(In order of completion)
Introduction
Since my last entry, I underwent an operation which sent me into cardiac arrest, threw me into a two- or three- day coma, and left me hospitalized for weeks. I have been home two-and-a-half and am recovering.
While I was in the hospital, I asked a friend to bring me a novel from home which I thought I had been reading. He brought it, but said it had been shelved with books I seemed to have finished. I had forgotten that and, as you will see, other things as well.
1. George Saunders. “A Swan in the Pond in the Rain.” I recall enjoying the first two-thirds to three-quarters. It’s drawn from classes Saunders taught which, by focusing on short stories of Chekhov, illuminated how writers write and readers read and the relationships between the two.
2. Thomas Bernhardt. “Extinction.” I’ve read a number of Berhardt’s novels (See previous “Last Ten”s). In some ways they are indistinguishable, and while I can recall no specifics of this one, am sure I found it worthy.
3. Virginie Despante. “Vernon Subutex.” The first volume of a trilogy about dissolute, aging members of a post-punk Parisian bohemian scene.
4. Virginie Despante. “Vernon Subutex” (vol. 2). The story continues. Before I had finished, I realized these people’s lives and concerns were so different than mine, they might have belonged to a different galaxy. At which point, I tossed volume 3.
5. Kevin Burroughs. “The Most Dangerous Book.” An informative, entertaining account of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” including its struggles to pass through little magazines, into little publishing houses, and, finally, against legal opposition, the mainstream. Many fascinating people are encountered and many odd facts unearthed.
6. Eleanor Caton. “Luminaries.” The author, a young New Zealand woman as I recall, won the Booker Prize for this sprawling, often confusing, Victorian-novel like yarn. Gold, murder, sex – and muddled relationships are involved. Reasonably entertaining; challenging not so much.
7. Carol Tyler. “Ephemerata.” Tyler, a fine graphic novelist, addresses the loss of her parents, her husband, and, maybe, a sybling, and/or pet (I forget). It is well done – but it is like like immersing yourself in a couple hundred page bath of misery.
8. Henry Green. “Surviving Stories, Essays, Interviews.” I have valued several of Green’s novels. This stuff could have been left in his desk drawer as far as I am concerned though.
9. Florian Iler. “1913.” I remember nothing about this. Nothing about the author. Nothing about the book. (A novel). I think it was good though.
10. Thomas Bernhardt. “The Voice Imitator.” This is the book I had forgotten I had read. It was Bernhardt’s last, a collection of page or less “stories,” consistent with the voice and attitude of his novels, but a coda to them. Cocky and grim riffs on the frailties of man.
Afterword
On this memory thing, (1) yesterday I learned I’d had a phone conversation shortly before I went into the hospital with a cartoonist pal in Kentucky, which I had completely forgotten; and (2) Adele and I settled in to watch “Marty Supreme,” which seemed to have just been made available for free on TV. As soon as it started, I realized I had seen it before. (This held true the entire first half.) So it must have been there for several weeks. Again I had forgotten I had seen any of it.
But I can still tell you the starting line-up for the 1950 Phillies.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.