A Personal Matter

A Personal Matter [Kojinteki Na Taiken] (Evergreen, 1982)
by Kenzaburo Oë [translated from the Japanese by John Nathan]
Japan, 1964

A Personal Matter is 1994 Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oë's feverish exploration of a first-time father's struggle with ethics and personal responsibility when confronted with the birth of a hideously deformed baby diagnosed as unlikely to grow up "normal."  Great premise for a novel.  Laughably bad execution.  While some of the blame for the letdown probably lies in John Nathan's memorably erratic translation (no offense, but it was kind of hard not to laugh like a high school kid each time Nathan described how erected [sic] lead character Bird was when he should have just said that the character had an erection, was aroused, etc.!), Oë's definitely to blame for the lion's share of the problems here.  To be more precise, the quality of his writing didn't measure up to the quality of his themes for me.  A couple of telling examples.  Early on in the novel,  Bird meets his newborn baby and looks away in shock and disgust at the sight of the two-headed "monster" apparently born with a brain hernia.  "My son has bandages on his head and so did Apollinaire when he was wounded on the field of battle," Oë writes (24).  A remarkable image, truly powerful here, that would then lose its appeal for me after the fourth or fifth time that the novelist referred to it in quick succession.  Aside from such unnecessary repetition, A Personal Matter is also full of over the top bad writing masquerading as clever wordplay.  Bird "found himself caught in the claws of a formidable lobster of fatigue," we read at one point.  Poetic?  On its own, maybe.  But Oë follows this up in the very next paragraph with Bird's out and out loopy confession to his adulterous girlfriend: "I guess I'm scared.  I have this feeling a disgusting goblin of misfortune is waiting for me just outside" (109).  In the face of such frequent and grandiloquent howlers, I lost interest in whatever grand thematic statement Oë was trying to make and the dimestore psychology of throwaway lines like "Bird's moral mechanism had been broken since he had abandoned his baby in the hospital" (116).  "Moral mechanism"?  Really?  Even making allowances for the state of desperation that the writer might have been trying to evoke with his envelope-pushing prose and subject matter, I didn't connect at all with his tone, the monochromatic characters, or the conveniently pat ending in the last two pages of the novel that resolves everything with a nice little moralizing bow.  In other words, maybe not as full-on dopey as Tender Morsels but a huge disappointment nonetheless. 

Kenzaburo Oë

A Personal Matter was Claire's July pick for the Non-Structured Reading Group and friends.  Next month we'll be tackling another one of Frances' selections, William Carlos Williams' In the American Grain, with the discussion set to take place on Friday, 8/27.

El Tercer Reich

El Tercer Reich (Vintage Español, 2010)
por Roberto Bolaño
España, 2010

Udo Berger, entusiasta alemán de wargames y escritor para revistas de juegos de estrategia, va al hotel Del Mar en la Costa Brava para pasar las vacaciones en España con su novia.  Bajo el sol catalán, Udo e Ingeborg se encuentra con otra pareja teutónica, Charly y Hanna, y empiezan a desarrollar una amistad con ellos y con los vecinos (un elenco internacional de españoles, expatriados, y un hombre misterioso de origen desconocido que se llama el Quemado).  Nada interesante pasa hasta que Charly desaparece una noche; llegado a este punto, la cosa se complica y comienza una suerte de thriller claustrofóbico.  Sabiendo a ciencia cierta que todo fanático de Bolaño va a querer experimentar a este libro (una inédita novela, escrita en 1989 y descubierta entre los archivos del escritor después de su muerte) por sí mismo, voy a tratar de limitarme a decirles que El Tercer Reich me pareció más o menos, tal vez bueno, pero nada del otro mundo.  El ambiente de misterio, por ejemplo, tarda demasiado antes de arrancar.  La segunda parte de la novela, donde Udo sufre de indicios de una crisis nerviosa inexplicable al mismo tiempo que empieza a perder el juego de El Tercer Reich a su contrincante, casi parece a Henry James más que a Bolaño mismo.  ¡Qué lastima, pues, que la segunda parte sea la mejor parte con respecto a la intriga!  Por supuesto, no es una novela mala y sí hay páginas que se leen como el Bolaño de siempre.  Pero falta algo de picante, si me entienden.  (http://www.grupodelectura.com/)
*
El Tercer Reich (Vintage Español, 2010)
by Roberto Bolaño
Spain, 2010

Udo Berger, a German war game enthusiast and a writer for board game strategy magazines, heads off to the Del Mar hotel on the Costa Brava to spend some time with his girlfriend vacationing in Spain.  Under the Catalan sun, Udo and Ingeborg meet another German couple, Charly and Hannah, and begin to develop a friendship with them and some locals (an international cast of Spaniards, expats, and a mysterious man of unknown origin known only as "el Quemado" [a/k/a "the Burnt Guy"] for his disfiguring scars).  Nothing really interesting happens until Charly disappears one night--at which point, the plot thickens and a sort of claustrophobic thriller begins to take shape.  Knowing full well that all of Bolaño's fans will want to experience this book (an unpublished novel, written in 1989 and discovered among the author's papers after his death) for themselves regardless of anything I have to add, I'll try to limit myself to saying that El Tercer Reich [The Third Reich] seemed OK, maybe even "good" to me, but nothing really out of this world.  The mystery ambience, for example, takes too long to develop before it gets going.  The second half of the novel, where Udo inexplicably begins to suffer from the symptoms of a nervous breakdown at the same time as he begins to lose a game of The Third Reich at the hands of his rival, almost reads more like Henry James than Bolaño himself.  What a shame then that the second half of the novel is the better of the two halves in terms of the suspense and intrigue!  Of course, it's not a bad novel and there are pages that read like the Bolaño that we're used to.  It's just that something's missing, if you catch my drift.  [N.B. "Self-translation" added 7/29 as a tip of the hat to E.L. Fay!]

Bolaño

El testigo

El testigo (Anagrama, 2007)
por Juan Villoro
México, 2004

"No me veas así, pendejo, este país sólo tiene una división geográfica importante: los cárteles".

(El testigo, 221)

Aunque leí el Premio Herralde 2004 El testigo como mi primer libro para el Reto México 2010 de Sylvia, había querido leerlo desde que vi que fue considerado como el número 18 en la lista de Las mejores 100 novelas de la lengua española de los últimos 25 años según Semana.com (por supuesto, también tenía ganas de hacerlo porque sabía que Bolaño era hincha de Villoro).  Sin ir más lejos, yo diría que para mí era un libro muy bueno pero quizá no era un excelente libro.  Mientras que mi única queja de verdad es que Villoro a veces trataba de hacer demasiado con su argumento, la novela es una mezcolanza rica que se compone de una suerte de libro de viaje, una historia sentimental, y una trama novela narco entre otros ingredientes.  El protagonista, Julio Valdivieso, es un profesor potosino que regresa a México después de unos veinte años que ha pasado enseñando en el extranjero.  Al descubrir un nuevo país (al hablar de la política) y el mismo México de siempre (al hablar de las conexiones sentimentales con varios amigos y familares de su pasado), Julio gradualmente está metido en una crisis donde los recuerdos de un amor perdido, su afán por el poeta mexicano Ramón López Velarde, una telenovela que se prepara sobre la guerra cristera, y una serie de asesinos probablemente relacionadas con los narcotraficantes al margen de su círculo de socios todos tienen algo que decir sobre su futuro.  Porque sospecho que mi resumen en miniatura de la novela les va a impresionar muy poco, me gustaría aclarar que me gustó el sentido de humor de Villoro (una proeza dada que la novela es basicamente un estudio psicológico).  Julio vocifera injurias contra Supertramp en un párrafo entero al principio de la novela, por ejemplo, y ese grupo nefasto de castratti con timbre nasal sigue ser la cabeza de turco del personaje a través de las 470 páginas siempre que haya mala suerte.  ¡Muchas risas!  Al mismo tiempo, Villoro me impresionó con su alcance como un maestro de ambiente, atmósfera y diálogo.  Por eso quiero decir que ambos los contrastes entre las escenas urbanas en la D.F. y las escenas de campo en Los Cominos y el diálogo entre personas de estratos sociales distintos me parecieron fidedignos.  Adémas, el capítulo donde Julio recibe una paliza de un policía corrupto me recordó de Bolaño con respecto a su intensidad.  Aunque pienso que Villoro faltaba un poquitín de sutileza en lo que se refiere al estatus de Julio como un testigo a todos los cambios en México durante los últimos 25 años, ya puedo entender cómo algunos podrían opinar que ésta sea la gran novela mexicana de esta década.  De hecho, me gustaría leer más de Villoro dentro de poco. 
*
El testigo (Anagrama, 2007)
by Juan Villoro
Mexico, 2004

"Don't look at me like that, pendejo, this country only has one important geographical division: the drug cartels."

(El testigo, 221, my translation)

Although I read the 2004 Premio Herralde winner El testigo [The Witness, sadly not yet translated into English] as my first book for Sylvia's Mexico 2010 Reading Challenge, I'd wanted to read it ever since I saw it was ranked #18 on Semana.com's list of "The 100 Best Spanish-Language Novels of the Last 25 Years" here (of course, it didn't hurt that I knew that Bolaño had been a fan of Villoro's as well).  Without getting into all the details just yet, I'd say that this was a very good but perhaps not a great book in my estimation.  While my main complaint is the somewhat nitpicky one that Villoro occasionally tried to cover too much ground with his plot, the novel's a rich hodgepodge of intersecting plotlines in which a sort of emotional-psychological travel journal, a love story, and elements of a narco-novel combine to form some of the main ingredients.  The protagonist, Julio Valdivieso, is a professor from San Luis Potosí state in central Mexico who returns to the country after an absence of some twenty-odd years spent teaching abroad.  Upon discovering a new country (politically-speaking) and the same old Mexico as always (in terms of his sentimental connections with various friends and family members from his past), Julio gradually becomes mixed up in a crisis where the memories of an old love affair that still haunts him, his fondness for the Mexican poet Ramón López Velarde, a soap opera in the making based on the Cristero War, and a series of killings probably involving narcotraffickers on the fringes of his social circle all will have something to say about his future.  Since I suspect that this rapid fire summary of the novel probably wouldn't draw many new readers to it even if it were available in translation, I'd like to make it clear that I really, really enjoyed Villoro's sense of humor here (no mean feat in what's at heart a reflective, psychological study).  Julio goes on a paragraph-long rant against the group Supertramp early on in the novel, for example, and that horrible band of nasally castratti come up as targets again and again throughout the 470 pages whenever the character faces a new round of adversity.  Just cracked me up.  At the same time, Villoro also impressed me with his range as a master of mood, setting, and dialogue.  Both the contrasts between the urban scenes in Mexico City and the country scenes at Los Cominos and the dialogue involving people from various social strata felt believable to me, and the part of the novel where Julio gets beat up by a dirty cop was Bolaño-like in intensity.  So while Villoro might have laid it on just a little too thick for me in regards to Julio's status as a witness to the sweeping changes in Mexico over the last 25 years, there's enough cool stuff going on with his El testigo that I can understand why some might view this as the Great Mexican Novel of the present decade.  If everything works out, I intend to read more by the guy before too long.

Juan Villoro

Hay cosas que se detestan y otras que es posible aprender a odiar.  Supertramp llegó a su vida como un caso más de rock basura, pero esa molestia menor encontró una refinada manera de superarse.  El destino, ese croupier bipolar, convirtió las voces de esos castratti industriales en un imborrable símbolo de lo peor que había, no en el mundo, sino en Julio Valdivieso.  Había educado su rencor en esa musica, sin alivio posible.  Olía a caldo de poro y papa, el caldo que bebío en la cafetería de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, unidad Iztapalapa, el día en que Supertramp dejó de ser un simple grupo infame con sinusitis crónica para representar la fisura que él llevaba dentro, una versión moral de la sopa de poro y papa o del cáncer de hígado o alguna otra enfermedad que el destino tuviera reservada para vencerlo.

(El testigo, 19)

*

There are some things you hate and other things it's possible for you to learn to hate.  Supertramp came into his life as just one more example of rock garbage, but that minor annoyance found a refined way to go beyond all that.  Fate, that bipolar croupier, converted the voices of those industrial castratti into a symbol of the worst there was, not in the world but in Julio Valdivieso.  He had forged his resentment in that music, with no relief possible.  It reeked of potato and leek soup, the soup that he slurped at the Iztapalapa campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana the day in which Supertramp stopped being merely an odious group with chronic sinusitis and became a stand-in for the fissure he carried within himself, a moral version of the potato and leek soup or liver cancer or whatever other illness fate had in store to conquer him.

(El testigo, 19, my translation)

Orbis Terrarum Film Mini-Challenge: Man on Wire

Man on Wire (Magnolia DVD, 2008)
Directed by James Marsh
England, 2008

Ridiculously entertaining documentary about French tightrope walker Philippe Petit's August 7th, 1974, 45-minute waltz back and forth across a wire illegally strung up between the Twin Towers in NYC.  Although Man on Wire benefits from some of Petit's own period footage (early training videos capture him and his friends as a bunch of essentially overgrown kids seemingly entirely committed to helping the aerialist pursue his daredevil dreams), I think its soul probably lies in the remarkable series of candid interviews assembled by director James Marsh.  The playfully boyish Petit (in his later years at least, sort of a John Lydon-lookalike), his contemplative ex-girlfriend, and other friends and misfit partners in crime seem to have shared a unique camaraderie while they planned the World Trade Center stunt, and Marsh manages to capture the feeling that they really believed Petit's high-wire act to be less of a potential suicide in the making and more of a gift of rebellious art to a public in dire need of it.  Overly idealistic?  Perhaps.  But while the part of me that's not particularly fond of heights and/or unnecessarily risky behavior in general may still reject that sort of thinking out of hand, man, what a rush to see that smiling dreamer dancing in the clouds over lower Manhattan!  (http://www.magpictures.com/)

Philippe Petit (l) and James Marsh celebrate Man on Wire's win for Best Documentary at the 2009 Academy Awards.

Note: I "forgot" to mention the Orbis Terrarum Film Mini-Challenge earlier in the month because I was the only participant last time, but I'll continue to "host" this mini-challenge every other month regardless of anyone else's interest in it.  No worries, really!  If you have any foreign film reviews to share for July, though, please send me a link and I'll include it below.  In the meantime, The Baader Meinhof Complex [Der Baader Meinhof Komplex] (Germany, 2008, dir. Uli Edel) was my first selection for the event back in May (a good time but no Man on Wire).  Out.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (Harvest, no date)
by Flannery O'Connor
USA, 1955

Since I don't think I'd even thought of Flannery O'Connor since my high school days (note: in geological time, comparing the here and now to my high school days is a little bit like comparing the here and now to the Pleistocene Epoch!), I'd like to start off by giving Emily a great big thanks for putting O'Connor back on my reading radar/map with this review of A Good Man Is Hard to Find last July.  That being said, it's tough to know where to begin with this one.  While I enjoyed all ten of the short stories that comprise the collection, O'Connor's conception of the Christian South as a cracker heaven and hell was decidedly unpleasant for me at times: even without the title tale's serial killer, for example, her characters indulge in so much petty meanness and casual racism that it's easy to imagine a 2010 version of the volume being entirely populated by bathtub meth dealers in mullets.  I don't know enough about O'Connor to hazard a guess as to whether she meant this series of dysfunctional family portraits to serve as a metaphor for the South or as a reminder of the need for God's grace (the stated purpose of all her writing per the blurb on the back of the book) or what, but there are at least three things about O'Connor's writing here that I found totally arresting.  First, she's absolutely unflinching as an observer.  Of course, this is very much a pro that comes with some built-in cons: if you're at all uneasy with the use of the term nigger, for example, don't expect O'Connor to make you feel any less queasy about it.  Second, she's rarely predictable as a storyteller.  While I'd feared that she might be a little didactic when writing about the nature of grace and redemption, O'Connor was ballsy and unconventional enough to--as Emily points out--suggest that a four year-old boy in the river actually might be closer to God while drowning than back safe at home with his abusive parents.  Strong stuff, and not exactly what I expected from a wordsmith with a "religious" point of view.  Finally, O'Connor's a consummate craftsman in the sense that both the unexpected physical descriptions (the young woman in slacks "whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage" [1]) and the devastatingly casual nods to race relations in the '50s South ("Her Negroes were as destructive and impersonal as the nut grass," she writes of one character [136]) constantly keep you on your toes as a reader.  Can't say that I've found my new favorite writer or anything like that--but another misfit for the gallery is always, uh, nice.  (http://www.harcourtbooks.com/)

Flannery O'Connor

Up for Grabs:

Interested in reading A Good Man Is Hard to Find?  My "gently used" copy is up for grabs to the first person who asks for it in the comments box (U.S. addresses only, sorry rest of the world).

Los lanzallamas

Los lanzallamas (Tolemia, 2008)
por Roberto Arlt
Argentina, 1931

Los lanzallamas, la continuación a Los siete locos, de Arlt, es aun más duro e inexorable que su predecesor.  Aunque el deterioro de Remo Erdosain, el protagonista de la novela cada vez más angustiado y trastornado, sigue ser el centro de atención de la obra, esta mitad del díptico trae al primer plano los otros locos y monstruos que pertenecen a "la terrible banda de Temperley" (229).  Además de Erdosain, un primer plano se da al Astrólogo, el líder castrado del grupo, que predica un evangelio de violencia mesiánica: "Ahora hay que predicar el odio y el exterminio, la disolución y la violencia.  El que habla de amor y respeto vendrá después" (20).  Lo siguiente es Haffner, también conocido como el Rufián Melancólico, un macró violente cuyos planes para un nuevo futuro vascilan entre lo de huír a Brasil y lo de convertirse en un segundo Al Capone.  Por su parte, la prostituta coja Hipólita sueña despierta en la imagen de Jesús como proxeneta ("Jesús no tenía pinta de 'cafishio'.  Lo seguían todas las mujeres.  Él la hubiera podido hacer 'trabajar' a la Magdalena" [82]) y, después de tales blasfemias, se reí a la idea de compartir sus pensamientos con una asamblea de mujeres devotas.  Algo que me fascina es que mientras que Arlt no juzga a estos desagradables personajes suyos, él  nunca se aleja asustado de darnos un retrato completo de ellos en lo que refiere a su sordidez tampoco.  En una pensión de bajísima categoría, Hipólita presencia un viejo derrotado que contempla el suicido con un revólver en la mano.  Erdosain esencialmente compra una niña de catorce años de su madre para ser el novio de la pibeta.  Dos hermanos, sufriendo de hambre a causa de la pobreza, deciden pretender ser un ciego y su lazarillo para pedir limosna en las calles; por supuesto, el "lazarillo" inmediatemente miente a su hermano acerca de la cantidad de moneda ganada.  Aunque este realismo sucio de Arlt parece tener más en común con un Zola que con un Borges en cuanto a su visión de la metrópoli moderna, sería un error exagerar los paralelos.  Mientras que la Buenos Aires de Arlt sí es una sestina, al mismo tiempo Los lanzallamas es una novela donde la realidad de pesadilla coexiste con escenas irreales (como la del hombre enigmático, vestido en un traje de las trincheras con careta antigás y todo, que visita al dormitorio de Erdosain para charlar de la toxicidad de gases en la batalla).  En resumen, otro libro raro sino asombroso desde Arlt, cuyo estilo y cuyas proclividades poco conformistas son un placer.  Totalmente macanudo.
*
Los lanzallamas (Tolemia, 2008)
by Roberto Arlt
Argentina, 1931

Los lanzallamas (The Flamethrowers, unfortunately still not available in English translation), the sequel to Arlt's The Seven Madmen, is even more grim and unrelenting than its predecessor.  Although the deterioration of Remo Erdosain, the novel's increasingly unhinged and anguished protagonist, continues to provide the center of attention in the work, this half of the diptych foregrounds the other madmen and monsters associated with "la terrible banda de Temperley" ("the terrible Temperley gang" [229]).  In addition to Erdosain, close-ups are given to the Astrologer, the castrated leader of the group, who preaches a gospel of messianic violence: "Ahora hay que predicar el odio y el exterminio, la disolución y la violencia.  El que habla de amor y respeto vendrá después" [20] ("Now's the time to preach hate and extermination, moral dissipation and violence.  The stuff about love and respect will come afterwards").  Next up is Haffner, a/k/a the Melancholy Thug, a vicious pimp whose plans for the future oscillate between fleeing to Brazil or becoming a second Al Capone.  For her part, Hipólita, a crippled prostitute, daydreams about Jesus' hold on the ladies ("Jesús no tenía pinta de 'cafishio'.  Lo seguían todas las mujeres.  Él la hubiera podido hacer 'trabajar' a la Magdalena" [82] ["Jesus didn't look like a pimp.  All the women followed him.  He would have been able to make the Magdalene turn tricks") and then laughs at the idea of sharing these blasphemous thoughts with a roomful of pious women.  What helps makes these unpleasant characters so fascinating is that while Arlt doesn't really judge them, he doesn't shy away at all from revealing them in all their sordidness either.  Hipólita witnesses a broken down old man contemplating suicide in a flophouse with a revolver in his hand.  Erdosain essentially buys a 14-year old girl from her mother to become his live-in fiancée.  Two brothers, suffering from hunger due to their extreme poverty,  are reduced to pretending to be a blind man and his guide to beg on the streets; naturally, the "guide" almost immediately starts lying to his own brother about the amount of the takes coming in.  While Arlt's brand of dirty realism might seem closer to a Zola than a Borges in terms of its vision of the modern metropolis,  I'd be careful about reading too much into that.  Arlt's Buenos Aires is a cesspool, but the Flamethrowers is also a novel where the nightmarish realities are interrupted by surrealistic sequences like the one where an enigmatic man in a WWI gas mask and trench suit visits Erdosain in his bedroom to discuss the toxicity of various battleground gases.  In short, another odd, altogether astounding effort from Arlt, whose nonconformist tendencies and gritty style are right up my alley.  Way cool.

Arlt

The Divine Comedy I: Inferno

The Inferno of Dante [Inferno] (The Noonday Press, 1997)
by Dante Alighieri [bilingual edition with a verse translation from the Italian by Robert Pinsky]
Verona, 1314

While reading poetry in translation is easily the compromise of all compromises, I have nothing but good things to say about how well Robert Pinsky's free verse translation of the Inferno flows (i.e. I can't speak for how accurate the translation is, but it reads like a thing of beauty terza rima or not).  Of course, it helps that the Inferno itself is so freaking good!  Since you can find better summaries of Dante's Virgil-led journey through the nine circles of hell elswhere, I'll merely mention a few of the things that made reading this so involving for me.  First up, there's that unresolved tension between Dante the poet and Dante the character in the poem.  While it takes a rather large amount of moxie to write yourself into history as the sixth world class poet in a continuum of "giants" including Homer, Horace, Lucan, Ovid, and Virgil (Canto IV, 70-87), Dante the poet's apparent hubris is lessened by the amount of times Dante the character is literally cowering in fear throughout his journey through the underworld.  In addition, there's something all too human, if not very forgiving from a Christian point of view, about Dante's reactions to particular shades he meets in hell: "and death to your family line," he angrily tells off one already-suffering victim late in the poem (Canto XXVIII, 100).  Although these "two Dantes" combine to form a fascinating character study, both poet and pilgrim at once, a second thing that's no less arresting from a psychological point of view is the Inferno's novel conception of the underworld.  Heroes from antiquity, various clerical and lay figures from recent history in the Italian city states, and even figures from literature and myth all vie for the reader's attention, forming an underworld cosmos that's like a hall of fame of the pagan, Christian, and schismatic damned.  While Dante's visceral descriptions of the punishments that are meted out are well worthy of his fame, I was actually more wowed by how you might run into Minos one minute and Saladin or a troubadour holding his decapitated head in his hands in the next.  Truly inventive.  Finally, Dante's own prowess as a poet is undeniable even in translation.  Whether providing a simple description (Canto II, 45-46: "her eyes out-jeweled the stars in splendor"), a provocative metonym (hell is described as "sorrow's hospice" in Canto V, 15), using repetition and contrast in close order (Canto XIII, 66-68: "My mind, in its disdainful temper, assumed/Dying would be a way to escape disdain,/Making me treat my juster self unjustly"), or trotting out a Homeric simile updated for the 14th century ("Like those who shake,/Feeling the quartan fever coming on--/Their nails already blue, so that they shiver/At the mere sight of shade--such I was then," we read in Canto XVII, 75-78), the poet is always up to the challenge, always in charge of his métier as a craftsman.  Amazing stuff, no?  Ha, what a surprise!

Dante by Botticelli

Although I kind of rushed through the Inferno this past week to be able to post on it in time for this weekend's readalong kickoff, I look forward to discussing it all month long if any stragglers care to join in on the fun.  Please let me know what you thought about it!

More on Dante's Inferno

Amanda (Simpler Pastimes)

Avid Reader (The Avid Reader's Musings)

Bellezza (Dolce Bellezza)

Claire (kiss a cloud)

E.L. Fay (This Book and I Could Be Friends), Cantos 1-8

E.L. Fay (This Book and I Could Be Friends), Cantos 9-17

E.L. Fay (This Book and I Could Be Friends), Cantos 18-26

E.L. Fay (This Book and I Could Be Friends), Cantos 27-34

Iris (Iris on Books)

Rebecca (Rebecca Reads)