Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it?
Monday, November 17, 2008
God, the audience
A recitation on God that I hadn't heard before, from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson:
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Another Ketchup - Part Two
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose - I've always been a sucker for these kinds of books that mimic survey courses. This one is particularly good, helped along by the fact that Prose is a top-notch fiction writer. Her chapter on Chekov alone is worth the price of admission (though I must admit that I borrowed this one from the library).
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson - Awful title, decent book. I fell in love with Atkinson's previous novel, One Good Turn and then went after her earlier Case Histories which I enjoyed, but not quite as much. WWTBGN? falls into that same "not quite as much" category. All three feature the same retired detective, Jackson Brodie, finding himself wrapped up in someone else's problems. In this one, the setup seemed to take forever (well over a hundred pages) and was only saved by the fact that Atkinson captured the voice and mindset of a quirky, sixteen-year old girl perfectly.
The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton - I don't buy many books strictly on the advice of cover blurbs, but this one had a blurb from David Sedaris saying that he howled with laughter. I didn't howl, but it was amusing and enough of a plot to keep it interesting. It felt like Flannery O'Connor-lite.
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson - This is one of the best books I've read in the last couple of years. A beautiful style (and I guess some of the credit has to go to the translator, Anne Born) and a deceptively simple story of a man who moves to the country to find isolation for the remainder of his life. The novel manages to pull in a story of familial love, betrayal, honor and a bit of WW II intrigue.
How Fiction Works by James Wood - This book almost feels controversial now that I've read so many differing opinions on it. I fall into the camp that appreciates the perceptive insights that Wood contributes. I don't find him nearly as pedantic as some of the reviewers--he tends to affect a lofty diction, but that's just his style. Plus, he's English. I did notice that many of the examples of literature that Wood cites are the same ones that he's cited in other essays (some of the same scenes were used to illustrate points in essays from The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self). Not that there's anything wrong with that. Whether you agree with Wood's championing of "realistic" fiction or not, I think the book is worth the read. His explanation of the "free indirect style" is reason enough.
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson - Awful title, decent book. I fell in love with Atkinson's previous novel, One Good Turn and then went after her earlier Case Histories which I enjoyed, but not quite as much. WWTBGN? falls into that same "not quite as much" category. All three feature the same retired detective, Jackson Brodie, finding himself wrapped up in someone else's problems. In this one, the setup seemed to take forever (well over a hundred pages) and was only saved by the fact that Atkinson captured the voice and mindset of a quirky, sixteen-year old girl perfectly.
The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton - I don't buy many books strictly on the advice of cover blurbs, but this one had a blurb from David Sedaris saying that he howled with laughter. I didn't howl, but it was amusing and enough of a plot to keep it interesting. It felt like Flannery O'Connor-lite.
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson - This is one of the best books I've read in the last couple of years. A beautiful style (and I guess some of the credit has to go to the translator, Anne Born) and a deceptively simple story of a man who moves to the country to find isolation for the remainder of his life. The novel manages to pull in a story of familial love, betrayal, honor and a bit of WW II intrigue.
How Fiction Works by James Wood - This book almost feels controversial now that I've read so many differing opinions on it. I fall into the camp that appreciates the perceptive insights that Wood contributes. I don't find him nearly as pedantic as some of the reviewers--he tends to affect a lofty diction, but that's just his style. Plus, he's English. I did notice that many of the examples of literature that Wood cites are the same ones that he's cited in other essays (some of the same scenes were used to illustrate points in essays from The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self). Not that there's anything wrong with that. Whether you agree with Wood's championing of "realistic" fiction or not, I think the book is worth the read. His explanation of the "free indirect style" is reason enough.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
It's been over a month, but I have to mention the fantastic Nick Cave show at the 930 Club in D.C. Very likely the loudest show I've ever attended, they played a lot of material from the latest album which lent itself to a high energy show. Cave himself was mesmerizing. José mentioned something about what the two drummers were doing, but I couldn't take my eyes off of Nick Cave the entire time. He was like this shamanistic evangelist, wheeling across the stage on those impossibly long legs and gesturing to the crowd almost constantly. He even took a moment to autograph a book someone passed up to him.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Another Catch-Up
Again, I've been neglecting the roundup of books. So much so that I think I'll have to break this "Catch-up" into multiple parts. Here goes part number one:
The Book Against God by James Wood - After reading a chunk of Wood's essays, I decided to check out his novel. Thomas Bunting is working on his Ph.D. but spends most of his time jotting notes in his "Book Against God" and lamenting his relationships with his wife and his father, a small town priest. As one would expect, Wood's style is lyrical and humorous and is what makes the book worth reading--otherwise it's a standard "my life is falling apart, existential crisis" novel.
The Sea by John Banville - Elegiac is the word most often used to describe this short but dense novel and that's the first that came to mind for me when attempting to describe it. I'm not sure if anyone writing in English today writes a more beautiful sentence than Banville. Sometimes it's almost too much, like a whole dinner of incredibly rich Alfredo sauce. Still, beautiful with the great little twist at the end.
Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas - I picked this up because I read Sarvas' blog, The Elegant Variation. While I think that the review in the NYTBR was unnecessarily nasty, there were several points made that I have to agree with. Most of the "comedy" scenes played like bad television slapstick (the ball-busting exercise bike ride, the peeing out the window onto someone's head scene) and the humor in general just didn't work for me. Almost all of the character's ploys (Harry goes way out of his way to help a downtrodden waitress in order to impress her coworker) felt like they were contrived solely to advance the plot of the novel, not because they fit with the character's motivation. I wanted to like this one, because I do enjoy Sarvas' blog, but it never took hold with me.
That's it for now. I'll get to the rest later. Today? I don't know--that's kind of stretching it.
The Book Against God by James Wood - After reading a chunk of Wood's essays, I decided to check out his novel. Thomas Bunting is working on his Ph.D. but spends most of his time jotting notes in his "Book Against God" and lamenting his relationships with his wife and his father, a small town priest. As one would expect, Wood's style is lyrical and humorous and is what makes the book worth reading--otherwise it's a standard "my life is falling apart, existential crisis" novel.
The Sea by John Banville - Elegiac is the word most often used to describe this short but dense novel and that's the first that came to mind for me when attempting to describe it. I'm not sure if anyone writing in English today writes a more beautiful sentence than Banville. Sometimes it's almost too much, like a whole dinner of incredibly rich Alfredo sauce. Still, beautiful with the great little twist at the end.
Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas - I picked this up because I read Sarvas' blog, The Elegant Variation. While I think that the review in the NYTBR was unnecessarily nasty, there were several points made that I have to agree with. Most of the "comedy" scenes played like bad television slapstick (the ball-busting exercise bike ride, the peeing out the window onto someone's head scene) and the humor in general just didn't work for me. Almost all of the character's ploys (Harry goes way out of his way to help a downtrodden waitress in order to impress her coworker) felt like they were contrived solely to advance the plot of the novel, not because they fit with the character's motivation. I wanted to like this one, because I do enjoy Sarvas' blog, but it never took hold with me.
That's it for now. I'll get to the rest later. Today? I don't know--that's kind of stretching it.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
New David Byrne and Brian Eno
I woke up this morning to an email alert from the David Byrne and Brian Eno website that their new album was ready for streaming and downloading. I clicked on the link, popped on the headphones and "Home" was already playing through them. It was a beautiful thing. I love it. Check it out.
Monday, August 11, 2008
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
I almost gave up on this book. After reading the initial section—made up of the journal entries of a precocious and at times dislikable young man recounting his initiation into a group of Mexico City poets—I was nearly ready to abandon the novel. The early chapters of the bulky middle section didn't help.
That middle section is told with a variety of voices—faux interviews, really. The name of the speaker, the place and date of the interview precede each interlude. Some go on for pages and some are just a paragraph. Some of the speakers are characters we've met in the first section, while others are new characters, but all of them have had some contact with our heroes, the leading poets of the visceral realist group, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano. They leave Mexico City on a trek to find the original visceral realist poet, a woman who disappeared into the Sonora Desert in the 1920s, Cesarea Tinajero. When some of these interviews became bogged down with lists of obscure Latin American writers and obsessions over defunct (or entirely fictional) Mexican publications, I took a break from The Savage Detectives and read James Wood's How Fiction Works (more on that later perhaps?).
When I returned to the novel, I found myself entranced by the numerous voices that comprise the middle section. Characters began to distinguish themselves. Some were one-timers, others returned repeatedly throughout. I was captivated by Quim Font, the father of two visceral realist daughters who ends up in an asylum, by the Austrian skinhead who befriends Ulises in Israel, the female bodybuilder who lets a room to Arturo in Barcelona. Through this panoply of character portrayals, we follow the two poets across continents by the people they come in contact with. In many ways, we develop a much better picture of the numerous characters than we ever do of the two poets. Bolaño's dense pages of first person narratives, in a variety of first persons, demonstrate his genius for collecting the voices of Latin American and Spanish characters that give an intriguing portrait of an entire generation of artists, writers and scenesters.
That middle section is told with a variety of voices—faux interviews, really. The name of the speaker, the place and date of the interview precede each interlude. Some go on for pages and some are just a paragraph. Some of the speakers are characters we've met in the first section, while others are new characters, but all of them have had some contact with our heroes, the leading poets of the visceral realist group, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano. They leave Mexico City on a trek to find the original visceral realist poet, a woman who disappeared into the Sonora Desert in the 1920s, Cesarea Tinajero. When some of these interviews became bogged down with lists of obscure Latin American writers and obsessions over defunct (or entirely fictional) Mexican publications, I took a break from The Savage Detectives and read James Wood's How Fiction Works (more on that later perhaps?).
When I returned to the novel, I found myself entranced by the numerous voices that comprise the middle section. Characters began to distinguish themselves. Some were one-timers, others returned repeatedly throughout. I was captivated by Quim Font, the father of two visceral realist daughters who ends up in an asylum, by the Austrian skinhead who befriends Ulises in Israel, the female bodybuilder who lets a room to Arturo in Barcelona. Through this panoply of character portrayals, we follow the two poets across continents by the people they come in contact with. In many ways, we develop a much better picture of the numerous characters than we ever do of the two poets. Bolaño's dense pages of first person narratives, in a variety of first persons, demonstrate his genius for collecting the voices of Latin American and Spanish characters that give an intriguing portrait of an entire generation of artists, writers and scenesters.
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