I’ve kept a log where I write about some of the books I read since some time in 2017. I present here my entries in my book log for 2024, unedited, and with some additional errors from transcription.
- Stranger Shores Literary Essays 1986-1999
- A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
- Zama
- The Quest for Roots The Poetry of Vasko Popa
- Shadow of Heroes
- The Nick Adams Stories
- My Brilliant Friend
- Midaq Alley
Stranger Shores: Literary Essays 1986-1999
by J.M. Coetzee, finished 2024-02-05
I really enjoyed these essays, and found them inspirational, though I don’t think I’d have found them as interesting had they not been written by Coetzee. He’s really well read, and it makes me want to read more. Partly, I found his writing intimidating. I’d like to write this sort of thing but it feels like I’de have to read so much…
One thing I found interesting is that, although there are a number of essays on white South African authors, there are none on black South African authors. I was initially confused by this, but I think there’s a good reason. I believe Coetzee is working out in this writing what it means to be a white African, and, particularly, a white African writer. I don’t know what conclusion he comes to, if any. He’s very critical of these writers, and I wonder how he feels about his own writing.
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
by Peter Handke, finished 2024-02-12
Read this in two days, it’s quite short - only 70 pages. The book is a biography of Handke’s mother who killed herself in her 50’s. I’m not sure if this is framed as autofiction or memoir. I guess I’m not sure what the difference is.
I’ve never read any Handke before, and this book doesn’t reccommend him. He does this thing that feels like apologia for his intentions. I’m not sure why he does this exactly, but it drives me crazy
Zama
by Antonio Benedetto, finished 2024-06-21
This was a book Coetzee reviewed in one of the two collections of literary essays I read earlier this year. I didn’t really enjoy this book, but I powered through. It was quite short but still took me a few weeks to finish.
The book follows the inner life of the titular Zama as he tries to get a nut off. In the end, he volunteers to help capture a bandit who tortures Zma before the novels end.
The novel was too navel-gazing for my taste, and the reactions and behavior of the characteres was too dreamlike. The whole thing was very strange. I don;t think I get the point of this book, but it definitely has a vice similar to L’Étranger.
The Quest for Roots: The Poetry of Vasko Popa
by Anita Lekić, finished 2024-07-10
Took me a while to finish this, but I’m glad I did. My copy of Popa’s Complete Works is still in Berlin so I couldn’t reference it, but a lot of the quoted poems were familiar to me. My feelings about the author’s analysis of Popa’s early work is mixed: on the one hand we’re in agreement on the subject being the confrontation between the inner self and a hostile external world. On the other, Lekić fails to understand the driving irony of Far WIthin Us and the implied failure to conquer that hostile external world. In my opinion this gives added depth to Popa’s relationship with the violence around him.
I was happy for some of the historical context given for his middle works which are somewhat mysterious to me. Still Lekić’s analysis is a little suspect.
Shadow of Heroes
by Robert Ardrey, finished 2024-09-03
This play is about László Raijk and Janos Kadar, the Hungarian communists, and about Julia Rajk, László’s wife. It is also about the failed social democratic revolution of 1956. I read this after having seen it mentioned on Wikipedia while I was riding the bus up to Ithaca to hang with Scott and boys on the Finger Lakes. I spent a bunch of time that ride reading about Kadar and the history of Communist Hungary.
It’s all pretty sad. At the end of the play Julia is back in prison, and was still there when the play was produced in 1958. The play really tells the story of man’s imperfection, our inability to govern justly or to act on our own principles.
I thought it did a good job of humanizing the history it portrays. The voice of the author thing was a little weird but what can you do?
The Nick Adams Stories
by Ernest Hemingway, finished 2024-09-10
I’d read a bunch of these before, probably in Mom’s book of his collected stories. But there were new ones like “The Last Good Place” which I loved. Reading these stories brought me back to when I was seventeen, reading those other stories. The wistfulness and meaning, and how much I love Hemingway’s prose.
Some of the Nick Adams stories are about writing and I’d like to take something away from them but I don’t know what. Confidence, maybe, which I never really had. I’m 34 - Nick is 38 in the last story - twice again as old as I was when I started really reading and thinking about life and the world. What really has changed?
My Brilliant Friend
by Elena Ferrante, finished ~2024-09-25
I really enjoyed this book, not least because I’m reading it with Lauren and Manan. I think the psychology of the involved characters was so real and well-communicated, and the very mundane drama of the story nevertheless managed to maintain interest. Really well-executed story.
One aspect I found interesting was the spectre of the second world war. Like so much in the book, it is consigned to an ambiguous time before the narrative, but its impact is seen now and then.
Lauren: “There’s a lot of grudges, people still remember whose side everybody took, what they did, even though they don’t seem to talk about it.”
Midaq Alley
by Naguib Mahfouz, finished 2024-11-25
Mostly a boring book so it took me a while to finish. Coetzee wrote about Mahfouz in one of those books of his I read earlier this year is what inspired me to pick this up. Having read this just after My Brilliant friend - another book in which not much happens - I found myself comparing them quite a but much to this novel’s disadvantage. Whereas Ferrante made me invested in Lila and Lènu’s lives so that the mundane drama is more immediate and gripping, I didn’t care at all for any of the characters in this novel, not least because there are many of them and none takes center stage.
