Michiko Kakutani reviews Home here. I started the book this week, so I may not read the review until later. It seems like lately Kakutani and James Wood are unavoidable.
9 September 2008
Books on the Nightstand
And books at my desk and on the kitchen table and on the floor and wherever they will fit.
I finished (finally) Anna Karenina on Friday. I must say, I did not have the patience to give it the attention Tolstoy deserves. I interrupted the book to read other books and short stories, so it took a good two months to finish all 870 pages. If you have the patience, by all means, read it. Russian authors, in my opinion, are some of the finest. I can’t explain why, though.
Now I’ve given in to Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. I resisted him for a while, then read The Road last year. I wasn’t too impressed with it, mostly because it’s not my taste. But with everything I read about his writing, I think I have to give McCarthy another chance. I’m reminded of the debate between the writer’s contract and how much effort a reader should have to give a book. I think the writer owes the reader something, but at the same time, we’re often too lazy to read deeply, myself included. I’m not saying there isn’t a time for easy reading, but what a shame would it be if that’s all we had.
After anxiously awaiting the library’s copy of Home, I have it. Gosh, I can’t ignore Marilynne Robinson even if Gilead’s epistolary-ish style is not my favorite. There’s a line from Housekeeping that haunts me still. It’s actually from Genesis 4–”blood cries out from the ground” referring to Cain and Abel. The way she invokes this Biblical image, placing it in the context of her novel, it gives such a rich meaning to the characters and the town, especially.
I have a few stories left in Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Stories. There are other books but I’m trying to resist the urge to read too many at one time.
