I was going to add this as a footnote to the last post, but it quickly spun out of control and became too long. I have had pretty good success in tracking down Simic's early books, though oddly enough Looking for Trouble (which is mostly a selected volume from his early books) is currently missing from Robarts. I found a copy on Abe Books at a reasonable cost (including shipping to Canada!) so put in an order. Probably within a few weeks it will turn up at Robarts. C'est la vie. What is a bigger concern is if it basically replicates his first Select Poems, which I own, but I just couldn't get a hold of a table of contents, even on Google Books, so I am just flying blind.
One much rarer book is Pyramids and Sphinxes, which is basically just a 24 page chapbook. It turns out that SUNY-Buffalo has a copy. SUNY-Buffalo actually has a pretty solid library with some other poetry rarities, like most of John Godfrey's books. It's not a high priority but I may write to see if it is possible to get a researcher pass and schedule a visit (after I get my passport back obviously). I would do this after late May, which is when the Albright-Knox Museum is supposed to reopen. As it happens, the SUNY-Buffalo library isn't anywhere near the Albright-Knox. It's about an hour by bus. Even driving between the two takes 25 minutes or so! I'm not sure if I would actually rent a car to drive to Buffalo or just plan to cab it. Getting into the spirit of things, I went to see if there was any theatre worth seeing in Buffalo. Generally there isn't much going on in the spring there, aside from Rapp's The Sound Inside, but I'll be seeing that at Coal Mine and don't have to travel far for that... Anyway, there is no rush. I may indeed wait until the fall seasons are announced and/or when Albright-Knox determines their next block-buster show.*
I just finished The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al-Aswany, with the last 90 pages or so finished while in line at Service Canada to apply for my new Canadian passport! I saw some interesting parallels to Kurkov's work in that both are describing deeply corrupt societies where all kinds of bad things can happen if one crossed someone with deep pockets. In some ways, this plays out like a mirror image version of The Milkman in the Night where most of the characters end up in bad places (sometimes deserved, often not) though the final scene is of a joyous wedding.
I also wrapped up Farrell's Troubles this week. I probably would have finished a day or two sooner but actually rode my bike in twice that week. While this was an entertaining and often amusing read, I was just struck at how passive the main character, Major Archer, is. He finds himself engaged to Angela Spencer, though he wonders exactly how this came to pass. He moves into the Majestic in Ireland, a crumbling hotel owned by her father, Edward. After the engagement falls apart, the Major unaccountably sticks around despite the fact any sensible person would have left. Then he falls in love with a completely unsuitable woman and moons over her while often trying to keep Edward out of trouble with his Irish tenants. The end of the novel just feels like one damn thing after another, which is probably a good metaphor for the Irish "Troubles" of 1919-21. Here is a pretty good, if a bit spoilery, overview of the novel.
I'm partway through a few books, in some cases because I started reading them using Libby on my phone: Frederick Reuss's Horace Afoot,** Knut Hamsun's Hunger, Kingsley Amis's Take a Girl Like You and a book on highway financing and politics. I also need to start Pandemic in the Metropolis, as I agreed to review the book in exchange for a reviewer's copy. Despite this, I just couldn't help myself and started looking through 4 different translations of Gogol's Dead Souls. (I decided for my sanity to skip over Constance Garnett's translation.) So I'll be juggling a few books in January and early Feb., at which point things may be a bit simpler. Of course, that's probably around the time The Siege of Krishnapur will show up, and I'll be diverted into reading that...
Edit (1/15): I have come to some conclusions on Dead Souls and the many translations on hand. I have to agree with Nabokov that the Guerney seems to be the best, though I thought the Reavey translation pretty solid as well and the notes and extra material in the Norton edition make it worth sticking with. I felt pretty neutral towards Pevear and Volokhonsky. Their translation was maybe a notch below the Reavey, but it would have been fine if it was the only one I had. (What's odd is that the e-book version I am browsing has very few paragraph breaks except for dialogue.) The only one I really didn't care for was Rayfield's, which is the most recent (2008). How unfortunate that this is the one that NYRB is publishing. As it happens I was able to borrow a scholarly edition that reproduces nearly 100 Chagall illustrations, which are quite interesting. These sadly they aren't in the NYRB edition, making it even more disappointing. My new plan is to drop the P&V translation (at least partly because of the ultra long paragraphs), to keep alternating Guerney and Reavey translations, chapter by chapter, and just skim the Rayfield translation while taking in Chagall's illustrations. When I get to Book Two, Guerney drops out of the race, and at that point I will alternate Reavey and Rayfield.
* The next major exhibition appears to be one on Marisol, which I have been anticipating since they received a huge donation from her estate. Interestingly it hits Montreal first in the late fall and won't be in Buffalo until mid 2024. I haven't been back to Montreal in some time, so I might well catch it there. Anyway, I see that Milwaukee has a pretty interesting exhibition on the Ashcan School, but it closes in mid Feb.; I probably can't make that. I am moderately likely to order the catalogue though. More surprisingly, the DIA has what should be a blockbuster Van Gogh show but hasn't publicized it at all. (Though I guess I don't subscribe to Art in America so who knows how much advertising they did.) This closes on Jan. 22! I do wish I had checked their website more frequently and knew about this before I cut up my PR card, as I think I would have made a special trip to Detroit. I'm sure it wasn't mentioned the last time I looked and the show itself only runs for 3 months or so! The catalogue is definitely a bit more expensive than I would like, especially as they won't ship to Canada, so I'd have to wait quite a while to get it into my hot hands. So the whole thing just feels kind of aggravating. I suspect I'll wait to see if the price drops after the show closes and get it then perhaps ultimately donating it to the AGO library. Of course, I burned myself pretty badly with that approach with the Alex Janvier catalogue. Perhaps the difference being there is just so much more general interest in Van Gogh.
** I've owned Reuss's Horace Afoot for many, many years, along with his second novel Henry of Atlantic City, but am finally cracking it open. I'll definitely want to write more on Horace Afoot as I get deeper into it. At any rate, I only recently learned that Reuss published several more novels. Most can be tracked down in local libraries, but, not surprisingly, it gets harder and harder to find the works of midlist authors at the library, and he may not even quite rise to that level. I've heard him compared to Walker Percy and that seems apt, though sadly/shamefully I haven't read any Percy (and actually purged him from my bookshelves in preparation for a move years ago!). The main difference is that Percy was writing at a time when libraries were still buying all the midlist authors, and he seems pretty well lodged in the "long tail" of literature. I will definitely try to read at least The Moviegoer in 2023. Whenever I get around to Henry of Atlantic City, this year or next, I'll slip in Percy's The Last Gentleman. In terms of the rest of Reuss, I think I'll skip The Wasties, as I am getting flashbacks of Beckett's Three Novels from the description. I'll probably read A Geography of Secrets some day, though it isn't super high on my agenda. I had to order a copy of Maisie at 8000 Feet from Powell's, as no library nearby has a copy. However, I was fairly restrained and only ordered a copy of Poe's Poetry and Tales (LOA) to save a bit on shipping (out of the thousands of new and used books at Powell's). I probably don't even want to see if they had any used Charles Simic books. And of course, the minute I thought that, I had to go see, and indeed one of the only used books they have is Jackstraws, which is essentially the only collection missing from my shelves between The World Doesn't End (1986) and The Monster Loves His Labyrinth (2008). I'll think it over for a bit, but I'll probably cave, which is exactly why my bookcases are always so full...
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