Autumn Quail, by Naguib Mahfouz

 I picked this one up at Cherry Valley Bookstore, a cool little shop with a really excellent selection of high quality used books. Mahfouz is one of the authors in my personal pantheon, that is, one of the authors whose works I am trying to read all of. He's an especially fascinating one, because there are observable changes in his style over the long arc of his career, from more typical realist-style fare (though with a goodly dose of symbolism) to more formally experimental (which I prefer, I think). He writes a lot of bitter, angry male protagonists, which I initially found abrasive, but now have grown accustomed to, I guess. 

Anyways, this one was especially interesting, because it's set in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1952, and chronicles the story of a man who is on the outs with the new regime. I am not especially knowledgeable about Egyptian history and politics, but I was really struck by the way this novel captures a sense of frustration, confusion, and malaise connected to massive political changes, and I kept thinking of it in relation to US politics of the last 10 years or so. The thing about political upheaval is that life goes on, in many ways, unchanged, but then it also doesn't. Your individual life is deeply shaped by those various forces and happenings, but there are also aspects of it that seem entirely separate (even if they aren't). There was something about the way this story see-sawed between broader social concerns and deeply selfish individual ones that was really compelling to me. And is curiously echoed in the way that I, in turn, read it as both a particular account of a specific time and place (one I know very little about — but I was dimly aware of the ways that the novel was referencing its particular moment) — and a more universal, or at least transportable, story that resonated with my own time.

 

Transit, by Anna Seghers

 This has been recommended to me more than once, so I was somewhat surprised not to like it more than I did. I think the big problem is that the plot device of, "I saw this woman once and instantly became obsessed with her and completely reorganized my life to stalk her" is just...not that interesting to me. Or convincing. It's kind of hard to believe that this is such a cliche, because really, wtf?

That said, this is in many ways a wonderfully atmospheric novel about bureaucratic morass, and the absolute misery and panic of people caught in its clutches. It has a distinctly East German feel to it, I was thinking to myself, and then I wondered what I meant by that, and decided that it's mostly that something about the prose reminds me of Christa Wolf. 

That I finally got around to reading it is in large part because of a tweet from Dan Sinykin calling for someone to do a Buzzfeed style ranking of all the NYRB books,* which inspired me to collect all my unread NYRB books in one area of my to-read shelf:

                                                    Of course, I immediately found 4 more I'd left out, but whatever

...and to really make a point of starting to read them. And then I was on a TRAIN, and I had a bookmark from TRANSIT BOOKS, and it was just irresistible.

It's not a bad book, but I'm not sure why so many people have specifically recommended it to me.

* It also inspired me to take a stab at selecting my top 10 NYRB books, here it is:

1. Fair Play 

2. Dud Avocado 

3. Skylark 

4. A High Wind in Jamaica 

5. Season of Migration to the North 

6. Late Fame 

7. The Captain's Daughter 

8. Berlin Stories 

9. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes 

10. The Door

Maluchem do Raju, by Kazik Kunicki i Tomasz Ławecki

 This started out as a book review, and turned into a meditation on what we know about the past, and the kinds of stories we tell about it. It's one of the more personal things I've written, in that it's about my academic interests, but also my family history, and my translation work, and even has a little scene, of sorts, of me interacting with my parents.

Anyhow: here it is, my piece for the Field Notes of Modernism/modernity, with big thanks to Jeanne-Marie Jackson for inviting me to contribute!

A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann Ni Ghriofa

 KGB Bar is one of my favorite bars in the world, so I was absolutely delighted to contribute a review to their lit mag! All the more so because it gave me the opportunity to really think through why I admired A Ghost in the Throat so much. Here's what I ended up saying!

Sidenote, but — you might think that as someone who studies 18th century lit, and Irish fiction, OF COURSE I had heard of this book. But in fact, I learned about it, as I learn about many many many excellent books, from Caitlin Luce Baker's twitter feed. This just reaffirms what I've said many times before, that booksellers are far more up on the important stuff than academics are. And also, that bookseller twitter is so so good! If you want to hear more about excellent literature in translation, or stuff being published by indie presses, Caitlin is a great person to follow.

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

 It's hard to believe that I somehow made it this far without having read this book. I've always heard it described as a classic, as important, as formative, and just generally soooo great, so I was delighted when a student who is writing an Honors thesis with me wanted to write about it, because it forced me to finally read it. 

So, the big thing that it made me realize is just how little I know about American literature and its history, because I was kind of bewildered by the apparent scandalousness of it. Weren't European writers, especially French ones, writing stories like this for a good 30 years or so already? The Awakening is published in 1899. Madame Bovary is 1856. A Doll's House is 1879. Was this stuff not translated until much later? Was it a big deal because it was an American woman who was articulating these ideas?

And also, OMG IT IS SO RACIST. Maybe if I read more 19th/20th century American lit, I would be more accustomed to this, but WOW. And nobody ever mentioned that, in all the things I've heard about the book! Is it because the racism is not the kind where there is lots of explicit discussion of people of color as lesser (though, ahem, Mariequita's "broad and coarse" feet might give you pause), but is rather the kind where the book is full of Black characters and none of them have a name? My student wants to write about the institution of motherhood as oppressive to the protagonist and I'm like, ok, sure, but you're gonna need to get into the fact that the vast majority of the actual work of caring for her children is done by "the Quadroon". The shit is blowing my mind. I bought myself a copy of a newer edition with an intro by Carmen Maria Machado, thinking that surely she would have something to say about this, but nope, not a word! And then I found this truly unfortunate NYTimes essay (no, I'm not gonna link to it), where a white women suggests — with only the slightest of disclaimers — the the summer of 2020 and the rise of "wokeness" can lead us back to The Awakening and the idea of pleasure as freedom. What the holy hell?

But ok. Calm down. I'm not saying that we have to cancel Kate Chopin. I just think that it is deeply wrong to talk about how this book can be seen as liberatory, inspiring, etc, without also AT LEAST acknowledging, but preferably reckoning with, the fact that Edna's pursuit of freedom is deeply entangled with her racial and class privilege. I mean, this woman up and decides to move out of her house into her own little apartment, and she actually does it, and it's FINE. Her husband isn't delighted but he works it out, her kids are with their grandmother, who is absolutely thrilled to keep them at her place — she not only hasn't taken anyone else into account, but even when this obliviousness becomes clear, there are no negative consequences. One of the most telling moments in the book, to me, is when her kids ask her where they are to sleep, in this new home of hers, and she tells them that the fairies will figure it out. Like, ooops, totally forgot that you existed for a minute there, but, uh, *throws a pile of glitter into the air* I mean, at this point, you really have to wonder, what else does this woman need to be free?

And this, of course, is actually a really interesting question, and one very much worth exploring. There's a great essay by Molly Hildebrand that really lambasts the protagonist as a negative example of solipsism (but also, maybe, a proto-vision of the female artist?), but I think it might be a bit too quick to dismiss some of the difficulties of these issues, I don't know. 

I will say, though, that this is a book that richly rewards close reading and re-reading — it's wonderfully opaque and ambivalent in a lot of ways. I'm having a terrific time wrestling with it with my student. But at the same time, I'm...kind of glad that I didn't read it at a more impressionable moment in my life.