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September 22
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Bryant
is currently reading:
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
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Bryant
gave
to:
Elizabeth Costello (Paperback)
by J.M. Coetzee
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September 10
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Bryant
gave
to:
Disgrace (Penguin Essential Edition)
by J.M. Coetzee
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read in September, 2008
Bryant said:
"In this book, J.M. Coetzee refrains from sacrificing plot to ideas or vice versa. Both the story itself and the manner of its telling compel. Yet the coiled energy of Coetzee's prose, delivering up zippy asides all along the page-turning way, can a...more
In this book, J.M. Coetzee refrains from sacrificing plot to ideas or vice versa. Both the story itself and the manner of its telling compel. Yet the coiled energy of Coetzee's prose, delivering up zippy asides all along the page-turning way, can also produce an unexpected convulsion that does not jibe with the celerity of the story: we want to turn the page to see what happens, but Coetzee's cogent commentary makes turning the page backward, re-reading, all the more necessary and appealing.
All the while treating us to the ruminations of his prodigious intellect, Coetzee uses this story, as he did in "Waiting for the Barbarians," to pit the vulnerability of the intellect against trauma, shock, bodily horror. After much indescribable occurrence--indeed, Coetzee chooses not to describe it--we learn only that for the protagonist "a vital organ has been bruised, abused--perhaps even his heart." He claims to be "tired of shadows, of complications, of complicated people."
These wishes, mind you, come from an out-of-work, emotionally shattered college professor. So, in spite his professed desire for simplicity, he's also writing an opera. (Of course!) The tensions between the power of the body over the mind and the mind over the body reverberate throughout the book. While there are times when Coetzee's characters speak with implausible presence-of-mind, intellectual acumen, and argumentative consistency, the overall story manages, with the exception of the daughter's preposterous culminating decision, to overcome the occasional pretensions of narrative that threaten to undermine it. And for the best moments--when both the tale and the telling are so well wedded that turning the page becomes an act of one-handed applause--there is no comparable novelist working today. ...less
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September 06
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Bryant
gave
to:
Palimpsest: A Memoir (Paperback)
by Gore Vidal
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read in September, 2008
Bryant said:
"The metaphor of a palimpsest for writing a memoir is an ingenious one, and there are scraps of Gore Vidal's well-textured parchment that are genuinely fascinating. Step-brother to Jackie Kennedy Onassis (nee Bouvier) and her sister Caroline Lee, and...more
The metaphor of a palimpsest for writing a memoir is an ingenious one, and there are scraps of Gore Vidal's well-textured parchment that are genuinely fascinating. Step-brother to Jackie Kennedy Onassis (nee Bouvier) and her sister Caroline Lee, and generally very well-connected from an early age, Vidal is nevertheless at pains to observe throughout the book that the essential choice he made was never to let his possible privileges make him passive. As he writes, "Jackie, Lee, and I were brought up in a wealthy manner and yet were penniless . . . Of necessity, Jackie married twice for money, with splendid results. Lee married twice, far less splendidly. I went to work."
That work has produced several fine and often ground-breaking novels. A weakness, though, of "Palimpsest" is Vidal's decision not to discuss these books and their consequences in greater detail. He is generally more preoccupied with personalities, and there are times when the book reads like a collection of memorable one-liners from sometimes memorable people. (Two of the better one-liner scenes: Tennessee Williams proposes that he and Vidal sleep together after a night of unsuccessful cruising. "Don't," responded Vidal, "be macabre." Or there's Williams' own wildly inaccurate metrics for why the Kennedys would never attain to the White House: "They're far too attractive.")
Vidal repeatedly laments the death of book reading, which has been overrun by the usual suspects of television, movies, and journalism. But Vidal's memoir often reveals how much he himself is overrun by the very thing--celebrity--that these media often reinforce. Vidal's lengthy disquisition on the Kennedys is easily the most self-indulgent and boring chapter in the book. Maybe Vidal's purpose is to reveal, by boring us, how uninteresting the Kennedys themselves really were. If Americans spend not enough time reading books and too much time obsessing over celebrity, it's frustrating that, with this chapter and other sections like it, the normally maverick Vidal join the ranks he purports to be above.
The best parts of this book, especially the touching descriptions of Vidal's one true love who died young at Iwo Jima, are unfortunately too sparse to hold the book together. Vidal has a way of ending paragraphs and large sections eloquently and with a rueful but not overly wistful touch (the final chapter is perfect). It's the verbiage between those well-cadenced endings that drags.
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August 28
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Bryant
gave
to:
Political Fictions (Paperback)
by Joan Didion
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my rating:
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read in September, 2008
Bryant said:
"A wonderful antidote to the sometimes obnoxious over-excitement surrounding the 2008 American presidential election, Didion's "Political Fictions" reminds us why revving up the engine of hope when it comes to political change usually leads ...more
A wonderful antidote to the sometimes obnoxious over-excitement surrounding the 2008 American presidential election, Didion's "Political Fictions" reminds us why revving up the engine of hope when it comes to political change usually leads to frustration. As a marker of her often unintentional prescience, consider her observation about the robotic mantras of the 1992 DNC:
"Not much at their [the Democrats' 1992:] convention got left to improvisation. They spoke about 'unity.' They spoke about a 'new generation,' about 'change,' about 'putting people first.'"
It's tempting to dismiss Didion's cynicism as unhelpful or simplistic, but, reading her book, it becomes equally clear how easy it is to nurture the bloated aspirations our candidates offer us, aspirations that become more bloated when divorced from a knowledge of history. This book helps to restore the necessary dimensions of historical knowledge that can help us make sense of--or at least recognize--the cycles and patterns that pervade election season after season.
Didion's account of the 1988 presidential election, for instance, and the ways in which the "insider" process functions at a level "perilously remote" from the people it purports to represent, makes for a sobering comparison with our current election.
If politics is the art, not the practice, of the possible, then Didion's chief skill is her lapidary exposure of the art, and artistry, that goes into crafting our national political narratives. She calls these narratives fictions, but we dismiss their realness at the risk of being improperly informed voters.
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August 01
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Bryant
gave
to:
The Magic Mountain (Paperback)
by Thomas Mann
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my rating:
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recommended for: People who have nothing to do for months
read in January, 2008
Bryant said:
"Thomas Mann wants to mess with your sense of time! Calendar pages will fly by, the short hand on your watch will spin dizzingly, and wrinkles will huddle on your brow (perhaps arabesque wrinkles, like those of Pieperkorn) before you finish this book...more
Thomas Mann wants to mess with your sense of time! Calendar pages will fly by, the short hand on your watch will spin dizzingly, and wrinkles will huddle on your brow (perhaps arabesque wrinkles, like those of Pieperkorn) before you finish this book. The tome rivals in size the mountain it describes--and like a mountain, there are parts that vivify and inspire, and parts so unremarkable that only a continual journey upward can improve the view, change the terrain. The chapter called "Snow," where Hans Castorp dreams of an idyllic world interrupted by a startling image of butchering witches, is the most peculiar, and perhaps intellectually daring aspect, of the book. The book's final chapter also makes the lost months, vagrant hours, and insidious wrinkles worth it all.
And, just when you think it's over, Mann tells you in the epilogue that his book can only be understood if it's read twice. It's hard not to believe him. ...less
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July 25
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Bryant
gave
to:
Schachnovelle. (Gebundene Ausgabe)
by Stefan Zweig
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recommended for: translated as "Chess Story"
read in July, 2008
Bryant said:
"Diese Novelle von dem (bedauerlicherweise vergessenen) österreichischen Schriftsteller Stefan Zweig findet scheinbar auf einem Passagierdampfer von New York nach Buenos Aires statt. Nach ein paar Seiten ist es aber klar, dass diese Geschichte in de...more
Diese Novelle von dem (bedauerlicherweise vergessenen) österreichischen Schriftsteller Stefan Zweig findet scheinbar auf einem Passagierdampfer von New York nach Buenos Aires statt. Nach ein paar Seiten ist es aber klar, dass diese Geschichte in den Gedanken und Gesprächen zwischen dem Erzähler und dem merkwürdigen Herrn B, der, obwohl er seit 25 Jahren kein Schachbrett berührt hat, unglaublich gut Schach spielen kann, geschieht. Allerdings ist das Buch vor allem eine psychologische Erkundung der komischen, notwendigen Wegen, in denen Leute, die unter Totalitarianismus leiden, versuchen sich selbst zu retten. Aus dem sogenannten Nichts kommt der Versuch des Herrn B. durch Schach ihn selbst zur Vernunft zu bringen. Es ist die besondere Art von Zweig uns zu überzeugen, wie das gleiche Ding, das jemanden zur Vernunft bringen kann, auch zum Irrsinn bringen kann.
This novella, from the (unfortunately forgotten) Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, apparently takes place on a ship between New York and Buenos Aires. After a few pages, however, it becomes clear that it is among the thoughts and conversations between the narrator and the curious Mr. B., who--although he has not touched a chess board in 25 years--plays unbelievably good chess, that real story occurs. Indeed, this tale is above all a psychological exploration of the strange, inevitable ways in which people suffering under totalitarianism try to save themselves. Out of what he terms Nothingness comes the attempt from Mr. B. to bring himself to his senses by means of playing chess. It is Zweig's special talent to persuade us that the same thing which leads Mr. B. to reason can also result in madness. ...less
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Bryant
marked as to-read:
Mead: An Epithalamion (Contemporary Poetry Series)
by Julie Carr
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
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Bryant
marked as to-read:
Memoirs of Hadrian (Paperback)
by Marguerite Yourcenar
bookshelves:
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July 13
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Bryant
marked as to-read:
Der Tod in Venedig und Andere Erzahlungen (Paperback)
by Thomas Mann
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
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