You'd have no idea, but I have been blogging hardcore all week. Unfortunately, none of you are seeing the products of it (are there any of you, anyways?). That is because I exported my posts from this blog and transfered the data to another site I have started that provides me with more versatility - giving me a way of producing a blog and book-reflection site at a much higher standard. I just hope that my writing follows suit.
To get to the new site and see what I've been doing all week, follow the link below.
LiteReader.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Regeneration - Pat Barker
I came upon Regeneration accidentally - or, at least, that is how it descended from my book shelf and into my hands, was spread onto my lap and its infectious words started to swoon me. "I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it." Well this is going to be interesting...
When I started reading Regeneration, I thought it was a not-all-entirely different book. You see, I thought it was Pat Barker's Booker-Prize winning novel Ghost Road. I am rather grateful that it wasn't, because I now have the opportunity to read two novels before I get to the third, Ghost Road, and will have a chance to understand her vision of the war all the more for it.
Regeneration is the first novel in the Regeneration Trilogy. It portrays the transformation of a man, or two (or more), in a mental health facility for those soldiers sent home from France in the First World War because of their mental afflictions. Shell Shock is not a generally accepted concept, so many of these men are not highly regarded by the society to which they are returning. Indeed, most have a sense of guilt for coming back mentally scarred rather than physically scarred. Moreover, most have a deep sense that they are missing out on the biggest clubhouse event of the century because of their inability to fight, or to ride horses, or to throw anymore grenades, or to run through no-man's land once more. Many do anything they can to return just so that they don't have to face their families or friends or communities as the weakling who died mentally but not physically.
The protagonist, Siegfried Sassoon, is a unique character in the mental health facility. You open the book convinced that there is nothing wrong with him mentally, and come to the conclusion (by the end) that there must be something wrong with him. He is a decorated soldier, a published poet who is relatively celebrated - and he refuses to fight. He knows there is nothing wrong with him - and he can't be convinced that there is. Which is the purpose of the antagonist William Rivers - a psychiatrist at this relatively isolated mental healthy facility: restore Sassoon to 'sanity', which means convincing him that he is wrong and them convincing him to become right, and then send him back to the trenches.
Rivers becomes the protagonist in this novel, unexpectedly. And everybody else in the hospital becomes his antagonist - so the transformations of heart that he is expected to push onto Sassoon and the other patients start to affect him. Perhaps this sounds cliche in this context. But the way that Barker does this, with subtlety and perfect characterization, is phenomenal.
Of course, and much to my ignorant surprise, Barker is well-known in the UK for her writing. I felt that, years ago when I selected her novel from the discount bin because I liked the First World War, I was discovering a new novelist. Not at all. Her bibliography is extensive, as is her list of awards and her list of literary talents. Many of which are displayed in this novel.
Being a novel about mental health in the wake of a war there are flashbacks that Williams has to pull from his patients. And Barker handles these with the highest degree of expertise. They are short - no longer than a paragraph - they are sparked - by the shape of the beach, or the storm, or by a smell that doesn't really exist but is imagined - they are graphic. And they are so well imaged with the text that you see them in the flashbacks to photos and movies, and you are affected.
The amazing and unexpected side of this novel is that it about more than the war - meaning the characters' interactions and stories and much more developed than one would expect. Women who don't want their husbands to come back but would prefer the war pension - or men who love other men but can only do so in the trenches because the war halted any developments in society's acceptance - or families that are angry at their mentally dishevelled sons - or women in need of sex and men trapped without sex. These characters are people to Barker (and this is the central part of her novel) - they become people to the reader.
Yesterday I posted my list of favourite reads from this year. This novel was included. I've now collected the second novel in the trilogy from my local library, and upon its completion will procure the third. Barker's accomplishment is to our benefit as a reader, and as a society - she helps us understand the war not in its immediate consequences but in the forces it places on its victims. Newton's first Law of Motion: Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. Read this novel, and presumably the second and third novel, and see how impossibly strong the force of war is on the minds of young men.
When I started reading Regeneration, I thought it was a not-all-entirely different book. You see, I thought it was Pat Barker's Booker-Prize winning novel Ghost Road. I am rather grateful that it wasn't, because I now have the opportunity to read two novels before I get to the third, Ghost Road, and will have a chance to understand her vision of the war all the more for it.
Regeneration is the first novel in the Regeneration Trilogy. It portrays the transformation of a man, or two (or more), in a mental health facility for those soldiers sent home from France in the First World War because of their mental afflictions. Shell Shock is not a generally accepted concept, so many of these men are not highly regarded by the society to which they are returning. Indeed, most have a sense of guilt for coming back mentally scarred rather than physically scarred. Moreover, most have a deep sense that they are missing out on the biggest clubhouse event of the century because of their inability to fight, or to ride horses, or to throw anymore grenades, or to run through no-man's land once more. Many do anything they can to return just so that they don't have to face their families or friends or communities as the weakling who died mentally but not physically.
The protagonist, Siegfried Sassoon, is a unique character in the mental health facility. You open the book convinced that there is nothing wrong with him mentally, and come to the conclusion (by the end) that there must be something wrong with him. He is a decorated soldier, a published poet who is relatively celebrated - and he refuses to fight. He knows there is nothing wrong with him - and he can't be convinced that there is. Which is the purpose of the antagonist William Rivers - a psychiatrist at this relatively isolated mental healthy facility: restore Sassoon to 'sanity', which means convincing him that he is wrong and them convincing him to become right, and then send him back to the trenches.
Rivers becomes the protagonist in this novel, unexpectedly. And everybody else in the hospital becomes his antagonist - so the transformations of heart that he is expected to push onto Sassoon and the other patients start to affect him. Perhaps this sounds cliche in this context. But the way that Barker does this, with subtlety and perfect characterization, is phenomenal.
Of course, and much to my ignorant surprise, Barker is well-known in the UK for her writing. I felt that, years ago when I selected her novel from the discount bin because I liked the First World War, I was discovering a new novelist. Not at all. Her bibliography is extensive, as is her list of awards and her list of literary talents. Many of which are displayed in this novel.
Being a novel about mental health in the wake of a war there are flashbacks that Williams has to pull from his patients. And Barker handles these with the highest degree of expertise. They are short - no longer than a paragraph - they are sparked - by the shape of the beach, or the storm, or by a smell that doesn't really exist but is imagined - they are graphic. And they are so well imaged with the text that you see them in the flashbacks to photos and movies, and you are affected.
The amazing and unexpected side of this novel is that it about more than the war - meaning the characters' interactions and stories and much more developed than one would expect. Women who don't want their husbands to come back but would prefer the war pension - or men who love other men but can only do so in the trenches because the war halted any developments in society's acceptance - or families that are angry at their mentally dishevelled sons - or women in need of sex and men trapped without sex. These characters are people to Barker (and this is the central part of her novel) - they become people to the reader.
Yesterday I posted my list of favourite reads from this year. This novel was included. I've now collected the second novel in the trilogy from my local library, and upon its completion will procure the third. Barker's accomplishment is to our benefit as a reader, and as a society - she helps us understand the war not in its immediate consequences but in the forces it places on its victims. Newton's first Law of Motion: Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. Read this novel, and presumably the second and third novel, and see how impossibly strong the force of war is on the minds of young men.
Monday, July 4, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Everything is Illuminated.
This novel starts out like a fairy-tale, and never completely leaves that literary domain. Beginning in an unnamed town in an unnamed part of Eastern Europe, and starting out with a humorous though violent death that somehow manages to weave its way through two hundred years of history and act as the starting point of something completely original and absolutely moving, you don’t know what to think about it until well past the first hundred pages.
And by then you’re enamoured.
Everything is Illuminated is the story of the history of Trachimbrod - a town split in two in Eastern Europe. And then it is the story of a trip taken by a character named after the author to Eastern Europe to find a town named Trachimbrod. And then it is the story of the correspondence, by letter, between a character, named after the author, his tour guide during his trip to Trachimbrod. It is in fact all of three of these, told through a half dozen different narrators spanning two hundred years.
The story that it tells - of a thriving small town with a bustling Jewish population, of a bizarre friendship where a lost Eastern European young man finds himself in the wilderness of the Ukrainian Steppe, of that same man who argues for his right to leave his father as a result - is absolutely compelling. And somehow so tightly constructed, so imbued with humour, that it fits together just perfectly - like watching the pods of water collect in the vein of a leaf just before the weight gets to be too heavy and the water is released to the ground below. It is something special.
It is also told in a totally different kind of language. On the back of my edition is a quote from a review, suggesting that the English language had not been so radically used and changed since A Clockwork Orange. That is quite the statement. And though what is accomplished here in terms of language is not quite up to the standard set by Burgess in his masterpiece, it is totally disorienting at times - until you learn the language that is used. One of the narrators is speaking as an English as a Second Language User. Another is using truly language reflecting the Judaic community. And the English that is used is so frequently used to produce conceptual and emotional outrage and understanding that traditional sentence structure is occasionally foregone. This is largely done to the author’s credit - the result is the sense that what is interpreted could only have been presented as it had been.
Everything if Illuminated is also nothing that you expect. It is a fairy tale - somehow magical, and somehow entirely tragic. None of those chapters reserved for the history of Trachimbrod, particularly for the history of Brod (the maybe daughter of Trachim - who may be the first man in the story to die), seem plausible. They are legendary. And they never have to be proven true - indeed, they fit into the reality of myth just as well as they may fit into the reality of truth. Perhaps the history provided is that of Trachimbrod - most likely not. Nonetheless, you do become attached to the town without a name, then given a name, then given another, and then divided into two (and then three) partitions.
And then destroyed.
And then rediscovered. As nothing.
In some of the most heartbreaking language I have ever encountered.
I read the most heartbreaking section in the break room at work. I couldn’t finish it. I put the book down for a few minutes. Picked it up again. Put it down. Left it there and left it there. Picked it up - I needed to know. Couldn’t read any further. Needed to finish it - my break was getting close to being done. Didn’t finish it, and had to come back to it again after work. It bothered me.
What works for Everything is Illuminated is that it is nothing that you expect it to be. You only briefly encounter the Nazis and the threat they pose to the town of Trachimbrod. It isn’t a story of survival, or a story of the gas chambers. In fact - and this is what caught me most off-guard - it has pretty much nothing to do with the Nazis at all. Far more paper is dedicated to the history of the town. Far more paper is dedicated to the vacation to find the town again. Far more paper is dedicated to the letters sent across an ocean as a man in Eastern Europe battles for independence. Indeed, much of this paper is moving - the text that blackens it blooming like a flower of insight and humour and tragedy and joy.
I cannot highly enough recommend this novel. It is not without flaws - but while you are reading it, if you can accept the language and the structure, if you can hear the philosophy singing through the pages, then you will almost surely overlook them. Is it the best book I have ever read? No - not quite. But it is certainly the best I have read all year. Upon putting it down, I immediately wanted to pick it up again and figure out where the fairy tale becomes real and vice versa. Ever since, I have spent time reading some of my favourite passages over and over again.
Read. This. Book.
And by then you’re enamoured.
Everything is Illuminated is the story of the history of Trachimbrod - a town split in two in Eastern Europe. And then it is the story of a trip taken by a character named after the author to Eastern Europe to find a town named Trachimbrod. And then it is the story of the correspondence, by letter, between a character, named after the author, his tour guide during his trip to Trachimbrod. It is in fact all of three of these, told through a half dozen different narrators spanning two hundred years.
The story that it tells - of a thriving small town with a bustling Jewish population, of a bizarre friendship where a lost Eastern European young man finds himself in the wilderness of the Ukrainian Steppe, of that same man who argues for his right to leave his father as a result - is absolutely compelling. And somehow so tightly constructed, so imbued with humour, that it fits together just perfectly - like watching the pods of water collect in the vein of a leaf just before the weight gets to be too heavy and the water is released to the ground below. It is something special.
It is also told in a totally different kind of language. On the back of my edition is a quote from a review, suggesting that the English language had not been so radically used and changed since A Clockwork Orange. That is quite the statement. And though what is accomplished here in terms of language is not quite up to the standard set by Burgess in his masterpiece, it is totally disorienting at times - until you learn the language that is used. One of the narrators is speaking as an English as a Second Language User. Another is using truly language reflecting the Judaic community. And the English that is used is so frequently used to produce conceptual and emotional outrage and understanding that traditional sentence structure is occasionally foregone. This is largely done to the author’s credit - the result is the sense that what is interpreted could only have been presented as it had been.
Everything if Illuminated is also nothing that you expect. It is a fairy tale - somehow magical, and somehow entirely tragic. None of those chapters reserved for the history of Trachimbrod, particularly for the history of Brod (the maybe daughter of Trachim - who may be the first man in the story to die), seem plausible. They are legendary. And they never have to be proven true - indeed, they fit into the reality of myth just as well as they may fit into the reality of truth. Perhaps the history provided is that of Trachimbrod - most likely not. Nonetheless, you do become attached to the town without a name, then given a name, then given another, and then divided into two (and then three) partitions.
And then destroyed.
And then rediscovered. As nothing.
In some of the most heartbreaking language I have ever encountered.
I read the most heartbreaking section in the break room at work. I couldn’t finish it. I put the book down for a few minutes. Picked it up again. Put it down. Left it there and left it there. Picked it up - I needed to know. Couldn’t read any further. Needed to finish it - my break was getting close to being done. Didn’t finish it, and had to come back to it again after work. It bothered me.
What works for Everything is Illuminated is that it is nothing that you expect it to be. You only briefly encounter the Nazis and the threat they pose to the town of Trachimbrod. It isn’t a story of survival, or a story of the gas chambers. In fact - and this is what caught me most off-guard - it has pretty much nothing to do with the Nazis at all. Far more paper is dedicated to the history of the town. Far more paper is dedicated to the vacation to find the town again. Far more paper is dedicated to the letters sent across an ocean as a man in Eastern Europe battles for independence. Indeed, much of this paper is moving - the text that blackens it blooming like a flower of insight and humour and tragedy and joy.
I cannot highly enough recommend this novel. It is not without flaws - but while you are reading it, if you can accept the language and the structure, if you can hear the philosophy singing through the pages, then you will almost surely overlook them. Is it the best book I have ever read? No - not quite. But it is certainly the best I have read all year. Upon putting it down, I immediately wanted to pick it up again and figure out where the fairy tale becomes real and vice versa. Ever since, I have spent time reading some of my favourite passages over and over again.
Read. This. Book.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
So Cool!
So the day of my great nation, Canada, is rapidly approaching. I've spent the past three out of the country, so it will be nice to watch fireworks sprayed into and spreading across the sky on July 1st. Eating steak and corn, and hoping you don't get rained out. Going for a hike through one of our many, many beautiful ecosystems (Wascana Trails, I'm looking at you!).
And then I discovered The Book Mine Set. This is a book blog with a Canadian Bias - and it is hosting an event on July 2nd entitled "Under the Midnight Sun Readathon". From noon on July 2nd to noon on July 3rd you read. Not much more than read. Try and finish a book - blog about your progress and your thoughts. Not much more.
So cool!
Now, I've long thought that Canadian literature is some of the best that the world has going for it. I'm totally biased too - but that doesn't stop me from suggesting it is true. There is far, far too much wealth in our literary vault for our population. Thank goodness so many of our authors are sufficiently popular to gain some international recognition.
The other 'So Cool!" part?
The 5th Canadian Book Challenge, also hosted by The Book Mine Set. You grab thirteen books, one for each of the Canadian provinces or territories (though not necessarily coming from them) and you read. You have a year. Starting on the country's birthday. Does not sound too hard, does it?
So what should I read? What Canadian masterpieces are out there for me to yet discover?
Here is a tentative list of what I am hoping to enjoy:
1. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Mordecai Richler
2. The Fire-Dwellers - Margaret Laurence
3. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
4. Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden
5. Pilgrim - Timothy Findley
6. The Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro
7. A Season in the Life of Emmanuel - Marie-Claire Blais
8. Lives of the Saints - Nino Ricci
9. In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
10. A Whale for the Killing - Farley Mowat
11. The Golden Spruce - John Vaillant
12. No Great Mischief - Alistair MacLeod
13. Galore - Michael Crummy (the only book on this list that I do not yet own)
And then I discovered The Book Mine Set. This is a book blog with a Canadian Bias - and it is hosting an event on July 2nd entitled "Under the Midnight Sun Readathon". From noon on July 2nd to noon on July 3rd you read. Not much more than read. Try and finish a book - blog about your progress and your thoughts. Not much more.
So cool!
Now, I've long thought that Canadian literature is some of the best that the world has going for it. I'm totally biased too - but that doesn't stop me from suggesting it is true. There is far, far too much wealth in our literary vault for our population. Thank goodness so many of our authors are sufficiently popular to gain some international recognition.
The other 'So Cool!" part?
The 5th Canadian Book Challenge, also hosted by The Book Mine Set. You grab thirteen books, one for each of the Canadian provinces or territories (though not necessarily coming from them) and you read. You have a year. Starting on the country's birthday. Does not sound too hard, does it?
So what should I read? What Canadian masterpieces are out there for me to yet discover?
Here is a tentative list of what I am hoping to enjoy:
1. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Mordecai Richler
2. The Fire-Dwellers - Margaret Laurence
3. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
4. Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden
5. Pilgrim - Timothy Findley
6. The Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro
7. A Season in the Life of Emmanuel - Marie-Claire Blais
8. Lives of the Saints - Nino Ricci
9. In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
10. A Whale for the Killing - Farley Mowat
11. The Golden Spruce - John Vaillant
12. No Great Mischief - Alistair MacLeod
13. Galore - Michael Crummy (the only book on this list that I do not yet own)
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Tom McCarthy's Men in Space
I saw this item at my local book store on the shelf reserved for sale-price items. I nabbed it, recognizing the name as that man who had written C - a nominee for last year's Man Booker Prize. I had not yet read that book, but I have heard it is fantastic. And that the other book that people speak about when they speak about Tom McCarthy, Remainder, is also reportedly fantastic (conveniently, it was located right beside Men in Space on the sale-price shelf, and it was also collected for my book shelf). How could I go wrong in picking up this book, reading it - surely I will fall in love with it.
Right?
Men in Space is about life in Czechoslovakia as it becomes a Republic, and the reign of the Soviet States collapses in eastern Europe. Or, that is what the back of the book told me. It is, more specifically, about an attempted art heist, using the confusion of a new state to successfully transport a one-of-a-kind religious icon. Impossible to explain, completely unique. Christ-like but entirely anti-Christ-like. A unique piece of art.
Admittedly, the book lost me early on. There are many characters, many narrative styles. Some of the voices that are used are quite interesting. One of them, the personal records of a surveillance officer who feels increasingly neglected by his commanders and starts to go deaf as a result of his work (he specializes in audio surveillance), is quite interesting. Some golden moments of character are wrapped up in his narration. Others are completely forgettable, interesting in the instant that they are read, but not interesting afterwards.
Men in Space is not one of those books that you read and get slapped in the face with a theme. It feels like a movie plot written out in book form. And it likely would make more sense in that format.
Not that it is nonsensical. One of the features I noticed late in the novel was just how tightly constructed the novel was. And soon after I started reading I realized that I was in for a treat in reading - there are moments where the writing is simply sublime:
Quite enjoyable to read. And impressive construction of details. So what is missing?
Characters. Setting. Circumstance. Motive.
Nobody, no place, leaps from the pages and fills your imagination. I kept thinking I was missing this in the pages - perhaps there were sentences fit in between the lines of text on the pages that my eyesight was not allowing me to see. Blind to important information, I continued to read that which I could see and was only getting half the story. Half of the ideas. Incomplete characters, flattened.
And the voice, which only occasionally was given to a character that really impressed you, was transferred from one character to another too quickly - so characters never developed a personality. Or circumstance. Or place. They just seemed to be characters in a story about something that was bigger than they were - but still managed to be boring. Boring despite the considerable research that surely went into it; the amount I learned about Art History in Easter Europe in the 1800s was shocking.
And yet I did not care. Nothing clicked.
About 60 pages from the end, exhausted and hoping I could just breeze through it, I turned to the end. Just to see if maybe, just maybe, the book had magically reduced it's size and thus my commitment to it. I started reading the acknowledgements. And this is part of what it shared with me:
Well then, now it makes sense. I am not liking this novel because it was never meant to be a novel. And the novel is about being disjointed - no wonder it makes me feel that way as a reader. What a masterful construction technique - if only the theme had played out that well in the text. Some of these people feel disjointed. Others feel connected, in round about ways, to other characters in unexpected ways. And they are not likeable (lies, three or so of them are. Two of these die, the third, as mentioned above, loses his hearing and starts getting paranoid).
Moreover, you can feel, in the last 20 pages, how Mr. McCarthy tries to connect the novel into a coherent story, drawing on the symbolism of the entire novel. The painting. A man in space nobody wants to take credit for. And these pages are enjoyable, if lacking in power. None of these symbols were used consistently enough, or explained well enough, to justify their involvement in the conclusion.
This novel would likely have been a more enjoyable movie than book. It's pacing and story is more akin to that media - and certainly any novel that makes frequent reference to a painting and it's features would benefit enormously from the visual aids of a film. As a novel, it fails. But I am willing to give the author a second chance eventually - I do already own another one of his works. I just hope that Remainder is much better than Men in Space ever got to be.
Not recommended.
Right?
Men in Space is about life in Czechoslovakia as it becomes a Republic, and the reign of the Soviet States collapses in eastern Europe. Or, that is what the back of the book told me. It is, more specifically, about an attempted art heist, using the confusion of a new state to successfully transport a one-of-a-kind religious icon. Impossible to explain, completely unique. Christ-like but entirely anti-Christ-like. A unique piece of art.
Admittedly, the book lost me early on. There are many characters, many narrative styles. Some of the voices that are used are quite interesting. One of them, the personal records of a surveillance officer who feels increasingly neglected by his commanders and starts to go deaf as a result of his work (he specializes in audio surveillance), is quite interesting. Some golden moments of character are wrapped up in his narration. Others are completely forgettable, interesting in the instant that they are read, but not interesting afterwards.
Men in Space is not one of those books that you read and get slapped in the face with a theme. It feels like a movie plot written out in book form. And it likely would make more sense in that format.
Not that it is nonsensical. One of the features I noticed late in the novel was just how tightly constructed the novel was. And soon after I started reading I realized that I was in for a treat in reading - there are moments where the writing is simply sublime:
Behind these people, perched at tables, groups of American collegiate types. They're talking politics, shouting above the music and each other. They're discussing the splitting of Czechoslovakia that's to take place in - what, less than one hour from now, the reconfiguration of Europe it'll bring about. The phrase transitional geographies keeps coming up: one guy keeps saying it and another jumps up each time and shouts Fuck your transitional geographies! East Coast, probably: Yale or Princeton. Mladen's seen the films: woollen sweaters and striped scarves, clean young boys running after girls in pleated skirts who look like Heidi, only slightly pretier, and clutch books to their chests. Frat parties. Weird rites.
A little further down the bar is some Czech kid whose face is vaguely familiar: classical, high-chekboned, blond locks swept across the forehead. Mladen knows that face, from a gig maybe, only then it belonged to a girl. Or to a girl and a - yes, that's right, it's David, one of those twins Roger, at that party, just before he got his eyebrow cut, said came ftraight off the one-hundred-crown note: the peasants. David's standing at the bar alone, looking down into a beer, morose.
Quite enjoyable to read. And impressive construction of details. So what is missing?
Characters. Setting. Circumstance. Motive.
Nobody, no place, leaps from the pages and fills your imagination. I kept thinking I was missing this in the pages - perhaps there were sentences fit in between the lines of text on the pages that my eyesight was not allowing me to see. Blind to important information, I continued to read that which I could see and was only getting half the story. Half of the ideas. Incomplete characters, flattened.
And the voice, which only occasionally was given to a character that really impressed you, was transferred from one character to another too quickly - so characters never developed a personality. Or circumstance. Or place. They just seemed to be characters in a story about something that was bigger than they were - but still managed to be boring. Boring despite the considerable research that surely went into it; the amount I learned about Art History in Easter Europe in the 1800s was shocking.
And yet I did not care. Nothing clicked.
About 60 pages from the end, exhausted and hoping I could just breeze through it, I turned to the end. Just to see if maybe, just maybe, the book had magically reduced it's size and thus my commitment to it. I started reading the acknowledgements. And this is part of what it shared with me:
The manuscript of Men in Space has had a long gestation. It started as a series of disjointed, semi-autobiographical sketches written in what seems like another era, and grew into one long, disjointed document from which a plot of sorts emerged from time to time to sniff the air before going to ground again. That it eventually found a kind of warped coherence as a novel about disjointedness and separation is to a large extent thanks to the intervention through the years of several people...
Well then, now it makes sense. I am not liking this novel because it was never meant to be a novel. And the novel is about being disjointed - no wonder it makes me feel that way as a reader. What a masterful construction technique - if only the theme had played out that well in the text. Some of these people feel disjointed. Others feel connected, in round about ways, to other characters in unexpected ways. And they are not likeable (lies, three or so of them are. Two of these die, the third, as mentioned above, loses his hearing and starts getting paranoid).
Moreover, you can feel, in the last 20 pages, how Mr. McCarthy tries to connect the novel into a coherent story, drawing on the symbolism of the entire novel. The painting. A man in space nobody wants to take credit for. And these pages are enjoyable, if lacking in power. None of these symbols were used consistently enough, or explained well enough, to justify their involvement in the conclusion.
This novel would likely have been a more enjoyable movie than book. It's pacing and story is more akin to that media - and certainly any novel that makes frequent reference to a painting and it's features would benefit enormously from the visual aids of a film. As a novel, it fails. But I am willing to give the author a second chance eventually - I do already own another one of his works. I just hope that Remainder is much better than Men in Space ever got to be.
Not recommended.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Trying to catch up.
I woke up this morning. Finished my most recent reading (Regeneration by Pat Barker) - only had another ten pages to go, so it didn't take me long. Collected some books, and selected a new novel.
And realized I am now officially three novels behind on this blog.
Expect a note about the quality of Tom McCarthy's Men in Space tomorrow. Hopefully a note about Everything is Illuminated by mid-week, by which time I expect I will have finished my current novel (Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee). Regeneration the following week, putting me only behind by a single novel, and perhaps some Non-Fiction and a note about short fiction.
Regarding the Non-Fiction - I am currently fighting every desire to quit my journey with An Irish Heart. I'm getting close to finishing it though (after months of fighting the reading). I don't have much to say, other than that Sharon Doyle Driedger is not a historian - and the historical training that I have (and will be getting in the near future when I start my M.A. in Canadian History) is somewhat concerned that this piece of work can be regarded as a product of notable quality. But I'll tear it apart later - perhaps it will thoroughly impress me in the final half.
And realized I am now officially three novels behind on this blog.
Expect a note about the quality of Tom McCarthy's Men in Space tomorrow. Hopefully a note about Everything is Illuminated by mid-week, by which time I expect I will have finished my current novel (Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee). Regeneration the following week, putting me only behind by a single novel, and perhaps some Non-Fiction and a note about short fiction.
Regarding the Non-Fiction - I am currently fighting every desire to quit my journey with An Irish Heart. I'm getting close to finishing it though (after months of fighting the reading). I don't have much to say, other than that Sharon Doyle Driedger is not a historian - and the historical training that I have (and will be getting in the near future when I start my M.A. in Canadian History) is somewhat concerned that this piece of work can be regarded as a product of notable quality. But I'll tear it apart later - perhaps it will thoroughly impress me in the final half.
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