The Creative Act

Adalbert Stifter. Rock Crystal. NYRB

This is a 76 page book that reflects upon events familiar to just about everyone. Two children set out on Christmas eve from their grandparents to their home. The path is over a small mountain, one they have traversed many times. The boy is young, the girl younger (perhaps 4 or 5).

A very short while after they leave it starts to snow.

Local communities form several valleys set up search parties when they realize what has happened. The children hideout in a cave for the night and see something akin to the northern lights, which they associate with the Christ child they had expected to arrive that night in their village. This is a tear jerking story for those who have been lost or lost someone.  It is about a community coming together, being defined by a moment that will go down in their village history an change the way they see the mountains around them.

I highly suggest you read this book, assuming you have encountered either, estrangement from a community or loss in your life. You want regret it.

Alberto Moravia. Boredom. NYRB.

Alberto Moravia’s book first came out with the english title “The Empty Canvas.” The story follows a painter that is no longer interested in art nor able to paint. His big problem is that he is rich and bored (read whiny). By boredom he means that he is unable to attach anything outside of him to himself therefore he is bored as nothing has a meaning. He feels disconnected from the artifacts of the material world and so stays in his mind at all times, which is the vantage point from which the reader watches the tale unfold.

Enter Cecelia, the would-be model come sex toy. Dino (the painter) essentially inherits this young fox from a sly old painter whose studio was in the same building. Dino comes to think that in her he has something he can connect with and possess. His attempts to accomplish this are failures as the girl proves to be an especially difficult nut to crack, uninterested in money and life to such a complete extent it becomes obvious to the reader that it is she, and not Dino, that is truly bored and detached from the world.

For the first 80 pages I could not help but think this must be a poor translation and I pondered putting the book down. The only reason I held on was that the New York Review of Books has never let me down with one of their printings. Suddenly on page 189 (a little more than halfway) a chapter ends “I was still at the stage of jealousy when a surviving sense of dignity prevents one from spying upon the person one is jealous of. Nevertheless, as I went away I knew I had merely postponed the moment when I would start watching her. Next time, I thought, I should no longer be able to stand firm against circumstances which encouraged me, which indeed almost obliged me, to spy upon her.” And suddenly the novel takes off at a terrific speed until, dazzled and surprised you put the book down and think, Huh?

I will not attempt to explain the metaphysical character of this book because an awful lot is going here besides the narrative and I fear that doing so would give far too much away. The pleasure of this read for me is in the pondering of its metaphysical aspects.  This is a book you’ll have to read twice and think a lot about, perhaps you could read some Nietzsche on boredom in order to truly grasp it. If that is too much work, then I suggest reading the final 200 pages because as a thrilling tale of obsession wherein you hate both the spy and his “victim” this book is pure gold.