Blindness by Jose Saramago

Blindness is a dystopian novel, depicting a society where a peculiar kind of white blindness is so highly contagious that practically everyone is affected by it and society discontinues to function in a civilized way. The readers are witness to the very first man that goes blind. After being helped home, and his wife’s return from work, the blind man goes to an Ophthalmologist who is baffled by this condition. Later that evening, it turns out that the patients in the waiting room and the ophthalmologist himself go blind. As the disease spreads rapidly, the diseased are quarantined. The Doctor’s wife lies that she has gone blind as well so that she may stay by her husband. Of course the quarantine is an awful place, where the corrupt patients seize control over everyone. However, the disease spread so fast that eventually the patients escape only to find a broken society with no government to facilitate, no water, no electricity, no nothing; just people living like animals, defecating and dying on the street and groping their way around to find food and survive. However, the doctor’s wife can still see and she with their close knit group are able to survive. In the end everyone can see again. The reason I told you what happened is because it’s a lame ending, and it doesn’t deserve the honor of being kept ambiguous.
Furthermore, the narration is painstaking as it has to rationalize every aspect and emotion of the character. To some extent, I believe that Saramago is just rationalizing his own fantasies. For example, at one point in the quarantine the doctor’s wife sees her husband sneaking into bed with another woman. Although she is hurt by this she is understanding and walks over there and practically gives her blessing. Like that would ever happen. At least let her pretend she didn’t see it. The doctor is lucky enough to have his wife with him (considering that she is described as pretty and obviously in obscenely patient), as so many families were split.

I also did not understand why Saramago did not use names. It is explained at one point (like everything else is, not leaving much up to the reader’s imagination), but it still didn’t make sense to me. The doctor is the doctor, his wife is the doctor’s wife, the woman he cheated on her with is the girl with dark glasses. If none of the characters in the novel can see her dark glasses, why should she be identified by them? I suppose the blindness has catapulted them into a such a different world that their names and former identities no longer apply, but it just didn’t seem relevant, especially since they are identified by aspects of their previous way of life.

I can’t say I was that enthralled with this novel, and that’s bad since I was really anticipating reading it. Perhaps my hopes were too high. I felt like an interesting idea for a plot was wasted by an over-rationalizing, third person narrative which diminished any suspense or emotion from me since it was all so thoroughly explained.

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer depicts a common trend that was seen throughout Central America throughout the 1970’s, 80’s, and in some cases, even today. To emphasize the commonality of the regimes and coups that took place, Didion sets her story in the imaginary Central American country of Boca Grande. However, the story of the political climate is connected to the forefront of the plot in two ways: the narrator, Grace, is an American expatriate living in Boca Grande and widowed by a member of the ruling family and brings the main character, Charlotte Douglas, to life by narrating her story, and also when the coup overthrows the ruling family and Charlotte dies in the overtaking. Everything in between describes Charlotte’s marriage to an abusive alcoholic and professor of literature (who would have thought?) and to a Berkeley California lawyer, as well as her daughter’s involvement with a Marxist organization and her second, practically still-born child. During her time in Boca Grande, Charlotte is present during many meetings having to do with the overthrow of the regime, but she acts oblivious to what is going on around her. Perhaps she wanted to feel connected to her daughter without acknowledging the violence that would result.

Didion, as always, depicts the reality of the times. By depicting an American woman in Boca Grande, she is able to do so of both the Central American and American cultures, ranging from corrupt government and regimes, to the American lifestyle on many different levels represented by Charlotte’s husbands and daughter. They are all embodied in Charlotte’s character.

Although I enjoyed reading this novel, Didion’s matter-of-fact style, which I admire greatly, is better suited for her essays. I find her to be an excellent verbal photographer of her times always gathering telling snapshots of the existing range of cultures.

The Blind Assassin - by Margaret Atwood

Reading The Blind Assassin after The God of Small Things was very complementary. Both novels with a similar plot set in different cultures (Canada and India respectively): a family is traced for three generations with the first generation starting a modest company which in the second generation is challenged by the communist movement that the owners are sympathetic towards but cannot sustain the demands, and it is in the third generation that things begin to differ, well that and Atwood’s writing is far superior and less superficial. Also, alongside the story told by a daughter of the third generation, Iris, is the enigmatic novel of the Blind Assassin written by one of the siblings of the third generation. So, essentially Atwood has granted us the gift of two novels in one. Of course, The Blind Assassin depicts a part of the narrator’s life that she does not feel comfortable explaining as fact in her life story, but implies only subtly. Even though the plots differ by the time we reach the third generation, there are some striking similarities: the issue of class and marriage and forbidden love interests.

Although the book is long it moves at a quick pace and is not stunted by overly descriptive writing as it is in Roy’s novel. The characters are believable even though their situation is unusual.

One theme that is gently weaved into the book, yet holds a strong presence is that of God and religion. My favorite quotation regarding the theme: “A paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, but now they’ve learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used – metaphorically, of course – to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?” The belief in God shows up in different forms and varieties among the many characters in the novel. Iris, the narrator and the one responsible for the quotation above, obviously is not a believer. Her sister Laura is a believer in the essence of God; she does not allow the superficial aspects of organized religion to interfere with her behavior and acts in a way that is peculiarly honest. In a sense this makes her so pure and innocent that she is exempt from carrying any of the burdens of the family and they all fall on Iris. Reenie, a woman who looks after them and manages the house, although good at heart also believes in God, but in an institutional sense as well; she often cares about how certain behaviors appear to the community and gossips as many religious people do. However, Reenie is a moral character and a pillar for the two sisters.

The different forms of belief extend to other secondary and tertiary characters as well. I do think that the way each character decided to believe in God has an indirect impact on their fate since essentially it determines their outlook on life. Laura’s disappointments in human nature are earth shattering and drive her to suicide, Iris’s practical atheism is what makes her a perfect candidate for taking on the family’s burdens, and Reenie’s well-rounded approach to life results in a normal family, yet she does contradict her own “Christian morals” by becoming pregnant before wedlock.

Atwood has created an honest, intelligent, beautifully written, and entertaining novel. It’s a book for all lovers of literature!

A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin

The latest installment in the series, and in the interest of avoiding spoilers and redundancy, I'll not summarize or talk about the plot lines. But there is something about this book that irks me, although the irritation it inspires is different in kind than the one produced by its immediate precursor, A Feast for Crows, which was an overlong and overwrought chapter in the larger story. A Dance With Dragons is in fact of equivalent quality to the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, but it does not rise up to the excellence of the first and third books, A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords, respectively. And yet they all share the same fatal flaw, which, in the end might not be a flaw at all; namely, there is no end. It seems silly to view the series as a whole in critical terms until it's complete, and so you're left with mindless wondering about how the story will eventually unfold.

Although I can't help mindlessly speculate that the theme of the books will eventually be: Blood tells. Which is abhorrent, yet par for the course in the epic high fantasy genre, although I had hoped that Martin was trying to undermine this tired trope.

The Passion Artist - John Hawkes

Would it be necessary to pursue fleeing women into those ravished buildings? Would inmates and volunteers grapple with each other in dark rooms where ordinarily and under lock and key these same women slept during their endless and unnatural nights? In the midst of his fellows and standing inside the walls of La Violaine at last, suddenly he began to feel that he recognized the yard, the buildings, the catacombs and labyrinths of this world of women, as if he too were a prisoner in this very place and had always been so.
-pg 50 (Dalkey Archive ed)

The man referred to here is Konrad Vost, a widower who lives in a nameless city attached to a large women's prison called La Violaine. Vost lives an unremarkable life marked more by routine and habit than anything else, and aside from the demands of work and keeping his spare house in order for the sake of his daughter, he makes a daily visit to a cafe across from the prison, which is also called La Violaine, where the husbands and relatives of the incarcerated women all wait, each day, more as a ritual act of devotion than out of any expectation that their wives, daughters, or mothers will be freed. The woman for whom Vost waits is his mother, who is serving time for murdering Vost's father.

The only remarkable aspect of Vost's life is that it is defined by women, and not only by their mere absence or presence in his life, but also by their transgressions against him. His mother kills his father, his wife sleeps with another man, and, as the narrative unfolds, we find out that his daughter, far from being the perfect picture of a young student, has taken up prostitution. Later on, we come to find out that Vost's entire life has been one of suffered indignity at the hands of women, but in the story it is his daughter's turn toward prostitution that seems to jolt him into action. As soon as he finds out, he haplessly hires one of his daughter's schoolmates, who is a prostitute as well, and that marks the beginning of Vost's initial transformation into a man who is striving against the power that women seem to have had over his entire life.

After his tryst with the girl, the women in the prison riot, revolt and take control of the prison, forcing the men in the city to organize a response. Vost joins in and takes part in the battle for the prison, trading sex for violence in his struggle against women, and the violent and sex-filled narrative that follows is a peculiar odyssey of discovery and revelation, wherein Vost comes to understand and break free of the prison of his misogyny.

Thematically, the book runs the risk of being precious, or pat, but it is the way in which it is told that allows the book its modest success; Hawkes's nightmare-dread prose is operating at the same high caliber you would expect if you had read any of his other books. The physicality of the theme and the action matches well with his sensual style, and the horror intrinsic in his internal life is heightened by the dream-like quality of his writing. But, and there always seems to be a but for me when speaking of Hawkes, the book is not one of the best of his that I have read, and even the prose seems not to rise as high in its achievement as it does in, say, The Beetle Leg or The Lime Twig. Nevertheless, I know of no other book that treats the subject of misogyny so frighteningly, and Vost's strange cast of mind becomes, by the end, entirely familiar, even if its starting point of upended gender roles seems so alien at the beginning.

The God of Small Thing by Arundhati Roy

This is a book that I have begun many times but just recently pushed myself to finish! The story itself is wonderfully constructed; it has a gripping plot and the narrative is masterfully structured. In this story, Arundhati Roy unfolds the many layers of history belonging to a prominent Indian family in Ayemenem. The family has achieved its prominence through a pickling company founded by the grandmother. This factory becomes a central stronghold for the communist party, and even though the present owner of the factory, the son, is sympathetic to the worker’s needs, he is unable to meet their demands. This cleverly reveals the political climate of India while also tracing the family’s rise and fall.


The rise and fall of the family is also determined by the actions of the family members themselves. The narrative (3rd person) is structured in such a way so that the reader knows what will happen, but not quite how. Certain images from the story are woven in repeatedly before the event even takes place. In this sense the unfolding of the narrative is truly masterful, where the climax does not depend on the action itself because we are familiar with it, but at the exposure of the true personalities of the characters whence the events are properly described to us, some are hopeless, some helpless, but the most shocking character is cunningly and frighteningly evil.

Although the narrative is impressive, it must be said that the writing itself is abhorrently pretentious. The most concise example I can give is Roy’s use of similes. She uses them very liberally to the extent where two similes may be matched to one comparison. Automatically one way which Roy could improve her writing is by using only one simile per comparison. I have no idea why her editor did not think of that. Secondly, some similes were such far reaches and served no literary purpose. For example, she compares the permanence of something to government jobs. Being Greek, I know first-hand what that means, but it just didn’t fit in with the atmosphere of the novel. I understand that she is trying to emphasize the social and political climate of India, but she should save it for another novel rather than polluting this superbly structured story with useless words. I caught myself rolling my eyes many times while reading this novel.

If you can ignore the obnoxious similes and the other superfluous language that is pungent like perfume in the duty free stores of frantic and sleepless airports filled with bodies moving at different paces or like the intoxicating smell of diesel gas that somehow seeps into the car, even on cold days when the windows are rolled up tight to prevent the cold from biting, then I say read it because it is a meaningful story.

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.

These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Mark's, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning.

The book is subtitled The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, and here Ryder takes a step back from the story that he has been telling, essentially to himself, to reinforce Waugh's theme of the peculiar nature of the grace of the Catholic god, and of the unbeliever coming into the fold. This brief quotation combines several of the book's more notable features; that the narrative of events occurs almost entirely in the past, remembered by Charles Ryder; that the author uses elaborate metaphors and is capable of pulling them off quite beautifully; the wry misdirection of phrases such as 'for we possess nothing certainly except the past,' which litter the novel like a false trail of breadcrumbs. The inclusion of St. Mark's is no accident, nor is the broken biscuit in the mouth, and the deft circling around from the image of memories as a flock of angels that draw the mind to higher things to the image of startled and startling flock of pigeons leaving St. Mark's square bare underlines the economy of both Waugh's prose as well as his thematic dexterity.

The book begins with Charles Ryder serving as an officer during World War II, coincidentally stationed at the family seat of his estranged childhood friend Sebastian Flyte, and the location turns Ryder's thoughts to when he first met Sebastian when attending university. The narrative then begins in earnest, with Ryder recounting his dissolute university days, his meeting the Flyte family, the descent of Sebastian into a rather pure state of alcoholism. Later, Ryder moves on to describe the tragedy of his own life, wherein he marries and becomes a successful architectural painter, only to find himself in love with Sebastian's sister, Julia, who is married, as well. They have an affair, going so far as to break off their marriages, but in the end, it does not end well.

Or doesn't it? Despite the somber tone of the tale, and Ryder's eventual ostensibly lonely end, there is, hidden beneath the narrative, the theme of conversion that comes to life in the end. It is a flaw, a flaw that this book shares with some Graham Greene novels; namely, that the story seems to be of secondary concern, and that it is the Catholicism that matters. To be clear, it is not the fact that the book's theme is religious that irks me, it is that it is so deviously slipped in. The above quotation, which I think truly gets to the heart of the book beneath its attempts at misdirection, is followed by this passage, where Ryder is thinking on the memories of those moments that rise above the unremarkable moments that make up most lives:

The human soul enjoys these rare, classic periods, but, apart from them, we are seldom single or unique; we keep company in this world with a hoard of abstractions and reflections and counterfeits of ourselves--the sensual man, the economic man, the man of reason, the beast, the machine and the sleep-walker, and heaven knows what besides, all in our own image, indistinguishable from ourselves to the outward eye. We get borne along, out of sight in the press, unresisting, till we get the chance to drop behind unnoticed, or to dodge down a side street, pause, breathe freely and take our bearings, or to push ahead, outdistance our shadows, lead them a dance, so that when at length they catch up with us, they look at one another askance, knowing we a have a secret we shall never share.

I can't help but think that this novel would have been better had Charles Ryder kept that secret in his breast, locked away, and that Waugh kills the subtlety of his theme by hitting it, right at the end, on the head.

Amseterdam - Ian McEwan

Besides, in Vernon's life lately there was so much to think about, so much of the real world that thrilled, that mere fantasy could hardly compete. What he had said, what he would say, how it went down, the next move, the unraveling consequences of success... In the accumulating momentum of the week, practically every hour had revealed to Vernon new aspects of his powers and potential, and as his gifts for persuasion and planning began to produce results, he felt large and benign, a little ruthless, perhaps, but ultimately good, capable of standing alone against the current, seeing over the heads of his contemporaries, knowing that he was about to shape the destiny of his country and that he could bear the responsibility. More than bear--he needed this weight, his gifts needed the weight that no one else could shoulder.
-Pg 109

So thinks the Vernon the unremarkable newspaper man, who until the political scandal he is helping to stoke came to light, was described as an empty vessel of a human being whose position as an editor of a failing newspaper was a matter of chance and coincidence rather than any real ambition or skill. His hubris is notable only in that it is the unconvincing peak of his character's arc, and is the ham-handedly given key to this ham-fisted morality tale of an entertainment. Vernon, like the other main character in the book, Clive, a successful composer who falls short of his own aspirations to genius, is petty. In fact every other character in the book is petty, each armed with the commonplace instinct to disregard any idea of moral fortitude in the quest to get ahead. And in the end, although the two main characters suffer for their sins (the punishment brought about by an extremely unconvincing deux ex machina), the theme is not that the righteous will prevail, but that two awful men brought down by their own actions are merely representative of a society peopled with other, equally detestable human beings.

Is it funny? Perhaps, but not particularly so, as the humor is undercut consistently by the sense that reading the book is an utter waste of time. What it reminds me of is a Boccaccio story that has been stretched so as to make it long enough to be publishable as a novel (aided by a large type that indicts the publishers of this book with the same cynicism that is embodied by the books characters), which by being overly lengthened distributes the weight and heft of the tale in a diffuse, inefficient way. It seems like the whole point of the book was to introduce the cute trick that ends it, and although McEwan has a good grasp on the vicissitudes of newspaper men, artists, and politicians alike and can use his fluid prose to present the story in a painless way, the whole thing is undermined by the feeling that much of the detail included about the characters was introduced as needless filler, mealy potatoes added to the gristly meat in a watery, all-too-common stew.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me the condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.
-pg 471 (Bantam Classic)

By the time the reader runs across these lines, Melville in fact has accomplished what this passage describes; he's written a book that, while ostensibly about whales and one whale in particular, is used as a vehicle to explore everything. What is more surprising than his ambition is the execution, and how even in the descriptions of the most technical aspects of whaling he manages to be both edifying and entertaining. Or, at least, this was surprising to me, having long held the perhaps common misconception that this book is 'about' Ahab's quest for the white whale Moby-Dick.

What I found almost as enjoyable as the questing narrative, or the action of the hunting of the whales, was the descriptions of all the processes of the whaling world; the whales' biology; and, even, Melville's detours into the suburbs of the narrative, such as when he considers the dread that whiteness produces in men (there might be some connection here between Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Moby-Dick). But more than the sheer enjoyment of reading Ishmael talk about the importance of whaling, its history, the methods for hunting, killing, and processing the beasts mid-ocean, I was struck by how convincing it all is; I found myself believing, quite willingly, that the sum total of human knowledge of Cetacea was contained in this book; that nothing more had been discovered since; that here, when reading, in my hands was the key to that world. It was like a different order of the willing suspension of disbelief, that although Wikipedia might be a click away to discover, truly, what ambergris is, or the entire historical process for dismantling a whale, I preferred to be led by Ishmael's encyclopedic knowledge, however dated it might be.

Part of it, of course, is Melville's prose, and although almost any passage plucked from the text would serve to illustrate this point, as, even, the quotation above does, there are some moments of surpassing eloquence, that manage to both describe and inspire, such as this one, in which Ishmael describes their arrival to the South Pacific:

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
--pg 498

And although the prose here is stellar, the rhythm rising and falling as naturally as waves, the thematic depth that he achieves in such a short passage is particularly noteworthy and representative of the book in general. The Pacific, which serves well as a synecdoche for the ocean as a whole, is a vast graveyard for the entire world, over which the living observer travels, conscious of the "the tidebeating heart of the earth," which might stand for history or simply life, or both, in fact. In this way the passage also has an ourobourian quality to it, that if one considers the ocean, one is considering the land; if one is considering the dead then one must needs be thinking of those who have yet to pass; and so the passage serves to illustrate the thematic link between whale and man; they are complementary, and each worthy of a grand book to describe them to those who would listen.

Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabakov

The story opens with the main character, Cincinattus, receiving his death sentence and then returning to his prison cell. One very important thing that no one tells Cincinattus is when he is scheduled to die. Through a good portion of the novel he is trying to acquire this piece of information while being subjected to absurd, theatrical behavior of those around him such as the prison guard, prison director and a fellow prisoner. Furthermore, they continuously scold him and shoot him dirty looks for being apathetic towards their services.

This novel has a very dream-like element reflecting the absurdity of those around Cincinattus, ultimately a metaphor for society. Everyone knows what is happening, even what day Cincinattus is due to be beheaded, but they don’t let him in on it.

A very powerful scene that shows someone with some kind of understanding of Cinncinatus’s character is when his mother comes to visit him. Although he categorizes her with everyone else, in a world made of “tarbrush time”, she attempts to make sense of him unlike the other characters. Seeing her son in his prison cell she makes an apt connection to a toy from her childhood,

“Well, you would have a crazy mirror like that and whole collection of different nonnons, absolutely absurd objects, shapeless, mottles, pockmarked, knobby things, like some kind of fossils – but the mirror which completely distorted ordinary objects, no you see got real food, that is, when you placed one of these incomprehensible, monstrous objects so that it was reflected in the incomprehensible, monstrous mirrors, a marvelous thing happened… everything was restored, everything was fine, and the shapeless speckledness became in the mirror a wonderful, sensible image” (pg 105).

It is clear that Cinncinatus is one of these “absurd objects” but when put in front of a crazy mirror, he becomes a “sensible image”. His mother recognizes that there is beauty in her son. But she doesn’t see it, nor does she let him know when his execution will take place, so in Cinncinatus’s head she is no better than anyone else.

For such heavy material, this book is read at a quick pace. Things move quickly and everything is dreamlike. At one point, when they are whisking Cinncinatus away to his execution they clear out his cell as if it were a stage. Everything turns out to be a prop, even the little spider that kept Cinncinatus company. At one point, I had to put the book down because I reached a point where the psychological twists and turns were too upsetting. Oddly enough, I have done this with a book before, Lolita, also by Nabakov. No matter how disturbing it can be, it is a worthwhile read. Nabakov successfully takes his readers to another world, unknown to us and makes it completely realistic.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Over the years, a teacher that I once had and now have the pleasure of working with has repeatedly recommended this book to me. She explained that it is written by a woman who takes low-wage paying jobs in different States to come to a better understanding of how the poor scrape by through life. Although I thought it was a clever idea I didn’t jump at the opportunity to read this book until recently I thought, if she has recommended it to me so often, I’ll probably like it!

I did enjoy the read very much. For one, I find the subject relevant to today’s society. While her book is concerned with only three states: Florida, Maine and Minnesota there is a consistent pattern that I think extends beyond the U.S. and throughout the Western world (we all know that working conditions are far worse in some other regions). It is clear that Ehrenreich and I are on the same page on many social issues such as poverty, racism and rights in the work place. I found myself in full agreement with just about everything she says but I was also quite shocked at some of her observations, some jobs sounding like borderline slavery. Furthermore, it is really does help put the reader in the shoes of people who depend on such work for a living. Even if you pride yourself on being understanding towards those who serve you in restaurants, hotels, retail, etc. you still don’t know how much they go through and how rewarding a customer’s kindness can really be.

Generally, I’m more drawn to literary texts which is probably what kept me from reading this book. However, Ehrenreich’s voice reminded me a lot of Joan Didion’s, one of my favorite female writers. Both writers have a feminine voice but there is that sincerity which keeps the voice from becoming strictly feminine alienating male readers. Also, Ehrenreich takes on some pretty grimy jobs where some things she describes have no room for femininity. For example, she goes into detail about the different kinds of shit she had to clean off toilets as a cleaning lady in Maine.

If you are looking for a quick and interesting reading, maybe you want to take a break from all that heavy duty literary shit you often find yourself reading, this is a nice, intelligent break!

Herzog by Saul Bellow

Moses E Herzog, a character loosely based on Saul Bellow, has been divorced twice, fathered a child from each marriage and his career in academia is slowly diminishing when we meet him. This being the case, he is not altogether in a sound psychological and emotional state. To cope with his anger and frustrations he is writing mental letters to people with whom the nature of their relationships may vary from personal to professional, etc. The content of the letters is often triggered by different memories from Herzog’s past and we follow Herzog’s brain from letter to memory to letter to present and back again. In doing so, we are able to come to understand what has brought Herzog to this state and why he suffers as much as he does. By creating a narrative in such a style we see Herzog as a man mostly consumed by thoughts and ideas, not just having to do with intellectual matters, but personal matters of human behavior including his own.
Herzog is for the most part a kind, loving, trusting and loyal person. We see him continuously trusting people despite their betrayal of him over and over again. The main source of this betrayal is his coldly attractive second ex-wife Madeline. At the time we meet him, he is involved with another woman, who seems to be supportive, but he continuously is trying to escape her. Herzog has almost resigned himself to destruction by women by either avoiding the right women or hurting them and then binding himself to the nasty ones. Furthermore, he feels that his fate is sealed by his parents’ genes. He is always linking certain character traits of his own to those of his mother or father, often with a fatalistic approach, anticipating a tragic end.

At the climax of the story, Herzog tries to gain control by salvaging his relationship with his children as well as restoring a crumbling house in the middle of nowhere, Massachusetts. What we must decide is: is it too late for poor old Herzog?

The White-Luck Warrior - R. Scott Bakker

The sun glares. The air chills. The Mop tosses on and on, an endless ocean of swaying crowns. Whatever relief they hope to find in wind and sunlight is snuffed when they look to one another. Squinting. Eyes glittering from blackened faces. Ragged like beggars. In the gloom below, they seemed as true to their surroundings as the moss or the humus. Here on the heights, there is no overlooking either their straits or their desperation.

This book, and the series of which it is a part, falls easily into the category of world-building fantasy novels that pit evil forces against mankind, rife with battles, sex and court intrigue, sorcerers and gods and superhumans and non-human creatures both vile and sublime, and might easily be written off as one of the many Tor paperbacks that line the shelves of your local bookstore, the author's name stamped on a line of similarly designed covers. But what sets this series apart from other fantasy is the author's ambition. Embedded within the story is a philosophical core that is often absent in other books in the genre, one that guides not only many of the character's actions, but one that also seems to define the way that the world seems to move, the way that the story seems to unfold.


To summarize the plot would be tedious, but suffice it to say it is complicated, and has a novel structure in that narrative arcs are broken up into trilogies (so far). And despite Bakker's attempts to inject more seriousness into the genre, at times it seems the books take themselves too seriously, with the characters' conversations sometimes crossing the line into pedantry. The prose, which is far from terrible, at times becomes ponderous, as in the quotation above.

But the plot alone is worth plodding through the more tortuous sentence constructions, and the vision and the discipline evident in the execution of that vision are remarkable. It seems that Bakker has the whole story laid out in his mind, given the excellent pacing of the narratives in every story, as if each part is simply waiting for the book's bindings before it can be put on the shelf. For all its flaws, the story ranks high in the fantasy writing pantheon, even if it seems to fall short of the author's goals.

A Song of Ice and Fire (Series) - George R.R. Martin

This sprawling, epic, high-fantasy tale begins with A Game of Thrones, blooms into A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, only to falter with the latest installment in the series, A Feast for Crows. There is a forthcoming release of the next installment in July, A Dance With Dragons, which, if the author is to be believed, will be followed by two more installments some time in the distant future. Despite each volume's size (they range from around 800 pages to 1200), they don't easily fit into the category of novels, as they are more book-length chapters in a larger work, akin to the novel-in-three-parts structure of The Lord of the Rings, the progenitor of the modern fantasy story. The reason for this is simple: None of the books contains a true narrative arc, and each one ends with the explicit suggestion of a cliffhanging TV drama's 'to be continued,' which says nothing about the quality of the series but suggests an admirable span of attention and intensity of ardor in those who love the genre.

The story is as simple as it is complex. A kingdom that has known peace for a decade faces both internal and external threats. As the power structure that keeps the kingdom together crumbles, a many-sided war breaks out in the resultant power vacuum, with long-simmering grudges and rivalries coming up to a boil, all while in the background twinned supernatural threats loom large. The complexity is introduced by means of the narrative structure, a first person limited accounting of events from the viewpoints of an ever-increasing cast of characters, and as the larger, world-encompassing events unfold, the reader is given long, uninterrupted views of the denizens of the world in their cups, in bed, in battle, and generally doing their best to survive in an uncertain and cruel world at war.

The quality of the prose in the books seems to suffer with each new installment, which isn't necessarily a barrier to enjoying the extant works as a whole, but by the third book a vicious editor would have been a godsend, and the fourth book could easily be cut in half--it seems like there are whole chapters that can be skipped over with impunity. But the first book is excellent in its economy of pacing of events and exposition, and by the time you've finished it you're either hooked on the plot or your not, so anyone who'd continue on with the series would understandably, much like the author, be more focused on the plot developments than the intricacies of how well a given passage might be written.

One aspect of the books that is extremely well done is the restraint with which Martin uses magic. Magic and the supernatural crop up rarely, but often enough to foster a sense of wonder and speculation, which ultimately buttresses the reader's interest in the characters, their stories, their ultimate fates, and, in some cases, their origins, which is, in the end, the reason why so many have read and now wait for the next installment, and will wait for the next one after that.

Julian by Gore Vidal

In this historical fiction novel, Vidal depicts the life of the Byzantine emperor, Julian. Although, most of the story is told through Julian’s own memoirs, Vidal includes two other points of view.


The novel begins with a correspondence between Priscus, an Athenian intellectual and Libanius, an intellectual at Daphne. What is revealed in this correspondence is a mutual desire to revive the mission Julian tried to accomplish throughout the Roman Empire: bring down Christianity and revive Hellenism. Priscus is in possession of both Julian’s memoirs and his journal and Libanius plans to revive Hellenism by making these public.

Julian’s memoir describes different events in his life, beginning with watching his father being taken for execution while Julian and his brother are sent away for schooling where the present emperor, Constantine (their cousin), can keep a watchful eye on them ensuring they don’t threaten his position on the throne. Julian’s appetite for knowledge and quest for truth was evident at a young age; he always questioned Christianity and eventually found truth in the Greek Gods. Of course he mentions his different relationships with friends, academics and lovers. The relationship that I found to be most interesting was the one he had with his brother, Gallus. The two were complete opposites; Julian admired his brother’s strength (but also shocked and disgusted by how he used it) while Gallus constantly put Julian down. Such a juxtaposition leads to some intense scenes.

The construction of the narrative weaves in the voices of Libanius and Priscus, particularly the latter, throughout Julian’s memoirs. Either through their correspondence or notes scribbled in the margins of Julian’s manuscript, their version of the story is also presented. Vidal also keeps their voices consistent and different from each other’s. At points it felt like reading actual historical documents rather than an historical novel. Furthermore, the different points of view provide a structure to the novel that motivates the reader to continue, even if he is well informed about the history of Julian.

Hypocrisy plays a heavy role in many different aspects, the most obvious one being the role the Orthodox Church played in Byzantine society which is what led to Julian’s rejection of it at a young age. The following quote shows him taking action towards this corrupt bunch as emperor,

“Yet your religion preaches that you should not resist injury or go to law or even hold property, much less steal it! You have been taught to consider nothing your own, except your place in the other and better world. Yet you wear jewels, rich robes, build huge basilicas, all in this world, not the next. You were taught to despise money, yet you amass it,” (pg 336).

But even Julian, whose hypocrisies were not as blatant and reckless, made certain unethical decisions to further his own cause, such as letting his soldiers capture and rape women to keep their morale up or allowing the execution of an innocent man to maintain good relations with the senators (I think). There were even points where he compared his decision making to his hated cousin, Constantius, the emperor before him.

Priscus and Libanius also reveal some hypocrisies of their own. In their correspondence Libanius keeps a cheerful tone, even praising him at times, while he notes in the margin of Julian’s memoir “I hate Priscus”. Furthermore, Priscus presents himself as an honest person, he is even forward about his own hypocrisies. However, he scams Libanius for the documents of Julian! This makes the characters all very real and addresses the issue of everyone’s individual hypocrisies, yet, as an institution the hypocrisies become much more harmful and sickening. Despite some of Julian’s decisions he truly did try to eradicate the hypocrisies of both the palace and the church.

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

"It is only your guest, sir," I called out, desirous to spare him the humiliation of exposing his cowardice further. "I had the misfortune to scream in my sleep, owing to a frightful nightmare. I'm sorry I disturbed you."
-pg 33

An odd book, made odder still by its uncanniness, that unheimlich so well explained by Freud's exegesis of E.T.A. Hoffman's story The Sandman. For it's a familiar story, familiarly told, love unrequited followed by revenge, told through the eyes of a more or less passive observer to a passive listener, describing events that are so beyond the ken of normal life as to seem mythical, taken to such extremes as to be pure fantasy. There is something of fable about it, some Grimm unlogic to the lives, loves, motivations, and hatreds of the characters, that their actions, so far removed from what one would normally expect of the Victorian English, lose their unreality and seem to become etched in stone, like the lives of heroes and villains from some bygone age where, as in the Old Testament or Shakespeare, people know what it is to sin, and know well how to hate.

Mr. Lockwood, the man to whom the story of Heathcliff's revenge is told, seems to sum it up in the quotation above: The story is a nightmare which we, the readers and the listener, have entered into; the strange doublings, the two seemingly isolated estates, the many repetitions of names, and the surly demon around which it all revolves are the product of a sentient but troubled mind, and there is no moral purpose which guides them all, just dreamy developments that compound horror and outrage; to wake up would be a relief, but we're forced to move on by that same sadistic interest that draws people to bullfights, or, more apt, perhaps, car accidents and tragedies, auto-da-fes, perp walks, and other public, if less lethal, yet more lasting humiliations.

But to say it's a nightmare does not quite grasp the horrific fascination that I felt while reading the book. Instead, it might be better to say that it convinces you in some manner beyond belief that these characters are real, and terrible to behold, and if the characters are plagued by ghostly visitations and vengeful lives and loves from beyond the grave, leering up from the moist warm earth, scratching at windows, infiltrating dreams, then the characters themselves are ghosts set loose by Emile Bronte's awful imagination, and sent, as ghosts are, to trouble your waking life, not your dreams.

Bleak House - Charles Dickens

Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it flows where the houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and on the shore where the watchers stands to see the ship with her spread wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented only to him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London there is some rest.
pg. 668

The geography of this sentence seems to cover all; we begin on a high hill with a grand view of the surrounding land, behold the river and effortlessly follow its meandering path down to the sea, stop briefly to consider the distant deep, only to be arrested by the vision of a boat coming into a harbor beaconed in by a lighthouse's light, and then come back to rest in the middle of the city of London. At the beginning, it seems the night is the subject; then, the stillness of that night; and by the end of the sentence we discover what we've known all along, that sound is the paragraph's main concern, building up to what will be the crescendo of the passage, where "every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating."

And what is that sound? The noise of life? And why not, after all, characterize it that way? Dickens ranges both high and low to give a full portrait of London society, from street sweepers to Baronets, and weaves together every character's fate in a way that suggests that despite their differences, they all are part of the same entity, this vast vibrating glass, the consciousness contained within the muddy, foggy, wet, dispiriting city of London.

The novel is anchored by an ongoing case in the English courts of equity, Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, which has gone on for so long with so little progress that the original claimants are long dead and it is their various descendants who stand to reap a reward from its successful resolution, despite the fact that the case is nowhere near its conclusion. In the end, the case is a joke, Dickens's damnation of the entire court, but it serves to draw all the main characters into a common orbit, just as the city does, and there might be a statement inherent in their juxtaposition, where both are foggy, muddy entities around which the huddled masses gather to look for some meaning, the courts seem populated with dust, decay, and a grinding forth of the lowest form of existence--there are no people there, just lawyers, judges, claimants, and cases--whereas the city in contrast seems to sing with sympathetic life, for all the mean tragedies and awful loves won and lost, it is still a wondrously alive thing.

Another Country by James Baldwin

"The silence of the listeners became strict with abruptly focused attention, cigarettes were unlit, and drinks stayed on the tables; and in all of the faces, even the most ruined and most dull, a curious, wary light appeared. They were being assaulted by the saxophonist who perhaps no longer wanted their love and merely hurled his outrage at them with the same contemptuous, pagan pride with which he humped the air. And yet the question was terrible and real; the boy was blowing with his lungs and guts out of his own short past; somewhere in that past, in the gutters or gang fights or gang shags; in the acrid room, on the sperm-stiffened blanket, behind marijuana or the needle, under the smell of piss in the precinct basement, he had received the blow from which he never would recover and this no one wanted to believe. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?"

The title of Baldwin's book unintentionally captures what it is like to read it in 2011, so many decades after its first publication. Set in the years following World War II, the New York presented here feels like another universe. It is a place where a black man lives in fear of the cop on the corner, making every street a terrifying gauntlet. Mixed-race couples are confronted with scorn and revulsion in the faces they pass in Washington Square Park. A corned beef sandwich and a beer can buy you a young homeless man for the night, if you're lonely. After last call, in the city's shadowy spaces, patrons from the gay bar and the longshoreman bar meet in violent embrace, even though they would never acknowledge each other in the harsh light of day. Young couples live in cramped apartments, nothing more than cages where they claw at each other. Aging bohemians haunt the same haunts of their youth, clinging to the same stale dreams, and endlessly repeating the same stale ideas on how to live.

Above all it is a place where everyone, everywhere, is searching for love. And yet they hate themselves so much that all they can do is unleash their hate on those closest to them. This self-hate, which perpetuates a destructive Oresteia-like cycle, stems from the mere fact that they're black, or gay, or white even, a reminder that racism and prejudice poison both the oppressed and the oppressor.

Of course, some of these aspects of New York life are eternal; others, particularly those concerning the lives of blacks, I'm not in a position to say, and the news gives reasons for equal measures of optimism and pessimism. It would be comforting to think that things have changed, that we hate ourselves less, or at least for reasons that are less arbitrary. Yet Baldwin's vision of New York is so convincingly miserable, and at times so depressingly familiar, that I often wondered what I was doing here myself.

Another Country, as you can probably tell, is a brutal book, and brutally told, with the blunt force of the saxophonist described above, thrusting all his rage, all that is terrible and real, on an awestruck and uncomfortable audience. I suppose the question is whether that brutality serves some purpose in the end, whether in some twisted way such trials make for a better person, or a better nation as a whole. Perhaps by recounting the effects of society's sins, Baldwin is suggesting that some sacrifice has been made by his suffering characters, offering those who survive a chance to redeem all of history. It is an open-ended question whether redemption is possible for the characters in the book, who only rarely, if ever, rise above the maelstrom of their time and see a way to move forward. More worryingly, it remains an open-ended question for the contemporary reader too.

Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee

"The blow catches him from the right, sharp and surprising and painful, like a bolt of electricity, lifting him up off the bicycle. Relax! he tells himself as he flies through the air (flies through the air with the greatest of ease!), and indeed he can feel his limbs go obediently slack. Like a cat he tells himself: roll, then spring to your feet, ready for what comes next. The unusual word limber or limbre is on the horizon too.

"That is not quite as it turns out, however. Whether because his legs disobey or because he is for a moment stunned (he hears rather than feels the impact of his skull on the bitumen, distant, wooden, like a mallet-blow), he does not spring to his feet at all, but on the contrary slides metre after metre, on and on, until he is quite lulled by the sliding.

"He lies stretched out, at peace. It is a glorious morning. The sun's touch is kind. There are worse things than letting oneself go slack, waiting for one's strength to return. In fact there might be worse things than having a quick nap. He closes his eyes; the world tilts beneath him, rotates; he goes absent."

So begins Slow Man, a book that I will press on everyone I know. These first three paragraphs are a good representation of the book's style. It is formal yet playful, austere yet warm. Each word pulls its own weight, and it's as if they are being used for the first time, presented afresh in all their wondrous glory.

The man in the accident is Paul Rayment, an elderly, bookish, solitary type. He finds himself in the hospital, at the mercy of a young, efficient surgeon who amputates his leg. He is discharged, and left to fend for himself in his lonely apartment. He goes to physical therapy sessions, hires a nurse, but it doesn't stop the gloom from settling in. He is a cripple; his life as he knew it is over.

A new nurse comes into his life, an immigrant from Croatia. He discovers that he is falling in love with her, and the gloom begins to lift. This part of the book is heart-wrenching -- I must have been quite a sight on the subway, literally wincing with pain, and every so often slamming the covers shut. There were many sharp intakes of breath and whispered pleas to the main character. I also found myself laughing out loud (which never fails to irritate me when other people on the subway do it), a welcome novelty for a Coetzee book.

And then, about one-third of the way through, someone new appears on Paul's doorstep: Elizabeth Costello. Yes, Elizabeth Costello, the titular character of another Coetzee book, who, if the rumors swirling among Coetzee watchers are to be believed, could possibly be the alter ego of the great man himself. Costello, a renowned writer, impishly inserts herself into Paul's affairs. It turns out that she may or may not be the author of all that is happening, and may or may not be in total control of her characters, a la At Swim-Two-Birds.

My reaction to this development was swift and unequivocal: What have you done? No one wants to play your stupid postmodern games! Give me back the touching story of the crippled, solitary man who finds love in the autumn of his life! We hates Elizabeth Costello, we wants our precious!

Etc. But it turns out that the games are a great deal of fun. And the book remains, to the end, utterly gripping.

Howards End by E.M. Forster

"'Somehow, when that kind of man looks frightened it is too awful. It is all right for us to be frightened, or for men of another sort--Father, for instance; but men like that! When I saw all the others so placid, and Paul mad with terror in case I said the wrong thing, I felt for a moment that the whole Wilcox family was a fraud, just a wall of newspapers and motor-cars and golf-clubs, and that if it fell I should find nothing behind it but panic and emptiness.'"

At first glance, it would seem that Forster's Howards End, the story of two English families at the turn of the twentieth century, bears little resemblance to A Passage to India, a later work set in India during the height of Britain's colonial supremacy. The latter, while tenderly exploring the lives of its characters, is set against a backdrop of epochal events, and the entanglements that arise between Englishman and Indian are the ripple-like repercussions of a broader clash of civilizations. Howards End, on the other hand, describes a clash of a much smaller scale: that between the upper-middle class and the middle-middle class.

Typically English! you might cry. So inexplicably obsessed with the fine gradations of class! But while Howards End is concerned with quintessentially English dilemmas, and is more humble in historical and geographic scope, it bears similarities to its worldly successor. It is perhaps even more disturbing, suggesting that the fathomless mystery of the other can reveal itself not only in far-flung places, but right next door, amongst one's countrymen.

Howards End is the name of a house, and serves as a symbol of England as a whole. The claim to this property becomes a contest between the practical-minded and business-sound Wilcoxes and the idealistic and art-obsessed Schlegels. The Wilcoxes have their hands on "all the ropes" of the material world; the Schlegels a deep dedication to the more nebulous world of human relationships. In their dealings with each other, as well as with the pitiable clerk Leonard Bast (a representative of the lower-middle class), we see the hypocrisies and strengths of the warring clans. As Virgina Woolf puts it, the story is a "struggle between the things that matter and the things that do not matter, between reality and sham, between the truth and the lie." Forster accomplishes this all with humor, keen observation and great feeling.

Beneath it all is the terror that comes from gaining a glimpse of another's life. It is a threat to the fortresses we make of our beliefs; it is the shaking of the earth under one's feet. The most famous scene in Passage to India occurs at the Marabar Caves, where Mrs. Moore, new to the country, hears a disconcerting echo in one of the caves. It is a sound that is beyond language, beyond understanding; to her it sounds like "boum." What this "boum" means remains vague, but we know it shatters the foundation upon which she has built her life, a foundation that began to crack when she came into contact with an alien culture. Reading Howards End, perhaps we can put words to that sound: panic and emptiness, panic and emptiness.