{"id":146,"date":"2008-11-25T16:15:47","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T21:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/?p=146"},"modified":"2008-11-25T16:20:32","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T21:20:32","slug":"bleak-no-austere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"Bleak? No, Austere."},"content":{"rendered":"

These are great days, cold in Minnesota, but great. (Yes we can, President Obama, oh yes, we can.) So now is the time to sneak in mention of Arnaldur Indridason\u2019s<\/strong> new paperback, Voices.<\/strong><\/em> (NYTimes Book Review<\/strong>,11-2-08) \u201cNot the Icelandic guy again.\u201d (Groan.) \u201cNot more North Atlantic.\u201d (Midwestern groan.)<\/p>\n

Okay, his books are bleak, but North Atlantic sells to Roseledge sailors and his books are smart about Icelanders and well-written and at least one big groaner I talked with is probably going to read it anyhow. I\u2019m going to pass for now and read instead the latest paperbacks set in North Atlantic countries from Swedish Henning Mankell <\/strong>(Firewall<\/strong><\/em>) and Norwegian Karin Fossum<\/strong> (The Indian Bride<\/strong><\/em>), both of which authors I have labeled \u201ctoo bleak\u201d in the past. Then I actually read Hening Mankell<\/strong>\u2019s One Step Behind<\/strong><\/em> last Spring and liked it, partly because his turning-fifty detective is making a new friend at the end of the book, surely a sign of possibilities or hope, if not exactly merriment or joy. Maybe Mankell\u2019s books are austere rather than bleak.<\/p>\n

\"img_2485.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fig. #50. Tenants Harbor public landing in spring, surrounded by the promise of dinghies in summer. Austere, maybe; never bleak<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Reading Karin Fossum\u2019s latest may challenge my previous assumptions, too, because I liked Per Petterson<\/strong>\u2019s Out Stealing Horses<\/em> <\/strong>which was also by a Norwegian and had a Norwegian voice, my Norwegian friends tell me. It was surely austere, but the characters were resilient and saw possibilities. Resilience added to the expected forbearance may be another part of the bleak\/austere difference. So I’ll try Karin Fossum.<\/p>\n

An aside: Pettrerson\u2019s several pages during which the now-older son is preparing breakfast for an unexpected guest at his isolated cabin reminds me of a Jamie Wyeth painting. The former\u2019s spare language balances the latter\u2019s rich colors as each features telling, promising details, but only Jamie Wyeth sometimes includes whimsy or joy. This makes him a great Tenants Harbor neighbor and through this link, a (somewhat indirect) reason to tie Per Petterson\u2018s book to Tenants Harbor.<\/p>\n

I am reading Amir Aczel<\/strong>\u2019s The Jesuit and the Skull<\/strong><\/em> about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, evolution and the discovery of the Peking Man. Teilhard de Chardin is one of my heroes. In the late \u201950\u2019s-early 60\u2019s, I saw that he saw a promising future for man, especially the mind of man, and in the \u201970\u2019s when I really needed it, I found an essay in which he argued for the inheritability of a zest for living. Ninety pages in, Teilhard de Chardin is deliberating the complex, sometimes conflicting ideas of science and religion that made him whole, if often in trouble. Around these deliberations, Aczel writes a great snotty Vatican read. This one is definitely worth a little less sleep at night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These are great days, cold in Minnesota, but great. (Yes we can, President Obama, oh yes, we can.) So now is the time to sneak in mention of Arnaldur Indridason\u2019s new paperback, Voices. (NYTimes Book Review,11-2-08) \u201cNot the Icelandic guy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1,6,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}