How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month, but I promise I had a good excuse. Posts on Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism will appear this month, I swear, or at least hope. My eventual excuse this month will be, I am afraid, even better.
Still, I read.
PHILOSOPHY ADJACENT
The Way Things Are (1st c. BCE), Lucretius
Selected Satires &
Dialogues of the Dead (2nd c.), Lucian
FICTION
Little Novels of Sicily (1883), Giovanni Verga
Ulysses (1922), James Joyce – unlike thirty years
ago, I just more or less read the novel like a novel, not that there was not
plenty to look up.
The Death of the Heart (1938), Elizabeth Bowen
Ficciones (1944), Jorge Luis Borges
The Leopard (1958), Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Gee, these are good books.
POETRY
A little Holocaust poetry unit on the syllabus.
Selected Poems (1921-71), Jacob Glatstein
Poems of Paul Celan (1947-76), Paul Celan
Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology (1995),
just the poetry section
The Tradition (2019), Jericho Brown
MEMOIR
The Periodic Table (1975), Primo Levi
IN FRENCH
La Pharisienne (1941), François Mauriac
Thomas l’obscur (1941/50), Maurice Blanchot, the
short version, perhaps the most abstract novel I have ever read.
Paysages et Portraits (1958), Colette – posthumous,
and Colette had some good stuff in the drawer.
No Portuguese study this month. See above for the reason. Perhaps it will resume in the fall.
Tell me more about The Leopard. What's it like? Do you think I'd like it?
ReplyDeleteIt's a magnificent book, richly detailed, deeply ironic. It has one of the all-time great dogs.
ReplyDeleteI have seen people criticize the novel for not adhering to their phoney baloney rules about historical novels. So not everyone likes it. But I think it is generally quite likeable.
Okay.
DeleteIronic? I must have missed that. It's definitely richly detailed.
DeleteWe may be using the word differently, but the novel is full of mismatches between the real and apparent, some of which are understood more by the reader than the characters. Think of the extraordinary last chapter pulling the rug out from under the preceding novel, ironic to the final image/
DeleteI read Lucretius too. I enjoyed it, but it was a slow read. I'm only just getting used to reading philosophy, but I'm fine with slow, deep reading. I'd rather deep read and understand than speed read and get nothing. I'm up for more philosophy in August.Thanks for all you do. Oh I'm reading Adamson too. I'm grateful for your recommendation. I hope to read all his works in due course.
ReplyDeleteIf you have decide on what to read in August, could you please leave a comment? I can tell you are time restricted, but I would be grateful.
That promise of "better" excuses to come seems somewhat foreboding, so I hope all is well. Speaking of The Leopard, I really liked Steven Price's novel Lampedusa, about its author and composition. It is a rarity (for me): a book about great authorship that rises to the occasion (or so I thought). I have had The Death of the Heart on my shelf since 2020: time to read it, surely.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I see the name "Borges" I want to read more of his work/ reread Ficciones. One of these days.
ReplyDeleteThe Leopard was one of my favorite reads a couple years ago. I don't always (usually) get along with historical fiction but this one worked for me. It really felt dense to me (I guess what you say by "richly detailed") and there was just something so compelling about the narrative. So good.
Clare, I am so glad you have been reading along with me. Thank you for your patience with my sluggishness. I, too, now hope to read all of Adamson.
ReplyDeleteI'll be reading Marcus Aurelius, the old Penguin Classics edition by Maxwell Staniforth. If I have the energy I will look into Seneca's Letters to a Stoic.
This is a good time for me to be reading the Stoics, so I hope I do. Philosophy in general. All is not well! I guess that is as much as I want to to say at this point.
The Price novel sounds quite interesting, but of course Lampedusa is interesting. I especially love that he was one of the all-time great readers. (And then he somehow synthesized what he read and wrote a masterpiece).
I know Bowen's short stories better than her novels, but this one must be among her best.
Ficciones is a touchstone book for me, one that radically changed my idea about what fiction was. I owe it a great debt. And it is also such a pleasure to read.
Your comment reminds me that long ago The Leopard worked well in my old book club, a big hit.
I read Ficciones last year, and agree it is a touchstone work.
ReplyDeleteI shall apart reading Marcus Aurelius, I have the Wveryman edition.this weekend. I am sorry to hear that all is not well in your life. We do seem to live in troublesome times. I hope things improve for you soon.
Sorry I was about to edit and my post posted. I shall start the Everyman edition this afternoon, was what I was trying to say. I wish you could edit after posting.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind thoughts. I am happy to say that Marcus Aurelius is by a good fit.
ReplyDeleteWhatever is afflicting you, I hope it will pass soon!
ReplyDeleteThank you. It will be a medium soon rather than a soon soon, but otherwise I have the same hope.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear things are not great. But what a month of reading! And Glatstein--nobody reads him! What did you make of him?
ReplyDeleteGlatstein's great. His shift from the most Modernist of the great early Yiddish-American poets to a Holocaust poet is quite interesting.
ReplyDeleteToo bad Moishe Leib Halpern did not live longer. His response would have been valuable, too.
Love those Yiddish poets. Too bad they are not taught as part of American literature, even though I understand the problem.
Did you read Malka Heifetz-Tussman? She's great too.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I have heard of her, although I might have come across her in an anthology without remembering. Anyway, I'm reading her now - many thanks.
ReplyDelete