Thomas Mann, "Casa Buddenbrook"

 – e-book

Perioada lecturii 10 – 25 martie 2015

Votul meu:

Din ce spune Wikipedia, Thomas Mann s-a apucat să scrie Casa Buddenbrook la 22 de ani (şi a publicat-o în 1901, cînd avea 26 de ani), pe de o parte din admiraţia pentru operele realiste ale secolului al XIX-lea (în special Stendhal), pe de altă parte din dorinţa de a-şi măsura talentul cu acela al fratelui său mai mare Heinrich, căruia deja îi apăruse un roman şi lucra la al doilea. 

Deşi nu este cea mai buna carte a lui, este cu siguranţă cea mai populară, mai ales în Germania dar nu numai (se spune că Faulkner o considera o capodoperă) şi este sigur că în mare parte datorită ei a primit premiul Nobel pentru literatură. 

Doris Lessing, "The Grandmothers"

 – four short novels, Perennial 2005 ISBN 0-06-053011-1

Read from to March 5^th 18^th 2015

My rating:

All the reviews on Doris Lessing’s The Grandmothers I’ve read claim that the book is oddly uneven, with two brilliant and two poor stories. All of them put A love child on top, followed by Victoria and the Staveneys and they generally agree that The Grandmothers and The Reason of It are the worst.

Well, I beg to differ. As usual, Doris Lessing is a master of the literary techniques and the unity of The Grandmothers is realized by subtle but strong links between themes, motives, narrative perspectives, framing, narrative voices etc., that create a pattern of a beautiful discreet symmetry, giving the book all the coherence it needs to claim its unity either in structure and literary value.

Michel Houellebecq, "La possibilité d’une île"

 – Livre de poche 2008, ISBN : 2253115525 (ISBN13: 9782253115526)

Lu du 20 février au 12 mars 2015

Mon vote : 

La possibilité d’une île est le premier roman de Michel Houellebecq que je lis mais c’est sûr qu’il ne sera pas le dernier. Son écriture incitante et provocatrice, ou, comme lui-même le dit « singulièrement décapante » a, à peu près, tout ce que je cherche dans un livre : équilibre compositionnel, maîtrise du fil narratif, finesse stylistique, bref, une image qui ressort du tapis (pour emprunter la fameuse métaphore de Henry James) à la fois claire et compliquée, reposante et bouleversante, lumineuse et ombragée.

Sur le thème du manuscrit trouvé (l’histoire de Daniel1 est lue, deux millénaires plus tard par ses descendants Daniel24 et Daniel25) se construit une dystopie singulière, dans laquelle le futur n’est pas cauchemaresque parce ce qu’il a échoué dans la dictature de l’État (comme dans 1984, ou The Handmaid’s Tale, ou Brave New World pour ne pas citer que les plus fameuses), mais parce qu’il a « amélioré » l’homme, tout en le transformant  dans une « machine consciente » dépourvue de toute émotion et par conséquent, de toute frénésie d’exister qui définissait son humanité.

Denis de Rougemont, "Iubirea şi Occidentul"

– e-book

Perioada lecturii : 24 februarie – 9 martie 2015

Votul meu : 

      Am citit undeva că eseul lui Denis de Rougemont ar fi prima operă care analizează extensiv iubirea. Nu am verificat afirmaţia dar, deşi îmi vin în minte şi alte opere, ca Despre pasiunile sufletului a lui Descartes sau Despre iubire a lui Stendhal, Iubirea şi Occidentul rămîne cartea pe care aş recomanda-o în primul rînd celor interesaţi de acest subiect surprinzător de puţin studiat, dacă ne gîndim că nimeni n-a contestat încă adevărul celebrei afirmaţii danteşti despre iubirea care mişcă soarele şi celelalte stele.

      Premisa eseului scriitorului elveţian este aparent provocatoare: căsătoria şi iubirea nu sînt compatibile. Pentru a o demonstra, autorul pleacă de la mitul lui Tristan şi al Isoldei aşa cum apare el în literatura trubadurilor din secolul al XII-lea, mit care ar revela, pe de o parte, că o întreagă literatură s-a născut de pe urma crizei căsătoriei şi pe de altă parte că amorul-pasiune nu este iubirea de celălalt, ci iubirea de iubire. Denis de Rougemont pune aşadar în antiteză cele două concepte, afirmînd că au origini diferite : amorul-pasiune a fost inventat de tradiţia cavalerească (care, după cum vom vedea, ascultă de credinţe misterioase, eretice), în timp ce instituţia căsătoriei a fost consolidată de obiceiurile feudale (prin Biserică).

Stendhal, "Le Rouge et le Noir"

 – Éditions Rencontre Lausanne, 1961

Relu du 1^er février au 4 mars 2015

Mon vote :

Il a déjà été dit plusieurs fois, mais je ne me fatigue jamais de le redire, émerveillée – la fascination des classiques se trouve, pardonnez-moi le truisme, dans leur impeccable classicisme – c’est-à-dire, dans le fait qu’ils sont  en même temps anciens et actuels, connus et surprenants, lus et à découvrir.

Je relis, pour la troisième fois, je pense, Le Rouge et le Noir, et sa modernité m’éblouit comme si je le lisais pour la première fois. Je sais bien que Stendhal a été un innovateur dans le roman du XIXe siècle, et qu’il a contrarié ses contemporains par sa capacité, entre autres, de réinventer la sensibilité romantique avec des moyens réalistes, ce qui a fait Prosper Mérimée, si je me rappelle bien, lui reprocher d’avoir trahi l’idéal de l’art en dévoilant les tares indicibles de l’âme humaine. Mais je sais également que l’innovation littéraire n’est pas toujours une garantie d’immortalité, surtout étant donné la rapidité avec laquelle les nouveautés se démodent pour faire place à d’autres nouveautés.

Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"

 – e-book

Read from January 19^th to February 26^th 2015

My rating :

I can’t remember who told me, a long time ago, that Catch 22 is excruciatingly boring. It must have been someone whose judgment I trusted, for although I’ve had this book in my library for a very long time I’ve never come around reading it. Until a month ago, that is, when I decided the time had come to check the truth of this outrageous statement concerning one of the iconic books of the American literature.

It took me about 6 weeks to finish it and I must admit it was not easy. Furthermore, somewhere in the middle of the book I almost gave it up – now I’m glad I didn’t, because it improved sensibly towards the end. And now that I’m done with, I must try and put my thoughts in order a little, to make sense of my weird relationship with this novel, that sometimes irritated me immensely, and other times blew up my mind.

Cella Serghi, "Pînza de păianjen"

 – e-book

Perioada relecturii: 6 – 23 februarie 2015

Votul meu:

Nu ştiu de ce am simţit nevoia să recitesc romanul Cellei Serghi, după mai bine de 20 de ani. Poate pentru că aminteşte de el Mihail Sebastian în Jurnalul său, Jurnal care mi-a trezit nostalgia lecturilor din liceu, cînd priveam cu atîta admiraţie spre literatura noastră interbelică.

Din păcate, trecerea timpului nu mi-a schimbat impresia: acum ca şi atunci, nu pot vedea în Cella Serghi decît o autoare pasabilă, de vacanţă, fără vreo pretenţie reală la un loc alături de monştrii noştri sacri a căror contemporană a fost. Scriitura sa rămîne pentru mine în categoria chick-lit, prin miza pe sentimentalism şi melodramă, amestecate (ceea ce o salvează, oarecum) cu descrieri de bună forţă evocativă.

Yves Beauchemin, "Les émois d’un marchand de café"

 – Québec Amérique 1999, ISBN 978-2-8903-7993-0

Lu du 6 au 19 février 2015

Mon vote : 

Ma première rencontre avec un auteur québécois de langue française s’est révélée tout à fait charmante. Dans un style simple et robuste et préférant un néo-réalisme qui se moque éperdument de toutes les trouvailles postmodernistes de la fin du vingtième siècle, Yves Beauchemin développe dans Les émois d’un marchand de café un thème aux inépuisables ressources tragi-comiques : le bien qui peut faire du mal.

Wayne C. Booth, "Retorica romanului"

Prefață de Ștefan Stoenescu – Univers, București 1976

Perioada relecturii: 20 decembrie 2014 – 8 februarie 2015

Votul meu:

Wayne C. Booth este poate cel mai cunoscut dintre membrii Școlii de la Chicago, care prin anii ’60, se opuneau grupării Noua critică și a fermei convingeri a acesteia că opera literară este un obiect estetic autosuficient și autoreferențial, a cărei valoare trebuie căutată mai ales în limbaj și structură și al cărei autor poate fi ignorat. Pentru criticii neo-aristotelieni de la Chicago însă, stilul era doar un aspect, un material de construcție de importanță secundară în ansamblul operei.

Considerată cea mai importantă operă de critică literară după Anatomia criticii (1957) a lui Northrop Frye, Retorica romanului (și vorbesc aici despre ediția din 1961, căci din păcate nu am citit-o încă pe aceea revizuită trei decenii mai tîrziu) repune în discuție raportul autor-narator-cititor pornind de la trei afirmații: nu poți vorbi despre un text în afara autorului său; orice narațiune este o formă de retorică; orice operă de valoare își educă propriul cititor.

Ian McEwan, "Solar"

 – Vintage Canada Edition 2011 ISBN 978-0-307-39925-0

Read from January 23^rd to February 4^th 2015

My rating :

Should I feel ashamed? According to some critics of McEwan’s Solar I should, since its hero, Michael Beard, is a despicable character, a philanderer, a plagiarist, an egocentric and a criminal liar… whom I totally liked. Moreover, it is a long time since I have been so immersed in a reading to forget everything around me – last week I almost missed the metro stop on my way to university, so much I was enjoying this crazy, crazy book, which rose conflicting reactions among its readers.

One of the most acerbic reviews was written immediately after its apparition in 2010 by Jason Cowley in The Guardian (here it is). The journalist pointed out mercilessly many of what he considered the minuses of the novel, from the one-dimensional character to the trodden subject, from the sometimes nonsensical comedy to the lack of other perspectives, ending with a graphic image of the book as an empty room in which only the groan-like confession “of a fat, selfish man in late middle age eating himself” can be heard.

However seductive this metaphor of a novel speaking like an echoic chamber, I beg to differ. Not against the observations per se, they are true enough, but against the implication they are flaws.

Paul Celan, "Selected Poems"

 – e-book

Read from December 10^th to 16^th 2013

My rating:

“He speaks truly who speaks the shade”

I was eighteen and obsessed with this verse. I can’t remember where I found it, maybe I had read it in a book, maybe someone had given it to me (we used to collect quotes then). I knew it was Paul Celan’s, but I did not know Paul Celan. I did not even know how to pronounce his name – it sounded French to me, but I had a vague suspicion it could be Romanian. And of course, living in a communist Romania I couldn’t possible make a genuine research and soon I forgot about him or abandoned him for I had just discovered Dostoyevsky, my greatest obsession of all.

But, in some corner of my mind, Paul Celan always lingered and thirty years after I can at last put a title and a poem and a book around that strangely beautiful verse. I’ve also learned I was both right and wrong in my assumptions: Celan, an anagram of his real name, Anczel, was used as a pseudonym while publishing in a Romanian periodical, but otherwise his links with Romania were complicated, as were those of all our writers in exile (Cioran’s, Ionesco’s, Eliade’s, etc.) and in his case rather weak – it is hard to find a veritable influence of Romanian literature in his work, not at the same extent as French and German influence even though the poems he published at Bucharest immediately after WWII were in the Surrealist spirit still effervescent in Romania of that time. Anyway, his penname would eventually be pronounced in a French manner, since he lived in Paris until his death.

Shalom Auslander, "Hope: A Tragedy"

 – e-book

Read from January 17^th to January 29^th 2015

My rating:

The idea that hope is the hugest misfortune humanity was cursed with is not at all new. It is sadly revealed in the myth of Pandora’s box, it is thoroughly proved by the Buddhist equivalence between life and suffering, it is only apparently reversed by the Dantesque inscription on the hell gates “Lasciate ogni speranza…”

New in this disturbing book is the way the author chooses to interpret the theme. To prove, without doubt, that hope is a tragedy in a book that reads as a comedy is a masterstroke. The main tool, although not the only one, is the double entendre, that starts with the very title: is “tragedy” a synonym for hope, or simply a subtitle of the book (instead of the usual specification “a novel”) or is it a little of both?

Mario Vargas Llosa, "The Feast of the Goat"

 – e-book

Read from January  31^st to February18^th 2014

My rating:

They had forgotten the abuses, the murders, the corruption, the spying, the isolation, the fear: horror had become myth. "Everybody had jobs and there wasn't so much crime."

I keep remembering those summer nights, many years ago, when the air was heavy with the tension of passionate discussions about Ceausescu and the political changes after his death and the communism specter that continued to haunt our country.  We were young and full of hope and mockingly called all those regretting the past “old” and “nostalgic” while secretly being afraid of them.

During one of these conversations a friend of mine forecast that in the long run Ceausescu would become legend, his evil forgotten, his few achievements overstated. That statement seemed to me so inconceivable that I started a fight even though I knew very well he shared my political views.

Lars-Gunnar Andersson and Peter Trydgill, "Bad Language"

 – Penguin Books 1992

Read from January 13^th to 21^st 2015

My rating :

I come, I seen and done

There are at least three allegations in Lars-Gunnar Andersson and Peter Trydgill’s Bad Language to make the delight of every pupil and bring to despair any teacher:

1. English native speakers do not make grammatical mistakes in speaking;
2. There is no such thing as bad language (except for swearing, maybe);
3. What today is a mistake could be legit tomorrow.

 The first statement is so comforting I was seduced by it myself for a while. It is true, English is not my mother tongue, but I tried to verify it by remembering the mistakes my students often made in our own language and I soon realized that these mistakes didn’t necessarily come from a dialectal slip, but often from careless correlations between speaking and thinking and even more often from plain ignorance.

Doris Lessing, "The Old Age of El Magnifico"

 – Flamingo 2000

Read on January 22nd 2015

My rating :

Cat among Humans

My attitude toward cats has always been ambiguous. I mean, although I have never disliked them, nor have I loved them as I love dogs. Moreover, I always believed (subconsciously if I may use this lame excuse) in the cliché that a dog lover couldn’t be a cat lover.

However, lately, and probably because two of my close friends have got cats and often speak of them in a warm and delighted and intimate way, I began to look at them with a different eye, and I have to admit that there is something truly intriguing about them – an elegance, an aloofness and a dignity that seems to justify the fascination of so many artists with them.

Anișoara Odeanu, "Anotimpul pierdut"

– e-book

Perioada lecturii : 18 decembrie 2014 – 15 ianuarie 2015

Votul meu :

Mă întreb din ce motiv i-o fi schimbat Editura Eminescu Anișoarei Odeanu. la reeditarea în 1971, titlul romanului, din Călător din noaptea de Ajun (așa cum apare el în 1936), în Anotimpul pierdut. Să fi fost din motive strict comerciale sau poate din cauza unei vagi conotații religioase a primului titlu? Habar n-am, dar schimbarea nu mi se pare un cîștig, nici din punct de vedere stilistic, nici măcar publicitar. 

În altă ordine de idei, îmi propusesem de multă vreme să citesc acest roman, pe care-l amintește și Mihail Sebastian în Jurnalul său (e adevărat, doar ca să-l înțepe un pic pe Camil Petrescu, care ar fi sfătuit-o pe autoare să-l șteargă din dedicație pe Sebastian și să-l lase doar pe el), mai ales că știam că George Calinescu o numise „întîia ingenuă a literaturii române”. Acum constat că ar fi fost probabil  o idee mai bună să încep cu poezia ei, căci am pățit ca-n proverbul acela cu pomul și cu sacul. Vreau să spun că nu am găsit prea multe argumente (pe lîngă vocea feminină și cîteva găselnițe stilistice) ca să-l înscriu printre operele memorabile ale literaturii noastre. Dimpotrivă, dacă ar fi să-l caracterizez cu un singur cuvînt, acela ar fi – banal. Banal în sensul de cuminte, în contextul în care nu propune (și nici nu ascunde) nimic extraordinar, ca să folosesc un truism. Nici în structura epică, nici în construcția personajelor, nici în perspectiva narativă, cu toată prefața extrem de laudativă a lui Camil Petrescu. Să vedem.

Emily Bronte, "Wuthering Heights"

 – e-book

Read from: December 2^nd 2013 to January 3^rd 2014

My rating:

The Hero of All Anti-Heroes

Human soul is not necessarily beautiful even when it is hurting, love does not have to be unrequited or forbidden to be cursed, reason wide awake does not always keep monsters at bay, a strong will does not always mean a noble heart and weakness is not always to be pitied.

Or so Emily Bronte seems to tell us, in this strange story that keeps scattering old myths of star-crossed lovers that haunted the imagination of the mankind from Tristan and Isolde to Romeo and Juliet and beyond. What if, the author challenges us, love does not excuse everything? Moreover, what if it does not make us better, nobler, worthier, but rather reveals the darkness of our souls? What if the reasons of the heart are not reasons at all, but blind nature forces, wuthering winds that rise the soul to impossible heights only to let it fall more deeply into the abyss? And what if the soul not only accepts that but welcomes it?

“If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable. (…) I dreamt once that I was there. (…) heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights…”

Italo Calvino, "Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno"

 – e-book

Letto dal 12 al 26 marzo 2014

Il mio voto:

Ragni e lucciole

Com’era generosa e affascinante quell'epoca frenetica della “littérature engagée” che investiva l’autore non solo con l’autorità di diventare la portavoce della Storia ma anche con la capacità di influenzare le masse! Com’era seducente e quanti scrittori l’hanno corteggiata, tra cui Llosa, Calvino e tanti altri. Anche se dal loro giovane entusiasmo non sono nate capolavori, ci hanno regalato comunque qualche opera rimarcabile, lontana dall’ideologismo assurdo che prolifererà sotto il nome di realismo socialista nei paesi communisti dopo la Seconda Guerra.

Certo, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno non è espressionista nel senso sartriano della parola, ma neanche troppo neo-realista lo è, e ovviamente lontano del senso peggiorativo del termine. Nella prefazione, l’autore lo chiama, più adeguatamente, neo-espressionista, ma gli aggiunge una dimensione magica quando sceglie la perspettiva di un bambino, Pin, quello che dà alla narrazione quel “tono fiabesco” rimarcato da Cesare Pavese, spiegando nello stesso tempo l’inclusione dell’Isola del tesoro, di Stevenson, tra i modelli letterari che hanno influenzato il romanzo, accanto a Per chi suona la campagna, di Hemingway, L’armata a cavallo, di Babel e La disfatta, di Fadeev, libri che, soprattutto gli ultimi due, ad un primo sguardo sembrano più appropriati, siccome evocano sia la Guerra di Spagna sia la Guerra civile di Russia.

Bret Easton Ellis, "American Psycho"

 - e-book

Read from January 6^th to 29^th 2014

My rating: 

I take my cock, purple with stiffness, and lowering Torri's head to my lap I push it into her bloodied mouth and start fucking it, until I come, exploding into it. Afterwards I'm so hard I can even walk around the blood-soaked room carrying the head, which feels warm and weightless, on my dick.

It is never easy to speak about books like this, which make the readers so involved with the subject that they easily become impervious to the why-s and the how-s.

Especially when the two almighty gods of nowadays, Sex and Violence, escape from porn and horror and break free into literature. The reactions are to be expected, from denial of any artistic value to visceral disgusted rejection. For the latter I have one word to say: hypocrisy. We are, every single day, stuffed with incredible violence, real violence showed by TV and paper news, and virtual violence spread by dubious movies, videogames, books. Violence we forever close our eyes at, but this does not mean it goes away, it only means we are happy to live comfortably in our politically correct lies that whisper soothingly to us that what we do not see is not really real.  From this point of view, you can say this is a wake-up-people book, like in wake up before you lose whatever humanity you have left and become violence.

James Joyce, "Dubliners"

 – e-book

Read from June 6^th to 18^th 2013

My rating: 

The Winter of Our Oblivion

Joyce, you have to take him in small doses, carefully tasted and swallowed. Do not expect to like his universe, do not expect to lose yourself in some kind of epic bliss. You can never choose to be a first-level reader of his books (to use Umberto Eco‘s terminology), only a second-level one, that is, one who looks rather for how than for what it is told. If you don’t, the grey desperation of his characters can easily become your own, since their epiphanies are all about dullness and hopelessness, about bleakly understanding their lives and resigning to their fate.

The greatest epiphany concerns of course Dublin, the main character of Joyce’s books. Stephen Dedalus' and Leopold Bloom's Dublin, Dubliners' and Fineggan Wake’s Dublin is a dead, morose city where nothing happens, and nevertheless this “nothingness” gains Homeric proportions as every (apparently) insignificant hero fights for his right to be exactly this: insignificant. For there is a quiet dignity in these existences meant only for the background, in their determination to ascertain that background is also important. And maybe this is why the book begins with a death and finishes with “The Dead”, to emphasize that the lifeless life they lead, with their lack of ambitions, dreams, which seems to paralyze their actions and diminish their existence, is in fact life. Life of options you never considered, life of all that could have been but never was, second-hand life that suffocates you and cannot be redeemed. Not important, not novel-material, not exceptional – only life.