The Sheila Variations

Hitler's marginalia (or, to quote Eddie Izzard: "I can't paint this tree right ... I must kill everyone in the world!!")

Marginalia is one of my favorite literary topics - and although when I buy a second-hand book, I make sure that nobody has marked it up beforehand (too distracting) - I do find studies of marginalia to be extremely interesting: the things that famous people underlined, or marked, or things written in the margins of books ... Thornton Wilder's marked-up copy of Finnegans Wake is a piece of art, as far as I'm concerned!!

I write in my books. It's kind of a compulsive habit, I usually read with a pen in my hand. I feel weird without it. It's part of my obsession with holding onto things, a barrier against the oblivion of forgetting. "I must remember this passage ... so I can find it again if I need it". Some books in my collection are more marked up than others. My Sylvia Plath Collected Poems is so marked up that I bought a clean copy - just to go alongside the marked-up one. I like to READ the clean copy, but my web of connections in the margins is also interesting to look at, and helpful when I want to write about Plath. References in her journal, references in Hughes' poems that dovetail with one of Plath's, early drafts of the poems, or alternate titles ...the margins are full of small notes to myself. (Example: In Sylvia Plath's Oct. 1962 poem "The Tour" the following line occurs: "The blue's a jewel. / It boils for forty hours a stretch." Beside that line, I wrote the following note, referencing one of Ted Hughes' poems from Birthday Letters: "Ted Hughes. Red. 'But the jewel you lost was blue.' " Okay, so that's an example of how these poems appear to speak to one another and I wanted to make sure I captured that connection so I could come back to it later, if I wanted to. I realize how OCD this makes me sound. I can own that.)

A small book has come out about Hitler's library, and analyzing his marginalia (which is, necessarily, a speculative enterprise - because who can know what is in someone's heart ... However, I mentioned before - in one of my soulmate essays - that my secondhand copy of Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull was owned by someone else and every line about 'soulmate' was underlined by this gentle soul - it's all in the same pen, and the same pen that wrote the inscription in the front. So obviously it wasn't the bits about flight or birds that touched this reader, but the possibility of finding a mate. This is my guess, anyway. ) The marginalia can speak. That's why I love it as a topic.

Very interesting what it could, potentially, reveal.

Here is a review of Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life.

Literary Couples

Got this question from Ted:

“Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s just me.”

I am not limiting myself to romantic couples. I am thinking in terms of pairs.

John and Alma Summer and Smoke, (excerpt here). The play itself has some problems, and it is certainly not as well-known as Tennessee Williams' more famous plays - but the love story of John and Alma burns right through me. It is his most tragic relationship ... because you know, if the universe were a FAIR one, these two would be together. And nothing at all can be right in the world as long as it didn't work out between the two of them. I can't read this play without weeping. I have lived it.

Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (excerpt here) Cousins. Comic book artists. At first Sam is resentful of this refugee cousin who has to now share his room in Brooklyn. But gradually, the relationship blossoms into friendship - and not only that, but colleagues. The last conversation in the book between the two cousins made me weep when I first read it. I felt such understated yet unbelievable love there ... And the added layer of Sam Clay being gay - and finally coming to know that about himself ... Killer. I invested in those two. I missed them when that book ended. I still do.

Max and Eleanor. Hopeful Monsters (excerpt here) A British boy, a German-Jewish girl, fighting across war-torn Europe to be together ... and they don't even know why ... they just know that the world is somehow balanced between them, they teeter on a tightrope wire over the abyss - and somehow ... whatever else happens, Europe being swallowed up by fascism and dictatorship ... their love must survive. Whatever form it takes. The form is irrelevant. Amazing relationship.

Nelson Denoon and unnamed narrator. Mating (excerpt here). I honestly can't go into it at this time. All I know is - these people live, and if it is life and death to THEM whether or not they get back together, then it is life and death to me too.

Beverly and Derek Life Without Friends (excerpt here) Please do not judge. This romance GETS to me ... and I re-read the book this summer, and although I am not 17 years old or however old I was when I first read it - it STILL gets to me. I love both of those people. And I love both of them together.

Aubrey & Maturin. The Master & Commander series (excerpt here) Their relationship spans so many books and it never gets old, never seems stale - or like it's schtick. These people were obviously very alive to Patrick O'Brian - I never feel him getting into a rote-mode with them, they are difficult complex men - polar opposites in some ways ... and as they get older, their differences just become more entrenched, rather than softening at the edges. Yet there is obviously something in each one that the other relies upon - and gets from him like no other. They are intellectually curious 19th century men, and their relationship is one I treasure. You want them never ever to stop talking to one another.

Jo and Laurie. Little Women (excerpt here). I don't know who Amy and her blond curls and her stolen limes thinks she is - but Laurie is JO'S MAN ... and the second half of the book always (still) throws me off when stupid German professor with his maudlin poetry enters the picture. Regardless - the first half of that book - when Jo and Laurie become friends ... FUGGEDABOUTIT. Doesn't get any better. I love those two people so much.

Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. Jane Eyre (excerpt here) The weirdest creepiest literary romance I can think of, with a cross-dressing episode and a calling-across-the-space-time-continuum ending ... an unclassifiable book with two unclassifiable leads. I adore them.

Gillian and the djinn. "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" (excerpt here). I know it's obscure but the short story had me in its grip and I still dream and fantasize about it, it was that captivating. Gillian is an academic, a celibate middle-aged woman, who somehow lets a genie out of a paperweight that she bought at a bazaar in Turkey. The genie (or "djinn") is an enormous turban-swathed creature - who somehow - over the course of their evening together - reveals himself as someone with tremendous insight into Gillian, the uptight brainiac. I can't describe it without making it sound trite or silly, and maybe it is all that as well, but God, did I love these two characters. I want a whole book about them!

Johnny Wheelright and Owen Meany. A Prayer for Owen Meany (excerpt here). A cosmic relationship, showing the ultimate structure of the universe, basically. But grounded in the reality ... it's a dynamic that killed me when I first read it, and enraged me, and made me laugh out loud ... and those two people, and their frienship and what it led them to - stays with me to this day. I'm almost afraid to re-read this book.

Valancy and Barney. The Blue Castle (excerpt here). I think it is Lucy Maud Montgomery's finest romance - way better than Anne and Gilbert. Valancy is an uptight spinster, overridden by her family - who - after getting the diagnosis that she only has a year to live - goes INSANE. She bobs her hair. She eats hotdogs on the sidewalk. She moves out of her mother's house and goes to live with a local reprobate whose daughter is dying (after giving birth to a baby out of wedlock). Valancy sets herself up as a housekeeper and nursemaid and eventually meets Barney - a man who has a terrible reputation in town, all sorts of horrible rumors fly about him ... but they meet and connect. Because Valancy only has a year to live, she asks him to marry her. She wants to experience marriage and all that entails. Barney is startled and says, "You know I don't love you, right Valancy? But I have always thought you were sort of a dear." So he marries her. WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW MUCH I LOVE THEIR ROMANCE. Valancy is head over heels, and she feels, because she only has a year left to live, that she can fully love and express that love - because why waste any time? It makes her free and abandoned. Barney knows about the diagnosis, and while he is a confirmed bachelor, accepts her as his wife - and ... well. You'll just have to read the book to see how it all ends. LOVE IT.

Romeo and Mercutio Romeo and Juliet. I always found the relationship between Romeo and Mercutio to be far more interesting than the one Romeo has with Juliet, which is pretty standard (albeit gorgeous) young-love stuff. But the friendship of those two men is one of the reallest in all of Shakespeare's canon, and I never read that play without feeling the loss of it, the sadness of losing such a friend. They're brothers.

ROMEO
I dream'd a dream to-night.

MERCUTIO
And so did I.

ROMEO
Well, what was yours?

MERCUTIO
That dreamers often lie.

ROMEO
In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

MERCUTIO
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she--

ROMEO
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
Thou talk'st of nothing.

MERCUTIO
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

I think Mercutio is the best part in that play.

Charlotte and Wilbur. Charlotte's Web Heartcrack. Charlotte's selfless support of Wilbur, her dedication to his LIFE, and Wilbur's growing love of her. They go through all the stages - dawning realization of kindred spirit, one friend the stronger than the other, Wilbur taking advantage of Charlotte, Charlotte sulking, but still doing what she needs to do - because she has this gift. This gift of language. And the last two lines of that book rival any in all of literature. I can barely type it out without tearing up:

It is not often someone comes along that's a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both.

Nothing worse than "going out into the world without a single book"

A new biography of Oscar Wilde is coming out called Oscar's Books, by Thomas Wright - and I am frothing at the mouth to get my grubby little paws on it. Brenda Maddox reviews it in The Literary Review and the review brought me to tears. It's very resonant for me right now, for various reasons ... books ... and what they mean to my family ... and how books, and the reaching out for a book in a dark moment is sometimes all you have to hang onto ... and also: it is a good sign, a sign of health, of life ... If you can still read, you are still alive. Not just surviving but alive. It is tremendously important.

Maddox writes:

Among the humiliations Wilde suffered after being sent to prison were not only compulsory silence - prisoners were forbidden to speak to one another - but deprivation of books. All he had in his cell at Pentonville, apart from his bed (a plank laid across two trestles), were a Bible, a prayer book and a hymnal. When at last his sympathetic MP won him permission to have more books, Wilde nominated Pater's The Renaissance along with the works of Flaubert and some by Cardinal Newman. These were allowed, but only at the rate of one a week. Moved to Reading Gaol, he found himself under a more sympathetic prison governor. His book request lists after July 1896 show him developing an interest in more recently published titles, including novels by George Meredith and Thomas Hardy. Wilde later said that he also read Dante every day in prison and that Dante had saved his reason.

God.

2nd US President John Adams once wrote a letter to his son John Quincy, giving him a word of advice: "You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket", and - speaking from my own experience - it is true. I am never alone if there is a book somewhere near me.

So Wilde felt unhinged without his books. Where did they go? Who would he be without them?

Unbelievably moving to me.

To read a biography of Wilde focusing on his library is spectacularly exciting to me, and I wish it were out NOW.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
-- Oscar Wilde

Maddox writes:

When he was discharged in May 1897, he was not allowed to take his accumulated books with him and faced what he called the horror of 'going out into the world without a single book'. But friends rallied round. Entering the hotel room in Dieppe where he was to begin his exile, he found it full of books furnished by his friends and he broke down and wept.

I feel ya, dawg. I'm weeping right now just thinking about it.

Blankets, pillows, warm clothes? Pshaw. Canned goods? Leave 'em at the door.

If I go into exile, send me all my books, please.

Images of Moby Dick ...

Some are the famous Rockwell Kent illustrations (I have the copy of the book with those images in it - and more haunting images you will never see! He has created the looming leviathans of nightmares) ... others are from other versions of the book ... book covers, artist renditions, etc.

I love to see all of the different viewpoints of the artists. Everyone is trying to capture - or imagine themselves into - a single event. There's something beautiful about that. (Reminds me of this post I did way back when.)

War and Peace: An entire society ...

...described in one paragraph:

Part Four: Chapter III

On the 3rd of March all the rooms of the English Club were full of the hum of voices, and the members and guests of the club, in uniforms and frock-coats, some even in powder and Russian kaftans, were standing meeting, parting, and running to and fro like bees swarming in spring. Powdered footmen in livery, wearing slippers and stockings, stood at every door, anxiously trying to follow every movement of the guests and club members, so as to proffer their services. The majority of those present were elderly and respected persons, with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. Guests and members of this class sat in certain habitual places, and met together in certain habitual circles. A small proportion of those present were casual guests - chiefly young men, among them Denisov, Rostov, and Dolohov, who was now an officer in the Semyonovsky regiment again. The faces of the younger men, especially the officers, wore that expression of condescending deference to their elders which seems to say to the older generation, "Respect and deference we are prepared to give you, but remember all the same the future is for us." Nevitsky, an old member of the club, was there too. Pierre, who at his wife's command had let his hair grow and left off spectacles, was walking about the rooms dressed in the height of the fashion, but looking melancholy and depressed. Here, as everywhere, he was surrounded by the atmosphere of people paying homage to his wealth, and he behaved to them with the careless, contemptuous air of sovereignty that had become habitual with him.

From War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

The new Brideshead and the whole Waugh thing in general

Really interesting article about the so-far-unsuccessful attempts to bring Evelyn Waugh's various books to the screen (big and small). I remember the Brideshead miniseries - anyone who was alive at that time HAD to be aware of it - it was kind of like the Roots miniseries. Unless you were freakin' Amish, you were at least aware that it was going on.

I've been on a Waugh kick lately. Hadn't ever read anything by him, and now I am making my way through all of his stuff. Read Scoop, Decline and Fall and The Loved One. Next one I think will be Vile Bodies. I love him.

Now here is what I remember from the mini-series of Brideshead: Jeremy Irons slouching around in white linen. A melancholy. There was a homoerotic thing going on that I did not pick up on ... but I did get a sort of dissipated energy from everyone involved - showing the decay of that world, of course, and etc. I remember the settings - the white colonnades and the gardens and all that.

So THAT has been my impression of Evelyn Waugh. No wonder I never read him. I'm not saying the mini-series wasn't good - i watched every second of it and was mildly obsessed with the languid sulky-eyed Anthony Andrews ... but it seemed a bit, well, ponderous. Precious, in that very English way (Eddie Izzard makes fun of those kinds of movies. "What is it, Sebastian? I'm arranging matches." Etc.)

Imagine my surprise when I picked up Scoop (excerpt here), and found myself laughing so hard in public that I frightened other people on the bus. Imagine my surprise when I read Decline and Fall (excerpt here) and found myself MOPPING the tears of laughter off of my face at a couple points. And imagine my surprise when I read The Loved One and found myself in a satire of Hollywood as biting and ridiculous as anything that Fitzgerald ever wrote about show business.

I have not read Brideshead Revisited yet, and it is that image from the miniseries of dissipated white linen and tubercular love affairs that has kept me away, but now that I know the true character of Evelyn Waugh's prose, I will definitely read it.

I loved this observation from the article above:

The essence of Waugh is his economy of style. He is Hemingway bearing a bumbershoot. The writing may be far more Latinate, but it's every bit as efficient. "It is the cinema which has taught a new habit of narrative," Waugh wrote in 1948. Like Hemingway, he learned from the movies the value of the camera-eye view: the description that takes in without belaboring.

What makes the books either so relentlessly funny, acidly sharp, or both is a simple equation: the more outlandish the situation or personage, the more precise and lucid the writing. Waugh's true cinematic equivalent is Howard Hawks, not Merchant-Ivory. Each is a master of pace and control: moving things right along and never getting in the way of his material.

Yes!! Howard Hawks, not Merchant-Ivory. Howard Hawks could have filmed Scoop (and in a way, he did - with His Girl Friday and its frenetic insane observations about the newspaper business) - and could have not only reflected the PACE of the book (that's what really surprised me about Waugh - how fast his books move ... I guess because that mini-series from my childhood seemed to go on forever!) but the humor and the absolute absurdity of the situations the characters find themselves in. (Like Cary Grant bemoans in Bringing Up Baby: "How could so many things happen to one person??" That's very Evelyn Waugh-ish!)

Another very good observation about the film adaptations of Waugh's stuff which I think is quite perceptive:

Waugh's Hollywood sojourn exemplifies the basic problem with movie adaptations of his work. Without exception, Waugh's heroes are outsiders - as he was in California. Each novel's capacity for comedy or tragedy comes from its hero's being at variance - whether as a Catholic, innocent, or bounder - with the society around him.

The Waugh adaptations all plant themselves firmly on the inside, reveling in the dense social knowingness that comes of membership in an Oxford college, Pall Mall men's club, or aristocratic family. Ultimately, Waugh's books are about a search for redemption. Waugh adaptations are about decor.

It's that outsider thing that I've written about before, with Waugh (he, as a gay man, was the ultimate outsider) putting a total outsider smack-dab into the middle of a world whose rules he does not understand. It is not a full-immersion experience, his books ... because we always have one eye at how ABSURD these people are behaving. It's a subtle difference in tone and outlook, but it seems to me to be an extremely important element in how his books are filmed.

That's why the Howard Hawks suggestion is so superb, I think. (And, I don't know ... I've seen the previews, and the new Brideshead looks very drippy and British and all "Sebastian, I'm arranging matches ..." but I'll hold off until I see it.)

Here's the whole article.

Master and Margarita as graphic novel

Fantastic idea - and take a glimpse at the artwork by Andrzej Klimowski. WOW. Beautiful!

Here's my favorite image from that slideshow.

Just looking at it gives me the creeps, remembering that awful cat in the book and how much I wanted to kick him under the streetcar.

Some of my thoughts on this great great book here - but I definitely need to check out the graphic novel. I am intrigued.

(via Book Slut)

Books:

Bren: re-reading Kavalier and Clay

Jean: reading The End of the Affair, and also Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

Dad: reading The Far Side of the World (he finished Treason's Harbor)

Siobhan: reading White Noise

Cashel: reading The Egypt Game (thank you, Lisa!!) ("I really relate to those kids!" raved Cash)

Me: finished The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh, finished Evil Genes by Barbara Oakley, finished The Writing Class by Jincy Willett - and now I am 250 pages in to War and Peace - trying to catch up with my cousin Liam!! It's such a huge book but it's really quite easy to read. The SIZE is daunting but once you start it's hard to put down. To imitate Cashel: I really relate to poor Princess Marya. Loving it.

Cashel on Frankenstein:

"I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and every other WORD was 'melancholy'. The melancholy sky, the melancholy smile ... EVERYTHING was 'melancholy'! And it was 200 pages before he built the monster!"

So, Mary, could you dial down the melancholy, please? A 10 year old in 2008 is bored by the repetition. Thanks.

The changeability of Manhattan: Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin

I'm reading Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin. Mitchell raved about it to me (before ABANDONING ME, that is), using the words fin de siecle and ancien regime in his ravings, which means 1. Mitchell is an asshole (but at least he's got company!) and 2. I felt I had to read it. And Ted has mentioned it to me numerous times. But ... but ... it's so BIG. I am overwhelmed. What is it ABOUT? I'm scared. Someone hold me.

So I started it a couple weeks ago. I am so busy now with my own projects that I don't have much time for reading - I've got enough on my plate with family stuff, bridesmaid dresses, crying jags, writing marathons, Trinidadian caretaking involving frankincense, and emails/texts from my ex-boyfriends jostling for position in the Sheila Ex-Boyfriend Lexicon: "Is it ME that's the most important?" "Is it ME?" I am not even kidding. Remember: literary conceit. Always important to keep in mind. Also important to remember that I love men with healthy egos. I have gotten these emails and texts independently of one another. These are not men in touch with one another. They don't even know each other. But I got two in the last week alone. I love those men. But honest to God. My plate is full, boys, without RANKING you in importance for my eventual autobiography, but I'll get to it. I promise.

But I started Winter's Tale and I'm not even going to begin to talk about it yet. I'm scared. Hold me. I'm only 3 chapters in. It is weaving a spell - there is some cloud wall around Manhattan - the marshes of Bayonne are populated with a strange kind of primitive man ... and there's a thief named Peter Lake - and a scene that blew my freakin' socks off that takes place in a huge reservoir tank - a den of thieves - I held my breath the entire time - BUT - I am not ready to talk about it yet - except to just mention that I'm reading it and ... and I'm really really excited. What is it ABOUT? No, wait, don't tell me. WHAT IS THAT WHIRLING CLOUD WALL? No, don't tell me!!!

I know a lot of what is reaching out to me in this book is the New York it depicts, and what it has to say about New York. This is my home. I am tied to my home. I love my home. Mark Helprin, in his majestic narrative, seems to capture some of the ... je ne sais quois ... of New York. Along with the fin de siecle. And the trompe l'oeil. And the aricoverts. As well as Leslie Caron.

Here is a brief paragraph. But it immediately made me think of something - my daily looking-right ritual - and if I have my camera on me, I capture it ... whatever it is that I see:

The next morning, Peter Lake saw the city through different eyes, as he would from then on whenever he awoke. It was never the same from one day to the next. Dark, close, smoky afternoons; oceans of rain; autumn days clearer than crystal paperweights; sunshine and shadow - no one city existed.

You got that right.

Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh

Decline and Fall is Evelyn Waugh's first novel. I'm reading it right now. I had so much fun last year reading Scoop, his hilarious spoof on foreign journalism, particularly war journalists - that I am moving on to his other stuff. I've mentioned before that, like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh was just someone I "missed" in my education. Never read him before. I remember the Brideshead Revisited PBS mini-series VERY well, but never read any Waugh. It was Christopher Hitchens' book review of Scoop in The Atlantic that made me pick it up. I mean, when the book review makes you laugh out loud - you know the book will be funny.

Decline and Fall takes the same absurdist manic tone as Scoop, skewering everything in sight. Everyone in the book is absolutely RIDICULOUS. Their names are preposterous. There is a character named "Sir Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington", for example. In Scoop, it was the foreign press - in Decline and Fall Waugh takes aim at education (and, indirectly, class issues in England - public school vs. private, accents, all that complicated hierarchical stuff). First we meet Paul Pennyfeather, who is studying at Oxford, and is basically expelled for "indecent behavior" - but it's totally not fair because it was only the appearance of indecent behavior. He truly was an innocent victim of circumstances! He wasn't running across the Quad "without his trousers on" as a prank- he truly had lost his pants! But no matter. Off he goes with a blemish on his record. He gets a job teaching German and music at a Welsh boarding school (despite the fact that he cannot speak German and he cannot play music) and finds himself immersed in the manic ridiculous life of an all-boys boarding school. The other teachers are all insane in one way or another, fallen priests and compulsive womanizers - the headmaster is a lunatic with enormous prejudices against the Welsh - and Paul, surprisingly enough, finds that he doesn't need to know German or music in order to teach those subjects. Waugh, as always, with all of his humor, is quite a social critic - some of his observations come close to the anger of Swift, although Waugh always seems to take a more absurd tone, making everyone in the world (except for Paul Pennyfeather) seem on the verge of some sort of hilarious mental collapse, but it's okay, because the world keeps on turning! Don't worry so much, chaps!

Waugh has a "what's the use" fatalism to much of his work - very typical, I suppose, to his generation at that time and the crowd he ran with - so beneath Paul Pennyfeather's experiences is a vaguely sad and baffled attitude ... like: what on earth is the use? What on earth can the use of ANY of this be?

To repeat what Cecil Beaton said of Evelyn Waugh: "His abiding complex and the source of much of his misery was that he was not a 6 foot tall, extremely handsome and rich duke." Waugh's books are so funny that people will look at you strangely if you read them in public because you will be unable to control your laughter. But they are not in any way, shape, or form - "light", or "shallow". There is this undercurrent of unease in them ... I suppose that's much of what an "absurdist" sensibility is all about (at least that is true in the theatre, and I imagine so in literature). Waugh sees things.

Here is a description of Paul Pennyfeather's first day teaching class at the boarding school:

Dumb with terror, he went into his own class room.

Ten boys sat before him, their hands folded, their eyes bright with expectation.

"Good morning, sir," said the one nearest him.

"Good morning," said Paul.

"Good morning, sir," said the next.

"Good morning," said Paul.

"Good morning, sir," said the next.

"Oh, shut up," said Paul.

At this the boy took out a handkerchief and began to cry quietly.

"Oh, sir," came a chorus of reproach, "you've hurt his feelings. He's very sensitive; it's his Welsh blood, you know; it makes people very emotional. Say 'Good morning' to him, sir, or he won't be happy all day. After all, it is a good morning, isn't it, sir?"

"Silence!" shouted Paul above the uproar, and for a few moments things were quieter.

"Please, sir," said a small voice - Paul turned and saw a grave-looking youth holding up his hand - "please, sir, perhaps he's been smoking cigars and doesn't feel well."

"Silence!" said Paul again.

The ten boys stopped talking and sat perfectly still, staring at him. He felt himself get hot and red under this scrutiny.

"I suppose the first thing I ought to do is to get your names clear. What is your name?" he asked, turning to the first boy.

"Tangent, sir."

"And yours?"

"Tangent, sir," said the next boy. Paul's heart sank.

"But you can't both be called Tangent."

"No, sir, I'm Tangent. He's just trying to be funny."

"I like that. Me trying to be funny! Please, sir, I'm Tangent, sir; really I am."

"If it comes to that," said Clutterbuck from the back of the room, "there is only one Tangent here, and that is me. Any one else can jolly well go to blazes."

Paul felt desperate.

"Well, is there any one who isn't a Tangent?"

Four or five voices instantly arose.

"I'm not, sir; I'm not Tangent. I wouldn't be called Tangent, not on the edge of a barge pole."

In a few seconds the room had become divided into two parties: those who were Tangent and those who were not. Blows were already being exchanged, when the door opened and Grimes came in. There was a slight hush.

"I thought you might want this," he said, handing Paul a walking stick. "And if you take my advice, you'll set them something to do."

He went out; and Paul, firmly grasping the walking stick, faced his form.

"Listen," he said. "I don't care a damn what any of you are called, but if there's another word from any one I shall keep you all in this afternoon."

"You can't keep me in," said Clutterbuck; "I'm going for a walk with Captain Grimes."

"Then I shall very nearly kill you with this stick. Meanwhile you will all write an essay on 'Self-indulgence.' There will be a prize of half a crown for the longest essay, irrespective of any possible merit."

From then onward all was silence until break. Paul, still holding the stick, gazed despondently out of the window. Now and then there rose from below the shrill of the servants scolding each other in Welsh. By the time the bell rang Clutterbuck had covered sixteen pages, and was awarded the half crown.

To me, Evelyn Waugh has perfect pitch.

And then there is the aforementioned monologue by Dr. Fagan, headmaster of the Welsh boarding school. I just think it's so hysterical that he harbors such contempt for the Welsh people despite his surroundings - and he is unashamed yet a part of him must realize how inappropriate it is because he wanted to publish "a little monograph" on his feelings about the Welsh but he was afraid it might make him "unpopular in the village". hahahaha Yeah - ya think?? Anyway, listen to Dr. Fagan go on and on and on to poor Paul Pennyfeather who cannot get awy.

"I often think," he continued, "that we can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Carnarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life, Pennyfeather, and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Non-conformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging. But perhaps you think I exaggerate? I have a certain rhetorical tendency, I admit."

"No, no," said Paul.

"The Welsh," said the Doctor, "are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing," he said with disgust," sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver. They are deceitful because they cannot discern truth from falsehood, depraved because they cannot discern the consequences of their indulgence. Let us consider," he continued, "the etymological derivations of the Welsh language...."

But here he was interrupted by a breathless little boy who panted down the drive to meet them. "Please, sir, Lord and Lady Circumference have arrived, sir. They're in the library with Miss Florence. She asked me to tell you."

"The sports will start in ten minutes," said the Doctor. "Run and tell the other boys to change and go at once to the playing fields. I will talk to you about the Welsh again. It is a matter to which I have given some thought, and I can see that you are sincerely interested. Come in with me and see the Circumferences."

What??

The poor Doctor. This is the man who, in a moment of joy and hopefulness, goes off on a huge monologue about how he "doesn't understand his own emotions". Like - hope enters his heart, anticipation of something pleasant, sheer simple enjoyment of the sunshine and the grass and being alive, and he literally cannot understand what the feeling actually is.

I am in love with Evelyn Waugh. So glad I'm playing catch-up now.

And this is a first novel? Damn him.

Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

I finished Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris yesterday. It blew me away. At one point, I found myself wiping tears off of my face. And then at other times I was laughing so hard that I made my seat-mate on the bus nervous. It's an amazing accomplishment, not to mention right on in its observations of the hollow-ness and ferociously gossipy atmosphere of most offices. It's just perfect that way. You spend more time with your co-workers than you do with your own family, and in a way it's like you're a great big family - you get to know everyone's quirks, and some are more annoying than others ... but you can't just say, "Please go away, you're annoying me ..." You have to put a lid on your hotter passions when you are in the office and do your best to get along. And then there comes a moment when you realize that that person sitting in the cube next to yours - you may overheard the person's phone conversations, and know that she has a bikini wax scheduled for Tuesday, or her douchebag boyfriend won't call her back ... but protocol says you can't ask about these things - and you may know so much about someone, through osmosis, that it comes as a shock when you realize you actually don't know anything at all. Then We Came To The End is all about those moments. Gossip feels real. And vital. It also feels irresistible. It's difficult to turn it down, it's difficult to not succumb. And the one guy in the office (Joe Pope, a GREAT character) who does not gossip is looked at with suspicion and loathing. There is a total group dynamic at work here ... which becomes even more intense once the layoffs start. Who will be next? The book is just so accurate in observations about office life, but also about humanity - and the gap between who we are at work, and who we are at home. This is especially true of the higher-ups, the boss - who is separated from the masses below, because of her salary, her job title ... She is intimidating, good at what she does - and nobody knows anything about her. When we do learn what is going on with her, it is shattering. At least I found it shattering. The SPLIT in psyches ... the fact that work, with its necessary evasions and polite ignoring of tensions, becomes the place where you can hide ... especially if you are a person of power. Because nobody is going to stroll up to you and say, "Hey - what the hell are you doing at work at 10 pm on a Friday night? Come on - go home!" No. Because she is the boss. I'm serious - as we got glimpses into what was happening with her (her moment in the dressing room in the department store especially) I found myself in tears. As funny as the book is, it's a "big" book - with big themes, and I really admire a writer who can pull that off. It's rare in the current literary climate. Joshua Ferris has figured out a way to comment on today's economic atmosphere, and he does so in a way that is funny, accurate, heartfelt ... These characters - I KNOW these people. I know Tom Mota, I know Marcia Dwyer (I love her so much!!), and Benny ... Siobhan texted me the other day when I told her I was 8 pages in to Then We Came to the End and I had already laughed out loud 5 times ... she texted me: "I love Benny!" And oh my God, so do I. He's not Mr. Rochester, he's not Sydney Carton ... he's just a guy who seemingly loves to gossip, loves his job, has an unrequited crush on Marcia ... but as the book goes on, what you realize is: Benny is the glue. Benny is one of those people. We NEED Bennies. Their generosity is so often taken advantage of. Fantastic character. He killed me.

And I'm still gobsmacked by the plural narrator and how perfect it is.

Here's an excerpt.

Marcia Dwyer became famous for sending an e-mail to Genevieve Latko-Devine. Marcia often wrote to Genevieve after meetings. "It is really irritating to work with irritating people," she once wrote. There she ended it and waited for Genevieve's response. Usually when she got Genevieve's e-mail, instead of writing back, which would take too long - Marcia was an art director, not a writer - she would head down to Genevieve's office, close the door, and the two women would talk. The only thing bearable about the irritating event involving the irritating person was the thought of telling it all to Genevieve, who would understand better than anyone else. Marcia could have called her mother, her mother would have listened. She could have called one of her four brothers, any one of those South Side pipe-ends would have been more than happy to beat up the irritating person. But they would not have understood. They would have sympathized, but that was not the same thing. Genevieve would hardly need to nod for Marcia to know she was getting through. Did we not all understand the essential need for someone to understand? But the e-mail Marcia got back was not from Genevieve. It was from Jim Jackers. "Are you talking about me?" he wrote. Amber Ludwig wrote, "I'm not Genevieve." Benny Shassburger wrote, "I think you goofed." Tom Mota wrote, "Ha!" Marcia was mortified. She got sixty-five emails in two minutes. One from HR cautioned her against sending personal e-mails. Jim wrote a second time. "Can you please tell me - is it me, Marcia? Am I the irritating person you're talking about?"

Marcia wanted to eat Jim's heart because some mornings he shuffled up to the elevators and greeted us by saying, "What up, my niggas?" He meant it ironically in an effort to be funny, but he was just not the man to pull it off. It made us cringe, especially Marcia, especially if Hank was present.

In those days it wasn't rare for someone to push someone else down the hall really fast in a swivel chair. Games aside, we spent most of our time inside long silent pauses as we bent over our individual desks, working on some task at hand, lost to it - until Benny, bored, came and stood in the doorway. "What are you up to?" he'd ask.

It could have been any of us. "Working" was the usual reply.

Then Benny would tap his topaz class ring on the doorway and drift away.

How we hated our coffee mugs! our mouse pads, our desk clocks, our daily calendars, the contents of our desk drawers. Even the photos of our loved ones taped to our computer monitors for uplift and support turned into cloying reminders of time served. But when we got a new office, a bigger office, and we brought everything with us into the new office, how we loved everything all over again, and thought hard about where to place things, and looked with satisfaction at the end of the day at how well our old things looked in this new, improved, important space. There was no doubt in our minds just then that we had made all the right decisions, whereas most days we were men and women of two minds. Everywhere you looked, in the hallways and bathrooms, the coffee bar and cafeteria, the lobbies and the print stations, there we were with our two minds.

There seemed to be only the one electric pencil sharpener in the whole damn place.

We didn't have much patience for cynics. Everyone was a cynic at one point or another but it did us little good to bemoan our unbelievable fortunes. At the national level things had worked out pretty well in our favor and entrepreneurial cash was easy to come by. Cars available for domestic purchase, cars that could barely fit in our driveways, had a martial appeal, a promise that, once inside them, no harm would come to our children. It was IPO this and IPO that. Everyone knew a banker, too. And how lovely it was, a bike ride around the forest preserve on a Sunday in May with our mountain bikes, water bottles, and safety helmets. Crime was at an all-time low and we heard accounts of former welfare recipients holding steady jobs. New hair products were being introduced into the marketplace every day and the glass shelves of our stylists were stocked with tidy rows of them, which we eyed in the mirror as we made small talk, each of us certain, there's one up there just for me. Still, some of us had a hard time finding boyfriends. Some of us had a hard time fucking our wives.

Some days we met in the kitchen on sixty to eat lunch. There was only room for eight at the table. If all the seats were full, Jim Jackers would have to eat his sandwich from the sink and try to engage from over in that direction. It was fortunate for us in that he could pass us a spoon or a packet of salt if we needed it.

"It is really irritating," Tom Mota said to the table, "to work with irritating people."

"Screw you, Tom," Marcia replied.

The book packed an unexpected punch. I was surprised at how moved I was "when I came to the end".

Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

I'm reading Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris right now - thanks to my sister Siobhan and also to Elegant Variation, who put the book on my radar almost immediately. If you work in an office now, if you have ever worked in an office, you will wince and cringe and laugh out loud reading this book. Within the first two pages I wasn't just chuckling, at the observations - I was guffawing, and had to put the book down to get myself together. It reminds me quite a bit of Catch-22(excerpt here), with its realistic and yet vaguely manic way of talking about something that is totally absurd. I have not finished it yet - so please do not spoil it ... but so far, it's one of my favorite new books I've read in the last year. And it's a first novel, which I am usually prejudiced against. Any book that makes me laugh so loud on the subway that the person next to me starts to shift uncomfortably because they are seated next to a lunatic is a book that has won my heart. The most amazing thing about the book is that it is a plural narrator. "We". At first I wondered, nervously, "Will he be able to sustain this? Will I miss a more conventional story?" Well, I'm 200 pages in and yes. He is able to sustain it. And no. I do not miss a more conventional narrator. Because if you've worked in an office, you know how it is all about the group ... people say "We think" and "We feel" with total freedom, and when you really examine it - or stop to think about it - it is totally insane! Gossip runs the world. Without it, offices would not function. Without the group "we", office politics would fall apart. So I'm really impressed with the "we" narrator, and now I barely think about it - I have totally accepted it. It's not a gimmick, or a trick. It really expresses what office life is like. But there's so much else that (so far) is wonderful about this book. I've mentioned the humor. The observations are so right on that I suddenly find myself thinking, 'Why on earth did I not see that before?" But the book does not sacrifice heart, the abyss that is at the center of so many people's lives. It's not condescending either - as in: hahaha, let's laugh at the poor drones who have to work in cubicles, haha. Oh God, no. Joshua Ferris KNOWS this world, and he has observed how it operates - and he just "gets" it. Office life. It's making me laugh so hard I cry. Some excerpts later, perhaps, but for now - I just have to go on record that this is a fantastic book.

Culture snapshots and emotional snapshots

-- I'm reading A Widow for One Year by John Irving and also The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian. Awesome counterpoint. Both superb writers in their own way.

-- Thank you, dear Siobhan, for introducing me to the amazing pleasures of L.E.O. - I cannot get enough of them right now. (Website here) Mike Viola and the Candybutchers are pretty much a required course if you are an O'Malley - kinda like the Foo Fighters - you at least have to give them a chance ... otherwise we won't take you seriously. It's kind of non-negotiable. Sorry. Anyway, L.E.O. is sheer liquid joy floating through the atmosphere. The song "Make Me" is my current fave. (Explanation of what L.E.O. is here)

-- Thinking a lot about Jeff Bridges these days. More later.

-- Went to a screening last week of Mongol, the sweeping Russian epic about Genghis Khan. Big plush press screening room on 57th Street, it was great. Everyone (myself included) blackberrying throughout the film, stepping outside to take a phone call, whatever ... and also scribbling on notepads throughout ... totally different atmosphere from seeing a movie out in the real world, but fun and interesting. My review will be on House Next Door eventually - I'll point you that way when it launches.

-- Totally consumed by something I'm working on now. It's causing me a lot of stress, there are not enough hours in the day, but I find a deadline ultimately very freeing.

-- Oh, guess who I heard from randomly (God bless Facebook) ... the guy I gave a photograph of my eyeball to for Valentine's Day 'lo those many years ago. Hysterical. It was good to catch up. I didn't bring up the eyeball. It's still too embarrassing.

-- I miss all of my friends right now.

-- Cashel wears a fedora to school now. He calls it his "trademark".

-- Allison's going to Italy for 10 days with her aunt to take a vacation in Tuscany on a horse farm. She's going to be riding horses the entire time. I'm so happy for her, although I will miss her.

-- Thank you, Hitachi. From the bottom of my heart: THANK. YOU.

-- Oh, and I'm also reading Patricia Neal's autobiography (thank you, cousin Mike!) and damn it's making me fucking SAD. She had one love. Gary Cooper. And she never recovered from the loss. Never. And Roald Dahl was a son of a bitch. But what a life, what a career, what strength ... but she ends the book with thoughts of Gary. She never got over it.

-- I crossed 2 or 3 pretty major things off my To Do list which have been haunting me. I actually cried when I crossed the last one off. It had been tormenting my mind, and giving me stress dreams.

-- Watched Stranger Than Fiction last night for, oh, the 10th time, and had to mop the tears off my face at the end. Slowly it's becoming one of my all-time favorite movies. ("You're never too old for space camp, dude.")

-- Last week I said the following sentence to Patrick, "My fallopian tubes are unfurling." Patrick still has not recovered.

-- My entire consciousness is now consumed by the bridesmaid dress I will wear in September.

-- I find office supplies immensely relaxing.

That Night, by Alice McDermott: The beginning

I'm now reading That Night, by Alice McDermott - author of the wonderful and National Book Award-winning Charming Billy (my post about it here).

McDermott often writes from the point of view of an innocent bystander, usually a member of a huge sprawling family of the Irish Catholic variety - so even if you were not a first-hand witness to an event, it doesn't matter. You tell the story of Uncle Jimmy driving the car over the wall as though you were there. Stories are passed down, hardening into narrative. She's so so good at getting that feeling of Boston Irish Catholic diaspora. I can't think of anyone who comes close to "getting it right" - without being twee, or annoying, or full of "oh, I long for the leprechauns of the auld country" like so many Irish-American writers succumb to. It's nauseating. McDermott writes about families who still have the breath of turf around them, they're one generation removed, grandmothers have brogues, etc. I think she's full of truth. That Night takes place in what would seem to be a stultifying suburb atmosphere, early 60s, cusp of Vatican II 60s, and kids roam the streets (the book is told in retrospect by a little girl, now a grown woman, who was truly peripheral to the main events) - and the mothers chat over the fences, and the fathers come home smelling of cigarettes, with slicked down hair. (I love the fathers. Man, does Alice McDermott "get" that kind of father. It's hard to describe. You just know it when you see it. I recognize my entire family, the Buddy Holly glasses, the cigarettes, the little kids leaping through sprinklers, all the Polaroids from my childhood, yes - even this one - in her descriptions of fathers. It's poignant.)

But a while back (and I cannot find the comment even though I looked) I was writing about something - it must have had to do with "openings" of books, as in - how they start, and how challenging they are to write. And Jon, a friend of mine, made a comment that a while back, in a writing class, a teacher had given That Night as an example of a first-rate beginning. I'm halfway through the book right now, but I did want to share the opening - because, man, Jon's teacher was right.

I highly recommend That Night (and all of McDermott's stuff).

Hard to NOT keep reading after something like this. It is a stunner of a beginning. Goosebumps.

EXCERPT FROM That Night, by Alice McDermott - The beginning:

That night when he came to claim her, he stood on the short lawn before her house, his knees bent, his fists driven into his thighs, and bellowed her name with such passion that even the friends who surrounded him, who had come to support him, to drag her from the house, to murder her family if they had to, let the chains they carried go limp in their hands. Even the men from our neighborhood, in Bermuda shorts or chinos, white T-shirts and gray suit-pants, with baseball bats and snow shovels held before them like rifles, even they paused in their rush to protect her: the good and the bad - the black-jacketed boys and the fathers in their light summer clothes - startled for that one moment before the fighting began by the terrible, piercing sound of his call.

This is serious, my own father remembered thinking at that moment. This is insane.

I remember only that my ten-year-old heart was stopped by the beauty of it all.

Sheryl was her name, but he cried, "Sherry," drawing out the word, keening it, his voice both strong and desperate. There was a history of dark nights in the sound, something lovely, something dangerous.

One of the children had already begun to cry.

It was high summer, the early 1960s. The sky was a bright navy above the pitched roofs and the thick suburban trees. I hesitate to say that only Venus was bright, but there it was. I had noticed it earlier, when the three cars that were now in Sheryl's driveway and up on her lawn had made their first pass through our neighborhood. Add a thin, rising moon if the symbolism troubles you: Venus was there.

Across the street, a sprinkler shot weak sprays of water, white in the growing darkness. Behind the idling motors of the boys' cars you could still hear the collective gurgle of filters in backyard pools. Sheryl's mother had already been pulled from the house, and she crouched on the grass by the front steps saying over and over again, "She's not here. She's gone." The odor of their engines was like a gash across the ordinary summer air.

He called her again, doubled over now, crying, I think. Then he pitched forward, his boot slipping on the grass, so it seemed for a second he'd be frustrated even in this, and once again ran toward the house. Sheryl's mother cowered. The men and the boys met awkwardly on the square lawn.

Until then, I had thought all violence was swift and sure-footed, somehow sleek, even elegant. I was surprised to see how poor it really was, how laborious and hulking. I saw one of the men bend under the blow of what seemed a slow-moving chain, and then, just as gracelessly, swing his son's baseball bat into a teenager's ear. I saw the men and the boys leap on one another like obese, short-legged children, sliding and falling, raising chains that seemed to crumble backward onto their shoulders, moving bats and hoes and wide rakes that seemed as unwieldy as trees. There were no clever D'Artagnan mid-air meetings of chain and snow-shovel, no eye-to-eye throat grippings, no witty retorts and well-timed dodges, no winners. Only, in the growing darkness, a hundred dumb, unrhythmical movements, only blow after artless blow.

I was standing in the road before our neighbor's house, frozen, as were all the other children scattered across the road and the sidewalk and the curbs as if in some wide-ranging game of statues. I was certain, as were all the others, that my father would die.

Behind us, one of the mothers began to call her husband's name, and then the others, touching their throats or their thighs, one by one began to follow. Their thin voices were plaintive, even angry, as if this clumsy battle were the last disappointment they would bear, or as if, it seems to me now, they had begun to echo, even take up, that lovesick boy's bitter cry.

A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter

It's been years since I read this classic novel, but it's been on my radar again - ever since Larry wrote an evocative post about reading James Salter's memoir (I mention Larry's post here - sadly, the link to his site no longer works). Anyway. Haven't written much (at all) about James Salter - I came to him late, and I didn't come to him through A Sport and a Pastime, his most well-known book. The first of his I read was Light Years and I was very young when I read it, early 20s - and it sounded some kind of chord in me that made me DEEPLY uneasy. It's definitely a middle-aged kind of book - with all its resignations and disappointments and echoey silences- and I think I'm hesitant to pick it up now. But I will never forget my first reading of the book. I felt literally uneasy.

It's hard to describe what he does as a writer, and why it is so good and so singular ... maybe I'll look around for some reviews to see if I can clarify it, if someone else managed to say it perfectly. Even to say "he's a good writer" is absurd. It would be like saying, "Cormac McCarthy can write, bro!" Well, yeah. But ... Methinks we need to create a different definition of "writer" for guys like McCarthy and Salter. Comparing the two may seem rather insane - because there is really nothing similar about them ... McCarthy catapults us into the genocidal American past, and Salter evokes a gentle dying world in the present. Where events happen that form us - but so quickly that they are gone in a second ... leaving us marked, but also somewhat dazed ... did that really happen? But I feel now like I would recognize a Cormac McCarthy sentence if I bumped into it in a dark alley - and the same with Salter's language. I read Salter and there are times when I get that same feeling I got when I was reading Blood Meridian: Oh God ... this is too deep, too deep ... I can't slow down enough to really contemplate it ... must keep moving ...

And then by the end of the book you find yourself flattened. LIKE A BUG. SMUSH. Never to recover 100%. Writers like that sneak up on you. They work their magic subtly. It's not that they do not want to be noticed: their writing is nothing if not startlingly attention-getting. It's that they do not want to be congratulated. Their concentration lies somewhere else entirely.

I read Light Years a million years ago (uhm, light years ago) - and immediately picked up A Sport and a Pastime which is another book that made me almost uneasy. They're quiet books, no noise or chaos ... but there is something at the heart of them that is unbearably sad. I think it was the sense of looking back on a time when you were most alive ... looking back from a more dim drab present ... the sense of loss ... of unrecoverable vitality ... I'm making him sound bleak, and that's about right, but the language is so beautiful, and so simple - so simple - that the bleakness almost feels like a betrayal when it comes. He describes a snowfall so perfectly that you are transported into its beauty and then he jujitsus you with some bleak empty sentiment. Never too proud of himself, never elaborating, always simple and clear. That's the key to his genius. Most of his sentences are short.

My friend Jon wrote in the comments section of my blog:

First of all, "Light Years" is probably one of the best books I've read in the past five years--and is certainly on my "Top Something" list. I was a wreck after reading that. The scene where Ned comes back to his empty house after seeing Ibsen's "The Master Builder?" I think I had a slight heart attack while reading that. Unbelievably powerful. That whole book is like a column of light, each sentence almost literally like a tiny, multi-faceted diamond, shining such focused rays in eternal directions. And I've been meaning to read more of him ever since--can't believe how long I've gone without actually doing it. Onward.

And I responded:

I am so thrilled to read you were as blown over by Light Years as I was. There were quiet moments in the book (like at the end, with the turtle in the woods) where I felt so ... Basically what I want to say is: the book stunned me, and sometimes it was a barely pleasant sensation ... Like, it affected me PERSONALLY. I'm almost afraid to read it again. He is SUCH a good writer.

So I decided to go back and re-read A Sport and a Pastime (I still don't feel ready to look at Light Years again, especially now when my equilibrium is hanging by a thread on a moment-to-moment basis - but if you're reading me, and you like book recs, etc. - all I can say is: READ Light Years. My God!!)

And I come across passages of such simplicity and beauty that I want to grab Salter by the collar and say, "DIVULGE YOUR SECRETS." I wish I could write like this.

A Sport and a Pastime takes place in provincial France ("the real France" as the main character keeps saying) in the 1960s. A Yale dropout hooks up with a French girl. That's it. No big plot machinations. But the imagery, the language ... Again, I can feel myself skimming the surface of it ... it's almost TOO good ... too good to absorb in one sitting. He's deceptively simple. In almost the manner of Hemingway. If you just skim the surface, you'll miss most of it. But Hemingway doesn't let you off the hook, and divulge the subtext ... or when he does? You'll know it. Salter is the same way. He's describing a soccer stadium here. That seems to be all that is going on. But no no no. The deeps he sounds in his writing ...

Four in the afternoon. The trees along the street, the upper branches, are catching the last, full light. The stadium is quiet, some bicycles leaning against the outer wall. I read the schedule once again and then go in, turning down towards the stands which are almost empty. Far away, the players are streaming across the soft grass. There seem to be no cries, no shouting, only the faint thud of kicks.

It is the emptiness which pleases me, the blue dimensions of this life. Beyond the game, as far as one can see, are the fields, the trees of the countryside. Above us, provincial sky, a little cloudy. Once in a while the sun breaks out, vague as a smile. I sit alone. There are the glances of some young boys, nothing more. There's no scoreboard. The game drifts back and forth. It seems to take a long, long time. Someone sends a little boy to the far side to chase the ball when it goes out of bounds. I watch him slowly circle the field. He passes behind the goal. He trots a while, then he walks. He seems lost in the journey. Finally he is over there, small and isolated on the sideline. After a while I can see him kicking at stones.

I am at the center of emptiness. Every act seems purer for it, easier to define. The sounds separate themselves. The details all appear. I stop at the Cafe St. Louis. It's like an old school room. The varnish is worn from the curve of the chairs. The finish is gone from the floor. It's one large, yellowing room, huge mirrors on the wall, the same size and position as windows, generous, imperfect. Glass doors along the street. Wherever one looks, it seems possible to see out. They're playing billiards. I listen without watching. The soft click of the balls is like a concert. The players stand around, talking in hoarse voices. The rich odor of their cigarettes ... They're never there in the daytime. It's very different with the morning light upon it, this cafe. Stale. The billiard table seems less dark. The wood is drawing apart at the corners. It's quite old, at least a hundred years I should think, judging from the elaborate legs. Beneath the pale green cloth which is always thrown over it, the felt is worn, like the sleeves of an old suit.

"Monsieur?"

It's the old woman who runs the place. False teeth, white as buttons. Belonged to her husband probably. I can hear them clattering in her mouth.

"Monsieur?" she insists.

Exquisite. Just perfect.

And then there's this bit of observational genius:

The three or four gilded youths of the town, too, slouched on the divans. I know them by sight. One is an angel, at least for betrayal. Beautiful face. Soft, dark hair. A mouth like spoiled fruit. Nothing amuses them - they don't talk until somebody leaves, and then they begin little laughing cuts, sometimes calling over to the barman. The rest of the time they sit in boredom, polishing the gestures of contempt. The angel is taller than the rest. He has an expensive suit and a tie knotted loosely at the neck. Sometimes a sweater. Soft cuffs. I've seen him on the street. He's about seventeen, and he seems less dangerous in the daylight, merely a bad student or a boy already notorious for his vices. He's ready to start seductions. Perhaps he even says it's easy, and that women are simple to get. To believe is to make real, they say. A chill passes through me. I recognize in him a clear strain of assurance which has nothing to imitate, which springs forth intact. It feeds on its own reflection. He looks carefully at himself in the mirror, combing his hair. He inspects his teeth. The maid has let him undress her. She hates him, but she cannot make him go. I try to think of what he's said. He has an instinct for it. He is here to hunt them down, to discover the weaklings. I don't know what he feels - the assassin's joy.

The less said about such writing the better, I think. To analyze it or point out elements that work would be to ruin it. It's perfect, as is. And I'm thinking: A chill ran through you?? A chill runs through me, Mr. Salter, every time I pick up one of your damn books!

It's been almost 20 years since I read this book and I'm still just stunned by it.

The Pornographer, by John McGahern

I'm tearing through The Pornographer, a novel by John McGahern. I posted about it yesterday. I am mortified by the book. Not the frank sex scenes, which I love - he writes them quite well (not to mention the interesting subtle differences between the "real life" sex scenes and the erotic stories written by our narrator ... You know, the difference between sex as performed by gymnasts and sex as performed by regular people with issues and problems and inhibitions, etc.) - but the character of Josephine - the woman Michael becomes involved with (pretty much against his will) is pushing ALL MY BUTTONS. Josephine! My God! The thing is is that I know she is pushing my buttons because I see myself in her, a dark mirror ... and I do not like what I see. I would never ever behave like Josephine behaves, I have far too much coldness and steel in me - and I would rather walk away from a situation than debase myself by asking for what I need (you can see the dysfunction - this is why pride is a sin, people) ... but the desire to behave like Josephine behaves, my experience of rejection (and not even rejection - but potential rejection) - is all out in the open with this woman, and it is excruciating to read. Excruciating!! I find myself siding with Michael repeatedly. I am as cold as he is. Cut this lady loose, Michael. Cut her loose. You were honest with her, and she chose not to listen. So she's an idiot. Get rid of her. Do it quick, like ripping off a Bandaid. Because Michael, lemme tell you, the woman is a nightmare. RUN FOR THE HILLS.

But it is not that simple, of course it isn't. And my response to Josephine, and Michael's response to her ... perhaps might be indicative of our own personal truths, our own sense of boundaries, etc ... but I imagine that McGahern is going for a deeper point here. About intimacy and the inability to connect. Sex feels like connection, and it actually is connection. But when two people are having two separate experiences -during the act of making love - then that's a problem. Actually to call it "making love" is a misnomer. If one person is "making love" and the other person is "having sex" you're gonna have some issues. Josephine is 38 years old, and a virgin. She is highly competent at her job, and she loves it. Michael writes porn stories for a magazine, and hides that fact from everyone. When she discovers the truth, at first she is intrigued. But as they get deeper involved, and he starts pushing her away, she becomes convinced that it is the writing of the porn that has ruined his soul for love. He needs to give it up. And looking at Michael's coldness, his ability to detach - regardless of the consequences - I don't know, maybe Josephine has a point. Michael doesn't sit back and write his porn stories with detachment, they work him up ... as they are meant to work the reader up. But what is he ultimately left with? McGahern does not take a judgmental stance towards porn, or those who love it. He is quite egalitarian, which I like. He's a male writer who can write about women (not all of them can, many of the great male writers suck at trying to write women) ... Women are not monolithic to McGahern, they are not "other" (that's my main beef with a lot of male writers and how they write about women - I'm looking at YOU, Don DeLillo) ... they may be mysterious to the gentlemen involved with them, but they are not so completely beyond the pale in terms of their life experience. Josephine is a nightmare to read - the story, after all, is totally from Michael's point of view. We only feel his increasing sense of entrapment (and this chick sets her sights on him instantly ... I guess that's what happens when you take a 38 year old virgin's virginity ...)

She's pushy. She's demanding. She is immediately in love with him. Michael senses the danger, he senses that Josephine's power 'comes from outside' - meaning: there is a hollowness there, and when he rejects her, as he WILL do, she will be destroyed, because she has built him up as her only reason for being. Michael can sense, from afar, how Josephine is creating a relationship with him out of wholecloth - even though he only wants to take her to pubs, and go back to his place. Doing "date" things, like going to the movies, or doing things during the day ... he's not into that. She keeps pushing him. I ache for her. I ache with embarrassment for her. I want to tell her to back off. She mentions her two friends, two American girls, and Michael can sense the HOURS of girl-talk that has been devoted to him. Michael's no dummy. He knows how women operate. He knows how they make shit up because they want it to be true.

But he got more than he bargained for with Josephine, who will not disappear so easily. This isn't a Fatal Attraction story. She doesn't go off the rails (at least not yet) ... but it's hypnotic, in the fact that I can't wait for her to disappear, I can't wait for Michael to go back to his real life, which consists of doing nothing but writing porn, wandering the streets aimlessly on his days off, picking up girls, having sex, moving on ... Like: why do I want him to go back to that? And yet - I certainly couldn't "approve" of him accepting Josephine - it couldn't work! His coldness amazes even me, and I actually think it's something to be proud of. He does not lead her on. He says straight off, "I am attracted to you, and I want to have sex with you. That's not love." She doesn't understand that at ALL. He reiterates the point. He knows he has to break it off. She gets all excited when she's with him, she can't stand it when he needs "a day off" - like, she wants to be with him all the time. Meanwhile, Michael is in the middle of a family crisis - with his beloved aunt dying, and all of that stuff going on ... he needs SPACE. "I'll see you this weekend," he says to Josephine, after their date on Tuesday. She is dismayed. "All that time without seeing you?"

Frankly, I want to slap her upside the head.

But let me be clear: I want to slap her upside the head because I'm embarrassed, yes, and I want her to protect herself more, play it cool, not be so openly needy ... but then I look at my life, where I have played it cool to such an extent that I am alone, I have hidden my neediness from men so well that they think I don't need them or even really like them, frankly. So who is better? Should Josephine go MY way? Why, cause it's been such a ringing success for me?? Honestly.

What button is being pushed by reading about a woman actually saying, "I love you. I want to be with you. I want to be IN your life ... i don't want to just be the girl you get a drink with and then go home and screw ... I want to be part of your life ..." ?

I don't know, but SOME button is being pushed.

At the same time, I think Michael has been perfectly clear with her - and if any guy ever says to me, "I think we need to take a break" I will know what that means, and I will walk away, and never look back. But that's not Josephine. She will not give up so easy. She fights for it. She is annoying, yes, and we see her through Michael's eyes - which is a distortion ... but I admire the fight.

Be careful what you wish for? Yes, but also the maxim could be: Be careful who you sleep with ... you might awaken a monster. I said that to the doppelganger, lo, those many years ago, in the horrible 2002 aftermath: "Guess you just flirted with the wrong girl, huh. Lesson learned." He gave me the weirdest look, almost like I had slapped him, and nodded and said, "Yeah. I guess so."

And yet I never lose sight of Michael's journey, too - in the book. I yearn for his freedom, I yearn for her to just ... go away. Life (and love) is never that simple.

Bravo, Mr. McGahern.

Here's a killer excerpt. The last paragraph knocked me on my ass. I still haven't gotten up.

"We only know each other a few weeks, and things are happening far too fast for me. I'm fond of you," I could hear the lie slithering on the surface of thin ice. "But I'm not in love with you. I want us to call a halt, for a time anyhow, to these regular meetings."

"I see you have it all worked out, just like one of your plots."

"I haven't it all worked out, but I want to give it a rest. We'll drop it for a month or so and see how we feel then. And for that time both of us are free."

"But I love you ...."

"If you love me, then surely you can do that much for a month."

"You're letting nothing through and you can really swing them."

"Swing what?"

"Reasons. Figures. You have it all figured out, haven't you? There's hardly need to even talk."

"I want to rest it for a month," I said doggedly.

"It'll be no different in a month."

"We'll see."

"I feel I have enough love for the both of us to begin with. It's that horrible stuff you're writing that has you all twisted and unnatural. I'd care so much for you. There's so many other decent natural things you could do."

"I suppose I could run a health food shop or a launch on the Shannon River," I said angrily.

"You don't understand. I love you. I only want the best for you."

'Well then, the best for me is that we agree not to see one another for a month."

"I don't suppose there's any use suggesting that we go back to your place and talk about it."

"No. There's no use. You know what that'll lead to, and we'll be only deeper and deeper in."

"There was a time when you were anxious enough for that," it was her turn to be angry.

"We both were. I'll get a taxi for you or I'll walk you home. Whichever you prefer."

"Walk me home," she said.

"I'm grateful, even flattered by your love. But you can't do the loving for the both of us," I said to her at the gate.

"O boy," she said bitterly. "I waited long enough to sure pick a winner," and I shook her hand and left before she began to cry.

I too had stood mutilated by another gate, believing that I could not live without my love; but we endure, as the first creature leaving water endured, having first tried to turn back from the empty land. Having drunk from the infernal glass we call love and knowing we have lived our death, we turn to love another way, in the ordered calm of each thing counted and loved for its impending loss. We learn to smile.

The Pornographer, by John McGahern

I'm reading The Pornographer, a novel by John McG