B List--Between books
C List--Between books
This month's check-in catches me on an off day. I am working on the report for B, and the book due up for C was a novel by Philip Pullman that was highly rated but I didn't realize it was a Harry Potteresque fantasy/young adult type book. I read about 20 pages of it and wasn't interested, so I'm waiting to get to the library to get the next title for that list.
Nathaniel West is, by some people anyway, a celebrated American satirist of the 1930s. I did read his most famous book, Miss Lonelyhearts, a few years back. It didn't make much of an impression on me. This one is supposed to be a spoof on the Horatio Alger genre. The first few pages were funny, then an orphan girl character got introduced who has already been the victim of two rapes, the first when she was twelve years old, and who works in the employ of a local lawyer and town who takes down her pants and spanks her twice a week. I get that this is supposed to be part of the dark skewering of banal conventions, and it does give the story some bite, or at least a sense of controversy, and I am attracted to that, but at the same time it is difficult in the current environment to react to its being presented in this rather light way in the spirit which is probably conducive to the way this episode is supposed to be understood. In general I am almost always ultimately disappointed by these kinds of books, even by their better practitioners such as Waugh. I am just not thoroughly (wickedly?) cynical enough by nature to derive the full enjoyment from them. Besides the likelihood that they don't seem to age very well, for them to work the humor and thrust have to be quite sophisticated, I find, and this is where Waugh is strong. One of the oddities of our time is that Donald Trump would seem to be such an obvious target for a devastating satire, and truly millions of people are offering would-be witty and devastating commentary on his entire persona on a daily basis, yet I cannot remember anything of the sort that I thought was particularly funny or clarifying about the absurd situation we find ourselves in, not that I have read everything, of course. Trump is a slippery target I suppose because he genuinely seems (along with his supporters) to regard his detestable qualities as in fact great strengths, and this detail seems to be beyond the comprehension of his critics, which dulls their ability to mock him. Instead, the most delicious targets for satire in the current environment are the Resistance and the virtue signalers who regard themselves with hilarious self-seriousness as moral paragons, at least compared to their cultural and political enemies, and the guardians of the true Republic. Not that the Trumpists are not delusional too I suppose but the attacks on them are so obvious and predictable, I guess, they don't have any sophisticated force beyond brute rage....
This is the time of year when I start to count down the days I have left to read on the porch before I have to close that up for the winter. Most years I feel like I can get out there most days up to October 20th or so, but this year even the second half of September has been chilly. I've only gotten out there a couple of days each week the past fortnight, as there have been a lot of days where the high temperature was 57 degrees (and raining). It looks like there are two or three days coming this week which will be warm enough to go outside, but that might be it...
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