Does Anyone Remember?

Does anyone remember when the History Channel used to have shows on history? I’m not talking about the documentaries on gangs, mobsters, the latest conspiracy theories, the invention of the coolest new gadgets, Nostradamus, martial arts, and fear-mongering religious apocalypse, but actual historical figures like George Washington, Alexander the Great, Socrates, Mao, Marx, Rousseau, Henry the IV, Marie Antionette, etc. I could’ve sworn they once had history shows on the History Channel, but it might have just been a figment of my imagination.

 

Booklist 2009 # 51 – 56

I have finally sunk to the lowest of the low by offering capsule reviews instead of my normal in-depth posts.

51) Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

Nathanael West writes in a surreal style different from the Modernists of his day. At times his surreal descriptions prove creative and unique,  while at other times they seem far-fetched and unbelievable like a metaphysical poem gone horribly wrong. Miss Lonelyheart writes the “Dear Abbey” style help column in his local news rag, which at first was meant to be a joke. However, as he reads through the flood of letters from people suffering serious problems he slowly sicks in a malaise of melancholy. He searches for a number of ways to recover an ounce of hope by turning to sex, the cynicism of his editor, art, and finally finding religion and Jesus at the end. However, the religious epiphany at the end proves to be another illusion. West writes a clever work that takes a cynical look at Depression era America, calling into question the values of art, religion, and sex as a means of pleasure and escape in dealing with the darker side of the world. Religion is both a joke and a means of hope, by pulling us away from concrete reality, but by also providing an inch of hope, even if it turns out to be all bullshit (so, I make of the books ending).

52) The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

This novel dissects the moral bankruptcy of Hollywood and the American dream itself. This novel is a tad less surreal in style compared to Miss Lonelyhearts. Tod Hackett works in Hollywood as a scene designer, but in his spare time works on his artistic masterpiece, “The Burning of Los Angeles” full of all the new people out from the East to the West and chaotic destruction of the city. He lusts after one of his models helping him with the painting, Faye Greener, an aspiring actress and the daughter of a washed-up vaudevillian.  However, other men want to sleep with Faye as well, including an impoverished cowboy, his Mexican friend, and Homer, a mild-mannered hotel clerk from the East sojourning in California.  The characters are all two-dimensional caricatures: we have the aspiring talentless female movie star who sleeps around to advance her career, the washed-up vaudevillian star dreaming of the old days, the hack visual artist pretending to be a “real” artist of genius, the rich Hollywood producer, and many others. So one theme of the novel is the failure of dreams. People dream big, but often it is a far more difficult task to attain them. We also have the running motif of the hack. Todd Hacket’s last name speaks for itself. Faye, however, relies on her charms and sex appeal to advance her career rather than her talent; in other words, she is just as much a hack as her talent relies on how wide she can spread her legs and who she can entice into bed. The novel’s plot in many ways revolves around the many characters pursuing sexual relationships with Faye, with the manly men always winning out over the effeminate artist and noncommittal soft-spoken figures in the form of Todd and Homer. It’s the aggressive macho men who get laid. The novel’s denouement centers around a riot that breaks out over a movie premiere with Homer and Todd at the center. This event parallels the imagery of Todd’s painting with its pandemonium. There are many episodes where normally mild Todd imagines disturbing rape fantasies involving Faye. All this points to the darker side of the human nature underneath the thin veneer of sophisticate society as embodied in Hollywood.

53) A Contract with G-d by Will Eisner

The title story of this graphic novel was an extremely moving look at the relationship the individual has with G-d. A religious Jew who many believe has been blessed by G-d, signs a contract with G-d as a sacred pact that he will continue to devote his life to G-d’s way by doing good deeds and devoting himself to religion, and G-d should reward him with happiness for all his life. He questions the contract once his adopted daughter dies of disease. This event breaks the man and he abandons all his good deeds of the past, and now exploits others as an owner of a tenement. However, one day he attempts to reestablish his contract with G-d with disastrous results. I like that the moral point of this story is that you shouldn’t do good deeds with the expectation of rewards from G-d, but that doing the good deed is the reward itself and sometimes bad things happen to good people. The story is in the vein of Job.

54) A Life Force by Will Eisner

This story is about a bunch of interwoven stories of Jews, Italians, and other gentiles living in the same neighborhood, learning to live together and help each other during hard times.

55) Dropsie Avenue by Will Eisner

This story follows the history of Dropsie Avenue from the original dutch settlers to tenements to run-down slums to its modern days as a closed community of houses. The reader watches as the neighborhood changes and the original inhabitants feel threatened when new ethnic groups move in to town (the dutch feel threatened by the newly arrived English, the English by the Irish, the Irish by the Germans, the Germans by the Italians, etc.); this motif repeats again and again, showing the pattern of ethnocentricity, but also shows hope in successful inter-marriages and ethnic alliances for those not too caught up in ethnic tensions. The street degenerates and is renewed countless times.

56) John Donne’s Poetry edited by A. L. Clements

John Donne is the master of metaphysical poetry. He can transform a blood-sucking flea into a symbol for the insignificance of lost virginity and a plea for sex. He writes elaborate, often abstruse poems about sexuality, celebrating both free love and true love in the form of monogamy. He writes simpler, but elegant poems about his devotion to G-d and his religion in his later poems. He even writes some poems capturing the religious conflicts of his age between Catholicism and Protestantism.  Although many think of him as the metaphysical poets who creates elaborate conceits about lovers being like two points of a compass, in truth, his style varies greatly between poems. He writes some of the most beautiful and difficult poems I have ever read.

Fifty Book Challenge Met for 2009

So I have completed fifty books for the year, meeting my minimum “requirement” for the amount of books I desire to finish in a year. At this point, I actually have completed fifty two books, but I have not yet written the posts for those two additional books. I honestly was hoping for more like a hundred books this year, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, although there’s still time I suppose.

I’m considering returning to my Roman Reading list soon, which will be loosely based on this list. I found it very useful to have read most of the major Greek literary works as part of a cohesive unit last year; I was reminded of the advantages of reading this way during a recent discussion I had with some atheists in which they tried to create imaginary connections between the myths of Dionysus and the New Testament stories of Jesus, as well as other myths. One website a guy linked to in the discussion blatantly invented events that never occur in any of the known Dionysus stories to try and make a stronger link between the Dionysus myths and Jesus.  As a Jew I don’t even believe in Jesus as a theologically relevant figure (basically meaning: what do I care if you don’t think Jesus was an historical figure or if you want to blasphemy him?) and I still couldn’t drop my incredulity at some of the crazy claims I heard. You know, because of that whole intellectual honesty thing. For all the posturing I heard on that site about atheists being more rational, logical, and intelligent than all other beings in existence, especially religious believers, I have come to the more nuance conclusion after several interactions with the posters that atheists as a group are about as rational as any other group on the internet.

Besides returning to my reading plan, the discussions there also made me consider that I might be focusing too heavily on literature and history at the expense of science and math. I’m not sure what I plan to do about this yet. Once upon a time I was a strong math students (who pulled easy As, honors in 7th grade, 92% on my 9th grade Math Regents, etc.) and then around 10th grade my grades dropped drastically and math transformed into one of my weakest subjects. I am not sure if it pays to spend a lot of time fixing this weakness, as I can still perform rudimentary and necessary in daily life mathematical functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division,  percentages, fractions, etc.) with ease, but it would be nice to be able to do the more complicated stuff again.

Booklist 2009 # 50: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

American Born Chinese is the only graphic novel in history to be nominated for the prestigious National Book Award to date. The story takes the form of a triptych where three separate stories are connected by interrelated themes about belonging and coming to terms with your identity.

One story follows the monkey king, a powerful master of kung-fu, who rebels against the gods after they won’t let him join their party because he’s a monkey. This experience makes him ashamed of being a monkey, and he struggles against the gods to reject his identity, and prove himself superior to a mere monkey.

The second story follows a second-generation immigrant named Jin Wang who struggles to find an identity in a school where his peers look down on him for being Chinese and the girl of his dreams doesn’t seem interested.

The third story is about a white American boy named Danny, whose Chinese cousin Chin-Kee embodies every possible stereotype about Chinese people imaginable. His cousin visits him each year and ruins his reputation at school with all his stereotypical behavior.

At the very end of the graphic novel we find out that all three stories are really a single story. Danny turns out to be Jin Wang living a fantasy life in which he imagines himself as popular and white, Chin-kee turns out to be the monkey king in disguise trying to help Jin Wang come to terms with his identity, and the monkey king’s story parallels the rejection of his peers found in both Jin and Danny’s stories. The monkey king is a nice mythic riff on the same issues of identity and belonging. After the monkey king fights the other gods in heaven for not allowing him into their party he returns home to Flower-Fruit Mountain and suddenly notices that his royal chamber smells like monkey fur, and that “he’d never noticed it before.” Yang confronts the reader with the pernicious effects of stereotyping, the way it creates a new conscience and causes you to hate your own identity. Jin and his friends constantly suffer from the white kids calling them slurs and claiming they eat dog and other nasty stereotypes. This is what causes Jin to want to be one of the white kids and assume the fantasy identity of Danny, until to be haunted by his Chinese cousin. Chin-kee’s name says it all; his name itself being a slur against people of Chinese descent. He pronounces his “L”s as “R”s and his “R”s as “L”s with ridiculous exaggeration, he tells every woman he meets that he wants to bind their feet and marry them, and brings in cat gizzards with noodles to school. He symbolizes all the negative stereotypes that Jin Wang comes to identify with being Chinese. Jin Wang flees from this identity and these stereotypes when he fantasizes himself as a popular white kid. However, as the graphic novels goes to show Chin-kee follows him everywhere, even as Danny, the popular white kid. Yang’s point seems to be that you can’t run away from your identity, it always follows you wherever you go.

Although, the writer deals directly with Asian American experience as his focal point I found myself strongly identifying with his themes as a Jewish American who has faced his own forms of hurtful stereotypes, discrimination, and identity crisis at times.  In a way, these themes are broader than just the Chinese American experience. I believe all people who have ever struggled to maintain their identity against adversity and the majority insulting them will love this graphic novel. But if you don’t believe me, why not listen to Gene Yang himself? I am finding so far that I am really impressed with graphic novels as a medium of artistic expression.

Booklist 2009 # 49: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

Frank Miller transforms the Batman mythos into thought-provoking literature with a conservative bent. He strikes the right notes with your typical comic book fan by including cameos by other superheroes such as the Green Arrow and Superman and well-known villains such as the Joker and Two-face, while managing to add provocative social commentary on the nature of crime and criminals, the pros and cons of vigilante justice, the difficulty in maintaining law and order without taking drastic measures, the way mass media influences important political and social issues, and believably satirizes liberals progressive types who are too soft on crime.

Miller accomplishes all this by working in an alternative universe where Bruce Wayne (the alter ego of Batman for those unfamiliar with the Batman mythos) has gone into retirement for over ten years due to guilt lingering from the death of Jason Todd, who was Robin, his crime-fighting sidekick. The government has also decided to make superhero activity illegal. The young people of Gotham no longer believe Batman ever existed, thinking it the stuff of legend meant to scare children. Since his retirement crime has skyrocketed in Gotham. Gotham city has practically degenerated into a Dystopia with a gang known as the Mutants pretty much running the streets, and the inadequate police force unable to control then.

Bruce Wayne doesn’t handle retirement very well, often dreaming about the day his parents were murdered and the night he fell into a cave of bats through an alcoholic stupor. His alter-ego continually haunts him, begging him to return to crime-fighting. Finally unable to take the chaos plaguing Gotham anymore and the nagging voices of the past calling for him to resume his work, Batman returns to save the city from the Mutants and other criminals. However, he is not welcomed with loving arms by the public.

Despite his methods significantly dropping the crime rate, the new Commissioner issues a warrant for his arrest, television personalities argue with each other on debate shows about the Pros and Cons of Batman (not afraid to lie and exaggerate to make their points), the mayor refuses to take a position on Batman until he can see the polls, and a hippy psychologist continually addresses the media by insisting that Batman’s presence creates all the criminals and crime in Gotham city, attracting them like a bright beacon does moths.

A new female Robin joins Batman in his quest to fight crime. After defeating the leader of the Mutant gang, the members of the gang disperse into splinter gangs, while others join the crime-fighting gang of vigilantes known as the Sons of Batman. Unfortunately too many of these new vigilantes take their crime-fighting too far, killing not only the perpetrators of crime, but in one case, the graphic novel shows a scene where a Son of Batman kills an owner being robbed because he was too scared to resist, allowing crime to flourish by not resisting it, and therefore is indirectly causing crime to continue flourishing.

Meanwhile, the joker, Batman’s arch-nemesis, convinces the psychiatrist blaming Batman for creating his own criminals, that he is in fact sane. The psychiatrist believes him and takes him on a talk show where the Joker kills everyone. Batman and the new Robin hunt him down to an amusement park after the Joker murders a group of visiting children. Batman loses his cool and almost murders the Joker for his crimes, but ultimately cannot bring himself to cross that line. The joker kills himself by twisting his own neck as a way of framing Batman. This only turns public opinion further against Batman, believing falsely that he now murders criminals.

Eventually the federal government gets involved and sends Superman to defeat Batman. Miller reinvents Superman for his gritty take on the world; often known as a little boy scout that always plays by the rules, Superman now works as pawn for the federal government so he can legally continue to do superhero work under the watchful gaze of the President, unwilling to do it without permission from the authorities. The federal government in turn gets to use Superman as a secret weapon, a deterrent against nuclear war. Batman realizes it will come to blows with superman. He develops a plan for taking out Superman that involves faking his own murder and using enhanced battle armor and Kryptonite to match Superman’s powers. Batman defeats Superman, but dies in the process. However, it turns out Batman faked his own death, using drugs to temporarily stop his heart, and Robin digs him up. Bruce Wayne abandons his direct role as the Batman and begins an underground organization with Robin and loyal members of the Sons of Batman to continue the vigilante effort against criminals.

Although this might seem like a typical comic book story line, you would be sorely mistaken in assuming this is the usual fare. Miller spends less time with battles and intricate traps, and more  time focusing on politicians and the media’s reactions to Batman. Many frames of the graphic novel are lent to covering these reactions. Miller depicts politicians as ineffectual, unwilling to challenge public opinion and their own political fortunes for the general good. He pokes fun at left-wing intellectuals and hippies throughout the book. The most obvious case is through the hippy psychologist who always thinks the best of his psychotic criminal patients, unable to see them as the deranged individuals that they happen to be, but thinks the worst of Batman who is risking his life to fight the crime. The psychologist claims that Batman is the cause of all the crimes, following the so-called wisdom of the Left that crime is a product of poor social conditions and is reaction to power and unfair authority, but the reader clearly sees that crime was rampant before Batman made a come-back and after his return the crime levels went down, suggesting the good doctor is full of crap. We also have a wonderful scene with Robin’s parents who are portrayed as aging hippies and neglectful parents. In the scene, one of them mutters, “didn’t we have a kid?” while they are sitting down to dinner and there daughter is out fighting the Mutants. Another great parody of liberals comes when various mutants injured and captured by Batman want to sue Batman and have him arrested for assault, suggesting that they are somehow the victims, even though almost all these criminals would’ve done a thousand times worse to the innocent people that Batman saves by injuring them. Miller’s point is that as a society we are too soft on criminals and too often the Left coddles them by inventing ridiculous excuses and explanations for their behavior (i.e. they’re merely products of their environment and aren’t really to blame for their actions).

However, Miller doesn’t present an entirely one-sided picture either. In the first story line involving Two-Face and Batman’s return from retirement, the two characters are conflated with each other, both unable to transcend their respective psychosis and traumatic past histories; Miller goes so far as to imply that they’re mirror images. Batman is unable to function as a normal human being, driven forever by his trauma, much like Two-Face. The idea of vigilante justice is also critiqued; the Sons of the Batman cross the line that Batman refuses to cross by murdering criminals and sometimes murdering innocent people who didn’t fight against the criminals victimizing them.  In a way, part of the psychologist’s theories prove true. The Joker lays dormant in Arkham Asylum for ten years, while Batman is in retirement, no longer caring, and only has a desire to escape and perform crimes again once Batman returns. The Joker’s crimes are the most heinous in the book, far worse than anything in which the Mutants engage. It would seem Batman awakens the true psychotics, the true mass murderers, and keeps the petty criminals at the bay; in this case, it seems that since the book establishes Batman’s vigilante behavior as a mirror of the true psychotics, Miller is in fact questioning the underpinnings of vigilante behavior and mass murder. The philosophical code that underpins vigilante justice and mass murder is the establishment of one’s own moral code and rules of law outside of society’s standards. This conflation demonstrates that vigilant justice is as problematic as mass murder because the same type of thinking underlies both behaviors, even if they produce different results. There seems to even be a critique of fascism, which thrives on this sort of thinking. Fascists are, indeed, good at ridding the streets of petty criminals, but they are just as good at committing mass murder by redefining the rules. However, this doesn’t change my perceived conservative bent of the text. Miller relishes poking fun at Leftists who apologize for criminals. I think the graphic novel also implies that the reason vigilante justice arises in the first place is when justice itself fails to deliver proper judgement to the guilty and punish them sufficiently.

Miller’s text in this way proves to be very sophisticated, leaning right-wing, while avoiding preachiness. His work demonstrates that the often fantastical milieu of comics and heroes in spandex can still provide serious critiques of society.

Booklist 2009 # 48: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (trans. Constance Garnett)

Probably the hardest part of reading a Dostoevsky novel is all the names–the unfamiliar Russian names, the endless barrage of surnames and nicknames,  and the similarity of names (such as Petrovna and Petrovitch). Although entertaining, the novel drags out its central plot; the basic plot can be summarized as guy commits murder because of his warped philosophical beliefs, has a mental breakdown which causes him to confess details of his crime to friends and members of the police, bringing further suspicion upon him, but before the law can arrest him he decides to confess and repent his old ways, rejecting his former philosophy. In between this simple plot the novel focuses on, the main character and murderer, Raskolnikov’s psychological deterioration and turbulent mood-swing.  To fill-in the rest of its massive five hundred pages, the novel explores a plethora of sub-plots, such as the impending marriage of the main character’s sister with a man our protagonist rejects, the misfortunes of an alcoholic who brings his family to ruin, and other episodes that intertwine themselves with the central murder plot.

After suffering in impoverished conditions in the modern city of St. Petersburg, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former student at the university, decides to kill an old pawnbroker and steal her money. He believes in a theory of Great Men that convinces him that Napoleon, Alexander, and the like have the right to transgress traditional moral boundaries of the common herd. He believes he has the right to commit this murder because he, too, falls into the category of one of these Great Men. On the night of the murder, he not only kills the old woman, but also her idiotic younger sister. He escapes from the crime successfully, but as a consequence his mind degenerates into mental illness and paranoia. He continually fears people will discover his crime and often incriminates himself by telling the police details of his crime, obsessing over the murder, and even returning to the scene of the crime at one point.

His good-natured friend Razumhikin discovers the ill Raskolnikov and takes care of him, hiring a doctor and refusing to abandon him no matter how poorly Raskolnikov treats him. On top of all this, Raskolnikov has discovered that his sister, Avdotya (also known as Dunya) plans to marry the rich Pyotr Luzhin after a terrible incident working as a governess in the house of the lecherous Svidrigailov who tried to proposition Raskolnikov’s sister into an affair. Raskolnikov in his mentally ill state meets with Luzhin and insults him. Soon, Raskolnikov’s own family arrives as part of the wedding arrangements. Raskolnikov explains his objections to the wedding, and Dunya finally sees the true character of Luzhin during their final meeting. Razumhikin who is of great help to the family by watching out for Raskolnikov and negotiating the treacherous world of St. Petersburg falls in love with Dunya, but is too virtuous to tell her.

Raskolnikov soon finds himself entangled with the fortune of the Ivanonovna family after he gives away the last of his money to help with the funeral arrangements of Marmeladov, a drunken man who told him a few days earlier about his family’s degradation caused by his alcoholism. Marmeladov’s virtuous daughter, Sonya, has been forced into prostitution to make money for the family. Sonya grateful at Raskolnikov’s gift for her father’s funeral soon develops a relationship with him. Raskolnikov believes Sonya holds the key to his redemption and plans to confess his crime to her.  To complicate matters further, Dunya’s former employer, Svidrigailov arrives with the clandestine intentions of seducing Dunya. He takes an apartment beside Sonya’s, and one night when Raskolnikov finally confesses his crime to the girl, he overhears all the details. Svidrigailov taunts Raskolnikov with the knowledge of his murder, but when Dunya rejects his advances, after Svidrigailov almost rapes her, the man kills himself. With the police closing in on him because of all his inability to keep his mouth shut and his mind deteriorating from guilt and fear, Raskolnikov decides to confess his crime, goes to prison in Sibera, and repents his old philosophy of Great Men, replacing it with Christianity and the budding emotions of true love that he feels for Sonya who follows him to Siberia.

Raskolnikov is one of the most interesting characters in all of literature. Many I suspect will find his narcissism, misanthropy, alienation from the world, wild mood swings, and problematic moral philosophy difficult to sympathize with, but Dostoevsky softens his character through various incidents. One incident is a dream Raskolnikov has of a trip with his father to the countryside when he was younger where he tries to shield an injured horse from being tortured by his owner and a gang of drunken men. Another incident is all the moments he tries to help Marmeladov and his family. Razumikhin’s love of Raskolnikov also ameliorates the repugnant side of Raskolnikov, as well as the genuine love Raskolnikov bears for his family. Dostoevsky constructs a diverse character with a lot of different sides to him. Raskolnikov represents a soul corrupted by the new philosophies coming from outside Russian and the terrible conditions of poverty.  All these details set the reader up to believe that Raskolnikov could’ve been a virtuous soul, but that his poor conditions and misguided philosophies he learned in the university warped his thinking. Only through Christianity and genuine love of another human being at the end of the novel does Raskolnikov find redemption. He learns to love and appreciate the world again instead of hating and resenting it.

In stark contrast to Raskolnikov’s bitter narcism is Razumikhin’s friendly altruism. Razumikhin represents the virtuous soul and Aristotle’s “perfect” friendship (teleia philia), although it is a one-sided friendship with Razumikhin encouraging Raskolnikov to become more virtuous. Razumikhin cannot believe Raskolnikov actually committed murder and refuses to believe anything bad about his friend, always trying to protect him when possible. Razumikhin is the friend I think everyone wishes they had. He shows as well that the university ideas need not corrupt a person, suggesting that their is more to Raskolnikov’s deterioration than just his poverty and exposure to philosophical ideas, which functions as a subtle critique of socialism and other philosophies that believe social conditions are entirely to blame for crime. The sad part is that Raskolnikov could’ve been his moral equal. It is no surprise that he falls in love with Dunya. Raskolnikov’s sister is one of the few characters who can match Razumkhin’s virtue, yet at the same time, Dunya is a female version of Raskolnikov, strong-willed, insightful, intelligent, but not adulterated by the philosophies of St. Petersburg; she shows us what Raskolnikov could’ve been had he remained in the countryside, had he made different choices in his life.

As the flap of my book points out Dostoevsky “[a]nticipat[ed] by almost twenty years Friedrich Nietzsche’s concerns with power and the adequacy of Christian morality.” This is a strange comment because in the end, I think Dostoevsky sides with traditional Christianity morality as our best salvation from a cruel world. One of the main points of the book is to show the shortcomings of the new philosophies pervading Russian at the time; he does so in the most explicit way possible, by writing a story where one of those new philosophies leads a young student to commit murder and disregard the sanctity of life by naively fooling himself that it is for the larger social good. Dostoevsky rejects the crass materialism of nihilism and the social theories of Utilitarianism expressed by the likes of the powerful, immoral, and stupid Pyotr Luzhin. In a sense, capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie is condemned. Luzhin fantasizes about using his money to take advantage of poor women, in this case, Dunya and making them perpetually grateful for hand-outs. He is the living embodiment of the crass and vulgar bourgeoisie rising to riches through capitalism only to exploit the poor. At the same time, Dostoevsky doesn’t spare socialism. He pokes fun at socialism through a back and forth dialogue between Luzhin and the socialist Andrei Lebezyatnikov, revealing the many ideas of the socialist character, which Luzhin demolishes as silly and ridiculous, and I’m afraid the reader has to agree. Lebezyatnikov still proves himself to possess a moral conscience when he saves Sonya from Luzhin during Marmeldov’s funeral; the latter tries to frame her for stealing money from him. This suggests that Dostoevsky believes that socialism has its heart in the right place, but in actual practice is untenable as a system. No, it seems in the end that only Christianity, free will, and strong personal relationships (with friends and family) offers any hope of redemption for the characters.

Notes from the Bored Reader

I know I still need to write up a post with my thoughts on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment; it’ll come when I have the motivation. I originally planned to read through all the major works by Dostoevsky (C&P, Notes from Underground, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamozov), but I think I might be dropping those plans. I keep trying to read Notes from Underground, but never seem to make it beyond the third chapter. I tried reading Silas Marner by George Eliot, but got bored after two pages.

I seem to be in a state where I’m unsure what I would like to read. I am thinking maybe I should try some poetry or a short story collection. Maybe I can try graphic novels, borrowing them from the library. Maybe I should take a break from reading for a couple of weeks. I’ve been watching a lot of The Office on Netflix and playing a lot of The Beatles on my guitar. Maybe I’m just not in reading mood. Hm.

Happy New Year!

L’Shana Tovah, everyone! Tomorrow I shall be heading home with the girlfriend to visit the family and celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

The Esslingen Mahzor of Germany by Kalonymus ben Judah. c. 1209. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Earliest dated Hebrew manuscript from Germany. The Mahzor is the traditional prayer book read during the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Booklist 2009 # 47: Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac (trans. Lowell Bair)

“In the pure and monotonous life of a young girl, there comes a delightful time when the sun shines it rays into her soul, when flowers express thoughts, when the throbbing of the heart communicates its warm fecundity to the brain and dissolves all ideas into a vague desire–a day of innocent melancholy and gentle pleasantries! When babies begin to see, they smile; when a girl first glimpses sentiment in nature, she smiles as she smiled when she was a baby. If light is the first love of life, is not love the light of the heart? The time to see clearly the things of this earth had come to Eugenie.”

Based on the strength of Verbivore’s review at Incurable Logophilia, I decided to check out Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac. As my introduction written by Milton Crane notes Balzac shows an insensitivity to language. This is not to say he is a writer incapable of grace and beauty in his prose; the quote above testifies to his abilities. However, his writing often includes bland details, doesn’t know when to shut up and move on,  and even during those times when he does manage a beautiful description it lacks that sublime power and originality of a Shakespeare or a Hawthorne. To explain what I mean by that last point, even when Balzac produces the top of his game on a pure writing level, it doesn’t quite meet the standards of quality and beauty achieved by other major writers. This is not to say that he’s a bad writer, but rather to note that he occasionally falls short from aesthetic greatness. The one exception would be his choices for metaphors; his metaphors are atrocious and ridiculous, making it hard to believe the comparison because they are so over-the-top.

(Warning after this point, the plot description contain spoilers)

His style in general is heavy-handed. He constantly interrupts the narrative to add sociological commentary about his characters’ actions and personality. He enjoys telling us almost every detail of their life stories and is often interested in parts of his characters’ lives that most other writers would gloss over in order to get to the meat of the story.  This made for a very boring first half; it was so boring that I considered writing Balzac off entirely and couldn’t figure out why Verbivore enjoyed the book so much, but once I hit the middle of the book where the plot really gets rolling I understood. As it turns out Balzac has penchant for good story-telling and a fine eye for writing interesting and humorous characters.

The book tells the story of a miser who rises from rags to riches through shrewd business decisions and aggressive capitalist acumen. He has a daughter, Eugenie, who stands to inherit his vast fortune; this causes two rival neighbors, the Des Grassins and the Cuchots to be sycophantic friends of the family, each hoping to win Eugenie’s hand in marriage for suitors in their family.

In the novel, the miser’s nephew, Charles, comes to live with the family for a short time after the boy’s father goes into bankruptcy and kills himself.  This boy who has lived an extravagant lifestyle must adapt to the ascetic ways of his uncle before being shipped off to the Indies to regain his father’s lost fortune. Eugenie falls in love with her cousin and gives away her gold, which she receives as a present every holiday from her father with the hopes that it will help her develop an avarice taste for money. After receiving the gold, the cousin starts reciprocating her feelings. The two swear vows and promise to marry each other when he returns from the Indies.

After the cousin leaves to make his fortune, the miser discovers the loss of the gold. The miser grows so angry that he temporarily disowns his daughter and locks her up in her room like a prisoner. The miser’s wife grows ill over her daughter’s punishment. This eventually leads to her death. The miser learns that his daughter stands to inherit the property of his wife if his wife should die and their estates would be liquidated. Instead of letting his property be split, he reconciles with his daughter, but it is too late to save the mother from death. The miser, too, eventually dies. The Des Grassins and Cuchots continue to fight for Eugenie, but she refuses to marry, waiting for Charles to return. Charles eventually returns from India a changed man, having seen the ways of the world and slept his way around it. He decides to marry another woman to feed his ambitions of gaining a title and rising into the peerage of France, repaying back his debt to Eugenie for the gold she lent him, and breaking her heart in the process.

Some would say this novel falls under the category realism and contains many tragic elements, which may be true, but it reads like a comedy in my mind. The characters in their tragic obsessions and their poor decisions came off as comical. You cannot help laughing at the miser. Eugenie for all her pure and virtuous heart seems woefully ignorant of the world.

The well-crafted and developed Miser is hilarious, especially his death bed scene, where he clutches a silver cross that a priest holds out while praying for his soul. He becomes suspicious of his own family of robbing him of his gold. However, Balzac strikes a more realistic note than the comical miser of Plautus Pot of Gold (and Moliere’s The Miser, which I haven’t read, but know he took as an archetype) in that Grandet demonstrates other facets to his personality beyond shrew business sense, his ability to manipulate and read people, and his love of money. He seems to genuinely love his family, especially his daughter. This might sound counter-intuitive to a plot where the man locks his daughter up as a prisoner in his own home for giving away her gold and causes his wife’s death, however, there are many scenes in the book such as when he splurges on butter to allow her a cake against his normally miser nature, gives back a gold token of affection that he snatches when his daughter threatens to kill herself, that suggest he cares about his daughter and her welfare.  Hidden beneath the more obvious portrait of a miser is a father who loves his daughter. In fact, it is this conflict within himself that provides much of the internal conflict for the character. In fact, when the scene comes where he discovers that his daughter has given away the gold it isn’t entirely clear whether he is angry about the loss of the gold or angry at his daughter for not trusting him enough to tell him outright who she gave it to. His greed sometimes and often gets the better of him, but there is still this other side of his character buried deep and shown in subtle scenes throughout the narrative by a writer who is usually anything but subtle. Grandet is like an alcoholic, a person who may still love their family members, but whose substance abuse causes them to betray the ones they love, while at other times they throw away their alcohol when they realize they are hurting their family members, only to pick it up again later, in a vicious cycle.

Eugenie is also interesting. She may be virtuous, but she lacks her father’s cunning to the expense of her happiness. Indeed, another way Grandet’s character is softened a bit is that he isn’t wrong about Charles. Although Charles repays back the gold, he betrays his vows to Eugenie. She wastes all these years waiting for him; he proves to be exactly the sort of morally bankrupt person that Grandet pegged him. She might seem like the hero, but she too, isn’t without her flaws.

Balzac set out to write a sociological novel about the miser, but ended up writing a far more ambivalent work than I think most give him credit. The work strikes a satirical note in the way it detests avarice through the overbearing and ridiculous Grandet, but shows through Eugenie that naivete in a greedy world can also destroy a person. It’s a novel that shows the price one must pay with the ones they love when they distrust the world and love money more, and the price one must pay when they trust too easily and consider their self-interest too little.

Booklist 2009 # 46: The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Winner of the prestigious Newbury award, I enjoyed the book version of The Tale of Despereaux more than I did the movie, which I thought was okay. Kate DiCamillo writes in a voice that often treats her characters ironically and addresses the reader that reminds me a bit of Jane Austen. Her writing is quite humorous and is one of the reasons I enjoyed the book more than the film.

The story is about Despereaux, a mouse, who is shunned by his peers and community for acting different from a normal mouse. Instead of eating the pages of books like a normal mouse, he decides to read them instead. Instead of scurrying away from humans, they attract his curiosity. Tales about knights and chivalry captivate him, and he falls in love with the Princess Pea, and even converses with humans–the ultimate sin in the mouse community. For his transgressions they banish him to the dungeon with the rats. Among the rats lives Roscuro who is also abnormal for one of his kind because he enjoys light and wants to explore the world upstairs. Eventually he does journey beyond the boundaries of the dungeon only to fall into the Queen’s soup and kill her from shock. The Princess Pea pained by her mother’s death shoots him a look of absolute loathing. Roscuro’s heart breaks at this look, returns to the dungeon, and plots his revenge against the princess. Mig, a mistreated and unintelligent peasant girl sold into slavery to her uncle by her father, finds herself taken to the castle after years of abuse when soldiers enforce the anti-slavery laws of the kingdom.  She dreams of one day becoming a princess. Mig conspires with Roscuro to kidnap the princess, and bring her to the dungeon. Despereaux journeys back into the dungeon to save his one true love, the princess, but is confronted by an army of rats that want to eat him. Only Roscuro’s change of heart can save him and bring about a happy ending.

There are numerous differences from the movie. First noticeable difference is that people die in the book version. The dungeon in the story is depicted as an endless labyrinth in which one can easily get lost. The jailer down in the dungeon loses his way after Roscuro chews away his rope that he uses to trace his steps back upstairs. Rhe book tells us that because of this the jailer loses his way and starves to death. The reason for this omission from the movie is that the film was obviously geared towards a younger audience; they lightened it up for the kids. Not only that, but in this version Roscuro blatantly commits murder.

In the film, Roscuro is made a more sympathetic character, a good-natured rat living on a ship with a pirate/merchant friend, who arrives in the kingdom during its annual soup festival, and accidentally has a bad stroke of luck when he falls into the Queen’s soup and kills her. He descends into the dungeon, joins a whole rat society run by a corrupt evil mayor character, and a large part of the film is his inability to adopt to this society and the barbaric ways of his rat brethren. In the film Roscuro has a full-fledged character arc that shows his slow degeneration over time into an mean-hearted rat, but then he has a change of heart and joins Despereaux in an all-out battle to save the Princess, realizing he has made a mistake. In the book, the soup festival doesn’t exist; we are simply told that the Queen herself loved soup, not that it was some major festival celebrated every year. Roscuro is already in the dungeon and was never a ship rat who lived above ground and had a pirate/merchant friend; in fact, even at the beginning much of his behavior is atrocious like the other rats, he tortures prisoners, and chews on the jailer’s rope (which eventually leads to his death), long before the princess ever shoots him a dirt look for accidentally killing the Queen.  He commits first degree murder with the jailer.  He is seedy from the beginning, but he has the one quirk that he loves the light, unlike other rats. Roscuro’s change into an evil rat plotting revenge happens quickly after the soup incident, there is no slow degradation like in the film, where Roscuro worries about losing his soul down in the evil rat kingdom.  There is no rat society like in the film; there is only one other named rat character, otherwise the rats sort of exist in a kind dark anarchy in the dungeon.  The scenes in the film with a faux-Roman coliseum where gladiators face off against a giant captive cat is completely absent from the book. Roscuro in the book is a lot less sympathetic than he is in the film (after all, he is murdering people); in fact, he is almost an entirely different character with a few superficial similarities.

There are other minor differences. For example, Mig’s father in the film turns out to be the jailer. In the book, Mig’s father turns out to be a captive prisoner in the jail that Roscuro tortures. The jailer who lives in the film dies in the book. The king who is portrayed as moody and melancholy in the film, unable to finish mourning his wife’s death, is depicted as silly and outrageous. His reactions and laws are over-the-top melodrama that the narrator playfully mocks. In the film, Despereaux is braver, doing death-defying acts that normal mice would flinch away from doing. This Despereaux is more talk than action; often this Despereaux engages in chivalrous actions, but then finds himself scared out of his wits. This might be seen as a statement about the nature of bravery, calling attention to the illusion that bravery is about never feeling afraid; the truly brave person always feels frightened, but still faces danger and evil even when they are ready to crap their pants.

Essentially this is a story about identity and individuality. Despereaux is ostracized from his society for not engaging in the behavior of a normal mouse. Roscuro demonstrates behavior that is different from a typical rat in his love and fascination with light. Other rats constantly remind Roscuro that he is a rat, this term is used to describe not only his species, but also define how he should behave. The word “rat” as it is used in the novel possesses both its meanings for the actual animal and a person’s character. We have here a story where characters struggle against the limitations of a pre-defined essence.  Mig struggles to transcend her status as a peasant to become a princess, and succeeds in a metaphorical way (the book tells us that when she is reacquainted with her dad, he feels so guilty about abandoning her that he forever treats her like a princess, even if she doesn’t become a literal one).

My final conclusion is that while it might not be Tolstoy or Shakespeare, this is pretty good stuff for young adult/children’s literature. The characters are amusing, the moral is fairly modern if not a bit obvious, but really what won me over is the charm of DiCamillo’s Austenesque voice. It’s fun to read on the beach, especially out loud so you can annoy all the people around you, which is how my girlfriend and I enjoyed it; we read about half of the novel out loud to each other on the beach, switching between chapters (with voices for the characters and everything), which was a fun experiment to try out in public.