Given a few days with no roomate, I'm learning to cope by (or is it with?) my lonesome*. The lessons will be longer in the fall. Based on current happenings, this means that I'll learn how to cook. Though presently eating a rather bland lentil and rice dish, save for the occasional whole and potent coriander seed, I'm confident that a few months of similar boredom-staving experimenting will yield something tolerably edible. In the alternate, I will become an even more efficient sandwich maker.
As for reading, after losing Vanity Fair in my suitcase, I flirted with Anna Karenina and Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen. I did not pursue the Tolstoy for two reasons: one, the translator gave the title Anna Karenin. The explanatory note argued that we English don't say Countess Tolstoya, so the translator was merely enforcing consistency. Clearly, I could not trust the edition. The most immediate pleasure of the text, after all, is the possibility of repeating the eponymous name like so: Anna Kareninininininia. The second reason I put aside the novel for the second time in my life is that, even by Chapter Four, it was just too damn sad. But it's the Russians! you may cry. Yes, yes. But this wasn't grappling-with-personal-conscience-and-the-vast-suffering-in-the-world-Dostoevsky sad. (I love that sad). It was a people-are-petty-and-cruel-though-they-do-love-each-other-crush-your-soul-and-I-can't-stand-Tolstoy-oh-the-unbearable-grief- sad. So, I had a brief fling with Sen, who was deserted for another copy of Vanity Fair.
Now, I'm most of the way through Snow by Orhan Pamuk. Once again, I don't trust my translator, though I'm sure that Maureen Freely is doing her best. The book has a tone that I can't locate in the first reading. Most uncomfortable. The ephemeral tone, the dubious protagonist, the titillating obsession with shame, the exploration of art and politics: it all reminds me of Coetzee, and frankly, I just don't have the energy to obsess over two. So, I think I like it, though I'm annoyed I'll have to read it again. Highlights include the chapter entitled If God Does Not Exist, How Do You Explain All the Suffering of the Poor? (I do love Dostoevsky) and the wonderful line, "I'm a typical atheist. I don't care about anything except love and happiness" (New York: Knopf 2004, 287).
* Lones-ome? One's mass. Lone-some. Isolated quanitity.
As for reading, after losing Vanity Fair in my suitcase, I flirted with Anna Karenina and Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen. I did not pursue the Tolstoy for two reasons: one, the translator gave the title Anna Karenin. The explanatory note argued that we English don't say Countess Tolstoya, so the translator was merely enforcing consistency. Clearly, I could not trust the edition. The most immediate pleasure of the text, after all, is the possibility of repeating the eponymous name like so: Anna Kareninininininia. The second reason I put aside the novel for the second time in my life is that, even by Chapter Four, it was just too damn sad. But it's the Russians! you may cry. Yes, yes. But this wasn't grappling-with-personal-conscience-and-the-vast-suffering-in-the-world-Dostoevsky sad. (I love that sad). It was a people-are-petty-and-cruel-though-they-do-love-each-other-crush-your-soul-and-I-can't-stand-Tolstoy-oh-the-unbearable-grief- sad. So, I had a brief fling with Sen, who was deserted for another copy of Vanity Fair.
Now, I'm most of the way through Snow by Orhan Pamuk. Once again, I don't trust my translator, though I'm sure that Maureen Freely is doing her best. The book has a tone that I can't locate in the first reading. Most uncomfortable. The ephemeral tone, the dubious protagonist, the titillating obsession with shame, the exploration of art and politics: it all reminds me of Coetzee, and frankly, I just don't have the energy to obsess over two. So, I think I like it, though I'm annoyed I'll have to read it again. Highlights include the chapter entitled If God Does Not Exist, How Do You Explain All the Suffering of the Poor? (I do love Dostoevsky) and the wonderful line, "I'm a typical atheist. I don't care about anything except love and happiness" (New York: Knopf 2004, 287).
* Lones-ome? One's mass. Lone-some. Isolated quanitity.
posted by Precocity at 7:55 PM
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