What I Read in July 2025 - books are quiet and unobtrusive, and do not try to hustle the reader

In general, however, he [Louis XVI] preferred writing down his thoughts instead of uttering them by word of mouth; and he was fond of reading, for books are quiet and unobtrusive, and do not try to hustle the reader. (Stefan Zweig, Marie Antoinette, 1932, p. 77 of the 1933 American edition, tr. Eden and Cedar Paul)

 

Soon I will put up a schedule of my autumn Not Shakespeare reading, just in case anyone wants to join in.  In effect it will be a lot of Christopher Marlowe with a few contemporaries.  Marlowe is a lot of fun.

FICTION

Love, Death, and the Ladies' Drill Team (1955), Jessamyn West – Reading Salinger’s Nine Stories (1953) I wondered what else the New Yorker readers of the time were reading along with “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”  One answer is Jessamyn West.  These stories seemed good to me.  “The Mysteries of Life in an Orderly Manner” (1948) is easy to recommend as a sample, for one thing because it is only six pages.

The Holy Innocents (1981), Miguel Delibes – A famous Spanish novel, just translated, that uses its post-Franco freedom to indulge in a little revenge on the powerful.  Modernist and unconventionally punctuated, but I do not want to say it was too surprising.  New to English – what took so long?

That They May Face the Rising Sun (2003), John McGahern – I am not sure what a quiet novel is but this is likely one of those.  Irish people lives their lives.  Seasons pass.  There is agriculture.  I have not read McGahern before; my understanding is that the novels that made his names are not so quiet.  But Ireland in 2003 had quieted down a lot, which I think is one of the ideas behind the novel.  Quite good.  The American version was for some reason given the accurate but dull title By the Lake.

The Director (2023), Daniel Kehlmann – Discussed over here.

 

NON-FICTION

Brazilian Adventure (1933), Peter Fleming – A jolly, self-conscious romp written in, or let’s say approaching, the style of Evelyn Waugh.  Young Fleming’s river trip in the Amazon is more dangerous and a bit more substantive than Waugh’s Mediterranean tourism in Labels (1930), but still, useless, except for the pleasures of the resulting book.

Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue (2003), Yoko Tawada – Tawada publishes fiction in both Japanese and German.  This book is an extended essay about the creative relationship between the two languages, based on Tawada’s education, travel, and writing.  It is perhaps especially fresh because English plays so little part in the book.

How the Classics Made Shakespeare (2019), Jonathan Bate – Outstanding preparation for my upcoming reading.  The title describes the book exactly.

Marie Antoinette (1932), Stefan Zweig – Just the first 80 or 90 pages.  I have wondered what Zweig’s biographies, still much read in France, were like, and now I know a little better.  Not for me.  Badly sourced and rhetorically dubious.  Obtrusive!  At times trying to hustle me!

 

POETRY

Selected Poems (1952-68), Vasko Popa

Helen of Troy, 1993 (2025), Maria Zoccola – This Helen lives in Sparta, Tennessee.  The up-to-date formal poems are interesting: American sonnets, and golden shovels, a form invented in 2010, incorporating lines from Robert Fagle’s Iliad.

 

IN FRENCH & PORTUGUESE

La rage de l'expression (1952), Francis Ponge – More thing poems.

Literatura Portuguesa (1971), Jorge de Sena – Long encyclopedia entries on Portuguese and Brazilian literature now published as a little book.  So useful.

A Bicicleta Que Tinha Bigodes (The Bicycle that Has a Moustache, 2011), Ondjaki – An Angolan boy wants to win a bicycle by borrowing a story from his famous fiction-writing uncle.  Specifically by borrowing the letters that he combs from his moustache.  That’s not how it works, kid.

A Biblioteca: Uma segunda casa (The Library: A Second Home, 2024), Manuel Carvalho Coutinho – I have now read all the books I brought home from Portugal last year.  This one is literally a series of four-page profiles of Portuguese municipal libraries.  Why did I buy it (aside from loving libraries)?  It is at times as dull as it sounds, but sometimes, caused by the authors skilled or desperate attempt to write a less dull book, shimmered with the possibility of another book, a Calvino-like book, Invisible Libraries.  Visit the library full of obsolete technology, the library with books no one wants, the library for tourists, the library, most unlikely of all, where everyone goes to read books.