Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Louis Aragon

Since my last post, I've read two issues of Eclectic Reading, two of OK Magazine, and an issue of The New Yorker.


I also read the complete works of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, the Edgar Allan Poe of French literature. I was struck by how effective his Night Gallery type stories were, how much they held my interest and how entertained I was. Some are poorly written -- the great title came with no money as his father spent millions before he was born, and though his parents always lived together his mother asked for the legal separation of their finances so he could blow the money she was to inherit, so he wrote for the rags -- but others are wonderful.

I then read two more novels and some short stories by Louis Aragon, whose last volume of complete works came late. His extremely long novel about the defeat of France, Les Communistes, is extraordinary. It is hard to read because it is burdened with lots of descriptions of military events best left to a historian,but like Life and Fate (Vassily Grossman, a great classic), it contains unforgettable moments: the announce of the defeat on the radio, where all the women instinctively take the hands of the men, who are bound to leave soon; the head doctor complaining about his field hospital, interrupted by a Stuka.

Alfred Jarry

So I just read the pioneer of absurdist literature in French, Alfred Jarry, a lifelong prankster. He is most famous for his succes de scandale (because he used a slightly altered word in place of excrement), Ubu roi, when he was a schoolboy. I have had trouble knowing what to make of his work, of which only a part was published in his lifetime. As you might expect, he died young of tuberculosis in 1907 after considerable substance abuse. His editors, on receiving his manuscripts, often wrote back asking what they were expected to do with his work, and I feel I may share their puzzlement.

Louis Aragon

Since my last post,I've read an issue of Majesty, my guilty pleasure, an issue of Eclectic Reading, an issue of The New Yorker, and an issue of Vanity Fair. I don't usually discuss my mag reading, but The New Yorker has a great article on the Obama administration and the news reporters, and Vanity Fair has a great article about Tiger Woods and his recent fall from grace. Reading between the lines, I came to understand that Tiger Woods had signed with excellent handlers who controlled his public image to the extent of giving hush money to his numerous sexual partners over the years. How sad for his family and for himself.

I have also read nearly all of Louis Aragon's novels. He was a surrealist and a communist who came to abandon both camps. He certainly has written a wide range of novels, but I liked Les Voyageurs de l'imperiale the best, even though his most read novel is Aurelien and his least, which I'm struggling through now, is Les Communistes, about how the communists in France held up during World War II. Hmm... it certainly gives me food for thought, as it opens with two Frenchmen trying to get a third out of the Spanish Civil War.

Hamsun, Boswell

Since my last post I've read an issue of The New Scientist, and an issue of Eclectic reading. I've also read Frank Brady's biography of James Boswell, and then I have read Knut Hamsun: Dissenter and Dreamer by Ingar Sletten Kolloen. The Brady biography covered the latter years of Boswell's life, and followed a better written and more insightful first volume by Frederick Pottle. It was published in the 1960's, and according to the foreword an unfair collaboration was proposed by an authority on Boswell on a much less experienced person. The life of Knut Hamsun, which interested me since I have read his books and knew only that he had become a Fascist. Well, what a sorry character he was, and he treated his wife, who was condemned as a collaborator where he was acquitted on the basis of mental incapacity -- he went on to write a book, giving the lie to the verdict direct -- abominably, cutting her off without a penny when he was both rich and she was 67. Awful. His early years of hunger and poverty, his mentally ill mother, all led to write great classics and make a shipwreck of his life.

Queneau, Maupassant, Boswell

Since my last post I've read an issue of The New Yorker, two issues of Eclectic Reading, and an issue of OK Magazine. I've also read the first half of James Boswell's biography, and I have discovered the wonderful novels of Guy de Maupassant. I particularly enjoyed Bel Ami, the story of a climber, of course, but I do like those. In all Maupassant's novels, there is a martyr -- a woman with a baby, someone dying of tuberculosis, etc. I also finally got to read the last volume of Raymond Queneau, including his experiments with the spoken word in print, which irritated me. However Zazie dans le metro is a famous novel, and I'm glad to have read it. I'm also reading the draft memoirs of a friend, Eleanor Albanese. These are at times so vivid that I feel I am there.

Apuleius, Dafoe, Walpole, Russian Symbolist Theatre

Apuleius's Golden Ass is a picaresque novel that was written a long time ago, in Latin. It sounds a little flip to put it that way, but it is good. I also read good biographies of Daniel Dafoe, by Paula Backscheider, and Horace Walpole by Lewis Melville. Dafoe's life was the usual tumultuous mess. Walpole's life was comparatively comfortable -- certainly he never was imprisoned for bankruptcy. I also learned a great deal from Michael Green's Russian Symbolist Theatre. I have never heard of most of the writers, but the various texts and struggles for publication was excellent.

MacLennan, Le Guin, Davies, Gilgamesh, Book of the Dead

Since my last post,I've read a biography of Hugh McLennan, an issue of OK magazine and an issue of Eclectic Reading.

I've started mixing in the greatest book list by Harold Bloom with my complete works, so right now I read Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, which was wonderfully written and imagined -- I really liked the unisex species' dialogue: "You are female? Permanently?". I also read the epic Gilgamesh, which I enjoyed since this is such a rare book, 1500 years or so before Homer wrote. Finally, I also read the Egyptian Book of the Dead, full of incantations to various deities. I also enjoyed this last book, because I had such a strong feeling of reading something completely foreign to me and to my form of spirituality.

I am now reading the complete stories of Lydia Davies, which have some successfully and interesting experimentation with form. I find she is a talented writer, but I wonder about the soul of her writing. Perhaps the form, short stories, does not communicate soul or themes well. Perhaps it's just too soon to tell.

MacLennan, Buchan, Queen Elizabeth

Since my last post, I've read an issue of the New Yorker, and an issue of Eclectic Reading. I also finished reading a biography of John Buchan, and I now regret complaining about the awful lives of writers. Buchan's life, except for frailty which saved him from World War I service, seems to me to have been charmed, and I found it irksome. I also plowed through 943 pages of the Queen Mother's official biography, which overall I enjoyed, except for the fact that my neck and leg hurt from craning and supporting the monster, respectively. I just started Cameron's life of MacLennan, and I look forward to it.

Brecht, Singer

Since my last post, I've read three issues of Eclectic Reading, an issue of the National Enquirer, of Saveurs, of Chatelaine, and of The New Yorker.

I also finished my biography of Bertold Brecht and I'm now halfway through a biography of Isaac Bashevis Singer. The big news there is that he is a womanizer, and his many conquests have given him many fine characters for his stories.

Levi-Strauss, C.S. Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, Antonin Artaud, I.A. Richards, Powys

I finished up the biography of J.C. Powys -- did I really need to know about his struggle with constipation after giving up his bi-weekly enemas, and that when he resorted to using his fingers, that he wished he had clipped his nails? This is right up there with the discussions of anal fistulas that I read in a life of Samuel Becket. Although I will say this, I'm now really curious to read his Wolf Solent, all 900 pages of it, to see how this odd man who proclaimed his inability to have 'normal' sexual relations portrays the life force in his novel.

Anyway, what a sorry lot these writers are, Wyndham Lewis sabotaging his relations with his patrons, and Dostoevsky with his compulsive gambling and his epilepsy and his exile to Siberia, and Powys with his disclosed sexual peculiarities and the 'surgically deflowered' wife...And of course, I had to follow up all this with the life of Poe, whose dying wife could not relieve her tubercular chills with even a blanket, let alone a fire, because they were too poor. Mind you, Poe's nurse used to tranquilize him with bread soaked in gin, no one has a fighting chance with that. Antonin Artaud also died young of substance abuse, it's been a really happy little day.

C.S. Lewis' life, with his mother hang-up, seems comparatively tame compared to this. I must say I disliked the way in which Joy Gresham, Lewis' wife, is lambasted for her abrasiveness -- it's not just Wyndham Lewis who is a misogynist.

In this panoply, reading Levi-Strauss was a relief -- I really only liked his book about the cultural structures in both pre-industrial western and central American societies. His is justly famous for that.

Also, the life of I.A. Richards (by Russo), the promoter of Basic English, was also welcome relief.

Wyndham Lewis, Jean Toomer, John Cowper Powys

Well, today is the last day of the holiday break, with my teaching starting up again tomorrow. So I'm going to read as much as I can. Since my last post, I read biographies of Wyndham Lewis (The Enemy by Jeffrey Meyers) and Jean Toomer, and started one of John Cowper Powys (by Morinne Krissdotter). I also have seven books (in one big omnibus) by Levi-Strauss to read before tomorrow. I have no engagements, so let's see what I can do with a marathon.

Giono, Beaumarchais, Forster

Since my last post, I've read an issue of the Examiner, the Globe, The Economist, and The New Scientist.

I've also read the last three volumes of short stories and novels by Jean Giono, including the great classic L'homme qui plantait des arbres. I found that spare and moving. The other novels were good, but were more of mixed bag in terms of my personal taste. However, it completes my reading of his complete works.

I've already finished reading the plays of Beaumarchais, I have only the two essays to read now. I most belatedly realised that Le Barbier de Seville and Le Mariage de Figaro feature all the same characters....Better late than never, I suppose.

I also read quite a superficial biography of E.M. Forster, which reported the family members on whom certain of his characters were based, and the trips he took and the jobs he held.

I now believe I will be able to get everything read that I wanted to this December break. I've only a collection of Levi-Strauss books to read for inter library loan, and perhaps fifteen literary biographies. On the other hand, I have two large bags full of books to return to the library sometime today, as I don't want to carry them in my backpack when classes begin again.