Wednesday, February 15
7:00 am
It is -14 °C, with a high forecast of -1 °C.
From the Environment Canada website:
Today Mainly sunny. Wind becoming west 20 km/h gusting to 40 this afternoon. High minus 1.
Tonight Clear. Wind southwest 20 km/h gusting to 40. Low minus 8.
8:00 am LiteratureLiterature
While getting ready for our drive to Calgary I happened to notice a book in the stand beside my chair in the living room. It was under a pile of model train magazines. The title was "Nothing Remains the Same" and it was written by Wendy Lesser, a literary critic and editor of a literary criticism magazine. I first read it a few years and loved it. There is a lot of yellow highlighting in it.
The book contains her comments while rereading a number of books. The title of the book comes from a Mark Twain letter. I have decided to take the book with me, reread it, and make a few more notes about it.
The first chapter is called Reflections. Lesser notes than when she was a young girl she read largely for the plot. She begins her book by deciding to reread Henry James' novel, "Portrait of a Lady". I have yet to read anything by Henry James - I really must rectify this.
James' book is the story of a woman and the choices, and subsequent consequences, she makes in her life. Lesser then says, "Now [Lesser in middle-age] I understood that nothing ends with such choices -there are always additional choices to be made, if one's life if to be interesting". This is the type of comment that I enjoy highlighting - whether in a memoir or a work of fiction. Lesser ties this into her description of how she now reads a novel: what decisions do the characters make, and why? Here is another personal quote from this chapter: "General conclusions, I often feel, are the enemy of perception.".
She then pats herself on the back by saying that she purposely constructed her life to avoid "the speeded-up, mechanized, money-obsessed existence that had somehow become our collective daily life". In part this involved "incorporating reading into my daily life".
I have always enjoyed reading. I can remember going to our town library on Wednesday evening, and again on Saturday afternoon (the only two times the library was open) and taking out at least 2 books from the "children's" section (The Hardy Boys, Ken Holt, Nancy Drew, the Black Stallion series, Tarzan, Biggles - a WWII flying ace, a series about a high school baseball player, ... I just did a Google search on Biggles - fascinating. But when I was going to university, majoring in mathematics, I had no time for recreational reading. When I graduated in 1965, the first thing I did was join Book-of-the-Month Club. I have been reading ever since.
One aspect of reading today that was not possible 10 years ago is being able to quickly do a Google search to find out more about almost anything that occurs to one. I think this is an important development. I am writing this on an iPad2 (with an external keyboard) and a wifi connection to the Internet so I can check my memory, and correct it when necessary. For example, I first thought that the name of the series of detective stories for boys was called Tim Holt. But google revealed that was the name of a comic book cowboy. Fortunately the search also came up with some hits for Ken Holt and those were the ones that corresponded with my memory.
Returning to Lesser's opening chapter - she mentions the following novels in this chapter:
- Anna Karinina
- Middlemarch
- Huckleberry Finn
- The Charterhouse of Parna
- David Copperfield
- Remembrance of Things Past
- Don Quixote
- The Letters of Henry James
- Greene on Capri
- Age of Iron
- Disgrace
- The Human Stain
- Contempt.
My early sense of literary criticism writing is the inclusion of references to a variety of novels and authors - which helps contribute to the critic's credibility. It also allows the reader to compare the list with one's own list of books read.
In my case I have read Anna Karinina, Huckleberry Finn, Remembrance of Things Past, Don Quixote, Age of Iron, and Disgrace. The latter two by Coetzee are ones that I know I have read, but I cannot remember any details at the moment. Perhaps I should reread them? Middlemarch has been on my "to do" list for some time.
The first step is to actually create a list! Okay, to begin:
- Nothing Remains the Same (Wendy Lesser) [rereading now]
- The Use and Abuse of Literature (Marjorie Garber) [reading now]
- The Stand (Stephen King) [reading now]
- Middlemarch (George Eliot)
- Age of Iron (J. M. Coetzee)
- Disgrace (J. M. Coetzee)
- Portrait of a Lady (Henry James)
Middlemarch is also available as a TV miniseries by Masterpiece Theatre. First the book, then the movie.
Now to pack the SUV and head north to Calgary.