Two Lives

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Exploring Nature: Beetles & Bugs: A Captivating Inside View Of The Life Of Two Of The Most Successful Insect Species On The Planet, With Over 200 Pictures. As a foreigner in the Third Reich, Shanti was prevented both from practising dentistry and from carrying out postgraduate research, and in 1937, much against his will, he moved to Britain. The world was also closing in on the Caros, who were Jewish: many of their non-Jewish friends drifted away, too afraid to visit them, and Henny lost her job with an insurance company. Thanks to Hans's father, she got out a month before the war, to stay with a family called Arberry in London. Her mother and sister Lola were less fortunate. I don’t appreciate my work being analysed to that extent,” he might say. “I just want people to enjoy it." This is arguably a single superbly written novel. But it is composed of two different novellas that William Trevor wrote at different times and later chose to combine. His talents as a writer are displayed here at their finest. Today I am feeling that after thirty years of reading his works, this is his best. Which doesn't mean that I'll read it, mind. Books that large are only used for squishing spiders at my place.

Book 20 – threesomes, practice makes perfect. Another summer job ends up with the usual chaos. (June to September 1986). Finally, the oceanic tremor of a book and harbinger of the Gertrude Stein tidal wave, Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007). Sometimes I love to sit awhile watching a bird totter around the garden, or listen and follow the water flowing in a stream, or watch the wind blowing through the grasses and heathers when I walk up Kinder Scout - often this is how it feels to me to read this author. I was a bit 'meh' about the gossipy parts of this book - sometimes the colour of 1920s Paris can come off a bit "Henry and June" for me. Having finished it, though, I see that had I not been hung over, I would have been pretty annoyed. Malcolm writes about as much about Stein and Toklas as she does about some literary critics she met. She gets all meta with the "these people don't like this person and maybe this person is exploiting Stein but then aren't I just exploiting him too?" And slowly but surely we learn more about Janet Malcolm and the literary types she knows than we learn about Stein or Toklas. And what we learn about Janet Malcolm is that she just can't believe that there are some people in the world who don't care about their ethnic roots! Imagine the temerity! Your name is freaking Stein, how come you don't continuously write about being Jewish??The bottom line: a book nearly as curious as Stein herself, but far briefer. It was a great read, with rich insights. Malcolm’s essays here document both fact and process; we are introduced to a few of the leading lights in “Stein-ology” as Malcolm does her research and struggles to make sense of the famous duo. The book also underlines how much of the couple’s life is still open to interpretation although Malcolm is not hesitant to judge. Her harsh appraisal of Stein and Toklas centers to a large extent on their sublimation of their Jewish identity and the mystery of their comfortable and confident survival in occupied France during WWII.

I like that shades of A Suitable Boy peek through almost as if by accident - if I hadn't read that book, some of his family members wouldn't have felt familiar at all.In Two Lives, Trevor displays once again this ability to get at the core of people. The book is two novels, each one bearing a female protagonist who is going slightly mad. I was really enjoying this when I started: I was hungover, I wanted to learn about Stein, and Malcolm can write sentences that sometimes rise above (or fall below, either way) the usual New York journalism. It was exactly what I wanted: three essays, one about Stein and Toklas in occupied France, one about Stein's work and academic criticism of it, and then one about Toklas' life. Also: super short, and really nicely designed. Yale University Press's new editions of the Stein opuses Ida and Stanzas in Meditation, both books beautifully considered in last month's issue of Bookslut by Elizabeth Bachner.

Lastly, I would have loved to meet his Mom. I had a Mom who lived to that exact same age and was called the "War Department" too. Actually my cousins called my parents "The Axis Powers"- so this book really hit home for me. In those exact same eras as Larry's parents' lives too. This is not the book I had understood it to be, which is my fault. This is purely an academic work, and if you're not familiar with Stein's writing, then you will be at a loss. I also have to say I don't really care much for the style of the author of this book. It's more about name dropping. There's focus on her subjects in there, but she's much more interested in the historiography of the subjects than her subjects themselves. There is something to be said about the way we as a culture look at 'mad' women—the way we see women, and madness as their second nature; something that wouldn’t be there if it hasn’t always been; something to be anticipated, only a matter of time. It is always so that madness becomes the woman—seldom do we see her beyond the isolation of that opaque, unforgiving veil.

Great book, I thought of the trials with my own father and some of the conversations that we have had, and are still having, yes my father did come from the same era as Larry's dad, went through some of the same things, utilized the military as a stepping stone, raised many boys. Many of us would find some similarities in our life spaces with this book, I thought it a was a welcome read during this holiday season, and it made me appreciate my own father even more. The sparse prose took a while for me to get into, but to brilliant effect—this is a story I would recommend strongly, in a solid four star kind of way, in a way that keeps you feeling something indefinable but persistent. Shanti and Henny both endure many trials before they meet again. Shanti serves as a dental and medical surgeon in the British Army, and he loses an arm after an explosion. He doesn’t see how he can work again, but, inspired by others to keep going, he eventually learns how to perform dentistry with one hand. Henny learns that Hans pretended to be a diligent Nazi, and she’s unsure how to separate fact from fiction. She also discovers that her best friend’s husband is a member of the Nazi SA. During the course of his doctorate studies at Stanford, he did his field work in China and translated Hindi and Chinese poetry into English. He returned to Delhi via Xinjiang and Tibet which led to a travel narrative From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983) which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.