rise readeth 2011

I am un-lurking myself from the group. I joined the 2010 edition of the club sometime in the last quarter of the year. Now I've resolved to create a reading log here. Longer reviews were posted in my blog.

Reading log:

JANUARY

1. Kafka on the Shore by Murakami Haruki, tr. Philip Gabriel
2. Emotero by Mark Angeles
3. A Heart So White by Javier Marías, tr. Margaret Jull Costa
4. The Return by Roberto Bolaño, tr. Chris Andrews

FEBRUARY

5. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, tr. Mirra Ginsburg
6. Don Quixote, tr. John Rutherford
7. The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami Haruki, tr. Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin
8. after the quake by Murakami Haruki, tr. Jay Rubin
9. Drown by Junot Díaz

MARCH

10. Caravaggio by Francine Prose
11. Crossing the Heart of Africa by Julian Smith
12. Seashells of Southeast Asia by R. Tucker Abbott
13. Translation in Practice, ed. Gill Paul
14. Chronicle of My Mother by Inoue Yasushi, tr. Jean Oda Moy

APRIL

15. Marxism and Literary Criticism by Terry Eagleton
16. Borges and the Eternal Orang-utans by Luis Fernando Verissimo, tr. Margaret Jull Costa
17. My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose, tr. Arunava Sinha

MAY

18. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Murakami Haruki, tr. Philip Gabriel
19. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer
20. Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig, tr. Anthea Bell
21. Beowulf, tr. Seamus Heaney
22. Underground by Murakami Haruki, tr. Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel

JUNE

23. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
24. The Old Capital by Kawabata Yasunari, tr. J. Martin Holman
25. The Ubu Plays by Alfred Jarry, tr. Cyril Connolly and Simon Watson Taylor

JULY

26. Poems New and Collected by Wisława Szymborska, tr. Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh
27. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, tr. Anthea Bell
28. The Fall by Albert Camus, tr. Justin O'Brien
29. Chess by Stefan Zweig, tr. Anthea Bell
30. Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by José Saramago, tr. Giovanni Pontiero
31. Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell by Javier Marías, tr. Margaret Jull Costa
32. Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories by Kōno Taeko, tr. Lucy North and Lucy Lower

AUGUST

33. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
34. On Translation by Paul Ricoeur, tr. Eileen Brennan
35. Between Parentheses by Roberto Bolaño, ed. Ignacio Echevarría, tr. Natasha Wimmer
36. First Love by Ivan Turgenev, tr. Constance Garnett
37. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
38. The Duel by Joseph Conrad
39. Maybato, Iloilo, Taft Avenue, Baguio, Puerto by John Iremil E. Teodoro

SEPTEMBER

40. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami Haruki, tr. Philip Gabriel
41. Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
42. The Seamstress and the Wind by César Aira, tr. Rosalie Knecht
43. Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías, tr. Margaret Jull Costa

OCTOBER

44. Pan by Knut Hamsun, tr. James W. McFarlane
45. Bad Nature by Javier Marías, tr. Esther Allen
46. Trese: Last Seen After Midnight by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo
47. Maoh: Juvenile Remix, Volume 01 by Kotaro Isaka and Megumi Osuga, tr. Stephen Paul
48. Maoh: Juvenile Remix, Volume 02 by Kotaro Isaka and Megumi Osuga, tr. Stephen Paul
49. Maoh: Juvenile Remix, Volume 03 by Kotaro Isaka and Megumi Osuga, tr. Stephen Paul
50. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Susan Bernofsky
51. The Silent Angel by Heinrich Böll, tr. Breon Mitchell

NOVEMBER

52. The Shooting Gallery by Tsushima Yūko, tr. Geraldine Harcourt
53. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll, tr. Leila Vennewitz
54. Night Fish by Kristine Ong Muslim
55. Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter, tr. Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore, illus. Josef Scharl
56. Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

DECEMBER

57. The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson
58. Patriotism by Mishima Yukio, tr. Geoffrey W. Sargent
59. The Dead by James Joyce
60. The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude
61. Paulownia: Seven Stories from Contemporary Japanese Writers, tr. Torao Taketomo
62. The Castle by Franz Kafka, tr. Mark Harman
63. Insomnia by Kristine Ong Muslim

JANUARY

1. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, tr. Philip Gabriel

The 7th book by H. Murakami that I've read.
A long novel about incest, animal cruelty, music, destiny, growing up.
The English translation reads well but I think Murakami is a minor writer here.
The repetition of sentences and phrases are a bit irritating. Granted that repetitions are used to imitate a piece of music, the flat Hemingway-esque prose can not save it from sounding contrived and didactic.
It looks to me as if the plot just plods along without regard to the seamless sequencing of the disparate themes. As if the whole jigsaw puzzle is a Scrabble board, the puzzle pieces cut at the perpendicular edges of a tile.
Overall, I think it's a poor example of a "magical realist" novel, in which magic is utilized without "logic." My benchmark for good magical novel is One Hundred Years of Solitude.
A weakness of the novel is overkill: too much explanation being expended to "justify" the incest.

Good to see you here, Rise.

I've never thought of Murakami's writing as magic-realism, though many regard it as such. He injects elements of fantasy and dream-like events, sure, but they are indeed disjointed and I would say, rather crude. I've always felt his use of these elements superficial and detached from the context. I think context is crucial in magic-realism, and the portrayal of place in magnificent and exaggerated proportions, to the extent that one can imagine it becoming a major character in the story, is what Murakami fails to achieve. Anyway, I think Kafka on the Shore was a couple of hundred pages too long.

Welcome. I've got Kafka on the Shore on my unreasonably large TBR pile. I've seen mixed reivews so I don't think I'll get to it this year.

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Deebee1, I see your point on Murakami's use of fantastical elements as detached from context. I use the term "magical realism" here very generally, but maybe "surrealism" can also be used. In any case, the dream-world that Murakami created here is not "realistic" enough. In the same way that Kafka's nightmares and Borges's labyrinths are all too real.

Janeprice, I can't say I recommend it. I personally prefer "A Wild Sheep Chase" and "Norwegian Wood."

2. Emotero by Mark Angeles

Prose poems, in Filipino language. I'll probably translate a few and post on my blog.

3. A Heart So White by Javier Marías, tr. Margaret Jull Costa

This is the 7th book by Marías that I've read and is one of my favorites.
It's about violence against women, the tricks of memory, translation and interpretation, and the dangerous acts of telling and listening to stories.
I think that the translation reads very well in English and can stand on its own. A feat for a book where the characters are interpreters and translators.
Marias's meandering style serves his themes well.
It's a "thinking novel" where the wandering mind and thought processes of the narrator perfectly reflect the acts of interpreting and translating.
Marias uses repetition not only for the sake of repetition, not for mere repetition. Words, phrases, and sentences are repeated to evoke the distortion and validation of truth, both as curse and as salvation of his characters.

Book #3 is a favorite of mine, too, and yes, I think that MJ Costa did an excellent job here.

2 - Do post a link here when you get the translations up. My husband gets confused for Filipino all the time so I've had a growing interest recently.

> 8

Will do.

4. The Return by Roberto Bolaño, tr. Chris Andrews

This is the 14th Bolaño book I've read, including his book of interviews. I admit to being a Bolaño completist.
This collection consists of 13 short stories taken from two Spanish collections Llamadas telefonicas and Putas asesinas. The previous collection Last Evenings on Earth contains the rest of the stories from the 2 collections.
The stories mostly concentrate on individuals consigned to the fringes of society - prostitutes, gangsters, necrophiliacs, and other "lowlifes."
The narrative primarily moves forward as run-on sentences, with occasional flashes of metaphors that can make one's hair stand on end or still the beating of one's heart (so to speak).
My favorite stories include "Murdering Whores" (a translation that did not capture the wordplay in the Spanish title "Putas asesinas"), "Buba" (about football with some very good goal-scoring kicks), the titular story "The Return" about a necrophiliac, a weird twist of the "Ghost" movie (the one with Patrick, Demi, and Whoopie in it).
Four of these stories can be accessed online at The New Yorker.

"William Burns"
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/02/08/100208fi_fiction_bolano

"Clara"
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/08/04/080804fi_fiction_bolano

"Prefiguration of Lalo Cura"
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/04/19/100419fi_fiction_bolano

"Meeting with Enrique Lihn"
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/12/22/081222fi_fiction_bolano

5. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, tr. Mirra Ginsburg

Sci-fi is not my favored genre but this is supposed to be a fine example. And it is.
It's set in the future where individuality, freedom, and imagination are all taboo. Every citizen in the One State is called by a number. Nicotine and alcohol are branded as "poisons" that will make one incurably sick.
The Guardians of the One State control everyone's movement, lifestyle, and schedule. Conformity is held as highest virtue. Every action is taken to prevent anyone from "developing a soul" - a most feared disease.
The scientists of the One State finally developed a cure for the disease - the extermination of the imagination.
A great read, just like watching a great SFX movie.

6. Don Quixote, tr. John Rutherford

Contains all one can ask of a long adventure novel.
Took me 7 months of on-off reading, but well worth the time investment. Don Q and Sancho P don't fail to crack me up whenever I get back to them.
A "true history" that displays all kinds of humor, from the slapstick to pitch black.
There's a dozen or so translations of this book. The one I read, a modern (Penguin) translation by John Rutherford, is full of fun.

7. The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami Haruki, tr. Alfred Birnbaum & Jay Rubin

Murakami's first collection of selected short stories in English. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a greatest hits collection, but some are really good, better than expected. Some are amusing though, mostly for their silliness. I find it a mixed collection of dead serious deadpan stories. It exhibits both of Murakami's strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Still worth a read as I think his short fleeting stories are more bearable than the extended silliness in some of the long novels.

I've finished 2 short story collections.

8. after the quake by Murakami Haruki, tr. Jay Rubin

9. Drown by Junot Díaz

Of these two, Díaz's collection is a worthy read. Murakami barely makes a strong impression. Drown is a cohesive collection of stories of immigrant life in the US. The linkage of the stories is subtle, almost allowing the stories to coalesce into a novel. The Murakami pieces, on the other hand, are fragmented as ever. Just like some of his long novels that require a sort of manufactured incredulity on the part of the reader in order to appreciate the barrenness of the plot. Díaz is realistic in his depiction of the mental and physical hardships not only of the Dominican immigrants in the US but of the familias they left behind in the country. For his part, Murakami approaches the short story with utter benignity and complacency. His post-earthquake scenarios can be jarring. He relies, as always, on the fantastical elements of the story and this cannot really hide the flatness of his characters. The characters even appear as if they can hardly believe they found themselves in the story they are in. Granted, Murakami is mimicking the dreamworld and is trying to write through the grammar of dreams. But a realistic fantasy is more earthbound than a fantastical fantasy. Another downside to certain Murakami stories is their tendency to use repetition for the sake of repetition. The characters echo some quotable sentences as if they need to drive home the precious words to the reader.

14 - Drown sounds interesting; I put it on the ever-expanding wishlist.

> 15

janeprice: Drown is a quick read, so it should be painless. :p

10. Caravaggio by Francine Prose

Biography of the famous painter. Prose was very perceptive especially in discussing Caravaggio's signature artworks.

This made me very curious about her own fiction. I welcome any recommendations on which book by her to try.

11. Crossing the Heart of Africa by Julian Smith

Crossing the Heart of Africa is part travel writing, part memoir. Smith journeyed into the continent following closely the itinerary of legendary explorer Ewart Grogan who undertook more than a century before what was then considered an impossible feat. The parallelism in the two men's travels rests not only on the similar roads they took but on their motive for their respective crossings: they both, in their own ways, did it for love. Grogan was challenged by his beloved's stepfather to the task as precondition for his marrying her. Smith, on the other hand, did his own travel on the eve of his scheduled wedding. Each of their separate travels was recounted in the book in alternating sections, with some flashbacks of the developing relationship between Smith and Laura. (review)

12. Seashells of Southeast Asia by R. Tucker Abbott

A field guide for identifying mollusc shells. It contains beautifully photographed color plates and tips on how to collect and preserve shells. I brought this book on a trip to the beach last week and found it very useful.

Rise - just reading your thread for the first time, and enjoying it. Excellent review of Crossing the Heart of Africa.

> 20:

Thanks, dchaikin.

13. Translation in Practice, ed. Gill Paul

A practical guide for translators and editors of translations. Very short (less than 100 pages, in large font). This can be downloaded for free from the Dalkey Archive Press site.

14. Chronicle of My Mother by Inoue Yasushi, tr. Jean Oda Moy


... if an emotional love—even just a tiny fragment—has endured throughout a person's life, then one cannot say that life has been entirely wasted. (p. 33)


Inoue Yasushi (1907-1991) was primarily known as a historical novelist from Japan and author of such acclaimed works as Tun-huang. – I haven't read Tun-Huang but a friend's review captivated me so much that I decided to pick up this one, my first Inoue. – In Chronicle of My Mother, translated by Jean Oda Moy, the novelist wrote about the last decade of his mother's life. It charted the mother's aging, senility, and death, up to the late age of 89. The chronicle was divided into three parts. "Under the Blossoms," the first, was published in 1964. The succeeding, "The Light of the Moon" and "The Surface of the Snow," were published five years apart from each other. Inside these poetically titled sections, Inoue shared first-hand accounts of the difficulties he and his siblings faced while caring for their mother ("Granny"). The deterioration of Granny's physical and mental health was detailed in very concrete terms that were surprisingly devoid of self-pity. The children tried to rationalize the puzzling gaps in Granny’s memory. The events that she was able to recall from her past and the possible explanation for this selective memory were a constant preoccupation for Inoue. Granny's senility was evident from her utter forgetfulness, repetitiveness, and mood swings: "We first became aware of the severity of her condition when we realized that Mother herself did not understand, or accept, the fact that she kept forgetting what she said and repeated herself. . . . although she heard what was said, she retained it only that moment and promptly forgot about it." Despite Granny's condition, which was stressful for all those caring for her, her children were very understanding of her condition. They were supportive of each other and were very willing to attend to her needs.

The family culture that was described in the chronicle was exclusively Japanese, though the universal theme will resonate for anyone. In the translator’s introduction, Jean Oda Moy, an Asian American, described the increasing lack of regard for aging parents as a result of materialism: "With the unprecedented social and cultural changes taking place in Japan today, many traditional values which might appear to interfere with productivity and 'success'—in short, with rampant materialism—are losing ground. . . . In Japan as in the West, the elderly today are frequently shunted aside, ignored, or made to feel they are a burden." Inoue's family, as portrayed in the book, was one of those who adhere to a strong sense of duty and love for old parents. The economy of words, the poetry, and the lack of sentimentality made Chronicle of My Mother a touching and accessible read. It is a good example of "grief literature," one that was by no means a depressing elegy. On the contrary, the reader can sense positive feelings from the book and this could be attributed to Inoue's empathy, compassion, and love for his mother. He produced an intimate memoir, one that also served as a paean to motherhood and family ties.

Do you think that the author was driven to write the books because of those changing values--and do you think the books were popular because the Japanese people are wrestling with their guilt while also wanting to keep up with (insert Japanese version of "The Jones's)?

Chronicle of My Mother sounds fascinating, and I am adding it to my wishlist.

The Twilight Years by Sawako Ariyoshi is a fictional account involving many of the same issues. I liked it very much.

> 24: My sense is that the author wrote the books as a kind of personal journal. He wanted to make sense of his mother's forgetfulness and senility and his writing reflected a kind of grasping for some explanation of her condition.

I'm not sure if the books became popular since the time the memoirs were published, or if some Japanese felt guilt at negligence of their old. But the translator did note that the changing values were evident in special temples for the aged in Japan. The supplicants there were frequently praying for early death.

> 25: I am in turn adding Ariyoshi's book in my list. Hope to find a copy. The publisher, Kodansha, just closed down!

15. Marxism and Literary Criticism by Terry Eagleton

A concise introduction to the subject, Eagleton's book surveyed the rise of Marxist literary critics and their ideas and philosophies. It began with a definition of basic concepts of Marxist lit theory (e.g., base/structure and superstructure) and then proceeded toward a critique of early interpretations of the theory. The approach is academic and somehow lacking too many examples. The presentation of arguments was interesting even though it mentioned a lot of critics and books I'm not familiar with. The book will be most appreciated by those who have a background on the subject and writers mentioned, from the its originators Marx and Engels, to its modern interpreters Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin. Eagleton specifically approved of the type of criticism produced by the latter two: Brecht for the innovations he promoted in his plays and Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction -- at least Eagleton convinced me to look out for these books. Basic precepts and conclusions range from the obvious (a text should not be overtly political) to the ingenious (texts are valued as much for their contents as for the behind-the-scenes modes of production that went toward their publication).

16. Borges and the Eternal Orang-utans by Luis Fernando Verissimo, tr. Margaret Jull Costa

Very funny, very entertaining whodunit, with more than passing references to Borges (a major character here), Poe, and Lovecraft. Vogelstein is a 50-year old translator and English teacher who adored Borges with the same fanatical zeal as the narrator of the Borges story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote." His first "encounter" with the master was not agreeable: Vogelstein translated one of Borges's stories for a Portuguese magazine but he changed some aspects of the story to fit his own preference for how the story should proceed. Of course, Borges, upon learning of the travesty, was furious. They eventually exchanged letters, which was the start of Vogelstein's literary hero worship.

Their second encounter was face to face, in a conference about Edgar Allan Poe held in Argentina. Even before the conference was to start, a murder of one of the speakers took place. The murder victim apparently was found, in true Borgesian fashion, in front of a mirror - his body's position was such that it formed a letter from the alphabet, a clue that could point to the solution of the crime. Borges and Vogelstein were commissioned to help uncover the identity of the killer. The ensuing investigation was a riot of literary speculations, invoking the mystery stories of Poe, Kabbalah, and Necronomicon book of the dead. This novel was criminally funny. I'm sure there were some in-jokes (re Borges, Poe and Lovecraft) that went past me but it was altogether a solid detective work, if a bit too neat the way it all tied up, in postmodern style, in the end. Verissimo was nonetheless guilty of leading the reader into a maze of intertextual pleasures.

#28-29 - good reviews, both sound interesting...although I'm not well read enough to "get" the Verissimo.

No background about the writers needed, Dan. Borges was portrayed like a Hercule Poirot who just happened to have read a lot of obscure texts. It was quite accessible, I guess even Eagleton will lay down his Marxist theory for it.

17. My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose, translated by Arunava Sinha

Four men, strangers to each other, were stranded on a train. They met a young pair of lovers who appeared very much in love. This sight of the couple led to the men reflecting about love and sharing stories with each other. Each of the stories that followed was rendered in very simple yet beautiful prose. They were all simple tales, but together they form a subtle whole. This novella reminds me of another book set in the region. Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra, is also structured as a book of love stories, seemingly linked by the writer's fine sensibility and poetry.

18. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Murakami Haruki, translated by Philip Gabriel

Love story. A boy fell in love with a girl. Many years later, when the man was already married, they met again.

I usually hate Murakami's stories. But this one was one of his good efforts. There's a surprising depth in his characterization.

19. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer

A second read for me.

This posthumous epic-length book by Bolaño consists of 5 discrete parts. He left instructions before his death for the books to be published one at a time, but his literary executor and family chose to put out a single book.

There are many stories contained within it. It tells of a search for a missing novelist, about a journalist covering a boxing match in Mexico, about a German soldier in the second world war. At the center of these stories is the real-life murders and rapes of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

The lasting impression I take of the book is its unique exploration of serious stuff - violence, cruelty, intolerance. Technically, the writing is inventive, swimming in many registers. It is atmospheric and replete with mystery, symbols, metaphors, and forceful scenes. Its best quality is perhaps the creation of a convincing atmosphere of lurking evil. How evil operates through time and how a portrait of it can be investigated in literary terms in many ways, in the realms of culture, economy, politics, and ethics.

> 32 - I really like the sound of My Kind of Girl - thanks for the review!

I think you'll enjoy it. It's a very likeable book.

20. Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig, translated by Anthea Bell

A well written novella about love tested by years of physical separation. It reminds me of Henry James in the depiction of inner passions and conflicts, but with a more fast paced and electric prose.

Ludwig fell in love with his employer's wife, and she with him. They recognized their strong feelings for each other on the eve of Ludwig's departure abroad. He was sent overseas to oversee a mining venture, a rare chance for him to improve his lot in life. The job will cost him two years away from Germany. Before his departure the lovers came to an understanding that they will renew their relationship when he returns to Germany. After two years, when he was just about ready to come home, the first world war broke out and transport to Europe was cut off.

21. Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

An entertaining graphic-epic. The ancient world is shaken by the appearance of a monster with a pure evil heart. Everybody cowers in fear. Thankfully, a hero appears, bent on ridding the world of monsters. The fight scenes are eye-popping, the energy as pure as electricity, the testosterone filled to the brim. There is probably a hint of comedy in the translator's language, the hyperbolic humor shooting like skyrockets.

22. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami, translated by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel

A book of terrorism reportage. It tells of what happened in the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995. Five men, members of the religious cult called Aum Shinrikyo, punctured sarin nerve gas in plastic bags using the sharpened tips of their umbrellas. The poison gas released killed a dozen people injured hundreds. Nine months after the incident, the novelist Haruki Murakami began to interview the victims in order to understand what actually happened.

Underground followed the template of Murakami's fiction: the story of ordinary men and women thrust in an abnormal situation. But it was a real nightmare happening to real people in the real world, unfolding as if in real time.

The narrative has two self-contained parts, divided into short sections focusing on one person and his part in the gas attack. The first part, titled "Underground", recounts the event from the victims' point of view. To balance the story the second part, "The Place That Was Promised" narrates the stories of members and ex-members of the Aum cult. The first part is already a brilliant exploration of the outcome of terrorism; the second part is a glimpse into the minds of individuals who renounced the world and joined the religious cult.

The book's form and structure is reminiscent of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's story "In a Grove". Several witnesses are asked in a kind of deposition to recount what happened on that day. The accumulation of the stories portrayed a kind of hell, a nightmare experienced in broad daylight, underground.

Great review of Underground, something I'll now be thinking about.

Yes great review of underground. I read Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it as well. For all you people out there who might be put off by its long poem format, you needn't be.

One of my favourite reads this year has been Grendel by John Gardner. This is a take on the Beowulf saga, but from the monsters point of view.

We seem to read a lot of the same books as well as being in many of the same groups. (You're even a member of my Author Theme Reads group!) I'll have to keep an eye on your thread from here on out.

40

Dan, thanks. Murakami has strong opinions in his afterword about the terror attack that provoke thoughts even if his analysis about the Japanese psyche is a bit speculative.

41

baswood, thanks for the info about the Grendel book. A monster’s point of view is always welcome!

I was told there’s an audio of Heaney reading his Beowulf translation. That must be worth a listen too.

42

Hi, lilisin. Nice to meet you. I checked out your Japanese thread. Lots of ideas there as I’ve just joined a Japanese Lit reading challenge.

Oh that's fantastic! I'm glad you're dipping into my favorite type of reading! Just don't stick to Murakami H. for too long. He might be one of the more famous Japanese authors overseas but to be honest I've never understood why. He gets more of a shrug out of me. (Although I actually loved Underground.) Let me know if you are looking for anything specific and I'll see if I can't recommend anything.

Where are you doing this reading challenge? Off LT? Or is it just a personal thing you're requiring of yourself?

Off LT. It's an annual reading challenge that lasts from June to January. Here's the link. I've only started reading Japanese lit in earnest 2 yrs. ago, where previously I was only aware of Ishiguro and John Hersey. Incidentally I own some of the J-lit books you've read! H. Murakami is a personal challenge. Some of his books are really mediocre but I'll read everything by him to get him out of my system. :p Underground is my 11th book by him and his best work for me. Overall though I think Ryu is a more interesting writer.

Oh, interesting! Browsing through it a lot of the books I've read have been mentioned (yay!) and many others are on my huge Japanese TBR pile. I'll have to bookmark this for future reference. Glad to see so many people though excited about Japanese lit. I look forward to seeing your future reads.

I agree that Ryu seems more interesting. I'm reading his Almost Transparent Blue in the original Japanese and even though I'm only doing a few pages at a time, I'm quite engrossed with it despite its content.

I'm thinking my next Japanese read will be Hell by Tsutsui.

I'm looking forward to Almost Transparent Blue. I have it on my pile. As well as The Sea and Poison.

Right now I'm reading The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata.

The Old Capital is actually deceptively difficult. It's so reserved that it's hard to grasp. At least it was for me. I'll come back and see what you end up thinking of it.

50

I find the Kawabata to be like a sequence of haikus in prose. My take on it is that it deals with man's broken relationship with nature. Here is my blog post on it.

23. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

I did not warm up to this Pulitzer Prize winner. It was good in parts but did not make a wondrous whole.

24. The Old Capital by Kawabata Yasunari, translated by J Martin Holman

Chieko, a young woman, was in search of her identity. She was a foundling, left behind by her true parents when still a baby. She grew up comfortably being cared for by a couple who ran a business selling fabric cloths. Her adoptive parents treated her like their own, but her broken connection from her biological parents seemed to weigh on her more and more. It was as if there was something lacking in her, a part of her nature that was also reflected in her seeming disconnect from and yearning for the natural world.

Reading it is like meditating on beauty and the impending extinction of nature.

25. The Ubu Plays by Alfred Jarry, translated by Cyril Connolly and Simon Watson Taylor

The three core texts of Ubu form a trilogy of sorts. Ubu Rex is the forerunner of the dictator novel. Ubu Cuckolded - a play that's more a segue than a sequel - is The Empire Strikes Back, with the premature appearance of Ewoks. Ubu Enchained is The Return of the King, the best part of the lot.

Ubu is an amoral character and "crappy creature". In the first play, Pa Ubu, with his equally base partner Ma Ubu, usurped the throne of the king of Poland. As the new king, he pursued more acts of cruelty and greed, satisfying all his base appetites. When Ubu Rex was originally performed in Paris in 1896, the utterance of the first word of the play (Merdre, which without the extra "r", is Shit in French) provoked a riot of its audience. The riot lasted some 15 minutes.

In Ubu Cuckolded, Pa Ubu invaded the privacy of another person in not-so-subtle means. The final play Ubu Enchained was the height of slapstick. It started as a straightforward case of mistaken identity. Then along the way, it unravelled as a psychotic parable or allegory of malcontents. A utopian society was born, a place where freedom and slavery coexist, where the master is enslaved by the slave, and where the slave prevailed. It was the culmination of the wretchedness of Ubu.

The 3 plays are the best of satires. Their comedies are without let-up. The book also contained Jarry's writings on the theater.

JULY

26. Poems New and Collected by Wisława Szymborska, translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh -- 5/5
27. Austerlitz by W G Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell -- 5/5
28. The Fall by Albert Camus, translated by Justin O'Brien -- 5/5

29. Chess by Stefan Zweig, translated by Anthea Bell -- 5/5

A world chess champion is aboard a ship sailing from New York to Buenos Aires. Chess aficionados try to engage him in a game at a high price (the arrogant champion will not play them unless they pay him a large fee). In the middle of the game that is as good as lost, a passenger whispered to them the move that will wrest advantage from the champion and at least force him to a draw. This passenger has not played chess for 20 years. Who is he? And more importantly, what is his story?

This novella is a political and psychological thriller about Nazism and the perverted nature of genius - what makes for an "expert" of something like a game of chess. The writing has captured the suspense of the game which is more than a battle between Black and White. It's also a play between sanity and madness.

(The touchstone is for a different translation.)

30. Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by José Saramago, translated by Giovanni Pontiero -- 3/5

The novel is narrated by H., a fifty-year old painter commissioned by S. for a portrait. The first few pages unfold slowly, telling of H.'s difficulties in producing two simultaneous portraits of his client. In order to get around to this problem, or more like to escape from it, H. decided to produce another third portrait of S., but this time the image will be in words. Through sudden impulse or instinct, H. decided to turn into writing (the "calligraphy" in the title). (review)

31. Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell by Javier Marías, translated by Margaret Jull Costa -- 4/5

This is the valedictory volume in Javier Marías's spy novel whose prose style represents a calcification of poetic images, symbols, and a very very very very slow motion. We find Jacques Deza, newly separated from his wife in Spain and employed in London as a 'secret agent' under the tutelage of Bertram Tupra, an engimatic and strong character. What starts as a mental blood-battle of spy-wits in the first two volumes ends as a voluble treatise on actual physical bloody violence of recent and modern wars.

32. Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories by Kōno Taeko, translated by Lucy North and Lucy Lower -- 5/5

The stories in this collection were originally written in the 1960s and were about women and their flagging marital relationships. Kōno Taeko's genre of writing was classified as transgressive fiction owing to her use of elements of sadomasochism and aberrant behavior. The stories were often open-ended, which are really the best kind of stories; and they were propelled by ordinary details made to seem odd and entirely new with the way the characters think through these once-familiar details.

The main character in the stories was usually a middle-aged female (an obsessive, or on the way to becoming one) or a couple in a strained relationship. The stories recounted the insecurities of a wife or female partner. She was caught in a web of doom that brought her to breaking point. The central relationship was then deconstructed through deployment of metaphors and symbols. A tragic event is about to happen or it already happened in the past.

Kōno either hinted at the "shock value" of stories behind the curtain (all the more shocking and unsettling for being untold) or the shock was displayed in full in all its gross profundity in the well-lit stage (all the more shocking for being brazen). The intelligence of her "shock" stories derived from their transgression of the boundaries of narrative convention. We were somehow given a restrained ending when we were perhaps expecting something explosive, or we were treated to something nauseating when we were bracing for tame plot development. The uncertain feeling was perhaps summarized by this paradoxical passage from the first story, "Night Journey":

Fukuko realized that she'd been in a particular mood for some time now, a mood that would keep her walking beside Murao into the night, walking on and on until they became the perpetrators - or the victims - of some unpredictable crime.

That "particular mood" hovered in Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories, a mood that either implicated the reader as the guilty party or rendered him the story's hapless victim. A seemingly harmless mood suddenly turned into a murky plot, twisting along a labyrinth of menace and a tormented psyche. The reader of Kōno will relish the dynamic shifts of focus in the story's short duration, the bombs being dropped very slowly but surely, the monomaniacal attitudes of narrators faced with their own dissembling, and the direct exploration of issues of femininity and sexuality, including motherhood, infertility, marriage, family ties, and fidelity in relationships.

Kōno Taeko, 85 years old, must be the grand dame of Japanese letters. Her outputs were praised, most deservedly, by writers like Ōe Kenzaburo and Endo Shusaku. This collection of ten short stories was all translated by Lucy North (except for the last, translated by Lucy Lower), and published in 1996 by New Directions.

Kōno's intelligence as a novelist was recognized in her country where she was a multi-awarded writer. However, with only a single collection of hers appearing so far in English, she was certainly under-translated and under-appreciated. Her transgressive short stories, superior in many respects to the ones put out by Murakami Haruki, deserve to be assimilated and widely talked about. They are fleeting stories that leave strong aftereffects, very like the silent afterglow of fireworks in "Full Tide":

The children set about lighting their sparklers. Each time she brought a flame to the tip of one, the girl's fingers would tremble slightly. She had to be careful: she could never tell exactly where the first sparks would shoot out. Then the darkness suddenly would be ablaze, and transfixed, she would be in another world. The sparkler would make fiery, spitting sounds, fizzling away before her eyes. In those few seconds, though, she knew the sparkler was living for all it was worth - fiercely, keenly, in a beautiful world of color and light. Even when everything became dark and still once more, the girl would be sure that she still saw something there, glowing and fizzling away.

The internal combustion in a Kōno story was lighted by the same implosions, the darkness and its recesses momentarily uncovered by a blaze of light. The sparklers' glow never receded without being indelibly imprinted in a child's imagination.

For a sample of a Kōno story, here is a full story that recently appeared in TWO LINES Online of Center for the Art of Translation:

"An Odd Owner", translated by Goro Takano
http://catranslation.org/an-odd-owner

Rise - catching up, some fascinating stuff here. I'm intrigued by your comment on The Old Capital : "Reading it is like meditating on beauty and the impending extinction of nature".

Excellent review and information on Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories. I will read the short story that you have provided the link for.

Hi, Dan. I think of Kawabata as a transparent nature writer. I expanded on the idea about The Old Capital in a blog post here.

Barry, it's a different story for Kono in that it was told from the point of view of the husband. But the theme and the taboo subject are consistent with her.

Rise, thanks, what a terrific review on your blog. You have given me some things to think about.

AUGUST READS

33. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

I read this to complete the so-called "Big Three" among dystopian novels that also include We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It didn't disappoint. It's a very well written and harrowing thought experiment.

The other reason I read it is that I will most likely be reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 which is published this month. According to Murakami, Orwell's influence on the book not only inspired its title but also its handling of alternate realities.

34. On Translation by Paul Ricoeur, translated by Eileen Brennan

A short (72 pages) book of essays on the philosophy of translation. In the first essay "Translation as challenge and source of happiness", the late French philosopher introduced the concept of translation as a work of remembering and a work of mourning (after Freud). It also introduced the very beautiful term 'linguistic hospitality' to describe the appreciation of translation through the acknowledgment of its limitations, the acknowledgement that there is no total (or perfect) translation: "Just as in the act of telling a story, we can translate differently, without hope of filling the gap between equivalence and total adequacy. Linguistic hospitality, then, where the pleasure of dwelling in the other’s language is balanced by the pleasure of receiving the foreign word at home, in one’s own welcoming house."

35. Between Parentheses by Roberto Bolaño, edited by Ignacio Echevarría, translated by Natasha Wimmer

A book of short essays on books and writers, mostly from Latin America. Bound to increase one's TBR.

36. First Love by Ivan Turgenev, translated by Constance Garnett

Turgenev's story was a linear and controlled exploration of being in love at a young age. It offered a portrait of a transition from youth to adulthood: from the confusion and giddy puzzlement that accompanied the raw feelings of youth to a more luminous perception of reality as one gained more experience. The protagonist was a sixteen-year-old student, a young man of middle class background. The object of his affection was a young princess, older than him by a few years, who with her mother was his family's new house neighbor. Turgenev created tension in two fronts. First, although members of Russian nobility, the new neighbors were actually on the verge of poverty. Their tenuous hold on their upper class status was endangered by their large debt owed to some influential persons. Second, the beautiful young princess was not entirely a bashful one. She was as carefree as can be and she was surrounded by a lot of suitors who were slaves to her every wish. Into their midst was flung the young protagonist - awkward, dejected, and in love. Soon, the young princess was sending a covert message to the group of young men (our student, a poet, a doctor, a handsome count, and a hussar) around her. She had found someone: a lover who was her match. She, her heart, was already taken. But who among them could it be?

37. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

Never expected this to be such a funny and engaging short story.

I read it, online, to prepare for a reading of Enrique Vila-Matas's Bartleby & Co.

38. The Duel by Joseph Conrad

Surprised to know that the author of Heart of Darkness and Nostromo can be very funny in this novella.

39. Maybato, Iloilo, Taft Avenue, Baguio, Puerto by John Iremil E. Teodoro

A collection of poems in Filipino language. This is the poet's second collection that charts his peripatetic life around the Philippines. My favorite section is the "Puerto" poems, where I'm currently based. It's also the same beautiful place that is the subject of Iremil's first poetry book.

Sounds like a great month of reading.

It was, Dan. No duds in August.

SEPTEMBER

40. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami Haruki, translated by Philip Gabriel

A useful book for those interested in taking up running. It may just be the book to inspire you. But ultimately it's a minor memoir bogged down by clumsy writing. If you're not a Murakami completist or a runner-in-the-making, you can skip this with a clear conscience.

41. Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters

In straightforward free verse, the dead people of Spoon River speak from beyond the grave. The ghosts, injured when still alive, cannot rest in peace. Some are haunted by their former lives. Full of irony, bitter memories, vindictiveness, melancholy, poetic musings, and comic touches, the stories of the dead are oddly full of life.

42. The Seamstress and the Wind by César Aira, translated by Rosalie Knecht

César Aira can be considered a "micro-novelist", which is to say, a writer with a predilection for an almost-scientific precision of details and a predisposition to short-length novels. His writing method was to simply place one word after another. He never revised much of what he wrote, never planned ahead what he was going to write, and simply wrote whatever came to mind.

In an interview he said that not revising is not a deliberate choice for him, "it just seems to me like the natural way of doing it." When starting to read and correct what he wrote months before, he's "overcome with laziness, or with self-deception, and I leave it as it is."

His genre of writing can be classified as "spontaneous realism", a type of writing that produces a constellation of ideas, free of linearity, and full of superfluity. They are characterized by contradiction and spontaneity, with strong aversion to the "scriptedness" and predictability of plot.

Of the half dozen translated books by Aira to date (out of the 5 or 6 dozens of them published in Spanish), The Seamstress and the Wind had the most schematic of plots. It was essentially all over the place. To enumerate the elements (characters) of this short novel: there's a writer working in a Parisian café, a 'kidnapped' child, his seamstress mother who ran after him, his father who ran after her, a truck driver, a levitating wedding gown sewn by the seamstress, the betrothed teacher who ran after her wedding gown, a 'Paleomobile' made from an ancient animal shell, a powerful talking wind, and a monster. The plot, in other words, is mayhem.

Interesting. Does it work?

As a comic book, yes. I think though that the method was used to greater effect in his other experimental ventures, in How I Became a Nun or The Literary Conference.

43. Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías, translated by Margaret Jull Costa

A man and a woman are about to commit adultery. Suddenly the woman dies on him. The man cannot report her death and must immediately leave her and her sleeping child behind. From this opening scene, the novelist explores the whole idea of storytelling as an act fraught with emotional baggage, of the art of novel-writing as essentially ghostwriting. Later, the man considers revealing his identity to the woman's husband. He feels that unburdening himself can be the only way to save them both. He does not realize that they might be both already past saving.

OCTOBER

44. Pan by Knut Hamsun, translated by James W. McFarlane

Pan (1894) is a lyrical expression of man's inner nature. The forest teems with the beauty of the natural world and Knut Hamsun is too wise not to use it for his own ends. The novel fairly anticipates the sensuous and erotic works of D. H. Lawrence and the spiritual confessions of Rilke. Ostensibly the journal entries of a soldier hunter who inhabited a hut in the woods of a rural community, the short novel otherwise relies on various storytelling registers—folktales, legends, testimonies, monologues, daydreams, prose poetry.

Hamsun depicts a fierce battle of the sexes, a battle to the end between the narrator, Lieutenant Glahn (a man with an irresistible "animal look"), and his object of love, the fickle beauty Edvarda. Despite their obvious passionate feelings for each other, they enact a savage choreography of power and dominance. Each one will not yield submission to the other.

The novel proceeds in swift chapters, each mostly running for two or three pages. Glahn's journal tells of his hermit-like existence in the woods and of his intimate relationship with Edvarda, in a voice that at first is romantic and then becomes more and more vindictive and vicious. Its language is incantatory, as if delivering poetry reading after poetry reading on the subject of mountain, sea, forest, moon, birds, and beasts. Hamsun's achievement is in portraying extreme and conflicting psychological states in one man and one woman—compassion-cruelty, love-rage, reason-madness, intelligence-delusion.

In James W. McFarlane's translation from Norwegian, it is a rousing mad poem of love sickness.

   I lie closer to the fire and watch the flames. A fir cone falls from its branch, and then a dry twig or two. The night is like a boundless deep. I close my eyes.
   After an hour, all my senses are throbbing in rhythm, I am ringing with the great stillness, ringing with it. I look up at the crescent moon standing in the sky like a white shell and I feel a great love for it, I feel myself blushing. "It is the moon," I say softly and passionately, "it is the moon!" And my heart beats gently towards it. Several minutes pass. A slight breeze springs up, an unnatural gust of wind strikes me, a strange rush of air. What is it? I look about me and see no one. The wind calls to me and my soul bows in obedience to the call, I feel myself lifted out of my context, pressed to an invisible breast, tears spring to my eyes, I tremble—God is standing somewhere near looking at me. Again some minutes pass. I turn my head, the strangely heavy air ebbs away and I see something like the back of a spirit who wanders soundlessly through the forest. (p. 107)

Enjoyed your review of Pan and the extract. It reminds me that I have still got Hunger on my TBR list.

Thanks, Barry. Hunger was also on my list. But this one grabbed me first. His other "best" books are interestingly one-worded titles too - Victoria, Mysteries.

45. Bad Nature by Javier Marías, translated by Esther Allen

This is my second read of this short story which is published as part of the New Directions Pearls series. It first appeared in Granta 66.

Elvis Presley is shooting a movie in Mexico and needs a Spanish interpreter so he can deliver the lines with a convincing accent. This appeal to 'authenticity', to a perfect and accurate delivery of the lines, is the very theme that the Spanish novelist Javier Marías explores here, in condensed form, and elsewhere in his other works of fiction.

Ruibérriz (aka Roy Berry) is the man who fills the job of interpreter adequately. That is, until the Elvis contingent gets waylaid in a bar full of gangsters. The exchange of insults between two parties, mediated by the poor interpreter, is only one among many happening in the real world. These conflicts could be the result of cultural differences, prejudices, and intolerance of 'the other'. At any rate, the role of the translator cannot be discounted in a world of perpetual wars.

46. Trese: Last Seen After Midnight by Budjette Tan & Kajo Baldisimo

Trese is a graphic series based on reworkings of stories from the Philippine "lower mythology". The heroine, Alexandra Trese, battles it out against some of the mystical and mythical villains and figures from Filipino pop culture. "Last Seen After Midnight" is the fourth installment in the series. Inked in noir-like black and white art, it's a restrained and well written quartet of stories in the genre supernatural crimes and mysteries.

http://tresekomix.blogspot.com/2011/09/trese-last-seen-after-midnight.html

47-49.
Maoh: Juvenile Remix, Vol. 01
Maoh: Juvenile Remix, Vol. 02
Maoh: Juvenile Remix, Vol. 03
by Kotaro Isaka and Megumi Isuga, trans. Stephen Paul

I'm hooked on this series, which by the third volume ends with a cliffhanger. But I learned there are already 10 volumes in the series (and possibly more coming). Yayks.

The "juvenile" in the title refers to the main character Ando, an orphan who discovered he had the power of ventriloquism -- he can make other people speak things he want to say. The potential enemy is the charismatic Inukai, head of a vigilante group called Grasshopper. Inukai, self-proclaimed savior, wants to take over the whole Nekota City and save it from rapid urbanization. He marks as enemies businessmen, urban developers, investors, and mall owners. He wants to prevent the city from being overtaken by impersonal capitalism and commercialization. A valid enough cause, but his methods of violence against paid criminal gangs and goons are questionable. Our good-natured teen Ando, who is just learning to use his power, sees something sinister in Inukai's grand plan. Will he be able to stop him?

50. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, trans. Susan Bernofsky

The novel is a tale of a house by the lake in a German woodland area. The main character is Time, who predictably moonlights as Death. Other characters include History and Memory. The page count is small, but the technique is dense with innovative manipulations of language. The story -- there's no story -- covers a century of racial abuses and prejudices. The plot is linear enough but the delivery is sophisticated. It drives home the point that all human beings are dispensable. The theme and style will remind one of the midsection of Woolf's To the Lighthouse, the cruel chapter called "Time Passes". That is precisely what the main character does in the novel. He passes. The narrative proceeds in bursts of prose poetry. It holds a candle to the accumulation of private and public memories. I read this in speed read mode -- a bad idea. I could have read slowly and listened hard to the music and differentiated the notes soaring above the words. The music is playing the whole time in the background. The musical translation reads and flows well. It's very good, awesome even, but I imagine the original is a nasty beast. It is recommended for those interested in poetry and German history (or just history) and great original writing.

Visitation sounds intriguing. I have added it to my wish list

Barry, you just might like it.

51. The Silent Angel by Heinrich Böll, trans. Breon Mitchell

According to W. G. Sebald, in On the Natural History of Destruction, this novel by Heinrich Böll was one of only a handful of postwar novels that depict the intensive carpet bombing leveled against Germany in the second world war. Though written early in Böll's career, the novel however was not published in his lifetime due to the subject matter. The publishers thought it was not appropriate to dwell on such a topic. After a long war, is it not perhaps best to move on to cheery stories?

Böll described the ruins and rubble of wartime Germany right after the end of the bombings. Amid this wasted landscape the characters move like zombies, traumatized by their experiences. They lived only to survive hunger, scrounging for the rare bread and provisions that came at high prices. The centerpiece of the story was a love story and a subplot of a family drama. Böll was able to illuminate a time that was barely recorded, even consciously avoided according to Sebald, erased from memory, sanitized and repressed by German writers. It was not a popular subject but it was necessary to keep a record of destruction of cities and its effects on men and women.

NOVEMBER

52. The Shooting Gallery by Tsushima Yūko, trans. Geraldine Harcourt

Tsushima Yūko (b. 1947) is known as the daughter of the Japanese novelist Dazai Osamu who committed suicide when she was one year old. She's an accomplished writer herself, having won several prestigious literary awards in Japan. The Shooting Gallery is a collection of eight short stories about modern women, the difficulties they experience in the face of divorce or family pressures, and their search for freedom. Tsushima portrays single mothers and separated women with a generous sympathy. (review)

53. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll, trans. Leila Vennewitz

Originally published in German in 1974, this short novel explicitly dealt with the modern dilemmas of the individual that Franz Kafka stipulated in The Trial. The apparent illusion of liberty was manifest in the gradual ruin of Katharina Blum's reputation and the invasion of her privacy, by the press and by the state (through wiretapping). The issues raised by Heinrich Böll, in a thinly disguised satirical voice, were today still "newsworthy".

One morning Katharina Blum was brought in for questioning by the police. She was involved with a man who stayed in her place the previous night. The man was accused of murder, most wanted by the authorities, and by all indications, it looked like she helped him escape the police stakeout around her place. At the outset this looked like a simple crime investigation, but Heinrich Böll framed a narrative about the willful distortions of the truth to sensationalize a piece of news. It's a lethal piece of writing that questioned the absolute freedom granted to press. Böll sought to question the extreme application of freedom of the press in his depiction of a woman held hostage by the media's manipulation of truth. I think only a few radical writers could get away with a controversial subject like this. Böll was one of these writers who grappled with human institutions and systems and developed a prognosis on the fallibility of that system to protect human rights. He was spot on in describing the helplessness of the individual amid an onslaught of lies and deceptions broadcast on the news.

Excellent reviews of The shooting gallery, Tsushima Yuko and The Lost honour of Katharina Blum, both of which I now want to read.

Thanks, Barry. I think you'll find them worthwhile reads.

54. Night Fish by Kristine Ong Muslim (poetry chapbook)
http://www.shoemusicpress.com/elevatedbooks.html

55. Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter, trans. Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore, illus. Josef Scharl (Pantheon Books, revised 1965 edition)

Rock Crystal: A Christmas Tale by the Bohemian-born Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868) was a novella marked by purity of prose, naturalism, and portents. It was first published in the original German in 1843, and appeared in translation, by Elizabeth Mayer and the poet Marianne Moore, a century later (1945). Despite the onset of holiday cheer that pervaded the start of the tale, the reader could detect that something would go wrong.

Among the high mountains of our country there is a little village with a small but needle-fine church spire. Conspicuous above the green of abundant fruit-trees, this spire—because the slates are painted vermilion—can be seen far and wide against the faint blue of the mountains. The hamlet nestles in the very center of a fairly wide valley that is an almost perfect ellipse. Besides the church, a schoolhouse and a parish house, there are a few stately homes around a square with four linden-trees and a stone cross in the center. (...) In the valley and scattered along the mountain-sides are many little huts of a sort common to such regions—whose inhabitants belong to the village (...) Even more distant huts, hidden away in the mountains, cannot be seen from the valley; the people rarely come down among their fellow-parishioners; often, indeed, are obliged to keep their dead with them over the winter till they can bring them to the valley for burial after the snow has melted.

The above passage was clipped from the extended opening of the book, a slow sequence of scenes that gradually expand to contain the traditional Christmas festivities, culture, natural cycles, social structure, and topography of the village of Gschaid and its neighboring village of Millsdorf. The way the passage culminated on the fact of the dead staying at home for the long winter signalled a dark tone to the fable-like simplicity of the tale. The landscape and mountain communities were exquisitely evoked in sinuous sentences. Something had to upset the balance of beauty.

It took some time of lingering on the natural and cultural landscape before the story alighted on the central characters and story line. A shoemaker from Gschaid married a dyer's daughter from Millsdorf. They had a son and a daughter. Something happened on Christmas eve that will affect the whole family's relationship to their extended family and to the whole community.

Although the background of the story was Christian, a valuable lesson imparted by this fairy tale for adults and young adults was not wholly religious but of the universal human variety. It was partly about how a time of crisis or calamity became the very thing that could make a community realize that everyone is equal in grief. Nature could teach a tightly knit community to accept people who were from another place, outsiders who were different from them in several respects.

This is a heart-winning story that could leave a lump in one's throat. The prose was clear as rock crystal. It could render something out of nothing, like the following description of silence which had the concreteness and precision of poetry:

They stood still, but heard nothing. They stood a little longer, but there was nothing to be heard, not a single sound, not the faintest except their breathing; indeed, in the stillness reigning, it was as if they could hear the snow falling on their very eyelashes.

Rise, Good review of Rock Crystal.I enjoyed the extracts.

It's a book perfectly titled, Barry. One can see through the luminous prose.

56. Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

An investigative report about life in the German Democratic Republic prior to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. The true stories of common people seemed to have come straight out of Orwell's dystopia. It's a topic that still resonates today, given the totalitarian regimes in the Middle East that were toppled right and left. The style of the book was far from dry journalistic report. It read very much like a novel. The portraits of people in it were well drawn and their experiences very immediate and harrowing. Anna Funder wrote indelible images of a repressive regime in a restrained but effectual manner.

On the night of Sunday 12 August 1961 the East German army rolled out barbed wire along the streets bordering the eastern sector, and stationed sentries at regular intervals. At daylight people woke to find themselves cut off from relatives, from work, from school. Some made a dash through the wire. Others who lived in apartments overlooking the borderline started to jump from the windows into blankets held out by westerners on the footpath below. Then the troops made the residents brick up their own windows. They started with the lower floors, forcing people to jump from higher and higher windows.

Stasiland won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction. I read an ARC of the book.

Catching up. You read fascinating book after fascinating book. I'm especially intrigued by Visitation and The Silent Angel.

And terrific review of Stasiland.

Thanks, Dan. The past month was devoted to German lit. I've read Erpenbeck and Böll for the first time and greatly enjoyed their books.

I've read 7 books in Dec. 2011, bringing me to a total of 63 for the year.

57. The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson

One of my favorite books of the year, it is a manifesto for immediate action to stem the tide of global environmental degradation. The environmental disaster is now unfolding. It is of our own making and, Wilson reminds us, it will be the instrument of our undoing. That is, unless we undo this horrible mess. The book itself provides strategies and examples of how to do so. It is a call to arms: a call to constructive environmentalism.

58. Patriotism by Mishima Yukio, tr. Geoffrey W. Sargent (reread)

A lurid, blood-curdling enactment of suicide. It celebrates supreme vanity. The display of patriotism through suicide must be Mishima's master statement about the pursuit of art to its own end. I recommend Death in Midsummer where this short story is only one of several masterful stories.

59. The Dead by James Joyce (reread)

In Ireland, a New Year's party was in full swing. The three lady hosts were busy catering to their guests. All were reminiscing about the past, thinking of operatic singers and musical icons who entertained them through the years. Dances and songs were constantly playing. Gabriel Conroy, the hosts' nephew, braced himself for carving the goose and delivering the dinner speech. Everyone had some kind of issue in this annual party. The caretaker's daughter was feeling bitter about some kind of heartbreak. A man, possibly drunk, was being closely watched lest he upset the party. Gabriel was worrying too much about the contents of his speech. His wife, distracted by a lonely song sung in a hoarse voice, remembered something from the past. As the party drew to a close, the snow was softly falling, etc. A story of mood.

60. The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy, tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude

A wondrous novella about a magistrate who was dying of a mysterious disease. It was also about the denial of mortality, a moment-by-moment self-auditing of a life, and the acceptance of an existence rendered meaningless by suffering and death. It must be Tolstoy's synthesis of a lifetime and a life's work of writing.

61. Paulownia: Seven Stories from Contemporary Japanese Writers, tr. Torao Taketomo

Stories by three noteworthy Japanese writers of early modernism – Tōson Shimazaki, Mori Ōgai, and Nagai Kafū. The stories are undeniably beautiful. The translation, however, is so bad in many places that there's nothing to recommend it.

62. The Castle by Franz Kafka, tr. Mark Harman

Kafka fashioned a brilliantly constructed joke about K., a land surveyor trying to gain entry into a castle on a hill. The ridiculous tangle K. found himself in was worthy of many laughs and cries.

63. Insomnia by Kristine Ong Muslim
http://kristinemuslim.weebly.com/books--chapbooks.html

In this collection of poems, Muslim's whimsical voice is profoundly wedded to her arresting images. She is a poet who sees miracles in the mundane and whose way with language is unobstructed. Her lines stun and mystify. They often deliver the punch that is felt hard in the gut. (I received an e-copy of this book from the author.)

Some reading statistics:

63 books read: 43 fiction, 12 nonfiction, 8 others

50 books by male writers, 11 by female writers

45 translations: 15 Japanese, 9 Spanish, 8 German, 4 Russian, 3 French, 6 others

Most read authors: 6 Haruki Murakami, 4 Javier Marías.

wow! some interesting books read in December

I look forward to reading your thread on club read 2012

Looks like it was a great December. I wondering how dated Wilson's book is.

> 95: Thanks, Barry. Had a bit of a reading slump at the start of year. But I'm starting to get back on the pages.

> 96: Dan, some parts like the discussion on climate change (Kyoto Protocol, etc.) are already a bit dated. But most of the ecological ideas remain relevant.

My 2012 reading log here.