What are you reading?

I´m making my way through Story - its tongue-twister subtitle is (I´ll just catch my breath) Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting - and it´s a fascinating read. If you´re interested in knowing why some films break your heart and others leave you cold - or even worse fidgeting until there´s a moment when you can decently leave the cinema - this book is for you.

Speaking of bailing out before the ship has even left the harbour, I didn´t get very far with All That Follows by Jim Grace, usually such an inventive and rewarding writer. Life´s too short, and certainly the summer is too short, to spend time with a sad jazz musician past his prime, bringing breakfast in bed to his disagreeable wife. ¨ Each day provides a further chance to love his wife and make love to his saxophone.¨ Jim! What were you thinking?

Likewise, David Mitchell´s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet left me (or I left it) underwhelmed. The friend who lent it to me admitted that he only really liked finding out all about the Dutch East Indies Company in Japan in 1799 and Mitchell has certainly done his homework. But that´s the problem. The endless exposition, every line stuffed with facts and learning, the writer´s research in fact, soon becomes distracting and tiresome. I much prefer the lighter touch and the inventiveness of Ghostwritten.

So I turn instead, time and time again, to Iconostasis of Anonymous Saints by the poet Yannis Ritsos which seems to me nothing short of astounding. Short titled pieces, full of observation, detail, reflection and imagination, make up a novel or a memoir or an autobiography. But as in the case of Colette or Fernando Pessoa, the Ariostos who observes and narrates both is and is not Ritsos. Ritsos/Ariostos blends the mundane and the sublime with perfect pitch and inspires this reader with a sense of wonder that outlasts the reading. The only thing I can even slightly compare this book to is Clarice Lispector´s Chronicles. After reading one of these pieces, which range from less than a page to three pages, I see with fresh vision, stepping out onto the street with a new awareness of the complexity of living, the constant balancing between the internal, thoughts and feelings, and the external, noticing a spent pale pink balloon nudging a car wheel, the exact wounded tone of a neighbour´s exclamation. In paying such close attention to his own life and the lives of those around him ( ¨Beyond their ordinary use, all objects have their secrets and their private lives: chairs, beds, glasses, knives and forks, sheets, towels, toothbrushes, combs.¨) Ritsos teaches us to pay attention to our own, moment by moment.

I see with delight that there are two more volumes to this series, but then, crestfallen, the words ´´ still to appear in English.´´ But quickly turning to the publication dates to check the first printing of this edition, I see 1996, what joy! There´s every chance that the subsequent volumes are now available.

I leave you with these lines from One Evening:

¨I peek through the opening between two houses. High up there, a tiny star is coughing, all shrivelled up next to a cloud. I think of the children, who weren´t given their favourite toy from the Christmas tree. Why so much repentance in the air, prior to the sin?¨¨

Happy reading and have a great Summer!