Archive for January 11th, 2009
Essays by Grossman, Pamuk
Not book reviews, just quick notes -
Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics, by David Grossman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008; 144 pages, $18). Grossman is an Israeli who writes essays, commentary, and occasionally journalism - but mostly novels. I’ve never read his fiction but his essays are wonderful. The title piece in this collection was first delivered in 2007 as an address at the Pen American Center. Like much good writing it seems artless at first, almost shapeless - think of Montaigne or “The Golden Notebook” - and yet at the same time utterly assured. In this and the other essays, Grossman gropes his way through the dark to celebrate the triumph of private language over the debasement of words by governments and interest groups at war with each other. Grossman writes from a country at war, and yet what he has to say is quite pertinent to the U.S. , a country busy conducting not one but two wars out of the immediate sight of its citizens.
Other Colors, by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage paperback reprint, 2008, 464 pages, $15.95). I’m actually reading the 2007 hardcover edition, which I picked up a couple of weeks ago at The Strand over on Broadway and 12th Street in Manhattan. I enjoyed though never finished an earlier memoir by this Nobel prize winner, Istanbul: Memories and the City - hmm, I’ll have to get back to that one at some point. What I like about Pamuk is his slow style, abhorrence of confession for its own sake, masculine sentimentality, and willingness to muse about meaning rather than merely present a string of scenes. A nice change from the relentlessly present-tense memoirs churned out in this country.
