Dear girls and one boy
What need a writer to write? Does he need security, economic freedom or peace?
What's the compromise of the writer with the society?
http://www.theparisreview.org/images/imgLogo.gif?1203436204
enjoy of the interview and see you later to discuss ....
cheers
Federica
Friday, 30 April 2010
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Faulkner, so difficult and so poetic!
Hi girls and one boy,
Faulkner touched me! His language is too rich as well as too difficult for my vocabulary! Although I couldn't read and understand a lot, his writing is so incredible to capture my feel deeply! I loved reading some poetic description even when I didn't understand what, when, where it was happening the action.....Only Saramago is able to write a page, even a book without stopping!
But four weeks later it [the river] would look different from what it did now, and did: he (the old man) had recovered from his debauch, back in banks again, the Old Man, rippling placidly toward the sea, brown and rich as chocolate between levees whose inner faces were wrinkled as though in a frozen and aghast amazement, crowned with the rich green of summer in the willows; beyond them, sixty feet below, slick mules squatted against the broad pull of middle-busters in the richened soil which would not need to be planted, which would need only to be shown a cotton seed to sprout and make; there would be the symmetric miles of strong stalks by July, purple bloom in August, in September the black fields snowed over, spilled, the middles dragged smooth by the long sacks, the long black limber hands plucking, the hot air filled with the whine of ins, the September air then but now June air heavy with locust and (the towns) the smell of new paint and the sour smell of the paste which holds wall paper—the towns, the villages, the little lost wood landings on stilts on the inner face of the levee, the lower storeys bright and rank under the new paint and paper and even the marks on spile and post and tree of May’s raging water-height fading beneath each bright silver gust of summer’s loud and inconstant rain; there was a store at the levee’s lip, a few saddled and rope-bridled mules in the sleepy dust, a few dogs, a handful of negroes sitting on the steps beneath the chewing tobacco and malaria medicine signs, and three white men, one of them a deputy sheriff canvassing for votes to beat his superior (who had given him his job) in the August primary, all pausing to watch the skiff emerge from the glitter-glare of the afternoon water and approach the land, a woman carrying a child stepping out, then a man, a tall man who, approaching, proved to be dressed in a faded but recently washed and quite clean suit of penitentiary clothing, stopping in the dust where the mules dozed and watching with pale cold humorless eyes while the deputy sheriff was still making toward his armpit that gesture which everyone present realized was to have produced a pistol in one flashing motion for a considerable time while still nothing came of it.
I also appreciated some delicate insight when he is talking about women and love...
Wilbourne returned to the house. It was late, yet she had not begun to undress; again he mused, not on the adaptability of women to circumstance but on the ability of women to adapt the illicit, even the criminal, to a burgeoise standard of respectability as he watched her, barefoot, moving about the room, making those sutle alterations in the fixtures of the temporary abode as they even do in hotel rooms rented for but one night, producing from one of the boxes, which he had believed to contain only food, objectes from their apartment in Chicago which he not only did not know she still had but had forgotten they ever owned - the books they had acquired, a copper bowl, even the chintz cover from the ex-work bench, then from a cigarette carton which she had converted into a small receptacle resembling a coffin, they tiny figure of the old man, the Bad smell; he watched her set it on the mantel and stand looking at it for a time, musing too, then take up the bottle with the drink they had saved her and whit the ritualistic sobriety of a child playing, pour the wisky on to the hearth. "The Lares and Penates" she said....
Faulkner touched me! His language is too rich as well as too difficult for my vocabulary! Although I couldn't read and understand a lot, his writing is so incredible to capture my feel deeply! I loved reading some poetic description even when I didn't understand what, when, where it was happening the action.....Only Saramago is able to write a page, even a book without stopping!
But four weeks later it [the river] would look different from what it did now, and did: he (the old man) had recovered from his debauch, back in banks again, the Old Man, rippling placidly toward the sea, brown and rich as chocolate between levees whose inner faces were wrinkled as though in a frozen and aghast amazement, crowned with the rich green of summer in the willows; beyond them, sixty feet below, slick mules squatted against the broad pull of middle-busters in the richened soil which would not need to be planted, which would need only to be shown a cotton seed to sprout and make; there would be the symmetric miles of strong stalks by July, purple bloom in August, in September the black fields snowed over, spilled, the middles dragged smooth by the long sacks, the long black limber hands plucking, the hot air filled with the whine of ins, the September air then but now June air heavy with locust and (the towns) the smell of new paint and the sour smell of the paste which holds wall paper—the towns, the villages, the little lost wood landings on stilts on the inner face of the levee, the lower storeys bright and rank under the new paint and paper and even the marks on spile and post and tree of May’s raging water-height fading beneath each bright silver gust of summer’s loud and inconstant rain; there was a store at the levee’s lip, a few saddled and rope-bridled mules in the sleepy dust, a few dogs, a handful of negroes sitting on the steps beneath the chewing tobacco and malaria medicine signs, and three white men, one of them a deputy sheriff canvassing for votes to beat his superior (who had given him his job) in the August primary, all pausing to watch the skiff emerge from the glitter-glare of the afternoon water and approach the land, a woman carrying a child stepping out, then a man, a tall man who, approaching, proved to be dressed in a faded but recently washed and quite clean suit of penitentiary clothing, stopping in the dust where the mules dozed and watching with pale cold humorless eyes while the deputy sheriff was still making toward his armpit that gesture which everyone present realized was to have produced a pistol in one flashing motion for a considerable time while still nothing came of it.
I also appreciated some delicate insight when he is talking about women and love...
Wilbourne returned to the house. It was late, yet she had not begun to undress; again he mused, not on the adaptability of women to circumstance but on the ability of women to adapt the illicit, even the criminal, to a burgeoise standard of respectability as he watched her, barefoot, moving about the room, making those sutle alterations in the fixtures of the temporary abode as they even do in hotel rooms rented for but one night, producing from one of the boxes, which he had believed to contain only food, objectes from their apartment in Chicago which he not only did not know she still had but had forgotten they ever owned - the books they had acquired, a copper bowl, even the chintz cover from the ex-work bench, then from a cigarette carton which she had converted into a small receptacle resembling a coffin, they tiny figure of the old man, the Bad smell; he watched her set it on the mantel and stand looking at it for a time, musing too, then take up the bottle with the drink they had saved her and whit the ritualistic sobriety of a child playing, pour the wisky on to the hearth. "The Lares and Penates" she said....
Mr. Faulkner and The Wild Palms
The Wild Palms
Hi all,
First of all, I have to say I'm going to read this book in Spanish, because unfortunately my poor knowlege in English is miles away to understand Faulkners' vocabulary. That doesn't mean I don't like it, I suppose is just the opposite. What I like about him is his particular style to describe every situation with all those rich details. Also, I think his understanding about love and the relationships is quite peculiar and fascinating. Here, my extract from the book -which I won't finish, for sure- where Faulkner finds just the perfect words and uses the correct comparison -in my opinion- to show what's love and what happens when falls apart, Charlotte say:
"Yes. It's love. They say love dies between two people. That's wrong. I doesn't die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you're not good enough, worthy enough. It doesn't die; you're the one that dies. It's like the ocean: if you're no good, if you begin to make a bad smell in it, it just spews you up somewhere to die. You die anyway, but I had rather drown in the ocean than be urped up onto a strip of dead beach and be dried away by the sun into a little foul smear with no name to it, just this was for an epitaph. (...)".
So, this is about The Wild Palms, the chapters I enjoied more. With regard to The Old man story, for me more difficult even than the other one, I dislike the unending paragraphs, with no pauses and points. High level, high level...
The other point I didn't enjoy is that particular way to alternate the chapters of two different stories...that made me crazy to follow them. But, for sure, Faulker is one of the biggest.
Well, we will talk about it tomorrow!!
Esther.
Thursday, 15 April 2010
LEVIATHAN
Hi all,
Leviathan is the first book I have read by Paul Auster and I was shocked by it because I was expecting a mistery novel. Nevertheless, it's like a puzzle about Benjamin Sachs' life, a sort of biography about him, so I was surprised by it.
My favourite part is the bit in which Benjamin moves with Lillian and little Maria: I couldn't stop reading because I think the relationship between them was very special, mainly in the beginning when they meet each other.
The excerpt I have selected is one that talks about the end of this relationship and how the child feels that she has been neglected by Benjamin, the first person in her life that has taken really care about her: "They have fallen in love, perhaps, but they had also upset the balance of the household, and little Maria wasn't the least bit happy with the change. Her mother had been given back to her, but she had lost something as well, and from her point of view this loss must have felt like the crumbling of a world. For nearly a month, she and Sachs have lived together in a kind of paradise. She had been the sole object of his affections, and he had coddled her and doted her on her in ways that no one else had ever done. Now, without a single world of warning, he had abandoned her".
See you tomorrow,
Neus
Leviathan is the first book I have read by Paul Auster and I was shocked by it because I was expecting a mistery novel. Nevertheless, it's like a puzzle about Benjamin Sachs' life, a sort of biography about him, so I was surprised by it.
My favourite part is the bit in which Benjamin moves with Lillian and little Maria: I couldn't stop reading because I think the relationship between them was very special, mainly in the beginning when they meet each other.
The excerpt I have selected is one that talks about the end of this relationship and how the child feels that she has been neglected by Benjamin, the first person in her life that has taken really care about her: "They have fallen in love, perhaps, but they had also upset the balance of the household, and little Maria wasn't the least bit happy with the change. Her mother had been given back to her, but she had lost something as well, and from her point of view this loss must have felt like the crumbling of a world. For nearly a month, she and Sachs have lived together in a kind of paradise. She had been the sole object of his affections, and he had coddled her and doted her on her in ways that no one else had ever done. Now, without a single world of warning, he had abandoned her".
See you tomorrow,
Neus
What I like and what I don't like of the Leviathan
Dear girls and one boy,
I’m not sure I like the Leviathan… too much emphasis in my opinion on contradictions, paradoxes, destiny and coincidences…
I really appreciated at the beginning of my reading the original point of narrative-observation, the voice off of Peter/Paul and I read anxiously, waiting for some answer of where is the clue.
However, I felt a little bit tired at the end by the repetitions of impossible coincidences, the personal signature given by Paul Auster to his novels, and by the exaggeration of some characters in their challenge to break down with the ’80 American Standard of life and thinking.
Anyway, I’d like to recognize that I found genial some part of the curious description of the Maria’s performances and the idea of the Phantom of Liberty is a really nice metaphor of the loneliness of a very little part of the American society in these years to cope with the Reagan epoch's way of life (¿The Leviathan …?).
…“In the past few months the Phantom of Liberty had been the subject of editorials and sermons. He had been discussed on call-in radio shows, caricatured in political cartoons, excoriated as a menace for the society, extolled as a man of the people. Phantom of Liberty T-shirts and buttons were on slae in novelty shops, jokes had begun to circulate and just last month two strippers in Chicago had presented an act in which the Staue of Liberty was gradually disrobed and then seduced by the Phantom. He was making a mark than he had ever thought possible”.
I don’t not very well Paul Auster, but I’d like to discuss with you what it means his fixed return to the “identity dilemma”…
see you tomorrow
federica
I’m not sure I like the Leviathan… too much emphasis in my opinion on contradictions, paradoxes, destiny and coincidences…
I really appreciated at the beginning of my reading the original point of narrative-observation, the voice off of Peter/Paul and I read anxiously, waiting for some answer of where is the clue.
However, I felt a little bit tired at the end by the repetitions of impossible coincidences, the personal signature given by Paul Auster to his novels, and by the exaggeration of some characters in their challenge to break down with the ’80 American Standard of life and thinking.
Anyway, I’d like to recognize that I found genial some part of the curious description of the Maria’s performances and the idea of the Phantom of Liberty is a really nice metaphor of the loneliness of a very little part of the American society in these years to cope with the Reagan epoch's way of life (¿The Leviathan …?).
…“In the past few months the Phantom of Liberty had been the subject of editorials and sermons. He had been discussed on call-in radio shows, caricatured in political cartoons, excoriated as a menace for the society, extolled as a man of the people. Phantom of Liberty T-shirts and buttons were on slae in novelty shops, jokes had begun to circulate and just last month two strippers in Chicago had presented an act in which the Staue of Liberty was gradually disrobed and then seduced by the Phantom. He was making a mark than he had ever thought possible”.
I don’t not very well Paul Auster, but I’d like to discuss with you what it means his fixed return to the “identity dilemma”…
see you tomorrow
federica
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Leviathan and the destiny
Hi everyone,
I cannot choose an extract from Leviathan (maybe because I'm not impressed for his writing style), but I think this sentence, from the beginning of the book, can show perfectly Auster's themes: the fate, the coincidences and the destiny in lives, using as a stage New York and its history.
"Everything is connected to everything else, every story overlaps with every other story".
And this is somethings that is repeating in the rest of his novels, as "Moon Palace", which is definitely much better, in my opinion.
See you all on friday!
Esther.
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