Reading Journal: Monday 1st February 2010

The fact that I now set aside particular days for the reading of particular authors is really working out for me. Not only does it allow me to make slow and steady progress through the multitude of reading projects I set myself, but it also gives me something particular to look forward to. Yesterday was the day for my dearest Maupassant, and what a day with him it was. Due to its length I only managed to read one story, but if ever a single short story from Maupassant offered so much then Family Life (also known as A Family Affair), is that story.

The story follows humdrum and monotonous Monsieur Caravan, in his equally humdrum and monotonous life as a government bureaucrat and family man. At the beginning Maupassant paints a rather bleak and dreary picture of Monsieur Caravan, and although the man pretty much stays the same throughout, the story actually turns out to be more of a comedy than a tragedy. I did feel the story dragged out a bit, but regardless of this, Family Life is a wonderful story which contains a bit of everything. Anyway my ‘official’ afterthoughts can be found HERE.

While on the subject of Maupassant, I quickly want to add what a difference a more modern translation makes to the reading of the French storyteller. In many ways the stories are more readable (although in this particular story at one point, Coward appends the word ‘pet’ to the end of a line of dialogue making Monsieur Caravan sound like a Northener ), but then again the stories become more detached from the period of their origin, when language was a bit different. I’m not sure which I prefer to be honest. What do you think? Here’s an example:

1911 translation by Albert M.C. McMaster et al:

Caravan had installed his mother, whose avarice was notorious in the neighborhood, and who was terribly thin, in the room above them. She was always cross, and she never passed a day without quarreling and flying into furious tempers. She would apostrophize the neighbors, who were standing at their own doors, the coster-mongers, the street-sweepers, and the street-boys, in the most violent language; and the latter, to have their revenge, used to follow her at a distance when she went out, and call out rude things after her.

1990 translation by David Coward:

Caravan had brought his mother to live on the top floor, a woman so mean that she was famous for it in the neighbourhood, and so thin that people said that when the Good Lord made he had used her own parsimonious principles to do it with. She was permanently bad-tempered and not a day of her life went by without dreadful quarrels and outbursts of rage. From her window she screamed abuse at neighbours as they stood on their doorsteps, at women hawking their wares, at men sweeping the street and at children who, to pay her back, followed her at a safe distance when she went out, shouting: ‘Miserable ole bag!’

Let me know which you prefer folks. I’m really interested in finding out your thoughts on this one.

****

Moving swiftly on to my Arthur Miller short for the day, The Bare Manuscript from Presence: Collected Stories (Bloomsbury) and I’m not really sure what to make of this one. First published in The New Yorker in 2002, this story follows Clement Zorn, a writer riding on earlier successes, who’s comes up with a unique way of pushing through his supposed writer’s block. His answer it seems is to write a manuscript on the naked body of a woman (hence the story’s title). The story begins with the writer scribing upon a naked woman and what follows is frequent flashbacks to the past where Clement contemplates on his past loves – particularly his wife Lena – and it these memories which seem to spur the writer on to complete this new manuscript. All in all an OK story I suppose, but a little too meditative for me. Story Rating:

****

Sadly I didn’t make my 100 page target yesterday, only reading 60+ pages. But I’m now up to page 284 and things are really beginning to heat up. Seriously though folks, if you’re looking for a light, accessible doorway to learning a bit of the history of Iran, it’s more recent troubles, and Islam in general, then this really looks like being that kind of a book. The way that Abdoloah is infusing fact into fiction is quite remarkable and there’s nothing stuffy or academic about it. Still got 150+ pages to go, but already I’m beginning to form concrete opinions on this one, and they’re to the positive.

::Tuesday’s reading plans::

• Yay Chekhov Tuesday is upon us – well for me – and two Chekhovian tales planned: Anyuta and Ivan Matveyitch.
• I’m going to miss out on my Arthur Miller story today. The story I had lined up – The Turpentine Still, is huge at 60 pages, and I don’t want to snag myself up reading this when I’m so close to finishing The House of the Mosque.
• Yep, a strong hint above it’s Kader Abdolah’s The House of the Mosque, and hopefully I’ll be reading it until finished today.

‘Reading Journal’ provides an unedited, on-the-fly record of the bookish highlights in Rob’s reading day.