Multiple Reading Personalities

Unsuspecting reader (maybe even readers, since this post is in English), beware! This is definitely going to be “one of those posts”, a lot of rambling and no clear idea of where I’m going. When a piece starts like that in a reputable magazine, you know that the writer will have figured something pretty moving/ peculiar/ insightful/ funny about themselves by the end of the article; no such guarantee here, alas.

And… Now we’re back to “reader”. I guess that’s how disclaimers work.

I’m not exactly sure when I started this blog, but it must have been a little over a year ago. I hadn’t quite enrolled back to school then, but I was seriously thinking about it. My reading was all over the place (still is), and I wanted to give it some sort of direction (not a success so far — school has been much better at that). I also wanted to train myself to write a little more formally in English (not quite dissertations, but a step more complex than emails). I’m still very unhappy with what I write, especially relative to the amount of time I spend on notes, but that’s definitely getting better. Hopefully my grammar is improving too — if not, I find solace in the fact that I spend less and less time reviewing it, so if it’s stable I’m still improving my result-to-effort ratio.

The “all over the place-ness” has been on my mind a lot lately, especially since I appear to experience reader’s block. My reading patterns are the fruit of very eclectic tastes, low self-discipline, and of my work history. This last one might seem a tad strange, but it has sadly one of the key influences on my reading life. When I was working corporate, I had 10-hour workdays as a base, with frequent travels (between 20% and 60% of the work week, depending on phases — yes, that’s between one and three days a week in another city, with associated late nights working until it was time to go to bed). Work also trained me to shorten my attention span: it was part of my job to juggle projects, clients, vendors, methods, activities, etc. Literally was what I was paid for. Most of the reading I managed to do then was escapist. I still read quite a lot, and many good books too, but I let the fantasy/ science fiction/ horror part of my tastes take over, and pretty much take the place of everything else, except for the odd piece of “literary fiction” when I was on vacation. I had been reading way “beyond my age” as a child, teenager and young adult; I started reading way “below” as a sentient cog.

Now there’s nothing wrong with well-written fantasy, but I think there’s something off-balance about reading only one type of books. Not to mention the fact that after a while, you start reading pretty mediocre books compared to the ones you could be reading if you were just a little more open-minded. Not working full time any more, and then enrolling for a lit degree means that I have read better written books (overall) these past twelve months, and that I have been thinking about what I’m reading a lot more. That’s mostly a pleasure (which is why I fully intend on keeping this up!). But once in a while, it also is a challenge, and that seems to be where I’ve spent the past two weeks. I want to read something fun, light and fluffy, which is why I picked up Songs of Distant Earth while exploring a second-hand bookstore the other day. I had fun reading it, thought a couple ideas were interesting, and was pleasantly surprised by the writing (whoever translated the Clarke I read in French as a kid did a terrible job — everything came out as poorly written as Asimov, and the touches of irony got lost in translation). However, there is no way I can claim it was a good book: the plot holes and unexplored ideas, for one thing, could fill up the aforementioned galactic emptiness. Then I tried a Giono, and I was… over-analytical. I think I spoiled a perfectly good book for myself by looking it in the mouth. And the past four days, I’ve been playing a lot of Oblivion on the Xbox (and have a looong way to go to complete the game), reading tons of mindless Internet chatter about how to make my hair look good (next-to-impossible) and whether Dior’s Shanghai campaign is racist or not (of course it is). But I haven’t opened a book, and I feel like I’m never going to want to open one again. Which is frankly terrifying me, since it’s about time I started seriously preparing for the Master’s classes, which are starting in a month or two. Or three. Depending on how the French bureaucracy will feel in September/ October/ November/ etc.)

I’ve had a little more freelance work coming in lately, most of it in market research (my first career). I wonder if that’s activating an ADD button in my brain, or if I just need a break (from what?). Chris and I have a little traveling coming up at the end of the month. That always works well to reset my brain, so here’s to hoping, but really what I want is get to a magical point where the effort will disappear and reading will become just as automatic and inescapable as brushing my teeth. I might have to cut out some more clutter from my life, and I think I’m getting to a point where I can accept that — but I’m not quite there yet.

Ça y est. L’année scolaire est derrière nous, et il semble que tout se soit bien passé. Les notes qui sont arrivées jusqu’à moi — la plupart d’entre elles, grâce à la gentillesse d’une de mes condisciples parisienne — sont bonnes, excellentes même parfois. Bien sûr, écrire cette dernière phrase m’est un peu compliqué. Je me sens prétentieuse… mais fière, aussi. Et heureuse. Très impatiente d’attaquer l’an prochain.

Me voici donc de retour à Indianapolis, avec devant moi un peu plus de deux mois sans aucune obligation. Les cours que je donne ne reprennent qu’en septembre, comme ceux pour lesquels je vais m’inscrire. L’été se gonfle comme une voile vide, et je ne sais encore qu’en faire. Quelques vagues projets de cuisine, cerises au brandy et sauce piment au gingembre, et c’est tout. Je tâtonne à la recherche d’un sujet de mémoire pour l’an prochain, errant dans mon éternelle envie d’inconnu. Je voudrais qu’un sujet sur lequel je ne connais rien me tombe du ciel, mais je ne crois pas que cela soit raisonnable, ni faisable. Il me semble que l’on attend de moi un sujet et sa justification.

Du coup je me fixe sur des idées flottantes, des envies de hasard. L’une d’elles tenait à ce livre paisible de Danny Laferrière, et à L’Empire des signes, de Barthes. Ça s’appellerait Le Japon imaginaire. Ce serait sans aucun doute un choix stupide pour quelqu’un qui voudrait, à long terme, travailler au moins en partie sur le domaine littéraire anglophone. C’est séduisant, pourtant, non ?

J’ai donc relu Je suis un écrivain japonais, cherchant un prétexte à l’étudier. La séduction de ce livre tient pour moi à ce que je ne le comprends pas bien. Certes, il y a une histoire, celle d’un écrivain qui vend à son éditeur un titre (“je suis un écrivain japonais”), titre génial en ce qu’il stimule l’imagination d’une multitude de personnages aussi loin de l’auteur que peuvent l’être des lecteurs d’un romancier. Le Japon tout entier s’emballe, discute, conteste ou adopte un livre encore incertain, et en ce sens le titre génère mille récits… Même s’il n’est pas certain qu’il parvienne à susciter le livre promis. Nous suivons le narrateur dans sa tentative de mettre au jour son roman, nous voyons son histoire émerger des profondeurs, affleurer à la surface, puis sombrer à nouveau. Ce pourrait être l’histoire d’une grappe de jeunes femmes autour d’une chanteuse nommée Midori (un prénom pour moi lié pieds et poings à Norwegian Wood de Murakami, mais passons). Ce pourrait être l’histoire d’un écrivain haïtien de Montréal parti sur les traces émotionnelles du poète japonais Bashô. Ce pourrait, bien sûr, être une histoire d’identité et du besoin d’échapper aux étiquettes — aux titres — dont l’esprit humain est friand, ou ce pourrait être une méditation sur les parts respectives de l’imagination et de l’écriture (au sens technique, productif, du terme) dans le rôle du conteur moderne. Ce pourrait bien être autre chose.

La texture du livre a la légèreté du fantasme et la lucidité hermétique de l’image, ce qui évoque mon Japon imaginaire à moi bien mieux que les quelques signes nippons qui flottent à travers le récit. L’ensemble donne une impression de flou et de froideur que je trouve apaisante, mais qui visiblement a perturbé certains lecteurs (je n’ai pas gardé les liens, mais j’ai fait un petit tour de critique avant de rédiger cette note). On ne sait toujours si le livre est une collection mal finie, un collage délibéré, un abandon lié au je-m’en-foutisme ou à une intimité confiante. Je penche pour un peu de tout ça, tout simplement parce qu’il m’est plus facile d’imaginer que Laferrière fonctionne comme moi que différemment, qu’il écrit avec son inconscient autant qu’avec son intelligence, plutôt que de penser que je me suis fait abuser par une supercherie totale ou que quelqu’un soit capable de simuler entièrement un tel naturel.

Bien sûr, c’est ma propre paresse qui se reflète dans cette supposition.

Has it been two months? It has been. A long silence, and yet I kept thinking about this place. I have to admit that this thinking was a source of stress more than a source of pleasure: I have been reading quite a lot in the past 62 days, and I kept thinking I should come back here and report. And I kept not finding the time. And it felt like an obligation I was not fulfilling.

What was I doing instead?

Reading. A few fiction books, some literary criticism, a lot of class material. I finally gained access to the website for my distance learning class on November 27th, and I then discovered that a lot of mid-year reports were due for mid-January, so there was that to get ready for. I learned (or relearned, for I had studied it in high school… Fifteen years ago) an insane amount of Latin: only level 2 Latin was open, so I had to cram levels 1 and 2 into my head in 6 weeks (you are supposed to take one level a semester, so that was… a lot). I also started translating for kiva.org (that one is more an excuse, as I really haven’t done all that much yet) and working at my local university, which needed an adjunct to teach French 101. With all this going on, my husband and I still found a week to travel to France over Christmas, another week to get over the germs we collected there from my niece and nephews. And we bought a house for my in-laws, who need one.

It’s been busy, and not a little stressful… I love it though. I love the university environment though I haven’t had much chance to properly explore. I love my classes. I love dreaming about next year’s master’s, because I already know that I want to enroll for one (and I’m even beginning to ponder on subjects). I love struggling with Proust, and Simon, and Barthes, and Rilke, and all these crazy-difficult-twisted-unusual writers in my program. I love the moment when you finally crack the code, and even though I started the year highly disappointed that I skipped the 19th century and was sent straight into the 20th, I am finding strange rewards in it.

But I need to release some pressure, and I want to come back to writing here every now and then. It might get more bloggy, more rambling, more… I don’t know. Personal. Stilted. Notebooky. Whatever comes! Everything goes! An online journal where I sometimes play the wannabe lit major, I guess, even though I’m not sure what the point of an online journal is. Even though nobody wants to read the excruciating thoughts of a rookie student muddling through a program for which she’s wholly unprepared.

In short, I have no idea what I’ll be doing. Even this note… Stream-of-consciousness, and except for a little check-spell, I don’t think I’m going to edit it. I’m just not going to think too hard about this space for now. Just going to go on instinct for a while.

Ok, let’s try. Multiple Reading Personalities, take 2?

Just as I was going to start redacting the note I’ve been meaning to write for a few days on Proust Du Côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way), I got my first paid translation job! It was poorly paid and a rush job if there ever was one, but it was also a fun and easy subject (tourism in the New York area) and most of all — it was my first “official” paid translation. So tonight is still not the night I will be writing about my recent readings, but I hope to have some time tomorrow morning.

I also want to talk, albeit probably briefly, about The Tanslator’s Revenge. I am now reading through Molière’s Le Malade imaginaire and Hugo’s Last Day of a Condemned Man, as I landed a French substitute teacher gig and will be teaching these texts next week. After that, I don’t know if I will continue with more Proust or if I will be unable to resist Hélène Berr’s journal, which was part of my recent book arrival. Proust is the reasonable choice, and I very much enjoyed Swann’s Way, but Hélène’s book is calling to me. Decisions decisions!

Look what came in the mail today…

11 textbooks (mostly Latin, Roman civilization and linguistics), 10 classics for school (Proust, Rilke, Gauthier, Modiano, Claude Simon, Georges Perec) and EIGHTEEN various books. THREE of which I paid for — the rest courtesy of my bookstore owner friend and from another friend, who works for a publishing house in Paris.

We used to be very close, but we lost touch for many years, and now have a very intermittent relation… So this came as a total surprise! For hours, I couldn’t stop giggling with the intoxication of knowing loved ones love you back. That, and new books!

The cats must have been feeling my happiness, because they invited themselves in the pictures instead of going straight for the empty box. Of course, they then disappeared in cardboard heaven.

Now all I have to do is decide where to start reading!

I have to apologize, once more, for introducing a little dose of French here, but you have to understand: I am distraught.

Yes, I knew it was going to happen. That psychopath Achilles killed Hector.

I tried to push the moment as far back as I could, reading very very slowly, and even starting a new book despite my promises to myself not to start anything until I had finished the Iliad. But finally last night I just could not delay the inevitable any longer, and I read through the death of Hector. I was very stoic for a while, at least until Andromache started weeping, and then I started crying too. Such a weakling.

Oh, and the other book that I picked came from my first time volunteering with the Library sales team. It is a fun experience, and I got to feel very young, as the rest of the volunteers (except for one woman who must be well into her forties) are all sixty and older. They are very nice, and I am so happy I get to sit with a bunch of white-haired people to drink weak coffee and eat bad cookies at the morning break, and to listen as they are telling stories of things that had happened last week or 40 years ago. One woman told about how she sold her car to get a TV in the fifties — this is the same woman who reads at every single meal and comes to help the Library every week for four hours even though she has a bad back. I’m already feeling very fond of her. I was very excited when I got back home after this, and I think Chris thought I was a little crazy.

I can’t wait to go back next week!

Doing my blog tour today, so many books appealed that I started scribbling down titles on a piece of paper. I wasn’t really thinking while doing so, but when I reviewed the list later, I was amused to see within a few lines of each other Black Milk (a Turkish novel from Elif Shafah, on women’s relations to creativity, located in one of my favorite cities in the world – Istanbul), Black Juice (from Margo Lanagan, a writer I’ve been meaning to discover) and the anthology Black Water (an 1984 collection of supernatural stories Audrey Niffeneger mentioned in her recent Goodreads interview).

All these dark liquids somehow reminded me that I didn’t review Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls — a vampire book I read under the pretense of the R.I.P. Challenge. To tell the truth I haven’t much to say about it. It is the story of a young vampire searching for his family; he will have to choose between kindred creative/ tortured souls and his blood kin – vampires lost in blood and sex lust. 

I’m not a prudish reader, but the abundance of incest/ pedophilia was a little ridiculous and just killed any eroticism. I wasn’t shocked so much as bored – the worst thing that can happen to a story. The problem was compounded by the fact that the two characters I was most interested in (Ghost, a “sensitive”, and Christian, an old vampire) did not gain the depth I was hoping for. I really wanted to get to know them, and was really curious how their stories would intertwine. I also wanted to see a female character that wasn’t a thinly veiled plot device… In the end however, I didn’t get any of my wishes. So while not exactly bad (after all, I wanted something to happen, so I had some interest), the novel just didn’t feel substantial. I have a feeling I’ll forget it entirely pretty soon.