The Call of Childhood is a Little Weaker Than I Thought

Currently Reading: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

After finishing The Eyre Affair novels, I decided it was time to get back to tackling my reading list. Of course, this was a considerably easy decision to make when I was temporarily out of Jasper Fforde novels to read. But either way, I knew that I should take advantage of my summer oasis and opportunity for a reading binge so I dove back into the list. Well… actually, I kind of waded back in, back tracking in my reading gaps to ones created in my middle school years and picking up Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.

It’s a very bizarre experience to go from reading books like On the Road and The Once and Future King to reading a book designated appropriate material for young adults. Not only is this the first book I’ve read with illustrations since I don’t even know when, but it was also the first book told from a non-human perspective that I’ve encountered (with the exception of The Art of Racing in the Rain) since… middle school? I honestly had to reread the first paragraph several times before I realized that the narrator is a dog.

For someone who avidly read the Bunnicula series growing up, it was an odd moment to recognize that I’ve matured to the point that a canine narrator is no longer perfectly normal.

Also, how did we ever read books with illustrations as kids? They’re not only distracting, but often contain spoilers of what’s coming on the next page. Granted, my parents had a really beautiful copy of this book and the illustrations were gorgeous, but still! It just made them even more distracting.

The most unsettling sign of the onset of adulthood I discovered while reading this novel was that I had no idea how to judge it. I’ve become so accustomed to the elevated language, the experimental structures, and the jammed-packed symbolism of the other books on my list that I forgot what merits a good book for younger readers. I assume that it is widely agreed that Call of the Wild is considered such a book given that it is on most middle school English class syllabi, and I think I agree, but I don’t feel qualified to judge anymore.

Besides assessing its merits in the scope of literature, I couldn’t even tell if I enjoyed it. I loved how effortless a read it was and it was kind of fun to have an animal narrator again, but beyond that, I’m not sure. It was upsetting and eye opening to see how sled dogs were treated during the Klondike Gold Rush (who kidnaps a family pet??), but I didn’t particularly enjoy watching Buck revert from a sweet pet to a vicious sled dog.

Maybe I should have taken a children’s literature class in college. I always wanted to, but never managed to fit one in. Maybe children’s stories really don’t have the depth of meaning that I was looking for?

Or maybe I’m just too old for this…

Eyre-ing Out My Mind

Currently Reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

After finishing (the upsettingly abridged version of) The Count of Monte Cristo back in June, I decided I needed a bit of a mental break. Just as summer signaled the end of assigned readings while I was in school, it signaled the end of challenging reading for me this year. Even though I liked The Count of Monte Cristo, I just needed a book that you wouldn’t study in a classroom; I needed a serving of book candy.

With this in mind, I picked up Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. It was exactly what the doctor ordered. A quick paced, intriguing plot with a strong, likeable heroine and endless clever allusions to classic literature, The Eyre Affair was an enjoyable way to pass the time on my now daily metro rides. In fact, it was so enjoyable that I promptly went out and bought the next two books in the series, Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots, and thus continued my book candy binge. I’m now anxiously awaiting the following four books, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of our Thursday Nexts is Missing, and The Woman Who Died A Lot, as anticipated birthday presents at the end of the month.

The story takes place in an alternate reality in which time travel is possible; dodos are a popular pet; Neanderthals have been resurrected; and literature is taken seriously enough that there are literary detectives who investigate crimes against literature. One such literary detective is the heroine, Thursday Next, who ultimately gets wrapped up in a case in which she has to return the kidnapped Jane Eyre to her rightful place in her novel.

The sequels go on to introduce the complex world of Fiction, including the agency that governs crimes from within, Jurisfiction. While hiding out, Thursday Next eventually joins the ranks among other agents like Miss Haversham from Great Expectations. (Side note: I’m really intrigued to read Great Expectations now just to see how accurate Fforde’s depiction of the character is.)

There are three particular reasons that I really liked reading The Eyre Affair and its sequels.

The first is the number of literary inside jokes. I loved understanding the references to classic literature and getting caught up in the various Shakespeare authorship debates! And when I didn’t understand a joke, it made me want to read the referenced material so that I would. This makes this book special in that it not only makes its readers want to continue with the series, but it inspires them to read other books. I think that’s wonderful!

Plus, come on, who doesn’t love a good literature or grammar joke?

The second is that I love the idea that characters in novels have a life beyond the page. As someone who still somewhat subscribes to the idea that her stuffed animals came to life when she left the room, Toy Story-style, I really like to think of my favorite characters existing outside of their stories, acting as agents for Jurisfiction or needing walkmans to pass the time between their scenes. You get so attached to these characters that they start to feel like real people, friends of yours, so it’s nice to think that even after your time with them has finished because you’ve finished reading the novel that your friends go on living, like a friend who has moved across the country or something.

The third reason I liked this novel is that I love that this story provides plausible – if fantastical – explanations for some of the weird plot points of Jane Eyre. The most important and novel-altering is the mysterious voice that calls out Jane’s name, convincing her to suddenly return to Rochester. I’m not sure what Charlotte Bronte had in mind for the explanation of that bizarre and random voice, but I like the idea that it was Thursday Next because she had to get Jane back to Rochester so she could escape the novel. I also like the idea that the fire that causes Rochester’s injuries was an accident rather than an intended plot point set down by the author. It always felt a bit cruel and odd that Bronte would maim Rochester and destroy Thornfield Hall. Plus, the fire is never really explained beyond a weak, “Mrs. Rochester is crazy! Of course she’d burn down the house!” So having it be the setting for the pivotal battle between the sociopath villain Hades and Thursday Next feels like a much more reasonable explanation. I applaud Fforde’s cleverness and creativity for filling in these gaps.

These books were a wonderful surprise and I’m very excited to continue the series.

Especially since reading Moby Dick might just kill me.

The Unabridged Count of Monte Cristo Blog Post

Currently Reading: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

When I originally sat down to write my post on Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, I had every intention of simply discussing my thoughts about and impressions of the book. I wanted to discuss the impressive intricacies of Edmond Dantes’ revenge plans; the disappointment in watching him deteriorate from a wonderfully charming, likeable young man to a vengeful, almost creepy, bitter man; the somewhat weird relationship he had with Haydee that seemed to walk the line between father-daughter and lovers a little too closely; and the dissatisfaction of the ending, which I expected to be completely different since I was basely my expectations off the movie adaptation. Essentially, I had every intention of writing a normal reaction post.

Because I’ve been fairly miserable about keeping my blog up to date with my reading, it’s been about two months since I finished The Count of Monte Cristo. So I decided to review the plot (shamefully) on its Wikipedia page. As I read the summary, I became more and more confused. I have no memory of that, I thought as I read. When did that happen? Since when did those characters have an affair? 

I grew concerned. Is my memory really going at the tender age of 23?

I turned to a co-worker who I knew had read the novel. (Another bonus of working at a library: everyone is really well read!) After discussing the various gaps I encountered in the summary, it turns out Wikipedia wasn’t at fault for them. Those missing parts were really in the book.

At least, they were in the original version of the book.

That’s right. I came home to discover that my copy of The Count of Monte Cristo had deceptively snuck in this title page:

Mind you, nowhere on the cover is there a mention of abridgement! And who really reads the title page?

I felt robbed. Someone had stolen part of the story from me.

And in my frustration (and if we're being honest, my devastation), I realized that this incident raised some very interesting questions for me.

I don’t really have answers to most of these, but I would be SO GRATEFUL if anyone had some to offer me!

First of all, why do abridgements exist? Why do people feel the need to make abridged versions of novels? I understand that some novels are insanely hefty, but why has it become OK to say that you only want to read part of the novel, not the whole thing? If you only want to have a general idea of what it’s about, why wouldn’t you just read the SparkNotes or find a summary some other way? If you don’t want to bother with the original version, why do you want to bother with it at all?

Also, how did this movement towards abridgements get started? Is this something that’s been going on for hundreds of years or is this something that’s become part of what my mother affectionately refers to as “the dumbing down of America”? Or are abridgements necessary in some cases, like when teaching a novel in a classroom?

Who makes the decision to cut down novels? How do they decide which parts to cut out or shorten? How do they decide which books to cut? And if there seems to be a book that people universally agree should be shorter (like Les Miserables), shouldn’t there be an effort to just make one abridged edition so people reading the abridged version are at least having one universal experience? Plus, wouldn’t that eliminate the chances that you would read a bad abridgement, one that jumps around and skips major plot points?

Finally, do abridged versions count? Can I now say that I’ve read The Count of Monte Cristo? Or can I only proclaim that when I’ve read it the way it was written by the author, i.e. in its entirety? I think, on the whole, I got the majority of the key plot points. I’m pretty sure I got all the characters, if not all the parts of their stories. In other words, I believe I read a pretty good abridgement, but does that mean I’ve read the novel?

When will the book slashing end?!

And what do you think?

Like I said, I really don’t have answers for these questions, but I would love to know. I’d also love to know if abridgements bother everyone the way they bother me or if some people appreciate or even prefer them? 

In the meantime, I’ll continue to be paranoid that every book I’m reading is a secret abridgement. I sincerely hope that this already 586 page version of Moby Dick isn’t…

Some People (in Camelot) Claim That There’s A Woman to Blame

Currently Reading: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 

The Once and Future King by T. H. White chronicles the life and reign of the famous King Arthur of Camelot, as well as the love affair between his most trusted knight and friend, Lancelot, and his wife, Guenever, which eventually leads to his kingdom’s downfall. It’s a much more in depth version of the story than I’ve ever heard, probably because the basis for my knowledge of this legend come from the Disney cartoon The Sword and the Stone and a few clips of the musical Camelot, which I never had the patience to sit through in its entirety. Discovering all the details of the story, including the incestuous conception of Arthur’s only son, Mordred, was fascinating and made reading this hefty 500-page book enjoyable overall. 

The parts that dragged for me a bit were the philosophical aspects that T. H. White added, musing over the man’s aggressive nature, war, and morality for his post-World War II audience. I’ve never been one for philosophy as it tends to make me feel like a dog chasing its tail, running around and around in circles debating a topic, but never able to achieve the desired goal. However, I have to say that White’s exploration of these lofty topics was pretty accessible and actually kind of fascinating in parts. I especially enjoyed them during Arthur’s childhood lessons from animals, particularly the adventure with the geese who point out how ridiculous the notions of property, boundaries, and ultimately nations are.

It does make me wonder, though, that I can only understand and enjoy philosophy that’s meant for a child’s intellect… 

On the whole, this book was lengthy, but enjoyable. I just have one rather significant complaint:

The women in this book SUCK!

T. H. White writes women like they are as foreign a species as the ants or geese, basically only capable of sense and good judgment “in the long years that bring women to the middle of life,” when they “are beginning to hate [their] used bod[ies].” Before that, they are apparently slaves to their hormones, moody, changeable, and incapable of suppressing their sexual appetites.

Despite the fact that Arthur’s knights are supposedly defending women from rapists on a regular basis, it never seems like men have any desire to have sex at any point in this book. When they do, they push it down and channel the energy elsewhere. The only times men do have sex is when they have been tricked into it by an evil seductress. Arthur’s half-sister, Morgause seduces him through magic; Elaine gets Lancelot drunk and convinces him she’s Guenever to get him in bed; Morgause continues on to apparently sleep with pretty much anyone and everyone; and Guevener has an affair with her husband’s best friend for decades.

I really cannot think of one instance in the novel when a woman appears and doesn’t do something deceitful. Even in one of Lancelot’s quests, a woman tricks him into climbing a tree without his armor so that when he comes down, her husband able to take advantage of his vulnerability in a fight.

As if this isn’t insulting enough, women also seem to be the root of all evil in this book. How biblical of you, Mr. White.

After all, Morgause is responsible for the conception of Mordred, who vows revenge upon his father and ultimately leads to the downfall of Camelot. Guenever’s affair is also largely responsible for this destruction, as she forces Arthur into an impossible situation in which he has to burn his wife at the stake for the sake of the established order and set of principles he’s created and preached (Spoiler alert: Lancelot saves her). Elaine is responsible for taking away Lancelot’s ability to ever perform another miracle and destroying his virtue.

Basically, as I said before, women in this book suck.

This rather blatant misogyny is upsetting in and of itself, but what upsets me more is realizing that this was the standard in novels for a long time. My mother is the person who recommended this book to me. It is one of her favorites, but I don’t believe she’s read it since childhood. When I mentioned the pretty awful female characters, she didn’t remember it fazing her and said, “That’s just the type of book we grew up with.”

When I think about the amazing and empowering female characters that I grew up with, from the Paper Bag Princess to Ella Enchanted to Alanna of Trebond to Talia of Valdemar, it breaks my heart a bit to think my mother didn’t have fictional guides like them. It’s really made me appreciate how times have changed and how lucky I am to live in the time I do.

Yes, the fight for gender equality isn’t completely over (it probably never will be), but at least I didn’t have to grow up with Guenever as my fictional role model.

P.S. The King Pellinore parts of this book are the BEST! He’s definitely one of my new favorite characters.

Oh, I Can Definitely Wait to Get On the Road Again

Currently Reading: Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

Prior to reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, my exposure to the novel was limited – sadly – to dialogue on an episode of one of my most watched TV shows, Gilmore Girls. In the episode, There’s the Rub, the audience enters into a scene to find three characters (Rory, Paris, and Jess) engaged in a lively debate about literature with Paris declaring, “A tragic waste of paper.” Over Jess’s protestations, she continues saying, “Well it’s true. The Beats’ writing was completely self-indulgent. I have one word for Jack Kerouac: edit.” (Transcription for the episode found: http://www.gilmoregirls.org/eguide/transcripts/episode216.html, but with corrected grammar because I can’t help myself.)

While I’ve watched this episode at least twenty or so times, I had never read Kerouac and so did not fully appreciate this conversation until I read On the Road.

Holy cow is Paris right!

The discovery of just how valid Paris’s statement is was especially disappointing because I had such high hopes for the novel. As someone who has been bitten by the travel bug and thus has contracted the incurable disease of wanderlust, I thought for sure I would relate to and love these characters as their actions are guided by that same disease. For the first hundred or so pages, I was hooked, thrilled to have an author write characters who understand that burning sensation within oneself to go and see and do!

But things quickly started to turn.

Because ultimately, Paris is right. The book gets incredibly repetitive as the characters only ever do the same things over and over again. They drive, they drink, they sleep with and impregnate random women, they fight, and they scrounge for money until they absolutely have to go back to working for a bit before doing it all over. While I relate to the desire to constantly want to be somewhere else and see new places, I couldn’t relate to the characters past that. They have no goals, no focus, and almost no morals. Not exactly people with whom I would want to spend my time. It’s a self-indulgent lifestyle and because the book reads almost like a diary instead of a novel, the writing also comes across as self-indulgent. Kerouac puts every thought and detail he wants to put in, never mind how relevant or interesting it is. He simply writes with seemingly no thought given to his audience.

Again, for about a hundred pages, none of these things are that bothersome. But for three-hundred pages? It gets tedious quickly and frustrating when it becomes apparent that Kerouac has no intention of creating any plot arch whatsoever. The extra details make the repetitive action drag further and eventually I found myself desperately wishing that someone would just take the main character’s car keys away from him so the whole journey could end.

It’s small wonder that most of the friends I know who have read On the Road have never actually finished it.

So take some advice from Paris, Mr. Kerouac, and please for the love of God, edit!

Distractions and Namelessness - Not a Good Reading Combination

Currently Reading: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Apparently I went through a bit of a stretch during which the books I read left little to no impression on me. However, I’m not sure it’s fair to say that this is purely a reflection on the novels. After all, I read The Old Man and the Sea in a desperate attempt to reach my February goal of four books for the month and then my two subsequent books, The Red Badge of Courage and On the Road, were read in the midst of my Australia trip frenzy. For the first time in a while, my life was actually more interesting than those of the characters I was reading about. Exciting and glorious as this change was for me personally, it has been a rather negative development for both my reading and blogging habits.

I mean, how could Jack Keruoac’s rather redundant journey back and forth and back and forth across the United States possibly compare with spelunking in the Jenolan Caves? Could I really be expected to be more interested in Henry Fleming’s cowardly actions in The Red Badge of Courage than in my cruise on the Great Barrier Reef, complete with an introductory scuba dive?

I think it’s reasonable to say that my lack of interest in these novels was only about 30% due to the actual writing and stories. The other 70% was purely distraction.

All this being said, though, I’m not sure I would put The Red Badge of Courage at the top of my favorite books list even if I read it with laser focus.

The story follows a young private, Henry Fleming, who joins the Union army during the Civil War, imagining that the glory of battle awaits him and he’ll have a chance to show what a manly, brave hero he is. Instead, (spoiler alert) he runs away from his first skirmish. After wandering around, encountering other soldiers and even watching one of his friends become delirious from his injuries and die, Fleming eventually rejoins his regiment. In the final battle of the novel, Henry becomes the hero he desired to be when he refuses to let the colors of his army fall even after the previous flag-bearer is killed.

Stephen Crane very effectively shows the true ugliness of war, rather than the romantic image of it. He demonstrates through Henry that not all moments of battle are moments of glory. These soldiers are simply men, who get scared and injured and even die, all for the sake of some higher-ranking soldier’s purpose. Crane shows how most men do not end up with their names in the history books, but are rather sacrificed as faceless, nameless pawns in a game of chess.

The problem for me, though, was that Crane did this last part too effectively. He chose to barely ever mention characters by name, instead referring to Henry almost exclusively as “the youth” throughout the novel (I had to look up Henry’s name before writing this post, that’s how little it’s mentioned). Each soldier then becomes barely different from the next and they almost cease to become individuals. It’s an incredibly powerful way to highlight how this is the case for soldiers in war, but it backfired a bit for me. By having almost all of the characters become an amorous blob of soldier, I found it very hard to get invested in anyone. It was much harder to care for Henry when I often couldn’t tell when he was being mentioned or not. Again, a very powerful implication of the ability of war to strip away a person’s identity, but made for slightly less interesting reading.

Again, it very well could have been that I just was far more interested in petting a koala…

My Own Marlin Fight - Finally Writing This Blog Post

Currently Reading: The Once and Future King by T. H. White

It absolutely figures that I would write a post bragging about my blogging consistency and then go radio silent for over a month.

I don’t even have a good excuse. I just haven’t been motivated to write, especially not about The Old Man and the Sea. So I apologize that this may not be one of my best posts.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t dislike The Old Man and the Sea. I just didn’t have any strong opinion of it or lasting impression. I attribute this to two facts: First, the book I read before this was Madame Bovary, of which you may know I had a very strong opinion, thus making any impression from the next book instantly wane in comparison. Second, I zipped through The Old Man in the Sea in one day. In the same way that one can devour a meal, finish, and then realize he didn’t really taste a single bite he ate so quickly, I finished this book and realized I didn’t really digest it.

Add to this the fact that Ernest Hemingway and I have had a fairly rocky relationship. He’s famously concise, able to strip the English language down to its core and let its raw power shine through. However, in my past experiences with him, I’ve found that he’s often too concise, expecting his readers to make crazy leaps to get to the conclusions he wants them to make. Thus, I often miss the main point.

It’s created quite a challenge when it comes to writing a blog post about it.

It feels fitting, though, that writing a post about this old man’s days-long struggle with a giant marlin has become an equally lengthy challenge for me.

While this quick book is chock full of symbolism and metaphors about religion and life, I’m taking a cue from Hemingway and opting for brevity, focusing on the most impressive part of the story from my perspective: the old man’s strength.

Despite the 85-day streak without a single fish, the old man still makes the solitary trek out into the water to make another attempt. Then when he does manage to catch a fish that’s bigger than his own boat, he’s not discouraged by its size or strength or determination. Instead, he fights with equal determination. For days. He has incredible resolve and keeps battling for this prize, even when he realizes he won’t be able to bring it back to shore to be of any use.

But to me, what’s even more impressive is his physical strength because damn! This man is supposed to very elderly and I know some older men who are still fit, but I can’t imagine one that could do what Hemingway’s old man does. He’s literally dragged by an 18-foot marlin for days, never able to let up on his grip or relax his pull without the loss of the fish, not to mention the rope digging into his back and hands. And he still hangs on! To me, who can barely manage a push-up, this old man has super-human strength!

Who cares about the message about life and religion – that’s what I find most fascinating about The Old Man and the Sea.

Again, it’s a quick read and the story hasn’t really stuck with me. It didn’t enrage me like Madame Bovary nor did it rock me like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But I’ve got to hand it to Hemingway. He really manages to squeeze an awful lot into his very short sentences.