As I've noted many times in these entries, I know very little about most of the books I am reading here. And I am perpetually amazed at my inability to see where any of these novels end up. See my last entry about Greene's The Heart of the Matter for a perfect example of an unexpected turn. I'd like to think that my failure to predict has nothing to do with my being an inattentive or weak reader. Instead, I think that it is because I don't know what the novel is about until the ending twists my neck along with the plot.
It will not surprise you to learn, then, that Paul Bowles throws me for yet another loop with his novel The Sheltering Sky.
At the start of the novel, Bowles sets up the characters, their competing desires, and the tensions that will fuel their interactions. Port and Kit are independently wealthy New York intellectuals who are traveling in Northern Africa to see some part of the world untouched by the war. The couple is estranged sexually, though they still have many affections for each other and appear to be best friends. Port is searching for something genuinely not European or American, something original, something primal. Kit, while very like Port, would much rather be in Italy or France. Neither likes the heat, the people, or the Europeanized city that they begin in, but Port wants to move deeper into the Sahara desert, fascinated by its raw wildness. Port wants a solitary experience, but he wants Kit to share it with. Kit is a believer in omens and sign and does not care to glimpse into the power beyond them. Even the recounting of dreams shakes Kit to her foundation as she fear what's at the route of them. In one of the happier moments, Port and Kit rent bicycles and go riding out to the dunes, where they park and watch the sunset. For Kit, "Sunset is such a sad hour." But for Port, "It was such places as this, such moments that he loved above all else in life. . . . And although he was aware that the very silences and emptinesses that touched his soul terrified her, he could not bear to be reminded of that." He hoped she "would be touched in the same way as he by solitude and the proximity to infinite things," but of course, they merely terrified her. But for this critical difference, the two seem very well suited to each other, and both overthink their actions and reactions and fail again and again to make the connection they want.
Complicating matters is their traveling companion, Tunner, a good looking man several years younger than they who was captivated by the couple and gladly followed them to Africa. He is a perfect foil for Port. Tunner appears to be shallow with a surface of kindness and good-spiritedness that drives Kit crazy. The other Eurpean characters are Mr. Lyle and the woman he claims is his mother.
It is among these characters and their interaction that the stage is set, and foolishly I thought the stage was set for interpersonal drama. We have a love triangle (Tunner has a crush on Kit, and the two have a shared night in a train car while Port has traveled ahead with the Lyles). We have growing tension as the group travels deeper inland away from civilization that they understand and amenities they are used to. Mr. Lyle turns out to be a thief and makes off with Port's passport, and when Port takes Kit further inland without his passport to avoid meeting Tunner who is returning with his passport, it seems that they couple is bound for trouble. Will the couple work things out? Will the love triangle resolve or explode? Will the missing passport and the inability to prove his identity land Port in trouble with the authorities? On that final bus ride into the Sahara, port becomes ill, and we wonder will the lack of hospital care force Kit and him into a precarious position?
And just as everything is set up, as all the questions are floating before the reader, the plot crumbles in our hands. Port dies after an extended period of delirium. And after hiding the fact of Port's death, Kit steals off into the desert in the middle of the night. The entire last portion of the novel follows Kit as she encounters strange Arab merchants who take her for a lover and then a wife, disguising her as a boy. Then after she escapes, she encounters another Arab whom she takes for a lover before he steals all her Francs.
What?!
I did not see that coming. And it's at that moment, that I always need to re-approach the first two-thirds, the setting up of the story. Either the writer panicked in the middle of his book and went running off in a blind direction, or the points he built up earlier were not about what I thought they were about. And sure enough, it becomes apparent that Ports infidelities with Marhnia and his obsession with the blind dancer are not about his infidelities any more than Kit's is. The girls are that true experience with another world that Port is questing for. Meanwhile Bowles is letting us know what Kit is like faced with the limits of her knowledge. Tunner is there not to set up a love triangle, but to propel Port into the desert where he can die alone in a tete-a-tete with the nothingness of being. That moment is what the novel builds too. In fact, we are given hints that this is where we are going from the very beginning.
In the first chapter, Port wakes from a nap, and Bowles describes the moving in and out of nothingness, into and out of the room around him, and Port's calm. This scene is echoed in Port's dying scene in which he enters and leaves the room, balancing between something and nothing. Losing Port, Kit must face the ugliness of existence and the loss of her only love. Her experience is further tainted by her guilt and anger, and the result is something of a psychotic break. Her fear of the nothingness of death is greater than her fear of life and she wanders out into the world no longer afraid wanting to forget all her experiences and knowledge.
Now what happens to her after that is either reality or purely fantasy. It is gripping and bizarre, but my brain kept revolting against what it was being fed. I do love the ending however, where Kit re-encounters "civilization" a broken woman who belongs neither among the living or the dead.
The moral of the story (my story, that is) is that we often mistake our misreading of a book for the mis-writing of the tale. We need to be willing to assume that the writer told the exact tale that he or she wanted to tell, and our anger and frustration that it did not go where we thought it would go (and wanted it to go) is not to be blamed on the book itself. Part of our job as reader is to wrestle with the text and pull out the meaning that's there.
If you can experience The Sheltering Sky for what it is and not get caught up in what it is not, you are in for a real treat.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
The Matter at the Heart of the Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter is all about Scobie, the high-ranking police official of an unnamed African community in the British Empire. How the reader responds to Scobie and his philosophies is how the reader responds to the novel as a whole. I found myself in a complicated position when thinking about Scobie because always at the back of my mind I was trying to divine what Greene himself thought about Scobie.
As readers, we almost always look for the author's attitude toward his or her subject, and we normally don't have to look that far. We know pretty early on that Orwell is not a fan of Big Brother. We know that Isherwood is not a fan of the Nazis and that he is deeply in love with all his characters. We know how the author's feel because they make it so easy to like some characters and so difficult to like others.
Greene, on the other hand, is incredibly subtle with his character. Other characters pass judgment on Scobie, but they are not reliable evaluators of the man. Wilson, for instance, hates Scobie for a number of reasons, and his declaration that Scobie does not love Louise or anyone but himself are hardly worth anything. Louise loves Scobie, and she also feels that the only person Scobie loves is Scobie. Helen feels the same at times, but Louise and Helen are his lovers, and it is unclear how far they see into Scobie's character. So it is left to us to determine what kind of man is Scobie.
Perhaps he is a good man who falls into a web of lies and deceit that eventually undo him both morally and physically. Yes and no. This is definitely the story of Scobie's decline, but to see the crux of the matter as the political intrigue that pretends to be at the heart of it all is to miss the larger point. I initially thought it was just such a book, one about the political world around Scobie that conspires and pressures him into an ever-tightening circle. The book has all the trappings, and Greene lays them out brilliantly. Scobie is an upstanding man. His compassion for a father and fellow Catholic leads him to do his first immoral thing, burn inconsequential letters instead of handing them over to the censors. His desire to give his wife what she desperately wants leads him to take out a loan from a crooked Syrian, putting himself in Yusef's debt. At the same time, Wilson is in town as a spy, who shortly has it in for Scobie because Wilson falls in love with Scobie's wife and embarrasses himself by letting Scobie witness his tears. While Louis is gone, Scobie takes on a lover, and in an effort to please her, he writes a compromising letter that is intercepted by Yusef's men and used to blackmail Scobie into breaking the law by smuggling diamonds for Yusef. The Louise returns unexpectedly and Scobie cannot break it off with Helen or his wife and feels he must keep his deception up. As everything gets tighter, Scobie goes to the one man who knows all his secrets, and tells Yusef his worries. When Ali, Scobie's servant and companion is killed, Scobie has no one to turn to.
That's great writing! Right!? That's a crazy good web of problems for poor Scobie to stumble into one turn of the screw at a time! I'd swear this book was a kind of thriller, and I enjoyed myself immensely through the first two-thirds of the book as thing ratcheted up for our protagonist. But then, after Ali dies, the screws stop turning altogether. No one breathes down Scobie's neck. Yusef disappears. Wilson quits hounding him. The outside concerns vanish, and we are left with only the internal worries and pressures of Scobie and his Catholic beliefs. The build up was false and was never about what it seemed to be about. We are like Wilson, who confronts Scobie only to be told, "The things you find out are so unimportant." Because what we quickly learn is that the mad descent of Scobie's morality, all those pressures acting upon him, were there primarily to put his mortal soul in danger, not his personage. The final third of the novel is about the safety of his soul, not his skin.
Now as readers we are charged with the task of evaluating Scobie's logic and attitudes about God and salvation. Up to the final third, I had not given Scobie's personality much thought. He was my protagonist. He was a decent guy. He seemed pretty level headed. He thought and felt deeply, even if we didn't agree on everything. But once I was done with the novel, and I was left trying to figure out the importance of what finally happened, I had to go back and study him closely--I had to study him closely to find out if Greene left me any clues.
In the end, I don't know. And to be blunt, I don't know because I am not Catholic or even religious. Clearly Greene wanted this to be thought of and discussed even among Catholics (especially among Catholics?). But as with other Catholic novels on this list (and there seems to be a lot of them--Death Comes for the Archbishop, The Power and the Glory, Brideshead Revisted), I cannot trust my own instincts to interpret the novel because my assumptions and beliefs can run perpendicular to those of the authors. Nevertheless, we are allowed and invited to make analysis (and even judgments) no matter our religion, so I will forge ahead.
After re-approaching Scobie at the close of the novel, I found that I glossed over his attitudes toward his fellow human beings. At first I loved his obsession with pity, because it was such a unique concern: "He had no sense of responsibility towards the beautiful and the graceful and the intelligent. They could find their own way. It was the face for which nobody would go out of his way, the face that would never catch the covert look, the face which would soon be used to rebuffs and indifference that demanded his allegiance. The word 'pity' is used as loosely as the word 'love': the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience." And I loved what seemed like a generosity of spirit: "Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst." I dismissed the notion expressed by Wilson and Louise and Helen that he loved no one but himself. But as Louise expressed that very sentiment to Father Rank in the final pages of the novel, the Father responds, "And you may be in the right of it there too." Did Scobie love anyone else, or was he only able to feel pity and responsibility? And in spite of his glorification of pity, pity is a lopsided emotion, one that places the pitier in a position of superiority over the pitied. Scobie's detachment seemed to me more and more pathological. His affair with Helen, which was odd even on the first read through, just seemed odder as he never had a moment of pleasure with her. He went from non-committed to responsible and full of pity. He put himself in a position of power over his wives when he says that he "formed" them in his school, that he turned them into miserable creatures. The more I looked at Scobie, the more he seemed to have a God-complex, a conviction that he was the only one who saw things as they were. He even compares his suicide to Jesus's crucifixion.
Perhaps Greene intended this re-interpretation of Scobie, or perhaps he meant his reader to be suspicious of Scobie from the start. Or perhaps, he felt that Scobie was in the right, that he saw things accurately. What Greene wanted, we can never know, nor does it really matter in the end, because a work of literature is far more than intention. In it's consumption, the novel fuses with our DNA and is rewritten in our brains and comes out as a new thing, a synthesis of the original words and our interpretations, perceptions, and feelings.
As readers, we almost always look for the author's attitude toward his or her subject, and we normally don't have to look that far. We know pretty early on that Orwell is not a fan of Big Brother. We know that Isherwood is not a fan of the Nazis and that he is deeply in love with all his characters. We know how the author's feel because they make it so easy to like some characters and so difficult to like others.
Greene, on the other hand, is incredibly subtle with his character. Other characters pass judgment on Scobie, but they are not reliable evaluators of the man. Wilson, for instance, hates Scobie for a number of reasons, and his declaration that Scobie does not love Louise or anyone but himself are hardly worth anything. Louise loves Scobie, and she also feels that the only person Scobie loves is Scobie. Helen feels the same at times, but Louise and Helen are his lovers, and it is unclear how far they see into Scobie's character. So it is left to us to determine what kind of man is Scobie.
Perhaps he is a good man who falls into a web of lies and deceit that eventually undo him both morally and physically. Yes and no. This is definitely the story of Scobie's decline, but to see the crux of the matter as the political intrigue that pretends to be at the heart of it all is to miss the larger point. I initially thought it was just such a book, one about the political world around Scobie that conspires and pressures him into an ever-tightening circle. The book has all the trappings, and Greene lays them out brilliantly. Scobie is an upstanding man. His compassion for a father and fellow Catholic leads him to do his first immoral thing, burn inconsequential letters instead of handing them over to the censors. His desire to give his wife what she desperately wants leads him to take out a loan from a crooked Syrian, putting himself in Yusef's debt. At the same time, Wilson is in town as a spy, who shortly has it in for Scobie because Wilson falls in love with Scobie's wife and embarrasses himself by letting Scobie witness his tears. While Louis is gone, Scobie takes on a lover, and in an effort to please her, he writes a compromising letter that is intercepted by Yusef's men and used to blackmail Scobie into breaking the law by smuggling diamonds for Yusef. The Louise returns unexpectedly and Scobie cannot break it off with Helen or his wife and feels he must keep his deception up. As everything gets tighter, Scobie goes to the one man who knows all his secrets, and tells Yusef his worries. When Ali, Scobie's servant and companion is killed, Scobie has no one to turn to.
That's great writing! Right!? That's a crazy good web of problems for poor Scobie to stumble into one turn of the screw at a time! I'd swear this book was a kind of thriller, and I enjoyed myself immensely through the first two-thirds of the book as thing ratcheted up for our protagonist. But then, after Ali dies, the screws stop turning altogether. No one breathes down Scobie's neck. Yusef disappears. Wilson quits hounding him. The outside concerns vanish, and we are left with only the internal worries and pressures of Scobie and his Catholic beliefs. The build up was false and was never about what it seemed to be about. We are like Wilson, who confronts Scobie only to be told, "The things you find out are so unimportant." Because what we quickly learn is that the mad descent of Scobie's morality, all those pressures acting upon him, were there primarily to put his mortal soul in danger, not his personage. The final third of the novel is about the safety of his soul, not his skin.
Now as readers we are charged with the task of evaluating Scobie's logic and attitudes about God and salvation. Up to the final third, I had not given Scobie's personality much thought. He was my protagonist. He was a decent guy. He seemed pretty level headed. He thought and felt deeply, even if we didn't agree on everything. But once I was done with the novel, and I was left trying to figure out the importance of what finally happened, I had to go back and study him closely--I had to study him closely to find out if Greene left me any clues.
In the end, I don't know. And to be blunt, I don't know because I am not Catholic or even religious. Clearly Greene wanted this to be thought of and discussed even among Catholics (especially among Catholics?). But as with other Catholic novels on this list (and there seems to be a lot of them--Death Comes for the Archbishop, The Power and the Glory, Brideshead Revisted), I cannot trust my own instincts to interpret the novel because my assumptions and beliefs can run perpendicular to those of the authors. Nevertheless, we are allowed and invited to make analysis (and even judgments) no matter our religion, so I will forge ahead.
After re-approaching Scobie at the close of the novel, I found that I glossed over his attitudes toward his fellow human beings. At first I loved his obsession with pity, because it was such a unique concern: "He had no sense of responsibility towards the beautiful and the graceful and the intelligent. They could find their own way. It was the face for which nobody would go out of his way, the face that would never catch the covert look, the face which would soon be used to rebuffs and indifference that demanded his allegiance. The word 'pity' is used as loosely as the word 'love': the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience." And I loved what seemed like a generosity of spirit: "Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst." I dismissed the notion expressed by Wilson and Louise and Helen that he loved no one but himself. But as Louise expressed that very sentiment to Father Rank in the final pages of the novel, the Father responds, "And you may be in the right of it there too." Did Scobie love anyone else, or was he only able to feel pity and responsibility? And in spite of his glorification of pity, pity is a lopsided emotion, one that places the pitier in a position of superiority over the pitied. Scobie's detachment seemed to me more and more pathological. His affair with Helen, which was odd even on the first read through, just seemed odder as he never had a moment of pleasure with her. He went from non-committed to responsible and full of pity. He put himself in a position of power over his wives when he says that he "formed" them in his school, that he turned them into miserable creatures. The more I looked at Scobie, the more he seemed to have a God-complex, a conviction that he was the only one who saw things as they were. He even compares his suicide to Jesus's crucifixion.
Perhaps Greene intended this re-interpretation of Scobie, or perhaps he meant his reader to be suspicious of Scobie from the start. Or perhaps, he felt that Scobie was in the right, that he saw things accurately. What Greene wanted, we can never know, nor does it really matter in the end, because a work of literature is far more than intention. In it's consumption, the novel fuses with our DNA and is rewritten in our brains and comes out as a new thing, a synthesis of the original words and our interpretations, perceptions, and feelings.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
1984 - Interactive Reading Group - Take 1
Hey Y'all! We are trying something new here, so let's jump in and see how this goes.
The next book on the list is 1984, which is a phenomenal book, and a book that everyone should read and most people want to read, so I am hoping to have some people play along. I will post my regular blog about the novel when I have completed reading it this time through, but before then, I am starting this thread to let anyone who wants to to make comments about the book.
So all you have to do to play is click on the comment area below and leave a comment. It can be anything you want: something you love about the book, a great sentence, a cool idea, a diatribe on Orwell's use of pronouns--I don't care! If you think it and want to share it, throw it in there. It's a reading/discussion group for anyone who wants to play. I've made a few comments below to get thing rolling.
I myself will be absent for the next week or so (I promised the family I would read the last two books in the Hunger Games series so they can discuss it openly!), but then I will be back and in full swing. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves. Go get your copy of the book and dig in!
The next book on the list is 1984, which is a phenomenal book, and a book that everyone should read and most people want to read, so I am hoping to have some people play along. I will post my regular blog about the novel when I have completed reading it this time through, but before then, I am starting this thread to let anyone who wants to to make comments about the book.
So all you have to do to play is click on the comment area below and leave a comment. It can be anything you want: something you love about the book, a great sentence, a cool idea, a diatribe on Orwell's use of pronouns--I don't care! If you think it and want to share it, throw it in there. It's a reading/discussion group for anyone who wants to play. I've made a few comments below to get thing rolling.
I myself will be absent for the next week or so (I promised the family I would read the last two books in the Hunger Games series so they can discuss it openly!), but then I will be back and in full swing. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves. Go get your copy of the book and dig in!
Under the Volcano: or, Why We Read
I am a freelance videographer who works primarily for the legal industry. I have nothing that resembles a work schedule, as every day I am working at a new location. I also hate to be late, so I get everywhere obnoxiously early, and I always have a book with me to read while I wait in the car to go inside and set up my equipment. After the equipment is up, I generally have a little time before everyone else arrives to read a little more. I will often get questions from attorneys and deponents about what I'm reading, what it's about, etc.
Last week, I was in a deposition for which the doctor was late (as they usually are), so I read while the attorneys sat in awkward silence. One of the attorneys asked about the book, so I said, "It's Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry." No one has heard of it. "It's about an alcoholic living in a small town in Mexico in 1938. The entire novel covers the last day of his life, Dia de los Muertos. His wife who left him has returned to try to work through their problems, and his younger half-brother, who is a jack-of-all-trades idealist who has been working as a journalist is also in town." Oh, they say, non-committally. Is it any good, they ask. "Hmm. It is very good, but very challenging. Each chapter follows one of these three characters and we spend a lot of time in their minds, and since the main character is an alcoholic, things can be very jumbled in his mind and even in his perception of what's happening. It's not light reading, but it is beautifully written." More non-committal nodding and a set of eyebrows raised in sympathy. The one attorney turns to the other and says, "I don't like to work when I read for fun. I don't read much as it is, so when I do, it needs to be easy." I laugh and nod, because I understand exactly what they mean. When we read, we are all looking for an experience of some sort. Sometimes we want high drama, sometimes funny characters in funny situations, sometimes something non-fictional that teaches us something new about the wold or some part of it we didn't know about. Sometimes we want a fast plot with some turns and an ending that strikes us because we never saw it coming, but looking back we think that we should have. Then again, those are all elements of story that are not unique to books. Movies can give us those same experiences. And who ever says to herself, I want to read something in which very little happens plot-wise, in which we spent a great deal of time in characters' heads, and which is very demanding of my mental attention? Why do we read at all, and why would we read a book like Under the Volcano?
There are two things that make the novel unique as a storytelling form. The first, of course, is the use of language. Novels have the unique ability to describe the world, people, actions, motivations, thoughts, and emotions in words, to put down in a graspable form all the vagueness that bumps into us as we stumble through this life. The author can capture a feeling, a mood, a thought and make us understand the inner workings of our own minds and our neighbors' minds. The second thing that novels can do, and this is obviously a direct offshoot of the first, is spend time inside a person. Films and TV are great at action and decisions, but getting inside a character's head is a limited thing when working with a visual medium. In film, you learn about character through her actions. In literature, the author is not limited to action (though a good author will always use action too); she can directly tell us the character's thoughts, feelings, and contradictory impulse.
It is no coincidence that the modern novel became increasingly internal and abstract as the film industry grew larger and larger. Reality was being portrayed and covered just fine in the pictures, so novelists took advantage of the unique traits of their trade and plumbed the depth of the human mind and soul like no other medium could.
And that brings us to Lowry's Under the Volcano. Under the Volcano is in the tradition of Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Under the Volcano is literature, with a capital L. Reading this novel is not a casual affair; it is work. It provides many moments of great pleasure through its language, its use of symbols, its honesty, and its insight--but it cannot be said to be "fun." When I began this novel, I had no idea that is hailed as one of the great works of English literature. (Sure the cover says something to that effect, but it seems like a lot of covers do!) But it didn't take me long to feel that a very competent mind was putting this story together. The language is incredibly rich, and while it is more convoluted than is my usual preference, the sentences are beautiful, and when concentrated on, make perfect sense. Every sentence feels worked over, like it has something crucial to say. Some writing moves through us like water--it's refreshing and enjoyable while we are drinking it, but it leaves us with no lasting impression, it keeps us alive, but it gives us no nutrients, nothing for the body to convert into energy. These sentences are filled with good stuff, but as such, they demand an incredible amount of attention. The brain has no room to wander, to work on other events of the day that have already or are yet to come. And the brain is a restless animal, unaccustomed to being tasked with singular focus. It wants to multitask, and Lowry's novel won't let it, at least not if you want to follow the story. I had to reread the first chapter in its entirety twice (and some portions thrice) to feel like I had a firm grasp on the world and events of the novel.
And it's not just the sentences that are challenging. This is one of the most referential novels I have ever read, and it offers explanations for none of the references. Set in Mexico in the late 1930s, you need to know about Mexico's history, economic and political. Hugh, the half-brother, has traveled the world and served as a journalist in revolutionary Spain and Stalin's Russia. And Europe is of course popping with the early stages of World War II. Layer on top of those things untranslated passages in Spanish and phrases in a dozen other languages along with cultural and literary references from the history of world literature. I found myself reading through Wikipedia nearly every day to understand the politics and factions throughout the book.
The amazing thing, and the thing that makes this novel so incredible, is that Lowry actually feels in control of all this information. Each reference has purpose and weight--not the vain flexing of intellectual muscles, but the artistic placement of structural features in an impressive landscape. Everything has its place, and it can be a marvel to behold. The repetition of playbills, of the film Las Manos de Orlac, of the dead Indian and his horse branded with the number 7: Lowry's symbolism beats like the syncopation of a dozen drums that all make up the rhythm of this story. And his ability to portray Geoffrey's mescal-rattled brain is worth the price of admission alone.
When I finish a novel like this (not that there are many like it at all), I do not derive the same joy that I do when concluding a more plot-driven novel, or a character-driven novel. Those praises I have given to other books on this list do not apply hear, for I did not end emotionally drained or charged, taken to some height by the struggles of a character. It is a much more intellectual state of wonder for me. For those of us who embrace this sort of novel, why do we do it? Why do we submit ourselves to its demands and its challenges? Perhaps we take them on for the same reason that some people scale Mount Everest. We do it to say we've done it, to conquer something monumentally larger than ourselves, and to push ourselves to do something we don't entirely feel up to. And I would venture to say that the rewards are similar. We gain not just personal satisfaction in our inner strength and determination, but we are rewarded with beautiful sights and sublime visions. And yes, sometimes we are too frostbitten, bleeding, and torn up to appreciate the sights at the time, but we have the memories of our visit and can say, "I was there, and I saw wonderful things."
Last week, I was in a deposition for which the doctor was late (as they usually are), so I read while the attorneys sat in awkward silence. One of the attorneys asked about the book, so I said, "It's Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry." No one has heard of it. "It's about an alcoholic living in a small town in Mexico in 1938. The entire novel covers the last day of his life, Dia de los Muertos. His wife who left him has returned to try to work through their problems, and his younger half-brother, who is a jack-of-all-trades idealist who has been working as a journalist is also in town." Oh, they say, non-committally. Is it any good, they ask. "Hmm. It is very good, but very challenging. Each chapter follows one of these three characters and we spend a lot of time in their minds, and since the main character is an alcoholic, things can be very jumbled in his mind and even in his perception of what's happening. It's not light reading, but it is beautifully written." More non-committal nodding and a set of eyebrows raised in sympathy. The one attorney turns to the other and says, "I don't like to work when I read for fun. I don't read much as it is, so when I do, it needs to be easy." I laugh and nod, because I understand exactly what they mean. When we read, we are all looking for an experience of some sort. Sometimes we want high drama, sometimes funny characters in funny situations, sometimes something non-fictional that teaches us something new about the wold or some part of it we didn't know about. Sometimes we want a fast plot with some turns and an ending that strikes us because we never saw it coming, but looking back we think that we should have. Then again, those are all elements of story that are not unique to books. Movies can give us those same experiences. And who ever says to herself, I want to read something in which very little happens plot-wise, in which we spent a great deal of time in characters' heads, and which is very demanding of my mental attention? Why do we read at all, and why would we read a book like Under the Volcano?
There are two things that make the novel unique as a storytelling form. The first, of course, is the use of language. Novels have the unique ability to describe the world, people, actions, motivations, thoughts, and emotions in words, to put down in a graspable form all the vagueness that bumps into us as we stumble through this life. The author can capture a feeling, a mood, a thought and make us understand the inner workings of our own minds and our neighbors' minds. The second thing that novels can do, and this is obviously a direct offshoot of the first, is spend time inside a person. Films and TV are great at action and decisions, but getting inside a character's head is a limited thing when working with a visual medium. In film, you learn about character through her actions. In literature, the author is not limited to action (though a good author will always use action too); she can directly tell us the character's thoughts, feelings, and contradictory impulse.
It is no coincidence that the modern novel became increasingly internal and abstract as the film industry grew larger and larger. Reality was being portrayed and covered just fine in the pictures, so novelists took advantage of the unique traits of their trade and plumbed the depth of the human mind and soul like no other medium could.
And that brings us to Lowry's Under the Volcano. Under the Volcano is in the tradition of Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Under the Volcano is literature, with a capital L. Reading this novel is not a casual affair; it is work. It provides many moments of great pleasure through its language, its use of symbols, its honesty, and its insight--but it cannot be said to be "fun." When I began this novel, I had no idea that is hailed as one of the great works of English literature. (Sure the cover says something to that effect, but it seems like a lot of covers do!) But it didn't take me long to feel that a very competent mind was putting this story together. The language is incredibly rich, and while it is more convoluted than is my usual preference, the sentences are beautiful, and when concentrated on, make perfect sense. Every sentence feels worked over, like it has something crucial to say. Some writing moves through us like water--it's refreshing and enjoyable while we are drinking it, but it leaves us with no lasting impression, it keeps us alive, but it gives us no nutrients, nothing for the body to convert into energy. These sentences are filled with good stuff, but as such, they demand an incredible amount of attention. The brain has no room to wander, to work on other events of the day that have already or are yet to come. And the brain is a restless animal, unaccustomed to being tasked with singular focus. It wants to multitask, and Lowry's novel won't let it, at least not if you want to follow the story. I had to reread the first chapter in its entirety twice (and some portions thrice) to feel like I had a firm grasp on the world and events of the novel.
And it's not just the sentences that are challenging. This is one of the most referential novels I have ever read, and it offers explanations for none of the references. Set in Mexico in the late 1930s, you need to know about Mexico's history, economic and political. Hugh, the half-brother, has traveled the world and served as a journalist in revolutionary Spain and Stalin's Russia. And Europe is of course popping with the early stages of World War II. Layer on top of those things untranslated passages in Spanish and phrases in a dozen other languages along with cultural and literary references from the history of world literature. I found myself reading through Wikipedia nearly every day to understand the politics and factions throughout the book.
The amazing thing, and the thing that makes this novel so incredible, is that Lowry actually feels in control of all this information. Each reference has purpose and weight--not the vain flexing of intellectual muscles, but the artistic placement of structural features in an impressive landscape. Everything has its place, and it can be a marvel to behold. The repetition of playbills, of the film Las Manos de Orlac, of the dead Indian and his horse branded with the number 7: Lowry's symbolism beats like the syncopation of a dozen drums that all make up the rhythm of this story. And his ability to portray Geoffrey's mescal-rattled brain is worth the price of admission alone.
When I finish a novel like this (not that there are many like it at all), I do not derive the same joy that I do when concluding a more plot-driven novel, or a character-driven novel. Those praises I have given to other books on this list do not apply hear, for I did not end emotionally drained or charged, taken to some height by the struggles of a character. It is a much more intellectual state of wonder for me. For those of us who embrace this sort of novel, why do we do it? Why do we submit ourselves to its demands and its challenges? Perhaps we take them on for the same reason that some people scale Mount Everest. We do it to say we've done it, to conquer something monumentally larger than ourselves, and to push ourselves to do something we don't entirely feel up to. And I would venture to say that the rewards are similar. We gain not just personal satisfaction in our inner strength and determination, but we are rewarded with beautiful sights and sublime visions. And yes, sometimes we are too frostbitten, bleeding, and torn up to appreciate the sights at the time, but we have the memories of our visit and can say, "I was there, and I saw wonderful things."
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Brideshead Revisited
I had no idea Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited was a religious novel when I picked it up. In fact, I had no idea it was a religious novel until about 50 pages from the end of the book.
When I last met Evelyn Waugh, I was reading A Handful of Dust, a novel in which religion played no part. I was expecting Brideshead Revisited, then, to be something similar, a sort of comedy of the lives of the wealthy in the British countryside. The characters would be similar to real people, but they would be exaggerated to comic effect.
While the characters did indeed make me laugh with their behavior, they were remarkably well developed in Brideshead Revisited. Waugh strove for something much more realistic, and he of course did a wonderful job. Yes, both novels are set in British estates, and both novels deal with the ways of the upper classes, but the content beyond that is starkly different, and I much prefer Waugh's efforts in his later work. The world is so colorfully created, and the characters are delicious in how they act and react to each other.
The big similarity between the novels is their structure. I was in shock for the entire final third of A Handful of Dust as Last wandered through the jungles and died a horrible death. Up to that point, I had thought the novel was about one thing only to discover that it was about something else entirely. I had the same experience in reading Brideshead Revisited. Up until the final section, I thought Waugh was saying something about families and relationships, the way things rise and fall, and how we shape each other. While I was aware that the Catholic belief of the Flytes was important to the novel, I thought it was a device to separate the Flytes from other families, and a tool for talking about the way that religion can pull people apart instead of giving them peace. Then I read the final section and discovered that Catholicism is at the heart of the novel, and that it is held to be something winning. And Sebastian, who was the center of the first half of the novel, becomes little more than a footnote. We hear of him, but never encounter him again. Waugh is very talented at playing with and thwarting my expectations, and possibly yours too.
In the end, we have a novel in which three men have profound encounters with religion and find God when they need him most. Sebastian, bereft of everything, and scraping along the rough bottom of existence, finds God through Kurt, his German friend who allows Sebastian to fulfill a service to someone else, to live beyond himself. Lord Marchmain, a man who never cared for Catholicism, crosses himself on his deathbed, and finds God when he is on the precipice of death. And Charles Ryder, our narrator, goes through the whole novel a non-believer. When he opens the novel he has lost his last love as he realizes that he and the Army have grown apart like estranged spouses. Then in flashback, we see him lose everything else, from Sebastian to Julia. He finds prayer in Marchmain's death scene as he thinks of Julia; he prays for a sign for her sake, to comfort her. And ironically, in answering his prayer, the good Lord separates Julia and Charles forever. Then as the epilogue closes, Ryder stands a shell of a man. He has lost all human love and now all love for the army. It is no coincidence that Ryder is a painter of architecture. He embraces the things created by man, not by God. Even when he visits South America, he paints not the landscape, but the fallen buildings there. Even Anthony Blanche sees his paintings are essentially the same thing. So there Ryder stands at the end of the novel, thinking about the man-made thing that has meant the most to him in his life, Brideshead. He contemplates that the builders had no idea the live their creation would lead. And that brings him to the chapel and the light that burns therein, for there is another creator who knows exactly where his creations go. And the upnote that Waugh ends on is Ryder finding peace in this discovery. Ryder has found God.
There are of course plenty of other characters who would be worth analyzing, but restrictions of time and space in this short blog prevent me from diving into. The minor character that intrigues me most is Nanny Hawkins, the childhood Nanny who dwells in the attic space of Brideshead. Throughout the 20 years that the novel covers, Nanny is forever in her attic window, simultaneously in touch with all the goings on and way out of touch with what's happening below her. She has a view of all, but her eyes are weak. I wonder if she is not some version of God in this novel. And I wonder what it would mean in she were. I don't know if Waugh had a difficult relationship with God. I learned through Wikipedia that he, like fellow countryman Graham Greene (whose The Power and The Glory also deals with Catholicism and the difficulty of believing), Waugh converted to Catholicism as an adult and embraced it fully. So are we supposed to be critical of Ryder's and Sebastian's profligacy of youth? Are we supposed to feel for Lady Marchmain, who is the whipping-girl for all those who have trouble with God? And how odd is it that Lady Marchmain's death comes and goes without fanfare while Lord Marchmain gets and whole section devoted to his dying? If Nanny is like God, then is her fellow counterpart Ryder's father, whom Ryder notes is like Nanny in that they are the only two people who never change. How problematic is Father Ryder as an analogy for God?
A talented writer can take what a more common writer might turn into a tract and turn it into something grand and beautiful. Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh have taken a subject that threatens to be made into a sermon and make art out of it, just as Orwell can take a political tract and make a living, breathing story. This was another gem to be discovered thanks to this reading list. Something tells me that Waugh and I would have nothing to talk about if ever we met, and from what I have read about him, I don't even think we would get along. So how talented must he be to create a world and characters, and breathe life into those very things, and weave a story out of them that pulls me in completely when my world view is so different from his? That is the power of literature and art. That is why we read.
When I last met Evelyn Waugh, I was reading A Handful of Dust, a novel in which religion played no part. I was expecting Brideshead Revisited, then, to be something similar, a sort of comedy of the lives of the wealthy in the British countryside. The characters would be similar to real people, but they would be exaggerated to comic effect.
While the characters did indeed make me laugh with their behavior, they were remarkably well developed in Brideshead Revisited. Waugh strove for something much more realistic, and he of course did a wonderful job. Yes, both novels are set in British estates, and both novels deal with the ways of the upper classes, but the content beyond that is starkly different, and I much prefer Waugh's efforts in his later work. The world is so colorfully created, and the characters are delicious in how they act and react to each other.
The big similarity between the novels is their structure. I was in shock for the entire final third of A Handful of Dust as Last wandered through the jungles and died a horrible death. Up to that point, I had thought the novel was about one thing only to discover that it was about something else entirely. I had the same experience in reading Brideshead Revisited. Up until the final section, I thought Waugh was saying something about families and relationships, the way things rise and fall, and how we shape each other. While I was aware that the Catholic belief of the Flytes was important to the novel, I thought it was a device to separate the Flytes from other families, and a tool for talking about the way that religion can pull people apart instead of giving them peace. Then I read the final section and discovered that Catholicism is at the heart of the novel, and that it is held to be something winning. And Sebastian, who was the center of the first half of the novel, becomes little more than a footnote. We hear of him, but never encounter him again. Waugh is very talented at playing with and thwarting my expectations, and possibly yours too.
In the end, we have a novel in which three men have profound encounters with religion and find God when they need him most. Sebastian, bereft of everything, and scraping along the rough bottom of existence, finds God through Kurt, his German friend who allows Sebastian to fulfill a service to someone else, to live beyond himself. Lord Marchmain, a man who never cared for Catholicism, crosses himself on his deathbed, and finds God when he is on the precipice of death. And Charles Ryder, our narrator, goes through the whole novel a non-believer. When he opens the novel he has lost his last love as he realizes that he and the Army have grown apart like estranged spouses. Then in flashback, we see him lose everything else, from Sebastian to Julia. He finds prayer in Marchmain's death scene as he thinks of Julia; he prays for a sign for her sake, to comfort her. And ironically, in answering his prayer, the good Lord separates Julia and Charles forever. Then as the epilogue closes, Ryder stands a shell of a man. He has lost all human love and now all love for the army. It is no coincidence that Ryder is a painter of architecture. He embraces the things created by man, not by God. Even when he visits South America, he paints not the landscape, but the fallen buildings there. Even Anthony Blanche sees his paintings are essentially the same thing. So there Ryder stands at the end of the novel, thinking about the man-made thing that has meant the most to him in his life, Brideshead. He contemplates that the builders had no idea the live their creation would lead. And that brings him to the chapel and the light that burns therein, for there is another creator who knows exactly where his creations go. And the upnote that Waugh ends on is Ryder finding peace in this discovery. Ryder has found God.
There are of course plenty of other characters who would be worth analyzing, but restrictions of time and space in this short blog prevent me from diving into. The minor character that intrigues me most is Nanny Hawkins, the childhood Nanny who dwells in the attic space of Brideshead. Throughout the 20 years that the novel covers, Nanny is forever in her attic window, simultaneously in touch with all the goings on and way out of touch with what's happening below her. She has a view of all, but her eyes are weak. I wonder if she is not some version of God in this novel. And I wonder what it would mean in she were. I don't know if Waugh had a difficult relationship with God. I learned through Wikipedia that he, like fellow countryman Graham Greene (whose The Power and The Glory also deals with Catholicism and the difficulty of believing), Waugh converted to Catholicism as an adult and embraced it fully. So are we supposed to be critical of Ryder's and Sebastian's profligacy of youth? Are we supposed to feel for Lady Marchmain, who is the whipping-girl for all those who have trouble with God? And how odd is it that Lady Marchmain's death comes and goes without fanfare while Lord Marchmain gets and whole section devoted to his dying? If Nanny is like God, then is her fellow counterpart Ryder's father, whom Ryder notes is like Nanny in that they are the only two people who never change. How problematic is Father Ryder as an analogy for God?
A talented writer can take what a more common writer might turn into a tract and turn it into something grand and beautiful. Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh have taken a subject that threatens to be made into a sermon and make art out of it, just as Orwell can take a political tract and make a living, breathing story. This was another gem to be discovered thanks to this reading list. Something tells me that Waugh and I would have nothing to talk about if ever we met, and from what I have read about him, I don't even think we would get along. So how talented must he be to create a world and characters, and breathe life into those very things, and weave a story out of them that pulls me in completely when my world view is so different from his? That is the power of literature and art. That is why we read.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
We Are All Berliners
The 31st book on our list is Christopher Isherwoods The Berlin Stories. The book was placed at number 31 because it was published in 1946; however, The Berlin Stories is made up of two books: The Last of Mr. Norris, published in 1935, and Goodbye to Berlin, published in 1939. Both books take place in Berlin in the first few years of the 1930s, during which time there was a power struggle in Germany between communists and fascists, and the end of which resulted in Hitler's rise to power. This political backdrop makes for a fascinating stage on which Isherwood tells his stories.
The Berlin Stories is probably most famous today as the source for the Bob Fosse film Cabaret and Liza Minelli's portrayal of Sally Bowles. I have not had the good fortune to see the film, but I did have the pleasure of looking at reviews of it. Even better still, I saw comparative reviews of it and the 1955 adaptation of The Berlin Stories called I am a Camera. Presumably the reviewers had not read Isherwood's book because they spoke of Julie Harris's Sally Bowles as not being energetic enough and Laurence Harvey's Isherwood of not being gay enough.
But the Isherwood of The Berlin Stories (known as William Bradshaw in The Last of Mr. Norris) is not openly gay. His desires and cravings do not enter into the stories at all. He is a narrator that provides actions and reactions to the characters he meets, because in spite of the political backdrop, the novel is first and foremost a character study. And Isherwood's sense of character is what makes the book so enjoyable.
From Mr. Norris to Frl. Shroeder to Otto, Herr Schmidt, the Baron, Sally Bowles, to the most minor or characters, Isherwood brings them all to life. And who they are comes to us through their interactions with the narrator, who while remaining constant himself, means something different to each of them. Isherwood makes this relationship clear by having each character call him something different. To Frl. Schroeder, he is Herr Issyvoo, to Fritz and Sally he is Chris, to Otto and his family, he is Christoph, etc. I love the way Isherwood allows his narrator to have a life of his own and simultaneously allow other characters to pour themselves into him. There is a genuine love that Isherwood feels for all the characters he invents (or recreates from the real people he encountered in his time in Germany), and that love makes them all vibrant, fragile, lovable, and as close to alive as paper people become.
Much has been said already about who Isherwood creates, namely those people living on the fringes of society: the poor, prostitutes, con artists, bartenders, gay men and woman. This choice of characters no doubt reflects his own tendernesses, but it also aligns with the political environment in which he sets his novel. The main power struggle in both novels that make up The Berlin Stories takes place between the Nazis and the Communists. This conflict is more apparent in The Last of Mr. Norris, in which Norris and the narrator both join the Communist group for their own reasons. The leader of the Communists, Ludwig, is an incredibly charming man who seems to always be smiling and always know more than anyone else in the room. We learn near the end of his story, that he knew Mr. Norris was selling information about the Communist party, but he doesn't care about the betrayal. To him, the Communist party has room for everyone, even traitors. I kept waiting for something ugly to be revealed about Ludwig, but nothing ever was. Ludwig, and the communist party in turn, were the opposite of the Nazi's in Isherwood's novel. The Nazis are clearing house, attacking everyone who is not like them, while the Communists have open arms, and no matter who you are you have a place and a purpose; not matter who you are, you are welcome.
By 1939, when Isherwood published Goodbye to Berlin, the extent of the Nazi's hatred had revealed itself and the problems with Communism were also more apparent, so the second story is even darker in its political portrait. This political setting is, I think, what allows this collection of character stories to be so successful. There is not much of a plot in each of the stories, but there is a consistent and solid world that ties them all together, and the political happenings help give each story its own movement. Even though I never knew where a story was heading, I always felt like it was going somewhere, and the ride was always a good one because the world and the characters were so captivating.
This is not a roller-coaster of a ride kind of novel. This is not what they call a page-turner. But it is a novel that moves, that has a pace, and that provides a wonderful experience to the reader. If you are a reader who prizes character over action (but one who still demands a story in which those can exist) then you should plunge right into The Berlin Stories!
The Berlin Stories is probably most famous today as the source for the Bob Fosse film Cabaret and Liza Minelli's portrayal of Sally Bowles. I have not had the good fortune to see the film, but I did have the pleasure of looking at reviews of it. Even better still, I saw comparative reviews of it and the 1955 adaptation of The Berlin Stories called I am a Camera. Presumably the reviewers had not read Isherwood's book because they spoke of Julie Harris's Sally Bowles as not being energetic enough and Laurence Harvey's Isherwood of not being gay enough.
But the Isherwood of The Berlin Stories (known as William Bradshaw in The Last of Mr. Norris) is not openly gay. His desires and cravings do not enter into the stories at all. He is a narrator that provides actions and reactions to the characters he meets, because in spite of the political backdrop, the novel is first and foremost a character study. And Isherwood's sense of character is what makes the book so enjoyable.
From Mr. Norris to Frl. Shroeder to Otto, Herr Schmidt, the Baron, Sally Bowles, to the most minor or characters, Isherwood brings them all to life. And who they are comes to us through their interactions with the narrator, who while remaining constant himself, means something different to each of them. Isherwood makes this relationship clear by having each character call him something different. To Frl. Schroeder, he is Herr Issyvoo, to Fritz and Sally he is Chris, to Otto and his family, he is Christoph, etc. I love the way Isherwood allows his narrator to have a life of his own and simultaneously allow other characters to pour themselves into him. There is a genuine love that Isherwood feels for all the characters he invents (or recreates from the real people he encountered in his time in Germany), and that love makes them all vibrant, fragile, lovable, and as close to alive as paper people become.
Much has been said already about who Isherwood creates, namely those people living on the fringes of society: the poor, prostitutes, con artists, bartenders, gay men and woman. This choice of characters no doubt reflects his own tendernesses, but it also aligns with the political environment in which he sets his novel. The main power struggle in both novels that make up The Berlin Stories takes place between the Nazis and the Communists. This conflict is more apparent in The Last of Mr. Norris, in which Norris and the narrator both join the Communist group for their own reasons. The leader of the Communists, Ludwig, is an incredibly charming man who seems to always be smiling and always know more than anyone else in the room. We learn near the end of his story, that he knew Mr. Norris was selling information about the Communist party, but he doesn't care about the betrayal. To him, the Communist party has room for everyone, even traitors. I kept waiting for something ugly to be revealed about Ludwig, but nothing ever was. Ludwig, and the communist party in turn, were the opposite of the Nazi's in Isherwood's novel. The Nazis are clearing house, attacking everyone who is not like them, while the Communists have open arms, and no matter who you are you have a place and a purpose; not matter who you are, you are welcome.
By 1939, when Isherwood published Goodbye to Berlin, the extent of the Nazi's hatred had revealed itself and the problems with Communism were also more apparent, so the second story is even darker in its political portrait. This political setting is, I think, what allows this collection of character stories to be so successful. There is not much of a plot in each of the stories, but there is a consistent and solid world that ties them all together, and the political happenings help give each story its own movement. Even though I never knew where a story was heading, I always felt like it was going somewhere, and the ride was always a good one because the world and the characters were so captivating.
This is not a roller-coaster of a ride kind of novel. This is not what they call a page-turner. But it is a novel that moves, that has a pace, and that provides a wonderful experience to the reader. If you are a reader who prizes character over action (but one who still demands a story in which those can exist) then you should plunge right into The Berlin Stories!
Friday, February 3, 2012
A Book More Equal than Other Books
How many overtly political novels can you think of that are embraced and praised by people of every political persuasion? Conservatives, liberals, capitalists, socialists, and even communists? George Orwell's Animal Farm is amazing because everyone loves it, and everyone loves it because it is amazing.
I can't imagine that I have anything new to say about this book or that anyone needs a review of it, so I will be brief. To me, the book is embraced by all because it breaks down so completely and so simply the means of manipulation that one group uses to control another. Before the invention of the photograph, how horses physically ran was a mystery. Their feet flew too fast to see, and it was popular to debate in the second half of the 19th century whether all four hooves of a horse were ever off the ground at the same time. It wasn't until Eadweard Muybridge took photos and put together a display that the case was settled. George Orwell does something similar with power and manipulation. And we can all appreciate the analysis and see it at work around us even today, no matter who is the force attempting to manipulate.
Squealer is the perfect media machine, creating numbers to "prove" what is not true, rewriting history freely and faulting the animals' bad memories and pernicious lies for the misunderstanding, and gleefully justifying why the ruling class needs special treatment "or else Jones will return." We see this combination of "facts," historical revision, and threats coming from all sides in order to gain our consent for a system that is not in our interest. Similarly, the animals don't have the wherewithal to argue against the lies, and even when they do, the distractions of the bleating sheep destroy that moment of potential protest. Our collective amnesia about the past is a common complaint today, and we see evidence of the "distractions" that pull our mind from the thing we should be focusing on. The right complains of the left employing these tactics, and the left complains of the right, and we all feel like the "lower animals" suffering in a system that is geared entirely against us.
Orwell, a literary hero of mine, manages to combine a direct and powerful writing style with a comprehensive political understanding and brings it all together with an unerring sense of story. At no point does his novel become a political tract. It is always a story first, and an incredible story at that. Stalin and Trotsky are just names in history books today, but Napoleon and Snowball will live forever.
I can't imagine that I have anything new to say about this book or that anyone needs a review of it, so I will be brief. To me, the book is embraced by all because it breaks down so completely and so simply the means of manipulation that one group uses to control another. Before the invention of the photograph, how horses physically ran was a mystery. Their feet flew too fast to see, and it was popular to debate in the second half of the 19th century whether all four hooves of a horse were ever off the ground at the same time. It wasn't until Eadweard Muybridge took photos and put together a display that the case was settled. George Orwell does something similar with power and manipulation. And we can all appreciate the analysis and see it at work around us even today, no matter who is the force attempting to manipulate.
Squealer is the perfect media machine, creating numbers to "prove" what is not true, rewriting history freely and faulting the animals' bad memories and pernicious lies for the misunderstanding, and gleefully justifying why the ruling class needs special treatment "or else Jones will return." We see this combination of "facts," historical revision, and threats coming from all sides in order to gain our consent for a system that is not in our interest. Similarly, the animals don't have the wherewithal to argue against the lies, and even when they do, the distractions of the bleating sheep destroy that moment of potential protest. Our collective amnesia about the past is a common complaint today, and we see evidence of the "distractions" that pull our mind from the thing we should be focusing on. The right complains of the left employing these tactics, and the left complains of the right, and we all feel like the "lower animals" suffering in a system that is geared entirely against us.
Orwell, a literary hero of mine, manages to combine a direct and powerful writing style with a comprehensive political understanding and brings it all together with an unerring sense of story. At no point does his novel become a political tract. It is always a story first, and an incredible story at that. Stalin and Trotsky are just names in history books today, but Napoleon and Snowball will live forever.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
