So here's one for you, the week that I got drunk and watched very late-night tennis instead of reviewing the Book Review for you: should we bother reading book reviews? What's the point of them? Whom do they serve? I don't mean to ask these things rhetorically, but really: after all, I do read book reviews, compulsively, and wherever I can find them. I am often unsatisfied, for example, with my review-knowledge of a book of short stories if I haven't seen a breakdown of each story, with a little description of each one (vide my high-school era review at Prestigious Critical Organ amazon.com, of Girl with Curious Hair {or rather don't vide it, because I wrote it in high school}). I want to know what's what, going in, usually.
But I don't know if I want book reviews. I think that really, what I want is something like "to have already read the book and formed a shorthand reminder of what it's about, which reminder is:". So, instead of a few quotes and some musing and scene setting, my pre-reading review of, say, the Adventures of Kavalier and Clay would be "Depression and World War II Era comic book guys/lots of relationship trouble/episodic pacing/very well written/satisfyingly unsatisfying ending". It would be like "plot keywords" on IMDb, except for books. And really, too, I do not know whether that would lead to a better idea of what was in store for books I meant to read or not; probably not, given that most of you who have read Kavalier and Clay might've put down totally different keywords, and many of you who have not read it might now be imagining Kavalier and Clay, based on my list, to be a book totally different from what it actually is. Although possibly not too different, because probably too amorphous. The reason I got to wondering all this about the worthwhileness of book reviews has to do with the occasionally massive discrepancies between the actual books we read, and the books we imagine we're approaching based on their reviews.
Pierre Bayard borrows a term from Freud and calls the idiosyncratic set of ideas we each make for ourselves out of the reputation of a given book that "screen book", and I think that what happens so often to me is that I dream up, based on a book review (or an amalgamation of book reviews) a screen book that is radically unlike the idiosyncratic ideas about the book that are based on actually reading the book. Which is absolutely not to say that I feel as if book reviewers are disingenuous, or shoddy, or creating unjustified hype; simply to say that I am I and they are they and thus we think different things. I think the most egregious case of this was the review I read a book that I enjoyed very much, the Emperor's Children by Claire Messud. I don't know why; subtle phrasings like this: "the metaphorical pawn in their struggle [that is, between Murray Thwaite, Mr. Earnest Liberalism, and Ludovic Seeley, who is basically Nick Denton] -- a struggle over status -- is Bootie Tubb." This is a slightly sophisticated point; in the book, Murray and Seeley are largely unconcerned with Bootie, who's kind of a twerp. But the position here in the book review made me keep an eye out for it. Also, the three main characters are introduced, naturally, at the beginning of the review, and as a group; in the book, they are less of a group and more of a loose aggregate.
Are these big deals? Are they some kind of misrepresentation of the book? Absolutely not. But they are a series of what, to a reader sensitive to sorts of readymade stories, could launch a weird series of in-between screen books. So, in sum, I don't know what to do about book reviews. I guess I'll just keep reading them; it's not like I've got that much better to do. Except maybe read the books they're about.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Time in a Bottle
Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano have made it to Europe, at the point I've gotten to thus far, and Ulises Lima farther than that, to Tel Aviv. Today I want to talk a little bit about how the oral history structure of the book is working, and how that contributes to the way, discussed earlier, in which Our Guys are got at peripherally, rather than head-on. First a note on what it is not: every once in a while, when someone says something particularly nice about Arturo Belano, I am tempted to think what I have been told is sometimes thought, viz., this looks like a way for Bolaño to sneak in some nice things about himself, like Norman Mailer's huffing and puffing about "Norman Mailer" in the Armies of the Night, or anything that has to do with Agent Michael Scarn. But I don't think so. I don't have a really definite reason for why I don't think so; maybe it's just because I haven't read the introduction, and don't yet know how narrowly or widely the life of Belano differs from the life of Bolaño.
But I mention this because it is, critically, not that displacement strategy which I think is served by the oral history. Now, to be disclose-y, I am not what you'd call an oral history expert; the only other one I have read is Rant by Chuck Palahniuk which, like the Savage Detectives, is totally made up. What I think Bolaño is doing, and doing better than Palahniuk does in Rant, is to create different time signatures. The passages that made up Rant tended to be roughly the same size, and passed not chronologically as far as the events related were concerned, but seemed presented chronologically with their telling. Not so with the Savage Detectives. So far, I have sorted out three kinds of passage: one, the self-contained stories, like Auxilio Lacouture on her activities during '68 or Norman Bolzman talking about Ulises Lima in Tel Aviv; then, the running commentaries that keep pace with Our Guys, like those by Quim Font and his daughters, or Luis Sebastian Rosado, whose years of comment keep ticking up; and then, by itself, the very long description of an encounter with Arturo Belano and Felipe Muller that we get, alway from 1976, from Amadeo Salvatierra. That last one, in particular, is probably one on which to keep an eye.
As usual, these ideas are inchoate, and consist mostly of notes and very little of judgments (beyond the fact that, given that I am now reading this book at a rather fast pace, they appear to be working). But so. There's something about the Savage Detectives to bear in mind. Until to-morrow, friends.
But I mention this because it is, critically, not that displacement strategy which I think is served by the oral history. Now, to be disclose-y, I am not what you'd call an oral history expert; the only other one I have read is Rant by Chuck Palahniuk which, like the Savage Detectives, is totally made up. What I think Bolaño is doing, and doing better than Palahniuk does in Rant, is to create different time signatures. The passages that made up Rant tended to be roughly the same size, and passed not chronologically as far as the events related were concerned, but seemed presented chronologically with their telling. Not so with the Savage Detectives. So far, I have sorted out three kinds of passage: one, the self-contained stories, like Auxilio Lacouture on her activities during '68 or Norman Bolzman talking about Ulises Lima in Tel Aviv; then, the running commentaries that keep pace with Our Guys, like those by Quim Font and his daughters, or Luis Sebastian Rosado, whose years of comment keep ticking up; and then, by itself, the very long description of an encounter with Arturo Belano and Felipe Muller that we get, alway from 1976, from Amadeo Salvatierra. That last one, in particular, is probably one on which to keep an eye.
As usual, these ideas are inchoate, and consist mostly of notes and very little of judgments (beyond the fact that, given that I am now reading this book at a rather fast pace, they appear to be working). But so. There's something about the Savage Detectives to bear in mind. Until to-morrow, friends.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Where's Waldo?
Today I have some books missing. Now, I always have books missing, somewhere or other. Many of them are lost to the ages, that I lent to people whom I no longer ever see, like the pothead who ran the coffee shop in Lockport when I was in high school, or the son of my family doctor. Others, I just don't see around my bookshelves anymore and can simply not account for. The white whale of these books is the Norton Anthology of Poetry (Shorter Edition), which I had to buy for English 121, in 2004, and which fell into a black hole shortly thereafter. But. This white noise of lost books is nothing at all compared to the freakout in which I engage when I lose a book which I am in the middle of reading. This has happened before, as documented here, when I left Gargantua and Pantagruel at a Buffalo Bisons game, and couldn't handle 24 hours before buying a new one. Now, the book I have lost is Ralph Waldo Emerson's Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems, a book that my facebook Visual Library says I've been reading for eight months.
I kind of have; I keep starting it and then getting distracted and then deciding that the part where I pick up isn't resoundingly Emersonian enough and starting again at the beginning. But now, I don't know where it is, and I find this troubling. Should I clean out all of our cars? Look in the refrigerator (I've found books there before)? Last night, after looking for it at my uncle and grandfather's houses, I went to Barnes and Noble and stood looking at the outside of the book for like twenty minutes, wondering whether or not to spend $4.95 on a new one. To put how hard of choice this really should've been in perspective: I spent more than twice that much this weekend buying shots of Ouzo for the bartender. But I didn't buy it, then went home and sat around scowling that I didn't have any books of Emerson to read. I tried reading some Civil Disobedience, but it just wasn't the same.
Thinking about it, I have no idea why I didn't just buy a new damn Selected Essays &c. I have some things underlined in my current copy, but nothing that's really lighting the world on fire. Most, in fact, are things that I got all excited about from recognizing them from other things that referred to Emerson, like the epigram to Then We Came to the End (Is it not the chief disgrace in life, not to be considered a unit?) or things that Bootie Tubb really liked from the Emperor's Children. I guess I just like having lost books. I wish them well; I hope that they are doing right by whoever has found them. (The big exception in this case is my copy of High Fidelity, which was lent out and which, I have on good authority was unread and then later dropped in a ditch and not recovered, sad, sad.) So. I think I will resign to another lost book, and by another copy later today, and keep it on my shelf next to my successor copy of Gargantua and Pantagruel. A proud spot, indeed.
I kind of have; I keep starting it and then getting distracted and then deciding that the part where I pick up isn't resoundingly Emersonian enough and starting again at the beginning. But now, I don't know where it is, and I find this troubling. Should I clean out all of our cars? Look in the refrigerator (I've found books there before)? Last night, after looking for it at my uncle and grandfather's houses, I went to Barnes and Noble and stood looking at the outside of the book for like twenty minutes, wondering whether or not to spend $4.95 on a new one. To put how hard of choice this really should've been in perspective: I spent more than twice that much this weekend buying shots of Ouzo for the bartender. But I didn't buy it, then went home and sat around scowling that I didn't have any books of Emerson to read. I tried reading some Civil Disobedience, but it just wasn't the same.
Thinking about it, I have no idea why I didn't just buy a new damn Selected Essays &c. I have some things underlined in my current copy, but nothing that's really lighting the world on fire. Most, in fact, are things that I got all excited about from recognizing them from other things that referred to Emerson, like the epigram to Then We Came to the End (Is it not the chief disgrace in life, not to be considered a unit?) or things that Bootie Tubb really liked from the Emperor's Children. I guess I just like having lost books. I wish them well; I hope that they are doing right by whoever has found them. (The big exception in this case is my copy of High Fidelity, which was lent out and which, I have on good authority was unread and then later dropped in a ditch and not recovered, sad, sad.) So. I think I will resign to another lost book, and by another copy later today, and keep it on my shelf next to my successor copy of Gargantua and Pantagruel. A proud spot, indeed.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Book Review Review
There was a big deal a few years ago, when the Detroit Tigers were all of the sudden good, when Jim Leyland had Pudge Rodriguez bat, for either the first time in his career or for the first time in a long time. That it was it was like when, smack first in the Book Review this week (subtitled "Democratic Vistas"), we get a facefull of roundup, this time a roundup of books about Obama by the guy who wrote my AP US History textbook. The leadoff roundup has all the benefit, really, of an extra essay, which is basically never bad. Brinkley gives a brisk rundown of books about the election, including one that he says is interesting but less prescient than it should be; the former because it is by Rahm Emmanuel and the latter because it is by 2005 Rahm Emmanuel. Which made me think: who is reading these election books? Don't the kind of people who would get these, just get newspapers instead? It seems to me like topical books like this need an angle on which to hang their hats, like Recent Book I Liked Imperial Life in the Emerald City: for years, it can be The Book about the Green Zone. I'm not sure that things bode well for books to be The Book about the Obama campaign, if they are being collected in a roundup by Alan Brinkley. But who knows.
The other democratic vistas all look either sobering or inspiring, just as they ought to; there's Gwen Ifill's book The Breakthrough, a book on the composition of Martin Luther King's Dream Speech, and a piece on a spate of books about FDR. Never one to shirk their Prime Directive, they also throw in a few otherwise-ly literary choices. And the essay, about William Buckley meeting Reagan, and the way they represented the battle between the brains and the brawn of the conservative movement, is intriguing. All in all a decent one, but still waiting to return to midseason form after the winter holiday.
The other democratic vistas all look either sobering or inspiring, just as they ought to; there's Gwen Ifill's book The Breakthrough, a book on the composition of Martin Luther King's Dream Speech, and a piece on a spate of books about FDR. Never one to shirk their Prime Directive, they also throw in a few otherwise-ly literary choices. And the essay, about William Buckley meeting Reagan, and the way they represented the battle between the brains and the brawn of the conservative movement, is intriguing. All in all a decent one, but still waiting to return to midseason form after the winter holiday.
There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists
So I guess if you're a visceral realist, the word of the day, everyday, is "poetry". Like I said earlier, Brian Blood is skeptical of the visceral realists and their poetry. I kept making the "These books make me want to smoke on curbs in Lima" argument, and he kept saying "Yeah, but you won't talk about poetry all the time like they do." This is, perhaps, true. In general, I do not talk that much about poetry, except in April (and, btw, get ready for a bonanza April). But I think that I could, and I think that I for sure would if I were friends with the poet Ulises Lima.
This is how, early in his career (1976, when he was 18 or so), Ulises Lima is described as creating poetry:
He wrote constantly, that's what I remember most about him, in the margins of books that he stole and on pieces of scrap paper that he was always losing. and he never wrote poems, he wrote stray lines that he'd assemble into long strange poems later on if he was lucky...
That's Lima, and that's what I want to be; or rather, that is the kind of poetry that I could talk about all of the time. There's a kind of poetry not in vilanelles, or perfectly formed pieces of performance, but in scribbled down bits -- stray lines that could, maybe, be assembled into long strange poems. More so even then the kind of commitment to poetry that, in their more theoretical moments motivates the visceral realists, this kind of commitment to words is what makes me glad to have, on the basis purely of hype, picked this as our book club book.
But you guys? What do you like about it?
This is how, early in his career (1976, when he was 18 or so), Ulises Lima is described as creating poetry:
He wrote constantly, that's what I remember most about him, in the margins of books that he stole and on pieces of scrap paper that he was always losing. and he never wrote poems, he wrote stray lines that he'd assemble into long strange poems later on if he was lucky...
That's Lima, and that's what I want to be; or rather, that is the kind of poetry that I could talk about all of the time. There's a kind of poetry not in vilanelles, or perfectly formed pieces of performance, but in scribbled down bits -- stray lines that could, maybe, be assembled into long strange poems. More so even then the kind of commitment to poetry that, in their more theoretical moments motivates the visceral realists, this kind of commitment to words is what makes me glad to have, on the basis purely of hype, picked this as our book club book.
But you guys? What do you like about it?
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Short Story COUNTDOWN
So here's another list you all like so much, this time of my favorite short stories. I am not, I think, a short story expert, because I've only read one short story by Chekhov and that was in ninth grade. But whatever, I'm not a Judy Blume expert or a Robert Herrick expert either, and lord knows that didn't stop me from talking about them. Top five:
6. Josephine the Singer, or, the Mouse Folk, by Franz Kafka -- So I think there are basically three kinds of short stories: short stories that basically do what novels do, but shortly; short stories that have a plot culminating in some sort of gimmick, like stories by O. Henry; and then there are stories like the ones by Kafka and Borges and Steven Millhauser, that are all gimmick and almost no plot. Like the one by Millhauser all about the town that is a copy of the town that the narrator lives in, or Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, which is all about an encyclopedia. There is not really a plot, as such, to my favorite Kafka story, Josephine the Singer, or, the Mouse Folk. It is all about the one mouse, in the mouse community who wants to sing songs, and the slow-building resentment of the rest of the mice. It is a great slow burn, of mouse resentment, and it's weird, and, for Kafka, it's surprisingly undepressing. Or rather, still pretty depressing, but more depressing about mice than about us, which kind of lets us off the hook.
5. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl --This story absolutely freaked me out when I read it as a kid, because at one point, the narrator interrupts his story about a guy who uses yoga to see through the backs of cards and win money to tell you what might happen next, and what the narrator tells you is that Henry -- a slightly unscrupulous but generally charming guy -- may just look at himself in the mirror and see, with his yogic powers, a blood clot, and then fall over dead. What actually happens is that Henry becomes a philanthropist, and founds orphanages all over the place. Imagine being twelve and having this author butt in to tell you that his characters survive only because of his caprices, that he could at any minute blood clot any one of them, even the titular hero of his "wonderful story". Yikes. This one gets on the list on sheer oomph.
3. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri -- This is a pretty good example of the short story as a mini-novel: it's got an interesting, metaphor-ready situation (the main guy is a tour guide whose other job is translating diseases for a doctor who doesn't know English) and then a few hours' worth of emotionally charged plot. Not a lot "happens" happens, but with Lahiri's quiet prose, not a lot happens very very strikingly.
2. Menelaiad by John Barth -- This thing, which is seven levels of story going in and then seven more exploding out, is a bravura retelling of some of the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey, told by Menelaus. Of the stories on this list, except for the creepy authorial interlude in Henry Sugar, this one has the most going for it in terms of short story gimmick, what with its nested stories and classical references and such. And in the middle of all of that is the most plangent thing I think I've ever read -- in the middle of yet another narrative three-ring-circus about his slightly embarrassing marital life, Menelaus breaks through half a dozen layers of story to ask the reader, "Why don't they call her Helen of Sparta?" It there were ever a claim on which to hang my nerdy hat, ladies and gentlemen, there it is.
1. Spring in Fialta by Vladimir Nabokov -- The season is cloudy and dull, but the story is wonderful. This is not a short story that's built like a novel, but a short story built like someone talking to you about a novel. It is also elegaic and full of delightful sentences and remorseless analysis, which is why I like it so much. I think that it strikes a mood of elegy, in fact, that is uniquely suited to a short story -- such a novel would get maudlin, such poems have too much the element of performance about them (see Dr. Johnson on Lycidas, e.g.) -- and makes it my favorite instance of what a short story can do.
6. Josephine the Singer, or, the Mouse Folk, by Franz Kafka -- So I think there are basically three kinds of short stories: short stories that basically do what novels do, but shortly; short stories that have a plot culminating in some sort of gimmick, like stories by O. Henry; and then there are stories like the ones by Kafka and Borges and Steven Millhauser, that are all gimmick and almost no plot. Like the one by Millhauser all about the town that is a copy of the town that the narrator lives in, or Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, which is all about an encyclopedia. There is not really a plot, as such, to my favorite Kafka story, Josephine the Singer, or, the Mouse Folk. It is all about the one mouse, in the mouse community who wants to sing songs, and the slow-building resentment of the rest of the mice. It is a great slow burn, of mouse resentment, and it's weird, and, for Kafka, it's surprisingly undepressing. Or rather, still pretty depressing, but more depressing about mice than about us, which kind of lets us off the hook.
5. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl --This story absolutely freaked me out when I read it as a kid, because at one point, the narrator interrupts his story about a guy who uses yoga to see through the backs of cards and win money to tell you what might happen next, and what the narrator tells you is that Henry -- a slightly unscrupulous but generally charming guy -- may just look at himself in the mirror and see, with his yogic powers, a blood clot, and then fall over dead. What actually happens is that Henry becomes a philanthropist, and founds orphanages all over the place. Imagine being twelve and having this author butt in to tell you that his characters survive only because of his caprices, that he could at any minute blood clot any one of them, even the titular hero of his "wonderful story". Yikes. This one gets on the list on sheer oomph.
3. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri -- This is a pretty good example of the short story as a mini-novel: it's got an interesting, metaphor-ready situation (the main guy is a tour guide whose other job is translating diseases for a doctor who doesn't know English) and then a few hours' worth of emotionally charged plot. Not a lot "happens" happens, but with Lahiri's quiet prose, not a lot happens very very strikingly.
2. Menelaiad by John Barth -- This thing, which is seven levels of story going in and then seven more exploding out, is a bravura retelling of some of the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey, told by Menelaus. Of the stories on this list, except for the creepy authorial interlude in Henry Sugar, this one has the most going for it in terms of short story gimmick, what with its nested stories and classical references and such. And in the middle of all of that is the most plangent thing I think I've ever read -- in the middle of yet another narrative three-ring-circus about his slightly embarrassing marital life, Menelaus breaks through half a dozen layers of story to ask the reader, "Why don't they call her Helen of Sparta?" It there were ever a claim on which to hang my nerdy hat, ladies and gentlemen, there it is.
1. Spring in Fialta by Vladimir Nabokov -- The season is cloudy and dull, but the story is wonderful. This is not a short story that's built like a novel, but a short story built like someone talking to you about a novel. It is also elegaic and full of delightful sentences and remorseless analysis, which is why I like it so much. I think that it strikes a mood of elegy, in fact, that is uniquely suited to a short story -- such a novel would get maudlin, such poems have too much the element of performance about them (see Dr. Johnson on Lycidas, e.g.) -- and makes it my favorite instance of what a short story can do.
Nonfiction Lunch
Every New Year's my Uncle Paul names the year that's going to happen. For the first few years this millennium, it was Body 2000, then Body 2001, and so on. Then it was 2004: It's All Coming Together, which was really the rightest one because that year his family gained a cute daughter, and the Red Sox won the World Series and the Patriots won the Super Bowl, which got Uncle Paul all amped up. Since then it's been things like 2006: Nice One and 2008: This Year We Play For Keeps. Anyway, the thing is that the little manifesti that Uncle Paul announced to go along with the year names were usually only partially achieved. Like all named things, the years since 2000 have been in some way a disappointment. And even so with the dead horse I'm going to here kick, my Summer of Adventures without Underlining.
That, the lonelier of you will recall, is what I meant to do last summer in order to save money and learn things: since I didn't expect them to have a lot of finely tuned phrases (no "(picnic, lightning)"s to scribble under), I could forgo underlining nonfiction books. And because I didn't have to write in these books, I could get them at the library (cheap!). And then, as you know from my reporting on the epic battle of me vs. Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte, the best laid plans &c. But! I have been secretly sticking with it, to surprise you! On a day just such as this! With the news that I have kept up low-level commitment to nonfiction books, and, for an inveterate fiction snob like yrs truly, it has been going ok.
Of books I wanted to read, I am not doing so hot. I've only read one, the Nine by Jeffrey Toobin, but that is the one about which I want to talk to you today. The Nine was a very good book, and had a lot to say about the Supreme Court under William Rehnquist, and some sharp things to say about where the court is headed now. That said, the only thing that really stuck with me about the book (apart from a few zingers from Scalia) was that David Souter eats an apple for lunch every day -- and eats the core, too. That blew me away. Did his parents teach him, in harsh New Hampshire winters, that no part of the apple should go to waste? And did their parents? Or did Justice Souter just decide one day, enough is enough, I'm eating this whole apple? This was the main thing I took away from this sharply written, thoroughly researched book about one of the three most important bodies in the United States. That probably means something.
Anyway now I'm reading the Dark Side by Jane Mayer, which is good. On the lunch front, all I've seen so far is that David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, ate gazpacho for lunch everyday by himself. That seems to be sadly humanizing, but doesn't hold a candle to Justice Souter's bravura, philosophy-encapsulating lunches. More on nonfiction next week, and a list later today!
That, the lonelier of you will recall, is what I meant to do last summer in order to save money and learn things: since I didn't expect them to have a lot of finely tuned phrases (no "(picnic, lightning)"s to scribble under), I could forgo underlining nonfiction books. And because I didn't have to write in these books, I could get them at the library (cheap!). And then, as you know from my reporting on the epic battle of me vs. Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte, the best laid plans &c. But! I have been secretly sticking with it, to surprise you! On a day just such as this! With the news that I have kept up low-level commitment to nonfiction books, and, for an inveterate fiction snob like yrs truly, it has been going ok.
Of books I wanted to read, I am not doing so hot. I've only read one, the Nine by Jeffrey Toobin, but that is the one about which I want to talk to you today. The Nine was a very good book, and had a lot to say about the Supreme Court under William Rehnquist, and some sharp things to say about where the court is headed now. That said, the only thing that really stuck with me about the book (apart from a few zingers from Scalia) was that David Souter eats an apple for lunch every day -- and eats the core, too. That blew me away. Did his parents teach him, in harsh New Hampshire winters, that no part of the apple should go to waste? And did their parents? Or did Justice Souter just decide one day, enough is enough, I'm eating this whole apple? This was the main thing I took away from this sharply written, thoroughly researched book about one of the three most important bodies in the United States. That probably means something.
Anyway now I'm reading the Dark Side by Jane Mayer, which is good. On the lunch front, all I've seen so far is that David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, ate gazpacho for lunch everyday by himself. That seems to be sadly humanizing, but doesn't hold a candle to Justice Souter's bravura, philosophy-encapsulating lunches. More on nonfiction next week, and a list later today!
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