Yourcenar, Vidal

I read Myra Breckinridge first thing this morning, and I must say I was a little shocked at the content. In the introduction to the edition I was reading, Vidal mentioned a Russian publisher telling him Myra would never be published there, and I believe him. The sexual content is shocking...I've finished reading Yourcenar's memoirs and her essays, so I've completed the lot. I liked her memoirs, there's something unvarnished about them, and it's interesting to read about the French bourgeoisie. I also read an issue of Electic Reading, an issue of The New Yorker, and an issue of The New Scientist. Now I've figured out why I didn't read Dostoievsky's Adolescent -- it's unfinished, and I don't read unfinished works as a rule. I'm now diving into the journals of Jules Renard.

Yourcenar, Vonnegut, Paley, Bowles, Green, Pisan

Since my last post, I've read an issue of The Economist, an issue of Eclectic Reading, and an issue of OK Magazine.

I read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and I really liked it, particularly at the start. I don't find that the tone was sustained, but daring enough in its way. I saw it as black picaresque, not science fiction. I also read three or four of Grace Paley's short stories in Little Disturbances of Man, but they didn't capture my interest. I read in one go Paul Bowles' Sheltering Sky, and while I found some passages wonderfully written, I found the story not entirely outside predictability or stereotype. It's an interesting travelogue plus kind of story. I plowed through Christine de Pisan's inventory of women in hagiography, myth and history with some interest, as I had never read anything of hers. I also sprinted through some short stories, novels and novellas by Marguerite Yourcenar, having read her memoirs, and the novel Memoires d'Hadrien previously. I didn't find they held my attention.

Ah, but I am continuing to read at a leisurely pace Julien Green's journals, and those I find are teaching me all over again the French language. It is a pleasure to read someone writing in a language other than his first, English, and someone who was entirely bilingual.