Sustained Criticism

I find that the most comforting thing in the world is that I am energy. If the particles I consist of were to encounter their respective anti-particles, I would become energy. Energy through annihilation.

"You have a gift for literature", I was told today. "You see it for what it is, and do so very quickly." Happy, me? While I think law would be amazing, and surgery incredibly challenging, my heart lies with literature. Dahl stole it when I was 6. Writing something as simple as this, reading critique or theory, takes me back to when I read Dahl and cackled as Grandma shot through the roof. Or when the room spun as I read my first Feist book. The first time I cried over a novel's end. When I got dissy as I read T.S. Eliot: "We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/ Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! / Our dried voices when ..." And "Do I dare disturb the universe?", though it holds a different meaning for me than it does for Prufrock. At least, I think it does.

My room is looking more and more like that of a deranged academic. Books strewn everywhere, in stacks on the floor and on top of those in the shelves. And then there are clothes, make-up and shoes. A bit of cleaning up might be in order, but who cares.

And now I sort of regret not going out to celebrate halloween tonight. I could have been frost (and played with MAC pigments to my heart's content). Oh, well, next year. This will be nifty, too. There is red wine involved.

Murdoch is magical when she is at her best: a hundred pages can pass, and I sit with bated breath. Looking up only when the spell is broken and it is no longer as wonderful. Mischa's party for instance – still in The Flight from the Enchanter – kept me so wrapped up I didn't hear mum telling me, four times, dinner was ready. She has what Nabokov called shamanstvo, "the enchanter quality". The Sea, the Sea had the same thing. These occasional, brilliant, breath-taking scenes. It's just that there is so much in-between I have to force myself to take interest in.

I have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the writings of one Iris Murdoch, after reading her The Sea, The Sea, which, I thought, dealing with a withdrawn, middle-aged actor, I was bound to love. It ended with a rant to some friend; so heartfelt I got the sympathy of our principal (we happened to walk by her, the ending was the most anticlimatic I have ecountered). She is incredibly famous, and supposedly writes fantastically. And she had her moments in The Sea, The Sea, despite the ending. So I decided I had to give her another chance.

The Flight from the Enchanter is the story of four people, all entangled in some way with Mischa Fox. Annette spent her final moments at school swinging from a chandelier; Rainborough works at the most ridiculous company, called SELIB – terribly satirical –, and is in love with his artificial Personal Assistant; Rosa gives herself unconditionally to two Polish brothers; Peter is an insane, but very enjoyable academic; Hunter tries to make a living, editing a long-dead feminist magazine. It is, apparently, her second novel, which might, or might not, account for a few things. Though I don't know her style well enough to say anything about it in relation to her other works. It is episodic, some episodes almost separate. Until I remember some earlier scene, where they met in Peter's rooms. The descriptions are vivid, put run on at times. But they are largely interesting, with the exception of Annette. Too naïve, too safe, and too overdone. Sadly, she seems very well-wrought, so I can't really fault Murdoch for her.

Murdoch and I had a heartfelt high-brow-wannabe moment earlier. She exemplified something or other with plebeians, marxism and Rousseau. Perhaps she turns out all right, this time?

And why is it unheard of to publish in summer? Am I the only one that suddenly has all the time in the world to catch up on forgotten books?

When I'm done with these blasted exams, I am going to take a plunge into Cornwell's Scarpetta novels. I need undemanding reading, immense quantities of it.

Great news, Katrine, I've finished The Road, and agree with you. It is blah. Terribly post-modernistic, in that it is a warning; in that he is scared of what we are doing to ourselves, our relationships, our world; in that there is very little punctuation; in that there are no names. And the list goes on. It is intriguing, as a piece of post-modernism. As a piece of writing, the work of a craftsman, it is not. Call me conservative, but I like my post-modernism with puncutation, thank you very much. I also enjoy my literature with well-crafted sentences, which McCarthy completely lacks.

The story is intriguing, and it was easily enough read for me to not throw a tantrum and refuse to finish it. But that is also it. I can't relish the writing, the soul-searching dialogue or the beautiful scenes. While a post-apocalyptic setting should perhaps rule out beauty, at least in the case of The Road, certain scenes had the capacity of heart-breaking beauty. It just didn't quite get there. The straight-forward, monotonous [fantastic word to type] prose is incapable of touching me as powerfully as the story has potential to do.

Myers wrote A Reader's Manifesto, and criticised American literature (Wikipedia article), and I agree with him on both Auster and McCarthy. I will have to get my hands on a copy of his essay. I have not yet read DeLillo, but have been drooling on his Underworld for a few years. And I think I might have found a new, wholly personal God in Myers, from what I've read of him. – Yes, I will admit that I am a nerd if you ask me to. And I want to read more literary criticism, it is.

And some educated person (I persume it is a man, for what it's worth) thinks The Road, is Post-Southerngothic. Another very interesting idea. I just have to print it out, in order to be able to read it properly.

Addendum: A Reader's Manifesto is apparently out of print, so I have to get it shipped from the US *headdesk*. But, abebooks have some very, very cheap copies. And, of course, some unnecessarily expensive ones.



(Excuse the awful pun in the title, it was, I am afraid, intended.) And I miss both New York and London.
And I found a limited edition, signed version of The Secret History.

London tomorrow, and I haven't packed a thing. Hihi. London, London, London. Though I have to be good, and not buy anything. Control. Staying the hell away from Selfridge's/Harrods (awfully punctuated, Harrods) is absolutely imperative. I will not be able to control myself in the face of Louboutin, quite frankly.

I spent some four hours in bed earlier, reading the second part of Feist's Magician. I love that book. It is not that it is so very well-written or otherwise a masterpiece, I just adore it. I remember reading it the first time, in a Norwegian translation. The room spun and I was utterly transported.

My god, the scarves! It is genious. Though I can't say I care much for the shoes, what was he thinking?

And as for portrait photography, portraits of beautiful people are about the most boring thing I can think of. Flawless, pretty, boring people have no business crowding portraits.

I'm trying to find out what I should read, what I have (and where) and what I need to buy. So, I figured a list is convenient. So, in no particular order, books that I either must read, would like to read or feel I should read:

Victorian London, by Picard. I'm not reading it as much as leafing through. What posessed me to buy it, I wonder.
Sourcery, Maskerade, Reaper Man, all by Pratchett.
Heart of Darkness, by Conrad
Mary, by Nabokov
Dubilners and Ulysses, by Joyce
Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night, by Shakespeare. I'm buggered with Caesar, had it just been politics I had survived, but politics and Shakespeare ...
The Birthday Party, by Pinter.
Jane Eyre, Brontë
Mrs Dalloway, Woolf
Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys
David Copperfield, Dickens. For when another temporary bout on insanity strikes me.
The Inner Life of Martin Frost, Auster
African Stories, Lessing
The Heart of the Matter, Greene
Lectures on Literature, Nabokov
Fatherland, Harris
War and Peace, Tolstoy
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell, Clarke. I promised Dad I would read it and try to make some sense of it this summer, but never did, and he is still wondering what I might make of it. It is huge, and red and miserable.
The Flight from the Enchanter, Murdoch. The Sea, the Sea was anticlimatic, but this one looked interesting.
The Melancholy of Anatomy, Jackson. Very peculiar, by the looks of it. I think I might love it.
Ada or Ardor, Nabokov. Stationed by my bed, unfinished.
To the Lighthouse, Woolf
Før du sov, Ullmann. Should be bolded to showcase the one Norwegian on my list.
Half Life, by Shelley. If The Melancholy ... is any good, I will have to read her next novel, too. Post-modernism intrigues me.
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath


Perhaps I should take a leaf out of Nærum's book and buy no new books this year, but read the ones I have instead?

When I've read Joyce (the plan is Dubliners, perhaps A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and eventually Ulysses), the volumes in my "un-read shelf" and fulfilled my promise to dad by reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, I think I shall make it my new literary project to read the works Nabokov discusses in Lectures on Russian Literature and then read his take on them.

I'm high on post-modernism, and cannot be bothered to open the Psychology book just yet. Thus, procrastination.

I just drowned in a cup of steaming coffee. And in a month or so, I will be drowning in a cup of Starbucks' steaming cappucino. It is always the very first thing I do when I arrive, locate a Starbucks and go be decadent. London calling <3.

Listening to "The Poet and the Pendulum" on the buss to school this morning, I actually wound up crying. I am amusingly easy to touch these days.

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"How do you choose which books to read?" I happened to read the Writer's block thing on the front-page of LJ, and it was inspiring, so I'll try to write something about it, I think.

How do I choose my books? I choose the ones that ensnare me: Nabokov, for his brilliant openings - "Dolly in slacks [...] but in my arms, she was always Lolita"-; Wilde for his wit; Foer for his absolute insanity; Lessing for her reliance; and Christie for a proper, almost degrading, treat of discustingly Belgian Poirot. (I would very much like to be described in a book, once. I would love to read, and know that that description is me, filtered through the minds of the insane – heads up, Rush and Quills –, or, if you prefer, of those touched with fire.) But how do I discover new books? I peruse them, pick them up or take them down, and then, I open them very carefully, so as not to make any marks. I ignore the quotes and snippets from other authors and reviews, they are never accurate, and instead read the back.

It is all, really, a matter of the hands. If the book fits - and you will know when it fits- there is nothing to do but buy it. There are certain things about a book that really fits: the weight is right, the colours, the smell, the impression and the associations of it. If, on the other, I am recommended a book, I base my deliberation on the recomender. Some, I know, have a knack for discovering good books, other find only the ones that turn out to be trash.

One should never read the introductions in books published by Penguin before beginning a book, for the very simple reason that they are not introductions, but afterwords. They, as a rule, discuss the sentral happenings, the plot, the themes (bah!) and characters in minute detail, and makes very little sense to anyone not familiar with the work. Why they are forwords at all, I can't phatom for the life of me. If not the people at Penguin think it a very good idea to always spoil their readers' experience by sparing them the trouble of reading the book.

Unless the foreword is by the author, I do not read them before finishing the book. Though authors are occasaionally of Penguin's dispoisition, at the least, they're usually not so with a vengeance.