🦋 Insomnia
 This weekend I read Josipovici's Goldberg: Variations, without knowing much more about it than that I had seen it recommended a number of times over the years in pretty glowing terms. I found it, well, pretty disappointing -- went in hoping for great literature and found a couple of flashes of genius surrounded by 200 pages of a well-crafted lack of inspiration.
What is frustrating about the book is it seems to me like the author knew his work was lacking in inspiration, in vivacity -- he almost tries to make that the book's selling point. The complex structure of the book (which is about its most interesting feature) can be simplified as: a series of frames within frames; in each enclosing frame, an author is failing to find the needed inspiration to write the story in the enclosed frame. It sort of seems like a great book could be written with that structure, if the author were, say, Joseph Heller. But here it is ultimately just the chronicle of Josipovici trying and failing to write Goldberg: Variations -- my reaction is, if you can't write the book, then don't write it, or at least don't publish it... There are definitely moments of genius and of beauty in the book; for me, they are not enough to recommend reading it. If I were asked for a one-word description of it, my reply would be "Stultifying."
posted evening of Monday, August first, 2011
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This always happens when you try to novelize keyboard works. Dreiser's "Prelude and Fugue in D Minor" was never even published.
Did the book put you to sleep properly? Bach's original was Leipzig's version of David Letterman, just interesting enough to make nodding off pleasant.
posted evening of August first, 2011 by John Emerson
I did fall asleep pretty easily last night while reading it, come to think of it.
posted evening of August first, 2011 by Jeremy
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