A poem by Borges

Here's a poem I read recently. One of Jorge Luis Borges' poem, translated by W.S. Merwin.

I don't get around to reading many poems. And when I do read them, at times I don't get them. They require patience and keenness to enter the poet's frame of mind.

However, this one speaks to me. I now have it on my phone and I go back to it often. Sharing it here.

The South

To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars,
from the bench of shadow to have watched
those scattered lights
that my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations,
to have heard the note of water
in the cistern,
known the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle,
the silence of the sleeping bird,
the arch of the entrance, the damp
- these things perhaps are the poem.

The collection is called 'Selected Poems' by Borges edited by Alexander Coleman. There are a few more which I'll like to add here. Soon.

Nabokov's 'Speak, Memory'

It took me a few weeks to cover the distance from front to the back cover of this book. It demanded attention, and lengths of uninterrupted time. The initial part was swift, and I read and kept a lot of notes which pretty much form this post. The last few chapters were slow for me. There came a few days of not attending to this book and rather read a lot of other stuff - essays, a lot of utilitarian research, not literature really. The flow had been interrupted, and the magic was undone. But I do have the memory of the magic. Hope the post still shows how enamored I am, and hope to read it again some time! And hope to read more from Nabokov soon.

**

Speak, Memory is Nabokov's memoir, a selective autobiography of the first 40 or so years of his life. A lot of the writing here has been published elsewhere as essays, stand-alone narratives. But he revisited them in compiling this collection. Put them in the broadly natural flow of his life.

He writes about time. He writes about themes. He writes about his earliest memories, and makes us see them, vivid. There's beauty dripping from every page. Words and words! One can keep collecting Nabokov’s words the way he collected butterflies. Beautiful words and phrases making what he says his own. The thought that it leads me to is that there is little new to be said under the sun, but the way he says it, Oh! Such beauty. Makes you wonder why bother to read anything else. He writes like a poet. There is so much heartbreaking beauty in his prose. His words, his phrases and what he sets up for you. What he shows you. How he sees things and what he chooses to interlace and this beautifully, detailed, intricate, yet, such fine account.

The book accounts for the years 1903 - 1940. Nabokov was born in 1899 and broadly kept in step with the century’s years. From his earliest memories in Russia - 

“The old and the new, the liberal touch and the patriarchal one, fatal poverty and fatalistic wealth got fantastically interwoven in that strange first decade of our century.”

Little that I can add, just quote. And a lot so quotes I have. 

He talks about time, and his philosophy is perhaps what lends weight to his beautiful prose. 

"I have journeyed back in thought — with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went — to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits."

"Initially, I was unaware that time, so boundless at first blush, was a prison."

"How small the cosmos (a kangaroo’s pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!"

"I felt myself purged abruptly into a radiant and mobile medium that was none other than the pure element of time. One shared it - just as excited bathers share shining seawater - with creatures that were not oneself but that were joined to one by time’s common flow, an environment quite different from the spatial world, which not only man but apes and butterflies can perceive."

"One night during a trip abroad...I recall kneeling on my pillow at the window of a sleeping car and seeing with an inexplicable pang, a handful of fabulous lights that beckoned to me from a distant hillside, and then slipped into a pocket of black velvet: diamonds that I later gave away to my characters to alleviate the burden of my wealth.”

“The following of such thematic designs through one’s life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography.”

It has something perhaps to do with the way English is his language but not the first tongue. English, learnt in different surroundings. It is a medium which opens up a wealth and treasure of thought and books, but it is an acquired medium. The original medium was something else. Does it affect the way we relate to words and language?

The way Nabokov writes, he defines, he collects, he classifies. He talks about mushrooms, about his family tree, and despite some of these being tedious, in his hands they flow like poetry. I don’t know is this a bias because reading him seems like a win - a delight of words, of phrases, of sentences, of ways of seeing, and of philosophy. You get everything in one book. And because there is so much to be gleaned, I re-read the chapters I’ve just finished reading to revel again in those beautiful sentences. True pleasure and joy.

His initial years in Russia were very comfortable. Perhaps very few people live like that. The extremely rich perhaps. And I was intrigued at the places where he talks about the family tree going back to 1300s and the way his mother managed to live without getting into kitchen or household admin! Very few women have managed that in their lifetimes.

**

What you take away from books is the number of things or imagery that is vividly created for you. Some books leave you with a few, but the really successful ones with you leave you with a lot of those. The way Katherine Mansfield sees things. Some of the early bits of Mrs Dalloway. And so much from Nabokov.

May be it is a product of the attention you can bestow on the book. The openness with which you let it affect you. It is your openness, your eagerness to receive and seek, and the author’s dealing with the subject, in this case his memories make them stand true for you.

“It is certainly not then - not in dreams - but when one is wise awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement , on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow that blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.”

The eye of the artist. The memories of a writer. As he says, he has lent so many of his memories to his characters. The eye that traces the past from a dim fog and makes it come alive for us. The way the perspective is drawn is that of a visual artist. So much more than just a writer.

Even shadows moving through the garden path bring alive a summer afternoon - “Eyed shadows moved through the garden paths. On the white window ledges, on the long window seats covered with faded calico, the sun breaks into geometrical gems after passing through rhomboids and squares of stained glass”

About the nonutlitarian delights of art:

“When a butterfly has to look like a leaf, not only are all the details of a leaf beautifully rendered but marking mimicking grub-bored holes are generously thrown in. ‘Natural Selection’ , in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behaviour, nor could one appeal to the theory of ‘the struggle for life’ when a protective device was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance and luxury far in excess of a predator’s power of appreciation. I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.”

**

However, as he moves out of Russia, the book loses a bit of vibrancy. And although I enjoyed it, I felt that joy was a little bit lacking from that writing. May be it was a byproduct of the attention I had on reading. I do not have much to quote from final sections of the book.

Sometime, perhaps when I read it again.

The final section of the book is a pseudo-review by Nabokov of his own book. I am glad that most of this post was drafted as I was still reading through the initial bits. Because once you read the final section, it is a recap, and a light thrown on his thinking process, on the mechanics and it is a nice wrap and little is to be said after that.

But let me close this post with another quote of his. Here, he reminds us again of the elasticity of time:

“ I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern - to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.”

Recent reads - short stories

I recently read a couple of short story collections.

One was Ali Smith's "The First Person and other stories". And the other was Evelyn Waugh's "Work Suspended and other stories". This is a late update. I read them a few weeks ago.

I enjoy short stories. They are also good for times when it is difficult to carve out sustained reading time.  I feel that with essays too. More recently, it has been Nabokov's Speak Memory and Teju Cole's collection of non-fiction writing. They send me on different paths too. More on them soon - that is, once I finish reading them. The point is difficult to read a complete narrative or a novel at the moment. So reading whatever takes me away for a little while but brings me back soon.

Ali Smith's this collection was different from the Public Library one. I had loved that one. This one, the First Person and Other Stories, was a little bit difficult to completely warm up to. The language and the smooth, flowing narrative is the same as any other writing by Ali Smith. It is the characters, their sadness at times, and at times the strangeness of the set-up. There were some interesting bits - I would say, more of a mixed bag, this collection. There's this thing about her writing, she quotes from so many places, and she uses such beautiful words, that I'm often tempted to stop and look them up deeper, but there is a compulsion in her sentences, which pulls you along. It is like a slide. Once you are on it, even though you do wish to go slow and look around and enjoy the scenery, you cannot do much; you just slide.

I felt that most of the stories here were exploratory. They explored a setting - the narrator and narrator's younger self. The narrator and a lost cause/ lost child. The narrator and a random parcel at her doorstep. It starts with something and as if, the author wishes to see where it will take her. And it takes her to strange lands. I feel I need to reread some to understand what is really going on, to understand the intent or even where the focus of the story lies.

I liked "True short story", a story about short story. More than a short story, an exploration of what a short story is and leaves you with collectible quotes from several writers. Consider this:

"Tzvetan Todorov says that the thing about a short story is that it's so short it doesn't allow us the time to forget that it's only literature and not actually life.

Nadine Gordimer says short stories are absolutely about the present moment, like the brief flash of a number of fireflies here and there in the dark.

...

William Carlos Williams says that the short story, which acts like the flare of a match struck in the dark, is the only real form for describing the briefness, the brokenness and the simultaneous wholeness of people's life."

The other collection I read was Evelyn Waugh's "Work Suspended and Other Stories". I haven't read anything from Evelyn Waugh in the past and this seemed like a good way to get introduced to the author. This one is a collection of short stories and a couple of novella length works. Most of the short stories in the collection are satirical. Interesting picture of the times - 1920s, 1930s, between the wars. Depicting a wide and disparate set of people and their lives, immediate problems and their preoccupations. One of the novella-length story, Scott King's Modern Europe, is another satire. This time focusing on a school teacher from England on a trip to a fictional totalitarian country, and through his journey, we explore the difficult, senseless, nightmarish random country (reminded me of early pages of The Unconsoled or a bad dream).

The one story that stood out in all this, was Work Suspended. This one was different from all the rest. More like a novel. Traces the life of a writer of detective fiction, and his fascination for a friend's wife - not much in this seemed satirical. His work gets suspended because he puts his book away to make way for the war.

Interesting collection. Keen to read more at some point.

Take this waltz

This one is not a book related post.

I am going through a song phase. Every once in a while I go through a song phase, or a poem phase that lasts until I wear out the song a bit, but before I do so, I wish to capture the latest one here. A few days ago it was 'a long and winding road'.

The current one is 'Take this waltz' by Leonard Cohen and I discovered it very recently, and it has grown on me. Helps that it is a poem too (by Spanish poet Lorca), which took Cohen somewhere around 150 hrs to translate to get it just right in English. I am not sure whether I get the poem completely - I get the mood, the tone, and I love the pace and the way it is set to song. And like all haunting poems, this one too lives on love and loss.

Probably it is the Rebecca West that I'm reading (her journey through Czechoslovakia, and its constant reference to Vienna). I am enjoying this on loop. And since it's that part of the phase where I need to tell everyone I meet to listen to this song, I am sharing it here (since this song is a poem too). Until I decide better, here goes:

Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

Oh, I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lilly
In some hallway where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea

There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz, it's been dying for years

There's an attic where children are playing
Where I've got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lillies of snow

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its "I'll never forget you, you know"

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea

And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist

Oh my love, oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now, it's all that there is

A few recent reads

Last few months have been different than normal in quite a few ways. No matter the specifics, but they left me with little time or desire or both to read or if read, then, to write. I could read a little bit this week, so here again, trying to fill in the gaps.

Some notes on a few of my recent reads:

Janet Malcolm's Nobody's Looking at You

Her Forty One False Starts sits on the shelf - been sitting there for a while. I have read it haphazardly. Quickly read a  few essays and then couldn't read the rest. And hence, still counted as an unfinished book on my list. So when I came across this one, I didn't give in to the temptation of reading by pull. I read it through from beginning to end, over this week. And glad that I did.

This is her most recent essay collection I believe - writings from different publications. Divided in three main groups. First one is profiles of a few people beginning with Eileen Fisher, about Yuja Wang, Rachel Maddow and about a second-hand/ old books store in New York. I loved each one of those profiles. Quite contemporary compared to some of my other readings. One can just google and read up more around and about the subjects from wherever JM leaves off.

The next section is around American politics and processes. Little context for me but I liked her writing, and I was keen to read cover to cover so I pushed through that section.  A lot of references in the 'The Art of Testifying' piece were lost on me. But immediately next was the piece on Sarah Palin and family, and one doesn't need much context for reading through it ('Special Needs'). It was a strange, intriguing piece. More than the writing, I think for me what held me was the dissonance of what one knows, being a non-American, and what JM shows. The writing was engaging, gossipy, humorous and still somehow, fair, sympathetic.

The final section was around literature, and mostly reviews of books on a range of topics, from feminism, sexual harassment to Tolstoy, Bloomsbury set, Plath and Hughes, and some more. There was an interesting essay on translations of Russian fiction - edifying, akin to enrolling in a class, and I mean it in the best way. The books she reviews are not my standard reading fare and glad to read reviews and views and thoughts - again akin to learning from a teacher. These are more than reviews, they give a flavour, a context, and a lot of comparison and information, like any good essay. I am glad that I read them otherwise they don't really show up on paths I take.

Most of the essays in this collection are available in online archives of these mags. Enjoyed it. Next steps - quite keen to look deeper at Eileen Fisher (the company) and the related question of eventual company ownership.


Joseph Conrad's Victory - An Island Tale

I liked this one. Very different from the last one I read from him (The Secret Agent). In parts reminiscent of Heart of  Darkness. But just a little bit - mainly in the colonial way,  to the extent that it is set in that slice of colonial time and space which regards non-White world as racially inferior.

And still, it is not about people in any general sense. It is about a specific person and about circumstances. And about passivity and activity. And about the way life works sometime. If one can look past the annoying colonial set up, and the presumed superiority of that set-up, and one looks at the protagonist, Heyst just as a person living on an island, giving it all up, cutting off all ties (almost), and still, due to some random chain of circumstances, getting caught in the web of life again, and losing. It is about how one sees through the world, understand it is all a farce, and yet one gets drawn into it, makes ties, and then those ties define the chimera of life. One tries to reason, explain, apply logic and structure and sequence and narrative, but things happen all of the sudden, and the tables get turned and if the passive wouldn't act, then activity comes to them.


Such Fine Boys by Patrick Modiano (translation) ****

I don't seem to have any notes for this one except for the four stars I've added on my recent reads page. This fairly recent translation came with a foreword by Clezio. The book is a sort of sketchbook, a collection of portraits. A few boys who attended a boarding school together. The narrator and a few other boys, the abandoned, unwanted (but not without substantial means) children at this school near Paris. Now adults, at different points in their lives. Each chapter picks up one of the boys or characters from the school the narrator comes across at some point, and through that portrayal, the narrator tells us a little bit more about the history, the old times at the boarding school, their lives on the weekends and the current times, and somewhere in the chapter, the narration shifts and the person being narrated about becomes the narrator. Their lives in and around Paris. It is the bizarre-ness of these lives that was the most arresting bit. I still recall certain scenes from the book and at times get tempted to believe that I watched a movie or saw a show. But it was all the author in translation working on my imagination - images and scenes as vivid as a TV show.

On recently reading Hilton Als' Paris Review Interview, I came across this interesting way he refers to theater. He quotes Dianne Wiest:

She wrote to me, “A great play turns you [the audience] into each character . . . It pulls at you to question your thoughts and feelings through the prism of characters. A great play requires hard work from an audience. It is not about something, it is the something. The conflict belongs all to you and you live it and carry it with you.”

Something that Patrick Modiano's book ends up doing to you.

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Another beautiful read.

What I recall and what stayed - This little kid at the end of chapter 1, going to his grandparents after his parents are no more, alone in this world (the vulnerability of little, lonely kids!!), after a long travel, last miles of his journey, in the middle of nowhere, night, between heaven and Earth - away from everything that he knows- and that night, the author says that the child does not pray, but believes what would be would be. I am unable to recreate the effect that it made on me. But the juxtaposition of this little, vulnerable fellow and this big, freeing thought - what will be, will be somehow warmed up my heart.

The book is about this kid growing up at his grandparents' - initially at their farm in the open country, the West, and then in a small town nearby, and this girl, Antonia, and her family, who arrive to the neighborhood on the same day as the narrator, European immigrants, and they set about to rebuild their lives in this new country. A portrait of life in the farming America at the turn of last century.
Choices available to boys is different from those available to girls. It is an interesting portrait of those times, those lives and the place.

My first from Willa Cather. Over time if I come across more, I'll hopefully read more.


Public Library and other stories by Ali Smith

Quite enjoyed this one. Interesting, beautiful stories.Strange emotions. Poetry. Sentences run along carrying you with them. So fast, gliding. Different stories highlight different people. From Katherine Mansfield, to DHL. And then throughout the book, what people think of libraries, public libraries and how they are important. A book about books. If you love reading, you love such books. So many references. There are words she plays with, collects, loves. Then there are all these people she reads and admires. And then there are so many interesting, curious facts. And then her own memories and dreams. And they are all beautifully, breathtakingly meshed together in these stories. So although the narrative strangeness and abruptness can jar you, the flow is too smooth to stop mid-way. If anything, you turn back, and reopen the pages to slide down again and see the vista at may be a different angle than seen first.

Another author I want to read more from.

A portrait, and an addition to wish-list

I was recently drawn into a write-up by a portrait. It is a profile of Russian writer Maxim Osipov. Consider this:

(Photograph of Maxim Osipov by Elena Anosova for the New Yorker)

This beautiful portrait drew me in. The light seems like afternoon reflected off snow. The wood, the smoke hanging in the air - such a beautiful capture. Everything opposite to where I am. I have never lived in a place where it snows. Visitor, yes, but never struggled with the slush, the wet, the snow the cold. And the wooden walls and the desk and the cabin. Where I sit, everything is white around me - the desk, the walls, the white-framed window shutters blinding off the green tree and blue sky and white clouds outside. Nothing  brown and warm. Hence the very idea is beautiful in its other-ness. At times the opposites are interesting because they represent all that you are not. In that, complementing you.

Maybe I am wrong with all the assumptions above. May be. The portrait released that chain of thought. I kept staring at it for a bit and then since it mentions Chekhov in the first breath, I had to read more. The promise of such write-ups is delightful.

This article by Joshua Yaffa introduces Maxim Osipov to the English speaking world. It mentions that he is a doctor, a practising cardiologist in the Russian town of Tarusa, 101 kms away from Moscow. Living in the quiet provinces. Writing, publishing, essays and this collection : "Rock, Paper, Scissors". Added to my wishlist.

The mood of the portrait, and generally the idea of Russia, the earthy, snowy feel to the books - be it the Hunter's sketchbook (another one halfway read, on my wishlist), or other Russian short stories, they are like comfort food. The idea of a cold evening, hot chocolate, snug blanket, cosy thick socks and the book. The idea.

It helps that it is the beginning of  winter in our hemisphere, and although I live nowhere close to snow, the light slants more these days, and the roads are full of fall leaves, and the breeze can at times pierce through you, making the idea of a book of Russian short stories in a cosy setting all the more attractive.

Here is a sample of his writing from one of his essays - the complete quote is from the New Yorker (article linked above) -

" A year and a half after his first essay appeared in Znamya, he published an elegiac follow-up called “Complaining Is a Sin,” in which he describes receiving an early-morning summons from the hospital. “Cold, fog,” he writes. “Ten minutes later, you run into the office, shove the plug into the socket, everything is noisy, you put on a robe, look at the canvas-colored twilight outside the window, and say to yourself, ‘One, it won’t get any better, and, two, this is happiness.’ ”  "

Lucia Berlin

Not a lot going on in terms of reading at the moment, but this overdue update on Lucia Berlin. I recently read her collection of short stories : "A Manual for Cleaning Women" and her memoir/ letters "Welcome Home".  My notes from a few weeks ago:

The Manual for Cleaning Women is different from Evening in Paradise - another of her story collection I read recently. Unlike as in Evening in Paradise, the stories in this collection are not chronologically arranged. One wouldn’t think that they all relate to one person. One would think it an interesting collection of characters, places and viewpoints. If I had picked up the book without any context, would have read it differently. But now that I know the context, and I know it is all Lucia, and her difficult, difficult life which she opens up for us without a single note of complaint. (And that is the really impressive bit. The reason the writing appeals so much is one can perhaps wonder at the life, but the one who lived it, did not use her whimper or whine or complaint. It is all so full of life, and the spirit  to deal with the anything and everything.)

Welcome Home is a memoir, incomplete, peppered throughout with pictures of her, her family and all the different places she lived in. She did not complete it. It leaves off when her kids were still very young and Buddy Berlin was still around. You see glimpses of her stories in that writing. Or perhaps it is truer the other way round. You see glimpses of those houses in the stories.

You don't know her, but after reading these stories you know enough of the themes that have stayed with her through her life. The things that work their way in fiction again and again.

Similar to what Doris Lessing does. Or what Gabriel Garcia does in Living to Tell the Tale. When authors draw so heavily from their lives, you read their memoirs or their books and you jeep getting echoes or déjà vu.

Then there is another list, of all the problems with different houses. Reads like poetry. Sheer number of houses she lived in. Makes you wonder about yourself. And makes you want to do that exercise for yourself.

All this doesn’t take much space. Then there are the letters. It took me a while to bring myself to read the letters. On one hand, there are her stories,  written in very alive, sparse, clipped prose. The stories are matter of fact, no complaints ever comes through. And then there are these letters. One wonders that they are published because people wish to know more about her. And you understand more of her struggle, her life. May be the mystery would have been better. May be, we need heroes who don't complain.

Apart from the emotion on no complaints, the other emotion was wonder and a creeping desire to judge (the desire to judge manifested after the letters. The stories had left me with awe and wonder). It is such an off-centre life. And lives are products of choices. At times things happen where people don't have control. But at times things happen because people have a choice and they make certain choices. And then when you see other's choices, you start wondering - and unless you stop yourself, one can get to judging too. But one needs to stop. There is no right and wrong. Just choices. And one can almost identify with her at times even if most of the times she stays enigmatic, alien.

By the time you read the three books, you know her well, or so you think. And you get it. And you feel sad. It is a slippery slope.

As in one letter she says to Ed:

"Once when I was very little in the Grand Canyon there was a waitress with a huge tray of coffee in cups walking across the restaurant. One of the cups fell and smashed on the floor and she sort of looked up at heaven and said oh hell and tossed the whole tray onto the floor and split. That is what I do all the time."

My Brilliant Friend

It has been over a fortnight now since I read this book by Elena Ferrante. I read it through quickly, but then couldn't get it out of my head.  Still understanding how I feel about the book. Do I like it? Too raw, too close, too much ruffling of guarded emotions, yet, yet, yet, I knew I felt like I needed the next one, immediately.  However, other things came up, and I haven’t got around to getting hold of the second book, and now, the distance of time has dulled my love-hate emotions for the book. Yet, there is this delightful feeling of expectancy, of knowing that there are a couple of books out there which I can dip in when I want to and dial into that engaging roller-coaster of a reading experience.

I am a late arrival to the Neapolitan novels. Everyone seems to have read them. And of course, there is the show. It is the story of two girls, two friends growing up in Italy in 1950s. The first book in the series deals with early life and adolescent years leaving us at a point where one of the friends get married.

It is a different world. A different life. It is one of the points of view that one doesn’t read about much because people living those lives perhaps don’t get the time to write it down, or are not people of letters. Their lives are full, intense. Even David Copperfield’s life seems a far cry from the daily lives of these folks in Naples. The story is from the point of view of someone who has not had a privileged life, or privileged upbringing, or even exposure to privilege (the way DC has), and yet, they grow up and write this account.

It is not just that the material means are little. It is the dichotomy. The struggles of life would perhaps resonate with so many of the girls growing up in developing countries even now, 70 years down the line, who traverse two different worlds in their early lives. The age-old, traditional, paternal world of home, where family, women’s roles, women’s opportunities are still rooted in ancient ages, and then the other world of modern education exposing them to ideas, books, thoughts, and people and exposing them to lifestyle, culture, of what they return to every night. It is interesting, to grow up like that.

In a sense, it reminds me of the autobiographical writings of Simone De Beauvoir and Doris Lessing (the two writings I read last year, the first books of each of their memoirs) where the authors are growing through the same years as Lila and Elena. Girls growing up in different parts of the world, last century, going to school, living at home, relating with their families, siblings and friends, relating with others’ expectations and their own expectations of themselves.

I am touching upon the book’s characters, but the book is not about Lila or about Elena, it is about their friendship, their lives together. And it is enjoyable. But perhaps where my thoughts linger most after reading are always on the lives lived by those characters where my mind imagines itself in their shoes living their lives.

I enjoy reading about the books other people read, about things they are learning, and about the hardwork they are putting in. It warms my heart to see honest effort. It might sound strange, but the best loved passages in the book are where Elena balances her work at school with her home, and with discipline and will decides to work early in the morning and late at night to ensure that she stays on course for next classes. Things like these make me wonder that perhaps people who have less are the most driven and motivated. And perhaps having less is a blessing in disguise.

Then there is the brilliant Lila. After brilliantly pursuing excellence in whatever she does, she goes on to read and master what she reads. One can almost understand and identify with Elena's fascination with Lila. What it perhaps refers to is the unattainable, the slightly out of reach, the out of bounds, but just enough to fascinate, to be desired, knowing that you fall short, like someone in a Zeno's paradox, you'll never reach the desired, just keep getting closer, and left with that feeling of incompleteness to that extent.

Oh the vulnerabilities of being human, of growing up, of caring, of feeling, of knowing too well. Of having what you wish to be always in sight, and yet, knowing that you can not be that. The cruelty of knowing, of seeing more than what can keep you blissful, ignorance is bliss and all that. Of seeing everything in its raw shape, and then sitting, heartbroken.

Another reason why this touches so is growing up where I grew up, I have witnessed some of the heartbreak. Not personally, but so many instances around me. Where I grew up was more privileged than the girls from Naples, but still, middle class, the social construct, of taking care of home (people and times were not rich enough for modern luxuries of gadgets or money-bought luxuries of external help), and the general question of how much do you need to study given that one is a female.  After a point, what's the point? Personally, I and a few of my friends have been fortunate, but we come from changing times. We were some of the more fortunate ones, while people around me and families around me still believed in the way things used to be - the traditional, the way society had existed for ages and ages. Then there's this thing about not knowing. When one does not know, one doesn't struggle. It is only when one sees or thinks that there is another way that discontent arises. And with it, the struggle. When you grow up a particular way, the other way is always going to create battles inside you.

That explains some of my love-hate relationship with such fiction. Also the reason I do not enjoy fiction set in India. It is too close for comfort, guess too confrontational. It is a reminder to so much more, of unfairness. It calls to mind things forgotten and may be, forgotten for the better. Gets unpleasant.

So much for the ranting post. I am quite fascinated by the book. I know I’ll seek out the next one at the earliest opportunity, so more, then.

The Salmon Of Doubt

Talking about Science Fiction, I felt like revisiting this post sitting in my drafts for a while now.  I picked up Douglas Adam's The Salmon of Doubt earlier in the year. I didn't get to finish reading it, and I don't have with me any more so I doubt I'll close this one. But I do have a collection of quotes, which I intend to put up here.

There are certain authors who delight you with the lightness of their touch. There is Douglas Adams, and there is Bill Bryson. For both, their love or joy of their pursuits shines through in their writing, passing on to you in form of good cheer and joie de vivre. 

The Salmon of Doubt is a posthumous collection of writings by Douglas Adams, classified under the heads of Life, Universe and Everything. It has autobiographical sketches, essays, interviews and notes on books, and a partly completed Dirk Gently novel. The book is interspersed with brilliant morsels from his writing. I read most of it except the unfinished Dirk Gently novel. I do not know whether I wish to read it (the novel). Not what the author wanted to share perhaps.

Here, perhaps, it is worth quoting what Douglas Adams says of PG Wodehouse. It will pretty much convey what one can say of him,

"Shakespeare? Milton? Keats? How can I possibly mention the author of Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkins and Pigs Have Wings in the same breath as these men? He's just not serious!

He doesn't need to be serious. He's better than that. He's up in the stratosphere of what the human mind can do, above tragedy and strenuous thought, where you will find Bach, Mozart, Einstein, Feynman and Louis Armstrong, in the reams of pure, creative playfulness."

I think 'creative playfulness' is what defines his work too.

This is him introducing himself:

"I just want to mention one thing, which is completely meaningless, but I am terribly proud of - I was born in Cambridge in 1952 and my initials are DNA!"

His thoughts on perspective and the way we see the world. He is writing in late 90s, when the world was very different. But like some of the uncanny sci-fi writers (read Arthur Clarke), he is spot on stuff  - the way cloud computing, the way internet has changed, about online advertising.

Here's him talking about Online Magazines (note, this is in 1995). After discussing an advertiser paid online magazine method,

"That's one model of how online magazine work, and it is, of course, absolutely free to readers. There's another that will probably arrive as soon as it becomes possible to move virtual cash around the Internet, and that will involve readers being billed tiny amounts of money for the opportunity to read popular Webpages. Much less than you would, for instance regularly spend on your regular newspapers and magazines because you wouldn't be paying for all the trees that have to be pulped, the vans that have to be fueled, and the marketing people whose job it is to tell you how brilliant they are. The reader's money goes straight to the writer, with a proportion to the publisher of the Web site, and all the wood can stay in the forests, the oil can stay in the ground, and all the marketing people can stay out of the Groucho Club and let decent folk get to the bar.

Why doesn't all the money go to the writer, I hear you (and indeed myself) asking. Well, maybe it will if he's happy just to drop his words into the digital ocean in the hope that someone out there will find them. But like any ocean, the digital ones has streams and eddies and currents, and publishers will quickly have a role finding good material to draw into those currents where readers will naturally be streaming through looking for stuff, which is more or less what they do at the moment. The difference will lie in the responsiveness of the market, the speed with which those streams will shift and surge, and the way in which power and control will shift to those who are actually contributing something useful rather than just having lunch.

The thing we leave out of the model is, essentially just a lot of dead wood."

- Wired, 1995

The joy is in  his way of looking at things. The conclusions he draws, what he takes away.

About Comedy, and a way the world has changed:

"The thing that hit be like a thunderbolt... was that comedy was a medium in which extremely intelligent people could express things that simply couldn't be expressed any other way... 

Creative excitement has gone elsewhere - to science and technology: new ways of seeing things, new understandings of the universe, continual new revelations about how life works, how we think, how we perceive, how we communicate.

Where, thirty years ago, we used to start up rock-bands, we now start up start-ups and experiment with new ways of communicating with each other and playing with the information we exchange. And one idea fails, there is another, better one right behind it, and another and another, cascading fast as rock albums used to in the sixties." 

On coding:

"Whatever complexities a computer produces - modeling wind turbulence, modeling economies or the way light dances in the eye of an imaginary dinosaur - it all grows out of simple lines of code that start with adding one and one, testing the result, and then doing it again. Being able to watch complexity blossom out of this primitive simplicity is one of the great marvels of our age, greater even than watching man walk on the moon."

And on how to see the world. The macroscopic, and the microscopic.

"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away, and think this to be normal, is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspectives tend to be. "

"The other thing that comes out of that vision of the universe is that it turns out to be composed almost entirely, and rather worryingly, of nothing.  Wherever you look there is nothing, with occasional tiny, tiny little specks of rock or light.  But nevertheless, by watching the way these tiny little specks behave in the vast nothingness, we begin to divine certain principles, certain laws, like gravity and so forth.  So that was, if you like, the macroscopic view of the universe, which came from the first age of sand. " 

"The next age of sand is the microscopic one.  We put glass lenses into microscopes and started to look down at the microscopic view of the universe.  Then we began to understand that when we get down to the subatomic level, the solid world we live in also consists, again rather worryingly, of almost nothing and that wherever we do find something it turns out not to be actually something, but only the probability that there may be something there." 

From "Is there an Artificial God?" Complete text of this here. 

This, above is one of my favorite bits. About infinities within and infinities without.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

I read this one by Philip K. Dick yesterday. Short book. Over in a few hours. Have found science fiction after a while. Although there are days when I really crave sci-fi, at times just to get a perspective and distance from things and thoughts at hand.

I enjoy sci-fi by Arthur C. Clarke. And for his lightness, brightness and joy - Douglas Adams. Happy to re-read Space Odyssey and Hitchhiker any day. And of what I've read from Isaac Asimov, I've mostly enjoyed. I haven't read Ursula K. Le Guin's fiction, just a bit of non-fiction, keen to read Left Hand of Darkness. I haven't read a lot by Philip K. Dick. I tried Ubik, but couldn't get far in. I'll try reading The Man in High Castle at some point.

'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' is a 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick. Short book. Quick read.  The internet tells me that the book inspired Blade Runner, the 1982 movie. It is set in a future where Earth has become quite inhospitable, has much fewer people after World War Terminus, most having emigrated away from Earth, and there is a lot of dust, abandoned, unoccupied dwellings, and kipple. What is kipple? The un-ordered, the mess, the disintegration of everything organised, the chaos, the entropy. Eventually kipple is meant to push out everything which is non-kipple and take over what remains of Earth. Many animals are extinct, it is a world without birds, and to keep up with the Joneses, people are expected to take care of real animals - the animals you own become the signifier of your wealth/ place in society. And hence, there is a thriving industry of fake, electric animals. In this set up, there are androids (hard to distinguish from humans, and often not aware themselves that they are androids) and the perpetual question of how good AI can get, and then there is the protagonist whose job is to retire/kill rogue Androids.

So far, so good. The story then unfolds over two days, with a thriller like chase sequence.

With sci-fi, the joy is in the construct, the imagination, the new set-up and how thoroughly authors can think and thrash out a new reality. Beyond that, how the story unfolds and how well the author can hold you varies from book to book and author to author. This one, I read it through for the story, but not a fan.

The way I see it, there are perhaps two kinds of science fiction. One is the fast-paced novel, where a lot goes in to set it up, the imaginary world with its own problems, but then the way the protagonists behave reads like thriller. And then there are the more ironic, satiric, or questioning the absurd by putting the sci-fi construct on them - where authors choose to comment on and examine the modern realities and social questions through this new lens or framework offered by imaginary fiction. Such examination reveals new angles and throws light on aspects not commonly perceived - take 1984, or Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Handmaid's Tale or some of Doris Lessing's fiction, or for that matter, The Glass Bead Game. Both kind of sci-fi take the same path initially - the detailed set up, the displacement of the reader from the current existing realities before the road forks, and one path goes down the thriller route, and the other, literature.

The book at hand I feel goes down the thriller path. Though I must say that it held me better than the other cold book I am reading (The Unconsoled) where the real is perhaps more alien than a world with humans who wonder whether they are androids.

Charles Dickens

I am new to Charles Dickens as a reader. But one can't grow up in this age and time without the idea of Dickens. As a child, I would have read a lot of his stories in abridged version, and doubtless watched countless movies and shows which might have been inspired from Dicken’s plotlines or characters which are drawn perhaps directly from his books. But by themselves, except for reading 'Great Expectations' a couple of years ago, I hadn’t a chance to read Dickens. So I picked up ‘Bleak House’ after trying to understand from online forums which one is the best, and then immediately followed it with ‘David Copperfield’. Quite long reads. DC goes on for some 800 tightly packed pages. I read 'Bleak House' on phone/ipad, and 'David Copperfield' on the deadtree version I have which comes with an introductory essay and Dickens own plan for chapters.

I have little to say about these books. I enjoyed going through the drama. They contain the joys of the story and narrative. Reading them non-stop had a binge quality to them. Little to think after reading. Because things pretty much resolve themselves neatly through the books. Plotlines coincide conveniently. And Dickens closes each and every open end for you. So very little to reflect or wonder about as you close the book. In that sense, easy reads.

(I must add here that 'David Copperfield' was a spur of the moment choice while I was struggling through Ishiguro’s ‘The Unconsoled’. My mind clutched quickly to Dicken’s narrative clarity. Will go back to 'The Unconsoled' soon. Having recently looked up the internet around the book, I find I am not the only one to digress.)

Back to Dickens. 'Bleak House' is about a disputed will, and its ramifications on different people where the eventual costs eat up the estate, and about Esther – a child born out of wedlock and the course her life takes. 'David Copperfield' is an autobiographical narrative of DC’s life, from a fatherless birth, to a fairy-tale-esque bad stepfather, eventually an orphan who grows up to become a writer, and the key characters shaping him – episodes inspired from Dickens’ life.

Apart from the joy of the story, one of the other things that engaged me was the portrayal of London and Britain of Dickens' time. Being able to contemplate other times, other cultures is one of the key pleasures of reading. I have grown up in a culture which is different from Britain's, hence not fully equipped in the cultural sub-text or shorthand for the way life that happens in Dickens' London (mid-late nineteenth century), and its social mores and protocols.   The books serve as a commentary on the society of that times. Too far removed from our time and age to have a social context right now. (Such as some of the issues around women- although there is a long way to go yet, one would think that a fair bit has been covered from Dickens’ times).

The other thing with his books is the character cast. The plot and drama aside, one comes away with a memory of all these sharply defined portrayals. Both books have a huge array of characters, all with some defining characteristics. Memorable for the extremes in their behaviour. Be it Mrs Jellyby and Mr Skimpole in 'Bleak House' or Mr. Micawbre and Uriah Heep in 'David Copperfield'. May be they are memorable for the caricature-ish quality to them – sharpened and sharpened on one extreme or dimension of their personality. The interesting thing is that most characters in his books stay very true to their definition. Unlike life. One can perhaps pick them out from their dialogue even if you don’t know who was talking. Each one has these few identifiable traits. The complexity, if any,  is not in the characters per se, it is in the number of them, and the scope and the length of the books.

It was interesting to read them one after the other.  Bleak House is a mix of narrative styles – first person in Esther’s narrative and a general author narration. Rounds up everything nicely. But DC is  first person. And is quite a reflection on how first person narratives work. The world view is the narrator’s. People are good or bad basis how they behave vis-à-vis the narrator. Interesting dilemma for the author. The narrator should see and still don't see too soon. 

There are still quite a few Dickens books I wish to read. And of course so much else I wish to read. It took me some time getting through these two. One can just wonder at how he wrote these for the serialised versions. (there is a bit in David Copperfield about his hard work, determination and perseverance, about how he goes through stuff one after the other and just keeps at it - which might have autobiographical reference). Seems like he spent time (1) making a plan and outline of chapters and (2) then just saw them through. Easy for people to do 1. Guess it is the 2 that determines where one lands.

Reading update

The year has been progressing slow in terms of books read. Meanwhile, I have saved on my phone a thousand beautiful essays and stories. Saved to be savoured peacefully. Some really long essays. And a few short stories. Some short articles, and some books. And then, when I have a stretch of time available or desire to lose myself in a story, I shake my phone like a mint case and read the one that falls out the top. So that's what I've been doing. Savoring mints. Mints don't get counted on this blog. Only completed books make it to the recent reads page.

And I remind myself again that books read is not the right metric. It is a good general indicator, but not the correct measure. The correct measure would be a bit more subjective. Such as how I feel about my reading? Am I exploring more? Am I reflecting, and taking the time to write about what I read? Am I enjoying the process?

The answers change so much through the year, if not the questions themselves over time. And that, that exactly is the right metric. Am I growing and changing?



Bending Time

Sometimes, going through old notes I find so many reading lists and things worth exploring. It is a bit of despairing feeling. There'll never be time enough to read what all I wish to read. Unless I learn to bend time. I am hoping that one of the books I read will teach me how to do that.

And then this afternoon, I found another way to bend time meanwhile. Listening after a long time to some songs that I used to listen to non stop years ago, I was back in time. Everything that song evoked was rich in color - present in my mind and thoughts. Was I transported back in time, or was the time bent and brought to re-exist around me?

Aren't such stuff, such music, fragrances, good writing, art, tunnels or warps in time? Enter here, read this, listen to this music, smell this, and voila, bend the time. Over and over again.

So may be, no need to despair. Sometimes, one instance is deeper than the average depth of rest of the lifetime, and perhaps that is the linear programming function to solve for. Maximize intensities of moments. Maximize collecting these time bending experiences. Everything else, the average, the mediocre, the never-ending lists, there is no limit. What one cannot conquer in distance, perhaps one tries to conquer in depth?




Memoirs and other Personal Non Fiction

I am currently reading quite a few: Simone De Beauvoir's The Prime of Life, Doris Lessing's Walking in the Shade (both part two of their respective memoirs. I read both their first parts last year). Even though I am making little progress, and I'm not even sure whether I'll finish them soon, I am enjoying alternating between them. And then, in similar vein was the book of short stories by Edith Wharton which again seems drawn from something close in her life. Every once a while, one of the characters is a writer, and the settings and scenes are very unique, and perhaps depict the perpetual question that the author tries to answer - of perusal of art vs living of a life.

It pretty much continues on last year's theme of reading autobiographies, personal essays and memoirs. One of the other reasons I realize I enjoy these writings is because they open up ways of seeing. Life as closely observed by other people who carry with them powers of superb expression. The way they see the world, it is not explicitly mentioned at times. But it gets revealed in turns of phrases, by what they take for granted, and by what surprises them. Things so close to them. It can be fascinating this way to get under their skin and look at world the way they look at it. You come away richer for perspective, and wiser for someone's deep thoughts.

The rewards of such readings are then in the process. One can read quickly, or one can dwell, take time out every few minutes to note down their thoughts and the meta that opens up in your head. That makes progress slow. With other things, it just means a few pages a day. But aren't they very rewarding pages?

**

And yet, because of that, because of the way they take their lives so seriously, and whatever they are upto so seriously, a heaviness gradually creeps in, making it difficult to go on and on. The spillover is sometimes quite sad and negative, and can weigh you down. For such times, standing out in sharp contrast to these two memoirs is the posthumously collected writings of Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt). I enjoy Doris Lessing and Simone De Beauvoir, but Adams, and another of my current exploration (Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue) shine with joy and cheer. Sometimes, that is what one needs to lift up the day.

**

Apart from these, there are a few other open explorations.One of them is Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. I have been getting in and out of it for over a year now. Everything I read there, I feel like quoting or noting down. Reading it sequentially, I sometimes reach stretches that  pull me down a bit, gazing into the nothingness and finding, nothing - making me spill over around me. I close it then.  And that little helps the book's progress. 

Still, since I touched upon it, I'll quote one bit:

Passage 11
(Litany)

“We never know self-realization.
We are two abysses – a well staring at the sky.”

The Thirty-Nine Steps

John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps features in so many all-time book lists, that when I came across this book, I picked it up without thinking. The first thought is that perhaps people read this book in their teens, and hence what they take away is different from reading it later in life.

In the dedication page, the author writes to Thomas Arthur Nelson:

"You and I have long cherished an affection for that elementary type of tale which Americans call the 'dime novel' and which we know as the 'shocker' - the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of these aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. "

This pretty much sums up how I think about the book. It is fun, cheerful, a quick, gliding read. But that is what it is.

Here, in Richard Hannay, we have a protagonist who seeks adventure, and finds it gift wrapped. The book is set in the months before WWI, and the protagonist tries to stop some particular event, details of which somehow I do not understand completely. It is much more about the chase, and reads like a movie. No wonder so many times it has been adapted to or inspired, film version.

I seem to have read quite a few books in this category of London, terror and spy/agent fiction.  This one comes soon Conrad's The Secret Agent and Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday in my recent reads. Not really any anarchists here. But the chase is similar to The Man who was Thursday. Although so much more logical and sensible and of this world than Chesterton's. Unlike The Secret Agent which dealt more with the politics of it all, and which belongs to a different genre altogether, this one sits in the spy thriller category, albeit with more lightness and humour, and bigness or horrors of the impending WWI is just referred to, and the dark powers reduced to three gentlemen who play the antagonists here.

Not fair to compare it like this. It is a good quick read that holds your attention completely when you read it, but soon after leaves you with very little to report.

Still, I do have a couple of things I would like to note from the book. First one is on acting:

"I remember an old scout in Rhodesia, who had done many queer things in his day, once telling me that the secret of playing a part was to think yourself into it. You could never keep it up, he said unless you could manage to convince yourself that you were it."

And secondly, an interesting observation by the author on hiding in plain sight.

"If a man could get into perfectly different surroundings from those in which he had first been observed, and this is important - really play up to this surrounding,  and behave as if he had never been out of them, he would puzzle the cleverest detectives on earth.... A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different"

These two go in my list of stuff that help 'seeing'. Perceiving, observing and seeing. Stuff that makes living intense and life, rich.

Edith Wharton's The Muse's Tragedy and Other Stories

Although well-known for her novels, Edith Wharton wrote a lot of short stories during her life. The twenty stories in this collection are from late 1800s to early 1900s. Spanning from early in her career to later in life when she was well-known, widely-read novelist. It is a collection culled from a few other collections I believe.

Where her popular novels are mostly based in old New York society, for these stories, the setting and society is quite varied. Part of the set have one of the protagonists as an aspiring or published writer. A few are ghost or supernatural stories. Some more are about tired marriages. And the rest are in the same vein of New York society and as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. (I have read one, yet to read the other).

The point of short stories is experimentation I guess. There are all these people, some of them not really courageous enough to be written into full-length novels. And stories can be an interesting way of dealing with them summarily. I guess for novels, the setting - the time and society play an important part. For stories, where the problem at hand is quite momentary in time, the range explored can be varied. And that is where I find this collection very rich, and took my time working through it - the number of different characters and their so different lives and their problems. I find the range much wider in these 20 stories than some of the other short story collections I've read.

In this book, I best enjoyed the stories where one of the parties is an aspiring or published writer and trying to write. They seem drawn close from the author's own experiences and ring truer and more authentic. I quite enjoyed the title story - The Muse's Tragedy. (A reminder to read James' The Aspern Papers). And another story that quite touched me was "Autres Temps ..." dealing with the protagonists worries and anxiety which she realizes are not ill-founded although everyone around her tries to convince her otherwise. I am sure with the way society and its veneer works, Wharton's un-layering of that veneer with different characters leads to as many interesting episodes.

I couldn't see the resolution in ghost or supernatural stories. (but then I have read little in that genre, and don't have much to compare them with). I find them strange. I enjoy and love science fiction, but this is different - the supernatural bits I find intriguing. Not a fan. They made me wonder about how one comes up with such ideas. Not really a ghost story, but in similar vein was  'The Journey' which I found quite troubling. This one, and some of the other ghost stories read more like nightmares.

As to the book and its pace, I was slow given each story was quite unique in setting and characters, and required a bit of imagination warming up. Add to that, I found some of the writing a bit tedious.  (I say this, because I find myself holding  Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps in my hands at the moment, for which I don't have to do much to read. I simply glide.) With Wharton's book, it was a bit of work in some of the stories in the early pages. (As she mentions in Xingu, one has to wade through it) But then they pick up pace, and you wish to see them through.

But her way of thinking and observing, I loved it and noted down parts (mostly, where she deals with perception, and ways of looking and considering).  How people 'feel' their way in conversation, and how it is difficult in one-sided written correspondence. And I think it is from things like this that is where I draw value from books I read. Language itself can be a delight. But the thought, and observation, and what the novelist chooses to tell you irrespective of the smoothness or tediousness of prose is what stays on.

Overall, I enjoyed the collection, and hope to make time to read Ethan Frome, if not The Age of Innocence soon.

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

I read Snow Country a few weeks ago. And since then, I have been reading stuff quite far and away from Snow Country and the world of Shimamura and Komako. Hence, this post tries to cover a bit of distance, in time, as well as in my thoughts.

Although it is difficult to access my thoughts from the time of reading, I do have some notes which I'll work through. I like coming back to these posts about the books I liked and found interesting even though reading older posts can invariably draw my attention to all the errors I make. I wish I could write perfect posts. It is a fleeting balance, this striving for the elusive perfect post, living with perpetual drafts, or, to live with the fact that there'll be errors. What then happens is that once I get a broad enough post covering most of what I wish to say, I hit publish. And then, over time, I can get at least the errors in thinking cleaned up, if not all the grammatical ones.

Back to Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. I stumbled across this book during a recent second-hand book sale. The joy of such book sales is in stumbling across things that you would not normally look for, or aisles you would normally not walk down. Most of the time, the books are clubbed randomly, and the chances of you picking up something new are higher than the usual familiar places to get books.

So with this discovery too. My first read from Kawabata. Yasunari Kawabata was the first Japanese recipient of Nobel for Literature in 1968 (the next was Kazuo Ishiguro recently). In fact, Kawabata acknowledges in his Nobel Banquet speech, that he was the first Oriental recipient after Rabindra Nath Tagore, 55 years before him. Understandably, translations make their way slowly.  He was awarded the prize "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind." Snow Country, which kept evolving through his life (talk about people unhappy with their own writing, or striving for a better way to express what they wish to express), was one of the contributing reasons for the prize.

The book opens up through a tunnel in Japanese snow mountains. And although Shimamura (the protagonist) keeps leaving the place, and heading back to Tokyo, the book stays there, in snow country. White landscape, clean, and fresh, as Komako (the other main character in the book). When the book opens, Komako is a yet to be Geisha. As Shimamura notices in the book, she goes from being a good girl, to a good woman. There is an ideal image that Shimamura seems to be seeking -clean and fresh, untainted feeling -  initially in Komako, and then as reflected in Yoko. And there is this recurring theme throughout the book of "wasted effort" or "wasted life".  Komako's pursuits, Komako's love, Komako's life, her strivings, all "wasted effort".

But what stood out was in the way that all of them, all the characters, accept their role, their place, and continue with their lives in zen-like ways. In-spite of their 'wasted efforts'.  It was interesting to see this view point after the all consuming emotion of Werther in The Sorrows of Young Werther.  In Snow Country, there is similar unrequited love,  similar gaping holes in hearts, but there is restraint, there is acceptance.

I am not sure I understand the book completely. I liked reading it though. I find it lyrical, poetic in things said, and left unsaid. There is a lot of beauty in the book - in seeing the way light and image is reflected in moving train and the landscape outside, in singing voice, in people, in the silvery grass. Beauty in its sparseness, refrain, fragmentary impressions of the lives of its characters. It provides the cues and then leaves you to imagine and build up the landscape in your mind evoking the snow country, the mountains in different seasons, the beauty of the place. Rustic, old country ways. Peaceful lives.

May be, I do not get the book fully because I don't think I understand the cultural nuances completely. Where rest of the world seems relatively homogeneous, Japan seems to stand out. It seems a magical, different place, with different nuances. Strange, fairy-tale like.Whenever I read about Japan, I find the imagery beautiful, somehow other-worldly, transcendental, and yet, find it difficult to completely reconcile with the way family life, place of women in society works.

While reading this one, I kept thinking of the other books which recreate that fairy-tale strangeness. There is little that I have read on Japan. A couple of books by Kazuo Ishiguro. I haven't read much from Murakami. Just Kafka on the shore. And his NF/personal book on running. And more recently, this short story, Cream. (Set in Kobe. Quite interesting as well as inspiring. Here is the story link). I have read Pico Iyer's "The Lady and the Monk". He recreates the Japan as seen by an outsider. And then David Mitchell. Both people who have not grown up in Japan, but have found, time, love and space to write about it, and to convey its magic. Where The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was the beginning of modernization, most of the other reads are based in relatively modern times. And then, a little bit of Japan of TV and movies. I recently watched a show called "Midnight Diner" which is a series of short stories anchored around a Tokyo diner and its master.

Perhaps when one reads from a culture far away, one is looking at a multicolored picture with a slightly impaired vision band, and hence one is bound to miss out on seeing completely what is being portrayed. 

However I do understand the refrain of "wasted effort".  And yet again, seen from a high enough, or far enough vantage point, all our lives and all humanity is a wasted effort. But isn't it the continuous series of "wasted effort" that make life interesting?

**

PS: This week's New Yorker (Feb 10, 2019) published this interview with Haruki Murakami. Worth a read. It refers to the magic of Japan.

2018 | Yearly wrap

2018 was a good reading year. Glad on two counts - (a) I read more non fiction and (b) I wrote a little bit more, making it one of the better years for this blog. 

In my reading, there was fair bit of non fiction (referred as NF below), close to half the books, mostly personal NF. Not as many Short Stories (SS) as I would have liked. Just 4 collections (and there is this Mansfield collection with unread bits on incomplete stories not added here). Very little science fiction. (SF, Just a couple of books). A few translated books (not as many as I thought I normally read). This was also the year when I discovered Elizabeth Von Arnim, read a lot from Katherine Mansfield, and came across the essays of Stephen Jay Gould. Read a bit of autobiographical/ memoir writing from different people across different times and cultures. And finally read Vanity Fair, Portrait of a Lady and Jane Eyre. Finished my first Turgenev. And could get around to reading Svetlana Alexievich. This was also the year when I gave myself a few no-fiction months.

Following is the list of books that I read in 2018 from my 'recent reads' page. Not as many as 2017 (when I was lucky to read over 50), but I loved most of what I read. 

For the following, the order is sequential: No.1 on the list read in January, last on the list most recent. The links lead to related post on this blog.

1. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth (or Mary Annette) Von Arnim ****
2. In Light of India by Octavio Paz (NF/ sort of personal essay) *****
3. Very Good, Jeeves! by PG Wodehouse (SS) ***
4. Winter Tales by Isak Dinesen (SS) ****
5. The Solitary Summer by Elizabeth Von Arnim *** (iphone reader)
6. The Benefactress by Elizabeth Von Arnim ** (iphone reader)
7. Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard *** (NF/ personal essays)
8. Vera by Elizabeth Von Arnim ** (iphone reader)
9. Elementals by AS Byatt **** (SS)
10. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard **** (NF/personal essays)
11. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte *** (iphone reader)
12. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray ** (iphone reader)
13. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte ** (iphone reader)
14. Villette by Charlotte Bronte *** (iphone reader)
15. Memoirs of a Nun by Denis Diderot **
16. 2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke *** (SF)
17. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone De Beauvoir **** (NF)
18. The Abundance by Annie Dillard **** (NF/ essay collection)
19. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson *** (NF/ Eminent Lives)
20. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James **** 
21. Notes from a Big Country by Bill Bryson ** (NF)
22. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev *** 
23. Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard ** (NF/ personal essays)
24. Jacob's Room is Full of Books (a year of reading) by Susan Hill ** (NF/ personal/ memoir?)
25. The Richness of Life - The Essential Stephen Jay Gould by Stephen Jay Gould **** (NF)
26. Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich *** (NF)
27. Under My Skin by Doris Lessing *** (NF | Autobiography)
28. Pierre and Jean by Guy de Maupassant *** (How should I rate a book when I don't like it as much, but it is not the book's fault. It is a well written story - and like all Maupassant stories, is a reading delight. It is just that I don't like the way people behave in it. Anyhow, these are my personal ratings. It falls more in three, and since I have avoided half points, books that are between two and three often get rated two or three basis my mood or my whim on the day I think)
29. 3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (SF) kindle ** 
30. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (phone) ***
31. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (NF | Memoir) phone ***
32. From Silk to Silicon by Jeffrey E. Garten **** (NF)
33. The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad ****
34. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim ** phone
35. The Folded Clock, A Diary by Heidi Julavits *** (Diary/ personal /NF)
36. The Golden Thread - how fabric changed history by Kassia St Clair *** (NF)
37. Artful by Ali Smith **** (NF/F?)
38. This Craft of Verse by Jorge Luis Borges (NF) *****
39. Evening in Paradise - More Stories by Lucia Berlin (SS) ****
40. The Man Who was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton **

Apart from what's on the list, I explored and opened a lot more. And perhaps took away something from each one of them. At the end of the day, it is not the number that's relevant but what I come away with from the year.

For me, one of the big book-blog realization this year was that the thought-space you can access and unlock while reading a book, or fresh out of a book somehow magically disappears after a while. Difficult to retrieve those emotions or recreate the same magic even on an immediate re-read. Even as I am reading, the more moments of recording the thoughts, the more I have to say about the book. After the book ends, trying to relive the experience can sometimes be difficult. I do have the overall thoughts and impressions. But while reading, while bobbing on the stream of thoughts that the book triggers, if I write them down, it goes with the flow, perhaps just a pause to hover and examine before I row forward. A few rightly placed moments and I can express and save those transitory thoughts.

Wouldn't call this an epiphany, but a gradually unraveling thought, which has been in the making but not articulated or set in definite terms. Pretty much goes with other stuff in life too. And makes me wonder whether those who keep detailed diaries and journals of life as it flows through them, remember more or live more intensely? By recording as much as you can. You can perhaps click pictures which so many of us do so much more now. But what about the thought chain? From where things start and where they land, the chain is so unique. Each one of them. Illuminating different parts of memory and your inner landscape as the thoughts pass through them train like. When you write them down, you get the access key for future use. Makes little sense when I write it here like this. But what I wish to note and remember is that I am better off writing as I read, rather than not writing.

What next?

For 2019, no major reading plans or goals. Although I do hope that for books that start a conversation in the head, they get a little bit of that jotting down and recording on this blog.

To 2019, and to more reading.