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.