Arrgh, the Hunger!

Wow, it’s been three weeks. Looks like I’m really taking to this blogging thing. I guess Will Leitch was right; it is hard work. Especially, when you’re working on something else. But excuses, excuses. I’m still reading Sacred Hunger. Just starting to get in the flow. I wanted to finish it by June but it’s not looking good. I’m only 200 pages into a 630-page book. It was a little slow to begin with, the ship didn’t sail until around a 100 pages in. Now, I’ve got to look up all the nautical terms in order to correctly place each character in my mind. Scuppers, the punt, the forecastle, all that stuff. Reminds me on my wallpaper as a kid which had ships on it and my headboard which was a “real” ship’s wheel.

I’m starting to see why it won the Booker. It’s a well-written book and some of language is beautiful. There are times when I wish Unsworth would step out and take a few more chances. The book lends itself to points of magic realism but he pretty much plays it straight. There’s the beginning of Part 4 which I particularly liked: “There are moments in anyone’s life when some blend of circumstances, some consonance of surroundings and situation and character, show him in light of a peculiarly characteristic, make him seem more intensely himself–to the observer, that is: the subject will not be aware of it. He seems to us then to be immobilized, taken out of time – or he steps, rather, into some much older story.” And later in the same graph: “He is there imperishably, wild with his jealousy, vague with the peace of the day. He is always, always to be found there.”

Unsworth seems to be saying, look, notice this character here, this is his essence. And yet there is something vague about it. For you think of your own moment where you are “intensely yourself”. Occasionally, those moments reveal themselves then and there, but usually that occurs later. Maybe this will unravel a bit later in the book for he brings up the blind mulatto here who he cites in the prologue as sitting at the entrance to the labyrinth of his story.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m going to keep going but I’m thinking of adding a non-fiction book, possibly Interesting Times. All of this while the Lakers march into the Finals and my birthday, and more books no doubt, approach.

Sacred Hunger

So I decided to read Barry Unsworth’s “Sacred Hunger”. It’s a novel about an 18th century British slave trading ship (I should have read back-to-back with “And a Bottle of Rum”) and it shared the Booker Prize in 1992 with “The English Patient” which I really loved. I think my future wife read TEP and lent it to me or urged me to read it. We were working at the same place in NYC, a small bond trader. Here’s the thing though. We were just friends at the time. Very. Close. Friends. So I was pining for this woman, but she had a boyfriend. So I bought a copy of Jeanette Winterson’s “Written on the Body”, wrote some emotionally charged words in the front and gave it to her. She gave it back to me with a yellow sticky that basically told me where to go. But I won out in the end. I didn’t see her for ten years and then I called her up out of the blue. Then we moved to LA. Then we got married. Lucky me. There’s more to the story than that but that’s what I remember about TEP, besides the fact the film ruined a great book. Too much Willem Defoe. Oh, and I was cleaning out an old box in my closet here last year and guess what I found the sticky. I still have the sticky.

So I started the book, about fifty pages in. Big font, small chapters. The writing is a little old school for my taste but I like a good sailing/adventure story so I’m sticking with it. Plus, it’s 630 pages. When I finish it I will have completed 12 percent of my task. I have no recollection who gave me the book. I’m thinking it might be my mom or my sister. But I know I received it one Christmas along with “Perfume” which, of course, is also on the list.