Nonsuch Book

stoner by john williams

William Stoner left the very humble family farm on which he was raised to attend the University of Missouri in Columbia. It had been suggested to his father that he might study agriculture and advance the family business (which was actually more subsistence than business), but Stoner found his mind's content in a sophomore literature survey and went on to finish his doctorate in English and teach at that same university for the rest of his life. At the opening of the novel, we are told that Stoner has died and has left no substantive mark upon the university to which he devoted his life:

"Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound that evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers. "

And then Williams spends the rest of the novel writing quietly and precisely against the image of an insignificant life that this quote suggests. Stoner lived the life of the mind as he wished hampered not by any limitations of his talents but by an ethical decision that created a departmental feud that impacted him professionally. On a personal level, Stoner knew love but was unable to keep it because of an ill-considered choice of a first love, his wife.

The evolution of Stoner's thoughts around his profession and the life of the mind transition from the appealing but youthful and not unique global consideration of the books before him...

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”

... to a more profound epiphany of how his life is shared with those he teaches:

"He spoke more confidently and felt a warm hard severity gather within him. He suspected that he was beginning, ten years late, to discover who he was; and the figure he saw was both more and less than he had once imagined it to be. He felt himself at last beginning to be a teacher, which was simply a man to whom his book is true, to whom is given a dignity of art that has little to do with his foolishness or weakness or inadequacy as a man. It was a knowledge of which he could not speak, but one which changed him, once he had it, so that no one could mistake its presence."

Stoner's love for Katherine, a doctoral candidate who sits in on one of his graduate seminars, grows awkwardly and fiercely out of a common passion for the written word. In some ways, they see each other personally first through their work. I read somewhere I can't remember that their relationship was unconvincing and that Stoner had need of a vessel to hold the love he had been unable to find and express with his wife just as he has found a vessel in the university which held his need of a retreat from the world. But that is an idea I find unconvincing given Stoner's reaction to Katherine's book, dedicated "To W.S.," years after their affair had ended:

 "It was as good as he had thought it would be. The prose was graceful, and its passion was masked by a coolness and clarity of intelligence. It was herself he saw in what he read, he realized; and he marveled at how truly he could see her even now. Suddenly it was as if she were in the next room, and he had only moments before left her; his hands tingled, as if they had touched her. And the sense of his loss, that he had for so long damned within him, flooded out, engulfed him, and he let himself be carried outward, beyond the control of his will; he did not wish to save himself. Then he smiled fondly, as if at a memory; it occurred to him that he was nearly sixty years old and that he ought to be beyond the force of such passion, of such love. But he was not beyond it, he knew, and would never be."

Beautifully written in its own right, and at this point of the book, just staggering in its emotional impact. But that is the whole of this novel. Simple, precise, without artifice or manipulation, stirring. And a new addition to all-time favorites. Highly recommended.

the almost liked

There are aspects of the novel you just love. You've laughed to the point of teary eyes, you've been so sucked into a character's travails that you almost burned dinner. And yet, by book's end your enthusiasm has taken a nap with no wake up time in sight. This has been my experience twice lately.

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan was not (as some of you know) a book I wanted to read, but when it was selected for a work book club last month, I played nice and read it. And for all of us, the experience was nearly the same. Everyone was starting the book and running around school to tell each other how great they thought it was and then there was a serious reading slow down at a little over halfway through, and then the ending was universally panned. The last chapter reaches out into the future to make a final connection for these interconnected stories that so sharply departs from the elegance of the prior loose and tangential ties between story lines that a reader might justifiably wince at the awkwardness of it. Gimmicky in a way I did not expect given that Egan made a chapter that took the form of a Powerpoint emotionally powerful and not at all forced.

Then there was Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson that had me laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of two awkward neighbors who alternate in viewpoint to reveal how they have misjudged one another in that awkwardness while ingesting a steady flow of Fernet Branca that both claim to hate but think the other loves. The whole tale is absurd but never betrays any cognizance of its own absurdity, lending an even sharper focus upon the myriad of details that makes this march through the ridiculous delicious. But it soon becomes apparent that the story line is inconsequential to the playful banter, and having to wade through the overcomplicated to arrive at a place less well-appointed than the beginning promised annoyed me. Forced my way through last third of the novel.

Did you like it? The question the bookish put to the bookish. I find that impossible to answer in some cases like these. I thought I did. And then I didn't. But the parts I disliked made me so steadfast in wanting to distance myself from the whole that I was conflicted about still claiming the parts that touched or excited me. Like dating gone bad for the immature. If you no longer want them then they must be wholly dismissed. 

i am half-sick of shadows by alan bradley

It was sitting on the coffee table in the den when I got to my parents' house on Wednesday. My mother saw me looking at it and smiled and told me she had already finished it and I could have it. Alan Bradley's new and fourth installment of the Flavia de Luce mysteries. So the books I had intended to read for the next three days were put aside for this one plus games and food and wine and other holiday fun with family.

"I am half-sick of shadows," / Said the Lady of Shallott are lines that stick with a bookish girl who also loves the Pre-Raphaelite paintings Tennyson's words inspired like the one you see above by John William Waterhouse so I knew the reference in the title instantly when I first heard it. The cursed Lady of Shallott who sits in her tower weaving the story of the world around her while only able to see it through the reflection of her mirror. Resentment and defiance are inevitable. And in this book, there are multiple ways to view this connection. The dead mother Harriet is of course a pined-for shadow by both husband and daughters. But Flavia herself is a bit of a shadow of her mother that her family can barely stand to look upon at times. The shadows all are unembraceable on some level.

It is just before Christmas 1950, and Flavia has determined a means of catching Father Christmas upon the roofs of Buckshaw by treating the chimney pots with a special adhesive of her own devising. She has to prove his existence to herself and to the sisters who mock her. This combined with an opening dream sequence in which Flavia turns an entire wing of Buckshaw into an ice skating rink that she traverses with wild abandon set just the right note of whimsy before the inevitable dead body shows up. It also grounds the book in the fact that despite all her precociousness, Flavia is still an 11 year old girl, one whose emotional range has not yet fully meshed with her cognitive abilities.

As always, the family is on the verge of losing all including the beloved Buckshaw, so the Colonel has let out the family estate to a film crew for the holidays and beyond. The famed actress starring in the film agrees to act in a short scene from Romeo and Juliet in the great foyer of the house and to invite the entire village as a fundraiser to replace the church's roof. But while all enjoy the event, a blizzard swirls outside and leaves them all stranded there just before Christmas. And that is when the dead body shows up.

All very interesting. But not nearly as entertaining as our protagonist's sly wit and maneuverings through an adult world. For fans of the series, Bradley gives up quite a few pieces that we have not seen before including a broader picture of Dogger and a touching view into the Colonel's love for his wife. Just as addictive as all the rest. And perfect for the holiday. Made me wish I was trapped in a manor house with a dead body and a whole cast of diverse characters.

pirate king by laurie r. king

Gravely disappointed. Huge fan of the Russell/Holmes books, and especially appreciative of the mounting gravity of the last few, I found this engaging and humorous at first, but then the flabby and loosely detailed plot began to bore me. The cutesiness of some of the humor irritated me. The individual characterizations did hold my interest but ultimately there was no pay-off for sticking with them as few were ever fully baked. King scattered some lovely ingredients all about but forgot what recipe she may have originally intended. If she did intend one. This lighter side of Russell may have been fun to write, and there were moments fun to read, but the ludicrous ending suggested nothing to me but what I had begun to suspect about 150 pages back. A successful formula for a series is often worth sticking with. I missed the intensity of the plot lines that preceded this one and I missed the highly detailed interactions between Holmes and Russell.

This is my first read for R.I.P. VI.

an infatuation

Volume 2 consumed me in July before the Art of the Novella reading frenzy that was August. And I should have captured my thoughts at the time because now they exist in a distant form on a lime green index card dominated by the words "fear," "Rosa Klebb," "cleanliness," and "menstruation." My thoughts rotate around the way protagonist Deza's character is framed by his boss Tupra's words about fear.

'Fear is the greatest force that exists as long as you can adapt to it and feel at home and live on good terms with it and not waste energy battling to ward it off. Because you can never entirely win that battle; even in moments of apparent victory, you're already anticipating its return, you live under constant threat, and then you become paralysed, and fear immediately takes advantage of that. If on the other hand, you accept fear (that is, if you adjust to it, if you get used to it being there), that gives you incomparable strength and you can take advantage of that strength and use it. Its possibilities are infinite, far greater than those inherent in hatred, ambition, unconditionality, love, the desire for revenge; they're all unknown quantities. Take someone in whom fear has taken deep roots, in whom fear remains active, an everyday kind of fear that has been incorporated into normal life, that person will be capable of truly superhuman exploits. Mothers with small children know this, or most do. As does anyone who's been in a war. But you haven't, have you, Jack? You've been lucky. But that also means that your education will be forever incomplete. They should send mothers into battle with their children nearby, within sight, to hand, because mothers carry their fear with them, it's a permanent fixture; there could be no fiercer combatants.'

And the way that early conversation is recalled at novel's end after an unexpected indulgence into controlled and manipulative violence. How fear is instilled, provoked, and power and advantage rendered. How alien this all seems to Deza at the same time he easily comprehends the reasoning and possibile truth behind it. How so freakin' alone this man is. That even someone as casually reprehensible and misanthropic as Tupra is more connected to those around him.

Deza's alienation is nowhere more evident to me than in his musings about women from the mildly obsessive thoughts about Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love and her suspect personal hygiene habits to his thrice repeated references to menstrual fluid leaking to the floor to the details with which he describes the physical characteristics of all women he encounters. Thinking of fear again. Of how he both fears the unknown elements of women that originate in their physicality as he obviously admires them. How does one enjoy the broader company of women within the restraints of social mores whether those revolve around marriage or work relationships or any number of other encounters?

So I am reading slowly through Volume 3 looking for more in this line, and finding everything and nothing. I'll explain later. What I do find is that I have this intense infatuation with Deza. Not of the variety where you crave a connection but of the variety where you crave a few additional moments within close proximity so that you can imagine what that connection might look like. Where the possibility is more appealing than the reality. Another type of fear where engagement is averted. And allows for the same distant observations for which Deza has such talent. This is addictive stuff.

and on the plane

Plane travel is full of distractions for me so as much as I would like to tell you that I inhaled hundreds of pages of Marias on my recent lengthy flights, the truth is that I picked lighter (but wonderfully readable) fare. That would not compete with chattering and drink carts and seat kicking and... Well, you understand.

The eighth and newest installment of the Maisie Dobbs series was very satisfying although I have to admit that I was torn between my interest in her quiet, damaged self and this stronger recovering Maisie found here. Her newfound economic security allows her some breathing space in life both for her own good and the good of others, and her love interest hints at another side of Maisie we have not seen before. But the mystery rules the day as she poses as a professor of philosophy at a college dedicated to international peace where British intelligence suspects something hidden in these days leading to the second world war. And Scotland Yard is called in to investigate the murder of one of the college's leaders. The book moves along at quite a clip, enjoyed it thoroughly, and was only a tad perplexed at how Maisie managed to plan for her classes with all the requirements of the investigations with which she is involved.

The Finishing School was just as darkly humorous as any Spark novel but a bit off her usual game. Something vaguely tired about it. Did not realize until after I finished reading it that it was her last novel. Perhaps that is the reason? That her usual satirical humor seems touched by a splash of judgment? Her cultural references dated?  But it still provided plenty of laughs as the husband and wife team who start a shifty finishing school in order to generate an income until the husband's writing career takes off must weather the introduction of a student whose writing successes threaten to unravel both their business and their marriage. Jealousy and wackily irrational responses abound. Recommended but not to the same degree I recommend other Spark novels.

So what do you read on a plane? The light and entertaining or are you able to bury yourself uninterrupted into heavier reads?

look at me by anita brookner

Jonathan Yardley picked an Anita Brookner title for me for IABD. Well, not personally, but the process of choosing just one proved too daunting so I turned to searching through the opinions of others to find a title that was a bit more than just the piercingly perceptive depictions of loneliness for which Brookner is so well known. And then I found a piece from the Washington Post in 2005, one of those Yardley contributions I enjoy so much where he reconsiders a "notable and/or neglected book(s) from the past." Where he looks beyond the psychic isolation of Look at Me protagonist, Frances Hinton, to the thoughtless treatment she receives at the hands of careless people, people Yardley compares to Daisy and Tom from The Great Gatsby. "It was all very careless and confused," Fitzgerald writes. "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated into their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

Frances leads a quiet life contained within an inherited flat with inherited possessions with a housekeeper that she also did not choose, and ventures out for few things other than her work in a small medical research library. When her life is touched by the beautiful and fun-loving Alix and her equally appealing husband Nick who works as as a doctor at the same institute as Frances, she comes alive with the possibilities of life and permits this couple to treat her as an object of entertainment and an occasional funder of their merriment. They pair her with James, another doctor from work, with whom her sensibilities mesh, and her contentment elevates her out of loneliness. Until the bright and beautiful cease to find her amusing anymore.

Even as Frances recognizes the casual disdain with which she is treated, she still seeks to preserve her inclusion in the social circle of her new friends.

"I could have been different, I think. Once I had great confidence, great cheerfulness; I did not question my purpose or the purpose of others. All that had gone, and I had done my best to replace it. I had become diligent instead of spontaneous; I had become an observer when I saw that I was not to be allowed to participate. I had refused to be pitiable. I had never once said, Look at me. Now, it seemed, I must make one more effort, one more attempt to make myself viable. And If I succeeded, I might be granted one more opportunity to do it all over again. I did not dare to think what would happen if I failed."

So what she requires from this relationship with the careless is not to possess them, to become them but to regain possession of herself. In an odd way, she uses them as much as they use her especially in her frequent relegation of the cast of characters around her to mere subject material for her writing. But she does this only from desperation in an attempt to claim a voice in a life that has not readily afforded her one.

"I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state 'I hurt' or 'I hate' or 'I want.' Or, indeed, 'Look at me.' And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory."

The observations of self and others stream in an exhaustive flow of pent-up release. An observant mind that finds no occasion to share her thoughts freely except on paper. Juxtaposed against the excesses of speech and action in the careless, this is a jarring reminder to allow oneself to hear the unsaid, to see the unseen certainly not out of misplaced pity but in order to connect to a broader consciousness. A stunning and elegant book.

your face tomorrow: fever and spear by javier marias

"Gratuitous or motiveless curiosity (which is what afflicts the erudite) turns us into puppets, shakes us up and hurls us about, weakens our will and, worse, divides and disperses us, makes us wish that we had four eyes and two heads or, rather, several existences, each of them with four eyes and two heads."

Protagonist Deza of the many first names makes this observation while ripping through the usually tidy study and extended book collection of his host while the rest of the house sleeps. He is staying the night after a party that was apparently orchestrated to test his suitability for intelligence work. He picks up a book only to discard for another as one idea or fact forges a natural cognitive leap to another, an irresistible leap. He is, as suggested by the quote above, quite at the mercy of a consciousness that flows out of his control, of powers of perception that spring from an unidentified well that appear to exclude an in-depth self-knowledge.

Before reading this, I said that I was interested in the frequent comparisons between this work and Proust, and this quote defines those differences for me in an odd four eyed and two headed kind of way. The sentences of both Proust and Marias might bear a similarity in length but not in precision in any way. Which is not at all a slight aimed at Marias. It is a reflection of two very different protagonists - one whose world is highly scripted and whose personal certainty is a product of occasionally hilarious self-delusion and one whose observations of the unpredictable and sometimes chaotic world around him flow from an unscripted ability and must be coaxed from him. There are other points of comparison, but none as prominent to me. Except the frequent use of the word "languid" by both authors and its numerous variations that suggest a physical barbiturate that does nothing to slow the unease of the mind.

And so the book unfolds like Deza's mind unfolds on the page. There is not so much that really "happens" - Deza is estranged from his family that lives in Spain, he is living in England working in journalism until he is drafted into intelligence work, he is only called upon to deliver his perceptions of people he is asked to observe in that service. That is about it. He is encouraged by his new employer to allow his thoughts to flow freely. "Words distract sometimes, you see, and hearing only the melody, the music, is often fundamental. Now tell me what you think."

Well, I think that this music will either suit you or it won't. How is that for saying nothing? There is a melody to this work that appeals to me, a look into the consciousness of a protagonist that I connected with and flowed right along with it in all its occasionally disjointed reality. And I have interest in following his path to certainty that might flow through the next two volumes of the work. Enjoy the thought that his gift of perception yields certain knowledge in a world that no longer prizes certainty.

"People hate certainty; and that hatred began as a fashion, it was deemed trendy to reject certainties, simpletons put them in the same bag as dogma and doctrine, the dolts (and there were a few intellectuals amongst them too), as if they were synonymous. But the idea has proved a tremendous success, it's taken root with vengeance. Now people hate anything definite or sure, and, consequently, anything that is fixed in time; and that is why people partly detest the past, unless they can manage to contaminate it with their own hesitancy, or infect it with the present's lack of definition, which they try to do all the time. Nowadays people cannot bear to know that something existed; that it existed and in a particular way. What they cannot bear is not so much knowing that, as the mere fact of its existence."

Very much looking forward to more Your Face Tomorrow.

Thanks to Richard for suggesting the group read. Find other opinions at these links:

• Richard at Caravana de Recuerdos
• Nicole at Bibliographing
• C.B. James of Ready When You Are, C.B.
• Amateur Reader of Wuthering Expectations
• Sarah of What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate

the brief wondrous life of oscar wao by junot diaz

One of those books that I have been getting to for a very long time. Not because of the critical reception but just because of the frequency with which it has been mentioned in the same breath as "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." Now I appreciate a lot of Hemingway's work but do not count it among my favorite reads. Except for that particular short story. The artistry of the structuring, the leanness and restraint of the prose, the possibilities for interpretation. But Diaz's Oscar, a "ghetto nerd" of Dominican descent, invites comparison with Francis in only one regard - a life lived in cowardice until its final moments.

The stuff of Oscar is a pleasant enough read, occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious as it navigates the terrain where popular culture collides with nerd culture of the Dungeons and Dragons, comic book, fantasy variety. Oscar is a unique individual, and I may have appreciated the book more if it were just about his struggles with being an overweight, socially awkward perennial virgin. But this book is actually more of his family's history in the Dominican Republic, a topic which takes up a large portion of the middle of the book. I just don't do family saga well, and was additionally disappointed in the book's attention deficit disorder characteristics - the narration that shifts unnecessarily without convincing change of voice, the focus or lack of as it takes up everything within easy reach at a pop culture level. And unlike the bit of Hemingway to which it pays homage in the title, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is over-written. Deliberately so I think but in so self-conscious a manner as to make me laugh at the same time I wished that Diaz had not settled for less here. Entertaining for sure but scratching my head a bit at the accolades received.

This book was the June selection for my online book group, The Wolves, to which I am once again late. More opinions may be found at the virtual homes of these fine people:

• Richard of Caravana de Recuerdos
• Emily of Evening All Afternoon
• Claire of Kiss a Cloud
• Amy of New Century Reading
• Rise of in lieu of a field guide

all passion spent by vita sackville-west

Lady Slane has at last been set free to make her own decisions at the age of eighty-eight. Released by widowhood, she moves to a house of her own choosing at Hampstead. And tells her large and overbearing brood that their visits are not required, and in some cases, will not be accepted. Her companions are her French maid that has been with her a lifetime, her eccentric, coffin-making landlord, and the odd but refreshing Mr. FitzGeorge who loved her a very long time ago unbeknownst to her. People that see the self pressed very far down by a life scripted for her.

Despite the opinion that her family holds of her as a not particularly bright person, Lady Slane saunters out through a lifetime of memories into areas first foggy and amorphous and questioning then very clearly focused on the choices she made, why she abided by them, and if perhaps she should have. By the latter half of the book, the delicate and fragmented musings of the beginning give way to great insight into her relationship with her husband:

" --- then other demands were made upon her watchfulness: she must be quick to detect his need for reassurance when a momentary discouragement overcame him; when, mooning, he strayed up to her and drooped over her chair, saying nothing, but waiting (as she knew) for some soft protection to come from her and fold itself around him like a cloak, yet it must all be done without a word directly spoken; she must restore his belief that the obstructiveness of his Government or the opposition of his rivals was due to their shortsightedness or envy,and to no deficiency within himself, yet must not allow him to know that she guessed at his mood of self-mistrust or the whole fabric of her comfort would be undone. And when she had accomplished this feat, this reconstruction of extreme delicacy and extreme solidity - when he left her, to go back strengthened to his business - then, with her hands lying limp, symbol of her exhaustion, and a sweet emptiness within her, as though her self had drained away to flow into the veins of another person - then, sinking, drowning, she wondered whether she had secretly touched the heights of rapture."

And her thoughts on motherhood:

"Shocking, unnatural thoughts had floated into her mind. 'If only I had never married... if only I had never had any children.' Yet she loved Henry - to the point of agony - and she loved her children - to the point of sentimentality."

"But none of these things had held any truth in them. She had always been aware that the self of her children was as far removed from her as the self of Henry, or, indeed, her own."

It would be easy to pigeon hole this work as feminist tract about the sacrifices required of women by a patriarchal society. But the author herself always shied away from such lines of thinking preferring the application of humanist perspective to feminist perspective in regards to her thinking and written work. What we have here instead is a quiet and lovely and telling picture of an individual who has dressed herself in the garb of conformity when she craved the accoutrement of non-conformity.

"She was too wise a woman to indulge in such luxuries as an imagined martyrdom. The rift between herself and life was not the rift between man and woman, but the rift between the worker and the dreamer. That she was a woman, and Henry a man, was really a matter of chance. She would go no further than to acknowledge that the fact of her being a woman made the situation a degree more difficult."

A very thoughtful, enjoyable book that rings with this authentic voice of a dreamer.