Oh looky-loo! In between not writing about the 2011 Road Trip and finishing up my first year of graduate school, I hacked out another book review. I'm really starting to enjoy Archipelago Press books, and while 2-2 may not seem like a telling result, it certainly means something to me!
This review was of Polish writer Wiesław Myśliwski's Stone Upon Stone, a fantastic book just under 550 pages long. Here's the beginning of the review:
" It doesn’t take that many pages to figure out that the narrator of Stone Upon Stone is a womanizing, egotistical douche bag. Through a hyperbolic and highly digressive retelling of his life (ironically centered on the construction of a tomb), main man Szymek Pietruszka makes it clear that he is known by all around him as the best drinker, fighter, singer, dancer, ladies’ man—all the men want to be him and all the women want to be with him, etc. etc. But what’s amazing is that as much as Szymek is the type of guy you’d want to elbow hard in the back of the neck “on accident,” you can’t help but feel for and even like him. In just under 600 pages of palpable rural Polish imagery and culture, author Wiesław Myśliwski shows how easy it is to take a man who has seemingly spent his life at the top of his game and break him down piece-by-piece until he has nothing left but himself and the land.
Wiesław Myśliwski (1932- ) is an award winning Polish novelist and playwright whose novels have largely not yet been translated into English (with the exception of Palace [1991, Peter Owen Ltd] and the forthcoming A Treatise on Shelling Beans [2013, Archipelago]). Stone Upon Stone (Polish original published in 1984) has been called Myśliwski’s “grand epic,” and not without reason. In addition to specializing in all things Polish countryside, Myśliwski is a master not only of invoking location, but also of creating characters. The voice of Szymek Pietruszka is so distinct and so unique that it’s almost unreal to think the English translation is, in fact, a translation. That’s not to say it’s been streamlined to fit what could be considered a more “American” ideal or standard for fiction—this book is undeniably European. It’s more like the book was originally written in English."
Click here to read the full review.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
How it Feels
Since words have no place, this is an approximation of what it feels like to have completed and survived my first year of graduate school:
Wide open, expansive, free, overly pink like cotton candy and, yes, even a little fluffy.
I don't normally process or edit anything this...rosy, but it's what seemed the best at the moment. I could jump on a million trampolines for a million years, run a million miles, somersault down a million hills--fair enough, that sounds like a triathlon for people dressed in the latest trends in straight jackets--but it just feels pretty damn good. And I didn't screw up once!
Wide open, expansive, free, overly pink like cotton candy and, yes, even a little fluffy.
I don't normally process or edit anything this...rosy, but it's what seemed the best at the moment. I could jump on a million trampolines for a million years, run a million miles, somersault down a million hills--fair enough, that sounds like a triathlon for people dressed in the latest trends in straight jackets--but it just feels pretty damn good. And I didn't screw up once!
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
The Chukchi Bible
Oh hey! I wrote a book review for my internship class and the Three Percent blog a few weeks ago of The Chukchi Bible by Yuri Rytkheu. I really enjoyed the mixture of memoir and folk tale, as well as learning a bit more about the lifestyle of Arctic and nomadic tribes. So until my final course paper is written and before I finaly get to a recap of the March cross-country road trop, here's an excerpt of my review-oriented ramblings:
"A bird flies around, takes a few shits, the shit turns into land and, voilà, the world is created.
That may sound like a summary of a terrible animated short or a 1970s acid trip, but it’s simply my poorly hyper-abridged version of one of many truly beautiful Chukchi folk tales that mark the beginning of time and man in Yuri Rytkheu’s The Chukchi Bible. Here’s the real version:
A raven was flying over an expanse. From time to time he slowed his flight and scattered his droppings. Wherever solid matter fell, a land mass appeared; wherever liquid fell became rivers and lakes, puddles and rivulets. Sometimes First Bird’s excrements mingled together, and this created the tundra marshes. The hardest of the Raven’s droppings served as the building blocks for scree slopes, mountains, and craggy cliffs.
There’s just something amazing about folk tales. I grew up with them as bedtime stories and have had a soft spot for them ever since, even preferring them to all things Disney. See, I find fairy tales lack that realistic nitty-gritty and hometown hero charm only a culture-specific folk tale can evoke. “Folk tales” focus on specific aspects of a culture, its values and history, whereas “fairy tales” are mostly about dwarves, princes hooking up with princesses, and evil queens getting tossed into canyons. While both forms of story telling are meant to entertain, folk tales are better in regard to educating and reminding us where we come from. And The Chukchi Bible has no shortage of heroes, culture, reality and that delicious nitty-gritty that makes stories like this all the more tangible."
The rest of the review can be found here. So far I'm 2/2 on reading and liking works published by Archipelago Books. I've got a couple more from them to start and hope I'll find them just as enjoyable.
"A bird flies around, takes a few shits, the shit turns into land and, voilà, the world is created.
That may sound like a summary of a terrible animated short or a 1970s acid trip, but it’s simply my poorly hyper-abridged version of one of many truly beautiful Chukchi folk tales that mark the beginning of time and man in Yuri Rytkheu’s The Chukchi Bible. Here’s the real version:
A raven was flying over an expanse. From time to time he slowed his flight and scattered his droppings. Wherever solid matter fell, a land mass appeared; wherever liquid fell became rivers and lakes, puddles and rivulets. Sometimes First Bird’s excrements mingled together, and this created the tundra marshes. The hardest of the Raven’s droppings served as the building blocks for scree slopes, mountains, and craggy cliffs.
There’s just something amazing about folk tales. I grew up with them as bedtime stories and have had a soft spot for them ever since, even preferring them to all things Disney. See, I find fairy tales lack that realistic nitty-gritty and hometown hero charm only a culture-specific folk tale can evoke. “Folk tales” focus on specific aspects of a culture, its values and history, whereas “fairy tales” are mostly about dwarves, princes hooking up with princesses, and evil queens getting tossed into canyons. While both forms of story telling are meant to entertain, folk tales are better in regard to educating and reminding us where we come from. And The Chukchi Bible has no shortage of heroes, culture, reality and that delicious nitty-gritty that makes stories like this all the more tangible."
The rest of the review can be found here. So far I'm 2/2 on reading and liking works published by Archipelago Books. I've got a couple more from them to start and hope I'll find them just as enjoyable.
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