I'm back with some Calvino

The Nonexistent Knight (1959)

And

The Cloven Viscount (1952)

By Italo Calvino (1923-1985)

Finally, I finished a book that’s on my list. Now I know why this list built up on my shelf in the first place. Writers keep writing and publishers keep publishing and some books on my shelf just don’t hold my interest. (Sorry, Don Quixote, but once your story deviates from you as the central figure, it tires me.) After many sidetracks, I managed to pick a book of the shelf that’s on the list, and I stuck with it.

I’ve read Calvino before, first If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler (which a friend recommended and I liked so-so, but enough to try another), then Invisible Cities (which I loved far more).

These are two novellas (I’d call them) collected in one volume. The Nonexistent Knight features a crusading armor powered solely by the will that lives within it and the people affected by this will. Fun story.

Favorite quote (because I an relate to it and because it’s good):

One starts off writing with a certain zest, but a time comes when the pen merely grates in dusty ink, and not a drop of life flows, and all life is outside, outside the window, outside oneself, and it seems that never more can one escape into a page one is writing, open out another world, leap the gap. Maybe it’s better so. Maybe the time when one wrote with delight was neither a miracle nor grace but a sin, of idolatry, of pride.

The Cloven Viscount (does not rhyme with “discount” but you knew that) treats a character split in half by cannon fire, one half turning excessively bad, the other (initially thought lost, sorry to spoil a bit of it as much as the back cover spoils it) excessively good.

Neither story was as light as I had hoped, but both are inventive and playfully thought-provoking, so I consider them both winners.

Still, if you’ve never read Calvino, I’d recommend you start with Invisible Cities.

Ladies, Please

Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady (1985)

Florence King

What a crazy confluence of influences on this Southern Lady. Between getting molded by her grandmother and hardened by her mother and coaxed along by her dad and floundering among various sexual adventures, Florence King presents an entertaining read.

I had started it before and couldn't get into it the first time because I was looking for a different kind of humor. Not in a degree of funniness or observational power, both of which are present here, but in the presentation. Many of the scenes seem to be a set-up for someone's witty remark at the end as a stinger. Once I'd resigned myself to that, it moved along nicely and turned out to be a fun read.

Here's the first and last sentences of the prologue (which don't giving away too much and yet give away everything).

There are ladies everywhere, but they enjoy generic recognition only in the South. [...] No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street.

Ko-Ko, Pooh-Bah, and Nanki-Poo

The Mikado, or, The Town of Titipu (1885)

Gilbert and Sullivan

Luckily it's silly. The names and the setting and the action are so over the top, it ought to be an operetta. Oh, okay. It is. Otherwise, sheesh.

I was going to write that everything in it is improbable, but that word isn't strong enough.

It's a fun spoof on overwrought lackadaisical bureaucracy. Ludicrous situations, fun songs.

What more does a growing boy need?

Interim Read

While I'm slowly plugging along at Don Quixote, I not only read a few non-list items - the most recommendable of which is The Ask by Sam Lipsyte (great fun) - , but also one of my listed ones.

Das Hasek Lesebuch, a collection of shorter pieces by Jaroslav Hasek (1883-1923).

His great claim to fame is The Good Soldier Svejk, one of my favorite books ever. His shorter stories work along similar lines: the dirty reality of getting along in the world of central Europe in the early 20th Century shows up all the cracks in the official face of things.

The Svejk stories (which survive being taken out of context of the big work and are represented here, too) have the benefit of the delightful character of Svejk himself, who appears a bumbling fool, but is really a survivor of the most divinely inspired sort.

It makes me happy just thinking about it again.

(And, now back to Don Quixote and Sancho.)

Dropping Acid and Names

Terry Southern (Nile Southern and Josh Alan Friedman, eds.)

Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 (2001)

Most of the things that I found striking about the book are not really repeatable in this forum. Let's just say that drugs, sex, and celebrities play a major role.

The book was recommended to me in several different places, mostly on-line, mostly by comedy writers citing their influences. I can see how this is mind-expanding stuff, and it's well-written, it's just not easy for me to relate to it.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as reading should broaden your horizons. And if you're curious about how, for example, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, and Terry Southern eluded the Chicago police during the 1968 "riots," then you're in for a treat. Or if you want to know about some of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of Dr. Strangelove, or if you want some insightful cultural (literary, musical) reviews, this is for you.

Ah, now I know what's been bugging me about the book all along. He's not very self-critical.

Still. Good read.

Hank Cinq

King Henry the Fifth

by William Shakespeare (1599)

What fun. Between the chorus setting the scenes and Henry whipping his outnumbered army into a frenzy, the play is chock-full of memorable lines, stirring words, emotional nutrients and moral fiber.

As I'm putting this down here, I realize there's a bit of a correlation between the chorus constantly apologizing for having inadequate materials on stage and begging the audience to "piece out our imperfections with your thoughts" and Henry asking his outnumbered army to go "once more into the breach, dear friends, once more."

Also, because it's a(n) historical play, the outcome (I'm guessing) was known to the audience, so the play is really all about the spectacle, and it doesn't fall short.

Thumbs up.

As I Like It

William Shakespeare

As You Like It (1599)

It turns out, not so much.

I guess I'm just not much of a fan of the fantasy world of Arden, and the plot device of romantic partners masquerading as someone else and testing or proving a love. Or, in this case, the Yentl move of cross-dressing and wooing nevertheless.

I also remember not liking A Midsummer Night's Dream that much. But, hey, I still read 'em.

I'd love to get behind some of the stuff and it's probably fun to perform. (The Kenneth Branagh movie, though. Hm.)

Anyway, on a positive note, I'll leave with this, by Celia:

O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!

(Dang, that man could write!)

Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Charles Dickens

In the Book Club Of My Mind, I often play the game of whom I might cast in which role if I were to make a movie of the book I’m reading.* In this case I’m not even sure who’d get top billing, so I checked out imdb and noticed that Sydney Carton seems to get it almost unanimously, save for the odd exception of Dr. Manette.

Obviously a movie has to emphasize individuals and personal relationships.

The novel, however, seems to emphasize the force of History (to be grand) or the Mob (to be bitter) and every character is in relationship to it, as are the two titular cities.

For those of you who have read it, I’ll just remind you of the names. Dr. Manette, Mr. Lorry, Lucie Manette, Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay (Evremonde), Mr. Cruncher, the Defarges, Miss Pross, Stryver, and other more minor characters. Right? None of them carry the action, per se.

Great book, great final scene. Of course much depends on strange coincidences, but who isn’t willing to accept some of these in exchange for the fine writing.

(That said, Dickens isn’t the best subway reading, so I’ve had to spend quite a few end-of-chapter moments standing on the platform after getting off the train just to make sure I got the gist of the chapter I was on.)

My favorite melancholic line is by Mr. Jarvis Lorry, talking about his youth, “when […] my faults were not confirmed in me.”

The quote in context:

Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a few moments, said:

“I should like to ask you: -- Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother’s knee, seem days of very long ago?”

Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry [who admitted to being 78 years old] answered:

“Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me.”

* For what it’s worth, my usually jokey suggestion of Keanu Reeves in the main role is not too bad here, since the character needs some otherworldly distance. And that actress who plays Lizzy’s older sister in the newer Pride and Prejudice (I looked it up: Rosamund Pike) would be a good Lucie. Dr. Manette? Peter O’Toole. And my dear Mr. Lorry, not sure yet. Oh: Ed Asner.

No Humbug

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens (1843)

I’m guessing you all know the story and have probably seen it in various adaptations but might not have read it yet. I hadn’t either; good thing we have this list.

Every time I read Dickens, I regret that I don’t have more time to read him more, and I feel bad whenever my attention drifts because, as far as I can tell, all of his passages are rewarding if you only pay attention.

The guy just seems to love to churn our words, but more than merely churn, he makes them bubble and froth. This is from the last part of A Christmas Carol:

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding, hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!

Recently, my kids and I saw the new animated film version of this story. Though I think that Scrooge was miscast and that the Ghosts ought to have been played/voiced by different people, I was impressed by how creepy the movie was and how much it honored the ghost story as a scary visitation from the beyond and not just as a means for time travel. Thinking about the Present (as a gift as well as a point in time) in its relation to the other times is, after all, the point:

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

Wilde and Crazy Guy

Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

De Profundis (1897)

If I were overly harsh, I'd say that the true crime Oscar Wilde was guilty of wasn't "somdomizing" (as his accuser, the Marquess of Queensberry wrote) a young man (the Marquess' son, Lord Alfred Douglas), but that he couldn't self-edit in gaol ("jail" to us - and Reading is pronounced "redding," but you knew that).

In other words, these two works are a bit unfocused and meandering. It appears that Wilde meant to edit De Profundis for publication, but the ballad is as it stands, a bit odd in its relation of form to content. The ballad is a ballad without real plot - which is, I guess, what prison life was for Wilde. The plot was an internal one of self-forgiveness and learning the redemptive power of tears.

De Profundis puts it better, but it takes a long time to get to the wonderful passages about Sorrow:

Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow.

Pleasure for the beautiful body, but Pain for the beautiful Soul.

and the analysis of Christ as artist:

He realised in the entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation.

[...] Christ is the most supreme of Individualists. [...] one only realises one's soul by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired culture, and all external possessions be they good or evil.

But all this is wrapped in long diatribes on the sins of the addressee of the eighty-plus-tightly-written-page letter, Lord Alfred Douglas. All I can say after having read about all of this kid's selfish and nasty behaviour is, Dang, he must have been really hot.

(To sum up: I'm glad I read them, but I only recommend the middle part of De Profundis. You're better off with the Happy Prince stories, the plays, or The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I will probably reread soon even though it's not on my list, making me fall even further behind.)

Jeeves

Jeeves and the Tie That Binds

(Much Obliged, Jeeves in the U.K.)

P.G. Wodehouse (1971)

Okay, so maybe Pelham Grenville wasn’t on top of his game anymore at ninety years of age (P.G. lived from 1881 to 1975). But Jeeves is f. no matter what the circs.

If you haven’t read a Wodehouse yet I recommend you begin with Right Ho, Jeeves (1934), though I’m sure whoever does the recommending will recommend the first Wodehouse he or she read. His humor is of a somewhat formulaic type – but the formulae are original to him and executed exquisitely. You won’t regret picking one up.

(For those of you who have read Wodehouse, here are some characters to bring smiles to your faces: Aunt Dahlia, Anatole, Stinker Pinker, Madeline Bassett, Market Snodsbury, the Junior Ganymede Society. Old friends all, no?)

Back on the List

Pygmalion

by George Bernard Shaw (1912; 1938)

I'm just looking at the reason for the disparity of the dates and am finding this. It was written in 1912, but the version that is printed for reading consumption is dated 1938 and is based on Shaw's screen adaptation. Yes, apparently Shaw was around for movies - blew my mind, too. But the most interesting note, to me, was, "First presented in German at the Hofburg Theater, Vienna, on 16 October 1913." That is, it was presented in German before it was presented in English (in London).

What the?!

A play about the class differences in England as manifested in the country's spoken language was first presented in German. Heh. Luckily, the Germans have class differences manifested in their language as well. Unlike, according to one of the letters that appear as bonus materials, the Swedish, who have nothing (okay, not nothing: less) at home to relate the premise to.

I won't retell the plot because I have the feeling you've seen or heard of My Fair Lady, which is Lerner's (and Lowe's) adaptation of Shaw's play.

Interesting is the epilogue that Shaw added, to make sure that the reader knows he is serious about having Eliza marry Freddy and not Higgins. Shaw figured everyone would get along best if they didn't jump over into the romantic side of things, something Higgins with his mother fixation probably couldn't have done, anyway.

Fun read, by the way, except for the last scene in which Eliza and Higgins have it out. That was a bit too much explanation, I think.

The Reason I've Gotten Off the Track

Nicholson Baker,

The Anthologist (2009)

Rarely do I feel that a book is written precisely for me. But, then again, rarely do I pass by an opportunity to read something by Nicholson Baker, so obviously my taste tends in his direction.

Anyway, I happen to write silly little poems for a radio show and this book is a kind of apologia for poems that rhyme.

And it's very intelligently written and has nicely intertwined stories of what narrator thinks and does and says and what happens to him. Ah, the book is a delight.

And, to top it all off, the reader gets lots of lovely inspirations to read more poetry, which is what I've been doing since The Anthologist came out in September.

I'll be getting back to my list soon. But first I'm encouraging you to read some Nicholson Baker. Always a treat.

Off-List Reading

Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry (1973)

By B.S. Johnson

The novel wasn’t originally on my list, but someone else here read it and made it sound appealing to me. And voila, the blog is showing fruits.

I thought the book was great. A little more meta than I usually like, but the self-reference as created text (ick, I thought I wouldn’t be writing statements like that after College) made sense. My favorite instance:

Meanwhile, they were both perfectly happy. Well, this is fiction, is it not? Isn’t it?

Think about that for a while, and if this kind of thinking appeals to you, then hie yourself to the nearest book-purveyor and read it. As Johnson often points out, it is a short novel.

And, just for fun, here are some words I had to look up: exeleutherostomise; fastigium; sphacelated; trituration; helminthoid; cryptorchid; eirenicon; sufflamination; ungraith; brachyureate; theodolite.

But don’t let that turn you off. The double-entry conceit, as laid out in the terms of its inventor, the 15^th-century Tuscan Monk, Fra Paciolini, makes overly perfect sense for the likes of Christie Malry and moves the book along nicely. Not only that, but the individual reckonings are an ingenious way of letting you reevaluate what happened before.

Hie yourselves and read, I say.

Babbittry Explored

Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

I have the feeling Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair have the Schubert/Schumann problem: similar names, similar job, similar times. Knowing what little I do about Upton Sinclair, I’d say he’s the Schumann because what I’ve heard about him makes him sound like a bit more of a heavy hitter (Schumann couldn’t orchestrate lightly if they held a blunderbuss to his frontal lobe) than the bantamweight Sinclair Lewis.

Lewis darts and flies around and delivers deft stings with his adjectives and adverbs. Hardly ever have I seen them so smartly chosen.

Babbitt “made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.”

That “nimble” is great, especially because Babbitt “was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless on the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic;…”

I LOVE that he is “extremely married.” And the little bit of story that finally emerges centers on this married-ness.

It takes a while for the story to emerge since the novel is largely a portrait of this upper-middle-class Republican in an industrial several-hundred-thousand inhabitant city named Zenith.

The benefit is that you could excerpt any chapter of the novel and read it as a vignette and you’d be just fine. The downside is that, once you set down the book mid-read, you don’t always have a great incentive to pick it up again. Especially since one of the points is that this kind of character isn’t really likeable.

Still, you get highly enjoyable chapters of (the chapter titles are mine): Babbitt at the Office; Babbitt and his Car; Babbitt at the Club; Babbitt Holds a Dinner Party; Babbitt Gets Away for an Extended Vacation; Babbitt on the Train; etc. And the chapters are all fun in their own way.

Let’s see if I can’t find some more fun adjectives. Ah:

Fricasseed chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream

Signed it, in his correct flowing business-college hand,

Vaguely frightened

Notorious freelance preacher

All of them volubly knew, or indignantly desired to know,

Mrs. McKelvey was red-haired, creamy, discontented, exquisite, rude, and honest.

There. I’m done.

plays go by so quickly

Here's another.

Der zerbrochene Krug, by Heinrich von Kleist (1802-05, performed 1808).

Cute. That's really the most I can say about it. A bit of a farce about justice. A judge who has some injuries whose origin we don't know (yet) is visited by an inspector. On this day a case of a broken jug is brought before him involving a mother, her daughter, the daughter's fiancee, and, it turns out, a mysterious third party (or fourth, I guess). Guess who it turns out to be?

Exactly.

But the way it makes you squirm while the people on stage figure out what you've already divined is entertaining and somewhat enlightening. As in: why does it bother me that they're being so dense? Do I really want the characters in the book (or actors on stage) to acknowledge that I figured it out before they did?

Two plays

Since they're plays, they're quick to get through, which is why I've put so many on my list. Like for many of you, other reading keeps butting into my list reading.

But there you go, two more down.

Kasimir und Karoline, by Oedoen von Horvath (1932) and

The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1777).

Both are on my list because I've read other works by the same authors.

Horvath gets assigned in high school in Germany, the novel Jugend ohne Gott. He seems to have made his living as a playwright, though, so I chose the one that includes my dad's middle name in the title - as good a reason as any, I think.

I picked up Sheridan to read The Rivals, which is where Madam Malaprop - the namesake of malapropisms - makes her appearance. I liked it, so I figured I'd read another.

I like Horvath's novels more, but, then again, I didn't see this staged, and I definitely didn't see it staged in Germany in 1932, which may have changed my interest. - It included a joke about women always going to the bathroom together, though. Now I wonder when this observation was first made in print. Maybe it's already on the walls of Lasceaux.

Sheridan is full of cutesy witticisms, so it's fun to leaf through.

My favorite line is by Lady Teazle to her husband, early in the play:

Authority! No, to be sure: if you wanted authority over me, you sould have adopted me and not married me. I am sure you were old enough.

Zing!

The N-Word and Christ

When we went to Disney World last year, I took along Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. It’s my idea of irony: going to the South to the “happiest place on earth” with a wackily gothic author.

So this year I repeated it (yes, we went again) and upped the ante. Along with A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor (1953), I also brought The Groucho Letters: Letters To and From Groucho Marx (1967) and Witold Gombrowicz, A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes (1971). The only one I actually finished while there was the Guide to Philosophy. (It and the Groucho Letters are highly recommendable.)

But I finally finished the other two as well. At first it’s a little difficult for me to get into O’Connor’s world (see title of post for reasons why), but once I got going, it became more and more engaging and ultimately awesome. I almost feel like reading them once is just a warm-up to reading them again, which I’ll do eventually, but not yet, because “the list” beckons.

A Big One Taken Down

I finally knocked another book off my list: An Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor, Bennett Cerf, ed. (1954).

How did a book like this come to be a “gap” in my reading? Two things: first, I’ve read Roy Blount’s Book of Southern Humor and E.B. and Katharine White’s Subtreasury of American Humor, both of which have turned me on to writers I hadn’t heard of (or simply ignored) before; second, it was among the books my mom took home from her parent’s house after they died, so I thought it might give some insight into my Grandpa (though, in retrospect, it didn’t look well-read). So, when I saw a copy of the book in a used-book store, I picked it up and never read it and finally put it on the “gaps” list to get around to it.

Nearly 700 pages later, I’m not sure it was a worthwhile gap. Maybe if I hadn’t read the other anthologies first, but as it is, Roy Blount’s anthology made me question Cerf’s chapter on “The South” (the book is subdivided first into regions and then into genres) and the Whites’ anthology had already introduced me to the better writers in the collection.

Benchley, Twain, and Perelman are still the cream of the crop for written humor pieces as far as I’m concerned. I love Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which is excerpted here (as it was in the Whites’ book). The nicest surprise was an excerpt from Donald Moffat’s A Villa in Brittany (which I’ve already ordered from ABE books), mostly because of the way he translates the French to English. For example, when a car is about to get a ticket:

What is it that it has, Mr. the Agent? She is to me, the carriage.

Still makes me snicker.

And, for good measure, some Benchley:

People lie in bed and send out to the wine-shops for the native drink, which is known as wheero. All that is necessary to do with this drink is to place it in an open saucer on the window sill and inhale deeply from across the room. In about eight seconds the top of the inhaler’s head rises slowly and in a dignified manner until it reaches the ceiling where it floats, bumping gently up and down. The teeth then drop out and arrange themselves on the floor to spell “Portage High School, 1930,” the eyes roll upward and backward, and a strange odor of burning rubber fills the room. This is followed by an unaccountable feeling of intense lassitude.

The Original Tricky Dick

The radio show This American Life had a show about Origin Stories this week, and they began with the myth of the garage as the founding place for all software giants. No matter how bogus, the myths survive because they make better stories.

Ever try to explain the big bang to a five-year-old? Four of five sentences into it you realize how appealing it is to just say, “And on the sixth day, …”

Or, if you’re a former music major like me, how much do you love the movie Amadeus even though you know it’s a load of bullpuckey?

All this is a lead-in to tell you I read Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592).

For some odd cosmic reason I had picked up Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (1951). It was calling to me off a library shelf and I answered the call. It’s great fun.* A detective is laid up and gets interested in a picture of Richard III, deciding that the man looks nothing at all like a murderer. From that point on he interviews everyone who comes in his room as a hostile witness. What surfaces is what we already know but often forget: all history is written by the victors, or at the very least with an agenda.

That aside, Shakespeare’s Richard III is well worth while. But not really for the story. It’s almost like Shakespeare knew the story is a leaky vessel and plugged it with and exquistely evil character, presenting Richard’s ominous pre-revealings of the events about to unfold.

The fun in the text is not at all in “what’s going to happen?” but in “how is he going to do this?”

I’m guessing it’s the kind of play you watch not for the drama, but for the acting.

*So much fun that I read Tey's The Singing Sands soon after. If you're going to read Tey, stick with Daughter of Time.