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

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

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

Medea

Part of what I loved was the character of Medea. She was a wronged woman, but ultimately a strong one. Medea had left her home to come to a foreign land, and now she was being cast aside.  Her husband Jason had not only cheated on her but had cast her away and married another, younger woman.

Medea’s reaction to the situation and her subsequent actions are extreme. Like Lady Macbeth, she casts aside her instincts of kindness and, particularly, her motherly love. She murders her own children. But unlike when I read about Lady Macbeth, I felt Medea was in the right. She is acting out of revenge, while Lady Macbeth had acted out of selfish desire for power. I was cheering for Medea as I read her story.

It was gruesome, and I don’t want to suggest that every wronged woman should go and kill her children or husband in order to give revenge. In fact, I would suggest that revenge is not the best solution to problems in the modern world! That said, the concept of a strong woman standing up for herself really made me happy, and since this was a Greek play, the gruesome aspects of the revenge made it seem appropriately Greek.

As for the underlying Greek-ish-ness of this play, I should say first and foremost that I am not very familiar with Greek literature. I have not read very much. But this play seemed different in that I was not constantly made aware of the presence of the gods as I was with Homer and with the other Euripides play I read last year. The last lines of the play (sung by the Chorus) are especially interesting:

Zeus in Olympus is the overseer
Of many doings. Many things the gods
Achieve beyond our judgment. What we thought
Is not confirmed and what we thought not god
Contrives. And so it happens in this story.

I don’t really understand it. When I went back and read the two-page introduction to my volume, I read the translator’s comments on the role of gods in the story and I still didn’t understand much of it. But one line does stand out:

The play creates a world in which there is no relation whatsoever between the powers that rule the universal and the fundamental laws of human morality. (page 641)

My lack of noticing the gods, then, ultimately makes sense to me. Euripides showed how the gods and man really are separate. That subject made it feel more modern than ancient Greek.

I also want to add that while Medea is a play, I had no trouble following the story and action as I read it. It would be interesting to see it performed, of course, but reading it still conveys the force of character: the characters are strong enough to exist through their words.

I finished reading Medea a few weeks ago, and I feel that I’ve forgotten many of the other impressions I had at that time. I should write my reviews shortly after finishing a work!!

Because I love the concept of a strong woman standing up for herself, I’m counting this play as one of the selections for the Women Unbound Challenge. I also read this play for the Really Old Classics Challenge.

Have you read other Greek plays you can suggest?

How soon after finishing reading do you write your reviews? If you wait to write your review, how do you remember what you wanted to talk about?

• Hippolytus by Euripides
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• The Iliad by Homer: The Story
• The Odyssey by Homer: The Story
• The Iliad by Homer, trans. Robert Fagles: Love and Hate But Mostly Love
• Reading The Iliad by Homer, trans. by Robert Fagles
• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
• Really Old Classics Mini-Challenge Round-Up
• The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder
• The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkein

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)

I’ve wanted to revisit the opera since then. I can’t exactly go to the opera these days (that’s what a baby and buying a house has done to my entertainment budget!) but I have had a wonderful time in the past few weeks visiting the opera in a number of forms.

The Magic Flute has a fun story, but when I try to write it out it sounds lengthy and/or rather complicated. It’s not. Wikipedia has a great extended summary and analysis, as well as a few sample arias (including my favorites!).

A (Pathetic) Summary

Although I know this summary sounds wrong and possibly uninteresting, here is an attempt.

The Magic Flute is a fairy tale story of a man (Tamino) sent on a quest by a sinister queen (the Queen of the Night) to rescue the Queen’s daughter (Pamina), who conveniently is the woman of Tamino’s dreams. The extremely amusing bird-catcher (Papageno) accompanies him. The queen gives Tamino a magic flute and Papageno magic bells to help them on their journey. As they rescue Pamina, a mysterious priest (Sarastro) gives the two of them (and later Pamina as well) various tests to show their worthiness for marriage. All ends happily ever after (except, maybe for Pamina’s mother, the Queen of the Night, who turns out to be rather insane).

There is so much more in this opera, and I don’t know how it sounds trying to summarize it like that. The story can be approached on the surface, or one can look at all sorts of symbolism. This time around, I preferred to enjoy the superficial aspects of the story and the music. I let myself get swept up in Mozart’s melodies: they just fit and the more I knew about the story, the more I enjoyed the music.

Although the story is also fun, I mostly enjoy The Magic Flute for its music.

The Picture Book

When I first started blogging, I found a review of a children’s book about the opera. (I cannot find who it was! If it was you, tell me and I’ll link to it.). It’s taken me this long to find the book and read it. And I love it! The Magic Flute, adapted and illustrated by Kyra Teis, has gorgeous paintings and tells the story well. It’s just perfect for a child in introducing a fun and magical story.

For a number of reasons, various plot elements (side stories) are omitted from the picture book. The racism, the wicked Monostatos’s temptations (he almost rapes Pamina), and the ritualistic moments are omitted from the story, so the entire story becomes much simpler. I think it helped me to read this before I went back to approach the opera.

Obviously, reading an opera in a picture book eliminates something important: the music. I love the music, so reading the book is not the same. That said, at the end of the picture book is a page of tips from the illustrator for how to approach the actual opera, and what to look for. I appreciated the reminder that the story is just a small part of this experience, and I think reading the story of an opera is a great way to get children interested in the form. I only wish I owned this book so I could read it more often!

The Commentary

After I’d read through the picture book, I stumbled upon the Chicago Lyric Opera’s commentary CDs (While I can’t find the past seasons for sale anywhere online, the 2009-10 season will be streaming free of charge on the Lyric Opera website throughout the season!). The commentary for The Magic Flute was wonderful! The person commenting on the play was sarcastic and fun as he went through both the plot and the significant musical elements one should note throughout to the opera.

The commenter was funny. He had no qualms mocking Tamino for his weakness (since he faints a few times in the beginning) and his stoic not-very-fun approach to the challenges (Tamino is very obedient to everything he is told). In fact, at one point, the narrator mentions that Tamino would not be any fun at a party he’s so boring. The narrator also humorously diagnoses Pamina’s mother, The Queen of the Night, as psychotic. (You can tell when you listen to her extreme singing that she’s a bit unstable.)

Beyond the amusing look at an amusing opera, he also explains the significance of the melodies, some facts about Mozart’s inspiration, and so forth. For example, it interesting to me that although the opera seems to discriminate against woman (after all, the message seems to be “this woman is your reward”) Mozart has included things that seem to be progressive: Pamina joins Tamino for the final tests and occasionally there are some references to not just “man and wife” but also “wife and man,” which puts the two on “equal footing.” No, it’s not exactly liberation by today’s standards, but it was interesting to learn the 1790’s perspective.

I also learned that because there is spoken dialog as well as singing, The Magic Flute is not technically an opera but a singspiel. (I still am referring to it as an opera.)

In between the commentary are excerpts from the songs so we can get a feel for the opera. I look forward to visiting other operas in such a manner! It was wonderful.

A Movie

I watched the movie of the opera as well, but it was a disappointing amateur production. I can’t say that watching bad acting and listening to poor renditions of the songs helped me, but I suppose seeing it acted out and reading the entire libretto in the subtitles helped me get a better feel for the opera. It is so funny!

At one point shortly after I was married, I recall my husband mentioned that my very inexpensive recording of a classical artist was poorly done.

“Oh, come on. There’s no difference! The artists just play the notes!” I replied.

Um, I was wrong. After listening to a few different recordings of the Queen of the Night’s solos, for example, I can promise you: an amateur recording is simply bad. A professional recording is incredible. To realize that I can hear a difference is incredibly exciting: my ear is being trained!

I had, of course, seen the play in Chicago with my husband-to-be a few years ago, as I mentioned, but it had been a long time. I appreciated seeing it again – even if it was amateur.

The Music

After watching the movie, I listened to the opera music on CD as I drove to my mother’s house. The drive takes about an hour each way, so the round trip got me through the entire opera. It was beautiful to just be wrapped up in the music. I love it! The version I listened to was beautiful.

Queen of the Night's set for 1815 production, via Wikipedia

My favorite songs are those of the Queen of the Night, but Papageno’s songs also top my list. The Queen of the Night has a particularly high and delightfully tension-filled song when she’s commanding her daughter to kill Sarastro. I think it is simply beautiful, especially when considered in context.

I also particularly love the duet when Papageno first meets Pamina. After he tells Pamina that Tamino loves her and is coming to rescue her, the two sing about how delightful it must be to fall in love and be married: “Man and Wife! Wife and Man!” They sing such a beautiful melody. It’s simply a gorgeous song.

And then there is Papageno’s song with his true love match, Papagena. This is just plain fun: they stutter over each other’s names and then sing about the children they will have together: a boy named Papageno, a girl named Papagena, and then another Papageno, etc. (The commenter I mentioned above says, “It sounds like they are going to populate the earth with their children!”)

I had intended to read the libretto too, but I think I’m Magic Flute-d out for now. Maybe next year or the next I’ll revisit it again. Or at least listen to the music again: it is so beautiful! While the story is entertaining and deep, it’s the music I truly love.

Which opera(s) do you love? I’m particularly interested in an opera with great music and an interesting story, but I may be interested in any of your favorites if it has either the great music or the great story. (Currently in my car: Carmen by Georges Bizet.)

Funny story: When I told my co-workers that my boyfriend was taking me to opera, I was giddy. But one co-worker said, “I’d rather go to a monster truck rally.” I thought that was funny because our preferences were obviously rather different. I have no desire to EVER go to a monster truck rally, but I sure would love the opera every now and then!

Which would you rather attend: an opera or a monster truck rally?

• Carmen by Prosper Merimee
• Two Neuroscience Books (Proust was a Neuroscientist by Lehrer and Sacks’ Musicophilia)
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Lullabies
• Children’s Christmas: Picture Books of the Season
• The Planets by Dava Sobel + A Giveaway
• Christmas Countdown: Music Collections I Love
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• Beauty and the Beast + The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle

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

I think there’s something about reading historical fiction that occurs in nineteenth century China that is always painful for me. I dislike the way women and girls are discounted, I don’t understand the traditions (seriously, crippling girls’ feet makes them more attractive?!), and I am often frustrated by my ignorance of place, food, status, and culture. That last point is the main reason I feel I should continue to read about Chinese history: there is so much I do not know.

Although I enjoyed learning about the culture and traditions, the novel did very little for me emotionally. I disliked Lily from her childhood, and I found few other characters to draw me in to the novel. There was one character I found complicated and interesting (Snow Flower) and by the end, although I felt frustrated with the story and with Lily, I felt there were pertinent issues relating to friendship and trust to consider and ponder.

Yet, I unfortunately found the writing stilted and boring, although many people have praised it as beautiful. Maybe that boredom came from the fact that I read the incredible Beloved by Toni Morrison immediately before this novel? I suspect I would have abandoned this novel from boredom if not for my in real life book club, which was meeting at my house.

Nevertheless, despite my lukewarm reaction to Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, I am glad that I read it. Viewing a fictionalized snapshot of nineteenth century China made me incredibly grateful for living where I do now. There are good issues raised about friendship and trust; betrayal; and, ultimately, a woman’s relationship to her husband, friends, and children. I’m sure many people will (and do) enjoy this book more than I did, so please don’t take my word for it.

Because I was hosting the book club in my home, I decided to find something edible from the book to feed to my guests, so I read the book looking for food. That made reading the book fun, too, and it saved me from utter boredom. I ended up making congee and deep-fried sugared taro root.

During a deadly typhoid epidemic, Lily feed her children only congee, a rice pudding. While those who ate the diseased animals died, Lily’s family survived. The congee I made had vegetables and chicken stock and it was quite good. I suspect Lily’s would have been a bit more boring, to say the least. Probably just rice and water. Boiled. For a long time.

Every summer when Lily and Snow Flower met in the village, they ate a special deep-fried sugared taro root desert. I’d never eaten taro root before, but it’s a potato-like tuber. I sliced the taro like thick French fries, fried them in oil, and then coated them in sugar. It was surprisingly tasty! Find links to the recipes on Rebecca’s Cooking Journal.

I guess that goes to show that for me, this “in real life” book club makes a book much more fun than just reading it myself, and not just because we had a fun discussion!

Since I didn’t love this book (note that I didn’t hate it either, it just didn’t do much for me), I found as many other reviews as I could find so you can get a second opinion. If I missed your review, let me know.

Other reviews: 1 more chapter; A Novel Menagerie; A Striped Armchair; American Bibliophile; Bending Bookshelf; Bloody Hell, It’s a Book Barrage!; Book Club Girl; Book Nut; Bookin’ It; Books for Breakfast; Books Lists Life; Dear Author; Devourer of Books ; Dolce Bellezza; Fyrefly Books’ Blog; Literate Housewife; Lotus Reads; Reading Adventure; Reading Matters; Sassymonkey Reads; Small World Reads; So Many Books, So Little Time;  Some Reads; Stone Soup; The Bookworm – Naida; tiny reading room; Tif Talks Books

• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• The Norton Introduction to Poetry + My Introduction to Poetry
• Caldecott Corner: Wintery Miscellany

When I was about 75 pages into my slim, 98-page volume of John Donne’s poetry, I was bored. But then I read the last section of the book: the Divine Poems. After reading that section, I’m pretty sure I’ll be revisiting Donne’s poetry again.

I didn’t hate the beginning portion of the book; I just wasn’t all that interested. Occasionally, a poem interested me, but most of the time I just was not loving Donne’s poems, which often seemed to be well-written yet confusing love poems. I liked the writing style (I like to read it the beautifully written lines out loud) but the poems were complicated and non-interesting to me.

I decided I’d make it to the end. After all, my volume was very short (albeit with very small print). Then I wouldn’t feel bad to admit that “I just couldn’t get in to it.” But then came to the last section of the book.

I truly loved John Donne’s Holy Sonnets. There was something so personal and real about his discussions with God. I could relate on a personal spiritual level.  And since I had just reread the play Wit, in which the main character discussed these poems as she prepared to die, it was emotional to read the poems.

I consider myself religious, so I related to Donne’s pleas to God for assistance and forgiveness. For example, in Sonnet 4, he calls out to his “black soul”:

Oh make thyself with holy mourning black,
And red with blushing, as thou art with sin;
Or wash thee in Christ’s blood, which hath this might
That being red, it dyes red souls to white.

There were so many other lines I loved:

…here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou hadst seal’d my pardon, with thy blood. (Sonnet 7)

a space

One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die. (Sonnet 10)

a space

Batter my heart, three-person’d God …
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. (Sonnet 14)

a space

’Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more. (Sonnet 15)

I found myself rereading these sonnets over and over again to make sure I understood, to fully internalize what Donne was saying about his own life and his personal desires for salvation.

In the end, I think John Donne is a poet to be reread and reread. Maybe then I will understand him a little bit more. I’m pretty new to poetry, and I don’t know how to “understand” it. But I do intend to revisit some of Donne’s poetry. In fact, I’m glad the volume I have is a slim collection, even if it did still take me a long time to work my way through this time around (I kept putting it off). I will pick it up again, and I will browse through it.

Some favorite poems include “The Good-Morrow”; “The Flea”; “The Bait”; “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”; “The Will”; the sonnets included in this volume (1, 3-7, 9-10, 12-15, 17-19); and “A Hymn to God the Father” (which has a funny play on his name “thou hast done”). I admit: as I go through the volume to pick out favorites, there are a number more that jump out at me as “reread me now, please” poems, and I like them more and more with each read.

I also picked up a slim volume of (Harold Bloom edited) criticism on Donne’ poetry, but I haven’t gotten to it yet (I’ve only read the intro and the biography of John Donne). I may browse through it this weekend, but I admit I liked reading the poetry myself. I’m beginning to think reading someone else’s interpretation of a short poem takes away some of the fun. (This is coming from a former student of English who loves literary criticism!)

Do you ever read criticism to help you understand poetry? Have you read Donne?

Links of Interest:

• Read John Donne’s poetry via Luminarium
• John Donne on Wikipedia

If you have reviewed or shared thoughts on your blog about any of John Donne’s poetry, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

• Poetry Friday: Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare
• Wit by Margaret Edson
• Poetry Friday: Christmas Poems
• Poetry for Young People: Lewis Carroll
• Rose, Where Do You Get that Red? by Kenneth Koch + Reading with Kids Challenge
• Reading Journal (26 Aug): Focused Reading
• Poetry for Young People: William Shakespeare
• Poetry for Young People: Robert Louis Stevenson (edited by Frances Schoonmaker)
• Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins
• The Norton Introduction to Poetry + My Introduction to Poetry

Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life is a great example why someone else’s life may be incredibly interesting, simply because Molly’s life has been defined by food. And as she explains each chapter of her life for us, she provides recipes so we can experience the integral food too, if we choose.

It’s so much fun to see a life through the eyes of delicious foods. Molly shows that food is a communal part of our lives, helping to form lasting memories and lasting relationships. Food really can tell the stories of our lives, as Molly’s memoir/cookbook attests.

As she writes of her childhood, for example, she shares her dad’s excellent French toast. As she writes of her first trip to Paris, she writes of the bread and chocolate that defined her days.  As she writes of the holidays, she shares favorite holiday treats. And then, of course, there are her Paris recipes, and her best friends’ recipes, and her vegetarian boyfriend’s salad recipes. And Molly could just keep going, I’m sure.

But A Homemade Life is not just about the food. Molly’s memoir is excellently written, easily readable, and absolutely delightful. I know “delightful” is a cliché, but this book seriously fits the word without being cliché. It is real, and yet amusing and engaging all at the same time.

As Molly writes about her dad’s death, for example, I was in tears myself, thinking about the impact he had had on her life. His was an influence not to be forgotten. As Molly moved on with her life, she realized that. She subsequently learned to follow her dreams, even when they took the form of a food blog (Orangette). In fact, the only thing missing from this book are the gorgeous photographs Molly normally includes along with her blog posts on Orangette.

Many of the recipes Molly shares are a bit too “fancy” for my tastes. I’m primarily a family cook, and I don’t cook with specialty foods simply for cost reasons. “French style” cooking is not really my thing. But I do like simple food, and some of the recipes appear simple; at least a dozen and a half have entered my personal recipe file for future experimentation.

Molly’s story comes full circle, with the one center point in every part of her life being food.  In the end, I love the concept that foods, and not only the events, make up a life.

I would never think of delicious food as the center point of my childhood memories, and that’s okay. But it is encouraging to me that food can be such a staple in a life, and I look forward to making delicious food a memorable part of my family’s life going forward.

In the end, I can say I liked reading Molly’s story so much I intend to reread it someday. And cook her recipes.

What food memories do you recall from various stages of your life? As a child, I recall my dad’s pancakes on Saturday mornings. As an adult, I recall the risotto my husband made for me for one of our first dates.

A Homemade Life was a memoir read for The Spice of Life Challenge.

Other Reviews:

• Books Lists Life
• I Read What??
• Books and Cooks

If you have reviewed A Homemade Life on your blog, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• A Bite of the Spice of Life (Two Books by Julia Child and Too Many Cooks by Emily Franklin)
• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel + Giveaway
• Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• My Antonia by Willa Cather

The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy tells the story of the end of the 1800s and the early 1900s: the cusp of modernity. The younger generation is sending off the older generation by living outside of the norm, much to the horror of the elderly Forsytes.

Such horror is only understood when one understands the Forsyte family. The Forsytes are atrociously self-conceited and yet cold. It is a family we’d all hate to be a part of today, let alone 100 years ago: everyone must be proper and follow tradition. Emotions are shunned in favor of practical, reasonable business. The main life goal of the ten Forsytes of the first generation was to propagate money. They are now comfortably upper-middle class and hope the second generation Forsytes keep things that way.

For those Forsytes that do stray from the “right way,” they are sure to be shunned. The Forsyte Saga is their story of life.

The Forsyte Saga, An Introduction

The Forsyte Saga is a collection of three full-length novels about the Forsyte family, with interludes between them. It is the first of three similar volumes (hence, nine independent novels) in The Forsyte Chronicles, which covers, I believe, forty years in the history of the fictional Forsyte family.

They were published as follows (information thanks to Wikipedia):

• The Forsyte Saga, 1906-21, 1922
  • The Man Of Property, 1906
  • (interlude) Indian Summer of a Forsyte, 1918
  • In Chancery, 1920
  • (interlude) Awakening, 1920
  • To Let, 1921
• A Modern Comedy, 1924-1928, 1929
  • The White Monkey, 1924
  • (Interlude) a Silent Wooing, 1927
  • The Silver Spoon, 1926
  • (Interlude) Passers By, 1927
  • Swan Song, 1928
• End Of the Chapter, 1931-1933, 1934 (posthumously)
  • Maid In Waiting, 1931
  • Flowering Wilderness, 1932
  • One More River, 1933 (originally the English edition was called Over the River)
• John Galsworthy also wrote numerous short stories about the Forsyte family at various stages of his writing career.

My edition of The Forsyte Saga has a family tree at the front; this reveals the subsequent genealogy of all the novels, therefore revealing the plot twists (i.e., spoilers). For me, though, learning how things happen is the most interesting part of the novel, so “spoilers” are impossible. This is story of changing social perceptions and how amazingly realistic people live and react in such a volatile social time.

Beyond the subject matter, I love Galsworthy’s writing. He writes as if he is not in a hurry: he takes the time to flesh out the characters, including their thoughts and feelings. For, despite the fact that emotion is frowned upon by Forsytes, they certainly have real ones within them. While the entire plot may be considered similar to a soap opera (such as a wife having an affair with her husband’s cousins’ fiancée), Galsworthy writing makes the story real: the social world of the late 1800s becomes real to me as I read.

John Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932 for his body of writing. He died in 1933.

The Man of Property

The Man of Property is the first of the nine novels in the entire collection. “Man of property” has a double-meaning as it refers to Soames Forsyte, a second-generation Forsyte.

At first, I thought “man of property” simply referred to Soames’s purchase of land and a mansion in the country. For the first generation Forsytes, owning land and owning “things” is a distinction of being a Forsyte. Soames, a second-generation Forsyte, is therefore showing his status by building property. Soames’ uncle Jolyon says at one point, “I don’t know what Soames is about … to make a fuss over a few hundred pounds. I thought he was a man of property.” (page 258). Thus, being a man of property is a status symbol to that generation. To Soames’s surprise, his wife and others in his generation don’t seem to grasp the impact of this status; the times are changing and he’s not certain what is significant anymore.

But it soon became apparent to me that there was another, more significant way that Soames was a “man of property”: “property” refers to Soames’s wife, Irene. Irene has expressed her dislike of him and desires to leave the relationship. The older generation Forsytes urge Soames to beat his wife into submission, to take the locks off of her doors, and to force her to submit to him and be a “proper” wife. Yet Soames is a man torn between two generations. He cannot do so: he loves his wife and does not want to hurt her. And yet, he still holds to some of the ideals of the old generation and considers his own “status” before that of his poor wife, who loathes him.

Ironically, Soames is only one “man of property.” Another of the second-generation, young Jolyon, has been cut off from the Forsyte family for “breaking up” his own marriage fifteen years earlier. When he re-enters the family arena, he likewise adds to the modern generations’ views, for he can understand a spouse being unhappy in the marriage and seeking freedom. He’s the opposite of Soames in that he cannot understand much, if any, of the import of “property” and why it should be praised.  He has the best grasp of the situation, as his thoughts show when he visits the zoo with his father.

To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible barbarity. But no cultivated person would admit this.

The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had probably never even occurred to his father, for instance … In his eyes, as in the eyes of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom!

But as young Jolyon had in his constitution the elements of impartiality, he reflected that to stigmatize as barbarity that which was merely lack of imagination must be wrong; for no one who held these views had been placed in a similar position to the animals they caged, and could not, therefore, be expected to enter into their sensations. (page 162)

Young Jolyon had been in such a cage: a loveless marriage. Therefore, he understood the plight of the animals. Being cut off from the Forsyte family as a result of escaping his “cage” meant lots of struggle. But although young Jolyon is destitute, it seems clear to me that he is the “richest” of all the Forsytes, simply because he is happy. If anyone is a “man of property” in this book, I’d say it’s young Jolyon, for he is happy in his status: no other second-generation Forsyte has that, riches not-withstanding.

Indian Summer of a Forsyte

After the novel and before the next begins, Galsworthy has written an “interlude,” which is an extended story about a few of the Forsyte characters. This first interlude is absolutely beautiful: it describes the last summer of old Jolyon, who is dying of old age. Galsworthy perfectly captures old Jolyon’s thoughts and emotions as he seeks for some special connection with beauty and with the rest of the world, a world that has changed much over his long lifetime. It is beautiful, and reads like a self-contained story, even though it does relate to the other novels, and in fact is quite important to the next novel.

I’ve already made great progress on the second novel in The Forsyte Saga. I’m enjoying the continuance of the story and I look forward to more.

Have you read The Forsyte Saga? Does this sound interesting to you?

What social period would you most like to see developed in a “saga” over forty years? I never would have thought the 1880s to 1920s would be so interesting!

• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (In Chancery and To Let)
• Reading Journal (June 4): Reading More Than One Book at a Time
• Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
• Bloggiesta Progress
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Bloggiesta!
• Reading Journal (June 10): Book Clubs
• Reading Journal (May 27): Distraction
• June in Review

The Adventures of Pinocchio

I don’t know why I was surprised that it was a fairy tale: the talking marionette should have been evidence enough. Yet the first paragraph surprised me:

Once upon a time there was -

“A king!” my little readers will say immediately.

No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.

“Oh!” I thought. “This is a fairy tale.”

Sure enough, the adventure story took Pinocchio through many lands over many years through seemingly random adventures, much as fairy tales (at least, the Grimm fairy tales I read earlier this year) feel random. Of course, Pinocchio begins with a talking block of wood, so we know something magical is happening. Then humans regularly converse with animals and fairies provide needed protection.  And it ends happily ever after (are you surprised?).

But Pinocchio is not like the brothers Grimm (thoughts here). In some respects, it’s much more human. In Grimm’s stories, the characters often felt like stereotypes acted upon by magical or wicked individuals. Pinocchio is also a stereotype – he is a marionette being “played on” by all around him as he lacks any common sense. And yet, the problems Pinocchio faces are ones he subscribes for when he disobeys his father. His problems come as a direct result of his disobedience, a human failing; the magical elements of Collodi’s fairy tale are incidental and “normal” as he goes about his adventures.

Pinocchio’s adventures began his second day of life, when he skips school to go to a marionette show, even though his dear father, Gepetto, had sold his coat to buy his new son a school book. Pinocchio is almost killed – and then saved! He is given money – and then tricked out of it! He is imprisoned and then released! – only to nearly drown! (I insert exclamation points to be intentionally sarcastic; while children may find Pinocchio’s adventures exciting, for this adult reader they became tedious.)

Pinocchio’s adventures continue, and he fails to learn the lessons he should learn, namely:

• Don’t skip school
• Don’t talk to strangers, let alone trust them
• Don’t be lazy (with sub-lessons of “money doesn’t grow on trees” and “you’ll turn in to a donkey if you only play”)
• Don’t lie (or else your nose will grow very long)

Disney’s Version

When it comes to Pinocchio, I think Disney succeeded in improving the original once again (as also was the case with Mary Poppins; thoughts here). In the movie, there is continuity to hold the story together, from the relationship between Gepetto and Pinocchio to the blue fairy and Jiminy Cricket.

In the movie, Gepetto is excited about the marionette he has just made; he wishes it were real, and that wish leads to the adventures. In the book, Gepetto begins carving a block of wood that is alive. When he has carved feet, the block of wood runs out of the house and Gepetto gets in to trouble. In the book, I felt little connection and “love” between Gepetto (who simply inherited a possessed block of wood) and Pinocchio (who repeatedly sought trouble from the very beginning). Since Gepetto is absent for the majority of the book, I wondered how Pinocchio learned all the sayings he is constantly recalling his father had taught him.

Also, in the movie, the “blue fairy” (in the book, the “fairy with the blue hair”) is a character from the beginning, first bringing life to the marionette, then saving his life, and ultimately making him a real boy. In the book, the fairy with the blue hair is someone Pinocchio meets a few times on his path. Although she is a special fairy for him, there felt like there was little consistency. She showed up at random times, and not always when Pinocchio needed him.

Finally, the movie had Jiminy Cricket. That, I think, was the best change Disney made. In the book, there is a “talking cricket.” But Pinocchio killed him with a hammer in the first few chapters, and all subsequent reminders of right and wrong came from the dead cricket’s ghost. While I admit that anything can happen in fairy tales, this element seemed especially odd as Pinocchio went about his adventures. In the movie, on the other hand, Jiminy was just another imperfect creature trying to help Pinocchio. Jiminy also had the blue fairy’s blessing, and that felt like another appropriate tie between the characters.

I guess you can say it took re-watching the movie to realize what was wrong with the book: the book lacked a framework, it lacked character depth, and it failed to develop the relationships that the movie successfully developed.

The Bottom Line

In the end, while The Adventures of Pinocchio was a fairy tale with fantastic fairy tale elements, magic, and a satisfying fairy tale ending, Collodi’s lessons made it feel didactic and his lack of intriguing characters made it hard to enjoy. I’m glad I read the original Pinocchio, but I’ll stick with Disney’s version for the foreseeable future.

Pinocchio counts for the Once Upon a Time III Challenge.

Other Reviews:

• Puss Reboots
• things mean a lot

If you have reviewed The Adventures of Pinocchio on your site, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

• The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
• Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales
• Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• A Few Fairy Tale Reviews
• Beauty and the Beast + The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
• Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel + Giveaway
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
• Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne

Yet, in Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt attempts to explain Shakespeare’s life by reading what he did write: his plays. In a truly remarkable way, Greenblatt ties the Bard’s life into the context of Victorian England by visiting the context of his plays.

Despite being an English major, I am not very familiar with most of Shakespeare’s work, let alone his life. I found Greenblatt’s look at Shakespeare’s life through his plays be utterly fascinating. Even if none of the suppositions Greenblatt provides were true, understanding the cultural context of the plays will help me in my future studies of the plays. I loved this “literary” biography, and I’d highly recommend it to those interested in the cultural context of the Bard.

Reading about New Historicism

When I was a geeky English major, one of my favorite ways of looking at literature was from the perspective of New Historicism, which looks at literature as a part of history. Harmon and Holman share the following thoughts about New Historicism:

The New Historicism tends to be social, economic, and political, and it views literary works … as instruments for the displaying and enforcing of doctrines about conduct, etiquette, and law. In a dynamic circle, the literature tells us something about the surrounding ideology .. and the study of the ideology tells us something about the embedded literary works. (A Handbook to Literature, eighth edition, page 346)

Stephen Greenblatt is even called “the most influential practitioner” of New Historicism.

The Life of the Bard

Will in the World definitely fits New Historicism approach to literature: it looks at Shakespeare’s plays as an instrument for recording Shakespeare’s life.

For example, to describe Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife, Anne Hathaway, Greenblatt turned not just to the remaining public records but to Shakespeare’s writing. The public records show their marriage and the birth of their first child six months later; the public records show that Will left essentially nothing to her after her death but his “best bed”, even though tradition gave widows at least a third of his property.  As for Shakespeare’s writing, there are, remarkably, no remaining letters from William to Anne.  Greenblatt turns to the poems and plays, examining various attitudes toward women at various points in Will’s life. Suffice it to say that it appears Will didn’t have a great relationship with Anne.

To me, this literary dissection was a fascinating way to learn about a literary giant. As I mentioned, much of Greenblatt’s conclusions are suppositions: there is  no long-lasting record of the facts. But Greenblatt’s familiarity with all of the Bard’s works, let alone the works of his contemporaries, makes his conclusions completely believable and fascinating.

Audiobook Review

The audiobook I listened to was recorded by Peter Jay Fernandez, an experienced Shakespeare actor. It was a great experience to listen to the book because he adjusted his voice to fit the given Shakespeare character whenever Greenblatt would quote from a play. It was a wonderful reading of the book. That said, this is one book I wish I read in paper: there were so many wonderful insights and quotes I wanted to mark down.

I’m glad I read Will in the World early in my Shakespeare studies. I feel my reading will be greatly impacted by the insights Greenblatt shared. I now intend to read Shakespeare’s complete works. After I do so, I want to revisit Will in the World and learn again the cultural context of the plays.

I highly recommend this literary biography.

I read this as part of the BiblioShakespeare Challenge.

Have you read a fascinating biography of the Bard? I’d love to read more about this mysterious man.

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

• Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman
• Poetry for Young People: William Shakespeare
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
• Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• My Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance
• On Writing by Stephen King
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster
• Jane Austen: A Biography by Carol Shields, a Quote Book, and a History of England

In some respects, Landolfi’s stories reminded of Borges’ Fictions: they have elements the bizarre. I didn’t enjoy reading Borges (thoughts here), but I did sense a genius and power behind the writing. Landolfi’s writing is likewise laudable, although I wonder once again what the genius behind the stories actually is. I think it is beyond me.

In some stories, Landolfi narrates incredibly unbelievable events as if they actually occurred, a technique that seemed much like Borges’ stories. For example, in his title story “Golgol’s Wife,” the narrator describes his association with the author Nikolai Golgol and Golgol’s wife, who is a balloon. Yes, a balloon. The bizarre accounts in the story would have been amusing if I wasn’t so distracted by the oddness of it. “Pastoral” likewise is odd: a lonely girl visiting the country writes a city girl about the “hibernation” of the country people during the winter.

Other stories don’t have supernatural elements but have rather difficult personal subjects. “The Two Old Maids” is about a monkey that breaks into a chapel at night. “The Death of the King of France” is a “long and wearisome” account of a man letting go of his obsession with his 12-year-old adopted daughter. (I don’t think I completely understood this disturbing story; please correct me if you think there is a different point to it.)

Some stories weren’t disturbing and were short and easier to relate to. “Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies” asks the question: are poems written in a nonexistent language really a work of art? “Giovanni and His Wife” shares the story of two duet singers – who sing out of tune completely together. “Sunstroke” details the last moments of the death of an owl, and “Wedding Night” is about the chimney sweep visiting during a wedding feast.

In the end, it seems Landolfi’s stories ask questions attempting to define art, right and wrong, and acceptable relationships.

I read Landolfi’s stories because Harold Bloom recommends “Golgol’s Wife” in How to Read and Why. In reading Harold Bloom’s praise of the story “Golgol’s Wife,” I now realize that I must be familiar with Golgol and his writing before it will make sense. Yes, Landolfi’s story was definitely beyond me.

In the end, I readily admit I missed something. I can’t say I loved reading Landolfi, but it’s nice to know that I’m trying things I would not otherwise pick up. I’m trying to have an open mind. Maybe someday I’ll revisit Landolfi and understand better his themes.

If you have reviewed any of Landolfi’s stories on your site, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

• Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
• Stories by Vladimir Nabokov
• How to Read and Why: Short Stories Retrospective
• Stories by Guy de Maupassant (Favorites)
• Stories by Flannery O’Connor
• Two Stories by Turgenev
• Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
• Stories by Ernest Hemingway
• Stories by Anton Chekhov

His writing in these stories is so well done that I, a very amateur writer, feel the urge to try my hand at capturing the images around me, a task I will surely fail because I know I will never even remotely measure up to Nabokov’s incredible talent.

The unfortunate aspect of reading more than 60 of Nabokov’s short stories in one month is that the characters he so adroitly creates, the settings he so carefully draws, and the feelings he so perfectly captures are, for the most part, miserable, gloomy, and ultimately depressing. Also, some of his stories have fantastical elements that failed to resonate with me, and most dwell on negative aspects of human nature – subjects that weren’t pleasant for reading in bulk.

But I feel that the overall quality of Vladimir Nabokov’s writing is so extraordinary that he should be read simply for the marvelous experience that comes from reading his words, even if the reader doesn’t necessarily consider the negative underlying themes amazing.

Nabokov’s Style

Unlike the concise Ernest Hemingway, Nabokov uses many words to write his poetic stories. Some paragraphs are longer than a page; sentences are five lines long. It’s very dense, but, to me, beautiful.

Through his wordiness, Nabokov carefully creates a scene, as did James Joyce, and the scene seems to be imperative to many of his stories.  Also like Joyce, Nabokov’s purpose or theme for each story isn’t revealed until the end. While Joyce’s stories often left me confused (revealing my ignorance, I suppose), Nabokov’s left me depressed. Sometimes the abrupt endings are a sort of epiphany and sometimes they are just the result of the character’s actions, and we, the readers, must determine Nabokov’s aim.

In that way, Nabokov’s writing reminded me of Anton Chekhov’s stories. Both authors seemed to describe every-day people (peasants in Russia for Chekhov; poor Russian émigrés living in Berlin for Nabokov) living their lives, with a sudden realization (either for the character or the reader) in the last moments of the story illustrate the depressing state of human nature, life, and relationships.

Guy de Maupassant also wrote about the dirty side of human nature. But, while Maupassant’s stories ended up being funny, Nabokov’s stories rarely had humor (although I may have missed any high-brow humor). Some of the stories with fantastic elements reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s or Washington Irving’s stories. (In fact, one story appropriately refers to Rip Van Winkle.)

In the end, Nabokov has a style completely his own. Just as I felt after reading Flannery O’Connor’s stories, I can’t place his style and themes into a category with any other short story writer.

Favorites

As I mentioned, Nabokov’s stories tend to be rather sad. My two favorite stories happened to be the least unpleasant. A number of other stories have also stayed with me.

Two Stories

In “First Love,” a man reflects on his first love. In the course of his description of a childhood summer’s events, it’s unclear to the reader whether his first love was traveling by overnight train; swimming at the beach; learning about butterflies; or meeting the little French girl, Colette. This story doesn’t have much plot or grand finale, but it is a beautiful story that I’ve already reread three times.

“The Vane Sisters” was the story that Harold Bloom recommended in his How to Read and Why book list. In this story, a man reflects on his relationships with two sisters, one of whom was once his girlfriend.  It also is incredibly subtle. (Highlight to read spoiler.) Nabokov’s subtle ending tells us that this man’s life really hasn’t been all that affected by the life and then the death of these sisters. It’s kind of depressing for the sisters, but an interesting realization for the man. It made me think about my own life and relationships. What impact do certain people have on me? For example, how often do I think about old boyfriends? Did they really impact my life significantly?

Other Stories

While I can only see myself rereading those two stories, there are a number of other stories that I keep remembering, even after starting the next story. Note that I do think Nabokov’s writing improved through the years; if you read the 60+ story volume as I did, start in the middle or go backward.

Here are some that stayed with me, with short introductions.

• “That in Aleppo Once…” His wife never existed, he’s sure of it.
• “A Forgotten Poet.” A dead poet arrives at the banquet held in his honor.
• “A Guide to Berlin.” One man recounts the small details of Berlin.
• “Music.” At a recital, a man sees his ex-wife across the room.
• “Perfection.” A very proper tutor is asked to take his young charge to the sea shore.
• “The Visit to the Museum.” A man goes to a museum to acquire a painting for a friend – and gets lost inside.
• “An Affair of Honor.” A man finds that his wife is having an affair with his friend, an ex-cavalry man, and he must fight a duel to save his good honor.
• “A Slice of Life.” The woman once loved him; now that his wife has left him, he has come to her to get drunk and commiserate.
• “The Dragon.” A dragon awakes after his ten-century slumber.
• “The Fight.” The elderly man he sees at the beach is also the bartender; he observes one night’s bar fight.
• “The Potato Elf.” A small dwarf in the circus seeks love.
• “Terra Incognita.” A group of bug collectors in the tropics get sick, lost, and angry at one another, as told from the perspective of the ill, delirious man.
• “The Reunion.” Two brothers, one living in Russia and one an émigré in Germany, meet after ten years.
• “Breaking the News.” The elderly, deaf woman’s son has died, and no one wants to tell her.
• “Cloud, Castle, Lake.” A man is forced into his first vacation, and he’s hoping that he’ll find the elusive happiness he seeks.
• “The Thunderstorm.” A man awakens in a storm to see Elijah dropping his mantle for Elisha.

The Bottom Line

Have I made myself clear? Maybe not. To be safe, here it is as clearly as I can write it:

Read Nabokov’s short stories, at least one or two. His writing is incredible.

Have you read already read Nabokov’s stories? What did you think? How would you describe his writing style and the themes he writes about?

Note: Because Vladimir Nabokov’s stories are not in the public domain, I cannot link to them online. Here is Wikipedia’s information about him.

• Bookworms Carnival: Relationships
• Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov + Giveaway
• Stories by Tommaso Landolfi
• Stories by Flannery O’Connor
• Stories by O. Henry (and Another BBAW Giveaway)
• Stories by Ernest Hemingway
• Stories by Guy de Maupassant (Favorites)
• Stories by Guy de Maupassant (Introductory Thoughts)
• Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Themes

Race and Class

I found the most common theme in Flannery O’Connor’s stories is race and class, looking at conflict between generations. A great example is “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” In this story, a progressive young man must ride the bus with his older mother to the YMCA because she is “afraid” of the blacks on the integrated buses. He wants to teach her a lesson, but in the end he realizes he still needs his mother, as “old-fashioned” as she is.

Race and class often mix in O’Connor’s stories. In “Revelation,” a self-satisfied judgmental woman is baffled when a young girl calls her a rude name; in the end, she (maybe) realizes the folly of her judgments.

Other stories clearly dealing with race and class also include rural versus city conflicts. Some of these stories are “The Artificial Nigger” (a father and son visit Atlanta); “The Displaced Person” (a Jewish refugee family joins the farm); “A Late Encounter With the Enemy” (Grandpa fought in the civil war); and “The Geranium” and “Judgment Day” (an old man, living in New York City with his daughter, longs to return to the South to die; these are essentially the same story, one written at the beginning and one at the end of O’Connor’s career).

Isolated, Lonely People

Some of my favorite stories were about lonely, isolated individuals seeking for a place. In “The Crop,” a lonely woman sits down to write a short story-and forgets where she is. I love this story because I can relate to this writer: she can’t figure out how to get the story from her head to paper. In “A Stroke of Good Fortune,” the woman ponders a fortune teller’s message, and the reader, following her thoughts, knows what it is. I loved how clueless she was as I followed her thought process.

While others weren’t favorites, they were also about lonely, isolated people: “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead” (14-year-old must bury his grandfather);  “Good Country People” (a lonely girl with a wooden leg finally trusts someone, the good country man selling bibles); “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” (mother gets her mute daughter married to a nice, good country man); “A View of the Woods” (a lonely, selfish grandfather idolizes his granddaughter); and “The Enduring Chill” (a lonely, unsuccessful writer returns to Georgia to die).

Christianity (Good versus Evil)

Flannery O’Connor’s stories also deal with Christianity and good versus evil in general. Her view of good and evil in the face of Christianity is intriguing.

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is probably the most familiar O’Connor story, but I really don’t like it. Grandma gets her family lost on a side road. They meet a murderer, who Grandma is sure she recognizes as a good man. I think it’s a look at how everyone has good, and yet, we’re all missing good too; we’re all condemned. I find it a bit disturbing.

In other stories, people try to save each other through religion and because of religious training. In “The River,” the boy’s caretaker, Mrs. Conin, wants to “save” him with religion. In “Parker’s Back,” Parker gets one more tattoo that he thinks his religious wife will appreciate. In “The Comforts of Home,” Thomas’s mother thinks she can save a loose woman from corruption. In “The Lame Shall Enter First,” Sheppard thinks he can redeem a criminal boy who shows more promise than his own son.

Compared to the Others

I found Flannery O’Connor’s stories to be completely unlike the others I’ve read in the past few months. And yet, I still try to compare and contrast.

As did Chekhov, O’Connor focuses on specific characters in a specific setting, keeping the scenarios tight. Somewhat like Maupassant, O’Connor’s stories focus on base human desires and situations. In contrast to James Joyce, who was careful to develop a scene, O’Connor throws us into it to a scene and we must feel our way until we understand the setting (and yet it is still marvelously developed). Also, while Hemingway captured scenes mostly through dialog, O’Connor captures her scenes through incredibly realistic thought processes.

Unlike O. Henry, her stories are not “feel good.” In fact, I almost hated reading some of the stories, because I knew, following her style, that just before the character finds redemption, something would go wrong and they’d be damned, or killed, or otherwise without hope. In subject matter, then, I think her stories most closely resemble Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories in Interpreter of Maladies, which capture the isolation immigrants feel. While O’Connor’s characters aren’t immigrants to the United States, they seem similarly confused by their loneliness in a changing Southern environment.

HTR&W

I didn’t agree with a lot of Harold Bloom’s comments in How to Read and Why on the specific stories he discusses, but his general comments on O’Connor’s style are interesting. He focuses on the religious aspect of her work, how everyone ends up damned as I mentioned above, and how O’Connor doesn’t expect anyone to be redeemed.

…the best way to read her stories is to begin by acknowledging that one is among her damned, and then go on from there to enjoy her grotesque and unforgettable art of telling.

Harold Bloom captures what my main gripe was with O’Connor’s stories, although he thinks it’s a beautiful trait. It is, but it’s still a bit annoying in bulk:

…readers need to be wary of her tendentiousness: she has too palpable a design upon us, to shock us by violence into a need for traditional faith.

I sometimes didn’t like the violent shock at the end of each story: but that may be because I was reading all of her short stories in the same week. If you read Flannery O’Connor, read her in installments.

In the end, Flannery O’Connor certainly has a marvelous but morbid story telling ability.

Have you read Flannery O’Connor? What do you think of her stories? Did you like “A Good Man is Hard to Find”?

• Stories by Vladimir Nabokov
• Stories by Guy de Maupassant (Favorites)
• Stories by O. Henry (and Another BBAW Giveaway)
• Personal History by Katharine Graham + Why I Love a Great Biography
• A Stop in South Africa (Two Novels by Alan Paton) + Giveaway
• Stories by Guy de Maupassant (Introductory Thoughts)
• Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Stories by Tommaso Landolfi
• Stories by Anton Chekhov
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

I submitted my post about The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, which discusses the relationship between husband and wife in the late 1800s in New York City. I loved this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Other books I’ve reviewed relating to relationships:

• The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman (memoi; father-son relationship, in the midst of learning the father’s Holocaust experience)
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (short stories; individuals’ lack of relationships, i.e., their isolation)
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (novel; sisters)
• March by Geraldine Brooks (novel; parent and husband)
• Personal History by Katharine Graham (autobiography; wife to mentally ill man)

Trying to list works I’ve reviewed about relationships is hard; I’ve read so many more books, but I’ve only been reviewing online for a few months. I’ll get more books reviewed as time goes by!

Go check out the carnival for other relationship books.

• March by Geraldine Brooks
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Bookworms Carnival: Fairy Tales
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In a break-through way, he tells this story in the form of a graphic novel. I was amazed not just with how approachable this made the horrible story of the Holocaust, but also with how appropriate it was. The story of the Holocaust is not an easy story to tell. By telling his father’s story from the perspective of a son watching his father and via a graphic medium, Spiegelman captured the effects of the events on his father. As a reader, I could see the aftermath of the story because Spiegelman had captured the emotions in the illustrations. The Complete Maus is an essential story in the body of work about the Holocaust and rightly deserves the special Pulitzer Prize awarded it in 1992. It is a book anyone, even those who don’t consider themselves readers, can approach to learn about the Holocaust.

Maus I: My Father Bleeds History

In Maus I, Spiegelman approaches his father Vladek to learn the story of how he met his mother Anja and how they survived in Poland in the early years of the World War II. Interspersed through Vladek’s story is the modern-day struggles Vladek faces with his second wife, Mala. At first, I was frustrated by the presence of people not associated with the historic story. Why not tell the entire story from the perspective of the past? However, I realized that seeing Vladek’s reactions to modern events helped me to see how his past is still his present: he cannot forget the war. Despite the fact that he wants to set the past behind him, he is still untrusting of people and frugal. He is still suffering, still “bleeding” history.

What struck me most about the Jews in Poland in 1938-1944, particularly Vladek and Anja, was that the only reason they survived thus far was because they were lying, stealing, and cheating, besides the fact that they still had some money to pay people for help. Vladek put himself and his wife before everything: that was the way to survive. It was shocking to realize how little mercy others had for them. While some were willing to risk their lives to help the Jews, it was shocking how little chance the Jews had to live. The Nazis, in general, showed no mercy.

Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began

Maus II continues the story of Vladek and his wife, now sent to Auschwitz, and it continued the story of Spiegelman as he faces his father’s life story, now in the wake of his father’s death. Spiegelman (the graphic novel author) feels guilty not just because his father survived Auschwitz but because others want to exploit it, because he never suffered as his father has, and because he will never really understand what suffering is. It is emotional, with that introduction, to read the story of Vladek and Anja’s 10 months in Auschwitz, again trying to find an advantage so that they can survive, despite the odds.

The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale

What stood out to me in these two volumes of history is that the graphic novel format is a griping way to tell a story. It showed me, again, that this is medium that needs to be embraced.

Spiegelman does not want his graphic novel turned in to a movie. I would agree: a movie of this story would be too harsh and too insensitive. A wordy memoir also would be too “heavy”: I love to read, but I couldn’t read a memoir like this because it would be too much, too depressing, and too detailed. But a graphic novel medium is perfect. In Maus, we learn about the Holocaust but we also learn about the effect of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. And it is very readable: for the legions of people in the world that don’t “like” to read, this is something that they could easily approach, painful as the story may be. That said, I was greatly disturbed the story (as should be expected) and I wouldn’t recommend this for children.

The Holocaust happened: the world needs to know story. Maus is an excellent approach to it.

I read Maus I and Maus II at the same time, in one volume called The Complete Maus. They were originally published in 1986 and 1991. I cannot comprehend separating these two stories; they seemed to be one. Did you read these at different times? How did that affect your reading of the story? Did you feel something was missing after the first one?

Other reviews:

• things mean a lot
• Thoughts of Joy Maus I and Maus II
• nothing of importance (my everyday blog)
• The Hidden Side of a Leaf

If you have reviewed The Complete Maus (Maus I or Maus II or both), leave a link in the comments and I’ll add your link to this post.

• Bookworms Carnival: Relationships
• Palestine by Joe Sacco
• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
• Graphic Novels Challenge
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
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• Beauty and the Beast + The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
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• The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter
• Challenges, A Personal Challenge, and a Giveaway!

In the beginning of the novel, Newland Archer ponders his upcoming engagement to May Welland, idealistic about his ability to influence her life and help her become a “free” woman, simply by being an engaging and caring husband.

Newland Archer’s idealistic world is shaken, however, first when May’s cousin and his old beau (Ellen Mingott Olenska) returns to New York, shamed and disgraced after leaving her cruel and abusive husband. Newland must reconsider his notions of women’s social position. When Madame Olenska begins to seek a divorce, the New York society is shocked. Such a situation would bring shame to all of Ellen’s family, including Newland’s wife-to-be. Newland must determine if his own exclamation “women should be free—as free as we are”(Vol. 1, Chap. 6) is realistic for “poor Ellen Olenska.”

In the process, Newland Archer realizes that he is not as free in his relationships as he had imagined. His developing relationship with Madame Olenska complicates the matter, and he realizes that his marriage will not be as he had envisioned.

Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage. … There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free…. (Vol. 2, Chap. 2)

Ultimately, The Age of Innocence is the story of a man coming to terms with the 1870s social constraints on the most intimate of relationships, love and marriage. Newland Archer finds that the social stigmas prevalent in society distance people: “There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well have been half the world apart” (Vol. 2, Chap. 6). In the end, he must decide whether or not he will live within the socially unacceptable dreams he has or if he will look “not at visions, but at realities” (Volume 2, Chapter 11).

I highly recommend this novel.

In our day, women are essentially free to enter in to a relationship or to end a relationship. In The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer desired to help women choose their destinies, all the while being married to a woman who didn’t comprehend she could be anything other than a dutiful wife and mother. I choose to stay home with my son and fill that roll, but some women today feel trapped into such situations. How can we as a society help women recognize their own abilities to choose and accept the choices they have made?

Note: I read this book via dailyreader.net, which emails you a part of your selected novel (in the public domain) every day. It worked well for me.

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• The Touchstone by Edith Wharton
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (The Man of Property)
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