Sunday, February 04, 2007

I Officially Suck

Yes, as you may have already heard, I officially suck. But to redeem my suckiness I will now recommend some of the shorter things I've read this month.
First there's James Baldwin's short stories, "Sonny's Blues" in particular that is very warmly recommended. The stories are mainly about the blacks in America in the 30-40s I think. It's hard to tell from my picture, but I'm not black, and it's not the 30-40s (I think), and I'm not American, yet somehow Baldwin manages to place you accurately in the shoes of people who are distanced from you by so many factors. It's like you don't have to be black to feel soul music or jazz, which is actually what "Sonny's Blues" is about.
Next is Grace Paley who actually reminds you of the tradition Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foyer come from. That immigrant literature that seems to be peculiar to Jews but could belong to anybody who still has a concept of old world/new world. Literature with accents, stories with histories, it never seems to get tiring. That baggage that keeps piling up on each new generation, that each generation of writers volunteers its shoulders for. It's all there already with Paley who wrote from the 60s till this day (she's a really old and sweet looking lady now).
And there's also John Updike, who is probably the most successful and acknowledged out of all three. He's also the voice of the fat, lazy, glutinous middle class who don't take anything seriously, who go shopping just to shop and make money just to have it. Updike is bitter, realistic and caustic, trying to kick American's off their pleasure seeking asses. The stories are knockouts though the reality is much the same as it was 50 years ago.
So that's pretty much America in short stories, brought to you by the Ideology and the Subject in American Culture course at the Tel Aviv university. Those are the three writers that most impressed me out of the ones I wasn't already familiar with.
So, until the day I have time to read for pleasure only,
Toodles!

2 comments:

ניסיון אפי said...

Is there anyway one can send you an e-mail?

Abby said...

one can send me an email to soporiphic@gmail.com if one was so inclined!