The Pearl is Steinbeck's sixteenth published work, and the third that I read this year (following The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden). It is based on an oral Mexican-Indian story he heard while traveling in the Gulf of California. It is a short work with a very folktale quality.
The protagonist, Kino, is a pearl diver who finds an immense and unusual pearl, which had been referred to in local legends as The Pearl of the World. He believes that the discovery of this pearl will bring happiness and prosperity to his family, but instead it brings tragedy. Technically, the pearl itself is neutral and has no effect on Kino, but the way other humans react to his discovery brings tragedy. The pearl symbolizes the American Dream, and Steinbeck is making the point that, while pursuit of the American Dream itself is neutral, our world makes it impossible for it to function as intended.
Showing posts with label American. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American. Show all posts
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis' satirical novel is set in the fictional Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. The novel is very descriptive, and although coastal dwellers may find the descriptions of a small midwestern town amusing, I found it a little creepy to read a nearly exact description of the hamlet in North Dakota in which I spent much of my childhood. Lewis isn't lying. For better or for worse, this is small-town America. Now, as Lewis was writing satirically, he accurately skewered most of the negative aspects of living in a small town. I'm sure other writers have written on the positive aspects of small town culture, and for the sake of balance I should probably read one...but I won't do it anytime soon. I'm still enjoying shaking my head at Gopher Prairie.
The main character, Carol Kennicott, moves to Gopher Prairie, her husband's hometown, after her marriage. She struggles for years as a person whom the townspeople perceive as an outsider, although she wants to be considered an insider. I too moved to a small town and was mystified at the insistence many people had upon labeling me a newcomer. Even after two years of attending the small school, I was referred to as "the new girl". After two years of being the new girl, the prospects of ever being considered an insider were bleak. I can sympathize with Carol. Unlike Carol, however, I turned 18 and left. If I had been born into the place, had been accepted as one of the community from birth, I may have been happy to come back after college and make a life in that small town. In that way, I can understand the residents of Gopher Prairie and the residents of my own small town, and their enjoyment of their community. Unfortunately, their protective instincts toward their community are a double-edged sword, as they use those instincts to excuse their reticence to accept people who genuinely want to belong.
Oh, and last week I went to Minneapolis. I'll admit that I imagined the residents of Gopher Prairie, admiring the sleek Euro designs as they wandered through Ikea, or buying trendy clothes at the Mall of America just to impress their friends back home. And then I went back to my house, in a town that is not tiny, where people do not tell me that I don't belong.
The main character, Carol Kennicott, moves to Gopher Prairie, her husband's hometown, after her marriage. She struggles for years as a person whom the townspeople perceive as an outsider, although she wants to be considered an insider. I too moved to a small town and was mystified at the insistence many people had upon labeling me a newcomer. Even after two years of attending the small school, I was referred to as "the new girl". After two years of being the new girl, the prospects of ever being considered an insider were bleak. I can sympathize with Carol. Unlike Carol, however, I turned 18 and left. If I had been born into the place, had been accepted as one of the community from birth, I may have been happy to come back after college and make a life in that small town. In that way, I can understand the residents of Gopher Prairie and the residents of my own small town, and their enjoyment of their community. Unfortunately, their protective instincts toward their community are a double-edged sword, as they use those instincts to excuse their reticence to accept people who genuinely want to belong.
Oh, and last week I went to Minneapolis. I'll admit that I imagined the residents of Gopher Prairie, admiring the sleek Euro designs as they wandered through Ikea, or buying trendy clothes at the Mall of America just to impress their friends back home. And then I went back to my house, in a town that is not tiny, where people do not tell me that I don't belong.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
I read this novel in early November, but it would have been great for Halloween. Because the author isn't completely explicit with details, he builds suspense and leaves the reader wondering about the exact nature of the ghost and its interaction with the children. I enjoyed The Turn of the Screw and The Woman in White for similar reasons, in part because they rely on suspense and ambiguity to keep the reader psychologically off balance. I recommend this book for readers who enjoy mystery and suspense, possibly even psychological horror.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper
I know, I'm just a blogging fiend today. I've got to get all these books out of my head so I can think about the next ones. The Prairie is the third of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales that I've read this year, the others being The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans. There are five Leatherstocking Tales, and I originally intended to read all of them this year, but I just don't know if I can do it. Now, The Last of the Mohicans was pretty good, and The Pioneers had some good parts, especially the end. (No, not because it was the end). The Prairie was my least favorite so far. Again, the ending was the best part. The novels seem to drag at various points, with plot and dialogue being uninteresting, but they always pick up at the end. That is Fenimore Cooper's greatest strength. After three novels' worth of Nathaniel Bumpo fighting Indians, protecting damsels and waxing eloquent about nature, I feel like I'm reading the same thing over and over. As an aside, Mark Twain wrote a satirical essay called Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences, which I found quite humorous. He describes Fenimore Cooper's writing style more critically than I would think accurate, but it's eight pages of satire, it's funny, and it's free at Project Gutenberg. Check it out. Maybe check out Fenimore Cooper first, so you know what you're laughing at.
Stats:
Hero: the trapper aka Hawkeye aka the Deerslayer aka Natty Bumpo aka Leatherstocking
Bad guys: the Tetons and some lawless white settlers
Good guys: the Sioux and some nice white settlers
Two-dimensional plot devices: the females (as Fenimore Cooper calls them)
There was a lot of: tracking, shooting, spying, sneaking up, escaping, capturing
There should have been more: plot. I really shouldn't have read Twain's essay before writing this entry. hee hee
This book makes you want to: fall asleep (help me, I can't stop myself)
This book makes you glad you don't have to: die alone in the wilderness without family, step on dry twigs an inopportune moments, read the last two books in the series, although I probably will anyway
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
After three Russian novels, I was looking for something different. Enter Kerouac. I got this book for a dollar at the farmer's market. After three weeks of watching youthful Slavs visit the picturesque countryside, only to slowly waste away under a grim fog of sourceless Russian ennui, I caught a ride with young Kerouac as he hitchhiked across the country, stayed with friends in rundown apartments and generally experienced life, liberty and the pursuit of consciousness, occasionally frequently with chemical assistance. This book is truly iconic in its description of the Beat generation, and only slightly disturbing was my discovery that Jack Kerouac's altered states of consciousness weren't all that different from my usual states of consciousness.
For example:
"For just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an indescribable seething roar which wasn't in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds...I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water."
I can dig that. Even without benzedrine. But Kerouac insisted that his novel detailed not a drug spree but a religious journey. In his words, it "was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him. I found him in the sky, in Market Street San Francisco (those 2 visions), and Dean (Neal) had God sweating out of his forehead all the way. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OUT FOR THE HOLY MAN: HE MUST SWEAT FOR GOD. And once he has found Him, the Godhood of God is forever established and really must not be spoken about."
I know what you mean, Jack. There's a certain threshold that, when you cross it, you leave the world of words behind, and what is beyond there can't really be spoken about. It can't be brought back into the land of speech, incarnated into a body of grammar, without being torn apart as it enters the dimension of duality. So it stays out there, and when you try to talk about it part of your mind has to go out there to think about it, and then the person you're talking to realizes that you're not all here, and they're right. You're not. But it's not the benzedrine talking, it's the beatific vision. I've been there too, Jack, just over the threshold, at the place where Beat was born.
Related explanatory facts: Kerouac wrote the novel in three weeks, typing continuously onto a 120-foot roll of teletype paper. This led to Truman Capote's well-known zinger, "That's not writing, that's typing".
The Beat Generation is often seen as a space-holder between WWII and the turbulent sixties, but without the Beats, the sixties as we know them would not have happened. The Beats influenced Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan and, of course, the Beatles. They demystified drug use, explored multiple spiritual traditions, fought censorship, pursued ecological viewpoints, opposed the military-industrial complex and appreciated idiosyncrasy over conformity. "Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose." - Allen Ginsberg
Kerouac himself describes Beat as "(being) watchful, catlike, inquisitive...in the street but not of it. ...It's a sort of furtiveness, like we were a generation of furtives. You know, with an inner knowledge there's no use flaunting on that level, the level of the "public,"a kind of beatness-I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves-and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world... we're a beat generation." Kerouac saw his generation as the beatific generation; the generation that would see God, but in the end his vision was a hopeful projection onto his generation, and did not manifest in reality.
Monday, August 29, 2011
East of Eden
Between this book and The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. This is partly because I like his style of writing, of describing people and places in a way that really lets the reader see inside them. I also appreciate the fact that his books aren't just about the storyline, or about the lessons the characters learn, but the storyline is also used to reveal deeper truths. In this book, Steinbeck uses symbolic characters which are meant to be types, not necessarily actual people who are a mixture of different types. In the end, the story and its deeper meanings hinge on the choices and actions of Cal, who is the everyman. East of Eden is ultimately about choice, the human power to choose one's actions, which means one is able to stand against one's environment, one's genetics and family and one's personal past when necessary. Even Cal, with so much stacked against him, has within himself the power to make the right choice. The reader doesn't learn what Cal and his father ultimately choose until the very end of the novel.
This story of two brothers is dedicated to Steinbeck's two sons; it is a double-narrative which, in his words, will tell “the story of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness” — the mutually-dependent pairings out of which creativity is born. Steinbeck considered this book his masterpiece, with his previous works leading up to it. East of Eden is a portrait of the artist as a mature man. He says, "But in this book I am in it and I don’t for a moment pretend not to be”. The book is thus a vehicle for what he is or believes himself to be. To use a term that is common in classifying archetypes found in fairy tales and myths, this book is Steinbeck's soul jar. A soul jar is just what it sounds like: a container or object which holds all or part of a person's soul (or life, or heart); which makes that person immortal. A fairy tale example would be Koschei the Deathless, who kept his soul in a box buried in the ground. Literary examples include Sauron's ring, the picture of Dorian Gray, and Lord Voldemort's horcruxes. (I know; these are all bad guys...don't draw a similar conclusion about my opinion of Steinbeck!) The soul jar appears in film in The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, in which Davy Jones keeps his heart in a wooden chest instead of the more common thoracic chest cavity generally used by humans for cardiac storage. Now, all this is not to say that East of Eden contains Steinbeck's soul in some kind of Cali-voodoo way. Rather, through this book, Steinbeck will live forever in that his name and reputation will never die. He put so much of himself into this book that it can be considered a metaphorical soul jar. Myths and fairy tales, including those mentioned above, remind us that the price of immortality is our humanity. Those who chose to literally live forever slowly ceased to be human. With Steinbeck, the exact opposite has taken place. By embracing, analyzing and internalizing his humanity, he gave birth to East of Eden and his own literary immortality. To quote the Havamal, an Old Norse wisdom poem, "Cattle die, kinsmen die, the self must also die; but a good name never dies, for the one who is able to achieve it."
This story of two brothers is dedicated to Steinbeck's two sons; it is a double-narrative which, in his words, will tell “the story of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness” — the mutually-dependent pairings out of which creativity is born. Steinbeck considered this book his masterpiece, with his previous works leading up to it. East of Eden is a portrait of the artist as a mature man. He says, "But in this book I am in it and I don’t for a moment pretend not to be”. The book is thus a vehicle for what he is or believes himself to be. To use a term that is common in classifying archetypes found in fairy tales and myths, this book is Steinbeck's soul jar. A soul jar is just what it sounds like: a container or object which holds all or part of a person's soul (or life, or heart); which makes that person immortal. A fairy tale example would be Koschei the Deathless, who kept his soul in a box buried in the ground. Literary examples include Sauron's ring, the picture of Dorian Gray, and Lord Voldemort's horcruxes. (I know; these are all bad guys...don't draw a similar conclusion about my opinion of Steinbeck!) The soul jar appears in film in The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, in which Davy Jones keeps his heart in a wooden chest instead of the more common thoracic chest cavity generally used by humans for cardiac storage. Now, all this is not to say that East of Eden contains Steinbeck's soul in some kind of Cali-voodoo way. Rather, through this book, Steinbeck will live forever in that his name and reputation will never die. He put so much of himself into this book that it can be considered a metaphorical soul jar. Myths and fairy tales, including those mentioned above, remind us that the price of immortality is our humanity. Those who chose to literally live forever slowly ceased to be human. With Steinbeck, the exact opposite has taken place. By embracing, analyzing and internalizing his humanity, he gave birth to East of Eden and his own literary immortality. To quote the Havamal, an Old Norse wisdom poem, "Cattle die, kinsmen die, the self must also die; but a good name never dies, for the one who is able to achieve it."
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Little Women
Little Women has an excellent but inaccurate reputation as a children's novel. Alcott's work is a classic bildungsroman (coming of age story), which partially accounts for its enduring appeal. It is better classified as a young adult novel than a children's book, and society's reliance on simplified versions results in ignorance of much the book has to offer. Alcott explores issues of identity, loyalty, class, women's roles, personal development, death and the definition of success, among others, but much of this exploration takes place in dialogue between the characters, through narrator musings or within an individual character's thoughts, rather than through plot devices. Perhaps it is the style of presentation of these major themes of discussion which doesn't lend itself well to screen adaptations.
The author's transcendentalist upbringing is obvious in some of the musings. Alcott's father, Bronson Alcott, was a founder of the transcendentalist movement, and Louisa was tutored by noted transcendentalists and writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Fuller. Considering her education, it is no surprise that her writing talent flourished. Can you imagine being tutored by Emerson and Thoreau?! Ah, if only...
The book is so well-written, and the characters so believable, that it's no wonder it became an instant classic. This is a story of four average teen girls (well, average for 1868) experiencing average challenges, relationships, failures and successes. Even in abridged or adapted versions, the appeal shines through (but I still recommend reading the original). While teaching English in Kazakhstan, I taught a unit using an adapted version of Little Women, and I was surprised at the students' enthusiasm for the story. The enduring themes and issues mentioned above remain salient across time and cultures. I think of Alcott writing in her attic, and wonder what she would have thought had she known that, 130 years later on the other side of the world, her description of a well-loved character's death would bring tears to strangers' eyes.
Stats:
Tomboy writer: Jo (based on Louisa M. Alcott herself)
Girly-girl painter: Amy
Shy violet and homebody: Beth
Mother figure: Meg
Honorary brother: Laurie
Curmudgeonly aunt: Aunt March
Setting: New England during the Civil War
There was a lot of: discussions, noble deeds, funny mistakes, unfortunate illnesses, poverty
There should have been more: food. This book would have lent itself well to a Beatrix Potter-type tea cosy effect, with characters sharing toast and tea, meat and potatoes, bread and cheese, etc., around a roaring fire. Or maybe I'm just hungry.
This book makes you want to: show kindness to others, be the best you can be, take the bad times in stride, for they come to us all
This book makes you glad you don't have to: knit all your own socks, fear death from common communicable diseases, work as hard for independence as women did at that time
The author's transcendentalist upbringing is obvious in some of the musings. Alcott's father, Bronson Alcott, was a founder of the transcendentalist movement, and Louisa was tutored by noted transcendentalists and writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Fuller. Considering her education, it is no surprise that her writing talent flourished. Can you imagine being tutored by Emerson and Thoreau?! Ah, if only...
The book is so well-written, and the characters so believable, that it's no wonder it became an instant classic. This is a story of four average teen girls (well, average for 1868) experiencing average challenges, relationships, failures and successes. Even in abridged or adapted versions, the appeal shines through (but I still recommend reading the original). While teaching English in Kazakhstan, I taught a unit using an adapted version of Little Women, and I was surprised at the students' enthusiasm for the story. The enduring themes and issues mentioned above remain salient across time and cultures. I think of Alcott writing in her attic, and wonder what she would have thought had she known that, 130 years later on the other side of the world, her description of a well-loved character's death would bring tears to strangers' eyes.
Stats:
Tomboy writer: Jo (based on Louisa M. Alcott herself)
Girly-girl painter: Amy
Shy violet and homebody: Beth
Mother figure: Meg
Honorary brother: Laurie
Curmudgeonly aunt: Aunt March
Setting: New England during the Civil War
There was a lot of: discussions, noble deeds, funny mistakes, unfortunate illnesses, poverty
There should have been more: food. This book would have lent itself well to a Beatrix Potter-type tea cosy effect, with characters sharing toast and tea, meat and potatoes, bread and cheese, etc., around a roaring fire. Or maybe I'm just hungry.
This book makes you want to: show kindness to others, be the best you can be, take the bad times in stride, for they come to us all
This book makes you glad you don't have to: knit all your own socks, fear death from common communicable diseases, work as hard for independence as women did at that time
Sunday, June 19, 2011
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls after spending time in Spain as a news correspondent in the Spanish Civil War. The main character, Robert Jordan, is a professor from Montana who volunteers in order to live out his political beliefs. It took me many chapters to get straight in my head who was fighting whom, in part because the Republicans form the political left and are supported by the USSR, which is opposite of what I, a 21st century North American, expect from Republicans. But the other reason-and this is critical-that it was difficult to differentiate between the two sides, is that Hemingway doesn't portray them as good vs. evil dualistic opposites. Neither side is right; neither side is wrong. At first they fight because they disagree politically, and eventually they continue to fight because they're already fighting. Whether taunting their enemies or facing their own deaths, characters from opposite sides act in similar ways. The Nationalists have better technology and more highly trained soldiers, but neither that nor the reader's knowledge that they eventually win the war makes them correct. We all know the saying that history is written by the winners, but Hemingway writes as a third person omniscient narrator who conveys his story before history has chosen a winner. Even though Robert Jordan fights for the guerilla resistance, the reader never gets the sense that they are more ethical or correct, or that the Nationalists are in any way morally inferior. Even the most villainous character, Pablo, is morally ambiguous and performs a few noble actions which shine in contrast with his frequent betrayal and violence. This leaves the reader with the message that, in war, neither side is right.
The entire novel takes place over the course of a few days, but by the end, Robert Jordan has encountered the transformative power of love and has discovered something to live for. I especially enjoyed Hemingway's decision to begin and end the novel with Robert Jordan lying on the pine needle floor of the forest. Despite his having come full circle positionally, at the novel's close Jordan feels his heart beating against the forest floor, while the novel's opening contains no such observation. During these few short days, Robert Jordan has begun to truly live.
Stats:
Wise old crone: Pilar
Judas: Pablo
Grudge match: Nationalists vs. Republicans
aka: Fascists vs. Communists
Object of Jordan's affection: Maria
Sense of place arises from: the forest, the soil, the earth
Best scene: El Sordo's last stand
Hemingway's odd pseudo-swearing: "I obscenity in your obscenity."
There was a lot of: hiding, planning, waiting, discussing,
There should have been more: discussion of characters' thoughts and beliefs
Jordan's thoughts on the transience of life: What we do not have is time. Tomorrow we must fight. To me that is nothing. Bu for the Maria and me it means that we must live all of our life in this time."
This book makes you want to: appreciate each day you have, be aware of the futility of war, have a life that you want to keep living
This book makes you glad you don't have to: engage in guerilla warfare, cook rabbit stew all the time, endure military bureaucracy, trust someone who isn't trustworthy
The entire novel takes place over the course of a few days, but by the end, Robert Jordan has encountered the transformative power of love and has discovered something to live for. I especially enjoyed Hemingway's decision to begin and end the novel with Robert Jordan lying on the pine needle floor of the forest. Despite his having come full circle positionally, at the novel's close Jordan feels his heart beating against the forest floor, while the novel's opening contains no such observation. During these few short days, Robert Jordan has begun to truly live.
Stats:
Wise old crone: Pilar
Judas: Pablo
Grudge match: Nationalists vs. Republicans
aka: Fascists vs. Communists
Object of Jordan's affection: Maria
Sense of place arises from: the forest, the soil, the earth
Best scene: El Sordo's last stand
Hemingway's odd pseudo-swearing: "I obscenity in your obscenity."
There was a lot of: hiding, planning, waiting, discussing,
There should have been more: discussion of characters' thoughts and beliefs
Jordan's thoughts on the transience of life: What we do not have is time. Tomorrow we must fight. To me that is nothing. Bu for the Maria and me it means that we must live all of our life in this time."
This book makes you want to: appreciate each day you have, be aware of the futility of war, have a life that you want to keep living
This book makes you glad you don't have to: engage in guerilla warfare, cook rabbit stew all the time, endure military bureaucracy, trust someone who isn't trustworthy
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, was first published in 1967. Its chronicling of Esther Greenwood's coming-of-age intentionally corresponds to Salinger's treatment of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. The novel's frank and detailed description of mental illness was unusual for its time, although it does have some similarities to more current novels such as Girl, Interrupted and The Virgin Suicides; however, their styles are less literary. Plath's talent for poetry was already recognized at the time of The Bell Jar's writing, and it comes through in her construction of prose as well.
So, is Esther Greenwood suffocating under a bell jar solely because of her mental illness, or is it partly due to her experience as a woman in the man's world of the 1950s? She resists learning the secretarial skill of shorthand because, "the trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men...I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters." Her observation that the other girls at her hotel "were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents... and they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, where they had to wear hats and stockings and gloves to class, or they had just graduated from places like Katy Gibbs and were secretaries to executives and junior executives and simply hanging around in New York waiting to get married to some career man or other" shows society's expectations of women at that time, as well as Esther's opinion of those expectations. Esther doesn't want to get married and have children; she doesn't want to exist solely as a function of her husband, but her efforts to write and to establish an identity as a writer are repeatedly derailed by her mental illness.
Some reviews state that The Bell Jar is very dark and can be difficult to read because it takes the reader on a journey into deep depression, but even as a person who has experienced long term depression, I did not find that to be the case. Perhaps that is because reading a description that takes up a few chapters of a book is far less depressing than being stuck in the real deal for months on end. Personally, I found it interesting to peer into another mind and see its similarities to and differences from my own.
Finally, I have to point out that those girls working at the magazine in New York with their shoes and purses and dates, chasing after money and status, were at least as crazy as Esther and me. Maybe crazier.
Stats:
depressed writer: Esther Greenwood
creep she finally dumps: Buddy Willard
relationship with mother: complicated, unhappy
father: born in a manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia (I love that line), now deceased
there was a lot of: being thwarted, inability to be the agent in one's own life, discordant relationships, superficiality, depression
there should have been more of: I would have liked to see the novel continue on to follow Esther as she becomes a writer, but it would have been more difficult to make a proper ending, and an epilogue would have been anticlimactic.
this book makes you want to: discover or revisit your life's goals, endure painful experiences knowing they lead to growth, allow all meaninglessness to fall away
this book makes you glad you don't have to: marry Buddy Willard or somebody like him, endure '50s style treatments for mental illness, eat 50s style meat and/or seafood salads
So, is Esther Greenwood suffocating under a bell jar solely because of her mental illness, or is it partly due to her experience as a woman in the man's world of the 1950s? She resists learning the secretarial skill of shorthand because, "the trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men...I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters." Her observation that the other girls at her hotel "were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents... and they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, where they had to wear hats and stockings and gloves to class, or they had just graduated from places like Katy Gibbs and were secretaries to executives and junior executives and simply hanging around in New York waiting to get married to some career man or other" shows society's expectations of women at that time, as well as Esther's opinion of those expectations. Esther doesn't want to get married and have children; she doesn't want to exist solely as a function of her husband, but her efforts to write and to establish an identity as a writer are repeatedly derailed by her mental illness.
Some reviews state that The Bell Jar is very dark and can be difficult to read because it takes the reader on a journey into deep depression, but even as a person who has experienced long term depression, I did not find that to be the case. Perhaps that is because reading a description that takes up a few chapters of a book is far less depressing than being stuck in the real deal for months on end. Personally, I found it interesting to peer into another mind and see its similarities to and differences from my own.
Finally, I have to point out that those girls working at the magazine in New York with their shoes and purses and dates, chasing after money and status, were at least as crazy as Esther and me. Maybe crazier.
Stats:
depressed writer: Esther Greenwood
creep she finally dumps: Buddy Willard
relationship with mother: complicated, unhappy
father: born in a manic-depressive hamlet in the black heart of Prussia (I love that line), now deceased
there was a lot of: being thwarted, inability to be the agent in one's own life, discordant relationships, superficiality, depression
there should have been more of: I would have liked to see the novel continue on to follow Esther as she becomes a writer, but it would have been more difficult to make a proper ending, and an epilogue would have been anticlimactic.
this book makes you want to: discover or revisit your life's goals, endure painful experiences knowing they lead to growth, allow all meaninglessness to fall away
this book makes you glad you don't have to: marry Buddy Willard or somebody like him, endure '50s style treatments for mental illness, eat 50s style meat and/or seafood salads
Saturday, June 11, 2011
The Grapes of Wrath
What can I say about a book that won its author the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature after first being banned and burned? Steinbeck was labeled a socialist and writer of communist propaganda, but now The Grapes of Wrath is required reading in many high schools and universities. Not only does he take the reader on a journey from "I" to "we", but he does so by winding through pages of vivid natural prose.
In Steinbeck's depiction of the farmers' connection to the earth, their sense of place and the horror of their forced separation from their homes, his kinship with Dickens (Hard Times) and Hardy (Tess of the d'Urbervilles) is apparent. We hear echoes of Dickens' labor uprisings in "The line between hunger and anger is a thin line," and Hardy's ache of modernism is manifest in "The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses." Steinbeck is a link in a chain that continues to the present in people like Indian environmental activist and proponent of alter-globalization Vandana Shiva.
Compare Steinbeck:
And at last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won't work anymore. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop. We have to do it. We don't like to do it. But the monster's sick. Something's happened to the monster...The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it...We can't depend on it. The bank – the monster – has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size
with Shiva:
The World Bank has historically used its clout to promote undemocratic processes ... They have pushed India to violate the laws of the tribals and the farmers, because once they settle on a certain line of investment, then no law that supports the democratic rights of the people can survive - if they finance a superhighway that highway gets built, if they finance a mining project, that project happens no matter who or what it destroys in the process.
Stats:
main characters: the Joad family, the land
oddly enlightened former preacher: Jim Casey
slow but steady: land tortoise
growing heavy for the vintage in the souls of the people: grapes of wrath
there was a lot of: dust, heat, loss, separation, hunger, illness, violence, people taking advantage of others, loyalty to friends and family
there should have been more: bacon, coffee (those poor people ate biscuits all the time)
this book makes you want to: make a family home that will last for generations, cultivate friendships and family relationships, see the wonder and beauty around you
this book makes you glad you don't have to: drive a thousand miles without knowing what's at the end of your journey, suffer from malnutrition, owe your soul to the company store
In Steinbeck's depiction of the farmers' connection to the earth, their sense of place and the horror of their forced separation from their homes, his kinship with Dickens (Hard Times) and Hardy (Tess of the d'Urbervilles) is apparent. We hear echoes of Dickens' labor uprisings in "The line between hunger and anger is a thin line," and Hardy's ache of modernism is manifest in "The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses." Steinbeck is a link in a chain that continues to the present in people like Indian environmental activist and proponent of alter-globalization Vandana Shiva.
Compare Steinbeck:
And at last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won't work anymore. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop. We have to do it. We don't like to do it. But the monster's sick. Something's happened to the monster...The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it...We can't depend on it. The bank – the monster – has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size
with Shiva:
The World Bank has historically used its clout to promote undemocratic processes ... They have pushed India to violate the laws of the tribals and the farmers, because once they settle on a certain line of investment, then no law that supports the democratic rights of the people can survive - if they finance a superhighway that highway gets built, if they finance a mining project, that project happens no matter who or what it destroys in the process.
Stats:
main characters: the Joad family, the land
oddly enlightened former preacher: Jim Casey
slow but steady: land tortoise
growing heavy for the vintage in the souls of the people: grapes of wrath
there was a lot of: dust, heat, loss, separation, hunger, illness, violence, people taking advantage of others, loyalty to friends and family
there should have been more: bacon, coffee (those poor people ate biscuits all the time)
this book makes you want to: make a family home that will last for generations, cultivate friendships and family relationships, see the wonder and beauty around you
this book makes you glad you don't have to: drive a thousand miles without knowing what's at the end of your journey, suffer from malnutrition, owe your soul to the company store
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Last of the Mohicans
This is the second (in order of publication) of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, following The Pioneers, which I read in March. Once again, I embarked upon a mental portage for the first 300 pages, after which the plot sped up somewhat, but although I patiently awaited some of the thoughtful, even philosophical musings encountered near the end of The Pioneers, I was ultimately disappointed. Don't get me wrong, as a plot-based historical novel Mohicans can hold the reader's interest, but it lacked the depth of Cooper's earlier volume. There are three more novels in the Leatherstocking Tales, and I am interested to see which precedent they will follow. I know I will be reading The Prairie at some point this year, as it is already in my possession, but The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder will likely wait until next year.
The plot of the novel differs noticeably from that of the 1992 film, so if you've seen the movie but haven't read the book, don't worry, I'm not mixing up the sisters....not that it would be difficult to do so when both characters are one-dimensional stereotypes of 19th century women. Speaking of which, let's talk about Cora. One piece of information that is fairly important in the novel but omitted from the movie is the fact that Cora is one-quarter black (but technically not African-American, as her mother was from the Caribbean). Why would the screenwriter (or casting director? whoever) skip over this? Probably because it is implied as a reason for Magua's attraction for her as well as for her more strong-willed and intense temperament. This then begs the question of why it would be problematic for Magua to be attracted to her due to her racial origins. To the 21st century reader it seems obvious that individuals have varying levels of attraction to people of different ethnicities. Part of the difficulty lies in the stereotypical representation of Magua as a sly, sneaky, violent and deceptive Indian. To put it bluntly, in Cooper's world, the villain of inferior race, when presented with two women, chooses the one who is also of inferior race. So you can see why Hollywood wasn't going to touch that with a ten-foot canoe paddle.
Now, before you get the idea that I think Cooper is a racist pig, I must state that I stand by my previous opinion of him as quite advanced for his time in his ideas of race and culture. Let's look at Uncas, for example. If Magua is the sly, sneaky Indian and Chingachgook is the stoic noble savage, Uncas is an admirable and courageous hero whose depiction rises above ethnic stereotype. Hawkeye and Cora point out at different times that Uncas' behavior is commendable. Hawkeye comments that Uncas is pretty awesome for an Indian (my paraphrase) *sigh*, while Cora states that anyone who observed Uncas' actions would forget the color of his skin. Cooper then portrays the other characters as being uncomfortable with Cora's statement, which would have indeed been a historically accurate response. Cora (and Cooper) were ahead of their time.
Related but not identical to Cooper's exploration of interracial relationships is his portrayal of culture conflict. Heyward represents the soldier ideal in American culture, while David Gamut is the Calvinist Protestant and Hawkeye is the frontiersman. These three men clash with each other throughout the novel, so how can such an internally discordant culture, one which can't even agree with itself, be expected to instantly enter civil discourse with not just one completely foreign Native American tribe, but many? Thus, Cooper makes his point more clearly than would have been possible had he permitted less conflict among the male American characters.
Cooper further sets out issues of cultural conflict through his use of several names to refer to one person, tribe or place. To name something or someone is to assert dominance over that person or thing, and the fact that each group had their own names for other groups/people is used as a device by Cooper to signify the struggle between them. Nathaniel Bumppo calls himself Natty but is also known as Hawkeye by the Mohicans and La Longue Carabine by the French and Huron. The Iroquois are alternately Maquas and Mingoes, the Delaware are the Leni-Lenape, Chingachgook is Le Gros Serpent and Magua is Sly Fox. Even Lake Horican is also Lake George and Le Lac du St. Sacrament. Uncas originally carries the title Last of the Mohicans because he was the last born of his tribe, but after his death, his father, Chingachgook becomes Last of the Mohicans. Symbolically, Chingachgook represents not only the last of his tribe, but the last of all Indian culture, ultimately destroyed by the coming of the Europeans and their settlement of the frontier.
Stats:
Heroes: Uncas, Hawkeye
Villain: Magua
More sappy prairie women: Cora and Alice, but especially Alice
Over sensationalized: Indian massacre
Under explored: character of Hawkeye...but I do have 3 more volumes to go so I'll let it slide
There was a lot of: dialogue, tracking, descriptions of nature, hiking through the forest
There should have been more: comic relief. I think Cooper was trying with David Gamut, but I personally don't find much humor in strict Calvinists...
This book makes you want to: appreciate the alien beauty of the wilderness, appreciate the alien beauty of a person you don't understand (hmm...think Cooper chose his setting to correspond with his themes?)
This book makes you glad you don't have to: faint regularly as proof of your XX chromosomes, engage in hand-to-hand combat as proof of your XY chromosomes, rely on a guide who is trying to trick you, be the last living member of your tribe
The plot of the novel differs noticeably from that of the 1992 film, so if you've seen the movie but haven't read the book, don't worry, I'm not mixing up the sisters....not that it would be difficult to do so when both characters are one-dimensional stereotypes of 19th century women. Speaking of which, let's talk about Cora. One piece of information that is fairly important in the novel but omitted from the movie is the fact that Cora is one-quarter black (but technically not African-American, as her mother was from the Caribbean). Why would the screenwriter (or casting director? whoever) skip over this? Probably because it is implied as a reason for Magua's attraction for her as well as for her more strong-willed and intense temperament. This then begs the question of why it would be problematic for Magua to be attracted to her due to her racial origins. To the 21st century reader it seems obvious that individuals have varying levels of attraction to people of different ethnicities. Part of the difficulty lies in the stereotypical representation of Magua as a sly, sneaky, violent and deceptive Indian. To put it bluntly, in Cooper's world, the villain of inferior race, when presented with two women, chooses the one who is also of inferior race. So you can see why Hollywood wasn't going to touch that with a ten-foot canoe paddle.
Now, before you get the idea that I think Cooper is a racist pig, I must state that I stand by my previous opinion of him as quite advanced for his time in his ideas of race and culture. Let's look at Uncas, for example. If Magua is the sly, sneaky Indian and Chingachgook is the stoic noble savage, Uncas is an admirable and courageous hero whose depiction rises above ethnic stereotype. Hawkeye and Cora point out at different times that Uncas' behavior is commendable. Hawkeye comments that Uncas is pretty awesome for an Indian (my paraphrase) *sigh*, while Cora states that anyone who observed Uncas' actions would forget the color of his skin. Cooper then portrays the other characters as being uncomfortable with Cora's statement, which would have indeed been a historically accurate response. Cora (and Cooper) were ahead of their time.
Related but not identical to Cooper's exploration of interracial relationships is his portrayal of culture conflict. Heyward represents the soldier ideal in American culture, while David Gamut is the Calvinist Protestant and Hawkeye is the frontiersman. These three men clash with each other throughout the novel, so how can such an internally discordant culture, one which can't even agree with itself, be expected to instantly enter civil discourse with not just one completely foreign Native American tribe, but many? Thus, Cooper makes his point more clearly than would have been possible had he permitted less conflict among the male American characters.
Cooper further sets out issues of cultural conflict through his use of several names to refer to one person, tribe or place. To name something or someone is to assert dominance over that person or thing, and the fact that each group had their own names for other groups/people is used as a device by Cooper to signify the struggle between them. Nathaniel Bumppo calls himself Natty but is also known as Hawkeye by the Mohicans and La Longue Carabine by the French and Huron. The Iroquois are alternately Maquas and Mingoes, the Delaware are the Leni-Lenape, Chingachgook is Le Gros Serpent and Magua is Sly Fox. Even Lake Horican is also Lake George and Le Lac du St. Sacrament. Uncas originally carries the title Last of the Mohicans because he was the last born of his tribe, but after his death, his father, Chingachgook becomes Last of the Mohicans. Symbolically, Chingachgook represents not only the last of his tribe, but the last of all Indian culture, ultimately destroyed by the coming of the Europeans and their settlement of the frontier.
Stats:
Heroes: Uncas, Hawkeye
Villain: Magua
More sappy prairie women: Cora and Alice, but especially Alice
Over sensationalized: Indian massacre
Under explored: character of Hawkeye...but I do have 3 more volumes to go so I'll let it slide
There was a lot of: dialogue, tracking, descriptions of nature, hiking through the forest
There should have been more: comic relief. I think Cooper was trying with David Gamut, but I personally don't find much humor in strict Calvinists...
This book makes you want to: appreciate the alien beauty of the wilderness, appreciate the alien beauty of a person you don't understand (hmm...think Cooper chose his setting to correspond with his themes?)
This book makes you glad you don't have to: faint regularly as proof of your XX chromosomes, engage in hand-to-hand combat as proof of your XY chromosomes, rely on a guide who is trying to trick you, be the last living member of your tribe
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Fahrenheit 451
Having read 1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World, I steeled myself for another bleak dystopia, but Ray Bradbury surprised me with a happy ending. Perhaps it is more of a commentary on my outlook than on the novel that I considered the destruction of civilization by atomic bombs to be a happy ending... I will qualify that by pointing out that it is not the destruction of civilization in general, but the destruction of that civilization, which garnered my approval.
A society built on destruction and violence, one which forbids critical thought and medicates humans with entertainment, sounds unfortunately familiar. Fahrenheit 451's ubiquitous seashells which distract and pacify their wearers while cutting them off from other people are an obvious parallel to the earbuds and headphones worn by many. Current Western governments don't normally censor, edit or forbid certain books, let alone books in general, but society often does the job itself. Publishers delete or change portions of older books that are now considered offensive, as the recent fate of Huckleberry Finn demonstrates. Over time, larger segments of the work are removed until the current incarnation scarcely resembles the original. Indeed, a case of classic irony occurred in the 1990s when high school students wrote to Ray Bradbury telling him that the version of Fahrenheit 451 they were reading in school had been censored in over 70 places.
So what's the problem with removing the swear words from Fahrenheit 451 or the "n" word from Huckleberry Finn? This is exactly what Ray Bradbury predicted; each subgroup of society deletes the portion it finds offensive, until there is nothing left. This is particularly troubling when references to offensive parts of history are removed; eventually we may be left with a revisionist history. Obviously the "n" word is offensive; so is slavery and the mistreatment of black people (or any group). Why not also remove references to slavery from Huck Finn, and from any other book that children may come across? I disagree with this in part because in not knowing anything about that era of history, people step closer to repeating it, and later historical events also become meaningless or nonsensical when their causal link has been deleted. Again, Bradbury points this out near the end of the novel. Human society is like a phoenix, consuming itself and then rising from the ashes time after time, in part because it doesn't learn from its mistakes. So if you're in a tizzy about the end of the Mayan calendar on 12-21-2012, the coming of Ragnarok, the setting of the fifth sun or the end of the Kali Yuga, don't worry. It's not the end of the world.
Stats:
Slightly sinister guy who is reborn as a good guy: Guy Montag
Main villain: not Beatty....not tv...but society itself in its desire to be placated, entertained, anything to avoid occasional unhappiness
Guide who introduces main character to his quest: Clarisse McClellan
Weapons of mass sedation: television, radio with earbuds, (what would Bradbury say about FarmVille?!)
There was a lot of: burning, lights, heat, hiding things, mentally vacuous people, mechanical/electronic things that resemble insects, mention of specific banned authors and books
There should have been more of: I would have liked Montag to read more books and have his thought life develop more before he was forced into his final life-changing dilemma, even though it would have slowed down the plot
This book makes you want to: read more books, explore books that have been censored at various times, unplug the tv, spend time in nature and with other people
This book makes you glad you don't have to: live superficially just because everybody else does, run for your life from a creepy mechanical hound, undergo therapy to recall from your subconscious the entire text of a book you read which has since been destroyed
A society built on destruction and violence, one which forbids critical thought and medicates humans with entertainment, sounds unfortunately familiar. Fahrenheit 451's ubiquitous seashells which distract and pacify their wearers while cutting them off from other people are an obvious parallel to the earbuds and headphones worn by many. Current Western governments don't normally censor, edit or forbid certain books, let alone books in general, but society often does the job itself. Publishers delete or change portions of older books that are now considered offensive, as the recent fate of Huckleberry Finn demonstrates. Over time, larger segments of the work are removed until the current incarnation scarcely resembles the original. Indeed, a case of classic irony occurred in the 1990s when high school students wrote to Ray Bradbury telling him that the version of Fahrenheit 451 they were reading in school had been censored in over 70 places.
So what's the problem with removing the swear words from Fahrenheit 451 or the "n" word from Huckleberry Finn? This is exactly what Ray Bradbury predicted; each subgroup of society deletes the portion it finds offensive, until there is nothing left. This is particularly troubling when references to offensive parts of history are removed; eventually we may be left with a revisionist history. Obviously the "n" word is offensive; so is slavery and the mistreatment of black people (or any group). Why not also remove references to slavery from Huck Finn, and from any other book that children may come across? I disagree with this in part because in not knowing anything about that era of history, people step closer to repeating it, and later historical events also become meaningless or nonsensical when their causal link has been deleted. Again, Bradbury points this out near the end of the novel. Human society is like a phoenix, consuming itself and then rising from the ashes time after time, in part because it doesn't learn from its mistakes. So if you're in a tizzy about the end of the Mayan calendar on 12-21-2012, the coming of Ragnarok, the setting of the fifth sun or the end of the Kali Yuga, don't worry. It's not the end of the world.
Stats:
Slightly sinister guy who is reborn as a good guy: Guy Montag
Main villain: not Beatty....not tv...but society itself in its desire to be placated, entertained, anything to avoid occasional unhappiness
Guide who introduces main character to his quest: Clarisse McClellan
Weapons of mass sedation: television, radio with earbuds, (what would Bradbury say about FarmVille?!)
There was a lot of: burning, lights, heat, hiding things, mentally vacuous people, mechanical/electronic things that resemble insects, mention of specific banned authors and books
There should have been more of: I would have liked Montag to read more books and have his thought life develop more before he was forced into his final life-changing dilemma, even though it would have slowed down the plot
This book makes you want to: read more books, explore books that have been censored at various times, unplug the tv, spend time in nature and with other people
This book makes you glad you don't have to: live superficially just because everybody else does, run for your life from a creepy mechanical hound, undergo therapy to recall from your subconscious the entire text of a book you read which has since been destroyed
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The Pioneers: The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale
Yes, that's the entire title, and I chose to use it to distinguish this novel from O Pioneers!, which might have come to your mind if I had only written The Pioneers. This book is the first published (fourth chronologically) of the Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, and it sold 3,500 copies before noon on the day it was published (1823). Most famous of the Leatherstocking Tales is the second chronologically, The Last of the Mohicans, which is sometimes called >adopt reverent tone< THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. (Incidentally, this should remove a weight from the minds of all you aspiring American writers, in that, since Cooper has already written the great American novel, you don't have to!) I have chosen to read all five of them this year, and I was undecided whether to read them in order of chronology or of publication, until someone suggested doing the latter in order to more easily follow Cooper's development as a writer. That appealed to me, so down I sat with The Pioneers.
Egads. After about 300 pages, I was considering greasing my eyeballs to allow them to slide over the text more quickly. It was, how you say, le boring. And then, somewhere around page 325 (I'm guessing), the clouds parted, the sun beamed down, the birds sang and somebody smacked Cooper upside the head and said, "Get going!!" Well. After that the plot took off galloping and didn't stop until a finish that crammed in everything. Instead of spreading out the literary goodness over the entire novel, Cooper was rather stingy at the beginning, and then piled it on at the end. Seriously, in approximately the last 100 pages, you will find SPOILERS AHEAD>>> entrapment, poaching, a weaponized stand off, a trial, a jailbreak, a wildfire, rescue of damsel in distress (twice), the death of a noble chief, appearance of a long lost friend/relative, revelation of a character's true identity, confession of true love, proposal and marriage, burial and romantic epitaphs, poetic speeches about death, the afterlife, wilderness, civilization, law and justice, and finally the hero walks off into the sunset.
END SPOILERS
Now, before you think Cooper a tired cliche for having his hero walk off into the sunset, let me point out that The Pioneers was the first novel to contain such an exit. Far from cliche, this was original and very romantic (in the original sense of the word). Also romantic is the continuous tension between wilderness and settlement. Cooper addresses issues of environmental stewardship, conservation and use, and is possibly the first novelist to do so. He also pointedly demonstrates the difference between justice and law, and the fact that the law exists to serve itself (or possibly power). He devises a surprisingly universalist hero for an American in 1823, as can be seen in Hawkeye's statement that, although whites want to be buried facing east and Indians want to be buried facing west, after death they will meet in the land of the just.
Despite being far ahead of his time in many ways, there are other areas in which Cooper has not shed the conventional prejudices of his day. The portrayal of black slaves and freedmen as childlike is similar to or slightly worse than that of Mark Twain's Huck Finn (written a generation later than the Leatherstocking Tales). Expect to see the "N" word in the first few chapters, used by black people as often as by whites. That said, Cooper was the first American novelist to include African American characters at all, so even his stereotypical portrayal was a milestone. As for women, they are virtuous but mentally vacuous, occasionally fainting and getting into dangerous predicaments from which they require rescuing. Their main functions are as daughters, servants and wives, but not mothers, interestingly. (Both mothers are dead). A contemporary critic wrote of Cooper: "the women he draws from one model don't vary / All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie." Despite these shortcomings, Cooper's portrayal of Native Americans is varied and complicated. He succeeds, through the course of the Leatherstocking Tales, in creating contrasts between some Native characters that are noble and heroic and others with few redeeming qualities. In this, he demonstrates his view of Native Americans as a large group with certain tendencies, but comprised of individuals with different characters. In other words, they have the dignity and depth of any other human culture group.
As a short aside, I must question whether Cooper was a genius. You see, he was enrolled at Yale at age 13, but was expelled after a dangerous prank that involved him blowing up another student's door. Another less dangerous prank consisted of training a donkey to sit in a professor's chair. That certainly looks like the work of a genius to me. ;)
Stats:
ponderously annoying semi-main character: Judge Marmaduke
maple and prairie female: Elizabeth
ethnic stereotypes: the German guy, the French guy, the black guy, the English guy
hero: Hawkeye, aka Leatherstocking, aka Nathaniel Bumpo, aka Natty Bumpo
comrade of aforementioned hero: Chingachgook (also of The Last of the Mohicans fame)
there was a lot of : trees, wildlife, use and misuse of said trees and wildlife
there should have been more of: women with brains...or at least personalities...
this book makes you want to: preserve some unspoiled wilderness, treat people right, get away from stupid people
this book makes you glad you don't have to: be a woman or ethnic minority in 1823
Edit: I read and reviewed The Last of the Mohicans in May.
Egads. After about 300 pages, I was considering greasing my eyeballs to allow them to slide over the text more quickly. It was, how you say, le boring. And then, somewhere around page 325 (I'm guessing), the clouds parted, the sun beamed down, the birds sang and somebody smacked Cooper upside the head and said, "Get going!!" Well. After that the plot took off galloping and didn't stop until a finish that crammed in everything. Instead of spreading out the literary goodness over the entire novel, Cooper was rather stingy at the beginning, and then piled it on at the end. Seriously, in approximately the last 100 pages, you will find SPOILERS AHEAD>>> entrapment, poaching, a weaponized stand off, a trial, a jailbreak, a wildfire, rescue of damsel in distress (twice), the death of a noble chief, appearance of a long lost friend/relative, revelation of a character's true identity, confession of true love, proposal and marriage, burial and romantic epitaphs, poetic speeches about death, the afterlife, wilderness, civilization, law and justice, and finally the hero walks off into the sunset.
END SPOILERS
Now, before you think Cooper a tired cliche for having his hero walk off into the sunset, let me point out that The Pioneers was the first novel to contain such an exit. Far from cliche, this was original and very romantic (in the original sense of the word). Also romantic is the continuous tension between wilderness and settlement. Cooper addresses issues of environmental stewardship, conservation and use, and is possibly the first novelist to do so. He also pointedly demonstrates the difference between justice and law, and the fact that the law exists to serve itself (or possibly power). He devises a surprisingly universalist hero for an American in 1823, as can be seen in Hawkeye's statement that, although whites want to be buried facing east and Indians want to be buried facing west, after death they will meet in the land of the just.
Despite being far ahead of his time in many ways, there are other areas in which Cooper has not shed the conventional prejudices of his day. The portrayal of black slaves and freedmen as childlike is similar to or slightly worse than that of Mark Twain's Huck Finn (written a generation later than the Leatherstocking Tales). Expect to see the "N" word in the first few chapters, used by black people as often as by whites. That said, Cooper was the first American novelist to include African American characters at all, so even his stereotypical portrayal was a milestone. As for women, they are virtuous but mentally vacuous, occasionally fainting and getting into dangerous predicaments from which they require rescuing. Their main functions are as daughters, servants and wives, but not mothers, interestingly. (Both mothers are dead). A contemporary critic wrote of Cooper: "the women he draws from one model don't vary / All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie." Despite these shortcomings, Cooper's portrayal of Native Americans is varied and complicated. He succeeds, through the course of the Leatherstocking Tales, in creating contrasts between some Native characters that are noble and heroic and others with few redeeming qualities. In this, he demonstrates his view of Native Americans as a large group with certain tendencies, but comprised of individuals with different characters. In other words, they have the dignity and depth of any other human culture group.
As a short aside, I must question whether Cooper was a genius. You see, he was enrolled at Yale at age 13, but was expelled after a dangerous prank that involved him blowing up another student's door. Another less dangerous prank consisted of training a donkey to sit in a professor's chair. That certainly looks like the work of a genius to me. ;)
Stats:
ponderously annoying semi-main character: Judge Marmaduke
maple and prairie female: Elizabeth
ethnic stereotypes: the German guy, the French guy, the black guy, the English guy
hero: Hawkeye, aka Leatherstocking, aka Nathaniel Bumpo, aka Natty Bumpo
comrade of aforementioned hero: Chingachgook (also of The Last of the Mohicans fame)
there was a lot of : trees, wildlife, use and misuse of said trees and wildlife
there should have been more of: women with brains...or at least personalities...
this book makes you want to: preserve some unspoiled wilderness, treat people right, get away from stupid people
this book makes you glad you don't have to: be a woman or ethnic minority in 1823
Edit: I read and reviewed The Last of the Mohicans in May.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance
Wait... "A Romance"?
Yes, that is the subtitle Nathaniel Hawthorne gives to his magnum opus. I know what you're thinking: "A romance among the Puritans? This is going to be about as grotesque as a Russian luau." Now, before you go complaining that I'm insulting Russians, let me point out that I thoroughly enjoy their food, music, novels, ballet, folk tales, fur hats and Faberge eggs. I just don't see them as embodying the aloha spirit. In the same way, the plain, somber, gray-clothed Puritans aren't the first people who come to mind when you want to read about a vibrant and undying loooove. >insert googly eyes here< Perhaps this is why The Scarlet Letter sat on my shelf for 12 years with nary a peek from me. I thought it would be dour and depressing, what with all the "Sinner!" and "Evildoer!" finger pointing.
That is where I was wrong. I humbly repent, in the most literary way possible. I will admit that I suffered through the first half, as did the main characters. That section focused a lot on Hester's de facto shunning by the community, which was very puritanical (how fitting, I know), and the plot came across as heavy-handed with overly repetitive allusions. But the book in its entirety turned out to be a very interesting exploration of many themes, including sin, legalism and guilt.
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILERS AHEAD!
In the latter half, we see how Hester's development as a human has taken her far beyond the Puritan settlement. To couch it in Puritan terms, although they view her as an outcast and sinner, she has become more Christlike than any of them. The minister, however, is still wracked with guilt and we see the contrast between how these two people have dealt with their unacceptable behavior. We also see Chillingworth develop from a husband wronged into the worst sinner in the community.
Conclusion
I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in a discussion of social and religious themes. The plot moves slowly but there is character development, albeit from the narrator's point of view. What I mean by this is that there isn't a lot of dialogue or monologue coming from the characters. The narrator explains what the characters are thinking, feeling and doing. Don't give up on the book if you find it initially distasteful, either. After chapter viii, you will not be bludgeoned repeatedly with the community's view of Hester. (Not as much, anyway) It is also intriguing to read this book in view of Hawthorne's internal conflict between his Puritan ancestry and his distaste for that religious sect. Although he disapproved of his gloomy ancestors' religious persuasion, he felt a real connection to the town of Salem and a strong sense of his place in New England. This comes through in the novel's end, as the protagonist eventually returns to the town of Salem despite her treatment by its inhabitants. We can imagine that Hawthorne would have done the same thing.
Stats:
Best contrast: between the marketplace and the forest
Most conflicted character: Dimmesdale
Most surreal character: Pearl
Favorite short quote: "It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society." [There are a few excellent sections which are too long to feature here.]
This book makes you want to: wander contemplatively through the forest, meet the author
This book makes you glad you don't have to: endure legalistic piety, sew your own clothes
Sense of place: 9 out of 10
Yes, that is the subtitle Nathaniel Hawthorne gives to his magnum opus. I know what you're thinking: "A romance among the Puritans? This is going to be about as grotesque as a Russian luau." Now, before you go complaining that I'm insulting Russians, let me point out that I thoroughly enjoy their food, music, novels, ballet, folk tales, fur hats and Faberge eggs. I just don't see them as embodying the aloha spirit. In the same way, the plain, somber, gray-clothed Puritans aren't the first people who come to mind when you want to read about a vibrant and undying loooove. >insert googly eyes here< Perhaps this is why The Scarlet Letter sat on my shelf for 12 years with nary a peek from me. I thought it would be dour and depressing, what with all the "Sinner!" and "Evildoer!" finger pointing.
That is where I was wrong. I humbly repent, in the most literary way possible. I will admit that I suffered through the first half, as did the main characters. That section focused a lot on Hester's de facto shunning by the community, which was very puritanical (how fitting, I know), and the plot came across as heavy-handed with overly repetitive allusions. But the book in its entirety turned out to be a very interesting exploration of many themes, including sin, legalism and guilt.
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILERS AHEAD!
In the latter half, we see how Hester's development as a human has taken her far beyond the Puritan settlement. To couch it in Puritan terms, although they view her as an outcast and sinner, she has become more Christlike than any of them. The minister, however, is still wracked with guilt and we see the contrast between how these two people have dealt with their unacceptable behavior. We also see Chillingworth develop from a husband wronged into the worst sinner in the community.
Conclusion
I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in a discussion of social and religious themes. The plot moves slowly but there is character development, albeit from the narrator's point of view. What I mean by this is that there isn't a lot of dialogue or monologue coming from the characters. The narrator explains what the characters are thinking, feeling and doing. Don't give up on the book if you find it initially distasteful, either. After chapter viii, you will not be bludgeoned repeatedly with the community's view of Hester. (Not as much, anyway) It is also intriguing to read this book in view of Hawthorne's internal conflict between his Puritan ancestry and his distaste for that religious sect. Although he disapproved of his gloomy ancestors' religious persuasion, he felt a real connection to the town of Salem and a strong sense of his place in New England. This comes through in the novel's end, as the protagonist eventually returns to the town of Salem despite her treatment by its inhabitants. We can imagine that Hawthorne would have done the same thing.
Stats:
Best contrast: between the marketplace and the forest
Most conflicted character: Dimmesdale
Most surreal character: Pearl
Favorite short quote: "It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society." [There are a few excellent sections which are too long to feature here.]
This book makes you want to: wander contemplatively through the forest, meet the author
This book makes you glad you don't have to: endure legalistic piety, sew your own clothes
Sense of place: 9 out of 10
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