books

The other day, I was trying to come up with a list of books I've read this summer (that is, since graduation) and couldn't quite do it. This irritated me. So, in case I forget later, here they are, in no particular order:

The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham (second time)
Darkness Visible, by William Styron
A Tidewater Morning, by William Styron
Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
The Stone Raft, by Jose Saramago

Also, I started The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton, and All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw, by Theodore Rosengarten, but couldn't get into either. Another time. Waiting in the wings, to be started tomorrow, because I just finished The Namesake, are Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth and Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, by Kenzaburo Oe (there should be a long bar over the "O," but I can't figure out how to do that in Blogger). At the moment, I have wasted a good feeling of exhaustion that had me collapsed on the floor in the front hall with Sherlock, Izzie and similarly-exhausted Dad around nine. Instead, I got wrapped up in The Namesake. It's a lovely book; the word that overwhelms all others when I think about how to describe it is "compassionate." Lahiri treats each of her characters with empathy and respect, even those who exist in the book to be resented or hated by the protagonists, or simply to introduce strife into the plot. This is profoundly different from Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, say, which is wonderful in its own way but whose peripheral characters are cartoons. None of the other authors I've read the past couple of months have come close to Lahiri's ability to make her characters so lively and intimate. (Gawande, obviously, is in a different category, because he's writing nonfiction. I loved Better almost as much as I loved Complications, but that's another story). I couldn't put the book down tonight, so I read most of it through, and I got that dreadful thrill at the end, when I knew, even as I feared to look to the right, that the facing page contained the last lines of the book. I didn't want it to be over. There's a lot to chew on in there, although Lahiri's themes are pretty basic - foreignness, sex, death, love, identity - and I'll be thinking about it for a long time. It didn't bowl me over the way "The Third and Final Continent" did, and I don't think I'll read it ten or twelve times, as I've done with that story. But still, it was a very good book and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.

Now I think it's time for bed, sleepy-eyed or not. I was about to start writing tentative promises to write more updates, but I realized that things like that don't goad me into writing and only look silly in retrospect when, three weeks later, I sit down to write here again. Let me just say that I have the intention of writing again soon, with something a little more newsy. For now, good night.