currently reading: Fraud by Anita Brookner
books bought
Toppatakin alla on sydän by Tuija Hannula (rough translation: There’s a heart under the winter coat)
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters by Julian Barnes
books received
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (out 9/24)
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac (out 9/17)
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (out 9/17)
Give Scandal by Tobias Ryan (unpublished manuscript)
books finished
The Examiner by Janice Hallett (out 8/29)
Hey you,
I’m in my Julian Barnes era. You might think my Julian Barnes era would’ve started a decade ago, when I got a tattoo of a line from his memoir, Nothing to be Frightened Of. In a sense I suppose it did. But at the time I got the tattoo, the memoir was the only book of his I’d read. We can call this a total and rigorous commitment to the philosophy of the death of the author. Someone less generous might say that getting the tattoo when I did put me in a bit of self-imposed bind: what if I read his other books only to discover that they sucked, or what if realized I found him annoying, what if he was horrible? Best to avoid them completely, then.
I suppose ten years of living with that fear in the back of one’s mind gives one time to get used to it, get over it. Fortunately, I am here to report that Julian Barnes is a great writer, actually. One could even say (though I certainly wouldn’t) that there was nothing to be frightened of.
And yet I find myself completely unable to share my thoughts on his work, perhaps even to form thoughts on his work, besides a feeling of tenderness, of relief, sometimes of awe. Sometimes feelings of worry, too: he is 79, and—I feel ridiculous writing this—I worry about losing him, as if it would be personal. Well, in some sense it would be.
I have been reading his books as I find them in bookstores, completely out of order; I would like to read them in order, one day, and take notes, and see what I think then. I fancy I’ll always be one of his most generous readers; I would never claim otherwise. But perhaps after ten more years, I’ll be able to wring some deeper observations out of myself.
Fitting, then, that merely by the serendipity of the Brookline Booksmith’s used book section’s selection, I recently found myself reading Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac: the titular character in Barnes’s most recent novel, Elizabeth Finch, is said to be based in part on Brookner. I’ve read two of Brookner’s books before: Dolly and A Misalliance, and thought them both quite gorgeously written, but without much staying power for me personally. Hotel du Lac is more powerful, really stunning: my god, she can write a sentence. Her powers of observation are such that they make me realize I’m barely taking in a quarter of the world around me at any given time, and when combined with novel turns of phrase, it’s a combination that’s hard to beat. A lake “spread[s] like an anaesthetic towards the invisible further shore.” The lake later in the fall: “An autumn sun, soft as honey, gilded the lake; tiny waves whispered onto the shore.” A wife’s description of her late husband makes the protagonist, Edith, suspect he “might have been the kind of man who calls a shop a retail outfit.” Edith, having skipped her morning meal, has a stomach “innocent of breakfast.”
It’s the kind of book that could make you despair for the state of contemporary literature, but me, I’m just pleased Brookner wrote enough books to keep me enthralled for a good long while.
I wrote all of the above about a month ago, before I left for Helsinki, the city of my heart, to spend July with my boyfriend. I’ve just returned a few days ago; I feel a vertiginous homesickness. Isn’t she beautiful?
I confess I did very little reading last month: I finished Janice Hallett’s The Examiner on flights—it was a complete waste of my time. I picked up Fraud occasionally. On the flights back to Boston I read some of Richard Osman’s forthcoming, We Solve Murders. I find his books charming, a fact which I find annoying. My boyfriend read more than me: I gave him a copy of Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite by Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman, which I knew would be catnip to him and lo, it was.
Now I’m slowly finishing Fraud, giving it nowhere near the attention it deserves. I am missing Helsinki something awful: it takes up a great deal of my attention. I am missing my boyfriend too, very very very much, but I can at least call him. I should be able to write to Helsinki, and to have her write back.
I sometimes joke that my relationship with my Finnish boyfriend is like Jacob’s with Bella in Twilight: merely a ploy to bring me to my real true love, much later on, without me knowing it. Finland is my Renesmee, that’s what I’m saying. But this is a sort of defense mechanism, really. In some ways it is quite difficult to accept the bounty I’ve been given: a man I love and a second home I love, a much expanded world. It gives me more to lose, if you know what I mean. More to miss. It’s an impoverished worldview; I am trying to shake it. I am trying instead to think about it the same way I think of Barnes’s work: with deep and endless gratitude, and the knowledge that regardless of what happens I will have it forever.
Your friend,
Smalls