Literary Blog Hop

My very first Literary Blog Hop! How exciting. I used to participate in the big huge blog hop over at Crazy for Books, but I like this one even more because it's more specific to my blog. So, without further ado, here's this week's question...

What setting (time or place) from a book or story would you most like to visit? Eudora Welty said that, "Being shown how to locate, to place, any account is what does most toward making us believe it...," so in what location would you most like to hang out?

Being a big fan of James Joyce, I'd really like to visit Dublin, Ireland. Of course, he doesn't exactly portray his hometown very nicely, but I would absolutely love to visit the places about which he writes. I hear there are walking tours in Dublin that take Joyce fans to places like the boarding house in which his story, "The Boarding House" is set, or others that travel through the events of Ulysses. I'd love to do this someday. There's a certain personality that Joyce gives Dublin, that I find fascinating. Very few writers imbue their settings with such emotion and character.

I'm actually considering studying in Dublin for a semester once I graduate high school. I'd like nothing more than to study in a place that raised such literary greats as Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett.

So, tell me about the literary settings you'd like to visit! I'm off to visit the other blogs participating in the hop.

"Adams:" A Hilariously Grim Short Story by George Saunders

I listened to "Adams," by George Saunders, on The New Yorker's Fiction Podcast, a while ago, and absolutely loved it. I found myself literally laughing out loud as I listened (which never happens to me). You can listen to the podcast here, or read it here, but I recommend listening to the podcast, because Joshua Ferris' reading is absolutely perfect for the tone of the story. There is some strong language in the story, just for your information.

"Adams" is basically about paranoia and preemptive strikes. The protagonist, Roger, finds his neighbor, Frank Adams, in his underwear, "facing in the direction of [Roger's] kids' room". This is bad, of course, but it's never clear whether this is a euphemism representing something that Adams had possibly done earlier, or if he's just a weird guy who thinks it's acceptable to show up at people's houses in his underwear. At first, you're rooting for Roger. But as time goes on, Roger's thoughts become more and more irrational, and by the end, you find yourself questioning whether or not Adams actually did anything wrong, or if his guilt is only the result of the possibilities of what could happen, constructed within Roger's mind.

I absolutely adore the way this is written. The inordinate amount of "wonking" is probably my favorite part, but the very successfully conversational tone of the story is just brilliant overall.

Seriously, go listen to it. It's a little gruesome, rather harsh, and incredibly funny.

The God of Small Things

I finished The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy, a few days ago, and while I can acknowledge that it's a very good work of literature, I was also a little bit disappointed with it. But I'll get to that in a bit. 

Picture credit here.



The God of Small Things takes place in India in 1969, and follows two fraternal twins, Estha and Rahel, who possess a mental or spiritual bond. It's not in any sort of chronological order, but it basically follows the events that unfold when the twins' British cousin, Sophie Mol, comes to visit. With Sophie Mol's arrival comes tragedy and forbidden love, and, even decades later, Estha and Rahel struggle to come to terms with what happened and who is to blame.

I had some problems with the way it was written. Roy employs a lot of anaphora - she'll have several sentences beginning with the same word or phrase (I had to look it up to remember what it was called). An example:

"The History House.

…Where waxy ancestors with tough toe-nails and breath that smelled of yellow maps whispered papery whispers.

Where translucent lizards lived behind old paintings.

Where dreams were captured and re-dreamed.

Where an old English-man ghost, sickled to a tree, was abrogated by a pair of two-egg twins…” (290)

I wouldn't really mind this, and sometimes it can be done well. The writing itself is beautiful. But the repeated "Where" got old really quickly here, and as Roy continued to do this, it began to feel rather amateur-ish.

I also had some problems with the plot. Since it's not in chronological order, you have at least a vague sense of what the tragedy will be within the first few pages of the book. This in itself isn't bad, but the tragedy is built up so much throughout the book, with Roy trying to make it as suspenseful as possible, that when it finally happens you feel a little bit cheated because you've already been told what would happen too many times. By the end of the book, you're expecting that what you know will occur is only one part of a greater tragedy, because after a while you get used to the idea that people are going to die or become exiled. Don't get me wrong, what happens is tragic, but when you're already hyper-aware of what's going to happen, the ending feels anti-climactic.

Of course, it's a very interesting book. From a student's perspective, there are a lot of ways to approach it, whether it be feminist, post-colonial, Marxist... the list goes on and on. And I didn't dislike everything about the language; she does do interesting things with words to illustrate the twins' misunderstandings about various words (In Rahel's mind, a barn owl is a Bar Nowl, and a film actor is a Fil Mactor). This was cute, and didn't irritate me as much as the anaphora and fragmented sentences. Also, many of Roy's sentences truly are beautiful. One of my favorite scenes was when Rahel and Estha watch a story-telling dancer in a temple:

“The secret of Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories, you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. 

That is their mystery and their magic.” (218-219)

Roy seems to believe that her story is one of the Great Stories of which she speaks, but I don't think she gets that far. Sure, you know exactly who is going to die and who will survive, because of the abundant flashbacks and flashforwards, but I'd rather not hear this story again, and it's too jumbled to "enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably."

Overall it was a fairly enjoyable book. Roy's sentences are almost always beautifully crafted. But it was unfortunately too tedious for me to really appreciate as much as I would have liked to.

Literary Joy!

Just posting to brag about what came in the mail yesterday - my first issue of Shakespeare Quarterly! I was so excited to find this in my mailbox. Opening it up and flipping through the pages made me feel instantly intellectual. Very exciting stuff.

In addition, today I got to pick up some lovely books. The AP Psychology book won't be so much fun, but it's interesting and of course it would be pretty sweet if I could do well on the exam and get college credit. I'm pretty excited to read Darwin's The Origin of Species, and I'm especially excited about that collection of some of Kafka's works. I actually haven't yet read anything by him, other than A Hunger Artist, and I'm starting to feel a little guilty. Anywho, I'm off to add these to my ever-expanding bookshelves. Happy weekend and happy reading, everyone!

The Lesson (Ionesco)

I read The Lesson recently, and I really liked it. I've seen a mediocre production of Ionesco's Rhinoceros, but this is the first of his plays that I've actually read. It's very funny, and based solely on the one time I've seen Rhinoceros, I'd say The Lesson is the better play. Then again I'm probably being a little bit tough on Rhinoceros. 

Picture Credit Here.



Anywho, The Lesson is about a young woman who goes to a professor guy in order to be tutored in subjects such as mathematics and philology. At first all seems pretty normal, but then...

"The Professor: How much are one and one?

The Student: One and one make two.

The Professor (amazed at her intelligence): Oh, that’s very good. You seem very advanced in your studies. You’ll have no trouble getting your Total Doctorate, Mademoiselle.



The Student: I’m so glad. Particularly hearing it from you."

And then later...

"The Professor: …Would you count for me?

The Student: Yes, Professor. One… two… uh…

The Professor: You know how to count, don’t you? How far can you count?

The Student: I can count to… infinity.

The Professor: But that’s impossible, Mademoiselle.

The Student: Then how about sixteen?

The Professor: That’s better. We must know our limits."

(Quotes taken from pages 60 and 61, respectively.)

Already we can see how absurd this is. Then it gets even worse, when she can't tell if four is bigger than three, and so the professor finds himself getting into the fundamentals (and the philosophical ideas) of what a number really is. It's maddening, but it's great fun. In the end, the professor's frustration gets the best of him. You may be able to guess what happens, but I'm not going to say exactly how it ends.

The Lesson is very funny, and it gets into ideas about the nature of numbers and words, and the abstractness of mathematics and language. It's a lot of fun for a quick Absurdist read.

Coming back to the blogosphere...

Hello there! It's been a while! These past few months have been crazy, which of course is no excuse for my utter disappearance, but honestly, things have been CRAZY. Now, with college applications and all that all finished up, I find myself with a little bit of free time for the remainder of my senior year of high school. Not much, mind you, but enough to come back to my humble blog. I really have missed blogging very much, and even if I can't write full reviews as frequently as before, I'd still like to start blogging again.

Today, I find myself snowed in, with some school work to do, but lots of free time for reading as well, which is quite a treat. I thought for this "I'm back!" post, I'd just brag a little bit about the book I got over the weekend.

Picture Credit Here.

On a trip to the bookstore with a friend of mine (you know you've got good friends when they're elated to spend ridiculous amounts of time in book stores with you :P), I found The Western Canon, by Harold Bloom. I'm quite a big fan of Harold Bloom, especially for this book. I like the fact that he has the balls to say, "I know exactly what is worth reading, here's a list, now go read." The audacity of it makes me like him. Of course, The Western Canon is not simply a list what Bloom feels are the most influential and awesome works ever. It's also a series of essays on the authors he feels are central to the Canon (this includes Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Joyce, Beckett, Tolstoy, Kafka, and a whole slew of other greats). What I love about these essays is that I'm already citing one about Shakespeare, Joyce, and Beckett in a paper I'm writing right now. Instant essay material!

So that's lots of fun. I'll probably be talking about this more eventually once I read some more of it. For now I'm just flipping through it in awe. 

For Christmas I got a lot of exciting books, both fiction and non-fiction, so I'll be writing about those soon. One that I'm particularly excited about is Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas, which is one of the most beautiful and grotesque works I've ever read. Expect something about that soon. I also recieved a subscription to Shakespeare Quarterly (score!), so I am anxiously waiting the arrival of my first issue.

So, I hope this post will suffice as a "Hey, sorry y'all, but I'm back!" sort of post, and I'm certainly looking forward to getting back into blogging.

Nabokov's The Original of Laura

I read Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura quite a few weeks ago, but I'm finally getting around to writing about it now. 

Credit here.

There was quite a bit of controversy surrounding this book's publishing. It was published very recently, in November of 2009, 32 years after Nabokov's death in 1977. Nabokov was working on this novel at the time of his death, but never finished, and he requested that the index cards that comprised his work be destroyed if he died before finishing it. For over 30 years his son Dmitri held onto his father's work, not sure what to do. The only people to view the index cards during this time were Nabokov's wife and son, and a few scholars. Ultimately, Dmitri decided to publish the unfinished work.

The way the book has been put together is interesting in itself. Each page has a photograph of the index card on the top half, and below is a typed version of the text on the index card. The index cards are perforated so that the reader may rearrange the cards as he or she sees fit, but I think this is rather unnecessary and a bit silly. I wouldn't go ripping my book apart, and I wouldn't presume to know how Nabokov wanted his book arranged. Then again, Dmitri and the publishers involved made just such a presumption, but they did so based on Nabokov's numbering of the index cards, and I'm content to read them in the order presented.



Anyway, on to the content itself. The Original of Laura has got Nabokov written all over it. There's so much classic Nabokov in this, even in this very early draft. The language is, of course, brilliant. One thing I noticed was that, as usual, Nabokov plays with names a lot here - there's a minor character named Hubert Hubert, who is very much like Humbert Humbert in both name and characterization, and there's also quite a bit of playing with like-sounding names such as Flora, Laura, and Aurora. There's also a novel within the novel, and this fictional novel apparently describes (or perhaps foretells) the death of The Original of Laura's protagonist. The overall plot is a bit difficult to summarize, as it's quite scattered and is clearly missing a good amount content that Nabokov never got to.

For a fairly short, and not nearly finished work, Nabokov's brilliance is apparent. The Original of Laura is complex and extremely interesting, especially when examined in tandem with older works like Lolita and Pale Fire (because a few major themes from these older works crop up here as well). The Original of Laura may be a jigsaw puzzle missing too many pieces, but I enjoy piecing together the fragments nonetheless.