Read, reading, not reading and not yet reading

Read...

Joyce Carol Oates Middle Age: A Romance.  Again I marvel at Oates's ability to create a cast of utterly realistic and unclichéd characters, an entire social context and network of relationships that compel me to turn the page whilst satisfying and defeating my expectations of both plot and character.  The idea seemed trite: an eccentric, charismatic but apparently poor sculptor in a wealthy US suburb dies suddenly; we see how his death touches a handful of those who knew him, forcing them to re-assess themselves, make changes to their smug lives, run away from spouses, stop keeping up pretences and so on. It looks too neat and could easily have slipped into sentimentality, but always Oates veers away from the easy redemption and cuts to the harsher and occasionally happier but less pretty truth.  Outstanding.

Reading...

Mrs Dalloway.  Slowly.  Woolf is too rich for me to take more than a handful of pages at a time but I love every word.  I especially love how the apparent jumps and illogicalities of conversation or thought make perfect artistic sense.

T S Eliot's poems and this guide whose introduction is a truly excellent and interesting guide to Eliot's influences and where they took his poetry.  I've picked up a couple of allusions in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock which had passed me by before, and I plan to head off in the direction of The Waste Land now we're home from holiday.

Dante's The Inferno.  By accident.  This Penguin translation by Dorothy L Sayers has been on my shelves so long that it has my maiden name in it.  The Southam book mentioned above cites Dante as a major influence on Eliot and my readings in Gabriel Josipovici's essays The Singer on the Shore had also whetted my appetite for embarking on The Divine Comedy.  But the problem loomed of which translation to use.  On the basis of this article I bought the Mandelbaum translation but it was too heavy to take on holiday and the unintelligible introduction by Eugenio Montale rather curbed my enthusiasm.  Sayers has a very informative introduction and notes and whilst her actual translation feels dated in places she is in three volumes and therefore portable.  I'm already as far as Nether Hell without it feeling like hard work.  Indeed, I even read it by the pool on holiday (I hope the surrounding swathes of Ian McEwan fans felt suitably chastened). 

Not reading...

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell.  Purchased because it was the only book I'd heard of about Cyprus.  I got about a third of the way through while we were there and it was a case of Durrell being snooty about the English ruining the island by turning it into a clone of suburbs like Wimbledon and then taking himself off to 'the real' Cyprus to restore a house.  And what comes next is obviously the usual tale of bumpkin builders being colourfully eccentric and falling down drunk.  Yawn.  But then I hit a discussion of the, no doubt, interesting-at-the-time politics, and fell into a deep state of narcolepsy in which the book slipped from my hand never to be picked up again.  But all is not lost for Mr Durrell.  Our brief visit to Cairo has left me with a burning desire to read about non-ancient Egypt and there's an outside chance of The Alexandria Quartet making its way onto my tbr pile.  I've already read (but wasn't terribly keen on) Palace Walk, the first of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy and am wondering about The Yacoubian Building.  Has anyone read it?  Does anyone have any other non-ancient Egyptian suggestions?

Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky.  I'm not sure quite how this smuggled itself into my holiday hand luggage; possibly another Josipovici recommendation, but having taken several hours to get through just 40 pages I fear defeat looms.

Not yet reading..

April's plans are to read Dorothy Richardson's Pointed Roofs and Montano's Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas.

Clearly I haven't a hope of completing so much heavyweight reading in one month but its going to be fun trying.

Comments

[steve mitchelmore]

It's a shame you had the wrong guide to Dante translations! Pinksy's, Durling's or the Hollander's would have been better.

[Bet]

There is another Durrell who wrote about Cyprus, and in a most enchanting way: Lawrence's youngest brother, Gerald Durrell. Start with My Family and Other Animals. It's more about the family and Gerry's adventures observing and collecting wildlife, but the culture and beauty of Cyprus creeps in. Besides, it's hysterical!

[Sandra]

Ah, Steve I knew I should have thrown the translation issue out to the collective wisdom of the blog readers. I'm now on a mission to find as many different translations as I've seen mentioned and do my own compare and contrast. Meanwhile the DLS version is at least highly explained.

Bet, My Family etc is set on Corfu, a different island in the Med, but I do agree it is very funny!

[bookfraud]

the first part of notes from the underground is difficult sledding, but once they get to the dinner and the post-eating festivities, it is amazing, a real stunner.

in my humble opinion.

[Amateur Reader]

If you're soliciting Dante translation recommendations, I suggest a look at Laurence Binyon's version of "Inferno". A lovely poetic rendering (it keeps the terza rima). Out of print, at least in the US.

[carolyn]

I don't think the John Ciardi Translation has ever been beat (it's also in verse)