Category Archives: books

The annex

By Posted in books 2 Comments

Last weekend, we traveled to Michigan to visit our daughters. We also added one more bookcase to the annex, resulting in what my older daughter has dubbed, a “book-sort-cation” — that is, shifting, dusting, and reorganizing the library to make the best use of the space. So, yes, I did fall a wee bit behind on my reading schedule, but I am now completely caught up. (The courses and groups are listed in the sidebar.)

The recommended text for “Reading the Odyssey” (which begins this week) is the Emily Wilson translation. Others have already praised it (here, here, here), but allow me to add my voice to the chorus: What a lucid and riveting rendition.

“Truths so appealing and entertaining…”

By Posted in (re)reading Moby-Dick, annotated reading lists (2023), books, commonplace book, reading Don Quixote 6 Comments

Because I am also studying Moby-Dick this semester, I appreciated Harold Bloom’s assertion (see introduction to the Edith Grossman translation) that “Melville blended Don Quixote and Hamlet in Captain Ahab (with a touch of Milton’s Satan added for seasoning).” Returning to a book again and again (and again), as I have Moby-Dick, creates a familiar, well-creased mental map. With this, a reader can travel along the accustomed channels or more easily attempt new routes (meanings, metaphors, implications, associations, links to other works, etc.). On my current voyage through Moby-Dick, for example, I have been navigating ideas about how Melville (perhaps as Ishmael, perhaps as the story’s creator) shapes the narrative and what, precisely, we readers are meant to understand as truth in that narrative. Oh, how I wish I had something even approaching that level of familiarity with Don Quixote because Cervantes is also clearly experimenting (perhaps we can even say, playing?) with narrative structure and truth, but I have only the barest outline of a mental map by which to chart my course through this vast novel.

In last week’s tutorial meeting, we discussed Cervantes’ (playful? deceptive? ironic?) intent in the prologue and dedication and touched on the idea of the novel as a “found” history. In Chapters XI through XXI of Part I, readers encounter a number of other approaches to storytelling, including Quixote’s “long harangue” to the goatherds; Antonio’s ballad; Pedro’s account of Grisóstomo and Marcela; the verses of the deceased shepherd; Sancho Panza’s deceptive explanation of his and Don Quixote’s injuries; a reference to the history of the deeds of Don Quixote penned by “the wise man whose task it will be to write” it; Sancho’s “best of all stories” (which, “[a]s finished as his mother,” ends abruptly); the confessions of the prisoners; and the pawned autobiography of Ginés (a narrative of “truths so appealing and entertaining that no lies can equal them”). This variety surely represents more than simple diversion; what is its meaning and purpose?

I wonder, too, if, as with Melville’s sprawling novel (which also employs a variety of narrative forms, from sermon to soliloquy to taxonomy to stage play to sailor’s yarn and more), the varied structure is related to an underlying assertion about the role of truth in storytelling; or do I have that inverted? Is it, rather, an indication that storytelling undergirds truth? In the Grossman translation, I am struck by the repetition of the words “truth” (at least twenty-one in this week’s reading) and “true” (at least nineteen). In fact, Bloom’s introduction opens with the query, “What is the true object of Don Quixote’s quest?” I might parry, What is Don Quixote’s truth? Alternately, What do “true” and “truth” mean to the Knight of the Sorrowful Face? (I have, as I reread Moby-Dick, similarly asked, What is Ahab’s truth? How does it differ from Ishmael’s, the crew’s, and the author’s?) When I concluded this week’s Don Quixote chapters, I affixed two questions like pins to my as-yet faint mental map: Why do the novel’s assorted storytellers insist on the veracity of each narrative? More philosophically, why, when we storytelling animals narrate, do we claim to have proffered the truth?

Four passages particularly speak to the ideas above:

“Since everything I’ve told you is the absolute truth, I take it for granted that what our lad said about what people were saying about the reason for Grisóstomo’s death is also true.” (p. 85)

“I didn’t know her,” responded Sancho. “But the man who told me this story said it was so true and correct that I certainly could, when I told it to somebody else, affirm and swear I had seen it all….” (p. 145)

“… [W]asn’t it laughable how frightened we were, and wouldn’t it make a good story? At least, how frightened I was, for I already know that your grace doesn’t know what fright is or understand the meaning of fear or terror.”

“I do not deny,” responded Don Quixote, “that what happened to us is deserving of laughter, but it does not deserve to be told, for not all persons are wise enough to put things in their proper place.” (p. 151)

“It’s so good,” responded Ginés, “that it’s too bad for Lazarillo de Tormes and all the other books of that genre that have been or will be written. What I can tell your grace is that it deals with truths, and they are truths so appealing and entertaining that no lies can equal them.” (p. 169)

The year in books

By Posted in books 2 Comments

AE5F0F0D-FCBC-4AC5-8FC6-249C04896317The year opened with the usual goal: read 100 books from my shelves (i.e., books in my collection before the end of 2021), including at least 24 non-fiction titles and at least one book from each of the following categories: Shakespeare (about or retold), poetry, NYRB, Kurt Vonnegut (by or about), Joyce Carol Oates, philosophy, art, and children’s / YA. As it turns out, I read 139 books in 2022, of which 76 were from the shelves. Of those read from the shelves, nineteen were non-fiction titles; and while I met the poetry, NYRB, philosophy, and art challenges, I missed Shakespeare, Vonnegut, Oates, and children’s / YA.

Still. It was a pretty spectacular year of reading, one that included (finally) the bible. Here are some of the other projects, courses, and groups that shaped my reading year.

With the Cardiff BookTalk, I read:
■ A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess; 1962. Fiction.)
■ The Waste Land (Norton Critical Edition) (T.S. Eliot. 1922. Poetry.)

The 100 Days of Dante relaunched this year, but I participated in the first cycle, which began in 2021 and continued into 2022. In addition to Purgatorio and Paradiso, I read two related books (marked with asterisks):
■ Purgatorio (Dante Alighieri; 1320. (Trans. Robin Kirkpatrick; 2008.) Poetry.)
■ Paradiso (Dante Alighieri; 1320. (Trans. Robin Kirkpatrick; 2008.) Poetry.)
* Dante’s Divine Comedy (Seymour Chwast; 2010. Graphic fiction.)
* Dante (R.W.B. Lewis; 2001. Non-Fiction.) RFS

For two Guardian Live events:
■ Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Mary Beard; 2021. Non-fiction.)
■ The Essex Serpent (Sarah Perry; 2016. Fiction.)

With A Public Space / APS Together:
■ Childhood (Tove Ditlevsen; 1967/2021. Fiction.)
■ Youth (Tove Ditlevsen; 1967/2021. Fiction.)
■ Dependence (Tove Ditlevsen; 1971/2021. Fiction.)
■ Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (Herman Melville; 1851. Fiction.)
■ Cane (Jean Toomer. 1923. Fiction.)
■ W-3: A Memoir (Bette Howland; 1974. Non-fiction.)
■ Villette (Charlotte Brontë; 1853. Fiction.)

For three Night School Bar courses:
■ Debt: The First 5,000 Years (David Graeber; 2011. Non-fiction.)
■ Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (Silvia Federici; 2004. Non-fiction.)
■ Capital Realism (Mark Fisher; 2009. Non-fiction.)

For a Newberry Library course:
■ The Emigrants (W.G. Sebald; 1992/1996. Fiction.)
■ The Rings of Saturn (W.G. Sebald; 1995/1998. Fiction.)
■ Austerlitz (W.G. Sebald; 2001. Fiction.)
■ Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald (Carole Angier; 2022. Non-fiction.)

With Catherine Project reading groups (supplementary texts are marked with asterisks):
■ Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy; 1878. (Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.) Fiction.)
■ Apology (Plato; 399 BC. (Trans. G.M.A. Grube; 2002.) Non-fiction.)
■ Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (Herman Melville; 1851. Fiction.)
■ The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway. 1926. Fiction.)
■ The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway; 1952. Fiction.)
■ A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway. 1929. Fiction.)
■ On the Origin of Species (Charles Darwin. 1859. Non-fiction.)
* Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (Sabina Radeva; 2019. Graphic non-fiction.)
* The Tree of Life (Peter Sís; 2003. Graphic non-fiction.)
* Darwin: Portrait of a Genius (Paul Johnson; 2012. Non-fiction.)
* Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation (Michael Keller. 2009. Graphic non-fiction.)
■ A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Flannery O’Connor; 1953. Fiction.)
■ Everything That Rises Must Converge (Flannery O’Connor; 1965. Fiction.)

Several readers in the Hemingway group decided to continue reading together:
■ A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway; 1964. Non-fiction.)
■ For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway. 1940. Fiction.)
■ East of Eden (John Steinbeck. 1952. Fiction.)
■ Fathers and Sons (Ivan Turgenev (Trans. Constance Garnett); 1862. Fiction.)

And three of us in that group decided to meet, too:
■ The Pearl (John Steinbeck. 1947. Fiction.)
■ Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov; 1955. Fiction.)

With the UCSC Deep Read:
■ Transcendent Kingdom (Yaa Gyasi; 2020. Fiction.)

With The Readers Karamazov:
■ The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco; 1980. Fiction.)
* The Key to The Name of the Rose (Adele J. Haft, et al.; 1987/1999. Non-Fiction.)
■ A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller; 1959. Fiction.)
■ The Sign of Four (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; 1890. Fiction.)
■ A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole. 1981. Fiction.)

For a course with the Premise Institute:
■ The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka; 1915. (Trans. Ian Johnston.) Fiction.)
■ The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka; 1915. (Trans. Susan Bernofsky.) Fiction.)
■ The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Jean-Dominique Bauby; 1997. Non-fiction.)
■ The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath. 1963. Fiction.)
■ Nausea (Jean Paul Sarte. 1938. Fiction.)
■ Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope (Johann Hari; 2018. Non-fiction.)

In advance of a Theater of War event:
■ The Suppliants (Aeschylus; 460 BC. Drama.)

In November, I deleted my Twitter account, but I certainly miss the reading groups with whom I read:
■ Europe Central (William T. Vollmann. 2005. Fiction.)
■ A Mapmaker’s Dream (James Cowan. 1996. Fiction.)
■ A Lost Lady (Willa Cather. 1923. Fiction.)
■ Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace. 1996. Fiction.)
■ Zeno’s Conscience (Italo Svevo; 1923. Fiction.)

With the T Book Club:
■ Desperate Characters (Paula Fox; 1970. Fiction.)
■ Specimen Days (Michael Cunningham; 2005. Fiction.)

With the SciFri Book Club:
■ Upgrade (Blake Crouch. 2022. Fiction.)

Looking ahead, this winter, I’m taking classes with the University of Chicago Graham School, the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and Night School Bar. The Premise Course in which I’m enrolled will meet once in January and conclude in February. I’m hoping to participate in a Catherine Project tutorial beginning later this month, and the band of merry readers who remained following Hemingway (and Steinbeck and Turgenev) is tackling Crime and Punishment over the next few months. If I manage to keep up with these exciting pursuits, I’d like to participate in the February SciFri Book Club. More another time.