Last week I finished 'The Late Mattia Pascal' by Luigi Pirandello. It didn't strike me as very special at the time, but it's stayed on my mind ever since. Mattia Pascal goes on a ten day bender in Monte Carlo to get away from his wife and mother in law, and wins a fortune. As he rides the train home triumphant, he reads in the newspaper of his suicide, and decides to start a new life free from his old identity. Of course it's not that easy and it works through all the ideas inherent in freedom and identity and society and the law in a faintly humourous and impressive way. It's a good book.

rachael wrote:

kerble wrote:

sparky wrote:

rachael wrote:Just finished Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood, and I'm getting ready to read Robber Bride. Anyone?

Every time I read one of her books I always end up reading another one right away. Her writing is addictive.

I've read The Blind Assassin, which I loved. The ending made me feel very soppy in a dark sort of way.

I have a big problem with Blind Assassin. I've tried to read it four times and I just get bored after about page 75, even though I don't find the story matter boring at all. Maybe it's something to do with the pacing of the interconnected stories.

is there any reason at all I should try again? I spent several years reading through Booker Prize books (I think I've read maybe 10 and have at least six more on my shelf), but this is the only one I can't get into, let alone not finish.


if I may inquire, what's appealling about it (without divulging too much of the plot)?

This one I haven't read, so I can't help. Her novel Cat's Eye is one of my favorite books ever, so much that I've read it 3 times. Maybe you should try a different novel of hers?

I'm about 80 pages into The Blind Assasin right now, and I really love it. I plan to finish it this weekend on the airplane, so I'll let you know what I think. At this point I'm holding my breath between stories about the make believe place whith the children who weave. This is one of the reasons I love Margaret Atwood. Another is that her descriptions always seem to hit the nail on the head perfectly, putting me right in the perspective of the character with almost no effort.

Just read: The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11, Ron Suskind. Title refers to Cheney's formulation: "If a one percent chance exists of our enemies attacking us [or Iraq having WMDs, or any potential or perceived threat becoming reality], we will act as though it's a certainty."

Now reading: Seek, Denis Johnson. Articles and essays on stuff like Christian bikers, the Rainbow Gathering, Eric Rudolph (the former fugitive bomber), etc.

Both well worthwhile. The second piece on Liberia in Johnson's collection, "The Small Boys' Unit," is amazing.

I'm reading more non-fiction at the moment.

Robert Fisk's "The Great War for Civilisation", which feels appallingly timely. For such a grisly, depressing read, it is a page turner. His more extravagant descriptions work better there for me, as occasionally they can grate in his journalism. He's even-handed, just very passionate, horrified, and with a terrific eye for detail and dark irony. And he has seen a hell of a lot.

"A Lover's Discourse" by Roland Barthes is a fun read. I like books with scribbles in the margin.

I've started re-reading "Cities of the Red Night" by William Burroughs. It's one of my favourites, and the ending is magnificent.

ooh...i'm midway through Ulysses by James Joyce right now...yeah...

Today I finished Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda - the letters between Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. And gosh darn, if this book hasn't made me sad.

F. Scott Fitzgerald made me love literature, I think; I always loved reading, but it was only reading The Great Gatsby at school that got me into the real good shit. Most of what I have read since then has come from there - exploring writers he was contemporary with, or mentions (like the awesome Ring Lardner), or influenced him, or who he influenced - and then spreading out from there. Scott's perhaps been overtaken by other writers but hey, he was first, and I intend to go back soon and re-read him. 'The Beautiful and Damned' is great.

I've read biographies of both Scott and Zelda before and become very familiar with their tragedy. I hadn't read much of their correspondence before.

This volume comes from the standpoint that I personally subscribe to; that no one was to blame for ill treatment of the other. Scott gets quite a bashing in popular telling for his treatment of Zelda but the currents run real deep. And in the last ten years of their letters to each other, it's nothing other than just painful.

Zelda is unstable and unaware and shipped from institution to institution, because psychiatry didn't have the knowledge to treat her then. Scott is drunk and ill and trying to pay for everything while watching his talent drift away. It's nobody's fault, it's all too sadly inevitable. The last year is especially poignant, they both sound close to breaking their duck: Zelda at her mother's, writing of the weather and resuming a social life, Scott in Hollywood, making enough money to write for three more months and keep their daughter at university and he's off the bottle.

Even knowing how it ends, you begin to root for them - I saw a hopefulness in their last years that I haven't seen explored before. I began looking at how many pages could be left in the book, thinking where the end must come, and then it comes - just as 'The Last Tycoon' is progressing, just as Zelda is resuming a regular life, just as they're planning a reunion, and just before Christmas, Scott stands up and has a heart attack and that much is that much, for both of them.

There ends today's book report. But really - I wish the question of their lives would move on from apportioning blame one way or another. The whole thing is too sad, and so far beyond a simple equation regarding 'fault'.

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I've started some Swedish shocker novel called '491'. The paperback has a card insert demanding whether you want to read other books about the real underground. The pack of young delinquents it depicts have already fulfilled one cliche by having one young man do the knife-between-fingers game, but it's picked up a touch lately with a strange scene regarding a piano.

daniel robert chapman wrote:I've started some Swedish shocker novel called '491'. The paperback has a card insert demanding whether you want to read other books about the real underground. The pack of young delinquents it depicts have already fulfilled one cliche by having one young man do the knife-between-fingers game, but it's picked up a touch lately with a strange scene regarding a piano.

I'm not sure what I make of this book now I've finished it. The 'shocking' and 'controversial' stuff which caused a furore, apparently, and had the film version seized by US Customs as obscene, is pretty fucking obscene. Boy delinquents get raped by supervisor, underage girl gets raped by caretaker, teenage female prostitute gets maltreated and, ultimately, raped by dog. I hadn't really expected as much when I picked this book off of a second hand shelf and chance fifty pence on it. The dog in question is naturally the only element of love or trust or responsibility that the main character experiences; I guess the whole thing is meant to be about pointlessness and violence of existence and the like. But, I don't know. I don't enjoy reading about rapes, and also these descriptions don't have the power they may have had in the sixties. So the whole undertaking felt rather unnecessary.

I've just re-read Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz's Brought to Light. It is a concise hallucinogenic evocation of the activities of the CIA from the end of the Second World War to when the comic was published, back in 1988. I think it is one of the most beautiful, scary pieces of narrative art that I have seen. It is certainly the most successful piece of political writing that I have encountered. It was released to support the Christic Institute, a liberal law firm that tried and failed to sue some individuals involved in the Iran-Contra affair. It is pretty tough to get hold of nowadays, as the book names names, but well worth tracking down.



The artist Bill Sienkiewicz is fucking boss, by the way. He did a bunch of Friendly Dictator trading cards which I would love to get hold of.



Other than that, I am about to start a book called The Box Man, by Kobo Abe. I've only just begun it (it begins with instructions on how to assemble a box, and the story is in the title), but it looks great.

daniel robert chapman wrote:Today I finished Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda - the letters between Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. And gosh darn, if this book hasn't made me sad.

how much of your enjoyment for that book came from your love for fitzgerald? i read and enjoyed the great gatsby recently, but i haven't really got into that style or era otherwise. would you still recommend it?

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im about 20 pages from the end of Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music. its been fairly good, and a quick and easy way to get some context about it all. its been more useful as a timeline than anything else. but i agree wholeheartedly with the reviews that the writer is trying way too hard to be funny, almost every other line, which can make for tedious reading at times.

i think i might finally read 'death in venice' next

sparky wrote:Other than that, I am about to start a book called The Box Man, by Kobo Abe. I've only just begun it (it begins with instructions on how to assemble a box, and the story is in the title), but it looks great.

You are in for a treat. Great, disturbing book, and Abe's best, I think.