solitary_summer | (no subject) (Reply)

My attention span is all but non-existent these days. Pathetic.

During my one and a half week holiday I read...

(written right after I'd come home, or most likely it'd never have been written at all)

Re-read Buddenbrooks in two days... [I can't seem to talk/write about TM's novels, impossible to put my fascination into proper words, even verbalise it within my own head. Not even my favourite of his books maybe, but there's something compelling about the juxtaposition of the formal perfection, the detached irony, and the Wehmut, Verzweiflung lurking underneath. Questionable coming from an unmusical person like myself, but there's something like music about the whole novel, the repetitions and variations of phrases and themes...]

Unordnung und frühes Leid [Which I read and moderately liked, until right at the end, where I suddenly wondered - was I imagining this, or is there the lingering implication that unlike the child for whom the evening's emotional turmoil will be remote and unimportant in the morning ('Dem Himmel sei Dank dafür!'), this - or a similar - emotional confusion and pain wouldn't be resolved or forgotten as easily by the Professor himself... Des Morgens, wenn der Professor frühstückt, reisst er auf dessen Schreibtisch das Kalenderblatt ab - sonst legt er keine Hand an das Zimmer. Er soll das Kalenderblatt in Ruhe lassen, Doktor Cornelius hat es ihm oftmals anbefohlen, da dieser dazu neigt auch das nächste noch abzureissen, und so Gefahr läuft, aus aller Ordnung zu geraten. Aber diese Arbeit des Blattabreissens gefällt dem jungen Xaver, und darum lässt er sie sich nicht nehmen. ]

Das Gesetz [Which is perhaps proof that anger doesn't necessarily make for the best literature - it doesn't have the much more subtle and shaded approach of the Joseph books, which here is replaced by a hard edged sarcasm more reminiscent of some passages in Doktor Faustus; but then again the purpose is a different one, which becomes perfectly obvious within the last page.]

Read the 1935/36 diaries and started the 1937-39 volume. [Is it me, or are there a lot more [...]s in the earlier volumes, or did I just not notice them in the later ones? And is it scarily voyeuristic of me to be a occasionally a little irritated when they appear in a whole series of entries? If TM didn't see fit to censor himself, why should the editor feel obliged to do it for him?]

Almost 500 pages of the new translation of Tausendundeine Nacht (or 282 nights, in the case of this incomplete manuscript) until I got stuck in & bored with an overly long romantic intrigue between yet another oh-so-beautiful woman and oh-so-beautiful youth oh-so-hopelessly in love with each other...

Finished P. O'Brian's The Thirteen-Gun Salute, The Nutmeg of Consolation and Clarissa Oakes. [My enthusiasm with the series has faded somewhat, but almost despite myself I'm still sufficiently intrigued to finish the whole thing...

'As for an end,' said Martin, 'are endings really so very important? Sterne did quite well without one; and often an unfinished picture is all the more interesting for the bare canvas. I remember Bourville's definition of a novel as a work in which life flows in abundance, swirling without a pause: or as you might say without an end, an organized end. And there is at least one Mozart quartet that stops without the slightest ceremony: most satisfying when you get used to it.'
Stephen said, 'There is another Frenchman whose name escapes me but who is even more to the point: La bêtise c'est de vouloir conclure. The conventional ending, with virtue rewarded and loose ends tied up is often sadly chilling; and its platitude and falsity tend to infect what has gone before, however excellent. Many books would be far better without their last chapter: or at least with no more than a brief, cool, unemotional statement of the outcome.'

And that - this rambling style - is what has been my problem from the start, something I never really 'got used to': especially with the later volumes any division often seems wholly arbitrary, the voyages blur into one another and it becomes hard to keep track of the sequence of events, because of the utter lack of narrative structure of any kind. I do believe it is possible to have some sort of structure, even an ending, that doesn't necessarily have to be flat and moralising. And speaking of 'virtue rewarded'... The Thirteen-Gun Salute certainly isn't lacking in moralism; in fact the fate of Wray and Ledward, not to mention Stephen's 'disposal' of their bodies (quite shockingly cold even for Stephen's standards; Jack would probably have been horrified) Abdul's execution and Fox's death, brought onto himself by his haste and ambition, leave a rather unpleasant taste, and absurd as it may sound in view of O'Brians 'disclaimers' throughout several volumes, the whole thing has a tinge of homophobia imo. Clarissa Oakes, however, was interesting & psychologically intirigueing. ]

Half-(re)read C. Barker's Sacrament which lies neglected since...

During the three weeks since I'm back I made my slow, slow way through The Wine-Dark Sea, half of The Commodore and the greater part of H.Heer's Vom Verschwinden der Täter, the last of which I read mostly at work.

Am now fiftysomething pages into Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I like so far, although after seventeen volumes of O'Brian I'm fairly yearning for something more modern than the Napoleonic age...

A.Oz's Eine Geschichte von Liebe und Finsternis is still lying around untouched, although I found the first few pages intriguing. Same with Yann Martel's Schiffbruch mit Tiger. And so on, and so on.

I just can't seem to focus at all, most of the time.

Instead, too much tv watchage. [Is that even a word?]

I vaguely remember someone once asking on lj whenever the dvd had become the normal medium for the consumption of a tv show, and really, it's true. And it spoils one horribly for the shows one doesn't like enough to buy the dvds for. Commercial breaks, air times, necessity to tape when not at home, & so on. Lack of continuity & coherence trying to make sense of Stargate S1 and S6 (I think) on one channel and S7 and yet another season on another.

Saw the Stargate:Atlantis pilot last week, not particularly impressed. (But then again I only watch the original Stargate because of a vague nostalgic left-over-from-McGuyver-days fondness for RDA and an even vaguer fondness for the whole J/D thing. But really, my inner archaeologist... cringe doesn't even begin to cover it. Mycenaean, blablabla, never mind the obviously Etruscan wall-painting.) Vaguely amused by the purple haired Wratih woman apparently inspired by Marilyn Manson's MA incarnation. A moment of hey! that's Robert Patrick, oops, didn't make it past the pilot. Pity.

Startrek Enterprise? Is it worth it?

A month's worth of taped Smallville episodes, mostly boringly bad, badly boring; it would probably help if I could at least find Tom Welling remotely attractive, but I can't & don't, not to mention his character annoys me 99% of the time. However, I still like the way they handle Lex's character & arc, the slow, gradual slide neither he nor the viewer really notice, because mostly he is actually trying to do the right thing. (Too late already... imo the - very - last warning Lex got was in S2 'Prodigal', that scene towards the end with the Luthor family pointing guns at each others heads in something part insane power-game, part... desperate search for a proof of familial love, if it can be called that. At this point, I think, it was clear that the only chance to get out alive and sane was to run, fast and far. By accepting the challenge and staying Lex doomed himself.) And yet... there's one moment in Velocity, the look of happiness, pride, and (yes, still) love on Lex's face when he lets Clark know that he knows what he's done and thoroughly approves... beautiful, weird, and perhaps not entirely sane any more; perfectly sums up their doom-ridden complex relationship.