Noshing on the Novel
by Shaharazad
I gave myself a half hour in the Civic Center Library. After looking around, I began stalking the novel (shelved with occasional short stories): I began with the N row, found Nabokov – YES – then scanned the rows looking for other books to suggest, books or authors I have read and loved.
Originally I thought I’d re-read them, but even though this library visit was about reading on a tight budget, I was tight on time, too. Here are the suggestions and a quote or two. The message of this review is simple: read a book! Let it stretch the walls of your mind. As for the various screens we gaze into, let them fade into nothing, for just a half hour a day… Tasty reading to you!
Anne Lamott, Blue Shoe
New York, Riverhead Books, 2002
The author captures the imperfect, quirky moments in everyday life, and here, wrestles with the questions of care for an elderly mother, and the real identity of Mattie’s father. There are questions of accepting and giving love. Moving, poignant and often funny, Lamott’s fresh, sparky perspective illuminates Blue Shoe. She is a contemporary Marin, California, writer. I pass her while walking the trails on the ridge every now and then:
The wisteria had gone nuts, as it always did in late springtime. In March it had looked gritchy and twiggy and crucified, disturbing the symmetry of the fence, and then it exploded into Oriental craziness, like a garish beaded curtain (p 157).
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1938
If you are ready for long sentences, elegant writing, and a world where art – in this case painting – is the only thing that lasts in a changing world, then To the Lighthouse is a classic. In the 1920s, Virginia Woolf was part of the famous Bloomsbury group in London on the literary cutting edge. She drowned herself in 1941. Nicole Kidman plays Woolf in a recent film.
Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her — who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world? (Chapter 6, last paragraph).
Vladimir Nabokov, Nabokov’s Quartet
New York, Phaedra Inc. 1966
Here is a master writer. His short stories are very readable, and hold the reader in thrall. Be warned that some are quite grim — soaked in Russian angst. A lighter favorite in this collection is The Visit to the Museum, written in Russian and published in 1939, translated from Russian into English by his son Dmitri Nabokov. Other stories, such as Lolita, he wrote in English. A Nabokov read is a delight. He uses language with precise and breathtaking skill. In Museum, the reader follows the main character into a museum, where reality and dreamscape intertwine. This book was last checked out of the library on Feb 2, 1996!
He turned out to be a thin middle aged gentleman in high collar and dickey, with a pearl in the knot of his tie, and a face very much resembling a Russian wolf-hound; as if that were not enough he was licking his chops… (p 96).
Naguib Mahfouz, Arabian Nights and Days
New York, Doubleday, 1994
The Egyptian writer, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature, has revived here the feeling of The Arabian Nights. I bought this book, and also Palace Walk, some years ago and enjoyed both. In a nod to the original, Shaharazad is freed by the Sultan. In the magical Islamic city, one thing leads to another — often unexpectedly — as the wise may turn out to be foolish and the foolish a kind of Nasruddin man of the heart. This is a smooth, delightful read.
The sheikh sat down cross-legged on a cushion in front of him. “What is your feeling,” he asked, “as you visit me for the first time?” / “I feel as though I have known you since I was born,” Aladdin said truthfully (p 164).
