Reza, Simenon

Since my last post, I've read by Simenon: Le charretier de la providence, L’affaire Saint-Fiacre, les fiançailles de Mr. Hire, Le coup de lune, La maison du canal, L’homme qui regardait passer les trains, Le bourgmestre de Furnes, Les inconnus dans la maison, La veuve Couderc, Lettre à mon juge, La neige était sale, Les mémoires de Maigret, La mort de Belle, Maigret et l’homme du banc, L’horloger d’Everton, Le président, Le train, Maigret et les braves gens, Les anneaux de Bicêtre, Le petit saint, and Le chat.

About Simenon,I only really noticed Memoires de Maigret, which has an established character, hero of over fifty novels, talk directly to the reader for the first time. It was an interesting conceit.

By Yasmina Reza, I've read Hammerklavier, Nulle part, Adam Haberberg, Dans la luge d'Arthur Schopenhauer, Une désolation, and L'aube le soir ou la nuit. This last essay is about her following the now-President of France for a year during his campaign. She never actually says who he is, except in the acknowledgments at the back of the book. Her adventure certainly was well-known in France, but not here, and not, I presume, for posterity. Two of the books are reminiscences or reflections on her own life. The three novels include one written entirely in letters (Schopenhauer), naturally better done by Laclos, and another who talks about a writer losing his sight, an interesting premise that is never followed up.

I also read an issue each of The New Yorker, The Economist, and The New Scientist.

Simenon, MacEwan, Tillyard

I read the great novel of Belgian Liege, Pedigree, by Georges Simenon. It seems this was his bid for literary greatness, for acceptance in serious literary circles. It did not work for him, but the novel is interesting as a bildungsroman. I like his straightforward murder mysteries better. I read Stella Tillyard's book on the Lennox sisters, and I found it mildly diverting, and not particularly significant in historical terms. I thought the same of the television series. Insipid, I guess, compared to some of the heavy stuff I've read for history. Finally I read the much lauded Atonement, and I found it sexist almost to caricature. A thirteen year-old girl would bear false testimony out of sexual jealousy? How trite, and how out of date. I didn't get the class stuff at all, it certainly wasn't redeeming, and I didn't find the style sparkling either. It's unfortunate I had just read D. H. Lawrence, it's certainly not a fair comparison. I certainly am swimming against the trend on this one. How much ground the stereotypes about women have gained, and after all that work, too, from the wom n's movement.

Banville, Le Clezio, Fennario, Adiga, Pamuk, Doctorow, Enright

Since my last post, I've read John Banville's The Sea. The praise on the cover is extravagant, but despite my understanding of death and grief I was untouched and unmoved. I liked better Anne Enright's Gathering, a novel about an Irish woman coming to terms with her life and her family, troubled as it is. I read Black Book by Orhan Pamuk, which I didn't like, and Snow, which I liked better. Le Clezio's Étoile errante showed his affinity for the marginalized. His much earlier Voyages de l'autre coté had some interesting experiments in structure and form, which actually worked, but I like his later, more conventional work much better. I read David Fennarios' play Balconville to see how he handled a bilingual play -- it is primarily in English, with some few scenes in French, brave though that experiment was in 1976. I read Aravind Adiga's White Tiger, about a poor man in New Delhi, with some interest. It was not lyrical, but I like struggle and success stories, even when the hero is none too moral. Finally, I enjoyed Doctorow's latest novel, March, about the Civil War, as I have all his other novels. A quick easy read well worth the trouble, picturesque in its detail although the plot is looser than I remember his other novels to have.

Littell, Assouline, Simenon, Amette

I read since my last post an issue each of The Economist, The New Yorker, OK Magazine, and The New Scientist.

I also read Assouline's biography of Georges Simenon, followed by the first of 21 novels by Simenon. The biography was a quick, easy read, and it was not particularly insightful. I learned principally that Simenon suffered administrative detention after World War II for having published serialized novels in collaborationist newspapers. He was released fairly shortly. He also wrote anti-Semitic articles while a reporter in Belgium, and then featured anti-Semitic characters in his novels, even after the war. That gave me pause.

I also read Amette's Maitresse de Brecht, a post-war novel about East Germany and Brecht political wanderings. It was a quick, easy read, but I read it interspersed with a most affecting novel by Littell, Les Bienveillantes, and it struck me as lightweight compared to that.

So now I come to Littell. I feel strongly that any novel that is 892 pages long, even skipping (much to my dislike) the paragraph returns for the dialogue to save space, has to be pretentious in this day and age. I thought this book was about banal evil bureaucracies, as we follow the lawyer narrator through his memories of World War II, where he was a Nazi bean-counter. He engages in homosexual encounters without much affect being present, as far as I can tell, orders guards not to destroy a nest of ants in Auschwitz because a young prisoner is watching them, discusses politics and the menu of the train he travels on, receives without comment the suggestion from a superior that maybe he should get married, as people are starting to wonder. So I'm wondering why I should even read a novel that shows the everyday life of the people who came up with and put into action the Final Solution -- is the trivialization offensive? Why should I care what the minor functionaries felt after Stalingrad, waiting for Hitler to speak to them? Of course, I believe in the right of artists to broach any topic, raise any question. And then, doesn't the homosexuality make him something of an outsider, as gays were gassed too? So I'm going back and forth in my own mind.

And then, past page 700 somewhere, the narrator describes having sex with his younger sister, in quite explicit detail, and here I am thinking that this is the epitome of evil, as is the perpetration of the Holocaust, the one morally unambiguous evil of the 20th century -- until we know even more about the Stalinist purges and the state-induced famine under Mao. As the sexual acts come in quick succession, the sister is described putting her mouth on her brother's circumscribed penis. In Europe, of course, circumcision can only mean one thing. So here is the final reversal, the final play into moral ambiguity, where our Nazi lawyer bean-counter of the Holocaust is Jewish. So I know must suppose that the novel is about moral ambiguity, in the manner of Paul Verhoeven and his misunderstood satire, Starship Troopers, and his great film about the Dutch resistance, The Black Book. The novel is now being translated into English. I can imagine it will attract attention.

Jelinek, Le Clezio, Pierre

I read four novels from Elfriede Jelinek since my last post: Women as Lovers, Piano Teacher, Lust and Greed. If found them for the most part hard to read, except for piano teacher. I found that Jelinek certainly describes sex explicitly for serious literature, although it was not offensive. In Women as Lovers and Greed, I found the experiments in structure made it harder to read, although these experiments at least served the content., unlike Pierre's Vernon God Little and Dia'z Wondrous Brief Life of Oscar Wao, which did not. Le Clezio wrote an extraordinary book on hunger as the sensation which defined World War II, both in camps and in occupied countries. La ritournelle de la faim was certainly effective and limpid in its style. I had, of course, Hamsun's Hunger on my mind the whole time, but the overall feel of the book was totally different. I didn't like DBC Pierre's novel. I thought it was contrived, and I can certainly tell there is a fashion for what people think are new voices, but actually are superficial misuses of stream of consciousness and vernacular speech.

Le Clezio, Fenby, Lyon, Leroy

I read a number of books since my last post. I read Le Clezio's Le chercheur d'or. Clezio is a revelation, succint, direct style with the riveting telling detail. I also read Orhan Pahuk Nouvelle vie, with some extraordinary opening pages on reading that I could have repeated for myself, word for word. I also read Lyon's The House of Wisdom, an essay on the scientific contributions of Islam to knowledge. I read Fenby's History of Modern China, with the first pictures I recall of the Western Empress, but also a lot of detail about Communist China, including the tidbit that Mao had to give permission for surgery for the Chinese elite around him. That certainly explains why Zhou looked so bad. I also learned a good deal about the Cultural Revolution and some of its prominent victims. I also read a novel based on Zelda Fitzgerald's life, Alabama Song by Gilles Leroy. I liked it, but I knew the story quite well already. It's sad to see again the details of a wasted life and talent.

Mags, Angier, Huxley, Diaz, Kaye

It appears I'll have a whole 24 hours to do nothing but read, something I used to do all the time, but have done much less recently.

I read an issue of The New Yorker, The New Scientist and Vanity Fair since my last post.

I also finished Angier's biography of Primo Levi. I disliked the habit of her telling the story of the information she got, from time to time, but I understand her dilemma at being given information she could not verify. I read Nellie's letters in Elspeth Huxley's memoir, and I read Kaye's Far Pavilions, which was of historiographical interest, rather than earth-shattering in originality. I am now about 50 pages into Diaz's Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which is quite original in feel. I also read a book about Winfield House, the residence of the US Ambassador to the Court of Saint James. It was a picture book, but luxuriously photographed. I had read a biography of Barbara Hutton a few years ago, and she was the heiress who donated this extraordinary house to the US for an Embassy, and it interesting to see where she had lived.

Gibbon, Brest and Harvey, Lindstrom

I've read three books since yesterday, along with an issue of The New Yorker. One of the books is Perceval Gibbon's novel of colonial Africa, Margaret Harding. I found it a conventional story demonizing distrust of miscegenation, and I was shocked at the derogatory use of words to describe blacks, apparently used without discrimination in 1911, when the novel was published. I also read Money Well Spent, about strategic philanthropy, by Brest and Harvey. I also read Buyology, by Martin Lindstrom, which was a long justification and plea for better funding his area of neurological causes of behavior. I am now in the middle of Angier's Double Bond, a biography of Primo Levi.

Mags, George, Pinkard

I've read several magazines since my last post: an issue of The New Yorker, an issue of The New Scientist, an issue of Majesty, an issue of Chatelaine, and two issues of The Economist. I also read Rose George's Big Necessity, about sanitation in various parts of the world -- it was really interesting although I've become hyper-aware of my toilet habits. And I read Susan Pinkard's culinary history about the rise of Parisian cooking in the XVIIIth century, A Matter of Taste. I thought it was a very good, very solid read, especially compared to so many lightweight titles of recent vintage I was reading.

Beard, Imlay and Toft, Balzac, Agapit, Morency

I read today Mary Beard's Fires of Vesuvius, which was, at least, not stuffy. I thought the idea of contrasting what can be said about Pompeii and what the popular myths are very interesting. My high school Latin class failed to mention that there were Hebrew documents found in Pompeii. Made me want to visit next time I'm in Italy. An easy read. I consulted Imlay and Toft's Fog of Peace for professional reasons -- it's about military planning, but it was all historical with the latest case study being in the 1950's, so I didn't read much of it. I have read at least forty of Balzac's novels, but I got as a gift Le Lys de la vallee, which I found lacking in action and slightly maudlin. Perhaps I ought to have read this novel at the same time as all the rest, about two summers ago. I also delighted in three trashy tabloids, Hello Canada, The Globe and The Examiner. I also read the two other books I got as presents. Marc Agapit's L'Heritage du diable was an excellent 'insolite' novel, about the natural son of a gangster who will inherit a trunk full of money and jewels and gold if he'll steal a single hazelnut, but refuses. it was quite interesting, I don't read the Twilight Zone -type novels often. I also read an experimental novel, Ossature by Robert Morency. It managed to get its point across despite the unusual structure. It was, however, flat.

Athill, Buckle, Rowboatham, Wendt

I've read Diane Athill's Stet, and a book by Canadian playwrights for playwrights, and an important book in International Relations, called Social Theory of International Politics, by Wendt. I tried reading Development of American Strategic Thought by Trachtenberg, but it's a collection of classics in the field, and I'd read all of them already. Has it been so long since I last wrote, that I haven't mentioned reading another biography of Diaghilev by Richard Buckle, and then one of Edward Carpenter, by Sheila Rowboatham? I found it relatively boring to read about the bohemian lives of two eccentrics. I also read an issue of The New Scientist, and two issues of OK Magazine. I find I'm having much less time to read than before. I think I might be falling behind in my book-a-day average. On the other hand I'm writing more. But that's a post for another blog.

XVIIth century French Theatre, Norrell

I read a biography of Booker T. Washington, the great black leader, and I thought his contemporaries were awfully hard on a man born a slave, who rose to create an institute of learning for African Americans, no matter how many compromises he made. I also finished reading a collection of XVIIth century french plays, which were tedious to read. I did include a Scudery satire of academics, and a play by the original Cyrano de Bergerac.