Books I currently have on the go:
The Habit of Being - Flannery O'Connor
The Story of a Soul: the Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux
Paul and the Gift - John MG Barclay
The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor
Mystery and Manners - Flannery O'Connor
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (w/Owen) - Roald Dahl
This is actually a bit on the low side for me. From one of O'Connor's letters: "My trouble is wanting to read everything at once."
Saturday, March 10, 2018
Friday, March 9, 2018
Ten years on...
It's been ten years since I used this blog, and even then I did it poorly. But blog sites these days all seem to want to charge money to sign you up, so I thought the easiest thing was to jump back onto this one. Besides, the title about sums up my intentions for any personal blogging I might do anyway.
I'm reading Flannery O'Connor's collected letters, The Habit of Being. My life is being made better in the process. I think I'm learning more about the communion of saints--at least in terms of dead ones--through this book than I could have learned in any other way. Her being Catholic means she likely would have thought of that communion differently than I do, but I think I'm getting a hint, through the friendship with her that her letters create in the reader, of what she might have meant by it. In any case, it probably means more than the superficial connections I felt reading the following paragraph, but since the last book I mentioned reading in a draft for a post (never published) on this site was Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, I'll quote it here:
I'm reading Flannery O'Connor's collected letters, The Habit of Being. My life is being made better in the process. I think I'm learning more about the communion of saints--at least in terms of dead ones--through this book than I could have learned in any other way. Her being Catholic means she likely would have thought of that communion differently than I do, but I think I'm getting a hint, through the friendship with her that her letters create in the reader, of what she might have meant by it. In any case, it probably means more than the superficial connections I felt reading the following paragraph, but since the last book I mentioned reading in a draft for a post (never published) on this site was Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, I'll quote it here:
I've read Swann's Way but not other Proust. I feel this is very uncultured of me but I don't see the day when I am going to rectify it. I feel I ought to do something about this lack of a classical education so I am currently reading Cicero. I aim to read Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus and any other of them boys that I can think of. Then I will at least have a classical veneer. (Letter to "A", 24 March 56, The Habit of Being, 150)
Saturday, March 8, 2008
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
It's been almost two months since I've posted, but that means neither that I haven't been reading nor that I've been neglectful in posting. I've just been behind in finishing things! Since Moby-Dick, I've gotten through half of The Portable Faulkner with the library reading group, read the first half ("Combray") of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, and read Philip Roth's 1997 novel American Pastoral.
The Faulkner has been set aside the last few weeks, but I had really become enthralled by his world at the point in that collection where I left off. Proust's book (especially the famous "madeleine cake in tea" passage) is absolutely breathtaking, but a little exhausting at times because of the density and length of its beautiful sentences - I'll go back soon and read the rest: "Swann in Love" and "Place Names: the Name". I just decided I needed a little break before I stepped right into the world that I'm guessing will continue to unfold itself over the course of the whole Proust novel.
The only Roth I'd read before this was the story "Goodbye, Columbus" out of his first book, Goodbye, Columbus and Other Stories. This one comes almost forty years later, and it is a book makes you feel the experience, maturity, and sadness that comes with aging. This was, then, my introduction to Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's author alter-ego, who narrates many of his novels. Zuckerman begins by being very present in the narrative, relating his memories of the star athlete of his high school, Seymour Levov, from the adoring perspective of a younger student who looked up to him. After the Swede (Levov's nickname) gets in touch in the 1990s with Zuckerman about writing a tribute to his father, Leo Levov, all of Zuckerman's worshipful feelings come back. Levov's apparent shallowness and self-unawareness is like a punch in the stomach to Zuckerman, and he wonders if that all-American beginning turned into all-American boredom and banality.
Shortly after, Zuckerman finds out from Levov's younger brother that the Swede has passed away, and that his life was not as he had guessed. The pivotal moment in the downfall was the day in 1968 when his young daughter Merry Levov blew up their small town's general store as a protest to the war in Vietnam. From there Zuckerman's mind sets to work, imagining what must have gone wrong, and he disappears, allowing his guesses to become the heart of the novel we are reading.
I mention all of this framework because it really fascinated me. You start to forget later that this story of the Swede's adult life isn't necessarily what happened but a fiction that an author has dreamed up to try to make sense of a story about which he only possesses skeletal parts. Keeping that in mind reminds us we're reading fiction, but the story itself feels somehow startlingly real.
Being the story of a father whose daughter has let him down but who can't let go of his feelings for and memories of her, I found certain parts frightening (as a new father to a daughter who seems to me just about perfect) and other parts heartbreaking (there is a beautiful passage where the Swede with the sadness of fuller knowledge remembers Merry's growth from unknown newborn to beloved child). There is a lot more to it than that, but the father-daughter themes definitely struck a chord with me personally.
The Faulkner has been set aside the last few weeks, but I had really become enthralled by his world at the point in that collection where I left off. Proust's book (especially the famous "madeleine cake in tea" passage) is absolutely breathtaking, but a little exhausting at times because of the density and length of its beautiful sentences - I'll go back soon and read the rest: "Swann in Love" and "Place Names: the Name". I just decided I needed a little break before I stepped right into the world that I'm guessing will continue to unfold itself over the course of the whole Proust novel.
The only Roth I'd read before this was the story "Goodbye, Columbus" out of his first book, Goodbye, Columbus and Other Stories. This one comes almost forty years later, and it is a book makes you feel the experience, maturity, and sadness that comes with aging. This was, then, my introduction to Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's author alter-ego, who narrates many of his novels. Zuckerman begins by being very present in the narrative, relating his memories of the star athlete of his high school, Seymour Levov, from the adoring perspective of a younger student who looked up to him. After the Swede (Levov's nickname) gets in touch in the 1990s with Zuckerman about writing a tribute to his father, Leo Levov, all of Zuckerman's worshipful feelings come back. Levov's apparent shallowness and self-unawareness is like a punch in the stomach to Zuckerman, and he wonders if that all-American beginning turned into all-American boredom and banality.
Shortly after, Zuckerman finds out from Levov's younger brother that the Swede has passed away, and that his life was not as he had guessed. The pivotal moment in the downfall was the day in 1968 when his young daughter Merry Levov blew up their small town's general store as a protest to the war in Vietnam. From there Zuckerman's mind sets to work, imagining what must have gone wrong, and he disappears, allowing his guesses to become the heart of the novel we are reading.
I mention all of this framework because it really fascinated me. You start to forget later that this story of the Swede's adult life isn't necessarily what happened but a fiction that an author has dreamed up to try to make sense of a story about which he only possesses skeletal parts. Keeping that in mind reminds us we're reading fiction, but the story itself feels somehow startlingly real.
Being the story of a father whose daughter has let him down but who can't let go of his feelings for and memories of her, I found certain parts frightening (as a new father to a daughter who seems to me just about perfect) and other parts heartbreaking (there is a beautiful passage where the Swede with the sadness of fuller knowledge remembers Merry's growth from unknown newborn to beloved child). There is a lot more to it than that, but the father-daughter themes definitely struck a chord with me personally.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
The back cover of my edition of Moby-Dick declares that it is the greatest novel ever written by an American. After finishing it this afternoon, I don't think I would qualify to defend that statement. The first page and a half (which I reread to Dee today) immediately keeps the expectations pretty high, and all through the novel are wonderful metaphors and large-scale comparisons of almost everything to the whaling business (it seems to me that Moby-Dick is as much about writing as it is about anything else), but, my word! - how detailed a description, however poetic, do I really need of every part of a whaling ship? (The exclamation point in the last sentence was my own personal imitation of Melville's, or Ishmael's, enthusiastic writing style.)
There are sections of Moby-Dick that I loved. Two examples are the chapters named "Moby-Dick" and "Cistern and Buckets." The later chapters of the book, when we actually read about Captain Ahab's mad quest to kill the white whale, are also wonderful. But I confess to having lost interest many times along the way. I found that when I read very slowly, I enjoyed it more, because I could appreciate the metaphors and wordiness. But when I got tired of doing that (I could usually keep up the slow reading for several pages at a time) I just got frustrated by it.
I've spoken to three people in the last couple of weeks who have told me that they shared my experience to one degree or another. I'm glad I've read it, but the trouble was that from about halfway I was only really reading so that I could say I'd read it. I don't think it was a waste of time or anything, but I probably won't reread it, except for certain sections.
There are sections of Moby-Dick that I loved. Two examples are the chapters named "Moby-Dick" and "Cistern and Buckets." The later chapters of the book, when we actually read about Captain Ahab's mad quest to kill the white whale, are also wonderful. But I confess to having lost interest many times along the way. I found that when I read very slowly, I enjoyed it more, because I could appreciate the metaphors and wordiness. But when I got tired of doing that (I could usually keep up the slow reading for several pages at a time) I just got frustrated by it.
I've spoken to three people in the last couple of weeks who have told me that they shared my experience to one degree or another. I'm glad I've read it, but the trouble was that from about halfway I was only really reading so that I could say I'd read it. I don't think it was a waste of time or anything, but I probably won't reread it, except for certain sections.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
When the 60s rock group The Band has been asked to explain their signature song, "The Weight,"
Robbie Robertson usually describes it as being about the impossibility of doing something good, or something like that. The narrator of the song is taking greetings from "Miss Fanny" to the town he's visiting, and everywhere he goes suffers for his willingness to do her that favour. Everyone wants a favour, and he suffers their requests one after the other until he's been loaded down with the weight that everyone puts on him.
Nathanael West's very short novel Miss Lonelyhearts reminded me of that song. The title character, a male who writes an advice column for a newspaper under the Lonelyhearts pseudonym, starts out mocking his correspondents, but eventually is overcome by an unbearable identification with their suffering. The novel depicts what happens when he tries to get involved and alleviate some of the suffering. It's not a pretty picture.
The idea is simple enough (and powerful as it is), but the book held my attention only partly because of the story. Interspersed throughout the narrative are transcripts of the letters he receives from readers, complete with grammatical errors and awful spelling. But these letters evince a naive desire for help arising from real trials, and they make it almost impossible not to identify with Miss Lonelyhearts' sympathy for his readers.
Things don't turn out well, and there is a cynicism about life that I don't really share, but as extreme as some of the situations and characters are in Miss Lonelyhearts it somehow gets at something of life that we all experience from time to time.
Robbie Robertson usually describes it as being about the impossibility of doing something good, or something like that. The narrator of the song is taking greetings from "Miss Fanny" to the town he's visiting, and everywhere he goes suffers for his willingness to do her that favour. Everyone wants a favour, and he suffers their requests one after the other until he's been loaded down with the weight that everyone puts on him.
Nathanael West's very short novel Miss Lonelyhearts reminded me of that song. The title character, a male who writes an advice column for a newspaper under the Lonelyhearts pseudonym, starts out mocking his correspondents, but eventually is overcome by an unbearable identification with their suffering. The novel depicts what happens when he tries to get involved and alleviate some of the suffering. It's not a pretty picture.
The idea is simple enough (and powerful as it is), but the book held my attention only partly because of the story. Interspersed throughout the narrative are transcripts of the letters he receives from readers, complete with grammatical errors and awful spelling. But these letters evince a naive desire for help arising from real trials, and they make it almost impossible not to identify with Miss Lonelyhearts' sympathy for his readers.
Things don't turn out well, and there is a cynicism about life that I don't really share, but as extreme as some of the situations and characters are in Miss Lonelyhearts it somehow gets at something of life that we all experience from time to time.
Friday, January 4, 2008
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Between his winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year, Oprah's surprising choice of The Road for her book club, the "exclusive interviews" with the press-shy author, and the current critical acclaim for the Coen Brothers' adaptation of his previous novel No Country for Old Men, I became quite curious about Cormac McCarthy late in 2007. I didn't know much about him before, and I suppose I still don't, but I read The Road just before Christmas, and it was an unforgettable experience.
The book is about a man and his young son walking along a road trying to get to the coast of a literally burned America. It is so bleak at times that you wonder if there can be any light coming at all, but just at those darkest moments there is some small but shimmering beauty seen in an event along the way, like the part when the man (the characters are never given names) finds a can of Coke among the ruins of an old pop machine and gives it to his son who has never tasted a Coke before and doesn't even know what it is. "It's really good," the boy says, and the father simply answers, "Yes, it is." Those moments happen more than you might expect in this novel. The reader starts to be faced with the question of what is really necessary for one to have in life, and to learn the importance of appreciating what he has. The man and his boy have nothing but an old shopping cart, which they fill with whatever food and clothing they can find along the way. Ash is everywhere. The man is losing hope, facing death, and finding it harder and harder to be good, while the boy is all hope and idealism and desperately wants to be reassured that they are still "the good guys."
McCarthy is famous for his style of punctuation, which is to say, his lack of punctuation. He's not very fond of commas, never uses a semi-colon, and doesn't employ quotation marks to identify speech. He claims that if you write well, the page doesn't need to be cluttered with all kinds of squiggly little marks. It's surprising at first, but very easy to follow. He is also well-known for using a fair bit of archaic language, and I'll admit that the words on the page in The Road often pointed out the limits of my own vocabulary. That's not his fault, though.
It's a great book (and a fairly quick read, too), and it made me want to read more of his works soon, so I'm looking forward to reading Blood Meridian in the next month or so and then starting on the Border trilogy soon after.
The book is about a man and his young son walking along a road trying to get to the coast of a literally burned America. It is so bleak at times that you wonder if there can be any light coming at all, but just at those darkest moments there is some small but shimmering beauty seen in an event along the way, like the part when the man (the characters are never given names) finds a can of Coke among the ruins of an old pop machine and gives it to his son who has never tasted a Coke before and doesn't even know what it is. "It's really good," the boy says, and the father simply answers, "Yes, it is." Those moments happen more than you might expect in this novel. The reader starts to be faced with the question of what is really necessary for one to have in life, and to learn the importance of appreciating what he has. The man and his boy have nothing but an old shopping cart, which they fill with whatever food and clothing they can find along the way. Ash is everywhere. The man is losing hope, facing death, and finding it harder and harder to be good, while the boy is all hope and idealism and desperately wants to be reassured that they are still "the good guys."
McCarthy is famous for his style of punctuation, which is to say, his lack of punctuation. He's not very fond of commas, never uses a semi-colon, and doesn't employ quotation marks to identify speech. He claims that if you write well, the page doesn't need to be cluttered with all kinds of squiggly little marks. It's surprising at first, but very easy to follow. He is also well-known for using a fair bit of archaic language, and I'll admit that the words on the page in The Road often pointed out the limits of my own vocabulary. That's not his fault, though.
It's a great book (and a fairly quick read, too), and it made me want to read more of his works soon, so I'm looking forward to reading Blood Meridian in the next month or so and then starting on the Border trilogy soon after.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
I read Bleak House from the end of November to the middle of December, and it was the longest book I had ever read. Over the past year and a half I had read a few of Dickens' shorter novels. Twice in the past year I had gotten halfway through a longer novel and given up for one reason or another - this happened with both Dombey and Son and David Copperfield. I had been enjoying both of them, but was probably reading too sporadically or something, and felt as if it would take forever to get through them.
When I started Bleak House, I wondered if I was being foolish - finish what you've already started! Don't add another long Dickens novel to your list of half-finished reads! Maybe I'm starting to grow up, or am just becoming a better reader, but this time I read steadily through it over three or four weeks, and by the end found myself hooked completely, reading the final two hundred pages in two days.
I learned a little something about reading longer novels as I read Bleak House. Novel reading must be done with trust - trust in the story, in the development of characters, and in the author's plan for unfolding the whole thing. The introduction of new characters several hundred pages in could be frustrating for a reader, but if you trust that the author knows what he or she is doing, and how everything fits together, it's easier to find your way into the novel. That trust may be misplaced when reading some authors, but without that trust the great ones could all become those abandoned books still sitting on the shelf years after beginning.
Bleak House itself is full of wonderful people, from the three Jarndyce wards to the almost impossibly good John Jarndyce, from the admirable Sergeant George to the laughable but lovable Mr. Guppy. As I read Guppy's last appearance in the novel, I laughed and laughed out loud, unable to remember that with a sleeping baby upstairs it might be in my best interests to keep quiet! And all that is not even to mention the fascinating Lady Dedlock.
Among many perceptive and wise moments in the novel, my favorite passage came late in the book when Esther and Ada discuss Richard's steady decline. As his hopes turn into an obsession, Esther comments: "There is a ruin of youth which is not like age, and into such a ruin Richard's youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away." How many people have I known whose faces show the wear of years their bodies have not yet lived through?
All 989 pages of Bleak House were worth the time it took, and I feel like I'm now able to read longer books without fear.
In December, Dee and I watched the BBC miniseries of the novel, starring Gillian Anderson, and although it (even at 8 hours) has to trim events and characters from the story, it's really great too.
When I started Bleak House, I wondered if I was being foolish - finish what you've already started! Don't add another long Dickens novel to your list of half-finished reads! Maybe I'm starting to grow up, or am just becoming a better reader, but this time I read steadily through it over three or four weeks, and by the end found myself hooked completely, reading the final two hundred pages in two days.
I learned a little something about reading longer novels as I read Bleak House. Novel reading must be done with trust - trust in the story, in the development of characters, and in the author's plan for unfolding the whole thing. The introduction of new characters several hundred pages in could be frustrating for a reader, but if you trust that the author knows what he or she is doing, and how everything fits together, it's easier to find your way into the novel. That trust may be misplaced when reading some authors, but without that trust the great ones could all become those abandoned books still sitting on the shelf years after beginning.
Bleak House itself is full of wonderful people, from the three Jarndyce wards to the almost impossibly good John Jarndyce, from the admirable Sergeant George to the laughable but lovable Mr. Guppy. As I read Guppy's last appearance in the novel, I laughed and laughed out loud, unable to remember that with a sleeping baby upstairs it might be in my best interests to keep quiet! And all that is not even to mention the fascinating Lady Dedlock.
Among many perceptive and wise moments in the novel, my favorite passage came late in the book when Esther and Ada discuss Richard's steady decline. As his hopes turn into an obsession, Esther comments: "There is a ruin of youth which is not like age, and into such a ruin Richard's youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away." How many people have I known whose faces show the wear of years their bodies have not yet lived through?
All 989 pages of Bleak House were worth the time it took, and I feel like I'm now able to read longer books without fear.
In December, Dee and I watched the BBC miniseries of the novel, starring Gillian Anderson, and although it (even at 8 hours) has to trim events and characters from the story, it's really great too.
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