There are two texts for Marlowe's definitive treatment of the Faust myth, and no real consensus on which is more authoritative. The A text is shorter There are two texts for Marlowe's definitive treatment of the Faust myth, and no real consensus on which is more authoritative. The A text is shorter and punchier, but the B text includes some good stuff too. The arguments, briefly:
- Marlowe expanded his hit play into the B text, which is therefore authoritative; - Someone else added some shit in later, so the A text is authoritative.
Don't believe the Wikipedia page, btw, it's a mess.
I prefer the A text. The B text is quite a bit longer, and while some of the additions are good, much of it is forgettable; you get the important stuff with the A text and you'll be less likely to wander off to play with your dog. ...more
This one guy starts as a champion of the people and turns into a corrupt demagogue. It's a gripping story and a terrific book - sortof a political noiThis one guy starts as a champion of the people and turns into a corrupt demagogue. It's a gripping story and a terrific book - sortof a political noir - but you're like come on, that would never really happen.
"Listen here, there ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity."...more
The answer is sortof. Spanking the Maid is actually a lengthy, postmodern allegory, I guess for the creative process although (like this white whale I read about once) with enough general effectiveness to stand in for any number of other annoying processes. That's pretty good in itself - allegories involving spanking are a thing we could probably use more of, or at least a thing we could not use less of - but it's also one of those "YO CHECK IT OUT, ALLEGORY" situations - again, like that whale - where you're kinda like yeah, dude, I get it; I mean, it's not a subtle piece of work.
"No seriously though," you ask, if you are Jennifer, "But is there spanking?" Yes, there is spanking! There is a lot of spanking. It is chock full o' spanking. It's spanktastic! If spanking was white guys, this book would be Harold Bloom's Canon*. See, the allegory is that there's this maid who keeps trying to clean this dude's room but she does a lousy job and he has to punish her by spanking her, as one does; similarly, you keep having to try to discipline your brain to create great art, by spanking it, but your brain's panties keep falling down about its ankles while it's trying to dust. Or something like that.
* Because Harold Bloom's Canon has a lot of white guys, and this book has a lot of spanking. Get it?
I like Coover's "The Babysitter" a little better; it's similarly aggressively pomo, and similarly amused by waving its penis around, but I thought it was more complicated than this was.
Briar Rose is better, too, a winky novella about Sleeping Beauty, entertained or tortured through the years by a procession of fantasies about her own rescue, woven into her brain by the evil witch, a funhouse Scheherezade, while her faithful princes die in the hedge outside. According to John Banville's worshipful intro, this is about love.
BTW, this is impossible to get on Kindle even if you know where to look, so if you want to read this you're going to have to hold a book called "Spanking the Maid" up in front of your face, which is either good or bad depending on whether you're on the subway and a creep....more
While I was reading this, I kept throwing "Tolstoyesque" around, which is quite a compliment. I liked how carefully Franzen describes his characters' While I was reading this, I kept throwing "Tolstoyesque" around, which is quite a compliment. I liked how carefully Franzen describes his characters' motivations, what's going on inside their heads. It's a psychologically complicated novel, and I was pretty crazy about it.
With a week or so to think about it, though, here's what concerns me: are the characters real themselves? Or are they unreal characters, whom Franzen has bent over impressively backwards to convince us to believe in? Does it ring true that Walter Berglund would stumble into such thorough moral compromise? Does it make sense that two men should fall so thoroughly for Patty Berglund, who is pretty much always a pain in the ass? And then there's the rock star.
Tolstoy described real people in great depth. What I'm wondering about, with Franzen, is whether he's describing made-up people in great depth.
Which isn't worthless, anyway; it's still pretty interesting, and I like this book. But I've come back a week later to write this review and knock it from five stars to four....more
I have to say, I'm not really seeing what the fuss is. I feel like I've seen this before.I have to say, I'm not really seeing what the fuss is. I feel like I've seen this before....more
American Gods came in seventh in my GR book club's poll for "Best Book of the 21st Century (so far)," so I read it not as a potential good book, but aAmerican Gods came in seventh in my GR book club's poll for "Best Book of the 21st Century (so far)," so I read it not as a potential good book, but as a potential great one. It is not bad.
It's my first Gaiman, and my main thought was that he's in the Stephen King tradition; I was reminded of The Stand. That's not a bad thing! The Stand is not great, but it has legs. Many people do and will consider it great. And this, too.
This is better plotted. It's tighter: Gaiman clearly knew where he was going here, whereas King himself has admitted that he had no idea where he was going with The Stand. But it shares, in addition to an addictive plot, King's clunky, expository sentences; his folksy, hiding-something townies; his enthusiastic but clueless portrayals of women.
As books go, this is very good...but as literature goes, I have a hard time calling it a great one. I'm missing psychological insight of any sort here. It's pure plot - good plot, yes! - but nothing more.
BTW, where are the Greco-Roman gods? Just curious. ...more
Teetering between three and four, so I'll be generous. Russell has found a very distinctive setting here, the swamps of Florida and the world of alligTeetering between three and four, so I'll be generous. Russell has found a very distinctive setting here, the swamps of Florida and the world of alligators; I suspect it's going to be memorable for its exceptionally dingy feel. I appreciate that. But the story doesn't quite make it; it's a little obvious, a little Allegorical.
And every time they referred to alligators as Seths, which happens like five times a page, I rolled my eyes. Set was the Egyptian god of death and violence. No shit, Karen, we saw Romancing the Stone too.
If you're considering reading it, you should be aware that it gets very, very dark. When you're all "It has an exclamation point in the title and the cover reminds me of Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp*! I bet this will be a nice lighthearted romp, which is exactly what I need after spending two weeks reading about dead hookers!" you are having the wrong idea. I'm not wholly against that dark bit - I see why it's there, I guess - but, y'know, "Hey, I think I'll spend a quiet hour on this snowy Sunday afternoon reading a book! Oh, now I'm reading about (view spoiler)[the rape of a child in great detail from her perspective (hide spoiler)]. Suddenly my hot chocolate seems obscene."
* I should say, I re-read that book when I stumbled across it while helping my mom pack this year - by "helping my mom pack," obviously, I mean "reading" - and it's pretty dark itself. But, I mean, not this dark....more
What's it like The frustration or the joy of reading Dickens, depending on your attitude, is his digressiveness. Since, some will tell you, he was paidWhat's it like The frustration or the joy of reading Dickens, depending on your attitude, is his digressiveness. Since, some will tell you, he was paid by the page, he tended to produce a lot of pages, with the result that books like Bleak House are great rambling ambles. If you read books in order to find out what happens next, you may be frustrated. But if you read them to be immersed in someone else's world, they're terrific.
Bolano too was paid by the page, in a way. He wrote 2666 in the last five years of his life, knowing he was dying, intending for it to be published in five parts, to provide for his family after his death; so he was plenty motivated to produce a lot of pages. 2666 contains a recipe for brussels sprouts with lemon, which sadly calls for boiling rather than roasting; some increasingly creative ways of saying "vaginally and anally raped"; and this:
Only the digestive system of herbivorous animals, said Florita, is equipped with substances capable of digesting cellulose and therefore of absorbing the glucose molecules that make up cellulose."
- this section will go on to analyze diarrhea in great detail - after which I made the note "Srsly, wtf?"
What's it about So if your question is, "But what's it about?" then this is not the book for you. For example, major (view spoiler)[: although the infamous Part IV feels at times like a murder mystery, there will be no reveal. The Ciudad Juarez killings that inspired it were the result (I guess) of a culture in which the murder of a woman became a relatively common way of expressing frustration, and that's the horror Bolano is telling you about. There is no Bad Guy here, just murder. (hide spoiler)]
You read 2666 to be immersed in Bolano's wonderful, weird brain. You read to see "buildings propping each other up like little old Alzheimer's patients." Or for this:
And then, as if a breath of foul air had wafted into a commercial for sanitary pads*, the silhouette of a man made them freeze.
You will get sentences like these nowhere else in literature. At times Bolano careens into a kind of prose poetry, as in the long paragraph around 77% when a girl describes the transparent obsidian sacrificial altars of the Aztecs:
At first the light was black or grey, a dim light in which only the inscrutable silhouettes of the Aztecs inside the pyramids could be seen, but then, as the blood of the new victim spread across the skylight of transparent obsidian, the light turned red and black...
It's difficult to get the power of a passage like that across without the full (much longer) bit, and without the "Gah, what's this now?" feeling you get when the story lurches into it out of nowhere, but poetry is what it is - new, offhand, weird poetry, maybe not exactly poetry, but certainly not exactly prose either.
* And let's be clear here, there's a lot of talk about the horrific sections of this book, and they are, but Bolano is often very funny, too. Here's my favorite description of kissing ever:
The girl's tongue was very dry at first and Reiter caressed it with his tongue until it was thoroughly moistened.
I can't even paste that without cracking up.
What is it But if your questions is, "But what's it about?" god, dude, let it go, it's about the search for the missing cult author Archimboldi, Bolano, dying, pours out everything into an attempt to write his masterpiece: 2666 is about death and masterpieces. "Every secret author is, by definition, a writer of masterpieces," he says, before setting the pantheon of great writers of works "magnificent and sometimes monstrous" apart from "the epigones and authors he called the Horde." Bolano considered himself, I think, a secret author, and his hopes didn't rise past becoming the kind of cult author his protagonists, here and in Savage Detectives, are in search of. But 2666 represents his best effort at creating something worth going in search of. And it's one of those rare cases, like Infinite Jest, where someone with vast potential just nails it.
How strange he would find it if he knew how high he's risen since his death. By some fluke of fate, we all found him after all, and how lucky we are! Because 2666 is a masterpiece. Magnificent, and sometimes monstrous....more
Louisa May Alcott, a transcendentalist feminist of ambivalent sexual orientation and the author of sensational novels, is asked by her publisher to wrLouisa May Alcott, a transcendentalist feminist of ambivalent sexual orientation and the author of sensational novels, is asked by her publisher to write a book for girls; she's like eh, that sounds super lame, but she does it anyway, "in record time for money," and here we are.
What's startling about Little Women given the intro I just gave it, and the reason it worked then and still works now, is its absolute sincerity. There's not a trace of sarcasm in the entire thing; it remains a sweet-natured book full of nice people doing nice things.
Another way to say all that is, of course, "corny," and it is that too. You know how sometimes you re-read a beloved book as an adult and realize there was much more going on under the surface than you caught when you were younger? Well, this is not one of those books. It's utterly straight-forward.
The life lessons given here are basically still sound. Alcott recommends marrying for love; she's not against a woman being the primary breadwinner. In a very gentle, nonthreatening way, she's true to her feminism, and you'll find nothing truly objectionable for your child. A lot of God stuff, so your mileage may vary on that. These were probably the last women on earth to read shitty old Pilgrim's Progress.
Our lead character, Jo, and our semi-autobiographical one, bums me out a little; if you don't mind spoilers, here's why. (view spoiler)[Alcott never married. While there apparently was a Laurie for her, of sorts, there was not a Bhaer, and it shows: Bhaer is a totally unreal character. He's the husband equivalent of Steve Carrell describing boobs as sandbags in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
There was a moment when Jo turned Laurie down and it looked like she was going to become a single author, and I really liked that, even before I learned that that was what Alcott actually did. But Alcott sortof copped out on her own life, I think, marrying Jo off to this neutered Casaubon, and it stuck in my throat a bit. (hide spoiler)]
Little Women has neither subtlety nor malice; it succeeds purely because of Louisa May Alcott's sheer charisma. It was, is and probably always will be a very pleasant book....more
A great rambling hilarious explosion of stream-of-consciousness writing from one of the more execrable protagonists I've run across, Money is surprisiA great rambling hilarious explosion of stream-of-consciousness writing from one of the more execrable protagonists I've run across, Money is surprisingly effective. Surprising because there's a novel buried in all this postmodernism, with an actual plot and actual twists, so cleverly hidden that I didn't even see it coming until it showed its hand. And it's that plot that makes me like this book much better than ancestors like Tropic of Cancer that seem to disdain anything like it.
The distance between author and narrator corresponds to the degree to which the author finds the narrator wicked, deluded, pitiful or ridiculous
says Martin Amis, or the character named Martin Amis inside the book, and John Self is all of those things in spades. In case you have any doubts about that, Amis the author will make it crystal clear:
It's always been phenomenally clear to me that the women I've hit don't like being hit one bit. If they did, what would be the point of hitting them?
John - a wonderful kind of unreliable narrator, by the way, because while he always tells us the truth, he also tends to be blackout drunk during key moments - is wicked, deluded, pitiful and ridiculous, and I spent the book wondering how the hell things seemed to be going so well for him; what's the message Amis is sending here? Nihilism? Why is he writing a book in which his completely horrible protagonist gets away with everything?
Is there a moral philosophy of fiction? When I create a character and put him or her through certain ordeals, what am I up to - morally? Am I accountable?
And what if he has no real ordeals? What if he wins? Then what are you up to, morally? And then there are spoilers: (view spoiler)[He doesn't, and maybe you saw this coming but the essential grift of both the plot and the book completely snuck up on me: I was hoodwinked as badly as Self was.
We are all stomped and roughed up and peed on and slammed against the wall by money.
The book can drag at times: there's no variance in tone or pace, it's just one breathless rush of awful behavior, and it does start to muddle together at a certain point. But one can't really knock a writer for achieving exactly what he set out to. This is a complete success....more
Ximena is totally into Rodrigo, but Ximena's dad and Rodrigo's dad are both wack old assholes, and her dad humiliates his dad in a wack old assThe Cid
Ximena is totally into Rodrigo, but Ximena's dad and Rodrigo's dad are both wack old assholes, and her dad humiliates his dad in a wack old asshole fight, so in order to save his family's honor Rodrigo is all
Spurious pity mixed with monstrous pride! Quick to insult, are you afraid to fight?
and kills Ximena's dad, because good plan, dude - dads sound like such a hassle, man, seriously - so then Ximena is super pissed, and she's like
From all your knights I now demand his head Whoever brings it me, I'll share his bed.
And then guess what happens? I am not going to tell you! You should find out by reading this play, because it's total balls. It's awesome, man. Rollicking plot with great momentum, and gorgeous flourishy Shakespearean language.
And Bolt's translation is on par with Richard Wilbur's brilliant Moliere. It's that good. Beautiful lines, in effortlessly rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter. It's so smooth!
For love - sweet source of all my bitter pain Breeds subtlety in every lover's brain.
Right? This whole thing is just the shit, man.
The Illusion Almost as good; it's apparently sometimes called Corneille's The Tempest, and I understand why. It's sortof a meta examination of the nature of the stage, and there's a magician. Again a very satisfying plot, with twists and terrific speeches. More of a straight comedy....more
Sharp, focused and righteously angry, but...I don't know if it's just that I've been aware of and pissed off about Chappaquiddick for so long, or whatSharp, focused and righteously angry, but...I don't know if it's just that I've been aware of and pissed off about Chappaquiddick for so long, or what, but I felt like I've heard this story before, had these emotions already. I like the gambit of staging an entire book in the moment of a catastrophe - a "life flashing before one's eyes" thing, but the execution feels too slight - too easy? - to be great. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, though, especially if you don't mind getting a little bummed out....more
Y'know, this is terrific. Screamingly funny - that speech Fitz-Nottle gives is amazing - and deceptively intricately plotted. It's a puzzle book, righY'know, this is terrific. Screamingly funny - that speech Fitz-Nottle gives is amazing - and deceptively intricately plotted. It's a puzzle book, right? Our heroes get into what seems like an untenable situation, and the suspense is wondering how Jeeves will fix it, and that's all very cleverly done. Jeeves is sortof a dastardly hero, and Wooster himself is one of the great unreliable narrators....more
This is a review of the play, not this translation. I read Paul Roche's translation, which (as usual) was clear but not smashingly elegant.
Bleak is thThis is a review of the play, not this translation. I read Paul Roche's translation, which (as usual) was clear but not smashingly elegant.
Bleak is the road...I am coming.
Alcestis, the earliest of his extant plays, shows Euripides doing what he does best: overturning the rocks of myth and poking at the worms underneath. The story: Admetus has been promised by his buddy Apollo that he can escape death if, when his time comes, he can convince someone else to die in his place. Sadly, no one wants to do this for Admetus except his loving wife, Alcestis, who faithfully dies for him. And if that sounds like "WTF dude" to you, well, folks did things differently back then - but actually it sounds pretty fucked up to Euripides too, so here we go.
The juicy part of the play comes when Admetus's dad Pheres shows up. Admetus is on his way to bury Alcestis, and he's understandably a bit raw, and he starts raging at his dad, who is after all super old and why couldn't he have died? And his dad is like
"I'm the coward, you say, you - you prince of cowards Shown up by a woman who died for you! ...Keep your mouth shut, coward, and remember If you love your life, so does everybody."
Lol, pwned. Once again, Euripides the trickster breaks the cocks off the Greek statues.
The play is confused by the intervention of Heracles, who (view spoiler)[kinda bails everyone out and gives us a sudden happy ending. Fuckin' Heracles, right? It's often, as my boy Ronald points out, difficult to classify Euripides' plays, and that holds true here. It mixes comic and tragic tones and leaves you unsure what you've got. (hide spoiler)] But this is one of my favorites.
Update: with time, the deus ex Heracles has kinda gotten to me; I'm downgrading this to four stars because of the ending....more
Recently voted the best ever crime novel by some dudes, and I can understand why: this is a perfect mystery. Perfect puzzle - and I love that ChristieRecently voted the best ever crime novel by some dudes, and I can understand why: this is a perfect mystery. Perfect puzzle - and I love that Christie finds it unnecessary to give us some big lurid case; it's an incredibly mundane small-town murder - perfect clues, perfect ending. It might be the best mystery novel I've ever read, including Holmes; it's that well done.
And this book is completely impossible to say much more about without spoilers, so...I won't. If you know you know; if you don't, quick read this book before someone spoils it for you....more
Okay, I found this very pleasant and all, and it's always fun (view spoiler)[to see the Mithridates strategy in play, Count of Monte Cristo-style, (hiOkay, I found this very pleasant and all, and it's always fun (view spoiler)[to see the Mithridates strategy in play, Count of Monte Cristo-style, (hide spoiler)] but I'm failing to see how this is better than Agatha Christie. I mean, is it just because we think it's funny that Sayers sets this amongst the Bloomsbury Group? That is pretty funny....more
You ever see a dog experience snow for the first time? Utterly mystified, right? "Ahhhhh, what the fuck is this, it's amazing!" Galumphing madly aboutYou ever see a dog experience snow for the first time? Utterly mystified, right? "Ahhhhh, what the fuck is this, it's amazing!" Galumphing madly about. Trying to eat it. Batshit with ecstatic confusion.
That's how I felt about this book. I had no idea what was going on, until the very end, and I only had one or two ideas even then. Are these people crazy? Is the house haunted? Is there a bad guy? Is this supposed to be funny? But I loved every sentence.
Alice Munro writes stories like guts: miles of story, packed into this tiny little space. You get into it and it explodes and there's, like, story eveAlice Munro writes stories like guts: miles of story, packed into this tiny little space. You get into it and it explodes and there's, like, story everywhere.
They make you wonder why people write novels. It's not so much that they have more to say, it's that they take so much longer to say it than Munro does. She makes everyone else look like they're doodling.
Dimensions: A woman whose husband no longer lives with her learns to maybe move on a bit. Well done for what it is, but didn't make a huge impression on me. Ending was a bit tidy.
Fiction: Sortof three stories in one. A woman's marriage collapses; twenty years later, she reads a book by a bystander to the original collapse and gets a different perspective on it. Smart, intricate, very well done.
Wenlock's Edge: Dark and surprisingly dirty, a total home run. A woman gets an odd new roommate. Naked Housman reading ensues.
Deep-Holes: A funny little look at how annoying those flaky Buddhisty hippie types are: they possess no skills and rely on the kindness of others to support their totally irresponsible lives, and yet there's always part of you that's jealous of them. Man, that looks nice! Except for the being super poor and having no personal agency, I mean.
Free Radicals: A woman who once was the younger woman and became a widow gets an unexpected visitor who...sortof has the same impact as the thing in "Dimensions", but different. Another smash hit for me. ...more
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