Acquiring books

So many books, so little time. How do you choose which book to read next?

For so long I had books chosen for me—I read the books that my parents owned, and then the ones in the public library, and then what my teachers assigned, my professors, and my book groups. Even now I am very insecure about choosing books. I like to believe that choosing a book by recommendation or review is never as romantic—and rarely as successful—as finding one by chance encounter.

Inside a large bookstore I am paralyzed, but a cart outside in the street is irresistible. I know I may only find a gem or two and will be able to weed out all the rest. For example, I bought Smilla’s Sense of Snow from the small for sale cart in the library, perceiving about it only that it was set in Denmark and Greenland. What a fine purchase it turned out to be.

So there I was in Strasbourg this summer, in the Place Gutenberg, riffling through crates of used books. We were traveling light, so I could only choose one book. I had been in the Librairie Kléber, one of the best bookstores in the world, and emerged bookless because of indecision. Even this outdoor bookstall had a large selection of high quality books. The pressure was mounting. I could have chosen one of many classics and been quite happy, but nothing was singing to me, as the French expression goes.

I didn’t want just any old ugly mass market paperback that would pain me when I gazed upon the bookshelves at home. So I picked up a small, solid book with a bright turquoise spine. The front cover was even better, a bold bright painting of a cabin in the tropics. When I read the back cover, the decision was made. This was a book I had never heard of by an author I had never heard of, but it was based on his childhood in Haiti. Two years or so ago I went on an enjoyable Haitian literature binge, and it had been a while since I had read anything of that nature.

Le Charme des après-midi sans fin (The Charm of Endless Afternoons) by Dany Laferrière was pure delight. It is simply written, befitting the viewpoint of a not-quite-adolescent boy raised by his grandmother in a small Haitian village. It is not sentimental, lush, or introspective. Instead, the writer gives you brief, pithy scenes where you see, hear, and smell exactly enough to know what you need to know.

I found myself laughing out loud time after time as the boy, Vieux Os (Old Bones), gave his honest accounting of various situations. It is from this tender, innocent point of view that the reader encounters the heavy topics that a Haitian setting must invariably include. The events are interesting and the characters are superb.

Here is one of my favorite sections, titled “The Photo.”

Nothing has changed in my grandfather’s room. His hat, his cane still hung on the wall, near the bed, next to the photo of an immense yellow tractor in a field of wheat. I have spent hours in front of this photo. A man is driving the tractor. His two sons (the younger must be about my age) are nearby. You can see them above their waists. The rest of their bodies disappears in the high grass. I notice that they aren’t wearing hats. My grandfather would never have tolerated such a thing—to work bareheaded in the fields is to risk certain sunstroke. All three of them wear the same plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to their elbows. The man and his sons are as blond as ears of corn. I look at them for a long time, especially the younger son, wondering what would happen if he and I switched places. He would come and live in this house, in Petit-Goâve, and I would go to Chicago. Every time I say it, this word makes me feel funny all over, as impressive as the largest tractor: Chicago. Chicago. Chicago. Three syllables that clatter in the wind. Chicago. It feels good in my mouth. Petit-Goâve also sounds good. I can’t really tell. I was born here. I don’t know when I heard Chicago named for the first time. That little boy from Chicago might die without ever hearing of Petit-Goâve. I feel sad thinking about that. Sad for him, for me, and for Petit-Goâve. Everyone in the world has heard of Chicago because of its yellow tractors. And Petit-Goâve, what will it be known for in the world one day?

I’m not sure if this book has been published in English, but The Aroma of Coffee is the English translation of another book by the same author about the same little kid, Old Bones. I really need to get my hands on it.

Cowtown blues

I read the Constance Garnett translation of the oft-recommended Brothers Karamazov after college and was underwhelmed. However, after recently reading the delightful translation of Anna Karenina by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, I decided I wanted to see what they did with The Brothers Karamazov.

Although the translation is a vast improvement, I still enjoyed Dostoyevsky less than I enjoyed Tolstoy. I can see why he appeals to philosophers and theologians, but for me the endless kneading of ideas gets boring, just like car chases and fight scenes put me to sleep in movies. I also dislike the neverending drama of Dmitri’s life. The book had the attraction of a detective novel, intriguing you to keep reading and see who is really telling the truth. Although many critics seem to think Alyosha is a weak character in the book, he inspired me; his presence gave a sense of peace that was missing from the other parts of the book. I also enjoyed the Father Zosima parts.

One of the funniest parts was that you don’t find out the name of the town (Skotoprigonyevsk) until page 573, when the narrator inserts in parentheses “alas, that is the name of our town; I have been concealing it all this time,” and a note says the name loosely translates as “Cattle-roundup-ville.” To enjoy the novel fully you have to notice the narrator’s sense of humor.

I have to agree with Vladimir Nabokov’s comment about this book that “the natural background and all things relevant to the perception of the senses hardly exist.” This is a damning statement from a man who believes that “literature belongs not to the department of general ideas but to the department of specific words and images.” Nabokov likes Dmitri but says that “the moment we come to Alyosha, we are immersed in a different, entirely lifeless element. Dusky paths lead the reader away into a murky world of cold reasoning abandoned by the spirit of art.” Of course I disagree about Alyosha, and as I said, I find Dmitri ghastly.

Nabokov accuses Dostoyevsky, along with Richardson and Rousseau, of being a “sentimentalist” author, one who engages in “the nonartistic exaggeration of familiar emotions meant to provoke automatically traditional compassion in the reader.” What a great description of a flaw you find in so many poorer authors’ work! However, I think Nabokov goes too far in condemning Dostoyevsky, whose idea of conflict, he says, was “placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from those situations the last ounce of pathos.”

Another interesting critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, concurs that Dostoevsky is an author of ideas, but he admires that these ideas are integral to the characters’ essence and are not just spouted by the author along the way as disembodied aphorisms.

“Actually, the ideas of Dostoevsky the thinker change the very form of their existence when they become part of his polyphonic novel; they are turned into artistic images of ideas: they become indissoluably combined with the images of people… they are freed from their monological isolation and finalization, becoming completely dialogized and entering into the great dialog of the novel on completely equal terms with other idea-images…. Dostoevsky the artist always wins out over Dostoevsky the publicist.”

Although I tend to be a more Nabokov-like reader, wanting to sense the same light on my face and breathe the very air the characters breathe, I appreciate what Bakhtin appreciates about Dostoevsky. I must admit that my initial loathing of Dmitri drained away until I began even rooting for him towards the end. This is proof of the power of Dostoyevsky’s writing to celebrate the glorious spectrum of human personality.

Bedframes and Bayern

Here is a snapshot of our new raised garden bed. Earlier this week I planted fava beans and Austrian winter peas for ground cover. As I write, the frame of the bed is being leveled—probably not the ideal order of things. We will see what occurs next.

Let me now proceed with the first of a long backlog of book reviews.

Not much of one to pay full price for books, I salvaged Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl out of my parents’ garage and was charmed enough to check the next book out of the library, and the next, and the next. I expected the books to get worse as the series continued, but I actually really enjoyed the third and fourth books.

The Goose Girl draws its inspiration from one of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales. While the two stories share many events and characters, they are not nearly close enough for it to qualify as a retelling. One striking difference is that the main character in the original tale is completely passive, while Hale’s heroine takes decisive action throughout the book. Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee is of course beautiful and blonde, but still plenty admirable, and I found myself captivated by the story. Don’t let her ridiculous name turn you off; the whole book is teasing conventions all the while that it profits from the power of a good old fairy tale.

The original editions of the Books of Bayern came dressed in playful illustrations with a medieval Italian feel, but they seem to have been later repackaged as teen romances with front cover photos of mysterious, full-bosomed young girls peering out at ruined castles from the shadows of the forest. It occurred to me to be embarrassed as I checked them out of the young adult section of the library, but obviously that didn’t stop me.

The second book features one of the princess’s friends, and it deals skillfully with her maturing through a period of self-deception and alienation from her friends. The third book is about another of their crowd, a boy this time. I really enjoyed it because it made me laugh a lot and it showed convincing character development. In the fourth book, the main character harbors serious confusion about her identity. I found this story deeper than many young adult novels. It is not her image that troubles her, as it does so many of these type of fictional characters, but her very soul. It is a unique, poignant story.

These summaries sound rather psychological, but the stories are full-fleshed and concrete with entertaining plots. My main disappointment with the books is the use of a real place name, Bayern, when all the other place names are made up. I also disapprove of the lack of suffixes for demonyms and for adjectival forms of place names. But these are minor beefs.

If you’re looking for some good clean escapist young adult fantasy fiction with interesting characters, and written with a great sense of humor, I recommend these books.