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evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
Humbolt's Gift is easy to summarize in a sentence (washed-up ex-wunderkind bequeaths to his embarrassingly successful but rapidly money-hemorrhaging friend the nutty movie scenario they cooked up together one drunken night when they were both still young and golden), but hard to describe. The reasons why Charlie Citrine, the embarassingly successful writer-narrator, is hemorrhaging money form several tide pools of comically demoralizing drama, each with its own thriving drama ecosystem. Bellow combines beautifully sturdy paragraphs, the elite athletes of the paragraph world, with meandering, unwieldy plots - a perfect combination if you're me.
Black Spring continues to be a weird-ass book of uncertain category (Wikipedia calls it a novel, which I guess is fair enough), with lots of quasi-Joycean stand-up-comic logic and an eccentric blend of Real Gross Nasty True Life Grittiness and pure fantasy. Sometimes he hits a splendid ranty stride, and for a moment you're nodding along as if to music, and then suddenly he'll skid off in another direction about the true nature of mankind or something, and you can almost hear the record scratch inside your head.
If you want to listen to Henry Miller reading HIS OWN WORDS in exactly the voice you would expect him to have (a pleasantly crusty midcentury New Yorker with some distinctive vocal tics,) there's loads of audio over on Ubuweb Sound: http://www.ubu.com/sound/miller.html - also thanks to Wikipedia.
What I'm Reading Now
I really can't tell if The Coup is a failed experiment that's slowly growing on me or a successful one I'm not keen on. Updike's put on the extra-florid costume of a fictional African dictator (who once studied in Wisconsin) in order to make Updikean jabs at American consumerism and cultural imperialism from a fresh angle, and giving himself an excuse to be maximally indulgent in his prose style, with more decorative curlicues than suburban Pennsylvania allows. It's lushly satirical but seldom actually funny, at least for me, as the work of macheteing through the metaphors is too tiring. Do I like it? I still don't know.
In Kristin Lavransdattar I've just finished Chapter 5 of Book II (The Wife), and. . . Erlend did something considerate! Can you believe it? Of course he did plenty of inconsiderate things before then and probably after, but check it out:
After Kristin has her baby, Erlend decides to go deliver the news to her parents, who, he reasons, probably realized about the preganancy sooner than he did and are getting worried. He makes the journey by ski, stays for a bit, and mends fences with Lavrans and Raganfrid to some extent. Then Lavrans decides to come with him back to Husaby to visit his daughter and grandson, and Erlend's big moment arrives:
This comes after a lot of disappointment and disillusionment. Kristin arrives at her new home in Husaby to find a very different home than the one she grew up in - neglected, disheveled, blooming with resentments like a crop of black mold. Her bed has been prepared with silk sheets and pillows, but the straw is rotting and the big fur blanket is full of lice. Then, when she orders everything washed and changed and steamed the next morning, she gets laughed at. It's her honeymoon, shouldn't she relax? Erlend is embarrassed because he should be embarrassed, but he also takes it out on Kristin.
This book keeps getting better, but I suspect the marriage of Kristin and Erlend will get a little worse.
What I Plan to Read Next
I've given myself too much of a backlog, so beyond the 99 Novels, I'm not sure. The two that I ordered haven't arrived yet, but I have a couple more from the library: Man of the People by Chinua Achebe and The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark.
Humbolt's Gift is easy to summarize in a sentence (washed-up ex-wunderkind bequeaths to his embarrassingly successful but rapidly money-hemorrhaging friend the nutty movie scenario they cooked up together one drunken night when they were both still young and golden), but hard to describe. The reasons why Charlie Citrine, the embarassingly successful writer-narrator, is hemorrhaging money form several tide pools of comically demoralizing drama, each with its own thriving drama ecosystem. Bellow combines beautifully sturdy paragraphs, the elite athletes of the paragraph world, with meandering, unwieldy plots - a perfect combination if you're me.
Black Spring continues to be a weird-ass book of uncertain category (Wikipedia calls it a novel, which I guess is fair enough), with lots of quasi-Joycean stand-up-comic logic and an eccentric blend of Real Gross Nasty True Life Grittiness and pure fantasy. Sometimes he hits a splendid ranty stride, and for a moment you're nodding along as if to music, and then suddenly he'll skid off in another direction about the true nature of mankind or something, and you can almost hear the record scratch inside your head.
If you want to listen to Henry Miller reading HIS OWN WORDS in exactly the voice you would expect him to have (a pleasantly crusty midcentury New Yorker with some distinctive vocal tics,) there's loads of audio over on Ubuweb Sound: http://www.ubu.com/sound/miller.html - also thanks to Wikipedia.
What I'm Reading Now
I really can't tell if The Coup is a failed experiment that's slowly growing on me or a successful one I'm not keen on. Updike's put on the extra-florid costume of a fictional African dictator (who once studied in Wisconsin) in order to make Updikean jabs at American consumerism and cultural imperialism from a fresh angle, and giving himself an excuse to be maximally indulgent in his prose style, with more decorative curlicues than suburban Pennsylvania allows. It's lushly satirical but seldom actually funny, at least for me, as the work of macheteing through the metaphors is too tiring. Do I like it? I still don't know.
In Kristin Lavransdattar I've just finished Chapter 5 of Book II (The Wife), and. . . Erlend did something considerate! Can you believe it? Of course he did plenty of inconsiderate things before then and probably after, but check it out:
After Kristin has her baby, Erlend decides to go deliver the news to her parents, who, he reasons, probably realized about the preganancy sooner than he did and are getting worried. He makes the journey by ski, stays for a bit, and mends fences with Lavrans and Raganfrid to some extent. Then Lavrans decides to come with him back to Husaby to visit his daughter and grandson, and Erlend's big moment arrives:
It was a struggle for Lavrans to keep up with his companion; he didn't want to admit that his son-in-law went too fast for him. But Erlend took note of this and at once adapted his pace to his father-in-law's.
This comes after a lot of disappointment and disillusionment. Kristin arrives at her new home in Husaby to find a very different home than the one she grew up in - neglected, disheveled, blooming with resentments like a crop of black mold. Her bed has been prepared with silk sheets and pillows, but the straw is rotting and the big fur blanket is full of lice. Then, when she orders everything washed and changed and steamed the next morning, she gets laughed at. It's her honeymoon, shouldn't she relax? Erlend is embarrassed because he should be embarrassed, but he also takes it out on Kristin.
This book keeps getting better, but I suspect the marriage of Kristin and Erlend will get a little worse.
What I Plan to Read Next
I've given myself too much of a backlog, so beyond the 99 Novels, I'm not sure. The two that I ordered haven't arrived yet, but I have a couple more from the library: Man of the People by Chinua Achebe and The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-10 09:07 pm (UTC)Also, Erlend's brother appears to be worth ten of him. I bet if he had been in charge of the estate rather than Erlend, there would be no lice on the bedstraw.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-16 04:18 pm (UTC)Inevitably!
(I also suspect that Kristin's life from here on out will be marked by a long line of men who are worth ten of Erlend, but maybe that's slightly less inevitable).
no subject
Date: 2019-05-17 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-17 11:16 pm (UTC)