50 book challenge: #53, #54, #55 (last 2007 post edition)

#53: Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great. God, you're so vain. You probably think this book is about you.

#54: Ellen Litman, The Last Chicken in America. A so-called "novel in stories," which means that it was basically a collection of short stories, but those don't usually sell well so hey, let's call it a novel. Stories from a Russian Jewish immigrant to Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. Occasionally cloying, but the local detail was irresistible.

#55: Stendhal, The Red and the Black. A remarkable novel. Julien Morel was one of the most singular characters I've known. It's not often you can have a thoroughly hypocritical, only marginally likeable person carry a novel for 600 pages, but when you have a supporting cast as forceful as Madame de Renal and Mathilde de la Mole - and a motivating genius like Stendhal's - you can do it. The novel was so thoroughly interworked with very subtle references to French politics of 1830 that I'm sure I missed a lot, even with the notes (and the lousy translation didn't help), but A+++ would read again.

Careful: your brain might asplode.

Behold: the 103d edition of the King William's College General Knowledge Paper: the most intimidating trivia quiz ever created by the mind of man. On a first (google-free) run, I think I got, like, 1. And you will find that google is not even that helpful.

I learned something today.

In Japanese, the word "Subaru" refers to the Pleiades star cluster, and that is why the car company's logo is made up of stars. Pass this on and you will be lucky in the new year!

50 book challenge: #51, #52.

#51: Pierre Bayard, How to talk about books you haven't read.

The dominant mode of relating to books is, of course, by not reading them. The thesis of this short, brilliant work is that the notion of "not-reading" is more ambiguous than we usually admit. His job is to relieve the anxiety and shame that go along with "not having read a book," in order to liberate (non)readers to talk about them anyway. There is some overreaching here, but overall this is one of the best books I read this year, and one of the most stimulating books I have ever read (or at least as far as I can remember, which is kind of the point). For all you haters out there, yes, I did read most of this book - I probably skimmed only about a dozen pages altogether. If you have a problem with that last sentence, then I say to you, "Tolle, lege."

This interviewer from the N.Y. Times claims to have read the book before talking to Prof. Bayard; to judge from her questions, she has thereby confirmed Bayard's thesis that having read a book does not necessarily enable you to make intelligent observations based on it.

#52: Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End. Well, this book has appeared on several year-end "best of" lists, but it left me feeling a little meh. The characters have distinctive personalities, interests, and actions, but they all seemed to talk in the same casual, banter-y, bright-toned register. Also, hasn't this tale of cubicle life been done before? Why does the subject seem so familiar? It's not a particular novel I have in mind, though more knowledgeable readers (or non-readers!) may know more, but it's definitely been worked over in other mediums - comics (Dilbert, right?), TV and movies (The Office, Office Space, Clockwatchers, etc.) Enjoyable enough, if you've got nothing else to do at your cube farm.

Denis Johnson: second worst writer of his generation?

I felt this way about Colm Toibin's The Master, but no one seemed to agree with me:

When a novel’s first words are "Last night at 3:00 a.m. President Kennedy had been killed," and the rest of it evinces no more feel for the English language and often a good deal less, and America’s most revered living writer touts "prose of amazing power and stylishness" on the back cover, and reviewers agree that whatever may be wrong with the book, there’s no faulting its finely crafted sentences—when I see all this, I begin to smell a rat. Nothing sinister, mind you. It’s just that once we Americans have ushered a writer into the contemporary pantheon, we will lie to ourselves to keep him there.

Having read nothing by Denis Johnson except Tree of Smoke, his latest novel, I see no reason to consider him a great or even a good writer, but he is apparently very well thought of by everyone else. According to The New York Times, which in 2006 sent a questionnaire to writers, editors, and critics, a collection of Johnson’s short stories titled Jesus’ Son is regarded by some as the best American book of the past 25 years. He is often called "a writer’s writer," with the customary implication that this is far better than being a reader’s writer. Denis Johnson is, in short, the sort of novelist whose work one expects to be reviewed on the cover of every prominent newspaper’s book section, as Tree of Smoke was in September. Equally predictable was the reviewers’ implicit injunction that we should ask not what the book can do for us, but what it can do for Johnson’s place in American letters. This much is standard Important Writer treatment, and for all I know, Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times), Jim Lewis (The New York Times Book Review), and other reviewers consider Johnson worthy of it no matter what he puts out. What I find difficult to believe is that they admire Tree of Smoke. For one thing, their own prose is better than anything in it.

The novel is attacked on both stylistic and mimetic grounds. Read on, if you dare. But be warned: "It would be a rare novel that did not yield some infelicities, but I defy anyone to argue that those quoted here are not representative of every page of Tree of Smoke. I might also point out that no book review can convey the tedium of reading bad prose in such unrelieved bulk."

50 book challenge: #50.

#50: Lytton Strachey: Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. The funny thing about reading Eminent Victorians is that today it can be hard to understand intuitively why it was so innovative. E&E has a different quality, though - today, people still don't write history like this. Maybe it's viewed as too speculative, presumptuous (in speculating about motives or feelings), or just plain pretentious. For me, though, even if a historical narrative/argument is tendentious, I like it if it at least gives me a definite view - something to push back against. That kind of quality can be a good aide de memoire, if nothing else. Anyway, that's one of the reasons why this is such a fine work. I don't know anything about current opinion of the work's merits. I have a multivolume Strachey biography sitting on my shelves that I hope to get around to, someday.

Recursion.

The best of the "best of" lists of 2007.

There is no cabal.

This is obviously the first (or last?) step in a Masonic conspiracy:

Four members of an underground "cultural guerrilla" movement known as the Untergunther, whose purpose is to restore France's cultural heritage, were cleared on Friday of breaking into the 18th-century monument in a plot worthy of Dan Brown or Umberto Eco.

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon's unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid "illegal restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.

Hey, people! They were not there to fix a clock! You can see the hideout here.

50 book challenge: #49.

#49: Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. The novel's originality of concept is praiseworthy, but the execution was quietly annoying, and a little half-baked. The plot moved slowly, too slowly if the idea was to mimic a Chandler novel. And there seemed to be too much overwritten description: all very artfully done, but seeming like the product of a writing workshop exercise ("O.K., now your main character, this Landsman fellow, meets a scrappy Alaskan bush pilot. Bring the bush pilot to life in 150 words.") In other words, every character introduction was accompanied by a very inventive description of clothing, quirks, facial features, etc., but how is that enhancing my enjoyment of the story, or necessary to it? Maybe my expectations were too high.

Now that's a mishpacha.

The gang.






Cara entertains the troops.












Papa shows Benji how it's done.

























Dovid embraces Elisha. Or tries to steal his ball. You decide.