Its a rainy day in Stuttgart. Again. Theresa is studying and I should be quiet. I was thinking of going to the Museum today, I don’t know, maybe I will still go, but its already 3. Anyway I’ve had these books that I wanted to at least mention, and here is this post.

Oh, and a side point regarding the recent upgrade: When (or if) you decide to comment you can now fill in your name so you don’t have to be “anonymous” anymore.

I was wondering myself if this upgrade was worth the effort then I found out today that my old wordpress was starting to get comment-spam attacked. Did it just in time. My only gripe with wordpress 2 is the really big lag between the time you type something and when what you type appears. Like writing on grease. Not the greatest thing. But only a small gripe.
First book: The Origin of Waves by Austin Clarke. – I didn’t think that it was possible to write a novel about a single conversation, yet Mr. Clarke does just that… After a little flashback opening thing where we see a vivid childhood memory of the last time two close friends from Barbados saw each other, the friends bump into each other for the first time in 50 years on page 27, then they go into a bar on page 35 and stay there until page 227, and the last 20 pages are epilogue. How’s that for a plot? Thing is that most of what these two characters say to each other over much those 200 pages turns out not to be true. (I know this is fiction, but please give me something to hold on to here!)

The novel is set somewhere on Yonge street Toronto, and that was nice, so in that sense it felt very familiar. You can say its about failing in life and coming to terms with that failure. Images of the self and their projection, Dealing or not dealing with loss. But forget all of that, just for Clarke to make this thing readable is an achievement. And it is readable, even somewhat enjoyable. I won’t recommend it for everyone, but it is entertaining. Not a complete waste of time, but if you don’t like artsy stuff then it might be close.

An aside: This book won “The Rogers communications writer’s trust fiction award” – whatever that is – and it has a collection of quotes on the sleeve. As all books are want to have. A portion of one quote in particular caught my attention: “Austin Clarke not only writes in a voice that is entirely his own, he is also one of the more talented novelists at work in the English language today.” This is from Norman Mailer and it is the highlighted quote on the back cover.

It sounds really good at first read, but it doesn’t really say anything complimentary. I imagine that any novelist or writer of any note writes in their own voice, so that isn’t telling me anything amazing. Do you know of any good writer who writes in someone else’s voice? But this part gets me: “he is also one of the more talented novelists at work in the English language today”. He is not the most talented. He is not one of the most talented. He is not among the best. He is simply “more talented” than most. Above average in other words. A ‘B-’ grade. What a fancy way to say it though.

The second Book: Beloved by Toni Morrison. Probably unfair to Clarke to talk about arguably the best novelist alive after him, but hey, that’s the order in which I read em. This book is simply amazing. Morrison writes such beautiful sentences.

Best way to describe this is that Theresa is interested in reading it as well and I recommended to her that she read a German translation (It’s called “Menschenkind” in case you were wondering – which does not mean “beloved” – it means “human child” – odd.) Thing is that Morrison doesn’t use any big words. So why should she read a translation of a seemingly “simple” book? Thing is that there is so much meaning behind each word and Morrison doesn’t use words in normal ways, so I don’t think this is an easy read. But trust me that it is rewarding. The plot doesn’t even matter.

Ok. So its about a mother who kills her own child during the days of slavery. Now the child’s ghost has come back to haunt the mother and perhaps take revenge. Like I said it doesn’t matter. It’s Toni Morrison for crying out loud. Oddly enough, I find her writing reminicent of Zora Neale Hurston’s in “Their eyes were watching God”, a similar way with words. Morrison is a better writer though. But I find them similar…
Well, that does it for this extra long review section. What I’m reading now is Paradise and Plantation by my bestest friend Ian G. Strachan. Not every day you get to read a good book by someone you know well. Now to go look at some grey sky…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 10:31 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.