How Things End: Two Rereadables

I don't reread books often. When I do, there's something special going on. Here are two books I've reread and will soon reread again.

For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard
Earlier in life, I was so inspired by passages in Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that I started seriously attempting to write. One of my college-professors slammed me for giving her "belle-lettristic" essays and after she explained the meaning of the term I had to admit that writing pretty letters sounded like a plan.

For the Time Being is the philosophy of being and mortality by a writer capable of beautiful letters who can also strip subjects down to startling fundamentals. The metaphors for the differences between single tragic deaths and mass catastrophes will stick with you forever. I reread the book after the Japanese tsunamis and I suspect I'll look at it again soon. Not my original copy: that I left on a plane after I'd started writing poetry in it, so someone out there has a copy that's plus/minus my interstitial poems.

The summary of For the Time Being on Amazon is excellent, and will tell you if you're interested if my words have not.

The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M. Banks
Banks' last Culture book is about a civilization figuring out how and if it's going to transcend. It's also about a musician and the instrument she carries that's devoted to attempts to perform a single impossible piece. I've had other Banks fans tell me they didn't like this book that much, but I love it, and some of its observations are right up there with Dillard, not to be forgotten.

If you can order from your local bookstore, do it.

And if you read on Kindle, The Hydrogen Sonata is on sale today as a Kindle deal.

all day permanent red

When I read the Iliad as an undergraduate, I envisioned it as if filmed on the side during the night warfare scenes of Apocalypse Now. I wasn't looking back to imagine a true record of an ancient conflict, I was translating a clash of heroes into the most powerful visual language I’d been exposed to.

This will do as a short cut to describing Christoper Logue’s poetic retelling of the Iliad. He’s using the most powerful visual language he can invent to retell an epic war between heroes, patron gods and hapless (but named) spear fodder.

A pure classicist might freak out at battle scenes invoking the future spirits of aircraft carriers smashing through the sea of spears, or references to King Marshal Ney smashing his sabre on a cannonball, or the thwarted lethality of a Tiger tank at Kursk. But the images from other times are judiciously chosen. Logue chants with voices from the past and voices from the more recent past, and if you have any fondness for the Iliad, you won’t regret trying this alternative phrasing.  

War Music: An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad is the other piece of the ongoing translation I own. Unlike all day permanent red, it’s not just battle scenes, but I’ll wait to recommend it until I’ve finished it.

I've seen a couple different covers for War Music, both interesting choices. Which leads me to believe that the cover of all day permanent red carries an extra kick if you know where the photo is from. But I don't recognize the image and would love to have it explained.