Laura
An interesting enough mystery (which as usual kind of lost me in those crucial moments of revelation before the whole thing is explained to the reader, because I'm not a reader of mysteries for the mystery's sake) and it was fun to read fan fiction about the later years of the Wimseys, but the writing was far from what one could expect from an imitation of Sayers. It's been a few years since I read Paton Walsh's other two Wimsey follow-up novels, but I seemed to recall they fit in more neatly with Sayers's four Wimsey-Vane novels, which I should explain are amongst my favourite books.
The explanation of Peter's experience in the Great War and his shell-shock in the years following seemed to be a simple re-hash of the beginning of Busman's Honeymoon. The scene wherein Peter and Harriet explain to their sons about Harriet's murder trial twenty years previous was well-intended but poorly executed. The initiative the boys took in the stable block was overly cute. Both Peter's and Harriet's characters were kept fairly true to Sayers's, although some of the dialogue was wide of the mark. I'll dip into it again for the parts relevant to Wimsey history (Paton Walsh did consult Sayers's work on the Wimsey's outside the books), but I'm not planning a re-read.
Started off great with the first several chapters, but then it stopped moving. Near the end it started to pick up again but by that point I was only reading it in the evenings before bed falling asleep while trying to get to the end of the chapter, so what do you want from me. There was promise (and a blurb on the back from Sheila Heti) that did not ultimately pay off. Still, some excellent passages that I will go back to once I've cleansed myself of this bad impression.
I wasn't planning to read this novel when it first came out, since I usually read many more older books than newly-published ones, but when I saw that it involved two cultures close to my heart – my family is Dutch and I was raised just about as Protestant as you can get; and I've had a crush on various aspects of Japanese culture since being a huge Sailor Moon fan in my adolescence – I went for it. It took me longer than usual to get into it, although once I got there it was engaging enough to read for long stretches and finish in a week or two. I expected more from it, though, especially having enjoyed Cloud Atlas very much a few years ago. The ending was mildly disappointing; the story seemed to fade away without a gesture toward something larger. Perhaps I missed it? I was expecting something to resonate, but nothing did beyond Jacob's stand on the watchtower.
Intense and harrowing. Realistic and hyper-realistic and melodramatic all at once. It was simultaneously impossible to and impossible not to feel compassion for the Tyrones. Their hyperactive emotions were hard to take. Each conversation would begin to seem too raw and overbearingly naked, but by the end of the speech it was too tragic not to believe. I felt I had to read this book sideways rather than head-on.
“What I'm saying, what is your life? (Pause.) It's looking forward or it's looking back. And that's our life. That's it. Where is the moment? (Pause.) And what is it that we're afraid of? Loss. What else? (Pause.) The bank closes. We get sick, my wife died on a plane, the stock market collapsed ... the house burnt down ... what of these happen ...? None of ‘em. We worry anyway. What does this mean? I'm not secure. How can I be secure? (Pause.) Through amassing wealth beyond measure? No. And what's beyond all measure? That's a sickness. That's a trap. There is no measure. Only greed. How can we act?” (Roma, Act One, Scene Three)
I grew up with several shelves' worth of Agatha Christie books in the built-in bookcase above the stairs, but I only ever read one short story or novella. I borrowed a few books from my parents the last time I visited, and the first sentence of this one introduced a novelist. What writer doesn't enjoy reading about novelists? So I started with this one.
The story was fine, interesting and engaging enough, but it lit none of the fires that Sayers usually does for me, or that Hammett and Highsmith recently did. I might go on to read By the Pricking of My Thumbs and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side because those are the only titles that have stuck with me since my youth, but I don't think I'll miss much if I leave the rest be.
My first Brookner, which I enjoyed, although it's a quiet novel, even for me. I had to check the date of publication a few times because I kept forgetting which decade the story was set in (I just had to check again: 1980s!), although it made little difference in any case. It felt like the 1930s, but certainly that was because I was reading Willa Cather and Dorothy L. Sayers at the same time. In other situations, I would have felt that the ending was a bit of a cop-out, but it made me laugh.
P.S. This doesn't matter but my edition was actually called The Misalliance.
I read this during a difficult week, while I was stressed out thinking about my job and the kind of life I want to have, and I'm not sure whether it helped me or increased my disquiet. Both, through the means of the latter, is the answer this book gave me. This kind of suffering and shame, and the forgiveness and understanding that accompany them in an ideal situation, is necessary in order to become a human being.
I marked a lot of pages in this book, but here's one passage that I've been thinking about a lot because it's also the theme of a university course I'm taking and it's something of which I am still trying to understand the implications and next steps:
Yet the three ways the art impulse can manifest itself are: as an object, like a painting; as a gesture; and as a reproduction, such as a book. When we try to turn ourselves into a beautiful object, it is because we mistakenly consider ourselves to be an object, when a human being is really the other two: a gesture, and a reproduction of the human type. One only has to travel on a subway during rush hour and pull into a station and see all the people waiting to get on and off to be struck by how many of us there actually are in the world.
Devoured this book in one day. My favourite stories, which I still think about every once in a while, were “Not One of Us,” “The Terrors of Basket-Weaving,” and “Old Folks at Home.” Mostly I appreciated how alien such a social circle as the one in the first story is to me, identified with the creepy feeling of knowing something you didn't think you knew in the second, and got to feel self-righteous about not having kids in the last. I hadn't read any Highsmith before (just seen the Hitchcock movies, pretty much all of which, contrary to my nature, I saw before reading the book), but I will seek out her more famous works for sure.
—
‰ЫПDiane felt that she had lost herself. Since repairing that basked, she wasn‰ЫЄt any longer Diane Clarke, not completely, anyway. Neither was she anybody else, of course. It wasn‰ЫЄt that she felt she had assumed the identity, even partially, of some remote ancestor. How remote, anyway? No. She felt rather that she was living with a great many people from the past, that they were in her brain or mind (Diane did not believe in a soul, and found the idea of a collective unconscious too vague to be of importance), and that people from human antecedents were bound up with her, influencing her, controlling her every bit as much as, up to now, she had been controlling herself.‰Ыќ (From ‰ЫПThe Terrors of Basket-Weaving‰Ыќ)
Nabokov's first novel, and, as he says in the introduction, a purging of himself and his own experiences so that he could get on with writing other things. I identified with Ganin's feeling of depression as a result of having no desire. The scenes in the boarding house are wonderful as are the passages inside Ganin's head. Overall it's a tight book and a quick read.
—
‰ЫПHe spent about an hour drinking coffee, staring at a picture window and watching the passers-by. Back in his room he tried to read, but he found the contents of his book so alien and inappropriate that he abandoned it in the middle of a subordinate clause. He was in the kind of mood that he called ‰Ычdispersion of the will.‰ЫЄ He sat motionless at his table unable to decide what to do: to shift the position of his body, to get up and wash his hands, or to open the window, outside which the bleak day was fading into twilight. It was a dreadful, agonizing state rather like that dull sense of unease when we wake up but at first cannot open our eyelids, as though they were stuck together for good. Ganin felt that the murky twilight which was gradually seeping into the room was also slowly penetrating his body, transforming his blood into fog, and that he was powerless to stop the spell that was being cast on him by the twilight.
‰ЫПHe was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle. Nothing relieved his depression, his thoughts slithered aimlessly, his heartbeat was faint, his underclothes stuck unpleasantly to his body.‰Ыќ
Read for a university course in American literature. I dislike it while still appreciating that it is full of genius. I love the multiple narrators, I love the changes in voice and perspective, I love the touches of the supernatural, I appreciate the religious symbolism, the dark comedy, the inversion of the quest narrative, but I didn't really feel it. It was a chore to read (and I rarely ever feel that way about any book), and I feel suitably chastised for having chosen this book as the subject of my single discussion assignment for this course, with some optimism, unknown to me now, that I would have something intelligible to say about this book. (Even the professor, whom I kind of adore, couldn't make me like this book any more.)
—
‰ЫПIn a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I dont know what I am. I dont know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not.‰Ыќ
This book was amazing, if only because it got me back into doing two hobbies that I had abandoned: knitting and writing. Scarlett Thomas encouraged me to believe that one day I'll be able to knit a pair of socks too, and also made me think about the kind of stories I create when I write, and that the storyless stories I like best are perfectly okay, if not actually exceptionally awesome. This book has stuck with me weeks after finishing it, and I'm thinking about going back to it soon.
‰ЫПAs I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma, ‰ЫУ literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger: while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulence, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
‰ЫПSqueeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers‰ЫЄ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, ‰ЫУ Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
‰ЫПWould that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.‰Ыќ
—
‰ЫПIt does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator, keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter‰ЫЄs, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.
‰ЫПBut how easy and how hopeless to each these fine things! Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter‰ЫЄs! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!‰Ыќ
Re-read in March 2011. I first speed-read it last November over our American Thanksgiving vacation since I had a reading test due on the Thursday. Being Canadian with an American husband can sometimes lead to such unfortunate experiences as having to rush through Walden and being supremely annoyed with it for taking me away from lazing away in the hot summer weather and drinking bourbon ale. So of course I didn't enjoy it much then – I mean, how absurd to idealize solitude and quiet in the woods and economical living while on a road trip from Ontario to Florida to visit family and eat delicious food – but after hearing the professor's lecture and re-reading it in preparation for writing a paper, I have changed my opinion and am kind of thrilled with Walden. So okay, Thoreau seems a bit of a douchebag in some ways, but seriously, he's not telling you that you have to go out and live in the woods by yourself in order to have a fulfilled life. He's opening up some possibilities on how to have a fulfilled life. So maybe I have romantic notions about solitude and nature and things of that sort, but there is a lot in this book that makes sense and can work even if one has a mortgage and would rather stay in a hotel than a cottage in the woods.
—
‰ЫПThen to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining-rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПGrace thought to herself how different all this was going to look in a few weeks, when it had become familiar. Houses are entirely different when you know them well, she thought, and on first acquaintance even more different from their real selves, more deceptive about their real character than human beings. As with human beings, you can have an impression, that is all. Her impression of Bellandargues was entirely favourable, one of hot, sleepy, beautiful magnitude. She longed to be on everyday terms with it, to know the rooms that lay behind the vast windows of the first floor, to know what happened around the corner of the terrace, and where the staircase led to, just visible in the interior darkness. It is a funny feeling to visit your home for the first time and have to be taken about step by step like a blind person.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПWhen you describe an experience, what you are recounting is your memory of the act, not the act itself. Experiencing a moment is an inarticulate act. There are no words. It is in the sensory world. To recall it and to put words to it is to illustrate how one remembers the past, rather than actually experiencing the past. Keep this in mind as you read to words of others as they remember an incident.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПCatholics rehearse their stories. They tell stories over and over. The same story, torquing it a little, realizing a certain detail is not working, adding stuff. I‰ЫЄve heard the same two dozen stories out of Lydia about thirty times. And then there are the daily stories. Events that happen that she recounts. She‰ЫЄll tell me, and then she‰ЫЄll call Daphne, and then her brother phones and she tells her brother. The thing I find interesting about this story-telling thing is that if you heard only one of these stories, you‰ЫЄd think she was telling it for the first time. The enthusiasm behind it. That‰ЫЄs definitely a Catholic thing. Protestants tell a story once and it‰ЫЄs over with. They feel self-conscious to tell the story again. They are aware of who has already heard the story. Protestants tell a story best the first time; Catholics, the last time.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПIf the earth were one unified island, a smooth ball, we would all be one species, a tremulous muck. The fact is that when you get down to the business of species formation, you eventually hit some form of reproductive isolation. Cells tend to fuse. Cells tend to engulf each other; primitive creatures tend to move in on each other and on us, to colonize, aggregate, blur. ‰Ы_ As much of the world‰ЫЄs energy seems to be devoted to keeping us apart as it was directed to bringing us here in the first place. ‰Ы_ Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth.‰Ыќ (From ‰ЫПLife on the Rocks: The GalМБpagos‰Ыќ)
‰ЫПStaring out through the window, off into the horizon, Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce ‰ЫУ winds, seas ‰ЫУ a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature swirling inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world ‰ЫУ no flower or stone ‰ЫУ as a single hello from a human being.‰Ыќ (From ‰ЫПWhich Is More Than I Can Say About Some People‰Ыќ)
‰ЫПIt seemed to her that everything she had ever needed to know in her life she had known at one time or another, but she just hadn‰ЫЄt known all those things at once, at the same time, at a single moment. They were scattered through and she had had to leave and forget one in order to get to another. A shadow fell across her, inside her, and she could feel herself retreat to that place in her bones where death was and you greeted it like an acquaintance in a room; you said hello and were then ready for whatever was next ‰ЫУ which might be a guide, the guide that might be sent to you, the guide to lead you back out into your life again.‰Ыќ (From ‰ЫПTerrific Mother‰Ыќ)
‰ЫП‰ЫчBut, before we can go any further, you‰ЫЄve got to make up your minds what this novel actually is about.‰ЫЄ
‰ЫПThey spend the rest of the hour making up their minds.
‰ЫПAt first, as always, there is a blank silence. The class sits staring, as it were, at the semantically prodigious word. About. What is it about? Well, what does George want them to say it‰ЫЄs about? They‰ЫЄll say it‰ЫЄs about anything he likes, anything at all. For nearly all of them, despite their academic training, deep, deep down still regard this about business as a tiresomely sophisticated game. As for the minority who have cultivated the about approach until it has become second nature, who dream of writing an about book of their own one day, on Faulkner, James or Conrad, proving definitively that all previous about books on that subject are about nothing ‰ЫУ they aren‰ЫЄt going to say anything yet awhile. They are waiting for the moment when they can come forward like star detectives with the solution to Huxley‰ЫЄs crime. Meanwhile, let the little ones flounder. Let the mud be stirred up, first.‰Ыќ
‰ЫП‰ЫчYou know, eating‰ЫЄs much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you‰ЫЄve just got to have something super-delicious. And when you‰ЫЄre standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into ‰ЫУ the good restaurant or the awful one. It‰ЫЄs like ‰ЫУ do you fall on this side of the fence, or the other side.‰Ыќ (From ‰ЫПCrabs‰Ыќ)