Wordless Wednesday

I found this image on Welcome to Planet Chen. For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

How I Used to Feel at My Old Job

Luckily I start a new one today!

Terminus from Spyfilms.com.

Teaser Tuesday

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from. That way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
• Please avoid spoilers!

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh by Slobodan Novak
Page 143 - "But above all, of course, to our Lord! It's a very nice custom my dear neighbor, and it's good if it's observed."

"When he's settled in his accounts like that, a person can set off more lightly on the new hopeless circle along the ecliptic."

Foreign Words (A Review)

Foreign Words
By Vassilis Alexakis
Translated by Alyson Waters
Autumn Hill Books
228 pages
April 1, 2006





Whereas in French, like in Greek, the negating adverb goes at the head of the sentence, in Sango it goes at the end. How can anyone not be surprised by a language that always presents things in a positive light, only to retract them at the end? If you want to express the idea that you no longer have parents, first you will say that you have them, and then you will add pepe (the first syllable is middle, the second down, pepè), that is, "not," "not at all," or, in Greek, dèn: "I have my father and mother not."

Vassilis Alexakis was born and raised in Greece but exiled to France by the 1967 coup d'etat. His first novel, Le sandwhich, was written in French and the second, Talgo, was written in Greek and translated by Alexakis himself into French. Not surprisingly, the interplay between language, life, and loss is the dominant theme of Le mots étrangers (Foreign Words, translated from French by Alyson Waters), originally published in 2002. Nicolaides, the narrator, is also a Greek novelist living in France. Following the recent death of his father, he has decided to learn Sango, the main tongue of the Central African Republic (a former French colony). The resulting story is not plot-driven per se: it is a novel of ideas and introspection, in which events unfold organically, much as they do in real life. The depth of Sango proficiency exhibited in the narrative, as well as Nicolaides's strong biographical similarities to Alexakis, indicates a work that may be as much a memoir as it is fictionalized.

The first word of Sango Nicolaides learns is, appropriately, baba, which means "father." Now "orphaned" at age fifty-three, Nicolaides finds himself leading an ordinary, and somewhat stagnant, life in Paris. His last novel received lukewarm reception and his publishing contract demands he soon release another. He carries on a sporadic affair with a midwife named Alice and watches a friend fight cancer. Why he wants to learn a third language, particularly an obscure one, is something Nicolaides can't quite articulate at first, although he recalls that,

Whenever you begin to study a new language, you inevitably seem a bit foolish, you become a child again. Was I nostalgic for that time in my life when I didn't yet know how to speak? I had had no end of trouble getting the hang of French, but the effort had not been devoid of charms. Some of the words I encountered were so delightful to me, and I would enthusiastically try to combine them in different ways to form sentences. The French language has become less amusing since it has become the tool with which I earn my so-called living. It's no longer a foreign language; I learned it so long ago that I have the impression that I've always know how to speak it. Maybe I wanted to learn a foreign language simply because I didn't know any.

In fact, he was eventually so immersed in French he nearly forgot his native Greek. As a bilingual writer, Nicolaides is an individual whose life and work have been inevitably shaped by the dynamics of languages and how they reflect and act on the cultures that produced them, as well as the cultures they were imposed upon (i.e. French in the Central African Republic). That he would want to acquire yet another language is actually less surprising than it seems.

Nicolaides's subsequent journey is an intellectual one. The biggest action that occurs is his trip to the CAR, which - despite his boyhood fantasies of Tarzan, fascination with big cats, and some brief references to Heart of Darkness - is largely uneventful. Any "exotic adventures" happen in Nicolaides's mind. It is an intriguing and subtle take on the Western paradigm of Africa as the dark "other" where the wild things are and unwary white people fall victim to either "savages" or "primal influences" (i.e. Kurtz, Tarzan). Even reading the Sango dictionary, Nicolaides comes across sample sentences such as "Once I've killed him, I can throw him in the bush, can't I?" and "They tore Africa to shreds, like hyenas" that bring to mind the bleak, one-sentence "short stories" by Thomas Bernhard. Given the information presented in the book, in addition to the influence of American media images of Africa as a continent wracked by violence and famine, I fully expected something major to take place during Nicolaides's stay in the CAR. It turns out, however, that capital city Bangui isn't all that different from Paris and Athens. For all its economic poverty, it is yet another community of ordinary people working and living their day-to-day lives. The death of Nicolaides's parents had also revived an interest in his family history, including a photo of his grandfather taken in a Bangui studio (with the appropriate "exotic" flourishes) and a great-aunt who was well-known in Bangui's Greek community. In reality, then, Sango- and French-speaking Bangui is a largely familiar place, right down to the conflicts between French and Sango that mirror the tension between Demotic (Modern) Greek and Katharevousa, the official state dialect of Greece.

Foreign Words is ultimately a novel that gives the reader the pleasure of exploring new approaches to language and culture. It is a leisurely book that encourages meditation on the wonderfully compelling concepts it introduces. Anyone seeking suspense or action will be entirely bored; everyone else, however, is in for a learning experience skillfully embedded in Vassilis Alexakis's clean but deftly-composed prose. ("The wind that had risen at nightfall was making my new curtains ripple, filling them with air and then suddenly drawing them outside. I saw them fluttering like hankerchiefs. It was as if my apartment were leaving the neighborhood, waving good-bye to the buildings across the way.") Foreign Words is probably not a book with mass appeal, but thoughtful readers will truly appreciate it.

Sunday Salon

I finished Vassilis Alexakis's Foreign Words (review tomorrow) which leaves me with one more book from last week's AHB windfall to read. That would be Slobodan Novak's Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. Once the Novak book is out of the way, I will re-focus my attentions on An American Tragedy, which has been the bane of my literary existence for almost three months now.

Foreign Words (translated from French by Alyson Waters) was really a wonderful book, despite its risky set-up. Specifically: it is character- and idea-driven, as opposed to plot-driven. There is actually very little structured plot to speak of, as events unfold organically, much like they do in real life (think The Catcher in the Rye or The Sun Also Rises). There was a lot of potential for the story needlessly meander and the first-person narrator to ramble on about nothing, but Alexakis is skilled enough at his craft to have kept everything together and continuously engaged the reader. I'm going to save my analysis for the review, but just to give you an idea of Alexakis's style, here is an excerpt:

I found three words that Sango and Greek have in common. Two are from Arabic: dunya, "the world" (another of Vamvakaris's songs, in which he uses this word, come to mind: "All the hooligans of the world/Show me their affection") and sandugu (sendouki in Greek), "crate" or "trunk." The third, politiki, "politics," is of course, authentically Greek. Alas in Sango it has taken on the sense of "demagogy," "lies." This just goes to show you that language is not lacking in critical intelligence. This is confirmed by the fact that, in the early 1950s when France was governed by the RFP (Rally for the French People), General de Gaulle's party, concessionary companies continued to act as ruthlessly in the colonies as they had in André Gide's time, and the initials RFP gave birth to the word erepefu, "forced labor."

The narrator is - like the Alexakis himself - a Greek novelist who lives France and writes in French. Foreign Words is about his attempt to learn the Central African language of Sango. It is listed as fiction, but the depth of Sango research exhibited in the book has me wondering how much of it was autobiographical.

Which brings up another question: when does a character clearly based on the author become a Mary Sue/Gary Stu? I addressed the Mary Sue issue awhile ago in this post about Anita Blake, but I found myself thinking of it again while reading Foreign Words. I think the Suedom occurs only when said character acts solely as a the author's and/or readers' wish-fulfillment fantasy. For example, Bella Swan from the Twilight series (who was inspired by a dream Stephenie Meyer had and seems to resemble Meyer physically) has all these boys, including a werewolf and vampire Adonis, falling in love with her. Everyone else wants to be her friend. She has amazing adventures and gets to live happily ever after as a beautiful immortal. And yet she is a cipher with no recognizeable personality and no hobbies outside some vague references to literature. Thus, she is a blank slate for the reader to project herself onto and live through vicariously. Alexakis's narrator, by contrast, is a very human one who learns Sango to deal with a recent loss and uses this new experience as a springboard to meditate on the nature of language, thought, and culture. He is 53 years old, average-looking, and lives a rather boring life. Even his trip to the Central African Republic is largely uneventful, despite his boyhood dreams of Tarzan. In other words, he's easy to identify with, yes, but hardly an idealized fantasy. But I also think the danger of writing a Mary Sue is much greater in speculative fiction, where you can give your characters all sorts of supernatural powers and incredible adversaries to overcome.

As far as the rest of my reading goes . . . I've actually been focusing quite a bit on the books Autumn Hill sent me, so I really haven't been doing any additional reading for the time being. I figured I got four free books to review, so I should really get my reviews out there as quickly as possible! Hopefully I will have much more to say about reading on my next Salon!

Update: I was just on Christine's blog She Reads Books, where I learned that Who is Mark Twain? (read my review here) can be read online for free. Check it out - I STRONGLY recommend it!

Also: Rebecca of The Book Lady's Blog has a just done a very thoughtful Sunday Salon post about blogging as a serious hobby vs. just blogging seriously. She articulated my own feelings on the subject very well.

The Reading Meme

I found this on The Book Zombie!

1. What author do you own the most books by?

Anne Rice. But the author with the most books in our house is Dean Koontz.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?

I don't own multiple copies of one book, but I do have three different books of T.S. Eliot poetry: one big one of his complete poems and plays, a little one with a few poems but really good notes, and another little one with a few poems and some essays.

3. Did it bother you that most of these questions ended with prepositions?

Nope.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

Edward Cullen! Nah, just kidding! Um, I actually cannot think of one.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life?

Hmmm, several. Dean Koontz's Phantoms never ceases to impress me (a true classic of the horror/thriller genres). William Burroughs's Naked Lunch is like a spectacular train wreck. Mostly I don't re-read books, though - only favorite passages.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

Robinson Crusoe: the first real classic I ever read.

7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year?

I have a list of the best and worst of 2008 here. For 2009, I've been pretty lucky so far, but Christian Jungersen's The Exception irritated the hell out of me.

8. What is the best book you've read in the past year?

I've read quite a few great books this year, but Dan Simmons's The Fall of Hyperion is the one that most sticks out.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?

Victor Serge's Unforgiving Years. A powerful, powerful book by a woefully neglected Russian author.

10. Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?

Tough one. Either Mario Vargas Llosa or Salman Rushdie.

11. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

Dan Simmons's Hyperion, but I'm not sure any movie could do it justice. It's probably much better off as a miniseries.

12. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

Oh, dear God. Ilja Leornard Pfeijffer's Rupert: A Confession. Good book, but NOT MOVIE MATERIAL!

13. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

I've never had any weird dreams per se, but Dan Simmons's appropriately-named The Terror remains the only book to ever give me nightmares. I don't remember what happened in them exactly, but they were inspired by the last 1/4 of the book, when things got really gory and horrifying.

14. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?

What a fun question! Bentley Little's The Return definitely soaks up sewage at the bottom of the trash can. (How did that one even get published?) Twilight was also quite bad. Most people would consider Star Trek novels pretty lowbrow too, but obviously those people have never read anything by Peter David.

15. What is the most difficult book you've ever read?

The Great Dialogues of Plato. Enough said.

16. Do you prefer French or Russian?

Russian. Eastern Europe in general.

17. Roth or Updike?

Uh, I've never read either of them? Bad book blogger, bad!

18. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?

I have never read the first one and I have no idea who the second one is. I know they're both contemporary authors, but most of the contemporary fiction I've been reading lately is translated works.

19. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

Dante!

20. Austen or Eliot?

I've never read anything by Jane Austen because she's never interested me (although Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sounds good). I've never read George Eliot either, but her works sound more interesting than Austen's. I do, however, strongly recommend T.S. Eliot.

21. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

Nineteenth-century literature.

22. What is your favorite novel?

Several. Ferenc Karinthy's Metropole, Serge's Unforgiving Years, Simmons's Hyperion Cantos series, W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Others I can't think of at the moment.

23. Play?

I saw A Mouthful of Birds in college and never forgot the experience. I have also seen Larry Shue's The Nerd, which is absolutely hilarious.

24. Short story?

Several by Edgar Allen Poe: "The Fall of the House of Usher," "MS Found in a Bottle," "Ligeia," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Man of the Crowd."

25. Epic poem?

Dante's The Divine Comedy. Every English major should be required to take an entire class devoted to Inferno.

26. Short(er) poem?

T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."

27. Work of non-fiction?

It may be deeply flawed as a history text, but Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic is definitely one of the most thought-provoking books I've ever read. Nathan O. Hatch's The Democratization of American Christianity is another sure winner. Drew R. McCoy's The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America. Charles C. Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

28. Who is your favorite writer?

Too many to name. SimmonsEliotPoeFitzgeraldWoolfRiceKoontz
MorrisonDavidDanteTwainHemingwayDosPassosPotok. . .

29. Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

STEPHENIE MEYER. To a lesser extent: Stephen King and Dan Brown.

30. What is your desert island book?

Hah, I had to do an essay on this in college! T.S. Eliot for sure.

31. And . . . what are you reading right now?

Thomas Dreiser's An American Tragedy and Vassilis Alexakis's Foreign Words.

A Castle in Romagna (A Review)

A Castle in Romagna
By Igor Štiks
Translated by Russell Scott Valentino and Tomislav Kuzmanović
Autumn Hill Books
December 21, 2004





"Somehow, regardless of time and space, Strecci and I are connected. Someone once said that we listen to stories and read books only to know we're not alone. I would add that the fact that we collect them, listen to them, read them persistently all our lives, speaks of our desire to surpass their uniqueness. Somewhere stories come together, perhaps crossing or overlapping, but they are never the same."

Igor Štiks's 2000 novella A Castle in Romagna (originally titled Dvorac u Romagni and translated from Croatian by Tomislav Kuzmanović and Scott Valentino) gives me hope for An American Tragedy, which I have been trudging through for two months now. Štiks initially has the same drawback as Dreiser: a verbose style that force the reader to go over the same sentence twice. The introduction to my edition of An American Tragedy promises that the emotional power of the story will eventually make up for the sluggish beginning. Luckily, such was the case with A Castle in Romagna, in which the recklessness of love only leads to personal destruction.

There are two narrators and three narratives in three separate time periods: Romagna, Italy in 1535, Romagna in 1995, and the Croatian island of Rab in 1948. The first speaker, an exiled Croat from war-torn Bosnia, has arrived at the ancient Castello Mardi for a tour with two female friends. The resident friar, Niccolò Darsa, makes a crude joke about the young man's homeland, and then apologizes, speaking perfect Croatian and offering to tell his own story and that of Renaissance literary giant Enzo Strecci, a guest of Francesco Mardi who was later imprisoned and executed. I feel like natural sympathy with Enzo, Niccolò says, "You won't believe it if I tell you that he was like you and me. No, you won't believe it. Just like you and me." It turns out that the old cleric is an ethnic Italian who lived on Rab until Yugolsav President Josip Broz Tito's split with Stalin shortly after World War II, which precipitated a period of repression and paranoia that saw innocent people turned in and executed for being Cominformist agents. So too did Enzo live in a tumultuous era, as the threat of invasion led to a fear of Habsburg spies lurking among Mardi's household and villages.

As Niccolò, a natural storyteller, recounts his own tale and dramatizes Enzo's, a stronger bond between the two Italians becomes evident: that of forbidden romance and its inevitable follies. The rash and stubborn behavior of senseless youths in love is made all the more foolhardy by a hostile political environment that threatens to crush everyone, victims and perpetrators alike, in its relentless crusade against "subversives." Leaders, acting emotionally, use their authority to carry out personal vendettas. Lives, time and again, are destroyed by love and war. The moral of the story is, conclusively, that humanity remains the same even as the perpetual march of history alters the superficial appearance of things.

Despite its weighty subject matter, A Castle in Romagna is a very short book of only 102 pages. It is nevertheless a slow start, due to Štiks's fondness for rambling sentences that can easily make the reader lose track of the original topic. Sample:

Maria thought quickly, clearly, and correctly, but, unfortunately, on an unsound foundation, that love needed to be fought for, and she took firm hold of the tail of Enzo's horse, which, it seemed, willingly allowed her to take it as it made its way toward Catarina.

(Actually, I wonder if I might have the same problem?) Of course, the trouble with critiquing prose in a translation is that, no matter how skilled the translator, you are still not reading the original work. Nabokov once griped about reviewers who praise translated books for "reading smoothly," contending that one who does so is a mere "hack who has never read the original, and does not know its language, [and who] praises an imitation as readable because easy platitudes have replaced in it the intricacies of which he is unaware." That being said, however, another Croatian novel translated by Tomislav Kuzmanović that I have also read, Zoran Ferić's The Death of the Little Match Girl, did not have this same issue of long-windedness, so I would assume it is indeed reflective of Štiks's authentic voice. Which brings up yet another question: can one properly review a translated book if they are not familiar with the other work the translator has done? Food for thought. But as I said, as the suspense and emotional intensity of A Castle in Romagna increase, so does its readability until it finally starts to sail - dare I say it - smoothly.

Additional thought: The Death of the Little Match Girl is also set on Rab and deals with war and paranoia. Recurring themes in contemporary Croatian literature or is that too broad an assertion to make from two books? I will be reviewing a third Croatian novel, Slobodan Novak's Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, so stay tuned.

Wordless Wednesday

I just love this design blog! (Click here for more Wordless Wednesday.)

Finally!!!!

Folks, I may have finally found the perfect background! This one is from The Cutest Blog on the Block (they are credited at the bottom). I'm sorry: I know I'm always changing my blog around but I really like this design and I'm sticking with it!

Laundry (A Review)

Laundry
By Suzane Adam
Translated by Becka Mara McKay
Autumn Hill Books
250 pages
November 1, 2008
Lost in Translation Challenge Book #6




I feel almost like an archaeologist, chipping away at a widening pit, descending into it, into another room, a maze. I don't understand anything. I didn't know any of it, violating the oath of years of silence. In my family we always screamed the truth in each other's faces. This did not make me any happier, though at least we knew each other's sore points; her family is partitioned, everyone nursing his own pain.

Suzane Adam's 2000 novel Laundry (translated from Hebrew by Becka Mara McKay) has been described as a "psychological thriller," but I'm not sure "thriller" is the right label for it. That word makes me think of a mass-market paperback you'd purchase at CVS along with the shampoo, makeup, and Tylenol. I could be wrong, but to me, Laundry was indeed intensely psychological, but also possessing the depth and lyricism of literary art that transcends mere genre. It is also a tale of the human mind - one that becomes even more disturbing when the reader considers the following:

• Superficial charm
• Criminal versatility
• Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others
• Impulse control problems
• Pathological lying
• Deceitfulness/manipulativeness
• Aggressive or violent tendencies, repeated physical fights or assaults on others
• Lack of empathy
• Lack of remorse, indifferent to or rationalizes having hurt or mistreated others
• A sense of extreme entitlement
• Promiscuous sexual behavior, sexually deviant lifestyle
• Lack of personal insight
• Failure to follow any life plan
• Inability to distinguish right from wrong

Adam definitely did her research: the clinical diagnostic criteria for psychopathy fits Yutzi with terrifying precision.

Laundry is told from the first-person POV of two narrators in Israel in the 1970s: Ephraim, the primary voice, and his wife Ildiko née Rott, who relates to him the story of her lonely, fearful childhood, including the mental and physical abuse she experienced at the hands of Yutzi. The book opens in an emotional whirlwind: Ephraim is confused, frightened, and deeply agitated by a recent, possibly violent, catastrophe involving Ildiko, who at first retreated into herself and is now finally ready to spill out the secrets of her past. Her family has no idea why what happened has happened. To them, twenty years ago in their native Transylvania, Yutzi had found five-year-old Ildiko wandering around after having been lost for three hours. Since then, Yutzi (whose troubled homelife included a morbidly obese, immobile mother and two violent, controlling brothers) has been an adopted daughter of sorts, with whom Ildiko's mother has maintained correspondence ever since the family's move to Israel when Ildiko was eight. Tiny, trusting Ildiko had idolized seventeen-year-old Yutzi as a beautiful older girl and followed her incessantly. In retaliation, Yutzi took her to the slaughterhouse where she worked. There, Ildiko witnesses the butchering of calves and the grotesque assembly of sausages, recalled in vividly surreal passages reminiscent of Mercè Rodoreda's haunting dystopic novella Death in Spring. Before taking her home, Yutzi threatens to "rip your guts out." Though sweet and gracious to Ildiko's parents and baby sister (even as she secretly steals from them), Yutzi continues to emotionally torment Ildiko behind their backs. Finally, one night shortly before the Rotts' move to Israel, Ildiko awakens to find Yutzi, who was supposed to be babysitting, having sex with Ildiko's best friend's father in the Rotts' living room. Yutzi attempts to smother her, but is stopped only by her alarmed lover.

Throughout her childhood, Ildiko's family will wonder at her withdrawn nature and frequent illnesses that only vanish when they leave Romania for good. Ephraim, a landscaper, will also tell the reader the story of how he met the quiet, introspective painter who lived at her mother's house where he tended the garden. He is fond of the Beatles and has had a pointless affair with a girl he met at a disco, all the while dreaming of a simple, loving wife who will enjoy nature as he does and want to sleep in Kinneret with him under the stairs. When telling Mrs. Rott what Ildiko had told him about darling Yutzi, his reward is yet another long-buried secret: Mr. and Mrs. Rott's own surival of the Holocaust. Laundry is ultimately a novel of silence buried in silence. In the Rott family, no one talks and the effect is similar to Freud's social theories on repression. Specifically: that the more of it you exercise, the greater the inevitable release of suppressed feelings, drives, and instincts. As in much Israeli literature, the Holocaust lurks as an omnipresent force that continues to shape the lives of the characters in the present. After all, Ildiko learned the principles of silence from somewhere.

Laundry is also a tale of female violence. When discussing this topic in another post from a pure fantasy standpoint, I referenced a brief essay by author Carrie Vaughn, who critiqued the tendency of speculative fiction writers to feel that they have to "explain" a woman's aggressiveness by giving her a victimized past. Of course, Vaughn was talking about the highly stylized and often supernaturally-enhanced combat found in urban fantasy. In Laundry, by contrast, Suzane Adam is realistic to an uncomfortable degree and sugar coats nothing. It can certainly be argued that Yutzi has also been victimized, but at the same time, Adam makes it quite clear that that is not the source of her twisted nature. Shirley Jackson once said that "some houses are born bad," and you can obviously say the same of humans.

But what made Laundry so different (to me, anyway) was its oddly feminine approach to violence and abuse. Ildiko had seen Yutzi as role model, a kind of like a real-life fairy princess. Despite her psychopathic personality, however, Yutzi, as a young woman, is also rendered powerless by society and is herself a casualty of male abuse. Although she is doubtlessly one of the most unsympathetic characters I have ever come across in fiction, I think Yutzi will force most readers to reconsider their notions of women as being the inherently "more moral" sex. I'm not trying to argue that "girls can be genocidal tyrants toooo," but I remember reading an article about Pfc. Lynndie England that mentioned how shocked people were that a woman could be responsible for such horrific behavior. But really, the article went on to say, when you deny that women can be brutal you also deny that they are fully human, with all of humanity's highs and lows. In Christian Jungersen's The Exception, the point is made repeatedly that "victimizing others is a part of human nature." (Incidentelly, The Exception also centered on female aggression, but in a stereotypically "hysterical female" manner.) Because Laundry is, above all, a powerfully human tale that explores the relationships between people and how they can be formed and deformed by trauma and pure evil. It certainly makes for uncomfortable reading, as its well-drawn, fully-realized characters beg for and demand empathy that will leave you almost shaking. In short: strongly recommended for anyone brave enough to take it.



***
Challenge Update

I have now completed the Lost in Translation Challenge!

Suzane Adam, Laundry (Hebrew)
Christian Jungersen, The Exception (Danish)
Jakov Lind, Landscape in Concrete (German)
Ilja Pfeijffer, Rupert: A Confession (Dutch)
Mercè Rodoreda, Death in Spring (Catalan)
Jáchym Topol, City Sister Silver (Czech)

Teaser Tuesday

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from. That way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
• Please avoid spoilers!

A Castle in Romanga by Igor Štiks
Page 37 - He threw his waistcoat onto the chair, left his hat on the sofa, shoved his boots up to the door of the oak armoire, and listlessly pushed his trousers to the edge of the bed. He sank onto the bed with his full weight, eagerly awaiting the first rays of the peaceful afternoon sun, which would sweep his emerging sadness away, or so he was hoping when, suddenly, he found himself on a horse next to Mardi, embracing him forcefully despite the impediments of the quiver and standard with its familiar lynx.

An American Tragedy by Thomas Dreiser
Page 383 - Unfortunately for this, she was compelled, to her terror and dismay, to enter the factory one morning, just about this time, her face a symbol of even graver and more terrifying doubts and fears than any that had hitherto assailed her. For now, in addition to her own troubled conclusions in regard to Clyde, there had sprung up over night the dark and constraining fear that even this might not now be possible, for the present at least.

Windfall!

This past week, I have received four books from Autumn Hill Books. AHB may be located in Iowa, but these authors come from Israel, Croatia, and France.

























Clockwise from left:

Vassilis Alexakis's Foreign Words
Foreign Words, by Vassilis Alexakis, is an invitation au voyage, a book that takes us on a journey through time and space with the story teller as he travels from Paris where he lives as the book opens, to Greece where he grew up, and where his father has just died, to the Central African Republic as he undertakes the study of Sango. . .

The work is a profound meditation on language and loss, on the language of loss, and also on the power and magic of words — their power to change the way we see ourselves, their magic to renew our lives after hardship, loss, and death. The story is simultaneously filled with delicate suspense and emotional honesty, while the narration is full of humor, tender self-deprecation, and subtle irony.

Suzane Adam's Laundry
Laundry is a novel of psychological suspense that focuses on family relationships and the aftermath of childhood trauma. It is not a novel of the Holocaust, but like much Israeli literature, Laundry is driven by characters whose lives were shaped by the Holocaust-so much so that those events become a silent character in the novel. In 1960s Transylvania, where the novel begins, the main character, five-year-old Ildiko, experiences psychological abuse at the hands of an older girl, Yutzi, whom she worships and follows everywhere. Though Ildiko's family emigrates to Israel soon after, Ildiko's life continues to be shaped by the secret of the trauma that she carries with her. Ildiko tells her story in flashback to her worried husband, who at the novel's start is nearly hysterical with worry about a recent mysterious and possibly violent incident. Only as Ildiko's story unfolds-and with it the parallel stories of her family and her husband-do we come to understand what has taken place, and how Ildiko's story has come full circle.

Igor Štiks's A Castle in Romagna
In eleven tightly woven chapters that alternate between Renaissance Italy and Tito's Yugoslavia, this novel weaves a double spiral of love, intrigue and betrayal at one and the same time. Here it is Rimini, 1535, and the Croatian island of Rab, 1948, just days after Tito's momentous break with Stalin. Lives and fates are intertwined, history repeats itself, nostalgia for home is bittersweet and undying.

Slobodan Novak's Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh
Dispossessed of her vast property on the island of Rab by the Communist authorities of Yugoslavia, 100-year-old Madonna lies on her death bed. She is finicky, frail and foul-smelling, a "miracle of nature," according to the narrator Mali, because her body continues to function at all. Mali looks after her, patient and exasperated. His identity is never made clear. He may or may not be a relative. He stands to gain little or nothing when she passes on. He waits, performing his duty, remembering and reflecting on his life and the life of the island, his country. In the finely honed lyrical prose of a mid-20th-century masterpiece, Slobodan Novak explores family, religion, the individual, the state, duty, memory, and love in a manner reminiscent of Chekhov, Beckett, Borges and Kis. Madonna's passing is the passing of the way of life and thought of an entire age.

For more Mailbox Monday, click here.

Note: This blog is still relatively new, so this isn't something I'm going to be able to do every week. But hopefully that will soon change!

Sunday Salon

Today I must work from 5 pm to 11. Unlike many people, I actually prefer early morning hours because then I can get the whole unpleasantness over with. (Luckily, I will be starting a new job next week!) Unfortunately, because I had to work yesterday as well, I was unable to participate in Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon. My reading can be pretty sporadic, so having a challenge set for me would have been a great help. In fact, the only reason I am continuing to plod along through An American Tragedy is because of the Chunkster Challenge. The intro says that Dreiser's ponderous prose will soon become an "emotional vortex," but so far the only thing that sucks is, well, the ponderous prose. Ugh, here is a sample:

But more interesting and more to his purpose at the time was the fact that both Hegglund and Ratterer, in spite of, or possibly because of, a secret sense of superiority which they detected in Clyde, were inclined to look upon him with no little interest and to court him and to include him among all their thoughts of affairs and pleasures.

Alas, Dreiser's love affair with litotes, convoluted sentences, and unfortunate names (Hortense?) is as tragic as Clyde and . . . that girl he ends up killing. I don't know who it is yet because I haven't gotten to that part.

In the meantime, however, I am currently breezing through Suzane Adam's Laundry, one of four books I have just received from Autumn Hill Books. It's an Israeli novel, translated from Hebrew by Becka Mara McKay. I am about halfway through and thoroughly enjoying it. Normally I find psychological thrillers boring, but Adam's prose, even in translation, is beautifully done. Added to that is the unfolding mystery of both Ildiko's past and recent events that have necessitated a lawyer and almost resulted in her being committed to the psych ward. (It is also interesting how all these Hungarian names sound Japanese - i.e. Yutzi, Zsuzsi, Marishka.) The other three books I got from AHB are also translated fiction, which I hope to make the primary focus of this blog.

I am also very pleased to announce that my review for HarperStudio's upcoming Who is Mark Twain? is up! When Twain died in 1910, he left behind some 500,000 pages of written remains, multitudes of which remain unpublished. Robert H. Hirst of Berkeley's Mark Twain Project has hand-picked twenty-four of these literary scraps, some unfinished, to introduced to the reading public for the very first time. Needless to say, I am very pleased to have been given an advance copy! Who is Mark Twain? will be released on the 21st, and I strongly recommend it for anyone who would like a novel introduction to one of America's greatest authors.

Although I haven't picked it up in several days, I would also like to re-read A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 by Michael McGerr, having won a copy of Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler's The Crimes of Paris from a giveaway on Unmainstream Mom Reads. The Crimes of Paris deals with the Modernist art movement of the early twentieth century, which is also my favorite time period to study. I read A Fierce Discontent in college and did a multimedia presentation on it (that involved a listening to "Your Daddy's Son" from the Ragtime musical and a book of Alfred Stieglitz photography), but most of it has by now slipped my mind. If I could chose any era to have lived in, it would New York City from 1890 to 1930! The Crimes of Paris should be excellent!

Okay, now I'm off to other Sunday Salons on other blogs. Happy reading, everyone!

Who is Mark Twain? (A Review)

Who is Mark Twain?
By Mark Twain
Edited by Robert H. Hirst
HarperStudio
206 pages
April 21, 2009





[The grave's] occupant has one privilege which is not exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not really without this privilege - strictly speaking - but as he possesses it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks with the act of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always - when committed. Which is to say seldom. - from "The Privilege of the Grave"

In 1900, Mark Twain wrote an editorial entitled "The Missionary in World Politics," originally intended for publication in the London Times. Palpable anger smolders beneath the polished veneer of a journalistic conviction intended to persuade the reader over the breakfast table. Now you, complacent Westerner, Twain charges, now you imagine what it would feel like to watch foreigners traverse, uninvited, throughout your homeland, telling your children that your native religion is the sure ticket to eternal damnation, which has doubtlessly been the fate of all your heathen ancestors. And we wonder at the murderous rage this inspires, he continues, and then fail to see that the insult is only compounded when colonial punishment is meted out and a new, overbearing church is built in memorial to the fallen Christian martyr. "[The missionary] has loaded vast China onto the Concert of Christian Birds of Prey; and they were glad, smelling carrion; but they have lit and are astonished, finding the carcase alive. And it may remain alive - Europe cannot tell, yet," Twain concludes, ominously foretelling a dark future should European exploitation of China continue unabated. The editorial is signed with an anonymous X, but it was never published anyway - it turned out that the "massacre of the Ministers" had been a mere rumor. The topic of the piece nevertheless remains pertinent today, while the tone and the imagery further emphasize the anti-imperialist sentiments of an author all too often derided as a racist.

"The Missionary in World Politics" also brings together two main themes - free speech and issues with the American publishing industry - that run throughout HarperStudio's new book Who is Mark Twain?, a collection of twenty-four previously unpublished essays, sketches, thoughts, and short stories by the famed writer whose real name was Samuel Clemens. Although he never left explicit instructions for dealing with his vast collection of written remains - roughly half a million pages of everything from personal correspondence to bills to manuscripts to miscellaneous notebooks - Twain certainly implied that he would greatly prefer that most of it be published only after his death. "He seems to have been wholly willing to let posterity read them," says editor Robert H. Hirst, "unafraid of the light they might cast on his talent, or the way he wrote. That unusual willingness to let the world see how he worked, including how he failed or simply misfired, had only one precondition - he must not be alive at the time." As indicated by the title, the purpose of this newly-released compendium is to contribute to a greater understanding of an American literary giant: to clarify and illuminate him as both an artist and an individual. But, as an occupant of the grave, Twain is also protected from whatever public outcry and vilification he felt would accompany the publication of his more controversial works. Pure, unadulterated free speech, he felt, is a risky endeavor for the living, but the dead are more easily forgiven.

Each item in the book was handpicked by Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California in Berkeley. While some are complete short works, others remain unfinished or unedited ("Conversations with Satan," for example, starts out very promisingly but soon veers off onto a tangent about taste in cigars and then abruptly cuts off). Opening the collection is, appropriately, a farcical essay entitled "Whenever I Am About to Publish a Book." Although Twain never knows exactly what kind of book he is writing until the literary critics tell him, he still wants to know what the general public will think of it, so he lists fourteen distinct "focus groups" (i.e. "Men and women with no sense of humor, "Men and women with a prodigious sense of humor," "A sentimental person") to whom he likes to gives private readings. "I seem to be making a distinction here," he observes, "I seem to be separating the professional reviewer from the human family; I seem to be intimating that he is not a part of the public, but a class by himself." That is not entirely the case, he goes on to explain: the professional reviewer simply represents a tiny sliver of the reading public, the crème de la crème who has the God-given authority to determine if you should be enjoying your new book or not. But whether or not he actually decides to publish the book in the first place depends largely on the opinion of the "Man who always goes to sleep," who must remain awake for at least three-quarters of an hour during the Twain's test run.

"Whenever I Am About to Publish a Book" also establishes Twain's tenuous relationship to the press, particularly the American press. The context of "The Missionary in World Politics," as well as the disparity Twain has noted between the freedom of speech accorded to the living and the dead, both indicate an ongoing resentment of the de facto social restrictions on what can and cannot be published. Two other pieces entitled "The Force of 'Suggestion'" and "Interviewing the Interviewer" also reveal a frustration with the often sensationalist and salacious nature of the "yellow journalism" that prevailed at the time. In the latter work, Twain takes aim at Charles A. Dana of the New York Sun and envisions a meeting between the two of them wherein Twain (ironically) plays the role of humble advice-seeker. "My son, unto none but you would I reveal the secret," he imagines Dana telling him,

". . . The first great end and aim of journalism is to make a sensation. Never let your paper go to press without a sensation. If you have none, make one. Seize upon the prominent events of the day, and clamor about them with a maniacal fury that demands attention. Vilify everything that is unpopular - harry it, haunt it, abuse it, without rhyme or reason, so that you get a sensation out of it. Laud that which is popular - unless you feel sure that you can make it unpopular by attacking it. Hit every man that is down - never fail in this, for it is safe. . . If an uncalled-for onslaught upon a neighboring editor who has made you play second fiddle in journalism can take the bread out of his mouth and send him in disgrace from his post, let him have it! Do not mind a little lying, a liberal garbling of his telegrams, a mean prying into his private affairs and a pitiful and treacherous exposure of his private letters. It takes a very small nature to get down to this, but I managed it and you can - and it makes a princely sensation."

Dana's imaginary "advice" also graphically reflects Twain's wariness of attracting public animosity as a living man writing controversial material. And yet, the last piece in the book, "The American Press," appears almost as a note of redemption for the hitherto darkly satirical portrayals of the state of American publishing. Twain is responding to English poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold's disparagement of American newspapers as lacking in reverence and respect. "Goethe says somewhere that 'the thrill of awe' - that is to say, REVERENCE - 'is the best thing humanity has,'" Arnold is quoted as saying. On the contrary, Twain contends, the European newspapers remain stupidly and thoughtlessly committed to propping up their nations' archaic governments and, to that end, maintain a sonorously serious aspect utterly lacking in any sense of humor. "Professor Mahaffy on Equality" also counters another European mischaracterization of American culture, as Twain responds to Mahaffy's apparent confusion of "physical equality" with the Constitution's proclamation of political equality. For all his difficulties with his country and its institutions, Twain was also more than willing to defend America from its misinformed detrators and proclaim it as the greatest, most free nation on earth.

At the same time, however, Twain's travel memoir Roughing It certainly leaves the reader with a profound sense of disillusionment as, one by one, American dreams and myths are acerbically torn down. The overall tone of the works in Who is Mark Twain? is likewise one of hard realism and a playfully pessimistic view of human nature, with a witty edge reminiscent (to modern readers) of TV's Dr. Gregory House ("Everybody lies!"). In "The Undertaker's Tale," a family in the graveyard business lists their sick neighbors as business assets and despairs of ever having a "good season," especially after the cholera epidemic misses their town. "Dr. Van Dyke as a Man and as a Fisherman" ironically makes use of the parable (in this case, the noble Christian Van Dyke luring an innocent fish to his hook of death) to illustrate the impossibility of man's ever living up to his own lofty ideals. But not that Twain is blind to his own faults:

Satan would not allow me to take his hat, but put it on the table himself, and begged me not to put myself to any trouble about him, but treat him just as I would an old friend; and added that that was what he was - an old friend of mine, and also one of my most ardent and grateful admirers. It seemed such a double compliment; still, it was said in such a winning and gracious way that I could not help feeling gratified and proud.

"Conversations with Satan" is emblematic of the entire collection: a small fragment of Twain, raw and unfinished, but still recognizably Twain in its biting satire (of courtly manners and the author himself) and brazen honesty. Despite having been previously unpublished, the selections in Who is Mark Twain? are definitely not second-rate when compared to his famous works. Twain's unique voice is heard in multiple genres, from travel accounts to indignant editorials to a wide range of short stories (one of my favorites, the sad and adorable "Telegraph Dog," surprised me with its striking tenderness and the pathos surrounding loyal, tragic little Billy). Who is Mark Twain? comes strongly recommended for anyone seeking a greater understanding of an American literary great whose candor makes him a contentious figure even today. It is both a quick, comprehensive introduction to readers unfamiliar with Twain and a great supplement to a full literary diet of Twain. Considering the 500,000+ pages he left behind, I am sure we can expect another book like this one in the future.


I would like to give a special thanks to Kathryn and everyone at HarperStudios for inviting me to review this excellent book.

Crazy Bookshelves

I got the idea from the blog Nonsuch Book, which also occasionally features creative and whimsical bookshelves.












Sources (in no particular order): Design Corner, Jennifer Convertibles, Metacrazy.com, Crookedbrains.net, and Trendhunter magazine.

And Now For Something Completely Frivolous. . .

I made this for the ROFLRAZZI on icanhascheezburger.com:

That, of course, would be the vampire Alucard from Kohta Hirano's manga series Hellsing.

Wordless Wednesday

This is from fashion photographer James Merrill. I first encountered him on one of my favorite design blogs please sir. I LOVE his sense of atmosphere! (Click here for more Wordless Wednesday.)

The Officers' Ward (A Review)

I knew nothing of the Great War. I knew nothing of the muddy trenches, the dampness that seeps into the bones, the big black rats in their winter fur dodging among the mounds of refuse, the stench a mixture of cheap tobacco and half-buried excrement, and over everything, the unvaried metal-grey sky that unleashes a torrent of rain at regular intervals, as if God can never refrain from hounding the ordinary soldier.

Marc Dugain was born in 1957 in Senegal to French parents. He returned to France at age seven and often accompanied his grandfather to La maison des Gueules cassées (the Castle of the Broken Faces) in Moussy-le-Vieux. Established in 1925 by the newly-formed L'Union des Blessés de la Face et de la Tête (rough translation: Union of the Injured in the Face and Head), the castle was one of two institutions set aside where disfigured veterans of World War I and later wars could recuperate and congregate, and bring their families for events and children's summer camps. Although Dugain would later become CEO of an airline, the story of his grandfather and his friends remained with him, prompting him to write La Chambre des officiers (The Officers' Ward, translated by Howard Curtis) in 1998. It was an immediate commercial and critical success, going on to win some twenty literary prizes including the Prix de Libraires, the Prix des Deus Magots, and the Prix Roger Nimier. A movie directed by François Dupeyron was released in 2001. Since then, Dugain has left his corporate job to write three more novels: Campagne anglaise (The English Campaign), La malédiction d'Edgar (The Curse of Edgar, about J. Edgar Hoover), and Une exécution ordinaire (A Regular Execution).

Main character Adrien Fournier, based on Dugain's grandfather, is a dashing lieutenant at the very dawn of the Great War. As in every American account I have read of this era (in addition to the original All Quiet on the Western Front film, based on the German novel), the coming catastrophe is currently being painted as a patriotic struggle against the [insert enemy name here], who must be stopped at all costs or else puppies will be eaten and unicorns will go extinct. The evening before he leaves for the front, Fournier meets the lovely Clémence, has a one-night stand, and falls in love. Forty-eight hours later, the very first day of the war, Fournier and his squad are ambushed by German mortars. Everyone is killed except Fournier, whose face is torn half off by shrapnel.

After a painful and hallucinatory ambulance ride, Fournier is taken to the officers' wing of the maxillofacial ward of the Val-de-Grâce hospital in Paris. He is its very first patients, although the staff earnestly promises that he won't be lonely for long. Three other gueules cassées soon arrive: Pierre Weil, jovial Jewish pilot with severe burns and a missing nose; Henri de Pananster, a Breton aristocrat and devout Catholic who lost half his chin; and a third, anonymous man buried under gauze who never wakes up. All mirrors have been removed, but a glimpse of his reflection in a window nearly drives Fournier to suicide: there is "tunnel" where the middle of his face used to be. It is as though his nose and upper jaw have been sucked into a black hole. The loss of his palate means that eating and talking are now impossible and he will have to re-learn these basic skills while undergoing extensive (and revolutionary) reconstructive surgery.

Fournier will spend the remainder of the war (five years) in the officers' ward, where he will form an intense bond with Weil and Pananster and his fellow patients. Though simply told and never sentimental, the novel is an unpretentious toast to the human spirit and its astonishing will to overcome tragedy. Historical detail is richly subtle and often surprising. For example, a new admittee who apparently survived a suicide attempt (the bullet passed through his chin and out his forehead) immediately becomes an outcast for trying to do to himself what the Germans had attempted to do to all of them and failed. Meanwhile, the character of Marguerite - a formerly beautiful nurse whom Fournier now describes as a row of roses in which one has been forcefully ripped out - brings to the forefront simmering questions of sexism and the relationship of society to the disabled and disfigured. The ending follows the Fournier and his friends through their marriages (except Marguerite, who remains single) and right up to the very end of World War II, during which they hid Weil and his family from the occupying Nazis in a barn on Pananster's property. The Officers' Ward closes at a funeral, where disfigured veterans of World War II are encountered and Fournier promises to teach them how to live again.

Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain the movie La Chambre des officiers in a lawful manner and was forced into a life of crime. Specifically: I had to install µTorrent and download it illegally! I didn't think it was that big a deal but then I downloaded Silent Hill and realized I was on a slippery slope. (From now on, it is the lesser evil of streaming TV and movies via Surfthechannel.com.) So anyway, this is Eric Caravaca as Adrien Fournier. (To take screenshots from VLC Player on a PC, you must hit ctrl-alt-s, not the Printscreen key! The image will be automatically saved to My Pictures.) I got really annoyed Google Image searching for a picture of Fournier's new face and not finding anything, so I decided to include this one from the end of the movie. Doesn't look anything as severe as the book described, though.

Also: I found this French page about the history of the gueules cassées. Problem is, you go there and are immediately assaulted by all these really graphic clinical photographs. Do not want!

Oh Limp Bizkit. . .

I just found this oddly nostalgic and thought-provoking article by Jonah Weiner on Slate magazine: "Was Limp Bizkit Really That Bad?"

*Sigh*

Darling Fred, has it really been that long? I remember when you first hit it big! I was in seventh grade. "Re-Arranged" was my favorite song. Lo! the glory and the indignation. And I still remember when I first heard "Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)" on the radio! But maturity surprised us, coming over the mountains with a shower of rain; we stopped in the pizzeria, and went on in sunlight, onto Hometown Main Street and drank screwdrivers, and talked for an hour. Oh my God Rob Zombie is sooooo hawt did you see him on the Rolling Stone cover he is way more badass than Marilyn Manson.

I remember 9/11 too (I was 15) when they said irony was finally dead. . . Well, that was an overstatement, it just went on hiatus for a few months, but what, I wonder is the difference between irony and guilty pleasure? According to Weiner:

It's overly generous to argue that Durst is in on the joke, exactly; when he threatens to wield a chainsaw against trash-talkers on "Break Stuff," or names a song "Break Stuff" in the first place, he probably doesn't intend to exaggerate white-male angst till it becomes satire. But in his quest to attract as many young, surly suburban fans as he can, Durst clearly enjoys hamming up his role to the point of grotesquerie—and that might amount to the same thing.

I guess it's kind of like the Twilight series: brainless entertainment that nevertheless, on some collectively visceral level, just speaks to the feelings of millions of angsty teens and is ultimately more about sheer emotional appeal than actual art. As the UK Times put it, Twilight captures "perfectly the teenage feeling of sexual tension and alienation." Same thing with Limp Bizkit. They had their moment in the adolescent sun; today, they are that braindead band you liked in high school and still enjoy in a weirdly wistful way. Oh to be young again!