Tall tales and fairy tales

Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov

I recently heard the awesome violinist Alexi Kenney* lead the San Francisco Symphony in Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Although the piece is comfortably familiar and familiarly Baroque, I still know of no other human creation at all like it. I would say the same of Pale Fire, a work of imagination and audacity of the highest order. For my second reading, after many years, I had intended to read it "straight": flipping back and forth between John Shade's 999-line poem and Charles Kinbote's extended commentary on it. In Kinbote's foreword, he recommends a different approach, starting with his notes and then proceeding back to the poem... purchase of a second copy is recommended to facilitate ready access to the notes. Of course, Kinbote is a rather unreliable guide, if he even exists, fictionally speaking. Reliable or not, he can be laugh-out-loud funny, if unintentionally, just as Shade can be a touchingly rich poet, even if his rhymed iambic pentameter is nostalgic and contrived. In the end I read it straight through: Foreword, Poem, Commentary, Index. I reckon I will not wait long before taking another crack at it, maybe next time following Kinbote's questionable advice.

The Sleeping Beauty
Elizabeth Taylor

This was the fifth of Taylor's novels that I have read, and it is a very good one – I'd rank it just a notch below her humble masterpieces, A View of the Harbour and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. Taylor's middle-class Brits often lead cramped, unhappy lives; her lead characters engage in small acts of heroism that involve the embrace of love over bitterness or honesty over (self-)delusion. When the pursuit of love conflicts with the virtue of honesty... well, that's drama... and comedy. 

* Full disclosure: Offspring of blogger.

Jack DeJohnette, RIP

He made much great music. This one is kind of a fusion version of speed metal. I have it on vinyl. Generally not my thing, but wow.

Reading roundup

The Hours
Michael Cunningham

A riff on Mrs. Dalloway, with its themes of madness, beauty, sexuality, and choosing between living and death, it is a fine novel, loaded with clever parallels and references to the original that only occasionally distract or become too contrived. 

James
Percival Everett

Having read about the novel, I was little worried that it would be too didactic or woke for my tastes, but in fact it is primarily a rollicking good adventure yarn, and in that regard not unlike its inspiration / foil Huckleberry Finn. Everett has serious fun with Jim's code-switching when speaking with his peers versus the white folks, if on occasion he is inclined to explain rather than show. Although the evils of enslavement, and its corruption of all levels of American society, are on display here, Everett's depictions never rise to the level of eloquence or horror of, say, Beloved, or The Known World. And in the end, in light of the plot's central revelation, what the f*** has become of Huck? I guess that question is left to the late Mr. Clemens to answer. This is not Huck's story, after all.

Desolation Island
The Far Side of the World
Patrick O'Brian

Ahoy mateys! I'd read a couple of his books before, and I was happy to return for more. Yes, they follow a formula. Yes, there are only so many things that can happen, so they keep happening, book after book: storms, doldrums, shipwrecks, battles at sea, floggings, scurvy. And yes, you have to make a choice between keeping Wikipedia close to hand so you can translate all the nautical jargon, or just blow through it like a westerly in the South Atlantic, counting on context and the pure music of the words. Anyway, our heroes Aubrey and Maturin are so compelling, the storytelling so gripping, the writing so facile, the moral sensibility so empathetic if traditional, you welcome yet another chase across the high seas, whether Aubrey is the hunter or the quarry. Call it science fiction: You are dropped right onto an alien spacecraft, with its own peculiar technology, language, culture, and rules. But better than most science fiction: Informed by historical and physical reality, and written by a master prose stylist.

D'Angelo, RIP

Some of the best-sounding music ever made. Way too young.

Congratulations, Arthur Sze!

Our next Poet Laureate is an excellent choice... Child of Chinese immigrants, teacher at Institute of American Indian Arts... How did this happen under Trump? 

Murder They Wrote

Summertime is the time for crime novels, one of the genres my mother always called "escapist literature." And couldn't we all use some escape?

The Glass Key
Dashiell Hammett

Hard-boiled, with plenty of political shenanigans. It is more graphically violent than I would have expected from a 1931 novel. A very good read from front to back.

Bluebird Bluebird
Attica Locke

Our favorite Black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is back, and appealing as ever. Locke gets a little bogged down in her east Texas version of Faulknerian southern gothic, but the characters are mostly compelling, and the plot keeps you going. 

Harm Done
Ruth Rendell

I can't say exactly why I have never fallen for Inspector Wexford the way I have Dalgliesh, but nonetheless this is a decent read, despite some meandering plot detours and a bit of amateur sociologizing.

Eddie Palmieri, RIP

A giant. 

Larry Kotlikoff on Trump firing the head of BLS

I suppose you have to be an econ nerd to fully appreciate the work of our federal statistical agencies– notably the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Suffice to say, they are not perfect, but they do incredibly valuable work generating data that we can have confidence in. At least until now. I don't agree with Kotlikoff on everything, but he is spot-on here. Krugman and others have noted that by corrupting and politicizing government data, Trump is doing what banana republics have always done. I suppose becoming a banana republic will have its advantages, since we will presumably have to grow our own when the Trump tariffs cut off banana imports.