Half Years and Such

I'm behind again, aren't I. Three books. Honestly, it is not intentional - there has been so much to do over the past couple of weeks that I've not really had time to reflect on my reading experiences with you. But I can assure you that the adventures I've been having, the pages I've read, have left me thoroughly impressed. I'll do my best this week to get you caught up.

This post is not about anything of that nature though. Instead, it is a celebration of a year of reading - or rather, six months of reading. I've counted, and have had the pleasure of reading 19 books thus far. Not an overly impressive number, but seeing as one book (Atlas Shrugged) took me nearly two months to get through rather than my standard 4 or 5 days, I'll take what I can get.

This gives me a great opportunity to look back at what I've read, and the places I've been. And the places I've been.

I've crossed into Japan and back with a man named Jacob de Zoet, traveled to the Ukraine and altered the lives and deaths of entire towns, witnessed the split of Czechoslovakia in the midst of a political art crisis, traveled to the backwoods of Canadian Identity in lakes of Quebec, discovered a post-Civil War Southern United States where lawlessness is terrifying, traveled to St. John's from Labrador with a transgendered almost woman almost named Annabel, perused Norway's backwoods where the war still haunts the memories of man and woman, and built a railway with a female tycoon only to have it taken away and be transported to a utopia while the world falls to pieces.

I've done well for myself, considering I've not actually left my town since New Years, no?

So where do I stand so far? What are my favourite reads?

I'm going to keep the number to six, just under a third of what I've read. A challenge, because, as you'd know if you've been following me all year, I don't really think I've read anything particularly bad this year. Here goes nothing...

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - I'm sure this surprises nobody. After finishing this novel, I was in a reading funk; I could not convince myself that the books I was picking up to try and fill the void were doing it. The language and characters that fill the pages are truly special, and I look forward to reading it again.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - This is a haunting tale, and I'm sure that an academic could place it in a historical genre of magical realism if they were so inclined. I would listen, as I am sure that Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is also rightfully placed in it (and it also, is rightfully placed among the classics). What impressed me most was Dorian Gray's character, and how Oscar Wilde took hold of a theme and illustrated with a painting. Terrifying.

Regeneration by Pat Barker - Part One of a trilogy, I was impressed with this novel's subtlety. You'll find out more about it later this week (I promise), but the characters and their attachments to each other thoroughly impressed me, and the delicacy with which Barker captured the flashbacks horrified. The second novel is waiting for me to pick up from the local library. Truly, this trilogy should be exalted into the highest echelons of anti-war literature.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - If you knew me, you'd be shocked by this selection. My entire family scoffed at me for reading it, and then slowly came out of their respective closets: my mother read it in University, my Grandma read it while she was pregnant with my aunt. This highly controversial novel, though not perfectly written, is phenomenally constructed. While not a masterpiece in literature, it is a masterpiece in the mixture of ideology and plot and character. I battled with Rand throughout the story, because it challenged so many of my ideals - and still does. A powerful and demanding read expertly constructed.

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel - Yann Martel wrote about Pears and Bananas and stole my heart. This story, this allegory, this symbolic portrayal of the destruction of an entire race of people - it proved to me that Martel can make me react to animals with more empathy than almost any other author can with human characters. Not only is the ending heartbreaking and confusing, but it asks for you to become involved. A short, disconcerting read.

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy - Mr. McCarthy has something to say about the human condition, and he does by no means sing its praises. It does not trust, it does not see beauty. It destroys, and turns the world to darkness. There is no respite. And McCarthy's incredible painting of a landscape, both detailed and mysterious, and his populating of the world with people, both detailed and mysterious, astounds - he writes as though he has seen this, and though the world he portrays is the world he recognizes. And by the end of every novel he writes you are only more convinced. The characters and the plot of this story, neither elaborated beyond the bare necessity, feel like an exploration of the unknown, and the discovery of monsters turns this two-hundred page novella into an epic. Stunning.

Honourable Mention: The best parts of my judgement are telling me that I can't include The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell on this list. I just finished it tonight, but it impressed me immensely. I look forward to reflecting on it over the next week.

A Moment of Genius

My experience with Beatrice and Virgil started more than six years ago. In my final year of public schooling, the English Department somehow managed to have Yann Martel come to my auditorium and speak. What it is he spoke about I haven't an idea. I remember being in awe of the fact that an author, and an author of award-winning book, was in my school - speaking to me. I remember being in awe because I thought that was how I was supposed to be.

I had not yet read Life of Pi. In fact, it would be another 5 years before I would. So I was completely unfamiliar with why this man was actually important - other than that I was told he was by the media and by my teachers.

In the question period that followed his speech, somebody asked what it was that he was working on next.

Without going into too many details, or really any at all, he talked about his interest in the Holocaust, and how it is portrayed in literature, and his hope of talking about the Holocaust through the use of animals - a monkey, named Virgil, and a donkey, named Beatrice. I was intrigued.

I thought to myself, "I like symbolism! I like metaphors! I like history, and the Holocaust is interesting! I think I will like that book when it comes out. Which can't be far from now..."

I bought the book the first week it came out. I've only just read it. Some of the reviews that I read, only after having spent my hard-earned cash, made it seem as though it wasn't very good.

Those reviews were wrong.

But they made me wait to read the book until now - in fact, I am not entirely sure why it is that I took the leap to read a book that is so reportedly bad when I have so many others that are demanding of my attention, that are not reportedly bad; that are, in fact, reportedly fantastic.

But I am glad that I did. And I hope that you do in the near future.

The story is about Yann. Or rather, about a man named Henry, though I think it would be wrong for any person to deny that there are a few moments of autobiography in this book. Or that it is tainted by it throughout. And that the book thrives as a result.

Henry is a writer, who has won awards, and whose previous book had done very well internationally. His follow-up book is about the Holocaust, writing about it as though it has meaning, but treating it as fiction rather than historical fiction. In doing so, the entire novel is immediately cast in the thematic brilliance of truth - a theme that does not arise in Life of Pi until the last chapter. And the book thrives as a result.

Henry's publisher do no much like his latest book. They don't know how well it will sell, or how it will sell, or where in the store they will even shelve it so that people can see it so that it can sell. They make suggestions for his re-writing of it. Henry does not take them very well. And stops writing. For years.

At this point in the novel I was disappointed. I figured I was reading a novel about an author who cannot seem to succeed again - and we have all heard that story somewhere. It is very common in the field of music. I wanted a story about the Holocaust.

Henry still received letters from fans around the world in those years where he was not writing. His publishers forwarded them to him. He decided to read them all, respond to them, help answer regular questions about themes from his award-winning book that was immensely successful. And then he received one that changed his life - that introduced him to a man that astounded him, and aggravated him, and gave him a way to write again. The creative block, and the self-imposed writer's block, ended slowly but eventually. And the end of the novel he releases a new book - a memoir.

But in between the beginning and the end is something that is quite extraordinary in literature. It is a story about the Holocaust without being about the Holocaust. It is allegorical, filled with allusions. It is about truth and literature. And about animals and humans and how the interact and how we perceive them. In a mere 198 pages is produced perhaps the most compelling book about the Holocaust that I have ever read.

Indeed, perhaps even more compelling than Eli Wiesel's Night.

Because it isn't about the Holocaust. And the author of the characters that represent the Holocaust - they do not belong to Henry - is an amazing character that, at the end of the novel, shocks you. Three times. In two pages. Two very quickly read pages.

Throughout the novel, Martel uses the semi-autobiographical plot to encourage the reader to undermine his story. And there are moments when you do. For example, the constant reference with the inability to write, and the involvement with a local acting troupe and music lessons to make something creative happen, and the inability to successfully replace writing with another outlet despite his successes, and the references to a pen-name. And the use of animals. Martel wants us to discount him because once again he is using animals to tell the story.

But the animals in this story are different. They suffer. And we love them before they suffer. They have voices, and fears, and a friendship. They love. And when they do suffer I cringed. When they suffered again, I cried. Which I don't do with books. And when the novel ended with some Games for Gustav I cried again - the parity between this allegory and the Holocaust was complete.

With this book, Martel succeeded totally and completely in writing about the Holocaust without writing about the Holocaust. This is a much more tightly written and convincing piece of literature than Life of Pi. This is the book that should be read in classrooms around the world. Everything draws on everything else, and when the ending arrives, it feels complete and still raises some harrowing questions about truth and meaning, animals and people. Read this book.




As a side note, this book made me want to read Gustav Flaubert - it will likely have the same effect on you. I won't tell you why, but I will tell you that, come the ending, you will realize how important it is to the story; you feel as though reading him will only possibly enhance that which you have experienced in this book.

On finishing books of considerable magnitude.

I have finished Beatrice and Virgil.

I couldn't help it - I couldn't hold back. The writing sucked me in, so did the characters - even those that were merely fictitious characters within this work of fiction. And it comes away with such moral power, it disrupts your comfort and your compass. The ending shocks you - in 30 pages you feel twisted and abused as a reader.

But it is so good.

I am going to need time to let this book germinate in my head. And then I will write more.

For now I will tell you only that you should read this book. It only takes a day or three, but it is absolutely worth it.

On to Annabel, by Kathleen Winter.

And War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy. Let's try out this new reading strategy.

A New Reading Strategy

VIRGIL: The taste of a good pear is such that when you eat one, when your teeth sink into the bliss of one, it becomes a wholly engrossing activity. You want to do nothing else but eat your pear. You would rather sit than stand. You would rather be alone that in company. You would rather have silence than music. All your senses but taste fall inactive. You See nothing, you hear nothing, you feel nothing - or only as it helps you to appreciate the divine taste of your pear.

BEATRICE: But what does it actually taste like?

VIRGIL: A pear tastes like, it tastes like... (He struggles. He gives up with a shrug.) I don't know. I can't put it into words. A pear tastes like itself.

BEATRICE: (sadly) I wish you have a pear.

- Yann Martel, Beatrice & Virgil; pg. 51


This was the moment when I finally looked up at the number on the top right corner of the page. I read it 2 days ago and have been trying to think ever since of how to present the glory of the pear-revelation since. But this is when I looked at the page number for the first time while reading this book.

It is a fast read, but engrossing. There is something about Yann Martel's writing - it had the same effect in Life of Pi. It reads like a speaker who is intelligent but is never trying to convince you of their own intelligence - who is quirky with their experience and loves and descriptions, but not disruptively so. I like it.

But it is just because of its fast-readi-ness that I am thinking of adopting a new reading strategy. Most of the books I want to read I anticipate being fast-reading novels. A good 350 pages (this latest by Yann Martel is just shy of 200, and if it wasn't for the joy that I was experiencing on each of those 200 pages, I would be quite frustrated by my full-priced purchase of it); few are much more than that. But the rare one is in the thousands.

And my new reading strategy, just to slow down the pace at which I read these shorter pieces of frequent brilliance, will be to read (as well as my nonfiction literature) a long piece; those books occasionally called masterworks because of their content and their length. I can't decide what to read in the background though (and which, I am sure, will come to the fore more often than not).

Ulysses? War and Peace? The Brothers Karamazov? The Pillars of the Earth?

Perhaps War and Peace. It is on my Kobo already, requires no further spending. And it was only recently the centenary of Tolstoy's death. But... what about James Joyce? I will have to keep you informed on where my decision lies. I am certain it will be made this week, and I will likely complete Yann Martel's fable by the end of tomorrow, and would like to not rush through another three or four novels in the coming week-long holiday.