This reminded me a lot of Daniel Handler’s The Basic Eight in a few ways—the subject matter and a similar humorous tone mostly. The Secret History is far more long-winded, though perhaps to be convincing of someone trying to get down every detail of a story like this. Throughout the third quarter of the book, I wondered why the story was still going on, and though I did understand by the end, the arc of the story still felt uneven.
There’s some super romanticisation and nostalgia going on in this tale of a small group of students focusing their attention to the classics at a picturesque college in Vermont. The teacher is a wise old man who limits his students to small numbers and insists they study pretty much with him only. Our narrator Richard is a Southern California transplant and outsider to the rest of the group, who are mostly upperclass and have known each other for a year already. The class dynamics between them could be more compelling—Richard’s alternations between something like awe and jealousy of their positions gets old after a while. Also the depth of the story doesn’t come across as well as it might have.
I certainly enjoyed reading this—I became entirely engrossed once for over 100 pages. But something in the humor got a little annoying, as certain parts of the story got bogged down delving into comedic moments that only served to build on the repetitive humor without pushing the story along. The suspense is well-crafted at least. We know from the very beginning that one of the group is murdered by the rest but the details are slipped out tantalizingly slow. Probably the best part of the book is the introduction which ends:
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
The highly anticipated follower to Persepolis!; I am very lucky that Steve had requested it from the library early and then let me read it first when he got it. This book starts with Marjane arriving in Vienna, the first one having ended with her leaving Iran, and her transition into a life in a Western country, away from her family is rough. Eventually she decides to return to Iran, which turns out to be equally, if not more, difficult after her time away.
This book is less about Iran’s history, one thing I especially appreciated about the first book, but for the obvious reason that she is disconnected from her family and her country for half of the book. These experiences are just as telling and intense.
It ends kind of open-ended, so I have this hope that there might be more books. But it might be all wishful thinking.
It’s quite possible that a good deal of readers of Cortázar feel much like Literary Moose, but I’d guess there are a lot of obsessive fans at the same time. You can read this book in two ways: either straight through chapters 1 to 56 in sequence (i.e. linear) or choose-your-own-adventure style, following either the map in the Table of Instructions or the numbers at the end of each chapter (i.e., non-linear).
I went the linear route, not sure if I wanted to invest into the full 560 pages of the book; after the end, unable to resist more context, I was sneaking into the “expendable chapters” (which are sometimes small pieces of the story seemingly edited out or essays or quotes and who knows what else). I will have to re-read this sometime the non-linear way, as it seems impossible to fully take in the whole book with just the first 56 chapters read in sequence, but feel like I’ve spent enough time with this for now. I should have just started in the non-linear way; oh well.
The story itself probably isn’t incredibly compelling to relate. An Argentinian man lives in Paris and he has a mistress, who is also from Latin America, and he is not in love with her. Paris is a dark, damp place. They are part of a circle of bohemian intellectuals. The narrative is all rather internal, but the imagery is hypnotic. Long chapters of stream-of-consciousness will either pull readers in or set them off. An intriguing experimental read.
this book is proof that fragmenting a story can be the best way to tell it. how else to contrast how different members of one family reacted to something like the revolution in cuba?
each character’s point-of-view has a certain style, though subtly distinguished, and that’s probably what makes this work. also the imagery is beautiful and the webbing of connections between characters is compelling.
i found this short story anthology in montreal over a year ago, half afraid that it would be one of those books that appears interesting, yet potentially not so much and then actually turns out for the worst. but luckily it’s an excellent collection of short fiction by 20th century writers—as good as it seemed it might be when i was inspired to buy it. there’s a good range of styles here from representations of every day life, to political works, to folkloric tales, to more psychological explorations of relationships.
some of the shortest pieces were my favorites, for their clear moments of weight, like “Blind Chinese Soldiers” by Hirabayashi Taiko and “Yellow Sand” by Hayashi Kyoko. But “Residues of Squalor” by Ota Yoko was definitely my favorite. it seemed to trudge on a little, but illuminates so brilliantly at the very end.
i’m curious to see what other works by these writers have been translated to english.
