Category Archives: Literature

Last year at the end of November, I decided to read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. I had always wanted to read The Idiot, but after having gone to Wiesbaden, I was pretty close to reading The Gambler instead. Nevertheless, I was still convinced that I would relate more to an idiot than a gambler, and so I chose The Idiot.

After about two weeks of intense reading, I was totally absorbed by the story. Dostoevsky has an incredible power of description and to detail the psychology of a large number of characters right from the beginning. This unfortunately is also a problem. Reading Dostoevsky (like Tolsoy) requires great dedication and concentration. It is like going to the gym. Once you miss a day or two, you have to start all over from the beginning. And that is what precisely happened to me with The Idiot. At the beginning of December 2005, I was busy for a few days and was not able to read. Those two days turned into a month, and the next thing I knew, I was engulfed in working at FON — where amongst another 19 things, I did not have time to continue with Prince Mishkin’s tale. So I had left the Prince a little more than a third into his story (around page 320). Allow me to continue:

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I am just about to go to bed and finish off the long day by reading Haruki Murakami’s short story, “The Year of Spaghetti” from his new book of short stories Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. As you may know from two previous posts (Noruwei no Mori and Haruki Murakami), I am very much a fan of the Japanese novelist. In any event, this story is about a guy who spends an entire year cooking pasta for himself everyday, seven days a week, and always eats the pasta by himself. As a matter of fact, he believes that pasta should be eaten by oneself in solitude. When I read the following lines, a huge smile formed stretched across my face (emphasis added in bold):

“Every time I sat down to a plate of spaghetti –especially on a rainy afternoon — I had the distant feeling that somebody was about to knock on my door. The person I imagined about to visit me was each time different. Sometimes stranger, sometimes someone I knew. Once it was a girl with slim legs whom I had dated at school, and once it was myself from a few years back, come to pay a visit. And one time it was none other than William Holden, with Jennifer Jones on his arm . . . Not one of these people, though, actually ventured into my apartment. They hovered just outside the door, without knocking, like fragments of memory, and then slipped away.”

After having just finished reading Catch-22 on Sunday and two other excellent books this summer, I was desparately in search of something new to read. Last year, I finally got myself around to reading Stendhal’s The Red and the Black and absolutely loved it. Thus, on Sunday evening, I pulled out my copy of The Charterhouse of Parma. Twenty pages later, it just wasn’t happening for me, so I decided to leave it for some future date. I then turned to one of my alltime favorites, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (of whom I have written about previously). Norwegian Wood gets its name from the Beatles’ song of the same title, and is one of those stories that I wish I could re-read a hundred times for the very first time. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone. Curiously enough, the novel tends to be better received by my male friends than my female ones . . .

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I am finally reading Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. I love this dialogue between the overzealous and immature Nately and the elderly Italian man in a brothel as it puts many contemporary issues into perspective:

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As mentioned in a previous post, I have just finished reading one book and am in search of a new one. Since I began to work in FON, I have not had much time at all to read, but this summer I have read two very good books: “Another Country” by James Baldwin and “Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow. What I have noticed is that there is a big difference between reading fiction and non-fiction, and the difference reminds me of Neitzsche’s concept of the Eternal Return. Basically, fiction is always alive, while non-fiction dies upon completing the book. Ironic, but here is what I mean:

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For no reason whatsoever, I just recalled this line from Stephen Vizinczey’s An Innocent Millionaire (I also recommend In Praise of Older Women):

“To be jealous of a woman one doesn’t love is the most ridiculous form of vanity . . . “