My first piece last year was “About reading” and at the end of it I listed the books I had read in 2007. I’d like to start this year by considering the books I read in 2008.
Reading Montaigne’s “Essais”” was an inspiration to start this blog, so I began 2008 by finishing them all, in particular by re-reading the very long “Apologie” and all of Book III, which contains his best essays, notably the final “De l’expérience”. Montaigne is truly great and deeply human, so his best work bears plenty of re-reading. He proves his point that by concentrating on what he knows best, himself Michel de Montaigne, and writing about that as objectively as possible, he in fact succeeds in writing about the human condition in a way that is universal.
The same cannot be said of Bacon whose “Essays” are quite different and rather disappointing in comparison. They are more a manual for the courtier, yet without the incisiveness of Machiavelli, and are in no way a revelation. Montaigne tells it like it is, Bacon how he would like it to be.
Other essays I read last year include Virgina Woolf’s “Three guineas”, a strong work of feminism; Thoreau’s iconic “Civil disobedience”, very clear, personal and well worth a read; Erasmus’ “In praise of folly”, somewhat less inspiring; more of historic interest; and, though in a different form - dialogue - Plato’s three pieces on the “Last days of Socrates”.
Pamuk’s “Istanbul” is a mixture of essay and autobiographical reminiscences about growing up in that great paradoxical city and it was wonderful to read it in conjunction with our visit, as it really gives an insight into the place (see ‘”About Istanbul”).
Another autobiographical work I read was Greene’s “A sort of life” that takes you through his early life, his conversion to Catholicism and embarking on a literary career. It reads like a Greene novel, of which I have read 14, so I enjoyed it a lot.
Prompted by Montaigne’s admiration I also started reading Plutarch’s “Lives”, which are of essay length, though in my Penguin editions not presented in the original parallel couplings of one Greek and one Roman. I have now read 20 out of 50 of the lives and tend to enjoy the Romans more than the Greeks. Though Plutarch was Greek himself, the Romans were closer to him in time, and he seems to bring out their human side more (perhaps it’s the literary attraction of the flawed personality). I partcularly liked the ones Shakespeare drew on -Coriolanus, Brutus, Anthony.
I read two books of art history: Livey’s “From Giotto to Cézanne” and Gombrich’s “Story of art”. “Story of art” is a well written, thoughtful, really educational book in the best sense of the word. To illustrate his arguments Gombrich chooses well known great works of art which are shown on the same page as the related text so you can follow it all very easily. He is careful neither to talk down to the reader nor to become pretentious: quite an achievement and you really learn a lot. I actually read this book after writing my piece “About painting” and felt comforted in my own tastes and opinions.
I now turn to last year’s literature. starting with new fiction.
McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach” was my tenth of his books. I like his clear direct way of writing. McEwan is really a writer of novellas, or extended short stories and that is certainly the case with “On Chesil Beach”, where in his typically efficient way he charcterizes a man and a woman leading up to the key event of the fiasco of their wedding night and how they react to it. He is very good at capturing a certain socially constipated Britain which came just before my own time.
My next new book was Hosseini’s “A thousand splendid suns”, (his second novel after “the Kite runner”) which is a great story and an excellent documentation of the lot of women in Afghanistan.
Lewyzca’s second novel “Two caravans” describes the appalling conditions of illegal, mainly Eastern European, workers in contemporary England using a lot of comedy, so you laugh while being made aware.
Both these books work well in their different ways thanks to their authors’ concentrating on the human story and letting the narrated facts speak for themselves.
Last year’s efforts towards keeping up my languages saw me re-read, but for the first time in Spanish, Garcia Marquez’ s “Hundred years of solitude”, a truly great novel. Gabo lets his imagination run riot in a way that is totally engrossing. I love the way the plot finally works out.
In German it was a re-read of Kafka’s “ the Trial”. Incidentally, in June I stayed in a hotel in Prague which has been installed in the renovated building that used to house the insurance company for which Kafka worked. Although I didn’t get it, one room is actually where Kafka’s office was. Just imagine the dreams you could have there and maybe waking up to find yourself turned into who knows what! “The Trial” remains essential reading for modern man, even in its truncated incomplete form, though that is in its way in keeping with its dream (or nightmare) like quality and logic. David Luke, my German tutor at Oxford, always used to say: “Never forget, Kafka is funny” and he is in a very black way: the absurdity is to be laughed at as much as to be disturbed by. Kafka offers us modern myths: they are open to multiple interpretations while retaining a profound rightness.
In French I re-read two of Racine’s tragedies, “Andromaque” and “Phèdre”, as I was going to see them at the theatre (see "About theatre”). Racine is worth revisiting if only for the sheer beauty of his verse, but he remains very difficult to stage convincingly.
In Italian I read Slataper’s “Il mio Carso” which is a fictionalized autobiography of growing up in and around Trieste at the start of the 20th century. I picked it up hoping for some insights into the Carso (see “About the Carso”) but that only accounts for a small part of the book. I found it rather disappointing: the uneven work of a young man still trying to find his style and subject. It merits its obscurity.
I completed my seventh novel by Dickens, “Bleak House”. It was actually my second attempt, I got stuck the first time, I find this one took a bit of effort to get into. Dickens can be off-putting in his over-written over-adjectivized passages, maudlin sentimentality and over-done rants about paticular bees in his bonnet. But when he hits the mark, he’s certainly one of the best. His impossibly complicated plots and sub-plots keep you turning the pages once hooked and his geat comic characters are a delight.
I had another read of T.S. Eliot’s “Collected poems”. Eliot was the first poet I enjoyed as a teenager, doubtless for his ability to take seemingly everyday language as a springboard to explore some quite thought provoking ideas. You can probably never understand everything he writes, though over the years with each successive read you get closer to it. In the meantime much pleasure can be gained merely from the way he uses the language.
In 2007 I read a lot of Virginia Woolf. Last year I turned my attention to D.H. Lawrence. They are utterly different but what they have in common is that they were both writing at the same time (1920’s) and were interested in what goes on underneath, the unspoken in human relations; Woolf more in everyday situations, Lawrence more in emotionally charged moments.
What they also have in common is that most people I know have no time for either of them. I like them both. I’m not sure quite what that says about me.
In Lawrence’s own view of the world he is very much the man and Woolf the woman; the proud priapic as opposed to the inwardly reflective. But that is an over-simplification as indeed are many of Lawrence’s own ideas. In fact Lawrence is best when he is not ramming some rather odd thoughts down the reader’s throat but bringing out the inner contradictions in his characters’ actions, motives, feelings and thoughts. Anyway both writers recognize that we are all a mixture of masculine and feminine.
While Woolf is both an extremely elegant and experimental writer, Lawrence is more traditional and rough-and-ready in his handling of prose. He is actually rather uneven, some passages are very good indeed, others rather annoying. Yet on the whole I find far more good than bad in him, so I keep on reading him.
Last year I read “the White Peacock”, “Sons and Lovers”,. “the Rainbow”, “Women in love”, “the Fox; the Ladybird; the Captain's Doll”, “the Lost girl” , ” the Prussian officer” and “Aaron’s Rod”.
A recurrent theme in Lawrence is the desire to break free from the constraints of routine and class, especially in the newly indulstrialized society of early 20thC England, which Lawrence saw as constraining man’s ability to fulfil his human potential. Many of his heroes and heroines seek to achieve this by throwing off, sometimes quite irresponsibly, their present circumstances in search of a new life, usually with only limited success.
This striving to break free by rushing off somewhere else can never be the solution, as the fetters to our self-fulfilment are within ourselves. Yet Lawrence’s obsession that we can and should take our lives onto some different more intense plane beyond the humdrum is actually quite subversive and deep down probably what shocked society (his books frequently had to be censored to be published) more than his more or less explicit treatment of sexuality. If everyone were to behave like his heroes, society would collapse.
I guess all of this mirrors Lawrence”s own rather footloose life, finally dying young of disease in self-imposed exile. Woolf, more a prisoner of her social circumstances, had to work with what she had and try to come to terms with it; her own end perhaps also suggesting a kind of failure. It is of course always risky to interpret literature through the prism of the author’s biography, but in these two cases of heightened self-awareness, it’s clear where a lot of input and context was coming from.
To return to the point made by Montaigne, which I seek to pursue in this blog, writing honestly from one’s own experience of life is in literary terms probably the best way of approaching some kind of truth.
