All I Can Say Is...Read It!

I finished Bonfire of the Vanities yesterday. I don't even know if there should be much more to this post than, "Read it." I liked it that much.

Tom Wolfe is definitely not the best writer on this list (I thought he was never going to stop repeating the words "gloaming" and "snout"). But his characters and the storyline were so interesting and layered and deliciously complex that I could hardly put the book down (which is really saying something - if you'll recall, the only version I could find was a hefty large-print edition that probably weighed 10 lbs). Read it!

I looked like this. Except that I didn't wear a suit or glasses, and I'm not a man. Almost entirely unlike this, actually.

The novel follows the derailment of bond tradesman Sherman McCoy's charmed life after he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. A sleazy reporter's newspaper articles quickly magnify the case into a local sensation, charged with racial tensions and political intrigue. Many people behave badly, but Wolfe's genius is that most of the character's motivations are so complicated that it becomes increasingly difficult to say who the "good guys" are...if there are any at all. My description doesn't do it justice. You should really read it.

I have been told not to watch it though. Evidently not a good adaptation.

Disclaimer: The back of my book contained critics' remarks raving about the book's hilarity. The satire is amusing, but I didn't find it to be laugh-out-loud funny. In case it bothers you when book jackets don't necessarily match up to the contents (and sometimes it does me), you have been notified.

What's the last book you read that you would definitely recommend "Just read it!"?

Reading man photo found here. Bonfire movie photo found here.

The Power of Choice

I have emerged! Somehow between planning our family reunion, hosting out-of-town guests, and doing more business at work in two months than we did all of last year, I've barely been able to read. Or blog. Or really even think straight.

I abandoned The Satanic Verses shortly after my last post, in favor of plunging in to Sophie's Choice. Back in the days of yore 7th grade, I performed a dramatic monologue piece from the novel, so I was familiar with the basic premise of the book and thought I might find it a little more compelling than slogging through Rushdie (Sorry Salman...sure loved your cameo in Bridget Jones though!).

I really enjoyed Styron's writing style and found myself eagerly reading chapter after chapter, despite the sometimes overbearing use of ominous foreshadowing. For those unfamiliar, the story is narrated by Stingo, a young would-be writer living in NY just after WW2 who develops a relationship with Sophie, an Auschwitz survivor, and Nathan, her lover. Stingo is from the South, and Styron often uses his character to draw parallels between Southern racial inequality and Nazi genocide.

This book is the second on the list to deal with the Holocaust (the other was Schindler's List, also very good), but where that story focused on the actual events that took place during the war, Styron spends an equal amount of time looking at how Sophie's life is altered afterwards. It is not an easy read. Even though I knew the outcome of the titular choice made by Sophie, I couldn't keep the tears from welling up as I read that passage.

As as adult, what has become truly frightening to me about the entire concentration camp system is realizing the sheer manpower needed to create and implement the systematic destruction of so many lives. I often wonder what the Nazi participants were thinking, how they could live with themselves after behaving so cruelly, and how could there have been so many of them. I think it's easy with the benefit of hindsight to say things like "Oh, I would never have supported slavery. I would never have been a participant in something like the Holocaust." Yet we constantly see headlines proclaiming that bullying is on the rise, bitter rancor increasing in American politics, and we can use all the various channels at our disposal to mock those that see/act/look differently than we do, ostracize them, make them the unimportant, inhuman "other." Consider that there is danger in doing so. Of course it's a huge leap to go from mockery to actually trying to exterminate a group of people, but those Nazi ideas started somewhere. At some point, tiny seeds of contempt and discomfort grew into full blown hatred, not just from a few, but from a shocking, terrifying, normal everyday many.

Okay, off my soapbox.

If you have the chance, read Sophie's Choice. And more importantly, if you have the chance, choose to be kind to someone else today.

Distractions

I'm losing steam.

The first hints of spring are in the air (and this is Texas, so I really have to pay attention and enjoy it for the five minute it lasts here), and I'm finding that I just don't have the motivation to read. I especially don't have the motivation to read The Satanic Verses.

Everything I'm about to share could possibly reveal me as a superstitious and mildly crazy person, but here goes. Even though I know it's not really about Satan, I don't like reading a book with the word "Satan" in the title. I don't really want to be seen reading it in a public place. I left it at home on purpose during my trip to San Fran because I felt weird about carrying it on a plane (I am far enough to know it starts with a plane exploding in the air). And even though I know most of the books on my list have been offensive to one group or another at some point in time...this book earned Salman Rushdie death threats from an organized government in recent history. Eeeeek.

I'm not Muslim, and quite frankly I don't even understand half the cultural and religious references I've read so far in the first hundred pages, but I just feel some bad ju-ju about a novel that has been so upsetting to people of that faith. So instead I've been...

Planting flowers.

Painting doors.

Snuggling with my cat.

Learning to grill lobster tails and bake cheese bicuits with the Hubs.

Am I being too superstitious about The Satanic Verses? Or even better...how ready are you for spring?

Deep and Hard Questions

I've been pondering for the last three days on what I wanted to write about A Clockwork Orange. My mind's been in overdrive since I finished it Thursday night. Perhaps it's that the book coincided with the end of one year and the promising start of a new one; perhaps it's that I'm enjoying an unusual amount of solitude while my husband visits family in California; perhaps it's that I saw Black Swan yesterday and now I have to think about something else or I get the creeps. In any case, I'm struggling to find the right words to describe a novel that I didn't really like, and yet somehow loved. Yes, this one deservedly makes the Personal Best List.

Jake tries to help me collect my thoughts.

Burgess poses a tough problem with Alex's forced conversion to model behavior. Clearly he finds the government's power to snatch away free will to be more terrifying than Alex's brutal, destructive nature. In a sense, I understand that - the enormity of that power and the ability to inflict it even on those who do not need "reform" is quite disturbing. And yet...I'm not quite buying it either.

My version of the book included the "controversial" last chapter, which was not published in the original U.S. edition and thus not included in the Kubrick film's ending. Essentially the last chapter sees Alex grow out of his hedonistic ways and voluntary choose the straight and narrow, to the point that he now focuses his energies on finding a mate and perhaps starting a family of his own. Errr...wait. Wait. WAIT. So, murder, rape, beatings, etc. are just the product of youth's folly??? I'm sorry Mr. Burgess. I see that you might want to end the book on a more positive, upbeat note, but really, this ending is a cop out. It's much more unsettling, and I think realistic, to end the book with Chapter 20, wherein Alex is cured of his conditioning and able to terrorize the night once more.

Perhaps it's too American Puritan of me, but I want consequences when someone chooses to inflict harm on others. It's galling to me that Alex brutally murdered at least two people, raped children, and attacked old men, and the only punishment he may potentially suffer is having a child that will go through the same "stage" of violent behavior? I don't think he even feels remorse for what he's done, just boredom with it all and readiness to move on to something new. Murder is so old hat, you know.

Despite all of that, I liked the questions that the novel put forth. I like that it really made me think carefully about the nature of good and evil and the motivations for our actions. A Clockwork Orange reminded me that our free will is a terrible and wonderful gift. And so, with that, I shall leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the novel as spoken by the prison chaplain (or charlie):

"It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions…" (2.3.13)