"Even at long range it is easy to discern the difference between a man with an overwrought soul and one who is simply wishing that he had avoided the
"Even at long range it is easy to discern the difference between a man with an overwrought soul and one who is simply wishing that he had avoided the lobster newburg at lunch." (181)
I had a deadline for a grant proposal earlier this week—stressful stuff—so I did what one does. I turned to Wodehouse. Ice in the Bedroom is not among the very shiniest of the P. G. W. goods, but it delivered. I laughed out loud three times; that'll be three stars....more
"For me, writing is like it was in my childhood, something secret and prohibited, shameful, something one sneaks into a corner to do when no one else
"For me, writing is like it was in my childhood, something secret and prohibited, shameful, something one sneaks into a corner to do when no one else is watching." (255)
Childhood, Youth, and Dependency are known collectively as The Copenhagen Trilogy. The trilogy is Tove Ditlevsen's fictional autobiography, which may seem like a contradiction in terms—but one might argue that no autobiography is entirely nonfictional anyway. The very act of remembering means coloring the past with the knowledge of the present, adding to and subtracting from it, as we are unable ever to fully access or reconstitute what happened (we are no longer there). Be that as it may, Ditlevsen's work is unique—it reads like fiction, but, as far as I can tell, the major events are all faithfully described. Perhaps the most 'fictional' of the three is Youth; this makes sense, given that Ditlevsen begins her story when she is five years old. As the story progresses, it becomes less poetic (moving out of youth) and a more straightforwardly narrated, but still well-written, recounting of events. The first and last parts—Youth> and Dependency—are the best.
The trilogy is brutally honest, melancholy and sad—sometimes even tough to read. I don't want to give anything away about the story, because I think that being shocked at what happens (I know I was several times) is part of what makes it compelling. Just in case you'd still like to read it, reader....more
"Before a house massive and severe as a canon of the Middle Ages, the garden really must extent like the opened pages of a beautiful illuminated antip
"Before a house massive and severe as a canon of the Middle Ages, the garden really must extent like the opened pages of a beautiful illuminated antiphony. It must dare over five lines to propose a precise music. Until now, from my poor disoriented terrace only scattered notes have emanated, where the melody only makes itself known by the caprice of indifferent and distracted chance. Ah, come, dear Mademoiselle, lend my flowers some ideas." (52)
Displaced and wandering poet Rainer Maria Rilke finally found a place to settle down in July 1921, when he moved into the chateau of Muzot, a thirteenth-century medieval tower surrounded by vineyards above the town of Sierre in the Canton Valais, Switzerland. Here, in the final years of his life, he would complete the Duino Elegies and compose the Sonnets to Orpheus. The Letters around a Garden include twenty-two letters that were written from Muzot and the sanatorium at Val-Mont in a one-sided exchange from 1924 to 1926 between Rilke (whose letters alone we read) with a young aristocratic Swiss woman named Antoinette de Bonstetten—a passionate horticulturist to whom Rilke turned for advice regarding the design and upkeep of the Muzot rose garden (whose letters are lost).
The letters frequently allude to Rilke's desire to finally meet the elusive Mademoiselle Bonstetten. Rilke's plans for his garden, his observations and lamentations about the plants and nature more generally, his comments about Paul Valéry, loneliness/solitariness, and his declining health, all make the letters interesting to read. There is a kind of sweetness to the correspondence between the physically deteriorating Rilke and his more youthful correspondent. They are not quite letters of love, but they are loving—filled with the sort of affection that a person might have for their small garden in a remote corner of the world and for the person who is uniquely able to appreciate and help you tend to it.
"We need art (and still!) or all the resources and expectations of childhood, and the constant contribution of so many things to support ourselves, alone. A willing house; a garden innocent and giving; the curve of birds in the air; the winds, the rains, memories and the calm of a starry firmament stretching to the infinite: all this just so a human being can settle with his heart!" (19)
"I just have my own standards and in my funny little way I try to live up to them." (23)
Having read—devoured—all of J. D. Salinger's published fiction
"I just have my own standards and in my funny little way I try to live up to them." (23)
Having read—devoured—all of J. D. Salinger's published fiction a long time ago, I really don't know why it took me so long to discover this collection of three early Salinger stories. It's a somewhat strange publication with a long and rather unsavory history. Basically, this company—the Devault-Graves Agency—shook the literary world by publishing the first legitimate collection of Salinger stories in over 50 years, after they discovered that three of Salinger's stories had fallen into the public domain (apparently unbeknownst to the Salinger estate). They proceeded to copyright the collection as a unique anthology, thus cementing their rights over Three Early Stories and preventing others from publishing the three stories together. The foreign rights question also became messy, with the Devault-Graves Agency filing a suit against the Salinger Trust for allegedly interfering with the book's foreign marketing. The suit was later dropped, but became a significant case in international copyright law. Anyway, the situation now—as far as I can tell—is that there is still only this Devault-Graves edition of Salinger's early stories, in a rather flimsy, printed-on-demand-looking-and-feeling, overpriced volume, which includes some original illustrations (but no indication by whom these were drawn).
The publication history of the stories, then, is almost as enigmatic as the stories themselves. As the title suggests, there are three:
1. The Young Folks (Salinger's first published work, written in 1939 and first appearing in Story Magazine in 1940) 2. Go See Eddie (first published in 1940 in The University of Kansas Review after having been rejected by Story Magazine and Esquire) 3. Once a Week Won't Kill You (first published in Story Magazine in 1944)
The two best stories are the first and last. The Young Folks takes you right into a New York cocktail party scene, where dull conversations and gestures mask deeper anxieties. Once a Week Won't Kill You is the story of a young man who is about to go off to war and tries to convince his young wife to take out his elderly but still sharp aunt to the movies once a week. The least self-sufficient story was Go See Eddie, a brother-sister tale in which a brother tries to convince his sister to get a job and to quit her affair with a married man. It sounds juicy, I know, but it feels more like a sketch or a scene from a novel than a full-fledged story—neither the background not the ending is sufficiently rounded. Be that as it may, there is enough in the story to make it interesting....more
"Teach us to understand the sinfulness of our own hearts, and bring to our knowledge every fault of temper and every evil habit in which we have indul
"Teach us to understand the sinfulness of our own hearts, and bring to our knowledge every fault of temper and every evil habit in which we have indulged to the discomfort of our fellow-creatures, and the danger of our own souls." (13)
Jane Austen apparently composed prayers—she most likely wrote them to use during evening prayer times with her family. This aesthetically pleasing little volume is abundantly illustrated (albeit with somewhat random, yet still pleasant, pictures from the British Library's public domain) and collects all of the prayers, which are meant to "give us a privileged glimpse into Jane's soul." I thought that this would be an exaggeration, but, while reading the prayers, I could hear Jane's earnest voice. Having read the prayers, it is clear that her faith deeply found its way into her novels—even if, Austen being the great artist that she was, this was never a simple or simplified conversion. Even if you're not a Christian, I think that these prayers are lovely to read. That is, you can read them secularly, and take from them what you will.
"Teach us, Almighty Father, to consider this solemn truth, as we should do, that we may feel the importance of every day, and every hour as it passes, and earnestly strive to make a better use of what Thy goodness may yet bestow on us, than we have done of the time past." (51)
"Ana Magdalena Bach left the cemetery a different woman. She was trembling, and the driver had to help her into the taxi because she could not control
"Ana Magdalena Bach left the cemetery a different woman. She was trembling, and the driver had to help her into the taxi because she could not control her body's shaking. Only then did she understand her mother's determination to be buried there, on an island she visited three or four times a year, when she learned she was dying of a terrible illness in a foreign land. Only then did the daughter glimpse the reason her mother had taken those trips the six years before she died. She considered that her mother's reason—her mother's passion—might be the same as hers, and surprised herself with the analogy. She did not feel sad but rather encouraged by the realization that the miracle of her life was to have continued that of her dead mother." (101-102)
The marketing slogan—The Lost Novel—on the front cover of this edition of Gabriel García Márquez's novel, Until August, is willfully incorrect. The novel was never lost. Nor was it originally intended to be a novel—Gabo had originally planned for it to be a collection of four stories loosely connected by the protagonist (the only female protagonist in his oeuvre), Ana Magdalena Bach. At the time of his death, the novel remained unfinished. Suffering from dementia near the end of his life, Gabo was unable to follow the plot of the novel sufficiently to tie the work together. He was satisfied with the development of the protagonist (she is an interesting character!) but not with the plot of the 'final' version of the novel. In fact, before his death, Gabo requested that his sons destroy the novel. His family initially respected his wishes, but eventually decided to publish the novel. In the preface to this edition, Rodrigo and Gonzalo García Barcha write:
"Judging the book to be much better than we remembered it, another possibility occurred to us: that the fading faculties that kept him from finishing the book also kept him from realizing how good it was. In an act of betrayal, we decided to put his readers' pleasure ahead of all other considerations. If they are delighted, it's possible Gabo might forgive us. In that we trust." (ix)
I do think that the novel delights; parts of it do, at least. The language and descriptions are often beautiful. The plot is not spectacular and is clearly unfinished, but there is an idea behind it that intrigues.
Having read all of Gabo's fiction, I was always going to read this; but I am not going to rate Until August, for many of the same reasons that I did not rate Kafka's letter to his father. I think you'll understand why....more