Moderato Cantabile by Margaruite Duras (1960)

This is my third work of fiction by Margaruite Duras.  It is a very interesting story about class distinctions.  It focuses on the relationship of a factory owners wife to her son and his piano teacher and her growing interest in a man who used to work for her husband.  She often goes to a bar where factory workers take their leisure and we see her impact on the men there. 

Mel u

Pigeon Pie by Nancy Mitford (1940)

My gratitude to Max u for the Amazon Gift card that allowed me to read this book

Zoe Heller Refutes the Notion that Nancy Mitford's Novels are just Frivolous  "Chic Lit"

                 Love these old Cover Images

The Novels of Nancy Mitford 

(1904 to 1973, born London, died Paris)

• Highland Fling 1931.
• Christmas Pudding. 1932. 
• Wigs on the Green. 1935. 
• Pigeon Pie. 1940. 
• The Pursuit of Love.  1945. 
• Love in a Cold Climate 1949. 
• The Blessing. 1951. 
• Don't Tell Alfred. 1960

In the world of Nancy Mitford's novels, no one really has a job, unless you considered unpublished poetic genius a job.  People have "livings", ranging from a meager £500 a year which allows you only two servants up to millions.  Everyone seems to have a Rolls Royce, beige is the preferred color, and eccentric relatives from whom they expect large inheritances.  Paris is paradise for them.  Of course having  a suitable spouse is of paramount importance.

Pigeon Pie is set in England just after war was declared.  For quite a while nothing much happened and everyone in the novel thinks England will win in three months.  To appreciate the humor of this book I think it helps to understand that much of the English upper class, especially landed country gentry, were before the war, in sympathy with the Nazis and saw Hitler as a strong leader who could fight their biggest political fear, communism.  Two of Nancy's sisters, Unity and Diana were fervent admirers of Hitler.  Jes

Diana spent the war in prison for her involvement with the British Union of Fascists and Unity tried to kill herself when England and Germany went  to war.

The plot is involved with a doty lady who sees Nazis spies everywhere.  We see men begin to get drafted and some are killed.  War rationing begins to impact almost everyone, hence pigeon pie becomes a common menu item.  Butter and suger are hard to get and decent tea is a real rarity.  Fuel for your Rolls is severely  rationed. There are lots of delightful eccentrics.  The Americans have not yet joined the war and their is what vaguely anti- America talk by characters.  Biographers says Nancy disliked Americans.

Pigeon Pie is very witty.  Mitford's prose is just a pure delight.  

My next Nancy Mitford novel, her first one, will be Highland Fling.

Mel u

Proust The Search by Benjamin Taylor (2016, from The Yale Jewish Lives Series) Plus suggestions on other books on Proust

Marcel Proust on The Reading Life

In The Guardian's luke warm review of Proust The Search by Benjamin Taylor it is suggested 

that the big question on Proust Taylor addresses  is "How did a simpering, high-class layabout write a work of such profound moral seriousness?"  This for me pretty much wrecked the book.

I am currently doing my third read through of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Times.  Wayne Carter, the greatest living authority on Proust, is producing, published by Yale University Press, heavily annotated with illuminating data, a revision of the great translation of F. Scott Charles Moncreiff.  I was kindly given an advanced review copy of Volume One which I posted on last year and am now reading a review copy of volume two.  

The standard biographies of Marcel Proust are huge, pushing 1000 pages.  Taylor's sort of biography is just over 200 pages.  Taylor has two basic objectives.  The first is a task he acknowledges as impossible, explaining how Proust's life experiences lead to him producing one of the the very greatest novels ever written, a supreme artistic achievement of the human spirit.  Taylor somehow buys into the notion that because Proust was gay he was of weak character, lacking in the strength to produce a 3500 page masterpiece.  This notion permeates  Taylor's account of the life of Proust.  Taylor also tries  to place Proust in the European Jewish tradition.   Proust's father was Christian, his mother Jewish.  I did not find this tremendously interesting and I think it is counterproductive to limit Proust like this.

Taylor goes into detail on Proust's romantic life with various young men and what Taylor sees, probably rightly, as "cover" relationships with women in his younger days.  It is not pleasant to learn what Proust liked to do at a gay brothel he might have provided start up money for, Proust inherited in today's money five millions dollars from his mother.  Taylor lets us see that Proust was not money smart but was blessed with a good money manager.  He sometimes bought stocks because he liked the company name.  He was a very generous tipper and gave large gifts.  

My thoughts on getting into Proust (check out on YouTube the hilarious Monty Python skit on Proust)

First to state the obvious, read Proust.  It will take awhile, it is very, seven volumes over 3500 pages in most editions, long but it is not "difficult" or hard to follow.  (There is an interesting scene in Taylor's book describing a meeting of Proust and James Joyce.)  I read tne Moncreiff translations but will eventually read newer translations.  Next I would suggest you read Wayne Carter's biography of Proust.  

I have read two good secondary books on Proust.  Roger Shatluck's Proust's Way A Field Guide to Remebrance of Things Past is a work I found interesting and useful.  

Anka Mulstein's Proust's Library is super interesting.

Taylor does talk a good bit about Proust's reading.  He loved The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  I must read it again.

On Taylor's book, it is for Proust fanatics only.  There is enough detail to keep readers like me interested but most will be better served by following my suggestions.  

Taylor is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and I guess this book started out as class room lectures and Taylor felt a need to base his work on things young students who most likely have never read Proust could relate to, him being Jewish and Gay.  It was near offensive when Taylor suggested it was surprising when Proust, who joined the military to get his choice of where he would be trained knowing he would be drafted, liked the army and was considered a good soldier.  

Mel u

The Square by Marguerite Duras (1955)

French Literature and History on The Reading Life

Not long ago I read and posted on my first work by Margaruite Duras, The Lover.  Set in French colonial Vietnam, it is a very powerful story about a young French girl's relationship with an older wealthy Chinese man.  It is a story of sexual obsession, class distinctions and the impsct of colonialism on Vietsmese society.  

I wanted to read more of her work and was happy to find four of her novels published in a Kindle edition.

The Square is set on a park bench in Paris, on a Thursday afternoon between 430pm and nightfall.  There are but two characters in the work, a woman of twenty and an older man, both sitting on the bench.  Not knowing each other, they begin to talk.  At first the conversation is the bland innocuous talk of two strangers just passing the time.  Slowly each begins to open up, their ways of coping with life begin to emerge.  Each one begins to learn from the other.

The Square is almost all dialogue.  It is interesting and worth reading.  I did prefer The Lover but that just may be because I am very into colonial Asian fiction.

I will read and post on the other three works in the collection

Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard (1984)

This is my fifth venture into the dark world of Thomas Bernhard.  In normal Bernardian fashion, the story is told by a Viennese man who thinks everyone but himself is a complete idiot.  It is one long paragraph.  It is an attack on the values of bourgeois Vienna, the art, the literature and the people.  The narrator hates everyone.

The story is set an "artistic party" hosted by a married couple the narrator was friends with thirty years ago.  The occasion is the observation of the death by suicide, unfortunately he ran into the couple while on a stroll in the park and they invited him to the party.  

Bernhard is not for everyone.  I am quite fond of his work.  It is fun to try to reconstruct what really is going on through the narration of the often unbalanced but always very cultured and intelligent narrators.

I hope to eventually read all of his work available as a Kindle

Please share your experience with Thomas Bernhard with us.

NovelsEdit

• Frost (1963), translated by Michael Hofmann (2006)
• Gargoyles (Verstörung, 1967), translated by Richard and Clara Winston (1970). *
• The Lime Works (Das Kalkwerk, 1970), translated by Sophie Wilkins (1973)
• Correction (Korrektur, 1975), translated by Sophie Wilkins (1979). *
• Yes (Ja, 1978), translated by Ewald Osers (1991)
• The Cheap-Eaters (Die Billigesser, 1980), translated by Ewald Osers (1990)
• Concrete (Beton, 1982), translated by David McLintock (1984). *
• Wittgenstein's Nephew (Wittgensteins Neffe, 1982), translated by David McLintock (1988) *
• The Loser (Der Untergeher, 1983), translated by Jack Dawson (1991)
• Woodcutters (Holzfällen: Eine Erregung, 1984), translated by Ewald Osers (1985) and as Woodcutters, by David McLintock (1988). *
• Old Masters: A Comedy (Alte Meister. Komödie, 1985), translated by Ewald Osers (1989)
• Extinction (Auslöschung, 1986), translated by David McLintock (1995). *
• On the Mountain (In der Höhe, written 1959, published 1989), translated by Russell Stockman (1991)

(I have read and posted on the items marked with a *)

Mel u

Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford (1932)

Zoe Heller Refutes the Notion that Nancy Mitford's Novels are just Frivolous  "Chic Lit"

The Novels of Nancy Mitford 

• Highland  Fling 1931.
• Christmas Pudding. 1932. 
• Wigs on the Green. 1935. 
• Pigeon Pie. 1940. 
• The Pursuit of Love.  1945. 
• Love in a Cold Climate 1949. 
• The Blessing. 1951. 
• Don't Tell Alfred. 1960.

Nancy Mitford wrote two comic masterpieces, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate.  I liked these so much I decided to read all eight of her novels.  The other novels are funny, have great segments but all pretty much acknowledge they are not as great as her two master works.

Christmas Pudding is set on tne country estate of Lady Bobbins, obsessed with hunting.  It is Christmas time and several of her friends and relatives, including her very spoiled and somewhat difficult youn adult daughter, Philadelphia.  Another important, and my favorite character in the story, just published his first novel.  He intended it to be a work showing the anquish and dispair of contemporary English society.  To his great anquish, the novel is hailed by all the critics and the public as a wonderful comic novel.   He has decided he should write a biography of an English author.  He researched various possibilities and set on a recently deceased female author.  He finds she kept a journal for years and he writes her sister telling her of his interest and asks permission to use her journal in his research.  The sister reads his very respectful letter, tells her housekeeper that he seems like a mental case and her write him refusing permission to see the papers.  He is crushed but he keeps trying and eventually gets to read parts of the journal.  We get to read along with him and the diary entries, quite a few of them, are just a total delight.  

Lady Bobbins is trying to find a husband for Philadelphia, not an easy task for this very picky young lady.   At the dinner party one of the guests advocates that capitalism be abolished and that owners of grand country homes would be happier and better citizens if they moved into small cottages.  When asked why she does not give up her house she says she would love to but she does not want to put her 97 household and grounds servants out of work.  

Christmas Pudding was fun to read, a gentle satire of country aristocracy.  I will next read Pigeon Pie.

Please share your feelings on Nancy Mitford and her family with us.

Mel u

The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery (2016, translated by Alison Anderson)

My Post on The Elegance of the Hedgehog - from July 21, 2009

When I first read The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery about a concierge in a Paris apartment building who keeps largely hidden her high degree of culture from the wealthy and elegant residents of the building.  She feels the apartment owners will not readily relate to someone they seek as socially inferior if they discover she is extremely and deeply into the reading life.  I loved this book and in truth I very much related to it.  I saw in her work life as reflective of many of us deeply into the reading life.  I wanted to see how others reacted to this book so I googled it and I discovered the world of book blogs.  Soon I was following lots of book blogs.  It was a great thing for me as I have always been alone in my personal life in my love of reading.  In a few months I decided it would be fun to have my own book blog and I started The Reading Life.  The day I joined the international book blog community changed my life forever and I always felt grateful to Muriel Barbery for this.  

The Life of Elves is a very challenging book, one which offers great rewards to readers with the willingness and desire to follow the very deep mysteries with which it deals.  I read a few reviews after completing the book.  I was surprised to see it described in The Telegraph as a "children's book", another print reviewer said she abandoned the book on page 69 because  she could not follow the plot  and complained of an inadequate narration.  Another reviewer complained of many obscure perhaps overly lush, overblown sentences that they found difficult to understand. (To me this shows a negative aspect of print reviews in which reviewers are required to write about works with which they feel no affinity and more or less acknowledge is beyond their reading level.)

Still other reviewers recognized it was a major work of art dealing with universal political issues, the nature of story telling, the role of beauty in bringing value to life.  Above all it is about the clash of realms, about the need to keep Magic alive if humanity is to survive.

The Life of Elves treats of two different but connected worlds , that of elves and that of humans in Brugandy and Italy.  A great evil is treatining both realms.  Disharmony in the human world has given a sinister mysterious leader the ability to change in a destructive meteorological cycles.  The disharmony is reflective in the falling away from a love for stories and music, the music of the spheres.  The elf council has located two young girls who may be able to repel these forces.  

The two girls are Maria and Clara. One lives in Brugandy, the other in Italy. Maria's parents are elves but her apperance is totally human.  Her magical powers are still in the nascent stages but with direction her powers can go rapidly.  Clara is half elf, half human. Her power comes through music and have the power to defeat the growing darkness.  Her music can help restore harmony.  

The plot is not simple, there is an extensive cast of characters.  The prose is exquisite, replete with erudite references, beautiful metaphors, and wonderful descriptions of the beauty of the natural world. I had to way slow down to read this book but it was worth it.  It is about the nature of stories, how stories helped make us human.  

I first became familiar with the work of Gallic Books when I received a review copy of a wonderful biography they recently published, Helena Rubenstein The Woman Who Invented Beauty by Michelle Fitoussi.  I urge anyone into quality French literature in translation visit their very well done webpage.  

Gallicbooks.com

Here is their mission statement

 Gallic Books was founded by francophiles and former Random House colleagues Jane Aitken and Pilar Webb, with the aim of making the best French writing available to English-speaking readers. Having published its first titles in 2007, Gallic now has a catalogue of more than 50 works of fiction and non-fiction, including historical crime series, contemporary noir, commercial and literary fiction, recently adding classics to the list.

Mel u