Wednesday Empires of Dirt
Feb. 17th, 2016 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
The Laughing Monsters. I like Denis Johnson, though his work was never the beacon for me that it was for a lot of people I know, so I read this book partly out of a sense of obligation despite some clear indications that it was going to be Not My Thing. Maybe that was a mistake.
I wrote a lot of words about The Laughing Monsters trying to figure out whether it's a deeply flawed novel or a joke I failed to get. There's a good chance that it's both, but I'll probably never know for sure.
Hard-drinking NATO guy (or something; his current official affiliation is deliberately unclear) Roland Nair turns up in Freetown, supposedly to keep an eye on his old friend, charismatic Ugandan con-man Michael Adriko. He gets drawn into Adriko's latest scheme to sell fake plutonium to arms dealers and return in triumph to his hometown with his American fiancee, Davidia. The scam fails and the triumphant return also fails. Along the way, there's plenty of mud and violence, amoral soldiers, fed-up missionaries, a grotesque rural cult leader, and lots of hotels with inadequate electricity and Internet connections. The descriptions of hotels are pretty good. The tiny vodka packets Nair rejoices in are also good. Adriko is a memorable character, lyrical and dangerous – even if the vagueness of Nair and the others sometimes leaves his charisma with nothing to hook into. Davidia and Nair's long-distance girlfriend/colleague Tina are so underdeveloped they barely exist. Davidia gets the occasional flicker of life out of how thoroughly Nair fails to understand her. Tina's just a name and a photo of some boobs.
Is that intentional? Is it some kind of genre-savvy spy thing, or a commentary on the exploitative imagination of the West, or something? Is Johnson being serious with all this seemingly boilerplate spooky heart-of-darkness forget-it-Jake it's-the-Dark-Continent business? And if not, what's he doing? I'm just not smart enough to tell you. If I read it two more times, I might be able to work something out, but I barely liked it enough to read it once.
Of course it's no good complaining that the narrator is “unlikable” when it's clear from Page One that great pains are being taken to ensure no one makes the mistake of liking the narrator, and it's pointless to mope about my failure to “connect” with a story about the indifference of history (or "Africa") to anyone's particular feelings. It wasn't for me; that's all.
It's also entirely possible that the extra-large print had a subconscious effect on my impressions – like maybe some part of my brain kept trying to read it as a YA novel and was constantly being surprised by all the rape and arms dealing and whatnot.
What I'm Reading Now
Prometheus: The Life of Balzac by André Maurois. It's a biography of an author I've never read, written in 1964 in a style that feels a little old-fashioned -- peppered with self-conscious epigrams about genius, women, and the relationship of women to genius -- but very readable and almost as exuberantly confident and charming as its subject. The elder Balzacs are supportive of 19-year-old Honoré, even if secretly they are skeptical about the idea of literature as a money-making venture. They have just set him up in romantic fake poverty in Paris for a trial run of two years, to "prove his talent." His first move as a Real Writer in Paris: attempt to develop a philosophy of life!! His second move: write a spectacularly earnest epic verse play about Cromwell and send it to a well-known dramatist! (Honoré's mother celebrates the occasion by making a beautiful copy of Cromwell in her own handwriting).
"He read it with care, but when Madame Balzac and Laure called on him to ask his opinion he suggested that the author's time might be better employed than in the writing of stage pieces. He added that he did not wish to discourage a young man and was quite ready to suggest to him 'how he should approach the study of belles-lettres'. The sheet of paper on which he had noted his private opinion of the play was lying on his desk. Laure got hold of it and passed it on to Honoré. It was a good deal more blunt: 'The author would be well-advised to try anything except literature. . ."
Honoré bounces right back, though. <3
I'm almost done with Under the Volcano and maybe next week I'll have something to say about it. It's virtuosic as hell.
What I Plan to Read Next
It's your turn, The Victim by Saul Bellow!
Also, DID YOU KNOW I am still reading Finnegans Wake; maybe eventually I'll even finish it. Does anyone ever finish Finnegans Wake, or do they just hop off the boat before it starts to go around again? Anyway, I will get to the part where the pages run out (at this rate probably sometime in 2017).
What I've Finished Reading
The Laughing Monsters. I like Denis Johnson, though his work was never the beacon for me that it was for a lot of people I know, so I read this book partly out of a sense of obligation despite some clear indications that it was going to be Not My Thing. Maybe that was a mistake.
I wrote a lot of words about The Laughing Monsters trying to figure out whether it's a deeply flawed novel or a joke I failed to get. There's a good chance that it's both, but I'll probably never know for sure.
Hard-drinking NATO guy (or something; his current official affiliation is deliberately unclear) Roland Nair turns up in Freetown, supposedly to keep an eye on his old friend, charismatic Ugandan con-man Michael Adriko. He gets drawn into Adriko's latest scheme to sell fake plutonium to arms dealers and return in triumph to his hometown with his American fiancee, Davidia. The scam fails and the triumphant return also fails. Along the way, there's plenty of mud and violence, amoral soldiers, fed-up missionaries, a grotesque rural cult leader, and lots of hotels with inadequate electricity and Internet connections. The descriptions of hotels are pretty good. The tiny vodka packets Nair rejoices in are also good. Adriko is a memorable character, lyrical and dangerous – even if the vagueness of Nair and the others sometimes leaves his charisma with nothing to hook into. Davidia and Nair's long-distance girlfriend/colleague Tina are so underdeveloped they barely exist. Davidia gets the occasional flicker of life out of how thoroughly Nair fails to understand her. Tina's just a name and a photo of some boobs.
Is that intentional? Is it some kind of genre-savvy spy thing, or a commentary on the exploitative imagination of the West, or something? Is Johnson being serious with all this seemingly boilerplate spooky heart-of-darkness forget-it-Jake it's-the-Dark-Continent business? And if not, what's he doing? I'm just not smart enough to tell you. If I read it two more times, I might be able to work something out, but I barely liked it enough to read it once.
Of course it's no good complaining that the narrator is “unlikable” when it's clear from Page One that great pains are being taken to ensure no one makes the mistake of liking the narrator, and it's pointless to mope about my failure to “connect” with a story about the indifference of history (or "Africa") to anyone's particular feelings. It wasn't for me; that's all.
It's also entirely possible that the extra-large print had a subconscious effect on my impressions – like maybe some part of my brain kept trying to read it as a YA novel and was constantly being surprised by all the rape and arms dealing and whatnot.
What I'm Reading Now
Prometheus: The Life of Balzac by André Maurois. It's a biography of an author I've never read, written in 1964 in a style that feels a little old-fashioned -- peppered with self-conscious epigrams about genius, women, and the relationship of women to genius -- but very readable and almost as exuberantly confident and charming as its subject. The elder Balzacs are supportive of 19-year-old Honoré, even if secretly they are skeptical about the idea of literature as a money-making venture. They have just set him up in romantic fake poverty in Paris for a trial run of two years, to "prove his talent." His first move as a Real Writer in Paris: attempt to develop a philosophy of life!! His second move: write a spectacularly earnest epic verse play about Cromwell and send it to a well-known dramatist! (Honoré's mother celebrates the occasion by making a beautiful copy of Cromwell in her own handwriting).
"He read it with care, but when Madame Balzac and Laure called on him to ask his opinion he suggested that the author's time might be better employed than in the writing of stage pieces. He added that he did not wish to discourage a young man and was quite ready to suggest to him 'how he should approach the study of belles-lettres'. The sheet of paper on which he had noted his private opinion of the play was lying on his desk. Laure got hold of it and passed it on to Honoré. It was a good deal more blunt: 'The author would be well-advised to try anything except literature. . ."
Honoré bounces right back, though. <3
I'm almost done with Under the Volcano and maybe next week I'll have something to say about it. It's virtuosic as hell.
What I Plan to Read Next
It's your turn, The Victim by Saul Bellow!
Also, DID YOU KNOW I am still reading Finnegans Wake; maybe eventually I'll even finish it. Does anyone ever finish Finnegans Wake, or do they just hop off the boat before it starts to go around again? Anyway, I will get to the part where the pages run out (at this rate probably sometime in 2017).
