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"Too much traffic"
About Me
- Jenny Davidson
- I have published four novels and four books of literary criticism; I'm currently at work on a book called FOR THE LOVE OF BROKEN THINGS: MY FATHER, EDWARD GIBBON AND THE RUINS OF ROME. I teach in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
A few pieces
Books
My other blogs
Blog Archive
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2007
(775)
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May
(51)
- Endangered species
- Twofold pleasures
- The savage Norse
- Archive overload
- A New Yorker cartoon wrapped around a knife
- Good literary things
- Sinister jigsaw puzzles
- The What
- "Bad novelists should marry one another (and not b...
- The naked polliwog of the Elite g
- The real people
- Toy soldiers
- The Friends of Terra Cotta
- "The noise - the massiveness - the horror!"
- Darwin too was fond of pigeons
- Delinquently
- Because it's the most pressing thing in my life
- I can't wait to read
- Some very charming letters
- Lunch with the Witch of Endor
- ABCs
- The Healthy Kidney 10K
- That little chop will not make a very nourishing pie
- The shrinking surface area of the soul
- Two Dover soles and a giant ribeye steak
- Putting up with the interruptions
- The ghosts of 995 Fifth Avenue
- Black-market whisky at twenty-five shillings a bottle
- A steep plunge to the road below
- The Prince Hal routine
- Further thoughts
- The bestseller
- What works on the page
- A pair of white gloves
- Novels as bad influence
- Knight errantry
- Promotional blogging?
- White jeans and black cowboy boots and Garth Brook...
- A sort of consummation
- Impossibility does not exist
- The world's first computer
- Nemtsi
- Novel-reading on the road
- One thing that works really well online
- House-cleaning
- Miscellaneous thoughts
- His nose was as sharpe as a Pen
- Porridge and kippers
- I have had my Weetabix
- This is so
- One more thing before I go
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May
(51)
This isn't about the article itself -- which, like you, I found fascinating -- but I just wanted to leave a little note saying how much I appreciate the material you link to. You're like what AL Daily was before it hit (and decided to stick to) that one shrill, almost anti-intellectual note.
ReplyDeleteNot really a commnet on the above (or is it below?) but just a note to say I found the 2005 posting re Never Let Me Go very interesting. I have justg finished this book and find that his adapted style for this book was insidiously perfect. Naivete, yearning, hopefulness without grounds, myth-believing. Hail Sham.
ReplyDeleteThose boxes of things of no value, the attachment to what can not be had, children, the belief in a kind of reprieve (semi-salvation?) and the goodness of the sub-contractor (the folks who ran the creme-de-la-spoiing-creme Hailsham, all really speak to us and who we are and how little it means in the end. Which does not speak of pessimism but only the Becketian "I can't go on, I'll go on."
This book is one hell of an achievement. And though delayed a year, I look forward to your fifteen and upper with all its promised quirkiness. I probably will skip the academic work, though. Love and kisses, McD
The Stasi article is very Riddle of the Traveling Skull (the ripped-up poem)...!
ReplyDeleteThanks, guys! For some reason blogger has recently (mostly) stopped e-mailing me comments, so it is a nice treat to find all this good stuff here. Richard, you remind me that I must reread "Never Let Me Go," I sort of feel like it's got to be on my top-ten favorite novels of all time but perhaps had better check that out with a reread before adding it to the list...
ReplyDeleteNever Let Me Go is also a personal favourite, though the episode when Kathy and Tommy visit Miss Emily has always struck me as the one 'sore thumb' of the novel - clunky, for some reason. I've tried to decide why but can't seem to hit on the reason. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteThe final scene is beautiful, however, and the last lines, using as they do the only extended metaphor of the whole novel (as far as I can remember!), remind me of your own admonitions to spareness in this regard. Once is obviously enough...
I agree about the visit to Miss Emily's. I thought that maybe her monologue was a little too long, like Ishiguro used the scene to package everything up a little too neatly. The book is amazing though. I read it while I was resting between my first and second donations. It's one of the things that got me though-- I've just been called for my fourth!
ReplyDeleteI agree that this Stasi article is fascinating. Having recently seen The Lives of Others, I posted about it too (finding out about the project via Nature rather than the BBC), at:
ReplyDeletehttp://petrona.typepad.com/petrona/2007/05/digital_jigsaw_.html
In the comments to that post are a couple of recommendations of books that look rather tempting.
A haunting tale. Let me know if you would like the entire Nature article.
Maybe some box has become unchecked in your blogger dashboard for some strange reason(the email alerts)?
Next week Abby will be going a class trip to Berlin, during which one day of the programme is devoted to the NS/Stasi past (and one to democracy), as I've already mentioned on another blog, and includes visits to the former Stasi prison and to the Stasi museum. I'm going to interview Abby or ask her to write a guest post over at Lowebrow about her experiences, since this topic is attracting so much attention. In Germany, of course, the 'puzzle pieces' have been in all the media.
ReplyDelete