Winter Journal – Paul Auster

A book that I had often seen in bookshops but avoided because, let’s face it, I don’t really like self-celebrating memoirs/reflections on an author’s life etc. Like a child, I only read it because my mom said so. And clearly my mom knows best – sure, it’s a self-celebrating reflection on the author’s life, but if the author in question is Paul Auster, then the book is bound to be extremely well written and, at the very least, the mirror of a very interesting life.

What this book has left me with are chiefly two things: the love and profound respect Auster feels for his wife Siri Hustvedt, and the fact that that he is, or at least he portrays himself to be, rather happy at the prospect of growing old.

At times there are passages I didn’t feel particularly interested in (some stories about his youth, for instance, left me quite untouched), but overall the book is at the very least quite thought-provoking. I never thought Paul Auster would have played pick-up basketball growing up, as pretty much all of his sports references in his other books seem to be about baseball, but reading about that made me happy, as did seeing him go through all the houses he lived in and what these meant to him. 

Burmese Days – George Orwell

I never thought I would get to write something like this, but having now read all of Orwell’s novels I can see why so many people think he was a genius. He’s still far from being my favourite writer ever, but 1984, Burmese Days, and Coming Up for Air are three really good novels (although Keep the Aspidistra Flying is remarkably bad, I only moderately liked A Clergyman’s Daughter, and I honestly can’t stand Animal Farm).

Burmese Days reminded me of some of the finest Graham Greene, but also of that wonderful thing that is Burgess’ Malayan Trilogy – it’s a beautiful portrayal of the pettiness of a colonial society that doesn’t really understand the reality of the land it inhabits, of its silly internal fights, and of the way in which locals try to ingratiate themselves with the Europeans.

Flory doesn’t possess the literary weight of Burgess’ Crabbe, but he is still a deeply fascinating character. And sure, the book was written by a person who quite clearly thought that British imperialism was dead by the 1930s (and history ultimately proved he wasn’t far wrong), but that doesn’t mean this book of fiction, if taken with a pinch of salt, isn’t historically accurate. 

Perfidia – James Ellroy

It’s been a month and two days since my last post, so let’s get back to my commentaries (I would love to be able to call them reviews, but I’m aware they’re just three paragraphs on my impressions of books!). Perfidia was a novel I quite literally dove into after reading a falling madly in love with L.A. Confidential. Probably owing to its size and bright red cover, my daughter tried to snatch it every time I opened it. She loved it a lot. Me, less so.

Being Ellroy, it’s obviously superbly written, fast-paced, witty, intriguing, intricate and all that. In addition, the exploration of the fictionalized shady dealings in the organization of internment camps for people of Japanese origins set-up in the US at the start of WWII is absolutely fascinating.

But there is a but: while I absolutely loved how Bernstein, Lana Turner, and plenty of other celebrities of the time (or their look-alikes!) appeared in L.A. Confidential and The Black Dhalia, I think that Ellroy goes too far with Bette Davis in Perfidia. An epic one-night stand with Dud Smith, sure, but making her such a focal point of the plot was just a bit excessive. And even in this case, I’m not quite sure how I feel about Ellroy re-using yet again so many of his characters: they remain awesome, but I found myself no longer as interested in their lives as I was in other books in which they appeared.