OK I know I’ve not filed a reading journal entry for a few days. To be honest with you my reading has been all over the place. I’ve been like a little Dutch boy running around trying to plug all the holes that keep springing in the dyke, and not having a lot of success. 
I’ve taken a lot of deep breathes now though, reset my reading meter to calm, and spent a bit of time re-organising my reading schedule. Hopefully a routine will now be re-established.
Now before I move on with a rundown of the day’s reading, let’s have a very brief recap on the main reads that were outstanding from the last time I posted a reading journal entry:
I’ve made significant progress with Richard Holloway’s Between the Monster and the Saint (Canongate). Aside from finally getting my forethoughts posted on it, I’m now two-thirds of the way through it and just about to enter the final section, which I’m led to believe is a lot more uplifting than the first two (thank goodness ).
Am I still finding Between the Monster and the Saint as dense to read? Thankfully no. Reading still has to be slow and considered, but my comprehension has been good. Holloway is a very clever man, with a lot of interesting things to say in this book, so I don’t want anyone being put off by my slow progress through it.
In my last reading journal entry I said that I was hopefully going to finish up reading Hanna Astrup Larsen’s 1922 biography on Knut Hamsun (available to read online HERE). In the end I decided to stop reading this for the time being. It’s not that Larsen’s biography isn’t any good, far from it. The problem is Larsen has turned to dissecting many of Hamsun’s novels which is getting a bit too deep into ‘spoiler territory’ for someone who has still to read them i.e. me.
So what I’m going to do with Larsen’s biography is to read the relevant parts only after I’ve read the related novel, just to assist my understanding of it. So gone Larsen’s biography may be for the time being, but it’s certainly not forgotten.
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Today
07:00 – Now that I’ve shelved Larsen’s Hamsun biography, it’s allowed me to start reading Ingar Sletten Kolloen’s newly published translated biography, Knut Hamsun: Dreamer and Dissenter (Yale University Press). I’m a touch behind putting up my forethoughts on this one but I wanted to dive into it anyway, to build some sort of routine and momentum for my Totally Knut reading project.
I only managed to read 20 pages of Kolloen’s biography, which mainly focuses on Hamsun’s childhood and teenage years, but already I’m loving it. The translation is flawless and Kolloen writes in a very engaging and straightforward way. I’ve stopped just as Hamsun is about to scoot off to America, so exciting reading times ahead methinks.
20:00 – I posted my forethoughts on it earlier today, so I was free to start on my next read – Jayne Joso’s debut novel, Soothing Music for Stray Cats (Alcemi). Three chapters down and I’m thinking it must be a good day for great books, because Soothing Music for Stray Cats is shaping up very nicely indeed. The story is narrated in the first person by chief protagonist Mark, and I’m loving his ‘voice’ already. More importantly I’ve also experienced a couple of sublime reading moments. With only 40 pages read that’s pretty reassuring.
About Rob
I know what you mean with biography spoilers – do you think that biographies ought to be like this? Should biographies concentrate on the person and deal with their writing separately or is the writing instrinsic to the life? I get really annoyed when I read a biography and am not up on the literature only to find that I need to know the writing. It makes me feel inadequate and I’m sure that’s not the biographer’s intention (although some are more intent on showing what they know to the detriment of their readers).Surely the person comes first and if you are introduced to them in this way that should lead you to develop an interest in their writing. If you already know everything what would be the point of reading?
Rant over…
says:
BookRambler,
Nice of you to drop by! You put across some great points so thanks for that.
I think that if it’s a biography on an author then it’s inevitable that a large part of the book will be about the writing that that author has done, and the influences that have shaped his/her writing. It is after all the key product of their life, so without that is there 1) any point to the biography? 2) enough other material to make the biography worthwhile?
That said there’s a fine line between dealing with the person and dissecting their works piecemeal isn’t there? Larsen’s biography starts off well. It explains Hamsun’s background and influences eloquently and occasionally offers an opinion or two on why Hamsun may have written a novel, or created a certain character etc. All well and good and perfectly readable. Then Larsen goes off on a tangent and begins to completely pull apart the novels (Pan and Hunger from what I’ve read so far), giving away huge spoilers and effectively summing up the book in a couple of sentences…arrghh!!
This is when the fine line is crossed, and the biography becomes unreadable, unless one has read the output of the author beforehand. Maybe that’s the point BookRambler. Maybe we should read all of an author’s works before picking up an biography on them. We would then certainly know which novel/character the biographer is talking about, and there would be no danger of getting into spoiler territory. But I’m like you BookRambler I like to be introduced to a writer before reading their published works, and for the exact reasons I listed when I first spoke about reading Hamsun’s biography before picking up any of his novels i.e. background, motivations, influences etc.
I guess ultimately it’s a catch 22, or is it? The Kolloen biography I’ve just started reading isn’t anything like the Larsen one (thankfully). So far there are no spoilers or in-depth analysis of Hamsun’s novels. There is of course passing reference to them, but that’s all it is – passing, and it’s all more to do with the act of creation rather than the content.
So maybe a biography on a writer can be presented without too much analysis on his/her work but I think that depends on two things 1) the richness and depth of the writer’s life – enough of these and there isn’t going to be room for deep analyse of the writer’s works, and 2) the skill and aims of the biographer.
Pheww sorry BookRambler. I’ve did a bit of rambling myself and gone on for waaay too long. Apologies for that.
Warmest
Rob