Reading Books

My daughter who's prepping to go away to college soon has challenged me to join her in reading a book a week, and preferably a novel (in addition to her schoolwork and to all my other work and play).

Here's one of my favorite bits so far from what I'm finishing this weekend:

Dear Ms. Singer,
I just finished your translation of the poems of Nicanor Parra, who, as you say, "wore on his lapel a little Russian astronaut, and carried in his pocket the letters of a woman who left him for another." It's sitting here next to me on the table in my room in a pensione overlooking the Grand Canal.  I don't know what to say about it, except that it moved me in a way one hopes to be moved each time he begins a book.  What I mean is, in some way I'd find almost impossible to describe,it changed me.  But I won't go on about that....

That's from page 55 of The History of Love by Nicole Strauss.

I love how there's so much going on all at once, in the characters, in their letters, in their lives.  You hear many voices in Strauss's writing, and you get to see how some of them have changed her, perhaps are her.  For example, the dedication is below:

And then one of the protagonists is trying to figure out where she's come from and who she is, and we read this chart on page 96:

Her mother is telling her she's not of any one race.  And after considering all the mix, she shouts back, "I'M AMERICAN," to which her little brother (the religious one, whom some refer to as 'the Moshiach') replies, "No, you're not.  You're Jewish."

Last weekend, it was re-reading Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams.  That one also explores life change, and the subconscious influences.

Books I'm looking forward to reading include:

Cari M. Carpenter's (or rather also Victoria Woodhull's) Selected Writings of Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and Eugenics.

Edith Grossman's Why Translation Matters.  (And what makes me even more interested is this exciting essay of hers!)

Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil.

David Rosenberg's An Educated Man: A Dual Biography of Moses and Jesus.

You might just find some bits from these here to read soon.  Don't know about you, don't know how, but reading changes me.

it's The End of the world (as we know it) and I feel fine

καὶ διαγενομένου τοῦ σαββάτου Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰακώβου καὶ Σαλώμη ἠγόρασαν ἀρώματα ἵνα ἐλθοῦσαι ἀλείψωσιν αὐτόν

² καὶ λίαν πρωῒ τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων ἔρχονται ἐπὶ τὸ μνημεῖον ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου

³ καὶ ἔλεγον πρὸς ἑαυτάς τίς ἀποκυλίσει ἡμῖν τὸν λίθον ἐκ τῆς θύρας τοῦ μνημείου

⁴ καὶ ἀναβλέψασαι θεωροῦσιν ὅτι ἀποκεκύλισται ὁ λίθος

ἦν γὰρ μέγας σφόδρα

⁵ καὶ εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον εἶδον νεανίσκον καθήμενον ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς περιβεβλημένον στολὴν λευκήν

καὶ ἐξεθαμβήθησαν

⁶ ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε Ἰησοῦν ζητεῖτε τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον ἠγέρθη οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε ἴδε ὁ τόπος ὅπου ἔθηκαν αὐτόν ⁷ ἀλλὰ ὑπάγετε εἴπατε τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῷ Πέτρῳ ὅτι προάγει ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν ἐκεῖ αὐτὸν ὄψεσθε καθὼς εἶπεν ὑμῖν

⁸ καὶ ἐξελθοῦσαι ἔφυγον ἀπὸ τοῦ μνημείου

εἶχεν γὰρ αὐτὰς τρόμος καὶ ἔκστασις

καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν

ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ

It’s come to that Seventh Day when Mariam from Magdala, Mariam of Jacob’s family, and Shaloma have been to the market for perfumes to go slather him with.

It’s very early on this one Seventh Day when they go, when on the memorial cave the sun’s just risen.

They’ve talked among themselves: “Who’s going to roll the boulder for us out of the doorway of the memorial cave?”

Looking up, they see that the boulder’s been rolled.

There it was, in fact, massively huge.

Going into the memorial, they observed a youth sitting on the righthand side of a white wrapped up robe.

They were freaked out.

He talks to them: “Don’t freak out. Joshua who you’re searching for who’s from Nazareth who was strung on a cross, he’s gotten up. He is not here, look. The place where he was positioned. The other thing is this. Set off to say this to his apprentices (even to Rocky): “He’s gone off ahead of you all, right into Galilee, where he’ll be observed, just as he said to you all.”

Going out, they ran from the memorial grave.

What they had, in fact, each of one them, were the shakes and weak knees.

Nobody said anything.

Terror had them, in fact.

[UPDATE: there's this alternate updated ending that ends with something like "Amen." It's to tidy up the terror in the text; it's the textual war on terror, if you will. But don't updates, like this one, somehow detract as alternates, unless we stay open to what might have been, which changes what is (as we know it)? If everybody thought that was the original ending, or the final one, then I would just translate that "The End."]