Books I read in September 2024 - Boring books had their origin in boring readers

My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really do it.

November is Norwegian month at Dolce Bellezza.  I will be joining her by reading at least the first novel, The Other Name (2019), of Jon Fosse’s Septology, and polar explorer Roald Amunden’s memoir My Life as an Explorer (1927).  Please join in the alliterative fun.

 

FICTION

The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder (1925), Edgar Wallace – “The author of crime novels at one time so popular that every fourth book sold in Britain came from his pen” is how H. R. F. Keating introduces the extraordinary hack Edgar Wallace in Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books (1987, p. 31).  Can this possibly be true?  Exactly when, I wonder.  But it is true that although Agatha Christie won the war, Wallace won the early battles.  For a couple of decades in the detective novels of other writers, Edgar Wallace is the common reference, the mystery writer all of the characters apparently read, and the creator of all of the clichés that you won’t find in my novel, or if you do we can wink at them as deliberate Edgar Wallace stuff.

Wallace writes in a light, witty version of the 1920s British house style, simpler than Christie who is in turn simpler than Dorothy Sayers, not as funny as Wodehouse or Waugh, obviously, but with some good jokes in their line.  The crimes and solutions (this is a book of linked short stories) are nonsense but much more than those of many of his peers?  Not much more.  Easy, fun reading.

Passing (1929), Nella Larsen

Chevengur (1929/1972), Andrei Platonov – I’ll write about this one soon.  The quotation in the title is from Chevengur, p. 151.

Dark Avenues (1946), Ivan Bunin – This one, too.

The Remains of the Day (1989), Kazuo Ishiguro – For several years the contemporary writers who have attracted my attention have mostly been – see the next two books – conceptual art weirdos who are not necessarily trying to write great or perfect books.  But I still enjoy such things, like this one.  An intricate construction.  At times I almost – well, an experienced or jaded reader, I did not applaud or gasp, but I sure thought “Oh, good one, nicely done” or the equivalent.

Game of the Worlds (2000), César Aira

Half an Inch of Water (2015), Percival Everett – Short stories set in the Rocky Mountains.  Of a piece with his novels, except with more horses.

A Shining (2023), Jon Fosse – A single short story for some reason published as a book.  Minor.

 

POETRY

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013 (1948-62), Derek Walcott – Some apprentice work, I guess, absorbing the influence of many other poets, but getting darn good by the end (meaning 1962).  Who knows when I will follow Walcott into the 1960s and 1970s.

O Lovely England and Other Poems (1952), Walter de la Mare – His last poetry book, barely distinguishable from his first in 1902.  Fifty years of lovely England, lovely poetry.

Collected Poems (1953-85), Elizabeth Jennings – A British Catholic in the quadrant with Auden and Larkin, maybe.  “Art is not self-expression while, for me, ‘confessional poetry’ is almost a contradiction in terms” (13).  Lots of interesting poems about paintings and music, and, sadly, mental asylums.

Sonnets for a Missing Key and some others (2024), Percival Everett

 

ADVENTURE AND JOURNALISM

The Royal Road to Romance (1925), Richard Halliburton – Fresh out of Princeton, young Halliburton begins what will become a round the world tour.  His tramp through Europe has me wondering why I was reading this trivial book, but it gets more interesting once he gets to India, and his enthusiasm, his love of the “romance” of pure movement, never stops.  I am reading another book about a tramp across Europe just a few years later, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s The Time of Gifts (1977), and they are opposites, in style, purpose, and tone.  Halliburton’s book may now be more interesting as part of the history of travel writing, the creation of the celebrity traveler, now I assume found on Instagram, than for its own sake.

A Writer at War (2005), Vasily Grossman – Another I will write a bit about separately, I swear.

 

FRENCH AND PORTUGUESE

Coral (1950), Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen – Sophia’s mythological seashore poems take a dark turn in her third book.

Pedra Filosofal (1950), Jorge de Sena – Abstract compared to Breyner Andresen, and more difficult for the poor language learner.

O Cavaleiro da Dinamarca (1964), Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen – The Knight from Denmark, a peculiar children’s novella which gives a little tour of European culture.  Portuguese children learn about Giotto and Dante and so on.  An oddity.  The other children’s books I have read of Breyner Andresen – and bless her, the Portuguese language learner says, for writing them – were about little children having magical adventures.

Mes Cahiers (1941), Colette – My Notebooks, a wartime scrapbook dump, of most interest for stories featuring early versions of her Cheri character.  But then there is some travel writing from the 1920s that is exquisitely written, almost abstract assemblages of form and color.

La Douleur (1985), Marguerite Duras – More notebooks, which the older Duras says she does not remember writing, about the events of the end of the war in Paris, like waiting for loved ones to return from camps, or the Resistance punishing collaborators.  Of high interest for the subject matter.  In English as The War.