26 Books

I’m very surprised to find that I found The Brother’s Karamazov, Dostoyevsky’s final masterpiece, to be nothing of the sort. Instead, I thought it self-indulgent, flabby, morally nonsensical, overwritten and – worst of all – boring.

The Brothers Karamazov

Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)
Vintage Classics 1992, Paperback, 816 pages, £9.99

Now, clearly this is not the accepted wisdom on this novel; the writer I revere above all others – Kafka – loved it, for example, so it’s a judgement that may say more about me than it does about the book. But I’ll try to show why I reached this conclusion, if I can.

Here’s another of Bolaño’s earlier novels, which are appearing in English at an alarming rate these days.

Amulet

Roberto Bolano
Picador 2010, Paperback, 192 pages, £7.99

As I’ve said several times before, Bolaño is always worth reading, and this strange novel is no exception. It is 1968, and Auxilio Lacouture hides in the lavatory of the Mexico City university as the repressive regime sends in the troops to suppress dissent. She stays there for an extraordinary twelve days.

This is the second part of Broch’s groundbreaking trilogy The Sleepwalkers. Its title in German is 1903. Esch oder der Anarchie, and as I mentioned in my post on the first part of the trilogy, Penguin’s decision to translate it so inaccurately is inexplicable. Again, it’s not a new translation, but there’s surely no reason not to correct this stupid mistake.

The Anarchist (Penguin Modern Classics)

James White (Introduction)
Penguin Books Ltd 2000, Paperback, 192 pages, £6.99

Thankfully, this is only of tangential interest to the book as a whole, which is magnificent. Esch is a book-keeper who is wrongfully dismissed from his job. He ends up involved in an female wrestling business, although his resentment at the forces that have cost him his book-keeping job constantly eats away at him.

I’m sad to say that I can remember only some very general impressions of reading this book – I read it nearly a year ago, and only now have I got around to writing about it. By Night in Chile was the first of Bolaño’s novels to be made available in English; today you can’t move for them.

By Night In Chile

Roberto Bolano
Vintage 2009, Paperback, 144 pages, £7.99

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the hype surrounding Bolaño has anything in common with the seemingly entirely misplaced regard for Stieg Larsson. Bolaño was a genuinely great and innovative writer, who knew few boundaries or rules. Reading him is an exhilarating experience, his writing full of sarcasm, wit and anger.

This is a very slim volume from the author of the Maigret novels. It’s not a detective story as one might expect, but rather film noir in novella form which tells the story of a recently divorced actor and the chance encounter he has with a lonely woman in Manhattan.

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (New York Review Books Classics)

Joyce Carol Oates (Introduction)
NYRB Classics 2009, Paperback, 176 pages, £7.99

Although it was enjoyable enough, it has a cloyingly cliched feel to it, somewhat like looking at an Edward Hopper painting for too long (in other words, for more than than a few seconds). Everyone is rumpled yet stylish, acerbic, hardboiled and suspicious.

I was part of the way through this book when I realised that Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote the screenplay for Last Year at Marienbad, a film that is widely considered a classic but remains without doubt the most boring film I have ever seen. I saw it in the cinema so I had no way of knowing when it would end and I swear I actually started to hurt with boredom.

Erasers (Oneworld Classics)

Alain Robbe-Grillet
Oneworld Classics Ltd 2009, Paperback, 256 pages, £7.99

Thankfully, The Erasers is much better, though it’s more like an intellectual and philosophical exercise than a novel. Robbe-Grillet deconstructs the detective story in this cryptic and faintly humorous book.

The Counterfeiters is a brilliant novel, a novel of formal experiment and nihilistic pessimism. The characters are all upper-class, but their despair is real.

The Counterfeiters (Twentieth Century Classics)

Dorothy Bussy (Translator)
Penguin Classics 1990, Paperback, 352 pages, £12.99

On the formal front, The Counterfeiters is notable because of its blurring of fictional and metafictional worlds. One of the characters appears to be writing the novel that we are reading, for example. Unusually for the time – although Proust was covering the same subject at the same time – it is also openly about homosexuality, and this is supposed to be one of the reasons that it was originally poorly received.

Although I work in a highly creative and visual environment, I do not think visually at all. In fact, I have no idea what it would be like to think visually. I do not visualise anything, not novels, music or computer systems. The only way I can describe it is that I think in an entirely abstract way, and when I become aware of the thought process itself, I think verbally. I compose blog posts or documents in my head and only then write them down. When I’m asked to describe something, I immediately want to do so in writing, although at work I’m nearly always required to create something visual, which I naturally struggle with. Unfortunately, people don’t want to read closely argued and detailed prose (if indeed that is what I produce; you may think it’s simply verbiage), and if I want to communicate an idea, I must roll up my sleeves and break out some visual tool or other.

Design as Art (Penguin Modern Classics)

Bruno Munari
Penguin Classics 2008, Paperback, 224 pages, £9.99

I cannot draw at all, and efforts to do so end up with me in a blind rage. I am simply incapable of planning what something should look like, and the results of my drawing attempts are pathetic and useless. I’m not exaggerating out of some sense of modesty: I really cannot draw at all. As a result, I decided to try to train the visual side of my brain this year, starting, of course, with some reading.

Milan Kundera’s essays are always a treat, and this latest collection is no exception. Whereas the previous three volumes (The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, and The Curtain) are each conceived as a integral work, often as carefully structured as the novels, Encounter has more of the feel of a collection of disparate pieces, given unity by their singular aesthetic focus.

Encounter

Milan Kundera
Faber and Faber 2010, Paperback, 192 pages, £12.99

Kundera has written extensively of his influences, in particular of Kafka, Musil, Broch and Gombrowicz, but these authors are hardly to be seen at all in this new collection. Instead, Kundera ranges over a much wider territory, one with a number of very welcome surprises.

This is a short but nevertheless immensely famous book, with a huge reputation. It’s clearly heavily influenced (and this is a good thing) by Laclos’ wonderful Les Liaisons dangereuses, and operates in a similar demi-monde. However, it lacks the malice and profound cynicism of Laclos (a bad thing).

Cheri (Vintage classics)

Colette
Vintage Classics 2001, Paperback, 120 pages, £7.99

I very much liked it, but I don’t really have much to say about it. My only real objection to Chéri is the rather perfumed, satiny and cloying atmosphere of the boudoir. I detest that flouncy shit. Otherwise it is a masterfully written story of love, desire, commitment, wish-fulfillment and loss.