Posted by paragraphonline on February 25, 2010
It takes a really gifted writer with the precise recipe of unabashed honesty, wicked intellectuality and sly wit to make an autobiographical memoir truly readable. De Assis (1839-1908, Brazilian) achieved this feat in 160 intentional chapters, each illuminating luminously the trials and tribulations of his (alter) ego. Reflecting an astute style-choice (he opts for the posthumous route from the get-go since the dead could always only have fun!), these disparate tracks re-create the digressive nature of consciousness-in-being by skipping lithely between life’s predominant polarities both across and within chapters: objectivism and subjectivism (or depiction and conversation; reflection and refraction, reality and philosophy). The result is an intimate reading experience facilitated through an embracive literary structure. There are many addictive and attractive things about ‘Epitaph’, the greatest of which would be the reader’s desire to eventually obtain a fragment of Assis’ bravery in his ability to reminisce a life’s worth in glee. I affirm that this is quite possibly one of the ‘greatest novels you never heard of’.
Contributed by: s.t
Posted in Books | Tagged: Epitaph of a Small Winner, Machado de Assis | Leave a Comment »
Posted by paragraphonline on February 3, 2010
The Holocaust, arguably a historical individual, has always been fascinating because of its extraordinary components. It is a bizarre circumstance where incomprehensible evil is dealt a worthy opponent in the incarnation of unwavering will and mercy. Depictions of this battle swarmed with documentarian value are abundant; what are few and far between are the ones which could deliver an ease of literary accessibility during reading, while keeping the horror at arm’s length. Yes, I am talking about non-fiction literature. Impact-wise, Capote’s In Cold Blood comes close to what I consider to be Primo Levi’s opus, The Drowned and The Saved. (How about Elie Wiesel’s Night?) Levi, an Auswitch survivor, writes with such fluidity that you would think that the blood which once flowed never stopped. Yet somehow, you could feel that it had, because of his willingness to understand analytically the conditions (psychological, structural) of the rested dead and the walking ones. Through Levi’s writing style, one is able to get a sense of his personal struggle for mnemonic reconciliation: it is not about getting closer to the heart of suffering; rather, it is to manufacture and then maintain a delicate distance with that emotional core, through a beautiful mind.
Contributed by: s.t
Posted in Books | Tagged: Elie Wiesel, In Cold Blood, Night, Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, Truman Capote | 6 Comments »
Posted by paragraphonline on February 3, 2010
The Hours is one of the subtlest novels you will ever pick up, yet also one of the most powerful and haunting. Nothing seems to really be happening, yet so much has already happened because everything interior is alive and well. Just as there is not much to be said about the impending grief of losing a dear friend to AIDS, why not realize the breeze and its whispers while fetching him flowers in an early spring morning full of possibility? Such is life.
Therefore, instead of fashioning characters that hover above their banality, Michael Cunningham wisely chooses to locate personal stories amidst their everyday condition. Characters and their pasts meander in and out of their structured circumstances, showing their faces like hallowed ghosts. The choices that are revealed under such setting render the characters’ humanity, in all its shades, starker, and it is a very beautiful thing to witness. Standing tall on the shoulders of Virginia Woolf’s vision in Mrs Dalloway, The Hours is perched as a fitting postmodern companion. The durable scaffold of the former is revived as a recurrent situational text for reality referencing in the latter. However, what is borrowed are never the mere details and manners of one era (early 20th century England), but the common emotional undercurrents that echo through time, such that the years that divide them erode away, only to exist as convenient chapters of one same book. Cunningham knows this, and here, his interpretation allows a re-reading of Woolf, updating her text with an urgent contemporary relevance. This is a great personal homage that is tastefully done. The visionary is dead, long live the visionary. Unlike in Specimen Days (c.f. Walt Whitman was his muse) where this strategy was employed to a slightly contrived and inconsistent effect, the result here is an intricately-woven cross-stitch of life’s tapestry that is ‘equally poised between despair and the desire to live’ (Meryl Streep, 2002).
Contributed by: s.t
Posted in Books | Tagged: Meryl Streep, Michael Cunningham, Mrs Dalloway, Specimen Days, The Hours, Virginia Woolf | Leave a Comment »
It takes a really gifted writer with the precise recipe of unabashed honesty, wicked intellectuality and sly wit to make an autobiographical memoir truly readable. De Assis (1839-1908, Brazilian) achieved this feat in 160 intentional chapters, each illuminating luminously the trials and tribulations of his (alter) ego. Reflecting an astute style-choice (he opts for the posthumous route from the get-go since the dead could always only have fun!), these disparate tracks re-create the digressive nature of consciousness-in-being by skipping lithely between life’s predominant polarities both across and within chapters: objectivism and subjectivism (or depiction and conversation; reflection and refraction, reality and philosophy). The result is an intimate reading experience facilitated through an embracive literary structure. There are many addictive and attractive things about ‘Epitaph’, the greatest of which would be the reader’s desire to eventually obtain a fragment of Assis’ bravery in his ability to reminisce a life’s worth in glee. I affirm that this is quite possibly one of the ‘greatest novels you never heard of’. 
