Read the Nobels

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

2012-01-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Book Rhapsody (April 1, 2011).

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Image from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

Intro

I was confused then. I was scouring the classics section of a book store. I didn’t know which book to buy. So many books, so little cash. So I texted my old flame. Which do you think is better, this one or Siddhartha. He went for Siddhartha.

I was half-wishing for him to choose the other one, which I cannot recall. It must have been a more commercial or more popular classic. So I bought Siddhartha half-heartedly. You see, I still have a weak will over random matters.

This is just like last week’s Rhapsody, but this is a little different. How come?

The Rhapsody

This is the story of a young man named Siddhartha who explored the world and led different lives. He became a lot of things, but I distinctly remember him leading a lustful life. Not necessarily a prostitute though. A playboy, perhaps.

It is a spiritual journey, one that aims to find the meaning of one’s life. He ran away from home, suffered destitution, experienced luxuries, went through other various phases. He sinned and transcended. It is quite short book, but the musings in it can be really tough. I do not recommend it for the beginner reader because he might find it a little complicated.

I read this one years ago. I found myself rereading some parts again and again, mostly because I didn’t get them at the first run, and other times because it’s just so beautiful reading and pondering upon them.

There is an analogy between a river and life here. It’s a popular one, and I am convinced that that analogy originated from this book. It says that a river can never be the same at any given time. If a man steps his foot on the river and steps out of it again, the river doesn’t resume to its former self. Although the river still seems the same to the naked eye, it can no longer be the way it was because time has passed. And so on.

Such is life. Whatever we do with it at any moment can change the shape of its course. Whether we make minor or major decisions, the path can never be the same, and we can never go back. We just have to go with its flow until we reach the big ocean, where we merge with all the rivers and waters of the world into one.

We just keep on going. There are beautiful sceneries to pass, wide curves to skirt, treacherous parts to surpass. The flow can be as tranquil as the midnight with its full moon hanging and lustrous stars in the canopy, and it can be as harsh as the summer storms with their howls of deafening winds and bolts of blinding lightning.

Such is life. We cannot avoid all those; that must be the grand design of living. For what would life be worthy of if it ran in a mere straight line? Besides, we will always have a destination. We will definitely reach it.

Final Notes

I met this guy on a gay social networking site just a few days back. He caught my attention because the user name that he is using is my real name. I messaged him, asking him if that was his real name. He said no. And in his profile, he quoted a passage from this book.

We had a little talk about the book, and he claimed it to be the book of his life. He said that it was his older brother’s copy, dog-eared and filled with marginalia. He read it over and over again. I wish I could get some time to reread this book. Truth is I want to reread a lot of books. But I am pressed for time. We only have so little, and we seem to have a lot of things to do.

I read it only once, and all I could share was this river thing. It was enough though. He was not disappointed. We carried on. At some point, we stopped exchanging messages. Surely, we both weren’t there just to talk about this book. He must be one of the beautiful sceneries that my river passed.

And our rivers keep on flowing.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

2012-01-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's short novel of a day in a Stalinist camp is a story of human dignity, survival and faith. The Stalinist prisons were not for criminals, and they attempted to break the wills of those in the camps. Ivan, or Shukhov as he is referred mostly in novel, is essentially a dignified and proud character. The characterization is subtle. He is from a peasant background and not particularly intellectual, religious, or rebellious, but there is a quiet dignity and pride about him. He is simple, and very much the beautiful every man:

And although he had strictly forbidden his wife to send anything even at Easter, and never went to look at the list on the post--except for some rich workmate--he sometimes found himself expecting somebody to come running and say: 'Why don't you go and get it, Shukhov? There's a parcel for you.' Nobody came running. As time went by, he had less and less to remind him of the village of Temgenyovo and his cottage home. Life in the camp kept him on the go from getting-up time to lights out. No time for brooding in the past.

I liked this novel. I think it's hard to pinpoint what's particularly unique or special, but it is a straightforward and well told story. There seems to be such wonderful simplicity in the prose that gets across the character and the experience of camp life so well:

Shukhov's idea of a happy evening was when they got back to the hut and didn't find the mattresses turned upside down after a daytime search.

The book ends with a discussion of faith, religion and spirituality which is part of the survival of the camp. In his own way, Shukhov is spiritual in his actions and the way he carries himself. He has hope after all:

For a little while Shukhov forgot all his grievances, forgot that his sentence was long, that the day was long, that once again there would be no Sunday. For the moment he had only one thought: We shall survive. We shall survive it all. God willing, we'll see the end of it.

From my blog Aquatique.

This would be my first book.

Nobel Quotes / 1

2012-01-17T20:39:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to everyone! Here's a little meme that's sure to drum up some interest in our Nobel reads. Everyone is welcome to join!

It's simple!

Choose any quote that "grabs" you ... of course from any book written by a Nobel Prize for Literature laureate (check out those links in the side bar!). It can be anything you have read, plan to read, or currently are reading.
Post the quote on your blog, with the title and author.
Add the "Nobel quotes" button in your post.
Link back to this post using the Linky below.

Hoping this gets us all visiting other bloggers who are reading Nobels too! Don't forget to leave a message when you do the rounds.

This will be a weekly event. If you have an ideas to spice things up, sound off in the comments below!

<a href="http://readnobels.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bZzIRl4S8wU/TxZKHbxkk6I/AAAAAAAAAvA/CMWs2LfiLcU/s1600/nobel_quote.jpg" /></a>

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

2012-01-15T23:17:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Book Rhapsody (February 18, 2011).

***

Image from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

Intro

Right after the 5th Pamiyabe Creative Writing Fellowship back in my college freshman days, I went to a book store and bought a copy of this novel. I was so inspired to read a classic then, and seeing that this was shelved in the classics section, I picked it up.

I told this classic inspiration to our editor-in-chief and about this book shopping, and she was rather horrified at the thought of the book. She said she reached halfway through it, and with a surge of annoyance, ditched the book. She swore never to open the book again and wished me luck.

What pushed her to such a conviction made me only more curious. I had to read it right away.

The Rhapsody

O-lan and Wang Lung are Chinese peasants. I can’t believe that I still remember the names, but yes, I barely remember the turn of events.

Anyway, this is the story of a poor couple and how they rose above poverty. What happened upon reaching a taste of success must be the strong points of this novel. Together, the couple held on to each other towards that path. And yes, money, too much money, destroyed their family peace and happiness.

Their kids didn’t grow up as they hoped they would be. Wang Lung took to vices and concubines. The kids quarreled over money, the husband transformed into a monster, and what about O-lan? She just remained there in the background, sticking to her silent resolve, working as hard as ever, and dying in the middle of the novel.

I guess this is the point when our editor-in-chief gave up. Even for me, it seemed that the novel ended there. The rest was like an extended epilogue, and to think that this novel is a part of the series, our editor-in-chief would have been mortified if I told her this.

O-lan was never the doting and perpetually jealous wife. She just carried on, trying to keep her family together, sucking in everything to herself. I remember she has this precious stone that was given to her by Wang Lung when they started reaping the rewards of their hard work. She never wore it, thinking that she doesn’t deserve it and that it was totally way out of her league. She just held on to it, keeping it inside her bosom, and taking it out now and then, clutching it, marveling at it, and putting it back inside her chest, close to her heart, wrapped with a fine piece of clothing.

One day, Wang Lung lost huge amounts of money thanks to his newfangled addiction, gambling. Running short on money, he forced O-lan to sell this precious stone. I imagine it is a sapphire, but it could be an emerald. Upon hearing her husband suggesting the unthinkable, of taking back a gift that you have grown attached to, she held back. She didn’t want to just return it and have it sold for such a lousy reason. In fact, I don’t think she would have let go of it no matter what. Only death could tear her apart from that piece of jewelry.

But alas, she gave in. She was only Wang Lung’s woman after all. With a heavy heart, she took it out of her chest. And that was the only time that I saw O-lan in her weakest. All the suffering, pain, and anger that she warded off all her life broke her down. Then after a while, she died of a disease that she hid from her family.

And Wang Lung was devoured by guilt. In the end, while on his deathbed, he asked his sons never, ever to sell their farm, the good earth that they cared for and the good earth that gave life to them. He had their word, but once his sons were out of sight, they started negotiating.

The selling of that piece of jewelry is what I best remember from this. It is enough for me to like it despite the ending that I didn’t enjoy, which left me hanging in a limbo.

Final Notes

Their kids grew up to be brats, who never held a hoe in their life. They went to expensive schools, but their schooling never contributed to their education. Yes, I am paraphrasing someone.

This only means that schooling does not necessarily make a man. I have met a lot of people from different strata of life, and I have to say that the ones that moved me are the uneducated ones. This could be misconstrued as utter pity for them, but I could say that this is out of compassion.

I somehow know their pains. In a way, my life story is similar. Poor parents who had a little success and who ended up poor again. I know how hard it is to live a life in squalor, that’s why my heart always go out to people who strive so much to make their lives better.

And what about my own schooling? I am proud to say that the only lessons that matters to me are the ones I learned in kindergarten. In fact, I did not learn them at kindergarten. I learned them from my mom. These are reading and writing.

When I learned how to do these two, everything else followed. I learned how to count, how to color, how to tell the time, how to draw, how to sing, how to follow instructions. I learned how to think critically, I learned how to listen carefully, and above all, I learned how to appreciate the wonders of life in this earth.

If you really think about it, schooling is all about reading and writing. You are responsible for your own education, so read well and write well.

Blindness and Seeing by Jose Saramago

2012-01-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

I've been on a Saramago roll lately! His writing style intrigues me; and his allegorical-philosophical discourses - while they can get me a little bogged down - never fail to surprise me with his insights into human nature, even the worst of it.

After passing over Seeing many times as it happens always to be on the shelves... finally a few months ago, I saw Blindness. All I knew is that I'd need to read Blindness before Seeing.

The books in one sentence each:

Blindness: A city is inexplicably hit by blindness - save for one woman - the blind are confined to a mental hospital where man's worst appetites rear its ugly head.
Seeing: Majority cast blank votes in the election; government strives to deal with this "revolt," and pinpoints that the "seeing woman" is behind this plot.

My thoughts: I've always been intrigued by dystopian literature, though it can be a little of a downer for me so I always make sure to stagger read it.

Blindness is a depressing read yet shows what goodness, forgiveness and strength of character can do to rise above depravity and anarchy. The scenario is simple - in an entire city of blind people, one woman remains able to see. Why? What does she do?

This enigmatic phenomenon starts off with a man who is strangely struck by blindness. He goes to his ophthalmologist to find out why ... and instead he starts off a strange epidemic of blindness in other patient, including the very doctor who seeks to cure them.

The blind are quarantined in an old mental hospital. The doctor's wife, who remains able to see, refuses to leave her husband's side and feigns blindness to be able to do so. The hospital leaves the blind to basically left to fend for themselves ... and anarchy takes over in the fight for survival. The doctor's wife arises as a natural leader.

The characters are an interesting lot and lend various perspectives to this unusual story. There is the "girl with the dark glasses" - a prostitute who turns motherly to a young boy separated from his parents. Then there is the "man with the black eye patch," who unlike everyone else, takes his blindness calmly and matter-of-a-factly and sees it as an opportunity to learn a much-needed lesson. There is also the tyrannical "Ward 3 leader," who when supplies run low and modes of payment are non-existing, demands women in exchange.

{I watched the movie (Julianne Moore?!?) and decided that this story is something best left as a book. It is much too graphic and depressing to have to watch - instead of being fodder for thought.}

* * *

Seeing is the sequel to Blindness post-blindness. Sight is miraculously restored and election time has swung around. The whole day, very few come around to vote, explained away as a heavy rain falls. But right after the skies clear up at around 4:00 pm, people are inexplicably at the polls and extensive lines start up. And to everyone's shock, the majority of the votes cast are blank.

Government investigates, viewing this sudden surge of voters at 4:00 pm and the resulting blank ballots as a plot to overthrow the government. In the increasingly oppressive nature of this Government, there is widespread discontent yet the fear of the repercussions of communicating this. Government keeps up a semblance of normality through what is regarded as highly suspicious propaganda. Meanwhile people are questioned and start disappearing - and what results is an interesting yet precarious balance between the ruled and the rulers.

The "seeing" woman again figures in this story. She is pinpointed as the one responsible for orchestrating the casting of bank votes by mere virtue of her retaining her sight during the inexplicable blindness. A Superintendent is assigned to investigate who is responsible for this "revolution." The Superintendent, in the course of his investigations comes to see the human side of the situation, and he becomes a dissenting voice in this silent city.

Verdict: Both must-reads! Blindness focuses on the individual at his best and worst. Seeing focuses on the government at its worst.

{Originally posted at guiltlessreading.blogspot.com.}

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (3m)

2011-10-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted at my blog, 1morechapter

Winner, 1999 Booker Prize

Disgrace caught me by surprise. I didn’t like the main character; I didn’t like the events that happened in the book; but yet, as I turned the last page, I realized it was flat out brilliantly written. It definitely deserves its place on the shortlist for Best of the Bookers.

Before reading it, all I really knew about it was that a professor had an affair with a student. As it turns out, that’s only a minor point. The book has several issues: men’s subjugation of women, South Africa after apartheid, and animal rights. How Coetzee could say so much in just a little over 200 pages is amazing. There are several parallel stories going on. I want to say so much about it, but to do so would be to give away everything. I’m glad I was ignorant going into this novel, so I won’t say much except that it will definitely get a re-read from me someday and preferably in a group setting. There would be many, many things to discuss.

(1999, 220 pp.)

As to the film, I thought it followed the book almost exactly. It was produced by Australians but I believe most of the outdoor shots at least were filmed in South Africa; the scenery was beautiful. John Malkovich played David Lurie exceptionally. My only small quibble is that his South African accent went in and out some. I thought the actress who played Lucy was also excellent. I highly recommend this movie IF you have read the book. You probably wouldn’t appreciate it as much or at all if you haven’t.

Film grade: A

Blindness by José Saramago (Lisa Hill - ANZ LitLovers)

2011-10-20T04:22:00.000-07:00

Blindness, by the Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, is completely different to The Double which I read last year. It’s an astonishing book. I don’t think I will ever forget it.

It’s the story of an epidemic of ‘white blindness’, which spreads across a city affecting everyone. The novel reveals just how quickly chaos descends.

It begins with the sudden blindness of a man at the wheel of his car, and though a stranger’s first impulse is to kindly drive him home - the opportunity to steal the car is irresistible. He is then taken by his wife to an eye doctor, who soon goes blind himself, and within 24 hours the others in the waiting room become blind as well. The only one not to lose her sight, inexplicably, is the doctor’s wife.

Before long they are quarantined along with other victims in a former mental asylum, and Part I of the story traces their adjustment to the loss of their sight, their freedom and their independence. The government abrogates their human rights, providing them only with rudimentary shelter, paltry rations, inadequate sanitation, and no medical assistance or supplies. There is also a trigger-happy set of guards, who eventually panic over the proximity of the internees and fire on them because they believe the blindness to be contagious. There are squabbles over bed allocations and sharing of rations; there is distrust and untruth; there is a distasteful dispute over the burial of the dead and there is opportunistic fondling of one of the women with a dramatic consequence – but that is nothing compared to what is to come.

To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/10/20/blindness-by-jose-saramago/

The Eye of the Storm by Patrick White (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-09-14T18:06:00.000-07:00

I was hoping, as I began reading Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm, that there would be heaps of erudite reviews out there in cyberspace, to help me make sense of it so that I didn’t write anything really inane here. Alas, no, hardly anybody has tackled it so at this stage I am free to interpret it any way I like and few but experts skulking in academia will be any the wiser. I expect I’ve missed heaps. Patrick White’s books are like that, and that’s what makes them so good. Each time I re-read one, especially if in the interim I’ve stumbled on some other work of literature that’s he’s referenced, I enjoy it more because I notice new things…

The Complete Review found The Eye of the Storm ‘impressive’ and recommends it for readers with ‘staying power’. Anderson Brown in Puerto Rico had a go at it, intrigued by the exotic idea of a Nobel Prize winning author being ’an Australian, no less’. But apart from noting that White’s ‘terrain is the nature of consciousness’ approached in a ’painterly’ way, he doesn’t have a lot to say in his review. Martha Duffy at Time thought it ‘pallid and self-indulgent’ and wished that ‘that the storm would blow every bit of it away’. (She was a journalist who started in fashion magazines and a royal watcher, so make of her vehemence what you will).

King Lear and the Fool by William Dyce
(Wikipedia Commons)

It is Alan Lawson, at the ABC website about White who makes the connection between King Lear and this novel. (Though the book is littered with references to Lear, so it’s not exactly revelatory. Unless you don’t know King Lear. Best to read a quick summary at Wikipedia if you don’t.)

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/the-eye-of-the-storm-by-patrick-white/

The Passport, by Herta Müller (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-07-30T01:43:00.000-07:00

When Herta Müller won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009, there was the usual outcry from the powerful claiming to be oppressed by the European bias of the judges. Why is our literature being ignored? howled those who dominate the book industry throughout the English-speaking world, and of course they denigrated the winner as if to prove their point.

Tibor Fischer at the Guardian on behalf of the UK was so unimpressed that he misrepresented the plot with a reductive summary:

The Passport is a 90-page novel about a miller, Windisch, a Swab, or ethnic German, who applies for a passport to leave Romania. That’s all in the way of plot or narrative impetus.

Well no, it’s not just about that, Mr Fischer. Not even at literal level. Even the dopiest reader will soon figure out that there’s more to the plot than that.

To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/the-passport-by-herta-muller-translated-by-martin-chalmers/

Main Street (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-07-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

Sinclair Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. The citation reads for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters. His most well-known novels are Main Street (1920) and Babbit (1922).

Main Street ruffled more than a few feathers in small town America when it was first published in 1920, and I expect it has the same effect on some readers today, nearly a century later. Sinclair Lewis wrote this savage satire as an indictment of small town life in the early 20th century – a time when prairie life was patriotically idealised as wholesome and honorable. But Lewis saw small towns as claustrophobic, narrow-minded, anti-intellectual, mean-spirited and conformist. He labelled the power of small town life to inculcate its citizenry with enervating shallow values as ‘The Village Virus’, and the focus of the story is whether the outsider Carol will succumb to Main Street, or not. The choice of Carol as the central character means that Main Street also explores the same territory of female aspirations and limited career choices as Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900), and this adds interest to

Lewis’s primary critique.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/main-street-by-sinclair-lewis/

I read and blogged my review of Main Street in July 2011.

Lisa Hill, Melbourne, Australia

Wandering Star by J.M.G. Le Clezio (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-07-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve had a mixed experience with Nobel Prize winners that I’ve recently read. The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek was challenging to say the least, and Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti was bizarre. On the other hand, Beloved by Toni Morrison was a revelation, and The Double by José Saramago was very entertaining. But Wandering Star aroused intense feelings of melancholy about the Arab-Israeli conflict and of anger about international indifference to the persisting plight of refugees all over the world.
J.M.G. Le Clézio was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature as an ‘author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization’ – and I bought Wandering Star, the only one of his books available in English, shortly afterwards. Now that I’ve finally read it, I understand why he won the prize.
Alison Kelly’s review at The Guardian explains that Le Clezio wrote experimental fiction in his first phase as an author, but that Wandering Star reverts to using ‘conventional modes of storytelling complete with familiar devices such as characters, settings and plots’. Since I haven’t read any of his unconventional works, I can’t comment on the full scope of this author, but (despite the pedestrian translation) this book shows a writer in great command of his powers. In this novel he has tackled that most intractable of geopolitical issues, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of two young girls, both of whom are ‘wandering stars’ in search of a home. Esther is a Jewish refugee in post-Holocaust Europe, and Nejma is a dispossessed Palestinian. Their parallel stories illuminate the anguish of exile.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/wandering-star-by-j-m-g-le-clezio/

Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa (Wendy)

2011-03-21T17:47:00.001-07:00

People are collapsed at the base of the monument and around them a dung heap of cigarette butts, peels and paper; on the corner people are storming the run-down buses that become lost in dust clouds as they head to the shantytowns; a policeman is arguing with a street vendor and the faces of both are hateful and discouraged and their voices seem to be curled by a hollow exasperation. - from Conversation in the Cathedral -

Conversation in the Cathedral by Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa is set in Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel A. Odria. The primary character is a man named Santiago, who runs into a man from his past named Ambrosia and they re-connect. I didn’t get very far in this book, sadly. I read to page 63 before quitting in frustration. There were several reasons I did not finish this book:

The writing is almost stream of consciousness and there are no quotation marks delineating when dialogue begins and ends. I found this very confusing as the characters move back and forth from speaking to “thinking” and I was never sure when actual speech was happening, not to mention who was actually speaking.
There are many references to the political problems in Peru. Most are subtle, yet the plot seems to rely on the reader having some knowledge about the government and history of the country. I don’t have any knowledge of the time, place or historical references…and so I felt lost early on.
There are numerous characters who seem to go by more than one name. Within 30 pages, I had no idea who was who and how they were related. I kept paging back, trying to see if I had missed something which could give me direction, but I was still a bit confused.
Within 10 pages a dog is beaten to death at the animal pound. I am aware that this probably does go on in some countries…but the detailed description just made me ill and I was afraid there was going to be more of this kind of thing throughout the book.

The back of the book reads: “Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and oral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it.” I think the emphasis should be on the word “complicated.”

I really wanted to read this book because I have heard great things about Llosa. But, I am afraid this one was well over my head and thus felt like work rather than enjoyment. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a book that makes me think…but this one just left me feeling like I didn’t have a clue what was going on.

Unrated.

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-02-10T03:40:00.000-08:00

Hesse says in his introduction that this is the most misunderstood of his works and I can understand why. It seems to be a first person narration of a person with a mental disorder - maybe schizophrenic or maybe chronic depression - but whatever it was, I got tired of it before long.
The Steppenwolf is a man who feels himself to be half man, half wolf, and he is torn between satisfying his 'base' desires (exemplified by sex, dancing, jazz and generally the sort of stuff that most people enjoy but he despises himself for it) and satisfying his intellectual desires (Goethe, Mozart, solitariness and rejecting bourgeois taste).
He meets a strange girl who seems to know what's good for him, but Hermoine is also a Herman, and a procuress to boot. She lines up another girl for him, not to mention Pablo the jazz muso.
I know, I know, all this is a metaphor for the crisis in Hesse's own persona, but at the end of the day, it just didn't work for me. At least it was short.

Kim, by Rudyard Kipling (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-02-10T03:25:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed this. It's one of those classic books I always meant to read, part of my British heritage known around the world because of Kipling's influence on the scouting movement.
Kim is a boy enlisted by chance to work for the British Secret Service in India. He is orphaned by a sick mother and a feckless Irish father in service in India, and he lives in the streets. One day he is captured by the British, who find his ID papers in a scapula around his neck - and they send him off to school. A certain Commander recognises his potential as an 'agent' because he is familiar with Indian street life and its languages.
Kim takes to the streets on a quest for enlightenment with a Buddhist Lama, but is able to serve His Majesty in various other ways as well, including acquiring precious papers implicating an Indian prince's conspiracy with Russians to the north. One of his accomplishments in to quell an Indian uprising and in this he is aided by Muhtab, a Muslim, and Hareem, a Hindi - and nowhere is their quisling role questioned. (I read a similar short story to this in which a British boy singlehandedly quells a riot, in The Man Who Would Be King, and no, it's not ironic.)
Kipling was an old colonialist, after all, and everything I've ever read by this author champions the British Raj and the Empire. It's a fair bet that he'd never have got a Nobel Prize in these post-colonial days!

One Man's Bible by Gao Xingjian

2011-02-10T03:05:00.000-08:00

I can't say that I enjoyed this book but it did make me more aware of what it must be like to live under a totalitarian state. In Stasiland by Anna Funder [book:Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall|226369], Funder is the narrator, an outsider viewing with shock, amusement, compassion or disbelief, but even an author as perceptive as she is cannot convey what it is like to be subject to the intellectual confusion it occasions.
Xingjian does. His narration seems first hand, written with a sense of immediacy through dialogue between Margarethe the German Jew and Xingjian's man who has fled the Cultural Revolution.
The lovers talk in the present, and they try to get each other to talk about the past. This dialogue is in the 3rd person, breaking into first person as the narrator reflects. It can be irritating, this constant use of 'You say' as the narrator reports what he's said to Margarethe, but after a while I realised that the effect is to show the gulf between what is said, even in intimate moments, and what is thought. A habit learned for self-preservation.
Chapters set in the past, in the Cultural Revolution, are written in a detached 3rd person voice. Here the impersonal observer describes events as Funder would - not as a participant but as a disapproving reporter of the absurdity of the regime.
What does it do to a fine mind to be subject to endless propaganda, slogans, re-education sessions and capricious reversals of dogma? Everyone lives in a socio-political world and needs to be able to comment on it somehow, but for a very intelligent person it is vital to their sense of self. To be put in very confined spaces and forced to participate in bizarre denouncements of counter-revolutionary thought would be torture. Xingian's protagonist craves living in a peasant village, just to have a little space.
I began to wonder if the reason the book is called 'One Man's Bible' is because it's a play on the way the Bible has permeated individual thought to become part of personal being. Even for non-religious people, the Christian Bible is the basis of most Western cultures because of its themes of individual choice and responsibility, forgiveness and compassion. Its stories (the Flood, the Tower of Babel etc) permeate literature; its symbols permeate art.
In the Cultural revolution, consciousness had to keep shifting to keep pace with the Leadership's pronouncements. So one had to try to maintain one's own intelligent perspective but risk sharing it with no one. Yet one also had to participate in the propagandising sufficiently well to be able to parrot the required statements and harass fellow-citizens enough to survive without becoming confused about what was required this particular week. Imagine having to put intellectual energy into that! How degrading!!

I read and journalled this book on September 9th 2003.
Cross-posted at GoodReads

Crabwalk, by Günter Grass,

2011-02-10T02:40:00.000-08:00

This is the first I've read by Günter Grass,, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

Grass is struggling with the collective guilt of the German people. The narrator of the story is a hack journalist who is reluctantly drawn into researching the unusual circumstances of his birth, In a lifeboat, after the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by a Russian sub in 1945.

It's cunningly written. Paul Pokriefke, the journalist, doesn't want to know about the past, and is almost vitriolic about his mother, who is always going on about it. These two symbolise Germany's dilemma - Ursula/Tilla has had a traumatic experience and needs to talk about it, but is denied any therapeutic release because of the German culture of silence about their wartime suffering. Paul just doesn't want to know. He's the next generation, with no memory of the event, and he just wants to get on with his life, even if what he's doing isn't particularly worthwhile. He fails to see that some of his lack of direction is due to the circumstances of his birth, but he is able to blame his mother for being so promiscuous that he can't know who is father was, whereas if he were less judgemental he would admit that he could just as easily have been fatherless if his father died in the war.

What forces Paul to confront his, and Germany's history, is his own son's neo-Nazi proclivities...

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

2011-02-10T02:33:00.000-08:00

This was the first piece of Egyptian writing I've read, and I was attracted to it by the cover notes which explained that Mahfouz had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but I found it disappointing.
It begins with a compelling portrait of Amima, who lives her entire married life according to the zealous religious strictures of her husband, Ahmed Abd al-Jawad. He imposes strict Muslim observances on all the females of his family through the power of his bullying personality, but he himself spends each night drinking and whoring.
Despite a truly awful translation, the early part of the novel succeeded in conveying the claustrophobic life the women lead. Denied access to education, to the news, to books other than the Qur'an, Amima is depicted as gaining satisfaction from serving her husband and accepting the limitations of her life. Her subservience to this hypocritical tyrant is appalling to a modern woman!
Perhaps the laboured prose and the repetitious quotations from the Qur'an are part of the style of Egyptian literature, but the book seems overlong. It was interesting to read the Egyptian perspective on the Australian occupation during WW1 (extremely negative) and on the postwar demonstrations to end the British Protectorate, but the bawdy flirtations and obscure dialogues of Ahmad and his women were tedious. The scene when Yasin, Ahmad's thoroughly unpleasant younger son, rapes his wife's servant is repellent in the extreme. The writer treats the victim as Yasin does, of no consequence whatsoever - and the imputation that Yasin's wife is insulted all the more because the servant is black is downright offensive.
Was all this meant to be ironic? An expose of these hypocrises? I couldn't tell...
I read and journalled this book on 10 January 1997.
Cross posted at Good Reads

Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

2011-02-10T02:26:00.000-08:00

Doctor Zhivago is not only a memorable love story, it also shows how the Soviet revolution impacted on its citizens. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but the USSR made him renounce it because the authorities didn’t like his criticisms. Reading this book has certainly made me more aware of how difficult life must have been for ordinary people in the period Pasternak writes about.
The story begins with the death of Yura Zhivago’s mother, deserted long ago by his wastrel father. He had been rich, but had squandered it away with gambling and so the orphaned Yura went to live with his Uncle Kolya. (Like all Russian novels, this one confuses Western readers with names: all the characters have three or four but I’m sticking with the short and easy ones.) He is a thoughtful and rather dreamy boy who seems to stumble from one disaster to another, plodding through life with determination and courage, but very little initiative. It seems quite clear that initiative was a bad idea in Soviet Russia.

I read and blogged this book on April 4th, 2009. To see the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/doctor-zhivago-by-boris-pasternak/

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-02-10T02:12:00.000-08:00

The Sun Also Rises was Ernest Hemingway’s first serious success – published in 1926, only four years after James Joyce’s Ulysses. It is hard to imagine two books less like each other than these: Joyce, the great Irish modernist, exploring the limits of language (not to mention the patience and fortitude of his readers) and Hemingway, the great American exponent of plain language and tough, terse prose.

I read and blogged this book on November 18th 2009. To see the rest of my thoughts about this book, please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/the-sun-also-rises-by-ernest-hemingway/

The Twyborn Affair by Patrick White (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-02-10T02:07:00.000-08:00

I’m not surprised that The Twyborn Affair was a bestseller. It’s easier to read than the High Modernism of Voss and it’s an intriguing read. The curious life and identity of Eddie Twyborn is told in three parts:

in the south of France where Joanie Golson, in retreat from British scorn for ‘colonial’ Australians, discovers and becomes fascinated by ’Eudoxia’ Vatatzes, and there are enigmatic hints of a relationship that don’t make sense;
the interlude on the Monaro where Eddie Twyborn has ambiguous relationships with the local squatter’s wife, Marcia Lushington and the manager Prowse ; and
the life of Eadith Trist, the madam of a high-class bordello in London.

I read and blogged this book on September 26th, 2009. To see the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/the-twyborn-affair-by-patrick-white/ but beware, there are spoilers.

The Solid Mandala by Patrick White (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-02-10T02:04:00.000-08:00

The Solid Mandala is the story of twins Waldo and Arthur Brown, told partly through the perspective of Waldo, (who seems a lot like White himself), and partly through Arthur’s point of view. Their contrasting narratives illuminate their difficult relationship, as for example, when Waldo describes his painful attempts to negotiate friendships with girls – hampered by the embarrassment of having a twin who’s a bit simple.

Arthur is a big shambling fellow, given to dribbling, making inane remarks, and getting over-excited. Waldo fancies himself as an intellectual, and wants to write. He reveals this ambition to Dulcie Feinstein, only child of a middle-class Jewish family, but has no clear idea of what he might do. HIs father is hopeful that an influential friend might engineer a job for Waldo at the library. Arthur drives a delivery van.

I read The Solid Mandala back in 2007, but I didn't blog it till August 12th 2009. To read the rest of my response to this book please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/the-solid-mandala-by-patrick-white/

Auto-da-Fé, by Elias Canetti (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers

2011-02-10T01:57:00.000-08:00

This book is bizarre. It’s like a Grimm’s fairy tale with insane characters, or a cautionary tale with a moral that’s not a moral because it’s so nihilistic. This, Canetti seems to be saying, is what happens if an intellectual dissociates from the real world and hears no voice other than his own. He becomes dogmatic and he falls victim to the venality of the ignorant. It’s sobering reading.

Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born Jew who spent most of his childhood in Germany and wrote in German, though he spent part of his life in England because of the Nazis (who banned his books). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981 although Auto-da-fé (1935) is his only novel. It’s on many to-read shelves at Good Reads and has provoked both enthusiastic reviews and dismissive comments, (the latter mostly from people who failed to finish it).

Set in Vienna and Paris, the story begins with a chance meeting between Professor Kien and a clever little boy. The boy has inadvertently stood between Kien and his view of the books in a bookshop. The professor goes for walks early in the morning before the bookshops open so that he won’t be tempted to buy any more – he already has a library of 25,000 books and anyway, the books in the bookshops are inferior and not worthy of him.

He himself was the owner of the most important private library in the whole of this great city. He carried a minute portion of it with him wherever he went. His passion for it, the only one which he had permitted himself during a life of austere and exacting study, moved him to take special precautions. Books, even bad ones, tempted him easily into making a purchase. Fortunately, the great number of the book shops did not open until after eight o’clock. (p11)

But still, he’s not happy to have his view obstructed.

I read and blogged this book on AUgust 21st, 2010. To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/auto-da-fe-by-elias-canetti/

Rites of Passage by William Golding

2011-02-10T01:53:00.000-08:00

Rites of Passage is Book One of a trilogy that was made into a BBC serial called To The Ends of The Earth, and it won the Booker in 1980. It's a comi-tragic sea journey and a coming-of-age tale about Mr William Talbot, a young aristocrat on his way to Australia to take up a government position procured for him by his wealthy godfather.

En route, this rather naive, pompous and yet good-hearted young man learns a lot about the world and himself. As in Lord of the Flies, an isolated community tests the boudnaries of civilised behaviour, and is found wanting. Mr Colley, an irritating and fawning parson is victimised and humiliated, subjected to barbaric rituals in the crossing-the-line ceremony, and then worse. When he wills himself to die of shame, Talbot is called on to help by Lieutenant Summers, a man who has worked his way up from the ranks - but in this decisive moment risks his career by demanding of Talbot (his superior in British class-ridden society) that he take some responsibility for what has happened.

All efforts fail, and Talbot finds himself compromised by Captain Anderson's 'enquiry'. Having boasted about his journal of events, Talbor has made Anderson aware of the need to cover up his own aggressive behaviour towards Colley - because it was that which made others on board feel that they could bully him with impunity. The enquiry is a whitewash and Talbot is left with no recourse but to lie to Colley's family about the truth.

The TV series went on with other events including the near loss of the ship in the Antarctic, boarding by another ship, a romance for Talbot and the death of the athiest Pettigrew. I'd like to read the sequels on which these are based if they're as good as this one was, deftly written in a C19th seafaring style and showing Talbot's painful self-growth towards maturity.
I finished reading and journalled this book on 23.2.2008.

Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers
Cross posted at The Complete Booker.

Beloved, by Toni Morrison (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-02-10T01:45:00.000-08:00

Beloved is a wonderful book even though it is deeply disturbing to read. It was published in 1987, it won the Pulitzer Prize and Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Why it has taken me more than 20 years to get round to reading it, and how I came to miss the movie, I can’t explain….

It’s the story of Sethe, in post Civil War Ohio, coming to terms with a freedom which has not really set her free. The narrative leaks unwelcome intrusions from her past into the present and it presents multiple voices, but Sethe is the central character. A former slave, she has lost so much and she is such a damaged person that I found it hard to reconcile this depiction of a former slave with Lawrence Hill’s Someone Knows My Name. I had reservations about the resilience of the character Aminata at the time of reading Hill’s book, and Beloved reinforces my view that the impact of slavery on the pysche is, in Someone Knows My Name, somewhat sanitised.

Sethe’s house, No 124, is haunted by her dead toddler, and everyone avoids the place. Her grandmother, Baby Suggs, has not long died and Sethe lives there alone with her surviving daughter, Denver, until Paul D turns up. He is a former slave also from the ironically named plantation Sweet Home, and his arrival triggers the presence of Beloved, who seems to be an adult reincarnation of the dead child.

I read and blogged this book on June 27th 2009. To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/beloved-by-toni-morrison/

The Double by José Saramago (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-02-10T01:43:00.000-08:00

The Double, by José Saramago, is very entertaining reading. It’s the story of a most ordinary man, a teacher of history, who one night, watching a video, sees himself as he was five years ago on the screen. He becomes consumed by anxiety about this double, and his quest to deal with the problem of who owns his identity is, in the hands of this master storyteller, a remarkable story.

Saramago (1922-2010) was a Portuguese author: he wrote novels, plays and journalism and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. Wikipedia tells me that he came to the attention of Portuguese censors late in his life, and moved to Spain to avoid interference on religious grounds. (Apparently he died at Las Palmas, which I visited as a small child en route to Africa. I have vivid memories of the contrast between its warmth, colour and vivacity and the drabness of postwar London.) In Portugal all seemed to be forgiven when Saramago won the Nobel, though the conservative PM who’d supported the religious censorship prudently avoided the mourning when Saramago died.

I read and blogged this book on September 13th 2010. To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/the-double-by-jose-saramago/