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.