The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

After reading both Crime and Punishment and The Three Musketeers this month, I really needed something quick and easy, engaging, and yet unique to catch my attention and give myself a break from the excellent but long masterworks my mind has been wrestling for the past three or four weeks.

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares was a perfect book for such a time. Although I read the novella quickly and enjoyed it simply as a fantasy story, it has depth that I suspect would benefit from more serious reading and study. Continue reading »

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Crime and Punishment,” says Richard Pevear in his introduction, “is a highly unusual mystery novel: the most mystified character in it is the murderer himself.”

At first glance, there is no mystery. The answers to “who, what, when, and where” seem self-evident, especially since the murder occurs center stage in the first 80 pages of the novel. Yet the “why” behind Raskolnikov’s crime arrests attention, and the mystery is determining exactly what is the “punishment” of the title. From the beginning section to the epilogue, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s psychological novel captures a disturbed mind in turmoil from its own philosophic ideals. Raskolnikov’s expectations for himself as a “Napoleon” above the law are distorted by his own inner turmoil, and his “punishment” may be realizing his place as a human in the midst of humanity.

But I say “at first glance.” The best facet of Crime and Punishment is its depth. An abundance of characters, some stereotyped and some individual, and layers of complexities of situation and personality illustrate just how each one of us has both a “devil” and a “saint” inside us.

As the Penguin Reading Guide asks, “Who among us is not a criminal? Who among us has not attempted to impose his or her will on the natural order?” I love Crime and Punishment because of the universality of that concept. The concepts do not seem specifically Russian or nineteenth century. Instead, it is universal in its look at human nature, and human nature has not changed much in the past 150 years, although the specific settings vary.

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The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Duels. Lovers. Mid-night rendezvous. Mistaken identity.  Revenge. There was plenty of adventure in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. But it was the humor that captured my attention and kept me reading.

I mentioned the other day that, thanks to Zola’s emphasis on “a point,” I was frustrated by the first bit of Dumas’ book, simply because I kept expecting some point to it all. I came to realize, however, that the point of Dumas’ story is to have fun. It’s full of humor, and the entire concept of dueling is rather amusing when every possible offense is “solved” by challenging to the death.

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Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki

Junichiro Tanizaki’s Naomi is about obsession. Joji, a mediocre businessman, lets his obsession of the mysterious girl Naomi overtake him. Yet, while the novel is full of sensual obsession, it is ultimately about obsession with Western culture, for Naomi is a Western-looking girl that personifies an idealization of the west.

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The Masterpiece [L’Oeuvre] by Emile Zola

In The Masterpiece, Zola captures the pain of creation, as he claimed himself:

I want to depict the artists’ struggle with reality, the sheer effort of creation which goes into every work of art, the blood and tears involved in giving one’s flesh, in trying to make something that lives.  (Introduction to Oxford World Classics edition, page ix.)

In telling the story of the doomed Claude Lantier, Zola does capture a painful side to creation. As a self-absorbed painter, Claude is unable to see beyond his skewed perception of the world, since he sees all through the eyes of his “impressionistic” painting style. (Although Zola does not use the word “impressionism,” it is clear that such is the era of art.)

I didn’t enjoy reading the story, but I certainly appreciated it as a whole. Zola shows a realistic disconnect for people who struggle with a vision, and I felt like I was glancing at real lives between the pages of the novel. Continue reading »

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

I had to keep reminding myself that The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson was actually a novel. It was realistic, and it was engaging and entertaining at the same time. Even more, it has a place in history alongside true-life narratives as an account of what some African-Americans may have felt in the early decades of the 1900s: enslaved in a world that catered to whites. Continue reading »

East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Thoughts on a Reread)

My interest in rereading East of Eden by John Steinbeck was purely personal: reading it the first time was what prompted me to start a book blog in the first place. I enjoyed my reread, mostly because Steinbeck’s writing is so incredible. The themes of good versus evil in human nature still felt universal to me, although I wasn’t as perfectly satisfied on this reread as I was the first time I visited it. East of Eden is a book I’d like to keep rereading at various points in my life. Continue reading »

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I was a skeptic. I had heard the hype and still I avoided The Help by Kathryn Stockett. My book club decided to discuss it this month and I grudgingly put a hold for it at the library. The hold came in and I let it sit on my TBR shelf for a week before I finally picked it up one night at 10 p.m., with a sigh, and began to read. I figured I’d read until I got bored or fell asleep.

And then I read until an embarrassingly late hour. I couldn’t put it down. The next day, I persuaded my toddler to take a nap. Then, instead of taking a needed nap myself, I finished the book. This was a book I wanted to keep reading. I wanted to see what happened.

The Help has flaws. It is not a perfect novel in any way. But I really enjoyed reading it, and the themes it addresses and the way it is written (for the most part) all work together to bring me into it and make it a page-turner.

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Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

I was a bit disappointed by Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. I’m glad I read it: it gave me a new perspective on Wharton, because it was a different setting, cast of characters, and theme from those I’ve read before. It was wonderfully written, with Wharton’s elaborate and realistic descriptions of the setting and thought processes. As in the other Wharton novels and novellas I’ve read, there was a moral dilemma.

Yet, the overall mood to Ethan Frome was so bleak that I felt depressed both while I was reading and afterward. It also felt like a study in symbolism for high school students to read: it seemed Wharton was hitting us over the head with “subtlety” to discover if we just read close enough. I felt it didn’t have the depth that The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth had, nor the matter-of-fact dilemma that The Touchstone had.

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Genre Fiction: A Tolkein, A Heyer, and A Verne

During the first two weeks of March, I read three lighter genre classic authors. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring took me to the fantastic Middle Earth, Georgette Heyer’s The Talisman Ring was an amusing foray into romantic historical fiction (albeit an unrealistic one), and Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was an incredibly convincing science fiction novel that visited not space, as modern science fiction does, but the unknown seas of the nineteenth century.
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