In the Spirit of the Spree: July 2005
BOOKS BOUGHT:
Caligula - Albert Camus
En Attendant Godot - Samuel Beckett
Roméo et Juliette - Shakespeare traduit par François-Victor Hugo
Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
Jumpers - Tom Stoppard
A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
Summer - Edith Wharton
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Selected Work of Edna St. Vincent Millay
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
BOOKS READ:
En Attendant Godot - Samuel Beckett
Roméo et Juliette - Shakespeare traduit par François-Victor Hugo (unfinished)
A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl - Siri Hustvedt
Job - Joseph Roth
Caligula - Albert Camus
Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
Jumpers - Tom Stoppard
Measure your life not in love but in literature. Not a bad month. Picked up the originals of Caligula and Waiting for Godot in a Fnac, equivalent of Barnes and Nobles, and consumed them pretty quickly. Plays burn like hemlock. Confess to being at Beckett's grave and reading his words to his remains. A silly stunt but I found myself there and the book found itself in the bottom of my sack. Might be my familiarity with the language but I was less bowled over by some of statements in the original French (although the stage directions for bowler hat business was just as comedic in French, not new that physical comedy is a more universal language than esperanto.) One of my favorite lines, "Come here till I embrace you," does not hold same ambivalence (what does the till signify? stop coming once we embrace? go away post-embrace, a sentiment have heard before), does not taste the same in the flavor of "Lève-toi que je t'embrasse." But I joyed in what I could comprehend. The insults I knew and the pain and the jokes I got. A Long Way Down was a long way down from Hornby's other novels as already explained, complained. But novels swung back up on the pendulum of Hustvedt's Enchantment. Left learning of literary criticism where acceleration equals zero and gave self over to the momentum of fiction until I found myself hanging for a moment on her words, hanging at the end of the upswing, suspended disbelief and floating before falling out of the book on the last page, landing on cushions of the couch where I was reading. I do most of my reading on my hour and fifteen minutes of commute. Once I change for the five at fourteenth street, I forget looking up for the length of Manhattan and most of the Bronx, best part of going to the third to last stop on the line. I know there are stained glass windows at the subway stop for 174th street in the Bronx, I listened to woman chanting, "Open your heart to Jesus, thank Jesus for waking you up this morning, thank Jesus for your breakfast, thank Jesus for..." and a sunset's distracted me occasionally. But most of the time books eat up my trips and make me want to thank Jesus, imagine lyrical intonation, for hours like in old Lexington summers where I'd do nothing but lie hammock, backyard or by stream, daydream and devote myself to conquests of the Hunter Library. Now Katie's lent me her Harry Potter. Like an addict, started stroking cover and itching to smoke it when she put the thick volume in my hands. Been so good waiting for Jesse's at camp copy. But now know what I'll be reading next rides. Can't go back to college without reading the new one. Finally, in defense of purchasing but not touching last five of books bought list, they mostly came from cart of $1 books at Housing Works Damn Delightful Used Book Cafe. I also don't feel financially responsible to Hugo, F. Victor's version of Romeo. Two euros, from a vending machine, after midnight, in Paris. And translation's in the wrong direction from origins and me.
Caligula - Albert Camus
En Attendant Godot - Samuel Beckett
Roméo et Juliette - Shakespeare traduit par François-Victor Hugo
Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
Jumpers - Tom Stoppard
A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
Summer - Edith Wharton
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Selected Work of Edna St. Vincent Millay
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
BOOKS READ:
En Attendant Godot - Samuel Beckett
Roméo et Juliette - Shakespeare traduit par François-Victor Hugo (unfinished)
A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl - Siri Hustvedt
Job - Joseph Roth
Caligula - Albert Camus
Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
Jumpers - Tom Stoppard
Measure your life not in love but in literature. Not a bad month. Picked up the originals of Caligula and Waiting for Godot in a Fnac, equivalent of Barnes and Nobles, and consumed them pretty quickly. Plays burn like hemlock. Confess to being at Beckett's grave and reading his words to his remains. A silly stunt but I found myself there and the book found itself in the bottom of my sack. Might be my familiarity with the language but I was less bowled over by some of statements in the original French (although the stage directions for bowler hat business was just as comedic in French, not new that physical comedy is a more universal language than esperanto.) One of my favorite lines, "Come here till I embrace you," does not hold same ambivalence (what does the till signify? stop coming once we embrace? go away post-embrace, a sentiment have heard before), does not taste the same in the flavor of "Lève-toi que je t'embrasse." But I joyed in what I could comprehend. The insults I knew and the pain and the jokes I got. A Long Way Down was a long way down from Hornby's other novels as already explained, complained. But novels swung back up on the pendulum of Hustvedt's Enchantment. Left learning of literary criticism where acceleration equals zero and gave self over to the momentum of fiction until I found myself hanging for a moment on her words, hanging at the end of the upswing, suspended disbelief and floating before falling out of the book on the last page, landing on cushions of the couch where I was reading. I do most of my reading on my hour and fifteen minutes of commute. Once I change for the five at fourteenth street, I forget looking up for the length of Manhattan and most of the Bronx, best part of going to the third to last stop on the line. I know there are stained glass windows at the subway stop for 174th street in the Bronx, I listened to woman chanting, "Open your heart to Jesus, thank Jesus for waking you up this morning, thank Jesus for your breakfast, thank Jesus for..." and a sunset's distracted me occasionally. But most of the time books eat up my trips and make me want to thank Jesus, imagine lyrical intonation, for hours like in old Lexington summers where I'd do nothing but lie hammock, backyard or by stream, daydream and devote myself to conquests of the Hunter Library. Now Katie's lent me her Harry Potter. Like an addict, started stroking cover and itching to smoke it when she put the thick volume in my hands. Been so good waiting for Jesse's at camp copy. But now know what I'll be reading next rides. Can't go back to college without reading the new one. Finally, in defense of purchasing but not touching last five of books bought list, they mostly came from cart of $1 books at Housing Works Damn Delightful Used Book Cafe. I also don't feel financially responsible to Hugo, F. Victor's version of Romeo. Two euros, from a vending machine, after midnight, in Paris. And translation's in the wrong direction from origins and me.
