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August 7, 2006
OGIC: That meme
I know, the One Book meme is sooooo last week, but here I go anyway...- One book that changed your life. I've blogged about it a lot already, but I'm going to say Shirley Hazzard's Transit of Venus. Maybe to say it changed my life is a little melodramatic, but I can say that it changed my sense of the possibilities of the realist novel. No, it changed my sense of the possibilities of language. Yes, language. I kept pinching myself while reading it--not literally, but you get the idea.
- One book that you've read more than once. A friend recently told me that he's reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time, and I realized that this is a condition I aspire to. In other words, I wanted for a second to claw his eyes out, but the second passed and I masked my jealous rage nicely, I thought. It used to be every Christmastime that I read P&P. Now my readings are further spaced out, every three or four years instead of every single one as I try (without hope) to regain a state of innocence vis-à-vis this particular book. (Note: I'm in good company on this count.)
- One book you'd want on a desert island. I know what you think I'm going to say, but I'll take a fat blank book (and a supply of pens).
- One book that made you laugh. Randall Jarrell's campus satire Pictures from an Institution always makes me laugh, again and again, savagely. See for yourself: "If you had given a Benton student a pencil and a piece of paper, and asked her to draw something, she would have looked at you in helpless astonishment: it would have been plain to her that you knew nothing about art. By the time a Benton artist got through exploiting the possibilities of her medium, it was too dark to do anything else that day; and most of the students never learned that there was anything else to do." Etc., etc., ad infinitum.
- One book that made you cry. The Furies by Fernanda Eberstadt. The tragedy that ends this novel is shocking and sad, but what pushed me to tears was the terrible logic of it. (In addition, this book not being reprinted in paperback makes me want to cry. It's worth the price of the cloth edition, though.)
- One book that you wish had been written. A novel by Alice James. Don't you think she'd have given Henry a run for his money?
- One book that you wish had never been written. Just one? I'll get back to you on this. It may require a whole post.
- One book you're currently reading. I'm still reading Anthony Powell, as reported here, and will be for some time. But for variety's sake I'll say that I'm also reading another Powell: Dawn Powell's Angels on Toast. After reading half and inexplicably putting it down a few years ago, I'm starting again at the beginning. This is no reflection on the book; I did the same thing with Anna Karenina three times before I finished it!
- One book you've been meaning to read. Proust's book. You know the one. And in French, no less. (I'm on page 3, so I'll still count this as an intention rather than underway.)
Posted August 7, 2006 3:01 AM
