Been a while, eh wot?
I’m back at school after a long weekend. We went to Seoul and visited Lotte World, the largest indoor amusement park in the world. It was - good! Then we bought $140 of books yesterday - nice new books at Bandi & Luni’s bookstore in the Coex Mall. I got a big book of the short fiction of Nikolai Gogol - yes, the same author who contributed his name to Gogol Bordello, that one crazy Ukrainian-American band. But Gogol is perhaps more famous as the author of such classics as Dead Souls and The Overcoat, both of which are sparkling gems. Had he lived longer, he might have established himself as the greatest Russian novelist of the 19th century, for he had something that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, for all their brilliance, lacked - style. Gogol had style in spades. His wit and vivacity are comparable to Dickens. But, alas, he fell under the influence of an insane monk, who convinced him that it was in his best interest to starve himself to death and burn his manuscripts. Reader, never doubt the malevolence of insane Russian mystics. Rasputin is but the tip of the iceberg.
To digress - I found a hefty book of Gogol’s short works, and snapped it up. I’ve had a hard time finding his stuff in the past.
I also got a compendium of the complete prose works of Jorge Luis Borges. Who? you say, while shaking your head perplexedly. Who? you repeat, whilst your brain rattles pea-like in the maraca of your skull. Borges, the Argentine writer who worked in genre literature such as detective stories and fantasy fiction, blending each seamlessly with metaphysics and meditations on the role of the narrative, thereby showing us how seeds in the loamy soil of pulp can sprout into lofting trees of literature? Yes, the same. Umberto Eco named a character in The Name of the Rose after him. The Argentine government put his face on a coin.
I’ve been looking for his books for a while, and all I’ve found is The Book of Imaginary Beings, a bestiary. It’s fascinating, but I want to read the man’s fiction. So happy was I yesterday to espy an omnibus.
Then I bought a copy of Saint Augustine’s Confessions. Weighty stuff. But Papillon is steeped in medieval Christianity, a subject in which I am embarrassingly ignorant. I seek to rectify this situation!
And I got Joe Haldeman’s Forever War. This is depicted often as the counterpoint to Starship Troopers, a book I enjoyed, though disagreed with. It also incorporates the author’s experience in Vietnam into a scifi setting. Since we’re basically hip-deep in Vietnam 2 right now, this may be more relevant than ever.
Currently, I’m dividing my attention between Thomas Lippman’s Understanding Islam and Dan Simmons’s Fall of Hyperion.
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