Sunday, July 27, 2014
Reading up to date
I have neglected writing about my reading.
Perhaps because when I am reading I am not thinking about writing and certainly not about writing about my reading at the moment. Or something.
I need to catch up.
I just put down a wonderful book called The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. In this lovely novel, various characters get their own chapter. All are part of the staff or audience for a small English language paper published in, of all places, Italy. It is owned by a guy named Ott who has a business empire. He bought it and sort of forgot it many years ago. His story is one of those told. As well as that of his successor son who is a wastrel and idler.
This ownership situation allows the writers and readers have at it together for years without interruption or financial cares. A necessary removal of reality for the kind of things folks get up to here. It is a serious journalistic enterprise however and the mix of ex-pats and locals involved all live very interesting lives, indeed.
The Gelman family are newer Russian emigres and the youngest son, an aspiring writer, is the subject of A Replacement Life. Slava. There is no telling about him in a short review. He is a dolt and a genius and as he sets forth to write his grandmother's ghetto to holocaust to immigrant story. He gets swept up in the stories of a lot of her friends. He makes up grandiose stories which somehow end up being case making for reparations from Germany for their wartime depredations. And so on. His efforts are fraudulent and he is just on the cusp of arrest when, well, that is the story. Great dialect humor without being in dialect. I loved it.
I am currently reading Steve Martin's biography by Steve Martin. Born Standing Up
He says it is not an autobiography because he is writing about this other Steve Martin, the famous one, who became a comedian and not himself. OK. Good idea. It is fun to read. Breezy in the Martin style but not without some bittersweet details about where all that genius comes from.
