Most of the books I’ve read since my last update were for my capstone seminar, entitled “Endings” and directed by Dr. Will Marquess. It was a pleasure to read them, and their companionship really took the edge off the harrowing “capstone” experience.
If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino, brought to English by the impeccable William Weaver. If any well-apportioned library lacks If on a winter’s night a traveler, I forgive the slight at once. If any library has it, however, I extend almost irrevocable esteem. The novel is a book about reading a book by the same title, but by the end of the novel covers censorship, and—in my reading—the delicate connection of art, artifice, and deception. This book is a haven for theory wanks, but anyone who loves books should be able to approach this with all due reverence.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Most everyone I knew had to eat this bullet in high school, but I skirted its edges until now. Awakening is a problem book for me, but mostly because I hate Edna. A critic, whose name escapes me, said something to the effect that Chopin sympathized with Edna, but never pitied her. Perhaps I am the opposite.
Beloved by Toni Morrison. I gave this book multiple readings, because I couldn’t finish in one attempt. Or two. Or three. Beloved is widely-regarded as a success, that is, it achieves the goals that Morrison articulated, but I find that her aesthetic sense rarely appeals to me. Contemporary literature has a lot of bad aesthetic habits, and Beloved legitimizes them.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Of course any course about “Endings” would include Roger Ackroyd. There is no doubt that Christie left an indelible impression on popular fiction, and the device she used in Roger Ackroyd will be forever hers.
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. As much as I hate to say it, I like Palahniuk but I hate his fans. Well, perhaps that isn’t true—perhaps I just haven’t yet seen a “transgressional fiction” manage to transgress itself, and I find that it has a penchant for tedious regression. In any event, I’m biased because I feel that David Fincher’s directorial grasp of the story surpassed Palahniuk’s authorial treatment. I find something about Fight Club truly distasteful: not the blood, anarchy, explosions, or any other moral distaste. It’s not an aesthetic distaste either. The book is intentionally polarizing, and divides readers into two camps: “omfg I love Fight Club it’s so raw and manly and let’s all fight and blow something up because nothing really matters” versus the camp of readers who think, “My, this writer is offering an interesting commentary on how it is so easy to misplace our faith when we try to rebel against our consumerist culture.” The latter is the theory wank, the former is what Laura Miller so lovingly called the “stoned high school student who has just discovered Nietzsche and Nine Inch Nails.” The problem is that these two readings cannot exist side-by-side: something that all thoughtful readings are (axiomatically) supposed to be able to do. The wanks look down on the eyeliners because they’re missing the subtle, enlightened reading, whereas the eyeliners look down on the wanks for being tools of what the book fights against. If I wasn’t any smarter, I’d say that Palahniuk panders to those who buy his bread while trying to reassure the rest of us that it’s exactly not what it says it is.
My edition came with an afterword from Palahniuk. If I didn’t dislike him before, he did a great job making sure I do now.
Other books I’ve read:
Freemasonry and Its Etiquette by William Preston Campbell-Everden. I was unable to trace the genealogy of this book: Preston wrote it, but it was updated somewhat in New York or Pennsylvania, but is still fundamentally about the English flavored Freemasonry. Bought this in a small bookstore in Montpelier because I had book money over the summer.
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. I ultimately found this book to be a bit gimmicky, and it was almost fatally hampered by one of the most contrived happy endings ever, but there were moments of delicious uncertainty. The nameless, ungendered narrator is bisexual, and possibly a horrible liar, who really digs married women. That’s all I’ll say about it, because anyone who wishes to read it—please do, it’s a comfortably quick but satisfying read—should try to experience the prose in whatever uncertainty possible.
