Kåre-Bjarne
Fog is descending on the world outside my windows, I have tea and social psychology. Roger and Kåre-Bjarne, the two faces depicted on the book's cover, named by me and Kristine, have done an incredible amount of desperate things in my mind over the course of the 150-60 pages I have read. And, when I can work up the courage, I am starting over again, and writing notes. It should, perhaps, worry me that I remember next to nothing of what I have read.
And I continue reading Lessing's The Grandmothers. The two first novels - I hestitate to call them novels, they are so short, but neither are they short stories -, The Grandmothers and Victoria and the Straveneys, were both sublime, but the one I am reading now, The Reason for It is a bit quirky. The entire collection is a social commentary, and while I see the elements in this one, too, I had expected something more from Lessing. I suspect one of her, very idiosyncratic, surprising endings approaching. Or just a revelation of some sort, there have been a few just the last few pages.
I should perhaps say something of why I admire Lessing so much? She is, beyond writing good stories and creating good - not amiable, almost never amiable -, a master of insinuation. There is so much left hanging in the air, always essential to the story, but never said out-right. A bit like Hemmingway, though you are almost forced to analyse some of his works to get at the things he would not say. Lessing trusts the reader; no, she does not trust us, but takes for granted that we are reasonably intelligent, thinking and good readers that will not skip descriptions (credit goes to Nabokov for the image of good readers being the ones that devour a book word by word, dictionary in hand). I like her short stories, in particular. Though they must be read as a whole, in collections. "Romance 1988" bewildered me when read on its own, taken out of its original context of London Observed and placed in Tapestry.
As Gina (sleepingsun89), I joined Den norske bokklubben and got a gift-certificate, for which I bought several books. Yesterday, I got seven of them. Dickens' Dickens' David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol, Wilde's Collected Works, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon, Nabokov's autobiography Speak Memory, Joyce's Dubliners and Auster's The Inner Life of Martin Frost. I shall read Dickens till I can take no more, comfort-read Wilde, devour Nabokov with appropriate vigour and requisite squeels of delight.
Oh, Kristine got 6 on the "extended essay" (or "særemne") we wrote together. There is no denying it now, we are brilliant!
And in the spirit of Christmas and Psychology, god jul! Or Merry Christmas, if you are so inclined.
And I continue reading Lessing's The Grandmothers. The two first novels - I hestitate to call them novels, they are so short, but neither are they short stories -, The Grandmothers and Victoria and the Straveneys, were both sublime, but the one I am reading now, The Reason for It is a bit quirky. The entire collection is a social commentary, and while I see the elements in this one, too, I had expected something more from Lessing. I suspect one of her, very idiosyncratic, surprising endings approaching. Or just a revelation of some sort, there have been a few just the last few pages.
I should perhaps say something of why I admire Lessing so much? She is, beyond writing good stories and creating good - not amiable, almost never amiable -, a master of insinuation. There is so much left hanging in the air, always essential to the story, but never said out-right. A bit like Hemmingway, though you are almost forced to analyse some of his works to get at the things he would not say. Lessing trusts the reader; no, she does not trust us, but takes for granted that we are reasonably intelligent, thinking and good readers that will not skip descriptions (credit goes to Nabokov for the image of good readers being the ones that devour a book word by word, dictionary in hand). I like her short stories, in particular. Though they must be read as a whole, in collections. "Romance 1988" bewildered me when read on its own, taken out of its original context of London Observed and placed in Tapestry.
As Gina (sleepingsun89), I joined Den norske bokklubben and got a gift-certificate, for which I bought several books. Yesterday, I got seven of them. Dickens' Dickens' David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol, Wilde's Collected Works, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon, Nabokov's autobiography Speak Memory, Joyce's Dubliners and Auster's The Inner Life of Martin Frost. I shall read Dickens till I can take no more, comfort-read Wilde, devour Nabokov with appropriate vigour and requisite squeels of delight.
Oh, Kristine got 6 on the "extended essay" (or "særemne") we wrote together. There is no denying it now, we are brilliant!
And in the spirit of Christmas and Psychology, god jul! Or Merry Christmas, if you are so inclined.