Book Review: My Life with Bob

[osprey_archer]

I enjoyed Pamela Paul's My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, but in a much more low-key way than I was expecting. It's a memoir about Paul's reading life, which is a genre that ought to be larger in my opinion, although future practitioners ought to take Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris as their guide rather than My Life with Bob.

The problem with My Life with Bob, honestly, is that there's too much regular memoir here and not nearly enough detail about the books. I want my book memoirs like my food memoirs, rich in sensory detail. I want to feel sun-warmed peach juice dribbling off my skin; I want to catch my breath along with the author (who has become the reader again) as she races toward the ending of the second Hunger Games book, exhausted from giving birth but nonetheless so engrossed in the story that she picks it up again as soon as the baby's sleeping and all is quiet. Paul mentions this experience, but it's not vivid enough for me to feel it with her.

I want this even if I haven't read the book myself. Especially if I haven't read the book myself. I didn't come out of this book filled with the overwhelming urge to read any of the books it mentioned, which I think is really a sign of failure in a book-about-books.

Having said this, I think part of the problem is that the Venn diagram of our literary tastes only have a small area of overlap, and even that overlap is mostly illusory. Both Paul and I loved Anna Karenina, for instance, but Paul identified with Anna, whereas it didn't even occur to me that you could identify with Anna. Levin was clearly where it was at. You read the Anna sections because you have to in order to dive breathlessly into the next bit about Levin and Kitty.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when I read Anna Karenina I was much more into the Kitty and Levin story, too.

And yeah! A book like this ought to make you excited about all the books you haven't read, like a good book review--but it won't work if what you like is really different from what the author likes.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

The one book she managed to make me feel passionate about was one that she passionately hated, because it sounded liked something I'd passionately hate too: the Flashman series, which sounds sort of like James Bond male wish fulfillment dialed up to eleven set in the nineteenth century. Maybe it's easier to communicate passionate hatred than love?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's easier to communicate passionate hatred than love?

Yeah maybe! When you dislike something, then even if someone else's dislike is for some other reason, unless that reason goes directly against your own sensibilities, you're liable to credit it because you're being carried along by the energy of your dislike. Whereas, when you like something, you like it for very particular reasons (usually? often? at least when you really love something), and if another person picks out irrelevant (to you) things to focus on, it can feel like a disappointment, like they haven't actually seen what's special about the thing.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Both Paul and I loved Anna Karenina, for instance, but Paul identified with Anna, whereas it didn't even occur to me that you could identify with Anna.

I actually gasped out loud at this statement! No accounting for taste (or character identification), I guess!

(I didn't care about Levin and Kitty at all, except in this meta-sense where I find Tolstoy's obvious self-insertion and Opinions About Everything entertaining).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

My mom was on your side. She rolled her eyes at Kitty and Levin because they were so clearly showered with Tolstoy's approval.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

You know, I did roll my eyes, but I also didn't mind this self-insert approval-shower quality at all in the endgame couples for War and Peace (can't remember if you've read it, so no spoilers).

I mean, I noticed it and went, "Hah, Tolstoy, there you are again," but I was also interested in those characters in a way I never quite got interested in Levin and Kitty, who were completely overshadowed by Anna and poor Karenin as far as I was concerned.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I read War and Peace so long ago that I only remember about three scenes--but I know the number-one endgame couple, and at least the female member of that couple I really liked.

I think part of what makes Tolstoy's *non* self-insert approval characters so good is that he seems to have so much compassion for them--not just Anna, but Karenin, even.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Poor Karenin! I felt quite bad for him, at least until his bitterness calcified him into a state of self-righteous priggery. You should have taken the divorce when he offered it, Anna!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Levin is the most self-inserty self insert ever, it is true. I suspect that there is an ur-Levin in Tolstoy's juvenilia (possibly a part that Tolstoy burned) where Levin has purple eyes and a Tragic Past.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

:D