More books
Feb. 24th, 2003 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiI had an excellent visit to the Strand on Sunday, and came away with four more books: essays by Elie Wiesel (depressing, I suspect), Sense and Sensibility (if I ever owned a copy it was lost on an annual move years ago), Calvino's Invisible Cities (I borrowed this once from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fillyjonk unless her copy is in Italian, and I need to own it) and A Fall of Kings (despite being lukewarm about Swordspoint). My friend found the real prize, a novel called Bitten which appears to be some kind of trashy werewolf romance. I am determined to borrow it soon, because there's a certain "Buffy meets Bridget Jones" to it.
But I really must not return to the Strand until I have read all the books I've acquired--I still have a "to-read" stack from my last visit. I did note plenty of books that I'd recommend, though. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and two Alan Furst novels Kingdom of Shadows and Blood of Victory. Neither is the best introduction to Furst, but both are good. I'm fond of Nicolas Morath, the narrator of Kingdom of Shadows, but I'm a sucker for Furstian anti-heroes; the real problem with the book is that Furst uses such a light hand with the plot that one reaches the end wondering what on earth that was all about. It's one of those books in which the story you think it's telling isn't the story it's really telling (sorry--such an awkward sentence!), and if that's what you want, Iain Pears does it better in A Dream of Scipio. Despite the daft title, Blood of Victory hangs together somewhat better plotwise, and Furst is on surer ground with the main character, a Russian writer/disenchanted revolutionary type who gets sucked into the world of espionage. The novel really captures the sense of everything spinning out of control.
What strikes me about both of these is that Furst has become much more invested in atmosphere than in story; or perhaps that the story he's trying to tell (espionage in Europe from about 1935-1945) is too big to be told through a single character's experience. One almost feels that each book is part of some larger whole: here is a Pole, here is a Hungarian, here is a Russian, and these are the things which happen to them, which they may or may not survive (the fact that major and minor characters recur throughout all his books only makes this impression stronger). The characters are overwhelmed by their times, and the reader gets overwhelmed as well. I think that the closest Furst has come to telling the whole story in a single novel is Night Soldiers, because it was his first book and he seems to have been determined to put everything in it. So although I see it mostly as a meditation on being and becoming American, it's also a strange fable about Central and Eastern European unity in which almost everyone gets to do their bit.
You know, all the books I've discussed here (the two Fursts, Kavalier and Clay and Scipio) deal in some way with the Second World War; that's a subject I religiously avoid on film, but seem to like in print. I wonder why.
fillyjonk unless her copy is in Italian, and I need to own it) and A Fall of Kings (despite being lukewarm about Swordspoint). My friend found the real prize, a novel called Bitten which appears to be some kind of trashy werewolf romance. I am determined to borrow it soon, because there's a certain "Buffy meets Bridget Jones" to it.But I really must not return to the Strand until I have read all the books I've acquired--I still have a "to-read" stack from my last visit. I did note plenty of books that I'd recommend, though. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and two Alan Furst novels Kingdom of Shadows and Blood of Victory. Neither is the best introduction to Furst, but both are good. I'm fond of Nicolas Morath, the narrator of Kingdom of Shadows, but I'm a sucker for Furstian anti-heroes; the real problem with the book is that Furst uses such a light hand with the plot that one reaches the end wondering what on earth that was all about. It's one of those books in which the story you think it's telling isn't the story it's really telling (sorry--such an awkward sentence!), and if that's what you want, Iain Pears does it better in A Dream of Scipio. Despite the daft title, Blood of Victory hangs together somewhat better plotwise, and Furst is on surer ground with the main character, a Russian writer/disenchanted revolutionary type who gets sucked into the world of espionage. The novel really captures the sense of everything spinning out of control.
What strikes me about both of these is that Furst has become much more invested in atmosphere than in story; or perhaps that the story he's trying to tell (espionage in Europe from about 1935-1945) is too big to be told through a single character's experience. One almost feels that each book is part of some larger whole: here is a Pole, here is a Hungarian, here is a Russian, and these are the things which happen to them, which they may or may not survive (the fact that major and minor characters recur throughout all his books only makes this impression stronger). The characters are overwhelmed by their times, and the reader gets overwhelmed as well. I think that the closest Furst has come to telling the whole story in a single novel is Night Soldiers, because it was his first book and he seems to have been determined to put everything in it. So although I see it mostly as a meditation on being and becoming American, it's also a strange fable about Central and Eastern European unity in which almost everyone gets to do their bit.
You know, all the books I've discussed here (the two Fursts, Kavalier and Clay and Scipio) deal in some way with the Second World War; that's a subject I religiously avoid on film, but seem to like in print. I wonder why.
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 02:40 pm (UTC)I really hated it.y
no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 02:54 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-02-25 08:02 am (UTC)I didn't think it felt like fanfic, but I did think there were things that seemed amateurish. Things that would never fly in the stories of good fanfic writers, in fact. The betas would have stopped them.u
no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 02:56 pm (UTC)If you didn't like Swordspoint, I should think FoTK would be even more disappointing. Or maybe it will appeal to you more.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 05:41 pm (UTC)Well, I figure that there's a chance that I'll like it more. I'll read it without specific expectations and see how that works out for me. Although I've sworn not to start any new books until I finish the ones I'm halfway through, so it may be a little while before I get to it.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 05:20 pm (UTC)Alas too many of the Calvino books I have are in the original Italian, and I've forgotten how to read it in the last 20 years, so they're about as much use as the proverbial chocolate teapot. (Except, of course, you can eat that.) One day I will have to either make a determined effort to relearn the languages I used to have enough of a nodding acquaintance of to read with the aid of a dictionary, or rationalise my book collection. I suspect neither one is going to happen very soon.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 11:10 pm (UTC)I'm not an archaeologist but I sometimes play one on tv, you might say (i.e., I pass the Secretary's standards for historic preservationist if you don't look too closely).
Apropos of not much, have you read "Tigana"? Because one of these days I really am going to track down that book about the Night Walkers. By the Italian anthropologist whose name escapes me.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-25 05:36 am (UTC)And the Carlo Ginzburg book is quite good. I can't remember how closely Kay sticks to the practices Ginzburg describes, though; it's been a long time since I've read either book.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-25 05:35 am (UTC)I think it's only fair to say that versions #2 and #3 are considerably more well thumbed, and version #2 was the one I used for serious study. Mind you, version #1 looks very nice on the shelf. :-)
no subject
Date: 2003-02-25 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-25 12:35 pm (UTC)She was only part way through translating Paradiso when she died, so the remainder of that was completed by Barbara Reynolds. And I believe that Penguin have commissioned a newer translation, this time in blank verse, but I can't remember who it's by. I believe the Sayers version is still available though.
Trashy Werewolf Romance
Date: 2003-02-25 12:52 am (UTC)Speaking of trashy & sordid Passions-style stuff -- you have got to call me to hear the latest. :)
Re: Trashy Werewolf Romance
Date: 2003-02-25 06:14 am (UTC)Re: Trashy Werewolf Romance
Date: 2003-02-25 11:56 am (UTC)