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English Book…
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- The Heart of the Matter (135)
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By Graham Greene -
Finished on May 17, 2013 
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- The Virgin Suicides (450)
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By Jeffrey Eugenides -
Finished on Apr 29, 2013
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- Tinkers (78)
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By Paul Harding -
Finished on Apr 15, 2013
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- Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (118)
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By Philip K. Dick -
Finished on Apr 1, 2013
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Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
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Sicuramente il libro dal titolo più bello di sempre (seguito a ruota da By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept -- e per qualche motivo le lacrime c'entrano sempre), e definito da molti anche il migliore di Philip Dick, mi ha lasciato parecchio deluso.
Intanto devo dirlo che un po' è co ... (
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Apr 2, 2013 |
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- Songs of the Dying Earth (16)
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Finished on Mar 26, 2013
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- The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 (341)
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By Sue Townsend -
Finished on Mar 1, 2013
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- Stories of John Cheever (69)
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By John Cheever -
Finished on Feb 14, 2013
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Mi ci sono voluti quasi due mesi per finire questo libro (lunghissimo) e non è stato facile. Se c'è un'impressione che mi resta, è il rimpianto di non averlo letto con più attenzione, di aver lasciato correre a volte, di non essermi soffermato a riflettere sui significati.
Le storie sono molto vari ... (continue ) -
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Feb 20, 2013 |
2 feedbacks
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- The Wapshot Chronicle (18)
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By John Cheever -
Finished on Dec 27, 2012
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Mi piace ricordare questo libro dalle righe finali, che ne riassumono, secondo me, l'atmosfera:
"Advice to my sons," it read. "Never put whisky into hot water bottle crossing borders of dry states or countries. Rubber will spoil taste. Never make love with pants on. Beer on whisky, very risky. W ... (
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Dec 28, 2012 |
1 feedback
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- Winesburg, Ohio (162)
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By Sherwood Anderson -
Finished on Dec 17, 2012
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- The Invention of Solitude (150)
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By Paul Auster -
Abandoned on Dec 6, 2012
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- The New York Trilogy (926)
- City of Glass; Ghosts; The Locked Room
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By Paul Auster -
Finished on Dec 4, 2012
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Paul Auster è un grandissimo.
Ecco, lo volevo scrivere subito, poi magari me ne uscirò con una recensione seria. -
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Dec 5, 2012 |
2 feedbacks
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- Young Hearts Crying (23)
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By Richard Yates -
Finished on Nov 19, 2012
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- The Confidential Agent (16)
- An Entertainment
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By Graham Greene -
Finished on Aug 14, 2012
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- A Traveller's Guide to Icelandic Folk Tales (2)
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By Jón R. Hjálmarsson -
Finished on Aug 22, 2012
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- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (35443)
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By Lewis Carroll -
Not Started
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The Heart of the Matter
Questo Greene mi ha colpito, ma non come altri: la storia non mi ha pienamente convinto. Troppo cattolico forse.
Ma in fondo è sempre Greene, con i suoi personaggi profondamente umani, estremamente reali, fisici, solidi, pieni di pietà.
Come l'uomo la cui moglie è stata derisa alle spalle:continue)
In th ... (
Questo Greene mi ha colpito, ma non come altri: la storia non mi ha pienamente convinto. Troppo cattolico forse.
Ma in fondo è sempre Greene, con i suoi personaggi profondamente umani, estremamente reali, fisici, solidi, pieni di pietà.
Come l'uomo la cui moglie è stata derisa alle spalle:
In the old days she had replied, but she was not such a creature of habit as he was - nor so false, he sometimes told himself. Kindness and pity had no power with her; she would never have pretended an emotion she didn't feel, and like an animal she gave way completely to the momentary sickness and recovered as suddenly.
Scobie thought: What are those others worth that they have the nerve to sneer at any human being? He knew every one of her faults. How often he had wincedat her patronage of strangers. He knew each phrase, each intonation that alienated others. Sometimes he longed to warn her - don't wear that dress, don't say that again, as a mother might teach a daughter, but he had to remain silent, aching with the foreknowledge of her loss of friends. The worst was when he detected in his colleagues an extra warmth of friendliness towards himself, as though they pitied him. What right have you, he longed to exclaim, to criticize her? This is my dooing. This is what I've made of her. She wasn't always like this.
E a letto, quella sera, consolandola come ogni volta:
She was crying. He felt an enormous tiredness, bracing himself to comfort her. "Darling," he said, "I love you." It was how he always began. Comfort, like the act of sex, developed a routine.
If only he could postpone her misery, he thought, until daylight. Misery is worse in the darkness: there's nothing to look at except the breen black-out curtains, the Government furniture, the flying ants scattering their wings over the table: a hundred yards away the Creoles' pye-dogs yapped and wailed.
O anche:
Louise said, "I've known it for years. You don't love me." She spoke with calm. He knew that calm - it meant they had reached the quiet centre of the storm: always in this region at about this time they began to speak the truth to each other. The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practises. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.
If I could just arrange for her happiness first, he thought, and in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him - that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness.
Forse quello che mi ha colpito davvero nel libro è il tema ricorrente della pietà, una pietà profondissima.
Scobie said, "You needn't feel that. It's the same with everybody, I think. When we say to someone, 'I can't live without you,' what we really mean is, 'I can't live feeling you may be in pain, unhappy, in want.' That's all it is."
He had no sense of responsibility towards the beautiful and the graceful and the intelligent. They could find their own way. It was the face for which nobody would go out of his way, the face that would never catch the covert look, the face which would soon be used to rebuffs and indifference that demanded his allegiance. The word "pity" is used as loosely as the word "love": the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience.
God can wait, he thought: how can one love God at the expense of one of his creatures? Would a woman accept the love for which a child had to be sacrificed?
"But do you really, seriously, Major Scobie," Dr Skyes asked, "believe in Hell?"
"Oh yes, I do."
"In flames and torment?"
"Perhaps not quite that. They tell us it may be a permanent sense of loss."
"That sort of Hell wouldn't worry me!" Fellowes said.
"Perhaps you've never lost anything of any importance," Scobie said.
It was not Helen's face he saw as he prayed but the dying child who called him father: a face in a photograph staring from the dressing-table: the face of a black girl of twelve a sailor had raped and killed glaring blindly up at him in a yellow paraffin light.
"It's no good even praying..."
Father Rank clapped the cover of the diary and said furiously, "For goodness' sake, Mrs Scobie, don't imagine you - or I - know a thing about God's mercy."
"The Church says..."
"I know the Church says. The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."