Night Train to Lisbon, by Pascal Mercier

I feel I should have liked this book more than I did. And there were aspects of it that I really liked. I found the central character, a middle-aged philologist who drops out of his life and runs off to Lisbon on a whim, sympathetic and appealing. His central quest is set in motion after he discovers and is drawn in by an unusual book. In Lisbon, he seeks out family and associates of the book’s author — Amadeu Prado, tracing his life to try to understand the fundamental mystery behind this person whose writings so spoke to him. This is a storyline that goes right to my own sensibilities. (I am, after all, someone who traveled to an out-of-the-way island at the north end of Patagonia — and some other places besides — because of books I’ve read.) The flaw, for me, in this book was the text within the text. I failed to be drawn into the Prado text the way the central character was meant to have been. This book within the book ends up being quite a large chunk of the book, interspersed throughout, which made the reading a bit of a slog for me. I was much more engaged when the book recounted the activities, and thoughts, and interactions of the central character - even as they are largely inspired by (and find reflection in) Prado’s life and writing.

I read the first half of Night Train to Lisbon in January, then set it aside to bring Little Fires Everywhere with me on a trip. Then I didn’t go back to it, and didn’t go back to it again. I wasn’t sure I would go back to it at all, but my reading life has felt so disjointed in 2020, I decided I should give it another shot just to take the weight off. I picked it up again 2 days ago and read it on my commutes, then I read the last 175 pages in one sustained go on a flight from NY to Vegas (after seriously considering bringing another book instead, as I had done when I went to Kansas). I must say I’m quite relieved to have it behind me, and I am glad I went back to it.

Butcher's Crossing, by John Williams

An unexpected train of thought I kept having while reading Butcher's Crossing was about trust. Specifically, the trust you put in an author to see you through to the end of the story gently. Of course, this isn't always what you want as a reader, or what an author wants your experience to be. Several times over the 10 days it took me to read it, I considered stopping reading Butcher's Crossing. At the very beginning, I had the sense that things could go very badly indeed. And if this book had been by just about anyone besides John Williams, I likely would have stopped. But I trusted Williams to make it bearable and even beautiful, and in the end it was.

Butcher's Crossing follows 4 men on a buffalo hunt in the Rocky Mountains in the 1870s, centering on one member of the party, Will Andrews, a young man from Boston who has come west to find himself. The slaughter of the buffalo through the middle of the book was depressing and difficult to read, and in the end futile, which is sort of the point of the story. The one lengthy description of a buffalo stand (which cursory further research shows was based on a myth about buffalo behavior) was heartbreaking. It probably didn't help that I was recently in Kansas where I visited a buffalo sanctuary. To think that millions of buffalo roamed wild throughout that part of the country 150 years ago and that most of them were just slaughtered -- well, to say it got me feeling down would be putting it very lightly.

Although there was virtually nothing "industrial" about this book (the introduction of the railroad, which plays a small part in the book being the notable exception), it made a grim picture of industrial era. The reason for the hunt -- to supply the in-demand buffalo hides for popular robes back east, the scale of the kill -- in the area of 4000 buffalo, and the bottoming out of the market for buffalo hides that renders the whole exercise meaningless, all signal market-driven modernity. Reading this reminded me of two quite different roughly contemporary books that chronicled this time period as it was happening: Moby-Dick and Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames (I could just imagine the department for buffalo hide robes in the latter).

As I said at the beginning, Butcher's Crossing was occasionally quite beautiful. After being trapped in the Rockies for months, when the moment comes for the hunting party to return to Kansas, Will Andrews feels elation at being finally able to leave, but also "a curious sadness like a presentiment of nostalgia." A presentiment of nostalgia. Beautiful.

North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell

As you will know if you read my last post, I was quite sick in January, which gave me lots of time to lie in bed and watch BBC miniseries. I watched the new Sanditon (if you are a monthly donor to your local PBS station, as I am, you can watch the entire series ahead of the air dates -- I watched the whole thing the weekend episode 1 premiered), which was great but very unlike how Austen would have written it I'm sure. The inconclusive ending (which I gather is more from the hope of having a season 2 than from the fact that it's an unfinished Austen novel) left me wanting a conclusive ending, so I watched the 1995 Pride and Prejudice (which I have seen so many times I can recite it, though I hadn't watched it for several years). I think it was after this that I watched North and South, though I subsequently watched Daniel Deronda and the 2009 Emma (with Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightly, which I found very disconcerting), and then eventually I watched North and South again because I realized it was really what I was craving. I had watched it years ago and remembered liking it, but didn't remember much else. For quite some time, I would say that I had been consciously not watching North and South because I have had the book for years and I always thought I should read the book while the series was distant in my memory before watching the series again. My need for endless hours of period romance broke my will, but after watching the series twice in as many weeks, I decided maybe it was actually time to read the book. I'm still not sure whether this was a mistake.

This post made me think it was probably better to have watched and developed an affection for the miniseries first, because going the other way always highlights the deficiencies that must come from cutting down a book for adaptation. I will say I fully agree with the author's point 3 and partly agree with her point 4. She is also 100% correct in saying that Mrs. Thornton is wonderful in the series - Sinéad Cusack was perfect and I heard her voice every time Mrs. Thornton spoke in the book, and Richard Armitage is also great as Mr. Thornton. I don't really agree with her gripes about the portrayal of Margaret; I found the Margaret in the book occasionally trying and written against her own type, if that's possible. It's been a while since I've read a novel from this era, but some of the tropes around women attributed to Margaret -- her quickness to cry, tire -- even fainting once, and especially her self-reproach for her supposed sin (of lying for a good reason), seemed to contradict her self-possession and mastery of her emotions that is described throughout the book. I appreciated the de-Victorianization of Margaret in the miniseries, even while it may not be faithful to the book. I also found some of the religious sentiment in the book a bit heavy-handed, which again reminds me I'm out of practice in reading 19th Century literature, though the point of Margaret's father having lost his faith in the church was quite interesting in the book, and much better explained there than in the mini-series. These complaints aside, I did enjoy the book and I'm looking forward to rewatching North and South for the third time this year quite soon.

Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng

The start of 2020 has been, objectively speaking, not great for me. The very beginning of the year was good: on New Year's Day, I woke up with a bit of a hangover, but I did an hour-long guided meditation session that was fantastic, went to see Varda by Agnès, followed by my annual tradition in-the-making of half-price calendar shopping at the Strand, and finally dinner at Han Dynasty with a friend, and on all the subway rides between these activities I was reading Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me. It was truly one of the best New Year's Days ever. The Marías took me through the first 10 days of 2020, and in fact those 10 days were all fine. It was only after that that things went south. Over that weekend, I went back to reading Interpreter of Maladies, which I had started at the end of 2019. I read one story, then set it aside again. (I do intend to finish it yet.) On the following Monday morning, I started Night Train to Lisbon, which I stuck with for the next 10 days, though I was finding it rather slow. And it was during those 10 days that things took a turn for the worse, from which I have only just mostly recovered.

Things were going well at work, but I was completely swamped, and so also stressed. When the 3-day MLK weekend rolled around, I needed it so much, and the snow that Saturday only made the decision to stay home and watch TV all day feel more right. I guess the first thing that happened was I got a text message from my dad informing me that my great aunt - my last living relative from my grandparents' generation - had died. It wasn't a surprise; she was 96 and had not been well for some time. The rest of my weekend progressed relaxingly enough, but on Monday I felt the first signs of a cold sore coming on, as sometimes happens when I'm under a lot of stress. I applied Abreva (which really does work wonders) and went about my day: seeing 1917 for the second time, going to the gym, eating leftover pizza. Nothing major. About 10 minutes after I arrived at the office on Tuesday morning, I got a phone call from my dad asking if I wanted to go with him to my great-aunt's funeral. I hadn't really thought I would, but when he called, I realized I really wanted to -- it had been ages since I'd seen many members of that part of my family -- and so I booked a flight right then to fly to Wichita, Kansas that Friday and suddenly my already abbreviated workweek was shortened by another day and I had just 8 working days to prepare for a workshop I was leading in Houston the following weekend, as well as lots of other little things I was juggling. I thought I had successfully headed off the cold sore, but Wednesday it came back; an annoyance. Thursday, I had after work plans to go to the Philharmonic with my mom, and just as I was finishing my workday, I got my period. It was not unexpected, but added another unpleasant wrinkle to my travel plans: cramps.

Anyway, Friday morning I woke up and packed (I had had no time between when I made my travel plans and Friday morning to prepare at all) and headed to JFK. I had a tight connection in Atlanta where I was meeting up with my dad, but it worked fine. We got to Wichita and picked up our car and tried to take country roads to the town where the funeral was, but the country roads turned into dirt roads a little ways from the highway, so we went back to the interstate. Golden hour was amazing - the shadows are so long when there are no buildings to block the sun. We got to the church as the viewing was wrapping up and then went out to dinner with various extended family members. The funeral was the following morning and there was a huge turn-out of my relatives: cousins I hadn't seen in years, and the next generation (and even one member of the generation after that: my great-aunt's great great granddaughter!), many of whom I had never even met. After the funeral and the burial and the lunch back at the church (with 5 types of Jell-O salad), I went for coffee with my dad, his cousin, her daughter, who I had been close with growing up, and her two daughters, who I hadn't seen in years. That night we had dinner with other cousins (so many cousins!). I guess this is all to say that the funeral was actually great; it was what a funeral should be. I'm so glad I went. But Sunday morning I woke up with a dry cough and just feeling a little off. We were flying out that morning, so I picked up some Zicam (which I swear by when I feel like I'm coming down with something). We made a detour on our way to the airport to drive through the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge where we saw dozens of elk and buffalo, as well as a few deer while we were en route. The trip back to NY after that was uneventful. When I got home around 7pm, I was just so tired.

I woke up Monday morning a bit under the weather, but I had a meeting that afternoon I felt I shouldn't miss and I didn't feel too terrible. It was a mild day, but I wore my long down parka because I seemed to be running cold, and I found myself shivering the whole way into the office on the subway. Almost as soon as I got to the office, I realized that coming in had been a mistake. I took care of a couple things I absolutely needed to do and then turned around and went back home, where I got back in bed immediately and spent the next couple hours feverish with occasional chills. I ordered in pho for lunch, but could only drink the broth. I took a conference call that afternoon, which took all the energy I had. Around 5, I called my mom and told her I needed help with food: I had very little at home, no energy to go get any, and a struggling appetite. My mom came over with soup, saltines, and a thermometer. I had a 101.5 degree fever. I managed to eat a bunch of saltines and a bowl of soup. Then I went to bed feeling feverish and slept fitfully. In the morning, I got up and went to urgent care as soon as they opened, where I was tested for and diagnosed with the flu. I don't think I'd ever had the flu before. I had mild congestion and a bit of a cough, but mostly my symptoms were exhaustion, fever, and a loss of my appetite. Luckily, I had gotten the flu shot, which supposedly helps, and I went to the doctor soon enough that they prescribed me tamiflu. I went straight to the pharmacy for the latter and also bought some Tylenol and then went home to rest between conference calls. I ended up staying home the rest of the week, working remotely starting Wednesday, but still so exhausted. I didn't leave my apartment between when I got home from urgent care on Tuesday and when I left for the airport to fly to Houston on Friday morning (the doctor had told me I would be ok to fly as long as my fever was gone and my other symptoms weren't worse). I made it through my 2-day workshop. After the initial symptoms passed, the hardest thing honestly was my loss of appetite. I am never not hungry, so it was the strangest experience for me not to feel like eating. Coffee tasted awful; I drank Coke for my caffeine for 4 days. (Prior to this it had probably been more than 5 years since I'd had a Coke.) I'm only just getting my appetite back and I'm still finding coffee - which I normally adore - a little repugnant. Anyway, I flew home from Houston on Saturday night and got home around 1am. I woke up groggy on Sunday morning around 8, went back to sleep and finally woke up around 10:30, which is the latest I've slept in ages. I spent most of the day in bed watching TV. I took Monday off work to clean and recover and finally get my life back in order. I went back to work on Tuesday, still with a mild cough and a rattle in my chest. Even today there's a little rattle. I feel like I lost a week of my life. I lost more than a week of my reading time.

Night Train to Lisbon had been slow going and so I thought I should bring something different for my plane reading. For me to read on a plane, rather than watch movies, I need something engrossing. As I packed for Kansas, I decided to bring Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere. I had read her earlier book, Everything I Never Told You, partly on planes and found it to be the right kind of book for that: both lovely and absorbing. I think I read about 90 pages of Little Fires Everywhere on my Kansas trip. It did have the qualities I was looking for; I was sucked right in. At one point, things went a bit dark and I had a strong sense of foreboding. I thought about my list of books I had to stop reading because I feared for the central characters. And then I didn't read the whole week I was sick, and all the while the bad things I was sure were going to happen hung over me. Tuesday morning, when I went back to work, I read on the subway as usual. Wednesday I did it again. I was close enough that I could have finished the book Wednesday night, but I wasn't sure I wanted to read what was coming. So, yesterday I read it again on the subway to work and I nearly finished it on the subway home and I read the last 5 pages after I got home and, while bad things did happen, it was also ok. I just needed to pace myself. There is, apparently, going to be a mini-series of this book and I know there is no way I will be able to watch it. That this book gave me the anxiety it did speaks mainly in its favor, and I think it was very well conceived and written, but I can't say reading it was exactly a pleasurable experience. Or maybe if I had been in different circumstances myself I wouldn't have felt it so acutely.