Far From Brooklyn

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Tess of the Durbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
The Professor of Love by Philip Roth

Every year of reading includes at least a little re-reading. Lately I’ve been digging into some authors in part because I wonder how well their work stands up in the eyes of a current era reader (me).

My dip into David Copperfield, around the new year, was joyous. More recently, I revisited some Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth, Jorge Luis Borges, and Thomas Hardy – in no particular order, and with no unified reason for picking them. They don’t have anything to do with each other in my reading history, nor (as far as I know) do they have any literary relationship.

With Woolf, I picked up To the Lighthouse, which I scrabbled through at some point in college, when it left little or no impression on me. Last year, though, I had picked up Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway, and (with the latter in particular) I was amazed by the incredible joy and airiness of her writing. I think Mrs. Dalloway features some of the greatest sentences and paragraphs I’ve ever read. There is an almost religious ecstasy in the way Woolf puts into words the minor pleasures of Clarissa Dalloway’s morning. Unfortunately, much of the book’s “business” – the parallel story of the disturbed WW II vet in the park – felt plastic (albeit well wrought sentences are the rule there, too). But the stream of Clarissa’s consciousness is a unique delight.

As with Mrs. Dalloway, the sentences and paragraphs of To the Lighthouse were delightful. And, speaking as a guy who has spent some time in waspy seaside area, the novel’s beach cottage setting felt familiar and beautifully rendered.

But, but, but: The thoughtless privilege of the Ramsay family (who are going or not going to sail to the titular lighthouse) is grating. From the perspective of the current moment, the Ramsay’s lazy assumption of superiority is offputting. Without meaning to, the book feels a little like an indictment of the selfish, self-absorbed intelligentsia of England in the years before World War I. The sad fate of some of the characters mitigates that to an extent, but only to an extent.

Meanwhile, my return to Thomas Hardy was less satisfying than I had expected or hoped. Tess of the D’urbervilles had been my favorite of his novels, which I guess I must have read in my 20s and 30s – I don’t remember reading any of them in high school or college. Maybe because of Covid-era distractibility, I found it difficult to hack through this novel in 2021, even though Tess’s plight – raped, forced to bear a child, losing the child, etc etc, could not feel more of the moment (thank you, Samuel Alito et al!).

As for the Borges, I picked up Labyrinths. I previously had read this both in the original Spanish (in high school!) and in translation (sometime later in life, having realized that I could not possibly have understood Borges as a high school Spanish student–and a mediocre student at that). I was delighted and amazed by the inventiveness of the tales (it goes without saying) and surprised by the fluid beauty of the writing itself.

But the experience of reading Borges, for me anyway, was not entirely satisfying. His work brings to mind NBA basketball in 2021. (Stay with me, here!) The cliche of today’s game is that it’s a “make or miss” league. That is, the team that sinks its three-point shots wins. Sometimes the acknowledged great shooting teams win, but sometimes a lesser-shooting team gets streaky, and they win. It’s all decided somewhat arbitrarily by those long, arcing three-pointers.

With Borges, every story is a three-point attempt–a truly wild burst of creativity. There’s a decent chance that it will hit the mark–score!–but there’s just as good a chance that it won’t. And when they don’t, they just feel tiresome. My reaction to some of the tales reminds me of the way I roll my eyes when a team launches a three-pointer that goes wide: Jeez, all that trouble for nothing.

Still, when they hit, it’s a beautiful thing.

Also, I read–or listened to the reading of–what is probably my favorite Philip Roth novel, The Ghost Writer. I loved it every bit as much as ever.

Photo credit: Jorge Luis Borges, Revista Panorama Nro 3 Agosto de 1976 (Wikimedia Commons)