Slow Learner

Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon. Bantam.

Slow Learner is a collection of short stories written early in Pynchon’s career. All were written before the publication of V. except the last, which was written between V. and The Crying of Lot 49. Some characters, such as Pig Bodine and Victoria Wren, who show up elsewhere in Pynchon’s œuvre, make appearances in these stories.

I don’t know why I choose to read this, given how much I disliked Gravity’s Rainbow. It was an improvement, although that really isn’t saying much.

The maddening thing about Pynchon is that he can write well when he wants to. He is capable of writing enjoyable and readable passages and even complete books, but has more than once chosen not to. I can’t begin to understand, much less explain, why someone outside of academia would choose to do that.

If you come across a copy, I suggest reading “Low-lands” and “The Secret Integration” — those two were well written and entertaining. The others you might as well skip.

La hija de Kheops

La hija de Kheops by Alberto Laiseca. Tusquets.

If I were somehow sent back two thousand years in time to, say, Classical Rome, I think I’d probably manage to get along reasonably well. Sure, language would be a problem initially. Hygiene standards weren’t what they are today. And many -isms and -phobias that are today in the process of being wiped out were at that point still alive and well. However, I think that people then and people now are fundamentally similar. I don’t think I’d come to the conclusion that everyone around me was completely nuts. Products of their time and in many ways bass-ackward, probably. But not crazy.

But the thought of being sent a few thousand years before that, to Ancient Egypt, really makes me wonder. If La hija de Kheops is anything to go by, people then were weird. Superstitious, incestuous, and downright strange.

Full of grossness (read: incest, and try not to think too much about it), odd anachronisms, and some amusing wordplay. Possibly quite inaccurate. Generally entertaining.

(It looks like this book was never translated into English.)

Trafalgar

Trafalgar by Angélica Grodoscher. Emecé.

Trafalgar reminded me somewhat of Wells’ The Time Machine. Even more so of Asimov’s Foundation, and, to a lesser extent, several of his short stories about robots. Written, of course, in Rioplatense Spanish, which contains not a few words that neither Alma nor I understand.

Quite entertaining.

Introducción a la literatura inglesa

Introducción a la literatura inglesa by Jorge Luis Borges, with María Esther Vázquez. Alianza.

A review of British literature from the time of the Anglo Saxons until the middle of the twentieth century. The title is somewhat misleading, as the book covers more than just English literature: several Irish and Scottish authors merit a mention.

This book is very similar in intent and presentation to Introducción a la literatura norteamericana, but with far fewer misspellings.

The Sexual Life of Catherine M.

The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (La Vie Sexuelle de Catherine M.) by Catherine Millet. Grove Press.

JB tells me that the word for a pretentious person is “prick”. If the author is a she, “twat”.

Isn’t that appropriate?

The Sexual Life of Catherine M. is two hundred pages of lousy output by a twat. A twat with a very active twat, as it turns out.

That someone can manage to write ten score pages all about sex and nothing else without being interesting or titillating is nothing short of amazing. In a bad way. I was dying for the book to finish. It was a quick read, but not quick enough.

But the book isn’t merely boring. There’s also the fact that Millet is basically not credible, and not just because her day job is art criticism. A shy person with all sorts of diverse friendships? Right. Once she tried her hand at prostitution when she needed the money, but that didn’t work out. Nobody ever paid her for sex. And she really didn’t receive many gifts from her paramours — it only took a mere two thirds of a page to list them all. And so on. But then, critics are the lowest of the low (hello, world!), and I think she basically knows it, and thus wants to pass off as an artist. So why not stretch the truth a whole lot and claim to be a prurient James Joyce?

To put it succinctly, Millet is full of both shit and dick, and has a written a book with less literary merit or interest as a story than that sad work of internet fan fiction where, when Harry Potter and Hermione Granger unexpectedly meet Xena, crazy hijinks ensue.

(Note: I have not read said fan fiction. It might not even exist.)

Avoid.

Fragile Things

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. William Morrow.

About ten years ago I went to the worst concert I’ve ever seen. The opening band was Self, a one hit wonder, and one whose one hit (”So Low”) wasn’t very good. The headlining band was Cracker. They opened with a song I liked, “I Hate my Generation”. Then they played country rockabilly music? crap for about nineteen hours. Then they closed with “Low”.

(I think they came out for an encore, but I’d had enough. It was the first and last concert I’ve left before it was really over.)

Fragile Things is just like Cracker’s concert, but without an opening band. And it’s made up of short stories and poems, not songs. And it is pretty good, certainly not the worst book I’ve ever read.

So it really wasn’t much like that Cracker concert at all… except that the first story and the last story are by far the best in the book. The first is based on “A Study in Scarlet”, with a Lovecraftian twist. The last is a short sequel to American Gods.

And, really, the stuff in the middle is pretty respectable too. Recommended.

Post Office

Post Office by Charles Bukowski. Ecco.

I read this book in under a day. It’s good. Bukowski doesn’t show off.

Un veijo que leía novelas de amor

Un viejo que leía novelas de amor (The Old Man Who Read Love Stories) by Luis Sepúlveda. Tusquets.

A short (137pp) story. It reminded me Cien años de soledad and especially El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, both books by Gabriel García Márquez that take place in isolated towns in South America plagued by corrupt local government. (Gabo turned 80 today, by the way). The last third also reminded me of The Old Man and the Sea.

As with all books in Tusquets’ “colección andanzas” line, the edition itself is a thing of physical beauty.

The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Vintage.

The Plot Against America is a historical fiction novel set during the time leading up to and the first several years of the second World War. The twist is that, instead of being reelected in 1940, Roosevelt loses to Charles Lindbergh, an isolationist, and probably antisemetic.

It is narrated by Philip Roth himself as a boy of about nine, who (at least in the book) lived at that time in a Jewish neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. (I don’t know much about Roth’s life, and as such don’t know what liberties he took. The book is in written in the first person, though, and the main character is named Philip Roth. So there.) With Lindbergh in power and antisemitism on the rise, the life of the Roth family, hitherto relatively stable if not especially prosperous, undergoes several profound changes.

My first impression, several pages in, was along the lines of “oh boy, here comes a massive apologia for Israel”. Not so - Israel isn’t even mentioned. Roth’s father, an admirable character, believed very much in America, which, as a secular democracy, was the right thing to believe in. For all the people trying to make it so, the US isn’t a country based on religion or race. Israel is, and that’s my root problem with it. It should be yours, too.

The style of writing is odd. Mostly it sounds like a nine year old’s writing, with simple language and simple ideas. It reminded me of “young adult” literature, stuff I read when I was about that age. But every now and then Roth breaks out these long sentences with words no nine year old would know. Which isn’t a bad thing, but a bit strange nonetheless.

Worth reading, as it helps explain some of the motivations of today’s Jews, a people who collectively have a serious, yet largely self-inflicted, PR problem, especially outside the US, yet isn’t too heavy-handed about it.

Fervor de Buenos Aires

Fervor de Buenos Aires by Jorge Luis Borges. Emecé.

A short (~80pp) book of poetry written early in Borges’ career, shortly after first returning to Argentina after having lived in Europe for several years.

I’ve sometimes said “I don’t believe in poetry”, half in jest. Really, I’m undecided as to whether poetry in general is good art or a waste of paper. Fervor did not alter my agnosticism towards metaphor and obliqueness.

Lo bello y lo triste

Lo bello y lo triste (title in Japanese: 美しさと哀しみと, title in English: Beauty and Sadness) by Yasunari Kawabata. Emecé. Translated by Nélida M. de Machain.

I bought Lo bello at a book fair in the Zócalo several months ago. I like Emecé’s format, and since they publish books by Borges, I figured it was worth a look to see what else they publish. Emecé did not let me down. (¿”¡Emecé PLV!”?) Interestingly, on the page that has the copyright notice, edition info, etc. (is there a name for that page? If so, what is it?), the title of the English translation is also given. I doubt the book was translated from Japanese to English to Spanish, but it’s possible.

The book itself is about an author of some fifty years, Oki, who goes to look up an old flame, Otoko, whom he does find. He also meets her protégée, Keiko, a character of some ambiguity. Lo bello y lo triste chronicles their adventures, past and present.

I’ve only read books (as an adult) by one other Japanese author, Haruki Murakami. I guess it’s inevitable, if a bit provincial, that I make comparisons between the two. (I found myself making similar comparisons between Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, and I’ve only read one book by each, although both Foucault’s Pendulum and If on a winter’s night a traveller talk quite a lot about books qua books.) So, given a very small sample of Kawabata’s œuvre, here are some comparisons.

Kawabata is more descriptive than Murakami, and describes colors and sensations more vividly. On the other hand, Murakami’s books tend to get to the point, and seem more believable; they’re generally (always? I can’t remember now) written in the first person, and as such he doesn’t try to get inside the heads of all of his characters. He only needs to understand one of them. When Kawabata recounts conversations between two women, I have to wonder how realistic - and thus believable - they really are.

There are aspects to Lo bello that are recognizable in books by Murakami, particularly South of the Border, West of the Sun and Tokio Blues (Norwegian Wood) - which isn’t to say that I’d call Murakami derivative; he is anything but.

Some Japanese critics have apparently criticized Murakami for being too Westernized; I’m not aware of any such charge leveled against Kawabata. As such, and even if the language weren’t beautiful and the plot weren’t interesting, new insight into a very different culture is worth the admission price alone.

Recommended.

If on a winter's night a traveler

If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino. Harvest Books. Translated by William Weaver.

A book about books, or is it about their readers? The protagonist - that’d be me (or would that be you? The book is written mostly in the second person) - starts reading a book only to find that not too far into it, due to an apparent publishing error, the action is suddenly cut off and replaced with a totally different book. He gets a new copy, and it’s yet another book, and one which is soon to be cut off as well! …And so on.

Recommended, although slightly frustrating as the book-within-the-book keeps rebooting itself, and none of the sub-stories has a proper resolution. Or an improper one. The prose is fluid, which compensates for the frustration of starting almost anew so many times: starting anew may be annoying, but at least it’s easy to do.

Hat tip to JB for lending me this book; maybe some day I’ll have a chance to return it to him.

Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Penguin.

Gravity’s Rainbow has 100 to 150 enjoyable, contiguous pages. The rest of its 760 pages are boring, tedious, and full of nonsense: pseudopsychology and gratuitous drug use and sex. [*] It digresses, it makes your eyeballs itch, and it contains language that is deliberately hard to parse (or was it just never edited?). Finally, it doesn’t have any real point; the story qua story sucks, and there is no message.

It’s been described as unreadable. That’s not quite true, because I’ve basically read it (I skimmed towards the end). It is, however, not worth reading.

I admit that there were some cute moments here and there. Like ten or so. Out of more than six hundred pages of otherwise garbage.

Crap. As I said above, I skimmed the last 200 pages or so. That wasn’t fast enough. I should have just flipped them. I could still claim to have read it. And I would have, I suspect, read more than most self-professed Pynchon fans and the people who couldn’t finish it but were too ashamed - professionally or personally - to admit it.

[*] I am not against drug use or sex in books, or out of them, for that matter. But when they’re pointless they’re pointless. In Gravity’s Rainbow they usually are.

Update: Go read this comic. Read its tool tip. Point well made.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Picador.

The Satanic Verses is easily Rushdie’s most famous work. I found it to be of mixed quality. Some parts are really good, beautifully written and interesting to follow. Overall, the story is good, even if the ending left me rather unsatisfied.

But sometimes the poetic language and “novel” use of punctuation went too far, annoying me. Parts of the book - lots of the book - end up reading something close to Moleskine’s propaganda, the writing of pretentious kids dilettantes course takers. There is a fine line between art and annoyance. Rushdie crossed it too often.

But I can overlook all that. Because in the grand scheme of things, I’m totally on Rushdie’s side.

Are you familiar with the series of events that followed Verses’s publication? There are still barbarians in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Introducción a la literatura norteamericana

Introducción a la literatura norteamericana by Jorge Luis Borges. Emecé.

A review of Northamerican literature, up to 1970 or so. Borges mentions several authors that I haven’t read and probably should.

I wonder if this book was ever translated into English.

The book has lots of errors; many English words and placenames are misspelt. I like to think the errors are due to the editor or publisher, not Borges, who learned English in his childhood and presumably wouldn’t have made such mistakes. I made a list of all the errors I noticed, and plan to send Emecé mail. Pedantic mail.

The chapter on Native American literature seems a bit forced. Political correctness in Borges - who’d have guessed? But then again, I usually take a dim view towards poetry. And it’s not all political correctness; Borges calls the Indians los pieles rojas (redskins).

Not the greatest of Borges’ works by any stretch, but it was quite cheap at the Gandhi in Querétaro. And more Borges of course looks good on the bookshelf.

El libro de los seres imaginarios

El libro de los seres imaginarios, by Jorge Luis Borges. Emecé.

A list, in alphabetical order, of imaginary beings found in mythology and literature. One of the least practical books imaginable, and probably not comprehensive enough to serve as a real reference, but enjoyable.

ginger ale

On Sunday, Alma and I brewed a small batch of ginger ale. We roughly followed the directions at http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Ginger-Ale. We deviated from the recipe a little bit in using limes instead of lemons. Hey, we're in Mexico — what do you expect?

It finished brewing this morning (by our estimation). We let it refrigerate during the day, and just now opened and tried it. It was pretty good.

Next time, we'll probably use fewer limes, so it's less citrusy; more ginger; and more yeast, so it comes out fizzier.

Not bad at all for a first try!

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La memoria de Shakespeare

¿Alguna vez imaginaste tener un encuentro contigo mismo pero más viejo, dentro de un sueño y no saber quién está soñando a quien?, ¿qué pasaría si alguien te pudiera dar como herencia la memoria de Shakespeare? Borges lo relata en dos de las cuatro historias que conforman este pequeño librito.

Un exquisito platillo gourmet, tuve el placer de cenármelo anoche, qué deleite. No he encontrado mejor maestro del cuento que él, en serio. No sé qué me asombra más, los temas que aborda en sus historias, los diálogos que configura o su delicada capacidad de síntesis.

Una vez más entré a la cosmología borgeana, poblada de sueños y dualidades, qué gusto es enfundarme en su piel y mirar de otra forma este mundo. Los golpes de su inteligencia se reciben con gusto. No puedo mas que dar gracias por tanta belleza y cordura.

Museum Of Terror (Tomie 1)

I didn't know that I liked Japanese anime, particularly the genre of terror. Since the day I saw Ghost in the Shell, I knew that I had the potential to become a fan. A couple of weeks ago I was in Harvard Bookshop, in the used books section, where I found a lot of anime books at a good price. One was "Tomie". When I read the first dialog something said to me "this book is for you". The sentence was: "My friend Tomie is dead... pieces of her body were found scattered everywhere..."

I couldn't stop reading the nine stories. All were good, but the ones I liked most were "Photo" and "Painter", with its sarcastic humor.

I recommend Museum of Terror you. It's easy to read while on public transport, it's fun to read in reverse (as a comic book translated from the Japanese, its panels are viewed and read right to left, top to bottom), and it's excellent English practice because the characters speak colloquially.

I am very anxious to read more books like this. I don't know why I didn't buy more. If you have a book like this one, we can trade. ;)