1984

1984 is personal. My reaction to it was purely personal. Obviously I know and understand its links and parallels with the USSR, but I didn't care about any of that. To quote from my 2006 journal entry about this novel:

1984 bothers me....I don’t give a shit about big brother, loss of privacy, the ability to or possibility of altering the past, the social commentary, its relevance to today, etc. I don’t care. What bothers me is the story about Julia.

I was deeply disturbed by the love story here. DEEPLY disturbed. And it all centered around this:

"...Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you - that would be the real betrayal."

I wrote extensively about this in my journal at the time. I read 1984 when I was dating Shawn - about a year and a half into our relationship. Everything was still fairly new, and we were still in the lovey-dovey stage. And I completely felt Winston in this instance - he and Julia know they will be tortured, and that they will give the other up. But no matter what, they would still love each other. That feeling would still be there.

And then there is Room 101 and the rats. And Winston really does betray her, in his own definition of the word. He tells O'Brien - do it to her, not to me. His own self-preservation instinct is stronger than his feelings for Julia. And Julia did the same thing. This FLOORED me. It had me questioning everything: would I do the same thing? Would Shawn? And what did that mean? I was bewildered and confused for days.

I continued in my journal:

...After Winston is arrested and begins to be tortured, all I wondered about was Julia – was she constantly on his mind, there with him, etc. Because I would like to imagine that I would feel him there with me. But then I think about those tortures – being kicked in the back where my discs are bad, or to be beaten, shocked, and it's frightening because maybe it would be so bad that I wouldn’t think or feel anything but my own pain. It’s frightening that someone could take him away from me in that manner. Then there was the scene when they shock his brain to convince him of things, and I became afraid of someone who would remove him from my brain in such a way to make me forget that I love him. But then in the end, with the rats, when he tells them to do it to Julia instead...That was the betrayal – he thought of himself to her detriment. What bothers me is that someone else can force you to that point, and you can believe all you want that it won’t or couldn’t happen, but it can. Until just now, I thought that what bothered me was that someone else could do that to me – someone else could force me to betray him but when I was just writing that, I realized that someone could do that to him as well – he could betray me in the same way, and suddenly, I’m not sure which is more disturbing.

I read a lot, but it's rare when a book truly elicits a reaction, or that really moves me. I'm not talking about feelings of frustration, boredom, and general anger at a book or author (*cough cough* Henry James *cough cough*). I'm not talking about being engrossed in the plot. I'm talking about something that stays with you, and that when I recall it, it brings that emotion back up. I can really enjoy a book: its plot, its language or style, etc., but it's those that are not only reading experiences but emotional experiences as well that I love. I get anxious just remembering my reaction to this novel, and that says a lot. I'm not sure that I could stomach reading it again, but I'm sure that I will some day. 1984 may not be my favorite book, but it certainly was able to bring forth really strong emotions. And THAT makes it a damn good book.

A U.S.A. Resource

I'm currently in about 2/3 of the way through Dos Passos's 1919, the second installment in the USA trilogy. Because I allowed such a huge gap between my reading of the first installment and this one, I am having a hell of a time keeping track of characters and remembering who we know from 42nd Parallel, and how those characters relate and interact with the characters in 1919. I have search high and low, and haven't really been able to find much information about USA, specifically a character list. This is an egregious oversight on the part of book readers/bloggers. But today I stumbled upon this website, which is really excellent.

Life of Pi

Last year, my mom and I had the following conversation:

MOM: I read a good book - Life of Pi, and I think that I get it. The boy was the tiger, and the sailor was the zebra, and the cook was the hyena...
ME: So what was the religious theme of the book?
MOM: What?
ME: I thought there was some religious theme to it.
MOM: I don't know. I guess I will have to re-read it.

I've been hearing about Life of Pi for a long time. And I have been avoiding it. First of all, I don't like to read popular books. I don't want people to think that I'm someone who jumps on a bandwagon; someone who reads Faulkner because Oprah told me to. I ADORE Faulkner (despite our initially contentious relationship), but I would have purposely NOT read him during the time that he was Oprah's book club pick. Unless, of course, I could wear a shirt that said, "I LOVED FAULKNER BEFORE OPRAH." Books with buzz tend to scare me away.

I have been avoiding Life of Pi for the other reason as well: it's religious theme. It's a book that is supposed to make you believe in god. Oh boy, one of those books. No thank you.

But then, there are people whose opinion of books I take seriously, mostly because we have such similar tastes. So, I have finally given in and read it.

First of all, the key to this book is in the author's introduction. You have to read that first, or like my mom, you will miss the point. Martel gives us two stories: one is fantastical - unbelievable. A boy is on a lifeboat with a tiger for almost a year and the tiger doesn't eat him? The second story is the believable, and probably true one. But which one is the better story? Which one makes life more interesting? Obviously the fantastical one. The religious theme, of course is that we can choose to believe the religious stories - that god created us special, and a baby was born to a virgin in a stable, and angels and shepherds, and wise men, and all the other religious stories, or we can believe the "real" story. You can take your pick. God is the better story.

Now in the previous paragraph, I only listed the Christian story. But Life of Pi is not exclusively a Christian story. Pi is also a Hindu and a Muslim. So it doesn't matter if your story is Kali and Shiva and the turtle - or is it an elephant? - holding up the world, or whatever stories it is that Muslims believe (I admit my inexcusable ignorance of what is in the Koran), or if you believe in the baby in a manger. Martel is just saying that the better story is the fantastical one...the one that it's hard to believe but is more beautiful...or more exciting, or something.

I'm not really sure about that though. They are good stories, some of them at least. But isn't the story of the natural world just as interesting, just as worthy of awe? Go on youtube and listen to some of Neal DeGrasse Tyson's talks on the universe and you'll see what I mean.

All in all, Life of Pi wasn't bad. It's not the greatest thing I ever read. But for being popular, it was a pretty decent read.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I have been meaning to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for a long time...either since it came out, or since I read Foer's other book, Everything is Illuminated - I don't remember which happened first. I LOVED Everything is Illuminated. It's one of the best books I ever read. It was funny, moving, quirky, terribly sad. And it was awesome. So obviously I was looking forward to EL&IC, but also a little afraid...I was afraid it would be like my "relationship" with F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby absolutely blew me away when I read it in 10th grade, and since then I have read other Fitzgerald novels, but none of them are as good. He knocked it out of the ball park with Gatsby, and how could you rival that? So I have been timid about Extremely Loud - what if it just wasn't as good...then I would be disappointed.

But EL&IC did NOT disappoint. Within the first dozen or so pages I was laughing out loud: "Succotash my Balzac, dip shiitake!" But as I said, there is a pervasive sadness, centered around 9/11. This isn't my first 9/11 novel. It seems to have become like my Holocaust novels - I keep reading them. Their sadness is different from other tragic books, because you know what happens. From the very beginning, I knew how Oskar lost his father. You know what is going to happen, what the narrative is circling around. And it doesn't even need to be stated. Foer didn't need to say, "those messages were left on the phone on September 11th." It needn't be said - we know. It's not a novel about 9/11, but rather a novel in the shadow of 9/11.

It takes a lot for a novel - or anything really - to move me, especially to move me to tears, and this one did - and more than once. This book gave me "heavy boots." I finished it yesterday, and I can still feel its weight.

I know that Foer often gets mixed reviews, but I think that he is my favorite contemporary writer. The more I read, the more I like. Tragicomedy must be my thing. With EL&IC, I would definitely recommend having read Grass's The Tin Drum first. It's certainly not necessary, but there are a lot of parallels, which really enhance the reading.

The End of the Dance

I didn't realize how sad this was moment was until I wrote the title for this post. The End of the Dance. This isn't just the end of a book. Powell's million word, 12-novel, 4-volume work could never be called "a book." To some extent, it feels like the end of a chapter in my own life. I've been reading it for more than a year and a half now, and so much has happened in that time. And all along, every night, there was Nick Jenkins. It's not a book - it feels more like a relationship. And my "relationship" with A Dance to the Music of Time has lasted lasted longer than some actual relationships.

I began this book in November or December of 2007. It's been so long ago now, I don't remember. I complained, incessantly, about this novel in the beginning. I was beginning to fear he would be like Henry James, as Powell is prone to comma use and long-windedness. But I've been very wrong about books before, and I learned (with Things Fall Apart specifically), that you can absolutely detest 75-90% of a novel and then something happens at the end that makes that whole experience worth while. That's why I never give up on reading something, even if I can't stand it. Even if I find myself throwing it against the wall. The only exception was Suite Francais. But that was just bad writing.

Anyway. It really wasn't until I saw the first part of the BBC version that I really "got" it. Somehow seeing it all come together in a 2-hour visual presentation allowed me to put the pieces together. Oh - that's what was going on. It suddenly made sense.

Perhaps if the second volume (comprised of the fourth, fifth and sixth novels in the series) wasn't as fabulous as it was, this review would have taken a different tone...I might have had an entirely different opinion about Dance. These novels really were fabulous: Fitzgerald's parties set in London instead of America. It was kind of like that. There wasn't dancing in the fountain, but people were falling down stairs and dying, drunk butlers getting bit by monkeys, and their fair share of drinks...though probably much more sipped politely than glugged.

I didn't particularly like the third volume, which dealt with World War II. It was really here, however, that the genius of Powell's work comes to light. It would seem that an author would put his character at the center of all action, that he would be present for everything important that happens in the course of the novel. But that isn't Dance. It's the exact opposite. Nick is never involved in anything really exciting during the war. There's the Blitz, but Nick is never in a building that blows up - though a number of his friends unfortunately are. Death mostly occurs "off screen", and is casually mentioned or learned through here say. And that's what makes Dance to the Music of Time really unique - the narrator is not the central character. We barely know anything about Nick. Powell tells us just enough to move the narrative forward. That was the most frustrating thing about these novels at first...I wanted to know more about Nick. But once I was able to accept that this was what Powell was giving us...it wasn't Nick's story, it was the story of everyone around him - once I let go of my need to know Nick, the novels were much more enjoyable.

The fourth volume was really mixed - some of it I enjoyed (poor X. Trapnel), some of it I wasn't thrilled with (Scorpio). But overall, it was good. And I don't know that I'll ever get the image of Widmerpool jogging into the mist - "I'm leading, I'm leading..."

Though occassionally likened - rightly, I believe - to Jane Austen, Powell is most often compared to Proust. I've never read Proust...I'm afraid of In Search of Lost Time, but then again I was afraid of Powell (whose name is pronounced like "pole" and rhymes with "Lowell", which may or may not be the same thing, probably depending on whether or not British or not). But having never read Proust, I imagine that the comparison is simply in the shere ambition and volume of their two masterpieces, not necessarily in style. In an interview for the Paris Review in the 1970s, Powell briefly addressed the comparisons with Proust: "the essential difference is that Proust is an enormously subjective writer who has a peculiar genius for describing how he or his narrator feels. Well, I really tell people a minimum of what my narrator feels – just enough to keep the narrative going." Nick is much more the eye of the hurricane than the center of action - all the important stuff that moves the story along is happening to other people, happening around Nick, not to him. The things that do happen to Nick aren't important in terms of the plot. As I said earlier, what happens to Nick only happens to move the story forward...so that he can meet someone else, or run into someone he hasn't seen in a while, or be told an interesting story about someone.

But I don't want you to think the series, or any individual component of it, has a plot. Because it doesn't. Stuff happens, but like life, there isn't a sequence of events leading to a climax. So this whole level that fiction has typicall engaged on is just left out. What it is replaced by is perhaps unsurpassed in literature, or maybe surpassed only by Proust. You get to know an awful lot of people. You spend 100 pages or so with someone, then they go away, only to be reintroduced in another context - as someone's new wife or business partner. And this is where the book becomes rich, where it is funny and tragic. And that's also why you can't give up after the first section, or why you can't "dabble" or read some here, some there. As a review for the Times wrote,

He is a writer who should be read in bulk, however. Dipped into at random, any one of these books can seem bland at best. But several together reveal rich patterns in the caperings and transformations, the pairings and partings, the exits and reappearances of Powell's more than 300 characters.

Just as in real life, knowing the context of relationships is important. Knowing that Widmerpool essentially sent Stringham to his death isn't quite as tragic if you don't know the back stroy from when they were at school together. And knowing Bithel's interactions with Widmerpool during hte war make their interactions in the cult much more meaningful. Barbara Wallraff wrote in the Atlantic,

"One becomes more and more bound up in Powell's parallel universe, until the novels begin to seem like a long, long, long letter by a witty and kindly old friend, filling one in on what has become of other old friends. I have a number of firends in the real universe who I felt would be susceptible to Dance's charms, and having encouraged them to read it, I find that we can talk about the characters almost as if we were discussing people in our own circles.

In fact, curiously, no books have ever made me feel more as if I were living someone else's life along with him. As one reads A Dance to the Music of Time, one looks forward to meeting certain characters again as much as one does to seeing favorite people in life; one looks forward to parties in the books as much as to real parties."

I wholeheartedly agree.

When Time Magazine put this novel on it's top 100 list, the reviewer stated that "Powell's real triumph is in the way he catches the rhythm of ate itself, the way it brings people together, only to spin them apart, then reunite them later as near-stranges, transformed in unexpected ways by the intervening years." If this book is going to be said to be about anything, it is about coincidence. You meet someone at school, and then 10 years later you are re-introduced to them as a friend's business partner. Everything is just getting reshuffled...as Powell points out in the beginning of the novel:

...These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.

My friend Steve once asked me if the commitment it takes to read Powell's 3,000+ page magnum opus was worth it. At the time, I was hesitant to answer. And maybe I really need to wait until I'm further away from the experience to say for definate one way or the other. But my reaction right now is - yes. It definately was worth it. Powell is an excellent writer (even if his comma use annoyed me at first), and the characters he created really came to life. I'll never forget them, and I'm sure even if I never read another sentence out of it, decades from now I'll be running into people that I will only be able to describe as Widmerpool-like...or Pamela Flitton-like. As Powell himself said, "A couple of years ago, I stepped down from a very crowded railway carriage in Westbury, and a fellow came up to me, and said, 'I had dinner with my Widmerpool last night...' Everyone has their own Widmerpool."

In the way these characters have entered my consciousness, they are on par with Jay Gatsby and Jordan Baker, Almasy, Hanna and Kip (from The English Patient), Ignatius from Confederacy of Dunces and Edna from The Awakening. (They are, in fact, on par with the characters from my favorite novels. Does this mean that A Dance to the Music of Time might be a new candidate for that honor?) While in most novels, you only get to know a character at a particular instance in their life, in Dance, you know them their whole life. The sheer expanse of the whole thing - 12 novels spanning a half century, written and published over the course of 25 years; 3,000 pages, a million words...makes it much more than a book, as I said when I started this review off. It's not a book, it's an experience - an invitation to live life along with Nick Jenkins. It's a chance to be allowed into a world as vast and richly detailed as Tolkien's Middle Earth, even if it is much closer to reality. Yes, I do think it was worth it. And I am not counting out someday reading it again.

In one of the articles I read while researching A Dance to the Music of Time for this post, the author stated that probably less than one million people have read the series. I'm proud and happy to say that I'm one of them.

Some Interesting Dance Links:

http://www.oberlin.edu/math/faculty/henle/Powell.html
http://www.anthonypowell.org.uk/home.php


I also enjoyed this review:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A789824

A Salute to The Ambassadors?

Ann Patchett is probably not an author I would have really considered reading. She's one of those authors I've "heard of" in the least meaningful way...I've walked past her books in Borders, vaguely registering them to the category of "not interested." And now that I've come across this article from NPR's "You Must Read This" series, Patchett has entered a new category: Never Pick Up A Book By This Author. Who else resides in this category? I couldn't come up with one. There is a separate but related category of Authors To Avoid Unless You Can't Avoid It, in which Henry James and probably Henry Miller are the first two that come to mind, though I'm sure there are numerous others. Fortunately, I don't believe Patchett is the type of author that will end up on any Best 100 lists that I - for some strange reason - make it my goal to wade through.

So, what is it that Patchett has done to incur such wrath from me, who has never - and now will never -read one of her books? She has exclaimed her love for not only Henry James - but The Ambassadors. That book is one of the signs of the Apocalypse, let me tell you. It is the work of a devil.

Here's what she said:

If the topic of conversation for our vacation was going to be The Ambassadors — that notoriously opaque Henry James novel published at the start of the 20th century — I would get to work straightaway.

And work it was. I followed Lambert Strether to Paris as he tried to reclaim the errant playboy Chad Newsome and return him home to his mother. The action was so subtle and the conversations so dense I could scarcely blink for fear of missing something. Suddenly reading felt more like deep sea diving, going miles out on a boat, suiting up in heavy gear, and then swimming down and down into that other world.

But that's what's so beautiful about the book — and about Henry James. Once you get in, it becomes your entire consciousness, the air you breathe. I had never read anything so all-encompassing, nothing that could knock out every bit of ancillary chatter in my brain. What seemed impenetrable at first slowly bloomed open with layer upon layer of meaning. The rewards of the effort were limitless, the literary equivalent of a religious text. As soon as I finished, I wanted to start again.

[Emphasis mine]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Ann Patchett you are so funny! Yes, James does feel like swimming - swimming in a sewage-polluted river where you encounter a giant, human-eating monster. You escape, but you are covered in nasty, stinkly slim that takes weeks to get off. Only it's not that exciting. It's also interesting that James knocks out all the other chatter in Patchett's head. Because whenever I pick up James, the chatter in my head increases: "Hey, wouldn't you rather be taking out the garbage?" Oh yes, I would rather take out the garbage. With my copy of The Ambassador's in it.

True friendship is a rare gift in life, but a friend with whom you can read and
reread The Ambassadors cannot be replaced.

Oh, so many mocking things come to mind: With friends like that, who needs enemies? If that's the true meaning of friendship, I'm glad I don't have any friends.

People have read this blog and quickly realized my hatred not just for Henry James, but for The Ambassador's in particular. They e-mail me and say, you're just being hyperbolic right? It can't be THAT bad, is it? "Yes. It really is," I advise them. They tell me they have to see for themselves. It's usually not that long after that that I get a follow-up e-mail. "You were right. It IS that bad." Listen to me here people: it really is that bad. And I would advise you to stay away from anyone who tells you they like it. Those people are working for Satan.

Atonement

I have been absent here for awhile. This has been partly due to my continued reading block, partly to my workload, and partly to an extended business trip. I simply haven't been reading very much. In order to stay interested...to keep as on track as I can, I've been neglecting my "required" reading...as in the things I've planned months in advance to read (ahem - Henry James, and finishing A Dance to the Music of Time) in favor of books I'm more apt to stick with to the end. Hence why I picked up Atonement.

This book is devastatingly good. The plot is good, the writing is good. The entire book hinges on Briony, a 13-year old girl (in the beginning) who likes to write stories. She sees herself as someone who is able to understand and interpret the adult world. And when she sees something out of her bedroom window, something very adult - the budding yet strained relationship between her sister Cecilia and Robbie, the charwoman's son, she thinks she understands, but she doesn't. She sees it through the lens of her stories...of her own interpretation. The situation gets worse and worse, Briony constantly misinterpreting the adult world, but thinking she understands. When Robbie gives Briony a letter to carry to her sister, he accidentally gave her the wrong one…the explicit one, which Briony of course reads. Later she catches Robbie and Cecilia in the library. She can only see Robbie as an aggressor now, and believes her sister needs "saved" from Robbie. This of course has devastating consequences when her cousin Lola is attacked at night by someone. Briony – who only sees the shadow of the perpetrator running away – assumes it had to be Robbie. First he attacked her sister, then Lola. And Lola doesn’t say anything…she knows it wasn’t Robbie, but she stays quiet since Briony is so insistent. Of course it wasn’t Robbie, but he goes to jail anyway. Cecilia wants nothing more to do with her family. And then there’s the war. Robbie dies in France and Cecilia is killed in a bombing. Because of Briony thinking she got it…by playing in the adult world that she didn’t understand, she completely changed the fate of these two people. They might have lived happily ever after if not for her.

But we’re played a trick on. That’s not what we’re told happens at first. Yes, Robbie goes to jail, and then to France, and Cecilia disowns her family and becomes a nurse. But Robbie makes it back to England, he and Cecilia are together again, and Briony agrees to tell the truth of what happened. It’s only in the end, in the epilogue of sorts that we’re told that’s not what happened at all. It’s presented that Briony wrote the text of Atonement in order to do all she could to make better what she had done. The players had died long before, but she could give them a life together, a happily ever after in her story. “I can no longer think what purpose would be served if, say, I tried to persuade my read, by direct or indirect means, that Robbie Turner died of septicemia at Bray Dunes on 1 June 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in September of the same year by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station. That I never saw them in that year. That my walk across London ended at the church on Clapham Common, and that a a cowardly Briony limped back to the hospital, unable to confront her recently bereaved sister. That the letters the lovers wrote are in the archives of the War Museum. How could that constitute an ending?” We are given the hope that things turned out ok, and then it’s crushed.

As an adult, as someone who is able to see more from where Cecelia is coming from, I really wanted to strangle Briony. What a little brat. The little kid who believes she is “Writer”…who sees herself as a part of a world which she is not a part of…who believes in all seriousness and earnestness that she is right and smart and knowledgeable. She believes she can see or understand something about the world, as a Writer…as someone who sees the world and interprets it for others. What I question is whether or not Briony – the adult Briony – can ever atone for what she did. I don’t think you can. Her sister’s life was ruined…her sister is dead potentially because of what that child did. After it was all done there was no going back for anyone, and once the two main players were dead, there was nothing that could be done to make any of what happened better. Briony does all she can – gives them a different story than the one they had…but she can never actually atone for what she set in motion.

Often times, I prefer to see a movie version before I read the book version. Atonement is one that I wish I would have done the opposite. I got most of the emotional impact of the story with the movie, and so I wasn't able to be held in suspense...to believe that Robbie and Cecilia really did live happily ever after. I knew what was coming in the novel, and I wish I had been able to forget that.