The Funeral Party. Translated from Russian, set in New York City. This looks like it will be a very quick read; I started it last night and I am already about a quarter of the way through (and I read two chapters of Vanity Fair on top of that).

Here is the Publisher’s Weekly description:

The oddly matched protagonists in this award-winning Russian author’s lively American debut are connected through their love for the artist Alik, a Russian émigré keeling merrily toward death. Alik’s loved ones gather at his cramped, stiflingly hot downtown Manhattan apartment, each trying to reconcile their memories with their moral obligations to the dying man. His neurotic wife, Nina, is desperate for Alik to be baptized; Maika, the 15-year-old daughter of his ex-lover, Irina, is upset that no one understands Alik’s jokes now that the man is sick.Ulitskaya uses the loved ones’ varying emigration experiences to underscore their attempts to respect one another’s places in Alik’s life and at his deathbed. One friend, for example, cannot get his impressive medical credentials certified in the U.S., while another not only passed his exams in record time but took advantage of advances in Western technology and found work in a cutting-edge field of medicine. Still, both live in poverty. Irina, a former circus acrobat, performed at night for “rich idiots,” using her earnings to graduate from law school, while Nina, a former model, now finds nothing for herself to do in the U.S. besides tend to Alik and drink. Ulitskaya is adept at capturing the subtle nuances of thought and experience, expressing both human spirit and flaws without false sentimentality. Her characters are fully realized, rendered in extraordinary detail.

This is the sort of novel I miss reading the most during the school year. I am very, very tired of contemporary British novelists right now.

It’s that time again. The 2005 list looks a lot like the 2004 list except it’s much longer. Hopefully there will be some deletions in the next month if I actually manage to knock a few more off last year’s list. I didn’t do very well this year, mostly because I took writing classes that left me without any time to read. Normally I read about 85 books a year but this year I am not sure I’ll make it to 60 books. But hey, I read Ulysses, and that should count as nine or ten books all by itself.

Next year I’ll be taking my comprehensive exam, hence all the retreads on this list. I’m also deleting a few from 2004 that are just not appealing to me at the moment. The items in bold are new additions for 2005; the unbolded items are pulled in from the 2004 list.

1. Alai, Red Poppies
2. Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
3. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
4. W.H. Auden, Selected Poems (Review)
5. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Review)
6. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Review)
7. James Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain
8. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Review)
9. Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
10. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
11. Camilo Jose Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte
12. Chang Ta-chun, Wild Kids
13. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Review)
14. Kate Chopin, The Awakening (Review)
15. Maryse Conde, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
16. William Congreve, The Way of the World (Review)
17. Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch
18. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (Review)
19. Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems (Review)
20. John Donne, Selected Poems (Review)
21. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
22. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Review)
23. George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
24. T.S. Eliot, Selected Poems (Review)
25. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
26. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” and Other Essays (Review)
27. William FaulknerAs I Lay Dying (Review)
28. William Faulkner, The Hamlet
29. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Review)
30. Carlos Fuentes, The Years With Laura Díaz
31. Glen Gold, Carter Beats the Devil (Review)
32. Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
33. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Review)
34. Heaney, Selected Poems (A reread)
35. Linda Hogan, Solar Storms Review
36. Hsiao Li-Hung, A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers
37. Zora Neale HurstonTheir Eyes Were Watching God Review
38. Henry James, Portrait of a Lady (Review)
39. Jennifer Johnston, The Railway Station Man
40. James Joyce, Dubliners (Review)
41. John Keats, Selected Poems (Review)
42. Lan Cao, Monkey Bridge
43. Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn
44. Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
45. David Lodge, Nice Work Review
46. Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (Review)
47. Herman Melville, Billy Budd (Review)
48. John Milton, Paradise Lost (Review)
49. Toni Morrison, Beloved (A reread) (Review)
50. Ovid, Metamorphoses
51. Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red
52. Annie Proulx, Postcards
53. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea Review
54. Matt Ruff, Set This House in Order : A Romance of Souls
55. Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo
56. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
57. William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Review)
58. Sam Shephard, True West (A reread)
59. Steven Sherrill, Visits from the Drowned Girl
60. Bapsi Sidhwa, Cracking India
61. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
62. Wallace Stevens, Selected Poems (A reread) (Review)
63. Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
64. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Selected Poems (Review)
65. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Review)
66. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Review)
67. Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat
68. Wang Chen-Ho, Rose, Rose, I Love You
69. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
70. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (Review)
71. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (Review)
72. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (Review)
73. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
74. William Wordsworth, Selected Poems (Review)
75. W.B. Yeats, Selected Poems (Review)

Vanity Fair. I can’t believe I got to be 35 years old without ever encountering Becky Sharp.

Tula Station. What a great book. See my previous comments here and here. I liked this even more than I expected to, even more than I liked Our Lady of the Circus. I said just a few weeks ago that I was a little tired of metafiction, but after reading Tula Station I think I can say that I am tired of pointless metafiction about uninteresting characters.

I am going to take exception to the reviews that suggested that Tula Station is a difficult read, because it is not. Yes, there are multiple layers of fiction here, but the layers are not complex or confusing, and it is not at all difficult to keep the different strands of stories separated. The only part of the novel that could be remotely confusing is near the end, when Froylán begins inventing alternate endings for Capistrán’s story, but the text explains what he is doing and, really, it is not a difficult novel.

Both Froylán and Capistrán are maybe a little difficult to like, but not in a way that ruins the story. About midway through the novel I started to be bothered by some of the two main characters’ sexism, but then I noticed that their sexism was not ruining the novel for me: it was just part of what made them such sad people. I say “sad people” because I don’t want to call them “tragic characters,” since in both cases they are responsible for a lot of what is wrong with them. And I don’t think the novel itself is sexist, because I had no trouble relating to and understanding the female characters even if the two male protagonists were too stuck in macho romanticism to share that understanding.

Like Our Lady of the Circus, this novel feels like it could have been a magical realist novel even though it is not. If magic had sprung up in the middle of Tula it would not have felt out of place. I read one review that suggested that Toscana has replaced magical elements with chaos theory, and I can buy that.

I really wish I understood the quasi-historical background of the novel, which was mentioned in some of the reviews. There is a real Tula, Mexico, and in particular there is a real abandoned city called Tula, but that Tula was an Aztec city abandoned thousands of years before the events in this novel. The descriptions I found of the modern city of Tula, Tula de Allende, sound nothing like the town in the novel. I also do not understand the significance of the name Juan Capistrán, which in the novel is not related to the saint. And the other characters make fun of the names Doménico and Froylán, but I don’t know why those are funny names. I hate it when I’m ignorant.

Still, this is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and highly recommended. I am so disappointed that his most recent novel has apparently not been translated into English.

I found this brief biography of Toscana and liked this description of his writing:

David Toscana describes his narrative aesthetics as “realismo desquiciado” (t: unrestrained realism) which breaks with magic realism. Neither rhyme nor reason determine his protagonists’ actions – what goes on in their world takes place in the imagination alone, albeit as an exchange between life and fiction unfolding on more than one level.

I realize his books are out of print in the U.S., and my school library at least doesn’t carry any of them, translated or not. Our local library has two English translation copies of Tula Station, though, as well as one in Spanish, and one translated copy of Our Lady of the Circus. And Amazon has a bazillion used copies.

Just continuing on my mission to make everyone read the books I like. What, you’d rather wait to see what Oprah is reading next?

Tula Station. One of my small missions in life is to make other people read David Toscana, but so far I am not having any luck. I lent my copy of Our Lady of the Circus to Ian but I bet he never read it. I tried three times to get the Usual Suspects book club to read it, and no luck. I have recommended Toscana to classmates, to professors, and everyone just looks at me like I am perhaps slightly insane.

But I am just going to keep trying, because David Toscana is amazing and I think it’s kind of sad that we Americans sit up here in our houses paying absolutely no attention to anything being written in Mexico. I include myself in that assessment; I read Mexican-American authors and South American authors, but I think Toscana is the first contemporary Mexican author I have even encountered. And he’s brilliant! And funny! And all postmodern and shit!

Here is what I said about Our Lady of the Circus when I read it last September:

At some point in the recent past I started to develop a guilt complex about the fact that I’d never read a single book by a Mexican author. I’ve read books by Mexican-American authors, of course, and by Central American and South American authors, but nothing by a Mexican author unless you count those Octavio Paz poems in college. I think the guilt was inspired by listening to All the Pretty Horses, and seeing Mexican characters reduced to scenery in McCarthy’s fucked-up prepostcolonial heart-of-darkness fantasy. And Toscana’s books kept showing up on my Amazon recommendations, so I finally picked up this one and Tula Station. The latter is supposed to be a complicated postmodern metafictional maze, and while I’m looking forward to reading it, I decided to read the easy one first.

This book was by turns both absurdly funny and bleakly tragic. I’ve read reviews that compared Toscana to Gabriel García Márquez and to Umberto Eco. There is no magical realism here but there is a sort of situational absurdity that reminds me of García Márquez. In some ways, this entire novel could be an extended riff on Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row.” I liked it.

I guess that wasn’t much. The Publisher’s Weekly blurb is a little more enticing:

A group of eight stranded circus performers colonize an abandoned town in this darkly humorous and poignantly allegorical novel by Mexican writer Toscana (Tula Station). A squabble between the two founders of the Mantecón Brothers Circus, Don Alejo and Don Ernesto, results in the split-up of performers and assets. When Don Alejo and the five men and three women left in his charge trudge into an abandoned town, they decide to become ordinary citizens, and the results are ludicrously serious. They rename the town Santa Maria of the Circus and hold a drawing to pick occupations. The midget, who cannot remember the Mass, is a priest. The bearded lady becomes a doctor, and the contortionist must play the role of Negro, and do all the work no one else wants to do. The paunchy strong man is discomfited but willing when he is assigned to be the town whore. Don Alejo, the only one who refuses to participate in the plan, secludes himself in the big top with his performing pig in its velveteen robe. Hungry and half-mad, the ex-performers sink periodically into self-gratifying reminiscences, only to awake to a fast-deteriorating reality. When Don Ernesto happens back with his half of the circus, the rest of the troupe is changed beyond recognition. Astringent, remorseless and spectacularly strange, this is a cunning social satire, a wise and wonderful companion to Charles G. Finney’s immortal Circus of Dr. Lao. Forecast: More accessible than the well-received but forbiddingly metafictional Tula Station, this clever and smoothly translated novel should stimulate interest in its impressive young Mexican author.

See? Don’t you want to read it now? It’s short! Non-forbiddingly metafictional!

Meanwhile, I am moving on to the forbidding metafiction. About Tula Station, Amazon has this to say:

It seems fitting for a man being heralded as heir to García Márquez and other Latin American godheads of postmodern circuitousness that the namesake of David Toscana’s English debut, Tula Station, is the central image and fulcrum of not only the novel but also any criticism that may be made of it. As the town of Tula’s fortune ultimately resides in the government’s decision of whether or not to include it on the railway line, so does the book’s success depend upon the reader’s willingness to separate its three narratives so that they become more than coincidental echoes of one another.

Supposedly culled by Toscana from the manuscript of Froylán Gómez, long considered dead, Tula Station continues to toy with the hazy realm between fact and fiction. Gómez is paid to write the biography of Juan Capistrán, the bastard orphan of Tula. Capistrán spends his life in pursuit of the affections of the beautiful, elusive Carmen as well as validation from the town of the once-prosperous Tula. Preoccupied with its ultimate standing in history’s eyes, the town goes to great lengths to leave its mark, including this amusing attempt to be the most populous city and therefore the capital:

How many more do we need? One hundred? Three hundred? And nobody can die. That is Dr. Isunza’s responsibility. I, one of them said, am going right home, and in nine months, I will provide another Tulteco. All applauded and drank to expanding their families. Well, I couldn’t even if I wanted to, señores, because my wife is already in menopause. Then marry off your daughters. And the men left the casino and headed home, ready to eliminate the cold showers, half acts and the not-todays.

Capistrán and the town itself quickly emerge as likable underdogs, thanks to Toscana’s loving attention to quirky details. Gómez, on the other hand, requires a bit more patience if one is to see something larger in the selfish rejection of his established life for the pursuit of yet another mysterious Carmen. The same can occasionally be said for the overall novel itself, cutting quickly back and forth between Gómez and Capistrán’s related journeys. But what is intended as harmony can descend into a temporary cacophony for anyone who is less than patient. Toscana supplies the story’s cords, but is up to the reader to elevate them to chords.

Now everybody else go track down a copy, and before you know it we’ll have a little David Toscana fanclub, right here at Outside of a Dog.

Birds Without Wings. It has been so long since I read Corelli’s Mandolin (which I loved) and the South American trilogy (which I also liked a lot although those books were not perfect by any means, and in fact I’m not even sure I ever read the third one) that I had practically forgotten de Bernieres still existed. I am enjoying this very much, although it is a very long recording and I don’t expect to finish it any time soon.

I confess that I am pretty ignorant of the historical background of the novel; I think we are in late 19th-century and early 20th-century Turkey. The novel shares one character with Corelli’s Mandolin, Drosoula Drapanitikos, who is the mother of Mandras in the earlier novel. The novel also shares one standard de Bernieres device, the mythically beautiful village girl, which I am awfully tired of. But I guess if it’s good enough for García Márquez it’s good enough for everyone else.

Like Life. A writing professor and a couple of classmates told me to read Lorrie Moore after reading my short stories. I love this collection so much that I can only assume that what they meant by that recommendation was, “Give it up; Lorrie Moore is writing all the short stories we need; you suck.” She takes everything that was good about Tama Janowitz and early Anne Tyler and makes it deeper, better, more lyrical. I have a new favorite writer.

Flaubert’s Parrot. A lesson to be learned: do not read back covers. A review quoted there compared this book to Pale Fire, so I read it without ever trusting the narrator. Which might have been fine, but I think my mistrust was too deep and it kind of spoiled the book for me. Once again, I admired this book more than I loved it; I think it would annoy the crap out of anyone who is not a past or present English major. I also can’t imagine reading this without having read Madame Bovary, although I was the only person in my class who had read the Flaubert and most of the students enjoyed the book a lot. One guy said he wanted to throw it in the fire, and several people were entirely silent during the class discussion, but at least one person really engaged with the narrator’s story, and several more, like me, admired the writing enough to get over not really caring about the narrator.

I would classify this as a novel but some of my classmates disagreed. It’s a fictional biography and autobiography, an essay on literary biography and criticism, a collection of styles and approaches and sly in-jokes. It is a lot of fun if you are familiar with Flaubert or have an interest in literary criticism, and I suspect it is just a big mysterious mess otherwise.

Jeremy wanted to read this book at one point but I am going to hide it, because if he reads it he will go back to mocking and deriding and generally bitching about lit majors, and I just broke him of that habit, and if he picks it up again I am going to have to kill him.

Last Orders. Public service announcement: Audible’s version of this book is missing several chapters at the end. Audible has not responded to my complaint about this issue. Do not purchase this book from Audible. Too bad, because it was not a bad recording at all up to that point.

A very good book. Far more entertaining if you have read As I Lay Dying, since this borrows the basic plot and narrative structure from Faulkner, along with a nod or two to Chaucer. Taking that structure — a group of people take a loved one’s remains to his desired resting place, with each character taking turns telling the story in his or her own voice — and transplanting it to post-war working-class England, Swift manages to retain a whole lot of the humor and pathos of Faulkner’s original without being annoyingly derivative or overtly clever.

I will take one Graham Swift over ten thousand Ian McEwans.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman. By far my favorite of the books assigned in my contemporary British novel class. Will you kick me out of the cool kids’ club if I say that I am a little bit tired of metafiction? I keep having this nagging feeling that everything the young hotshots are doing, Nabokov did earlier and with far more subtlety. This novel is a bit older — 1964, I think — and now that I’ve read it, I am even more irritated by the authors who think they need to keep revisiting this particular theme (style, whatever). Fowles said everything that needed to be said, and this book is so good, so much fun to read and so engaging on multiple levels, that I think everyone else needs to find a new parlor trick already. (At the very least, now that I’ve read this I don’t understand why Possession was necessary at all.)

I confess, though, that I think Sarah is a contender for most annoying character in fiction. I loved the book in spite of disliking every single character except for the narrator.