“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”
Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Pardon the absence, but Portugal and Italy and I apparently did not equal any kind of efficiency. Back to the real world and hopefully an interesting season ahead of us. What season? That’s a good question. Summer is still in vogue, at least in other countries, and there is relaxation and fun to be had even though some of us have to go back to work (or start working… the student life for me is over for now). This little column will be a pleasant rock in what will probably be a sea of manual labor. I am looking forward to going into more depth on raised subjects, and also to revisiting some older posts and articles from this site.
The Elegant Variation has a four part interview with Joseph O’Neill plastered all over their front page. O’Neill is the author of the critically acclaimed NYC/9/11/Cricket novel Netherland.
Much in the spirit of what I’ve failed to do these past three weeks, the Guardian has a list of a selection of famous people’s favorite beach reads, mixed with the paper’s own choices. A kind of inspiration can be found here; there are at least a dozen books on this list I’ve never heard of.
So what about my planned reading? I read and liked Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, but didn’t get further than that. Only about 50 pages of A Confederacy of Dunces on the plane from Rome to Prague, so thoughts on that one will have to wait.
My overall impression of Invisible Man was clearly marked by the fact that the book was written in the fifties, and reflects its own times. There is a kind of universal relevance in the novel’s themes, but they are nevertheless themes that have been treated in all forms of media ever since those years. Most of all, the book’s narrator is invisible because he is seen by not being seen; he is being looked at, not seen, by the non-black peoples; a bit trivial. The most interesting contemporary example, if we were to discuss this aspect, would be the academic debate on Representation and Post-colonialism, and how one achieves legitimate agency. The more interesting aspect of the book is the way it chronicles the North American experiences of a Southern black man, and his “backwardness” is used efficiently to expose the upsides and downsides of the social and political climate in New 
York City. The book is very well written, but I do feel that maybe I shouldn’t have read Ellison’s 30 year anniversary introduction, in which he discusses writing the book, before reading the actual book. It can sometime take you out of the world of the novel when you, mid-sentence, start thinking about the exact phrasing used by the author. Leave that for genetic criticism.
We are going to finish off with some bad news: Frank McCourt, who won the Pulitzer for his debut novel/autobiography Angela’s Ashes, the story of his impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland, has passed away, aged 78. McCourt, a New York City schoolteacher, followed up his acclaimed debut with T’is a Memoir and Teacher Man, which complete his story of how he came to be a beloved NYC schoolteacher for most of his life. He taught for many years at Stuyvesant High School. My aunt went to Stuyvesant, and when she graduated, Frank McCourt, retired, delivered a speech she still talks about today.
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