Getting Round to Things

I finally read two books that I have wanted to read for a long time but have not yet managed.

First, We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It won the Orange Prize in 2005. It is a deeply traumatising and utterly compelling book. It is not the book to read if you are worried about becoming a mother. I wondered often what it was like to read this if you do have children. I imagine for some it would be unbearable to read about how this woman fails to connect with her child and her myriad disappointments and misery thanks to her (lack of) relationship with her child. For others, I imagine they repeatedly say "thank you" for identifying the misery and the inability to truly love her child. All this was very interesting in light of an article published by the Daily Mail a couple of weeks ago in which a mother publicly stated that she didn't really like her daughter. That was probably not the way to go about things, particularly when talking about how much she loves her other daughter. Yet, that's what this book is all about. For those of us who doubt whether we do want to have children, I could empathise with much of this book, yet you could see how much damage she did. It was a really extraordinary book. Apparently she had tremendous trouble finding someone to publish it, but I am very glad she did.

The next book was Ender's Game. It is a classic piece of science fiction, and my mother is mad about it. I basically inhaled it last Sunday, and I really, really recommend it. It's such an interesting question of morality, of reacting to things beyond your control with violence or force, and how people channel their gifts and use them for good or ill. Very interesting, particularly in its discussion of pre-emptive force - it's the Bush Doctrine!

Next up: Going to read some more classic fiction. Just not sure what, yet.

Legal Action

I'm taking a course on Law & Literature this semester. The idea is to think outside the external, tangible and, fundamentally, legal, to try to think about the intrinsic, the intangible, the moral. To see how artists perceive our career choice, our system, but most of all, concepts of justice - both descriptively and normatively. It should be interesting. At least, our prof wants to make sure that, at a cocktail party, we're "interesting."

Mostly, I'm just very excited about what we get to read; the book list, which I'm going to purchase this morning (those that I don't already own, obviously):

• Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
• Franz Kafka - The Trial
• Albert Camus - The Stranger
• Herman Melville - Bartleby and Billy Budd, Sailor
• Sophocles, Oedipus The King
• Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
• Ei Doctorow - The book of Daniel
• Charles Dickens - Bleak House

We also have to watch Sidney Lumet's "The Verdict". Paul Newman. Shame.

A Game of Chess

Sad news today, as Ingmar Bergman passed away. I think I assumed for a long time he was in fact already dead, and was surprised to find out not just that he was not, but was still working and being productive.

We saw some of a great season of his works at the NFT. Those seasons are always interesting, and the NFT is one of the things I miss most about London.

One of the things I find intriguing is people's choice of which ones to go and see. For example, as a Bergman novice at the time, I chose Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. The former was adored by some friends, but I preferred the latter, which was remarkable and terrifying in its own way. Choice is really dependent on how well one knows a director, and so more experienced Bergman fans saw things like Persona, Winter Light, and loved them. This lovely short article by Nigel Andrews sums it up, I think, rather well.

I haven't seen a Bergman since, but a retrospective would pose an interesting dilemma: Revisit those utter classics to get a good feel for them, or see unseen ones that deepen my understanding of his work as a whole? I find I feel the same about books, to a certain extent: while I would like to go through the whole works of Dickens, for example, what I really want to do is curl up with Our Mutual Friend, which is now like an old friend and comforts, stimulates and moves me.

When Film Forum, as it undoubtedly will, announces its retrospective we shall see what I end up choosing. I think I would explore a few new, and watch one of my others again. But you never know...

Preemption

Annoyingly, the Observer Music Monthly for July features a vote for the 50 Greatest Cover Versions of All Time (Ever Ever Ever - plus, no question it's All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix, so a stupid thing indeed). This is akin to the Challenge (TM) set me by Cerebus on Thursday night - to get together a playlist of the most successful cover versions. By this, he and I mean to put together a list of the genre-crossing, unexpectedly great versions. For example, the rather splendid version of The Hounds of Love by the Futureheads will definitely feature...

Which is what I'm going to be doing for the next month or so. Contributions will be gratefully received, although not guaranteed to make the final list...

Americana

I have just finished what is a fairly extraordinary book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It is my second Ken Kesey, and I have to say, I am now an enormous fan.

This brings to mind the discussions Cerebus and friends have had about the "great" authors of the twentienth century, and how, as with visual art, this has shifted to the United States. For example, there is Kesey, Faulkner, Roth, DeLillo, Dos Passos, Updike, Auster (although the friends loathe him, but I love him, so tough), Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Bellow... anyone else missing? However, I feel that unlike the art world, what differentiates literature is the shift to post-colonial writers, with some of the most influential and beautiful writers in English not being either British or American, but someone like Coetzee, Rushdie, Naipaul, Achebe, Carey et al.

Kesey I love; I think Sometimes a Great Notion is one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. His description of the inability of two men to ever understand each other was beautiful and stays with me. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was simply terrifying: the combination of authoritarian humanity combined with the gradual grinding down of the "rabbits" by wider society... I think one of the starkest moments is when Mack realises that the patients there are there voluntarily; that his mission to gather other patients to buck the system with him simply won't work. His bewilderment, his thrashing struggle to avoid being brought down, was haunting. So obviously there may be more Kesey and his Canadian goose obsession.

Nonetheless, I feel my next "series," if I ever really have one, is to be U.S. authors in general. So, folks, I need recommendations, soon. I have to get through my new bookclubbook first, and then I'm there. So what's it to be? What, or more importantly, who should I read?

Midnight's Children

FINALLY. I have finally finished another from the list, Midnight's Children.

It was extraordinary - ambitious, breathtaking, self-deprecating, playful... I didn't realise how deeply imbued it would be with the traits of magical realism, which was an unexpected joy. What I really loved was that he seemed to embrace and rejoice in the underbelly, the smelliness, the faults, the dirt of Indian living. The book was bustling and alive, and while it didn't mean that I appreciated the aesthetics of the country I feel I understand a bit more about life in India. Although of course that might be a load of old boswellox.

And yet, as often with reading of classics, or must-reads, I feel I have missed something. I now feel I understand a great deal more about the birth of India, or Pakistan, of Bangladesh, although I can't help thinking I would have got more out of the book if I'd known more about that in the first place: some of the references, the jokes, the satire, clearly went over my head. Which proves to me that to truly engage with "great" works on more than a superficial level, you need to really have a sense of history - either of the time of writing of the book itself, or of the time period which the book covers, but history, nonetheless. Something like Demons, by Dostoyevsky, makes a lot more sense when you understand the adventures of the Nihilists; all of Dickens reveals more when you understand the rise of the nouveau riche, the chattering middle classes. Somehow that seems a tad unfair, that it's not just the text but the backstory that matters. Particularly when I'm the ignoramus. This is why crime novels are the gifts that keep on giving... they are almost timeless. Still, perseverance: it's next time for more Ken Kesey, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - yet another cheery one.

Perverted Inheritance

I have, alas, not got any further in my quest to read / watch anything that can be considered a classic. I have, however, completed my bookclub book for this month - Saturday, by Ian McEwan.

Hmm.

There are some (Cerebus, for example), who will say I was predisposed to dislike him because my mother dislikes him. Her influence cannot be denied on me, hence my gobbling up of crime novels, I'm sure, and my general irritation with two of the world's grand dames, the Dench and the Streep (although my dislike has waned somewhat). Nonetheless, I think this was all entirely his own fault. It was... infuriating. It all felt--and I hesitate to use this term--terribly contrived. I am also not entirely sure I'm interested in reading this story of this type of man, but I imagine that the Daily Mail & Telegraph loved it.

So yes, prejudiced - but due to the book. However, I shall persevere. My friend has a three-book rule - if you can't stomach an author after trying three of their books, that's it - no more chances. Therefore, given that Atonement is on the Top 100 List, which is acting as our guide, I shall give him one more try.

Alas, as it's finals time, I cannot bear anything too taxing. So it's back to reading trash until I can think properly again, without guilt.

Sub-par-way

I have finally finished the Pamuk. It was actually rather good once I made an effort with it. The problem was reading it on the subway rides to school, which is where I do most of my non-school reading. Some books and authors are simply not designed to be reading in small chunks, and I think Pamuk is definitely one of those. He is too dense, too intricate, and a twenty minute bash simply does not do him justice. Interestingly, where I was successful in engrossing myself in his book was on the long ride down to South Ferry - about 50 minutes or so - which really allowed me to relax into his style.

I thought you would appreciate this piece about how difficult it is to translate Turkish into English, as described by his translator, Maureen Freely, talking about the devrik cümle:

This is a sentence--usually a very long sentence--in which words appear in an order different from that ordained by custom and practice, and cascading clauses create a series of expectations that are subverted by the verb at the very end. The poet Murat Nemet-Nejat has described Turkish as a language that can evoke a thought unfolding. How to do the same in English without the thought vanishing into thin air?

The accepted view, especially among bilingual Turks, is that the translator should pay close attention to the sentence's "inner logic." This might also be desdcribed as its architecture--the elegant way in which the various parts reflect one another and, together, reflect the mystery that must never be coarsened by words; the games with voice and tense and the imaginative melding of different epochs and places in setneces that may be admired at length like pictures in a museum. For those who feel at home inside the traditions of Turking thought, the virtues of this approach are manifest. A translation that is utterly faithful to that inner logic will, in their view, open up like a flower to reveal its inner truth . . .

This passage reinforced to me the problems of reading in translation, and that languages really are structured differently, not just grammatically, but in terms of thought processes. A communication gap really does exist between those who are fluent, and those who are not. Nonetheless, understanding how the language works, and why it is translated in a certain way, does help with the reading. All very interesting, to me, at least.

Little Lola

Interestingly, we all seem to have read Lolita. I was utterly mesmerised by it. I think what people find troubling about the novel (probably those who haven't read it) is its strength: the ambiguity with which we view Humbert. He is not obviously a monster, despite doing often monstrous things. It's on every list of the greatest books of all time that you can find, it seems. The Guardian's 50 books you must read describes it thus:

With its unreliable narrator and ambiguous tone, Lolita avoids drawing any definite moral conclusions from this notorious story of ageing academic Humbert Humbert and his obsessive confusion of lust and love for a 12-year-old girl. It is Nabokov's playful prose, however, that is the most bewitching aspect of this novel.

It is a truly remarkable work. That it was written in a second language makes it all the more incredible - to have such a command of a tongue that is not your own... my envy is palpable.

Starter for 100

This list of the hundred greatest novels of all time (ever! really!) was posted by the Observer late in 2003.

Of them, I have read twenty-seven.

(If you're interested, by "read" I mean completed them, not just bought them second-hand and left them on the shelf; not started and left with a bookmark about thirty pages in, never to be touched again)

(if you're further interested, the twenty-seven I have read are: 8, 9, 10, 16, 22, 23, 24, 34, 40, 43, 48, 56, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66, 69, 72, 73, 74, 76, 85, 87, 88, 96, 98)