October 2020

A List: Hemingway--The Sun Also Rises......................................................168/247

B List: Between books

C List: Carlyle--The French Revolution..........................................................59/727

I had never read The Sun Also Rises, which is usually considered to be Hemingway's best novel, until now. It is on the B list, but not for a long time, so I'm happy to have the opportunity to take it up now. I do like it. It doesn't seem like a lot actually happens, in terms of action, compared with traditional novels, yet more than in other books, especially of this brevity, one does get the sense of a cohort of people occupying the world quite entirely for a certain period of years which the reader a century on at least knows and feels to have passed on. I guess this means the characters are not especially timeless or universal, though maybe they will come to seem so in the future. For me the world and mentality described in this is real enough while not being quite reproducible that the passing of this particular era and generation carries some influence in my life. The characters in this spend almost all of their time doing exactly the things I most like doing, or would have liked doing--wandering around Paris having nightlife adventures, drinking, reading novels, going on train excursions, having love affairs, bantering with their friends--but that never quite comes off with the same appeal in our age. One reason is that the people in this time had educations, particularly literary educations, that are more similar to what I have than that of contemporary educated people. Not better, perhaps--I don't really know, our truly educated people now are certainly very very smart in some ways--but more in line with my own mind...(would go on but I have run out of time)

I didn't get very far in Carlyle last month. Reading him and Henry James at the same time would have been ridiculous so I put Carlyle off. With having to write the Henry James report and a couple of shorter works upcoming, I should be able to put a little bit of a dent in him this month. There is a fair amount of gold to be found in his book, I think, but there is a lot of overgrowth to hack your way through to get to it...

I don't take very many pictures. I should take more perhaps, but my children usually won't hold still long enough to get the picture I want, and when I go somewhere I find I am not usually at inner rest enough to take the time to calmly size up and get a good picture. And then often my children take my phone and take hundreds of pictures by themselves, a few of which come out interesting. 

(Vermont)

(Vermont)

(Vermont)

(Concord--soccer field)

Our little squirrel died just a few days after this. I'm assuming it was one of those rodent diseases that takes them off suddenly. We probably should have let him go, though I don't think he would have survived long anyway. 

We've gone back to Maine a couple of times. I was in Portland last weekend, but I wasn't moved to take any photos on that occasion.

 (Vermont again)