Richard Seltzer's Blog: Richard Seltzer, page 6

Theatre by Somerset Maugham

Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Maugham had a remarkable talent for creating living characters. That's what I enjoy in his novels and what I would like to learn from him.

I believe that clothes do not make a man, nor does a plot make a novel. All depends on the characters, how they see and hear and think and feel, not what they do, but how they do it, who they are.

In this novel, he puts the reader inside the mind of an actress, with insights into the art of acting, as well as musings on the relation between make-believe and reality.



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the Taming of a Shrew by Anonymous

The Taming of a Shrew by Anonymous

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


A play very much like Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. He may have "borrowed" liberally from it. Or he may have written it, perhaps in collaboration with others.
I read it as research for my novel The Shakespeare Twins.



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The Narrow Corner by Somerset Maugham

The Narrow Corner by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Magnificent.
I don't have a clue what the title means.
And very little of this book has to do with the sea (contrary to the description here on goodreads.)

Layer upon layer of story. The overall narrator (Dr. Saunders), a disgraced British physician living in China, summoned to an island to treat a wealthy acquaintance. To get home, he gets a ride on small but sea-worthy ship with a disreputable captain (Nichols) and a mysterious young man (Fred Blake), who seems to be fleeing from legal trouble. On the way, they land on a remote island where they meet a would-be poet, his enchanting daughter, and the daughter's Danish fiance. That's when the story really takes off -- about two-thirds of the way through. Saunders partakes of opium every night and prompted by the people he encounters and the events that take place he often insightfully muses about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. I'm addicted to Maugham's musings of that kind.

Here are a few samples:
p. 61 Transmigration? Look at the sea: wave follows wave, it is not the same wave, yet one causes another and transmits its form and movement. So the beings travelling through the world are not the same today and tomorrow, nor in one life the same as in another; and yet it is the urge and the form of the previous lives that determine the character of those that follow.
p. 90 There was something absurd in the notion that this pearl diver, the heir of innumerable generations, the result of a complicated process of evolution that had lasted since the planet was formed, here and now, because of a succession of accidents that confounded the imagination, should be brought to death on this lost and uninhabited spot.
p. 111 He knew once more that he had but to stretch his intelligence ever so little to solve a great mystery; and again he did not do it because it gave him more pleasure to know that it was there waiting to be solved.
p. 120 He ws amused by the lad's ingenuous surprise at the complexity of human nature.
p. 155 the value of life lay not in its moments of excitement but in its placid intervals when, untroubled, the human spirit in tranquility undisturbed by the recollection of emotion could survey its being with the same detachment as the Buddha contemplated his navel.
p. 158 Critics divide writer into those who have something to say and do not know how to say it, and those who know how to say it and have nothing to say.
p. 175 does the outer man represent the man within?... The goal is perfect knowledge of the soul's nature...
p/ 181 My life has been a journey in search of truth and there can be no compromise with truth. The Europeans ask what is the use of truth, but for the thinkers of India it is not a means but an end. Truth is the goal of life.
p. 205 It's the self which is part o the universal self; perhaps we've all got it; but what is so wonderful in her is that it's almost sensible, and you feel that if only your eyes were a little more piercing you could see it plain.
p. 291 The contrast between a man's professions and his actions is one of the most diverting spectacles that life offers... What does it all mean? Why are we here? Where are we going? What can we do?





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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I bought the Library of America edition of Jackson's works. I enjoyed her story collection The Lottery. so I tried The Haunting of Hill House. It is short (about 200 pp.), but very slow, wooden, and contrived. Major disappointment (for me). I have no idea how a TV series could be based on shut a thin and dull story.



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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Disappointing.
Intermittent brilliance,
Uneven. Punctuated with memorable phrases, but adding up to nothing.
review of Dylan Thomas --
p. 11 conducted the wind with his whip
p. 14 I climbed the stairs, each had a different voice
p. 29 The floorboards had squeaked like mice s I climbed into bed, and the ice between the walls had creaked like wood... I had pulled the sheets over my head, and soon was roaring and riding in a book.
p. 39 uncles from America, where he had no uncles, might arrive with revolvers and St. Bernards.
p. 55 the room as splendidly untidy
p. 78 an engine coughing like a sheep on a hill.
p. 130 the night air sapped me down.





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The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


As soon as I finished reading it, I turned back to the beginning and reread the opening chapters, understanding them and enjoying them better than before.
A magical book about magic, seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old and then remembered decades later.
The many metaphors, comparing ordinary everyday sights with impossible magical ones, makes the impossible not just normal, back tangible and familiar.
p. 107 "the dream was haunting me: standing behind me, present and yet invisible, like the back of my head, simultaneously there and not there."
p. 143 "I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writing with grubs and nightmares and hunger. I saw the world from above and below. I saw that there were patterns and gates and paths beyond the real. I saw all these things and understood them and they filled me, kust as the waters of the ocean filled me."





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Up at the Villa by Maugham

Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Great fun.
Unlike the other Maugham novels I've read, this one includes violent death and suspense.
A quick enjoyable read.
I finished it in about five hours. Couldn't put it down.



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The Lost Boy by Wolfe

Lost Boy: A Novella by Thomas Wolfe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Brilliant.
The style -- following paths of association of words and memories rather than a plot, and the rhythm of the thoughts -- put me inside the minds of the four narrators. Their memories were becoming my memories as if I were there with them. and at the end there were tears in my eyes.
I read Look Homeward Angel in 1964, 56 years ago. Now I have to read it again. This time I'll probably read the reconstructed original version O Lost. And then I'll have to read the rest of his works.



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The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I believe that this is Maugham's masterpiece.
The plot and its moral dilemmas are echoed in some of his short stories. But here the main character, Kitty, is fully drawn and we see her evolve from a superficial, self-centered, and not particularly intelligent young woman to someone with emotional depth and sincerity.
I couldn't put it down, and finished it within eight hours of when it arrived from Amazon.



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Memory and Paths of Association by Richard Seltzer

(excerpt from Lenses, a collection of short essays in search of a publisher)

A path of association can be one-dimensional, based on a single property or characteristic. e.g., color, size, sound. or a single sense. Or it can involve switches, where language opens opportunities by way of homonyms, synonyms, antonyms etc. for one word or thought to lead to another not connected by meaning, but rather other characteristics. In poetry as in punning, a single word or phrase can have multiple meanings at the same time, opening multiple paths of association, connecting many previously disparate thoughts and feelings.

We need well-worn paths like well-known physical buildings to aid in reliable and fast recall, but we also the need for regular shuffling, through verbal interaction with others, directly and through reading, that open and reveal other patterns of association, other possible paths. Dreams and language itself and human interaction refresh and enrich the possible paths of recall, shortening associative distances and making it so you can get from here to a there that before was impossible to reach.

One could study the geometry of recall -- all the ways that words and phrases and images and thoughts and meanings can relate to one another.

Language itself is a massive map of familiar associations that we learn from one another, which involves sound and sense and has visual components as well, related to spelling in written language as well as the visual images associated with its sense or meaning. And visual patterns can connect directly to one another for fast and powerful association. And metaphor is a switching mechanism.

Learning multiple languages gives you multiple massive associative maps.

Disciplines of study also serve as preformed associative maps (like languages, involving jargons where the same words used in the context of different disciplines have different meanings and different paths of association.)

Conversation and reading and story are ways of recognizing, learning, and adopting new and complex associative paths. Allusions are links between large chunks of story.

Genres of fiction are indicators of familiar paths of association, triggering of pre-set expectations.

Intimacy and partnering involve sharing patterns of association from common experiences, as well as the initial attraction of common patterns of association. You "get" one another; you understand one another at a level not possible with anyone else. The one serves as an extension of the memory and mind of the other. You literally can finish one another's sentences. And you lose part of yourself in final parting or death.

In social media, like Twitter, random comments from masses of people on topics of common concern trigger fresh associations, build new paths of common thinking, lead to new loyalties and commonalities of thought. The stream current news serves as a source of new associative paths.