Friday, September 20, 2013

Now W(uthering)E(xpectations) Are Six

Or, In Praise of Folly.

Every two years I assemble a Selected Wuthering Expectations.  Best, favorite, representative?  I am not sure that I know.  This is what I do, Part 3.

2011 to 2012, that was Portuguese literature.  Eça de Queirós, Machado de Assis, Pessoa.  The week on The Maias; the 60 masterpieces of world literature of Machado; a monkey with a parasol on an elephant.  Be sure to read Pessoa before you die.

A contrary cuss, I am suspicious of enjoyment, and the word “classic,” but enthusiastic about griffins.  The Wuthering Expectations Lifetime Writing Plan.

AphorismsScience fictionLeafcutter antsMusical cheese.

2013 was the year – or the six or seven months – of Austrian literature.  My run of pieces on Adalbert Stifter’s great, tedious novel Indian Summer was the most ambitious writing I have done.  Three weeks of posts on the book and related ideas, beginning and ending with Thomas Bernhard, and dragging in Kundera, Goethe, Broch, Murnane, Hofmannsthal, and more, and all while engaging in a careful reading of the book itself, not simply piling other books on top of it, as tempting as that might be.  Where else could I write such a thing?

Anyone who has developed a sudden if unlikely interest in Austria’s greatest apocalypticist: Karl Kraus week begins right here.

Acting in Uncle Vanya.  Joseph Epstein on Henry James.  Robert Browning is difficult.  My recent and ongoing enthusiasm for Kipling begins here somewhere.  How to read a Victorian novel.

I cannot emphasize enough how much I value the serial nature of the book blog.  Mediocre first posts lead to inspired comments and improved ideas.  After a week of writing – 2,500 to 3,000 words – I finally begin to get somewhere.  At exactly that point, I stupidly jump to something new.  These were fun to write and get better as they go (links to the beginning of the series, of course):

Nobody cares about Little Dorrit – she is so tiny; Hugo’s heist novel The Toilers of the Sea; Collins’s visibly deformed The Woman in White; James’s poorish story Washington Square; Zola’s poorly understood The Kill; Jewett’s domestic picaresque The Country of the Pointed Firs; Trollope’s well-fertilized Orley Farm; Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.  One more link here, to the last post on that novel, about Flaubert's meaninglessness, a hidden key to Wuthering Expectations.

What fun  to read with others.  The big group read of The Savage Detectives was especially productive.  Comb through that week for links to better posts by other book bloggers.

I did a week on W. G. Sebald, beginning with the time I briefly met him.  That is an interesting example.  I had not planned to write on Sebald for a week, not for more than one day, actually, but idea followed idea.

The week on ghost stories was a kind of structured improvisation.  After the first day, readers far more knowledgeable than I am suggested stories that I immediately read, allowing me to instantly concoct all kinds of nonsensical theories.  Haunted beds, 75% of the stories involved haunted beds.  Odd.

It is common enough now to read discussions of how book blogging has changed in the last couple of years.  The big change at Wuthering Expectations is that since my last anniversary I have read two hundred more books and written (or copied) 270,000 more words.

Thanks so much to all of my readers, collaborators, commenters, co-readers.  Thanks to anyone fool enough to write or read a book blog.

32 comments:

  1. On my first anniversary, I promised to read Great Expectations for my second. I still haven't done that.

    450 posts * 600 words/post = 270,000 words. I didn't believe it either.

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    1. Congratulations, War and Peace has estimated 561,093 words, so you're halfway to beating it!

      These last two years have been full of fine commentary about many books I knew nothing about.

      And I can't overstate the importance of your blog in the creation of mine.

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  2. Congratulations :)

    I wonder if the comment that beat me here (advertising lengthy adult cinematic features) is an indictment of the internet, or a delightful example of how everything is interconnected these days...

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  3. Happy anniversary -- it's been a pleasure following you for, oh, about four years and four months now. (Golem week!)

    Was really hoping you'd get to Inger Christensen when I saw a couple of her books appear in that box up to the right. But hell, I guess it's healthy not to write about every cursed thing you read.

    I think you're second only to Patrick Kurp in inspiring my reading choices. Still haven't read John Galt though! Perhaps I need to pester NYRB Classics to reissue him.

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  4. Hey, congrats! The interwebs are better for your active presence.

    Do you write things Elsewhere not about books? Because you are one of my favourite writers and I would read it.

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  5. Happy blogiversary! When foolish people casually malign book blogs, yours is always the one I want to force them to read. To paraphrase Chandler writing about 'The Maltese Falcon,' book blogging that is capable of this is not by hypothesis incapable of anything.

    I would certainly be very curious to know how you would read Great Expectations now.

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  6. Thank you, Tom, for the ideas and insights which you write about here; often, I feel unqualified to address them. But, I never leave Wutherng Expectations without a fresh thought which widens my own. May you long continue.

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  7. Happy Anniversary to one of my favorite blogs/bloggers, Tom! I enjoy all of your posts (even though I still pine for more of those old ones on mummified cats), but I must say that collaborating with you and others on the Bolaño and Karl Kraus events was particularly sweet. Really, really sweet. ¡Viva Wuthering Expectations!

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  8. p.s. I would (re)read Great Expectations with you. I consider myself an expert on holding them, not necessarily on Dickens, but we would have a happy time together. As we did in reading Alcott.

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  9. I look forward to the next six years. More insect stop-motion films, though, please.

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  10. Children start forming permanent memories around the age of six; in that sense, real life begins at six. Thank you so much for writing this blog and let's hope your future posts will be as memorable as the ones so far.

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  11. I value this great ride, the trademark wit, book selection, quality of conversations...

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  12. First, thanks so much for all of these kind words. I deeply appreciate them. That friendly piece of now-squashed spam Tony mentions beat everyone to the party. How thoughtful of it.

    Miguel reminds me that in six years I am substantially past War & Peace in word count, although so many of my words are quotations of better writers. Luckily, I am not Tolstoy, and would not have written the equivalent of War & Peace instead of all this stuff, so I do not have that guilt weighing on me.

    Øystein - thanks so much. What a lot of good ideas you have put in a single comment. 1. I want to write about Christensen sometime. I felt I needed to put her aside, but I plan to return to her - to work on it, maybe. A fascinating poet. To the confused onlooker: I was not merely italicizing the word "it" for emphasis. That is the name of Christensen's big book. 2. Galt as an NYRB Classic is a great idea. 3. Second to Kurp in anything is a fine place to be. We're both literary omnivores.

    Colleen, I do write elsewhere about other things. Dull things. Proprietary things owned by my employer. But the larger issue of writing other other things has certainly been on my mind. One would be a fool to write this much and not think about it.

    Rohan - I guess, after giving it some thought, I am glad that no one is forced to read Wuthering Expectations. I had to think about ti for a minute, though. The form of the blog as a place for criticism has not been fully utilized, that is a fact, and part of the reason is the one you have written about so often: that so many people who as part of their career write criticism refuse to even look at book blogs.

    Bellezza - a readalong of Great Expectations is a wonderful idea. Let's touch base at some point. The Alcott was good. It is always useful to bounce ideas off someone.

    As with the Kraus readalong, with the Bolaño, those older crazy Ubu and Melville event with bibliographing.

    If only I could stumble upon another idea as good as mummified cats or Golem Week. The ghost story thing was not bad.

    Scott - man, I am plum out of insect stop-motion films. I wish it were otherwise. I would someday like to write a bit more about film, but it has not happened yet.

    Cleanthess - thank you for the thoughts, and for all of the helpful comments and direction. You have expressed my great hope.

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  13. I have had the pleasure of following your literary journey for about four years. It has been a consistent pleasure. ,I enjoyed the Scottish challenge and discovered some Brazilan writers via your event and now Mr. Jarry is one of my literary buddies. ,I wish you many more years of reading and blogging

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  14. I too, as father of the author of Wuthering Expectations, congratulate Tom. I enjoy reading the posts, comments, etc. I don't always understand it all, the result of too many years in the trenches of teaching high school, but it is still enjoyable. Keep up the reading and writing. Dad

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  15. Congrats on six years, Tom! There's always something interesting going on here, many titles and authors I've learned of through your posts. Maybe I'll even get around to reading one of them eventually. (P.S. Love the title.)

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  16. From one fool to another, happy blog birthday, Amateur Reader!

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  17. I missed Rise yesterday by seconds, I guess. Lisa's blog is almost exactly the same age as mine - a great example of the value of real specialization.

    mel - thanks, the same to you. Amanda, forget my recommendations and jump to (I am looking at your Classics Club list) Henry Green. Or Invisible Man. Or Faulkner. Or... it is not like there is a shortage of good books.

    The blog's title is my single greatest achievement, and it was the first thing I thought of, so in some sense it has all been downhill from the beginning, or rather a struggle back uphill.

    And to my father, thanks for reading along with this foolishness.

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    1. All those good books, that is the problem, rather. Although, funny you should mention, I finally started reading my first Faulkner yesterday.

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    2. There is no reason anyone else should read what I am reading, if they are reading something else just as good.

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  18. Milne and Erasmus! You know how to party. Happy blogday, and you've reawakened my curiosity about Swinburne.

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  19. An A. A. Milne party - that's right, I am sitting here putting a popped balloon in an empty honey pot, then taking it out again, then putting it back in, endlessly.

    Thanks for the good wishes.

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  20. And a belated congratulations from me also. True, I visit irregularly, and contribute comments only when I think I have something to say that isn't too mindless or asinine; but when I do visit,I do make a point of reading all the posts put up since my last visit. It's one of the greatdelights of the internet. Here's to the next six years!

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  21. It is perhaps better to read them in clumps. I am glad I do not have to write them that way.

    Thanks!

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  22. Dang. I go away for the weekend and miss the best party of the year? I hope you saved out a couple bottles of champagne. My warmest congratulations. Coming late to the festivities I can do little but echo what others have already said, but it's true: Wuthering Expectations demonstrates all that is best about book blogging. I greatly look forward to the next six years.

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  23. Happy six! Thanks for you always interesting posts and thoughtfulness. And if you are getting up a Great Expectations group read I will join in. It's one of my favorites and it has been far too long since I reread it last. Plus, I can only imagine what sort of interesting things you would make of it!

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  24. Well, a couple of bottles of cava, at least. Champagne is a little pricey.

    Regardless, thanks for joining the party.

    The group read is sounding like a better idea all the time. i wonder when I last read it? Twenty years ago? I'll have to get the Norton Critical Edition, though, where I can see Mrs. Oliphant call it "Specimens of Oddity Run Mad," which sounds good to me.

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  25. As as chaotic a blog reader as blogger, I enjoy bursts of reading 'in clumps'. This is a very great rabbit hole in which to do so. 'Have some wine.' (I'm not very civil either, it appears.)

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  26. I have wondered how they should be read. Or is there is a "should" - I suppose the series fit different methods. To me, it is a process of constant suspense, but I am not really reading them.

    I will have some wine, thanks, a Portuguese rosé.

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  27. Hello Tom,

    I have been following your blog for quite a while now and I just want to let you know how fond I am of it. It's hard to find a book blog of quality.. Reading your analyses and observations is like drinking nectar.

    Recently I have been nominated for the Liebster Award (http://inkstainsonareadersblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/liebster-award/). I'm passing it on to you. Not expecting anything - it's really just an act of appreciation.

    Sincerely,
    Anna

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  28. Anna, thank you so much for the kind words. And more importantly, thank you fro the introduction to your fine blog. I appreciate the company in which you put me.

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  29. You're most welcome, Tom... I will try not to shy away from commenting on your exciting posts.

    Anna

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