The Hungarian Bookkeeper

Tibor Fisher: Under the Frog

2011-05-13T18:32:00.006-06:00

It is a very funny book indeed. However, this is exactly my main problem with it. Under the Frog lacks any tragic touch that an author who actually lived through the events in the novel, would have used. I am not whining or being snob (for a change, haha); I just know, as I am from that country and I did live through half (!) of the previous regime (I am hesitating to call it "communist" regime as it was not communist). My parents and their friends saw everything Fisher is talking about, and I saw everything that those events did to them. And boy, it was not funny. Tragicomical and/or bittersweet - yes. But not funny, I swear.

Nevertheless, it is an easy read, a pageturner. What else can I wish at the end of my trimester?

Too bad I am Central-European.

A Wicked Note On Bolaño

2010-07-13T21:53:00.005-06:00

I am reading Bolaño's new short story collection (The Return, New Directions, 2010) and at one point he writes (emphasis mine):

Rogelio came over to our table and said that the greatest writer of the centrury was, without doubt, Mikhail Bulgakov. (...) Rogelio mentioned other works by the distinguished novelist, more than ten of them...

Now, Rogelio almost had to include the short stories of B too if it came more than ten...

A New Critical Reading of “Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed”

2010-06-16T10:24:00.001-06:00

In Ray Bradbury's short story, “Dark Were They and Golden Eyed”, a family of five arrives at Mars from the Earth to settle down and find a new life. Although they try to do everything they can to establish an environment as similar to Earth as they can, soon they notice and have to accept that they are going through irreversible changes and cannot maintain their old selves: they gradually turn into Martians.

For a close reader the most important tension of the short story becomes perfectly clear. Although Bradbury seemingly sets up the main conflict based on the differences between the “white” Earth people and the “dark” Martians, it is actually between the unimaginative and inspired, the ordinary and extraordinary, the conformist and nonconformist, the organic and technicized components that continuously fight their battle inside us and for us. Through describing a person's inner battle, and with the help of carefully but very purposefully chosen poetic devices, Bradbury shows us how much more meaningful and exciting to live a life filled with colorful fantasy and imagination – not unlike children's lives - than to insist on our safe but soul-destroying “white” existence. After all, “Maybe we're children, too”, “dark we are, and golden eyed. “

The road leading to our inner, innocent, child-like self is long and hard. Breaking all our safety-rockets does not help; the changes have to happen in us, deep in us to be final and irreversible.

Bradbury's short story can be divided into five pieces: a quasi prologue, three main parts and an epilogue. In the prologue the family arrives at Mars; the first main piece is from the devastating news about the atomic bomb on Earth to the rising of the green star; the second part ends with the father, Harry's ritual submerging into the canal; the final part is from the submerging to the total accomplishment of the transformation; the epilogue talks about the next group of Earth people coming to the planet to be supposedly lead to their “native” self.

The title of the short story, “Dark They Were, And Golden Eyed”, immediately poses some ambiguous questions causing tension. Who exactly are “they”? With the strange word order Bradbury puts a very strong emphasis on the adjectives and places them in the foreground of our perception. Dark usually refers to something bad, suspicious, unpleasant, while the color gold is a symbol of light, rich, sparkling, pleasant. How can somebody be good and evil at the same time? Or is it possible that either of these adjectives is used with an unfamiliar connotation?

In the prologue we meet the protagonist and his family. They live a “clean, decent” life on Earth; however, one day they feel the urge to leave it behind, “come over sixty million miles” to Mars. Although they are still not aware of what it is exactly that they are after, and why they feel their lives are unsatisfied and unfulfilled on Earth, the author already gives us several clues to ease this tension. They arrive with children, who are like “seeds, might at any instant be sown” (567) and eventually develop into a brand new plant. There is not too much doubt what is going to happen. Bradbury uses expressive similes with organic imagery to describe the life-changing experience the family is going to go through: “the tissues of his body draw tight as if he were standing at the center of a vacuum” (567). “The wind blew as if to flake away their identities” (567). “At any moment the Martian air might draw his soul from him, as marrow comes from a white bone” (567). Right in the beginning the author introduces several of the short story's main symbols: the wind that accompanies the hero all the way to the end is a well known and frequent public symbol of change. Something old is always “gone with the wind” and something new and exciting arrives with a new breeze (and stays until the wind changes). Through the implied meaning Bradbury suggests that these changes are going to be for the better.

Another very important element, color, also appears in the prologue. The two most prominent colors of the text are being introduced in their symbolic senses. “[T]he Martian air might draw his soul from him, as marrow comes from a white bone” (567), Bradbury writes, depicting the hero's old life as “white”. The children's hair is “yellow” - the simplified color of gold. Linking “goldness” to children foreshadows the symbolic meaning of the golden-eyed existence; after all life on Mars – according to Bradbury's description – is evidently childhood-like, innocent: “They saw the old cities, lost in their meadows, lying like children's delicate bones” (567).

The third leading symbol of the story is also in the prologue. “The children with their yellow hair hollered at the deep dome of the Martian sky” (567). Indeed, we need to dig deep to reach our inner child-like innocence, when we were still without inhibitions and full of imagination and fantasy. The good news is, says Bradbury, that not only we possess the desire for a more imaginative and meaningful life (“a man standing on the edge of a sea, ready to wade in”), we also have all that is needed within us to realize it, to make it our reality. Although our “marrow” (fantasy, imagination) is locked up, surrounded by “white bones” it can be released and rescued; however the process to set it free may be a very long and painful process.

Interestingly enough it is only in the first part of the text's main body where we hear the family's name first time right in the first sentence. “Their name was Bittering” (567). It is a telling name: including an adjective (bitter) with an -ing ending suggests a “verb” that describes both its bearers' character and their most characteristic action. It is another clue about their not having been happy in their previous lives on Earth.

Comparing to the other main divisions of the story this section is the longest one; the lengthiness suggests that the road Harry Bittering is taking so that in the end he can arrive at a more satisfying although totally different way of life is full of inner pitfalls and uncertainties and indeed, takes a long time.

He does not see his destination still and he does not know if it is worth the struggle. Although he instinctively knows it is “time to get up” (568), he is full of fears all the time: “the fear was never gone” (567). He is “drenched in the hotness of his fear” (569). He constantly tries to convince himself of the opposite (as if testing his strength): “We do not belong here. We're Earth people. This Mars. It was meant for Martians”(568). He meticulously insists on his old-life routines: he plants a garden, gets up at seven o'clock, goes to “work”, reads the Earth paper every day. The decision of his Mars adventure seems like a certain kind of a game, a “survivor show” until a dramatic event happens: there is no way back. “Atom bomb hit New York! All the space rockets blown up. No more rockets to Mars, ever!” (569) With this event Bradbury puts his characters in a situation when they have no choice. In other words, their old, ordinary, boring, “white” life is over for ever. There is no other way than going forward. That is to say, there is no other way then just digging deeper and deeper into their “Martian world” that in the text represents a child-like, innocent, colorful, peaceful and content life. There is no other way than just being happy again just like we all used to be as children.

The road is long and hard but Bradbury does not leave his characters by themselves. From their very first breath on Mars there is a mysterious phenomenon with them, the wind that helps them through the probing times. In the prologue it cools them down and gives them (and the readers) the first clue about the changes they face. It always reminds them of the existence of their inner self, the destination of their journey. When they have doubts (“But did we find any Martians? Not a living soul!” 568), the wind immediately reacts, and does so very prominently: “A river of wind submerged the house” (568), windows “rattling”. When they learn the news about Earth (which is the actual beginning point of the main tension of the story), and they are all devastated, the wind is there at once to console them and at the same time show them a possible (the possible) way – the creative, imaginative life - out of depression: “For a long time there was only the sound of the wind in the late afternoon” (569). It is there as a manifestation of the Martian (meaningful) life, whenever the doubtful, hesitating, confused Earth people need strength and reassurance. “Are you up there? All the dead ones, you Martians? Well, here we are, alone, cut off! Come down, move us out! We're helpless!” (570) And down it comes and moves them out of their misery. It calms down only when the work is done, in the third main part of the story, and the “quiet autumn” replaces the chaotic, loud and hot summer.

Bradbury uses quite a few poetic devices to convince the reader about his truth. One of the most obvious devices is repetition. The function of the repetition of certain words and expressions is not just calling attention to an important fact, action or feature but also to make the text's central idea stronger, assuring the text's organic unity this way as well. “No way back. No way. No way” (569). The repetition plays out on the action level too. If Harry gets uncertain he keeps going to “work”: “Work, he thought, work and forget” (569). There are also lots of “lists” with the same function and role. Often the lists contain repetitions as well: “Sweat poured from his face and his hand and his body” (569). “himself working alone, himself alone even among his family, alone” (576). Whenever Harry is in an especially devastated state and almost loses his strength and sanity, he talks to himself in very short, simple, repetitive sentences that snap one after the other as if he tried to convince himself with a series of short, sharp slaps. “Think. Keep thinking. Different things. Keep your mind free of Earth...” (570), “He perspired. He glanced about. No one watching”(570). Bradbury uses the garden imaginary in a strange, defamiliarized sense: usually we connect positive phenomenon to gardens; gardening in literature very often means growing and cultivating our intellect, reconnecting with nature, with organic elements. In Bradbury's short story the garden is the symbol of the Bitterings' old, monotonous, dull, unimaginative life. It is a place where Harry keeps returning to maintain fractions of his Earth self.

The colors in Bradbury's short story also have enormous importance and expressive strength as they carry very heavy symbolism.

The old, left behind world is white. It is the color of oversimplified boredom, transparency (as in: not complicated with shades), everything that is ordinary, empty, mundane. That is the life the Earth people come from. This is the color they try to establish around themselves: “They built a small white cottage” (567). The wind of change sweeps out the colorlessness and fills the “center of a vacuum” (567) with colors. Lots of colors. When the transformation really gains ground, everything and everyone is being saturated with bright colors, similar to a free drawing of a child bursting with happiness and light-heartedness. “...changing through the old peach tree [peach as a color, not just the fruit], the violet grass, shaking out green rose petals” (571).

The second most important color in the list is definitely gold (or its frequent representation, yellow). In the beginning of Bradbury's text golden-yellow is undoubtedly and purposefully connected mainly to children. The Bittering children arrive at Mars “with their yellow hair” (567) strengthening the short story's main idea: the creative, imaginative, fantastic features that give meaning to our life are carried by the children in a “white” world until they lose them and they, themselves become “white” adults. The children are not just the only ones who possess the seed of being “yellow” or “golden-eyed”, but they are the first ones who sense and notice and know the changes both in the environment and in people too. They are the first ones who bring up the possibility of some kind of Martian existence: “Maybe there're Martians around we don't see. Sometimes nights I think I hear 'em” (568). And they are the first ones who adapt to the new situation by demanding new, “Martian” names for themselves.

But the golden color is not restricted to children only. The first thing that goes through a transformation in people is their eye. The eye is the mirror of the soul – as the saying goes. And if it is so, there is a part in everyone's soul that – according to Bradbury – still possesses our inner, playful child. We just have to find our Martian wind that brings it out from the deep. Golden-yellow is the color of the sun, the huge, hot, bright star that gives us light, warmth, the source of all existence. In Bradbury's story golden-yellow is the symbol of being different, being exciting, being extraordinary. At this point we are again at the center idea of the text: this extraordinariness, this excitement that manifests itself as imagination and fantasy, is not less than the essence of our life. “Mr. Bittering felt his bones shifted, shaped, melted like gold” (573), Bradbury writes. It is an intriguing simile indeed: the very intensive, aggressive physical transformation, that suggests some kind of pain, suffering, is connected to the color gold. However, it has been quite clearly established that in this text gold has positive, pleasant connotations. What nature is, after all, such a huge change and transformation? Bradbury makes sure the feelings, impressions and descriptions of the ongoing change leave a very positive aftertaste in the reader. Changing (back) to a world filled with imagination is good. It is desirable. Even if it does not seem so at first: when he speaks about the Martian new world, Bradbury uses a seemingly cruel metaphor in which the beast of change devours its victim: “What would happen to him, the others? This was the moment Mars had waited for. Now it would eat them” (569). But this metaphor is embedded in sensually pleasant context, making it very ambiguous: “Earth people left to the strangeness of Mars, the cinnamon dusts and wine airs, to be baked like gingerbread shapes in Martian summers, put into harvested storage by Martian winters” (569). Gingerbread cookies smelling like cinnamon, accompanied by wine in harvest time...What is all this if not a reminder of memories of our sweet-smelling, fragrant childhood? Should we stay away from a change like that? Bradbury does not think so. It is not bad, it is not cruel, only different and maybe surprising, says Harry himself: “Onions but not onions, carrots but not carrots. Taste: the same but different. Smell: not like it used to be.” (571) Cora, Harry's wife agrees: “Look all right to me” (570). It is not just right, it is “native”, it is natural, it is evident: “You make a little ghost in your mind, a memory. It's quite natural. Imagination” (568).

The change saturates the Earth people's senses: the colors change, tastes are different, voices die out and quietness takes over, smells are “not like it used to be”, digging “fingers in the earth” does not feel the same as it was before. Bradbury uses synaesthesia to express the chaotic (but exciting) mixture of senses: cinnamon dust, wine airs, green silence dance around the people entering their old-new lives.

This section of the story ends with an allusion: “A green star rose in the east” (574). It refers to Jesus' birth in the New Testament. The pivotal placement of such a well known and strong reference-image suggests that the chain of the events has gotten to a turning point. The birth of Jesus, the Savior means the transformation, the rescue (“saving”) is getting rooted deeply in Harry at last, probably for ever and irreversibly. Indeed, this is the moment when “a strange word emerged from Mr. Bittering's lips” (574). This is the very first linguistic element in a long line of Martian naming words that occurs in the story. And a very important one. We learn that Iorrt, the word that Harry utters after the portentous star appears is “the old Martian word for our planet Earth” (574). The pioneer of the upcoming names “emerged” from the depth of Harry Bittering. The verb “emerge” definitely has an image of upward movement. Apart from the depth of Harry's inner self the direction refers both to the act of redeeming (through the allusion of Christ's birth) and concretely, to the height of the surrounding mountains where the remnants of the ancient, buried Martian life can be found. This is the event that starts the ceremony of naming and renaming things and people in Bradbury's short story, although we have already learned earlier the importance of names. “He thought of the proud old Martian names that had once been on those peaks...Once Martians had built cities, named cities; climbed mountains, named mountains; sailed seas, named seas…In spite of this, the Earth Men had felt a silent guilt at putting new names to these ancient hills and valleys” (570). Growing up, we leave our childhood behind together with its language. Our language “grows up” too, as we feel we need to find rational sense in the universe including its signs, the words. The act of naming is a very symbolic step: it gives things and people identity. By taking away the Martian (“childhood”) names and replacing them with the Earth Men's (“grown up”) words, Martian life has lost its essence, its child-like quality in the name of “rationality”, “seriousness” and “adulthood”. With the transformation getting close to its completion, the elements of the environment return to their original, “native” states by reclaiming their old names. These new-old names do not make “sense” linguistically to the adult Earth Men (and Women), just like a newborn's cooing cannot be identified with any traditionally formed “adult” words. With this choice of linguistic elements Bradbury's reminds the readers again of the meaning of his Mars metaphor that is surrounding the central idea of the text.

The next main part ends in another very strong biblical allusion. Harry Bittering submerges in river (canal) water so that he can emerge as a newly born, changed, transformed man. The image can easily be traced back to the Christening scene of Jesus. By baptism the protagonist becomes, is converted to a new, innocent person. He frees himself from his previous life and sins. The paragraph that describes the scene in Bradbury's story is one of the most important parts of the whole text. It is full of figures of speeches with definitely positive connotations suggesting something wonderful, desirable and peaceful has happened. Bradbury uses synaesthesia (“green silence”) to express the complexity of the almost overwhelming experience; brings back a previously established color symbol in a simile: “let himself sink down and down to the bottom like a golden statue” (575); takes a metaphor (as a contracted simile) to picture the tranquility that fills Harry (“water-quiet” as opposed to the wind's constant howling in the previous parts). When Bradbury writes about the process of the change he tends to use very strong and aggressive nouns and verbs of action (the rocket's “lid gave a bulging pop”, the wind is rattling, Laura, one of Harry's children, is dashing onto the porch with bad news, the children are running out “in time to see their father hurrying about the garden”, the situation is called a “crisis”). In this paragraph he does the opposite: everything slows down, taking time: “A few tremblings shook him, but were carried off in waves of pleasant heat” (575). It is not dark under the water, on the contrary, he sees the light, he is enlightened, he is enchanted – he is transformed. An oxymoron (“He saw the sky submerged above him” 575, - submerge/above) emphasizes two features of the experience: it is indeed an overall and overwhelming surrounding and at the same time it is elevating. The event takes place in the deep, where “all was peace”, where all our buried dreams exist. Although it happens underwater, it is not suffocating like the “other” world. When he emerges from the water he gets his new (“Christian”) name (utha) as a manifestation of his new identity. It is given to him by his son – a child figure, hinting at a new, innocent, promising, exciting era of his life in which he needs to build himself again, cell by cell, but this time with lively, thrilling colors from his deeply buried self: “If I lie here long enough, he thought, the water can build on that skeleton – green things, deep water things, red things, yellow things” (575).

In the epilogue, that takes place five years later, the old, Earth life appears again on Mars, in the form of a rocket that “fell out of the sky” (579). Together with it returns the characterization of the “white” life. The newcomers speak in the usual short, concise sentences of the Earth Men (“Dark people. Yellow eyes. Martians. Very friendly” 579), nothing unnecessary albeit nice and amusing pleasantries and extras. The main value of them is constant, monotonous, rational and effective work: “Lots to be done, Lieutenant…The work, all the work” (580). Their viewpoint is definitely “adult”; they see only “ruins” instead of villas with marble floors and refreshing swimming pools in the Martian settlement. Bradbury uses irony to describe and characterize the absolute unimaginativeness of the rocket men. When they are engaging themselves in naming the environment on Mars (and by naming they think they can take possession of it), the captain claims that it “calls for a little imagination” (580). But the given names are the same as always, there is no innovation, or fantasy, or playfulness present at all (Lincoln Mountains, Washington Canal, Einstein Valley).

Everything starts again, and we can just hope we know what will happen with “the blue mountains rising beyond, the canals moving in the light, and… the soft wind in the air”... (580)

Dark they were, and golden-eyed, indeed.

=================================

Work Cited

Bradbury, Ray. “The Stories of Ray Bradbury.” Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. 567-80. Print.

Disobedience by Naomi Alderman

2010-01-25T10:59:00.004-07:00

I am almost done with Disobedience by Naomi Alderman. And I think I know why it doesn't work. It is impossible to identify with the heroine (Ronit). She is superficial, pathetic, insensible, very-very selfish and I could go on and on and on. It is not that there aren't (main) literary characters that are similarly negative but in this case Alderman seems to make tons of effort to make us like Ronit or at least understand her. I am not saying that this really strict and ortodox Jewish world with its patriarchs and silent manipulators is attractive in any sense, however the only character I managed to like up to a certain point is the husband, Dovid. I absolutely despise Esti, consider Ronit a monster, so comparing to them, Dovid is quite likeable. I am wondering whether the last 50-so pages will change anything.

The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch

2010-01-16T11:03:00.008-07:00

OK, this is gonna be short, for now: I find Murdoch's writing almost unbearably pretentious. I am not the one who refuses "artsy" things, but this seems to be too much, even for me.

We'll see. I am still in the beginning.

Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton

2009-11-03T18:01:00.009-07:00

Sooooo.... I am at half of the novel and there are three things I want to mention.

I almost did not pick up the book as it has this terrible, distasteful and hideous jacket design - I understand that it is supposedly funny hinting at some 50s (?) romance novel covers but there is nothing in it that suggests irony; the designer thought that putting together 50s style graphics automatically gives an ironic impression. Well, let me tell you: no, it does not.

Even when I read the blurb on the cover I thought it would be a kind of “How to Talk to a Widower”- type book – a very easy, very entertaining guilty pleasure. I did not read anything from the author, Jane Hamilton (whose name, by the way, sounds exactly like a name of a heroine in a typical romance novel, and this fact did not help me pick up the book either).

And finally the mea culpa, the pleasant surprise: Laura Rider's Masterpiece is extremely intelligently written, almost too intelligently (meaning: too artificially, too perfectly, too smoothly), and the story itself is growing onto me slowly but surely. It is a pretty delicate situation and of course the big question is whether Ms. Hamilton is talented enough to grab its delicacy and uneasiness. There is something creepy about the whole set-up, something absolutely not funny about the wife writing flirting letters to the radio star in the name and with the consent of her husband.

We'll see.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Part 8.

2009-10-26T09:19:00.004-06:00

Okay, okay, okay. Calm down.

I am almost in the end, hardly 30 pages are left, and it is a total chaos. The last sentence of the inspector twisted the story again. The hundredth time. I do not know anything, I do not understand anything.

I still have patience and excitement to go on and on and on. But I am more and more convinced this novel cannot be finished in the "right" way (from the writing technique's point of view or something). I do not want to finish this book and I want to finish it so badly.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Part 7.

2009-10-22T15:32:00.004-06:00

Well, I am not familiar with the genre, this genre, if this is the genre the novel seems to belong to (why the hell I keep thinking that nothing is really what it seems to be?!), but now that I have read about 2/3 of the book certain events start to pile up and they seem to be too many for CRZ to be able to "explain" in the end one by one. Unless of course there is going to be (1) a huge deus ex machina or (2) a generous, mysterious, leave-everthing-in-the -dark type ending. I am not sure I would be happy with either of them though. (However, everything seems to point to number 2, so I'd better get used to the idea.) And as fabulous and overwhelmingly rich as this book has been so far, I am terrified that CRZ won't have enough munition left for the whatever ending…

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Part 6.

2009-10-22T11:48:00.006-06:00

I am slowly but surely realizing that one of the protagonists of the novel (quite easily the real one) is Barcelona itself. It is unbelievable how atmospheric CRZ's text. Beautiful. I've been waking up, living with and going to bed with Barcelona for a while now, a gothic, sinister Barcelona, always wet, always under stormy skies, always at daybreak, neither day nor night. Haunting me anywhere I go.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Part 5.

2009-10-21T15:54:00.007-06:00

Ah, now I feel some inauthentic voice in the text – a dialog-chunk where CRZ let the temptation for an oh-so-easy score take over. But I needed to get to the 320^th page to experience this slight slip for the very first time in the novel – and that is, my friends, not a too bad report card over all, whatever the future might bring.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Part 4.

2009-10-21T12:34:00.017-06:00

…of course, now the question is not that what will happen - if it stays like this (and this is a huge 'if'), we can figure that out quite easily I guess, but rather: is it going to be final main story or will the main story be Daniel's fight against the Evil? And if yes, will he succeed? Is he going to survive this fight?

Here is my guess at the moment: he'll try to fight it but won't survive the battle. I just cannot see anyone being able to stand up to such an evil power, the Evil itself.

But that leads me to something else too: if I am right, and it is a Mephistopheles (Faust) story than how come the omnipotent Mr C. cannot see Daniel's every step and move? Or can he? Is this just a trick of his – to make D. think he can have thoughts and intentions of his own while in reality he cannot…? And who is in and who is just an innocent bystander in Daniel's life? Like: what is the role of Isabella?

Questions, question, questions. Still. Still no answers. (I love it.)

Sunday Salon: no milk today

2009-10-18T10:53:00.010-06:00

...uhm, books. No books today. The whole family is sick with the flu. Our weekly feature is returning next week. Until then enjoy these interesting book-related links.

Check out the news on the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair; this year the Guest of Honour was China; now, you know if I invite a guest I am not bashing them or if I want to, I don't invite them. Why the hell they made China the G of H if they can't tell two nice words about this country (mainly in the context of literarture).
How well do you know your own books? - asks Sarah Crown in the Guardian's Books Blog. Ah, what a familiar situation...
Watch out online book reviewers (including book bloggers)!
Disney-art, a bit... khm... differently...

Monday Movies - October 12, 2009

2009-10-12T10:23:00.006-06:00

Over at The Bumbles there is a weekly meme that is very close to my heart as it is about movies, good movies.

This week is about the best romantic movie I have ever seen.

Of course there is not one "best of", and so I could list a lot of "best" romantic movies as well as "best this" and "best that". However I am mentioning the one that I have seen (and will be watching) the most as I love it so much (but who doesn't).

Yes, it is of course Casablanca, directed by one of my fellow countrymen, Kertész Mihály, a.k.a. Michael Curtiz.

Ah, what could I write about this movie that hasn't already been written? Anyhow, it is comforting to know that the studio came to its senses and casted the Bergman & Bogart couple as the leads instead of Ronnie (the Reagan) and Ann Sheridan (as the original plan was). Brrrrr....

Oh, and one more thing: Bogart wrote a big chunk of the screenplay and so supposedly we should thank him for one of my all-time favourite quotes (that I use an average once a week, or more, haha): "Here's looking at you, kid..."

(You can read about more favourite romantic movies here.)

Sunday Salon: Mysteries of Winterthurn by Joyce Carol Oates

2009-10-11T08:00:00.002-06:00

Mysteries of Wintherthurn by Joyce Carol Oates
Published by Persea Books in 2008

(NOTE: Well. The thing is, Oates' name was all around in the past week in connection with the nominees for Nobel Prize for Lit – and honestly I hoped it was a mistake, mainly if you compare her to the other nominated authors. But just in case I have written a few words about an old novel of Oates to prove my point. Here it is – I don't want to throw it out just because she hasn't won. As for Herta Müller, the winner… well. She has to wait.)

Everyone read Bellefleur or them or Blonde. Everyone loved them. Me too. But this is an author who should write approximately tenth of the amount she is actually writing and stop and think first instead. 75% of her oeuvre is – although very popular in Reading Clubs I guess - totally mediocre (and I am very generous now). Mysteries of Winterthurn is not an exception either.

Success traps you much more easily than failure. While failure might discourage you success often makes you stuck-up and over-confident. That's what happens to Oates sometimes in her career and that is definitely the case with Winterthurn. It was written not much after Bellefleur and she evidently wanted to ride the success waves of that great family novel.

First of all, it is important to keep in mind that Oates' novel is supposed to be a classical mystery / detective story because this fact determines the critical approaches.

The story takes place in a small fictional American town in the East Coast – or better to say: stories as there are 3 ones (seemingly loosely) linked together by the same place and the same characters – a detective and his love. The question is: apart from this, is there any more, a bit deeper connection among the three stories?

We follow the protagonist, Xavier Kilgarvan's detective career from the beginning up to his 40s. In the first story there are several strange unnatural deaths in his own family and he manages to find out who stands behind all this. The second one is about some sadistic murders of factory workers (women) and in the third one a respected priest is murdered while in the middle of (seemingly) dubious acts. (You can read the book as a detective story, a whodunnit, so I am not telling you more.)

Well. I know, it is the umpteenth time I am writing this but again, Mysteries of Winterthurn seems to be an excellent example for the fact that a story itself is really not that important (=not enough) for a good novel. (In other words: the story is way over-estimated nowadays.) The literary value of a book lies mostly in the way an author handles (writes) a story. It is mainly true with mysteries. And that's where Oates slips: she evidently doesn't want to present an ordinary whodunnit, she feels she has to be "deeper", more "artistic". So she researches a whole bunch of cheap (American) pulp fiction from the beginning of the last century, decides to follow their formula but, as she is a "serious" novelist after all, she wants to write a persiflage, a kind of (not-too-funny) parody of these instead. So she uses a lot of archaisms, strange sentence-structures, fills her text with exalted fake-emotions, etc, etc. But there is a problem here: if you do decide on this genre you just cannot do things by halves. In a persiflage (parody) you either mock at somebody or not mock at them at all. You either need to take it totally seriously (and then drop the genre) or make fun of the characters, situations, etc. without any ("artistic") restrictions. That's what makes this genre work. Any other solution just confuses the receivers (=readers). Just like Oates confuses us in the Mysteries of Winterthurn: she evidently takes her almost-horror stories dead (haha) seriously but at the same time the way she tells us these stories (i.e. her writing style) is one of a parody. We tend to believe the seriousness of the stories but the archaic, mocking, sometimes pompous style that goes with it makes them sound discordant.

But even the stories themselves are not authentic in a literary sense. Yes, you can write unsolved mysteries very successfully (watch out: there is a good reason why I wrote "unsolved"; it is not necessarily referring to the actual story line, but again, I am not going to tell you more…), but you need to be an excellent writer to make it work (think of Edgar Allan Poe for instance). Or: you can create a surrealistic/enigmatic situation (chain of events) but in this case you need to give an explanation for the surrealism/enigma in a classic detective story. Unfortunately, Oates mixes up things again: she presents a mystery story in a pretty realistic way but leaves important elements of the same story enigmatically unsolved, causing uncertainty, unbalanced feelings in the reader (and not the good kind of literary uncertainty, believe me).

But let me to collect the positive features of the novel as well – and try to answer my beginning question at the same time: is there any more, a bit deeper connection among the three stories? After all, it says "A novel" and not "3 Novels" on the cover.

I have a feeling that if we can get over this mystery-persiflage thingie we might even discover what Oates' real purpose would be with her book. Somewhere deep (very, very deep, almost invisibly deep) she seems to talk about one thing in all 3 stories: she is outraged by the unscrupulous American Rich, who, with the help of their money, can overcome social morals, laws and anything or/and anybody who might stand in their way to live and do as they please. And after all this can be a suitable message for a reader to keep their motivation to finish the book.

Suitable – yes; literarily valuable – unfortunately: no.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Part 3.

2009-10-09T10:52:00.010-06:00

I have never understood totally what it meant when somebody said 'It was the kind of book I read as slowly as I was able to so that it could last longer..."

Now I know.

As in literature or any other act of communication, what confers effectiveness on it is the form and not the content. (...) Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating an emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated.

I think it rhymes to Wittgenstein but I still need to think it over. Not to speak of the fact how much it rhymes to what I've kept saying: the "story" being totally secondary after the form of a text. Yeah, baby.

(Part 1.
Part 2.)

And the Nobel goes to…

2009-10-08T10:30:00.006-06:00

Well, now we know where the award goes this year.

But there might be something we don't know. A quote:

One lesson to be taken from this: the Swedish Academy has a big leak, and someone made a mint placing money on Müller at 50/1. That's two years in a row now (though since Le Clézio's odds started out much better not quite as much was won off his victory) -- and you can be sure everyone is going to follow the Ladbrokes odds very, very closely next year.

First read this…

…and then this…

Interesting, to say the least. (And the LS is fantastic, as usual.)

Monday Movies - Dad characters

2009-10-05T08:50:00.018-06:00

Over at The Bumbles there is a weekly meme that is very close to my heart as it is about movies, good movies. I thought it is time to introduce this topic here as I am also planning to write about movies in the future.

This week is about movies with great Dad characters.

The greatest movie about a Dad is definitely Father directed in 1966 by István Szabó (he is the one who got an Academy Award back in 1981 for his 'Mephisto'). It is out here as well with English subtitles so all the English speaking community can enjoy it too.

More fantastic Dad characters in movies...? Let me see just on top of my head.

Les Nichols (played by Charles Durning) in Tootsie. (One of the best movies ever made about gender issues as well.)

As I mentioned a Dustin Hoffman movie, here is something everyone will mention as it is a really great one...

Ted Kramer in Kramer vs. Kramer.

But there are lots of others (don't forget, great means greatly written or greatly played too, not just "good" or "positive")...

Moses Pray (played by Ryan O'Neal) in Paper Moon.
Guido (played by Roberto Begnini) in Life is Beautiful.
Frantisek (played by Zdenek Sverák) in Kolya.
Helge (played by Henning Moritzen) in Festen.
Vito Corleone in Godfather (played by Marlon Brando).
Will (played by Hugh Grant) in About a Boy.
Bishop Edvard Vergerus (played by Jan Malsmjö) in Fanny and Alexander
Norman Thayer (played by Henry Fonda) in On Golden Pond.

(You can read more about Daddy movies here.)

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Part 2.

2009-10-04T19:48:00.009-06:00

In a bookstore I have just read a bit about the novel in Bookmarks. Well, it seems to me that the NYT mentions Faust so I am right about that. (Phew. I felt stupid... no, not stupid but rather over-educated.)

On the other hand it seems The Angel's Game hasn't gotten too good reviews (hasn't gotten too bad ones either), it has been judged as a mediocre effort, and everybody compares it to his previous novel of course. (See one of my posts about this - this comparison game is the stupidest thing ever.)

Again, it is absolutely possible that this novel goes downhills (has to drop quite a lot as it is now at a very very high point), but it has to be a totally different reason from what these idiot reviews are talking about. I haven't read even one authentic (=literary critical) reason so far for these face-makings.

Nevertheless, in spite of my common sense and knowledge, these things can put me off quite well.

(Part 1.)

Sunday Salon: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

2009-10-04T07:00:00.003-06:00

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Published by Delta, 2000.

Last week I wrote about a James Baldwin novel and promised I would go on this week with another one, a more famous one, Giovanni's Room.

Well, it almost did not happen.

Not because this novel is worse – as a matter of fact, just the opposite. Although it was written much earlier then If Beale Street Could Talk, Giovanni's Room is more completed, more absolute – artistically speaking. Its world is as dark as the world of Beale Street but in a different way. It is a love story as well but even more beautiful. Race is not mentioned here and its subject is not a "blacks vs. whites" conflict but rather the nature of love. And as such, Giovanni's Room is one of the most beautiful love stories ever written. However, our question seems evident: is it possible to write another "traditional" love story when everything has already been said and told about this topic? And the answer is: yes and no.

Baldwin's story is a love story between two young men. A great, tragic love. The text is not banal, not sentimental at all: it presents all the painful aspects of the agony a relationship can cause (adding homosexuality to all this), including a very thorough social context as well (see the exploitation manner of the old pimps). Baldwin pictures the situation with a real insider's view, thoroughly and in an extremely complex way. The novel is an unforgettable, inspiring and sometimes disturbing reading about the beauty and the anguish, the clashes, the social aspects and the overwhelming power of Love itself.

Other than it should be a compulsory reading for every bigoted person who ever questioned the rights of homosexual love, it is hard to say anything more.

As a matter of fact hard to utter a word after closing the book.

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Part 1.

2009-10-03T21:28:00.015-06:00

(NOTE: In my Hungarian book blog I have been doing this for a long, long time - a diary of my ongoing reading experiences; thoughts, ideas while I am reading a certain book, thoughts, ideas about that particular book. I wanted to do so in this blog as well, when all of a sudden... Well. It will be sufficient to say now that I do not care about that certain "all of a sudden" thingie any more.)

I am at about the 120th or so page and... I am sure it has been one of the best novels I have read in this year so far. Or in the last 2 years. Or ever. The problem: it is 530+ pages so I should keep up my very high opinion on it for another 410 pages... We'll see (and I definitely hope so).

I kinda read some of the reviews (the reliable ones I mean) - "kinda", as I really did not want to know any important story line in advance (other than the cover tells us of course, but I practically cannot avoid that), so I just skimmed through these reviews very superficially and quickly. The Angel's Game was published in Hungary too, so I even pulled up some Hungarian reviews as well.

But.

After just 120 pages the parallel with the Faust-story is sooooo evident to me. I cannot tell if it will be staying so (so please do not tell me if yes or no!), but if yes, why the heck nobody mentions this? Am I the only one who read the Master and Margarita by Bulgakov (another aspect of the parallel)? Or am I the only one who has noticed this? OK, I am smart, but that smart...? So I am assuming, the character named Andreas Corelli, won't turn out to be a Lucifer figure and that's why nobody mentions this... Although so far everything, I repeat, everything shows so: the outlook, his "family background", his being totally omniscient, even the title of the book, etc, etc. Or, of course, I haven't read the reviews very thoroughly or I haven't read the right reviews, etc.

The text itself is so disturbing that I cannot read more than a few pages (1 or 2 chapters) at a time and then I need to put it down for a short while, but I cannot wait to get back to it again. I know, I know, it is weird but that's how it is, that's how I am. Believe me, there are not too many books that have done this to me. Very intense, very disturbing, very complex, very thick text. Layers and layers and layers. Incredible. So far at least.

And the characters. Not even the protagonist (Daniel - who is, or has been so far, the least interesting out of the 3), but take the woman (Cristina) or the (seemingly? really?) altruist Pedro Vidal. So complex, so complicated characters that I could write essays on them. And again: I have only read less then the quarter of the whole book (roughly)! But in this first part so many things are happening (both on the levels of reality and symbolism), so many emotions and thoughts are crammed in that all this would be more than enough already for a separate novel.

I should read (=catch up) with my Les Miserables but I cannot think about anything else but The Angel's Game.

Came the right time, right place...? Yes. Definitely.

Sunday Salon: If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

2009-09-27T19:20:00.000-06:00

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Published by Delta, 2000.

Well. Let's face it: we have read enough love stories already. What new revelation can be said about this topic?

Oh, but it can be. Seriously. And to prove my point let me tell you about two short novels by James Baldwin I have read lately: If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Giovanni's Room (1956).

The title of Beale Street is a bit misleading: the novel is definitely not about one particular street but rather about the world of Harlem, or probably even more.

After taking stock of the main ingredients we might just shake our heads: no, no, no! What clichés! What stereotypical characters! What boring schemes! The inhuman, wicked (and what's more: albino!) policeman; the quasi altruist priests (who do not shy away from a little bit of stealing either – but that's OK as the greatest classics in literature have already "legalized" stealing for the poor's sake); a loving couple whose love is of course based on devotion and trust, unconditional belief in each other; the conformity of an overly ambitious family that is ready to sacrifice its most appealing member, the innocently accused son; and so on and so forth.

But not so fast. Baldwin was one of the greatest writers of our times (died in 1987), and we realize once again the truth in what I mentioned not a long ago about Cervantes: the subject matter is really secondary; the most important factor of a great work is the talent that creates something outstanding in the end from an otherwise trite stuff.

This Romeo & Juliet story is presented with a very passionate, moving writing style and with totally credible psychological and sociological insights. The seemingly stereotypical characters and situations are nicely balanced by other features and figures, like the protagonist's lonely sister with her rich and pretty assertive personality, Baldwin's sympathy for the mother who escapes into bigotry and social pretense (an otherwise typical negative character), or the lawyer who is pretty indifferent and solicitous at first but then gets very keen about "doing the right thing" (and endangering his career at the same time), etc. The construction of the novel also adds to its greatness: Baldwin cleverly feeds the story's antecedents and context bit by bit and it surely makes us want to read on and on.

And the result? This initially (and seemingly) not too exciting and ambitious novel gradually becomes a truly magnificent work of art in the hand of an outstanding writer.

(I am planning to write about Giovanni's Room next week.)

Sunday Salon: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

2009-09-13T07:00:00.008-06:00

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
Published in 1995 by W. W. Northon & Company.

(I am about to read another Burgess novel and digging around his name on my bookshelves I came across A Clockwork Orange; as I hadn't read it for a long time I spent a few days re-reading some parts to refresh my memories. And if so I thought I might as well write about it. )

There is no need to introduce Anthony Burgess.

The critical feedback of his novels is usually quite abundant - however, some critics remark that while he can recognize (and verbalize) the most problematic issues of our world he cannot show us solutions, and anyhow, he is too pessimistic, too nihilistic, too this or that. As for me I agree with his being a pessimist, but need to add also that his attitude towards these issues and his conclusions seem to be undoubtedly true and authentic.

One of the reasons for Anthony Burgess' huge success is evidently his constant experiments in creative writing. To mention a few: the Napoleon Symphony (1974) is a literary translation of the structure of Beethoven's Eroica symphony - the "movements", the moods but even the ratio of the different parts of the novel are very strictly based on this musical piece. Another one, the first Burgess novel I read in the beginning of the 80s, One Hand Clapping (1961) was built from the magical slogans of our consumer society: television ads. (Supposedly "the entire vocabulary ... amounts to approximately 800 words".) So mostly and seemingly it is the language itself that makes Burgess "Burgess": the author often confesses that he is obsessed with linguistics. Reading A Clockwork Orange surely convinces us of this. The question is: what lies beneath?

There are innumerous essays, reviews and such on A Clockwork Orange (originally published in 1962), Stanley Kubrick directed a great (although very controversial) movie based on it and all and all the novel has undeniably become one of the modern classics. If we manage to overcome our natural creeps while reading the novel, we are rewarded with a long list of fundamental questions of life that only the greatest and most important works can raise.

But be aware: if we try to prove that the "real" world and the world of A Clockwork Orange are basically the same, we probably would fail (although now and then a terrible possibility appears that somewhere somehow its nightmarish vision might come true): Burgess does not hold up a mirror in front of us, rather makes us look into his special telescope. The scene we see is a dystopia (an anti-utopia if you like) - just like in Huxley's Brave New World and mainly of course Orwell's 1984.

In spite of many dark touches A Clockwork Orange is an absolutely enjoyable pageturner (although it takes a while till we get used to Nadsat¹ - the language they speak). Burgess said he tried "to make comic novels about man's tragic lot". It is a mystery indeed why we cannot take the story's monstrosities dead soberly. Why does it make us laugh and shiver at the same time? The author helps us solve this paradoxical feature: first of all he passes a judgement on der stand der dinge² by placing the story, told in past tense, in a vague future, although unlike Orwell and Huxley, Burgess does not even tell us exactly when his novel takes place. (We learn that men have already been on the Moon, and a letter from 1960 is considered to be "starry" - old). Another thing that helps us understand the novel's paradox mentioned above, is Burgess' brilliant linguistic trouvaille³ that lets us take the comfortable role of an outsider, an observer only. It is hard to grab the exact moment of the reader's (the "receiver's") giving up their reluctance - but the use of the Russian-like slang in the English context is so natural and evident that after a short while we are totally convinced: it is indeed the only form Burgess can use for telling his story.

The novel's genius slang Burgess created also gives us some ideas about time (when the events take place). Mostly, these words are bizarre and weird mixtures of Russian and English and indicate that we are probably after a time when the two dominant empires (the US and the Soviet Union) have been united keeping all the disadvantages and worst features of both. This fusion hints at a very scary fact (from that time period): the opposite sides are not really antagonistic at all, what's more, their fundamental characteristics are practically the same.

There are some other linguistic inventions of Burgess that are more than just clever tricks. Even the title of the book includes one of the most important messages embedded in a word play: "orange" refers to the Malay word for man ("orang" - like in "orangutan") and so we get a pretty clear vision from the very beginning ("the automated man" or "man of a mechanical device", etc.) what we encounter with in the novel. The connection between the protagonist and the writer's name (Alex and F. Alexander) is evident (and it is not too far fetched to discover the cross-reference in it to Alexander the Great as well). But there is more here than meets the eye: lex is the root of the Greek word lexis (word, phrase) and the a is an affix (also in Greek) meaning "without / not with". And even more: in Latin lex means "law". Here, you've got it all: Alex's name itself includes two of his most important personal characteristics: he is an autonomous young man who is not willing to fear any law, and as he is not a man of words either he reacts to everything by acting immediately and spontaneously. In this time, the time of the novel, reading books is not "cool", nobody knows about Mozart, the classical European (humanist) utopia is distorted and Alex becomes the proprietor (rather: a mutation) of culture, moral guidelines, ideals of freedom and aesthetic norms. Although Alex's views of life are rather bizarre (to say the least), they are at least coherent, and real art with stable values has a substantial effect on him. His violence-loving personality attracts and puts us off at the same time: in the novel's world violence is paradoxically the only way to save his dignity - the State forces everyone into a numb, conformist, automatic, zombie state, of which brainwashing is an everyday, ordinary tool. In this sense animal instincts taking over anyone seems to be quite human indeed.
______________________________
¹ It might be interesting for some of you that for a (more than 40 year-old) person from Hungary (that used to be a part of the so called "Soviet-controlled communist block") Nadsat is far easier to get used to than for somebody who has never studied Russian. Russian was a compulsory language to learn at school in Hungary up until 1989. So most of the Nadsat words sound way familiar and the novel gave me almost no difficulty to understand from the very first sentence. But I can see it might be hard for a lot of new readers (even in Hungary as Russian is practically out of schools there).
² The state of things. Originally the title of a Wim Wenders-movie (1982).
³ Idea, inspiration (fr)

Sunday Salon: Don Quixote (Don Quijote), Part 2.

2009-09-06T08:06:00.003-06:00

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
Published in 2005 by Harper Perennial.

(Part 1 can be read here.)

First of all let me tell you how glad I am that I have finally read this novel. The book publishing industry is pouring out new and newer and newest "sensational" works every day - and while I am trying to get some information before I try a newly "discovered" author, sometimes it is just the urge to keep a tab on the literary pulse (which is not even too important if you think about it, and mainly not leading to real values most of the time; but I am made of human, and such, can be corrupted easily). Consequently, the classics are often play a secondary role in my reading schedule and I am ashamed of it quite well. It is very rare that while reading a book we cry out excitedly: "At last a novel that has not been written with the help of yesterday's readings!" (to paraphrase Chamford if I remember right).

The DQ-volumes proved to me again a well-known commonplace: the subject matter (the "material" or the "story") is basically secondary; the most important factor of a great work is the talent that creates something outstanding in the end from an otherwise not-too-intriguing stuff. Take this masterpiece for instance: in the beginning Cervantes' goal does not seem to be more than creating a parody of the then-fashionable novels of chivalry. First we do not understand his effort - that kind of literature would have died out soon anyhow (after all, the much more "realistic" view in the arts was already awoken in the 16th century, after the dark Middle Ages). However, we soon notice that in its writer's hands the theme way exceeds its original goals. The Don, who seems to be a pathetic, crazy person in the first few chapters, becomes one of life's great symbolic figures by the middle of the first volume (a symbolic figure, by the way, whose symbolism is more meaningful in the European nations' constant identity crisis, than it can ever be over the Atlantic Ocean - hmmm... another topic for a post...?). When we are introduced to the protagonists we simply shrug: what do we have to do with these silly guys? But amidst big laughs we gradually find their story more and more tragic, until we suddenly realize that we are reading a story about ourselves, we are them, the essence of our two inner worlds. Or in other words, we can easily identify ourselves with both Don Quijote and Sancho Panza; reading the stories is like looking in a magic mirror: it makes us face the two sides of our life.

While the first part is more ironic, more of a critique of Reality's Great Misunderstanding by either Don Quijote or Sancho (we can never be sure which is the real thing), the second part - being as funny and ironic as the first one on the surface - is much more the Don's inner, personal way to trying to accept the other world (Sancho's world, if you like) around him. And if Life itself is so scary, so terrifying, so overpowering that the picture we get from Cervantes' beautiful work (or simply by looking around us now), then who knows where the borderline is between sanity and insanity. Maybe it is in charity work for others, maybe it is in giving up our dreams, maybe it is in treasure hunting in places scattered with garbage, maybe it is in being too rational, maybe it is in not seeing in life what it could be.

Don Quixote a madman, and we sane; (...) I'd like to know now which is the madder, he who is so because he cannot help it, or he who is so of his own choice?

Maybe the world would be much more perfect (beautiful?) if it were Don Quijote's world (which is, by the way, the reaction to the eternal dissatisfaction in Life - we can't afford not to build it up inside us) but I guess the real Reality is somewhere between the two viewpoints (represented by the two protagonists): ideals without reality are as false as a reality without ideals.

However, I can't help feeling quite miserably by the end: Don Quijote is definitely one of the most bitter, most disillusioned judgements anyone can tell about us, people. According to Cervantes, we cannot even imagine any ideals let alone live with them - and I cannot argue with this at all.

And still.

There was a very famous Hungarian poet with a very tragic life, Attila József, who, at the dawn of the European fascism, when humankind reached one of its deepest points, wrote a beautiful poem, welcoming Thomas Mann's visit in Hungary. That's what he said in the last four lines (translated by Vernon Watkins):

Sit down, please. Let your stirring tale be said.
We are listening to you, glad, like one in bed,
To see to-day, before that sudden night,
A European mid people barbarous, white.

Let's not give up our hope.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

2009-09-02T05:22:00.010-06:00

SPOILER ALERT!

In the 18th century an old-new genre was (re)born in England, the Victorian Gothic. One of the best known predecessors of it was Ann Radcliffe. Although she was the one who (re)introduced this genre to the Western Canon, nowadays she is best known from another English novelist, Jane Austen: Catherine in Northanger Abbey is a big fan of hers.

After the childish monster-stories of the time, full of giants, witches and other supernatural elements, Radcliffe's novels had refreshingly new voice. Her intention was to take the readers to some (seemingly) more realistic fear, horror, even terror and create a somewhat intellectual, spiritual atmosphere instead of delivering a simple, boring fable.

Her books mostly depict the relationship between members of the aristocrats and representatives of the middle- and lower class - in the novels the latter people are usually trapped for some reasons and want to get out of their dire situation. Generally there are several story lines and they become more and more mysterious, ambiguous. Supernatural signs, unexplainable events, seemingly scattered, scarry occurences add to the excitement. Her totally unique, quite bizarre and suggestive points of view, her sometimes intentionally ambiguous, vague prose surely keep her readers thrilled to the very end, while she doesn't forget about being romantic either. But, just when the readers get totally confused about what is real what is not, who is a ghost and who is not, Radcliffe switches her tactics and reveals her cards, explaining everything and everybody - not unlike Hercule Poirot in an Agatha Christie-mystery.

Ann Radcliffe's most famous work is The Mysteries of Udolpho, first published in 1794. It is probably one of best pre-Victorian gothic novels and has had constant followers and fans not just among readers but authors as well. Here is the plot, according to Wikipedia:

Emily St. Aubert is the only child of a landed rural family whose fortunes are now in decline. Emily and her father share an especially close bond, due to their shared appreciation for nature. After her mother's death from a serious illness, Emily and her father grow even closer. She accompanies him on a journey from their native Gascony, through the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast of Rousillon, over many mountainous landscapes. During the journey, they encounter Valancourt, a handsome man who also feels an almost mystical kinship with the natural world. Emily and Valancourt quickly fall in love.

Emily's father succumbs to a long illness. Emily, now orphaned, is forced by his wishes to live with her aunt, Madame Cheron, who shares none of Emily's interests and shows little affection. Madame Cheron marries Montoni, who brings them to Udolpho, separating Emily from her suitor Valancourt. Montoni threatens Madame with violence to force her to sign over her properties in Toulouse, which upon her death would otherwise go to Emily. Many frightening but coincidental events happen within the castle, and in the end Emily takes control of her property and is reunited with Valancourt.

The Mysteries of Udolpho with its characters bearing psychological depth in modern sense, its frequent descriptions of nature, travelogues, poems is definitely the forerunner of today's horror stories both in literature and in the movies. In other words: a great, fun novel.
__________________________________
I would have gotten this book through a member giveaway in LibraryThing. However, the promised book never arrived. I was so curious about the novel that I checked it out from my library. I am still waiting for the book to show up at my doorstep, now, that I have read it, even more...

Book Review Blog Carnival

2009-09-02T04:43:00.003-06:00

The 25th Book Review Blog Carnival is available for your reading pleasure at This Girl’s Bookshelf. I am honored to be included with two reviews of mine. Thanks, Joy!

Sunday Salon: Der Stand der Dinge, or: another book snob speaks out

2009-08-30T08:15:00.003-06:00

BookSnob over at Required Reading According to a Book-Snob writes:

I often find that the first book that I read by an author is my favorite. Which leads me to wonder if I am really so good at choosing books that I always choose their best work first, or if, upon really liking a novel, I create expectations for the author's next work that can't possibly be achieved.

It immediately reminded me how different the literary criticism used to be in Europe (at least in Central-Europe where I am from) from its American counterpart.

There are unbelievable amounts of books published each day. Considering their literary value, 99% of it is just plain garbage. The book-publishing industry follows the same pattern as the American way of life in general: I want the most and I want it easily, quickly and very cheap. Indeed. "There is no free meal!" - they say, but I should add, yes, there is, you can have a free meal, all you need to do is to decrease the quality (in literature as well as anywhere else) until it is beneath the frog's ass (as the Hungarian saying goes).

In Europe we used to talk about authors' career, in the US they talk about books' career. Very often the writer's name is secondary now, people do not make any effort to remember them, book lists (and movie lists or/and any kind of art lists) are almost always set up according to titles not their authors. (Or think of the end of a movie: credits are shown in a speed or in so small letters that no one can read them; it is not important to anyone, who cares about a fantastic photographer or one of the best editors in the world?? Give me the meat! Let me tell you something then: in the Hungarian movies not just they used to show each credit for a very respectful - i.e. readable - time, but - horribile dictu! - put all the credits in the beginning, recognizing this way each and every person who contributed to a work of art...)

Horrible, horrible, horrible.

In the past a writer (of any nation) used to write and publish, let's say, 25 books in his life; that was their oeuvre. And the whole oeuvre was read and re-read to be able to decide whether they were good authors (all those whose work was mostly good) or bad writers (all those whose work was mostly shit). Nowadays (mainly on this side of the Atlantic, let's face it) if a writer (or any artist as a matter of fact) gets the spotlight once in their lifetime (meaning: not just manages to publish a book but this book gets some kind of a feedback from either its readers or/and the literary critics), they should consider themselves extremely lucky. In this case there might be some possessed person (even among the critics!) who happens to read the author's second book as well, but mostly, they are strictly judged by their very first child. And if the second installment of the oeuvre is not similar to the first (successful) one the author might as well can bury himself deeply as he is forgotten for ever. (The tragic thing is that similarity is expected not just in its - good - quality - that would be totally correct and acceptable - but also, in topic, writing technique, style, etc, etc.) The situation is the same if the first book is not the best - and our writer sill engages himself in a future writing career. Although even the worst first book of an outstanding author is usually much better than a new and newer and newest so-called "sensational" one-day-wonder, it does not mean that great writers' careers show a permanent level of quality. (Péter Esterházy, who is one of the best authors in the world nowadays, could never have achieved anything in this way: even if we don't consider the fact that it takes a lot of creative mental effort to read his postmodern texts, his first two collections of novellas and short stories - although quite interesting and very promising - were quite behind his third volume, literary critically speaking, and this certain third book practically changed the Hungarian literary scene for ever. But then came a long (21 years!) series of shorter books of different kind (with varying level - mostly pretty high though) until we got to another giant achievement, the fantastic Celestial Harmonies, etc, etc - there, you've got it: the ups and not-so-much-downs of a genius' output. But I could have mentioned lots of others, even the Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész as well as American giants, like the movie maker Woody Allen - who is more popular and respected in Europe than in the US, which is not a coincidence of course.

In spite of the first impressions, this post is not necessarily an outburst against the American mass culture and its consumers (much less of course against BookSnob's very thought provoking writing). Can't be anyhow - the same signs of superficiality and decreasing quality can be noticed in Europe (sadly, my home country, Hungary is definitely not an exception either) as well as all over the world. (True enough, and to be fair, it can mostly be thanked to the American hegemonial ambitions.)

Instead, this post is about the sad fact that nowadays - starting from the US - nobody gives a shit (pardon my French) as for the long-term, real individual achievements (or lack of it) in the Arts. Individuality is the official national slogan here (and gradually all over the world where the American type capitalism shows up) but in reality just the opposite happens: no one cares about true individual efforts. If the reasons for this ignorance were purely aesthetic (meaning: ignoring the aesthetically bad pieces), I could accept the situation more or less.¹ But alas, for a long while it has been totally different: "for my money I want the goodies that I can consume very fast, very easily, without any cognitive effort, and I want a lot of it, regardless its origin or source".

So the reply to BookSnob's question ("would we be better readers if authors were anonymous?") can be nothing else but a horrified, protesting, and (yes, let's be European snobs) nostalgic European scream.
___________________________

¹ You might ask what this "aesthetic" mean and mainly, who am I to tell anyone what is good and what is bad. Well, now. While I might not be sure of giving you a good, practical definition of this branch of philosophy (much more knowledgeable philosophers haven't been able to do this very easily either), I can tell you, whole heartingly agree with the abovementioned Esterházy, that there is no "bad" literature: a piece is either good and then it is Literature, or bad, and then it is not Literature (let's call it garbage instead). In other words, aesthetics have pretty good guidelines that can be studied, looked up, etc (warning: takes cognitive effort to do so), and it should never, ever be mistaken for someone's personal taste. I have not been able to sit through a Tarkovsky-movie since I immersed myself in the world of Art (about, oh, 30 years ago, give or take a few), but it has never occured to me, under no circumstances, to declare Tarkovsky a bad director. Because he is a genius - and my movie preferences do not change this fact.

(Of course it would be well worth writing a separate post about what has been involved into the Canon and when and how. But it is a totally different story.)

A Shakespeare Challenge - revised edition

2009-08-23T09:22:00.008-06:00

So here is my revised list for the Shakespeare challenge - I tried to mix Hungarian lit with English language lit:

1. Book of Memories by Péter Nádas (re-read some parts of it; the father figure of the novel takes quite a lot after Richard III by Shakespeare)

2. Halmi by Géza Bereményi (a play based on Hamlet by a legendary Hungarian author and film maker - a re-read)

3. Nothing Like The Sun by Anthony Burgess

4. Amint az égben meg volt írva by Károly Norman (a Hungarian short story based on a Shakespeare theme by a not-so-remarkable although readable author)

5. Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike

6. Balta a fejbe by Attila Lőrinczy (a play based on a Shakespeare tragedy by an obscure Hungarian writer - came across him by searching with Google, the play was actually performed by a Hungarian theater group, now I am curious)

7. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
I have seen the movie of course but never gotten around to read the actual play it was based on. Maybe now.

+3 re-watching

- King Lear (1971) and The Tragedy of Hamlet (2002) - movies by the genius Peter Brook)
- Shakespeare Behind Bars (2005) - a great, great documentary by Hank Rogerson)

Sunday Salon: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

2009-08-23T08:30:00.005-06:00

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.
Published in 2009 by Delacorte Press.

Right in the beginning I have to confess: I bow with pleasure to the steady critical success of this book. It is a fine quality and totally enjoyable summer (beach) reading, no doubt.

At first glance it is a traditional whodunnit with a twist: an exceptionally bright (and exceptionally wordy) 11-year-old girl is our tour guide, or the detective if you like. The story moves around some famous and very valuable stamps, stamp collecting, respectful and shady stamp collectors and so forth. Let's leave it as it is now, after all we are talking about who has done it, aren't we?

It is extremely hard to re-invent this genre or even just write something outstanding; there are no stories and variations of this theme that have not been told already. So mystery writers nowadays try to let the story line play the second fiddle and give the recital part to other ingredients. It can be the character (features) of the protagonist, the circumstances or / and environment, the era of the crime, the hidden layers of the book, an extra "message", etc. The best feature of Bradley's work is, that other than the story line he managed to come up with an intriguing book in a lot of areas mentioned above. In other words, it is an enjoyable reading for those as well who do not like to read mysteries.

Just to give you some hints what I mean: Bradley does an excellent and quite moving job of describing the father's deep sorrow and loneliness he feels about losing his wife whom he adored, and how these feelings and emotions determine his relationship with his three daughters. It takes a great writer to depict such a vivid and plausible character as the mother purely through the remnants of her husband and her children's memory. So much so that this long disappeared woman becomes, indeed, one of the main characters of the novel. Also, there is a wonderful (under)story going on between Flavia (the 11-year-old wonder) and her two sisters: whoever has siblings will laugh and cry out loudly recognizing the oh-so-famililar situations and dialogs. Ah, and those constant plannings of poisoning that sister(s) of ours (ok, just a bit, just to put something in her lipstick so that she gets biiiiig ugly swollen lips for her first date of the love of her life) to teach them a lesson, but on the other hand, jump right in comfortingly when they are so desperate about their not-so-much piano talent...

To mention some of the (very few) weak points of the novel: I have found quite a few inconsequential events - or better to describe them as "why the heck do they do that, other than give the author a (forced) reason to go on with the main story line (the crime)?" Think of for instance Flavia and the innkeeper's daughter choosing a very elaborate way to get to a certain room in the inn so that nobody can see them. But: (1) why does it have to be a secret? and mainly (2) why does the innkeeper daughter have to take Flavia to this room just to tell her that the guest harrassed her? Oh, yes: we are taken there because Flavia needs to find something in the room (I am not telling you what), that is absolutely crucial for Bradley, the author to go on with the story... Bad, bad, bad. Also, there are a bit too many cultural hints to establish the era's (1950s' England) atmosphere, which is totally unnecessary as they do not really take us back in time at all. For that matter the era itself is something that is not important in this case: the novel could take place in our present as well as in the 20s.

However, the greatest achievement of Alan Bradley is, that he created a totally plausible 11-year-old character in spite of the fact that we know for sure from the very first moment that no real 11-year-old could act and speak like Flavia no matter how bright they are. In other words the author managed to achieve an extremely rare trick: we immediately believe whatever he wants us to believe, gladly and enthusiastically resisting our real life experience and common sense. And this is a sign of a true talent, indeed.

A Shakespeare Challenge

2009-08-18T13:02:00.031-06:00

I don't do book challenges because usually I prefer not reading the same kind of books (or books of the same topic/author, etc) one after the other or relatively close to each other. However, I could not resist this Shakespeare challenge, having been Shakespeare my constant companion (in this way or other) for almost 35 years now. (Not to speak of the fact that the logo of the challenge is perfectly harmonius with my blog's color scheme - OK, just joking.) I will try to find works other than the bard's own, although I might just re-read some of his greatest plays or re-watch my favorite movies (that gives me the same joy over and over again). At the moment these are my choices (reserving the right to change my mind of course):

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
I have seen the movie of course but never gotten around to read the actual play it was based on. Maybe now.
Nothing Like the Sun and / or
A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess
Burgess is a trademark, although the subtitle ("Shakespeare's Love Life") sounds to me a bit sensational. We'll see. (Away with my prejudices, haha!)
Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike
Updike can be very good and very bad. Would be interesting to find out which one in this novel.
And maybe Hamlet by John Marsden and / or The Players by Stephanie Cowell.
Got them from different lists on Shakespeare fiction, they sound pretty solid and hopefully not too much whodunnit.

Tried to avoid the tons of mysteries with similar subject matter as much as I could (love the genre, but in this case I was looking for something more complicated and thought provoking - after all, as I have mentioned, not an everyday event that I participate in a challenge).

But again, I might as well (re)watch some really, really good Shakespeare-movies, such as:

King Lear, directed by the genious Peter Brook (I am also thinking of re-watching his theater-play directions that were released on dvds)
Shakespeare Behind Bars, a 2005 terrific documentary about a prison company's annual Shakespeare performances. Unforgettable.

P.S. The list has already changed... I managed to find some fine Hungarian pieces (there are not too many) and I happily and enthusiastically included them in the "chosen ones" group... Details later.

Sunday Salon: Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

2009-08-16T08:33:00.004-06:00

Bad Monkeys, by Matt Ruff.
Published in 2007 by HarperCollins.

There haven't been too many books that I wanted to throw in a corner from frustration never to be picked up again. But Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff managed to reach this (in)tolerance level of mine all right, and it did so on its 70-something page, at about the third (!) of the novel.

The whole reading experience started out quite well and hopeful though, with an intriguing (although not too original) story.

White room: white walls, white floor, white table, white clothes, white white. We are supposedly in a psychiatric ward of a prison with the protagonist and her doctor, Richard Vale, who is conducting an interrogation of Jane Charlotte. She has been arrested for killing a certain Mr. Dixon. We learn right away that Charlotte is a member of a department (called Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, in other words: Bad Monkeys) of a quasi secret organization that fights evil. Dixon's murder - according to Jane - was a mistake as he was actually not a bad guy.

And so starts this unbelievably fast, unbelievably insane journey into the... nowhere.

As I mentioned, at around the 70th page I started to feel uneasy about the novel - started to be afraid that all these gimmicks of Ruff's writing are just cover-ups for the unbearable nothingness of its existence. And boy was I right. A lot of critiques pointed out the evident "borrowings" from a huge amount of great writers of the genre, but sadly enough the protagonist also bears similarities with Evanovich's primitive Stephanie Plum (to whom I was introduced a couple of weeks ago so that I should not pick up another of her books again in my whole life). Consequently, I can't even tell that Ruff's resources were at least first-class literary persons.

One of the main (and extremely frustrating) gimmicks of Ruff is that he tries to sell the stuff as a smart novel with deep, hidden philosophical meaning(s). Which, let me tell you honestly, could have been there: not the neverending "what is good, what is evil" problem (let's face it: it is a bit too big and a bit too general bite for even a much more knowledgeable person), but there is a dialogue-crumb towards the end between the bad Jane and the good Jane about the perception of reality - and this could have been a great concept for the novel indeed (starting somewhere around Berkely - esse est percipi - and Hume).

What we left with though, is a totally pointless, pretentious... nothing. Not worth a minute of our precious reading time.

Sunday Salon: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

2009-08-09T08:14:00.003-06:00

Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie.
Published in 2002 by Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

There was a legendary writer in the Hungarian literary world, István Örkény, who beyond doubt is one of the finest absurdist (writer of absurd prose) in the world. He wrote a collection of short stories - really, really short ones, so much so that the title of this legendary book is One Minute Stories (available in English as well). One of the most beautiful pieces is about the magic of literature - although the original Hungarian title is "Ballad about the Power of Poetry" (check it out here - pdf file - or here).

That's exactly was the first thought that occured to me while I was reading Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, a short literary allegory about... well, the power of literature.

Although the environment and the events are anything but allegoric. During Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution two teenagers - being sons of well known and succesful doctors and as such, parts of the hatred intelligentsia - are declared enemies of the states and sent to a remote mountain village for "re-education". They are surrounded by unbelievably poor and ignorant peasants (ex-opium growers turned into Mao-communists) and their fate is about to be finally and hopelessly doomed when they come across a bunch of classical European literature (like Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo, and so forth). Through the novels a whole new world reveals itself to them and to a beautiful local girlfriend of one of the boys (the little Chinese seamstress). The power of literature affects not just the boys but changes the life of the girl for ever: Dai Sijie's story is a Pygmalion story as well - where the role of Pygmalion is equally divided between the boys and the members of the European classical canon.

The most intriguing features of the book is its humor and its language: it is written in a very exact, precise, spare, "outsider" prose most of the time that adds to an interesting dichotomy: the narrator, who is actually one of the boys (presumably Dai Sijie himself or a close alter ego of his), is of course an "insider" but with this style he manages to keep some elegant distance from the text (and the events) as well and that goes to the authencity of the novel.

That being said, Sijie unfortunatelly let it loose in the end: the sentences are roaming around a bit too much (think of the embedded story of the preacher-turned-streetsweeper of which function seems to be quite puzzling), and then there are the "audience intervenes" parts (The Old Miller's story, Luo's Story and The Little Seamstress's Story), that tells me Sijie was not able to solve a writing-technique problem - namely, to provide some information on the characters that the narrator himself simply could not have. (Ouch.)

All and all it is an authentic, intelligent, quietly humorous Bildungsroman, a certain L'Éducation sentimentale if you like, but mainly and most importantly it is a deeply honest salute to the power of literature, that can give us all hope and faith, what's more, it can be the only straw that keeps us alive.

The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman

2009-08-02T22:39:00.012-06:00

The Ritual Bath, by Faye Kellerman.
Published in 1999 by Avon.

The Ritual Bath is usually categorized as a mystery novel (it even won a prestigious award in this field, the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel in 1987), but is rather a contemporary romance novel in a whodunit environment. (And I am telling so without ever reading a so called main stream 'romance' work of any kind...)

On her way home from a ritual bathhouse ('mikvah') a young woman is brutally raped in a small, strict Orthodox Jew community, near Los Angeles. One of her friends, recently widowed Rina Lazarus, calls the police and she is also the only one among the religious villagers who seems to be willing to cooperate with the authorities. No wonder that the dashing, 6+ foot, freshly divorced policeman, who is in charge of the case, feels closer and closer to Rina. With some twisting and turning the story unstoppably and pretty calculably rushes towards its happy ending (that includes solving the rape plus murder case on the sidelines as well).

One of the the good things of the novel is its environment of course: it is trying to destroy a common prejudice that the followers of any orthodox religion must be weirdos but at least totally self-centered people rejecting other religions and outsiders. The community of Jewtown (as it is called in the story) is pretty confident but friendly and relatively open; boys are playing with G.I Joe action figures, their parents buy stuff in Target, a lot of them subscribe to 'secular' magazines and newspapers, they watch regular TV channels, drink Coke, and so on. True enough, if they go to a ball game, they are strictly banned to eat a good ol' hot dog (instead, they carry their kosher snacks), observe Sabbath very seriously (no electricity use, no work), follow a precisely described dress code anywhere they go, and of course keep the regulations of the ritual bath.

The title ('The Ritual Bath') can have several meanings, among them some symbolic as well: first of all of course the actual central element of the story, but we can take it as a symbol for Peter Decker on different levels: it is this case that puts him out of his past's misery (the residues of a divorce), but also, it is this case that connects him with his real spiritual self as well. The events also help Rina to understand what she wants from the rest of her life - as so far she has been burdened with her past too.

Kellerman writes good dialogs most of the time (for instance there is some mannerism in the beginning when Marge - one of the police officers - talks, etc), approaches her topic quite tactfully and empathetically and develops the Peter-Rina relationship very nicely and realistically (OK, 75% realistically...) With this being said, the novel is hardly more than a plain, although well-written romantic (romance?) story. The mystery part is forgettable but page-turningly (is there such a word?) enjoyable (I figured out the rape incident at about the 50th page or so, and it is not getting better later). For me the most annoying parts are when the text becomes an encyclopedia entry on the kollel life or on other orthodox Judaic cultural issue.

The Ritual Bath is fun to read, easy to read and easy to forget. Perfect beach book.

Sunday Salon: Cervantes: Don Quijote (Part 1)

2009-08-02T07:55:00.013-06:00

For an online book club I have been reading Don Quijote (Don Quixote) by Cervantes. We have just finished the first part and it is time for some reflective thoughts on the novel so far.

Right away we bump into a very intriguing and quite easily the key part of the whole text: the Author's Preface. Let's try to answer the "accomplishment" question from this point of view.

"...if I mistake not, this book of yours (...) is, from beginning to end, an attack upon the books of chivalry."

This sentence of Cervantes' so-called (advise-giving) friend can be (is) controversial of course. As - no doubt - it can be interpreted as Cervantes' intention with the book, but again: in the context of this explicitly ironic and distance-keeping preface why exactly this sentence should be taken seriously? Further more: the whole book ("novel") seems to deny this statement.

On the other hand, the idea, that DQ is merely an attack on the books of chivalry (quasi), definitely made a huge impact on the reception/reading history of it. The Preface pulls the "novel" itself into its own present tense, forces its time onto the "novel", forces its "truth" onto the "novel's" truth. (Along the same lines with Derrida's description of a Preface in Dissemination.)

Ortega y Gasset also explains the special "novel" status of DQ with a similar time- and context-change (that is, at the same time, a breaking with the epic story telling) in his famous "Meditations on Quixote": DQ, the "novel", is actually the Past pulled into the Present, a still-epic book of chivalry put into another context. In other words, the DQ itself is a Preface to other books of chivalry, and after reading Cervantes' "novel" we get to know what a book of chivalry is, so we (almost) do not even need to read them.

However, there is a very intriguing sentence about Sancho towards the end of the Preface:

"I have no desire to magnify the service I render thee in making thee acquainted with so renowed and honoured a knight, but I do desire thy thanks for the acquaintance thou wilt make with the famous Sancho Panza,..."

First of all it clearly goes against the canon: books of chivalry usually did not pay too much attention to squires - unlike Cervantes. But more importantly (and back to the achievments of DQ) this "desire thy thanks" definitely offers the interpretation of DQ as the "novel" (=story) of Sancho Panza. Right - but what kind of story then? Ortega y Gasset gives us some hints again: Sancho's job is to make (almost) all adventures impossible. The adventures themselves break into the "real world", the adventures are poetic, on the other hand Sancho is the embodiment of reality (=anti-poetic picture of reality). Now - the point is that the protagonist, Don Quijote's intent to change the reality (of his time) is the most (only?) succesful in Sancho Panza's character - just think: in this sense the critical (realistic) perspective is carried out by the narrator while Sancho Panza goes (runs, jumps, escapes) back and forth between the perspectives of reality and fiction ("miracles").

We can go on and on, just from the Preface itself: what is the real preface and what is the real text in DQ (and around DQ)? Starting with, the chivalry books that DQ read, can be interpreted as prefaces to his own story, to his own chivalry life. Then, the first chapters of DQ can be read as a foreword to the often mentioned Benengeli-variation. And of course, the whole first part of DQ can easily be taken as a long introduction (preamble) to the second part (which was written years - long years - later). Or vice versa: the books of chivalry (that DQ read) are the prefaces to Cervantes' "novel"... It depends how we want to define the word "pre-face": it can be "pre" - to give the readers some kind of pre-meditated ideas about the text they will meet soon, or it also can be a weird phenomenon: a "pre"face that actually a post-face as it already knows everything about the text that is still to be read by us...

(Photo: curtesy of New York Public Library on Flickr)

Sunday Salon: Chinua Achebe

2008-09-21T15:39:00.005-06:00

I have been trying to catch up with the (modern) classics from my TBR list - so the other day I picked up Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

It is a peculiar coincidence that I am reading this book not long after Ondrok gödre by Imre Oravecz: the similarities between these two novels are almost spooky (can you tell I am already in Halloween mood?). Same topic (farmers' life), same characters (Okonkwo and István - both are very frail and human, both are very careful not to show any "weak" feelings and emotions to the outside world and even to themselves, both are obsessed with the land and its farming, both have secretly a favorite child among their children, both live in an extremely strong patriarchal community, etc.), same writing style (that certain emotional distance-keeping and the unbelievably meticulous description of everyday life on the farm and around, the mosaics that add up the whole picture) and so on, and so on.

However I must say I cannot see as much coherence in Achebe's book as much I experienced in the Oravecz-novel. I have finished about two-thirds of Things Fall Apart, and it still seems to me as if the Nigerian writer had compiled a (thorough) ethnographical list of the Ibo people (traditions, rites, environment, etc), and gone through each item one by one, trying to make up an individual story around all the collected data. There is not a common storyline or concept (apart from the fact that everything happens with and around Okonkwo and family) that you could string these totally loose events onto. As opposed to the Oravecz-novel, in which from the very beginning you are clearly aware of the writer's intention to present the slow but inevitable process of the decline of the Hungarian agriculture in the first decades of the 20th century and the mosaics of István's life communicate this message perfectly smoothly and in a wonderful, symbolic way.

Nevertheless, it is a very enjoyable (and sometimes pretty sad) novel, quite easy to read, and if nothing else I can learn a ton about a world that is so far away from where I grew up.

Sunday Salon: DFW

2008-09-15T07:15:00.015-06:00

I wanted to write a decent review on The Scandal of the Season or a much less decent (but much more enthusiastic) review on Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe, but then I read the news.

At this point I cannot write about literature at all - I am shocked and hurt too much.

Maybe next week.

And dreams. For months there have been dreams like nothing before: moist and busy and distant, full of yielding curves, frantic pistons, warmth and a great falling; and you have awakened through fluttering lids to a rush and a gush and a toe-curling scalp-snapping jolt of feeling from an inside deeper than you knew you had, spasms of a deep sweet hurt, the streetlights through your window blinds cracking into sharp stars against the black bedroom ceiling, and on you a dense white jam that lisps between legs, trickles and sticks, cool on you, hardens and clears until there is nothing but gnarled knots of pale solid animal hair in the morning shower, and i the wet tangle a clean sweet smell you can't believe comes from anyting you made inside you.

The smell is, more than anything, like this swimming pool: a bleached sweet salt, a flower with chemical petals. The pool has a strong clear blue smell, though you know the smell is never as strong when you are actually in the blue water, as you are now, all swum out, resting back along the shallow end, the hip-high water lapping at where it's all changed.

Around the deck of this old public pool on the western edge of Tucson is a Cyclone fence the color of pewter, decorated with a bright tangle of locked bicycles. Beyond this a hot black parking lot full of white lines and glittering cars. A dull field of dry grass and hard weeds, old dandelions' downy heads exploding and snowing up in a rising wind. And past all this, reddened by a round slow September sun, are mountains, jagged, their tops' sharp angles darkening into definition against a deep red tired light. Against the red their sharp connected tops form a spiked line, an EKG of the dying day.
---David Foster Wallace

Sunday Salon: The Scandal of the Season

2008-08-31T11:10:00.004-06:00

Today I started a new book: The Scandal of the Season by Sophie Gee. Actually, there were two reasons I had picked up this volume from my never-shrinking TBR pile: (1) two of my all-time favourite movies are Ridicule (Patrice Leconte, 1996) and Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988), and although I know that Gee's book and these movies do not take place in the exact same times I somehow have connected them together in my mind; (2) I really love to read good fiction or other piece of art about writers and artists (like Loving Frank by Horan, Shakespeare in Love by Madden, Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance by Brandreth, Arthur and George by Barnes, etc.), and Sophie Gee's novel is of course about Alexander Pope and the birth of his famous poem, The Rape of the Lock.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to read as much as I wanted to but so far I have enjoyed the book very much. What I am really happy about the most is its language: it is slightly flourishing, a bit demure but never strained and artifical being in perfect harmony with the era it takes place in. It is just like a minuet or a rococo outfit. Very nice job.

At the moment we are rearranging our house (as we managed to buy a new dinner table + 4 chairs + a bench without thinking over what the heck we are going to do with the old set, ah, this is soooo us), but I am planning to dive in Ms. Gee's book again as soon as this chore is over, probably late at night...

Sunday Salon: a fantastic Hungarian novel

2008-08-10T10:40:00.001-06:00

Last week we went for our annual vacation and I took a Hungarian book - reading in Hungarian still demands much less concentration for me. It was Ondrok gödre by Imre Oravecz, a Hungarian literary man, who is rather known for his excellent prose poetry than his prose prose.

Needless to say it was illusory to think I would have time to finish an almost 400 page long novel (mainly with an over-stimulated 6-year-old jumping up and down on our bed - or sometimes on Mommy's or Daddy's tummy - in the evenings) in spite of the fact that it turned out to be a real page turner for me. So it seemed evident that on the first calm day at home I was trying to bury myself into Oravecz's fabulous writing.

I spent about 3.5 hours (95 pages) reading this book today. (Still haven't finished it - got through approx. two thirds of it; as it happens, at every truly exciting literary adventure I tend to slow down considerably and enjoy a certain word, a wonderful wave of a sentence, an unusually great expression, etc. I also have a habit to go back and re-read some parts - for this reason or another.)

The Ondrok gödre (The Pit of Ondrok - by the way, the name "Ondrok" is a variation of the Hungarian boys' name András - my son's name! -, which is Andrew in English) is a family saga through 3 generations and 30 years of the Árvai family at the end of the 19. century. It takes place in Northern Hungary, in a small village among gentle hills, slow rivers and lush forests. The Árvais are middle-class farmers, having to struggle for survival in the middle of an economic turmoil of the so-called agricultural modernization. But this is just one of the layers of this unbelievably rich text (and honestly not the most important and most interesting for me). At the same time the book is the history of the Hungarian village-life itself, the Hungarian countryside as well as a wonderful coming-of-age novel, a thought provoking piece about the classical conflict between fathers and sons, an erotic love story and so on and so forth.

Although I have never had anything to do with this kind of lifestye, the novel definitely pulled me deeply into itself. I totally become sympathetic with its protagonists in no time, I feel and know their happiness, their pain, their problems, their desires, their emotions, their anger, their joy. This is a real sign of an outstanding writer's outstanding work.

The most intriguing is the novel's style: Oravecz keeps a remarkable distance from his subjects and still this seemingly objective, sometimes dry, non-comittal, cool and still elegant narration is never without deep and gentle empathy - as someone remarked this style was totally unique in the Hungarian literature.

Also very interesting how the writer builds up the structure of his novel: Oravecz uses a bird's eye view both in time and space in the beginning, and he gradually gets closer and closer to his main scene and main characters (not unlike a plane descending into an airport ready to land). For me the most beautiful thing is how Oravecz could combine time and space absolutely perfectly and seamlessly in his approach: we start somewhere in the pre-historic times when the hills and valleys began to take shapes, and slowly get to a point in time and space where we are right inside the protagonists deepest thoughts and feelings crossing geographical and psychological borders at the same time.

Unbelievably beautiful text.

So next week (or probably even tonight) I am finishing Ondrok gödre, and then back to my other adventures in literature: among others to go on with the Special Topics in Calamity Physics...

Have a great literary week everyone - and thanks for visiting.

Sunday Salon - August 3

2008-08-02T20:06:00.017-06:00

Soooo... I am trying to think where I have heard of the Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl first... but I have no clue. As this is one of the books I am currently reading I have decided my first Sunday Salon post should be about this novel.

Today I could not spend as much time with it as much I would have liked to as we are going for a Portland, OR + Oregon coast vacation on Monday and you can imagine how chaotic it can be with a 6-year-old, who wants to take all his library books (17 at this point) with him, not accepting no as an answer. (Deep sigh. And another suitcase. It will become handy not just for my son's books but for my usual visit at Powell's.)

Anyway, back to Marisha Pessl and her Physics.

First of all, this is of course not a science book (took me a while till I conviced my librarian to look it up for me in the newly returned Fiction section instead of telling me over and over that she could not find it among the Science Books), instead a 450+ page book about a genius (bookworm!) teenager. The structure of the novel is very bookish as well: each chapter is titled after a famous literary piece (Othello, Wuthering Heights, Madame Bovary, etc.) for instance, the TOC is called "Core Curriculum (Required Reading) ", and in the end we are getting a final exam of the read content.

I can't tell you a lot about the story as I have just started it and gotten to the 50th (or so) page. The protagonist is Blue van Meer (she is telling the story), a daughter of a well-known college prof of Pol Sci, who makes it his life goal to live (and teach) at least 3 cities of the US each year. (His wife, Blue's mom died when she was a kindergartener.) According to the cover the storyline will include a certain kind of murder mystery as well as other characteristics of a picaresque novel. We'll see.

The writing is not too serious, very easy to follow, kind of a chatty like a young adult text. And although it is seemingly heavy with all kinds of literary references, these are mainly for ironic purposes as most of them are imaginary titles and authors.

The reason why I started it is, that I heard a whole lot of great things about this book, but unfortunately a couple of days ago I managed to read the CR's opinion and that - for some reason - totally put me off. In spite of the fact that I have the impression the CR is too strict in its judgement - overly particular about to whom it gives an "A". (Sometimes I feel them totally unfair and incorrect.) The funny thing is, that in the end the Special Topics got a B from them, which is theoretically not too bad at all, but the review itself does not contain one single positive sentence about the novel!

Again: the book is pretty enjoyable, and I am kind of ashamed how much a negative review can influence my feelings toward it - and now it is much harder for me to get on with this new reading of mine.

Anyhow, for our trip I am taking another book with me, a new(er) novel of one of the best-known Hungarian writers: Ondrok gödre by Imre Oravecz (a few works - a volume of prose poetry, some short stories and poems - of his were translated into English and available at amazon as well if you are interested although not this one as far as I know). So it is very possible that I am taking a break from Ms Pessl next week but definitely planning to finish it as soon as possible after that.

Happy next week everyone!

Welcome.

2008-08-01T22:42:00.004-06:00

Hi everyone.

This blog is mainly about books. It is also a field for my experiments with The Sunday Salon. As for the latter I cannot promise I will be there every week but am trying to do my best to show up at least twice a month.

See you soon!