Reading Notes: Swann's Way, Part III

In the final section of Swann's Way, titled "Place Names: The Name," we're thrust back into our original narrator's voice as he ruminates on the power of names, particularly their ability to trigger a memory or emotional episode from one's past. After a fair amount of lengthy prose on this phenomenon itself, he finally gets to the main point: the narrator's relationship with Swann's daughter Gilberte, of which he had spoken more briefly towards the end of Part I.

In some sense, this is where the prior two seemingly disconnected parts to the novel finally do connect. The narrator is in Paris as a child/youth [I'm a little unclear about the exact age] and while out in the Champs-Elysees he hears the name 'Gilberte,' bringing to mind the girl he met back at Combray who made an "indecent gesture" towards him. [One: I don't know what that gesture actually was. Two: See how he connects the name recollection to memory here with this personal experience; point taken.] The girl connected to the name here in Paris is, in fact, the same Gilberte, and the narrator's intrigue is quickly rekindled and strengthened, especially as he becomes a frequent playmate of Gilberte.

The intrigue quickly turns to infatuation with habits and behaviors mimicking the ones we just read about Swann; the narrator finds that Gilberte occupies his thoughts, even outside of their time together and the experiences they share. He begins to judge his own life through a lens that she colors. His governess suddenly seems less sophisticated than Gilberte's; strangers with whom she interacts suddenly have more appeal, strictly by the fact that they earned Gilberte's attention. Further, M. Swann has lost all identity to the narrator as his parents' friend, the man who came to dinner at Combray and prevented his mother from kissing him goodnight. Now, he is "Gilberte's father," and an individual whose attention the narrator desperately seeks for validation, gaining pleasure at the idea that he may occupy any place in the Swanns' thoughts.

This infatuation is called love by the narrator, juxtaposed alongside Swann's own experiences chronicled in Part II, though identified as mere innocence since he, the narrator, was only a child. It becomes clear as I read this section that Proust always intended to carry the story further, using frequent parenthetical side comments to indicate something that will be noted or seen in the future. In a way, this consideration helps make sense of the novel's disjointedness; presumably this story was always meant to be an anthology, stretched out into segments that hop back and forth in time, with a mere single volume entirely unable to tell the full story. This becomes even more apparent with the story's big twist that **SPOILER ALERT** despite Swann's insistence at the end of Part II that he is, in fact, out of love with Odette, it is she who is Gilberte's mother and Swann's wife! And more interestingly, it is simply stated as fact, without any clue as to what led here. I have to say "well done" to Proust for burying the lead; I'm only discouraged that there are six more volumes to read that may or may not, at some point, finally reveal the full story!

After dropping that bomb, Proust concludes Swann's Way with present-day reflection by the narrator as he observes the Paris of the present, finding it void of the elegance he remembers from his past. But ultimately, how accurate are these memories and recollections?

"The reality I had known no longer existed.... The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment [emphasis mine]; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years."

Concluding with the idea that reminisces are not realities, that we hold our memories to a higher esteem where they take on a revered status, Proust reflects that perhaps it was never the "thing" in the first place; there's no sanctity in the objects or experiences to which we attribute such strong emotional connection, but rather it's us - our own personal moment of development, realization, experience, etc. - that creates the moment of inspiration and allows these outside "things" to hold such magic.

"But when a belief disappears, there survives it - more and more vigorous so as to mask the absence of the power we have lost to give reality to new things - a fetishistic attachment to the old things which our belief once animated, as if it were in them and not in us that the divine resided and as if our present lack of belief had a contingent cause, the death of the Gods."

And that, my friends, is my completion of Swann's Way. And having finally checked off such a daunting title that has been on my list for fifteen whole years - more of a project, really - I can say with complete confidence and acceptance that I will most likely not be reading on further into In Search of Lost Time. Sorry, Proust.

Reading Notes: Swann's Way, Part II

Part 2 of Swann's Way is a lengthy, 200-page section titled "Swann in Love," and it's drastically different than the book's first part. It chronicles a period of Swann's history when he was (yep, you guessed it) in love, which was a narrative briefly alluded to by our narrator in Part 1 (so brief, in fact, that I had not even remembered it). The object of Swann's affections is a woman named Odette who is described as rather unremarkable, not the most intelligent, and not at all Swann's usual type. Basically, she's a 19th-century basic bitch.

Swann meets Odette through this social circle led by M. and Mme. Verdurin. Basically, they seem to be a group of semi-social outcasts that have created their own circle of friends just to judge those that have judged them. It's an eclectic set of personalities with the most comedic member, I think, being Dr. Cottard, a man who so humorously lacks social awareness that he never forms a true opinion and always responds with an ironic smile as his safety net - if his attitude doesn't match the socially accepted one, well of course, he knew that all along and now he's simply making a joke about it! Socially, Swann is above all of these people and thus considered a catch for their little social set. Yes, he has managed to create a better social persona than they have, but he's just as shallow and eager to please the public as they are. He only sticks around so long because he falls for Odette, and the Verdurins are his gateway to her.

So about this relationship with Odette. It's funny because in the beginning Swann is described as quite the ladies' man. Upon meeting her at the Verdurins, he gets the impression that she is trying to woo him, though he doesn't find her particularly appealing; the only real attraction comes from the fact that he knows she likes him so much. In fact, he's often with other women right up until he meets her and the Verdurins! As time passes, though, that attraction he feels from her causes his own attraction towards her to grow, creating an interesting type of love affair. How genuine can it be considered if you only fall for the person because you know they have fallen for you? (A modern day quandary as well, I'm sure.)

As time passes, Swann's intrigue turns to infatuation, which turns to full-out obsession. We rarely hear Odette's side, just Swann's as he struggles with the passion, thrills, and insecurities of this relationship. They're definitely lovers by its most basic definition; they meet up regularly, sleep together, and carry on some sort of passionate relationship. Swann is left enamoured, holding on to tiny moments, actions, or words during the time they are not together. (That's the novel's theme playing out: the staying power of insignificant memories.)

After introducing this part's main players and building relationships with descriptive interactions, the relationship begins to fall apart as Swann continues to hear rumors of Odette's amorous past, feeding into a deep, unsettled insecurity. He begins to question everything she says and does, convincing himself that the times she is not with him are filled with deception. Both Odette and the Verdurins lose interest in Swann, most likely due a great amount to his obsessive behavior. Proust then uses pages and pages to convey Swann's internal self-deprecation. He's experiencing an obsession to the point where he doesn't know how to not think about it, creating stories and convincing himself of drama that may or may not exist, because it's easier than letting it all go - you're so used to the anguish that you don't know what to do without it.

As a reader, I'm thinking, "Ohmygod please don't let this go on forever," because it's exhausting and also pretty monotonous. And Proust, then, most likely agrees and brings Swann back into the society he has for so long neglected where it becomes clear how much he has detached himself because of Odette. This, I think, is one of the more realistic and universal points in this whole affair of Swann's. He has sacrificed all other aspects of his life for this tumultuous, insecure affair, and it's this break from Odette, as he is trying to "wean himself" from her, that illuminates that sacrifice. When he once again hears the phrase from the piano sonata that came to define his early passion for Odette, he realizes that passion no longer exists; it's maintained only by his memory.

So like the dunking of the madeleine and the view of the church steeples in Part 1, this musical phrase conjures more than just reminisces; it invokes overwhelming feeling linked to a particular time and place. And in this instance, it's the realization that this emotion no longer exists that helps Swann break with Odette for good.

And before Swann had time to understand, and say to himself: "It's the litte phrase from the sonata by Vinteuil; don't listen!" all his memories of the time when Odette was in love with him, which he had managed until now to keep out of sight in the deepest part of himself, deceived by this sudden beam of light from the time of love which they believed had returned, had awoken and flown swiftly back up to sing madly to him, with no pity for his present misfortune, the forgotten refrains of happiness.

The drastic difference of this section from the previous one comes from the narration. It's told in such a third-person omniscient voice that we totally forget that it's actually the voice of "Marcel," our Part 1 narrator. In fact, I don't think he uses the word 'I' until over 100 pages into this section! We very quickly forget that this whole story about Swann and Odette is, in fact, just a retelling. We're reminded that everything we're reading took place in the past, before the narrator's time, and it must have just been retold to him, perhaps by his grandfather who has been mentioned as a friend of Swann's. I was happy to see, as I predicted, that the story would end up focusing more on Swann (since his name is in the book's title and all), but this total disconnect of narrative voice has left me wondering how it all connects. What's the point in sharing this tumultuous romance of Swann's past and nearly losing track of our narrator? Perhaps Part 3 will tell...

Fiction | Taming the Wild

...Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.

My library book club just finished Willa Cather's O Pioneers!, a selection I gladly picked up since this is my summer of reading classics and heftier titles. Despite its short length, I had zero idea what this 1913 staple of American literature was actually about, beyond what you could garner from the title.

The story centers around Alexandra Bergson and family, pioneers on the Nebraska prairie in the late 1800s. John Bergson, the patriarch passes away early on, leaving the farm in the hands of his daughter Alexandra in what would have been a hugely uncommon move at the time. (A woman in charge? Heavens!) Alexandra is the eldest of four. The two middle brothers, Lou and Oscar, work the farm but are generally more lazy, self-serving, and looking for a quick buck. They lack Alexandra's deep connection with the land itself, which is most likely why John didn't leave them in charge. They are also constantly concerned with how they appear to others and frequently question Alexandra's progressive decisions; they prefer to fall in line rather than stand out. The youngest Bergson, a son named Emil, is only five when the story begins and develops into a more sensitive, adventurous young man. He's somewhat pampered by Alexandra, because she sees how different his nature is from his older brothers, and he's the only one in the family who attends university. As a result, he's not always held in the highest regard by Lou and Oscar who are probably just jealous. Strangely, the family's actual (unnamed) matriarch is the least present character in the novel. She's described as a good housewife but misses life in the old country, and her life seems one of stoic adaptation.

The communities are small and fairly new, land that has yet to be tamed by its human settlers. The Bergsons represent the thousands of families that packed up and headed west because of the free land promised through the Homestead Act, the act of government that officially opened up the western frontier (reminder: lands taken from the American Indians) to settlers. These are people that are at the beck and call of nature; success or failure is almost entirely out of their hands as an unforeseen drought or late freeze can be your downfall. Cather reminds of us of this power of nature constantly:

"The roads were but faint tracks in the grass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable. The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings." 

"But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. ...he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness."

There are neighbors and characters that humanize the story - Crazy Ivar, an elderly eccentric; Carl Linstrum, a neighboring young man about Alexandra's age who leaves the prairie and later returns; Marie Shabata, a vivacious young woman, the town beauty; Frank Shabata, Marie's husband, a bitter man unhappy with how his life has settled into one requiring constant hard work. These people, alongside the Bergson family, create the novel's page-to-page stories and conflicts. And those stories are nothing new. Obligation, love, jealousy, sacrifice - these are themes that fill the pages of book after book, and feel all the more powerful when set in such a stark environment such as this one.

What makes Cather's story unique, though, is that despite filling her pages with personal and family dramas, it's never a story strictly about the human condition. Alexandra is a strong, independent woman, yes, but she is so focused on the land that she sacrifices the more personal aspects of her life. She's deeply oblivious to the human passions that are playing out right in front of her because she is so self-sacrificing. Great melodramas of the 19th century - Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Wharton and Austen - speak volumes on the universality of human nature, but I believe these are never Cather's interest nor focus. Relationships and behaviors fill the pages, but Cather's main focus is always the land.

"Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

I think O Pioneers! is very nearly a perfectly executed novel. Cather manages to convey complex conflicts and ideas through a simple, succinct story. It's one that is unique to her characters but potentially universal, representative of a specific time, place, or situation. Despite this praise, I have great dissatisfaction with the ending. In a nutshell, without sharing spoilers, I felt betrayed by the author who painted a final portrait of an Alexandra that felt very much opposite the one we had gotten to know for the previous 4/5ths of the book. It felt like the author asserting some moral or standard of the era rather than remaining true to the character she had created; it reeked of too much author voice instead of the character's (and story's) natural denouement. The ending notwithstanding, I found this a surprisingly deep and satisfying read.

Reading Notes: Swann's Way, Part I

As a 16-year-old over-achiever aiming to read all the same books as Rory Gilmore, I must've checked out Proust's Swann's Way from the library about six times without ever having actually opened it to page one. It was always just too daunting, and somehow I knew back then that it was far over my analytical ability level. When my NYC book club chose it as the long holiday selection right before I moved, I decided to buy it anyway - a new motivator to pick up this long set-aside "masterpiece."

...And so it has sat for another three-and-a-half years until my fall reading of David Copperfield inspired me to pick up some other classics for my summer break reading. Thus with 6 weeks ahead of me with ample time and freedom, I decided to finally embark on the Proust journey.

For having held a position on my "to read" shelf for so long, I have known surprisingly little about Swann's Way. My skim through translator Lydia Davis' introduction ("skim" because, wow, she gets detailed) informed me that the novel's narrator is not, in fact, this titular Swann, and whomever he is is never named (though all the internet will call him Marcel, apparently after the author, assuming this is somewhat an autobiographical voice, according to a one-lined reference in a later volume of this anthology). This, along with Davis' further discourse on Proust's run-on writing style and references to this yet-unknown-to-me famous episode with a madeleine, immediately informed me that I may be in rather over my head. Some sort of reading guide seemed necessary, and I luckily found an informal one, a seeming personal reading project and journal called 182 Days of Marcel Proust in which the blog author simply records and reflects during the reading process, about 15 pages at a time. PERFECT.

Part 1, titled "Combray," involves mostly the narrator's reflections on his childhood spent at his grandparent's house in the northern French town of Combray. It starts out as a simple memory of how he often struggled with falling asleep as a child, and then experienced that sensation when you start awake and lose track of where you are and realize you were, in fact, actually asleep, but you have to piece together your surroundings of time and place. I mean, yes, it's a very real and common phenomenon, but pretty much the entire first section of this narration reflects on this idea that stemmed from this small memory. This gives you an indication of just how Proust structures his narration. [Basically, not at all. It's a lot of meandering, stream of consciousness, one thought leads to another idea sort of thing.]

Continuing on, the narrator recalls an incident when Monsieur Swann (a neighbor and friend to his grandparents) is visiting for dinner, thus preventing the narrator's mother from kissing him goodnight, which was apparently an anxiety-inducing tragedy worth reflecting upon years later. Other memories include those with Aunt Leonie, an ailing old codger who confines herself to her bed and constantly laments her state of health, whether real or imagined. [She's just like old Mrs. Harris in the Anne of Avonlea movie.] He recalls an innocent encounter with his Uncle and a prostitute that causes such embarrassment that Uncle is never seen by Narrator again. There are pedantic acquaintances that annoy the family but introduce the Narrator to a great deal of literature and culture. And there are ordinary townsfolk, like M. Vinteuil and daughter, whose small personal dramas cause great reflection on life, love, and humanity. Oh, and Narrator also meets Swann's daughter, Gilberte, with whom he apparently is essentially obsessed. [Supposedly there's more on that later.]

As I've followed along with summaries and notes during my own reading, I was somewhat surprised to realize that I was actually following what was happening. I haven't read an observation on a detail that I couldn't recall...which is a good sign; it means I am following the narration fairly well, at least. But I still haven't felt as though I really get it, that I get what Proust is saying and why. Yes, I can follow the plot points easily, but Proust is using so many words and there's such academic intellect surrounding him; surely there must be something deeper that I am missing. I mean, he's building this story, or rather, narrative, around an individual's memories and recollections and how these affect one's view and perception of the world - something that is very personally and, well, individualistic. It's like trying to put into words a complex cognitive process that happens without awareness or consciousness.

I guess it makes sense when you consider the overarching title of Proust's 7-volume anthology (of which Swann's Way is the first): "In Search of Lost Time." The Narrator here reflects a great deal on sensory experiences (dipping the madeleine into a cup of tea, observing church steeples from a moving carriage as the sun sets) and I guess Proust's p o i n t of this all is to consider how these small, perhaps insignificant moments of "lost time" actually inspire and contribute to our personal, intellectual development and experience.

But I'm still just very taken with the minor role Monsieur Swann has actually played in this first third of the book so far. Waiting to find out when (or even if) he becomes a lead.

Fiction | A Classic Approach to Reading

I've long talked about Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge that I began back in 2015 and have been picking away at ever since.

Well guys, it's official: I finally finished the 2015 Read Harder Challenge!

My last remaining category for the challenge was "a book published before 1850," and I actually debated several options for this over the course of my participation. Originally, I had wanted to read something American from pre-1850, because I'm already familiar with (and had read) many of the infamous British authors from this era; that would be the easy-out. As time passed, though, I just increasingly felt that sticking to American works was too limiting. ZERO of the options inspired me, and I had, simultaneously, been inspired to read a Dickens classic since I'd only ever read Oliver Twist and that was back in high school. Of the date-qualified options, I chose David Copperfield and, with it being a chunkster and all, saved it for my final Read Harder Challenge project.

David Copperfield, like Dickens' other works, was originally published as a serial over the course of 19 months from 1849 to 1850. Facing its intimidating 800+ pages, I decided to plot out my reading and put myself in the mindset of its original audience; each day, I read a single part, following its original publication schedule of three chapters at a time. This was a fabulous decision, as it made the book's language and heft (daunting to my middle-grade mindset) feel much more manageable.

Largely considered an almost autobiographical work, David Copperfield follows its eponymous main character from his orphaned boyhood to adulthood, through love and loss, happiness and heartbreak, alongside a slew of characters that impact his journey.

Beyond this quick introduction, I think it impossible to outline this book in a succinct paragraph with any certitude. That's not the end goal of the story, to be able to quickly summarize for a friend an enjoyable tale you encountered. What Dickens does with David Copperfield, instead, is create an immersive world in which one character, one man, exists and comes of age. This immersion is achieved in part by its first-person narrative, told from the perspective of an older Copperfield. And it's not even told, as so common, as a reflection but more of a simple retelling with an occasional musing thrown in. Because of this, we the reader forget that we are reading events that have happened in the narrator's past; we are fully engaged in the events unfolding on the page, with the characters with which we interact.

It's a story about the world we live in, with its good and bad, without delving into the world, on a large scale, itself. Rarely do we view Copperfield's place as a citizen of a larger society; rather, his experiences are all relational. He learns of the depths of humanity from the people closest to him—the warm, gregarious Peggotty clan; the unctuous Steerforth; the foolishly optimistic Micawber; the duplicitous Uriah Heep.

On of my most telling observations on this reading experience was the contrast of perspective from that of my own. In a modern world, one in which access is available at our literal fingertips, in which we are inundated with news and opinions, it is a jolt to experience a life in which one's worldview is so strongly influenced by so few people and experiences. Consider that David Copperfield's entire sense of identity and belief was derived from what we read in these pages. It's an experience that is far more personal and intimate than that of today—smaller, perhaps, but no less significant.

Another point: this book is funny! And sentimental! And the poignancy with which Dickens describes certain experiences and emotions was incredibly surprising to me. I guess I tend to view all "classics of literature" from an intellectual frame, assuming the language is straightforward and old-fashioned, lacking expression. But this passage on Copperfield's first bout of intoxication had me laughing, and I'm sure had I not been reading "all-in," focused on the subtleties of language, I would have passed it right by.

"Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking, and trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder...

Somebody was leaning out of my bed-room window, refreshing his forehead against the cool strone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as 'Copperfield,' and saying, 'Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn't do it.' Now that somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair - only my hair, nothing else - looked drunk...

...We went downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it."

I stated in my last post that the dedication I devoted to reading David Copperfield was refreshing; I am so used to breezing through books as we breeze through everything else—news, Netflix, social media—consuming as much as possible in as little time as possible. In some regards I think we suffer from an overabundance of culture available for our consumption. When you live your life alongside the "so many books, so little time" mentality, it becomes habit to speed through one thing to move onto the other. Reading this classic reminded me that books like this were written to be savored, slowly consumed and absorbed, and perhaps that is a mentality I should adopt more often.

Book vs Movie: I Capture the Castle

True story: when I was a teen, I was OBSESSED with the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Like, unhealthily obsessed. And in seasons 4 and 5, my BFF Carol and I had huge crushes on Marc Blucas, the actor who played Buffy's college boyfriend. Like serious 'write fan letters, hang pictures in our lockers, hunt down his other movies, write notes about him' crushes. He was a total all-American boy beefcake. So, imagine my surprise when I'm browsing the Netflix instant library a few months ago and see his name in the credits of a BBC-produced film. I texted Carol immediately (because we still alert each other as to MB's whereabouts). And then I realized that I Capture the Castle is the book that's been sitting on my shelf in Nashville for years after my mom read it and passed it along to me.

Well, because I'm a book-before-the-movie type of person, I left I Capture the Castle and Marc Blucas patiently waiting on my Netflix queue until I headed home again and could grab my copy. I was actually excited to finally read it after all these years. My mom had recommended it to me back in my early college years or so, and the recommendation has only been reinforced since then; a fellow book club member who shares many of my reading tastes gave it the highest praises, citing it as one of her favorites.

Dodie Smith's classic is about a family living in squalor in an old English castle in the 1930s. Seventeen-year-old Cassandra guides us through the story via her journal pages. She's just on the cusp of childhood and adulthood and not quite certain where she belongs. Her older sister Rose longs for beautiful things and a rich lifestyle. Their father once wrote a great book but has been in a writing slump for years and refuses to get out of it. Stepmother Topaz is an eccentric soul, latching on to art and its creators. And little brother just tries to stay out of it. Life seems pretty mundane until two American brothers suddenly arrive  and stir things up (in a nutshell).

I think this was a case of my expectations being too high. I enjoyed this, I really did, but I just didn't see the magic that lots of people have found in the story. Cassandra was introduced as such a strong, independent character as opposed to her sister, a characterization that was reinforced throughout her journal entries. But eventually, I lost faith in her rationality. Cassandra was never as petulant as Rose, but I didn't hold them on such a different level by the end. Maturing as a result of new experiences is one thing; I think the point, by the end, was to show a stronger, more mature Cassandra, but I didn't like the path that took her there, nor felt she was the same independent girl who viewed the world with a naive fascination. And that's something I don't believe Cassandra would have lost, no matter her experiences.

After I finished the book, I finally watched the movie. Sometimes, I actually like the movie version better, as in the cases of Harriet the Spy, Atonement, and Julie & Julia. Minor plot shifts, the visualizations, or an actor's characterization can bring a new dimension to the story. But this one just didn't really add anything. I felt like I was seeing the same exact story I had just read. Maybe it was due to the fact that I wasn't totally enchanted with the story in the first place, but I probably could've skipped it. Except I got to enjoy MB on my TV screen once again. Ahhh.

Reading Anna Karenina: Part II

After a nice two-week break, I finally got back to Anna Karenina and finished it in time for our Idlewild book club discussion last week.

You know what I thought of Anna Karenina, Parts V-VIII? Mostly...BORING. Maybe it was because I already knew the characters; maybe because Tolstoy seemed to go on endless detailed rants, even more so than before; maybe because I was reading on long subway commutes and was being gently rocked to sleep anyway. But whatever the reason, I was just itching to finish.

My final thoughts on the book are pretty consistent with my original thoughts—more than consistent; those thoughts were completely reinforced!

• The level of detail that I griped about back during the first half of the book seemed to take over certain sections. Long-winded chapters about hunting trips and dinner discussions and political elections about bore me to tears. I definitely zoned out for all of these sections during those long train rides mentioned before.
• I thought the book's strongest point is that Tolstoy handles each character with such detail that they seem realistic—neither one way nor another, neither black nor white. This was particularly poignant in Tolstoy's treatment of his women characters. Anna is, at one point or another, intelligent, confident, irrational, jealous, passionate, apathetic, and ultimately her hysteria takes control and she spirals out of control, leaving you to wonder what happened to all her strong, independent characteristics.

I know that one of the notable features of Anna Karenina is that Tolstoy does address the issues of society in 19th century Russia, but as I mentioned, they bore me, so I don't have much to say on those. My favorite feature of the story, though, is how Tolstoy juxtaposes his characters and couples to create a story about relationships and how they are affected by the society in which they are built and by the individual personalities involved. The reader is constantly comparing Anna/Vronksy to Kitty/Levin because their stories are presented side-by-side.

One of the most important things to note upon finishing this book is—why is it called Anna Karenina? Sure, it's the plot line that everyone knows, the focus of any movie adaptations...but Anna's story is not the most important one in this novel. Yes, it's the most dramatic (a love affair, a fallen woman—ingredients for a headlining story), but Tolstoy spends most of his attention on Levin and his own personal awakening. The entire eighth part of the book, in fact, has moved entirely beyond Anna and Vronksy and is devoted entirely to Levin and his own struggle with reason and meaning. It leaves you wondering: What story did Tolstoy intend to write? Was Anna's only purpose to grab readers with a "dramatic" plotline? And if so, why did he name the book after her?

I never had to read this book in high school, but many other book club members did and noted how different their opinion was this time around as adults—when you understand complex relationships and recognize the grey areas. I have to wonder if I would've brushed this book aside ten years ago without thinking further about it.

Reading Anna Karenina: Part I

When I stopped by Idlewild in July to discover August's book club selection, I learned something unsettling: We were completely bypassing August and meeting again in September...and the book was Anna Karenina. I looked at it sitting there, so big and daunting, and promptly turned around and walked out of the store. I thought, "Anna Karenina?? REALLY?? This isn't 11th grade English! If I had wanted to read this, I'd have read it by now!!!!"

So I had completely decided to skip this one. Anna Karenina...HA. But then a couple weeks passed; I remembered that book club is one of my favorite extra-curricular activities, and I didn't want to miss another meeting with no excuse besides not wanting to read the book. And I discovered that the Brooklyn Public Library had the exact version (the newest translation) we were reading available as an eBook and therefore would require literally no effort to attain...so I gave in and started reading Anna Karenina.


Anna Karenina is not a difficult read, but it's not exactly a quick one, either. It's a "story told in eight parts," and I made it through four of them before my two-week digital check-out expired. But that was perfect, because I needed a break from Anna Karenina.

What do those few of you who don't know much about Anna Karenina need to know? Russia. Social rules. Love affair.

What have I learned so far?

• Tolstoy is detailed in his writing...painstakingly detailed. He's created these interesting, dynamic characters but sometimes goes into so much detail that it becomes incredibly boring. It's like he starts writing about one of them and then gets carried away and keeps going and going to the point where you're like "Ok, great, I see that Levin got a kick out of manual labor, but geez I don't need to know about every swoop of his scythe."
• The story can drag...but so can the characters. They all have some sort of "falling from grace" moment, some indication that they aren't easily pigeonholed as the certain type of person you initially took them to be. You think Levin is this socially-awkward, quiet type that you kinda feel sorry for while cheering him on, and then he gets really critical of the peasants and that just seems sorta uncalled for. Vronksy seems like the knight in shining armor type, but then you find out he's in debt and tries to off himself because he just can't deal. No one's perfect, I guess.
• On the same note, I don't particularly like any of the characters. Most of us know how the story ends, so I guess I keep reading just to see how it gets there. It is like a soap opera, but a demure, high-collared one.

Since I never had to read this in high school and thus missed the mega-analysis that English teachers force upon you, I feel like there's probably a lot I'm missing. But that's part of the reason I chose to read this with book club, because I'll get more out of it than if I chose to read it alone. (But let's be serious, that wouldn't have ever happened anyway.)

World Party: Corrida de toros...olé!

About a week before the end of the month, I realized I had not yet read a book for the World Reading Challenge! July's country was Spain, and, though I'm sure there are much better books representative of Spain by actual Spanish authors, I chose The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; I'd never read any Hemingway and the library had tons of copies immediately available. [What did I read in high school, you may ask? Apparently not the classics.]

One reason I'd never read any Hemingway is because I was intimidated by his writing. I always perceived it as difficult—full of symbolism and themes and motifs and all that crap that makes it a high school English requirement. I thought he was something like Faulkner with the rambling and incoherence. But I was quickly informed that is not the case with Hemingway. He writes in short, staccato sentences with lots of short dialogue. Apparently this is his trademark. Thanks, high school English, for teaching me about important American authors.

Another reason I'd avoided Hemingway kind of goes with my first reason; I assumed his books were all depressing and serious. Since this is the only book I've read of his up to this point, I'm not sure I've been all wrong on this assumption, but The Sun Also Rises is less dark and difficult than I'd expected. It's more Kerouac and Salinger than Faulkner in terms of writing style and character. Youths of a post-war generation aimlessly wandering the world...eating, drinking, dating, and thinking of little else. The power struggle between young men and women. These are the same youths of other high school reading classics that just seem so miserable and never admitting it, so lost on their quest to find something of meaning in the world. These characters are never particularly likable. They drink and smoke and have intellectual conversations and arguments usually over nothing, and are generally just so lonely.

The Sun Also Rises is probably most well-known for its focus on bullfighting (hence Spain). I'm trying to read into this book as I would have in high school [by reading the Sparknotes alongside to figure out what the hell someone can interpret from this and test me on]. The bullfighting, I'm certain, plays a huge symbolic role—seduction and danger that parallels character drama in the text. But frankly, that is not what I thought of as I read it. I thought, and call me stupid if you want, "They always kill the bulls in the end???" I've seen the bullfighting arenas in Valencia, Madrid, and Cordoba, but I guess I just never gave them that much thought. I didn't know they always killed them. Poor bulls.

Other than the geographical setting and focus on the bulls, I didn't feel much sense of place (of Spain) with this book, which is why I'm certain there would've been better options for this month's country of choice. I guess I'm glad to have read this so I can now actively participate in a Hemingway discussion. [Coincidentally, I just read an article about him and his Ketchum, Idaho, home in an in-flight magazine.] Can't say I'm too inspired to read any of his other works, though.

Review: The starving of the artist as a young man

Nobel Laureate Knut Hamsun's Hunger is probably one of the most famous Scandinavian novels. And when you recall that it was written in 1890, it makes it all the more remarkable. It takes on the bleakness of Dostoevsky with the spare prose of someone like Hemingway. While people were still reading the longwinded prose of Dickens, this must have come as a shock - especially since the subject matter isn't terribly reader friendly.

The nameless narrator is roaming the streets of Christiana (now Oslo). He is a writer who only occasionally gets to write for the local papers and journals. He doesn't seem to have a great relationship with any of the city's publishers: they know him, they take pity on his plight, but there's no jocularity, no friendship between them. He doesn't get assignments from them; he's the one pitching the essays he pens with a measly pencil - one of his main possessions.

Thus the narrator refuses to live or write by any one else's standards but his own. Which of course makes him live on the edge of existence: he can't pay rent and is thrown out by his kind landlady, he doesn't have money in a bank account and eats whenever he pawns one of his few belongings (first, his waistcoat). On top of this he refuses to beg, to take money that isn't earned, which makes this project even more difficult.

The narrator isn't someone that we want to sympathise with, as the introduction by Paul Auster tells us: 'Pity plays no part in Hunger. The hero suffers, but only because he has chosen to suffer. Hamsun's art is such that he rigorously prevents us from feeling any compassion for his character. From the beginning, it is made clear that the hero need not starve. Solutions exist, if not in the city, then at least in departure.' This is clear and apparent as one wades through this book; there's something obnoxious about this writer - is it his 'standards'? is it his voice? is it his eccentricities and inability to connect truly with anyone else in Christiana? - but there's something compelling about his self-created pain that makes the reader want to continue on his masochistic journey.

For no one understands him, not the prostitutes, not the shopowners (who don't understand his generosity-turned-layaway payments). Maybe his 'Freedom of the Will' - the first piece of writing he talks about - is just too 'free' for others. Though this kind of runs against some of his more insightful observations: 'The sorrowful, flutelike sound of the organ shivered in me, my nerves began to vibrate like a sounding board, and an instant later I slumped backward on the bench, whining and humming with the music. What odd things the feelings stuck to when one was hungry! I felt drawn up by the notes, dissolved in them, I began to flow out into the air, and could see very clearly what I was flowing over, high over mountains, dancing on in waves over brilliant areas . . .'

Hunger for the modern audience may not be as affected as Hamsun's own cohorts. It's hard to imagine this plight of the artist - it almost feels too romantic in its pains, in its aesthetic concept: 'Everyone fails once in a while, and they always fail precisely in the most simple problems: that doesn't mean anything, it's just chance.' The existentialism presented here doesn't resonate as intensely as that found in something like Crime and Punishment or The Stranger. But it's certainly building towards those pillars of literature.

As aforementioned, the introduction to the Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition ($15) has an introduction by Paul Auster, which can be found in his Collected Prose trade paperback original - a definite volume for the Auster fan (and one that, after reading his memoirs, you'll understand why he has such an interest and love of Hunger). Though I wonder if the Penguin edition/translation would be better...

Back to School: Greaser, Socs, and Prep School

I waited to read my last two titles for the Back to School Challenge until I went home for Christmas, because all of my old school books are there. I thought reading two books with an average reading level of about the 7th grade would take me two days max, but I didn't factor in that I am constantly busy when I'm at home. So, ever the procrastinator, I crammed in my two books my last day and a half at home and completed the Back to School Challenge with two titles I generally enjoyed the first time around: A Separate Peace and The Outsiders.

John Knowles' A Separate Peace seems to me like a somewhat more (though not much more) plot-driven Catcher in the Rye. It's supposed to be that classic coming-of-age story you read in high school. Gene is the smart kid attending Devon, a New Hampshire prep school at the beginning of World War II. He's best friends with Phineas, aka "Finny," who is pretty much the antithesis of Gene. Finny is a star athlete, outgoing, and a natural leader. He has a way of smooth-talking his way out of any situation as he casts a sort of spell over everyone he encounters. Though Gene is by no means disliked nor unathletic, he has a whole nest of insecurities when standing next to Finny...dare it be envy? During a summer session at Devon, all of Gene's pent-up emotions finally blow up during a male-bonding sort of game invented by Finny, causing an incident that leaves Finny disabled and Gene questioning his thoughts and actions.

I was hoping I would get more out of this book reading it now, almost ten years later, but I can't say I did. I completely understand the point of it all and the latent feelings that one may or may not choose to claim as real, but I can't say that I personally relate to the story. I can understand why it's a must-read in high school—it deals with a lot of issues that need to be explored, picked apart, and analyzed. Knowles does an excellent job of getting into a character's head, even when the character is not quite sure what's going on in there. The setting subtly lends to the chaos in the characters' heads; they are quickly approaching draft age, and their future is uncertain; the war presents a looming fear that Gene is (perhaps subconsciously) desperate to disrupt. Neither Finny nor Gene are willing to accept themselves and their role within their surroundings, but ultimately, Gene has to try to understand and (most importantly) make peace with his actions and their consequences. Inner- and outer- war and peace...that about sums it all up. It sure does have plenty of themes and symbols that English teachers seem to love.

The Outsiders, I read even longer ago, in the 7th grade. In reading it now, I find even less to analyze than I did when I was 12. Where A Separate Peace seemed to be written primarily for analysis, The Outsiders seemed to be written as a straight-up story, one you could absorb and retell without depriving the story of any of its subtleties. The writing isn't that great—no extraordinary use of literary techniques (probably because S.E. Hinton was a mere fifteen when she wrote this)—but it has great character development. Ponyboy Curtis is the story's narrator. He's a 14-year-old "Greaser," what he describes as one of the two types of people (the others being "Socs"). Greasers are hoodlums—they steal, smoke, and start fights. The Socs pretty much do the same thing, the only difference being that they're middle-class and have money. Therefore, Socs seem to get away with anything, while Greasers are constantly on the run and watching their backs. Ponyboy lives with his two older brothers, Darry and Sodapop, and their gang serves as a kind of extended family. He's intelligent, athletic, and, most notably, thoughtful. Ponyboy's head is always in the clouds. His loyalty to his gang is unyielding, but the fighting and hatred just start feeling kind of pointless to him. After all, Greaser or Soc, a guy's still just a person with his own thoughts and feelings. 

I wouldn't exactly suggest this one for English class analysis, but maybe that's the only way you can require a kid to read a book. And this one should definitely be necessary. While the details seem dated (it was written in 1967), the situations are not. It's thought-provoking to the audience as Ponyboy deals with a whole range of experiences and emotions. His constant internal battle between right and wrong gives him a sense of vulnerability as opposed to some of the other Greasers. He's a very real character, and we get to see all of his confusion, all of his ups and his downs, as he struggles with his environment. The Outsiders is a story I finish without needing to analyze, because the writing is so straightforward that I got everything out of it the first time around.

Ruminations: The importance of being earnest

On this Lazy Friday, I've decided to take a look at two works - residual from the Back to School challenge - that have not too much in common with one another other than they a) take Gothic literature to either the tragic or comic extremes, b) experiment with literary style, and c) have rather amusing videos that accompany them. Plus, in times of economic crises, publishing houses go back to the classics - giving them a new jacket or introduction - in order to sustain business. Vintage Classics has repackaged 19th century (aka public domain, aka without copyright) works, as has Penguin in its new gorgeous deluxe hardback editions:

I read Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights because being someone who kind of despises 80s music I wanted to understand the power ballad. The king of said genre, Jim Steinman, wrote such epics as most of the Meat Loaf music, 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', and 'It's All Coming Back to Me Now' based on this novel, apparently. The latter was written with the a scene in mind - one that actually doesn't exist in the book - where Heathcliff digs up his long lost love's body and dances with it in the moonlight. About two-thirds of that statement is right: Heathcliff digs up Catherine's coffin in the moonlight, but he doesn't dance with it (which probably would have made the scene much more fascinating; but hey, it was 1847 when Brontë wrote it, and I have a feeling that that wouldn't have been kosher with her publisher, even though the Victorians enjoyed their grave digging).

Still it's one of the most rough, vicious, and brutal novels I've read in my lifetime. Talk about people who can't let anything go. Every single character lives to destroy the next. It's a novel where characters are trying to outlive their neighbours solely for spite in order for property to remain in their family name, so that their children don't fall in love with the 'wrong' one, so that paternalism can take itself to its logical end. Which of course lends itself to a wonderful rendition from Monty Python (the Wuthering Heights bit starts about 1.04 mins in), where they capture most of what you need to know about the book, in semaphore too!:

The other book that I read recently was Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, which I had to read in high school but hadn't revisited since. At that point I was more intrigued by the evil and darkness that the novel depicted; I had just read Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and the concept of selling your soul for education (in Faustus's world) or for eternal beauty (in Dorian Gray's case) I found fascinating. However, this reading time around I focused on the humour, the absurdity, and the cleverness of wit that Wilde is absolutely and justifiably known for: The clingyness of the portrait painter Basil, the terrible acting of Dorian's female love interest Sibyl Vane, the brilliant and Gawker-style snarky one-liners of Lord Henry Wotton.

The ostentation in this book is just out of control. In high school, my friends and I - whenever we came across such unnecessary purple prose in other novels - would jokingly refer to such passages as being like 'Dorian Gray's tapestries', for there is a chapter in this book that just describes the absurd and decadent tastes that Dorian picks up after reading a vicious book, described:

'I am so sorry, Harry' [Dorian] cried, 'but it is entirely your fault. That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time was going.'

'Yes: I thought you would like it,' replied his host, rising from his chair.

'I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.'

'Ah, you have discovered that?' murmured Lord Henry. And they passed into the dining room.

That's just a wonderful quote about the 'poisons of literature'; for they show that, as Lord Henry earlier states, 'Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life'. And of course this story - sans the homoeroticism - is a perfect novel that the film industry would want to get its hands on, with all the wild colours and temptations and soul selling that encompasses this wonderful work. And below is the somewhat ridiculous trailer for the film that apparently came out in the UK and has no release date in the States, probably for good reason. It just looks like it missed the humour and focused on the 'drama'. And really, that's not decadent at all...I doubt Wilde would have approved.

Review: A Victorian soap opera

For some reason, while reading Middlemarch I felt like I was reading a pastoral version of Shakespeare's Othello - although of course something much less villainous and without a creature like Iago who stumbles on things to ruin his master and his wife's love. I say this only because both works are like watching what happens just past 'and they lived happily ever after'. Before Othello commences, there's a wedding. Not too far into George Eliot's sprawling masterpiece, there's the first of many weddings. And then we're invited to watch such marriages fall from perfection, fall from idealism, into something much more realistic, unfortunate, and amusing.

Dorothea Brooke perhaps is a proto-feminist. She doesn't necessarily want to be locked down by the typical fetters that womanhood suggests. Instead of playing house for her husband - making sure that the hired help is doing what they need to do, dressing up the salons so that everyone will comment when they come for tea - she wants to dive headfirst into her husband's work and become the muse whose inspiration will set his work apart from everyone else's and put him in the limelight. Instead of marrying James Chettam, her equal in age, she decides to marry the 'academic' Edward Casaubon who is much older, perhaps almost double her age. On their honeymoon, they bump into a cousin of Casaubon's - Will Ladislaw - a struggling artist who is intrigued by this woman.

Meanwhile Dr Tertius Lydgate has newly arrived in Middlemarch and is interested in revamping and -vitalising the medicinal practice in town. It involves a lot of volunteer work, proto-socialised healthcare (?). He decides to marry the mayor's daughter, Rosamond Vincy, who also happens to be a relative of Mr Bulstrode, a man with a shady past but also a man with money to spend. Here, between Lydgate and Rosamond, is another failing marriage as the wife wants to be bathed all the time in aristocracy, whereas Lydgate is much more interested in his work and not his personal life.

Rosamond's brother Fred also falls in love with a childhood sweetheart. But Mary Garth won't marry him unless he abandons the church and settles in a different, more suitable career. Fred also has a bit of a gambling problem that causes him to go into debt and makes him an unsuitable 'gentleman' for the Garths.

These stories create something of a soap opera, as we watch people unravel, as we hear subtle arguments, as we watch disappointments and plots against one another unfold. The only thing that's missing is the supernatural. George Eliot's style in this book is certainly to have a narrator speak as a god or a Greek chorus, from afar and with tons of sententious and axiomatic remarks, like: 'For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.' Or: 'We are angered even by the full acceptance of our humiliating confessions.'

Or: 'The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay: but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.'

It's almost as if this book is a compendium in competition with Bartlett's Quotations. That's not to say that it's not amusing or touching at times; the language and these huge brushstroke generalisations usually bog down the drama of the novel. But in that regard it makes one feel as if Eliot's narrator had precisely plotted and executed everything he/she decided to do beforehand, unlike Iago against his Othello.

Back to School: Idealism in the slums

I last read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn back in the 11th grade. I remember absolutely loving it, to the point that it immediately and has subsequently held the top position on my list of favorite books. But junior year of high school was seven years ago, and I couldn't remember exactly why I loved it so much, so it was time for a re-read. I was a bit nervous that it wouldn't hold up to my memory, but I am happy to say that it was just as good the second time around.

Betty Smith's classic is the coming-of-age story of Francie Nolan, a young girl living in Brooklyn in the pre-WWI 20th century. It's the Brooklyn you can only read about—an immigrant population, tenement housing in Williamsburg, penny-pinching, and all the stores "down the street" (such as, "Francie, run to the butcher/apothecary/grocer down the street..."). Francie possesses the perfect blend of her mother Katie's realism and her father Johnny's idealism. Katie works as a janitor in their apartment building in exchange for rent, and Johnny is a singing waiter with a bit of a drinking problem. Along with her brother Cornelius ("Neely" for short), Francie struggles to remain idealistic amongst poverty and the normal ups and downs of life.

This was the first story I ever read that really got me into a style of novel that I love; it's not so much a book with a plot, rather a portrait of a life and a time. To enjoy this kind of novel, you must love the characters, and it is easy to love the Nolans. Once I started reading, I immediately remember why I loved it so much; Francie is one of the only characters I've ever read that I immediately understand. I get her, and I get her way of thinking. She's thoughtful, in a contemplative way. She has a kind of optimistic realism about her, and she finds joy and beauty in the smallest things. Her character perfectly illustrates what it means to grow up. 

Rather than rattle on and on, I'm going to keep this review short and leave you with some of the passages that exemplify what I mean and why I love this book. Out of 31,841 ratings on Goodreads, its average rating is 4.24 out of 5. That says something. Just read it.

"Don't say that. It's not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there from the grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong."

"Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!"

"Dear God, let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be happy; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well-dressed. Let me be sincere- be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."

Back to School: The "grotesque" of Southern Gothic

My main reason for starting the Back to School Reading Challenge was to give myself an opportunity to read all of those classics from high school I remember nothing about. I haven't read Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird since the 8th grade (and I shudder to think that was 10 whole years ago), and it's very different than I remember.

To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer in 1961 and even earned Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 (yes, she is still alive!). The novel takes place in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression (1935, or so). It's the kind of setting that defines the story and all of the people in it. The story is told from the perspective of 6-year-old Scout Finch as she lives and learns about life and reality for a couple of years. It's a coming-of-age story, just using a much younger age than usual. Scout and her brother Jem (four years her senior) are the two children of a widowed defense lawyer, Atticus. The story begins with the childhood innocence of a new summer as the Finch kids and their friend Dill try to coerce Boo Radley, the town recluse, out of his house. Over the next two years, however, Scout and Jem learn more about the real world than they expected as Atticus defends a black man against a rape charge in a racially charged Southern town.

I don't know if anyone else likes to do this but when I'm reading books like this one that have such renown, I like to Wikipedia- and SparkNotes-search them so I get the full picture—the history, the context, the little-known facts. This is one of those classics that has so much behind the story that it'd seem a shame to simply read the book without Google-searching it as well.

I love Scout. It is hard to fathom that what you're reading is supposed to be the voice of a six-year-old, but I don't think the language used requires a completely realistic interpretation. Lee uses a child's voice to get her point across which is this: children aren't naive just because they don't know the way of the world yet. They notice behaviors; they notice language; they notice injustice. The unique thing about Scout (and Jem) is that they each have a mind of their own. They notice things, but instead of just accepting actions and behaviors as the "way things are," they question what they see. They ask "why?" and they form their own sets of beliefs. 

I read another reviewer state, "[Scout] wanted to be a person first and then a girl," which is a mentality I am sure stemmed from the kids' relationship with their father. Atticus is older than most other fathers, more serious, less gloat-worthy (the Finch kids have never been able to brag about his shot or athletic ability). In the two or so years spanned in this novel, Jem and Scout learn more about their father and his rules on life than they probably ever expected. Atticus teaches by example, not by words. He feels a moral obligation to defend Tom Robinson against an unjust charge, even though race relations determined his fate before the trial even began. He teaches Scout and Jem that some things are worth fighting for because they are right, even if they may be a lost cause. He treats his children with respect and earns theirs in return.

I know there are dozens of themes and motifs and symbols that one could analyze during and after reading this book, and that's part of the fun upon finishing it. If you finish the last page and put it back on the shelf, you're missing half of it. You wouldn't know how the story is partly autobiographical or that it was never expected to sell. But as you read the story, savor it, and save the analysis for the end.

Back to School: A Victorian faerytale

I had debated whether or not I should count this towards my Back to School challenge, since I've already read one Dickens, but in the end I thought it best to tack it on as it was 1,000 pages long - and a damn good novel at that. Charles Dickens's Bleak House is an intricate and immense look at the court system of London in the 19th century, a fascinating analysis on the effect of class on day-to-day activities, and a document that showcases women's independence and forthrightness even before they had suffrage.

In short - although no Dickens novel can really be described in short - it is the tale of Esther Summerson, a woman who is raised not knowing who her parents were. As she is told incessantly by her original guardian, 'Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.' Chance bestows her though when her guardian dies and she's brought under the auspices of a Mr John Jarndyce, an amiable man who sole intent is to make his companions happy. Living in Bleak House - a wonderful place despite the name - he attends to Esther and her two companions, Ada and Richard, cousins and wards of court.

And court is central to the story as Ada, Richard, and John are all tied to the outcome of the most infamous case in Chancery Court's history: Jarndyce and Jarndyce - a case that has ruined lives and has cost more than it's worth. Richard slowly becomes more involved as he sees his aspirations tied to it; whereas John Jarndyce has distanced himself from it entirely so as not to become bogged down, villainous, moneyhungry, or lecherous.

Even now to describe this I'm realising that I can go on and on, as Dickens captures so many intricacies, so many locks and just as many keys, to Victorian society. There are scores of characters, each with a strong identity. And above this all sits Lady Dedlock, a mysterious, somber woman who holds many secrets and many answers to the situations at hand. Her secrets though are being pulled out into the open by her husband's lawyer, Mr Tulkinghorn, who is uncovering something that could tear the Dedlock name.

This is a much more mature narrative than that of Nicholas Nickleby, which was my last Back to School book. The characters aren't as hot headed, their decisions are poignant - whether for good or ill. There is idealism, as Richard shouts, 'I will begin the world' while he plunges further into his case and thus into madness. There is romance, satire, intrigue, detective plots (with arguably the first detective in all English literature), and spontaneous combustion - all of which creates a story of the highest order with characters completely memorable and relatively three-dimensional. Lady Dedlock remains to me one of the more vivid creations I've come across in my reading.

Dickens, when it doesn't feel like overdone pathetic fallacy, aptly captures all the information we need to know from each scene; his description of the fog that pervades this entire narrative is masterful. (One would even like to say that it might have influenced TS Eliot when he wrote 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock'.) For instance, the novel slowly begins with a journalistic description of London, autumn's coming to an end, and it seems like some elephantine mythical beast is roaming the streets of London. Then: 'Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty city). Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships...' It goes on for several lines, but it reminds us that we cannot escape one another, that each deed we do affects the next, that atmosphere does seep into our skin whether we want it to or not.

Back to School: No more school!

I watched Douglas McGrath's 2002 adaptation of Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby on a whim and, besides the lead actor's flat acting, enjoyed it tremendously. Thus I decided to change my 'Back to School' reading list and add this coming-of-age tome.

The eponymous character is an angry but loving young man who loses his father early in life; his father unfortunately left his family in a bit of a conundrum - he rids them of their savings on a business plan that goes awry. And so the Nicklebys are forced to ask for help from Ralph, Nicholas's uncle, a man who has no love but for money, no care but for manipulation. Nicholas, eager and willing to do anything for a shilling, decides to work at a Yorkshire school (Dotheboys Hall) under the auspices of Wackford Squeers and family, but upon arriving he sees the utter brutality and ignorance of the Squeers - how they cane the boys, feed them something worse than gruel, and mentally unprepare them for the world outside.

When the physically - and mentally - disabled servant of Dotheboys Hall, Smike, tries to run away and is caught by the Squeers family, when Wackford decides he will torture and mutilate the boy in front of the rest of the school, Nicholas finally steps in and saves the boy from his fate, instead whipping Squeers. Nicholas and Smike become a Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of sorts along the English countryside, trying to find a way home, a way back into favourable society, and a way that Nicholas and his family can be independent from Ralph, who becomes much more sinister, especially when you see how he terrorizes Nicholas's sister and her innocence (it's almost surprising she doesn't follow the path of Tess of the D'Urbervilles).

Of course, as this is a Victorian novel and one by Dickens, there many more storylines and characters than this. And the McGrath film adaptation does a fine job managing them all in an entertaining and essence-capturing way. I found the second half of the book a bit annoying, as if there was such a change in theme (Nicholas finds a love interest) that it didn't have the same exciting energy that the first half had. Additionally - and I know that this a large aspect of 19th century writing - I did not enjoy how everyone was so black or white; characters couldn't be in the grey area, having good and bad qualities, having issues of the past that they're working against. And I felt like Dickens manipulated the narrative too much when it came to Smike: although he was my favourite character in the novel itself - and Smike himself had some of the best, tearjerking lines - I didn't find it necessary that he had to be so abused and so belittled that he was so dependent upon Nicholas and, eventually, his family.

But in closing, my preferred lines from the novel:

'Do you remember the boy that died here?' [Smike said]

'I was not here, you know,' said Nicholas gently; 'but what of him?'

'Why,' replied the youth . . . 'I was with him at night, and when it was all silent he cried no more for friends he wished to come and sit with him, but began to see faces round his bed that came from home; he said they smiled, and talked to him, and died at last lifting his head to kiss them. Do you hear?'

'Yes, yes,' rejoined Nicholas.

'What faces will smile on me when I die!' said his companion, shivering. 'Who will talk to me in those long nights? They cannot come from home; they would frighten me if they did, for I don't know what it is, and shouldn't know them. Pain and fear, pain and fear for me, alive or dead. No hope. No hope.'

As beautiful and as provoking as this passage is, it is dripping with melancholy. But still, a worthy read.

Review: The fiery furnace of fiction

Flannery O'Connor's masterful collection of stories A Good Man Is Hard to Find immediately forces you to understand why the author is regarded as a master of short fiction. From the eponymous first tale any of those that follow it, the reader is aware that he is in good hands, that the author has us on a lead as we watch bromidic characters reveal their festering and inherent nastiness within. Every story is uncannily memorable, as if sui generis of description and form. And it certainly didn't hurt that I read the Brad Gooch biography before attempting this book. Even though I was anticipating plot twists, everything felt anew.

O'Connor's characters bring to mind the concept of Edith Wharton's granite outcroppings detailed in Ethan Frome. I don't want to use the word 'grotesque' here, as every other person who describes O'Connor's work seems to do; but there is something misshapen about these people - not even just physically or mentally. Since all of these stories have a Christian and yet nihilistic them and tone about them, it's only fair to have the characters mimic such sentiments, having hunched backs and wooden legs, obstreperous dialogues and plump names.

In 'A Temple Is a Holy Ghost', O'Connor's descriptions are able to mimic the actions of the scene (much like the finale to 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find', which I won't go into because it is wildly shocking to endure). For example:

[Their mother] asked them why they called each other Temple One and Temple Two and this sent them off into gales of giggles. Finally they managed to explain. Sister Perpetua, the oldest nun at the Sisters of Mercy in Mayville, had given them a lecture on what to do if a young man should--here they laughed so hard they were not able to go on without going back to the beginning--on what to do if a young man should--they put their heads in their laps--on what to do if--they finally managed to shout it out--if he should "behave in an ungentlemanly manner with them in the back of an automobile." Sister Perpetua said they were to say, "Stop sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!" and that would put an end to it.

'The Artificial Nigger' is a gritty story about a grandfather and grandson, the latter so proud that he was born of the city and is returning for the 'second time' (the first being his birth); but when they get there both realise that they're not as cosmopolitan as they think. And when the boy gets into a bit of trouble, the grandfather, like Peter, denies his grandson.

My particular favourite story was 'The River', which perhaps gets shadowed only because it follows 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find', and it's pretty difficult to turn the page and get interested in a new tale after you read the sharp ending and the violent conclusion to the first story. But 'The River' follows more in the veins of James Joyce's 'Araby'. It's about a young boy who is sent to spend the day with a babysitter as his father is evidently incapable of dealing with his own child and his mother is in the next room bedridden with some terrible ailment. This babysitter is an older woman with children of her own and is obsessed with the Christian religion. She decides that she's taking the boy with her to see this preacher, so that he can be baptised and saved from damnation. Some quite hysterical bits occur, but what makes this so heartwrenching is when the boy returns to the river where the preacher was in order to see if he can see Jesus within. He starts to drink and drown himself in the water, hoping that just a bit of heaven can be inside him. And as the bazaar in 'Araby' destroys the boy's dreams, so does this bit of rolling water.

What I found absolutely fascinating about this book was the fact that identity - especially self-naming - was so fluid. People interchanged their names: one woman decides to be Hulga after she thinks herself too deformed to be named Joy any longer; the young boy in 'The River' deceives his babysitter and claims his name is Bevel, like the preacher they're seeing; men and women are referred to as Mr. This or Mrs. That which kept them always at arm's length. Which seems to contradict the purpose of these stories, which bring you so close to the prejudices and cores of these characters that you feel like you've known them forever.

A deserved classic. One that should be cherished.

Everything Austen: Sense and Sensibility

I decided to read Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility for the Everything Austen challenge because I haven't read it since high school and remembered very little about it. I'm always glad I created this book blog, but this is one time I'm really glad I created it; once I finish writing about Sense and Sensibility, I'll actually remember the book's premise rather than forget it in a week or two.

Sense and Sensibility was Austen's first work, published in 1811. She tells the story of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two of the three daughters of Mr. Dashwood who has passed away and left them with little money [the rules of inheritance were so strange back then]. The story begins when Mrs. Dashwood and her three girls move to the cottage of a distant relative where they begin a whole new life. Elinor and Marianne are pressured to marry a wealthy man for financial support, but their low economic status does not make them very desirable to many men [marrying for money was common...and desired!]. But the girls, like all of Austen's female leads, care more about love than money. Their quest to find romance is hindered by heartbreaking men, scheming young women, and meddlesome neighbors.

I have been reading this at the same time I've been watching the BBC's Pride and Prejudice, which may have not been the smartest thing to do. I'm sure an Austen-ite would fight me on this, but in my first experience with them, they seem pretty similar—females rebelling against society's norms and all that. Other observations:

• I know Austen is praised for her wit, but in my experience, it's better illustrated on screen. Maybe that's just me.
• I also think the characters would come to life better on screen. She was very wordy in this one.
• I've always thought the setting was later 1800s. Guess I was wrong.
• Salaries seem to be public knowledge and subject of frequent conversation. It's weird.
• Her characters and their relationships are realistic with flaws. I appreciate the detail she pays to basic human emotion. Even the men have character.
• Poor Margaret...she barely exists. I forgot there was a third Miss Dashwood.
• I'm curious about an analysis or comparison of her novels. What makes them different? What makes one more enjoyable than the other? [comment here with input!]
• I also like Austen's sarcasm.

I can see why some people are big fans of the Austen world; everything is just so classy. The setting and lifestyle is a big draw for many, like a fantasy world where people were polite and society had rules and expectations [which could be fun...but also sadistic]. While I would like to read all her novels just because they are classics and I should, I think I'd prefer them on screen.

What's the draw of Austen for you?