This past summer, I read The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. I also read The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds in quick succession. I just finished Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Between those markers are several other science fiction novels left unfinished including The Iron Heel. James Joyce’s Ulysses was quickly abandoned.
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| Curious Books in East Lansing. |
Hurston was recommended to me by a co-worker, a garage attendant with a degree in English. I had no idea who Hurston was and reading about her was as compelling as her work. She was complicated. So, she is a Rorschach inkblot to every biographer. I will not add my uninformed opinions. I like Huston’s narration.
“Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without masters, walking together like harmony in a song.”
“They sat in the fresh young darkness close together. Pheoby eager to feel and do through Janie, but hating to show her zest for fear it might be thought mere curiosity. Janie full of that oldest human longing—self revelation. Pheoby held her tongue for a long time, but she couldn’t help moving her feet. So, Janie spoke.”
“Sop and his friends had tried to hurt her but she knew it was because they loved Tea Cake and didn’t understand. So she sent Sop word and to all the others through him. So the day of the funeral they all came with shame and apology in their faces. They wanted her quick forgetfulness. So they filled up and overflowed the ten sedans Janie had hired and added others to the line. Then the band played, and Tea Cake rode like a Pharaoh to his tomb. No expensive veils and robes for Janie this time. She went on in her overalls. She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.”
The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (Harvill Secker, 2006. Set in Stempel Garamond), is a fantasy. As parody, it is a spoof and quickly became cloying. And yet, it remains interesting as I read night after night. It is a story about books, writing them, printing them, buying, selling, and collecting them. Our hero, Optimus Yarnspinner, is a dinosaur. This world is also inhabited by many other fantastic creatures. Their images were drawn by the author.
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| Inhabitants of Bookholm. |
Not being steeped in literature myself, many of the allusions went over my head. About halfway in, the anagrams leapt out at me because of a parody of “The Bells” written by Perla la Gadeon whose anagram I deciphered on sight. Much else fell into place. I already understood the bookstores and the other avenues of commerce and the inelegant pathways of earning a living by writing for readers.
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| Bibliophiles who live underground. |
I also found something that the author did not intend with his description of a book hospital where devoted cyclops creatures repair old books. “It’s where we restore worm-eaten or damaged books. We reconstruct texts and reprint them or repair the bindings. Books can be damaged in many ways,” explains the guide. It sounds benevolent but we just attended "The Long Lives of Very Old Books" at the Harry Ransom Center and among the displays were forgeries in which stolen books had been cut apart, pages reproduced (sometimes by hand lettering), and the books rebound, and sold to collectors. The British Museum bought a large inventory of its own former shelving.
Addendum 21 January 2024
I finished the book. I thought that Moers wrote it in English because I did not believe that the translator, John Brownjohn, is a real person. He is. Moers himself is secretly famous.
Walter Moers on IMDbWalter Moers in LibraryThing
Walter Moers in TVTropes
Walter Moers in Wikipedia
The City of Dreaming Books in Wikipedia
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
For the Glory of Old Lincoln High
Firefly: Fact and Value Aboard Serenity
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