Monday, July 20, 2020

Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig (1976)

A young man is separated from the woman he loves by work and war.

Book Review: Journey into the Past seems more a short story than a novella. The pages fly past and the plot is simple while the emotions are deep. This is a romantic (in all senses of the word) story that turns on what happens when two people discover their love just as they separate. While apart, they and the world alter drastically. The author asks: can love remain unchanged? Published posthumously, in Journey Into the Past, as always Stefan Zweig plumbs our feelings, captures our hearts, and touches the soul. Full of longing, the plot heads speedily and directly to the only possible conclusion. But Zweig shatters the story with a chilling description of a Nazi march through the streets of Heidelberg. Just as the two lovers seek to recapture what they once had, so Zweig looks back on the world he had lost. The reader can only emerge as disturbed as the protagonist. Although his writing might bend toward melodrama, become overly passionate, and always contain a subterranean obsession, it was never as simple as it seemed on first reading. Journey Into the Past is an exercise in nostalgia and regret, told with tender care.  [3½★]

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Henry and June by Anais Nin (1986)

The unexpurgated (but heavily edited) diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-32, in which she meets Henry Miller and his wife June.

Nonfiction Review: Henry and June is one of the few well-known works by notorious diarist Anaïs Nin (1903-77), and was made into a 1990 film with Uma Thurman. Subtitled "from A Journal of Love," it's the first in that series (followed by Incest (1992), Fire (1987), and Nearer the Moon (1996)). Unlike Faulkner with his South or Toni Morrison on race, Nin found the subject of her oeuvre closer to home: herself. She was both canvas and painting. Nin found her life sufficient for examination and expression and her obsessive narcissism is mesmerizing. In Henry and June Nin, three or four lovers, a husband, and her analyst flirt, tease, manipulate, play games, prevaricate, agonize; they may or may not have sex throughout the book. And she gets a nose job. It all reads much like fiction. We witness Nin grow into her sexuality from near ignorance to eager participant. The reader begins to pity her husband who brings home the bacon while living in uneasy ignorance of her daily meanderings: "I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife." June soon leaves the country and is mostly offstage, but lingers as a hovering presence beguiling both Nin and Miller as they pursue their affair together in her absence. We learn about Henry Miller and his writing (Tropic of Cancer is to be published) and she reflects on her own "enameled" fiction: "I wanted to go on in that abstract, intense way, but could anyone bear it ... for me there was meaning in those brocaded phrases." What's unclear to me is how this book was written, published years after her death. Seemingly, some unknown person (the introduction is in passive voice) went through Nin's unredacted diaries and removed everything quotidian leaving only the material relating to the title couple. Some editor found a way to continue to milk the infamous diaries. Regardless, Nin makes her life as interesting as possible, for the sake of her journal if nothing else. In Henry and June the reader just goes along for the ride.  [4★]

Saturday, July 18, 2020

Confusion by Stefan Zweig (1927)

A scholarly project draws a college student into the life of an inspirational professor and his wife.

Book Review: Confusion is a dated but worthy story of its time. Apparently the German title of this novella is more literally "Confusion of Feelings," but the single word title here is modern and evocative. Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) pours on the passion in his moving style to bring the reader into a heady mix of emotion, thought, and sensation. A side effect of his intense writing is that it can touch on melodrama and the sentimental, especially to contemporary ears. For me that's not a detriment. I'd rather have more emotion and feeling than less. And Zweig adds wry wisdom amidst it all: when the student confesses that he'd wasted his first term the professor comforts him saying, "Well, music has rests as well as notes." Published in 1927, the story has dated, but not the meaning and it must've been progressive for its time (at least from an American perspective). The reader sees and understands much more than our naive narrator Roland, a college student who's repeatedly told he's a mere child. I'm curious whether he seemed as innocent to readers of that time or if it's just today's worldly and cynical eyes that know too much. Confusion embodies the magic and lure of learning and literature and scorns the small minded prejudice of those who don't get it. Even as I see easy sentiment, obvious signaling, and simple psychology, I still enjoy the warm bath of Zweig's writing. As always, Anthea Bell does a flawless translation into English. Confusion isn't his best or my favorite of his work, but it's still Zweig, and that's a good thing.  [3½★]

Friday, July 17, 2020

old song: The Red Moon Anthology 2017 ed. by Jim Kacian, et al. (2018)

The Red Moon Anthology of English-language haiku 2017.

Poetry Review: old song is the 2017 installment of this annual, quality anthology by Red Moon Press, that's been published since 1996. Every year a few thousand haiku nominated from around the world are winnowed down and selected for inclusion in this collection. Alert: few if any are of the traditional 5/7/5 syllable-counting exercise we learned in grade school. What is most striking is the wide diversity contained in these pages. Haiku from the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Canada, Australia, China, Sweden, Ireland, Japan, India, Ukraine, Montenegro, Slovenia, Turkey, and the U.S. are included in just the first 50 pages. Even more diverse is the subject matter within, the perspectives are endless. These are genuine efforts to capture some aspect of life and the world in three lines or less. Some of the haiku are light,

   yoga class
   my corpse pose
   draws a fly

some are personal,

   soft rain ...
   the way the oncologist
   says "we"

there's the political,

   syrian truce
   first snow falling on
   a roofless town

and some seek to capture some eternal truth in a moment,

   priest's handshake
   leaves that still cling
   to the tree

With the best haiku various interpretations are equally possible. I'm not a member of the haiku community, but somewhere, sometime ago, thanks to Basho, Peter Pauper Press, and R.H. Blyth I became seriously enamored of the form as a way to capture or illuminate a moment. It's very individual, private, intimate, mine. Haiku is not for everyone, but for those who find it and reach some level of understanding it can become a comforting part of life. Other than the wholly conventional forms, whatever Platonic ideal one has of haiku can be found here with some guaranteed to resonate. My personal vision of the form is very restricted, but even I found work by like-minded people inside. By my, or perhaps your, definition not all of pieces in old song are haiku. Some are simply abbreviated poems. But that's just fine; I like short poems. In addition to this treasury (to be treasured) of haiku, there are a number of "linked forms" in which the haiku is incorporated into a short narrative to striking effect. There's also scholarly, thoughtful and erudite essays on the form that simultaneously proclaim: (1) this is an adult pastime, not child's play; and (2) there's a whole world of haiku out there for the solitary watcher scribbling short poems in a pocket notebook (or on your phone) while being in and of the world. Even if the essays may seem a bit too much, they will still welcome you into a dimension where haiku writing is a part of life. When one begins to see the world through a haiku prism, that vision becomes a third eye, therapy, or a new voice for song. For anyone who writes, loves, or is curious about haiku, short poems, moments of enlightenment or wry chuckles, old song is a perfect place to begin. All the previously published editions are still available from Red Moon Press (they can be addicting).  [4★]

Thursday, July 16, 2020

The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig (2015)

A collection of five of Stefan Zweig's thoughtful, emotional, and psychological novellas.

Book Review: The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig is a small treasure from the ever brilliant Pushkin Press. This was my introduction to the work of Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) and what a wonderful introduction it was. Five varied novellas from throughout his career: Fear (1910/1920), Burning Secret (1913), Confusion (1927), A Chess Story (1942), and Journey into the Past (1976). A Chess Story (his masterpiece) and Burning Secret are the best of the bunch, both unique and creative visionary works. Confusion (also known as Confusion of Feelings) is more average, at least to today's eyes, although it is a story with a message. It may have been more meaningful and powerful if I could have read it in 1927. Fear (aka Angst) and Journey into the Past are "smaller" works, each focusing on a narrower point and verging on melodrama. One-note works. In fairness, both do full justice to their narrower points. Both are stories with a heart and more emotion and feeling is better than less. The novella was Zweig's most effective art form. He made his stories just as long as they needed to be. Even in The Collected Stories not all of the works are "short" stories. Zweig's specialty, his chosen subject, is a mix of the romantic (in all senses of the word), emotions, and psychology. What could be called "human nature." He finds the depths in the people he writes about, often considering the many possibilities a particular stress, pressure or trauma might create. If they venture into the sentimental, so be it. All five works in The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig were ably and excellently translated by Anthea Bell. Although I don't speak German, having translated manuscripts I'm aware of the possible flaws (especially my own) in this secondary art. While reading translated works there are usually a number of "Is that the right word?" moments, indicating some (almost inevitable) communication breakdown between translator and author. There are few, if any at all, of these moments in the sensitive and capable hands of Ms. Bell. This diverse collection gives the reader a quick and valuable introduction to the range of Stefan Zweig's work. All these novellas have stuck with me.  [5★]

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima (1968)

A heedless young couple court scandal and disaster in 1912 Japan.

Book Review: Spring Snow is the first book in "The Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, the final work by Yukio Mishima (1925-70). Time and place are essential to the story told here. As a child Kiyoaki, the son of a nouveau riche samurai family, is sent to live with an aristocratic family of ancient lineage to learn culture and manners. He and their daughter Satoko are raised as brother and sister as he learns "elegance." But this elegance is affected, overrefined, artificial, ineffectual. The aristocracy is a dying breed: enfeebled, exhausted, enervated. Japan in the early 20th Century is becoming Western, industrial, warlike. Infected by these aristocratic values, however, Kiyoaki decides to live only through emotion; his social climbing family's wealth allows him to ignore practical necessities. For Mishima, the preternaturally handsome Kiyoaki is a tragic moral lesson as his family "had enjoyed centuries of immunity to the virus of elegance." As years go by, after much childishness and game playing, he decides he loves Satoko, but only after it's too late for their story to end without misery and suffering. Contributing to the torment of the time is a punishing class structure and a generally negative attitude toward women. At times Spring Snow seems like a Japanese Romeo and Juliet, but rather than star-crossed lovers, their misfortune is of their own making. Often the characters' actions are unclear, inconsistent, puzzling, perhaps because of my temporal or cultural differences or just the recklessness of youth. All is emotionally fraught, but this is no more a love story than is Wuthering Heights. Spring Snow is a slow read requiring patience, a thoroughly researched historical novel that is often beautifully written and leavened with discourses on philosophy and religion. The story becomes more arresting in the second half, which promises much for the three sequels.  [4★]

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison (1999)

A racist senator relates his life to the black preacher who raised him in this slice of an uncompleted  historical epic about color in America.

Book Review: Juneteenth is the great unfinished book that makes Ralph Ellison (1913-94) one of that elite group of great novelists who published just one novel: Emily Bronte, J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, and (irony of ironies) Margaret Mitchell. Ordinarily I don't read unfinished novels published after the author's death (such as The Last Tycoon or Go Set a Watchman). It seems unfair to the author and doesn't give the reader a full sense of the writer's intent or vision. Here I made an exception largely because of the recent holiday. I'm glad I did. Since Ralph Ellison didn't complete or publish this effort, I cannot fault him for any flaws in the work, but I can admire its many successes. Likewise I can't blame the editor (John F. Callahan), as I'm sure he did the best he could with a massive and chaotic archive. Ellison set out to follow his classic Invisible Man (1952) with what may've been a Faulknerian, multi-volume epic of African American history told through an authoritative and exhilarating use of the black oral tradition. A mythic mix of language and identity. The reasons for its failure to reach fruition are detailed in Callahan's thorough introduction. The bit we have, Juneteenth, is told through a Woolfian stream of consciousness: speeches, sermons, thoughts, delusions, and vernacular, intimate or contentious conversations. At times the constant inundation of words is overwhelming, without any phrase making an impact before being trampled on by seven other phrases following in quick succession. Too many notes, too many words, too hard to focus. Like drinking from a fire hose. There is no single narrative but scraps intermingled like bread crumbs along a trail that the reader tries desperately to track through interweaving streams of sensory overload. Monologue and dialogue meld. But when it does work, which is often enough, Ellison is brilliant. A flashback to a call-and-response church sermon given by the two main characters is overload in the best possible way, the history of African arrival to this country told in pure poetry slam perfection "We were born again in chains of steel. Yes, and chains of ignorance. And all we knew was the spirit of the Word. We had no schools. We owned no tools, no cabins, no churches, not even our own bodies." When it works there are moments of transcendence, as when a delegation of seniors from a black church congregate at the Lincoln Memorial and Ellison gives us a meditation upon that great and all-too-human martyr. As an unfinished work there is little narrative drive, little forward propulsion beyond the reader wondering about the moment of metamorphosis from what we're told happened to the painfully little we learn about what is. There is no real beginning, middle, and end -- we enter in the middle of a conversation. The basic story rests heavily on the two central characters: a white, race-baiting U.S. Senator and the black tent-show preacher who raised him. The whole swirls around Juneteenth, that happy commemoration of the resurrection that we call Emancipation, that overdue proclamation broken by conciliation and compromise: "A bunch of old-fashioned Negroes celebrating an illusion of emancipation." That great moment as unfinished as this book. But somewhere in the 40 years of writing in the wilderness that arrived at Juneteenth, Ellison strikes gold often enough that readers can see the vision he had for it, even as we can see Lincoln's vision, even if neither has been realized or perfected. There's so much here of violence, and pain, and injustice that still rings relevant today: "Why can't they realize that when they dull their senses to the killing of one group of men they dull themselves to the preciousness of all human life?" For the historians, Callahan apparently assembled Juneteenth from Book II of what may have been a possible three volume sequence within Ellison's greater reservoir of notes, disks, and typescripts. In 2010, Callahan published a longer version of this novel, over a thousand pages, as Three Days Before the Shooting. I've not seen a copy and this version, however truncated, is enough for me. As incomplete, fragmented, limited, and unblessed by the author as this may be, the many pieces still unite to speak of matters we need to hear.  [4★]