Getting back on the horse

Life has made book-blogging a little untenable the last few months. I've just started my MFA at the New School, as well as a new job, and there is hardly any time to stop and reflect on the reading I'm doing.

But I'd like to try and record some thoughts about my fall reading list. I'm in a literature seminar called "War, Politics and the Modern Novel", and I'm already three novels in and considering topics for my first critical essay for the class. The first two novels we discussed were Dostoevsky's Demons (or, to some, The Possessed) and then Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes. I wasn't able to finish the Dostoevsky because it was summer reading, and I'm a first-year student, although I hope to go back and get into it. (I read the first one hundred pages, and like any casual reading of Dostoevsky, found it puzzling and wonderful.) I did get the Conrad completed, and we're in the midst of discussing that in class.

For me, the first part of that book was excellent -- the moral struggle of Razumov over his anger with Haldin, his desire for vengeance, and his qualms about betraying a fellow student. I really felt Conrad created such a believable and moving story, and the ending was so thrilling. However, the rest of the novel failed to recapture that sense of sharp poignancy. Part of it may be a generational issue -- a 21st century reader is well acquainted with the tropes of spy thrillers and many of Conrad's plot features have been exhausted in books, television and movies. I'm sure to his contemporaries, Conrad's story was far fresher than it feels to me now.

What I really appreciated was Conrad's use of doubles -- a constant in his work apparently. I loved that certain pairs of characters illuminated each other and cast certain qualities in relief, either from similarity or contrast. I might have to check out Lord Jim and consider writing my essay on Conrad, but I'm still not sure what I want to do.

We're in the middle of The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth this week. For some reason, it reminds me a bit of Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude -- that multi-generational quality, perhaps. But I'm still not far enough into it to have much to say just yet.