Colm Tóibín: The Master

"It would spoil my post-mortem expression which I have been practising for years."

This is what James's sister says some time before her death, which he eventually attends:

"He stayed by her body, knowing that lying peacefully in death was what she had craved to do. She looked beautiful and noble, and he believed, after all his earlier doubts, that if she could see herself as her body awaited cremation, she would feel a grim delight at what she had become."

And on and on the book is filled with gems like this one, and that one:

"She could not utter a sentence without making passionate changes to her expression, smiling and frowning, and puckering up her perfect nose. He wondered how her face had withstood so many changes in its weather. Soon, he thought, there would be a landslide, something would have to give."

His brother William about his books: "In this crowded and hurried reading age you will remain unread and neglected as long as you continue to indulge in this style and these subjects."

How true! Henry James' leaden style has probably not only deterred me from reading his books, particularly his later ones. Even the Queen is impatient: Alan Bennett writes in his Uncommon Reader, "It was Henry James she was reading one teatime when she shouts out loud, 'Oh, do get on.' "

Then what a nice surprise Tóibín's weightless novel is, undoing the frustration of trying to read James' novels and tales and failing.

There are several books about Henry James on the market. However, I cannot believe that any of the other books betters Tóibín's. Here is a nice portrait of the fight for supremacy in the Henry James novelization market, written by one of the authors, David Lodge is given here.

Zadie Smith: White Teeth

Wow, did this book take me long to read! More than one month. I do not know if it is a good idea to set up a list of 10 books and then force oneself to read them all consecutively. Because in the meantime I bought a bunch of other books one by one but cannot read them. E.g., William Styron's "Sophie's Choice" (I even bought the DVD). I have wanted to read this book for a long time, Styron's recent death made this reading wish even more urgent. But I have to finish the other two books in the list of 10 first.

Also, I come to a point at which I doubt if I have to make my reading life public. Who is interested in my reports anyway? No one. So I write these hesitant outpourings for myself, diary-style. One thing is clear: this is the last time I write a literary blog. It is much more interesting to read those of others, e.g. Of Books and Bicycles, The Elegant Variation, The Millions.

Back to White Teeth: if I lived in the heterogenous environment of London which the book is about, I would have finished it in a much shorter time. My strongest impression for the book which went on and on, was the end which surprised me: the recombinant mouse disappears, and so does this - recombinant - book: after one month of reading snippets and snippets of the novel, not much to remember is left.