Jesse's Reading List

OK, I guess. Shrug. I know little about Williams, but the reflection I see in his play is of someone writing over-dramatically about things he hasn't ever experienced, at least not deeply. The ending, definitely the best part, works as an account of a couple of spoiled rich folks. But I am left feeling that the author overlooked the humanity of the abject to almost the same degree as did Sebastian.

Skimmed this one. Painful. Full of what are most assuredly worthwhile tidbits for those who would make money. Reminded me I don't care all that much about said pursuit. The entire book could have been replaced by the closing summary without noticeable loss of ideas.

Salinger going off the deep end, or at least beginning to. Give a writer an inch of fame, he'll take a mile of liberty. One senses that Salinger, by the time of Seymour's publication, had become enchanted with the sound of his own voice. On the other hand, the ending of Raise High is one of the best ever penned. And there are moments of wit, philosophical insight, writerly wisdom and spiritual potential throughout both stories. Well worth the read.

More raw, more blunt and less real than Catcher , Franny and Zooey is nonetheless a gem. With his philosophical expositions, which come to us via the voice of "Zooey On The Cross," Salinger both expounds and surpasses the argument at the core of Catcher . In Franny and Zooey , we have Salinger in a more caustic pill, one that is less easy to swallow but more honest for its open rebellion. Salinger is railing against rules, especially rules imposed from above by unseen gods of ambition, power, money, religion. He uses the concept of a true, biblical Christ as a foil for orthodox, institutional christs, the christs on stages and altars, the ones who parade through our day-to-day promising reward, release and redemption. Franny's crisis comes not from the Jesus prayer she steadily mouths, but from the realization that she inhabits a false world. She adopts a blank vessel--her own, personal Jesus--and fills it with the things she feels are true. In doing so, she can more

Great books are like rivers--you can never read the same great book twice. Great books are organic, they wrap themselves around our brains like vines, differently each season, growing, creeping, adapting to changes in our ways of thinking, drawing us to different conclusions than previously. In the two decades since last we met, Holden Caulfield has gone from anti-hero to mere human. I now see him as a victim pressing--no, not pressing, but wanting to press--against the onerous, invisible weight of social expectations. When it comes to conformity, he is almost completely lacking in self-awareness. He can spot a "phony" from a mile away, except when the phony is himself. He gripes about affectations even as he is affected. As a teenager, I saw every phony suit and tie, every scribbled "Fuck you" as somehow on a par with every cleric, politician, warlord. I now see that some battles are not worth fighting. If you can convince the world to change its clothes, or

If it's true that A) the older we get, the grumpier we get; and B) we read to become ecstatic; then C) this is the grumpy, ecstatic old man at his best. Semi-colons intentional.

Greatness, unfulfilled. Why, I ask, did Bauby waste his too-brief life in the shallows of a fashion magazine? Why didn't he suffer his stroke sooner, less fatally, so that he might have blinked his way through decades instead of months and arrived at a more substantial oeuvre? Two months of hard summer work in July and August of 1996 are the major remnant of this man's life. The reams of glossy paper that consumed much of Bauby's writing life are truly dead, just more dominoes long-ago fallen in the endless stream of anorexia and sex that floods supermarket checkout aisles, never to be remembered. Bauby wields exceptional ability, rendering tableaux that shimmer with honest pathos. What more might he have accomplished had he lived? Ignore the cover snippets. The Diving Bell is not "one of the great books of the century;" nor is it "gripping;" nor "a testament to freedom and the delight of the human mind." It is a beautiful adolescence brought

Stegner's last novel is suitably garrisoned to hold its ultimate position, armed with subject matter ranging from family, to career, to love, to friendship, to art, to death--in precis, with the memorable stuff of human life. And then there is that even deeper matter, the one that evades explicit mention, and would almost escape notice entirely (as it so often does) were it not for the title and its prefatory source, a stanza from Stegner's good friend Robert Frost: I could give all to Time except--except What I myself have held. But why declare The things forbidden that while Customs slept I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There And what I would not part with, I have kept. And what are these "things forbidden"? Stegner, I believe, could have laid out an easy answer for us, drawn from natural gifts, gifts conditioned by years of pain-love-experience. That is the common precedent, and one not forsaken by many great men. Tell 'em, old man, tell 'em. You