Mandel > Recent Status Updates

Russian roulette, child messiahs, and the transmigration of souls, each with a twist. Ah, Cărtărescu, you do not disappoint.

I'm re-reading this to teach it in my seminar, and as was the case with G.H., I'm enjoying immensely the process of reading it very slowly, taking notes along the way. Today as I read, it occurred to me that Lispector's prose is much like Thelonious Monk's music - always off-balanced, uncannily out of sync, but never quite tipping over and falling down; and the drunken teetering becomes a dancing all its own.

Having just re-read this novel, I'm beginning it yet again - this time, to make detailed notes for my seminar lectures. In a real way, I'm teaching this seminar on Lispector precisely to give myself the excuse to do a very slow, close reading of this book, allowing myself the luxury of writing lengthy reflections as I do...

Holy sh*t, this book is swallowing me whole.

Just finished The Double. What a claustrophobic, bleak novel. The socially inept, nervous clerk Mr. Goliadkin slowly goes mad, convinced his life has been usurped by a doppelgänger more talented, charismatic, and cunning than he. His final descent is especially heartbreaking: one moment, the pity of those around him seems like love, and the next, they burst out in applause as he's dragged to the madhouse...

As I recently did with Molloy, I'm re-reading this to teach it in a seminar. This time, I've dug especially deep into the first few pages, which introduce Malone's way of understanding why he's writing this remarkable deathbed text. The notion of storytelling as a way to escape self-preoccupation (as Malone says it, a way of avoiding 'watching himself die') and face death with equanimity is incredibly rich.

Re-reading this yet again to teach it this week. This time around, I'm thinking a lot about the striking difference between the narrated and the narrating Molloy. Narrated Molloy's speech is virtually incomprehensible to others. He's emotionally erratic, and shockingly ignorant about the world. Narrating Molloy is articulate, even charming, erudite, and detached. This duality is one of the keys to the magic brew!

Having finished part II - which concludes the main narrative of the novel - I can't help but think Cortazar was influence by Beckett's Murphy, perhaps is an homage to Murphy. Both novels are about men crippled by their inability to engage with the world and other people. Both men estrange the women who are devoted to them, and end up working in an insane asylum, whose they find much in common with.

Part I is a story about the emptiness of bohemian intellectuals. Oliveira feels like a dark portrait of what I could have become had I never gotten over teen angst and intellectual self-importance. He's a man-child of a breed that is sadly all too common among academics, which makes it difficult to sympathize with him, and a pleasure to see him brought low by his own awfulness. Good on La Maga for ditching him!

Returning to it as an adult, it's fascinating to compare this earliest version of Tolkien's legendarium with the much later one found in The Silmarillion. Many of these early versions are much more detailed. Many of the details are different in ways that are crucial for Tolkien's overall themes, and they are placed into a frame narrative Tolkien later abandoned.