August Update

It's a day early because the 6th is a Saturday and I am not sure whether I will have any computer time or not.


A List: Between books. Recently "finished" Les Fleurs du Mal.
B List: Allen--Anthony Adverse....................................569/1,224
C List: Rushdie--The Ground Beneath Her Feet.............314/575


I put the quotations around "finished" for Fleurs du Mal because I got lazier as it went on and stopped, first, writing out all of my translations, and then by the end I was not bothering to look up words, or keep looking them up, since some of them kept appearing over and over again and I could not remember/keep straight what they meant. The A list, though it gave me at one time a pretty good foundation in English literature at least, has not been working for me in a long time, and perhaps at some point I will abandon it. I am otherwise so generally dismal and sluggish though in the hours when I do this reading that it is not evident that I will attack whatever replaces it with any more vigor or enthusiasm.


The B List is where I get most of my literary enjoyment these days, even when the books are not Great. However it takes me back to one of the more hopeful and fervid interests of my youth, which has a much-needed positive effect on my overall mood and state of mind. I have to admit that there are a lot of things I like about  Anthony Adverse, though it is still longer than it needs to be and it is definitely a book to read either before age 18 or after 45, and the after 45 only if you have gone as far as you are ever likely to go with real literature. There are also political incorrectness issues. The book features a great diversity of national and racial origin among its characters, though stereotypes and the traditional negation in books written by western men of the sexual potency of their non-western counterparts are the rule, even when the exotic is otherwise portrayed as a good or admirable fellow by European standards (Natty Bumppo syndrome). The hero of course is a fair-haired Anglo-Celtic type. At the point of the narrative that I have reached Anthony is in Africa making good money in the slave trade. He does have a French monk with him who is setting up as potentially being a sort of conscience and who I suspect will turn Anthony away from this perfidious practice, but having already shipped out fourteen cargoes to Havana, the come-to-Jesus moment will be coming a little late to endear him to modern audiences.


I like the more swashbuckling aspects of the book, its generally good-natured admiration of high-spirited and thriving masculinity, albeit often at the expense of others. These old books are at least as judgmental of masculine failure and inferiority as contemporary books are, but the measure one feels to be taken of himself is less personal, due in part to the changing moral circumstances among other things. I also find it interesting to consider the various problems that arise, such as, how to gain control of the ship with various enemies plotting against me. I am not good in coming up with solutions or even sniffing out what bigger actions the various observable little actions portend. It is important to be able to react thus in real time however. (I have more to say about this but I am running out of time).


The C List book I only read a little each day, with the idea of getting a taste of the more current world scene, which is why I favor shorter books for it when possible. The Rushdie book is meandering quite a bit as it goes on. That he has a considerable amount of talent is apparent, at times, and it is worth reading for those times. But the control over the material is not always as tight and focused as you get used to reading classics.