2022 Favorite Books & Other Writing
January 2023 Reading Recommendations
I’ve been a slow reader these past few months, partly because I didn’t feel drawn to any books, and partly due to traveling, family, and friends getting the best of me and then some.
I did manage to review three books recently published in Estonia, tho. “La place” (“Koht”) by Annie Ernaux for Sirp and Jan Kaus’ two books of essays – “Vaade” + “Kolm punkti” – coming up in Looming’s April 2023 issue.
One Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I woke up knowing that I want to take up writing again. Writing fiction, that is. Now, I am counting the days (4 at the time of writing this) until the end of my (marketing) work period, until the 5-month vacation for reading, writing, and, well, living.
When working on my own fiction projects, I tend to avoid any literary works and immerse myself in theoretical subjects. Recently, the main topic to pique my interest has been the apocalyptic though and end-of-the-world theories – from Ancient Greek down to Post-modern culture. The most interesting books I’ve recently read on the subject thus far are Apocalypse and Golden Age by Christopher Star, and The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode. Elvia Wilk’s Death by Landscape also touched upon several interesting post- and alt-apocalyptic narratives.
Books read in February + March 2023:
- 10:04 by Ben Lerner, 5/5
- La Place / “Koht” by Annie Ernaux, 4/5
- Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, 3/5
- “Vaade” & “Kolm punkti” by Jan Kaus, 4/5
- The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode, 4/5
- The Correction by Thomas Bernhard, 5/5
- Grove by Esther Kinsky, 3/5
Best of stories, essays + poetry read this month
- #story | “The Ferry” by Ben Lerner
- #prosepoem | “The Media” by Ben Lerner
- #poem | “I” by Jorie Graham
- #story | “My Wonderful Description of Flowers” by Danielle Dutton
- #story | “The Balloon” by Donald Barthelme (re-read an old favorite)
- #essay | The Worlds of Italo Calvino – Merve Emre on the mysteries underlying Calvino’s oeuvre, via The New Yorker
- #review | The Master of Toska – Gary Saul Morson on the makings of Chekhov’s style, via NYRB
- #review | Longing for Reconciliation – a review of the biography of Jacob Taubes, by Susan Neiman, via NYRB
- #interview | Jorie Graham interview in The New Yorker
“The beauty—every last drop of it. Is it going to disappear? Perhaps. Then bear witness, pass it on. When they dig our poems up out of the rubble, we want them to know who we were, what consciousness was, but also how astounding and unimaginably infinite and mysterious life was.”
– Jorie Graham
Book reviews
The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode
A scholarly overview of the notion of apocalypse in pre-modern literature, touching upon the role of the novel as an impossible source of truth.
What Kermode is arguing for is that humans have the need to place themselves inside time, to have a beginning and an ending, the measurable bits of time to navigate by. He considers the 20th-century history, the pre-modern novel, and takes a deep dive into Sartre’s “La Nausée”.
Very much unlike Eva Horn’s book on apocalypse myths in the post-modern culture where the author jumps from one example to the next without drawing any original conclusions. Kermode is highly (sometimes to the point of complexity hard to get through) educated in pre-modern history and literature and his lectures included in the book are filled with insights hard to come by in 20th-century books on the subject. A demanding yet fascinating book.
The second-hand copy I received was filled with sidenotes and underlinings. Now, it has even more of them.
“The great majority of interpretations of Apocalypse assume that the End is pretty near. Consequently the historical allegory is always having to be revised; time discredits it. And this is important. Apocalypse can be disconfirmed without being discredited. This is part of its extraordinary resilience. It can also absorb changing interests, rival apocalypses, such as the Sibylline writings. It is patient of change and of historiographical sophistications. “
“Men in the middest make considerable imaginative investments in coherent patterns which, by the provision of an end, make possible a satisfying consonance with the origins and with the middle. That is why the image of the end can never be permanently falsified. But they also, when awake and sane, feel the need to show a marked respect for things as they are; so that there is a recurring need for adjustments in the interest of reality as well as of control.”
“The novel, then, provides a reduction of the world different from that of the treatise. It has to lie. Words, thoughts, patterns of word and thought, are enemies of truth, if you identify that with what may be had by phenomenological reductions. Sartre was always, as he explains in his autobiography, aware of their being at variance with reality. One remembers the comic account of this antipathy in Iris Murdoch Under the Net, one of the few truly philosophical novels in English; truth would be found only in a silent poem or a silent novel. As soon as it speaks, begins to be a novel, it imposes causality and concordance, development, character, a past which matters and a future within certain broad limits determined by the project of the author rather than that of the characters. They have their choices, but the novel has its end.”
“La Place” by Annie Ernaux
Annie Ernaux’ first translation into Estonian – “La Place” – was a somewhat surprising choice yet a justified one.
I would have expected the publisher to first go for a translation of “Les Années” – an auto-sociobiographical chronicle of post-war France trudging through the second half of the 20th century and that was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Yet “La Place” was Ernaux’ first novel to feature her unique authorial voice, sparing yet exacting.
Read the review (in Estonian) in Sirp here.
I also wrote about the latest miniature novella by Ernaux “Le jeune homme,” published in 2022. (Read the essay here.) The book is a mnemonic excavation of an affair she had in the 1990s. Back then, Ernaux was in her fifties. She was seeing a man 30 years her junior.
By writing about events that happened tens of years prior, Ernaux establishes a certain barrier between her present and past selves that allows her to remain blunt, honest, and shameless in her recollections. The style prevails through “La place” and “Le jeune homme” as well as the rest of her books.
For those interested in reading more of Ernaux’ novels, the UK publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions has a rich selection of her best work. Above all, I recommend The Exteriors and The Happening.
“Vaade” by Jan Kaus
I’ll drop here a sneak peek of the review to be published in Looming and a couple of quotes from the book that drew my attention.
Noppeid arvustusest:
“Kausi autofilosoofiline essee saab esmase impulsi vaatetornist, mille kirjaniku äi Juhan ehitas Viljandimaal Pirmastu külas asuva isatalu hoovinurka. Selleks, et tiibu sirutada ja lendu tõusta, on vaja tõukepinda. Just seda raamatu autor teeb, võttes lugeja endaga ühes rännakule nii geograafilistele kui mõttemaastikele. Reisitakse auto, rongi ja lennukiga, muutlike rünk- ja ideepilvede all. Viljandimaalt Prantsusmaale, Singapuri, Lõuna-Hispaaniasse, ja koguni kosmosesse. Nõnda pikal rännakul on loomulik, et vandersell uitab mõnikord peateelt kõrvale, eriti kui laseb end kanda uudishimust.”
“Vaatamine on kadreerimine, kaardistamine, nimetamine, omastamine, salvestamine. Meie võime seda kõike teha ei sõltu ainult meelte teravusest vaid ka meeleteravusest. Valgus- ja helisagedused, läbi mille me igapäevaselt nähtut kogeme, on sama ulatuslikud kui me ise nad venitame. Vaateväli on seda rikkalikum, mida laiem on tema tähendusväli.”
Tsitaate raamatust:
“Silmapiir ongi seetõttu kütkestav, et ta ei tähista vaid nähtava lõppu, vaid ka jätkuvust”
“… igas vaateväljas on osaline ka see, mis jääb väljalt välja, maapinna enda ulatus, avarus, mis vaatevälja võimaldab ja vaatepilte annab.”
“Ühel hetkel tundus mulle, et ma ei vaata lihtsalt vaadet, vaid vaate kaudu tervet maailma,” kirjeldab Kaus üht oma filosoofilist vojöörikogemust. “… tundsin end asuvat ühtaegu vaatest väljas – see tähendab ma vaatasin midagi, mis ilmselgelt polnud mina ja mis oli määratud jääma alatiseks mu haardeulatusest välja – ning samas selles vaates sees, osana vaatest, täiesti kohal. Ma olin samal ajal maailma kohal ja maailmas kohal.”
[Short Story] Milk Glass Lit
I was working on a short story last spring that I never published. Figured that I might as well share part of it – the beginning – here…
—
At first, we thought the Change commenced when everyone lost their sense of smell. Now, we’ve come to realize that the first signs appeared much earlier. As if there’s any use in guessing the exact moment, how frivolous the human mind. While trivial errors can be caught between one’s fingers and disposed of like an unwelcome bug, a substantial mistake impends above the wide-eyed horizon like a waxing moon, thirsty and unstoppable. We’ve all been complicit in our indifference and yet there’s no one to blame. For months, our life proceeded in its natural course – nothing too good but nothing too alarming, either. Had the Shift occurred faster, say in a single week, we may have considered more things aberrant. Instead, for months, we hummed along to a tune increasingly off-kilter, its elusive notes above human capacity to register and decipher.
It’s increasingly difficult to tell what’s real and what’s imagined. Is this me, a dream, a projection? Perhaps there’s another cue to help solve this mystery. As if it matters. As if by solving the puzzle we could break it apart. It’s already too late. Someone sent the pendulum adrift and no one bothered to ask why, lest it should be stopped. Now, we’re carried forward by its forceful inertia serving a capricious, unforgiving gravity.
This observation stems from my personal hermeneutics of suspicion. Considering the circumstances, I am not in a position to speak for Grace or Agnes. Back in the day when we still discussed such things, Grace thought that the Shift began around the time that the three young men appeared. They moved into a third-floor apartment in the five-story (that’s six counting the rez-de-chaussée) building across the street from us on Rue des Archives. Grace, she navigated her life by the lucid human warmth rather than the icy shimmer of cold hard facts.
The guys, like me, were retirees from traditional career choices. From what we could see – they kept the tall windows wide open throughout the day – they idled around in baggy sweatsuits and took videos of each other. That – the idling – we had in common but our means and ends were estranged. After the evening sun’s reflection wore off, we could sight three armchair-framed silhouettes of three oval heads pointed toward the living room wall at odd angles. Bodies bent like rods of magnet fishers by the Seine. Our new neighbors didn’t take any notice of us. I could stand by the window, drag on a cigarette and observe their ordeals. Sometimes, one of them would raise their head and look toward me. It made no difference. Theirs was a blank stare that gazed right through. Now, looking back, it’s obvious. For the three young men across the street from us the Change had arrived early.
There’s one more thing I must mention: the magnolia trees. One by one, they wilted and disappeared. A cruel Goddess at work, harvesting her crop, collecting a long-due loan. Until there wasn’t a single magnolia left in Paris. One of the first blooming plants of this planet, drifting in the cruel currents of the Anthropocene, parted for good to join the Elysian fields of Things-that-used-to-be-nice.
Flattened sensibilities, curved boys, haunted magnolia trees. The Change was happening on all levels, the ephebic virtual world pulling along the senescent reality. The former energetic and determined, the latter reluctant but helpless. And yet…
What if it’s all my imagination or worse, a projection? I trace my hand over the rough stone texture of a windowsill and press hard against its surface. It hurts my skin therefore it must be real. I am still grounded in this world.
Yesterday afternoon, my dealer told me that the Change has become more apparent. People take notice, there are signs of resistance. Resistance to what? Too hard to tell. Too late to ask. He thinks that whoever’s coordinating this has lost their vigilance. I think they’re simply aware that we’re past the turning point. And what does it matter? This fractured world, this failed enigma, is long past mending. There’s nothing to be done except to make the best out of what time is left. Which makes me remorseful for having lost Grace. The sweet, delicate Grace, breaking sugar on my back.
Like everyone else, we carried on with our lives, found refuge in the re-encounters with the yet unchanged. Every morning, Grace, the epitome of domestic benevolence, rumbled in the kitchen, brewing coffee for both of us. Les bon vieux temps. On the brink of a cataclysm, we were weaving our cushioned arcadian nest. It had been a good decision to let her stay in the apartment. I could walk from my bed to the kitchen and be handed a cup of hot potent liquid. Reliable, Grace and coffee.
Standing at the window, I lit my first cigarette of the day. Grace would ask how I slept. Without fault, automatically, I replied that I slept alright. Other than that, she knew better than to disturb my brooding morning silence. Slowly regaining my consciousness, I observed the placid rhythm of people careening along the street. Hurried and pretentious, these tiny, fragile particles of this wired-up world. At such moments, I considered the four flights of stairs and several locked doors separating me from the street to offer the ultimate refuge. I hadn’t been out on my own for weeks, I only went shopping with Grace as my escort. But Grace, she didn’t mind taking a metro to the office, rather seemed to enjoy it. Her mind, at its zenith when navigating a six-line highway of parallel thoughts, thrived on bustle and babble. Her mind was an organized mayhem. Her preoccupation with hundreds of concurrent impressions often made it impossible to get my words across to her. Grace was a cordial listener but only a fraction of her mind was there. The rest was intently busy somewhere else. She seemed to inhabit several realities at once, never fully present in any. She belonged to a multi-place, and as long as no such thing existed, to a non-place. Perhaps that’s what her soul, lacking a private center of gravity, was pulled toward. A flashback: I’m leaning against the window and watch Grace rinse a cup. Her eyes are zoomed out of this realm, her lips faintly curved in a smile. I look at her and wonder, does she think of something?
