Harriet's Corner
The Bi-Monthly Newsletter of What to Read
Issue #2: In which she checks in from Paris...
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Chers amis,
Before I arrived for my month in Paris and my continued desperate attempts to learn the French language, I did read some compelling and exciting books. The one that kept me captivated on the flight over and is incontournable, as the French would say, is THE RULE OF FOUR just out in hardcover by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. Written by two recent college graduates who have been best of friends since the age of eight, this book is about the mysteries of the impossible to pronounce 500 year old Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ...which in fact is a real book. My guess is that it has been read by no one save our own Gary Hunt. (For those of you who know us only by email, Gary is the iconoclastic owner of the bookstore who has a taste for the esoteric and bizarre.) This Renaissance text seems to have a magnetic pull on any who try to decode it..and that is exactly what two college seniors attempt to do. The book is a bit of an intellectual mystery, stories within stories, mixed with the delightful experiences of the halcyon days in the senior year of college...before the “real world” sets in and close friends go their separate ways. A little unevenness in the progression of the story is easy to forgive here because, to paraphrase a reviewer, it is as though Umberto Eco, Dan Brown and Scott Fitzgerald teamed up to write a novel. And that, mes amis, is a novel you don’t want to miss.
I didn’t intend a theme to my recent reads, but a bit of a theme there is. So on to another “coming of age” novel, Tobias Wolff’s OLD SCHOOL due out in paperback August 31. This is a story about a young man in boarding school, trying to fit into the ‘boarding school’ mold while hiding his own very different background. This is a book about literature...the raison d’etre of the school where every year there is a contest to write a story or essay that is to be judged by the author who visits the school that year. The winner of the contest has a private meeting with the author. So we meet the likes of Robert Frost just after he recites a poem at the Kennedy inauguration, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway. For anyone who has read Ayn Rand (which I suppose is everyone at some time in their lives) and anyone who has loved her or hated her, this book is a must! The Ayn Rand section had me in such fits of uncontrollable laughter that I near drowned in the bathtub where I had been reading. This is a beautifully crafted book...not one word out of place. On reflection, the main character seems to be, not our storyteller, but Literature itself. It tackles the themes of honesty and dishonesty, truth and fiction in literature and in life. It is about a young man’s growth in character and conscience...through literature. A real gem to be savored.
ANY HUMAN HEART by William Boyd is the odyssey of Logan Mountstuart whose journals takes him and us through most of the twentieth century. I will start by saying that I tend to stay away from books written in journal or diary format.....for no particular reason other than it is not a genre toward which I gravitate. However, having said that, this is a stupendous book where use of diary allows us to get to know the inner feelings, desires, hopes and disappointments of the protagonist...in all of his humanness. Logan Mountstuart was a writer, a husband, a spy, a father, an art dealer and a man just looking for his place in life. He lived through many of the great events of the last century rubbing elbows with James Joyce, Evelyn Waugh, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and yet again...Ernest Hemingway (just to name a few). The tragedies in this book are profound....and show the amazing resilience of the heart. I love the opening quote by Henry James...”Never say you know the last word about any human heart”. William Boyd’s huge talent is his ability to produce great writing while telling a fascinating and compelling story with the richness and depth of a historical setting. If you have not read any Boyd yet.....you are in for a fantastic treat! Also, don’t miss THE BLUE AFTERNOON and BRAZZAVILLE BEACH...two earlier books which I have adored and of course are available new and used at the store. (All of these books are available in paperback).
Let’s see....this is a tough one to describe....SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME by Ignacio Padilla is a remarkable little volume. Everyone at the store has been making fun of me...being stuck on books with shadow in the title...but THIS is a very worthy entry in my newsletter. This is a hypnotic novel about imposters and identity. In the first pages, we the readers enter into a labyrinth and are left alone to find our own way out. On page one, two young men are on a train heading toward the front in WWI. One is a conscript and the other a train lineman. One proposes to the other a game of chess in which the winner takes the identity of the lineman, thereby perhaps saving the winner’s life. And the remainder of the book is like a game of chess...where pawns are at the mercy of fate....or something else, perhaps quite sinister...they are sacrificed and swapped until the reader’s mind is spinning. Suffice it to say, that by the end of the novel, we cannot be sure who is sitting in the glass cage in Israel being tried as Adolph Eichmann! This is the first novel translated into English by this young Mexican writer....I cannot wait to read what comes next. This is available in paperback.
BRICK LANE by Monica Ali was short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize....which in my opinion often offers some pretty strange reading. But this book is splendid. It’s the story of a shy Bengali girl, Nazneen, married off at 18 to a man twice her age. He takes her away from everything she has known to live in London. She is an obedient Muslim girl who struggles not to ask questions about why things happen. But as she learns how to adapt to the strangeness of London’s Bengali neighborhoods, she also learns how to become her own person. The characters in this book have an unusual depth and richness. One easily develops a fondness for Nazneen and anxiously follows her on both her physical journey and the journey of her spirit and soul.
PARALLELS AND PARADOXES by Daniel Barenboim and Edward W. Said
The subtitle of this book is “Explorations in Music and Society”. The exploring is done by Daniel Barenboim, the internationally renowned pianist and conductor who is an Argentinian born Israeli and his good friend of many years, the recently deceased Edward W. Said, the Palestinian-American literary critic and commentator on the Middle East who was also a pianist. The format is simply conversations between the two men. They address extreme nationalism in a time of globalization, music as a teacher of human nature and the very personal views on the question of place and belonging. Timely for today’s world....and less globally, something wonderful to read and think about when you attend the SVSS’s concerts this August (I couldn’t resist the plug for my beloved SVSS!)
IN THE LAND OF TEMPLE CAVES by Frederick Turner
Pam W: this book was written for you! Mr. Turner questions the use and purpose of art after the horrifying events of September 11. In order to figure out the real meaning of art.....he goes back to the caves of France to research some of the earliest art known to man......Why did man draw? What was he trying to express in his drawings which were done in very difficult circumstances...very little light, obtaining the color from the ochre, etc? Was it to tell a story? Was it to elevate man to a higher plane? (And yes, he even raises the possibility of artists being women.) These questions come up as he savours the French countryside and all that it has to offer. He has a wonderful quote in the book from his good, close friend, Jim Harrison: “We do everything better than they do,’ he said to me once over a very superfluous glass of Calvados in Paris. ‘Except live.’”
This book, recently out in hardcover, is very timely and provocative. It addresses some of the great questions of man’s experience vis-à-vis the meaning of art while being a delightful French adventure in Paris and the Dordogne....this book also has a high place on my francophile list.
If you do not wish to continue to get my newsletter, just email me at harriet@iconoclastbooks.com.....it’s ok....I won’t take it personally. On the other hand, if you have any friends you think might be interested in receiving my bi-monthly letter...just send along their email addresses.......Happy Reading.... a bientot, mes amis!
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