reviewsSeptember |
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notes from underground (dostoevsky)
 my fourth dostoevsky and my favourite novel(lla) of the year. notes from underground is about the philosophical development of consciousness amounting to useless and endless self-awareness, and I liked it a lot as someone who is the postmodern product of that. it's like a combination of oblomov and faust, and a little bit of Erika Kohut hitting people on the bus with her instrument case, and maybe even the ressentiment of the diary of a wimpy kid, and the blurb's "a work that marks the frontier … between two centuries' visions of the self" evokes a little dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, too. I have genuinely internalized the moral anti-model of the man from underground and it has done more for me than any self help book could ever; dostoesvky is the only author capable of arousing the little capacity I have for spirituality. |
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northanger abbey (austen)
 [read for class] my first jane austen. I tried watching Pride and Prejudice on the plane but I got bored, and I tried to watch Emma on the plane but I got bored. and I needed class to teach me to appreciate this or I wouldn't have made it through either; I never experienced the literary trends that northanger abbey is reacting to so I wouldn't have known what to think. … but it's a little funny that the scandal over women reading novels at the time was a little like that of "dark romance" today. |
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the tale of princess fatima, warrior … (tr. magidow)
[read for class] the translator insists that she is being accurate to what was the original experience of this story to its contemporary audience but I can't believe an oral tradition perserved for so long was ever performed so dryly. I was right to be suspicious of Magidow's note that she removed any "long" descriptions of gore because it seems like she was too comfortable flattening all the imagery. the similes and metaphors are written like after-thoughts, and the repetition of the same sentence structures reads like childrens' writing. I don't know arabic and so I can't make a comparison but the translation is unconvincing. as for the story, it's a male fantasy of a domineering woman ultimately falling to submission; interesting to study but not fun to read. |
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água viva (lispector)
[read for bookbug. read the full review here] After weeks of picking up books and not committing to a single one, I joined the online book club bookbug and I read the assigned novel(?) in a day. Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector is the kind of book I’m scared to write, a book with no plot or characters or at least any familiar form, in other words, a book without consumer appeal. But I’m lucky to live in the time after the modernists broke every convention so I can enjoy almost anything without anyone doubting my serious engagement with an artwork … |