First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, Sylvia draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence. Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wo First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, Sylvia draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence. Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wounding honesty the excruciating particulars of a youthful marriage headed for disaster. Well, it's a memoir.

I wrote and I wrote, and I tore up everything, and I wrote some more. After a while I didn't know why I was writing. My original desire, complicated enough, became a grueling compulsion, partly in spite of Sylvia.

Pinnacle 8051 Simulator Free Download. I was doing hard work in the cold room, much harder than necessary, in the hope that it would justify itself.' This isn't about the memoir but I am taking it anyway. Sylvia: a Novel, according to the back blurb, was a story-length memoir first and then appeared again Well, it's a memoir.

I wrote and I wrote, and I tore up everything, and I wrote some more. After a while I didn't know why I was writing. My original desire, complicated enough, became a grueling compulsion, partly in spite of Sylvia. I was doing hard work in the cold room, much harder than necessary, in the hope that it would justify itself.' This isn't about the memoir but I am taking it anyway.

Sylvia: a Novel, according to the back blurb, was a story-length memoir first and then appeared again with 'weird delirium' (not my words) of the 1960s and modern marriage. I half-assed read the back of the book and somehow came away with the idea that it was added onto, and I really can't justify this next part at all, from a magazine article. Where did I get magazine article from?

The publication date says 1990. The events take place in 1963, which is when I think it was first written down. Right or wrong, I couldn't get the idea that Michaels took a bit of writing about something that happened to him (magazine article came from the writing exercise feel!) and added to it decades later out of the back of my mind. Writing to deal with something becomes something else and it was like the motives changed now. I don't really want to criticize the book for motives.

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That wasn't what I really thought about it. It's a memoir. Michaels married Sylvia.

He married Sylvia, he says, because marriage would solidify them. The fights whispering I'm sorry, the kamikaze planes would stop shooting down peace on earth and all systems go for set flight plans for wedded bliss blah blah blah. He married her anyway. He knew what he knew and he did it anyway. Listen, officer!

I didn't know! My hands are clean except for these ink stains on the fingers. You can tell by my ink stains that I was wholly present the whole time. There is no way that there was nothing else to Sylvia than their marriage. I have known women who don't seem present without the company of a man. I don't care.

I don't believe it. Sylvia of 'Sylvia' is wife of Leonard Michaels. If she is a person without him it is listening to her 'crazy' friend Agatha.

(Agatha who is sexualized, so-called demeaned, offering up for an audience to her one listener. How is that different than writing a memoir?) She had attempted suicide before they had met. At least there was a scar on her wrist. He denies the attempt but then brushes away the bloodless (yeah right!) attempt as 'She was good at it because she had done it before' (not an exact quote). He seems to be asking someone, maybe himself, in the writing if he was treating Sylvia like the whore she thought he was when he would walk ahead of her. The constant testing of her place. How is that different than writing a memoir?

Turns to the audience: Listen to this chick, right? She's totally nuts! It's crazy, I can't do anything right. I don't want to criticize for this.

'Sylvia' doesn't always come off like this, exactly. But it's that whole writing about it in a memoir.

She's dead and wasn't he in the right? She was a crazy bitch, right? I wanted a Sylvia that was a whole Sylvia, or even a submerged in a glass half empty Sylvia, not only his wife. Why did he marry her when he knew what she was like? He wouldn't ask the right questions then and he doesn't answer with the right question in the book.

Patterns are their own hypnosis. Winners and losers is wrong.

'It would have been easy to leave Sylvia. Had it been difficult, I might have done it.' No, that's not fooling me. It might have something to do with someone who would try to win the past by writing a memoir. I did like this description of writing a lot. 'Writing a story wasn't as easy as writing a letter, or telling a story to a friend. It should be, I believed.

Chekov said it was easy. But I could hardly finish a page in a day. I'd find myself getting too involved in the words, the strange relations of their sounds, as if there were a music below the words, like the weird singing of a demiurge out of which came images, virtual things, streets and trees and people. It would become louder and louder, as if the music were the story. I had to get myself out of the way, let it happen, but I couldn't.

I was a bad dancer, hearing the music, dancing the steps, unable to let the music dance me.' I felt more turmoil about his struggle to get out of the way about his writing than I did for his marriage.

I could relate to this and I also related to pretty much the first information he relays about himself is that he's a person who likes to read (as if that's the only thing he could think of to say. Not off to a good start for a memoirist!).

It was moving when he saw his own happiness in his own handwriting when apart from her, before her death. That was how he felt. What the hell does the right thing have to do with anything? Happiness away from something you know in your bones is not good for you beats any after the fact justification for what sounds good to explain something you just know.

That's what I'm doing in this review. I didn't love this book and I don't want to criticize it because I didn't hate it. I know in my bones it isn't in my bones. But did she really kill herself because she wasn't with him? Maybe Michaels couldn't get out of the way enough to really write about it.

There are illustrations by a 'Sylvia Bloch'. I don't want to know if they were the same Sylvia.

I know they are. They look childish and helpless. She's in most of them.

He's laying down like someone would lay down on train tracks. (Sylvia would be true if he ever did. He is too self conscious about his struggles to be a writer. Writers.) Maybe it's a weird thing to criticize someone's life story for lying or unwillingness but. It's a memoir.

Why would you write one of these if you were gonna hide behind Walker Percy quotes about the '60s? (I don't think I liked The Moviegoer. I'm not gonna check my gr ratings in case I rated it highly. Jesus, that's such a self serving memoir move there, Mariel!) Larry McMurtry (of Lonesome Dove fame.

Best book ever!) says on the back flap: 'One of the strongest and most arresting prose talents of his generation'. Okay, Michaels is pretty darn good at prose at times. But didn't he blurb something similar about Barry Hannah? Man, you blurbers are all the same.

(Some other Mariel review from 2011: 'Man, I hate memoirs.' ) Edit- Ok, the hate has set in! I was thinking about this book more and it started worrying me more and more how Michaels complained Sylvia kept him from writing.

Yeah, what a bastard. He makes me hate writing even more. If you don't want to get at what matters then why do it?

Do not be mislead by the description. This is not a book about the sixties. That the book is set in the sixties is peripheral, incidental.

The story itself could have been set during any decade. That it happened to be set in the sixties can be attributed to the bluntly autobiographical approach the author took to the source material. Describing the author's approach as 'bluntly autobiographic' may sound derogatory, but admittedly I'm mixed.

Referring to the dates of journal entries lacked subtlet Do not be mislead by the description. This is not a book about the sixties. That the book is set in the sixties is peripheral, incidental. The story itself could have been set during any decade. That it happened to be set in the sixties can be attributed to the bluntly autobiographical approach the author took to the source material. Describing the author's approach as 'bluntly autobiographic' may sound derogatory, but admittedly I'm mixed.

Referring to the dates of journal entries lacked subtlety, but it also reinforced the timeline of the events. Written 10 years later (during the memoir boom that brought us such high-profile works as A Million Little Pieces), Sylvia would have undoubtedly been marketed as a memoir itself. Fortunately, the text is spare enough that it doesn't consistently or conspicuously exhibit any characteristic that would push it into one category or the other. (The most conspicuous being the journal entries.) Thus it can be read as either a novel or a memoir.

Indeed, this is not a book about the sixties. Sylvia is an intimate portrait of the author's marriage to the titular Sylvia. Sylvia is a difficult character to write about. Throughout the novel, we are presented with the sympathetic aspects of her character. She's an orphan. It is suggested that she may be mentally ill, although she refuses to undergo psychoanalysis or therapy. But the overall portrayal of the character is not sympathetic.

On the contrary, Sylvia is a nightmare. More than a portrait of a marriage, the book is a portrait of the many ways in which Sylvia abused the author - verbally, physically, emotionally, etc. There are so many examples that I doesn't know where to start. Ordinarily, I would focus on the problems of this portrayal. Sylvia is, first and foremost, the 'manic pixie dreamgirl', an archetype denounced as reductive to women. Moreover, she is a nightmare.

The 'manic pixie dreamgirl' is already a problematic archetype. Adding Sylvia's idiosyncrasies (a polite way of saying she's a 'crazy bitch') to the mix only make the portrayal more problematic. But I can't focus on these problems because I have met Sylvia.

Not the 'Sylvia' of the book, but my own Sylvia. Sylvia is her own archetype. There are male and female equivalents.

What is consistent in the Sylvia archetype is the character's inability to constructively process their past, or their shortcomings, or their insecurities, or their etc. The character's inability to constructively process some aspect of their personality or circumstances manifests itself in abusive behaviour. The abuse may be generalized, but more often than not it is directed at one person. In the case of Sylvia (and in most cases) that one person is the significant other, spouse, or love interest. Leonard Michaels's greatest accomplishment with Sylvia is his ability to convey his state of mind to the reader.

The importance of this being that most readers won't understand why the protagonist is staying in this marriage, or why the protagonist is putting up with this abuse. Perhaps the most important passage in the book is that in which the protagonist visits a psychoanalyst and receives the psychoanalysts opinion that he and Sylvia are 'feeding off of each other.' It is important that we (the readers) remind ourselves that this is only one perspective. The author is presenting his account of a marriage. Unfortunately, we do not have Sylvia's account. The best the author can offer us amounts to a few drawings completed by Sylvia during those tumultuous years. Pound for pound (weighing in at a scant 125 pages) this is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Keeping with the boxing analogy, Michaels writes with a sort of punchy, muscular prose style that is both plain and profound at once. I kept marveling at how skilled he was at saying so much in so little space. His physical descriptions of characters were particularly impressive. It isn't often that the narration about the size and shape of a character's lips becomes one of the most pleasur Pound for pound (weighing in at a scant 125 pages) this is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Keeping with the boxing analogy, Michaels writes with a sort of punchy, muscular prose style that is both plain and profound at once. I kept marveling at how skilled he was at saying so much in so little space. His physical descriptions of characters were particularly impressive.

It isn't often that the narration about the size and shape of a character's lips becomes one of the most pleasurable parts of the story, but Michaels has a real gift for revealing, shaping and drawing story through his characters. The copy I own bills the story as a 'fictional memoir.' I have no idea what that means, but it didn't bother me. If it's a memoir then it's the best memoir I've ever read. If it's a novel then it might be considered a little abrupt or unfinished, but that still wouldn't change the fact that it is filled with high-quality writing throughout. I guess I'd recommend the book to young writers, New York historyphiles, and masochistic boyfriends. In Sylvia, Leonard Michaels manages to make dark and disturbing a joy to read.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I'm off to find more books by this guy! A few close friends love this book.

Like LOOOVVE. Yes, it is beautifully written. Yes, it is filled with raw and intense pain. Yes, it made me cry. But it is supposed to be a portrait, a mature reflection of a hideously dysfunctional relationship. And in one sense it works. I get how Michaels is young and naive and over his head.

I get Sylvia's insanity (never called that, but that's what it is). I get the intensity of their fights. I feel his hopelessness. But I never understood why A few close friends love this book. Like LOOOVVE.

Yes, it is beautifully written. Yes, it is filled with raw and intense pain. Yes, it made me cry.

But it is supposed to be a portrait, a mature reflection of a hideously dysfunctional relationship. And in one sense it works. I get how Michaels is young and naive and over his head. I get Sylvia's insanity (never called that, but that's what it is). I get the intensity of their fights. I feel his hopelessness.

But I never understood why he loved her. I never got a sense of who she was or how she was appealing. He describes her as attractive but then has a mutual friend say, 'she's not beautiful, you know.' (Why did he do that? To show that it wasn't her beauty that held him entranced?) He claims she's smart but never shows it. What's the appeal? What is the basis of his love?

Who was the woman he was in love with? Who was Sylvia? It's 2014 and I don't ever want to read another story about a sad sack young man in love with a 'crazy.' I never want to see another portrayal of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. It's time to see the 'crazy' or the Manic Pixie Dream Girl write books and movies and comics about the creepy assholes that are in love with them. THAT is something I'd like to read. I don't really know how to react to this novel.

I know from growing up with my mad sister that people suffering from mental/physical illnesses can be abusive. Much of Sylvia's behaviour sounds familiar to me and yes, I wouldn't hesitate to call it abuse. But how this book is written, and how Sylvia's actions are framed does not seem fair to Sylvia. For one thing, the 'a male writer falls in love with a mad, beautiful bitch; the sex is great at first, but they're doomed; she needs to die for him I don't really know how to react to this novel. I know from growing up with my mad sister that people suffering from mental/physical illnesses can be abusive. Much of Sylvia's behaviour sounds familiar to me and yes, I wouldn't hesitate to call it abuse.

But how this book is written, and how Sylvia's actions are framed does not seem fair to Sylvia. For one thing, the 'a male writer falls in love with a mad, beautiful bitch; the sex is great at first, but they're doomed; she needs to die for him to write, and to live' narrative is immediately suspect. What are we to make of Michaels' constant reiteration that he chose this relationship? How he uses this choice to justify and exculpate himself in the readers' eyes. How never really explores how he was 'feeding off' her, as was suggested by one of the psychiatrists, except to say (more or less) that he was Too Good a Person From Too Loving a Family. How she was substantially younger than him and he never addresses that power imbalance (she was just 19 and hadn't even chosen a major; he was a 27 year old grad student.

Nb: he also creeps on his students when he becomes a TA: 'some of the Italian girls [.] were visually delicious.' ) How he others her when she's first introduced; he's 'hypnotized by Sylvia's flashing exotic effect' - her dripping wet curtain of 'Asian hair', her 'Egyptian'-looking 'wide and sensuous mouth'. What are we to make of Michaels, and society at the time, and their keenness to label Sylvia insane? What are we to make of Michaels' note that Sylvia never did the groceries or the laundry? How he would come home and she was just hanging around talking to her one friend, who he demeans as a ~sex-crazed woman who loves being debased and narrating her ~debasement. What are to make of Michaels' humiliation re: buying tampax for Sylvia?

His dread that people will label him a 'transvestite' for buying ~feminine hygiene products~? His portrayal of Sylvia as being 'turned on' by having emasculated him in this way, her slight smile. And the eagerness of the psychiatrist he visits re: having Sylvia committed by Leonard, not re: her own well-being given her suicide attempts, but again, re: emasculating Leonard by asking him to buy tampax for her.

And Michaels' satisfaction at the psychiatrist's assessment of her based on his words. What are we to make of this diary entry: 'I have no job, no job, no job. I'm not published. I have nothing to say.

I'm married to a madwoman.' And right after: 'I didn't [know] either as I held Sylvia in my arms and called her names and said that I loved her. Didn't know we were lost.' And what to do with this diary entry as well: 'I was in pain. She was wailing.' I question Michaels' motivations in writing this book.

It's decades after the fact. It's not an investigation into what made his wife tick, what did he miss, why was she the way she was.

It's not a grief memoir. Michaels just revisits bad memories and reasserts that his wife was insane. Sylvia remains as opaque as ever and that's how he wants her to remain. But I'm glad it helped inspire The Antlers' Hospice. A very short sharp sad read which takes place between 1961 and 1964, a Greenwich Village bo-ho version of the Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath gruesome twosome waltz with madness and suicide (yes, another Sylvia).

This Sylvia is like the more famous one in being intellectually gifted and driven to prove it, but whereas with Miss Plath I always wonder grimly what would have happened if she'd just hung on for a couple more years until the 60s started properly swinging and the feminists started roaring inst A very short sharp sad read which takes place between 1961 and 1964, a Greenwich Village bo-ho version of the Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath gruesome twosome waltz with madness and suicide (yes, another Sylvia). This Sylvia is like the more famous one in being intellectually gifted and driven to prove it, but whereas with Miss Plath I always wonder grimly what would have happened if she'd just hung on for a couple more years until the 60s started properly swinging and the feminists started roaring instead of dying in 1963, this Sylvia allows no such sentimental if-only nonsense. Because she was smack in the middle of the social avant-garde which the other Sylvia never encountered.

For Sylvia Koch it was all free love, free drugs and free jazz (rock not yet being hip in the first part of the 60s) - and all this creative cutting-edge whirligig only made things worse. The hippies considered love to be a solution, and Miss Koch had, it appears, a basketful of love presented to her every day with flowers and frills and furbelows stuck all over it by Mr Michaels and it didn't help a bit.

Like Neil Young says, an ambulance can only go so fast. Here's my book jacket blurb: 'It's the Feel-Bad book of the summer!' In the mood for a riveting read that will make you want to curl up on your bathroom floor in a puddle of tears? Have I got the book for you! But seriously.Michaels's matter-of-fact but poetic style seduces you into the unfolding horror of a young writer who slowly realizes he is thoroughly overmatched by his relationship with, let's say it plain, a crazy woman.

It's the most realistic portrayal of the 'relationship dynamics' be Here's my book jacket blurb: 'It's the Feel-Bad book of the summer!' In the mood for a riveting read that will make you want to curl up on your bathroom floor in a puddle of tears?

Have I got the book for you! But seriously.Michaels's matter-of-fact but poetic style seduces you into the unfolding horror of a young writer who slowly realizes he is thoroughly overmatched by his relationship with, let's say it plain, a crazy woman. It's the most realistic portrayal of the 'relationship dynamics' between a 'sane person' and a mentally ill person that I've ever read or will ever want to read. One of the most disturbing and beautiful novels I've ever read. First off: i basically wrote my common app essay (personal statement, whatever) about this book, and about leonard michaels. Or rather, well, about the certain kind of hopeful idol at this time in my life that leonard michaels has represented for me, and how with sylvia (picked up, unexpectedly, in a used bookstore in evanston, not either of michaels' books of short stories i've been searching for for years but rather a fictional memoir) i was trying in some way to step outside of the need for t first off: i basically wrote my common app essay (personal statement, whatever) about this book, and about leonard michaels. Or rather, well, about the certain kind of hopeful idol at this time in my life that leonard michaels has represented for me, and how with sylvia (picked up, unexpectedly, in a used bookstore in evanston, not either of michaels' books of short stories i've been searching for for years but rather a fictional memoir) i was trying in some way to step outside of the need for that desperate idolatry.

None of this is necessary, besides the fact that i'm trying to say that whatever i ended up thinking of this book, before i even read it, it was important to me in a strange way that i could not refute. That i could not get away from, i suppose. Naturally, it did not measure up to the importance that was placed in it (an arbitrary importance), but that's almost besides the point—or rather, that was exactly what I knew would happen, and maybe it would have been weird, or worse, if it had measured up.

Now, totally unrelatedly to that spiel, i can't figure out to what extent the demonization of sylvia was intentional on michaels' part. Because you read it, and you think, good god, is this girl even human? And then there is that one line at some point, saying it was of course easier to remember the good than the bad, the fights rather than the pleasant conversation, complete truth, and this resolves a lot, as you realize this is only half a memoir, a memoir of the bad (which eventually became the whole—and i suppose i'm implying there must be some sort of good/bad dualism, which, maybe not, but still—) but still it's bothersome. One realizes that by extrapolation michaels is saying of the protagonist, of himself, it's not that she was a demon and i her willing victim, we stayed together because i too was a demon. We matched each other. —but still it's bothersome. This dovetails with some other things i've been thinking about lately, like, after a certain point in ~history~ or whatever, when one should know better (like 1992), what's the point of reading stuff so tinged with misogyny?

It can be hard to reconcile literature with feminism (my realization is that, for much of the history of literature, you can't, because it's not like there was a contemporary feminist work equal to paradise lost out there, if you know what i mean), and it's harder still as you move within the twentieth century. The question is, do i read philip roth? Do i read leonard michaels? Do i read sylvia?

Well i have, and yes. I wrote in a college supplement essay that literature is my avenue towards understanding human experience. Does michaels' portrayal of the human experience outweigh in some aspect or another the misogyny? Is misogyny a valid aspect of the depiction and understanding of human experience?

Is it still valid if said misogyny may or may not be ingrained in the very writing, in the memory, in the viewpoint, and not as an intentional part of plot or character? There's no right answer here, nothing objective. For me, though, i think it's yes. There was a real essayistic feel to this novel, as it was told in alternating chunks of exposition and scene segments, and I have to say everything was executed perfectly up until the problematic ending, which felt more like the conclusion of a short story than the end of a novel. But seeing how this is the story of a young writer trying to make sense of his violently depressed wife's suicide, I suppose there weren't and could never be any easy answers.

I feel like he wrote past the ending, that There was a real essayistic feel to this novel, as it was told in alternating chunks of exposition and scene segments, and I have to say everything was executed perfectly up until the problematic ending, which felt more like the conclusion of a short story than the end of a novel. But seeing how this is the story of a young writer trying to make sense of his violently depressed wife's suicide, I suppose there weren't and could never be any easy answers. I feel like he wrote past the ending, that there was a spot two pages earlier where the ending would have punched me a little more, but this is kind of the struggle with retrospective narrative voice--the urge to end in reflection rather than scene. But still: 'Writing a story wasn't as easy as writing a letter, or telling a story to a friend.

It should be, I believed. Chekhov said it was easy. But I could hardly finish a page in a day. I'd find myself getting too involved in the words, the strange relations of their sounds, as if there were a music below the words, like the weird singing of a demiurge out of which came images, virtual things, streets and trees and people. It could become louder and louder, as if the music were the story.

I had to get myself out of the way, let it happen, but I couldn't. I was a bad dancer, hearing the music, dancing the steps, unable to let the music dance me.' Anyone who writes that maybe deserves better than to have me workshop the end of their novel. Almost a memoir, it's about his first wife's suicide.

Toontrack Ezkeys Grand Piano Keygen Downloader on this page. Micheals's prose is so clean and pure throughout this book. It avoids the woe-is-me aspect of bad relationship memoirs because of its frank honesty. There's also some fun factoid elements scattered throughout, like when Michaels gets his first literary agent and then meets Jack Kerouac.

Let me give you one little sample of this book's beauty (this part is about his wife Sylvia and their friend Agatha): 'They are close even in their looks--sam Almost a memoir, it's about his first wife's suicide. Micheals's prose is so clean and pure throughout this book. It avoids the woe-is-me aspect of bad relationship memoirs because of its frank honesty. There's also some fun factoid elements scattered throughout, like when Michaels gets his first literary agent and then meets Jack Kerouac. Let me give you one little sample of this book's beauty (this part is about his wife Sylvia and their friend Agatha): 'They are close even in their looks--same height, same shape. I found them asleep together, on the living room couch, one black-haired girl, one blonde. The difference only showed how much they looked the same, two girls lying on the couch in late afternoon.

They looked like words that rhymed.' One of the spookiest novels about abusive relationship you will read, mostly because its so intensely personal. Michaels managed to set it perfectly in its time and place, using the backdrop of the turmoil of the 60s and 70s as a sort of symbol/parallel to his relationship with Sylvia, who is undoubtedly crazy/insane/violent, and Michaels seems to have enough self-awareness to realize he was equally to blame for the toxicity of the relationship. The prose is beautiful, sparse.

Reminds me of Auste One of the spookiest novels about abusive relationship you will read, mostly because its so intensely personal. Michaels managed to set it perfectly in its time and place, using the backdrop of the turmoil of the 60s and 70s as a sort of symbol/parallel to his relationship with Sylvia, who is undoubtedly crazy/insane/violent, and Michaels seems to have enough self-awareness to realize he was equally to blame for the toxicity of the relationship. The prose is beautiful, sparse. Reminds me of Auster at times, but without being so pretentious. From 'There would be an inadvertent insult, then disproportionate anger.

I would feel I didn't know why this was happening. I was the object of terrific fury, but what had I done?

What had I said?' - The Narrator I remember a quote from the books that are a part of Melville House's The Neversink Library. The quote is from Herman Melville and it goes like this: 'Somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; from 'There would be an inadvertent insult, then disproportionate anger.

I would feel I didn't know why this was happening. I was the object of terrific fury, but what had I done? What had I said?'

- The Narrator I remember a quote from the books that are a part of Melville House's The Neversink Library. The quote is from Herman Melville and it goes like this: 'Somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.” I am reminded by the books that I have picked on a whim, without knowing anything about the author or the book itself, just because I liked the cover or because the things written at the back of the book piqued my interest. I am reminded by the hand that providence played in these meetings between book and reader. I am reminded by Man in the Dark, the slim book that introduced me to Paul Auster; by Chess which introduced me to Stefan Zweig; and by The Ecco Book of Christmas Stories, a book I picked up out of a desire to read something for Christmas and evolved into my ongoing love affair with short stories by introducing me to Graham Greene, John Cheever, and Alice Munro. Sylvia, the autobiographical novella written by Leonard Michaels, belongs in the company of the books I mentioned above.

My sole reason for picking it up is because it was part of FSG Classics and I was collecting them en masse in defiance of reason and common sense. After a while, I relegated Sylvia to the part of my library classified under 'Books I Might Never Read In My Life'. Woe to me then if I had never summoned it back from that unfair hell where I banish some of my books. The thing about Sylvia is that it is unassuming and simple. A slim volume of less than 2oo pages, it doesn't talk about epic themes like Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude nor is it honored as a technical powerhouse in writing like David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.

Sylvia is a story about a disintegrating marriage between the narrator and a woman named Sylvia Bloch. It's the kind of story where things seldom happen and where events that advance the plot is almost nonexistent. Sylvia is mostly a book of ruminations regarding the narrator's marriage and his struggles in becoming a writer. Only in the end, when things escalate, does the reader have a sense that something is moving forward. Of course, it may sound unsexy and boring even but what separates this book from the others, what elevates Sylvia, is Michael's writing style. The writing is terse but dense with meaning and emotional honesty. Consider this paragraph from the book from when the narrator first saw Sylvia Bloch: 'She stood barefoot in the kitchen dragging a hairbrush down through her long, black, wet Asian hair.

Minutes ago, apparently, she had stepped out of the shower, which was a high metal stall in the kitchen, set on a platform beside the sink. A plastic curtain kept water from splashing onto the kitchen floor. She said hello but didn't look at me. Too much engaged, tipping her head right and left, tossing the heavy black weight of hair like a shining sash. The brush swept down and ripped free until, abruptly, she quit brushing, stepped into the living room, dropped onto the couch, leaned back against the brick wall, and went totally limp. Then, from behind long black bangs, her eyes moved, looked at me. The question of what to do with my life was resolved for the next four years.'

The paragraph above is devoid of any grandiosity and is written simply but it's oozing with meaning. There's the sensuality of Sylvia's brushing and her movement implying that there's a sexual attraction coming from the narrator. The reader can also see the brutal passivity of Sylvia, a trait that will become important later on. Finally, the reader is made known that the narrator has fallen in love but the declaration is without cheesiness but with urgency.

Here is a man who is in a state of limbo in his life but he sees a savior in the form of Sylvia Bloch. Not only is he in love with her but he needs to be in love with her because it is something that can take him away from this limbo. Might the narrator be petty in his reason for love? Only a person who hasn't been devastated by love and circumstance can truly say so. Sylvia is not only a portrait of a deteriorating marriage because it is also a portrait of love.

Both the narrator and Sylvia want their love to work, they want to live together because they truly love each other. However, Sylvia's psychology and the narrator's helplessness overshadows their love. I am reminded by a quote from a book I read recently, Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending: 'There is accumulation. There is responsibility.

And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.' Like The Sense of an Ending, Sylvia has devastated me and left me thinking about it for days. Right now, just writing about it, I am burdened by the tragedy of the characters' marriage.

I believe that is what great books do which is to force itself upon the reader, disturbing the reader during odd moments, not letting the reader forget that there's a book out there capable of awakening raw emotions from within you. Leonard Michaels was an American writer of short stories, novels, and essays and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Going Places, his first book of short stories, made his reputation as one of the most brilliant of that era's fiction writers; the stories are urban, funny, and written in a private, hectic diction that gives them a remarkable edge. The follow-up, coming Leonard Michaels was an American writer of short stories, novels, and essays and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Going Places, his first book of short stories, made his reputation as one of the most brilliant of that era's fiction writers; the stories are urban, funny, and written in a private, hectic diction that gives them a remarkable edge. The follow-up, coming six years later (Michaels was perhaps not prolific enough to build a widely popular career), was I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, a collection as strong as the first.

Il 23 ottobre del 1965, 450 soldati americani del primo battaglione del 7째 Cavalleggeri vengono trasportati con gli elicotteri in un piccolo spiazzo nelle valli di Ya Drang. Sono immediatamente circondati da 2000 militari nordvietnamiti. Tre giorni dopo, a poco pi첫 di due miglia di distanza, il battaglione che avrebbe potuto giungere in loro soccorso viene letteralmente fatto a pezzi. Il luogotenente Hal Moore ha un solo ordine: resistere. E un solo obiettivo: mantenere la promessa di riportare a casa tutti i suoi uomini, vivi o morti. Read information about the author Lieutenant General Harold Gregory Moore Jr.

Is a retired officer of the U.S. Army, and the co-author (with Joe Galloway) of two successful books ('We Were Soldiers Once. And Young' & 'We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back To The Battlefields Of Vietnam') about the 1965 battle of the Ia Drang valley in Viet Nam, during most of which Moore (then a Lt. Colonel) was the primary U.S. Officer commanding. Galloway was also present during much of the battle, as a combat correspondent for UPI.

After a long and distinguished career including combat service in the Korean War previous to his service in Viet Nam, Lt. Moore retired in 1977.

He was highly decorated during his career, earning the Distinguished Service Cross, Army Distinguished Service Medal, Legion Of Merit (3 Awards), Bronze Star (4 Awards, including 2 for valor), Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm (3 Awards) and many other medals, decorations, and badges. A full length biography of Lt.

Moore ('Hal Moore: A Soldier Once. And Always', by Mike Guardia) will reportedly be published by Casemate Publishers in September 2013.

Reviews of the Eravamo giovani in Vietnam.