One of my best years yet, I read nearly 50 books in 2009.
More than a few of 2009’s books, like Wolf Hall, The Children’s Book and Little, Big, felt like complete literary immersions. Experiences I was very sad to have end, even when they weighed in at 600+ pages. And some (vampires, I’m looking at you) were not so much. I’m also happy that I was able to get to a few biographies–something I always intend, but rarely get around to reading.
Hurrah for 2009. Onward Twenty Ten.
A new website takes on logging some of literature’s most memorable opening lines.
A few of my favorites:
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I am a sick man…I am a wicked man. An unattractive man, I think my liver hurts.
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You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax.
(Incidentally, I haven’t started reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler–something I intend to rectify over the holidays.)
So, what’s one of your favorite opening sentences?
In the age-old struggle, as old as blogs themselves, I aim to post more regularly here. I give you my thoughts on a recent read:
Stumbling into a world of magic he had always hoped existed, high school senior Quentin still can’t seem to shake the depressive malaise that’s dogging him. Even after graduating from Brakebills college of magic, he’s no less content. And when partying, drugs, booze and a threesome don’t satisfy either, our hero spearheads a quest to the magical land of Fillory, a place he thought only existed in his favorite fantasy book series. He, his friends and his very angry girlfriend set out, only to get pulled into a power struggle they don’t quite grasp. And frankly, neither do I.
I slogged through the meandering, plotless school episodes because they were occasionally witty and because I hoped for a narrative payoff. But while Grossman devotes pages to college tropes of debauchery, when he writes of Fillory he sloppily rushes, and the book feels even more plotless than Quentin’s college experiences. At the same time, Grossman begins trying to imbue everything with a significance that seems misplaced. As Quentin and his friends are slugging it out with The Beast in order to restore Fillory to rightful kingship, they first berate the old Fillory god, an Aslan-figure, about why he didn’t help them or stop The Beast from gaining such power. But what feels like the characters’ search for information morphs into a tirade about why magic hasn’t made them happy, then shifts into a pseudo-interrogation of God about the existence of suffering. It feels forced from characters whom, up to this point, have shown little inclination for metaphysical quandaries.
The battle with The Beast ends with tragic consequences, and Quentin is once again back in New York, unhappily aimless, without his friends and having abandoned magic and any sort of engagement with the world beyond alcohol and porn. Blending the magic universes of Harry Potter and Narnia with the idea that magic never made anybody happy, Grossman could have made an interesting point. Instead, the point rings hollow when Grossman closes the novel with Quentin stepping out of his office skyscraper window to fly off with his buddies for another quest.
Kudos to all my friends who are working each month to put together this e-zine. Check it out!
I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading, but not as much writing about it. Recently, though, I finished a book that offered some food for thought, so I thought I’d repost my review of it from goodreads.com:
A story of classic gothic suspense, complete with creepy twins, a burnt house and incestuous love, à la Henry James, Daphne du Maurier and Charlotte Bronte. Not just a pastiche of gothic devices though, Diane Setterfield crafts an original story, one that’s compelling and enjoyable in its own right. I haven’t enjoyed another book so much in some time. (Though I would have wished for darker, rainier, chillier evenings to accompany it.) But I do find myself wondering whether it “meant” something.
As I read, I was reminded of Richard Kearney’s On Stories, where he examines whether history is more ethical than story and to what extent truth and fiction can and should intersect. Similarly, at the beginning of the novel Vida Winter explains to her soon-to-be biographer, Margaret Lea, why she has never given anyone a true account of her biography:
My gripe is not with lovers of the truth, but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed . . . What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.
Given the absoluteness of this claim and Ms. Winter’s own life spent devoted to evading and obscuring her past, I expected the author to address this truth-fiction conundrum. But while the concepts of “storytelling and honesty” do figure prominently, the novel seems to champion two very distinct and ultimately incompatible notions, with the greater part of the story spent celebrating the anodynic comfort of fiction even as the entire plot moves towards the superiority of the “true story.”
Setterfield’s treatment of both Ms. Winter’s story as dictated to Margaret—the story within the story and the bulk of the novel’s length—is sumptuous, compelling and fascinating. Margaret’s own fascination with Ms. Winter’s story testifies to this, as Setterfield celebrates the act of storytelling and the story’s ability to consume the listener. And when it becomes apparent that Ms. Winter’s is not telling the whole truth, there is no repercussion or condemnation. Rather, this evasion sets up the story’s secondary arc of suspense as Margaret must herself unravel the “true story.”
In fact, Ms. Winter’s story is not the only history that needs to be retold as true. In the frame story, Margaret also learns her own history about her twin’s death and how it affected her parents, and Aurelius, friend to Margaret and whose own history is tied to Ms. Winter’s, is also on a quest to uncover his orphan past.
It seems then, that Setterfield has it both ways. By savoring and emphasizing Ms. Winter’s fascinating but ultimately false stories she praises the consoling refuge of story. But this is then undercut when each narrative thread ends in its respective “true story.” As if to reinforce the point, Margaret tells Aurelius at the novel’s end that her mother, who intentionally kept Margaret’s twin a secret, “thinks a weightless story is better than one that’s too heavy.” The implication, of course, is that she and Aurelius know better. So in the end, a conundrum: truth wins out, but the best parts of the novel are when the narrative lies.
Yesterday, Mar. 25, was Novalis’ death date, a German Romantic philosopher whose thought I stumbled upon while researching my thesis on George MacDonald.
My love for Novalis’ thought is similar to my love of MacDonald’s. Both recognized the limits of language and rationality when it comes to expressing truth and the universal. Both rejected what they deemed to be the artificial distinctions between the natural and the supernatural and the internal and the external. “Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.” Death for both of them was nothing to be feared—it was just a portal to more life.
Last weekend I finished The Book of Dead Philosophers (Simon Critchley’s lively meditations on the significance of nearly 200 philosophers’ deaths.) and was pleased to find an entry on Novalis:
After a period of deteriorating health and having suffered a stroke, Novalis sent for his friends. On 25 March 1801 he fell asleep as Friedrich Schlegel sat beside him, listening to his brother Karl playing the piano. He never woke up.
Not mentioned in the entry is the uncanny intersection of his death with something Novalis wrote (and one of MacDonald’s favorite quotations from him):
“Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps will.”
It would seem it did.
This is it. The moment my computer widget has been counting down for about two years now—the final day of the Bush presidency and the beginning of the Obama one. (Of course, two years ago, my computer didn’t know that latter bit of information.)
Pundits and the cautionary are rightly calling attention to the fomented excitement and overblown expectations. No doubt expectations are too high. Obama is no superhero. Just a regular joe (though not “that one”).
But today, we are not only celebrating a new president, but new possibilities. It’s a chance to get away from the worrying headlines that have become part of our daily routine. Eventually, reality will settle in.
But it’s been a long time, and a hero can’t hurt. Even if its only for a day.
It would appear that 2008 was a good year for my reading list. And it’s particularly gratifying to see them all organized with thanks to goodreads.com. You, yes, you, should log your own reading.
This year afforded me the luxury of being able to read more than a few books by a single author–which was an enjoyable way to get better acquainted with reoccurring themes and concerns of a given author. In addition to continuing my love affair with A.S. Byatt, I found a few new crushes: Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith and Miriam Toews.
While reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman this evening, I underlined the following quote:
“. . . women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.” ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792
Then not three minutes later I stumbled upon this:
“The problem with women is that, historically, they don’t know their worth in the workplace. They’d prefer to be liked rather than respected. [We] shouldn’t have to choose between the two. We should be both.” ~ Judge Judy Sheinlin, 2008
Interesting, no?
