2000-06

12/06

McMurtry, Larry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. This suffers from a common McMurtry characteristic: somewhat light. Also not entirely coherent. Theme of M as wrangler of books as his father was of cattle, while potentially silly, works okay for me, but he doesn’t get enough good out of it and I’m not sure what it has to do with Walter Benjamin. Yes, Europe as the other. I like that and can identify with it. But WB’s specific point, or the one M highlights, is about storytelling, not book wrangling, and I don’t think M quite gets the two conceits to fit. He never really sinks his teeth into storytelling, never gets a grip on it. The best story, for my money, was of the German who killed himself, but that leaves us with even more unrelated pieces, since the German farmers were different from the English/Scot ranchers. The closest M gets is the blankness of the west versus the rich culture of Europe, but how does storytelling fit into that? Not at all, probably.

Three Movies: Stephen Frears, The Queen with Helen Mirren. Liked The Grifters a lot. This too. K and I have different take on Diana. Kurosawa’s Stray Dog. Was it too long, or was it current expectations, or the fact that I was also looking after Daisy? Still excellent, especially as a look at Japanese life just after the war. Moral theme explicit: will mistakes make or break you? Compare to Breznitz, which is all about the cop trying to be loved. Or to love. 2046. Hong Kong. Too stylish in an MTV/hip commercial sort of way, and not really much to say in re to love stories.

Indian Short Stories. Should pull out names for further reference.

Benny, Jack. Autobiography with daughter’s commentary in-between.

Kroning, Hans, DeWitt’s War. Written in old-fashioned Greene and Ambler spy style. Amateur spy. Not bad but has problems. Deals with important issues but not in a particularly engaging way, issue being whether it’s best to collaborate or quit in protest. Survive or make a point? I think this is a perennial good one, overworked but a nugget always ready to be turned another way. Not this time, tho.

11/06

Lapid, Haim, Breznitz. Israeli cop. Police procedural. Suspected a little too self-consciously serious at beginning. Now see it’s a gimmick novel: detective unknowingly is killer.

Eliot, George, Middlemarch. May change my mind, but so far I’ve decided this is a great novel. Quotes: Delight does more good than doing good, so says Ladislaw to Dorothea. L. wasn’t perfect that day, but something. Description of the Graths. Many, many good parts in this, but not sure totally satisfying. Characterization seems a little unfinished? Maybe just idealized. Compared to the Russians relatively insipid? But is it fair to compare to Russians? Why not? Better than Dickens, and Jane Austen. I think I prefer C. Bronte. But how does Dorothea’s dilemma compare with Jane Eyre’s? Is it the same or not? Do L and her husband represent opposite poles? More complex, isn’t it, than Bronte?

10/06

Byatt, A.S. Babel Tower. Decided to stop last night. Story of Frederika, while entertaining, seems no more than that, a notch above melodrama, all of which may be the ironic point, but if so I get it and it’s time to move on. Well done and not. Seems pretty thin milk compared to Eliot and Bronte. We all know there are women like that who get themselves into that position. Now what?

A Hundred Years in a New England Town. Interesting how Dedham set itself up, unity as the guiding principal, for order. Will try to get back to it, to find out how that disintegrates. Interested because fascinating how things change over time, and the fact that white people have lived in this area for nearly four hundred years. Can you tell it? Not like you can in Mexico, that’s for sure. But Paz, in Sor Juana, says, North America was built to change; South America to last. Thesis about Dedham contradicts that, but result bears it out.

Herodotus. A little tedious with all the names, but his personality is entertaining, and though I know it sounds rubish (like a rube), I’m still amazed at how modern the ancients sound in modern translations. I’ll try to stick with this. Went back later, then dropped again. When he gets into a narrataive, can be very entertaining.

Austen, Jane, Sense and Sensibility. Came back to this on weekend. Warms up a little, and I’ve warmed up to it a little, but not as much as P&P. Of course I should give her a break since it’s her first novel.

Bronte, Jane Eyre. I should confess. I wept. More than once. Three times I can remember: when R. proposes to Jane; when she is in desperate straits after running off and is finally saved; when they re-unite at end; screw you if you think that’s sentimental bullshit. Jane is likeable to the point of my almost believing she’s real. Read C. Bronte’s views on reason and emotion in re to Jane Austen, then picked up Sense and Sensibility, and have to admit that at least in my present state of mind, I agree with Charlotte. S&S so far is dry as a bone. All sense. How does this stand up to the morals test? Just fine, since Jane represents a rock solid universal dilemma, balancing S&S. Certainly was a preoccupation back then wasn’t it?

Eliot, George, The Mill on the Floss. Vaguely remember feminist talk of Eliot, scared me off for a while, but this is a good and entertaining novel. I became very wrapped up in the travails of Tom and Maggie and thought Maggie an interesting woman, though not, as I was soon to discover, nearly as interesting as Jane Eyre. Will read Middlemarch soon. Yet again, though, I think the politics in Eliot is going to lessen the moral punch. Or is it the aesthetic punch?

DeLillo, Don, Cosmopolis. Fun but allegorical nature and cool tone a little off-putting. The good and bad sides of protagonist a little contrived? Or at least transparent.

Tried and failed to read Stanley Elkin: Mrs. Ted Bliss and first story in Room at Arles. No heart.

9/06

Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces. Not sure this is as good as Walker Percy thought, or says in intro, but as comic novels go, pretty good. In fact, if I liked comic novels, which on the whole I don’t, I can’t see why it shouldn’t be ranked among the best. Pulls no punches with hero, yet we care about him. I did.

Bentley, Trent’s Last Case. I have the feeling that all of the classic drawing room mysteries are going to seem pretty thin to me these days. This one may be better than most for me because I like the turn of the century British hero.

Harrison, The Beast God Forgot to Invent. Three short novels. I got excited about this. First Harrison I’ve read.

Rinehart, The Circular Staircase. This has same appeal as Trent’s Last Case, in re to tone and values. Padded, tho. More than a few ho-hum moments.

Tried and failed to read E.F. Benson, Make Way for Lucia. Too cute.; George V. Higgins, Bomber’s Law. ‘Clever’ TV dialogue run amok.; Morley, The Haunted Bookshop. Too cute.

8/06 or 9/06

McBain, Where There’s Smoke. Excruciatingly dull. Should try the precinct novels.

Wood, H.F., The Passenger from Scotland Yard. Excellent. Surprised to read how little is known about the author. Might be worth looking into. The hero is more like Maigret.

Highsmith, Ripley Under Water. Excellent. Ripley’s amorality is fascinating and perfectly consistent throughout.

Coetzee, Age of Iron. Good but not the best.

Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Ditto from above.

Earlier

Auster, New York Trilogy, Timbuktu, Leviathan.

Has more heart than DeLillo, but what’s it all about? In all, question, or questions, of identity is pivotal. Dropping out to become anonymous. For a cause in Leviathan. Why in others? Don’t know. In any case, existential rather than moral. I suppose, though, that the existential works if it’s connected to how to deal with the world, not just personal misfortune. The latter is conservative in that it must assume that the world is okay. The person has temporarily become an outsider, and progress of story is how to get back in, chic way now is redemption. Whereas, Auster, and everyone else I like, sets up the opposite scenario: the world has the problem. Or, even better, it is a problem. Life is a problem. What about C.B.? Yes, and Jane was perfectly ready to face it alone if need be. And Eliot? Ditto.

Wahloo and wife. The Swede or Norwegian couple who write mysteries. Liked very much.

Excellent. Want to read more.

Fleming. Goldfinger. Embarrassing in some respects; can’t deny he’s good on suspense and action and situations are fairly intelligent.

Ha Jin, Waiting. Liked this almost as much as Coetzee.

Taibo II.

Baker, Vox. Fun but so relentlessly of self-absorbed identities that it’s also off-putting after a while.

The Fermata. Interesting that he says nothing about John D. MacDonald’s The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything as an influence. Mentions others, I forget now what, but good idea to mention sources since it is so high concept. Clearly more heart than Vox. Came after. Apparent attempt to break out of the self-absorption.

Fuentes on Mexico;

Paz, Sor Juana. See Mexico.

Chekov, Plays and Stories

Zola

Robert Crais

Amis, Night Train. Auster-esque. Enjoyed. Theme of motive not relevant any more interesting. Suppose it’s a gesture towards post-modernism. Approving or no?

Money. Got into this, funny, though it’s a pretty conventional British comic novel.

Flannery O’Connor: Essays

Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (re-read with Kate)

Turgenev, In Virgin Soil. Cold and political as usual, though better than I remembered Fathers and Sons from college days.

Stegner, Angle of Repose. Straight to the point of being dull. Meat and potatoes.

Austen, Pride and Prejudice. I was completely charmed by this, which makes the later experience of reading S&S after C. Bronte, and finding it too dry, as C predicted, all the more interesting. Am I that impressionable? So easily swayed? Do I need more sense?

Barnes, Julian. Nothing to Declare. Book about France, or rather about being a Francophile. Parts, especially the one about pop singers, made me think of my own forays into Mexican pop culture. Strange how it can exist so close and be completely unknown. Also, should be a lesson that it’s a country more overdone than Mexico, but that didn’t deter Barnes.

Gogol. Stories. Dead Souls is the rare parable with heart and warm blood. I think of The Painted Bird as similar in attitude.

German guy that died: Sebald. Got it listed below. a post-modern I could get into. Even forget the title of the book.

Probably something I don’t like about it; but also some things I do.

Spark. Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Very good.

Memento Mori.

Hazzard, Bay at Naples. Satisfying yet limited. Greene on Capri.

O’Brien. Master and Commander. Fake at core. Sorry if that means I have no sense of fun.

Tried and failed: Schlink. Didn’t know it was schlock.

Japanese Novels: Mishima, Oe, and two more or less pop novels: The Lady Killer, a thriller written by a woman, and The Pornographers, sort of a good old boy tale. I liked Mishima short stories, haven’t been able to get into a novel yet. Oe I remember enjoying but now forget it.

Kleist, The Marquise of O and Other Stories. Liked these a lot.

Sebald, Austerlitz. Liked black and white photos.

Vargas Llosa, Don Rigoberto.

On Regency Drive

Bedford, Sybille. Jigsaw. A Legacy. You feel as if you get to know Bedford extremely well when you read these novels. My general impression, or gut feeling, is that she reveals what is important by focusing on what is important to her and letting the rest alone, which doesn’t really obscure anything. The obliqueness at times seems a little forced, or self-conscious; the values defensive; all adds up to charm.

_______

Coetzee: Disgrace. I tried to read Foe a few years ago and found it too cold and intellectual. I tackled this, I think, after reading about his “memoirs,” which I’ve yet to read, in NYRB, and I was almost immediately converted. It has the direct simplicity I seem to like these days, comments about Bronte above notwithstanding. I guess the contradiction could be resolved by saying that I prefer modern and post-modern simplicity and 19^th Century extravagence. But there’s more than a little of the romantic in Coetzee. As in C. McCarthy. It’s Faulknerish, and Chandleresque (why not Faulkneresque and Chandlerish?), in that underlying the toughness is a soft underbelly. An idealism.

Foe. Odd how much I liked this after reading Disgrace.

The Life and Times of Michael K.

Waiting for the Barbarians.

________

Dickens, Bleak House. After reading the women, Bronte and Eliot, I’m even more puzzled by his appeal, though I include myself in those appealed to. I like Dickens. I liked this novel. But the tricks are a little too apparent, at least in contrast to the women.

Dante, Inferno. I was hoping to get into this the way I did The Odyssey and Don Quixote, but it never happened. I think the problem is with what it’s about, though that doesn’t totally hold water, given some of my other favorites, eg, Greene.

Keats, Several Poems. Part of an ongoing project to really like and appreciate poetry.

William Trevor, Felicia’s Journey and stories. The point of view of all of Trevor’s stories is the same: a kind of late 20^th Century omniscient narrator, which is to say it’s of someone with the curiosity and sensibility of en educated person living at that time. You feel as if you are being taken into people’s lives by a trustworth guide.

Trollope, Barchester Towers. Completely charmed. Not so much with others. Found Palliser novels unreadable. For one thing, maybe main thing, I had no clue about the politics, no context for it.

Waugh, Brideshead Revisited. Dull and dated. Sorry Evelyn.

When The Going Was Good. This was fun usually but so lightweight compared to Greene that it was hard not to compare unfavorably.

DeLillo, Underworld. This may be D.’s East of Eden. Big book that didn’t quite set the world on fire enough.

Franzen, The Corrections. Picked up after Oprah scrap. Put down as we were learning about the bowel problems of parents. Intrigued for a while by “corrections” theme. The obsessions with fixing everything, how that bleeds into writing, re-writing.

Keats, Collected Works. Tried with some but not a lot of success to use for getting into reading poetry. I get impatient with the syntax, even with Keats.

Ford, F.M. The Good Soldier. Second or third time around on this. Like it better every time. Read it originally for English novels course in college. Less sure how to take it each time, which evidently is the point.

Ford, Richard. The Sportswriter. Really detested this. Fake relationship nuance wrapped in stylish cloak. Forced myself to finish just to say I had. Recently read that McMurtry trashed first novel when it first came out in NY Times BR.

De Sade. Various. Not that impressed.