"Wait. What happened to 'Catch-22'?"
Oh, it's a thing. It still exists. In fact it is still sitting on my bookshelf with the other of those 100BYSRBYD. The only reason that I'm moving on to the next book on the list is because I couldn't take the inanity anymore. I spent months trying and months avoiding it by setting parenting magazines and random flyers I received on top of it. Sure enough it kept peeking out from under the stack with an accusing glare. "FINE," I shouted and sat down with it for thirty minutes a day for about a week. At the end of those few days the book magically leapt from my hand, flew across the room and smacked into the wall.
Final Word on "Catch-22": While I'm sure that it has a place in the great works of literature I don't believe that a slot in the top 20 of the top 100 is deserved at ALL. This book is pretty much the novel equivalent of many "Palm d'Or" Winners at the Cannes film festival or, indeed, some of the "Best Film" winners at the Oscars. Often it seems that those films win not because of artistic merit but because it has something perceived as "worthy", a political message or something socially "relevant" to the time. It is in that same manner that I view this novel. It has an audience, sure. The Mary-like deification of prostitutes, the disregard and target abuse of any virtuous character that happens to come along, and the constant Post-Modern message that there is no goodness, there is no virtue, and all your institutions are crap so let's tear them down, violate innocence & goodness, and somehow society will magically hold together since we don't have any constructive ideas; it all coalesced into something I realized wasn't worthy of my time. I've ranted about Post-Modernism before and I realized that just because the fecal matter is being sold at the market doesn't mean I have to purchase it. It's a clever parlor trick devoid of any substance. /rantoff
"Rebecca" on the other hand has been quite a joy to read. I started it less than a week ago and I'm already one-third of the way through it.
WIKA (What I Know About): Essentially the only thing I knew about this novel coming into it was that if I was reading it in public, chances were someone would think I was reading a trashy romance novel as opposed to a literary romance novel. The cover looks as though it is wrapped in scarlet silk, much like rumpled bed sheets, and only the title and author's name besides. It has all the indications of being a Harlequin novel too hot to put something representative of the contents on the cover. Yes, I could have gotten a handsome looking trade paperback edition that would be less scandalous looking...but I would have paid 10$ more for the privilege. Other than that I knew nothing. I hadn't even heard of the opening line, "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" which is supposedly as famous as, "Call me Ishmael". I was ready for a surprise.
The novel begins with something you couldn't get away with in fiction these days; two chapters of tease. The author spends those two chapters making it clear that they occur long after the end of the book. It describes the emotional state of two nameless characters who are trying to move on from some unnamed tragedy that has expelled them from Manderley much like the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.
The first thing that grabs me about this novel is the author's writing style. I'm going to say it right here and right now...I'm in love with Daphne Du Maurier. I have not "swooned" this much while reading a novel because of spot on word usage to create a mood in a long time. She is absolutely fabulous and this novel is a moment of literary lightning captured for all time.
Describing the Manderley in her dreams she writes: "Nature had come into her own again and, little by, little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers....The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church."
In chapter two she begins: "We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and the sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion, as it had been before."
In describing the unnamed male companion stuck in this emotional turmoil (also from chapter two): "He will fall to smoking cigarette after cigarette, not bothering to extinguish them, and the glowing stubs will lie around on the ground like petals. He will talk quickly and eagerly about nothing at all, snatching at any subject as a panacea to pain."
Woo! Somebody fan me. I've got the vapors.
It's this combination of excellent language usage and insight into the human condition that makes a good book for me. As we've said all along, a great novel speaks to these common, universal human experiences and sheds light on them. It sets us in the direction of hope and we can glean wisdom along the way, even if it is only the comforting wisdom of, "You are not alone."
In the third chapter we are introduced to Mrs. Van Hopper, who is easily one of my favorite characters in fiction. Not my favorite in the same way Bilbo Bagins, Jane Eyre, or Hamlet is. She is more in line with a Falstaff, or Meriadoc Brandybuck. Not essential for the whole novel, but a delight as they come on and enter the stage.
Mrs. Van Hopper is a bit of a one woman paparazzi. She travels to Monte Carlo every year not to take in the sights and relax. Rather, she goes to find and ingratiate herself to the rich and famous also on vacation there.
"It seemed as though notables must be fed to her, much as invalids are spooned their jelly; and though titles were preferred by her, any face seen in a social paper served as well. Names scattered in a gossip column, authors, artists, actors and their kind, even the mediocre ones, as long as she had learnt of them in print."
The unnamed protagonist is introduced as a sort of hired companion for Mrs. Van Hopper. She was hired for ninety pounds, payable at the end of the season. She is often draw into the games Mrs. Van Hopper plays with the famous. Essentially the old woman runs a scam where she declares that she saw the individual at the wedding of her nephew, produces a picture of the happy couple on their honeymoon, and trusts the fact that famous people attend a ridiculous number of weddings they can't remember and depends on their good manners to treat her like an acquaintance they simply forgot. This nets her no end of favors and invitations to parties and lavish estates.
"There was nothing for it but to sit in my usual place beside Mrs. Van Hopper while she, like a large, complacent spider, spun her wide net of tedium about the stranger's person."
Seriously..."wide net of tedium". My goodness, I'm in love heart palpitations and all.
The following chapters contain the whirlwind romance with the much older and previously married Maxim, aided by Mrs Van Hopper catching a nasty case of influenza, and lends some foreshadowing of future difficulties and a secret buried or, more appropriately, drowned. In the end the two get unexpectedly married, have a honeymoon in Italy, and return to Maxim's home of Manderley.
The introduction to Manderley chapters are quite beautifully written and you get a genuine sense of awkwardness as the protagonist begins her life in someone else's place, and with someone else's things. How strange and otherworldly would it be to sit in a chair beside your husband knowing that its cushion had already had years forming to someone else, that the dog cuddled up to you did so because of a habit formed with someone else, that your bed, desk, bathroom items and all were previously used by another who came before you. She struggles with this throughout. Then she begins to meet people who all judge her against Rebecca, commenting on how different she is from her, wondering if she will uphold the traditions of parties and balls, etc. Everywhere Rebecca is praised and our unnamed heroine begins a slide down into a mental breakdown as she begins to compare herself to Rebecca in her own soul.
I actually look forward to this book with delight every time I sit down to read it. While I know what happens in the end (because I'm like Harry from "When Harry Met Sally") I look forward to the end. It's not a happy ending, but it is certainly in keeping with the tone of the book.
Fun Fact: Daphne Du Maurier was also the author of "Birds" which Alfred Hitchcock based his film "The Birds" on.
Pax,
W
Showing posts with label 100 Novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 100 Novels. Show all posts
Friday, January 20, 2017
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Post Modern War (Catch 22 chapters 1-9)
First off...I'm going to start by being honest. I already don't like this book. It is going to take a major emotional shift near the end (much like the one that happens at the end of Catcher in the Rye which no one pays attention to anyway for how to interpret the book) for me to agree that this is one of the 100 Books You Should Read Before You Die.
From the very first chapter it has all the flavor of the play "Waiting for Godot" which is a play best summed up in the review "Ninety minutes, nothing happens, and nobody learned anything".
The first nine chapters are some fairly decent character studies on different people that the main character, Yossarian, has come into contact with both in his flight group and at the hospital. Yossarian has a naturally high temperature and he complains of pain in his liver which gets him out of having to go back to war. Since he is an officer he spends his hospital time, when not annoying or being annoyed by his fellow patients, with the job of redacting letters. He doesn't follow any specific protocols in redacting said letters. Sometimes he has a ban on adverbs, other times he blacks out everything in the body of the letter leaving only the closing. Why? Because it entertains him to do so.
Every officer who does the redacting must sign the redacted document. He signs not his name but instead Irving Washington, or Washington Irving so that they can't trace it back to him.
And it's about this time that I realize this is a book of Post Modernism. It isn't labeled as such. Some people call it Black Humor, others Absurdist Fiction, but ultimately it has the saccharine likability of Post Modernism. It screams from every page, "Ooooh, I'm clever. Look at me!! I'm Clever! Wasn't that writing clever? Here, I'll even spin round and do the same joke with different words because I'm so effing Clever. That's right. I'm clever with a capital "c"! That's how clever I am."
Imagine Abbott and Costello performing "Who's on First" except with knowing "didja get it" nods to the audience, and then if there was even an iota of doubt they would repeat the whole line again, stomp after the punchline, and hold out a hand to signal that the audience should laugh.
Yossarian is not at all a likable character in my estimation. Like many in Post Modernist fiction, the man has no heart or consideration beyond himself. He is not a passive observer so much as a vindictive observer. Each good thing he sees he pours his derision on. And this is my issue with Post Modernism in general. It says, "Let's tear down and destroy anything good and noble...and then not replace it with anything." It is vanity.
For instance when Yossarian describes the, "Texan who was from Texas." Ok, I will admit happily that it was the one line that actually got a laugh from me. I mean, who hasn't met a Texan who would happily tell you with overpride "I'm a Texan from Texas"? However the line later follows, "The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous, and likable. In three days no one could stand him." In speaking of Clevinger, another patient who seemed nice enough, "The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with." These other guys are decent men who simply aren't in on the joke, so let's deride and mock them. Why? Cause we're bored and there's a war on that we are trying to avoid going back to.
In the aspect of criticism of war I do have to give it props. It echoes much of my own sentiment as a pacifist. The military sends a C.I.D. man to catch Washington Irving or Irving Washington in the hospital and in chapter two it begins, "In a way the C.I.D. man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their lives."
All sorts of horrible things happen in war that are against all rationality. I could never volunteer for such a thing. If I was drafted I would be more of a liability than anything because of certain sensibilities like not being able to put away rationality and that would cause me to hesitate. I tend to over think especially when the pressure is on. However, the difference between myself and Yossarian is the fact that when called upon I would go, and once there I would do my best to protect the one on my left and my right. I would fight with everything rather than sit in a hospital criticizing others and childishly redacting love letters with no thought to those on the other side of them.
"Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who belived in God, Motherhood, and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him. 'I hate that son of a bitch,' Yossarian growled."
A few back and forths later Yossarian reveals his "Rebel Without a Cause" style philosophy.
"What son of a bitch do you hate, then?"
"What son of a bitch is there?"
Many of the men got together to build a sort of Officer's Club that ended up taking a lot of work which Yossarian never went to help at until it was already finished. "It was truly a splendid structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his."
In the world of Catch 22 everyone hates someone, everyone is trying to scam everyone else, there is nothing to live for, nothing to die for, and nothing worth anything. Every hero is torn down, every man with any value despised and held in contempt. It's very much the world we live in now fifty five years later. This mentality has spread everywhere to the point that schools are stopping teaching the founders of this country as "Great Men". They are being taught as average guys who didn't really do anything special. We tear down our heroes, eviscerate virtues, call truth a lie. We are swinging a sledgehammer at anything solid in a two story house and expecting it to magically stay in tact.
I don't believe war to be a virtue, or even something glorious. War is, as has been famously said, hell. War is madness. But it is sometimes a necessary madness. Even I, pacifist I am, have to admit that.
In these first one hundred pages the only real thing I got from any of this were brief moments where PTSD shown through the murk. Chapter 6 on Hungry Joe had a lot of really good moments where the damage of war was clear and made me think differently about those coming home. Naturally Doc Daneeka ruins plenty of moments by bemoaning how he had to go to war and left behind a 50k a year medical practice with plenty of tax free income on the side. "I gotta laugh when I hear someone like Hungry Joe screaming his brains out every night. I really gotta laugh. He's sick? How doesn't he think I feel."
Consumed with self, zero empathy, null compassion is what characterizes much of this novel. The book casts a microscopic lens on the cracks in any seemingly good individual while neglecting to cast it upon those deriding such individuals. It casts promiscuous wives of higher ups as blessed saints. Literally says "He had sinned, and it was good..." "Major Major had lied, and it was good" in a bit of mockery of God declaring the different phases of creation "and it was good".
I don't hold out much hope for my enjoyment of this novel. It tears down everything and affirms nothing which is pretty much the opposite of the novels I've loved in this series.
Well...I do have to admit it taught me what the word "furgle" means so...that's something.
Pax.
W
From the very first chapter it has all the flavor of the play "Waiting for Godot" which is a play best summed up in the review "Ninety minutes, nothing happens, and nobody learned anything".
The first nine chapters are some fairly decent character studies on different people that the main character, Yossarian, has come into contact with both in his flight group and at the hospital. Yossarian has a naturally high temperature and he complains of pain in his liver which gets him out of having to go back to war. Since he is an officer he spends his hospital time, when not annoying or being annoyed by his fellow patients, with the job of redacting letters. He doesn't follow any specific protocols in redacting said letters. Sometimes he has a ban on adverbs, other times he blacks out everything in the body of the letter leaving only the closing. Why? Because it entertains him to do so.
Every officer who does the redacting must sign the redacted document. He signs not his name but instead Irving Washington, or Washington Irving so that they can't trace it back to him.
And it's about this time that I realize this is a book of Post Modernism. It isn't labeled as such. Some people call it Black Humor, others Absurdist Fiction, but ultimately it has the saccharine likability of Post Modernism. It screams from every page, "Ooooh, I'm clever. Look at me!! I'm Clever! Wasn't that writing clever? Here, I'll even spin round and do the same joke with different words because I'm so effing Clever. That's right. I'm clever with a capital "c"! That's how clever I am."
Imagine Abbott and Costello performing "Who's on First" except with knowing "didja get it" nods to the audience, and then if there was even an iota of doubt they would repeat the whole line again, stomp after the punchline, and hold out a hand to signal that the audience should laugh.
Yossarian is not at all a likable character in my estimation. Like many in Post Modernist fiction, the man has no heart or consideration beyond himself. He is not a passive observer so much as a vindictive observer. Each good thing he sees he pours his derision on. And this is my issue with Post Modernism in general. It says, "Let's tear down and destroy anything good and noble...and then not replace it with anything." It is vanity.
For instance when Yossarian describes the, "Texan who was from Texas." Ok, I will admit happily that it was the one line that actually got a laugh from me. I mean, who hasn't met a Texan who would happily tell you with overpride "I'm a Texan from Texas"? However the line later follows, "The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous, and likable. In three days no one could stand him." In speaking of Clevinger, another patient who seemed nice enough, "The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with." These other guys are decent men who simply aren't in on the joke, so let's deride and mock them. Why? Cause we're bored and there's a war on that we are trying to avoid going back to.
In the aspect of criticism of war I do have to give it props. It echoes much of my own sentiment as a pacifist. The military sends a C.I.D. man to catch Washington Irving or Irving Washington in the hospital and in chapter two it begins, "In a way the C.I.D. man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their lives."
All sorts of horrible things happen in war that are against all rationality. I could never volunteer for such a thing. If I was drafted I would be more of a liability than anything because of certain sensibilities like not being able to put away rationality and that would cause me to hesitate. I tend to over think especially when the pressure is on. However, the difference between myself and Yossarian is the fact that when called upon I would go, and once there I would do my best to protect the one on my left and my right. I would fight with everything rather than sit in a hospital criticizing others and childishly redacting love letters with no thought to those on the other side of them.
"Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who belived in God, Motherhood, and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him. 'I hate that son of a bitch,' Yossarian growled."
A few back and forths later Yossarian reveals his "Rebel Without a Cause" style philosophy.
"What son of a bitch do you hate, then?"
"What son of a bitch is there?"
Many of the men got together to build a sort of Officer's Club that ended up taking a lot of work which Yossarian never went to help at until it was already finished. "It was truly a splendid structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his."
In the world of Catch 22 everyone hates someone, everyone is trying to scam everyone else, there is nothing to live for, nothing to die for, and nothing worth anything. Every hero is torn down, every man with any value despised and held in contempt. It's very much the world we live in now fifty five years later. This mentality has spread everywhere to the point that schools are stopping teaching the founders of this country as "Great Men". They are being taught as average guys who didn't really do anything special. We tear down our heroes, eviscerate virtues, call truth a lie. We are swinging a sledgehammer at anything solid in a two story house and expecting it to magically stay in tact.
I don't believe war to be a virtue, or even something glorious. War is, as has been famously said, hell. War is madness. But it is sometimes a necessary madness. Even I, pacifist I am, have to admit that.
In these first one hundred pages the only real thing I got from any of this were brief moments where PTSD shown through the murk. Chapter 6 on Hungry Joe had a lot of really good moments where the damage of war was clear and made me think differently about those coming home. Naturally Doc Daneeka ruins plenty of moments by bemoaning how he had to go to war and left behind a 50k a year medical practice with plenty of tax free income on the side. "I gotta laugh when I hear someone like Hungry Joe screaming his brains out every night. I really gotta laugh. He's sick? How doesn't he think I feel."
Consumed with self, zero empathy, null compassion is what characterizes much of this novel. The book casts a microscopic lens on the cracks in any seemingly good individual while neglecting to cast it upon those deriding such individuals. It casts promiscuous wives of higher ups as blessed saints. Literally says "He had sinned, and it was good..." "Major Major had lied, and it was good" in a bit of mockery of God declaring the different phases of creation "and it was good".
I don't hold out much hope for my enjoyment of this novel. It tears down everything and affirms nothing which is pretty much the opposite of the novels I've loved in this series.
Well...I do have to admit it taught me what the word "furgle" means so...that's something.
Pax.
W
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
To Endings that are Good...Enough (Little Women wrap-up)
By heaven. Has it really been since September that I last wrote in this blog? I haven't been idle, if that comforts anyone. It does me a great comfort given that I usually spend quite a bit of time idle.
`There's been October, which really needs no excuse. October is a time for celebration for my people, the Autumnals, and is the one month of the year which I look forward to the most. It's also the one month of the year where the temperature is perfect for going out of doors. The summer is too sticky, spring too wishy washy, and winter too frigid by half. October is, in a word, perfection.
There was a wedding in there somewhere within that month, and a vacation to Colonial Williamsburg.
November was my birthday and the time of NaNoWriMo was upon me in which I get really crabby, exhausted, and want nothing to do with writing after the requisite 50k words have been accomplished.
December came quite hard and fast, as they are wont to do. You never realize how busy a December can be until you're in recovery mode somewhere in the later part of the month. And that's why we find ourselves here and now. While in recovery I finished Little Women.
I don't remember if, and I'm too lazy to go look, I talked last time about the marked difference between the first half of the novel and the last half. Part two took me completely by surprise with the difference in tone. It was as if so much time had elapsed between the two parts that she had no idea where to begin and, when in doubt, moralize.
Ms. Alcott did have quite a bit of moralizing going on in the novel to begin with, however she diffused it by employing her characters rather than herself as the agent of it. If I was a better blogger I would have researched the time in between parts, but alas. What I do suspect is that the two parts were sold separately and she was told what people liked about the first part. Praise before a novel's completion can be a terrible thing.
A few months ago at my writer's group the members had almost universal praise for my chapter, especially how poetic each line was which was so appropriate for the genre and subject matter. It was so well praised that when I sat down to write the next chapter instead of flowing naturally like it usually does I was given to fits and half starts. Why? Because I was focusing on the poetry of the language than the actual story.
Halfway through this second half of the book, somewhere around where Mr. Bhaer is established as a fixture in Jo's life away from home having moved beyond acquaintance, Alcott picks up with the verve, wit, and natural ease of her writing that I quite admire. The little pastiches showing life with Meg's family became a bit heavy handed again, but I do have to admit that the problems they suffered are remarkably still issues in families today.
I was as surprised as anyone to find that my opinion of Amy has actually softened. My recollection of the movie version was that they tried to turn it into a little love triangle with Amy stealing Laurie and Jo being outraged or, at least, a little miffed about the whole thing. Here I was actually overjoyed to find that Amy grew up, that she caused Laurie to grow up, and Jo was completely grown up about the whole thing; that she truly never did harbor any feelings Laurie beyond sisterhood. I do understand that it's difficult to make a wholly interesting movie in the modern age with that as the story, and I wonder how many faithful readers of the book were outraged. Jo didn't miss her chance because she never wanted one. Showing a young woman who is actually mature, wise, and thoughtful would likely be an unbelievable thing in media these days where we embrace figures who live on the edge, are incomplete without a man (any man), and act foolishly at every turn but it all seems to work out in the end anyway.
I was equally interested in Beth's passing. It was such an understated, almost normal sort of thing to happen. I suppose most of that is due to the fact that everyone knew, had time to prepare, and loved her through the whole ordeal. Had it been a sudden death it would have been handled differently, I'm sure. Mourning occurred but it wasn't drawn out. The pain was there but not quite so acutely portrayed. So much of modern movies and books is all about grabbing you by the emotions and tugging as hard as you can. This was something different; a sweet passing, a gentle goodbye, a loving caress of a death. I could moralize here myself and write about how we are so desensitized and so yearn to feel anything that of course we gravitate towards more overtly emotional tales.
The romance of Bhaer and Jo was something that I was naturally predisposed to enjoy. Separation, mounds of letters in a year, sensible yet whole hearted love between them, etc. is something that mirrors my own love story. Ok, my beloved was the sensible one. I was the one who racked up a $450 phone bill while she was at school in Oxford. I've never claimed sensibility when it comes to my bride.
My only complaint about the novel, and it is such a petty thing, was the ending. It ends as it began, of course, being a portrait of a simple, loving family with all their faults, foibles, blessings, and the wisdom of their parents on display. I can't imagine an appropriate ending that would tie everything in a nice bow, and so perhaps I shouldn't complain.
Overall I pretty much loved this novel, and all the more to find that Amy doesn't remain a hideous person. I set out on this journey to see if the novels would change me, and so far they have, this one especially. When I consider their "simple" life I don't do too much romanticizing. Modernity certainly has more avenues to and support for living a crazed hectic life, but somewhere between the pages I made a connection. It's a connection I'm not sure I can vocalize here, but naturally I'll try.
There wasn't more time in a day back then with which we could sit, ruminate, and come to a correct course of action. There are a bajillion more choices of things we can do with our time, but that is what they all are; choices. The life best lived is not in embracing every possibility of what we can do with our time, but choosing well and, as it laughably turns out, choosing fewer. The right things, the beneficial things, the healthy things, the great and honorable things are all still there for us to choose. They have endured. Maybe society is more like my daughter who prefers the mediocre but color episodes of The Andy Griffith Show because, "Old things are not good and these are better because they are new" (yes...she'll be brought to wisdom if I have to drag her kicking and screaming). I've gained an appreciation for the old and timeless because of those two qualities. The old endures because of its virtues and timeless things are...well...timeless. I shy away from every brand new iteration of Apple Products that they just have to have while the old one is just as usable. A disposable, constantly upgradeable society is by its very nature a house of cards. We have virtue and principles when it is convenient and violate them when it is not, and that's not the world I want to live in. Remember...once upon a time a handshake was a legal agreement...and now we prenup our marriages.
Likesay, I'm not sure where I'm headed because of these books, but I'm fairly certain it will be better than the direction I was heading without them.
Pax,
W
`There's been October, which really needs no excuse. October is a time for celebration for my people, the Autumnals, and is the one month of the year which I look forward to the most. It's also the one month of the year where the temperature is perfect for going out of doors. The summer is too sticky, spring too wishy washy, and winter too frigid by half. October is, in a word, perfection.
There was a wedding in there somewhere within that month, and a vacation to Colonial Williamsburg.
November was my birthday and the time of NaNoWriMo was upon me in which I get really crabby, exhausted, and want nothing to do with writing after the requisite 50k words have been accomplished.
December came quite hard and fast, as they are wont to do. You never realize how busy a December can be until you're in recovery mode somewhere in the later part of the month. And that's why we find ourselves here and now. While in recovery I finished Little Women.
I don't remember if, and I'm too lazy to go look, I talked last time about the marked difference between the first half of the novel and the last half. Part two took me completely by surprise with the difference in tone. It was as if so much time had elapsed between the two parts that she had no idea where to begin and, when in doubt, moralize.
Ms. Alcott did have quite a bit of moralizing going on in the novel to begin with, however she diffused it by employing her characters rather than herself as the agent of it. If I was a better blogger I would have researched the time in between parts, but alas. What I do suspect is that the two parts were sold separately and she was told what people liked about the first part. Praise before a novel's completion can be a terrible thing.
A few months ago at my writer's group the members had almost universal praise for my chapter, especially how poetic each line was which was so appropriate for the genre and subject matter. It was so well praised that when I sat down to write the next chapter instead of flowing naturally like it usually does I was given to fits and half starts. Why? Because I was focusing on the poetry of the language than the actual story.
Halfway through this second half of the book, somewhere around where Mr. Bhaer is established as a fixture in Jo's life away from home having moved beyond acquaintance, Alcott picks up with the verve, wit, and natural ease of her writing that I quite admire. The little pastiches showing life with Meg's family became a bit heavy handed again, but I do have to admit that the problems they suffered are remarkably still issues in families today.
I was as surprised as anyone to find that my opinion of Amy has actually softened. My recollection of the movie version was that they tried to turn it into a little love triangle with Amy stealing Laurie and Jo being outraged or, at least, a little miffed about the whole thing. Here I was actually overjoyed to find that Amy grew up, that she caused Laurie to grow up, and Jo was completely grown up about the whole thing; that she truly never did harbor any feelings Laurie beyond sisterhood. I do understand that it's difficult to make a wholly interesting movie in the modern age with that as the story, and I wonder how many faithful readers of the book were outraged. Jo didn't miss her chance because she never wanted one. Showing a young woman who is actually mature, wise, and thoughtful would likely be an unbelievable thing in media these days where we embrace figures who live on the edge, are incomplete without a man (any man), and act foolishly at every turn but it all seems to work out in the end anyway.
I was equally interested in Beth's passing. It was such an understated, almost normal sort of thing to happen. I suppose most of that is due to the fact that everyone knew, had time to prepare, and loved her through the whole ordeal. Had it been a sudden death it would have been handled differently, I'm sure. Mourning occurred but it wasn't drawn out. The pain was there but not quite so acutely portrayed. So much of modern movies and books is all about grabbing you by the emotions and tugging as hard as you can. This was something different; a sweet passing, a gentle goodbye, a loving caress of a death. I could moralize here myself and write about how we are so desensitized and so yearn to feel anything that of course we gravitate towards more overtly emotional tales.
The romance of Bhaer and Jo was something that I was naturally predisposed to enjoy. Separation, mounds of letters in a year, sensible yet whole hearted love between them, etc. is something that mirrors my own love story. Ok, my beloved was the sensible one. I was the one who racked up a $450 phone bill while she was at school in Oxford. I've never claimed sensibility when it comes to my bride.
My only complaint about the novel, and it is such a petty thing, was the ending. It ends as it began, of course, being a portrait of a simple, loving family with all their faults, foibles, blessings, and the wisdom of their parents on display. I can't imagine an appropriate ending that would tie everything in a nice bow, and so perhaps I shouldn't complain.
Overall I pretty much loved this novel, and all the more to find that Amy doesn't remain a hideous person. I set out on this journey to see if the novels would change me, and so far they have, this one especially. When I consider their "simple" life I don't do too much romanticizing. Modernity certainly has more avenues to and support for living a crazed hectic life, but somewhere between the pages I made a connection. It's a connection I'm not sure I can vocalize here, but naturally I'll try.
There wasn't more time in a day back then with which we could sit, ruminate, and come to a correct course of action. There are a bajillion more choices of things we can do with our time, but that is what they all are; choices. The life best lived is not in embracing every possibility of what we can do with our time, but choosing well and, as it laughably turns out, choosing fewer. The right things, the beneficial things, the healthy things, the great and honorable things are all still there for us to choose. They have endured. Maybe society is more like my daughter who prefers the mediocre but color episodes of The Andy Griffith Show because, "Old things are not good and these are better because they are new" (yes...she'll be brought to wisdom if I have to drag her kicking and screaming). I've gained an appreciation for the old and timeless because of those two qualities. The old endures because of its virtues and timeless things are...well...timeless. I shy away from every brand new iteration of Apple Products that they just have to have while the old one is just as usable. A disposable, constantly upgradeable society is by its very nature a house of cards. We have virtue and principles when it is convenient and violate them when it is not, and that's not the world I want to live in. Remember...once upon a time a handshake was a legal agreement...and now we prenup our marriages.
Likesay, I'm not sure where I'm headed because of these books, but I'm fairly certain it will be better than the direction I was heading without them.
Pax,
W
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Highs, Lows, Frustrations, and Joys (Ch. 11-22)
Now that I am half way through Little Woman, I've come to the conclusion that it would never have a market in this modern day.
As a writer, I've been through the query process many times, and the biggest criticism I have gotten on my work is that I start off too slow. You need a good hook in the first page/paragraph/sentence/half sentence that will propel the prospective reader in a hurtling death race to the final page. If you can make it dystopian, dark, gritty, oversexed, and maybe a teeny tiny bit about demons or dark magic then all the better. A book about a random period of time with the major driving plot point being that the father is off to war and sick just wouldn't cut it these days. I mean, let's face it, nothing major happens. It's a book about relationships and a slice of life. You'd pretty much only find a probable audience for the novel in the Christian Fiction market.
These days it doesn't matter how well written it is, and don't get me wrong I believe Little Women to be one of the best written books of all time, if it doesn't fit a certain formula it isn't going to be picked up. Honestly, if you put Hunger Games and Little Women up against each other vying for an agent's pickup which do you think would get picked? Exactly. And it's a tragedy. Certainly they are each in a different genre, but it's a shame that there is nothing modern to compare it to. There's the odd straight "fiction" novel that breaks onto the public consciousness like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Life of Pi, or The Help, but nothing that endures like these past few books and I wonder why that is. The classics have a completely different feel than anything modern. Whether we bring that to the reading because they are designated as classics would make for an interesting discussion to have, but for now, and for decades, nothing our species has written has endured for long at all. Maybe we can't tell during our time in the same way people didn't know that they were in the Renaissance while it was happening.
My personal opinion, however, is that this work simply glows from scene to scene. I've mentioned before about how the magic of these novels is in their reality, that this is really how people are and have all the hallmarks of having actually happened. The newspaper, along with their little alter egos, and post office adventures are extremely endearing.
It reminds me of the sorts of things my own children come up with when they are "dying" of boredom. Lately when they say, "I'm bored!", I respond with a hearty, "Congratulations!". After a minute of the confused look on their faces they ask why I'm congratulating them. "Because, that means that you're on the edge of making up some great game, or might end up acting out a play of a story, or you'll get an amazing idea that you wouldn't have if you'd been on devices or watching TV. We should get you bored more often". That usually gets me an eye roll, an aggravated sigh, and fists on hips, but within ten minutes they usually prove me right.
My daughter chose Little Women (abridged version) as her book report book a few weeks ago. Probably the biggest reaction she showed (other than "Wow, Papa, Amy is just downright mean") was the experiment of the girls to try and do nothing, to have a little holiday. Ever since reading about that, and especially Beth's unfortunate casualty, she has endeavored to work a little harder even on the days she has free of chores. Appropriately it has affected me in quite similar ways in the care and keeping of our home.
"Have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty."
Try telling that to kids, let alone adults, these days and you'll get a response akin to, "Don't you tell me how to live my life. You don't know me!".
In my daughter's homeschool materials I was delighted to find that at the top of her arithmetic pages and her spelling pages there are verses and maxims for her to read. It used to be fairly standard in schools to have these "copybook headings". We've become a culture that is obsessed with burning down the previous standards. "If it's old it's bad," is something I've heard and even out of my own daughter's mouth. It is an extremely human tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is a far easier thing to look at edifices and institutions of the past and say "burn it" than go through the hard work off picking over what is worth saving and taking with us. As a species we always do what is easiest and most emotionally satisfying rather than what is actually best for us. The older I get, the farther I look back and the more fastidious I am about sorting through the burnt wreckage for gems.
"Camp Laurence" was a delight. I love it when I'm nostalgic for an era that I've never even been a part of. Certainly I'm guilty of romanticizing the past and would find things to complain about if I were transported across space and time, but I do so love it, regardless.
Also, I love that Jo and I share the same birth month. I do look at November far more pleasantly as a month because I was born on the first day of it.
Then the darkness comes...father is sick, Mother must leave, and then, while gone, Beth becomes sick. Even though I knew it was coming, Beth getting sick was a blow. I would write more except that I apparently don't like to talk about it. Because of this, the return of Mr. March is incredibly bittersweet. I do delight in Jo's quiet fury regarding the possibility that Meg and Mr. Brooke may get together. There is something so honest, so genuine, about that emotion and how it plays out.
My great hope is that I'll be able to purposefully carve out more time for the novel. I do have quite an affection for it. It may even become one of those novels I dig out every year to remind myself there are encouraging and wondrous things in this world when it gets dark.
Of course October is the month that I read the Ray Bradbury novel Something Wicked This Way Comes to my daughter. If you are looking for a good book for the prelude to Halloween it is very much worth your time, as is all Bradbury content.
Pax,
W
As a writer, I've been through the query process many times, and the biggest criticism I have gotten on my work is that I start off too slow. You need a good hook in the first page/paragraph/sentence/half sentence that will propel the prospective reader in a hurtling death race to the final page. If you can make it dystopian, dark, gritty, oversexed, and maybe a teeny tiny bit about demons or dark magic then all the better. A book about a random period of time with the major driving plot point being that the father is off to war and sick just wouldn't cut it these days. I mean, let's face it, nothing major happens. It's a book about relationships and a slice of life. You'd pretty much only find a probable audience for the novel in the Christian Fiction market.
These days it doesn't matter how well written it is, and don't get me wrong I believe Little Women to be one of the best written books of all time, if it doesn't fit a certain formula it isn't going to be picked up. Honestly, if you put Hunger Games and Little Women up against each other vying for an agent's pickup which do you think would get picked? Exactly. And it's a tragedy. Certainly they are each in a different genre, but it's a shame that there is nothing modern to compare it to. There's the odd straight "fiction" novel that breaks onto the public consciousness like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Life of Pi, or The Help, but nothing that endures like these past few books and I wonder why that is. The classics have a completely different feel than anything modern. Whether we bring that to the reading because they are designated as classics would make for an interesting discussion to have, but for now, and for decades, nothing our species has written has endured for long at all. Maybe we can't tell during our time in the same way people didn't know that they were in the Renaissance while it was happening.
My personal opinion, however, is that this work simply glows from scene to scene. I've mentioned before about how the magic of these novels is in their reality, that this is really how people are and have all the hallmarks of having actually happened. The newspaper, along with their little alter egos, and post office adventures are extremely endearing.
It reminds me of the sorts of things my own children come up with when they are "dying" of boredom. Lately when they say, "I'm bored!", I respond with a hearty, "Congratulations!". After a minute of the confused look on their faces they ask why I'm congratulating them. "Because, that means that you're on the edge of making up some great game, or might end up acting out a play of a story, or you'll get an amazing idea that you wouldn't have if you'd been on devices or watching TV. We should get you bored more often". That usually gets me an eye roll, an aggravated sigh, and fists on hips, but within ten minutes they usually prove me right.
My daughter chose Little Women (abridged version) as her book report book a few weeks ago. Probably the biggest reaction she showed (other than "Wow, Papa, Amy is just downright mean") was the experiment of the girls to try and do nothing, to have a little holiday. Ever since reading about that, and especially Beth's unfortunate casualty, she has endeavored to work a little harder even on the days she has free of chores. Appropriately it has affected me in quite similar ways in the care and keeping of our home.
"Have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty."
Try telling that to kids, let alone adults, these days and you'll get a response akin to, "Don't you tell me how to live my life. You don't know me!".
In my daughter's homeschool materials I was delighted to find that at the top of her arithmetic pages and her spelling pages there are verses and maxims for her to read. It used to be fairly standard in schools to have these "copybook headings". We've become a culture that is obsessed with burning down the previous standards. "If it's old it's bad," is something I've heard and even out of my own daughter's mouth. It is an extremely human tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is a far easier thing to look at edifices and institutions of the past and say "burn it" than go through the hard work off picking over what is worth saving and taking with us. As a species we always do what is easiest and most emotionally satisfying rather than what is actually best for us. The older I get, the farther I look back and the more fastidious I am about sorting through the burnt wreckage for gems.
"Camp Laurence" was a delight. I love it when I'm nostalgic for an era that I've never even been a part of. Certainly I'm guilty of romanticizing the past and would find things to complain about if I were transported across space and time, but I do so love it, regardless.
Also, I love that Jo and I share the same birth month. I do look at November far more pleasantly as a month because I was born on the first day of it.
Then the darkness comes...father is sick, Mother must leave, and then, while gone, Beth becomes sick. Even though I knew it was coming, Beth getting sick was a blow. I would write more except that I apparently don't like to talk about it. Because of this, the return of Mr. March is incredibly bittersweet. I do delight in Jo's quiet fury regarding the possibility that Meg and Mr. Brooke may get together. There is something so honest, so genuine, about that emotion and how it plays out.
My great hope is that I'll be able to purposefully carve out more time for the novel. I do have quite an affection for it. It may even become one of those novels I dig out every year to remind myself there are encouraging and wondrous things in this world when it gets dark.
Of course October is the month that I read the Ray Bradbury novel Something Wicked This Way Comes to my daughter. If you are looking for a good book for the prelude to Halloween it is very much worth your time, as is all Bradbury content.
Pax,
W
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Another World, Another Time ("Little Women" Ch. 1-10)
I feel like I've got a "bajillion" (my daughter assures me that it is a standard unit of measurement) things to say about Little Women and yet I have no idea where to start. I suppose I could start with the easiest revelation, which is that I'm pretty much in love with this book.
It was no surprise to me when I learned that Little Women is drawn from the experiences of the author's own life. Each of the characters is completely believable and almost bowls you over with their authenticity. It's been a common theme here on the 100BYSRBYD blog that these books stand the test of time because you actually know someone who isn't just kinda like Jo but is Jo.
Much like with To Kill a Mockingbird, this novel taps into the "Main Street USA" feels in my brain. It makes me nostalgic for a time that I never was a part of. Granted it takes place during a terrible time in our history, the Civil War, but it feels like it was a much simpler time. Of course that's a trick of distance in time. Each decade had its own complications and it's own longing for a simpler time. Still I can't help but feel that I'd give up my cell phone and Twitter/Facebook accounts for floor scrubbing and field work and think it a fair trade.
You can't read Little Women and not have a favorite "little woman". The book naturally skews one towards Jo, but there is a case to be made for Meg or Beth. Amy...well, let me tell you about Amy.
As I mentioned in the WIKA, I barely remember the movie I once watched long ago. Throughout the book so far I've been getting flashbacks to the movie. Winona Ryder was Jo, Claire Danes was Beth, I don't remember who played Meg, and Kirsten Dunst played Amy. I have always wondered why I have such a loathing for every character Kirsten Dunst has played. I mean, she was tolerable as Mary Jane in Spiderman, but other than that every time I see here in a movie I've had this low level hostility towards any character she plays. It genuinely borders on that questionable "want to punch them in the throat" level deep in my gut. I'll never forget watching Mona Lisa Smile and realizing that every time her character was on screen I had to leave the room. It was such a strange response that I spent a lot of time trying to understand. I mean, yes, her character in that movie was written to irritate the viewer with here...well, there's no easy way to say it...outright bitchiness. So, overall I couldn't understand my reaction...until I started having the flashbacks to the movie based on Little Women.
I hated Amy in the movie so much that the hatred transferred over onto the very actress who played her. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but Amy, as with Blanche from Jane Eyre, is everything repulsive to me that a woman can be. Cruel, conniving, poisonous, cold, soul shredding, selfish, pompous, and then tries to turn it all around with a little angelic smile and a sorry. Just thinking about how she burns Jo's book as recompense for Jo and Meg going to a party with Laurie that Amy wasn't even invited to makes my blood pressure skyrocket.
Now before people claim that I am clearly sexist because I attribute the above adjectives to women let me say (by way of a disclaimer that I shouldn't even have to make) that I understand men can be cruel, conniving, poisonous, etc. I will defend myself in saying that women do it so much differently than men. There are those women who have chosen the above as a normal way of living life and interacting with humans and they scare the crap out of me. I avoid them the way I avoid toxic nuclear waste...I avoid them by going miles around them.
So, for now enough about Amy. I have my heart condition to think of and until she commits another "sin" in the book I'll table my loathing for her to write of better things here.
I will get to the quotes and thing that struck me the most in a bit, however I can't continue without pontificating on the single greatest aspect of this first quarter of the book. I'm not exactly sure how to put it in the most "entertaining" way possibles. As a result I'll just jump right in.
Virtue. I know, that's almost a dirty word in today's culture, but in this novel it is ever present. I'm not even talking about the points where it extols virtues, the very gift of a copy of Pilgrim's Progress is emphasis enough to be sure, I'm talking about how virtue is an active part of each person's life. Most shocking to me, in a good way, is the manner in which each character is aware of their faults and failings to live up to an ideal (aside from Amy...blergh..) and is actively working to remedy their lack. Jo knows that her fuse is short and is prone to flying into a rage. Meg is fully aware that she craves finer things that amount to little in this world and only serve to enhance her prideful streak. Even their mother looks around for lessons to apply to her own virtues.
It's at this point I wonder why this book is solidly in the top 100BYSRBD given that it's very substance is antithetical to our current society. The entire American propensity towards self indulgence can hardly abide this. If someone has a propensity towards anger, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, pride, lust, etc. what do we say of them? Or, rather, what do they say of themselves? "It's just how I am. Accept it. I'll never change." We didn't always believe so and this novel is evidence of that fact. We have a near fatalist view of virtues and vices. You have what you have and you'll never get any better. We medicate ourselves into numbness (self or prescription) rather than go through the hard work of doing a objective self-assessment let alone striving through the hard slog of bettering ourselves. And why should we be surprised, if indeed we are at all? A relativistic society is not now and could never be a virtuous society. Where once we followed "Know Thyself" with "Better Thyself" we now blithely mutter "Yeah, well that's fine for you but not for me". When oneself is the measure of virtue then it's no wonder things are falling apart at the seems and reason is a bizarre way of looking at the world. Facts become variables and feelings become laws.
Already this book has changed me in that regard and changed my parenting style. If I don't encourage self analysis in my children, model it for them, or establish the virtues as goal posts then how dare I be surprised or even disappointed when they eventually grow up and miss the mark? While people are content with their children getting participation trophies, receiving scouting badges they didn't earn, and sliding by in society I find myself rejecting that thinking more and more for my children. My daughter was in Girl Scouts for about three months before the Summer break. To my shock she was given a number of badges that the other girls had earned so she wouldn't feel left out. For the sake of politeness I allowed it, but am wondering now if I should have made a bit of a stand. My daughter and I have since had a talk about how different it is when you actually earn something yourself. She and I are in agreement now that no one is to give her a badge or an award she didn't earn with the hard work of meeting every requirement. We throw away standards at our own peril. If other parents don't understand, I'm fine with that. All of the books on the list so far have taught me one thing above all else. "In a world of insanity, stand for sanity."
Now that I've gotten all that out into the open (for good or ill) let us move on to my favorite bits and bobs, quotes and such.
In reference to Pilgrim's Progress it is stated of Jo that "She knew it very well, for it was that beautiful story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going the long journey". The Bunyan novel has gotten diminished as of late in the eyes of many Christians. I'm not sure that we as a group afford it the honor that it is actually do. Allegory seems the province of nursery rhymes to our "modern" sensibilities. It's not on the 100 list, but I'm pretty sure I'll need to read it soon.
I love Beth to pieces. She is such a pure and gentle soul. Her affection and care of cast off dolls is such a delight to me. She's the kind of person you want to be around if for no other reason than to stand between her and the wide world that is lying in wait to abuse and destroy her gentleness and innocence. If Jane Eyre has taught me anything it is that in literature that's a signal that she is going to die before the book is done. Unfortunately there's a big blank in my memory of the film in this regard so...here's hoping I'm wrong.
"There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind."
These types of characters make me feel ashamed; ashamed of my cynicism, skepticism and suspicious nature. I've met a good many of them and they seem so alien to this world, to be honest.
I LOVE the elder Mr. Laurence. The way he takes to little Beth and his reaction to her reaction to being given a piano is simply priceless. In my movie of this book he would be played by Sir John Hurt. A perfect match if ever there was one. Mrs. March would be played by Jennifer Ehle of Possession fame.
"Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying and never think it impossible to conquer a fault." See previous diatribe on this point. I could repeat it all over again here, but I'll spare you.
Mrs. March proves her quality again and again throughout the book. Particularly in the section after Meg "'fess"es after her trip to "Vanity Fair". I could write out the two pages of text where she reveals her "plans" for her daughters...but I won't It's well worth the read and shames my heart (in an ultimately constructive way) as a parent. It can be distilled in the following quotes.
"I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved, and respected..."
"I'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones without self-respect and peace."
"...better happy old maids than unhappy wives, or unmaidenly girls, running about to find husbands...
Next we'll have a goodly "Vocab" post. I'm very glad to be back to finding words that I don't know the meaning of.
Pax,
W
It was no surprise to me when I learned that Little Women is drawn from the experiences of the author's own life. Each of the characters is completely believable and almost bowls you over with their authenticity. It's been a common theme here on the 100BYSRBYD blog that these books stand the test of time because you actually know someone who isn't just kinda like Jo but is Jo.
Much like with To Kill a Mockingbird, this novel taps into the "Main Street USA" feels in my brain. It makes me nostalgic for a time that I never was a part of. Granted it takes place during a terrible time in our history, the Civil War, but it feels like it was a much simpler time. Of course that's a trick of distance in time. Each decade had its own complications and it's own longing for a simpler time. Still I can't help but feel that I'd give up my cell phone and Twitter/Facebook accounts for floor scrubbing and field work and think it a fair trade.
You can't read Little Women and not have a favorite "little woman". The book naturally skews one towards Jo, but there is a case to be made for Meg or Beth. Amy...well, let me tell you about Amy.
As I mentioned in the WIKA, I barely remember the movie I once watched long ago. Throughout the book so far I've been getting flashbacks to the movie. Winona Ryder was Jo, Claire Danes was Beth, I don't remember who played Meg, and Kirsten Dunst played Amy. I have always wondered why I have such a loathing for every character Kirsten Dunst has played. I mean, she was tolerable as Mary Jane in Spiderman, but other than that every time I see here in a movie I've had this low level hostility towards any character she plays. It genuinely borders on that questionable "want to punch them in the throat" level deep in my gut. I'll never forget watching Mona Lisa Smile and realizing that every time her character was on screen I had to leave the room. It was such a strange response that I spent a lot of time trying to understand. I mean, yes, her character in that movie was written to irritate the viewer with here...well, there's no easy way to say it...outright bitchiness. So, overall I couldn't understand my reaction...until I started having the flashbacks to the movie based on Little Women.
I hated Amy in the movie so much that the hatred transferred over onto the very actress who played her. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but Amy, as with Blanche from Jane Eyre, is everything repulsive to me that a woman can be. Cruel, conniving, poisonous, cold, soul shredding, selfish, pompous, and then tries to turn it all around with a little angelic smile and a sorry. Just thinking about how she burns Jo's book as recompense for Jo and Meg going to a party with Laurie that Amy wasn't even invited to makes my blood pressure skyrocket.
Now before people claim that I am clearly sexist because I attribute the above adjectives to women let me say (by way of a disclaimer that I shouldn't even have to make) that I understand men can be cruel, conniving, poisonous, etc. I will defend myself in saying that women do it so much differently than men. There are those women who have chosen the above as a normal way of living life and interacting with humans and they scare the crap out of me. I avoid them the way I avoid toxic nuclear waste...I avoid them by going miles around them.
So, for now enough about Amy. I have my heart condition to think of and until she commits another "sin" in the book I'll table my loathing for her to write of better things here.
I will get to the quotes and thing that struck me the most in a bit, however I can't continue without pontificating on the single greatest aspect of this first quarter of the book. I'm not exactly sure how to put it in the most "entertaining" way possibles. As a result I'll just jump right in.
Virtue. I know, that's almost a dirty word in today's culture, but in this novel it is ever present. I'm not even talking about the points where it extols virtues, the very gift of a copy of Pilgrim's Progress is emphasis enough to be sure, I'm talking about how virtue is an active part of each person's life. Most shocking to me, in a good way, is the manner in which each character is aware of their faults and failings to live up to an ideal (aside from Amy...blergh..) and is actively working to remedy their lack. Jo knows that her fuse is short and is prone to flying into a rage. Meg is fully aware that she craves finer things that amount to little in this world and only serve to enhance her prideful streak. Even their mother looks around for lessons to apply to her own virtues.
It's at this point I wonder why this book is solidly in the top 100BYSRBD given that it's very substance is antithetical to our current society. The entire American propensity towards self indulgence can hardly abide this. If someone has a propensity towards anger, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, pride, lust, etc. what do we say of them? Or, rather, what do they say of themselves? "It's just how I am. Accept it. I'll never change." We didn't always believe so and this novel is evidence of that fact. We have a near fatalist view of virtues and vices. You have what you have and you'll never get any better. We medicate ourselves into numbness (self or prescription) rather than go through the hard work of doing a objective self-assessment let alone striving through the hard slog of bettering ourselves. And why should we be surprised, if indeed we are at all? A relativistic society is not now and could never be a virtuous society. Where once we followed "Know Thyself" with "Better Thyself" we now blithely mutter "Yeah, well that's fine for you but not for me". When oneself is the measure of virtue then it's no wonder things are falling apart at the seems and reason is a bizarre way of looking at the world. Facts become variables and feelings become laws.
Already this book has changed me in that regard and changed my parenting style. If I don't encourage self analysis in my children, model it for them, or establish the virtues as goal posts then how dare I be surprised or even disappointed when they eventually grow up and miss the mark? While people are content with their children getting participation trophies, receiving scouting badges they didn't earn, and sliding by in society I find myself rejecting that thinking more and more for my children. My daughter was in Girl Scouts for about three months before the Summer break. To my shock she was given a number of badges that the other girls had earned so she wouldn't feel left out. For the sake of politeness I allowed it, but am wondering now if I should have made a bit of a stand. My daughter and I have since had a talk about how different it is when you actually earn something yourself. She and I are in agreement now that no one is to give her a badge or an award she didn't earn with the hard work of meeting every requirement. We throw away standards at our own peril. If other parents don't understand, I'm fine with that. All of the books on the list so far have taught me one thing above all else. "In a world of insanity, stand for sanity."
Now that I've gotten all that out into the open (for good or ill) let us move on to my favorite bits and bobs, quotes and such.
In reference to Pilgrim's Progress it is stated of Jo that "She knew it very well, for it was that beautiful story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going the long journey". The Bunyan novel has gotten diminished as of late in the eyes of many Christians. I'm not sure that we as a group afford it the honor that it is actually do. Allegory seems the province of nursery rhymes to our "modern" sensibilities. It's not on the 100 list, but I'm pretty sure I'll need to read it soon.
I love Beth to pieces. She is such a pure and gentle soul. Her affection and care of cast off dolls is such a delight to me. She's the kind of person you want to be around if for no other reason than to stand between her and the wide world that is lying in wait to abuse and destroy her gentleness and innocence. If Jane Eyre has taught me anything it is that in literature that's a signal that she is going to die before the book is done. Unfortunately there's a big blank in my memory of the film in this regard so...here's hoping I'm wrong.
"There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind."
These types of characters make me feel ashamed; ashamed of my cynicism, skepticism and suspicious nature. I've met a good many of them and they seem so alien to this world, to be honest.
I LOVE the elder Mr. Laurence. The way he takes to little Beth and his reaction to her reaction to being given a piano is simply priceless. In my movie of this book he would be played by Sir John Hurt. A perfect match if ever there was one. Mrs. March would be played by Jennifer Ehle of Possession fame.
"Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying and never think it impossible to conquer a fault." See previous diatribe on this point. I could repeat it all over again here, but I'll spare you.
Mrs. March proves her quality again and again throughout the book. Particularly in the section after Meg "'fess"es after her trip to "Vanity Fair". I could write out the two pages of text where she reveals her "plans" for her daughters...but I won't It's well worth the read and shames my heart (in an ultimately constructive way) as a parent. It can be distilled in the following quotes.
"I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved, and respected..."
"I'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones without self-respect and peace."
"...better happy old maids than unhappy wives, or unmaidenly girls, running about to find husbands...
Next we'll have a goodly "Vocab" post. I'm very glad to be back to finding words that I don't know the meaning of.
Pax,
W
Monday, July 13, 2015
Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed (1984 Pt. 2 Ch. 6-Ch. 10)
In which things get real...
It has been quite a while since my last post. I blame summer. The adventures have been great and plentiful to be sure, so...I regret nothing. 1984 has continued to burn in the back of my mind the whole month I've been away, however. We've seen the world shift in that time. Doublethink is in high gear in our country. Facts don't matter, emotions rule the day, we've even seen our own Hate week of sorts in the racial riots. Never mind what the court says, never mind what the evidence is, never mind what the people actually have voted for and want. Freedom is teetering on her perilous perch and 1984 has never seemed closer.
That is the magic and the power of 1984. It is rather like reading the book of Revelation of Saint John. It is the future, a possible future, a road map to destruction. You can see the signs and the mileposts all along the way ever getting closer, ever drawing nearer even if it is still a long way off.
1984 is our shadow. When we are turned towards the light and move for a substantially truly better world we can't see it, but it's there lurking. When we look over our shoulder we see it staring back at us like a fact of life connected to us by the feet. Our feet can take us further towards light or shadow and we're never far from either choice.
The majority of this section is history of the world and the policy of Big Brother revealed through a book that O'brien (don't quite trust that little bugger) gets to Winston and Julia after they become a part of the Underground. Winston reveals that he has spent most of his life thinking it was his fault his mother died. He says he always thought he murdered her, but a recent dream makes him rethink that. The couple has accepted that it is inevitable that they will be caught and that they might betray each other.
"I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal...If they could make me stop loving you- that would be the real betrayal." Winston tells her. She responds, "It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything -anything- but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."
I'm the kind of guy who reads like Harry from the movie "When Harry Met Sally". I read the last page of the book before I even start. It's not for quite the same slightly morbid reasons as Harry, but I do it. Knowing the last page, the last line even gave that reassuring moment a real darkness. They CAN get inside you. They CAN make you believe it.
Orwell later says, "They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or though; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable." As a writer I can recognize the wind up before the pitch. Writer's reassure you that the story can't possibly go wrong, possibly go bad, that it's going to end exactly how you want it to and there will be puppies, and unicorns, and flowers, and hopes and wishes all come true in Fictionland. Some writers deliver exactly that. My favorites, however, don't. There may be puppies but they're missing an ear. The unicorn is actually an obscure goat from the African sub continent. The flowers die and wilt eventually because you picked them. It's not as depressing as it sounds, but as a writer you have to inflate the expectations before the crashing reality.
So, according to the book they receive the world has devolved into three main superpowers (Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania) who are basically in constant war with each other. Because they've been on a war footing for so long that has become their life and their basis of economy. They are at a three way stalemate being each equal in power and each equal in destructive ability.
"...war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths...there is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fight about..."
There is a section between each of the three mega nations that is constantly fought over and its inhabitants are basically life long slaves to one master or another depending on who won that week.
Scientific progress has come to a grinding halt because of Doublethink. If there is no empirical habit of thought, if knowledge is dictated by the government as both a thing and not a thing at the same time and can change on a dime then science cannot progress. This has dangerous tinges of "relativism" going on here. Science is based on facts and data (which could also be known as Truth) but we train our children, as a society, that they can have their own truth, that facts don't matter. It's about what you feel and think. Science can't progress in a world without truth. To me this is the true destruction of the world of this novel. A world without principles, consistency, truth, etc. is not a world I'd like to live in. It's no small wonder the characters feel lost and adrift mentally with nothing to hold on to. They can't even be sure that the date is accurate because even that is up to Big Brother's discretion. It could be July 13th or November 23rd and it would be equally true to the Party and the Proles.
So, why be constantly at war? The answer shouldn't surprise anyone, and yet it shocked me in its parallels to our own "forever war", aka the War on Terrorism. "...at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger makes the handing over of all power to a small caste seem the natural condition of survival." Politicians want, above all else, power and have proven they don't care about how much of the Constitution they have to shred to get it. "Never let a crisis go to waste" (a mantra of leftist politicians but is seemingly adhered to just as equally by rightists) has its roots here. There is always a power kickback in every "safety" measure they push in Congress. Whether it is gun control or a "Patriot Act" the goal is always more power to control the American people by pushing the fear button and taking advantage of the crisis. And oh how we beg for the chains in exchange for assurances that it will keep "even just one child safe", which if we ruminate rather than react we would admit the measures can assure no such thing at all ever.
In reference to the Party members Orwell reveals this: "Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph" (bold for emphasis is my own). Emotions are the enemy of logic. I am constantly suspicious of any appeals to emotion. Once I realize my emotions are being stirred up by a group or an individual I reflexively stop and step back. Why? Because people, especially politicians and religious leaders, only engage the emotions when they cannot make their case with logic and reason. Emotion is the easiest way to motivate people. Fascinatingly if you have two groups whipped up in an emotional fervor and set them against each other generally you'll find that the prevailing opinion is that the other side is just a bunch of easily led sheep. And they are right. Both of them. The right and the left are easily led sheep who will condemn the other's tactics WHILE employing them themselves.
A few years ago Paula Dean was shredded and destroyed for life by leftists for admitting that in the 70's (yes...40 years ago) she used a racial slur. George Takei used a racial slur weeks ago and the leftists say, "Oh, come on. I'm sure he didn't mean it like that." Rightists praised George W. Bush's Patriot Act but when it came time for it to be renewed under a Democrat president then it was the work of a tyrant. Each wants to accuse the other of partisanship and each side is correct. They are each side as partisan as they can be.
"...competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph."
In the words of Egon from Ghostbusters "Yes...have some."
(That might be a little too "inside baseball" so I apologize in advance, but I'm not changing it.)
The chapter on "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" is predominantly occupied with class warfare. For me this was extremely instructive. Growing up in the United States and listening to the nightly news I couldn't help but be inundated with facts about the "Middle Class" which naturally leads to the knowledge that there is an "Upper Class" and a "Lower Class" of citizen. These classes are universal in every culture and nation. There are nations with more layers of classes (I'm glancing at India in particular here) but none with less. Nations can claim to have less (oh, hey. Look there's China) but the fact remains that there are at least three.
Now, Orwell posits, and rightly so I believe, that these three classes are the natural human state and each irreconcilable.
"The aim of the High is to remain where they are." Can you blame them? If I was in the Upper class I'd want to stay there as well.
"The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High." Naturally.
"The aim of the Low, when they have an aim- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives - is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal." Obkb. These things all follow quite naturally. We see all three of these time and time again.
Now, the High stay in power continually until/unless they lose their faith in themselves. This often comes in the form of guilt via "social consciousness" etc. At this point they falter and the Middle sees the opportunity to strike and move themselves up the ladder. The Middle, being the Middle, understands that their position isn't going to win much sympathy. I mean, sure they aren't rich and "rollin' in the Benjamins", but they aren't poor and suffering. On their own the Middle can do little. Now, I grant you the U. S. is completely different. One can leap from one rung to the other in a generation or less, but let's table that for the sake of discussion.
The Middle turns to the Low and uses phrases like "equality", "justices", "brotherhood" and the like to engage the Low to come alongside with them. They give the Middle a boost to get into the High and then the Middle abandons them.
"From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters." To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "And so it goes."
"In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown."
So, how did Big Brother "achieve" "equality"? It was by conscious strategy to halt the pendulum; to control thought, to control actions. Surveillance, re-education, changing the very model of human behavior not so that there would be genuine equality but rather so that the flip flop could not occur and they could force everyone to believe that equality had been achieved. Anyone who disrupts the placid waters (stagnant waters are just as placid) of the equality are removed from the society.
There is so much that I haven't brought up from Crimestop and the intricacies of Doublethink that shed a lot of light of politics and life and so much. 1984 is really, when it comes down to it, less of a prophecy, less of a warning necessarily than a handbook for preserving your own sanity in a world gone mad. I probably should leave this sort of thing for the end, but it gives comfort to those who truly believe in facts and truth. It is the best kind of writing...the kind that is a message in a bottle that washes upon your shore and says, "You're not alone."
Sadly, just as Winston and Julia start to feel this the owner of the knick knack shop is revealed to be Thought Police and captures them.
Pax,
W
It has been quite a while since my last post. I blame summer. The adventures have been great and plentiful to be sure, so...I regret nothing. 1984 has continued to burn in the back of my mind the whole month I've been away, however. We've seen the world shift in that time. Doublethink is in high gear in our country. Facts don't matter, emotions rule the day, we've even seen our own Hate week of sorts in the racial riots. Never mind what the court says, never mind what the evidence is, never mind what the people actually have voted for and want. Freedom is teetering on her perilous perch and 1984 has never seemed closer.
That is the magic and the power of 1984. It is rather like reading the book of Revelation of Saint John. It is the future, a possible future, a road map to destruction. You can see the signs and the mileposts all along the way ever getting closer, ever drawing nearer even if it is still a long way off.
1984 is our shadow. When we are turned towards the light and move for a substantially truly better world we can't see it, but it's there lurking. When we look over our shoulder we see it staring back at us like a fact of life connected to us by the feet. Our feet can take us further towards light or shadow and we're never far from either choice.
The majority of this section is history of the world and the policy of Big Brother revealed through a book that O'brien (don't quite trust that little bugger) gets to Winston and Julia after they become a part of the Underground. Winston reveals that he has spent most of his life thinking it was his fault his mother died. He says he always thought he murdered her, but a recent dream makes him rethink that. The couple has accepted that it is inevitable that they will be caught and that they might betray each other.
"I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal...If they could make me stop loving you- that would be the real betrayal." Winston tells her. She responds, "It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything -anything- but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."
I'm the kind of guy who reads like Harry from the movie "When Harry Met Sally". I read the last page of the book before I even start. It's not for quite the same slightly morbid reasons as Harry, but I do it. Knowing the last page, the last line even gave that reassuring moment a real darkness. They CAN get inside you. They CAN make you believe it.
Orwell later says, "They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or though; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable." As a writer I can recognize the wind up before the pitch. Writer's reassure you that the story can't possibly go wrong, possibly go bad, that it's going to end exactly how you want it to and there will be puppies, and unicorns, and flowers, and hopes and wishes all come true in Fictionland. Some writers deliver exactly that. My favorites, however, don't. There may be puppies but they're missing an ear. The unicorn is actually an obscure goat from the African sub continent. The flowers die and wilt eventually because you picked them. It's not as depressing as it sounds, but as a writer you have to inflate the expectations before the crashing reality.
So, according to the book they receive the world has devolved into three main superpowers (Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania) who are basically in constant war with each other. Because they've been on a war footing for so long that has become their life and their basis of economy. They are at a three way stalemate being each equal in power and each equal in destructive ability.
"...war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths...there is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fight about..."
There is a section between each of the three mega nations that is constantly fought over and its inhabitants are basically life long slaves to one master or another depending on who won that week.
Scientific progress has come to a grinding halt because of Doublethink. If there is no empirical habit of thought, if knowledge is dictated by the government as both a thing and not a thing at the same time and can change on a dime then science cannot progress. This has dangerous tinges of "relativism" going on here. Science is based on facts and data (which could also be known as Truth) but we train our children, as a society, that they can have their own truth, that facts don't matter. It's about what you feel and think. Science can't progress in a world without truth. To me this is the true destruction of the world of this novel. A world without principles, consistency, truth, etc. is not a world I'd like to live in. It's no small wonder the characters feel lost and adrift mentally with nothing to hold on to. They can't even be sure that the date is accurate because even that is up to Big Brother's discretion. It could be July 13th or November 23rd and it would be equally true to the Party and the Proles.
So, why be constantly at war? The answer shouldn't surprise anyone, and yet it shocked me in its parallels to our own "forever war", aka the War on Terrorism. "...at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger makes the handing over of all power to a small caste seem the natural condition of survival." Politicians want, above all else, power and have proven they don't care about how much of the Constitution they have to shred to get it. "Never let a crisis go to waste" (a mantra of leftist politicians but is seemingly adhered to just as equally by rightists) has its roots here. There is always a power kickback in every "safety" measure they push in Congress. Whether it is gun control or a "Patriot Act" the goal is always more power to control the American people by pushing the fear button and taking advantage of the crisis. And oh how we beg for the chains in exchange for assurances that it will keep "even just one child safe", which if we ruminate rather than react we would admit the measures can assure no such thing at all ever.
In reference to the Party members Orwell reveals this: "Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph" (bold for emphasis is my own). Emotions are the enemy of logic. I am constantly suspicious of any appeals to emotion. Once I realize my emotions are being stirred up by a group or an individual I reflexively stop and step back. Why? Because people, especially politicians and religious leaders, only engage the emotions when they cannot make their case with logic and reason. Emotion is the easiest way to motivate people. Fascinatingly if you have two groups whipped up in an emotional fervor and set them against each other generally you'll find that the prevailing opinion is that the other side is just a bunch of easily led sheep. And they are right. Both of them. The right and the left are easily led sheep who will condemn the other's tactics WHILE employing them themselves.
A few years ago Paula Dean was shredded and destroyed for life by leftists for admitting that in the 70's (yes...40 years ago) she used a racial slur. George Takei used a racial slur weeks ago and the leftists say, "Oh, come on. I'm sure he didn't mean it like that." Rightists praised George W. Bush's Patriot Act but when it came time for it to be renewed under a Democrat president then it was the work of a tyrant. Each wants to accuse the other of partisanship and each side is correct. They are each side as partisan as they can be.
"...competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph."
In the words of Egon from Ghostbusters "Yes...have some."
(That might be a little too "inside baseball" so I apologize in advance, but I'm not changing it.)
The chapter on "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" is predominantly occupied with class warfare. For me this was extremely instructive. Growing up in the United States and listening to the nightly news I couldn't help but be inundated with facts about the "Middle Class" which naturally leads to the knowledge that there is an "Upper Class" and a "Lower Class" of citizen. These classes are universal in every culture and nation. There are nations with more layers of classes (I'm glancing at India in particular here) but none with less. Nations can claim to have less (oh, hey. Look there's China) but the fact remains that there are at least three.
Now, Orwell posits, and rightly so I believe, that these three classes are the natural human state and each irreconcilable.
"The aim of the High is to remain where they are." Can you blame them? If I was in the Upper class I'd want to stay there as well.
"The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High." Naturally.
"The aim of the Low, when they have an aim- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives - is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal." Obkb. These things all follow quite naturally. We see all three of these time and time again.
Now, the High stay in power continually until/unless they lose their faith in themselves. This often comes in the form of guilt via "social consciousness" etc. At this point they falter and the Middle sees the opportunity to strike and move themselves up the ladder. The Middle, being the Middle, understands that their position isn't going to win much sympathy. I mean, sure they aren't rich and "rollin' in the Benjamins", but they aren't poor and suffering. On their own the Middle can do little. Now, I grant you the U. S. is completely different. One can leap from one rung to the other in a generation or less, but let's table that for the sake of discussion.
The Middle turns to the Low and uses phrases like "equality", "justices", "brotherhood" and the like to engage the Low to come alongside with them. They give the Middle a boost to get into the High and then the Middle abandons them.
"From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters." To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "And so it goes."
"In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown."
So, how did Big Brother "achieve" "equality"? It was by conscious strategy to halt the pendulum; to control thought, to control actions. Surveillance, re-education, changing the very model of human behavior not so that there would be genuine equality but rather so that the flip flop could not occur and they could force everyone to believe that equality had been achieved. Anyone who disrupts the placid waters (stagnant waters are just as placid) of the equality are removed from the society.
There is so much that I haven't brought up from Crimestop and the intricacies of Doublethink that shed a lot of light of politics and life and so much. 1984 is really, when it comes down to it, less of a prophecy, less of a warning necessarily than a handbook for preserving your own sanity in a world gone mad. I probably should leave this sort of thing for the end, but it gives comfort to those who truly believe in facts and truth. It is the best kind of writing...the kind that is a message in a bottle that washes upon your shore and says, "You're not alone."
Sadly, just as Winston and Julia start to feel this the owner of the knick knack shop is revealed to be Thought Police and captures them.
Pax,
W
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
A Case To Be Made (Wuthering Heights Ch 11-21)
Gentle ladies and, to a lesser extent, gentlemen of the jury, if you will indulge me, I would like to present my case.
There have been many love stories written over the eight millenia or so since human beings invented written language. From those first chicken scratch cuneiform syllables to the garish modern implementation of Comic Sans and even upon entering into the all forgiving, healing light of Helvetica there has been much debate on the subject of what does and does not constitute a love story. Certainly it can take many forms.
Some would have us believe that for a tale to truly be a love story it must end happily. Romeo and Juliet, arguably the greatest of all love stories, would then be out of the running entirely. Indeed, the modern romantic classic Possession by A. S. Byatt would only count because the modern couple gets together though the past couple does not.
I submit to you that for a love story to truly be that in name, it must actually show the protagonist couple in love and doing loving things to and for each other. At it's very base element this must be present.
I further submit, therefore, that Wuthering Heights is the furthest thing from a love story since Machiavelli's The Prince or perhaps Mein Kampf. I don't use these comparisons lightly at all. When we look at Wuthering Heights what do we see between Catherine and Heathcliff? Only passion; animalistic and self serving passion. I do believe that I could excuse the novel as merely a tawdry little work if it was just animalistic passion. Tawdry but not nearly a love story.
Seriously, though, what am I supposed to think about this Heathcliff? A brute from the moment we meet him, cast into a family of brutes and selfish prigs, who has a certain amount of passion for a beautiful, sniping, selfish, conniving...wench. All he knows is beating people into submission and all she knows is manipulating people for her own uses. Why am I supposed to cheer for this couple? At all?
I last left these people with Heathcliff having returned to find Catherine married Linton, who is now one of two people who actually seem virtuous. It seems that Linton actually loves Catherine though her standards of "passion" are clearly not met in that relationship. She teases and taunts Heathcliff with the marriage and disrespects her new husband in many respects by allowing/demanding that Heathcliff be allowed to visit whenever he likes.
Heathcliff reveals his plan to destroy Earnshaw through the son he neglects, Hareton, and then gets the bright idea to revenge himself on Linton, for marrying Catherine, by taking up with his little sister, Isabella. Catherine correctly sees what Heathcliff is up to and says, not considering for a second that the same might be said of her, "Your bliss, like his (Satan's), lies in inflicting misery." The husband overhears all, steps in, Heathcliff threatens to beat him, she says it's all his (Linton's) fault and how dare he accuse Heathcliff of being horrible...Seriously. She declares "If Edgar will be mean and jealous then I will break their hearts by breaking my own." Yes...she's intentionally going to pitch fits because her husband won't allow her to see a man who is passionately in love with her and has threatened to beat her husband bloody. And this is love? She spends the next few chapters being not so much a Drama Queen as a freaking Drama Empress. She claims she'll kill herself and it's only out of selfishness that Linton wants her around.
It's about this time that Heathcliff comes around, scoops up Isabella to elope and, as any lover would do, hangs a dog by the neck so that it should die. It would be belong to his new wife, Isabella.
When news reaches Catherine then she predictable falls into a brain fever.
This section is where I pretty much lose it. Before, at Wuthering Heights, it was terrible people doing terrible things to other terrible people. Now they are leaving a trail of broken hearts and damaged psyches in their wake because they insist on involving decent people. Linton attends to Catherine and dotes on her before, during, and after the illness. Sure, he's not the most passionate guy, I mean her prefers books to strangling puppies to death, but he cares. Isabella warmly invited Catherine into their lives and she ends up repaid with abuse, physical and mental.
Isabella writes a letter to Nelly and asks if Heathcliffe is a man. If not is he insane or a devil? Seriously, honey, if you have to ask...you're in deep Bantha poodoo. Upon Nelly pressing Heathcliff for an explanation he declares it was all Isabella's fault. Hanging up her dog, beating her, no brutality had any effect on her so he continued to be brutal.
Gosh, he's dreamy.
Catherine takes ill even more. Apparently her fake tantrums took their toll especially in light of her pregnancy (surprise) and near to giving birth Heathcliff gets wind of her illness and stands outside the house, hidden. He's lurking, waiting until the husband isn't home and the door is accidentally left unlocked. (So freaking gallant and not at all creepy!)
"Oh, Cathy! Oh, My life! how can I bear it?" he says upon forcing his way in.
"'What now?' said Catherine, leaning back and returning his look with a suddenly clouded brow: Her humour was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices. 'You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff! And you both come to bewail the deed to me, as if you were the people to be pitied...(ain't she a gem?) You have killed me-and thriven on it, I think....How many years do you mean to live after I'm gone?'"
Chapter sixteen begins with the fact of Catherine's death in childbirth...to which I could only manage to say, "Then why is there so much freaking book left?!?!".
Loving, chivalrous Heathcliff responds as anyone would expect a caring individual who just lost the love of his life would.
"May she wake in torment!...Why she's a liar to the end!...haunt me...only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you!" Yeah, cause you treated each other so well when she was alive. I mean, she must be in hell not being abused by you or be able to watch you tormenting her sister in law with a freaking KNIFE shoved between her teeth (actually happened). She must be missing you something fierce.
As ever Nelly has the right of it when she says, "Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies."
We fast forward...Isabella escapes Heathcliff and Earnshaw to London, pregnant but more than happy to make it on her own than around those two. She gives birth and names the child Linton, hoping that will disuade Heathcliff who only declares, as a good father would, "When I want it, I will have it." Edgar Linton has named his child Catherine, after her mother, and sixteen years pass. During that time Earnshaw died leaving Heathcliff with Hareton. Isabella dies and Edgar goes off to fulfill his sister's wish of having Linton live with him. Heathcliff objects and the poor, sickly child is brought into his care. And why would he want him? One simple reason; to have the ultimate in pathetic revenges; Linton to marry Cathy and then when Linton dies, because of the language of the law, Heathcliff would rule over both estates. Of course he can't help but encourage Hareton to try for Cathy and thereby cause even more discord. It's not enough to play with and ruin the lives of adults, but now he has to destroy the lives of children.
The worst part of it all? There is still one hundred pages to go, and we already know how this ends because the beginning is the end; Heathcliff abusing both Hareton and Cathy around a fire.
I could spill all of my feelings about this book, what all it's taught me, and that sort of thing, but I think it's best left for the final entry.
I will say, however, that I got on multiple sites and read reviews for this book by many people. The one thing that amazed me was how many people think that this is such a good love story, and how amazing Heathcliff is. Seriously?
Renee commented on my last post about how there's a sort of Heathcliff arc in fiction. Edward Cullen, Four, Christian Gray and all these guys who are dark, brooding, abusive types are so lapped up by readers as so dreamy. I'd even go so far as to put Lestat in that category. I guess it's likely human nature on some level. When I was in high school who did all the girls want? That guy who was no good for them at ALL...but gosh they want them. They give their bodies and their lives to them and then when they are used up, abandoned with kids, past their "prime" they wonder where all the good guys are.
Now the interesting question, of course, is what would Charlotte Bronte think of her sister's work and does Rochester apply as the dark, brooding, abusive type?
I'll leave that to your gentle hands, dear jury, to type out into the comments below. :)
Pax,
W
There have been many love stories written over the eight millenia or so since human beings invented written language. From those first chicken scratch cuneiform syllables to the garish modern implementation of Comic Sans and even upon entering into the all forgiving, healing light of Helvetica there has been much debate on the subject of what does and does not constitute a love story. Certainly it can take many forms.
Some would have us believe that for a tale to truly be a love story it must end happily. Romeo and Juliet, arguably the greatest of all love stories, would then be out of the running entirely. Indeed, the modern romantic classic Possession by A. S. Byatt would only count because the modern couple gets together though the past couple does not.
I submit to you that for a love story to truly be that in name, it must actually show the protagonist couple in love and doing loving things to and for each other. At it's very base element this must be present.
I further submit, therefore, that Wuthering Heights is the furthest thing from a love story since Machiavelli's The Prince or perhaps Mein Kampf. I don't use these comparisons lightly at all. When we look at Wuthering Heights what do we see between Catherine and Heathcliff? Only passion; animalistic and self serving passion. I do believe that I could excuse the novel as merely a tawdry little work if it was just animalistic passion. Tawdry but not nearly a love story.
Seriously, though, what am I supposed to think about this Heathcliff? A brute from the moment we meet him, cast into a family of brutes and selfish prigs, who has a certain amount of passion for a beautiful, sniping, selfish, conniving...wench. All he knows is beating people into submission and all she knows is manipulating people for her own uses. Why am I supposed to cheer for this couple? At all?
I last left these people with Heathcliff having returned to find Catherine married Linton, who is now one of two people who actually seem virtuous. It seems that Linton actually loves Catherine though her standards of "passion" are clearly not met in that relationship. She teases and taunts Heathcliff with the marriage and disrespects her new husband in many respects by allowing/demanding that Heathcliff be allowed to visit whenever he likes.
Heathcliff reveals his plan to destroy Earnshaw through the son he neglects, Hareton, and then gets the bright idea to revenge himself on Linton, for marrying Catherine, by taking up with his little sister, Isabella. Catherine correctly sees what Heathcliff is up to and says, not considering for a second that the same might be said of her, "Your bliss, like his (Satan's), lies in inflicting misery." The husband overhears all, steps in, Heathcliff threatens to beat him, she says it's all his (Linton's) fault and how dare he accuse Heathcliff of being horrible...Seriously. She declares "If Edgar will be mean and jealous then I will break their hearts by breaking my own." Yes...she's intentionally going to pitch fits because her husband won't allow her to see a man who is passionately in love with her and has threatened to beat her husband bloody. And this is love? She spends the next few chapters being not so much a Drama Queen as a freaking Drama Empress. She claims she'll kill herself and it's only out of selfishness that Linton wants her around.
It's about this time that Heathcliff comes around, scoops up Isabella to elope and, as any lover would do, hangs a dog by the neck so that it should die. It would be belong to his new wife, Isabella.
When news reaches Catherine then she predictable falls into a brain fever.
This section is where I pretty much lose it. Before, at Wuthering Heights, it was terrible people doing terrible things to other terrible people. Now they are leaving a trail of broken hearts and damaged psyches in their wake because they insist on involving decent people. Linton attends to Catherine and dotes on her before, during, and after the illness. Sure, he's not the most passionate guy, I mean her prefers books to strangling puppies to death, but he cares. Isabella warmly invited Catherine into their lives and she ends up repaid with abuse, physical and mental.
Isabella writes a letter to Nelly and asks if Heathcliffe is a man. If not is he insane or a devil? Seriously, honey, if you have to ask...you're in deep Bantha poodoo. Upon Nelly pressing Heathcliff for an explanation he declares it was all Isabella's fault. Hanging up her dog, beating her, no brutality had any effect on her so he continued to be brutal.
Gosh, he's dreamy.
Catherine takes ill even more. Apparently her fake tantrums took their toll especially in light of her pregnancy (surprise) and near to giving birth Heathcliff gets wind of her illness and stands outside the house, hidden. He's lurking, waiting until the husband isn't home and the door is accidentally left unlocked. (So freaking gallant and not at all creepy!)
"Oh, Cathy! Oh, My life! how can I bear it?" he says upon forcing his way in.
"'What now?' said Catherine, leaning back and returning his look with a suddenly clouded brow: Her humour was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices. 'You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff! And you both come to bewail the deed to me, as if you were the people to be pitied...(ain't she a gem?) You have killed me-and thriven on it, I think....How many years do you mean to live after I'm gone?'"
Chapter sixteen begins with the fact of Catherine's death in childbirth...to which I could only manage to say, "Then why is there so much freaking book left?!?!".
Loving, chivalrous Heathcliff responds as anyone would expect a caring individual who just lost the love of his life would.
"May she wake in torment!...Why she's a liar to the end!...haunt me...only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you!" Yeah, cause you treated each other so well when she was alive. I mean, she must be in hell not being abused by you or be able to watch you tormenting her sister in law with a freaking KNIFE shoved between her teeth (actually happened). She must be missing you something fierce.
As ever Nelly has the right of it when she says, "Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies."
We fast forward...Isabella escapes Heathcliff and Earnshaw to London, pregnant but more than happy to make it on her own than around those two. She gives birth and names the child Linton, hoping that will disuade Heathcliff who only declares, as a good father would, "When I want it, I will have it." Edgar Linton has named his child Catherine, after her mother, and sixteen years pass. During that time Earnshaw died leaving Heathcliff with Hareton. Isabella dies and Edgar goes off to fulfill his sister's wish of having Linton live with him. Heathcliff objects and the poor, sickly child is brought into his care. And why would he want him? One simple reason; to have the ultimate in pathetic revenges; Linton to marry Cathy and then when Linton dies, because of the language of the law, Heathcliff would rule over both estates. Of course he can't help but encourage Hareton to try for Cathy and thereby cause even more discord. It's not enough to play with and ruin the lives of adults, but now he has to destroy the lives of children.
The worst part of it all? There is still one hundred pages to go, and we already know how this ends because the beginning is the end; Heathcliff abusing both Hareton and Cathy around a fire.
I could spill all of my feelings about this book, what all it's taught me, and that sort of thing, but I think it's best left for the final entry.
I will say, however, that I got on multiple sites and read reviews for this book by many people. The one thing that amazed me was how many people think that this is such a good love story, and how amazing Heathcliff is. Seriously?
Renee commented on my last post about how there's a sort of Heathcliff arc in fiction. Edward Cullen, Four, Christian Gray and all these guys who are dark, brooding, abusive types are so lapped up by readers as so dreamy. I'd even go so far as to put Lestat in that category. I guess it's likely human nature on some level. When I was in high school who did all the girls want? That guy who was no good for them at ALL...but gosh they want them. They give their bodies and their lives to them and then when they are used up, abandoned with kids, past their "prime" they wonder where all the good guys are.
Now the interesting question, of course, is what would Charlotte Bronte think of her sister's work and does Rochester apply as the dark, brooding, abusive type?
I'll leave that to your gentle hands, dear jury, to type out into the comments below. :)
Pax,
W
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Principle and the Totalitarian Temptation (To Kill A Mockingbird Ch 19-31)
When we were young we glutted ourselves on tales of daring do, fairy tales, and all manner of stories that instill in us a sense of justice. We believe, at such an early age, that evil doers are punished and the good and virtuous will rise from their plight on eagles' wings. My daughter has had to deal with this lately. Her sense of "fairness" is being attacked on all sides by reality.
My heart broke for Jem in this section. He's forced to grow up and realize that the world isn't fair or just. There are moments of fairness and slight breezes of justice that can be felt, but there are more times when neither will appear. For Tom Robinson the cards were stacked against him just because of the color of his skin. Things are wrong, in this world. We can easily go about our days seeing injustice and becoming bitter, wailing like Jem that it just isn't right. There are so few things we can do individually to affect major change.
I like what Miss Maudie says,
"I waited and waited to see you all come down the sidewalk, and as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won't win, he can't win, but he's the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we're making a step - it's just a baby-step, bit it's a step."
There's something I refer to as the "Totalitarian Temptation" that comes along with big justice issues. Whether it's Gay Rights, Feminist issues, or either side of the abortion debate, there is this desire that crops up when we see the problem as too large. We presume that we know best and everyone else is stupid or uneducated and not entitled to their beliefs. We decide that what we need is the government to force the other side of the argument to capitulate. This is less than ideal. People don't like being told what to believe or what to do especially without having a say in the matter. It often leads to resentment and sometimes violence. When we talk about these justice issues we're really talking about matters of the heart not just of the mind. Forced acceptance may seem like the best route, but only the law has been changed. You can outlaw abortion but you haven't changed the fact that people are still going to seek it. And so, I love this attitude of "baby steps". If you force the change then you disrespect everyone. Like Scout says to Jem, "How can you hate Hitler so bad and be so ugly about folks at home?" when he wants to force the people to change their minds.
There's a lot about the book I could write about here. I could write about how hilarious Scout is in her girly dress at the Missionary Tea when asked where her pants are, since she's a tomboy, and she declares that her britches are on under the dress. The final scene with the reveal of Boo and the second "mad dog" that had to be taken down was masterfully written to a Bradbury degree. Simply perfect. And I'd love to go into how much of an influence Truman Capote (the real life Dill to Harper's Scout) was with some of the sharp moments of language such as in the description of Mrs. Merriweather as a "faithful Methodist under duress". However, none of that is the real takeaway from this novel.
The perpetual question for the next three years or so of these books has been and will be, "Why do they endure?" Why ARE these the books you should read before you die?
One answer so far has been the relatability of the characters and situations. All three novels so far have come off as real people in real situations rather than some idealized version of events. There is something amazingly concrete that even 250 years removed from the original material we respond.
I think the other, larger answer has something to do with a quality of the characters themselves. When I look at Jane Eyre I can't help but admire her. I admire her most, out of many reasons, for her principles. In To Kill a Mockingbird I have to say that Jem, Scout, and Boo don't endure. At least not as much as Atticus. As much as it is from Scout's perspective, this book is really about Atticus. He is a man of principle, and quiet principle at that. Atticus follows those principles to their logical end even in the face of intimidation, mockery, and threats of violence. He makes mistakes. He's not the perfect parent. He's not even the best lawyer in the state. I couldn't help but hear Jane's voice relating how her principles were there to be clung to in the worst and most maddening of times. Even when it appears that Jem has murdered Mr. Ewell in self defense he wasn't going to buckle from his principles.
It's not pride, though it could be misinterpreted as such, and it's not adherence to any old principle or idea that comes along. I got the sense that this is a man who has weighed out all options and found that this is the best way to live, these are the things to cling to. I think we'd like to believe that is who we are, but I'm not sure these days. Opinions move with the tides, principles shift with the opinion and what is expedient to our interests. Somewhere in our DNA I think we all recognize that Atticus is as much a hero as Hercules, perhaps even more so. At least we want to be like him even if we don't succeed. In a relativistic society I think it gets harder and harder to hold on to our principles. Someone once asked me if I thought I was able to believe in something, an ideal or a principle, even if every single person on the planet thought it was ridiculous. I answered then as I'll answer now, "I'd like to think so." But then again I can't decide between two pop tarts which is better. (Today I'm leaning Brown Sugar but other days it's Blueberry)
Next up is Wuthering Heights by one of the other Bronte sisters. It should be interesting to see how similar their styles are and where their inspirations cross.
Pax,
Will Arbaugh
My heart broke for Jem in this section. He's forced to grow up and realize that the world isn't fair or just. There are moments of fairness and slight breezes of justice that can be felt, but there are more times when neither will appear. For Tom Robinson the cards were stacked against him just because of the color of his skin. Things are wrong, in this world. We can easily go about our days seeing injustice and becoming bitter, wailing like Jem that it just isn't right. There are so few things we can do individually to affect major change.
I like what Miss Maudie says,
"I waited and waited to see you all come down the sidewalk, and as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won't win, he can't win, but he's the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we're making a step - it's just a baby-step, bit it's a step."
There's something I refer to as the "Totalitarian Temptation" that comes along with big justice issues. Whether it's Gay Rights, Feminist issues, or either side of the abortion debate, there is this desire that crops up when we see the problem as too large. We presume that we know best and everyone else is stupid or uneducated and not entitled to their beliefs. We decide that what we need is the government to force the other side of the argument to capitulate. This is less than ideal. People don't like being told what to believe or what to do especially without having a say in the matter. It often leads to resentment and sometimes violence. When we talk about these justice issues we're really talking about matters of the heart not just of the mind. Forced acceptance may seem like the best route, but only the law has been changed. You can outlaw abortion but you haven't changed the fact that people are still going to seek it. And so, I love this attitude of "baby steps". If you force the change then you disrespect everyone. Like Scout says to Jem, "How can you hate Hitler so bad and be so ugly about folks at home?" when he wants to force the people to change their minds.
There's a lot about the book I could write about here. I could write about how hilarious Scout is in her girly dress at the Missionary Tea when asked where her pants are, since she's a tomboy, and she declares that her britches are on under the dress. The final scene with the reveal of Boo and the second "mad dog" that had to be taken down was masterfully written to a Bradbury degree. Simply perfect. And I'd love to go into how much of an influence Truman Capote (the real life Dill to Harper's Scout) was with some of the sharp moments of language such as in the description of Mrs. Merriweather as a "faithful Methodist under duress". However, none of that is the real takeaway from this novel.
The perpetual question for the next three years or so of these books has been and will be, "Why do they endure?" Why ARE these the books you should read before you die?
One answer so far has been the relatability of the characters and situations. All three novels so far have come off as real people in real situations rather than some idealized version of events. There is something amazingly concrete that even 250 years removed from the original material we respond.
I think the other, larger answer has something to do with a quality of the characters themselves. When I look at Jane Eyre I can't help but admire her. I admire her most, out of many reasons, for her principles. In To Kill a Mockingbird I have to say that Jem, Scout, and Boo don't endure. At least not as much as Atticus. As much as it is from Scout's perspective, this book is really about Atticus. He is a man of principle, and quiet principle at that. Atticus follows those principles to their logical end even in the face of intimidation, mockery, and threats of violence. He makes mistakes. He's not the perfect parent. He's not even the best lawyer in the state. I couldn't help but hear Jane's voice relating how her principles were there to be clung to in the worst and most maddening of times. Even when it appears that Jem has murdered Mr. Ewell in self defense he wasn't going to buckle from his principles.
It's not pride, though it could be misinterpreted as such, and it's not adherence to any old principle or idea that comes along. I got the sense that this is a man who has weighed out all options and found that this is the best way to live, these are the things to cling to. I think we'd like to believe that is who we are, but I'm not sure these days. Opinions move with the tides, principles shift with the opinion and what is expedient to our interests. Somewhere in our DNA I think we all recognize that Atticus is as much a hero as Hercules, perhaps even more so. At least we want to be like him even if we don't succeed. In a relativistic society I think it gets harder and harder to hold on to our principles. Someone once asked me if I thought I was able to believe in something, an ideal or a principle, even if every single person on the planet thought it was ridiculous. I answered then as I'll answer now, "I'd like to think so." But then again I can't decide between two pop tarts which is better. (Today I'm leaning Brown Sugar but other days it's Blueberry)
Next up is Wuthering Heights by one of the other Bronte sisters. It should be interesting to see how similar their styles are and where their inspirations cross.
Pax,
Will Arbaugh
Friday, March 6, 2015
Appalachian American Alliteration
I apologize, dear reader, for not having made more frequent updates as of late. The sad story, and it is a tale of woe, is that a week ago my son got sick, then my daughter got sick, and then I, being a stay at home dad, was pretty much doomed to get sick. My wife, a CPA hip deep into tax season, chose to abandon us for the relatively sanitary conditions of her Sister's house. Today is pretty much the first time I've been able to string sentences together in a manner recognizable as language.
Fortunately I was able to recognize words and sentences while being subjected to the plague, and so I've nearly read to the end of To Kill a Mockingbird. I'll be posting my thoughts on the second third another time, but today I have another reason for posting.
As I've mentioned, I am a huge fan of "Appalachian American" culture and language. It really does need its own specification because it is so very different from anything you'll experience anywhere else. Yes, we speak the same "language" and all embrace the general American culture. It can, however, be as different from Alaska to Georgia as it is from the U.S.A. to England. There are roots and the same language but so very different. Sometimes it can be different words for the same thing, as in an elevator in the U.S. and a lift in England, or distinct local oddities.
Rabbit Tobacco: When scout describes the condition of the Radley yard she mentions that Johnson Grass and Rabbit Tobacco grew in abundance there. Johnson Grass is a common enough around the nation and is actually native to the Mediterranean area. It's apparently very good at protecting against soil erosion. Rabbit Tobacco, though, I had never heard of before. Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium, is its scientific designation if that sort of thing matters to you. It also goes by the names "old field balsam" and "sweet everlasting." When it is crushed it gives of the scent of maple. The Native Americans of all tribes found a ton of different uses for it; everything from muscle cramps, asthma (when smoked), rheumatism, cold syrup, mumps, fevers, headaches, to dispelling ghosts and bringing back those who had "lost their mind". From what I've read it was actually common for children in the south to smoke the leaves to mimic adults smoking actual tobacco.
Smilax: When Mr. Cunningham pays Atticus however he can, for Christmas he dropped off a crate of "smilax and holly". While it may have been just for the purpose of Christmas decoration, the root of the smilax is predominantly used in sarsaparilla and other root beers.
Croker Sack: Essentially a burlap sack or it could mean any sack made of a coarse material. The colorful name comes from it being the kind of sack used to hold frogs when hunting them.
Hain't: This was a hard one to find. In the book Walter Cunningham, walking past the Radley place with Jem and Scout, declared that there was a "hain't" that lived in the decrepit house. Most places online simply say it's a contraction of the word "hasn't" and "ain't". The only things I could find other than this were odd mentions that it means a ghost or spirit. In one place a sermon referred to the Holy Spirit as the "Holy Haint". Of course, the context lends credence to the paranormal definition. I quite like the word "hain't". It feeds into my brain regarding the nature or supernatural creatures, that they are things that shouldn't be but yet are.
Crackling Bread: Because Calpurnia go "so lonesome" with both kids away from school she made Crackling Bread. This is something on my list of regional foods to try. From what I could gather, it's cornbread made with pork rinds in it. I can't stand a pork rind by itself (fried pork skin...just doesn't sound appealing) but put it in cornbread and something in the pleasure center of my brain says, "Oh, that could be nummy."
Scuppernongs: The state fruit of North Carolina, Scuppernongs are similar to your average white grape but are larger and more round. The name is due to where they were first found, the Scuppernong River in North Carolina. Also in North Carolina is the oldest cultivated grape vine known to man. It's the 400 year old "Mother Vine" on Roanoke Island.
Lane Cake: Miss Maudie makes up a Lane Cake for Mr. Avery who helped fight the fire. I've made a few cakes in my time and have looked over many descriptions of recipes (mostly because I'm trying to find one that I had once when I was 5 years old that I still crave but haven't found its equal) and this is the first time I've heard one described as "bourbon-laden". There's a heck of a lot of bourbon in this baby...hoo wee. How much you ask? 3 cups of bourbon for one cake. DANG. Other than that there are raisins, pecans, coconut, and other variations.
Scout mentions that Miss Maudie made a Lane cake to welcome Aunt Alexandra "with so much shinny in that it made me tight."
Shinny: Liquor.
Habiliments: Clothing. Yeah...I was a bit disappointed to. I suppose the level of the word was increased to make it worth of Sunday dress.
Rotogravure: A process of mass production printing used at the time for magazines, art prints, and the like.
There were a few more colorful words and phrases that caught my eye, but I forgot to mark them in my copy because I was getting caught up in the story. After the showdown at the jail, I was burning through the book and can't wait to write some more about how truly wonderful it is. For now, though, I've got some cold medicine and a nap calling my name.
Pax,
W
Fortunately I was able to recognize words and sentences while being subjected to the plague, and so I've nearly read to the end of To Kill a Mockingbird. I'll be posting my thoughts on the second third another time, but today I have another reason for posting.
As I've mentioned, I am a huge fan of "Appalachian American" culture and language. It really does need its own specification because it is so very different from anything you'll experience anywhere else. Yes, we speak the same "language" and all embrace the general American culture. It can, however, be as different from Alaska to Georgia as it is from the U.S.A. to England. There are roots and the same language but so very different. Sometimes it can be different words for the same thing, as in an elevator in the U.S. and a lift in England, or distinct local oddities.
Rabbit Tobacco: When scout describes the condition of the Radley yard she mentions that Johnson Grass and Rabbit Tobacco grew in abundance there. Johnson Grass is a common enough around the nation and is actually native to the Mediterranean area. It's apparently very good at protecting against soil erosion. Rabbit Tobacco, though, I had never heard of before. Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium, is its scientific designation if that sort of thing matters to you. It also goes by the names "old field balsam" and "sweet everlasting." When it is crushed it gives of the scent of maple. The Native Americans of all tribes found a ton of different uses for it; everything from muscle cramps, asthma (when smoked), rheumatism, cold syrup, mumps, fevers, headaches, to dispelling ghosts and bringing back those who had "lost their mind". From what I've read it was actually common for children in the south to smoke the leaves to mimic adults smoking actual tobacco.
Smilax: When Mr. Cunningham pays Atticus however he can, for Christmas he dropped off a crate of "smilax and holly". While it may have been just for the purpose of Christmas decoration, the root of the smilax is predominantly used in sarsaparilla and other root beers.
Croker Sack: Essentially a burlap sack or it could mean any sack made of a coarse material. The colorful name comes from it being the kind of sack used to hold frogs when hunting them.
Hain't: This was a hard one to find. In the book Walter Cunningham, walking past the Radley place with Jem and Scout, declared that there was a "hain't" that lived in the decrepit house. Most places online simply say it's a contraction of the word "hasn't" and "ain't". The only things I could find other than this were odd mentions that it means a ghost or spirit. In one place a sermon referred to the Holy Spirit as the "Holy Haint". Of course, the context lends credence to the paranormal definition. I quite like the word "hain't". It feeds into my brain regarding the nature or supernatural creatures, that they are things that shouldn't be but yet are.
Crackling Bread: Because Calpurnia go "so lonesome" with both kids away from school she made Crackling Bread. This is something on my list of regional foods to try. From what I could gather, it's cornbread made with pork rinds in it. I can't stand a pork rind by itself (fried pork skin...just doesn't sound appealing) but put it in cornbread and something in the pleasure center of my brain says, "Oh, that could be nummy."
Scuppernongs: The state fruit of North Carolina, Scuppernongs are similar to your average white grape but are larger and more round. The name is due to where they were first found, the Scuppernong River in North Carolina. Also in North Carolina is the oldest cultivated grape vine known to man. It's the 400 year old "Mother Vine" on Roanoke Island.
Lane Cake: Miss Maudie makes up a Lane Cake for Mr. Avery who helped fight the fire. I've made a few cakes in my time and have looked over many descriptions of recipes (mostly because I'm trying to find one that I had once when I was 5 years old that I still crave but haven't found its equal) and this is the first time I've heard one described as "bourbon-laden". There's a heck of a lot of bourbon in this baby...hoo wee. How much you ask? 3 cups of bourbon for one cake. DANG. Other than that there are raisins, pecans, coconut, and other variations.
Scout mentions that Miss Maudie made a Lane cake to welcome Aunt Alexandra "with so much shinny in that it made me tight."
Shinny: Liquor.
Habiliments: Clothing. Yeah...I was a bit disappointed to. I suppose the level of the word was increased to make it worth of Sunday dress.
Rotogravure: A process of mass production printing used at the time for magazines, art prints, and the like.
There were a few more colorful words and phrases that caught my eye, but I forgot to mark them in my copy because I was getting caught up in the story. After the showdown at the jail, I was burning through the book and can't wait to write some more about how truly wonderful it is. For now, though, I've got some cold medicine and a nap calling my name.
Pax,
W
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
A Boy Named Boo (To Kill a Mockingbird Ch. 1- 10)
The initial thing that occurs to me is that so far, 3 out of 3, these novels have sucked me in pretty quickly. Oddly enough it isn't for the reason that modern "writing experts" proclaim. I've read enough issues of Writer's Digest to know that the single most important thing to hook a reader is an exciting first sentence. Even the first word has to grab the reader, the first paragraph, the first chapter all has to be perfectly tuned to grip the reader by the throat and throw them into the rest of your novel. It's perplexing to me, in a sort of round about way, that so many classics don't sink their hooks in you from the beginning.
"Call me Ishmael."
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that..."
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."
It doesn't exactly create the sense of "Wait, WHAT? I have to read more!" that all of my writing teachers in college demanded of me. I guess I'm in good company because in my writing I won't force a "perfect hook" first sentence. I'll usually get you by the end of the first chapter though, and that's what these classics have been very good at.
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the sleepy little town of Mayberry...sorry, I mean Maycomb. Honestly it may as well be Mayberry it's so delightfully small and idyllic in a retro fashion.
Harper Lee supports her setting with such appropriate usages of language and anecdotes that even my mental reading voice is using a southern drawl. It's so pitch perfect that you don't for a moment question that this town exists nor that it is Ms. Lee's actual experience. One of my favorite things about going back east to visit my relatives in West Virginia is because of language. In fact it is where I first discovered just how delighted I could be by language.
I often relate the story of a time when we visited my Grandaddy and Granny one year. Often the menfolk and womenfolk would separate to talk about things. I was mostly raised by my mother, because my father was in the military and I was homeschooled for a good half of my "learnin'" years, and as such when the separation of the group along gender lines occurred I often hung back with my mother. This allowed me to be privy to all of the good gossip and cooking tips, the later of which set a part of the course for my life.
One year, however, I realized that at some point I had "grown up". I was told, not invited - told, by my father that I was to join the menfolk out on the patio. It was my dad, grandaddy, my crazy uncle Gary, and myself sitting out on the plastic patio furniture on plastic covered cushions. There was an awkward pause as everyone kind of settled in and searched for something to talk about.
Now, talking in the south is not like talking in most places. It's almost a leisure sport. One person, usually the eldest, begins the cycle.
"Went down to the Kroger the other day and got a watermelon they had on special (pronounced spay-shoo) for 99 cents a pound," my grandaddy started it off.
"99 cents a pound?" everyone took a turn saying.
"Yeah. Pretty good for 99 cents a pound," he responded.
The conversation takes another turn towards a secondary topic. A few sentences are said on another topic and then there's another pause before the first topic is folded back into the mix.
"99 cents a pound. Man. I can't imagine it was all that good for 99 cents a pound," my uncle would declare.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty good," Grandaddy reassured.
"And you said you got it on special down at the Kroger?"
"Yeah. 99 cents a pound on special."
A third topic is then brought up, The second topic is then revisited followed by the first.
"Well, I better get on down to the Kroger later to get me some of that watermelon. 99 cents a pound?"
"Yeah, on special. 99 cents a pound. I got it at the Kroger over on that corner down there, but I expect they've got the sale anywhere."
It goes on from there, topic after topic folding back in on themselves til the end of time if you let them, I'm sure. Discovering this delighted me, and now when I'm around groups of people I pay attention to what they are saying it, how they are relating and so on. It delights me to see how these little "conversation fractals work out. Harper Lee's conversations are amazing to watch, from stories about the county's colorful past to Scout's conversations/conflicts with the big city trained teacher.
These stories and word choices give the whole thing an authenticity that can't be fabricated.
"...but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords ahd dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody."
Her description of Maycomb is nearly poetry for someone like me,
"Somehow it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shad of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."
Talk about some great writing. It evokes a similar mood and poetry as Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is one of the few books I regard highly enough to read every year.
The Radley place is introduced as the creepy house down the street that everyone is familiar with as a child. "Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked." I particularly love Dill's fascination with it. "In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate."
I was surprised at how quickly the scissor stabbing incident is mentioned. There is a lot of this that I couldn't remember here in the first third. Which means I performed an amazing display for the teacher. If that was during my homeschooling years...Mom...I'm sorry.
Scout is so amazing as a character. I totally understand why Dill asks her to marry him. When she grows up I imagine men will be falling all over each other for the chance to marry this vibrant, outspoken, "ballsy" woman. Well, I forget that these are qualities I enjoy in women and not all men do. I particularly loved how when Dill, her childhood fiance, starts paying more attention to Jem instead of her she say "I beat him up to twice to remind him, but it did no good".
Her confrontations with Miss Caroline are hilarious. It's funny to see the mentality of "You need to let teachers be the teachers and parents should have nothing to do with your education" back then. This refrain is heard in modern times in Common Core classrooms. A 6 year old who can read? I say more power to her instead of "hold her back, hold her down and force her to unlearn it." She has a particularly trying first day of school and the rest don't fare much better.
"Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the state of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics".
I do have a faint memory of the treasures found in the knot hole of the tree near the Radley house. That's such a fabulous little detail. I loved how it takes Scout nearly a half hour to be sure, through different child rituals, that the gum wasn't going to poison her. Child is full of these hilarious little rituals and superstitions. Oh, and summer. Do you remember how important summer was? Oh, this book gives me an ache for those times.
"Summer was our best season; it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.."
*sigh* I know it would horribly affect our GDP, but couldn't we just take a national holiday from work for the months of summer? I crave having three months off to do as I please so very much. Well, I guess it would help if I also had someone to cook my food, do my laundry, and take care of me when I fell out of a tree and into a patch of Devil's Club as well.
Uncle Jack reminds me very clearly of my own "Crazy Uncle" Gary.
"We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Maudie would yell back, 'Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they'll hear you at the post office, I haven't heard you yet!' Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady's hand in marriage, but then Uncle Jack was rather strange."
I swear I've met Miss Maudie while visiting West Virginia the few times that I did.
"True enough, she had an acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood doing good, as Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable faith in Miss Maudie. She never told on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend."
There is so much in her to love that recalls our own childhoods...well, at least mine. I grew up in Alaska and was allowed to run free and wild. I wonder what city folk think of the novel. Personally, I've always had the pleasure to be around blue collars and red necks. To me it has been a pleasure to not grow up "citified", though I live there now. I'm fairly certain that they saw me as citified though I was born and bred a military brat. I never saw a reason to despise them, as I saw some do in public schools. I didn't understand what was so bad about being the son of a "Dock Rat" or "Oilfield Trash" or any epithet they put to traditional red necks. Maybe it was because my own mother grew up on a farm, but I thought they were some of the most interesting and noble jobs out there and I still do. It doesn't take much to get me on my soapbox about how everything we own, and everything we put in our mouths was made possible by someone with a blue collar or a red neck. I'll take a farmer over a big city...anything any day. I could get into a few more facets of that, but then I'd never get back to the story.
Two things left that I want to get to and then I have some cleaning to attend to:
1) Harper Lee really knows how to make things at once both creepy and heartwarming. When scout rolls down the hill, slams into the steps of the Radley house and she hears laughter behind the door; depending on your disposition towards Boo that's creepy or heartwarming. Boo stepping out of the house to put a blanket around Scout's shoulders and then disappearing could be either. She nudges it over into creepy territory constantly but holds that line masterfully.
2) I'm admiring how much of the surrounding story is filtering through. She brings up bits and pieces of conversations that Scout remembers but didn't understand at the time. For instance the only time she ever heard Atticus speak tersely with someone was when she heard him tell his sister he was doing the best they can for them. It is so accurate to what childhood is like. Children are around adults all the time and not necessarily paying attention to a full conversation but they do when their parent starts acting emotionally. My own daughter often stores things away that I've forgotten about and a year or so later she'll say, "Oh, that's what you were talking about!" It's a trick I'm going to need to steal from Ms. Lee. :)
Things get serious near the end of this first third. Atticus takes a case for a colored man and is accused of being a "nigger lover" so much so that Scout is driven to defend his honor. Through an odd series of events Atticus is compelled to shoot a mad dog wandering through the town. I'm pretty sure this is a foreshadowing of something coming that will be more than a bit tragic.
Pax,
W
"Call me Ishmael."
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that..."
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."
It doesn't exactly create the sense of "Wait, WHAT? I have to read more!" that all of my writing teachers in college demanded of me. I guess I'm in good company because in my writing I won't force a "perfect hook" first sentence. I'll usually get you by the end of the first chapter though, and that's what these classics have been very good at.
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the sleepy little town of Mayberry...sorry, I mean Maycomb. Honestly it may as well be Mayberry it's so delightfully small and idyllic in a retro fashion.
Harper Lee supports her setting with such appropriate usages of language and anecdotes that even my mental reading voice is using a southern drawl. It's so pitch perfect that you don't for a moment question that this town exists nor that it is Ms. Lee's actual experience. One of my favorite things about going back east to visit my relatives in West Virginia is because of language. In fact it is where I first discovered just how delighted I could be by language.
I often relate the story of a time when we visited my Grandaddy and Granny one year. Often the menfolk and womenfolk would separate to talk about things. I was mostly raised by my mother, because my father was in the military and I was homeschooled for a good half of my "learnin'" years, and as such when the separation of the group along gender lines occurred I often hung back with my mother. This allowed me to be privy to all of the good gossip and cooking tips, the later of which set a part of the course for my life.
One year, however, I realized that at some point I had "grown up". I was told, not invited - told, by my father that I was to join the menfolk out on the patio. It was my dad, grandaddy, my crazy uncle Gary, and myself sitting out on the plastic patio furniture on plastic covered cushions. There was an awkward pause as everyone kind of settled in and searched for something to talk about.
Now, talking in the south is not like talking in most places. It's almost a leisure sport. One person, usually the eldest, begins the cycle.
"Went down to the Kroger the other day and got a watermelon they had on special (pronounced spay-shoo) for 99 cents a pound," my grandaddy started it off.
"99 cents a pound?" everyone took a turn saying.
"Yeah. Pretty good for 99 cents a pound," he responded.
The conversation takes another turn towards a secondary topic. A few sentences are said on another topic and then there's another pause before the first topic is folded back into the mix.
"99 cents a pound. Man. I can't imagine it was all that good for 99 cents a pound," my uncle would declare.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty good," Grandaddy reassured.
"And you said you got it on special down at the Kroger?"
"Yeah. 99 cents a pound on special."
A third topic is then brought up, The second topic is then revisited followed by the first.
"Well, I better get on down to the Kroger later to get me some of that watermelon. 99 cents a pound?"
"Yeah, on special. 99 cents a pound. I got it at the Kroger over on that corner down there, but I expect they've got the sale anywhere."
It goes on from there, topic after topic folding back in on themselves til the end of time if you let them, I'm sure. Discovering this delighted me, and now when I'm around groups of people I pay attention to what they are saying it, how they are relating and so on. It delights me to see how these little "conversation fractals work out. Harper Lee's conversations are amazing to watch, from stories about the county's colorful past to Scout's conversations/conflicts with the big city trained teacher.
These stories and word choices give the whole thing an authenticity that can't be fabricated.
"...but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords ahd dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody."
Her description of Maycomb is nearly poetry for someone like me,
"Somehow it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shad of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."
Talk about some great writing. It evokes a similar mood and poetry as Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is one of the few books I regard highly enough to read every year.
The Radley place is introduced as the creepy house down the street that everyone is familiar with as a child. "Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked." I particularly love Dill's fascination with it. "In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate."
I was surprised at how quickly the scissor stabbing incident is mentioned. There is a lot of this that I couldn't remember here in the first third. Which means I performed an amazing display for the teacher. If that was during my homeschooling years...Mom...I'm sorry.
Scout is so amazing as a character. I totally understand why Dill asks her to marry him. When she grows up I imagine men will be falling all over each other for the chance to marry this vibrant, outspoken, "ballsy" woman. Well, I forget that these are qualities I enjoy in women and not all men do. I particularly loved how when Dill, her childhood fiance, starts paying more attention to Jem instead of her she say "I beat him up to twice to remind him, but it did no good".
Her confrontations with Miss Caroline are hilarious. It's funny to see the mentality of "You need to let teachers be the teachers and parents should have nothing to do with your education" back then. This refrain is heard in modern times in Common Core classrooms. A 6 year old who can read? I say more power to her instead of "hold her back, hold her down and force her to unlearn it." She has a particularly trying first day of school and the rest don't fare much better.
"Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the state of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics".
I do have a faint memory of the treasures found in the knot hole of the tree near the Radley house. That's such a fabulous little detail. I loved how it takes Scout nearly a half hour to be sure, through different child rituals, that the gum wasn't going to poison her. Child is full of these hilarious little rituals and superstitions. Oh, and summer. Do you remember how important summer was? Oh, this book gives me an ache for those times.
"Summer was our best season; it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.."
*sigh* I know it would horribly affect our GDP, but couldn't we just take a national holiday from work for the months of summer? I crave having three months off to do as I please so very much. Well, I guess it would help if I also had someone to cook my food, do my laundry, and take care of me when I fell out of a tree and into a patch of Devil's Club as well.
Uncle Jack reminds me very clearly of my own "Crazy Uncle" Gary.
"We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Maudie would yell back, 'Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they'll hear you at the post office, I haven't heard you yet!' Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady's hand in marriage, but then Uncle Jack was rather strange."
I swear I've met Miss Maudie while visiting West Virginia the few times that I did.
"True enough, she had an acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood doing good, as Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable faith in Miss Maudie. She never told on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend."
There is so much in her to love that recalls our own childhoods...well, at least mine. I grew up in Alaska and was allowed to run free and wild. I wonder what city folk think of the novel. Personally, I've always had the pleasure to be around blue collars and red necks. To me it has been a pleasure to not grow up "citified", though I live there now. I'm fairly certain that they saw me as citified though I was born and bred a military brat. I never saw a reason to despise them, as I saw some do in public schools. I didn't understand what was so bad about being the son of a "Dock Rat" or "Oilfield Trash" or any epithet they put to traditional red necks. Maybe it was because my own mother grew up on a farm, but I thought they were some of the most interesting and noble jobs out there and I still do. It doesn't take much to get me on my soapbox about how everything we own, and everything we put in our mouths was made possible by someone with a blue collar or a red neck. I'll take a farmer over a big city...anything any day. I could get into a few more facets of that, but then I'd never get back to the story.
Two things left that I want to get to and then I have some cleaning to attend to:
1) Harper Lee really knows how to make things at once both creepy and heartwarming. When scout rolls down the hill, slams into the steps of the Radley house and she hears laughter behind the door; depending on your disposition towards Boo that's creepy or heartwarming. Boo stepping out of the house to put a blanket around Scout's shoulders and then disappearing could be either. She nudges it over into creepy territory constantly but holds that line masterfully.
2) I'm admiring how much of the surrounding story is filtering through. She brings up bits and pieces of conversations that Scout remembers but didn't understand at the time. For instance the only time she ever heard Atticus speak tersely with someone was when she heard him tell his sister he was doing the best they can for them. It is so accurate to what childhood is like. Children are around adults all the time and not necessarily paying attention to a full conversation but they do when their parent starts acting emotionally. My own daughter often stores things away that I've forgotten about and a year or so later she'll say, "Oh, that's what you were talking about!" It's a trick I'm going to need to steal from Ms. Lee. :)
Things get serious near the end of this first third. Atticus takes a case for a colored man and is accused of being a "nigger lover" so much so that Scout is driven to defend his honor. Through an odd series of events Atticus is compelled to shoot a mad dog wandering through the town. I'm pretty sure this is a foreshadowing of something coming that will be more than a bit tragic.
Pax,
W
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
WIKA "To Kill a Mockingbird"
When I was a bit of a young man To Kill a Mockingbird was required reading in school. By that time I hardly saw the value of a story if it didn't happen to include some element of fantasy or the fantastical. By then I had discovered the works of Stephen King, Robert Aspirin, Brian Jacques and the still incomparable team of Weis and Hickman. My mind was abuzz with dragons, alien clowns, wizards named Skeeve, sword wielding mice, and a Kender named Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I didn't have much room in my head for lazy towns, racial segregation, and some basketcase named Boo. My world, I imagined and could still debate though far more weakly now, was a far better place.
Around this time my brain had fashioned a crude survival defense against such mundane books. Yes, I had to read them, but no, I didn't have to read the whole thing. "Cliff's Notes" was too much like cheating, but skimming half the book, using my wit to fill in the gaps, I could get an "A" on any book report. I did this for years and was never caught. I would give a book two or three chapters to catch my interest, I felt that was fair, but after that all bets were off and I muddled through quite gloriously.
Here's the thing; most of those books I was required to read back then were actually pretty useless. I firmly believe that they did very little to shape me and mold me as a person. I was better served by second hand accounts of the Trojan War in ideals to strive for and heroes to emulate than by reading A Separate Peace. I needed less stories about kids my own age muddling through modern adolescence and probably more about Pirates and Gladiators. Why do I say this? Well, there's a bit of a disconnect when it comes to an adult deciding what children "should" read. I've already read the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird and I was immediately transported. I can already see the sleepy, little, idyllic Maycomb. I'm laughing at the dry little jokes everywhere. It is very much a book that I can only "get" now. Perhaps my opinion will change by the end of the book, but this very much seems like a book that can only be fully appreciated as an adult. However I'm sure it has values that an adult thinks that children "should" read about. But back then...gimme Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe.
What I know about To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty much that the main character is a girl named Scout, (Which I did think was pretty awesome. I had a bit of a crush on her because of her name and the mental image of a tomboy it conjured, but it wasn't enough to carry me through the book.)she constantly calls her dad by his first name, her dad is a lawyer named Atticus Finch, there's a strange boy named Boo, and there's a moment where shiny steel scissors are stabbed forcefully into a thigh.
My ignorance is fairly considerable on this, however I comfort myself with the fact that it is hardly as vast as my ignorance in regard to Jane Eyre.
I have a feeling this will be a fairly quick read as that it's only 325 pages in a standard paperback format. I'm not sure how many "word nerd" posts I'll have given its modern setting and writing. There may be a few southern colloquialisms that would be quite fun to delve into.
Since this is a "mandatory book" in our schools I'm hoping to hear from you all with your different views on the book and what you took away from it as a child vs. an adult. Please feel free to comment, disagree loudly, or argue with me on any point. :)
Pax,
W
Around this time my brain had fashioned a crude survival defense against such mundane books. Yes, I had to read them, but no, I didn't have to read the whole thing. "Cliff's Notes" was too much like cheating, but skimming half the book, using my wit to fill in the gaps, I could get an "A" on any book report. I did this for years and was never caught. I would give a book two or three chapters to catch my interest, I felt that was fair, but after that all bets were off and I muddled through quite gloriously.
Here's the thing; most of those books I was required to read back then were actually pretty useless. I firmly believe that they did very little to shape me and mold me as a person. I was better served by second hand accounts of the Trojan War in ideals to strive for and heroes to emulate than by reading A Separate Peace. I needed less stories about kids my own age muddling through modern adolescence and probably more about Pirates and Gladiators. Why do I say this? Well, there's a bit of a disconnect when it comes to an adult deciding what children "should" read. I've already read the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird and I was immediately transported. I can already see the sleepy, little, idyllic Maycomb. I'm laughing at the dry little jokes everywhere. It is very much a book that I can only "get" now. Perhaps my opinion will change by the end of the book, but this very much seems like a book that can only be fully appreciated as an adult. However I'm sure it has values that an adult thinks that children "should" read about. But back then...gimme Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe.
What I know about To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty much that the main character is a girl named Scout, (Which I did think was pretty awesome. I had a bit of a crush on her because of her name and the mental image of a tomboy it conjured, but it wasn't enough to carry me through the book.)she constantly calls her dad by his first name, her dad is a lawyer named Atticus Finch, there's a strange boy named Boo, and there's a moment where shiny steel scissors are stabbed forcefully into a thigh.
My ignorance is fairly considerable on this, however I comfort myself with the fact that it is hardly as vast as my ignorance in regard to Jane Eyre.
I have a feeling this will be a fairly quick read as that it's only 325 pages in a standard paperback format. I'm not sure how many "word nerd" posts I'll have given its modern setting and writing. There may be a few southern colloquialisms that would be quite fun to delve into.
Since this is a "mandatory book" in our schools I'm hoping to hear from you all with your different views on the book and what you took away from it as a child vs. an adult. Please feel free to comment, disagree loudly, or argue with me on any point. :)
Pax,
W
Monday, February 16, 2015
A Most Appropriate Ending (Jane Eyre Ch. 31-The End)
In one great blast of reading, many thanks to my children for being understanding and fending for themselves while Papa read "the lady book" (as my 3 year old son referred to it), I finished Jane Eyre. I was told during the course of this novel by a friend that I would cry at the ending. I'm not sure how I could cry given the situation at the end. As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
We last left Jane she had left the warmth and hospitality of Moor House for her own austere cottage in her new situation as a teacher to the local poor children. To our modern sensibilities we can easily gloss over some of the statements Jane makes regarding her pupils that were, in all actuality, fairly revolutionary. She declares of them,
"I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest geneaology; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born."
This, in the Victorian era, must have been a touch of a slap in the face. In a time where nobility was still revered as being infallible and your "betters" it would take a character such as Jane to both see and point out that there is little "better" about those "betters". Consider that every "best born" that she has encountered has proven themselves to be both ill mannered and of a baser quality than the servants and commoners all around her. As a teacher of both the noble and the common she would see that there is little difference at all. Every religious person is so far removed from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ as to be unrecognizable. The "heroes" of the novel are men of science (the doctor who tended her compassionately at the Reeds), a headmistress of the school who claimed no particular faith, a child riddled with consumption, and a man a "lord" who cares nothing about the hierarchy of things. The villains claim to know Christ and seek to force change in others while the heroes barely claim Christ at all, have no idea what is best for others let alone themselves sometimes, admit their own faults and failings, and don't seek to change others much at all.
And here is where I must bring up St John Rivers, Jane's cousin. It's hard to decide which "villain" is more vile; Brocklehurst vs. Rivers vs. Aunt Reed...in a cage match to the death! All three are vile in such very different ways. Aunt Reed you can almost forgive simply because of the situation. Does that grant absolution? Likely not. She damaged a child, but if you're a parent you know how easy it is to think you are doing what is "best" for a particularly willful child only to turn around and realize you've made a horrible mistake. Brocklehurst's lack of consistency is to the point of self delusion, which isn't born out of cruelty though it may in effect be cruelty. As with Aunt Reed he seems to genuinely believe what he is doing is what is actually best for these "slatterns".
St John is in a whole other category. Aunt Reed and Brocklehurst didn't seem to use their "piety" for selfish and controlling ends. Neither actually wanted anything from those they treated poorly. St John, however, was more than happy to worm his way into Jane's heart and use whatever he found there to manipulate her into meeting his desire.
On the surface St. John appears to be a decent sort of fellow. He's willing to take Jane in though he mistrusts her at first. He rises in the middle of inclement weather to attend to the needs of a poor person in his congregation. St. John roams far and wide on a daily basis to see to the spiritual health of his parish. All honorable things. I initially took his lack of conversation as general deepness of thought or adherence to the scripture that says one should only speak what is beneficial and avoid idle talk. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the silence is that of a calculating mind. He manipulates Jane into learning Hindustani instead of the German she has been studying. Well, manipulates is too weak a word. He pretty much demands. And why does Jane comply? Our typically strong willed Jane seems to just accept his will over her own. He did save her from certain death. He is her highly respectable cousin so...there is some feeling of indebtedness to be sure. But he begins to push her harder and harder the closer he gets to his date of shipping out to India as a missionary. She begins to sense something is amiss when she realizes the following,
"As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation."
And then the other shoe drops, as it were, and from out of left field he asks her to be his wife and to accompany him to India. First of all...first cousin marriage...yeah...that's weird. He confesses that he's been molding her and shaping her (aka grooming...ya jerk) to become his perfect help meet. She says "As a sister, yeah, totally I'll go with you to India." (abridged version) He continues to demand it has to be as his wife.
Pages upon pages are dedicated to their back and forth on this issue. It very closely reflects the back and forth between Jane and Rochester cattiness, but there is no fun, no joy in it. Why? Because St John is a controlling and manipulative jerk.
Maybe it's because I've watched "Kingdom of Heaven" too many times (Love that film. It speaks to men the same way Jane Austen speaks to women) or perhaps it's my adequate knowledge of history, but anytime someone even hints at saying "God wills it" apart from the original apostles and Jesus himself...I'm going to question the heck out of that presumption. These two go back and forth, Jane the ever resistant when cornered, and here we see the difference between the two suitors. When Jane stands her ground before Rochester, yes he's not happy about it, but his admiration for her grows because she is being very much who she is. She is very much being everything Rochester loves her for. When obstinate before St John he constantly plays the "God's Will" card as a means to force her to bend to his will. Jerk.
She is, unsurprisingly, smart enough to notice that "he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge." He then overplays his hand in responding, "Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case your should be numbered with those who have denied the faith..." Oh, she sees him for what he is now. "As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission -" He's austere, despotic and worried of limiting himself to barren obscurity. All of his trips to help his parishoners, when none would go out into the night and the gale, is for his own glory, not the Lord's.
In reference to the very difference between her refusal to her suitors she tells the reader, "To have yielded then (Rochester) would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now (St John) would have been an error of judgement."
Allow me an aside here to reflect on my own relationship.
There is something in the "religious" mindset that doesn't know what to do with a willful woman. I adhere to the Christian faith intensely and am constantly baffled by this. I've found myself quite unwittingly having been a "Feminist", of sorts, all my life when compared to much of the views regarding women in the older generations whom I've listened to. My wife comes from a far more rigid, right wing, patriarchal system than I ever did. I was raised "non-denominational" which is probably where most of my flexible spiritual thinking comes from, I suppose. We went from Methodist, to Baptist, to Assembly of God, to "community church". I can pretty much praise with anybody. However, there's been a noticeable thread throughout each of them that, as I said, doesn't know what to do with a willful spirited woman. When they find one they'll talk about how she's supposed to be submissive, meek, gentle, kind, respectful and all these virtues that really aren't meant to be limited to women.
So, when I found my wife one of the odd things was that half the attraction was to how spirited and vibrant and willful she was. Well, IS still. She has her own mind and it is a fabulous mind. She's more intelligent than me (by 2 IQ points, but still I grant her the credit of it at every opportunity) and I so value how differently than me she thinks. She has a very strong personality and is intimidated by no one.
She'd told me this before, but it has come up in conversation while reading Jane Eyre, that her parents and grandparents were flabbergasted with her idea of marriage. She declared that she wasn't going to marry a authoritarian man or a controlling man, that she would only marry someone who would make decisions with her. "But...what if you disagree? The man is the head of the house (in our faith) and so he gets to make the decisions. What happens when you disagree?" She shrugged it off and said, "We'll talk it out and come to a consensus." As her husband of 15 years I can tell you that this is precisely what happens, and not because she pushed her philosophy. It's because from the beginning we mutually respect each other and each other's strengths. Now, as a Christian, yes, I do agree that I am the "head of the house" and have the "final say" power granted by God...but if I don't have to pull rank why should I? When people have told me half joking "Will, control your wife!" I jokingly reply back "Ha! You try it and see how far you get", but the truth of the matter is we talk. We share our perspectives (sometimes loudly) and we do hammer out a consensus. 8 times out of 10 we both look at a problem and can see a clear path. The other 2 times it takes some thought and usually we're one or both of us missing information. If my wife and I discussed it and I could see rationally what she could not see and it was going hurt damage one or both of us then and only then would I "pull rank", as it were. I married a rational, intelligent, clear thinking woman. To "pull rank" just because I can would be to deny that she is any of that.
The older generation of ladies, not just the men, also have tended to tell the younger ladies "how to be". In some instances this is actually beneficial and wise advice. My wife has been given advice on a number of occasions to just be quiet, smile and nod, and obey, keep your opinions to yourself, let the man make the mistakes and have his way and that's how you find peace in a marriage. Yeah. Not even so much. How is that being a "helpmate"? How is that being a "co-laborer"? That's not having a wife. That's having an employee. I didn't marry her to just sit there and look pretty, to be seen and not heard. The farther I've gotten into this book the more I realized I sought my wife and married my wife because she's very much like Jane. She even wants to learn to paint.
We not return you to your regularly scheduled program:
Jane "flees" Morton in order to find out more information about her beloved Rochester who as it turns out, is no longer impeded by a previous marriage. Granted he is now blind and mutilated, but none of this even phases Jane because, well, why would it? She does not love with her eyes, but her soul.
When she first appears Rochester doubts his senses and his sanity. I love how the moment she mentions that she is an independent woman with five thousand pounds a year his response is, "Ah! this is practical - this is real! ... I should never dream that." Money was never an issue, never a negative or a positive to him.
Like any man Rochester is leery of imposing his mutilated and unkempt self upon Jane. She would have to feed him, lead him by the hand (literally...one hand is all he has left), and bathe him. He sees himself as an elder invalid and doubts Jane would ever be content as his nurse. She declares nothing would make her happier. Rochester plays a verbal "card" to test her meaning by declaring it is because she delights in sacrifice.
"Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms around what I value - to press my lips to what I love - to repose on what I trust; is that to make sacrifice? If so, then certainly delight in sacrifice."
The conclusion is one of the sweetest, most heart warming, and life affirming I have ever read. Love has won, though in not the beautiful wrapped in a bow sort of way the world likes. Love has won in the way that life is...a mess.
Why has Jane Eyre endured for 150 years? Why is it so beloved? Because it is true. It is the way life is, warts and all...and there is hope.
Pax,
W
We last left Jane she had left the warmth and hospitality of Moor House for her own austere cottage in her new situation as a teacher to the local poor children. To our modern sensibilities we can easily gloss over some of the statements Jane makes regarding her pupils that were, in all actuality, fairly revolutionary. She declares of them,
"I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest geneaology; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born."
This, in the Victorian era, must have been a touch of a slap in the face. In a time where nobility was still revered as being infallible and your "betters" it would take a character such as Jane to both see and point out that there is little "better" about those "betters". Consider that every "best born" that she has encountered has proven themselves to be both ill mannered and of a baser quality than the servants and commoners all around her. As a teacher of both the noble and the common she would see that there is little difference at all. Every religious person is so far removed from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ as to be unrecognizable. The "heroes" of the novel are men of science (the doctor who tended her compassionately at the Reeds), a headmistress of the school who claimed no particular faith, a child riddled with consumption, and a man a "lord" who cares nothing about the hierarchy of things. The villains claim to know Christ and seek to force change in others while the heroes barely claim Christ at all, have no idea what is best for others let alone themselves sometimes, admit their own faults and failings, and don't seek to change others much at all.
And here is where I must bring up St John Rivers, Jane's cousin. It's hard to decide which "villain" is more vile; Brocklehurst vs. Rivers vs. Aunt Reed...in a cage match to the death! All three are vile in such very different ways. Aunt Reed you can almost forgive simply because of the situation. Does that grant absolution? Likely not. She damaged a child, but if you're a parent you know how easy it is to think you are doing what is "best" for a particularly willful child only to turn around and realize you've made a horrible mistake. Brocklehurst's lack of consistency is to the point of self delusion, which isn't born out of cruelty though it may in effect be cruelty. As with Aunt Reed he seems to genuinely believe what he is doing is what is actually best for these "slatterns".
St John is in a whole other category. Aunt Reed and Brocklehurst didn't seem to use their "piety" for selfish and controlling ends. Neither actually wanted anything from those they treated poorly. St John, however, was more than happy to worm his way into Jane's heart and use whatever he found there to manipulate her into meeting his desire.
On the surface St. John appears to be a decent sort of fellow. He's willing to take Jane in though he mistrusts her at first. He rises in the middle of inclement weather to attend to the needs of a poor person in his congregation. St. John roams far and wide on a daily basis to see to the spiritual health of his parish. All honorable things. I initially took his lack of conversation as general deepness of thought or adherence to the scripture that says one should only speak what is beneficial and avoid idle talk. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the silence is that of a calculating mind. He manipulates Jane into learning Hindustani instead of the German she has been studying. Well, manipulates is too weak a word. He pretty much demands. And why does Jane comply? Our typically strong willed Jane seems to just accept his will over her own. He did save her from certain death. He is her highly respectable cousin so...there is some feeling of indebtedness to be sure. But he begins to push her harder and harder the closer he gets to his date of shipping out to India as a missionary. She begins to sense something is amiss when she realizes the following,
"As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation."
And then the other shoe drops, as it were, and from out of left field he asks her to be his wife and to accompany him to India. First of all...first cousin marriage...yeah...that's weird. He confesses that he's been molding her and shaping her (aka grooming...ya jerk) to become his perfect help meet. She says "As a sister, yeah, totally I'll go with you to India." (abridged version) He continues to demand it has to be as his wife.
Pages upon pages are dedicated to their back and forth on this issue. It very closely reflects the back and forth between Jane and Rochester cattiness, but there is no fun, no joy in it. Why? Because St John is a controlling and manipulative jerk.
Maybe it's because I've watched "Kingdom of Heaven" too many times (Love that film. It speaks to men the same way Jane Austen speaks to women) or perhaps it's my adequate knowledge of history, but anytime someone even hints at saying "God wills it" apart from the original apostles and Jesus himself...I'm going to question the heck out of that presumption. These two go back and forth, Jane the ever resistant when cornered, and here we see the difference between the two suitors. When Jane stands her ground before Rochester, yes he's not happy about it, but his admiration for her grows because she is being very much who she is. She is very much being everything Rochester loves her for. When obstinate before St John he constantly plays the "God's Will" card as a means to force her to bend to his will. Jerk.
She is, unsurprisingly, smart enough to notice that "he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge." He then overplays his hand in responding, "Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case your should be numbered with those who have denied the faith..." Oh, she sees him for what he is now. "As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission -" He's austere, despotic and worried of limiting himself to barren obscurity. All of his trips to help his parishoners, when none would go out into the night and the gale, is for his own glory, not the Lord's.
In reference to the very difference between her refusal to her suitors she tells the reader, "To have yielded then (Rochester) would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now (St John) would have been an error of judgement."
Allow me an aside here to reflect on my own relationship.
There is something in the "religious" mindset that doesn't know what to do with a willful woman. I adhere to the Christian faith intensely and am constantly baffled by this. I've found myself quite unwittingly having been a "Feminist", of sorts, all my life when compared to much of the views regarding women in the older generations whom I've listened to. My wife comes from a far more rigid, right wing, patriarchal system than I ever did. I was raised "non-denominational" which is probably where most of my flexible spiritual thinking comes from, I suppose. We went from Methodist, to Baptist, to Assembly of God, to "community church". I can pretty much praise with anybody. However, there's been a noticeable thread throughout each of them that, as I said, doesn't know what to do with a willful spirited woman. When they find one they'll talk about how she's supposed to be submissive, meek, gentle, kind, respectful and all these virtues that really aren't meant to be limited to women.
So, when I found my wife one of the odd things was that half the attraction was to how spirited and vibrant and willful she was. Well, IS still. She has her own mind and it is a fabulous mind. She's more intelligent than me (by 2 IQ points, but still I grant her the credit of it at every opportunity) and I so value how differently than me she thinks. She has a very strong personality and is intimidated by no one.
She'd told me this before, but it has come up in conversation while reading Jane Eyre, that her parents and grandparents were flabbergasted with her idea of marriage. She declared that she wasn't going to marry a authoritarian man or a controlling man, that she would only marry someone who would make decisions with her. "But...what if you disagree? The man is the head of the house (in our faith) and so he gets to make the decisions. What happens when you disagree?" She shrugged it off and said, "We'll talk it out and come to a consensus." As her husband of 15 years I can tell you that this is precisely what happens, and not because she pushed her philosophy. It's because from the beginning we mutually respect each other and each other's strengths. Now, as a Christian, yes, I do agree that I am the "head of the house" and have the "final say" power granted by God...but if I don't have to pull rank why should I? When people have told me half joking "Will, control your wife!" I jokingly reply back "Ha! You try it and see how far you get", but the truth of the matter is we talk. We share our perspectives (sometimes loudly) and we do hammer out a consensus. 8 times out of 10 we both look at a problem and can see a clear path. The other 2 times it takes some thought and usually we're one or both of us missing information. If my wife and I discussed it and I could see rationally what she could not see and it was going hurt damage one or both of us then and only then would I "pull rank", as it were. I married a rational, intelligent, clear thinking woman. To "pull rank" just because I can would be to deny that she is any of that.
The older generation of ladies, not just the men, also have tended to tell the younger ladies "how to be". In some instances this is actually beneficial and wise advice. My wife has been given advice on a number of occasions to just be quiet, smile and nod, and obey, keep your opinions to yourself, let the man make the mistakes and have his way and that's how you find peace in a marriage. Yeah. Not even so much. How is that being a "helpmate"? How is that being a "co-laborer"? That's not having a wife. That's having an employee. I didn't marry her to just sit there and look pretty, to be seen and not heard. The farther I've gotten into this book the more I realized I sought my wife and married my wife because she's very much like Jane. She even wants to learn to paint.
We not return you to your regularly scheduled program:
Jane "flees" Morton in order to find out more information about her beloved Rochester who as it turns out, is no longer impeded by a previous marriage. Granted he is now blind and mutilated, but none of this even phases Jane because, well, why would it? She does not love with her eyes, but her soul.
When she first appears Rochester doubts his senses and his sanity. I love how the moment she mentions that she is an independent woman with five thousand pounds a year his response is, "Ah! this is practical - this is real! ... I should never dream that." Money was never an issue, never a negative or a positive to him.
Like any man Rochester is leery of imposing his mutilated and unkempt self upon Jane. She would have to feed him, lead him by the hand (literally...one hand is all he has left), and bathe him. He sees himself as an elder invalid and doubts Jane would ever be content as his nurse. She declares nothing would make her happier. Rochester plays a verbal "card" to test her meaning by declaring it is because she delights in sacrifice.
"Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms around what I value - to press my lips to what I love - to repose on what I trust; is that to make sacrifice? If so, then certainly delight in sacrifice."
The conclusion is one of the sweetest, most heart warming, and life affirming I have ever read. Love has won, though in not the beautiful wrapped in a bow sort of way the world likes. Love has won in the way that life is...a mess.
Why has Jane Eyre endured for 150 years? Why is it so beloved? Because it is true. It is the way life is, warts and all...and there is hope.
Pax,
W
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