The Politics of Ruining a Book

Manguel ruins his book in the end with a manifesto of political proclamations against the United States and its allies. The book was written in the year the Iraq war began, so I can see how he might include some criticism, but to ruin such a potentially great book to make a political statement or to bash George Bush is simply ridiculous and irresponsible. The last third of the book is injected with a leftist diatribe that Manguel intends to forcefully link to the books he read throughout the year. I am disappointed. I wonder how books like these fall through editorial nets (perhaps they don't). I am not writing this from either side of the political spectrum; I would still hold right-conservatives to the same scrutiny. Manguel simply ruins the book and there's no excuse for it.

I am reading "Writers on Writing," a collection of the essays that appeared in "The New York Times" over a couple of years. There are two volumes of this collection so I'll be writing on individual essays and hoping to apply some of the advice to my own writing. Also, I think I am (for the first time) reading two books at the same time. The other books is a collection of short stories by Yoko Tawada, "The Bridegroom was a Dog." Most of the reading for the Tawada volume I will be doing between the hours of 11:30 and 12:10, since that is the time that I'll be most likely to be able to read without interruptions. I am really sorry for the Manguel book, really, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

The Art of 1600s Books...

Alberto Manguel's reading list for the book "A Reading Diary" includes Cervantes' "Don Quixote." Manguel quotes extensively from "Don Quixote" and the reader walks away with a great deal of the story. It must be an art to summarize entire sections of books this way. What to keep and what not to include? It is definitely a tough call. What I remember the most about "Don Quixote" are the times when my sisters and I would watch the old Mexican produced film version in Spanish and laugh at the absurdity of Sancho Pansa. It was a lovingly made film and I still remember some of its scenes. Some people theorize that Don Quixote is mentally ill because he read too much--spent too much time in his library. Perhaps I will end up like him.

Manguel on borrowing books: "I feel uncomfortable having other people's books at home. I want to either steal them or return them immediately. There is something of the visitor who outstays his welcome in borrowed books. Reading them and knowing that they don't belong to me gives me a feeling of something unfinished, half enjoyed. This is also true of library books." Over the years I have been collecting books at the same rate I read them, voraciously. I mark my books so borrowing from a library really doesn't help my case much. I do, however, borrow computer books from friends and from the library. I use them to teach myself and then have little or no attachment to them in the end.

I almost forgot to mention what Manguel writes regarding reading more than one book at a time. He says it is like two voices that enjoys at different times of the day. I am thinking of doing the same. I always read one book at a time and start thinking about what to read next on my list when I start getting close to the end. I don't know how it will go but I think I might want to try. Perhaps I will read twice as many books :-)

Nostalgia...

This is a debate that has been brewing in my classes for a long time. What is nostalgia? How can we describe the feeling of longing-yet-happy-bittersweet emotions? Manguel's book defines the term for us once and for all. It is fascinating how one comes across information like this by just opening a book. Here's the most concrete definition of nostalgia I have read up-to-date:

"The word 'nostalgia' was invented on June 22, 1688, by Johannes Hofer, an Alsatian medical student, by combining the word nostos (return) with the word algos (pain) in his medical thesis, "Dissertatio medica de nostalgia," to describe the sickness of Swiss soldiers kept far away from their mountains."

What do we feel nostalgia for? A loved one. A place or time. A country. That I believe is particularly the one that applies to me. Even though I was born here there are times when I feel I live in exile. The search for home is never ending. A passage fron Ovid's "Tristia," .... a country created by layers and layers of memory, embroidered, corrected, reshaped.... the places we live in become transformed through our prejudices, whims, limited experience, through the fact that we walk one route and not another." And as in yesterday's post, when I took refuge in literature, perhaps I can find a country in it as well. Manguel includes some of the finest quotes about literature I have ever read. From Josef Skvorecky: "To me literature is forever blowing a horn, singing about youth when youth is irretrievably gone, singing about your homeland when in the schizophrenia of the times you find yourself in a land that lies over the ocean, a land--no matter how hospitable and friendly--where your heart is not, because you landed on those shores too late." Literature can do that, and this book is making me more and more aware of the possibilities.

Take Refuge in Me...

Manguel writes about taking refuge in books. I can definitely vouch for it. I don't think I could've made it through my last heartbreak if it hadn't been for the escape books provided. It is strange but at that moment, at the precise moment of break up, I turned to Kafka for refuge. In his letters to Milena: "Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; love is to me that you are the knife which I turn within myself." And just like that I simply understood why that other person had to move on with her life. But I am digressing. We take refuge in books to forget what has been carved into our consciousness through experience. Take refuge. Appropriate. Manguel remembers his bouts of escapism while, as a child, he read "The Island of Dr. Moreau." There was something exciting, he states, about being totally terrified; something that helped him forget the clutter of present-mindedness. He also writes about his collecting books and how his library has changed with the many moves of his life. Recently, I laid down roots in a brand new home, and established what I hope to be my permanent library, so I can relate to what he is writing. He describes the trees outside his window, the way the sun catches the front of the house, etc. I have gone through similar emotions lately (although the sun doesn't hit my window at all in the library). It is, however, home, and my books are my refuge. It's like having at your disposal several hundred counsellors or psycho-analysts.

Then there are those who resist the illusion, those who can live without the hope of the refuge. A college professor friend of mine spews out that for her all reading is escapism and that escapism, no matter how much it might be needed, is not a worthwhile endeavor. I resist that corrosion. I am simply attached to the comfort the written word offers. Just like Manguel who happens to be "drunk with words."

I think that the only criticism I have for "A Reading Diary" is that Manguel turns political at some points, strongly critical of the American administrations of the past and of today. I believe he is a socialist. While there is nothing wrong with that fact, the truth is that in a book so lovely even a paragraph of this non sequitorial stuff seems too much. Perhaps he has in mind a book on political analysis. Thankfully, those passages are few.

Tomorrow I will try to write about what Manguel calls "nostalgia." Lovely word, really.

Growing Up Philistine...

Alberto Manguel's book has awakened in me feelings that had been dormant for quite a while. I grew up in a household where books were not a priority. We had an encyclopedia and that was about it. The reason I am bringing this up is to explain why I started reading so late in my life. I don't blame my parents for the lack of initiative to promote education; they were a product of the Depression, when reading was a luxury not many could afford. It's a sad fact, but it is true. What really brought me to the "life of the mind" was music. I listened to music constantly when I was growing up. One day I felt music the way many people feel religion: a spiritual awakening. I decided to teach myself to read music and eventually picked the cello as my instrument. Knowing Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and the rest opened up for me the world of intellectual pursuit. After that, philosophy, literature, history, science came easy to me, almost naturally. I knew my life had changed, but never imagined that it was going to draw such a barrier between my parents and myself.

Reading eventually caught up with me, and when it did it enveloped me completely revealing a new me, a part of my spirit I had never known before. The first two books that did me in as a reader were Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and Garcia Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude." I read them both in Japan during the summer of 1994. I traveled constantly between Osaka and Hikone and read mostly on the train. One night coming back from Osaka I was enthralled in my reading that I passed my station and realized it nearly an hour and a half later. That, I have been told, is a real reading experience, when everything else evaporates and nothing is left but the word on the page and in the mind. Manguel states in his book: "Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know but can't describe." I know that I will never stop reading. For the rest of my life I intend to learn more, to love more and more the written word. I think this is the reason why Manguel's book has been so instrumental in awakening these feelings. I love the subtitle of the book: "A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books." It is still January... how many more treasures to discover. The beginning of the year is like the beginning of life, tabula rasa and away we go to enjoy our books and learn more! We are more blessed than we can estimate in the limit of our minds.

A Reading Diary

Alberto Manguel's book is fascinating. I was surprised right away when he cites that he began his year-long reading list by re-reading Adolfo Bioy Casares' "The Invention of Morel," a novella I read when I was an undergraduate. He describes the story well, although I suspect he doesn't really want to summarize the story itself. "The Invention of Morel" is a story about a man who comes to an island in the Caribbean only to find that the island is full of images of people. You see, there's a machine which reproduces images over and over again. Bioy Casares' story is along the lines of Jorge Luis Borges "Ficciones." In fact, Bioy Casares and Borges were close friends, and together they defined the Latin American literary boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Alberto Manguel's mentioning of this story really took me back to the summer of 1994 when I read "The Invention of Morel" for the first time. It was summer and I was living in Japan then. I was a young reader; that is to say, I began my reading career rather late. It is for this reason that the mentioning of "The Invention of Morel" in Manguel's book means so much to me. Manguel is an experienced reader (and writer) and his observations are magnificent. For example, he very subtly compares the story of Morel with the financial crisis that Argentina (he is from Argentina) suffered in the early 2000s. He saw Buenos Aires as inhabited by ghosts, just like the images the narrator sees on the island. I think this is done very cleverly and Manguel pulls it off without seemingly wanting to. Here's a quote from the book that moved me: "Perhaps, in order for a book to attract us, it must establish between our experience and that of the fiction--between the two imaginations, ours and that on the page--a link of coincidences." Ever read a book thinking you have gone through a similar experience? For as much as I disliked "Run Between the Raindrops" I have to say that all the grunt speak, etc. really got to me. I love the idea of having my experience linked intricately to a book. I can think of no better companion, really. Manguel also writes about the link of word on the page and image in the mind. I am fascinated by this book. I will pace myself so as not to read too fast. I want to write at length about this.

When the Rain Stopped...

I finished "Run Between the Raindrops." The narrator is wounded on the last day of the battle. I think he got a bit careless. At any rate, as I have said before, this is one book I had to finish despite it being so bad. I have a habit of (or a responsibility to) finishing the books I start regardless of how bad they might be. After all, someone wrote them so that others may read them. Whether they are good or bad never entered into the equation.

I am reading "A Reading Diary" by Alberto Mangual. It's a short book about the enjoyment of having a reading list for a year. Since I have been doing reading lists for the last few years, I thought this might be a good read for me.

I am playing in a concert on Saturday, February 3rd (here's the advertising). The pieces are mostly experiemental in nature, so I don't know how much of it will go over well with the audience. Of course I can always make this face to the audience if they don't like what they hear.

I might not be able to blog every day this week. Work has to come first :-)