Sunday, November 24, 2024
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Friday, November 22, 2024
Claire-Louise Bennett
Pond is not a collection about which I can claim to have been aware: but after having read a review, I was convinced to pick it up. And I'm glad that I did: Claire-Louise Bennett's stories are not only funny, not only poignant, they announce a novel literary style, one that's self-conscious without being paralyzed by that heightened sense of awareness. This is a collection with a voice all its own.
Part of what I enjoyed so much about Pond is its self-deprecating tone: the main character is gifted, but wayward, intelligent without drive. The result are scenarios which are comical, where the nameless character confronts the limits of her ambition, knowing that more is possible, but unable to navigate that potential.
There are laughable sections about sexuality, gender relations, social expectations -- even about food and real estate. Taken together, there's almost an absurd quality to the stories: and yet, they are not silly; they are profound, and lonely, and sometimes sad.
Not all of this collection reaches the same height: some stories are stronger or more comprehensible than others. But several, including those focused on the local environment -- on the nearby 'pond' -- succeed in transforming the banal into something more than that: into a complex mixture of details, of characters, of comedy, and of loss.
What Pond is about I couldn't really say: but as a collection of stories loosely tracing modern themes of alienation, ambition, and ambivalence, it succeeds in a significant way.
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Monday, November 18, 2024
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Jon Fosse
I'll be the first to admit that I'd not heard of Jon Fosse until he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Of course, I was curious, and so I recently read Aliss at the Fire.
Praise for the novella -- which has been positioned as an entry point into Fosse's larger oeuvre -- focuses on its fragmentation: the degree to which time itself becomes a malleable thing. Fosse abandons traditional grammar in favor of another sort of fragmentation: one in which sentences run indefinitely as time is presented a force without beginning or end. And then, of course, there's the complexity of Fosse's narration, which transitions from one character to another, often in the middle of a phrase or thought.
Who am I to critique this approach? Fosse has won the Nobel after all.
But I must say, I found the novella to be, well, to be sort of gimmicky: the shift in perspective, or narrative tone, or time is awakening at first, but becomes predictable by the end. And more: Fosse seems to bend the concept of time, but without building three dimensional characters. For me, there were elements of Stein and Faulkner here; and yet, I felt that both American authors explored these themes with greater effect: the layered quality to Faulkner's novels, in particular, far exceeds Aliss at the Fire.
I agree that there is an emotional impact to Fosse's novella, and that he is able, in very few pages, to develop a competing sense of poignancy and pain. But for me, I was never quite convinced by the style: it seemed unnecessary or strained -- like a trick that would have better served as the basis for a thought experiment than for a published work of fiction.
Friday, November 15, 2024
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Sad …
Theodore Olson, RIP - The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator | USA News and Politics
i am sure I met Ted and soent very afternoon chatting with him.
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Monday, November 11, 2024
Rachel Cusk
I've now finished the third of Rachel Cusk's "Faye" novels, Transit. And let me say at the start: this novel, like the others in the trilogy, is excellent: I mean absolutely excellent. (I read the novels out of order.)
Part of what I liked so much about Transit -- and Outline and Kudos -- is that it occupies a rare literary space: it auto-fiction without the narcissism. It is a book about questions: about how we pose them, and what we expect to hear or receive in response.
If Cusk is the main character in this experiment, that seems secondary: because her role in the novel is primarily to listen, and to endow conversations -- as I've written on the blog before -- with a universal quality. That is magic of Cusk: her ability to transcend the banal, to mold it into something great, with a lesson to impart.
What Transit is about exactly is not the point: you might say it is a novel about transitions, about spaces, about homes, about London, about loss. And all of these themes are indeed addressed. But they're explored less by way of character, and more by way of memory, discussion, and reconnection.
In Transit -- more than in Outline or Kudos -- Cusk orients her reader: she is in London; this is her builder; his name is X; he is this way or that. But now having read a few of Cusk's novel, I know that these details are less important than what the builder recounts to Cusk and how she structures those remembrances. This is a novel in which each section, each chapter, represents the transformation of the ordinary into something weighty, something transcendent.
It had been a while since a trilogy like this caught my attention, but these three novels are exceptional: they demand thought and reflection, and a new way -- it is no exaggeration -- of processing literature.
Blogging note …
I am awaiting the arrival a nurse and may be taken to the hospital. So I may not be posting today.
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Saturday, November 09, 2024
Friday, November 08, 2024
Thursday, November 07, 2024
Wednesday, November 06, 2024
Tuesday, November 05, 2024
For what it’s worth …
… everyone I spoke with today, wherher black or white, thought that Trump is going to win. they seemed quite sanguine about it. Well, we shall see.
'They're Targeting Voters Under the Guise of a News Org': Inside a Soros-Funded 'Fake News' Network's $9 Million Digital Ad Blitz
'They're Targeting Voters Under the Guise of a News Org': Inside a Soros-Funded 'Fake News' Network's $9 Million Digital Ad Blitz
They ought to deport Soros. The only thing he has done since coming here is try to undeermine our demoocracy. Throw the bum outl