Front Table 2/10/2023

February 10th, 2023

On this week's Front Table, narrow the divide between happiness & resentment, creativity & madness, and contentment & chaos: from a student noticing a painter's disintegration from her frenetic stories, her scattered art, and her use of white paint on a white canvas to the daughter of midwives escaping into their archives to discover reflections on birth, death and human nature. Find the following and more at semcoop.com

The Age of Goodbyes
(The Feminist Press)
Li Zi Shu, trans. YZ Chin

In 1969, in the wake of Malaysia's deadliest race riots, a woman named Du Li An secures her place in society by marrying a gangster. In a parallel narrative, a critic known only as The Fourth Person explores the work of a writer also named Du Li An. And a third storyline is in the second person; "you" are reading a novel titled The Age of Goodbyes. Floundering in the wake of "your" mother's death, "you" are trying to unpack the secrets surrounding "your" lineage.The Age of Goodbyes--which begins on page 513, a reference to the riots of May 13, 1969--is the acclaimed debut by Li Zi Shu. The winner of multiple awards and a Taiwanese bestseller, this dazzling novel is a profound exploration of what happens to personal memory when official accounts of history distort and render it taboo.

 

An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell
(And Other Stories)
Deborah Levy

She is a shimmering, melancholy angel, flown from Paradise to save him from the suburbs of hell. He an accountant, dreaming of a white Christmas, a little garden and someone to love. She attempts to fly him away from his habits and fears, while he holds on tight to all he knows. Man Booker Prize shortlisted Deborah Levy whips up a storm of romance and slapstick, of heavenly and earthly delights, in this dystopian philosophical poem about individual freedom and the search for the good life.


Animal Life
(Grove Press, Black Cat)
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, trans. Brian FitzGibbon

In the days leading up to Christmas, Dómhildur delivers her 1,922nd baby. Beginnings and endings are her family trade; she comes from a long line of midwives on her mother’s side and a long line of undertakers on her father’s. She even lives in the apartment that she inherited from her grandaunt, a midwife with a unique reputation for her unconventional methods. As a terrible storm races towards Reykjavik, Dómhildur discovers decades worth of letters and manuscripts hidden amongst her grandaunt’s clutter. Fielding calls from her anxious meteorologist sister and visits from her curious new neighbour, Dómhildur escapes into her grandaunt’s archive and discovers strange and beautiful reflections on birth, death and human nature. With her singular warmth and humor, in Animal Life Ólafsdóttir gives us a beguiling novel that comes direct from the depths of an Icelandic winter, full of hope for spring.


"La Clarté Notre-Dame" and "The Last Book of the Madrigals"

(Seagull Books)
Philippe Jaccottet, trans. John Taylor

In his 96th and final year, celebrated Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet finished two manuscripts-in-progress, one in prose and one in poetry, both of which are presented in this volume in John Taylor's sensitive translation. The first work, "La Clarté Notre-Dame," takes off from the "pure, weightless, fragile, yet crystal-clear tinkling" of a monastery bell heard during a walk with friends. With this thought-provoking sound as a leitmotiv, Jaccottet looks back on a life of writing, reading, and scrutinizing humankind's existential and spiritual aspirations. He sets these concerns against his equally lifelong preoccupation with "the rise of evil in today's world," notably in Syria. Composed in a baroque style, the verse poems collected in "The Last Book of Madrigals" explore love. Jaccottet returns in spirit to Italy, the country which for him symbolizes happiness and sensuality. As he evokes amorous attraction, he conjures up Monteverdi's madrigals, one of Dante's little-known rhymes, and Giuseppe Ungaretti's last poem. Reinventing and commenting on these works, Jaccottet meditates on old age, approaching death, despair, and the persistence of love.

 

Maroons: A Grievers Novel
(AK Press)
adrienne maree brown

In the second installment of the Grievers trilogy, adrienne maree brown brings to bear her background as an activist rooted in Detroit. The pandemic of Syndrome H-8 continues to ravage the city of Detroit and everyone in Dune's life. In Maroons, she must learn what community and connection mean in the lonely wake of a fatal virus. Emerging from grief to follow a subtle path of small pleasures through an abandoned urban landscape, she begins finding other unlikely survivors with little in common but the will to live. Together they begin to piece together the puzzle of their survival, and that of the city itself.


Spicilege
(Wakefield Press)
Marcel Schwob, trans. Alex Andriesse

"All over the world," wrote Jorge Luis Borges, "there are devotees of the writer Marcel Schwob who constitute little secret societies." Spicilege, Schwob's last book published under his name, constitutes the handbook to these societies--to Schwob's work, to himself as erudite scholar and author, and to the twilight of the era of French Symbolism. Schwob was, as Paul Léautaud described him, a "living library," and the critical biographies gathered in the essays of Spicilege display a few of the volumes in that library: his groundbreaking research on François Villon (work that remains a cornerstone to our knowledge of Villon), his passion for Robert Louis Stevenson and his encounters with such less-remembered writers as George Meredith. But it is the carefully developed ideas in these essays and the eccentric yet thorough scholarship that draws them together that are of particular interest today: the understanding of criminal slang in the Middle Ages; the study of prostitution in ancient Greece; the folklore inspired by a Flaubert story; a complex critique of individuality that effectively laid the groundwork for Jarry's "pataphysics"; as well as ruminations on perversity, laughter, biography, love, terror and pity, and art and anarchy.

White on White: A Novel
(Riverhead Books)
Aysegul Savas

A student moves to the city to research Gothic nudes, renting an apartment from a painter, Agnes, who lives in another town with her husband. One day, Agnes arrives in the city and settles into the upstairs studio. In their meetings on the stairs, in the studio, at the corner café, the kitchen at dawn, Agnes tells stories of her youth, her family, her marriage, and ideas for her art - which is always just about to be created. As the months pass, it becomes clear that Agnes might not have a place to return to. The student is increasingly aware of Agnes's disintegration. Her stories are frenetic; her art scattered and unfinished, white paint on a white canvas. What emerges is the menacing sense that every life is always at the edge of disaster, no matter its seeming stability. Alongside the research into human figures, the student is learning, from a cool distance, about the narrow divide between happiness and resentment, creativity and madness, contentment and chaos. White on White is a sharp exploration of empathy and cruelty, and the stunning discovery of what it means to be truly vulnerable, and laid bare.

Posted in: