A New York Review Books newsletter asked what people are reading now. I sent these paragraphs:
I’m reading Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet (Richard Zenith’s translation from the Portuguese). I found my way to it by tracking down an unidentified passage in Spanish from a book that appears onscreen in Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory. And then a friend mentioned that Pessoa’s book and Almodóvar’s film are two of his favorite things. So one translation led me to another.Here’s a post with the passage from Pain and Glory that started it all. George Bodmer mentioned Pessoa’s book in a comment. Elaine and I are a third of the way through.
The Book of Disquiet seems like appropriate reading for these times. It's a book of fragments, short or shorter commentaries on life both real and imagined, the work of a solitary man — Bernardo Soares, a Lisbon bookkeeper (one of Pessoa’s heteronyms) — who travels between his fourth-floor apartment on Rua dos Douradores and his workplace on the same street. “Isolation has carved me in its image and likeness,” he says. He writes of tedium, of his obscurity, of his co-workers, of what he sees from his fourth-floor window, of his own efforts to write. “If our life were an eternal standing by the window”: that seems to be most of us right now.
Reader, what are you reading now?
[Heteronyms: Pessoa created a great many authorial identities for his writing — not aliases but imaginary selves with distinct styles and interests. Pessoa called Soares a semi-heteronym, an identity closer to Pessoa himself.]
comments: 11
So, somebody builds a giant building, maybe 500 stories tall. This building is so huge that those who live in the interior can't see out (shades of people quarantined on cruise ships), and they are provided with window-like video screens. But the building is so large, to prevent traffic congestion, those in charge jigger the video feed on those screens so that the day starts at different times at different locations. Shades of the Tower of Babel, this giant building collapses into the Heap, which attracts itinerant villages of people who dig in the Heap, pulling out furniture and liquor and various evidence of routine life, including bodies. Buried deep under this gigantic pile is a radio station and a dj who still broadcasts, and whose shows are highlighted by conversations he holds on-air with his brother, who is on the surface and digging for him. A mysterious organization (shades of Pynchon) tries to get this brother to incorporate product endorsements into his daily on-air conversations, and when he refuses, the organization cuts off his access and substitutes a voice-impersonator. Sounds unlikely? The Heap, by Sean Adams.
Btw, the following quote from Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet gives a good sense of the book and why I love it: "I'm suffering from a headache and the universe" (331).
Would you agree that Soares has a highly refined sense of humor? (The intro says he doesn’t.)
Oh, definitely.
I didn’t realize at first that you were describing a novel — I thought you were inventing an allegory of our condition, with the Cuomo brothers at the end. From what you describe, this novel sounds like a prophecy of life these days.
“Oh, definitely”: I was hoping you’d think so.
Over the last couple of weeks I've read Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles and The Map and the Territory. I found both compelling, but I needed something much lighter after those two. Filling the bill are Philip Jose Farmer's The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, and The Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand Brinley. The Peerless Peer is a tongue-in-cheek pulp adventure team-up of Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan - yes, that Tarzan ! Brinley's book is a collection of juvenile short stories about a group of boys who solve mysteries and have adventures where the plot revolves around science. I didn't know about the series as a boy, but I did buy and treasure a copy of Brinley's Rocket Manual for Amateurs back then. I was curious to see what sort of children's stories were written by the man who wrote a highly technical classic on rocketry: I guess it's no surprise that his stories deal with some accurate science, although that doesn't get in the way of the stories being entertaining. Now that we're getting a few sunny days, these two are pleasant to read for a few minutes on the back porch; Houellebecq is something I have to lie down on the couch to read while waiting out the rains of grey spring days :-)
“A group of boys who solve mysteries”: my kind of childhood. :) Thanks for sharing those titles, Jim.
I'm reading The Martian by Andy Weir, about a guy whose crewmates, thinking he's dead, leave behind on Mars--the ultimate in social distancing.
I've always liked apocalyptic or survival stories, but now I want the heartening kind, not the bleak kind.
When I saw the movie, which follows the book closely, the astronaut's childish wisecracking bugged me. [To annoy NASA, he messages them: " Look, boobs: (.Y.) "]
Now it's a cheering model.
Also heartening: Do the other astronauts want to go to Mars and rescue him?
They do.
As a NASA wonk says,
"Astronauts are inherently insane. And really noble."
Also: Science. It works.
P.S. I just read J D Lowe's comment above mine and reaslize I'm reading the same sort of thing:
"a group of boys who solve mysteries and have adventures where the plot revolves around science."
Some of the astronauts are women in The Martian, but yeah, they're basically "boys" who like rockets.
I liked that movie a lot. I had no idea that it was a novel first. (Must read credits more closely.)
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