Jan 25, 2023The Art Of FlightPart autobiography, part literary criticism. I was a bit skeptical at first, and maybe to a certain extent throughout the entirety - while most of it is beautifully wrought, there is a tendency for Pitol just to simply start listing off names and places and books and works of art. Worse than that, they are lists of names of which I recognized only a small amount, and read even less! So basically both pretentious and an insult to my intelligent wordliness. (Reading the translator's note at the back, I discovered that the description of a man he saw in a bar in Barcelona as "the little black princess of the heaths" was in fact a reference to the nineteenth century novel Das Haideprinzeßchen? Which has a German wikipedia page, but no English one.) Unlike, say, Terry Pratchett, this is not an easy read.
Jan 26, 2023DucksKate Beaton is great, this book is great, this book is heavy and traumatic and human and occasionally a bit sweet. Should be read.
May 19, 2023Dawn Of EverythingGraerber and Wengrow paint a compelling and beautiful painting of new potentials for understanding the past & present. They set up a neat dichotomy between a Rousseaun and Hobbesian view of the origins of humanity, before bravely pointing out that it was maybe a bit more complicated than all that. Some powerful ideas around political and social organizational structure experimentation, differing practices and paradigms, the impact of play and the view of humanity as effectively originating in play. They walk an interesting line between criticizing the anthropologists who revere and idolize the way of life outside the State, and at the same time offering optimistict and bordering-on utopian interpretations of the same - but, after all, they have a good story for all of it, and a smattering of impactful and transformative ideas to think on. An edifying read.
May 27, 2023Pilgrim At Tinker CreekAn entirely self-indulgent conversation with a passionate believer in the wonder and the beauty of the natural world, full of excellent tidbits and charming vignettes, of life by the creek and Life by the Creek. I like the review that says "Just when you thought something interesting was going to happen she watches birds or something for hours." If you are looking for plot (and I do have a bit of a personal predilection/weakness in that direction) this is not where that will be found. It is instead a good book for telling you to go to the woods and front only the essential facts of life, for painting a golden aura around that which has the tendency to become mundane dirt, trees, sky. I find that some of the best books I read are those that inculcate a yearning for faith and belief in something greater, and this scratches that itch.
Jun 24, 2023The Snow LeopardReading this brought to mind Susan Sontag's On Photography, or at least what I remember of it/what I imagine it as saying, having read it a number of years ago. Not to say that they have anything in common or anything, but. What I imagine Sontag saying is something about the act of photography causing an incision between the realities of the viewer and the viewee. The photographer becomes the camera and the subject an object. What occurred to me reading this is that the same logic can apply just as well to writing about the act of photography - in examining photography, you loose the ability to do photography. This is a bit of a silly criticism of Sontag, but I think it points its finger towards ideas around non-fiction as a whole - writing about an experience, and especially planning to write about an experience, will color that experience, make it less Authentic.
Jun 24, 2023WaldenI listened to Walden while walking through the woods around Walden, and I gotta say - the words still ring true. Yes, he was a few hours walk from Boston, yes his mom probably did his laundry for him and the whole experience is a bit silly on the face of it. But there is a pleasant earnestness and optimism to Thoreau's years in "the woods" that I can't help but admire.
Jul 18, 2023A Sand County AlmanacI think this makes an excellent pairing with A Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek. The one, a bright-eyed celebration of the beauty and majesty of being alive and able to experience nature, the other (A Sand County Almanac), a reflection with an older voice but many of the same goals - and importantly, a moral imprecation, an explicit proposal not merely to look at things with new eyes but to act on what you see. The challenge to work towards a governance and guardianship that grants moral weight to the land and the ecosystem is of course more important than ever, is aptly and intelligently put, and demands to be read.
Jul 18, 2023The JourneyI mean, a personal predilection for just a little bit of pretension, for the fluency with literature and the literati, definitely does have an impact on my opinion of Sergio Pitol - lists of names and works and influences and times that are not known to me make me a bit jealous and admiring. I think without a little bit of that, you could get a bit fed up with this book and likely the whole of his Trilogy of Memory - although how you have gotten past The Art of Flight to this sequel is a bit beyond me.