The Bloater

The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a lark! So glad to have snagged a copy of this book from Interlibrary Loan and listened to the Backlist Podcast. Min is a classic female character in this delightful confection of the Sixties as she copes with her opera singer admirer called The Bloater ("this huge, tame, exotic man" "I personally can smell him from the kitchen...I do see that he is large and washing takes time") lusts after a coworker named Billy, gossips with friends and an inciteful neighbor ("he has property, knows everything, and occasionally tells me near-truths about myself.") She pretty much ignores her husband, George. She suffers from gout and is absorbed by her clothing, her home décor and her cleaner, occasionally her job in electronic music, but mostly is concerned with her love life. When her husband complains, "I am bewildered, and my ego falls down off her plinth." Fun to read. A closing salvo from Min: "I'm able to put up with the present only by attaching it to the future."

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Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars. My response to this book was mixed--the writing is smart and skilled and the personal relationships between father and son and male friendships held my interest, but the lengthy discourses on politics and why his Black friend votes Republican. religion, economics, market timing, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Robert Bork, the 45th president, Islamaphobia post September 11th, all dragged in verbosity. One of his more prescient observations: "Trump had just felt the national mood, and his particular genius was a need for attention so craven, so unrelenting, he was willing to don any and every shade of our moment's ugliness, consequences be damned." I've seen and appreciated Akhtar's short, one-act punchy action-filled plays including the Pulitzer-winner, Disgraced. I wanted more of that in the novel, but the author wanted to expound.

Many questions answered in this review: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

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What Are You Going Through?

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?”

― Simone Weil

The first half of the book deals mostly with the narrator's attendance at a lecture on the inevitable end of the world and then an amalgam of anecdotes as she meets people who tell her of their suffering. This section moved slowly. The latter half of the book is her attendance on a friend with terminal cancer who is intent on euthanasia and I responded more to this section, in fact laughed out loud at some of its incongruities like the flood, or:
"Flaubert: To think is to suffer.
Aristotle: To perceive is to suffer.
Hitchcock: Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
Sylvester the Cat: Sufferin' succotash."
The philosophical topics are meaty and many on the decimation of earth, illness, death, friendship and animals' role in our lives. Some consider it a companion piece to The Friend as it deals with similar topics of friendship and aging.
There's not much plot nor even characterization, but I enjoyed the literary references, the quotidian activities caring for each other, the author's telling how to sit with a terminal friend as the earth too is dying.

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2020 My Year in Books

2020 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What can I say about my year in books? I read a lot in quarantine, but not as much as some of my Goodreads friends. The bulk of my reading was fiction, the better to escape during this pandemic year, but I managed some memoir, poetry and art books. I would like to see more classics on my list or at least books from the Twentieth Century other than the one John O'Hara and Annie Dillard. Hopefully, my addiction to the podcast Backlisted.fm will spur me on in 2021 with forgotten titles. I would also like to read more books in translation and look forward again to the groups on GR which offer great weighted suggestions.
My favorite books this year were Shuggie Bain and The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss. I was most affected by What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance. I enjoyed rollicking along with the writer in Writers & Lovers. The poetry of Dorianne Lauxmade a lasting impression. My most challenging read was Milkman but worth it in the end. The most unexpected treasure was The Hanky of Pippin's Daughterwhich reminds me to pay attention to the other titles from Dorothy, a Publishing Project. A Line Made by Walking and Index Cards: Selected Essays with her thoughts on reading were completely unexpected finds, very different but both introspective. The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives was fun for a bookaholic particularly with my intention of reading backwards into the 20th Century.

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Shuggie Bain

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"They were suspicious of this woman who wore lipstick in the early morning and unchipped nail polish the color of sex."
Five stars for the writing, the characterizations (especially mother and son) and the story. Beautiful but bleak, I slowed down mid-book for a time (holidays), but was soon under the Douglas Stuart spell again. My empathy was with little Shuggie abandoned by all to pursue his loyal love for his wasted, alcoholic mammy. The portrayal of public housing tenants in the Galway suburbs is raw with cruelty and need. The men have lost their jobs and drink, fight and fuck away their frustrations. The women scrabble and gossip while trying to feed their too-many babies. Shuggie Bain's mother Beautiful Agnes drinks up everything - food, filial love, belongings and men. But throughout the reader cares about these folks, their dismal stories with flashes of humor, and stays with them throughout the book for its exquisite language and train wreck of a tale, thankful that the author persevered for ten years and thirty rejections toward his Booker prize.

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Riding in Cars with Boys

Riding In Cars With Boys by Beverly Donofrio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The subtitle is "confessions of a bad girl who made good" and this memoir of a seventeen-year-old who gets pregnant in 1968, marries a drug-addled good-time boy and manages to raise her son as a single mother and get an advanced degree is all about voice. The writing is captivating, her characters are well-written but throughout it's Bev's voice that spurs you on and lets you now she will get through it all. And every spare moment she got, when not watching TV or playing with her kid or smoking dope, she read. It's a paean to the written word as much as chutzpah which gets her into a good college and a writing life.

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The Writing of Art

The Writing of Art by Olivier Berggruen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not sure of my impetus in ordering this scholarly little book from the library. References within are made to Roland Barthes, to Douglas Cooper who helped the author's father amass a small collection of impressionists, and others such as Gertrude Stein. The author's offers short essays on Picasso, Paul Klee, Yves Klein, Ed Ruscha, Basquiat, Agnes Martin and Cy Twombly. With Pablo Picasso he focuses on the artist's work in theatre in June 1924 especially Mercure with music by Erik Satie(including the Feast of Bacchus). The section on Paul Klee discusses influences of a trip to Egypt while the Yves Klein piece focuses on Klein's travels in Japan. In talking about Ed Ruscha, the emphasis is on Wittgenstein Ludwig's "famous duck-rabbit paradox" to produce his word pictures like Cut Lip, Pool, Self, Promise, Cherry, Rodeo, Anchovy, Mint, Carp; his "emphasis on graphic design allows for traces of authorship to vanish." "Our cognitive understanding of the world is permeated by language." The chapter on Jean-Michel Basquiat(1961-1988) discusses his 1982 screen prints Anatomy & Tuxedo plus the untitled prints made in the Fred Hoffman studio. The chapter on Agnes Martin is entitled "The Lightness of Art" and examines her transition from grays to more seductive work in pastels. Finally, the part on Cy Twombly "The Summons to Living Things to Return Home" was not easily readable and challenged me, but I was pleased to be reminded of the work of these artists and expand my knowledge.
Also, noted the impressive work of the Berggruen Institute on thinking and prizes they award seen on YouTube.

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