james approved reading list

[recognito]

A neat feature of checking books out from the library using your Kindle is that, so long as you do not read any other book or browse your library, so long as as there are no updates that restart your device, you can keep the book on your Kindle indefinitely. This is very handy for me as I continue working my way through Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, one of the most bizarre and entertaining books I’ve read this year. Is it as good or truthful as some of the other things I’ve read or gotten obsessed with? Does it adhere to any standard of journalism that we may recognize today? Is it true that she fucked HG Wells and had his baby and raised the baby as her nephew???

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is ostensibly a travelogue, one of my favorite narrative forms, but also a history of Yugoslavia (yeah. old) and Europe more broadly, from the Roman Empire to World War 2. You may notice an unintentional theme of my reading choices this year of “reading books leading up to World War 2” and honestly of them all Lies and Sorcery is still the best, but I do think this one will probably hold a special place in my heart for having a better sense of sentence and hmm the strong authorial persona.

 

As everyone already knows, I'm an unforgiving stylist, and one of the reasons I dislike combing through the contemporary literary scene is having to read works either obsessed with mediocre lyricism or understated terseness. As someone who has committed both crimes, I think I deserve to shove my face into prose that excites and interests me, demonstrates a good ear for rhythm and balance, and manages to be elaborate, long, and effusively Westian at every turn. 

Here, a representative paragraph from last night:

Nothing could be more offensive to the eye, to the touch, or to common sense. The basin is strewn inside with extremely realistic fern-leaves and shells, among which are equally realistic eels, lizards, and snails, all enamelled in their natural colours. It has the infinite elaborateness of eczema, and to add the last touch of unpleasantness these animals are loosely fixed to the basin so that they may wobble and give an illusion of movement. Though Dubrovnik is beautiful, and this object was indescribably ugly, my dislike of the second explained to me why I felt doubtful in my appreciation of the first. The town regarded this horror as a masterpiece. That is to say they admired fake art, naturalist art, which copies nature without interpreting it; which believes that to copy is all we can and need to do nature; which is not conscious that we live in an uncomprehended universe, and that it is urgently necessary for sensitive men to look at each phenomenon in turn and find out what it is and what are its relations to the rest of existence. They were unaware of our need for information, they believed that all is known and that on this final knowledge complete and binding rules can be laid down for the guidance of human thought and behaviour. This belief is the snare prepared for the utter damnation of man, for if he accepts it he dies like a brute, in ignorance, and therefore without a step made towards salvation; but it is built into the walls of Dubrovnik, it is the keystone of every arch, the well in every cloister. They surrounded themselves with real art, the art that moves patiently towards discovery and union with reality, because to buy the best was their policy, and they often bought the best. But they themselves pretended that they had arrived before they started, that appearances are reality. That is why Dubrovnik, lovely as it is, gives the effect of hunger and thirst.

No one writes a hater paragraph quite like Rebecca West.

It’s a pretty snappy read: many of the chapters are short, and she’s a master of constructing hilarious and very affecting scenes, along with dropping in three or four pages of Roman history whenever she wants. Dense but manageable, although it helps to do a refresher on 19th and 20th century European history. West carefully lays out how the Serbs, Croats, and Slavs have been economically, militarily, and politically betrayed and exploited by Western Europe. It’s not an entirely seamless read for me: the gender politics are of the “men should be virile! a woman’s charm is domestic femininity!” in a way that leans into the racial politics of the era: the Slavs and Serbs are more manly, more virile, more heterosexual than the effete bureaucrats of the English city, the women more feminine, more charming, more heterosexual than the wilting Englishwomen, etc. West is obsessed with this idea that a nation’s ancient history leaves an indelible mark on its people and informs the quality and character of the people basically forever–I mean I understand the time she was writing in but honestly I find it really hard to get my head around. She’s obviously not a pioneer of this particular strain of thinking, but I’ve never really understood it and so much of the book feels like it’s resting on this idea that each ethnicity has a specific character and quality to it and I am. just gritting my teeth through it

I still have 700 pages of this book to go but lol as they say, rich text.

the other thing I finished this month is Dewitt’s The English Understand Wool. enjoyable, short. I don’t really have much to say about it aside from damn, Dewitt hates the publication industry. Fair!

Next month. surely I will finish reading Purity and Danger. I only have fifteen weeks left before I’m out of renewals!!