Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

From Elena Ferrante's Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (the third book in the Neapolitan series):

"Become.  It was a verb that had always obsessed me, but I realized it for the first time only in that situation.  I wanted to become, even though I had never known what.  And I had become, that was certain, but without an object, without a real passion, without a determined ambition.  I had wanted to become something - here was the point - only because I was afraid that [my friend] would become someone and I would stay behind.  My becoming was a becoming in her wake.  I had to start again to become, but for myself, as an adult, outside of her." 

Also, I love this description:  "There is no woman like you, you throw yourself into life with a force that, if we all had it, the world would have changed a long time ago."

The Story of a New Name

From Elena Ferrante's The Story of a New Name (the second book in the Neapolitan series):

“...I had arrived there full of pride and realized that -- in good faith, certainly, with affection -- I had made that whole journey mainly to show her what she had lost and what I had won.  But she had known from the moment I had appeared, and now... she was explaining to me that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other every so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other.” 

New words learned!

• excrescence:  a distinct outgrowth on a human or animal body or on a plant, esp. one that is the result of a disease or abnormality
• philologist:  the branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages

My Brilliant Friend

From Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend:

“Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.” 

The Goldfinch

After watching "Blue Jasmine" (which was extraordinarily good), my friend A turned to me and stated, with the utmost confidence, that Cate Blanchett would be nominated for -- if not win -- an Academy Award.  It didn't matter how tremendous other actresses' performances were in the upcoming months:  Cate Blanchett was simply that good.

This is how I felt about The Goldfinch.  It was extraordinary, and I can already tell that it will be one of my favorite books of 2014.

There are many, many things I loved about it:  the dark humor, how vividly Tartt painted (no pun intended) New York City and Nevada, the unexpected twists and turns in the tale.  It's a long read, but a rewarding one.

Some favorite passages:

• "And her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street."
• On Greenwich Village:  "It was a little weird being in the Village on my own because it wasn't a place where you saw many kids on the street on a weekend morning; it felt adult, sophisticated, slightly alcoholic."
• On his mother's death:  "Every new event - everything I did for the rest of my life - would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us.  Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away."
• "And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky -- so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly the middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime."

And this entire passage:

A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts.  We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people.  We don't get to choose the people we are. 

Because -- isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture --?  From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do?  How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart." 

Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me.  What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted --?  What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?

Best of 2013

Oh man.  Despite barely blogging in 2013, I still read a bunch.  It was the usual mix:  lots of fiction, some smutty books, a handful of non-fiction.  All around, it was a great year for reading, but here are my top five faves: 

1)  The Orphan Master's Son:  I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it.  Completely original and completely deserving of the Pulitzer.

2)  World War Z:  Courtesy of my friend Mark, I picked up this page-turner.  I also did not sleep for the entire month of September due to zombie nightmares.

3)  The Circle:  I get the criticism:  Dave Eggers' characters aren't fully formed and the 'plot twist' is pretty apparent from the first few chapters.  It doesn't matter.  The book does a great job exploring privacy, social media, and what we give up when we opt in.

4)  Americanah:  Hands down, my favorite book of the year.  I highlighted over a dozen passages, but I could have easily highlighted the whole book because it was that good.  

5)  Lean In:  I was a little torn about whether or not to include this one.  Like many others, I think that Sandberg writes from a position of incredible privilege, and that she seemed a little out-of-touch with some of her suggestions.  That said, I thought the book was thought-provoking with its discussions on work-life balance and how to make parental leave conversations more inclusive.

Happy 2014, everyone!

How It All Began

J's been traveling for work and, left to my own devices, I've been on a reading bender.  A backlog of posts coming!

From the latest, Penelope Lively's How It All Began, another reflection on why I read:

"Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system.  Her life has been informed by reading.  She has read not just for distraction, sustenance, to pass the time, but she has read in a state of primal innocence, reading for enlightenment, for instruction, even.  She has read to find out how sex works, how babies are born, she has read to discover what it is to be good, or bad; she has read to find out if things are the same for others as they are for her -- then, discovering that frequently they are not, she has read to find out what it is that other people experience that she is missing."

Overall, I thought the book was lovely: it reminded me a bit of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand with its tone, meditations on getting older, and, well, quintessential British-ness.  I would recommend it for anyone looking for a light, engrossing summer read.

Travels to India

From Justice Sotomayor's autobiography, My Beloved World: 

"Traveling with Mami to Puerto Rico was a little like being around Rip van Winkle on the day he woke up.  She wore an expression of constant wonderment: everything surprised her by how much it had changed, except for the things that surprised her because they were just as she remembered them."