The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinksi

First, can anyone recommend which book to read by Henry James?

The Soccer War is repeatedly described by its author as "less than a plan of a book." He won't even call it the "beginning of a book" and this sheds light on its strange form: it is more like cliff notes to a life (a life that is similar to Robert Capa's). Mr. Kapuscinksi was a journalist from Poland who focused on colonialism in Africa and Latin America. The chapters have nothing to do with one another other than that they snippets from one man's life. This man faces execution by rebels, scorpion stings to the face, and even being burned alive for the lack of 10 dollars, so the book is pretty hardcore. Unfortunately, a narrative never evolves from the book as a whole.

What it does: It takes you inside the life of a foreign correspondent during the 1940s-1970s. This correspondent seems to have a death wish, which is exciting. It also gives an insider perspective into Africa and Mexico, with a lot of semi-informative stuff on the development of the Congo and Ghana.

However, unless you adore living vicariously through a foreign correspondent or learning very narrow aspects of the history of these places, I wouldn't read this book.

---------Mattie

Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

'Let me out, good people, let me out into the light to live a little! I've lived without ever seeing any life, my life was nothing but a dirty rag, it was drunk away in a tavern on Sennaya. Let me out, kind people, to have another try at living in the world!...'

It's impossible to overpraise this book. It may be best described as a psychological portrait of a misanthrope, but because it's so craftily devised, that seems a bloodless phrase. Dostoevsky plays with form so nimbly, it's as if he marshals the confession and the diary, sets them against one another, and then marches them off the page. Every epistolary novel has its bar set uncommonly high by this book. But how was that bar raised so high? Of what material is it made?

In answer, I'd say character, for there is no story here after all. An old embittered man, hiding away in plain sight, buried by his own spite, telling a story of his misliving to no one at all... where's the story in that? There is no hero here for us to admire, no fair damsel in distress, no villain who deserves the reader's scorn heaped upon his sly back. Above all, there's no urgency to the tale; it's never-ending, or never-beginning... maybe, maybe always in-the-middling. Which is not to say that it's middling in any way. In fact, the balance it achieves--between confession and diary, between moralizing tale and ambiguous philosophy--makes it seem self-sustaining, a living, breathing, thinking thing, something that exists between pure fiction and pure fact. For there is something convincing about it, after all, something that seems to dispel the knowledge (slipped into the beginning as a footnote by the author) that the book is all illustrative of a real but imagined type. And if it's not the story, it must be the character who regales us, the unnamed narrator, the encoffined man.

And what do we know of this character? Nothing, really. He's unreliable; yes, he tells us as much. He's spiteful; it's one of the first things out of his mouth. He's weak, needlessly defensive, excessively verbose. None of these traits seem to recommend him all that much to the reader. But is that true? Perhaps not. There is in the last, I think, the key to it all.

Because despite all his many flaws and his vileness of character, he speaks so wonderfully well. He is because he has his voice. It reaches up, out from underground, up and off the page, and it describes, despite his best efforts to have it muddle and obfuscate, the man in his entirety. What need do we have for the shape of his mouth, the part in his hair, or a decent image of how straight his nose? His voice describes his soul. I'm not saying that the unnamed narrator describes himself; he does give you descriptions, page-long metaphors, snippets of events in his life, catalogs of insults, lilting paeans to the life of the educated mind, the wilted flowers of life spent above ground. But through the cracks seeps the sorrow that we can all relate to, the human being belied by the carapace of spite, so that, as above, when he's mocking some poor harlot, telling her that one day she'll be carried out of the whorehouse in a cheap coffin destined for a boggy grave, and he cries out, in her voice, Let me out!, it's not her that he's mocking, and it's not her he so misguidedly is trying to save.

And isn't this what Dostoevsky, with a Russian wink, gives to us as readers? He says, Here, here is a type that is fictional, but could very easily exist in this world; listen to him describe himself, watch him interact with other people, hear him tell of his descent into some hellish solipsism. And we can say that Dostoevsky has created an idea of a man of contradiction, quite wonderfully, quite well. Or we can say, here, look, he has made a man.

Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens

In his memoir Hitch-22, appropriately referring, of course, to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Hitchens describes his life of contradictions in a world of contradictions.
The first two chapters focus on his parents, Yvonne and the Commander, respectively and the following chapters continue with descriptions of his education, political activity and friendships. For the most part it’s a very informative read. His family life is interesting coming from two opposite parents, his mother a complicated woman who never quite made it in high society while his father is boring, pessimistic but courageous and modest (one can see where these contradictions began).

His descriptions of school, I found to be somewhat boring; involving mostly praise of himself and his superior abilities in reading (I didn’t need 2 chapters of that but it was interesting to see where his first intellectual influences were drawn from). However the section where he describes the Leys was rather engaging as it describes how boys dealt with their raising awareness of hormones in an all boys school.

He describes his activity as an activist for the left labor party union and his constant hunt for conflict-ridden areas to help liberate whichever group of people had only limited rights (if that). These chapters are very informative in terms of modern history but I did not feel like I was getting an in-depth personal account. In the chapter concerning Iraq, quite the opposite is the case. His descriptions are so vivid, particularly when describing Saddam confirming his power and another time where he went to a mass grave. For me this was the most grasping part of the book. It also marks the change he made from his alliance with the left towards believing in intervention. Perhaps this was why he was able to describe with such impact.

He also describes his friendships with other intellectuals, some friendships still active others destroyed over political differences and hurtful remarks discovered in printed publications. In these cases, particularly the latter, I felt he was explaining his side of the story with disputes. His relationship with Martin Amis is unique. There is strong bond between the two and it was interesting watching Amis hanging around with Hitchens during an interview for the Atlantic concerning his cancer and therapy after having read the chapter on their friendship. It was visual footage of the support described in the book. The other chapter I enjoyed was “Something of Myself” which I felt was also very personal (and which also proves that Hitchens intentionally constructed his memoirs as a collective documentation of some defining periods in his life rather than a personal depiction).

Other than some Vanity Fair articles this is the first time I have read Hitchens. Even if not every chapter is grasping this is true only because of the subject matter. The writing itself, I find masterful and as soothing as listening to his debates. I do find a very important lesson in his memoir and that is to avoid any self-labeling precisely because the world and our own lives are filled with such contradictions. I think this understanding is easier for those with more exposure to different cultures and influences, by whatever means, i.e. open-minded people. While Hitchens is no longer associated with the left, he most certainly does not belong with the right. He is his own person and bases his opinions on his own experiences, observations and knowledge. While some may not agree with all his views, including myself, I find him a completely trustworthy and honest source for views on world conflicts and on life. I recommend this book to those who like to write or are interested in a brief overview of some political conflicts in the past 3 decades. Otherwise, just stick to the chapters I found particularly grasping, unless you want to see for yourself!
Eliz.

Purgatorio - Dante Alighieri

Thus, if the present world has gone astray, in you is the cause, in you it's to be sought; and now I'll serve as your true exegete.

16.084

Issuing from His hands, the soul-on which He thought with love before creating it- is like a child who weeps and laughs in sport;

16.087

that soul is simple, unaware; but since a joyful Maker gave it motion, it turns willingly to things that bring delight.

16.090

At first it savors trivial goods; these would beguile the soul, and it runs after them, unless there's guide or rein to rule its love.

16.093

Therefore, one needed law to serve as curb; a ruler, too, was needed, one who could discern at least the tower of the true city.

16.096

I have an unfortunate habit of letting my approach to reading grow stale and rote, where finishing one book and starting another is more often than not merely accompanied by a sigh of resignation. That's not to say I don't enjoy the books I read; it is simply to say that I do not enjoy them immensely. Partly, this has to do with a reluctance to give each book the time it probably deserves. My list of books to be read is usually (save for vacations--see below) made up of books that have passed the test of time, justified by the fact that there is, after all, only so much time, and I will only read so many books in my life, so the books I choose to read might as well for the most part be books against which I can test my reader's mettle. Thus, each book could (and probably should) deserve more than a passing glance of my critical eye. And yet... sometimes I am simply not up to it, and so I pass on to the next book on the list, somewhat ashamed, but determined nonetheless to keep moving forward, and only every once in a while do I feel a certain sinking make-work feeling. And then there are times when I pick up a book, by accident or design, and it revives that thrill of reading that seems to come so rarely these days.

This book, perhaps predictably, gave me one of those thrills. I'd avoided reading it for a long time (and the only reason I picked it up was because I was avoiding Henry James), primarily because I thought it had to--had to!--suffer from that Miltonian flaw: how could anything compare with the description of hell? Sinners just have a lot more going on. But there really is no comparison, either between Milton and Dante, or between Hell and Purgatory, and perhaps the urge to compare and say which one is better is indicative of a childish view of literature, reading, history, etc. Suffice it to say, Hell and Purgatory are inseparable, complementary, as I imagine, now, that Paradiso is to the work as a whole.

As to why it thrills, I guess it isn't enough to say, Just read it! There is, on the one hand, how it enhances my appreciation of Inferno. Sure. Fine. But it is at root the sheer conceptual scope that amazes. And, as in all things literary, no matter that the ideas are wrong or that you find yourself in disagreement with them, it is the presentation that is the point of it all, and here it's as if philosophy and theology were built a cathedral on the wings of poetry. And its success--in description, in meaning, in thrilling--is primarily that while the ideas and, ultimately, the point of the books is the ascension to heaven, while that is where Dante the wandering soul's mind is fixed, the Dante that is the author of the fiction has the reader as his object, and his poetry, despite singing the glory of god, defines the glory of the human mind, and takes the reader along for the ride.

Summer vacay haaaaayyy

Just got back from vacation, so I'll do a quick roundup of all the crap books I read:

Ilium/Olympos, by Dan Simmons

For long plane rides, I try to find sf/f books to read because usually they're incredibly long, don't require much attention, and you can while away hours pursuing plot and plot alone. Unfortunately, I picked up Ilium and its sequel at the same time and brought them both on the plane. I'd read a Dan Simmons book in high school and it had been entertaining enough, but maybe that because I was in high school... who knows. These books were just straight up bad. I did end up finishing both, but primarily because I was so pissed that I'd wasted my money on them.

Basically, they're set in the distant future and super-evolved humans have, for reasons that go unexplained, adopted the personas of ancient Greek gods and have decided to reenact the Trojan war with Greeks and Trojans they've somehow created. (Actually, it is explained, but it's a supremely dumb explanation that comes in 1800 pages in, and does nothing to mask the fact that the author just said, Hey, this is a cool idea to base a book on.)

I don't think books can get any worse than this. There are a lot of heavy-handed allusions (made by robots!) to Proust, Joyce and Shakespeare, not to mention the near constant barrage of information about the Iliad and its characters, plus a sort of sci-fi section of the story that has to do with Earth in the far far distant future, which basically only serves to let the author show off his right-wing self-righteous world view.

Though, there is the unintentionally humorous habit the author has of describing things completely anachronistically. For example, at one point, one of the Greeks is described as feeling something like this: If theater had been invented at the time, he would have thought what he was witnessing was a farce.

I.shit.you.not.




A couple of Nero Wolfe mysteries, by Rex Stout

If you like detective novels, I'd give Rex Stout a try. His prose isn't the greatest, but the detective is good and the mysteries are amusing. My family has a long fascination with these books, from my grandmother on down, so I'm totally biased. Anyway, I re-read these whenever I'm home. If you were to pick one of them up, avoid the books that have three (or four) short mysteries in one volume, as they are generally unimpressive, unless you're a devoted fan.


The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Little Drummer Girl
by John Le Carre

I reread Spy simply because I'd run out of books and it was lying around at my grandmother's, but I'd forgotten how great it is. I'd be tempted to say it's the best cold war spy novel, but I haven't read all that many (and those I've read have been predominantly Le Carre books). Definitely a must-read, a page-turner, etc. If you haven't read any Le Carre, read this one first...

... and avoid Little Drummer Girl, which seems to distill all the bad things about Le Carre (he does women and love horribly) and avoids all that's really great about him (spy shit). A better place to continue Le Carre fandom is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and the two books that follow in the so-called Smiley Trilogy.



Tinkers, by Paul Harding

A surprising Pulitzer-prize win not only because it was published by a small press, but because the writing actually isn't bad. A sad, at times maudlin tale about a dying man in his last days and his memories of his father.

Despite some of the prose being pretty stellar, I didn't really take to this book, as it seemed to be a jumble of disparate parts smushed together to form a "novel." Reminded me of all the criticisms of MFA prose: too handled, too bland, and, with respect to the University of Iowa MFA (where Harding graduated from), too Marilynne Robinson. It definitely felt like Gilead-lite.

That being said, the man has an ear for prose, and I was surprised to find that I liked the book enough to (strangely, for me) look forward to his next book. Here, as an example, a passage I liked, and one I didn't:

He tinkered. Tin pots, wrought iron. Solder melted and cupped in a clay dam. Quicksilver patchwork. Occasionally, a pot hammered back flat, the tinkle of tin sibilant, tiny beneath the lid of the boreal forest. Tinkerbird, coppersmith, but mostly a brush and mop drummer.

Human consideration was no longer to be his, for that consideration could be expressed now only by providing physical comfort, and physical comfort was as meaningless to him (to it, for that was what lay before his family now--the it formerly he--at least to the extent that the he, although still figured by the struggling fading, dying it, was plumbing depths far, far from that living room filled with a weeping sister and daughters and wife and grandchildren and the it merely maintaining a pantomime of human life), was as meaningless to him now as it would have been to one of his clocks, laid out in his place to be dusted and soothed with linseed oil, fussed over and mourned even before it was was (because that is how the living prepare, or attempt to prepare, for the unknowable was--by imagining was as it is still approaching; perhaps that is more true, that they mourn because of the inevitability of was and apply their own, human, terrors about their own wases to the it, which is so nearly was that it will not or simply cannot any longer accept their human grief) as its broken springs wound down or its lead weights lowered for the last, irreparable time.

Of course, shorn of context, neither can mean all that much, but the second passage was rather inscrutable, and given its odd syntax, completely out of place in the novel, a riff with seemingly no purpose other than breathlessness.