Sat May 05, 2012 9:17 pm
Currently reading the second of my two-volume (seemingly German?) edition of Tom Jones, which continues to be a pleasure, more in the way of a good fireside essayist than a proper novel.
Also the Solitudes / Las Soledades of Luis de Góngora in a parallel text edition, very well translated by Edith Grossman. I read a stanza in English, then the same stanza in Spanish, and so on. Grossman quite reasonably omits the rhyme, but the rhyme really is worth experiencing even if you can't understand the 17th century Spanish, with de Góngora's convoluted verse - he just plonks words down as if they were Latin fridge magnets, with a cosmic disregard for word order. You find the adjective trailing the noun by two or three words sometimes, or the adverb wandering hopelessly in search of the verb. Or even worse, the noun and verb separated, like a couple too righteous to get divorced, steadfastly ignoring eachother while still having dinner with each other's friends.
And finally, about half way - or a bit more - through Floating Worlds - the Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter Neumayer which my wife got me for Xmas. I'm generally averse to correspondence, and I still feel that twitch here, but Gorey is too often quintessentially Gorey to make it unworthwhile. Neumayer comes over as a bit of a fawning bore, although a well-read one and nice enough, but Gorey is exactly the kind of madcap, staunch, self-denigrating obsessive you expect from his works. And it's a beautiful hardback edition by a co. called Pomegranate Press (great name), with Gorey's ridiculously cute incidental doodles and designs all over the envelopes. And if any of you haven't read Gorey, I press you thither.
fine words butter no parsnips
