Giovanni's Room (1956) by James Baldwin. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

Giovanni's Room (1956) by James Baldwin. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

Earlier this year I read Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son (1955, see earlier post) for the first time. A portion of that collection of autobiographical essays deals with Baldwin's reflections on Paris (where he had moved in the late 1940s). After finishing that non-fiction volume, I added Giovanni's Room to my list (which I had first read back in the 1980s/90s). In Giovanni's Room, Baldwin explores gender and sexuality through the lens of David, an American expatriate in 1950s France. Trapped between his alienation from his American birthplace and his identification by those in his Parisian milieu as an "American", David also struggles with the nature of his sexuality. When his fiancé Hella leaves for Spain to evaluate her relationship with David, he falls into a relationship with a bartender, Giovanni, himself an Italian expatriate. Moving in with Giovanni, David remains conflicted about his feelings. When Hella returns, David makes a painful choice that leads to tragedy. Set primarily in the Left Bank neighborhoods of the 6th and 14th Arrondissements (Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, home to artists and writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Man Ray, and Samuel Beckett), Giovanni's Room is also an encomium from an American to Paris. As Hella tells David:

"Americans should never come to Europe,” she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, “it means they never can be happy again. What’s the good of an American who isn’t happy? Happiness was all we had.” 

• Read: May 3 - 10, 2020 | Buy on Kindle
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Thirteen O'Clock: Stories of Several Worlds (1937) by Stephen Vincent Benét. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

Thirteen O'Clock: Stories of Several Worlds (1937) by Stephen Vincent Benét

Benét was a staple of junior high reading back in the day. Never as well-known as his American contemporaries (Fitzgerald, Stein, Faulkner, Wharton, Hurston, Hemingway, Wolfe, Buck) today, he is probably best known for "John Brown's Body" (1928), an epic poem which won the Pulitzer Prize. This collection of stories includes three well known works, 'The Devil and Daniel Webster', 'The Sobbin' Women' (later turned into the musical 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' (1954), and, perhaps most famously, 'By the Waters of Babylon'). 'Babylon', a classic (and early) post-apocalyptic depiction of a collapsed world society was written in response to the Fascist bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. At one point, the young narrator, after exploring the ruins of what was New York, recounts the advice of his father: "He was right—it is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast."

• Read: April 24 - May 3, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (2017) by Ursula K. Le Guin. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (2017) by Ursula K. Le Guin. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

You may best know Le Guin for her Earthsea novels (starting with A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968) and a number of other classic works of fiction including The Left Hand of Darkness (1969); The Dispossessed (1974); and her series of children's books, Catwings (1988-99). The Lathe of Heaven (1971), is her most compelling single volume for me. No Time to Spare is a collection of short essays, first published on Le Guin's blog (which she started at age 81). She muses on various subjects (how to eat an egg, the difficulties of aging, and the joy her young cat, Pard, brings her). A nice peak into the lightly filtered mind of the great writer as she reminds us that:

"We can’t question reality directly, only by questioning our conventions, our belief, our orthodoxy, our construction of reality. All Galileo said, all Darwin said, was, 'It doesn’t have to be the way we thought it was.'" or that "Actually, I don’t exactly have expectations. I have hopes, and fears."

• Read: April 18 - 24, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

South and West: From a Notebook (2017) by Joan Didion. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

South and West: From a Notebook (2017) by Joan Didion

The non-fiction work of Joan Didion is one of my go-to reads. I recently completed the brief South and West. The work is based on the notebooks she kept of her travels in the US South and her native West (Northern California). I think her work resonates with me as a fellow Californian (growing up between the Pacific breakers and the snowy Sierra Nevada) who leaves the West to go "Back East" to live. South and West has an unfinished feel (some of the  chapters appear in more polished form in other collections), but Didion's brilliant, "cool" (in the Marshal McLuhan sens) prose is always a pleasure:

"Part of it is simply what looks right to the eye, sounds right to the ear. I am at home in the West. The hills of the coastal ranges look 'right' to me, the particular flat expanse of the Central Valley comforts my eye. The place names have the ring of real places to me. I can pronounce the names of the rivers, and recognize the common trees and snakes. I am easy here in a way that I am not easy in other places."

• Read: April 17 -18, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Me (2019) by Elton John. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

Me (2019) by Elton John. COVID-19 Recreational Reading 

Recently, I finished Elton John's autobiography, Me (2019). It follows many of the tropes (art/excess/celebrities, aka Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll!) of the rock & roll auto/biography genre, but at the same time does include quite of bit of non-typical self-reflection and self-directed humor. I would have liked some more commentary on the creation of the songs/albums (what? no discussion of the legendary Thom Bell Philly Sound session!). A light and entertaining read that I paired with watching the "Rocketman" biopic (which didn't do the book justice) and listening to the albums from "Empty Sky" through "Victim of Love".

• Read: April 5 - 17, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) by Daniel Defoe. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) by Daniel Defoe. COVID-19 Recreational Reading 

Such a fitting book to read at this time. I'd read A Journal of the Plague Year many and many a year ago. A very timely read:

"I might be more particular as to this part, but it may suffice to mention in general, all trades being stopped, employment ceased: the labour, and by that the bread, of the poor were cut off; and at first indeed the cries of the poor were most lamentable to hear, though by the distribution of charity their misery that way was greatly abated. Many indeed fled into the counties, but thousands of them having stayed in London till nothing but desperation sent them away, death overtook them on the road, and they served for no better than the messengers of death; indeed, others carrying the infection along with them, spread it very unhappily into the remotest parts of the kingdom."

• Read: March 16 - 25, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Going Home (1957) by Doris Lessing. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

Going Home (1957) by Doris Lessing

For some reason, I've never quite been able to engage with Lessing. I've also, not, given her many chances. For many years, I had a copy of The Golden Notebook (1962), but never delved into it. In the 1990s, I read The Fifth Child (1988, which, though compelling, was personally disturbing). Going Home, a memoir of her return to her native Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) is a well done first hand account of the troubles and revelations that occur when she tries to re-engage with her native lands. Lessing's Leftist orientation (Marxist? Communist? Populist?) illuminates the inequalities and racism of 1950s Africa. At time didactic, Lessing's honesty, transparency, and ernest desire to create change, is not to be doubted. Lessing notes early in the book, the key concept under discussion:

"Africa belongs to the Africans; the sooner they take it back the better. But—a country also belongs to those who feel at home in it. Perhaps it may be that the love of Africa the country will be strong enough to link people who hate each other now."

• Read: February 23 - March 22, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) by Gertrude Stein. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) by Gertrude Stein

Paris, as Hemingway said, was a movable feast. Stein, and her long-time partner Alice B. Toklas, were those who set the table for the writers, artists, and others who passed through Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Stein, through the lens of Toklas passes judgement on the geniuses they meet, the wives of the same (ironically, never finding a female spouse to be a genius, unless, it would be Stein herself). Picasso, Hemingway (said Stein: "Hemingway, remarks are not literature."), Picabia, Joyce, Braque, and more. Stein/Toklas touch upon many of the great works written during this time (e.g. The Making of Americans). And where, one wonders, channeling Stein, is one more an American, than in Paris? And on American's Stein/Toklas comments:

 "Americans, so Gertrude Stein says, are like spaniards, they are abstract and cruel. They are not brutal they are cruel. They have no close contact with the earth such as most europeans have. Their materialism is not the materialism of existence, of possession, it is the materialism of action and abstraction."

• Read: February 25 - March 15, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Notes of a Native Son (1955) by James Baldwin. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

Notes of a Native Son (1955) by James Baldwin

In preparation for a planned (and cancelled) business trip to Paris, I wanted to read Baldwin's classic work, part of which discusses his experiences in France. Since I've been reading a lot of essays lately, this seemed like a good fit. Many years ago, I read his Giovanni's Room, but not much else by him. These essays explore Baldwin's life in New York and Paris.

The seminal quote, more relevant now than at the time Baldwin wrote it, is: "I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." (Autobiographical Notes).

• Read: February 7-15, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

The Old Drift (2019) by Namwali Serpell ( @namwalien ). COVID-19 Recreational Reading

The Old Drift (2019) by Namwali Serpell (@namwalien)

Simply brilliant. Is it perfect? Is it terribly flawed? Does it's reach exceed it's grasp? Yes on all counts. Sprawling across generations and continents, Serpell paints a picture of Africa (Zimbabwe/Zambia) and it's people. From the 19th century through tomorrow, "Africa" (if there is such a place) comes to 3D life in this novel. Serpell slyly slips the futuristic elements such as the VR "Beads" in such an offhand way that the reader is not sure if this is a KAZA M-Pesa Mobile Wallet (spoiler: it's not). Neural net drones? Afronauts? The politics of Colonialism? Check, check, check.

"Time, that ancient and endless meander, stretches out and into the distance, but along the way, a cumulative stray swerves it into a lazy, loose curve. Imagine the equation, or picture the graph, of the Archimedean spiral. This is the turning that unrolls the day, that turns the turns that the seasons obey, and the cycle of years, and the decades. But outer space too, that celestial gyre, the great Milky Way, turns inward and outward at once. And so we roil in the oldest of drifts – a slow, slant spin at the pit of the void, the darkest heart of them all."

Also recommended, the short stories "Will Williams" and "Double Men". Eagerly awaiting the next work from this compelling new voice.

• Read: January 17 - February 23, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

The Oresteia by Aeschylus. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

The Oresteia by Aeschylus

I just finished up “The Oresteia” by Aeschylus (translated by Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro in the Oxford UP new translation series). I'd first read Greek Tragedies in the famed Richmond Lattimore/David Grene edited U of Chicago series and thought it would be good to try a new (more contemporary) translation. “The Oresteia” brings the multi-generational tragedy of the House of Atreus to a cathartic end (and, as is often the case, a commentary on contemporary Athenian politics) and provides interesting insights into the 5th C. BCE Hellenic concept of dikê ("justice"). The multiple meanings of "justice", explorations of how "justice" is often situational, and whether "justice" is derived by humans or externally manifested.

• Read: April 12 - 17, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Feel Free: Essays (2018) by Zadie Smith. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

Feel Free: Essays (2018) by Zadie Smith

Over the weekend, I finished, Feel Free: Essays (2018) by Zadie Smith. A lot of you may know Smith for her breakthrough 2000 novel, White Teeth. Feel Free is her second collection of essays, following on Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009). This collection was primarily written between 2010 and 2018 and covers a wide variety of topics including cinema and book reviews, forwards to new editions, and general ruminations on growing up in London. I found her discussion of the battle to keep the local public library open in the gentrifying Willesden neighborhood where she grew up, particularly interesting. Long quote from the essay:

"What kind of a problem is a library? It’s clear that for many people it is not a problem at all, only a kind of obsolescence. At the extreme pole of this view is the technocrat’s total faith: with every book in the world online, what need could there be for the physical reality? This kind of argument thinks of the library as a function rather than a plurality of individual spaces. But each library is a different kind of problem and “the Internet” is no more a solution for all of them than it is their universal death knell ... All libraries have a different character and setting. Some are primarily for children or primarily for students or the general public, primarily full of books or microfilms or digitized material or with a café in the basement or a market out front. Libraries are not failing “because they are libraries.” Neglected libraries get neglected, and this cycle, in time, provides the excuse to close them. Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay ... It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to say that the reason why the market is not an efficient solution to libraries is because the market has no use for a library. But it seems we need, right now, to keep restating the obvious." (Northwest London Blues)

• Read: March 26 - April 12, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

The Last Days of New Paris (2016) by China Miéville. COVID-19 Recreational Reading

The Last Days of New Paris (2016) by China Miéville

I just finished China Miéville's The Last Days of New Paris (2016) that is an alternate history of WW II where the Surrealist Collective, La Main à Plume, leads the resistance against the Nazi occupation of Paris (and were various Surrealist artworks come to life as "manifs" (manifestations) after an explosion of the "S-Bomb". I'd also recommend his "Kraken" (2010) about a group that "kidnaps" the giant squid in the Natural History Museum (London).

• Read: March 15 - April 4, 2020
• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.