Category Archives: books

books, fiction, quotes

all this phrase-making

    ” ‘Poor little place,’ he murmured with a sigh.
    She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.
    It annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she said to him, in a matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly lovely evening. And what was he groaning about, she asked, half laughing, half complaining, for she guessed what he was thinking–he would have written better books if he had not married.
    He was not complaining, he said. She knew that he did not complain. She knew that he had nothing whatever to complain of. And he seized her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it with an intensity that brought the tears to her eyes, and quickly he dropped it.”

– Virginia Woolf, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

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books, fiction, quotes

breeding living fiction exempt from all the subjugations of the page

“…During the four days away, his answering service had taken no message from either an ominous palooka or an addled Alvin Pepler. Had his landsman spent into Zuckerman’s handkerchief the last of his enraged and hate-filled adoration? Was that the end of this barrage? Or would Zuckerman’s imagination beget still other Peplers conjuring up novels out of his–novels disguising themselves as actuality itself, as nothing less than real? Zuckerman the stupendous sublimator spawning Zuckermaniacs! A book, a piece of fiction bound between two covers, breeding living fiction exempt from all the subjugations of the page, breeding fiction unwritten, unreadable, unaccountable, and uncontainable, instead of doing what Aristotle promised from art in Humanities 2 and offering moral perceptions to supply us with the knowledge of what is good or bad. Oh, if only Alvin had studied Aristotle with him at Chicago! If only he could understand that it is the writers who are supposed to move the readers to pity and fear, not the other way around!”

– Philip Roth, “Look Homeward, Angel,” Zuckerman Unbound, Zuckerman Unbound: A Trilogy and Epilogue 1979-1985, New York: The Library of America (2007): 245.

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books

a bad dream from the grandparental past

“To read “The Man Who Loved Children” would be an especially frivolous use of your time, since, even by novelistic standards, it’s about nothing of world-historical consequence. It’s about a family, and a very extreme and singular family at that, and the few parts of it that aren’t about this family are the least compelling parts. The novel is also rather long, sometimes repetitious and undeniably slow in the middle. It requires you, moreover, to learn to read the family’s private language, a language created and imposed by the eponymous father, and though the learning curve is nowhere near as steep as with Joyce or Faulkner, you’re still basically being asked to learn a language good for absolutely nothing but enjoying this one particular book.

Even the word “enjoying”: is that the right word? Although its prose ranges from good to fabulously good — is lyrical in the true sense, every observation and description bursting with feeling, meaning, subjectivity — and although its plotting is unobtrusively masterly, the book operates at a pitch of psychological violence that makes “Revolutionary Road” look like “Everybody Loves Raymond.” And, worse yet, can never stop laughing at that violence! Who needs to read this kind of thing? […] The book intrudes on our better-regulated world like a bad dream from the grandparental past. Its idea of a happy ending is like no other novel’s, and probably not at all like yours.

And then there’s your e-mail: shouldn’t you be dealing with your e-mail?”

– Jonathan Franzen in the NYT on Christina Stead’s 1940 novel, The Man Who Loved Children.

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books, quotes

the poets had drunk too much

“The guest list had chiefly comprised their most prestigious writers in the main categories, a ploy which had added to the general atmosphere of inadvertence and fractionized unease: the poets had drunk too much and had become lachrymose or amorous as their natures dictated; the novelists had herded together in a corner like recalcitrant dogs commanded not to bite; the academics, ignoring their hosts and fellow guests, had argued volubly among themselves…
[…]
It had almost been a relief when a formidable female novelist, vigorously corseted in a florid cretonne two-piece which made her look like a walking sofa, had borne him off to pull out a crumple of parking tickets from her voluminous handbag and angrily demand what he was proposing to do about them.”

– P.D. James, Devices and Desires

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books, fiction

I am pleased to report that

I finished reading MOBY-DICK yesterday, after twelve years of trying. Here are my two favorite parts. First, an warning from Ishmael against hiring dreamy young philosophers for lookouts:

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed, and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer.
(Chapter 35: The Mast-Head)

And, of course, this:

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though there be many who have tried it.
(Chapter 104: The Fossil Whale)

I don’t know how I have survived this long without having the ending spoiled for me. But I’m glad I have. It was a wonderful surprise.

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books, poetry

albatross? albatross.

Book Thing hoard #2, from the Sunday expedition:

1) The Elements of Style
2)Literary Criticism, Plato to Dryden, ed. Allan H. Gilbert
3) The Vicar of Wakefield and Other Writings, Oliver Goldsmith (a hotbed* of prurient and/or offensive chapter subheadings. Looks really trashy.)
4) Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, by Frederick Nims
5) A back issue of Parabola: The Magazine Of Myth and Tradition

This weekend, I revised the same poem twice. This isn’t a lot of revision, by anyone’s standards, but each version was so different that it felt really exhausting. We (Les Poets) then held a pre-workshop workshop. Only a few folks came, so we had a lot of time for each poem. I got excellent comments. I am going to have to revise the entire thing again.

In other news, I am trying to gauge the enthusiasm of the cohort to have some kind of reading-the-RIME-OF-THE-ANCIENT-MARINER-aloud party, and people have been a little lukewarm. I guess it’s not the greatest poem ever written, but I really want to read it aloud. I believe that the last time I did this was senior year of high school, with the poetry/philosophy group I had with T, M, M, A, D, W, and others.

* in TA orientation, someone referred to Garland Hall, a central admin building, as a “hotbed of activity,” and it sounded so potentially lascivious.

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Baltimore, books

one potato, two potato

This morning, I walked with C2 to The Book Thing. We were there at nine, as if it was a farmers’ market and the freshest-baked and locally grown books would be all gone by 10 AM.

This was my first visit to Baltimore’s Charles Village book-recycler, and, oh, oh, oh, was it gorgeous. This alone may be enough to get my parents to come visit. Free books, guys. Free. Although I don’t know how you’re going to get them back to LA…but bring a truck!

This is what I came away with: a restrained count of seven items.

1) Art & Error: Modern Textual Editing (ed. Ronald Gottesman and Scott Bennett)

2) A Reclam edition of the Nibelungenlied

3) A Mathematician’s Apology, by G.H. Hardy with a foreword by C.P. Snow

4) The Selected Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson – C2 made me get this. It remembered me that I haven’t read any RLS since I was a kid, when I tore through KIDNAPPED and TREASURE ISLAND and DR. JEKYLL in a very short period of time. I think we read KIDNAPPED for a 4th-grade lit unit and we had to make a movie poster for it. That was fun. I have always enjoyed imitating advertising.

5) Madrigal’s Magic Key to French (having passed my language exam, I am inspired to review the finer points* of grammar)

6) Das erste Jahr, second edition, Margaret Keidel Bluske and Elizabeth Keidel Walther

7) America The Beautiful, in the words of Walt Whitman – an art edition of 7 of Whitman’s poems with huge photographs of famous US national parks and scenic sites accompanying the poetry. One of them is next to a characteristically Arizonan rock formation, and we agreed that Whitman had probably never been there. It’s a little silly.

I am not going to keep or read them all – some will be wending their way to unsuspecting recipients. Beware. Beware!

* Why? Why the “finer” points? Why?

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books

a tax dodge set up by some dentists

There is a new Thomas Pynchon novel coming out August 4th, titled Inherent Vice.

From the Penguin synopsis (via the Examiner):
…he [main character] soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists.

I have just enrolled in my student dental insurance, so this seems very appropriate.

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