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August 30, 2006

WHAT WE'RE READING

Something a bit different today, just because.  One of the best parts about finishing a novel is the time you recover for reading.  Now, as you can imagine, I'm reading all the time but the last few weeks have been an almost gluttonous orgy of catching up.  So instead of links, I thought I'd give you a snapshot of stuff I'm either reading at the moment or just finished.  After all, folks are kind enough to send me books all day long, I should probably mention some of them.  Regularly scheduled links will return tomorrow.

I'm one of those unfathomable creatures who reads several books at once (which has always felt vaguely disrespectful to the author(s) in question, but as the scorpion said to the turtle, you can't fight your nature), so here's the quick take on some titles I've been reading and thinking about.

The Horned Man and Seven Lies, James Lasdun - I seem to keep coming across enthusiastic Lasdun fans, so I finally picked up his two most recent titles.  Lasdun is an interesting case for me - I love (and I do mean love) the way the man writes.  There's a smart, lean, cool elegance to almost every sentence that compels me along from page to page.  But in the end, his work doesn't add up - there's too much manipulation and withholding, and the work ends up feeling dishonest to me.  His trick of not showing key moments and eliding important conversations seems beneath his talent, and he leans too heavily on the unreliability of his narrators who are, to borrow from James Wood, reliably unreliable.  I wanted to love him but I ended up in disappointed admiration.

Christine Falls, John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black) - Much more about this later, as you can imagine.  For now, I'll just say that I think Banville is going to pleasantly surprise a lot of people with this book.  I especially like how beautifully he renders Dublin - there's a real specificity of place here that's absent from his other novels.  There's a man I want to go pub crawling with.

The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey into the Disturbing World of James Bond, Simon Winder - Those who know my predelections will understand why I was eager to get into this odd hybrid of a book.  It's meant to examine what Bond said about 1950s and 1960s Britain; and what Britain said about Bond in return.  It's an interesting sociological document but the author seems to have a genuine love/hate relationship with 007 and he spends as much time deriding him as praising him.  In the end, the postwar British arcana is probably going to be too much for most Yanks - it is for me.  There are moments of scathing genius but it's a hard book for a Bond fan to love.

The Mystery Guest, Gregoire Bouillier - I'm only about a third of the way through this tiny volume but I'm finding it irresistible and tres francais.  The narrator is telephoned out of the blue after many years by the woman who wrecked his heart, and the resulting paralysis and paranoia are hilarious and weirdly touching.  I can tell you that I will never look at a turtleneck the same way again.  More to come on this as I make my way through it.

Rock n' Roll, Tom Stoppard - His new play.  I'm actually going back in for a second read but the first pass was disappointing.  I was startled at how un-dramatic Stoppard manages to make world-shaking events.  There's a heavy-handedness that is also unusual for him, and I suspect that in the end the material was, perhaps, simply to personal for him to achieve the necessary distance.  But any Stoppard is worth revisiting.

Reading Like A Writer, Francine Prose - Nearly halfway done, and it's definitely a worthwhile read.  I'm finding that some of Prose's suggestions are creeping into my own reading.  But I can't help feeling that the book finally undercuts itself.  For a book on close reading, there are lots of examples upon examples - snippets, really - but one never quite gets the feel of a sustained, close read.  It feels more like a greatest hits reel.  It's a useful primer but if you really want to do some close reading, there's still no substitute for Barthes' S/Z.

The Things that Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life, Edward Mendelson - I am loving this one.  This Columbia professor does his own close reading of seven novels - all, interestingly, written by women - and has each one stand in for one of his seven ages.  The opening chapter - Birth - looks at Frankenstein in as thoughtful a reading as I've come across in a long time.  Still working my way through this one but highly recommended.

The Paris Review Interviews, I - This stuff is crack.  I have to force myself to go slowly, doling out one interview a day.  Hemingway, Parker, Borges, Bellow., Bishop.  You get the picture.

Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas - This is the new translation by Richard Pevear, and I never pass a chance to revisit the Musketeers.   I've read it many times in many translations and the joy never seems to fade.  I can't really vouch for the fidelity of Pevear's work but I've ordered it in French (along with The Mystery Guest) so I can spot check and get a feel for the translator choices.  But the thing that gets me about Dumas is this - it shouldn't work ... and yet it does, brilliantly.  The plot is preposterous, full of coincidence and convenience.  There's never any real jeopardy because the Musketeers are so invincible, and even when they're wounded, it seems a week or two in bed with wine and a wench and they're on the their feet again.  It's clear Dumas was being paid by the word, and no repetition was beneath him.  There's certainly not much psychological depth to the characters (although I've always had a special soft spot for the dark, brooding Athos), and d'Artagnan can be an insufferable ninny not to mention a cad.  And yet, I can't put the thing down - it's just under 700 pages and I'll be done within two days.  Perhaps it's something to do with the power of archetypes or perhaps familiarity and great love forgives a lot.  But either way, if you've never read the Musketeers, en garde!  The time has come.

That's my desk, and that's all for today.  Back to the usual tomorrow.

Posted by TEV at 12:02 AM in Worthy Titles |

Comments

Can't wait to get that advance review on the new Banville. I am only now three quarters through The Sea, and loving it.

Posted by: PaulSweeney | August 30, 2006 at 01:35 AM

The Horned Man was a most unusual book -- I alternately loved and hated it for the very reasons you mention. But Lasdun clearly has a ton of talent. What you need to do with all you free time is pick up Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone. You can read it in 2 hours, but it's better if you let it take a couple days. Searing stuff.

Posted by: tod goldberg | August 30, 2006 at 02:03 AM

I didn't care so much for The Horned Man, but I loved Seven Lies. It's my favorite of the Booker longlist that I've read so far.

I'm eager to read both the Prose and the Mendelson books.

Posted by: Gayla | August 30, 2006 at 04:28 AM

Re your comment on Francine Prose's book: Permissions for such a book must already have cost an arm and a leg, and to include longer excerpts would have been extremely costly. Publishing houses charge for use of text from their books based on how long the selection is, among other things. Besides, with longer excerpts, the book would have been quite long! Hopefully she inspires some readers to go out and buy the sources of some of the excerpts!

Posted by: Alex | August 30, 2006 at 04:50 AM

I really liked both Lasdun's novels, but your caveats are valid. Horned Man was a bit muddier than Seven Lies, but he writes beautiful sentences. I'll read everything he writes.
And wow, how good is Winter's Bone!
I need to get the earlier stuff, now.
Nice one, Mark.

Posted by: David Worsley | August 30, 2006 at 05:41 AM

Winter's Bone is here in one of the piles somewhere. I'll pull it out today. And I did mean to mention that of two Lasdun titles, I did think Seven Lies was the better one.

And Alex, you make a fine point. Thanks.

Posted by: TEV | August 30, 2006 at 07:41 AM

Dumas is the master of the action novel. If you look at someone like Robert Louis Stevenson, or even Walter Scott, the interest lags in the second half--telegraphed scenes leading to a predictable conclusion. That doesn't happen with the best Dumas. I think it's a question of having the perfect balance of action and character. You've read The Count of Monte Cristo, right? I mean, Three Musketeers is good, but the Count of Monte Cristo is the best action/ suspense novel of all time, or, at least, the best that I know of.

Also, can't wait to read the Banville. I just finished The Untouchable on your reccomendation and was blown away.

Posted by: Shannon Burke | August 31, 2006 at 05:39 AM

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