I have read

An incomplete review of my recent reads. For a more complete list, see my Goodreads

Didion – Slouching Towards Bethlehem

I take it all back. Forgive my blasphemy of younger times. Didion is, in fact, all that and does, in fact, live up to (and exceed) the hype. Funnily enough, reading that review, I also seem to imply Faulkner is at an arm’s distance for me. Needless to say, ignore everything I said there—Didion is truly a master of the craft and incredibly humorous. 5 stars.

Hesse – Siddhartha and Steppenwolf

These (along with Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as a palate cleanser) were my first baby steps after finishing Absalom, Absalom! Even for baby steps, they were quite small ones; they were alright reads, and there were points where I thought they could be really great, but that feeling fell apart after a good night’s sleep. Just a little too on the nose for me.

Faulkner – Absalom, Absalom!

Where to start? Maybe at the beginning, but that would understate my excitement and awe by orders of magnitude. I started reading Absalom, Absalom! the same way I read As I Lay Dying: merely to bask in Faulkner’s beautiful prose, not thinking too deeply about the South and such. And, for about 250 pages, I managed to restrain myself to just that (aided by copious and lengthy breaks to read other books in between). But, at about page 260, I was struck over the head—how dare I? How could that even be done? The pieces of the storyline I’d noted only lackadaisically suddenly fell into line with one another, turned towards me, and began to run.

I thought (note here that I am beginning a second paragraph, and may go on to a third; this is evidence of the fact that this is the most important book listed here thus far) that this book was a four-star kind of thing, to be read, piquing my interest mildly but ultimately set down on the shelf never to be discussed again. But oh! how wrong I was. How I hinted to myself, taking picture after picture of stunning lines to keep for later, but denied myself the realization that this is a masterpiece. When I came to this fact (much too late), I knew, though I had a hundred and more pages to go, that this was to be one of my favorite books of all time (the same realization I had with Waiting for Godot, which, mind you, remains untrumped). The blunt instruments I had moseyed along with up until this point were suddenly given new meaning; the plot that had flowed thickly through my head only as a byproduct of individual lines now became a strong and quick beating pulse. What does it say that I became most swept away when the narration becomes most untrustworthy? When it acknowledges itself, within fiction, to be fictional? When Quentin and Shreve insert themselves so the subjects of their story become two, then four, then two again? I don’t know, but consider the motor of an epiphany come far too late.

Absalom, Absalom! is perhaps, objectively, the greatest piece of literature I’ve yet read. Not my favorite, but objectively the greatest. Maybe I need to revisit As I Lay Dying, having probably missed many of the more nuanced points, but now I feel I have to forge onwards (backwards, really) to The Sound and the Fury to learn more about this Quentin Compson. But how could it ever live up to Absalom, Absalom!? (Interrobang not intended but very fitting.) Just think of the title: a biblical story of the son who avenges the honor of his sister and rebels against the father, then is killed, to his father’s bereavement. There could be no better a title—not just for such a depiction of the American South (rich in so many ways, even beyond mention of the Civil War), but for the history of Charles and Henry (separately and together). The titular story is so fitting—no, it is not just “fitting,” as might be said of something off-the-rack that is worn by a customer who just-so-happens to be the same size, but is skillfully leveraged and squeezed and made to show the limits of its description, then pushed beyond into new heights—that I’m dizzied. And the title, so unassuming and nowhere beyond the cover made explicit excepting on the title and half-title page, is only one example of Faulkner’s genius; it is the most blunt example I can mention, and yet it is still so finely wrought.

Can greater works than this exist? I don’t know. I’m tempted to say “no,” were it not for the fact that Faulkner has written other things, and that I have read so little either of his or of others’. A library is not complete without Absalom, Absalom!, and neither is a reader.

Lafargue – The Right to Be Lazy

A very interesting take, but only once you’ve cut down past the pomp (and misogyny). Unfortunately, it’s a take that I’m not sure I either agree with nor, possibly, understand. He seems to blame the workers for wanting too much work, for taking the Spirit of Capitalism aboard too much in earnestness, with too much verve. We then must indict the economists, lawyers, moralists, and pseudo-philosophers who have taken intellectual leadership and made the proletariat enforce their own march into the gutter…but the capitalists seem to be alright? Sure, they don’t help, but they seem to be, for Lafargue, an entirely different class than the intellectuals who ensure their continued (and continuously luxurious) existence, and who are the real culprits of our degradation. But maybe I misunderstood.

Babitz – Sex and Rage

It feels a bit political to review this right after Didion, and more so to admit that I liked it better—but maybe we can ascribe that to liking glamour and wealth more than biting and jaded prose. Or to preferring fiction. Or we can harpoon my taste in general. But nonetheless, I enjoyed Jacaranda.

Didion – The White Album

Good writing…but (and don’t bite my head off) I’m not sure if she lived up to the hype for me. Certainly, I can believe that she changed the course of the genre and influenced generations of writers—but without having lived in LA during the 60s/70s, I don’t have the nostalgia to really bring it to life. It feels somewhat like reading Faulkner: the prose is often great, and I appreciate having such a skilled guide, but ultimately I am only a visitor to the time and place at hand.

Crawford – Shop Class as Soulcraft

I suspect that if I weren’t a leatherworker somewhat taken with the romantic formulation of craft (cf. my column in the Stanford Daily), then I wouldn’t enjoy this book very much. Luckily, I am, so instead of finding it sermonizing and abstract, I found some utility in the ideas put forward. It probably also helps that I’m not put off by academic writing (Crawford has a PhD in political philosophy) in the way some others drawn to the title alone might be.

Hesse – The Glass Bead Game

I started this partly because I thought it would give me a good kick to the rear (being a college student who is likely to get stuck in my own glass bead game), but it really reignited my desire to read for pleasure. Even though I could tell this wasn’t his best work (it was good! but it wouldn’t win a Nobel prize alone), I devoured it in just a few voracious sittings. I didn’t learn any lessons about getting lost amidst abstract academia, but I did learn that I need to dedicate far more time to reading fiction.

Durkheim – Suicide: A Study in Sociology

In terms of his statistical methods, this is painful to read. But luckily Durkheim gives us analytic categories that are useful beyond their statistical fabrication—and, indeed, their relationship to suicide. I wrote, for one of my classes, about how Portuguese author and poet Fernando Pessoa embodies the idea of egoism, and why egoism can expand our understanding of peri-/post-war Europe beyond the typical usage of anomie.

Vonnegut – God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater // A Man Without a Country

Fun reads, with good witticisms, but I won’t pretend to have gotten more out of them than that. Funnily enough, two different people got me “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” for my birthday. To quote one: “I know you like books about crazy old men”

Smith – Dead and Alive

Zadie Smith is of a certain ilk of female essayists that i can describe no further. They share a characteristic i cannot name, but I could tell you immediately whether an author you name belongs there or not. I’ve never read a book of Smith’s, but I love her prose, and this collection did not disappoint.

Orlean – Joyride

A joyride indeed. It took a moment to pick up to full pace, but I loved coming along for the ride: it was inspiring, refreshing, and fun, despite the fact that I haven’t read any of her other books (though surely I’ve come across her work in the New Yorker).