I had the purest intentions, I did. But now, Disquiet has been sitting forlornly in one shadowed corner of a shelf somewhere–I think I’ll know where it is, if pressed. I seem to have fallen off, although, please, the first nine days, at least, can attest to the fever of my infatuation with this ridiculously beautiful books:

Dated 04 July 2011 [see original post here].

Nine days ago, I began reading The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. The above picture was taken in the first hour I spent with this book, and by then I was already more than a little scared of how it would eventually matter to me, how it would be my book. Perhaps only five hours in total in those five days, but this book—it will unhinge me.

I am enamored by its utterances:

• Could it think, the heart would stop beating.
• I feel the chill of a sudden sickness in my soul.
• Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake.
• And the chill of what I won’t feel gnaws at my present heart.

This book is threatening to be a record of my disquiet, my factless autobiography. That’s me when he says, “If I write what I feel, it’s to reduce the fever of feeling,” or, “Ah, it’s my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!” That’s my tedium, too:

A tedium that includes the expectation of nothing but more tedium; a regret, right now, for the regret I’ll have tomorrow for having felt regret today—huge confusions with no point and no truth, huge confusions.

And that’s me, petty and alive with it: “Let’s not forget to hate those who enjoy, just because they enjoy, and to despise those who are happy, because we didn’t know how to be happy like them.” And all that bordering on being Alarmingly Pathetic Goat, that’s me, for the love of cheesecake.

It’s embarrassing how much of me is in this book, and it’s a relief. How many times does this happen in a reader’s life? A book that is not only yours, but describes you, articulates what you cannot—will not?

Futile and insensitive, I’m capable of violent and consuming impulses—both good and bad, noble and vile—but never of a sentiment that endures, never of an emotion that continues, entering into the substance of my soul. Everything in me tends to go on to become something else. My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while.

Bernardo Soares—who lamented, “Ah, how often my own dreams have raised up before me as things, not to replace reality but to declare themselves its equals…”—Bernardo Soares I officially my latest spirit animal.

And Soares/Pessoa even wrote: “How I’d love to infect at least one soul with some kind of poison, worry or disquiet! This would console me a little for my chronic failure to take action. My life would be to pervert. But do my words ring in anyone else’s soul? Does anyone hear them besides me?”

And in the margin, in mauve ink and minute cursive, I wrote, I do, sir.

Long-winded and self-indulgent flashbacks of my schmaltz aside, I’m sharing that the awe-worthy Tom of Wuthering Expectations is having a group read of The Book of Disquiet, and I’m reckless enough to join in on the fun. I apologize in advance if this means that more of the above posts will continue to appear in this page. No dignity of mine goes un-crumbled in this book blog, ladies and gentlemen. Brace yourselves. Oh, and also, join us. Take it from Tom:

Imagine the poor reader, trapped in his deathbed, who has read all 1,001 books except #PessoaDisquiet. He feebly turns the pages of the Richard Zenith translation, but his eyesight and concentration are insufficient for the difficult concepts and miniscule type of Pessoa’s text. His strength wanes; the book slips from his fingers; he feels the icy shadow of Death approach, knowing that he ends his life unloved, and badly read. Just one book short of being well-read, actually.

Do not be that reader.

Nope, don’t.

Seems handy to keep a notebook ever-ready when reading this book. It threatens to rock my world, yes, it does. Anyway. Have taken a peek at The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins [which I discovered through this post by Laura of Laura's Musings], because this is how I like to spend my weekends. Knee-deep in atheism and grumpy ol’ men who pooh-pooh all things otherwise. But, well, I picked this up because I need a frame for what I’ve long suspected as my foray into atheism [or whatever approximates it]. Let me be clear that I need not be convinced. I already know there’s something niggling within me, but I just can’t seem to articulate it. Dawkins’s book, well, I need to witness someone argue the case for me.

That peek I took? One measly paragraph into the book, in a special foreword to the updated paperback edition, Dawkins scratches his head over “a bafflingly large number of intellectuals [who] ‘believe in belief’ even though they lack religious belief themselves.” And I was like, hell, I can’t hazard to claim myself an intellectual, but I do tend to act as though I believe in belief, even if—yeah, you get the picture.

I dunno, Mr. Dawkins. I mean, for one, it’s hard to break away. It’s only been a couple of years since I grew comfortable with the fact that I just wasn’t too keen on religion. Specifically, the Roman Catholic religion, as an institution. More specifically, the spectacle of Catholicism in the Philippines (as a [political] institution), which never fails to give me the heebie-jeebies. I guess what “God” there was, what construct, what belief, was inevitable for me, for my personal philosophy, but to stop believing in belief itself? What?

But it’s also hard to act like a rude ass. In a noble light, it’s respect—respect of people’s opinions, culture, how they want to live their own lives. In a chill kind of thing, it’s passive tolerance. Shrug.

Gah. One measly paragraph into the book, and I’m already thinking a lot. What the hell, dude. What do you want from me?

I’m trying to read this book in tandem with A Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan. I’ll follow that up with Dawkins’ River Out of Eden. Maybe Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, why not?  And, in the interest of fairness—something I’ve noticed Dawkins’ is too cute-grumpy to allow me entertain—I’d try reading The Case for God by Karen Armstrong, because it just so happens that it’s lying around the house. Yeah. What is going on, Sasha?

So I’ve finished reading Maya Banks’ foray into historical romance: the McCabe Trilogy, featuring the three brothers McCabe, warrior highland men who, of course, have swoon-y heart bits—and the women they love. Or, in most cases, the women who convince them that, hell, love is awesome, and can they put aside their broad-axes for a sec that they can partake of its sauce? Yeah, that’s a good lad.

I like the books, I did. [You should’ve seen me squeal in the bookstore when I saw the third book had arrived, dude.] These books are yummy, they are. But I’m rude enough to want it to be better, and argue why it can be better, and argue for how it can be better.

I’m going to cut to the chase here and make my proposition—a proposition that, yes, I know wouldn’t have made a difference anyway because the industry doesn’t work that way, but call me stubborn. So. I’m thinking that the McCabe Trilogy would have been a better, more kick-ass, a more modern classic kind of book if Banks [and her editor/publisher?] had followed her heart and pushed the envelope and given us readers one big, fat, sweeping historical highland romance—full of lurve and blood, of battle cries and plaid. Yep. That’s my far-fetched idea.

I know. This is what writing-about-books frequently cautions against: Wishing that a book was something else, writing about a book the way you wish it had been written in the first place. Bah. But I’m feeling all creative-pants and nosy. So, well, turn away now, if ye know what’s good for you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why am I doing this? Blaaargh.

Ahem. As I was reading Book 03, it was very, very clear to me: this trilogy would’ve gotten everyone’s crazy-reader on if it had been allowed to be as rich and expansive as its premise and its characters promised.

Let’s revisit Book 01. So. Because the last draught of 2011 made for painful blogging, my recorded thoughts on the first installment, In Bed with a Highlander, were brief—basically, I told myself that I had loads of fun with it:

Heiress and potential political pawn, through sheer grit and gumption, saves herself and a laird’s son from the baddies? H&PPP reluctantly finding a home in a crumbling keep of three strapping Highland men? Yes. A lot of easy laughter and believably messy characters? Sure.

Not two months later, I’m trying to figure out how that’s so. Because, frankly, my problems with the next two books—oh, I will get to them later—kind of makes it all hazy for me. The first book, like the next two that followed it, have pressing political issues at stake serving as backdrop to the romance. And it must be said that, generally, Banks effectively uses this premise to add dimensions to and to further the relationship between the protagonists.

For example, in Book 01: The forced marriage, the less-than-ideal consummation scene (there’s a skirmish goin’ on, Mairin, sorry!), and the inevitable learning-to-love-each-other bit. There’s also that scene familiar to me [in my reading of romances featuring literal warrior-heroes]—the necessary, urgent choice between the honorable vendetta and one true love. [This particular scene, it must be said, occurs too in Books 02 and 03, though in different incarnations. Bekez that’s how your prove your love in politics.]

I have a stronger memory of what I felt with Book 02, Seduction of a Highland Lass, than its actual content. Heh. It was, in a word, outrage. Basically, middle child Alaric is on his way to marry the daughter of the neighboring clan [alliances must be formed!] when he’s ambushed. Keeley, outcast of the McDonald clan and a healer to boot, takes him in and nurses his wounds. And other stuff. Ewan, being all Laird-y and stuff, basically kidnaps Keeley so she can make sure that 1) Alaric is hale and healthy, and 2) Mairin’s baby will be delivered safely.

Now. Let’s remember the central conflict: Alaric is promised to another woman—it’s a political alliance. He and Keeley fall in love and get jiggy with each other with some lip service to honor and ooh-I-need-this-one-night schtick. I get that. I get that kind of conflict. But I wanted a little more spine from Alaric. His thoughts on their relationship, it needed more urgency, more shame at the potential political disaster he was brewing, more shame that he was treating Keeley like a doily—but, also, the undeniable necessity of having Keeley in his life. I wanted more agency from Keeley, who’s shown herself a pretty strong chick, kidnapping notwithstanding. For most of the book, I wanted to reach in grab Keeley by the shoulders and say, “Hey, find a man who loves you right. Gannon looks awesome!” [No, seriously, does Gannon get a book?]

And then there was Book 03, Never Love a Highlander. A lot hinges on this particular book, mainly because it has to fulfill the role of trilogy-closer, even as it makes sure it delivers a solid romance between the protagonists. So, one, this is where we expect a culmination of the clan’s war with David Cameron—who, by the way, is an unreliable villain, given his arbitrariness. This is where the overreaching narrative arc of the trilogy comes to a head, and we deserve, don’t we, a satisfying resolution?

And, also, also: The initial looks I had of the protagonists, youngest brother Caelen and the neighbors’ warrior daughter Rionna, had me salivating. I was ExcitedPantz. Here was the gruff guy, whose personal history is essential to why the McCabes are where they are now. Here’s that awkward, sword-wielding girl who’s been passed on from one brother to the next. This is not only conflict, this is potential for rich characters! I need more of them! Their story is awesome as it is, but I need more because I love them before I even got to know their together-story, don’t you see?

Ahem. It may please the bloodthirsty in me that the ultimate battle scene was fucking kick-ass. [However, in keeping with the theme of me being a know-it-all, may I suggest a reading of that raiding scene of the Mother Confessor painted white, in one of Terry Goodkind’s books. That is warrior-princess slash lover slash political powerhouse to aspire to.] What I especially loved about it was that Caelen and Rionna, as this particular book’s protagonists, was central to the resolution of that bigger narrative arc.

I do think that all these issues can be addressed if Banks relented to turn this trilogy into a happy love monster. Romances can be explored and made more whole. The whole bit with the couples keeping tabs on each other in and out the books? Yeah, not as annoying now, huh? And the politics! The backstories! The babies!

Lastly [and I use that word to pretend that this hot mess of a post is anything but], that umph I noticed was sorely lacking in these books—in comparison to Banks’ other works—was gravitas. In her erotic romances, Banks’ characters had issues that seem trivial compared to all the bloodshed in this trilogy—but they treated them real seriously. They laughed and fell in love, but they were always aware that there was a lot at stake—especially in the relationship they were trying to build with each other. That shit was intense, and it was so very good. I miss that intensity.

Ahem. Again, I liked the books. I’m just a terrible person in writing this post to express that crooked brand of liking. Hells, yeah.

[Again, not drunk! Just flaky.]

I think I’m learning how to take bad and mediocre books in stride. That is, I’ve decided that 2012 will be when I don’t take it as a personal offense that the book I just read dared be craptastic or so-so. That sounds wise of me, I know.

So. Five books into the year, and I’ve encountered my first DNF. The dubious distinction belongs to Bridge of Sighs, a short story collection by Paulette Roeske. It was, well, it wasn’t nice. I was intrigued by the first paragraphs of the stories [and one novella!], but, ultimately, there was no rewarding follow-through from the author. Off the top of my head, Roeske seems to settle with bland language. She sets up moments that demands for a reach to the poetic, but the language just lies there like a dead fish, and it won’t even give me the courtesy to flop. Gah. In contrast to the contrived lyric atmosphere, the floo-floo mood of the pieces? More than halfway through, I set the book down. I’d rather read some Alice Munro. She gets shit right.

And then there’s Joan Silber’s contribution to the Art of — Series, with The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long As It Takes. Now. I’m not quite exaggerating when I say that Silber’s short story collection, Ideas of Heaven, changed my life—and helped educate me on expert manipulation of time in fiction. This book, however, was lifeless. Like an elaboration on a little section of Wikipedia entry on time-techniques. It was just so dead. Blech. I’d rather read some Alice Munro—or any of the pieces Silber mentioned to see how those authors accomplished it, and then there’d be goddamned art going on. Sheesh. Happy bleepin’ New Year.

Here’s to another year, and let’s hope it’s above ground.

- From The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields.

Not even I, with my faux coolness, can resist the symbolism of the new year. Logically, it’s nothing more than continuation, or even an arbitrary transition. But I can’t help but feel the momentous-ness of this shiz. [Not unlike me and my mother and my little cousins looking up at the New Year's Eve sky with our mouth agape--"Why do we do this, Mom? Because, ooh, shiny-pretty lights!"] The Universe may be cackling behind a shower of stars, but I do feel as though I’ve been given the authority to wipe the slate clean. It is the new year and, suddenly, there are better things, there are spankin’-new opportunities–to laugh at myself, to fall on my butt, to laugh at myself all over again, I guess. It’s not so much a reinvention or that the aforementioned slate really is wiped clean–as it is a blessing to proclaim, “Yeah, we’ll get better at getting it right this time,” and mean it.

So here’s to 2012. I don’t know what the Universe has in store for me, but you can expect that I’m more than willing to arm-wrestle it, drink it under the table, out-fucking-read it, for good things to come my way, and stay warm and fuzzy by my side.

I would be honored and tickled muchly pink to have you guys with me when that happens.

It’s Christmas, and so I thought I’d do this blog a well-earned kindness and shut it down. Heh. I kid. Revive it, more like. I hope.

The past several weeks were an unexpected—albeit not an unwelcome—hiatus. I haven’t had time [or, truthfully, the inclination] to read as much as I usually do, and so I sure as hell don’t have time to goddamned blog. Which is a pity, because back in November [see how long ago I’d fallen off?] I read some awesome books—off the top of my head: two romance novels by Courtney Milan, a lush belle epoch novel by Richard Mason. I would’ve wanted to blog about them, but, myeh. Life got in the way—plus, December rolled around, and I am suddenly an alcoholic.

I think I will let this blog rest some more. I’ll be back come January. I’ll manage to cram in posts on books read [not a lot, lately], a year-ender that I know will only be more-than-tedious for y’all by then, and a lot more shenanigans. I will revive this, I will. I think I can. Ugh. Yeah. I miss all of you. I miss my friends, I miss the community. I miss cackling with cackle-minded people over at Twitter. Eh, I can do this. It’s only a matter of time. I hope.

I.

I am well aware of the arrogance in claiming that a certain book has been written with one’s self in mind. [Although I am also aware—and confident—that this proclamation ownership has not yet reached the prose-sickening stylings of one Elif Shafak.] I realize now that a more politic way of saying so is looking at through the reception of the work. And so, instead of telling y’all that Eugenides followed me around for the better part of four and a half years [and counting], I will hazard telling you that, hey, though many people will lovingly stroke the spine of The Marriage Plot, I am certain of my standing as one of its ideal readers.

Alberto Manguel writes, “There comes a time when every reader considers himself to be the ideal reader.” And I am thankful for the validation.

[Hopefully, the above statements can effectively prevent the lot of you who have long wanted to shove an elbow to my face whenever I lay absolute claim on books. Ideal readers, you and I, and that girl with the felt stars stitched to her walking shoes. We are legion.]

How many of us have taken a stab at describing this book’s effect on us? Or describing the book itself? Recently, a friend asked me, on Twitter, if I’d read it and liked it. I told him it was a college novel, and a love triangle, and that it was lovely. I add now that it brought me back to college and its sneaky little promises of infiniteness, of love, of the golden life beyond it. You’re reading Sartre and Nietzsche, with a little Foucault thrown in. You carry around bootleg copies of Euripedes and T.S. Eliot and Wilfrido Nolledo and Lakambini Sitoy, you wander in and out of yellow-lit rooms and gaze out picture windows that frame fire trees. You wear your hip-length curls in a bun high on your head and tend to forget the pens you’ve pushed through the mass. You fall in love with a boy but don’t tell him; the next day you kiss someone else. You argue with a stranger about Heidegger, you read a romance novel in public for the first time, you sneak alcohol in water bottles and roll around the football field. You blow your money on take-out and pick up your first pack of cigarettes and find yourself, at 2 AM, wandering Katipunan drinking yoghurt. A man you’d later realize was Greg Freaking Brillantes would amble toward you with a little smile and tell you that he’d read your story and that he liked it and when were you going to publish a book? You consider keeping a hedgehog as a pet. You move around a lot, as much as possible in a 700-meter radius. You fall in love again, and you say it’s f’real this time, and you tell your mother so, and she asks you if you are happy, and you only feel a split-second’s worth of guilt before you say, Yes, Mommy, yes, I am. You were infinite, dude, infinite.

For reminding you of all this, at the very least, fuck The Marriage Plot.

II.

I begin with Madeleine, whose frequent brushes against ecstatic book love can be shared by so many of us. Even the little trepidations that crawl through her. How many times have I raised my head from a book for a moment to wonder if I should go back to real life?

Madeleine, she goes: “And yet sometimes she worried about what those musty old books were doing to her.” I know, I know. There’s still a nugget of shame when I remember how I nearly sewn Madame Bovary to my chest. But then after that pause, the obligatory acknowledgment of the real world, we go back to bend over the pages. And, this:

What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative!

But, well, there’s another, more personal aspect to my identification with Madeleine. Ready yourselves for your collective groaning, because this one’s about Roland Barthes. I’m sorry. Heh.

Near the close of my decade-long wait for Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, the apprehension creeped in. Not so much doubts on the book’s merits, not even the near-certainty that this was not going to be Middlesex or The Virgin Suicides. To put it bluntly, I was scared shitless because Eugenides was going to dedicate a chunk of his book to stand as a love letter to Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse. And you all know how much I love—and am overprotective over—that book.

The logistics was staggering. A long-awaited book by a much-loved and critically acclaimed author—everyone and their mother was going to read it [my mother wants to, that’s something]. And if everyone was going to read it, then everyone was going to be reminded of—or worse, haha, introduced to Roland Barthes. And because I was confident that Eugenides would knock our socks off with this book, he was going to make a convincing case for reading Barthes, whether or not a tragic trajectory was in store for his characters who’d done so. Which basically means, my little obsession with ALD was going to be, ick, shared.

In the spirit of fairness [sorely lacking in these parts*], Eugenides gives voice to every hapless book lover in the form of Madeleine. Who loves herself some Barthes and, like me [I am sorry for projecting the hell out of this character!], her Barthes-loving takes her on an alternately vivifying and depressing ride with, well, love. So many crucial scenes in Madeleine’s life has ALD as a prominent secondary character. Bully for her.

Here is when Madeleine first discovers Barthes, experiences him for herself, and, again, yes, yes, I understand:

What made Madeleine sit up in bed was something closer to the reason she read books in the first place and had always loved them. Here was a sign that she wasn’t alone. Here was an articulation of what she had been so far mutely feeling. In bed on a Friday night, wearing sweatpants, her hair tied back, her glasses smudged, and eating peanut butter from the jar, Madeleine was in a state of extreme solitude.

Fuck you, Eugenides. I couldn’t agree more. [The pertinent quote is here, at the beginning of ALD.] Madeleine goes on, and I agree with her some more, and I wanted to bug the people around me to say, See, didn’t I tell you, I am all over this fucking book. Here:

. . . Madeleine fully understood how the lover’s discourse is of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because it wasn’t physical. It was extreme because you felt it in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, the most solitary of all places.

Well. I am torn between resolving to carry a childish loathing for Eugenides for brandishing this book about—see where your heartbreak gets you, dear readers—and, you know, just falling silent because how could one be-vest-ed man write this all down, because Madeleine is me, that book-loving is me, that trajectory of loving with Barthes in tow is undeniably me. Torn, I tell ya.

But what can you do when you read a book that lends you a voice? That shares not just your love for some very specific object, but allows you to express that love, if only by pointing at a passage?

A Lover’s Discourse was the perfect cure for lovesickness. It was a repair manual for the heart, its one tool of the brain. If you used your head, if you became aware of how love was culturally constructed and began to see your symptoms as purely mental, if you recognize that being “in love” was only an idea, then you could liberate yourself from its tyranny. Madeleine knew all that. The problem was, it didn’t work. She could read Barthes’ deconstructions of love all day without feeling her love for Leosnard diminish the teeniest little bit. The more of A Lover’s Discourse she read, the more in love she felt. She recognized herself on every page. She identified with Barthes’ shadowy “I.” She didn’t want to be liberated from her emotions but to have their importance confirmed. Here was a book addressed to lovers, a book about being in love that contained the word love in just about every sentence. And, oh, how she loved it!

III.

And then, there’s Leonard. Leonard of the bandanna, the lone rhino bleating away at the edges of them limber-limbed youth. Manic Leonard, depressive Leonard, Leonard who sits quietly at roundtable discussions on Semiotics and retires to a dinghy little apartment that refuses to shelter even a little plant in its dusty corner. Leonard, who Madeleine, of course, falls in love with, tries to live with, tries to live despite of.

Oh, Eugenides. You thought Madeleine wasn’t enough for me? You had to bring in Leonard, the proverbial final nail on the coffin? You had to add to the minutes I’d already spent looking up from the book, the pause augured by the heaviest of sighs? Damn it. Leonard who soon enough “realized something crucial about depression. The smarter you were, the worse it was. The sharper your brain, the more it cut you up.” I just can’t win with this book, no? Even the people Leonard meets—here, a co-patient who describes her depression thusly: “Depression be like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It always be there, though.” There goes Jeffrey Eugenides, poking and poking and poking where it hurts the most. Gleeful sonofabitch in his purple vest.

It seemed especially cruel, then, three days later, in the hospital, when the doctor came into the room to tell Leonard that he suffered from something that would never go away, something that could only be “managed,” as if managing, for an eighteen-year-old looking out on life, could be any life at all.

IV.

Another from Manguel’s manifesto, “Notes Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader.” The relevant item for this post is not, by the way, “The ideal reader has no interest in the writings of Bret Easton Ellis,” but this: “For the ideal reader, every book reads, to a certain degree, as an autobiography.”

I am cheating at this point, but here is another from Manguel: “Upon closing the book, ideal readers feel that, had they not read it, the world would be poorer.” I feel exhausted by this book, and a part of me continues to resent it being raising against the light certain aches. I will love it forever for lending me a voice, though. At the simplest level, I love it because it is a good book, an intelligent book, a book with heart. One that has oh-so-carelessly pushed me to confront truths I’d rather turn away from, sure. But, you know. Good book. [Yes, I am patting the book as I write this last line.]

Good lord, reading is dangerous business. Keeping a blog about one’s reading is, if possible, more so. Why do I do this to myself?

PSA: Guys, oodles of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides is available at National Bookstore for PhP715. Get it. I won’t hate you, I promise. Admit it, you’ve been waiting for this book for nearly a decade too. Get it.

——-

[*] You-don’t-have-to-read this digression: Yesterday, chilling at Cubao and trying not to buy books, I wandered into the National Bookstore Superbranch and, um, bought me some Roland Barthes—his S/Z, which I’d long despaired I’d never find. Well. I showed it off, and mah boss said, “You know, I saw A Lover’s Discourse. But I didn’t buy it, because it wasn’t mine.” And then a glare my way. Hah. Harhar. I seem to enjoy telling people to not read the best books.

Yeah. I am so reading less next year. Or, well, maybe buy less so I won’t have to pick up books out of guilt? That’s a plan. Heh.

Let’s get it on. Ahem. One of them books is The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer. Earlier this year, I’d eyed this book like crazy—and eventually gave in, obviously [predictably!]—because, well, I suspect that I am trying to recapture my old fascination on “domestic fiction.” Greer’s novel is practically the poster child: It’s set in post-WW2 America, and it’s about a wife, her beautiful husband, sometimes about her kid, and mostly about the stranger who arrives at her doorstop to disrupt the well-ordered storybook yadda yadda of her life. I used to live for these kinds of stories, haha.

The mundaneness—and, despite the life-altering revelations dropped willy-nilly, to these people, and to the narrative, overall the novel remains mundane—of the topic is buttressed by the quite beautiful prose. The language bewilders, too, since I haven’t recently encountered any contemporary novel that dedicates such painstaking effort to make its words shine. I mean, come on, look at this:

How do you make someone love you? For the very young, there can be nothing harder in the world. You may try as hard as you like: place yourself beside them, cook their favourite food, bring them wine or sing the love songs that you know will move them. They will not move them. Nothing will move them. You will waste days interpreting the simple banalities of a phone call; months staring at their soft lips as they talk; you will waste years watching a body sitting in a chair and willing every muscle to take you across the room and do a simple thing, say a simple word, make them love you and you will not do it; you will waste long nights wondering how they cannot feel this—the urge to embrace, the snow melt in the heart when you are near them—how they can sit in that chair, or speak with those lips, or make a call and mean nothing by it, hide nothing in their hearts. Or perhaps what they hide is not what you want to see. Because surely they love someone. It simply isn’t you.

And, two paragraphs later, it’s this:

To give up a marriage—someone unmarried might imagine it’s like giving up a seat in a theater, or sacrificing a trick in bridge for he possibility of better, later. But it is harsher than anyone could realize: a hot invisible fire, burning pieces of hope and fantasy, and charred bits of the past.

It’s exhausting too, yes, as after a while, the level of concentration required to make the prose go all sparkly only makes it feel self-conscious and self-indulgent. Besides, the narrator was getting whiny. Still eloquent, sure, but whiny. Plus there were broad swathes of nothing happening to both the story and these people’s actual lives. And I wasn’t in a very patient mood.

I felt more indulgent, though, with Darin Strauss’s memoir Half a Life, wherein he recounts having hit a bicycling schoolmate in his youth. It wasn’t his fault, but the guilt sets in, and it’s this guilt—plus dealing with the people around him and the circumstances they roll out that compound this guilt—that is the actual subject of this memoir.

So, well, in many cases, this little book is a long[winded] reflection. You can practically feel Strauss using his writing to make sense of half of his life, which seems like a protracted aftermath of a tragic accident.

Strauss is never unaware that the book has an audience, and he tends to spend valuable time assuring us that he is, at the bottom-line, a nice guy. Anyway. What I’m trying to say is, I guess, is that it was okay, and I didn’t mind. I appreciate the braveness of trying to unravel his story. And, you know, that’s about it for me on that book. Yep.

And then there’s A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James, which opened the author’s series on fairytale-retellings. The second book of the series, When Beauty Tamed the Beast, remains among my favorite romances evahr—though I don’t know if having the original fairytale as my favorite was an influence. I mean, well, Beauty and the Beast has pretty much become romance trope—the conflict each of them brings into the pair, the challenge to get it on. In comparison, what do Cinderella and her Prince Charming actually, well, do? Not much—circumstances throw them together most of the time. No one had any agency in that story, methinks.

James attempts to change that with this romance novel. The heroine is feisty, and far from an abandoned doormat pining for a White Knight in a steed. However, as with the fairytale it pays homage to, the heroine may be vivid, she may be surrounded by a cast of interesting secondary characters, but it is the prince who suffers. Basically, he is matter-of-fact—he never goes beyond being a prince, despite attempts at giving him a life beyond his thrust-to-him title. Matter-of-fact, not unlike their romance. Heh.

The tone is too casual for me, too, a little too frothy and glib—although, to her credit, James pulls this off with the right amount of cheeky self-awareness, which, by the way, I’ve been noticing in the author’s later novels. But, ultimately, it didn’t feel as though there was anything at stake. I think that’s mostly why it was an okay read for me. I mean, ya know me, I want my romance angsty. Stake-y.

- – - – - – -

Aaand that’s about it, cobwebby book blog. I do hope to see you again soon. If not, well, there’s about four episodes of Downton Abbey here somewhere. You be good now, y’hear? I’ll try not to buy any more books. Or read any more books. There is always hope.

A screeching commercial in between my attempts at “normal” book blogging! Aherm. Among my current reads is The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. I bought it on impulse [naturally]. I am yet to reach the twentieth page, but already the outrage had me careening to WordPress, to y’all.

Here’s the gist: Ella Rubenstein, recently accused of being an unhappy housewife, needs to read a manuscript for her new job. Goody for her. The manuscript’s called Sweet Blasphemy, and it’s a novel on mystic poet Rumi, and its title is cringe-inducing. Anyhoo. She gets into an argument with her eldest daughter, who wants to marry because it’s lurve, and later, Ella finally settles down to read the manuscript. Thus:

Little did she know that this was going to be not just any book, but the book that changed her life. In the time she was reading it, her life would be rewritten.

Are you fucking kidding me?

The alarm bells went a-clanging with this snippet of sentimental, graceless tripe. This was not being self-aware, this was being so incredibly yucky with schmaltz and Lifestyle Network kind of epiphany. This so does not help my bored-grumpy mood.

Ah, but there’s more. Because Ella actually begins to read the manuscript:

For despite what some people say, love is not only a sweet feeling bound to come and quickly go away.

Her jaw dropped as she realized this was the contradiction of the exact sentence she had spoken to her daughter in the kitchen earlier in the day. She stood still for a moment, shivering with the thought that some mysterious force in the universe, or else this writer, whoever he might be, was spying on her. Perhaps he had written this book knowing beforehand what kind of person was going to read it first. This writer had her in mind as his reader. For some reason unbeknownst to her, Ella found the idea both disturbing and exciting.

Seriously? Really, now? Why are you doing this to me? Why are you supposed to be a really good book? Why do I want to cackle at you, and then slink off under a shower to sob? How does one move forward from this? How?

One of the first NYRB Classics I heard of—in tandem with John Williams’ Stoner—was Eileen Chang’s collection of novellas Love in a Fallen City. My bibliophilic enabler Aunt Anne sent me this book late last year, and it’s taken me this long to settle down and read it. And, you know, it was awesome.

For purposes of brevity [sorely lacking in my corner of the internet], this post is going to focus on the title novella. Which is, well, one of the best nerve-wracking, most quietly and dignifiedly tense love stories I’ve ever read. It mixes cultural mores of the time [turn of the century] with a classics cat-and-mouse trope. Everyone is at once impeccably mature and flawed.

Liusu is divorced, and family—who tends to highlight her uselessness, given her status—presses her to make herself useful once more. Through marriage, naturally. Enter Fan Liuyuan, rich and educated in Britain, scaring off all the young brides eager to catch him. It’s like [what I hear] Jane Austen [is all about], but certainly more compelling, with a more volatile relationship.

She could hardly believe it, but he rarely so much as touched her hand. She was continually on edge, fearing he would suddenly drop the pretense and launch a surprise attack. But day after day he remained a gentleman; it was like facing a great enemy who stood perfectly still.

How these two interact with each other, all the games, all the strategic teasing and withdrawal of affection, the little props and hints they throw each other, it all rings true, and with such an intense feeling.

One backdrop of their relationship: The woman’s place—“Basically, a woman who was tricked by a man deserved to die, while a woman who tricked a man was a whore. If a woman tried to trick a man but failed and then was tricked by him, that was whoredom twice over. Kill her and you’d only dirty the knife.” Okay. [In another novella, this tidbit: “In China, as elsewhere, the constraints imposed by the traditional moral code were originally constructed for the benefit of women: they made beautiful women even harder to obtain, so their value rose, and ugly women were spared the prospect of never-ending humiliation.” Just amazing, no?]

It’s status, yes, it’s the political climate of the time. But, you know, at the heart of the falling city is this solid love story that has the individuals involved the main source of conflict. Hell, one of the most poignant scenes in the novella, for me: when Fan Liuyuan, after a day of hide-and-seek, calls Liusu from his room, which shares a wall with hers. She picks up the phone and lays the receiver on the bedspread. In the stillness of the room, that most quiet of nights, his voice is so clear:

“Liusu, from your window, can you see the moon?”

She didn’t know why, but suddenly she was sobbing. The moon shone bright and blurry through her tears, silver, with a slightly greenish tint. “In my window,” said Liyuan, “there is a flowering vine that blocks half the view. Maybe it’s a rose. Or maybe not.”

And for a long time, neither talks. That charged scene, that scuttling courtship, an olive branch extended—as close as the two of them could admit that they felt for each other. Oh, I swooned. I pressed the book against my face, squealed, read the passage again, and swooned once more.

Also, in SashaLand, it’s not a love story if no one relents. Ladies and gentlemen, the relenting, in form of one of the best kisses I’ve ever read:

This was the first time he had kissed her, but it didn’t feel like the first time to either of them—they had both imagined it so many times. They’d had many opportunities—the right place, the right moment—he’d thought of it; she had worried it might happen. But they were both such clever people, always planning carefully, that they’d never dared to risk it. Suddenly it was reality, and they were both dazed. Liusu’s head was spinning. She fell back against the mirror, her back tightly pressed to its icy surface. His mouth did not leave hers. He pushed her into the mirror and they seemed to fall into it, into another shadowy world—freezing cold, searing hot, flame of the forest flowers burning all over them.

Thank you, and good night.

+ + + + +

Something personal. I want to scrawl this on creamy paper and hand it over to you. Because, you know, once again I’ve found in literature more of the words that come only as instinct to me at each end of our days together.

Here in this uncertain world, money, property, the permanent things—they’re all unreliable. The only thing she could rely on was the breath in her lungs, and this person who lay sleeping beside her. Suddenly, she crawled over to him, hugging him through his quilt. He reached out from the bedding and grasped her hand. They looked and saw each other, saw each other entirely. It was a mere moment of deep understanding, but it was enough to keep them happy together for a decade or so.

I told y’all I’d give you an update on Mary Roach’s Bonk. Well, after an interminably long series of chapters on penises—how they work, how to fix ‘em if they’re broke, how to fix ‘em even if there’s nothing conceivably wrong with ‘em—we entered the pearly gates of, um, wait. Yeah. Basically, we zipped through the feminine bits, which was disappointing—I am, after all, in possession of one—and, then, ta-da, the end. But I read, and I had fun, and, I am a fount of useless information on sexy times.

You might be interested to know that the anecdote I gave you the last time on the sexual incompetence of pandas, well, it’s been making the rounds. I first announced the story during lunch time, sending officemates squee-ing and looking up “panda porn” up on our firewall-ed computers. Officemates and friends then told the story to their friends, and their friends then told the story to unsuspecting mothers at dinnertime. And, well, nothing like raising awareness on panda sex, y’all. My boyfriend thinks it’s cute, miming bewildered pandas who’d been assaulted by their bungling friends: “So, I was crawling up the preserve, see, and—smoking bamboos, Zhang, dude, what are you doing to my ear? Like, bubble of personal space here, okay? Jeesh.” Ahem. Exciting times in my household, yes.

Which brings me to Yoko Ogawa’s squick-tastic Hotel Iris, a slim novel on the most maddeningly boring and scrub-summoning sexual dynamic ever. [A digression: This has me thinking of sexual deviance, and sexual deviance has me thinking about Masters and Johnson, whom I first encountered when I got lost in the Rizal Library. Bonk informed me that Johnson is actually a girl. A nurse, who was first dragged on board to preserve propriety. Masters and Johnson later got married. Someone write a historical romance novel on that, please. Then turn it into a movie that doesn’t star Keira Knightley.]

[The stranger that sat in my table has leaned closer to his girlfriend, at the other table. He’s going all, “I came to see you all the way from Makati, and you don’t even stop talking to your roommate?” Said roommate excused herself, presumably to go to the bathroom. I am disliking this skeeve-monger more and more. For seriously.]

Where was I? Oh yeah, what a horrid book Hotel Iris was. Basically, there’s this pretty seventeen-year-old who’s all enamored with this sixty-seven-year-old mysterious guy. Who has a history of abuse. And weirdness. Now. I am not a prude, regardless of how many times I pull on my skirts at work. But this book, detailing a BDSM relationship that is so lacking in the trust imperative of such kinds of sexual relationships—this book that has our skeevy guy kicking this girl until she’s bloodied and supposedly wanting more and more, well—eww.

Let me clarify: Ogawa seemed to think that the sexual dynamic was a novel in itself. That it could stand on its own, bedamned language and storytelling, and all the other factors that go into the crafting good books. It is supposed to be chilling and disturbing, it’s supposed to leave you cold. Yeah, mission accomplished. But you couldn’t have made this book well-written? You couldn’t have gone, “Wait, I am going to confuse the hell out of my readers: I’mma make this a formalistically excellent book, but I’m going to make them gag on what I’m actually telling them.” You know, kids, after a while, the chilling and disturbing scenarios of sexual deviance—they just make this reader roll her eyes and reach for the next book. Blech.

No worries, though, the best palate-cleanser—and, well, the reviver of my faith in literature—came in the form of another compact book, a very, very, very good book—the kind of book that has you sputtering when you’re asked to talk about it—ladies and gentlemen, I read Unveiled by Courtney Milan, and I was so very glad to be alive.

That book, next time. Soon. Sooner. Someday. Yes.

Books mentioned in this post, in case ye missed it—Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach, which I bought from NBS Quezon Ave. for about 300 bucks, a quarter of the original price. Another anecdote: NBS, as a matter of company policy [I guess?] stores all their sex-related books behind glass cabinets. Which are locked. And when you ask a clerk to unlock a cabinet to retrieve a book, aside from the bemused gaze she is wont to give you, a crazy-loud alarm goes off once the cabinet’s unlocked. So, yes, when you buy a sexy-times book, you’re damned certain the entire store knows about it; and Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder [also bought from National Bookstore, Cubao this time, for PhP565. No alarms went off]. Okay then. Toodles.

I still haven’t been reading much, and when I do pick up books, I tend to go genre-ish: A swashbuckling highland romance, the first book of an overachieving fantasy series, the most entertaining book ever on the “curious coupling of science and sex”—the latter earning me not a few curious stares in my commutes to and from work.

Oh, I’m excited for Maya Banks’ new series; I had loads of fun with the first installment, In Bed with a Highlander. Heiress and potential political pawn, through sheer grit and gumption, saves herself and a laird’s son from the baddies? H&PPP reluctantly finding a home in a crumbling keep of three strapping Highland men? Yes. A lot of easy laughter and believably messy characters? Sure.

[Note: Has anyone ever read a book from Banks’ ongoing Colters’ Legacy series? The first book of which, Colters’ Woman, involves a woman who’s fled from her asshat husband, and into the arms of, um, three brothers? Seriously, that book is, like, canon in the 3m/f subgenre of erotic romance. It sounds skeevy, I know, haha. Commence suspension of disbelief!] [Note, v.02: The heat level in this Highlander book is kind of tame. I will not admit that I was disappointed.]

My romance reads this year have allowed me to conclude how much I love historical romances—Regencies, Victorians, usually [you gotta love the Season!]—but them men of the Highlands hold a special place in my heart. And no, not just because of the kilts.

In other news, other genres, I curled up with Lev Grossman’s The Magicians—a year or so too late, I guess?—and it was enjoyably but, well, ultimately it wasn’t as rich or as affective as the books it repeatedly tried to kupal out. Hah. Ugh. It was not, well, it was too full at the same time, and not full enough. It was exciting and rich, but anticlimactic and blah. It was rushed in too many places, it felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to do with itself. It wanted to introduce us to a magical world but it wanted to do too much at one time? Eh. I don’t know, gah. I read it, it was a fun couple of days, and I’d buy the second book when it comes out in paperback—but nope, no fireworks for me.

Speaking of fireworks [forced segue, but hey], I’m currently reading Mary Roach’s awesome, hilarious book whose title I want to chant over and over in public places: Bonk. Bonk, you guys, BONK. Aherm. I am a fount of useful and not-so-useful information. Like, say, this footnote on “the erectile tissue in the lining of the nose”: It “does, very occasionally, expand when its owner is sexually aroused. It too is made erect by increased blood flow. Nasal congestion is an erection inside your nose.”

Hur. I also learned, among other things, that pandas are so atrociously bumbling when it comes to slipping Tab A into Slot B, and that “panda porn” had to be created by scientists and panda caretakers—a sort of instructional video for pandas to get it on, with people inside panda costumes and, well, yeah, that. Hur, pandas. Aherm. I’ll definitely keep you updated.

So, yeah. That’s my month so far. I’m going back to bed now.

165 of 2011 ∎ The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby; translated from the French by Jeremy Leggatt.

“I have known gentler awakenings,” Bauby shares—telling of the day he awoke from a coma, an ophthalmologist stitching shut his right eye. And him inside a diving bell: a massive stroke resulted in locked-in syndrome—Bauby locked inside his paralyzed body.

I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches the home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.

The memoir has been painstakingly constructed by Bauby as he lay immobile in his hospital bed, deciding over words and phrases and paragraphs, turning them over in his head and then committing them to memory—words he then “dictated” by blinking (with one eyelid, to one Claude Mendibil) his way through a modified alphabet.

It’s a tedious, painstaking process: The meditation it demands and pushes against a body already oppressed by its silence. Every word here has fluttered within Bauby; every word has shouldered the weight of the realm it came from, the manner it was brought out into the world, what they want to say, what impression they would like to leave.

There are memories, of course. Bauby recalls scenes from his own life—shaving his father, taking his children to school, being kissed at the nape by his girlfriend. There is also the present, how he lives through his condition—the visits from friends and family, his son having to wipe the spit from his open mouth, doors and televisions left open and assaulting his senses.

Why these memories, why these specific details? There is no grand sermon from within the diving bell, no battle cry to go and embrace life while you still can. But why these particular words from Bauby?

All that weight it awes and humbles me. Bauby’s words—this slim book!—dares me to contemplate what words I would leave, if I were given the choice—what words, what would matter, what would stand with me and then, later and too soon, live without me?

PSA – I bought The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on sale [PhP200]at National Bookstore Cubao. At that crazy Attic, not unlike a book hospice, for seriously.

Don’t mind me—I’m just going to sneakily slip this in here. For posterity’s sake, as usual. Above is what I managed to read this October. Not in the picture is Milan Kundera’s The Curtain, which, for some reason, refuses to be found. It’s been a strange month for reading material, as usual. My shelves must be feeling quite hokey lately.

Regular programming will resume. Someday. Soon-ish.

And, well, I’m not missing reading too much. I look at my shelves, smile sunnily, realize that they haven’t been clamoring for me, shrieking from their confines. [In fact, the past couple of the days, my usual reading buddy put on her judge-y face and asked, “Why aren’t you reading?” And I shrugged and said, “You know, I’m kind of chill not reading.”] I’ll pick up a book soon, it’s nothing to worry about. I’ve had the urge, though, to read and commit to a fat book—a fat, consuming book. The Pillars of the Earth is grinning smugly at his shelf-mates, as is The World According to Garp. And, heh, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. I’m not ready for all that yet, but, you know, I’m chill.

I did read some really good books last week—Eileen Chang’s short stories, Bauby’s heartache-y memoir, Eugenides’ beautiful spectacle of I Do Not Know Yet. I’m biding my time, though, to talk about them. So, yes, the next time I remember having a book blog, I’ll attack those books.

Three books to dust off this blog with, now. The books below, for posterity’s sake—they’re not AwesomeSauce, but they’re not icky books; I guess they’re good books? Good, in a “Yeah, shrug” kind of way? Although, of course, I expected them to blow me out of the water—aren’t those normal reader expectations? Bleh. They’re just, you know. Shrug.

Take Alain de Botton’s The Romantic Movement, which I bought because de Botton is auto-buy, and especially because this hints at the wonders his On Love wrought on me. I hate to pull a comparison between the two, but if a brawl broke out in a seedy bar somewhere, On Love will throw chairs and knee groins, and The Romantic Movement will be ensconced in a corner table, surveying the proceedings with a sniff-ish air.

Like On Love, The Romantic Movement—subtitled “Sex, Shopping, and the Novel”—is an examination of a trajectory of a love story. Our girl’s resigned, bitter, idealistic longing for a soulmate. Our guy’s casual breeze into her life. How they fall in love, or how they say they fall in love. What makes it a de Botton novel is the author’s constant intrusion: Shopping will summon Emma Bovary, wine-tasting might summon Proust.

The main difference, though, between TRM and OL is that the latter made you invest in the characters, the people involved in the love story the author-narrator is dissecting. TRM looks at them as specimens, sometimes as vehicles for theory and embodiments of Perfect Examples of X—they were rarely actual people for me. I suspect TRM is more detached, if colder. There is the same erudition, of course, the same breathlessness for the language. But the tone and treatment can make you cringe with unease at times. These characters are bugs, and you’re just peeking into the Petri dish with de Botton over there.

Also. Loretta Chase debuted a new series with Silk is for Seduction—about three sisters who are dressmakers. This one’s about the eldest who plots to get the nearly-affianced Duchess of Something or the Other on her client list, because, damn, that will ensure her shop’s success. How does she go about it? By being all vamp-ish and court-y over the Duke. Whose pending-bride she wants to dress. Okay.

Guh, I don’t know. I liked the vibrancy of the heroine, how ruthless and conniving she could get. I did appreciate having a historical romance heroine who had a profession, and is quite good at it, thank you very much. But though I like those, I know—I felt—that they just didn’t make good romance fodder. I mean, she and the hero have no quiet time together. Shit’s always happening. Moreover, I felt that, ugh, her profession and her shop—and, you know, that little business about the class difference—stood in for their love story. How Marcelline [I think that’s her name, haha] fought for her profession, how good she is at it, and, later, how the Duke got all helpful and shit? Yeah. That was their relationship.

The writing was accomplished, the detail that went into making a credible dressmaker was impressive. But did I roll around the bed squealing over this book? Did I giggle like an idiot, or cried like one in Angst Timez? Nope.

And then there’s Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. This was just not my kind of book, although I did went all giddy at the thought of retelling Penelope’s story—or, at least, offering a rightful elaboration.

But I should’ve known there would be a Relevant Social Message crouched in the trappings of the myth. Which, by the way, was told in a too-prosaic language for my sake. [By the way, “The Odyssey meets Desperate Housewives” is just not my kind of cake.] Maybe the disconnect between these two factors—the agenda and the delivery—turned me off? Maybe I just wanted a myth-retelling to roll around in? Because, dammit, from what I remember in school, I really loved Penelope. So, yeah, I wished this had more, well, weight. More stuffing. More.

- – -

If you’re still with me, I suppose you’re thinking that it’s no wonder I don’t want to read. Heh. But no, no, I’ve got good books under my belt, and I can’t wait to share them with my cobwebby white space in my corner of the Interwebz. Just, you know, after I build an Olive Farm. And maybe see what else the Dowager Countess is up to.

In his introduction to Mavis Gallant’s short story collection, Varieties of Exile, Russell Banks offers us a quote from the other herself—

Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.

Banks, of course, offers the feeble, “But, trust me, these can’t.” As particular as the advice may come to readers of short story collections—among them, the odd creatures like me who merely take deep breaths in the pause between stories—the quote Banks pulls feels out of place, given the collective nature he selected for this NYRB Classics edition: The Gallant stories here are linked, in one way or another.

There are three sets or sequences to the stories—the first, about the adventures of Linnet Muir, trying to make her way into the world, when her refugee state and her gender are already two strikes against her; the second, the sisters Carette, growing up, loving, forging different lives; the last, of a male narrator [Banks stresses that there is a need to disabuse the notion that Gallant is cruel to her male characters].

What these three grand narratives have in common? One, they’re “Canadian stories,” as Banks dubs them—a matter of the characters’ nationality, we are informed, especially during a time when the very aspect of national identity for Canada was dubious. For another, their preoccupations: These are old-fashioned stories about people who were quite modern within the time they belonged. However, life seems to us pretty mundane and prosaic and seemingly trivial—but oh-so-oppressive in its politeness!—in Gallant’s world, despite the heavy cloak of formality, which is no doubt brought on by her strident tone and formalistic language. [There are strains of this formality, this scope and sometimes-glib omniscience in the stories of Alice Munro and Carol Shields, who both wrote a generation or two after Gallant, whom I both love madly.]

Again, linked stories, a generous survey. After the first two stories where you recognize the main character, you know where this collection wishes to take you, and you tag along. You can’t wait to see a life unfolding before you, told through stories [or installments] whose relevance was chosen with the author’s discretion. Think of the collection as three different novellas, told in episodes. After a while, well, of course these stories can’t wait—each of them is part of a specific arc!

Moving on. In theory, at least, I should have enjoyed Gallant. I’m certainly in awe of her—she is accomplished, this Grand Dame of Short Fiction. [Banks, too, addresses this, as Gallant “has mostly been viewed as a ‘writers’ writer’: “For what is a writers’ writer, anyhow? Merely one who honors in every sentence she writes the deepest, most time-honored principles of composition: honesty, clarity, and concision. So, yes, in that sense she is a writers’ writer. But only in that sense.”] So, yes, all that. Oh, I have admiration in buckets. But this reader didn’t have enough room to move, despite the expansiveness in the stories and the genius Gallant so clearly has—this reader just couldn’t feel it and fall in love and fall quiet.

Just checking in before I get cracking on blogging duties. Also, excuse the apparent lack of imagination with the picture above [compared to those here]—just think, rightly, that I never left my bed, only turning over once in a while to get the cricks out of my joints.

So, yeah, that stack was what happened. The bottom three books were read the day before the Readathon [because I couldn’t help it]—mostly finishing up unread stories in collections. And then, and then, the Readathon books themselves: the Bauby memoir, the Eugenides extravaganza, and the Atwood social-statement-disquised-as-myth-retelling. Yes. And then, and then, I fell asleep with the de Botton right when the 19^th hour tolled, but I went on reading, because it would’ve been Monday in a couple of hours, and y’all know how much I like to pretend that Monday won’t ever be coming. Aherm.

Yep. Just checking in. See ye soon, folks!

Here in my sunny little archipelago, the Readathon begins at 10 on Saturday evening, to end 10 on Sunday evening. [Or, well, I hope my computation’s right, haha.] Perfect for this night owl, and I am so excited, I could cry. I’ve been trudging through this past workweek, knowing that the Readathon is waiting for me at its close. Wee. And I am just about to tell everyone I am in speaking terms with to, you know, not speak to me at all for those 24 hours.

Pictured above are some of the books I’ve been reading for a while now—usually, I picked them up and read a pinch of pages, then got distracted by something shiny. Makes sense that I would read them during the Readathon: Finish the stories unread from the collections [UPDATE: Um. Oops, I just finished reading Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang about an hour ago. Heh.]; make progress with at least one of the novels (Eugenides looking tasty as ever, though I wonder why I set down the de Botton about a week ago); and return to the art books I dipped into (also, pictures!).

Yeah, that’s the sensible route. But I’ve spent the past couple of days cheering myself up by making lists of books that have long been in my shelves, books I want to finally read, yummy books. I’ve been pulling books from my shelves, making neat stacks, only to change my mind and begin all over again.

So, below, the books I shouldn’t even get too close to:

Heh. But, again, wee! I will be reading until it’s fun—probably the moment right before I want to puke out words. Mmmm, wordvomit. Okay. Um. Yes. See you soon, and keep us company?

[If you’ll allow me, I’ll be lazy and won’t be dwelling much on the plot of Zastrozzi, because it is all sorts of WTFery, briefly described in this oh-so-reliable Wiki entry, and I will have too much fun lacerating it. Also, please note that the Hesperus Press edition of Mary’s book is actually a translation, but for purposes of this Classics Circuit stop, I will only be focusing on the title story.]

* * *

Percy wrote Zastrozzi when he was seventeen, and it was published when he was 18. I refuse to offer the pithy “it shows”—but maybe, you know, this was before he realized he was a far better poet than he would ever be a fictionist? Because, dammit, Zastrozzi is all sorts of messy and crazy and just weird. Parts of it deliberately weird, most of it funny, a whole lot of it confused with what it wanted to do to itself. Also, the blood that gushed in this novel—and there are buckets—is, well, purple. Yes. Purple. This is a novel where people weep and wail out their monologues as they do so, where people slipping into a fevered coma upon hearing bad news, where the blood is purple.

However, a third of this slim novel—mostly about a kidnapping, foiled escapes to old women he meets, the thugs, his freaking kidnapping—is not really the point, because all those, they’re unnecessary, because they’re not really the story. I don’t think it’s even about Verezzi, or Zastrozzi.

The story is mostly about Matilda, Contessa di Laurentini, who’s madly in love with Verezzi, who happens to hold one hell of a burning torch for Julia, La Marchessa de Strobazzo. Zastrozzi, too, yes, being his vengeance-y self [his reasons for vengeance too tacked-on for me, btw] [also, yes, it must be said that Zastrozzi can rightfully labeled as the catalyst, or, at least, the grand manipulator of the narrative].  It’s all Matilda, for me, and not only because I stopped falling asleep with this book once Matilda came on the scene with all her wild-love yumminess.]

Yeah. It’s about love and revenge, yes, seemingly competing instincts but, if exercised with the same kind of passion, exerts the same kind of destructive energy. All in the desperate Matilda. As Zastrozzi instructs her:

Love is worthy of any risk—I felt it once, but revenge has swallowed up every other feeling of my soul—I am alive to nothing but revenge.

First of all, here’s another teeth-gritting story where the angelic woman is pitted against her sly and lusty counterpart. The ideal wife, with her virtue a mantle around her, a contrast to the woman who loves too much and discovers that her love can drive her too too intensely. It’s the mostly-absent Marchessa against our Contessa, and guess whose team I was on? Though, yes, although I am all for her desperate loving, I wanted to take her aside and say, “Honey, you sure you want to go all ninny for that Verezzi loser?”

[In fact, later on in the novel, when Matilda cunningly and complicatedly succeeds in making Verezzi love her back, his love is described as “a Lethean torpor,” emphasizing the fact that, hell, Matilda will never win. Oh, how happy Matilda was when he saw that Verezzi finally, after a long struggle and seduction, loved her.]

Zastrozzi fans Matilda’s jealousy, turning it into murderous rage. This is Matilda’s weakness—loving Verezzi and not being loved back—and Zastrozzi pounces on this, because of some grand scheme of his that frankly doesn’t make sense to me. Still, however, Matilda needed a Zastrozzi to push her love of Verezzi and hatred of Julia to an extreme. [Because it never occurred to her to, you know, hate Verezzi, or at least try to leave well enough alone?]

‘Oh Julia! hated Julia! words are not able to express my detestation of thee. Thou hast destroyed Verezzi. Thy cursed image, reveling in his heart, has blacked my happiness for ever, but ere I die, I will taste revenge—oh! exquisite revenge!’

* * *

Love and vengeance as bedmates, too, is the focus of Mary’s “Transformation”—it was apparent to me, however, that Mary is the better writer this round. It’s a concise, well-crafted, near-mythical tale of, as our narrator Guido describes it in retrospect, “an impious tempting of providence, and soul-subduing humiliation.”

Briefly, Guido is a wastrel, spendthrift, and prodigal adopted son all rolled into one. He loses his bride, thinks himself a victim of other people’s machinations, and plots sweet, sweet vengeance. In a pivotal scene, Guido all brood-y and shit on a cliff, he goes:

Revenge!—the word seemed a balm to me. I hugged it—caressed it—till, like a serpent, it stung me.

There are many similarities, yes, when I looked for them—but the main difference [aside from the writing skill, haha] is the reversal of the characters’ roles. Mary’s Guido is Percy’s Matilda, overcome by his emotions, lost in the intensity of his feelings. However, it helps that Guido tells this story years into the future, giving the tale a wiser edge, or, at least, one of self-awareness [as seen in what I quoted above].

Mary’s Zastrozzi comes in the form of a grotesque dwarf who comes to Guido on a cliff, offering temptation—better yet, offering a chance for vengeance—Guido can reclaim his beautiful bride [who kept daintily insisting that he behave himself], thumb his nose at his adopted father [who has nothing but love for him], and sneer at the townspeople who drove him out of his home [never mind that he habitually went on binges and orgies]:

‘Oh, you cousin of Lucifer!’ said he; ‘so you too have fallen through your pride; and, though bright as the son of morning, you are ready to give up your good looks, your bride, and your well-being, rather than submit to the tyranny of good.’

Offers from grotesque dwarves don’t augur well. Look at Rumplestiltskin, dammit. The dwarf offers untold riches to fund Guido’s vengeance, in exchange for three days of living in Guido’s body. The struggle in Guido—will common sense win out or his thirst for revenge? And then, when the revenge won out, the three days he waits for his body to return—the suspicion, the panic, the fear.

And, damn, is this book rife with symbolism. Makes me all dorky-giddy. Guido, in the body of that grotesque dwarf, gets the nerve to return to his hometown, encounter the people he’d left behind and hurt. Most especially, his confrontation with the dwarf in his booty-ful body. Wee!

* * *

Yes, I realize that these two works are not considered among these two’s masterpieces, or even their key works—for one, Percy’s a poet [and, man, does his novella know that], and, well, Mary’s got Frankenstein. But, ye know, I decided to go hipster and read their more obscure[d] books. Also, these were the books already in my shelves. Heh.

But, I like what I’ve read. Although Percy’s juvenilia had me stifling mad attacks of the giggles, the quiet dignity—the self-aware Gothic-y yumminess—of Mary’s stories were amazing. Percy’s bored me at first, and then it drove me batshit crazy, but I have nothing but respect for Mary’s writing. You know, I’ve long hemmed and hawed about reading Frankenstein, but, dammit, I think that I will very, very soon.

- – - – - – -

This post is one of many stops for the Gothic Literature Classics Tour of the Classics Circuit. Check out the tour stops before me, and wait with bated breath those that are a-coming!

I realize now that Tony and Susan—Austin Wright’s rediscovered/resurrected “classic,” begging the distinction accorded to Revolutionary Road—is more complex than it already seemed to me when I first read it. The premise is simple, though: Susan receives a manuscript from her ex-husband, for her to read and critique. The execution, however: We are with Susan as she reads Edward’s book, Nocturnal Animals—meaning, we read Edward’s novel along with her, we begin chapters as Susan begins them, we stop when Susan does. We are with Susan, too, in the interludes between her reading: We reminisce with her [the memories summoned are inevitable when reading work by one’s ex-husband, I suppose], we learn of her story, we learn of the disintegration of her first marriage, how she slipped into her second, and how the second, now, fills her with a dread that goes largely unexplained in the book, but ever-so-present.

Forgive me, however, for not plunging into the book itself—it’s not the best book, it doesn’t come close to fitting the “rediscovered classic,” but it’s okay. I do state, for the record, however, that were I asked to pick which I like more—Susan’s life or Edward’s manuscript—I’d rather have the former. The latter is, I suspect, deliberately flawed, by the way. However, it’s Susan I’m more interested in. Well, the thing about this book [what thing?] that has stayed with me is how Wright charts the relationship between reader and writer; reader and familiar writer; reader and book; reader and tragic character [“Poor Tony, how much her pleasure depends on his distress.”]; and also the person behind the reader confronting the reader as she reads. Susan, Susan, Susan, Susan.

* * *

Susan’s initial misgivings: They do not even concern the novel itself, but her relationship to its author. In sending Susan his manuscript, Edward insists that she has always been his ideal reader: an open mind, but harsher as any critic out there. But these two have history, messier and messier as we delve deeper into Susan’s life later in the novel.  But she needs to be reader and critic first, not [bewildered] ex-wife:

. . . she would try to clean out her mind to read Edward’s novel in the way it deserved. The problem was old memory, coming back like an old volcano, full of rumble and quake. All that abandoned intimacy, his out-of-date knowledge of her and hers of him. Her memory of his admiration of himself, his vanity, also his fears—his smallness—knowledge she must ignore if her reading was to be fair. She’s determined to be fair. To be fair she must deny her memory and make as if she were a stranger.

Susan’s more universal problem, however: That strangeness with beginning a book, not unlike the big unknown that floods you when taking a risk. For Susan, it’s not just this book in particular. For me, it’s not just Susan:

Like traveling without knowing what country you’re going to. The worst would be if it’s inept, which might vindicate her for the past but would embarrass her now. Even if it’s not inept, there are risks: an intimate trip through an unfamiliar mind, forced to contemplate icons more meaningful to others than herself, confined with strangers she never chose, asked to participate in alien customs. With Edward as guide, whose dominance she once struggled to escape.

And, later, firmly in the clutches of the book—regardless of the influence Edward-as-ex-husband—and the prospect of having to eventually say goodbye to it:

Then she was afraid of entering the novel’s world, lest she forget reality. Now, leaving, she is afraid of not being able to return. The book weaves around her chair like a web. She has to make a hole in it to get out. The web damaged, the hole will grow, and when she returns, the web will be gone.

I know exactly what you mean, Susan. With some books, we struggle, we resist. A mad, rushing embrace isn’t always the case in the reading life, and Susan knows this. Life gets in the way, but a brush of dread with holding the actual book in one’s hands is present as well. But we’re lucky, because some books pay off—Nocturnal Animals did so for Susan, as Tony and Susan did so for me [however tangentially]—even though, as Susan did, we wonder why we raised a hell of a kerfuffle in the first place, even, yes, with reason:

She feels bruised by her reading and by life too. She wonders, does she always fight her books before yielding to them?

PSA – I bought Tony and Susan from National Bookstore [PhP995] as a birthday gift to mahself. It paid off, it’s safe to say.

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