Sunday, May 14, 2006
The Hole exhibits life
Nerzhin! I was just about to post a cranky post saying that surely someone, somewhere, has read something. Even if it's Curious George Has a Colonoscopy or Peter Spier's Rain, we have to post about it! What is wrong with everyone? OK, so I pretty much gave you all the cranky post anyway. But dear Nerzhin can ignore it, because he posted at my darkest hour.
Lucky pawns
It's been a long time since I read a book as good as Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro has the gift of presenting us with enormously deep and difficult emotions in an understated, tightly controlled, slowly paced manner that only serves to highlight the depth of feeling. The slow clenching in your gut that you feel as you read seems to come from the story and from the characters, not from the writing itself.
Never Let Me Go opens at an exclusive British boarding school, where the three main characters, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy are students. The school, called Hailsham, seems nice enough, almost idyllic, but there are a few strange things. The students are never allowed to leave the grounds and don't seem to have families. And the only classes that are mentioned are things like art, music, and poetry; there is no chemistry or math or history. The students are pushed to be creative, and their very best works are taken away to be put in the Headmistress's "Gallery", a collection that the Guardians at Hailsham never mention but all the students are sure exists.
The book traces the relationships of Kathy (the narrator), Tommy, and Ruth as they leave Hailsham and begin the next phases of their lives, and as they begin to figure out who they are, what the Gallery means, what kind of institution Hailsham actually is. Ishiguro depicts the changing relationships with precision and poignancy; there is the sense, as in real relationships, of tension, uncertainty, and vagueness, and also the sense that understanding and working out these relationships is critically important.
The premise of the story lacks a certain realism if you think about it too much, but as it unfolds in the book you are so drawn in by the realism in the characters and the feelings that it doesn't seem to matter; the situation the characters find themselves in can be understood on an almost symbolic level. What makes this book great is that the lives of the characters, so different from ours externally, make us see our own lives in a different perspective.
Never Let Me Go opens at an exclusive British boarding school, where the three main characters, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy are students. The school, called Hailsham, seems nice enough, almost idyllic, but there are a few strange things. The students are never allowed to leave the grounds and don't seem to have families. And the only classes that are mentioned are things like art, music, and poetry; there is no chemistry or math or history. The students are pushed to be creative, and their very best works are taken away to be put in the Headmistress's "Gallery", a collection that the Guardians at Hailsham never mention but all the students are sure exists.
The book traces the relationships of Kathy (the narrator), Tommy, and Ruth as they leave Hailsham and begin the next phases of their lives, and as they begin to figure out who they are, what the Gallery means, what kind of institution Hailsham actually is. Ishiguro depicts the changing relationships with precision and poignancy; there is the sense, as in real relationships, of tension, uncertainty, and vagueness, and also the sense that understanding and working out these relationships is critically important.
The premise of the story lacks a certain realism if you think about it too much, but as it unfolds in the book you are so drawn in by the realism in the characters and the feelings that it doesn't seem to matter; the situation the characters find themselves in can be understood on an almost symbolic level. What makes this book great is that the lives of the characters, so different from ours externally, make us see our own lives in a different perspective.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
John McPhee
Not only am I posting about reading a book of excerpts from other books (what do you all think about this? is it acceptable?), but I haven't even read the whole thing. I've read all the excerpts from Coming into the Country (about Alaska) in The Second John McPhee Reader. It does make me want to read Coming into the Country. It's on my list now. Although I confess I checked Basin and Range out of the library back in Oregon and never made it very far, I am convinced still more now that McPhee is a fabulous writer.
In the spirit of excerpts, since even the excerptable stories that make it into the reader can't fit here, I offer my own favorite little quotes from the part about Anchorage:
In the spirit of excerpts, since even the excerptable stories that make it into the reader can't fit here, I offer my own favorite little quotes from the part about Anchorage:
Anchorage is not a frontier town. It is virtually unrelated to its environment. It has come in on the wind, an American spore. A large cookie cutter brought down on El Paso could lift something like Anchorage into the air. Anchorage is the northern rim of Trenton, the center of Oxnard, the ocean-blind precincts of Daytona Beach. It is condensed, instant Albuquerque.And McPhee's storytelling is far more delightful than his little one-liners. I don't even want to study how he does what he does, for example, in his story (from Table of Contents) about meeting a game warden with the same name as him. It's magic. It has zany postmodern moments, shifts of time and viewpoint without transition, nested stories (eminently excerptable, I suppose). His best gift is just pure storytelling, survival stories good enough to make you cry with joy.
Books were selling in Anchorage, once when I was there, for forty-seven cents a pound.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Dallas, Dublin
yes I said yes I will Yes.
These final words of Ulysses are the title of "A Celebration of James Joyce, Ulysses, and 100 Years of Bloomsday," edited by Nola Tully. It's a fun book. I got it as part of my quest to bring Bloomsday to Dallas. As far as I know, there are not even any Bloomsday celebrations in Texas!
It's weird how quickly one can absorb the Texan rhetoric about the state's being a world in itself, lacking nothing, doing everything better than everywhere else. I mean, it's easy to mock this attitude, because of course it's not true, but part of you wants to make it true. So when you see something lacking (like Bloomsday), rather than saying, "Aha! So much for bigger and better! Silly Texans!", you try to help Texas out. You try to make it complete. Rather than refusing to believe the myth, you work to make reality match it.
Dallas, Dublin. It can happen. Anything can happen for a day.
This (yes I said yes I will Yes.) is a really fun book, like I said. It's kind of a hodgepodge, including a term paper by Tennessee Williams ("speaking of Ulysses, there is, in the first place, too much of it"), a chart in which ten critics rank various authors, composers, characters, and periodicals on a scale of 25 to -25 (Krazy Kat gets a composite 7.6, Lenin a 0, Flaubert a 16.8, Joan of Arc a 3.3, Teddy Roosevelt a -9.5), quotes from friends and critics about Joyce and his novel, descriptions of Bloomsday celebrations around the world, essays, forewords, and so on.
Robert Spoo's essay on copyright is relevant while turmoil rages over that Harvard girl and her silly book. Spoo says, "The mustache on the Mona Lisa always washes off," which seems sound to me. Not that the people she borrowed from were deathless literary masters, but in any case time will tell who's the better writer. We sort and sift. We waste time on unworthy things. That's life.
I was sort of confused by the collection of statements about Joyce. You have people who say he was a true, loyal friend and all that, and then people who say he was insufferable and conceited. I guess you could say such divergent things about a lot of people. It reminds me that there are a lot of people I don't really want to be friends with, but I'm glad they can find people who do. It balances things out.
These final words of Ulysses are the title of "A Celebration of James Joyce, Ulysses, and 100 Years of Bloomsday," edited by Nola Tully. It's a fun book. I got it as part of my quest to bring Bloomsday to Dallas. As far as I know, there are not even any Bloomsday celebrations in Texas!
It's weird how quickly one can absorb the Texan rhetoric about the state's being a world in itself, lacking nothing, doing everything better than everywhere else. I mean, it's easy to mock this attitude, because of course it's not true, but part of you wants to make it true. So when you see something lacking (like Bloomsday), rather than saying, "Aha! So much for bigger and better! Silly Texans!", you try to help Texas out. You try to make it complete. Rather than refusing to believe the myth, you work to make reality match it.
Dallas, Dublin. It can happen. Anything can happen for a day.
This (yes I said yes I will Yes.) is a really fun book, like I said. It's kind of a hodgepodge, including a term paper by Tennessee Williams ("speaking of Ulysses, there is, in the first place, too much of it"), a chart in which ten critics rank various authors, composers, characters, and periodicals on a scale of 25 to -25 (Krazy Kat gets a composite 7.6, Lenin a 0, Flaubert a 16.8, Joan of Arc a 3.3, Teddy Roosevelt a -9.5), quotes from friends and critics about Joyce and his novel, descriptions of Bloomsday celebrations around the world, essays, forewords, and so on.
Robert Spoo's essay on copyright is relevant while turmoil rages over that Harvard girl and her silly book. Spoo says, "The mustache on the Mona Lisa always washes off," which seems sound to me. Not that the people she borrowed from were deathless literary masters, but in any case time will tell who's the better writer. We sort and sift. We waste time on unworthy things. That's life.
I was sort of confused by the collection of statements about Joyce. You have people who say he was a true, loyal friend and all that, and then people who say he was insufferable and conceited. I guess you could say such divergent things about a lot of people. It reminds me that there are a lot of people I don't really want to be friends with, but I'm glad they can find people who do. It balances things out.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
El misterio del principe
Wow, Tree, you read fast. My excuse is that I've been reading in Spanish.
Harry Potter y el misterio del principe was a delight to read. Since I assume I'm about the last member of Western civilization to have read it, I won't say too much about it, except that I'm looking forward to book seven.
My question for the day is this: Is J.K. Rowling a genius or just lucky? Are there other people writing books just as good as hers who never get discovered? I would tend to think there are. That is, she may be a genius, but she is certainly lucky.
Harry Potter y el misterio del principe was a delight to read. Since I assume I'm about the last member of Western civilization to have read it, I won't say too much about it, except that I'm looking forward to book seven.
My question for the day is this: Is J.K. Rowling a genius or just lucky? Are there other people writing books just as good as hers who never get discovered? I would tend to think there are. That is, she may be a genius, but she is certainly lucky.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Dubliners
This might be a good book to use in a class on Ulysses. You could have the students read one story per class period, simultaneously with the great comic epic, and they might feel less confused and overwhelmed. In Dubliners, you get traditionally written descriptions of some of the same characters (in fact the writing sometimes seems jarringly formal compared with U's), and a sense of the town's ethos.
My favorite stories were "The Dead" (beautiful), "Araby" (an amazing portrayal of the range of an adolescent's emotions), and I guess "After the Race" (neatly done, and also very good at showing emotional states).
I feel like I failed to understand most of the stories. This is when I really miss having a book discussion group.
My favorite stories were "The Dead" (beautiful), "Araby" (an amazing portrayal of the range of an adolescent's emotions), and I guess "After the Race" (neatly done, and also very good at showing emotional states).
I feel like I failed to understand most of the stories. This is when I really miss having a book discussion group.
Monday, April 10, 2006
A Fine Balance
We all read for different reasons, so others are no doubt justified in their liking of it, but I was disappointed by A Fine Balance.
It reminded me of two books: The Grapes of Wrath and Dominique Lapierre's The City of Joy. It's like Grapes in the way everything seems to be getting worse and worse. It reminded me of City because it features beggars in the slums of India and because it seems to be written to make a point.
No one can say that Rohinton Mistry's characters are unrealistic. They're complex yet predictable. They're true to themselves, yet surprising. Yet it still seemed like they were being used for something, which made them somehow less than human.
I think I missed that particularity that makes reading worthwhile. The books I admire have a strong sense of place. If you detach a person from their world, you can't understand them. The author has a duty to describe the world. If she does it right, you've done something by reading her book that you never could have done on your own; your eyes have been opened and your soul enlarged.
For all the manifest Indian weirdness in Mistry's book, I still felt like it could all have taken place anywhere. I'm not going to remember it like I remember the slums even in the badly written (or at least badly translated) City of Joy, or the dirty campsites and dusty fields of the Grapes of Wrath. Good writing makes me think, "This is what it feels like to be alive." I get more of that from one paragraph of Colette than I did from the 600 pages of this novel.
Sure, there are human truths and inspiring moments. I learned from the characters. I felt like there were morals to be drawn from the story. I laughed out loud and even cried once or twice. But I never learned what it was like to be the characters, or maybe I just failed to understand them. I wanted to breathe Indian air for a while, but I never got outside of myself.
It reminded me of two books: The Grapes of Wrath and Dominique Lapierre's The City of Joy. It's like Grapes in the way everything seems to be getting worse and worse. It reminded me of City because it features beggars in the slums of India and because it seems to be written to make a point.
No one can say that Rohinton Mistry's characters are unrealistic. They're complex yet predictable. They're true to themselves, yet surprising. Yet it still seemed like they were being used for something, which made them somehow less than human.
I think I missed that particularity that makes reading worthwhile. The books I admire have a strong sense of place. If you detach a person from their world, you can't understand them. The author has a duty to describe the world. If she does it right, you've done something by reading her book that you never could have done on your own; your eyes have been opened and your soul enlarged.
For all the manifest Indian weirdness in Mistry's book, I still felt like it could all have taken place anywhere. I'm not going to remember it like I remember the slums even in the badly written (or at least badly translated) City of Joy, or the dirty campsites and dusty fields of the Grapes of Wrath. Good writing makes me think, "This is what it feels like to be alive." I get more of that from one paragraph of Colette than I did from the 600 pages of this novel.
Sure, there are human truths and inspiring moments. I learned from the characters. I felt like there were morals to be drawn from the story. I laughed out loud and even cried once or twice. But I never learned what it was like to be the characters, or maybe I just failed to understand them. I wanted to breathe Indian air for a while, but I never got outside of myself.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Valuing trees
A fellow member of a native plant society mailing list estimated how much the trees on his campus in north Texas were worth. He decided about $10 million.
"Since it is very difficult to move a 40' Oak, especially a long distance, I simply figured $30K minimum for a specimen tree.... and I still feel this value is way low," he writes.
"Since it is very difficult to move a 40' Oak, especially a long distance, I simply figured $30K minimum for a specimen tree.... and I still feel this value is way low," he writes.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
By root and twig
I see the funny term "urban forestry" and am tempted to imagine forests marching into the streets, crumbling asphalt and concrete, ripping parking lots out with their roots. The entwives return after the dust settles to create peaceful parks between the skyscrapers. Humans come out at noon and eat their lunches in these shady, fountainous picnic groves.
According to this study around San Antonio, "residential shade trees were shown to save each home an average of $76 a year" in air conditioning costs. It also gives much more impressively-scaled statistics, but this one is nice in its significance to Billy Bob's wallet.
Another fantasy I have is that the city planning people will be practical enough to start considering the vegetable world in their budgets before I'm dead.
According to this study around San Antonio, "residential shade trees were shown to save each home an average of $76 a year" in air conditioning costs. It also gives much more impressively-scaled statistics, but this one is nice in its significance to Billy Bob's wallet.
Another fantasy I have is that the city planning people will be practical enough to start considering the vegetable world in their budgets before I'm dead.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Aliens in the Beltway
I first became acquainted with Christopher Buckley when an excerpt from his Florence in Arabia was published in the Atlantic Monthly, and I thought it was hilarious. It has taken me a while to get around to reading one of his complete books, and I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed.
Little Green Men begins with a funny enough premise; a secret organization within the US government, dubbed MJ-12, has been faking UFO sightings and abducting Iowa farmers as a way to keep up public support for the space program and the military while persuading the Russians that we had access to extraordinary alien technology. One bored member of MJ-12, Nathan Scrubbs by name, decides to order an abduction of John Oliver Banion, the most prominent political TV commentator in the country.
Banion begins to use his show and his column and all his clout and connections to discuss "alien issues." The Washington establishment and all of respectable society immediately subjects him to shun and ridicule; but three million regular citizens begin to treat him as some kind of Messiah. He sets out to force the government to reveal the truth about aliens with the help of his UFO brain trust, consisting of Roz, the attractive editor of Cosmos-politan, an astronomer named Dr. Falopian, and former Air Force Colonel Murfletit. Meanwhile, Scrubbs is on the run from his government employers, who are not to happy with him for abducting someone with such a high profile.
The results are funny but never quite side-splitting. Many of the jokes have to do with fashionable Beltway society and how this society intersects with politics, and those jokes were lost on me. Dr. Falopian and Col. Murfletit have a lot of comic potential as characters, but this potential is never really developed; in fact, both of them can be summarized by the phrase "crazy UFO nuts." That's only funny for about five pages.
Little Green Men also suffers from a distracting lack of polish. On a couple occasions the author refers to a character by another character's name, and he also has a tendency to confuse real people with their fictional stand-ins. One gets the feeling Buckley wrote his book with real politicians (Henry Kissinger, for example) in mind and then went through with an imperfect search-and-replace in order to avoid lawsuits.
Perhaps the funniest part of this book is the inside front cover, where, under the heading "Also by Christopher Buckley" we find the entry "Moby Dick (with Herman Melville)". Now that I've told you that, there's no need to buy it.
Little Green Men begins with a funny enough premise; a secret organization within the US government, dubbed MJ-12, has been faking UFO sightings and abducting Iowa farmers as a way to keep up public support for the space program and the military while persuading the Russians that we had access to extraordinary alien technology. One bored member of MJ-12, Nathan Scrubbs by name, decides to order an abduction of John Oliver Banion, the most prominent political TV commentator in the country.
Banion begins to use his show and his column and all his clout and connections to discuss "alien issues." The Washington establishment and all of respectable society immediately subjects him to shun and ridicule; but three million regular citizens begin to treat him as some kind of Messiah. He sets out to force the government to reveal the truth about aliens with the help of his UFO brain trust, consisting of Roz, the attractive editor of Cosmos-politan, an astronomer named Dr. Falopian, and former Air Force Colonel Murfletit. Meanwhile, Scrubbs is on the run from his government employers, who are not to happy with him for abducting someone with such a high profile.
The results are funny but never quite side-splitting. Many of the jokes have to do with fashionable Beltway society and how this society intersects with politics, and those jokes were lost on me. Dr. Falopian and Col. Murfletit have a lot of comic potential as characters, but this potential is never really developed; in fact, both of them can be summarized by the phrase "crazy UFO nuts." That's only funny for about five pages.
Little Green Men also suffers from a distracting lack of polish. On a couple occasions the author refers to a character by another character's name, and he also has a tendency to confuse real people with their fictional stand-ins. One gets the feeling Buckley wrote his book with real politicians (Henry Kissinger, for example) in mind and then went through with an imperfect search-and-replace in order to avoid lawsuits.
Perhaps the funniest part of this book is the inside front cover, where, under the heading "Also by Christopher Buckley" we find the entry "Moby Dick (with Herman Melville)". Now that I've told you that, there's no need to buy it.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Brother Cadfael
Recently finished two books in the Brother Cadfael mystery series by Ellis Peters (real name Edith Pargetter). I read #5, The Leper of St. Giles, and #7, The Sanctuary Sparrow. Both are fun murder-mystery page-turners set in 12th-century England (Brother Cadfael is a monk in a Benedictine monastery in western England).
I won't recap the plots of either book, but reading them made me think about mysteries and how hard it is to craft them. There are only a few named characters in each book, and one of those characters turns out to be the murderer in each case. I actually figured out who the murderer was in #7. Which points to a dilemma murder mystery writers must have: If you make the murderer plausible and provide real clues, it's more likely your reader will figure it out. Whereas if you hide clues and have the murderer be a character from the fringes, that's kind of cheating.
Which is why I don't think I'll ever try a murder mystery. Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Dorothy Sayers--and Ellis Peters--are safe.
Oh, one more thing: Nerzhin, we're not offended that you have started your own blog. We are, however, deeply offended that you don't even have a link to this blog on your page. For shame!
I won't recap the plots of either book, but reading them made me think about mysteries and how hard it is to craft them. There are only a few named characters in each book, and one of those characters turns out to be the murderer in each case. I actually figured out who the murderer was in #7. Which points to a dilemma murder mystery writers must have: If you make the murderer plausible and provide real clues, it's more likely your reader will figure it out. Whereas if you hide clues and have the murderer be a character from the fringes, that's kind of cheating.
Which is why I don't think I'll ever try a murder mystery. Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Dorothy Sayers--and Ellis Peters--are safe.
Oh, one more thing: Nerzhin, we're not offended that you have started your own blog. We are, however, deeply offended that you don't even have a link to this blog on your page. For shame!
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Quantum brains
Recently finished The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose, an Oxford physicist. According to Penrose, the action of the brain is fundamentally different from and cannot, even in principle, be reduced to the working of a deterministic computer. The argument is one I have some sympathy for, though I'm not sure Penrose makes his case completely convincing. Even so, the book is a fascinating trip through issues of computability, determinism, and the mind-body problem that I hadn't considered before.
Most physical laws are deterministic, which means that given the state of a system at one time you can, at least in principle, predict its state for the entire future. But at the quantum level things are a little bit more tricky and certain things (the position of an electron, say) are observed to behave probabilistically. Though most physicists and biologists would argue that quantum effects are not important at the level of human brains, Penrose disagrees and sees this as an opening for the presence of conciousness and free will.
Now may be as good a time as any to reveal that I've started my own blog. I hope no one's offended; it has a different kind of feel from the Crawdad Hole, and I will continue to post here from time to time as I have things to say that seem to fit better here than there.
Most physical laws are deterministic, which means that given the state of a system at one time you can, at least in principle, predict its state for the entire future. But at the quantum level things are a little bit more tricky and certain things (the position of an electron, say) are observed to behave probabilistically. Though most physicists and biologists would argue that quantum effects are not important at the level of human brains, Penrose disagrees and sees this as an opening for the presence of conciousness and free will.
Now may be as good a time as any to reveal that I've started my own blog. I hope no one's offended; it has a different kind of feel from the Crawdad Hole, and I will continue to post here from time to time as I have things to say that seem to fit better here than there.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Hello & Riding the Iron Rooster Review
Greetings to everyone from the newest member of this group. I'm honored to count myself one of the posters to this page. In the spirit of Tree of Valinor's book mandate, I'll begin with a short review of a book I almost finished over Christmas vacation, Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China by Paul Theroux. The fact that I didn't finish it should tell you something. It's a little dated, being over 10 years old, and I found Mr. Theroux's condescending attitude towards his fellow travelers annoying. Whether it was the fat ingorant Americans he began the tour with or the strange, spitting Chinese he spent most of his train time in the company of, it seems like Mr. Theroux had nothing but criticism. In fact, I can't remember a single person he gave an overall positive impression of.
To be fair, travelling is stressful, and sharing a sleeping car with a constantly spitting, loud-talking companion would not be a picnic. And who hasn't had wicked thoughts about people on the bus or in the next cubicle? So we'll give Mr. Theroux points for being honest, and points for writing vivid descriptions of people and places. I will never forget his description of the cold in Harbin. He made me feel it. And any book in which the author spends the majority of his time on steam-driven trains can't be a total loss. Still, in the end, Mr. Theroux's lack of sympathy for his fellow travelers turned me off and allowed me to put the book down before the end. I probably will never pick it back up.
To be fair, travelling is stressful, and sharing a sleeping car with a constantly spitting, loud-talking companion would not be a picnic. And who hasn't had wicked thoughts about people on the bus or in the next cubicle? So we'll give Mr. Theroux points for being honest, and points for writing vivid descriptions of people and places. I will never forget his description of the cold in Harbin. He made me feel it. And any book in which the author spends the majority of his time on steam-driven trains can't be a total loss. Still, in the end, Mr. Theroux's lack of sympathy for his fellow travelers turned me off and allowed me to put the book down before the end. I probably will never pick it back up.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Sunday, January 01, 2006
New year, new blog posts
Happy new year.
The most recent book I read was a collection of short stories, A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies by John Murray. It has a powerful emotional voice, and interesting believable characters, but nothing really happens in any of the stories, that is to say, the plots are less than gripping. All the stories seemed the same; if I had read only one of them I probably would have really liked it, but as a collection it was a little disappointing.
The other book I want to mention from 2005 is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Definitely a bit more lowbrow than what's typically discussed on this blog, but in terms of reading pleasure it's the best book I've read in a while. It has a real story, a fun story, even if it's not a candidate for the National Book Award.
The most recent book I read was a collection of short stories, A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies by John Murray. It has a powerful emotional voice, and interesting believable characters, but nothing really happens in any of the stories, that is to say, the plots are less than gripping. All the stories seemed the same; if I had read only one of them I probably would have really liked it, but as a collection it was a little disappointing.
The other book I want to mention from 2005 is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Definitely a bit more lowbrow than what's typically discussed on this blog, but in terms of reading pleasure it's the best book I've read in a while. It has a real story, a fun story, even if it's not a candidate for the National Book Award.
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