Vigil by George Saunders

 

Disappointed (so far) in this new novel - using the tropes of LINCOLN IN THE BARDO without any of the emotional zing (so far).

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allen Poe

 

Spell-binding. Was prompted to re-read this after reading an old journal entry of mine from freshman year of college, where, out of the blue, I read this for the first time - don't know why, wasn't studying it in a course at the time.

Anyway, it was just as good this time around - couldn't put it down, even though I'm in the midst of reading several other books. Part adventure story, part mystical journey, partly (rather boring) history of South Pole journeys.

The ending is particularly dramatic (not that all the starvation, murder, shipwrecks that precede it are UNdramatic), with its quasi-spiritual white clouds and whitening water and giant white human figure that rises up out of the mist.

Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser by Susan Bernofsky

 

Ruth by Kate Riley

 

Strange, puzzling, powerful book, tracking a woman's interior and exterior life as part of a strict Anabaptist community in upper Michigan.

Ruth is a thinker - on the surface, a compliant (if bizarre) cult member, but underneath, in her thoughts, a poet and a puzzler and a rebel and resistor, rebellious the only place she can be, in her own mind.

The prose structure is almost all touched by the omnicscient narrator giving us Ruth's thoughts - but the narrator speaks in a much more abstract, formal, supremely-ironic tone of voice and vocabulary than does Ruth, when we actually hear her speak (which is not often).

Really liked the book - deceptively simple-looking, but the language and its levels of irony require a slow, deliberate, reading pace.

A child wa no longer a baby when he hit back. A child was no longer a baby when he knew how to use a comb. A child was no longer a baby when his mother had another child. By this last definition did Jamie and Rose Feder quit their statio, and by this last definition did Gretel Feder remain a baby her entire life. (166)

Makup allowed one to life without speaking. (216)

She had finally read Revelation, and for all the beasts, remembered best the description of a Heaven defined by the nouns it lacked: death, mourning, sorrow, tears. A modest facility in which mixed species could rest together without histrionics.

Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel

 

Great horror/thriller, existential  psychological statement on mental illness and modern British suburbs!

She reminds me of the great Iris Murdoch in her pathological obession with the cruelty of human relations - but she's much more plot-driven than Murdoch.

This one is just stunning, scary, bleakly hilarious.

The Best American Essays 2007 edited by David Foster Wallace.

 

Fascinating essay about the culture of sexualization  and the sexual revolution by Mark Greif called "Afternoon of the Sex Children."

Great analysis of the Iraq Wars.

Amazing opening essay about a man dying in an apartment fire.

Came for the Wallace imprimataur, and it's ringing true.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

 

Started out thinking I would hate this, now suddenly charmed.

Couldn’t quite finish. quite funny at times, but too travelogue for my tastes. stylish melancholic nostalgic locales for an aging gay man to pity himself in. 

Learning to Talk: Stories by Hilary Mantel

 

Charlie Martz and Other Stories: The Unpublished Stories by Elmore Leonard

 

Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samantha Schweblin

 

Saw this review in the WPost (probably). Strange, eerie, pathologically deep examinations of characters and plotlines that sometimes feels like they're straight outa Stephen King fiction. 

Wasn't digging it, but just read and liked her long story ("The Woman from Atlántida") about two young sisters "rescuing" an alcoholic reclusive poet living in the beach resort town they're visiting.

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt

Good but the usual Greenblatt treatment - take a subject about whom almost nothing is factually known, and build out the social/intellectual/historical era around the black hole of the character's existence, and posit how he must have participated.

Marlowe is regarded as being Shakespeare's progenitor with his plays TAMBURLAINE, DR. FAUSTUS, and THE JEW OF MALTA. He was the first playwright to succesfully use blank verse in his works, and though Shakespeare surpassed Marlowe by a stunning margin, it's possible to see how Marlowe had to come first.

Watched SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE again last night, in which Kit Marlowe features.

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford

 

I remember as a child reading a young person's biography of Beethoven - or at least reading the first chapters, where a six year old Ludwig races home through the village streets humming the melody of a composition he's going to give to his mother at her nameday celebration.

This biography is good if stuffed with cultural history of Bonn and Vienna, the other German states and Europe at the end of the 18th century. Lots going on. Meanwhile, Beehoven, preternatually gifted, sullen, isolated, productive, does exactly what he needs to do.

From a junior Mozart/Hayden imitator, he creates incredible music that builds on their example, and then towers over it.

The Angel of Rome and Other Stories by Jess Walter

 

Good if minor stuff. Seems like he's imitating Richard Russo sometimes though, but without Russo's snarky undertones.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

 

I'm late to this party, but find the novel clarifyingly beautiful...

... if long and somewhat tediously overwritten. I watched the 2007 BBC series with Ruth Wilson instead. Quite good!

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

 

Finally got around to this. Found it tedious and overstuffed with internal psychologizing.