Nearly midnight. This is the hour when the invalid who has been obliged to go off on a journey and has had to sleep in an unfamiliar hotel, wakened by an attack, is cheered to see a ray of light under the door. How fortunate, it's already morning! In a moment the servants will be up, he will be able to ring, someone will come help him. The hope of being relieved gives him the courage to suffer. In fact he thought he heard footsteps; the steps approach, then recede. And the ray of light that was under his door has disappeared. It is midnight; they have just turned off the gas; the last servant has gone and he will have to suffer the whole night through without remedy.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Proust
When I was working my first job, in a warehouse, I had to wake up while it was still dark out to get to work on time. Generally, this was around 4 30. One morning I woke up and ate breakfast and, only after finishing my cereal, realized it was only 2 30. What else could I think of when I read this passage in Swann's Way?
Thursday, January 10, 2013
the list, 2012
Stats
36 books. Original languages: English, Russian, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Arabic. 1 book by a woman. 11 written in the 21st century, 13.5 in the 19th, 7.5 in the 20th, 2 in the 16th, and 1 in the 18th. Then there was the Arabian Nights. Fiction, 25; non-fiction, 11. 14 were published by Penguin; 6 by Vintage. If I had more motivation, I would do more analysis of publisher, but maybe next year! 18 were by authors whose books I'd never read before.
Non-Stats
Most disappointing reads of the year: The Sea (should have been a short story), The Confidence Man (should have been a play), Moll Flanders (thought it would be more picaresque), Wuthering Heights (should have been as creepy throughout as in the first 40 pages), House of Seven Gables (mostly description, with plot thrown in every 20 or 30 pages.) Jameson and Harvey's books on Marx were not as interesting as I wanted them to be.
Then there were good books with bad endings: The City and the City, Darwinia.
Which makes it sound like it was a bad year for reading--which it wasn't. Just about everything else I read was excellent in one way or another.
The second half of my year was dominated, at least psychologically, by Infinite Jest. I'm glad I read it, but I would recommend it to almost no one. Need more time to process this one.
Debt, by Graeber, was a great way to start my year. On it's own merits, it was worth reading. In the context of our national arguments about debt, it was also worth reading. Also worth it for how it set the stage for my reading the rest of the year--sensitivity and attention to the many different attitudes towards debt in various works of fiction and non-fiction, and from different time periods (Collins, Balzac, Diaz, Cellini, Norris, Dostoevsky, Arabian Nights, notably.)
Cellini's Autobiography and Bernal Diaz's Conquest of New Spain were fun to read together in the same year, for different aspects of the same century. Cellini, mostly because he's hilarious, and because he talks about several different popes, not in terms of their theology or religious authority, but in terms of how they kept trying to cheat him out of his wages. Diaz helped temper the image of Cortes and several hundred conquistadors taking over all of Mexico when, at least according to Diaz, they had help from thousands of natives who were bitter about Mexican rule (and also received reinforcements of hundreds more soldiers, at some point in the campaign.) And Diaz was obsessed with Aztec cannibalism.
McTeague reinforced my feelings about realism: great eye for detail, especially physical detail, marred mostly by such blatant moralism and ideology.
The Terror was the most visceral novel I've read in years. It was the height of summer, but I still felt like I was freezing to death anytime I picked it up.
I read three books by Dostoevsky (two novels, two novellas), and wish I'd read more. One was Crime and Punishment, which I'd read 5 or so years ago. This time around, I was mostly intrigued by the topic of confession, mostly because I'm more and more skeptical about the value we place on disclosure and confession. Most of us can bear our friends's secrets, what we can't handle is knowing they're keeping some secret from us. Reading Demons--and, actually, all of Dostoevsky--I'm intrigued by the emotions he can get away with. He gets away with a full range of emotions in a way that I don't think any other novelist does. It's melodramatic, but I still feel happy, despairing, and paranoid right along with his characters. In film, the closest comparison I can get to, in terms of emotional range, is Lynch. (An easy go-to for me, since I watched 5-6 of his movies in the last year.)
After reading an interview with Richard Beck in the Other Journal, I ordered his book, Unclean. One of the best that I read all year. It's a mixture of theology and psychology, especially looking at the relationship between disgust and morality (and the fallout of that relationship). He also looks at the contrary moral traditions in the bible, the purity tradition (personal cleanliness) and the prophetic tradition (mercy and justice.) It's worth at least reading the interview.
More later, possibly. I didn't even touch Foucault, Nietzsche, or Marx, among others, even though those books were incredible. And by that, I mean credible.
The List, Mostly in the Order Finished
Dispatches for the New York Tribune - Karl Marx
Debt - David Graeber
The City and the City - China Mieville
Toll the Hounds - Steven Erikson
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
Youth / The End of the Tether - Joseph Conrad
The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
The Sea - John Banville
Speaking of Jesus - Carl Medearis
The Confidence Man - Herman Melville
Unclean - Richard Beck
Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Spring Torrents - Ivan Turgenev
McTeague - Frank Norris
The Conquest of New Spain - Bernal Diaz del Castillo
Representing Capital - Frederic Jameson
The History of Sexuality, vol 1 - Michel Foucault
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Terror - Dan Simmons
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
Old Man Goriot - Honore de Balzac
The Black Minutes - Martin Solares
Ecce Homo - Friedrich Nietzsche
The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami
Homicide - David Simon
Darwinia - Robert Charles Wilson
The Final Solution - Michael Chabon
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Autobiography - Benvenuto Cellini
An Introduction to Capital - David Harvey
The Double / The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Arabian Nights, vol 2
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
36 books. Original languages: English, Russian, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Arabic. 1 book by a woman. 11 written in the 21st century, 13.5 in the 19th, 7.5 in the 20th, 2 in the 16th, and 1 in the 18th. Then there was the Arabian Nights. Fiction, 25; non-fiction, 11. 14 were published by Penguin; 6 by Vintage. If I had more motivation, I would do more analysis of publisher, but maybe next year! 18 were by authors whose books I'd never read before.
Non-Stats
Most disappointing reads of the year: The Sea (should have been a short story), The Confidence Man (should have been a play), Moll Flanders (thought it would be more picaresque), Wuthering Heights (should have been as creepy throughout as in the first 40 pages), House of Seven Gables (mostly description, with plot thrown in every 20 or 30 pages.) Jameson and Harvey's books on Marx were not as interesting as I wanted them to be.
Then there were good books with bad endings: The City and the City, Darwinia.
Which makes it sound like it was a bad year for reading--which it wasn't. Just about everything else I read was excellent in one way or another.
The second half of my year was dominated, at least psychologically, by Infinite Jest. I'm glad I read it, but I would recommend it to almost no one. Need more time to process this one.
Debt, by Graeber, was a great way to start my year. On it's own merits, it was worth reading. In the context of our national arguments about debt, it was also worth reading. Also worth it for how it set the stage for my reading the rest of the year--sensitivity and attention to the many different attitudes towards debt in various works of fiction and non-fiction, and from different time periods (Collins, Balzac, Diaz, Cellini, Norris, Dostoevsky, Arabian Nights, notably.)
Cellini's Autobiography and Bernal Diaz's Conquest of New Spain were fun to read together in the same year, for different aspects of the same century. Cellini, mostly because he's hilarious, and because he talks about several different popes, not in terms of their theology or religious authority, but in terms of how they kept trying to cheat him out of his wages. Diaz helped temper the image of Cortes and several hundred conquistadors taking over all of Mexico when, at least according to Diaz, they had help from thousands of natives who were bitter about Mexican rule (and also received reinforcements of hundreds more soldiers, at some point in the campaign.) And Diaz was obsessed with Aztec cannibalism.
McTeague reinforced my feelings about realism: great eye for detail, especially physical detail, marred mostly by such blatant moralism and ideology.
The Terror was the most visceral novel I've read in years. It was the height of summer, but I still felt like I was freezing to death anytime I picked it up.
I read three books by Dostoevsky (two novels, two novellas), and wish I'd read more. One was Crime and Punishment, which I'd read 5 or so years ago. This time around, I was mostly intrigued by the topic of confession, mostly because I'm more and more skeptical about the value we place on disclosure and confession. Most of us can bear our friends's secrets, what we can't handle is knowing they're keeping some secret from us. Reading Demons--and, actually, all of Dostoevsky--I'm intrigued by the emotions he can get away with. He gets away with a full range of emotions in a way that I don't think any other novelist does. It's melodramatic, but I still feel happy, despairing, and paranoid right along with his characters. In film, the closest comparison I can get to, in terms of emotional range, is Lynch. (An easy go-to for me, since I watched 5-6 of his movies in the last year.)
After reading an interview with Richard Beck in the Other Journal, I ordered his book, Unclean. One of the best that I read all year. It's a mixture of theology and psychology, especially looking at the relationship between disgust and morality (and the fallout of that relationship). He also looks at the contrary moral traditions in the bible, the purity tradition (personal cleanliness) and the prophetic tradition (mercy and justice.) It's worth at least reading the interview.
More later, possibly. I didn't even touch Foucault, Nietzsche, or Marx, among others, even though those books were incredible. And by that, I mean credible.
The List, Mostly in the Order Finished
Dispatches for the New York Tribune - Karl Marx
Debt - David Graeber
The City and the City - China Mieville
Toll the Hounds - Steven Erikson
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
Youth / The End of the Tether - Joseph Conrad
The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
The Sea - John Banville
Speaking of Jesus - Carl Medearis
The Confidence Man - Herman Melville
Unclean - Richard Beck
Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Spring Torrents - Ivan Turgenev
McTeague - Frank Norris
The Conquest of New Spain - Bernal Diaz del Castillo
Representing Capital - Frederic Jameson
The History of Sexuality, vol 1 - Michel Foucault
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Terror - Dan Simmons
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
Old Man Goriot - Honore de Balzac
The Black Minutes - Martin Solares
Ecce Homo - Friedrich Nietzsche
The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami
Homicide - David Simon
Darwinia - Robert Charles Wilson
The Final Solution - Michael Chabon
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Autobiography - Benvenuto Cellini
An Introduction to Capital - David Harvey
The Double / The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Arabian Nights, vol 2
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
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