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MochaMike

MochaMike

Currently reading

Swann's Way
Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis
Mating
Norman Rush
The Unknown University
Roberto Bolaño, Laura Healy
Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion since 1960 (20/21)
Amy Hungerford
The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays
James Wood
The Leviathan - Joseph Roth, Michael Hofmann

Hell of a day. Finished A Mercy this morning, started this one this afternoon, read the dreary reports of the debt ceiling debacle and administration’s selling out of the Progressives and working class, watched the anything-but-inspirational Never Let Me Go, then returned to this crisp and fast-paced novella of one man’s brief abandonment of his true passion before his predictable, though necessary, return to his true nature and to nature truly. (Yes, a spoiler of sorts.) Hell of a day.

It is too easy to say of The Leviathan that it’s replete with early 20th-century Jewish stereotypes; better, perhaps, is to remember that stereotypes do not grow up in vacuums, though they usually outlast any utility.

In reconsidering this review-ette, the only change I might make is replacing “predictable, though necessary” with “inevitable.” Take your pick.