This one is a re-read for me. I think last time I read it was when I lived in Toronto and I just hung out at the library after work and read books because my living situation was not ideal. This time I was visiting Esther in Halifax, and I knew I could finish it on my vacation, and Terry Pratchett is a favourite of mine.
Having said that he's a favourite, I need to warn anyone who might try him out that he is VERY silly and British. If you don't like Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) or Monty Python, chances are that this guy is not for you. I think you all should give him a shot, since until that Rowling lady came along, he was THE GUY for young adult literature. Note that it's young adult fiction, so it's not like there are terribly complex things going on here.
That's one of the other things I love about Pratchett. He doesn't sacrifice style to plot, and he doesn't think kids will lose their attention if the words are too difficult. I think he is successful in this because he is just constantly cracking jokes, so even if the plot is progressing less quickly (which it must do from time to time. Pacing is a thing, Rowling lady) there is still a lot of value in the writing.
Ok so on to the actual book. This one, Dodger, is not part of the gigantic Discworld series which Pratchett is known for. It's a novel about the character Dodger from Dickens' Oliver Twist. If you've read Oliver Twist or seen the movie, it might help you understand some things about the book, but it's not necessary and of course Wikipedia can always answer any particularly pressing questions. The best way to characterize this book is that it's a tribute to a time and place: London, England in the early Victorian era. I guess it's also a tribute to Dickens himself, and what the book Oliver Twist sought to accomplish.
Oliver Twist is a social commentary on the life of the poor in Victorian England. Oliver is innocent, honest, and uncomplicated. Various characters attempt to play him into their selfish, criminal schemes but he narrowly evades these traps by telling the truth and trusting the right people. Eventually everything works out and he lives with a wealthy family in the country. Dodger is a social commentary as well, but instead of the trusting innocence of Oliver, Dodger uses his knowledge of the city, his perceptions of people, and a staunch commitment to sounding truthful to get himself and his lady friend out of trouble. Dodger's cast of characters borrow from Oliver Twist, history, and from Dickens' own life, with Dickens playing a central role. Pratchett obviously held Dickens in high regard as a humanitarian and a writer. He just disagreed about what it takes to rise from the pits of poverty.
Dodger could be played off as a villain next to the innocence of Oliver Twist, but he enacts values of gentleness, generosity, and justice in spite of being recognized as "a geezer", which I take to mean as some sort of slum lord. Pratchett seems to be saying that crime and evil are not equivalent, and my good old G. K. Chesterton smiled in his afterlife.
Pratchett is a satirist, so of course this whole book is just cartwheeling with puns and sassy one-liners and parodies of historical figures. I know I must have looked like a doofus, sitting on a giant boulder in Peggy's Cove, grinning, reading. Can't be helped. Sweeny Todd even makes an appearance.
So where am I going with all this? I am not certain at all now that I read it back to myself. Dodger is the non-angelic hero that is miles more sympathetic than the pure-and-righteous Oliver Twist. Pratchett's crafting of characters and setting are impeccable, and it's also hilarious. I give it a perfect 8/8.
“After all, my young Dodger, what exactly are you? A stalwart young man,
plucky and brave and apparently without fear? Or, possibly, I suggest, a
street urchin with a surfeit of animal cunning and the luck of
Beelzebub himself.”
Up next: Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Saturday, 30 July 2016
Friday, 22 July 2016
The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene
My dad suggested this book and left it at my house, so it was easiest if I just read it. After all, he gave in to my incessant raving about Neil Gaiman (see blog about Neverwhere, April 2016).
To be honest I don't think I really understood this one either. Unlike Slaughterhouse Five, which I've grown to appreciate more and more as I've thought about it, I don't remember this one clearly enough to re-hash it and pull the meanings out. Probably has to do with the quality of the writing. None of the characters possess the brilliance of reality which would make them stick in my mind. None of the scenes are written so expertly as would make reading them just as good as living them (yes, it does happen).
The first half is a sort of a love story. The Captain and Liza have a sort of love relationship, but it is told through the memories of a child, and a fairly dull child too. No conflict or adventures, no questioning the adults or reaching out for affection. Just floating along in observation. There is one aspect that I found interesting about the love story, and that is its basis on acceptance and kindness, rather than passions or affections. Liza feels obligated to The Captain for his kindness and care of her. The Captain feels obligated to Liza for her quiet acceptance of his decisions and vices. It's unclear whether they are lovers or just mutual sympathizers. They spend most of their lives separated from each other and correspond regularly but telling each other very little. I wonder if this is an attempt by the author to construct a love story with the exact opposite operational basis from what we would consider desirable or normal. All of the obligation, none of the shared history. All of the kindness, none of the passion. All of the moral components, none of the physical.
Anyway after the love story part it turns into a spy story? The Captain turns out to be a spy/drug smuggler in Panama, and the narrator goes to track him down to tell him that Liza is dead and it all gets a bit bizarre. I don't know at all what the theme or point is supposed to be. There are references to the love theme, but overall the exposition is poorly done. Close, but no ciggy, Mr. Greene.
This novel has been part of an attempt by my dad to find the "new classics": books written recently which will survive into the following generations as important commentaries on philosophy, life, love, etc. We can't all read only Steinbeck and Hugo forever.
I don't recommend this book. It was an honest attempt, but it lacked fire and skill in the crafting.
Up next: Dodger by Terry Pratchett which was a recommendation from my past and was available at the Halifax Public Library. Terry Pratchett is candy for my heart.
To be honest I don't think I really understood this one either. Unlike Slaughterhouse Five, which I've grown to appreciate more and more as I've thought about it, I don't remember this one clearly enough to re-hash it and pull the meanings out. Probably has to do with the quality of the writing. None of the characters possess the brilliance of reality which would make them stick in my mind. None of the scenes are written so expertly as would make reading them just as good as living them (yes, it does happen).
The first half is a sort of a love story. The Captain and Liza have a sort of love relationship, but it is told through the memories of a child, and a fairly dull child too. No conflict or adventures, no questioning the adults or reaching out for affection. Just floating along in observation. There is one aspect that I found interesting about the love story, and that is its basis on acceptance and kindness, rather than passions or affections. Liza feels obligated to The Captain for his kindness and care of her. The Captain feels obligated to Liza for her quiet acceptance of his decisions and vices. It's unclear whether they are lovers or just mutual sympathizers. They spend most of their lives separated from each other and correspond regularly but telling each other very little. I wonder if this is an attempt by the author to construct a love story with the exact opposite operational basis from what we would consider desirable or normal. All of the obligation, none of the shared history. All of the kindness, none of the passion. All of the moral components, none of the physical.
Anyway after the love story part it turns into a spy story? The Captain turns out to be a spy/drug smuggler in Panama, and the narrator goes to track him down to tell him that Liza is dead and it all gets a bit bizarre. I don't know at all what the theme or point is supposed to be. There are references to the love theme, but overall the exposition is poorly done. Close, but no ciggy, Mr. Greene.
This novel has been part of an attempt by my dad to find the "new classics": books written recently which will survive into the following generations as important commentaries on philosophy, life, love, etc. We can't all read only Steinbeck and Hugo forever.
I don't recommend this book. It was an honest attempt, but it lacked fire and skill in the crafting.
Up next: Dodger by Terry Pratchett which was a recommendation from my past and was available at the Halifax Public Library. Terry Pratchett is candy for my heart.
A Beauty That Hurts by W. G. Lovell
This was an excellent suggestion from my little sister Esther, who is studying International Development. She had to read this for a class and thought I would like it, which I did.
It's not a novel. This is a history/memoir/case study of Guatemala with a special emphasis on the indigenous Mayan people. Lovell is a professor at Queen's University and has worked and traveled in Guatemala for decades. He narrates a comprehensive history of Guatemala from the pre-colonial period, through the Spanish Conquest, independence, and 30+ years of civil war lasting into the mid-nineties. The analysis he provides was truly enlightening because he is able to identify with the Maya's values system and describe how the conquest and subsequent Spanish administration (even once independence was gained) made civil war all but inevitable.
Lovell's description of guerrilla warfare also brought me back to reading Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (blog post available, May 2014). As guerrillas (or in Hemingway's book, republicans) gain control of an area, they hunt down and eliminate any person not loyal enough to their cause. This included thousands of Mayan villagers not involved in the conflict but who would try to protect their homes and families. Then, as tides would turn, government forces would hunt down and eliminate anyone not sufficiently loyal to their cause. This included thousands of Mayan villagers... you get the idea.
The book included memories and reflections from Maya who lived through the civil war. They had family members slaughtered all around them; they had daughters and sons kidnapped, raped, murdered, dismembered; they lost entire villages. I really appreciated that Lovell included these personal stories with his excellent scholarly history because it humanizes the conflict. It's easy to read "45,000 Guatemalans fled across the border into Mexico", but it is much harder to read the stories of even one of these people - what they fled from and why they would prefer to live in a refugee camp in Mexico.
The description and analysis of the involvement of the U.S. government was also painfully enlightening. It shone a distinctly unfavourable light on how developed nations often treat tumultuous nations, offering their support to whichever militant group or government which is most sympathetic to American or European involvement. This prioritizes silence over peace - silencing dissident voices instead of hearing and addressing complaints, silencing all-out war by murdering individuals (over 5000 murders in 2010). During the war itself (1960-1996) it is estimated that 200,000 people were killed by government-run death squads. These killings were either individual disappearances or massacres of whole families, groups, or even villages. The governments responsible for these acts were defended (to varying degrees) by American governments, who even supplied training to Guatemalan soldiers during the Ford and Carter years. I'm not even exaggerating, it's on Wikipedia.
So 200,000 extrajudicial killings is pretty bad. What about the current Syrian Civil War, which had almost as many in August 2014? And is the involvement of U.S.+allies making the situation any better? Short answer: I don't know.
Justice is one of those things. We crave it, we wish to impart it, but often the complexity and brutality of conflicts leave us emotionally and intellectually gasping. So we try to simplify it by supporting the "good side", and find that all the belligerents are unjust. Then we try the humanitarian tack and either we 1) help everyone, thus distancing ourselves from the justice of the situation or 2) help only the innocent, and scrutinize the motivations, actions, and emotions of every victim until no innocent remain. So what option are we left with? How do we support justice? How do we extend hope and love to people who are aggressors or defendants in violent conflict? How do we stand on the side of the good" (Apostle Paul, Romans 12:9)?
The perpetrator vs. victim model is no longer relevant to these struggles because almost every person will have played both roles. History can describe motivations and conditions which precipitate conflict, but it can't tell us who is good and who is bad.
I thought, after reading the book, that Guatemala might have a silver lining by now, but the outlook is still pretty bleak. The Canadian government has issued almost every possible warning for traveling in Guatemala, from public health advisories to measures for dealing with a corrupt and violent police force. Of course that doesn't mean individuals are not getting along with their lives. Farmers farm, vendors vend, bankers bank, policemen kill people. They just don't have the blessing of security or stability, and there aren't any quick ways to grant them that.
Sorry this got all political, I've been watching the news too much recently. The book was excellent. It combined excellent scholarly history with personal memories. Lovell wrote with eloquence and clarity about topics that are brutal and complex. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history or culture of Central America.
Up next: The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene, a suggestion from my dad who has very similar taste to me.
It's not a novel. This is a history/memoir/case study of Guatemala with a special emphasis on the indigenous Mayan people. Lovell is a professor at Queen's University and has worked and traveled in Guatemala for decades. He narrates a comprehensive history of Guatemala from the pre-colonial period, through the Spanish Conquest, independence, and 30+ years of civil war lasting into the mid-nineties. The analysis he provides was truly enlightening because he is able to identify with the Maya's values system and describe how the conquest and subsequent Spanish administration (even once independence was gained) made civil war all but inevitable.
Lovell's description of guerrilla warfare also brought me back to reading Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (blog post available, May 2014). As guerrillas (or in Hemingway's book, republicans) gain control of an area, they hunt down and eliminate any person not loyal enough to their cause. This included thousands of Mayan villagers not involved in the conflict but who would try to protect their homes and families. Then, as tides would turn, government forces would hunt down and eliminate anyone not sufficiently loyal to their cause. This included thousands of Mayan villagers... you get the idea.
The book included memories and reflections from Maya who lived through the civil war. They had family members slaughtered all around them; they had daughters and sons kidnapped, raped, murdered, dismembered; they lost entire villages. I really appreciated that Lovell included these personal stories with his excellent scholarly history because it humanizes the conflict. It's easy to read "45,000 Guatemalans fled across the border into Mexico", but it is much harder to read the stories of even one of these people - what they fled from and why they would prefer to live in a refugee camp in Mexico.
The description and analysis of the involvement of the U.S. government was also painfully enlightening. It shone a distinctly unfavourable light on how developed nations often treat tumultuous nations, offering their support to whichever militant group or government which is most sympathetic to American or European involvement. This prioritizes silence over peace - silencing dissident voices instead of hearing and addressing complaints, silencing all-out war by murdering individuals (over 5000 murders in 2010). During the war itself (1960-1996) it is estimated that 200,000 people were killed by government-run death squads. These killings were either individual disappearances or massacres of whole families, groups, or even villages. The governments responsible for these acts were defended (to varying degrees) by American governments, who even supplied training to Guatemalan soldiers during the Ford and Carter years. I'm not even exaggerating, it's on Wikipedia.
So 200,000 extrajudicial killings is pretty bad. What about the current Syrian Civil War, which had almost as many in August 2014? And is the involvement of U.S.+allies making the situation any better? Short answer: I don't know.
Justice is one of those things. We crave it, we wish to impart it, but often the complexity and brutality of conflicts leave us emotionally and intellectually gasping. So we try to simplify it by supporting the "good side", and find that all the belligerents are unjust. Then we try the humanitarian tack and either we 1) help everyone, thus distancing ourselves from the justice of the situation or 2) help only the innocent, and scrutinize the motivations, actions, and emotions of every victim until no innocent remain. So what option are we left with? How do we support justice? How do we extend hope and love to people who are aggressors or defendants in violent conflict? How do we stand on the side of the good" (Apostle Paul, Romans 12:9)?
The perpetrator vs. victim model is no longer relevant to these struggles because almost every person will have played both roles. History can describe motivations and conditions which precipitate conflict, but it can't tell us who is good and who is bad.
I thought, after reading the book, that Guatemala might have a silver lining by now, but the outlook is still pretty bleak. The Canadian government has issued almost every possible warning for traveling in Guatemala, from public health advisories to measures for dealing with a corrupt and violent police force. Of course that doesn't mean individuals are not getting along with their lives. Farmers farm, vendors vend, bankers bank, policemen kill people. They just don't have the blessing of security or stability, and there aren't any quick ways to grant them that.
Sorry this got all political, I've been watching the news too much recently. The book was excellent. It combined excellent scholarly history with personal memories. Lovell wrote with eloquence and clarity about topics that are brutal and complex. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history or culture of Central America.
Up next: The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene, a suggestion from my dad who has very similar taste to me.
Sunday, 12 June 2016
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
This book is one if those modern classics which I fully expected not to understand. Even halfway through it I didn't understand and I wasn't all that bothered.
I like 40% get it now, after letting it gestate for 3 days.
So the basic idea is that Billy Pilgrim is an optometrist who is a vice-chaplain in the war. He is at the fire-bombing of Dresden, and survives. He makes it home, marries, becomes an eminent member of the community, and is kidnapped by aliens and held in a zoo on a foreign planet, but when he returns they do a time warp so he doesn't miss any time on earth. Eventually he dies. So it goes.
That's s the thing the guy always says when someone dies. So it goes. It creates this interesting level if disconnection between Billy Pilgrim and his circumstances. He's a wholly non-introspective character. When he is stuck on the alien planet they tell him that there's awful stuff and good stuff, and if you don't ever think about the bad stuff then you'll be reasonably happy. Billy Pilgrim does exactly that. Even in the aftermath of the firebombing he is not very upset. So it goes. It's kind of the pre-Disney hakuna matata.
So now I realize why that attitude is so ludicrous. Billy Pilgrim gets to the end of his life not having experienced anything, only having observed it. It reminds me that a big part of participating in life is allowing our inner self interact with our environment, growing and learning from our experiences.
Or when awful stuff happens we can shrug, So it goes, and never try to change it.
It's my new catchphrase now. So it goes.
Vonnegut is a brilliant writer. Barely even noticed I was reading half the time. It reminded me in style of The Catcher in the Rye, only with less whiny teenagers. Also SO quotable:
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
Beauty! Now note this was published in the late fifties and may no longer be as true. I still love it though.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience the best of the beat poet era, although Vonnegut was not himself a poet. Nothing salacious, just some good countercultural philosophy, and prose which engages the reader in a disengaged character.
Up next: A Beauty That Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala by George W. Lovell. Thanks for loaning it to me, Essie.
Friday, 10 June 2016
Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Yes, I watched the movie first and yes, I liked the movie. Yes, it was very similar.
A lot of people I mentioned this to immediately mentioned that they didn't care for the movie. I kind of want to talk about why I liked it and why the book was a lot better.
(quick warning: I am drinking a large glass of wine as I write this and I may become more verbose as the post progresses)
So in the movie there's the guy Pat who has just come out of a mental care facility (which he refers to as "the bad place") and he's separated from his wife Nikki, and his only goal is to win her back. So he works really hard on getting fit and being kind and reading clever books because he thinks those are the things which will win his wife back. His family are all trying to maintain his beliefs and don't communicate well with him. Then he meets Tiffany, a woman who recently lost her spouse. She tells him that if he will be her dance partner for this competition, she will talk to Nikki and giver her messages from him and maybe arrange a meeting. So obviously Pat tries really hard at the dance competition and eventually the truth comes out that Nikki was not ever interested in talking to Pat and that it was Tiffany all along because she loves Pat and then they get together, the end.
The issue that some people had with that is the idea that romantic love fixes people's mental illness. I'd contradict that by saying the movie (and book) encourage us to realize what our weaknesses are, and that we can share love most deeply with someone who sympathizes with those weaknesses. The book has more development of the relationships between Pat and his mother, father, and brother as well. This helps to develop the romantic plotline because Tiffany is a person who tells Pat the truth about the world around him and about himself when all the rest of his family is hiding behind the common interest (football) or just telling him what he already believes. Tiffany doesn't do this, even though she lies to him about communicating with his ex-wife. You might say that she was giving involuntary empty-chair therapy. Not ethical, but possibly effective.
So here's the thing the book does really well: it sets up Pat as the ultimate sympathetic character. We're talking like Of Mice and Men level empathy here. I think the reasons I sympathize so strongly with the character (read: crying like a water park) are two-fold. First, the purity and goodness of his intentions. He loves Nikki, he intends to win her back, he desires nothing else. He works diligently to shape himself into the man he thinks she would want. Second, the disproportion and immediacy of retribution for his shortcomings. Whenever he falls short of his own expectations, there's a huge fallout. These huge consequences make the stakes so high, and I recall the scene in the movie where he is just trying to explain what happened, because he believes if people can see his side, if he can just explain, then it will be ok. But everything has got too crazy, no one wants to hear his side, and the more frantically he tries to convince everyone he's calm and sane, the more unbalanced and dangerous he appears. Have you ever stepped on a dog's tail accidentally and then tried to say sorry to it, but it is trying to say sorry to you at the same time? That's how this made me feel. I'm so sorry, Pat, that you couldn't explain. I'm so sorry that your family lied to you. I'm sorry that your wife cheated on you. It's not because of how you are, it's because of how the world is.
Mental illness is a pretty tough thing to tackle, because you'll have one group of people saying "that's not how it is" and another group saying "it is too" and a third group being all "snap out of it srsly get over yourself". What the book does a good job of saying is that mental illness and, by extension, every huge human emotional experience, is easier to cope with and work through when you know what is real and what is delusion, and when people will listen to what's happening inside you, when you can explain and feel heard. Maybe this story doesn't speak to everyone who's struggled with mental illness, and maybe it's not a realistic portrayal of how to come through it, but it says something valuable about how we perceive those struggling with emotional trauma.
So yeah I really liked this book. It would have been a quick read if I hadn't had to stop for kleenex and hydration so frequently. Imma give it a 10/14, because the writing style was not remarkable.
Up next: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm already finished reading it but I don't know what it's about yet. Needs some more thinking.
A lot of people I mentioned this to immediately mentioned that they didn't care for the movie. I kind of want to talk about why I liked it and why the book was a lot better.
(quick warning: I am drinking a large glass of wine as I write this and I may become more verbose as the post progresses)
So in the movie there's the guy Pat who has just come out of a mental care facility (which he refers to as "the bad place") and he's separated from his wife Nikki, and his only goal is to win her back. So he works really hard on getting fit and being kind and reading clever books because he thinks those are the things which will win his wife back. His family are all trying to maintain his beliefs and don't communicate well with him. Then he meets Tiffany, a woman who recently lost her spouse. She tells him that if he will be her dance partner for this competition, she will talk to Nikki and giver her messages from him and maybe arrange a meeting. So obviously Pat tries really hard at the dance competition and eventually the truth comes out that Nikki was not ever interested in talking to Pat and that it was Tiffany all along because she loves Pat and then they get together, the end.
The issue that some people had with that is the idea that romantic love fixes people's mental illness. I'd contradict that by saying the movie (and book) encourage us to realize what our weaknesses are, and that we can share love most deeply with someone who sympathizes with those weaknesses. The book has more development of the relationships between Pat and his mother, father, and brother as well. This helps to develop the romantic plotline because Tiffany is a person who tells Pat the truth about the world around him and about himself when all the rest of his family is hiding behind the common interest (football) or just telling him what he already believes. Tiffany doesn't do this, even though she lies to him about communicating with his ex-wife. You might say that she was giving involuntary empty-chair therapy. Not ethical, but possibly effective.
So here's the thing the book does really well: it sets up Pat as the ultimate sympathetic character. We're talking like Of Mice and Men level empathy here. I think the reasons I sympathize so strongly with the character (read: crying like a water park) are two-fold. First, the purity and goodness of his intentions. He loves Nikki, he intends to win her back, he desires nothing else. He works diligently to shape himself into the man he thinks she would want. Second, the disproportion and immediacy of retribution for his shortcomings. Whenever he falls short of his own expectations, there's a huge fallout. These huge consequences make the stakes so high, and I recall the scene in the movie where he is just trying to explain what happened, because he believes if people can see his side, if he can just explain, then it will be ok. But everything has got too crazy, no one wants to hear his side, and the more frantically he tries to convince everyone he's calm and sane, the more unbalanced and dangerous he appears. Have you ever stepped on a dog's tail accidentally and then tried to say sorry to it, but it is trying to say sorry to you at the same time? That's how this made me feel. I'm so sorry, Pat, that you couldn't explain. I'm so sorry that your family lied to you. I'm sorry that your wife cheated on you. It's not because of how you are, it's because of how the world is.
Mental illness is a pretty tough thing to tackle, because you'll have one group of people saying "that's not how it is" and another group saying "it is too" and a third group being all "snap out of it srsly get over yourself". What the book does a good job of saying is that mental illness and, by extension, every huge human emotional experience, is easier to cope with and work through when you know what is real and what is delusion, and when people will listen to what's happening inside you, when you can explain and feel heard. Maybe this story doesn't speak to everyone who's struggled with mental illness, and maybe it's not a realistic portrayal of how to come through it, but it says something valuable about how we perceive those struggling with emotional trauma.
So yeah I really liked this book. It would have been a quick read if I hadn't had to stop for kleenex and hydration so frequently. Imma give it a 10/14, because the writing style was not remarkable.
Up next: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm already finished reading it but I don't know what it's about yet. Needs some more thinking.
Friday, 3 June 2016
Short Stories by Various Authors
Short stories have long been one of my most favourite literary styles. They're like chicken nuggets made out of words. I always figured that if I started writing (unlikely at this point) I would write the little stories.
Beyond the obvious time saving advantages, short stories tend to condense large emotions or principles into manageable arcs. None of this Victor Hugo going on and on for pages about a semi-related thing; every sentence is carefully constructed to maximize the benefit to the plot or theme. Not that they can't have description or pacing. I just find that the short story format forces writers to ante up on the quality of every word choice.
So the books I've read in the past week-ish are a collection of short stories by Jack London (adventure writer, socialist, White Fang, you know the guy) and a collection called "Unnatural Creatures" which I thought was written by Neil Gaiman but was only collected and edited by him, although he does contribute one story. I might also reference short stories by other authors who've mastered the skill such as Rudyard Kipling, O. Henry, F. Scott Fitzgerald (aka. F. Scotty), and Earnest Hemingway.
I remember my dad reading me Jack London's stories from a very young age. The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and other "backcountry lit" is something I loved dearly as a child. In recent years it has become less enticing to me, perhaps because I've read and re-read London's work so many times and found nothing to match it in all the rest of the genre (no I will NOT read your Farley Mowat nonsense go away).
He has a unique ability to recreate the sacred scarcity of the North that interests me so intensely that I will be viciously disappointed when I see a piece of actual tundra. Many of his stories are partially about survival against the challenges of that environment, but they also speak to the will of the human soul to overcome. He is not dismissive of the explorers in his story who fall prey to starvation or greed or to actual four-legged predators, they are all heroes in their failure. He only mocks the ones who sit comfortable in their homes (in California, inevitably) and do not challenge or risk anything critical - life, limb, or love.
Two stories are coming to mind just now. The first is "Love of Life", available here in its full glory. A man, out of food and water in the wilderness, fights onward to find help and food. That's a pretty accurate summary. The descriptions of the man's hunger, thirst, pleasures, setbacks, and mood are what make this worth reading. I love the line just near the end about him squirming along like a monstrous worm. It makes the whole thing seem weirdly comic, and thus all this fight for life thing takes a new dimension as hilarious in its futility. Oh Jack, you genius!
The other story which caught me recently is Planchette (here ya go). It was published in segments in a magazine, so it's less of a short story and more of a novella/serial, but there's some interesting stuff to pull out of it. First, it's a love story and a ghost story, a bit of a departure from what London is known for. A young man, Chris, tells his lover, Lute, that he can't marry her and he can't tell her why. Things happen. I can't tell you what because it's a suspense story. That's one of its primary features. London had the advantage of the serial format to play with while creating the suspense and pacing in this story. One thing he does really well here is to set up events where the reader is certain things will go wrong, but then sidestepping the expected outcome nonetheless. So the reader gets the anticipatory dread and the shock-n-horror both together, while usually they are exclusive. The other thing which is interesting about this story is the way he writes the lovers' dialogue. Jack's own views about love and marriage were radical at the time, and I'd say they're still pretty far left of average. His first wife was chosen to bear ideal children, and with his second wife the marriage was not an exclusive arrangement. But the lovers in this story are dedicated only to each other and to a moral standard that was not Jack's own. So it shows a very real possibility that this story was written for the money, because he thought that's what people would like or relate to. It's kind of his caricature of the expected romantic arc. And it reads like a caricature, every word more predictable than the last. Genius has some limits, I guess. He could imagine a Northland full of the highest adventure and the most primal demons, but he couldn't imagine loving one woman for herself until death. Aren't we all similarly blind to our own boundaries?
The other collection which I mentioned was "Unnatural Creatures". I borrowed this from the library hoping it was one that I had browsed through in Chapters a few months ago. That collection had been only by Neil Gaiman and had contained a very funny short story about a son and a mother and I wanted to read it again. This one had an entirely unexpected set of pleasures waiting for me. Not only was there a delightful story by Gaiman, but there were writers I'd never heard of telling such beautiful and weird stories. Now I have some new authors to explore in future, which I look forward to.
This was a collection of fantasy stories. Most of you will know the bias I have against fantasy as a genre: many writers focus so heavily on complex plots that their actual writing technique suffers heavily. This problem is mitigated by the structure of a short story. All the excess plot is stripped away and you're left with a handful of characters and manageable stories with meanings that drip out without much wringing. Sometimes I think fantasy and sci-fi authors attempt so much that they get lost in their own meandering webs of context and text and subtext. I'm looking at you, Orson Scott Card and Frank Herbert. "Dune" was notorious for this. Maybe writers should rite lots of short stories before attempting novels, because it forces them to write excellent quality and refine their ideas.
I'll bring up a few highlights from this little joy-bringer. First, the story "Prismatica" by Samuel R. Delaney. A poor, quick-witted man named Amos goes on an adventure with a tricksy man and gains the greatest treasure in the world by keeping his wits about him. I like this one because it has the pacing and structure of a Grimm's fairy tale, but a more modern morality. There are three trials set before our hero, and on the second he is betrayed by fate and the last becomes more difficult for it. He overcomes with the help of a person he has befriended. It sets up happy/wise marriage as the ultimate reward, and opposed it with a villain who separates lovers. I don't agree with this really but it's very fairy tale, so in the story I love it. It also reminds me of the writer Gail Carson Levine, who specializes in reinventing fairy tales. The language is distinctly similar and I wonder whether these writers were at school together or something.
Another one I loved was "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu. Ok guys, I lucking fove bees. They're just so fuzz. The science and myth in this story unite so seamlessly that I really really want to adopt it as factual. I'm not sure really what the moral or message was in this one. Probably something along an anti-anarchist line. Or maybe like a loyalty to the lineage sort of thing. I need to think on it more. I loved the delicate language and the perfect blending of real science into a myth.
There were many other great bits. Excellent one-liners in some, good morality structure in others, the first story had such an excellent unnatural creature and a kind of John Wyndham sci-thriller thing going on and I'm still kind of swooning over its construction. Overall just a great overview of fantasy shorts in one place. Well done again, Mr. Gaiman. You're danged good at this.
Fantasy shorts. I'll take future band names for $600, Alex.
So, here are my recommendations for people wanting to read short stories. Definitely the Gaiman collection is a cool overview of the fantasy genre, and London will make you want to move to a long-extinct Klondike, but it depends what you're looking for in a story.
If you want pathos, read some R. Kipling. His short story "Muhammad Din" makes me tear up a little every time (heck yes public domain!) His novel "The Light that Failed" is one of the most severely depressing stories in all of the English language (childhood friends become lovers, grow apart, reunite, lose hope, die). Or even for some really dry humour you might check out Kipling's "His Wedded Wife" or "Three and - An Extra". I like these last two stories particularly because they make humour of things we don't like talking about - death, adultery, deception. Kipling dresses them up and lets his heroes triumph over them and it just feels so just, so right. Cozy.
F. Scotty has several collections of short stories which represent, I think, his best work (sorry you Great Gatsby fans, but you're wrong). This includes "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" which is a neater and triter story than the Brad Pitt movie would have you believe. Fitzy is pretty much flawless in his short stories because he can focus on one idea and develop it perfectly. Particular favourites of mine are "The Cut-Glass Bowl" about a woman who is unhappily married and "The Ice Palace" about a girl who dodges an unhappy marriage. Ultimately these are stories about the inner struggle between desires and obligations, which is why I love them so well. Also his story "The Four Fists" is as good an argument against vigilante justice as there will ever be, and it's conveniently hilarious.
Ok one more recommendation and then I'll let you carry on with life. O. Henry. This guy was a short story MACHINE and gave us some of the most well-known and widely read pieces in American literature. Although he has an awful weakness for happy endings, it's only because he really believed in them and I think that's sweet and therefore forgiveable. His story "The Gift of the Magi" is well known as a story about Christmas and sacrifice. "The Ransom of Red Chief" is about a kid who is kidnapped and then proves to be un-ransom-able. O. Henry might have had a formulaic approach to these stories but he tended to focus on feel-good romances and comedies which make him a very appealing treat after a hard day in the Tylenol mines. Heart candy. Not that I have faith in romance to make my life remarkable or transcendant. But it's a lovely thing to know another human finds in your company a specific and additional pleasure among all the sensations that life casts you into.
TL;DR: go read a short story.
Up next: Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Beyond the obvious time saving advantages, short stories tend to condense large emotions or principles into manageable arcs. None of this Victor Hugo going on and on for pages about a semi-related thing; every sentence is carefully constructed to maximize the benefit to the plot or theme. Not that they can't have description or pacing. I just find that the short story format forces writers to ante up on the quality of every word choice.
So the books I've read in the past week-ish are a collection of short stories by Jack London (adventure writer, socialist, White Fang, you know the guy) and a collection called "Unnatural Creatures" which I thought was written by Neil Gaiman but was only collected and edited by him, although he does contribute one story. I might also reference short stories by other authors who've mastered the skill such as Rudyard Kipling, O. Henry, F. Scott Fitzgerald (aka. F. Scotty), and Earnest Hemingway.
I remember my dad reading me Jack London's stories from a very young age. The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and other "backcountry lit" is something I loved dearly as a child. In recent years it has become less enticing to me, perhaps because I've read and re-read London's work so many times and found nothing to match it in all the rest of the genre (no I will NOT read your Farley Mowat nonsense go away).
He has a unique ability to recreate the sacred scarcity of the North that interests me so intensely that I will be viciously disappointed when I see a piece of actual tundra. Many of his stories are partially about survival against the challenges of that environment, but they also speak to the will of the human soul to overcome. He is not dismissive of the explorers in his story who fall prey to starvation or greed or to actual four-legged predators, they are all heroes in their failure. He only mocks the ones who sit comfortable in their homes (in California, inevitably) and do not challenge or risk anything critical - life, limb, or love.
Two stories are coming to mind just now. The first is "Love of Life", available here in its full glory. A man, out of food and water in the wilderness, fights onward to find help and food. That's a pretty accurate summary. The descriptions of the man's hunger, thirst, pleasures, setbacks, and mood are what make this worth reading. I love the line just near the end about him squirming along like a monstrous worm. It makes the whole thing seem weirdly comic, and thus all this fight for life thing takes a new dimension as hilarious in its futility. Oh Jack, you genius!
The other story which caught me recently is Planchette (here ya go). It was published in segments in a magazine, so it's less of a short story and more of a novella/serial, but there's some interesting stuff to pull out of it. First, it's a love story and a ghost story, a bit of a departure from what London is known for. A young man, Chris, tells his lover, Lute, that he can't marry her and he can't tell her why. Things happen. I can't tell you what because it's a suspense story. That's one of its primary features. London had the advantage of the serial format to play with while creating the suspense and pacing in this story. One thing he does really well here is to set up events where the reader is certain things will go wrong, but then sidestepping the expected outcome nonetheless. So the reader gets the anticipatory dread and the shock-n-horror both together, while usually they are exclusive. The other thing which is interesting about this story is the way he writes the lovers' dialogue. Jack's own views about love and marriage were radical at the time, and I'd say they're still pretty far left of average. His first wife was chosen to bear ideal children, and with his second wife the marriage was not an exclusive arrangement. But the lovers in this story are dedicated only to each other and to a moral standard that was not Jack's own. So it shows a very real possibility that this story was written for the money, because he thought that's what people would like or relate to. It's kind of his caricature of the expected romantic arc. And it reads like a caricature, every word more predictable than the last. Genius has some limits, I guess. He could imagine a Northland full of the highest adventure and the most primal demons, but he couldn't imagine loving one woman for herself until death. Aren't we all similarly blind to our own boundaries?
The other collection which I mentioned was "Unnatural Creatures". I borrowed this from the library hoping it was one that I had browsed through in Chapters a few months ago. That collection had been only by Neil Gaiman and had contained a very funny short story about a son and a mother and I wanted to read it again. This one had an entirely unexpected set of pleasures waiting for me. Not only was there a delightful story by Gaiman, but there were writers I'd never heard of telling such beautiful and weird stories. Now I have some new authors to explore in future, which I look forward to.
This was a collection of fantasy stories. Most of you will know the bias I have against fantasy as a genre: many writers focus so heavily on complex plots that their actual writing technique suffers heavily. This problem is mitigated by the structure of a short story. All the excess plot is stripped away and you're left with a handful of characters and manageable stories with meanings that drip out without much wringing. Sometimes I think fantasy and sci-fi authors attempt so much that they get lost in their own meandering webs of context and text and subtext. I'm looking at you, Orson Scott Card and Frank Herbert. "Dune" was notorious for this. Maybe writers should rite lots of short stories before attempting novels, because it forces them to write excellent quality and refine their ideas.
I'll bring up a few highlights from this little joy-bringer. First, the story "Prismatica" by Samuel R. Delaney. A poor, quick-witted man named Amos goes on an adventure with a tricksy man and gains the greatest treasure in the world by keeping his wits about him. I like this one because it has the pacing and structure of a Grimm's fairy tale, but a more modern morality. There are three trials set before our hero, and on the second he is betrayed by fate and the last becomes more difficult for it. He overcomes with the help of a person he has befriended. It sets up happy/wise marriage as the ultimate reward, and opposed it with a villain who separates lovers. I don't agree with this really but it's very fairy tale, so in the story I love it. It also reminds me of the writer Gail Carson Levine, who specializes in reinventing fairy tales. The language is distinctly similar and I wonder whether these writers were at school together or something.
Another one I loved was "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu. Ok guys, I lucking fove bees. They're just so fuzz. The science and myth in this story unite so seamlessly that I really really want to adopt it as factual. I'm not sure really what the moral or message was in this one. Probably something along an anti-anarchist line. Or maybe like a loyalty to the lineage sort of thing. I need to think on it more. I loved the delicate language and the perfect blending of real science into a myth.
There were many other great bits. Excellent one-liners in some, good morality structure in others, the first story had such an excellent unnatural creature and a kind of John Wyndham sci-thriller thing going on and I'm still kind of swooning over its construction. Overall just a great overview of fantasy shorts in one place. Well done again, Mr. Gaiman. You're danged good at this.
Fantasy shorts. I'll take future band names for $600, Alex.
So, here are my recommendations for people wanting to read short stories. Definitely the Gaiman collection is a cool overview of the fantasy genre, and London will make you want to move to a long-extinct Klondike, but it depends what you're looking for in a story.
If you want pathos, read some R. Kipling. His short story "Muhammad Din" makes me tear up a little every time (heck yes public domain!) His novel "The Light that Failed" is one of the most severely depressing stories in all of the English language (childhood friends become lovers, grow apart, reunite, lose hope, die). Or even for some really dry humour you might check out Kipling's "His Wedded Wife" or "Three and - An Extra". I like these last two stories particularly because they make humour of things we don't like talking about - death, adultery, deception. Kipling dresses them up and lets his heroes triumph over them and it just feels so just, so right. Cozy.
F. Scotty has several collections of short stories which represent, I think, his best work (sorry you Great Gatsby fans, but you're wrong). This includes "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" which is a neater and triter story than the Brad Pitt movie would have you believe. Fitzy is pretty much flawless in his short stories because he can focus on one idea and develop it perfectly. Particular favourites of mine are "The Cut-Glass Bowl" about a woman who is unhappily married and "The Ice Palace" about a girl who dodges an unhappy marriage. Ultimately these are stories about the inner struggle between desires and obligations, which is why I love them so well. Also his story "The Four Fists" is as good an argument against vigilante justice as there will ever be, and it's conveniently hilarious.
Ok one more recommendation and then I'll let you carry on with life. O. Henry. This guy was a short story MACHINE and gave us some of the most well-known and widely read pieces in American literature. Although he has an awful weakness for happy endings, it's only because he really believed in them and I think that's sweet and therefore forgiveable. His story "The Gift of the Magi" is well known as a story about Christmas and sacrifice. "The Ransom of Red Chief" is about a kid who is kidnapped and then proves to be un-ransom-able. O. Henry might have had a formulaic approach to these stories but he tended to focus on feel-good romances and comedies which make him a very appealing treat after a hard day in the Tylenol mines. Heart candy. Not that I have faith in romance to make my life remarkable or transcendant. But it's a lovely thing to know another human finds in your company a specific and additional pleasure among all the sensations that life casts you into.
TL;DR: go read a short story.
Up next: Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Wednesday, 25 May 2016
How to Fall Off the Wagon (and possibly, How to Get Back On)
So you'll recall that I promised you a review on one of my all-time favourite series, the Cosmic Trilogy by C. S. Lewis. There is a draft post for the first book sitting here, undone, from over a month ago.
What happened to me? Where are all my ambitions, hopes, and plans?
The following is a short account of how I fell off the wagon.
It all started with an ambitious week. I planned a lot of activity in early May, even though I knew my sisters and cousin would be visiting for a family wedding. I knew that I had time to do all the things I wanted to, and time to sleep. I wanted to finish my blog post, bake bread, go to the wedding, have my family over, talk politics and philosophy with my cousins, keep the garden tidy, go to church and Bible study, keep the house clean, install an air-conditioner, you know, just like an average week. I had 2 extra days off too, so like no stress.
But I forgot one key factor: being with people (even family) makes me TIRED. Not sleepy-tired, but like the kind of tired where I need to not talk to anyone. I want to do absolutely nothing like in the movie Office Space. It's a very insidious kind of tired because after about 2 hours of watching Netflix the guilt starts to trickle in. "I should go get that blog post done". "I should clean up the kitchen." But obviously I don't do it right away. I watch another episode or check FB or just sit and stare at the ceiling, hoping it will motivate me. And now the trickle of "I should"s becomes the old flood of self-admonition that is at once pointless and unstoppable. I don't think it would be accurate to call it self-loathing, because I'm so apathetic about it. Just cannot give a single scheisse about doing any of the things. Obviously I still have to go to work, and that's another excuse for me to not get anything else done in a day. "I worked all night and I only got 4 hours of sleep". Well yeah, you and every other adult on the earth, Becca. The demotivational litany of apathy.
So all this tiredness and procrastination leads to more and more tasks piling up. And suddenly it seems like every time I do a thing (WHOA I DID ONE THING time to celebrate with 4 days of complete lethargy), there are 2 more things that need doing and I can't guilt myself into doing. I went from being confident in my ability to work and have hobbies and friends to unsure about whether I should be allowed to care for plants, all within the span of about 3 weeks.
TL;DR - I over-estimated my ability to handle a very busy time, and then completely ditched all but my most urgent responsibilities and of course all my leisure activities.
So now what do I do? I have 5 books in my car that I do want to read, but I'm tired and it's more work to read them than to watch endless episodes of American Dad (which I don't even find funny). I've planted half my garden but weeding seems like it will take hours but I don't have hours, only like 10 minutes. I told my dad that I'd write some advertising material for him but all of my awake hours feel blurry and laboured, not like the best time to write about beetles.
We all know what the answer to this is, right? Because there is a right answer. The big goals are too big for me to focus on, so I'll need to start with the little ones. Instead of trying to write about the Cosmic Trilogy, which has influenced the most primary levels of my thoughts and philosophy, I will start with some short stories by Jack London which I can read in 15 minutes and are about wolves and survival. Nice cosy life-and-death kinds of things. Instead of trying to tell myself that the kitchen has to be clean today, I will empty the dishwasher because that takes like 2 minutes and has a defined end-point. I will celebrate the victories with non-destructive treats, like finding a movie that I want to watch and not telling myself I shouldn't watch it while watching it. So this is me grabbing a pen and resetting the TI-83 that calculates what I expect of myself. I'm not going to expect less overall, but I'm going to stop adding all this backlog of past missed deadlines into the equation. There, done. The wagon is back on track and I am definitely on the wagon and I'm definitely done mixing metaphors.
Up next: Short Stories by Jack London and maybe some by Neil Gaiman or A. A. Milne. I've been really digging the short stories.
What happened to me? Where are all my ambitions, hopes, and plans?
The following is a short account of how I fell off the wagon.
It all started with an ambitious week. I planned a lot of activity in early May, even though I knew my sisters and cousin would be visiting for a family wedding. I knew that I had time to do all the things I wanted to, and time to sleep. I wanted to finish my blog post, bake bread, go to the wedding, have my family over, talk politics and philosophy with my cousins, keep the garden tidy, go to church and Bible study, keep the house clean, install an air-conditioner, you know, just like an average week. I had 2 extra days off too, so like no stress.
But I forgot one key factor: being with people (even family) makes me TIRED. Not sleepy-tired, but like the kind of tired where I need to not talk to anyone. I want to do absolutely nothing like in the movie Office Space. It's a very insidious kind of tired because after about 2 hours of watching Netflix the guilt starts to trickle in. "I should go get that blog post done". "I should clean up the kitchen." But obviously I don't do it right away. I watch another episode or check FB or just sit and stare at the ceiling, hoping it will motivate me. And now the trickle of "I should"s becomes the old flood of self-admonition that is at once pointless and unstoppable. I don't think it would be accurate to call it self-loathing, because I'm so apathetic about it. Just cannot give a single scheisse about doing any of the things. Obviously I still have to go to work, and that's another excuse for me to not get anything else done in a day. "I worked all night and I only got 4 hours of sleep". Well yeah, you and every other adult on the earth, Becca. The demotivational litany of apathy.
So all this tiredness and procrastination leads to more and more tasks piling up. And suddenly it seems like every time I do a thing (WHOA I DID ONE THING time to celebrate with 4 days of complete lethargy), there are 2 more things that need doing and I can't guilt myself into doing. I went from being confident in my ability to work and have hobbies and friends to unsure about whether I should be allowed to care for plants, all within the span of about 3 weeks.
TL;DR - I over-estimated my ability to handle a very busy time, and then completely ditched all but my most urgent responsibilities and of course all my leisure activities.
So now what do I do? I have 5 books in my car that I do want to read, but I'm tired and it's more work to read them than to watch endless episodes of American Dad (which I don't even find funny). I've planted half my garden but weeding seems like it will take hours but I don't have hours, only like 10 minutes. I told my dad that I'd write some advertising material for him but all of my awake hours feel blurry and laboured, not like the best time to write about beetles.
We all know what the answer to this is, right? Because there is a right answer. The big goals are too big for me to focus on, so I'll need to start with the little ones. Instead of trying to write about the Cosmic Trilogy, which has influenced the most primary levels of my thoughts and philosophy, I will start with some short stories by Jack London which I can read in 15 minutes and are about wolves and survival. Nice cosy life-and-death kinds of things. Instead of trying to tell myself that the kitchen has to be clean today, I will empty the dishwasher because that takes like 2 minutes and has a defined end-point. I will celebrate the victories with non-destructive treats, like finding a movie that I want to watch and not telling myself I shouldn't watch it while watching it. So this is me grabbing a pen and resetting the TI-83 that calculates what I expect of myself. I'm not going to expect less overall, but I'm going to stop adding all this backlog of past missed deadlines into the equation. There, done. The wagon is back on track and I am definitely on the wagon and I'm definitely done mixing metaphors.
Up next: Short Stories by Jack London and maybe some by Neil Gaiman or A. A. Milne. I've been really digging the short stories.
Wednesday, 20 April 2016
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Thanks again to Erika and Jasmine for independently recommending this book. Extremely interesting and worth the while.
It is one part memoir and one part psychoanalysis guide. It outlines the growth of the principles of logotherapy in the mind of its creator, Viktor Frankl, during his three year detainment in Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz and Dachau. It also provides notes from the doctor as he continued to develop this therapy at his practice in America after the war.
A really interesting trait of the memoir was that it did not focus on the tragedies of the camps, either on a personal or national level, although there was certainly tragedy enough to talk about. Frankl seemed more concerned with describing how and why people may choose and desire to continue living even when living is agony. It details how the doctor and others around him found meaning in their sufferings and how healing was possible after the experience.
The writing was very formal and somewhat more clinical than many memoirs would be. He tends to give very analytical views of his emotions, which I rather like. If I can analyse a thing it is not so scary, right?
Now to the clinical part. Frankl focuses on how the search for and realisation of a meaning or purpose helps heal a great many of the psychological problems people consult him for. In his words, "Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human". He demonstrates, with examples, how people may find meaning in work, love, or even suffering and why it is necessary that meaning is found.
I loved this validation of my own desperate quest for purpose. I am, as you know, a pathological nihilist. Looking at how this man found purpose in pain or in love or in work. It gave me some helpful tips on how to deal with the existential panics which assail me when I least expect it. The one thing I think is very worth mentioning is that the doctor never suggests anyone make pleasure or self-satisfaction their purpose or meaning. It is simply not done. REMEMBER THIS BECCA!
Up currently: The Cosmic Trilogy by C. S. Lewis (beginning with Out of the Silent Planet). A return to an old favourite that I will always love.
Friday, 8 April 2016
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
My initial reaction to this book was a huge, resounding "WAT".
On one hand, I knew from other sources that it was supposed to be about waiting for God/purpose/the answer to life the universe and everything. On the other hand, I don't know how anyone arrived at that conclusion from what was actually written on the page.
Sorry Calvin, I think this is one of the ones I'm condemned to not understand.
So being a play, this has a writing style that's much harder to criticise than novels. To be honest, the only play that I've ever read that I've LOVED is Cyrano de Bergerac, and I only loved it because Cyrano is SO sassy and SO poetic and SO heroic that nothing else matters. I digress.
There are two people waiting in the play: Estragon and Vladimir. I'm not sure what they are supposed to represent. Maybe two states of waiting: one who is ignorant to the intention and one who is aware? Anyway they both hate it. Then there's these other guys, Pozzo and Lucky, who come in and out, and I have no idea what that's about.
There was one point in the play where Beckett nearly stumbled into lucidity. Here's the bit:
So if this had been the whole play, I would have seen the metaphor with waiting for God et al. at once. But this nonsensical banter goes on and on and then the other guys show up and it's even more impossible to tell what's actually going on. Maybe I need to see it acted, I don't know.
Anyway, I talked it over with some people and I'm not the first person to have struggled with it. The general consensus is that it's so far out in the abstract that it may have cut itself adrift from sense entirely.
Overall, 2/5. Because that's how many of the characters I understood.
Up next: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, which comes highly recommended by both Erika and Jasmine. Thanks! After this one I want something less heavy so I might revisit a G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis favourite.
On one hand, I knew from other sources that it was supposed to be about waiting for God/purpose/the answer to life the universe and everything. On the other hand, I don't know how anyone arrived at that conclusion from what was actually written on the page.
Sorry Calvin, I think this is one of the ones I'm condemned to not understand.
So being a play, this has a writing style that's much harder to criticise than novels. To be honest, the only play that I've ever read that I've LOVED is Cyrano de Bergerac, and I only loved it because Cyrano is SO sassy and SO poetic and SO heroic that nothing else matters. I digress.
There are two people waiting in the play: Estragon and Vladimir. I'm not sure what they are supposed to represent. Maybe two states of waiting: one who is ignorant to the intention and one who is aware? Anyway they both hate it. Then there's these other guys, Pozzo and Lucky, who come in and out, and I have no idea what that's about.
There was one point in the play where Beckett nearly stumbled into lucidity. Here's the bit:
VLADIMIR:Let's wait and see what he says.ESTRAGON:Who?VLADIMIR:Godot.ESTRAGON:Good idea.VLADIMIR:Let's wait till we know exactly how we stand.ESTRAGON:On the other hand it might be better to strike the iron before it freezes.VLADIMIR:I'm curious to hear what he has to offer. Then we'll take it or leave it.ESTRAGON:What exactly did we ask him for?VLADIMIR:Were you not there?ESTRAGON:I can't have been listening.VLADIMIR:Oh . . . Nothing very definite.ESTRAGON:A kind of prayer.VLADIMIR:Precisely.ESTRAGON:A vague supplication.VLADIMIR:Exactly.ESTRAGON:And what did he reply?VLADIMIR:That he'd see.ESTRAGON:That he couldn't promise anything.VLADIMIR:That he'd have to think it over.ESTRAGON:In the quiet of his home.VLADIMIR:Consult his family.ESTRAGON:His friends.VLADIMIR:His agents.ESTRAGON:His correspondents.VLADIMIR:His books.ESTRAGON:His bank account.VLADIMIR:Before taking a decision.ESTRAGON:It's the normal thing.VLADIMIR:Is it not?ESTRAGON:I think it is.VLADIMIR:
I think so too.
So if this had been the whole play, I would have seen the metaphor with waiting for God et al. at once. But this nonsensical banter goes on and on and then the other guys show up and it's even more impossible to tell what's actually going on. Maybe I need to see it acted, I don't know.
Anyway, I talked it over with some people and I'm not the first person to have struggled with it. The general consensus is that it's so far out in the abstract that it may have cut itself adrift from sense entirely.
Overall, 2/5. Because that's how many of the characters I understood.
Up next: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, which comes highly recommended by both Erika and Jasmine. Thanks! After this one I want something less heavy so I might revisit a G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis favourite.
Thursday, 7 April 2016
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Overall, this book is very similar to the Stanley Kubrick film, which some of you kids will have seen.
The major difference lies in the conclusion so I must issue a spoiler alert, although if you continue reading this review I doubt you will ever read the book or see the film.
The important thing to disclaim here and now is that Anthony Burgess approved of the ultra-violence which his character Alex metes out to various members of the unsuspecting public. Burgess wrote later that the gang-rape scene especially (probably memorable to those who've seen the movie) sickened and appalled him even as he wrote it. Yet write it he did, and it does indeed fill the reader or observer with the squeamies.
Disclaimer delivered, now on to the real stuff.
The writing in this short novel is some of the most difficult that I've ever succeeded in reading. I know at least one of you has read Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (or snippets thereof) and that is the nearest thing I can liken it to. Chaucer's middle English, with its borrowed words from German and Latin and French and its bizarrely phonetic spelling is a joyous thing to read, especially aloud, because it exposes the roots and heart of our language. Burgess writes in a language which borrows 60 or so words from Russian (ie: "devotchka" = female, "slovo" = word), adds another handful of American slang (ie: "pee and em" = dad and mom, "guttiwuts" = stomach), and tops up the rest with a very formal dialogue voice (he uses the phrase "O my brothers" to speak to the reader throughout). The result takes some real adjusting. I suppose I could have looked up a glossary of the words online, but I just tried to piece it all together from context and I got on just fine after a few pages.
Aside from the difficult language, Burgess writes most sensory experiences very literally. His metaphors are so novel as to nearly lose meaning. The effects of using an uneducated voice to narrate a very clever novel is well-observed here, while Alex listens to his favourite song, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:
In the beginning, Alex is 15. At the end he is 18. Very few years, but very important ones. In the end of the book, Alex abandons the reckless and violent behaviour of his friends and decides he will look for a good job and a good wife ("a mother to his son"). The summary Alex gives is that being young is basically being a wind-up toy. We bumble around and mess up ourselves and everyone else and there's nothing much to do about it. It's worse than being an animal.
So basically Burgess was saying that youth is the same, even in this ultra-violent future, and that whether you bother to brainwash them or not eventually they will settle down. They will come to their senses of their own accord. We will all want that white-picket fence or equivalent when we've awakened from our youth.
I like that the novel doesn't glorify youth at all. Being young is being stupid and then whining about how hard it is to be stupid.
I have more thoughts but it is my bedtime. Overall I wouldn't recommend this book because of the difficult language and the rape and violence even though they aren't the moral of the story. Maybe a 5/7? I really liked the language, personally, because it makes me feel like I'm reading a different language and I'm cleverer for it.
Up next: Waiting for Godot, suggested by Calvin!
The major difference lies in the conclusion so I must issue a spoiler alert, although if you continue reading this review I doubt you will ever read the book or see the film.
The important thing to disclaim here and now is that Anthony Burgess approved of the ultra-violence which his character Alex metes out to various members of the unsuspecting public. Burgess wrote later that the gang-rape scene especially (probably memorable to those who've seen the movie) sickened and appalled him even as he wrote it. Yet write it he did, and it does indeed fill the reader or observer with the squeamies.
Disclaimer delivered, now on to the real stuff.
The writing in this short novel is some of the most difficult that I've ever succeeded in reading. I know at least one of you has read Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (or snippets thereof) and that is the nearest thing I can liken it to. Chaucer's middle English, with its borrowed words from German and Latin and French and its bizarrely phonetic spelling is a joyous thing to read, especially aloud, because it exposes the roots and heart of our language. Burgess writes in a language which borrows 60 or so words from Russian (ie: "devotchka" = female, "slovo" = word), adds another handful of American slang (ie: "pee and em" = dad and mom, "guttiwuts" = stomach), and tops up the rest with a very formal dialogue voice (he uses the phrase "O my brothers" to speak to the reader throughout). The result takes some real adjusting. I suppose I could have looked up a glossary of the words online, but I just tried to piece it all together from context and I got on just fine after a few pages.
Aside from the difficult language, Burgess writes most sensory experiences very literally. His metaphors are so novel as to nearly lose meaning. The effects of using an uneducated voice to narrate a very clever novel is well-observed here, while Alex listens to his favourite song, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:
Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.Lovely stuff. And just a few pages later we get to the ultra-violence (not my words, the narrators). In the early chapters, Alex stomps, stabs, beats, loots, and rapes his way around town with three friends. He is ratted out by these friends and convicted of murdering an old woman. He is sent to prison, where he kills another inmate and is sent to a "Juvenile Reclamation" project which is every bit as sinister as it sounds. Using drugs and a TV set, a doctor causes Alex to feel violently ill whenever he imagines or sees violent or sexual behaviour. After two weeks of treatment he is released to the world. Immediately on his release his friend from the ultra-violence pack finds him and beats him nearly to death. A man whose wife Alex raped nurses him back to health. A group of mercenaries under the direction of the government torture him into attempting suicide. The suicide is unsuccessful and Alex loses the anti-violence conditioning. Within days he is back on the streets, causing all manner of trouble. The film ends here, the book carries on a few more pages: he grows up.
In the beginning, Alex is 15. At the end he is 18. Very few years, but very important ones. In the end of the book, Alex abandons the reckless and violent behaviour of his friends and decides he will look for a good job and a good wife ("a mother to his son"). The summary Alex gives is that being young is basically being a wind-up toy. We bumble around and mess up ourselves and everyone else and there's nothing much to do about it. It's worse than being an animal.
So basically Burgess was saying that youth is the same, even in this ultra-violent future, and that whether you bother to brainwash them or not eventually they will settle down. They will come to their senses of their own accord. We will all want that white-picket fence or equivalent when we've awakened from our youth.
I like that the novel doesn't glorify youth at all. Being young is being stupid and then whining about how hard it is to be stupid.
I have more thoughts but it is my bedtime. Overall I wouldn't recommend this book because of the difficult language and the rape and violence even though they aren't the moral of the story. Maybe a 5/7? I really liked the language, personally, because it makes me feel like I'm reading a different language and I'm cleverer for it.
Up next: Waiting for Godot, suggested by Calvin!
Saturday, 2 April 2016
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
A little change of pace from what has been rather heavy reading. This book was an absolute pleasure cruise stylistically and I've made peace with the content for now.
Neil Gaiman is the writer of such classics as Coraline and Stardust. This book was suggested by my cousin Daniel, whose opinion I can generally respect. I read American Gods this past summer and it was a little bit too grown up for me but this novel is a masterpiece.
It follows the man Richard Mayhew as he stumbles from a normal life in London to a tumultuous adventure through the parallel universe of London Below. He accompanies the Lady Door on her mission to discover who ordered her family murdered.
This is not unlike one of those kids' adventure books (of which the Narnia series were the first-ish) where an unassuming child falls into another world and becomes a hero. They learn about the value of friendship or some similar trite BS and come back home with a deep appreciation for their home/family/boring life, etc.
Except Gaiman doesn't let that trope be. He explores the nature of the demons we face in our parallel universes (aka: inner lives/selves). He gives them names and forms - our fear of losing our identity, of losing our dignity, of losing our physical lives, of losing our minds. His allegory for the triumph of belief over inanity is astounding. He champions the hero of the mind who will not lie to themselves, who will not be blind to the inscrutable just because it is difficult. I love that theme. A hero does not accept a fate just because it is the most obvious or comfortable choice. A hero accepts the materials given and forges their own fate from it. A departure from the Wizard of Oz, no-place-like-home stuff, more of the Tolkenian epic written conveniently all in English and a healthy amount of snappy one-liners.
Or it might just be a nice little fantasy work that has no metaphorical depth whatsoever. Depends whether you're a materialist (Daniel...). Here's your tasty little quote:
I give this book 3/3 stars, because that's how many I know (Polaris, Alpha Centauri, the Sun).
Up next: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
Neil Gaiman is the writer of such classics as Coraline and Stardust. This book was suggested by my cousin Daniel, whose opinion I can generally respect. I read American Gods this past summer and it was a little bit too grown up for me but this novel is a masterpiece.
It follows the man Richard Mayhew as he stumbles from a normal life in London to a tumultuous adventure through the parallel universe of London Below. He accompanies the Lady Door on her mission to discover who ordered her family murdered.
This is not unlike one of those kids' adventure books (of which the Narnia series were the first-ish) where an unassuming child falls into another world and becomes a hero. They learn about the value of friendship or some similar trite BS and come back home with a deep appreciation for their home/family/boring life, etc.
Except Gaiman doesn't let that trope be. He explores the nature of the demons we face in our parallel universes (aka: inner lives/selves). He gives them names and forms - our fear of losing our identity, of losing our dignity, of losing our physical lives, of losing our minds. His allegory for the triumph of belief over inanity is astounding. He champions the hero of the mind who will not lie to themselves, who will not be blind to the inscrutable just because it is difficult. I love that theme. A hero does not accept a fate just because it is the most obvious or comfortable choice. A hero accepts the materials given and forges their own fate from it. A departure from the Wizard of Oz, no-place-like-home stuff, more of the Tolkenian epic written conveniently all in English and a healthy amount of snappy one-liners.
Or it might just be a nice little fantasy work that has no metaphorical depth whatsoever. Depends whether you're a materialist (Daniel...). Here's your tasty little quote:
So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experiences; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding.The style is super British, which I love because I read too much Tolkein and Lewis and Chesterton and Kipling and Bronte in my youth. There is also a tendency to draw heavily on the mythology and history and geography of London. I don't know the city, obviously, never having been, but I do love that a true son of that city writes about it so craftily. He weaves the elements of those myths with elements of reality to demonstrate the city as he experiences it: half hagridden ancestral birth-mother, half tangible brick-and-mortar. Gaiman will always get full points for writing style. I doubt I can help it.
I give this book 3/3 stars, because that's how many I know (Polaris, Alpha Centauri, the Sun).
Up next: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
Wednesday, 30 March 2016
Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau
This was was very difficult read. Within the first ten pages the author cut me down to the bone by observing that I "lead [a life] of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation". After such a stab, I hoped for consolation, but he just squelched around in the wound for a further three hundred or so pages, although I took much comfort in some passages. I've been inspired to try several changes to my normal life, hopefully they will be for the best.
Let me start you off with a nice little excerpt on education:
So we come to my actual reflections on the book. The above passage on education stuck to me because I am so viciously bitter about the wasting of my youth in an unproductive university education. Most of Thoreau's observations on business, employment, slavery, education, philosophy, and The Good Life strike me as singularly correct. It's impossible to distill down his whole book to a few notes, because it is a brilliant blend of poetry (his description of spring coming to Walden Pond made me feel like I was standing right beside him in the woods) and philosophy. To this man, the most exquisite pleasures available to humankind are a morning swim, a good learned book, a summer evening in solitude, a walk over a frozen pond, or a companion with a sympathetic disposition. He also seemed to think that a person was justified in striving after these pleasures, since they do not inspire greed or force us to compete. There is enough morning sunshine for everyone to get some. He also developed the idea that rather than DOING good a person should BE good. Cultivate your garden, so to speak (thanks Voltaire!). Growing good, generous feeling within yourself will lead to spreading good, generous action among all you meet. It's a more numinous goal than cold-hearted charity and certainly it is more difficult to BE a certain way than to ACT a certain way. I don't doubt that being in nature inspires the best feelings available within me.
I said I was stabbed occasionally by his disdain for the "normal" life. I was comforted then by the idea that I can freely go my own way without caring where the path I choose intersects with the paths any other person may choose. The intersections or overlaps don't define those as better or worse choices. Their goodness lies in whether they are what is best for me. So maybe it's not best for me to move to the woods in a cabin that I build myself, and to never see anyone except those I can walk to visit, and to eat only food that I grow (even though at present I desperately want this). Maybe instead of beans and turnips I can grow Tylenol. Maybe I too can take up surveying my own mind and self and see what good and bad there is inside me. But I have made some notable changes to my life in response to this book: I've started baking all my own bread, because it's not that much work, and I've become a vegetarian because, like Thoreau, killing critters is abhorrent to me.
Overall, 8.9/10. Because the writing tended towards complexity and convolutedness, I found the going pretty tough. I would recommend it to all of you who ever had that pastoral impulse to get away from everything, into nature.
Let me close off with another quote that sort of relates:
Quick note on the "Other Writings" mentioned in the title: there were other transcendental works which I skimmed, similar in style to "Walden" as well as the more political essays "Civil Disobedience" (I read it in high school), "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (which kicked off the abolitionist movement in the northern states), and "On Slavery in Massachusetts" (which further established Thoreau as one of the most influential abolitionists of his time). All of these writings, including "Walden", can easily be found online if you wish to have a taste of them.
Up next: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Special thanks to Daniel for the recommendation and to MCC Thrift Store in Elmira on only charging $2 for it!
If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practised but the art of life; — to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month — the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this — or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers' penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?So you can see the style here. It was written in 1850-ish. Thoreau spent '45 and '46 in a cabin he built himself beside Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. During this time he grew beans and turnips for food and baked bread from corn and rye meal that he bought - his only regularly purchased items. He kept a diary of reflections and of daily observations on nature. He was an excellent naturalist. He took up surveying and birdwatching and shared his cellar with a never-ending parade of mice, moles, foxes, rabbits, and other burrowing animals. His time at Walden Pond was ended when he decided to move in with a friend's family at a local farm. Thoreau died of tuberculosis at age 44, almost 10 years later. When asked whether he had made his peace with God, he replied "I did not know we had ever quarreled".
So we come to my actual reflections on the book. The above passage on education stuck to me because I am so viciously bitter about the wasting of my youth in an unproductive university education. Most of Thoreau's observations on business, employment, slavery, education, philosophy, and The Good Life strike me as singularly correct. It's impossible to distill down his whole book to a few notes, because it is a brilliant blend of poetry (his description of spring coming to Walden Pond made me feel like I was standing right beside him in the woods) and philosophy. To this man, the most exquisite pleasures available to humankind are a morning swim, a good learned book, a summer evening in solitude, a walk over a frozen pond, or a companion with a sympathetic disposition. He also seemed to think that a person was justified in striving after these pleasures, since they do not inspire greed or force us to compete. There is enough morning sunshine for everyone to get some. He also developed the idea that rather than DOING good a person should BE good. Cultivate your garden, so to speak (thanks Voltaire!). Growing good, generous feeling within yourself will lead to spreading good, generous action among all you meet. It's a more numinous goal than cold-hearted charity and certainly it is more difficult to BE a certain way than to ACT a certain way. I don't doubt that being in nature inspires the best feelings available within me.
I said I was stabbed occasionally by his disdain for the "normal" life. I was comforted then by the idea that I can freely go my own way without caring where the path I choose intersects with the paths any other person may choose. The intersections or overlaps don't define those as better or worse choices. Their goodness lies in whether they are what is best for me. So maybe it's not best for me to move to the woods in a cabin that I build myself, and to never see anyone except those I can walk to visit, and to eat only food that I grow (even though at present I desperately want this). Maybe instead of beans and turnips I can grow Tylenol. Maybe I too can take up surveying my own mind and self and see what good and bad there is inside me. But I have made some notable changes to my life in response to this book: I've started baking all my own bread, because it's not that much work, and I've become a vegetarian because, like Thoreau, killing critters is abhorrent to me.
Overall, 8.9/10. Because the writing tended towards complexity and convolutedness, I found the going pretty tough. I would recommend it to all of you who ever had that pastoral impulse to get away from everything, into nature.
Let me close off with another quote that sort of relates:
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.
Quick note on the "Other Writings" mentioned in the title: there were other transcendental works which I skimmed, similar in style to "Walden" as well as the more political essays "Civil Disobedience" (I read it in high school), "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (which kicked off the abolitionist movement in the northern states), and "On Slavery in Massachusetts" (which further established Thoreau as one of the most influential abolitionists of his time). All of these writings, including "Walden", can easily be found online if you wish to have a taste of them.
Up next: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Special thanks to Daniel for the recommendation and to MCC Thrift Store in Elmira on only charging $2 for it!
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
Candide by Voltaire
This was suggested to me by a friend whose taste I suspected was admirable. I was right! Excellent recommendation!
At approximately 100 pages, this book is more essay than novel. The main advantage there is that I could lump myself over to the library around 17:00 and still finish the book by 20:00.
It is the story of a naive young man, Candide, who experiences trials and tribulations all over the world as he searches for fortune and his sweetheart Cunegonde. He is counseled by an optimist philosopher, Dr. Pangloss, who asserts that all things are the best and for the best. Through many misadventures, Candide and Cunegonde and Pangloss all begin to feel that humans are actually awful and nothing is for the best and nothing makes any sense.
The thing I liked best about this was the dark wittiness. If sass were an Olympic sport, Voltaire would be Michael Phelps. One German town is named "Waldberghofftrarbkdikdorff". I think the humour is a way for the author to create an emotional distance between the characters and the audience so that we don't get so lost in the character that we miss the bigger themes.
Clearly Voltarie was a very well-educated person. He does that Oscar Wilde thing from Dorian Grey: have characters discussing all the important literature, music, and art of the day so that he can show off all the stuff he knows about it. I always like that because it feels like the writer is very close to the surface of their own disguise.
In the end, Candide and his friends are not optimists, but they aren't pessimists either. It reminds me of Ecclesiastes, where the conclusion is:
So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them. All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.
As it is with the good,
so with the sinful;
as it is with those who take oaths,
so with those who are afraid to take them.This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!...Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
Voltaire, like Solomon, concludes that the greatest happiness available, above any philosophy or adventure, is to cultivate our garden. I highly recommend this book and also gardening.
Up next: Walden and other writings by Henry David Thoreau. As always, please recommend more things to read if you think of them! I'll try anything but James Joyce.
Saturday, 12 March 2016
Cocksure by Mordecai Richler
A small book about a man and his penis. If you're going to be uncomfy with this, I suggest you click away now. I will try to be tasteful although the writer wasn't.
Mordecai Richler won a Governor General's Award f this book in the 70s. The writing is convivial in tone, and there is a current of humor through it. The writing style was right up my alley, which I why this book took all of an hour and a half to read. Clear and intuitive, just the sort of prose that ought to be made in Canada. Themeatically...
It's about a man who is never sure he's big enough, and he is mistakenly called Jewish, which he isn't, and he is accused of being anti-semetic when he tries to correct the mistake. He tries to clear up these things while his marriage falls apart a he has an affair with a woman half his age. It's kind of a mid-life coming of age story. He battles feelings of irrelevance, inadequacy, and frustration with the norm. I loved the dark humor that th author draped around these themes, which haunt all of us to some extent.
Then everyone talks about sex a lot. It isn't particularly lewd, it's just kind of Freudian. I did find it funny, but I would likely not recommend to my general acquaintanceship because it's weird to tell someone to read a book about a... Yeah.
So I would probably read something else by this writer and check it over first for genitalia before reading the whole thing.
I am getting Candide from the library today! Back on to solid, dick-free ground for a few days!
Mordecai Richler won a Governor General's Award f this book in the 70s. The writing is convivial in tone, and there is a current of humor through it. The writing style was right up my alley, which I why this book took all of an hour and a half to read. Clear and intuitive, just the sort of prose that ought to be made in Canada. Themeatically...
It's about a man who is never sure he's big enough, and he is mistakenly called Jewish, which he isn't, and he is accused of being anti-semetic when he tries to correct the mistake. He tries to clear up these things while his marriage falls apart a he has an affair with a woman half his age. It's kind of a mid-life coming of age story. He battles feelings of irrelevance, inadequacy, and frustration with the norm. I loved the dark humor that th author draped around these themes, which haunt all of us to some extent.
Then everyone talks about sex a lot. It isn't particularly lewd, it's just kind of Freudian. I did find it funny, but I would likely not recommend to my general acquaintanceship because it's weird to tell someone to read a book about a... Yeah.
So I would probably read something else by this writer and check it over first for genitalia before reading the whole thing.
I am getting Candide from the library today! Back on to solid, dick-free ground for a few days!
Friday, 11 March 2016
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This was a strange one. The scope of it alone was enough to render it bewildering. It follows members of the Buendia line from their founding of the village Macondo to the death of a last male - over one hundred years. Alternating between intimate conversations and sweepingly general recollections, the author paints the character of a dynasty.
I thought this was going to be much more narrative. Not that there isn't a story to it. The scenes are so brief and are connected so conversationally that it reminds me of reading a diary. A diary of a family over 3 generations.
So aside from the daunting scale of the thing, I enjoyed the writing (it's translated from Spanish, so hard to tell what implications that has). I also enjoyed the mythology that follows the family through the matriarch, Ursula. She is warned that her children would be born with a pig's tail if she married Jose Arcadio, but she does it and only realizes in her senility that their fatal flaws were just as bad as pigs' tails.
The solitude theme was a big deal but I am still not entirely sure how to distill it into something rational out of all the masses of instances I've just acquired. It does seem though that each character lives only when they are in the family home and they reach out for contact between similar spirits. They die spiritually when they become absorbed by their work, or when they destroy a relationship. Always their physical death is penultimate, and their ghosts carry on to advise the survivors. The real death is when they seek their solitude and isolat themselves from the cares and joys of life.
Also, the familial naming tradition made it difficult to be sure entirely which Jose Arcadio, Aureliano, or Amaranta was being referenced at any time. Could have been a literary device to indicate that they were all the same Aureliano, just in a different era. I am going to treat it as purposeful rather than incidental and applaud the masterful execution.
Speaking of executions... so many! Not sentimentally referenced, or even excruciatingly described, but just numerous and varied. The Colombian civil war plays a large part in one Aureliano's life, and they get pretty free with the executions. The other ridiculous recurrence was incest. A father and son each having a child by the same woman, a nephew having a sneaky relationship with his aunt, another Aureliano accidentally marries his aunt, two brothers keep the same concubine, one adopted sister marries her brother. I don't think there are family curses, but heritable temperments would make certain sins repeated along a family line.
Conclusion: 3 out of 4. The main problem I had was keeping pace as the author did not accelerate or slow while providing a diary of 4 generations' births, deaths, loves, sins, and jealousies. It was just exhausting. Too great in detail for me to digest in 6 hours. It reminds me of Steinbeck's East of Eden, though I liked it less. Steinbeck should have gotten a Nobel Prize for Literature, although Mr. Garcia Marquez is supremely talented.
Next: Cocksure by Mordecai Richler.
*edited to add*: I've been thinking about this more and I think one of the excellent things the author does does this book is to show characters, not describe them. He demonstrates that this Jose Arcadio is active and vicious, while the other Jose Arcadio is active and generous, and another Jose Arcadio is silent and brutal. For this ability alone I could happily reccommend the writer to anyone. Also, my cousin called this a "magic realism" book and I like that description a lot! It blends the grand mythos ofhumanity with the dreary inanity of daily life. Good catch, cousin!
Finally, I seem to have contracted, from this book, a deep fear of dying in solitude. I had avoided it well up till now. Daaaang.
I thought this was going to be much more narrative. Not that there isn't a story to it. The scenes are so brief and are connected so conversationally that it reminds me of reading a diary. A diary of a family over 3 generations.
So aside from the daunting scale of the thing, I enjoyed the writing (it's translated from Spanish, so hard to tell what implications that has). I also enjoyed the mythology that follows the family through the matriarch, Ursula. She is warned that her children would be born with a pig's tail if she married Jose Arcadio, but she does it and only realizes in her senility that their fatal flaws were just as bad as pigs' tails.
The solitude theme was a big deal but I am still not entirely sure how to distill it into something rational out of all the masses of instances I've just acquired. It does seem though that each character lives only when they are in the family home and they reach out for contact between similar spirits. They die spiritually when they become absorbed by their work, or when they destroy a relationship. Always their physical death is penultimate, and their ghosts carry on to advise the survivors. The real death is when they seek their solitude and isolat themselves from the cares and joys of life.
Also, the familial naming tradition made it difficult to be sure entirely which Jose Arcadio, Aureliano, or Amaranta was being referenced at any time. Could have been a literary device to indicate that they were all the same Aureliano, just in a different era. I am going to treat it as purposeful rather than incidental and applaud the masterful execution.
Speaking of executions... so many! Not sentimentally referenced, or even excruciatingly described, but just numerous and varied. The Colombian civil war plays a large part in one Aureliano's life, and they get pretty free with the executions. The other ridiculous recurrence was incest. A father and son each having a child by the same woman, a nephew having a sneaky relationship with his aunt, another Aureliano accidentally marries his aunt, two brothers keep the same concubine, one adopted sister marries her brother. I don't think there are family curses, but heritable temperments would make certain sins repeated along a family line.
Conclusion: 3 out of 4. The main problem I had was keeping pace as the author did not accelerate or slow while providing a diary of 4 generations' births, deaths, loves, sins, and jealousies. It was just exhausting. Too great in detail for me to digest in 6 hours. It reminds me of Steinbeck's East of Eden, though I liked it less. Steinbeck should have gotten a Nobel Prize for Literature, although Mr. Garcia Marquez is supremely talented.
Next: Cocksure by Mordecai Richler.
*edited to add*: I've been thinking about this more and I think one of the excellent things the author does does this book is to show characters, not describe them. He demonstrates that this Jose Arcadio is active and vicious, while the other Jose Arcadio is active and generous, and another Jose Arcadio is silent and brutal. For this ability alone I could happily reccommend the writer to anyone. Also, my cousin called this a "magic realism" book and I like that description a lot! It blends the grand mythos ofhumanity with the dreary inanity of daily life. Good catch, cousin!
Finally, I seem to have contracted, from this book, a deep fear of dying in solitude. I had avoided it well up till now. Daaaang.
Sunday, 6 March 2016
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré
I had never read a spy book before this one, unless you count Harriet the Spy, which you shouldn't. Detective books like Sherlock Holmes or mystery books like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo are definite a separate endeavour from this one.
Quick synopsis for those of you/me that haven't seen seen the film starring Gary Oldman. George Smiley is called up by old workmates in british intelligence to find out which of his circle of old workmates are working for communist Russia. Set in the Cold War era, it swaps narrarators endlessly until I am half-certain I'm a double-agent myself because I have too many facts to keep straight and no less than 3 justifications for every event in the book. Even during the final climactic exposition I wasn't completely sure I had a handle on who had done what or why.
I suppose that's what makes le Carré the supposed master of the genre. The disjointed narration and everyone's distrust of everyone gives the novel and the reader a mood of suspended belief. At the same
time I realize I place perfect, blind faith in the character of Smiley. No matter everyone else's motives, no matter his actions, he is the good guy, the side I want to be on. I know now it is because he is is cuckold, almost a King Arthur archetype. His discovery of betrayal by his wife is set in parrallel to the betrayal by the country he serves and the brothers he serves with. Maybe it's the complete lack of bitterness in his submission to the deception by his wife and ultimately his close friends in intelligence service. I think this is where the literary genius begins to dawn on me. The author seems to be showing the reader how blind all trust is, be it between friends, enemy operatives, or lovers. He seems to say that our guts decide who to trust, not our brains, even if they are very good brains. Who we trust determines so much of not only our lives but our characters and it's basically an alchemy of affection who we fall in trust with.
I guess the trust thing strikes me viciously because I am a classic trustophobe. It has certainly made me evaluate certain areas of my life in a brighter light.
I don't know if I recommend the novel. It's cerebral, certainly, and there is some excellent suspense. The writing style itself is somewhat tedious though overall I would say that the construction and orchestration of the trust theme makes up for it. So what's that, a 7.5 out of 10? Somewhere in there anyway.
Up next: it will depend on the ol' Elmira Library but I will try to get Candide by Voltaire. In the interim I may make some notes on other things I've read recently or revisit some of my treasuredest works.
P.S. If there are bizarre errors of orthography or syntax, it's because I composed this on my phone and the interface for creating posts is LOUSY!
Quick synopsis for those of you/me that haven't seen seen the film starring Gary Oldman. George Smiley is called up by old workmates in british intelligence to find out which of his circle of old workmates are working for communist Russia. Set in the Cold War era, it swaps narrarators endlessly until I am half-certain I'm a double-agent myself because I have too many facts to keep straight and no less than 3 justifications for every event in the book. Even during the final climactic exposition I wasn't completely sure I had a handle on who had done what or why.
I suppose that's what makes le Carré the supposed master of the genre. The disjointed narration and everyone's distrust of everyone gives the novel and the reader a mood of suspended belief. At the same
time I realize I place perfect, blind faith in the character of Smiley. No matter everyone else's motives, no matter his actions, he is the good guy, the side I want to be on. I know now it is because he is is cuckold, almost a King Arthur archetype. His discovery of betrayal by his wife is set in parrallel to the betrayal by the country he serves and the brothers he serves with. Maybe it's the complete lack of bitterness in his submission to the deception by his wife and ultimately his close friends in intelligence service. I think this is where the literary genius begins to dawn on me. The author seems to be showing the reader how blind all trust is, be it between friends, enemy operatives, or lovers. He seems to say that our guts decide who to trust, not our brains, even if they are very good brains. Who we trust determines so much of not only our lives but our characters and it's basically an alchemy of affection who we fall in trust with.
I guess the trust thing strikes me viciously because I am a classic trustophobe. It has certainly made me evaluate certain areas of my life in a brighter light.
I don't know if I recommend the novel. It's cerebral, certainly, and there is some excellent suspense. The writing style itself is somewhat tedious though overall I would say that the construction and orchestration of the trust theme makes up for it. So what's that, a 7.5 out of 10? Somewhere in there anyway.
Up next: it will depend on the ol' Elmira Library but I will try to get Candide by Voltaire. In the interim I may make some notes on other things I've read recently or revisit some of my treasuredest works.
P.S. If there are bizarre errors of orthography or syntax, it's because I composed this on my phone and the interface for creating posts is LOUSY!
Saturday, 5 March 2016
The Secret Garden (two years later)
It's hard to describe the effect this book has on me. It makes me feel like like I could live forever and ever.
Something about the cadence of the words. She captures the joy and splendour of the world waking up in spring. No matter how many times I read those words I still feel the same exhilaration. How did she write down that feeling of smelling cool, living earth for the first time in spring?
It's hard to describe, but I am full of that feeling and I love it!
Up next: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré.
Something about the cadence of the words. She captures the joy and splendour of the world waking up in spring. No matter how many times I read those words I still feel the same exhilaration. How did she write down that feeling of smelling cool, living earth for the first time in spring?
It's hard to describe, but I am full of that feeling and I love it!
Up next: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré.
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