READIN

Monday, August 11th, 2008

🦋 Thoughts about Borges

I have been taking a look back at Borges' fictions over the last few days -- very quickly I am again remembering what I love about them, and also seeing some problems with them that I was not conscious of in college. Jorge López' objection that they are "lacking in the emotional area" is particularly on my mind; I must say that the stories in part II, "Artifices," seem more emotionally developed than the stories in part I, "The Garden of Forking Paths." The last line of "The Form of the Sword" really cuts deep on an emotional level. (And yes, I seem to remember liking part I better than part II when I was in college. Make of that what you will.)

I have been reading Ficciones in the 1962 Grove edition, with translations by Anthony Kerrigan, Aleister Reed, Anthony Bonner, and a few others. I'm seeing some issues with the translations and thinking this could probably be a lot better done -- then I see over at Orbis Tertius today, there is a more recent translation by Andrew Hurley, published in 1998. So, I should check that out sometime.

I've also been happy about catching references that I did not get in college -- for instance, in "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" I recognized the title character's name from the op-ed piece I linked on Friday, and knew about "The Colloquy of the Birds" from references to it in Pamuk.

posted evening of August 11th, 2008: 2 responses
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Monday, August 4th, 2008

🦋 Control and relaxation

In the Gnostic cosmogonies, demiurges fashion a red Adam who cannot stand; as clumsy, crude and elemental as this Adam of dust was the Adam of dreams forged by the wizard's nights.

This looks like an interesting web site devoted to "The Circular Ruins".

posted evening of August 4th, 2008: 3 responses
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🦋 Fictions

He thought that good literature is common enough, that there is scarce a dialogue on the street that does not achieve it. He also thought that the æsthetic act cannot be carried out without some element of astonishment, and that to be astonished by rote is difficult.

I'm finding this, well, a lot of fun -- the degree of layering of fiction on fiction is really astonishing. (Particularly when Borges admits to having adapted one of his own stories, "The Circular Ruins," from a manuscript by Quain.) I'm waiting for personalities to emerge, but am confident they will; for the time being I'm just enjoying the technical beauty of the composition.

It has been several years since I read any of Borges' stories; his mastery of language is washing over me again. I'm reacting to his voice in a way I never did before, which is to feel like Borges is a control freak who wants me to react to every word of his in a particular way, and is leaving no room for my own reading; not sure how valid this is, it's just a spur-of-the-moment thought.

(According to The Modern Word, Saramago is not the only author to make use of The God of the Labyrinth. In Philip K. Dick's notes for a sequel to The Man in the High Castle, there is mention of Joseph Goebbels reading Quain's book.)

posted evening of August 4th, 2008: 2 responses
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Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

🦋 Close Range

Yesterday I started reading the stories in Close Range by Annie Proulx. This will bring my Proulx-reading arc full circle in a way, since I got interested in her by reading "Brokeback Mountain", which is in this book, and the first book I read was Bad Dirt, to which this is sort of a sequel. My early reaction to the book is that the stories are good, but don't blow me away in the same way that the stories in Bad Dirt did -- with those there was a sense of immediacy and freshness that I'm not getting as much here. But that may be because I know what to expect a little better. Also I am missing the thread of connection which was one of my favorite features of Bad Dirt -- at least half the stories there had characters and setting in common, whereas here all that seems to be shared is that the stories occur in Wyoming or feature characters from Wyoming.

posted evening of March 15th, 2006: Respond
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Thursday, December 22nd, 2005

🦋 Bad Dirt

Today and yesterday, I read Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2, by Annie Proulx. (A better verb than "read" might be "drank in" or "devoured".) What an amazing book -- Flannery O'Connor has some serious competition for my favorite author of short stories.

I got interested in reading Proulx from the story Brokeback Mountain, which I read last week prior to seeing the movie -- what struck me about that story was the fullness of characterization, and the palpable sense of time passing; I loved it and wanted to read more. So on my way to the movie theater I stopped at Montclair Book Center where I picked up Bad Dirt and Shipping News.

Bad Dirt mixes gravity and whimsy deftly, I particularly loved how The Wamsutter Wolf -- maybe the most moving story in the book -- is sandwiched in between The Contest and Summer of the Hot Tubs, both lighthearted, almost superficial stories. The characters are great -- the two I identified most closely with were probably Creel Zmundzinski (who opens and closes the book) and Buddy Millar (who is only in one story, The Wamsutter Wolf). But I got to know every character well and to feel for them.

posted evening of December 22nd, 2005: Respond
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Tuesday, June 24th, 2003

On-the-train reading today is 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme. I found this book last fall in the train station, where somebody had left a box full of old paperbacks. The stories are great -- well about a quarter of them seem to be what John Updike would have written if he had been into experimental prose, not quite my cup of tea -- and about a quarter are just too wordy for me to find a foothole -- but the remaining half are excellent, and moving, and funny. And the occasional odd phrase that makes me grin for a few minutes.

posted morning of June 24th, 2003: Respond
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