At twenty I must stop impersonating others and Become Myself, or at least begin to impersonate the self I believe I ought now to be. 12
Another classic Roth read, less obscene than Portnoy's Complaint, but more sexually frank than American Pastoral, The Professor of Desire chronicles the romantic coming-of-age of David Kepesh (who becomes a literature professor, fixated on the tender Chekov, the stymied Kafka, and a suite of other authors who focus intently on his own obsession with loveless life's impossibility). Kepesh moves from sweaty tangles with a high school cheerleader through a sadomasochistic menage-a-trois with two Swedish girlfriends to a dysfunctional marriage with an exotic beauty and a penultimate bout of depression before finally settling in with a healthily attractive, generous and kind, simple grade school teacher. He wants to believe that he'll at last be happy, but he feels the seeds of dissatisfaction with his good, scrubbed girl.
I love Roth for his blatant honesty about those feelings for which we are often ashamed, his willingness to admit that we are dissatisfied creatures who rarely know a good thing when we see it and, if we do, find it impossible nonetheless, for whatever petty reason (in this case, it's that clean Claire lacks even the most basic kinks of his Swedish lover, kindly refusing to fellate him, though she wants to bear his child). Kepesh takes Claire to Europe to exorcise his old lovers' ghosts, and, to a degree, it works. But there remains that threat of dissatisfaction, of having tasted too much to be happy with any one flavor, of being too comfortable with seeking to sit still once he's found.
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Sunday, August 23, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Books: The Runaway Soul, by Harold Brodkey
Woe to the source that foisted this brick upon me—luckily for it, I have no recollection which it was. After carrying this book to and from China (where I did not so much as crack it open), I finally did start reading—more than a month ago, and though I considered giving up often, I did finish it last night. But I've gained little.
Brodkey writes like a flatulent Philip Roth with Proustian ambition. His sensual moments are stunning; few write about the men's sexual experience with such (physical) tenderness. But these passages, even though some of them are quite long, are buried in a wasted landscape of mud, arduous prose about nothing that goes nowhere, the heaps of erasure dust of bildungsromans from Roth, Updike, Bellow (The Runaway Soul makes Augie March read like Flannery O'Connor).
This could have been an unforgettable 300 page novel; Brodkey managed to keep me spellbound through the first two hundred pages (in which the narrator masturbates (once) and takes a shit (once)—that's right, nothing else happens, and it's spellbinding). Had he kept his narration to his narrator—to youth, to exploration, to sensation—rather than veering off into familial drama, an older sister's spoiled tantrums, a mother on her deathbed, a father's love of stock phrases—had he kept his focus, Brodkey could have written a modern classic. Instead, he's created one of my least favorite books containing my favorite sentences.* Quite a feat.
E.g. "Thinking is a shadow fruit, shadows and weirdness in an electric orchard, blossoming with mirage after mirage, crumblingly real, then shadow paintings, mock photographs in black-and-white, then a mere sickly sense, and exposed underpainting, the overlay lost."
Brodkey writes like a flatulent Philip Roth with Proustian ambition. His sensual moments are stunning; few write about the men's sexual experience with such (physical) tenderness. But these passages, even though some of them are quite long, are buried in a wasted landscape of mud, arduous prose about nothing that goes nowhere, the heaps of erasure dust of bildungsromans from Roth, Updike, Bellow (The Runaway Soul makes Augie March read like Flannery O'Connor).
This could have been an unforgettable 300 page novel; Brodkey managed to keep me spellbound through the first two hundred pages (in which the narrator masturbates (once) and takes a shit (once)—that's right, nothing else happens, and it's spellbinding). Had he kept his narration to his narrator—to youth, to exploration, to sensation—rather than veering off into familial drama, an older sister's spoiled tantrums, a mother on her deathbed, a father's love of stock phrases—had he kept his focus, Brodkey could have written a modern classic. Instead, he's created one of my least favorite books containing my favorite sentences.* Quite a feat.
E.g. "Thinking is a shadow fruit, shadows and weirdness in an electric orchard, blossoming with mirage after mirage, crumblingly real, then shadow paintings, mock photographs in black-and-white, then a mere sickly sense, and exposed underpainting, the overlay lost."
Friday, May 11, 2007
Books: American Pastoral, by Philip Roth
Well, it's not Portnoy's Complaint, but it's still pretty darn good. The first quarter of the book (clocking in around 100 pages, it's a bit excessive) serves as a nostalgic, emotion-padded introduction (legacy of Proust, be damned—you don't belong in Jersey!) to what turns out to be the real meat of the novel, so it's a bit of a slow slog—this is one of those books that "it's hard to get into."
The introduction takes place in part over a high school reunion where a bunch of codgers—the narrator in particular—reminisce about their youth, and the narrator, a now-famous writer named Nathan, describes in the golden sepia of recollection his memories of "the Swede" (actual name: Seymour Levov). Swede Levov earned his nickname by being the only tall, blond, alpha-male Jew in his all-Jewish Weehawken school (in his all-Jewish town, in fact), and he was as athletically adept (all-city this, all-county that, in baseball, football, and basketball) as one would imagine he must be. Nathan has dinner with him once—a month or so before the reunion, not having seen him since high school before that—and finds that he has continued to live a perfect life—Marine served in the war, took up the family business (a glove factory in Newark), has a wife half his age and three healthy athletic sons, the four of whom he takes to dinner in New York City once a month. Nathan walks away from the meal bored stiff and certain that the Swede's life has remained as tediously picture perfect as a Life magazine spread.
At the reunion, though, Nathan discovers that the Swede has just died—prostate cancer (to which the narrator has lost his potency)—and with that news (and some more tiresome meanderings into Proustian sensory nostalgia), he decides to write the Swede's story. The story is what constitutes the next 300-some-odd pages, and it's a story packed with the detail-rich Roth we love. The Swede's life, in this story at least, hasn't been without it's bumps, the biggest his only child (preceding the second marriage and three sons by decades), a daughter, Merry (Meredith), whose troubles begin in the crib when she spends her first 18 months screaming uncontrollably, evolving into a childhood and teenage stutter, and culminating in anarchistic political rage (during Vietnam) when, at the age of 16, she bombs their country town's general store/post office, killing the neighborhood's doctor, and then disappearing.
The story is that of an entire family coping with politics, economics, society, and we learn, from the Swede's (very Jewish) father each detail involved in making a glove, and we learn, from the Swede's (Irish Catholic) wife how difficult it is to be taken seriously when one was once the beautiful Miss New Jersey, and how difficult it is to redefine oneself (she takes up a very hands-on business in raising of beef cattle, but, as she ages, still insists on a face lift). We watch the Swede's parents follow the Watergate scandal on TV, and melt with the poignancy of Grandpa Levov writing letters to Senators and CCing his politically-inclined granddaughter in hopes that she'll respect him for it. Most fascinating (to me) is that the Swede speaks in the Jewish tones of his father (and of Portnoy and his father) throughout the book, which is startling after the long introduction; we are set up to expect not exactly WASP diction, but speech more easeful, less fraught, the speech, perhaps, of The Natural, the character the introduction's Swede most clearly mirrors, before, of course, his own fall.
And even more fascinating than that (to me) is the concept of what this story (the 300ish pages) constitutes in relation to the introduction. Nathan doesn't know the Swede's backstory. They hadn't spoken since high school—and barely ever then; their dinner is their first meeting in fifty years, and the Swede doesn't say a word about having ever had a daughter. So is this story "true" (within the diagesis of the novel's entirety, of course), or is it a "fantasy," Nathan's completely fictional biography of a man into whose interior life he had no access?
The introduction takes place in part over a high school reunion where a bunch of codgers—the narrator in particular—reminisce about their youth, and the narrator, a now-famous writer named Nathan, describes in the golden sepia of recollection his memories of "the Swede" (actual name: Seymour Levov). Swede Levov earned his nickname by being the only tall, blond, alpha-male Jew in his all-Jewish Weehawken school (in his all-Jewish town, in fact), and he was as athletically adept (all-city this, all-county that, in baseball, football, and basketball) as one would imagine he must be. Nathan has dinner with him once—a month or so before the reunion, not having seen him since high school before that—and finds that he has continued to live a perfect life—Marine served in the war, took up the family business (a glove factory in Newark), has a wife half his age and three healthy athletic sons, the four of whom he takes to dinner in New York City once a month. Nathan walks away from the meal bored stiff and certain that the Swede's life has remained as tediously picture perfect as a Life magazine spread.
At the reunion, though, Nathan discovers that the Swede has just died—prostate cancer (to which the narrator has lost his potency)—and with that news (and some more tiresome meanderings into Proustian sensory nostalgia), he decides to write the Swede's story. The story is what constitutes the next 300-some-odd pages, and it's a story packed with the detail-rich Roth we love. The Swede's life, in this story at least, hasn't been without it's bumps, the biggest his only child (preceding the second marriage and three sons by decades), a daughter, Merry (Meredith), whose troubles begin in the crib when she spends her first 18 months screaming uncontrollably, evolving into a childhood and teenage stutter, and culminating in anarchistic political rage (during Vietnam) when, at the age of 16, she bombs their country town's general store/post office, killing the neighborhood's doctor, and then disappearing.
The story is that of an entire family coping with politics, economics, society, and we learn, from the Swede's (very Jewish) father each detail involved in making a glove, and we learn, from the Swede's (Irish Catholic) wife how difficult it is to be taken seriously when one was once the beautiful Miss New Jersey, and how difficult it is to redefine oneself (she takes up a very hands-on business in raising of beef cattle, but, as she ages, still insists on a face lift). We watch the Swede's parents follow the Watergate scandal on TV, and melt with the poignancy of Grandpa Levov writing letters to Senators and CCing his politically-inclined granddaughter in hopes that she'll respect him for it. Most fascinating (to me) is that the Swede speaks in the Jewish tones of his father (and of Portnoy and his father) throughout the book, which is startling after the long introduction; we are set up to expect not exactly WASP diction, but speech more easeful, less fraught, the speech, perhaps, of The Natural, the character the introduction's Swede most clearly mirrors, before, of course, his own fall.
And even more fascinating than that (to me) is the concept of what this story (the 300ish pages) constitutes in relation to the introduction. Nathan doesn't know the Swede's backstory. They hadn't spoken since high school—and barely ever then; their dinner is their first meeting in fifty years, and the Swede doesn't say a word about having ever had a daughter. So is this story "true" (within the diagesis of the novel's entirety, of course), or is it a "fantasy," Nathan's completely fictional biography of a man into whose interior life he had no access?
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Books: Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth
Today, we practice using em dashes correctly. I have been using them incorrectly for many years now. It's infuriating.
When every book you read reminds you of a different old lover, you begin to feel old. Not old because one must be old to have had so many lovers, but because of the concomitant emotions the reading inspires. A tender, almost Proustian, nostalgia comes in waves—poignant—fragile—and the time elapsed since said affair—usually a month or two, sometimes maybe a year or two—and the time elapsed during said affair—so often barely an actual affair and instead a string of semi-isolated incidents, meaningless at the time, to one party or sometimes even both—in retrospection, both durations take on proportions—emotive and temporal—that they never had in real time.
The non-affair—the ill-strung strand of isolated incidents, as it were—whose memory this book welled up in me—was one that ended badly. It was one that progressed badly, too, but was marked by a few shimmering highlights—the warm shock of our first coupling, a bottle of my favorite bourbon on my birthday, a sweaty evening when a thunderstorm blinked my walls blue, and the inconstant but lovely parade of sweets—financiers, eclairs, palmiers, blackout cookies (no croquembouche for the two of us, alas)—left on my desk after lunch while he was courting. I will leave out the bad parts. Who wants to remember them?
The problem is that reading this book, I couldn't help but remember them all. He (the lover), being a hyper-intellectual Jew, mid-30s, a victim of arrested emotional development, whose sexual appetite was dark and wide, leaped from lover to lover, mirroring completely our narrator, Alexander Portnoy, also hyper-intellectual, also Jewish, also mid-30s, as he philanders his way across America, obsessed with goyische cunt. My lover aside, the book is incredibly well written and filled with stunning passages on the joys of female anatomy, the horrors of Jewish mothers, and the dangerous places in which the two intersect. Told in confessional flashbacks, from the analyst's couch, the chronology slips as easily in and out of childhood as. . . well, you know.
Like the affair, the book ended badly (though without any cursing; one has lower expectations for books than lovers, which, upon consideration, might be completely backward), although it didn't progress badly at all. It just sort of, well, stopped. I'll admit that I was disappointed when it finished before I did. I mean, before I wanted it to. I mean, ahem, yes. I suppose that is the primary pitfall of writing a novel without a narrative trajectory. To be completely satisfying—all-encompassing—art must stop when in reality, life goes on.
When every book you read reminds you of a different old lover, you begin to feel old. Not old because one must be old to have had so many lovers, but because of the concomitant emotions the reading inspires. A tender, almost Proustian, nostalgia comes in waves—poignant—fragile—and the time elapsed since said affair—usually a month or two, sometimes maybe a year or two—and the time elapsed during said affair—so often barely an actual affair and instead a string of semi-isolated incidents, meaningless at the time, to one party or sometimes even both—in retrospection, both durations take on proportions—emotive and temporal—that they never had in real time.
The non-affair—the ill-strung strand of isolated incidents, as it were—whose memory this book welled up in me—was one that ended badly. It was one that progressed badly, too, but was marked by a few shimmering highlights—the warm shock of our first coupling, a bottle of my favorite bourbon on my birthday, a sweaty evening when a thunderstorm blinked my walls blue, and the inconstant but lovely parade of sweets—financiers, eclairs, palmiers, blackout cookies (no croquembouche for the two of us, alas)—left on my desk after lunch while he was courting. I will leave out the bad parts. Who wants to remember them?
The problem is that reading this book, I couldn't help but remember them all. He (the lover), being a hyper-intellectual Jew, mid-30s, a victim of arrested emotional development, whose sexual appetite was dark and wide, leaped from lover to lover, mirroring completely our narrator, Alexander Portnoy, also hyper-intellectual, also Jewish, also mid-30s, as he philanders his way across America, obsessed with goyische cunt. My lover aside, the book is incredibly well written and filled with stunning passages on the joys of female anatomy, the horrors of Jewish mothers, and the dangerous places in which the two intersect. Told in confessional flashbacks, from the analyst's couch, the chronology slips as easily in and out of childhood as. . . well, you know.
Like the affair, the book ended badly (though without any cursing; one has lower expectations for books than lovers, which, upon consideration, might be completely backward), although it didn't progress badly at all. It just sort of, well, stopped. I'll admit that I was disappointed when it finished before I did. I mean, before I wanted it to. I mean, ahem, yes. I suppose that is the primary pitfall of writing a novel without a narrative trajectory. To be completely satisfying—all-encompassing—art must stop when in reality, life goes on.
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