And I Guess I’m Back?

Oh yeah, this thing I was doing.

I’d like to say I’ve been meaning to come back to this project.  I’d like to say it was always in the back of my mind as I read a book.  But really, I just forgot.  After a while, this thing just totally left my brain-box.  And that’s a shame.  Mainly because it gave me a place to talk about books…my favorite thing…ever.  So, as a general update…

The Unread Books Currently on My Shelf:

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Between Parantheses by Roberto Bolaño

The Autobiography of Mark Twain Vol. 1

The Instructions by Adam Levin

Stephen Hero by James Joyce

The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Misadventure by Millard Kaufman

Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton

Anna Karenini by Leo Tolstoy

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Remembrances of Things Past by Marcel Proust

Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Cave by José Saramago

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Wow.  I’m sure there are actually more but it is late and I am tired.  I was reading Joyce’s Dubliners, making great progress then I decided to go to graduate school and  I have read no fiction in a month.  A whole month.  My brain is changing form to process dense textbook and philosophical material and I am going nuts.  I have been a reading machine in the least year plus and if I am able I’ll try to remember what exactly I have read in the last 18 or so months.

But for now, I’ll just say, I’m back.  I think.

Update

Since I last wrote I have read:

Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano.

Ulysses by James Joyce.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton

Antwerp by Roberto Bolano

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

and I am currently reading Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges.

I devoured Monsieur Pain in a day and the attacked Ulysses with all the zeal of a yet to be disenchanted college student.  I kept meaning to come back and discuss Ulysses but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  As I read the book I always had a pen in hand, taking notes, underlining names, places, bits of Latin, French, slang that I did not understand.  I went back after every chapter and researched by notes.  I wanted so badly to understand this book.  I needed to.  If I was going to read Ulysses, I was going to do it right.  I cross-referenced each chapter with its corresponding chapter in The Odyssey.  And the result?

I think I get it.  Sort of.

Ulysses is one of those books that I imagine I’ll revisit several times before my death.  Is it a favorite?  No.  Did I enjoy the experience?  Yes.  By and large I appreciated what Joyce was trying to do (Faulkner was really trying to do the same thing [playing with narrative styles, changing voice, using the stream of consciousness narration] but I feel at times Faulkner had more substance behind his words) with his varying narrative styles.  I feel very proud and accomplished that I have actually read this book but at the same time, slightly embarrassed.  You can’t really casually drop “Yeah, I just finished Ulysses last month…” without people thinking you are a dick or a liar.  Yes, I have read Ulysses but this is just the beginning of my relationship with the novel and certainly with Joyce.  Hell, I still own Portrait and The Dubliners and haven’t read those yet.

The other day at work I was asked the age-old desert-island book question.  I chose Ulysses not because it is one of my favorite books but because if it was the only book I ever got to read for the rest of my life, I would finally understand it.

So next up, Borges, I suppose…

A Tale of Two Cities: Day 4 part 2

A Tale of Two Cities is one of the best written stories I have ever read.  I know I’ve said this time and time again but this book is so well crafted it blows my mind-grapes.  Right after I wrote that last piece, literally, one page later, Carton reappeared and made sense of his role in Dickens’ story.  Just when I was wondering what had happened to him, fearing he had disappeared in some Wiseau-like fashion, he comes right back and answers all my questions.  I must say, the ending is predictable a good 70 pages or so out but I don’t think that is the point here (in fact, I rarely thing the ending of a story is the most important part.  Unless, of course it is a mystery and the plot is the most important thing in the book… or the only important thing in the book.  Unless we are speaking of Holmes, Marple and Poe, I guess…).  The world and characters are so well done, the predictable ending is a moot point.  But are the characters so well done?

In my last post I griped a bit about Darnay and his lack of depth.  I stand by that claim 100%.  If you use that argument that the Protagonist of a story is the character that changes the most, you would have to argue that Carton, not Darnay is the Protagonist.  But he isn’t.  The book isn’t A Tale of Two Gentlemen. Much like Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna, the protagonist is not a person but an entire village.  Or a city.  Or cities, in this case.  No, let’s say city.  Paris changes the most in this story above all else… London?  Eh, we don’t really get a good feel for what happens to London during the course of this novel.  The book should be called A Tale of a City or Paris: A REVOLUTION!

Back to Darnay.  He is one of the only major characters that lack depth and psychology.  Manette, Cruncher, Pross, Carton, Lorry and Stryver are all “better” characters than Darnay.  It seems that the only two bland and 2-dimensional characters are Darnay and Lucie… a boring man and his boring wife.  Sure, they’re pretty and noble and honorable and full of love but they’re like 2 ingenues in a musical: I don’t care about them.  If this were Les Miserables they would be Marius and Cosette, two boring characters that pale in comparison to Eponine and Enjolras (and Jean Valjean, Javert, Fantine and… Gavroche).  And, Dickens does not do a great job of making Darnay and Carton “rivals.”  Maybe I’m just stupid, but I did not get the impression that Carton was as in love with Lucie as he was. It felt forced.  It was necessary for his final redemption at the end of the novel but it didn’t seem real.

And surprisingly, that was the only thing in the novel that seemed forced to me.  All the other little threads and connections, the way that all of these characters are so intertwined beyond their knowledge (like some 1990′s “edgy” film…) and control came off so well.  None of it is trite or forced.

I blame my shitty english teachers in High School (really, just one.  9th grade.  Mr. Turner) for dumbing down my literary diet when it comes to the classics, thus my complete ignorance of Dickens (and most of the classics for that matter).  Nevertheless, this is my post-grad education.

Up Next: Monsieur Pain

A Tale of Two Cities: Day 4

The past day or so I’ve been blazing through A Tale of Two Cities. Perhaps it is because the novel is unrelenting in its story and fascination-factor… and perhaps it is due to the fact that the new Bolano is sitting idly by, waiting to be read. And so is Ulysses.

I’d like to speak briefly on the edition of A Tale of Two Cities that I am reading.

A little over a year ago I picked up the Oxforrd World’s Classics edition. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book from this series before, but it has turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and thorough reading experiences I have had in a while. Andrew Sanders, the gentleman who edited, introduced and annotated the book, has done an incredible job of fleshing out the already solid work Dickens has done. We get a nice introduction, a chronology of the life of Charles Dickens, the novel, the serialization dates of the novel’s original publication in 1859, a chronology of fictional and actual history surrounding the story of the novel and a very thorough explanatory notes section. All for only $6.95! Probably cheaper if purchased from Amazon or used! What a gem! What a steal!

The novel is clipping along nicely.  We have been in Paris for quite some time, living out the trials and tribulations of Darnay and Manette’s attempts to save him from the Revolution.  Darnay, certainly a noble and likable fellow, can certainly be considered the (or a) protagonist of this story but he is very bland.  So far he has not done much other than be an all-around good guy.  We haven’t gotten a good glimpse of what he is like a whole human being, as a complex, living, breathing creature.  Dickens has painted him with such broad strokes that I feel like I don’t really know the guy.  The back of the book (again, I know I should never put too much trust into the back of a book…) claims that the novel is about:

Two cities, and two men caught up in the terrifying events of the French Revolution.  In London, French aristocrat Charles Darnay and dissolute English barrister Sydney Carton fall in love with the same woman.  Unwillingly drawn to Paris, Darnay faces the revolutionary anarchy of the Terror; Carton, too, his destiny entwined with that of his rival, daces his ultimate test in the French capital.

What?  So far (and I am 80 pages away from finishing this thing) Carton has been a minor character.  At best!  If it weren’t for that description I would have shrugged Carton off as an unremarkable lout merely thrown in to give a foil to Darnay.  His appearances are few and far between and so far, his impact on the story is almost nonexistent.   My biggest curiosity now is, who dies at the end?  Is it Darnay, condemned to death by the Republic?  Or is is Carton?  Will he stand in the place of Darnay to satisfy Lucie, the woman he loves (although I don’t see how this will happen, we haven’t heard much from Carton in over 5 years it seems…)?  I know the novel ends with a character saying “It is a far, far nobler thing I do now that I have ever done before” (or something along those lines) who says it?  I seriously don’t know and am excited to find out.

Still Life With Woodpecker: Day 2 Part 2

I feel like I have said everything I want to say about Tom Robbins and Still Life With Woodpecker.  If I were to continue to write about it (which I am not compelled to do) I would just end up maligning the book and the author.  My interest in the book fizzled.

Up next:

What the Dickens!