“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
The biggest criticism with this book or, at least, with its characters is racism and misogyn
“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
The biggest criticism with this book or, at least, with its characters is racism and misogyny that shows up. However I think author was recording how people behave. The patients aren’t racist and misogynist in their thoughts and actions, but are so in a self-defence based on a kind of fallacious reasoning. It is general tendency that whenever we are harmed by an individual, we just can’t make do with forming opinion about the person but find a group of which he or she is a member but we aren’t – and hold that whole group responsible. And so even though patients develop a friendship with other women and another black men, they just assume that Ms. Ratcherd’s behaviour is so because she is a woman and when there is a fight with black ‘boys’, they start using racist language. That might be kind of why hate-crimes increased after 9/11 in US – people who had no prejudice against Muslims suddenly developed it in some sort of cognitive response (although I’m not sure what that word means). I think author is just portraying behaviour of people and none of his characters is perfect. Foxes and Rabbits
“nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”
One of the characters uses a metaphor of foxes and rabbits in the story. The rabbits are most of us and the foxes are the kind of people, who seem to want to use other people and are even prepared to harm others for their personal advantage. They are usually the kind of people who end up rising higher up in the hierarchy – managers, generals, your stereotype type bad boss, the people who have the loudest voice s when they are debating, the bullies, the pickup artists etc. We all know the kind – the people who will feed and increase your insecurity, who are prepared to eat into you for personal advantage. They would think the whole world is a game of chess and you are at war with everyone, wherever they find someone weak, they make their move. Most, that is, rabbits are not like that – we are natural, peace loving, easily trusting people who can’t hate someone enough to harm them in such a planned way, so lack the kind of competitive spirit and tend to avoid conflict.
“Seen 'em all over the country and in the homes—people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin' you where it hurts the worst.”
And rabbits are bound to lose to such foxes for rabbits only play defensive, they can’t be aggressive.
“She don't lose on her losses, but she wins on ours. To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.”
Most of the rabbits adapt to this constant threat of being attacked and so learn to live in the world – with fear and insecurities and in conformity to rules against them. Think workers working on minimum wages in MNCs! Shut-ins
“But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you?”
However there are a few who can’t handle such attacks and can’t confirm either, they give in, break down, go mad or shut themselves away – they come to believe that they can’t live in a world like that. The asylum is full of patients who are exactly like that. Many of them are there voluntarily – to shut themselves away from the world. They are willingly to accept the torturing treatment given to them by society instead. The point they seem to be missing is that they are hardly better being shut in. They aren’t any less vulnerable to those foxes, but being away from all the soft pleasures of the world that eases life when one lives among normal people, they might in fact be far more vulnerable. Perhaps what is lacking in them more than anything else is self-confidence and assertiveness - and that laughter is the best medicine.
“you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy”
Mckensky, a rebel, con-man and a psychopath (now that is kind of protagonist I like), slowly realises the problem – he does more for these people than institution ever did. He teaches them to fight back in self-defence. We aren’t all naturally good fighters, some of us have to learn. And he had to break rules, start rebellition for that. And so was asylum intentionally keeping them down? Well, perhaps not intentionally. But I think that there is general agreement about mental hospitals not being best of places to cure a diseased mind.
“The air is pressed in by the walls, too tight for laughing. There's something strange about a place where the men won't let themselves loose and laugh”
The narrator is prone to Shyzopernic – and it puts an asterisk on this whole black-and-white imagine of characters.May be the Big Nurse was the good person after all. It reminds one of a class-room scene where class rebel is questioning some rule difficult to follow and teacher is like ‘it is for your own good’ and you can’t be sure who is right. But like most good unreliable-narrator books, it is more fun reading if you take the narrator on his word, rather than guessing the truth behind what he is saying.
“But it's the truth even if it didn't happen”
* And now that the author chose to give away our secret i DON’T SEE ANY REASON FOR KEEPING IT:
“The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.”
And this ismy favourite:
“You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself.”
"When we are healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea."
In his classical conditioning experiments, Pavlov makes animals "When we are healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea."
In his classical conditioning experiments, Pavlov makes animals respond to a stimulus towards which they were initially neutral. The experiment in the book does same. The stimuli in question was presence of violence and response repulsion.
A lot of parenting and education involves an innocent use of this strategy on children. So parents tell their children that monster will take them if they won't remain good, thus trying to prompt, often with out much of effect, fear as response to will to bad behaviour. The carrot and stick approach is almost always with a wish to condition children into good habits.
The trouble is the doctors in novel chose to use the presence of violence as stimuli rather than cases where Alex was causing violence and thus rendering him unable to defend himself. It is more a case of choosing wrong stimuli rather than wrong experiment.
Some people will say that it will be choice inhibitory. But aren't we all slave to our instincts anyway. The freedom to Will is limited to will, which is itself an accident of nature - was it Schopenhauer who said "we can do what we will, but we can not will what we will." Education and other socialising forces are always countering the instincts dangerous or averse to what society likes. The promise of Christmas gifts is hardly more choice promoting. Same with imprisonment.
Suppose an ideal method of conditioning was created - where he felt repulsed but only at idea of being violent to innocent people. What would be ethical issues than? Now here is something to wonder about. If there are choice issues here, what about child-raising techniques then? Thus, it is not so much a choice between 'ability to chose Vs conditioning' but rather 'socially-enforced Vs natural conditioning'.
Your humble reviewer did like Nadsat (hence second star) and I didn't charge book for being full of violence (I did charge movie for that because it was graphic) but overall I think the centeral argument was weak ... and the conclusion worse. No, not the part where Alex gets away with everything (which to me is only circumstances not author's reaction), not when he turns criminal again, and not when he leaves those evil ways again. But where all the violence, murders and rapes are seen to be part of youth, growing up - wow, people died, ten year old girls got raped; but the important thing is that kid grew up....more
Anyone who ever read history can observe how nations involved in great revolutions which bring great changes, slowly reverts to the old ways. A new woAnyone who ever read history can observe how nations involved in great revolutions which bring great changes, slowly reverts to the old ways. A new world can not be created out of old people - at least not in as short time as revolution tries to do. Revolution is an act of desperation by masses which is exception, efforts to make it a rule will always fail.
To quote one example, Napoleon took over dictatorship after revolution had established democracy in France. Animal farm brings this theme out perfectly, though it uses Russian context but even if you don't know about Russian revolution you will still enjoy it.
Russian revolution which aimed at establishing socialism had ended up just replacing Czars with new rulers who slowly started looking like the old aristocrats. Animal Farm is an allegory of Russian revolution and its history under its two dictators. There are too many metaphors to talk about.
Here is a list : Men = Czars/Upper class Political class = Pigs Armed Forces = Dogs Old Major = Karl Marx (or Vladimir Lenin) Snowball = Leon Trotsky Napoleon = Stalin
There are many more - the hard working horse who is blindly faithful and old Benjamin who was too wise to know what would happen and yet choose to keep silent.
George Orwell is not against socialism, in fact at many other places he has demanded socialistic reforms in England; what he is criticizing is the way Stalin manipulated the idea of socialism to his own interests, just like the way the pigs manipulated the seven commandments.
The advantage which an allegory offers is that it gives reader a new perspective of seeing things and thus one gets to reconsider the assumptions she or he has come to made over time. It is amusing, for example, how commandments were altered more and more to benefit of pigs.
England and Russia were at time of publication allies and so This book is NOT a propaganda book, in fact it was rejected by many publishers, and Ministry of Information of England strongly recommended against its publication. Orwell's preface to Animal Farm, also called 'The freedom of press' is an eye opener - do read it if you already haven't. ...more
“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”
I’m not much into romantic stories – I mean how much of ‘
“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”
I’m not much into romantic stories – I mean how much of ‘Ellen, I love you’ and ‘Newland, it is wrong’ one can bear? More so, love triangles – and why they call it love triangles. Just look at this one – Archer has relations with May and Ellen but the two women do not love each other, so where is the third side of triangle? Shouldn’t it be called love angle or love V? In fact, if you think about it, a love triangle is only possible when at least one of three people is homosexual or bisexual ... well, that is just the kind of thing I wonder about when not working on my paper on quantum mechanics involved in motion of Nitrogen particles in low atmospheric temperatures.
Also, I don’t much like leisure classes; for me they represent half the things that are wrong with the world – they are hypocrites, full of ideas of ‘society’ and ‘common folks’, vain, sinfully rich, are always talking about useless subjects like- other equally boring people, balls, marriages, clothes (clothes! Clothes!), food etc.
The good thing is Wharton doesn’t much like them either.
Innocence
There can be many meanings of the word ‘innocence’. The people of society pretend to have and collectively impose on themselves conformity to standard of an innocence that is more of an ignorance and a willingness to stay the same - “ the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!”
But in reality these things come involuntarily; you can’t shut them out when they come; although you can always pretend. And so, almost all characters of 'society' are hypocrites.
"“In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.”
May is a typical example – she knows that women are expected to be innocent in above mentioned meaning of the word and so acts naive to affirm to the standard. In affirming to social expectations, she refuses to be honest with her own emotions. The only time she breaks away from social expectations is out of compassion for Ellen and Newland - ’her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself’ However, her need for conformity defeats even this exemplary compassion once institution of marriage is thrown into equation.
One other meaning of the word ‘innocence’ is honesty to one’s emotions and ideas – to cry when one feels like crying, to say and do what one thinks is right and not to take society’s dictation. Far few people accomplish that - Ellen is explicitly told not to talk about her emotions. The only people in the novel who are innocent in this later sense are either misfits (Ellen) or from so-called common people (M. Riviere). And that is why I think that the title is ironic.
Newland, the protagonist, is much more rebellious than May. For one thing, his training into matters of social form was not as closely watched; then there was all the sentimental education from novels. He struggles between social conformity and honesty to one's emotions.
And that often makes him contradict himself. Sometimes he is saying saying sexist things like “What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?” and taking offence because too much of Ellen’s shoulder is visible. At other point he is fighting for women rights. At one point, we are told “Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offence against "Taste," while later he will want to run away with Ellan.
In the begining, he is revolting in that he argues for equality of sexes but only in as far as he knows his would-be wife won’t be taking those liberties. But really people are like that. A lot of people I know in real life have this NIMBY attitude – they want equality for women but only when that ‘women’ represents distant vague sections of society like people from tv or newspapers – but they lack similar initiative in their family where habit of traditionally available advantages stops them from doing that.
These themes are similar to Lawrence, when compared to his, the psychology of Wharton's characters is more believable and she doesn't preach in as obvious a manner.
In fact, there is alternative way of looking at the novel – Archer’s oscillation between passions and conformity represented in Ellen and May; is a story of many such people; had the novel been written by a man he would have been accused of using May and Ellen as metaphors (especially given how subtly the characters of two women are developed).
"“He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.”
“It occurred to Sandy, there at the end of the Middle Meadow Walk, that the Brodie set was Miss Brodie's fascisti, not to the naked eye, marching a
“It occurred to Sandy, there at the end of the Middle Meadow Walk, that the Brodie set was Miss Brodie's fascisti, not to the naked eye, marching along, but all knit together for her need and in another way, marching along. That was all right, but it seemed, too, that Miss Brodie's disapproval of the Girl Guides had jealousy in it, there was an inconsistency, a fault. Perhaps the Guides were too much a rival fascisti, and Miss Brodie could not bear it.”
One commonly featuring theme with all the governments of last century that have gone wrong (whether they were fascists, ultra-nationalists, communalists, communist, anti-communists) is that they all paid special focus on education of children. And it is only to be expected, children are highly impressionable and, a simple application of Butterfly effect or any of psychological theories (except Humanism), shows what an effect a small change early on can have on one’s life – those early stages are the perfect opportunity for anyone wanting to play God:
“Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”
And Fascism basically means allowing one man to play God. But this book is not about politics, not unless you see it as an allegory. It is about education.
And so, the questions arises, what should children be taught and who should teach them? Ideally, I dare say that they should be taught how to live a life before they are taught how to earn a living – which might include teaching them about self-discovery, sex-education and how to be good parents, how not to let yourself be influenced by propaganda, how to check if you are prejudiced against some section of society, a habit of putting oneself in other’s shoes etc. The list is too long and as you can see literature can help with several of them. A well-written novel with racism or sexual violence, for example, can be used to teach how these tendencies work in society; how to put oneself in victim’s shoes, clothes and skin; and how one must be guard oneself in being cause of and suffering from such things.
What we really do though, is we play defensive, and don’t want anything too 'dangerous’ for children's stupid heads to be a part of their education. And so anything even remotely out of Disney world is excised out of books.
And what about teachers? We can’t censor teachers but we have an ideal for them, which they must follow. Now, in my mind, the image of this ideal teacher is that of a sentinel of discipline and traditions, yearning for good old times - a strict and, if I may dare use the word, sexless old thing with no sense of humor … you remember prof McGonagall? Exactly. Now you can’t expect every teacher to be an old woman, and so, what we do is we socialize teachers to act in that way while their students are observing them.
And, so, you see in school/college corridors, young teachers pretending to be angry at a behavior in their students which they had enjoyed only a few years ago or might still enact back home (since most of them are terrible actors, I don’t know how come most students don’t see through them, I for one was never fooled. Thanks!), scorning at the very jokes they might themselves find funny, and asking students to follow rules they themselves see injustice in (In this one scene in the third book, McGonagall refuse to sign Harry’s permission to visit the Hogsmeade, though she felt sorry since he was the only in. whole class not allowed to, for no mistake of his).
Now Miss Jean Brodie is no fan of this McGonagallism school of play-acting, she is a rebel (the only good thing about her) and she does seem to believe in teaching children about lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, her syllabus is highly dependent on her whims and she happens to be in her prime.
“One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.”
And since she isn’t wearing McGonagall masks, the personal life of this narcissist woman directly affects her students. She loses her initial idealism in a desperate effort to enjoy her life and ends up using her girls as pawns, causing a permanent damage in life of at least one, Sandy. You may make sure that the person teaching isn’t racist, communalist or have some undesirable political philosophy, but they will have much going in their personal life. And unless the teachers are maintaining so-called ‘respectable’ distances, you can’t save a student from their personal life. Now this might serve for the meek to want to argue in favor of sticking to safety of old-fashioned McGonagallism, but I don’t agree and my ex-career as class rebel and class-clown (obviously) has nothing to do with that.
One of the best and most humorous books I have read this year. ...more
“Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in.”
Veblen in his
“Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in.”
Veblen in his 'Theory of Leisure Class' (written six years before this book) argues that one of the way leisure class show their wealth is by maintaining people who will sit idly for them. The chief example is of wives, where richest men do not want their wives to be doing paid jobs - do and own charities - yes, art exhibitions -yes, partying - yes, just not doing any sort of job. The tendency becomes less visible as we go down the ladder of social class, In India, one can still observe the trend. If they are rich enough, many men would rather have housewives and many women would prefer to be housewives. And if they are wealthier still, they would have servants so that their wives won't have to work. Among such people, a woman earning her living is scorned at and is liable to be cast away by society. Besides wives, the super rich might also maintain a class of 'friends' to keep company.
Lily Bart is such a 'friend' and has been raised to be such a wife of a rich man. The only thing she knows well and is good at is 'manners' of leisure class - and these manners won't earn her any money. Higher standards of living are addictive and she is addicted, but she doesn't have any wealth of her own. And since she can't earn, marrying a rich man is her only option - which seems difficult as she is aging (it is a society where an unmarried women nearing thirties is likely to attract suspicions and prejudice attached to the phrase 'old maiden', another thing still visible in India) and, moreover, she also wants to marry for love. To her misfortune, she happened to be a character in Wharton's realistic novel, instead of being a character in one of Austen's happily-ever-after tales.
“She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”
One must bow low in respect to Wharton's craft. I mean there are lots of writers who have better stories or things to tell and writers who have awesome literary techniques at their disposal but, very few can beat her,IMO, when it comes to perfection of telling a realistic story in traditional manner (you know no stream-of-consciousness, no magical realism, no Gothic castles etc) And her cynicism (cynics are always sexy), and the way she brings out the helplessness of her character whether it is Lily Bart, Newland Archer or Ethan Frome. She also kept a dog in her lap when she wrote, if her new Goodreads avatar is to be believed....more
I like the themes Henry James chooses for his books, his portrayal of them not so much. Lots of readers advise writers to 'show but not tell' but bestI like the themes Henry James chooses for his books, his portrayal of them not so much. Lots of readers advise writers to 'show but not tell' but best of literature to me is about that which can not be seen. And after all, we have arts enough (painting, theatre etc) which capture life better in so far as it can be seen. Ishiguro said something similar in his Noble speech so now I have his authority to state my preferences. James' books are just full of scenes that show what could be more briefly told and this takes away from intensity of ceneral subject for me. Moreover his prose has very little of that energy in prose which makes Wharton click for me in similar books....more
“Ah, that son of Noah’s had been cursed, down to the present groaning generation: A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. Then the iro
“Ah, that son of Noah’s had been cursed, down to the present groaning generation: A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. Then the ironic voice, terrified, it seemed, of no depth, no darkness, demanded of John, scornfully, if he believed that he was cursed. All niggers had been cursed, the ironic voice reminded him, all niggers had come from this most undutiful of Noah’s sons."
Chinua Achebe in his postscript to his collection of essays, ‘Hopes and Impediments’, says of James Baldwin, “how easy it was to make Jimmy smile; and how the world he was doomed to inhabit would remorselessly deny him that simple benediction.” The very fact of being a colored person in a racist time, the difficult relations with his abusive father, the breaking away from a faith (he was deeply religious to start with) which would have him feel guilty for his natural instincts and getting criticism from his own Black community when he touched themes of homosexuality ensured a sad life for him.
‘Go tell it on the mountains’ is highly auto-biographical – the protagonist James too is deeply religious, struggling with his homosexuality, has an adoptive father who was a priest and who abused him more than his natural sons.
I thought it would be a coming-to-age book of sorts focused fully on John but it is more like a group of interconnected stories showing the impact religion has on people. With John, it resulted in repression of and feeling guilt at his natural instincts.
Gabriel, his father, too felt guilt over his own sexual affairs but each time he does so he makes himself believe that God has forgiven him even though he happened to ruin a few lives on the way – the hypocrisy. But isn’t that what religious morality is based on? Guilt, denial, fear and hypocrisy.
“I guess it takes a holy man to make a girl a real whore.”
And the women, John’s mother and aunt. They both tried to take hold of their own lives to go after their dreams only to find themselves brought down the world … or God, whatever you like – like is often the fate of so many rebellious underdogs …. and now, religion is but the last solace for them.
“There was a stiffness in him that would be hard to break, but that, nevertheless, would one day surely be broken. As hers had been, and Richard’s—there was no escape for anyone. God was everywhere, terrible, the living God; and so high, the song said, you couldn’t get over Him; so low you couldn’t get under Him; so wide you couldn’t get around Him; but must come in at the door”
..... You know come to think of it, this is second book which I have reviewed in a row which is sad. And whenever I'm depressed I turn to religion ... I mean where else will you find so many things to laugh at? But not today.
Today we have something serious to talk about - And that is this illusion that religions are against homosexuality, nothing is far from truth. The problem is that people lay too much importance on the 'word' - as if the 'word' is everything, I mean are you really naive enough to believe that spoonfuls which Mary Popkins gave to the children were, in fact, of sugar? Same aplies to rellgion. Now you can't suppose that saints or religious folks could have told those ancient or medieval folks that homosexuality is good, or later would have simply killed them. No, you have to learn to read between the lines - just think about it, religions always ask women to keep their bodies covered, seperate the people of two sexes on pretext of morality, tradition and war, the very monasteries are full of men who have nothing except books to keep then busy and are against abortion, also people of opposite sex are often addressed as 'brothers' and 'sisters' - I mean what kind of sexuality does it promote?
I tell you, you know people by their action not by their words. It says so in scriptures too - "you shall know a tree by fruits it bears". I tell you relgion is all about repressed sexuality. And then so many religious heads had multiple wives; tell me, how come no one suggested that they have a better chance at sexual satisfaction if they had tried someone of opposite sex for a change?
You don't believe me? Well, don't then. But talking about Christianity - and mind you, I have always liked Christ, because he is one of few religious figures who chose to let themselves die rather than kill or asking others to die or kill on their behalf. Moreover, for last couple of years, I have been a true Christian, I know it may not agree with some of other things I keep on saying but it is true, I have been instinctively following Christ's message - love thy neighbor. I mean, yes, she is not Christian enough to reciprocate ... I know, how infidel right! but hey there is no lacking of faith on my path.
And if you only get high on word, than remember ultimate dictum of morality across all religions 'Do not do unto others what you don't want done unto yourself'. It is impossible to follow this rule in heterosexuality due to simple physical reason of different sex organs. It is, in fact, a living adevtesiment of homosexual sex
Anyway, as I was saying, I read gospels and you know there is this particular part that I want to bring to your notice .... I'm not going to draw conclusions, all interpretations you might draw will be your own. I'm just going to state facts. So, it is the last supper time, Jesus has just announced, that it is his farewell party, to his apostles, all of whom coincidentally happen to be men, who drank from same cup (mind you, I'm not suggesting anything) and all heavily drunk and sad about Christ's departure and .... .... And, and, and they have a whole night to themselves. ...more
There is a bollywood movie Gujarish about an ex-magician who meets an accident and is now suffering paralysis from nec
“Caddy smelled like trees.”
There is a bollywood movie Gujarish about an ex-magician who meets an accident and is now suffering paralysis from neck down for several years. Finally he requests an amendment in law to make Euthanasia legal, so that he could kill himself. In one scene when he is asked if he wishes to say something before the verdict is given; he says he wishes to show a magic trick to the court. When it is allowed, his assistant brings in a box. The magician asks the lawyer of the state to volunteer, judge orders the lawyer to do so. The magician requests the lawyer to sit in the box and his assistant locks the door upon him. A few moments pass - as people expect magician to do something. He just sit calmly, till the lawyer starts screaming from inside the box. The magician starts talking about some random subject(weather) and thus further frightening the lawyer.
After a couple of minutes,the magician signals to assistant to let the lawyer out. "Are you stupid?" the lawyers says, breathing heavily, after coming out of box, "It was so dark inside, I couldn't see anything, I couldn't breathe.." The magician replies calmly, "It is what my life has been like for years. Two minutes and you wanted out."
This is what reading Benjamin's story is like. Faulkner does an incredible job putting us in the brain of an idiot. There is a good chance you will feel frustrated - I did. You may think this is how the book got the title - Faulkner makes random sounds, you get furious. You check on the internet and find out that it is, in fact, taken from a quote by Macbeth.
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
You may actually want to murder the author but than you remember he is already dead. You look into Wikipedia to find out cause of his death and are surprised to find that he died of totally natural reasons.
... but really that is the point. Now you know how Benjamin feels like - he couldn't differentiate between flashbacks and present and he is probably suffering from synesthesia without knowing anything about it. Even so much as Caddie's wearing a perfume sets him crying for he couldn't associate the smell of perfume with her - to him she must smell as she always did - likes trees. And he doesn't even know anything about Gods or he too would have curse them .... of course, you are supposed to guess all this by yourself. Faulkner is not going to doubt your intelligence by telling you all this.
There is a good chance you won't understand anything from that first section but that is the point. You may want to read it again after having finished the book - to properly understand it. It is one of the best things that I've read.
Now talking about confusion, there are too many character which are never introduced (except in an appendix in the end) and just thrown on to you; there are different characters having same names and also characters having multiple names and so on - which is justified at least for first section.
However there are unjustified confusions too - When you go to second section; you may be surprised how come Benjy, the narrator is in Harvard. He isn't - it is just our run-of- the-mill change of narrator with out so much as a by-your-leave. I don't know why Faulkner didn't feel need to announce the change, for example, by giving name of narrator in title.
It happens again in third section but by then, you are somewhat used to Faulkner's trickery. Of course he will still surprise you by bringing back a dead character - and upon that, with a change of sex ... but remember he is already dead. you can't do anything to revenge yourself. Having seen three different narrators in three sections, you want to quickly identify narrator in fourth section. Of course Faulkner will beat you again for this time narrator is none other than God himself. Go Guess!
Each successive section is easier to read than the last one and also more boring. The second one is easier compared to first but Quentien the narrator won't tell whether he is fantasizing or remembering. Also, he can occasionally go on for whole pages without using punctuation marks of any sort (Even Benjy had better sense than that.) The last two parts are pretty straight forward but have nothing good about them.
Years after the novel was published, Faulkner got into good mood and was good enough to provide an appendix (more of a character guide) knowing what he has written are only fragments of story - anytime you feel like leaving the book, you may want to check it. Reading it in the end feels like reading answers to a puzzle after you have tried your best to solve it. “I took out my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldn't even lie”...more
Have you ever come across a picture of painting sold for millions and be like a five year old could have made it because it was all a bunch of random Have you ever come across a picture of painting sold for millions and be like a five year old could have made it because it was all a bunch of random circles and squares? Now you go to an art critic and he will tell you about the underlying themes and ideas which is supposed to be understood from painting. The thing is the argument would still stand - a five year old could draw something like that and, if painter desired to say something very eloquent, it is not very visible in the painting itself. If the painting could give that message out by itself (independent of critical commentary, a piece of art should not be needing help of outside elements to be understood); then your five year old's painting should be saying same. And if it is critical commentary that makes painting amazing, then your child is not lacking in painting but in a critic.
Let us forget everything else, what can't be denied in the end is that the painter did nothing more than simply paint a rectangle or circle, nothing more - or strapped a banana on a wall. This is my problem with this whole iceberg theory. It seems to me our conception of human existence is like seeing tip of iceberg, it is the duty of art to show the hidden part. Hemmingway just seems to be sticking to showing the tip and leave the reader to guess the rest and I find the tip by itself to be extremely boring. I am sure that the wine or the bull stand for something higher but I am unable to discover anything to suggest such links within the book. All Hemingway did write about was a bull fight. All I see is a bull fight and some uninteresting characters which didn't inspire much. It is only the hidden part of iceberg of human psyche I read for. That and for feels which I where Hemmingway score. There is a mix of melancholy and seize-the-day feels in the book and it is those feels that got the book three stars. It might have been 4 stars but I don't like Hemmingway's having strong notions of conventional sexuality and anti-Semite tendencies....more
"The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn’t know what goes on in a single human heart."
That seems to be key theme of book, there is no knowing w "The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn’t know what goes on in a single human heart."
That seems to be key theme of book, there is no knowing what goes on in a heart and no tying it down with rules of morality. Scobie is a good guy by most accounts whose conscience is troubled by his catholic beliefs. It is almost invariably the good people that feel guilt which proves it is stupid. But what's amazing is that his wife seemed to not know him at all in the end. It is a fact that despite his highly objective (to the point of being boring) and honest diary keeping habit and his regular confessions, no one in the end seem to really know him.
A priest only knows the unimportant things.’
‘Unimportant?’
‘Oh, I mean the sins,’ he said impatiently. ‘A man doesn’t come to us and confess his virtues.’
Thus his (view spoiler)[ suicide (hide spoiler)] shocked everyone. And he probably won't have killed himself if it wasn't for catholic bug.
A sick man’s death means to them only a short suffering - everybody has to die. We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.
And this quote is just wow:
When he was young, he had thought love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty, pity ...
You might have heard it several times before but Cather can cut you most beautiful pictures of American West through her words. Not only the people buYou might have heard it several times before but Cather can cut you most beautiful pictures of American West through her words. Not only the people but the very place come to life in these pages.
There isn’t much of plot in it, it is just people living out their destinies. Cather’s genius lies in creating little moments which spark of poetry of life. The story is written from POV of Jim, a guy who is not much unlike the author but for some reason, Cather seems to prefer writing from a male POV.
The emphasis in the title is on the word ‘My’. It is not really so much about Antonia. Antonia has nothing particular about her, just another of poor immigrants making best of whatever little luck may fell into their unlucky lives. No, it is about Jim’s relationship with her.
We all have our Antonias, don't we? Those childhood best friends whose destinies were not same as ours, yet we feel a certain kind of possession over them:
“He went into the next room, sat down at my desk and wrote on the pinkish face of the portfolio the word, "Ántonia." He frowned at this a moment, then prefixed another word, making it "My Ántonia."
..We are interested in their lives, want them to do well even though life at times makes us drift apart from them, sometimes when angry resolving never to contact with them again, but whom we still end up searching for anyway, and whose mere sight, with all the changes their appearances might have gone through, reminds us of innocent times of our shared childhood. We look at them and wonder how different our lives come out to be – whether it was anything more than luck that set us on our paths. Jim shares this relationship with Antonia. May be Jim is attracted to her but that is all speculative. In the end, he finds peace in that ‘We will always have Paris’ kind of thought:
“Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
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