August 2021

A List: City of God (Augustine)..............................................................................541/867

B List: Between books    

C List: Sir Walter Scott--Rob Roy................................................................................7/501

Bonus: Zena Hitz--Lost in Thought.........................................................................126/210

I finally finished Buddenbrooks on 8/4, so I will eventually get up a report on that, though probably not before the last part of August, as there is probably no way I can get it done this week, and next week I am going to be on vacation. The next book on that list is another long one, which will probably take me through all of the rest of August and September, if it ever arrives, which it hasn't yet. So activity on this blog will continue to be light for a while. As to my other one, which I haven't updated since May, I am hoping that when school starts up again, in addition to being able to read a little more, I can get back into something of a more regular writing routine, even if it is just the blogs to start. I want to get in some exercising too, not because I am getting fat, but because I would like to maintain a somewhat healthy look, and as I am getting bored with my social life I would like to keep my options open for having a better one as much as possible--at this point of my life I have to concede that my brains are not enough to get me there on their own. We'll see what happens. 

This was not a productive month of reading. My mother came to visit for two weeks in July, and she is even harder to escape from than my regular family. Augustine is coming along slowly. His theme of the two cities (That of Man and that of God) is starting to come into clearer focus. This book is kind of an encyclopedic inventory of such religion and history as was known, or at least regarded as important, up to that point, and I like reading books of that sort from time to time. But I can't read that much of it in any given day.

For the C-List I spent most of the month finishing up Madeline L'Engle's short story collection The Moment of Tenderness. It got mixed reviews but other than one story about the devil which I didn't quite understand I thought it was really good. I guess I don't read that many stories. Maybe they all seem good when a real professional writes them, though I think I have some discernment in these matters. I just started Rob Roy today. It is pretty long for a C-list book, but my discovery of what a good novelist Scott is after not having read him my entire life is one of the modest joys I have had in the past two or three years. The first few pages of Rob Roy possess the same inimitable authorly charm that infused The Heart of Midlothian and especially The Bride of Lammermoor, the two books by this author that I have read in the last year or two.

I am working my way leisurely through my old classmate Zena Hitz's book. She draws on a wide array of liberal learning, much of which, even if I cannot claim to have been already possessed of, is accessible enough to me that I can usually make sense of it. The book has an underlying current (though don't all philosophical books to some extent?) of dismay at the current state of universities and intellectual culture, with the obscene lust for social status and material luxury that has permeated and influenced even the way these realms operate beyond what appeared to be the case in much of the known past, even that known to our generation personally ca. 1990. I feel much of the same general dissatisfaction with the state of public discourse and thinking in comparison with the form I thought, or hoped, these things would take in my mature years back then, so I am receptive to the message of the book.

Pictures. I took shockingly few pictures this month, given that it is summer. The above is obviously Boston. We walked the Freedom Trail, where it is kind of difficult to whip out the phone and take a lot of pictures on the interesting parts, at least if you have children. It had been three or four years since we've walked it, so it was new to the younger ones.

This is a pretty wooded trail in southern New Hampshire, I forget what town. It was near Milford. As you can see we got a lot of rain in July. 

This is in Vermont.

Lost tooth.

Maine

August 2019

A List: Poems
B List: Manzoni--Betrothed...……………………………...361/668
C List: Hoffman--The Marriage of Opposites...…………...218/365


The set of poems I am in the middle of are Burns's "Scots Wha Hae", "Lycidas" (Milton), "Whispers of Immortality" (Eliot), "The Hound of Heaven" (Francis Thompson), and Shelley, "To a Sky-Lark", which I still have to get to.


Burns was great. I have read enough of Milton that his poems mean something to me. With Eliot I have always liked his form and language, the references in this one were a little too outside of my core knowledge to really feel the poem on the initial go. The Thompson started out all right but my attention was wandering by the end. I thought I might be at the point in my life where I could immerse myself in the poetic medium like I once did but I guess I am still too distracted, apart from a poet like Burns who has a very immediate, stirring kind of style.


So this took an extra day and I have been reading over Shelley as well ("Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!"). At one time when I was reading and thinking about these things more intently I decided that Shelley was the most innately talented of the English romantics, I don't remember why, I think it struck me that his thought process seemed to operate the most naturally in the terms of poetic imagery or something. "Skylark" is a meditation on the nature of artistic creation, not wholly devoid of charm or style. Today was for whatever reason a calmer day so I was able (a little) to enter into such of the spirit of 1820 as calls down through the ages.


I've been busy and haven't gotten as far in the Manzoni as I might have liked. It is good while also being different from other great European books of its type in presentation, etc. While I suspect that Renzo and Lucia are going to overcome their presently formidable obstacles and get married in the end, I don't see yet by what clever means the author is going to make this happen, or at least didn't until today, when the most savage and ruthless of the villains yet introduced seemed to undergo a crisis of conscience. Also there are a number of interesting characters whose roles do not require them by the conventions of the Romantic novel to come to a pre-ordained end either good or otherwise, and I am interested in seeing what becomes of them. Hopefully I will be able to finish this and have the report out before the next month is up.


I worried for a while that I might have to take a part-time (2nd) job, which would further cut into my reading, and writing, time, but it looks like I might be able to put that off for this year at least. Joking about cutting into the reading aside, it would also cut into my ability to keep up with the laundry, the dishes, cooking dinner, monitoring my children's schoolwork at all. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to do this (take a second job) later on, but right now it would be difficult to do.


I've actually given up on The Marriage of Opposites. I was kind of going through the motions anyway because it wasn't grabbing me, and then when the rich, smoldering love interest showed up it basically turned into a Harlequin romance. It checks a lot of the boxes of popular contemporary novels. Strong female white/Jewish protagonist, personally progressive, not as racist as everybody else, best friend is black, etc, conveniently set in colonial times so she can express her indignation with the injustice of it all while her hands are largely tied as far as her ability to overthrow the system. I don't mean to make fun of it, I think most of these contemporary writers are probably sincere in wanting to be good and atone for the crimes of history literary and otherwise, but most of the time it just kind of weighs down the story and puts the characters in straitjackets because of course they have no capacity to surprise. Besides, I think there are like four books still waiting on the C list and at least 3 of them are pretty long, if I were to finish them.

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.