№ 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

№ 26 reading list: Beauvoir, Handke and Lowell

First, the book lover's confession: I have this tendency to go through periods where I read too many books at once, which is probably a form of addiction. Perhaps such periods depict restlessness and escapism, and blaming the pandemic has come in handy. Since last autumn there has been a lockdown in Austria, but with spring arriving - the vaccine too, hopefully - it's time for spring cleaning, to reduce the piles of books. It's going well. I have already read most of the books on the new reading list, which I intended to share in February, but I have been saving one: the 3rd volume of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography. I conditioned myself to complete certain books before meeting up with her again, this time in post-war France. The volume spans the period 1945 to 1963, when Beauvoir wrote, among others, her feminist work The Second Sex and the novel The Mandarins.

№ 26 reading list:

1  Suppose a Sentence  · Brian Dillon
2  Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader  · Vivian Gornick
3  Force of Circumstance  · Simone de Beauvoir
4  Wunschloses Unglück  · Peter Handke [German]
5  Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder  · Bertolt Brecht [German]
6  The Rings of Saturn  · W.G. Sebald
7  Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate  · Daniel Mendelsohn
8  Life Studies  · Robert Lowell
9  Letters Summer 1926  · Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva and Rainer

Maria Rilke

Translated by: 3) Force of Circumstance: Richard Howard

As I once promised, I have included on the list Brecht's masterpiece Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, which translates Mother Courage and Her Children (one of many editions available in English). Recently, I was browsing in an Icelandic digital archive, which gives access to articles in newspapers and periodicals, when I came across a theatre critique from 1965. At Christmas that year, Brecht's play was performed at The National Theatre of Iceland and the critic was far from impressed. If you can read Icelandic you will learn that it was mainly the director's fault.

Featuring the Austrian writer Peter Handke on a reading list without saying a few words about him is unthinkable. He received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature, which by many within literary circles was considered a controversial decision. Handke's career starts in the sixties but suddenly in the nineties, he becomes controversial when his writings about the wars in former Yugoslavia start appearing. Without hesitation he criticised the media coverage of what was taking place in the Balkans, the language applied to describe events. A turning point was an article by Handke that appeared in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in 1996, a travelogue about Serbia with a "provocative headline" written by the editors (Icelandic source).

It certainly didn't help Handke's cause when he visited Slobodan Milosevic in prison when the former president was being tried by The International Criminal Court in The Hague. And to make matters worse he attended and spoke at his funeral in Serbia in 2006. However, many argue that nothing in Handke's writings justifies the attacks against him, which allows one to conclude that those who have been the loudest have, in fact, not read his works.

Left: Austrian writer and Nobel laureate Peter Handke;
right: American poet Robert Lowell

Handke's book on the reading list, Wunschloses Unglück, was published in 1972. It's a short, well-written, semi-autobiographical book, prompted by his mother's suicide. Its English title is A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. I recently bought a German edition of Handke's book Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell, published by NYRB) which I will soon include on a reading list. If you speak Icelandic you may be interested in three links I shared in this same entry on my Icelandic blog. They include interesting discussions about Handke and his works on RÚV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

It is worth mentioning that Handke, in collaboration with the German director Wim Wenders, wrote the screenplay for the 1987 film Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), including the poem Lied vom Kindsein, which Bruno Ganz recites at its start.

My reading lists do not often feature poetry, but at Christmas a friend in Iceland gave me a Faber & Faber edition of Life Studies by Robert Lowell. It was first published in 1959 and contains confessional poems, e.g. Skunk Hour (dedicated to poet Elizabeth Bishop) and Waking in the Blue, and the prose memoir 91 Revere Street. This groundbreaking collection won Lowell the National Book Award for Poetry. I see myself reading it again and again.

top image by me | writers: 01: Peter Handke by A. Mahmoud via The Nobel Prize | 02: Robert Lowell via Put This On

№ 25 reading list: women only

Happy New Year! I would like to start the year with a new reading list, consisting of books by women only. As you probably know, Elizabeth Hardwick is a great favourite; her essay collection Seduction and Betrayal features female writers and women in literature. It so happens that Joan Didion, who has a book on the list, writes the introduction to the collection, which includes an essay about the Bloomsbury group and Virginia Woolf, who is also on the list.

№ 25 reading list:

1  Seduction and Betrayal  · Elizabeth Hardwick
2  Ninth Street Women  · Mary Gabriel
3  Approaching Eye Level  · Vivian Gornick
4  Intimations: Six Essays  · Zadie Smith
5  On Beauty  · Zadie Smith
6  The Waves  · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
7  Slouching Towards Bethlehem  · Joan Didion [rereading]

I have to confess that the list has been so long in the blog's draft that I have already read five of the seven books. I'm not far into the Mary Gabriel one - its snappy full title is Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art - but can already recommend it. Gail Levin's biography of Lee Krasner was on my № 24 reading list. I can also recommend that one but if I had to choose between the two I would pick Ninth Street Women. Even though Gabriel doesn't go into details about the artists' childhoods, I find her book more enjoyable to read. It's also better designed and images of artworks are in colour. Levin's book about Krasner is obviously well researched but the text is sometimes too academic for my taste which restricts its flow. In my copy, a William Morrow paperback, the paper is of poorer quality and the images of Krasner's artwork are in black and white only.

Lee Krasner, The Seasons, 1957

images mine, the 2nd appeared on Instagram 05/11/20 | Lee Krasner artwork, Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Whitney Museum of American Art via Haus der Kunst

Reading journal: Mendelsohn and Gornick

My holiday break has started and these days I carry with me an agreeable stack of books. Not far though, we are in a Coronavirus lockdown in Austria. Some were on my last reading list and I‘m still reading them, others are new ones that will appear on my next two lists. On Monday I received Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate by author, critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn. I meant to put it under the tree this year, as a Christmas present to myself, but I started reading it during a coffee break and couldn‘t put it down. It's short and contains three essays, an interesting mix of biographical writing, history and literary criticism, in essence about the writers Erich Auerbach, François Fénelon and W. G. Sebald. If you like books about books this one might appeal to you.

Another book in my stack is an essay collection by Vivian Gornick, Approaching Eye Level. It's my first by her; not the last. It goes down well with coffee and biscotti, as I predicted in my last blog entry.

In the Reading journal entries I have talked about books from a specific reading list but some time ago I felt the need to make changes, to make the journal more random and current. I also needed a category to archive my literary bookmarks. I mentioned once that it was never the idea to comment on all the books on my reading lists. I’m a picky reader and am seldom disappointed with the books on my lists. Sometimes when I truly enjoy a book, all I want to say is I loved this book and nothing else. That, however, hardly calls for a blog entry, using Instagram or Twitter is better.

Bookmarks & journal notes

Books I recently bought:
✔  Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon
✔  The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald

... added to my wish list:
✔  The Krull House by Georges Simenon

... prioritised on my TBR:
✔  fiction: Oresteia: Agamemnon. Libation-Bearers. Eumenides by Aeschylus
✔  non-fiction: Trieste by Jan Morris

Bookish joy:
✔  The moment when Margaret Busby, chair of the 2020 Booker Prize judges, announced Shuggie Bain had won and its author Douglas Stuart gave an emotional acceptance speech. When Stuart won I literally screamed out loud for joy, even though I still hadn't read his debut novel. I was rooting for him but was afraid that a white male author wouldn't win.

Podcasts I can recommend:
▶  Back to Shuggie Bain: Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, recently talked to its author Douglas Stuart on their podcast, The Book Club.
▶  And here Leith talks to Natalie Haynes about women in the Greek myths.
▶  In conversation with Eleanor Wachtel of Writers & Company, Martin Amis talks about literary life, loves and losses. A very honest and sincere Amis.
▶  I rejoiced when I saw that Stig Abell, the former editor of the TLS, has a new podcast called Stig Abell's Guide to Reading. (The TLS podcast is not the same without him.) The new podcast accompanies his recently published book Things I Learned on the 6.28: A Guide to Daily Reading. These two episodes are my favourites so far: Modern Literary Fiction with Kit de Waal and English Classics with Sam Leith, the aforementioned editor.

images by me, appeared on Instagram 14/12/20; 12/12/20; 23/11/20

Approaching Eye Level · Vivian Gornick

Approaching Eye Level by Vivian Gornick is a collection of essays, originally published in 1996. This is a UK edition, published by Daunt Books in August this year. Gornick is one of those authors I have followed for a long time but never read. One day I intend to do something about that. I can already picture a stack of her books that have found their way to my wish list: Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader, published last year in which she explores rereading, the essay collection The End of the Novel of Love, and two memoirs, Fierce Attachments and The Odd Woman and the City. Latte, biscotti and Gornick must be a gratifying combination.

Approaching Eye Level
By Vivian Gornick
Paperback, 176 pages
ISBN: 9781911547648
Daunt Books