What to make of the "Philip Roth" section of Halliday's Asymmetry

Finished reading the first section, Folly, in Lisa Halliday's debut novel, Asymmetry, and though I enjoyed reading this section or long story or short novel I feel at the end just as I did at the outset: I'm interested in a gossipy way, about which I feel somewhat ashamed but there it is, in learning about the private life of the great author Philip Roth. But if it weren't for the Roth connection, what's there to say about these 120 or so pp of Halliday's novel? At the end, the Roth character, Ezra Blazer, is in a hospital bed having suffered though one of his many ailments and maladies, and the young woman assistant book editor and "Gryphon" press (apparently, FSG?) is by his side, tending to his various needs. We see at the end of this section pretty much what we knew from the outset: He's much too old for her, all of his cultural references are way out of her sphere (though she gamely tries to enjoy his music - and makes no attempt to bring her taste in music or reading to his attention - and though she spends a lot of time following the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry - far too much time for even this reader), he needs a nurse or caretaker more than he needs a nubile girlfriend. So what's she doing w/ him, after all? We learn virtually nothing about her life: little about her family, nothing about her friends. She gives a little nod of agreement when "Ezra" asks what she does w/ all her spare time and posits that maybe she's trying to write. So yes like about 99.9 percent of the editorial assistants in NYC she's an aspiring writer, and "Ezra" has bestowed on her some fecund material for her first novel (which we're reading), but in my view it doesn't amount to much more than ginned up Page 6 or US Weekly material (Writers: They're just like us!). Yet I'm withholding judgement on the novel as a whole; apparently the 2nd section is an entirely new narrative, and, from the title of the work, I'm guessing that the two narratives are part of a grander design and not 2 long stories bound together in a volume.

Portrait of the artist as Philip Roth - in Lisa Halliday's novel

Reading the Lisa Halliday debut novel, Asymmetry, for one reason: A unique chance for an intimate look at the private life of one of the greatest living American writers, Philip Roth. OK, this is a novel and not a memoir (and a second half of then novel, which I haven't read yet, apparently goes off on a whole separate plot course), and the male characters is named Ezra Blazer, but nobody, least of all Halliday, is claiming that Ezra is not Roth incarnate (despite the ludicrous "this is a work of fiction" disclaimer from the publisher). Even Roth has copped to it, and why not? He comes off quite well here: Famous, witty, brilliant, widely read, but also caring, generous, loving, tender - a portrait of the artist as a nice old man. To her credit, LH writes a smooth prose, easy to follow, fast-moving, witty (esp when quoting "Ezra" of course), trenchant, an easy and pleasant read. And she includes just enough quoted passages, name checks, bits of gossip, and topical references to keep the writing fresh. The plot such as it is involves Ezra meeting "Alice" by chance (actually, by act of will - he sets next to her on a bench and inquires as to what she's reading - he, by the way, is clearly recognized and noticed by passers by, which I take as quite accurate) and they quickly begin a relationship of mutual benefit: Roth has in Alice a young (half is age of younger!), attractive, sexually compliant, yet not clingy or hung up or threatening in any way; she has in him a celebrity, a way into the literary world (she has a low-level job in publishing, like millions of others of her gen.), a generous benefactor (he lavishes her w/ gifts and $100 bills and with access to a way of life far beyond her means), a father figure (her father, whom we don't meet, is apparently a right-wing, paranoid bigot), and a tutor: Ezra introduces her to lots of works she could or should be reading (the Pygmalion myth), so we get a lot of name checks, more than enough to satisfy our own ego (yes, I recognize that quote, have read that author, etc.) as someone much more in the literary know than Alice (but obviously, here's the joke, no more in the know than the author). And of course he also provides her - subsequently - with the subject for a novel whose success has largely been fueled by the selfsame celebrity culture that Ezra apparently eschews and avoids (like Roth, btw). The problem w/ Asymmetry, to this point (about 1/4 in) is that Alice is a complete cypher: We know virtually nothing about her - her background, her private life, her goals and ambitions, her anxieties, her experiences - aside from what we see of her via her assignations with and visits to Ezra. Ultimately, the success of this novel as a work of art will depend on her ability to develop her central character as someone seen not only through the light cast by another but in her own right (or light).

Why it took Murnane a lifetime to begin to publish his fiction

Having finished reading Gerald Murnane's 1987 collection, Landscape with Landscape, in which the final story, Landscape with Artist, recounts the narrator's (author's?) visits to an artist community in the outskirts of Melbourne, first ca 1960 when he was a relatively young aspiring author extremely awkward with women and drinking to the point of alcohol poisoning and later, ca 1980, as a seemingly more mature man, still an unpublished writer, but far deeper into his obsessions, so much so that he has left his wife and family and moved to a rented (or bestowed) room in the artistic community, which he sees as part of a predetermined migratory pattern in his life. He still drinks too much and is almost criminally neglectful of his 12-year-old son whom he brings w/ him to one of the all-night parties at an artist's house. In short, anyone who'd met Murnane ca 1960 - or 1980 - would believe he was an alcoholic w/ a number of mental illnesses, notably OCD and some form of autism, that his devotion to his writing, while incontrovertible, is more of an obsession than a calling and that it would seem obvious that he would never complete a work of fiction much less publish any significant writing - and yet - here we are reading his collection of stories (and more works were to follow, to the point where he is today, in his 80s, attracting an international following. So what gives? Is the obsessing behavior of his narrator all just part of the story? From what we know based on a recent mag profile, no - the obsessions are really Murnane's. So perhaps it has taken a near lifetime of work for Murnane to be able to capture his ideas, many of them odd, and his "lost time," much of which was wasted in drink and clouded by sexual obsessions and by Catholic guilt - with the result being a # of unusual late-life works of fiction (and perhaps essays as well). As noted yesterday, his works are unconventional in content though not in form; in fact, all of the writers he mentions in this collection - and there aren't many, he seems to have lived and worked in isolation from all literary movements and academic refuges - are fairly conventional in re their writing styles (if not subject matter): AE Housman, Dylan Thomas, (a prodigious drinker), even Jack Kerouac, a drinker and a chronicler of his life (like Murnane) but an adventurer and traveler, completely unlike Murnane, whose adventures are explorations of interior, as he would put it, "landscapes."

Overall thoughts on the short fictoin of Gerald Murnane

Nearing the end of Gerald Murnane's collection of (loosely) linked stories, Landscape with Landscape, I offer a few observations and generalizations and speculations on this unusual author: First, we note that throughout the collection of what appear to be somewhat autobiographical stories, the first-person narrator is in a lifelong struggle to find an identity as a writer. He seems to have spent the first portion of his life, 40 years or so, thinking of himself as a poet, then switches to thinking of himself as a fiction writer. He apparently writes copiously and revises extensively, in particular via marginal notes in his ever-evolving unpublished manuscript. But the switch to fiction seems to have opened a pathway - a landscape, he might call it - that he can follow, perhaps with the result being the book we are reading. He talks about seeking a new form of writing - in particular a new form of poetry (in the final story, Landscape with Artist, he says he was compiling a list of words that would form the exclusive vocabulary o his poems - no abstract works - which is good - and gives us one strange example of a brief poem, intriguing but we can see why this unknown writers who is not part of any academic or literary movement would remain unpublished). Oddly - perhaps - the stories we are reading are not particularly experimental or avant garde in form; many are, superficially at least, familiar musings on coming of age, albeit with a remarkable frankness about sexual drive and about alcoholism. The unique aspect of his work is not the style of the writing but the mind of the narrator/protagonist, who is frank to the point of oddity and who is driven by a number of obsessions, all of which tend to remove him from family and society and to lead to a life of isolation and devotion to his writing (and drinking). Notably, he has a fixation on transit schedules and on place names (an obsession he shares w/ his partial counterpart in the search for lost time, Proust) and a need to create a complex and ever-evolving counterworld, which he documents through detailed maps and extensive ledgers of race-course meets and perhaps other information. It's not that he writes about this counterworld per se - it's not like sci fi or fantasy or imaginative "through the looking glass" fiction; he writes about the person (himself) obsessed w/ establishing this counterworld (or landscape, as he would call it). The initial effect is that these at first seem to be sad stories of an outsider artist struggling to find his place in the world, or in an alternate world - some of the stories are extremely painful in that regard (especially The Battle of Acosta Nu, which involves the death of a child), but that initial effect passes as we read more deeply and our final impression is of a man, an artist, who has managed to find some kind of happiness and satisfaction in his work. He is indifferent to social norms and expectations and even to the conventions of literary publication and success, but he seems to have found solace in his own peculiar way.

The meaning of "landscape" in Gerald Murnane's fiction

To understand the work of Australian writer Gerald Murnane you have to develop some understanding of his use of what appears to be his favorite word: landscape (I'm reading his 1987 collection of 6 linked stories, Landscape with Landscape). His use of this word is so odd (as is so much of his writing) that you'd almost think it's an awkward translation from another language. But, no; rather, he's proposing a new meaning of sense of the familiar English word. He clearly does not mean landscape in the pastoral, poetic, artistic, or photographic sense; when he talks about his works creating a "landscape" or about a character - most of his characters seem to be portraits of the author in various forms and stages of development - who dwells upon a particular landscape, he seems to reference an place that he's never seen or visited and that, in fact, he makes little or no effort to conjure or describe in the manner of most "nature" writers. For ex., in the 4th story in the collection, he describes younger version of himself, aspiring to become a writer, who becomes obsessed with the poetry of Houseman (Shropshire Lad in particular, and the desire to enter into H's prototypical English landscape - although that landscape is, as he knows, a fiction that AEH created in his verse. Similarly, in the 3rd - and extremely painful - story in the collection (The Battle of Acosta Nu) the protagonist seems to live in Australia yet believes his is one of the few Australian emigrants (or their descendants) living in Paraguay yet yearning for Australia (there were in fact several attempts by Australians in the 19th C to establish a commune of sorts in remote Paraguay). The landscape for GM is always internal and inaccessible, prompted by perhaps an image in a book or magazine, a live of verse, or even just the sound of the name of a place. He is the anti-Proust; whereas MP sealed himself away to try to search for and re-created the landscapes of his youth (and later life), GM seals himself away (he writes in isolation and has few social contacts, by design) to immerse himself in a landscape that is purely of the imagination; in fact, as he notes (and has been confirmed in the GM mag profile), he has never left the Australian state of Victoria (I imagine that's similar to, say, never leaving the state of New York). A few of his stories reference an entire world, or landscape, that he has created based on his own maps and on a set of facts - many having to do w/ horse racing - that he has documented, a perfectly imagined landscape, unsullied by any touches of history or present reality. He's also the anti-Knausgaard: whereas KOK has written beautifully and perhaps obsessively about his lifelong struggle to connect with others and to express his feelings in his fiction, GM writes obsessively about his need to separate himself from others and so as to write about, to conjure, landscapes that he has never experienced. That said, he is also painfully honest about his struggles to meet women, to keep writing, and to keep himself from descending into alcoholism and despair. He bears the burden, the curse, of a great creative spirit and acuity, perseverance, and what seem to be many disorders, including what most would say are some recognizable symptoms of OCD, autism, and Asberger's syndrome.His therapy is to write.

Intriguing ending to Yiyun Li story in current New Yorker

Yiyun Li story in the current New Yorker, A Flawless Silence, is topical, in a way (it's a metoo maybe story) and part of a growing trend in American fiction of stories about first-gen successful, well-educated immigrants and their assimilation and contribution to American society and culture. That's all to the good, a necessary corrective to angry, racist, paranoid, and demagogic rhetoric that has been poisoning our lives for 2+ years now. In discussing her story, I will give away the last line, so spoiler alert here. The central chracter in the story is a Chinese-born woman who has emigrated to the US and seems to fit in very well with the culture of her new land, and in fact has become a voting citizen. A minor school-yard crisis begins via a third-grad class assignment that involved writing to one of the '16 candidates, and one boy is ostracized (and his family shamed to a degree) because he chose Trump. The protagonist's husband, as it happens (also a Chinese immigrant) is also a Trump supporter, and he tries to drill Trump propaganda into the minds of his children. That's all foreground, establishing the wife's contemporary character and good relations w/ other moms in the school community. The heart of the story, however, concerns an elderly man whom she met when she was a teen in China who was interviewing women to find a match for his son; he passed on the protagonist, but then continued to pester her, suggesting he could give her English lessons. If that wasn't creepy enough, it turns out that he, too, has moved to the States, and continues to stalk her by email (they have met face to face only twice; apparently the email messages have been coming for years). So we see the woman as a victim, as vulnerable, and as passive (not only in re the creep but in re her domineering husband also). At the end of the story she decides finally to take up arms, and for the first time responds to the email, at first writing "Please do not email me again" and then changing it to: Go to hell. Good for her, finally showing a little gumption - that is, becoming more American, more outspoken, more "woke" in the current phrase - but is it enough? Aside from wondering what took her so long - a polite no-contact request at the outset might have ended everything right there - perhaps a real threat - of police or legal action - might have been even more profound. Telling this elderly creep off, in the end, is kind of easy; what's she going to do about the creep w/ whom she shares a life?

The strange short fiction of Gerald Murnane

Intrigued by the excellent profile in recent NYTnag of Australian author Gerald Murnane, I managed to borrow literally the only copy of any of his books in the entire R.I. public-library system, Landscape with Landscape (1987), a collection of six stories (at least one of which might qualify as a short novel). About 50 pp in, I'm still fascinated, puzzled, disoriented, and captivated by his writing, which, esp. in the first story (Landscape with Freckled Woman, is, I think, the title) is made all the more poignant by what we know about Murnane's strange work habits and personality. The obsessed and eccentric narrator in this story, which I would have taken as an extreme and odd creation by the author, is from what we now know so close and behavior and idiosyncrasies to Murnane himself that this story could almost be considered an essay: The author agrees to serve on a board (as treasurer), the only male on the board, which seems to oversee some kind of literary or literacy organization, perhaps a library board?. The author has fantasies about one of the women at the organization meeting, about telling her that he's a writer - yet he knows she will never understand what it means to him to be a writer. As he unwinds this obsessive desire, and recalls from his youth many women he spoke at extreme length to in bars about his literary ambitions, we gradually understand that his is like an anti-Proust: He wants to find some kind of isolation to write a novel about his childhood, but in fact he does not want to search for lost time, he wants to obliterate all input from the "real" world in order to inhabit and re-create in prose an alternate world or an alternate reality that he alone perceives (and we know from the profile that he had created on paper an entire continent with its own history and geography). The 2nd story, Sipping the Essence, which I haven't finished reading, is far more conventional in theme though the protagonist is extreme and odd in his behavior: a first-person narration about late teen/early manhood years in which the narrator, extremely uneasy and inexperienced with women, sabotages any chance he has for a relationship by obsessive, non-stop talking about his literary heroes - notably Kerouac - and his desire to leave Melbourne and trek through the bush of Queensland (a geography little known to most non-Australians): he prefers the emptiness of unexplored space (and time) to establishing a relationship with other people, women especially. In other words his painfully shy and immature, an adolescent tale in extreme.

Wide fange of views in book group of Jon McGregor's If Nobody Speaks...

Revival of book group last night after a +1-year hiatus discussed Jon McGregor's first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002), with a wide range of responses and reactions among the 6 of us, ranging from JoRi's enthusiasm for the beautiful writing (all concurred to a degree, especially impressed by the first section in which JMcG describes the sounds and the silences of a city neighborhood) to my annoyance and frustration with his willfully difficult narrative style - mixing third- and first-person narration, confusion about the time sequence, many undeveloped plot points, manipulative narrative structure  (teasing us with the allusion to a tragic event at the outset, leading to an let-down payoff at the end), refusal to name major characters, lack of clarity on key plot points (does the young man in #18 die at the end? what about the boy struck by the car? what is it that the twin has to tell the young woman at the end?), and even internal plot contradictions for example how could the young woman not know the fate of the young man in #18? When she meets his twin, wouldn't she immediately know: Oh, your brother is the young man who died tragically after the car accident. That said, I acknowledge this is a debut novel by a young writer who's interested in unconventional narration, and I noted that I would guess his most recent novel - Reservoir 13 - which is also a ind of group narration (portrait of 13 years in the life of a small town or village), is much easier to read, as his style most likely has matured and as he has learned more about life (first novels are often experimental and difficult, as young writers often draw more on their imaginations and creative abilities and less on life experience). (I was correct in my guess that JoRi was drawn to this writer by James Wood NYer review, which oddly was not so keen on this book but praised Reservoir.) Much discussion about the twin issue in this novel: what does it signify (3 sets of twins in the novel; we really came to know conclusions on this point), and in fact are the young man and the man in #18 (collecter of oddities, quiet observer, secretly in love w/ the young woman, in despair after seemingly failing to save the child from car collision) one and the same? Also some discussion without much resolution on the theme of injured hands and on the significance of the death by fire of a young wife and the surviving child's visions of angels. Also, we wondered about the sociopolitical context: By the end it's clear that this is a mixed-race neighborhood, w/ at least some of the residents being Muslim/Indian/Pakistani; there are some early hints at this, but this becomes completely apparent only at the end when suddenly some of the characters have (Muslim) names. Is JMcG holding this out on readers for some reason, or would most English readers just expect an urban neighborhood to be multi-racial? No clear answers on this point either. But, please, if you eschew standard plots, why not at least give your characters names. Help us out a little! Final note: I was alone in thinking the title is a bit of a joke, a paradox (if nobody remarks then they're by definition not remarkable).

Other Men's Daughters: What about the other side of the story?

The short final section, part !V, of Richard Stern's novel Other Men's Daughters (1973) brings the protagonist, Dr. Robert Merriwether, and his 20-year-old girlfriend, Cynthia, to a mountain retreat near Boulder, where he's articipating in a summer seminar - oh, the perks of academic life at its highst levels! - and living in apparent idyllic bliss post-divorce. This section is full of ominous hints: It opens w/ the son of the owner of the sublet house showing up at the door and rummaging through a closet to collect his stowed-away shotgun, that he claims to need to protect his current dwelling from vandals, Merriwether goes on a long hike up to a glacier viewpoint w/out nearly enough food or clothing and ges so exhausted in the cold and altitude that he almost can't get back, Cynthia flies to California to clear the field for visits from Merriwether's two younger children. But guess what? Everything works out! Great relation w/ the two younger children, everything seems to be going well between Merriwether and Cynthia, and, as the end, attending one of the seminars, he gets some insight that will help him get a jump start on his current writing project, a popular-science book on nuerology (I think). So it all works out for the guy who walks out on his marriage and his family and shacks up w/ a student half his age. Very nice; and it's too back there's nothing in this novel, not even a hint, from the woman's point of view because I don't think it worked out so well for wife, Sarah. But also guess what: Sarah has the last work, in a sense. Take a look at popular and literary fiction over the past 40 years, since the publication of Stern's novel, and see who's story is told most often, by a long, long shot - recently, for example, by Cusk and Ferrante and farther back by I don't know how many thousands of other writers (Sue Miller, Doris Lessing, it''s almost ridiculous to try to make a list). Stern's novel is almost forgotten. Others have had their say.

Why Richard Stern's Other Men's Daughters gets better in its final chapters

Credit where it's due: The last third (haven't quite finished reading it yet - there's a short part 4, something like a coda, still to come) of Richard Stern's Other Men's Daughters (1973) is the best part of the novel. Why? I think because in this section he more or less forgets about protagonist Robert Merriwether's love interest, Cynthia (who one imagines will inevitably toss Merriwether aside eventually), a beautiful and brilliant undergrad who falls for/seduces/bewitches the Harvard prof twice her age, and focuses on Merriwether and his family: the icy hostility of his wife, Sarah, and his guilt about breaking up their marriage and his pathetic attempts to rationalize and to be kind; the difficulty of explaining their pending divorce - and the reasons for it - to children, colleagues, neighbors; the legal mechanics of the divorce and the attendant troubles, such as selling the family house and finding new lodgings for all. Stern does a fine job with a few of the scenes, especially the painfully awkward last xmas the Merriwethers will celebrate together. He's not a great stylist, a la his contemporaries Roth and Updike, who have similarly examined marital despair and academic rites, but he has a great eye of what Wolfe called "status details," the many objects and acquisitions and decorations that mark a space and from which we, like anthropologists, can determine gender, race, class. Stern builds toward the climactic scene in which the parents tell the two youngest children - they seem to be in high school or maybe middle school - of the impending divorces. Improbably, they wait till the last possible moment, virtually on the eve of moving out of the house - but it's still a sorrowful moment, and we even feel some pity for the dad, even though he brought all this about through his own infidelity and ego. This novel, as one might deduce from the title, is entirely from the male point of view, but in fairness to Stern we feel more sorrow and pity for his wife (and children) than for the male protagonist; I almost wish that he's written a companion piece - like the Mr. and Mrs. Bridge novels - covering the same period of time and the same ground in close 3rd person from Sarah's POV.

An attack on an academic colleague, in fiction and in life

In the second and third parts (about the middle third of the 1973 novel) of Richard Stern's Other Men's Daughters the protagonist, Robert Merriwether, begins to get what he deserves, or at least what he should have expected. At this point he has taken Cynthia, the college student half his age (she's 20) with him for a summer conference in Nice (he's a physiology professor at Harvard). How he in any way thought he could maintain the secrecy of their relationship - for a year or so they'd been meeting regularly in and near Harvard Square, which as Stern makes clear is an insular, gossipy academic community - is beyond me, but he's outed when a Newsweek reporter interviews Merriwether and for some not likely reason references his pretty young assistant, Cynthia Ryder. The folks back on the home front in Cambridge can read between the lines! On another front, Cynthia's father, a prominent, self-made, competitive Carolina lawyer, comes to pay a visit; I expected fireworks and an ultimatum at the least, but Merriwether charms Atty Ryder and he departs wishing them well though encouraging Cynthia to get some counseling. Well, so much for the protective dad. A good sidelight, however, is the complete breakdown and furious personal attack on Merriwether from an eccentric lesser light at the conference, a guy from the Univ of North Dakota (such a condescending novel), which some may find to be unlikely and over the top but I can attest that such attacks do happen and even wonder whether Stern was present (as I was) in Buffalo in the early 70s when the cantankerous Lionel Abel similarly trashed cerebral colleague Angus Fletcher? On returning to Cambridge, Merriwether has to deal now w/ the confusion he's caused the children (Stern writes little about these 4 children) and the estrangement and extreme (and justified) bitterness and anger from wife, Sarah - all while trying to continue this unlikely relationship w/ Cynthia, setting her up in an apartment, spending most nights there, sometimes enduring her wrath. Stern depicts her as highly intelligent, beautiful, athletic, well-mannered, wealthy - one would think she could do better than a married man twice her age, but I guess love is strange.

A novel that's easy to dismiss, and yet ... Richard Stern's Other Men's Daughters

Richard Stern's almost-forgotten1973 novel, Other Men's Daughters (recently reissued by the great NYRB though I'm reading a library copy of the old Dutton hardback) can easily be dismissed as a middle-aged intellectual's fantasy novel: 40-year-old Harvard physiology professor Robert Merriwether, living in one of the old Harvard Square mansions passed down from his aunt (the M's are a classic Boston Brahmin family), married to the stereotypical faculty wife - genteel, from DownEast Maine, gave up her literary studies to settle into the marriage), marriage a little dull and stale, 4 kids of at or near college age who play almost no role in the novel at least through the first 1/3 or so, encounters a beautiful 20-year-old summer student (she comes to him while he's working at an doctor at one of the Harvard clinics, seeking a scrip for the pill) who literally flings herself at him and in a short time becomes involved in a passionate relationship; the novel opens as he's about to leave his family for this young woman - whose behavior doesn't even register on the scale of credibility. No surprise that the edition I'm reading has a back-cover blurb from Philip Roth - literally the longest jacket blurb I've ever seen (I have not, though, read the blurb - never do). Stern at the time was a prof at Chicago, where Roth also taught, so this seems to be a case of some log-rolling, though I believe Roth's praise was sincere: The two authors cover a lot of the same ground, w/ the academic novel of infidelity (see When She Was Good) as do a # of other writers from in or near their generation (see Malamud, and earlier see the great novel Stoner and Wharton's The Professor's House). The difference is that Roth's characters (and the others referenced above) are far more nuanced and more credible and their dilemmas far more complex and fraught. In Other Men's Daughters (even the title is off-putting) we don't really care what happens to Merriwether as, first of all, he doesn't care for anyone but himself and, 2nd, there's not a lot at stake: He leaves the marriage or he doesn't, and either way he's a creep. All that said, Stern's writing is excellent and his intelligence is manifest: Merriwether is a scientist, and Stern goes to great lengths to discuss many facets of his scientific work (his specialty is the nature of thirst - biological what determines thirst, what signals are sent to the brain, and why) - so he gets props on this, as almost all of the academic novels focus on English professors. He also does a pretty good job establishing the tone and milieu of Harvard Square in the 1970s, w/ a bit of overemphasis on the "hippie" culture (which must have seemed to Stern so odd and overwhelming, compared with the staid climate of U-Chicago in that era); I don't know what connection if any Stern had w/ Harvard, but he certainly taps into the Harvard elitism - even putting down the "second-rate" school the young woman (Cynthia) ttends (Swarthmore! - it would have made more sense had Stern placed her in a public university rather than one of the most selective colleges in the country). One odd note: when Merriwether first encounters Cynthia after her clinic visit, she offers him a lick of her ice-cream cone. Note only is this odd, but I think it's exactly the way Roth first encounters a young woman in NYC in the recent novel that's clearly based on aspects of Roth's life. Odd.

Promising first chapter of a novel by Keith Gessen in current New Yorker

Keith Gessen has a fine fiction entry in the current New Yorker (I cannot call it a short story as it obviously seems to be the first chapter of his forthcoming novel, A Terrible Country) that gives us some insight into a place most of us have never been: contemporary Russia as seen from the POV of a 30-something American, i.e., the narrator - who was Soviet-born, came to the U.S. at age 6 so feels fully American, unlike his sibling, an older brother who was 16 at emigration. At present the narrator is at a career deadlock, academic Ph.D. w/ no job prospects, and he gets a message from his brother asking if he can to the Moscow to take care of their only relative, their elderly grandmother. W/ nothing to keep him in the U.S., the narrator obliges. In essence this story/chapter introduces us to these two main characters and their tender if strained relationship; the grandmother has significant dementia, in fact cannot at times recall how she "knows" her grandson, though she recognizes her love for him (the awkward title of the piece in the NYer is a quote from the grandmother, that is powerful and sad in its context: How did we come to know you?). Through the chapter we get some insight into Russian medical care (the g-mother falls and hurts her head and goes to a neurology clinic, seedly looking place where families are expected to provide "gratuities" to the various staff members, though care is free) and a bit into the scary current state of Russian political an social life: the g-mother is in a desirable apartment, and there's a looming sense that elderly people in nice apartments find themselves unexpectedly injured or ill - perhaps not w/ nerve gas but it's possible g-m's fall on the steps involved a push? All told, this is a promising beginning, but Gessen will have to get a plot in motion soon; at this point there's no real central conflict or issue. The narrator (like the author?) is a journalist who took on this trip in hopes of writing a series of essays or articles - notably, the mysterious absence of the older brother who's supposedly in London cooking up a business deal (he's said to have made and lost a few fortunes since the collapse of the USSR).

The tables turn by the end of Tanizaki's Naomi

Though I never felt I could like either of the lead characters in Junichiro Tanizaki's Naomi, it was gratifying to see the tables turned at the end of the novel. What started out as a story of the complete exploitation of a young woman - the sleazy narrator, Joji, pretty much adopts an attractive 15-year-old girl (he's 28) to have her live as his housekeeper but essentially to make her his concubine and later his wife and to dominate her in every way, sexually, financially, intellectually, socially. But his "creation" grows beyond his control and becomes a powerful and alluring young woman - good - but also a serial philanderer, a spendthrift, probably an alcoholic, a totally unsympathetic character. Eventually, they fight and she walks out, leaving the narrator devastated and suicidal. Oddly, he strikes up a friendship with one of Naomi's many lovers and they tell each other tales of woe and console each other. But oddly Naomi comes back to Joji, at first as a "friend," using his house as a place to recover between assignations and eventually moving in - but for a long time resisting his advances and attempts to renew their marriage, sexually and emotionally - until she at last has him at a point of despair. He literally grovels at her feet - and then we jump forward a few years and see that he has set bought a beautiful suburban house for them and devoted his whole life into meeting her every need and whim, even allowing her to continue to see other men - in particular, "Western" men to whom she is so attracted (as is he to "Western" women - frequently noting Naomi's pale skin and Western features): the situation at the outset has reversed, Naomi is in complete control of the relationship, he is at her mercy. He gets what he deserves.

The characters in Tanizaki's Naomi: They each deserve better

Of course what eludes the narrator is painfully obvious to all readers, as we can see what he blinds himself to: His much-younger wife is carrying on an affair, in fact several affairs, w/ the young men (her age) who hang around w/ her during the many hours her husband is at work and she's kept at home like the proverbial bird-in-cage. Unwilling to face the truth, the narrator (in Junichiro Tanizaki's Naomi, 1925), Joji, keeps believing that his wife, Naomi, is like a child, a toy, a Pygmalion whom he has rescued from a life that would have led her into prostitution, who will continue to perfect her social skills as she studies English and the piano and that she will be content to sit home all day and wait upon him when he returns from work: Prostitution by another name. In fact, she's spirited and lively and, as it turns out, a terrible housekeeper and spendthrift. But he still won't believe or perceive the worst about her until he catches her in the act of deceiving him - and even then it takes him a few episodes (he catches her drunk in the street w/ her friends when he'd thought she was at home waiting for him; he comes home unexpectedly one day and finds one of her "friends" lying on their futon) before he realizes that she has no respect for him, that she stays w/ him only because she is financially depending on him, that their marriage is a sham that will never work, and they get in a fight and she leaves. And then her pursues her once again! Tanizaki does a great job in a creating a narrative in which our emotions and sympathies are always mixed: On that one hand we hate the narrator because of his controlling nature, his smugness, and low attitude toward women in general and Naomi in particular, his oblivion, his perverse view of marriage. And yet: While we sympathize w/ Naomi the captive, married to a much older man, product of a terrible family, facing few choices in life beyond prostitution and poverty, iot's hard to excuse her willful extravagance, her slovenly behavior, and most of all her brazen infidelity. In a way, they deserve each other - but more to the point they each deserve a better life and a suitable partner. They each deserve better, but then there would be no story.

Waiting for the narrator in Tanizaki's Naomi to get what he deserves

We continue to loathe the narrator, Joji, in Junichiro Tanizaki's 1924 novel, Naomi; we hate his snobbery, his obsession with "Western" beauty, his selection of a young and vulnerable woman (girl, actually - Naomi is15 at the start!) to be his "housekeeper," his obvious need to dominate Naomi (whom he marries), his creepy insistence that she call him Papa. And things start to turn: Naomi, as she matures, begins to chafe at the bit so to speak and seek some kind of independence, or perhaps even revenge. She begins spending recklessly, which really gets to Joji, a careful and methodical man who for the first time finds himself in debt and sees no way out - aside from asking his mother for money (which she provides - he doesn't really level w/ her, telling her he needs the money because of a higher cost of living, not because of Naomi's extravagance); she begins hanging out w/ people her age who are interested in music and dance. Joji agrees reluctantly to go to dancing lessons, and develops a crush on the instructor, an exiled Russian aristocrat (his obsession w/ Western beauty and his undue respect for the "upper" class are his undoing) and he feels his age and incompetence when N persuades him to go a dance hall, where he dances with an actress and No dances w/ an American man - and where, it seems, he ends up fronting for all the drinks. In other words, he's headed for a fall - as he indicated at the outset of this narrative -. There's a long history of this kind of plot - the duping of the old man by the young romantic hero (even in opera - think of La Boheme for ex.) - but there are many variations, which keeps us wondering how this will play out over the course of the narrative. Neither of the lead characters is sympathetic, but we can't wait to see the narrator get what he deserves.

Almost painful to read Tanizaki's Naomi, unless it becomes a novel of her empowerment

It's almost painful to read Junichiro Tanizaki's1925 novel, Naomi (his first novel, I think - published in serialized form in a Japanese newspaper, like his great novel from the 1940s, The Makioka Sisters), as the portrayal of women is so retro, so out of date, so sexist, which of course raises 2 questions: Is the attitude that of the author or of the narrator, Joji? And, is the attitude typical of its time and place or eccentric even then and unique to this work? The only way to go on reading is to assume, believe, and hope that the narrator is perverse in his attitude, even in 1925 Tokyo, and that he will get his come-uppance. On one level, this is a Pygmalion story transposed: Joji is a 28-year-old man with a responsible job in electronics, I think, born and raised int eh country and feeling out of place and awkward in the big city, and completely naive in his relationships to women. He develops a crush I guess you'd call it on a cafe hostess, the eponymous Naomi, who is 15 years old. He asks her out and the 2 of them begin taking long walks, and eventually he proposes that the two of them should live together, she to serve as his maid and housekeeper, and he will pay for her to receive and education (music lessons, English lessons). Her family is completely indifferent to her and apparently had been steering her toward a life as a geisha, i.e., a prostitute, so they go along with this odd proposal. Over time, their relationship becomes sexual and romantic and they quietly marry. Joji treats her more or  less as a pet, or at best as a servant and subordinate - and she, at least so far (about 1/4 through the novel) is completely under his control and dominance. I've just reached a point in the novel where she convinces him to join her in dancing lessons, and here she seems the superior - more skilled, more at ease w/ other people her age - and we sense, or he senses, the vast difference in their ages and backgrounds. So the only way to read this novel, I think, is to hope that it becomes a novel of her empowerment and liberation; we'll see.

Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas and the Second Amerndment

To be honest Heinrich von Kleist's story or short novel Michael Kolhaas is probably better though/talked/written about than actually read. Despite a promising start, in which the eponymous horse dealer is badly mistreated by a wealthy landowner and then rebuffed in all attempts to get justice through the official channels (because the landowner, Junker Wenzel, I think) is connected through family and politics). So in the second half of the story MK gathers some of his own men and sets off to attack Wenzel directly. His troupe slays everyone on  Wenzel's estate, though W himself escapes, and captures the horses that W had illegally seized. Had MK left things right there, he would have gotten revenge (and restoration of property) without getting full justice (including payment to the family of a servant killed in defense of the horses), but there'd be no story, either. In fact, MK builds an ever stronger army that eventually sacks a # of German cities suspected of offering shelter to the fleeing Wenzel - leading to a huge pllitical crisis, involving none other than Martin Luther (the setting is 16th-century German), who at first blasts MK as diabolical but later, following MK's entreaties, writes that MK should be protected until his case can be adjudicated. These plot machinations taking up +100 pp., and the going is tedious in the extreme for any reader - eventually I reverted to skimming, a real rarity for me. That said, the story raises fascinating questions still relevant today (and certainly relevant in Kleist's lifetime, just 20 years of so after the French Revolution): When are the oppressed justified in taking up arms against an established government, if ever? To me this story raises questions facing us today re the 2nd Amendment: American's have the "right to bear arms," but is that right secured in order to join, as a militia, in the defense of the established government of in order to form a militia to protect against a government violation of individual rights? (I would argue the former.) What is the difference, and how do we discern the difference, between a patriotic stance against an encroaching federal government and an act of treason (as in the land seizures in the West)? It makes no sense that the Constitution (as amended) would grant to citizens the right to take up arms against the government that Constitutional government - although clearly many people, for whatever reason, believe otherwise. This story, the "pro-gun" lobby, would provide some informative reading about the cost and danger society might face if confronted by an armed citizen attack arising from an unfavorable judgement in court.

A Kleist story from ca 1800 that could well have been written today

I read the first half, approximately, of Heinrich von Kleist's short story, or perhaps short novel?, Michael Kolhaas, so not ready to comment yet on the work as a whole, but it's another one from this (seldom-read) German author (ca 1770-1810) of the Romantic era that's completely engaging from the first moment. In fact, compared w/ the other stories in the Arcade Press Selected Prose of HvK, it's probably the least weird and fantastic: the others I've read were each somewhat fable-like, involving mystical or supernatural elements and much violence and torment. In this story, set in 16th-century Germany, the eponymous MK, a wealth horse dealer, travels to a major city (Dresden, I think) to buy and sell horses. En route, as he crosses some private land, a guard stops him at a turnpike and demands a fee; MK notes that he's never had to pay any such fee before, and the guard tells him it's a new policy. This standoff quickly escalates, to the point where the owner of the estate appears, threatens and bullies MK, and seizes 2 of his horses - with the promise of restoring them to MK once MK gets the proper passport required to cross the property. This agreement sends MK into a deep spiral of loss and frustration: There is no need for any such passport, the landowner has cruelly abused the horses (and a servant MK had left behind to care for the animals) and ultimately refuse to relinquish them. MK goes to court in hopes of getting an order to restore his property, but runs into numerous roadblocks, including a corrupt system - many of whose officers are related to or depending on the landowner. So in a way this feels like a story anticipating Kafka's The Trial - with an individual bewildered and destroyed by a faceless bureaucracy. In other ways, it feels contemporary: With the necessary changes, it could have been written today. We see many such narratives - particularly in film and in documentaries - about individuals who seek justice and are crushed by the system (e.g., The Night Of). Even in America!: justice systems controlled by powerful families and special interests, law enforcement driven and distorted by racism and fear. It's a harrowing narrative; MK's faith in "the system" is touching, quaint, and unsustainable. We know that in the end he will be crushed.

Themes in Kleist's short stories

Some themes running through the short stories of Heinrich van Kleist include: the wrath of the church and the established order against any unmarried woman who becomes pregnant or gives birth (The Earthquake in Chile in which an unmarried pregnant woman is to be beheaded by the state, The Marquise of O... in which the pregnant daughter is banished from the family), riotous mobs run rampant and driven by blood lust and destruction (Earthquake: children smashed to death by a mob, Power of Music in which a group of riotous anti-Catholics storm a convent, Betrothal in San Domingo in which rebellious slaves roam in bands killing white people, Marquise in which Russian soldiers assault a young woman). In short, his stories are full of action, violence, and destruction, more so than almost any other literary writer - but weirdly his stories also have a sense of redemption: the Marquise, after years of torment and abuse, seems to settle into a successful, possibly happy, marriage; the brothers who lead the attack on the convent in Power of Music become religious devotees (confined to a madhouse), at least one child is spared at the cease of violence in Earthquake, and even in Betrothal, where the interracial couple die in a murder/suicide, at least the man dies in despair but knowing that the woman he loves had not betrayed him but had tried to save him. In Kleist's world, salvation is achieved, if at all, only after great suffering, loss, ostracism, mayhem, and destruction.

Perhaps the creepiest and strangest story ever written: The Marquise of O...

Heinrich von Kleist, a hero of German Romantic literature (mostly short fiction and drama, I think) lived from about 1770 - 1810, died in a suicide pact w/ his beloved, which weirdly led to a cult of suicide, which Goethe wrote about based I think in part on Kleist's life (and death) in Sorrows of the Young Werther. But who reads Kleist today? I did find a nice volume of his selected prose, mostly fiction, from Arcade Press (known for its square-shaped books and printed pages), and yesterday read probably his best-known short fiction, "The Marquise of  O...," which may be the strangest and creepiest story ever written. In short: The eponymous Marquise is a young widow w/ two children, living in a citadel or fortress in Italy of which her father is the "commandant." Russian soldiers attack the fortress (K says nothing about the background of this military attack - perhaps it's completely fictional?), and some of the soldiers grab the Marquise and threaten to rape her. A Russian officer intervenes and saves the M. In fighting the next day, the Russian officer is reported killed. Some time later the officer shows up at the doorstep of the Marquise and her family - reports of his death have been somewhat exaggerated, to paraphrase Twain - and asks for her hand in marriage. Everyone is more or less freaked out by the audacity of this request (he doesn't know the M at all, nor does she know him). Sometime later it turns out the the M is pregnant; she insists that she has had sexual relationships w/ no one. She actually places a newspaper ad asking for the unknown father of her child-to-be to come forward. Then, in the creepiest scene in the story, we see through her mother's eyes the father "consoling" the distraught daughter, who is sitting on his lap as they kiss each other passionately. Ultimately, the child is born, the M marries the Russian, and they have a brook of children and all ends well. Well, Kleist was clearly a century ahead of his time in writing about Oedipal issues and incest, about guilt and shame, and about repression, as the whole family ignores what they know and what the see. His cobbled-together happy ending only suggests something darker and more mysterious: a cover-up of the sexual passion and broken taboos, the possibility that, if "all happy families are alike," as in Tolstoy's much-quoted phrase, there may be dark secrets in every happy family. And what about the apparent death and sudden resurrection of the Russian officer? And his determination to marry a woman w/ whom he has not exchanged a single word? I'm sure some have found him to be a Christ figure who "saves" the countess, but I see him more as a zombie who destroys her, giving her father "cover" behind which to continue a lifetime of abuse.

Tempests: Perhaps the best and most cinemeatic story in Dinesen's later collection

Orson Welles died w/out completing his long-awaited adaptation of Isak Dinesen's The Immortal Story, which does not seem to me like great material for a movie. I wonder why he was drawn to that weird material rather than to another work in Isak Dinsen's late (last?) story collection (Anecdotes of Destiny, 1955): Tempests. Tempests may not be a great story, but in my view it's the best in this five-piece collection and the most cinematic, even operatic - perhaps too much so (compared w/ the successfully adapted story in this group, Babette's Feast). Tempests is another 19th-century, fable-like story, in this instance about a young woman (Malli) whose from a remote coastal village in Norway whose father came over as a sea captain from Scotland, fell in love and married, set off on voyage and never returned (presumed dead; as this story is a like a fable of people lost and found, w/ man allusions to The Tempest, we continue to suspect that the sea captain will return from the deep; spoiler: He doesn't). The young woman becomes fascinated w/ theater and in particular w/ Shakespeare and signs on to traveling theater troupe, whose director makes her his persona protege (no me-too moments, however) and casts her as Ariel (w/ himself as Prospero). While en route to Christiansand (today's Oslo) for the beginning of the theater run the ship carrying the troupe is nearly destroyed in a coastal storm, but Malli - summoning her father's intrepid nautical character - saves the ship and all aboard. She's welcomed in town as a hero - and falls in love with the son of the ship owner. But when, a week or so after the near-shipwreck, one of the sailors does unexpectedly she decides that she is not meant to marry the son of the shipowner, writes him a farewell letter, and takes her leave. So the drama - the young woman's life story, the storm at sea, the nascent performances of The Tempest, the sorrow of her abandoned romance - could make for great cinema hat I would think would have appealed to Welles (and they do make for a ood if extremely puzzling story) - perhaps the story is just too weird and suffers from being yet another Dinesen story of thwarted love, unhappiness, and misanthropy. It also becomes apparent, as one reads through Dinesen stories, how important to her was the theme of a young (often Scandinavian) woman whose artistic talents go unrecognized, whose marriage has failed, and who suffers in loneliness (Malli and Babette are 2 examples, but see also The Ring and even the "heroine" of Immortal Story).

Another Dinesen story of ruined happiness

Isak Dinesen's story The Ring, in her final collection, Anecdotes of Destiny, is yet another example of her strange cruelty and misanthropy  the story at the start has all the telltales of a sweet fable about enduring Loren - and yet...if you've ever read Dinesen - which presumably you have as this is the last story in the collection - you know things will not go well and the story will take a turn toward dark matter.  In short: a young recently married couple are enjoying the first days of their life together in a cottage in the countryside where the very competent husband is beginning to earn a living running a small sheep farm. The two stroll through a verdant landscape and arrive at the sheep pen to learn that two of the sheep are ill and that a thief has stolen sheep and bled them to death over the past few nights. Oh? As the husband discusses these ominous matters w a hireling the young wife heads off for a stroll  oh? And for no possible reason she leaves the trail and heads into a glade where she of course runs into the sheep thief - bearing a knife. Oddly she tosses a handkerchief and her wedding ring onto the ground - and the thief kicks the ring aside. She returns to her has and. He can see that she's upset and she tells him she has lost her wedding ring. He's surprisingly blasé and says don't worry we can replace it.  I but its obvious they cannot replace the ring and that their marriage is ruined and that somehow she has been possessed by an evil force. So I guess this is a fable of some sort, but what makes ID dwell as she does on such ruined happiness and such tortured lives? There are other "dark" writers of course, many of them genre writers (Poe and Lovecrsft come to mind) but few if any who write so persistneltly about the destruction of innocence and in such a genre-defiant manner.  This story is perhaps the conscious counterweight to de Maupassant's Necklace story - the mysterious and unfounded (not a hint of foreshadowing to the wife's reckless behavior) actions and blind, destructive fate.

Unusual works by Dinesen and the new phenomenon Murnane

Two unusual and quite different (from each other ) stories yesterday: First, Gerald Murnane's Land Deal made available as a preview from his new US publisher FSG. After reading the amazing profile of the elusive and cantankerous Murnane (Most Books Are Crap) in the NYT Mag who knew what to expect? I expected something obscure and impenetrable - but this story is both mind -bending and ciiletely accessible. Written in first-person plural it tells from the Native American POV the experience ca 1830 of trading w white settlers/invaders for a large tract of the native land. Yes we all know that the native tribes had no concept of land as something that could be owned much less bought and sold. But this story goes way beyond that commonplace and gives us a sense of how the natives first perceived the objects of the trade - mirrors, knives, scissors etc. they considered these objects, in murnane's take, as the "possible" compared w their current tools (e.g. Sharpened rocks) as the "actual" , which leads to some weird cosmic speculation as they begin to think of their entire existence as being part of some other's dream - kind of like the founding of a religion or the beginning of a tragedy. Beautiful and odd - in the tradition of Borges and Calvino but more political and more charged w ideas rather than mere playfulness and experimentation w form. Other story: Isaiah Dinesen's The Immortal Story, about a European merchant in canton in the 1800s whose entire life is about power and money who becomes obsessed w engineering the events in a famous sailors' yarn about a sailor ashore asked by a wealthy old man to have a tryst w a beautiful woman (I think Hemingway wrote about this as if it actually happened to him, probably a complete boastful lie). Like just about everything else by Dinesen it's creepy and cold, w no sense of human emotions and feelings and in this instance w a particularly distasteful portrayal of women (and of Jews for that matter). How such a talented, educated, and fiercely independent woman could build her works around such characters is a mystery - I may read more of her works to see if there's an answer or at least a clue.

Fine story w/ dark humor and quirky dialog by Camille Bordas in current New Yorker

Fine story, The State of Nature, in current New Yorker by a writer unknown to me till now, Camille Bordas, a portrait of a woman - intelligent, quirky, distressed - facing and dealing with a crisis, and in the process growing, meeting new people, and learning some key information about her mother. The offbeat humor reminded me at times of Lorrie Moore at her best, and the angularity of the writing may be a result in part of Bordas's apparently complex linguistic background - the bio note in the magazine says that she has published 2 novels in French and her newest is in English. I'm impressed! This story is about a young optometrist (get this: I began reading this story in the waiting room of my optometrist, how odd is that?) whose apt is burglarized while she's taking a morning nap. She never even hears the burglar(s) at work; she asks the cops if that's possible: "It happens, not often," one responds - giving you a brief sense of her sharp use of dialog. Another: Her mother: "Don't you watch the news?" Response: "Of course I don't watch the news!" Ha! In short, she goes on a quest in search of the lost items, leading her to the "thieves market," i.e., the flea market where fences move stolen items and where burglary victims are willing to go and buy their own stuff back, no questions asked, accepting it is a small premium to pay for the return of desired objects. In the process the woman crosses paths w/ one of her more eccentric patients - a man who anticipates that the world will soon plunge into chaos and he wants to be prepared to live in a "state of nature," in particular by having Lasik to ensure perfect vision (he's a bad candidate for the process, however). The story is full of dark humor and a distant sense of menace - or maybe that should be a sense of distant menace: Much discussion about creating a "go-pack" of items to carry w/ you in case of emergency, as well as discussions about a "rape whistle" to summon help in event of attack. Throughout we expect the much-discussed whistle (and go-pack) to play a role in the story, and we're not entirely let disappointed, but as w/ much else Bordas surprises us, even in the expected payoff.

Why it's so difficult to "get" Pedro Paramo on first reading

Though the narrative attains some clarity toward the end of Juan Rulfo's novel Pedro Paramo (1955) - the last third of the book or so focuses on PP's alliance of convenience with a group of armed rebels (one of the many revolutionary groups in Mexico in the early 20th century), his sexual abuse of many women who lived and worked on his estate in rural Mexico, his immoral and devious accumulation of wealth - does he remind us of anyone today? - and ultimately of his little-mourned death. Even so, this part of the novel is difficult to follow, with its many jumps in time and point of view that Rulfo indulges in w/out any attempt at transition or narrative guidance. Even more strangely, by the end we have completely lost touch w/ the establishing events in the novel, which begins with a young man pledging to his dying mother that he will travel to her homeland in search of his father, the eponymous PP. By the end, this young man - I can't even recall his name - is no longer part of the story, and PP is long deceased. All of this narrative experimentation was groundbreaking in the 1950s and feels, flowered across the globe - and especially in Latin America - in the 1960s, and today feels quaint and self-indulgent. The edition I read has a short forward by a deeply admiring Susan Sontag (patron saint of the impenetrable), which offers some insight: Apparently JR wrote this novel (his only published novel) over a long period of time, discarding much of his drafts as he went along in order to pare this novel to a bare minimum (it's only 124 pp); we can assume that he eliminated all of the transitions and back story that he considered irrelevant or unnecessary (I beg to differ), giving then novel at best a feeling of openness and velocity or at worst a feeling of confusion. That said, the writing is at times hypnotic and powerful, especially the accounts of death and of the fear of haunting and the surreal sections in which ghosts speak to one another. No doubt a second or third reading would bring more clarity, and more approbation, and maybe someday I'll come back to PP and see if a 2nd pass-through brings more light to the darkness - but not today.

The unique and demanding narrative style of Pedro Paramo

Juan Rulfo's novel Pedro Paramo (1955) is considered one of the great modern (i.e., post-1900) works from Mexico, ranked alongside the works of Carlos Fuentes. Time hasn't exactly been kind for Pedro Paramo, however, as reading it now (for the first time) it seems almost quaint in its eagerness to defy narrative convention. This short novel - about 125 pp. - consists of many brief sections and a constantly changing point of view: sometimes first persona narration from the protagonist, sometimes 3rd person concerning various scenes over the past two generations in the small Mexican town of Colma (fictional?). In addition, some of the scenes seem to be "live," some are visions or dreams; some of the characters are "live," others are ghosts and revenants. To say this places a heavy demand on the reader is to put it mildly; the jacket blurb calls it a work of "surrealism," but I think that simplifies the case. As with its near contemporary The Master and Marguerita (USSR), this novel mixes visionary writing and imagery w/ realism - delving into the complex history of the town, blood rivalries, killings. It predates the Magic Realism that dominated Latin American literature from the 60s onward, but there is a little foreshadowing of this genre as well, with the tales of the Paramo family gobbling up land and then crashing into ruin and oblivion hinting at the tales of the Buendia family still to come (Garcia Marquez). Very roughly, the story line involves a man urged by his mother on her deathbed to visit her home town for the first time to meet the eponymous Paramo, who she tells him is his father. The man arrives at the town only to learn that PP has died some years back; the town is almost deserted, but he finds a woman - who turns out to be his aunt - willing to give him housing for the night. The woman - and just about everyone else he meets - turns out to be a ghost. In some strange manner the people (ghosts) in teh village were aware that this young man was coming to pay a visit. In a series of dream-visions he learns of various events in the history of the Paramo family, some involving his alleged father, Pedro, others involving Miguel, whom I think is his grandfather? Not sure. He also learns more about his mother and her difficult marriage to PP. This novel demands at least one re-reading if one is to fully comprehend the narrative - and that's probably OK for such a short novel. In a way, it reads more like a prose poem that traditional narrative fiction, so perhaps it's best to approach it as such: a collage of images, moods, and viewpoints.

Isak Dinesen's cruelty and Babette's Feast

Recently watched Axel's 1987 film, Babette's Feast (see related post on Elliotswatching blog) and have gone back to read Isak Dinesen's short story on which the film was based; it's part of what I think was her final collection, Anecdotes of Destiny (1958). First thing to note is that Axel's adaptation is extremely faithful to the text of the story, down to the smallest morsels of dialog, with a few exceptions, all but one of which are insignificant: setting moved from Denmark to Norway (actually Denmak feels more correct, as that's ID's native land and where she lived when writing these late-life stories), the opera singer is more dashing and handsome in the story, the General's remarks about the feast are internal in the story and spoken aloud in the film - for obvious reasons, but they also give the other guests more guidance on how to eat and appreciate the feast. Maybe it's also significant that in the story Babette never learns to speak good Norwegian, whereas in the film she seems to be fluent. The only significant difference, though, occurs at the end, when Babette tells the two sisters who'd taken her in that she won't go back to France because all the people she'd loved are gone. The sisters say: But all these people you've named were aristocrats, the ones you'd fought against (B was a "communard," advocating the "rights of man") and who killed your husband and child. She notes that these people patronized her restaurant and knew what a great chef she was; she states that she can now, having completed the feast, be at peace for the rest of her life because she has proven that she is a "true artist." Virtually all the commentary I've read/seen re the film indicate that the feast is like a communion and that the rigid and restrained villagers become more loving and winsome, as if the feast were something beautiful and holy w/ the power of transformation. Sorry but I don't see this at all, aside from the fact that the villagers seem a little tipsy by the end - though the still can't bring themselves to say anything kind to B. I see her feast as an act of hubris and cruelty: She spends all her money on one meal, leaving herself once again completely at the mercy of the charity of others. The feast itself represents everything that the villagers - whether right or wrong - oppose and reject: earthly pleasure, extravagance, waste, diverting money from charity to personal welfare. Forcing them to eat this feast is cruel - and could certainly have made many of the villagers ill: after a lifetime of dried fish and bread they're eating quail and tortoise soup and caviar and fois-gras? And all so that B can see herself as an "artist"? What vanity! A true artist, by the way, would create a great dinner that all would enjoy and that could be created (and re-created) with what's at hand; a truly generous person would have given back to the community in some meaningful way, in gratitude for taking her in as a refugee. (Of course, however, B does have a right to resent living based on charity from others: In the film, we see the rude and sparsely  furnished room in which she lives, quite a contrast to the simple, Shaker-like rooms where the sisters live.) In all, Dinesen is a cruel writer - cruel to her characters and indifferent to their cruelty to others. (See related post on her story The Sorrw-Acre).

A New Yorker story story that tells much - though not enough - by allusion

A writer named Sam Allingham - I know nothing about him - has an intriguing story, The Intermediate Class, in the current New Yorker; I can't say I loved the story, but it drew me along right to the end, which says something. Roughly, the story is about a young man, Kyril, who attends an adult-learning class in intermediate or second-year German, and we follow him through a semester of the class, with most of the narrative consisting of conversations among the classmates, guided by the teacher. The conversations are in "German," that is, the students are told to converse in German only, though they conversations appear in accurately translated English, that is, broken English - pretty much the way students might converse in an "intermediate" class in English. I'm drawn to the story from my own experiences learning a language while living in another culture, and it's interesting to see relationships develop or hint at developing among the classmates and between some of the classmates and the teacher. That said, there is so much about this story that we don't know and don't learn. For example, Allingham never states where this story takes place, though it does not appear to be in Germany. We know nothing about Kyril aside from what takes place in class or among the students; he could be a Russian immigrant, judging from his name, but we don't really know why he or any of the others in the small class are interested in learning German. One of the classmates becomes perturbed about some of the teaching methods and indicates he's feeling ripped off re the $300 enrollment fee - this would suggest that he has to take the course to learn German, though again it's not clear why. Another classmate disappears for some time but returns for the final class, looking disheveled and perhaps a victim of an assault - no explanation given. I like stories that have some mystery and allusion, but I think Allingham pushes his luck too far in this one. I finished feeling that I didn't know enough about the characters to make the journey worth the candle (it's pretty long for a NYer fiction piece), and as w/ so many NYer pieces I wondered if this might be part of a longer narrative - if not, perhaps it should be.

Reflecting on William Butler Yeats on Easter Sunday

I've been reading through some of the poems of William Butler Yeats, including, coincidentally, Easter 1916, which I read yesterday. Is it still a great poem? Part of the pleasure and interest in reading through some selected Yeats poems comes from watching the evolution of the mind of a poet: from the early somewhat romantic and sentimental work, to an interest in traditional Irish verse and mythology, to the political poems about the Irish uprisings and fights for independence (such as Easter 1916), to the late poems built in part of Yeats's own mythology, and some final poems about age and death, such as Among School Children. Naturally when I was younger I was most drawn to the early poems, including 2 in the Modern Poems (eds Ellman and O'Dair) that I've been reading through: The Like Isle of Inisfree, most of which I can quote from memory thanks to a folk album I had as a teenager - Paths of Victory, By Hamilton Camp - in which he set some poems to his own musical compositions - and When You are Old: strangely, I was really struck by the reference to his loving the "pilgrim soul" of this beautiful woman. I still don't quite know what that means, however, The Irish Uprising poems didn't do much for me when I was younger - and I have to say that now they don't read so well, anyway. Any poem for which we have to look up virtually every name reference is probably not going to last as great verse. Yet: Yet, the poem has memorialized the Uprising - which seems so incredible today, Irish freedom fighters jailed and within a month executed by the British state! - in a way that no history book or account can do, has done. "A terrible beauty is born," still rings like the tolling of a bell. Most of all, it's inspiring to think that there was a day when poems such as this could be published in a daily newspaper, and readers would care about the verse and react to it: It was brave of Yeats to publish such incendiary materials; though many of the topical references in his political poetry are today obscure, we read these poems today to keep alive the idea of poets as the "unacknowledged legislators of the race." Any look at any set of current New Yorker poems will show us, sadly, how far we've moved away from that political ideal.