Today is a glorious snow day, which allowed me, despite many things I SHOULD have done, to finish Madame Bovary. I loved this book. I didn't know a lot about it before I read it, other than that it was about adultery and that it recieved a lot of criticism for being too licentious. This book is about much more than adultery.
The first theme I pulled out of the book was about the idols we set up in our lives and the things we will do to pursue them. Madame Bovary was in love with "love", a trait that I too am often guilty of. After reading several books emphasizing the romantic ideal she longs to be swept off of her feet by someone who woos her with poetry and beautiful things. Although she at first believes her husband to be this person, she soon realizes he is not. Despite having a series of lovers, not a single one of them lives up to her romantic ideal and the narrator makes an astute observation that when you put anything on a pedestal we are bond to be disappointed. I loved this quote because it expressed that sentiment beautifully. "We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers". Other characters in the book are also guilty of this character flaw (which just goes to show that it is, unfortunately a part of human nature). Homais, the chemist in their provincial town of Yonville, fancies himself to be a bit of a physician. He has often tried to run doctors out of town so that he can practice medicine. He also longs to be recognized with a Star of a Cross of Honour which he succeeds in doing in the last sentence of the book, but to do this he "sold himself-in a word, prostituted himself". Charles Bovary succeeds in realizing his ideal near the beginning of the book which is to have a cozy home and to spend each night in comfort with a beautiful wife. In order to maintain this he sacrifices everything for Madame Bovary and remains oblivious to her adultery. When he eventually discovers it after her death he very shortly dies of a broken heart.
The second theme that emerges is that of the human condition. By that I mean our inability to ever fully express that which is within our hearts. Since the fall of man the Bible talks about how we can only now "see through a glass darkly". Madame Bovary tries to express herself to her husband but he never quite grasps her meaning. When she finds her lovers grasp a bit more she is at first appeased, but soon discovers that even they do not fully understand. Through a mutual love of literature she finds a small amount of connection with her second lover when he says,
"has it ever happened to you', Leon went on, 'to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back from afar".
And further on in the book it is expressed in a different, but rather more poetic way:
"...no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out a tune to make bears dance when we long to move the stars"
I read through this book quickly, and was swallowed up by the vivid descriptions. Everything was so well described that it was almost like I was there. At times I almost smelled the smells of the flowers, and felt the breeze let in by the windows. Unfortunately, the death scene of Madame Bovary was also described in great detail, and I was brought instantly back to the death of my father and how that experience felt. I wasn't however, angered by this, but felt it was beautiful that the author, Gustave Flaubert was able to capture the essence of what it feels like when someone you loves dies. Flaubert also does, like Dostoyevsky, in Crime in Punishment, an excellent job of describing completely insane acts in a way that allows us to understand how they might happen even to us. Although I esteem the sanctity of marriage higher than almost everything else, I was able to comprehend how Madame Bovary succumbed to adultery (and I am loathe to admit that it could happen to me).My favorite authors have always been the ones that provide insight into the man's weaknesses and show how all actions are rational. If these thoughts intrigue you I highly recommend anything by Dostoyevsky and my favorite Canadian author David Adams Richard's book "Mercy Among the Children".
This book is really not about adultery at all and I was suprised that it recieved such an outcry against it. The adulterous scenes are vaguely described and left completely to the imagination. This book is quite dark however, and perhaps that is more what people were opposed to.
Finally, I leave you with one final quote which I thought was beautiful:
"He was in one of those crises, in which the whole soul shows indistincly what it contains, like the ocean, which in a storm opens itself from the seaweed on its shores down to the sands of its abysses"
The next book I am on to is Middlemarch. This one is significantly longer than Madame Bovary but I am still aiming to have it read in three weeks (a month at most).For those following on facebook please check out my blog at magic-and-mystery.blogspot.com
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Moby Dick- Book 6
So much of Moby Dick has become a part of our every day culture. If you live on the West Coast like I do, and are surrounded by coffee culture as I am, Starbucks is likely a mammoth symbol in your life. Starbuck is Captain Ahab's first mate and the only one on the boat who dares to face off against Captain Ahab in his insane quest for the infamous White Whale, Moby Dick. Despite that he is also a loyal and dedicated companion to Moby Dick.
I was so excited to read this book because of one of my teenhood favorite shows, X-Files. On one episode (which consequently is in my top 5) Mulder and Scully search for a lake monster much like the Loch ness. During that episode Scully has a little Pomerianian named Queequag.Pomerianians have since become on of my favorite dogs, despite their yappiness and if I ever own one I would love to name it Queequag. Queequag is the name of Ishmael's (the Narrator of Moby Dick) closest companion on the ship.Eventually Mulder and Scully get stranded on a rock in the middle of the lake and Scully tells Mulder of her father and his nickname for her. He always called her his Starbuck and refered to himself as Ahab. I always found the scene so endearing and thought that Starbuck was the cutest nickname ever.
I read 2/3 of this book on my iphone app: ibooks because I could not find the book anywhere including the bookstores. I had to order it in to Coles which took a few weeks and in the meantime I read the book on my tiny little phone. At first I thought I hated reading ebooks but in the end I didn't find it as bad as I expected. Despite that there is nothing that compares to curling up with a book on the couch. It just doesn't feel the same somehow curling up with an electronic device!!! Nothing beats the smell of paper and ink and I frequenly sniff the books I read. Is that weird??!!
I am not sure whether I loved this book or not. There are parts of it that I absolutely loved. I did love most of the philsophy of the book which is about the search for the mysterious, ephemeral things in life and how they can never be grasped this side of heaven. There were so many parts though that were slow moving and I didn't look forward to reading it. The first few sections of the book prior to the Pequod sailing at sea and the last part, where they come closer to meeting Moby Dick are amazing. The middle of the book, what with the odd use of encyclopedia-style cataloguing and random bursts of play style writing is somewhat harder to stomach. I have noticed that the author of the list, Daniel S. Burt tends to favor the modern style of writing that focuses on the creative use of the novel, a la James Joyce. I also had a hard time stomaching the graphic descriptions of the hunting and dismemberment of the whale. What a horrible way to make a living.
And now for a few of my favorite quotes:
The first chapter sets about the reason for the sea voyage and restlessness that grows in Ishmael which always turns him towards the sea.
"almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feeligns towards the ocean with me"
"Take almost any path you please, ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it"
"Everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever"
Ishmael the author of the book meets Queequag at a hotel he choses to stay at prior to going on his first whaling voyage. He is a pagan who is covered in tattoos and worships a little ebony idol. This terrify's Ishmael but they soon become fast friends because, he
"felt a metling in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned agains the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it."
and he discovered that:
"Presbyterians and Pagans alike...(are) all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head and sadly need mending"
I love it! What a great way to look at the human condition.
There are a few other great metaphors about life in the book which make absolutely no sense out of context. I recommend reading this book simply because almost everyone knows the basic premise of the story but few have actually read it. It truly is more than just a story of a guy chasing a white whale. There are some beautiful gems in there about human nature and life in general. I am now on to book 7which is Madame Bovary. If anyone is interested in reading it with me let me know. It would be fun to have someone to chat about the book with.
And as with all these book reviews if you are reading this on facebook please head over to my real blog magic-and-mystery.blogspot.com
I was so excited to read this book because of one of my teenhood favorite shows, X-Files. On one episode (which consequently is in my top 5) Mulder and Scully search for a lake monster much like the Loch ness. During that episode Scully has a little Pomerianian named Queequag.Pomerianians have since become on of my favorite dogs, despite their yappiness and if I ever own one I would love to name it Queequag. Queequag is the name of Ishmael's (the Narrator of Moby Dick) closest companion on the ship.Eventually Mulder and Scully get stranded on a rock in the middle of the lake and Scully tells Mulder of her father and his nickname for her. He always called her his Starbuck and refered to himself as Ahab. I always found the scene so endearing and thought that Starbuck was the cutest nickname ever.
I read 2/3 of this book on my iphone app: ibooks because I could not find the book anywhere including the bookstores. I had to order it in to Coles which took a few weeks and in the meantime I read the book on my tiny little phone. At first I thought I hated reading ebooks but in the end I didn't find it as bad as I expected. Despite that there is nothing that compares to curling up with a book on the couch. It just doesn't feel the same somehow curling up with an electronic device!!! Nothing beats the smell of paper and ink and I frequenly sniff the books I read. Is that weird??!!
I am not sure whether I loved this book or not. There are parts of it that I absolutely loved. I did love most of the philsophy of the book which is about the search for the mysterious, ephemeral things in life and how they can never be grasped this side of heaven. There were so many parts though that were slow moving and I didn't look forward to reading it. The first few sections of the book prior to the Pequod sailing at sea and the last part, where they come closer to meeting Moby Dick are amazing. The middle of the book, what with the odd use of encyclopedia-style cataloguing and random bursts of play style writing is somewhat harder to stomach. I have noticed that the author of the list, Daniel S. Burt tends to favor the modern style of writing that focuses on the creative use of the novel, a la James Joyce. I also had a hard time stomaching the graphic descriptions of the hunting and dismemberment of the whale. What a horrible way to make a living.
And now for a few of my favorite quotes:
The first chapter sets about the reason for the sea voyage and restlessness that grows in Ishmael which always turns him towards the sea.
"almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feeligns towards the ocean with me"
"Take almost any path you please, ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it"
"Everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever"
Ishmael the author of the book meets Queequag at a hotel he choses to stay at prior to going on his first whaling voyage. He is a pagan who is covered in tattoos and worships a little ebony idol. This terrify's Ishmael but they soon become fast friends because, he
"felt a metling in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned agains the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it."
and he discovered that:
"Presbyterians and Pagans alike...(are) all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head and sadly need mending"
I love it! What a great way to look at the human condition.
There are a few other great metaphors about life in the book which make absolutely no sense out of context. I recommend reading this book simply because almost everyone knows the basic premise of the story but few have actually read it. It truly is more than just a story of a guy chasing a white whale. There are some beautiful gems in there about human nature and life in general. I am now on to book 7which is Madame Bovary. If anyone is interested in reading it with me let me know. It would be fun to have someone to chat about the book with.
And as with all these book reviews if you are reading this on facebook please head over to my real blog magic-and-mystery.blogspot.com
Thursday, November 18, 2010
The Brothers Karamazov
Thanks to an old quote book and a love of underlining quotes that jump out at me I can recollect my thoughts on this book in somewhat accurate detail despite having read it in 2001.
Dostoyevsky was one of my first favorite authors. I own many of his books and have read a lot of them. I love that he focused on people with struggles. He is a master at showing the inner workings of people and the reasons they chose the actions they do.
The Brothers Karamazov is actually my all time favorite Dostoyevsky novel. I heavily identified with Aloysha the brother that chose to be a priest. My favorite quote is:
"Love God's people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth"
At the time, I hide from the world. I felt very keenly that I was not stable and had very little trust in myself. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I chose to go to a Christian university. After getting healing (thankfully while at university) I began to realize that I could let myself go. I could have fun and be free and that the world would not collapse. My Christianity became less about the structures and rules of religion and more about my relationship to God.
The Brothers Karamazov was one of the books that I read that showed me that life was for living. It filled me with such agreat joy to hear that there was more than just surviving.
Here is a quote that shows that best
"If I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment-still I should want to live and having once tasted the cup I would not turn away from it till I have drained I would not turn away from it till I had drained it."
And further down that same page:
"I have asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't"
This book is a beautiful example of how nobody is one thing. In doing good, we are also at times evil. In doing evil we are also still good. Humanity can be best described as being a blend of the three brothers. Aloysha who has faith, Dmitri who is filled with passion and tries to live life with abandon and Ivan who pursues logic and science.
Aloysha and Ivan argue about God with Aloysha defending him and Ivan stating that suffering is horrible, and that God couldn't have created it.
Ivan tells of "The Grand Inquistor" which is a story about Christ coming back during the Grand Inquistion and being charged for giving man free will. The Church complains that God has been mistaken in believe that there is good in humanity and that they need to be controlled. The church states, they have taken this on. Talking of Gods love for man, the inquisitor complains that it would be more loving to have eased the burden of free will.
"Thou who has loved him more than Thyself. Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter.... for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves"
Aloysha however, is told of a more true way of being by one of his mentors
"Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and bless life and will make others bless it-which is what matters most"
I love that Dostoyevsky's novels always show that all behaviour is rational. Even the most horrible act often has a motive that any of us could easily understand. As humans we are a blend of both good and evil. We are as humans "capable of the greatest heights and of the greatest depths"
I was so glad to read this book when I did for I feel it helped me to reconcile a few parts of myself. I discovered I could be passionate, faithful and logical and not be contradicting myself in any sense. I count this book as probably my second favorite novel of all time only to be shadowed by East of Eden by John Steinbeck which for some reason never made this list of 100 at all. Oddly enough however it was also a story of brothers as well...
Dostoyevsky was one of my first favorite authors. I own many of his books and have read a lot of them. I love that he focused on people with struggles. He is a master at showing the inner workings of people and the reasons they chose the actions they do.
The Brothers Karamazov is actually my all time favorite Dostoyevsky novel. I heavily identified with Aloysha the brother that chose to be a priest. My favorite quote is:
"Love God's people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth"
At the time, I hide from the world. I felt very keenly that I was not stable and had very little trust in myself. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I chose to go to a Christian university. After getting healing (thankfully while at university) I began to realize that I could let myself go. I could have fun and be free and that the world would not collapse. My Christianity became less about the structures and rules of religion and more about my relationship to God.
The Brothers Karamazov was one of the books that I read that showed me that life was for living. It filled me with such agreat joy to hear that there was more than just surviving.
Here is a quote that shows that best
"If I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment-still I should want to live and having once tasted the cup I would not turn away from it till I have drained I would not turn away from it till I had drained it."
And further down that same page:
"I have asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't"
This book is a beautiful example of how nobody is one thing. In doing good, we are also at times evil. In doing evil we are also still good. Humanity can be best described as being a blend of the three brothers. Aloysha who has faith, Dmitri who is filled with passion and tries to live life with abandon and Ivan who pursues logic and science.
Aloysha and Ivan argue about God with Aloysha defending him and Ivan stating that suffering is horrible, and that God couldn't have created it.
Ivan tells of "The Grand Inquistor" which is a story about Christ coming back during the Grand Inquistion and being charged for giving man free will. The Church complains that God has been mistaken in believe that there is good in humanity and that they need to be controlled. The church states, they have taken this on. Talking of Gods love for man, the inquisitor complains that it would be more loving to have eased the burden of free will.
"Thou who has loved him more than Thyself. Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter.... for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves"
Aloysha however, is told of a more true way of being by one of his mentors
"Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and bless life and will make others bless it-which is what matters most"
I love that Dostoyevsky's novels always show that all behaviour is rational. Even the most horrible act often has a motive that any of us could easily understand. As humans we are a blend of both good and evil. We are as humans "capable of the greatest heights and of the greatest depths"
I was so glad to read this book when I did for I feel it helped me to reconcile a few parts of myself. I discovered I could be passionate, faithful and logical and not be contradicting myself in any sense. I count this book as probably my second favorite novel of all time only to be shadowed by East of Eden by John Steinbeck which for some reason never made this list of 100 at all. Oddly enough however it was also a story of brothers as well...
In Search of Lost Time Review
I was a little miffed to discover when I started reading this book that rather than just being ONE book it was actually 6 volumes in 6 books of about 600-700 pages each. Soooo....that makes my book list of a hundred books to really be 105 books. To be honest I bought only two of the six volumes and for the purpose of the "list", I only read two of the six books before moving on to the next book on the list. I hope to be able to come back to the other four novels after completing the list.
Well, after that rant you would think that I didn't like the book but in fact that isn't true. I loved the book. Proust philosophizes about just the sort of things I love: beauty, love and the things that charm you even though you can't say why.
While reading this book I read a beautiful description of Madeleines. I decided to cook myself up a batch since I had a Madeleine pan from the last French novel I read, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". I had the joy of eating them dipped in lime tea, just like the famous memory that was described in the book. I found a whole new appreciation for them because of this. I found them quite bland the first time I tried them. Lime tea made them delicious! They were also excellent dipped in a peppermint/vanilla latte!
One of my favorite quotes from Volume 1 of In Search of Lost time talks about the great benefit of novels being a way to see truth that we might otherwise ignore because it develops too slowly in our own life.
..."the most intense of which would never be revealed to us, because the slow course of their development prevents us from perceiving them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and it is our worst sorrow; but we only know it only through reading, through our imagination."
I can't count how many epiphanies I have had while reading that I might never have stumbled upon simply be observing my own life.
Another quote I loved was
"There is a charming quality, is there not' he said to me, "in this silence; for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist who you will read in time to come asserts that there is no remedy but silence and shadow".
The book is full of beautiful reminisences on many things. Some of them include his love of hawthorns and cornflowers which remind him of his first love and also of a particular walk that his family took that he referred to as "Swann's way" (also the title of the 1st volume).
While the first novel focuses on a friend of Marcel Proust (aka the narrator's) family and his love for his future wife the second novel focuses on Marcel's own first loves. He first loves Swann's own daughter Gilberte, but because of his inability to fully attract her later moves on. While vacationing at the seaside town of Balbec he falls in love with Albertine a dark haired girl with lovely plump cheeks that he longs to kiss.
The second novel is filled with beautiful reminiscences about how we often don't love the people we see before us but really our own image of them. For instance:
"very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, so distinct from teh person whom the world knows by the same name"
"To the Gilberte whom I carried within me. I ought to have reminded myself that the other, the real Gilberte, was perhaps entirely different from mine."
I have seen this to be true with the infatuations which I have had. I have discovered myself that the people I am interested in have very little in common with the reality that other people see. For instance, I somehow add charming characteristics that they don't possess to the degree I assume or believe their behaviours to have a different charming meaning from the one that they actually do.
My two other favorite quotes include:
"If God the Father had created things by naming them, it was by taking away their names or giving them other names that Elstir created them anew"
This quote speaks of how the artist takes the beauty that God creates and paints it in a different light that allows us to see them in a different way.
When Proust speaks of love he talks of it as magic experience that is hard to describe.
When it "relates to love, it is best to make no attempt to understand, since in so far as these are as inexorable as they are unlooked-for, the appear to be governed by magic rather than rational laws"
Of course I was amused by that quote because magic is one of my great loves. Unfortunately, love is one magic that I have never been able to figure out the secret for.
That might be why I love these two books so much. Proust shows in beautiful detail the search for love in all of its pain and mystery. As a shy and ill boy he struggled with trying to figure out its secrets and portrays his own personal story while talking about universal truths in beauty and love.
The next book is the Brothers Karamazov which I have already read and loved. I will do a brief review of it before moving on to the sixth novel, Moby Dick. I am extremely excited to read it!!
Well, after that rant you would think that I didn't like the book but in fact that isn't true. I loved the book. Proust philosophizes about just the sort of things I love: beauty, love and the things that charm you even though you can't say why.
While reading this book I read a beautiful description of Madeleines. I decided to cook myself up a batch since I had a Madeleine pan from the last French novel I read, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". I had the joy of eating them dipped in lime tea, just like the famous memory that was described in the book. I found a whole new appreciation for them because of this. I found them quite bland the first time I tried them. Lime tea made them delicious! They were also excellent dipped in a peppermint/vanilla latte!
One of my favorite quotes from Volume 1 of In Search of Lost time talks about the great benefit of novels being a way to see truth that we might otherwise ignore because it develops too slowly in our own life.
..."the most intense of which would never be revealed to us, because the slow course of their development prevents us from perceiving them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and it is our worst sorrow; but we only know it only through reading, through our imagination."
I can't count how many epiphanies I have had while reading that I might never have stumbled upon simply be observing my own life.
Another quote I loved was
"There is a charming quality, is there not' he said to me, "in this silence; for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist who you will read in time to come asserts that there is no remedy but silence and shadow".
The book is full of beautiful reminisences on many things. Some of them include his love of hawthorns and cornflowers which remind him of his first love and also of a particular walk that his family took that he referred to as "Swann's way" (also the title of the 1st volume).
While the first novel focuses on a friend of Marcel Proust (aka the narrator's) family and his love for his future wife the second novel focuses on Marcel's own first loves. He first loves Swann's own daughter Gilberte, but because of his inability to fully attract her later moves on. While vacationing at the seaside town of Balbec he falls in love with Albertine a dark haired girl with lovely plump cheeks that he longs to kiss.
The second novel is filled with beautiful reminiscences about how we often don't love the people we see before us but really our own image of them. For instance:
"very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, so distinct from teh person whom the world knows by the same name"
"To the Gilberte whom I carried within me. I ought to have reminded myself that the other, the real Gilberte, was perhaps entirely different from mine."
I have seen this to be true with the infatuations which I have had. I have discovered myself that the people I am interested in have very little in common with the reality that other people see. For instance, I somehow add charming characteristics that they don't possess to the degree I assume or believe their behaviours to have a different charming meaning from the one that they actually do.
My two other favorite quotes include:
"If God the Father had created things by naming them, it was by taking away their names or giving them other names that Elstir created them anew"
This quote speaks of how the artist takes the beauty that God creates and paints it in a different light that allows us to see them in a different way.
When Proust speaks of love he talks of it as magic experience that is hard to describe.
When it "relates to love, it is best to make no attempt to understand, since in so far as these are as inexorable as they are unlooked-for, the appear to be governed by magic rather than rational laws"
Of course I was amused by that quote because magic is one of my great loves. Unfortunately, love is one magic that I have never been able to figure out the secret for.
That might be why I love these two books so much. Proust shows in beautiful detail the search for love in all of its pain and mystery. As a shy and ill boy he struggled with trying to figure out its secrets and portrays his own personal story while talking about universal truths in beauty and love.
The next book is the Brothers Karamazov which I have already read and loved. I will do a brief review of it before moving on to the sixth novel, Moby Dick. I am extremely excited to read it!!
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Ulysses Review
Book three is DONE!!!!
James Joyce Ulysses is a hard read, but very interesting and engaging. I think I liked it better than Don Quixote because even though it is a struggle to understand at times, I was engaged with the material.
This book is brilliant! Too brilliant for me in fact! I read it with a dictionary next to me and even with that, didn't comprehend everything. The book has several different languages in it, and a lot of Irish colloquialisms that are now out of date. The book is also based on The Odyssey and despite having watched the 90s TV movie with Vanessa Williams I remembered absolutely nothing of the story. I think if I had read it, it would have added to the experience of reading this book.
Ulysses is based on one day, June 16, 1904. Each chapter is an hour in that day. (Huh so I guess this book was the show "24" before it was "24"!!!) That, however is where the similarities end. Unlike "24", which details the crazy antics of one very action packed day, Ulysses sets about chronicaling a completely average day with very little, if anything happening. It focuses on the mundane activites that make up our day, and show how even those things can become an epic. Each chapter also has a different literary style to it. One chapter uses newspaper headlines and journalistic style writing to convey the meaning, another uses scientific questions, and yet another is set out like a musical. Most of the chapters include internal monologue, where a character thinks about things inside of his head. Unlike most novels, these thoughts are not polished and include tangents and free association, which at first is EXTREMELY confusing to follow. Once you realize what is going on (which took me about 20 pages and reading the introduction to the novel to accomplish) it is actually quite cool.
Ulysses focuses on the body in a big way. In the introduction of the version I read, it gives you chart to follow along in the book. Each chapter focuses on a body part. The humorous thing is that this book includes in detail descriptions of a morning bathroom routine, frequent burping, farting and other such normal bodily functions. It also strays into more sexual bodily functions and even includes a scene where the main character masturbates on a beach.
Thanks to the thoughts of the main characters, the book gets quite lewd and is almost pornographic in parts. The last chapter where the wife, Molly goes into detail about all of her affairs is particularly this way. Ulysses was banned in many places including the United States for a period of time and I imagine those parts are why. Would I ban it? No. Despite it really graphic parts the book is briliant. It is a masterpiece of its own kind that changes the way the novel looks at things. Rather than being full of heroic unique deeds it shows that even everyday life can be interesting. It also uses so many different literary methods and unique ways of conveying its message that it is definitely worth a read.
I would say the main theme is about feeling inadequate and looking for a purpose and identity in life. Bloom struggles with fears about his wife, and also struggles to fit in with society as a whole. Stephen, a young poet who later meets Bloom struggles with his identity having little contact with his family. Between the two of them they help each other out. A good quote from the introduction of the book I read is:
"Natural parents should bear in mind that the more supplementaries their children find, at school, or elsewhere, the better they will know that it takes all sorts to make a world."
There are some excellent quotes in this book, which borders on poetry. My all time favorite has to be a new name for God which Ulysses coins.Note that my blog is called magicandmystery for a reason. It is part of my philosophy of God. The world is a magic place. Joyce refers to Jesus as "Heisos Kristos, magician of the beautiful". LOVE IT!!!!
I love this one too!
"Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, women to her lover clinging, the more, the more"
Another one stated by Stephen Dedalus in the novel "Where there is reconcilliation... there must have been first a sundering"
And yet another.
"Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves"
I have found that last quote to be very true. It is often hard to change things that are innately us. Despite alll our efforts we find that we are more often than not the same in the end. Our view of the world is coloured by our internal thoughts and feelings.
Overall, I thought that Ulysses was worthy of a read, despite is pornographic elements. I would just caution readers to be aware that they are there.
I am now on to book 4 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Should be good!!
James Joyce Ulysses is a hard read, but very interesting and engaging. I think I liked it better than Don Quixote because even though it is a struggle to understand at times, I was engaged with the material.
This book is brilliant! Too brilliant for me in fact! I read it with a dictionary next to me and even with that, didn't comprehend everything. The book has several different languages in it, and a lot of Irish colloquialisms that are now out of date. The book is also based on The Odyssey and despite having watched the 90s TV movie with Vanessa Williams I remembered absolutely nothing of the story. I think if I had read it, it would have added to the experience of reading this book.
Ulysses is based on one day, June 16, 1904. Each chapter is an hour in that day. (Huh so I guess this book was the show "24" before it was "24"!!!) That, however is where the similarities end. Unlike "24", which details the crazy antics of one very action packed day, Ulysses sets about chronicaling a completely average day with very little, if anything happening. It focuses on the mundane activites that make up our day, and show how even those things can become an epic. Each chapter also has a different literary style to it. One chapter uses newspaper headlines and journalistic style writing to convey the meaning, another uses scientific questions, and yet another is set out like a musical. Most of the chapters include internal monologue, where a character thinks about things inside of his head. Unlike most novels, these thoughts are not polished and include tangents and free association, which at first is EXTREMELY confusing to follow. Once you realize what is going on (which took me about 20 pages and reading the introduction to the novel to accomplish) it is actually quite cool.
Ulysses focuses on the body in a big way. In the introduction of the version I read, it gives you chart to follow along in the book. Each chapter focuses on a body part. The humorous thing is that this book includes in detail descriptions of a morning bathroom routine, frequent burping, farting and other such normal bodily functions. It also strays into more sexual bodily functions and even includes a scene where the main character masturbates on a beach.
Thanks to the thoughts of the main characters, the book gets quite lewd and is almost pornographic in parts. The last chapter where the wife, Molly goes into detail about all of her affairs is particularly this way. Ulysses was banned in many places including the United States for a period of time and I imagine those parts are why. Would I ban it? No. Despite it really graphic parts the book is briliant. It is a masterpiece of its own kind that changes the way the novel looks at things. Rather than being full of heroic unique deeds it shows that even everyday life can be interesting. It also uses so many different literary methods and unique ways of conveying its message that it is definitely worth a read.
I would say the main theme is about feeling inadequate and looking for a purpose and identity in life. Bloom struggles with fears about his wife, and also struggles to fit in with society as a whole. Stephen, a young poet who later meets Bloom struggles with his identity having little contact with his family. Between the two of them they help each other out. A good quote from the introduction of the book I read is:
"Natural parents should bear in mind that the more supplementaries their children find, at school, or elsewhere, the better they will know that it takes all sorts to make a world."
There are some excellent quotes in this book, which borders on poetry. My all time favorite has to be a new name for God which Ulysses coins.Note that my blog is called magicandmystery for a reason. It is part of my philosophy of God. The world is a magic place. Joyce refers to Jesus as "Heisos Kristos, magician of the beautiful". LOVE IT!!!!
I love this one too!
"Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, women to her lover clinging, the more, the more"
Another one stated by Stephen Dedalus in the novel "Where there is reconcilliation... there must have been first a sundering"
And yet another.
"Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves"
I have found that last quote to be very true. It is often hard to change things that are innately us. Despite alll our efforts we find that we are more often than not the same in the end. Our view of the world is coloured by our internal thoughts and feelings.
Overall, I thought that Ulysses was worthy of a read, despite is pornographic elements. I would just caution readers to be aware that they are there.
I am now on to book 4 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Should be good!!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The Novel 100 list
I have had a request for the complete list of the books that I am reading. I have decided to type it up for all of you, but please note that this list is not mine it can be found in "The Novel 100: a ranking of the greatest novels of all time" By Daniel S. Burt. This book is helpful for reading through the books, as it gives you the background behind why Burt chose them, and also a bit about the books themselves.
1) Don Quixote- Miguel Cervantes
2) War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
3) Ulysses- James Joyce
4) In search of Lost Time- Marcel Proust
5) The Brothers Karamazov- Feyodor Dostoyovsky
6) Moby Dick- Herman Melville
7) Madame Bovary-Gustave Flaubert
8) Middlemarch- George Eliot
9) The Magic Mountain- Thomas Mann
10) The Tale of Genji- Murasaki Shikibu
11) Emma-Jane Austen
12) Bleak House-Charles Dickens
13) Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy
14) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-Mark Twain
15) Tom Jones-Henry Fielding
16) Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
17) Absalom, absalom-William Faulkner
18) The Ambassadors-Henry James
19) One Hundred Years of Solitude-Gabriel Marcia Marquez
20) The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
21) To the Lighthouse- Virgina Woolf
22) Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
23) The Sound and the Fury- William Faulkner
24) Vanity Fair-William Makepeace Thackeray
25) Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
26) Finnegans Wake-James Joyce
27) The man without Qualities-Robert Musil
28) Gravity's Rainbow- Thomas Pynchon
29) The Portrait of a Lady- Henry James
30) A woman in Love- D. H. Lawrence
31) The REd and the Black- Stendhal
32) Tristram Shandy- Laurence Sterne
33) Dead Souls-Nikolai Gogol
34) TEss of D'Ubervilles- Thomas Hardy
35) Buddenbrooks- Thomas Mann
36) Le Pere Goriot- Honore de Balzac
37) A portrait of an Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
38) Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
39) The Tin Drum-Gunter Grass
40) Molloy, Malone, Dies the Unnameable- Samuel Beckett
41) Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
42) The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne
43) Fathers and Sons- Ivan Turgenev
44) Nostromo- Joseph Conrad
45) Beloved- Toni Morrison
46) An American Tragedy- Theodore Dreiser
47) Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov
48) The Golden Notebook- Doris Lessing
49) Clarissa- Samuel Richardson
50) Dream of the Red Chamber- Cao Xueqin
51) The Trial- Franz Kafka
52) Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
53) The Red Badge of Courage- Stephen Crane
54) The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck
55) Petersburg- Andrey Bely
56) Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe
57) the Princess of Cleves-Madame de Lafayette
58) The Stranger- Albert Camus
59) My Antonia- Willa Cather
60) The Counterfeiters-Andre Gide
61) The Age of Innocence- Edith Wharton
62) The Good Soldier- Ford Madox Ford
63) The Awakening- Kate Chopin
64) A Passage to India- E.M. Forester
65) Herzog- Saul Bellow
66) Germinal- Emile Zola
67) Call it Sleep- Henry Roth
68) USA Trilogy- John Dos Passos
69) Hunger- Knut Hamsun
70) BErlin Alexanderplatz- Alfred Doblin
71) Cities of Salt- Abd Al Rahman Munif
72) The Death of Artemio Cruz- Carlos Fuentes
73) A Farewell to Arms- Ernest Hemingway
74) Bridgeshead Revisited-Evelyn Waugh
75) The Last chronicle of Barset- Anthony Trollope
76) The Pickwick Papers- Charles Dickinson
77) Robinson Crusoe- Daniel Dafoe
78) The sorrows of Young Werther- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
79) Candide- Voltaire
80) Native Son- Richard Wright
81) Under the Volcano- Malcolm Lowry
82) Oblomov- Ivan Goncharov
83) Their eyes WEre Watching God- Zora Neal Hurston
84) Waverley- Sir Walter Scott
85) Snow Country- Kawabata Yasunari
86) Nineteen Eighty-four-George Orwell
87) The Betrothed- Allesandro Manzoni
88) The last of the Mohican- James Fenimore Cooper
89) Uncle Tom's Cabin-Harriet Beecher Stowe
90) Les Miserables- Victor Hugo
91) On the Road- Jack Kerouac
92) Frankenstein-Mary Shelley
93) The Leopard-Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
94) The Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger
95) The Woman in White- Wilkie Collins
96) The Good Soldier Svejk- Jaroslav Hasek
97) DRacula- Bram Stoker
98) The Three Musketeers- Alexandre Dumas
99) The Hounds of Baskerville-Arthur Conan Doyle
100) Gone wiht the Wind-Margaret Mitchell
1) Don Quixote- Miguel Cervantes
2) War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
3) Ulysses- James Joyce
4) In search of Lost Time- Marcel Proust
5) The Brothers Karamazov- Feyodor Dostoyovsky
6) Moby Dick- Herman Melville
7) Madame Bovary-Gustave Flaubert
8) Middlemarch- George Eliot
9) The Magic Mountain- Thomas Mann
10) The Tale of Genji- Murasaki Shikibu
11) Emma-Jane Austen
12) Bleak House-Charles Dickens
13) Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy
14) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-Mark Twain
15) Tom Jones-Henry Fielding
16) Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
17) Absalom, absalom-William Faulkner
18) The Ambassadors-Henry James
19) One Hundred Years of Solitude-Gabriel Marcia Marquez
20) The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
21) To the Lighthouse- Virgina Woolf
22) Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
23) The Sound and the Fury- William Faulkner
24) Vanity Fair-William Makepeace Thackeray
25) Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
26) Finnegans Wake-James Joyce
27) The man without Qualities-Robert Musil
28) Gravity's Rainbow- Thomas Pynchon
29) The Portrait of a Lady- Henry James
30) A woman in Love- D. H. Lawrence
31) The REd and the Black- Stendhal
32) Tristram Shandy- Laurence Sterne
33) Dead Souls-Nikolai Gogol
34) TEss of D'Ubervilles- Thomas Hardy
35) Buddenbrooks- Thomas Mann
36) Le Pere Goriot- Honore de Balzac
37) A portrait of an Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
38) Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
39) The Tin Drum-Gunter Grass
40) Molloy, Malone, Dies the Unnameable- Samuel Beckett
41) Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
42) The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne
43) Fathers and Sons- Ivan Turgenev
44) Nostromo- Joseph Conrad
45) Beloved- Toni Morrison
46) An American Tragedy- Theodore Dreiser
47) Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov
48) The Golden Notebook- Doris Lessing
49) Clarissa- Samuel Richardson
50) Dream of the Red Chamber- Cao Xueqin
51) The Trial- Franz Kafka
52) Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
53) The Red Badge of Courage- Stephen Crane
54) The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck
55) Petersburg- Andrey Bely
56) Things Fall Apart- Chinua Achebe
57) the Princess of Cleves-Madame de Lafayette
58) The Stranger- Albert Camus
59) My Antonia- Willa Cather
60) The Counterfeiters-Andre Gide
61) The Age of Innocence- Edith Wharton
62) The Good Soldier- Ford Madox Ford
63) The Awakening- Kate Chopin
64) A Passage to India- E.M. Forester
65) Herzog- Saul Bellow
66) Germinal- Emile Zola
67) Call it Sleep- Henry Roth
68) USA Trilogy- John Dos Passos
69) Hunger- Knut Hamsun
70) BErlin Alexanderplatz- Alfred Doblin
71) Cities of Salt- Abd Al Rahman Munif
72) The Death of Artemio Cruz- Carlos Fuentes
73) A Farewell to Arms- Ernest Hemingway
74) Bridgeshead Revisited-Evelyn Waugh
75) The Last chronicle of Barset- Anthony Trollope
76) The Pickwick Papers- Charles Dickinson
77) Robinson Crusoe- Daniel Dafoe
78) The sorrows of Young Werther- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
79) Candide- Voltaire
80) Native Son- Richard Wright
81) Under the Volcano- Malcolm Lowry
82) Oblomov- Ivan Goncharov
83) Their eyes WEre Watching God- Zora Neal Hurston
84) Waverley- Sir Walter Scott
85) Snow Country- Kawabata Yasunari
86) Nineteen Eighty-four-George Orwell
87) The Betrothed- Allesandro Manzoni
88) The last of the Mohican- James Fenimore Cooper
89) Uncle Tom's Cabin-Harriet Beecher Stowe
90) Les Miserables- Victor Hugo
91) On the Road- Jack Kerouac
92) Frankenstein-Mary Shelley
93) The Leopard-Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
94) The Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger
95) The Woman in White- Wilkie Collins
96) The Good Soldier Svejk- Jaroslav Hasek
97) DRacula- Bram Stoker
98) The Three Musketeers- Alexandre Dumas
99) The Hounds of Baskerville-Arthur Conan Doyle
100) Gone wiht the Wind-Margaret Mitchell
Don Quixote review
The first novel in Daniel S. Burt's book was Don Quixote. The only thing I knew about the book before reading it was that it is a parody about knights.
While reading the book I remembered fondly my very first university level paper I ever wrote on Chilvaric love. This paper was wrote for my first year history class, before I even really knew how to write a proper essay. I never understood the idea at the time, but was interested in the topic having spent much of my youth following the anti dating movement popular in Christian circles at the time. I see now that I used the idea of "courting" as a way to opt out of real life (and unfortunately in the process missed out on a whole skill set necessary for relationships with the opposite sex). That, however, is somewhat besides the point.
What pray tell is chivalric love? In my history paper I wrote all about knights with their chaste love of their ladies. Knights in the 15th century roamed the earth providing the world with good deeds done in the names of their ladies. They also composed poems on their behalf, but other than that, had little to no actual contact with the ladies they were enamored with.
Don Quixote paradoies this to the extreme, in that he has never even seen the lady of his affections...but only heard people talking about her. Armed shoddily with homemade armor, a scrawny horse named Rocinante and a humorous and simpleminded page named Sancho Don Quixote sets out into the world in search of adventures. What he finds are several humorous and painful interactions with people who can't believe that "knights errant" exist outside of the novels. Some of these encounters are interesting while others moves slowly and are harder to follow. The people Don Quixote meets generally find him humorous and try to stop his percieved madness by talking him out of his insane venture. Despite that, by the end of the 2nd part of his "history", he has fans who are disappointed when he renounces chilvary and all of knight errantry.
I can't say I took much from the novel except for the notion that following your dreams (no matter how bizarre) brings joy not only to you, but others around you. Despite that fact, the journey is hardly, if ever an easy one.
I did find one quote that I liked:
"Everything beautiful is lovable, but I cannot grasp why, simply, because it is loved, the thing loved for its beauty is obliged to love the one who loves it"
Unrequited love is a sad situation, but cannot be blamed on just the beloved. They are no more obliged to love someone simply because they are loved by them.
Does the novel deserve the title of number one book of all time? Not in my books, although I understand what it was for it's time. The author of "The Novel 100", Daniel S. Burt, makes very certain that people know his list is his personal idea of the greatest novels, and that other people can feel free to differ with him. In fact, he encourages it.
Book two on the list is War and Peace which I have already read (and recently at that). For more information on what I think about that book please read my review in my blog magic-and-mystery.blogspot.com Book three on the list is Ulysses by James Joyce. I am not really looking forward to reading this one, but perhaps it will suprise me! I am aiming to read each of these books in about 3 weeks. I have had some requests to post the booklist, which I will attempt to do even though I have to enter all 100 books by hand. Happy reading folks.
While reading the book I remembered fondly my very first university level paper I ever wrote on Chilvaric love. This paper was wrote for my first year history class, before I even really knew how to write a proper essay. I never understood the idea at the time, but was interested in the topic having spent much of my youth following the anti dating movement popular in Christian circles at the time. I see now that I used the idea of "courting" as a way to opt out of real life (and unfortunately in the process missed out on a whole skill set necessary for relationships with the opposite sex). That, however, is somewhat besides the point.
What pray tell is chivalric love? In my history paper I wrote all about knights with their chaste love of their ladies. Knights in the 15th century roamed the earth providing the world with good deeds done in the names of their ladies. They also composed poems on their behalf, but other than that, had little to no actual contact with the ladies they were enamored with.
Don Quixote paradoies this to the extreme, in that he has never even seen the lady of his affections...but only heard people talking about her. Armed shoddily with homemade armor, a scrawny horse named Rocinante and a humorous and simpleminded page named Sancho Don Quixote sets out into the world in search of adventures. What he finds are several humorous and painful interactions with people who can't believe that "knights errant" exist outside of the novels. Some of these encounters are interesting while others moves slowly and are harder to follow. The people Don Quixote meets generally find him humorous and try to stop his percieved madness by talking him out of his insane venture. Despite that, by the end of the 2nd part of his "history", he has fans who are disappointed when he renounces chilvary and all of knight errantry.
I can't say I took much from the novel except for the notion that following your dreams (no matter how bizarre) brings joy not only to you, but others around you. Despite that fact, the journey is hardly, if ever an easy one.
I did find one quote that I liked:
"Everything beautiful is lovable, but I cannot grasp why, simply, because it is loved, the thing loved for its beauty is obliged to love the one who loves it"
Unrequited love is a sad situation, but cannot be blamed on just the beloved. They are no more obliged to love someone simply because they are loved by them.
Does the novel deserve the title of number one book of all time? Not in my books, although I understand what it was for it's time. The author of "The Novel 100", Daniel S. Burt, makes very certain that people know his list is his personal idea of the greatest novels, and that other people can feel free to differ with him. In fact, he encourages it.
Book two on the list is War and Peace which I have already read (and recently at that). For more information on what I think about that book please read my review in my blog magic-and-mystery.blogspot.com Book three on the list is Ulysses by James Joyce. I am not really looking forward to reading this one, but perhaps it will suprise me! I am aiming to read each of these books in about 3 weeks. I have had some requests to post the booklist, which I will attempt to do even though I have to enter all 100 books by hand. Happy reading folks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)