Summer Reading II

I finished Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, and I have to say that I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I was greatly pleased by the development of Alex's character, as opposed to the film (sorry for the comparison, but it's rather inevitable since I saw the film first). I haven't had a crush on a character in a book in a while, and I definitely wished he was a real person. The novel is comprised of alternating chapters: a letter from Alex to Jonathan, a portion of Jonathan's narrative about his mythologized family history, and a portion of Alex's narrative about his and Jonathan's journey to Ukraine. The entire storyline provided by Jonathan's narrative was left out of the film. It was some beautiful storytelling, a family history made mythical and mysterious and wonderful. It was that part of the story that had the most gratuitous sexual content, however, and it continued as the novel progressed. I was also disappointed in the ending. It was without love or hope, and that seemed unfortunately contrary to the experience of Jonathan and Alex throughout.

I also finished The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. It read like an overgrown short story. There was little going on in the way of plot, except for the quotidian movements of a young man's life - travel, cultural and generational tensions, sexual awakening, going to college, girlfriends, getting a job and getting married, etc. This was also made into a film, but I have not seen it. The struggle that Gogol has with accepting his name and accepting his family and himself would be more strongly conveyed in a short story. As it is, the existential details get buried under the material details, and that kind of just makes it boring.

So now I am on to On the Road. I happened to visit City Lights bookstore in San Francisco on Monday, where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg and that whole Beat crew would socialize and whatnot. The top floor is dedicated entirely to poetry and the Beat authors, and it was creepily quiet up there. They had one of the best selections of poetry I've ever seen, though, for a bookstore, and some awesome anthologies that I would never even think to look for, much less even attempt to find. I was impressed, though I found the whole Beat thing a bit overdone. But I am not far into On the Road, but so far it is interesting. Kerouac's voice is light, pleasurable, and I appreciate his vivid and frequent but not overbearing use of exclamation points. I think this tone comes from the fact that the stories are semi-autobiographical. Well, they are probably more than semi-autobiographical. I love reading his impressions of different local folk across the country. It's like Travels with Charley in that way, but probably with more sex and booze and benzos and no adorable poodle that I want in my own life.

I'm also reading Czelaw Milosz' Unattainable Earth, and I don't know what to make of it quite yet. That's all I have to say about that. Except that I kind of love it.

After On the Road is done, I will dedicate myself entirely to East of Eden. And then I don't know where I will go from there. I might crack Kevin Starr's California, which I bought at Copperfield's used (in hardcover) for $9.