a poem remembered

i had an interesting conversation with someone who I didn't know thought the same way about death as me - we both appear to have a near-unhealthy obsession, probably more honest to say a terror, with death being the end, there being nothing more, that awful notion of eternity, and reconciling that with a certain healthy agnosticism about an afterlife, heaven, whatever keeps you warm at night and makes you think you're going to see your dog and your grandma again. It probably stems from the issue that we're both tremendously self-obsessed - not in a selfish way, per se, but in a Whitman, Ayn Rand, exaltation-of-the-individual kind of way (in my more generous moments towards myself, of course) - and anyway, the notion of there being no more me is, quite obviously, difficult for me to imagine. Not that I really would have to, would I - but the abstract notion - coupled with the sad reality that some of my most treasured possessions, for instance certain books - might wind up unnoticed in someone's attic or just thrown away, no one remembering that someone revered them and kept them close through moves, and relationships, and numerous accidental dunks in the bathtub - the way some of my grandmother's things--letters, photos--were just discarded by my grandfather in his grief, and I wish we'd known he'd immediately go home and make good use of a dumpster in the few hours he was alone so we could save them.

But anyway - this all reminded me of a poem from Aspects of Love, a book that was turned into a play most famous, from what I remember in the New York Post during high school, for an all-too-quick full frontal nudity moment well before Nicole Kidman bared her Botoxed limbs for a Broadway audience. But I digress again, because I loved this book for its rustic south of France setting and its quintessentially French and British characters--the French women passionate and quick to despise as well as love and the British men who had no idea how to handle such emotion--for all their moral ambiguities and willingess to fall madly in love and into bed after eating omlettes and drinking beaujolais. Although I can see it right now, unopened for years, on the top shelf of my bookcase, I think I'll stay tucked in on the couch and see if I can remember the lines that conversation triggered a memory of:

Set down the wine and the dice, and perish the thought of tomorrow!
Here's Death twitching at my ear. "Live," says he, "for I'm coming".

Quickie...

...book review, you perv. One thing I managed to do in Malta (aside from drink something on the order of 67 Cokes-in-glass-bottles - deliciouser than Coke in a can) is read like...someone who reads things quickly. And a lot. I finished Atonement (loved, loved, loved - I take back everything I said about boring British white male authors), The Adventures of Augie March (genius writing, great characters, what a voice), The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (a romp - so much fun, so clever, I hope Chabon is a white British male so he can fit into my new crush category), and am about halfway through A Savage War of Peace, which so far is really lively, reads like a story rather than a re-telling. Oh, and the Gourevitch book, which of course was good but there's only so many times you can write, "and then this guy's family was all killed. He's trying to get by". Not to diminsh the stories of individual Rwandans, but it got repetitive. Plus I still can't remember my source who said Gourie (not a British white male, sucks for him) was way too "tutsis can do no wrong" but then again, he notes in the book that after the genocide and the fleeing of a substantial portion of the Hutu population, a lot of aid workers/groups started treating them like refugees when in fact they were the killers--don't get me started on aid workers, for what it's worth--so it would make sense that those types would think Vitchie is too pro-tutsi.

I have to say, I'm so far disappointed with Snow, mainly because I expected it to be a lot more - you know, silly me, win the Nobel Prize and I'd like your book to be engaging and original. It's quite slow, but well-written. Not that I've picked it up in two weeks.

One more thing - chill on the Harry Potter already. Or write me and tell me why anyone needed to read books 3-8 because it's the same plot over, and over, and over again. Oh look, the kinda-hero is the guy everyone thought was a dick! What a surprise! I actually was in Barnes & Noble on Sun with Bub and I flipped through the last few pages with a mind to start extorting small cash gifts out of people to not tell them the ending. It didn't work because on Monday all the Harry Potter fans were out of the office finishing the book and crying that it was over. Oh well. Silly Muggle that I am.

So, if Kakutani has been ticking you off lately (perhaps you are pissed and have declared jihad over the pre-release Harry review? Of course you have. And that's okay) and you want to take my word for it instead, go get Augie and Atonement. Kavalier and Clay is a bit of a heft, but I guarantee Atonement will just leave you breathless. I did hear that Saturday bites, though.

Climbing the Literary Pile

...still obsessed with conquering "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". Although it's mostly due to my often-counterproductive competitive nature (me, in the toilet at work, trying to pee faster than the woman in the next stall), I've also thought my reading is a little scattered - I've never stuck to any one genre long enough to feel as though I'm well-versed in it - today it's the magical realists, tomorrow it's an account of a reporter's work in Africa. So this is my effort to not have to fake it anymore when talking about books at a party and someone mentions The Vicar of Wakefield.

Okay, if you've ever been at a party where The Vicar of Wakefield is discussed and no one had a British accent, you really need to find new friends. But you see my point.

So, my list:

Vanity Fair (I know, I know - but I did just read Middlemarch, so I'm not completely hopeless)
Brave New World (probably even worse than not having read Vanity Fair)
Wide Saragasso Sea (haven't cracked it yet, on the nightstand)
Midnight's Children (recommended by Bub, who hasn't read One Hundred Years of Solitude and therefore doesn't see the similarities in voice but has already moved onto Pale Fire anyway)
The 9/11 Commission Report (just to stay somewhat based in reality; I'll be trying to shoehorn myself into a corset before long)

I recently finished Old Goriot (Balzac, on the list) and while the Francophile in me enjoyed it, I'm not quite sure it deserves a spot on the 1,001 list. Is it because of the universal story of unconditional parental love? the soul-crushing atmosphere of upper-class Paris at the time? the flowering and death of the idealism of Rastignac? While it's an engaging read, I'm still not convinced it's unique. I feel some of the books on the list are there because if you mention it enough, it becomes a great book - feel free to argue that there should be that many Ian McEwan novels on there.