The Magician: A Novel by Colm Toibin - 2021

The Magician:A Novel  by Colm Toibin - 2021 - 510 pages

I first read and posted on Colm Toibin in March of 2012.  Since then I have featured his work 15 times including novels, short stories and literary histories.  I loved his novel  on the London years, The Master, of Henry James and was very eager to read his latest novel, The Magician, based on the life of Thomas Mann.  The Magician brought Mann totally to life for me, as it has done for almost all readers.  It will help  if you have read Mann’s major works, or at least Death in Venice.  Not so much to follow The Magician but to appreciate the great challenge in basing a novel on his work. Toibin helped me understand how Mann created his great literature, the tremendous work and cultural depth behind them.

Thomas Mann

Born - June 6, 1875 - in the free city of Lubeck

1905 - marries Katia Pringsheim. From a very wealthy non- practicing Jewish family.  They have six children. Their lives are meticulously covered  in The Magician 

Buddenbrooks - 1901

Death in Venice - 1912

The Magic Mountain- 1924

1929 - wins Nobel Prize

1933- in response to the rise in power of Adolph Hitler the family moves to Switzerland 

1939 - moves to USA - teaching at Princeton University 

In 1942 the family relocates to Los Angeles, where there is a substantial German Émigrés community. He has a leadership role , helping many in need.

1947 - Doctor Faustus 

August 12, 1955 - dies in the Netherlands while on vacation 

The Magician begins in 1898 at the Mann household in Lubeck.  We meet his parents.  His mother is Brazilian, his father a wealthy German businessman.  We are pushed to wonder how a Brazilian mother impacted Mann.  One of the major themes of this book is the treatment of Mann’s homosexuality which very much not acceptable.  We wonder if a non-Germanic mother of dark beauty somehow impacted his sexual development.  Toibin depicts several same sex encounters of Mann’s.  Mann liked “beautiful boys”.  His gay sexual relationships were not enduring and were strictly physical.

His first novel, an amazing work for a 25 year old, Buddenbrooks, was considered by many readers as based on his family.  His father was miffed by it. As portrayed by Toibin, Mann wanted to marry Katia to become a part of her family.  He does develop a very close relationship with her.  A close friend had feared he would not be able to father children but he obviously did.

As Hitler became increasingly popular in Germany the international community and Germans who feared his doctrines wanted Mann to speak out against him.  Mann at first could not believe someone as atrocious as Hitler could win over Germany.  Mann could not accept initially that the country of Goethe and so many great philosophers and musicians could want to be ruled by Nazis.  He also at first did not want sales of his books blocked in Germany.

His brother Heinrich was very vocal in opposing the Nazis.  His wife’s family had to flea Germany for Switzerland once the Nazis began rounding up Jews.  They lost a lot of their money.  

The Mann family had numerous tragedies including multiple suicides.  The Mann children did not have easy lives even though their parents supported them throughout their life.

The book follows Mann over fifty plus years.  He was deeply into music and German literature.  

His time in America was fascinating.  At Princeton he socialized with Einstein.  He was always wealthy.  He built a wonderful home in Los Angeles.

There is just so much in this book.  This is a masterful account of how great art originates.

I will give Colm Toibin a final word 

“Colm Tóibín: He, in ways, was a ghost in his own life. He was silent in his study and he would come into the house and someone else would always be making the noise. And he had six noisy children. Thomas Mann was never someone out late at night. That never interested him. He lived a very sedate life. He was deeply domestic. He did not have close friends. He did not have a peer group. Once he married, he stayed home. So that the excitement in the book is all happening around him. He’s watching it. He’s resisting it. He’s nourished by it. But it’s not as though he himself is making the noise.”

I offer my great thanks to Max u for the Amazon gift card that allowed me to acquire The Magician.

 

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo + The 2019 Booker Prize Winner

 Girl,Woman,Other by Bernardine Evaristo - 2019 Booker Prize Winner

Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of 12 British women of color over several decades. The women struggle to establish themselves in families, relationships and careers.  

 

Each woman has a dedicated chapter in which we learn details of their histories.  Several of the lives are intertwined as mother and daughter, sisters, lovers, business associates.

We have Anna, a lesbian playwright.  Her play’s production draws the plot together.  There is a teacher not quite at home in lesbian communities and unhappy bride from The Barbados.

I enjoyed this book a lot, the characters are interesting.  Of course their relationships to men are central to their lives.

From The author’s website 

British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the author of eight books and numerous other works that span the genres of verse fiction, short fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, journalism, and radio and theatre drama. Her writing and projects are based around her interest in the African diaspora. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London. In October 2021, her first non-fiction book, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up, will be published by Penguin UK & by Grove Atlantic USA 2022).

Bernardine’s novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize 2019, the first black woman and black Briitsh person to win it in its fifty year history.  The novel also won many other prizes including the British Book Award’s Fiction Book of the Year & Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award for Fiction. It was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller for five weeks, the first woman of colour to achieve this position in the paperback fiction chart, spending 44 weeks in the Top 10. There are now over 50 translations of Bernardine’s books either published or in progress. She has received many awards, nominations

The Reading Life Review - September 2021 - My Plans for remainder of 2021- A Year in Lockdown

The Reading Life is a multicultural

book blog, committed to Literary Globalism.

Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among our Interests.

Column One

1. Susanne Clarke - UK - author Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell . And Piranesi - first appearance -enthralled by her work 
2. Sally Rooney - Ireland - author Friends, Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You. First appearance
3. Louise Erdrich - USA - Pulitzer Prize 

Column Two

1. Paulina Bren - born in Czechoslovakia- now lives in USA- author The Barbizon- The New York Hotel that Set Women Free.  A marvelous narrative non- Fiction book - first appearance 
2. Rosa Palitik - born in Poland- emigrated to Brazil. Prolific Yiddish language writer 
3. Barbara Pym. UK.  I am doing a read through of her work. Perfect pandemic reading for me

Column Three

1. Michael W. Twitty - USA - author The Cooking Gene A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South - 2018 James Beard Foundation Winner. First appearance - great book
2. Nalo Hopkinson - USA - Multi-awarded Fantasy and S/F writer. Her novel Salt Road stunned me. First appearance - hope to do a read through
3. Madeline Miller- USA - author Love Song of Achiles. I hope to read her second novel Circe, also drawn from Homer, soon. First appearance 

Column Four

1. Frederick Opie - USA  - food historian - first appearance
2. Ann Patchett - USA - Multi-Awarded.  First but not Last appearance - The Dutch House
3. Jonathan Safran Foer - USA - author Everything is Illuminated - first appearance 

Home lands of September Authors

1. USA - 8
2. UK - 1
3. Ireland- 1
4. Poland - 1
5. Czechoslovakia - 1

All but Rosa Palitik are living. Nine are women, three men.

Nine were featured for the first time in September 

I read two books upon which I did not post

1. The Social Life of Books- Reading together in the 18th Century by Abigail  Williams - covers England only
2. The Auschwitz Photographer - The Forgotten Story of The Photagraher who Documented 1000s of Lost Souls by Luca Crippa and Maurizio Onnis - a valuable edition to Auschwitz literature 

There were posts in September on nine novels, three works of narrative non-fiction and one on a Short Story.

Blog Stats as of Septrmber 30, 2021

Pages Views to Date. -  6,450,120

Posts Online - 3998

Home Countries of Visitors

1. United States
2. The Phillippines 
3. India
4. Canada
5. Germany
6. UK
7. Bangladesh
8. Indonesia
9. Russia

The top ten most viewed posts were on Short Stories

I have some ambitious hopes for The remainder of 2021

My thanks to Lyn u for her spiritual support 

My gratitude to Max u for his kind provision of Amazon Gift Cards  continues.

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twity - 2017

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty. 2017 -464 Pages - narrative non-fiction.

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of The Year

An Autodidactic Corner Selection

This is an essential book for anyone interested in African American culinary history but there is so much more awaiting readers of Michael W. Twitty’s book.  It is an exciting account of how he employed DNA based ancestral testing to uncover the ethnic background of his ancestors.  He goes into a lot of details on the challenges found in attempting to do ancestral research for persons whose ancestors were slaves in the old south.  He found himself about 25 percent European and 70 percent from various parts of Africa with The rest Native American.   He faces directly the rape of slave women that produced this.  We see How he accepts himself as Gay and converts to Judaism.

Among the many food crops that came from Africa as detailed by Twitty are okra, corn, various types of rice, yams, sweet potatoes, collard greens, kale, turnips, field peas and black eyed peas.  Slave traders brought seeds for these crops to feed the slaves on items they were familiar with.  Enslaved women cooked not just for themselves but their owners.  Thus these crops became the staples of southern whites.  Slaves were commonly allowed vegetable gardens.  Some rich plantation owners sent male cooks to France to be trained.  Slaves skilled in Rice farming were highly priced.

Chickens followed by pigs were a big part of The cuisine.  Through hunting, aligators, possum and deer were part of The diet. Fishing was very important.

Twitty talks about The impact of heavy consumption of so called “Soul Food” on health, leading to high blood pressure diabites.  He explains How greens, peas, sweet potatoes can be very healthy.

I learned a lot about The different African kingdoms from which slaves were taken in The largest forced migration in history.  Using examples from his own Family history he shows us The horror of life as slave.  Most of The book deals with The old south but sugar plantations are covered also.

Twitty includes a number of recipes.  He goes into Gullah culture also, one of my interests.  

There is so much of interest in this book.  It is a history of The culinary history of the old South.

Twitty loves his subject and it shows.  I give this book my complete endorsement.

“Michael W. Twitty is a noted culinary and cultural historian and the creator of Afroculinaria, the first blog devoted to African American historic foodways and their legacies. He has been honored by FirstWeFeast.com as one of the twenty greatest food bloggers of all time, and named one of the “Fifty People Who Are Changing the South” by Southern Living and one of the “Five Cheftavists to Watch” by TakePart.com. Twitty has appeared throughout the media, including on NPR’s The Splendid Table, and has given more than 250 talks in the United States and abroad. His work has appeared in Ebony, the Guardian, and on NPR.org. He is also a Smith fellow with the Southern Foodways Alliance, a TED fellow and speaker, and the first Revolutionary in Residence at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Twitty lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.” From The publisher

Mel u

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym - 1953

 Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym - 1953

“Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.” 

― Barbara Pym, Jane and Prudence

Works by Barbara Pym I have so far read 

Some Tame Gazelle - 1950

Excellent Women - 1952

Earlier in the month I acquired four more of her novels, in Kindle Editions, for $1.95 each.  Besides Jane and Prudence, t A Glass of Blessings, Less Than Angels and No Fond Return of Love.

Barbara Pym 

Born - June 13, 1913 - Oswestry, England

Died - January 11, 1980 - Oxford, England 

Barbara Pym is among the best chroniclers of a now lost, maybe lost when she was writing, world of curates, vicars and women whose lives are bound up the social world of post World War Two England, with rationing, the return of service men and endless meeting for tea. No one has children out of wedlock, of course. Many have small “private incomes”.

 Jane and Prudence centers on The  relationship of Jane, a forty year old vicar’s wife and Prudence, twenty nine and single. Jane was Prudence’s tutor at Oxford and they have stayed good friends.

Jane’s husband Nicholas has just take over as a Vicar in small community.  We see their efforts to get to know the parrisioners.  Of course having teas are a big factor.

Prudence works for an academic foundation of some sort. She is infatuated with the married Director who has never shown any reciprocal interest.  There are two other women employed and one man.  We never learn the precise purpose of the foundation.

Prudence has had a few  romances but Jane thinks she should be married before she becomes a spinster. She attempts to set up a relationship with Prudence and Fabian Driver, a widower with a reputation as a womanizer, having cheated on his late wife.  There is also a rival for Fabian.

This is a very funny novel with marvelous character development.   I was very struck by How Pym used adverbs to characterize something said and define a conversation.

 I greatly enjoyed Jane and Prudence.I will next read her A Glass of Blessings.

The Barbizon - The New York Hotel That Set Women Free by Paulina Bren - 2021-

 The Barbizon - The New York Hotel That Set Women Free - by Paulina Bren - 2021- 

My thanks to Buried in Print for this suggestion

I received a review copy of this book about six months ago.  I had intended to read it shortly after obtaining it but things got away from me as they do.  The is is a first  rate work on narrative non-fiction entering on life in a for women only hotel in New York City, The Barbizon.

The Barbizon Hotel, 23 stories, open in 1927 as a residential hotel for women.  Many young women wanted to try a career in the New York City but could get parental assent and support only if they stayed at the Barbizon.  There were several places to eat, a book shop, a lobby to meet dates (no men allowed in the rooms) a venue for preforming, a protective door man and places to socialize.  Many residents saw it as like their college sororities, a place with instant friends.

A lot of the book is taken up with the relationship of the hotel and the highly prestigious Glamour Magazine Guest Editor Program in which from 1000s of applications from College students twenty women were selected to spend the month of June as guest editors. All the guest editors were required to stay at the Barbizon Hotel.  Sylvia Plath is featured in two chapters.  I did not know her novel The Bell Jar was based on her time at the Barbizon.  A number of the characters are based on other guest editors.  Bren tells us there were about fifty suicides at The Barbizon  over the years.  Grace Kelly stayed there a while.  We learned some interesting details on her Life.  

The Gibbs Secretarial School students occupied three floors for several years.  Some residents stayed over forty years. Even when The hotel converted to a Condo in 2006( at a million Plus a unit) 14 elderly residents stayed on protected by rent control laws.

In 1981 hotel began to admit men. In 2004 the hotel Under went a $40 million dollar reservation.

I throughly enjoyed this book.  

Paulina Bren alternates her time between the Bronx, Poughkeepsie, and MetroNorth. Born in the former Czechoslovakia, she lived in the U.K. before moving to the United States. Paulina received her B.A. from Wesleyan University, her M.A. from the Jackson School for International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and her Ph.D. in Modern European History from New York University. 

She is the recipient of many grants and fellowships, including the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH), the National Council of East European and Eurasian Research (NCEEER), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the Fulbright-Hays. She has held residencies at the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest, and the American Academy in Berlin. She teaches in International Studies, Women’s Studies, and Media Studies at Vassar College

 

Piranesi by Susanne Clarke - 2020 - A Novel - 249 Pages

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - 2020 - A Novel - 249 Pages 

Winner 2021 Women’s Fiction Award 

A marvelous Review in The Guardian 

An illuminating post from Vox.com 

A conversation with Madeline Miller (author of Circe and The Song of Achiles) in which she talks to Susanna Clarke about Piranesi

As I finished Piranesi I wondered  what can I say about my Love for this book that would  not sound totally hyperbolic.  I have been under government mandated lockdown  in Metro Manila for 560 days.  If i could keep Reading books like Piranesi then let day 1000 come.  

The items I have linked above do a much better job describing the World constructed in Piranesi than I could.  

As began to wander around in the structure that is Piranisi’s world, he is the narrator I thought what can this mean?  We see seemingly near endless corridors with thousands of unique statues.  There is even an Ocean contained in the edifice, with birds of all sorts.  The story is relayed as a series of journal entries by Piranesi. At first Piranesi  thinks  there is only one other person, he calls him “The Other”.  He things over time fifteen others lived inside.  He knows “Piranesi” is not his real name, The Other named him.

He gradually discovers there maybe a third person.  The Other acknowledges this warns him the third person will try to kill him.  As I Marvel at the creative power behind this I begin to see many possible symbolic readings.

Then about one third into the novel it turned for me into a spellbinding slowly unraveling account of who Piranesi really was, How he got inside and much more.  I was totally captivated it was just so interesting.  A World outside The structure evolves for us, inhabited by strange, fascinating, sinister, intellectual beings I found fascinating.

“Susanna Clarke’s debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. It won the British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year, the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award in 2005. Susanna Susanna Clarke is also the author of the short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu. Piranesi was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, and was awarded Audies Audiobook of the Year, shortlisted for the British Book Awards Audiobook of the Year, the Costa Novel Award, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the RSL Encore Awards, the Hugo Award, the Nebula Awards, the British Science Fiction Association’s Best Novel, the Bloggers Book Award; was a finalist for the Goodreads Fantasy Book of the Year, the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction and the Locus Awards; and was longlisted for the 2021 Booktube Prize. Susanna Clarke lives in Derbyshire.”  From The book