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.