A Confederacy of Dunces

The story of this book's publication makes it immediately interesting regardless of its content: it was written by John Kennedy Toole in the early 60s, who failed to find a publisher and ended up killing himself. His mother then shopped around the manuscript until finally it was published in 1980, winning the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1981. I doubt there are many other books with such a history...

But as all of us here are products of the liberal elite postmodernist University system such things as the author's biography, intents, and interesting histories are beside the point! Is it any good?

Well it's certainly very original. The main character, Ignatius Reilly, is an amazing creation. Spouting all sorts of high-brow scorn, he also is a bit of an idiot when it comes to doing...uh, anything. He wildly swings from furious to hurt and pathetic, and is a master manipulator who only engineers spectacular failures. He is hilarious (on finding out his on-and-off girl has a new Kenyan man: '"Oh, my God!" Ignatius slobbered. "The minx has been raped by a Mau-Mau."') and has a certain admirable grandeur but is also a total dick to everyone.

For just one example, he gets a low-grade job filing papers in a clothing factory office, which he 'does' by chucking away all the papers. He then decorates the office with all kinds of elaborate signs and artwork, and organizes a worker's revolt that evaporates into nothingness just as it starts to get going when it turns out Ignatius has no idea of what he's actually trying to achieve with it.

As he blasts his way through various quarters of New Orleans we get a great depiction of the strange nooks and crannies of that city as well as a host of interesting minor characters. But the book is dominated by Ignatius and his unpredictable interactions with anyone he comes across. Although it's hard to imagine actually having to deal with someone as totally impossible as Ignatius, his conflicts with the world often strike close to reality. His university-educated disdain for simple work, crappy films, and regular people could come from any number of us highbrow types in a moment of weakness. Nobody envies the guy who sells hot dogs do they? And why should I have to do some lame job, I'm so well-educated!

Ignatius stands in for the frustrations of all of us university graduates brimming with mostly useless knowledge and with not much productive to do with it. While most of us will probably manage to 'grow up' and enter the normal, real world, Ignatius is what happens when a kid fails to understand that everyone is 'special' and 'unique' and has to do boring and inane things to be a member of society. But, just as in real life, such sociopathic personalities can still get along fine in their own little bubbles, since they don't care about what they are doing to other people.

So although the disasters of Ignatius's character act as a caution against his type of selfishness and sense of entitlement, the book also seems oddly sympathetic towards him. By portraying him as a big child who has been failed by society, his 'success' in spite of his anti-social tendencies is a happy ending of sorts that also suggests a very depressing view of society's ability to handle outliers. Ignatius just takes advantage every time normal people act nicely towards him, and ends up in the box seat despite nobody actually liking him. Society sucks like that.

A Short Little Read On A Sunny Sunday Afternoon

Coming in at a stretched 77 pages, The Pigeon, by Patrick Suskind is a good way to spend an hour on a sunny Sunday afternoon, but is probably not worth the $12 you have to pay for it brand new.

Being a tiny little read it is impossible for it deal with complex subjects thoroughly, but instead does a fantastic job at giving you a snapshot in to the main characters wacky mindset. The entire seventy seven pages are spent wisely on each event that happens during an offhand day displaying just how neurotic Jonathan Noel has become after a life of self inflicted isolation. Entertaining moments include a description of a homeless man taking a squat in full view of everyone on a public road, this gives Jonathan a sense of satisfaction in his job that has kept him standing in the same spot for ten of thousands of hours.

But after the hour it takes to read this novella you are left slightly disappointed. Not enough to use the seventy seven pages as cigarette papers to get some value in the $12 you spent on it, but enough to give the book only a six on the popular penguin out of ten scale. There wasn't anything to give the book an edge, let alone a reason for placing it in the popular penguin series. It was difficult to come up with deeper meaning from the read, or find something to take away which would make you remember the book. I think if it wasn't for writing this blog I'd have forgotten completely ever reading it by now. All The Pigeon is, is a well told story of a neurotic character's day, but nothing more. So get the book out from the library but take your $12 and go for a trip out to a beach and buy an ice cream, then spend an hour sitting in the sun with your short little read.

Revisting Brideshead

Evelyn Waugh revisits Brideshead Revisited in its 1959 revised edition; "It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster — the period of soya beans and Basic English — and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language which now, with a full stomach, I find distasteful."

The contrast between war-ravaged 'soya bean' England and the luxuriant hedonistic memories of Charles and his friendship with Sebastian was, for me, the most emotionally engaging and well written part of the novel. Overall I wanted to like this book much, much more than I actually did.

Waugh's depiction of love and marriage, a commentary within the frames of Catholicism and the English Upper Class, was simply that. Julia and Charles' blossoming relationship was sort of mechanically written, as was other relationships/affairs between the other characters (except Charles and Sebastian's -- perhaps if it was called "Brideshead Revisited: the Adventures of Charles and Sebastian," it would have been better). Waugh can wax lyrical on the delicious and extravagant, but is reluctant to get emotive in his description of romance and its turmoils. There are glimpses of witty and vibrant Marchmain family vignettes, but in obvious contrast Waugh turns the latter part of the book into a serious narrative with hints of redemption and/or resolution for some characters, but it is generally boring because I had little empathy for any of the characters to begin with.

Brideshead Revisited: a great and sweeping bittersweet reverie of a British soldier, rests comfortably on this idea and doesn't take it too much further.

A Visit Down to Brideshead

Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh.

Initially after reading Brideshead it took a while to really understand what the book was about. Without a second thought you might assume that it is entirely about a quirky family with lots of problems and has no real point to the disjointed plot. This was very similar to our discussion on it at book club. It was only when we were wrapping up the night that we got into a real discussion of the books subtle main theme.

Maybe this is why the book is so highly regarded, you can revisit the book and get more out of it each time (not that i'll read it again). Mid way through the book I was ready to conclude that this was a fantastic read. I was thoroughly enjoying the story about two young men getting into trouble whilst drinking tremendous amounts of alcohol. It rung true with my own life. But this story died off with Sebastian becoming an alcoholic and eventually running away from not only Brideshead but also the book. This left me feeling lost, not knowing what the rest of the book was really about. Charles steps up the story about his own life, finds some romances and sees all the older Marchmains die.

But this is not what Brideshead is about at all. The house and the characters and the little stories about each one are just a instrument for Waugh to make his point about the Catholicism song. Subtly interwoven throughout the book are discussions and actions discribing Waughs own religion. These tidbits were all a little too weak for me to actually believe that Waugh is a man of strong faith. He consistently mocks Catholic logic, like where he questions how Alexander Flyte crossing himself on his death bed is going to make up for the years of anti-Catholic behaviour, and then gives a small argument for divine grace in Charles's moment where he feels some spirituality after seeing Alexander die. Not nearly dramatic enough to convince me it was really life changing.

A theme should be somewhat of a statement, some kind of goal that the book is trying portray and hopefully persuade the reader into questioning their own ideologies or whatever. But here I am more fascinated by Charles youthful agnostic beliefs than his later conversion. The reader should also be clearly able to understand the conversion if all the Marchmains talk and actions that helped to lead to Charles's conversion have been told. Clearly Waugh would want his audience to be somewhat more understanding of the Catholic teachings and himself being a Catholic would probably want the book to help grow the church. But as I reached the end of the book I'd have to agree with Henry Green who says "The end was not for me. As you can imagine my heart was in my mouth all through the deathbed scene, hoping against hope that the old man would not give way, that is, take the course he eventually did."

The Operation of Grace

Bookclub often involves heated arguments, whether about the aforementioned science fiction issue or related with a particular interpretation of a certain character or theme, the participants are always up for a bit of loud, racous defence of silly ideas. Last night, we examined Waugh's self-proclaimed opus, Brideshead Revisited and engaged in a particularly heated debate concerning the religious quality of the novel.

There is (and was) no denying the strong religious themes dealt with in the book. The inhabitants of Brideshead are set apart by their religion, although the protagonist is adament in his atheism. This is with several large exceptions, chief of which is this passage taken from Charle's first discussions with religion:

I had no religion. I was taken to church weekly as a child, and at school attended chapel daily, but, as though in compensation, from the time I went to my public school I was excused church in the holidays. The masters who taught me Divinity told me that biblical texts were highly untrustworthy. They never suggested I should try to pray. My father did not go to church except on family occasions and then with derision. My mother, I think, was devout. It once seemed odd to me that she should have thought it her duty to leave my father and me and go off with an ambulance, to Serbia, to die of exhaustion in the snow in Bosnia. But later I recognised some such spirit in myself. Later, too, I have come to accept claims which then, in 1923, I never troubled to examine, and to accept the supernatural as the real. I was aware of no such needs that summer at Brideshead. (page 18)

This passage alone hints at a conversion, although admittedly offers no claim of creed or even monotheistic character. However, a cursory glance at what the author has said about the novel and his own context reveals much. Waugh wrote to his literary agent A. D. Peters, "I hope the last conversation with Cordelia gives the theological clue. The whole thing is steeped in theology, but I begin to agree that the theologians won't recognise it." The writing style does not explicitly state anything, but carefully threads the concepts beneath the relationships. The author's avowed intent is to "deal with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself".

While in other books of the time, secularlism rules unheralded, it is the secular values that Charles holds that are somehow empty in the face of the deep spirituality expressed through the Catholic tradition. The flawless logic that Charles employs does not even convince himself, when he sits at the side of Lord Marchmain's bed and prays for a sign.

Whether Charle's converts in the book is contested in the critical literature but kneeling down in front of the tabernacle of the Brideshead chapel and saying a prayer, "an ancient, newly learned form of words" - implies "recent instruction in the catechism" and the strange smile is testament to some form of enlightenment.

Waugh speaks of his own faith in grace in a letter to Lady Mary Lygon: "I believe that everyone in his (or her) life has the moment when he is open to Divine Grace. It's there, of course, for the asking all the time, but human lives are so planned that usually there's a particular time — sometimes, like Hubert, on his deathbed — when all resistance is down and Grace can come flooding in."

This is not to say the author portrays Catholicism in an entirely positive light. Waugh paints a tainted picture of his ideal, the deeply flawed Brideshead family torn apart from the offset. Sebastian could be happier without religion and Cordellia agrees "Sebastian is very holy and no one is holy without suffering." Julia believes one has to sacrifice happiness to be close to God and Charles logically deconstructs every aspect of religion that he can. I believe these issues simply display religion in a real light: Catholicism does not preach that having faith will bring happiness. Happiness is seen as a transitory thing in the novel, something ultimately unfulfilling. There is something more that exists, that perhaps one must be faithful to understand.

By no means am I claiming understanding, the concept of faith falls outside my worldview but Waugh, in his strangely poignant tale of his relationship with the Brideshead family, sheds some light on the strange nature of divinity and its interaction with our fleeting existence.

the immutable science fiction

When I first claimed The Picture (Portrait) of Dorian Gray was an excellent example of early science fiction I was mocked. Vilified almost.

Every book club since, my name has been tainted with the brush of science fiction.

"Oh Poms." They say, "Has this something to do with science fiction."

And laugh, laugh like an episode of the US office, which is surprisingly consistent.

To those doubters I turned the laughing tables tonight, when, not really thinking too carefully about what I was saying, I came up with a theory that will put that feverish doubt so hungrily dumped at my door in the same coffin as the fantasy authors utility to society.

About when Newton was sitting under apple trees, Gottfried Leibniz was postulating just as interesting theories on the other side of the Channel, particularly involving the possibilities of there being other worlds existing parallel to our own. While his theories, revolving around our own forming some kind of perfect vision of God, Kripke and others converted the ideas into semantic tools, allowing us to logically deal with concepts like "possibility."

X is possible, means there exists a possible world, where x is true. X is necessary, means X is true in all possible worlds. Neat, tidy, wonderful. And from this idea, stems a befuddling idea that effectively states all these worlds might exist. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics effectively postulates the physical existence of all possible worlds.

This is beside the point slightly, my point is that every piece of fiction, postulates a possible state of the world. The novel is a peek into a world that actually exists beyond our potential observation and probably beyond my understanding of the principle, but nevertheless states something profound about the nature of consciousness and how we shape worlds according to our perception of what is possible.

Can we create these worlds by placing them on paper or what appears to be more logical, are we actually desecribing actual worlds and events, whether in the far off junk fantasy of Jordan's Wheel of Time or the near autobiographical approach of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

A subject that has absolutely no potential impact in the real world, but is worth thought, if only after a bottle of wine.

A Travel Book, Murder Mystery and Historical Account

Three books in a row left our crowd of noble literary voyagers rather cold and this bold companion lays the blame firmly in the hands of the creator.

Dark Star Safari, Sin: Pride

Africa is an incredibly suitable subject for Paul Thereoux, the massive, wild origin of humanity, where the vast resources are slowly siphoned off by the Vikings progeny and returned in the form of small parcels of food to keep people just about alive some of the time, is a great subject to rant on and on and on about. And his rants are on occasion, poignant, thoughtful and important. Thing is, Thereoux's ego is so unbelievably massive that it can barely be contained on the pages with the already heavy subject-matter. He seeps through the individuals described, through the utter hopelessness of it all and it left me so utterly uninterested that I found myself unable to complete reading the book. Its all about him, all about his feelings and his experiences and his utter contempt for anything that seems to disagree with him, I wanted to punch him, or for him to die, or for some horrific accident to hurt him terribly, perhaps extreme but let us be clear, he is a fucking wanker.

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, Sin: Greed

Barbara Vine on the other hand, produced a technically excellent little mystery thing that is quite satisfying and interesting. You just kept feeling she was trying so hard to create something "good" that in the end it just seemed forced. Too many symbols spoil the plot and this text is so overflowing with symbols, subtle literary devices and pointless character development that its a surprise the central story-arc remains quite strong. Perhaps blaming the author is harsh as she constructed something very enjoyable, but one feels the opportunity to create something great is spoiled by over-cooking.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne, Sin: Envy

Finally, Simon Winchester's historical account told a fascinating story very competently. Winnie plays the game with a spring to his prose and an interesting format, comparing and contrasting two of the major writers of the Oxford Dictionary as well as describing the general origins of the book. His crime is the rather bizarre building of tension that is more reminicent of a work of historical fiction than non-fiction. It is almost as if Winchester wants to be writing fiction but finds himself hemmed in by the restrictions of the actual history. After a while, interest in the facts fade away and you are faced with a potted history of a pointless book and lets be clear, no one ever really convinced me of the value of this universal definition book, other than to ruin lives and give the criminally insane something to do. The oddly perverse climax is not really a climax at all, its just another little tragedy in the life of a man who is beyond much help. Non-fiction is not the appropriate route to address this story, it is begging for narrative invention to allow for a nice, binding central arc that can evoke that oh, so crucial, cathartic satisfaction. An interesting account but nothing approximating the literary greatness that Popular Penguins should be all about.

So there we have three authors who produced something interesting but failed to produce something great. Next up, an author who failed but in a much more magnificent way. The real question has to be put: considering the number of wonderful books in the world, why is it this stupid Popular Penguins list is filled with such average examples of the English novel.

Special Super-Delayed Review Editions, Vol. 2

The Surgeon of Crowthorne, by Simon Winchester

A non-fiction book, the Surgeon of Crowthorne is concerned with the origins of the ultra-ubiquitous Oxford English Dictionary. Perhaps the most respected reference book of all time ("Yo Brittanica, you got some great facts, imma let you finish..."), it was also the first to be constructed around quotations from actual usage, aiming to cover everything in the language. I found all the background on the history of dictionaries very interesting since I didn't really know anything about it beforehand, but Mr. Foulkes said he already knew most of it so if you're an expert in dictionaries it may not be the best reading.

The major focus is of course on the eponymous surgeon, a mentally ill man who started as an American civil war medic and ended up shooting a man in London and being sent to an asylum. From there he sent massive wads of quotations to the dictionary's editors, who were for a long time unaware that this helpful character was in an asylum. Although the story centres on this strange character I'd say at least half of the book describes the process of the dictionary being made with him somewhat in the background. It is amazing that such a respected and seemingly conventional and boring reference book has this weird, almost unbelievable character attached to it, and after reading the book the dictionary itself appears much more interesting than I previously thought.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne is competently written, but really is more like a giant magazine article than a piece of literature. As such there's not really too much more I can say about this particular Popular Penguin. It's a really strange and interesting story told in a mostly factual way about an unusual topic. I enjoyed it, but Poms threatened severe violence to anyone ranking the book above a 0/10, so you'll have to decide for yourself!

Special Super-Delayed Review Editions, Vol. 1

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, by Barbara Vine

The blurb describes "The Chimney Sweeper's Boy" as "one of the finest, most accomplished and chilling tales of psychological suspense ever written." While this is an exaggeration I think the most apt word is "accomplished". Barbara Vine aka. Ruth Rendell is an exceptionally experienced writer who really does know her craft. She always keeps the plot moving at just the right pace and her writing style, while not particularly exciting, has plenty of nice touches.

That said, I found the book unsatisfying. The symbolism (like the butterflies) was a bit heavy-handed and there were a few too many passages which were obviously just put in as clues to the mystery. The general outline of the solution to the mystery is pretty easy to see coming, though the details were unexpected (to me anyway). The strongest part of the book is the characters, who all have believable, slightly strange habits and flaws that still seemed realistic. Nobody's actually normal in real life are they? The plot itself is a bit more artificial but I could certainly imagine it happening.

I think the main thing that let down the book as a whole was the lack of much deep insight. Vine may have been just a bit too obsessed with building a story about a Serious Issue and let that get in the way of making a well-rounded story. I've never read any other Ruth Rendell but from this book I imagine her straight crime novels are really great examples of the genre. I think she certainly deserves credit for writing something much more ambitious and morally complex than a typical mystery book, and while it didn't work perfectly I did find it a good read.

A Confederacy of Dunces - A Review

I think it's fair to say that when one picks up a good-sized novel, one expects to be drawn into a good story. A Confederacy of Dunces did well to keep me wanting such enticement, and 400 pages is a long time to be waiting.
It simply lacked a coherent narrative. The farcical comedy, while at times hilarious, in my opinion didn't make up for this weakness. Furthermore, I felt little affinity with any of the characters, although in retrospect (and after bookclub discussion) the more extreme bits of all of us can be found lurking in the psyche of the book's gargantuan centre, Ignatius Reilly. Perhaps I failed to notice this because I was so repelled and revolted by his habits and behaviour most of the time. Unfortunate.
There was too much ranting too, which I absorb enough of in my everyday existence as a student, that to read it in a fiction novel is like cleaning a well-used bathroom - something of a chore. Hidden among these rantings, brandishing of plastic cutlasses and blocking of valves were small gems of social commentary that addressed themes of sexuality, reputation, mental illness, modernity, and the wobbly wheel of fortune. First and foremost however, A Confederacy of Dunces is a book about a confederacy of dunces. Even Angelo, who had enough sense to solve the mystery of the brown packet trade spent most of the book locked in a bathroom, or sulking around the streets in a ridiculous costume. Would it be utterly pretentious of me to be disappointed by his almost complete lack of back-bone? And Ignatius himself could be squeezed into a nutshell (if we could find one big enough) with the force of the single sentence, 'In his wake he had left a trail of overturned tables.'
Provided it was done well, this book would definitely translate into an excellent slapstick comedy film, with plenty of opportunities for symbolic visuals like the pirates earing flashing about, and closeups of a steaming, quivering hot-dog. But this is not a film, it is a book, and despite moments of genius comedic exaggeration and pertinent mockery of modern society, it is a novel which perhaps requires a certain type of reader, or a certain type of reading, to make it an overall enjoyable read. As one of our number aptly put it, this novel promises much but never truly delivers.
I give it 5/10.

Pornography like you've never seen it before

Spoilers alert!!

The placing of a father's penis next to the face of his son, the rape of a young boy by his classmates and the cutting of vaginas make up the first three stories in the collection of erotica from Anais Nin. How to define pornography is difficult, at one end of the spectrum, books like Lolita fester, without doubt exploiting sexuality and the description of sexuality but still pretty decisively lying in the literary domain, at the other lies "Pirates".

Where do Nin's titilations penetrate the scale. On the one hand, it was coaxed towards the descriptive by the Collector who commissioned the tales, every time demanding more actual sexual escapades and less context. Yet he hired literary types and especially in the case of Delta, the writing inevitably strayed towards the artistic. The depravity infesting all the stories is unmistakably poking fun at the Collector but at the same time deeply contemplating the absurdity and necessity of sexual morality.

Why is it we react with such horror at notions of fathers sleeping with their daughters and sons? Is it right to care that women are murdered brutally by sadistic men? Should we happily let the weak get sexually abused by the strong and revel in the pleasure of it all? Should we embrace the darkness that seems to surround these acts, allow suffering to become our motivation. As should be reasonably evident to any person with any semblance of sanity, the answer is no.

The most magnificent tale in the book featured a man who found he gained sexual pleasure from exposing himself eventually finding love in a like minded soul. This did not as the others did, rely heavily on exploitative relationships. The cheap pleasure he derived from exposure would psychoanalytically speaking, probably originate somewhere in the power he gained from his sexuality without consent or effort. Yet he found familiarity and accepted it, and lived happily ever after. A silly little fable but one that used such ridiculous subject matter that it actually remains quite vividly in the memory.

In a few of her stories, Nin titilates and inspires satisfaction, in some she invokes horror and others, merely pleasure. As a book, it leaves one wanting for more substance and a suitable memory blocker to get rid of certain images.

If there can be any conclusion to this rant, it is that pornography can do more than titilate. The deep satisfaction derived from an excellent narrative can be compared very loosely with the strange, magnificent, animal stupour induced by the orgasm; yet few would choose a really good book over a really good orgasm. The strange pleasure in this little collection is that it manages to walk the line.

Dark Star Safari

Dark Star Safari is a travel book, but it is not a holiday book. Theroux decided to go from Cairo to Cape Town using anything other than airplanes (though he does end up having to take one plane), and he portrays himself as a crotchety old man who has no time for traditional tourists, photography, sightseeing, and luxury. His method reminds me a little bit of Kerouac: traveling without a specific purpose, just observing normal lives and making spur-of-the-moment decisions to adventure into unexpected places. And like Kerouac his view is not a grand vision of the continent but a series of miniature portraits of individuals and towns.

Theroux references Heart of Darkness several times, particularly when he is traveling by boat along the Nile, and his view of the state of Africa is not much better than that in Conrad's story. Most of the countries Theroux travels through have thrown off their colonial Kurtzes only to have them replaced by local despots, tyrants and corrupt governments. Where there is copious foreign aid we are repeatedly shown the image of men standing around underneath trees with nothing to do, waiting for their foreign benefits. Where there is little aid people rely on subsistence farming, one bad season from famine. In Zimbabwe (as it was in 2001) Theroux describes a country on the edge of the abyss, about to go from a reasonably peaceful, prosperous country with modern farms and services to a lawless disaster ruled by a madman. "Even the democratic" South Africa sounds terrifying, with insane rates of seemingly unstoppable crime and plenty of racism.

For the first quarter or so of the book I found Theroux's mocking of the aid agencies and their expensive Land Rovers a bit tiresome, but by the time he's described the horrors of genital mutilation, poverty, AIDS denialism, useless government officials in expensive suits and on and on I pretty much agreed with his extreme cynicism, although this cynicism is uncomfortably close to saying "not our problem, too hard, nothing works".

It seems silly to say that I "enjoyed" such a depressing book, but it was worthwhile reading and Theroux's account was fundamentally honest and truthful despite his grumpy old man persona. The standard Western liberal view is that Africa is gradually getting better, and we just need to give a bit more to speed up the process. Dark Star Safari challenges everything about this view: In many places it's getting worse, "better" to us isn't necessarily better to them, aid is often counterproductive...it's all so depressing.

A Fine Romance

A quick perusal of Wikipedia reveals that Jane Eyre inspired a huge number of adaptations in film, music and television form throughout the 20th century, involving such names as Hitchcock, Welles, and Huxley. I would suggest that this is due to the timeless structure of the plot and its miraculous convergence with the narrator's own thoughts about romance and purposeful life. Film pitch: independent woman is down for some reason or other, meets some guy who is totally not her type, God, goes off and does something else, gets the guy in the end once he's renounced his fault(s) in her eyes. I don't know how common it was to have a female first-person narrator in the mold of Jane Eyre in the 19th century, but in its favour Jane Eyre does at least pass the DTWOF test.

Jane certainly wouldn't warrant a profile in Ms., but she is a perfect match for what I would call "post-feminism", which in its extremest form is roughly "that set of views in which a woman who dresses tarty, gets smashed, and sleeps around is the really free feminist". To transpose to the context of Jane Eyre: Jane is a free woman, free to choose the life of a dutiful wife with the perfect man, but not until he's really proven himself and she has proven that she could have got on without him.

But enough of this more-feminist-than-thou mockery. Jane Eyre is a great read, well-paced and well-written (apart from the occasional spell of overwritten dialogue) with a classic plot that ends well for all the characters Bronte has you sympathise with. Remove the Christian moralizing and the weird demon wife and you've pretty much got the blueprint for a modern romantic film script. I'd like to conclude by quoting my favourite passage from Jane Eyre:

"Are you well?" she asked. Well might she put the question: his face was blanched as her gown.

"Quite well," he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate. She went one way; he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she tripped fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across, never turned at all.

Ahh, unrequited love...

Jane Eyre and the Illogical Outcome

As an autobiographical narrated novel that is meant to be written from the perspective of someone reflecting on their own life and therefore should be a sound logical argument leading to a logical conclusion. But the book Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte mocks logic and so should be banished back to the eighteen hundreds from where it came, and where it belongs.

Lets looks at how the plot is set up before the pending outcome. Firstly we are introduced to Jane Eyre as a child where the first critical event happens (chpt. 1 - 4). After being unjustly and severely punished Jane explodes in a empowering manor at her auntie, displaying her awakening as a feminist and independent modern woman.

The next part of the story is based in the orphanage where again we are led to believe that Jane is being more and more empowered to be an equal in a hierarchical society (chpt. 5 - 10). This scene concludes with Jane leaving for employment she arranged by herself and is her first step into the real world with her mind made up on life, that she is a lady and no body can hold her back.

Although she doesn't step into a role as chief campaigner for the pro-abortion movement she does step into being master of her own world, employed, free, and obviously a great role model for all feminists to be. This is also where we see the gradual nonsensical change take place, the one that does not logically conclude from expectations set up from past events (chpt. 11 - 26). Maybe it is the achilles heel of females, or maybe it is everyone's strong belief in ghosts, but the introduction of the mature, rich, worldly, and absolutely stunning in her own eye, Mr Edward Rochester, exposes her as a very typical female, eighteen hundred's character of little interest to the new liberated readers of following centuries.

The book could have concluded at the two thirds mark quite easily without to much disruption to the over all outcome by not having the unsuccesful marriage of Jane and Edward. But fortunately we are given hope that Jane still has that independent spirit burning as she rejects him at the last moment because of not wanting to be the subordinate of a polygimist.

Hooray, Jane you are free, look at her escape the Rochester mansion and become all the woman she was born to be. But wait! After a number of chapters about her finding out she is rich, has a family and a cousin who cooks up some half baked plan to marry and move to India as a missionary with her as a way of legitimately having sexual relations with her, we find out that actually all she wants is what she had back at said two thirds mark (chpt. 27 - 35).

The conclusion of the book is, without surprise, her finding the long lost Mr Rochester and extinguishing that feminist flame within her once and for all. A quiet marriage and soon enough she is where she wants to be, back at a man's side giving in to his every wish. This we are meant to believe is actually love because Mr Rochester is now severely disabled and has nothing to do with Jane's subconscious connection to a safe, controlled, simple life as being ones house wife.

Oh! How the book set up the want to a radical ending where Jane moved to London became a prostitute and eventually somehow ended up as the first female president of the USA. But to think a woman eventually live a life unmarried and without a protector, Treason! Therefore Jane Eyre, never rear your head again in a modern movie, you are a let down for the entire modern age of liberty.

Manipulating your way to happiness: The Rochester Doctrine

Jane Eyre Spoilers alert!

Last month, book club discussion focussed on Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte's classic gothic romance telling the story of a young orphan girl who rises to be a governess. This week, I disagreed with the group on the subject of the romantic content of the book.


Jane Eyre and Rochester is one of the most satisfying romances that I've ever read in a novel. The age gap is immense, the 40 year old dates the teenager. Rochester is not attractive and neither is Jane. Jane is very intelligent, quick witted and a competent intellectual, Rochester is also endowed with mental prowess although has a darker past.

Jane's chief crime, although it is never really portrayed as a crime, is an outburst at her cruel adopted mother. Rochester screws his way round Europe after his wife goes crazy, cruelly manipulates Jane's emotions to love him and most of all, tries to fool Jane into marrying him when he is already married! Yet there is some Darcyness to the character, he sacrifices his vision and fitness to try to save his wife at the last and there is the underlying theme of love for Jane that isn't broken. Far more interesting and annoying is Jane's character. Haunted by a sense of inferiority, she seems to avoid anything approximating happiness until satisfying that Christian message that sneaks in, the "trust God and everything will be ok".

Yet, somehow through all of this, a consistent theme seems to be love. I always felt the Pride and Prejudice witty diatribe seemed a bit silly. The Darcy and Bennett characters are contrived and idealistic even with their weaknesses. The power games of Rochester seem to better approximate the age, with Jane Eyre still retaining and exercising her ability to choose.

In 1966, R.B. Martin called Jane Eyre "the first major feminist novel".

"Only equals like Jane and Rochester dare to speak truth couched in language of unadorned directness."

Nowhere in the novel is change promoted or expected. The woman's place in the world is accepted. Eyre in fact does not appear overly surprised by Rochester's betrayal, scarcely believing that such a man would deign to shower her with affections. It is only when he is emasculated that she accepts him, where he ceases to have power. Yet it is in this subtle and seemingly submissive attitude that the novel betrays its feminist fervour. Eyre is the one who pursues power, she wishes to make her life mean more than the blueprint of the age. She does not want to accept her position but at the same time, she knows that to rebel too openly is to lose everything. Instead the silliness of the God aspect allows Jane to take her own path. And that path is love.

Ah.

Dorian Gray Alternate Ending

WARNING POSSIBLE PLOT CLUES:

He looked round, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the motivator, Lord Henry. Dorian bound the knife with his handkerchief and pocketed it. He ran downstairs and sent his servant on an errand to invite Lord Henry over with urgency.

The moon was full and high in the sky. The light shone through the upper windows casting shadows counter to those of the dimly candle lit room. Lord Henry entered the room Dorian was lingering in. “Welcome Henry. How do you do?”. But little opportunity was given for a reply, Dorian quickly interrupted himself, “My mind is so clouded at the moment. It is every thing the nights sky is not on this still night. Follow me, you must understand.”. He led him up to that dark secret room where he stored his most hated of treasures. “Look, look at what you have made me!”. Dorian yelled as he whipped away the curtain covering the painting and forced Henry in for a closer look.

Lord Henry gasped at what he saw. At first it seemed as if Dorian was showing him a painting of a crazed old man, but after a second glance he saw it was the one holding him so closely to this ugly face. Henry then noticed something not even Dorian had seen before, it was Henry's own face starting to show through the horrid man's features, like that of a possessed person. It was on noticing this that he felt a sudden cool feeling in his back, and saw blood starting to trickle on the floor. He had no breath left in him to exclaim anything more than deathly sigh.

Dorian released the knife dropping Lord Henry to the floor. As Henry's last breath was exhaled with a bubble of air boiling through his blood filled mouth, he looked up to see what Dorian was now starring at. As Henry transitioned into the next state of life the painting changed with his departure. Revealing itself over an awe inspiring minute the paint moulded itself to form a new image not seen on this canvas for decades, but a near perfect reflection of the man standing admiring it. A new feeling came over Dorian he had not felt since his child hood. One of innocence and purity. It was soon obvious that the murder of his long time mentor was the cleansing of the devil on his shoulder. He felt free of sin and his thoughts were rid of the murkiness that had filled it moments earlier. The moon light shone through the small window of the room. The light cast a shadow over the young looking man and a silhouette from the white cross of the window frame came over his body.

It's no Crime and Punishment

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a strange book. Perhaps due to the large amount of changes Wilde made to the text from the original short novel version, including adding six chapters and removing the parts that were seen as too explicitly homoerotic or hedonistic, the pacing is rather uneven. One tedious chapter is mostly copied from various historical guides to Dorian's series of obsessions with precious stones, tapestries and clothing. Passages like this:

When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome, and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light. Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and twenty-one diamonds. Richard II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand marks, which was covered with balas rubies....

continue on for quite some time, and don't have much relation to the story.

Wilde uses (and recycles) a lot of epigrams in Lord Henry's dialogue ("Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects."), which makes for entertaining dinner party banter. Later on, Henry's compulsion to pronounce witticisms sometimes gets a bit tiresome, but is perhaps meant to show that the ideas of his that Dorian falls for aren't particularly deeply thought out. "You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."

I don't think it is just the style of the book that makes it somewhat unsatisfying though. Dorian falls for the hedonistic lifestyle without much of a moral struggle. Any sympathy he elicits as a young, naive youth is disposed of pretty quickly by his lack of remorse for any of his actions. Past a certain point there is no chance of redemption and the rest of the novel is just marking time until Dorian receives his just deserts. Even at the very end Dorian's feeling of remorse is quickly overcome by the desire to simply destroy all the evidence of his past.

But for the most part I found The Picture of Dorian Gray entertaining, and the episode with the young actress was quite effective in its desperate humour. Just don't expect deep and meaningful, capital-L Literature. Like an epigram, it is a bit of fun, but its charm is liable to evaporate if placed under too much scrutiny.

The Reflection of Dorian Gray

"How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this--for this--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!"

So laments Dorian Gray, staring into his beautiful likeness. There is something very fishy about the way Wilde writes this gothic horror. Compared with the explicitly Victorian Dracula, Wilde paints the same themes but instead of focussing on the hero, focuses on the monster. Underlying Lord Henry, with his light hearted hedonism is Satan, the great tempter. Dorian, tempted by the pursuits of the flesh, sells his soul to feed his Henry-induced desire to keep his beauty forever and in the end, perishes, the guilt and fear forcing his hand; a clear indictment of his own moral excesses and promotion of Christian value.

However, there is a certain ambiguity in Wilde’s analysis; there is no doubt that he paints Dorian as wrong. With the moral turpitude that he practises comes drug addiction, murder and the ruin of reputations, in that time a fate slightly better than out and out murder. Yet, the supernatural element of the painting hides a deeper meaning. Wilde appears to be commenting on the ridiculousness of it all.

"I know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more,--at least not before me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."

Do we have a soul underneath our skin carrying all of our collective sins or are we instead instinctive creatures that should embrace the pleasures of life? His death comes at his own hand after attempting to purge his sins, Wilde knows such an act is not possible; to attempt to purge one’s sins is to kill oneself. Henry in the book is both devil and Savior, Wilde leaves enough ambiguity to feel some truth in his words, some reflection in the joy of hedonism. It is the old who realise the truth of pleasure, it is the folly of youth to attempt to pursue these outdated moral truths.

"Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot…"

If anything, this story is about the rejection of these illusions of youth and learning to accept one’s sins for what they are. A reflection of our true selves. A society cannot repress its sexuality, its brutality, it must embrace and understand indulgence. Wilde never attempts to suggest this means going down the dark path of Dorian's disgrace but it is the denial that brings his worst sin and his own death. Only in acceptance can we be truly satisfied.

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

Detective P. D. O'Phile

What makes Lolita a great novel? It is the confessions of a pedophile, and might be expected to illuminate that condition to some extent, but I thought that the greatness of the book really lay in its language and structure, which is like a detective story hiding in the novel itself.

From the very first page Nabokov's use of language in Lolita is enthralling. Nabokov is able to transform "What makes twelve year olds sexy?" into this:

You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs--the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate--the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.

While I was reading Lolita practically every other sentence stood out as a tiny masterpiece. I found it easy to be carried along by the prose itself, regardless of the depravity of the thoughts being expressed. This made the occasional slips where the truth is plainly stated brutally jarring, as the reader is suddenly snapped out of the hypnotic spell of writing into confronting reality:

And I catch myself thinking that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night--every night, every night--the moment I feigned sleep.

The sentence starts with what could a beautiful evocation of the common feeling of the waste and weariness of endless travelling, but ends with the sting of the horrible truth.

While the language continues in this gorgeous style throughout the book, as the plot unfolds the rigourous structure of the novel begins to become apparent. Helped out by the design of the plot, H.H. can make literary references like this:

This book is about Lolita; and now that I have reached the part which (had I not been forestalled by another internal combustion martyr) might be called "Doloros Disparue," there would be little sense in analyzing the three empty years that followed.

H.H.'s comparison of Lolita to Proust's Albertine is at once self-serving (Proust may have been weird, but at least his 'prisoner' was of legal age) and also extremely apt: One of Proust's major concerns is the jealousy and helplessness he feels as the object of his affection tries to have her own life independent of him. The last part, "there would be little sense...", seems to be mocking Proust for spending several hundred pages examining the forgetting of his love instead of just getting over it in a page or two, but also suggests a clue to the ending, where Lolita returns changed and no longer appealing to H.H., much as Proust's childhood love, Gilberte, about whom he expends so much emotional energy, comes back as Proust's friend's wife, but since she is no longer the girl she was he no longer feels any jealousy. Lolita is full of similarly multi-layered references and clues.

Passages like this, marked by Nabokov through H.H.'s ironic remarks about coincidence, serve as more overt clues in the detective story:

a comparatively recent (1946) Who's Who in the Limelight--actors, producers, playwrights, and shots of static scenes. In looking through the latter volume, I was treated last night to one of those dazzling coincidences that logicians loathe and poets love.

Here we see the fateful name "Quilty" appear of course, but it is not until H.H. finally hears the truth from the now-pregnant Lolita that the hint is resolved:

she emitted...the name that the astute reader has guessed long ago. Waterproof. Why did a flash from Hourglass Lake cross my consciousness? I, too, had known it, without knowing it, all along. There was no shock, no surprise. Quietly the fusion took place, and everything fell into order, into the pattern of branches that I have woven throughout this memoir with the express purpose of having the ripe fruit fall at the right moment; yes, with the express and perverse purpose of rendering--she was talking but I sat melting in my golden peace--of rendering that golden and monstrous peace through the satisfaction of logical recognition, which my most inimical reader should experience now.

Somehow when I read this, the name Quilty really did pop into my mind, just like this passage describes. It felt obvious, but I couldn't figure out why. It was like those magic shows on TV where somehow you just can't believe you picked the Queen of Diamonds which is now right there on the screen, mocking you. Waterproof. Breathtaking. From the early hints of trickery, like the class list which seemed like a word puzzle, to the coincidental names H.H. finds in the hotels as he pursues the stolen Lolita, the novel builds up a huge force of mystery and purpose from all of these hints and references: you just know that something sneaky must be going on.

In the end, these fateful coincidences make the plot of Lolita rather far-fetched, yet I felt that much of the force of the book as an artwork came from the resolution of all of the unlikely connections. Not just the resolution of the actual events of the story, but the resolution of all of the hints that stand out as not really belonging in a "realistic" story. Unlike a standard Sherlock Holmes-style detective, H.H. already knows all the answers, since he wrote the story himself. The detectives are the readers, as they try to uncover the master plan of the "pattern of branches" which Nabokov imposes on H.H.'s confession.

All of this is kind of an expansion on why I said that pedophilia is in some sense a MacGuffin in Lolita. Not that it isn't important to the novel, but that I thought the book's effectiveness was as a pure work of writing, from the smallest details of language to the overall structure of the novel. There are deep truths to be found in Lolita, but I felt that they were often incidental to the grand design of Nabokov's big literary puzzle.

To begin, I must stress that we are not experienced literary critics or for that matter, literature students of any capacity. We have a certain degree of experience between us, all in our twenties, all having spent a significant proportion of time reading and appreciating the written form in various forms but none of us profess to possess any higher understanding or knowledge of the densely populated critical context that surrounds the books we read. So our opinions will probably seem amateurish or simply silly to those of a more well rounded literary persuasion. Otherwise, read on and enjoy!

Lolita splits critical reception, England and France had it banned, America calls it the great American novel or pornography. It both impressed and dissatisfied me without ever really getting anywhere close to what I’d feel is a great novel. Why?

Nabakov convolutedly describes his work as “his love affair with the English language.” There is no denying the utterly wonderful style, resplendent in sly wit, endless clever devices, French and a brilliantly manipulative main character who effortlessly draws you into his perverted world. However, writing alone does not make a good story. This is clearly a book by an academic artist; an excellent piece of writing that is perhaps not as aesthetically pleasing or entertaining as it is objectively superb.

Many seem to be engaged by this book, but for me, it simply offered a showcase of excellent technical application. The problem, in the end, lies in the subject. The tale of moral turpitude; the paedophile who spends as much time in rationalisation as guilt, has been criticised quite fairly as pornography. In our book club, Giles argued that the paedophile aspect could be replaced with anything, I disagree. Nabakov bases his whole character around the odious condition, and although along with Happiness, the Woodsman and the like, provides an interesting study of that most perplexing disorder, it doesn’t seem to go any further. What can we take away from the book, other than perhaps an increased understanding, perhaps even a degree of sympathy for those in our society that cannot be excused. I genuinely believe a work of fiction should attempt to do more than merely showcase technique and at least try to shed some light on some aspect of the human condition. Nabakov wrote on the book: “For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss.” For me, that’s not enough and that’s why I gave it a 5/10.

How Lolita Affected My Life

One month since reading Nabokov's classic Lolita, I posed the question 'how had my life changed directly from reading this novel?'. Apart from the obvious discussions about the book, surely there were themes or characters who had some level of affect and therefore have shown their facades through my actions or thoughts or philosophic state.

Personally the most atrocious themes have not personified themselves in my day-to-day living, nor my non-day-to-day living, although I was drawn into watching The Woodsman one night. Firstly I must self realise what has changed for me in the last month. There are the obvious things, a new job, biking being made my main form of transportation and the resulting outcomes such as tiredness, timeliness and more t words. These big changes were little to do with the reading, but a closer observation might conclude that biking is something to do with fear induced from the road trips Lolita and H,H go on.

Maybe a look at smaller subtle changes might be more appropriate. After reading this book I questioned morals, should the self indulge in thy self to satisfy ones desire? I am tempted to agree, but is it this temptation that makes me aware of the outcomes. Why does one feel guilty when they succumb to temptation? does it come from a spiritual awareness within? or is it a reaction to years of psychological damage from conservative teachings? I am justified to state that as long as ones actions only do good, least post neutral, to all people they influence that they might deem appropriate. In stark contrast to the narrator, "Unless it can be proven to me—to me as I am now, today, with my heart and my beard, and my putrefaction—that, in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, life is a joke) I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art." - Humbert Humbert.

One last thing one might think of is destiny. Throughout the book there are signs of a destiny for HH to be with a nymphet that he was designed for. From his first encounters with Annabel to the occurrences within the Hazes house where he knew it was no accident that one such object of his affection would be somehow become his and only his, and a solid example; the houses street number is 342, the room they stay in The Enchanted Hunter is 342. In my own life I feel slightly more open to destiny, if it is a possibility. For example, the job I started took no effort to obtain. I was approached by someone in need, was free to start without any issues and have enjoyed it so far. Maybe there is an underlying thread of things all working together to produce outcomes that are even romantic in the way they fit together. The final sign being a recent news article about a 13 year old boy becoming a father, link. A twisted fate that must be born from the loins of Lolita.

Book 1: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul."

The first Popular Penguin under review by the Popular Penguin Book Club of Christchurch is the 1955 controversy, Lolita.

Check back soon for reviews and essays submitted by book club members.