The book I am currently reading
It’s never one book. I am now liberated from reading about Paris so I’m finishing Hermione Lee’s great biography of Tom Stoppard and feeling exhilarated by the stretch of ideas within it. I’m on the last chapters of Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds and don’t want it to end. And I’m deeply moved by Durs Grünbein’s Porcelain, his paean to the destruction of Dresden, translated by Karen Leeder. I didn’t know his poetry and have become an evangelist.
The book that changed my life
Primo Levi’s The Wrench. It is his novel about why we make things, what it means to slowly create an object. It felt that someone knew that books were a kind of making.
The book I wish I’d written
I wanted to be a poet. I’m not but years of my life have been spent reading poetry and it is Paul Celan’s work that has proved to be a constant. Much of my ceramic work is a conversation with Celan. His poems are fractured and compressed and lambent. He wrote in German and so I need his words alongside translation. I’ve loved Michael Hamburger’s versions and more recently the editions of Pierre Joris, in particular Breathturn into Timestead, an edition of his collected later poetry.
The book that had the greatest influence on my writing
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. It is so delicately done that you don’t notice the changes of register until you find that a whole dynasty has collapsed, certainties are undone, treasures have become dust. He said in his last letter that the dog was the key to his whole novel, and when I reread it I feel this is true: write into the details, keep the energy unsettled.
The last book that made me cry
Last week I reread Denise Riley’s book of poems Say Something Back, which includes “A Part Song”, a long poem about grief, and that was that. It is remarkable.
The last book that made me laugh
Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. It is on a shelf of children’s books in a corridor, perfect for middle-of-the-night anxiety reading. It still works, still funny.
The book I couldn’t finish
It has to be Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities, his epic study of Viennese society. It is of “immeasurable importance”, according to the blurb, which hasn’t helped me get through the last 500 pages.
The book I’m ashamed not to have read
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Japan has been part of my life since I was 17, and I’ve nodded and mumbled my way through so many conversations about it over the last 40 years. I’m really sorry.
The book I give as a gift
Three favourites: AS Byatt’s Peacock & Vine, her beautiful essay on William Morris and the designer Fortuny; a book about looking and about place. Nigel Slater’s Toast is the perfect gift, as it will make the recipient cry. And Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, because books that collapse genres like this one does are exhilarating.
My earliest reading memory
Possibly not the very earliest but I can remember Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth with painful clarity. I’m sure that the atmosphere of loss and the deep, melancholic descriptions of the damp landscape of the north set me up for life.
My comfort read
Forget European literature. If I’m ill it’s back to Nancy Mitford. And if I’m on a plane it has to be Carl Hiaasen. And if I need to forget everything its Lee Child. Honestly.
-
Edmund de Waal’s new book, Letters to Camondo, is published by Chatto & Windus, £14.99. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
April 23, 2021 at 04:00PM
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/23/edmund-de-waal-if-i-need-to-forget-everything-i-read-lee-child-honestly
Edmund de Waal: ‘If I need to forget everything, I read Lee Child. Honestly’ - The Guardian
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment