Hello all! Just a few reading notes today, plus cats!
CONTENTS
Reading Notes- Carpentier, Williams, Rizal, Podhoretz
Lagniappe- The Observed Life, with Peter: Bliss!
READING NOTES
While getting my birthday lecture together, of course I read some other stuff. I read The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier, the Franco-Cuban writer credited with helping the Latin American magical realist boom get its start. Ti-Noel, its protagonist, raised a slave in Haiti, knows Makandal as a young man, witnesses the beginning of the Haitian Revolution, is taken away to Cuba by his master, then returns in time to witness Emperor Henri, one of the successors of the revolution, raise one of the most stupendous buildings in the world, the Citadel on Haiti’s north coast, a massive fortress in the mountain jungle built by terrified draftees. Ti-Noel sees much of the folly of man, including his own. In an introductory essay, Carpentier said he rejected the surrealist effort to make the world seem strange by adding dreamlike elements- life in the Americas, he insisted, needed only faithful depiction to produce all the effect the Surrealists wanted. Well, Garcia Marquez and the others Carpentier helped inspire to create magical realism would bring the surrealism back in, but Carpentier had a point.
I had had a copy of John William’s Stoner around for a while, and heard a lot of superlatives. There’s even a biography of Williams that calls him “the man who wrote the perfect novel”! Well, I read Stoner, and I’m not sure I would say it was perfect — I’m not sure what a truly perfect novel would look like, and like with biblical angels, am not sure I want to see one — but it was extraordinarily beautiful. The story of William Stoner, his rearing on a dirt farm in turn of the 20th century Missouri, his discovery of English literature after going to university for agronomy, the beauty he finds and the disappoints he experiences… it’s a triumph of a direct, well-polished style and emotional honesty. Some of the copy talks about Stoner as a hero against the world. Don’t listen. Stoner is not a martyr-saint. He’s better than that- a genuine, if flawed, man who does his best, often fails, but maintains a basic honesty. Not sure what else to say about it. It’s just really good.
I also read Noli Me Tangere, one half of the great epic novel of the Philippines, by patriot-martyr Jose Rizal. This was a period, the late nineteenth century, where one of the ways you proved that you were a serious nation of your own — not the kind of place that somehow deserved to be a colony — was to have big epic literature. Jose Rizal delivers that for the Philippines (though, notably, in Spanish, not in any of the indigenous Filipino languages- among other things, it seems that Rizal imagined the Philippines as remaining in some kind of unity with Spain). The story of young mestizo do-gooder Ibarra, coming back from seven years in Europe with all kinds of nice liberalizing ideas, and having land, future, and the hand of his lady love stripped from him by evil Spaniard Catholic priests (the Church had outsized power over Spanish colonial Philippines) and some jealous local fat cats, piles on the incident, emotions, characters telling their life stories in between the action, on and on… and there’s a sequel to boot, Filibusterismo! This was kind of fun but also long and a little… oddly paced, in the manner of historical romances of this period, so, not being a Filipino high school student required to read both volumes by federal law, I am not running out for the sequel.
Lastly, for my readings on the right, I had a look at the notorious Making It by neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz. This book nearly tanked his career when he published it in 1967. He was in his mid-thirties and was editor at Commentary back when those kind of small magazines mattered. He wrote this memoirs about how he, as the title implies, “made it” to this halcyon post, and also called it a meditation on success and the ways in which artistic and literary culture despises success, despite everyone involved hunting after it. The tone of the book is boastful, gossipy, self-obsessed, obsessed with others in Podhoretz’s circle, almost unbelievably petty, wounded in places, and unabashedly arrogant, arrogance of the kind that ritually refers to its own flaws, but more as beauty marks than real self-reflection. Podhoretz was always brilliant, people were always jealous, Podhoretz kept succeeding anyway, he learns that the ritual, aristocratic/lefty disdain for worldly success is a lie meant to keep people like him down, rinse repeat. And the thing is… it’s almost good. If Podhoretz is self-obsessed and obsessed with his circle (specifically his place in it), it’s because he was working at something like a high point for the prominence of serious literature in American society (not necessarily a high point for literary quality… but miles better than we have today). He could call his group “The Family,” talk about they (we call them the New York Intellectuals, now) dominated American literature and criticism that had any pretense of quality to it outside of a few enclaves, and he’s damn near right. His insights into the group are interesting and often funny. These, and some of the stuff about his earlier life, almost make the book the masterpiece he thought he was making. Then he delves into the nitty gritty of publishing for the last third of the book, to show how smart all his career moves were, and it becomes boring. The scene he enshrines, savages, sucks up to, spills “the tea” of, cut him out for his crimes, and this helped accelerate his rightward turn. Well… couldn’t have happened to a more genuine guy!
LAGNIAPPE
The Observed Life, with Peter: Bliss!
My mom got a little kitten! Her name is Bliss. She is a little tornado of cuteness and claws! I met her this week.
Mithra’s not jealous, YOU’RE jealous!
Noli me Tangere was given as a gift to me a few years back-- I took the title a little too literally (haven’t opened it since). Didn’t realize it had “great Philippine novel “ status-- also sharing similarities with the American historical narrative. Thanks for the reconnaissance!