Book in Hand

Anathem

2009-04-04T22:07:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened while reading Neil Stephenson’s newest (and best) book, Anathem. Over the last year or so whenever I have thought of Neil Stephenson’s work, and I probably have thought about it more than was good for me, I kept seeing him as a contemporary Jules Verne, crafting rip-roaring adventure stories employing technology and ideas that were (or are) on the cutting edge of science. And then hundreds of pages into Anathem, literally, there is a not-so-subtle reference to who else but Jules Verne? This causes me to believe that Stephenson, as well, sees himself as a kind of contemporary Verne, which gave me an even deeper respect for not Stephenson-the-writer, but Stephenson the man. It seems a rare thing for an author to catch a sensible—not grandiose—glimpse of themselves in the literary annals.

Anathem itself cements Stephenson’s place as a great writer. This is the book where he appears to fully break with early Stephenson and the Stephenson that his fans usually allude to—i.e. punk Stephenson with an obsessive love for technology, science, and aerobatic violence. Stephenson had already shown greater range in his strange yet fascinating trilogy of 17th Century Europe, the Baroque Cycle. However, even in these books his penchant for cutting-edgeness (monetary systems and the rise of empirical science) and action (think rapscallions in love, war, and on the high seas) dominate. But in Anathem, despite a number of really good action scenes and the technological descriptions of another world, the focus finally lies elsewhere. Stephenson overcomes technology built in the physical world and the punches also taken there to explore something far more exciting and human—the world of ideas.

Philosophy has taken a beating in the last century with people leaving it aside for the greater ‘certainty’ of religion or science. Those who study philosophy in college are largely looked at by our society as being little more than useless (we, English majors, can relate)—they will probably end up working at Starbucks or Barnes and Noble. Literature, as well, has largely eschewed philosophy. In fact the last great philosopher-novelists I can think of were Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, the latter who just barely saw the 20th Century. Therefore, it is quite daring, for a writer beloved for his speculative fiction and tech-savvy, to take on thousands of years of philosophical ideas. And take them on he does from Plato’s forms to Wittgenstein’s language-games.

Stephenson opens his sprawling novel in an otherworldly monastery—called a ‘concent’—only rather than being devoted to the worship and study of God, the monasteries in Stephenson’s world are devoted to what we might call a liberal arts education, focusing on science, math, music, and most importantly philosophy. It is truly an education Plato-approved. Despite the fact that this monastery system has different aims than our monastery’s (current and past), the two share certain similarities: both are set apart from larger society, members devote their days to study and ritual (here song), strict rules—which change depending on the order—apply, and time passes differently, rather than measured in lunch breaks or sitcom-length, Stephenson’s monastery measures time from years to millennium depending on the members, reflecting the slow and thoughtful life of real monks. Stephenson portrays a beautiful world inside these ‘concents’ where an outside society reliant on technology and materialism is left to focus on something far more profound: the human mind. While technology has a role in Stephenson’s monasteries, it is a largely controlled one, the primary fixation belonging to wisdom and learning.

There are few examples in our world that truly reflect Stephenson’s, although the closest would be the university. Yet Anathem’s ‘university’ is a place where students are more interested in books than beer (but fortunately they still drink); it is a place that lacks materialism, the Internet, television, and debt. Another important distinction: most of us will never have the chance to spend our whole lives in academically hallowed halls (tenure is increasingly difficult to obtain—thank you societal priorities). With the monasteries in Anathem it’s as though Stephenson wondered what would happen if Plato’s Academy had continued indefinitely while shutting itself off from the exterior world.

Currently, I am fortunate enough to be in a graduate program at St. John’s College in the Great Books. St. John’s probably reminds me more of the ‘concents’ than anywhere else I have been and Stephenson’s monks certainly embody the spirit of many of my tutors, enamored with wisdom, education, and the world of ideas. But St. John’s is not a closed society, though there are moments when it feels like it is: such as leaving class when you realize how little the ‘real’ world takes its time to really think about what you just spent any number of hours discussing.

The largest theme in Stephenson’s book is both relevant and largely ignored: what is the role of the educated elite in society? In a great passage, Stephenson explores the multiple ways of how the uneducated world views the educated, using examples from his created universe that directly correlate with Socrates execution, Captain Kirk’s gut-instinct versus Spock’s logic, and the fear of the ‘mad-scientist’, i.e one driven crazy by too much knowledge (perhaps a contemporary recreation of Faust). The book is really about these kinds of stereotypes and conflicts: what happens when the professors leave their academic stations and are forced by events to enter the world as built by those largely unconcerned with philosophy and higher wisdom.

Should philosophers rule, as advised by Plato’s Republic? Or should they hide away and be left to their own devises? How far should science and technology go? What is the role of the religious in society, especially those who may be called ‘fundamentalist’? Can the educated and the uneducated ever live peacefully—can they ever understand one another?

While Stephenson does come down on one side or the other of a couple large philosophical debates, he mostly leaves the discipline where it appears most comfortable—unanswered. The study of philosophy has always been more about experiencing the varied ways in which the world can be interpreted rather than discovering any truth with a capital ‘T’. There may be some suggestion at the end of what the author thinks, but it is a story not a lecture, and Stephenson makes certain to keep the tension between educated-uneducated present even as the novel closes.

The only place where Stephenson perhaps becomes too preachy is his view of the religious in the novel. He appears to forget that most high education throughout Western and Eastern history has been done largely by ‘Deolaters’, i.e. those who believe in a God of some kind. Even today, as society has become more skeptical, many incredibly intelligent, curious, and reasonable people still believe in a deity. While I think Stephenson is attempting to show not the folly of faith itself, but the folly of fundamentalism—or those who are ‘certain’ of their God—the book at times comes across as shaming the religious for irrationality. Still usually this is softened and the critique more reasonably focused.

Stephenson is not a writer of characters or poetic phrases; instead he is a plotter and a lover-of-ideas. His books are page-turners in the same way as 19th Century adventure novels—Dumas, London, and Verne. Unlike most contemporary writers, I would say his greatest influences—despite his largely ‘sci-fi’ aspects—actually come from these writers and others like them (I’d add Charles Dickens to the list) who weren’t afraid of writing terrifically long novels (Anathem comes in at just under 900 pages) and weren’t afraid of creating large sprawling worlds or extraneous details and side-stories, in fact, these great authors felt such details actually enrich the narrative, instead of sinking it.

Rather than write with eloquent and powerful language, Stephenson plays with language, shapes it, pummels it, and makes it into something new, yet still recognizable. For Stephenson usually this works, but sometimes I feel his prose just doesn’t hold up to his ideas. At times, instead of his writing feeling original and punchy, it comes across as juvenile and sloppy. Still, this is a small criticism in a work of literature that isn’t really about the writing. Instead, Anathem is a wonder of ideas and concepts. Like philosophy it makes one feel as though their world has expanded rather than contracted.

There are few writers today whom I feel are really moving literature forward and creating something unique and perhaps even classic (time will only tell). But Stephenson is one of them. Anathem is the kind of book one often despairs of reading in our world where writers appear increasingly obsessed with sounding clever rather than being wise. They forget: cleverness is soon forgotten, but wisdom always stays in print.

Borrowed from a friend.

Anathem

By: Neal Stephenson

HarperCollins, 2008

Hardcover, 935 pages

9780061474095

The Iliad

2008-02-07T23:03:00.000-08:00

Allow me to give credit where credit is due. I am currently enrolled in St. John's graduate program in Santa Fe. The graduate program is unique in this country in that it does not increasingly focus one's mind on a specific topic, but rather it forces the mind to expand, to reach, to go further than it ever has. It is a 'great books' program, meaning that we read the 'great books' of our cultural inheritance and then discuss them in small groups at length. It allows for conversations with intelligent and passionate fellows about a portion of the greatest thoughts and ideas ever put forth. It's kindof perfect.

I currently toil amidst the literature segment (every semester provides a different topic: Philosophy/Theology, History, Mathematics/Natural Science, Poltics and Society, and Lit), and am now reading The Odyssey and The Canturbury Tales. But last week we finished another book, one of the world's greatest pieces of literature: The Iliad, or literally 'the story of Ilium (Troy)'.

The Iliad's essential theme is what war makes of men. It should not be read as a simplistic reflection of the 13th Century B.C. Greek culture (since that is when the actual war took place and conceivably shortly thereafter the poems about it were first sung), but rather what war makes of every man in every culture. It's like Tolstoy's famous line: Every happy family is happy in the the same way, but every unhappy is unhappy in their own way. Every war causes the same changes in every culture and individual, but in peace cultures vary widely.

How is it that war's grasp is similar throughout cultures? In war, the primary objective is to win, whether for personal survival and/or personal and societal glory. War involves the wholesale destruction of the enemy by any means available, it requires a psychological divide between foe and friend. Comrades in war become incredibly close through the constant sharing of intense situations and the intimacy wiht death. War is a condition of life that stands outside the normal rules. One can kill others without punishment, in fact one's job is to kill others. The constant appearance of death simultaneously raises and lowers the importance of life. Life is easily taken, but perhaps more than ever treasured. The Iliad captures all of these universal facets of warfare, which is one reason for its brillance--there are many others.

It is the ninth year in what will be a ten year war. A war so brutal that it becomes the comparitive war for all of western culture. Whenever a city falls there is somewhere an echo of Troy. The story begins with wrath. Achilles, the greatest of the Greek's warriors, is angry. He has refused to fight because Agammenon, leader of the Greeks, has stolen Achilles' woman (he took her as booty from a raid). Achilles stands against what is obviously an unjust action by the Greek's leader. By choosing passivity, he condemns the army to suffer great losses against the Trojans. He is a kindof twisted Gandhi, choosing passive resistance to fight injustice, yet at the same time praying for his comrades' destruction to prove his righteousness.

Achilles, born of a goddess and a mortal, is stuck with a dilemna: he knows his destiny (it's definitely better not to know). He has been told by his mother that if he stays at Troy, eventually he will achieve great glory but will perish there never to return home. However, if he returns to his island-home he could live out a long life, but die without glory and infamy. He is already half-way to his destiny by being at Troy, but it is here--as he sits in his tent while other battle--when he seems for the first time tempted by the other option: a prosaic long life at home full of unremarkable deeds. He is the only character in the work who openly questions the point of this war, and the point of glory and honor all together. This is not common (either in 13th century BC or 21st century AD). Rarely do soldiers question the war while in it. Number one: they have survival on their mind. And number two: fighting a war one does not believe in is far more difficult than fighting a war one accepts. It's much easier to survive the horrors of war when one is not questioning its validity.

Many have commented on how ridiculous it is for the Greeks and Trojans to spend ten years and countless lives on a woman, Helen. However, there is more to it than that. The Greeks are fighting, because the abduction of Helen goes against the deepest part of their society. Quite simply, one cannot steal one's wife and get away with it. This is a flagrant violation of social rights. What if it was your wife? The Trojans--who never give Helen, although that seems the best way to avoid ruin--are fighting for something much clearer: home and country. The Greeks are threatening to destroy them and their city, wipe them off the face of the earth (which they eventually do). For the Trojans the posture is defensive, of course as the war goes on--as any war progresses--men start fighting for other reasons, personal, deep reasons. Namely that, how can one not fight when they have seen their comrades killed, when they have seen the bloodshed, grief, and terror caused by the other. This is depicted in Achilles when he finally re-enters the war due to Patrolocus' death. His grief becomes as insatiable as his wrath.

There is of course another way of looking at the Trojan war in general: men will use pretty much any excuse to have an enemy and to fight that enemy. A wife is stolen gives an excuse for war. We love war too much, for it paints the world in uncomplicated terms, black and white, making the majority of wars unneccessary. They happen simply because without war a man becomes restless. Witness the current war in Iraq: entered in under false pretenses, no objective but to destroy the regime, and accepted by the American people because, well, we wanted to fight some more and kill some more. Our bloodlust was not satiated with Afghanistan. To begin war all men need is an excuse, not a reason.

Amid all this bloodshed and warfare, The Iliad displays great empathy. There is probably no other war story that displays both sides with such great understanding. You see the war from both perspecitves, equally. Your allegiance shifts with the page. Though composed by the victors, it is a uniquely balanced account. As well, every man who dies on the field is named and described, we discover who their father is, where they grew up, what stories attend their childhood, and why they are here. No one is allowed to be an annoyomus enemy. Despite, the truthfulness of this, most war stories (from then on through today) depict warfare entirely from one side or other, but such perspectives are more propaganda than great literature. Great literature raises questions, propaganda exults in certainity. Here is a great lesson implicit in this epic poem: there is no enemy, there is only men killing men. War is tragic. Inherently, indisputably tragic. Yet, we still have not learned that to protray war from a single side (the 'so-called' good side) is inherently and simply wrong.

Homer's empathy extends even beyond the war. In his wonderful similes, he shows empathy for the sheep slain by the lion, and even for the enemy of man--the lion--surrounded by spears. Nothing escapes his empathy, no character is fully despicable. Even Agamemnon, who is probably the closest thing to a complete jack-ass in the book, displays numerous moments of self-reflection, of realizing how terribly he has acted, not to mention his heroics on the battlefield.

There is a moment in the final chapter of this amazing epic when Homer's narrational empathy displays itself in two of the work's greatest characters: Achilles and Priam. Achilles has killed Priam's favorite son, Hector, and then dragged his body around behind his chariot for days. So, Priam secretly goes to Achilles to ask for the body of his beloved son back, so his son may have a proper burial. In their meeting, which can only be described as heart-breakingly beautiful, two enemies see each other anew. A father sees his son's killer as a man of power and intensity. A soldier sees his enemy's king as a man of leadership and gracefulness. They admire each other. As someone in my class said, they see each other's humanity. If their is hopefulness in The Iliad, it is here: in these great men's improbable encounter.

Just because The Iliad is nearly 3,000 years old does not mean it is aged and stuffy. The violence, the brutality, is just as shocking and stark as I imagine it was when first recited. It remains one of the most violent books I have ever read and makes most Hollywood war movies look tame in comparison (did I say most? I meant all). On one level, The Iliad is the world's greatest 'action' book. Heroes slaying heroes, gods fighting gods, spear fights, sword fights, and chariot races. Heroes even fight gods. It's action is so non-stop and relentless that one almost becomes tired of battle after battle, death after death (and I think that is apart of the point), yet this is not some Arnold Swarzenegger souless action piece. The Iliad is a 'great book' because it tackles innumberable themes and questions without providing easy (or any) answers. What is the role of war in society? Is war inevitable? Is this the first anti-war book? What is fate? How much power does one man have over his fate? What is worth dying for and what is worth killing for? What is glory? What is honor? What is our relationship to the Gods (or God) and how does this propel us into, or keep us from, war? Is all fair in love and war, or only in war? Or only in love? Do men love war too much? Could their ever be a war-less society and what would that look like? What is death? Where does it lead? Can anything good come from war? Are war and peace apart of life's cyclical nature?

In some ways The Odyssey, which I am currently reading, is a direct answer to The Iliad. Or at least takes many of the themes from The Iliad and works with them, stretches them, plies them out for more truths and observations. Do not mistake The Iliad as an accurate and full representation of society, just as future historians will hopefully have more material to contemplate our era than Apocalypse Now and Saving Private Ryan. The way men act in war should never be confused with how they act in peace.

A final note: don't confuse the movie Troy as a substitute for The Iliad. Troy is the bad action movie version of a work of genius.

By: Homer

Trans: Robert Fagles

Penguin, 1991

Paperback, 683 pages

ISBN: 0140445927

Peter Pan in Scarlet

2007-03-27T19:45:00.000-07:00

I am a Peter Pan purist. It is my favorite children’s book, although I didn’t read it until I was legally (and practically) an adult. To my mind J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan stands with the greatest works of world literature. It is a brilliant book, but even more importantly it subtly takes on an incredibly large number of themes in wonderful and imaginative ways: the nature of time, mortality, violence, and love, while dealing with childhood’s inborn innocence, arrogance, and cruelty, as well as the fear (and ridiculousness) of adulthood. It is a comedic, tragic, and adventure-filled book. It insists on life’s impermanence, but through the sprite, trickster, or near-god Peter Pan, it believes in immorality.

It is not just the themes of Peter Pan that allow it to shine so brightly, but the characters. Peter is as powerful as a demi-god, as petty as a Greek God, and as childish as a child. He is full of arrogance, petulance, confusion, and unbridled joy. Everything is forgotten by him, yet he loves everything in its moment. Paired with Pan is one of literature’s greatest villains: Captain Jas Hook. How does one describe such a personality? He possesses the complexity of a character out of Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, yet remains still a rugged piratical children’s villain. He kills without conscience, yet goes to elaborate lengths to steal Wendy to be his mother. He is obsessed with time, appearance, and power, but mostly he desires to stand by the code of his early days in British boarding school. He can be a foppish clown and a brilliant adversary. J.M. Barrie does not shy away from making him sympathetic, as well as ridiculous. Yet with all his dualities one still believes in him fully, in fact he seems even more real through his contrasts; he is not allegorical—like Peter representing childhood—but a full-fledged larger-than-life persona persisting in a children’s book.

Finally, Peter Pan is a dark, violent, and morbid book. Our first view of Neverland includes every group—lost boys, pirates, Indians, and beasts—pursuing the other with intent on bloodshed. And blood is shed. Hook kills a member of his own crew on his opening; Wendy is shot by a very real arrow. Later, there is a great war between the Indians and pirates that results in several casualties, and Peter has no moral difficulty killing pirates one by one. Finally, when Peter confronts his own mortality, he proclaims: “To die will be an awfully great adventure!” If only we could all have this view. Hook’s more adult response to death is to go into the gaping jaws full of egotistical love and self-righteousness by proclaiming, “Bad form!” as his last words. The darker tones of Peter Pan usually finds its way OUT of adaptations—very unfortunately. As a culture we believe children don’t, or shouldn’t, think about death. Moreover we do not want to recognize the callousness and cruelty of children.

I hope in proclaiming the various reasons why I love this book so well, I am not making more of Peter Pan than is warranted. I hope I am not bullshiting (as is susceptible to English majors), for this is a book that should bring joy not overtly analytical triteness. This is a fun book to read, never numbing or trying.

With my love and admiration for Peter Pan declared, I came to reading its first ‘official’ sequel with some expectations. I came with hope, though not necessarily confidence, that it would preserve the spirit of Peter Pan—I had heard Geraldine McCaughrean on NPR and was impressed—but I also preserved a hefty amount of doubt. I pretty much figured it would dumb down the content of Peter Pan and bastardize the characters as every rendition/sequel/offshoot of Peter Pan does, from Disney’s beloved film to Spielberg’s Hook, from the popular musical to the most recent live action film.

Geraldine McCaughrean came to write this sequel through unusual circumstances. The children’s hospital which owns the rights to Peter Pan (given them by Barrie) held a contest, which Ms. McCaughrean won against innumerable other writers based on an opening chapter and a rough outline. From this first chapter it is immediately obvious why Ms. McCaughrean won. She displays an uncanny knack for resurrecting both the style and tone of Peter Pan. It is quite remarkable. Of course, there are times in the book when one can see that McCaughrean is trying altogether too hard to make the book Barrie-ish, but for the most part her style represents his well. I found this unexpected; I was surprised a children’s publisher would be open to a style so witty, intelligent, and wry, so full of truths hidden in fantastic images and ideas. Many children’s books today are written in straightforward, simplistic, action-oriented language that this throwback to the turn-of-the-century was a relief.

I don’t want to give away too much about the book, in case you have a mind to read it. But the first few chapters—pre-Neverland—are hilarious. McCaughrean captures the ridiculous in adults facing childhood, and I love that instead of the Lost Boys they are now the Old Boys. As well, her use of a children playing dress-up is employed extremely well (a theme throughout this novel). The action in Neverland I will not comment on too greatly, so as not to give away much, but I will say that her use of Neverland is wide and varied, and, of course, as with every sequel she creates new places to visit. Some of these feel too stretched from Barrie’s original, others fit perfectly.

What about the characters? With much relief, I discovered that McCaughrean cared greatly for Barrie’s originals. The plot she creates is fully wrapped around the personalities of Peter and Hook; in fact from the arrival in Neverland to the end of the novel there is no turn that doesn’t involve these adversaries. Peter Pan’s journey—with the Lost Boys and Wendy—is extremely interesting, because McCaughrean is able to produce temporary change in the unchangeable boy, and she does it without breaking any rules (namely: Peter Pan doesn’t grow old and doesn’t change of his own will). Her characterization of Peter throughout is well done; I felt it wasn’t always as strong as it should be, but still proved admirable.

But it was her portrayal of Hook that surprised me most. When I heard on NPR that she would be bringing Hook back for the sequel I scoffed. The man was eaten by a giant crocodile! I imagined she would have him reappear wit a flimsy excuse like: “he threw me up” or “I never actually fell in its mouth, it just looked like I did” or “the crocodile didn’t want to eat me; it just wanted to play”. I thought it would be better to leave Hook as was (dead) and recreate some new adversary. But, I was very wrong. I still marvel at how she did it. Hook returns and slithers his way into the story, and when we finally discover how it is that he has survived, it is a moment of great believability and completely coherent with the darker natures of Neverland. McCaughrean’s Hook is a marvel. He has lost some of the ridiculousness and pomposity he has in Peter Pan (i.e. he has grown up a bit), but he keeps the obsessions, the grim self-centeredness, and the pathetic inadequacies; he retains both his villainy and his sympathy. Incredibly, McCaughrean not only preserves Hook (amazing in itself), but also matures him through suffering. Hook plays such a role in the plot of Peter Pan in Scarlet that the book becomes almost more about Hook than Pan. This is surprising again, but just as well: Hook is rich enough to carry the novel. And his ultimate demise (or is it?) proves so poignant, so perfect that one feels as though J.M. Barrie whispered it in McCaughrean’s ear.

Finally, as shown by Hook's ressurection, Peter Pan in Scarlet does not shy from Neverland’s dark side. It is a grief ridden island, still filled with pointless violence and bloodshed. Still perfectly dangerous while perfectly adventurous. McCaughrean brings a new element to Neverland’s darkness, however; she brilliantly brings post-World War I England into the story, touching its tragedy and allowing No Man’s Land to run into Neverland. One of the most moving moments is one line in the middle of nowhere regarding one of the original characters.

I read this book in three days while staying in a cabin in the Minnesota north woods. To get to the cabin we had to walk across a frozen lake, which every morning sported new wolf tracks. Snow blanketed the ground and shadowed the trees. Cinnamon-colored squirrels chased one another competing for seeds. It was a beautiful place in which to read any book. But a perfect place for the first quality depiction of Neverland since Barrie's original.

**My copy (in photo) is entitled Peter and Wendy (Barrie's original title in 1911), but now it is almost always published under Peter Pan.

Borrowed from the library.

Peter Pan in Scarlet

By: Geraldine McCaughrean

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2007

Hardcover, 310 pages

1416918086

The Brothers Karamazov

2007-02-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

After much thought and examination, I proclaim: the greatest novel ever written is The Brother’s Karamazov.

Now, a few caveats: with this statement I do not mean that it is the greatest work of literature, for I would state that Hamlet is the greatest play and The Odyssey the greatest epic, while The Brothers Karamazov rests solidly as the greatest novel; but don’t ask me about poetry; I have not read enough poetry, nor do I understand poetry well-enough to attempt an answer as to its apex; next, while I would describe myself as well-read, I have, in truth, read very very little, and I can only state that The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest of the novels I have actually read (how can one measure anything against the unknown?), and among these unread books are a goodly number which are often classified among the greatest, including War and Peace, Middlemarch, and Don Quixote; finally every such classification is arbitrary and therefore nothing more than a curiosity in a sleepy museum in a town no one has ever heard of. That being stated I will reiterate: The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest book ever written.
After such a proclamation I suppose I should explain why I believe The Brothers Karamazov rises above all rivals. But here is the difficulty: a work of art as complex and beautiful (and I use both words to their fullest meaning) as The Brothers Karamazov cannot be properly described, words and analysis fails: making the following paragraphs rather useless. Such a book calls to be experienced; then whispers may be made of it between conspirators. Still, having read it now twice, I will try and whisper a bit about it before signing off.

In The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky continuously addresses life’s most pressing and prevalent questions. What is love? Does God exist?—and if so or if not what are the ramifications? What is goodness? How shall we view suffering? What is to be made of joy? In whom can we place our trust? Are we weighed down with sin or an imprint of divinity? Finally, in what should the individual seek meaning: romantic love, family, faith, or relenting despair? In other—and less—words: the novel addresses both the personal and metaphysical state of being human. Dostoevsky presents these questions, his characters wrestle with them, but answers will not be found. Dostoevsky possessed too much wisdom to put much stock in answers; rather he illuminates how the press of these unknowns makes life burdensomely beautiful.

The Brothers Karamazov is both comedy and tragedy; suffused with drama and passion, it is a book that does not deserve classification. The book is full of Pandora’s box: violence, sickness, despair, hateful love, pride, rape, and murder. Yet, ultimately the The Brothers Karamazov celebrates life, but without denying all its misery, pettiness, and mendacity. The accomplishment is all the more important in that the book denies not one moment of human kind’s misery, pettiness, and mendacity, its closed-minded squalor.

Dostoevsky is a realist. We are what we are, and the world continues to spin. Within our acts and souls there is goodness and there is evil, contrary to our President’s bombast no human can escape either quality entirely. Murderers are as human as saints, and vice versa. In The Brothers Karamazov’s seeming perfection (if it were ‘perfect’ it would not be nearly so potent) as a work of art and a passionate depiction of the state of being human is a book that both affirms our existence and tests every moment of it. In this duality lies the power and hope of The Brothers Karamazov.

Still, these words are but words. While it may be impossible to state why The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest of novels, perhaps I can make a bit of a case for why it matters. So much of our lives as twenty-first century Americans is spent on being entertained by some outside force, and very little of the entertainment addresses any of the issues that The Brothers Karamazov presents on ever page—questions so integral to being human. As a culture we seem to collectively shun such questions; some glibly believe the easiest answer, while others just don’t care. Americas despise doubt, and worship certainty, even preferring apathy or dogmatism to uncertainty. We are the culture that does whatever it wants without thinking about consequences or responsibility. As our illuminating president—and I use that adjective without sarcasm—stated regarding global warming: “the American way of life is not up for negotiation”.

Yet what have we created with this brutal optimism, this innocent destruction? An age of superficiality, more concerned with gossip than any pursuit of truth. Our celebrities are not those who labor under questions: writers, artists, scientists, or holy men, instead we worship mediocre actors and starving models; we love the heiresses and the talking heads. We raise high the businessman, and ignore the philosophers. Is it any wonder that we believe that the possession of material stuff is far superior to the possession of thought or imagination? We don’t want geniuses and great thinkers; we want loveless sex, pointless violence, easy religion, and lots of commercials. And we have pressed our entertainment-oriented and material-obsessed society to nearly every corner of this globe. But there are those that rebel against this single-minded materialism, this love of superficiality. Dostoesky—and others like him—still lay on many bookshelves and that means something, doesn’t it? It must. A book such as this, a work so full of life, can never prove infertile.

That is why this matters. So, reaching an end of sorts, I must admit that it’s probably impossible to state anything truly illuminating regarding a work as full as Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov in 200 words, but then again it may be just as impossible in 200 pages. With this then let my paean to The Brothers Karamazov conclude: it is a book that everyone should read at least once in their life. Maybe twice.

I bought this translation--long sought--at a little used bookstore in the Village in New York City. Miss that store. Oh and in the process of reading the back cover tore off: well-loved.

The Brothers Karamazov

By: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Translated by: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Vintage Classics, 1991

Paperback, 796 pages

0679729259

The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness

2007-02-01T10:07:00.000-08:00

When one thinks of travel writing, one thinks of a writer engrossed, enthralled, in love with the countries through which they go, enamored with traveling itself. We always imagine these people as gregarious, positive, and more-than-ready for the next adventure. They are the intrepid wanderer, air underneath their soles. Peter Matthiessen is a wanderer, but he is the chain-smoking, cynical, pig-headed Western wanderer, and to his credit he is only partially intrepid. It took me a long time to become accustomed to his demeanor. But first I had to understand: ‘Okay, so this is what the book is about’: a grumpy man backpacking through South America in the early sixties, who has no trouble complaining, judging, disliking, or disregarding. Such a style can be seen as refreshing. There's no upbeat assessments when traveling prospects are gloomy; he does not leave out the frustrations involved in such a rigorous trek; he worries a lot, and who wouldn’t on such a trip? He grumbles and complains. He dislikes some people for no real reason, and likes others for the same. In fact, he’s quite human. That’s great…but still, one always feels as though they are missing something with Matthiessen, like he's hiding beneath the print. He is a taciturn and private writer; he shows you places in South America but remains an odd enigma himself.

Much of the book is observation rather than interaction. Especially before his journey into the Amazon, Matthiessen sees South America, but does not involve himself. All right, so maybe this is what we do when we travel: we see a lot of stuff, we connect to it in our heads (or don’t), but we rarely participate; we remain voyeurs. On the other hand, after spending months and months in South America, you’d think he’d have a few more stories to tell, something entertaining like a night in a bar or getting sick from contaminated food or a girl he met or…er…well…something. Most of the book is long descriptions of places, and if you’ve never been there it can become dull. The sections on Peru and the Amazon proved the most interesting to me because I’ve been there; the rest, while they sound like incredible places, I couldn’t relate to in the same way.

There are moments that jar you from the slow rocking of his prose and description, but many of these have to do with dismay. Matthiessen is a true white Western male. He disdains the natives, and even when he seems to treat them or their lives with some appreciation, he never shows respect. They are not his equal. One has the sense that he believes the Spanish conquest was not at all a bad thing, and that Westernization of South America has had a good civilizing affect on the either child-like or eternally-depressed natives. He states that the Peruvian Quechua (the natives of the Andes and the descendents of the Incas) “neither smiles nor scowls, and this deadness of face seems incongruent with the gaiety of dress” (65). But perhaps, they didn’t smile for Matthiessen because they had been oppressed for centuries. The Spanish brought to the Quechua inescapable poverty, endless toil, political disenfranchisement, and alcohol. And this was after their population was almost completely wiped out by disease. However, I also think Matthiessen is just not looking very hard; while in Peru I found that the Quechua were incredibly friendly and warm; I will never forget the night a Quechua Shaman from a mountain village kept hugging and kissing. Since we could not communicate, this was how he showed his joy at meeting a traveler.

The respect Matthiesen lacks for natives seems to be counterbalanced in his love for wildlife. On his journey from New York to the mouths of the Amazon, he lists every wildlife sighting. He is enamored of birds and knowledgeable. But once he finally enters the jungle, and begins his white-man’s quest, he seems to lose all the respect he had. The jungle can do strange things to a man. At this time it is a hobby with natives and travelers to take pot-shots at every caiman they see (it’s no wonder the black caiman—the larger of the two caiman species—is practically extinct). And while Matthiessen states how the caiman have lessened in the Amazon due to this reasonless killing, he eventually joins in. It’s a weird moment when our narrator picks up the gun and starts firing; he states his duplicity quite openly: “I am as much a hypocrite as the next man, and eventually my itchy trigger finger got the best of me” (234). Then one of the books strangest and most pathetic moments begins with a capybara appearing at the river’s edge. Now let me preface this by stating that the Capybara is the world’s largest rodent—the size of a large dog, but bulkier. It is a magnificent animal, beautiful and truly strange; spending its life in the water, eating the Amazon's plentiful grasses, it is in some ways the hippo of the Amazon. Also, let me state that up to this moment Matthiessen has not seen a large mammal—except for American suburbs, the rain forest is the hardest place in the world to actually see wildlife—he has spent hours searching the river sides for a sign of mammalian life: capybara, tapir, river otter, or jaguar. Nothing. Then he enters the Amazon itself and spends grueling days trekking amidst the endless green and many more days on a small native raft in its rivers, and now—now he finally sees a large mammal and what happens? He shoots it dead. A bullet through the neck, and then the slain sinks into the river. The one defense Matthiessen may have at this point is that had the men been able to get hold of the body, they probably would have eaten it. However, it seems particularly symbolic to me that the first land animal he sees—after frigging months of searching and despairing—he shoots dead: thusly our relationship with nature.

Words should be stated in Matthiessen’s defense, for throughout this entry I have been rather smug and righteous. We must remember this is the very early sixties; times were incredibly different and mindsets regarding the natural world and the natives of America were nearly the opposite of what they have become. I believe this transformation in our regards to the natural world and native peoples is one of the major credits to the human race during the past century (though these beliefs have yet to progress to any action). Matthiessen is a man of his time: he is at once aware of the growing plight of the animals and the horrible history that the natives have suffered under Spanish rule, yet his words and deeds are still that of one who believes himself superior to…well pretty much everything. He is not the big-game hunter of Ernest Hemingway-styling nor is he the hippie Buddhist who loves and respects all living things. He sits at the very cusp of a great re-thinking of many cultural norms for the white Westerner. So, he’s just an intelligent white guy who does some stupid things then feels guilty about them later.

All of the above is definitely a very negative review of what has become a classic of Nature and Travel writing. Yet despite my many issues with the work (and not just ethical ones), I must say that I actually kind of enjoyed it. It was one of those books that was difficult to get through—mostly because I was not interested enough—it definitely wasn't what I expected or hoped for. However, it has proved one of those rare books where I don’t really know why I like it but I still do. Either that or it’s a book I didn't particularly enjoy reading, but only well after finishing realized its brilliance; I had this experience the first time I read Thomas Hardy. Still Matthiessen is not Thomas Hardy, not in this book at least. Nor is he anywhere close to the greatest travel writer I have read, Patrick Leigh Fermor; though I cannot claim to be widely read in travel narratives, Fermor outdistances what I have all by miles. So let us just say that I don’t regret reading The Cloud Forest, but wouldn’t recommend it unless the person has a specific interest in South America and pig-headed narrators.

I plan on someday reading Matthiessen’s travel/nature work The Snow Leopard, which won him the National Book Award. Mostly I want to read it because I am obsessed with snow leopards, and the premise of traveling to the Himalayas with the goal to see one in the wild—they are famously elusive—proves to hard to resist. But hopefully, if he does see one he won’t shoot it.

I work now at an independent (dare I work for any other?) bookstore in Minneapolis; I purchased the book there

The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness

By: Peter Matthiessen

Penguin Books, 1996 (originally published in 1961)

Paperback, 280 pags

0140255079

The Wheel of Time: Knife of Dreams

2006-09-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

I broke in our new apartment with this book. Every reading space was utilized: the couch, the loveseat, the dining table, the bathtub, the bed. I read leaning against the kitchen counter waiting for the tea to boil, I read at my computer desk, I read to avoid my inevitable next step in life: looking for a new job. There are few things worse than looking for a new job, and few things I like more than sitting around reading, cooking, going for long walks and generally being a housewife without kids. So, that is what I have done for the past month.

Going from New York City to Peru and finally to Minnesota left me exhausted, and so I chose a book that would keep me entertained and easily distracted, something I could sink into without effort. That said, I finally picked up the latest (and eleventh) volume of the Wheel of Time Series. I discovered this series in high school where I was an avid, though particular, reader of fantasy. I have since kept up with each new volume as they have appeared, and each time I have had to re-read the preceding the volume in order to reinsert myself into the world.

What a world it is! I wouldn’t say Robert Jordan is the greatest craftsman when it comes to the nitty-gritty of actual writing, but he is a magnificent storytelling, a master inventor. He has created an alternative world of such size and complexity that I think few writers (aside from Tolkien) could compare in that regard. The Wheel of Time Series, eleven volumes (so far) ranging from 600-1000 pages each, incorporates a cast literally of thousands. These thousands, however, are not just masses of soldiers like in a William Wyler epic, no when I say a ‘cast of thousands’, I mean characters who have names, purposes, personalities. I have no idea how Jordan keeps track of all of this. I imagine he has reams of paper with each character cataloged alphabetically, or perhaps by their first appearance in the story. So far, the world consists of, as I can remember, five major cultures: the main European-like one, the Aiel (a Bedouin, Native American-like culture), the Seanchan (think Vikings and ants, literally), the Sea Folk (a nautical society), and the Ogier (here is the only non-human culture, most similar to Tolkien’s Ents). This is not the end however. The main Euro-culture is split off into numerous kingdoms, each with their own complex society and cultural norms. There are in turn many separate societies based on magic (the Aes Sedai and the Asha’man are the most significant) and there are rogue cultures like the Children of Light (zealots not unlike early American pilgrims) and the Tinkers (similar to the British Isle’s travelers). These brief descriptions do not do Jordan or his creations justice and are merely meant to give one a sense of the largeness of this epic. The cultures are complex, vital, and when they act (or react)—as individuals or in a group—they do so in incredibly realistic ways and within their singulars culture’s parameters. I have no doubt Jordan must be a passionate student of history.

If one studies history, one knows that most of history is not about cultural stagnation, but rather about change. One of my favorite aspects of this series is how adeptly Jordan portrays a world undergoing great, tumultuous change. In the beginning of the series, Jordan sets up numerous rules (big and small) for his world, its cultures, and their relationship(s) to magic. Then he proceeds with beautiful adeptness to stretch these rules, to break them altogether, and finally shatter the world he has created. And how do his characters react to their once stable world becoming new, bright, terrible? As all humans act when confronted with what they thought not only would never occur, but could never occur: disbelief, terror, denial, finally grudging almost desperate acceptance (that is until the next great change is wrought). The Wheel of Time is the fall of the Roman Empire, the Mongol horde, World War II; it is civilizations under incredible distress and pressure.

In Jordan’s mileu there are characters who not only rise above this change, they cause it. Egweme, Mat, Elayne, and Perrin: each inflicts change where they must, but it is Rand Al’Thor, the protagonist of the series if there is one, who unleashes the greatest changes. Rand is the Dragon Reborn, which means he is the classic Chosen-One of fantasy literature and mythology. He must do battle with the Shadow, and in doing so break the world and himself. He is as much Christ and Buddha, as he is Achilles, Seigfred, Cuchulain, Arthur/Merlin, Aragorn, and Luke Skywalker. Throughout the epic, we watch Al’Thor go from a young village boy, naïve and likeable, to a tormented cold-as-steel demi-god. This process, slow (which is one of its great pleasures: the time Jordan takes to wrought it) yet inevitable, is fascinating to watch. Whenever I begin a chapter is centered on Rand, I get giddy. As interesting and engrossing as nearly all the characters are, Rand stands out. Perhaps, it is because his story is set upon at least five thousand years of ‘Chosen-One’, ‘Self-Sacrifice’, ‘Resurrection’ tales. It is a tale that never gets old.

Just this year Robert Jordan has been diagnosed with a rare and often fatal blood disease. It is incredible to think that the man who has spent the last fifteen years writing and creating his magnum opus may not be able to finish. He is currently undergoing treatment at the Mayo Clinic, and he is nothing if not a fighter. In fact his response to his diagnoses is truly inspiring (see http://www.tor.com/jordan/). He is optimistic he has decades of life before him. I join many others and take this moment to say: “Mr. Jordan, keep fighting!”

Purchased at a thrift store in Brooklyn for an amazing price

The Wheel of Time: Knife of Dreams

By: Robert Jordan

Tor Fantasy, 2005

Hardcover, 784

ISBN: 0312873077

Bleak House

2006-09-05T07:13:00.000-07:00

I read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House while traveling for six weeks in Peru. I probably should have spent that time reading some South American master, like Borges or Marquez, or most importantly Llosa, since he is Peru’s most celebrated writer, but instead I chose Dickens. I think it was because I liked the idea of reading something completely distinct from where my travels lead me, to sit in Chesney Wold while sitting on the cold, desert Peruvian shore, to walk through grimy, smoky 19th Century London while walking in the clear pampas of the Andes, to roam the dark, labyrinthine rooms of Chancery while roaming the dark, labyrinthine, yet living, jungles of the Amazon Basin. In the chance of encountering a squirrel monkey not unlike Jo, a tapir for Tulkinghorn, a spectacled bear for George, lay a certain mystifying joy, a kind of realization of the wideness of the world.

I also wanted a large, hefty book that would last most of the trip, something epic in scope to alleviate all the children’s literature I had read recently. And having worked at the bookstore during the Bleak House miniseries on the BBC, I listened to many Bleak House-centered conversations. One patron exclaimed that Charles Dickens was the world’s greatest writer—only, of course, after Shakespeare—and Bleak House his masterpiece. Such effusive exclamations certainly made the decision to make Bleak House my Peru book easier.

Enough on decision-making (although that is one of the great pleasures of reading!) and onto Bleak House. During the first three weeks of my trip and the first half of the book, I found myself disappointed. Or perhaps a better word is confused. I kept wondering where was this novel going? How would Dickens tie all these disparate characters together? Really, what was the point of all this? Sure, the writing was wonderful, the characterizations excellent, and many of the scenes were very funny, but I felt as though I struggled through the pages looking for a through-line, grasped in the dark for a string to get me through this seeming labyrinth of a book (if you haven’t guessed it already that is the word of this entry: labyrinth). Perhaps, I was too distracted by the stressors of the trip to catch on to the groundwork Dickens was laying. Perhaps, I was too accustomed to children’s literature where the first chapter always contains significant movement on plot and theme. I found myself almost bored.

I have read Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, and Hard Times, so it’s not like I came into this unaware that much of Dickens work is stuffing—and that is also one of the great joys of Dickens and many other 19th Century artists; they throw everything into their artistry, every bit of fluff, scrap, and rags they can manage. How different, and more perfect, a scarecrow looks when he is filled out, when he looms in a cornfield like a fat man after a satisfying meal than when he is nothing but an empty shirt, empty pants, and brainless bag for a head, which is how I often view contemporary literature: all plot, no stuffing; all action, no nuance; all bold strokes, no details. So why wasn’t Bleak House speaking to me? Perhaps, too much stuffing, so that it’s spilling out of the book, like a scarecrow split open by crows’ beaks? Or maybe I was simply too dim-witted.

Whichever way it falls, the light bulb between my head and the work eventually did go on. It was almost five hundred pages though before it fired. A few chapters before Esther becomes sick, the light began to come in fits and spurts, shedding a little illumination into the shadows. And then once she fell ill, it came on full, and for the rest of the book I was engrossed, I was devouring, I was in awe at Dickens’ ability to take all these disparate elements and make, dare I say it, a masterpiece. I remember, mid-day in the Amazon, laying on my mosquito-netted bed, and tearing through the revelation of Esther’s parentage. In fact, this is one of my favorite memories of the trip!

Now, looking back, the first half of the book makes complete sense. It is the set-up, the introduction of all these elements, characters, and plot points that really began to interconnect and play themselves out through the second half in such surprising and ultimately satisfying ways. It is a dark book, but beautifully so. I found myself surprised as to where Dickens would take so many of his characters (death, ruination, corruption, despair, murder, spontaneous combustion).

It is a book really about the society’s impact on the young, on the innocent, on those just coming into the world. In the micro version of this, you have the effect of parents (or guardians) on their children, Esther and her Aunt, as well as Esther and her birth parents, Mrs. Jellyby’s effect on Caddy (and on all her offspring), Mr. Jarndyce influence over Ada, Esther, and Richard (though he ultimately rejects it), and subsequently Mr. Skimpole and Mr. Vholes parentage over Richard, and finally George and Mrs. Rouncewell. Presiding over both Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wife are those illustrious aristocratic ancestors. As they move along the Ghost’s Walk, they remind us of the pressures on these two characters left to them by parental figures long dead. Sir Leicester Dedlock’s sporadic gout is another indication of his deeply ingrained inheritance. It is so delightful then when at the end of the novel he throws off much of his parentage and strikes a new, though still constrained, path. Finally you have those characters entirely without guardians, such as Jo and Nemo. Very little good can come to them.

At the macro level all the characters in the Bleak House have one patriarch, a stern, unyielding, and absurd father called Chancery Court. This is societies answer to bad-parenting: create a far worse, almost omnipotent monster. Ridiculous though the court may seem, it is ruthless, destructive, devouring. It eats not only money, but hope, youth, innocence, and entire lives. Only the few characters that are able to cut themselves truly off from Chancery Court, and subsequently Jarndyce and Jarndyce, come off well. The rest meet dim, pathetic ends. To tie one’s self to this Cronus means to meet repetitive humiliation, and eventually ruination.
Dickens seems to be making a comment, or many comments, on parenting. Children must break free of bad parents and strike out on their own. If the parent is good however, a certain degree of closeness is not only all right, but necessary (witness George and Miss. Rouncewell, as well as Richard’s demise after rejecting a ‘good parent’). This may seem quite a simple lesson, but it is not. It is a condemnation of every aspect of 19th Century British society, which in Dicken’s view had created a terrible, many-headed parent. The only comfort were the few individuals, like Mr. Jarndyce and Esther, who were able to offset some of society’s, and parent’s, wrongs through acts of selflessness.

Bleak House remains topical. Chancery Court could be the American Health Care system, or the trappings and ridiculousness of our Senate, Congress, and President. We too live in a time of bad, bad parenting. Obscurity remains: absurdity is taken for rationality, rule of law is merely rule of the indifferent, and a sense of hopelessness—of an inability to escape our dissembling parents—descends on us all. To quote the justly famous opening chapter of Bleak House: “Fog everywhere”.

Book purchased from Amazon.

Bleak House

By: Charles Dickens

Penguin, 2003

Paperback, pages 1037

ISBN: 0141439726

Watership Down

2006-05-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

My roommate owns a rabbit who must make an appearance here at some time, and what better moment then alongside Watership Down, Richard Adams' lapine masterpiece? My roommate's rabbit's name is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, or Justice (pronounced Eustace) for short. He spends much of his day in her room, chilling, but in the evening he comes out. He loves to be petted (which I find strange in a rabbit) and he performs the most wonderful little tricks, well not so much tricks as actions: he cleans his ears, wiggles his nose, chews at everything, and when in the right mood will leap twisting into the air or run wildly in circles.

Eustace did not inspire me to finally read Watership Down, I've been meaning to do that since I started working at the bookstore, but living with a rabbit certainly pushed the book to the head of my list. One of the great joys of this novel is that the rabbits are not fully anthropomorphized; they are rabbits. They are given human-like personalities of course, and from time to time allowed to puzzle out things that one would imagine a rabbit never could, but they still retain a distinct rabbitness. In fact, the very societies presented--different as they are--are credibly explained byway of the natural rabbits' lifestyle.

I had always thought of Watership Down as a seventies, hippie-inspired novel, an allegory for what the world may be and what it should be. For awhile, this made me avoid the book; I was generally uncomfortable with allegory (and still am). While Watership Down can be construed as an allegory for peace and love and freedom, it is not necessarily so. Like any great piece of work, the book stands by itself, free of any biased allegories and symbols. Certainly, themes like the quest for peace and prosperity, the importance of individual freedom, or the debilitating features of a rigid society abound. As well, courage, intelligence, daring, and leadership are traits that are exalted through such characters as Hazel-rah and Bigwig; finally, Fiver carries the importance of deeply felt instinct. But none of these themes or traits apply directly to any contemporary society or personages; there is no one-to-one ratio which is what allegory insists upon. Hazel-rah is not Churchill and Woundwort is certainly not Hitler. Such connections can be made, but any surety in making them is nonsense.

One of the aspects of Watership Down that I found so appealing was Adams lush use of language. 'Silflay' became my favorite word of the week; it has a lovely sound and it is employed to full effect, so that both its sound and meaning become delightfully routine by the end of the novel. As well, the addition of 'rah' behind the rabbit leader's name is powerful and beautiful. Just compare the name Hazel to Hazel-rah; the latter has far more maturity and potency. I loved that the rabbits' language often had an almost Arabic sound to it. Aspects like this ground the novel, and make it far more than some kid's story about a bunch of talking bunnies.

In most 'questing' books, which this one definitely is, the quest the heroes undertake is often for a treasure of some kind, to rescue someone, or achieve a special power. Here, the quest proves far simpler, but also far closer to our own lives. Hazel-rah and his disparate, yet courageous, band of followers are not looking for glory; their quest is for a simple life. They--like most of us--want to be safe, loved, and live in the manner they choose. They are, after all, rabbits--meaning they are a prey species --so there is a constant tension in their lives between the level of ever-present danger (real or imagined) and the level of security they have achieved. Their needs are simple, yet in the novel they must go to great lengths to achieve them. And in the end, they do. You come to understand the rhythmic (even harmonious) nature of these animals. Their lives will become routine and yet beautiful: this is what they are striving for throughout the novel, this is why they journey.

Watership Down is a sprawling vast novel. It is a novel that to me connects back to the great novels of the European Nineteenth Century; in those, as in Watership Down, there is a feeling of the story at times careening away from its writer, of its very largeness allowing us to see glimpses and moments that would never be allowed in a more controlled work of art. In their very nature of natures they are diffuse, they spread and drip and fall where one does not expect them. But often their genius lies in this, this careening magnitude that attempts to capture not one aspect of life, but everything.

Book borrowed from work.

Watership Down

By: Richard Adams

Scribner, 2005

Paperback, 496 pages

ISBN: 0743277708

Coriolanus

2006-04-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

I finished Coriolanus, the last of my Shakespeare plays, at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Not where we live, but where we often visit. The Tea Lounge is a unique coffee/tea shop (except for the other Tea Louonge relatively close by). We spent alot of time there this fall when we didn't have Internet at home, since they have free wireless. The decor of the Tea Lounge is unimaginably cool; first, it's enormous and I mean warehouse-enormous (which in New York is rare): it's both wide and open, crappy couches fill the space, the coffee bar turns quickly into a real bar, massive fans sway above your head, and they often play truly good music (and usually the whole album!) like The Beatles, Nirvana, and Bob Dylan. A couple warnings: food is expensive and not all that spectacular, the place can be packed on weekends with a mix of hipsters and Brooklyn yuppies, and on weekdays it is the place where all the young mother's gather (and my god there is a lot of them in Park Slope!) for play-dates, for gossip and knitting, and other activities which you wouldn't expect in 21st Century Brooklyn but occur nonetheless .

It was a rainy day in Brooklyn, and our plans for a picnic in the botanical gardens were therefore postponed. So instead we spent three hours at the Tea Lounge. I finished the play, reading the final bear-the-dead-like-a-soldier speech, while my fiance simultaneously read the chapter in Little Women where Jo declines Laurie. What symbol might be drawn from that conjunction, I don't know. But it was fun, nonetheless. We celebrated my completion of Shakespeare's play by proceeding to a market and picking up salmon and Kronenbourg for dinner. It was all in all a lovely, surprising Saturday. In New York City any weekend where you don't do much of anything--where you remember that simple days are still possible--is a good one.

Coriolanus proved a difficult play to get into, although the play begins with action: a blossoming of various battles (which seems a rarity for Shakespeare, there was very little exposition). The first act feels initially as though it should be the fourth or fifth. I did finally get grasped by the play, but by the end I didn't feel fully moved or astounded. Plot-wise the play is very well put together, and it certainly deals with some interesting issues, but I felt it lacked the emotional punch of almost every other of Shakespeare's tragedies.

The story is pretty simple, Coriolanus is a soldier through-and-through, a man who performs daring and near god-like deeds in warfare. However, his inability to double-speak or make love to the plebians of Rome causes his downfall and eventual banishment from his home. To revenge himself upon his citizens, he joins with an old enemy, Aufidius, to storm the gates of Rome and lay waste to the city. Militarily, he is set up to succeed, but he is finally convinced to seek a truce when by his mother. As revenge, and partly as a way to regain his own status, Coriolanus is murdered by Aufidius. Shakespeare took the story from Plutarch's Lives.

The main set-up of the story, as I see it, is the tension between Coriolanus, a man of action, utterly incapable of duplicity, and the nature of Rome (or political states in general) where one must be able to play the political game, i.e. being a war hero is not enough. Coriolanus can often be compared to Achilles, the greatest war hero of war-heroes (although, I felt Coriolanus lacked the potent mix of raw fierceness and knee-jerk passion which Achilles represents so well). Both men achieve great military victories for their state, both men feel underappreciated, and both men meet tragic ends. It could be argued that Achilles' blend of undiluted anger and arete is more more accepted by the society of Ancient Greece than Coriolanus' same qualities in later Rome, but I think that's overlooking the consistent reactions of the Greeks to Achilles in The Iliad; Achilles is often lectured by Agamemnon and Odysseus for his temper, he is treated as a child, unable to grasp the political realities of Ancient Greece. While it is certain that Achilles was revered throughout classical Greece as a hero worthy of emulation, I don't think The Iliad itself makes it so, the portrait painted there is too complex. The same stands for Coriolanus. While a war-hero and a man who lives up to his word (except in foregoing the destrcution of Rome), Coriolanus is still protrayed as petulant, almost stupid, and certainly a mama's boy. He is only kind of worth his hero-status, only kind of worth emulation. Perhaps, what this best attends to is the sense that certain aspects of society should not be forced to mix. In other words, soldiers--even the greatest--should not be forced into politics by default. Just as being a politician does not automaically make one a good soldiers. With that I'll let the heroes lie.

One nice coincidence: I finished my Shakespeare-play-completion on April 22nd, but I read the Introduction on the 23rd--Shakespeare's (supposed) birthday. It seemed fitting.

That evening in Park Slope, as my girlfriend and I walked from the Tea Lounge to the grocery, I was saying something about how I was excited that now I had read everything Shakespeare had written.

"Really everything?"

"Yeah, I think so. All the plays, the long poems--you know."

"You've read all the sonnets?"

"Ah...well, no."

And there it is. Now, I've got to pull out the sonnets and get to work. Well...maybe. I think first a break is required. Perhaps a classic children's novel is in the works, one in which I was too deprived to have read as a child.

Much ado.

Book borrowed from the 96th St. New York Public Library.

Coriolanus

By: William Shakespeare

Signet Classics, 2002

Paperback, 384 pages

ISBN: 0451528433

Breath

2006-04-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

In college I minored in history. I now think that I probably should have double-majored: english and history (maybe tripled, theatre). Since graduating, my fascination--obsession may be a better word--with history has only grown. It's incredible to wonder at the scale of lives that have come before ours, each one unique and important. There are so many stories in those multitudinous lives. I think it would be nearly impossible to be a good reader (which is what I strive for) and be bored by the past. In fact I doubt if it's possible to be fully engaged with the world, and be bored by the past.

I am always surprised how history receives a bad rap in our culture (but then I am also puzzled by how 'intelligence' is given a bad rap too). Like math and science, history is usually considered a boring subject, only for specialists, i.e. geeks, nerds, and the like. At most history to us is a source of entertainment (i.e. movies) or a harmless hobby and not illumination. A basic example is the amount of not only badly made historic films, but also the amount of inaccuracy in Hollywood. A film may cost three hundred million, but none of this seems to go into any actual research. There are of course exceptions: Master and Commander comes immediately to mind. But as usual I am digressing, let me just say that history--while always entertaining--is more than entertainment, and the past deserves more respect and curiosity than is usually granted it.

I don't think Donna Jo Napoli is well known outside of the YA market; this is a shame. From the two novels I have read of hers, she is a sublime novelist of history. She is a masterful storyteller with a style that punches by way of its simplicity. Using just a few sentences she can craft historical places and times that prove both recognizable and entirely alien. I imagine any run-of-the-mill time traveler would undergo a similar experience. Most of her novels take familiar fairy-tales or myths and attempt a new spin on them while infusing raw and gritty historical 'reality' over most of the fantastical elements (in fact it is only really when Napoli attempts 'fantasy' that her stories slip a bit and fade).

Breath is a retelling of the medieval story of the pied piper who stole away Hamelin's rats (and children) by music. But really Breath only focuses on this traditional part of the story in the last fifty or so pages, and it is the previous two hundred that I found truly enthralling. Here we see a small, 13th Century German town and farmstead recreated in brief, yet utterly believeable, detail (a scene in which a grandmother and grandson make a sparrow-pie dinner sticks out). Salz--our narrator crippled with cystic fibrosis--tells his story in heart-breaking, stark prose. One minute he's playing with his new kitten, and the next he's stricken with tremendous, life-threatening pain, but the change is so abrupt and simple, the reader hardly recognizes it until they are in the midst of the pain, with Salz.

The bulk of the book deals with the slow destruction of Hamelin as a mysterious illness overtakes one household after another. The disease is blamed on a sudden increase in rats--hence the piper. But the disease takes on a form that may be even more terrifying than the black plague (which had not yet reached Europe from Asia in 1284 when the novel takes place). This plague instead causes night-madness: hallucinations, sexual deviance, explosive violence. Salz proves immune to this sickness (whose scientific nature is explained thoroughly in an Afterward by Napoli), and it is through these innocent eyes that we watch his family, and the whole town, suffer a fate worse than death. It is a nightmarish Jekyll-and-Hyde vision, gut-wrenching and haunting. And Napoli protrays it with such care and simplicity that the terror rises almost unbeknown. Certainly, it is unwelcome, even by the reader: one cannot help but react to the town's devastation with even more disbelief than does Salz.

As with Bound, the other Napoli novel I have read, the book loses some of its focus and even believability in the last few chapters. By hewing so close to the Pied Piper story, she gets herself stuck in a situation that is just not believable, and starkly so against the gritty realism of the rest. Still the book is harrowing, affective, and give you a better glimpse of the 13th century than almost any movie and most other books. Rather meant for adults or children. However, if you're looking for a good medieval antithesis to Breath (that's still every bit as wonderful and accurate) check out Adam of the Road, a wondrous, beautiful tale of a boy who loses his father and dog in the medieval England.

If Breath sounds like it shouldn't be meant for children, that's probably right. In my mind this is really a 14 and up YA novel, however a mature 12-year-old could probably handle it. But this brings up one of the depressing issues surrounding "Young Adult Literature" (and there are many). More and more books are being classified young adult simply by the age of the narrator or main character and not neccesarily based on content and/or the author's desired audience. Donna Jo Napoli is a wonderful writer for young adults, but she is also a wonderful writer for any age. But how many adults take YA literature into consideration when choosing their next book? Of course, the majority of YA novels are crap, but this doesn't mean the gems should be stuck in the same category. Having spent the last nine months reading and re-reading children's literature, I can safely say that a lot of it deserves wider attention than it receives and some of it deserves far less attention than it already gets (i.e. Gossip Girls series, The Clique series, and any of the other trashy, nullifying kid lit. out there).

Well that is enough of this rambling entry where I seemed to cover everything (and resolve little) from American society's take on history to the actual book to various issues in classifying books as Young Adult. Next time (Shakespeare returns) I'll try to focus a little more.

(Book borrowed from work; picture above is of the hardcover edition, because I think that cover is far better)

Breath

By: Donna Jo Napoli

Simon Pulse, June 2005

Paperback, 272 pages

ISBN: 068986177X

Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling

2006-04-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

A brief word on reading in New York City's subways. First, it is wonderful. Every weekday I have on average one-and-a-half to two-hours of pure reading time. That's a pretty significant chunk (1/12 of a day). However, there is another plus to reading on the subway: it is a way to hide. My book is a tortoise's shell, whenever I want I just pop my head in-between the pages. This allows me to avoid high school tourists singing " Santa Fe" from Rent (although that was actually very amusing), crazy men screaming and ranting that MLK Jr. was a whoremonger, kids selling candy for god-knows-what, and of course the cursory panhandler. It also allows me to take a breather from New York's freneticism, its overwhelming characters, and the poisonous vapors that come through whenever the doors open.

That brings me to: drawbacks. Let's be honest, reading on the subway is not sitting at home in late-afternoon light with a cup of lemon tea listening to classical music. Reading on the subway often means reading the same sentence two dozen time because A) you were eaves-dropping on some suit's take-over-the-world conversation, B) your eyes were straying to a dread-locked dude playing Mario Brothers, C) your focus (though not your eyes) was pulling to the woman who is proclaiming that Christ is coming, or D) you just have no idea what train is what on the weekend. In other words, sometimes the shell isn't as dark or thick as I want it to be, and despite my best efforts I still can't avoid being drawn into the daily show that is New York City.

Another reality: for subway bibliophiles you have to choose book size wisely. For example, I have to keep checking out manageable copies of Shakespeare's plays from the library because I simply can't cart around the hefty Complete Works. Finally, by reading on the subway you must accept that people will look at what you are reading and judge you accordingly. I thought about reading the Bible (since I'm trying to finish that as well) but then I realized a portion of the populace would judge me as an over zealous-Christian-fundie-rightwing-missonary while others would want to compare with me their 'finding Jesus' stories. I decided to avoid such associations, and read Monster Blood Tattoo instead.

Before I begin my Monster Blood consideration, I should explain my job. I currently work as a Children's Book Buyer at an independent bookstore. For the purposes of these pages, this means I will be writing about a significant amount of children's literature. This also means I have access to tons of books before they go on sale. Monster Blood Tattoo releases in May. Currently, I am reading a galley; it's an unfinalized version of the book that publishers send around to allow stores to review the book before they decide whether or not to buy.

I have one chapter left of Monster Blood Tattoo, but feel sufficiently well informed to write about the book (which got the Australian writer a six-figure deal and a trilogy). Let me start off by saying that I love fantasy. It's one of the only 'genre-fictions' I am drawn to regularly. On the other hand, I am pretty picky about my fantasy. No one touches Tolkien. C.S. Lewis is a genius. And contemporaneously, Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series and Harry Potter are the only fantasies I read consistently.

Monster Blood Tattoo while enjoyable does not belong in the realm of the aforementioned. It contains an incredibly well crafted and pretty original (considering how difficult it is to be original in fantasy or sci-fi anymore) world. Apparently, Mr. Cornish spent many years crafting the world before drafting the story. This is not surprising, the detail is staggering and for the most part believable. The world is most closely comparable to a few Miyazaki films and the later Final Fantasy video games.

Fantasy is known to a genre of pretty awful writing, but D.M. Cornish does not fall into that category. His style is entertaining and interesting, his dialogue especially crisp and character-driven (I loved it when his monsters opened their mouths). Still, his writing does lack something, a kind of visceral (and if not that, mythical) quality that makes us delude ourselves into believing this is a real place and not just some planet misting in Cornish's mind.

While the writing was overall pretty good, the plot lacked some punch. The beginning drew me, as basically the story is simple and one I particularly enjoy: child-protagonist on a journey into the world. Where, of course, things are neither what they seem nor what he expects. Cornish does a nice job of instilling his hero, Rossamund (a boy with a girl's name) with wide-eyed wonder and, when needed, shock at the world's cruelty. Also, it is nice to read a fantasy that almost feels prosaic, so far our hero is not a CHOSEN one; he is not out to save the world or any such thing; he posses no remarkable abilities or objects; he's just a Candide out for a wander (however there are hints of chosen-one, world-saving to come...I hope not). My large complaint with the plot is that by the end (or by the near-end) not enough has happened. It feels like I should only be halfway through the first book, when instead I am 18 pages from the end. Loose ends are tied up far too easily and conveniently, characters either discarded or returned in an altogether unbelievable style. The climax is lackluster. This is not to say the book is rotten by any means. I enjoyed it quite a lot, though I am not sure if I'll have enough reserve interest to read the next volume whenever it appears.

I must close with a word about the title. How about: what the hell were they thinking. Monster Blood Tattoo sounds like a very crappy video game or a very crappy comic book. If this book wants to be a new serious contender in the ever-more-crowded genre of young adult fantasy, it should not have a title that would make even an undiscerning thirteen-year-old snicker. Why? Why? Why? The title of the series does make (some) sense once you read the book, but that doesn't really matter, because it's the first impression here that sticks.

It makes me wonder where Lord of the Rings would stand today if Tolkien, as he initially intended, had called his protagonist Bingo instead of Frodo?

Some alternative titles:

The Lord of the Rings -- My Year Saving Middle Earth

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -- Jesus Allegory in a Wardrobe

The Wheel of Time -- The Apocalypse, Again

(Galley, courtesy of Penguin)

Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling

By: D.M. Cornish

Penguin, 2006

Paperback, 432 pages

ISBN: 0399-24638-X

Timon of Athens

2006-04-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

Rather than begin with an introduction both of myself and of this blog, I will instead begin with a book. I'll shelve that introduction for another time, another place.

I am at the tail-end of a reading journey (which I do not doubt will prove the most fulfilling of my life) of Shakespeare's works; this journey began twelve years ago when I first read A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was on an extended hiatus from school and had checked out the play from our local library. I remember sitting in bed, eating a TV dinner I had microwaved myself, and reading the entire play in one sitting. I felt daring and grown-up. One, because I was home alone and left to my own devices, and, two, because I was reading literature that was clearly beyond me. I probably understood a fifth of it at the time (although perhaps that is being too generous), but I recall laughing whole-heartedly at the lovers' mercurial hearts. The line that sticks out most from that particular reading belongs to Lysander: 'And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake!' I still crack-up at that one when I see the show performed; in most audiences I think I am the only one to laugh.

Currently--what seems a lifetime later--I am reading Timon of Athens on the subway to and from work. This is my last Shakespeare play, but one. After Timon, it's Coriolanus. Once I'm finished with the canon, I don't truly know how I will respond. I suppose I should expect some sense of loss, some cold frigid feeling. After all, unless in my lifetime some lost play of Shakespeare's re-emerges (I'm hoping for Cardino simply because the title is so striking), Corialanus will prove the last time Shakespeare's words will be entirely new to me. But in actuality I don't feel any foreboding toward the end. For one thing, Shakespeare is one of the rare writers whose works I can read (or see) again and again without any trepidation. His plays age better than wine, and are far less expensive (cheap bottle of wine in New York: fifteen dollars, used Shakespeare play: four). Though this view will certainly not gain any points in originality: I attest that Shakespeare is the greatest writer of any age. There is something about his words that is inexpressible, they reach into the deepest valley of what it is to be human--and pull out conundrums. His metaphors, while never unfunctional, are always bold, daring, and replete. He creates characters that are at once bigger-than-life yet at the same time as true-to-life as any person who has ever graced this earth. He is the master imaginer.

But enough of this, I'm certain I will return to 'why-Shakespeare-above-all-others' again in the future. On to: Timon of Athens. I just finished Scene 1 of Act IV, in which Timon curses Athens--with true Shakespearean passion--the city that has grounded his ruin. The play is not one of Shakespeare's best, however I still find myself enthralled. One of the things that intrigues me most is how Shakespeare can write a compelling play centered almost entirely on economic issues (although I shouldn't be surprised: A Merchant of Venice). To me--a person with mostly an artistic and dramatic sensibility--it seems like a rather bland topic. But here Shakespeare brings both the micro-economy of Timon and the macro of Athens into light. He is fascinated by how the decisions one person--or a community--makes with money can so easily shape our fates. What are these gold pieces, these dubloons, these talents, this cash? Of course, Shakespeare doesn't answer this question; it would be ridiculous if he did. But for myself--entering my late twenties--I almost wish he did. Us post-college loaners could use a little Shakesperean advice.

Shakespeare's round-about, open treatment of loaning/lending reminds me of Neal Stephenson's own presentation of cash in Quicksilver. I read that book this summer, and while I did not love it enough to read the two following hefty volumes, I really did enjoy the read (except for the very strange sex/purging scenes). I was especially drawn-in by Stephenson's obsession with money or, perhaps more properly, the rough-and-tumble beginnings of a capitalist market economy where money becomes like air. It's there: we know that because we breathe it, it allows us to live; it's there, but it's no longer tangible. It's tied up. It's invested. It is--beyond true comprehension.

But Timon begins with actual assets, and then loses everything due to unbridled spending. Or does he lose everything because what he invests in (friendship) refuses to pay him back? There is no return on camraderie, certainly not cold hard glittering cash. So here money is not based on material worth or market value, but rather on social ties and social relationships. Or are social ties only corrupted by financial? Maybe. Maybe not. Here is a sign of things to come: there will be no answers in this blog. Answers don't belong in great literature, only questions and musings.

While it sucks to be Timon, at least he's expressive enough to pay back his lackluster friends with perfected cursing. I'll leave you with these impassioned words:

bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back, out with your knives,
And cut your trusters' throats! bound servants, steal!
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's bed;
Thy mistress is o' the brothel! Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains! Piety, and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries,
And let confusion live!

(Library Book, NYPL 96th St.)

Titus Adronicus/Timon of Athens

By: William Shakespeare

General Editor: Sylvan Barnet

Signet, 1989

Paperback, 432 pages

ISBN: 0-451-52269-9