Hesse, Thoreau, Musset, Gide, Barney, Stowe, Huxley, Pope, Agee

Since my last post, I've finished the biography of Hermann Hesse by Mileck, and I've read Lestringant's Musset, Pierre Lepage's Gide, Jean Chalon's Chere Natalie Barney, Hedrick's Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harding's Days of Henry Thoreau. I also read Bedford's life of Aldous Huxley, a biography of Alexander Pope, and a biography of james Agee.

I won't bore my few readers with everything I didn't know about this or that writer, that Aldous Huxley was visually impaired, to the point he learned Braille, that Thoreau's life was pretty mundane, that Musset died young, that Natalie Barney was independently wealthy. Bedford's biography petered out into quotations strung together, but I suppose we cannot be too harsh as the Huxley papers were lost in a brush fire at their home in California.

I suppose what I have now concluded is not just that writers must have examined their own life, but they also must have experienced very intense moments. This usually means pain and suffering. I have also concluded that they need to struggle for their art. When life is too easy, writing becomes difficult because there is no reason to try and survive. .

Hardy, Allen, Smart, Jonson, Miller, Hesse

Since my last post, I've read biographies of: Thomas Hardy, with many critical comments to his wife despite the fact that he was repeatedly and constantly unfaithful; Elizabeth Smart, a Canadian writer of affluent background -- her life certainly doesn't resemble anyone else's life, at least none of anyone I know who was alive in the thirties, for example; Ben Jonson, about whom I knew very little; Henry Miller, who used his sex life to write, but in a much more direct way than many before him -- was this pornography?; and the memoirs of Walter Allen, a British writer I didn't previously know about, and whose reminiscences were not all that illuminating for me.

I'm now in the middle of a Herman Hesse biography. Overall, I'm starting to think that all writers are hard on the people around them, and suffer money problems. Not a novel conclusion, of course, but there it is.

Baudelaire, Heine

Since my last post, apart from making lots of stuffed pasta for Christmas, I've read a biography called Baudelaire the Damned, by F. Hemmings. It would appear Baudelaire was perpetually in debt, and troubled his mother and stepfather. The book contained photographs of his mistresses, some of which were richly portrayed as Rubenesque. Such a nice change from current fashions. I also read a biography of Heinrich Heine, by Jeffrey Sammons, another writer, of socialist leanings this time, who was a trouble to the women in his life. If it's not money it's women, with these writers. Heine was an assimilated Jew of the Germany of XIXth, and I was interested in the fact that he didn't know until he was an adolescent. I was also interested, as I usually am, in the salonnieres of the period.

Wylie, Wilde, Boll, London, Symons, Carlyle, Seton, Woolf

Since my last post I've read an issue of The Economist, The National Enquirer, The New Scientist, The New Yorker, and The Globe, two issues of OK Magazine, and three issues of Eclectic Reading.

I've also read Carlyle by Louis Cazamian, Carlyle by John Nichol, two catty volumes of Virginia Woolf's journal, although her depression must account for some of the comments; Elinor Wylie by Thomas A. Gray, which made me wonder why the biographer bothered if she was considered second-rate; Ernest Thompson Seton by Magdalene Redekop, about a Canadian writer I've never heard of; Mme du Châtelet by Esther Ehrman, a woman scientist; Heinrich Böll by Robert C. Conard; Oscar Wilde by Heasketh Pearson, which proved witty; Arthur Symons by Karl Beckson; and Jack London by Robert Baltrop.

Gladstone, Palmerston, Flaubert, Camus, Burney, Charrieres, Melbourne

Since my last post, I've read two issues of The Economist and OK Magazine, four of Eclectic Reading, and one of The National Enquirer.

As well I've read Herbert Lottman's biographies of Gustave Flaubert and Albert Camus -- English influenced by the French language; Isabelle de Charrieres by Raymond Trousson; and the six volumes of Fanny Burney's letters and journals. I didn't know Charrieres existed, so I've learned a good deal about her. About Burney, as with my reading of Woolf's diaries, I don't knwo enough to appreciate them fully, and they are not penetrating enough to hold my attention.

I've also read David Cecil's Melbourne, which was excellent, and Philip Magnus' Gladstone, also very good. Aristocrats writing about other aristocrats. I also read Denis Kay-Robinson's The First Mrs. Thomas Hardy. This was written to settle a controversy regarding Hardy that I know nothing about. I've now read a biography of Palmerston by Espley, to complete the quartet of biographies of Victorian prime ministers -- the positions Palmerston took were understandable for the period, but I found them hard to fathom. I've also read a biography of Bessie Head by Gillian Stead Allersen. This latter is written in good but slightly stilted English -- English influenced by Danish.

Ayme, Effand, Burney

So I've read all of Marcel Ayme's novels. Some of them are truly excellent, although they are not know outside France: Travelingue, a tragedy ending in murder, Uranus, an immediate post-WWII novel, La Vouivre, a novel with a fantastical character who is the only remnant of Celtic culture in French myths. I loved them all, written with economy but a great precise vocabulary, characters that are interesting, plots whose ends I cannot predict.

I also read Benedetta Craveri's book on Mme d'Effand, a pre-revolutionary French salonniere. It was mildly interesting.

Finally, I started in on the six volumes of Fanny Burney's diaries. Like Virginia Woolf's, I don't know as much about their environment to recognize the people, as I did with Goncourt, say. The letters and diaries are chronological, so that I find it more challenging. On my nighttable for today: the works of Beaumarchais, best known for Noces de Figaro, and a biography of Gustave Flaubert.

Woolf, Burney

Since my last post, I've read an issue of OK Magazine. I expect to finish reading Marcel Ayme tomorrow.

I also read the second volume of Virginia Woolf's diary, which includes some pretty sharp comments about people, particularly women. Of course, a diary is not meant to be anything but honest. It also contains some despairing comments about her own writing, about being old and out of fashion, as well as recording some mundane reasons which nonetheless prevented her from writing on this day or that. It is when I read her 'fighting off the fidgets' that I feel the most compassion.

I also read a memoir of Fanny Burney, by Dodson. Being dresser to Queen Charlotte is quite an odd occupation for a talented writer. I will be reading Burney's diaries next. Finally, I am reading a biography of Christina Rossetti, by Jan Marsh.

Ayme, Franco, Queneaux, Behn

Since my last post, I've read one issue of The Economist, The World in 2010, Vanity Fair, Utne Reader, National Examiner, The New Yorker, Eclectic Reading, Hello! Canada, and two issues of The New Scientist. I've also finished Raymond Queneau, although I'm waiting for the second volume of his novels. I also read a biography of Reconstructing Aphra by Angeline Goreau, that put me more in the picture of this writer. I also read, as well as a book about Veronica Franco, The Honest Courtesan, by Margaret Rosenthal.

I'm halfway through the second volume of Marcel Ayme. As has happened over and over again, I'm reading through novel after novel that don't come alive for me, and then suddenly I hit pure gold. Le vaurien is beautifully plotted and written, and the characters are vivid. I loved it. Same thing happened as I manfully plowed through his short stories: I just started reading one about a writer who kills off all his characters before the age of thirty -- I suspect he is referring to Roger Martin du Gard -- when one of the characters' wives walks into his study to plead for his life. Wonderful. Ayme is witty -- this collection of short stories all have characters called Martin in them: a writer, a schoolboy, a farmer...

Ayme, Woolf, Queneau, Gautier

Since my last post, I've read one issue of Eclectic Reading.

I have also read the complete works of Theophile Gautier, a Frenchman primarily remembered for his poetry. I grew up hearing my mother sing her own mother's favorite songs, which were Gautier poem's set to music. Well, damn. Two volumes later, I find that he was extremely maudlin by today's standards. He was a serial writer, but he was not the master of the feuilleton that Balzac was, or Dickens. He has novels set in foreign climes, which I can legitimately claim is Voltairian, seeing as I have read Voltaire and his works on China, for example, are not well informed. I've read the first (of 5) volume of Virginia Woolf's diaries, which so far are well-written but not remarkable. I read a book about the blue-stockings in 18th century England. I've read two of the three volumes of the complete works of Raymond Queneau. He was boring, until Les enfants du limon, which suddenly and unexpectedly experiments with form. These experiments probably merit him his place in literature, but these experiments are innocuous. They neither detract nor add more than a note of unexpectedness. I have ordered the third volume, as I have the last two volumes of Woolf, and now am reading Marcel Ayme, a great descriptor of IIIrd Republic France.

Sayers, Augustin, Turgenev, Behn, Cecil, Dostoievsky, Morrell, Hourani

Since my last post, I've read Hone's Dorothy L. Sayers, Saint Augustin's Catechese, polemique, philosophie; David Magarshack's Turgenev; Janet Todd's Secret Life of Aphra Behn, Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples, Stephanie Seymour's Ottoline Morrell, Avrahm Yarmolinsky's Dostoevsky His Life and Art, and The Cecils by David Loades. For magazines, I've read two issues of Eclectic Reading, and one issue each of The New Yorker, The Economist, and OK Magazine.

I didn't even know who Dorothy Sayers was (a crime writer, among other things), so reading her life was a revelation. But I have two other books about her and I don't think I'll read them -- I think I have an idea of who she is. Saint Augustin was relaxing to read. It was a recent translation from the Latin, and given that I had read a lot of theology in the past, I could follow these texts from a Father of the Catholic Church. The writings were intended to be pastoral, anyway, so they are usually more accessible. I read Turgenev with interest, since I had read in the last couple of years the memoirs of Herzen, but the Dostoevsky biography was sad. He was imprisoned in Siberia for four years, he was an epileptic, he was a compulsive gambler, he was in debt...I guess it's easy now to see the genesis of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot...I was glad to read of Aphra Behn, I'd never heard of her, but I also thought this book ought to have been entitled The Possible Life of Aphra Behn, as the author uses historical context to speculate on what might have been. In the end, I found that a little disappointing.

Albert Hourani's book deserves its accolade as a classic. I found I learned more about the history of Arabs in the chapters covering the early, post-Prophet years than in the chapters of more recent times, but it was excellent. Finally, I read Ottoline Morrell and The Cecils for pleasure. The Morrell biography filled in a lot of gaps for me, as I had heard the name repeatedly as that of a great eccentric. turns out she was an impoverished member of a very rich family -- Mother failed to leave her as much money as her brothers. It must have been very difficult. I had read a review of The Cecils commenting on how great events were barely mentioned, but having read about the Tudors at great length, I liked a book focusing on the great secretary and his successor son.