I knocked on the tin roof of the fish

On vacation, I finished the Booker Challenge I began in January. It was easy - just read six Booker prize winners or short- or long-list nominees in 2008. My sixth book was Anne Enright’s The Gathering, a novel about a woman whose older brother commits suicide. The book has a strong negative charge that I enjoyed, but to be honest, although the writing is good, I found the first 2/3rds of it pretty humdrum. Nearer the end, the writer revs things up emotionally and psychologically, but it still didn’t make the book all that remarkable.

I hadn’t been planning to read The Gathering, but when we flew to Italy, Alitalia lost our luggage and I sent a desperate email to my mother, who was coming to join us, asking her to bring along something for me since I was nearly done with what I was reading.

I also read Machado de Assis’s Epitaph of a Small Winner, written from the perspective of a dead man. It was original and very entertaining. It’s considered an obscure classic, but I found it more prosecco than champagne, and not a must-read.

I also read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, a long novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in the early ‘70’s. It’s about a man confined to a wheelchair who writes about the lives of his grandmother and grandfather in the West, interweaving it with his own biography. The story was engaging and very good. I really hate the ‘70’s though. There’s something grotesque about them.

The best book I read on vacation was Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost, about the author’s great-uncle and his family who are killed in Poland in the Holocaust. It’s probably a prerequisite to be at least slightly interested in the Holocaust to enjoy this book, but if you are, it’s a fascinating, terrible and beautiful story. The story itself isn’t brilliant since unfortunately it’s similar to what befell millions of terrorized European Jews. What’s brilliant is the way the author uncovers the story, the riveting discovery of the story. He pursues it with such loving care and tells it almost unbearably well. I cried all over it.

I also read 12 of the 20 stories in The Best American Short Stories of 2002, which all in all were quite good. There are a couple more stories I want to read before putting this back of the shelf. So far my favorite story in the collection was Richard Ford’s “Puppy,” which you can read here.

Here are the books I’ve read so far this year, excepting poetry:

Schindler’s List – Thomas Keneally (Booker Challenge)
The Color of Blood – Brian Moore (Booker Challenge)
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
When We Were Orphans – Kazuo Ishiguro (Booker Challenge)
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro (Booker Challenge)
Rule of the Bone – Russell Banks
Last Orders – Graham Swift (Booker Challenge)
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
Eclipse – John Banville
A Dangerous Friend – Ward Just
This Republic Of Suffering – Drew Gilpin Faust
The Kiss – Kathryn Harrison
Stoner – John Williams
Epitaph of a Small Winner – Machado de Assis
The Lost – Daniel Mendelsohn
The Gathering – Anne Enright
Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner

perishable goods

In general Last Orders is a buddy movie/road trip story about four friends who go to throw a dead man’s ashes in the ocean. The back cover says this is “his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered in the sea.” If that’s a peculiar wish, call me Ishmael. The front cover is better – nice picture, no?

I wasn’t wild about this book. It took a while to get into and even then, the story was unremarkable. It wasn’t until page 100 that I felt able to keep the characters straight. Still, I think the switching of narrators/points of view added a lot to the book, Faulknerian in its way, but not as complicated. The male voices were convincing, though at first I had trouble distinguishing them. The voice of Amy, one of the few women in the book, didn’t come off well in my opinion.

The style made the pace seem plodding at first, and the road trip interminable. But as the narrative bore out, I liked the way the pieces came together to tell the life stories of the characters. Life could be beautiful but we make mistakes. Life could be beautiful but we can't get over ourselves and our limitations. I thought the closing scene was wonderful in both atmosphere and wording. But overall it seemed rather weak for the Booker Prize. Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane, shortlisted the same year, was better.

That is the fifth book of six for the Booker Challenge I'm doing. I'm leaving it off for awhile to read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.

hearts full of youth/ hearts full of truth/ 6 parts gin to 1 part vermouth

I'd like to compare Never Let Me Go to a martini. Unlike red wine, where you may find nuances of fruit, cigar smoke, a chewy bosom, violet underpants, a clove or cinnamon finish, etc etc etc, this book one flavor throughout - dry and detached, but not without its own wallop.

And instead of an olive, there's a kidney or lung floating around in the martini glass. I know this is unappetizing, but if you've read the book, you know what I mean.

I love Ishiguro - his writing is clean, his technique is fabulous, and I'm obsessed with his obsession - putting the past together in a way that makes sense. Unfortunately I knew something of the plot before I started, which diminished my enjoyment. I would have loved to be surprised. Perhaps that contributed to the feeling that the book was written in slow motion.

Without going too much into the plot, since I'd recommend reading this and wouldn't want anyone to suffer my fate of foreknowledge, the one thing that's pestering me is why is there not rebel among the "special" group of people under the microscope here. Some readers say the characters are so brainwashed there's no chance of protest, but I don't see that. And if there's no rebellion, then maybe the "soul" that's under discussion in this book is indeed absent. I don't think so, which is why I find this aspect so hard to buy.

Then again, I couldn't help but identify with the characters here in a no-way-out sense, in that there's nothing you can do to thwart mortality even through "true love" or creative work.

This was the fourth book in the Booker Challenge for me. Two to go.

And since I can't find Tom Lehrer's song "Bright College Days," from which my heading comes today, I offer instead "The Elements."

I Interview Myself about What I've been Reading for the Booker Challenge

What is Schindler’s List about?
It's about springtime and also winter but mostly it's about crying on the subway.

And what genre is it?
It is the BIG EXPERIENCE genre of novelesque nonfiction.

*
And the second book you read for the Booker challenge, The Color of Blood, what kind of book was that?
This is what they call a “catholic thriller.” I’m afraid to say I found the bad guys deranged but sympathetic.

Whom would you recommend this book to?
Anyone stuck in a long line at the grocery store.

*
You’re now halfway through When We Were Orphans. What is that about?
This book is about how much you should read every one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s books, lather, rinse and repeat. How you should be well reminded that he is a superior novelist to Ian McEwan and many flouncy American novelists.

Whom would you recommend this book to?
Anyone who appreciates good architecture as well as cozy interior design. There is a low fire going in the fireplace, and a Bijar rug laid out before it.

o cloud of special dimness

Almost finished with Schindler's List.
Well, Jesus Christ, of course.
Not to mention the usual cast of assholes.

I feel a WWII reading binge coming on.
I may be temporarily derailed.

Somewhere on these shelves is the Goldhagen
book I haven't read yet. And I added
a biography of Himmler, a bio of Heydrich,
one of Goering and the Höss memoir to my list.
Shit. Plus all those battle books.
Gott! I love getting to the end.
I guarantee that good wins out.

bookering

I’ve been reading A Frolic of His Own, but, now on page 118, am finding it a slow plow. The writing is good, and sometimes comic, but the story fails to engage. I would like to finish it, some other time. Yesterday I picked up my mother’s copy of Schindler’s List, a book I’ve also long wanted to read. I walk by Oskar Schindler’s last residence, a seedy walk-up across from Frankfurt’s central train station, every day, and see his face there. A pair of beggars sleeps below the memorial plaque every night.

So, as long as I’m at it with Schindler, I’m going to join this Booker Prize reading challenge. The challenge is easy – read six Booker Prize winners, shortlisted or longlisted books in 2008. If you go to the Booker site, you can see the winners, and if you click on the book, you’ll see also the short lists and long lists. My choices are books I can get my hands on. I have some of them, and borrowed others from our office “library,” where a bunch of us share books. To be honest there are some other Booker books that I’d prefer to read, but that would involve a lot of Amazon shopping and shipping that I’m not ready to do.

Here’s my list of six, followed by some alternatives:
Schindler’s List by Thomas Kennealy – winner 1982
The Color of Blood by Brian Moore – shortlist 1987
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai – winner 2006
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – shortlist 1996
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro – shortlist 2000
On Beauty by Zadie Smith – shortlist 2005
----
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel – winner 2002
Possession by AS Byatt – winner 1990
Any of the Iris Murdochs I haven’t already read

Here are the Booker Prize winners I’ve already read, favs asterisked:

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhablava
*The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
The History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
*Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
*The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
*Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje