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August 13
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Meredith
marked as to-read:
The Forty-nine Steps (Hardcover)
by Roberto Calasso
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Meredith
marked as to-read:
The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong (Hardcover)
by Jennifer Michael Hecht
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Meredith
marked as to-read:
The Arcades Project (Paperback)
by Walter Benjamin
bookshelves:
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my rating:
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Meredith
marked as to-read:
Towards A Natural Narratology (Hardcover)
by Monik Fludernik
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July 06
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Meredith
gave
to:
Man's Search for Meaning (Mass Market Paperback)
by Viktor E. Frankl
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Meredith
gave
to:
The Remains of the Day (Paperback)
by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Meredith said:
"Devastating. Not so much in the sense of obvious tragedy or catastrophe, but rather devastating in the sense of, say, a lover remaining silent when asked, "Do you love me?"
This is the story of an aging butler in post-WWII Britain who c...more
Devastating. Not so much in the sense of obvious tragedy or catastrophe, but rather devastating in the sense of, say, a lover remaining silent when asked, "Do you love me?"
This is the story of an aging butler in post-WWII Britain who comes to appreciate (too late?) the "human warmth" that he never learned to cultivate alongside the frigid, rigid persona of "dignity" and professionalism that he never took off "except when alone."
While this novel describes a dying generation, it also speaks to the failures our own. Intimacy, warmth, tenderness: in contemporary life, all too often these remain uncultivated due to the supposed demands of professional advancement. The book's core demand of us seems to be, What is the unnecessary human cost of a determined careerism that rejects and devalues all real growth?
Ishiguro controls the first-person narrative voice with such astonishing craft that the novel manages to satirize the very values the narrator expresses. But even as the work makes space for such irony, however, its ultimate achievement lies in getting us to see ourselves as we might in the evening of our fading day. Remains of the Day binds writer, character, and reader with the agonizing threads of self-recognition and compassion.
...less
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Meredith
gave
to:
The Dying Animal (Paperback)
by Philip Roth
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my rating:
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June 21
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Meredith
gave
to:
Lucky (Paperback)
by Alice Sebold
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my rating:
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Meredith said:
""You save yourself or your remain unsaved," claims Alice Sebold in her harrowing memoir of rape. Painful though it may be, I second this claim; the archetypal night sea journey has always been one you venture on alone.
The question, then...more
"You save yourself or your remain unsaved," claims Alice Sebold in her harrowing memoir of rape. Painful though it may be, I second this claim; the archetypal night sea journey has always been one you venture on alone.
The question, then, becomes "How?" How do you embark to save yourself?
How, for instance, might an eighteen-year old coed recover from being hunted in the night by a man with a knife, beaten against pavement, dragged into an underground tunnel, torn open with a fist, strangulated, raped, robbed, sodomized, left?
Lucky is less the story of Sebold's actually saving herself from trauma's aftershocks than the story of the decades she spent coming to understand that she must not allow herself to remain unsaved.
Like Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones, Lucky left me sleepless and terrified an entire night through. Even so, the second-hand trauma of reading it has tremendous social value, I think. It keeps us honest. Brutality, so shockingly ordinary in this world, so often gets away as we blink.
Even via the indirect medium of a book, there's something about bearing witness to trauma that gestures toward relieving a survivor from the exhausting isolation of perpetual vigilance, intrusive flashbacks, overwhelming terror. Sebold saved herself by writing this book; somehow one affirms her survival by reading it.
Survival, I say. Not a return to a pre-assault nervous system that does not leap at a spoon dropping in the sink. Not a recovery to the relative wholeness of an unbeaten self. Just survival, in all its broken triumph.
Because even after you survive and even after you pretty much save yourself, still nothing can spare you from the fact that your life now is After.
...less
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Meredith
gave
to:
Away from Her (Paperback)
by Alice Munro
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my rating:
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Meredith said:
"Munro never seems to falter. With the incisive, almost grim care of a surgeon, she again and again opens for our view the bleakness and the grace of intimacy.
_Away from Her_ (originally titled "The Bear Came Over the Mountain") tells o...more
Munro never seems to falter. With the incisive, almost grim care of a surgeon, she again and again opens for our view the bleakness and the grace of intimacy.
_Away from Her_ (originally titled "The Bear Came Over the Mountain") tells of a professor whose wife slips away from him into dementia--and into love for another man in her nursing home. An unwavering account of the strange permutations of affection and memory.
A representative paragraph describes the professor's approach to his sexual wanderings in the 60s and 70s:
"All so that he could now find himself accused...of deceiving [his wife] Fiona--as of course he had deceived her--but would it have been better if he had done as others had done with their wives and left her?
"He had never thought of such a thing. He had never stopped making love to Fiona in spite of disturbing demands elsewhere. He had not stayed away from her for a single night. No making up elaborate stories in order to spend a weekend in San Francisco or in a tent on Manitoulin Island. He had gone easy on the dope and the drink and he had continued to publish papers, serve on committees, make progress in his career. He had never had any intention of throwing up work and marriage and taking to the country to practice carpentry or keep bees.
"But something like that had happened after all."
***
The only reason I give this book a mere "liked it" rating is that I expected it to have the density and intensity of a novella. Instead, it is a long short story stretched into book form. I imagine it was marketed that way after the "major motion picture" version came out....less
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June 15
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Meredith
gave
to:
Dry: A Memoir (Paperback)
by Augusten Burroughs
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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