Excited to once again present reading reviews from some of my favourite readers. Today’s installment, his fifth, is by my longtime friend Nat Leach. Nat is a nineteenth-century scholar turned college administrator who has spent the last 6 years reading the books on his shelves in alphabetical order. He has recently doubled his social media presence by becoming mostly inactive on not one but two platforms, posting occasionally as @gnatleech on Twitter and @gnatleech.bsky.social on Blue Sky.
For reasons not worth going into, 2023 was actually a pretty rotten reading year for me. I read sporadically, finished only 20 books, and only progressed through one letter in my alphabetical reading project, finishing K, and making a brief start on L (so, after 6 years, I’m not even halfway through the alphabet; my 10-year plan, which was originally a 5-year plan, is looking like it will become a 15-year plan). [Ed. – Very Stalinist of you, Nat.] I wasn’t even able to write entries for each book as I went along, as I’ve done in the past, and was considering foregoing my annual post, but Dorian threatened to sue for breach of contract, so here we are. [Ed. – Look, a deal’s a deal. You want the glory, you gotta write the post.]
One meaningful reflection I was able to draw from my year’s reading is a better understanding of why I enjoy reading the way that I do, progressing alphabetically through my shelves rather than making conscious decisions about where my reading should take me. Thomas de Quincey, in a wonderful essay on “Sortilege and Astrology,” explains that he believes in astrology, but not in astrologers; there is indeed a pattern connecting all events in the world, but anyone who claims to know it is a charlatan. And yet, practices such as sortilege (the opening of a book at random and putting one’s finger on a passage as a means of divining the future) entail putting ourselves in the hands of this unknowable force of fate. [Ed. – Ah, finally I have a name for what my students do when I throw out a question in class.] My reading practice is then a kind of sortilege in which I trust that fate will put in my hands the right book at the right time. And very often, as I discovered this year, I’m able to trace out patterns and connections that I may not have been exposed to had I more rigorously organized my reading.
I often found myself reading two books at the same time—books that offered unexpected congruences, and paths leading from one to the other. And thus, since I did not manage to write entries for individual books this year, I present my reading by category, which often means: by categories I would not always have chosen to adopt in advance, but discovered while reading.
Books Written in 1989 that Challenge Canonical Western Conventions of Storytelling: Thomas King – Medicine River and Maxine Hong Kingston – Tripmaster Monkey
A super-specific first category, but these are two very different books. For many years, my office was just around the corner from a poster with a quotation from Thomas King: “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are.” The narrative structure of Medicine River seems to be an illustration of that axiom. Each chapter cuts (in a way that feels very cinematic) between an action in the narrative present and one in the past. We thus gradually learn how the past of the protagonist, Will, shapes the person he’s become in the present. The book also suggests how this is true at a deeper cultural level, referring to significant events in Indigenous history such as the battle of Little Bighorn and the occupation of Wounded Knee, but for the most part the focus is personal and the tone is lightly comic, but also somewhat melancholic.
Kingston’s novel, on the other hand, is much more explicitly disruptive of literary expectations in its use of Chinese legends and stories to revise American literary and cultural norms. The novel’s protagonist is a Chinese-American hippie whose hybrid status is reflected in his name, Wittman Ah Sing (geddit?) and whose life in 1960s San Francisco is inflected with wild imaginings that superimpose figures of Chinese legend onto the American present, culminating with the performance of an extravagant play that ends with a chaotic collapse of the distinction between actor and audience. [Ed. — !] Like King’s novel, we see how stories create, and do not simply reflect, identities.
Kingston’s book segued nicely into the next book I read, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. At one point, Kingston includes an extensive quotation from Kipling’s narrative of his visit to the United States. In that book, Kipling becomes a spokesperson for a racist past whose perspective persists in the present, a tendency that can certainly be seen in Kim, the story of a boy who gets caught up in the political intrigue of maintaining English power in the Indian sub-continent. It still works as an adventure story, though Kipling’s colonial perspective on India is consistent with the account of the Chinese inhabitants of San Francisco that Kingston critiques.
Holocaust Memoirs and Diaries: Gerda Weissman Klein – All But My Life, Victor Klemperer – I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945, Ruth Kluger – Still Alive
These were sitting next to each other on my alphabetically ordered shelves. I have much less experience with Holocaust texts than Dorian, so I will not pretend to any expertise here, but in the small teaching experience I have had, my approach has been to encourage students to notice differences—the atrocities of the Nazis took many forms, and were experienced differently based on a whole range of factors including location, age, gender et cet.—but also to notice significant similarities and patterns. [Ed. – Nat is too modest: I still use a terrific assignment he designed on the topic of Holocaust diarists.] Each of these texts describes some distinctive aspect of Nazi terror: Klein was part of one of the infamous “death marches,” which she describes more thoroughly than any account I had previously read [Ed. – absolutely agree], Klemperer describes the everyday psychological tortures endured by Jews living in Germany, as well as the horrors of the fire-bombing of Dresden, while Kluger’s account spans a range of locations and forms of violence from Vienna to Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Looking for patterns, it is evident that each also benefits from a number of timely pieces of good fortune that contribute to their survival: for example, Klein was able to live through most of the war in the relatively protected confines of a weaving factory, Klemperer avoided deportation because his wife was Aryan, and the bombing of Dresden in fact provided him with an opportunity to remove the yellow star from his clothing and escape from the city, and Kluger benefited from timely advice to lie about her age at Auschwitz, and a well-timed decision to escape from a death march. A somewhat more curious parallel is that both Klemperer and Kluger fled to Bavaria, and both would have been in fairly close proximity when the war ended. [Ed. – Good point! A function of how the regime decided to compress this remaining pool of slave labour into a central, contiguous section of the Reich: the Sudetenland, x, y, and Bavaria.] In short, three very different books, with some similar lessons, including an awareness of the very narrow line between survival and destruction.
Classic postmodern novels from when it was still OK to use the word “postmodern”: Robert Kroetsch – The Words of My Roaring, Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Yeah, I know it’s cool to dump on the word “postmodern” in our enlightened 21st century, but I still find it a useful way to speak about texts that reflect on, and engage critically with, their own status as text. Both books use postmodern strategies to explore the construction of individual identity and that of a national past. Kroetsch’s book experiments with the genre of the folk tale, and is narrated by Johnny Backstrom, a political candidate in Alberta during the Depression who promises the voters—all farmers struggling with drought conditions—that it will rain. Kundera’s novel reflects more philosophically on the nature of chance and coincidence (coincidentally all the stuff I wrote about in my introduction) against the backdrop of Czechoslovakia in the Communist era. As with King and Kingston, these are books that think about how stories create identities.
Books set in the 1970’s (but written later): Hanif Kureishi- The Buddha of Suburbia and Rachel Kushner – The Flamethrowers
I was reading these at the same time, and all the ‘70s cultural references kept getting me confused as to which one I was reading. But the easy way to tell the difference was that one of these books harnesses that cultural anxiety/nostalgia in an interesting way, and the other… not so much. Kureishi’s book is great, exploring his familiar territory of cosmopolitan London and the racial and political tensions of the period. It moves deliberately from the idealism of the hippies to the backlash of punk, and ends with the election of “the new Prime Minister,” unnamed but obviously Thatcher, as represented in the striking images at the conclusion of the BBC miniseries. Things would never be the same again…
As for The Flamethrowers, if I were being charitable, I would say that the book wasn’t for me, as I simply didn’t find the subject matter interesting. If I were being uncharitable, I would say that the book cobbles together a whole bunch of supposedly “cool” images and events of the ‘70s just because they are cool, not because they serve any narrative logic. And the author’s Afterword kind of confirms that hypothesis in describing her process of starting with striking images.
Books set against the backdrop of 17th/18th century nationalist revolutions: Lady Caroline Lamb – Glenarvon and Giuseppe di Lampedusa – The Leopard
Again, a category that features one very good book, and one very bad book. Lamb’s novel was really written only as an attempt to avenge herself on Lord Byron, with whom she had a scandalous affair before he unceremoniously dumped her. The structure of the novel is bizarre, as the description of the affair between Glenarvon (Byron) and Calantha (Lamb) is sandwiched between a Gothic narrative that seems to make very little sense (the explanation provided at the end doesn’t seem to match with the beginning, but I have no desire to try to figure it all out). And, oh yeah, Glenarvon is made into an Irish patriot leader in the 1798 rebellion. For some reason. [Ed. – Very moody, the Irish. Just like Byron.]
The Leopard, on the other hand, is a fantastic book, often hailed as one of the great historical novels of the 20th century. What makes it great, I would argue, is that it represents a moment of critical historical change from a multivalent perspective that shows just how complex change is. Don Fabrizio is essentially the last in a long line of Sicilian nobility. His time is coming to an end, he knows that it is coming to an end, and he even recognizes that in some ways it is right that it is coming to an end. But we also see that good things are being lost along with the bad, and that a different form of badness is ascending. In short, Lampedusa shows historical change in all its ambivalence, as well as the conflicting emotions that it gives rise to. [Ed. – I gotta read this again: been far too long.]
Books read for Women in Translation month: Svenja Leiber- The Last Country and Clarice Lispector – Agua Viva
Well, in my case it was Women in Translation two and a half months, but that’s OK. I was hoping that the Leiber book would be the one to break me out of my slump of disliking 21st century novels, but it was not to be. It hooked me at first, but this is a book with an epic scope (the life of a musician through the vicissitudes of 20th century Germany) but an episodic structure, which I grew to find infuriating more than anything. The prose also felt very abstract—there were many moments when I honestly couldn’t tell whether a sentence was meant to be literal or metaphorical—but I’m not sure if this was a translation effect or inherent in the original. As for the Lispector, it was my first experience with her, and seemed to me an interesting cross between literary and theoretical prose; she reminded me of nobody more than Maurice Blanchot. Which, if you know me, is a compliment. [Ed. – He’s understating things. That’s like his highest compliment. Well, maybe if he’d said it reminded him of Levinas.]
Books read with the #NYRBWomen23 Group: Eleanor Perenyi – More Was Lost, Elizabeth Taylor – A View of the Harbour
I wish I’d had more time to participate in this wonderful series choreographed by @joiedevivre9 but these were the two that were on my shelves already (and hey, I’m going to get to “P” and “T” eventually, right?). Two very different books, Perenyi’s a non-fictional account of her life and marriage to a Hungarian nobleman before and during World War II, and Taylor’s an account of lives of quiet desperation in an English seaside town. Both excellent. [Ed. – So excellent]
A few classics: Honoré de Balzac – Le Père Goriot, Heinrich von Kleist – The Prince of Homburg, D. H. Lawrence – Sons and Lovers
Kleist’s play (like much of his work) is ahead of his time, a proto-Freudian reflection on dreams, reality, desire and death. This was a re-read for me, and confirmed its greatness.
OK, I haven’t actually finished the Lawrence yet (2 chapters left), but I figured mentioning it would score me points with Dorian. [Ed. – It does. You now have 7,967.] Lawrence’s prose is utterly compelling, and even though I find that most of the characters fall into the literary-critical category of “big idiots,” I am absolutely glued to the book. [Ed. – Ha! Accurate!] I’m also enamored of the fact that the book is set in the area of Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire that my grandparents used to live in, and I recognize many of the places mentioned from visits in my youth. When the characters go to Alfreton or Crich Tower, I internally cheer as if a rock band has just casually mentioned how great it is to be in <insert your city here>.
Saving the best for last, I started the Balzac shortly after joining Twitter some 6 years ago, and read it in French, which made it slow going for me. Appropriate then, that I finally finished it in 2023, the year of Twitter’s demise (or whatever you want to call the transformation it has undergone). In any case, this is such a wonderful book about the perils and temptations of society and money, and the challenges of maintaining a moral compass in the face of them. Apparently, I now have a whole lot of Balzac that I’m going to need to read. [Ed. – Hell yeah lfg!!!!!]
That’s about it. Will 2024 be a better year? Who knows how far I’ll get through the L shelf, and who knows how long it’ll take to get through that monstrously large stack of M’s (now is the time that joining those recent group reads of The Balkan Trilogy, The Levant Trilogy, Moby Dick, and The Man Without Qualities is really going to pay off!). But with Nella Larsen, Margaret Laurence and Ursula Le Guin among the next authors on my list, I am guaranteed some treats in the coming year. [Ed. – You sure are. Thanks as always, Nat.]
Eiger, Mönch & Jungfrau 