№ 32 reading list: Woolf, Hardwick & new books

Here is the reading list I promised. Perhaps I should have combined two lists into one because I have started reading books that will be on my next one. And I confess that I'm already looking longingly at books that will be on the list thereafter. One of those is Letters of Leonard Woolf. That would be the husband of Virginia, the man to thank for the access to her personal material, letters, diaries, etc. I enjoy reading letter collections, especially literary ones. Warner and Maxwell's letters on the new list, and in my image above, are gold. Each letter is well crafted and shining through is the mutual respect these writers and friends had for one another.

№ 32 reading list:

1  The Years · Virginia Woolf
2  Virginia Woolf · Hermione Lee
1  A Room of One's Own · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
3  The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick · edited by Alex Andriesse
4  A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick  · Cathy Curtis
5  De Profundis and Other Prison Writings · Oscar Wilde
7  The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and

William Maxwell 1938-1978  · edited by Michael Steinman

On my new list is Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf, which I'm about to finish and can highly recommend to all Woolf fans. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend Woolf's novel The Years. More on that disappointment later. My blog readers know that Elizabeth Hardwick is a favourite; on the list is a new essay collection and the only available biography of her. Now, let's look at a different list, my wish list.

Left: The autobiographical writing of poet Robert Lowell was published in August;
right: Elizabeth Hardwick on the cover of Darryl Pinckney's new book

The wish list keeps getting longer and I would like to mention two new additions. Come Back in September by Darryl Pinckney comes out in October. The book is about his friendship with Hardwick and the editor Barbara Epstein. Both founded the literary magazine The New York Review of Books and were best friends and neighbours on W 67th Street in New York. Memoirs came out in August, a collection of the autobiographical writing of poet Robert Lowell (he was Hardwick's ex). Critics have highly praised it.

A nod to my next reading list

images mine, appeared on Instagram 03/08/22 and 17/09/22

№ 31 reading list: the letters of Bishop & Lowell

Adding Swann's Way to my last reading list (№ 30) was an excellent idea. I'm still reading Proust and cannot understand why I waited so long to read him. His rich prose requires slow reading and I find it best to read 8-10 pages at a time, preferably in the morning. I start my day by reading; I wake up very early with my son, who has to cross Linz and its suburbs by tram to get to school. When he leaves - most people are still asleep - I sit down with coffee, toast and books. These days I start with the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, with the letters they wrote to each other, before turning to Proust and other writers. My routine ends with whatever German fiction I'm reading at the moment.

№ 31 reading list:

1  Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop

and Robert Lowell  · edited by Thomas Travisano & Saskia Hamilton

2  Upstream: Selected Essays  · Mary Oliver
3  Speak, Memory  · Vladimir Nabokov
4  Personal History  · Katharine Graham
5  Ein ganzes Leben  · Robert Seethaler [German]

I'm still reading Der Untergeher (The Loser, № 30), my third book by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. He is such a witty storyteller. I want to read everything by him in German (I think most of his novels and plays have been translated into English). I have never read anything by his countryman Robert Seethaler and now it's time for Ein ganzes Leben which I bought last summer (A Whole Life, trans. by Charlotte Collins).

Cherry blossoms, Antwerp 2011

My current bedtime reading is Personal History, the memoir of the late Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. I started the book a long time ago but held off adding it to a reading list until now. I knew she had devoted many chapters to her family story and upbringing (it's the part of biographies that least appeals to me), so I wanted to get through them first. When her story finally took off I often found it hard to put the book down, but more on that in my next reading journal entry.

images mine, 01 and 03 appeared on Instagram 12/04/21 and 24/04/21

№ 28 reading list | Oh, Vienna ...

Here you have my new reading list. Something about this stack of books delights me immensely. I had trouble deciding which book to start with (I'm trying to break the habit of reading many at once) and in the end, I picked up Max Perkins by A. Scott Berg, the winner of the 1980 National Book Award. This is the biography of perhaps the most important editor of the 20th century, a book about books and the act of writing. Perkins was the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, to name a few. Given that The Great Gatsby has become a classic, it's almost astonishing to read Fitzgerald's letters to Perkins before its publication in 1925, full of doubts, especially about the title. Unfortunately, his concerns were valid because the book sold poorly, compared to his first, This Side of Paradise (1920). If only the dear old sport had known its fate.

№ 28 reading list:

1  Essayism  · Brian Dillon
2  This Little Art  · Kate Briggs
3  Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers  · Janet Malcolm
4  Shuggie Bain  · Douglas Stuart
5  Unquiet  · Linn Ullmann
6  Max Perkins: Editor of Genius  · A. Scott Berg
7  The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million  · Daniel Mendelsohn

Translated by: 5) Unquiet: Thilo Reinhard

The Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Vienna

In my last reading list entry, I told you about the COVID-19 restrictions in post-lockdown Austria: This summer would be different and there would likely be some train-hopping if one could go to cafés and restaurants without planning ahead. Sitting down to enjoy refreshments one needs a negative test, which limits spontaneity. My oldest daughter and her Dutch boyfriend recently came for a visit and we spent a day in Vienna. We went to the Belvedere Museum, greeted Napoleon - or Napi, as we call him - and took our time to admire Klimt's Kiss. We walked all over the city and enjoyed lunch in a public park. Our stroll ended in the Jewish quarter, where the English bookshop Shakespeare & Company is located, in Sterngasse to be exact. I love this district in Vienna, thus I give the members of Ultravox the last word, Oh, Vienna ...

images mine, the 2nd appeared on Instagram 16/07/21

№ 27 reading list: Erpenbeck, Stepanova and Roth

In an April blog entry, I promised a new reading list after finishing the third volume of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography. I broke that promise because shortly after I was offered an unexpected assignment. Despite being busy, I have maintained a good reading routine that begins in the very early hours with my cup of coffee: I have finished Jenny Erpenbeck's book, I'm more than halfway through both Maria Stepanova and Philip Roth's biography, and I have started the others on the list. Two years ago The Years by Annie Ernaux became one of my all-time favourites and recently when I gave a friend a copy, I knew I had to reread it.

№ 27 reading list:

1  Philip Roth: The Biography  · Blake Bailey
2  In Memory of Memory  · Maria Stepanova
3  Not a Novel: Collected Writings and Reflections  · Jenny Erpenbeck
4  The Radetzky March  · Joseph Roth
5  Heldenplatz  · Thomas Bernhard [German]
6  Himnaríki og helvíti  · Jón Kalman Stefánsson [Icelandic]
7  The Years  · Annie Ernaux [rereading]

Translated by: 2) In Memory of Memory: Sasha Dugdale; 3) Not a Novel: Kurt Beals;

4) The Radetzky March: Joachim Neugroschel; 7) The Years: Alison L. Strayer

If you follow books news you must have read about the fate of the much-anticipated biography of Philip Roth. Following sexual assault claims against its author Bailey, the publisher, W. W Norton & Company, first halted the shipping of the book and eventually pulled it (Bailey, who has not been convicted in a court of law, has already found a new publisher). I pre-ordered the book long before this happened and believe I would have ordered it anyway, as I'm fully capable of separating the art from the artist. The book is well researched and written (Roth handpicked Bailey to write it) but I do admit that my mind sometimes goes Why do I need to know this? when I come across details of Roth's sexual encounters.

Not a Novel was my first by Erpenbeck, who is one of the major contemporary novelists in Germany. It's an English translation of her non-fiction, but not a complete one: it only contains a fragment of the original, Kein Roman, which is twice as long. I enjoyed the reading but parts felt slightly repetitive and after finishing I was left with this sense of a gap. I don't believe this shorter English edition does justice to the original and once my German improves I will definitely read the latter.

The cover of Philip Roth: The Biography by the now-infamous Blake Bailey

Five years have passed since I shared my first reading list. As I select the books carefully, there have been few disappointments. On my last list was a short essay collection by Vivian Gornick that I cannot recommend: Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader. The introduction appealed to me, and probably raised my expectations, but as I read on it became clear that Gornick and I are very different readers. She is character-oriented and seems very occupied with failed fictional relationships. Her approach tested my patience. A certain paradox revealed itself to me: Gornick is an active feminist but the tone of voice in these essays didn't give me the sense of a strong woman. There was one piece I liked, about the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, who is still on my TBR (list of to-be-reads). On that list are still a few Gornicks but honestly, I now feel little desire to prioritise them.

The COVID-19 lockdown in Austria has finally been lifted after constant extensions since last autumn. We still have to wear FFP2 masks and there are some restrictions, e.g. a negative test or a vaccination certificate is needed to enter cafés and restaurants. I got my first vaccination dose recently and get the second one in a few weeks and will then be able to get my latte fix whenever I want. That's all I ask for. Until then life continues to be rather lockdowny - I may have coined a word.

images mine, the 2nd and 3rd appeared on Instagram 22/04/21 and 15/06/21

Reading journal: Simone de Beauvoir

I am halfway through Force of Circumstance, the 3rd volume of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography (№ 26). The idea was to finish it before sharing a new reading list. Beauvoir's life story is interesting but this volume has its flaws: Sometimes she's too concerned with setting the record straight and often it feels as if Jean-Paul Sartre is the main subject. Obviously, their lives intertwined, but I'm interested in her story, in her writing, not the content of Sartre's political articles in Les Temps Modernes or the plot of his plays. Speaking of politics. The book has plenty, sometimes to the point of being tedious or exhausting. Depending on my mood. On a positive note, Beauvoir travels all over the world and is a keen observer of people and landscapes. Those narratives, her books, and how they were received makes this volume worth reading, so far.

Bookmarks & journal notes

Books I recently bought:
✔  Philip Roth: The Biography by Blake Bailey
✔  The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

... added to my wish list:
✔  A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick by Cathy Curtis

... added to my TBR:
✔  Hannah Arendt by Samantha Rose Hill
✔  This Little Art by Kate Briggs
✔  Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape and Home by Alexander Wolff

... want to read again:
✔  The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Bookish joy:
✔  Recently the 2021 International Booker Prize longlist was announced, containing the authors and translators of 13 books published in the UK or Ireland. I have yet to read any of them but was pleased to see among them In Memory of Memory by Russian poet and writer Maria Stepanova. It was translated by Sasha Dugdale. It so happens that in a recent blog entry I featured the US cover. Later in April, they announce the shortlist and in June the winner.

Recommended podcast:
▶  The 135th Backlisted episode was superb. They featured the novel The Fish Can Sing (1957) by the Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness (1902-1998), who received the 1955 Nobel Prize. Its Icelandic title is 'Brekkukotsannáll', which literally translates 'The Annals of Brekkukot [Hill cottage]'. This time the guest on the podcast was the British novelist and poet Derek Owusu. If you happen to understand Icelandic you can listen to Laxness himself reading his novel on RÚV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

image by me, appeared on Instagram 19/03/21

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York · Alexander Nemerov

Later in March, Penguin releases a new book, Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York by art historian Alexander Nemerov. It's a somewhat short biography that focuses on a particular period in the artist's life. Enthusiasts of abstract expressionism might recognise the cover photo, taken for Life magazine and shows Frankenthaler sitting on a painted canvas in her studio on West End Avenue in New York. Frankenthaler, who in the 1950s made a name for herself in the art world of post-war America, was one of the major artists of 20th-century America and had a great influence on contemporary art.

It so happens that I'm still reading Ninth Street Women (see № 25 reading list), about the career of Frankenthaler and her fellow artists Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, and Joan Mitchell. Its author Mary Gabriel praises Nemerov's new book by saying that his poetic descriptions read ‘like one of Helen’s paintings.’

Cover photo: Gordon Parks, 1957

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
By Alexander Nemerov
Hardcover, 288 pages
ISBN: 9780525560203
Penguin Press

Philip Roth: The Biography · Blake Bailey

We are heading for a Roth spring. In April, Philip Roth: The Biography by Blake Bailey arrives in bookshops, published by W. W. Norton & Co. I have waited for this official biography for years, ever since I watched Philip Roth Unleashed (2014), a documentary in two parts, part of the BBC series Imagine. Bailey was one of many interviewees and talked about the writing; Roth chose him specifically for the task and gave Bailey all the papers he needed. Last summer when the cover was released, I couldn't contain my excitement: it meant the wait was getting shorter.

Cover photo: Bob Peterson, 1968

Philip Roth: The Biography
By Blake Bailey
Hardback, 880 pages
ISBN: 9780393240726
W. W. Norton & Company

Life with Picasso · Françoise Gilot

The term has finished and I have a study break until January. This morning I watched two episodes of Kiljan, a weekly literary TV program in Iceland, read the first pages of Patti Smith's new book, Year of the Monkey, and caught up with books podcasts, which I haven't had time for since mid-October. In the coming weeks I intend to enjoy days like these to the fullest.

When I last signed in I had some ideas about how to keep my blog alive during my studies, for example with a new category about beautiful book covers, and nothing happened. This is the cover I wanted to feature first, a new edition of the memoir Life with Picasso (1964) by Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, which was published by New York Review Books last summer.

Cover image: Françoise Gilot, Self-Portrait, 1953
Cover design: Katy Homans

Françoise Gilot, So Far, So Near, 2016

In 1943, Gilot was just over twenty when she met Picasso, then 61 years old. They never married but their relationship lasted ten years and they had two children. The book will be on my next reading list, which I meant to share in October, and I can recommend it to anyone interested in art. The sections of the book containing her and Picasso's conversations about art are a joyful read.

Life with Picasso
By Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake
Paperback, 384 pages, illustrated
ISBN: 9781681373195
New York Review Books

bottom image by me, appeared on Instagram 03/07/2019 | Françoise Gilot painting via The Elkon Gallery