I avoided this book for a long time, though I’m not exactly sure why. I think the premise (or at least what I understood to be the premise) reminded mI avoided this book for a long time, though I’m not exactly sure why. I think the premise (or at least what I understood to be the premise) reminded me of a book I read last year that was so horribly executed I felt very little inclination to get into something similar again. Who wants another lousy memory loss story, anyway? Well, put me in the “wrong again, asshole!” category because where the first book failed, converting an otherwise interesting idea into cheesy mindless schlock, this one delivered just fine.
It is the story of Alice Howland, a professor of psychology at Harvard University who, at the height of her research career, slowly begins exhibiting signs of early-onset dementia. Attributing her symptoms to stress or exhaustion at first, she eventually learns that she carries a gene mutation responsible for Alzheimer’s and is already well into the early stages of the disease. Knowing the gene mutation is autosomal dominant (meaning she only needs one copy of the gene to express the disease), each of her three children stands a 50% chance of inheriting the disease as well. The knowledge of this, on top of her own losses of stature, confidence, and ultimately her independence, serves only to compound the agony.
It is not all perfect, of course. The book is fairly breezy, refusing to delve much past the expected feelings of frustration, loneliness, and confusion that accompanies Alzheimer’s, and it often times felt rather clinical and pamphlet-y. But I am a giant nerd—I like clinical and pamphlet-y when the subject matter is in my realm of interests. Regardless, the book serves a purpose. It strikes the reader as remaining fairly true to the experiences of someone beginning to lose the required synapses necessary to retain memory and cognitive function—my second grader would call this “realistic fiction”—and as of its publication, it is in fact the only novel ever to have been endorsed by the Alzheimer’s Association.
And what I’m saying here is that I guess I am endorsing it a little bit, too....more
The Long Walk is a book by an elusive author named Richard Bachman—whom no one has ever met—about a bunch of kids being slaughtered in a near-future (The Long Walk is a book by an elusive author named Richard Bachman—whom no one has ever met—about a bunch of kids being slaughtered in a near-future (or alternate reality) dystopian America. Which, been there, done that, right? Can’t unknown authors write about something that wouldn’t be covered again decades later? The lack of foresight here is really disappointing.
There are differences, though, between The Hunger Games and this book, particularly in that the kids in The Long Walk are mowed down by military officials rather than by each other, and that participation in this deadly event is strictly voluntary (whereas in The Hunger Games, there is little “choice” in the matter). And while I don’t think it is a bad thing necessarily for some of these teenagers to get their just desserts—seriously, have you met a teenager?—the voluntary aspect of this event is something that I had trouble with. Because we’re not just talking a few hundred mentally disturbed kids who cannot comprehend the meaning of a 99% mortality rate. We’re talking tens of thousands of kids across the country who seem to want to be chosen for competition, and whose family and friends seem even to encourage their participation. I am not sure how dystopian this dystopia is, other than that it appears to include a military-run government, but it certainly doesn’t leave one with the impression that laying low and avoiding the event entirely should be all that difficult to do, so what’s with all these idiots wanting to get themselves killed?
But still, the book is pretty good overall. It draws interesting conclusions about survival and what drives us to surpass that which we believe to be the limits of our physical capabilities (mind over matter) and it also addresses a point that I have always been able to relate to particularly, which is that it doesn’t take much more than a simple conversation sometimes to connect with another person, and in the case of The Long Walk, that connection can come to mean the difference between life and death for its characters. At the end of it all, though, it is a book that was hard to put down, and it makes one wonder why the author—whoever he is—has not been more prolific and has never broken free from relative obscurity....more
It is often the roll your eye moments of books or movies that weaken the reading/viewing experience for me, but I have to be honest in saying that I cIt is often the roll your eye moments of books or movies that weaken the reading/viewing experience for me, but I have to be honest in saying that I cannot always define what exactly triggers those eye rolls. I think sometimes it is the predictability of the plot, other times the outrageousness of coincidence or lack of plausibility. If I get the impression I am being manipulated to feel a certain way, I bristle and balk. But what happens when a book commits one or more of these grave errors and I don’t roll my eyes? What was different that time? Did the book just happen to execute things more effectively? Did it possess some other, albeit unrelated, redeeming quality that allowed me to overlook certain flaws? Or does it really all come down to my state-of-mind at the time of reading?
I do not have the answers to these questions, but I do know that I really enjoyed Night Film—despite its main character being a bit of a retard (not to mention a lousy father), despite motivations that stem more from a sake of convenience than from any reasonable source, and despite the intrusion of the wild and zany into what is otherwise a reality-based investigative thriller.
So what did I like about this book? I liked the writing, I liked the supporting characters—not just the peripheral ones but also the ones who exist only in the ethereal sense. I enjoyed the twists and turns, which are perfectly timed and manage to prevent some elements from being revealed until the final page. I liked that not everything is ultimately revealed and I like what that says about who we are, as readers, and what we want out of a story. There may be two sides to a coin but at the end of the day it is the same coin, and maybe you need both sides to complete a picture. Or maybe that picture is never really complete because it exists in an ever-changing reality and all you can do is theorize and deduce and grab hold of whichever belief helps you sleep best at night, hoping nothing will come along later to challenge that belief, but still preparing yourself for that possibility because it almost always happens eventually, one way or the other, doesn’t it?
My apologies for the vagueness there but when you finish the book you’ll understand. Or maybe you will just roll your eyes and think, “whatever, man.” Either way....more
Which should be readily apparent, because if I were not, this book would probably have received only two stars from me—not aI am in a good mood today!
Which should be readily apparent, because if I were not, this book would probably have received only two stars from me—not as a reflection of its literary quality per se, but rather as a reflection of my own reaction to it.
Here is what happened yesterday: I finished this book and tossed it forcefully onto the coffee table next to me in what may be seen as a transparent attempt to attract attention to myself (which is something I tend to do often) and sure enough someone picked it up, read its title, and asked me what it was about, providing me with a wonderful opportunity to roll my eyes dramatically (another move with which I am somewhat familiar) and ask, “Do you realllllly want to know?” I explained that it was about this aimless young gentleman who decides to kill some time before starting a new job by visiting his cousin in a tuberculosis sanatorium high up in the Swiss Alps, but who begins to exhibit symptoms of ill health himself and whose visit becomes lengthened by increasing bouts of time until his initial 3-week stay has been stretched out to a full seven years, and that this book was about his experiences in that sanatorium over the course of those seven years. By this point, my enquirer’s eyes were wide with interest and I was astounded. In explaining the premise of a book that has actually kind of bored me, have I inadvertently extolled its virtues? Is this book perhaps more interesting than I am giving it credit for? The short answer to that is, NO! This exchange with my enquirer has merely revealed what I think is the essence of The Magic Mountain—it is a place that appears interesting, a place a reader might wish to visit on account of that appearance, but once there it is a place that traps the reader for seven long years and berates him with its endless philosophical musings and its explorations of moral ideologies, and only upon being finally discharged does the reader discover his eyes are bleeding from all the fork stabbing.
Now I have gone ahead and made it all sound so horrible. The truth is, this book is very well written. It has a lot to say about the cyclical nature of time and humanity’s fruitless attempts to anchor itself against its continuous passing. It speaks of the mysteries of biology and brilliantly relates the starting point of life to an unexplained (and unstoppable) illness. It presents death as merely an extension of life as opposed to its diametric opposite and eerily makes the reader feel comfortable with it. And it exemplifies the importance of spiritual health to providing fulfillment for a life that is by most accounts cursory and meaningless. But at the end of the day, it is a book for the brain, and as much as that may be adequate for some, I need a book with a heart and soul. I need a book with characters I can relate to and empathize with, and unfortunately this book had none of that. So, to the extent that I “enjoyed” my visit to this sanatorium, it is not a place to which I would consider returning any time soon....more
This is a great play about the decline of the Russian aristocracy, its implications for the working class It’s true what they say. Chekhov’s got guns!
This is a great play about the decline of the Russian aristocracy, its implications for the working class rising to fill the vacancies left by those cash-stricken families, and the complications propagated by these changes, namely the social inadequacies of those who get sucked into this newfound vacuum.
I read Three Sisters recently and while I did like the play, it did not shake my maracas as much as I had hoped it would. There are intertwining themes between the two plays (and perhaps among Chekhov’s plays in general), such as the emphasis placed on working—as both a route to happiness as well as a practical method by which to quantify one’s worth—but I think overall The Cherry Orchard has more going on, and has characters that are (to me) more interesting.
Take Lubov Andreyevna, for example. Lubov is the matriarch of the high-society family which is about to lose its beloved cherry orchard (along with the rest of the estate, too, but they all seem to be concerned only with the pretty trees) on account of a cash flow shortage that prevents them from paying their mortgage. These solvency problems are reflected in the predicaments of other landowners in the play, as well, like those of Simeonov-Pischin, who is constantly seeking a loan. Lubov has difficulty facing the gravity of the situation, having lived all her life in general ease and comfort, not having to work, and assumes things will naturally work themselves out in her favor. (They do not, by the way.) And yes there are tears and sadness but the tears are reigned in quickly, and Lubov demonstrates some surprising resolve at her capacity to adapt.
There are also other characters I liked. Lopahkin is the former peasant who represents the “new money” in turn-of-the-century Russia, though he does not always know the best way to handle his fun status bump. Fiers, a servant of the older generation, is at a complete loss to absorb the changes occurring around him while Yasha, his young counterpart, is almost embarrassing in his insolence, clearly not knowing his place (Fiers’s view) or perhaps percipient in recognizing what is happening and putting his native chameleonic qualities to good use.
In the end, I empathized with most of the characters in this play, feeling the acute twinges of pain in seeing the symbolic orchard meet its inevitable fate, but it is a pain swiftly assuaged. These characters reconcile themselves to their respective futures, and do so stoically, choosing to view the loss of the orchard not as an end per se, but as merely a different bud from which their new lives will thenceforth germinate....more
Sorry, Ben. And Kelly. And karen. This book really did not do it for me. In fact, that is kind of an understatement; my two-star rating is genRuh roh.
Sorry, Ben. And Kelly. And karen. This book really did not do it for me. In fact, that is kind of an understatement; my two-star rating is generous in that I actually feel sort of bad for disliking it as much as I did. I know it hits certain people on an emotional, gut-deep level and I am not arrogant enough (I am arrogant, just not arrogant enough) to universally proclaim its lack of literary value. My point is that I’ve often had people come onto my reviews and say, “Oh, thanks for letting me know this book sucks. Now I can take it off my shelves.” Don’t do that! Don’t not read this book on account of this review. It is only a reflection of this novel’s impact on me, and I am just one person. And a relatively unimportant one, at that.
Okay, so here is why this book sucks. First of all, I was genuinely liking it at the beginning. It is absolutely well written, and I enjoyed the narrator’s slow reveal of his history with Sarah and Henry. I was all geared up to hate the narrator, too, who I thought was going to be some detestable marriage violator. (It can be a lot of fun hating awful characters, can’t it?) Except as I continued reading, I came to realize that we, the reader, are perhaps not meant to hate Bendrix at all. In fact, I think we are being asked to identify with him, possibly, which sucks for me because I can’t. I don’t. So thanks, Mr. Greene, for taking the fun out of that angle.
And then the book shifts to Sarah’s journal entries, at which point everything for me came to a grinding, screeching halt. Sarah is by far the lamest character ever created. Her internal struggle—the struggle that lies at the center of the novel’s plot—is one that I could in no way relate to. It is during the description of this struggle that the novel takes a turn into an awkward territory of faith and the challenges presented on account of that faith (or lack thereof), and it was simply a huge turnoff for me. I’ve already returned this book to the library so I can’t quote it directly, but certain passages, paraphrased, rang very shallow to me, like, “my love for her refused to accept (view spoiler)[her death (hide spoiler)], whereas my hatred for her had full faith in it.” Oh, for fuck’s sake, give me a break. Really?
Anyway, I am super sorry I did not love this book. The only character I liked was Henry and I got the suspicious feeling I was supposed to dislike him, so it was just an all around mismatch for me. But I will try to do better next time....more
**spoiler alert** I don’t know. I guess this is what you would get if you crossed Ernest Hemingway with John le Carré? Maybe.
The Quiet American is the**spoiler alert** I don’t know. I guess this is what you would get if you crossed Ernest Hemingway with John le Carré? Maybe.
The Quiet American is the story of a British journalist covering the war in 1950s French Indochina and the annoying American who disrupts his complacent lifestyle. Sure, he’s in a war zone, but he has never had it better. He has a beautiful girl by his side and he finds it possible to remain relatively safe, both physically and emotionally—physically in that most of his reporting duties occur behind the front lines; and emotionally in that he is able to convince himself of Britain’s (and by extension his) lack of involvement with the war itself. It is their problem.
The annoying American changes all that, and it seems to me the American—Pyle, by name—is presented by Greene as an extension of America itself: innocent in its idealistic principles, yet dangerous in its perceived lack of guilt for the harm its idealism causes.
Without getting into specifics, there is more to Pyle than meets the eye, and even though I did not love this story as much as I had hoped to, it did pull together for me in the end. The protagonist learns that at some point, it becomes necessary to make a choice and become involved no matter how adamantly you believe in your own neutrality. Greene does write with a remarkable degree of restraint—in my opinion, his writing could even be said to be too restrained—which is how he packs a story with such complexity into a reasonable number of pages. The problem I had with it lay mostly in the fact that I did not experience much of a connection with any of the characters’ relationships. Though Pyle and Fowler essentially fight over a girl, it is a girl whom neither of them seems to really love, and the two men themselves don’t actually develop any quantifiable bond of friendship that would have otherwise made the story more affecting.
Anyway, I am not done with Graham Greene yet. Some guy on Goodreads named Ben told me to read The End of the Affair, so I suppose that is what I’ll go ahead and do next....more
Ok, let’s just cut to the chase. This work, this novel, this brilliantly flowing diatribe of comic vitriol, is a work of pure consummate genius. The wOk, let’s just cut to the chase. This work, this novel, this brilliantly flowing diatribe of comic vitriol, is a work of pure consummate genius. The writing, the pacing, the internal dialogue, the word choice, and probably the translation, too (though that is only a guess)—it is all perfect, perfect, perfect. You people will think I’m joking when I say this, but I am telling you: this book is a freaking page-turner.
Woodcutters is the first-person narrative of an over-the-hill, acrimonious gentleman who becomes reunited with a group of shallow, pretentious, artistic “wannabe” individuals with whom he had once been intimately acquainted, after the death of one of their mutual friends. For most of the story, the narrator sits in a wing chair in the corner of the anteroom of one of these people’s homes, after having been invited there following the friend’s funeral, and silently blasts his hosts for their abominable character and their tactlessness at hosting this party to begin with, as it was initially meant to be an artistic dinner to honor an artistic guest, and only later became an in memoriam dinner to honor their dead friend, as—it should be mentioned—it was only for this latter purpose, once it was learned that the friend had died, that the narrator was extended an invitation.
And that’s it. That is the entire premise of this novel, and yet it is all Bernhard needed to completely knock it out of the park.
For anyone who knows me, or for those who have been following my reviews long enough (why? why would you do that to yourselves?), you might know I’m a sucker for an ambiguous character, or perhaps a character whose motives reveal themselves as contrary to what the character would prefer you to believe. Our narrator would like you to believe, as he seethes away in his wing chair, that he is unlike the miserable hosts of the party to which he had been invited, unlike their vacuous, imbecilic guests, and unlike the insufferable artistic-guest-of-honor who hasn’t even shown up yet but who the narrator has already made clear is insufferable and is unlike him, the narrator, as he sits in his wing chair. But as he continues to rip into these people, you start to wonder...how did the hosts manage to invite the narrator to their party in the first place if the narrator insists he has always tried to avoid these people? How has his opinion of these people managed to change so drastically from the days during which he used to associate with them? And what do these people think of him, the narrator, as he sits in his wing chair ridiculing all of them?
Look, you know what? I’ve said enough about this novel. I don’t like long reviews, so I’m just going to say one more thing: this book is phenomenal, and my only challenge to you, my review-reading audience, is to read one paragraph, just one single paragraph of this novel, because it is all you will need to become as enamored with this book as I am....more
I’m just going to come right out and say it: Shirley Jackson knows how to tell a story. Though she may be best known for her work in the psychologicalI’m just going to come right out and say it: Shirley Jackson knows how to tell a story. Though she may be best known for her work in the psychological suspense genre, I’m pretty convinced she was not limited by this label, nor would she have been by any other, and this work would most likely fall into the “other” category. But there’s no reason to take my word for it; even Oliver (view spoiler)[
(hide spoiler)] found himself drawn to her work, enthralled by her words, and taken in by her characters to such an extent that his appetite for Jackson’s novel was all-consuming. He practically devoured the story in one sitting!
It took me a bit more than a single sitting, but whatever remains of this story Oliver left for me I nonetheless enjoyed. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Jackson’s final novel, and somewhat melds ideas and themes prevalent in “The Lottery” and in The Haunting of Hill House. The first-person narrator is an 18 year-old infant, a childish adult not unlike the kids from Dogtooth with their alarming degree of worldlessness, and through the course of the narrative, we (the reader) find ourselves being duped several times over as our impressions of the characters are formed and reformed, morphing as quickly and as seemingly effortlessly as a T-1000. Are the villagers as chillingly terrible as Mary Katherine Blackwood would have us believe, and as we are confident she herself believes? Is there perhaps something more deviant and sinister to the Mary Katherine whose older sister playfully admonishes as “Silly Merricat”? Or—and more likely—does the novel rather take place in a gray area of suspicion and questionable motives, screwing around with our sense of moral placement?
If I could rate with half-stars, I’d probably have given this a 3½. While the writing itself is top notch, the story ends kind of anticlimactically, and while the plot is well paced, one could often tell where it was going before it got there. Still, these are minor quibbles. A good Shirley Jackson book is a great book in general, as it turns out....more
Does anything sound like less of a good time than listening to some crotchety old man wax nostalgic for his younger days, humoring him (in a patroniziDoes anything sound like less of a good time than listening to some crotchety old man wax nostalgic for his younger days, humoring him (in a patronizing way, of course) while he complains that times have changed? Very little pleases this person; he’s finicky, he’s bad-tempered, and his attitude toward his fellow man is depressingly sour. At first glance, Ebenezer Le Page might resemble this curmudgeonly type, and admittedly he is a curmudgeon on many levels, but there just happens to be something about him that sets him apart from the typical irascibility of his curmudgeonly brethren, a “something” that inevitably makes getting to know him an investment worth undertaking.
Ebenezer, not surprisingly, is a constant in an area of the world that has seen rapid technological advances since World War II, before which it remained relatively protected from external influences. Naturally, Ebenezer covets the insularity his homeland enjoyed before the war, having been raised in this environment and having forged close ties with his surroundings, particularly to his home which has been in the possession of his family for generations. Ebenezer views these changes as a sort of “end” to Guernsey life as he has always known it, and unwittingly becomes a human parallel to its terminative quality when he finds himself inching imminently closer to his own mortality with no one left to extend his legacy, or at least no one he deems “Guernsey” enough. He thus spends a large chunk of his remaining days deciding to whom he should bequeath his property while simultaneously composing a memoir of his life, a memoir that becomes The Book of Ebenezer Le Page.
This is one of the easiest five-star ratings I’ve ever applied to a book. It is a fictional memoir whose narrator has completely and totally endeared me to him. He writes with an almost Proustian capacity for observing human relationships, and his accounts of friendship—specifically with Jim, but also with Raymond and later with Neville (who, to him, represents the antithesis of the new generation of Guernsey)—are beautiful in their depictions. At the end of his life, Ebenezer is able to reflect honestly on the choices he has made, without judgment, and from a vantage point of understanding better the circumstances around which those choices were made. His words and actions are comical, yet poignant, and his fictional legacy will be—for me—largely unforgettable.
Speaking of crotchety curmudgeons, this book was a gift from one of my favorite Goodreaders. Thank you, David!...more
Liking this book makes no sense. Not only are its characters subjected to like, the bleakest set of circumstances ever, but then those circumstances aLiking this book makes no sense. Not only are its characters subjected to like, the bleakest set of circumstances ever, but then those circumstances are presented to the reader with such an alarming degree of authorial detachment that you almost have to wonder whether Mistry himself—fed up with the unending series of hardships his characters are required to endure—didn’t just raise his arms in the air and say, “Oh, fuck it.” And yet I could not tear myself away from this train wreck.
A Fine Balance presents neither a balanced nor a very fine account of a group of four Indian residents during the late 1970s. These folks, heralding from different castes and backgrounds, are tossed together by their individually perturbing situations to forge an unlikely bond—not unlike the bond formed among the cast members of Big Brother or The Real World except that in this case, the glamorous hot tub around which the characters congregate is replaced by a broken propane stove and a rusty tap from which water can be drawn only occasionally. For those not brushed up on their political history, the late 1970s saw India under the rule of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who, though largely considered one of India’s greatest prime ministers on account of her centralizing policies (the constitutionality of which, I suppose, could be debated), was certainly not among those in the author’s favor. Throughout the story, Mistry’s characters are continually being caught in Gandhi’s crossfire even while remaining mostly oblivious to the political climate surrounding them. We get the distinct impression that Mistry is trying really hard to keep his own opinions from interfering with the story, but it is pretty obvious dude’s got some serious bitterness issues to work out.
Anyway, this book is not without its flaws. A few characters bump into each other under repeatedly, under no plausible pretext other than pure coincidence, and this coincidence occurs frequently enough, especially toward the end of the novel, that the reader has to remind himself that this is India we’re talking about here, right? The one with a population density of a thousand people per square mile? Mistry makes us feel like this might be an India under glass, where the characters are tiny steel balls and Mistry is controlling the flippers.
This book is good, though. For all its doom and gloom, I still see the hope in its pages. Three of its characters are clothing tailors, and one of the repeated themes is something about how life is like the patchwork of a quilt, the good parts and the bad parts being sewn together—but if one were to try to remove the bad parts, he’d only end up with holes in his life.
(I suppose you’d have to think positively when you share a crapper with 150 other villagers.)...more
Compared to the stories told in this book, and the stories that surely countless others could tell of their own obsessionAs it turns out, I’m a fraud.
Compared to the stories told in this book, and the stories that surely countless others could tell of their own obsessions with the printed work, I’m like the guy in the back of a Star Wars convention who says, “Oh, I’ve seen Return of the Jedi once or twice, I think!” Because the fact is, you people are out of my league.
And that just might be the difference between liking this book—appreciating it for its humorous accounts of bibliomania and its interesting history of book collecting—and loving it on a level that only someone who personally identifies with the neurotic episodes contained therein can love it.
Objectively, there is plenty to find fascinating about A Gentle Madness, not the least of which is that it offers the healthy perspective of correlating batshit-crazy book collecting with the preservation of historical records. Without these nutsos doing their thing, it is not unreasonable to believe that many aspects of history might have otherwise been lost to the ages. Book collecting is important! At the same time, a majority of these book collectors are people with whom I cannot readily identify. For example, there is an account of an older woman who collected children’s books...thousands of them. Her interests leaned toward the rare, but truthfully she would have accepted anything into her collection that showed signs of being handled by actual, real-life children. You’d think her motivations were rooted in a love for children themselves, or at least in a desire to recapture her own childhood by allowing herself to be absorbed by these books. But nope! Her desire was simply to collect. She wanted no snotty brats touching her books, and she certainly had no interest in actually reading them. The reason I can’t relate to these experiences is that I feel as though I am the exact opposite. I love reading. I will read (practically) anything somebody gives me, or anything that catches my eye. But once I’m done with it, the book itself is fair game. In fact, I would rather give a book away for someone else to enjoy than keep it for myself. I understand this concept is foreign to most Goodreaders who proudly display photos of their bookshelves, or their “book porn” (which—seriously—is a practice that needs to STOP; unless the books are specifically pornographic in nature, they are not book porn), but that is how I differ from most of you psychos.
What happened was, I hadn’t been paying close attention to my Netflix queue, and when Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing was released, I quickly fliWhat happened was, I hadn’t been paying close attention to my Netflix queue, and when Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing was released, I quickly flicked it to the top of the queue (like I do all new releases) without remembering that I had wanted to save it for when I actually read the play. (I was also saving Kenneth Branagh’s for the same occasion.) Then the red envelope arrived and I couldn’t let it sit there forever and I’m certainly not going to waste a few days sending it back unwatched, so what is a fella to do other than to actually read the play?
And what a play it is! Ostensibly about a guy named Claudio falling hot and heavy for a girl named Hero and a bastard villain who tries to thwart their romantic plans for no discernible gain (seriously, find me someone who can explain Don John’s motives here), this play is really about Beatrice and Benedick. Because as it turns out, Claudio is merely a puss-puss who has offered no contribution whatsoever to the Space Race. And people like that should never command one’s respect.
Beatrice and Benedick, on the other hand, are pretty great, and this being a Shakespearean comedy, they happen to be pretty funny, too. Especially Beatrice. A master of wordplay and sarcasm, her insults are delivered with a stinging precision and the deftness of a ninja. Halfway through the play, her comedic match is met when we are introduced to Dogberry, whose humor is a little more...unintended? Yet it is nothing short of hilarious.
This play probably has some deeper themes trying to elbow their way out—Beatrice is presumably an early model of feminism in literature and I am sure that angle could be explored more deeply—but this worked well enough for me as a breezy romantic comedy, and I look forward to seeing what Whedon does with it. Wow, did I just call Shakespeare breezy? I am such a puss-puss!
Oh, and Branagh’s adaptation has been subsequently moved up in the queue, as well, and should already be waiting for me at home. It will be a Shakespeare movie weekend! (In between Red Sox games.)...more
Did you know that Zooey Glass was voted People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1961?
What? No, I’m kidding. Why would you have ever believed that? Did Did you know that Zooey Glass was voted People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1961?
What? No, I’m kidding. Why would you have ever believed that? Did you think the magazine even existed back in ’61? Geez.
But if it did, fictional or not, Zooey could almost certainly have been a contender. And back then he would have been eligible, too. Of course, you wouldn’t get the Zooey Glass looks without a little of the Zooey Glass attitude, and are you sure you’d want to have dealt with that? It was a little...I don’t know...caustic? At least three levels above endearing sarcasm (and those are three levels in the wrong direction, by the way), Zooey could chew you up and spit you out without even blinking an eye. But yeah, I get it. He’s hot.
Franny’s not so bad looking herself, but she—like her delightful brother—may not have made the best dinner date companion. Franny, who seems to me an older, wiser, and less retarded version of Holden Caulfield (and I say this affectionately because I love Holden in all his beautiful retardedness), expresses a whole slew of disgust for the world around her, and for the state of the arts and of academia in particular. In fact, they both do (Franny and Zooey), to an extent that is both sad and comical at the same time.
So what is up with the Glass kids? Why are they so damaged? Zooey attributes their psychological issues (his and Franny’s) to their older brothers Seymour and Buddy, one of whom is dead, and the other being a stand-in for Salinger himself (or so I’ve read), as they practically forced their intellect onto their younger siblings at an impressionable age, critically injuring their ability to be happy later, and isolating them from a society that can’t comprehend their lofty criticisms of...well, nearly everything. I mean, don’t you think Franny and Zooey would have preferred to be as carefree as other members of society seem to be? Wouldn’t they wish to trade their brainiac existence, at least occasionally, for a some flip-flops and iced tea? Well, in the end, maybe not.
I liked this book very much. I loved the Glass family, as messed up as they are, along with its matriarch. I thought it interesting, too, how reading this was like reading a play. Aside from Buddy’s letter to Zooey, Franny and Zooey has a clear delineation of three distinct scenes in two distinct acts. The sets are simple, yet close attention is paid to their design. Actor positions are described at every turn. Maybe it’s just me...maybe I wanted this to be a play for some weird reason, but it’s also what appealed most to me about the book, I think. It is the dialogue between the actors (and it is almost always one-on-one) that elucidates their character and it is the characters that made me love this book as much as I did.
Whoever designed the cover of this novel and came up with its title (because I refuse to believe either of thesePreconcetti sventato ancora una volta!
Whoever designed the cover of this novel and came up with its title (because I refuse to believe either of these disasters were Jess Walter’s doing) must have had one thing in mind: make this book appear to be as much of a chick-lit beach read as possible. And yes, while there are certainly elements of the chick-lit beach read here—some tender relationships, a sprinkle of sentimentality, a romance or twelve—it would be highly unfair to categorize it as so, because this book smashes that label to pieces and even transcends whichever other label one might try to apply to it. Beat that, labels!
Walter is a skilled writer. For such a short book with its surprisingly large cast of characters, including (believe it or not) Richard Burton, Walter manages to do draw out each of them fully and beautifully, flaws and all. Traversing from post-war Italy to modern-day Hollywood and back again, the plot is expertly constructed. Though it does, at times, meander into predictable territory, it never stays there long, and the care with which Walter crafts the relationships among his characters—whether it be between a mother and her son, a young man and his comrade, or a widow and her never-forgotten flame—is a care reminiscent of that shown by Krauss in The History of Love. In fact, I think both novels succeed on a similar level (besides shattering my preconceptions), which is to address the often competing themes of desire and responsibility, imagining the possibilities of a life-that-could-have-been while ultimately reconciling it with the life-that-is.
But also, yes. It is a love story:
And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke loves Leia (till he finds out she’s his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omertà—the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don’t even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story.
And also, yes. Parts of it do take place on the Italian Riviera.
Memory is a slippery little sucker. It constitutes an elusive, transient cache of data, the reliability of which decreases in reverse proportion to thMemory is a slippery little sucker. It constitutes an elusive, transient cache of data, the reliability of which decreases in reverse proportion to the length of time it has been stored. It can even be a blatant liar! How often have we found ourselves convinced of the details a particular memory only to have those details called into question by some testimony or other of which we have been made newly aware? It is almost frightening how quickly and naturally the bytes of our mind can be removed and supplanted by ones more convenient, ones designed to soothe our psyche, thereby allowing us to live at peace with ourselves.
Marcel Proust was not a psychologist, but he may as well have been, what with his ridiculous understanding (the kids are using the word “ridiculous” to mean like, way amazing, these days) of the fluidity of memory, and more specifically, of involuntary memory, which may or may not be any more reliable than that which is conjured consciously. Though we believe a person or a place from our past remains stationary in our idea of them while its true-life counterpart adapts and progresses, Proust shows us how memory can have a life of its own, as well. And yet when his narrator bites into that famous piece of sponge cake and transports us back to the days of his French childhood, we go willingly, not hesitating to question the accuracy or the validity of his musings. Because it doesn’t matter. When in Proust’s world, it is the remarks on human nature and memory and social customs and relationships and whatever else comes with that trip that makes it so worthwhile.
The best part of Swann’s Way, by far, is the intricate portrayal, from beginning to end ((view spoiler)[but evidently not really the end (hide spoiler)]), of the relationship between Swann and Odette. Their relationship is doomed from the start, being based on superficialities at its onset and becoming increasingly toxic as it progresses, yet by no means does its toxicity ever invalidate the love Swann has for Odette. That part of it is wholeheartedly genuine. For anyone who has ever been in such a relationship, it is kind of wild how realistically it is depicted. For anyone who has ever witnessed objectively a friend in such a relationship, it is kind of wild how recognizable the signs are of its toxicity, and how it seems to tap us on the shoulder, reminding us of the ease with which we must at the time have said, “I wonder why he doesn’t just leave her and move on with his life?”
This book really blew me away. For all the difficulties I anticipated reading Marcel Proust, I have to admit how pleased I was by its readability. I think what I enjoyed most, besides its perfectly constructed sentences, was that if I had been able to track the number of times I would encounter a passage that so exquisitely peels away the complicated layers of the human condition, exposing its unadulterated innards, I...well, I suppose I’d have reached a pretty high number. Having embarked on In Search of Lost Time in full ignorance, I have no idea what to expect next, but part of me wonders if “Swann in Love” isn’t meant to foreshadow the budding of a similar relationship between the narrator and Gilberte. I suppose we’ll find out.
The other day my friend was saying to me that she recently saw The Descendants and thought it was a pretty dumb name for a film which has nothing to dThe other day my friend was saying to me that she recently saw The Descendants and thought it was a pretty dumb name for a film which has nothing to do with the protagonist’s descendants. I have not seen it yet, but I thought maybe the title was more overtly related to the book, a relation which then became lost in its translation to film. Regardless, it does fit the book rather nicely—and it is not about the protagonist’s descendants, either, but about his being a descendant: a descendant of Hawaiian royalty (back when Hawaii was a kingdom) and the burden of his needing to make his own way in the world, for himself and for his daughters, that leaves him with the legacy of having done something, or of having started something, so that he can be (in some respects) at the top of that family tree as opposed to on some lowly descendant branch.
But, really. Some burden, right?
Except Matt King—and yes, that really is his name—has a few more serious burdens to contend with, namely his dying wife and the two children in whose growth he has played no significant part until now. This book is mostly about this transition for him, from non-participatory parent and (probably) inadequate husband to involved father and coping widower, with a few curveballs thrown in for good measure.
It is a decent book, and while I don’t always like to extend my own opinion of a book’s characters into my evaluation of the work as a whole (oh, who am I kidding? of course I do), I had difficulty relating to Matt. For someone whose wife is dying and who has just learned has been cuckolding the crap out of him, I could not understand his understanding. I mean sure, he says he is angry, but he certainly doesn’t behave as though he were angry. In fact he does things that are in complete opposition to what I would expect an angry person to do in such a situation. I am sorry, but no one is that well adjusted. I refuse to believe it. Still, the book is pretty decent in spite of this. There were other characters I liked a lot—namely Sid, Matt’s oldest daughter’s “friend”—and even though the movie will probably cast him horribly (I have not checked yet), he more than makes up for the inadequacies of some of the other characters.
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