I didn't think I would quite have the time tonight to go to the library and to go swimming, but I just managed to sneak in a few laps. That is the first swimming I have done since I have been sick.
I got through Lethem's Lucky Alan in about a day and a half (it is very short - 160 pages). I have to admit, I didn't think very highly of it. Two stories had sort of interesting plots but were not really well developed ("Lucky Alan" and "Pending Vegan"), and "The Porn Critic" had some grubby fascination, and that was about it. Definitely glad I borrowed this from the library.
I did enjoy Albert Cossery's final novel (or really novella as this clocks in under 100 pages): The Colors of Infamy. I wasn't entirely sure about the ending, which is sort of an elaborate set up for a punch line, but there isn't much indication of what will actually happen next. Either the corrupt developer will accept he has been bested and slink off or violence will erupt. However, I have heard that Cossery is far more about ambiance and mood and less about plot. I'll have to remember that in the future. (Also, quite a bit happens in the cafes of Cairo, which is a pretty direct linkage to Mahfouz.) I admit I was intrigued by Karamallah -- Cossery's world-weary intellectual who has been forbidden by the government to publish and who lives in his family tomb in the cemetery.
He reminds me in some ways of the very crass, debauched and yet morally outraged Spider Jerusalem from the Transmetropolitan comic books.
It's a bit hard to make out, but the tattoo on his forehead is a spider. Spider in turn is an even more amped up and whacked out version of Hunter S. Thompson, who often took refuge in acting gonzo when confronted with the never-ending venality of U.S. politics. Of all of these figures, Karamallah is probably the most successful in just being detached and finding at least some humour in the corruption around him.
I only have one last short novel (Joseph Roth's Weights and Measures) before I launch into Dos Passos. I should be done with Weights and Measures tomorrow, particularly as I can read a bit during the intermission of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike tomorrow evening. So I should begin Dos Passos on the Friday commute unless I actually do bike in. I wouldn't say I am exactly nervous about tackling it, but I did try to read the USA Trilogy before and set it aside, feeling I wasn't quite ready. Interestingly, Dos Passos wrote a great deal more than this and Manhattan Transfer and Three Soldiers. It seems, however, that he departed greatly from his socialist roots and became pretty fanatically anti-Communist and even briefly a McCarthy supporter! In the 1960s, he campaigned for Goldwater and Nixon, so it was almost a complete reversal from his early days when he attacked Big Business. While this lost him no end of friends (particularly Ernest Hemingway) and the support of most English professors (who continue to assign only his early works), many detached observers seem to agree that the quality of his books really suffered (in contrast to, say, Koestler's Darkness at Noon, which is also fiercely anti-Communist). I had no idea that Dos Passos had actually written a second trilogy dwelling on national issues: the District of Columbia trilogy includes Adventures of a Young Man (1939), Number One (1943) and The Grand Design (1949). The second two don't interest me, but Adventures of a Young Man is essentially a companion piece to Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, as both cover the Spanish Civil War. It appears Robarts does have this, and I may go ahead and read it in a year or two when I finally get back around to Hemingway.
What was a surprise (at the Toronto Public Library) is that Patrick Modiano's Suspended Sentences would be ready so soon. I'll have to read this right after Dos Passos (most likely interspersing the novellas with Pullman's trilogy). Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, and there is now all this interest in him. It appears that most of his best work is all tied up in memory and history and an obsession with Occupied France. What is particularly intriguing is that this seems to be the same ground that Emmanuel Bove trod, so there is surely a dissertation in that -- for somebody else to write...
It may be silly but someone recommended reading Rue des Boutiques Obscures in the original French, as it was fairly straight-forward, and there was a very cheap copy on Amazon, so I ordered it. I have not had time to practice French in a long time, but I think I'll have to start. My son is getting lessons in school, and I'll need to be able to help out a bit. BTW, this particular Modiano novel was translated as Missing Person and is in the library as well, but I really ought to try to struggle through on my own first.
That's pretty much it. I'm going to hold off a bit longer on some other reviews and some notes on Nightwood. I have good ideas for some creative writing projects, but not quite enough energy to follow through... Maybe tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment