Self's Punishment and Niggling Doubts

Just finished another book so I though I'd best come and blog-out my review ASAP, before I forget I've read it. I keep having these niggling doubts that I've missed at least a couple of books in between Twilight and Breakfast at Tiffany's - I must have! I can't possibly have read that little. Unfortunately, racking my brains is turning out to be a fairly short-lived line of enquiry. All I can think is that it's possibly I've been too distracted with uni reading to do much else (I do intend to write reviews on some of the novels I study as part of my coursework, but so far this semester we've been doing a lot of poetry - Whitman, Dickinson etc - or I haven't finished reading the novels set - like The Scarlet Letter. Which I thought was actually quite good but had trouble getting into, and trouble with my time management skills as well - essays being due at the same time and whatnot).

Anyway, enough excuses, on to the book review - these past few weeks I've been delving into the literary world of German crime fiction - specifically, a collaboration between Bernhard Schlink (of 'The Reader' fame) and Walter Popp, who collectively published 'Self's Punishment' under the psuedonym Thomas Richter.



This book was published in Germany in 1987, but wasn't translated into English until 2004, or so says the little flap on the inside of the jacket. We probably only got the translation because Schlink had such a great success with 'The Reader'. It's about a private investigator and former Nazi prosecutor, Gerhard Self, who is assigned to a case at a large chemical works plant thingy, where someone has been messing with the computer system and generally causing havoc - giving the lower-level employees extra holiday time, cutting the executives' salaries and messing with the automated tennis court booking system. Things get hairier when tampering with the computer-controlled gas sensing system leads to an explosion at the plant.

I was really looking forward to reading this book, as I'm a really big fan of 'The Reader', and another of Schlink's more recent novels, 'Homecoming'. Unfortunately, I think Walter Popp is a bad influence on Schlink. You could see touches of Schlink's brilliance in certain character descriptions, but mostly his flair was obscured by what I assume was a really low-grade translation (does being bitchy hurt less if I suffix that with a "no offence"?). And, clearly, the collaboration was less than cohesive - parts of this seem like each writer was writing in a separate room, and neither of them bothered to double-check if the various sections fitted together. I've given group presentations with similar problems, so I understand. But it does seem a bit shameful that this kind of disorganisation would occur within an international publication, rather than just in a first year history course.

In some places, the scenes just seemed like a really detailed synopsis. A publication of the author's notes, if you will. Despite this, it was a good plot - and an interesting look into post-WW2 German culture - and I have hope that the sequel, Self's Deception, will be better.

The "Little Blue Books" & Breakfast at Tiffany's

Years ago, my mum worked at the library. I was a nerdy little kid who didn't like being left home alone, so when Mum went to work I would often tag along, especially during school holidays. Almost every day you would find me sitting under the stairs, in the staff area, on a pile of pillows, nose buried deep inside a book. Sometimes it would be actual library books, sometimes I would bring something from home, but a lot of the time I would pick something from the donations bin. (I use the term "donations" very loosely - even though the library took in books they very rarely passed them on to any charity or added them in to the collection - they would mostly just sit in this giant bin for years on end - I was saving them from a life of neglect, really...) One day I got the best haul I've ever had - someone dumped a whole collection of these tiny blue editions of Oxford Classics. Jane Austen's entire collected works, a few Tolstoys, Trollopes, some Dickens, and some miscellaneous poetry collections too - stuff that, if I were to buy brand new editions today, would cost me $30+ each. So I stuffed two library bags full and hauled my treasure home.

This has to have been more than 7 years ago, and I still haven't any of these pretty little blue treasures - so, new resolution, I am going to read all of them, and I am going to tell you what I think of them when I do.

I'm partway through reading one (just the one) of my little blue books - a collection of short stories by Tolstoy. I do like Tolstoy. Russians literature is just so fantastically depressing - it's particularly funny to read his stories for children. People get captured and held prisoner and nearly starve to death, and he matter of factly blurts out at the end, that they got away, but the other guy nearly died. That's his version of a kids book.

Speaking of books, here's something I read recently that has completely changed my life:



Before I read this, I was a Capote-virgin (wow, that sounds dirtier than it should, doesn't it? No, just me? I poke my tongue out at you if you don't find that as weird as I do...), but now I am a convert. It's times like these that I remember why I gave up being religious in favour of just reading a shitload of books. Breakfast at Tiffany's is perfect - you know when reviewers use that cliche, "a gem of a novel"? This is not only an accurate way to describe Breakfast at Tiffany's, reading it makes you feel like the phrase was invented just to describe Capote's story.
I will admit, I was biased when going in to reading this, because I saw the movie first, and loved it, and part of the charm was being able to ignore descriptions of Holly Golightly as a blonde and picture Audrey Hepburn in my head instead. I couldn't imagine Holly any other way, and I wouldn't want to. The ending is (thankfully) a lot less Hollywood/romantic comedy than the film, but most of the events are the same. There's something so much more wonderful about reading it though, and I would whole-heartedly recommend reading it first if you can. Every single word Capote writes seems to fit snugly into place, like puzzle-pieces - the words were invented just to be strung together in those very sentences. The tone is like having someone tell you a story, like the narrator is real - he never once slips out of being the narrator into being the author, like so many things (frustratingly) do. Out of five stars, I would give this a read-this-book-or-you-haven't-lived rating. I am a Capote convert, and I am planning to buy everything else he's ever written as soon as funds allow.

On a side note, the other thing I loved about this book was that it was $10, and is part of a Penguin re-release of paperbakcs in the old orange covers - I am a very tactile person, and I really loved how the pages were all smooth and the covers were soft to hold. I barely opened the pages properly because I didn't want to crack the spine. To regurgitate another reviewer's cliche, everything about this book was a delight.

Well, that is me up-to-date for the moment. Hopefully I will be blogging more regularly now - I got my own baby laptop for my birthday, so I will be able to blog in those long breaks between classes, when I am at uni. Always connected now. God bless wireless internet.