Books I Read July 9th

Generally speaking, life is better the more I'm able to make myself read.

Written on Water by Eileen Chang – Youthful, scattershot contemplations by the doyen of mid-century Anglo-Chinese fictions. As a rule I tend to find writing about writing really boring, so some of the critical essays left me cold, but I enjoyed the surprisingly neutral recollections of Chang's nightmarish childhood, as well as all the stuff about fashion.

Of what one cannot speak, one ought remain silent.

Murder in Memoriam – Two murders twenty years apart set a police inspector to investigate the dark corners of France's history. Second-rate Manchette.

A Chance Meeting : Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967 by Rachel Cohen – The (actually, generally planned) encounters of major American figures used as a vehicle for examining the history of American letters. A clever premise executed with insight and clarity.

Broken April by Ismail Kadare – The loosely interlinked stoies of a doomed killer and an urban writer express the complexities of the rural Albanian blood feud, the relationship between an artist and their subject. Or, as Nietzsche said – “It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it.” I actually picked this up prior to the Nobel laureate's recent passing, and it did not disappoint.

True Stories: And Other Essays by Francis Spufford – Erudite idiosyncratic essays from a cultural observer of rare empathy and sincerity. I liked the ones on science fiction the best.