Novel Thoughts

While I've read a number of novels since In Search of Lost Time, I probably won't get around to writing much about them. But that doesn't mean I don't have anything to say about any of them, however brief or truncated. Here are notes on some of them; other novels have their own posts.

Molloy, Malone Dies, & The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett:
Gabriel Josipovici has written in a few places about how, as a young man feeling urgently the need to write, he felt overwhelmed by the examples set by such writers as Tolstoy, Conrad, Dickens, George Eliot. Their works seemed complete, hermetically sealed, sure of themselves. It was writers like Proust and T.S. Eliot who helped show him the way out of his problem, with their inclusion of, awareness of, failure in their work. Beckett, too, of course. "Fail better", and so on. I've felt a twinge of recognition in reading Josipovici's words. As I've said here before, my problem was even more acute: I refused to even acknowledge the need to speak. There were however times when words would occur to me, formal ideas perhaps, and I'd immediately discount them as invalid. Which brings me to Beckett's prose trilogy. I actually read these before finishing Proust. Where I'd previously said that I didn't want to read any other fiction till I'd finished In Search of Lost Time, I found myself bogged down, unable to get started with the fifth volume, The Captive. With none of my available non-fiction doing it for me either, I opted for Beckett. It was just what I needed: I quickly read Molloy and Malone Dies, though The Unnamable was somewhat slower going, as might be expected. I feel a great affinity with his writing, in a way that's hard to describe, so I won't try to cram it in here. But there's something familiar here, a recognition. I'll be reading a lot of Beckett in the coming years.

Bartleby & Co. and Montano's Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas (both translated by Jonathan Dunne): It's uncanny: here is a writer seemingly addressing the very things I've been thinking about, perhaps without my always knowing it, though certainly the correspondence with what have been ongoing concerns here is obvious. Lars is right, of course, there are no models. But it was nice, semi-inspiring even, to come across such assemblages of writers confronting these similar types of problems. Writers of No; refusals; the sickness of literature, literature as sickness. I must, however, admit that my attention flagged while reading both, and the second was in particular a slog for me to finish. Almost as if he'd made his point, and I grew increasingly weary of the elaboration (though no doubt he needed to see his conception through, and can I blame him?).

To the Lighthouse and Orlando by Virginia Woolf:
Ten months into the year, and I've only read two books written by women? Wow. Woolf was long one of those writers, like Joyce, who represented for my imagination "difficulty" in literary Modernism. This, of course, was without reading a word of her writing. Mrs Dalloway changed that slightly, some years ago. These even more so. They were a great pleasure to read, particularly To the Lighthouse. In both, I especially enjoyed the short passages describing the artist's vision and process, one of which I excerpted elsewhere. Other than The Waves, which is already on my to-read list, what else of Woolf's fiction should I read? All of it?

Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee:
I'm with Waggish and Steve on this one. Actually, in this case, I suspect I will have more to say about it. For now let me just say that I'm amazed that readers still insist on assuming that the "opinions" in this book are necessarily held by J.M. Coetzee himself, and that their content have much to do with the success or failure of the book.

The Immortal Bartfuss by Aharon Appelfeld (translated by Jeffrey Green):
This is the first Appelfeld novel I've read that takes place after the Holocaust. I'm sorry to report that I have very little to say about it at this time.

Bloggers of the No

Apropos of this post, Aimée asked me about this "bloggers of the No" business. I replied that the novel I'd just finished, Enrique Vila-Matas' Bartleby & Co., is all about writers who refuse to write, writers who have stopped writing, and so on. "If they've stopped writing, how are they still writers?" Ha! I paused before saying something vague to the effect that it had to do with the Blanchot and Heidegger I'd been reading. Ugh. Forgive me for the glibness of this answer. I was tired and fading fast and unsure how much to say before falling asleep. Which is not to say that the Blanchot and Heidegger is not related. But the point I would have tried to get across, were I more awake and able to find the words, is that it's all related, all that I've been writing about here. But this is somehow still unacceptable.

My next post was a passage from Vila-Matas' Montano's Malady. Lloyd Mintern commented that the book has been "as much an influence on [his] personal history, as when [he] first read Alain Robbe-Grillet". I feel I know what he means. Though my reading of Montano's Malady was far from ideal. It took me three (very) sleepy weeks--a long time for a short book--so it was choppier than I would have liked. Even so, I found much to like in the book, as in Bartleby & Co. But more than anything, they made me think of my own problems writing--my own refusals. I feel an urge to write about this, along with a strong reluctance to do so. A voice tells me that I shouldn't write about this, shouldn't blog about it, shouldn't give in to the solipsistic impulse. (I know, it's a blog.) I've gotten away from writing whatever it is I was writing, in favor of writing about myself in terms of the books I'm reading. Or so it seems. Maybe it's just my imagination. I think it's that writing about this enables me to write about other things--existence, politics even. It's that, reading what I've been reading, the Vila-Matas books mentioned above and, of course, Proust and Beckett, I recognize possibilities. I recognize myself, in some sense.

Sometimes it seems easier to just stop--it comes so slowly, and I'm so often so tired. But I still feel that need to get something across, to myself if no one else.

Noted: Enrique Vila-Matas

From Montano's Malady:

Gradually the percentage of copying in my poems decreased and slowly, but with a certain amount of confidence, my own personal style evolved, always constructed--to a greater or lesser extent--with the collaboration of those writers whose blood I sucked for my own benefit. Without haste, I began to acquire a little of my own style, nothing dazzling, but sufficient, something that was unmistakably mine, thanks to vampirism and the involuntary collaboration of the rest, those writers I laid hands on to find my personal literature. Without haste, arriving always after, in second place, accompanying a writer, all the Cernudas I discovered along the way, who appeared first, original. Without haste, like Walser's secondary or Joseph Roth's discreet characters, who pass through life in endless flight, placing themselves on the margins of the reality that troubles them so much and also on the margins of existence--in the face of the mechanism of sameness so dominant in the world today, to defend an extreme residue of irreducible individuality, something that is unmistakably theirs. I discovered mine in the others, arriving after them, first accompanying them and later liberating myself.

I think I can now say, for example, that thanks to Cernuda's protective staff I began to walk on my own and to find out what kind of writer I was, and also not to know who I was, or, better put, to know who I was, but just a bit, in the same way as my literary style is just an extreme residue, but that will always be better than nothing. The same can applied to my existence: I have just a bit of my own life--as can be observed in this timid dictionary--but it is unmistakably mine, which, to be honest, to me already seems a lot. Given the state of the world, it is no small thing to have a bit of autobiography.

Checking in

I've been tired. . . busy. . . just a brief reading update.

I finished reading Time Regained the other day, thus coming to the end of In Search of Lost Time. What can I say? I won't get into too much just now, though it's funny: people--friends, co-workers--congratulate me on having finished it. Like it's an accomplishment. To be fair, I tell these people I've finished it. And I had, over the last several months, reported on my progress. Why? Is it simply a pointless boast? I'd like to think not! (Is it substantially different from blogging?) People are curious. They like to talk about what they read, too, and they've heard of Proust, see me with whichever volume I'm reading, want to know something about it. But what can I tell them? I like it? Will anything I say convey anything of interest about the book? Maybe. And, yeah, it's long. But, the thing is, Proust isn't difficult to read, not really, not in the manner of some writers. Blah blah blah. . . Anyway, it feels weird now, not having Proust to read. Granted, I wasn't reading the book exclusively--and there was quite a big gap of time between volumes 4 & 5--but there was always it to return to. I could just read it again, of course, but I'm not going to, not right now. I mentioned earlier that it felt wrong to read any other fiction while in the midst of In Search of Lost Time, and I meant it. Then I was having trouble getting started on The Captive (mostly because I was so often exhausted and having a hard time focusing on Proust's rhythm through the fog). Several passes at the opening got me nowhere, hence the big gap. But I felt the need for some narrative. I pulled books down from our shelves, looking for something worth breaking my self-imposed rule. Finally, Molloy was just the ticket to get me moving again. More on that experience, and the experience of reading Beckett's prose trilogy, in another post.

I made some noise about reading Blanchot's The Space of Literature. Naturally, since then I haven't made it much further into it. However, on recommendations from Mark and Steve, I picked up a copy of Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Thought and am, unexpectedly, finding it much easier going than Blanchot. Which is not to say it's an easy read. Far from it. But there's a lot to chew on, and I know I'll be having something to say about it here. (And, yes, I will be returning to my Blanchot reading and notes.)

Months ago, I packed up a lot of my books into storage in anticipation of the arrival of the baby, and more of them will be going into storage soon. I made a small pile of books that I thought were most likely to be read over the next several months. From this pile, I've begun reading Enrique Vila-Matas' Bartleby & Co. How many of us are bloggers of the No? (Not enough of us?) It turns out that this is the perfect time for me to be reading this book. I hope to be able to explore some of my thinking on it here. Time permitting. On the fiction reading horizon: Vila-Matas' Montano's Malady, of course, but then some women. I've noticed that every book I've read this year, fiction or not, was written by a man. Now, in fiction, with Proust and Beckett as my major projects for the year, that's understandable, but still. Anyway: perhaps some Virginia Woolf? I have not read Orlando (acquired years ago, after I read an enthusiastic passage or two on the novel by William H. Gass) or To the Lighthouse, both of which we have on hand, plus a re-read of Mrs. Dalloway may be in order. I expect I'll be reading a fair amount of Marguerite Duras, with six titles awaiting me. And Carole Maso. I've always liked Carole Maso, and it could finally be time for AVA.

But then, maybe I'll just scrap it all and read Capital along with David Harvey. . . if the introductory video is any indication, it's really worth it (link originally via From Despair to Where?, but also via ReadySteadyBlog... ). Which of course reminds me of all the political posts I haven't written (apparently there's some election campaign on), all the food- and oil- and war- and housing- and money-related articles I've meant to link to and write about, but haven't. . . (summary: things are mess)