The Modern Librarians
A Quest to Read the Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Extracurricular #3: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov
The book is 2000’s Vera {Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov} by Stacy Schiff, who made bookchat headlines more recently with her phenomenal 2010 biography of Cleopatra. As the title kindly informs those of you not already given to prying into the personal lives of great writers, Schiff’s subject is the elusive Vera Nabokov (née Slonim), wife of the great Vladimir.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Team Review 2: #18, Slaughterhouse-Five
Monday, January 16, 2012
#93 - The Magus
He was, by all accounts and the testimony of his own journals, a thoroughly irritable and grouchy man, full of hatred for his publishers, his considerable success, his readers, and the human race in general. His other novels include The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Collector, and Daniel Martin. The Magus was the first written but the second to see print, being published in 1966 and revised a decade later. (I read the revised edition for this review.)
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Wild About Wodehouse
What ho, old beans! Ring the bell for the tea things and we’ll flap the old gums for a bit.
What’s gotten into me lately? There’s only one explanation. I’ve been reading P. G. Wodehouse. Not just reading- more like devouring. The past three books I’ve read have all been in the Jeeves series: The Inimitable Jeeves; Thank You, Jeeves; and Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.
Some of you might be familiar with Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and his “gentleman’s person gentleman” (read: valet) Reginald Jeeves from the sixteen novels P. G. Wodehouse wrote about their misadventures in the early 20th century. Other of you might have enjoyed the TV series “Jeeves & Wooster”, starring the pictured Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, respectively. Most of you, however, will at least remember the former mascot of Ask.com, Jeeves the butler. Jeeves has since gone into retirement on the American version of the search engine, but in the
Bertie Wooster and Jeeves are definitely Wodehouse’s best-loved characters.
And in every single one of these cases, Jeeves has materialized, and with understated brilliance and impeccable grace, extricated his young master from the “horns of the dilemma”. Jeeves is a mysterious figure, who always appears in the exact moment when he is needed. Jeeves also has a particular fashion sensibility, and
Bertie was a member of a social class known as the “idle rich,” a class which comprised most of the High Society scene in
My favorite of the three Wodehouse books I’ve read so far is definitely The Inimitable Jeeves. It is most episodic than the other two, and easier to take in small doses. These stories, to me, are like children’s stories; humorous, light, clever, and, being marked with Jeeves’ presence, they have the guarantee of a happy ending.
Toodle pip and cheers, chaps!
-K.
PS. For all you P.G.W. devotees out there, the book “Plum Sauce” by Richard Usborne is a peerless companion to all things Wodehouse, and a must-have for every Jeeves and
Sunday, January 8, 2012
#95- Iris Murdoch's "Under the Net"
Hello, lovelies! I know, it’s been much too long. But I promise I didn’t forget about you- this book was just slow going. Slow Going is not, of course, to be confused with boring.
Number 95 on the list, Under the Net, was published in 1954 and authored by native Dubliner Dame Iris Murdoch. This, her first novel, is a conflation of philosophy and the picaresque style, narrated from the point of view of one Jake Donahue. Jake is often wrongly described as a “failed novelist”. I take issue with this description because we all know one can not fail if one does not try. Jake has made it his mission in life to not try. At anything, really. Ever. He dabbles in translation, wrote one mediocre book, and mooches prolifically. His relationships are, for the most part, superficial. His love affairs are handled badly and lead nowhere.
So what makes Jake’s a voice worth reading? Jake is far and away the most self-aware narrator I have ever come across. He suffers from a condition he describes as “shattered nerves” (a condition that now probably has a proper name and diagnosis and favored treatment) and insists that how his nerves got shattered is unimportant. I know so far in our readings M. and I have made much of the heavy-handed narrator versus the light, unobtrusive narrator. Jake is leagues away from unobtrusive- every thought he has is about himself- but I don’t feel comfortable calling him “heavy-handed”. He is intensely, painfully self-aware. Every word he speaks, every action he commits, every decision he makes is carefully outlined, described, and analyzed for the reader.
Much as you would expect, that level of introspection can get overwhelming quickly. This is why the book took me so long to read- every thirty to fifty pages I had to get up and do something else, usually for a few hours. But please, don’t let this deter you. I really enjoyed reading about Jake’s lady-pursuing, dog-stealing, hospital-breaking adventures. Your capacity to handle (and enjoy) this book is going to be entirely based on your tolerance for neurotic people. If you can stand the compulsively self-reflective voice, the voice that sees a fractal pattern of possibilities and consequences in every word and gesture, I think you’ll get a lot out of this book. If “over-analyzers” are one of your pet peeves, stay far away from this book. Far, far away.
The supporting cast in this book is delightfully colorful. Jake has a person he describes as being emphatically not a servant who follows him around and fulfills servant-like duties, who, next to Jake, looks about as complicated as a plastic cup of applesauce. His first landlady, Magdalen, is the kept woman of a film industry magnate. One of the people Jake mooches off of, Dave the Philosopher, makes a number of farcical appearances, Hugo Belfounder, a jack of all trades and former roommate of Jake’s, is essential both to furthering the plot and to illustrating more of the narrator’s character: he is Jake’s polar opposite. He is superficial, uncomplicated, un-philosophical, and has never had any trouble accumulating money. He serves as a conversation partner for Jake while they are both in a facility for test subjects in a research project to cure the common cold, and their relationship is broken when Jake writes the aforementioned mediocre book about his conversations with Hugo. Thinking he has betrayed his friend by publishing a work based on their interactions, Jake runs away, much to Hugo’s confusion. Throughout the book, Hugo serves as the perfect counterweight to Jake’s obsessive analysis:
“During the early parts of my conversation with Hugo I kept trying to “place” him. Once or twice I asked him directly whether he held this or that general theory- which he always denied with the air of one who has been affronted by a failure of taste. And indeed it seemed to me later that to ask such questions of Hugo showed a particular insensitivity to his unique intellectual and moral quality. After a while I realized that Hugo held no general theories whatsoever. All of his theories, if they could be called theories, were particular. But I still had the feeling that if I tried hard enough, I could come somehow to the centre of his thought…” (61)
I think the above is a good illustration both of Jake’s relationship with Hugo, and Jake’s need to get to an ideological heart of everything everyone says (including himself). But don’t worry- the book isn’t all introspection. When I described this novel as picaresque, I really meant it. Superficially, casting off all the underlying philosophy (but why would you want to?) it’s a fun book about a roguish hero who goes on a wild adventure, getting by on his wits alone.
It’s been a pleasure, reader, as it always is. You have M.’s review of John Fowles’ 1966 novel The Magus to look forward to, as well as a little glimpse into my latest pleaure reading obsession. Our next team review will be of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five- get ready for clash of the litcrit titans on that one. And as always, we welcome you to join in!
Best,
K.
Monday, December 26, 2011
'Tis the Season
Hi everybody! As the holiday season is winding down, M. and I just want to take this chance to say Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukka, Happy Kwanzaa, Have an Awesome Solstice, etc etc. Or, if this time of year holds no particular cultural or religious significance for you, Happy Last Week of December to you, our wonderful readers.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
K.'s Rant/Review....Raniew?
The big players in this game are people like David Sedaris, whom I adore, Bill Bryson, Augusten Burroughs, etc.* I have mixed feelings about all of these men, which is why this is turning into a extracurricular review/rant.
The basis of this entire genre can essentially be boiled down to one sentiment: “A funny thing happened to me, let me tell you about it.” or something similar. The quality (and by quality here I mean entertainment quality, different than literary quality) is in the author’s ability to make his or her story interesting to their reader. The minute the recounting ceases to entertain the reader is the minute the book ceases to be valuable. For this reason, I very much enjoyed David Sedaris’ 1997 collection Naked. Out of the seventeen essays, I enjoyed myself thoroughly through all but one.**
Augusten Burroughs follows along a similar idea, but does not split his incidents up into individual essays as Sedaris does. He has written six memoirs to date, more, both to my mind and his, than any 46 year old has any business writing. Of these six, I have read three- Running With Scissors, A Wolf at the Table, and, most recently, Dry, a memoir of his alcoholism treatment. Burroughs is a decidedly darker humor the Sedaris or Bryson. His entire life, as he tells is, is a series of dark incidents, each more disturbing and bizarre than the last. While Mr. Sedaris often seems to be hyperbolizing for the sake of comedic effect, one frequently gets the impression that Burroughs is telling outlandish and frequent lies. I have no doubt that he has had an uncommonly difficult life and has plenty of reasons to be unhappy, but the way he presents much of his material is just not believable.
Aside from the believability issue, Burroughs also crosses over onto the wrong side of the interest line. Running With Scissors can hold a reader well enough simply because the scenario is so bizarre: the child of two mentally ill parents is relinquished into the care of his mother’s ‘psychiatrist’ and his family, a collection of totally neurotic and unhinged people. The rest of his memoirs would be interesting perhaps to Mr. Burrough’s friends and family, but as a reader with no emotional attachment the author, they read pretty dull.
One of the absolute worst offenders to the Reader’s Interest Line rule that I have read lately is Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island. As an Anglophile and fan of Mr. Bryson, I thought this book about his goodbye travels around England, where he had been living for twenty some-odd years, before returning to his native American Midwest, was going to be a real treat. I was very, very wrong. Please understand, dear reader, that normally I adore Bill Bryson. The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way counts among my favorite modern nonfiction books. His “Eminent Lives” series Shakespeare biography is succinct, well-informed, and enjoyable, and his Dictionary of Troublesome Words for Writers has often served me well. That being said, I had absolutely no idea what he was thinking when he wrote Notes from a Small Island.
Normally a witty and pleasant voice, here Bryson read like a tiresome old git. This description of each location he visits is exactly the same: arrive, wander around until settling on what will prove to be a horrid guest house with no cable and bad service, wander around and discover that there are no good restaurants or pubs around, go to bed, get up, wander to the local tourist attraction, discover entrance is a few dollars, and refuse to go in. This, as you can imagine, quickly got boring. He refuses to pay less than one pound to get into a private garden, asking What could a garden possibly need my money for? (Apparently Mr. Bryson has heard neither of landscaping nor lawn maintenance,) and makes some particularly culturally insensitive remarks directed at the Welsh. He states that native Welsh-language place names, (which I personally find mellifluous and enchanting,) sound to him akin to the noise my cat makes whilst being sick on the carpet after someone has accidentally fed him cheese.
All of these elements did not add up to what one could call an interesting read. I found Notes From a Small Island quite disappointing, especially after getting my hopes up as a Bryson fan. That being said, I am definitely going to try another one of his travelogues soon, and hopefully chalk up this reading misadventure to choosing a book from his “Cranky Old Man” period.
One last thing before I let you on your merry way- I know M. mentioned this already, but my condolences to the reading world for our recent loss. Christopher Hitchens, (1949-2011) was a peerless voice and a brilliant writer who had the rare and priceless gift of being able to write intelligently on just about any subject. One of the greatest lights in the thinking world went out last week, and he will be dearly missed.
Thanks for reading, and a very happy holiday to you,
K.