"I am dying now, but I still have many things to say." (3)
With these words, By Night in Chile begins; the entire novella is the rant, the at times fev
"I am dying now, but I still have many things to say." (3)
With these words, By Night in Chile begins; the entire novella is the rant, the at times feverish monologue, of an old man who is apparently on his deathbed (he quite literally is in bed, propped up on an elbow, while he recounts parts of his past). The old man, Father Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix, is a member of the Opus Dei, as well as a poet and literary critic. These elements, combined with the (socio-political) setting of Chile, constitute the main body of the novella, the themes which Bolaño interweaves and builds upon through the memories of his ailing and unreliable narrator.
What I particularly appreciated, aside from the many literary references (most notably to obscure Ancient Greek philosophers and Italian poets) and exposition of a literary life, was the position Bolaño takes precisely against such a life � or rather, the dangers, or seductions if you will, inherent in it. For it is tempting, once you give yourself over to a life of reading and writing, and perhaps religious devotion, to shut your eyes to the world around you � even if, and perhaps especially, if that world around you finds itself in deep political and social turmoil. To occupy yourself with the 'higher' pursuits of art and literature and knowledge (of the past) becomes an all-too-ready and easy excuse to ignore that which might � or should � call for action, for a strong stance. The novella thus become satire when Fr. Urrutia sits in his home writing poetry and reading the Greeks while Chile is bleeding around him, and criticism when Fr. Urrutia consents to collaborate with Pinochet and the rest of the junta.
"Morality has its streams from which dishonored individuals will try to spatter noble people with the mud in which they are drowning." (125)
An intense
"Morality has its streams from which dishonored individuals will try to spatter noble people with the mud in which they are drowning." (125)
An intense and, at times, rather tedious story of young love and romantic idealism, which is strengthened by several compelling letters and a strong (unexpectedly satisfying!) ending....more
"Not even the wisest reader knows the anguish of the writer who has sent a truly awful piece of writing to a magazine in order to survive. Here goes n
"Not even the wisest reader knows the anguish of the writer who has sent a truly awful piece of writing to a magazine in order to survive. Here goes nothing, I told myself, pushing that heavy envelope into the mailbox. It hit the bottom with a thunk. And that was that. Another crummy story. On the surface, it pretends to be a mirror to my soul. Although I know as well as anyone the slimy worms of compromise are wriggling in the muck at the bottom. It's a work in which the work is far from done. […] It makes me so ashamed I want to scream and run around in circles." (3)
Thus opens Osamu Dazai's The Beggar Student in this fresh new translation by Sam Bett. The story is a romp—perhaps not really a five-star story compared to his greatest works, but I'm going to give it five stars all the same, if only to encourage New Directions Publishing Corporation to commission more Dazai translations....more
"But, I tell you, if one is born and one dies! To be born, Monsignor: did you want to be born? I did not. And between one case and the other, both
"But, I tell you, if one is born and one dies! To be born, Monsignor: did you want to be born? I did not. And between one case and the other, both independent of our will, so many things happen which all of us wish had not happened and to which we resign ourselves reluctantly.
"What can I do if France can't produce any good theater and we are reduced to putting on Pirandello plays which you have to be lucky to understand
"What can I do if France can't produce any good theater and we are reduced to putting on Pirandello plays which you have to be lucky to understand and which are written in a way never to please either critics or actors or public."
Surely one of the best modern works of theater....more
"Is it—I'm not certain—possible to love someone if your first interest is the use you can make out of him? Doesn't the gainful motive, and the guilt a
"Is it—I'm not certain—possible to love someone if your first interest is the use you can make out of him? Doesn't the gainful motive, and the guilt accruing to it, halt the progression of other emotions? It can be argued that even the most decently coupled people were initially magnetized by the mutual-exploitation principle—sex, shelter, appeased ego; but still that is trivial, human: the difference between that and truly usinganother person is the difference between edible mushrooms and the kind that kill: Unspoiled Monsters." (22-23)
Only the third and final part of what is now known as Answered Prayers was published in Truman Capote's lifetime. La Côte Basque came out in Esquire magazine in 1965, and instantly turned Capote—a celebrity through the success of his writing—into a social pariah. It is not hard to see why. Capote envisioned Answered Prayers as his magnum opus—a towering chronicle in the vein, if not the spirit, of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. Unlike other great sagas, this was to be a roman-à -clef; yet the veil was hardly there, and the persons depicted, if not actually by name, knew precisely who they were. Capote's society friends were shocked, then, to find themselves and their dirty secrets so blatantly exposed. Whether or not Capote miscalculated the implosive effect that La Côte Basque would have, the full novel never materialized. There is some speculation about its existence in the first place—perhaps Capote never completed the other chapters (although some claim to have had other chapters read to them by Capote). What is left, or what was made, of the sprawling chronicle that Capote envisioned is published here as Answered Prayers (with the exception, I have since learned, of . In short, the incomplete novel, which includes two chapters prior to the one published in Esquire�Unspoiled Monsters and Kate McCloud—raises more questions than it can answer. It is a lively, living, messy work, at times endearing in its honesty. There is brilliant storytelling with some cruder attempts at shock thrown in. All in all, it is unforgettable. The story of Kate McCloud is especially great and haunting; it stands on its own among the many sub-stories told throughout Answered Prayers. I won't rate the overall work; it wasn't finished by Capote, and wasn't meant to be judged as it now stands....more
"If there is one thing rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an
"If there is one thing rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an absolute onion, it is hopeless love." (75)
I was ill and did what I always do when I'm feeling under the weather—I turned to Wodehouse. Thankfully, I still have some works left to read, even if I am slowly beginning to reach the end of the man's splendiferous oeuvre. The Adventures of Sally is an interesting novel, noticeably different in tone from much of Plum's other work. It is more serious; or, differently put, it is less light-hearted. There are real struggles here—there is heartbreak and failure, which is not all redeemed by the end of the novel. An adjective actually came to mind that I don't think has ever suggested itself before while reading Wodehouse: bleak. Perhaps it was my own state of illness that picked up on and amplified this. All the same, there were good parts to the novel, and I enjoyed it in end.
"'I've missed you dreadfully,' she said, and felt the words inadequate as she uttered them. 'What ho!' said Ginger, also internally condemning the poverty of speech as a vehicle for thought." (257)
"Would I were lying stretched out in my comfortable bed, Mr. Barrell, just wasting slowly, painlessly away, keeping up my strength with arrowroot a
"Would I were lying stretched out in my comfortable bed, Mr. Barrell, just wasting slowly, painlessly away, keeping up my strength with arrowroot and calves-foot jelly, till in the end you wouldn't see me under the blankets any more than a board. [...] Oh no coughing or spitting or bleeding or vomiting, just drifting gently down into a higher life, and remembering...all the silly unhappiness...as though…it had never happened."
"Even at long range it is easy to discern the difference between a man with an overwrought soul and one who is simply wishing that he had avoided the
"Even at long range it is easy to discern the difference between a man with an overwrought soul and one who is simply wishing that he had avoided the lobster newburg at lunch." (181)
I had a deadline for a grant proposal earlier this week—stressful stuff—so I did what one does. I turned to Wodehouse. Ice in the Bedroom is not among the very shiniest of the P. G. W. goods, but it delivered. I laughed out loud three times; that'll be three stars....more
"For me, writing is like it was in my childhood, something secret and prohibited, shameful, something one sneaks into a corner to do when no one else
"For me, writing is like it was in my childhood, something secret and prohibited, shameful, something one sneaks into a corner to do when no one else is watching." (255)
Childhood, Youth, and Dependency are known collectively as The Copenhagen Trilogy. The trilogy is Tove Ditlevsen's fictional autobiography, which may seem like a contradiction in terms—but one might argue that no autobiography is entirely nonfictional anyway. The very act of remembering means coloring the past with the knowledge of the present, adding to and subtracting from it, as we are unable ever to fully access or reconstitute what happened (we are no longer there). Be that as it may, Ditlevsen's work is unique—it reads like fiction, but, as far as I can tell, the major events are all faithfully described. Perhaps the most 'fictional' of the three is Youth; this makes sense, given that Ditlevsen begins her story when she is five years old. As the story progresses, it becomes less poetic (moving out of youth) and a more straightforwardly narrated, but still well-written, recounting of events. The first and last parts�Youth> and Dependency—are the best.
The trilogy is brutally honest, melancholy and sad—sometimes even tough to read. I don't want to give anything away about the story, because I think that being shocked at what happens (I know I was several times) is part of what makes it compelling. Just in case you'd still like to read it, reader....more
"Before a house massive and severe as a canon of the Middle Ages, the garden really must extent like the opened pages of a beautiful illuminated antip
"Before a house massive and severe as a canon of the Middle Ages, the garden really must extent like the opened pages of a beautiful illuminated antiphony. It must dare over five lines to propose a precise music. Until now, from my poor disoriented terrace only scattered notes have emanated, where the melody only makes itself known by the caprice of indifferent and distracted chance. Ah, come, dear Mademoiselle, lend my flowers some ideas." (52)
Displaced and wandering poet Rainer Maria Rilke finally found a place to settle down in July 1921, when he moved into the chateau of Muzot, a thirteenth-century medieval tower surrounded by vineyards above the town of Sierre in the Canton Valais, Switzerland. Here, in the final years of his life, he would complete the Duino Elegies and compose the Sonnets to Orpheus. The Letters around a Garden include twenty-two letters that were written from Muzot and the sanatorium at Val-Mont in a one-sided exchange from 1924 to 1926 between Rilke (whose letters alone we read) with a young aristocratic Swiss woman named Antoinette de Bonstetten—a passionate horticulturist to whom Rilke turned for advice regarding the design and upkeep of the Muzot rose garden (whose letters are lost).
"We need art (and still!) or all the resources and expectations of childhood, and the constant contribution of so many things to support ourselves, alone. A willing house; a garden innocent and giving; the curve of birds in the air; the winds, the rains, memories and the calm of a starry firmament stretching to the infinite: all this just so a human being can settle with his heart!" (19)
"I just have my own standards and in my funny little way I try to live up to them." (23)
Having read—devoured—all of J. D. Salinger's published fiction
"I just have my own standards and in my funny little way I try to live up to them." (23)
Having read—devoured—all of J. D. Salinger's published fiction a long time ago, I really don't know why it took me so long to discover this collection of three early Salinger stories. It's a somewhat strange publication with a long and rather unsavory history. Basically, this company—the Devault-Graves Agency—shook the literary world by publishing the first legitimate collection of Salinger stories in over 50 years, after they discovered that three of Salinger's stories had fallen into the public domain (apparently unbeknownst to the Salinger estate). They proceeded to copyright the collection as a unique anthology, thus cementing their rights over Three Early Stories and preventing others from publishing the three stories together. The foreign rights question also became messy, with the Devault-Graves Agency filing a suit against the Salinger Trust for allegedly interfering with the book's foreign marketing. The suit was later dropped, but became a significant case in international copyright law. Anyway, the situation now—as far as I can tell—is that there is still only this Devault-Graves edition of Salinger's early stories, in a rather flimsy, printed-on-demand-looking-and-feeling, overpriced volume, which includes some original illustrations (but no indication by whom these were drawn).
The publication history of the stories, then, is almost as enigmatic as the stories themselves. As the title suggests, there are three:
1. The Young Folks (Salinger's first published work, written in 1939 and first appearing in Story Magazine in 1940) 2. Go See Eddie (first published in 1940 in The University of Kansas Review after having been rejected by Story Magazine and Esquire) 3. Once a Week Won't Kill You (first published in Story Magazine in 1944)
The two best stories are the first and last. The Young Folks takes you right into a New York cocktail party scene, where dull conversations and gestures mask deeper anxieties. Once a Week Won't Kill You is the story of a young man who is about to go off to war and tries to convince his young wife to take out his elderly but still sharp aunt to the movies once a week. The least self-sufficient story was Go See Eddie, a brother-sister tale in which a brother tries to convince his sister to get a job and to quit her affair with a married man. It sounds juicy, I know, but it feels more like a sketch or a scene from a novel than a full-fledged story—neither the background not the ending is sufficiently rounded. Be that as it may, there is enough in the story to make it interesting....more
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