TRAGIC WOMEN, book stuff

"Mauvaise fille" by Justine Lévy is published by Stock

... sometimes there seems to be a chain of events or things you find interesting or a special kind of attention you pay to certain details, and all the tiny little facets seem to fit into a bigger picture, or all of a sudden a common thread seems to emerge... Whatever.

Justine Lévy and her intellectual gigolo papa Bernard-Henri...

It all started with my buying the new novel by Justine Lévy at the airport in Paris - I KNOW I KNOW - kind of too fashionable a reading and everything, but still. I just wanted to flick through the book at the newsstand (the book came out a week or so ago), totally convinced that I would find it pretty crappy, and indeed: "Mauvaise fille" sets out in this completely Lévy-ish tone, kind of I am so complicated, weak, suffer from an inferiortiy complex (at the same time though I find myself super duper...) - but then I got caught by her description of her mother's death and slow fading away, which I found very touching. And tragic. And sad. Once her mother disappears from the book, btw, the reader is yet again left alone with unbearable Justine Lévy (or her badly disguised narrating voice) - and must hurry through the rest of the book not to be tempted to throw it into the next corner.

Alfonsina Storni

Okay, Lévy and her mother's tragic fate. Then I got into some kind of Mercedes Sosa commemorating frenzy, which of course (Alfonsina y el mar by Ariel Ramírez) led me to the fate of Alfonsina Storni, her suicide, the death note she had sent to the editors of an Argentine newspaper...

VOY A DORMIR
Dientes de flores, cofia de rocío,

manos de hierbas, tú, nodriza fina,

tenme prestas las sábanas terrosas 

y el edredón de musgos escardados.

Voy a dormir, nodriza mía, acuéstame. 

Ponme una lámpara a la cabecera; 

una constelación; la que te guste; 

todas son buenas; bájala un poquito.

Déjame sola: oyes romper los brotes... 

te acuna un pie celeste desde arriba 

y un pájaro te traza unos compases

para que olvides... Gracias. Ah, un encargo: 

si él llama nuevamente por teléfono 

le dices que no insista, que he salido...

... and then again, by mere coincidence, looking for a birthday present, I came across a reedition of the writings of Annemarie Schwarzenbach, who is already a tragic figure for herself, but then she, of course,...

Annemarie Schwarzenbach

... had or did not have this short thing with Carson McCullers, and when I read this short biographical note on Wikipedia, I was really (I know, pathetic...) saddened by how terribly hard a life is inflicted upon certain individuals, with poor Carson McCullers being sick and suffering from the most atrocious illnesses from a very young age, and I think I don't even have a point here...

Carson McCullers - I am really curious to read one of her novels,
maybe the first one she wrote, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

... except for the whiff of melancholy all of these almost simultaneous (re)discoveries leave me with.