Histories

I’ve taken to reading books to Jen at night. Chapter by chapter, we make our way through books I happen to have. We did The Billionaire’s Vinegar, a gift to Jen from my brother. Then, we read Contested Will, a book I bought after hearing the author speak at the Newberry Library. (He adheres to the controversial theory that Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him.)

I just finished reading her our first fiction work, A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes.

I’d read it several years ago and loved it, but I was amazed at how much I didn’t remember. It’s a lovely book. Essentially, it’s a novel disguised as a collection of short stories. And I suppose each chapter could each be read on its own, as a separate story. But taken all together, it’s a theme and variations, a musing on love, fate, free will, religion, art, death, rebirth, passion, and the cycles history takes us through. Starting with Noah’s flood, images gather and recur and spin into each other like a snowball rolling and growing. And burrowing through the book like a woodworm is—well, a woodworm.

It’s very inspiring to see the way he pieces the symbolism together. Sometimes I wondered if it was too ham-fisted, like you could see the strings. But I enjoyed watching him do it so much. It made me want to find an image or two and screw around with it from multiple angles.

Next up: A History of the World in Six Glasses, a Christmas present from my brother. That ought to cover our historical studies nicely.