I finally finished this book last Wednesday. I've been thinking about what to write ever since then. It should be short and simple: don't waste your precious time reading this book. Yes, I understand that the book was important in changing the structure of the novel and being among the first to experiment with stream-of-consciousness narration. However that makes this book valuable in an historical sense, and thus of value to English Lit grad students, but to a general reader, I don't think there's much here to be concerned with.
Stephen Dedalus is the main character of the book (and a thinly veiled alter ego of James Joyce himself). Born into a decent family, his father spends the family into penury over the years. Stephen goes to a Catholic boarding school run by the Jesuits, but then the family can't afford to send him any longer. So then he goes a day school run by the Christian Brothers. During all this, Stephen's story is surrounded by the Irish national politics of the day (mainly independence from England). And while I'm very interested in the history of Irish nationalism, Joyce makes it unintelligible and uninteresting. Stephen is a very religious boy, but during his adolescence he's led to discover the temptations of the flesh and has his first sexual encounter with a prostitute. He also engages in other "sinful" activities and is shamed by them but he enjoys them too much to give them up. Then he goes on a church retreat and Joyce goes on a rampage. Twelve or so pages describing Hell and the punishments for sinners. At this Stephen reverts to his pious ways. So much so, one of the Jesuits asks him to consider joining the order. Stephen declines and goes off to college. There he learns that beauty is worth pursuing for its own sake. And thus he must leave the religious and political shackles of his homeland to make good in his study of beauty.
That's the story. Basically a coming of age story that could have been told in a hundred or so pages. Instead, expressing contempt for his readers the entire time, Joyce makes the book twice as long as it needs to be. Further, Stephen isn't even a particularly likeable character. He's a shy kid who turns into a stuffy zealot and then into an insufferable prat in college. Ok Stephen, you've read Aquinas and Aristotle, that doesn't mean that you have some tremendously developed philosophy of beauty and aesthetics.
The book could have been greatly improved if someone had introduced Joyce to the period. His sentences, even the ones that aren't stream of consciousness based, tend to run on and on. I'm not saying he needed to be Hemingway or that I don't enjoy a challenge. What I'm saying is, bunches of four and five line sentences are taxing on the reader and take away from plot and character development just so you can show off that you can construct a fancy sentence. Just for fun, I went back to the 9th grade tool of trying to diagram a complex sentence of Joyce's. I assure you that unless you're a 9th grade English teacher who's well versed in diagramming, it can't be done. It's possible it can't even be done then. It's a shame because there are flashes of descriptive brilliance in the novel.
Simply put, I detested this book because I believe the writer didn't care about his readers. He was more interested in gimmickry and showing off his skills with the language. It doesn't make for a good read.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Not Re-Joyce-ing
I'm going to come out and say it right now: James Joyce sucks. Highly over-rated, bombastic, beat-you-over-the-head crap. I powered through about 40 more pages last night in an effort of supreme will. About a dozen or more of those pages were given over to describing Hell. Ok, I get it. And I get that you're showing how Stephen became afraid of the sins of the flesh because he didn't want to go to hell. I think four pages would have more than sufficed. Sheesh.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
James Joyce Is Tough to Read
I'm slogging through Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Not only is it difficult to read, I'm also not really interested in the character and the story. Ugh.
Monday, September 8, 2008
What's Left on the List
1. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
2. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (currently reading)
3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
4. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Don Quixote by Cervantes
6. The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
7. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
8. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
9. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
10. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
11. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
12. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
13. A Book to be Named Later by an Author to Be Named Later
I'm pretty sure I'm going to eliminate the Neil Postman book. I'm also pretty sure that I'm going to add Barbara Tuchmans The Guns of August to the list. I tried to read it a few years ago and it didn't take, but as it's considered such a wonderful work and as I consider WWI to be fundamental to understanding the 20th C., I think I need to give it another shot.
I need to finish this list up. My "to be read" list of books in LibraryThing has cracked 100!
2. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (currently reading)
3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
4. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Don Quixote by Cervantes
6. The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
7. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
8. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
9. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
10. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
11. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
12. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
13. A Book to be Named Later by an Author to Be Named Later
I'm pretty sure I'm going to eliminate the Neil Postman book. I'm also pretty sure that I'm going to add Barbara Tuchmans The Guns of August to the list. I tried to read it a few years ago and it didn't take, but as it's considered such a wonderful work and as I consider WWI to be fundamental to understanding the 20th C., I think I need to give it another shot.
I need to finish this list up. My "to be read" list of books in LibraryThing has cracked 100!
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Night by Elie Wiesel
Night by Elie Wiesel is the Nobel Peace Prize-winning personal account of his time in the Nazi concentration camps as an adolescent. It is a very short book, but immensely powerful.
As with most talk of the Holocaust, no matter what I write here can begin to capture the horror of those terrible times. Every word seems to be an insufficient testament to man's basic inhumanity. Perhaps what I find more terrifying than "just" the killing, was the methodical and precise (though often arbitrary) way the genocide was carried out by the Nazis. This wasn't just knee-jerk killings in the streets due to anti-Semitism. This was well-thought out, planned, and executed government policy. It beggars the imagination.
What struck me most about Night was the spareness of its language (in English translation). No punches were pulled, no unnecessary prose was used. The story was as bare as the experience. Everything is stripped away. There is no time for extra words. Extra words are an unaffordable luxury. One must tell the story. One must bear witness. Perhaps the strongest contribution of Night was that it inspired other Holocaust survivors to tell their stories, so that we never forget what happened in those camps.
Wiesel lived in the Transylvania region of Hungary. Things went along fine for his town during the war until 1944. That's when the Nazis showed up in Budapest and the "evacuation" of those Jews began. First they were forced from their homes into ghettoes and then loaded into cattle cars and shipped like so much cargo to the concentration camps. Wiesel and his father were separated from his mother and sister at Birkenau. He and his father were then marched to Auschwitz. I have to stop here and say that the writing on the gate of Auschwitz (and the facsimile of the gate at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) is one of the things that angers me most in the world. Arbeit Macht Frei (work will make you free). The most cynical words ever set into form. There was no chance, no prayer, no way that work would make these inmates free. It was a lie on a colossal scale. I'm grinding my teeth now just typing this. I don't know how I could have dealt with seeing it as an inmate. Frankly, I probably couldn't have afforded the anger.
Wiesel goes on to describe how life in the camp became nothing but a quest for survival. He even, in his mind, abandoned his filial duties. His life revolved around how to avoid the blows of the guards, how to get food and water, how to get sleep, and how to avoid illness. The bleakest, sparest existence possible.
Finally, Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald camp. The Nazis fled after inmate resistance late in the war. American troops arrived the next day. Wiesel's father had alread died.
Night is a tremendously powerful book. Like many other Holocaust survivor stories, it should be required reading. We cannot forget what happened and we are bound to do our best to prevent anything like it from happening again.
As with most talk of the Holocaust, no matter what I write here can begin to capture the horror of those terrible times. Every word seems to be an insufficient testament to man's basic inhumanity. Perhaps what I find more terrifying than "just" the killing, was the methodical and precise (though often arbitrary) way the genocide was carried out by the Nazis. This wasn't just knee-jerk killings in the streets due to anti-Semitism. This was well-thought out, planned, and executed government policy. It beggars the imagination.
What struck me most about Night was the spareness of its language (in English translation). No punches were pulled, no unnecessary prose was used. The story was as bare as the experience. Everything is stripped away. There is no time for extra words. Extra words are an unaffordable luxury. One must tell the story. One must bear witness. Perhaps the strongest contribution of Night was that it inspired other Holocaust survivors to tell their stories, so that we never forget what happened in those camps.
Wiesel lived in the Transylvania region of Hungary. Things went along fine for his town during the war until 1944. That's when the Nazis showed up in Budapest and the "evacuation" of those Jews began. First they were forced from their homes into ghettoes and then loaded into cattle cars and shipped like so much cargo to the concentration camps. Wiesel and his father were separated from his mother and sister at Birkenau. He and his father were then marched to Auschwitz. I have to stop here and say that the writing on the gate of Auschwitz (and the facsimile of the gate at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) is one of the things that angers me most in the world. Arbeit Macht Frei (work will make you free). The most cynical words ever set into form. There was no chance, no prayer, no way that work would make these inmates free. It was a lie on a colossal scale. I'm grinding my teeth now just typing this. I don't know how I could have dealt with seeing it as an inmate. Frankly, I probably couldn't have afforded the anger.
Wiesel goes on to describe how life in the camp became nothing but a quest for survival. He even, in his mind, abandoned his filial duties. His life revolved around how to avoid the blows of the guards, how to get food and water, how to get sleep, and how to avoid illness. The bleakest, sparest existence possible.
Finally, Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald camp. The Nazis fled after inmate resistance late in the war. American troops arrived the next day. Wiesel's father had alread died.
Night is a tremendously powerful book. Like many other Holocaust survivor stories, it should be required reading. We cannot forget what happened and we are bound to do our best to prevent anything like it from happening again.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Down and Out in Paris and London is a barely fictionalized account of Orwell's experiences in poverty in both of those locations in the early 1930s. Sadly, it doesn't appear that conditions have improved much for the poor over the last 70 or 80 years.
Orwell starts the book by relating his life as a renter in a Parisian slum. It wasn't much of a room, but at least he had some privacy. His daily practice involved looking for work, trying to find money to get his daily tea and daily meal, and trying to fend off boredom. Chronicled here are the scams that the poor can fall victim to, such as promises of employment if one pays a subscription fee up front, or a start-up restauranteur telling you that you'll begin work tomorrow...and then the restaurant doesn't open for another month. Much of the time Orwell has to head to the pawn shop and take what he can get for anything he can sell...including his clothes. Hunger is constantly nipping at his heels. It's a joy when he can afford more than just bread.
Later, when Orwell does find work along with his friend Boris, he describes the subterranean 18 hour days of a plongeur, which is a position that is lowlier even that just dishwashing. This isn't to say that most of the restaurant workers are well off...but the plongeur is simply the worst of the lot. Finally, Orwell heads back home to England with the promise of work caring for a developmentally disabled person.
But of course, when he arrives in London, the child and the parents have gone abroad for a month, so Orwell is left penniless again. He is able to get a tiny loan from a friend, but two pounds doesn't stretch over a month. Now we're introduced to the life of a tramp in England. The situation here seems quite worse. The French seem to ignore their poor, where the English seem quite hostile to this same group. The daily routine here was to find shelter for the night. Common lodging houses were set up by the government and by charities. The cost of lodging was minimal, but often much more than a tramp could afford. What's worse, often the tramps were locked in for the night and their clothes were confiscated until the morning. On can only assume that this was to prevent them from going out and "terrorizing" the neighborhoods in the night. (Orwell notes extensively that tramps might be extremely petty theives, but they're also a broken-spirited lot who, due to poor nutrition among other things, don't have the energy or the inclination to go out raping and pillaging. They're happy just to have a roof over their heads). Another rule of the common houses is that you can't stay at the same one on consecutive nights (I think it might have even been a month between stays). This kept the tramps on the move.
Orwell concludes the book by enumerating the problems of the tramp: that he is a tramp by circumstance, not by inherent flaw; celibacy, because women generally don't fall to the level of tramp-dom; enforced idleness, which is a torture to a thinking being; and general physical discomfort (such as hunger, lack of sleep, and various maladies brought on by malnutrition). He closes by saying that the government should let them stay in one place and grow their own food. It would provide better for the men and it would save the government trouble.
Down and Out in Paris and London is quite a good book. No doubt this is because Orwell was one of the premier writers of the 20th century. But he also went out and lived this life. Educated, with connections, he probably could have made better at this early point in his life. But he lets his readers know about the lives of the indigent. I believe this is the book Barbara Ehrenreich was trying to re-write when she wrote Nickled and Dimed. However, she's not half the writer Orwell was and she's more than twice as preachy. But that's an aside. Orwell gives us pause to think about the poor...not to fear them or ignore them, but to actually consider their situations. It seems like it's well past time we do so.
Orwell starts the book by relating his life as a renter in a Parisian slum. It wasn't much of a room, but at least he had some privacy. His daily practice involved looking for work, trying to find money to get his daily tea and daily meal, and trying to fend off boredom. Chronicled here are the scams that the poor can fall victim to, such as promises of employment if one pays a subscription fee up front, or a start-up restauranteur telling you that you'll begin work tomorrow...and then the restaurant doesn't open for another month. Much of the time Orwell has to head to the pawn shop and take what he can get for anything he can sell...including his clothes. Hunger is constantly nipping at his heels. It's a joy when he can afford more than just bread.
Later, when Orwell does find work along with his friend Boris, he describes the subterranean 18 hour days of a plongeur, which is a position that is lowlier even that just dishwashing. This isn't to say that most of the restaurant workers are well off...but the plongeur is simply the worst of the lot. Finally, Orwell heads back home to England with the promise of work caring for a developmentally disabled person.
But of course, when he arrives in London, the child and the parents have gone abroad for a month, so Orwell is left penniless again. He is able to get a tiny loan from a friend, but two pounds doesn't stretch over a month. Now we're introduced to the life of a tramp in England. The situation here seems quite worse. The French seem to ignore their poor, where the English seem quite hostile to this same group. The daily routine here was to find shelter for the night. Common lodging houses were set up by the government and by charities. The cost of lodging was minimal, but often much more than a tramp could afford. What's worse, often the tramps were locked in for the night and their clothes were confiscated until the morning. On can only assume that this was to prevent them from going out and "terrorizing" the neighborhoods in the night. (Orwell notes extensively that tramps might be extremely petty theives, but they're also a broken-spirited lot who, due to poor nutrition among other things, don't have the energy or the inclination to go out raping and pillaging. They're happy just to have a roof over their heads). Another rule of the common houses is that you can't stay at the same one on consecutive nights (I think it might have even been a month between stays). This kept the tramps on the move.
Orwell concludes the book by enumerating the problems of the tramp: that he is a tramp by circumstance, not by inherent flaw; celibacy, because women generally don't fall to the level of tramp-dom; enforced idleness, which is a torture to a thinking being; and general physical discomfort (such as hunger, lack of sleep, and various maladies brought on by malnutrition). He closes by saying that the government should let them stay in one place and grow their own food. It would provide better for the men and it would save the government trouble.
Down and Out in Paris and London is quite a good book. No doubt this is because Orwell was one of the premier writers of the 20th century. But he also went out and lived this life. Educated, with connections, he probably could have made better at this early point in his life. But he lets his readers know about the lives of the indigent. I believe this is the book Barbara Ehrenreich was trying to re-write when she wrote Nickled and Dimed. However, she's not half the writer Orwell was and she's more than twice as preachy. But that's an aside. Orwell gives us pause to think about the poor...not to fear them or ignore them, but to actually consider their situations. It seems like it's well past time we do so.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Getting close to finishing another
I'm close to finishing George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. I'm planning on finishing it tonight after work while watching the first game of the new NFL season.
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