28 October 2009 | Uncategorized | salomd
This wonderful novel by the author of The Mezzanine and Human Smoke is the story of Paul Chowder, poet of little note, who is struggling as he tries to finish the introduction to an anthology of rhymed verse. In Baker’s inimitable style, Chowder informs the reader in crystal-clear detail about the tropes and conventions of rhymed verse, a style few contemporary poets still employ. Chowder picks on some of his favorites, particularly W.S. Merwin, and looks back to Walt Whitman as he also gives us insight into the mind of a sometime-academic fighting his own intellectual impotence. I have been reading Nicholson Baker since his first novel was published in 1986. He is a brilliant wordsmith. He will be speaking at Russell Sage College in the Fall of 2010.
Nicholson Baker. The Anthologist. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009. 243 pp. $25.00. 1416572449.
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28 October 2009 | Uncategorized | salomd
This brief memoir tells the horrific story of Jean-Dominique Bauby. The editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, in 1995 Bauby was stricken by a kind of stroke at the age of 43, leaving him in a condition medical science refers to as “locked-in syndrome.” He is essentially paralyzed, able only to blink his left eye in order to communicate. Bauby’s book (which was made into a film in 2007) makes little reference to the situation of his illness and instead focuses on what it is like to experience a world in which one is unable to respond. The nurses frustrate him, visitors sometimes anger him, but Bauby somehow lives on . . . but only for a short while. He passed away two days after the French publication of the book.
Jean-Dominique Bauby. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. New York: Vintage, 1997. 144 pp. $12.95. 0007790155.
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28 October 2009 | Uncategorized | salomd
This short (63 pages) novel, translated from Spanish, examines a deadly plague that has hit the inhabitants of an unnamed Mexican city. The narrator has converted his beauty salon into a kind of hospice where those afflicted can spend their dying days. The narrator actually tells us little about the nature of the plague itself (is it AIDS?), and instead focuses on the care and concern he has for these people he does not know. Nevertheless, amidst his exotic fish, he cares for these people as they quickly pass away. The novel seems to be a parable for modern life.
Mario Bellatin, Beauty Salon. San Francisco: City Lights, 2000 (English trans. 2009). 63pp. $10.95. 0872864731.
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