Multiple Reading Personalities

I am under the charm of Homer, and I have to admit I didn’t expect the pleasure. I was dubious whether I would enjoy reading the Iliad for two reasons. The first and most minor one was the question of suspense. Of course (I thought - and have been proven at least partly wrong) I know what happens in the Iliad. Knowing where a story is going is generally not a huge deal for me, but it certainly doesn’t help if the writing is not sufficiently interesting to take me in.

And that leads me to main my worry: the Iliad is poetry, and I am reading it in an English translation (that of Robert Fagles). I started reading poetry in English only relatively recently (Dickinson first, a hideously frustrating experience, followed by Keats and then a translation of the Russian poet Akhmatova), and so far it’s been… I think the right word is sad. In my native French, the first book I really, really loved (after my Black stallion era, that is) was a collection of Verlaine poems plucked from my parents’ bookshelves. Other poets (Beaudelaire of course, but also Mallarmé or Eluard among others) captivated me at other times. I was also always fond of reading rhymed theatre, the perfectly balanced verses of Beaumarchais, Rostand or Corneille giving me immense pleasure. But in English? Almost nothing. A few tingles with Keats, but none of the overwhelming physical well-being that I associate with poetry. None of the intensity of feeling that the specific rythms of a tense or luscious poem will instill. Until now.

Homer is much more brutal than I expected; he is downright gory at times. Eyes burst open, brain matter splatters inside helmets, entrails cascade on the ground – repeatedly. He is also very visual, constantly weaving striking similes into his tale. Finally, the verse itself, at least as translated, is halting, rushed, constantly driving forward. Sentences are long (not many places to stop), but with constant breaks in their rythm paralleling the back and fro of the action. I think these three elements are helping me feel the epic more than decypher it.

I can’t help but hope that this will prove the “breakthrough book” that will help me learn to enjoy poetry in English. Wouldn’t I better enjoy it for what it is? I am trying to keep my hopes in check, but my mind is racing back to that volume of Keats and wants to go and try again… Try again…

Today, finally, is a gothic day full of anguish!

Well, I mean this in a good way. For one thing, I’ve finally come to a place in Udolpho where there is action and drama to sink my teeth into, but more importantly – my lovely husband has soft-launched The Blood that Bonds, the website on which he offers his vampire novel as a free ebook.

 Now, you can’t expect me to be objective, but… I’m bursting with pride! The site is a wonderful mirror to his talents as a writer and a webdesigner, and more than that it reflects his generosity and his need to share. He poured love, time and effort on the site, and he took the opportunity to work with a great comic book artist. And and and… and it’s just FUN!

For all you vampire fiction fans out there, I hope you enjoy it!

Last week, the acceptance from Paris III finally in hand, the first thing I did was check the course syllabus and make a list of the books I would need. I then sent it to my favorite library in Paris (yes, it specializes in History and Law, but the owners are close friends with exquisite literary tastes, who have been sending me boxes of French books every few months since I moved to the US – I generally let them pick for me, unless I have a specific yearning, and they never disappoint). I could not help but add two novels to my list: La vengeance du traducteur (Translator’s Revenge), by Brice Matthieussent, and Démon (yep, that would be Demon), by Thierry Hesse. I don’t think either of them is translated in English (yet), as they are both part of the ’09 rentrée littéraire, the active French Fall literary season. Both books have garnered wide attention: Translator’s Revenge (which part keeps wanting to translate as Revenge of the Translator) appears to be a lighter read, a novel on a translator working on a novel about a novel, its author and its translator – if I add that Matthieussent is better known as a translator… Is your head spinning yet? Based on reviews, Démon is another beast altogether - a heavyweight, tragic masterpiece about a journalist investigating the suicide of his father, a Russian Jew who lived through the persecutions of the 20th century. I cannot wait to open it, though I must admit a little dread mixed in with anticipation.

But these are books are not there yet. For now, I am still on The Iliad, which I now have had open for several weeks. It is a much more entertaining and rewarding read than I expected, but to an extent that’s making matters worse: I just do not manage to “fast forward” through the extended (and gory) battle descriptions. The rhythm of the poem is fascinating and hypnotic, and surrender to it feels necessary before the unavoidable ending. It’s a false complaint (I’m absolutely thrilled to be engaged by poetry in English), but it makes me feel like I’m not progressing with my reading. Meanwhile, I started Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, which so far is very readable, but not as captivating as I’d hoped. My first impression is that Radcliffe started her narrative way too early in the story, developing a background that would have been more effectively evoked. I also listened to an audio-book of Gauthier’s La Morte Amoureuse (and decided that I’d like to spend a little more time with the text), received the copy of Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls I ordered for the R.I.P. IV challenge, and picked up three books in French at my local bookstore(which does not, for the record, sell book in French, but happened to have three second-hand copies for $2 a pop – how could I resist?): Maupassant’s Une vie (A Woman’s Life), Stendhal’s Le rouge et le noir (The Red and the Black) and Beaudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) joined my pile. Oh, and so did the Kindle version of The Well-Educated Mind, which I picked up on a whim after reading about it on So Many Books. I started reading it immediately, and spent a couple hours on it, and while it is interesting, I am quite annoyed with myself for the impulsive purchase, which I would never have made at a physical bookstore.

This is all too much and I am feeling a little overwhelmed — I am generally a “one book at a time” girl, two at most (when one is so demanding that I want a side of entertainment with it). I guess the solution to this crisis is very simple, and I am therefore going to return to Radcliffe and her heroin immediately!

What this year is all about is re-orienting my life towards books and literature; and I just found out that I am accepted in Télé-3′s (La Sorbonne remote school) licence de lettres modernes (modern lit 3-year diploma); I’m going straight to year 3, with just a few credits from year 2 to validate.

I’m incredibly excited to start — though for right now, what I should be doing is preparing the administrative file you have to send them after they officially accept you.

And I will put it together in a couple hours — but for right now, compiling a list of class materials and informing everyone is the priority!

I feel like the rabbit from Alice these days, running after time as the list of things I should be doing, should already have done and should do very soon keep getting longer and longer. On this blog, for instance… I still want to rework its appearance quite substantially – not until this is done will I feel like sharing it with anyone.

And then, there are the recent reads I need to summarize here:

• The Great Gatsby (love you, Fitzgerald)
• Electre (in its Giraudoux French version)
• the Oreisteia from Aeschylus
• Beowulf (in the wonderful Seamus Heaney translation)
• Pamela (oh Richardson, how I had to battle to get through the book!)
• and Frankenstein!

Then there are the books I should read for “literary education” purposes – maybe Paradise Lost will be next. I started a few weeks ago but put it aside recently without even realizing it (I have been reading mostly from my new Kindle, and Paradise Lost I own as a physical book). On the other hand, I have been trying to nurture my flailing creativity recently – I had been writing a fantasy novel, but about 3 weeks ago, about 35,000 words into it (and while I know what should happen next), it just started refusing to be written. I am trying to get my imagination started on it again by nourishing it with fairy tales and other fantasy works that I think might be relevant, but so far no luck.

At least it’s led me to reading old Breton legends, which I find fascinating. They are a part of a culture that was my grandparents’, but that was never passed on in my family – reading them almost feels as if I was remembering long-forgotten childhood memories.

A few months ago, I found out that I would be losing my job. It came as no surprise: my company had moved from the New York City area over a year ago, and company policy was that I should either follow to Texas – to which my husband (and I) had said an emphatic “Never!” – or be terminated. In fact, I was fantastically lucky to have very kind managers who allowed to work remotely for over a year… Until a new reorganization also pushed them out. By that point, I was tiring of my job, and tiring of all the travel. A layoff was probably the best solution… And yet, despite the support of my beautiful husband, I couldn’t help but feel terrified that my days were going to be endless deserts of boredom and soul-crunching job seeking.

Not so much, it turns out.

Oh, finding a job in this market is not easy, especially for someone with my type of experience. In fact, I’ve been unemployed for 3 months and still don’t have a new job. But boredom? Ah! I have written a (decent) short story and (terrible) half-novel, on which I’m still writing; decided to go back to school for Comparative Literature in the fall of ’10; researched the schools and their requirements, and started preparing for the GRE; decided to move to Indianapolis with my husband (he has a business partner there, it’s cheap and more conducive to studying that the NYC whirlwind for me); scouted the place and found a fairy tale house with wooden ceilings in one week-end; started organizing a move in two weeks; and of course, I have started this blog to monitor my progress in English and Literature on top of the French blog I keep for my European friends and family.

On the horizon: keep writing, keep reading (and making notes here), finish preparing for the GRE and get ready for the TOEFL, learn how to use Photoshop, learn how to take better pictures, learn how to drive (yes, I’m 32 and I can’t drive…), keep in touch with my loved ones in France and… Find a job in Indy, of course. That’s all in the immediate… Oh, except for planting an herb garden in the new house, discovering the city, loosing ten pounds (I’m not kidding) and making new friends in Indiana!

Meanwhile, the cats hide in the carboard boxes scattered all over our Park Slope apartment, and call to me to relax, calm down, relax…

Time for a cup of tea, I suppose. With a good book!

Currently reading: Beowulf (Seamus Haney translation)
Soundtrack: Tori Amos, Abnormally Attracted to Sin (the entire album!)

It took a great deal of preparation (3 hours gathering official documents, old bills, financial statements, printing out photos and the like) and quite a little bit of waiting (our appointment was at 9 am, but on our lawyer’s advice we showed up at 8:15, only to be kept waiting until 10, but it went fast once we were there: our interview with the Immigration Services is now behind us.

Since Chris and I have been married less than 2 years, all it will get me is a conditional Green Card, but with it in my pocket, I can now work or live anywhere I want in the United States. This is one more step to that feeling of freedom I felt so deprived of when I was working for the employer that brought me here. Not that they treated me poorly in any way – on the contrary, they were quite good to me – but the knowledge was always there that they could take everything from me if they let me go. Without employment, I would have had no legal ground to stay in the country of the man I knew to be the one from me from very early on. A month to wait for this now, but I already have interim documents, so this should be just a formality.

In the waiting room, I was finished reading through Aeschylus’s Oresteia, which I will summarize here soon. It’s been a surprisingly enjoyable read, full of humor, at complete odds with my expectations of a dreary, verbose classic – though it certainly gets chatty at times. Reading the scene of Oreste’s judgment in Athens, which proclaims the prominence of the marriage bond (patriarchal) over the one of blood (matriarchal), was interestingly timely; that I had been so recently immersed in Kafka and his administrative world was equally amusing.

And this is why I love books. No matter when, or where, or what: they always fit.