My Syllabus
I don't read tons of literary fiction. For fiction, I often read mysteries or crime novels in the hard boiled genre. I never miss a new novel by Michael Connelley, whose police procedurals are set in LA and mostly feature the driven, if haggard, detective Harry Bosch. I've been reading all of the Ace Atkins books set in a rundown nowhere town in Northern Mississippi. His characterizations and dialogue are off-the-charts sharp and funny. The writing in these books is just as good as literary fiction, but because they adhere to genre, they are in some respects less ambitious, but that also makes them more entertaining, and perfect for flights, etc. *
But I do want to remain reasonably literate, so I try to work in some literary fiction on a semi-regular basis. For some reason I have found myself reading a lot of influential early- to mid-20th century stuff. Here are some quick sketches:
Lawrence Durrell, Justine (1957, the first of The Alexandria Quartet). This is some tough sledding. I had tried this one before but bailed out 60 pages in. Why? Well, it largely consists of impressionistic, psychological portraiture -- of the love interest, Justine, and of the city of Alexandria, Egypt. So once you get the flavor of it, there isn't a lot of incentive to finish, since plot is secondary. But I'm glad I tried again, since the plot does intensify some toward the end. The depictions aren't Freudian per se, but they do show how much the psychological mode of meaning-making dominated the first half of the 20th century. Grade: B+
Henry Miller, Sexus (1949, first volume of the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy). Miller and Durrell were friends, but their writing isn't really similar at all. Miller shows how life is lived in the concrete. Written later in life, Sexus is superior to the earlier autofiction novels like Tropic of Cancer: more measured. This one portrays his life in 1920s Brooklyn before he made it as a writer. A huge influence on the Beats, Miller's thing was authenticity in life and writing, with the biggest foes being hypocrisy and its evil twin, moralism. Everyone knows about the sex writing, but those passages are balanced by long, bravura philosophical soliloquies from various characters. Grade: A
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of Night (1932). When I started this I had to check to see that the translator wasn't retrofitting it with contemporary modes of dialogue. It felt that fresh. Basically this provides the template for the kind of black humor and supercharged vulgarity that someone like Quentin Tarantino trades in. Celine has been called a misanthrope and nihilist, but he doesn't come off that way to me. His refusal, say, to get all patriotic about World War I only seems sane. In fact, he takes the piss out of war and patriotism like Altman's MASH did in 1970. It is true that Celine's most lyrical and visionary passages are inspired by the bleak aspects of his vision, but I never found the book to be a bummer. Terrific writing overall, and shows really well what soul-killing jobs looked like in the 20s and 30s. Big influence on Patti Smith and Charles Bukowski. Grade: A
John Fante, Ask the Dust (1939). This is the second time I read it, having sought it out originally because of Bukowski's praise for it. I guess we see a pattern in my selections here: Losers and artists on the fringes, doing sometimes exalted, sometimes debauched things. This book does a great job depicting the romantic vision of a young and always-broke person totally devoted to literature as a calling. His antagonistic relationship with his waitress-love interest is pretty engaging. Ultimately, the flights of lyricism save the book, or should I say, make it a keeper. Grade: B+
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Islands in the Stream (posthumous, 1970). Hem is known for his long sections that vividly portray intense activities such as bullfighting, big-game fishing, and war. Those passages were great, but I was struck by how much dialogue of the hard-boiled sort dominates the books. One of his moves is to show how people often repeat themselves in conversation, especially when drunk. As for his supposedly caricatured masculinity, I don't see repressed emotion here so much as stoicism, which doesn't deny emotions -- it just doesn't go yapping about them. His protagonists carry on in the face of loss, which makes me wonder why Hemingway is assigned in high schools. I don't think I could have properly understood these books until I was in my 30s. Grade: A
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night (1934). Clearly the best written of all these books. I'm just halfway though, but the elegance and innate lyricism are palpable in nearly every sentence. His characterizations are astute, and I find the story of how Dick Diver negotiates his relationship with his bi-polar, or schizophrenic, wife, Nicole, to be quite compelling, since he truly does love her. Some clever, ironically funny exchanges throughout. Grade: A
* I rarely read book-length nonfiction. What I do is read lots of nonfiction of the in-depth article or essay type form in the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Book Forum, etc. To me that's the ideal way to imbibe nonfiction. 5,000 to 10,000 words is going to tell me what I need to know on a topic. The rest tends toward overkill.
But I do want to remain reasonably literate, so I try to work in some literary fiction on a semi-regular basis. For some reason I have found myself reading a lot of influential early- to mid-20th century stuff. Here are some quick sketches:
Lawrence Durrell, Justine (1957, the first of The Alexandria Quartet). This is some tough sledding. I had tried this one before but bailed out 60 pages in. Why? Well, it largely consists of impressionistic, psychological portraiture -- of the love interest, Justine, and of the city of Alexandria, Egypt. So once you get the flavor of it, there isn't a lot of incentive to finish, since plot is secondary. But I'm glad I tried again, since the plot does intensify some toward the end. The depictions aren't Freudian per se, but they do show how much the psychological mode of meaning-making dominated the first half of the 20th century. Grade: B+
Henry Miller, Sexus (1949, first volume of the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy). Miller and Durrell were friends, but their writing isn't really similar at all. Miller shows how life is lived in the concrete. Written later in life, Sexus is superior to the earlier autofiction novels like Tropic of Cancer: more measured. This one portrays his life in 1920s Brooklyn before he made it as a writer. A huge influence on the Beats, Miller's thing was authenticity in life and writing, with the biggest foes being hypocrisy and its evil twin, moralism. Everyone knows about the sex writing, but those passages are balanced by long, bravura philosophical soliloquies from various characters. Grade: A
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of Night (1932). When I started this I had to check to see that the translator wasn't retrofitting it with contemporary modes of dialogue. It felt that fresh. Basically this provides the template for the kind of black humor and supercharged vulgarity that someone like Quentin Tarantino trades in. Celine has been called a misanthrope and nihilist, but he doesn't come off that way to me. His refusal, say, to get all patriotic about World War I only seems sane. In fact, he takes the piss out of war and patriotism like Altman's MASH did in 1970. It is true that Celine's most lyrical and visionary passages are inspired by the bleak aspects of his vision, but I never found the book to be a bummer. Terrific writing overall, and shows really well what soul-killing jobs looked like in the 20s and 30s. Big influence on Patti Smith and Charles Bukowski. Grade: A
John Fante, Ask the Dust (1939). This is the second time I read it, having sought it out originally because of Bukowski's praise for it. I guess we see a pattern in my selections here: Losers and artists on the fringes, doing sometimes exalted, sometimes debauched things. This book does a great job depicting the romantic vision of a young and always-broke person totally devoted to literature as a calling. His antagonistic relationship with his waitress-love interest is pretty engaging. Ultimately, the flights of lyricism save the book, or should I say, make it a keeper. Grade: B+
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Islands in the Stream (posthumous, 1970). Hem is known for his long sections that vividly portray intense activities such as bullfighting, big-game fishing, and war. Those passages were great, but I was struck by how much dialogue of the hard-boiled sort dominates the books. One of his moves is to show how people often repeat themselves in conversation, especially when drunk. As for his supposedly caricatured masculinity, I don't see repressed emotion here so much as stoicism, which doesn't deny emotions -- it just doesn't go yapping about them. His protagonists carry on in the face of loss, which makes me wonder why Hemingway is assigned in high schools. I don't think I could have properly understood these books until I was in my 30s. Grade: A
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night (1934). Clearly the best written of all these books. I'm just halfway though, but the elegance and innate lyricism are palpable in nearly every sentence. His characterizations are astute, and I find the story of how Dick Diver negotiates his relationship with his bi-polar, or schizophrenic, wife, Nicole, to be quite compelling, since he truly does love her. Some clever, ironically funny exchanges throughout. Grade: A
* I rarely read book-length nonfiction. What I do is read lots of nonfiction of the in-depth article or essay type form in the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Book Forum, etc. To me that's the ideal way to imbibe nonfiction. 5,000 to 10,000 words is going to tell me what I need to know on a topic. The rest tends toward overkill.
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