To begin...
My intent for the summer was to read a book a week and post a critique or random musings about how I felt about the book. So far, I have finished one novel and three Harry Potter books. So, there's not much there to critique.
When I finish a book, it's like that last swig of wine. It's pleasing as it hits the tongue and flows down the gullet, but when I want return to the glass to have another taste I find that it's over. Finished. There's just that little, annoying drop that never leaves the glass no matter how hard I pound it against my face. Well, it's something like that.
When I finish a book, it's like finishing a long hike that I really didn't want to finish. I want to go around a bend and find just one more stretch of trail, but I find the trailhead instead. So, I walk around the parking lot just to get the last bit out of my legs. Well, it's something like that.
I know that the best thing to do after I finish a book is write about how it impacted me, but I never feel so inspired. At least, not from Harry Potter because my scar is not on my forehead and I don't have a wand. In a book from a series, I find that the big questions are never really resolved.
So I guess I have to write about a book I finished in April, or somewhere around there. It's called More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow who is a Noble Prize winning author. The parameters of the book are laid out in the first chapter. It’s narrated by a nephew and the other main character is his uncle. The nephew describes his botanist uncle as being a gifted, scientist-eccentric that wanted to be conscious of the world around him instead of "[claiming] this privilege of human distance." Then, in my opinion, the thesis: "If he had canceled his 'outside connection,' he wouldn't have had so much grief from the ladies." I say this is the thesis because the nephew then recounts how his uncle deals with a new life after he has married an upper class bachelorette. The book discusses the uncle and his life in terms of how the nephew sees himself. The nephew sees himself as more akin to his mother's brother than to his own father who is quite a hit with the ladies and who struggles to understand why his son would move from Paris back to the Midwest to be with a botanist. This motif is weaved throughout the novel winding its way through the nephew's tale of his one-time lover and their illegitimate child and the feelings of inadequacy with her. He parallels this with his uncle's fear that his new bride is becoming less elegant and more masculine (this is discovered in a funny little scene where the uncle is in the basement laundromat of this majestic, up-town high-rise and describes how his bride has developed the shoulders of a man). The uncle arranges the marriage without telling his nephew even though the latter's "assignment was to preserve him in his valuable oddity." The uncle's inadequacy is heightened when his new bride's father, a doctor, takes him on his rounds and keep showing the uncle the genitalia of old people. The uncle is horrified, but the nephew dismisses it as the doctor trying to have some sense of comic escape during his depressing routine.
The important thins are the events that surround the main characters: how they react to each other's circumstances and how they react to their own. The uncle, more reserved and less emotional, as evidenced by his occupation as a botanist, adjusts his perception of things and you do not see him act out any of his thoughts or feelings that are shared with his nephew. The nephew, seemingly mild-mannered, does act out his frustrations on the former lover who bore a child, but did not want any commitment, by traveling to see her and making a mess of her bathroom. “The air was bad” in the bathroom, he claims. “It was worse than bad. The odors of a settled intimacy between man and woman (with child thrown in) rose from the floor, came at me from the towels, the pipes, the base of the bowl, smells of human ammonia, sulfides, organic acids…These stinks, I thought, choking an intruder (me!), were more binding than a marriage license.” This kind of description of relationships metaphorically residing in one or more of the five senses depicts the reality of them. No one thinks about an intimate relationship as being accepting of the various odors that emanate from a body, but this, in fact, is one of the truest evidences of the stability of a relationship.
Noteworthy quote: "The world as it appears to you classifies your mind."
I'd give it a look of indifference. 
In progress: Fahrenheit 451.
When I finish a book, it's like that last swig of wine. It's pleasing as it hits the tongue and flows down the gullet, but when I want return to the glass to have another taste I find that it's over. Finished. There's just that little, annoying drop that never leaves the glass no matter how hard I pound it against my face. Well, it's something like that.
When I finish a book, it's like finishing a long hike that I really didn't want to finish. I want to go around a bend and find just one more stretch of trail, but I find the trailhead instead. So, I walk around the parking lot just to get the last bit out of my legs. Well, it's something like that.
I know that the best thing to do after I finish a book is write about how it impacted me, but I never feel so inspired. At least, not from Harry Potter because my scar is not on my forehead and I don't have a wand. In a book from a series, I find that the big questions are never really resolved.
So I guess I have to write about a book I finished in April, or somewhere around there. It's called More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow who is a Noble Prize winning author. The parameters of the book are laid out in the first chapter. It’s narrated by a nephew and the other main character is his uncle. The nephew describes his botanist uncle as being a gifted, scientist-eccentric that wanted to be conscious of the world around him instead of "[claiming] this privilege of human distance." Then, in my opinion, the thesis: "If he had canceled his 'outside connection,' he wouldn't have had so much grief from the ladies." I say this is the thesis because the nephew then recounts how his uncle deals with a new life after he has married an upper class bachelorette. The book discusses the uncle and his life in terms of how the nephew sees himself. The nephew sees himself as more akin to his mother's brother than to his own father who is quite a hit with the ladies and who struggles to understand why his son would move from Paris back to the Midwest to be with a botanist. This motif is weaved throughout the novel winding its way through the nephew's tale of his one-time lover and their illegitimate child and the feelings of inadequacy with her. He parallels this with his uncle's fear that his new bride is becoming less elegant and more masculine (this is discovered in a funny little scene where the uncle is in the basement laundromat of this majestic, up-town high-rise and describes how his bride has developed the shoulders of a man). The uncle arranges the marriage without telling his nephew even though the latter's "assignment was to preserve him in his valuable oddity." The uncle's inadequacy is heightened when his new bride's father, a doctor, takes him on his rounds and keep showing the uncle the genitalia of old people. The uncle is horrified, but the nephew dismisses it as the doctor trying to have some sense of comic escape during his depressing routine.
The important thins are the events that surround the main characters: how they react to each other's circumstances and how they react to their own. The uncle, more reserved and less emotional, as evidenced by his occupation as a botanist, adjusts his perception of things and you do not see him act out any of his thoughts or feelings that are shared with his nephew. The nephew, seemingly mild-mannered, does act out his frustrations on the former lover who bore a child, but did not want any commitment, by traveling to see her and making a mess of her bathroom. “The air was bad” in the bathroom, he claims. “It was worse than bad. The odors of a settled intimacy between man and woman (with child thrown in) rose from the floor, came at me from the towels, the pipes, the base of the bowl, smells of human ammonia, sulfides, organic acids…These stinks, I thought, choking an intruder (me!), were more binding than a marriage license.” This kind of description of relationships metaphorically residing in one or more of the five senses depicts the reality of them. No one thinks about an intimate relationship as being accepting of the various odors that emanate from a body, but this, in fact, is one of the truest evidences of the stability of a relationship.
Noteworthy quote: "The world as it appears to you classifies your mind."
I'd give it a look of indifference.
In progress: Fahrenheit 451.
2 Comments:
Nice visual aid to go with your indifference. Although, if you curl your lip under just a little less you could confuse it with a look of just smelling a fart.
Oh, is it okay to write fart on your blog?
Fart fart fart fart fart fart fart. I wish I had a visual aid right now. My chair is just a scratch and sniff.
Love you, big kisses!
Hey, I have a couple of suggestions for you for summer reading. Keep meaning to put them up here, keep forgetting.
Jujitsu for Christ, by Jack Butler. Fantastic book about religion and racial politics in the sixties. Plus there's dirty Christian sex in it. Beautifully written.
Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy, the guy who wrote All the Pretty Horses. Little dark Southern Gothic tale about necrophilia. Good for the kids.
Right now I'm starting one of those B&N novel collections they put out periodically -- this one's four novels by H.G. Wells, whom I haven't read since junior high. Bunches of fun.
I've also been going over the last Potter book in preparation for the new one, and it occurs to me as I read it that roughly half the book is completely pointless, serves absolutely no significant purpose in telling the story. It's still fun, but I find myself skipping whole sections, thinking "Oh, get on with it." I think maybe when writers get too famous their editors get to be reluctant to actually cut their stuff down, which would explain why each successive book is expanding.
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