Luke Dittrich, “Patient H.M. A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets”

 – e-book

 Read from October 2^nd to 24^th 2021

My rating: 

 

 The first part of Luke Dittrich’s study-cum-(auto)biography-cum-history of lobotomy was interesting enough, although I was a little amused, a little put off of by what Steven Rose maliciously called, in his  Patient HM review – a botched lobotomythat changed science, a „rather florid American style”. Unfortunately, the last hundred pages or so seemed to me unjustifiably long and slightly boring.

The big plus, however, is that I’ve learned a lot of interesting things (and even remembered some I had forgotten, like the story of Herophilus and Erasistratus from Alexandria, who, around 300 B.C., were the first to perform human dissection, on dead, but also on some alive).

Art Spiegelman, "Maus. A Survivor’s Tale

 

I : My Father bleeds History, New York 1986 ISBN 0-394-74723-2. – 160 p;

 

 

II And Here My Troubles Began, New York 1991, ISBN 0-679-72977-1 – 136 p.

Read from to September 9^th to 17^th to 24^th 2021

My Rating 

 

I haven’t read many graphic books until now, even though my own daughter is a quite well-known cartoonist. But even a neophyte like me can recognize a masterpiece, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus is definitely one, with its amazing way of developing the distressing theme of the Holocaust using a mixture of tools from different arts.

In fact, this is what fascinated me most, the way narrative conventions, like timeline fractures, narrative voices, styles mixtures (either collages or insertions of panels from other author’s books), transgress not only the boundary between fiction and reality, as it happens in any memoir, but also the boundary between drawing and writing.

Lisa Smartt, "Words at the Threshold"

– e-book

 

Read from February 19^th to March 4^th 2021

My rating: 

 

 

 Maybe I wanted to read Lisa Smartt’s book, Words at the Threshold, because the agony has always been a painfully fascinating theme, with its thread of light under an otherwise firmly closed door, to take farther the metaphor in the title. Maybe because, like many others, I have always hoped to have an epiphany after hearing stories about it, in order to discover that death is nothing to be afraid of. Or maybe because apart from the fact that death is fascinating in its own terrifying way in any circumstances, it is when it robs you of a beloved that you need most to be reassured that it is only temporary, while desperately looking for explanations, for signs, for proof of another (better) world to alleviate your grief.

In such times, books like this one seem to help you cope. When my father died, I re-read Raymond A. Moody’s Life after Life for these exact reasons, somehow hoping to reconnect with my dad at another level. It did not happen, not in the way Lisa Smartt describes the reconnection with her own father, but it gave me peace, encouraging me to doubt the finality of death, to dream that sometime in the future...

Mary Roach, “Stiff. The curious Lives of Human Cadavers”

  – e-book 

 

Read from February February 2^nd to 18^th 2021

My Rating : 

 The horizon of expectations induced by the title of Mary Roach’s book, Stiff. The curious Lives of Human Cadavers, is, without a doubt, fulfilled. In fact, the whole book is a very interesting and pretty original effort to encourage people to change their belief that cadavers are gruesome, eerie, disgusting or simply boring, by proving that they are in fact some sort of superheroes, working for the ‘betterment of humankind’, that is helping us to test, experiment and understand the human body: they were the first ‘victims’ of the guillotine, the first subjects of the new embalming techniques, the first passengers to wear a seat belt. Moreover, that there is nothing disrespectful in relating amusing stories about them, for a cadaver is not a person anymore, it is simply an object without much dignity left:

Being dead is absurd. It's the silliest situation you'll find yourself in. Your limbs are floppy and uncooperative. Your mouth hangs open. Being dead is unsightly and stinky and embarrassing, and there's not a damn thing to be done about it.

Arthur Hoyle - "Mavericks, Mystics and Misfits. Americans against the grain"

– e-book

 

Read from February 17^th to March 12^th 2020

My rating: 

This review has been published by Across the Margin 


Bricks in the (foundation) wall 

I have known and read the biographer and the essayist Arthur Hoyle for several years now. His debut book, The Unknown Henry Miller A Seeker in Big Sur, impressed me with its thorough research, its ample information, its true passion for the chosen subject. Henry Miller is America’s voice, America’s iconic image, Arthur Hoyle kept reminding us, and he should not to be forgotten by his fellow Americans. 

In his second book, the author continues to look for the essential qualities of the American soul in the life and work of other personalities who refused to conform to the norm, drawing, with the same firm and gifted hand he accustomed us to, the complex portrait of that America rendered unique by its brilliant seekers, from one restless Henry Miller to other Mavericks, Mystics and Misfits. As he explains in the Introduction:

These individuals have been chosen because their life stories, though often at variance with the direction of the mainstream society around them, exhibit certain endur­ing qualities of the American character that persist despite the changing circumstances of time and place.

Solomon Northup, „12 ani de sclavie”

 – e-book

Perioada lecturii: 17 octombrie – 4 noiembrie 2019

Votul meu: 

Aproape tot timpul în care am citit povestea celor 12 ani de sclavie ai lui Solomon Northup m-am gîndit la romanul lui Margaret Mitchell, Pe aripile vîntului, meditînd la felul în care te poate convinge o carte cît de cît bine scrisă să iei ficțiunea drept realitate, mai ales cînd ești foarte tînăr și ți-e capul împuiat cu idei romantice care țin loc de informații, cum e și firesc, poate, la vîrsta aia.. Ca adolescentă, mi se  părea atît de tragică soarta Sudului, în ai cărui locuitori vedeam o clasă nobilă si cultă, strivită sub cizma grosolană a needucaților yankei. Pe de altă parte problema sclaviei, chiar dacă declanșase războiul civil american, mi se părea de importanță secundară, soarta negrilor, așa cum o prezenta cartea, nefiind deloc rea, cu unele excepții regretabile. Imagini idilice, cu sclavi cîntînd seara în colibele lor și cu negrese mămoase și autoritare crescînd generații de copii albi care le știau de frică mai mult decît mamelor lor se amestecau cu cele apocaliptice ale distrugerii fără sens a unei lumi, a unui stil de viață. 

În plus, romanul lui Harriet Beecher Stowe, Coliba unchiului Tom, citit aproape imediat după aceea, mi se părea prost scris și exagerat și tezist, probabil și pentru că subconștientul meu refuza să renunțe la imaginile pe care le-am descris mai sus. 

Sandra Newman, "The Western Lit Survival Kit"

An irreverent guide to the classics, from Homer to Faulkner - e-book

Read from 10^th to 27^th of September 2019

My rating:

My, my, this Sandra Newman, what a cheeky, irreverent hussy, to pleonastically put it! Daring to desecrate the Cathedral of Literature by entering it with an impertinent whistle only to deliver her Western Lit Survival Kit with no respect whatsoever for the holy names inside. How all its saints must have shuddered, including the Shakespeare God. Obviously, nothing is sacred anymore. Think of all those authors you have always tiptoed around, whose oeuvres you did not run the risk to open out of awe and/ or fear of not being the ideal reader they expected you to be, becoming the laughingstock of this brazen, sparkling American who sanctions mercilessly all books that don’t provide enough fun in reading.

Moreover, forcing me to take a walk down memory lane, to remember myself from the age of seven, from that moment when I took a book in my hand and discovered I could read in my mind, since then not to let one single day pass without reading at least ten pages, but usually much, much more. Why? Obviously, because I was having fun. When has this changed? I suppose when I decided to build a career on them books, by studying Letters. In a moment, to read what I liked irreversibly changed into reading what I had to. This habit is so ingrained now, that when I like a book too much, I look at it suspiciously, subconsciously considering its accessibility a fault. It took Sandra Newman’s essay to figure out that I am nothing more than a literary snob. And to finally admit that, yes, people, reading should be having fun. Even if it is about masterpieces, especially if it is about masterpieces. And this essay is a funny, although never superficial guide into oeuvres so great everybody knows about, but nobody reads anymore because they are not credited with fun. And many of them have it in loads. If you know where to look, that is.

Michelle Obama, “Becoming”

 – e-book

Genre: memoir 

Read from April 14^th to May 28^th 2019

My rating: 

“When they go low, we go high.”

How these Michelle Obama’s words, which I think are the quintessence of this amazing woman’s personality, sound truer and truer lately! I so needed her memoir (which was all I’ve expected it to be and more – the story of a proud, uncompromising woman), to restore even a little my confidence in a humanity that seems to have lost all its sense of value nowadays. 

Afua Hirsch, the “Guardian” journalist, says in her review,  with that English candour (I know she’s not born in UK, but still) that always makes you smile just a little bit exasperated, that if Michelle Obama were British hers would be a class tale. But isn’t it though? And not only a class tale, but also a race and a gender tale. For the message M. Obama sends, loud and clear, is that you can become anything you want not necessarily in spite of, but also because your modest origins, your skin colour and your, to use Simone de Beauvoir’s expression, second sex. 

Her astonishing parcourse, her majestic tenue, her exemplary story is yours to discover in a book that will help you become, too. Meanwhile, I leave you with some quotes that can better than any of my words illustrate the multiple facets, each one bright and shining, of her personality. The first one, dealing with the death of her father, helped me grieve somehow more peacefully the loss of my own, this spring:

It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open I the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful —a purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids—and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.

The next ones show that you can erase or at least attenuate the negative connotation of difficulty, obstruction, ugliness and use them as steps in your becoming:

If I’d learned anything from the ugliness of the campaign, from the myriad ways people had sought to write me off as angry or unbecoming, it was that public judgment sweeps in to fill any void. If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.

*

There’s an age-old maxim in the black community: You’ve got to be twice as good to get half as far. As the first African American family in the White House, we were being viewed as representatives of our race. Any error or lapse in judgment, we knew, would be magnified, read as something more than what it was.

*

We understood that we represented the nation and were obligated to step forward and be present when there was tragedy, or hardship, or confusion. Part of our role, as we understood it, was to model reason, compassion, and consistency.

It is true that sometimes you may feel, together with her, that all her and her husband’s efforts, dictated by reason and compassion, have been futile, that mankind never learns:

Since Barack left office, I’ve read news stories that turn my stomach. I’ve lain awake at night, fuming over what’s come to pass. It’s been distressing to see how the behavior and the political agenda of the current president have caused many Americans to doubt themselves and to doubt and fear one another. It’s been hard to watch as carefully built, compassionate policies have been rolled back, as we’ve alienated some of our closest allies and left vulnerable members of our society exposed and dehumanized. I sometimes wonder where the bottom might be.

But she also gives you hope for change given that nothing has been built in one day, and makes you aware how a solid foundation stone Obama family put in place so that tomorrow have less the consistency of a dream and more the consistency of reality: 

There are portraits of me and Barack now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, a fact that humbles us both. I doubt that anyone looking at our two childhoods, our circumstances, would ever have predicted we’d land in those halls. The paintings are lovely, but what matters most is that they’re there for young people to see—that our faces help dismantle the perception that in order to be enshrined in history, you have to look a certain way. If we belong, then so, too, can many others.

Because in the end, and this is one lesson everybody should learn thoroughly,

It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others.

Niall Ferguson, "The Square and the Tower"

 Penguin Books 2017

Read from February 23^rd to May 4^th 2019

My rating: 

I received Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower as a gift from my best friend and I have to confess that  when I first read the title, I thought it was a checkers metaphor - but no, actually it is inspired by two architectural designs, one medieval and the other contemporary. 

The medieval one is a landscape from fourteenth century Siena with its Torre del Mangia of the Palazzo Pubblico shadowing a popular market and meeting place named Piazza del Campo. The tower’s height, matching the height of the city Cathedral on the hill was meant to symbolize “the parity of temporal and spiritual hierarchies”. 

The second one is an imaginary juxtaposition eliminating the distance between Silicon Valley and New York City’s 5^th Avenue, to re-enact the same symbolism of the market shadowed by a tower that Trump has always falsely claimed it has 68 floors, instead of 58: 

Silicon Valley prefers to lie low, and not only for fear of earthquakes. Its horizontal architecture reflects the reality that it is the most important hub of the global network: the world’s town square. 

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, “The Ravenous Muse: A Table of Dark and Comic Contents, a Bacchanal of Books”

 – Pantheon, 1998. Illustrator, Dugald Stermer, Designer, Fearn Cutler. ISBN 067941861X; 248 p.

Read from April 9^th to May 2^nd 2018

My rating : 

You know that old saying, “You can’t judge a book by its cover”? Well, I have always considered it to be true, especially in its literal sense, therefore the cover of a book has never been a criterion in my reading choice – until now. I mean, until I was given, as a birthday present, some three months ago, Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s Ravenous Muse, and I so fell in love with Dugald Stermer’s drawing on it that it gave me the impulse to read it as soon as possible, despite the huge pile of books reproachingly hovering over me.

And I have not, for a single day of all 23 spent on reading it, regretted this impulse, not only because I so enjoyed looking at its amazing cover every time I closed it, but also because the cover really delivers, keeping its promise to feed the reader to his entire satisfaction, promise reinforced by the introduction:

Since you are here, you too must be a bibliogourmand, taking sensual as well as cerebral pleasure in the act of reading. And that’s what’s on the table here: creation caught in the act, writer and muse in flagrante delicto, biting each other’s mouths.

Richard Russo, “Empire Falls”

 – e-book

Read from March 17^thto April 2^nd2018

My rating:

Richard Russo’s Empire Falls reminded me of John Edward Williams’s Stoner in more ways than one – of course, it is about different events, a different narrative structure and not in the least it is written in a different style, but in the end both tell the story of a luckless, lost hero who does nothing to escape his fate and whose sense of responsibility is somehow overgrown. Moreover, both novels have a genially deceitful title, based on wordplay: “Stoner” is not a state of mind or body but simply the name of the hero and “Empire Falls” is not a historical evocation of a falling civilisation, but simply the name of the town where the action takes place. In other words, grammatically speaking that is, “stoner” is not a common noun and “falls” is not a verb. 

Nonetheless, Empire Fallsis an epic name for an epic story, but not in the sense the title a prioritricks us to think. Of course, a posteriori,you may always find a similitude between empires that fall when lives fall. From this point of view, the New England obscure town is as small as a village and as big as a country – a microcosm revealing the macrocosm. A town where nothing happens and all happens, which has its share of bad and good guys, boring or interesting, and is under the protection of a malevolent god, Francine Whiting who, (and this made me study the physiognomy of many a female colleague of mine J) “in the manner of a great many women of French Canadian ancestry, …lacked a chin, as if someone had already pinched her there.” (the original text is in italics)

Michael Shermer, „De ce cred oamenii in bazaconii. Pseudoștiință, superstiții și alte aiureli ale vremurilor noastre”

(Why People Believe Weird Things. Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time). Traducere din engleză de Anca Florescu-Mitchell.  e-book

Perioada lecturii: 4 – 17 martie 2018

Votul meu:

Nu-mi place să încep proiecte marțea. Bat în lemn să alung ghinionul, da’ nu în masă că se potrivește. Nu pun niciodată paharul jos fără să beau din el, după ce am dat noroc. Am o ușoară stare de neliniște existențială în zilele de 13 (mai ales dacă-i și marți). Nu mă duc la biserică, da’ nici nu îndrăznesc să mă declar atee – dacă Dumnezeu există totuși și mă aude? Nu mă miră deci că, de-a lungul întregii lecturi a eseului De ce cred oamenii în bazaconii, Michael Shermer mi-a vorbit cu vocea prietenei mele Nana – cu aceeași ironie, cu același umor și cu aceeași mirare amuzată în fața misterelor din mintea umană, care-i conduce uneori la raționamente absurde chiar și pe cei mai inteligenți (așa ca mine J ).

Desigur, la fel ca prietena mea Nana, care s-a priceput nu o dată să pună frîu imaginației mele cînd începea s-o ia razna, Michael Shermer e un sceptic. Iar scepticii sînt adesea priviți cu suspiciune de ceilalți, ba chiar acuzați că ar călca în picioare lucrurile sacre ale umanității, ca tradiții, eresuri, credințe. Aceasta pentru că lumea uită că, așa cum observă și Stephen Jay Gould în prefață, aceste intangibile sacralități au scos adesea la iveală monștrii din noi, conducînd la genocide, la robie și alte încălcări flagrante ale demnității umane, demnitate pe care scepticismul vrea s-o restabilească pentru că el este „agentul rațiunii împotriva iraționalului organizat... una din cheile decenței umane, sociale și civice.”

Katherine Anne Porter, „Corabia nebunilor”

– Ship of Fools. Traducerea Eugen B. Marian – e-book.

Perioada lecturii: 11 februarie – 11 martie 2018

Votul meu:

Cu toate că mama avea Corabia nebunilor a lui Katherine Anne Porter în bibliotecă de cînd eram copil (din cîte știu, o mai are încă – chiar ediția aceasta, publicată de Cartea românească în 1975 – oare  o mai fi fost reeditată?), și deși pe vremea aceea citeam cam tot ce-mi pica în mînă, nu știu de ce romanul ăsta nu m-a atras – ceva nu-mi plăcea la el, poate coperta (că titlul corespundea destul de bine orizonturilor mele de așteptare), sau poate l-oi fi răsfoit și nu mi-a plăcut stilul, nu-mi amintesc, cert este că îl citesc, iată, la mai bine de 40 de ani de la publicare și la aproape 60 de la apariția sa din 1962.

În orice caz, dacă stilul este cel care m-a făcut să-l ocolesc, trebuie să spun că intuiția mea a funcționat. Nu că nu ar merita să fie citit, de fapt, în linii mari romanul este destul de interesant,  în ciuda aerului ușor demodat și oarecum lipsit de strălucire, cauzat poate și de caracterul hibrid al scriiturii, în sens negativ, nu postmodernist: naratorul este ba omniscient ba introspectiv, preluînd vocea interioară a unuia sau a altuia dintre personaje, dar trecerea de la o ipostază narativă la alta este făcută cu o mai mare grijă pentru echilibru și simetrie decît pentru finețea tranziției (fiecare personaj trebuie să aibă timp egal de apariție, probabil pentru a nu-și putea aroga titlul de erou principal, în detrimentul celorlalte) astfel încît întreg romanul pare să ezite între o abordare modernistă sau realistă a narațiunii.