October’s just begun and already we have a backlog
Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis is best read in one sitting. It’s fast, short (168 pages in 15-point type) and nasty, and though the author tells you how it will end, and it’s not exactly a surprising end if you’ve read the earlier book Less Than Zero, you still want to know how it could’ve gotten so horrific. I kept waiting for Patrick Bateman from American Psycho to turn up with a chainsaw and some Huey Lewis and the News CDs.
Imperial Bedrooms is a sordid tale of friendship gone bad. Plus drugs, sex, and the movies. Just to mess with our heads the narrator refers to Less Than Zero, which was purportedly written by another character, and the movie starring Robert Downey, Jr, which was substantially different from the book. In the movie Julian dies. Yet here he is at the start of Imperial Bedrooms, alive and allegedly sober.
Ellis’s prose matches the frantic, sweaty, paranoid lives of his characters. We don’t like them, we know we should be rid of them, but we have to know what happens to them. That’s an accomplishment.
* * * * *
I was just congratulating myself on having diminished the tower of unread books by one when I got word that my stash had arrived. So I begin October already behind in my reading. This is not a complaint.
First up: Lydia Davis’s new translation of Madame Bovary. I read Madame Bovary in high school and hated it. It was boring and I thought the main character was stupid. She marries a dolt, she has affairs with men who aren’t much better, she gets into debt for curtains and then she kills herself.
Why am I taking another crack at this book? Because Madame Bovary is still regarded as a masterpiece, and now that I’m older maybe I’ll see what the fuss is about. I read the Steegmuller book on Flaubert and liked it, so maybe I’ll like Flaubert. Think of it this way: a masterpiece set in the Napoleonic wars is not surprising, but a masterpiece about a bored housewife who has affairs, runs up a huge debt and kills herself? That takes work.
Also, I love Lydia Davis’s stories. They’re short and clean, like a punch. True, she can’t change Flaubert’s style, but maybe she can point out what I’d missed the first time.
Then Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, which the American critics are raving about. One usually gets suspicious at the chorus of hallelujahs, but I was suspicious of The Corrections and I admired it. Even if I can barely remember what it was about.
The back cover of Richard Yates by Tao Lin asks, “What constitutes illicit sex for a generation with no rules?”
The answer is, Not having sex.
The protagonists in this novel are called Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning, so the challenge is to not see Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning in your head while you’re reading it.
I read Gary Shteyngart because he’s funny. The cover of his new book reminded me of the cover of a Godard dvd. Voila.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert translated by Lydia Davis, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Richard Yates by Tao Lin and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart are available at National Bookstores.
Almost forgot to ask: What are you reading?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 4th, 2010 at 12:49
1. Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour
2. Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns by Esther Lombardi
3. A Brief History of Time by Stephen W. Hawking (arrggghhhh!)
October 4th, 2010 at 13:50
rereading portnoy’s complaint. tapos pag may kabag na ako sa kakapigil tumawa ng malakas, i switch to alfred hitchcock’s biography hitch.
October 4th, 2010 at 14:33
Freedom! I just finished reading The Corrections and I loved it. Korek naman si Aling Oprah sa pagpili sa libro. Sayang nga lang at nagkairingan sila.
At speaking of Franzen and iringan, I’m sure you’ve heard of Franzenfreude? Hehe.
Thanks for this entry, Jessica. I’ll get my copy of Freedom and Super Sad True Love Story next payday.
October 4th, 2010 at 17:56
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Wuthering Heights (with the Gothic pen-art cover)
October 4th, 2010 at 18:24
Emma, which is hilarious.
October 4th, 2010 at 19:16
Anne Tyler’s If Morning Ever Comes.
October 4th, 2010 at 20:01
1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (a P99.00
hardcover copy from NB)
2. Short Stories by F. Sionil Jose
3. Winner Takes All by Paulo Coelho
October 4th, 2010 at 20:17
I read The Corrections last summer and I loved it too!!
Tonight, I will read The Temptation of Jack Orkney by Doris Lessing.
October 4th, 2010 at 20:18
Still trying to finish Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. It’s taking me a year, but now I’m already halfway through and determined to finish it before the movie version comes out.
Next up on the queue: Mort (Terry Pratchett), The Undercover Economist (Tim Harford), and either Cry of the Sloth or American Gods.
October 4th, 2010 at 21:59
I love Super Sad True Love Story! Just started on Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives.
October 4th, 2010 at 23:43
Just finished Walter Kirn’s Up in the Air (the George Clooney movie). Now chipping away at Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver. :D
@ruth I enjoyed The Savage Detectives more than 2666.
October 5th, 2010 at 00:53
Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood.
Because of the movie coming out soon. :-)
October 5th, 2010 at 01:39
1. a collection of o. henry short stories
2. pride and prejudice
3. the traveller’s guide to medieval england (ian mortimer) – nice history book
3. compendium of sewing techniques (to make up for all the home eco classes i missed in highschool)
October 5th, 2010 at 04:25
Just to add to how “meta” things can get in literature, you’ll perhaps want to read Seattle’s weekly The Stranger as Tao Lin himself parodies the Time Magazine write-up on Franzen a few weeks ago. He takes that profile and describes himself and the oddball stuff he does:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/great-american-novelist/Content?oid=4940853
On the reading front, I just managed to pick up a copy of Lethem’s Chronic City on paperback. Should crack it open soon. One that I’m really interested to take off the bookstore shelf though is Tom McCarthy’s Remainder.
October 5th, 2010 at 10:19
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
October 5th, 2010 at 12:41
The Most of George Burns, 700 pages of comic storytelling, got it for P180 at this book sale. Hardbound.
October 5th, 2010 at 13:21
V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life.
October 5th, 2010 at 18:31
i’m down to the last 50 pages of the grapes of wrath, by steinbeck!
October 5th, 2010 at 21:11
I incorrectly wrote the title of the third book I’m reading. It’s Paulo Coelho’s “Winner Stands Alone.”
October 5th, 2010 at 21:32
It took me a month to read “The Quincunx” by Charles Palliser, but it was a great read. Never thought I’ve be riveted by a Dickensian novel.
Currently reading Sue Miller’s “While I Was Gone.”
October 6th, 2010 at 11:35
Better by Atul Gawande (ang galing!)
American Pastoral Philip Roth
Art & Design in Photoshop by Steve Kaplan