The Regeneration Trilogy - Pat Barker

 

What an absolute work of art! And to think that Pat Barker studied history (what I teach...) at the university where I work, and I actually had to discover her because my auntie told my mom about her. In my defence, she did graduate a few decades before my arrival at least...

The Regeneration Trilogy is possibly the best WWI book(s) I have ever read. Barker has a truly unique way of describing, through her characters, the ugly beauty of war, how it plays with the minds of soldiers who can never leave war behind and are often attracted to it for various reasons even when given a chance to leave. 

Her ability to weave real history and fiction together in an inextricable mix is also remarkable, and the last few chapters of The Ghost Road are an agony to read, as the reader clearly knows how things are going to end for Billy Prior, the beautifully troubled and scarred main fictional character of the trilogy. 

Fiore di Roccia - Ilaria Tuti

 

One of the recent Italian books that my mom said I could "maybe" look at. 

On the one hand, this is surely a commendable effort, in particular because of its depiction of some key contributors (the women who carried supplies up to the front) to the Italian war effort during World War I. From that point of view, it reminded me of the similarly commendable Italiana by Catozzella. 

Beyond that, though, I struggled with the heroic tones of the novel (I suspect to a large extent used to mimic the rhetoric of the time) and the sentimentality of it (despite the fact that some reviewer praised the author for supposedly not giving in to sentimentality?) is something that really has no appeal for me. 

The First Forty-Nine Stories – Ernest Hemingway

It is officially time to go back to blogging, at least a little bit, after almost two months. There are a number of reasons behind my disappearing acts: changing jobs, my daughter starting nursery (and me taking care of pick-ups and drop-offs in an attempt not to feel completely useless) and also the fact that I have been genuinely reading less, with most of my last month spent reading The Brothers Karamazov at a time that wasn’t ideal.

The First Forty-Nine Stories is a book that I actually read months ago, after it was given to my wife as a gift more than a decade ago. Much like other Hemingway books that I’ve read after my teenage years, some passages left me quite untouched, others made me positively shudder at their “manly man-ness”, and some just kind of blew my mind.

My two favourites were easily “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” – because in it I saw more than the standard Hemingway macho hunting story (for once I thought there was more than a hint of self-criticism and dark irony in the finale) – and “My Old Man” – a story that is often neglected but that I truly loved, possibly because that’s the way an only child is bound to feel about his father if he is perceived as being mistreated. 

Radetzky March - Joseph Roth

Ah, Joseph Roth and the finis Austriae! Does it get any better than that? Well, in a way it does, considering that my favourite Roth novel (or rather a short story - The Legend of the Holy Drinker) is actually set in Paris...

Radetzky March is a wonderful novel (despite the fact that it took me a week to finish it because of the impending fatherhood and, erm, the Olympics...) and one of those books that I wish I could persuade my students to read.

Interestingly, Roth ultimately seems to love his characters despite the fact that more often than not these have to be bailed out by the Emperor, and that their careless actions lead directly or indirectly to the death of a number of people throughout the book (then again, the atmosphere surrounding the duel in the first half of the book reminded me of Ridley Scott's The Duellists so those deaths are justified!).

Speaking of the Emperor and his powers - the chapters directly related to his ageing are possibly the best-written of the book, but (speaking as a historian...) Roth seems to conveniently forget the fact that by 1914 the Austrian one was ultimately an empire hell bent on starting a war with Serbia (although not with the whole of Europe).

A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

My students, like all students, have a tendency to ramble. Entire paragraphs without punctuation, sentences that are pretty much paragraphs, subordinate clauses with no mains, etc. After their first essays (usually unreadable, usually on the First World War) I tell them to read Hemingway, in particular A Farwell to Arms, and see if they can learn by imitation. Nobody ever reads the book, but it’s a nice ritual I’ve grown accustomed to.

When I first read the book I was 15 and really struggled to understand why Fredric would ever volunteer to fight in World War One. I still ask myself that very same question, but hey. I also don’t quite know whether I was simply immature and focusing only on the main character, or whether Hemingway just didn’t really care about Catherine and the baby, but I barely remember that she dies and he is stillborn, although I clearly remember Frederic’s sad final stroll through Lausanne.

And yet, in spite of the perplexities I had and still have about this book, I consider it one of the greatest works ever written. 

Across the River and into the Trees – Ernest Hemingway

The philosophy teacher in my Italian high-school used to frequently ask us about our readings. Between Paulo Coelhos, Dan Browns, Khaled Hosseinis etc. I like to think that he often turned to me in the hope of talking about something that could pass as literature of some sort. I am also pretty sure I impressed him when I told him that I thought that The Old Man and the Sea was a very average book and that Hemingway’s real masterpiece was Across the River and into the Trees.

Probably that had a lot to do with the desire of a 17-year old to go against the established order (disclaimer: I still think The Old Man and the Sea is really mediocre, but probably A Farwell to Arms is Hemingway’s best work). And it surely had a relation to my love for Venice and to the fact that I pictured Renata to look like my love at the time.

This is the most sentimental of the Hemingway books that I’ve read (i.e. most of them, with the exception of – ironically given the title of this blog – A Moveable Feast and a couple of others) and also one that inspired me, at age 17, to go to Harry’s Bar in Venice for a coffee (alcohol would have been illegal) – standing at the bar, clearly, in order not to get ripped off. Funny thing is: I actually don’t really drink coffee, except before races, when I have a cup half an hour before the start and I gulp it almost like a medicine.

Journey to the End of the Night – Luis-Ferdinand Céline

I read this book in Bolivia, in the internet-less and TV-less flat of my wife’s grandma, with no people around me. The perfect place to dedicate your full attention to a book. And yet, I got bored, my mind wondered, and I frequently asked myself what was the point of this novel.

Sure, the writing is innovative, but other than that? Wikipedia talks about cynic humour. I couldn’t see that. Sure, seeing Bardamu travel from place to place can be exciting, but what’s left after the novelty of the different location dies out? Very little, and even the final scene left me completely unmoved.

My literary taste is probably too underdeveloped to appreciate the uniqueness of this book. I’ll happily trade my copy of it for anything with a linear story and a protagonist who is not such a jackass. Just kidding: I would never give my copy away, I think it’s a book you need to have, even if just to dismiss it.

The Emperor’s Tomb – Joseph Roth

I read this book without having first read Radetzky March, something which I now regret (slightly) but that still didn’t prevent me from loving this novel. And I didn’t just love it, I also used it in an essay about the relationship between architecture and memory that won the praise of my Cambridge professors (probably the only time that happened).

There is something in the classy decadence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that is particularly appealing to me (and I don’t even come from the part of Italy that was under Austrian control for a long time). I’m not particularly at ease with the way in which Trotta treats his wife, but that probably (and sadly) is justified by his upbringing.

Oddly enough, this is another book whose details are now escaping me, but the final walk to Franz Joseph’s crypt is a wonderfully melancholic picture that I think will always stay with me.