Or... how to keep yourself sleepless.... Not just because it is a gripping read, but because it haunted me!
"The Road" is a tale about a man and his son surviving in a post apocolyptic world, when everything is dead or dying, and everyone is scavenging what remains of food, from cans and packets, or worse, eating other people. Everything else that is usable is running out - ammunition, shoes, clothing, wood for making fires. The boy's mother features in the man's memories, but has died by the time the story starts. They meet some characters along the way, and none are what you'd call friendly.
When given something deep and/or worrisome or disturbing to think about, I am prone to insomnia. "The Road" is the first book I've read in a long time that has stuck with me so vividly, and kept me awake far, far into the night. The plots of many other books (and movies) become fuzzy soon after reading them, but the events of this book return to my brain regularly, and I read this months ago.
Why? Several reasons:
- a key plot point is never explained. You never find out what exactly happened to the world. It is kind of implied that there has been a nuclear war, but you don't know why, or how this all unfolded. It is a few years in the past when the story starts, and you just get snippets of it from the man's memories. This is plenty to wonder about.
- people driven to the edge. Resources are so scarce that you kill or be killed. Some resort to cannibalism. Some try to retain their humanity. What is humanity? It's a fine line when protecting those you love at times. What would be the point of life under these circumstances?
- parenting. All the big questions, such as how to best instill the/your key values in children? can you pass on everything that is important before you die? would you really want to have children faced with such a bleak future? Can you always find things to hope for? How do children view the world you grew up in?
These are not just questions for the grim circumstances of the book. I understand that the author, who became a parent in his 50's or 60's, and is faced with reaching old age sooner than most parents, wrote this about his own fears of not being able to pass everything important on to his son before he dies. Another part of the story is the mother's story, told through the man's memories. She is pregnant at the time the nuclear war (presumably) starts, and the boy is born soon after. She finds she can't feel optimistic at all in a post-apocalyptic world. As a woman, naturally, she has different fears.
A highly recommended read.
Showing posts with label Classics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Classics. Show all posts
Monday, August 16, 2010
Monday, August 09, 2010
Jeckyl and Hyde
We saw a review of "Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson on the First Tuesday Book Club, then saw it for sale cheaply at a book shop and thought "Why not?".
It is interestingly written, and the writer has given much thought to details - how the big secret will be gradually revealed, how to make it shocking.
However, it is all a bit ruined by its famousness, sadly. Everyone knows the plot twist. I'm sure Looney Tunes even did a cartoon where someone turned evil and needed a potion to turn back to normal.
I did enjoy it, though, and it's a quick read. The book contains other short stories by the same author, so hopefully I can review them too in the future.
It is interestingly written, and the writer has given much thought to details - how the big secret will be gradually revealed, how to make it shocking.
However, it is all a bit ruined by its famousness, sadly. Everyone knows the plot twist. I'm sure Looney Tunes even did a cartoon where someone turned evil and needed a potion to turn back to normal.
I did enjoy it, though, and it's a quick read. The book contains other short stories by the same author, so hopefully I can review them too in the future.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
Vintage 2004, First Published 1973
I read this, about a year ago, and really quite enjoyed it. I know it’s old, it’s probably on feminism 101 reading lists, but I liked the tone- Isadora the main character is smart and reflective and wry and horny and wondering. She makes mistakes, she has phobias, and she has a patchy history in love, but I liked her heaps. Nice to read a female lead who is neither simpering nor brittle nor simple nor ‘sweet’ nor completely 2 dimensional. Isadora is a proper gutsy likeable flawed story hero. Even though I’m too lazy to write a review right now, I thought these quotes were interesting. AQsthe main character is a writer (poet) quite a bit of the book relates to this. The first quote is a character in the book speaking to Isadora Wing, the last two quotes are Isadora herself.
The writer being accused as using lovers as material:“You go through life looking for a teacher and then when you find him, you become so dependant on him that you grow to hate him. Or else you wait for him to show his weaknesses and then you despise him for being human. You sit there the whole time keeping tabs, making mental notes, imagining people as books or case histories – I know that game. You tell yourself you’re collecting material. You tell yourself you’re studying human nature. Art above life at all times. Another version of that puritanical bullshit. Only you have a new twist to it. You think you’re a hedonist because you take off and run around with me. But it’s the bloody old work ethic all the same because you’re only thinking you’ll write about me. So it’s actually work, c’est-ce pas? You can fuck me and call it poetry. Pretty clever. You deceive yourself beautifully that way.”
The voracious and open minded reader:“I had always worshipped authors. I used to kiss their pictures on the back of books when I finished reading. I regarded anything printed as a holy relic and authors as creatures of superhuman knowledge and wit. Pearl Buck, Tolstoy, or Carolyn Keene, the author of Nancy Drew. I made none of the snotty divisions you learn to make later. I could happily go from Great Expectations or the Secret Garden to Mad Magazine.”
Books as refuge:“Growing up in my chaotic household, I quickly learnt that a book carefully arranged in front of your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility. I learned to take refuge behind books, to become, as my mother and father called me, “the absent-minded professor.” They screamed at me, but I couldn’t hear. I was reading. I was writing. I was safe.”
I read this, about a year ago, and really quite enjoyed it. I know it’s old, it’s probably on feminism 101 reading lists, but I liked the tone- Isadora the main character is smart and reflective and wry and horny and wondering. She makes mistakes, she has phobias, and she has a patchy history in love, but I liked her heaps. Nice to read a female lead who is neither simpering nor brittle nor simple nor ‘sweet’ nor completely 2 dimensional. Isadora is a proper gutsy likeable flawed story hero. Even though I’m too lazy to write a review right now, I thought these quotes were interesting. AQsthe main character is a writer (poet) quite a bit of the book relates to this. The first quote is a character in the book speaking to Isadora Wing, the last two quotes are Isadora herself.
The writer being accused as using lovers as material:“You go through life looking for a teacher and then when you find him, you become so dependant on him that you grow to hate him. Or else you wait for him to show his weaknesses and then you despise him for being human. You sit there the whole time keeping tabs, making mental notes, imagining people as books or case histories – I know that game. You tell yourself you’re collecting material. You tell yourself you’re studying human nature. Art above life at all times. Another version of that puritanical bullshit. Only you have a new twist to it. You think you’re a hedonist because you take off and run around with me. But it’s the bloody old work ethic all the same because you’re only thinking you’ll write about me. So it’s actually work, c’est-ce pas? You can fuck me and call it poetry. Pretty clever. You deceive yourself beautifully that way.”
The voracious and open minded reader:“I had always worshipped authors. I used to kiss their pictures on the back of books when I finished reading. I regarded anything printed as a holy relic and authors as creatures of superhuman knowledge and wit. Pearl Buck, Tolstoy, or Carolyn Keene, the author of Nancy Drew. I made none of the snotty divisions you learn to make later. I could happily go from Great Expectations or the Secret Garden to Mad Magazine.”
Books as refuge:“Growing up in my chaotic household, I quickly learnt that a book carefully arranged in front of your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility. I learned to take refuge behind books, to become, as my mother and father called me, “the absent-minded professor.” They screamed at me, but I couldn’t hear. I was reading. I was writing. I was safe.”
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Why read 'why read the classics?'
‘The classics are books which, upon reading, we find even fresher, more unexpected, and more marvellous than we had thought from hearing about them.’
The start of a new year and so it seems appropriate to begin as I wish to continue – that is by writing something on this new, first day of January. I say this because writing more regularly is one of the things I aim to do this year. As is reading more of the books on my ‘I’ve been meaning to read’ list.
Yesterday I cleaned out a bookshelf, putting some books in a bag to give away, maybe take to the backpackers for travellers to read over morning coffee or help amuse while buses are late, that kind of thing, and the others rearranging. I spent a while thinking about how to organise the books in some kind of order – not that there are so many that I wont be able to find them otherwise, but as a tool to help me plan and prioritise my reading for this year. I get excited in book shops and buy new books to add to my pile, then sometimes I despair at how many I have yet to read, how many authors who I already know I love that I haven’t managed to read the whole of their works. The list of authors I’d like to read but haven’t tried yet, or maybe have got half way through and then abandoned. The non-fiction in little clusters of topics that I think I will read and patch together an interesting picture of the state of play in a field, or finally figure out the range of arguments for and against and where I stand on the matter. My bookshelf has things I’ve read and loved (with gaps where I loved them and lent them out and haven’t had them returned), things I didn’t love that much and are now going to the backpackers around the corner, things I’ve bought and hope to read, a couple of guilty long term lends that need to be read and sent home, and the ghostly figures of books not there but dreamt of, the ones I sometimes think ‘oooh, wouldn’t it be good to read…’ (ancient philosophers and beat poets and mystics and recent releases by old favourites, that kind of thing).
Funnily enough one of the books I took off the neatly organised and newly inspiring bookshelf this morning was ‘The Literature Machine’ by Italo Calvino – a series of essays through the 1960’s to the early 80’s about writing and reading, as well as about specific authors and pieces of work, science and literature, philosophy and literature etc. He is one of my favourite writers, whose books are classics to me.
Generally I like his work because I find it clever and funny and awe-inspiring. His language (as I read it, once removed from the source, translated from the Italian) is clean and precise and lovingly used, not stale, not staid, it has depth and detail and contradiction and a lot of wry humour. He writes the reader into the work, often, and he writes in a matter of fact way about the foibles of people and the planets and the workings of nature. He tells silly little stories that have grace and meaning but aren’t overblown. Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m missing something, that he’s saying something that I haven’t quite grasped the meaning of, but I kind of like it, it’s like being a child around smart and capable grown ups who you know you will be like one day too.
Anyway, one of the essays, ‘why read the classics’ is brief but very engaging – he ranges through some definitions or key characteristics of what might make up a classic, and addresses the challenges in engaging in these works in a busy life, but talks about how they are valuable to a reader. The whole thing is great, and only about 10 pages long, so you may as well just read it yourself. I wont summarise but I’ll just talk about a couple of things that interested me.
Firstly, I liked the tone. I had a public school education and don’t speak French, Latin, Greek or Italian, so any opinionated writing about ‘the classics’ that sounds like dust and elbow pads and large country houses tends to annoy me. I don’t want someone to tell me that that unless I’ve read Dante and Montaigne and Plato that I really couldn’t possibly understand the human spirit, or that I’m seriously missing out on something wonderful and it’s probably too late to start now anyway. I am having to build my own relationship with the classics which is selfguided and tentative, any brow beating would be counterproductive. This essay is modern and light hearted (yet serious) and doesn’t tell you what you ‘should’ read, instead it supports the idea of being selective, and of there needing to be a very personal relationship with the books and the reader: ‘if the spark doesn’t come, that’s a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, only out of love. Except at school.’
‘There is nothing for it but to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count – leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries’.
This paragraph made me happy because it reminded me of yesterday and felt very synchronous to be reading about what I’ve just done and only be in a position to read it because I’d done the thing.
Also, this talk of books yet to be read made me think about how reading, unlike many other ‘interests’ of ways of interacting with the world through others (compared, say, to listening to music, or watching films) has a different time scale about it. If I decide to get to know a film director who has interested me, it is plausible that I can find an all day Saturday screening of their most famous works; I could watch a DVD a night for a week and see all their back catalogue if I put my mind to it. On music, I could digest a few new albums a week and ‘really listen’ to them, plus relisten to favourites – I can do this while doing the dishes, while walking down the street to the shops, while typing reports at work, while enjoying dinner with friends.
With reading, there is more time involved, and it is something you do alone. Getting to know an author (outside a university English course, or community college creative writing course or similar) might take place over a period of several years (even if you are quite interested in them you might only read one of their books a year, in amongst other things you read, or ). It takes a certain peaceful setting, other people to not need your attention, over the hours it takes to read it. You may be lucky enough to dedicate a day / week/ afternoon to reading, or you may find yourself picking up a chapter here and there, revisiting and asking yourself ‘now where was I? And where were they?’.
(And I’m not suggesting it’s a special and noble pursuit because of this difference, just that it has some different challenges).
The unread books on the bookshelf can be distressing because you have chosen them knowing that you want to go there, you have it on good faith that you will enjoy them, you are intrigued to know what this author will say, how they will speak, what their tone of voice is like, whether they smile as they talk, or frown, how they speak of people and places and ideas you already know and who and what new they will introduce you to. You want to have this conversation, to listen in to the story and find your own responses to it, but you must wait, can only be reading one at a time (even if reading several at once). It requires patience, delaying gratification, and faith that you’ll get to the other ones later, in the face of that niggling (perhaps technology age aided) sense of anxiety about all there is to know and read and experience, in such a short span as a life.
That’s why I liked his description of the book shelf, because it validates the ‘yet to be read’ and also the unknown that might find its way into your hands and heart.
I also like the way that he recognises, in the essay, the particular challenges that a modern reader faces in ‘reading the classics’. Not in terms of time available (that is more my concern) but he talks about how to balance the intake of inputs eg the classics and daily news and whether one would ideally abstain from popular culture altogether or whether connection with the daily grind is an important part of placing the reader and the work in historical context.
‘Maybe the ideal thing to do would be hearken to current events as we do to the din outside our window that informs us about traffic jams and sudden changes in the weather, while we listen to the voice of the classics sounding clear and articulate inside the room. But it is already a lot for most people if the presence of the classics is perceived as a distant rumble far outside a room that is swamped by the trivia of the moment, as by a television at full blast.’
The start of a new year and so it seems appropriate to begin as I wish to continue – that is by writing something on this new, first day of January. I say this because writing more regularly is one of the things I aim to do this year. As is reading more of the books on my ‘I’ve been meaning to read’ list.
Yesterday I cleaned out a bookshelf, putting some books in a bag to give away, maybe take to the backpackers for travellers to read over morning coffee or help amuse while buses are late, that kind of thing, and the others rearranging. I spent a while thinking about how to organise the books in some kind of order – not that there are so many that I wont be able to find them otherwise, but as a tool to help me plan and prioritise my reading for this year. I get excited in book shops and buy new books to add to my pile, then sometimes I despair at how many I have yet to read, how many authors who I already know I love that I haven’t managed to read the whole of their works. The list of authors I’d like to read but haven’t tried yet, or maybe have got half way through and then abandoned. The non-fiction in little clusters of topics that I think I will read and patch together an interesting picture of the state of play in a field, or finally figure out the range of arguments for and against and where I stand on the matter. My bookshelf has things I’ve read and loved (with gaps where I loved them and lent them out and haven’t had them returned), things I didn’t love that much and are now going to the backpackers around the corner, things I’ve bought and hope to read, a couple of guilty long term lends that need to be read and sent home, and the ghostly figures of books not there but dreamt of, the ones I sometimes think ‘oooh, wouldn’t it be good to read…’ (ancient philosophers and beat poets and mystics and recent releases by old favourites, that kind of thing).
Funnily enough one of the books I took off the neatly organised and newly inspiring bookshelf this morning was ‘The Literature Machine’ by Italo Calvino – a series of essays through the 1960’s to the early 80’s about writing and reading, as well as about specific authors and pieces of work, science and literature, philosophy and literature etc. He is one of my favourite writers, whose books are classics to me.
Generally I like his work because I find it clever and funny and awe-inspiring. His language (as I read it, once removed from the source, translated from the Italian) is clean and precise and lovingly used, not stale, not staid, it has depth and detail and contradiction and a lot of wry humour. He writes the reader into the work, often, and he writes in a matter of fact way about the foibles of people and the planets and the workings of nature. He tells silly little stories that have grace and meaning but aren’t overblown. Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m missing something, that he’s saying something that I haven’t quite grasped the meaning of, but I kind of like it, it’s like being a child around smart and capable grown ups who you know you will be like one day too.
Anyway, one of the essays, ‘why read the classics’ is brief but very engaging – he ranges through some definitions or key characteristics of what might make up a classic, and addresses the challenges in engaging in these works in a busy life, but talks about how they are valuable to a reader. The whole thing is great, and only about 10 pages long, so you may as well just read it yourself. I wont summarise but I’ll just talk about a couple of things that interested me.
Firstly, I liked the tone. I had a public school education and don’t speak French, Latin, Greek or Italian, so any opinionated writing about ‘the classics’ that sounds like dust and elbow pads and large country houses tends to annoy me. I don’t want someone to tell me that that unless I’ve read Dante and Montaigne and Plato that I really couldn’t possibly understand the human spirit, or that I’m seriously missing out on something wonderful and it’s probably too late to start now anyway. I am having to build my own relationship with the classics which is selfguided and tentative, any brow beating would be counterproductive. This essay is modern and light hearted (yet serious) and doesn’t tell you what you ‘should’ read, instead it supports the idea of being selective, and of there needing to be a very personal relationship with the books and the reader: ‘if the spark doesn’t come, that’s a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, only out of love. Except at school.’
‘There is nothing for it but to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count – leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries’.
This paragraph made me happy because it reminded me of yesterday and felt very synchronous to be reading about what I’ve just done and only be in a position to read it because I’d done the thing.
Also, this talk of books yet to be read made me think about how reading, unlike many other ‘interests’ of ways of interacting with the world through others (compared, say, to listening to music, or watching films) has a different time scale about it. If I decide to get to know a film director who has interested me, it is plausible that I can find an all day Saturday screening of their most famous works; I could watch a DVD a night for a week and see all their back catalogue if I put my mind to it. On music, I could digest a few new albums a week and ‘really listen’ to them, plus relisten to favourites – I can do this while doing the dishes, while walking down the street to the shops, while typing reports at work, while enjoying dinner with friends.
With reading, there is more time involved, and it is something you do alone. Getting to know an author (outside a university English course, or community college creative writing course or similar) might take place over a period of several years (even if you are quite interested in them you might only read one of their books a year, in amongst other things you read, or ). It takes a certain peaceful setting, other people to not need your attention, over the hours it takes to read it. You may be lucky enough to dedicate a day / week/ afternoon to reading, or you may find yourself picking up a chapter here and there, revisiting and asking yourself ‘now where was I? And where were they?’.
(And I’m not suggesting it’s a special and noble pursuit because of this difference, just that it has some different challenges).
The unread books on the bookshelf can be distressing because you have chosen them knowing that you want to go there, you have it on good faith that you will enjoy them, you are intrigued to know what this author will say, how they will speak, what their tone of voice is like, whether they smile as they talk, or frown, how they speak of people and places and ideas you already know and who and what new they will introduce you to. You want to have this conversation, to listen in to the story and find your own responses to it, but you must wait, can only be reading one at a time (even if reading several at once). It requires patience, delaying gratification, and faith that you’ll get to the other ones later, in the face of that niggling (perhaps technology age aided) sense of anxiety about all there is to know and read and experience, in such a short span as a life.
That’s why I liked his description of the book shelf, because it validates the ‘yet to be read’ and also the unknown that might find its way into your hands and heart.
I also like the way that he recognises, in the essay, the particular challenges that a modern reader faces in ‘reading the classics’. Not in terms of time available (that is more my concern) but he talks about how to balance the intake of inputs eg the classics and daily news and whether one would ideally abstain from popular culture altogether or whether connection with the daily grind is an important part of placing the reader and the work in historical context.
‘Maybe the ideal thing to do would be hearken to current events as we do to the din outside our window that informs us about traffic jams and sudden changes in the weather, while we listen to the voice of the classics sounding clear and articulate inside the room. But it is already a lot for most people if the presence of the classics is perceived as a distant rumble far outside a room that is swamped by the trivia of the moment, as by a television at full blast.’
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