Yourcenar, Vonnegut, Paley, Bowles, Green, Pisan

Since my last post, I've read an issue of The Economist, an issue of Eclectic Reading, and an issue of OK Magazine.

I read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and I really liked it, particularly at the start. I don't find that the tone was sustained, but daring enough in its way. I saw it as black picaresque, not science fiction. I also read three or four of Grace Paley's short stories in Little Disturbances of Man, but they didn't capture my interest. I read in one go Paul Bowles' Sheltering Sky, and while I found some passages wonderfully written, I found the story not entirely outside predictability or stereotype. It's an interesting travelogue plus kind of story. I plowed through Christine de Pisan's inventory of women in hagiography, myth and history with some interest, as I had never read anything of hers. I also sprinted through some short stories, novels and novellas by Marguerite Yourcenar, having read her memoirs, and the novel Memoires d'Hadrien previously. I didn't find they held my attention.

Ah, but I am continuing to read at a leisurely pace Julien Green's journals, and those I find are teaching me all over again the French language. It is a pleasure to read someone writing in a language other than his first, English, and someone who was entirely bilingual.