Frustrating "Travelers"

Despite newspapers and all the other claims on my time, I was able to finish a book today. Unsure what to tackle next, I went bookshelf hunting and came up with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Travelers, which explores the lives of four wandering souls who converge in India.

I found the book unsatisfying, and I'm not entirely sure that that wasn't the author's intent. It ends without resolution - okay for a short story, but not after the investment of reading a novel. Moreover, the characters are opaque, and don't seem to know themselves very well. You learn more about them from the way they see one another than from the chapters "about" them. How do you sympathize with a character that remains profoundly unreal? And yet, their circumstances - for the most part self-inflicted - provoke sympathy. This complexity drives the book, as do an array of relationships that consist of dominant and submissive parties. [I paused in typing for an extended reverie on whether I was judging sadomasochism and claiming it was incompatible with healthy loving relationships.] The games that characters play to exert control over others are uncomfortable and do not - it hardly needs to be said - make for pleasant reading.

So in the time it's taken to write this, I've decided that the dissatisfaction and discomfort were intentional. Jhabvala could be commenting on the paradoxes of modern (Travelers was published in 1973) India, as well as the lengths people will go to in the attempt to find - or keep from finding - themselves. A dark and unsettling read.

Busy, like a bee

It's been a little hectic around here in Libraryland, so there hasn't been much time for reading.

I did, however, come across this interesting review in the LA Times Book Review. California: America's High-Stakes Experiment, by Peter Schrag, offers the take "of a disappointed liberal, a believer n the Golden State's vaunted postwar promise who has watched the dream drift out of reach." Schrag addresses the paradoxes and "uncomfortable truths" about my unique home state.

The reviewer, Kevin Roderick, is an interesting character in his own right as the force behind LA Observed, which is currently heading my list of favorite LA blogs. (I am oddly fascinated by his ability to make the local news sound relevant.) Local readers should check it out.

Also, I have started a new book, so more posts are coming.

American (Lit) Idol

Somehow (i.e. Michael) I have been watching "American Idol" this season. I don't know why - it's like crack. (But I know I'm not alone, all you closet watchers and voters out there.)

LAist brings news of another contest, the Million Writers Award for Fiction, which is "a little like American Idol for short stories: a huge group is selected by judges, then winnowed down, then put before the public for a vote."

What's truly cool about this is are the links to the dozens of finalists, where in most if not all cases you can read the stories right on your screen. A very cool way to promote short fiction - which I often enjoy but rarely read anywhere except the New Yorker, which didn't have produce any finalists.

In other news, the pile of magazines by my bedstand has gotten out of hand, so I am taking a break from books for at least the rest of the workweek to try to reimpose some level of control. So likely light posting for a little while.

The 20th Century in "Two Lives"

Vikram Seth's great-uncle and aunt met in 1930s Berlin and married in London almost two decades later. In the interim, Shanti B. Seth becomes a dentist and loses an arm in WWII while Henny Caro flees the Nazi machine and loses her fiance, mother, and sister.

The younger Seth is a talented fiction writer, but in his family members he found a rich and complex tale. Two Lives tells a love story unlike most that appear in books, one that is rewarding even if sometimes puzzling. Shanti and Henny are most vivid as individuals rather than as a couple - but evidence suggests that they were often seen as the latter. The hidden emotions and questions that (Vikram) Seth brings to the surface have lingered in my mind since I finished the book yesterday.

But this is a loooong book, and I'd prefer to write a short review. As a student of 20th century history, I found this a fantastic portrait of everyday life during and immediately after the Second World War. Seth unearthed a treasure trove of primary sources, and I believe that they illuminate many of the questions that will begin to attract scholarly attention. But it also reads much like a novel - Seth is sensitive to the fact that he is telling a story, and shares the reader's frustration when his "characters" remain obscured.

For me, this was a more satisfying read that A Suitable Boy, which I loved but fought with. Perhaps you can't fight with history in quite the same way; Henny & Shanti were real humans, both remarkable and flawed. Their tale is definitely worth a read.

Go Buy Books!

March is more than half over, but I just learned today that it's Small Press Month. Congrats and thanks go out to all the indie publishers, writers, and sellers during your month of fame. You guys, as you know, rock.

So now you're thinking, "I need to find me a small press book to read since it's Small Press Month and all..." Potential offering abound, but I'm focusing on just one today, since it may well go on Erin's List:

Siberia, by Nikolai Maslov. A graphic novel about Soviet Russia and alcohol? Seems like a good way to usher in spring.

Happy Birthday to me!

Although I'm probably too old for this, I still like making a big fuss over my birthday. Hence the birthday post.

This is also to say a big thank you to those who will be helping keep my in books for the year to come. Michael took care of two books on my list:

• Dog Days, by Ana Marie Cox. Wonkette isn't the same without her. And despite mixed reviews (good and less so), I love her.
• The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin. I have had this on my list since Michael mentioned it to me. All I know is that it's the tale of a Soviet apparatchik who falls out of favor. More coming as I read it.
  

And.... thank you Ben & Katie and Jen & Dan for gift certificates! I haven't shopped for books for myself in ages and am thrilled to have an excuse to do so. So hurrah and thank you!

(Thanks also to everyone else who pampered me in non-literary ways. I am lucky to have friends and family with such good taste.)

I translate too!

Rabassa's book (read the post below if you haven't yet) came into my life at a particularly serendipitous moment.

A couple weeks ago, Michael and I were treated to a free screening of the Russian blockbuster Nochnoi Dozor (Night Watch) - now at a theatre near you. It's fun, and if you see it, let me know and we can talk about it more.

(By the way, it's based on a trilogy by Sergei Lukyanenko, whose novels are available through the LA Public Library, but apparently only in Russian. And there seems to be a new fourth novel, possibly titled "Last Watch.")

But I digress. On New Year's Day, the follow-up, Dnevnoi Dozor (Day Watch - careful of the link, there's a spoiler alert!) opened in Moscow. And the third (Dusk Watch) will be filmed in English, rumor has it. I hope that I am revealing little enough to keep myself and others out of trouble, but Michael and I have come into possession of a copy of this film - sans subtitles - thanks to a friend with a thing for the Watch. My new hobby - and the point of this post: to translate the film for said unnamed friend.

And so many of the things Rabassa writes in his book really echoed my experience, although I am clearly lacking in his talent and facility. In an old issue of the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wrote that we "breathe in our first language and swim in our second." And yet the gap between Rabassa's fluid stroke and my manic dog paddle is wide indeed.

Lost in Translation

Don't call me lazy just because I picked the easiest possible title for this post. It's been hard work getting through enough reading to get onto Blogger.

But I made it!

Once upon I time, I promised you I'd be reading Gregory Rabassa's If This Be Treason, a memoir of translation. This guy is just about unbelievable, having translated dozens of works by different Spanish- and Portuguese-language authors. Also, of course, he seems to be fluent in every other language out there, including Latin. His enthusiasm for the perfect word or phrase is adorable, in the way as nerdy scientists who are so passionate about something utterly obscure. It's also intimidating, as he goes crazy (especially in the first section) with tangential asides and references.

Which reminds me, the first section of this short but rather dense book is about how he came to translation, and his defense of it as cultural mediator. (He also has great fun with untranslatables, words that have no English equivalent or that even lose something simply because the word sounds different and therefore must carry something different.) The last two thirds is his "list of particulars" - short chapters on every author he has translated and some details about the specific joys and challenges of each author's works. How few of them I knew (thank goodness for Gabriel Garcia Marquez) was a reminder of all the avenues of literature I have yet to explore. And this book provides a great reading list for anyone looking to discover Latin American (and particularly Brazilian) literature.

I'll leave you with a couple quotes that encapsulate the paradox of translation:

The translator, we should know, is a writer too. As a matter of fact, he could be called the ideal writer because all he has to do is write; plot, theme, characters, and all the other essentials have already been provided, so he can just sit down and writer his ass off.

and

...a translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print.

Others have guilty pleasures too...

I have to admit that I also liked Da Vinci Code (and was embarrassed about it too) but my favorite thing about it right now is that it's prompting a spate of discussion about whether or not it's actually any good at all. Or if it's just fluff dressed up as literature.

Stephen Bayley (author of A Dictionary of Idiocy - my new favorite book title) discusses "good bad books" in today's LA Times. Apparently, in shades of Rumsfeld's known unknowns and unknown unknowns, there are good books, bad books, bad good books, and good bad books. The Code falls into the last category.

From Bayley:

Good bad books are not the same as books that are merely bad. Good bad is more subtle. A good bad book is one that achieves a surprisingly exhilarating effect despite flaws of style and construction, which disqualify it as (what Updike calls) "literature." Significantly, good bad books translate very well into film, perhaps suggesting that cinema is an intellectually and artistically undemanding medium.

Is this the home of Helen Fielding? And does a novel's status change over time?

Pain & Sex

Alison Lurie's Truth and Consequences proved to be the ideal antidote to Snow. The latter was challenging and slow, and above all demanding; the former is a lovely and quick read. I read it on Monday evening, which meant I returned from the holiday weekend with the awesome sense of accomplishment of having finished two novels. (Hoorah!)

Lurie's novel just barely sneaks out from the label of (middle-aged) chick lit. She chooses the popular setting of a small liberal arts college; the four main characters (two couples) are a professor, a visiting fellow, a college administrator, and a former poet. Sounds just like you and your friends, right? But it works. Jane and Alan's marriage is being eroded by his back pain, and I think almost everyone knows how destructive to a relationship the interplay of caregiver and caregetter can be. They aren't perfect, but they are sympathetic, and you want them to figure out a way to get by and be happy again. The other couple, Delia and Henry, aren't as well drawn, but their vagueness drives the novel. If we knew them as intimately as we know Alan and Jane, I don't think it would work.

I imagine you have guessed by now that when the two couples come together, temptation and havoc ensue. But since there are a few different ways the plot could unravel, it's worth the read to discover which route Lurie and her characters choose.

Reading While Listening

Michael has previously written about audiobooks, finding free literature for your iPod at LibriVox. But what of the poor souls who bring make a living by bringing you your commuting literature? The LA Times recently published a feature on narrators. The tease: "Just how does the commuter's salvation, a.k.a. the audio book, make it from page to iPod? Hint: There's a lot of patience required, not to mention Blistex and reverie." The article reminds you of the obvious - it's hard work to talk and talk and talk, pronouncing everything correctly and putting the perfect inflection into dialogue. But what an awesome way to inhabit a book.

Now, I've never really been into the audio book. I think I get more easily distracted when I'm listening to words than when I'm seeing them. Also, if the voice is wrong, it can ruin it for me entirely. (I listened to part of Sister Carrie once, and was convulsing at the narrator's drag queen take on Carrie's voice.) But I think I'd like them for the right books. Does anyone have suggestions?

Snow

It's a little unnerving to read a book entitled Snow while the weather around you toggles between 90 and sunny and 50 and rainy. Especially when the author truly evokes an icy snowscape.

But I'm getting into the review before the disclaimer, which is: I will not be able to do this book justice. Orhan Pamuk defies my abilities.

Snow dominates the novel - shutting the roads and isolating the little town of Kars from the rest of Turkey; and more importantly, providing the hero with the blueprint for his final book of poems. Ka, a exiled poet acting as journalist, has been suffering from writer's block, but upon his arrival the poems begin falling like snowflakes. And he arranges them as on a snowflake, creating the unique pattern that makes up his soul.

But of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. In three days, Kars plays host to an array of interlocking love stories and betrayals, suicides, murder, epiphanies, political intrigue, religious extremism, a coup, and two plays with shocking denouements. It's too much to even begin to recount. And doppelgangers abound. Ka, in Kars in search of a story and his own happiness, is mirrored later by the narrator, a novelist named Orhan, who too comes to Kars in search of a story. The interplay of the snowflake's singularity and the characters' doubles could make a great topic for a paper...

I don't think Pamuk is for everyone. He packs an immense amount of detail, plot, character into each page - not really beach reading, despite my attempt at a half hour in Huntington Beach. You have to be willing to devote yourself to the story, a requirement that led me to take much longer than I expected to finish reading. But he is immensely rewarding - somehow he can tell you in advance how it ends and still make it a surprise. He is just lovely.

Czeslaw Milosz

Milosz may be my favorite intellectual of the 20th century. The Captive Mind was a captivating (sorry about the bad pun) examination of the moral compromises that thinkers and dreamers make in a totalitarian regime. (By the way, Lisa, can you return my copy when you get a chance?) And though he passed away in 2004, there's still new work to read.

Legends of Modernity is a compilation of letters and essays from 1942-43, when Milosz lived in Nazi-occupied Poland, and is being published in English for the first time. Reviewer Robert Fagan describes the Milosz's writing as "concise and penetrating." Here's one example: "Evil has become complicated, it has become more clever and sly, and he who wants to confront it must arm himself with equivalent perspicacity," an excellent reminder of the strange strange condition of living in Poland in the 20th century.

I saw Milosz live as an undergrad; he and translator and friend Robert Hass were discussing the nature of poetry translation. Two things about Milosz struck me; his intense eyebrows (picture) and his easy relationship with genius and art. While Hass spoke of technique and difficulties, Milosz commented in grumbly tones about inspiration, and just knowing something was right.

I hope Milosz turns out to be like Tupac and Biggie, continuing to release new works from beyond the grave.

America!

The worst thing (or second worst thing, depending on how much I miss hockey) about not having cable is that I can't watch Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Fortunately, I have America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. I was belated in reading it, due to a strange affliction which causes me to read most books received as gifts one year after receiving them.

Unsurprisingly, the book is a rollicking good read. Since the show largely skewers current events, it's nice to see Stewart and his writers take aim at American history as well. I discovered that apparently my preferred government is a Constitutional Sultanate ("favorite kind of war: pillow fight") and learned the porn name of House members is the largest city in their district plus the state flower. (This unfortunately means that my representative shares the name Los Angeles Poppy with several of her colleagues. Still funny though.) There are other goofy jokes - and a surprising amount of actual information.

I applaud the inspired textbook premise. In addition to allowing for a number of non sequitor jokes that were brilliant, it reminded me of how annoyingly ADD-esque student textbooks are. We wonder why our students have trouble with focus? There are ten other pop-up boxes and insets breaking up the main narrative.

But anyway, read it. It'll remind you - in a strange way - why America is so cool, even when it's frustrating.

Dueling Reviews

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go definitely struck me as the kind of novel that would impact readers in different ways. In light of that, I'm offering two capsule reviews, one by me and one by Library operative Carolline. Together, I hope they will shine more light on whether this is the book for you.

1. This book is creepy. Even after reading other reviews and discovering what the dark mystery is, from the beginning the ominous tone of the novel affects you. You’re never quite sure if the narrator and her friends are in danger from the rest of society, or if they’re a threat to them. Children of the Corn, with feelings. It’s not until the very end that everything is explained--much like the villain's monologue in a movie--but that’s what keeps you going. At times, the book gets a little slow, describing the narrator’s childhood, and way too many English countryside's, but is overall a good read. Smart, philosophical and creepy.

2. This may be the gentlest dystopia I've ever read. Combining science fiction and that most British of genres - the boarding school Bildungsroman, Ishiguro has created a masterpiece of innocence lost. This is the story of love triangle and the fate that awaits all three, but also a meditation on the human capacity to love and feel, and (there's more?!) an indictment of society's ability to suspend morality in order to feed our insatiable desires. A beautiful, haunting elegy that may never let you go.