Piranesi

 

“The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

Second books are hard. Especially if the first was a massive success. They must live up to a high standard, even more so than as they ought to – all books ought to meet high standards, to my mind – because, let’s face facts, they have big shoes to fill. Piranesi was one such.

I confess that I did not purchase this sophomore effort when it was first published. I read its blurb and found it less inspiring than Susanna Clarke’s first effort, the celebrated Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. How could this slim volume compare with a work ten years in the writing, I wondered.

Long story short, having recently consumed a number of videos in which reviewers praised it, some even declaring Piranesi better than Ms Clarke’s much lauded “masterpiece,” I finally bit the bullet and read it.

What did I think? I think it’s good; but I do not believe it anywhere near as good as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. My opinion. But, to be fair, they are very different experiences. JS&MN is epic in scope (some might find it daunting, in length, in style, and in pace); it’s Georgian, and Dickensian. Piranesi, on the other hand, is contemporary. JS&MN is replete with myth, and indeed history; Piranesi lacks this. That said, it is evocative of other works: Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s prints, “Imaginary Prisons”; Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”; with allusions to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia. This is not to say that it lacks style. It positively radiates this. But given its narration style, Piranesi is lacking in that we, the reader, never truly understand how Piranesi’s world came into being.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s “Imaginary Prisons”

Piranesi’s world is a labyrinth of rooms, each lined with statues: of animals, and lovers and kings, and monsters of every imagining. It’s hinted that these rooms were possibly dreamed into being. That’s all well and good; but one wonders how flocks of birds and schools of fish find their way into a universe dreamt into existence by humans, if indeed we did do just that. There are tides, and seasons, and night and day; but no inhabitants other than our limited cast of players. Though interesting, I did not find myself convinced of its existence, regardless that it does indeed exist.

What I did find intriguing was Piranesi, himself, his having been altered by his world. Why is he called Piranesi? That is explained – a little; but not completely; suffice it to say that he is christened that by the only other soul he knows. One must work a little, reading outside this work for greater illumination. Speaking of that other person, I was also intrigued by the cast of players within this morality play. Far too many spoilers would be risked by discussing them in any detail here. Suffice it to say, I was left questioning most of their motivations. Why do they do what they do? To what end? Enough on that.

I was, however, most pleasantly surprised by the novel’s denouement, if not its conclusion, for reasons left unsaid – sit would be criminal to spoil the experience. It is most profound.

Piranesi is worth a read. More so, I believe, if you haven’t read JS&MN. Even if you have. As already noted, they are very different experiences. But each is as surreal as the other. I, personally, found Ms Clarke’s first effort a far more immersive and satisfying one. Perhaps this novel is as deep, and tightened to only its essential elements, but I still prefer her weightier tome. That said, I’m still pleased to have finally read Susanna’s sophomore effort.

 

“Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

Jane Austen July

 

Jane Austen, by her sister Cassandra, c. 1810

Most anyone reading this might wonder what the hell Jane Austen July is. It’s rather self-explanatory, I imagine. It’s simply a celebration of Jane Austen’s works in the month of July. It’s nothing official, just something that some Booktubers dreamed up some years ago.

It’s also something I began “participating” in some years ago (four years ago, to be exact, at time of writing), if participating is proper usage here, considering my depth of participation, or lack thereof, as it were: it’s not like I’m actively engaged in some group activity, aside from reading something by Jane Austen during said month. There are those who do participate in the Booktube community, in “group readings” and discussions, over on certain Booktubers’ Patreans, and the like. I do not. I just like that I might make the personal dedication to finally consuming the body of work of one of the most celebrated authors of English Lit canon.

Why? Why not. It’s about time I’d set my mind to finally read them, given my age. I’ve no excuse as to why I waited so long to do so, other than the usual male prejudice against what certain males might label “chick lit.” Is it? Chick lit? Her books were most certainly written by a woman, obviously, and originally published as such, as well, under the anonymous pseudonym “By a Lady.”  But I would now (now that I’ve read her) never consider her oeuvre an example of that now somewhat maligned category of modern marketing. It is serious literature and should be considered such. It’s riven with social commentary, to say nothing of complex characters, and biting wit. It matters not a whit that its subject matter focuses on women’s lives (Jane was a women, after all, and wrote what was within her experience), and their deathly serious pursuit of the best matrimonial match they can gain (woe to those, in her time, who did not). Are they sentimental fiction? They are indeed novels of sensibility, but they are also excellent examples of 19^th Century literary realism. If you are still of a mind that works about women are only about women, and should only be read by women, it’s high time you divorced yourself of the notion. Henry James wrote novels about women. So did Thomas Hardy. I’d neglected classical works by women for far to long. Better late than never, I say. 

Back to the subject at hand. What must one do to participate in Jane Austen July? It’s simple, really:

1.      Read one of Jane Austen’s six novels

2.      Read something by Jane Austen that is not one of her main six novels

3.      Read a non-fiction work about Jane Austen or her time

4.      Read a retelling of a Jane Austen book OR a work of historical fiction set in Jane Austen’s time

5.      Read a book by a contemporary of Jane Austen

6.      Watch a direct screen adaptation of a Jane Austen book

7.      Watch a modern screen adaptation of a Jane Austen book

In truth, no one need read anything other than a single one of her novels to have participated; anything more is a bonus.

What do I intend? I’m reading Emma this year. In prior years I’ve read Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park. I’ve also read “Lady Susan,” and “The Watsons” in years past. I’ve also read Death Comes to Pemberly, by P.D. James. Longbourn, by Jo Baker, was a wonderful discovery, well worth your time. It illuminates the lives of the servants of Pride and Prejudice.

I’ve cheated some, truth be told: I’ve read “contemporaries” published outside Jane’s lifespan (1775 to 1817) during Jane Austen July. But, seeing that I’m not involved in JAJ in any official capacity, I tend to do what I choose. Those supposed contemporaries were Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847), and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (also1847). The year I read Jane Eyre I also read Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Jean Rhys, a reimagining of Charlotte’s classic novel.

Personally, I believe participation in this “event” is an excellent use of your leisure time, whether you’ve read Jane Austen or not. If you’re a fast reader you could, conceivably, read most, if not all, of her novels in the course of the month; if not, as I said, one will do. I believe delayed gratification is a good thing. One per year gives one something to look forward to. It also gives one time and licence to become acquainted with other Regency writers: Sir Walter Scott, for instance; or Robbie Burns. Playwrights and poets are as admissible as novelists, so indulge in a whole host of Romantics, if you’ve a mind to.

As to contemporaries, there’s a whole host to choose from: Bridget Jones Diary, Where the Rhythm Take You, Unequal Affections, The Other Bennet Sister, etc. o nuts, if you will, with Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, if the mood takes you.

Whatever. There are not hard and fast rules. Unless you wish to follow those noted above; so, I suppose there are hard and fast rules. I just choose to ignore them and colour outside the lines.

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! – When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

A Short Stay in Hell

Cover design by Matt Page

Know your audience. That’s good advice; and I ought to listen to that voice in my head that tells me not to venture where I’m sure to embark when I’m about to open my mouth and gush forth to someone I already know will not appreciate (or perhaps even tolerate) the subject raised. But sometimes enthusiasm and the desire to share overwhelms that wisdom and I find myself doing just what it warns me not to.

Point in case: I’ve mentioned my having read the novella “A Short Stay in Hell” to two souls outside my household. One was a reader. He, I already knew from past discussions, read widely, and wished to read more widely still. He had, it turned out, already read Steven L. Peck’s novella of 2009 and was wildly enthusiastic it, telling me that he had found himself spiritually disconnected from himself after having completed this short work. The other, not a reader, was instantly dismissive of both it (which he declared, before hearing me out, stupid) and me, inferring – my projection – that I was crazy to have even wanted to read such a thing; or anything at all, I imagine.

I ought to have never broached the subject with the second person in question: He (who’ve I been acquainted with for decades), to my mind, has never been a deep thinker: he professes to enjoy SF, but has never read science fiction – indeed, he could not name a single SF author to save his life; he watches science documentaries, but never ponders anything beyond the mere facts he’s consumed. Am I being dismissive of this individual? I suppose I am. But one wonders how someone can not ponder what eternity truly means in context of the human experience if come face to face with the very question. Or am I unique in this?

I mention this because this short work, this novella in question, does exactly that. It explores how we, finite beings with limited perspective, might weather eons of existence.

Illustration by Erik Desmazieres

The premise: a devout Morman passes away, and discovers that he is being sent to Hell because he is not a disciple the true faith. What faith, do you ask, as he does, is the true faith? Zoroastrianism. The protagonist had never even heard of Zoroastrianism. Neither had those others seated before the surprisingly amicable demon who was processing them. The demon looks horrific, but is amicable, and quite apologetic concerning their fate. But he is also businesslike in the application of his task. Each is whisked off to their individual hell without much delay. But before their dispatch the demon mentions that, unlike Christianity’s dire eternal damnation, Zoroastrianism’s hell is only temporary, merely a short stay while the soul earns its redemption for not believing what it ought to have. Our protagonist, our amicable demon notes, was an avid reader in lie, and so decides he knows the exact sort of destination that should suit him.

Dis, by Stradanus

Soren (our protagonist) suddenly finds himself next to an unimaginably vast bookshelf, a hell apparently modelled after Jorge Borges’ Library of Babel, one decidedly and horrifically similar to Dante’s City of Dis, that appears to stretch unto eternity, up, down, left and right. Across a not overly wide chasm is another identical wall of shelves, where, like those culturally similar souls he finds himself among (all American, all Caucasian, all in their peak of youth and fitness), innumerable other souls mill about, as he must, searching for a selection of volumes describing their personal life story, detailed to second. This will be no quick or easy task, given that the library contains every possible book, even those comprising gibberish, random symbols, books of all As, all Bs, books where the text of “War and Peace” has every second letter an A, or B, or asterisk, or ellipsis. One wonders how long our protagonist might have to search such a library to find his biography?

The book is essentially an exploration on how this might affect a human intellect, or soul, as it were, should it find itself in such a hell. How the monotony experienced might drive one to eons of depression. Or to madness. Or cruelty.

What it truly terrifying is how countless eons, innumerable billions of years, the lifespans of consecutive universes, are only a sliver of eternity. How short is a short stay in hell when compared with eternity?

This book is indeed philosophy. It is also heartbreaking and horrific.

Its intent was lost of the second soul I spoke with; but he also has no interest in faith or philosophy. Or deep thought of any kind, I imagine.

Its meaning was not lost on the first. Or on me.

Reading Update, the latter 1800s

 

Portrait of John Keats, Joseph Severn, 1821-1823

What’s my reading plan, as it stands? It’s evolving, but it will be somewhat chronological: 

Notes From the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1864).

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866). In progress.

Demons, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1872).

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain (1876). A Reread.

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (1884).

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880).

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James (1881). In progress.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1884). A reread.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche (1885).

She, H. Rider Haggard (1886). Completed.

Tay John, Howard O’Hagan (1939 – set in Alberta from 1880 to 1911). Completed.

Selected Stories, Anton Chekhov, (Stories published between 1883 and 1898).

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (1957).

A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle (1887). A reread.

The Five, The Untold Stories of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold (events leading up to 1888). In progress.

From Hell, Alan Moore & Eddie Campell (a graphic novel about the Ripper case, set in 1888).

Maiwa’s Revenge, H. Rider Haggard (1888).

The Nether World, George Gissing (1889).

By Gaslight, Steven Price (set in 1890).

The Call of the Wild, Jack London (1902, set in the 1890s). A reread.

The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde (1890). A reread. 3rd time's a charm.

White Fang, Jack London (1906, set in the 1890s). A reread.

The Final Problem, Arthur Conan Doyle (1893). Another reread.

Murdoch Mysteries novels, by Maureen Jennings; beginning with “Except the Dying” (there are eight titles, I believe – I have the first seven – all set in the 1890s).

Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908, set in late 1890s).

The Island of Doctor Moreau, H.G. Wells (1898). Yet another reread.

The River War, Winston Churchill (1899).

20th Century:

Stalin, Passage to Revolution, Ronald Suny (spanning birth 1874 to 1917). In progress.

Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak (1957 – events from 1902 to sometime during WW2). In progress.

Ten Days that Shook the World, John Reed (1919 – set in 1917). Completed. 

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer. Completed.

Montreal Stories, Mavis Gallant (set during WW2). In progress.

Paris Stories, Mavis Gallant (set post WW2). Completed.

Behind the Bar, John Henry Henshall, 1882

It’s an eclectic mix, to be sure. But one ought to tackle what’s on one’s shelves. There are plenty of videos on YouTube where contributors are challenged to “read what you own.” As I should. This will take quite a while, I imagine. As I’ve noted: I own a lot of books. Most of these early books are quite long, too. That’s to be expected. Novels of the 1800s tended to be long, for the most part – there was no radio or tv to distract one from the reading experience, then, and books tended to be rather introspective. Some might find that dull, certainly slow-going; but it allows one to truly empathise with the characters; and more to the point, it allows one to immerse oneself in the minds, and heart and soul of those who lived in times of yore. At any time, really. It’s been said that reading fosters empathy: One can never truly know what goes on in another’s mind – reading gives us insight into another “person” as is not possible in the real world. It also allows one to time travel. Authors contemporary to their times can give insight into the times they lived in, as no modern “historical” writer could ever hope to they not having experienced the era firsthand.

Toronto, 1880s

Which is kind of the point in this little exercise I’ve embarked on, not only to dive into the backlog of books I own, to thin the ranks of titles cluttering up my shelves, but to gain deep insight into the span of my Lost Generation ancestors’ lives (my great-grandparents Robert Patterson Murray, born 1878, and Susan, in 1880; and my grandparents Joseph MecLea Gauthier, in 1897; and Jules and Blanche, and Hilda, all born in the first decade of the “new” century), beginning with those culturally significant influences that might have had impact on their lives.

Regardless how successful I may be in that regard, this archeological dig into my bookshelves gives me an opportunity to finally tackle the Russians, something I’ve hitherto neglected.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Reading Goals

 

I have an insane number of unread books. I suspect there are a great number of other people who suffer that same ailment: they who perhaps have too many books to read in the time remaining them; yet who, perplexingly, buy ever more books, despite the sobering fact that they will likely never complete all those they already own. I wonder why that is? That’s a silly question; they – we – have hope that they will have the time to fully peruse their entire library.

One thing is for sure; most readers will read those titles most recently purchased and leave those bought ages ago mouldering on the shelves, hidden behind ever deepening stacks and rows of titles arrayed in front of them, having sometimes completely forgotten what is hidden behind them.

So, what’s to be done? The easiest solution would be to never visit a bookstore or bookselling website again. Fat chance there.

Another solution is to develop a reading strategy. (That may not prevent the person in question from purchasing new, but it will at least pull some of those woefully neglected orphans down from the back ranks of the bookshelves.) I’ve done such a thing.

How so? Not randomly. By developing a narrative.

I’d recently been watching some WW2 documentaries and decided that I might read some of the nonfiction titles I owned. Then I thought I might add period fictions into the mix, read chronologically (not by publication date, but by narrative calendar year). The nonfictions would add context to the fictions. Ground them, so to speak.

But, as I was just then reading John Reed’s “Ten Days That Shook the World,” I decided that I might expand my reading plan back to that day. That would give me an opportunity to read (or reread, as the case may be) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise” and Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” I began to pull other titles down from my back shelves, fictions and memoirs by Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Isherwood, etc. I was onto something, I thought. Before I knew it, I had decided, given how many other books I owned but had not read, I might consider adding other titles like, “To Kill a Mockingbird” to the mix, set during the Depression but written years later. You can imagine how many other books might be added to that steadily gather pile.

Long story short, I realised that the scope of my reading plan would be epic indeed; it would, by and large, span the lifespan of my long past Lost Generation ancestors (plus a little more): from the latter 1880s to the 1970s, read more or less chronologically. As this was an ever-evolving list, at that time, given those prior mentioned WW2 documentaries, I was already deep into William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” something that I’d been picking at for years. I’ve since completed it and “Ten Days…” which inspired me to finally read Boris Pasternak’s “Dr Zhivago.”

One wonders then what those earliest titles might be, those reaching back into the 1880s: Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and Henry James’ “The Portrait of a Lady.” Yes, “Crime and Punishment” is earlier (1866), but it does present the Human Experience of the latter Victorian Age (or in this case pre-Russian Revolution) that then provoked the sweeping changes experienced during the Edwardian, as James’ work spans both the Victorian and Modern literature movements. I’ve even decided to finally pull down Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” (1878 – close enough to the 1880s) from its lonely perch, seeing that both it and “C and P” help to illuminate the Russian world before the socialist revolutionary movement took root (the first failed Revolution being 1905). That has inspired me to read not only “Stalin – Passage to Revolution” (leading up to the October 1917 revolution); but also “The Five, the Untold Tale of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper,” deconstructing the lives of those poor women, leading up to their tragic end in 1888 (not prostitutes at all, it would seem).

The list I’ve curated it too long to list here, but it is epic indeed in span. It also gives me the opportunity to tackle the Russians, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, and a host of other authors I’d hitherto neglected. Scattered throughout will be selections from McClelland and Stewart’s New Canadian Library.

All these works, fictional and nonfiction, will give me a greater appreciation of all that influenced and later unfolded throughout the long history of the Lost Generation and the 20^th Century.

One thing is for certain: it will take years to complete, given my relatively slow reading rate. No matter. It’s the journey that matters, not the end result.