BIBLIOGRIND
Adventures in Writing, Reading & Book Culture
May 2, 2013 at 8:14 pm · Filed under A Commonplace Book, THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
“Turns of speech,” said he, “conceal mediocre affections: as if the fullness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like an outworn, battered timbal upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity.” – Nick Tosches, “In the Hand of Dante”
A thoroughly strange book, and highly unusual (though not unique) way of telling the story: different voices using divergent methods to bring off auras, effects, and manipulation.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
March 29, 2013 at 4:55 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, The Prague Blog
This has been a roller coaster two-month stretch of reading. Two BIG books and one decidedly philosophical, though wholly a fiction. Last year was The Year of the BIG Book, yet so far in 2013 I’ve luxuriated in some whopper-length stories and just completed a long-but-oh-so-accessible survey of Western Philosophy (and for anybody who likes philosophy, it’s a winner; for the philo-phtoowee people, you could do a lot worse — and probably have, in which case has determined your aversion ratio).
TUNC by Lawrence Durrell
Durrell has fun with this “novel of science-ideas” in that he plays with language in a way that you wonder if your leg is being pulled from the get-go. This isn’t the case, although the footing which the reader stands upon is moving. Ostensibly, the story follows an applied engineering inventor, Charlock, and his relationship with a worldwide company, the ubiquitous Merlin. To work for Merlin is to be set for life: steady income that grows to real wealth, keeper of your own patents, prestige, freedom of thought and work. But Charlock is a skittish sort, and he wants to know Why? all this must be so wonderful. Thus begins the ride.
2666 by Robert Bolano
Bolano gave us five short novels as he prepared to die (look him up on Wikipedia). The estate-cum-publisher decided to sandwich them, thus presenting a massive tome. But there is not just one story, so that’s okay, too. Each section follows different people, though there is a loose connection between the stories, and sometimes the odd character (or main one) appears in another story. The last story, “The Part About Archimboldi”, was for me the most coherent. Where the others left of as if Bolano died before he typed the last page, the story of Archimboldi is as complete a picture of a human as a reader could hope to get. Really heartfelt stuff, in a world of uncompromising treachery, delivering himself from evil with no help from north or south, and living by his wits.
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
This classic survey of “the world’s greatest philosophers from Plato to John Dewey” is such a fascinating read because Durant brings reasoned thought, intellect, wisdom, and humor to a whole ship-full of good prose. I’ve always disliked reading (or slogging through) the actual texts of many philosophers (Niezsche is brutal; Russel is obscure; Kant is dense as twice-baked cheesecake) but I thoroughly enjoy having a mature philosopher to pull out the best (and readable) bits from all those guys. Durant does this so well that I wanted him to give me the delineation on all the included philos’ works; alas, such an undertaking is “voluminous.” Nevertheless, we learn about the men behind their works, which partly explains the reasons they came to their … um … reasoning. And what I came away with this time, at this point in my life, is that most of the major philos were lonely, had been pushed down by society (or gov’t), rejected in love, hounded by peers, and in this built a view of life that, amazingly, captured the attention of those same people and society and gov’t that dumped on them.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
February 10, 2013 at 11:31 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, The Prague Blog
In 2012 I was fortunate to have been able to read 27 books. This year I’d like to read more than 30; if I can read 35 I’ll be truly a happy reader, and better off for the challenge. While I’m not in this for some speed contest, I do make time each day to read, usually about 50 pages.
Here are my first three titles of the year. Oh – I should have dated this column from Jan 22nd, which is when I finished the third book (I always post in groups of 3 books read) but I’ve been busy writing my next novel, and generally occupied otherwise.
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
I didn’t want to like this book after I read the first 50 pages. All the events and coincidences seemed too pat. And then something happened: life wasn’t so cheery and easy after all. And that’s where this book makes its true mark. We readers sometimes forget that, in point of fact, we can put ourselves into the shoes of characters. In this book, it’s inevitable that you think about where your own life has tread, and where it’s headed.
Her tan is complete, opaque brown all over. She continues on without a glance at me, this old man in his cream suit. Two worlds collide at this moment, it seems to me — mine and the future. Who could have imagined that such an encounter would have been possible on a beach in my lifetime? I find it quite exhilarating: the old writer and the naked Dutch girl—perhaps we need a Rembrandt to do it full justice.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
There is a decidedly poet nature to this short novel that packs so much story into its fast-reading pages. I think the imagery helps fill out what one might think is “missing.” But beware, this story of a love affair (two or three, actually) demands that you peer closely at each scene. There is a world being built, one stone at a time.
Sometimes when she is able to spend the night with him they are wakened by the three minarets of the city beginning their prayers before dawn. he walks with her through the indigo markets that lie between South Cairo and her home. The beautiful songs of faith enter the air like arrows, one minaret answering another, as if passing on a rumour of the two of them as they walk through the cold morning air, the smell of charcoal and hemp already making the air profound. Sinners in a holy city.
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
The notorious Grace Marks was convicted of killing two people outside Toronto in the 1840s. Her story was the topic of newspapers, magazines, books, and the public for months, even years. Just that minute portion of doubt regarding her full duplicity in the crimes saved her from the gallows. Her life of 28 years behind bars, and the days leading up to and after the crime, are chronicled by Atwood’s careful hand, inquisitive mind, and steady pacing.
The minister looked like a heron, with a pointed beak of a nose and a long skinny neck, and a tuft of hair sticking up from the top of his head. The sermon was on the subject of Divine Grace, and how we could be saved by it alone, and not through any efforts on our own part, or any good works we might do. But this did not mean we should stop making efforts, or doing good works; but we could not count on them, or be certain that we had been saved, just because we were respected for our efforts and good works; because Divine Grace was a mystery, and the recipients of it were known to God alone[.]
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 1, 2013 at 6:39 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, The Prague Blog, Ways of Seeing
In 2011 I was able to read 49 books (mostly novels) and don’t know exactly why that count fell to 27 in 2012. I called 2012 The Year of the Big Book because the average page count was 436. By today’s publishing standards, that’s nearly double the book — and double the pleasure.
For commentary on each of the 27 books, look at the Books Read string. Otherwise, the stats for and my chronological list of books read for 2012 follows:
2012: 27 books – 11,776 pages – apprx words: 5.1 million ….
Biggest surprise enjoyment: “The Magus” (it took me back to carefree years of college) … Biggest Disappointment: “Polite Sex” (missed opportunities; perhaps poorly edited) … Weirdest Story: “One Big Damn Puzzler” (life on a Pacific island) … Best Drama: “The Kindly Ones” (life of a Nazi SS commander) … Best Writing: Philip Roth’s books simply kill me, how good a stylist, storyteller, and ear for dialogue he has … Biggest Surprise: “East of Eden” (Steinbeck can write some character!) … Most Memorable Character: Lucy Nelson in “When She Was Good” (Roth) … Funniest: “Solar” … Best Sex Scene: “Rabbit at Rest” (actually, one of only a few in all these books) … Best Narrative Story: “Suttree” (McCarthy can lay down scene & place like few others) … Widest Use of Characters: “Middlesex” (everyone simply worked and was needed) … Oddest Use of Characters: “The Philosopher’s Pupil” (Murdoch’s characters sometimes do the oddest things!) … Most-Traveled Character: Augie March … A Little Disappointed: “Amsterdam” (I expected more, of everything) … My Favorite Book – Maybe: “Rabbit at Rest”
1/10 In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike (488)
2/6 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (611)
2/28 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (250 – fired)
2/29 Reading Myself and Others by Philip Roth (300)
3/15 Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (465)
3/31 The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow (295)
4/4 Polite Sex by James Wilcox (270)
4/8 Solar by Ian McEwan (386)
4/21 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (320)
4/29 The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (390)
5/20 The Philosopher’s Pupil by Iris Murdoch (550)
6/5 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (425)
6/30 The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (975)
7/4 The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings (343)
7/12 Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (278)
7/22 One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding (450)
8/16 The Magus by John Fowles (642)
8/24 I Married a Communist by Philip Roth (323)
9/2 Basic Bech by John Updike (303)
10/10 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (510)
10/19 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (438)
11/7 East of Eden by John Steinbeck (590)
11/15 A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis (609)
11/24 Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer (274)
11/30 When She Was Good by Philip Roth (291)
12/4 The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem (440)
12/30 The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch (560)
In 2013 I want to read some of my contemporaries, including several Indie authors who have put out books that sound good and read very well. Otherwise, I have lots on my plate, as I’m working on a first draft of my next novel, “Max, the blind guy”.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
December 30, 2012 at 8:55 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
For the last month I’ve gone to three authors I trust. I wanted to go out of the year (27 books read) with some strong fiction. Roth is always good, and I ask myself each time I read him “Why weren’t you reading this guy 30 years ago!?” … while Lethem is an author I know through his journalism more than his fiction … and Murdoch always surprises me; I think she must have surprised herself most of the time.
When She was Good by Philip Roth
Philip Roth accepts the notion that there are many ways to see a particular incident, or life. Evaluation is all about point of view. A young woman finds that her life must be made acceptable, even livable, through her own strength, intelligence, and management. But what happens when other people become part of that life, or when people from the past reenter? Who’s at fault if things go wrong? I must admit that, by the book’s end, I could accept most of the different points of view, when looked at from only it’s angle. So the question erupts: who are we to judge someone’s course in life?
The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem
This collection of Lethem’s book-culture journalism (with smatterings of his short fiction) has a central theme of “those books/authors/events/things that influence a writer’s work/thoughts. The title is a riff on Harold Bloom’s once-seminal “The Anxiety of Influence” (1973) in which Bloom argued (in terms of poetry) that every writer’s precursor creates a particular anxiety in him/her that makes the new poetry find uniqueness, or fail. While that argument has its detractors, Lethem takes the tack that any influence should be yearned for, accepted, and used to a writer’s greatest advantage. Most of the essays are writerly-centric, and not exactly fit for the general audience, but the good thing about Lethem is that his language is always accessible within its literate scope.
The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch
Iris’s 1985 story of “being good” and “finding goodness” is of course half-ironical because her characters can hardly get out of their own way. How very human, I kept thinking, though the drama of fiction keeps that thought kindling. In this story, Edward Baltram has accidentally killed a friend; his brother, Stuart, wants to drop out of society and into a monastery; and meanwhile, their father is having an affair with a friend of the family. Each character is in search of, or already thinks he/she’s living a good life. Irony abounds. Characters witness their own failures and others’ triumphs. What we learn is that no set plan can make life good, per se, but the half-righteous desire to simply live is … pretty damn worth living.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
November 30, 2012 at 6:34 pm · Filed under A Commonplace Book, The Prague Blog
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Everyone in America knows The Grapes of Wrath; most of us had to read it for h.s. English class. East of Eden, then, is perhaps the book we all wanted to avoid after having to slog through GofW. But that would be a shame to continue shunning this book. The story of the Hamiltons and the Trasks is as entertaining, American, and equally harrowing stories as anything in fiction. The character that adds everything to this novel is Cathy Ames, a true monster of a human, a demon in disguise, a user and abuser of men and women (but especially men). She is, in a word … DELIGHTFUL. What a great woman of fiction, one who uses her intelligence and gumption to get what she wants in the American world of ‘take what you can get.’
A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis
Here lies the story of Oscar — last names don’t matter — a history lecturer and hobbyist writer. He’s about to sue the writers/directors/producers and film studio that has made a movie out of what Oscar claims is a rip-off of his monumental Civil War play. And along the ride that Gaddis takes us, all things American are skewered, basted, roasted, and eaten: religion, brand names, real estate agents, film studios, publishers, agents, TV news, higher eduction, students of higher education, and (and especially) lawyers and the practice of civil litigation. Just a comic delight that, for all its tangential micro-stories, makes you laugh aloud at the absurdity of culture, society, and how both are practiced in the USA.
Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer
The eponymous woman in this story of hardship and redemption, is Shosha, once a little girl who looked forward to marrying Aaron, a neighborhood boy, but who lost contact with him when his family moved to a different part of Warsaw. Aaron, an aspiring writer, is beset with bad ideas, until one day a rich American and his actress wife come to town. In the few years remaining before Adolph Hitler plunges the world into war—and the Polish Jews into concentration camps—Aaron reunites with Shosha, and they try to make life worth living as disaster bears down on them.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
October 19, 2012 at 7:13 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
Basic Bech by John Updike
Updike created his alter-ego, Henry Bech, and let him loose on society back in the 1960s (last century!). One overriding characteristic of Bech is that he has writer’s block; he’s had it for several years. He lives off the largess of those who remember him (colleges, societies, institutions) and hire him for weekend talks, foreign tours, etc. … Bech is a libidinous mo-fo, as are so many of Updike’s characters (men); but Bech intellectualizes his sexual excesses. These are great cause for laughter. Ultimately, the Bech stories stand up to time, although we can see the decades from which they spring (for those of us who remember those decades). This minor blip matters little to these stories, which are fun, smart, ribald, and very human.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Eight years ago I read this novel, and sort of understood its meandering time-space-continuum theme. This second reading made more connections for me. Six stories played out by the same characters, re-living their lives in identical, or new, ways, as the Earth moves forward. But does humanity ever move forward? That’s the question the author asks. And, if you’re a student of history and socio-political interconnectivity, the answer is easily graspable. Essentially a morality play, Mitchell writes in six genres, from the Victorian epistolary to science fiction, to futuristic demi-fantasy. Have fun. Pay attention. BTW… a major motion picture is scheduled to open this month.
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
The pinnacle of American political novels, the story of Willie Stark, small-town bumpkin done-good by his own Lincolnesqe studies and work against corruption, this novel is more about the Stark’s “men” … a la “Humpty Dumpty” who fell off the wall and couldn’t be put back together again. This is, in fact, the real story of the American Dream: there is no dream, period. The novel is told by Jack Burden, one of Stark’s men and a one-time historian, one-time newsman, whose family’s closet has more skeletons than the town cemetery. The writing is lush, beautiful, imaginative and heavy with so many memorial images. A book you should read before you die.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
August 27, 2012 at 3:42 pm · Filed under A Commonplace Book, The Prague Blog
One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding
Last Christmas I gave the John Harding novel “One Big Damn Puzzler” to my wife as a Santa gift. She read it and told me I had to read it, for its laughs and oddities, and its anti-American (or, really, anti-modern world) slant, and because so many of the scenes had stuck with her. This last week I read the 200K-word book, and my wife was spot on: this novel has so many odd adventures, characters, and themes inside, that I shall remember it, and its “idea” of life vs. art vs. existential breadth, for a long time.
[quick synopsis]
On a small Pacific island, Managua, one of the village elders — and its only literate member — is translating “Hamlet” into the local pidgin English, a language “gift” from the American army that had used the north half of the island as an aerial bomb proving ground. Enter William Hardt, American foreign-claims attorney, who descends on the island to get them compensation for the harm that America has done to the island, and the so-many-legless people (from late-exploding ordnance).
What Hardt discovers is a society that is entirely unreliant on the outside world, and which has its own view of life, death, sex, society, and love. While many fine scenes exist for excerpt, one of the shining lights in the novel is the Shakespeare-to-vernacular that Harding has accomplished for Hamlet’s soliloquy.
The Magus by John Fowles
The stranger the book, the better I like it. And this book is strange. As all stories — well-written stories — have some overriding mystery, we readers are pulled along by characters who don’t much know themselves why they do what they do; not exactly, anyway. It’s call “personality.” Now isn’t that the essence of life? So for THE MAGUS, the mystery is a step onto a wire, a thin wire, that gets longer and thinner, and higher, as you move with the characters.
What I liked most about the story was that, once I realized there was a veil between what I thought I knew (dramatic irony) and what was really happening (fictively), the more I liked the book. Not all books can do this effectively; not just any writer can take the care which this kind of story needs. THE MAGUS is a well-written, well-crafted, and thoroughly original book that should be on your reading list. It has history, psychology, love, sex, intrigue, betrayal, and redemption.
I Married a Communist by Philip Roth
The story of the rise & fall of Ira Ringold, a hood in his youth, zinc minor to escape his youth, Communist to escape the mines, and discovered-radio-personality to bring the good word of REVOLUTION to America. I liked this book for many reasons, but mostly because Philip Roth knows how to write a descriptive sentence AND dynamic dialogue. As a story heavily laden with politics — and America’s disastrous treatment of Communist-leaning (or not) citizens in the 1950s during the HUAC hearing and RED SCARE days — some readers might think this is a difficult book. It is, if you’re uninterested in 20th-century American history. Otherwise, the reward of this book comes through the story of human beings living in these times, experiencing the emotions of the day, re-living those emotions, and attempting to come to terms with them. Also, this human puzzle (if there’s not a puzzle, this isn’t a Roth book) comes together in the last 20 pages. And that ending is as satisfying as any book I’ve read in 10 years.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
August 17, 2012 at 11:48 am · Filed under A Commonplace Book
The stranger the book, the better I like it. And this book is strange. As all good stories — well-written stories — have some overriding mystery involved, we readers are pulled along by characters who don’t much know themselves why they do what they do. It’s call “personality.” Now isn’t that the essence of life? So for THE MAGUS, the mystery is a step onto a wire, a thin wire, that gets longer and thinner, and higher, as you move with the characters.
What I liked most about the story was that, once I realized there was a veil between what I thought I knew (usually, dramatic irony) and what was really happening (fictively), the more I liked the book. Not all books can do this effectively; not just any writer can take the care which this type of story needs.
THE MAGUS is a well-written, well-crafted, and thoroughly original book that should be on your reading list. It has history, psychology, love, sex, intrigue, betrayal, and redemption.
august 16, 2012
“There are three types of intelligent person: the first so intelligent that being called very intelligent must seem natural and obvious; the second sufficiently intelligent to see that he is being flattered, not described; the third so little intelligent that he will believe anything. I knew I belonged to the second kind.”
“Freedom was making some abrupt choice and acting on it.”
– John Fowles, “The Magus”
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
June 9, 2012 at 9:20 am · Filed under The Prague Blog, Ways of Seeing
It seems like I’ve used these names before in this column of the last year or so. Okay, paint me a guilty primrose, or magenta (wink-wink, Asia!) …
These authors have lots to say and the imagination to tell what that is — pain, stupidity, sex, women & men, love & livid hate, all the great things in life! — in stories that show people at their worst or near-best.
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
What would have happened to America, and American Jews, if Charles Lindberg had become president as WWII raged in 1940? Roth uses historical and fictional people to realize a potential firestorm for liberty and the conscience of a nation. And Roth takes all this in from the eyes of a nine-year-old boy living in Newark, NJ. This is significant because the wonder of life, and awareness of society’s realities, begin to intersect at this age. This counter-factual history has basis in reality, woven into the tapestry of the common citizen’s hopes and barriers.
The Philosopher’s Pupil by Iris Murdoch
A cast of misfits and near-do-wells, eminent minds and vengeful hearts, makes this story of a small spa town in Surrey a comedy of errors, a drama of passions, and nexus of past and present in full fire. When the famous scholar and teacher returns home, everyone in town wonders if this will be their chance to rub elbows with the greatest mind in modern philosophy, and one man, the pupil, wants validation. But the philosopher has other ideas.
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
The forth (and final) book in the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom has a consistency with its previous books (one book for each decade of this “life” … beginning in 1959-60) that makes reading the quartet a lasting and thoroughly gripping saga of an American family. Here, Rabbit is retired from the car sales business, and enjoys half-year “rest” in Florida. But his fuck-up son drags Harry back into the business, and things unravel from there. But this is Rabbit Angstrom, whose exploits on the basketball court in his high-school salad days has given him ways to cope, and his duck/dodge/hide attitude towards life moves the story from hilarity to pityingly foolish moves to put a house back together.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
