Janet Haven

Admitting that the holidays are really and truly over is a painful act, so despite the fact that I've been back at work this week, I'm posting my Holiday Reading List Book Reviews as if I were still at leisure. This holiday season I've managed to plough through a good number of books, fiction and non-, and acquired even more that are waiting for a moment of calm. In case you're looking for something to read, here are some suggestions (and warnings):

• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: Recommended by one of my most trusted book friends, Cloud Atlas was possibly the best piece of fiction I've read in years. My reading of "serious" contemporary fiction has dropped off in the past five years or so, largely because every time I delve in I'm disappointed, annoyed, or overcome by the schlockiness of it all. The last book I found as satisfying as Cloud Atlas was Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. While I don't think The Corrections is for everyone, I can't imagine a reading friend who wouldn't appreciate Cloud Atlas. Go buy a copy.
• Casino Royale by Ian Fleming: Been watching Bond movies for years but you've never read any of the books? Well, don't bother, if the first one is any guide. Casino Royale was a real snooze; the movie, which I saw over the holidays with my family, was ten gazillion times better. Ian Fleming's young Bond seems an arrogant dolt, deeply unperceptive (I wonder if Vesper's nightly sobbing and daily secret phone calls during our romantic getaway spell T R O U B L E...? Bond's conclusion: no, girls are just weepy), and frankly sounds unattractive (not unimportant if you're claiming to be James Bond, right.) Also, predictably, the girls are real sissies, and not nearly vixenish enough to entertain. Ugh. Go see Daniel Craig instead.
• A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes: I actually read this over Thanksgiving, but am including it in holiday reading since Favorite Husband read it over Christmas, sparking much Russian history discussion at the Haven-D'Amato dinner table. The long and short of it is: read this book, if you have any desire to understand the underpinnings of the revolution. It's excellent, a 900-page page-turner, which is something one wouldn't usually expect in a brick-sized tome. Figes packs the book with anecdotes illuminating the tidal shifts in power, particularly from the 1914-1919 era. A main point that both FH and I took away from the narrative was how unlikely the Bolshevik seizure of power really was -- for much of the period under discussion, the country was entirely up for grabs, and much of the reason that the more moderate socialists didn't step forward was their hilarious and tragic belief in the rule book of revolution: we can't seize power, they explained to each other, because the book says that we need to have another twenty years of bourgeois development before the glorious socialist revolution could happen. Of course, anyone who has studied Marx knows that theory, but the idea that a group of so-called revolutionaries were presented with the possibility of taking on the reigns of state and stepped back from because of a theoretical map laid out by a 19th century philosopher is astonishing in 2006. Lenin, of course, only worried about that issue for, say, five minutes before shoving everyone aside and making the fatal grab for Russia.
• Best American Short Stories 2006 edited by Ann Patchett and Katrina Kenison: Usually, I enjoy this collection, but this year, it's draaaaging. I'm only halfway through, so hope lies in the next 10 pieces, but the stories so far have been ethereal, very atmospheric rather than character or plot driven. I mention it because I think my reaction actually points to a good thing about this series, that is, they pull in a new editor every year who brings their own slant to the choices. As Patchett says in her introduction, these aren't the *best* short stories of 2006, they're *her* 20 favorite stories of 2006. I wasn't a big fan of Patchett's book Bel Canto (although it won all sorts of awards), so I'm not surprised, on reflection, that I'm not moved by her short story choices. A word to the wise: know your anthologist.
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth: Like every dutiful American fiction reader, I feel like I should read AND appreciate Philip Roth. I made it through The Human Stain a while back and did, you know, appreciate it, although it left a bad taste...I always find it hard to read novels peopled with wholly unlikable characters. Nevertheless, occasionally when I know I'm headed for a long flight, I choose to bring a book that I have been meaning to read and that I think in other circumstances, I might set down after the first few pages. So I picked up American Pastoral on my way out the door for the flight from London to Los Angeles back in December, and resisted the urge at the airport to pick up any other reading material that might offer me an easy out, should I regret my Roth. Oh, what a mistake. Six hours into the twelve hour flight, my laptop was out of juice, my iPod had mysteriously shut itself off and poutingly refused to turn on again, and I was two agonized hours into American Pastoral, possibly my least favorite forced reading experience of a decade. Why is Roth The Man of contemporary American letters? Why? Why? Why? Although the flight offered me many, many hours to review this question, I did not manage to come up with an answer, despite the fact that I got three-quarters of the way through AP before touching down in LA. Perhaps the last quarter of American Pastoral holds the key to this puzzler, but since I set fire to the book in the backyard barbeque upon reaching my parents' house, I guess we'll never know, will we?
• Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology by David Gelernter: If you need an anecdote to Roth (or your version of Roth), pick up a copy (and go for the hard cover, you cheapskate) of David Gelernter's lovely long essay on beauty as a driver of innovation in technology. It's counterintuitive but obvious in retrospect, and so engaging that you may not even smell the charred Roth wafting in from the backyard.
• December 6 by Martin Cruz Smith and The Moscow Vector by Robert Ludlum: Let's acknowledge the private, dirty joy of an airport spy novel. What more can I say, except that in truth, the 12 hour flight back to London passed much more quickly with Martin Cruz Smith in hand than with Philip Roth on the way out. And my second iPod also broke directly after takeoff, so it was a completely level playing field. I don't recommend either of these books, but then I also wouldn't recommend that you eat an entire bag of Reeses Peanut Butter cups in one sitting, if you get my drift.



• The Elements of Style by Strunk and White: Possibly you read this, or exerpts of this, if you were once an American schoolchild. Read it again. William Strunk's clear, cool advice will resonate. As he tells you to use "definite, specific, concrete language," to "avoid a succession of loose sentences," to "omit needless words", you will think: guilty. My version is new and illustrated by Maira Kalman, which makes it more fun. A large part of the fun is not in her illustrations themselves, but in evaluating her choice of phrases to illustratrate. I would have illustrated the book entirely differently than she did, and imagining your own visuals alongside Strunk and White's spare, wise remarks makes for an amusing afternoon. And perhaps improved writing.

And books to look forward to...my father and brother ganged together and bought me, luxuriously, three of Edward Tufte's toothsome books on information design: Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Beautiful Evidence, his most recent. I also have Julian Barnes latest, Arthur and George, on the stack, Gogol's Dead Souls (which I started in California but haven't finished), and eternally, that bastion of the bedside table, Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China (five years and counting).

Recommendations for further reading always more than welcome.

Posted by Janet at 03:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (72)

Oh lucky me, experiencing Christmas as an American child. While I cried on Christmas mornings past when I got Kissing Barbie instead of Etch-a-Sketch, or a bright pink cable-knit sweater instead of the stripey Danskin legwarmers I craved, my Central European counterparts were spending the month of December dodging birch-switch beatings by the Krampus, St. Nick's evil sidekick in these parts. In my homeland, Christmas is a riskless experience for children, a mushy blend of holiday cheer and a strong sense of entitlement. Not so in Central Europe, where Mikulás showed up on December 6th* accompanied by (or according to some legends, preceeded by) a foul-breathed, forked-tongued creature who sought out the bad children and instilled terror and a sense of gratitude before, maybe, doling out the apples he lugged around on his back -- or maybe just taking the bad children away with him.

The Krampus (or Krámpusz, in Hungarian) appeared all across the Austro-Hungarian lands in one form or another. Often, he was rather unimaginitively depicted as a traditional Christian-style devil (horns, cloven hooves, forked tail or tongue, flaming red) on Krampus-themed Christmas postcards that circulated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Leave it to the Weiner Wertstatte in Vienna to really get down to the essence of the Krampus in their version of the nasty fellow. This postcard, currently for sale on eBay for 1500 USD, shows us the Krampus as we'd like to remember him -- furry, stunted, behorned, and tongue-lollingly silly, giving a couple of fashionable Viennese kids a run for their money while fabulously Art Deco St. Nicholas looks on with approval. This particular Krampus card indicates a somewhat different relationship between St. Nick and his unpleasant friend than we might otherwise assume. Here, the monster seems positively beleagured by his duties of child-terrorizing, driven by his cruel, supervising taskmaster. Before I saw this card, I had always assumed that kindly St. Nick was a bulwark against the evils of the Krampus, not in collusion with the little beast. In fact, the Weiner Werkstatte seems to suggest from the patriarch's smug expression that the Krampus is really an employee of the Santa empire, clearing out the nastiest brats so that Szent Miklos could come in and drop off his gifts more efficiently across the Austro-Hungarian lands.

So, American children, be happy. In earlier days, the threat of coal in the stocking may have hung vaguely over naughty children, but let's face it --- Christmas in America is a time of national amnesia, when parents from coast to coast forget all offspring-related evils, from dishes left undone to neighborhood arson. The Krampus wouldn't let you off so easily, but he hasn't made it to your neck of the woods yet.

*In Hungary, holiday traditions of the Christian bent are confusing to begin with. Children in Hungary expect two days of present-giving in December. The first, Miklos Nap or Mikulás (Nicholas Day), falls on December 6th; Saint Nicholas, as might be expected, attends to this event. On the night of December 24th, the Baby Jesus shows up, dragging with him a tree and another round of gifts.

Posted by Janet at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It's difficult to read Thomas Hardy, that great chronicler of social injustice, without considering the modern path of social justice movements. Social justice is a concept that many rally around -- activists, funders, polictical parties. Nevertheless, the idea of social justice is a bit slippery -- in its broadest sense, it is about shaping societies to a basic moral structure, but how that gets interpreted obviously varies widely from culture to culture. The Center for Social Justice, a Canadian Jesuit organization that Googled first for "social justice", argues for "narrowing the gap in income, wealth, and power". For others, it may not be so explicitly about financial power, but more about social power -- Fahamu, an organization that operates mainly in Africa, uses the tagline "networks for social justice", and on their website explain their "...vision of the world where people organise to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognise their social responsibilities, respect each other’s differences, and realise their full potential." In other words, it's very much about personal responsibility and initaitive.

Back to Hardy and a world where personal responsibility and initiative are generally punished -- not by the rule of law, but, indeed, socially. I've just finished Hardy's "The Woodlanders", which was apparently the author's favorite of his own works; it's easy to see why. Unlike the clearly doomed title characters in "Jude the Obscure" or "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", "The Woodlanders"' Giles and Grace keep a Hardy-weary reader's hope allive. Maybe, just maybe, they'll overcome all the injustices heaped on them by 19th century England and see their way clear to a happy pastoral life of barking trees in the spring and pressing cider in the fall. However, since this is Hardy, it's foolish to suppose that anyone will be well-rewarded for trying to wiggle their way clear of the social codes of the day.

Hardy spent a lot of his time thinking about social mobility, and wrote with a view on the increasing porousness of English society. "The Woodlanders" focuses on the after-effects of social elevation. Rather than being about the follies of trying, like the ever-obscure and always-failing Jude, to better oneself into a higher social status, "The Woodlanders" is about the follies of *actually* bettering oneself into a higher social status, and the ensuing social disintegration that one can assume will happen when classes willfully mix.

As always, love (or lust) is the driving force behind class-mixing. Marty, a lowly country girl, loves above her station, and covets Giles, a self-employed cider-presser. Giles doesn't give Marty the time of day, but instead dedicates himself to Grace, the local timber-merchant's daughter, who is one social step ahead of him by virtue of her expensive education; Grace, in turn, who should be of Giles' stature but has been (foolishly?) sent away from village life for a high-class education and now returns to find Little Hintock (and Giles) too mean for her new tastes, is fascinated by a newly arrived young doctor of very good family; the young doctor, Fitzpiers, is the great democrat of the book, since he's willing to sleep with everyone in town, but eventually marries beneath himself by choosing Grace - - who is, despite her newly refined tastes, still the daughter of Hintock's timber merchant. Finally, Fitzpiers realizes he has unnecessarily lowered himself, and starts keening after Mrs. Chambers, the local aristocrat who actually owns the whole village. Mrs. Chambers clearly finds a professional man like Fitzpiers beneath her, but begins an affair with him anyway, thus ruining his marriage. However, since Grace, his wife, is essentially two tiers below Mrs. Chambers in social hierarchy, that doesn't really bother her until Grace shows up and demands that Mrs. Chambers keep her hands off her (Grace's) husband. Mrs. Chambers wavers when face to face with the angry young wife, but then takes Fitzpiers off with her to tour Europe anyway. It is, by her reckoning, her social right, after all.

As you'd expect from Hardy, it all ends in tears, early death, and unfortunate choices. The crucial point, however, is that all the book's events are set in motion by the unusual decision by Grace's father to attempt to better his daughter through education; he simply does not factor in how an educated woman will be reintegrated into village society at the other end of boarding school. She is welcome nowhere. Grace confesses at one point in the book that her schoolmates always looked down on her, knowing that she came from village life. However, her old friends (and her betrothed, the guileless Giles) assume her to be too finely wrought, post-schooling, to enjoy their company. Hence the social dystopia of Hardy's vision: one may achieve some kind of personal betterment, but only at a cost to society as a whole. Grace is only reintegrated back into the village when she returns to "nature" (both her own "real" nature, and nature in opposition to cosmopolitanism), and becomes as she was before.

Hardy's is a beautiful trick; as a romantic poet who clearly loved the rhythms of 19th century rural England, he writes a tactile and engaging story. But as a social crusader, he avoids Dickensian didactics, and still manages to impart a modern sense of social injustice in his narrative. I can't help but wonder which element prevailed for his contemporary readers.

Posted by Janet at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

As noted earlier, I'm in the middle of a group read of Don Quixote. The translation was selected by our good professor, Micheal Miller; many chapters in, I learned that it was a particularly well-regarded translation, new, by Edith Grossman. Lucky us, I thought, failing to realize that Professor Micheal had obviously done a little research on the topic to get us to such a happy place.

While I was in New York in December, I loaded up all the empty crevices of my suitcase with books to replenish our stocks in Budapest. At the Columbus Circle Barnes and Noble, I lingered in front of a shelf of Proust, and finally selected a copy of Swann's Way much as I would choose a California pinot gris: the packaging was pretty, with a sort of festive shiny purple swoopy deal on the front. And feeling in the holiday season, that seemed like a better choice than the somewhat mournful Currier & Ives-type print on the front of the other translation. Besides, the Penguin translation I bought was new, and I decided that in the world of translations, new was probably superior to the creaky old one-- otherwise, why would Penguin have gone to the trouble and expense of forking out?

(Actually, it turned out it be a marketing trick of the academo-geekiest sort: they had each volume of In Search of Lost Time translated by a different person, and re-released the whole thing. Which, by the way, used to be translated from À la recherche du temps perdu to Remembrance of Things Past , if you read it long ago in college).

A kind but mildly punitive reader friend pulled up for me a December article from the New York Review of Books on the very volume that I hauled back to Europe in my bag. If you're one of those interested in various translations of Swann's Way, I encourage you to read it: it's very good, and it makes clear why I made a tragic mistake in choosing Lydia Davis' plodding and earth-bound translation of Proust because of its Christmas-paper-wrapping cover over the emotionally honest and spiritually rewarding versions by Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Oh, the folly of shiny baubles!

The moral of this story, however, is one that you probably already know, but perhaps like me, you ignored. More Pinot Gris, less Proust. No, that's not it. Research your translation if you're reading in second language! Books aren't cheap, and I'm now stuck with the sorry choice of either consigning my copy of SW to the guiltily-abandoned pile of never-to-be-read brand-new books by the side of the bed (someday I'll post a list of those for public excoriation) OR ploughing through the damn thing, knowing that I'm missing out on soaring prose and emotional reward in spades. As Proust himself opined, "The only paradise is paradise lost." Woe is me.

Posted by Janet at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

My friend and colleague Jerzy Celichowski has the soul of an artist; his Budapest flat is filled with pictures and paintings that give the feel of an ecletic, homey gallery as well as a family's residence. Over the upright piano, Jerzy has hung a painting of wise-looking dog with a tiny erection surrounded by cherubs; the picture is unframed and both simple -- almost like a child's drawing -- and strange enough to pause in front of, repeatedly. I always spend several minutes admiring the dog when I visit Jerzy and his wife Orsi.

The artist, Emil Für, is Hungarian, and tends to paint angels, Central European Jewish men, mobile phones, circus escapees, and potent devils, often in surprising combinations. I confess I have no idea what the paintings are about, but his paintings are by far my favorite from a contemporary Hungarian artist (though barely surpassing the recent enthusiasm in our household for that other fabulous Hungarian artist, photographer Dezső Szabó.)

Für's paintings combine a flat, folk-art sensibility with characters who use modern appliances (mobile phones are clutched even by angels in his world) and take off their clothes at the drop of a hat. When they do wear clothes, they are at extremes: either goofy (see the devil from "Tempation" to the right, clad only in spotted blue underpants) or, as in the case of many of Für's Jews, religiously black, white, and providing neck-to-ankles coverage.

Angels are everywhere in Für's pictures, either as subject or standing guard in pairs above the action. Many of Für's subjects are Jewish, but it's entirely unclear whether the angels are as well. I usually think of angels in terms of Christian iconography, but angels of course litter the Old Testament, stepping out of burning bushes and wrestling with troublemakers. They also, I've just discovered, appear throughout Jewish teachings, although the interpretation of their role is varied. Angel in Hebrew (mal'ach) means "messenger", and indeed, it seems that angels continue to play that role both in the the Torah and in Jewish writings. However, Rabbi David Wolpe, in an article on angels and Judaism, explains that some medevial Jewish commentators explained angels as " necessary because they perform tasks that are beneath the dignity of God's 'personal involvement.'" That is, they act as a sort of PA/project manager for God. I like this explanation best, in light of Emil Für's paintings, because it seems to make sense: there's so much watching over in his art that God himself couldn't possibly get involved -- but the angels themselves, armed with mobile phones for quick reporting, are nearly always present.

More recent paintings and drawings can be found here.
Emil Für's site is here.

Posted by Janet at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the fall, American historian David McCullough gave a guest lecture at the Central European University here in Budapest. Although I missed the lecture, regrettably, several of my friends attended and came away bearing a message from the Professor: read Don Quixote. Don Q. is the ultimate everyman, the first (and many believe, last) word in dreamy bumbling; he is interred in what is widely considered the original "modern" novel. Professor McCullough reminded his audience that John Adams carried a copy of the great DQ in his saddlebag as he travelled a not-yet-United States before the Revolutionary War.

On conferring among ourselves, Friends and I discovered that within our group of five over-educated individuals, only one had read DQ previously, and she had read it in Hungarian -- but was game to move on to English. We each obtained a copy of Edith Grossman's recent translation of Don, apparently regarded among Quixotists as the very, very best rendering of 16th century colloquial Spanish into snappy-but-not-too-modern-sounding English. Our DQ group, comprised of a refugee from the publishing biz, a movie theatre mogul, a professor of Jewish Studies, two professional antiquers, and me, meets every few weeks over dinner to discuss a chunk of reading. We're about a third of the way through the book at this point -- which, if you haven't hefted it lately, is a real doorstop, even in paperback.

For me, the modernity of Don Quixote has been surprising. The book is unswerving in its comic violence and vulgarity -- even though I read far and wide, I still have a bias that somehow older books are more, well, genteel -- too much Thomas Hardy, presumably. DQ's main characters fart, shit, and fondle their way across southern Spain; in the name of chivalry, they engage in pointless battles with hapless travellers that result in lopped ears, cracked ribs, showers of blood, and occasional comas. After each incident, Sancho Panza, the faithful valet, ties Don Q. back into the saddle on his long-suffering horse, and follows on to the next confrontation. Sound familiar? I'm guessing that the experience of reading the book for, i.e., John Adams, was not an uplifting stroll through contemporary literature; rather, it was the reality show of the era, something akin to a bored businessman's entertainment in a Holiday Inn: he tunes into "Jackass" on MTV before crashing for the night.

Which brings me to the question: why does Professor McCullough recommend to all his audiences that they run, not walk, to pick up a copy of DQ? My experience in reading the book is similiar to the first time I saw Egon Schiele's paintings. Schiele was part of the Viennese Expressionist movement of the early 20th century; he died young, at 28, during the flu epidemic following World War I. His incredible legacy of paintings, many of which are at the Ludwig Museum in Vienna, are shocking in their violence and modernity; to me, Schiele's work seems to predict both the zeitgeist and the major art movements of the 20th century. How did he know? Or more to the point, do modern museum-goers think of Schiele when they visit a contemporary installation at the Tate, and muse that it's all been done before?

Back to Don Quixote, and why Professor M. suggests it to his audiences. As a historian, he must regularly encounter the patterns of history, in political action, popular culture, religion, philosophy. In ploughing through DQ, I can't help but think that he recommends the book as a historical lesson in patterns of culture, in encouraging the discovery that we, in the 21st century, aren't so far off in taste or interests from a Spanish readership of 1605. Or maybe he wants readers to experience a sense of Cervantes' predictive powers in both defining and parodying a modern world, as I did standing in front of Schiele's paintings in Vienna.

Posted by Janet at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)