The trilogy collectively called U.S.A. , from the American author John Dos Passos has me hooked. At the pace I set in reading this, as a reader it should take me through til late summer to finish. Already a journey, the innovations for its time, in its telling, appear a century later as not merely influential but even prescient of a later age's idealization.
Young Mac grows up on the rails before WWI in America, and along the side roads, in farmhouses in Michigan and flophouses in 'Frisco, and as Teddy Roosevelt presides. Mac, or by his given name Fanian, finds himself a Maisie that would stick by him and their children that he so suddenly finds himself having to work at and pay for. If only he would for long. But the Socialists in Nevada call and with him drunk all the time there's no tellin how long he'll stay. Fanian McCreary learned how to typeset and get a press to print in Chicago and so, was valuable to The Movement. But in the face of that he leaves his family behind, and ends up in Mexico before their war.
Jenny Williams is just alright in Georgetown with space enough to dream of faroff places and enough independence to work a youth away at the office. A brother is a confidante, his friend becomes for her a glowing memory wrecked on motorbike. Joe goes off to war and bails. Jenny finds a beau that makes her laugh, but won't claim him. And there are the smells and sights and motions of everything going by: by train or car, by carriage, on foot, the trees and air, the flowers, the faces. And the newsprint and verses in song, the newsreel captions, and the stream-of-conscious 'Camera Eye' too, which comes to our eyes and ears as liquid frames for the tongue.
It all reads like it was meant to be performed aloud. It all reads like motion picture characters that a young Jimmy Stewart and James Cagny would admire, look up to, learn from and learn to know having memorized, from a thousand chance encounters. It reads like Huck Finn and Walt Whitman, repeating secular catechisms in a hymn to possibility. And yet the story steams on. Overseas the war begins again, and at home the loss of justice comes as plop! just another obituary in the daily papers.
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If Dos Passos is on the move, Balzac remains inside, out of the rain, near the hearth, with an approving nod made to the maid lighting the candles one by one. These she takes on the finely-wrought, polished, embossed silver tray over to the long oaken table scarred by too much use. This one left near the center of the great room she sets each taper at intervals in between chairs set for many guests.
Piketty's Capital is winding up its central arguments after several months (with my fitful pace). I read that in earnest for a month and set it down and chew on it looking again at other things.
Braudel's monumental Meditteranean, also many journeys, is at least moving along at a doable rate. This week he's talking about bandits and Stendhal.
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notes of date, topic and pagination from Marin Sanudo's excerpted diaries in English:
Venice: Cita Excelentissima
published by Johns Hopkins (2008)
March 1, 1498: Sanudo begins third volume, pp 5-6
Venice: Cita Excelentissima
published by Johns Hopkins (2008)
March 1, 1498: Sanudo begins third volume, pp 5-6
March 1, 1511: uprising, violence in Udine, pp 98-9
March 1, 1519: Sanudo as senator still maintains diary, at first of Venetian year, pp 20-1
March 1, 1523: Sanudo maintains his diary, integrity, vim, pp 23-5
March 1, 1531: doge Gritti goes out to see what needs to be done with lagoons, p 88
March 3, 1511: uprising in Udine spread, pp 99-100; festa and mummary for weddings,m p 271
March 3, 1517: shipwreck tale, pp 256-7
March 4, 1531: Jews allowed a festa that Christians cannot attend prolly during Purim, p 342
March 5, 1522: lottery as a form of gambling outlawed, p 350
March 6, 1508: festa for a wedding, p 490
March 6, 1510: loans to be exchanged for positions, p 269
March 6, 1511: difficulty in filling galley commander, pp 271-2
March 6, 1515: gifts from sultan squabbled over, pp 275-6
March 6, 1528: famine helped by Germans, p 333
March 7, 1511: another letter on uprising in Udine, pp 100-1
March 7, 1517: law drawn up to dredge the canals, pp 85-6
March 7, 1520: suspending pig run, p 519
