A Swim in a Pond in the Rain - In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life (George Saunders, 2021)

(408 pages)

In The Cart

The Singers

The Darling

Master and Man

The Nose

Gooseberries

Alyosha the Pot

Re-read for me, I picked it for book club.  Things I talked about -

A book celebrating these peerless Russian authors and learning to write - or more pertinently to me, to READ.  Seven short stories plus discussion around each.

That made this book well worth some contradictions.  I don’t really love the short story format; you just get used to a few characters and then - it’s over. I was kind of disappointed in some of the stories Saunders selected. I got tired of his preaching.  

The contrast to Lonesome Dove. Big canvas; led me to War & Peace.

Two good rules: Be entertaining.  Advance the story in a non-trivial way.

The Cart - was Marya changed by remembering childhood happily?

The Singers - I really liked this, especially his efforts to describe music (the indescribable, I’ve tried). Keyed to the reactions of the audience, especially the wife (sharp-nosed and quick-eyed tradeswoman). (Kind of rich – in The Singers, he is criticizing Turgenev for running on and on, apparently not understanding that he is doing a far worse job of it himself. Plus, I like Turgenev’s running on!)

Too much analysis = yuck. 

This collection is worth it for Master and Man alone. 

Grappling with spirituality - the moment when the master decides to devote himself. Difficult to write about that something “larger than ourselves” - but it works, quite a moment.

In the first few pages after Master and Man, Saunders talks about opinion and fact, that Tolstoy here is pure fact. Compare War and Peace - all sorts of opinions about Napoleon, war, etc. Here:  “It’s mostly just descriptions of people doing things.”  Perfect. Saunders is helping me read better.

The “facts” of being out in that snow for anyone who’s lived there.  Billy Devine’s corncrib. 

        Page 219. Reminds me of my reaction to the snow drift sections.

        How Tolstoy goes into the master’s mind as he tries to sleep. Everyone familiar with this from night experiences of difficult situations - tell yourself not to think about it; select something happier to think about; keep trying; maybe drift off but there it is again! Saunders discusses section 6 of the story at page 232 (the part where master and man are in the cart overnight).

The Nose - can anyone find something of value either in the story, or in the author’s notes? I liked Dead Souls, but this?

At 331, Chekhov uses the same technique to describe beauty as Turgenev does to describe music in the singers. Here: “The moment when Pelageya stops Ivan and Burkin in their tracks with her good looks.” 

At 336-7 is a key for my readings of Chekhov.  Saunders best work appears here (or is it just because I agree with it?!) The idea of Checkov having clear views, weakly held. Start at “interested in everything but not wedded to any fixed system of belief” and read the highlights.

Refer to page 381 re Russian history. Saunders cites the 70-year explosion (mostly literature but some music)! How does it fit in with Russian Revolution, Stalin, etc. I’ve wondered about this.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain - In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life (George Saunders, 2021)

(408 pages)

Rote gibes in the early going directed at whatever it is that the author thinks of as "capitalism" made me unreceptive, but then I have to admit that the author does say a lot of useful things about writing.  Perhaps can't help it that he spends a lot of time in campus environment? [As the book goes on, annoying comments about climate change activism, gender/class, "my truth" as a useful concept - pretty much the entire catechism. Why are politics even invoked?  Whatever, the book remains quite useful.]

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He head-on addresses in a useful way (first at page 102) something we've noticed and talked about but not really nailed down - 

--that the appreciation of an art work at its deepest level happens when there is that instant of recognition that something special, or moving, is hitting us; and we can ride that for a while depending on the nature of the art work (and what's happening in the immediate environment - distractions?)

--that instant is somewhat sharable without words - the knowing look at another contemporaneous observer - we know there is some element of sharing but cannot know the extent of the overlap of our respective appreciations.  which is fine.

--that moment will fade away every time . . . we may remember aspects of it, and we definitely will remember that it happened

--often it's followed by an attempt to verbalize or write down what was experienced (what I sometimes am trying to do in a weak way here in this blog).  sometimes we do a decent job of that, but we (I don't think it's just me but who knows) always and quickly get the feeling that our words are mostly failing to express the experience

--which is interesting in itself.  humans have developed this marvelous capacity for language, and for writing things down to speak across geography and years.  And it's super-valuable.  But - as valuable as words are - the "words cannot express" concept is real.  Everyone knows/accepts it.

--the "instant of recognition/appreciation" is the best moment - better than the subsequent point at which we try our hardest to share via words - Proust/Mann as great at trying to put that experience into words but I don't recall, or didn't pick up, how they made this point.  (Mann with music in Doctor Faustus; Proust with Elstir/painting, Bergotte/writing, Berma/acting, Vanteuil/composing)

Turgenev in "The Singers" - the reaction of the sharp-eyed innkeeper's wife (the author is telling us by this adjective that she's not sentimental or easily-swooned) - as soon as the second singer got going, she immediately "drew herself up to her full height" - eventually had to leave the room (we conclude because the performance was so striking).  Wow - a wonderful way to tell us about the quality of the music via an observer's reaction - we all know that feeling even if we can't put it into words.  Turgenev's description of other listeners also good but I thought this was the best.

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"Pattern stories" - where repeat certain elements but with variation and escalation - I often think this exact thought with the piano works that I try to learn.  Those works are relatively short, just a few minutes - I think they can be fairly compared to short stories - these piano works introduce a theme, it comes back but escalates.  Interesting.  (This was "The Darling" by Chekhov.) (Also true of larger musical works but I don't play those on piano.)

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Master and Man - a story I've loved for decades.  Author telling us how Tolstoy wrote with "facts" - I'll try to watch for this.  Then the author annoys me with early 21st century "woke" criticism (about treatment of the peasant) - I'm pretty sure that criticism won't age as well as Tolstoy's story.

the moment when the "master" decides to take action - so powerful; it creates that "instant of recognition."  The build-up pays off, immensely.

reminders of "The Death of Ivan Ilych."

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Gogol's "The Nose" - I find it worthless.  And I find worthless the author's effort to explain why it's not worthless.  (I also didn't much like "The Overcoat", but found "Dead Souls" great, so who knows.)

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The remaining stories and commentary not as striking.

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More generally - made me think why I don't read a lot of short stories - maybe because, like poetry, they often make the reader work harder?  My habit is to rather rapidly read extended novels or history - I'm steadily rewarded with interesting or perhaps even moving passages that don't so much require me to stop and think; constantly presented with something new.  I do believe this is my problem with poetry, something to work on.  Short stories less of a problem, there are quite a few that I like a great deal.

Doctor Faustus - The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn as Told by a Friend (Thomas Mann, 1947)

Not sure what I felt like after reading this.  I think it was extraordinary.  I think I like Thomas Mann an awful lot, at least based on this book, and also on this book.  I don't know much about Mann, what critics think, etc.  Maybe it's better that way.

This was an adaptation of the famous Faust tale; a story long prominent among Germans, particularly in relation to this work by Goethe.

It reminded me of The Magic Mountain in many respects - long discussions among characters, long book, long sequences with little or minor action - yet compelling throughout.

A "friend" of a famous (fictional, of course) German composer - Adrian Leverkuhn - is writing Leverkuhn's story.  Leverkuhn makes a Faustian bargain so as to be able to compose wondrous musical works.  Or does he?

Mann goes into long discussions of the nature of music and composition throughout the book - this was highly interesting to me - being long close to classical music, yet almost entirely ignorant on theory and composition.  An example:  Mann does this effectively through the character of Leverkuhn's teacher in Eisersachern - the lectures, the individual discussions - intrinsically interesting separate from the story.  Lots of references to Beethoven's 9th - the Ode to Joy, including chorus - a note of hope after all the turmoil in Beethoven's earlier works - how Leverkuhn's final composition is a sort of answer to the turn taken in Beethoven's 9th.  This element of the book was very thought-provoking, if not always directly pertaining to the plot line.

Leverkuhn studied theology before turning to music . . . interesting discussion by a theology department professor about good and evil - how a complete world needs both - how freedom granted by God would mean living in compliance - so would not a truer use of one's God-gifted freedom be noncompliance?  Or what?  This is all part of the set-up for the Faustian bargain.  If there was one.

Theology, demonology, music.

Leverkuhn 's friend is writing the story over a course of years during WWII . . . regularly updating on the course of events in WWII; these run in parallel with elements of the underlying story, which took place in the years surrounding WWI.

And of course there is political allegory here - Germany as making a Faustian bargain with Hitler - I rather expected this to be the extent of the book, but there is far more going on.

Interesting political discussion among the narrator and some acquaintances in the Nazi years - consensus forming that truth can, and should, be sacrificed to the community's needs - it's a longish discussion that I'm not capturing here, but resonated in a troublesome way with the orthodoxy/political correctness prevalent in the US these days.  Don't be too truthful, it might be uncomfortable.  The myth of the community.

Leverkuhn's musical breakthrough is modeled on Schoenberg's 12-tone work (which I know nothing about).

This was very good.  I need to spend more time with it.

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (Samuel Johnson, 1759)

I much liked Boswell's biography of Johnson, but still have trouble figuring out where he fits in the literary world.  Other than his dictionary and all the essays, aphorisms and bon mots - I think he wrote quite a bit of other stuff, but don't know that it really took off.  I signed out of the library a one-volume collection of selected "prose and poetry" by Johson - started working through it, decided not to keep after it.  Probably gave up too soon, but it wasn't that interesting.

I did work all the way through a short story - Rasselas - didn't find it all that compelling either.  I think this is one of his better-known works.  It reminded me of Voltaire's Candide;  but I didn't like it as much.

Junior members of Abyssinian royalty are confined to a hidden valley from which it is impossible to escape - though all needs are met in the finest possible way.  Rasselas becomes discontented, eventually escapes with his sister and their tutor (who had experience in the outside world).  They go around trying to find happiness, or purpose - meet up with various folks, find out that it's a pretty complicated issue.  Eventually they go back to Abyssinia - wiser, perhaps somewhat sadder as well.

The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann, 1924)

"Your statement is incoherent, my good engineer," Settembrini said in reply, "yet its reprehensibility still shines through."  This is an entirely inconsequential quote in the book.  I jotted it down simply because I so much enjoyed the language throughout this book, and it seemed like as good an example as any.  (Maybe I'll get a chance to use this line someday.)

This translation runs a little over 700 pages, and was completely engaging throughout.  Difficult to absorb, I definitely will need to work back through this.  I can see why it appears on so many "must read" lists, and am grateful I finally got around to it.  The typical focus here is on how the book is a metaphor for pre-World War I Europe - and I can somewhat see this - but there's so much more going on.

I think it's wonderful.  Enough to where I just bought the book.

Plot is well-known - an "entirely normal" individual (Hans Castorp) leaves Hamburg and goes to a Swiss sanatorium for a three-week visit to his ill cousin who is a patient there; ends up staying seven years.  Even then would not have found his way out except for external circumstances.  He finds life at 5000+ foot elevation quite different than life in the "flatlands."

Among other things, Hans Castorp immediately notices that "time" is different in the mountains.  The setting, the role of illness, the lack of prescribed tasks (other than five meals per day and several "rest cures"), a climate where snow can (and does) fall any month of the year - make time almost irrelevant.  How time changes when one goes on a vacation or otherwise experiences a break from one's normal schedule. Mann muses about this quite a bit.  I need to think about this.  My own experience of "time" is changing - after decades of being nothing but extremely busy, I am consciously seeking not to be. It matters.

The role of illness - a very compelling way of discussing how illness can make day-to-day concerns meaningless.  But they're not meaningless.  How is this reconciled?  Similarly:  the role of death - for all, but particularly for patients in a setting where many don't survive.  Patients typically taking treatment in the "horizontal position" (including at "rest cure") - but then there also was the permanent horizontal position, often commencing before death.

Sanatorium director - Behrens - seems like a quack/salesperson - but there are genuinely ill folks at the institution, and he seems genuinely interested in helping them. Not sure how to take him.

Hans Castorp's cousin, Joachim Ziemssen - well-liked, military.

Hans Castorp is very interested in sometimes-fellow patient, Clavdia Chauchat.

Two major characters are introduced - both required to live at elevation due to poor health - Herr Settembrini - the Italian, humanist, democrat, Freemason - and Naptha - Jewish and converted to Catholicism, would-be Jesuit, now a teacher at the high school.  There are many, many pages devoted to the musings and arguments of these two folks on every imaginable topic - often directed to Hans Castorp.  Settembrini sometimes sets up Asia v. Europe, with Germany in the fulcrum.  Much of this may relate to pre-war conditions, but I don't know how to put that together.  It is all very interesting, very erudite; the more one has read, the more interesting it would be.

Then Mynheer Peeperkorn shows up (with Clavdia Chauchat) - he is typically incoherent in speech, yet dominates all - elderly, regal, Hans Castorp keeps referring to his dominant "personality" - the point being that this seems to leave the two scholarly disputants overwhelmed.  Interesting, I don't know what this is about - force of personality over strength of rationality, logic, articulate-ness?  I wonder whether the original German term translates to "personality" in the way I think of the term?

I enjoyed the description of the short (and prematurely-ended) visit of Hans Castorp's uncle.

Hans Castorp was a mediocrity when he arrived at the sanatorium, but learned a great deal during seven years.  Including a phase where he learned lots of details about the way nature works (anatomy, botany, etc.) - interesting contrast to the esoterica, interesting interplay with his interest in Clavdia.

And what was going on at the end of the book - Hans Castorp's interest in music (via a new phonograph); the girl with medium powers; the "great petulance" that seemed to lead to confrontations (this did seem to have a presaging effect).  Then, a very powerful finish.

There's something going on here - about our entirely proper focus on job, day to day responsibilities, social standing, politics and current events, the sorts of ostensibly deeper digs by folks like Settembrini and Naptha - all so worthwhile and important - yet how this inevitably gets swamped by illness, change of circumstance, falling in love, big personality, points of honor, physical attraction, the power of music, perhaps even whatever goes on with a medium.  Hmm.

The Anatomy of Influence - Literature as a Way of Life (Harold Bloom, 2011)

This is a very recent book that has received great reviews and is appearing on a number of "best of" lists for 2011.  The author has taught at Yale for decades while also being a very well-known (though not to me) literary critic. 

I found the book very interesting - but I still don't know why, because I simply don't understand what he's talking about most of the time.  This is an entirely different level of engagement with literature.

The basic premise here - and in other of his works - is the role of "influence" - how writers were influenced by others.  But I can't follow the influence threads very well; perhaps because much of the book is focused on poetry, which is a foreign land to me.

And he keeps talking about things that are inscrutable to me (and, I suspect, unhelpful):  gnosticism, Lucretianism, etc.

Something I liked: he's 80 and recently experienced very poor health - this comes through - he suspects this is his last hurrah, probably isn't filtering opinions, etc.

Something that was clear to me:  I need to take another run at Shakespeare.  This author just loves Shakespeare - he ranks him way above all others (giving Walt Whitman somewhat similar acclaim in the American market).  And he quotes plenty of others who share his views of Shakespeare.  Emerson said, "He [Shakespeare] wrote the text of modern life."  Bloom:  "I can think of no one except Shakespeare and Montaigne who has such wisdom beyond tendentiousness." Bloom:  "The miracle of Shakespearean representation is its contaminating power:  one hundred major characters and a thousand adjacent figures throng our streets and sidle into our lives." Now that's influence.

Bloom:  "I keep returning to Shakespeare in the chapters that follow not because I am a Bardolator (I am) but because he is inescapable for all who came after, in all nations of the world except France, where Stendhal and Victor Hugo went against their country's neoclassical rejection of what was regarded as dramatic 'barbarism'."  That quote sounds cool but I need to think more about what the last part means.

Bloom thinks "Nostromo" is Conrad's best book:  good choice.  He admires Proust, Milton, quite a few others.

So I will start spending some time with Shakespeare.  Not sure I care about exploring Whitman's stuff, maybe later. 

And maybe I'll read this book again in a decade or so and see if it makes some sense to me.