A Room of One’s Own Friday, May 2 2008

Newsflash. I haven’t been posting because I’ve been reading too much! After the library asked for my books back because I am graduating, I had to go beg them to extend my borrowing privileges! I got a raise, Andrew is in NJ calling me from Geraldo’s home phone. My bowling pin burn is coming off. And: I am graduating!

On to the books: I really feel that I’m not doing this whole reviewing what I’ve read thing justice. Right now I am reading:

1) The Captive and the Fugitive by Marcel Proust–Almost done. This is the most disjointed book so far. There was a brief scene in Madame Vedurin’s house, where Monsieur de Charlus caused a stink over something and the rest of the book has been Marcel weeping, postulating, prostrating, and lamenting over Albertine. It’s very beautiful–don’t get me wrong. But it is not as graceful as Swann’s yearnings over Odette. I miss Swann. Let’s just say that I’ll be delighted when I am finished and will be able to take a look at the thing as a whole. Believe me, if it was too much or too awfully boring I would have quit by now. There’s something in it that keeps me going and it’s hard to explain. The language is enough to carry the sometimes nonexistent plot. I don’t even usually need a plot–books these days rarely have a plot. I just need something to keep me in the scene, something to make sure I don’t wander off. Elstir, Francoise, and Jupien and those kinds of characters are what keep me in the book. Marcel likes to lay around in bed and worry.

2) Art and Ardor by Cynthia Ozick–another book of essays. So far I have read a lot about Virginia Woolf and thus the portrait above. I am reading now about E.M. Forster’s secret homosexual novel. Bloomsbury is now interesting to me and I really want to read more Woolf before too long.

3) Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by: Lydia Millet–the three men who starred in the Manhattan Project have been brought back to life in the 21st century and are mooching off a married librarian in New Mexico. She believes in their plights and their hearts and her push over husband may not make it. I really like the way this is written and am savoring it slowly.

4) Master and Margarita by: Mikhail Bulgakov–Getting stranger and stranger. Margarita has shown up and she is horrible! I can only imagine that the way this novel ends can only be in the most unimaginable horror ever. It’s almost unbelievable. I love it.

5) The Virgin in the Flames by Chris Abani–just started it so I don’t have any idea how I’ll like this. So far, it’s interesting. Very contemporary.

6) Auto da Fe by Elias Canetti–yes, I’m still reading this because only one chapter at a time can be handled. This is not to say that I don’t like it, it’s just hard to swallow in large chunks.

I will try to finish one of these this weekend, so I can start something equally as wonderful and share it with you!

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Possession Tuesday, Apr 8 2008

I am not sure how I feel about the new set up here at wordpress, I think I might grow to like it. That’s really neither here nor there. (I love that saying in writing). I found this de Kooning painting on a website and also this quote:

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts it size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter– the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last– the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

- E.B. White, “Here is New York”

Apparently this is a neat little essay written by E. B. White in a hotel room in New York City, and I want to get my hands on the whole thing. I could start a whole shelf devoted to these musings on my future home.

Something weird is going on when I don’t want to do anything but listen to Pandora and while away the minutes until I get to go home. I don’t want to read or think about my responsibilities right now. I think it’s called a mixture of Spring Fever (the trees have turned and I must be under them!) and Graduation-itis (a rare form of ‘I don’t give a shit-fever’ coupled with an amnesia like sensation of not knowing who you are or where you are or who those people are who are telling you to write them papers.) I’m not sure if I will survive. But The Mountain Goats guy is singing me through it.

I’m still reading, don’t worry, just not as much as usual. Trying to get through Auto da Fe by Elias Canetti. and Possession by A. S. Byatt. Both are excellent and pair together well. I’m pretty annoyed with Interlibrary loan for this major disruption in Proust reading, but there’s not much to be done about that. I am wanting a book from the Science library which is not on North Campus so I have no idea where it is or how to get there, how I’m going to find time to get there, etc. I’m also really excited about the next few months worth of new releases that I won’t be able to afford to buy myself and they are:

Chuck Palahniuk-Snuff

Louise Erdrich-The Plague of Doves

Maureen Freely-Enlightenment

Salman Rushdie-The Enchantress of Florence

David Sedaris-When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Haruki Murakami-What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Just to name a few. Also going now to research Sanford Berman, a radical librarian.

Love, Jessica

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