Banville, Le Clezio, Fennario, Adiga, Pamuk, Doctorow, Enright

Since my last post, I've read John Banville's The Sea. The praise on the cover is extravagant, but despite my understanding of death and grief I was untouched and unmoved. I liked better Anne Enright's Gathering, a novel about an Irish woman coming to terms with her life and her family, troubled as it is. I read Black Book by Orhan Pamuk, which I didn't like, and Snow, which I liked better. Le Clezio's Étoile errante showed his affinity for the marginalized. His much earlier Voyages de l'autre coté had some interesting experiments in structure and form, which actually worked, but I like his later, more conventional work much better. I read David Fennarios' play Balconville to see how he handled a bilingual play -- it is primarily in English, with some few scenes in French, brave though that experiment was in 1976. I read Aravind Adiga's White Tiger, about a poor man in New Delhi, with some interest. It was not lyrical, but I like struggle and success stories, even when the hero is none too moral. Finally, I enjoyed Doctorow's latest novel, March, about the Civil War, as I have all his other novels. A quick easy read well worth the trouble, picturesque in its detail although the plot is looser than I remember his other novels to have.

Jelinek, Le Clezio, Pierre

I read four novels from Elfriede Jelinek since my last post: Women as Lovers, Piano Teacher, Lust and Greed. If found them for the most part hard to read, except for piano teacher. I found that Jelinek certainly describes sex explicitly for serious literature, although it was not offensive. In Women as Lovers and Greed, I found the experiments in structure made it harder to read, although these experiments at least served the content., unlike Pierre's Vernon God Little and Dia'z Wondrous Brief Life of Oscar Wao, which did not. Le Clezio wrote an extraordinary book on hunger as the sensation which defined World War II, both in camps and in occupied countries. La ritournelle de la faim was certainly effective and limpid in its style. I had, of course, Hamsun's Hunger on my mind the whole time, but the overall feel of the book was totally different. I didn't like DBC Pierre's novel. I thought it was contrived, and I can certainly tell there is a fashion for what people think are new voices, but actually are superficial misuses of stream of consciousness and vernacular speech.

Le Clezio, Fenby, Lyon, Leroy

I read a number of books since my last post. I read Le Clezio's Le chercheur d'or. Clezio is a revelation, succint, direct style with the riveting telling detail. I also read Orhan Pahuk Nouvelle vie, with some extraordinary opening pages on reading that I could have repeated for myself, word for word. I also read Lyon's The House of Wisdom, an essay on the scientific contributions of Islam to knowledge. I read Fenby's History of Modern China, with the first pictures I recall of the Western Empress, but also a lot of detail about Communist China, including the tidbit that Mao had to give permission for surgery for the Chinese elite around him. That certainly explains why Zhou looked so bad. I also learned a good deal about the Cultural Revolution and some of its prominent victims. I also read a novel based on Zelda Fitzgerald's life, Alabama Song by Gilles Leroy. I liked it, but I knew the story quite well already. It's sad to see again the details of a wasted life and talent.