Stranger on Earth

Sleepless It’s only late at night, When the minutes are protracted That the fears hidden by daylight - The fear of dilapidation, of irreducible pain, Of loneliness and all things terminal – Drop their masks and reveal the ugliness Of Truth; that for the single man There is no truth other than That all paths lead to the eternal forest - So achingly green and familiarly dark – Where all living things retreat and wait For the certain final hour. It’s only late at night, When Silence has reclaimed its purity, That the echoes of bygone eras return, Droning regrets and protestations never-ending, Cyclical disappointments, looping heartbreaks, Rhythmic reiterations of ‘Never again!’, ‘Today is the first day…,’ and ‘Worthy I am.’ All conviction since lost, drowned in The underworld stream of mass indifference, The hungry maelstrom devouring dreams Of every manchild ever dared to Outwear the insignia of innocence. But when daylight comes...

This is a pedantic series of entries about classic novels you should read if you wish to make an impression at uptown soirees catering to cultured types. Look on the bright side: there is no such thing as a born ignoramus.  Candide, or Optimism – Voltaire Year of publication: 1759 Edition: Penguin Classics, 2005 Plot: Candide is a naïve young man shaped by his tutor Pangloss’ philosophy positing that ‘all is for the best.’ When Candide ventures out into the big bad world to face his demons, he is thwarted by outrageous (and often hilarious) disasters ranging from earthquakes to the Inquisition. At the end of his harrowing journey, he learns to question his tutor’s stance and grows into maturity. Why this novel: 1. This is the European novel of enlightenment that raised the question of the individual’s right to freedom of expression. It is the forefather of all satirical works, and was for the longest time perceived as a threat by the Church and various g...

This is a pedantic series of entries about classic novels you should read if you wish to make an impression at uptown soirees catering to cultured types. Look on the bright side: there is no such thing as a born ignoramus.  The Turn of the Screw - Henry James Year of publication: 1898 Best edition: Penguin Classics ( The Turn of the Screw and The Aspen Papers ) Plot: An unnamed governess is hired to watch over a young boy and a girl in a gothic mansion. During her tenure she discovers that the previous governess had an illicit affair with another employee, and both died a mysterious death. Something is also not quite right with the boy and the girl. They appear to be able to communicate with the dead governess and her evil lover. Is the mansion haunted? Are the children possessed? Or is the governess not playing with a full set of marbles? Why this novel: I could have recommended The Portrait of a Lady (also by James), but its bulk of some 600 pages might ...

On a foggy day, during the enactment of a reverie, author Paul Auster ( The New York Trilogy, The Book of Illusions, Invisible ) sits down with me and turns the tables on interview conventions. The author interviews the reader. Auster: Ed, I feel I may call you that. Any reader who’s re-read a book of mine three times in the past seven years deserves to have his name abbreviated. So Ed, why did you decide to read The New York Trilogy for the third time recently when ten million new books are being published each month? Ed: Mr Auster, you may call me anything you want, but I shall call you ‘Mr Auster’ out of respect and reverence. A ( laughs ): Fair enough. E: To answer your question… I’m a broken record. I get stuck in a groove and keep playing the same chorus. Your books tend to amplify that tendency in me. Besides, there’s something in the third book, The Locked Room , which resonates with me. ‘Resonate’ doesn’t begin to cover it. When I read the words, it’s l...

Good god, is nothing sacred anymore? I was browsing on Goodreads when I came across the following comments (most probably from a teenager) about Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa (1937), the mother of all memoirs: I have no idea why my mom recommended this book to me. A white British colonist tells the story of her privileged life on her coffee plantation in Kenya. She writes some great imagery about the Kenyan landscape and tells funny stories about animals, except that her idea of the landscape and animals includes all the Black servants and workers and "squatters" on her plantation. She is really stupid and proudly naive. It's awful. For example, when she jokingly threatens to fire all of her servants if they don't find this cute baby antelope she saw while on an outing, she thinks it's out of love for her that they spend all night searching for it. How darling of them! I think you're supposed to find her some sort of feminist heroine because she...

Q: It’s a sign of double madness when you’re interviewing yourself about a book nobody’s going to read. You do know that, right? A. You may have a point there, but we talk to ourselves all the time, and madness is the flipside of clarity. It’s true I have no intention of getting the book published, but as written texts go, the moment they come into existence they will be read. It’s just not the way you think they’ll be read. I’m planning to pull a Kafka. I’ve chosen my Max Brod. Q: So you’ve finally wrapped up your second novel called Goliath . Care to tell us what it’s about? A: That title… it does sound a tad fake, doesn’t it? I tried out several different ones but came back to it eventually. I see it as a sign. But who would want to read a book with such a self-important title? The author clearly has a Nabokov complex. I’ll leave that up to you Jungians and Freudians out there. The book, broadly speaking, is about seven young university students living in the 1960s at th...

Dear Herr Hesse, I know you’ve been dead since 1962, a good ten years before I was born, and my writing to you may come across as a mad gesture the likes of which only the overly obsessed are capable of. I can assure you I’m not mad, even though everyone around me is. I’ve just finished reading your 1919 novel Demian , which you wrote when you’re on the brink of madness (Was the war that bad? Why did all those young men have to die?), and which made you what my generation calls an “overnight sensation” among the disillusioned young. Before I started reading the book, I’d wondered why it’d had such an effect on the young men of the 1910s (and also those of the following decades). It’s just a book, I thought. Aren’t we exaggerating? But I should’ve known. Your Siddhartha has after all been my personal guide since I first read it in 2004, so why should this one be made of lesser stuff? The actor/scholar James Franco, a young(ish) man of my generation, wrote a new introduc...

Beauty, sexuality, death. Any reader who opens a Yukio Mishima ( 三島 由紀夫 ) novel will inevitably encounter these abstract subjects. Known for controversial works such as The Sound of Waves, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion , and The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, Mishima was a novelist with uncompromising ethics and a stalwart belief in right-winged, nationalist ideals. His writings are sometimes considered emotionally barren and overtly intellectual, distancing the reader from the authorial voice. Forbidden Colours ( 禁色 , 1951-3) is that exception, where the reader, if he chooses to, can almost hear Mishima himself meditate on the power of absolute beauty and the bane of homosexuality in post-war Japan. The novel’s two main protagonists, Shunsuke (an aged misogynistic, heterosexual writer) and Yuichi (a guileless homosexual youth blessed with unparalleled beauty), are the driving forces behind the intriguing plot, which finds Shunsuke, towards the end of an illustrious li...