In Search

Proust.  I was always too intimidated to try.  But when I heard about the goodreads.com reading group to read all of ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (ISOLT) in 2013, I decided to give it a try.  Nothing like peer pressure to keep you motivated, and the discussions might well help to give me some clue what I was [trying to] read.  So I plunged into ‘Swann’s Way’ (the Lydia Davis) translation with fear, anticipation, humility, and trepidation.

Well, I made it through ‘Swann’s Way’.  So many reactions, many of them very surprising to me.

Highlights:

It’s not all that difficult to read.  It requires patience, and the ability to plow through long passage that may not seem relevant, but it’s not Greek. 

The book is long and sprawling.  At first it seems dreamlike and almost unstructured, and that’s troubling.  Then it seems dreamlike and almost unstructured, and that’s not troubling at all.  It’s wonderful. 

Reality, illusion, dream, wakefulness, deception, truth.  Proust weaves these together seemingly without effort to produce an all-too-accurate portrayal of what it is to be alive and trapped in human consciousness.  At least some of the spirit of Freud (leavened with a French sensibility) prevails.  Yes, it’s all terribly self-conscious, and there are points where you want to scream “Get over it!”  But that is also what I scream at myself on a regular basis in my life.

I know of no comparable literary expression of the role of art and beauty in life.  The description of a musical performance and the emotional effects on the listener is closer than anything I’ve ever read to my deepest experiences of music.  And there are similar depictions of the effects of literature, architecture, and painting.  Stunning.

Yes, there were passages where I became hopelessly lost.  Yes, there were passages where I had to reread several times.  Sometimes I made progress, sometimes not.  I guess reading Proust is a lifetime affair.  One time won’t cut it.

There is a surprising amount of humor, some of it really, really funny.  I didn’t expect that.

Over the month of reading I became absolutely seduced by the inward-looking self-conscious and reflective pose of the narrator.  It’s like having a very effective therapist.  The experience is one in which you can be very very honest and confidential with yourself.  Somehow most of the usual day-to-day embarrassment melts away.  If Proust can be this honest, why withhold as a reader?

There is some achingly beautiful prose.  I’m not qualified to comment on translation issues.  I can only testify that there were sometimes tears at the pure beauty of the prose itself.

Reading Proust affected my reading in general.  I was generally reading ‘Swann’s Way’ and another book at the same time during the month.  I was always comforted on returning to the Proustian womb.  So warm, comforting, and reassuring.  Also very limiting.  But it’s a trade-off that I can buy off on.  At least for now.

So will I continue on with the next book in the ISOLT series?  Not sure.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Depends on what other reading might take me elsewhere.

For now I bow to Proust and his unique take on the human condition.  I take comfort in knowing that I can return to the Proustian cathedral should my soul tell me that I need to do so.  I don’t think it was wise for me to postpone my first Proust until the age of sixty.  But better late than never. 

Before it’s too late.

“George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

That was the headline in the NYT.  Well, you can’t really ignore that, can you?  I guess not.  Saunders has published several books.  The first came out in 1996.  Why haven’t I heard of him?  Why haven’t I read him?  He was close to DFW.  He’s well known in certain literary circles.

Shame on me.

My new hero

So I read his latest story collection, “Tenth of December”, and yes, it may well be the best (new) book I’ll read this year.  It is extraordinary.  Ten stories.  Each in its own distinct voice.  A bit of avant-garde here and there.  But these stories all get to an emotional (if complex) truth, a place of intense feeling that can be scary, telling, funny, reassuring, and loving all at the same time.  At heart Saunders seems to be quite traditional, even if the surface is modern, or even a bit post-modern.  FINALLY, a writer that uses experimental techniques in the service of old-fashioned goals.  FINALLY a writer that is truly comfortable in the 21^st century, a writer that can use modern technique without waving the post-modern flag, and he doesn’t require the reader to enter the writer’s self-conscious ‘Creative Writing Workshop’.  We can read Saunders and relax.  We can savor our role as a reader. He’s the writer, we’re his readers.  Simple.  Also rare these days among forward-thinking writers.

A favorite and representative passage.  It comes from the end of the title story.  The characters have been through a wrenching and complicated experience:

‘They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever . . .’

There’s some sci-fi, there’s humor, there’s poignancy.  I won’t reveal details.  Just read it.  You won’t be sorry.  The writing is challenging in places.  There are times when the reader doesn’t know quite what’s what.  But it all sorts out soon enough, at least enough to be satisfying.  Some ambiguity remains.  There is no preaching, there are few judgments.  Humanity abounds.

And there is plenty of really good writing.  Each story seems to start from a particular writer’s place, a certain voice, rhythm, dialect, point of view.  And Saunders runs with it, spins it out in front of our very eyes.  He never breaks character, and he never goes for the cheap shot or the cheap laugh.

I pledge that sooner or later I will read everything he’s published.

Very happy.

Disappointment

Have always been a big fan of Kingsley Amis’s ‘Lucky Jim’, for me one of the funniest novels ever about academic life. Had never read anything by his son, Martin Amis, so I decided to try ‘The Pregnant Widow’.  Martin’s is now a much bigger literary reputation than his father’s, so my expectations were high.  I was looking for something smart and funny as a break from Proust.  I joined the 2013 Proust reading group on Goodreads.com.  The plan is to read all of the Recherches during 2013.  No idea how long I’ll stick it out, but I am currently ahead of the reading schedule and enjoying ‘Swann’s Way’ very much.  Nonetheless it’s very dense and sometimes tough going, so something light and witty seemed like the perfect intermission.

Martin and Kingsley Amis in 1965

I couldn’t have been more wrong.  By the middle of the book I was longing to get back to the engaging and confidential (if twisted and neurotic) prose of Proust.  It was a real chore to get to the end of ‘The Pregnant Widow’, and I almost wished I had honored my first instincts and put it down after the first hundred pages.

First of all, Martin Amis is brilliant, well-read, and insightful.  But all in service of what?  I don’t mind negativity at all.  The St. Aubry Patrick Melrose novels are witty and also very bleak, but they engage real feelings, sometimes to a painful degree.  I found the Martin Amis to be slick, snotty, snarky, and utterly devoid of any character that might evoke real feelings in me.  All of the characters are lost in one way or another, most to a degree that they seem to inhabit an artificial world devoid of basic human emotion.  They can’t really feel anything except vague self-hatred  and snotty “Why is everyone happier than I am?” that gets them nowhere.  They’re trapped in a place that frankly I don’t find all that interesting. 

Ok, so yeah I get the basic premise about the difficulties presented to young folks by the sexual revolution.  I’m of exactly that generation.  I was facing some of those same choices in 1970, the year when most of the novel’s plot takes place.  Some of my reactions were constructive, some were self-destructive, but I did manage to feel something and react.  These characters just blunder on and spend page after page wondering in witty, abstract, smart, and ultimately boring ways why they’re not as happy as their overwhelming sense of entitlement tells them they should be.  

Amis manages to bring in references to pretty much the entire history of the British novel, and he does a disservice to every single book he cites.  And I realize he knows he’s doing that.  I just don’t want to read about it unless there’s going to be some kind of genuine heartfelt reaction invoked at some point.  But no.  Nothing.  Zilch.  The writing is full of witticisms, many of which I’m sure I missed.  Some are probably too specifically British for me, some too erudite.  Who cares?  These are people I choose not to spend time with.  Period.

I hope this book is not representative of Martin Amis’s overall output, and I hope the book’s outlook is in no way an accurate reflection of his take on life.  If so, what a terrible waste.

Welcome Back

An underrated pleasure in life: something familiar, pleasurable, accessible, and reasonably high quality that we can visit and revisit as we please.  Like having a special restaurant in the neighborhood, a place you know well and enjoy when the time is right.  The food is very good if not five-star, you’re a known and valued customer, you’ve never had a bad meal, and you feel at home.  You can stop by for a comforting and pleasing experience and get a little bit of the relaxation of coming home.

That’s how I feel about Paul Theroux.  He’s written lots of books, and he’s still producing.  I always enjoy reading his work.  I think I know his strengths, and I also know what his fiction is not and probably never will be. But I keep coming back for more, and I’m rarely disappointed.  He has a special talent for getting across the essence of an exotic locale at a particular time in history.  OK, so maybe the plot is sometimes a little contrived.  Maybe the characters don’t exactly resonate with the depth of Tolstoy or Flaubert.  Maybe the language doesn’t have quite the sophistication of Banville or Trevor.  But I don’t know another living author that can give such a sparkling and detailed sense of place and time.

Malawi

‘The Lower River’ is his latest novel.  It deals with the backwater of Malawi.  We learn about how the country has changed in the last forty years (not for the better, despite the all-too-good intentions of many) through the life of Ellis Hoch, an American who spent several years working there in his early twenties, then returns at the age of sixty after his traditional life in Massachusetts explodes.  There are some aspects of plot and character that don’t ring quite true.  But I now feel that I know something about Malawi, its people, its precarious position in the world today.  Not somewhere I’m anxious to visit, but I almost feel that I have, thanks to Theroux’s writing.

We’ve all had the experience of reading a good general newspaper or magazine and learning about this and that.  Until we read something there about a subject we know well; then we suddenly think that the publication is superficial and misleading.  Is that what’s happening about Theroux and Malawi?  I’ve never been there so I guess I’ll never know.  But I do find the portrayal convincing, and I guess that will have to suffice.  Theroux offers no easy answers to the country’s serious problems, nor does he take sides in the various conflicts he portrays.  It’s frankly quite a mess.  That makes the Hollywood ending all the more improbable, but who cares about the last two pages?  The rest is well worth reading.  And it would make a very good movie.

So sit back at your favorite table, have a friendly chat with the waiter you’ve known for years, and order something from the menu you haven’t had before.  The kitchen you know so well will not disappoint you.

More Munro

It’s such a pleasure to read a review or critical essay that instantly clarifies one’s own feelings about an author’s work. Cathleen Schine’s piece on Alice Munro (NYRB, January 10, 2013, unfortunately behind the paywall, so I won’t link to it here), for me, at least, absolutely nails several special aspects of Munro’s stories.  I’ve always loved Munro’s work, and have never been able to figure out what makes the experience of reading her stories so unique. 

‘What Munro has done with this distancing, what she does so powerfully in all her work, is not to withdraw us from her characters or her characters from us, but to create room around them: room for sympathy.  They are not always easy to sympathize with, either.  The inhabitants of Munro’s stories are troubled, peculiar, pinched, violent, prideful, ignorant, envious, meddling, superior – as imperfect as human beings get.  She does not hold back in revealing the wormy crawling activity beneath the rocks of small-town life, the disgust with anyone different or ambitious or literary or imaginative or, worse yet, all these and female, too.  But Munro, like some brisk clear wind, reveals the errors and evils and simultaneously blows away our own initially judgmental reaction.’

The piece covers several other aspects and is well worth reading carefully.

Hmm, looks like Ms. Schine has written some fiction of her own.  And criticism published in The New Yorker and NYRB.  Was married to the film critic David Denby.  Will have to look out for her.

An English Estate in a Little Town Called 'Hope'

Patrick Melrose is now a little older, a little further away from the trauma of his childhood, and maybe a little wiser.  He's severely damaged, but he's beginning to recover. For the moment he’s past the worst of his substance abuse, and he’s primed to find a way to move his life in a positive direction.  He’s just not quite sure how to do it.

‘Above all, he wanted to stop being a child without using the cheap disguise of becoming a parent.’

Like the first two novels in the Patrick Melrose series, Edward St. Aubyn’s ‘Some Hope’ focuses on the events of a single day leading up to a particular event.  Here it’s an elaborate party to celebrate the birthday of an aristocratic friend, one who has his own share of problems.  Princess Margaret is an honored guest at the party, and St. Aubyn’s satirical and cynical pen is especially sharp here.  One guest, a young woman looking to find her way in aristocratic society remarks:

‘Looks didn’t last forever and she wasn’t ready for religion yet. Money was kind of a good compromise, staked up somewhere between cosmetics and eternity.’ 

Patrick says of the host:

‘There’s a blast of palpable stupidity that comes from our host, like opening the door of a sauna. The best way to contradict him is to let him speak.’

Patrick is beginning to come to terms with his deceased father.  His mother is another story:

‘His mother was really a good person, but like almost everybody she had found her compass spinning in the magnetic field of intimacy.’

It will require one more book (‘Mother’s Milk’) for Patrick to come to terms with his mother.

At any rate the social satire in ‘Some Hope’ is stunning and very entertaining indeed.  Here’s an exchange between a minor character (Johnny Hall) and Princess Margaret:

‘It must be funny having the same name as so many other people,’ she speculated.  ‘I suppose there are hundreds of John Halls up and down the country.’

‘It teaches one to look for distinction elsewhere and not rely on an accident of birth,’ said Johnny casually.

‘That’s where people go wrong,’ said the Princess, compressing her lips, ‘there is no accident in birth.’

And here’s another minor character expounding on Europeans and his efforts to fit in:

‘I love the French.  They’re treacherous, cunning, two-faced – I don’t have to make an effort there, I just fit in.  And further down in Italy, they’re cowards as well, so I get on even better.’

The writing is razor sharp and witty.  It’s comforting to see Patrick slowly finding his way to a more normal, productive life given the trauma of his childhood and the paralyzing 'advantages' of his birth.  St. Aubyn at his best. We really feel tremendous sympathy for this remarkably privileged young man.

I’m looking forward to the final two novels in the series.  Already a little sad that the end is in sight.

So Clever

Can you imagine reading a full-length novel, and only at the very end do you understand what the text you’ve been reading really is?  And when we gather that knowledge in the last few pages, we can then deduce the fates of the two main characters without having to be explicitly told. And we also then understand some of the 'weaknesses' that we'd encountered in the book along the way.  It really is astonishingly clever.  I didn’t see it coming, and I was grinning for quite a while after finishing the book.  In retrospect it seems a little unlikely, but it’s just so much fun, who cares?

Ian McEwan brings it off in his latest novel, ‘Sweet Tooth’.  It’s a tale of some pretty tame British domestic espionage in the 70’s.  He does manage to evoke the time very nicely.  There are undoubtedly many specifically British references (especially political and literary) that I missed, but I got enough to remember how those times felt. The writing is slick and professional without calling undue attention to itself.

‘Sweet Tooth’ is part spy novel, part love story, part commentary on what it means to write fiction.  There’s a good dose of autobiography: one of the main characters is clearly a stand-in for McEwan himself.  I’m in no position to judge the extent of truthful correspondence to his own life.  And yes it’s another work of fiction in part about fiction itself.  We do seem to be a bit stuck on that these days.  So many writers have become self-conscious and feel the need to write about themselves writing, all within the boundaries of more-or-less traditional fiction.  Here there's just a hint of self-referential dizziness, and it’s annoyingly indulgent in a few places.  About two-thirds of the way through I got mildly discouraged.  The plot was starting to bog down and I wondered where all this was going.  But the ending makes it all worthwhile.  I don’t know another book quite like it.