Daily Archives: March 11, 2012

A Year in Books/Day 69: On the Road

Posted on March 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: On the Road
• Author: Jack Kerouac
• Year Published: 1957 (The Viking Press)
• Year Purchased: Unknown
• Source: Unknown
• About: Do I really have to go into this? Sal, Dean, Marylou. You know the drill, right? In case you don’t, I’ll dedicate a few disjointed sentences to your enlightenment: Although not his best book, ‘On the Road’ is certainly Kerouac’s main claim to notoriety and immortality. It is a great gateway to his other work. Hell, even poor Kerouac is better than most and this is very, very far from being his worst. You’ll meet some of his Beat Generation friends on the pages. Since it captures a state-of-mind that most young Americans experience to one degree or another, it is a must read: exhilarating, chaotic, life affirming. If you haven’t read it yet, and want to, do so before the film is released. Please.
• Motivation: I think most teenagers go through a Beat phase. This novel is usually the first thing they read. I was a little different-I devoured a few random biographies before taking the ritual plunge with ‘On the Road’. However, I didn’t truly appreciate any of it until a second go-round with the whole gang in my late twenties.
• Times Read: 2-3
• Random Excerpt/Page 180: “At dusk I walked. I felt like a speck on the surface of the sad red earth. I passed the Windsor Hotel, where Dean Moriarty had lived with his father in the depression thirties, and as of yore I looked everywhere for the sad and fabled tinsmith of my mind. Either you find someone who looks like your father in places like Montana or you look for a friend’s father where he is no more.”
• Happiness Scale: 8
  

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A Year in Books/Day 68: Are You Somebody

Posted on March 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Are You Somebody The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman
• Author: Nuala O’Faolain
• Year Published: 1996 (Henry Holt and Company, Inc.)
• Year Purchased: 2000
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: Nuala O’Faolain could write. That seems like a simplistic assertion but it’s true: she could write, and she did so beautifully and well in five books. This was her first. She was 56 at publication, and everything she had learned in nearly 6 decades of  living was poured, eloquently and firmly, into this exquisite volume. This is what I would term a “quiet” memoir, not because of the contents but because of her unflinching yet lyrical voice: the battles and iniquities and joys of her life are recounted without hyperbole, bombast or dramatics. It’s lovely, moving, humorous, without pity: it’s straight-up what a memoir should be.
• Motivation: The title and the jacket blurbs were a huge lure (unusual for me). The cover photo is alluring, the concept compelling.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 36: “I’m not ashamed of our fervours. But I am ashamed that twice I stole the gifts I gave to my heroine. I took Tweed talc or round soaps in tissue paper from other girls’ cubicles. I had to. I had no money. I didn’t take them for myself, just to give to her. I think that she may have known-and that the nuns knew and never came out with it. They knew I told lies. They knew I read under the blanket. They knew (this was nearly the end of me) that I smoked, perched in the window embrasure of a lavatory high up in the attics, listening at the cold glass to the noises of the town, like the great roars from the rallies for the IRA men-one of them was a local-who were killed on the Borders in 1956.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 67: Literary Feuds

Posted on March 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Literary Feuds A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe
• Author: Anthony Arthur
• Year Published: 2002 (MJF Books)
• Year Purchased: 2005-2007
• Source: Unknown
• About: There are writers who spend their lives and careers building a literary community: where everyone is helpful and supportive of one another, where advice and camaraderie abound, where failures and successes are shared. Unfortunately, reality decrees that some people aren’t meant to get along. This same reality also dictates that some people are just jerks. I’ll leave you to decide how to categorize the titans covered in this book. At least wordsmiths lace their rancorous verbal wars with plenty of wit; unlike feuds involving reality “stars” or athletes, you’ll walk away from these encounters with all of your brain cells intact.
  

  Sinclair Lewis-Image via Wikipedia

• Motivation: Writers. History. Obscure facts. Intellectuals fussin’ and fightin’. Bring it on.
• Times Read:1
• Random Excerpt/Page 75: “Fortunately, a revised picture of Lewis is now available from Dreiser’s biographer, Richard Lingeman. Written with sympathetic insight instead of disdain, Lingeman’s ‘Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street’ was published early in 2002; although it adds nothing to our understanding of the quarrel between the two writers beyond what Lingeman had already described in his earlier works about Dreiser, it should help Lewis toward the literary resurrection he deserves. At the least, Lewis should be placed side by side as a literary giant with Theodore Dreiser, the difficult man he admired so much, and from whom he got so little in return.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 66: Marcel Proust

Posted on March 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Marcel Proust A Life
• Author: Jean-Yves Tadie (Translation by Euan Cameron)
• Year Published: 1996/Translation Copyright: 2000 (Penguin Books)
• Year Purchased: 2005
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: This is one of the most complex, obsessively detailed and clear-eyed biographies I have ever read. Don’t let the hefty 779 pages deter you; it’s a smooth read and well worth your time.
• Motivation: Proust fascinates me like few others. I first came across his name as a teenager, when I discovered that I share a birthday with the great writer. That was all it took for me to decide to find out more about the Frenchman (yes, I’m that kind of self-absorbed). Fortunately, I never looked back; my life is infinitely richer for that decision. He is one of my favourite authors. I ended up reading this biography in 2006 whilst on a cruise. This is definitely my idea of vacation reading!
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 577: “This explains why, shortly after 24 December, Proust asked Louis de Robert if he would take his book to Ollendorff, pointing out that he would offer to have it published at his own expense; the choice of this publisher, whose list consisted mainly of books on nature study, was scarcely a fortunate one; his response was to become famous.”
• Happiness Scale: 9
  

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