The Jungle

For all the dislike I have of Chicago, I must say that at least I wasn't here in the early 1900s.  Compared to that, I'm living the life of a queen.  Jurgis Rudkus' life is, plainly stated, shit.  I would have gone mad and killed myself long ago in his situation, which I must admit, I wish he had done so that the book would have stopped much sooner.  But while we're on the topic of dislike -- I'm just going to come out and say it -- I have no desire to read any more Sinclair ever again.

I don't even know how to organize my thoughts, so I will keep it brief.  Here is a list of rants in order of my beef (hardy har har) with them:

1.  What is the point of the last two chapters!?  I am aware, thanks to the notes at the end of the book, that the audience for this story was Socialists.  But for the sake of modern times, all of the goddamn speeches should have been cut.  Jesus, the only thing I could think the whole time was that I could not wait for it to end.  It stopped even being about Jurgis at all, since he didn't even speak for almost the entire part of the last 50 pages or more.

2.  When the book was revolving around Jurgis, it was ludicrous.  Okay, I understand times were tough and people keeled over and died all the time and were dirty and poor etc etc but each chapter LITERALLY ended with a new dramatic calamity that befell the main character.  Out of a job?  One up that, all your money is taken.  Oh, your house got foreclosed?  Welp, now your wife is dead.  At least you still have that ray of sunshine in your life that's your son.  Oh wait, now he's randomly dead too even though he was super healthy two pages ago.

3.  There is absolutely no humanizing any of the women.  Sure, Jurgis loved Ona but she was a flat character who was an idiot.  Elzbieta and Marija seemed so strong and had so much potential but instead, they ended up just being little puppet vessels for the sake of Jurgis who became incredibly dull as soon as he left his family.  And then once Jurgis does come crawling back after betraying them, they take him in without any questions because they are so wonderful and kind.  What the heck.  Feminism!

4.  Prior to starting this book I kept hearing how great it was.  All of these comments came from men, naturally, and I can see why they may say that because it's all rough around the edges and masculine and all about hard work and all that.  Honestly, I don't need beautiful images and emotion and puppies and marshmallows if the content is good, and I truly sincerely would appreciate a story about someone working through hardship and trying their best.  But I cannot handle this book.  It is just too much whining and self loathing, and nothing is even resolved in the end.

At least this book taught me why there are so many Lithuanians in Chicago (yes, I have lived here for over 5 years and do not know any history about the city).  It also taught me that Lakeshore Drive was lined with mansions, which seems obvious, but it's nice to see that all of those old buildings over there that I used to drive by on the bus daily actually are historical.  Guess that much really hasn't changed.  Well, you know, class and society-wise...not people-melting-in-lard-vats-and-getting-eaten-alive-by-rats-at-work-wise.

Waterland

#265. Waterland by Graham Swift (no, not the Kevin Costner movie that you're thinking of).

I like this book because it doesn't end happily in the mainstream fashion that is so frequent these days.  Or else, I guess that's the case in movies...but I suppose books tend to lend themselves to more sobering characters, which have depth and grey emotions. 
My point is -- if that is actually the case and I'm not just generalizing and being an idiot -- this book does a good job of being a book.  There is a fine balance of heaviness, humor, and brightness as there truly is when one looks back on their life, and I think Swift's ability to capture true human thoughts and emotions like childish love, doubt, regret, and curiosity is really apparent here.

The novel is laid out in a nice way, through the stories of a history teacher narrating his "history" to his students.  What a lovely concept, when you consider it.  I wish I could have that kind of experience - it's a rare thing to really hear about and understand someone's past (at least for me), especially when you weren't a part of it, and when it happens, it's something quite magical.

Tom Crick's story is sincere, and really truthful in the sense that life is full of impulses, heartache, confusion, and the sense that we are all trapped in the past.  I have a love affair with the topic of memories, so of course, this hits me right where I am vulnerable, but aside from that, I think there is really something that makes you think here.

One thing that I thought was a little bit weak, was Ernest Atkinson's reasoning for putting those 12 bottles of beer into the chest for Dick (also, the significance of the name Richard).  Ernest referred to them "for emergencies" but what the hell kind of emergency is he really envisioning potent beer to be useful for?  Come on, be a little bit more useful to your son that you forced your daughter to have.  Perhaps it was just a random out for Swift to exemplify Ernest's insanity as well as being able to use it as a way for the ultimate destruction of Dick in order to come full circle, but there must have been much better ways to tie things up.

There is no happy ending to real life because it just keeps going, and I think that's something that Waterland makes you consider.  I guess all anyone can do is to live until you die and to do your best.  I'll be on the road again on the way to some more interviews next week.  Wish me luck!

The Plot Against America

Roth does this thing in The Plot Against America where instead of building up to a major dramatic climax where everything hits the fan at once and turns into holy-shit-chaos like in American Pastoral, he rather casually introduces startling little facts and effects upfront and explains them later which results in tiny little chaos slaps in the face.  Something along the lines of "I snuck out of my house to become an orphan and everything really turned out fine and I don't even remember getting kicked by that horse and why I'm now hooked up to a tube"...which then goes on to explain how he came upon a horse and why it decided to kick him in the head.  In better words, of course.  The overall story though, is a what-if-Lindy-had-been-president-instead-of-FDR fictionalized history told through the accounts of Philip Roth as a young boy in New Jersey.  This means that America grows to be an anti-semitic nation led by a supposed supporter of Hitler.  I've never really read/seen anything about America's involvement with WWII prior to Pearl Harbor, so this was an interesting place to start.

I'm really impressed by the way Philip Roth can complexly think things through and write in such a detailed manner pertaining to various characters, and how things affect one another.  I'm a simpleton so I'm unable to conceptualize one person's actions and motives and how they will build into a bunch of other events and thus my stories are flatter than this rich faux history that Roth has created.  It's believable, exciting, and personal, and you get the sense that you're actually learning something about history even though it's not what really happened (although, you can get a quick taste of the learning bit of real events from the postscript).  As I've mentioned before, I've often found that Jewish writers are exceptional at capturing emotion beautifully (whether it's Nazi-related or not), and by using his own family as the centerpiece of the story, Roth has written a sort of upside-down fairy tale of his own life that is relatable.

All this WWII reading led me to other movies and online reading and now I'm kind of paranoid, though I'm not sure of what.  Also, I didn't know Henry Ford was such an anti-semite.  What an asshole.

Going to Boston next weeeeeeek!  Dear god, let someone freaking hire me soon because this job hunt thing is really getting expensive.

I'm glad Kafka let this one go

I have so far found for myself that Franz Kafla's writing doesn't suit me.  He is rather melancholy and depressing, which you would think would be right up my alley, but he does it in such a queer way that is impersonal and difficult to relate to.  

The Trial is an unfinished novel, so that probably accounts for all of the loose ends in this story (such as the female neighbor that K. stalks for a chapter or so and then immediately forgets).  The topic of this novel is an accused man who is "arrested" for no apparent cause.  Naturally, you would assume that with that sort of "problem", the point of the plot would be to reveal what the accused had done.  On the contrary, no one (not even the reader) cares at all why this might be, and on top of that, the entirety of the 10 chapters are so nonsensical with no apparent motive to bring purpose to anything that occurs on a single one of the pages that make them up.

K. does seem to be weirdly and abruptly sexual with random women who he just happens to meet as strangers though, so maybe he was arrested for being a man slut.  Whatever the case, I'm not much interested in investigating any further than not at all.

For my next book, I'm going back to an author I could relate to a little better. 

Orange you glad...

I remember an author recommending Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson a few months back on NPR while I was driving home from work.  Oddly, I only remembered this after picking up the book and looking at the cover as I was about to start reading it, even after personally picking it out at the used bookstore myself.  Funny how my memory can change from one sensory form to another, as the physical word "oranges" made me recall what I had heard (however delayed it may have been).

I think the author who was talking about it on the radio said it changed her life.  She had found it at a garage sale as a young person and was drawn to its openness about religion and sexuality through the voice of another juvenile.  Unfortunately, my poor memory fails to really recollect any insightful commentary or who the speaker even was, but I can attest to the fact that she was very fond of this work, as am I.  Even as (somewhat of) an adult -- but maybe moreso as one -- I appreciate the simple, uncomplicated views that children have in the face of corrupted adults.  In this case, corruption comes from religion.

In regards to its subject matter, this book surely seems ahead of its time.  It could have been written today with Winterson's openness about homosexuality.  She tends to get a little bit too artful (and off topic at times), I think, with her metaphors and fantasies, but she is successful in her use of humor and sincerity.

I'm surprised at the number of spelling/grammatical errors in this book.  I always hate when this happens, because I want to break out a red pen and play the role of editor.  I don't even really understand how a published novel can get away with so many blunders.  I would blame it on the fact that this book was originally published in '85 when they no doubt did not have spell check, but then there is The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok that was just published a few years ago, that has even more mistakes than this one.  Shame on you, editors.

My slim volume is weathered now with crumpled pages after being shoved into my bag along my travels earlier this week (damn you Spirit Airlines, with your horribly sneaky tactics).  Somehow, that feels right.  Jeanette's made-up heroine Winnet was traveling with me.  She was looking for a city with "only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it".  I am trying to dare as much as I can.

A life completely her own

Well, the impending doom that I had forecasted in the last post came quicker than expected, placing me now at the end of my first week of unemployment.  It was no surprise though, and therefore failed to jar me in any way.  Coincidentally, along with my finishing up The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, I will be spending some hours in the Big Apple working toward a new career.  Hopefully good things will come from that, but as Auster describes in "The Locked Room" (the second of the three stories), "In general, lives seem to veer abruptly from one thing to another, to jostle and bump, to squirm."  I'd rather less squirming and more veering, after almost three years of risen hopes and inevitable letdowns.  Anyway, to get on with the book...

What a strange book, with layers that go deeper than I can explain in any fathomable way -- especially since I haven't yet been able to wrap my mind around it myself.  The New York Trilogy is composed of three "installments".  I went into it thinking that each would be its own short story but found that the three parts are mysteriously interwoven in very subtle ways that very effectively haunt the reader (at least, me) into discomfort.

The third part, "The Locked Room", is the climax of the unsettling feeling that builds throughout the book.  It is self-conscious of itself as a whole (while the previous two parts simply reveal strange and questionable connections to each other) -- book existentialism! -- but it does this through such delicate hints that one is continuously left questioning these connections.  One of the things I am talking about here of course (*spoiler*), is Auster's "retelling of anecdotes" and stories throughout the entire novel.  I've never read a fictional book that does this, and I found it very interesting.  To place your own original writing alongside quotations and ideas from other authors seems a little bit courageous as well as inspiring...at least to me.  It gives a glimpse into the author's (or I suppose, character's) interests, and that to me further adds depth and stimulates the already numerous things going on in your head while you read this book.

The collection as a whole is a mental labyrinth.  Although the characters in all three stories ultimately find freedom from their struggles and paranoia, the reader is not allowed the same privilege, but rather left to puzzle over what the connections really were, and how best to interpret them. I suppose this mental struggle is a small reflection of the billions of personal fights we must overcome these days (especially as young people)...just like Sophie; "Sophie was just twenty-six years old.  She was too young to live through someone else, too intelligent not to want a life that was completely her own".  Voice of a generation (lol).  Overall though, I can confidently say that The New York Trilogy is a much more accomplished and powerful work than I found Moon Palace to be.  We'll have to see how the rest of his books on the list compare.

Echos of Eco

Finally, I've finished Foucault's Pendulum after having been reminded a couple of times that it's been a while since I've written anything.  I'M A SLOW READER APPARENTLY, OKAY??  Just kidding.  Thank you for checking up on me to make sure I'm still on task and kicking.  It's appreciated. 

Anyway, I have a feeling this story ended in a similar nostalgic fashion that Queen Loana did, but I may also be making that up completely since I don't really remember but rather just had this slight déja vu feeling as it was happening.  The text ends in "It is so beautiful" after a bunch of melancholy closing-word type things have been said.  Finality is always beautiful, isn't it...as is sadness.  At least in art.  Too bad it doesn't really work that way to the one experiencing it, in real life.  Otherwise so much would seem beautiful and glittering to me rather than extremely mundane and useless.  Although, I guess they are actually starting to glitter now with Christmas on its way.

Anywhoooo, now that I've thoroughly S.A.D'ed you out, some more thoughts, tracking backwards:

I am nosy and a snoop, and therefore savor being inside other people's minds and hearts.  Eco gives me only glimpses of that, hiding between lengths of obscure ideology.  For example:

"'All emanates from God, in the contraction of simsum.  The problem is to bring about tikkun, the restoration of Adam Qadmon.  Then we will rebuild everything in the balanced structure of the parzufim, the faces -- or, rather, forms -- that will take the place of the Sefirot..."

(seriously, what??)

vs.

"Because at the time I felt the need.  I had just given up drinking.  Relationship between the liver and the heart.  A new love is a good reason for going back to drink.  Somebody to go to a bar with.  Feel good with."

Perhaps the sparseness of these moments gives it more value.

Speaking of going to bars with people, I guilted some old coworkers into spending time with me a few weeks ago.  It was nice to go out, and to be social.  Same with Thanksgiving, having had the opportunity to see friends that I truly value. Feelin' good with people, reminding me that they exist.

I think it's time for me to read a slim volume.  Eco's brief chapters saved me any strenuous work, but I think I need something quick and (hopefully) breezy for the next book. I feel this impending doom creeping up on me but it could be exciting...I need some forced change in my life, I think.  I've also had this intense pain in my lower back lately that will just not go away.  I'm aging rapidly, or the whole of me is giving up, either way.  Better read as many books as I can before whatever it is that I feel in my gut eats me up.