BOOKS BOUGHT:
- Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic--Alison Bechdel
- Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron--Daniel Clowes
- Fight Club--Chuck Palahniuk (for $1)
- The Escapists--Brian K. Vaughan
- The Enchantress of Florence--Salman Rushdie
BOOKS READ:
The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman--Lawrence Sterne
I had this really great quote about The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy. I got it from the bonus features on the DVD version of the 2006 movie adaptation, A Cock and Bull Story.
I paused the movie when I heard the quote, ran off to get a piece of
paper and a pen, and then replayed the quote and wrote it down. I
wanted to use the quote as an intro to this review. Unfortunately, Tristram Shandy
is a very long book. It took me a couple months to get through. In
that time, I managed to misplace the piece of paper with my
introductory quote. I guess I could go back up to the library and
re-rent A Cock and Bull Story, but that seems like a waste of
precious energy and time. Instead, I will forget all about that quote
and quickly come up with an entirely new approach to this review.
Hmmmm. Okay, I will share with you my four favorite quotes from the
book itself (which I just happened to mark with Post-its). Here we go:
#1 - On Digressions in Writing
Digressions,
incontestably, are the sunshine;--they are the life, the soul of
reading!--take them out of this book, for instance,--you might as well
take the book along with them;--one cold eternal winter would reign in
every page of it; restore them to the writer;--he steps forth like a
bridegroom,--bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite
to fail.
#2 - On Reading the Same Thing Over and Over Again...and the Results of Doing So
O! but to understand this, which is a puff at the fire of Diana's temple--you must read Longinus--read away--if you are not a jot the wiser by reading him the first time over--never fear--read him again--Avicenna and Licetus read Aristotle's metaphysicks forty times through a-piece, and never understood a single word.--But mark the consequence--Avicenna turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of writing--for he wrote books de omni scribili; and for Licetus (Fortunio)
though all the world knows he was born a foetus, of no more than five
inches and a half in length, yet he grew to that astonishing height in
literature, as to write a book with a title as long as himself--the
learned know I mean his Gonopsychanthropologia, upon the origin of the human soul.
#3 - On the World We Live In
What
a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your worships,
but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief,
discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies!
#4 - On Reading Tristram Shandy
I write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good-humoured Shandean book, which will do all your hearts good--And all your heads too,--provided you understand it.
The nine volumes of Tristram Shandy were originally published between 1759 and 1767, making it the second oldest novel I've ever read (after Don Quixote).
It didn't read like an old book, though. Sure, some of the language
came off a bit archaic, but the book as a whole felt surprisingly
modern. I'm not going to lie, though. Tristram Shandy was a
difficult book to get through. Sterne wrote and wrote and never seemed
to get anywhere. I don't think Tristram was even born until a couple
hundred pages in. Just about the entire book was made up of tangential
ramblings and digressive loops. It was a frustrating, yet
ultimately rewarding book. Reading it did my heart good...I'm not sure about
my head, though.
Swann's Way--Marcel Proust
Swann's Way is the first volume in Marcel Proust's masterpiece of 20th century fiction, In Search of Lost Time (sometimes called Remembrance of Things Past).
The book is divided into three sections. In the first, the unnamed
narrator (supposedly a fictionalized version of the author himself)
looks back on childhood memories spent at his grandparents' home in
Combray. In the second, he tells the story of Charles Swann's love
affair with Odette de Crécy. The final section of the book deals with
the narrator's own love for Swann's daughter, Gilberte. Simply put, Swann's Way is the most poignant, beautifully-written examination of love and memory that I've read.
I look forward to the second book, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. If that volume is even half as good as its title, it's going to go down as an all-time personal favorite.
Buddy's Got Three Moms: A Hate Collection--Peter Bagge
When I'm not reading post-modern masterpieces that somehow managed to
be written prior to modernism, and when I'm not reading the first
volumes of 3,000 page books, I like to settle back with a comic or two.
Amy sent this Hate collection to me in the mail along with the original #1 and #2 Hate
comics. I'm not sure why she thought I'd like them. What does it say
about me that she thinks I'd enjoy a series of comic books about a
cynical slacker who drinks too much? What does it say about me that I actually did enjoy them? These Hate
books were pretty funny. It took me awhile to get used to the art
which Peter Bagge admits looks like something drawn by "a retarded
garage mechanic who copies out of Car-toons magazine." Once I
got over that, I was able to concentrate on the stories themselves,
which were usually hilarious...and sometimes surprisingly touching.
CURRENTLY READING:
- The Book of Yoga--Christina Brown
- Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron--Daniel Clowes
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