A month without writing anything. Plenty of reading, though.
FICTIONS
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James
Weldon Johnson
The Making of Americans (1925), Gertrude Stein – read
over the course of months. The quotation
up above is from p. 783. I will write
about this book soon, if only to plant a flag on the peak.
All My Sons (1946), Arthur Miller
Dialogues with Leucó (1947), Cesar Pavese – a sequel
to Ovid.
A Scrap of Time and Other Stories (1983), Ida Fink –
terrible, in the “terror” sense, Holocaust stories, almost all about people who
hid, or tried to hide, the camps in the distance.
The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989), José
Saramago – a romance novel.
Erasure (2001), Percival Everett – Is the Roland
Barthes parody in the movie, somehow?
POEMS
Collected Poems 1930-1993 (through 1948) &
The Land of Silence (1953) &
In Time Like Air (1958), May Sarton – smart cosmopolitan
formalism; not yet a Maine poet.
A Mask for Janus (1952) &
The Dancing Bears (1954) &
Green with Beasts (1956), W. S. Merwin – more smart
cosmopolitan formalism.
Daylight (1953), Czeslaw Milosz – or whatever part of
the book is in New and Collected Poems.
Grackledom (2023), Leslie Moore – a Maine poet and artist. Just look at this book, irresistible. I live about a quarter mile from a
grackledom.
WORLD WAR II MEMOIRS
Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy
(1978), Norman Lewis – Since he knew Italian, he was an administrator behind
the lines. Since he is a skilled British
writer, his account of the post-war Italy is essentially comic, dark, dark
comedy.
With the Old Breed (1981), E. B. Sledge – It occurred
to me that I had read plenty about soldiers in Europe and nothing about the
Pacific. Sledge was an American Marine
who fought in two nightmarish battles, on a coral island and on Okinawa. Clearly written and open-eyed.
IN FRENCH & PORTUGUESE
Journal (1943-9), André Gide
Les bonnes (1947) &
Le Balcon (1956 / 1960 / 1962), Jean Genet
Victimes du devoir (1953) &
Amédée ou Comment s'en débarrasser (1954), Eugène
Ionesco
Portuguese study was all in class and in the textbook. June’s study will be in Portugal itself. Let’s see how that goes.
I'm glad you read and liked the Lewis; as I wrote here, "his account of his experience mediating between the triumphant Allies and the starving but resourceful Neapolitans is alternately funny, horrifying, and just plain humane." (I remember you had mixed feelings about John Horne Burns’s The Gallery; I think I liked it better than you did, but it's been a while.)
ReplyDeleteThe Burns and Lewis book make superb complements. If Burns had lived longer we would likely have his memoir, too.
ReplyDeleteThe books also provide an outstanding contrast of British and American prose styles.