In her free time, Chieko would see the cherry blossoms and visit the cedar forests. It was a celebration of the world around us, and I enjoyed Kawabata’s pace. The world today moves so quickly, it was unusual to slow down and try to imagine this foreign 1950s world. Chieko’s Kyoto seemed on the cusp of embracing  Westernization.

And that was how the book felt to me: on the cusp. I can’t say I didn’t like it: I enjoyed it very much. But as I read, I felt it was on the verge of something beautiful, and I missed it. Only in retrospect does it all fit together for me. (Note that I’ve attempted to avoid major “spoilers,” if those are even possible.)

As I read, I thought, from beginning to end, that Chieko’s relationships drove the subtle story. First, there is the obvious observation of her unknown status to her adoptive parents. Was she a foundling? Was she a stolen child? The culture threw me off here, because apparently being a foundling is far worse than being stolen. (I would have thought that discovering that your parents were kidnappers was the worse alternative.) But beyond her relationship to her parents, and even more importantly, Chieko had competing suitors that seemed to vie for attention in the novel, and she develops a new relationship with the newly discovered Naeko. Just as I thought some resolution to these relationships was to come, the novel ended.

In retrospect, I realize I misunderstood the novel. It is titled The Old Capital because Kyoto was the capital of Japan for many hundreds of years. As I reflect on the novel, I realize that Kyoto is the character that Kawabata wanted me to focus on: the city streets, the festivals, the cherry blossoms and the cedar woods, the geishas. This traditional city is the Kyoto that Kawabata probably loved most, and he, as a modern individual writing 1957, can see the growing influence of those Western shops, for example, where one cannot even purchase a kimono or an obi.

Just as the two violets in the beginning grow a few feet apart, the Western and the Japanese traditions in the Old Capital seem to be growing apart. Do they know of each other? How do they interact? In this novel, we do not see them interact much at all. The violets parallel extends to Chieko and Naeko and Chieko’s suitors as well. How do they all fit together?

I want to thank Tanabata for leading a book group discussion (I’m a few months late…). One question she asked was this:

When Yasunari Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, he apparently remarked “that in his work he sought a harmony among man, nature, and emptiness.”  Do you think he achieved this in The Old Capital?

Yes: in highlighting the beauties of the traditions of Kyoto, Kawabata illustrates just how the cultures should work together.

In the end, I believe Kawabata is writing in mourning for the Old Capital. In that sense, the novel is simply beautiful. I want to reread this someday after I’ve gone to Kyoto, or at least somewhere I can see a proper kimono and obi. In just 50 years, even in a global environment like the Internet, such traditions are overwhelmed by the Western.

What cultural traditions do you mourn the lose of?

Random Fact for those that have read the book: I read in my recent project book, DNA, that twins are statistically rare in Japan. Less than 3 out of 1000 pregnancies are twins. In a country in Africa, on the other hand, the rate jumps to 40 out of 1000 pregnancies. Is that rarity an explanation for the superstitions revolving around twins?

Read the Nobels

• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (In Chancery and To Let)
• Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
• The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (The Man of Property)
• The Student by Anton Chekhov: A Perfect Short Story
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Why, then, did I struggle so much in reading it?

In October, after reading a few novels by Gaskell , Collins, and Dickens, I picked up Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Eventually, though, I decided that I just couldn’t get into yet another Victorian novel, so I set it aside after about 100 pages. This month, I was determined to get through it, so I began again. Yet, the first 100 pages still almost derailed me. Once again, I was bored. I was confused by the sheer number of characters introduced. I felt confused because of my ignorance about the French Revolution.

What was different this time? Why did I not give up? The first reason is completely superficial: The book I checked out from the library was a brand new copy. It had a crisp paperback cover and the pages were newly printed, with a strong “new book smell.” I’ve been reading lots of books with old covers lately, and that new book just kept calling to me from my library loot pile.

The main reason I was able to get through the novel, though, was I kept reading. I forced myself, and I gave myself plenty of time to dedicate to the task. After the initial hump, I was engaged in the story. To balance my lack of understanding of the French Revolution, I referred to the timeline at the front of my copy, which highlighted both the actual history of the Revolution and the novel’s story as it progressed.  By the end of the novel, I was sincerely interested in the story, and I felt emotional engaged when it ended.

Was Dickens at all to blame in my overall disinterest in A Tale of Two Cities? I don’t think so. I fully accept that my lack of engagement in the novel was mostly my fault. I am not normally interested in dark and sinister stories, and the imagery in the beginning section really did not bring me in to the novel; in fact, it kind of made me shiver, exactly the wrong reaction needed for me to enjoy a novel. I also was ignorant of even a basic outline of the French Revolution, an issue Dickens’ original readers would not have had, since they lived just 60-70 years after it.

Ultimately, what finally did bring me in to the novel was the human interest: the characterization. Once I understood how all the different characters fit together, I found myself engaged in the novel. In the end, my favorite character was Miss Pross, who turns out to be more important than we realize at first.

In the end, I found A Tale of Two Cities far superior to Oliver Twist. No, I didn’t enjoy it as much; it was a difficult and somewhat uncomfortable read for me. But Dickens’ craft is far more refined in Two Cities than in Oliver. He seems to have a wide vision of the story from the beginning, unlike Oliver Twist which just seemed to go whereever Dickens wanted, with some nice convenient plot twists. Dickens held his focus in Two Cities from beginning to end, in ways that Oliver Twist did not. It was a superior novel, but not my favorite of the two.

What was the last book you finished that you knew was well done but you just did not like it?

What is your favorite Dickens novel?

• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens
• Four Christmas Novellas by Charles Dickens
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Beauty and the Beast + The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Odyssey by Homer, trans. Robert Fagles
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

P.G. Wodehouse’s collection of short stories about Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves was simply perfect. It was my first foray into the world of Bertie and his witty butler, and these stories made me crave more.

The best part of the Jeeves stories is the interaction between the two. Bertie is a wealthy British bachelor who thinks quite highly of himself. He is ridiculous. Jeeves is, quite simply, a perfect servant and a genius. Jeeves takes control of situations and use things to his advantage all the while Bertie thinks he’s in charge.

Carry On, Jeeves has ten stories, including one about the first day Jeeves entered into Bertie’s services. A few of them take place in New York, but others are in England and Europe. Jeeves saves the day in all of them, in his own style. Bertie, of course, is ridiculous.

Much thanks for my library’s e-audiobook website. The version I listened to was wonderfully narrated by Martin Jarvis. I now know I have a perfect go-to when I need an audiobook like this!

What is your favorite Bertie and Jeeves story? I’m ready for more!

• The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie King
• Alexander McCall-Smith
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Einstein by Walter Isaacson
• Kissinger by Walter Isaacson
• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• Reminder: Giveaway for Really Old Classics Reviews
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
• Stories by Tommaso Landolfi

How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. … If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that – for that – I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that! (page 25)

And that is what happened. In the beginning, Dorian was fascinated by the painting: scowls (representative of his wickedness) immediately began etching itself on the painting, while he remained innocent and attractive looking in all respects. At times, though, the image of his soul disgusted him and he decided to abandon his life of sin, hoping his image would then right itself. But Dorian Gray found himself unable to stop embracing the life he’d created for himself, even when it disgusted him.

When I found out that Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was written in 1891, I was surprised. It seemed far more modern than that, since it deals candidly with issues of immorality. It captures issues of sin versus innocence. But such issues seemed appropriate for the late Victorian age, since it is questioning the existing morals and the social constraints of that rigid era.

“[Society] feels instinctively that manners are more important than morals, and in its opinion the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef,”  says Lord Henry Wotton at one point (page 119). Although I found Lord Henry to be a bit of a devil, his comments on society always seemed the most enlightening. I enjoyed his interesting perspective on society.

In the end, then, is Wilde’s novel a warning against debauchery (such as American audiences thought)? Or is it a catalog of Wilde’s own life (such as British audiences thought, even calling on Wilde to defend himself)? I found the discussion of original understandings of the novel to be very interesting. (See the Norton Critical Edition.)

My Favorite Part

The part I enjoyed most was Sybil Vane’s commentary on finally falling in love:

Dorian, Dorian. Before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. … I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came – oh, my beautiful love! – and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. … You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. … Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant… (page 73-4)

In contrast to Dorian Gray, who only is going through an act throughout his life (the painting is the real Dorian Gray), Sybil’s relationship with another human being helped her to understand her own life. I found it tragic to see this sweet girl contrasted with Dorian Gray, and I honestly could relate to her epiphany of what love and life were.

The Graphic Novel

The graphic novel adaptation (done by I.N.J. Culbard and Ian Edginton) was, in short, horrible. It took me about 30 minutes to read this 125-page adaption and there was nothing intriguing about the story. It moved so fast that the tension and creepiness was nonexistent. I picked up the graphic novel because January’s Graphic Novel Mini-Challenge was to read an adaptation of a classic. Since Dorian Gray is about a painting, I thought it would be nice to see the painting’s changes illustrated. The picture was creepy but it changed so quickly that it didn’t have the same effect that reading a full novel about it changing had. A picture is not worth a thousand words in this version.

It horrifies me to think people will read the graphic novel and think “I’ve read that book” when they hear The Picture of Dorian Gray mentioned. I am not a fan of the concept of adapting a classic into a graphic novel to begin with, but this was even more disappointing than I anticipated.

The Bottom Line

The Picture of Dorian Gray made me uncomfortable. I don’t like creepy books, and I guess the sell-your-soul aspect was a bit out of my comfort zone.

It seems that many love Dorian Gray, though. Since I’m leading a book group about it tomorrow night, I’d love to know: What do you most enjoy most about Dorian Gray?

• Reading Journal (10 Feb): The Joy of Reading Slowly
• February in Review
• Reading Journal (3 February): Black History Month
• Graphic Novels Challenge
• Reading Journal (27 January): Addicted
• Reading Journal (20 January): Distracted
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• Childhood Reads
• Painting a Novel: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Such is the premise of George S. Schuyler’s Black No More. It caught my eye because of the science fiction/dystopian aspect. I don’t normally read science fiction, but to come across a Harlem Renaissance science fiction novel seemed so far out of the norm for that decade of African-American literature that it intrigued me.

I know I missed a lot of the humor of the era because of my unfamiliarity with most of the characters of the Renaissance. The novel’s pacing, characterization, and development also had plenty of flaws. But overall I loved the issues it raised about self image and society. It reminded me of issues today, especially the world’s obsession with body image. Today we have plastic surgery and liposuction to attempt to make everyone alike the world.

The important thing about reading Schuyler’s novel is understanding the purpose and context. It’s pretty obvious from the beginning that Schuyler is not serious in expecting things to happen like this, even if such a surgery was suddenly invented.  The introduction to my volume claims it is a burlesque, which Merriam-Webster defines as follows (third definition omitted):

1 : a literary or dramatic work that seeks to ridicule by means of grotesque exaggeration or comic imitation
2 : mockery usually by caricature

Schuyler certainly mocks the leading figures of the Renaissance. Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard is a caricature of W.E.B. Du Bois; Santop Licorice is Marcus Garvey; Mme Blandish is C.J. Walker, self-made millionaire during the Harlem Renaissance for her hair care products. Schuyler gives these characters their own agenda, and it is amusing to see their reaction to the basic elimination of the race issue.

Throughout, Schuyler is mocking the entire race issue. Would “becoming white” have solved the problems of the African-Americans in Harlem in the 1930s? In this novel, he ridicules the idea by showing how superior all the blacks became, once they were white. (For example, almost as soon as the main character, the unsuccessful Max Disher, becomes white, he is able to infiltrate the orders of the racist Knights of Nordica and siphon off the money for his own future use.)  What if white was suddenly the shunned race? What if everyone were exactly the same race? Why is race an issue at all?

I certainly hope that we have come somewhere on the race issue. If we were given the option of changing our skin color, would we? Why? Would it make a difference in how successful we are?

Even beyond the race issue, the novel still seemed familiar. After all, the world I live in does seem to force an image on me. When people get on the cover of People for having surgeries to better fit the “model,” I feel Schuyler’s novel is not that far-fetched. Of course, in his novel, he was able to provide surgeries for $50, a price that, during the Great Depression in Harlem, was well within budget for many people. If liposuction was that cheap, how many of us would flock to it?

Black No More reminded me of the Uglies series to some extent, but it illustrated the beginning of a movement to make everyone being the same. Being a classic African-American novel, Black No More dealt mainly with race issues and the effects of discrimination. But it still speaks to us today, and it is well worth reading simply for the reminder of the superficial world we live in and the dangers of forcing or expecting conformity. The satire and humor also make it an entertaining historical read, albeit one with some flaws.

Read for the February 2010 Classics Circuit.

• Reading Journal (3 February): Black History Month
• Harlem Renaissance Poetry
• My Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• February in Review
• A Stop in South Africa (Two Novels by Alan Paton) + Giveaway
• Reading Journal (16 December): A Classics Circuit TBR List from Wilkie Collins to Harlem
• December in Review
• Reading Journal (18 Nov): Planning for a Quiet December
• Reading Journal (10 Feb): The Joy of Reading Slowly

But it grew on me. The main reason is Elinor Dashwood. Although she is stereotypically serious and sensible, she also was realistic enough that I felt for her frustrations. Although the title captures the two personalities of the sisters, this is a novel about Elinor. Even as she comforts Marianne through her emotional upheavals, Elinor is strong in dealing with her own disappointments and doesn’t break down and whine. I really admired that.

Marianne, I’m sorry to say, really irritated me. I found her to be very similar to Lydia Bennett (flighty and stupid), except Marriane’s end turned out okay because she didn’t actually run off with her lover (whew). Yet, I see people around the blogosphere with “I’m Marianne Dashwood” badges on their sites, so that makes me think I’m supposed to like this girl, and that she is supposed to be a heroine. Hmmm. I think I may be in the minority on disliking her.

*spoilers* I also detested Willoughby. With such a lovely name, I really thought he was going to be a good guy. In my mind, his “apology” was too little, too late, and really pointless. I don’t think it made up for anything he did. He married for money, and that made him shallow and heartless, considering how much he says he cared for Marianne. In any event, I found Marianne’s courtship with Colonel Brandon to be entirely undeveloped, but that was okay. For me, this novel was about Elinor, and I loved how her story resolved. *end spoilers*

I also watched the 2008 BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility this week. Some aspects had been changed (in particular, Marianne took a much larger role), but overall, it was a delightful few hours. The 1995 version is next in my Netflix queue.

As I mentioned yesterday, I read this book too fast. It was satisfying but then it ended! And I was sad! I watched the movie, and I still wanted to read more Jane Austen. I guess this is why I have to space these out every few months. I want some more Jane Austen to look forward too!

Who did you like better: Marianne or Elinor?

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Jane Austen: A Biography by Carol Shields, a Quote Book, and a History of England
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• Reading Journal (10 Feb): The Joy of Reading Slowly
• Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams
• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• What the World Eats by Peter Menzel
• The Odyssey by Homer, trans. Robert Fagles

All that said, I really liked reading Moses, Man of the Mountain. I have a fascination with retellings of the Exodus.* Because of that interest, then, I liked Hurston’s novel simply because of the premise: tell the story of Moses and the Hebrews basing it on African-American folkloric practices (hoodoo and magic).

Hurston tells the story in an easy-to-read style, and I personally liked the idiomatic speech. The story has some different aspects to it that make it a little different from the Biblical version, of course, since Moses is a hoodoo expert, but I liked that too. I just liked it over all.

To give you an idea for the writing style of the novel, here is a favorite passage (the burning bush).

The voice came again.

“Moses, I want you to go down into Egypt.”

“Into Egypt? How come, Lord? Egypt is no place for me to go.”

“I said Egypt, Moses. I heard my people, the Hebrews, when they cried, when they kept on groaning to me to help. I want you to go down and tell that Pharaoh I say to let my people go.”

“He won’t pay me no attention, Lord. I know he won’t.”

“Go ahead, like I told you, Moses. I am tired of hearing the groaning in my ear. I mean to overcome Pharaoh this time. Go on down there and I”ll go with you.” …

The Voice was hushed. The bush no longer burned. In fact, it looked just like it had yesterday and the day before and the day before that. The mountain was just as usual with the wind yelling “Whoo-youuu” against its rocky knots. (page 127)

Maybe you can tell in this passage that it’s not the strongest writing ever. I wouldn’t call Hurston’s characterization spectacular either.  Nevertheless, although the book may not be a masterpiece, I loved seeing how Hurston weaved it together simply because I love the subject and the setting. I’m willing to forgive any flaws simply because I like those aspects.

Is there any subject or time period that you love reading about, even if the book is not the best?

For the record, most of the Amazon reviewers also seem to enjoy it, rather than complaining that it’s “badly flawed.”

*Back when I thought I wanted to be a writer, I had a story idea related to the exodus. Instead of sitting down and writing that story, I read a lot about it as background. The story never was written. I guess I should say that by reading a book like Hurston’s, my passion to capture my own story dies. I could never create characters and a world so strong as this, and this is “badly flawed”!

[Really Old Classics Extra Credit: retelling of an old classic]

Related posts:

• Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales
• Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage
• A Stop in South Africa (Two Novels by Alan Paton) + Giveaway
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel + Giveaway
• Masterclass in Photography by Michael and Julien Busselle
• A Ruined Author?
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

Although I’m glad I read To the Lighthouse, I can’t say I’ll ever revisit it. I am looking forward to reading others’ posts today, though, because as with the other Woolf novel I read, I think I missed a lot! This post is a rambling collection of my thoughts about the book, and if you’ve also read the novel, I’d love to hear your thoughts too. What did I miss?

Because I read this book as a part of the Woolf in Winter read-along (hosted at Emily’s blog today), this post and the comments may include spoilers as a part of the discussion of the book.

When I suggest To the Lighthouse has a plot, I feel a bit taken aback because I struggle to specify what that plot would be. In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa was preparing for a party. That seemed clear to me from the beginning.

In To the Lighthouse, on the other hand, it’s not as easy to pin down, despite the fact that it seems more things are happening: James wants to go to the Lighthouse, Mrs. Ramsey is busy sewing and preparing things, Minta and Paul get engaged, James and Cam and Mr. Ramsey go to the lighthouse, Lily paints a picture (actually, two pictures). But despite the action, none of those things seem to be the key to the “plot” of the novel. How does it all tie together?

As I read the first part of the novel, I thought it was about Mrs. Ramsey. Although I didn’t particularly like her character, her thoughts seemed to drive the “action” of the novel for the most part. Her thoughts were the majority, it seemed. Yet, suddenly, she was dead (just like that) and the novel was only half way through. I was startled and felt a lump in my throat at the thought. Oh no! That couldn’t be! She was the tie.

And so maybe she was still the one who tied them together. Of course James and Cam don’t have a good relationship with their volatile father, but it is the memory of a tradition of visiting the lighthouse that drives the action here, and that is reminiscent of their mother. The last section seems to focus often on Lily’s thoughts, and Lily’s thoughts are of her pleasant memories of Mrs. Ramsey, a woman she did, but didn’t, like because Mrs. Ramsey caused her to feel guilty. Lily did, but didn’t, wish she was married, and Mrs. Ramsey’s preoccupation of marriage is something that Lily does, but doesn’t, remember with fondness. Lily’s confused about what she wants.

It was unclear to me if Lily was happy in the end. I think she kept going in circles, and the painting was just one example. Although the book ended with her satisfied, I suspect she’ll find the painting the next day and decide it’s horrible and go through similar thoughts again.

So what does “to the lighthouse” mean? I also don’t know the answer to that, but maybe it means coming to a place of satisfaction. For Mrs. Ramsey, it was not ever telling her husband that she loved him (and yet, he knew). The next day, she’d probably be frustrated with him again until she got her way again. Lily’s satisfaction was being satisfied being herself: a single woman who painted pictures (even if they’d end up in attics). For James, it was getting a compliment from his father. The next day he’d be just as frustrated again.

My favorite part was section two, where time passed so rapidly. It was heartbreaking to suddenly be removed from the house after having been so intimately in the characters thoughts (which were about the books, the wallpaper, the window, and so forth). I also loved the language in that section.

I also enjoyed the last section, as Lily painted. As she painted, I found myself wanting to paint as well. This is quite amusing to me: I am not artistic in that way and I cannot capture things by drawing or painting them. (Give me a computer and I could create something, if need be, though.) Yet, there was something so relaxing about reading Lily’s thoughts as she painted. It seemed so tranquil, like the sea James was on. This was a contrast to the stormy sea and child-filled house of section one.

Conveniently, this week, in the evenings, before I relaxed into Virginia Woolf, I have been painting in my home (continuing the project I started at Christmas time). Instead of listening to an audiobook or music, I just painted in silence and let my thoughts run. It was very relaxing! I think it’s a lesson in the need for personal meditation: not reading, not listening to music, not talking. Just thinking. Virginia Woolf reminded me of that.

As I said above, I’m not sure I understood the book, but I’m glad I’ve experienced the modern novel and I look forward to trying more in the future. I’m planning on reading A Room of One’s Own (on my own) in two weeks and I’ll rejoin Woolf in Winter in a month with The Waves.

• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Reading Journal (30 December): Happy New Year (Briefly)
• Stories by Vladimir Nabokov

Obviously, comparing Ogawa’s modern novel to Shonagon’s 1000-year-old journalistic notes is like comparing apples to oranges. If you ask, I’ll say I much prefer the old classic. But I did enjoy the Japanese novel too. Now I feel I am about to embark on a new genre of interest: Japanese literature, classic and new.

The professor of the title was once a famous mathematician, but a car accident 25 years ago left him unable to remember more than 80 minutes at a time. Now he lives in the past and every 80 minutes he must learn again the events and people from the 25 years he’s forgotten. Nevertheless, the housekeeper is able to develop a friendship with him as she learns about the beauty of numbers. Mathematics, not memory, is a universal language of their friendship. Although the science of the memory aspect of the book seems suspect, the themes of friendship are universal. In the end, it was an enjoyable book, although not a favorite.

As a part of the book group, Tanabata at In Spring it is the Dawn asks a few questions and includes the publishers’ book group questions. Note that this post (and probably the comments) will include spoilers as a part of the discussion of the book.

Did you enjoy it?

I did enjoy reading the novel. I don’t read a lot of modern fiction, but this was a nice addition. I can’t say it was a favorite novel, but I’m glad I read it.

The one thing that bothered me was the portrayal of memory loss as an 80-minute increment thing. I thought the author did not make it very realistic in her portrayal, although I struggle to pinpoint just why. I recently listened to one of Oliver Sacks’ audiobooks about neuroscience and memory; Sacks talked about some people with 15 second memories, but the professor’s memory was so unbelievably following a clock, it just seemed a little unrealistic to me. I’m nitpicking here, but the mathematics was so well-researched (it’s obvious the author is a mathematician) that the science of the memory seemed, by contrast, off.

How does this book compare to other Japanese literature that you’ve read?

As I mentioned above, the only other Japanese literature I’ve read is Shonagon, which doesn’t really compare. Reading Housekeeper, though, I was struck by the universal quality of the novel. It didn’t feel “Japanese” at all, and maybe that’s because the characters were nameless (see next question). I felt like it could have taken place anywhere, at any time.

The characters in The Housekeeper and the Professor are nameless (“Root” is only a nickname). What does it mean when an author chooses not to name the people in her book? How does that change your relationship to them as a reader? Are names that important?

Because the characters are nameless, I forgot I was reading a “Japanese” novel. I know it doesn’t matter where a novel is written but one thing that was hard with The Pillow Book for me was all the long names that I couldn’t pronounce in my head. I found myself skimming over them. Without names in Housekeeper, I felt I was reading a book from anywhere: baseball and mathematics, memory and friendship became the themes, not the setting. I enjoyed that aspect. I admit I need to get over my difficulty with Japanese names and words, but still, the book became like mathematics: anyone and anywhere can understand mathematics, once you learn the language of mathematics.

How is it possible for this seemingly one-sided relationship to thrive? What does Ogawa seem to be saying about memory and the very foundations of our profoundest relationships?

I think what kept their friendship “alive” was the current events. Although the housekeeper was able to remember the details of the professor’s preferences, because she kept doing things with him and for him, their relationship continued to grow. It’s interesting that for the professor, it’s as if it never happened. I think it’s a lesson for all of us in relationships: in order to keep it alive, we need to build on the past but also keep doing new things that we enjoy. We have to enjoy the present.

At the same time, it didn’t seem one-sided, and again, this is where the memory problems didn’t convince me. Why was the professor still feeling close to the 22-year-old Root at the end, when before he only felt close because he was a child and he loved children? There seemed to be something unexplained there about his memory. Did Root somehow become an unconscious part of his memory?

Generally, how does Ogawa use math to illustrate a whole worldview?

I love how Ogawa uses mathematics (which I’ve always hated) as a universal language of friendship. The professor meets the housekeeper at the door with “What is your shoe size?” and finds connections between her birthday and his own award number. I loved the entire concept of “amicable numbers” and thought it a good comparison to amicable people too!

Baseball is a game full of statistics, and therefore numbers. Discuss the very different ways in which Root and the Professor love the game.

The professor seems obsessed with all the statistics, but it seems to me that Root is more interested in the action of the games. The professors’ interest in numbers seems to rub off on Root, though, in the end. And the professor definitely appreciates the baseball players too, especially when they are wearing a perfect number!

Ogawa chooses to write about actual math problems, rather than to write about math in the abstract. In a sense, she invites the reader to learn math along with the characters. Why do you think she wrote the book this way?

I think Ogawa wrote the book with the mathematics as well because that was such an imperative part of the housekeeper’s friendship. If the housekeeper hadn’t fallen in love with the concept of amicable numbers and prime numbers and all that, she wouldn’t have been so fascinated by the professor himself. It was their connection. Besides, I think Ogawa is a bit fascinated by numbers. I suspect she hoped we’d all become converted as well! Although I can’t say “I like math” now, I still found it interesting.

As I said, I enjoyed this book, but it wasn’t a favorite. I’m still looking for my next Japanese literature read.

Questions for You

What favorites of Japanese literature have you read (classic or new)?

Do you struggle when you read foreign names? I have a hard time because I want to pronounce them right. (I have the same problem with Russian literature.)

• The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
• How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
• Reading Journal (27 January): Addicted
• Reading Journal (20 January): Distracted
• Reading Journal (9 Dec): Thoughts on Being a Selective Reader
• January in Review: A Good Start to 2010
• A Few Science Book Reviews (The Great Equations by Crease and Two by Gawande)
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
• My Antonia by Willa Cather

Herland is nearly 100 years old, but the fantasy-adventure story of three men discovering a country of women still has some relevance. In some aspects, its age shows, but I’m glad I reread it ten years after my first read so I could get a fresh perspective.

I’m also willing to send you my twice-read, still-in-good-condition, ten-year-old Dover Thrift Edition so you can read it for yourself.

I had issues, good and bad, with Herland that I didn’t have when I read it at age 18 or 19. Certainly, I am more aware of feminist issues. Having read a little bit more Victorian literature, I am more familiar with the era from which Gilman was raised in, and I feel that knowing the Victorian perspective is important going in to it. (Although Herland was published in 1915, which was after the Victorian era, Gilman’s feminist perspective is based on her specific experiences in the 1890s.) That said, some of the things Gilman suggests through her novel made me a bit uncomfortable. While Gilman didn’t really come across as a man-hater, her perspective of the perfection of an all-woman society was just as inaccurate as the Victorian men’s perspective of woman’s abilities. In the end, I consider Herland a dystopia that would be just as dreadful to live in as More’s Utopia (reviewed here).

In the novella, three adventuresome men hear of a land of only woman and go seeking it, hardly daring to believe in such a paradise. Of course, when they walk into the uni-sex society of Herland, they are stunned to find

They were not young. They were not old. They were not, in a girl sense, beautiful. (page 16-17).

Although the woman do not allow the men to leave Herland, they do teach them and learn from them. The narrator of the novella is, conveniently, a sociologist, so he’s able to accurately capture the society he observes.

This is the Dover Thrift Edition I'm giving away (see below)

The women of Herland have the ability to spontaneously reproduce by choice, and thus their society has reproduced for 2000 years. It is a land that is of course without poverty or inequality. It is a land that improves its teaching methods with each generation, and mutually decides on how to use their land (the country is the size of Holland, so space is at a premium). It is a land where women choose careers and succeed in them. (Imagine that.) To the astonishment of the men, the woman’s organized and clean society is far superior to the male society they had come from!

Above all else, it was a land of mothers, as all the children are raised by the villages collectively. The ultimate plot-driving conflicts between the men and the women go back to the “nature of the [marriage] relation” (oh, how many euphemisms are in this text! It’s so amusing.). The women struggle to understand the necessity for sex beyond “fatherhood” and “motherhood.” In fact, the entire race appears to be asexual. On the other hand, the Victorian men struggle to realize that the women have rights over their own body. Women, to the surprise of the men, are not property simply because they are their wives.

This contrast between the Victorian male and the “liberated” female is, I think,  the most important aspect of the novella. Herland is a series of contrasts between what Victorian men (in stereotype) believe and what a particular Victorian woman (Gilman) believes. Gilman captures her own utopia of women being in charge. In her Victorian and Edwardian world, she may not have had the opportunity to experience such a world, and I can only imagine (from the brief introduction in my edition of the novella) what her relationship with her first husband must have been like to prompt such a utopia.

However, the book is dated, in terms of a modern utopia for women today. (Herein begins my personal ramble.) I am certainly not a man-hater, but I’m also not a woman idealizer. So for me, this other extreme seems almost as inappropriate as suppressing woman’s talents. In Herland, the women all got along, and while they not all mothers, they all celebrated it and wished they could be mothers. They were also ugly and manlike in all descriptions.

I sincerely believe that if a society of all women existed, there would be economic inequality and political rivalry. Some women would be more feminine than others. Some would be more motherly than others. I personally feel women as a whole are generally more inclined to negotiation, compassion, and nurturing than men as a whole (see my thoughts on Dee Dee Myer’s social history/memoir). BUT. I don’t think women, as a whole, are perfect, and I certainly don’t like the idea of stereotyping women into a “mother” role. Women need the opportunity to choose which type of women they will be. We come in all different ways, and each strength needs to be celebrated.

When I read Herland a decade ago, I recall thinking, “I don’t think I got that book. There is something in it I missed. I need to revisit it sometime.” I’m so glad I finally took the chance revisit this book! According to the introduction to my copy (Dover Thrift Edition), Gilman was largely forgotten after her death until the woman’s movement in the 1970s. What a tragedy, since her near contemporaries probably would have appreciated it very much.

What is your idea of a utopia?

Have you read Herland?

If you would like me to send you my good condition, used copy of Herland (Dover Thrift Edition), please mention it in the comments. I’m willing to send it anywhere in the world. I’ll select a winner this week from the comments. If no one is interested, I’ll list it at Bookmooch. Giveaway ended.

[Chosen specifically for the Women Unbound for obvious reasons]

[A Year of Classics]

• Utopia by Thomas More
• Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
• “Used” Books Giveaways Poll
• Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers
• Carmen by Prosper Merimee
• The Touchstone by Edith Wharton

In some respects, Jazz seemed to capture the complexities of two different generations of African-Americans living in Harlem in the 1920s: the middle-aged and the young adult. But it also deals with redemption and forgiveness. It wasn’t a beautiful novel for me to read, but I’m glad I did read it.

Although Violet and Joe have been in Harlem for twenty years when the main action takes place (1926), we learn of their childhoods and marriage in frequent flashbacks. The novel begins brutally, by telling us what happened: Joe shot his 18-year-old lover of three months, Dorcas, and his wife Violet attacked the dead girl at the funeral, slashing her face with a knife (page 3).

The rest of the book is going back in forth in time, trying to determine what happened and why. It was fascinating to examine how memories and events in the past influence current events or our understanding of current events, and the confusing nature of the narration was a way of portraying the confusion Violet and Joe feel as they struggle to come to terms with their past and what they’ve done. Contrasting Violet and Joe’s complicated back stories of life growing up in the south is the story of Dorcas and her friend Felice, who are both young and have different attitudes toward life, death, and Harlem in general.

One aspect that made Jazz so difficult for me was the narration and writing style. The narrator is an unknown omniscient viewer of some kind, telling the story in first person. I never could figure out if I was supposed to know who or what was narrating, and that was a little disconcerting. As I went to write this post, I referenced Wikipedia and an interview with Toni Morrison and it makes more sense now, but that’s after finishing reading it. For a first time reader, it’s important to know that the narrator is unreliable. What really happened? I really need to reread it.

In the last pages of the novel (*spoilers*), the narrator says “I invented stories about them” (page 220) and talks about the healing that Violet and Joe were able to do. It really is a story of redemption. They were able to rise above their past and look toward the future, and I think (just think, because I’ve only read this once and it needs a second read) that jazz music was what helped them do that.

The pattern of the story telling is, appropriately, a “jazz” style (according to Wikipedia). I don’t listen to jazz music (except for Christmas music by jazz artists) so I missed the “call and response” side to the novel’s writing. It just felt uncomfortable to read for me. Beyond the style, though, the main characters were incredibly complex, mostly because they kept being recreated by the narrator. I struggled to follow their thought progression through the novel.

In preparing this post, I found a Time magazine interview with Toni Morrison. She is asked about jazz music and here’s her response:

I try to echo some of the basic characteristics of jazz music in that book by refusing to have a narrator or leader who knew everything and exactly how the music was going to turn out. Instead, the narrator had to listen to the characters the way Miles Davis listened while he performed with his musicians,and depending on what they did, that would affect the next solo or alteration in the music.

Now I want to listen to Miles Davis! Maybe then I’ll reread Morrison’s Jazz. And because I loved this interview, here’s another quote from Ms. Morrison about Jazz. (*Spoilers*)

I had to keep in mind, and I think readers should keep in mind, that all of it is artifice. It’s all planned, but it should look unplanned. The narrator was designed to be unreliable and to have only part of the story and to be the one that was most inaccurate by the time one reaches the end, but at the same time, the narrator learned about its own vulnerability. I wanted to explode the idea of an all-knowing, omnipotent, totalitarian, authorial voice and to parallel the democratic impulse of jazz ensembles.

I read Jazz because as I researched the Harlem Renaissance in December, I discovered that Toni Morrison had written this novel. Since I loved Beloved, which captured the 1860s-1880s era in African-American life, I decided to see how she examined the 1920s African-American. I’m very glad I read it, and I did enjoy reading it. The themes didn’t feel as universal as those in Beloved, though, so while I really should reread Jazz to full comprehend Morrison’s purpose in writing it, more likely I will be rereading Beloved again instead.

What novels have you read with unknown and possibly unreliable narrators?

Do you listen to jazz music?

[Because this book is out of my normal reading]

Read the Nobels

• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• My Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance
• Reading Journal (30 December): Happy New Year (Briefly)
• Reading Journal (20 January): Distracted
• The Book That Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson + Giveaway
• Reading Journal (6 January): Starting Off the New Year
• Carmen by Prosper Merimee
• Christmas Countdown: Music Collections I Love
• The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder
• The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

If you read my reading journal last week, you’ll know that I struggled to read Woolf at first. It was confusing and rambling and I didn’t want to keep reading. Someone suggested that I slow down significantly. So I did: I began reading it aloud. As I did so, the stream of consciousness writing style became clear to me.

The turning point for me – where I decided I wanted to continue reading – was as Clarissa (Mrs. Dalloway) stood looking in a bookstore window, trying to decide which book to buy for her ill friend.

“…Ever so many books there were; but none that seemed exactly right to take to Evelyn Whitbread in her nursing home. Nothing that would serve to amuse her and made that indescribably dried-up little woman look, as Clarissa came in, just for a moment cordial; before they settled down for the usual interminable talk of women’s ailments. How much she wanted it — that people should looked pleased as she came in, Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towards Bond Street, annoyed, because it was silly to have other reasons for doing things. Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waiting to cross, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (and now the policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a second taken in. Oh if she could have had her life over again! …” (page 10)

I do that: I try to imagine what people want from me. I try to do things because I feel I should. My husband, like her husband, is my example of what I should be: doing things for the things themselves or for myself (i.e., because I personally want to take my friend this particular book). I often find myself thinking that if I had my life over again, I’d get in the habit of doing things right.

In the next paragraph, she ponders what she’d do differently if she did have her life to live over again, and she mourns the death of who she is or was:

“…She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway. …”

This paragraph struck me even though I’m completely different from some of the specifics Woolf mentions. I’m young; I’ll probably have more children; I am rarely called Mrs. Reid and never Mrs. my-husband’s-first-name Reid. But somehow I did relate to Clarissa. Sometimes I do feel invisible, unseen, and unknown. I spend 12 hours a day awake with a toddler, alone, and when I do go in public, people see me as the mom with the toddler. They see me through the filter of what I’m doing, and not as myself. Clarissa’s feelings are similar to some of the feelings I have as I go through life as a busy mom with a busy kid. Who knows me?

The rest of Mrs. Dalloway has so much more in it that I got out of it on this read. As I read, I kept thinking, “I need to reread this before I can write a proper post.” Suffice it to say, I’m not writing a proper post this time around: I will have to reread it to get more of the marvelous depth I found in Woolf’s introspective look at a variety of people.

Throughout, Clarissa was the one that I was fascinated with, and on this read, I didn’t see the necessity of the other character’s detailed experiences. I’m sure if I reread it, I’d see just why certain people are brought into the story.

I related to Clarissa’s frustration at the party, even though she’d been so excited about it. I, too, often plan something only to wonder during the whole event “Why did I want to do this again?!”

In the end (spoiler warning), I found it touching that Peter was the one to recognize Clarissa as Clarissa, and not as “Mrs. Dalloway.” I felt he was the only one who never stopped seeing her as herself, and I am comforted knowing that this is the type of relationship I have with my husband. How precious it is to me to know I am not “unseen” and “invisible” to him! If only Clarissa could have had friends (beyond Peter, who probably wasn’t going to be around for long) or a husband who could have seen her properly.

I suppose Mrs. Dalloway is a depressing book, for that reason. Clarissa feels alone and sad. Despite the joy of the morning and the planned events, the evening’s party only brought her lower into her aloneness. But as I finished the novel, I didn’t feel depressed, I felt enlightened. I felt I wasn’t alone because others (even fictional characters) go through internal battles, others feel “unseen” in the middle of a busy street, and yet these “others” survive. They do find some moments of joy and friends that recognize them for themselves.

What point made you want to keep reading? Or did you enjoy it from page one?

What character did you most enjoy reading about?

[Woolf in Winter: a group read-a-long]

[Women Unbound: Because it focuses on a 1920s woman]

[A Year of Classics: written 1927]

• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Reading Journal (13 January): Exhausted
• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• The John Cheever Audio Collection
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• The Joy of Audiobooks
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Perhaps it was Cather’s perfect capture of New Mexico: while I have never been to New Mexico, I feel I now can perfectly imagine the place, the pain, and the joy that the setting evokes. Also, while there are religious elements in the book (after all, it tells the story of the first Roman Catholic Bishop of New Mexico), Cather’s emphasis seems to be the human connections, the legends, and the memories of those living in a challenging yet beautiful era in American history.

Archbishop was a different classic to read: in some respects, it is a collection of stories, not a novel. When early reviews complained that book was hard to classify, Cather herself said “why bother?” She at times calls it a “legend” or a “narrative” (from the introduction, Everyman Library’s Edition).

Because of its loose structure and subtle plot, it tells of the Bishop Latour’s life and that of his friend, Father Valliant at a leisurely pace. In fact, my first read (three weeks ago) surprised me: I found myself struggling to be motivated to read it. (It was also during the Christmas holiday, so I was busy and probably not in the mood for a thinking book.) Because I’m preparing some discussion questions for my infant book group, I decided to reread it this week. (I was feeling horribly nervous about keeping a discussion going. Unfortunately, this is how I feel every month when I go to prepare for book club!)

So I reread Archbishop, knowing that it is slow, thoughtful, and not so much a novel but more a series of vignettes. And I loved it. The last 75 pages last night had me in tears as I pondered the life of the priests. While I loved My Antonia, this is my new, absolutely favorite Cather (of those two, at least). It has far more depth to the characters, the language, and the setting , and I was emotional moved as I read it. I may add it to the “Books Read in 2010 That I Love and Want to Reread Someday” list I’m starting in my head.

Note: Because I don’t believe Death Comes for the Archbishop can be “spoiled,” I discuss the book in below without hesitating to reveal some details.

I finished rereading Archbishop last night, after having finished Mrs. Dalloway on Tuesday, and maybe it was the slow-reading mood I’d had with Woolf that made Archbishop so rewarding this time around.

I am not a Catholic, but I do consider myself religious. Similarly, Cather was religious, but she was not a Catholic when she decided in 1927 to tell the story of the 1850s Catholic missionaries to New Mexico. Yet, her book is a religious one because she describes nature in terms of religion.

This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau.  The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape. (page 94-95)

The book as a whole is not overly religious. Rather than celebrating any organized religion, Cather is celebrating humanity and the beauty of nature. She almost gives more space to the Indian traditions, legends, and religious beliefs than she does to the Catholic priests’ beliefs. The priests are just her vehicle to the legends. Catholic, Mexican, and Indian legends are all fascinating to me, despite the fact that I don’t know much about any of them!

A good portion of Archbishop is about service and friendship. I suspect this post cannot possibly capture the beauty of the text and the emotions I felt as I read about those subjects in Cather’s words, but I will try to do my best.

Because Father Valliant went to seminary in France with Bishop Latour, they are close. They were very different: Bishop Latour always planned ahead and Father Valliant was always full of energy to go do what was needed right now. But these differences were what made the book so rich. Both served the Catholic and non-Catholic populations and touched people in different ways, and because they saw life so differently, the moments of togetherness were perfectly captured and realistic. Although other relationships among the people touched me, it was the friendship between the two missionaries that touched me most: they’d given up a life of ease for a life of struggle, all because they wanted to serve. Yet they still had each other to understand how hard it was. How they must have depended on each other! (I say as if they were real… Although Cather based them on real missionaries, the story was a fiction.)

Finally, Death Comes for the Archbishop actually is about death, but it’s also about life and memory. In her introduction, A.S. Byatt indicates that there is confusion with the title:

“It arouses expectations in the reader which are not fulfilled – that death and the Archbishop are of equal importance in the narrative, whereas in fact the Archbishop’s death is only one further incident in the series of frozen gestures, moments of insight, small comedies and agonies which make up the fresco.”

I agree that the Archbishop himself is of utmost importance. But so are the Indian friends, and the New Mexico landscape, and dear Father Valliant, none of whom are mentioned in the title. I think Cather chose to include death in the title because that is what life is: we live to die. I am dying right now. How we live (i.e., what we choose to do with our time) determines how we will eventually die.

As he entered his last convalescence, Bishop Latour gave this bit of wisdom:

“I shall not die of a cold, my son.  I shall die of having lived.” (page 267)

Death Comes for the Archbishop tells the story of Bishop Latour’s death, which is how he lived. He lived in service to others, looking ahead and planning for the future. Only before his death could he stop considering the future and recall, with fondness, his past. Cather’s narrative is absolutely beautiful in capturing his story!

Now that I’ve finished this reread, I am incredibly excited for my book club meeting next Wednesday night! I feel I have so much I want to discuss, and this book has much more in it for discussion than My Antonia (which I think many people read in high school or college). I have barely touched on all the themes that stand out to me after these two reads. I just really hope the others didn’t get hung up on the “slow” aspects as I did at first.

If you hated My Antonia, have you tried this one? I’m curious to know if those who dislike Cather know about this masterpiece. This is, of course, much slower than Antonia in pacing (believe it or not), but the end result is far more rewarding, I believe.

Have you read any books lately that moved you emotionally (not necessarily in a tear-jerker kind of way)?

• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Reading Journal (25 November): Unplugged Edition
• Death in Children’s Literature: Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• What the World Eats by Peter Menzel
• March by Geraldine Brooks
• January in Review: A Good Start to 2010
• December in Review
• Death and War in Children’s Literature: Two Newberys about the Revolution

As with the other two Edith Wharton stories I’ve read (The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth), The Touchstone deals with an individual’s challenge in turn-of-the-century New York City. As in The House of Mirth, this novella focuses on the need for money in order to live the comfortable life one is accustomed to. As in The Age of Innocence, Wharton follows a young man’s inner thoughts as he tries to make big decisions.

From the beginning of the novella, a person’s inner conflicts are the center of the action. Glennard longs to marry his beloved Alexa, but he is so poor as to be unable to support the two of them in a comfortable country home, as they both expect to have. While pondering his need for money, he comes across a note in the newspaper. Famous English novelist Margaret Aubyn has died: publishers are interested in learning of her life in America and would pay good money for any letters or information about her. Glennard had had a relationship with her (in fact, Margaret Aubyn loved him), and he possesses hundreds of such letters from her (letters she’d begged him to destroy). Since he did not love her, though, the letters mean nothing to him, except a past life that he’d rather forget.

Herein is the crux of the plot: does one reveal a somewhat embarrassing part of one’s past in order to get money? Does one disobey the wishes of a dead friend? How does one hide the past while still using it to help oneself in the present?

I won’t tell you what happened, but as with The Age of Innocence, I found myself frustrated with Glennard’s selfishness and deceit, both with Alexa and with himself. The taunts of the past never go away if one refuses to examine them honestly.

The story was short – novella length – and that was its biggest weakness. When I read it, I thought the issues were interesting and memorable, but even in two weeks, the story, the characters, and the lovely settings I enjoyed so much have faded into obscurity. In the end, I don’t think The Touchstone was a particularly memorable novella, but it was entertaining and intriguing to read, and I’m glad I did so.

Here’s a question for you: Suppose an acquaintance of yours, someone who you don’t care about very much, gave you something like letters or diaries and told you to destroy them when they died. Subsequently, this acquaintance became famous and the items now were worth a lot of money. Would you sell them or destroy them as they’d requested?

It seems to me that in this era of celebrity, people don’t hesitate to make money on relationships like this. Maybe we should return to respecting the dead a little bit more and let go of “celebrity” status.

• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Bookworms Carnival: Relationships
• Carmen by Prosper Merimee
• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman + Giveaway (Used Book)
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• Jane Austen: A Biography by Carol Shields, a Quote Book, and a History of England
• Four Christmas Novellas by Charles Dickens

What surprised me was that all of those beautiful country scenes I remembered from the book happened in the first 80 pages! After that, Jim Burden moves to town. I remembered the details as I reread it, and it was kind of a fun experience to reread it for the first time and gain an open mind as my memory of events unfolded just before they would happen.

My Antonia captures a man’s memories of an immigrant girl, Antonia, who moved to Nebraska at the same time he did. Jim Burden and Antonia grew up near each other in the fields. Jim moves to town (Black Hawk), and she eventually follows to be household help for near neighbors. While his life follows different paths than hers, he remembers her and looks her up when he returns to Black Hawk.

My general memories were still correct. Antonia was a girl with positive spunk, even when things got really hard. She had some bad luck, where people took advantage of her. I loved her power to overcome.  Jim Burden didn’t always live next to her, but it was also a touching record of how one person influences our memories: Antonia made an impact on his life, even after all those years.

That is why I love this book. Some people can’t get through it: they find the writing dull and the characters and subtle story uninteresting. But I love the way that Jim’s memories of Antonia have stayed with him. I like to think that I’ve impacted lives for the better, much as Antonia impacted Jim’s life.

Did you enjoy My Antonia?

• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• A Stop in South Africa (Two Novels by Alan Paton) + Giveaway
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Four Christmas Novellas by Charles Dickens
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Anthem by Ayn Rand + A Giveaway
• Black No More by George S. Schuyler

While I can say in retrospect that I enjoyed reading Mary Barton, I really struggled for the first 200 pages. I could not connect to the characters, nor did I find anything in the plot engaging. At about page 200, things start to happen and I didn’t need to force myself to read for the last 300 pages, as I had for the beginning portion.

Mary Barton was Elizabeth Gaskell’s first novel, and I wonder if the developmental flaws are sincere, rather than the frustrations just being my problem. I felt the characters were described very beautifully, but from a distance: that made it hard to engage myself in their lives. Besides that, Gaskell literally took 200 pages to set the stage for the main plot of the novel. The way things were resolved in the last 300 pages was rather unrealistic, but satisfactory to me all the same.

I read somewhere that Gaksell’s husband encouraged her to write this as a part of the grieving process after the death of one of her sons. This book is full of grief. Most of it is lower-class grief, in which we see the dire circumstances of those living at the poverty level. There is some upper-class grief from the mill owner, but it did not seem sincere to me. I wonder if Gaskell was not as familiar with those people or if she just did not take enough time to introduce those characters properly.

The mill worker versus mill owner conflict seems to be a theme in Gaskell novels, as North and South (which I read a few weeks ago) also examined the plight of the mill workers and the conflict that arise from Unions. However, I personally preferred the complexities that were examined in North and South. While Mary Barton did have some lovely writing and interesting characters, I found the focus of North and South to be much more satisfying overall. The relationships developed in a more realistic way, and we had sufficient time to get to know the characters as the action unfolded. To me, Mary Barton seemed like a first attempt.

I read Mary Barton as part of the Elizabeth Gaskell Classics Circuit. Two other bloggers read Mary Barton for the Circuit as well: Becky’s Book Reviews and Kay’s Bookshelf.

Have the first books by your favorite authors ever disappointed you?

• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
• Reading Journal (21 Oct): Victorian Second Helpings + Giveaway of an Abandoned Book
• Reading Journal (4 Nov): Reading Progress and Library Loot
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
• November in Review + Reading Journal (2 Dec)
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Because Merimee’s novella seemed short and superficial, I can’t say it was a wonderful read. That said, I could recall the music as I read and imagine Carmen dancing to it, so I did enjoy reading the story in the end.

I didn’t enjoy Bizet’s opera as much as I enjoyed Mozart. It was not as smooth, and I found it harder to relax into. I don’t know how to explain it: it felt like an opera as I was listening, while listening to The Magic Flute was more like listening to beautiful music. Carmen the opera was pretty shocking when it first came out, considering the main character is a prostitute and there is a murder by the end. Bizet died a few months over its opening, thinking at his death that it was a failure. Of course, it took a little while, but now it’s recognized as pretty cutting-edge (in terms of music and plot development) for its day. Isn’t it interesting how the cutting-edge artists are always misunderstood at first?

At any rate, I was glad to read the original novella. It surprised me, however, to find that the main narrator is a Frenchman travelling through Spain (Merimee himself), and not anyone close to Carmen. This traveler meets the infamous Don Jose and the seductive gypsy, Carmen, through his travels. A few years later, he discovers that Don Jose is jail for murder, and he goes to hear his story. Chapter III (of IV), then, is the full story of Carmen and Don Jose’s relationship.

After this fabulous story, Chapter IV then digresses to the narrator’s studies of the gypsies, and I didn’t get it. I think the author’s intent is to show that people have no choice but to turn to crime. Don Jose’s last comment had been this, referring to Carmen:

“Poor child! It’s the calle who are to blame for having brought her up as they did.”

So maybe the narrator’s comments in the last section supported that idea. To me, it fell a little flat as a novella.

Then again, maybe Merimee really intended just to tell the story of a seductive and sexy woman. In the end, I didn’t find it to be superior writing or incredibly engaging, but it certainly was fun. Considering it was a rather short story (about 60 pages in Word, 12-point font), I am satisfied I read it. (I read it via Project Gutenberg.)

Have you read Carmen or seen the opera?

Do you think there is a “point” to it?

• The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Christmas Countdown: Music Collections I Love
• December in Review
• Reading Journal (25 November): Unplugged Edition
• The Odyssey by Homer: The Story
• Reading Journal (18 Nov): Planning for a Quiet December
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• What is Reading? and Audiobook Review of The Book Thief

Although I am glad I had a second experience with Paton’s South Africa, I still much preferred the first novel. I’d be happy to send you my lightly used copy of Too Late the Phalarope. See below for giveaway information.

Cry, the Beloved Country

When I read Cry, the Beloved Country as a teenager, it was on my mother’s suggestion. She loved the message of hope it portrays, and thought it would be one I’d enjoy. I recall that I did enjoy it, and while I remembered the basic plot and themes, I didn’t remember the details.

When I returned to it this year, I was a bit taken aback at first because the language is so difficult: it is in a Biblical style (I can’t think of a better way to describe it) and that adds a layer of complexity to the story. Dialogue is offset with only a dash at the beginning of the paragraph, so I was often confused where the dialogue ends and thoughts begin. This adds a surprisingly realistic feel to the man’s daily experiences in an overwhelming city.

To be honest, I didn’t like the writing style at first. As I mentioned, I did like the novel as a teenager, but this time, it really threw me off. I couldn’t read over breakfast or lunch or as my son played: I needed strict concentration – just me and the book – in order for the events and language to sink in. As I focused on the book, though, it gave back to me.

Cry, the Beloved Country is about two fathers, one white and one black. Stephen Kumalo is the Reverend of the very poor native community in the valley of Ndotsheni, and James Jarvis is the white farmer on the High Place above the valley. When Kumalo travels to Johannesburg in search of his son Absalom, the lives of the two men are inevitably brought together.

That sounds vague, as I don’t want to “spoil” the book. In some ways, Cry, the Beloved Country is about the dichotomy between being black in South Africa and being white. It is about rural life versus city life. It is about hatred versus forgiveness. As the black man and the white man come to know each other, they learn what it means to live and serve each other. They aren’t so different after all.

Alan Paton wrote Cry, the Beloved Country in 1947, and it was published in 1948, the year apartheid, the legal separation based on race, was made law in South Africa. It therefore portrays the country before whites were given legal permission to discriminate against the blacks. And yet, the traditional separation in the culture is obvious and heart-breaking. I believe that Paton’s purpose in writing the book is to illustrate how similar the two men (white and black) really are. Both are fathers, struggling to have a life full of purpose.  Ultimately, Cry is about the hope for the future if only the other people in the country could have the same realization of equality among the human race.

I reread Cry, the Beloved Country specifically for my book club and we had a great discussion about the themes in the book. Most enjoyed the book, although two people disliked it and found it depressing.  I personally wasn’t really crying throughout the book, but my throat kept getting all tight. It was painful to read. But I think it was necessary for me, because it helped me see the hope that comes from loving one another in our communities, even a community that is so full of inequality. It was a hopeful book to me.

One further note: I read most of a book of commentary and criticism (edited by Harold Bloom). While much of the criticism focused on the religious aspects and the symbolism, I found that many of the arguments felt like a stretch to me. Yes, this book is obviously intended to be a religious allegory: the writing style and the names, for example, hearken to Biblical elements. But for me, reading this book was about the hope I got from the character’s interactions, not about the symbolism.

Too Late the Phalarope

Alan Paton’s second novel, Too Late the Phalarope, has a different feel. It, too, has a Biblical tone to it and the dialogue is confused with thoughts. But I did not like the narrator, the spinster aunt Sophie, and writing style seemed affected and a little tedious. I’m not sure why the writing affected me in this novel, as it seems similar to the other. But the subject matter wasn’t as appealing to me either: it was not about hope.

Pieter is not just an Afrikaner lieutenant in the South African police corps, he’s also a star rugby player, husband and father, and once a star student. His father is pleased with his well-rounded son, but he has a little bit of reserve, since his son is too tender: he loves too much. Pieter, too, wishes that he, like the others around him, shrank away from black people and saw them as less than he is. But he cannot. Pieter loves people, regardless of race.

Ultimately, Too Late the Phalarope is about love. Pieter’s thoughts on love are complicated by his relationship with his wife, who is cold and distant to him. He loves her, and yet there is something missing between them. And Pieter’s deepest secret is that he is attracted to a black woman, which may be a capital offence in 1950s South Africa.

Too Late the Phalarope is not a happy book. Since Paton wrote it after apartheid had been made law, it seems he himself realized the backwards direction that the country was going: no longer is there the hope for a better future that he wrote about in his pre-apartheid book.

That’s not to say that a sad book isn’t good. It was good: it brought a painful issue to the forefront of political consciousness then, and there is relevance today as one looks at the issues of love it addresses. It just wasn’t my favorite book, and I don’t intend to reread it.

Would you like my lightly read copy of Too Late the Phalarope? Let me know in the comments.

I received this paperback used from a giveaway at Maw Books Blog more than a year ago, but it is in very good shape, with just slightly bent cover corners. This giveaway is open until Saturday morning, 4 December 2009. It’s open to anyone around the globe. If you are a regular reader (i.e., you have left a comment on Rebecca Reads before today), you get an extra entry in this giveaway.

A note on the title: A phalarope is a rare South African bird. I was very curious myself.

Have you read Alan Paton? Did you enjoy the writing style?

What books have you read with difficult or different writing styles? Did the writing style change your enjoyment of the book?

• A Meme, A Farewell, and A Giveaway Winner
• November in Review + Reading Journal (2 Dec)
• The Book That Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson + Giveaway
• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Reading Journal (4 Nov): Reading Progress and Library Loot
• Stories by Flannery O’Connor
• Anthem by Ayn Rand + A Giveaway
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman + Giveaway (Used Book)

Aucassin et Nicolete was written in medieval France, but it’s not your typical roman d’amour.

I haven’t actually read any other medieval romances. My expectations of “typical” are all formed on stereotype. In many ways, Aucassin and Nicolette meets those fairy tale stereotypes. On the other hand, something goes quite “wrong” in this love story, for Aucassin seems to be a selfish weakling, a man frozen into inaction when things don’t go as he expected, and Nicolette is constantly called on to be the true heroine of the story.

I first read Aucassin and Nicolette during my first or second year of college for a history class. I loved it! I found it again this week for the Really Old Classics Challenge, and I still love it. Because I think Nicolette is such an awesome heroine, going beyond the stereotypes of Medieval France, I’ve decided to also count Aucassin and Nicolette as my first work for the Women Unbound Challenge.

The Style and The Story

Aucassin and Nicolette’s story is a song-story. Every page has a short poem, and then the story continues in prose. Both are essential to the plot, so you might miss something by skipping the short poems. But the style of both poetry and prose is pretty basic, and while the translation I read this time did have an “older” feel, it still was straight forward and easy to read. Although I have not read other medieval romances (or, for that matter, anything else medieval of this sort!), the poetry style seemed to call up the days of knights rescuing princesses.

The basic plot is also somewhat typical of a fairy tale romance. A prince loves a gorgeous-yet-lower-class girl. The family disapproves, and both of them end up locked in separate prisons. But that is where it stops being typical. Aucassin the Prince is a lazy, complaining man. Although his father is at war, he has not entered the battlefield to fight for his kingdom, and he refuses to unless his father lets him marry Nicolette.  Grudgingly, Aucassin goes to battle, but his father still denies him Nicolette and throws him into a cellar where he won’t get in trouble. Aucassin sits and mopes in his prison.

My sweet lady, lily white,
…
I for love of thee am bound
In this dungeon underground,
All for loving thee must lie
Here where loud on thee I cry,
Here for loving thee must die
For thee, my love.”

Nicolette, on the other hand, has been banished to a tower for loving Aucassin. When he does not come for her, she ties her sheets together, escapes, and sneaks to Aucassin’s prison, slipping past guards and climbing walls in her dress, in order to talk to him and help plan his escape.

I don’t want to tell you all the delightful adventures in this song-poem. Suffice to say, that the two lovers eventually meet up in a lovely garden bower where they begin their adventures together, Nicolette prompting Aucassin to action at most steps. It gets strange when they visit the foreign land of Torelore to find the King in bed in the throes of childbirth and the women fighting the neighboring kingdom with baked apples, eggs, and fresh cheese.

Now, the pregnant men and baked apples story sounds ridiculous, but I think the ridiculousness of the “gender roles” in Torelore is a way of underscoring the ridiculousness of the romance story to begin with. And Aucassin and Nicolette is all about gender roles.

Side note: In some criticism I read when I was in college, they said the pregnant man represents “the pregnancy of Adam, [and] far from undermining his gender position by rendering him effeminate, is the basis of his supremacy as a male” (quote from Jane Gilbert, “The Practice of Gender in Aucassin et Nicolette.”  Forum for Modern Language Studies.  33 [1997]:  220). Therefore, Aucassin beating up the pregnant king is Aucassin rejecting his male role. Maybe that is a bit of a stretch. But if you ask me, I wrote a pretty good 10-page paper about androgyny in this story for my class. I’d be happy to share more about it if you really care. (If you are in the midst of writing your own paper for a class and I’ve never “met” you before, go do your own homework! I spent forever on my paper and I’m not going to let you copy it.)

Nicolette is a delightful woman, able to remain proactive in moving forward to get what she wants, especially when Aucassin himself is immobilized and distracted. Yet, she also wants to be a feminine woman (and she does little feminine things like make sure the edge of her dress didn’t get damp in the morning dew). She seems she know that she is in a romance story and she knows how the romance is “supposed” to go.

Would a romance where the two of them simply followed the “script” be demeaning to women? Not necessarily. But I personally found Nicolette’s more complex role as a proactive woman to be far more entertaining and appealing overall. Besides, the underlying message of the song-poem, to me, seemed to be that gender roles are unnecessary and that any person, male or female, can be strong or weak in a relationship.

My ultimate question is this: Why would such a strong, awesome woman want to be with such a loser anyway? What I realize is that I have that same question for so many women (and men) today. Surely they could choose so much better.

The Translation

This time, I read a Project Gutenberg download translated by Andrew Lang. There is second option via Project Gutenberg by Francis William Bourdillon. (If I’d seen the Bourdillon first, I’d had read that. I hadn’t realized there was a second option.) When I was in college, I read the Glenn S. Burgess translation. I no longer have the Burgess translation, but I recall it being much easier to read, and it was divided into sections. It was more modern, and sentence structure was better organized. That said, I still found the “thee”s and “shouldst”s of Lang’s translation more “medieval.”  Both were good, but I’d highly suggest the Burgess translation if you can find it! I loved it. (I can’t find it on Amazon, unfortunately.) Links below go to Project Gutenberg, where available.

Here is the same excerpt three times. It is weakling Aucassin, claiming that he loves Nicolette more than she loves him. Feel free to roll your eyes now!

Andrew Lang translation via Project Gutenberg:

It may not be that thou shouldst love me even as I love thee.  Woman may not love man as man loves woman, for a woman’s love lies in the glance of her eye, and the bud of her breast, and her foot’s tip-toe, but the love of man is in his heart planted, whence it can never issue forth and pass away.

Francis William Bourdillon translation on Project Gutenberg:

That were not possible that you should love me so well as I do you.  Woman cannot love man so well as man loves woman.  For a woman’s love lies in her eye, in bud of bosom or tip of toe.  But a man’s love is within him, rooted in his heart, whence it cannot go forth.

Burgess translation (from The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Volume 1, Sixth Edition):

It is not possible that you love me as much as I love you.  A woman cannot love a man as much as a man loves a woman. For a woman’s love is in her eye and in the nipple of her breast and in her big toe; but a man’s love is planted in his heart, whence it cannot escape.

There is also a translation by Eugene Mason that I have not read; from the Google Books preview, it appears to be closer to the Burgess.

In Conclusion

No matter what translation you read, Aucassin and Nicolette is very short, at about 35 pages in Word with 12-point font. Even if you are intimidated by really old classics, I think this is a great one to read. If you decide to give it a go, consider joining the Really Old Classics Challenge: reading this one work will allow you claim you’ve finished it!

When I first read Aucassin et Nicolete ten years ago, I found it so modern I wondered if it truly was a medieval manuscript. It feels modern, for the issues are modern ones, and surely the questions it addresses, that of gender roles and women’s issues in general, are still relevant to us today!

(Apparently, it wasn’t very popular in medieval France.)

Also, it’s now a new comedic play in Seattle. I wish I could go see it, and I hope it has a long run. It sounds so wonderful!

Have I tempted you to attempt this? What could I say to get you to read it?

Do you think a romance/fairy tale with “traditional” gender roles (the woman submits to a man’s “rescuing”) is demeaning to women?

• Literature in Translation
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Hippolytus by Euripides
• Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
• Ingenuity and Authority: Who Really Wrote Aesop’s Fables?
• Medea by Euripides
• Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Reading The Iliad by Homer, trans. by Robert Fagles

I did give up on A Tale of Two Cities this week. While Oliver Twist seemed intuitive and easy to breeze through, Two Cities has been confusing, especially in comparison to the other novels I’m reading. Dickens keeps introducing characters and I can’t see how it fits together. I’m also completely unfamiliar with the facts, dates, and details of the French revolution, so that is a big negative to my experience. I’m certain the novel does all fit together – and that it is definitely worth reading – but I’m ready for a few non-Victorian novels before I tackle Gaskell’s Mary Barton for the upcoming Classics Circuit tour. The past few weeks of Victorians have given me a slight burnout. I feel guilty admitting it, as I’m the one promoting the Victorian Classics Circuit! Nevertheless, rest assured that I’ll revisit Two Cities in the next year at some point when I’m able to read it “fresh.” For now, I’m setting it aside.

Because Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell are both touring the Circuit in the coming weeks, I’ve kept these reviews brief. Check out The Classics Circuit to see where the two authors are going in the future!

If you’d like, you can skip to the review you’re interested in by using these shortcuts:

• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Although I don’t like mysteries, I am immensely glad I gave the first of the genre a chance. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins was one of the original, definitive mysteries. It was full of suspense, red herrings, misunderstandings, and drama.

I didn’t particularly love The Moonstone, but I enjoyed reading it. The things I disliked were an effect of the genre: mysteries tend to bore me. Like adventure stories, I get impatient and just want the writer to get to the point already. The Moonstone was no different, and since it was primarily a mystery (and not a romance on the side or anything), it just really wasn’t my thing. I found myself bored by the plot, I’m sorry to say! (To clarify: there are some elements of love, but for this Austen-fan, it was not nearly enough romance.)

That said, I loved the characters Collins created! For example, Betteredge is the butler who adores Robinson Crusoe – and uses it as his bible for seeking answers to life’s problems; Miss Clack is the evangelizing loner who thinks the family is depending on her to save their souls. I loved these creations, and it was for the rich people that I enjoyed reading The Moonstone. Further, despite the fact that I didn’t love the genre, I found myself turning pages hoping I could figure it out myself. (I did not: there were some odd twists I wasn’t expecting.)

While I don’t anticipate loving the mystery genre anytime soon, I’m glad I read The Moonstone, and I look forward to more Collins!

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

North and South was my second Gaskell novel, and it felt strikingly different from the subtle setting and characters in Cranford (reviewed here).

In some respects, North and South seemed a delightful mix of Jane Austen romance and Charles Dickens working class expose. In Gaskell’s novel, an upper-middle class young woman is uprooted from her idyllic setting in the South and brought to the Northern town of Milton, which is a mill town in the middle of the industrial revolution. Her nineteenth-century notion of “gentleman” is brought in to question, for the wealthy John Thornton, a self-made man, is not an inheritance-born gentleman. The Jane Austen romance comes in as Margaret’s obvious prejudice against Mr. Thornton comes into question, despite his interest in her. Margaret observes the Dickensian tragedy that is the life of the mill workers.

North and South was a painful book in ways that both Charles Dickens and Jane Austen are not. Of Dickens’ stories, I have only read Oliver Twist – which focuses not on mill workers but on the poor in London who take to thievery — but Dickens wrote with a humor that made it feel light. Jane Austen, on the other hand, writes her story (I’ve only read Pride and Prejudice) with plenty of romantic situations, and the political world around her is essentially invisible. But the pain that I felt as I read of Margaret’s struggles were incredibly real. Margaret’s situation was more complicated and more concerned with life and death than Elizabeth Bennet’s situation: the Bennets were worrying about their reputation, not their lives. Therefore, while I loved the light story of Austen’s novel, Gaskell’s novel felt more realistic.

A note on the end (highlight to read, as it contains spoilers): I was rather frustrated that it took so long to come to the happy romantic resolution I knew was coming, and I wished Gaskell had developed the last scene further. According to the footnotes in my version, apparently Gaskell complained about how Dickens (her editor) shortened the serial publication dates and rushed her to a conclusion. Nevertheless, she says in the end, “I am not sure if, when the barrier gives way between 2 such characters as Mr Thornton and Margaret it would not all go smash in a moment, — and I don’t feel quite certain that I dislike the end as it now stands.” (note 2, on page 449, Penguin Classics edition). That made me more satisfied (a little).

Are you joining either upcoming Circuit tour?

Have you read A Tale of Two Cities? Did you enjoy it?

Do you ever get “burn out” from reading a particular type of book?

• Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Reading Journal (21 Oct): Victorian Second Helpings + Giveaway of an Abandoned Book
• The Life of Wilkie Collins (Biographies by Clarke and Peters)
• Reading Journal (4 Nov): Reading Progress and Library Loot
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• November in Review + Reading Journal (2 Dec)
• Reading Journal (28 October): Thoughts on Read-a-thons and Eye Strain
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Reading Journal (18 Nov): Planning for a Quiet December

I studied Spanish for a few years while in college and I spent ten weeks in Bolivia one summer, so at one point I knew the language fairly well. I bought La casa en Mango Street back in the days when I dreamed in Spanish; reading it was delightfully easy because I knew the vocabulary. But, needless to say, when you don’t use a language skill for five years, you start to forget things. I recently met a woman at church who speaks Spanish and little English, and I found myself laughing and delighting in our broken conversation as I struggled to find Spanish phrases and she struggled to find English ones. It inspired me to rethink my relationship with this foreign language I once knew.

I was delighted to see that Neruda’s slim volume of poems had the Spanish alongside the translation. And while I no longer was able to read La casa en Mango Street with ease in Spanish, I was able to pick up a volume of the English and compare the two. I read Mango Street in Spanish, then in English, and then bits of it again in Spanish.

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda

There is no doubt in my mind that the second volume of poetry that Pablo Neruda wrote is an example of his Nobel Prize in Literature greatness. Oh my, but his Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair are absolutely incredible to me, especially after I learned that he was twenty-years-old when he wrote them.

The beautiful introduction says, “These are not abstract poems aimed at idealizing beauty or love, but the messy, scented perceptions of lived loves – and lusts.” (Cristina Gracía, introduction, page vii)

That description – messy, scented perceptions – is why I enjoyed this volume. Although it the emotions and perceptions were “messy,” as whole it was perfectly controlled and beautiful.

What struck me is that this volume of poetry is telling a story. The love poems have elements of sadness (the woman is always sad) and the last poem of love is essentially a “good-bye”:

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Immediately following that is the “Song of Despair.”

I think my favorite poem was poem 1, “Cuerpo de mujer/ Body of a Woman.” It just has awesome imagery.

I’ve mentioned before that I am not trained in poetry. I don’t know how to read it or interpret it. All of these thoughts are my own impressions on this reading of the poems, not true analysis.

I picked this volume of Neruda’s poetry up because I saw his name on a Hispanic Heritage Month list somewhere and it piqued my interest. I am so glad I picked it up. It also counts for my Nobel Prize in Literature personal challenge. I will certainly be revisiting Neruda some day.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

While Cisneros did not originally write Mango Street in Spanish, she writes about a young Hispanic American girl growing up in an Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. Esperanza is an awkward girl, and she is determined to someday leave her past behind and live the life she dreams of. It is a coming-of-age story and it reveals some harsh realities of the world she lives in, including the horrendous abuse her friends live with and the homesickness some have for the country they left behind.

I felt I could not relate to most of it, but I did appreciate seeing Esperanza’s growth. Her personal stories were those that I remember. In the end, she realizes that even as she moves beyond her childhood neighborhood, she must come back and remember those she’s left behind.

“They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.” (page 110)

I read La casa en Mango Street for Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15). (Obviously, I read it after the month ended, but oh well!)

Reading in Translation

Reading poetry in the original Spanish and in the English translation was eye-opening, as was reading prose in a Spanish translation and then visiting it in English.

How does a translator capture the feeling of poetry? The translator for Neruda’s poetry (W.S. Merwin) did a great job, and I felt Neruda was beautiful in both Spanish and English. While I am of course not a Spanish expert, in some cases, though, the English translation did seem to change the nuances of the beautiful Spanish.

Consider poem 12. In Spanish, it is called “Para mí corazón” (For my heart), which is taken from the first line, which is “Para mí corazón basta tu pecho.” In English, it is called “Your Breast Is Enough” after the first line, which is “Your breast is enough for my heart.” While those two lines say the same things, putting “breast” before “heart” in the title and reversing the order of the sentence seems to lose something. The order and emphasis is changed and I don’t think it’s quite as gorgeous.

On the other hand, there are some beautiful translations that capture the language, albeit in a different way. In poem 13 (“I Have Gone Marking”), the last stanza begins with three verbs: “Cantar, arder, huir” The beauty of those words are the differences: the –ar, the –er, the –ir verbs are all represented and each word sounds so different. I just loved it. The words in translation (“Sing, burn, flee”) likewise seem to capture the same feelings for me. It’s a word-by-word translation and it works just as beautifully in English as in Spanish.

Reading Cisernos’s prose in Spanish translation and then in the original English is harder for me to comment on. Because I wasn’t reading English as I went along (as I had with the Neruda), I was much more lost as I read the Spanish. Entire sections didn’t make sense because I was interpreting some words wrong. I’m not a dictionary user – I liked to learn from context and I don’t have patience to look up words constantly. But that was a mistake in my approach to this book. I would have gotten more out of my reading experience had I stopped and looked up some words.

After I read the book in English, I went back and compared the two versions. There were some disappointing translations that I believe changed the meanings.

For example, in one chapter, the girls are jumping rope to little rhymes. The rhymes were not translated: instead, completely different rhymes were inserted. The English rhymes had to do with Chicago: it gave the entire story a sense of place. Obviously, to literally translate the rhymes into Spanish wouldn’t make it the “familiar” rhyme it is in context in the Spanish book; there is logic to it. I was just surprised to see such a difference. It changed the overall feel of the book to not have the Chicago references.

There were also a few conversations in mixed English and Spanish that just don’t make sense much sense all in Spanish.

I guess my bottom line is, it seems best to read a work in its original language! Something is probably lost in translation, even if it is a great translation.

My Experience

Although I’m glad I read both these works, I didn’t much enjoy my experience reading (or attempting to read) Cisneros in Spanish, simply because it was full of so much once-again new-to-me vocabulary. It also didn’t sound as beautiful and far-reaching. But is it truly fair to compare Neruda’s Nobel-worthy poetry to Cisneros’s prose-in-translation when I’m not looking in a dictionary?  No, I don’t think so. Neruda’s poetry was inspiring; it was sweeping; it was awesome. Cisneros’ prose was challenging, and it was prose, not poetry.

In the end, reading Neruda and Cisneros reminded me of how far I’ve fallen in being able to read Spanish. After reading Neruda, I have to agree with Cristina  García, who wrote in the introduction to Neruda’s poetry:

With their gorgeous sweep and intimacy, their sensuality and rhapsody, and their “secret revelations of nature,” Neruda’s poems also made me want to reclaim Spanish … after a long, long silence. (introduction, xvii)

Thank you, Neruda. You’ve encouraged me, too, to revitalize my Spanish.

Does anyone have any suggestions for reclaiming a struggling second-language ability?

Can you suggest a not-too-hard book in Spanish that I may have a good experience with?

I rarely get a chance to practice my Spanish in daily life (I remain at home with a two-year-old who doesn’t even speak English yet!), and I don’t have a television connection (nor would I like sitting and watching it). Maybe reading a children’s book would be easier. I also suspect I should find my old Spanish dictionary!

• October in Review
• The Norton Introduction to Poetry + My Introduction to Poetry
• Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins
• Reading Journal (7 Oct): Books for Every Season
• Reading The Iliad by Homer, trans. by Robert Fagles
• A Selection of Poetry by John Donne
• Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
• Poetry Friday: Christmas Poems
• Iliad in Translation

Now that I’ve experienced the story of the original Count (Count Dracula), I have to wonder why Sesame Street wants to align themselves with such a morbid creature. I’d never read a vampire story before (of any kind), and I have to say, I really don’t think they are for me. There’s something about the dripping blood. While at first I was excited for an adventure story, by the end I was a bit disgusted by the bloody concepts. (I didn’t include a cover picture here because they all look disgusting.)

I was glad when Dracula by Bram Stoker had finally ended.

Part of my problem was an amateur narration via Librivox.org. It was just bad. I believe that a compelling story with well written characters and setting, or at least good writing, can stand out, even when it is narrated on audio by amateurs. In places, I felt Bram Stoker succeeded in writing with each of those. I just didn’t feel he did them all at the same time ever.

Is it unfair to judge this book by the narration? Yes. Maybe someday I’ll read the book too. But I’m observing my experience with Bram Stoker’s words as narrated by amateurs, and there was little in this experience that compelled me. I think it was more than the poor narration; I just don’t think vampire stories are for me. I found Dracula to be overly dramatic and morbid for my tastes.

I was very excited in the beginning. When Count Dracula welcomed Jonathon Harker to his home, I thought, “This is going to be good!” It remained “good” in my mind until the narration changed (until the end of chapter 5 of 27 chapters).

As was The Woman in White (which I read recently), Dracula is told in an epistolary manner. Some chapters have memorandums, some have journal entries, some have letters. But unlike Collins’ tale, Dracula’s various narrators all sounded the same. None of them had a distinct narration style (except Dr. Van Helsing, who wrote with uneven broken English), so when it switched from a woman to a man it all just sounded like Bram Stoker to me!

There were lots of comparisons in my mind to The Woman in White. In some senses, the black, bat-like Dracula himself (the image of the devil) was a foil to the white-clad innocent lady in Collins’ tale. Yet, Dracula, as a vampire tale, was so ridiculous to me that even now I struggle to put in to words the ultimate point of it. Dr. Van Helsing had a penchant for long speeches about right and wrong: I suspect I was supposed to come away from Dracula with a sense of pride in the fact that these people were able to do right.

Throughout the novel, there was a degree of confusion between what was chosen and what was forced. “The devil made me do it” often seemed a liable excuse! And yet, the ridiculous tale, the bloody “adventure” scenes, and the gothic settings made it seem overly dramatic.

It wasn’t even suspenseful to me, since I knew Dracula was a vampire. From the beginning, I knew what had to happen in the end. It felt tedious to me because it took forever to get there.

Someone is going to tell me that my poor audio narration “ruined” a wonderful book. I agree that my amateur narration made this worse: Dracula, for me, would have been better skimmed quickly. (I read the last chapter on Project Gutenberg because I was so eager to be done, and it was much less painful that way.) But I’m sure that those who love this story also like Edgar Allan Poe, horror stories in general, and dripping, bloody vampire tales. I don’t even like Halloween, so I’m sorry to say that this book probably would not have been a favorite for me, even if I skimmed it quickly.

These, however, are simply my impressions after listening to Dracula once. For a more professional assessment of why Dracula is worth reading, note Michael Dirda’s analysis in Classics for Pleasure (which I read after I wrote the majority of this post):

Dracula is … among the scariest books ever written. … The first third of the book could hardly be better in its carefully designed journey into fear, one that starts quietly and gradually ratchets up the tension. … Stoker modeled his novel after Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, unfolding its tense narrative through letters and journals. This allows him to build suspense to a braking point, then suddenly change key, forcing the reader to squirm with apprehension. …

Today more than ever, Dracula seems a text built, if only half consciously, on sexual anxieties. …[O]ur fear of the vampire lies in his seductiveness. He threatens our values, our public socialized selves; he tempts us from the path of salvation.” (excerpts from pages 196-198, Classics for Pleasure)

So you, like Michael Dirda, may like Dracula more than I did. For me, there was nothing likeable about the devilish vampire, and the people fighting to save the world from his undead influence were flat, boring, and overly dramatic.

I suspect that I’ll stay away from vampire tales for the foreseeable future, but maybe Dracula is for you.

Now, I return to my question: why on earth does Sesame Street include a Dracula figure in their line up?!

If you are interested in reading Dracula and/or Frankenstein in October, FizzyThoughts and Age 30+ A Lifetime of Books are hosting a Dueling Monsters read-along. Go check it out!

If you have reviewed Dracula on your site, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here. Since I didn’t enjoy it, I’ve included as many reviews as I could find so you can find someone who did enjoy it!

Other Reviews:

• Age 30+ … A Lifetime of Books
• Plays With Needles
• The Bookworm
• The Sleepy Reader
• Devourer of Books
• Musings of a Bookish Kitty
• Reading Matters
• Bending Bookshelf
• Becky’s Book Reviews
• 1morechapter.com
• Book Nut
• Bobbi’s Book Nook
• World According to Books
• Fyrefly’s Book Blog
• Adventures in Reading
• Subliminal Intervention

• Spooktacular Hachette Book Giveaway (USA) and Dracula Giveaway (non-USA)
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• October in Review
• My RIP List for a Lifetime
• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
• Reading Journal (23 Sept): The Classics Circuit
• Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji

I didn’t love Holden on this third reading (age 28). In fact, as I read the first sentence, I groaned. Would I have to put up with this kid’s whining for another 214 pages? But in the end, I couldn’t hate Holden Caulfield, even after 215 pages of whining and complaining. His compassion redeemed him for me, and I’m so grateful I reread his story so I could experience it again from this perspective.

As I read Catcher this time, I was mostly mad at his parents. I kept seeing it from the adult-child relationship perspective. Why on earth are his parents sending him away to a boarding school when he needs some actual attention? He recently lost his brother, who was his best friend, and yet he’s expected to go to classes and successfully pretend that he’s okay with everything. There is no doubt in my mind that his depression is normal. It seems that many of his frustrations could have been eliminated if there were some dialog among the family members. He loved his little sister. He loved his dead brother. Certainly, if his father and mother nurtured that love, rather than packing him off to school, it would have helped him a bit. (I’m not saying parents that send their kids to boarding school don’t love, but in this book, the only emotion we get about Holden’s father is that he’s going to “kill” Holden for getting kicked out of school. Is that really helpful?)

But I admit, as much as I disliked Holden’s complaining and his frustrations, the end made me cry. (highlight for spoiler) To think that all he wanted to do with his life was be one that saved children from falling off a cliff; and that he wanted to rub out all the bad words on the walls, one at a time; and that he wanted to make sure his little sister got her $8 back again: that was touching to me. Holden showed that he really did care about people, despite his best intentions, and he wished he could relate to them. That was the tragedy to him. (end spoiler)

As some people pointed out in a comment the other day, the narration is amazingly believable. I think it is well written. But that believable narrator was probably why it irritated me on this reread. He just was too ornery for me.

Have you ever reread a favorite book only to find you now dislike it?

Have you ever reread a book you disliked only to discover you love it now? (I never thought to ask this before, as I don’t think it’s ever happened to me, but Mary’s comment the other day prompted it.)

I don’t think I’ll ever reread The Catcher in the Rye. I’m seriously sick of Holden Caulfield. But I’ll keep my copy of it. Someday I may hand it to my (older) teenage son to see what he thinks.

Holden in School

In June, J.C. Montgomery of the Biblio Blogazine shared analysis of the current argument that The Catcher in the Rye doesn’t belong in the classroom anymore because kids can’t relate to it. I read her post back in June and it prompted me to reread the book. I love her analysis of the arguments and the comments on that post are intriguing too. If you’ve read Catcher (and especially if you read it for school), go read her post.

Having now reread The Catcher in the Rye, I’d have to agree on a few points. Holden Caulfield’s story is dated. I’m not a teacher of an English class, but I look at Holden’s adventures, and I doubt many kids today can relate to the boarding school framework, the smoking, the drinking, the prostitute, and spending the night at Grand Central Station. Maybe I’m too naïve but I don’t think Holden’s night on the town is something 16-year-old boys are going to get away quite so easily today. I don’t think New York City is recognizable as New York City.

Now, as one of the comments on The Biblio Blogazine points out, it’s not always bad to read books that occur in unfamiliar eras or settings. I agree: we learn something about 1940s New York City.

But I wonder along with those who wrote the articles challenge Catcher in school: does Holden’s night on the town teach teenagers anything about dealing with troubles that might actually help them today in dealing with their own frustrations? I don’t think so. I don’t know what books might do so, but I certainly hope there is something else out there.

Do you think Catcher should be replaced in high school curricula? Can teens relate to it still? What books might better help teens deal with their insecurities? (I don’t read much young adult literature and I can’t think of an adult novel dealing with teen frustrations as this novel does.)

As I said, I enjoyed Catcher when I read it as a teen. I related to his ultimate goodness, not to his cursing and smoking and night on the town. In one of my high school assignments about the book (yes, I still have them all), I wrote:

Though he never admits it, [Holden] does not really want to leave his world to join the adult world. He wants to keep his world as it is for the children, innocent.

Ultimately, I don’t think Holden Caulfield corrupted me (take that, book banners!), and I don’t think the different era bothered me either. I liked Holden Caulfield when I was 16 because he wanted to stay a kid.

Apparently, I wanted to as well.

If you have reviewed The Catcher in the Rye on your blog, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

Other Reviews:

• Booklit
• rob around books
• Mrs. Magoo Reads
• It’s All about Books
• Passion for the Page
• Not Enough Books
• Books of Mee

• Reading Journal (30 Sept): The Gift of Choice (Thoughts on Banned Books Week)
• The Odyssey by Homer: The Story
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Comfort Reading
• Kids Corner: Three Novels by E.B. White
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The Book That Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson + Giveaway
• A Few Fairy Tale Reviews

I wasn’t sure I liked Elizabeth’s Gaskell’s Cranford for most of my reading, and to be honest, the snippets of life in the town of Cranford irritated me at first. But in the end, it all comes full circle for me and I almost want to reread the portions that irritated me in the beginning. Some day, I think I’ll revisit this book. I definitely want to read more of Gaskell’s writing.

I think what I disliked most about Cranford-the-town was the superficiality of all the people. It is a town of predominately middle-aged, middle-class women, most of whom are spinsters or widows. From the beginning, though, we learn that there are certain social manners that are “required” to be followed. People with the wrong manners or even the wrong name are shunned. Middle-class people who admit to being “poor” or “unable to afford” something are social piranhas.

I have never been one to succeed in understanding popular fashions and unspoken social codes, and so such a city would seriously be hell on earth for me. I personally try hard not to care what other people think. Subsequently, I disliked most of the women for much of the book because they were so concerned about pleasing each other, and especially with pleasing the widowed Mrs Jamieson.  Even Miss Matty and the narrator were guilty of such pandering to convention and it was rather disgusting to me.

Certainly, that is part of the point of Gaskell’s novel. The narrator herself often expresses frustration at the ridiculous traditions, and her comments shed light on the humor of the situations, because they certainly were humorous. When “sensational” gossip revolves around how long someone stayed to visit (i.e., longer than 15 minutes), you know some priorities are out of order. My copy had occasional endnotes that explained some of the jokes that only those familiar with the Victorian period would have picked up on. For me, most of the book was a rather roll-my-eyes funny because I just really disliked the entire framework. It felt high school-ish and depressing: 50-year-old women were still playing the “popularity” and “gossip” game with their life.

Despite my dislike of the “game” they were playing, I still loved some of the characters. Miss Matty particularly stood out to me, and as she wept in her loneliness, I found myself weeping (I cry when I read books all the time). (Highlight for spoiler) When her friends came to her aid, I wept again. (end spoiler) And I loved Lady Glenmire. I say she was the only true Amazon woman in this novel, for she truly didn’t care what anyone else thought.

The narrator has an interesting presence in the book. For much of the novel, she is nameless, and yet she is obviously present at the various social functions. Only toward the end does her roll and presence become important, and while it was a little jarring to see her as a significant character in the novel (I liked it when she was in the background), it was refreshing to see her sincere friendship to Miss Matty.

Suffice it to say, though, that despite my frustration with the city of Cranford, I felt Cranford was well resolved. (Highlight for spoilers) I loved how Peter helped return the city to order, helping the women, particularly the ridiculous Mrs Jamieson, see that Lady Glenmire could still be a friend, even when her name was Mrs Hoggins. I thought that was a reminder that while it may be fun to sit around gossiping with other women, sometimes we need a reminder to have common sense. I subconsciously wish that it was Mary Smith, our narrator, who was able to knock some sense in to them. Yet, having a man come to the village seemed to indicate that, while a city of Amazons may be a nice idea, men help keep balance and rather make life pleasant. It’s easy to get wrapped up in gossip. (end spoiler)

I finished Cranford about an hour ago, and I rarely write reviews so soon after finishing a book. But Heather’s read-along was what motivated me to read this book in the first place, and so this end-of-the-month deadline has encouraged me to finish it and post about it tonight. I’m glad for that motivation because it is kind of refreshing to write my thoughts when they are still so fresh in my mind. I should do this more often.

(P.S. I just put the Masterpiece DVD on hold at my library too! I’m looking forward to watching it.)

• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
• Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• March by Geraldine Brooks
• The Odyssey by Homer: The Story

Oliver’s story is familiar to me: I watched the musical many times as a young girl (my mother fast forwarding past That Scene). I loved the music and found the characters delightful. I always loved Artful Dodger!

And yet, when I read the book, I was surprised.

I expected this book to elegantly written, engrossing, complicated, and suspenseful, and I won’t say that it wasn’t those things at various points. I really enjoyed reading it, and I really loved some of the characters. However, to me, most of Oliver Twist was convenient and pretty ordinary. I felt Dickens had a little bit of genius, and yet something was missing from the novel as a whole. As I reviewed his list of novels this morning, I realized that Oliver Twist was one of his first. I wonder, then, if Dickens was still working toward a masterpiece.

The bonus of Oliver Twist being “convenient” is that I don’t think anyone should be intimidated by it. Although it is Dickens’ wordy writing (and that takes a little getting used to), Oliver Twist is easy to follow, the characters are delightfully described, and the plot is not overly complicated. Plot-wise, it felt like a modern novel. It was a best-seller of its day, and I’m not surprised.

There is something comforting about a familiar “rags to riches” story. Oliver kept being brought to the upper class society and then loosing it again, for one reason or another, and as a reader I could not help but hope for him. I loved the parts of the story that had been eliminated in the movies I’d seen and I wish, now that I know the entire story, they hadn’t been eliminated because I liked those characters and the setting. I saw the end coming from a mile away, but it was okay. Dickens’ plot was convenient (as characters just “happened” to be in the right place at the right time, etc.), but that made it accessible and hopeful. I’ve seen Oliver compared to Cinderella, and I would have to agree there are similarities between the stories.

One thing that stood out to me was the concept of nature versus nurture. Oliver, an orphaned boy, still had instincts to do right, and he was consistently appalled by the vices surrounding him. Nancy also had similar instincts: although she’d been raised in “poverty’s vices,” she wanted to do “good.” (What “good” is, of course, can be debated.)

I loved Nancy’s character. She was much more complicated than the movies make her out to be, for she truly loved Bill Sikes. I’m not sure why – that is never clear to me, even in the book – but she does. She won’t save herself unless she saves him too. I thought it was beautiful.

The characters of Fagin, Artful Dodger, Mr. Fang, and Mr. Bumble (to name a few) were perfect caricatures, and I loved “meeting” them through Dickens’ descriptions. (From those names alone, guess which one is a bad guy. Now guess which one is the comic relief.). Even Fagin and Dodger, though, had some complicated depth to them. Dickens obviously hopes the reader learns a lesson in compassion by reading about the struggles of the lowest class. I found I had sympathy for the Artful Dodger and even Fagin, who do ultimately meet their “deserved punishments.” I couldn’t help but wish some different ending were possible for them. I wish they had more a chance to live. As it was, they seemed rather stuck.

Although Oliver is surrounded by horrible situations, I still felt Dickens had a tone of hope underscoring it all. At points, I wondered if that was because I knew what would happen in the end. But I know Dickens intended Oliver Twist to be somewhat humorous. For example, by illustrating the dichotomy of the wealthy, fat parish leaders feasting while orphaned work house children starve on gruel, Dickens could make fun of the wealthy, all the while underscoring the need for something to be done differently. There’s also humor among Fagin’s boys, especially the Artful Dodger. (I loved the account of his appearance before the beaks!)

There are so many other things that stood out to me about Oliver Twist, but as this book is the subject of the book club I’m leading in two and a half weeks, I think I’ll stop this post here. I look forward to revisiting this novel again in the coming weeks as I prepare for the book club. I think it’s one that provides plenty of discussion, but also could be read for simple pleasure if you desire. There’s adventure, action, and suspense, but also humor and tender characters.

I haven’t read much Charles Dickens, and I’m glad this was one of my first experiences with Dickens. Last year, I read all of his Christmas novellas, which I enjoyed for the most part, and I may have read A Tale of Two Cities as a teenager, although I remember none of it (a reread is on the schedule).

What Dickens novels have you read?

If you have reviewed Oliver Twist on your site, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

Other Reviews:

• Book Psmith
• In Laurie’s Mind
• Jenny’s Books
• The Book Blog

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Four Christmas Novellas by Charles Dickens
• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (In Chancery and To Let)
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins