Nonsuch Book

antigonick by sophokles translated by anne carson illustrated by bianca stone

The arrival of this book yesterday has brought something wonderful to my weekend. Many of you have been subjected to my near idolatrous love of Nox, and know that anything Anne Carson is involved with is an object of book lust for me. The production value of Nox brought joy to me that such exceptional content should find a home in something so beautiful and thoughtfully assembled. New Directions has always been a favorite publisher of mine for their author list (Tennessee Williams, William Carlos Williams, Roberto Bolano and Muriel Spark being especially admired in a list where nothing is not book lust worthy), but the investment they made in producing Nox endeared them to me forever. And they extended another outrageously generous gift to readers in this Carson translation.

From the New Directions blog:

Carson has hand-lettered the text on the pages (see below), and artist Bianca Stone (a former student of Carson's) has provided color illustrations, which are being printed on translucent vellum pages. The end result being that the two will work together, the ghostly presentiment of the text-to-come enhancing the illustrations.

The translation itself is simply beautiful. She's playful with the language and the plot (the chorus has a decidedly sarcastic tone; Kreon enters on a motorboat), and yet it's still the fundamentally human story about death and honor, ethics and the law. It is, essentially what it was when it was written about 2500 years ago: a timeless classic.

 

The impact of the text peeping through the illustrations on vellum is best captured by the description on the ND blog as "ghosting through."

And the arrangement of thoughts in isolation on certain pages is powerful.

So I am starting to read this as soon as I click "Publish Now" here. And I am cheating. I am reading all the chorus sections first. To pick up the tone, the voice of that tool in this translation. And then a read from cover to cover.

irving, bolano and krauss in the house

My case of The History of Love by Nicole Krauss was all ready for me at my public library today. For distribution on World Book Night. As I said before, I couldn't be happier about the book assigned to me. So singing in the car,  singing up the steps to the house and then there were two more bookish gifts for me - a finished copy of the new John Irving due out in May and the new Bolano translation. So sweet a day.

book lust: horseshoe crabs and velvet worms by richard fortey

When this popped up in the book section of the NYT this week, it was instant love for me. The cover design is elegant, successfully combining scientific image with softer script and flourish. I also have an odd fascination with horseshoe crabs having spent much time in close examination of them growing up when they washed up on the beaches near my childhood home. A scientific consideration of them made me both nostalgic and curious. But then this from the review left me with little choice but to seek this one out: 

"The good news about “Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms” is that Mr. Fortey is as vivid and charming about live things as he’s long been about dead ones, perhaps even more so. Reading this book is like stepping into the field with a man who’s equal parts naturalist and poet, let’s say equal parts E. O. Wilson and Paul Muldoon. The Wilson in him wields the notebook; the Muldoon flutters. It’s a bewitching combination."

Flutters. Bewitching. Soon to be mine.

the nonfiction

With little time on my hands recently, I have found that the amount of nonfiction I read has been steadily increasing. No narrative arc to follow. I can read multiple books at a time easily. Chapters often stand alone successfully, allowing me to jump around in a text and select that which interests me most. Skimming often. But a few in the last month or two have held my attention entirely.

• Language: The Cultural Tool by Daniel Everett - Aggressively challenges certain linguistic assumptions and shows how waning linguistic diversity corresponds with waning cultural diversity.
• "Multiplication is for White People" by Lisa Delpit - There is no achievement gap at birth. Enough said.
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt -
"His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation."
• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer - From the Author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist. A brilliant, fast-paced read that I loved for the fact that it employed the latest findings in neuroscience to champion my own personal and constant self-justification of the conflation of reason and emotion.
• Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer - Came at a time when a friend at work shared a belief that creativity is not an innate gift but something that can be developed. A belief I share and found echoed here. But especially loved the focus upon creativity and productivity - making a vision real. It takes hard work, a cultivation of one's creativity and not a muse tapping you on the shoulder beckoning you into an afternoon of daydreaming. Which I, of course, have no objection to. But wish to touch the best my head holds in many instances.

lightning rods by helen dewitt

"I would have to know you really well before I would suggest that you would like this novel." Kevin Guilefoile wrote that recently in match commentary for the just-ended Tournament of Books. My thought exactly. Your friends frequently ask what they should read next, your book club at work turns to you for suggestions, your neighbor asks what you are reading now. So you tell them you have picked up this book, a both hilarious and empty tale of the American talent for commodification. It is about a failing salesman who is unable to sell a single vaccum cleaner in a territory that has been thoroughly exhausted. Filled with pie and numbed by rejection, Joe escapes back to his trailer in the middle of the work day to indulge his fantasy life where he masturbates distractedly as he tries to perfect the details of his fantasy. The mouths of your friends hang open a little at this point but you press on. Let me read you this excerpt to best explain the nature of Joe's fantasy, you continue.

His first fantasy was about walls. The woman would have the upper part of her body on one side of the wall. The lower part of her body would be on the other side of the wall... Sometimes the woman would be naked from the waist down. Most of the time she would be wearing a short tight skirt that could be pushed up and underpants that could be pulled down. Sometimes he would have trouble deciding whether it was better with or without the pants. The high point was pushing the skirt slowly up to reveal a firm, tight, unsuspecting ass.

And still not a word has escaped from your audience's mouth. So eager for them to understand the point of the novel, to not mistake it for mere pornography, you explain that Joe turns this fantasy into a multi-million dollar business that sets up the services of women, lightning rods, in work places for the "release" of high-achieving and testosterone driven males. He sells the service to companies as a preventative measure to lessen sexual harassment in the work place. Or scandals among the famous like politicians. The book moves from the voyeuristic look into Joe's fantasies to a detail laden and hardly sexy view of a country where anything is possible.

So for what portion of your intended audience will this conversation (or monologue) be appropriate? You see my difficulty. And Guilfoile's. But this book is such a telling read about the demystification of sex in our society, our talents for self-justification and our willingness to allow boundaries to be rationalized away in the name of commerce. Where sex can be so completely impersonal that a lightning rod views the job as a wonderful way to pay for law school and have extra time to finally read Proust when only the bottom half of her body is enagaged through a wall.

Simon Critchley talks about his new book Faith of the Faithless, a philosophical examination of the interplay of love and faith, over at Full Stop this week, and one particular section grabbed my attention in reference to DeWitt's book.

It was the extremity of that that drew me, which is because I guess the question is really whether you can love and desire in the same place. There are different ways of talking about this, but one way of diagnosing culture would be to say that we love in one place and that we desire in another place. So, for example, I’m sure Eliot Spitzer loved his wife, but he desired the hooker that ruined his career. What I’m exploring is not some sort of pacific, peaceful idea of love — love and harmony and reconciliation — but a love that is fueled by desire, that is sustained by it. I’m working with some idea that these could exist in the same place, whatever that means.

An ideal. And certainly not one that exists here where a decided lack of philosophical exploration, where a half-rate intellect drives the story, the effort. Thought provoking. You'll laugh through your sadness. Possibly. I don't know. Remember, I hesitate to recommend despite my enjoyment of the book.

sunday salon: more weirdness required of the weird sisters and the march to the rooster

There is more than enough love out there for The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown so I do not feel bad in telling you that I have no love to add to the pot. Three sisters all named for a Shakespearian character by their father, a Shakespeare professor. Each bearing some similarities to the character for whom they were named. All have returned home as adults to presumably care for their ill mother but in truth are there because they are all self-defined failures on one level or another. A retreat. To the home where they all speak in Shakespeare's verse. Brown has talent as a storyteller but this is force feeding from the land of gimmicky. She could have taken this over-the-top approach to a magic place but instead becomes mired down in putting each of her characters on the couch, telling us their motivations and thoughts and so on rather than allowing the story to show us their plights and paths. And I believe I developed cavities from the ending. Which I reached after skimming through the final third of the book. I had hoped for more.

So as a reaction to that reading experience, I have shifted my focus back to the opening round of the Tournament of Books and Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt, a satire that posits sexual fantasy as a solution to corporate angst. Hilarious. Bad. The good bad. And so worthy of winning its first round matchup. I didn't read Salvage the Bones which was matched up against this one but I can just tell this one deserved to win. I feel cleansed by the filthiness of it all. A cavity free read. Reminds me to pick up Smut and House of Holes soon. As an exercise in thematics. 

That takes me up to Matchup 3  of the opening rounds having read the winners of one and two. I was going to read the winners of each contest but I don't have time to read the winner of the third, 1Q84. So I have declared the this matchup unimportant and unlikely to advance its winner to the end. So on to Matchup 4 where I cannot bring myself to read the winner, The Tiger's Wife. I will read the book it defeated, The Stranger's Child, at some point but have no time for the losers currently. So on to Matchup 5 where I already read the loser, State of Wonder, with my book club from work and believe that Wil Wheaton nailed it when he knocked that one out of competititon (although zombie round resurrection is a possibility). My next read is the winner of that contest, The Sisters Brothers. Swamplandia! I enjoyed (proof here) so I am good for 6. And Matchup 7 I prepared for, and purchased a copy of The Marriage Plot because it seemed like an inevitability. 

Feel better prepared for Quarterfinals and Semifinals than in previous years when I refused to read anything but my favorites. Go catch the commentary. And throw me your favorites?

the sense of an ending by julian barnes

"...but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

We live in time — it holds us and moulds us — but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing — until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return."

The Tournament of Books opened this week, and the very first matchup in my favorite annual bookish throwdown was The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes versus The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock. Now while the "dead dogs nailed to giant makeshift crosses, guns of all shapes and sizes, prostitution and murder and fake teeth resting on a stick of butter" of the Pollock novel certainly have their time and place, my alcohol consumption of late has been insufficient to support such a readerly investment. And I own the Barnes. So I picked it up and read it yesterday on a whim. And delighted in the delusions and denseness of the unreliable narrator and the elegant and effortless prose.

Narrator Tony has led the most unspectacular of lives having reached his sixties without feeling or thinking or acting in any way out of the ordinary with his tapped-down love of straight, clean edges. When he receives a letter that he has been bequeathed 500 pounds and a diary of a school days friend not from said friend, Adrian, who has been dead since their youth, but from the mother of an ex-girlfriend who dated Adrian after she dated Tony, he is understandably confused. His subsequent examination of the related events of his life beginning with his school days with Adrian and two other friends reveal both the mediocrity and predictability of his life as well as his own obtuseness. More unpredictably, at least to Tony, are the glaring weaknesses of his own memory.

"I could only reply that I think - I theorise - that something - something else - happens to the memory over time. For years you survive with the same loops, the same facts and the same emotions. I press a button marked Adrian or Veronica, the tape runs, the usual stuff spools out. The events reconfirm the emotions - resentment, a sense of injustice, relief - and vice versa. There seems no way of accessing anything else; the case is closed. Which is why you seek corroboration, even if it turns out to be a contradiction. But what if, even at a late stage, your emotions relating to those long-ago events and people change?That ugly letter of mine provoked remorse in me. Veronica's account of her parents' deaths - yes, even her father's - had touched me more than I would have thought possible. I felt a new sympathy for them - and her. Then, not long afterwards, I began remembering forgotten things. I don't know if there's a scientific explanation for this - to do with new affective states reopening blocked-off neural pathways. All I can say is that it happened, and that it astonished me."

We all to some extent create our own histories as it suits us or to the extent that self-preservation dictates. But told in this backwards way and given the opportunity to bumble along with this expertly drawn bumbler, a reader can easily feel both their own missteps in assessing their past and a sense of superiority in thinking that such miscalculation, such a lack of insight is reserved for a "special" few. The ending of this one has been met with more than a few WTF reactions, but honestly, I think that the ending could have been anything, any manner of ridiculous crap pulled from the air. Tony wouldn't have gotten the full picture no matter how facile or complicated or unpredictable it was. And that is part of the point.

Enjoying this one prompted me to rethink the way I will enjoy the Tournament of Books this year. I am a little weary of simply ranting about how this book or that one reached the highest level of competition. Of bemoaning the current state of popular fiction. This year, I am going to try to ride the wave. Just going to read the winners in each round (or at least try) and find the highlights. And The Sense of an Ending was spot on. Let's see how many winners I feel this way about.

the history of love

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, and they parted with leaves in their hair.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

A book I love and will be distributing on World Book Night.

Photo via The Butterfly Collector.

nixon era wiretapping made sexy

Picked up this stellar design in my Google Reader from both Jacket Mechanical and The Accidental Optimist and was blown away by the impact of its simplicity. Take a look at what rests inside the dust jacket:

 

The wires wrap clean around the back and dangle like the unspoken. And then, hours after viewing in my aggregator, the mail deliverer brings me a finished copy. I have an idea it might be for me. Glanced through and found humor and Alive Roosevelt and a cast of unlikely characters through which to filter Watergate. Intrigued by the concept. Infatuated with the look by Paul Sahre. Grateful for the welcome unsolicited copy. Thinking that it will be as clever, as funny as Nixon era politics can be. Okay, better than that.

book lust: in one person by john irving

The upcoming John Irving novel, In One Person, has been my primary object of book lust since I first heard about it. And then this week, I actually found myself with a galley, and I cannot tell you what a freaking distraction it has been. I plan to finish this weekend. And then re-read right before publication in May. If you are an Irving fan like me who has loved all of his books even the lesser (you know the ones - I bet we would all pick the same three), but have a special love for Garp, this one is for you. Thought that before I saw this from Irving's Facebook page:

Here’s an early look at the cover of my new novel, In One Person, to be published May 8, 2012. My thirteenth novel, In One Person is about sexual identity. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character, tells the story of his life as a “sexual suspect”—from his adolescence in the fifties, through the AIDS epidemic, into the present.

I first used the phrase “sexual suspect” in 1978, in my novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp. I return to that theme in this novel; as a bisexual man, Billy is a “sexual suspect” in the eyes of both straight and gay people.

In One Person is my most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, but it’s also a tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers. Not least, In One Person is a portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”

Has made my week.