Bookshelf

Recently Read:

The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon

I read this upon urging by an anthropologist friend. It was powerful and thought-provoking (duh)... I don't feel particularly qualified to discuss What It All Means, but I will cop out by quoting something in the translator's notes at the end:
"In his Preface to the first edition of Peau noire, masques blancs, Francis Jeanson tells how one day he wrote to Fanon asking for clarification of a particularly obscure passage in the book. An answer was duly furnished and Fanon added: "This passage is inexplicable. When I write such things I seek to touch my reader in his emotions, i.e., irrationally, almost sensually."
Further on in his letter Fanon goes on to confess how he is drawn to the magic of words and that for him language is the ultimate refuge, once it is freed from conventions, from its voice of reason and the terror of coming face-to-face with oneself. "Words for me have a powerful effect. I feel it impossible to escape from the sting of a word or the vertigo of a question mark." He went on to say that, like Cesaire, he wanted to sink beneath the stupefying lava of words that have the color of quivering flesh."
(Richard Philcox, translator)
I love this. Sometimes a thousand critics and academics with a thousand complicated analyses should just simmer down - it's inexplicable, it's for the joy of the language. Fanon was a brilliant theorist and a passionate writer, a true artist... I have a fairly shallow reservoir of patience for reading theories of race, culture, sociology - I'd rather read science - but I was glued to The Wretched of the Earth. Of course, living where I do at the moment, reading about decolonization was fascinating as well - Fanon was so right, and yet so wrong. I'm sure he would love to see how his predictions have been borne out or overturned, situation by situation. Highly recommended.

Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray

After reading it, I'm a bit curious to see the film. I'm sure no glitzy period flick could recreate Thackeray's many-leveled satire... I think I would've hated it if I had only read the first half. Thackeray was almost too clever - too many sly references, his characters too glib and unlikeable, the parody unkind and extreme. But as he stuck with the characters and unravelled them, the arch removal of the earlier chapters seemed like our own deceptions and misunderstandings at first meeting someone in an artificial society, and in the tragi-comic pursual of their lives the satire became reality. It didn't end with a funny, pat, clever ending - neither ironic glory or harsh tragedy, but something real, and therefore sad. It's like the thrilling effervesence of a new relationship, when you kiss mask against mask and everything seems beautiful - and then eventually the glamour fades and reality intrudes, blemishes and faults and indiscretions. Is the sadness in discovering the reality, or in refusing to ever admit it? Thackeray mocks the illusions and leaves an ambiguous conclusion about the realities. Can we ever find them? Are we really happier with the mask, and can we maintain it? It's also quite a funny book, but in a wincing sort of way.

Less recently read:

The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker
PINKER YOU BLEW MY MIND

Currently reading:

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
As with everything by Marquez, I never want it to end.