...

Oh man, what a page-turner! Once I got into this book, I couldn't put it down. This is almost too entertaining to be a classic. (I mean that in a good way.) Then I heard that it was made into a Hitchcock film, which is perfect. I mean, this is one hell of a cinematic book; you almost feel like you're watching a movie when you're reading it. I moved it straight to the top of my Netflix queue.

[Note: I did see the movie. And the movie is not bad--Joan Fontaine is perfect as the narrator--except that it cops out on the central event of the book! And then breaks from the perspective of the narrator at the end of the movie. AUGH! If I hadn't read the book, I would have liked the movie more, I bet. But I still say read the book first; it's far, far braver.]

The novel itself is very well-written; I can see why it's considered a classic. It's got so many plot twists and so much suspense that I don't want to really say anything else that might give anything away, although odds are that most of you have either read it or seen the movie. I guess the important thing to note here is that I thought it was fantastic.

I will say as vaguely as possible that one of the narrative conceits (involving the name of the narrator) should have, I thought, been ended at a specific symbolic moment. If you're curious as to what the hell I'm talking about, write me.

Quote: "I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word." (p. 35)

First of all, this book is a lot dirtier than I was expecting. (There's a reference to it in a young adult book I read as a teenager, implying that it would be studied in high school, but sexual power struggles--including a ridiculous scene about how shocking blowjobs are--are a major theme of the book.) Second of all, it's about yet another "emasculated" man and his penis. Thanks, canon, for another one of these.

Updike can write; the novel is vivid, plausible, gritty and persuasive. But--and it seems that this is always my complaint when I don't like a book--I didn't like the characters. I didn't understand why I was spending hundreds of pages inside the brain of Rabbit the impotent man-child--as if I was supposed to be sympathetic to the way he treats everyone from his wife to his mistress to his family to his child. I mean, I hate Rabbit, although the way the novel is written, you're supposed to be on his side to at least some extent. But his behavior is so selfish; he has no redeeming qualities. Why are there sequels written about him? Probably because Updike doesn't hate him; he sympathizes with him as a symbol of the middle class.

To digress for a moment, I don't like saying "I didn't like the character" as my only criticism; I've made it before and I don't think it is specific enough. Thinking aloud for a moment here... I mean I love Lolita and Humbert, I don't need characters to be sympathetic. And I liked Tropic of Cancer, so clearly misogyny isn't a literary deal breaker for me either. And now I'm thinking of all the complex characters of Henry James, many of whom aren't strictly likeable either, but I like reading about them. Their psychologies and stories are interesting to me.

I guess that is my problem with this book. Rabbit and his running from responsibility (which... isn't there more? Nobody gets anywhere in this book.) is not academically interesting, personally enlightening, or mindlessly entertaining. And I need at least one of the three.

Quote: "Momentarily drained of lust, he stares at the remembered contortions to which it has driven him. His life seems a sequence of grotesque poses assumed to no purpose, a magic dance empty of belief... He feels underwater, caught in chains of transparent smile, ghosts of the urgent ejaculations he has spat into the mild bodies of women." (160)

The most interesting aspect of this book is the autobiographical element to it. It seems to say a lot about Fitzgerald's feelings of emasculation and helplessness and the roots of his alcohol problem. It also says a lot about his issues with women. Because Dick Diver didn't need to feel as emasculated as he did. "Boo hoo, my wife is rich" is not much of an argument.

So anyway, Fitzgerald doesn't really write women very well, nor does he approach the universal woman. But he does approach a certain type of universal man in Dick Diver, possibly because he poured his own heart's blood into the character and onto the page. As much as it seems as if I can't separate Fitzgerald and Diver, I actually avoided all autobiographical information until I was done with the book. My suspicion as I was reading it was that it was autobiographical. He himself called the book "a confession of faith" and that is indeed what it is.

It's less perfect than Gatsby (Fitzgerald called Gatsby a "tour de force" and as hubristic as he was, he was right) but in a way its more resonant. It's the story of one man's messy, imperfect, dissipated, plausible life. And to what degree you blame him and what degree you feel sorry for him is not proscribed for the reader. At least I didn't feel that it was.

Quote: "Save among a few of the tough-minded and perennially suspicious, he had the power of arousing a fascinated and uncritical love. The reaction came when he realized the waste and extravagance involved. He sometimes looked back with awe at the carnivals of affection he had given, as a general might gaze upon the massacre he had ordered to satisfy an impersonal blood lust." (p. 27)

Henry James's style was described by H.G. Wells as that of “a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost upon picking up a pea.” That is the best description of James's prose I've ever heard. The Golden Bowl is late James--more convoluted even than normal, far less omnipotent, far less concrete.

I love Henry James, and I take great pleasure in puzzling out his sentences and situations, but even I found some of the passages of this novel tiresome. One small nuance of emotion can take up an entire chapter of metaphor and at the end, the reader is still frustrated by the lack of action or specificity. This is deliberate of course, but the subtlety of nearly every single interaction in the novel does get wearying. It's a lot easier to digest in a novella-sized chunk, e.g. Washington Square.

Also, considering that the book is nearly 600 pages long, you'd think one would have a firmer grasp on the characters as individuals. But they all share the same manner of speaking (that ebb-and-flow repetitive style) and the same vagueness--at least Adam and Amerigo do. I do enjoy the characterization of Adam at the end, with the golden tether, that changes him from a (perhaps literally) impotent figure into almost a Gilbert Osmond. I love the images of Charlotte and her cage, also towards the end of the book. I lose respect for Amerigo much as I think Maggie does at the end, some very powerful descriptors of his ultimate choice. And I don't think one is supposed to find Maggie wholly sympathetic; I didn't like her much at all. She's naive, weirdly obsessed with her father, immature, and vindictive in that subtle, Jamesian manner. And of course both she and her father are disposed to think of their spouses as purchased commodities, and of course to an overwhelming extent they are. Some of the most wonderful metaphors in the book (up to and including that of the golden bowl itself) is concerned with this theme.

The introduction and notes by Virginia Llewellyn Smith are, in the edition I read, particularly good. I'm having a good time reading all the criticisms and arguments about the book. As always with James, the novel is so dense and complex and nuanced that you can keep rolling it around in your brain long after you've finished it. Love James. Love him.

Oh, and the golden bowl itself (yes, there is such a bowl) is at Harvard now. One of these days, I'd love to see it.

Quote: "My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous--or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you are, in the same proportion, jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When, however, you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all--why then you're beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down." (p. 490)

If it weren't for this project, I wouldn't have ever picked up this book. I get totally squicked out by mental institutions; I can't imagine that I am alone here. Plus there are always needles and you know how I feel about needles. (Maybe you don't. I have a phobia.) And let's not even talk about the whole lobotomy thing--nothing scarier. Not even clowns scare me more. The Frances Farmer story scared the living shit out of me the first time I heard it. Good lord.

Anyway, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest wasn't quite as horrific or depressing as I expected, but it was plenty unpleasant. The writing is very good, however, and the story is excellent. If you can deal with the institution thing, it really is worth reading. I was impressed. The only thing that bothered me was the racism; there's no counterpoint to the three "black boys" who are depicted so stereotypically.

Ian tells me the movie is better and it has been duly Netflixed. I don't suppose the movie re-sets the story in a day camp, or at a llama farm, or anything?

Quote: "And then some guy wandering as lost as you would all of a sudden be right before your eyes, his face bigger and clearer than you ever saw a man's face before in your life. Your eyes were working so hard to see in that fog that when something did come in sight every detail was ten times as clear as usual, so clear both of you had to look away. When a man showed up you didn't want to look at his face and he didn't want to look at yours, because it's painful to see somebody so clear that it's like looking inside him, but then neither did you want to look away and lose him completely." (p. 116)

There is only one problem with this book, but it's a big problem. The book is about two poets who are deemed geniuses, worthy of study and adulation, fought over (rather ridiculously) in academic circles. There is a lot of poetry in this book, supposedly by these poets. And the problem is not that it's tedious; I've read a lot of great poetry that was tedious. It's that the poetry is so mediocre. And therefore its unbelievable that all these people would be devoted to studying it.

Just because something is presented in competent blank verse with elevated language does not mean it is good poetry. The "Randolph Ash" poetry is just line after line after line of generic blank verse. And most of the poetry of "Christabel LaMotte" (one of many unwieldy aptronyms that I would consider beneath this writer) is just regressed Emily Dickinson. It's Dickinson minus all the genius. The only legitimately genius example of a "great writer" is found in LaMotte's fairy tales. Those are charming. But the rest of it is utterly implausible and for me it's almost impossible to get past it.

I would have been amazed had Byatt turned out to be both a brilliant novelist and have a capacity for genius poetry. It's an enjoyable, excellent book that was great fun to read. The letters between Ash and LaMotte were easily my favorite part. But it's also overrated. I didn't see a Booker-worthy book here. I saw a good, but somewhat contrived, read--with a near-fatal flaw.

Quote: "This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the midpoint, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere."
         "Poetic, but not comfortable doctrine."
         "You know, as I know, that good poetry is not comfortable, however. Let me hold you, this is our night, and only the first, and therefore the nearest infinite." (p. 309)

I kind of hate to say it, because I know there are a lot of people who simply cannot stomach Miller's misogynistic language and I do see their point... but the artist in me sort of loves this book. Miller's (and now I am falling into the trap too, because this is not a gender-neutral way to say this) ballsyness is wonderful, liberating. He talks about the stagnation of art, and the depressing and mechanical way most people live their lives, and it inspires you to want to rise up, see the world, make art, do mad things--and break free from the stagnation.

Tropic of Cancer is messy, self-indulgent, unconstrained, balls-to-the-wall, brave, bold, and you kind of can't believe he got away with it. As Virginia Woolf would say, it is one of those books that have "that wild flash of imagination, that lightning crack of genius in the middle of them which leaves them flawed and imperfect, but starred with poetry."

After reading certain pages, chapters or paragraphs, I closed the book feeling as if I had been (in a literary sense) ridden hard and put away wet. A thinking woman can't help but be half-ashamed of that analogy, but Henry Miller would have loved it.

Quote: "In the Spanish number the house was electrified. Everybody sat on the edge of his seat--the drums woke them up. I thought when the drums started it would keep up forever. I expected to see people fall out of the boxes or throw their hats away. There was something heroic about it and he could have driven us stark mad, Ravel, if he had wanted to. But that's not Ravel. Suddenly it all died down. It was as if he remembered, in the midst of his antics, that he had on a cutaway suit. He arrested himself. A great mistake, in my humble opinion. Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite, or TNT. Ravel sacrificed something for form, for a vegetable that people must digest before going to bed." (p. 76)

Oh why do they make people read that? "Zeena is an ugly shrew, Ethan is doomed, and here is a very gloomy story about that."

That's all I have to say about Ethan Frome. I'm depressed now.

Quote: "He did not know why he was so irrationally happy, for nothing was changed in his life or hers. He had not even touched the tip of her fingers or looked her full in the eyes. But their evening together had given him a vision of what life at her side might be, and he was glad now that he had done nothing to trouble the sweetness of the picture." (p. 34)

Okay, now that's more like it. The Great American Novel? We have a winner. Or at least a front-runner. (I'd put this book at number one, Grapes of Wrath at number two, and To Kill a Mockingbird at number three. Note the lack of Faulkner on that list. Sorry, Faulkner-lovers.)

I tore through this book in a day. And reading it as a counterpoint to Absalom, Absalom was a great way to go. Toni Morrison confronts everything that Faulkner glosses over. She exposes the "boo-hoo, the Confederacy" guilt and impotence of Southern white males as exactly what it is: self-indulgent and blind.

You know what the Confederacy was? It was institutionalized slavery. And you know what slavery was? Evil. I mean of course that's obvious now--easier for me to say than Quentin Compson, for sure-- but does Faulkner acknowledge it? The atrocity of it? Nope, not really. Because he grew up in the middle of it, and he buys into the myth of the Glorious Old South. And whether he's conflicted about it or not, whether it's understandable or not, is that the novel I want to put on the top of my list? Well, no.

I had heard that Beloved was a muddled, confusing book. I did not find it to be the case at all. (Again, maybe coming after Faulkner helped my perception.) It was everything that the blurbs on the back promised it was. A masterpiece, magnificent, overpowering, indelible... I feel like I can't overstate it. I wonder how she did it. I wonder how any one person could write this well, could write a book this good, ripped from the very soul of an entire race of people. How anyone could have a well of pain this deep inside of her, and dip into it again and again to create prefect literature.

I know it seems like I'm overstating it; no book could be this good; no book could have this effect on me. But it did have this effect on me. It gave me goosebumps; it made me cry. It will stay with me. It is the Great American Novel.

Quote: "...And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all our inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize." (p. 93)

I read The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom as part of the wonderful TUS Faulkner seminar. The Sound and the Fury went rather quickly for me and I enjoyed it tremendously, particularly the Quentin section, which is just beautifully written. Then the Jason section makes a great contrast. I also admired the hell out of Caddy, the only saving grace (albeit an imperfect one) in Faulkner's sexist portrayals of pretty much all women. Definitely my favorite Faulkner. (Not that I am a huge fan of Faulkner. Sorry.)

Absalom, Absalom--although many feel it is the Great American Novel--did not do it for me. I felt annoyance more than anything else. Shreve grated on me, the constant use of the word "attenuation" got irritating, and I didn't understand anyone's motivation, really. (Mostly Sutpen's and Henry's motivations.) Most of the women were underwritten: Ellen and Judith in particular. The only person I really liked was Charles Bon. His motives, I got, and I respected.

It's all speculative, and I get what Faulkner is going for there, talking about how history is mythologized and made by the people who tell and re-tell it. But Shreve and his blowhard, disrespectful pronouncements of what "the South" is--representative of the North or not--got tiresome. Like, call Miss Rosa the right name, asshole! Plus, of course, nobody actually talks like that. I give Faulkner a pass on that; I think it was important that everything be framed as storytelling. I kind of liked that idea, actually.

At least this book explains why Quentin killed himself at Harvard. He's so fragile, carries too much weight and grief and guilt. He's too fragile to see that Shreve is being presumptuous. He takes the entire Sutpen story on himself. It's interesting thinking about the repercussions of the war on the South. And it was really interesting to hear the loss of the Confederacy blamed on the social caste system of the South. I'd buy that as well.

Also, it seems very tragic that if it weren't for this deep, ingrained racism, that none of the really horrible events in this book would have happened. Who cares if someone is 1/18th black? And of course that's a very modern perspective. But look at the treatment of all the black or part-black characters of this book. Called "niggers" throughout the book and described at one point with completely offensive monkey analogies. I mean, come on. It's hard to feel sorry for any of these people if you're happy the South lost. Except Charles Bon, who I totally feel sorry for.

Here's a quote that strikes me as important in the context of the narrative structure of the book:

Quote: "That is the substance of remembering--sense, sight, smell: the muscles with which we see and hear and feel--not mind, not thought: there is no such thing as memory: the brain recalls just what the muscles grope for: no more, no less: and its resultant sum is usually incorrect and false and worthy only of the name of dream." (p. 178)

And from The Sound and the Fury:

"Father and I protect women from one another from themselves our women Women are like that they dont acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for drawing it about them instinctively as you do in bed-clothing in slumber fertilizing the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose whether it ever existed or no" (p. 110)

To be perfectly honest with you, I don't really understand The French Lieutenant's Woman. I like the writing; I think the postmodern stuff is interesting; the dual endings are clever. (Perhaps... too clever?) But I don't understand Sarah at all. I don't understand her motivations in either ending, especially the first ending. I was totally confused by her.

I mean, she runs away from him but she loves him? Or she doesn't love him? And was she in love with him from the beginning or just manipulating him? "Wha' happened?"

I waited too long to write about this book and now have nothing else to say. I don't even remember when I finished it or a single other thing about it. Fortunately for me, nobody reads this page anyway!

Quote: "I cannot imagine what Bosch-like picture of Ware Commons Mrs. Poulteney had built up over the years; what satanic orgies she divined behind every tree, what French abominations under ever leaf. But I think we may safely say that it had become the objective correlative of all that went on in her own subconscious." (p. 78)

After having finished the book and thought about the argument against it, I would still call The Grapes of Wrath my front runner for Great American Novel. I consider the themes (of exclusion, of discrimination, of marginalization, of exploitation) to be so central to the American experience that it encompasses every division in America, from slaves vs. slave-owners to Muslims vs. Christians. It really spoke to me as a story that's as relevant to America as any other ever written.

One argument against Grapes is that the heroes are too good and the villains too bad; no shades of gray. As for the first point, I don't consider the good people overly saintly at all. They are as much belligerent, bratty, princessy, stubborn, drunken, cruel and lazy as they are strong, brave, noble. determined and all that. They struck me as realistic characters. And as for the villains being too evil, that struck me as realistic too. Little cogs in the wheel (such as the farm owner who felt bad about cutting wages or the store clerk who bought the Joads milk or the local kid who drives the corporate tractor) are shown to be, ultimately, realists. They don't see any alternatives because the system doesn't provide them with any.

And the system isn't unrealistic: the system existed. This story is based on something that happened in American history. These migrant people were driven from their homes in this manner, and forced to live these transient and essentially hopeless lives.

And unlike some, I don't fault Steinbeck for being too didactic. For the most part he presents the problem-- the problem of the farmers, of the migrants, of supply-and-demand, and then allows the reader to draw her own conclusions. The only part that struck me as a little much was Tom's speech: "I'll be ever'where--wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there..." Fortunately it's a short speech, but it's still a groaner.

I haven't read some of the other contenders for Great American Novel, so I can't say definitively that this is my pick. But I think the qualifications are met: a universal theme, a compelling story, and a uniquely American point of view.

Quote: "'Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?'

'No,' she said quickly. 'No, I ain't. You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much livin' too many lives. Up ahead a thousand lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one. If I go ahead on all of 'em, it's too much. You got to live ahead 'cause you're so young, but— it's jus' the road goin' by for me. An' it's jus' how soon they gonna wanta eat some more pork bones.'"

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, Wright makes a very interesting choice in telling his story. He doesn't present a black man who is a sympathetic victim (in fact, his actions are chilling), yet his argument--that Bigger is in fact a victim of a greater, systemic oppression--is persuasive. The plot is romanticized in the sense that a character like Max (or especially Jan) would never exist. Max's instinctive understanding of Bigger's motives is beyond the realm of plausibility. But it's good writing on another front, because we believe that a character like Bigger could exist. He is the guilty conscience of the white race; as such, I believe in him as a character.

I guess I don't much care for books that are overly didactic-- who does, really? I was fine with the message (well, minus the constant "blind" symbolism-- there was also a lot of color symbolism, but I thought it was a lot more clever and varied than the ubiquitous references to blindness) until the end of the novel, when Wright stopped letting things speak for themselves and turned the book into a series of long monologues that might have well been labeled HERE IS THE THESIS OF THIS BOOK. But the thesis of the book, the idea itself, is fascinating and worth thinking about. So once again I'm glad I read this book and have this perspective to consider, but I can't say that I "enjoyed" the book, really. Or that I would read it again.

Quote: "[I]n our blindness we have so contrived and ordered the lives of men that the moths in their hearts flutter toward ghoulish and incomprehensible flames. " (p. 367)

A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor. It is a wonderful collection, just wonderful. Each story is bleak, but it seems that each one also has a moment of salvation. (Not redemption, particularly, and certainly not a happy resolution. They are complex and subtle, compelling stories.

I originally misunderstood my reading list and thought that it was just the title story that was on the list. I read that story and thought, okay, it's good, but why would it be on the list? Not only is it the whole collection on the list (which makes perfect sense), it turns out that the title story was one of my least favorites. I think my favorites are "The Artificial Nigger" and "Good Country People," because I found so much in both of them. Heartbreak and salvation. Never superficiality.

Quote: " He didn't remember the Spanish-American War in which he had lost a son; he didn't even remember the son. He didn't have any use for history because he never expected to meet it again. To his mind, history was connected with processions and life with parades, and he liked parades." (p. 155, "A Late Encounter With The Enemy")

Heart of Darkness sure does have some beautiful prose. Vivid, metaphorical and thematic. But it covers a topic that I don't particularly enjoy reading about in fiction. I studied imperialism very intensely in college, one of the best classes I ever had, and the topic interests me. Why then do I dislike books like this one, and A Passage to India? Who knows, maybe I'd even dislike Things Fall Apart if I re-read it...

Actually I can explain why I didn't like Heart of Darkness on much more specific terms. First of all, Kurtz means nothing to me. I don't even really get what happens to him, or why the hell the narrator cares so much about his fate. I completely failed to be interested, and everything interesting in the story is completely abandoned when Kurtz comes along. I was left feeling very so what? about the whole thing.

Maybe if it was an interesting imperialism story. But to me it was largely boring, despite the narrator's ambiguity in his attitude towards the natives (which was for my money the only interesting thread in the whole story, especially since it seems to have reflected Conrad's own ambivalence about "civilization" and imperialism and the displacement of native peoples).

I didn't have to read anything about the actual killing of elephants in the ivory trade, for which I am profoundly grateful. But the transition from inside the Congo to outside the Congo is annoyingly abrupt. I mean, half the story is missing! How did he get out again? How did that go? What was his mission in going there? What were the ulterior motives as regards to Kurtz? And WHO CARES about Kurtz? Ugh. Bored now.

The narrative structure also is terribly distracting. The majority of the text is inside quotes, supposedly being narrated by the guy who went to the Congo. But most of the language is much to florid to believably come out of somebody's mouth. "I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night." That drives me crazy. You can do a prologue and epilogue without resorting to putting an entire book in quotes.

Did I mention some of the language is quite beautiful?

Quote: " The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there--there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their not being inhuman.,. They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar." (p. 28)

How the hell to sum up Ulysses? (There's a great review up at Amazon; right now it's the second one down on the page, called "sometimes infuriating but well worth the struggle." I could just cut and paste it if it wasn't plagiarism, because that person says it far better than I, and I completely agree.) (Sorry for the digression but I just found that review as I was looking for the book page to make the link.)

First of all, I am proud of myself for making it through, and happy that I read it. I was right: unless you read this book and make an effort to understand it, you can't dismiss it. I may not have loved it, I may not have fully understood it, but I will never dismiss it. It may be overrated, and it's absolutely difficult, but it's a masterpiece nonetheless.

I guess the crux of it is that I enjoyed thinking about Ulysses more than I enjoyed reading it. I developed this theory involving the four elements (Molly is water, which is completely borne out by "Ithaca" and "Penelope," I'm convinced) and another theory about how Bloom = Stephen more than Bloom/Stephen = father/son. This is a book that appeals to the intellectual, paper-writing section of my brain, which wants to write a master's thesis on Ulysses. (My god, that would be fun.)

Things I admire about the book: its breadth and depth. Its surrealism. Its poetry. The character of Molly Bloom and the way she's written: so female, so flawed, so real. The way she looms over the rest of the book. I also like how each chapter is like a book unto itself. Some of them I really enjoyed, others were torture to get through. But Joyce never got complacent in writing this book. He pushed every possible boundary. He had the courage of his artistic conviction.

And that's something to admire, even if you aren’t quite moved by it.

Quote: "Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance." (p. N/A) (This is a placeholder quote since I left my book at home. It is from Ulysses, though.)

I still haven't written about A Room With A View, and now I've read yet another E.M. Forster novel, Where Angels Fear To Tread. I think I'll just write about them both!

Angels is his first, and Room is his second novel. Certainly both of them seem slimmer and slighter than his later works (notwithstanding the fact that I hate, hate, hate A Passage to India.) Interestingly, they are both set largely in Italy, with an emphasis on the beauty of violets and the Baedecker travel guide (which he portrays as mostly charming in one book and mostly shallow in the other). But Room is more comic, poking fun at English middle-class tourists and their appropriation of Italy's charms. Angels has a sense of that too, but it's far more dark.

To me, Angels feels like the more complex work. Many of the characters are ambiguous-- Gino, Philip, Caroline, Lilia-- and the reader's opinion of them shifts as the plot progresses. The resolution is not neat or tidy. There is tragedy. The narrative structure is unorthodox. Whereas Room is more lighthearted and happy, or at least that's the way I remember it. Maybe it's the old "happy books can't be great" adage. I'm not sure. But it would be interesting to look through the whole list of great books and determine how many of them feature tragic death.

In the end, both books were quick reads that I enjoyed. I don't know if I would point to them as great literature; then again, I don't even remember Howard's End which is supposed to be considerably more advanced. The one I remember the most clearly, acknowledged to be his most mature work, is A Passage to India. See above re: hate, hate, hate.

Room quote: " There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst… It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business, sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas! the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war—a radiant crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over the surface, having the most delightful meetings with other men, happy, not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal Woman, and go there as her transitory self." (p. 68)

Angels quote: " Mrs. Herriton did not proceed. She was not one to detect the hidden charms of Baedecker. some of the information seemed to her unnecessary, all of it was dull. Whereas Philip could never read 'The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset' without a catching of the heart." (p. 11)

O Pioneers! contains one romantic love story and one unromantic love story, both of which are utterly overshadowed by the character of Alexandra and her unique relationship with the land she owns and loves. (Does that sounds like a dust jacket blurb or what?) The reason I write it out all stilted like that is because I don't really remember this book very well. It's been a while!

I enjoyed reading it, but not as much as some of her other novels, especially Death Comes for the Archbishop. I did care about Emil and Marie, and I rooted for Alexandra, but I think when it comes to Cather, I'm just getting a little tired of reading about pioneers. (I guess if you felt the same way, you'd know better than to pick up this particular book. Oh Pioneers. [hand gesture])

Quote: "Suppose I do will my land to their children, what difference will that make? The land belongs to the future, Carl; that's the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk's plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it--for a little while. " (p. 98)

First let me say: this book is very good. The payoff is subtle, heart wrenching, totally earned, truly well-done. The marvelous subtlety of Ishiguro's prose becomes clear to the reader only at the end of the book. The character portrait of Stevens -- whose first name I don't think is ever revealed -- is close to perfect. And here is another author who, like Nabakov, can reveal so much about his narrator so gracefully between the lines.

But the book had a flaw for me, which was that it focused more on the disconnection between the main characters, rather than their connection. That is to say, I bought Stevens and his feelings 100%. I didn't buy Miss Kenton; I didn't see any reason for her to feel the way she did. Although her actions were perfectly comprehensible in this context, I didn't see that Stevens ever revealed enough about himself or allowed himself to be friendly enough to engender such emotion in her.

I can see how in a movie, chemistry between the actors might bring out helpful nuances. It's just that there weren't enough of those nuances in the book to suit me; moments of connection were alluded to, and moments of disconnection were explored. I can see why Stevens wouldn't dwell on them, but I wished there had been a little more. I also suspect that maybe I need to read this once more to pick up more of the nuances...

Quote: "I do not mind confessing today -- and I see nothing to be ashamed of in this -- that I did at times gain a sort of incidental enjoyment from these stories. I did not perhaps acknowledge it to myself at the time, but as I say, what shame is there in it? Why should one not enjoy in a lighthearted sort of way stories of ladies and gentlemen who fall in love and express their feelings for each other, often in the most elegant phrases?" (p. 168)

I once said that I thought reading Langston Hughes's "Montage of a Dream Deferred" over and over would automatically make me a better poet. I had the exact same feeling after reading To The Lighthouse; that re-reading it would make me--if not a better poet, at least closer to understanding what it means to be an artist.

This is really an extraordinary book that I find it impossible to adequately describe. It's a bit difficult to get into, because the way it is written is from the overlapping perspectives of the characters (at least parts one and three are written like that). Part two is a meditation on the passage of time, and is written from the perspective almost of the house itself.

So I wouldn't call it an "easy" read, but it is just so masterfully done. The recurrence of small details--for instance of the "garden of antelopes" that Cam idly thinks about in part three--makes the text richer and richer every time you come back to it. (I was flipping through all the dog-eared pages in search of a quote, and I kept finding little touches like this. Foreshadowing and symbols.)

I deeply loved this book. If you haven't read it yet, put it at the top of your list. It's worth it.

Quote: "For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of--to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others." (p. 62)

Hemingway's prose doesn't really do it for me-- hardly surprising, when you consider how much I love Henry James. (Which is not to say that I only like incredibly complex prose, but they are sort of stylistic opposites.)

The love story is compelling, in spite of the fact that Henry and Catherine don't quite exist as characters outside of their love relationship, or their roles as "nurse" and "soldier." They are not characters so much as symbols, I think. But my favorite part of the book was the love story, especially the description of their life together at the end of the book. "I should think sometimes you would want to see other people besides me." "Do you want to see other people?" "No." "Neither do I." Love certainly does feel like that sometimes: insular.

Here's a confession I have to make. I was checking out the book jacket which says that Hemingway's "description of the German attack on Caporetto-- of lines of tired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized-- is one of the greatest moments of literary history." I can't say that I quite agree with this melodramatic claim of greatness; I waited for this great moment in literary history the entire time I was reading the book, and missed it completely! Where was it? I don't remember a German attack at all, and I don't remember any particularly brilliant description of the lines of troops either. I think I know what they're talking about (the scene that culminates when the officers are pulled aside and shot) but all of those qualities (hungry, weary, demoralized) apply mainly to Henry and his companions. Through them you can infer the feelings of the rest of the troops, but come on now! If it was really one of the greatest moments of literary history, you'd think it would be a little more obvious.

To sum up: still not a Hemingway fan, but the book held my interest. I would say (not having read any of his other books yet) that it's not my bag, baby, but I completely understand if its yours.

Quote: "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." (p. 249)

This novel (or novella, maybe) is about a woman who comes into her own-- or at least is awakened to her own emotional reality-- and decides to live life on her own terms, not the terms of society or of her husband. There is a love story, but it is incidental, and doesn't go the way that most of these stories go. (I expected a House of Mirth type of resolution, but that wasn't where it went, and I was glad of that. I don't consider this book a tragedy.)

It's more of a character study, really, but it was written by a woman about a woman, and as a woman reading it (especially being the same age as Edna in the book) I found that it resonated with me. Even today, there are so many subtle ways in which we as women live our lives on the terms of men. Or maybe I should speak only for myself; I know a lot of women who don't do this at all. Not to get all "rah rah vagina" on you, but sublimating the self is shockingly easy to do, and it's dangerous not to acknowledge that.

Anyway, sorry for the sidebar. I found the story to be empowering and affecting, and I liked it. (Peeking at Amazon, I see that this novel caused a scandal when it first came out. I'm not surprised; it is more frank about sexuality than novels of this time generally were, and I'm sure the "rah rah vagina" stuff was countercultural in 1899.)

Quote: " The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the piano sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier's spinal column... She waited for the material pictures which she thought would gather and blaze before her imagination. She waited in vain. She saw no pictures of solitude, of hope, of longing, or of despair. But the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her.." (p. 28)

A profound book. Very philosophical and thought-provoking without being inaccessible. Just the "unbearable lightness" idea alone causes you to look at life in a new way. I mean that literally: I have a new view on life as a result of reading this book. (Warning: the new view on life is somewhat depressing.) Looking over my possible quote selections, I found at least a half dozen that floored me when I read them. There's no other conclusion possible: You must read this book for yourself.

That being said, Lightness works better as food for thought than it does as an actual novel. I found the plot (by which I mean the author) sexist (especially his detailed philosophical justifications for Tomas's "I just can't help it" sexual escapades) and I thought the characters were a little ineffable and vaguely annoying. But it's worth reading anyway-- truly.

Quote: " They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's live. Anna could have chosen another way to take her life. But the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress." (p. 52)

Fantastic. After reading this I am prepared to say, in a blanket sort of manner, that I love Vonnegut and want to read everything in his oeuvre. He is hilarious, inventive, inimitable, blah blah blah. You all have probably read a lot more Vonnegut than I have, and so you know what I'm talking about. If not, race right out and pick up this book, or Slaughterhouse-Five or whatever. Anything, probably.

I love reading his books because he is so imaginative-- his plots are totally unpredictable, his style is accessible, and his sardonic view of humanity is simultaneously funny and profound. With this book specifically, I loved the chapter titles (just reading through them was entertaining enough) and the ending was just perfect. Struck exactly the right note, and when I put the book down I was grinning at his audacity.

Quote: "Frank Hoenikker wants to see me right away."
"Take your time. Relax. He's a moron."
"He said it was important."
"How does he know what's important? I could carve a better man out of a banana." (p. 162)

I'm not sure which list this book is on; either Gay Novels or Novels by Women. But I'm starting to be a little suspicious of a list that would include this book. Not because it isn't fun to read-- it is. But it is fun in a Ya-Ya Sisterhood type of way, in that it is not actually, technically speaking, a "good" book. It's very slight, very breezy, very airplane book. (I might just be saying this because I read it on an airplane, but then again I read Cat's Cradle on an airplane too, and there's no comparison.)

It's an entertaining story, with half-decent characterization. (Still, Ya-Ya did many of its characters better. The characters were more annoying, but they were clearer, more distinct, had more personality.) Anyway, all that aside, I did truly enjoy reading it, and I bet it made a good movie. I just don't think it belongs on a list of great and important literature-- unless there's something I'm missing.

Quote: " But what about size? she wondered. She never heard Ed mention size before. It was the other thing's size they were so concerned about, so she guessed it didn't matter all that much. All that mattered in this world was the fact that you had balls. Then all at once, the simple and pure truth of that conclusion hit her... She suddenly knew what Edison must have felt like when he discovered electricity. Of course! That was it... having balls was the single most important thing in the world." (p. 476)

I was surprised at how emotionally invested I became in the story about the funny-named bunnies. I mean, I'm sure it can be read allegorically, and has been read that way, and resonated for me partially because of its rich texture, but I was consciously in it for the adventure story and for the bunny characters (especially Hazel and Strawberry) that I came to love. (I wish there had been better girl bunny characters, but I find it difficult to get riled up about the portrayal of women in a book where women=girl bunnies.)

In seeing what I wrote about Fried Green Tomatoes, now I am wondering why I feel that Watership is relevant in a way that Tomatoes is not. I think it was more influential, for one thing. I think it hints at a deeper allegorical meaning. I think the characters, although rabbits, are more vivid. I think it's less surface and more substance. I enjoyed reading both of them, but Watership is the one that I would want to re-read, because I think I would get more out of it. I think there's more there there. (Thanks, Gertrude.)

(P.S. I also noticed a character named "Butterbur" and how Bigwig got called "Pigvig" and I wondered if J.K. Rowling borrowed the names, or if maybe I was stretching it.)

Quote: " This was their way of honoring the dead. The story over, the demands of their own hard, rough lives began to re-assert themselves in their hearts, in their nerves, their blood and appetites. Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope." (p. 174)

I picked up a $2 copy of The Stranger in a used bookstore, not knowing what to expect. It is a tight little psychological novel from the 40's, about a man who lives in Algiers. There's a definite and sensational plot, but as written it is secondary to the narrator's internal experiences. The writing is taut and engaging immediately. (One thing I noticed: the first two paragraphs are in the present tense to suck you right in, and the remainder of the book is in past tense.)

Something about the writing just gets you. You know very little about the protagonist, but he's a puzzle that you, the reader, are interested in solving. The mechanics of the writing interested me, I kept wondering why I was so involved with someone who was sketched with such a broad brush. And who, in some ways, lacks emotion.

Of course the point isn't that he lacks emotion, but that he's universal, or at least by the end of the book has embraced the spark of his own universality. The best part of the book by far is the end, the meditation on death that is the culmination of the psychological exploration that Camus seems to find so interesting.

Deceptively slight, a quick read, leaves you thinking. Worth checking out.

Quote: "Soon after this, as the streetcars became fewer and the sky showed velvety black above the trees and lamps, the street grew emptier, almost imperceptibly, until a time came when there was nobody to be seen and a cat, the first of the evening, crossed, unhurrying, the deserted street." (p. 29)

I am ashamed to admit that as much as I love Edith Wharton, I've never gotten all the way through The House of Mirth before. The thing is, there's no mirth in this particular house. It's a very depressing story, and as you come to understand Lily Bart, the more depressing it gets; and you hate Selden for being such a coward, and you even start hate Lily a little for being so damned idealistic (the prototype Newland Archer; I would love to write a paper comparing those two characters).

(While I'm on the subject, the commentary on this book mentioned that The House of Mirth was written as a scathing criticism of society at a time when Wharton was very bitter -- and indeed, it reads very much like that. Then The Age of Innocence came along in which Wharton was more forgiving, while still exploring the same themes. It was a good insight, and maybe that's why I find Innocence easier to read [and re-read, and re-read...] Innocence is bittersweet, but Mirth is just bitter. Not in a bad way, in a harder-to-put-myself-through way.)

So where was I? Oh, yes. Of course when I got to the ending of the book, I wept and wept. It's beautifully done, the whole thing, and although the commentator would have you believe that Selden is "a victim of the plot requirements" (which undermines the ring of truth that Wharton gives to Selden's whole character), he nails it on the head when he calls Lily "morally extravagant," "the only lady in society," and "a rose in an unweeded garden that only dully senses what a rose is."

Anyway, The House of Mirth. Edith Wharton. Lily Bart. Thumbs way up.

Quote: "Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as the sea-anemone town from the rock. She had been fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose leaf and paint the humming-bird's breast?" (p. 311)

I went into this book with absolutely no expectations. I was looking for something to read at work, and my only requirements were that it be on one of my booklists, and that it be on Project Gutenberg so I could print it out and read it. I'd never so much as heard of this book before. My impression was that, although it was written and set in the 19th century, it has a very contemporary feel to it. Very modern, very meta. There is a lot of humor in it, and the narrator is constantly breaking in to give these little lectures on various social and moral topics, which stop the action but are frequently very interesting. My only issue with the story was that the ending was rather anticlimactic, in terms of the destiny of the protagonist. (She said, vaguely.)

After I finished the book, I found that it was a semi-autobiographical social satire, very controversial and not published until the author's death. Someone else commented that he was a 20th century writer born in the 19th century, and I would agree with that. I can definitely see what a stir this would have caused, as it challenged a lot of the accepted notions of Victorian morality. But overall, I liked it even before I had done a little reading about the social significance of it.

Quote: "I believe, that if the truth were known, it would be found that even the valiant St Michael himself tried hard to shirk his famous combat with the dragon; he pretended not to see all sorts of misconduct on the dragon's part; shut his eyes to the eating up of I do not know how many hundreds of men, women and children whom he had promised to protect; allowed himself to be publicly insulted a dozen times over without resenting it; and in the end when even an angel could stand it no longer he shilly-shallied and temporised an unconscionable time before he would fix the day and hour for the encounter." (N/A)

Another winner! We're three for three. I love when this reading project actually results in some great reading and not torture. This was one of those books that I couldn't put down and, let's be honest, how often does that happen in the world of the classics? Even the ones that I really love, I sometimes have to struggle through.

This book is interesting in how cinematic it is (no, I've never seen the movie). The narration stays on the surface, in terms of not allowing us into the minds of the characters. The dialogue and descriptions are wonderful, though. (Some of the best dialogue comes at the end, and I can't quote it because I don't want to give away the mystery! Instead I quoted my favorite description in the book. "A fat pink star" just gave me such a thrill. Perfect image.)

I loved the San Francisco feel of the book (in fact, the first body is "discovered" about two blocks from where I currently work), which is why it occurred to me I should read it before I move away or whatever. (Not that I have any current moving away plans, it was just a thought.) Of course Sam Spade is one of the great characters of literature. The pleasure of the book is just waiting to see what Spade will say or do next. And also, he's kind of a rake. And chicks dig that.

Quote: "Spade went in. A fat man came to meet him. The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown... "Ah, Mr. Spade," he said with enthusiasm and held out a hand like a fat pink star." (108)

I think this is my second Toni Morrison book (not for the list specifically, but I read The Bluest Eye a few years back) and wow, it is heartbreaking and beautiful. It won a Pulitzer Prize, right? Yeah, of course it did. It's not hopeless, which is something that I love about it. There's so much beauty in the story, in spite of the attendant tragedy. And the characters are complex. Milkman, Guitar, Pilate. Macon, Hagar. Nobody's good, nobody's evil. They're all just dealing with their own histories and problems.

I should really get in the habit of writing this stuff down as soon as I finish the book, because then I forget everything. I'm a person who needs to re-read in order to truly absorb anything. I am a big re-reader. Anyway. What can I say? It's a transcendent book that is very thought provoking (so says this white girl) in its discussions of the African-American experience, and I recommend it entirely.

Quote: "Look. It's the condition our condition is in. Everybody wants the life of a black man. Everybody. White men want us dead or quiet-which is the same thing as dead. White women, same thing. They want us, you know, 'universal,' human, no 'race consciousness.; Tame, except in bed. They like a little racial loincloth in the bed... And Black women, they want your whole self. Love, they call it, and understanding. 'Why don't you understand me?' What they mean is, Don't love anything on earth except me." (222)

No secret that I loved this book. It made me laugh out loud. It's not the tour de force that Lolita is, but it sure as hell is funny. It's an aggressively banal poem ("We have been married forty years... How many more / free calendars shall grace the kitchen door?") that is "annotated" by a totally unreliable narrator with the biggest ego in the world, who believes himself to be the deposed king of an imaginary kingdom and reads all these ludicrous things into the poem. It's ridiculous, but very clever and a great read.

Quote: "My Foreword has been, I trust, not too skimpy. Other notes, arranged in a running commentary, will certainly satisfy the most voracious reader. Although those notes, in conformity with custom, come after the poem, the reader is advised to consult them first and then study the poem with their help, rereading them of course as he goes through its text, and perhaps, after having done with the poem, consulting them a third time so as to complete the picture." (18)