Tatiana Niculescu Bran, "Povestea domniței Marina și a basarabeanului necunoscut"

– e-book

Perioada lecturii: 22 iulie – 28 octombrie 2015

Votul meu:

Încerc să înțeleg, de ieri încoace, adică de cînd am terminat-o, de ce mi-au trebuit mai bine de trei luni să citesc Povestea domniței Marina și a basarabeanului necunoscut, de Tatiana Niculescu Bran, în contextul în care nu este o carte groasă și nu este o carte plicticoasă. De ce adică, în ciuda faptului că îmi plăcea cu adevărat în timpul lecturii, putea trece și săptămînă pînă să o deschid din nou, lucru oarecum bizar dat fiind că nu sînt o cititoare leneșă și nici prea răbdătoare.

Julio Cortazar, "Hopscotch"

(Rayuela), translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa – Pantheon Books, New York 1986 ISBN 0-394-75284-8

Read from September 8^th to October 26^th 2015

My rating:

Every move you make Every page you take – I’ll be watching you

A few nights ago I dreamt one of those bizarre dreams in which I was literally jumping from one page to another depending on the falling of the pebble-pen I kept throwing on a giant book opened at my feet. I often dream I’m reading or, if it happens to be a nightmare, trying very hard to make sense of an illegible page, but this time I paid no attention to the words I was seeing, so focused I was on the game itself.

When I woke up, I realized on one hand that I subconsciously associated a short story I read a long time ago about two characters literally living in a bookland with Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch, and on the other hand that for the first time ever I didn’t consider looking at the narrative technique as “work” and following the story as “play”; moreover, I was having such a wonderful time playing by the rules enunciated by the author that I didn’t care much for the story, so that I could happily contradict one of the characters’ belief that:

…no real revolution has ever been made against form. What counts is content, man, content.

Richard Lederer, "Anguished English. An anthology of Accidental Assaults upon English Language"

– Gibbs Smith 2006

Read from: February 10^th to 17^th 2014

My rating:

As a teacher, I have stumbled upon linguistic jewels for many years, in my students compositions and tests.  Sometimes I happened to hear them at TV or in the street, or read them in the press.

I intended, just like Richard Lederer, to make someday a book out of them, but I never imagined this book as a mere anthology – at the end of the day, how long can you laugh while reading page after page of jokes? How many spoons of honey can you eat before becoming sick? In other words, the real challenge is to seek a certain approach, either stylistic, philosophic and/ or linguistic, around which to organize the material.

These are my two main complaints regarding Anguished English: the careless organization of the contents (in spite of its chapters and subchapters, which could have been regrouped more efficiently to avoid repetition anyway)  and the hybrid character: it could have been either an anthology or a linguistic study but it’s both and finally neither.

John Dos Passos, "Manhattan Transfer"

 – Mariner Books 2003

Read from February 19^th to March 16^th 2014

My rating:

 

How can be explained the complicated and fascinating relationship between the city and the narrator in all major Modernist works whose theme is urbanity? Think of James Joyce’s Dublin, dull and suffocating, with its Evelyns forever clued on the shore they dare not leave. Think of Henry Miller’s Paris, with its siren song that entangles the artists to better devour them. Think of Virginia Woolf’s London, collecting thoughts and fates in the glimpse of a park, the rush of a street, the passing of a tram. Think of John Dos Passos’s New York glowing with promises that it never keeps.

David Lodge, "Cît să-ntindem coarda"

– Editura Polirom, 2004

Perioada lecturii: 6 – 23 august 2012

Votul meu:

A-l citi pe Lodge nu e niciodată atît de simplu pe cît pare la prima vedere. Ironia şi verva povestirii te pot impiedica uneori să treci de primele niveluri de lectură şi te pot face să uiţi, mult mai uşor decît în cazul altor scriitori dublaţi de critici literari, că autorul ştie să mînuiască toate uneltele narative, că un artificiu literar nu e niciodată folosit empiric sau inocent, că există nişte sfori care manevrează personajele şi un subtil deus ex machina care împinge inexorabil acţiunea spre un deznodămînt.

Numai că de data aceasta Marele Păpuşar s-a hotărît să se deconspire, să iasă la lumina reflectoarelor conform bunului obicei postmodernist, transformîndu-se în narator-personaj-romancier-critic literar, într-o polemică indulgentă cu sine şi cu cititorul, care are ca rezultat o ludică reinterpretare a metaromanului ca gen.

Neagu Djuvara, "O scurtă istorie a românilor povestită celor tineri"

– Humanitas 2010

Citită de pe 10 pe 23 noiembrie 2013

Votul meu:

Știați că :

Decebal se pronunță de fapt Dechebal?

Barbar însemna inițial străin?

Nu se știe unde s-a dat de fapt bătălia de la Posada, nici lupta de la Rovine?

Numele țigan vine din grecește și înseamnă „a nu se atinge”, iar cel de rom de la o provincie care se numea Romania (pe undeva prin sudul Bulgariei și partea europeană a Turciei) unde s-au stabilit aceștia după ce au fugit din India, acum multe secole?

Margaret Atwood, "Survival – A Thematical Guide To Canadian Literature"

- Anansi Toronto 1972 ISBN 088784-613-0

Read from September 16^th to October 2^nd 2015

My rating:

I think this is the first time ever I’ve read a book of literary criticism without being familiar with the name of at least some of the writers it was talking about (in fact I know of two of them, Alice Munro and Leonard Cohen, but theses ones are too little discussed to really count).

It was a strange feeling, as when familiar ground becomes suddenly unfamiliar, however, it did not stir any inferiority complex, since I’m fully aware my “Calit” knowledge is very limited. In fact, this is one of the reasons I decided to read it – to guide me through a culture I’ve been curious about since I came here, ten years ago. Another reason is of course, the author – not only I am a big fan of Margaret Atwood but I’ve also been always interested in the iconic writers’ attitude towards the literature of their native country.

Milan Kundera, "Cartea rîsului şi a uitării"

– e-book

Perioada lecturii: 16-23 septembrie 2014

Votul meu :

Despre îngerii uitării şi demonii rîsului

Trec anii şi vremurile acelea comuniste de lipsuri materiale şi spirituale, îndoctrinare politică şi batjocură intelectuală par din ce în ce mai îndepărtate. Trec anii şi frustrările de atunci par exagerate şi le rememorăm sub cenzura ironiei şi a minimalizării, transformîndu-le în anecdote şi poate în mituri urbane. La urma urmelor, e adevărat ce spune Kundera, că istoria nu se scrie sub ochii noştri, ea se uită acolo, printre adevărurile  trunchiate din documentele oficiale şi evocările dramatice dar personale din literatura exilului.

Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Master and Margarita"

– e-book

Read from March 5^th to 19^th 2013

My rating:

'When I emerged into the world clutching my novel, my life came to an end…'

“If the whole world I once could see

On free soil stand, with the people free

Then to the moment might I say,

Linger awhile… so fair thou art.”  

(Goethe, Faust)

“At the sunset hour of one warm spring day“ some time in the early 20^th century, here comes Devil to play havoc with the Muscovite literary and artistic life. It was the morning of the same day, two thousand years earlier, when Pontius Pilate had confronted Yeshua Ha-Notsri and decided it was too dangerous not to let him die. Or so the story goes, says the Devil. The story which Matthew the Levite recorded and the Master imagined, the story which Margarita saved and Ivan dreamt. The Story which this book is about.

Philip Roth, "The Plot Against America"

 – Vintage 2005, ISBN: 9781400079490

Read from: August 9^th to September 3^rd 2015

My rating:

Reality in the Making

Is there a more obsessively repeated question than “what if”? We ask it when we regret past actions, we ask it when we are frustrated by unexpected results, we ask it when we dream of changes. It is true, we rarely ask it to wonder whether things could have turned worse. Except for authors, of course, with their habit of diving straight into nightmares.

Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America is just this kind of a “what if” turned bad. Written in the style of non fiction novels, it looks so much like a historical memoir that you frequently have to remember that the events you are reading about never truly happened in those troubled times of the World War Two. A disquieting feeling of a disaster in the waiting, maybe because even though so far away, America did not entirely escape either the Nazi propaganda nor the blindness in front of the evil and so, under slightly changed circumstances it could have easily followed another way.

Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World Revisited"

 – Perennial Library, New York, 1965

Read from august 18^th to 30^th 2015

My rating:

Quis custodiet custodes?

Mankind has always dreamed of the perfect society, just as it has always feared the oppressive one. From this dream has been born the fantasy of Utopia and from this fear the nightmare of Dystopia.

But is Utopia truly the antithesis of Dystopia, and is it really an egalitarian society possible? From Thomas More to Karl Marx and H. G. Wells and many others, this perfect society generally abides by some rigid, unimaginative and sometimes implausible rules, the main one being the austerity caused by the absence of personal property. But, as it has already been seen in all Communist countries, this invests the State with an incredible power over the individual, denying the latter its importance whilst overstressing the importance of the community. And because there is nobody left to sanction its actions (that is, nobody to answer the question which is the title of this review), the State is prone to become, sooner or later, a dictatorship of the enforced good, a hell paved with good intentions, like in that old joke in which a young man eagerly helps an old woman get on a tram she didn’t want to climb. How easily Thomas More’s Utopia becomes George Orwell’s 1984.  

José Saramago, "The Cave"

 - (A Caverna) Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa A Harvest Book/ Harcourt inc. 2003 ISBN 0151004145; 0156028794

Read from September 5^th to 18^th 2014

My rating:

Shadow Gods

COMING SOON, PUBLIC OPENING OF PLATO’S CAVE, AN EXCLUSIVE ATTRACTION, UNIQUE IN THE WORLD, BUY YOUR TICKET NOW.

I don’t know why the end of José Saramago’s novel reminded me of the old joke with the child who asks his father why the writers have got street names. In fact I know why – the apparently innocent question hints to the way of reasoning of an entire society whose values have no common point whatsoever with the culture anymore, a pragmatic society that sees the eternal ideas as simple curiosities projected on the wall for its amusement, that does not feel any metaphysical anxiety anymore and it is quite comfortable with the ropes around the neck and feet which keep it firmly tied to the stone-bench of the immediate, the concrete, the consumable. A society forever anchored in the immanence.

I think this is the main theme of The Cave: the chains of ignorance the modern man proudly rattles, deluding himself he freely gave up his past, his inner life, his humanity as liabilities in change for the comfort of civilisation where having is more important than being.

Henriette Walter, "Le français dans tous les sens"

– Robert Laffont 2005

Lu du 17 juillet au 17 août 2015

Mon vote :

Il y a un ou deux mois je me suis beaucoup amusée en lisant une petite annonce collée sur la fenêtre de mon épicerie : « nous avons blé dinde ». C’est après la lecture du livre de Henriette Walter, Le français dans tous les sens, que j’ai constaté que, sans se rendre compte, la préposée qui avait écrit l’annonce ne s’était pas tellement trompée. Effectivement, le nom de la dinde a évolué du syntagme « poule d’Inde » comme elle était jadis nommée.

L’étude de Henriette Walter est plein de ce genre d’informations à la fois amusantes et intéressantes concernant non seulement l’évolution des mots, mais aussi celle des sens, de la prononciation et de l’orthographe, le tout organisé comme une histoire soit diachronique, soit synchronique du français dont elle révèle les traits historiques, géographiques et structuraux tout en capturant, comme dans un bildungsroman, son évolution dynamique.

Radu Pavel Gheo, "Adio, adio, patria mea, cu î din i, cu â din a"

– ebook

Perioada lecturii: 15-22 iulie 2015

Votul meu:

De ani de zile am un coșmar recurent care-l amuză la culme pe soțul meu: visez că sînt în România de mai bine de un an – habar n-am de ce – că suplinesc la aceeași școală unde am predat 15 ani înainte de a pleca, că nu am bani de avion să mă întorc în Canada și mi-e o frică grozavă că o să-mi pierd serviciul și casa… Mă trezesc de obicei răsuflînd ușurată cînd dau cu ochii de mobila familiară din dormitor…

Octave Mirbeau, "Le journal d’une femme de chambre"

 – Éditions Fasquelle 1971

Lu du 19 juin au 16 juillet 2015

Mon vote :

Si j’avais été plus familière avec la biographie mouvementée d’Octave Mirbeau, peut-être j’aurais été moins surprise à la lecture de ce livre qui a contredit en tout temps mon horizon d’attente suggéré par le titre. Mais, dans ma bonne tradition, si je n’ai pas d’avance des connaissances sur un auteur ou une œuvre, je ne m’informe qu’à la fin d’une lecture

Je peux maintenant dire qu’à la fin je n’ai pas été étonnée d’apprendre que l’écrivain a été un anarchiste. Il y a, dans son œuvre, une volonté de détruire toute une conception romanesque bâtie par ses prédécesseurs, et n’oublions pas que nous sommes à l’aube du XXe siècle, non à sa fin ! Et il commence si doucement, si conventionnellement, avec le motif du manuscrit, souvent utilisé pour créer l’illusion de réalisme dans l’art : l’auteur nous assure que le livre a été vraiment écrit par Mlle Célestine R. et qu’il n’a fait que l’ajuster ici et là, à contrecœur, à l’insistance de l’autrice. C’est peut-être un des motifs pour lesquels certains critiques se sont hâtés de l’inscrire parmi les réalistes avec des accents naturalistes.

Aurora Liiceanu - Alice Năstase, "Dincolo de bine, dincoace de rău"

 – e-book

Perioada lecturii: 23 iunie – 14 iulie 2015

Votul meu:

Poetizarea derizoriului și efectele ei terapeutice

Am citit nu demult Femei celebre pe divan, în care autoarea Catherine Siguret, după ce oferea un portret oarecum deformat unor personalități feminine, din cauza preocupării excesive pentru elementele de senzațional din biografia lor, îl completa cu scurte analize de comportament realizate de diverși psihologi sau psihiatri, poate în scopul de a descifra enigma succesului lor, ori poate pur și simplu pentru că, la fel ca orice jurnalist care se respectă,  se simțea datoare să alimenteze foamea cititorului de senzațional.

Același model hibrid îl oferă cartea pe două voci și cu titlu nitzscheean a Aurorei Liiceanu și a lui Alice Năstase, Dincolo de bine, dincoace de rău, cu deosebirea că informațiile biografice au fost înlocuite aici cu o monografie a sentimentului iubirii. Nu știu (și mi-e lene să sap) dacă asemănarea între cele două opere este întîmplătoare sau nu, dar efectul este același, din păcate: în ciuda unei premise interesante (într-un veac care disprețuiește canoanele și căruia îi place să se joace impudic cu forme și materiale atît de diferite încît pînă mai an nimănui nu i-ar fi trecut prin cap să le pună alături), volumul acuză totuși o lipsă de unitate structurală greu de pus pe seama unor tehnici ingenioase de contrariere estetică, dat fiind că disonanța dintre cele două voci – una prea sprințară, cealaltă prea serioasă – e uneori insuportabilă pentru ureche, iar efortul de înfrumusețare a superfluului devine cîteodată de-a dreptul ridicol, ca un scafandru care s-ar echipa din cap pînă-n picioare ca să sondeze o baltă a cărei apă îi ajunge abia pînă la genunchi.

Roberta Melchiorre e Fabio Bertino, "World Zapping. Racconti di viaggio"

-e-book

Letto dal 29 giugno al 13 luglio 2015

Il mio voto:

Non leggo spesso libri di viaggio. Forse è una reminiscenza della mia infanzia, quando saltavo sistematicamente le descrizioni per arrivare più velocemente ai dialoghi. O forse avevo un’idea preconcetta che un libro del genere è una longa sfilata di paesaggi che finirà per annoiarmi.

Niente di più sbagliato nelle mie percezioni, come l’ha dimostrato l’eccellente collezione di racconti di viaggio scritta da Fabio Bertino e Roberta Melchiorre e che ci porta un po’ dappertutto, non solo nello spazio geografico ma anche negli spazi sociali, culturali, storici.

Boris Pasternak, "Le docteur Jivago"

 – traduit du russe par Michel Aucouturier, Louis Martinez, Jacqueline de Proyart, et Hélène Zamoyska; Édition du Club France Loisirs, 1995

Lu du 30 mai au 10 juillet 2015

Mon vote :

Toute sa vie, il avait rêvé d’une originalité estompée et mise en sourdine, invisible au premier abord, dissimulée sous le voile d’une forme courante et familière. Toute sa vie il s’était efforcé d’élaborer ce style direct et sans prétention qui permet au lecteur et à l’auditeur d’accéder au contenu sans même remarquer comment il s’en rend maître. Toute sa vie, il avait eu le souci d’un style qui n’attire l’attention de personne, et il était effaré de voir combien il était encore loin de cet idéal. 

Cette citation, tout en résumant le massif roman de Boris Pasternak, Le docteur Jivago, révèle, à la fois, son meilleur et son pire trait : l’uniformité. La teneur équilibrée, le ton égal et détaché, qui ferait des merveilles dans une nouvelle, finit par étouffer vers la fin des 700 pages, comme le voyage interminable sur une rivière qui n’a pas de méandres, qui n’a pas d’obstacles et qui poursuit son chemin à travers une plaine plane, monotone et infinie.

Pourtant, les évènements décrits n’ont rien d’ordinaire, au contraire, font partie d’une des périodes de plus contradictoires de l’histoire, et avec des conséquences de plus dramatiques pour l’humanité : l’instauration du communisme en Russie. Mais, dans mon opinion, en forçant l’objectivité, l’auteur finit par lui enlever aussi le tragisme que le grotesque, même quand il raconte les évènements les plus tragiques, les plus grotesques. Il reste toujours l’image de la page imprimée devant nous, la lourdeur du volume entre nos mains, le sentiment gênant que ce qui s’est passé ne nous regarde pas vraiment.

Ismail Kadare, "The Ghost Rider"

 – e-book

Read from May 25^th to  June 19^th 2015

My rating:

Ghosts of the Tale 

I have always had a fascination for stories built on myths, legends or folkloric tales, for they tend to give another dimension to the nations subconscious that I’ve always believed populated by the latters. And I find it extremely interesting to see how these stories feed at the same time on the old and new, on the local and universal, on the real and the imaginary, how they can gain and lose specific meanings in time without losing beauty and depth.

And here it is, Ismail Kadare’s novel, The Ghost Rider, a strange tale (known apparently by all Albanian people), based on an ancestral belief – besa – a sacred promise that must be fulfilled no matter what. The narrative, whose general lines the author respects, is simple enough – a brother rises from his grave to keep the promise he made to his mother when he was alive and bring his sister back from a faraway land where she had gone to live with her husband. Simple is also, apparently, its message – the power of a word of honour that exceeds even death. Obviously there are other messages too, which speak about love and grief, about family and solitude, about estrangement and renunciation, etc.

David Foster Wallace, "The Broom of the System"

 - e-book

Read from  July 2^nd to August 25^th  2013

My rating:

The Word Out of System

Funny, witty and disinhibited, David Foster Wallace’s “Broom of the System” prend à la légère the theories of Wittgenstein and Derrida right from the title, whose significance is partly revealed in a dialogue between Gramma Lenore and her grandson, whom she asks about the more elemental part of the broom – the bristles or the handle. When he points the bristles, she triumphantly yells:

Aha, that's because you want to sweep with the broom... If what we wanted a broom for was to break windows, then the handle was clearly the fundamental essence of the broom…