Well, I was going to try to post this week, but I know I need a break and I know I wouldn’t get much done in the coming long weekend anyway. So we’ll go dark here for a nice Thanksgiving break. Make sure to get your pumpkin before it runs out.
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Mysteries, December 2008–January 2009
Maritime literature, January–March 2009 Melville read-through, part I, Typee—White-Jacket, December 2009–January 2010 Whirlwind tour of Russian literature, February–May 2010 Epistolary literature, July 2009–June 2010
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After reading, ages ago now, Sunflower by Gyula Krúdy, I wanted to read some more Hungarian literature, and now I have. Embers is a very different novel, and Sándor Márai is clearly a very different novelist, but this too is an elegy for a disappearing time and place, and it’s quite lovely. Here it [...] Now here are some believable letters. For all I say I don’t like Jane Austen, she is good, and really knows how to use even an unusual-for-her form. We dive right into the letters of Lady Susan—splash!—without any frame or explanation, and right away we must put together the pieces of this story bit [...] I want to start out this post by saying, “There is no reason for Evelina to be an epistolary novel.” But I know that’s not true. There are reasons. I just don’t think it should have been one, or, if it is, it should have been done better. So, what role do the letters [...] Reading Evelina, the epistolary first novel of Frances Burney that catapulted her into renown among the likes of Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson, I passed from boredom through annoyance and on to boredom again. It left me cold. I was disappointed, and yet questioned that disappointment. After all, I’d heard Burney was a precursor [...] Today is one of those Sundays where I feel like I don’t properly wake up at all and just sort of wander around in a daze. So it’s an excellent day for some relaxing reading, and I’ve just finished up The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark, which were lovely and perfect for a chilly [...] The Provost, the first political novel, is the autobiography of “a genuine Machiavellian”—a natural born one, at that. The chief pleasure here for me, as I noted over at Wuthering Expectations, is Galt’s technical virtuosity in producing this amazing narrator, Mr. Pawkie, and his exploits. It’s hard to explain without just giving examples of [...] Amid all the obvious nods in The Ayrshire Legatees to Humphry Clinker, it’s the differences that stand out most. Mrs. Pringle is almost too much like her counterpart Tabitha Bramble, but the difference between Mr. Pringle and Matt Bramble, and the resultant difference in attitude between Andrew Pringle (“my son”) and Jeremy Melford (Matt’s [...] I took great delight in a new and welcome epistolary style afforded by John Galt’s The Ayrshire Legatees, and shall this week add my own small part to the John Galt Clishmaclaver. In this novel, we have letters much in the style of The Expedition of Humphry Clinker—four family members head off on [...] |
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