Mags, Musset, Ellis, Connally

Since my last entry,I've read an issue each of Royalty, Majesty, the National Enquirer and the National Examiner. It was, in case it's not obvious, trashy light reading. I've also read The Partnership, by Charles Ellis, about Goldman Sachs, and Fatal Misconception, an anti-Malthusian essay by Matthew Connally. I've read 3 of the 19 plays by Alfred de Musset that I have slated for myself this December break. After Musset, I have Claudel, whom I've never read, and the last six volumes of Voltaire.

Odds and Ends

I read two books by Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad and Understanding Terror Networks. They were interesting as political sociology, I thought, and were revealing of the social conditions surrounding terrorist individuals. I also read all of Goethe's plays, translated into French. I had read Faust, so this was a top-up, about 40 plays. I found some of them very light indeed, for someone who called Shakespeare 'the master of us all.' Today Harold Pinter died, so I suppose I'm thinking about playwrights a lot. I also read Trillion Dollar Meltdown, by Charles Morris, a book published last February about the housing bubble bursting. I suppose the author must now think he had no idea he would be so right. I just finished Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money, which is an interesting analysis of currency. It puts me in mind of that early French sociologist who wrote on suicide, Emile Durkheim. Finally I also read a history of alcohol, Drink by Iain Gately. Resting on my dining room table is the oversize book about ants. That one is next, interspersed I suppose with the plays of Alfred de Musset. I also read an issue each of the New Yorker, OK Magazine, New Scientist, The Economist, Utne Reader and three issues of Eclectic Reading.

Food Adulteration and Magazines

Since my last post I've read three issues of Eclectic Reading, one issue of The New Scientist, one issue of OK Magazine, and one issue of The Economist. I also read a number of Goethe's plays -- the early ones don't betray the grandeur of the later works -- with about ten to go before I'm done. I also read Bee Wilson's Swindled, about food adulteration in history. It was only occasionally nauseating! I also read Vesaas' Spring Night. This was a leftover from my reading the UNESCO list, which I though I'd finished. Well, this was a boring novel, as all Vesaas' were -- not to my taste.

The last of the UNESCO list!

I have read the last of the UNESCO list of representative literature, The Uprising, by Liviu Rebreanu. I wasn't captivated, I liked his later novel more, but I was ecstatic to be done at last with the list! Talk about traveling inside my head!

I also read Agnes Humbert's Notre guerre, a French museologist's account of her suffering at German hands during World War II, including deportation, for being in the Resistance. I read Rose Lee Goldberg's Performance, an update of her earlier book on performance art, filled with color pictures this time. I also read Madeline Levine's Price of Privilege, which turned out to be a simple argument that rich kids can be suffering emotionally too. Money is a great way to neglect children without seeming to be doing so. I also read Vol. 2 of La pleiade's Theatre du XVIIe siecle, about 30 plays in all. I was hoping for something political during the Revolutionary period, and I got it. Otherwise, the farces and tragedies are full of silly country people or noble titled people.

I also read three issues of The Economist, an issue of Hello Canada, and one issue of The New Scientist.

last dribbles of the unesco list, Wood,

Since my last blog I've read an issue of The New Yorker, an issue of The Economist, and an issue of The New Scientist. I've also read Wood's How Fiction works, Patterns of Fashion by Janet Arnold, Performance Art by Ruth Goldberg, Putin's Labyrinth by Steven Levine, Footprints in the Snow by Kenjiro Tokutomi, Loneliness by Patrick and Cacioppo, and Hidden in the Shadow of the Masters, by Ruth Butler.

How Fiction Works is a quick easy read, and I know I got some insight out of it, but I can't remember now what it was. Patterns of Fashion had a 16-page essay and many patterns and photographs of costumes from the fifteen- and sixteen-hundreds. Performance Art was interesting: it made me think that performance art was about truth, at its most shocking, rather than pure sensation. Footprints in the Snow is yet another autobiographical novel about the struggle against family obligation in Japan. Putin's Labyrinth is about the network of murders and torture in Putin's Russia. It rehashes Poliskaya and Litvenenko's murders, for example. Quick read, anyway. Loneliness is a book about the psychology of connection, and while written for the layperson it is too gross, too unsubtle in its argument. Butler's book about Mesdames Monet, Rodin, and Cezanne made me feel sorry for these lovely young women who dedicated their youth and beauty to men who betrayed them in the end.

UNESCO, some essays

I finished the biography of Florence Nightingale, and I found that her life was rather bland -- who knew she lived as an invalid for her last three decades? But it was well written and illuminating, if only to let me know the government made her a heroine to distract the population from its failures in managing the Crimean war. I also read a great novel, Walliulah's Tree without roots, about a Muslim medicine man. It was very revealing of the realities of poverty in the practice of Islam. I also read Clark's Dark Waters, an essay about the flood of Florence in 1996. For once, it was not an uplifting tale of heroism, but of the reality that much art was damaged by the flood, and damaged by well-meaning efforts to preserve it. I also read some basic texts for Korea: Virtuous Women is the collection of three well-known stories of queens, widows and secret wives in the Korean aristocracy of the Middle ages. I learned, among other things, that Chinese was the main language for centuries, as Latin was in the West. I also read Yashpal's historical novel, Amita, about a slave in the palaces of maharajah in India.

UNESCO: Tsubota, Zaman, Varma, Arishima

I read the CAA Magazine, the Lee Valley catalogue, The New Yorker, OK Magazine, Eclectic Reading, and several articles on scenario planning. I can't say I read the entirety of The New Yorker, since most of the articles were fan clubs for Barack Obama. That's certainly not the reason I read the magazine, and I hope this doesn't happen too often.

I have also read an essay on Fred Astaire, by Joe Epstein, Varma's A Pilgrimage to the Himalayas, Tsubota's Children in the Wind, The Prisoner by Fakhr Zaman, Vesaas's Bleaching Yard, Arishima's A Certain Woman, and I started Bostridge's biography of Florence Nightingale. Epstein was pretty light-weight, what with detailed discussions of Astaire's clothing, and not much in way of discussing dancing technique or biography. Varma was a wonderful book about the poor in India, so real to me I could scarcely bear to read some of the sadder stories. Vesaas' first book I didn't like, and I didn't much care for this one either. Arishima was more interesting, although I thought the treatment of the woman was sexist, in the way that Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina were also sexist. Tsubota's novel of children in Japan in the 30's is skillful: I like catching glimpses of the developing fascism. Zaman's searing novel I couldn't bear to read in parts, because it describes torture and execution in a Punjabi prison before World War II. Bostridge I can tell I will enjoy unreservedly.

My night stand's leftovers

Since my last post, I've been reading the stuff left over from other reading lists. So, it will come as no surprise that I've read an issue of Airpower in French and in English. I also read the delightful Nocturnes, by Daniel-Rops, and Suzanna Jacob's La passion selon Galatee. I thought well of the miniatures of reflexion in Daniel-Rops, but Jacob's book was ordinary in every way.

I read Kechichian's biography of King Faysal, but I was disappointed by the lack of insight into his character. I felt that there was a certain amount of recycling from some previous work on the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia. I also read Becker's Art Worlds. This is an essay outlining the sociology of people who make and distribute art. I found the chapter on mavericks really interesting, as well as the discussion the constraints posed by any distribution system. I also read Sebastian de Grazia's biographical essay, Machiavelli in Hell. I was disappointed with the lack of insight here too, since the bulk of the book is taken up by a discussion of Machiavelli's writings. I wanted to know how he transmuted life into writing. Delhommais' Cinq milliards en fumee is about a rogue trader in France losing five billion euros. I suppose it's an understatement to say the guy was under-supervised. After that I read two murder mysteries given me by my boyfriend: Slaughter's Fractured and Grippando's Intent to Kill. I read each in about two hours, and I thought Slaughter had more unusual characters, even if they were still stereotyped. I suppose I noticed that it was the handicapped (autistic/dyslexic) which were the murderers instead of, in the past, blacks, loose women, poor people. Have we progressed at all beyond this distrust of the other?

UNESCO list

I have read Ion by Liviu Rebreanu , Premchand's Gift of a Cow, and Thor's Quick Quick Said the Bird. Ion is a pastoral, about a greedy and loathsome peasant trying to climb out of poverty, and making a lot of people unhappy in the process. Gift of a Cow is also about the rural poor, this time set in India. The hero, Hora, tries to do good and sinks into poverty more and more. I wanted desperately to give him the two or three dollars that would have saved him. Hora dies at the end, with a lifetime of drudgery yielding enough money for a few months' worth of floor for his family. Thor's book is an experimental novel. Having only read Halldor Laxness among the Icelandic writers, I'm glad I read it. It certainlyis different, but I think it's a noble failure.

I also read an issue of OK Magazine and an issue of The New Scientist.

UNESCO

Since my last post, I have read an issue of Eclectic Reading, and five books: Graciliano Ramos' Childhood, Shaikat Siddiqi's God's Own Land, The Palace of Ice by Tarjei Vesaas, Trash by Jose de Almeida, and Wild Bapu of Garambi by Shripad Narayan Pendse.

Trash is an important novel for Brazil, since it marks the entry of the Brazilian vernacular into literature. Otherwise, it is pretty ordinary. I thought God's Own Land was a soap opera, complete with passion, murder, and wrongdoing, but evidently it was immensely popular in Pakistan, where it is set. Both Childhood and Palace of Ice purport to charm the reader with memoirs of the author's youth -- Childhood succeeds a little more, and it is interesting to read what it was like to be a child in those countries, but that's about all I can say about either of them. Wild Bapu of Garambi is a translation from the Maranthi, and it is remarkable for the amount of dialogue for a novel. I wasn't surprised to read that the author translated this for the stage at some point in his career.

So this leaves me about fifteen books away from reading the entire UNESCO list in English and French. I should be able to read five or six more this week-end, but I have to wait on interlibrary loan to complete this list. What will I do with my time now?

Potrc, Levine, Soseki, Lilla, Niwa, Light

There are few things I find as relaxing as reading book-length essays. Yesterday I relaxed by reading three. Allison Light's Mrs. Woolf and the Servants was a valiant failure, I would say: it discusses the lives of servants of Virginia Woolf, but of course not that much is known about them, despite their importance to understanding the writer. Levine's High Brow Low Brow is an interesting history of theatre and music in the US, and shows how culture became sacralized there. This is not a new argument, of course, as concerts have become much more formal affairs in Europe as well, as was Shakespeare -- there are British scripts extant which play havoc with the Bard. Lilla's Stillborn God is a very good title for a fairly unsurprising essay on the use of God as political justification for power. Ends in the XIXth century, also not surprising.

I also read yet another Soseki novel, the most autobiographical, about a disgruntled man unhappy with his family obligations. It's called Grass on the Wayside. This one treats adoption in Japan, which is a very different concept from adoption as it is understood here. I also read Niwa's Buddha Tree, a sordid tale about incest and adultery, and the purifying power of passion. What I liked about it was not the denouement, which would have provoked derision in a Western novel, but the description of the way of life in Buddhist temples and the priesthood. I also read Ivan Potrc Land and the Flesh, a novel with a great opening and closing, about a young man's looking for love and mistreating his women.

UNESCO list

I read Sydney Lumet's Making Movies, David Lebedoff's the Same Man, Sadia Shepard's Girl from Foreign, Jozsef Lengyel's Prenn Drifting, Christer Kihlman's Sweet Prince, Aharon Megged's The Living on the Dead, and Jean Metellus' La Famille Vortex.

Vortex is the story of a family in Haiti, and I didn't find it very compelling. Megged's novel is about a writer's failure to write a biography, and in the process gives us a fresco of Israeli life. I rather liked it. Prenn Drifting is about a misfit who becomes a revolutionary during World War I in Hungary. I found it interesting primarily for the political overtones, and it was those overtones which led the Communist government at the time to select it for the UNESCO list. Sweet Prince is the story of an unlikely community near a garbage dump in Norway. I have such a pristine memory of Norway that I asked myself: are there garbage dumps in Norway? I found it hard to care about the characters in this one.

I enjoyed Shepard. It was an interesting book to read, about a woman looking for her Jewish roots in India, when she is born of a Muslim mother and an Episcopalian father in the US. I am used to thinking about all these religions not just as distinct, but somehow antithetical. I also thoroughly enjoyed reading Lumet. It's a quick, easy read that really gave me the feeling of what it is like to make a movie. I read the rehearsal process with great attention. Lebedoff, I have to say, disappointed me. I got the feeling a full biography of either Waugh or Orwell would have been too hard for this author, so he tries and fails to combine the two. His argument that both authors were similar fails -- the book is about their numerous differences. It was not well written, which attracts the eye a lot more these days.

UNESCO list

I read two issues of Eclectic Reading and an issue of The Economist.

I've also read five longer reads from my list. The first, Land by Park Kyong-ni, is an epic set at the turn of the century. I thought that this novel was ill-served by its translator, because it came across as colorless and uni-dimensional, and the author is probably the most famous in Korea today. the next book I cannot claim to have read, I only skimmed it: it is Mahdhara's Mantramahodadhi. This book explains the rituals and mantras for every occasion, with commentary. The rituals are elaborate, with explanations on food offerings, incense, type of imagery to be used in a lot of detail. This is what all those hippies in Haight-Ashbury must have read, but of course it was used in India for religious purposes. I read an anonymous epic translated from the Catalan, Curial and Guelfa. It is primarily a chivalrous novel in the tradition of Tristan und Isolde and La chanson de Roland. It is deadly serious, utterly without the leavening of humour. Galvan's Cross and the Sword is a rebellion story set in Santo Domingo. Shiga's Dark Night's Passing is a naturalist novel translated from the Japanese, and despite its limitations (it substitutes unadorned language for any sort of character development) it is the most popular in Japanese literature today. I liked it but found it stark, and I like spare prose.

UNESCO and Mags

Since my last blog, I have read two issues of The Economist, four issues of Eclectic Reading, and three novels. Naoe's Pillar of Fire is a historical novel with a political message about the militarism of Japan. I enjoyed it. Ishikawa Jun's Bodhisattva is another experimental Japanese novel. It was easier to follow that Abe's Inter Ice Age 4 or Woman of the Dunes, but it was not nearly as interesting or imaginative. Possibly Japanese readers enjoy the Buddhist aspect more than myself. I also read Abdullah Hussein's Weary Generation, about how a Muslim came to be a displaced person and refugee. The author translated his own work from the Urdu, and while I am sure that the translation is more faithful than if someone else had done it, I wondered about the modern colloquialism in a period novel. I found that modernism distracting, in the end. The novel didn't particularly hold my attention.

More UNESCO

I didn't feel like reading more late yesterday, but I had trouble sleeping. So I read Teresa De La Parra's Mama Blanca's Memoirs, Arreguin-Toft's How the Weak Win Wars, and Kazantzakis' Alexander the Great. I've read other works by Parra, and this one didn't make much more of an impression on me than the others. In fact, I thought her other novel was more effective. It was also three times as long as this one. I admired Kazantzakis's novel on Jesus, but this one, a serial intended for young people, didn't stand out very much. I read the Arreguin-Toft for professional reasons, and thought the author had gone to a lot a trouble with the statistics to make the same point I made in a totally different way, with a lot less work, in one of my own books.

UNESCO, Voltaire

Since I last blogged, I read two issues of The New Yorker, one issue of The Economist, one issue of OK Magazine, and three issues of Eclectic Reading. That's it for the mags, I also read the 8th volume of the complete works of Voltaire. This was a slog, as it contained his Histoire universelle. When it came to discussing Louis XIVth's reign, I thought what a contrast it was to Saint-Simon's magnificent Memoires. Saint-Simon's portraits of individuals were priceless, where as this is pretty bland. It was an interesting intellectual experience to read again about this period, when I've read so many of the first-person writings of the principals. Eight volumes down, eight to go.

I also read a stack of books from the UNESCO list. I read the first Japanese novel, Tale of the Lady Ochikubo, or for the cognoscenti, Ochikubo Monogatari. It precedes Tales of Genji by Lady Murasaki, which I also read. I found it a surprisingly easy read, humorous, interesting since I worked in Japan and I am curious about the foundations of the culture. I was thankful for the appendix with the structure of the Imperial Court, since everyone went by titles and not names in the thing.

I also read Olivier Friggieri A Turn of the Wheel, a novel about a depressed young man apparently dressing at straws. The most interesting thing about it is that it is translated from the Maltese dialect. It's a short, easy read.

I also read Nakae Chomin's Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government, a heavy-handed and, indeed, heavy satire of politics. Three men drinking talk about the government in Japan and elsewhere. I had thought it might interest me more than it did.

Of greater interest was the naturalist novel The Broken Commandment by Shimazaki Toson. This is about a Buraku, in the book known as an outcast or eta, who hides his social status and becomes an esteemed teacher in an important school. The novel ends with the teacher revealing his status to his students and bowing to the floor in apology. I was shocked at this turn, since the author is so obviously sympathetic to the Burakumin, but I have to agree that this is realistic. The plight of the Japanese untouchables cannot be exaggerated. I should think gay people would be able to relate, hopefully only in former times, to the need for secrecy and the public shame.

I also read Sigurdsson's Pastor Bodvar's Letter, which held neither my interest nor my attention very well. The same can be said of Autran Dourado's Voices of the Dead, and William Heinesen's Tower at the Edge of the World. It reminded me of the French Canadian classic, Le fou de l'ile, by Felix Leclerc, and Alain-Fournier's Le grand Meaulnes. Poetic, non-linear coming of age novels all.

Ruswa's Umra Jan Ada is the story of a prostitute in Lucknow, originally written in Urdu. I thought this was a sad and naturalistic story of a young girl defiled and then disposed of into prostitution. I was particularly struck by the passages where her companions are auctioned off for their deflowering, and then live in a much more exalted and luxurious style.

Finally I smiled over Paasilinna's Year of the Hare, the story like Ring Lardner's Ring of Bright Water, about a man and his pet. This time, it really is the eponmyous hare of the title, the pet owner's travails with border agents and game wardens, his troubles over getting fresh grass for the wild animal.

UNESCO

Since my last post, I read two issues of The New Scientist and two issues of Eclectic Reading. I have also read the magical novel by Miguel Asturias, Men of Maize, which I didn't like but which did give me an idea of what it would have felt like to be a Guatemalan peasant in colonial times. I have also read Soseki's Kokoro, a novel about the platonic devotion of a student to a guilt-ridden professor. I thought it wonderfully written, with an unforgettably vivid opening scene. That scene has the student describe his first sight of his sensei, as he wraps a towel around his head and walks naked into the sea. Soseki also wrote The Three-Cornered World, which I thought was too esoteric for me after the beautiful simplicity of Kokoro. I read Edgardo Julia's Renunciation, which is a novel structured like a series of lectures. It is about a Porto Rican revolutionary, and it has excerpts of letters and fragments of plays. The structure is mildly interesting, even if the novel falls pretty flat. Finally, I read Osaragi's Homecoming, a novel about postwar Japan and the retributions and penances various characters go through after World War II. I liked it in general, but I thought the key female character was portrayed in both a sexist way (scheming, grasping, using her sexuality, resenting being aroused), but also in ways which were not psychologically believable. I assume this author has stayed away from portraying women since.

I have just realized that I need to return three books tomorrow or they will be late, so I'm off to read two volumes of Voltaire and one last book of South American literature.

UNESCO Representative Literature

After finishing The Deadbeats, I read Salih's Bandarshah, the story of a grandfather written in the epic style. I read the charming Silver Spoon, by Naka Kansuke, the story of his childhood. I then read Shimazaki Toson's The Family, an autobiographical naturalistic novel about a brother being bled financially by his brothers and other relatives. Not exactly an optimistic view of human nature, and it begins with the protagonist's feelings of betrayal after his marriage on finding out his wife once was engaged to another man. I also read a conventional resistance noel, although this is set in World War I Romania, called A Gamble With Death, by Stancu.

I also read a two-volume essay on the Taxonomy of Pedagogical Objectives, which despite its arcane title I found riveting.

UNESCO Representative Literature

I've read quite a bit of Japanese literature. Mon, about the consequences of two people engaging in pre-marital sex in Victorian Japan, is by Natsume. So is Botchan, about a boy's school schoolmaster. I simply devoured Kafu Nagai's Geisha in Rivalry. It is another Victorian novel about geisha in Tokyo, and its translator didn't capture any poetry in the title, bit I read it straight through, worried I'd be late if I kept reading. But still I kept reading. In the general category of agitprop, I read Koyabashi's Absentee Landlord, about the endless persecution or exploitation of the poor. Worst, or at least most vivid, of all, is Endo's The Sea and Poison, a novel about human vivisection by the Japanese during World War II. It was related so clearly, I had to skip the worst passages.

I also read an issue of The New Scientist and OK Magazine.

I'm reading Ward Ruyslinck's Deadbeats, a short novel about a daily laborer in Holland.

Week-end UNESCO Representative Literature

I've decided to read two books a day as a rule, so that I can keep abreast of all those loans I've received.

Since my last post I've read two issues of Eclectic Reading. I'm behind in my magazine reading, there are two Economists, one New Yorker and one New Scientist on my bedside table.

I read Haggard and Noland's Famine in North Korea. this is a meticulously researched and argued examination of the terrible famine of the 1990's, where about 4% of the population died. It was not an exciting read, and the technical discussion got a bit hard to follow, but it was very interesting. There is so little known about North Korea that they have to be careful what suppositions they propose to use. I also read Hitchings' The Secret Life of Words. I was a little disappointed. Hitchings identifies ten or twelve mechanisms by which words are imported into English, some mechanisms being more common in times of war or plague than others, and then gives endless lists of examples. It's a little lightweight, I guess, for my taste.

I also read Knut Faldbakken's Sweetwater. This is a novel about a nameless war and a nameless occupied village, and its march towards liberation. Fabian Dobles' Years like Brief Days is a long reminiscence about the narrator's former days in a valley as a young man, a way of life that no longer exists. I read about half of Marga Minco's The Other Side, a collection of short stories. I liked best the stories about Jewish people after the war, in particular a short story about a gentile who robbed Jews by saying she would safeguard their most precious belongings. A Holocaust survivor calls on this woman and finds their Hanukkah candlestick used a a sconce. Egon Hostovsky The Arsonist is an interesting portrait of a village, with the search for an arsonist (who is never found) as the plot device to take us through the process. Annika Idstrom's My Brother Sebastian is a searing first-person novel of a youth and his mistreatment at the hands of a foster home under the pretext, no doubt, of protection. Finally, Autran Dourado's Pattern for a Tapestry made little impression on me.

UNESCO Representative Literature

I read another issue of The New Yorker, but also three books by Shusaku Endo: first, The Samurai, about Catholic converts in Japan in the 16th century; second, When I whistle, which didn't make much of an impression on me; and third, Wonderful Fool, a comic novel about a Frenchman in Japan. I did enjoy the latter, having been myself a foreigner in Japan. And I didn't really speak much more Japanese than Gaston Bonaparte, the protagonist.

I also read Yasushi Inoue's Roof Tile of Tempyo, about four monks going to China to bring back Buddhist materials. It didn't impress me that much, but the introduction by the translator, James Araki, was nothing short of a revelation. He discusses several characteristics of Japanese literature based on the taste of readers which don't exist in the West He discusses how the temple names are repeated often because a Japanese reader enjoys the aesthetics of an elegant hand writing those names. Japanese readers enjoy imagining rather than hearing the thoughts of the characters. Much as we like to see familiar landmarks in movies, Japanese readers like to catch glimpses of famous historical people in a novel. Well, who knew?

I read Yukio Mishima's Sound of Waves, a pastoral novel which thankfully didn't contain some of the more extreme sadomasochistic scenes I read in his other novels. I also read Salvador Garmendia's Memories of Altagracia, a fantastical novel I had trouble following, and finally Hwang Sun-Won's Descendants of Cain, about the communist takeover of a village in North Korea. I can readily believe it was a bestseller in South Korea, for political reasons. I found it unsubtle, frankly, although the translation may not render fully its literary merits. I also read Atheis by Achdiat Mihardja. This is the first Indonesian novel, and I found it conventional in itself, but of course it represents a great departure for Bahasa Indonesia. I found no sense of place in it, even though I've been to Jakarta, and the highlands of Indonesia.

UNESCO Representative Literature

So I read an issue of The New Yorker and an issue of OK Magazine and the latest Vanity Fair. I also just finished the Bengali novel Kalindi, which is an ordinary soap opera set in rural India; Kawabata's The Lake and A Thousand Cranes; the Turkish novel Gemmo; and the first Dutch fantasy/sci-fi novel, A Short Account of a Remarkable Aerial Voyage and Discovery of a New planet, by Willem Bilderdijk. Gemmo has a wonderful and eponymous central character, a woman who enters a tournament and fights men until one defeats her to choose a husband, instead of being sold off to the highest bidder by her father. Bilderdijk left me cold, and I thought about the unusual choices that are made by committees choosing the most representative untranslated novels for UNESCO. Kawabata, the first Japanese Nobel prize winner, has that element in his aesthetic that is common to contemporary Japanese literature: a sort of slightly off-center taste for pain and suffering, as if that was a proof of love. Perverse in its way, The Lake shows the seamier side of a petty criminal's emotional life. Equally perverse but admirably sparse and euphonious in its writing, A Thousand Cranes is the sordid story of two suicides caused by a spoiled but evidently desirable young man of callous predisposition.

The Vigil, Born Digital, Ancient Monuments, Cuore

I read an issue of Entertainment Weekly, an issue of Royalty, and the four books cited above. Cuore, by Edmondo de Amicis, is the required reading of all schoolchildren in Italy, and I liked it. It's a sweet look at 19th century school life, with stock characters like the handicapped child protected by the big lug, the spoiled rich kid, the hardworking poor kid, etc. The Vigil by Satinath Bhaduri is a striking novel about four family members imprisoned in India during the independence campaigns, and one of them is hanged. It's all about the reminiscence of lives past, but also about the reality of prison life in excruciating detail. I felt like I was there. I didn't like Ancient Monuments, a Swedish pastoral by Stig Claesson. From the essay Born Digital, by Palfary and Gasser, I mostly remember that the superficiality of research I notice in my students could well be a mechanism to protect them from information overload. This poses some particular problems in teaching, which I don't know how to resolve.

Voltaire, UNESCO, Mags

I finished Voltaire's plays and I was surprised not to read Candide, but this is probably the adaptation of a novel or short story. There were a few translations included in the complete works, so that made the whole thing a bit shorter. The histories now await me.

I read an issue of OK Magazine, of The Economist, and of The New Scientist.

I also read a biography of Marc Chagall, complete with color photographs. I was trying to verify the hypothesis of the latest biography, that he never regained the originality of the years in Russia, but I can't judge from what I read. I also read another extraordinary Japanese novel, called Twilight Years. It is the story of a working woman caring for her increasingly demented father-in-law, in a great deal of detail. The result is an extraordinary verisimilitude. I then read Claess' Swordfish, which didn't make much of an impression on me, and Orly Castel-Bloom's Dolly City. This translation from the Hebrew was too involved for me. It was clearly a satire of the Israeli state, but I didn't know enough details to appreciate. It had some pretty shocking content, like a surgeon operating on her own infant son and deciding to have an 'organ roll call' i.e. taking out and checking all organs in the body. Sounds painful. I also read Kindness of Strangers by Salka Viertel, which was a little more superficial than I had hoped from such a cultured and erudite actress and screenwriter.

I also read and was profoundly moved by Le livre de ma mere by Albert Cohen. It is a song to the author's late mother, beautifully written. I had to wonder at how much guilt figured in this song of loss, written several years after the death of the mother. She did die in occupied France, a Jew, while her son was safe in Geneva, so I am reminded of Life and Death.

UNESCO Representative Literature, Voltaire's Plays

I read Mariano Azuela's novel of the Mexican revolution, The Underdogs. It was a fairly typical novel of struggle with the unhappy ending of the death of the protagonist. I also read about 25 plays written by Arouet Le Jeune, known to history as Voltaire. The plays are not necessarily remarkable, but they are mostly inspired by classical tragedies. Reading them in quick succession means that I notice the author's fondness for springing a new relationship on characters (discovering variously a brother, a sister, a son, a daughter, a mother, a father, a childhood dear friend, etc.) Some of the plays set in, say, China, have not worn well. And interestingly, there is a play about the prophet Mohammed, entitled The Fanatics and and containing the revered figure of Islam urging a slave to murder her master, one of his enemies. I bet everyone has forgotten about this play.

I also read an issue of The New Scientist, an issue of Eclectic Reading, and an issue of The Economist.

Robinson, Barnes, Horowitz

I read Joseph Horowitz's Artists in Exile, and I found lots of entertaining tidbits in it, like Stokowski created his own persona (he was born and raised in London), and Charlie Chaplin's terrible early years.

But it is a rare pleasure to read two really good books in a row, and I just have. Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is an undiluted pleasure, and I can only add my compliments to its many plaudits. Julian Barnes' Nothing to be Afraid Of is a meditation on death, a topic I have had much reason to think over lately, and it is both literary and intelligent and informative. OK, so I found out that many writers in the 19th century France died of syphilis, and also that Barnes disliked his mother. But it was a wonderful read and I devoured it too.

I have also read an issue of The New Yorker and an issue of Eclectic Reading. I just started the complete works of Voltaire, starting with the theatre.

Dream of the Red Chamber, Wisse

I spent the week-end catching up on three issues of The Economist and an issue of The New Scientist and Eclectic Reading. I also finished the last quarter of The Dream of the Red Chamber. I suppose all cultures have these long, picaresque, comic novels written in instalments. I was reminded in a way of Don Quixote. Certainly the first half, I grew disenchanted with what seemed to me to be endless bickering and intriguing among the women of two affluent households. Then, in the second half, it was like a different author had taken up the pen. The psychology was more interesting, the plots were more complex, the human nature more believable, and of course it intended less humor, thank goodness. All in all it was worth the reading, however much slogging I did up front. I also just finished Ruth Wisse's Jews and Power, an essay on the political aspects of Jewish culture and modern history. I found myself straining to try and accept her views, since I feel strongly that the Jewish people have indeed 'been singled out by history.' But in the end, I concluded that this work was that of an extremist. I agree with her view that foreign governments would abandon the Jews to their fate, if it ever came to that. I agree that there is widespread anti-Semitism. I don't agree that most governments in the world today blame the Jews for their own problems. I think institutionalized anti-Semitism exists, but that the Holocaust has taught it to be more subtle than that, to go underground so to speak. And I confess that I am surprised that such views could be held by a fellow Canadian, a fellow Montrealer. I feel like we have grown up in parallel universes, however much pro-Israel I may be.

Mullan, Plumly, Ramadan, Almeida, Weber

John Mullan's Anonymity makes a really good read. It is about the reasons why and examples of authors publishing books anonymously or under pseudonyms. Some pseudonyms remain, like George Eliot, and some do not, like Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte). People used anonymity for marketing reasons, or for fear of the law. I also read William Weber's Great Transformation of Musical Taste, which is about concert programs and types for a 150-year period. It was interesting to see how late the church-like atmosphere and sacredness of text came into the culture. The author mentions, but I had also noticed, that the same is true in literature, particularly mangling Shakespeare, and it happened at about the same time. I did not find much that was new in Tariq Ramadan's Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, since I had read some liberal Muslim theology before. I found that there was similarities with Christianity in terms of the ethics of living, but I had noticed that before. I regret to say that Manuel Almeida's Memoirs of a Militia Sergeant, yet another picaresque novel, made next to no impression on me. Stanley Plumly's Posthumous Keats was excellently written, and it was an intriguing premise to look at how Keats' legend grew up in the 2 or 3 decades after his death. After that I spent quite a lot of time reading Reve du pavillon rouge. I'm going to have to read up on it, because it started getting more interesting than endless bickering among women in classical China past page 1500 or so. Yes, it's a 3000 pager, and I'm about 3/4 of the way through. I am finding it much more psychologically interesting. After that, I have the first 3 volumes of Voltaire's complete works to read.

Odds and Ends

Since my last post, I've read a issue of The New Yorker, and started another, started an issue of The Economist, an issue of OK Magazine, Vanity Fair, and The New Scientist, as well as Eclectic Reading. I've also read Ruth Wisse's If I Am Not For Myself, and The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, Mudslingers by Kerwin Swint , Ken Hamilton's After the Golden Age, and Al-Mazini's Egypt.

Wisse's is the most intense Zionist literature I've ever read, and this comes from a Canadian, no less. I found it interesting if extreme, and I must say I have greater tolerance because I knew she had been a refugee as a child, possibly a Holocaust survivor. Schlemiel made me jealous: a 126 page doctoral dissertation? I wish mine was that short. Mudslingers was fun to read: the list of dirty tricks in US politics is seemingly endless, and there were lots I didn't know about. The worst, as one might expect, was probably George Wallace and his naked appeal to racism. Al-Mazini's book was a trilogy of picaresque novellas about Egyptian society. Hamilton's is an essay on pianism, i.e. the ways of being a pianist. I thought it was interesting.

Odds and Ends

Since last writing, I read a issue of OK Magazine, one of the New Yorker, and one of the New Scientist. I have also read some fascinating books. One, Nightwork by Anne Allison, explores ethnographically the hostess bars of Tokyo. I also read an excellent book by a moderate Arab, , called The Arab Center, by Marwan Muasher. I also read Murray Bail's Longhand. I didn't think much of it, although it's fine as a notebook goes, but because it didn't need to be published. It is an approriately private document. I read a novel translated from the Urdu, The Shore and the Wave, by Aziz Ahmad, which I also liked. Best of all, I read Abe's Inter Ice Age 4, one of the most imaginative novels I've ever read. It is the story of a Japanese researcher who discovers a time machine, and then goes on to discover a secret government initiative to turn human beings into water-breathers by genetic engineering, because the sea level is rising and Japan will be submerged. He discovers that his wife's aborted fetus has been sold to this organization, the water-breathers come into being and then conflict with the land people, elderly Japanese spend their life savings on cameras to watch their water grandchildren, and the novel ends with the submersion of Tokyo. It was a masterpice. Unsettling and unpredictable at every turn. I can't recommend it enough.

I also read Kevin Swint's Political Campaigning and Negative Advertising, which was a quick read and very interesting. It appears that negative advertising about the candidate's person is the most likely to backfire. I also read Trevor-Roper's posthumous Invention of Scotland. The front of the book studies the creation of the idea of nationhood through Robbie Burns and Buchanan and the like, but the back two chapters are fascinating. It appears the kilt originated as the clothing of the poor, but was in its present form invented by an English Quaker industrialist. The tartan was created in its clan-belonging incarnation by two Polish tailors, who published the fraudulent Scotia Antiquarum, which was taken for cash by everyone since. Originally, different members of the same family would wear different patterns, for example. I laughed my head off.

I have now undertaken the 3000 page Chinese classic, Dream of the Red Chamber, which is primarily about women. I am reading it translated into French.

Odds and Ends

I read Les tambours noirs, by Josue Montello, a wonderful anti-slavery novel from Brazil, told in the first person in flashback. I also read a classic of Persian poetry, Nizami, entitled Chosroes et Chirin, as well as a novel which made next to no impression on me, Les oiseaux by Tarjei Vesaas. I just finished The Forsaken, by Tim Tzouliadis, about the Americans imprisoned by the Soviets, and I was riveted by the sadness and the inhumanity. It ranks right up there with the Nazi concentration camp literature I read when I was a teenager, Les medecins maudits and Les medecins de l'impossible. Apart from that, I read an issue of The New Yorker, an issue of The Economist, and two issues of Eclectic Reading, as well as an issue of The New Scientist. I also read Guided Inquiry, by Carol Kuhlthau, one of the last volumes about analogical cognition, this time written by a library scientist. It was excellent.

UNESCO Part XIV

I read Joel Lehtonen's Combe aux mauvaises herbes, Rizal's Noli me tangere, Flor Romero de Nohra's Crepitant tropique, and Eca de Quieros' Os Maia. Lehtonen barely kept me awake, despite it being a pastoral. It did give me a good idea of what it was like to live in the country in Finland about 1910, just like Nohra's book gave me a good idea of Colombian village life. Quieros' novel is indeed to be classed with The Forsyte Saga and Buddenbrook -- although I almost laughed when the principal lovers turned out to be brother and sister. Well, at least I didn't see it coming, as I have so many other times in other plot twists. Reading a book by a revolutionary shot by the authorities is always a ghostly experience, I find, but I also noticed that he named a character Sister Slutty, so he didn't exactly go out of his way to endear himself to the 1840s Philippine establishment either. I have just begun Herberto Sales' Les visages du temps, about colonial Brazil, and the style is already light and endearing. After this, I'll only have 2 UNESCO listers to read before I run out -- but the library will be open tomorrow.

UNESCO Part XIII

When I read a book like Arthur Schendel's L'homme de l'eau, I say to myself that it is for such books that I read the UNESCO list. It is the story of a Dutchman of the last century, who finds his personal sense of religion amidst the Calvinist fundamentalists in his family, falls in love with a Catholic girl and raises a son with him, repeatedly gives away his inheritances to live according to the values he professes, and dies drowning after rescuing his dog. There are unforgettable scenes here, of people evacuating after the dikes are breached ("What have we done to offend God!" cry the old women), of poverty and steadfastness. Schendel truly has immortalized the stoicism and strength of his countrymen. I found it moving and I also felt I understood even the modern day Dutch better for it.

I also read Prus' La poupee, a serial that reads like a 19th century Polish soap opera. Contrary to the expectations I held through just about 1000 pages, the guy dies and the girl enters a convent. It certainly defined my expectations. There was also anti-semitism aplenty, something I would have thought the Polish government of the era (this was translated in 1961) would have been at greater pains to conceal.

Finally, I also read to day Osman Lins' Le fleau et la pierre, a novel about rural Brazil. I thought the opening terrific, and it is filled with psychological truth, but I can't say I was gripped.

UNESCO Part XII

I read De Gaulle's Fil de l'epee, an interwar essay on the military. As my partner Tony ably put it: "How many ways can you say: "I'm important!"?" What stands out for me is the line, roughly translated, which reads: "Men can no more go without leadership than they can go without food or water." And who is going to provide that leadership, may we ask, Charles?

I also read L'exclu by Constantin Toiu. Translated from the Romanian and published as a monster hit in the totalitarian period, I don't understand why it wasn't banned. Granted the protagonist slowly grows to become a dissident in his own thoughts, and the scene with an interrogator is a masterpiece of political jousting. It's towering, but otherwise it's fairly pedestrian. I wonder if it isn't context, if the book wasn't different with its slow hints compared the drivel allowed by officialdom at the time.

I also read Le cousin Basilio, a Portuguese novel, by Eça de Queiros, which didn't make much of an impression on me.

Rum Island by Simon Vestdjik was a standard historical romance, except that it was written in Dutch about the Dutch West Indies. There was no actual bodice-ripping, thank goodness, but otherwise it was a cut above some drivel I used to read for relaxation. Now I find it too dumb, just like I kept reading this book to the end expecting for it to deviate from the expected.

UNESCO Part XI

I finished read Hahn Malsook's Chant melodieux des ames, and it started to remind me of Mrs. Dalloway, with the lover's suicide and the hearing of the protagonist's thoughts. It is a step down from stream of consciousness from Woolfe, just as Woolfe is a step down (thank goodness) from Joyce. I also read Vent du Nord Est, by Othman Kelantan, a novel translated from the Malay. Malay novels are not yet 100 years old, it's amazing, and this was a pastoral, the sad story of a fisherman who struggles to feed his family and dies in a storm. I also read Hiltu et Ragna, Sillapaa's novella of a suicide. Yes, it was up with people at our house last night.

Finally, I read two essays, Delighted States by Adam Thrilwell -- this is a post-modern essay with drawings and pictures and chapters called books, and interjections by the author, about the problems of translating great works of art -- and The Dumbest Generation, by Mark Bauerlein-- predictably slaying the impact of technology on capacity to read.

UNESCO Part XI

I read Haut le coeur and de la Parra's Iphigenie. Haut le coeur is a novel of Japan's militaristic interwar period, with the protagonist a violent right-winger who frequents prostitutes. If the author's goal was disgust, he succeeded. Iphigenie is supposed to be a proto-feminist south American novel, but I found it a conventional novel of a young woman loving a man who marries someone else, and eventually refuses to become his mistress. Hohum. I read an issue of The New Yorker and The Economist. At present I reading Tagore's Gora, which I would call a philosophical novel about caste.

UNESCO Part X

I read Osaragi's Retour au pays, a postwar novel in Japan published as a serial in 1948. It is quite simple in language and plot, and was wildly successful for its implications at a time of lack of freedom of expression. Whatever those implications where, however, went right over my head. I also read another of Machado de Assis' madness novels, called Philosopher or Dog? It was surprisingly conventional, for the subject matter.

UNESCO Part IX, Banfield, Maxwell

So far today I read Revolution aux Philippines by Jose Rizal, Martin Coucou by Jeno Tersansz, Banfield's Phantom Table, Maxwell's Integrating the Mind and Yao Xueyin's La longue nuit. Revolution is a political novel, that is to say a novel written for political reasons, about the turn of the century political troubles in the Philippines. Coucou is a picaresque novel translated from an everyday Hungary. Banfield is that essay on Virginia Woolfe that was jargon laden: and so it was, right to the last page. Maxwell's book is an edited collection on cognition; I only read five essays about analogical cognition, and as with the rest of this field, I was disappointed. Yao's book is an autobiographical novel of a Chinese youth kidnapped by a roving band of criminals and adopted into their fraternity against his will. All's well that ends well, but it is hair-raising to think what the poor guy went through.

UNESCO Part VII

I read an issue of OK and started the latest New Yorker yesterday, but I also read three titles from the UNESCO list. Yaka, by Pepetela, is an unusual story of the white community in Angola for the last hundred years. The narrative device is the statue, Yaka, which observes all the sad occurrences of colonialism and post-colonialism, and sometimes speaks. In Gallegos' Cantaclara, cavalier errant, I could feel the sun on the drenched plains of Venezuela throughout the book, however conventional the plot was. Finally, I read Kemal's Memed le mince, the story of a maquisard, a story filled with ineffable sadness at the circumstances that drive such people to such difficult lives.

More odds and ends

I forgot to mention, I think, that I read Force of Choice and Evolution of Special Forces in Counter-terrorism, both by J.P. Taillon. They were both dissertation-types of book; precise, detailed, prose obviously worked over.

UNESCO Part VI

I read Youssouf le taciturne, whose author was assassinated as a political subversive in Turkey. The value of this novel seems to have been in the quality of the language, which in translation has not been preserved. The novel is otherwise conventional. I also read L'Espadon, about Cyprus: this was a plotless novel noticeable for the integration of Turkish and Greek characters.

As I wanted a break from this type of reading, I read The New Scientist's latest issue, two issues of Eclectic Reading, and Trente-six strategemes by Phelizon. I was not familiar with this Chinese work of strategy, which was only discovered in the forties. I found the introduction interesting for the questions it raised in my mind: are all strategies outside the military stratagems? How does the classification of frontale, oblique and laterale dovetail with Andre Beaufre's action and persuasion, direct and indirect classification? Does the author believe that strategy outside the military or economic sphere exists?

I also read Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, the first time I read Gaskell. I liked it mostly because I enjoyed the miniseries I got as a gift. I also started to read the Phantom Table about epistemology and Virginia Woolfe, but the book was so laden with jargon I put it down after only sixty-odd pages. I had better luck with Distracted, which I read cover to cover, but I found the diatribe got in the way of the argument, regarding the assault on powers of concentration by technology.

UNESCO Part V

The effect of reading so much in so many languages of origin is like a kaleidoscope. There are many really interesting experiments in structure, and generally they work better than the ones I've read in English. So I read the first novel in Creole, Atipa, by Alfred Parepou. I don't have a strong opinion about it, I didn't find it gripping, but I'm glad I read such a landmark book. My edition came with the original Creole, which was interesting. I also read Pham Quat Xa's Le reve du papillon, which is a fantastical romance dram, I assume from Vietnamese mythology. It was written originally in French. I also read Muniz-Huberman's Dulcinee, which I didn't like. I spent the whole book trying to figure out what the author was thinking when she was writing this book, which has an autobiographical basis but is fantastical. Prevelakis' Chronique d'une cite was more interesting, a novel where the protagonist is a city. Moricz's Sois bon jusqu'a la mort gave me a real feelinh of what it is like to be at a boy's boarding school in turn of the century Hungary. I liked it for its emotional truth, but then that is usually what I like all novels for. Matsumoto's Tokyo Express was a great detective novel, and I relieved happily the punctuality of the entire Japanese train system, around which the plot turned. Obianim's Amegbetoa is another one of those books that is usually important to the Ewe speakers of this world, but is conventional in every respect for a Western reader. Nosaka's Tombe des lucioles is not an up-with-people kind of book. It tells the story of a street child in occupied Japan, dying of dysentery in a train station while remembering the mother who died in the bombings and the sister who died of malnutrition during the war. It comes complete with comments from passers-by ("Really, someone shouldn't let that corpse sit there, when the Americans might come by any time") and a description of the urchin weakly trying to cover the yellow stain of his diarrhea by covering it up with the dirt of the station. His body is cremated and dumped in a common grave, along with 30 or 40 other unknown children. The author survived the war, obviously, but his mother and sister died as described in this short little novel. Boy. It was hard to take. Nguyen Du's Kim Van Kieu is a familiar story of a young woman forced to redeem her family by her prostitution, and her pure love for a pure youth. Another novel of great psychological truth is Musique d'un puits bleu, a novel about the end of childhood in World War I Norway. It's all here, the birthday party to which one isn't invited, the scraped knee the cost of a hidden disobedience, the discovery of parents' flaws. The Brazilian novel Angoisse reminded me of nothing so much as Hamsen's Hunger, enough to make me wonder whether one author had read the other. Finally, I read an interesting Swedish novel, Le voleur de bible. What was interesting here, apart from the fact that the ending is a stomach-churning description of a death in a house fire of one of the main characters, with descriptions not unlike those of the Madrid air catastrophe this week, is that religion and the Bible figure in the narrative in the same famously neutral way the Swedes use nudity and sex in their cinema. It was striking in its difference, its lack of either judgment or glamorization of religion.

And yes, if you're counting, it's twelve books I've read today, but I did a lot of other things too.