Werner Herzog feels like kin to me. It feels like I have known him from childhood. I get an "i know exactly what you mean" feeling whenever I watch onWerner Herzog feels like kin to me. It feels like I have known him from childhood. I get an "i know exactly what you mean" feeling whenever I watch one of this films. This gloriously strange little book, a biography-adjacent, not-quite-true exploration of the life of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II, made me feel understood. Wacky and indefensible, as feelings go, but even so.
Michael Hofmann's translation is marvelous. I love the way he consistently chooses words like "the gloaming" in his translations, instead of "dusk," or even "twilight," for that matter. His translations are precisely beautiful.
I was transported by Werner Herzog's narration of his own book in English, and recommend the audiobook.
Reading this novel felt claustrophobic, and that would be ok if it felt like I was moving through a plot that was developing tension and/or a release Reading this novel felt claustrophobic, and that would be ok if it felt like I was moving through a plot that was developing tension and/or a release of tension, but it felt a little one-note instead. It didn't help me love it that so much of the story is written as flashback. I admired the mastery of the prose. I would love to see Karen Jennings try a novel where she didn't keep quite as tight a stranglehold on the characters and action....more
What was formerly called Key West pigeon was, in 1988 when this book was published, called a quail-dove. What was once called a specklebelly became knWhat was formerly called Key West pigeon was, in 1988 when this book was published, called a quail-dove. What was once called a specklebelly became known as a Greater White-Footed Goose. In some cases there used to be a dozen names for the same bird that by 1988 were all known by the same word. I loved spending time with this book and contemplating the evolution and sometime-loss of language, which evolves much like these species themselves....more
a deeply personal invitation to learn more about the mystery of translation. Ruden cracks open the original biblical languages and meditates on how bea deeply personal invitation to learn more about the mystery of translation. Ruden cracks open the original biblical languages and meditates on how best to represent these meanings in modern English. Ruden's approach to translation is so fascinating. Her love for language--both the original, and the target language--is so apparent. Ruden makes such interesting choices in her book to make her thesis accessible to everyone--the original biblical languages are transcribed phonetically in the roman alphabet, for instance--and I enjoyed following her description of the meticulous choices any literary translator needs to make, word by word.
Ruden gives an overview of how biblical translations reflect countless theological interpretations and even political compromises. She delves just deeply enough into how the original languages differ from English and what particular challenges these differences make for the translator. She includes familiar passages from King James translation side-by-side with her new translations of the same text. Her translations are like a clear window. She has no particular theological bone to pick, but her approach isn't just one of literary interest--her translations feel deeply interested in, and respectful of, the faith of the people who wrote down the original words, thousands of years ago. Some of her conclusions are delightfully speculative--she posits missing pieces of the original poetry of the psalms, for instance, when some bits don't really make sense together, or repeat oddly--and her delight in speculation was in turn delightful to me.
I read this novel with such nostalgia-filled pleasure. It was like listening in on another era and being given the opportunity to understand what it wI read this novel with such nostalgia-filled pleasure. It was like listening in on another era and being given the opportunity to understand what it was like to be an intellectual thinking humane adult in the 1930's--to anticipate the rise of fascism, to ponder the relationship between one's morals and one's need to act, and most of all, to take it all so seriously--to truly believe that ideas mattered, that human relationships mattered.
Reading this novel is like falling into a time machine. It's not exactly realistic but it reflects important issues of its time. The characters behave and speak like characters in movies before Method Acting became the norm. It was almost as if there were a patina of filmic pops and cracks over the language as I read some of the dialogue.
Everyone is white. Everyone is extremely gender-pigeonholed. Men are intellectuals and women want to stay home and have babies. The one woman in the novel who has a career and dares to have intellectual ideas is talked about openly by the other characters as being mentally ill and she meets a terrible end. Somehow these things didn't bother me as I read because again there was a sense that I was viewing the past and in a way the flaws in the story were giving me a truer picture of a way of life of people of a certain class and outlook in those times.
The physical descriptions of Montreal and Canada are stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. They made me long for more contemporary fiction that takes the time to set a scene rather than assume that I as a reader won't have patience for it....more
Enjoying this book requires you to imagine that a spite-suicide can be an excellent foundation for a comic romp. I was there for it. I was hooked fromEnjoying this book requires you to imagine that a spite-suicide can be an excellent foundation for a comic romp. I was there for it. I was hooked from the first clause of the first sentence, that being: "The night Ralph's mother flayed her forearms...". This book is incredibly funny to me and I need to admit it even though I'm slightly ashamed to admit it. Only slightly. What can I say to excuse myself? Well, there's the writing, which is delightful. The sentences made me laugh. The sentences zing. I was embarrassed to be laughing at this story which is really very shocking in many ways, but I was laughing. I was snorting, actually. You may need to be in a certain mood for this book, I admit. But it may put you in that mood before you know it. It's consistently written in a manic hysterical sometimes-schizophrenic voice that takes no prisoners. I wish I'd written it. Ainslie Hogarth is the master of first sentences, and the god of surprising verbs....more
Today I'm reaching for some old children's classics. It's just how I feel, a strange and insular reaction to world events. What beautiful worlds of plToday I'm reaching for some old children's classics. It's just how I feel, a strange and insular reaction to world events. What beautiful worlds of playful abandon Robert McCloskey always invoked in his books. His worlds were old fashioned fantasies even when I was a little child reading them, but always, always they felt like somewhere I could imagine, somewhere I could visit one day. When I was little I liked to think about a donut machine run amuk and making more donuts than any one town could ever eat. I thought about this book every time I went to the now-defunct Krispy Kreme shop that I could walk to from my house, and watch those little balls of dough make their greasy way through boiling fat to the end of the line....more
I spent the morning re-acquainting myself with the fictional girl I fell in love with when I was a child. When I was a child, I never once thought a mI spent the morning re-acquainting myself with the fictional girl I fell in love with when I was a child. When I was a child, I never once thought a man with a gun might come shoot me in my classroom. Here is the blithely confident Pippi Longstocking to remind me of that feeling. Some reviews think she is a bit of a monster but I like that about her....more
Magee has pulled off something so rare in literature with this novel; the prose sings; the observations about the complexity of human relationships arMagee has pulled off something so rare in literature with this novel; the prose sings; the observations about the complexity of human relationships are revelatory; the novel manages to both be intellectually challenging, and also filled with heart; its scenes feel immediate and visceral, but somehow they are also steeped in deep historical references; that it's a tragedy that manages to also be a testament to human resilience.
Updating my review today to add my thoughts on the audiobook, which I've just finished listening to. When I read the hardcover it at times felt like a stage play to me, because of the preponderance of dialogue, mixed with interior monologue. The dialogue-heavy quality of the storytelling makes the novel a perfect fit with Stephen Hogan's incredible narration. The audio performance was a different but equally magnificent experience. Hogan gives the characters a voice that at times surprised me. I had 'heard' these people differently, when I read it silently. The differences delighted me, and his interpretations gave me another way to think about the characters. A really great performance!...more
I went into the novel with huge stores of leftover goodwill from reading In the Distance. I also loved On the upside, I learned the word "dipsomania."
I went into the novel with huge stores of leftover goodwill from reading In the Distance. I also loved the idea of reading multiple rashomon-like reveals and revelations, and I read along in the beginning with great anticipation, and tried to retain my interest long enough to get to the next passage or sentence or anything at all that might remind me of how much I loved Díaz's debut...
But there were longer and longer interludes between the sparkly places.
In the end I was dragged down by the dull-sludge sections, and unable to make more excuses for this novel and its disappointments.
The novel's conceit relies on the first section, Bonds, being a novel that I can imagine people wanting to read in 1938. I couldn't imagine it. It feels fusty and restrained and underdone. It has no sustained emotional depth. It reads more like a long encyclopedia entry about the Rasks. I didn't believe it was interesting or important or revealing enough to be a novel that the 'real' Benjamin Rask, Andrew Bevel, would bother to care about.
But the section that disappointed me most was the last section, where we get scraps of Mildred Bevel's diary. I'd held onto the hope that in this last part the novel would finally break out of the intellectual straightjacket Díaz had forced his writing to conform to. I fully expected the novel would finally lift itself out of the mundane slog, and into something revelatory, and beautiful--but instead it just flopped around, like a fish drowning in air, and died....more
I am pretty much forced to give this little book five stars, because I can read it in German, because it has adorable line drawings throughout, becausI am pretty much forced to give this little book five stars, because I can read it in German, because it has adorable line drawings throughout, because it's charming, because it was signed by the author on Sept 25 1953--Sept 25 being my birthday--and because in 1953 the author signed this book with a fountain pen, in a gorgeous glorious script that nobody writes in any longer.
It seems that, like the painter Emil Nolde (who is on my mind because I just read a retrospective of his work), Manfred Hausmann was Nazi-lite, at first buying into the idea that athletic young aryans were a good thing, and then living out the war years in Germany, not exactly as a collaborator, but certainly as someone who did not get in the way of atrocity, either. This personal history makes me wonder about the extreme simplicity and the complete lack of seriousness or cynicism in Martin, which the author wrote in the immediate postwar years. The story's sweetness and lack of guile, so soon after the horrors of the war, raise questions in me that maybe the author didn't intend, like: why was he writing sweet family stories, while at the same time Böll and others were writing vivid horrific accounts of Germany's postwar destruction, and about how difficult it was for the people to grapple with what they'd just done as a nation?...more
A fascinating, sad story about a man who wanted to lead an authentic life, a goal that led him to ever more sketchy and harrowing life choices. There A fascinating, sad story about a man who wanted to lead an authentic life, a goal that led him to ever more sketchy and harrowing life choices. There is a mystic longing in me, sure, and in many or most people, maybe, to throw away my established life and step out on an adventure...but in the end Alexander's obsessive quest for authentic life-experiences feels about as meaningful a choice as cocaine addiction. I would find myself admiring Alexander's stamina and self-sufficiency on his many long treks into jungles or through mountain passes...then I'd think, isn't this the definition of self-indulgent? and: did he really have to walk through the himalayas in flip-flops--what's really the matter with foot safety and does having your toes sticking out make this experience any more authentic? Isn't this quest of Alexander's to find spiritual transformation kind of performative and ridiculous? And long before the author led me to the Parvarti Valley, where Alexander disappeared, in my mind began a drumbeat of a single thought: this man is on the path to killing himself one day.
Harley Rustad does a great job of threading the needle between admiration for Justin Alexander's vision, and objectivity about the man's shortcomings....more
I have yet to settle down into what I think of this novel, why I love it. The storytelling style required a lot of patience. It's a tell-not-show stylI have yet to settle down into what I think of this novel, why I love it. The storytelling style required a lot of patience. It's a tell-not-show style. I needed to acclimate myself to it. As a style it's very rich but it required me to activate some reading muscles that I haven't used since reading, oh, maybe Somerset Maugham. It's descriptively lush. The story arc is a bildungsroman where the hero is mostly thwarted and trapped by circumstances beyond his control, and in turn it thwarted me as a reader. The lack of clear boundaries and identities and nationalities in the text was remarkable in that it painted a world where all these things were in flux and the only things that really mattered were a character's relationship with, and access to, wealth and martial strength. I feel unsettled and yet more well-informed about humans than I did before I read this book....more
Such an interesting book. It's full of history and yet it takes a stance that is deeply ahistorical, based on the premise that history never changes wSuch an interesting book. It's full of history and yet it takes a stance that is deeply ahistorical, based on the premise that history never changes when it comes to autocratic leaders: they use identical tactics, and their tactics are completely unhooked from time, nationality, or even their political allegiances. I felt a little skeptical in the beginning. I was sure that Ben-Ghiat must be stretching the past to fit her thesis. But at some point, as I read, her carefully presented and overwhelming evidence persuaded me completely, where I'm happy to call this book a must-read, for anyone who wants to understand what's happening in so many contemporary democracies....more
"Here's how it is: The country where I was born no longer exists."
Gorgeous, attentive, precise, subtle, meaningful. Every sentence carried me softly i"Here's how it is: The country where I was born no longer exists."
Gorgeous, attentive, precise, subtle, meaningful. Every sentence carried me softly into a greater understanding of not just one boy's life, but also of the turbulent tragic time through which he and his family lives. Reading this novel took concentration but the payoff was incalculable....more
I had no idea what any of it meant, but I kept reading anyway, and time passed as if in a dream, or maybe an hallucination, and then I came to this seI had no idea what any of it meant, but I kept reading anyway, and time passed as if in a dream, or maybe an hallucination, and then I came to this sentence:
Every night, large cabbage leaves covered with beer drops were scattered over the flower beds, and at dawn, each one, like a trap, was transformed into a green drawing room teeming with intoxicated snails....more
Reading this book is like being invited to a beautiful feast with many courses where as soon as one waiter sets a dish down in front of you another waReading this book is like being invited to a beautiful feast with many courses where as soon as one waiter sets a dish down in front of you another waiter comes along and snatches it away....more
This novel is so clearly written by the same person/same brain as NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Here is the same gentle humor, the same human misunderstandingsThis novel is so clearly written by the same person/same brain as NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Here is the same gentle humor, the same human misunderstandings and misapprehensions, the same sort of bittersweet resolution in the end, where things may not be perfect but they are as perfect as possible..
The story felt a little stretched and in need of more happenings for me to have felt completely satisfied. Also, even if there is nothing in this novel that's so fantastically odd as combusting children, sometimes I was pulled out of the fictional dream by plot points dependent on coincidence. Now and then I found myself thinking: "people would never act that way." Some of the writing feels a little slapdash. Even with these reservations I still enjoyed spending time with Kevin Wilson and I'm looking forward to reading his next novel. He is an incredibly big-hearted writer. I admire that about him--his willingness to be sentimental, and even his willingness, now and then, to be shallow. Readability is not a bad word....more
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