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Thursday, July 20th, 2006
At the party last night, Roy reminded me of my initial aim in starting this blog (and this website in general), which was to write about the books I am reading. Well, and, right now I am reading one that I'm finding just lovely, very moving, to wit Dickens' Bleak House. It is hardly the perfect book I suppose -- I find myself thinking as I read it that there are too many lucky coincidences -- and I think I will notice even more such when I reread it and have the various threads of narrative more firmly in mind. I think that is the principal failing of the story. But with disbelief suspended, what a lovely story it is! The poetry of Dickens' language and the acerbity of his wit make for a world I can spend all day thinking about. Also: I think the story is very sentimental in places; but it is sentimental in such a way that I respond emotionally, which I am finding pretty unusual. I felt a tear in my eye when Jo was dying -- when I was talking with LizardBreath last night she said she didn't really respond to that, Jo was just the poor orphan who dies, rather than a fully human character; and I could see what she meant, sort of -- but it worked on me. So whatever. Next up: A White Bear is going to be conducting a discussion of Tristram Shandy. So I will read it! I started to back in 1999, it was the very first book written about on this web site. So here I am full circle! Nice.
posted evening of July 20th, 2006: Respond
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Friday, May 26th, 2006
I am reading Dickens' Bleak House now -- it is a book that has been on my shelf for many years, one that was spoken of very highly on the Pynchon-l and that I've always been resolved to read sometime. It's proving easier going than I expected, with plenty of laughs and a plot that is only occasionally obscure. But there are so many characters! It's a little hard to keep track of who, say, Mr. Guppy is, who has not been mentioned in the past 50 pages or so, when he pops up. So the Unofficial Moomin Characters Guide has given me an idea -- a general purpose, web-based database utility for keeping track of characters in a book or series of books. I don't think this would be very difficult to do and it seems like it would come in handy.
posted evening of May 26th, 2006: Respond
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I'm very happy to see that Drawn and Quarterly will be bringing out five volumes of Tove Jansson's Moomin comic strips. First one is due in September!
posted afternoon of May 26th, 2006: Respond
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Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
This weekend I finished Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart. This book is derivative -- I can hear bits of at least Pynchon, Vonnegut, and Heller in Shteyngart's style -- and its own spark of original genius as well. It is sort of a Catch-22 updated for the invasion of Iraq. What really struck me about it was, it was about the first book I've ever read that struck me as a generational anthem for my specific age group -- Shteyngart is two years younger than me as are his narrator and central characters -- I could see myself and the people I went to school with in the situations of the book, absurd though they were. I bit into the sturgeon kebab, filling my mouth with both the crisp burnt edges and the smooth mealy interior. My body trembled inside my leviathan Puma tracksuit, my heroic gut spinning counter-clockwise, my two-scoop breasts slapping against each other. Misha's descriptions of food and of his obesity work as metaphor on a number of levels -- the only one I can really express is the most obvious surface symbolism of greed and rapine, but trust me that there is a lot more than that going on under the surface. And a bonus quote for the Mineshaft crowd (to whom I very enthusiastically recommend this): when Dror is describing the focus group they held to see if they could get the American public interested in an invasion of Absurdisvanї, he says, We showed pictures of Absurdis, Congolese, and Indonesians at play, picking fruits, frying goats, and so on. More problems. The Congolese are clearly black, so that strikes a chord with all respondents. Like them or not, you got plenty of blacks in America. The Indonesians have funny eyes, so they're Asian. Probably work hard and raise dutiful children. Good for them. Then you get the Absurdis. They're sort of dark, but not really black. They look a little Indonesian, but they've got round eyes. Are they Arabs? Italians? Persians? We finally settled on "taller Mexicans," which is another way of saying we're fucked. Something notable: the book centers on "the second week of September 2001", but the famous events of that week are never mentioned. On the ride home I read some of Cat's Cradle, and was quickly reminded of what an extraordinary book it is. I must have read it through 20 times between the ages of 14 and 19, I know much of it by heart. One of the central wampeters of my karass. Update: Also look at this essay of Shteyngart's, on reading Philip Roth and particularly Portnoy's Complaint. A fine piece.
posted evening of May 16th, 2006: Respond
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Thursday, May 11th, 2006
I'm back in Modesto for a few days, visiting my parents, and how exciting! The book that I have looked through my old bookshelf for every time I have been back here, but never found, just jumped out at me this time. It is Cat's Cradle, with a self-portrait by Mr. Vonnegut on the title page, and an inscription: "FOR GOOD OLD JEREMY ----- (signed) Kurt Vonnegut OCT 12 88"
posted afternoon of May 11th, 2006: Respond
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Friday, April 7th, 2006
Guns, Germs and Steel serves as a really good prophylactic against romantic nostalgia -- the evolution of society depicted in the "Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" chapter does not at all make you want to go back to the days of egalitarianism.
posted morning of April 7th, 2006: Respond
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Thursday, March 30th, 2006
A statistic, from the opening chapter of Guns, Germs and Steel, to make the mind reel: of roughly 6,000 known human languages, 1,000 are spoken only on the island of New Guinea. This seems incredible to me; but Teofilo, who knows more of these things than I, confirms that it is straight up. Some Googling brings up a list of Papua New Guinean languages, and there are certainly a lot. Also the full text of Papuan Linguistics is online in PDF form. Update: there is also about a ton of interesting stuff on PapuaWeb, from beautiful pictures to scholarly articles.
posted evening of March 30th, 2006: Respond
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I've never been much of a reader of non-fiction. Maybe part of the reason is I fear writing style like that found in Unequal Childhoods, which I finished the other day -- full of potentially useful information but written in such a way as to stymie concentration in even the most willing reader. But today I started Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel; if the first chapter is any basis for expectation, reading it will be a different story. His voice is clear, engaging, direct. I've encountered Diamond's name a number of times over the years, mainly referred to by Crooked Timber posters, and always thought his stuff sounded interesting. I'm looking forward to this book. (And I realize on reflection that Crooked Timber has been responsible for encouraging a good deal of my non-fiction reading over the past couple of years.) Note: Here is a Crooked Timber post with pointers to a wide-ranging controversy about GGS.
posted morning of March 30th, 2006: Respond
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Yesterday I read The Quitter, Harvey Pekar's new book about his childhood. I've always loved American Splendor and this book is a fine addition. (It actually reminded me quite a bit of the AS movie -- Pekar as a kid in the main story, and Pekar as an old man stepping in occationally to comment.) Lovely art, moving story. Definitely recommended to the Mineshaft crowd, who I think will identify.
posted morning of March 30th, 2006: Respond
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Friday, March 24th, 2006
I am reading Unequal Childhoods by Annette Lareau currently, on the recommendation of Harry Brighouse. I like the slice-of-life aspect of it but the narrative style is kind of freaking me out. She switches constantly between a first-person where (as near as I can reckon) she is the narrator, and block-quoted observation notes in first-person where the narrator is the person who did the observation, who is never identified by name. I am finding this really frustrating, not to have an identity for the observer -- clearly there are several different people doing the observations but I have no way of distinguishing them, and it sounds like sometimes it it Dr. Lareau herself, but again no way to verify this. Maybe this is a standard style in sociology -- it just seems weird to me. The families being observed are named (though I don't know if they are real names or pseudonyms), so why not the observers?
posted evening of March 24th, 2006: Respond
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