Book #10 of 2020: House of Names by Colm Toibin

I believe my first encounter with Toibin was The Master: A Novel. His pitch-perfect recreation of Henry James was historical fiction at its best, and on top of the deep scholarship and research supporting the novel was a keen sensitivity to James and his emotions and passions and intellect. Where Toibin had to "fill in" gaps in the record, he did so as someone who knew James, and I appreciated that.

Over the past two decades I've read his other novels with great pleasure, as well as perhaps a couple dozen essays here and there (most in the New York Review of Books). Most recently I began reading a biography of Alice James re-issued by the excellent NYBooks imprint and there was Colm Toibin writing the excellent Introduction.

House of Names is something of a departure for Toibin, who typically focuses on one consciousness through which the rest of the action is perceived and filtered. Sort of like The Master himself, I might add, who was a stickler for point of view, but an innovator at the same time. Toibin writes about the Virgin Mary through her eyes only, or Brooklyn entirely from the protagonist's POV. But here we shuffle through different characters and get their experience.

House of Names is drenched with Greek thought and Greek imagery and Greek tragedy and Greek belief. It is also drenched in blood. Clytemnestra is completely aware that she is wrapped in a dark net of Fate, but thinks her actions will free herself and her family moving forward. Alas, that is not the case, as her revenge is only part of the pre-woven fabric. Toibin masterfully guides the bob and weave through this delicious and delirious retelling.

I'm on a roll with these Greek-inspired novels--maybe I should keep it going! We can all use a little catharsis right now.

The Plague

It was about nine or ten weeks ago that my 6th grade students started asking about COVID-19. I told them we likely needed to pay attention to it, but that we should also remember that end of the world predictions happen pretty routinely. I told them about Y2K, and the Mayan Calendar, and various alignments of planets, and other dreadful viruses which all heralded the end of the world over the past few decades. I had, I said, lived through many ends of the world.

And now, I'm starting my 2nd full week of teaching online. I have to scrub all groceries we purchase with alcohol cleansers and then scrub the counters where I placed them for cleaning. I sanitize the door handles and light switches. My wife and I did not leave our apartment for 7 days--this morning we ventured out to the grocery for the first time, and each patron at Foodie was given sanitizer and received a temperature check before entering 2 meters behind the previous patron in line. In order to get outside we have to ride an elevator 54 floors down.

It's impossible to maintain social distance on an elevator with 5 or 6 other people.

In four hours we will be officially stuck here in Panama. All flights in and out of the country are barred starting at midnight for at least 30 days. The US State Department has advised that citizens living abroad shelter in place, avoiding international travel. The government has locked down movement from the City to the interior and the beaches. The pool and other facilities in our building are closed. There is a curfew from 9pm until 5am. All bars and restaurants are closed.

Frankly, I'd rather be in Panama than the USA right now. I have some concerns about societal collapse back home, and think we might fare better here at least for now. The government has been far more proactive here. But despite that, Panama has gone from 1 case to 345 cases in less than 3 weeks.

We have Spring Break in 2 weeks, and had hoped to visit either Guatemala or Cuba. We've been living here for almost two years and have not really explored many new places nearby, with the exception of Cartegena. Now, we wonder if we will be allowed to travel before next school year starts. Presumably our Spring Break will be more sitting around the apartment, reading and looking at the COVID-19 infection numbers?

And will next school year start online, from home?

Book #9 of 2020: The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault

Recently I read Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones and Literature and the Gods. These sent me spiraling down a path back to the Ancient Greeks. Mendelsohn's book contained an elegant and touching reminiscence about his teenage infatuation with Mary Renault and her novels. This infatuation blossomed into a long-term correspondence with the author. As a result of that essay I read The Last of the Wine, which just happened to be be free on Amazon Prime.

What a timely read, finely tuned to our current reality. There was at that time in Greece a conspiracy of oligarchs to recruit foreign influence in the overthrow of the democratic government in Athens. Sparta was the recruited foe and the oligarchs successfully returned to power with their aid and support. Renault's depiction of the catastrophe is vivid and really captures what I imagine the Greek experience of the world was like. Along the way the reader gets to hang out with several characters we know well from Plato's dialogues.

Now I've moved on to House of Names: A Novel and I'm sure I'll have much more to say afterward. Toibin is a fantastic writer and I've already fallen deep into this retelling of Iphigenia, told from Clytemnestra's point of view. All of this is great, because I'll be teaching Ancient Greece to 8th graders next year and I need to brush up and put my own spin on the material. I'm already churning ideas for teaching the unit. Wonder if I'll be teaching it from quarantine? Toibin's Clytemnestra sees the world pregnant with omen and curse and wonders at the malignant power of her family's blood, but at the same time doubts the Gods are real and wonders how to mollify them and/or recruit them into her vengeful scheme. We all feel disturbing and discomfiting emotions at this time, and the Greeks somehow charted courses through them all for us.

PS: As I was typing this entry the Mrs. came in and interrupted me. I turned around and did a teasing Jack Torrence in The Shining impersonation. She was not amused, given we have not left the apartment in six days due to quarantine.

What I've read so far this year...

 

 

Final books of 2019 (#35, #36, and #37)

Books 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34 of 2019

Latest reads: 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29

The latest books: 21 so far in 2019

Just reading books by Jung or Jungians or memoirs of the individuation process by those who work with Jungians causes me to have delicious and mysterious dreams. I've been doing a lot of dreamwork with the Shadow, Anima, and Mother archetype lately.

The best bits of this book are those which use Biblical stories and religious symbols to explain Jungian concepts. And the best of those is the discussion of Job. Probably only interesting or useful if you're fairly deep in the Jungiverse.



There are several reviewers on Amazon who trashed this book because it's called "AMERICAN" short stories but there's a lot of stories about Africans, Asians, gray parrots, etc. Make the Best American Short Stories the Best Again! Whatever. I used to read these annuals religiously but stopped about 20 years ago; thought I should see what was happening with the short story lately.

I found this collection was excellent and interesting BECAUSE it didn't feature the painfully empty interior lives of a series of alienated suburban white people who had never even heard of Marx or Sartre or Chomsky and were unable to find a theorist to diagnose their malaise in US Weekly and People magazines. And the story about the parrot, narrated by a parrot, is an all-time great I can use with my middle school students. One of the classic devastating last lines!

 

Having met James Ellroy, and having spoken with him about JFK conspiracy books and novels, and having watched him scrawl "Blood rage rules!" in my copy of his American Tabloid, and having enjoyed several of his books, I thought I'd give the latest prisoner turned literary darling a shot. Cherry is a worthy first effort. Sometimes the narrator's voice is searing, clear, and white-hot, and that voice carries you along and surprises you with what captures the narrator's attention, and the curious tidbits he knows about literature and history sprinkled into the junky talk and soldier lingo. There is a lot of blood rage here, or at least blood hunger.

But other times the voice is clumsy and the narrator becomes a familiar type (I lived in West Baltimore for years--I saw these guys and gals daily. The reality of this "familiar type" is quite real to me). If you've read or seen The Corner you have heard this story. If you read Russell Banks's Rule of the Bone you've heard this story and met this character. You need some humor to sustain the plot, the way Trainspotting is just fucking awful and then awfully funny and then just awful again. Cherry has a lot of the awful but loses its sardonic humor at some point.

I dunno why I'm nitpicking a pretty strong first novel--it just feels like I've read this before, and done better. But the descriptions of the Iraq War and its consequences and the attitudes of the soldiers are top-notch. The first half of the book is very strong. Something about the narrator and the characters just can't sustain the second half.

 

Just great. Points out the resurgence of Native American population numbers, and while the well-documented and notorious facts of centuries of ethnic cleansing and genocide are noted and examined here, the book is mostly concerned with celebrating survival--and despite the grim data, a great deal of success. A really fantastic historic overview of government policy and indigenous response, of activism and combat, of submission and fealty and betrayal. The Epilogue is some deep shit.