Mr

This is the first book of stories by a very young man who has gone on to become a writer of fiction to watch. Old fashioned and peaceful, his work reminds one of a more settled age and finds some solace in the continuity of everyday life. These stories are about families bending and sometimes breaking under the stresses of late twentieth century life. Canin’s prose is almost unbearably beautiful, clear as mountain water but deep as the ocean. The title story ahs become something of a classic, but the rest are just as good. This a short book to savor and go back to, often.

Random Reading

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri may be the definitive novel of the experience of Indian immigrants in America. It follows the life of a man, named “Gogol,” after the Russian writer from boyhood to middle age, through school and love affairs and finally to marriage and a time where his mother attempts to recapture her roots. Who would have thought the immigrant novel would have been resurrected by Asians? This is a fine novel.

The Fortress of Solitude is another novel, like The Namesake and The Known World, that got great press last winter, or perhaps before that. Time sort of runs together for old retired guys. This novel, like the others is deserving of the consideration. Jonathan Lethem writes the old fashioned sort of novel, following the life of a white boy, son of an artist and a wayward mother who grows up in the ghetto and through the vehicle of music, learns to function in both racial worlds. The story meanders and touches on the events and ideas that have shaped our times, making another fine novel. Trust the critics.

Prisoner’s Dilemma by Richard Powers is a fine novel about a family and their attempts to cohere in the face of their father’s mysterious illness. He seems to be suffering from some strange neurological disease or perhaps a bad case of post WW II angst. Nuclear threats and suspension of individual rights figure in his retreat from the world and his children are forced to reevaluate their own security in terms of the insights his disease gives them. All of this is chronicled in Powers’ usual free-associational style, another post-modern novel for those who can’t stand post modernism.

The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci is the only Russian novel I know about the Italian Renaissance. That may be all there is to say about it, except it does capture the atmosphere of the waning middle ages and put us inside the conflicts Leonardo had with the church, the law and other censors. If you’ve been taken by the mysticism of the Da Vinci Code, this book might be a good antidote, since it explains the mysterious elements of the master’s paintings in much more mundane tones.

Stones of Summer, officially a lost book was republished last year by of all people, Barnes and Nobel. Dow Mossman’s book was first published to great reviews in 1972 and then promptly forgotten. Mossman never wrote another novel. This book is a post modern vision of the culture of change in the sixties, hung on the story of young boy’s coming of age in Iowa, the exact middle of our country. The writing is vividly hallucinatory and visionary. This is a fine book, remaindered and on its way to being forgotten a second time.

For Serious Readers

About Poetry

Donald Justice is the poet mentioned in Hotel New Hampshire. He’s been teaching at Iowa and writing finely crafted poems for decades. His collection, Night Light, revised in the seventies is full of the turmoil of Viet Nam and the cultural changes ripping through the country at the time. These poems are less strident and shrill than most written in the sixties, but no less deeply felt. He reminds this reader of amore straightforward Wilbur, though less optimistic.

I re-read Aeschylus’ plays, all but the Orestaia while in New York touring and riding out the rain left over from hurricane Charley. I chose mostly because I have a small, sturdily bound edition, which I could take with me everywhere. New York subway crowds are fairly literate, but I was the only one reading Greek tragedy. His verse still mazes, even in translation. He can make the wails of war bereft women into high art and still come up with lines like “an ox stepped on my tongue,’ for a guard to explain his speechlessness. In the end, the plays seemed a fine choice for the hectic modern city, getting ready to do battle with an ancient storm.

Conrad Aiken’s complete poems are something of a surprise. Read whole, he seems much more like T. S. Eliot than anyone gave him credit for. For the young modernists, he represented the worst of the old generation, sort of a Robert Browning drunk on Freud. From this vantage, his surrealistic dramas and psychological lyrics, his reliance on ancient poetry from Shakespeare to Egyptian, seems incredibly modern. Of course his droning blank verse, relieved by occasional rhyme is still a bit hard to get through. He does go on and I never had that feeling with Pound, though their oeuvres are about the same length.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s complete poems comes as something of a surprise to readers who only know her Sonnets From the Portuguese, and probably only know the most sentimental of that bunch, the often anthologized, “How do I love thee?” She seems to have been a tough minded lady, who tried her hand at epic in a poem about the battle of Marathon and at tragedy, where she took her subjects from British history as well as many interesting translations and poems about Italian history and politics. The masterpiece here is however Aurora Leigh, a book-length novel in verse which we have discussed elsewhere in these pages. It was even better the second time.

Some Criticism, Literary and Social

Weldon Kees, that poet more famous for his mysterious disappearance than for his writing, has recently had his criticism, mostly book reviews and other fugitive pieces, collected in a single, slender volume called Criticism and Essays. Many of these pieces were written when Kees was very young. The remarkable thing is they show his critical sensitivities fully formed while he was still in his teens. Of course he disappeared at age 34, so he might not have been as consistent had he lived longer. This is a strange and illuminating book, written by one of the most enigmatic figures in twentieth century literature.

Bandits, by quirky British historian Eric Hobsbawm, is a rollicking history of banditry and the social conditions which produce it. Most of the examples are from the nineteenth century or earlier, but still have application to some terrorist groups operating in similar terrain. Nineteenth century banditry was not wiped out until the social conditions of poverty and imperialism were replaced with more democratic institutions. We wonder if anyone is thinking about that these days.

The Life of Thomas Hardy by his daughter Rebecca is a much better book than one might expect. Realizing she had a unique position in her father’s life, she decided to let the controversy slide, letting her father’s works defend themselves. She emphasizes the personal. His dislike of parties, especially literary gatherings and his willingness to sell his works cheap are two examples of little know quirkiness. She also chronicles the loss of his once profound religious faith, though it’s hard to imagine the author of Tess and Jude the Obscure ever believed in God. She also has insights into his composition processes, especially into his neglected poetry, since she took care of him during his frail years, when he needed help with everyday tasks but was still writing considerable verse. This book is more than a monument. It is a real study of its subject.

Did you know that Marco Polo crossed the Great Wall of China more than six times in his travels and never mentioned it once? His famous book, long derided for exaggeration, may really be a dull understatement of what he found in Asia in the eleventh century. You can find it on line with the link above and see for yourself.

You can email me at kbackes1@wi.rr.com