both of which I've already read (I even read half of one of them in French)). The English samples are all excerpts. I was surprised to find one of these is a selection of 10 recipes, 3 of which I'm eager to try out.
A few hours later I've added to my library some Dickens, some Dumas, PG Wodehouse, and Agatha Christie. None of these are top of list, but they're all books I mean to get around to someday. Also, I find on my hard drive a PDF of Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness. Onto the ereader it goes. (Since added: George Gissing, on Susan's recommendation.)
Things to get excited about
The Sony has going for it the ability to take notes. I always figured e-marginalia would be a natural offshoot of this kind of technology, but I'd convinced myself wasn't really necessary. How often do I make notes in books? Not very. But I do add a lot of sticky notes with stars and arrows (mostly as bookmarks). So it is comforting to have the option of extending these habits into the future.
Also a plus: the built-in dictionary. How often do I look up words in the dictionary while reading? Not very. But, I feel that I should (a recent exercise in annotation mde me realize that I understand many words in context but much less precisely than I should). And now I can! Very, very easily! I'm looking forward to putting this to the test when I'm reading the new China Miéville this summer (though, there's a good chance a lot of his words won't be in the dictionary). Ehh, I'm sure I'll use it with Dickens too.
Some frustrating quirks
Regarding the reader itself, at this early stage, I have little to complain about. I hate that alphabetical by author means by first name, and I appear to be losing this battle against the technological world. But, oh, I hate that a lot.
Regarding the whole business of ereading, well...
I downloaded a PDF (Agatha Christie) only to find it included only the book's odd-numbered pages; all the even-numbered pages were (mostly — except for the occasional oddly placed scrap block of text) blank.
The public domain files are often hit or miss. Many of the ePub books are obviously produced using OCR. One sample (GK Chesterton) was evidently not proofread; headers (the book and chapter titles) and footers (paper page numbers) would appear mid e-page, often interrupting a sentence.
And! Why can't I get (I mean buy, from a store) any JD Salinger stories?
At the end of the day
I went to bed, finally, with a real hardcover book though, because it was the book I happened to be in the middle of. Not because of its format. Format is lost behind a good book. I'd gladly read it electronically if it were at the ready (but now, I wasn't going to buy an ecopy, when I already had paper in front of me).
I've purchased one ebook (The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki) and am considering a few more. I think it's a bit funny that my hi-tech reading device is being used to supply me with literature that's old. I feel like I should be using it to read science fiction.
One publisher has already advised me that they do not (cannot?) supply review copies (in Canada) in an electronic format. Not yet anyway.
I'm definitely hoping that the move to the ereader will help me reclaim some wall space, or at least not endanger any more, but the effect will not be immediate. I have two print books ordered a week ago winging their way to me, review copies will continue, and then there are those darn sexy, irresistible NYRB classics.
Advice?
Do you have an ereader? If so, do you read more print or electronic books? Do you find you choose to read certain types of books in one format or another? Where do you like to get your ebooks from? Do you find your ereader lacking in any particular respect? Do you use your ereader one-handed or two-handed? Do you carry it with you everywhere?
The Kobo is bigger and lighter than I expected it to be. Page-turning was a little slow, but I hear that's typical of all devices using eInk technology. I went around in circles, navigation-wise, for a bit, but that circle is limited, and though it was taking longer than I wanted to figure things out, I'm sure I would've done so eventually. I left the store determined to have one; if I couldn't convince anyone to get me one for Mother's Day, I would pick one up for myself on Monday.
As it happens, I hardly had time to sing its praises at home before I had in my hands an altogether different ereader (because allegedly, I'm the best mom ever).
The Sony Reader Touch Edition is about twice the price, and I'm not entirely convinced I'm worth it. Undeniably, however, the look and feel of the Kobo is cheap by comparison. The Sony has more weight to it (kind of a negative), but this heft also confers solidity. I can imagine the Kobo being easily cracked, and the buttons not registering your intended actions. The Sony is a quality piece of hardware. (And the eInk seemed to move faster on the Sony in my own home than in-store and under sales pressure.)
Getting started
The Kobo comes preloaded with 100 books, which had had me excited — with it, I could get started straight away. On the other hand, those books are public domain — presumably I could track down and download those public domain titles I'd actually be interested in reading to any ereader I pleased.
(Has the meme propagated yet? What are the 100 books preloaded to the Kobo? How many have you read and how many do you actually intend to someday read? Now I'm kind of curious to know what they are.)
The Sony reader wasn't quite ready to use starting out of the box. First you have to charge it up. Then you have to find something to read.
This reader comes loaded up with about a dozen samples: 5 are in a Germanic language I can't read, and there are 2 fantastic classic novels in French (both of which I've already read (I even read half of one of them in French)). The English samples are all excerpts. I was surprised to find one of these is a selection of 10 recipes, 3 of which I'm eager to try out.
A few hours later I've added to my library some Dickens, some Dumas, PG Wodehouse, and Agatha Christie. None of these are top of list, but they're all books I mean to get around to someday. Also, I find on my hard drive a PDF of Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness. Onto the ereader it goes. (Since added: George Gissing, on Susan's recommendation.)
Things to get excited about
The Sony has going for it the ability to take notes. I always figured e-marginalia would be a natural offshoot of this kind of technology, but I'd convinced myself wasn't really necessary. How often do I make notes in books? Not very. But I do add a lot of sticky notes with stars and arrows (mostly as bookmarks). So it is comforting to have the option of extending these habits into the future.
Also a plus: the built-in dictionary. How often do I look up words in the dictionary while reading? Not very. But, I feel that I should (a recent exercise in annotation mde me realize that I understand many words in context but much less precisely than I should). And now I can! Very, very easily! I'm looking forward to putting this to the test when I'm reading the new China Miéville this summer (though, there's a good chance a lot of his words won't be in the dictionary). Ehh, I'm sure I'll use it with Dickens too.
Some frustrating quirks
Regarding the reader itself, at this early stage, I have little to complain about. I hate that alphabetical by author means by first name, and I appear to be losing this battle against the technological world. But, oh, I hate that a lot.
Regarding the whole business of ereading, well...
I downloaded a PDF (Agatha Christie) only to find it included only the book's odd-numbered pages; all the even-numbered pages were (mostly — except for the occasional oddly placed scrap block of text) blank.
The public domain files are often hit or miss. Many of the ePub books are obviously produced using OCR. One sample (GK Chesterton) was evidently not proofread; headers (the book and chapter titles) and footers (paper page numbers) would appear mid e-page, often interrupting a sentence.
And! Why can't I get (I mean buy, from a store) any JD Salinger stories?
At the end of the day
I went to bed, finally, with a real hardcover book though, because it was the book I happened to be in the middle of. Not because of its format. Format is lost behind a good book. I'd gladly read it electronically if it were at the ready (but now, I wasn't going to buy an ecopy, when I already had paper in front of me).
I've purchased one ebook (The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki) and am considering a few more. I think it's a bit funny that my hi-tech reading device is being used to supply me with literature that's old. I feel like I should be using it to read science fiction.
One publisher has already advised me that they do not (cannot?) supply review copies (in Canada) in an electronic format. Not yet anyway.
I'm definitely hoping that the move to the ereader will help me reclaim some wall space, or at least not endanger any more, but the effect will not be immediate. I have two print books ordered a week ago winging their way to me, review copies will continue, and then there are those darn sexy, irresistible NYRB classics.
Advice?
Do you have an ereader? If so, do you read more print or electronic books? Do you find you choose to read certain types of books in one format or another? Where do you like to get your ebooks from? Do you find your ereader lacking in any particular respect? Do you use your ereader one-handed or two-handed? Do you carry it with you everywhere?
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Clandestine
I recently read an uncorrected proof of a newly (or soon-to-be) released NYRB classic, Clandestine in Chile, by Gabriel García Márquez, which I'd received as a part of prize pack. The proof contains only García Márquez's brief introductory comments, with a preface by Francisco Goldman still to come, which means I came to this story pretty cold and uninformed.
Previous to reading this book, I had never heard of Miguel Littín. He's a film director, and a Chilean in exile (due to chaotic circumstances following the coup that ousted Allende in 1973).
This is the story of Littín's return to Chile in 1985, under a false name and disguised as a Uruguayan businessman (an elaborate covert operation effected by the Chilean resistance), to film a documentary about life under Pinochet.
(Don't you love the cover? The placement of that title square is genius!)
"This may not have been the most heroic action of my life, but it is the most worthwhile," Littín told García Márquez. This report is assembled from 18 hours of interviews and retold as a first-person narrative.
Littín has some trouble finding the unhappiness he'd assumed would be so rampant under dictatorship. Misery is not always directly related to physical circumstances. Littín finds it people's restrained gestures, their pace, their lowered gaze.
An unexpected dimension is the role of the youth in Littín's view of Pinochet's Chile. Their political fervour is lacking; the youth cannot remember life under democracy.
This report was first published in Spanish in 1986. Some 15,000 copies of this report were burned in central Chile, on orders from Pinochet.
At just over a 100 pages, it's a quick read, and a pretty interesting one; however, I do think it's reads better as a piece of reportage. There's not much of a voice in it; the writing is far from great, repetitive at times, and García Márquez is nowhere in evidence. This makes the story sound drier than perhaps it ought to, but what's key is to recognize the truth in it. This really happened! And that's what makes it an intriguing story.
Review: New York Times.
This is the story of Littín's return to Chile in 1985, under a false name and disguised as a Uruguayan businessman (an elaborate covert operation effected by the Chilean resistance), to film a documentary about life under Pinochet.
(Don't you love the cover? The placement of that title square is genius!)
"This may not have been the most heroic action of my life, but it is the most worthwhile," Littín told García Márquez. This report is assembled from 18 hours of interviews and retold as a first-person narrative.
Littín has some trouble finding the unhappiness he'd assumed would be so rampant under dictatorship. Misery is not always directly related to physical circumstances. Littín finds it people's restrained gestures, their pace, their lowered gaze.
I went off alone to a restaurant on the heights of the city that Ely and I used to frequent when we were courting. The place was the same, tables out under the elms, a profusion of flowers, but it seemed to have stopped being. There was nobody there. I had to complain to get waited on. Even then, I waited nearly an hour before my order of grilled meat arrived. I was finishing my meal when a couple came in whom I had not seen since Ely and I were regular customers there. Ernesto and Elvira, proprietors of a gloomy little shop a few blocks away that dealt in engravings and medallions of saints, rosaries and reliquaries, funerary decorations. They were an irreverent and fun-loving pair, and we had enjoyed staying late with them on Saturdays in good weather, drinking wine and playing cards. Seeing them enter now, holding hands just as before, I was surprised by their loyalty to the restaurant after all the changes in Chile and I was struck by how much they had aged. It was a mirror in which I suddenly saw an image of my own old age. Had they recognized me they would undoubtedly have stared at me with the same stupefaction, but I was protected by my Uruguayan mask. They were eating at a nearby table and talking in loud tones but without their usual intensity. Occasionally they would look over at me without curiosity, without the slightest inkling that we had once enjoyed each other's company at the same table. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how long and devastating the years of exile had been. Not just for those of us who left — as I had thought until then — but also for the ones who stayed.
An unexpected dimension is the role of the youth in Littín's view of Pinochet's Chile. Their political fervour is lacking; the youth cannot remember life under democracy.
This report was first published in Spanish in 1986. Some 15,000 copies of this report were burned in central Chile, on orders from Pinochet.
At just over a 100 pages, it's a quick read, and a pretty interesting one; however, I do think it's reads better as a piece of reportage. There's not much of a voice in it; the writing is far from great, repetitive at times, and García Márquez is nowhere in evidence. This makes the story sound drier than perhaps it ought to, but what's key is to recognize the truth in it. This really happened! And that's what makes it an intriguing story.
Review: New York Times.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
La Vie est belle
Non frustra vixi.
Life A User's Manual (Georges Perec) is so, so much the book I wish I would write.
I love how difficult it was to find the space to read the final 30 pages this weekend, between kicking the ball around the schoolyard, buying fresh-cut tulips, getting caught in the rain, waiting for news of the hospitalized 90-year-old grandfather-in-law, walking some more for the hell of it with nowhere to go, laundering, cooking some surprisingly delicious lemon-dill chicken, playing a videogame, planting up some pots on the balcony, going for ice cream, and drinking chardonnay; reading fills some odd spaces.
I love how summer is so quickly upon us and how our courtyard is brimming with fresh but familiar noises: the couple with the new, strangely quiet baby; the couple who have been using their air conditioner all week long, even the day it snowed; the girl hoisting her bicycle up the fire escape to the third floor; the pigeons roosting; the man smoking on his balcony describing what it's like to watch the hockey game with his father, who's visiting from France and has never seen a game in his life, and the Habs won; the woman shaking out a tablecloth; the couple having a romantic candlelight dinner on their balcony; the drunkards spilling out from the bar on the corner; the trio for flute, violin, and cello; the couple who never speak to each other except to give each other orders, which they duly follow.
And for me, this book is now very much connected with this sense of interconnectedness, this melding of all our lives, and there's joy in it.
I love how it makes me miss my cat, the one I named Calvino. I see his younger self on Perec's shoulder, and his namesake is frequently mentioned alongside Perec in various commentaries.
I love the sense of eternal return. Everything is undone: the puzzles, but also indexing systems, construction plans, careers, families, kitchens, and good deeds (for example, the tale of the green beans). Apartments filled and emptied. All the stuff that comes and goes. Really, a beautiful, life-affirming thing. Out of chaos, order, and back again.
(Was Valène's painting undone? Or was it stalled in a state of potential?)
I love the allusions to the game of go. On the third-floor landing are seven marble lozenges laid out in the ko position (page 530), a kind of infinite deadlock. It's a game of territory, defined by what surrounds it. Positions are best shown in relief. Kind of like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
(The Gold Bug Variations: she watches the two men puzzle together at the cabin, one of them searching the board to find a fit for the piece in his hand, the other searching the table to find the piece that fits a chosen spot. Which puzzler are you?)
My favourite story within this novel is the tale of the woman who made the devil appear eighty-two times (chapter 65). Because it features the devil, but also because of the sleight of hand involved, within the story itself as well as for its place within the novel. These characters are conspicuously absent from the map of the building (previous residents of Madame Moreau's apartment). This is also the chapter ending with the tin with the picture of the girl eating the petit-beurre (as she eats a "missing" chapter for the skipped chess move, disappearing one of the building's cellars ).
Frankly, the whole book puts me in mind of the vanishing leprauchaun problem: where's the missing chapter? the missing puzzle piece? how did the puzzle piece change shape?
Annotation
I'm itching to annotate this book, but it's a daunting task. (I'll be considering this in the coming weeks; let's see how the book sits with me over more time. I'm toying with the idea of picking up a copy in French; my French is pretty crap, but maybe I'll learn something along the way.)
If you look hard enough, you'll find other people have done some of the legwork. . .
Compare Life A User's Manual (p 423):
with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:
(Which passage actually jumped out at me in all its exquisite beautifulness.)
As for the amazing couple Cyrille Altamont meets in a pub (page 504), the "thirty-year-old woman with a look that was both Slav and Asiatic at the same time — broad cheekbones, narrow eyes, reddish fair hair plaited and wound around her head" — this is clearly Clawdia Chauchat, and the gentleman is Mynheer Peeperkorn (although I've not yet met him for myself), known to me from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (which book I left off at page 425, so I cannot tell if any passage in particular is being more closely referenced).
Recommendation
If you enjoyed reading Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, I vehemently urge you to check out The Dodecahedron: Or A Frame for Frames, by Paul Glennon. I recently listed it as a book I feel deserves a wider audience, and previously excerpted a bit here.
Life A User's Manual (Georges Perec) is so, so much the book I wish I would write.
I love how difficult it was to find the space to read the final 30 pages this weekend, between kicking the ball around the schoolyard, buying fresh-cut tulips, getting caught in the rain, waiting for news of the hospitalized 90-year-old grandfather-in-law, walking some more for the hell of it with nowhere to go, laundering, cooking some surprisingly delicious lemon-dill chicken, playing a videogame, planting up some pots on the balcony, going for ice cream, and drinking chardonnay; reading fills some odd spaces.
I love how summer is so quickly upon us and how our courtyard is brimming with fresh but familiar noises: the couple with the new, strangely quiet baby; the couple who have been using their air conditioner all week long, even the day it snowed; the girl hoisting her bicycle up the fire escape to the third floor; the pigeons roosting; the man smoking on his balcony describing what it's like to watch the hockey game with his father, who's visiting from France and has never seen a game in his life, and the Habs won; the woman shaking out a tablecloth; the couple having a romantic candlelight dinner on their balcony; the drunkards spilling out from the bar on the corner; the trio for flute, violin, and cello; the couple who never speak to each other except to give each other orders, which they duly follow.
And for me, this book is now very much connected with this sense of interconnectedness, this melding of all our lives, and there's joy in it.
I love the sense of eternal return. Everything is undone: the puzzles, but also indexing systems, construction plans, careers, families, kitchens, and good deeds (for example, the tale of the green beans). Apartments filled and emptied. All the stuff that comes and goes. Really, a beautiful, life-affirming thing. Out of chaos, order, and back again.
(Was Valène's painting undone? Or was it stalled in a state of potential?)
I love the allusions to the game of go. On the third-floor landing are seven marble lozenges laid out in the ko position (page 530), a kind of infinite deadlock. It's a game of territory, defined by what surrounds it. Positions are best shown in relief. Kind of like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
(The Gold Bug Variations: she watches the two men puzzle together at the cabin, one of them searching the board to find a fit for the piece in his hand, the other searching the table to find the piece that fits a chosen spot. Which puzzler are you?)
My favourite story within this novel is the tale of the woman who made the devil appear eighty-two times (chapter 65). Because it features the devil, but also because of the sleight of hand involved, within the story itself as well as for its place within the novel. These characters are conspicuously absent from the map of the building (previous residents of Madame Moreau's apartment). This is also the chapter ending with the tin with the picture of the girl eating the petit-beurre (as she eats a "missing" chapter for the skipped chess move, disappearing one of the building's cellars ).
Frankly, the whole book puts me in mind of the vanishing leprauchaun problem: where's the missing chapter? the missing puzzle piece? how did the puzzle piece change shape?
Annotation
I'm itching to annotate this book, but it's a daunting task. (I'll be considering this in the coming weeks; let's see how the book sits with me over more time. I'm toying with the idea of picking up a copy in French; my French is pretty crap, but maybe I'll learn something along the way.)
If you look hard enough, you'll find other people have done some of the legwork. . .
Compare Life A User's Manual (p 423):
. . . and Moriane with its alabaster gates transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass, like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim beneath medusa-shaped chandeliers.
with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:
When you have forded the river, when you have crossed the mountain pass, you suddenly find before you the city of Moriana, its alabaster gates transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim beneath the medusa-shaped chandeliers.
(Which passage actually jumped out at me in all its exquisite beautifulness.)
As for the amazing couple Cyrille Altamont meets in a pub (page 504), the "thirty-year-old woman with a look that was both Slav and Asiatic at the same time — broad cheekbones, narrow eyes, reddish fair hair plaited and wound around her head" — this is clearly Clawdia Chauchat, and the gentleman is Mynheer Peeperkorn (although I've not yet met him for myself), known to me from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (which book I left off at page 425, so I cannot tell if any passage in particular is being more closely referenced).
Recommendation
If you enjoyed reading Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, I vehemently urge you to check out The Dodecahedron: Or A Frame for Frames, by Paul Glennon. I recently listed it as a book I feel deserves a wider audience, and previously excerpted a bit here.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Life: an index of sorts
I am currently unavailable as I am finishing reading Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual.
Caravana de recuerdos (Richard)
Dolce Bellezza (Bellezza)
Evening All Afternoon (Emily)
kiss a cloud (Claire)
Magnificent Octopus (Isabella)
A Number of Things (Julia)
what we have here is a failure to communicate (Sarah)
- April Shared Read: Life A User's Manual
- Perec, 1
- Queneau, 1
- On E.R.'s Blog, 1
- On E.R.'s Blog, 2
- Life A User's Manual
Dolce Bellezza (Bellezza)
Evening All Afternoon (Emily)
kiss a cloud (Claire)
Magnificent Octopus (Isabella)
- Music to read Perec by
- Things that are driving me crazy in the user's manual for life
- An acute and strange kind of staring
- Life: an index of sorts
- La Vie est belle
A Number of Things (Julia)
- Life: A User's Manual, by Georges Perec
- Perec, and a New Chronology
- Perec and His Lists
- The Dictionary Gamester's Tale
what we have here is a failure to communicate (Sarah)
Thursday, April 29, 2010
An acute and strange kind of staring
Daddi, after he'd got back from his holiday in the country, had appeared to all of them like someone completely dazed. It was as if he were somehow outside himself. He'd look at you with an empty smile on his lips, his eyes dull and glazed. He wasn't really looking at you, as was obvious when anyone called him. Then that astounded look had disappeared and been transformed into an acute and strange kind of staring. First of all, he'd stared at things from a distance, obliquely. Then, gradually, as if attracted by certain signs which he thought he could observe in one or other of his most intimate friends — especially in those who most assiduously frequented his house — highly natural signs, for everyone was thrown into a state of utter consternation by that sudden and extraordinary change. It was so completely in contrast with the usual serenity of his character. Gradually, he'd come to watch them attentively from close to, and in the last days he'd become downright unbearable. He'd suddenly plonk himself in front of now one, now another of them, place his hands on the man's shoulders, look into his eyes — deep, deep down into them he'd look.
— from "In the Abyss," by Luigi Pirandello, in Short Stories.
Thank goodness Life A User's Manual is indexed! Daddi is mentioned only 3 times. Indeed, the fifty-first chapter (page 163) lists "124 The single mother reading Pirandello's story of Daddi, Romeo" — which synopsis is fleshed out (a tiny bit) on page 19: the Pirandello story "telling the tale of how Romeo Daddi went mad" is noted as being included in the revue carried toward the bathroom by the girl in the Foulerot apartment.
I'm sure it's no more meaningful than any other allusion Perec makes, but it sang to me: Romeo Daddi! What a name! And he went mad! And so I had to find out more.
Now, I just happen to have a collection of Pirandello's short stories on my shelf, so when Perec referenced this story, I was quick to pull down the volume and check it for clues, as if this were another piece of the puzzle.
Later (page 215) we learn that Geneviève Foulerot is perhaps (Why perhaps? She was selected. Has she not made up her mind about it yet?) to star in a TV adapatation of the story, as "Gabriella Vanzi, the woman whose glance, direct and depraved at the same time, drove Romeo Daddi mad."
But that's not quite how the story goes. It's not so simple.
Daddi's friends have a theory (but they don't know about any woman):
Because you and I alike still have that little machine known as civilization in good working order inside us; so we let the whole bang shoot of all our actions, all our thoughts, all our feelings sit there, hidden, at the bottom of our consciousnes. But, now suppose that someone, whose little civilization machine's broken down, comes along and looks at you as I looked at you just now, no longer as a joke, but in all seriousness, and without expecting it removes from the bottom of your consciousness all that assembly of thoughts, actions, and feelings which you've got inside you. . . .
Gabriella Vanzi is a friend of Daddi's wife, and she says herself she went a little bit mad the day it happened, and she alone did not drive him mad (I can't believe her "civilization machine" is impaired), but it is the circumstance of them together that unleashed some force, but even that is not the madness, or the source of the madness.
In fact, it has a lot to do with consequences of the kind of zipless fuck that Jong's Isadora so hungered for. It's a kind of a breakdown in our social contract and, more importantly, an assault on the bonds of love. The madness comes from the realization of the meaninglessness of people's actions, despair in the awareness of our capacity for remorselessness regarding our actions. And maybe Gabriella is evil, maybe she really is to blame.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Fear of being honest
When Erica Jong's Fear of Flying appeared on David Foster Wallace's list of top ten books a few years ago, along with several other books of suspect reputation, nobody knew if it was meant to be taken seriously, or whether it was some ironic commentary on the nature of such lists, or what.
It's with this in mind that I picked up Fear of Flying for myself last week, after some blog conversation or other about the subject matter Jong deals with, or the tone with which she deals with it, or something. (And it seemed like the perfect break from that ~600-page experimental French novel I'm reading.)
First, let me say: It's not at all what I expected it to be. It's not smutty. It's not just so much overwrought emotion and pop psychology. It's not chick lit. It's not the kind of book to be embarassed about being seen reading it in public.
What it is is an immensely compelling read.
There's a hint of Sex and the City about it, only rawer and without the shoes. Loads of literary allusions too.
Henry Miller compared it to his own Tropic of Cancer. I think it's bigger and better than that. "Because sex is all in the head." So we have to get inside Isadora's head to appreciate how sex fits into her life. And to get inside her head means to come to terms with her family and her Jewishness and her education and her string of boyfriends; her personal history and her cultural history; everything that goes on in her head. It's more than just about a zipless fuck.
Now, I'm not Jewish, this isn't the 1960s, and I've never been in therapy (though maybe I should give it a try?), never married (technically) or divorced, but I found a lot to relate to. I am a woman, after all, and (the patriarchal) society still has expectations regarding how we should look and act. I spent a good portion of my weekend being angry at men, but this novel shouldn't be dismissed as some nutcase feminist diatribe either.
What it is is intensely honest. And this is why I can imagine that David Foster Wallace listed this novel among his top ten in earnest. It is completely genuine. Isadora is no goddamn phony. I don't know how you can tell, there are no specific criteria to check off; it's something you just know, you feel it in your gut.
It's hard to imagine this book being scandalous when it was first published in 1973. Us 21st-century dwellers, so little phases us, we've seen it all before. Almost 40 years, but really not that much has changed for women. There are things in this novel you don't discuss in polite company; they are difficult to discuss in loving relationships. It comes as a great relief to know that I'm not alone, whether it's regarding sex or body image or motherhood (and I mean in life in general, outside this novel), and thank goodness women talk more freely now and we have the internet, you've come a long way baby, but it's still impossible to get inside someone else's head, it's what makes us all feel so lonely.
Toward the end, I must admit I found the narrator's voice a bit tiresome. The story dragged on a bit, but I do find myself wondering how Isadora's life turned out and I may look up the sequels.
If you're a woman and you ever think about sex or relationships, or if you're a man looking for some idea regarding what women might actually want, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book to you. Maybe you won't get as much out of it as I did, but I think it's worth something, if only as historical artifact.
Reading guide.
It's with this in mind that I picked up Fear of Flying for myself last week, after some blog conversation or other about the subject matter Jong deals with, or the tone with which she deals with it, or something. (And it seemed like the perfect break from that ~600-page experimental French novel I'm reading.)
First, let me say: It's not at all what I expected it to be. It's not smutty. It's not just so much overwrought emotion and pop psychology. It's not chick lit. It's not the kind of book to be embarassed about being seen reading it in public.
What it is is an immensely compelling read.
There's a hint of Sex and the City about it, only rawer and without the shoes. Loads of literary allusions too.
Henry Miller compared it to his own Tropic of Cancer. I think it's bigger and better than that. "Because sex is all in the head." So we have to get inside Isadora's head to appreciate how sex fits into her life. And to get inside her head means to come to terms with her family and her Jewishness and her education and her string of boyfriends; her personal history and her cultural history; everything that goes on in her head. It's more than just about a zipless fuck.
Now, I'm not Jewish, this isn't the 1960s, and I've never been in therapy (though maybe I should give it a try?), never married (technically) or divorced, but I found a lot to relate to. I am a woman, after all, and (the patriarchal) society still has expectations regarding how we should look and act. I spent a good portion of my weekend being angry at men, but this novel shouldn't be dismissed as some nutcase feminist diatribe either.
What it is is intensely honest. And this is why I can imagine that David Foster Wallace listed this novel among his top ten in earnest. It is completely genuine. Isadora is no goddamn phony. I don't know how you can tell, there are no specific criteria to check off; it's something you just know, you feel it in your gut.
"I'm the only man you've ever met you can't categorize," he said triumphantly. And then he waited for me to categorize the others. And I obliged. Oh I knew I was making my life into a song-and-dance routine, a production number, a shaggy dog story, a sick joke, a bit. I thought of all the longing, the pain, the letters (sent and unsent), the crying jags, the telephone monologues, the suffering, the rationalizing, the analyzing which had gone into each of these relationships, each of the relationdinghies, each of these relationliners. I knew that the way I described them was a betrayal of their complexity, their humanity, their confusion. Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order. Even those writers who respect the beautiful anarchy of life and try to get it all into their books, wind up making it seem much more ordered than it ever was and do not, finally, tell the truth. Because no writer can ever tell the truth about life, namely that it is much more interesting than any book. And no writer can tell the truth about people — which is that they are much more interesting than any characters.
It's hard to imagine this book being scandalous when it was first published in 1973. Us 21st-century dwellers, so little phases us, we've seen it all before. Almost 40 years, but really not that much has changed for women. There are things in this novel you don't discuss in polite company; they are difficult to discuss in loving relationships. It comes as a great relief to know that I'm not alone, whether it's regarding sex or body image or motherhood (and I mean in life in general, outside this novel), and thank goodness women talk more freely now and we have the internet, you've come a long way baby, but it's still impossible to get inside someone else's head, it's what makes us all feel so lonely.
Toward the end, I must admit I found the narrator's voice a bit tiresome. The story dragged on a bit, but I do find myself wondering how Isadora's life turned out and I may look up the sequels.
If you're a woman and you ever think about sex or relationships, or if you're a man looking for some idea regarding what women might actually want, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book to you. Maybe you won't get as much out of it as I did, but I think it's worth something, if only as historical artifact.
Reading guide.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
What I mean when I say Rilke speaks to me
I found in my inbox today, courtesy of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, this poem, by Rainer Maria Rilke:
And it just makes me gasp and blush and sets my head aswirl. Is it just me?
I don't, as a rule, get poetry. So why this poem? Why does Rilke speak to me, while others hear Keats and Shelley? What is it about Rilke, and about me, that we have something to say to each other? Something other people aren't privy to — it's not for their ears. This is between Rilke and me.
You don't know nights of love? No
petals of soft words float on your blood?
No secret places on your body
throb with memories, like eyes?
And it just makes me gasp and blush and sets my head aswirl. Is it just me?
I don't, as a rule, get poetry. So why this poem? Why does Rilke speak to me, while others hear Keats and Shelley? What is it about Rilke, and about me, that we have something to say to each other? Something other people aren't privy to — it's not for their ears. This is between Rilke and me.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Slingback
A moment's consideration for the copper-toned slingbacks, worn this week after months of hibernation (with the exception of that romantic little vacation break) — my favourite shoes ever! — now on their last legs. (Pictured here in happier days.)
I loved your subtle points, the way you swooshed sexily around my ankle. You were the perfect height, your heel slender yet solid. Your flexible sole carried me along through some difficult times. You fit me like a glove.
Almost three glorious years we've had! We had a rough patch in our second summer, when your heel needed mending and I couldn't be sure it was worth the cost. Forgive me! It was such a small price to extend our time together.
Remember that time on the beach in Varadero? Our last great adventure. Today you let spill a few grains of Cuban sand from your seams, and it brought a smile to my face.
It's been a difficult week for footwear. These are days in which there are sightings within minutes of each other of both fur-topped boots and flip-flops. But you handled the situation perfectly and with finesse.
I need to replace you, but this year's model is a little too tall, too flashy, bares a little too much toe. I can't bear to be parted from you just yet. Please, one more walk together...
Almost three glorious years we've had! We had a rough patch in our second summer, when your heel needed mending and I couldn't be sure it was worth the cost. Forgive me! It was such a small price to extend our time together.
Remember that time on the beach in Varadero? Our last great adventure. Today you let spill a few grains of Cuban sand from your seams, and it brought a smile to my face.
It's been a difficult week for footwear. These are days in which there are sightings within minutes of each other of both fur-topped boots and flip-flops. But you handled the situation perfectly and with finesse.
I need to replace you, but this year's model is a little too tall, too flashy, bares a little too much toe. I can't bear to be parted from you just yet. Please, one more walk together...
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Things that are driving me crazy in the user's manual for life
Users' manuals are hard to write. (I know — I've edited translations of some.) Their point is to clearly and simply describe (not necessarily explain) an often complicated and technical process. The more complex the process, the bigger the challenge to present the material unambiguously.
It's not unusual in, say, telephony manuals, to stumble across apparently contradictory instructions or passages of unclear agency.
So it comes as no surprise that in a manual concerning itself with the process of life as it coalesces at 11 rue Simon-Crubellier there should be a few trouble spots.
I'm a little over halfway through Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, and I've identified 4 things that are driving me crazy.
1. The preamble is repeated in chapter 44. It would be reasonable to assume that these paragraphs were singled out after the fact (Or perhaps they were written first. The passage does after all fairly succinctly pin down the point of the whole book.). The only difference between these passages is that the preamble gives one more diagrammatic example in each of the categories of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and the diagrams are very slightly different. Why, why are these different? If the preamble and chapter 44 are the same, why not let them be the same?
2. I'm a bit put out by the lack of symmetry. The fifty-first chapter is special. Note that it is not "chapter fifty-one," in keeping with how the other chapters are labeled; it's "the fifty-first chapter." It is the kernel. Perec has painted himself into Valènes's room; the self-referential painting itemizes the book's contents. The rest of the novel serves only to flesh out what's listed here. However, it is not the precise physical center of the book (unless it is so by page count? but I can't imagine this holding across translations). In a book of 99 chapters, chapter 50 is the middle one. If we include the missing chapter for the ghost cellar (see below), chapter 51 still would not be the centre, but merely would begin the second half. (Why am I so stuck on this chapter, that it necessarily should be physically, structurally central as well as meaningfully?)
3. Perec's knight's tour — the route by which he leads us through the apartment block — is faulty. Was it a mistake he noticed too far along in the process which he never bothered to rectify? I can't believe it went unnoticed! Was it deliberate? It must be deliberate, but why? What happens between chapters 65 and 66? What makes their relationship unique in this building? (I'm not quite there yet. Hopefully I'll be reading these tonight.) Why does Perec skip over the bottom left cellar, which would've satisfied the knightly condition?
4. All the hexagons! What's with all the hexagons?! There are hexagonal red tiles (page 20); a low table, made of a pane of smoked glass set on a polyhedron of hexagonal cross-section (28); hexagonal vignettes (94); glazed red hexagonal tiles (120); glazed ochre-yellow hexagonal tiles (152); a hexagonal fireplace (191); small brownish hexagonal tiles (191); a hexagonal quartz brooch (219). Hmm, perhaps there aren't as many hexagons as I'd thought. (Maybe I missed some? Why'd I think there were so many?) Actually, there's a lot of geometry: circles, trapezoids, spheres, diamonds, squares, cubes, pyramids, rectangles, lozenges, cylinders, octagons, chevrons, kidney shapes. (And colours!) But for some reason the hexagons stand out for me. Perhaps emphasized by the bees, beeswax, honeycomb. Perhaps I've lived in too many apartments with hexagon-tiled bathrooms.
The precision of detail (falsely?) leads one to believe there is significance in it.
(Borges's "Library of Babel" consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms. The "Crimson Hexagon" contains a perfect catalog of the libray. The fifty-first chapter is Life's crimson hexagon.)
It's not unusual in, say, telephony manuals, to stumble across apparently contradictory instructions or passages of unclear agency.
So it comes as no surprise that in a manual concerning itself with the process of life as it coalesces at 11 rue Simon-Crubellier there should be a few trouble spots.
I'm a little over halfway through Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, and I've identified 4 things that are driving me crazy.
1. The preamble is repeated in chapter 44. It would be reasonable to assume that these paragraphs were singled out after the fact (Or perhaps they were written first. The passage does after all fairly succinctly pin down the point of the whole book.). The only difference between these passages is that the preamble gives one more diagrammatic example in each of the categories of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and the diagrams are very slightly different. Why, why are these different? If the preamble and chapter 44 are the same, why not let them be the same?
2. I'm a bit put out by the lack of symmetry. The fifty-first chapter is special. Note that it is not "chapter fifty-one," in keeping with how the other chapters are labeled; it's "the fifty-first chapter." It is the kernel. Perec has painted himself into Valènes's room; the self-referential painting itemizes the book's contents. The rest of the novel serves only to flesh out what's listed here. However, it is not the precise physical center of the book (unless it is so by page count? but I can't imagine this holding across translations). In a book of 99 chapters, chapter 50 is the middle one. If we include the missing chapter for the ghost cellar (see below), chapter 51 still would not be the centre, but merely would begin the second half. (Why am I so stuck on this chapter, that it necessarily should be physically, structurally central as well as meaningfully?)
4. All the hexagons! What's with all the hexagons?! There are hexagonal red tiles (page 20); a low table, made of a pane of smoked glass set on a polyhedron of hexagonal cross-section (28); hexagonal vignettes (94); glazed red hexagonal tiles (120); glazed ochre-yellow hexagonal tiles (152); a hexagonal fireplace (191); small brownish hexagonal tiles (191); a hexagonal quartz brooch (219). Hmm, perhaps there aren't as many hexagons as I'd thought. (Maybe I missed some? Why'd I think there were so many?) Actually, there's a lot of geometry: circles, trapezoids, spheres, diamonds, squares, cubes, pyramids, rectangles, lozenges, cylinders, octagons, chevrons, kidney shapes. (And colours!) But for some reason the hexagons stand out for me. Perhaps emphasized by the bees, beeswax, honeycomb. Perhaps I've lived in too many apartments with hexagon-tiled bathrooms.
The precision of detail (falsely?) leads one to believe there is significance in it.
(Borges's "Library of Babel" consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms. The "Crimson Hexagon" contains a perfect catalog of the libray. The fifty-first chapter is Life's crimson hexagon.)
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Today was a good day
I walked to work this morning, and it was a glorious morning. One hour from my front door to my desk, including dropping off the girl, picking up some cash, and thoroughly washing my hands of all the city grime that had settled on me in that time. One hour watching The Main wake up.
At lunch I went to see a chamber orchestra perform Vivaldi's Four Seasons at the church down the street. And it was glorious.
Walking to work would be a good habit to cultivate, I've been thinking, for the exercise and the air — a good way to start the day, in an otherwise underused timeslot, provided I'm sufficiently organized in the morning. However, it does mean losing about 15 minutes of reading time on the metro.
I managed to make up the time today; I left work early (shhh! don't tell my boss), to pick up the girl early ("that way we can spend more time together", she'd suggested). I caught up with her after-school group at the park. She played a bit longer, I read on a swing, and we had a wonderful time.
Spring may finally be here. This may merit a new pair of walking shoes.
At lunch I went to see a chamber orchestra perform Vivaldi's Four Seasons at the church down the street. And it was glorious.
Walking to work would be a good habit to cultivate, I've been thinking, for the exercise and the air — a good way to start the day, in an otherwise underused timeslot, provided I'm sufficiently organized in the morning. However, it does mean losing about 15 minutes of reading time on the metro.
I managed to make up the time today; I left work early (shhh! don't tell my boss), to pick up the girl early ("that way we can spend more time together", she'd suggested). I caught up with her after-school group at the park. She played a bit longer, I read on a swing, and we had a wonderful time.
Spring may finally be here. This may merit a new pair of walking shoes.
Friday, April 16, 2010
I♥NYRB
The lovely, eclectic selection of books published by New York Review Books is meant to be read, of course, but the colours, the texture, the look, the feel lead me to believe NYRB books are designed to be fetishized.
Maylin of The Dewey Divas and the Dudes recently shared a little NYRB love with me (thanks for the ARCs!), so I thought I'd do my part to spread a little NYRB enthusiasm.
First off, check out Maylin's NYRB challenge, to read 50 NYRB Classics within the year. It's this series of posts that made me sit up and take notice of them and learn to focus my book-fetishizing tendencies.
Spotlight Series will be featuring NYRB Classics during the week of May 16, 2010, and you can sign up to participate by reviewing an NYRB Classic (maybe I will).
I haven't purposely embarked upon an NYRB challenge myself, but it seems I'm amassing quite a collection of them. I'll try not to let the acquisition too far exceed the consumption.
Here's a list of those I now own, with links to reviews where applicable:
And follow @nyrbclassics on Twitter.
Is there a particular NYRB title that you have your eye on? Or one that you especially recommend?
- The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares (read February 2010).
- The Singapore Grip, JG Farrell.
- Clandestine in Chile, Gabriel García Márquez.
- My Fantoms, Théophile Gautier (read August 2008).
- Nightmare Alley, William Lindsay Gresham.
- The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick, Elizabeth Hardwick.
- Victorine, Maude Hutchins (the cover of which is one of my favourites).
- Sunflower, Gyula Krúdy (which I'd started just before my copy of Life A User's Manual arrived in the mail, and which I was loathe to set aside).
- Memories of the Future, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. (I almost finished this book — I think I was on the last story — but had to set it aside. I just felt too bogged down and needed to clear my head of all the heavy Russian melancholy. The first story, however, is worth the price of admission. I fully intend to finish this one this month.)
- The Mountain Lion, Jean Stafford.
- Letty Fox: Her Luck, Christina Stead (read October 2007; quoted once and again).
- Chess Story, Stefan Zweig (read February 2010).
- The Slaves of Solitude, Patrick Hamilton (read October 2006).
- Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, Patrick Hamilton (read March 2007).
And a couple more I'm dying to own:
- The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy.
- Rock Crystal, Adalbert Stifter.
- Uncle, JP Martin (read September 2007).
- Uncle Cleans Up, JP Martin (read July 2008).
- The Wonderful O, James Thurber (haven't been able to engage Helena in this one yet).
And follow @nyrbclassics on Twitter.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Music to read Perec by
I was relieved to find that Life A User's Manual is about 100 pages shorter than I thought, if you think it's OK, and I do, to subtract all the varied backmatter: index, chronology, checklist, translator's notes. Also, I found a very useful map on page 569, which, while included in the table of contents, could've been more clearly labelled, like, as a map.
I was early trepidatious of reading reviews or explanations or theories, of encountering spoilers. But quite by accident in an early Saturday morning pre-coffee haze I became better acquainted with my paperback, and I'm glad I did. Nothing to be afraid of! And a map! From chapter 3 I'd been toying with the urge to map out the apartment block for myself, but now I wouldn't have to. I've looked deep inside myself and can admit that I could never hope to decipher all of Perec's tricks, that figuring it all out for myself is unrealistic, and there's only a richer experience to be gained by being open to background information from varied sources. So, bring it on!
Now, I'm struggling with background music. Some books scream out for a soundtrack. I think this is one of them.
This is tough. French. Experimental. I thought Satie. But it's a little early, and not all that adventurous. But nothing too dada, too obvious. I thought 60s-70s, and so yé-yé, like Serge Gainsbourg, but maybe that's a little too pop and also a little too sexy, but then, I haven't read the book yet, so how can I know?
The experiment with form begs for jazz, but by 1975 jazz is a little vast — where to start?
The puzzle of it, its mathematics, suggest Philip Glass.
I find that Perec worked at one point with musician Philippe Drogoz. I can't find much information about Philippe Drogoz, and my sight-reading is a little weak to get a feel for the scores available online. I find a reference to a piece of his being based on Beethoven's Violin concerto, op. 61. So that's what I listened to for a while. Classical, and classic.
Then I remembered. Madame de Beaumont's concert grand has something on the stand (page 7). "Gertrude of Wyoming" by Arthur Stanley Jefferson. Well, it turns out this isn't easily listenable. Arthur Stanley Jefferson was the real name of Stan Laurel — funny guy, but not exactly a song writer. "Gertrude of Wyoming" does exist as an epic poem by Thomas Campbell, about the massacre in 1778 of American revolutionaries at the hands of Loyalists and Iroquois. But to my knowledge (and Google's), it was never set to music.
In a still life (page 15) is The Unfinished Symphony: A Novel, of which the author cannot be deciphered. That's not much to go on. The world has seen countless unfinished symphonies...
Vera Orlova makes her appearance with Schoenberg and Sprechgesang.
Lieder by Schumann and Hugo Wolf. Songs by Mussorgsky (which sound dark and melodramatic). I'm sampling all of these.
She sang the role of Angelica in Arconati's Orlando, with the famous last line: "Innamorata, mio cuore tremante voglio morire." There are some operas telling the stroy of Orlando (notably by Handel and Vivaldi), but Julio Arconati (1828-1905) appears to be a fictional invention inspired from Jules Vernes' Le Château des Carpathes. The imaginary opera is clearly based on the poem "Orlando Furioso" by Ludovico Ariosto, which was never set to music outside of these fictions.
Perec is creating an imaginary aural sculpture.
There used to be an opera singer in #3. When the building's first occupants moved in, us among them, she sent everyone a notice that she rehearsed regularly between 1 and 3 in the afternoon, apologizing in advance for any disruption it might cause and willing to accommodate anyone who might feel put out. I worked from home in those days; I know she toured often, but not once did I hear her; #3 spanned the front of the building, and my workspace was in the back. I sometimes felt sorry for this, for the fact that I never passed her on the stairs, that, since we live in #1, just inside the building's entrance, I never had opportunity to walk past her door and possibly overhear the strains of heaven.
What music do you recommend for reading Perec?
I was early trepidatious of reading reviews or explanations or theories, of encountering spoilers. But quite by accident in an early Saturday morning pre-coffee haze I became better acquainted with my paperback, and I'm glad I did. Nothing to be afraid of! And a map! From chapter 3 I'd been toying with the urge to map out the apartment block for myself, but now I wouldn't have to. I've looked deep inside myself and can admit that I could never hope to decipher all of Perec's tricks, that figuring it all out for myself is unrealistic, and there's only a richer experience to be gained by being open to background information from varied sources. So, bring it on!
Now, I'm struggling with background music. Some books scream out for a soundtrack. I think this is one of them.
This is tough. French. Experimental. I thought Satie. But it's a little early, and not all that adventurous. But nothing too dada, too obvious. I thought 60s-70s, and so yé-yé, like Serge Gainsbourg, but maybe that's a little too pop and also a little too sexy, but then, I haven't read the book yet, so how can I know?
The experiment with form begs for jazz, but by 1975 jazz is a little vast — where to start?
The puzzle of it, its mathematics, suggest Philip Glass.
I find that Perec worked at one point with musician Philippe Drogoz. I can't find much information about Philippe Drogoz, and my sight-reading is a little weak to get a feel for the scores available online. I find a reference to a piece of his being based on Beethoven's Violin concerto, op. 61. So that's what I listened to for a while. Classical, and classic.
Then I remembered. Madame de Beaumont's concert grand has something on the stand (page 7). "Gertrude of Wyoming" by Arthur Stanley Jefferson. Well, it turns out this isn't easily listenable. Arthur Stanley Jefferson was the real name of Stan Laurel — funny guy, but not exactly a song writer. "Gertrude of Wyoming" does exist as an epic poem by Thomas Campbell, about the massacre in 1778 of American revolutionaries at the hands of Loyalists and Iroquois. But to my knowledge (and Google's), it was never set to music.
In a still life (page 15) is The Unfinished Symphony: A Novel, of which the author cannot be deciphered. That's not much to go on. The world has seen countless unfinished symphonies...
Vera Orlova makes her appearance with Schoenberg and Sprechgesang.
Lieder by Schumann and Hugo Wolf. Songs by Mussorgsky (which sound dark and melodramatic). I'm sampling all of these.
She sang the role of Angelica in Arconati's Orlando, with the famous last line: "Innamorata, mio cuore tremante voglio morire." There are some operas telling the stroy of Orlando (notably by Handel and Vivaldi), but Julio Arconati (1828-1905) appears to be a fictional invention inspired from Jules Vernes' Le Château des Carpathes. The imaginary opera is clearly based on the poem "Orlando Furioso" by Ludovico Ariosto, which was never set to music outside of these fictions.
Perec is creating an imaginary aural sculpture.
There used to be an opera singer in #3. When the building's first occupants moved in, us among them, she sent everyone a notice that she rehearsed regularly between 1 and 3 in the afternoon, apologizing in advance for any disruption it might cause and willing to accommodate anyone who might feel put out. I worked from home in those days; I know she toured often, but not once did I hear her; #3 spanned the front of the building, and my workspace was in the back. I sometimes felt sorry for this, for the fact that I never passed her on the stairs, that, since we live in #1, just inside the building's entrance, I never had opportunity to walk past her door and possibly overhear the strains of heaven.
What music do you recommend for reading Perec?
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Danse macabre
Der Zauberberg! I'm halfway up the mountain! I give you here some of my thoughts on the remainder of chapter 5 of The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann, after Hans bought a thermometer and saw his x-ray (a copy of which he carries in his wallet).
Let us note that I have yet to discover what is magic about it — the book's magic is undeniable, but that of the mountain itself is still not clear to me. Certainly it does not restore to vigour the bodies that come for repose there, though its effect on Hans's spirit may be seen to be restorative. He seems to have awoken from a slumber — he has achieved a kind of freedom from the life below; others may call his general demeanour slightly fevered.
The magic most in evidence is the distortion of time. It's kind of appropriate that I left off from this book just after Christmas at around the sanatorium's Christmas celebrations and now after a few days of intense reading at Easter I'm all caught up to Easter (beginning of chapter 6).
Time passes, time passes, and Hans is completely enamored of Madame Clawdia Chauchat, much as her door-slamming continues to rile him. It excites him now beyond reason.
Hans sits on the veranda, chatting with other women, hoping to catch her attention. It's all very ridiculous because we know he wants to make Clawdia jealous, make some impression on her, and we know it's a feeble plan and we know it's the sort of thing that Clawdia would never fall for.
Hans follows up on the rumours he's heard that Doctor Behrens has painted a portrait of Clawdia, and he contrives to be invited to see it. The doctor is modest: "Well, I know her more internally, subcutaneously, if you get my drift. From her blood pressure, tissue firmness, and lymph circulation." Hans ensure the portrait stays close as they have their coffee. They (with cousin Joachim, of course) discuss beauty and physiology. The coffee mill is of an erotic design. The doctor explains the physiological processes behind blushing and goosebumps.
Hans takes to studying anatomy, biology, etc. He meditates on the miracle of life, and of the nervous system.
Christmas comes and there is a death among them, and Hans, in defiance of the usual practice, wants to know everything about it. With complicated motives, he resolves to bring about a moral revolution; he will bring flowers and birthday greetings and conversation and diversion to those who are seriously ill, the ghosts of the sanatorium. It's a kind of spiritual cleansing he claims, but it's also perverse and gruesome, the details of disease he embraces, the intensity with which he now dances with death.
Herr Settembrini marvels at Hans; this charity wasn't to be expected from "one of life's problem children," who himself needs looking after. And then it is Mardi Gras, or Walpurgis Night (as this section of the chapter is titled), or both, and carnival is upon them. Settembrini describes Madame Chauchat as Lilith (that is, he calls her Lilith and explains the Hebrew reference to the boys, but it's not clear whether she herself defines herself this night as Lilith). I sense there must be some witchly treachery about her.
There are games, and Hans needs a pencil, so he asks her, and this is only the third (or maybe second?) occasion on which they've actually spoken. The elaborate dance of their flirtation escalates. She tells him she'll soon be leaving the sanatorium. I suppose he feels he has nothing to lose.
The bulk of their conversation is in French; Russian would be out of the question for Hans, and she's simply not comfortable in German, nor are the evening's festivities conducive to it. So Hans accommodates her in the language of love. Everything is translated into English in my version, but their French is rendered in italic type, and I think even the look of it, its slant and flow, contribute to a certain crazy frenzy, the feeling of being carried away.
Their exchange, or at least Hans's part in it, is weird, extremely intimate, and, dare I say, erotic, in a macabre, fleshly, sort of way.
When finally they parted, I wanted a cigarette.
Let us note that I have yet to discover what is magic about it — the book's magic is undeniable, but that of the mountain itself is still not clear to me. Certainly it does not restore to vigour the bodies that come for repose there, though its effect on Hans's spirit may be seen to be restorative. He seems to have awoken from a slumber — he has achieved a kind of freedom from the life below; others may call his general demeanour slightly fevered.
The magic most in evidence is the distortion of time. It's kind of appropriate that I left off from this book just after Christmas at around the sanatorium's Christmas celebrations and now after a few days of intense reading at Easter I'm all caught up to Easter (beginning of chapter 6).
Time passes, time passes, and Hans is completely enamored of Madame Clawdia Chauchat, much as her door-slamming continues to rile him. It excites him now beyond reason.
Hans sits on the veranda, chatting with other women, hoping to catch her attention. It's all very ridiculous because we know he wants to make Clawdia jealous, make some impression on her, and we know it's a feeble plan and we know it's the sort of thing that Clawdia would never fall for.
Hans follows up on the rumours he's heard that Doctor Behrens has painted a portrait of Clawdia, and he contrives to be invited to see it. The doctor is modest: "Well, I know her more internally, subcutaneously, if you get my drift. From her blood pressure, tissue firmness, and lymph circulation." Hans ensure the portrait stays close as they have their coffee. They (with cousin Joachim, of course) discuss beauty and physiology. The coffee mill is of an erotic design. The doctor explains the physiological processes behind blushing and goosebumps.
Hans takes to studying anatomy, biology, etc. He meditates on the miracle of life, and of the nervous system.
Herr Settembrini marvels at Hans; this charity wasn't to be expected from "one of life's problem children," who himself needs looking after. And then it is Mardi Gras, or Walpurgis Night (as this section of the chapter is titled), or both, and carnival is upon them. Settembrini describes Madame Chauchat as Lilith (that is, he calls her Lilith and explains the Hebrew reference to the boys, but it's not clear whether she herself defines herself this night as Lilith). I sense there must be some witchly treachery about her.
There are games, and Hans needs a pencil, so he asks her, and this is only the third (or maybe second?) occasion on which they've actually spoken. The elaborate dance of their flirtation escalates. She tells him she'll soon be leaving the sanatorium. I suppose he feels he has nothing to lose.
The bulk of their conversation is in French; Russian would be out of the question for Hans, and she's simply not comfortable in German, nor are the evening's festivities conducive to it. So Hans accommodates her in the language of love. Everything is translated into English in my version, but their French is rendered in italic type, and I think even the look of it, its slant and flow, contribute to a certain crazy frenzy, the feeling of being carried away.
Their exchange, or at least Hans's part in it, is weird, extremely intimate, and, dare I say, erotic, in a macabre, fleshly, sort of way.
What an immense festival of caresses lies in those delicious zones of the human body! A festival of death with no weeping afterward! Yes, good God, let me smell the odor of the skin on your knee, beneath which the ingeniously segmented capsule secretes its slippery oil! Let me touch in devotion your pulsing femoral artery where it emerges at the top of your thigh and then divides farther down into the two arteries of the tibia! Let me take in the exhalation of your pores and brush the down — oh, my human image made of water and protein, destined for the contours of the grave, let me perish, my lips against yours!
When finally they parted, I wanted a cigarette.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
This, that, the other thing
I was all excited about returning to the arms of Thomas Mann after having set aside The Magic Mountain back in January, and I had a wonderful few days with him, and I made it past the midway point. But now I'm distracted again.
Boy! was I glad to be working from home today as Life A User's Manual, by Georges Perec, was delivered to my door. I hadn't intended to commit to any kind of readalong so soon (after last year's glut — Infinite Jest and 2666), but finally I couldn't resist the prospect of sharing in this book with a number of fine people (Claire, Emily, Frances, Richard, and Sarah), and in particular these impressions made an impression on me. I'm a little daunted, though, now that I see how big it is.
Also arrived in today's post: Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner, which I'd never heard of before its inclusion on the WSJ's list of novels of ideas. I love medieval incestuous monks! So much to look forward to!
I recently zipped through Robert J Sawyer's Wake, the second in his WWW series. I really can't stand this guy. I love his books though (and love to hate parts of them too). But then there are bits of the Author that seep into the text — the geek who tries too hard to impress girls, to prove he's an enlightened, sensitive male; the guy who blows his own horn just a little too loudly or in the wrong places. One of his characters was noted to have been watching Flashforward the other night fer chrissake (Robert J Sawyer wrote the novel (which I thoroughly enjoyed) on which the TV show is based, and is a consultant to the program). And there's something about him writing about a 16-year-old girl's sexual awakening which is downright creepy. I can't put my finger on it.
Yet, for all their flaws, I can't put down his books (usually — I never made it through Hominids, let alone the rest of the trilogy). I mean, sure I insult them, but I gobble them up. The man has great ideas. But the writing... Oh, it could just be so much better. Dialogue is stilted, though Sawyer's made tremendous improvement over the last decade. There are some weird, misplaced (in my view) cultural references: Do kids today even listen to Robert Palmer? Sure it's in the context of the 16-year-old's dad, but it seems awfully indulgent to give this minor character a whole parody. As for the intended audience, while this ref would work for geeky oldtimers, for most of the rest of the book they would probably feel very much talked down to. It's preachy about things barely relevant (mmm, no, not at all relevant) to the story (for example, gay marriage). And some relatively simple concepts (whether in AI, game theory, or ethics) felt over-explained.
I have to say: it's one of the nicest ARCs I've ever received (won in a contest) — the glossy cover, the binding, the paper quality. And, I can't wait to read the next book in the series. Be advised, they don't really work as standalone novels. I highly recommend this series as "starter sci-fi" for teenagers. Grown-ups would do better with The Terminal Experiment — the first Sawyer I ever read, as a direct result of hearing him (he can't have been that annoying) in interview with Peter Gzowski, and one of my favourites. If you really want to know more about Sawyer, you can check the entry in Wikipedia, which I'm sure he's edited extensively.
Phew. I feel better now.
I'm off to read Perec, tout de suite. It's a self-help book, right?
Boy! was I glad to be working from home today as Life A User's Manual, by Georges Perec, was delivered to my door. I hadn't intended to commit to any kind of readalong so soon (after last year's glut — Infinite Jest and 2666), but finally I couldn't resist the prospect of sharing in this book with a number of fine people (Claire, Emily, Frances, Richard, and Sarah), and in particular these impressions made an impression on me. I'm a little daunted, though, now that I see how big it is.
Also arrived in today's post: Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner, which I'd never heard of before its inclusion on the WSJ's list of novels of ideas. I love medieval incestuous monks! So much to look forward to!
I recently zipped through Robert J Sawyer's Wake, the second in his WWW series. I really can't stand this guy. I love his books though (and love to hate parts of them too). But then there are bits of the Author that seep into the text — the geek who tries too hard to impress girls, to prove he's an enlightened, sensitive male; the guy who blows his own horn just a little too loudly or in the wrong places. One of his characters was noted to have been watching Flashforward the other night fer chrissake (Robert J Sawyer wrote the novel (which I thoroughly enjoyed) on which the TV show is based, and is a consultant to the program). And there's something about him writing about a 16-year-old girl's sexual awakening which is downright creepy. I can't put my finger on it.
Yet, for all their flaws, I can't put down his books (usually — I never made it through Hominids, let alone the rest of the trilogy). I mean, sure I insult them, but I gobble them up. The man has great ideas. But the writing... Oh, it could just be so much better. Dialogue is stilted, though Sawyer's made tremendous improvement over the last decade. There are some weird, misplaced (in my view) cultural references: Do kids today even listen to Robert Palmer? Sure it's in the context of the 16-year-old's dad, but it seems awfully indulgent to give this minor character a whole parody. As for the intended audience, while this ref would work for geeky oldtimers, for most of the rest of the book they would probably feel very much talked down to. It's preachy about things barely relevant (mmm, no, not at all relevant) to the story (for example, gay marriage). And some relatively simple concepts (whether in AI, game theory, or ethics) felt over-explained.
I have to say: it's one of the nicest ARCs I've ever received (won in a contest) — the glossy cover, the binding, the paper quality. And, I can't wait to read the next book in the series. Be advised, they don't really work as standalone novels. I highly recommend this series as "starter sci-fi" for teenagers. Grown-ups would do better with The Terminal Experiment — the first Sawyer I ever read, as a direct result of hearing him (he can't have been that annoying) in interview with Peter Gzowski, and one of my favourites. If you really want to know more about Sawyer, you can check the entry in Wikipedia, which I'm sure he's edited extensively.
Phew. I feel better now.
I'm off to read Perec, tout de suite. It's a self-help book, right?
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Friday, April 02, 2010
Sick with longing for it
[Really. Frenzied. Like I have this compulsion to read this one book, and then another, and another, and I want to, really, but as much as I devour them I feel like they also devour me, and this makes me feel anxious and tired and confused.]
It's 1964, and Jean has accompanied her husband Avery to Egypt, an engineer working on the relocation of the temples of Abu Simbel, as necessitated by the construction of the Aswan Dam.
Avery has an architectural sensibility, so his thoughts focus on how we define space, in a man-made way.
Jean's a botanist. She's a lot more organic. For her, space is defined in more intangible ways. Space itself is more intangible; space is interior.
[Here there's a little conversation going on between a few of my recent reads. "Do you belong to where you come from or to where you're headed?" asks The Forty Rules of Love. Jean would say, both, I think. "The future casts its shadow on the past." It shifts, you carry both with you, they're tempered by the wind, and they change each other. Nikolski wants to map her experience on planes of space, time, and culture, and through plants and memories and their seeds. "First gestures contain everything; they are a kind of map."]
Then there are the Lost Villages. Avery was also involved in this operation in 1957, flooding the shore of the St Lawrence in preparation for the Seaway. Ten communities were submerged, or relocated.
These three examples are quite extreme, but one has to wonder what degree of shift, of relocation, changes a thing. So Jean's whole sense of identity is awash.
Late in the course of events she encounters a jazz band, and this is the point at which, to this reader anyway, Egypt and her mother's garden and Warsaw and her relationship with her husband and all her ghosts come together:
The Stray Dogs took each song apart, dismantling the melody, painstakingly, painfully, sappers dismantling a lie, and then turned each single component around so many times it disintegrated. Then they put it together again from nothing, notes and fragments of notes, bent notes, and breaths, squawks on the horns and the reeds' empty-lidded beating of keys. By the time the melody reappeared, one was sick with longing for it. [...]
The first time Jean heard the Dogs, they were rehearsing at Paweł's café, after hours, a broken-down dirge. It tormented the air with its clockwork irregularity, a mechanical breakdown of stops and starts, notes grinding, grating, surging, limping. It was the music of revellers too old to be staying out all night, too dwindled to walk another step. Impatient and sad. A tonal meagreness. One by one the players dropped away until there was silence. Jean listened, mesmerized, the way one watches a fallen bowl circle round and round on the floor, waiting for the inevitable stillness.
She thought of dangerous rocks cascading intermittently down a slope, of stalled traffic, of conversations that stop and start not lazily, but instead signaling the end of everything.
[There's the stillness. In the bowl.]
All of this deconstruction and a reconstruction is, of course, a metaphor for Jean's relationship with Avery, and it's further echoed in her sense of identity.
Jean's journey is a deeply emotional one. It's hard to imagine how so much turmoil and so much stillness could coexist, but she embodies both. Still waters.
The Poles argue over things like: "Language is only approximate; it's violence that's precise." Michaels' language is quite precise — quite approximately perfectly indirect, a building of words that gives shape to an empty space — in evoking the violence done these places and spaces and memories too.
Edited to add:
By the way, this book first registered on my radar when it was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and I read reviews at The Mookse and the Gripes and KevinfromCanada.
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