Ataraxia

  There are plenty of long passages, chapters in The Golden Book that I enjoyed very much. The adventures in Africa for instance. There are passages that I did not like- “licking blood and brains on the floor” to take one example. There is way too much communism for my taste. I had more than enough over about 25 years to read about it with any kind of pleasure. Doris Lessing criticises many communist actions and yet it is not a subject that I take in. therefore, I had to go through parts of the book with great speed and little attention.   To quote from the internet: “….the work explores mental and societal breakdown. The book also contains a powerful anti-war and anti- Stalinist  message, an extended analysis of communism and the Communist Party in England from the 1930s to the 1950s, and a famed examination of the budding sexual and  women's liberation  movements.  The Golden Notebook  has been translated into a number of other languages. In 200...

  Beloved by Toni Morrison   Perhaps when we consider the “hard times’we have to live through, recession, euro crisis, political turmoil, we should remember history.   The novel of Toni Morrison is a story to remember. It is inspired by history- “the story  of an African-American  slave ,  Margaret Garner , who temporarily escaped slavery during 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a  free state . A posse arrived to retrieve her and her children under the  Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 , which gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. Margaret killed her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured...”   What can be more terifying than this?   It is not an isolated incident, the story of one slave. The book estimates the number at slaves who died in the slave trade to be” 60 million and more”. Sethe is the main character of Beloved. Beloved is the ghost of the daughter, who comes to haunt her mother,...

  David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Another version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at: -               https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E It is an excellent idea to read again a very good book. Especially if decades have passed since the last encounter. And if, as in the case of David Copperfield, the last read was in adolescence or near it, the new meeting with the characters can be a surprise. I wrote a more recent note on the subject, but it was more of a grudge I had against a guest that seemed to me to be a replica of Copperfield. And it was wrong on two counts. First, the rebel view that I promoted was just anger without management. Second,  I was confusing Copperfield with Oliver Twist. Indeed, they both had unhappy childhoods and suffered at the hand of evil men. But to just place them together as two poor orphans was unfortunate, maybe...

  The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass Inspiring at times   This is my third encounter with The Tin Drum. I have read the book, saw the very good film by Volker Schlondorff (note: I am missing the German letters for the “covered” u and o). This last meeting of Oskar and his drum was in the form of a play adapted for the radio. I am not quite sure what to make of it though. We are dealing with a very special, interesting and at times shocking novel, which I both like and somehow feel repelled by. Gunter Grass, the Nobel Prize winner is a personage that has created some scandal. Rather noisy, since it reached my ears, which are at all attuned to what happens in Germany’s literary life. In fact, I have not been so keen on anything German, except for their cars and the business our company does with a German firm. Nolens volens, I have a life- line and strong connection with a country of what I consider to be cold people. But I may be wrong. And I am not the warmest of creatures- I have a...

  The Arabian Nights by Unknown Or Mille et Une Nuits   For the English speaking world we have the Arabian Nights; in other cultures, including mine- Romanian, we are talking about 1001 nights.   Is it kind of late to read and write about 1001 nights? Yes, indeed. A few years ago I decided to read only the best books. Searching the internet, we find an infinite number of lists of best books, most of them personal compilations. There a few lists which stand out and there seem to be a huge number of references to them: The Modern Library, The Guardian and The TIME list in particular. So I embarked on the task of reading the books on those lists, to which I would add The Friendswood and Le Monde. I am happy with this choice- I have read the majority of the books listed and enjoyed thoroughly most of them. When I had doubts, like with the 1001 nights, I decided to go through them again. Of course I knew about Sinbad, Aladdin or Ali Baba. I just couldn’t recall if I know these...

  The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint- Exupery   This is the most read and most translated book in and from the French language. The sales are huge: two million every year and one hundred and forty million so far. It is one of the bestselling books ever Antoine de Saint – Exupery has been a very intriguing character. An aristocrat, pioneering aviator and a writer he flew over the Sahara. I think there would be two ways or keys for looking at this hugely popular story: The first and most obvious one, would be to feel empathy for The Little Prince, who falls out of nowhere on a strange planet. He is an outsider and reading a bit of critique on the side, I understand that the story probably reflects the life of Saint- Exupery, who was an outcast for some time. There is poetry and tenderness, although the latest adapted version that I listened to this morning was rather bad. It must have been a version for Children’s Radio or something like that, because it was patronizing and l...