Re-Reading The Sun Also Rises

It was a natural move from Fitzgerald to Hemingway, and I chose The Sun Also Rises for several reasons. I re-read For Whom the Bell Tolls, for me his best work, some time ago, so it does not qualify for my haven't-read-in-fifty-years challenge. We had to read A Farewell to Arms in my senior year in college, and inevitably books you are forced to read feel less attractive for re-reading. But the main reason was that The Sun Also Rises was an enticing and disturbing book for a seventeen-year-old, in inexplicable ways. Of course it was about love, and impossible love, which is irresistible for a young intellectual. It was also about the kind of life we tried to emulate, moving between the three available coffee shops in the multimillion Russian capital; travelling to Leningrad or Riga and feeling we were in Paris or Pamplona; claiming that life was pointless and that we were the lost generation. Playing Hemingway was our favourite game.

Once again, I did not remember much of the novel. I remembered the plotline, or rather the absence of a plotline; I remembered that Brett was married to a lord, but was getting divorced and about to marry someone else, but fell in love with a bullfighter who could be her son. I remembered that Jake was injured in war and therefore could not be with Brett (although I only guessed what exactly the injury was and why it was prohibitive), but comforted her when she was upset. A friend of mine said, with a wisdom of a seventeen-year-old: “Every woman should have her own Jake”.

I remembered that there was a large party going to Spain for bullfighting, but I did not remember that prior to that Jake and his friends go fishing, which of course is less dramatic. I did not remember the character of Robert Cohn at all, not even that Brett runs away with him for a while. And of course I didn't notice the numerous antisemitic comments about Cohn. It isn't particularly significant that Jake is a Catholic, but I definitely did not reflect on that.

And again and again, I wonder what I saw in this novel then, apart from the love plot. I probably read it quickly, skipping the long, wonderful descriptions of bus rides and fishing sessions. I probably even skipped the seemingly meaningless dialogues that do not contribute to the plot and not much to character either, and very little to the “message” if there is such a thing. We were taught that Hemingway's style was called “iceberg technique”, perfected in his short story White Elephants. It is also prominent in The Sun Also Rises: the characters talk about something irrelevant, while the reader is supposed to infer what they really think and feel. Similarly, the lengthy descriptions obviously have the function to convey obliquely the character's state of mind, but the reader must work hard to get through. Was I able to do this at seventeen? Hardly. And I am sure I could not simply enjoy the beauty of these descriptions, or the marvellous alternation of pace: sometimes a sentence that goes over three pages, sometimes three pages of sentences of three words. And I don't think I appreciated the neverending record of Paris street names that didn't say me anything.

I believe The Sun Also Rises hasn't aged very well (unlike For Whom the Bell Tolls). Precisely what fascinated us as Russian teenagers irritates me now. Young Americans in post-war Europe, with enough money and spare time to go on long vacations and get pathetically drunk. Jake at least has a job. The others are spoiled lazybones. To be fair, like so many other literary characters.

I am glad I have re-read this book, but I don't think I will read it again. 

 

Re-reading The Great Gatsby

During my final years in Cambridge, my college would run a Great Gatsby themed formal dinner, which of course offered marvelous opportunities for dressing up. I even went to a costume party shop and asked for a suitable head band. But I wonder how many people at those dinners, students or Fellows, had actually read the novel. I had read it, I read it when I was very young, and I had vague memories of it. Therefore I included it in my 2020 re-reading challenge.

What I remembered was what anyone might know even without having read the book. It takes place in the 1920s, Gatsby is tremendously rich and gives huge parties, there is a romantic mystery, and he dies in the end. If you had asked me a week ago how he dies, I would have claimed with confidence that he commits suicide. (No spoilers, but he doesn't).

In many works of literary criticism The Great Gatsby is used as an example of witness-narrator: a first-person narrator who tells someone else's story. I have repeated this false statement many times. Nick Carraway is a highly self-centered narrator and occupies significantly more space in the novel than Gatsby. I was surprised to notice that Gatsby is only present marginally in the first third of the book, as a neighbour with a dubious reputation. Encounter with Gatsby shatters Nick's worldview, makes him abandon his career – Nick is doubtless the main character in his own story, while Gatsby is what narratologists would call a catalyst, a character who affects the protagonist's fate. A substantial bit of the plot also revolves around Nick's romantic involvement. In other words, Nick is in no way an objective biographer. It is his story, not Gatsby's. And as a narrator, he is totally unreliable, not least because he repeatedly admits that he dislikes Gatsby. What I did, however, notice and appreciate with my critical, narratological eyes, is how the narrator accounts for something that someone else tells him, but not in direct speech, and not in reported speech, but as if he really witnessed it, suddenly interrupted either by direct speech or abrupt temporal shift. There are also recurrent flashforwards of the type: All this I learned much later…

My memory of Gatsby was of a romantic figure. I think the reason is the unhappy love story. As readers we are conditioned to emphathise with unhappy lovers, and although I did not remember the details, I had the sense of his actions justified by love. Yet as it turns out, he is a liar, a hypocrite, a financial criminal and ultimately a murder accomplice. Nick has all the reasons to dislike him.

I had completely forgotten Gatsby's father who comes to his funeral. The pathetic funeral episode made me in a way reconcile with Gatsby; I felt genuinely sorry for him.

It is brilliantly written, and I enjoyed every page. I may re-read it soon again. 

Re-reading Salinger

I have re-read The Catcher in the Rye dozens of times. I have taught it in every course I could squeeze it into, even in the USA where I soon realised it was just as controversial as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And I re-read it for every course I taught, and I still find it one of the greatest novels ever written. But it does not fit into my 2020 reading challenge so I have chosen a different Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour, An Introduction. I read it soon after The Catcher in the Rye – once again, everyone I knew was reading it at the same time; we also read Nine Stories, and some of us read Franny and Zooey. I was, as many friends then, fascinated by Zen. My mother was a Japanese scholar, specialising on Zen gardens, so I knew quite a lot about Zen, probably superficially, but enough to at least start understanding Seymour Glass and his siblings.

I had vague memories of the first novella and none at all of the second; maybe I never read it then. Of the first, I remembered that it featured a cancelled wedding and started by stating that at the time of narration the bridegroom had committed suicide. I also remembered the scene in which Seymour reads a Zen text to baby Franny. I remembered that Seymour's brother Buddy is the narrator, and that their sister Boo Boo writes a message for Seymour with a bit of soap on a bathroom mirror: “Raise high the roof beam, carpenters...”

I cannot imagine what I could have appreciated in this little gem when I was seventeen. For it is a gem. It evolves in real time or even in a stretch (a temporal pattern in which it takes longer to tell an event than it takes place). Nothing, absolutely nothing happens. Buddy the narrator and a party of the bride's guests are riding a taxi in Manhattan, get stuck in traffic, go to Buddy's apartment. They have insignificant conversations, interrupted, discursively, by Buddy's reflections and memories. The characters are hilarious. The atmosphere is brilliant. I was sad when I finished because I wanted it to go on for a while yet. (I believe I will re-read it again soon).

Seymour, An Introduction was, if possible, the opposite. A long and rather pointless reflection by Buddy, many years after Seymour's suicide, ostensibly trying to create a credible portrait of his much admired brother. I was about to give up halfway when it suddenly turned more interesting, becoming what narratologist Seymour (coincidence?) Chatman calls “comment on discourse”. Buddy the narrator, by this time a published author, conveys the pain of writing, the very process of transposing memories on paper, addressing his potential reader. I guess it was a kind of self-reflection by Salinger, but I am not really interested in real authors, all the more in fictitious authors, and Buddy eventually turned out to be a fascinating storyteller, not least in contrast to the subdued narrator of the first novella. I probably won't re-read Seymour, An Introduction, but when I am finished with my re-reading challenge I might want to re-read more stories about the Glass siblings. 

 

Re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude

My reading challenge for 2020 is re-reading twenty-five books that I read fifty years ago and never re-read again. I have chosen books that were important, life-changing, books I discussed with my friends. It's a mixture of very high-brow and trash (that at the time I didn't know was trash).

I recently re-read The Glass Bead Game, but I had re-read it between then and now, so it doesn't count. I decided to start with One Hundred Years of Solitude because I had been planning to re-read it for a while, and I had to start somewhere. It was, again, one of those books everyone in my vicinity read at the same time when it was published in Russia. Everyone talked about it. It was like nothing else we had read. It was probably one of the very first Latin American authors translated into Russian, and I wonder why.

I had very vague memory of the book. I remembered the old man sitting forever under a tree. I remembered generations of men with the same names. I remembered that the very last couple has a baby with a pig's tail. I also remembered the weirdness, the strange flow of time which we subsequently learned was associated with the concept of magical realism. I was obsessed with time then – as now – so it made a deep impression on me, precisely because it was seemingly realism, and still not quite, always with a twist.

I did not remember that so much of the novel is about war and politics. I did not remember that the characters died suddenly and their death was mentioned in passing as something insignificant. I did not remember that the baby with the pig's tail is eaten by ants. I did not remember that the town of Macondo is sinking into total decay.

I found the novel exceptionally boring. It took me several weeks to finish, and on many occasions I would tell myself that I was too tired to read. If it hadn't been part of my challenge I would have put it aside. I could not relate to the characters, possibly apart from a couple of women that at least had some personality. I don't mind novels where nothing happens, but then they need to offer something else. This novel didn't offer me much else. I wonder what exactly was so attractive fifty years ago. Maybe just that it wasn't like anything we had read before. I also suspect that I read it quickly, skimming rather than reading deeply.

There were, however, some aspects I enjoyed, few and far between. The characters dying casually is one. It is a powerful narrative feature. The reader gets invested in a character (well, to a certain degree in my case), and then they suddenly are no more. I loved the way the word "solitude" appeared every now and then, just to remind me of the theme. I loved the prolepses, flashforwards, like the opening of the novel, saying “Many years later...” I don't think I appreciated this fifty years ago, perhaps didn't even notice. I loved the ending, also something I had totally forgotten: metafiction, the book within the book. It was worth suffering through the endless boring pages.

It is not surprising that I read differently now from when I was seventeen, because I am now a professional reader, damaged by the analytical toolkit I cannot ignore as I read. Yet the novel is still praised at one of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century. Why do I fail to recognise its greatness today? Of course, as I always tell my students, not all books are for everyone, and we should not be ashamed to admit that we don't like something that “everybody” likes. Still I wonder what I liked fifty years ago. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I bluffed. Maybe everyone I knew bluffed.

Re-reading The Glass Bead Game

The last book I read in 2019 (or in the 2010s if you insist) was Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, one of the very, very few books, books as physical objects, that have followed me through all moves and other hurdles in the last fifty years. Its dust jacket is falling apart, its pages are yellow. I am not sure why I suddenly decided to re-read it; possibly it happened in the short interim when I didn't yet have internet in my new home and couldn't download whatever was queued on my Kindle. I opened the moving box marked “Books” and pulled out a book at random. This was a moving box from Gatehouse where I only had a handful of books. The fact that Glass Bead Game was in that box is telling.

It was a cult book in Russia – as elsewhere – fifty years ago, during my so-called formative years when certain books could be life-changing. Everybody read it, young and old. Translated books were rare in the Soviet Union then. Translated books other than by explicit supporters of the Soviet regime were exceptions. Translated books that didn't describe the horrors of capitalism were more than exceptions. Considering it now, I wonder how this book could be published in the Soviet Union at the time when every attempt at freedom of speech was crushed. Of course Hesse was anti-Fascist, and there was something called “the subtle art of forewords”; and indeed the foreword, written by a literary critic, promptly explains to the ignorant Russian reader that the novel presents the decline of spirituality in capitalist society. I am not even sure I read the foreword fifty years ago, but if I did, I probably laughed at it, together will my Russian fellow readers. We recognised the rhetoric only too well.

But today I see that it is precisely what the novel does.

I wonder how much I understood reading this extremely complicated novel at the age of seventeen. I wonder how much my parents understood. There is almost no plot, dialogue is sparse, and paragraphs go on for page upon page. Did I skim the pages? Wasn't I bored to death? Did I fake my fascination just to show off? However, I do remember that the novel made a strong impression on me – as already said, strong enough to save my precious copy for fifty years.

I also remember that I re-read it a couple of years ago. What strikes me now is that I have no memory of the book from this re-reading. Surely, a few years ago I would read it slower and deeper; I am also, I believe, more educated and knowledgeable than fifty years ago, with years and years of literary studies to equip me in both understanding and enjoying the novel. Yet when I re-read it now it was as if I hadn't re-read it since fifty years ago. I remembered the beginning and the ending of the minimal linear plot. I had even forgotten that there were also appended stories, purportedly written by the main character. Metafiction. I may not have known what metafiction was fifty years ago. But surely five years ago.

I had forgotten that the story takes place in the distant future, two hundred years from now and told by someone even further away in the future. Goodness, I have written tons of critical work on narrative temporality, and I didn't notice it in Glass Bead Game? And of course it is a dystopia. I wasn't as well-versed in the genre fifty years ago as I am now, but I had read 1984 and We, and I was living in a totalitarian state. But Glass Bead Game is a much more subtle dystopia than Orwell's or Zamyatin's. It is a seductive book, and I believe we were all seduced back then. I remember in my upper teens and early twenties we referred to our existential conversations as glass-bead games. We genuinely believed that it was the highest intellectual achievement of humanity. But why then does the main character, Magister Ludi, give it up? If we saw him as our role model, shouldn't we at the very least question his choice? We didn't. Probably we simply ignored the ending, which is, as reading research shows, a common reaction to unsatisfactory resolutions. And of course the Game continues – they still play it in the narrator's distant time.

What I clearly see now – and again, how carelessly must I have read it three or so years ago that I didn't even contemplate it – is that the narrator is unreliable (another favourite scholarly subject I have put much effort into), that he – only men could become Game masters – admires the legendary Magister Ludi whose objective biographer he pretends to be. But the reader is supposed to see through it and realise that the Game is a parasitic, pointless escape for a handful of self-proclaimed geniuses who have rejected science, arts, religion, social life, human relationships, for the sake of a safe and secure life within a strict hierarchical structure. Didn't we see it when we were young? No, because we saw what we wanted to see, extreme spirituality, and ignored the rest. But three years ago I should have noticed.

This is a rather long reflection on the tricks of memory. I always tell my students: Don't trust your memory, re-read! I should listen to my own advice. 

My 2010s

Currently, both media and individuals are summarising not only the past year, but the past decade. For me, the 2010s more or less coincided with my sojourn in Cambridge so it feels natural to look back at it. While on the global scale these years have been disconcerting, for me personally they have been fruitful and enjoyable.

I had reached the highest position an academic can reach, a Chair in one of the three best universities in the world (the ranking rotates from year to year, but Cambridge is always in the top three). I believe I have done the work well. I built a community that I am proud of. I took fourteen doctoral students to completion and supervised scores of masters. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be among these brilliant young people with their inquisitive minds and tough questions. My former students have good jobs or other prominent positions. Some have become friends. 

I very much enjoyed being a Fellow of Homerton College, a superb intellectual community where you have opportunities to meet outstanding people outside your discipline. Free lunches and college dinners may sound attractive, but it's not about being free, but being an environment for professional and personal growth. 

I published two academic books, edited several more, revised a successful handbook, and I have lost track of articles and book chapters.

I also published a book of memoirs that hasn't received as much attention as it should have. 

I attended some great conferences and hosted a few – how great those were is not for me to decide, but I was pleased. 

I was elected Fellow of the English Association “for my services to the English language”. Given that English is not my native tongue, I find it quite remarkable. My English has significantly improved during these years. For what it's worth, I learned a lot about UK geography, history and habits.

I met and in some cases became friends with some brilliant authors. I also made many new friends within and outside of academia. I had always thought it was impossible to make real friends at later stages of your life, but I was wrong. And some older friendships grew stronger. I am exceptionally lucky to have these friends.

According to Goodreads, I read 437 books in these years. Some for work, many for pleasure. A few were life-changing. I hadn't imagined that you could still encounter life-changing books at my age. Others were perhaps not life-changing, but still highly enjoyable. My reading habits have changed. I now read more slowly. I don't finish books that do not engage me after fifty pages (unless it is for work). I started reading on Kindle in 2013, and I read more on Kindle than in print, mostly because it is convenient. Kindle books demand no shelf space, it's comfortable to read in bed, you can take as many as you need when travelling, and you can choose the font size. Contrary to existing research, I read slower and deeper on Kindle.

I also got an iPad early and love it dearly. I am ecologically minded and have completely stopped printing out lectures, conference papers, meeting documents and such. I even managed to persuade my department head to give up printing. Together with Finance office they figured out that if they gave each department member an iPad, they would save on printing within three months. I secretly take credit for this contribution to greener environment.

I was given a smartphone for my sixtieth birthday and have since then discovered lots of apps that make my life easier. I am a champion of getting lost, and the navigator was my saviour.

Continuing with technology: like most people these days, I switched from DVDs and Blue-Ray to streaming, and I use Spotify on daily basis. Last year I invested in noise-cancelling headphones which is probably the most useful gadget I own.

I went on several remarkable trips, including the Amazonas, Madagascar, Southern Africa and Orkney. Every time I tell myself that it is likely the last major trip in my life. I definitely prefer nature to culture now. 

I became a passionate walker and cannot imagine my life without walking. I walked Hadrian's Wall and some other wonderful trails that abound in the UK. I had fabulous walking companions. 

I tried falconry which I hoped would become a pastime in retirement, but it wasn't to be. Still, it was an experience I wouldn't want to be without. 

For a few years, until my peripheral eyesight failed, I was a star-gazer, spending hours with my telescope and becoming particularly good friends with Jupiter, sketching the position of its four large moons day by day. I once saw Uranus, only because I knew it was supposed to be there, and I observed Venus phases. I wanted to be an astronomer when I was young so at least I fulfilled a tiny bit of this dream.

I developed as a gardener, and although I probably killed off more plants than I succeeded with, after ten years my garden started looking the way I had wanted. 

I was a faithful servant to four cats. (You know, you cannot own a cat, you can only serve them, if they allow you to). 

I pursued my miniature-making hobby and finally decided not to wait until retirement and acquired a huge dollhouse that so far took me six years of work, and it's far from finished. Six years sounds like a long time, but it is rather abstract and imprecise so I will instead account for my time investment in hours: about 2,000. I made many other projects in between, among them room boxes I gave away as presents – I believe appreciated. 

I learned book-binding. 

 

My grandchildren have grown up. I have become older – maybe wiser.

On reflection is was probably the happiest decade of my life. 

Final destination

Some friends have had a chance to see snippets of my new life on Facebook, but I should probably offer a brief summary, now that I have reached my final destination. Well, not the final-final, which will probably be the lovely Forest Cemetery in Stockholm.

Of course you never know. Four years ago I was still confident that Milton, Cambridgeshire, UK, was my final destination (close to crematorium). Then came Brexit and its uncertainties. Then came other things and a series of moves and temporary dwellings. But this time I have hopefully landed.

I now live in a north-western suburb of Stockholm. I don't know this area at all. When we lived in Stockholm, three lives ago, we lived in a southern suburb. It is pure serendipity that I started looking for a place to live in this area, and I love it. It is right on the edge of a large nature reserve, that I have tentatively started to explore. It has several lakes and wetlands, a wide variety of wildlife and a 35km trail that will be my goal for summer. 

At the same time, it takes 15 minutes to city centre by commuter train so I don't feel isolated at all. I have already returned home late after various events, and it wasn't much different from returning to Södermalm.

My local shopping centre has everything I may ever need. There is even a small old-fashioned cinema that is closed at the moment but is supposed to start operating again soon. There is a library and an excellent independent bookstore. There is a second-hand shop where I have already found some household stuff. Within walking distance I have a humongous shopping area with IKEA and other outlets. 

My new place is a condo that in the UK would be classified as one-bedroom and in Swedish is called 2rok, spelled out as 2 rooms and a kitchen. It is exactly what it sounds like: a large bedroom, a large living room and a large kitchen with a large dining area. Plus a large hall, a large bathroom and a large glazed balcony. The rooms face in two directions so there is plenty of light, and the windows are large. (I seem to be abusing the word “large”, but it really reflects my perception of space). There are zillions of built-in wardrobes and even a large – yes, really large! - walk-in wardrobe where I will store all my craft supplies. Otherwise I don't have a lot of furniture, and I got rid of much stuff when I was moving from Cambridge so the rooms are truly in a minimalist style which has always been my dream. In previous lives, we had far too many books filling every available space. I haven't unpacked all my books yet, but I will hardly have more than three or four shelves. As I said: I have a library within three minutes walk.

I am going to have a balcony garden. So far, I only have a potted Christmas tree and a couple of plants I brought from my rented flat. I aim at a tiered, hanging garden with flowers, decorative plants, herbs, strawberries and maybe even some veggies. I have also volunteered to join the garden committee of my cooperative. We have a lovely communal garden that could benefit from some improvements.

I haven't yet succumbed to a television, but I am seriously considering it. I have survived over a year without a television, but I like watching movies, and now that I do have space perhaps it's time to stop watching on computer and get a proper screen.

Most important, in two weeks I will bring home two longed-for friends, Smilla and Smirre. But this is another story.