Keane, Molly: Mad Puppetstown
I'm reveling in Lydia Davis's Collected Stories at the moment, and those sent me to an interview with Davis on YouTube. The interviewer asked her what she was reading, and she mentioned Molly Keane (AKA M.J. Farrell). So much do I respect Davis that I had to immediately Kindle off and get my hands on a Keane novel. I'm glad I did.
Puppetstown is the name of an Irish country estate we first see through the eyes of a child, Easter Chevington. It is, at first a kind of paradise. Keane makes us believe in that paradise, and also believe it when the paradise comes crashing down in an early iteration of "the troubles." Easter, her mother, and her brothers flee to England. One brother is happy there and ends up engaged to a society debutante. Easter and her other brother are less at home and return to their Irish estate only to find that, having been left in the care of an eccentric aunt, Puppetstown is falling apart. You can never go home, but in the end, it seems, they do.
Looking forward now to getting back to Lydia Davis, and, of course, more Molly Keane.
Salih, Tayeb: Season of Migration to the North (New York Review Books Classics)
A man comes to town. A Sudanese man, that is, returns to his village after seven years studying an "obscure poet" in England. This post-colonial book is different from many others in that it wasn't written in the (European) colonizer's language but in Arabic. It is a little gem, rich both in language and literary reference (Othello, Heart of Darkness), and structurally exquisite. It is, as well, an evisceration of the colonial and then post-colonial situation. Salih gets the balance between these qualities and concerns just right. Kudos, too, to Laila Lalami, whose Introduction is a superb essay on the book. (As is my usual practice, I read the introduction after finishing the book.)
James, M. R.: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
Attempting to get in the spirit of the season, I started this book around Halloween 2022, but for some reason put it down and didn't get around to finishing it until yesterday, weeks after Halloween 2023. I don't know why I put it down, because the stories are gems. It's interesting to observe that, as Lovecraft's stories were driven by anxieties about those with the wrong nationality and pigmentation, these are driven by anxieties about the lower classes. How very English.
Ben Aaronovitch: Rivers of London
This book, the first in a series, comes highly recommended, and I'm glad the recommenders enjoyed it. I wish I had enjoyed it as much as they did, but I found this mystery with a supernatural twist to be a slog. I'm not sure why I finished it. Oh well. Can't win them all.
le Carré, John: The Looking Glass War: A George Smiley Novel
Another Le Carré exposé of the sordid and mundane side of spying. As usual, the best scenes are those in which Smiley is present, but as also seems usual, Smiley is not present for most of the novel. I like the character well enough, though, that I'll keep reading in hopes of catching glimpses of him.
: The Most Secret Memory of Men: A Novel
Senegal, France, The Netherlands, Argentina: this novel moves around a lot, and not only geographically. It is a sort of literary quest novel, literary in two senses: It is written with enough care, imagination, and originality that one must use the L-word, but also in the sense that the protagonist is searching for the reclusive author of a book with which he has become obsessed. Books and authors, that is, are seen as worthy objects of desire. The book for which the protagonist is searching, we learn, is made of pieces taken from other books (the author, Elimane, is accused of plagiarism). The book in which that book appears, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's The Most Secret Memory of Men, is, likewise, filled with allusions to other works, both African and otherwise. One can't help but think of Bolaño, and there are cameos by Witold Gombrovics and Ernesto Sábato. Indeed, Elimane, the author the protagonist is searching for, was called "the African Rimbaud," mostly because after bursting onto the scene he went silent. I was happy to join in the quest that this mythic detective/ghost/erotic, satyrical novel is.
Hand, Elizabeth: The Book of Lamps and Banners (Cass Neary, 4)
I liked Cass Neary, the punky, strung-out, noirish wreck who is the heroine of this series, enough that I read the first two books. Irritatingly the third is not available on Kindle (why?), so, contrary to my normal practice, I jumped ahead to the fourth book. It was good enough to make me look again to see if the third book had surfaced, but alas it hasn't, and at this late date I don't suppose it ever will.
Oh well.
I didn't feel lost or confused in The Book of Lamps and Banners, and enjoyed the spiral (because Cass's trajectory usually seems downwards) through England, Sweden, and Iceland. I also enjoyed the dip into the world of rare books and arcana, and also the glimpse, I think, of an actual rare book dealer known to those of us who like odd books.
Almost makes me think I should spend too much for the paperback version of the third book in the series.
Arrabal, Fernando: The Red Virgin
I couldn't quite motivate myself to count the words in each of the short chapters of Fernando Arrabal's The Red Virgin, but I have a sneaking suspicion that each chapter is of exactly the same length.This sort of Oulipoean constraint leads me to believe that Arrabal, who lives in France and has long been involved with the avant-garde there, has rubbed shoulders with those tricksters, though a quick Google search offers no confirmation for that. Whether or not the Oulipo lurks in the background, the novel, the testimony of a woman who had isolated her daughter in the hope that such a life would allow the girl to succeed in an alchemical quest, is an stimulating read. The mother attempts to make her daughter perfect; when her daughter veers away from her mother's version of perfection, the mother kills her. The most unbelievable thing about all of this is that it is based on a true story.
le Carré, John: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: A George Smiley Novel (George Smiley Novels)
In this one George Smiley is a spy, but he's far in the background for most of the book. I missed him, and wish he had spent more time at center stage, but still, this novel was a very good anti-James Bond. Le Carré doesn't hesitate to show us that English spies live lives devoid of Bondian extravagance and glamor and also that England and her spies were just as morally bankrupt as the Communists with whom, during the cold war, they crossed sabres.
le Carré, John: A Murder of Quality: A George Smiley Novel (George Smiley, 2)
This is the second in John LeCarré's series of novels featuring George Smiley. He is a spy in most of the books, but not in this one. Instead of engaging in espionage, Smiley, because of his intelligence background, is called upon to investigate a murder at a posh English boarding school. This set-up results in a novel that succeeds in every way: the plot is tight, the characters believable and interesting, the social critique biting, and the prose style is good enough that aspiring writers should pay close attention to it.
I'll move on to the third novel in the series, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, soon. This is the novel that made LeCarré's name, though it's hard to imagine that it will be better than A Murder of Quality.
i agree with you. the campaign will kill more civilians
Posted by: Pallgutha | 07/23/2009 at 05:07 PM
i do.and yes,yes,yes,yes,yes,yes,and you are absurd..
Posted by: ken | 07/24/2009 at 09:06 AM
Thanks, Ken, for your eloquent reply to my post.
Perhaps you would like to engage in an actual dialogue? If so, please tell me how our presence in Afghanistan is helpful. Please tell me how this massive government program (I'm assuming you're anti-big government) might lead to an end which will make America, Afghanistan, and the world better places. I would love to believe that our intervention in Afghanistan is helpful, and that it is worth the price Americans and Afghanis are paying. Maybe you can convince me that it is.
Here's hoping,
David
Posted by: Only a Blockhead | 07/24/2009 at 09:27 AM
well i saw you on the news and politics page and wasn't going to comment until i saw the three stooges pic,anybody who likes the stooges cna't be all bad.so i will give this a real try.lets look at that pretty little poppy plant first,i think we can agree that the best stuff comes from afghanistan and has for a long time,and there has been a cry for america to go and wipe out their biggest cash crop for decades.lets not forget the old u.s.s.r and now russia would very much have liked to have afghanistan for a colony.and then there is the current problem of the taliban using it for a base of operations.and then of course there is the fact that their next door neighbor is china a fact that most u.s. military minds have noticed.now last and maybe least in alot of peoples minds is the fact that afghanistan will enjoy freedom for the first time in 50 years.so there is 5 good reasons.i set them up you knock them down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: ken | 07/24/2009 at 10:42 AM
Hi Ken and David,
This is one of the other Blockhead stooges--Julian--here.
I'm going to take a wild guess that David wasn't convinced by what you wrote Ken, any more than you were by what Chris Hedges wrote in the original post. And I'll take another wild guess: that nothing either of you might say in these comments will convince the other.
In this vein, I really like a story that Tim Kreider, the left-wing cartoonist, told in the comments to the original "Outrageous" post I blogged about a few days back. Here it is:
"I have a neighbor who's a Marine and a Republican. He and I disagree on just about every political issue. After he read my last collection of cartoons, his only comment, offered after a judicious pause, was: 'Well--some of us have to be right, and some of us have to be wrong.' We both laughed. Then he mixed us up a couple of gigantic tumblers of pure vodka garnished with pickled vegetables (which is what he calls a 'martini'), grilled some huge pepper-encrusted steaks, and we watched old Queen videos 'til we got all weepy. In this I believe there is hope for America."
Queen... the Stooges... With so much to divide us, here's to the things that unite us.
Have a great weekend!
--Julian
Posted by: Only a Blockhead | 07/25/2009 at 08:51 AM
Ken:
Though Julian may be right that we should stick with
stooges and alcohol-impregnated vegetables, I do feel I owe you the
courtesy of a reply. Sorry to be tardy in writing it up.
I'll
begin with "that pretty little poppy plant" (opium poppies are
beautiful), and do my best not to drift into the farcically
unsuccessful War on (Some) Drugs, except to note that until Western
demand and willingness to pay big bucks for opium derivatives declines
substantially there will be no way to convince poor farmers to grow,
say, millet instead. But putting that to one side, let's assume there
is a way to convince farmers to grow something besides the highly
prized poppy. Would that be most efficiently achieved through force of
arms? I don't think so, but what do I know? Let's see what the folks on
the ground in Afghanistan think. This short item appeared a day or two
ago in the International Herald Tribune:
"The American-led mission in Afghanistan is all but
abandoning efforts to destroy the poppy crops that provide the largest
source of income to the insurgency, and instead will take significant
steps to wean local farmers off the drug trade - including one
proposal to pay them to grow nothing.
"The strategy will shift from wiping out opium poppy crops, which
senior officials acknowledged had served only to turn poor farmers
into enemies of the central government in Kabul.
So
yeah, let's send in an army, but not one of soldiers and drones (the
central government, not to mention the US government, already has
enough enemies). Rather let's deploy an army of agronomists and
teachers with enough money to pay farmers to grow other things (or
nothing at all).
Do I think that will work. As I've hinted
above, I don't. Until we deal with the dog--demand--there's no point in
harrassing the tail--poor farmers.
Regarding the USSR, perhaps
you've forgotten that our former allies, the Taliban along with some
Proto-al-Quaidists, handed the Soviets their ass in a bucket. I see no
reason to believe that the Russians want to enter that hornet's nest
again.
You point out that Afghanistan shares a (47 mile long)
border with China. Therefore the United States should intervene
massively in Afghanistan? I don't follow the logic here. China shares
borders with a lot of countries. Should the US invade all of them?
Hedges points out, and I think it is the case, that modern terrorist organizations have very little use for centralized bases. Rather, they seem to be highly decentralized and mobile. If things get too hot in Afghanistan for the Taliban they'll simply slip across the border into Pakistan. In fact they're already doing this. (And keep in mind that, as Hedges also points out, the 9/11 attacks were planned not in Afghanistan, but in Germany.)
You
write of "the fact that Afghanistan will enjoy freedom for the first
time in 50 years." That you use the future tense tells me that you
understand that even with the massive military presence, the bombings
of their villages, and so on, the Afghanis have yet to attain that
state that you, me, and most people of good will want for them. I don't see
how foreign military intervention, with which many Afghanis are far
from thrilled, is going to bring them freedom. If we kill enough
(suspected) Talibani, rocket enough wedding parties (attended by a
couple of Al Qaida hacks) will Afghanis suddenly slap a collective hand
to a collective forehead and say: "What were we thinking? We don't want
to live in a conservative Muslim state. We want to live in a liberal
democracy?" It'd be nice if such a collective head-slap would take
place; all I can say is you're more optimistic than me.
A Huge Pepper Encrusted Steak to You,
David
Posted by: Only a Blockhead | 07/26/2009 at 05:18 PM
if you'll hit the reply below my name i'll get your reply quicker,,there are already plans for a new crop to replace poppy,the only reason they are/were going slow is that america was paying more attention to iraq ,that has now changed.russia has alot of plans for the region alot of the ''stans'' in the area are under russian control.alot of american money and arms went into harrassing the russians when they were in afghanistan.the afghan people have been used by at least three different powers for a while,i still remember when the giant budda was torn down.alot of these people are crying out for peace,the u.s.a. will be the ones to bring it to them..pakistan and india have started to fight back against muslim extremist's and with america pushing from the other side this should stop being a military operation soon and turn into a humanatarion operation....the u.s, has looked for a land bridge into china for a long time they now have one,now this could lead to the u.s. using afghanistan as a ''colony'' for awhile but all things considered afghanistan is still getting the better end of the stick.
Posted by: ken | 07/27/2009 at 06:51 AM