What I Read in March 2025 – Some day, he thought, I must use such a scene to start a good, thick old-fashioned novel

FICTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904), Arthur Conan Doyle – My emergency book, the book on my phone, for when I need to read in the dark, or it is raining at the bus stop, or similar dire situations.  I have been dipping into it for two years or more, but decided to finish it up.  In the previous collection, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893), I could see Doyle growing bored with his creation to the extent that he shoved him off a cliff, but the stories in this book are rock solid magazine entertainment, every one of them.

A Mirror for Witches (1928), Esther Forbes – How many of us read Johnny Tremain (1943) as a child?  All of us (among the U.S. us)?  This earlier novel is about a lively teenage witch in the Salem vicinity.  It is written in a lightly imitative 17th century, flavorful but not overdoing it.  The narrator thinks the girl is a witch, and the girl thinks she’s a witch, so the novel works as both inventive fantasy and as psychology.  It is a simpler younger cousin of James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), so enjoyable that I am tempted to revisit Johnny Tremain after, oh, not fifty years, but getting close.

Soul (1935-46), Andrey Platonov – I wrote about this terrific collection here.

The Gift (1938), Vladimir Nabokov – I should write at least a little something about this one, which I have read several times.  A favorite novel; a great book.  The quotation in the title above is from the second page.

Near to the Wild Heart (1943), Clarice Lispector – This one received a bit of incomprehension back here.

The Matchmaker (1954), Thornton Wilder – Twelve years ago I read On the Razzle (1981), Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Johann Nestroy’s farce Einen Jux will er sich machen (1842).  Wilder, in his earlier version, moves the fun from Vienna to Yonkers and Manhattan.

The Acceptance World (1955), Anthony Powell – The third novel of Dance to the Music of Time.  Perhaps I will have something to write about it after I read the fourth novel.

A Rage in Harlem (1957), Chester Himes – The portrait of grotesque Harlem from the first, say, half of this novel is astounding.  Then Himes has to move through a plot, which also has its pleasures.

Attila (1991), Aliocha Coll

Attila (2014), Javier Serena – A little bit of stunt publishing here.  I will write a longer note on these two books.  It’s a good stunt.

POETRY

Ten Indian Classics (6th-19th c) – A collection of ten excerpts from the Murty Classical Library of India series for its tenth anniversary.  There is so much to read.

The Necessary Angel (1951) &

Collected Poems (1954), Wallace Stevens - Just the "new" poems, the section titled "The Rock."

Counterparts (1954) &

Brutus's Orchard (1957) &

Collected Poems: 1936-1961 (1962), Roy Fuller - Again, the poems new to this book.

GERTRUDE STEIN

Patriarchal Poetry (1927)

Stanzas in Meditation (1932)

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

Picasso (1938)

IN FRENCH & PORTUGUESE

Journal du voleur (1949), Jean Genet – Genet parapatets around Europe cities and prisons, getting by as a beggar, thief, and prostitute.  His great weakness is that his type is brutes, which leads to some ugly places in the 1930s.  The French is somewhat easier and sometimes more abstract than in Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs (1943) but still rough going.  All that slang.

Livro Sexto (1962), Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen – Poems of the shore and the sea, but with a little more political protest than usual.

Tempo de Mercês  (1973), Maria Judite de Carvalho – Speaking of more abstract, compared to the earlier two collections I read.  Sad stories where nothing happens.

O Surrealismo Português (2024), Clara Rocha – A volume in a Portuguese series like those Oxford Very Short Introductions.  I wish I had a shelf of them.  Portuguese Surrealism lasted five years.