Les jeunes filles

Read Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita online in a dreadfully difficult way, through a simulated book with turning pages that had no numbers. I closed my browser once and had to sit there clicking through pages until I found the page I had lost. Technology.

I had heard a lot of hype about this book...and I honestly don't think I had heard anyone talk negatively about it. Always described to me as a favorite and the object of literary obsessions by hip kids. There was a girl in one of my writing classes at SAIC who devoted her time to an art piece that transcribed the book in its entirety, through colored grids on graph paper. According to Nabokov's synesthesia. It's a pretty idea, really.

As for me, I cannot say it will be a favorite of mine, but it's obviously got its strengths. It was bold, surely. And I was very uncomfortable when Humbert described beauty in children. Hair falling upon skinned knees...that is one particularly creepy image.
That the object of desire was such an obviously distasteful little girl was pretty genius. Part of me hated her, but I suppose that's what happens when a child is raised in such conditions. As my ex-boyfriend said to me when discussing her wretchedness, "That's love though".

I was surprised at how comedic the narrative became during the last scenes of Quilty's murder. Quite a change from some of the slower, duller moments in the middle sections when Humbert was in bliss. Quilty's scene was so ridiculous that it seemed a departure from the story that led to it. I guess though, that that dark humor was there all along, such as in Humbert's fantasies about Charlotte.

Also, how the hell was he making money?? Or, how much freaking money had he in his savings??

Relatively, I see that Kubrick's Lolita is categorized as a comedy-drama. Perhaps I will have to see it.
Also as a sidenote, searching "Lolita" in google images returns a bevvy of Japanese girls in Lolita outfits. Should have known. -_______-

The future

is upon us, I think. There are mammoth clones and commercial space flights in the works, and all.

I was just thinking the other day how less and less prudent society is becoming these days, and how sexuality is much more open now than I once knew it to be. But maybe this is more about my aging than society as a whole.

I finally read Brave New World after being culturally ignorant without having read it my whole life. And now I can understand the allusions so often pointed toward it - hurrah!
I can't say that I was all that blown away by the book, though that is fault of so many spin offs having come from Brave New World, no doubt. But all in all, clones in tubes and a life of duty are nothing new in this day.
One thing that did surprise me was the society of Savages. I was expecting before Bernard and Lenina's trip that these old-fashioned beings were going to be contemporary people rather than literal savages. I think perhaps this might have been a better twist...though I see how that wouldn't have corresponded with Huxley's use of John in the end.

There were reviews from the time of publication at the end of the edition I was reading that I agree with in regards to the lack of interest that is stirred for these two-dimensional characters. They are this way for a reason, I think, and that is important...but even in John, the escapist to this, there was little time to grow any sort of attachment for. He even grew to be kind of annoying, so emotional was he. He is indeed a son of Shakespearean literature.

I could use some futuristic temperature control right about now though...it is hot in Chicago. One of my most hated things.

Morals

Aesop's Fables proved to be a tremendously easy and fast read - I was surprised to see how simple and short (most of them one pagers) the stories were, as I had never actually seen them on paper. I was familiar with many of them, being something of a know-it-all when it comes to fairy tales and children's stories. It's funny to think that I could learn about fifteen lessons in a matter of minutes.

An aspect that I really enjoyed about this collection was the simple country mood that was embodied through the scenarios. I was somewhat envious of the pretty, relaxed scenes in nature...maybe because my experience with such a lifestyle is so limited. Regardless, I liked, if only briefly, being able to glimpse that kind of life (maybe I'm channeling a little bit of Marie Antoinette, with her pink flocks).
My favorite, being a lover of cute girly things, was "Venus and the Cat" in which a cat falls in love with a young man and asks Venus to turn her into a beautiful damsel. Precious.

I took most of these stories at face value for their age and main point lying in their lesson teaching, but I can't help but to question a few. For example, "The Mouse and the Frog":

"It was an evil day for the mouse when he made the acquaintance of a frog on the eve of a journey into the country. Protesting his great affection, the frog persuaded the mouse to allow him to go along. But we shall never know what possessed the mouse when he let the frog tie one of his own forefeet to one of the frog's hindfeet, for surely it made traveling most uncomfortable indeed".

...what? And let me tell you, (spoiler alert), that this only ends in the two drowning in a river and getting eaten, leading to the moral "he who compasses the destruction of his neighbor often is caught in his own snare". Is this really the best thing he could come up with? To have two animals tie their limbs together? Seriously, that doesn't even make sense. I'm thinking he was stretching it a bit, here. Let me suggest my own lesson to you, Aesop; quit while you're ahead (though perhaps the fault is not your own, but rather the publisher's for including it).

Wealth in kindness

Two books to post about tonight: #417. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut, and #143. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides.

First off, Rosewater. I read in a few places that Vonnegut rated this book highly among his work, and even the back cover of the copy I read claims it to be "Vonnegut's funniest satire". I guess perhaps he thought this because it was a bit politically based...or maybe because he was sort of making social commentary? Either way, I'm not sure I appreciated the book as much as its author did.

The style reminded me a lot of Catch-22, in the sense that it kept schizophrenically changing subjects and viewpoints, often approaching queer thoughts and situations that I felt like I wasn't keeping up with.

I have been watching the t.v. show Parks and Recreation lately though, and I kept being reminded of Bobby Newport in Eliot. I liked him (as much as I could like a character in a book I wasn't very engaged in) for his sincerity and innocence. 

I guess looking back now, it seems like Mushari and Fred's role seemed a weakly employed tactic to get the end result of Eliot to give away all his money. They seemed to get tossed away at the end, just as throughout the entire plot, Mushari's whereabouts only popped up whenever Vonnegut seemed to remember that he had neglected him a bit too long. Obviously that probably wasn't his intent, but I felt it was poorly executed.

I read The Virgin Suicides online, as I did the other previous melancholy feminine favorites. It makes the idea of suicide rather pretty and like a fairy tale. There was a misty, still, airiness that was captured through the narrator's experiences - it was a perfect choice to tell the story from an observer's point of view. Distance is what captured the mystery that was so vital in describing the girls, and watching the girls through windows and dreams was the reason for my continued interest and hunger (just as the boys') for more contact.

I look at my claw foot tub with its long, draped linen curtains and imagine what a scenic suicide I would conduct there, like Cecilia. Not in the emo, self deprecating way, but in an artfully serene, natural way. 

The question I cannot overcome though, is how the Lisbon parents could ever have continued living the way they did after Cecilia. Would parents not want to rid the house of such negative vibes, if only for their daughters? Why lock them up, and force imprisonment on them in a decaying environment? Mr. Lisbon, I could accept. But his wife was outlandishly out-of-control, and her uptight precautions were the saddest part, resulting in the demise of the family.

Perhaps I will watch the movie. Kirsten Dunst seems an appropriate Lux.