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For some reason I’d only previously read “The Old Man and the Sea” (twice) which I never loved. I picked up a Hemingway collection (4 novels, $15!) and started on “The Sun Also Rises” because it’s relatively short, and about bullfighting, and because of Joan Didion’s writing. 

I’m not sure why Hemingway has gotten such a bad reputation recently. Well, maybe I do. His topics are very masculine. The characters struggles are often very masculine. The lifestyles are extravagant and self-aggrandizing since they’re ~related to his own experiences. The experiences are very outward in ways that we don’t need described in the age of wikipedia. The characters are awful. The dialogue is hard to follow. The prose can feel almost childishly simple. Not much happens besides gossip, drinking, and trouncing around Europe. The jokes are crude and many feel a little worse in light of a certain European event in the ensuing decades.  

But also it just still feels fresh. Compared to other books written around this time (and many written after), it reads like something written recently. The writing never gives too much or tries too hard in description. It conveys moods and emotions while never having to describe them. The writing gets out of the way without much sacrifice. Hemingway’s influence on American writing becomes quite clear when reading his work next to others written in a similar time period (far from Sinclair Lewis). 

This makes me want to read more Hemingway. I just picked up “A Movable Feast”…

Who should write the book about being online? I guess an Instagram meme-maker/friend of the band/influencer. But I bought the book because of the front cover blurb so I guess I was influenced. 

This is an essay collection very much in the Joan Didion sense–largely a description of living through certain eras or events shown through a loosely related narrative with nearly invisible conclusions and value judgements. These essays cover early internet chatrooms and the process of trying to manage both an online and “real life” persona, becoming an influencer and attending influencer-only events, online dating/dating people who are very much online, a digital detox in a monastery, polyamorous/ENM relationships, and environmental dread. 

As with any essay collection, a couple fell flat for me (maybe just not terribly relatable for me?), a couple were okay, but about half of the book was very good. Many of the essays do a. wonderful job of describing both the overwhelming amount of content but also the near impossibility of escaping a world that is increasingly online. This work covers the awkwardness of being and interacting with influencers along with both the dehumanizing aspects of online life (monetizing social media, dating apps, etc.). But also provides humanity to the weirdness of social media (needing  to monetize social media, finding love on dating apps, etc.). There’s an acute feeling of not really liking the way things are going but also not really knowing what/how to change things. 

My favorite: “In Real Life” 

This book (loosely) follows Melville’s own voyage to the South Pacific where he abandoned ship at Nuku Hiva and lived on the island for a period of time. It was a popular piece of writing during Melville’s life). 

Much of the writing focuses on expectations about the supposed cannibal islanders and the contrast between their lifestyle and that of America’s in ~1840. It isn’t unsympathetic towards a lifestyle that seems to consist of mostly leisure and is uncorrupted by money. The Type tribe (purported to be fierce and cannibalistic) find Tom (Melville) and Toby and take them in as guests treated luxuriously. Toby escapes but Tom is suck with an injured leg. During this time he partakes in the finest foods and comforts while remaining on edge that his hosts are cannibals.  

How can this be judged? The events in the book take place after many of the initial European voyages exploring the South Pacific but slightly predate French colonialism. Many details are likely embellished or taken from the writing of other visitors and a lot of the lengthy descriptions of the island are somewhat superfluous because of photos. It remains an interesting account of early industrial society encountering the non-industrialized. It’s not unpleasant it just doesn’t fit into any modern categories or provide much to current readers besides a fun story of island exploration.   

I think this is my second time playing publicly in the past five years. At one point I was playing publicly almost weekly with regular recitals. It’s a skill that I haven’t gotten to use a lot, certainly difficult switching from “practice” to “performance” (Listen to Maria João Pires play the piece here).

A young urbane couple leaves New York for the Connecticut suburbs. April had gone to acting school and Frank had attended Columbia and fought in The War and planned to “find himself” in some general academic pursuit. A pregnancy caused them to move and Frank to get an office job at the company his father had worked for. After a second child and several years of suburban living April stars in a local play which is an embarrassing failure. This starts a chain of events where April and Frank examine their suburban life and their previous dreams while searching for a way to find a more exciting life. 

This is one of the most miserable books I’ve read (and in a similar vein to also depressing “White Noise” and “Stoner”). No one here is happy, there are plenty of victims but no heroes, and everyone feels very much above their friends. This novel plays out largely in a series of arguments and plans to improve their situation made tolerable only by large numbers of drinks. 

Lots of comparisons are made “Gatsby” as they both call into question their outwardly indulgent, inwardly miserable era (1920s or ’50s). This novel much more directly parallels Lewis’s “Main Street,” picking up where it let off (a play which failed to inject culture into a provincial area) but a few decades later. In both cases there is an urbane wife and dawdling husband, they move to a small town/the suburbs but insist that the will make the most of it and not become dull and domestic like their neighbors. There is certainly no success but the husbands are able to make do (more or less). I really like Lewis, but “Revolutionary Road” is the better of the pair and retains more relevance (although they’re both certainly of their time). 

What a weird book! One of O’Connor’s two novels (although there are a lot of short stories sitting on my shelf) it follows Hazel Motes as he moves to a new town and tries to start his new religion–The Church Without Christ. He has a deep sense of (Catholic?) shame about his faith and tries to rebel by becoming blasphemous. He meets a preacher who blinded himself as an act of faith and a young man who is obsessed with a mummy in the city museum. These encounters lead to a series of more extreme events for Haze.

Things move fast here and the significance really lies in the strange actions of the characters. Not really a case of subtle writing or introspection, O’Connor narrates a series of strange events for several characters that are loosely intertwined. It’s strange without trying to push any limits or toe any lines. Hardly what I tend to go for but completely enjoyable.

“The Suicides” opens with a quote from Camus so I figured it was time to stop putting it off. 

I received “The Suicides” from the NYRB Classics Club subscriptions that I had last year (which have mostly just gone to a colorful stack). Can’t say why I chose this over the others but I’m glad that I did. 

The book opens like “The Stranger.” An unnamed narrator realizes that he’s about to turn 33–the age his father committed suicide. As a journalist trying to sell stories to magazines, his boss assigns a story about three suicides with no information besides pictures. He spends the remainder of the novel trying to find details from the three pictures while also following new suicides in the region. He is quick to ask favors and put others in uncomfortable positions to find any small amount of information. However, he’s much more interested in the women he meets along the way (though not his girlfriend) while he spends time at the fights of movies.

The writing is sparse and interspersed with statistical studies of suicide from one of the characters. The story moves and reaches conclusions in a way but generally is very stagnant. The narrator feels trapped for most of the novel with only a few glimmers of hope. Other reviews connect this to the political state of affairs around this time in Argentina. 

Maybe the situation reaches Camus’s absurd where the narrator finds little reason to continue living or go along with any typical role. At times there is passion and revolt, but hardly freedom. Certainly his job is Sisyphean. But maybe the situation is more Kafkaesque which, according to Camus, is too hopeful to capture the absurd, but somehow “The Suicides” might also have some hope. 

Gary Shteyngart’s new novel shows a marriage falling apart from the eyes of a ten year old in the milieu of a fascist America somewhere in the relatively near future. Vera is trying to navigate school and friendships in a “gifted” education system full of high expectations and entrance exams largely motivated by her step-mother who clearly prefers her younger brother. Conversations about this with her AI chess set convince her to try to find her birth mother in Ohio (where she met her father in college at “the school of fading repute” which is definitely not Oberlin). While this is happening her father is trying to sell his magazine to someone who doesn’t like its general political direction so they can go from having “cultural capital” to “capital capital.”

I read “Our Country Friends” in ~2022 and thought it was good, all things considered. There are a lot of similar characters here: pretentious writer husband with a borderline drinking problem that resembles the author, exasperated wife, Korean-American daughter, strained relationships all around. And apparently the “cultural capital” vs “capital capital” thing is a bit of a leitmotif for Shteyngart. Which is all to say that this feels almost like a continuation of some previous works despite the plots being non-connected. 

But it’s been a few days and I’ve really forgotten about most of it. Maybe I prefer Shteyngart’s “reporting” for the New Yorker or the Atlantic (on martini’s and probably tax write-off luxuries)–here the wit and “Russian pessimism” really shine. Nothing wrong with novel and I enjoyed it, but it won’t stick with me and that’s fine.  

A modern fable of a boy with an incredible sense of smell but no scent of his own. “Perfume” follows Grenouille (Frog) from his abandonment at birth through his childhood in ~foster care, adolescence as a tanning then perfume apprentice, time in isolation, and finally early adulthood learning enfleurage to make his ultimate perfume.

A main theme through this novel is how the often imperceptible sense of one’s smell contributes to their identity and perception by others. Since Grenouille gives off no scent, he is not perceived and found to be unsettling when people see him. Upon realizing this, Grenouille sets out to create the ultimate scent so others will perceive him as beautiful.

Writing in third-person omniscient, Süskind provides a sense of gravity and timelessness to the work without much personal introspection from Grenouille. He certainly isn’t an antihero that generates empathy. It’s an uncomfortable and unsettling read but also feels timeless. As a bonus, Süskind provides lots of interesting details about perfumery through Grenouille’s training.

Is it a romance or a coming of age novel? Critique of Edwardian manners? Forster’s novel plays a lot of parts for being relatively short length. To add, it feels like a victorian novel that’s been torn back and loosened up a little (not quite modernist). 

I guess it’s really a novel of conflicts modulated by manners. Lucy is in conflict with her mother, Charlotte, Cecil, and George but not really with her philosopher Mr. Emerson. Charlotte and Mrs. Honeychurch are in conflict with George and Cecil. All of their conflicts have to go through Edwardian customs and concerns of what others may think. 

Maybe I came in expecting a little bit of a lighter, lusher novel based on the descriptions of the book (and film). This has some weight to it which I wasn’t really expecting. 

Maybe this is more for the spring than the summer, or maybe my criticism is that LP Hartley’s “The Go-Between” exists.