READIN

Friday, March 19th, 2004

I'm really liking Tender is the Night. The story of Dick's night in Rome (chapter xxii of part 2) just hit me really hard -- it's like Fitzgerald had identified and dissected all of my pretensions to originality, 40 years before I was born.

posted evening of March 19th, 2004: Respond
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Truth may be stretched thin and not break, but float upon the surface of the lie, like oil on water

Cervantes
Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter X

For some reason, this quote out of context reminds me strongly of neocon arguments in support of the Iraq war.

posted evening of March 19th, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, March 16th, 2004

I started reading Tender is the Night, by Scott Fitzgerald, yesterday. (Picked it up from a street vendor a couple of weeks ago but have been spending my commuting hours on crossword puzzles in the mean time.) It's fun. All the characters are ciphers to me (thus far) except for Rosemary. A nice mix of mannered comedy with something else -- there is an element of mystery or suspense present. A very gentle tension that really points up the jokes. I am about to go look at IMDB to check if there was a movie made of it but am going to say beforehand that I think Gary Cooper should have been in it...

And here it is! Nope, no Gary. Jason Robards is the lead. Jill St. John plays Rosemary.

posted morning of March 16th, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, March 9th, 2004

Ellen finished House of Sand and Fog today. She liked it a lot, for similar reasons to my own -- the clarity of the characters' portraits will take your breath away. One note she found a little jarring was the level of detail in the narration -- it does not seem plausible that the characters would notice everything around them so accurately, when they are portrayed as being disconnected from the world. I can see the validity of this criticism but did not react that way myself.

Ellen told me what the title meant, which I had been wondering about -- "Sand" is Moussad, "Fog" is Kathy -- I thought it was just a reference to the house being near the San Francisco Bay.

posted evening of March 9th, 2004: Respond
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I found an interesting book on my way to work this morning. While looking at a used-book vendor's table on 40th Street between Madison and Park, I noticed an old hardbound book called Mother Goose in Prose. Hmm, an interesting idea -- then I noticed the author's name, L. Frank Baum!

Update: I asked about this book on the open thread at Making Light; Seth Ellis says it is Baum's first children's book.

posted morning of March 9th, 2004: Respond
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Tuesday, March second, 2004

I finished the first part of Don Quixote last night. What I want to say about the book is that it is funny and clever but not satisfying. And that the reason for this is, the reader is given no chance to get to know the characters as humans. (Funny, this is the same thing I just said about "The Dreamer" -- I don't know if that makes my saying it more or less trustworthy...) I do not want to paint myself into a corner where the only thing I can appreciate is modern novels. And I don't really thing that's what is going on: I can think of two works I love (and find satisfying) straight off the bat, Iliad and Beowulf, which do not have human characters in the sense I have been talking about; I'm sure there would be many more if I took some time to dig through my memory. Why is it that these work? Can I shift my expectations of Don Quixote to make myself enjoy it more?

posted morning of March second, 2004: Respond
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Sunday, February 29th, 2004

Don Quixote, chapter L: the story of Part I is drawing to a close and I am a bit troubled. I have been appreciating the narrative gymnastics and the wry wit; but I don't think any of the characters have emerged over these 450 pages as much more than one-dimensional. I am confused a bit about the pedantic tone of the sections that inveigh against chivalric novels -- sometimes it seems like irony, other times quite earnest.

As a reader in 2004, the question of chivalric novels doesn't matter much to me except insofar as it expands to cover popular action novels in general -- do I read Cervantes as talking specifically about the genre popular at his time, or as addressing a more universal human trait?

posted evening of February 29th, 2004: Respond

Friday, February 27th, 2004

Once I reached the scene where Lester breaks into Moussad's house, I was unable to put down House of Sand and Fog until I finished it -- it was electrifying. Hoping against hope that somehow the Behrani's would not be destroyed, darkly disappointed with Kathy for bringing this all to pass, stupefied at Lester's transformation into such an evil character, right inside Moussad's vengeful, violent head at the end.

Monday Ellen and I are going to the movies, I will lobby for "House of Sand and Fog" although her goal is to see "Lost in Translation". I wonder though how I will respond to the appearances of the actors -- I have come up with pretty fixed understandings of how each character should look.

posted evening of February 27th, 2004: Respond

I am just ploughing through House of Sand and Fog now, loving the world of the book -- Dubus has got me totally roped in to his reality. He is leaping around amongst various time frames and points of view and it seems totally fluid to me. This is IMO the key to a really good modern novel. I would like to develop this at more length sometime. Also it was occurring to me this morning, how does that tie in with my experience of Don Quixote? The movement between various narrative lines which I was admiring a few posts back is in the same direction as this quality I am talking about; but it is not precisely the same.

posted morning of February 27th, 2004: Respond

Wednesday, February 25th, 2004

Don Quixote, Chapter XLV: Ah, we're back to the main subject matter of the book, the madness of Señor Quexana. The other stories are good too but this is the real meat of it.

posted evening of February 25th, 2004: Respond

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