... I spend time with Dante investigating murder in Florence: Medieval poet an unlikely crime sleuth. (I think it worth noting that I would have overlooked this book if Maxine had not alerted me to it. Another example of how blogging can be a help in covering a beat.)
... David Hiltbrand spends time with Edgar Allan Poe sleuthing in Manhattan: Poe stars in a 19th-century Manhattan murder mystery.
... Karl Kirchwey looks at Derek Walcott's Selected Poems: Derek Walcott selection invites deeper reading.
Glenn Altschuler gets acquainted with a man who was generous to the U.S.: The man who endowed 'nation's attic' Well-told mystery, psychological study of lossYoung Adult Reader | Anderson gives razor-sharp look at painfully troubled family.
Finally, Carlin Romano thinks intellectuals - at least in Russia - ain't what they used to be:
During the past week: Russia's culturati a pale imitation of worthies of 'Utopia'.
... Sandy Bauers took a closer look at pigeons: Dirty birds, and history's darlings .
... Theopolis Fair thought Michael Honey's Going Down Jericho Road well worth reading: A vivid account of the Memphis strike, King's last fight.
And Jen Miller thought Walter Kirn's Net novel was better online: Book Review | A Net novel suffers in translation to paper form.
If you're having trouble finding it, here's Inquirer Books.
Great set of reviews, as usual, Frank. Your selections are always such an impressive bunch when considered together.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, I love your review.
Victor Pelevin (1945-), perhaps the most prestigious Russian writer of his generation, makes no international peep about his country's politics beyond his mixes of sci-fi, po-mo arabesques, and mysticism lite.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Pelevin's not being an obviously political writer; in his work Babylon as in virtually everything he writes, he viciously and with audacious comic inventiveness satirizes the entire socio-political world of the modern Russia. I would say he would see little point in pretending to be what he is not, ie someone labouring under the delusion that a few more pronouncements on the corruption would do any good. Much of his essence in his thoughts of Bulgakov's Master & Margarita here:
the effect of this book was really fantastic. There's an expression "out of this world." This book was totally out of the Soviet world. The evil magic of any totalitarian regime is based on its presumed capability to embrace and explain all the phenomena, their entire totality, because explanation is control. Hence the term totalitarian. So if there's a book that takes you out of this totality of things explained and understood, it liberates you because it breaks the continuity of explanation and thus dispels the charms. It allows you to look in a different direction for a moment, but this moment is enough to understand that everything you saw before was a hallucination (though what you see in this different direction might well be another hallucination). The Master and Margarita was exactly this kind of book and it is very hard to explain its subtle effect to anybody who didn't live in the USSR. Solzhenitsyn's books were very anti-Soviet, but they didn't liberate you, they only made you more enslaved as they explained to which degree you were a slave. The Master and Margarita didn't even bother to be anti-Soviet yet reading this book would make you free instantly. It didn't liberate you from some particular old ideas, but rather from the hypnotism of the entire order of things."
I think the apparent lightness of Pelevin's touch has fooled the writer of this piece into seriously failing to get what Pelevin is all about.
Also to add, Pelevin when on form such as in the very brilliant story, The Adventures of Shed XXII, is possibly or indeed probably the most humorous writer I've encountered. There is very definitely a cosmic sense of humour, God not all about hallelujahs or gnashings of teeth- related to this being works such as those of teh incomparable Mulla Nasrudin, and I would say Pelevin's humour marks him out as the genuine article regarding mysticism as opposed to someone writing oh so seriously about such deep matters. Pelevin defintiely a writer from the inside of mysticism rather than one from the outside writing about it.
ReplyDeleteYou've sold me, Andrew. Will get something and read it.
ReplyDeleteBit late to respond but not to make be too hagiographical(?) regarding Pelevin, but probably the very nature of his uniqueness means he can be a little hiut and miss. I'd probably avoid Omon Ra and The Helmet of Horror. Whether the writing I'll show an ezxample of below provides a thrill or not, probably will give a fair indication of whether he isone's cup of tea or not(I'm possible taking my role as acolyte of Pelevin too seriously):
ReplyDelete"Watching the hot sunlight falling on the tablecloth covered with sticky blotches and crumbs, Andrei was suddenly struck by the thought of what a genuine tragedy it was for millions of light rays to set out on their journey from the surface of the sun, go hurtling through the infinite void of space and time and pierce the kilometeres-thick sky of Earth, only to be extinguished in the revolting remains of yesterday's soup. Maybe these yellow arrows slanting in through the window were conscious, hoped for something better- and realised that their hope was groundless, giving them all the necessary ingredients for suffering."
Or in the Life & Adventures of Shed XII, "When he(Shed XII) tried to share some of his experiences with the occult-minded garage that stood beside him, the answer he received was that in fact there is only one higher-happiness: the ecstatic union with the archetypal garage......
You mean I should try and feel like a garage too ?" he asked one day.
"There is no other path," replied the garage.
A little i slost out of context but still...