Jesse's Reading List

I'll let Augie do most of the talking on this one. "But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles." Some authors work glacially, building ideas and themes over the course of many pages. Some prick us with voice--momentary words, instant but lasting images, piquant prose. Some leave us with indelible characters. It is a genius among geniuses who accomplishes all three. Bellow is a titan, even if Augie March is all-too-human. No matter that the book's other characters are most frequently foils, creations whose functions are illustrative, who do not strike with the blows of real-life individuals. No matter that the last two hundred pages or so seem disjointed and unjustified by the preceding four hundred. No matter that Bellow's imaginative linguistic permutations and juxtapositions are not sustained as thoroughly as might be de...

Stylistically sub-par (for Twain), this brief "pamphlet" reads like it was rushed off by a hurried pen. Which it may well have been, given the urgency of the subject matter. Twain here is lending his name, if not his brilliance, to the cause of reforming Leopold II's butchery in the Congo Free State. The soliloquy reads more like a naked indictment than like the probable thoughts of the king himself, and thus lacks the aroma of actuality requisite to effective humor or satire. Moments of sheer, factual horror deliver knockout punches despite the stale prose. One such moment is a description of the magnitude of the butchery, in which Twain reflects that the skeletons of Congolese killed under Leopold II's rule could stretch single file from New York City to San Francisco. This sounds unbelievable. But do the math--you will realize that Twain was actually understating the case. Ten million skeletons, standing hand in hand in a line, would stretch not just from NYC to S...

I could go on for more words than the book contains about this one. Instead, I'll note that I like both the book and the movie. Set the two side-by-side, and you have a clear illustration of how Hollywood perverts the world.

A slap-in-the-face account of one of the largest mass killings in history. As many as thirteen million dead. Jaw-droppingly shocking. If we could replace every "rah-rah America" history book in school with something along these lines, I dare say it would solve half of the world's problems. Kudos to Hochschild for going where few had gone for almost a century, and for having the persistence to get the result published. It's a tragic commentary on developed-world society that Jersey Shore attracts millions, while the death of millions goes largely unnoticed. Of course the book is not without its flaws. Hochschild's journalism has its own yellow bent, and this leaves us with a picture that is less telling and true than it could be. In Hochschild's world, it seems, characters are either very good or very evil. The exclusion of nuance from this book is a nearly-damning weakness--How are we to understand the genesis of great evil if we assume that the characters wh...

Never judge a book by its cover. Nor by its author, apparently. I admit to being pleasantly surprised. Well-written, funny, full of pathos, a quick but deep read. There's lots to this book. I found myself relating so much to the main character--a quirky, super-intelligent, 30-something male with socially-crippling OCD--that I lost any hope of objectivity about a third of the way through. I spent about thirty minutes mentally adding up the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal sums of the eight-by-eight magic square, noting that it is constructed in the Franklin-fashion, so that the diagonals don't add to the right number. Is this a sign that I was in-to the character? Or that I am the character? Thank God I don't have a fear of curbs. The closest Rite-Aid would be a marathon away.

Gritty and gripping. Trigell's Briticised prose is as crisp as a hand-pulled pint, as flavorful and turgidly suggestive as bangers and mash. This is 400 BC Greek drama set in early 21st century Britain, written in mid-21st century English. Do good people do bad things? And vice-versa? The book's deepest flaw, to me, was its unbelievability. Besides the ending (which I won't spoil; let's just say I've done something similar, and it's not really like that--if you want to try, just come over to my apartment any Tuesday afternoon and we'll give it a jump), there is the fact that "Boy A" is a saint. Shows up to work on time. Is kind, polite, reserved. Loves his fat girlfriend dearly. Wants nothing more than to do well by others. His occasional outbursts always take the form of self-questioning or helping his friends. Prisons, at least as I understand them, do not lead one to sainthood. Especially if the saint, as a nine-year-old boy, stabbed to death a...

This is a good book and a worthwhile read. Unfortunately, it reinforced my suppositions. This in itself is not surprising, I suppose, given the similarities I share with the author: we both have PhDs in economics from Stanford; we both took a long time to finish our dissertations; we'd both rather be writing something besides economics; even both our forearms hurt when we spend too much time writing. What is surprising is the way in which it affirmed my prejudices. "That kid," I say to Paige, pointing to a semi-adorable girl of about four years. She trails behind her mother in the makeup store, examining a low shelf of eyeliner. "Someone could slit her throat. Would it have more meaning than if someone had killed a goat? This is the first time I've ever thought anything like that. I have lost the belief that there is something special about our species." Paige replies with simple, patient, characteristic wisdom, "Goats are pretty great." Maybe. I d...

I have been to the Barrancas del Cobre. I have hiked into its canyons, completely alone, for four days. McDougal exaggerates frequently. Still, there is nothing to stop hyperbole from containing truth. There is even less to stop it from entertaining. And much of this story makes sense. So much of it that I have begun to play around with barefoot running.

Only interesting, perhaps as a result of this reader’s masculine viewpoint, because of its obvious and revealing portrayals of Henry Miller in the role of Jay and of June Miller as Sabina. Taken as biography, engrossing and wonderful. I extended my walk all the way to the Hermosa Pier (about 2.5 miles, one-way) in order to absorb more of its pages, and stopped at Marine to soak up a few more. I lay back upon the low concrete fence for six pages while the man in the blue shirt serenaded the ocean with his harp concerto. I was also struck by how much overlap there is in vocabulary between Nin and Miller. They have stolen each other’s words like lovers stealing kisses: “semitone, excrescence, phosphenes, charivaris, fanfaronade, fandangoe, ridotto, coruscating.” I will rob corpses. I believe they would have liked this idea.

The most disturbing work I have ever read. A reminder that love is never one-way. Men and women can survive anything, but everything leaves its mark.

Hilarious and timeless. Yet another book that should replace some orthodox text occupying the stale reading lists of American schools. Further proof that there is no history, only men and women, over and over again.

One of the best endings I have ever read. His use of scenery to convey mood is remarkable, as is the age of the author at the time of the book’s writing. I have committed to memory a few lines: "So was civilization nothing but a vast edifice of sham, and the war, instead of its crumbling, was its fullest and most ultimate expression."