4.5 stars, rounding up. I read and then reread several of these stories (some of them for a third time) while I was writing my final review for 4.5 stars, rounding up. I read and then reread several of these stories (some of them for a third time) while I was writing my final review for , and they keep impressing me more ... for the most part. My literary friends will be so proud of me! :D So here's the full review, where you can follow along with the journey of myself and my (severely challenged, but ultimately edified) brain cells ... [image] Ficciones is a classic collection of seventeen short stories by acclaimed Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, originally published in the 1940s in Spanish, and winner of the 1961 International Publishers Prize. These stories and mock essays are a challenging mixture of philosophy, magical realism, fantasy, ruminations on the nature of life, perception and more. There are layers of meaning and frequent allusions to historic figures, other literary works, and philosophical ideas, not readily discernable at first read. Reading Ficciones, and trying to grasp the concepts in it, was definitely the major mental workout of the year for me. My brain nearly overloaded several times, but reading some critical analyses of these works helped tremendously with my understanding and appreciation of these works 鈥� well, at least most of them.
The stories in Ficciones are divided into two parts: The first part, The Garden of Forking Paths (El Jard铆n de senderos que se bifurcan) was originally published in 1941. The first six stories in Part Two, Artifices, were added in 1944, and the collection was named Ficciones at that time. Borges added the final three stories to Ficciones in the 1956 edition.
Part One: The Garden of Forking Paths
鈥淭l枚n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius鈥� 鈥� The narrator tells how his search for information about Uqbar, mentioned to him by a friend and found in only one edition of an encyclopedia, leads him to Uqbar鈥檚 literature about the imaginary world of Tl枚n, with its fantastical culture steeped in psychological and philosophical concepts. A brief taste:
The nations of that planet [Tl枚n] are congenitally idealist. Their language, with its derivatives 鈥� religion, literature, and metaphysics 鈥� presupposes idealism. For them, the world is not a concurrence of objects in space, but a heterogeneous series of independent acts. It is serial and temporal, but not spatial. There are no nouns in the hypothetical Ursprache of Tl枚n, which is the source of the living language and the dialects; there are impersonal verbs qualified by monosyllabic suffixes or prefixes which have the force of adverbs.
Heady stuff! This twenty page story (the longest in the book) is so abstruse and heavily laden with philosophical ideas and allusions that I found it almost completely impenetrable. It reminded me of trying to read James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses. I was so completely lost that I鈥檒l confess I had to put this book down and retreat to a fluffy romance while I mentally regrouped for another attack on this book. Brain cell verdict: no response. They totally shorted out on this one.
鈥淭he Approach to Al-Mu鈥檛asim鈥� 鈥� This allegorical story purports to be a review of the titular novel, about the years-long pilgrimage of a law student in India, who murders a man in a riot and falls among the lowest of society. When he perceives a note of tenderness and clarity in one of these vile men, he concludes that it is the reflection of a perfect man who exists somewhere. The student embarks on a lengthy search for this man, whom he calls Al-Mu鈥檛asim. We have met the divine and it is us. My brain cells concluded that, although some of the allusions are obscure, this tale is far more readily grasped than the first one. There is hope!
鈥淧ierre Menard, Author of the Quixote鈥� 鈥� Another story set up as a mock review of one Pierre Menard鈥檚 attempt to recreate Don Quixote 鈥� not copy it, but study Cervantes and his world so deeply that he can write Don Quixote exactly as it was originally written. The reviewer lauds Menard鈥檚 work, which uses the identical words as Cervantes, as far richer and more profound than the original. It鈥檚 satirical in tone, but otherwise I was at a loss as to the theme and meaning of this work. The brain cells were getting restive again.
鈥淭he Circular Ruins鈥� 鈥� A stranger makes his way into the circle of ruins of an ancient temple, lies down and begins to dream, with great purpose: he wants to dream a man, to create a son to whom he will be the father, by imagining him in great detail. It succeeded for me as a symbol of the creative process of authors, even though I鈥檓 still wading through tricky but entrancing sentences like this:
He understood that modeling the incoherent and vertiginous matter of which dreams are composed was the most difficult task that a man could undertake, even though he should penetrate all the enigmas of a superior and inferior order; much more difficult than weaving a rope out of sand or coining the faceless wind.
It鈥檚 still a challenge, but my brain cells are starting to feel a little more hopeful. So we moved on to 鈥�
鈥淭he Lottery in Babylon鈥� 鈥� In the city of Babylon, a lottery morphs into an game that takes over all aspects of life in Babylon. A lucky drawing might lead you to be elevated to the council of wizards or reunite you with a long-lost love; a losing ticket might land you in jail, or get your tongue burned, or lead to infamy or death. The ubiquitous lottery seems to be a symbol of the capriciousness of chance in life and the story in general seems to be taking an ironic view of the questionable role of deity in human life. My favorite part was the sly reference to Franz Kafka in the form of the 鈥渟acred privy called Qaphqa,鈥� where informants can leave accusations for agents of the Company that runs the lottery. The brain cells were quite amused.
鈥淎n Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain鈥� 鈥� This is another satirical review piece, purporting to review four (non-existent) works written by a (fictional) author. Borges playfully explores the labyrinth concept in different ways in each of these works. This story, frankly, didn鈥檛 leave much of an impression on me.
鈥淭he Library of Babel鈥� 鈥� One of Borges鈥� most famous stories, 鈥淭he Library of Babel鈥� posits a universe in the form of a library made out of connected hexagonal rooms, each room filled with books and the barest necessities for life. Each book contains 410 pages, with 40 lines of 80 letters each. There are 25 letters and punctuation marks in the alphabet. The Library contains every possible combination of those letters. Most of the books are complete gibberish, of course, but like the Infinite Monkey Theorem says, if you have enough monkeys banging away on typewriters for long enough, eventually they鈥檒l write Hamlet. But life for the people dwelling in this library is profoundly frustrating, even depressing, since only a vanishingly small percentage of the books make any sense at all. Borges explores the ways that people react to this, with several nods to religion and philosophy. Mathematicians have had a field day with this book鈥檚 concept, figuring out how many books such a library would contain. Per Wikipedia鈥檚 article on this story, there would be far more books in this library (1.956 x 10 to the 1,834,097th power) than there are thought to be atoms in the observable universe (10 to the 80th power).
鈥淭he Garden of Forking Paths鈥� 鈥� Dr. Yu Tsun, a Chinese professor of English, is living in Great Britain during WWI. Dr. Yu is spying for Imperial Germany for a psychologically complicated reason: he wants to prove to his prejudiced German chief that a person of his race, a 鈥測ellow man,鈥� can save the German armies. Yu discovers that an MI5 agent, Richard Madden (an Irishman who also has equivocal feelings about the nation he is serving, due to his nationality) has captured another German spy and is on the verge of finding him. Dr. Yu goes on the run. The plot is thickened by the fact that Dr. Yu has just found out the location of a new British artillery park. How can he pass that information to his German handler before he鈥檚 captured? This is the first story in this book that has a substantial plot to go along with the play of ideas; hence, I enjoyed reading it more than the previous tales. The concepts in it are not as mentally challenging, although the labyrinth imagery and philosophical conjectures resurface toward the end. Still, 鈥淭he Garden of Forking Paths鈥� was straightforward enough that my brain cells didn鈥檛 hurt too much trying to wrap themselves around the story.
Part Two: Artifices
鈥淔unes the Memorious鈥� 鈥� Borges, as narrator, meets up with a young Uruguayan boy, Ireneo Funes, who has the ability to tell you exactly what time it is without looking at a clock. When Borges returns to this village three years later, Funes is now crippled from being thrown by a wild horse, but his mind is unimpaired. The narrator realizes that Funes also now has an infallible memory, with perfect recall. But the depth and detail of Funes鈥� memory makes it impossible for him to grasp general, abstract ideas.
To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details.
This tale was, again, a little too opaque and short on plot for me to really enjoy. The brain cells were grumbling a little.
鈥淭he Form of the Sword鈥� 鈥� In this story, which deals with themes of identity and betrayal, the narrator is passing through a town and asks an 鈥淓nglishman鈥� whom he meets there (actually an Irishman) about the terrible, crescent-shaped scar across his face. The Irishman tells a story of his involvement in the battle for Irish independence, and his dealings with a disagreeable, cowardly man named John Vincent Moon. There鈥檚 a twist to this tale, echoing the Irishman鈥檚 portentous comment that 鈥淸w]hat one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men.鈥�
鈥淭heme of the Traitor and the Hero鈥� 鈥� A man named Ryan researches the death of his great-grandfather, an Irish nationalist hero named Fergus Kilpatrick, who was assassinated and is now viewed as a martyr to the cause of Irish independence. Something about the manner of Fergus Kilpatrick鈥檚 death strikes Ryan as enigmatic, a series of events that are like 鈥渃ircular labyrinths鈥� (that image again!), oddly echoing elements from Macbeth and Julius Caesar, Shakespeare鈥檚 classic tragedies of betrayal. In 鈥淭heme of the Traitor and the Hero鈥� the conceptual aspects of this tale don鈥檛 override the compelling plot, and this was one of the stories I really loved.
鈥淒eath and the Compass鈥� 鈥� Erik L枚nnrot, a highly intellectual detective, works to solve a strange set of murders by figuring out the pattern underlying them and the clues left by the murderer, referencing the unspeakable Hebrew four-letter name for God. L枚nnrot foresees a final murder, but can he prevent it? As L枚nnrot explores the house where he has deduced the final murder is to occur, once again we have maze-like imagery:
On the second floor, on the top story, the house seemed to be infinite and growing. The house is not this large, he thought. It is only made larger by the penumbra, the symmetry, the mirrors, the years, my ignorance, the solitude.
This detective story had enough philosophy in it to make it intriguing and give it more depth than a typical mystery, but not overload my brain cells, which are feeling like they鈥檙e now on a roll.
鈥淭he Secret Miracle鈥� 鈥� A Jewish playwright is arrested by the Nazis and sentenced to die by firing squad. All he wants is the ability to finish up a play he has been working on, his masterpiece. A divine voice tells him that he will be granted the time to do this 鈥� even though he is set to die the next day. But God works in mysterious ways, and the playwright is able to weave 鈥渁 lofty invisible labyrinth in time.鈥�
鈥淭hree Versions of Judas鈥� 鈥� In yet another mock literary review, Borges reviews three imaginary works by Nils Runeberg about Judas, the betrayer of Christ. Borges-as-Runeberg recasts the character and nature of Judas in three different, heretical ways, including as a righteous man who knowingly accepted his role as the person who would force Jesus to declare his divinity, and even as another incarnation of God Himself. He challenges our comfortable religious views.
鈥淭he End鈥� 鈥� A shopkeeper, who has suffered a paralyzing stroke and is lying on a cot, sees and overhears a confrontation between a Negro man, who has been hanging around the shopkeeper鈥檚 store, playing his guitar and waiting, and a man who rides up to meet him. Their conversation makes it clear that the black man has been waiting seven years for this meeting. As mentioned in an editor鈥檚 footnote, this brief, bleak story is essentially a coda to a famous Argentine 19th century epic folk poem, 鈥淢artin Fierro,鈥� about the life of a violent gaucho. In a famous scene in the poem, Fierro crudely provokes a black man and then kills him in the resulting knife fight. Several years later, in this story, Fierro is an aging man with some regrets for the life he has lived, and whose free and lawless gaucho way of life is passing. Once I really grasped the connection between the poem and this story, it became one of my favorites in this collection.
鈥淭he Sect of the Phoenix鈥� 鈥� There is a group of people in all societies and times, tied together by the Secret that they share, which Borges coyly never reveals. Is it sexual intercourse? Or perhaps more particularly, homosexual sex?
In the prologue to Artifices, Borges comments:
In the allegory of the Phoenix I imposed upon myself the problem of hinting at an ordinary fact 鈥� the Secret 鈥� in an irresolute and gradual manner, which, in the end, would prove to be unequivocal; I do not know how fortunate I have been. Of 鈥淭he South,鈥� which is perhaps my best story, let it suffice for me to suggest that it can be read as a direct narrative of novelistic events, and also in another way.
鈥淭he South鈥� 鈥� This is one of my favorite stories in this collection, as well as Borges鈥�. The main character is Juan Dahlmann, a mixture of German and Spanish ancestry, whose life is mundane but who dreams vaguely of a more romantic life, inspired by the Flores side of his heritage and the Flores ranch in the South that he owns but has never visited. One day Dahlmann brushes his forehead against something in a dark stairway and realizes afterwards that he is bleeding. He develops a life-threatening infection and is taken to a sanitarium for treatment. After many excruciatingly painful and feverish days, he recovers, and decides that he will take a trip to his ranch to convalesce. He travels out of the city on a train, feeling as though he is traveling into the past, and has an unexpected confrontation as he nears his final destination. Or does he? You decide, but several clues in the text 鈥� a mysterious cat, a spitball that brushes his face, a dagger tossed to him by an old gaucho 鈥� have led me unequivocally to my own conclusion. The brain cells, by the way, were completely engaged by this tale, which was complex and layered enough to make me think, but didn鈥檛 lose me in a labyrinth of difficult-to-grasp ideas.
Repeated labyrinth imagery, scenes of deception, and challenges to our perceptions of what is real echo throughout the stories of Ficciones. These stories are often elusive, twisting out of your grasp or revealing unexpected depths just when you think you鈥檝e got a handle on them. Even the lightest stories have several layers and hidden meanings to unpack. If you鈥檙e interested in philosophical ideas and are up for a literary challenge, I highly recommend Ficciones. The 1962 English translation by Anthony Kerrigan and other translators is excellent....more
Review of the title story: An unnamed grandmother, a woman caught up in appearances and social standing, travels with her son's family to Florida on aReview of the title story: An unnamed grandmother, a woman caught up in appearances and social standing, travels with her son's family to Florida on a vacation. The grandmother was pushing to go to Tennessee instead, for lots of reasons - she has friends there; an escaped criminal called The Misfit is running around loose in Florida - but she gets overruled.
So she goes along on the trip to Florida, of course, but manages to make life more than difficult for her son's family. Lots of things go south, and it's more than just the family and their car.
I read this story in college for an English course, and reread it again for my real life book club, along with A Rose for Emily, which is equally disturbing Southern literature from an earlier generation. Though Flannery O'Connor is somewhat sparing with her descriptions, the characterization of the grandmother and her family is excellent. O'Connor has a great eye for human foibles.
This story has a lot going on beneath the surface, and has some really intriguing things going on with symbolism and religious belief, thought it was difficult to get a handle on the grandmother's religious discussion with another character toward the end. There's a subtle moment of grace there, but readers who dislike books that don't have a HEA ending should keep right on going. If you like bizarre Southern lit, though, you really need to read this one.
There's a free copy of this story online . Sensitivity warning: violence (not graphic but quite disturbing), and the grandmother uses the N-word a couple of times and in other ways clearly shows her unthinking prejudices....more
Jane Austen's novel about a femme fatale, the lovely and devious Lady Susan.
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This early epistolary Austen novel follows the young(ish), attractJane Austen's novel about a femme fatale, the lovely and devious Lady Susan.
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This early epistolary Austen novel follows the young(ish), attractive and recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon as she schemes her way around England, leaving emotional wreckage in her wake. Lady Susan is a unique main character for Austen, two-faced, mean-spirited and amoral ... yet witty and intelligent.
Lady Susan is trying to marry off her young daughter Frederica, whom she despises as stupid and insipid - well, she is pretty insipid, actually - to Sir James, a rich young man, while maneuvering to marry someone even richer herself. When she's banished from a home she was visiting (for seducing the husband, Lord Mainwaring), lacking better options, Lady Susan invites herself and her daughter Frederica for an extended stay with her dead husband's brother and his wife. The wife, Catherine Vernon, is one of the few people that sees through Susan's fa莽ade.
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Catherine's handsome young brother and the family heir, Reginald De Courcy, soon arrives for a stay as well. He's initially laughingly suspicious of Lady Susan, whose reputation has preceded her.
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But Lady Susan, all sweetness and distressed loveliness, is gradually able to convince Reginald that she's been unfairly maligned. Meanwhile she's writing letters to her friend, Alicia, confiding all her devious plans.
The plot thickens when Susan's shy daughter Frederica, desperately trying to avoid being married off to the oblivious Sir James, starts to fall for Reginald and begs him to help her evade her mother's plans for her. Susan's got all she can do to juggle all her lies and schemes, keeping Reginald on the hook while also continuing her relationship with Lord Mainwaring, who's still hanging around her. Just keeping her options open!
Lady Susan isn't a particularly deep or layered story; it was early days yet for Jane Austen. Other than Lady Susan herself and her foe Catherine Vernon, the characters are pretty much one-dimensional. But it's a fun read with many witty lines and an intriguing and unusual main character, and it's interesting to see Austen developing her style and craft. Half the fun in this book is reading Susan's explanations to Alicia of how completely she's tricking everyone around her. Even when I was getting anxious for her latest victim, Reginald, to wake up and smell the coffee, I was getting a kick out of how gleefully deceitful and amoral Susan is....more
Prospero manipulates his daughter Miranda, the prince Ferdinand, his father (the King of Naples), Ariel, Caliban, and the rest of the cast! But[image]
Prospero manipulates his daughter Miranda, the prince Ferdinand, his father (the King of Naples), Ariel, Caliban, and the rest of the cast! But in the end **spoiler warning here, if anyone actually needs it** he sets his slaves free and forgives those who've wronged (tried to murder) him, and also has some really excellent lines, so it's all good.
Review to come.
Initial comments: The "book from the 1600s" space is one of the last few that need to be filled in on my 2016 Classics Bingo card. I tried and failed to get into Milton's Paradise Lost, but The Tempest is going down a lot easier. :)...more
"At ev'ry Word a Reputation dies" [image] "The Battle of the Beaux and Belles" by Aubrey Beardsley
One of the wittiest poems ever written, and one of my"At ev'ry Word a Reputation dies" [image] "The Battle of the Beaux and Belles" by Aubrey Beardsley
One of the wittiest poems ever written, and one of my very favorites from my college English literature studies. "The Rape* of the Lock" (first published in 1712) makes good-natured fun of a real-life situation: a 21 year old Baron, Lord Robert Petre, rudely snipped off of a lock of hair from Arabella Fermor, a lovely young lady of his acquaintance, without her consent. Arabella was incensed (the situation wasn't helped when Lord Petre went and married someone else the next year), and the fall-out was causing a feud between their two prominent families. [image]
Alexander Pope's friend John Caryll suggest that Pope write a humorous poem about the event, in the hope that it would help everyone involved to lighten up. I'm not sure he succeeded there, but this poem did make a lot of other people extremely happy.
What dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs, What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things, I sing 鈥� This Verse to Caryll, Muse! is due ...
Pope wrote a mock epic version of the story, with Arabella (or Belle) renamed as Belinda.
Say what strange Motive, Goddess! could compel A well-bred Lord to assault a gentle Belle? Oh say what stranger Cause, yet unexplored, Could make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?
The poem follows the elaborate epic literary traditions of classics like The Iliad and Paradise Lost, but subverts them: it has supernatural beings (Bella's rather ineffective fairies), the arming of the heroine for war (with clothing, jewelry, etc.), a descent into the underworld, and an epic battle (of the sexes) where the heroine slays men with her eyes. The juxtaposition between grand ideas and trivial concerns is delightful:
Whether the Nymph shall break Diana's Law, Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw, Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade, Forget her Pray'rs, or miss a Masquerade, Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball ...
This poem is a bit on the long side for modern readers, and some parts are more interesting and amusing than others, but it's worth taking the time to savor it and delve into its humor and subtler meanings.
*"Rape," by the way, didn't have quite the meaning in the 1700s that it does now. I remember my English professor talking about this, and agrees:
Words are a lot like snowballs in that respect: as they roll through history, they gather layers and layers of meanings. In the 18th century, in Pope's day, "rape" also meant to carry away or take something from someone by force... "Rape" did have a sexual connotation, but in no way as strongly as it does now. By using it in the title as the verb to describe what happens to Belinda's hair, Pope is playing on both layers of meaning: seizing something by force and personal violation.
Reportedly Arabella Fermor was quite charmed with this poem until she realized (or, more likely, it was pointed out to her by friends) that there are some rather risqu茅 double entendres in the poem. Oops....more
This is a short but extremely intense book, first published in 1946. It begins with the author's experiences in four (!!) different German conc[image]
This is a short but extremely intense book, first published in 1946. It begins with the author's experiences in four (!!) different German concentration camps in WWII, including Auschwitz, and how he coped with those experiences -- and saw others cope with them, or not. He continues in the second half of this book with a discussion of his approach to psychiatry, called logotherapy, based on the belief that each person needs to find something in his or her life, something particular and personal to them, to give their life meaning. We need to look outside ourselves.
There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
The first half of the book is completely absorbing, fascinating reading. When I tried to read the second, more academic part of it years ago, I floundered (I don't think I ever got through to the end). But I stuck with it this time and found it truly rewarding.
The second part did sometimes challenge my brain cells with concepts like this:
I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything is irrevocably stored.
I had to read that one two or three times before I felt like I really grasped what Frankl was saying. And this one:
Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
I assume it's to help give us motivation to avoid making a wrong choice, by thinking through the likely consequences of what we are about to do. But there are so many nuggets of wisdom in this short volume. A few things that really impacted me:
We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated.
It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. ... In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
Inspiring words; inspiring life.
Bonus material: is an interview with Viktor Frankl when he was 90 years old. He died just a couple of years later....more
4.5 stars, rounding up, for this 1868 Victorian-era mystery, often considered the first English-language detective novel. Wilkie Collins spins a liter4.5 stars, rounding up, for this 1868 Victorian-era mystery, often considered the first English-language detective novel. Wilkie Collins spins a literary web that starts out slowly but then inexorably pulls you in; I finished the last half of the book in one extended readathon. He has a gift for writing as vastly different characters, who each take a turn telling or writing their part of the story, and a droll, sometimes very sarcastic sense of humor. [image] In 1799 a British soldier steals a large yellow diamond from a Hindu statute in India, ruthlessly killing three Indian men protecting the statue, and earning himself a curse from one of them in the process. He gets a bad reputation as a result and is shunned by his extended family in England. So when he dies, he leaves the Moonstone to his niece Rachel (whose mother refused to receive him as a guest in her home), knowing he's leaving her not only a 30,000 pound fortune in the jewel, but also a load of potential trouble: there's not just the amorphous curse, but three Indian men who have been following the owners of the Moonstone for years and are determined to steal it back, one way or another.
Rachel's relative Franklin Blake is entrusted with bringing her the diamond for her 18th birthday, and falls in love with her as he gets to know her over several days. The Indians are lurking, looking for their chance to grab their gem. Rachel wears the Moonstone at a dinner party the night of her birthday, puts the jewel in a drawer in her bedroom ... and the next morning it's gone. The odd thing is, it looks like an inside job. The bumbling local police are of little help, and even the renowned outside detective, the estimable Sergeant Cuff, is unable to bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion, though part of the problem is that several people aren't cooperating with him.
Wilkie Collins doesn't try all that hard to hide the villain in the tale, but the "how" is fascinatingly revealed over the last half of the book. I don't think Wilkie was particularly interested in giving readers all of the clues; this isn't really a mystery that is supposed to be solved by readers before the big reveal, in my opinion (the final reveal of exactly what went down that fateful night pretty much comes out of left field, though there are a few clues in the story). He's more interested in telling an exciting story, and he pulls just about everything into the mix: a massive jewel, star-crossed love, people hiding things for their own reasons, a servant with a highly suspicious past, dangerous quicksand, and a loyal servant with an amusing and rather touching devotion to Robinson Crusoe, which he treats as a sort of Bible. Better him than Rachel's cousin Drusilla Clack, an annoying Christian evangelist given to preaching and leaving tracts with titles like "Satan in the Hair Brush" around people's homes!
This proto-detective novel does get a little slow at times - Victorian authors typically weren't in a hurry to tell their stories, especially when they were serialized in magazines, like this one was. But once the storyline really started moving along in the second half I thought it was a great read. Bonus points for handling the Indian subplot in a manner that's unusually sensitive for books written in the Victorian age. ...more
Six deceptively simple (or simply deceptive?) short stories from early twentieth century Japanese author Ry奴nosuke Akutagawa, who died at the too-earlSix deceptively simple (or simply deceptive?) short stories from early twentieth century Japanese author Ry奴nosuke Akutagawa, who died at the too-early age of 35.
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My favorite is the first story, "In a Grove," where the police commissioner interviews various (unreliable) witnesses, trying to pin down exactly what happened in an apparent murder/rape scene.
In "Rashomon," a laid-off servant lingers under a dilapidated gate, caught between an living an honest life that might be the end of him and adopting a life of thievery. An odd occurrence leads him to his choice.
The main character in "Yam Gruel" is distinctly reminiscent of the pitiful, picked-upon Akaky in The Overcoat. Sometimes getting what you've always wanted leaves you emptier than when you started.
Another standout was "Kesa and Morito," in which a man and woman who've had a brief fling decide to kill the woman's husband - and neither of them really wants to do so. Love and contempt are mixed together in their hearts, one melting into the other until they're almost indistinguishable.
There are no easy answers in any of these painful stories. Truth twists away from you and becomes elusive, in one tale after another.
I would actually kind of like to taste yam gruel now, and to see a yam that's actually three inches wide and five feet long......more
This is the story of a marriage that superficially seems happy, but a critical turn of events reveals a sham relationship.
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Torvald and Nora HelmThis is the story of a marriage that superficially seems happy, but a critical turn of events reveals a sham relationship.
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Torvald and Nora Helmer, who've had some financial struggles, are delighted because Torvald has gotten major promotion at the bank where he works. But Nora, behind her lightheartedness and childish behavior - encouraged, always, by Torvald, who calls her diminutive, vaguely (or sometimes explicitly) insulting names names like "my sweet tooth" and "little spendthrift" - is hiding a major secret. She borrowed a substantial sum of money a few years ago to finance a trip to Italy to help Torvald recover from a major illness. She told Torvald the money was left to her by her father, but it was actually loaned to her by one Nils Krogstad, and she has been slowly paying it back. But now Nils is threatening to tell Nora's husband ... especially since he realized that Nora forged her father's signature as co-signer of the note.
I first read this play many years ago as a college English major, and frankly it didn't leave much of an impression on me at the time. But rereading this now, as a married woman with children, the utter wrongness and superficiality of Torvald's and Nora's relationship hits me hard. Almost everything Torvald says to Nora diminishes her as a person:
"Now, now, the little lark's wings mustn't droop. Come on, don't be a sulky squirrel."
Nora, in turn, treats her children - especially her daughter - with the same type of carelessness of their value as a person. As the problem of the forged promissory looms closer to disclosure, Nora becomes more frantic. But she still thinks that Torvald, who has shown nothing but disdain for her mind and financial ability, will stand by her and protect her if her misdeed (which was done because of her love and concern for her husband) becomes public.
This is one of the earliest feminist works of literature, written in 1879 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It's hard to believe that this hard-hitting play, about a woman who realizes she's been treated as a mindless doll all her life by her father and then her husband, and what she decides to do about it, was written over 130 years ago. It raises some important questions of true communication and finding yourself, not just for women but for all people. British actress Hattie Morahan, who played Nora, made some comments about it that really struck me:
"... the things Ibsen writes mean it ceases to be about a particular milieu and becomes about marriage (or partnership) and money. These are universal anxieties, and it seems from talking to people that it resonates in the most visceral way, especially if they are or have been in a difficult relationship. Someone said to me the other night, 'That's the play that broke my parents' marriage up.' It shines a very harsh light on the messy heart of relationships, and how difficult it can be to be honest with another human being even if you love them."
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I'll admit that the ending leaves me unsettled, with its burning all bridges approach. Although I have some sympathy with German actress Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, who famously refused to perform the play unless Ibsen rewrote the ending, I don't think changing it was the right decision from a literary point of view. As a literary work, the ending is tremendously powerful. However, as a practical guide to life, I'm not convinced that what Nora does is right. (view spoiler)[ She leaves her husband, which I can understand: he's tremendously selfish and has never treated her as anything but a mindless doll. Still, giving him at least a chance to change, once she realizes that they both need that change, would seem like the right thing to do in real life. What bothers me more is Nora also leaving her children and cutting off all communication with them as well, at least until she finds herself as a person. (hide spoiler)] I guess the question for me is, should you hurt innocent people in your quest to go pursue self-fulfillment? Nora, at least, didn't feel like she had a choice, but I wasn't convinced.
In any case, this is a very thought-provoking play that's still relevant 137 years after it was written....more
This is a collection of stories by noted author Irwin Shaw (author of Rich Man, Poor Man, The Young Lions, and numerous shorts published in magazines This is a collection of stories by noted author Irwin Shaw (author of Rich Man, Poor Man, The Young Lions, and numerous shorts published in magazines like The New Yorker). New York City, in fact, seems to be a favorite setting of Shaw's.
These stories, written between 1935 and 1960, deal with the human condition. They tend to be grim and are more than a bit existential, but they're definitely insightful and thought-provoking. I like reading this type of stuff in short stories: it give me a hit in the heart, but I'm not up to a whole novel's worth of unhappiness.
"The Eight-Yard Run" - 5* You know those people who were big shots in high school or college, and everything since has been downhill for them? It's always sad (if a little vindicating for those of us who weren't so popular back then) to see them at class reunions. This is about a former college football player whose life peaked with one magnificent run in a college game.
"Main Currents of American Thought" - 3* A day in the life of a harried radio screenwriter (which definitely dates this story to the 1930s). Debts and job and family pressures are really getting to the poor guy.
"The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" - 4.5* I think I read this one in a college lit class years ago. Michael has been married to a lovely, and loving, woman for five years, but like a little boy in a candy store, he just can't stop scoping out other women. His wife finally has had enough of his constant ogling, and they have it out. Whew! The last line of the story is a killer.
"Sailor off the Bremen" - 2.5* A demonstration on a ship against the Nazi regime (by a group of communists!) leads to one of the demonstrators getting beat up, losing some of his teeth and being blinded in one eye. Revenge is plotted by his wife, brother and friend. It's interesting that this was written in 1939, just before the Nazis began their military invasions.
"Welcome to the City" - 3.5* It's a pretty cold welcome when you're a poor, struggling actor or actress, even when you look just like Greta Garbo (except with the jagged, ruined teeth that poverty brings). I could almost smell the crappy, cheap hotel where this story is set.
"Weep in Years to Come" - 3* A little slice of life, as a man planning to sign up for combat in WWII strolls around NYC with his girlfriend.
"Search Through the Streets of the City" - 4* Paul meets his old girlfriend Harriet shopping in NYC. Harriet's now married (and pregnant) and Paul gradually realizes the mistake he made in letting her go. "I didn't realize I was looking for you until I saw you."
The middle set of stories -- "Night, Birth and Opinion," "The City Was in Total Darkness," "Hamlets of the World," "Walking Wounded," "Gunner's Passage," "Medal from Jerusalem," and "Act of Faith" -- all deal with WWII from one point of view or another, usually from the soldiers and other military personnel. They're gritty and interesting in that they're written concurrently with the war, so it feels highly realistic and there's an immediacy to these tales. Shaw definitely writes well and insightfully, but frankly this part was a bit of a slog for me. The most interesting story in this group was "Medal from Jerusalem," about an American man's affair with a Jewish woman who escaped the Holocaust, and the story she tells him one night.
There were about ten more stories from the post-war era, some tedious ("The Climate of Insomnia"), some poignant ("The Sunny Banks of the River Lethe," about a man slowly succumbing to dementia). The most memorable stories for me were "Mixed Doubles," where a woman evaluates and reevaluates her feelings her husband as they play a tennis match, and one of my favorite stories in the entire book, "The Green Nude," about a Russian painter who repeatedly outrages society with his occasional "decadent" and "subversive" green nude paintings that he comes out with every few years (in between he paints very normal portraits and still life paintings), when all he's really doing is subconsciously exorcising his anger toward his domineering wife. It's bitterly humorous about society and politics.
Shaw was a great, if quite cynical, observer of humanity, and his stories have some telling insights into what makes us tick.
Halfway through my 2016 Classics Bingo challenge: 12 down, 12 to go!...more
This is really a lovely little story, beautifully told, deceptively simple, full of hope and fear and love. Sarah, Plain and Tall, winner of the NewbeThis is really a lovely little story, beautifully told, deceptively simple, full of hope and fear and love. Sarah, Plain and Tall, winner of the Newbery Medal (one the shortest books ever to win that award), was written in 1985 but feels like something from a much earlier time. It could have been written 80 or 100 years ago. It's timeless.
It's based on a true story about the author's ancestors.* There are a lot of mail order bride romances out there, but this is one from the children's point of view, although you catch fascinating glimpses of what's going on in the minds of their father Jacob, and Sarah, his potential bride.
Anna and Caleb are two young children who in the U.S. plains with their widowed father, in maybe the late 1800s? Their mother died the day after Caleb was born.
They had come for her in a wagon and taken her away to be buried. And then the cousins and aunts and uncles had come and tried to fill up the house. But they couldn't.
Now Jacob has advertised for a mail order wife, and Sarah Wheaton from Maine, who describes herself as "plain and tall," writes a letter to him. They arrange for Sarah - and her gray cat, Seal - to come visit their family for a month, to see if it's a good fit, before making a permanent decision.
Caleb wears his heart on his sleeve, desperately wanting Sarah to stay but afraid that their house is too small, and that he is too loud and pesky. Anna hopes too, but is more cautious and watchful. Their father Jacob learns to laugh and sing again, even as he is arguing with Sarah about whether she should wear his overalls, ride his skittish horse, and help fix the roof.
And Sarah ... Sarah misses the sea. But "there are always things to miss, no matter where you are.鈥� And things - and people - that work their way into your heart and find a home there.
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* I'd love to know more about the original story but there's not a lot out there, at least that I've been able to find so far, other than that MacLachlan's mother and/or aunt begged her to write a book about this story....more
I picked up Adam of the Road at a library sale several months ago for a dollar. As a Newbery Award winner in 1943, it was one of those books that I reI picked up Adam of the Road at a library sale several months ago for a dollar. As a Newbery Award winner in 1943, it was one of those books that I remember seeing frequently during my childhood but had never read. And it fits into one of the squares in my 2016 Classics Bingo card, so here we are!
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Adam of the Road is the story of a couple of years in the life of a young boy who is a minstrel in training in England in the late 1200s. Adam鈥檚 father Roger is a quite successful minstrel who has left his eleven year old son at a monk鈥檚 school for several months, while he went to a minstrel鈥檚 school in France to learn more romantic songs and tales to tell the lords and ladies. Adam pines to leave the school and learn to be a minstrel like his father, so he鈥檚 overjoyed when Roger picks him up and takes him 鈥� and Adam鈥檚 dog Nick, a beautiful red spaniel that Adam loves with all his heart 鈥� on Roger鈥檚 journey with Sir Edmund, who employs him.
It鈥檚 an enjoyable life for a young boy, and Roger is a loving though slightly flawed father: he loses his money and a valuable war horse (which was a gift from Sir Edmund) in gaming with another minstrel, Jankin. [image] Jankin manages to ride the horse lame and, when he meets up with Roger and Adam on the road, decides to surreptitiously 鈥渢rade鈥� the horse for Adam鈥檚 dog Nick. Frantically attempting to chase down the dognapper, Adam gets separated from his father, and in trying to find each other, they only get farther apart. (It made me appreciate cell phones!)
The rest of the book relates Adam鈥檚 adventures on the road, trying to find both his father and his dog, and to make a living as a minstrel when he can. It鈥檚 a rather episodic tale, as Adam wanders from place to place, meeting new friends and enemies, dealing with robbers and thieves, but also being helped repeatedly by kindhearted people, and learning a few things along the way (like not being a braggart).
The tale is told simply, on a middle-grade level, but the author did her research and various details of life in 1290鈥檚 England fill the story. It鈥檚 a little superficial, and we don't get to know any of the characters well except for Adam and his father. But it's a good reminder of how different life in general, and expectations about entertainment in particular, were at that time. The story is infused with a 1940s kind of sweetness and optimism that is typical of children鈥檚 lit of that time. Those who like nostalgic children鈥檚 literature may really enjoy it. I was a little bored, and I tend to think most kids would be as well, but if you have one who needs to read a book about life in medieval England for whatever reason, you could do worse than Adam of the Road.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
I don鈥檛 think I would dare give
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
I don鈥檛 think I would dare give any collection of poems that contains the above lines anything less than five stars. Luckily, although every poem isn鈥檛 a winner for me (cough*Laughing Song*cough), there are so many immortal poems in this collection that I don鈥檛 feel the least bit guilty for giving the collection the full five stars. I started collecting some of my favorite lines to put in this review (not even the whole poem in many cases), and when I got to three pages in Word I realized I would have to restrain myself from posting half the collection in this review. This review is still going to be on the long side, but you鈥檒l have to just deal. :)
William Blake, one of the most well-known authors of the Romantic era, published this short collection of poems or songs in the late 1700s. The full title was 鈥淪ongs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul,鈥� which aptly describes the dichotomy echoed in most of these poems, with innocent Christian belief and pastoral joy in the foreground in the nineteen Songs of Innocence, and dark cynicism, criticism of man鈥檚 institutions (including churches), and even despair playing a more prominent role in the twenty-seven Songs of Experience. In fact, many of the poems in the Innocence set have their darker counterpart in the Experience set. So you go from 鈥淭he Lamb鈥�:
Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb. He is meek, & he is mild; He became a little child. I a child, & thou a lamb, We are called by his name.
to 鈥淭he Tyger鈥�:
When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Even in the more lighthearted Songs of Innocence, more often than not there鈥檚 a dark undercurrent, a hint (or sometimes a slap across the face) that the narrator of the poem is being unintentionally ironic:
"The Little Black Boy"
My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black, as if bereav'd of light.
鈥� And thus I say to little English boy: When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,
I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear To lean in joy upon our father's knee; And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him, and he will then love me.
That last line is a heartbreaker. Even though the black boy sees that the white child is equally under a cloud, he still can鈥檛 imagine being accepted by him until he looks like him.
Similarly, we have 鈥淭he Chimney Sweeper,鈥� where the young boys sold by their destitute families to be chimney sweepers鈥� assistants 鈥� a terrible, cold, dirty job 鈥� aptly cry 鈥渨eep鈥� in their childish lisps instead of "sweep":
When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" So your chimneys I sweep, & in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, That curl'd like a lamb's back, was shav'd: so I said "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when you head's bare You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
And so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black.
And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he open'd the coffins & set them free; Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run, And wash in a river, and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind; And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father, & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags & our brushes to work, Tho the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm, So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.
Such an indictment of those who mistreat children and the less fortunate among us!
This next one has stuck with my since I studied it in college. Even if you have Christian beliefs (as I do), you have to admit that the institutions of churches have often been misused by those in power. The last lines are haunting:
鈥淭he Garden of Love鈥�
I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 鈥淭hou shalt not鈥� writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love That so many sweet flowers bore;
And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be; And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys & desires.
Notice how the meter and rhyme change in those last two lines 鈥� there鈥檚 something inexorable about it.
A few more: I appreciate the insight into the effects of anger and grudges offered by 鈥淎 Poison Tree鈥�:
I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears, Night & morning with my tears; And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright; And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole When the night had veil'd the pole: In the morning glad I see My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.
And the stultifying strictures and chains of society get a knock in 鈥淟ondon鈥�:
I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man, In every Infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
I鈥檒l go back to the Songs of Innocence to end on a more hopeful note:
鈥淥n Another's Sorrow鈥�
Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear, And not feel my sorrow's share? Can a father see his child Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd?
鈥� He doth give his joy to all; He becomes an infant small; He becomes a man of woe; He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh And thy maker is not by; Think not thou canst weep a tear And thy maker is not near.
O! he gives to us his joy That our grief he may destroy; Till our grief is fled & gone He doth sit by us and moan.
I highly recommend this collection, and you can find copies of it free all over the web.
A couple of notes on bonus material: When this book was originally published, each poem was handwritten by Blake on a separate page with an original painting that he did to go with that poem. For example:
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They're worth looking up, and often add to understanding of the meaning or intent of the poem.
Also, many of these "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" actually were songs: at least some of them were set to music. As far as I'm aware none of the original tunes used by Blake have survived, but different people since have tried their hand at setting some of them to music, with varying results. Wikipedia links several of these modern song versions of the poems. I haven't checked them out yet, but if I find any good ones I'll link them here.
2016 Classic Bingo Challenge: 5 down, 19 to go....more
... and Jane Austen just having fun with us. [image] "Now I must give one smirk, and then weA creepy mansion ... [image]
Dark and stormy nights ... [image]
... and Jane Austen just having fun with us. [image] "Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again."
Seventeen year old Catherine Morland, as innocent and na茂ve a heroine as Austen ever created, with no particular distinguishing characteristics except goodhearted sincerity and an overfondness for Gothic novels, is invited to stay in Bath for several weeks with kindly and wealthy neighbors. She meets a new bestie, Isabella ... [image]
... as well as Henry Tilney, a guy who's far too quick鈥昻ot to mention wealthy鈥昮or her. But he has a weakness for cute girls who totally admire him. [image]
Their relationship strikes me as weak, probably because Austen was focused more on creating a parody by turning Gothic conventions on their heads than on creating a compelling heroine and romance. Henry is a great character, but Catherine really isn't quite up to his level, despite all of Jane Austen's rationalizations (though maybe that's true to life sometimes). However, I comfort myself with the thought that Catherine isn't unintelligent, just young and inexperienced. I have faith in Henry's ability to kindly help her learn to think more deeply and critically.
Austen inserts a lot of sarcastic side comments mocking Gothic plot elements, like Catherine's father being "not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters" and her mother "instead of dying in bringing the latter [sons] into the world, as anybody might expect," still living on in inexplicably good health. But Austen also takes the time, whilst skewering Gothic novels, to make a few pleas to readers in favor of novels generally. And she creates one of her most deliciously shallow and hypocritical characters in Isabella, whose mendacious comments, along with Henry's sarcastic ones, were the biggest pleasure in this book for me.
When Catherine is invited to visit with Henry's family at the formidable Northanger Abbey, all her Gothic daydreams finally seem poised to come true. A mysterious heavy chest in her bedroom, with silver handles "broken perhaps prematurely by some strange violence"; an odd locked area of the house; a man she suspects of doing away with his wife. Gasp! Austen makes fun of it all, and Catherine's "disturbed imagination" along with it. Catherine repeatedly gets shot down and then makes firm although not necessarily long-lasting resolutions not to let her imagination run away with her in the future. But it seems likely that, in the end, she's gained some experience and wisdom.
Good fun! The 2007 BBC TV movie with Felicity Jones and JJ Feild takes a few liberties with the book's plot, but I still recommend it highly.
Random trivia: Watership Down uses the ending lines from Northanger Abbey as one of its final chapter heading quotes, in what is probably my favorite use ever of a literary quote in an entirely different yet completely fitting context....more
Heidi, a Swiss book originally published in German in 1881, was one of those books I grew up with: my mother had a simplified, abridged version of it Heidi, a Swiss book originally published in German in 1881, was one of those books I grew up with: my mother had a simplified, abridged version of it that I read many times and loved as a child. When I realized the GR group "Catching up on the Classics" was doing it as a group read, I jumped in, excited for the chance to revisit Heidi and her simple, joyous life in the Swiss alps with her grandfather.
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Heidi, a 5 year old orphan, has been raised by her mother's sister Dete, who resents the imposition. When Dete gets a good job offer, she marches Heidi up to the Swiss village where she was raised, the (fictional) village of D枚rfli ("little village") and then even further up the mountain, to dump little Heidi on her unsuspecting grandfather, an embittered recluse. Despite being taken aback, the grandfather quickly takes to Heidi, admiring her intelligence and enthusiasm. She thrives in the lovely Swiss alps and country life, immediately shedding her more citified clothing and ways, and helping the local goatherd Peter.
[image] The Falknis mountain, with its two "towers," near where Heidi and Peter tend the goats
Everyone around Heidi grows to love her: her grandfather, Peter, Peter's grandmother. The only problem is that "Alm-Uncle," her grandfather, has such a deep distrust of people and town life that he refuses to even send her to the village school. Heidi is growing up happy and uncivilized when her aunt Dete suddenly reappears after three years, determined to take Heidi to Frankfurt to be the companion of Clara, a rich but sickly and invalid girl. Our bouncy, enthusiastic girl starts to feel desperately unhappy, cooped up in the big city. But Heidi has lessons to learn, and God has a plan.
I loved the detailed descriptions of the lovely Alps and life there in olden times. I suppose Heidi is a bit of a Mary Sue character, but her exuberant nature, jumping around all the time like a young goat, was charming. And - continuing the animal metaphors - I really felt for her when she felt like a trapped bird in Frankfurt, though the wasting away thing was a bit over the top.
The Alm-Uncle's character, bitter toward mankind generally but loving toward his bright granddaughter, seemed entirely believable to me, and honestly I got a bit teary as he began, like the prodigal son in Christ's parable, to find his way back to harmony with God and with his fellow men. Clara's devout grandmamma is a paragon of saintliness but has a little humor to leaven her spiritual lessons to Heidi; Peter's ailing, blind grandmother is equally devout but would fit in well with other Victorian-era sickly but wise characters.
The preachiness got a little too heavy-handed toward the end, although I did appreciate the message of continuing to trust God even when your prayers aren't answered immediately, and at the same time needing to take action to improve your own circumstances, as much as you can. I also can't help but be charmed with the notion that country living, with lots of fresh goat milk and toasted goat cheese on bread, brisk mountain air and the beauty of nature, heals pretty much everything.
[image] Mmmmm! ... okay, actually I don't like goat cheese, toasted or otherwise, but I have to say Heidi tempts me to give it another shot.
All in all I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Heidi and her friends again, after many years apart. I recommend Heidi to readers who like old-fashioned children's classics, like Anne of Green Gables, and don't mind a healthy dose of religious content in their reading.
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A note on English translations: Since this book is over 100 years old, it's out of copyright and there are several free English versions available. I read parts of Heidi in German and did some comparisons between the three English versions I found on Project Gutenberg. None of them completely satisfied me, but I thought this one was the best, closest to the original German text without being unbearably awkward: . I'm sure there are better translations out there, but I was working with what I could find free online. Whatever version you pick up, make sure you get both halves of the story, which was originally published in two parts (the second half has Clara visiting Switzerland)....more
The massive length, not only of The Eye of the World itself but the entire epic WHEEL OF TIME fan3.5 stars. Review first posted at :
The massive length, not only of The Eye of the World itself but the entire epic WHEEL OF TIME fantasy series, along with some differences in critical opinion regarding the literary worth of this series, has always daunted me. But I thought I owed it to myself to read at least this first book and judge for myself, so when the Buddies, Books and Baubles group here at 欧宝娱乐 decided to buddy read the series, I was happy to seize the opportunity. In the end, this book was both more and less than I had anticipated.
The plot primarily follows the adventures of three young men from a farming community 鈥� Rand, Mat and Perrin 鈥� whose sheltered lives are uprooted when monstrous Trollocs, led by undead Myrddraal, attack the village and their homes. When it becomes clear that the attack was focused on these three, they leave the village in the company of some more experienced and powerful individuals who 鈥渉appened鈥� to be there at the time of the attack, along with Egwene, a young woman from the village. Other characters join their journey along the way, as they travel to a destination that they hope will protect them from the evil that seeks to capture their souls and, ultimately to the mysterious Eye of the World itself, to shore up the forces that imprison this evil.
Robert Jordan鈥檚 debts to J.R.R. Tolkien are fairly obvious: the group of unsophisticated young men, from a small, isolated community, join a quest and undertake a long journey, continuously battling against a powerful malevolent force and pursued by its evil minions. The company is split apart during the journey. It鈥檚 no wonder that I kept envisioning orcs every time the Trollocs appeared on the page, notwithstanding their initial description as having an animal-like appearance.
It鈥檚 a highly detailed story and world (as it should be, at 800+ pages), but the pace of The Eye of the World is frequently plodding. My detachment from the tale wasn鈥檛 helped by the repeated immature actions and decisions of several of the characters, particularly Mat, whose greed and irritating penchant for mischief endanger both himself and the group. Rand is a more sympathetic character, although he oozes 鈥淭he Chosen One鈥� vibes and occasionally his obliviousness is frustrating. Both Rand and Mat read younger than the 19- or 20-year-old men they are supposed to be. The most interesting of the trio was Perrin, who initially seems slow-witted but then develops some unexpected depth, particularly when he meets Elyas, a man accompanied by a wolf with which he telepathically communicates. Elyas claims that Perrin also has the ability to mindspeak with wolves. Perrin is resistant to the idea but here, as so often is the case, resistance against your destiny is futile.
The Eye of the World did become more absorbing and interesting as I got deeper into the tale, when some intriguing new characters were introduced and the narrative took some unexpected turns. In the end, although it never completely captured my imagination in the way I had hoped, it鈥檚 still a worthy epic fantasy with layers of meaning and complexity. I鈥檓 not convinced yet that I鈥檒l find it worthwhile to plow through thirteen more volumes of the same or greater length, but I鈥檓 open to the idea of checking out at least the next volume or two ... sometime. ...more
In the year 1800, Jack Aubrey sits next Stephen Maturin at a musical performance in Port Mahon, Minorca, a basThe classic high seas adventure!
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In the year 1800, Jack Aubrey sits next Stephen Maturin at a musical performance in Port Mahon, Minorca, a base of the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Italy. They immediately rub each other the wrong way. Both are snappish because of other issues in their lives, and they part planning on next meeting for a duel. But when Jack is given his first command of a ship, all is forgiven, and he needs a ship's surgeon: who better than Stephen? Stephen, down on his luck, is happy to accept. And so begins the first Aubrey/Maturin voyage, with Stephen conveniently playing the role of landlubber who needs to be informed of everything naval, so the reader can be informed along with him.
I have to say this book was pretty rough sailing for me in parts. The massive amount of naval and nautical jargon about sank me, and I got a bit lost in some of the battle descriptions. My book club pretty much unanimously felt the same way; we all floundered a little.
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(The funniest part of the book club meeting was when one of the ladies was excitedly telling the rest of us about her favorite scenes in the book, and we didn't remember any of them. I finally asked her to show us the cover of her book: it was The Far Side of the World, the 10th book in this series!)
This 1969 book is the first in a series of 21 books and, though it doesn't end on a cliffhanger, the novel felt a little unfinished to me, more like a set-up for an ongoing story than a self-contained book. It's also very episodic, kind of like you're on a real-life journey with the characters.
But I can't in good conscience rate Master and Commander less than 4 stars: the amount of research that went into this book was incredible, even if O'Brian could have done a better job of making it accessible to the reader. ("Patrick," said one of his friends, "can be a bit of a snob.") The characters were well-rounded, with some very human flaws. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are very different from each other, but they complement each other well. Jack is brash and bluff, a womanizer in port, and just a little shallow at this point in his life, although he can be a genius at sea. Stephen is intelligent, curious and a gifted natural scientist, with a hidden past. It will be interesting to see how their personalities develop in following books.
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The plot was complex, with the author doing that sometimes frustrating thing (Dorothy Dunnett does the same) where something happens or someone says something and you can tell it's significant, but you can't figure out why because the author isn't spoonfeeding you everything.
There's a lot of humor in the story, some of it so dry that it's "blink and you miss it." At one point Jack and Stephen are at a fancy dinner party held by Captain and Mrs. Harte. Mrs. Harte is sleeping around on her husband. Stephen loses his napkin and dives below the table to get it:
He beheld four and twenty legs ... Colonel Pitt's gleaming military boot lay pressed upon Mrs Harte's right foot, and upon her left 鈥� quite a distance from the right 鈥� reposed Jack's scarcely less massive buckled shoe.
Course followed course... But in time Mrs Harte rose and walked, limping slightly, into the drawing room.
In a 1991 New York Times book review, Richard Snow called this series the best historical novels ever written. "On every page Mr. O'Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don't, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives."
Highly recommended for readers who want a mentally challenging historical novel.
Bonus content: There's a fantastic interactive map of the journeys of the ship Sophie in Master and Commander at . Spoilers ahoy!
"I am thinking," he remarked quietly, "whether I shall add to the disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the fireplace."
Written in 1859
"I am thinking," he remarked quietly, "whether I shall add to the disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the fireplace."
Written in 1859-60 by William "Wilkie" Collins and originally published in serial form in Charles Dickens' magazine (Wilkie and Charles were good friends), The Woman in White is considered one of the earliest examples of detective fiction, though it's really just the better part of the second half of this book that has any real detecting going on. Before that you have to wade through star-crossed love and the heroine acting all self-sacrificing (<---very bad idea, at least in this case). There's quite a bit of Victorian melodrama and some eyebrow-raising coincidences, but also some unforgettable characters and some intense suspense in the second half.
Walter Hartright - note the symbolic name - is a young art teacher. One night he helps a distressed lady dressed in white, who was wandering down the street, find a cab.
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After she's gone, a couple of men chasing her tell Walter that she's escaped from an asylum. Oops! But the lady in white will soon affect his life more than he can know...
Walter takes a job for a few months teaching art to a couple of gently bred young ladies, Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe. Laura is lovely, quiet and timid (and also, BTW, bears a startling resemblance to the mysterious woman in white); Marian has a singularly unattractive face but a charming, outgoing personality. Guess which one Walter falls for? And Laura loves him too, though they never speak of it, except to Marian.
**some spoilers in the next 3 paragraphs for the first half of the book**
But Laura is an heiress, out of Walter's class, and she's also engaged to a older baronet, as arranged by her family, so she and Walter sadly part ways. He goes on an expedition to South America to let time, distance and adventure heal his wounded heart. She marries her baronet, Sir Percival Glyde, figuring, I guess, that she might as well, and he's always been kind to her.
After the marriage - which quickly goes south since Glyde only married Laura for her money, and has no interest in being nice to her once they're married - strange things start to happen. Glyde wants Laura to sign papers (she still has control of her fortune) but won't show her what she's signing, hiding everything except the line where she's supposed to sign. Even in Victorian times, that's pretty alarming for the lady involved.
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Marian, who's living with Laura and Sir Percival, is very concerned for the fragile Laura's wellbeing. And she deeply mistrusts Percival and his other houseguests, the huge, urbane Count Fosco, who acts all affable but has a dangerous glint in his eyes, and his subservient wife, who stands to inherit a chunk of money if Laura dies.
[image] Count Fosco
Things get more complicated from there, but I don't want to spoil it. The actual mystery is a little unlikely but it's an intriguing read. The novel had a few parts that were long-winded and/or sentimental in that distinctively Victorian kind of way, and (also typical of older books) there are a lot of stereotypes. For instance, the women tend to faint or get ill rather than be tough and useful, although Marian is generally an exception to that rule. But the story really sucked me in the further I got into it. Marian and Count Fosco are truly unique and memorable characters. Identity is a recurring theme, for the villains as well as some of the main characters, as are hidden secrets.
I especially liked the quasi-investigative structure of the novel, with narration by multiple characters, each with his or her own distinctive voice and point of view. The kind-hearted, loyal Walter; Marian, writing in her diary; Laura's whiny invalid uncle, who just wants to be left alone and is of no help to Laura in her trials; the prideful Count Fosco, weaving his plans; a couple of servants: all of them get their turn explaining their part of the events in this book. I thought that was really well done. As a lawyer, I found the lawyer's description of marriage settlements particularly interesting, along with the negotiations between him (acting for Laura) and Sir Percival's lawyer. And when he says, and then repeats, "No daughter of mine should have been married to any man alive under such a settlement as I was compelled to make for Laura Fairlie," it was a chilling moment.
[image] Another Uncle Fairlie fail
Wilkie also has a sense of humor, which pops out occasionally. Walter describes Mrs. Vesey, Laura's former governess, so:
Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey sat through life... A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.
Buddy read with the Non-crunchy Cool Classics Pantsless group. Most of the group begged off - they seem to have some sort of aversion to 600+ page Victorian mysteries - but Evgeny, Jeff, Stepheny and maybe one or two others made it through the whole thing with me. Yay team!
Period illustrations are from early editions of The Woman in White....more
Much Ado about Nothing, written in 1598, interweaves the story of two couples. The more interesting and definitely more amusing one is Benedick and BeMuch Ado about Nothing, written in 1598, interweaves the story of two couples. The more interesting and definitely more amusing one is Benedick and Beatrice, who apparently have a rocky romance in their past history.
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But now they devote all of their energy in their interactions to insulting each other as wittily as possible, each trying to one-up the other.
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Beatrice wins most of the time.
The other romance is between Claudio, a count and military friend of Benedick's, and Beatrice's cousin Hero, a wealthy heiress.
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Claudio comes home from war, takes a look at Hero and all of her huge ... tracts of land (actually they鈥檙e her father鈥檚, but will be Hero鈥檚 at some point), decides he's in love, makes sure she's her father's only child and heir - and then lets his commander, the Prince of Aragon, Don Pedro, propose to Hero on his behalf. It's an odd thing, but then most of Hero's and Claudio's relationship plays out in an oddly public manner. So when Don Pedro's jealous and mean-spirited brother, Don John, decides to torpedo their romance, just because, it goes south in an equally public way.
But meanwhile all of Beatrice and Benedick's friends have decided that the war of wits between them is hiding deeper feelings, and in one of the funnier plot developments, decide to trick both of them into thinking the other loves them but will never speak of it because they're too hard-hearted. When things go horribly off the rails between Hero and Claudio, Benedick has a choice to make: his old world of his male buddies or his newly discovered love for Beatrice.
There's a lot of humor in this play, much of it very risqu茅 if you know Elizabethan idioms. But as is typical of Shakespeare, about half of it went over my head, except where I took the time to read the explanatory footnotes in my Riverside Shakespeare volume (one of those books that I would want on my hypothetical desert island if I were stuck there alone for years). Dogberry the constable, who inadvertently discovers the plot against Hero but doesn't quite know what to do about it, is one of the highlights, with his constant use of the wrong-but-almost-right word, delightfully and obliviously butchering the English language.
Deception is a running theme: Don John's deception of Claudio and Don Pedro, everyone's deception of Benedick and Beatrice, Hero's father's deception of Claudio and Don Pedro at the end, even Benedick and Beatrice hiding their true feelings.
I highly recommend the delightful 1993 film version of this play, starring the wonderful Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson at their best, as well as Denzel Washington as Don Pedro, Michael Keaton as the hapless Dogberry, Keanu Reeves as the evil Don John, Robert Sean Leonard as Claudio, and a lovely young Kate Beckinsale as Hero, in her film debut....more
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