Which I was quite enjoying, but left in France for the unguarded moment, to complete.

Which I did not enjoy as much as before, or as I had anticipated.

I again dipped into…

…but I found this tale of two brothers rather annoying. Ira, the pontificating Communist, married to the anti-Semitic Jewess Hollywood starlet. I kept putting it down. Freedom of speech is the theme, and certainly it was a hard won freedom in the time of the McCarthy Committees, but it was somehow too much for me, though I finished it.

A short squib of a book which I enjoyed re-reading…

An amazingly fine novel. The book is about death and the fear of death. How we learn of it. How we feel about it. In a brilliantly described family of an Academic at a small University town the Professor of Hitler studies, a course he invented, is overtaken by an “event” (in satire worthy of Heller) a noxious toxic cloud. Simulac constantly prepare for everything but the real thing, a perfect parody of how we face death. His perception of wives, fathers, children and friends is stunningly accurate. Above all he has a deep abiding sense of humour, which means he can sidle sideways into the awesome business of writing about death. There are several set pieces of great prose: the burning of the town mental asylum, the nebulous mass of the cloud itself. An awesome novel of great value. How we hide from the things that most worry us, while still perceiving them.

I had to read it again. It seems to me that Richard 111 was a serial killer. He seems to have done a couple of jobs for his brother the King, (Edward 1V) before replacing him on the throne, murdering his way towards his own crown with ruthless efficiency. He is utterly Machiavellian and his rise and fall are amongst the most dramatic in history. The odd thing is why the Shakespeare play should be so funny…? Perhaps it is the monologues. Iago isn’t funny though.

Essays on, rather than a history of. They become in the end just too generalised. It is the particular in history that is of interest, not the thesis. I kept hoping to find meat and chewing only on vegetables.

He isn’t my favourite cup of tea. I find his famous short sentences annoying. Almost as annoying as Gertrude Stein, who is almost totally annoying. This is a nice Book of the Month Club first edition from 1952 I found for fifty bucks, so certainly a good buy, but I see I had abandoned it by page 32. It is a fishing tale. Hunting, fishing, war… certainly a pattern there for a soon-to-be suicide.

Collection of long form articles I bought in Washington because of a nice essay on Philip Roth – who has me hooked. Enjoyed an article on Blair running for re-election and Gore not. Many fine things to dip into.

The celebrity book du jour. Steve Martin read out some very funny passages when he interviewed her at the Nokia Centre, where she was selling books by the ton. Perhaps that is the best way to approach a book like this – have it read out loud in the car, preferably by Steve…

Signed by the author. As you might expect, since he gave it to me over dinner with Jeff Davis.

Nathan Zuckerman returns to NYC after an eight year absence, to possibly swap homes and indulge in an affair. Odd to see the real Roth round the corner here the other night.

I don’t like this writer anymore. He used to be good, and had the possibility to be better, but now I cannot read his sentences and his stories bore me. (Failed to live up to expectations: cf D.H. Thomas)

More art essays about the beautiful. Including Mapplethorpe butt snaps from the sixties. I guess beauty is in the ass of the beholder…

I read this book with delight. It is a love story of a rapist. The tale of a Soviet soldier, raping his way across what would shortly become East Germany, (four million rapes is the rough estimate of what the revenging Red Army did to the Prussians) and he will end up raping the love of his life (Zoya) his dead brother’s ex-wife whom he adores and follows and fantasises about, before he makes his Nabokovian exit to America. And she will make her exit leaping on to the frozen Moscow river from the parapets of the famous stone bridge. A victim of the Russian Revolution, he returns a war hero to a life of arrest and the endless meaningless brutality of the camps, where his younger brother Lev appears but who internally “resists” – giving up poetry but never collaborating with the brutal world in which he too is a captive. Lev holds on against the tyranny whereas our hero surfs through it, surviving, but compromising, and killing where necessary, so he too becomes both brutal and unfeeling before the slow death of the protagonists. Two things mark Amis: his relentless fury at the monstrous depraved madness of Stalin, and his knowledge of the sadness of sex, its inability to quell the disappointed itch of love, the desire to utterly possess the love object. And what kind of freedom is that? Zoya describes her love life with Lev as freedom, they find freedom in each other’s arms, while the protagonist has only possession and betrayal and plans for future possession. A Russian kind of love. A Stalinist love song. The rape of Russia by the Georgian ogre, a man who mass murdered by quota. This must be considered as a kind of novel companion to his brilliant and must read book about Stalin: Koba The Dread. And it is of course brilliant.

I find her somewhat disappointing . This one is about Hawaii and OMG, apparently #Americans are Colonists.# How unsurprising this sounds to non-American ears, but yes, they made a real pigs arse of Hawaii. Fortunately it keeps the Mexican beaches a bit clearer of the ugly tourist, which makes Hawaii so much less interesting. The British called them The Sandwich Isles, so I guess they are now the Burger isles. Between the shocking Missionaries and the horrible whalers they created a schizophrenic mishmash of a society serving the great God Business. More Spam is eaten here than anywhere else on earth. Just thought I’d put that in. And incidentally I am using these # as irony marks. I have been seeking a new punctuation mark to indicate the presence of irony, as I find many people miss it. I’m still experimenting with what they should be. < >? * *? ^ ^? or % %. Semiotic required.

Well almost nothing Tony Blair says is of interest, it’s all self-interest. He plugs away at his new Faith based Charity, but of course we all know he became a Catholic after leaving office so at least someone would forgive him. I doubt I shall forgive him anything. Hitchens is breathtakingly brilliant and the prospect of his imminent demise has neither shaken his disbelief nor sentimentalised his thinking. Thank no god for that. It reveals Hitchens as the moralist and Blair with his crocodile smile, the pragmatist.

Yes I know it’s a bit pretentious reading this on the beach but it is extraordinarily gripping and each time you learn something new. Fuck Shakespeare. He is just too damn good.

A brilliant book. He just damn well keeps getting better and better. The brilliant way these different character stories interrelate is extraordinary. I could read this whole thing again. I may have to. Thanks to memory loss I may never have to buy new books again. Though one of the few things that get better with age is re-reading books you know and love.

Because I adore her I adored it. But to be fair, it’s a tad too correct to be entertaining. She has to be nice about everyone in everything she was ever in, and we like a little more than that in our memoirs, especially theatrical memoirs. I understand her reluctance to tittle tattle but she doesn’t really reveal herself, which is a pity as she is much sharper and funnier in real life. Lucky for me to know that.

In case one felt Assange wasn’t paranoid enough here is someone exposing Wikileaks. Daniel Dumbshit hasn’t much of interest to say though he reveals what went on etc.

A most annoying book in which the author in great detail discusses the portraits of Charles Dodgson without reproducing them. In fact but for the book jacket we wouldn’t have a clue what he is talking about. But surely a book like this must be a book of photographs with text. It is sublimely pointless and nonsensical and deeply irritating to discuss pictures in great detail which we cannot see!

Of course this, the first one of his I couldn’t finish, wins the Booker. Is it me? Of course. But I didn’t get on with this one at all and I have read absolutely everything of his for years and years. So while I am happy for him I put this book aside and I promise I’ll try again another day. I do find that often I am completely wrong and later pick up a book and thoroughly enjoy it. So books can be timely for us.

Further reading of this arrogant man’s folly. (Charles 11nd) An old paperback edition I have had since school days…er 1958. Gosh.