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decemberthirty1. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro: Early in this book there is a passage in which a butler named Stevens, after looking out on gently rolling fields broken by hedges and dotted with sheep, muses thus:
I am quite prepared to believe that other countries can offer more obviously spectacular scenery. Indeed, I have seen in encyclopedias and the National Geographic Magazine breathtaking photographs of sights from various corners of the globe; magnificent canyons and waterfalls, raggedly beautiful mountains. It has never, of course, been my privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will nevertheless hazard this with some confidence: the English landscape at its finest—such as I saw it this morning—possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term 'greatness'.
Although these remarks relate to rural England, they are also an apt description of the book itself. The Remains of the Day is an extremely quiet book in which almost nothing happens (the only possible plot summary is "A butler reminisces about his career while on a driving tour through the south of England.") yet it has a greatness that many flashier stories fail to attain. It's a masterpiece of nuance and impeccably controlled tone; Ishiguro's prose style is as restrained as Stevens himself. I was most impressed by the way Ishiguro conveys Stevens's emotional repression and the insularity of his existence from within the first-person perspective—definitely one of the most successful uses of first-person that I've ever read. I also appreciated the compassion with which Ishiguro treats Stevens. It would be so easy to make him a figure of fun, what with his pompous habits, his preoccupation with 'dignity', his stiffness and inability to take or make jokes, but Ishiguro never makes fun of him. It is only with the greatest gentleness that he suggests that Stevens may be wrong about dignity being the most important quality for a person to possess, that perhaps warmth and human feeling are just as important.
This is a beautiful book, the best thing I've read in months, and you should all go out and read it right now.
2. Gifts by Ursula K. LeGuin: Not a bad book, certainly, but not a great one either. A young adult novel about tribes of people who are genetically disposed to have superhuman powers, Gifts is beautifully written, as is everything by LeGuin, and her tremendous talent at building societies and detailing complex relationship structures is in evidence. Nonetheless, the story never quite comes to life. The world of the book is vivid—violent, dark, isolated, and sinister—but the characters are flat. It was a quick read and the plot was engaging enough to keep me going, but this is not the sort of book that lingers in the mind after you finish it. Disappointing, considering the way LeGuin's best YA writing does just that.
3. Strange Motion by Jonathan Franzen: Perhaps it's cheating to count this among my vacation reads, since I only read about 2/3 of it while I was away, but I think that's enough to give a preliminary review…
Like The Corrections, Strange Motion is a book that is packed with incident and with social observation. The plot contains a mysterious series of earthquakes in the suburbs of Boston, a dysfunctional family battling over a large sum of money, a love story that goes awry (and may yet right itself), and environmental wrongdoing by a major chemical company. All of these threads tie together neatly, and the story is surprisingly cohesive considering how much is stuffed into it. The prose is as quick and clever as one would expect from Franzen, although it sometimes feels a bit too self-conscious for my taste. I don't find the book to be particularly emotionally engaging thus far, but it's a fun read with a fair amount of intrigue.
4. "My Father's Suitcase" by Orhan Pamuk: I finally got around to reading Pamuk's Nobel Lecture, and I thought it was brilliant. He strikes a perfect balance between the personal and the intellectual, his tone is measured, and his language is precise. There's really nothing I can say that will be better than Pamuk's own writing, so I'll end with this quotation that would make any writer take heart:
When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or a literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man--or this woman--may use a typewriter, or profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I do. As he writes, he may drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time, he may rise from his table to look out the window at the children playing in the street, or, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or even at a black wall. He may write poems, or plays, or novels, as I do. But all these differences arise only after the crucial task is complete--after he has sat down at the table and patiently turned inward. To write is to transform that inward gaze into words, to study the worlds into which we pass when we retire into ourselves, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy.
I am quite prepared to believe that other countries can offer more obviously spectacular scenery. Indeed, I have seen in encyclopedias and the National Geographic Magazine breathtaking photographs of sights from various corners of the globe; magnificent canyons and waterfalls, raggedly beautiful mountains. It has never, of course, been my privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will nevertheless hazard this with some confidence: the English landscape at its finest—such as I saw it this morning—possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term 'greatness'.
Although these remarks relate to rural England, they are also an apt description of the book itself. The Remains of the Day is an extremely quiet book in which almost nothing happens (the only possible plot summary is "A butler reminisces about his career while on a driving tour through the south of England.") yet it has a greatness that many flashier stories fail to attain. It's a masterpiece of nuance and impeccably controlled tone; Ishiguro's prose style is as restrained as Stevens himself. I was most impressed by the way Ishiguro conveys Stevens's emotional repression and the insularity of his existence from within the first-person perspective—definitely one of the most successful uses of first-person that I've ever read. I also appreciated the compassion with which Ishiguro treats Stevens. It would be so easy to make him a figure of fun, what with his pompous habits, his preoccupation with 'dignity', his stiffness and inability to take or make jokes, but Ishiguro never makes fun of him. It is only with the greatest gentleness that he suggests that Stevens may be wrong about dignity being the most important quality for a person to possess, that perhaps warmth and human feeling are just as important.
This is a beautiful book, the best thing I've read in months, and you should all go out and read it right now.
2. Gifts by Ursula K. LeGuin: Not a bad book, certainly, but not a great one either. A young adult novel about tribes of people who are genetically disposed to have superhuman powers, Gifts is beautifully written, as is everything by LeGuin, and her tremendous talent at building societies and detailing complex relationship structures is in evidence. Nonetheless, the story never quite comes to life. The world of the book is vivid—violent, dark, isolated, and sinister—but the characters are flat. It was a quick read and the plot was engaging enough to keep me going, but this is not the sort of book that lingers in the mind after you finish it. Disappointing, considering the way LeGuin's best YA writing does just that.
3. Strange Motion by Jonathan Franzen: Perhaps it's cheating to count this among my vacation reads, since I only read about 2/3 of it while I was away, but I think that's enough to give a preliminary review…
Like The Corrections, Strange Motion is a book that is packed with incident and with social observation. The plot contains a mysterious series of earthquakes in the suburbs of Boston, a dysfunctional family battling over a large sum of money, a love story that goes awry (and may yet right itself), and environmental wrongdoing by a major chemical company. All of these threads tie together neatly, and the story is surprisingly cohesive considering how much is stuffed into it. The prose is as quick and clever as one would expect from Franzen, although it sometimes feels a bit too self-conscious for my taste. I don't find the book to be particularly emotionally engaging thus far, but it's a fun read with a fair amount of intrigue.
4. "My Father's Suitcase" by Orhan Pamuk: I finally got around to reading Pamuk's Nobel Lecture, and I thought it was brilliant. He strikes a perfect balance between the personal and the intellectual, his tone is measured, and his language is precise. There's really nothing I can say that will be better than Pamuk's own writing, so I'll end with this quotation that would make any writer take heart:
When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or a literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man--or this woman--may use a typewriter, or profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I do. As he writes, he may drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time, he may rise from his table to look out the window at the children playing in the street, or, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or even at a black wall. He may write poems, or plays, or novels, as I do. But all these differences arise only after the crucial task is complete--after he has sat down at the table and patiently turned inward. To write is to transform that inward gaze into words, to study the worlds into which we pass when we retire into ourselves, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-01 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-03 01:52 pm (UTC)I don't really like remains that much. It's a bit too flat. Nothing gets built really. Though I will agree it's good Never Let Me Go is much much much better.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-03 01:53 pm (UTC)I love opinions
no subject
Date: 2007-03-03 08:06 pm (UTC)I'm an anonymous, sometimes-reader of your blog; I read thebookyoucrew, and I've found your taste in books is close to mine, so I like reading your reviews of books. FWIW, I love Ishiguro, esp RotD; I thought Let Go was ok, but I really really liked Artist of the Floating World (it's short too).
Also, that Gordimer story in the newyorker was fantastic!
~ma
no subject
Date: 2007-03-06 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-07 03:05 am (UTC)