Murdoch vs. Ogawa

Just returned from the woods of Connecticut. I wonder if I'll love the Swiss forests as much as the American ones. It was nice to see my scheduled posts went through.

On to the books:

Iris Murdoch "The Sea, the Sea" vs. Yoko Ogawa "The House Keeper and the Professor"

The House Keeper and the Professor

This slim treasure of a book was given to me by the father of a close friend. The father is an aspiring writer himself so he and I connected on this issue when he visited and he send me this book which concerns the relationship between an unnamed Housekeeper and, similarly unnamed, math professor whose memory only lasts eighty minutes.

Though filled with "pop" mathematics (as opposed to the more popular pop psychology) and sugary sweetness, I enjoyed reading this book mainly because it made me realize two things about myself:

1) I, for the last time in my life, am living at the perfect age. Let me explain: the Professor teaches the Housekeeper all things concerning numbers, prime numbers, amicable numbers, deficient numbers and perfect numbers. The latter, according to the book, are rare and "treasured" by mathematicians.

A perfect number is a number whose divisors add up to the number itself. For example:

1 + 2 +3 = 6.

The number six is divisible by all these numbers and when you add them together you get, as I just showed, six.

The next perfect number is my age, 28.

1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28

Before reading this book I considered my current age a holding pattern age. Meaning it was late twenties, but not thirty. I was no longer young, but not old and still considered "a kid" by most of my colleagues, even those less than a decade older. It was a pleasant revelation to be living at my last perfect age. It makes me wish I had really started doing something during this age, rather than waiting; waiting for things in the mail, for visas, for news, for permission to do what I want, waiting for my life, in Switzerland, to begin.

I hope in the second half of this age I will cease to wait. For those who are the same age, or soon will be, 28 is your last perfect age. The next perfect number is 492 and, unless google comes up with nanobots that grant us immortality, I doubt anyone will make it that far.

2) This book, which I only read recently, made me realize that I have not properly dealt with my own father's memory deficiency. Following his heart attack two years ago, I doubt my father's memory lasts longer than twenty minutes as he can't watch a half hour sitcom without losing the plot.

The Professor in the book uses mathematics to deal with memory loss and confusion. My father uses silence, confabulated stories and apathetic answers. The Professor endears himself to those around him by embracing his exceptional intelligence. My father endears himself to people because of who he was. He was someone that filled a room with his laugh, controlled, beneficently, conversation, he was someone to whom people could not wait to speak. People still talk to him in memory of this lost conversational gift despite that fact that he rarely responds, or responds as shortly as possible because he does not remember any of the events about which these people wax nostalgic.

I admit that I've wanted my dad to be more exceptional in his brain injury, like the Professor in the book. I've kept my distance because I'm disappointed in the unexceptional father I now have.

There are certain anecdotes I tell about my father's memory (for example, how he can't remember I'm engaged, but he can still remember that, when we play dominoes, I'm deficient in threes) which, were he not my father, I would find interesting. I tell others because they do find it interesting.

But me? Forget all this "interesting" memory bullshit, just give me my dad back. It wasn't until after reading this book that I found the courage to write that sentence.

...I've spent the whole post on the Ogawa book, which means I'm shelving that one. Though I will record here, mostly for my own sake and because it seems apt at this point in my life, the last line of Murdoch's baggy, but booker prize winning novel: "Upon the demon-ridden pilgrimage of human life, what next I wonder?"

Back on the Shelf: The Housekeeper and the Professor

The Books III

Taking a break from works of fiction, let's delve into philosophy for today's tournament.

Various Authors "Life and Death" vs. Simone Weil "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force"

Life and Death

Aside from philosophy both of these books have a common thread, which will become apparent later.

This first one, Life and Death, was required reading for my Honor Scholar's freshman seminar at DePauw University. The seminar was called "Ruin and Re-begetting" and was taught by Dr. Andrea Sununu, an unparalleled instructor about whom I cannot write enough praise without sounding corny.

My education sucked before college. Senior year the longest book we read was George Orwell's "Animal Farm." To study the Odyssey we watched the SciFi (Syfy?) channel's made-for-TV version. I'm not kidding. Sununu's class kicked my ass. My head hurt I had to think so much and this slender volume of philosophy made it hurt more than anything. It unrooted my preconceived, Christian notions of how everything worked, of how everything should be.

Because of things written in this book, and discussed in Sununu's class I considered death for the first time without the guarantee of Heaven, which is to say, I considered death for the first time. For this reason, I kept this book.

The Iliad, of the Poem of Force

This slender volume was a graduation gift from the same Dr. Sununu. Over the course of college I went from pre-med to econ major to classics major, going on to do a post-bac year in Greek and Latin and then becoming a Latin teacher--the post I will soon be leaving.

There was a time when I excelled at Greek and could almost, almost just read it. I brought all my skills to bear on The Iliad. However, it was not until I read Weil, a year after I received the gift, that I understood the art behind that epic poem. Up until then I'd kept the book because it was a gift, but after reading it, the book became a touchstone that I return to even though I've long forgotten Greek.

Back on the Shelf: The Iliad, of the Poem of Force

Prehistory: The Winnowing, The Books II

Back for a second installment of my own personal tournament of books. What to keep, what to pitch.

Don DeLillo's "Libra" vs. José Saramago's "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ"

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

I haven't read this book. I've read, and enjoyed, several of the recently deceased Saramago's works, including Balthasar and Blimunda, Blindness and The Double. All these books I loaned out to people never to have them returned, which speaks, I think, to the quality of the writing.

But this book I've never read. Oh, I've started it and it was not that I disliked it, other book just distracted me. I did get far enough to read a horribly gruesome crucifixion scene (not Christ's). While depressing, this was great.

The book apparently caused a stir when first published, being censored and all that. It's a book I want to read and one I want to say, for reasons of vanity, that I have read.

Libra

This book I have read, but it was never a book I wanted to read. Though a DeLillo fan, a fictional account of the JFK assassination did not interest me. I'm of the generation that just accepts the CIA killed Kennedy, so I found the premise boring.

I was ridiculously wrong. This book rocks. I read it for a book club at the aforementioned Newtonville Books and could not put it down, nor keep myself from reading entire chapters, not just for intricate conspiracy woven, but also in an attempt to unravel DeLillo's perfectly constructed prose.

If anyone is a fan of the movie "JFK" by Oliver Stone don't read this book because, as it's so much better, it will ruin the movie.

The basic question: to I take a book already read or one I want to read? I'm not sure I will have sentimental attachment to The Gospel as I now do to Libra, but should one keep books around simply for sentimental attachment? It strikes at the question I am not ready to answer: why keep any of these books?

Back on the Shelf: Libra

Prehistory: The Winnowing, The Books

Due to prohibitive shipping costs and less space once I arrive in Switzerland, I can't take all my books with me.

A month ago I had one small bookcase hidden behind stacks of books and another larger bookcase dripping with even more. I donated two large boxes full of books I could think of no reason, whatsoever to own. Books that had been left at my house or on my desk. Economic

textbooks from college that survived five moves. Trashy books (like 'Twilight'...) people had bought me or loaned me before they (or I) moved away.

In a rushed moment, before I thought to much, I dropped them at a donation trailer behind Stop 'n Shop, but even that was painful. Afterwards I suffered pangs of guilt and regret.

I still have a tall bookcase full of books I 'care' about. I've limited myself to one box of "things" which will include not only books, but also DVDs, cookware and blankets. It's not the biggest box so I still need to dispose of a majority of these books.

To distract from the agony of relinquishing books I care about I decided to create a tournament of sorts. Each day I'll pit two books next to each other. One, I'll return to the shelf to fight another day, the other goes into the donation box.

If anyone is reading please feel free to object to my decision or, if you want the book I discard, just tell me. We can figure out some way to get it to you and I'll even write a note in it or something.

First Matchup

Rick Moody's "The Diviners" vs. John Wray's "The Right Hand of Sleep"

The Diviners

I bought this book because my local bookstore, Newtonville Books, scheduled a reading with Moody. I had never read anything by him, barely heard of him, but wanted to attend the reading and figured I needed something for him to sign.

For those unfamiliar with Moody he, I guess, is best known as the author of The Ice Storm, made into a movie by Ang Lee and for this notorious takedown of Moody's memoir by Dale Peck.

His writing is self-important, but not bad. The opening of The Diviners follows the journey of light, which might sound lame, but Moody's writing makes it work. Supposedly the last chapter serves as Moody's revenge on Peck (for the review mentioned above) which is all interesting if a bit petty. Overall, however, the interweaving plot line fail to go anywhere or say anything. I finished the book wondering why I had read it.

It is signed with Moody's looping, whole-page signature. He actually ripped the page while he was signing and wrote a confession for the rip on the page.

The Right Hand of Sleep

Few people have heard of John Wray and if they have, it's for his most recent book, Lowboy, which his publisher actually promoted.

Sleep is his first book that he supposedly wrote while living in a box in an abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn. I'm wary of such book 'myths' and even more wary of writing that emerges from Brooklyn these days (Lethem what happened to you? Spending too much time with Foer?), but this book is amazing. From start to finish the prose is simply beautiful.

It's set in Austria during the rise of Nazism and the rumblings of World War II. If you're at all like me such a description equals greatest generation snooze-fest but Wray, whose mother is Austrian, somehow sheds a new (modern?) light on a beaten to death topic.

There are certain passages I read, or even copy out sometimes, to jumpstart my own meager writing.

Back on the Shelf: The Right Hand of Sleep

Of course, if you really want the book I want to keep make your case and I'll think about it.