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Category Archives: Literature

“Live Forever”

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ Comments Off on “Live Forever”

Tags

Donna Tartt, Fiction, literature, Mississippi, novel, Shelby Foote, The Secret History, Walker Percy, Writing

Donna Tartt

“The weekends at Francis’s house were the happiest times. The trees turned early that fall but the days stayed warm well into October, and in the country we spent most of our time outside…

It was always a tremendous occasion if Julian accepted an invitation to dinner in the country. Francis would order all kinds of food from the grocery store and leaf through cookbooks and worry for days about what to serve, what wine to serve with it, which dishes to use, what to have in the wings as a backup course should the soufflé fall. Tuxedos went to the cleaners; flowers came from the florists; Bunny put away his copy of The Bride of Fu Manchu and started carrying around a volume of Homer instead…

Though, at the time, I found those dinners wearing and troublesome, now I find something very wonderful in my memory of them: that dark cavern of a room, with vaulted ceilings and a fire crackling in the fireplace, our faces luminous somehow, and ghostly pale. The firelight magnified our shadows, glinted off the silver, flickered high upon the walls; its reflection roared orange in the windowpanes as if a city were burning outside. The whoosh of the flames was like a flock of birds, trapped and beating in a whirlwind near the ceiling. And I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the long mahogany banquet table, draped in linen, laden with china and candles and fruit and flowers, had simply vanished into thin air, like a magic casket in a fairy story.

There is a recurrent scene from those dinners that surfaces again and again, like an obsessive undercurrent in a dream. Julian, at the head of the long table, rises to his feet and lifts his wineglass. ‘Live forever,’ he says.

And the rest of us rise too, and clink our glasses across the table, like an army regiment crossing sabres: Henry and Bunny, Charles and Francis, Camilla and I. ‘Live forever,’ we chorus, throwing our glasses back in unison.

And always, always, that same toast. Live forever.”

__________

A slice of high neo-romantic writing from the close of act one of Donna Tartt’s spellbinding debut novel The Secret History.

Reading Tartt, who was born in Greenwood, Mississippi and whose prose percolates with an impeccably controlled energy, I’m again struck by the talent of writers from that state, which has long had the lowest literacy rate in the country. Especially when read on the heels of Mr. Foote, a Greenville, Mississippi native who grew up next to Walker Percy, her work will make you think there’s gotta be something in the water.

More fiction:

  • Tartt: The intoxicating power of a teacher who believes in you
  • Philip Roth: Getting people wrong is what makes us human
  • Claire Messud’s beautiful, melancholic paragraph about sending a son to college

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The Writer’s Drug of Choice

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Interview, Literature, Writing

≈ Comments Off on The Writer’s Drug of Choice

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Alcohol, Art, Caffeine, Coffee, Drugs, Ernest Hemingway, Hysteria, John Bennet, literature, Oliver Sacks, Sasha Weiss, The New Yorker, tobacco, writers, Writing

Ernest Hemingway

Interviewer: John, you’ve been an editor for a very long time, and I imagine that you’ve worked with writers who have used various drugs to stimulate their writing.

John Bennet, New Yorker editor: Mostly caffeine and tobacco, and drugs of that nature. And simple hysteria.

I think it’s pretty hard to really write a complicated piece of writing if you’re hallucinating. That’s not to say that many of these writers haven’t done that in the past. But when they’re actually producing, they rely on caffeine, which is of course a drug.

Most writers I know write better than they’re able to write. That’s to say if it’s a good writer, he or she can write a great piece. But they do it by dent of great personal sacrifice. They tend to adrenalize themselves, whether it’s with caffeine or with just simple hysteria or panic, into this highly agitated state, whereby they are able to produce writing of the quality that they want to produce — that otherwise they feel they can’t produce.

And in general I must say it’s a rather destructive process to watch, when you work with writers who essentially have nervous breakdowns every time they have to write a piece. Which means it’s really a damnable profession, writing, because most people who are writers tend to be miserable — at least when they’re writing.

__________

Bennet, exchanging words with Sasha Weiss, story editor for the New York Times Magazine, in his joint interview with Oliver Sacks for The New Yorker Out Loud (Bennet’s remarks start at around 19:30 in the audio above).

You’ll find Sacks’s longer takes on this stuff in his highly acclaimed new memoir On the Move, which I plan to pick up in the coming weeks.

Read on:

  • Why I think the novel will never die
  • Why are so many writers alcoholics?
  • Why the world’s greatest advertiser added four words to a beggar’s sign

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Looking for Friends in Fiction

20 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Antigone, Claire Messud, Hamlet, Infinite Jest, Krapp, literature, Mickey Sabbath, Oedipus, Oscar Wao, Raskolnikov, reading, Saleem Sinai, The Corrections, Writing

Claire-Messud

“For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

The relevant question isn’t ‘is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘is this character alive?'”

__________

Claire Messud’s response when asked if she’d want to be friends with her “unlikable” characters.

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As She Sends Her Son to College

22 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

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Tags

Claire Messud, Fiction, literature, novel, The Woman Upstairs

Claire Messud

“Over the years I’ve tried to understand my mother’s emotion at that moment — regret about an unconsummated love affair? Her own Lucy Jordan moment? Simple sadness at my brother’s departure, and thoughts of all the things that now would be forever unsaid? — but all I know is that I’ll never know. I decided, for a long time, that it had to do with the ending of a maternal role, with the painful knowledge of all she’d sacrificed to raise him, when now she was handing off her son to the world. But more recently, I’ve thought that maybe it was about an unconsummated love affair after all, maybe about a flirtatious exchange with a stranger in a train station, or an unanswered letter from a college sweetheart, one of those secret moments when you think that now your life will have to change, only it doesn’t. Something small but big that she regretted and that tormented her each day. With my children, I’ve discovered over the years that the simplest explanation is almost always the right one; and that hunger of one kind or another — desire, by another name — is the source of almost every sorrow.”

__________

Pulled from The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud.

This is a reflection from the main character, Nora Eldridge, as she remembers seeing her mother cry the night before sending her son, Nora’s brother Matthew, off to college at Notre Dame (who wouldn’t regret sending a kid off to South Bend?). The family was finishing their final meal at the neighborhood Chinese restaurant, when they opened their fortune cookies and each read their fortunes. Her mother’s elicited tears, though years later Nora still couldn’t understand what about — it read “It is what you haven’t done that will torment you.”

More good writing:

  • Donna Tartt writes in The Secret History, on the intoxicating power of a teacher who believes in you
  • Philip Roth in American Pastoral: Getting people wrong is what makes us human
  • Joseph Conrad writes in his century-old novel The Secret Agent about the two main traits of terrorists

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How the Greeks Grieved

11 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature, War

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Antilochus, Atreus, casualties, combat, Greek History, grief, Helen, Homer, Ithaca, Memnon, Menelaus, Nestor, Odysseus, Stanley Lombardo, Telemachus, The Odyssey, War

Greek Bust

Menelaus, the head of the table, overheard
And, speaking to both of them, had this to say…

“I would gladly live with a third of my wealth
To have those friends back who perished
Far from the bluegrass pastures of home. And yet,
Though I weep for each of them often in my halls,
Easing my heart, I do not grieve constantly —
A man can get too much of chill grief.
I miss them all, but there is one man I miss
More than all the others. When I think of him
I don’t want to sleep or eat, for no one
In the entire Greek army worked as hard
As Odysseus, and all he ever got for it
Was pain and sorrow, and I cannot forget
My sorrow for him. He has been gone so long,
And we do not know whether he is alive or dead…

I used to think that if he came back
I would give him a welcome no other Greek
Could ever hope to have — if heaven
Had brought us both home from over the sea
In our swift ships. I would have given him
A city of his own in Argos, built him a house,
Brought him over from Ithaca with his goods,
His son and all of his people — a whole city
Cleared out just for him! We would have been together,
Enjoying each other’s company, and nothing
Would have parted us until death’s black cloud
Finally enfolded us. But I suppose fate itself
Begrudged us this, for Odysseus alone,
That unlucky man, was never brought home.”

His words aroused in all of them
A longing for lamentation. Argive Helen,
A child of nobles, wept; Telemachus wept;
And Menelaus wept, the son of Atreus.
Nor could Nestor’s son keep his eyes dry,
For he remembered Antilochus,
His flawless brother, who had been killed
By Memnon, Dawn’s resplendent son,
And this memory gave wings to his words:

“Son of Atreus, old Nestor used to say,
Whenever we talked about things like this,
That no one could match your understanding.
So please understand me when I say
That I do not enjoy weeping after supper—
And it will be dawn before we know it.
Not that I think it’s wrong to lament the dead.
This is all we can do — cut our hair
And shed some tears. I lost someone myself
At Troy, my brother, not the least hero there.
You probably knew him. I am too young
Ever to have seen him, but men say Antilochus
Could run and fight as well as any man alive.”

And Menalaus, the king:

“No one could have put that better, my friend,
Not even someone much older. Your speech,
wise and clear, shows the sort of father you have.
It’s easy to spot a man for whom heaven
Has spun out happiness in marriage and children,
As he has done for Nestor throughout his life.
And now he has reached a sleek old age in his halls
And his children are good and fight with the best
So we will stop this weeping, and once more
Think of supper.

__________

From Book IV of Homer’s Odyssey.

More from Homer:

  • The Odyssey’s opening lines and the journey home
  • Homer’s lyric description of Odysseus falling sleep
  • When the wealthy fought on the front lines

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Understanding Time

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ Comments Off on Understanding Time

Tags

Fiction, Julian Barnes, literature, The Sense of an Ending, Time

Julian Barnes

“We live in time — it holds us and molds us — but I never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing…

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.”

__________

The opening paragraph (and a later reflection) from Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending.

Happy new year. Have a good time tonight, everyone.

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Remember the Signs

28 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ Comments Off on Remember the Signs

Tags

belief, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Fiction, literature, Narnia, novel, Prophecy, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair

C. S. Lewis

“But first, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from the following signs.

And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That it why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters.”

__________

Excerpted from The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis.

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The Question of Nostalgia

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Fiction, Julian Barnes, literature, memory, Nostalgia, novel, past, School, School Days, The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes

“I’m not very interested in my schooldays, and don’t feel any nostalgia for them. But school is where it all began…

Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior. None of this, of course, was ever stated.

In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when that moment came, our lives – and time itself – would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first undiscernible. […]

But I’ve ben turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time — love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions — and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives — then I plead guilty… And if we’re talking about strong feelings that will never come again, I suppose it’s possible to be nostalgic about remembered pain as well as remembered pleasure.”

__________

Julian Barnes, writing in his Booker Prize winning novella The Sense of an Ending.

Go on:

  • Donna Tart on the intoxicating power of a teacher who believes in you
  • Barnes describes how and why printed books will survive
  • John Updike’s stirring remembrance of girls in fall

Julian Barnes and Kavanaugh

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The Hero Sleeps

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ Comments Off on The Hero Sleeps

Tags

Arete, Greek History, Homer, literature, Lord Alcinous, Mythology, Odysseus, Stanley Lombardo, The Odyssey

Roman Bust

‘You’re a hard man, Odysseus, stronger
Than other men, and you never wear out,
A real-iron man.’ […]

Then Odysseus
Stood up and placed a two-handled cup
In Arete’s hands, and his words rose on wings:

“Be well, my queen, all of your days, until age
And death come to you, as they come to all.
I am leaving now. But you, Lady — enjoy this house,
Your children, your people, and Lord Alcinous.”

And godlike Odysseus stepped over the threshold.
Alcinous sent a herald along
To guide him to the shore and the swift ship there,
And Arete sent serving women with him,
One carrying a cloak and laundered shirt,
And another to bring the strong sea-chest.
A third brought along bread and red wine.
They came down to the sea, and the ship’s crew
Stowed all these things away in the hold,
The food and drink, too. Then they spread out
A rug and a linen sheet on the stern deck
For Odysseus to sleep upon undisturbed.
He climbed on board and lay down in silence
While they took their places upon the benches
And untied the cable from the anchor stone.
As soon as they dipped their oars in the sea,
A deep sleep fell on his eyelids, a sleep
Sound, and sweet, and very much like death.

And as four yoked stallions spring all together
Beneath the lash, leaping high,
And then eat up the dusty road on the plain,

So lifted the keel of that ship, and in her wake
An indigo wave hissed and roiled
As she ran straight ahead. Not even a falcon,
Lord of the skies, could have matched her pace,
So light her course as she cut through the waves,
Bearing a man with a mind like god’s,
A man who had suffered deep in his heart,
Enduring men’s wars and the bitter sea —
But now he slept, his sorrows forgotten.

__________

Odysseus’s departure from the island of Scheria in books 12 and 13 of Homer’s Odyssey (Lombardo translation).

Read on:

  • The unbeatable opening words that set off The Odyssey
  • Thomas Cahill describes how and why the Greeks partied
  • Epictetus on why we should practice moderation in all things

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Where Was Man?

17 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ Comments Off on Where Was Man?

Tags

Auschwitz, concentration camp, Fiction, Holocaust, literature, Sophie's Choice, William Styron

William Styron 324

“Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie’s life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.

The query: ‘At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?’

And the answer: ‘Where was man?’”

__________

From the epilogue of Sophie’s Choice by William Styron.

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Starting with Scattered Shepherd Tribes

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

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Aeneid, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Metamorphoses, Moses, Old Testament, Ovid, the Bible, The Sorrows of Young Werther

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I had from childhood the singular habit of always learning by heart the beginnings of books, and the divisions of a work, first of the five books of Moses, and then of the Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses… If an ever busy imagination, of which that tale may bear witness, led me hither and thither, if the medley of fable and history, mythology and religion, threatened to bewilder me, I readily fled to those oriental regions, plunged into the first books of Moses, and there, amid the scattered shepherd tribes, found myself at once in the greatest solitude and the greatest society.”

__________

From Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s autobiographical novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

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