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SEPTEMBER READING NOTES

Ah, how the year progresses. September is now done and we are entering fall. Here is my reading notes and thoughts for the month of September. As always taken from memory and impressions.

1. Proust. I have read all but the last 40 pages of Vol IV of Remembrance of Things Past. Titled "Cities of the Plain". In the revised edition, which I am not reading, it is called Sodom and Gomorrah". It follows the story of M and the other characters of the novel as they continue to pursue their desires through society. Here are my observations on this volume:
  • Proust definitely is exploring homosexuality in society and the degree to which it is hidden and yet everywhere. The beginning with the observation of the "courtship" of Charlus and Jupien is wonderful. The obsession with "secret lives". Various sexual tastes.
  • The idea of desire and when you attain its object it is disappointing is carried on in this volume. M is not capable of happiness because when he attains it he finds it wanting. It is in the desiring that he finds real pleasure.
  • Poor Albertine. She has the worse boyfriend in the world. 
  • Morel. The ultimate social climber in a novel built on social climbing. Like so many willing to "turn tricks" in a heartbeat to get some cash. 
  • Charlus almost a figure of sympathy for how obsessed he is with Morel. This cannot but end badly. 
  • His sudden onset of grief when he goes back to Balbec was sad and well written.
  • You can see the class bias as M feels, like most of them do it seems, that working class girls (and boys for that matter) and shop girls are girls of easy virtue and who are fair game. A sense of entitlement. Morel, a working class social climber, talking about the joy of leading a working girl on, taking her virginity and then dumping her. Charlus is fascinated. Their is the feeling of a fin de siècle sense of decadence and perversion. 
2. Finished Acceptance. Very interesting novel. I will have to reread it to pull what it really means out of it. 
3. Finished Slaves in the Family. A great counter point to Gone with the Wind. A real look at what slavery was like and what it means to the descendants of slaves and slave holders. Explodes the myth, as cherished today as in Mitchells time, that slaves were really just servants, well treated and loyal. 

For September I am reading: Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill. Short meditations on books and the ones she has at home. A History of Reading by A Mangruel. An interesting book about reading and the importance it has played in history and today. White Noise by Delillo. A comic novel about death. A couple of books on Proust. Audio book about Victorian Secrets. Might re read via Audio Southern Reach Trilogy. 

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