i like "reading projects". i like thick books. i like hard books. i like books that experiment with form and structure. i like books that challenge my world view and self view. i like to read books that i don't like to read. i like to read books with references that take me down rabbit holes of peripheral information (e.g. history, events, people, places, music, film, art, etc), and tell the story of the interconnectedness of all things.

• The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai 🐛
  
• Independent People by Halldór Laxness
  
• Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
  
  

on deck

• Tom's Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski
  
• Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert J. Rayback 📚
  

The Collector by John Fowles

my book report

There was always class between us.

The Collector is my 3rd Fowles read. My introduction to Fowles dates back to my first reading project (The Modern Library 100), The Magus, #92 on that list. Magus knocked my socks off. The French Lieutenant’s Woman I read sometime later. FLW didn't grab me the way Magus did, but Fowles' demonstrates mastery in his craft. Collector, Magus, and FLW each stand on their own, neither rehash the other, but as a common thread all 3 works are psychological in nature, especially the pschology of men and women and their relationships. Having read these 3, I wonder what each book would be like if written by a woman instead of a man.

On the surface, Collector is a psycholoogical horror/thriller. Structured in 2 parts, the story told first in narrative form by abductor Clegg, the 2nd in diary fragments by his victim Miranda. In Clegg's narrative, Fowles uses quotation for Miranda's dialoge, but omits quotation marks for Clegg's dialogue. As a reader this seated me in Clegg's head, and magnified the feeling of disconnect from Miranda. Miranda becomes the butterfly pinned to the board. The retelling by Miranda is next... what really jumps out is her failed attempts over and over again to find a way to connect at a human level with Clegg. The ultimate attempt at human intimacy in Clegg only humiliates him, which dooms Miranda.

Collector is a commentary on Class and Art. The impassable void separating Miranda and Clegg is parable of economic and social class division. Fowle's verdict seems to be that these divisions ultimately cannot be overcome. He is likely correct. I think this is where some level of empathy or sympathy for both Miranda and Clegg stems from in my reading. To contextualize in my own life experience, as a straight, white, male living in a first-world, developed nation I am clearly upper, upper class relative to the global population (the richest half of American families owned about 97.5% of national wealth as of the end of 2024). In terms of my gender, race, etc. I benefit from centuries of preferential treatment. Here I look down. Within my own "upper upper class" tier, I am likely upper-middle class economically. Socially, I am likely lower-middle class. I look both up and down. I cannot relate to the billionaries or be a part of their world. I cannot save those who are poor in my community (they may be wealthy in another part of the world); I can only look down with pity. I suppose I could share half of my wealth with them, but I don't have the courage to do that; I have the convenient excuse that my own family depend on all of my wealth (even though it may meet the basic needs of another family a thousand times over). Instead of looking up or down in wonder and despair, it's easier to look left and right and be content. I may volunteer my time and energy, and maybe a little bit of my wealth, to help those "below" me, and I feel good about that, but the camel will still pass through the eye of the needle before I enter the kingdom of our most benevolent God. Fowles is correct... like both Miranda and Clegg, I am damned for eternity, but maybe I'll make it through life on earth in good shape.

On Art and the Artist... Miranda is taken by GP the Artist. In GP's judgement an artist is only an artist if fully devoted to art, uncompromising, nothing else matters. It seems Miranda falls short of this bar, is always looking up to GP, seemingly accepting and unable to satisfy this standard. My view of Art and the Artist is a bit of a duality. I view GP's Art, free of any social contract, fully devoted to their art for the sake of art, owing and giving nothing to no one, as a type of art. The other type of Art (in my mind): socially contracted, art created to convey a truth and giving back. I like both, piacking and panning works from each of these types; GP is an ass, but I may love his art, or not, and neither GP nor I really matter.

Oh by the way, Clegg will kill again.

locations mapped

Forest Row, East Sussex, England
Lewes, England
London, England

sources

The Collector, Wikipedia
John Fowles' The Collector, The Readers Karamazov Podcast
Leonard Lake, Wikipedia
The Collector & the Fugitive, True Crime Garage Podcast
Woman Adopted as Infant Learns that Biological Mom Was Allegedly Murdered by Serial Killers
Police Photos - Inside Leonard Lake's Bunker

related reading

Wormholes: Essays and Occasional Writings by John Fowles
A Letter from Sheri by Cheryl Gyant
Misery by Stephen King
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Emma by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
Native Son by Richard Wright
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

mixtape

Água Viva by Clarice Lispector

my book report

It’s this: dissonance is harmonious to me. Melody sometimes wears me out. And also the so-called “leitmotif.” I want in music and in what I write to you and in what I paint, I want geometric streaks that cross in the air and form a disharmony that I understand. Pure it.

AV left me with several sensations, particularly the first half of the work: a kind of terror mixed with a love of life, a sort of slow bleeding out, wanting every sensation in every instant of time to be held; like trying to drink an entire rapids while savoring every drop; personally brings to mind my times in the ocean, alone beyond the breakers, floating supine, the crashes of the waves blotting out the sounds of the public and my deteriorated vision smearing their bodies, leaving me to myself and my thoughts and sense of the infinite. Lispector makes occasional references to real time, her meditations fading in and out of her daydreams and night(insomniac?)dreams. Lispector's improvised stream and play with matter, time, and perception bring to mind Jazz and Einstein; could AV have been written without these predecessors? More imagery, Lispector's jellyfish is both the formless and the primordial, the cat eats the placenta. The structure and style also remind me of Whitman's Leaves of Grass (containing multitudes) at times, but at the same time formless (the jellyfish), with the stream of consciousness, and existential meditation, tough to pin down and define. Another novel that I recalled while reading, The Rings of Saturn (Sebald), for its meditations on identity and time. At the end Lispector loves life. AV induces sensation, waves washing over, and while I attempt to connect it to other experiences, art, or readings, it is not a kind of anything else. My reading of AV was via epub on my phone, due to the late September connection to bookbug, and I regret not reading the print version. I also suspect that the translated version leaves a gap that cannot be recovered from the Portuguese, but that is not in the cards for me. I perhaps would not have discovered Lispector without bookbug, and I am grateful for that. Lispector seems a buried literary giant, at least in the Eurocentric world.

locations mapped

Estátua de Clarice Lispector, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

sources

Água Viva (novel), Wikipedia
Clarice Lispector, Wikipedia
Meaning is a Breath: Images in Clarice Lispector
Interview with Clarice Lispector - São Paulo, 1977 (English subtitles)
The Complete Stories: Clarice Lispector, Library of Congress
136. Clarice Lispector - Água Viva, Backlisted Podcast
The Brazilian Kafka: Clarice Lispector (Conversations on Kafka), The University of Oxford
Clarice Lispector: The Brazilian Kafka, Fiction Beast Podcast
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector, CodeX Cantina Podcast

related reading

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald

mixtape