Following my enforced rest period reading began again in earnest today at RobAround Manor, and I couldn’t have been more happier.
I began the day with the opening story of Bloomsbury’s recently published collection of Arthur Miller short stories, Presence. Apparently, not a lot of people know that the great American playwright published short stories (I know I didn’t), but he most certainly did. Miller only published sixteen stories in total (published in three collections – 2 in his lifetime and one posthumously), and Presence is the gathered collection of all of these stories. I’ve still to put up a brief forethoughts post on this short story volume (because I’m planning on ticking off these stories daily until I’ve read them all), so that’s all I’ll say about Presence in general terms for now, other than to point you to a recent Daily Bookshot which featured the book.
This first story in Presence then (the first thing I’ve ever read from the pen of Miller incidentally), called I Don’t Need You Any More, was an absolute delight to read. The story, which was first published in 1959, follows five-year-old Martin as he tries to make sense of his world. It’s a world in which he appears to want for little. He has loving parents, a bigger brother to aspire to, and a good home in which to live. His family however are devoutly Jewish, and they practice their faith with complete orthodoxy. The day that the story is set is the first day of Yom Kippur, and Martin, frustrated with being on the very fringes of ascending to the next ‘chapter’ of his development and not being able to join his father and brother in fasting and prayer, uses this day of all days to vent his frustration, primarily towards his mother.
I guess what this story really is, is a study of childhood frustration at a time when one of our most rudimentary seeds of growth begins to sprout. It’s that time when we start to leave total dependency on others, and seek whatever crumb of independence we can forage for ourselves. I remember that time well myself. I had a major issue with wanting to tie my own laces, and knot my own tie, even though I incapable of doing either. Regardless, I wanted to do it for myself. And it is this seminal moment of seeking independence that I think Miller explores in I Don’t Need You Any More, but with the added cultural diversity of orthodox Judaism. Miller explores it well (he should do because this was the cultural environment that he grew up in), and with supreme eloquence, and if nothing else he left me with the rather warming concept that a choppy sea is down to God being present in the water at the time, collecting the sins of man. When the sea returns to calm God has shot back off to heaven, taking the sins with him. Ain’t that a nice thought? Anyway I’m giving I Don’t Need You Any More a rating of 4 out of 5 because I liked it so much.
Moving on and a portion of my reading day was devoted to getting through the first chapter of city-lit BERLIN (Oxygen Books). I’ve only just posted my forethoughts on the book, so it’s enough to send you to that for a general overview. But getting into specifics on this first chapter and I’d say its overlying message is one of liberal freedom, that Berliners despite the problems of the past (or the present as in Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler extract), like to party hard (for want of a better expression 
).
From the opening extracts which lay down a fervent love for Berlin, the chapter progresses to show Berlin’s early love with ‘cabaret culture’, and just how liberal and vibrant things were in Berlin during the Weimer Republic. Wit ha brief foray into the Nazi years (too brief for my liking), the chapter then goes on to provide a contrast between Rolf Schneider’s description of the austere and regimented traditional Berlin pub (or Kneipe as it’s known in the vernacular), with Tobias Rapp’s description of the modern, ultra-hedonistic Berghain club, which is about as far from the Kneipe as one could get.
With all stories in this chapter read and digested, the overall feeling is that Berlin, in a liberal sense has turned full circle, and is probably not that much different then it was in the late 1920s. That surprised me. Anyway 3 out of 5 for this opening chapter of city-lit BERLIN. I would have liked to have seen more than one extract relating to the Nazi period.
::Reading planned for tomorrow::
- The next story in Arthur Miller’s Presence collection – Monte Sant’ Angelo
- Chapter 2 of city-lit BERLIN, entitled Out and About
- A probable start made on Sang Pak’s debut novel Wait Until Twilight (Harper Collins)
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