Nonsuch Book

1% well-read challenge: the hours

"There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined."

The 1% Well-Read Challenge is a well-conceived idea, and I fully intend to complete it by the end of February. However, it is difficult to decide how to focus a review when your subject matter is some of the world's most notable literature and you have the space of a blog post to address it. So much has been written about these selections already, and if you loved the book, as I did The Hours, you feel as if anything less than a stellar post will somehow be a disservice to the work. So I popped in the graphic you see above into a new post and saved the draft on December 13 and have not written a single word here until just now as if procrastination would somehow lend weight to my words. But I can't put this off any longer so....

The Hours, an homage to the work of Virginia Woolf, is composed of three story lines woven seamlessly together that merge thematically (and in one dramatic moment physically) at various points in the novel. Virginia Woolf struggles in domestic exile from London as she begins to write Mrs. Dalloway. Laura Brown yearns for escape from 1950s family life. Clarissa Vaughan, like Clarissa Dalloway, is planning a party for her dearest friend Richard who has just won a literary prize as he slips away with AIDS.

All three women suffer in some degree from the scripting of their lives. As Woolf writes (or scripts) the fictional life of Mrs. Dalloway, her husband Leonard confines her to a domestic script removed from London where she has experienced such psychological unease. Woolf struggles to remember her lines as she gives directions to the housekeeper. She thinks that her sister, Vanessa, that visits is more comfortable in this play of domesticity than she will ever be. Laura feels that she is "about to go onstage and perform in a play for which she is not appropriately dressed, and for which she has not adequately rehearsed." Clarissa surveys her own kitchen and hardly recognizes the accoutrement of her life, all tastefully selected and arranged but more prop than reflection of her essence, the eighteen year old girl that kisses Richard in a defining moment.

Virginia and Laura both struggle under the societal expectations of their times. The lines they strive to deliver have been written by a patriarchal culture. Both characters have husbands that seek to control their actions under the guise of protecting them (from themselves presumably). However, both women reveal in their thoughts that the sanity or balance they desire exists outside the boundaries of the societal definition of sound mental health. There are few alternatives for both but escape. Conversely, Clarissa appears the picture of equanimity and normalcy. However, despite her freedom to live openly as a lesbian and make her own choices for her life, Clarissa is still playing the traditional roles of wife and mother. When Richard the poet seeks to define her as she truly is in his one prose outing, the language is virtually incomprehensible to most. 

Ultimately, language and behavior outside of the patriarchal norms exist as "the other" in this novel no matter the time frame. The focus on objects, the peppering of life's sets with both the expected and the personal are beautiful here as the characters strive to meet societal expectations that do not always serve their intellect, heart, or sanity well.

lost in translation reading challenge: giveaway for participants

Thank you to everyone that has already signed on for the Lost in Translation reading challenge. The challenge is a simple one - read six books in translation over the course of 2009. Hopefully you will post about them and link back to the challenge's dedicated page (just click on beautiful button on top right here), or you may want to email me your post so that I can paste you in as a guest blogger. The idea is to allow the dedicated page to become a forum of all of our ideas and reviews of what we have read rather than just another personal blog space for me. I have seen some great lists already (links to be posted soon), even a new participant today that has selected books translated into German, her mother tongue. 

Open Letter is the University of Rochester's literary publishing house, and it is dedicated to connecting readers with great international authors and their works. Publishing twelve books a year and running an online literary website called Three Percent, Open Letter is one of only a handful of U.S. organizations with a commitment to cultivating an appreciation for international literature. Today, they posted about the Lost in Translation reading challenge on their weblog! And they have a special offer for all challenge participants: 

"Since Open Letter only publishes translations, all of our books are eligible for this challenge. So, as a special offer, if you order any of our books for this challenge, and e-mail me at chad.post@rochester.edu about your participation in the challenge, we’ll refund you the entire shipping cost. (And yes, this free shipping offer also applies if you order a six-month subscription and are participating in the challenge.)"

But the good news does not stop there. They are also providing four copies of the Marguerite Duras novel The Sailor From Gibraltar as well as four copies of The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca to Lost in Translation participants.

Sign up for the challenge by commenting on this post by close of day on Saturday, December 13, and you will be automatically entered to win one of each of these titles. That's right - 4 sets of books will be given away. To be fair, all readers who have already signed up to participate in the challenge will be entered also.

lost in translation reading challenge

The technical and design skills I bring to the blogging world are very limited as I have commented on once or twice or dozens of times before. So when I decided I would like to offer a reading challenge, I did not even know where to begin. Content was all there in my head but how to do it? Read, read, read and bug my friend, Martin. 

The button you see in my upper right sidebar links to the page for the challenge. There is not much there yet but I have big plans and high hopes so please check in from time to time. Everything will be set to go and content rich before the new year dawns. So many challenges for 2009 already posted that I thought I should begin now so as not to miss you before you have all made your challenge choices. 

The challenge is simple – read six books in translation by the end of 2009. Comment with links to share or email me review URL to post. Check in periodically to see suggestions, reviews and what others are reading as well as articles and posts related to reading works in translation. Comment here with feedback and helpful suggestions? Would love to hear from you.

1% well-read challenge: breakfast at tiffany's

When you first start biblio-blogging, it all looks like a huge candy store. So much to read, so much to comment on, so much to write about. Reading challenges are particularly attractive to me so I finally signed up for one – 1% Well-Read Challenge – some weeks ago but have yet to post a review. The clock is ticking so I picked up the first of my choices this past week.

The goal of this challenge is to read 10 books in 10 months from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. For you non-math people, 10 out of 1001 is approximately 1%, hence the title. Realized going through the list that I had never read Breakfast at Tiffany’s or anything else by Truman Capote. Lovely, sad, and in many ways, quite a bit different than the movie.

The novella, in part, details a struggle between a desire for freedom and a desire for a place to belong. Holly Golightly is a self-defined traveler and wild thing, defending the right of both human and animal to live outside the cage. Yet she also desires to live as a family again with her brother, Fred, and hopes for a child and marriage with her South American boyfriend. The narrator exists adrift in the text, nameless and without job security yet he craves home and literary success.

Derogatory slang of the time aside, the text offers a subtle and interesting view into how sexuality can be both freeing and limiting as well. Holly practices a measure of self-deception in not equating the money she receives from men she has “banged” with prostitution. She views it rather as given with at least the illusion of love, and as a means to an end – her continued freedom to exist as she chooses outside the rules and expectations of others. Capote’s depictions of the gay men within the work are also defining moments as they reflect both the social constrictions of the time and Capote's suggested possibility that asexual unions, freed from the burden and unpredictability of desire, can yield a purer form of love or devotion.

Fragile and lovely. Sad and empowering. Thoughtful rhythmical read for those interested in a struggle to live outside the box where the unattainable - breakfast at Tiffany’s - exists as the ideal.