Book 67- Call It Sleep (103 book)

Book 67 was Call it Sleep by Henry Roth. It was the book of the month for July, but I somehow missed doing a review and now the finer point of the novel seem to have escaped me. I liked this book, that much I remember. The story follows David Schearl a young Jewish immigrant as he grows up in a new and terrifying world. It is coming of age story that rang very true for me.

David reminds me a lot of myself at that age because he finds the world a frightening place. A classic example of my early fear was the fact that my mother had to sneak out of my Preschool class when I wasn't looking after 3 days of accompanying me. I also, apparently, taught myself to read because when ever we had guests arrive at the house I would run upstairs and hide. I was always found reading books after the guest left.

David is a mamma's boy with a father who is a tyrant. He constantly lives in fear of upsetting his father and causing a huge row in his house. This shapes part of who he becomes later in the novel since he is timid and fluctuates between the fear of his peers and the fear of his father. These two opposing worries shape a lot of his encounters throughout the rest of the novel and ultimately shape his destiny.

David is also Jewish and his mother decides to send him to a Hebrew school to further his religious education despite the fact that the family isn't really devote. It is at Hebrew school where David learns the story of Isaiah and the coal being pressed to his lips to purify him. David instantly falls in love with this story and becomes obsessed with trying to have an encounter with God. One day on his ramblings throughout the city he stumbles upon a group of boys who show him the power of electricity in the live trolley lines. David somehow equates this experience with the story of Isaiah and believes that he has seen God.

Later in the story he meet a Catholic boy who lives in the neighbourhood. He discovers a rosary and becomes obsessed with having it at all costs. This obsession is used as a bribe by the neighbour boy to convince David to introduce him to his female cousins. David lives in constant fear of male/female relations after an encounter he had with a girl when he was younger and also after hearing about his mother affair with a non Jewish man before she met his father. David is constantly racked with guilt and his religious interest in partially based on him wanting to be good and feel clean.

The neighbour boy gives David the rosary and meets David's cousins only to assault one of them who then tells on him. David in a fit of panic runs to the Rabbi who is teaching him Hebrew. In order to cover up why he snuck into the school David tells the Rabbi an elaborate lie about his parentage based partially on the story he hears about his mother's encounter with the non Jewish man. The story culminates in a dramatic encounter where the Rabbi, the aunt and her new husband all converge on the Schearl house at the same time.

In owning up to the crime that happened the rosary falls out of his pocket and the father flies into a rage believing that it has all been an elaborate plot against him since the beginning. David runs out of the house and heads down to the trolley rails wanting to have another encounter with God. He jams a piece of metal into the tracks and is electrocuted. As he lies there with people trying to help him the title of the novel becomes clear as he utter the final line of the book that "he might as well call it sleep".

Normally, I don't retell plots when writing a review, but as I set out to write this review I needed to refresh the story in my own mind. The pieces of the story that stuck out the most for me are so tied in with the events that happen to David it is hard to share the details without sharing the plot. I think the most defining feature of this book for me was finding my childhood self mirrored in the  main character. This story portrayed both my fear of the world which lasted well into my teen years and also my dedication and devotion to God which developed as a direct result of myself trying to make sense of a world I found terrifying and confusing.

Although my fear and need to cling to God eventually lessened, my faith and belief in a very personal God never disappeared. I think this is what drew me to David's character the most. While all his fellow Hebrew schoolmates saw their religious education as a chore David found meaning and hope in it. The story of Isaiah stuck with him when he heard it told to an older student. He was also struck by the story of Christian faith as told by his Catholic neighbour. These things endeared David to me.

I like that this quest of reading the 100 greatest novels has lead to me hearing about different life experiences. Henry Roth is Jewish and wrote this story as Jewish immigrant and it reflects parts of life I will probably never have to experience. It is still great to be able to read it and find a deeper human meaning behind someone who had a vastly different experience of the world. Great literature is literature that makes us think and also literature that unites us together in the human experience. I would recommend this novel to anyone.

Book 66- Germinal (102nd book)

It has taken me a long time to get around to writing my blog for Germinal. I am not sure why since I enjoyed the book despite its fairly dark plot. Germinal follows Etienne Lanthier, an outsider, as he arrives in the mining town of Montsou only to realize that the conditions there are deplorable. He searches about for a solution and is eventually able to convince the miners to strike...with disastrous consequences. The novel ends ambiguously as Lanthier leaves town. The images of spring and germination, however, hint at the future hope that one day the power of the people might be restored to them.

Canada has long been accused of being a socialist country, but I think the one thing that sets it apart from Communist Russian is that there is a desire to raise EVERYONE up to a level of comfort and ease rather than bring everyone down to a level of suffering and pain. There is certainly nothing wrong with capitalism, but there is something wrong with income disparity and the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer.

Germinal clearly portrays the trouble when the people in power hold all the purse strings. The miners of Montsou live in homes provided by the mine, heated with coal doled out by the mine and shop at stores owned by the mine. The miners have taken pay cut after pay cut only to watch the mine owners get rich. Although there was unrest before Lanthier came a long everyone just assumed that their life was always going to continue to be the way it had been in the past. I was reminded quite a bit of The Grapes of Wrath as a result of the company owned stores. I think I prefer that novel to this, but I feel that the abject poverty of the workers is more clearly outlined in this novel. It is just so dark, and the miners lives are just so difficult. 

Unions no longer have the favour of the general public that they once did, but this novel chronicles a time before they existed and shows the pitfall of what can happen when workers have no power or safety net to support them. Without the safety net of having saved for hard times the workers would have no ways of disputing changes to pay because if they stopped work in protest they would quickly starve. This is what happened in this novel. I am surprised how quickly we have forgotten in North America that it is unions that have brought us the weekend, the 40 hour work week and the end of child labour. Although unions do have their pitfalls, there is a lot to be said for people banding together and fighting for what they believe in. 

This blog is not meant to be a political treatise on workers rights and unionism, but there is no way to write a blog about this novel without addressing the class war depicted by the novel.  Zola was inspired by a strike that occurred in 1884 in France. He actually posed as an engineer and entered the mines to interview the workers. He was much loved by the people and miners shouted "Germinal! Germinal!" at his funeral as a way to honour him for the work that he had done in accurately representing their plight.

I would recommend this novel for people who are sturdy of heart and in a good place emotionally. It is a dark book and with much of the novel taking place in the mines  with the dark, close spaces and constant fear of fire damp it is quite claustrophobic.  If things are tough for you in your life at the moment, or if you are feeling down, perhaps I would suggest reading this novel at some point in the future. Since it doesn't explicitly have an answer to the question of whether people can make a difference in the face of overwhelming social pressure it might be hard to stomach. That being said, the book covers a topic that we should not ignore, that of the fate of the poor and powerless. 

Book 65- Herzog (101st Book)

Dear Saul Bellow, 

Your novel Herzog is terrible and I disliked reading it greatly. I know you were trying to create a bildungsroman about how to make sense of life in a meaningless world. I know you wanted us to get angry at Herzog for intellectualizing his life only to realize that we too do the same thing as humans. I know that you wanted me to end the novel with a great sense that even though our lives are a comic failure that we can still bring meaning to our life in the face of death. I GET that, but yet, I still dislike your book.

Do you like random letters to famous dead people? Than Herzog is the novel for you! This novel follows the main character Herzog as he tries to make sense of his life with two failed marriages, a failed academic career and a failed novel behind him. Yes, you guessed it, this novel also includes everyone's favourite topic: Adultery. I suppose you might find this novel refreshing since it is one of the few novels that looks at the impact of adultery on cuckolded individual. Honestly, however, I am beginning to doubt that there is any other topic for a novel  an I am beginning to weary of it as a subject matter.

The random letters I referred to are penned by Herzog in his borderline insanity as he struggles with what to do with his life in the wake of his completed failure in almost every area. I found the letters extremely irritating and also extremely self-centered (which was what Bellow was going for when he wrote the novel). Bellow wanted us to dislike Herzog and the intellectualizing  of his problems, but he also then wanted us to make the leap to applying that dislike to areas of ourself. That leap, for me at least, did not happen. Of course I intellectualize. Of course I struggle when I feel like a failure in one or more areas of my life, but by reading this novel I did not feel that I gained any new perspective on life or any new grip on my reality....also I just plain didn't like reading this book.  Bellow said it best himself,

"These personal histories, old tales from old times that may not be worth remembering. I remember. I must. But who else-to whom can this matter?"

For me, this is one novel that tells of a personal demise that just doesn't ring true for me as a story with a general application. Either that or reading the best classics at the beginning of the book has made me grumpy. Or the fact that this must be the 12th or 30th tale of adultery has made me angrier than I have ever been before at fiction.

Today is May 30. I had 12 or so pages left to read on this novel. I struggled through the book for a week at the beginning of the month and left the last 12 pages until today. I had no desire to finish this book, but for the sake of the challenge I did. i am nothing if not stubborn and I haven't devoted the last few years of my life to completing this challenge only to give up at the well over half way point.

Dear blog reader, 

Unless you are completing some sort of life list like I am let me give you some advice. Pass by Herzog if you see it on the shelves at your local book store or for sale at a garage sale on the side of the road. There is a reason why this novel has become one of the lesser known classic novels of our time. I don't think that this particular novel will weather the tests of time.

Onwards and upwards to the next book on the Novel 100 list: Germinal!

Against the Day (100th book!)

My 100th book read on the "1001 books to read before you die" list was Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. It was a regrettable choice, and one that took me over 6 weeks and cost me .90 in late fees at the library.

I can't say that I loved this book, but then, in retrospect, I didn't really like the first novel of Thomas Pynchon's that I read, Gravity's Rainbow. (Read my review here). I liked it once I reflected on it, because I felt like it had some good themes about free will and choice, but when I was actually reading it I just wanted it to be over. I chose this novel after perusing the library one day for a book off the 1001 list. I picked this one up because I had been intrigued by the latest movie that came out based on Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. Every time I saw a preview for it, it looked weird....and interesting. I still haven't seen it yet, an perhaps I never will, but I though I would give Thomas Pynchon a second chance...it was not an enjoyable experience.

Against the Day had an extensive cast of characters who were slightly intertwined. Their story lines were all separate, but by the end of the novel most of the characters had met each other. Some story lines I never got into and others I enjoyed part of the time. One of the storylines that held my attention was the Chums of Chance. These individuals were the crew of a zepplin style balloon who travelled around the world on mysterious missions. They had a series of novels written about them and anytime something  interesting happened it referred to the  novel  where a similar event happened ie Chums of Chance and the Great Escapade. I would have much rather read any of these fictional books than Against the Day.

Like Gravity's Rainbow this novel mentions the concept of zero quite a few times. I have noticed after you read a few novels by the same author you can oftentimes pick up on their pet idea. This appears to be Pynchon's. Also like Gravity's Rainbow this novel has characters randomly bursting into song for no apparent reason. It is like a musical in book form! Similar to Gravity's Rainbow this novel is quite lewd, and seemingly for no point. I wanted to put down the novel several times and walk away, but by the time I had made that decision I had invested too much into the novel and wanted to see it through to the end.

Unlike Gravity's Rainbow this one didn't seem to have a lot of repetitive phrases or themes. The only one that I picked up on was a focus on light and its counterpart: darkness. Since the novel itself is quite dark this is not surprising.  Here are a few of the quotes that stuck out to me:

"Differences among the world's religions are in fact rather trivial when compared to the common enemy, the ancient and abiding darkness which all hate, fear, and struggle against without cease."

"When something is born of light, what does that light enable us to see?"

"Nobody can withstand pure light, let alone see it. Without her to reflect, God is invisible." (referring to the feminine side of God)

"Light, in any case, among these Indians  of Chiapas, occupies an analogous position to flesh among Christian peoples. It is living tissue. As the brain is the outward and visible expression of the mind."

At the end of the day, I would say that this novel was too long, had too little resolution, and either didn't have a point, or had a point that was too convoluted for me to pick up. Most of the stories dragged on for me and I soon lost interest in the novel as a whole. I am still so curious about what makes Thomas Pynchon tick, (he must have a fascinating story) but I other than that I don't believe I will become a Thomas Pynchon fan.

Book 64- A Passage to India (99th Book)

A Passage to India, by E.M. Forester is book 64 on the novel 100 list. I still marvel that I am plugging away all these years later since I have a habit of abandoning projects part way through. I did a photo a day project for half a year until I eventually abandoned it and I have given up on shows in the last season because I have moved on from them. I am hopeful that this book and blog project will continue on to the end since I am now well over half way through the list of 100 books.

I liked A Passage to India. The novel is very clearly a novel about ideas and the way that the world is. Although the novel at times seems a bit preachy about racism, religion and what makes us human, the characters are truly human so it doesn't seem forced or fake. I liked this novel and found the characters very engaging. Adela Quested is a very human character and many of the other characters Aziz, Mr. Fielding, Mrs Moore serve a purpose more than just helping the story along. The characters reactions and actions are authentic to human life and their motivations are very real.

The story follows Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested on a tour through India as they set about seeing if Adela could marry Mrs. Moore's son Ronny. Both want to see the "real India" beyond what the Anglo-Indians who live in India want to see. This desire, though genuine, is very English in nature and leads to the eventual crisis that shapes the novel.

I didn't realize something very cool about the novel while I read it, but it was pointed out to me after reading the short description of the book by Daniel S. Burt in The Novel 100. The novel is laid out in 3 sections for the seasons of India (cool, hot, wet) and the three sections also mirror the three major religions of India (Muslim, Christian and Hindu). On the surface this is a novel about the racial and religious tensions in British India (with racism being the easiest theme to pick up on), but the true theme of the novel is the divisions that divide people from having authentic relationships.

Aziz is someone who constantly strives to have authentic relationships with people and he has several throughout the book despite his comic blunder that get in the way. He meets Mrs. Moore in a Mosque and after his initial blunder they are able to communicate on a real level and move past the roles they are expected to play. He also finds a friend in Mr Fielding who is an Anglo-Indian who refuses to side with his race when a crisis arrives.

I found the crisis that happens in Marabar Hills very telling of what happens so much in our society. People side with the majority of voices and let emotion take them away. I learned about the concept of group think in my Psychology 101 class at university and it has been very real for me ever since. The theory basically states that conformity happens in a group so that any dissenting points of view are suppressed and people make decisions that they would never make if they were left to their own devices. There were two good quotes in the novel that illustrate this point of view.

"He was still after facts, though the herd had decided on emotion"

"evil was propagating in every direction, it seemed to have an existence of its own, apart from anything that was done or said by individuals."

Over all this was a good read. I would recommend it to others and I think both the message and story are worth the time and effort of others. That is something that I can't say for all the novels on the list so when I find both in one book I am quite happy.  One of the discoveries I have made during this novel challenge is that a good story has to be coupled with a good theme for me to rate a book highly. Each on their own is not enough to make a classic in my opinion. Good literature will be engaging and thought provoking.

Book 63- The Awakening (98th novel)

I am so sick of novels about affairs. It seems that the novel 100 list is absolutely chock full of them. Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Scarlet Letter, and The Age of Innocence are just a few. I have loved some of those novels, but I have to say that the subject matter is getting very old. Is there nothing more interesting to talk about?

The Awakening was more of a novella and the copy I had included a few other short stories. I enjoyed the setting since the stories were set in New Orleans, a place that very few of the novels on this list have been set. Absalom, Absalom was set in the South but I am no longer remembering what state.

I read this novel quite some time ago (I finished it in March), but I have, quite simply, not had the heart to do a blog about it. I can think of nothing that the book made me feel other than,  "meh." I didn't like the main character and I found her selfish and unlikeable. In my mind she had no redeeming qualities and I didn't feel like her plight was really teaching me anything.

The focus of the novel was a woman who was suddenly awakened to the fact that she could have a private identity outside of her duties as a woman and a citizen of a certain culture and place. There were a few quotes that I liked in regards to this topic but the out workings of her discovery just made me angry. While I agree that we all have a private identity beyond the roles that we take on, I don't think we should be selfish with this freedom.

"In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position to the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her."

"But I don't want anything but my own way. That is wanting a good deal of course, when you have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, the prejudices of others."

The only other thing I have to say about this novel is that it has some cool things to say about the spiritual qualities of the ocean and how it can speak to the soul. As someone who was raised on an Island and currently lives a block from the ocean I can attest to the fact that the ocean (and water in general) can have a therapeutic effect on a person.

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation."

"The voice of the sea speaks to the soul."

With this review done I can put this novel to rest and move full speed ahead with the April novel which is A Passage to India. Although it is April 18th I am just starting the novel now. I took on a challenge of reading Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon which is a 1000 page beast. True to Pynchon form it is a weird novel and I am having a bit of trouble plowing through it.

Book 62- The Good Soldier (97th Book)

You can not imagine my relief when I discovered that The Good Soldier was not a novel about war. I dislike war. I once collapsed in a fit of tears the middle of a room full of people when a friend of mine whispered lines from a war movie in my ear. We were in drama class and the point of the exercise was to find unique and different ways to break into a circle of people....mission accomplished! While The Good Soldier is not a book about war it does show the battle of wills between several different people one of whom is Edward Ashburnham the "good soldier" of the title.

The title was selected in a rather tongue in cheek sort of way. The author sent out the book to be published originally under the title "The Saddest Story".  In the gap before it was published, the First World War broke out. From the front lines, Ford Maddox Ford received a letter from an editor letting him know that the title was not marketable in war time. He sent a wire back saying, "Dear Lane, why not The Good Soldier?"

This novel is an attack on British culture and the restrictions of the social props of the time. It is loosely based on Ford Maddox Ford's own experience as a man who struggled with adultery in his own life. this novel is about two couples the Dowells and the Ashburnhams. Nothing is what it seems amongst them and their seemingly perfect lives are marred by affairs, jealous and battles of will.

The novel's narrator is John Dowell, an unreliable narrator if ever I saw one. The story is told through stream of consciousness and jumps backwards and forward in time as the Dowell tries to piece together the mess of his life. The novel is a bit of a mystery as the reader is left to try and piece together what is going on. "I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze"

The novel makes a rather ambiguous point. Through out most of the novel I was wondering what it was all for. Dowell, too wonders why there is so much suffering and whether life is really worth it. After reviewing the many quotes that stuck out to me I think the number one thing I am taking away from this novel is that no one is what they same and no one is perfect.

"And yet I am so near to all these people that I cannot think any of the wicked."

"There is not even any villain in the story"

"We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist."

"The human heart is a mysterious thing." 

"Not one of us has got what he really wanted."

Overall, I would say this is a good book. For the most part it kept my attention. I wasn't in love with any of the characters...in fact I despised all of them the hapless narrator included however, I think that is the point of the book.