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.