Ask the Dust – John Fante

I don’t think this is a book that can, nowadays, leave a lasting impression on its readers. That said, it did move me when I read it, probably because the main character is a struggling Italian American, and I think it would be great if people in my (former?) country remembered that, once upon a time, we were a nation of migrants.

The main character’s love is destructive and hopeless, the Depression (with a capital D) too big a hurdle for him, and the fact that he essentially lives on oranges is one of the saddest and at the same time more powerful depictions of poverty in American literature, for me at least.

I wish at some point there was something to smile about in this novel. I have the feeling that the greatest books, or movies, always have funny (or at least ironic) passages, no matter how desperately grim the plot is – and to me that makes them great works. Ask the Dust, unfortunately, doesn’t have any such moment. 

The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

Even if European, any remotely decent reader has got to read some Faulkner. That’s the only thing that pushed me to finish this book (well, that and the fact that I was bored out of my mind invigilating end-of-year exams).

Yes, I did struggle through the first part, narrated by the problematic Benji – but at least I found its unique style to be interesting (although it would take me a good 10 minutes to read a page and make some sense of it). I was surprised when I realized that the part was the most enjoyable one. After that, pain, sadness, desolation, and decadence – true, always described from different viewpoints, but not a single glimmer of hope, or a trace of humour, or irony, or anything that might prevent you from self-harm. Great literature is not necessarily meant to be enjoyable, but, I believe, neither should it be a hopeless and fruitless struggle.

Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller

 

What was the incredible pull that France had on American writers in the early 20^th century? I’ve watched Midnight in Paris and read Tropic of Cancer and didn’t quite understand it: the first seemed to paint a world so perfect it probably never existed, the latter a world so grim that I wonder why Miller didn’t try to swim his way back to the US.

The prose is obviously innovative for its time, but that doesn’t mean that it’s particularly pleasant to read. At least the sections set in Paris manage to show a glimpse of hope for the author’s life, his future, and possibly the future of mankind. But the pages about his experience as a teacher in Dijon are some of the driest – and possibly rather useless – pages I have read lately.