Books Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty One

HEY! I'm alive! I will spare you the diatribe about how my life is constantly madness and just say that I managed to read four books over my recent study break, and then managed to finish Steppenwolf to boot (even though I was reading it in like five page intervals at one point, whoops). So let's jump right in here, shall we....?

Book Seventeen: On Beauty, Zadie Smith

Let me begin by saying I was very skeptical about this book. A few years ago I had started White Teeth, Smith's first book, and had to put it down after the first chapter because I just found it utterly incomprehensible, so full of slang and references and its own cleverness that I could barely make out a story lurking behind all the mess. Well, maybe I'll have to give White Teeth another shot (and I'll have to, it's on THE LIST), because this book blew me away. It was by far one of the most engrossing and straight up interesting novels I've read in a long time; one of those that you literally cannot stop reading. I was at a cabin on the lake with a bunch of my friends and they were bouncing off the walls wanting to ski and ice climb and other assorted awesome things, and even with the prospect of all of that, the thing I wanted to do most was sit on the couch and devour this book. 

Overall, the premise of this book is pretty simple: it's a story about a family. Howard Besley is a British professor of art history now living in suburban Massachusetts with his big-hearted wife Kiki and his three children, Jermone, Zora, and Levi. This is a book that deals with a lot of thorny issues simultaneously - race, sexism, infidelity, identity, privilege, academia, lust (just to name a few) but somehow, the writing doesn't come off heavy handed or preachy. It's a completely believable, human account of these issues with a seamless plot that is original, engaging, and overall, interesting. Even with everything else crammed in there, at the end of the book the thing you remember most is the characters, in all their triumph and weakness.

So I have to write about four other books after this, so I'm only gonna pick my favorite of the themes running throughout the book; academia. Throughout the novel we see Howard, a professor, and Kiki, a nurse, struggling to mesh their two worlds. Kiki is a woman of the world, all about the body and the spirit and feeling, while Howard lives completely in his head and subjects his every thought to a slew of rationalizations and deconstructions. A great example of this essential argument here is about art itself. In the Besley's house, Howard, the professor of art history, gets to choose the art, and one hard and fast rule prevails; no portraits. The explanation for this is long and wordy, full of allusions to historians and theories and other crazy academic posturing. Kiki puts up with this, but we see the inherent differences between her and her husband when she goes over a friend's house and falls in love with a portrait the other woman owns. I can't remember the exact dialogue, but when she's asked about why she likes it, she says she just thinks it's beautiful. For Howard, you can't just "like" art because it's "beautiful" - you need a thirty page paper throughly deconstructing everything, and in the end you need to conclude that's it's imperfect and blah blah blah. I thought that interaction and everything else written in a similar vein about the utter insanity that is academia was spot on (though this may be heavily influenced by the current frustration I'm feeling after being trapped in it for so goddam long). I think the very best passage in the book dealing with this is a very short account told from the point of view of a young student of Howard's who loves art in a "childish" manner, and commits the great offense of "liking" a piece of art the class is going to discuss. She comes up with a whole list of explanations for why the painting is wonderful, most having to do with the simple human emotion it evokes, and goes to class confident that she'll finally have something to contribute. But when she gets there, she's drowned out in class discussion by roundabout and wordy discussions on this theory and that theory which serve to make everyone sound very smart indeed, but don't even approach the simple and beautiful opinions secretly held by this poor girl. And, in my opinion, therein lies the simplest conflict of the book: which should prevail: thought or emotion?

In summary: I can't even come close to telling you all the reasons this book is BRILLIANT, so you'll just have to read it for yourself. Deep and insightful and utterly, utterly believable, this is one of my new favorite books, and I promise you won't be disappointed. 

Book Eighteen: The Romantics, Pankaj Mishra

When I was writing down the list of books I read over break, I actually forgot I had read this one. Mind you, this is about two weeks later, so if I've already forgotten a book, you know it's not that spectacular. My problem with this book is the same one I've been having with many other books, most recently Never Let Me Go - I'm just bored. Again, the plot has the possibility for great force and drive - there's a young Indian scholar setting off on his own for the first time, dealing with a myriad of adventurous ex-pats, in the middle of tumultuous student unrest, and falling into a passionate affair with a beautiful and troubled Frenchwoman to boot - I mean, that sounds like a plot right out of the new Angelia Jolie movie. But there's just no heat here. From the beginning the main driver of the book is the sexual tension between the main character, Samar, and Catherine, the Frenchwomen, but other than that it's just a lot of talk about books and the heat and the day to day boredom of Samar's life. And guess what? Writing about boredom is boring. Even when the affair takes off, it's just a brief flash of flame in this book and then a lot more pining, reflection, and running off to become a schoolteacher for about eight years. And then, boom! Story over.

There were some good parts of this book - the descriptions of Benaras, for instance, were lovely, and I've always been fascinated by that city, so it was kind of great to read about someone actually living  where ancient and modern India collide. Diana West was a fascinating character - the scene after the party when's she's crying on the stairwell is very powerful - and the commentary on the Westerners trying to "find themselves" in India is thought-provoking indeed. But in the end this story is just too gentle and light for it's own good, and left me with nothing deep enough to stick.

In summary: Again, amazon.com is rife with praises for this books "simplicity and quiet narrative", but I'm a firm believer in the old quote by Kafka - "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." 


Sorry, Mishra - I'm just not feeling the axe this time.


Book Nineteen - The Awakening

I was so worried about this one because it seemed like a fussy old timey romance with a lot of flouncing and petticoats and tea parties and general awfulness, but you know what, I'm just gonna go out and say it. This book is badass. Why, you ask? Let me list the reasons.


1) Book about a female protagonist written by a woman (!!) pre-1900, always a win.


2) Main character Edna is so many kinds of awesome. She's not gonna take any nonsense from anybody. If she wants to go out swimming naked and befriend the antisocial pianist and have grand parties and buy a house, well you better believe she's gonna go right ahead and do that shit, no matter what her boring husband says. And if she wants to engage in the sheer lunacy of going on walks by herself and canceling her social calling hour, well then by Jeeves, she's gonna shock society while she's at it. As one of my good friends would say, in terms of 19th century Southern culture, she is a total baller.


3) Now my allergy to old books has caused me not to be too well versed on the subject, but my roommate who studied this book in school assures me it's one of the earliest and frankest portrayals of female sexuality in literature. As in, girls wanna get it on too, and not always with their misogynistic husbands. Shocking. 


4) Did I mention that Edna was a badass?


Only con: the ending. If you don't want to be spoiled don't read on, but my impression of Edna's character did not see her as the kind of woman to metaphorically throw herself off the cliff once her beau rejects her. Girl should have just cried a little, straightened out her skirts and marched on, if you ask me, but I guess I can't have it all with this book.


Summary: You go, girl.


Book Twenty: The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

Ah, this book has a special place in my heart. I read pretty prolifically even when I was a kid, but I until I was about sixteen I had a general hatred for any book I was forced to read for school. This was pretty understandable, I think, given that the stuff they were making us read were "classics" like Othello and the Odyssey (don't even get me STARTED on my deep and abiding hatred for the Odyssey. I once wrote an entire essay about how big of a dick Odysseus was and Virgil did the grand epic about a thousand times better. End of story.) Anyways, I was generally pretty sick about talking about "coming of age" and "historical narratives" and then, thank blessed God, a miracle occurred. The first good English teacher I had had in about five years assigned us to read this book. 

This book manages to hit a whole list of things I love in modern literature: it's short and packed with visceral imagery and hits you like a boot to the chest. It's gory without trying to shock and thoughtful without being preachy and funny without losing any of its seriousness. I just love O'Brien's writing style so much; it's just so matter-of-fact and accessible, while still packing quite the emotional punch. My little brother, who can count on one hand the number of books he's bothered to read and not just spark-noted, actually liked this book. That right there says something about the genius of O'Brien's writing style. 

Ah, there are so many parts of this book that I love; the part when he's thinking about escaping to Canada, the coed in the jungle, the endless circles in the pickup truck around the lake. I've obviously never been in a war but I feel like I gained some understanding of it by reading this book. I mean, what do all soldiers coming back from war say? It's terrible, too terrible for words, but it's not like that all the time. Sometimes it's boring and sometimes it's funny and sometimes it approaches a high and dreamy kind of beauty that few can understand. The Things They Carried captures all of this and more and brings it to us in book that you can read in a day. 

One last thing: the book is written as if it's a memoir of O'Brien's own time in the war, and only at the end does he reveal that most of what's been recalled there is made up. People in my English class went absolutely apeshit over this. They felt betrayed that the stories they had been reading hadn't actually happened, that O'Brien didn't shoot that young Vietnamese man and that he didn't even have a daughter. I, for one, could not understand what the problem was. I mean, we read fiction all the time and it's not any less powerful because it's made up, because all really good literature, fiction or non-fiction, manages to do the same thing: evoke real emotion in the reader. Does a story lose that power if it's not, technically, "true?" I don't think so. Maybe I didn't mind because at that point I already considered myself a writer and I knew that even if the story you were telling wasn't true, it still could help you understand and could still help you heal. By setting something down in a story you give it order, give it sense, give it meaning. As O'Brien himself says at the end of the book, "I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story."

      

In summary: At times hilarious, terrifying, sad and reflective, this is the book about war that has nothing to do with politics and grand heroic gestures- it's about the humans down there in the mud trying to make sense of it all. Read it, read it, read it. 

Book Twenty One: Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse

THIS BOOK! I LOVE IT SO. I first read this book when I was in high school and a lot of it, pretty much the entire story, got past me. It's remarkable how a few years can change your impression of a story like this. When I first read it I was going through my angsty teenage "fuck society and its pretensions" kind of phrase- you know, writing a lot of very incendiary poetry and disapproving of the cars my parents drove and reading Beat literature and generally feeling superior to everyone in existence. Ah, the teenage years.

Anyways, what I thought was very interesting is that my version of the book contains a short intro by Herman Hesse himself, which he had apparently written to clear up some misconceptions about the message. He was shocked by how many readers- young readers, especially - saw his book as nothing more than an attack on modern society and a depressing tale about its toll on poor old Harry, the troubled saint. I found this hilarious, because that was exactly the read I got on it the first time. Rereading it now, I wonder how I could have ever mistaken the story for any of those things. And you know what? I bet I'll read this a few years down the line and change my opinion again. That's the great thing about re-reading, I guess....we all get older and (supposedly) wiser.

Anyways, Steppenwolf starts as a book about a wretched old man, Harry Haller, generally being miserable. Poor Harry is under the impression that happiness will always elude him because his soul is split in two - the man, Harry, who loves company and society and high-minded ideas, and the wolf of the Steppes, a beast who bares its teeth at all modern comforts and pleasures and would prefer to roam about in the wilds and howl at the moon. Because of the warring nature of his two spirits, Harry is always in torment. Lots of torment. In fact, the whole first half of the book is torment, but don't give up in the face of the endless onslaught of woe, because the book gets so, so much better with the introduction of the lovely Hermine. Hermine is everything Harry is not- young and pretty and full of life and romance, free with herself and not afraid to engage in common pleasure like (gasp) dancing the foxtrot. Harry, who had always thought himself above such things, finds himself drawn into her mysterious world despite himself, and a chink of sunshine manages to enter his dreary life. But Hermine has a secret of her own, and this all culminates in the wildest party you've ever seen or heard about, where all the pieces fall into place.

One of my first new relevations about this book is that it's (not so secretly) Buddhist! Given that I couldn't tell Buddhism from Judaism when I first read that book I guess it's not so surprising that I missed it the first go round, but I'm didn't pay a bunch of money for all those university religious classes for nothing and you can't sneak it by me this time, Hesse. When they mock Harry for mistakenly believing his soul is one, unchanging individual - well, that's pretty much straight out of an intro Buddhism class. Eventually, Harry sees himself for what he really is - an ever changing conglomerate of countless versions of himself which flash in and out of existence and are at their heart no different from the souls of anyone else he knows. Even Hermine and Paulo and Maria are a part of him, the same as him. Escaping of suffering also figures keenly in this book, and as Harry finds out, suffering cannot be escaped by sinking further into it, but only by realizing that everything is transient, and that both earthly suffering and earthly joy pale in comparison to the "laughter of the immortals." I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given that Hesse wrote every Westerner's favorite Buddhist text, Siddhartha, but it was kind of fun to discover all of that lurking just out of sight!

Anyways, I love this book. The Magic Theatre sequences are among the most brilliant and wonderful passages of any novel I've ever read. The scenes in All The Girls Are Yours, especially, stick with me long after reading. Harry looks back over his entire life and sees that if he had taken himself a little less seriously and let a little spontaneity and risk enter into his solemn world, he could have experienced hundreds and thousands of joys which he had only dreamt of (plus, had a lot more sex). Harry realizes he has spent his whole life clinging onto glimmers of what he perceived to be deeper meaning, but the immortals and Hermine teach him that even the worst, basest, cheapest parts of life are worth experiencing, and that by always being afraid of living incorrectly, one never lives. As Mozart chides Harry, "...enough of the pathos and death-dealing. It is time to come to your senses. You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there you are. More will not be asked of you."

In summary: Wild and twisted and sensual, this book will start out making you want to never get out of bed. But if you're not laughing at life at the end, then give it a few years and try again. Maybe you'll learn what Harry learns: Life's a bitch, so learn how to dance.

DONE. Off to make some food and study. Next I'm gonna read House of Leaves, which always makes me a little more afraid of the dark. Until next time!

BOOKS FIFTEEN AND SIXTEEN- 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE AND NEVER LET ME GO

So I went on vacation recently and managed to read like four books, but only two that were on THE LIST, and had pretty opposite reactions to them, even though I've read them both once before (I know, I know, I keep re-reading, but I owe the vengeful people at the university library late fees and I would prefer to graduate without them knowing about it,  and yes, this does make me a bad person).

So Book Fifteen: 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I love this book. The only word I can think to sum it up in one word is "rich". You get everything in here, every emotion, tragedy, wonder that life can offer you,  passion and despair and ruin and rebirth and magic carpets and crazy ants and a whole lotta incest. What I love about this book is how most novels only follow one main character for a short time in his or her life - anywhere from one day (like Saturday, ugh) and rarely for an entire lifetime. But here we don't just get to see one lifetime, we get to see generations upon generations of them, how past events influence the present and will continue to influence the future, and how wrapped up families are with each other. You get to see how people change, how destiny changes, but everything still comes circling back to the beginning again. It's a wonderful, wonderful study of what it means to be human in this crazy world.

After reading a good book sometimes I have this burning desire to go online and research everything about it, so that's what I did here. Turns out that the town of Macondo is meant to be a representation of the history of Columbia, starting with it's innocent, idyllic time of independence (founding of the town) and detailing it's eventual corruption (the banana company) and demise (the ants, the storm.) This made the story a hell of a lot more interesting to think back on, and I wish I had been more clear on Columbian history when reading it. I'm beginning to sense that Marquez is another one of those clever bastard writers I like so much.

There's nothing I could say that could sum up everything I loved in this book - I could write for page and pages and still wouldn't come close. The depth of emotion and the variety of events will leave you aching and the final pages feel like a hammer coming down on your head. It's one of those book that you feel robbed when you're done with it. I just had to sit there for a few moments and process everything before I could do anything else.

Few impressions:

-The edition of the book that I got my hands on didn't have a family tree in the front. That, as you might imagine, made reading rather interesting.

-The magic realism! Usually it bothers the hell out of me. I get annoyed when all of a sudden these magical events start popping out of nowhere and nobody says a word. But it works here- it's all a part of the initial innocence of the town, how isolated and unreal and beautiful it is, and when Marquez started whipping out the magic carpets and self-navigating blood trails, I didn't even blink.

-Favorite character by far: Ursula. If I am anything like that woman when I get older, then I will be a happy grandma indeed.

-I didn't get how chilling the massacre was the first time around - I think I was too young to fully understand what Marquez was implying. "Always remember that there were more than three thousand and they were thrown in the sea."

-Mauricio Babilonia's butterflies. I don't know why, but that detail always lingers with me long after the book is done. It's just such a quietly powerful image- this man with rough hands haloed in butterflies.

-He puts himself in his book! YOU ARE SO SNEAKY, GABRIEL. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.

In summary: If I can ever, ever in my life write half as powerfully as Marquez, I will consider myself more than accomplished. This book is a masterpiece.

Book Sixteen: Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Ah, Never Let Me Go. I remember having such high hopes for you. When I first heard the summary of this book, it was hitting all the right buttons for me. Semi-dystopian alternate universe? Check. Ethically gray area of science? Check. Boarding school shenanigans? Check. Man Booker Prize finalist? Check. I love all those things, and I was ready for a powerhouse of a book, and instead I got this....I don't even know what to call it. It starts off well, and then the story just wilts in front of your eyes.

Now, if you haven't read this book, I'm going to be spoiling you here, so look away. These kids are clones. They are destined to die young as their organs are harvested in forced "donations". They are aware of this and are also fully intelligent, emotional human beings. The idea is great: this story could have easily been an incredibly powerful treatise on human freedom and the struggle for life against forces that want you to lie down on the operating table like a nice little clone while the doctor helps himself to a lung or two. But nothing like that happens. The drama behind this book, the main emotional driver of the story, is a love triangle that can hardly be called passionate, exciting, or even interesting. Our protagonist, Kathy H., is a limp noodle of a person who hardly protests when her (insanely controlling) best friend steals "the love of her life" out from under her nose, and continues to not make a peep about this for oh, about eight years or so. Meanwhile, everyone is happily chatting about art and frolicking in the woods, seemingly very nonplussed about the fact that they have a death sentence above their heads. Yes, yes, they were conditioned to believe there must be no other way, but there are several scenes where Kathy or other characters wonder about the fairness of it all, but there's no fire, there's no sense of self-preservation, except in the one memorable scene with Tommy (who I liked most out of all of them) which Kathy is completely bewildered by. They're like cattle being led to the slaughter. Maybe Ishiguro's trying to make a point about quiet desperation here, but it's very, very quiet indeed.

Anyways, the book started to get a little interesting at the end, with Madame and Miss Emily's speeches. I would like a whole book about those women; they at least seem to have been doing something to stop human beings from being treated like organ farms. Even the end, when Kathy and Tommy finally consummate their age-old love - which, I remind you, was the focus of the entire book - they just have some passionless sex, chat, play some checkers, and then Tommy is killed without a lot of fuss from anyone, especially Kathy. Oh well, these things happen? What?!


In summary: This book is well written and engrossing, but in the end leaves you with nothing worthwhile, no sense of struggle, and no sympathy for characters that should seem very sympathetic indeed. All the books I love best make me feel, but this book only made me feel one thing: frustration.

Edit: Just read some of the amazon.com reviews of this book, which all speak to its mesmerizing "story between the lines" and narrative about "wasted lives." When I read a book, I want a story, not a story that lurks so far between the lines it becomes almost invisible. Sorry, guys - I get what you mean about the wasted lives, but did we really have to read an entire book about Hailsham rumors and silly misunderstandings to get there?

Book Fourteen - Breakfast of Champions

'

So I had started this book, gotten almost through with it, and then it apparently fell under my bed and got covered in dust bunnies for about two months. So I picked it up, dusted it off, and finished it on this quiet Sunday night. If you've been reading my previous posts, you know my deep and abiding love for Kurt Vonnegut is as great as my deep and abiding love for Haruki Murakami, and this book just makes me ache for him. He is one of those authors that infuse themselves into their books, and it's impossible to untangle the fictitious story and the reality Vonnegut was grappling with. In my opinion, this is his saddest book, his most personal book, a book written in a crisis. I don't think there's another modern author who can draw back the curtain on modern life and make you feel it's loneliness and absurdity more keenly. After all, who hasn't felt like Lancer, the wretched greyhound, who, "had a very small brain, but...must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made."

I don't really want to say much more about this book. It would kind of feel wrong to dissect it apart, and like Vonnegut says, it's not your normal kind of book, with plots and story arcs and personal triumphs. It's hilarious and terrible and bizarre: no one else, no one would think to describe the word schizophrenia as being like a human sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes, and it DOES sound like that. How does he come up with this stuff? But Vonnegut was the master of dark humor, and this book got an extra shot of darkness.

'"This is a very bad book you're writing," I said to myself behind my leaks.
"I know," I said.
"You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did," I said.
"I know," I said.'

That's all I got, folks.

In summary: This book is like a kick to the chest, but when you put it down you realize some hope managed to sneak in along with the pain. Resquiat in pace, KV.

Book Thirteen - Brave New World

Apocalyptic fiction has got to be one of my favorite genres of literature. It allows for such creativity and the imagining of entirely different worlds, radically different societies, but is somehow much more powerful (for me, anyway) than simple scientific fiction. Apocalyptic fiction, after all, is not set on a distant alien planet, but on our own, in our own futures. And so, as much as we marvel and even mock the strangeness of these future societies, you can't help but ask yourself, "Could we ever get there?"

If I had to pick out the most likely apocalyptic landscape, I would turn to Oryx and Crake, by Maragret Atwood. The fact that it is not on THE LIST is a crime against literature; this book is brilliant, and I cannot stress reading it enough, especially if you work in any scientific field. If I had to hedge my bets, I'd say the world was going to end just in the way Atwood described. In the few years since she published it, we're already moving further into the crazy GMO, science, and virus obsessed 'utopia' she imagined. But I'm not here to talk about Oryx and Crake, I'm here to talk about Brave New World, which is another apocalyptic fiction that I could see coming true all too easily. While 1984 is terrifying and plausible, I cannot imagine our society transforming into a society like that unless a major global catastrophe happened which would circumvent our love of personal liberty and replace it with a desire for security. Brave New World is a much more plausible scenario- it seems only logical that a society of endless distraction and pleasure would be more stable than a society based on repression and secret killing. There are three pillars of the society in Brave New World that I think would ensure its longevity- soma, which eliminates not only bad feelings but also the capacity to treat them as something serious, conditioning, which the book proves to be an almost unshakable force, and the deportation of all who resist the first two measures to Islands, where they will be isolated and have their intellectual curiosities met, effectively neutralizing them as a threat to society. No random midnight killings, no bombings, no torture - this society of weird electric golf and pornography seems rather tame in comparison your normal post-apocalyptic wasteland. But you can see how this sort of thing can sneak up on you- and we can already see it somewhat in our society, with our excessive pursuit of leisure, material goods, and artificial happiness (i.e drugs, alcohol, American Idol). Slippery slope?

Anyway, I could talk about the brilliance of this book forever and ever, but I think the most mind-blowing scene is by far the conversation of between the Savage and Mustapha Mond. It's not dissimilar to the scene between Winston and O'Brien in 1984, the old tried and true "villain explains to his helpless victim the Great Evil Scheme," but this conversation is different. Mustpha Mond clearly treats the Savage as an equal, despite their vastly different situations, and overall it reads like a pleasant chat between two friends on the finer points of philosophy. But of course, it's not. It's nothing less than the fundamental argument between two vastly different ways of life: the sentimental past (argued by the Savage) and the rational future (argued by the Commander). And you're supposed to hate Mond, he's the Bad Guy, but you can't help but see that he's perfectly right, in everything he's saying. It's just such a brilliant exchange, I wish I could quote it all, but I particularly loved the bits about religion, so here...

'"Then you think there is no God?"

"No, I think there quite probably is one."

"Then why?..."

Mustapha Mond checkered him. "But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in those books. Now..."

"How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.

"Well, he manifests himself as an absence. As if he wasn't there at all."'

Brilliant. So one last point; whenever I read these kind of books, you feel bad for the poor people in them, like Lenina, who are clearly off their rockers but can't do anything about it because of their conditioning and society and blah blah blah. But today I was reading about modern dictatorships for class and thinking about this book and realizing that we've probably been "conditioned" too, in different ways, so subtlety that we don't even realize it. I'm not saying we were all forced to listen to a thousand repetitions of "Buy McDonalds hamburgers," in our sleep, but in some ways the control modern society has over us probably makes us a lot more like Lenina than we think. Scary thought...

In summary: This book was published in 1932. Unless you are under the age of thirteen or illiterate, you have no excuse for not reading it yet. Get on it.

Book Twelve- Sputnik Sweetheart

So since it was my first week back to work, I decided to choose something short and sweet and farmiliar from THE LIST, which led me straight back to Haruki Murakami. I was thinking, I'm really glad I decided to re-read books from the list that I had already read once, because books like this I can remember reading, but can't remember the plot or anything significant that happened, and rereading it is like...I don't know, almost like when you're having a dream and then you wake up and realize that you've had the dream before? That's a flowery way to put it, I guess, but blame Murakami, he puts me in that mood.


Sputnik Sweetheart is about three people living in Japan and connected by love: The narrator, who goes only by K, falls in love with his best friend Sumiere, an eccentric writer who dreams of becoming a famous novelist. Sumiere, however, meets and falls in loves with the mysterious Miu, a woman much older than her and with a dark secret. When their three lives intersect on a small Greek island, very strange things begin happening, and then, like in all Murakami novels, the confusion begins!


You know I love this book, for all the reasons I love Kafka on the Shore and everything else Murakami has written - it's beautiful, makes you think, and doesn't have to make sense to be evocative. In a way, it's one of his simpler books - the plot centers around only these three characters and doesn't deviate much. In fact, for about the first 3/4 of the book you can even pretend that the plot makes sense, but then of course that's all shot to hell once he really gets going. Parallel universes and snow-white hair and mysterious music and doppelgangers in small French towns? This man is insane and I love it.  And I must admit, one of the few television shows I do keep up with is Fringe (which, if you are a science dork like me, you should start watching IMMEDIATELY) and so I started grinning a little when all the talk started about of doubles from other worlds messing around with our lives.


Okay, and one other thing I've noticed about Murakami- I don't think he's ever painted a loving family relationship. If he has, I can't remember, and I've read most of his books. In most of the stories, the protagonist either gets along fine with his family, but feels like he doesn't belong (they are simple, uncomplicated people and he is in a Murakami novel, so of course he's insane and crazy things are happening to him)  or they are cold and hostile (Kafka on the Shore, for example.) It's an interesting trend, and it doesn't stop with this book.....there's no terrible mistreatment, but parents really don't figure in at all, and K especially feels alienated from his own family and in fact alienated in the world. For Murakami, the biggest thing to know about any of the family members of the main characters is that Sumiere's dad has one hell of a nose. 


In summary: Short, sweet, confusing, 100% Murakami to the core and full of wonderful observations about longing, friendship, "rock hard erections" and the other world. Haruki Murakami strikes again!

Books Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven

Well. My winter break is already drawing to a close and unfortunately that means my life is about to be become crammed to the seams with work and travel and general fatigue again, but at least I feel a little more rested after the last two weeks of lovely, lovely sloth. I finished probably about eight books this break, but only four of them were on the list. C'mon, when you're sitting around with a beer watching the snowstorm, it's sometimes hard to put down the cheap thriller and pick up the dense 18th century novel, am I right? Still, overall pretty productive, so without further ado....


Book Eight: Oroomoko, by Aphra Behn

Wow, is this an old book. 1688! This might be the oldest book I've ever forced myself to read, excluding everything I've translated from Latin and that one horrible time I was forced to read the Odyssey. This does make me a bit of a book ageist, I admit, but I have such trouble accessing the story when it's so cleverly hidden behind these stiff fortresses of language. In this book, all the nouns are capitalized. That being said, it was one of the better of the four books, because it was a simple story, short, and very engaging. Oroonoko, a great Prince in his native country, falls in love with the beautiful Imoinda. However, their happiness is soon disturbed by his elderly grandfather, who steals Imoinda away for himself. Various intrigues ensue, including a bedroom break-in and peddling of sexual favors, before both Oroonoko and Imoinda are tricked into slavery and are shipped to the New World.

This book was fascinating to me on several respects: One, it was written by a women. Just skimming THE LIST, I would venture a guess to say that less than 5% of the books overall were written by women. Maybe less. I don't know whether we can blame that on a historical patriarchy or just conclude that women didn't have enough time or education to complete great masterworks, but I did find it fascinating that a book this old and well-recieved could be written by a women, even in those decidedly unprogressive times. Secondly, the attitude towards religion is fascinating. Seventeenth century Europe was nice and progressive compared to the Middle Ages, sure, but if you weren't practicing some form of Christianity chances are life wouldn't end well for you. Not only does Behn assert that Oroonoko is perfectly moral, noble, and good without religion, but through him she attacks the Christian religion and God, saying that if men use His name to perpetuate such evil, he must not be a mighty god at all. Similarly, she speaks of not wanting to teach the natives of the New World Christianity, saying, "Religion wou'd here but destroy the Tranquility which possess," which I think at the time was about as radical as saying that she wanted to ride around everywhere on an ostrich. Yikes. This is not to say the woman was running around waving the Abolitionist flag - in fact, she repeatedly asserts the reason she likes Oroonoko is because of his European-like manners, his European-like appearance, and his European-like sense of duty and honor, which puts him above the rest of the slaves. 

The story itself is pretty simple, but with the themes of racism, intolerance, honor and love driving it, the (quite graphic) ending does pack quite a punch. And although its message is still tainted by the attitudes of colonialism, it does remain one of the first books of its time to treat a non-Caucasian protagonist with such reverence.

In summary: A great glimpse into the past for those who like Romeo and Juliet, excessive talk about honor, and capitalized nouns.

Book Nine: Saturday, by Ian McEwan

Okay, so I was still totally buzzing around on my Atonement high (see slightly hysterical post a few down) and was expecting to be dazzled yet again by McEwan's prose. Which proved ironic, because my main problem with this book was the prose. The vast, vast amount of prose. This book takes place over a single Saturday in a prominent London neurosurgeon's life. He wakes up, sees a plane on fire, has sex with his wife, gets in a minor car crash, plays squash, goes fish shopping, sees his mother, and then meets up with his family for what proves to be a very dramatic dinner. This may seems like a lot of activity, but this book is 290 pages long. And that is all that happens. This is the kind of thing that can be summarized in a few pages in another novel. Here, the majority of the novel can be taken up by Henry thinking about things. Henry loves to think. He just thinks and thinks. At one point, directly after the car crash, Henry thinks about the accident and other things for seven entire pages before even beginning to consider getting out of his car. See, that kind of thing pisses me off in a novel. Atonement had flowery and often exhaustive prose, yes, but the multi-narrative story and the riveting plot drove the reader along. Here, there is no plot to speak of, only a vague sense of uneasiness that is hardly enough to help me plod through another fifteen pages of Henry brooding about his age or the war or his sex life. Also, although the plot was centered around a huge anti-war protest happening in London, I thought the musings on terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism were out of place in a story about the wealthy forty-something doctor living in London. I understood what McEwan was trying to do with it- convey the message that although we may feel safe in our insulated lives, violence lurks at every edge and can suddenly intrude without our consent. It's a theme that works and probably the best take-away from the book, but I thought Henry's excessive focus on the Islamic aspects of this fear were overkill, even with the Iraq war and 9/11 lurking in the background of the book. Unless McEwan meant to imply that we are being taught to fear the wrong things? If that's the case, I concede the point to him. 

Okay, above rant aside, I did not hate this book. I was strongly, strongly temped to give up on it halfway when all the stuff above was overwhelming me, but since I had to finish it, I did, and the ending saved this book. I won't give too much away, but when Henry gets out of his head for five minutes and acts, the messages of the book come together wonderfully and I, at least, began to like him for the first time in the book. The finally surgery scene in particular was well done, and I think the book is worth it for that. Just plan on mucking through a lot of words to get there.

In summary: I spent 90% of the book hoping for the death of the main character so he would finally shut up, but in the end the book is an interesting look into the violence lurking at the edges of our comfortable world.

Book Ten: Timbuktu, by Paul Auster

Oh, man, I had high hopes for this book. Really I did. It was a book about a dog, and I am the world's biggest lover of dogs. It is no exaggeration to say that one of the best parts about being home for the holidays was getting tackled by my lovely mutt. On the other hand, I was worried about this book, because for some strange reason I am one of those people who can read about brain surgery and people getting pushed down stairs without a flinch (see above), but if a dog gets kicked in a novel I get all teary-eyed. This is such a problem that I still refuse to see I Am Legend because I heard (spoiler alert) that the dog dies. So I went into this book expecting a strong emotion either way and got....nothing, really.

This is a simple story. Dog has master, dog loves master, master dies, dog goes looking for new master. And Mr. Bones, the dog, really is a loveable character, and it is interesting that the book is told from his point of view. The real strength of this novel, I think, is the palpable feeling of love you can feel from Mr. Bones to his master. Everyone who's every owned a dog knows about the bond  I'm talking about, and Auster paints it beautifully from a dog's perspective. But once the beloved master dies, the storyline dies with it. With only the vaguest sense of plot - Mr. Bone's search for a new home - the book plods along unevenly, with no great revelations or particularly dramatic moments, and then stops suddenly and with no preamble. When I put down the book, I wasn't content or lost in thought, like I usually am when I finish a good book. I was confused as to why I had just read the thing. If there was a point, I couldn't find it.

Not to discredit Mr. Auster, but there is a short story I love told from a dog's perspective by one of my favorite people in the world, Dave Eggers. It was shared to me by a friend and I think it succeeds in bringing us into the world of a dog much more eloquently than this novel does. It is brilliant and heartbreaking. Read it right now.

After I Was Thrown In the River And Before I Drowned, by Dave Eggers

In summary: Yeah, I love dogs, and Mr. Bones loves his master, but what was the point?

Book Eleven: The Nun, Denis Diderot 

At last, close to the end! This is a lot of writing, whew. Alright, The Nun. I was expecting this book to be boring as hell. In parts, it was. What I was not prepared for was the excellent dialogue, drama, and crazy illicit lesbian romance. Jesus, this must have been a controversial book in its day. The plot centers around Suzanne, a young girl coerced into joining a covenant because she is prettier and smarter than all of her sisters and is getting in the way of marrying them off because she is so much better in every way. Oh, and also because she's the illegitimate offspring of her mom's fling with some asshole, and this is her mom's way of "atoning". Go Mom. Once she's in there, she's forced to take the vows of a nun, which she very definitely does not want to be. Forced into the convent, she rebels and begins a long fight to leave, which causes the other nuns to starve her, throw broken glass on her, insinuate that she was raping the young converts, spit on her, and tell everyone she was the devil. For a book written in the 1750's, this is the equivalent of a soap opera. 

For a book written by a man as a joke, this is a book that does deal quite deftly with the issue of a women's freedom - or rather, lack therof. From a modern standpoint, it's crazy that a girl's father could pay someone to lock her up in a nunnery, and despite years and years of protest and struggle, she still couldn't escape. This wasn't a house of God, it was a prison. This is also a really great study of group mentality and the absolutely batshit things people do when they've trapped in close quarters with nothing to do but pray all day long. Although I sometimes wanted to give Suzanne a good shake (the girl is more innocent than some five year olds I know) I had to admire her tenacity and her refusal to bow to her circumstances. 


In Summary: I was excepting to read a terribly dry book about some devout old woman knitting, or something, but instead I get this sharp, thought-provoking and terribly entertaining novel. Might have to rethink that prejudice I have against "old" books...




Whew. 1% DONE!! This is gonna take a long time. Alright. Off to enjoy my last night of freedom. Happy New Year, everyone!

Book Seven- Heart of Darkness

When I read this book the first time I only underlined one sentence.

"And this also," Marlow said suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."

I think that pretty much sums it up. When I read this book the first time it was for school and I was racing to get it done so I could go out or watch TV or write an essay or something, and when I read very very fast I don't really remember specifics, just a general impression, and in my memory this book was dark tangled trees and white teeth and silence and a snatches  of conversation that got nowhere and served no purpose. Now that I am finally free of finals and home for a little while, I could curl up with this book and read it properly, no rush.

What can you say about Heart of Darkness that hasn't been said a thousand times in a thousand high school English classes? The nature of savagery and civilization, the racism, the insanity, the "horror?" There is no question that it is a brilliant book and deserves to be a classic. Conrad deftly conveys the idea that modern man is a stranger to his own Earth, and although the book can get a little too long-winded or clever for its own good, you do walk away with a vague sense of dread at the end, and I think that's what Conrad wanted all along. It is this sense of fear that is the true strength of the book, and what I related to the most in it.

Now, I'm a pretty well traveled person, I've slept in my car or in the dirt more times than I'd care to admit, and I've been to places I consider pretty remote (though definitely not as remote as colonization-era Africa). And I will tell you, there is nothing like walking in a silent, dark forest at night to destroy any ideas that nature has been tamed. There is some....I don't know. Some kind of presence there, that makes you feel so small and uneasy. Something force that has been operating far longer than you could ever imagine and is utterly indifferent to you.

I felt that again, reading this book, especially the part where Marlow follows Kurtz into the forest, with the drumming and fires and dark shapes in the foliage, "the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness.....the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts...the memory of gratified and monstrous passions." "You will be lost," Marlow says to Kurtz, trying to keep him from going farther. "Utterly lost." But I think both men understand that Kurtz wants to be lost, that he has already gone over the precipice, and now there is no coming back.

In summary: If Joseph Conrad can make me afraid of the dark when I am sitting on an comfortable armchair in my living room with a bright winter day outside, then I consider that a job well done.