A_Musing U: A Categorical Failure Undone

OK, having failed misserably at an 8-8-8 in '08 and a 9-9-9 in '09, mainly because I have the attention span of a ... what was that? Yes, well, in this thread I thought I'd resurrect my wonderful, beautiful, but mostly unread "categories" and reorganize them as "classes" but ones without the limitations of a semester or a year or an eon. In other words, I will never fail, never not finish, only still be working on things.

So, anyways, I am not doing one of those 10-10-10s, though might consider a 1-1-1 at some point in the future.

Instead, I'm going to track and organize the reading here, and start by copying in the 2009 categories on which I want to keep working (the failure is documented here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/50869 ) and start adding a few new ones.

Drama Survey: In the 9-9-9 world, this was meant to be plays from 9 different countries, originally in 9 different languages; bonus points if they're in verse; live performances count.

In my new world, I'm going to set a general goal of reading plays translated from as many languages as possible before I'm done, or, perhaps, overdone.

1. Doubt, English
1a. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
2. Endgame, Samuel Beckett, French, A.R.T. production
2a. Antigone by Jean Anouilh, French
3. Agamemnon by Aescylus
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Ideas: Well, let's start with Faust, since I've been meaning to get it read for ages; then some more Kalidasa or Bhasa, maybe something more contemporary from India; Noh Theatre; Lope de Vega or Calderon; some Greek drama.

Survey of Indian Literature. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the South Asian diaspora. I'm going to keep this focused on South Asian authors (including expatriates and descendents), with an added goal of distributing works widely through time and around the world, but will allow in one or two history books by Westerners. Maybe I'll even update my map soon: http://www.librarything.com/topic/50529

1. The Book of the Beginning (Book 1 of the Bharata)
2. Baburnama, by Babur, of course
3. The Book of the Assembly Hall (2nd Parva of the Bharata)
4. Early India: From the Origins to 1300 by Romila Thapar
5. White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
6. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
7.
8.
9.

Ideas: This is going to include a bunch of books of the Mahabharata, which I'm working away at over a multi-year period.

THE WORLD SURVEY: New countries for my global travels. Over on the Reading Globally group, we're all aiming for reads from 192 countries sometime before we die; my world list is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/28306 .

So below is me inching toward the goal:

1. Noli Me Tangere by Jose Rizal, Philipines
2. Baburnama by Babur, Uzbekistan
3. The City and the Mountains by Eca de Queiros, Portugul
4. Nadirs by Herta Muller, Romania
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

The Circle of Kharma for Bhutan; this also can include some Epics for my "Epic Journey" at http://www.librarything.com/topic/19510

The Golden Ages: From Al Andalus to Spain - I'd try to pull books from the Golden Age of Jewish Culture, the high culture of the Convivencia, right up to Cervantes and the "Spanish" golden age. Anything Iberian works. This was inspired by a very successful 2008 8-8-8 category, but, unfortunately, didn't get much traction in 2009. BUT I'M NOT DONE YET!

1. Mohammed and Charlemagne by Henri Pirenne
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Big books with Ben - major literary works read with my 8 (soon to be 9) year old (last year's included Journey to the Center of the Earth, Gulliver's Travels, the Monkey King, and a bunch of others).

1. Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng'en, Volume 1
2. Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
3. Journey to the West, Volume 2
4. The Iliad by Homer (on hold)
5. Journey to the West, Volume 3
6. Journey to the West, Volume 4
7. Old Testament, KJV (in progress)
8.
9.

MELVILLE: I feel a Melville Class coming on. We're reading Clarel over in the Salon with the equinox, http://www.librarything.com/topic/75781 , and in preparation therefore I've begun buying books of all sort Melvillian, and begun several Melvillian readings, including The Published Poems: The Writings of Herman Melville, which now sits on my right while at work, and Melville: The Making of the Poet, and Pierre or the Ambiguities. I have no doubt where this all will end, but it's an obsession I nurse myself through about once a decade or so. Onwards....

1. Pierre
2. Clarel
3. Melville: The Making of the Poet by Hershel Parker
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

OK, six classes for now. I'll add more when I feel like it, and describe below both my "classwork" and my extracurricular reading.

My review of The Hour of the Star, a recent "extracurricular" read in the Salon (see broader discussion here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/75951 ):

This is really a very serious Nietzschean essay on Ontology, sans the uber-machismo but with a deft and well-meant humour, masquerading as a simple little story. Clarice Lispector, our author, is facing her death, and, working through a narrator who may or may not exist, looks into the eyes of a trod upon and anonymous young woman who may exist as an individual or a type and who may or may not be in the narrator's literal or figurative employ, and sees in those eyes her best answer to the questions of being and nothingness that so trouble the philosophical.

Set aside the Sartre, the Heidegger, the Wittgenstein, with all their big words (her narrator emphasizes repeatedly that he has banned big words). Forget about all the twisted logic used to figure out how we know about our own existence and what its purpose may be. If there is a reason, something more than pure brute instinct, for an ugly little waif from the poorest part of Brazil to exist, perhaps even to live, there is a reason for all of us to live. And so, in the midst of life in the mud, and, quite literally, death in the mud, Clarice gives us reason to live. And while she does this, she struggles to release us from the trap of a language that defines us. Each reader can figure out whether she succeeds. Success may or may not be important.

All of this is done through a style dominated by simple aphorisms (thus the Nietzschean - it's the only comparison I can think of) and a straightforward story line. No big words. Individually, her aphorisms are banal. Combined, they are profound.

Clarice Lispector weaves together metaphorical rags.

All I can say about the result: Wow.

You are amusing, but you are so much more.

You downright lead out of darkness. LOL

I have pretty well dropped even looking at Club Read, due to too many other irons in the fire, but yours I will follow.

Congratulations on all the above is about the most apt comment to make.

ditto #10! Can we say A_Musing is also Am_bitious!? Cool cool cool.

I love the review of The Hour of the Star. I had started it several weeks ago but put it down mid-flight after 20-30 pages. I'm now encouraged by your review and Solla's comments to give it another go soon. Thanks!

As I have noted elsewhere, I fear Clarel will lead us all into a Slough of Despair. I have a scalpel handy the better to slit my wrists sometime during this wholly misguided educational experiment.

You're going to slit your wrists with your shoulder blade (scapula)? I have to see this.

Excuse me. One poor exhausted urania taken to task for a misspelling. I have altered the previous message. At the moment I am sobbing.

Aww! Sorry, dearest. Um...maybe you should put the scalpel away. ;)

Oh, my. No blood on this thread, please.

Many thanks for all the interest. I shall have to think of what sort of song and dance I can do to justify all this attention. I do try to be ambitious, which is undoubtedly why I never finish one of those challenge thingies. But, now, ambition without deadlines!

So P, does that mean you have stopped visiting my thread?

* sobbing*

A_musing, this is very interesting, and ambitious. I'm interested in more of your Mahabarata reading especially; and also, in how your 8 year old reacted to Orlando Furioso, which I hope you did in the original Italian? Must be some 8 year old!

>18 tomcatMurr: Murrushka,

"p" doesn't visit my thread either. In fact he called me a perfidious wench in a private PM message a few days ago. I am sure had he said such a thing publicly, everyone here would have flagged him immediately and had him sent to Tim's version of LT hell.

Ben rather likes Orlando Furioso, and noted (without prompting I'd add - a proud papa!!) that it's just like Journey to the West, written a long time ago about a much longer time ago, with a lot of good monsters. We like to compare monsters. Chinese monsters are generally better armed, by the way, than Western monsters. Magic as-you-will cudgels are very cool.

But we originally were going to read Orlando between books of Journey to the West and suspended it to dive back in to more Monkey (his favorite), and now it's also competing with the Illiad, which his mother hooked him on (he had a kid's version read to him first, just warming him up for the real thing, which he's now getting into). His planned reading is getting pretty ambitious (though remember, he's planning for ME to read to HIM) - he wants to start on the Bible as well.

Kids like poetry, and they like action stories. Epics really are perfect. I discovered this a few years ago when we started with Gilgamesh and Sir Gawain, both much shorter and more traditionally thought of as accessible to young 'uns.

The Mahabharata is a whole separate story. I'll think a bit about what sort of things can be said about what I've done so far and what's left to go - it is really a road you start on knowing it will never end, since each time you read another book you understand more of the other books you've read, and have more questions about them. I've finished off the better part of two books each of the last two years, but I think I'll generally be happy with a book a year as long as I'm also doing other relevant reading.

I have posted my review of Herta Muller's Nadirs here:

http://www.librarything.com/work/2374505/reviews

Suffice it to say her first book of short stories left me cold.

Very cold.

And blue.

Though it adds Romania to my country list.

Sounds like Clarel. We are all going to be so sorry that we read it, and we won't even get to add another book to our list of countries read. Perhaps we should start another forum: Club Obscure. In order to qualify, each book must have no more than fifty member at the time we start. We can also have a point system. The more obscure the book, the more points we get. Then at the end of the year, the person with the most points gets a really nice book.

Sounds like Clarel. We are all going to be so sorry that we read it, and we won't even get to add another book to our list of countries read. Perhaps we should start another forum: Club Obscure. In order to qualify, each book must have no more than fifty member at the time we start. We can also have a point system. The more obscure the book, the more points we get. Then at the end of the year, the person with the most points gets a really nice book.

Oh, not at all. Melville is the funniest man who ever lived, especially if you like laughing at the Ontological, a la Lispector.

From Melville's epilogue (read it in a John Cleeves voice, really, you'll laugh):

Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate --
The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell;
Science the feud can only aggravate --
No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell;
The running battle of the star and clod
Shall run forever -- if there be no God.

Come on, tell me you don't laugh at "if there be no God" in particular.

You have a dispensation to not read Clarel, Urania. Though I was going to call Lispector Melvillian in her interweaving of philosophical discussion and story.

>24 A_musing:,

Of course I have to read Clarel. I won't have anything to gripe about if I don't. Besides, I have too much money and bookshelf space invested in this endeavor. I still maintain this project is dangerous. We shall all probably follow one another like lemmings to our doom.

Well, of course it is dangerous! Melville oozes danger, calling Christians worse than canibals, confusing God and Satan with each other, ridiculing anyone who might have answers, telling of love stories between sailors and headshrinkers.

Might we end up like poor Pip, who was lost overboard in the Great Ocean, but later rescued, having gone mad contemplating the infinite in the interim? Well, that's why we need to bob together in the ocean, and keep ourselves from focusing too much on the intensity of that vast, gleaming whiteness that can overcome us. If we don't, we'll end up like Sarah Palin.

I picked up this month's Poetry Magazine, and it has a little set of vignettes where Poets walk around Cities and describe them (mostly in prose), and of his Jerusalem Walk Peter Cole says: "Jerusalem will 'dissipate romantic expectations,' noted Herman Melville, having walked the city. 'To some,' he added, 'the disappointment is heart sickening.'" We must simply approach Clarel without romantic expectations.

-- A_Musing (Dangerous Bad Boy Extraordinaire)

My scholarly edition of Clarel arrived today. It was not an occasion for rejoicing. I have just finished 1.1 of Clarel. If you ask me, what that young man needs is some naughty, saucy sex. He would feel much better and less woeful. And "The Thinker" pose at the beginning? When will young tormented men, who fancy themselves atypical, learn this particular pose is trite and cliched? I am already feeling so depressed by this book that I will probably go to bed without any dinner.

As long as women suggest naughty, saucy sex as an antidote for that which ails a boy in the thinker pose, boys will keep getting in the thinker pose.

What do you think - is he wearing a black turtleneck?

>28 A_musing: Of course he's wearing a black turtleneck and a beret. Or else, he has long flowing locks and an intense gaze full of suffering with a touch of Lord Byron. I was once acquainted with the latter. His standard pick-up line: "Women would be the embodiment of perfection if only they had a sense of mercy." And of course, idiot after idiot fell for the line eager to prove to him they had a sense of mercy. I told him to go flagellate himself for a while. This and other comments undoubtedly explain why I hardly ever had a date although I did manage to accumulate a couple of husbands along the way. How? I have no idea.

It's not reading, but last night was a big music night in our house.

My oldest daughter saw her first opera. Carmen. Her whole school (150 students) went. She came out exhausted.

My son went to his first classical music concert. A Lou Harrison piece (La Koro Sutro) with 100 voices and 30 feet of Gamelan. Antheil's Ballet Mechanique with eight player pianos putting up a wall of sound, accompanied by two pianos, a mass of xylophones, drums, sirens and airplane propellors. A 1931 piece by Varese with a mix of percussion instruments from all 5 continents. He now wants Santa to get him a Gamelan for Christmas.

Glad to see you here, A_musing. Will aim to stop in from time to time to hear what you are reading...

I just finished Müller's The Passport but am going to give it a day or two before I write about it (I have to go to Maine for a few days anyway...)

I've thrown up my reviews of Clarel and Les Miserables. I'm still puzzling over Clarel and was a bit cranky when writing about Les Mis.

I've not been reading much of late, but am now just starting on a re-read of Infinite Jest, futzing around a bit with my old friend Paradise Lost, including reading Paradise Reclaimed by Halldor Laxness, reading some Hesiod (required reading in a house gone mad over Percy Jackson!), and picking away at Ottoman Literature: the Poets and Poetry of Turkey in preparing for Reading Globally's April read.

And yet somehow Les Mis has never been turned into a miniseries, or even, as far as I can tell, a decent-length movie. Go figure.

Good to see you back here.

>33 A_musing: This sentiment in your review of Les Mis made me laugh out loud - thanks for the first chuckle of the morning! Hugo ". . . meticulously clarifies everything that has already been made clear, and then repeats it again, helping us to understand even the most trivial points in great detail. Indeed, one of the beauties of this book is that if you miss something the first time, you will likely be able to catch it the fourth time, and thus need not read too closely."

Ah, sometimes it seems like I go more often than I come back. But thanks for the welcome back. And, Talbin, thanks for enjoying that line.

My favorite line in all the Miserables reviews was from the review who recommend that one "read the musicial". I second that recommendation.

Is it 2009 again, or am I simply lost?

It is now the year of the Tiger, or of the Depend Adult Undergarment. I like it here.

Depends. Ah yes. Do they make them for goats? Tell me more about your goatherd days. I keep Nigerian Dwarfs. Apart from all the trouble, the little ones that are hand raised are quite affectionate. They like to burrow in my lap. What I will do when they reach their full growth is another matter. I will hate to send these out to be bred when the time comes. It just seems so brutal. Additionally, I am rather picky. I do not want to send them to just any breeder. Artificial insemination looks attractive, but I do not know how expensive it is. I will check with my university extension service and vet school (which is quite good).

In the Big Books with Ben Category, we are now moving on to a reading of the Old Testament. We're starting with the King James Version, but he's already asking a lot of questions about the language and the translation, and I may starting looking for one of those comparative translations volumes.