Trouble With the Karamazovs

now finished: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Reading the same book for a month? Wishing I had more time to devote to it? Folding down pages and lamenting my lack of ability to read in the original language? Ahhh, must be time for another Big Russian Novel.

This one was destined to be anti-climactic. I've been meaning to read The Brothers Karamazov for SO long. I kept trying to persuade my Los Angeles book group peeps to read it (L.A.! That's so many cities ago!...although I need to go back there, by the way) when we had our The Books We Should Have Read in High School book group. That being said, they were probably right about not reading it at that time; I guarantee we would not have had a 100% successful finish rate. And, I no longer think of this as a Book We Should Have Read in High School whatsoever. College, maybe, though. In fact, college definitely. It's that kind of book. I probably would have loved it in college. I didn't really love it right now. I thought it was long-winded.

Now, recall that you are reading someone who absolutely loves her some long Russian novels. (And short Russian novels, but aren't there fewer of those?) Who read Anna Karenina (the whole thing! really!) in high school. Who considers reading War and Peace one of the top five greatest life experiences. Who has often pondered how Russia, much like the American South, does it -- how those two places crank out so freakin' much good literature, although they never make readers actually want to live there or anything.  Long is great. Long-winded is quite another thing. I'm not entirely sure that Dostoevsky edited this book at all.

It turns out that The Brothers Karamazov should be even longer; he was planning to write a three-part saga, but he died. This was his final novel. I kind of see him as this old man (even though he was only sixty-ish) with a life's great work behind him so everyone just lets him write and create and do whatever he wants in his art, without trying to stop/edit/finesse him to make it better. Kind of like Clint Eastwood does now. We don't really demand anything of Clint anymore; we just take what he gives us and continue to praise his genius. I think Dostoevsky was kind of rambly in the Brothers but no one cared. Why not? Just let it all wash over you. (No word on whether he kept an empty chair around to stimulate discussion.)

So, there are a few great things about the book. One, he has this crazy ridiculous insight into the human mind. So you can actually get through the book on that alone, marveling at the way these flawed characters are depicted and delighting in some of his pithy summaries of thought processes that are a bit like Kerouac's in the way they make you think, "Wow, he finally said what my brain has been trying to say for twenty years."

But then you kind of want the plot to go somewhere instead of reading five mystical pages about what place love and Christ and death have in our jacked-up world...

Eventually the plot goes places, of course. I frankly think the book got really good around page 500. (I am aware that this is FAR too much to ask of, oh, most readers.) And despite the fact that SO few people read this blog and even fewer are planning to ever read The Brothers Karamazov, I just can't offer up spoilers, which means I can't talk about huge, gigantic, major, point-of-it-all happenings like "whodunnit" and why.

I can say that Alyosha was annoying at first, but then I really got to like him, once I kind of understood him. Dmitri seems like a big jerk, but once you tap into his confusion you start to understand him a little better, too. Ivan is presented as all dark and dismal and atheist but I kind of liked him more in the first place than I did the others.

Another great thing about this book is that there are definitely great quotes. Like:

"...you, I, all of us are in a state of aberration, and there are ever so many examples of it: a man sits singing a song, suddenly something annoys him, he takes a pistol and shoots the first person he comes across, and no one blames him for it."   --p. 528, ISBN: 1-59308-045-X

He wrote that line in 1879, kids!

Speaking of the edition I read, I would really like it if the Barnes and Noble Classics edition hadn't told me a major plot point on the back cover. I mean, I guess everyone is just kind of expected to know what the book is about, but I am still of the belief that anything that happens after three hundred pages should not be on the back cover, period.

Basically, this book is really different from Crime and Punishment and Notes From Underground, my two previous Dostoevsky endeavors, both of which I loved. This book is more winding, more overtly philosophical about Big Questions (is there a god? what is family? what is love? death? society? justice? and so on), more pointless in some ways (Ilusha and Kolya Krassotkin....why? just, why?), and definitely more long-winded. Which, I already mentioned that.

However, I will say one thing: this book would be really hard to fake. The experience of it is quite different from its fame and all you hear about it in the world. I think one could fake The Scarlet Letter or Moby Dick or Hamlet a lot more easily. The Brothers Karamazov is really famous, but what do we know about its details in the world? It's about a family. With brothers. It's big and Russian. It's full of ideas and peasants and society. 'Cause it's Russian. With brothers. This, my friends, barely scratches the surface. As much as I think Moby Dick is utterly wasted on high school and college students and has so much more to say to adults who are disillusioned with life in the workplace, I still think the famous ideas about The Whale match the book itself, more or less. Not so with this book. So that's my advice to you: if you are one of the millions who has not read this book, don't try to fake it to impress that potential date at the bar who adores it. You will be called out faster than you can say Smerdyakov.

When Yalom Babbled

finished Sept. 4th: When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin Yalom

Apparently, this book has a subtitle. The whole thing is When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession. Well, as I noted on Goodreads when I first finished it, it didn't strike me as a novel of obsession at all, more like a novel of jabber.

I mean, with a title like When Nietzsche Wept I would expect it to be most if not all of the following: dark, literary, intellectual, profound, edgy, dense.  This book has been on my bookstore radar for years, bought by lots of those black-clad young professionals and artists and dark-side-of-preppy university students. I had high hopes. But, Yalom's novels just really aren't like that at all. They're downright lighthearted.

In fact, as I read When Nietzsche Wept, I began questioning myself as to why Yalom even made it to the top half 13 authors of my A-to-Z literary blog project.  The first book I read of his, when I originally chose him as my 'Y' author, was The Schopnhauer Cure, and it was like this in a lot of ways:  oddly frivolous,  pretty contrived, and in many ways not really a novel at all, but forced into the format of one.

Anyway, it's interesting to learn about Nietzsche and the psychologist Dr. Joseph Breuer whom Nietzsche apparently never met but whom Yalom imagines him meeting for this novel. But then, as with all historical fiction, I find myself wondering how much of the imaginings are just distortions that would never have happened but exist only in the author's mind but are now going to be forever associated in MY mind with these real historical figures (and this is why I hate historical fiction, duh.)

But if this book hadn't skipped along quickly like the trifle it is, it would have annoyed me. I am definitely not passing Yalom on to the semi-finals. His books remind me how interesting these philosophers are -- I mean, I totally get his love for/admiration of/desire to write about cool people in Western Philosophy -- but mostly they just make me want to put down his novel and go read the philosophers' actual words, myself.

Ray Zen

finished a while back: Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

He titled the book tongue-in-cheekily, you know. Which in itself says a lot about Ray Bradbury. I learned so much about him by reading this book: about his writing style, his process, his inspirations, his outlook on life. He's good. A true genius, so recently departed from among us.

I was one of those people who had read Fahrenheit 451 and nothing else by him, before I read this book. I am also one of those people (admittedly, there are fewer in this category) who have a Science Fiction Wall (i.e., I tend to avoid it. And call it "sigh-fi.") Mr. Bradbury specifically addresses this second type (me) in one of his pieces in here, lambasting the parents/teachers/critics/literati who mock children's interest in sci-fi. He kind of goes all Margaret Atwood on it, making it seem like real literature again. (Ray and Margaret: were they friends? Talk to me, book nerds. I want to know.)

Let's just say I am definitely inspired to pick up more of his writings, including The Martian Chronicles. But even better, this book did its job by reinvigorating me about my own writing. I am keeping it nearby to reread. Each little vignette offered me insight and I recognized dashes of myself in the need to create, to get those words on the page, to tell all the stories, the need that he so wonderfully evokes.

I can see myself recommending this to several of the smart, thoughtful, creative, interesting, and ever-so-slightly wacky people that I know. You know, the awesome people.

I can read weird things in Spanish now, too

finished September 8th: Aura by Carlos Fuentes

Weird book. Short, meant to be a little spooky and mysterious and sensual and surreal-ish and all that, variously described as "dreamlike" and "complex."  I don't know if I'd really call it complex, although there is definitely a lot going on under the surface. But it definitely does weird narrative things and blurs the lines between reality/fantasy, dreaming/waking, knowing/desiring, etc.

I have been a little familiar with Carlos Fuentes ever since I blew off one of his books that I was assigned to read during college. (Uh...sorry!)  I've never read his biggies, The Death of Artemio Cruz, but my kind Spanish-speaking-and-teaching comparative lit professor from USC who recommended me a few "greatest hits" of literatura en español for me to read during my stay in Mexico, suggested Aura for my Fuentes sample instead, and I picked it up for a mere 80 pesos in a bookstore a couple weeks ago.

Since it's short, I read it quickly, and it was definitely not difficult, though I had to look up maybe a handful of words. It just reminded me of a surrealist painting, really. That is the best way that I can describe it. A little bit of that dark, gothic feel, an interesting narrative structure (second person! that almost never happens), and yet also packing an educational punch by filling us in on a bit of Mexico military history, too. All in all, if you're an intermediate Spanish student looking to practice reading, you can't go wrong with this book! I have no idea if the mysterious feel of the book will get lost in translation -- probably not with a good translator, which I'm assuming there is for the works of Fuentes, so go ahead and read it in English, too.

Awesome Quotes From Shalimar the Clown

finished a while ago, and loved: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

I didn't even mean to read Shalimar the Clown, as I have mentioned, but it turned out to be wonderful and magical and awesome. My boy Salman Rushdie is such a writer, and he weaves and spins the language and characters into far-flung locales that feel close to home, serious whimsy, and really personal tales that resonate globally. This book, even more than The Satanic Verses, made me just LOVE how Rushdie's brain works. I will offer up a few sample quotes from the book, to try to convince you of its perfect truth:

"Religion was folly and yet its stories moved her and this was confusing." ( p. 22) 

"Again with the religious imagery. New images urgently needed to be made. Images for a godless world." (p.23)

"He tried to believe that the global structures he had helped to build, the pathways of influence, money and power, the multinational associations, the treaty organizations, the frameworks of cooperation and law whose purpose had been to deal with a hot war turned cold, would still function in the future that lay beyond what he could foresee. She saw in him a desperate need to believe that the ending of his age would be happy, and that the new world which would come after would be better than the one that would die with him." (p.24)

"They don't make no glass slippers no more. They already closed the factory." (p. 46)
(and everything else that comes out of the mouth of the Russian landlady who says this)

"The Ass, by contrast, is a coward and runs from danger; however you must remember in mitigation that he is an Ass, just as a jackal is a jackal and a leopard is a leopard and a boar has no option but  to be boarish one hundred percent of the time. They neither know nor shape their own nature;  rather, their nature knows and shapes them. There are no surprises in the animal kingdom. Only Man's character is suspect and shifting. Only Man, knowing good, can do evil. Only Man wears masks. Only Man is a disappointment to himself." (p.113-114)

An entire passage making fun of military-government "reasoning" about dissenting citizens: the integer/fraction/integrity/India/Kashmir bit on p. 119.

"'You can know a man for fifty years,' he said, 'and still not know what he's capable of.' Harbans shrugged in self-deprecation. 'You never know the answer to the questions of life until you're asked,' he said." (p.354)

"General Kachhwaha despised the fundamentalists, the jihadis, the Hizb, but he despised the secular nationalists more. What sort of God was secular nationalism? People would not die for that for very long." (p.373)

"He named the Los Angeles River after the angels of Assisi and their holy mistress and twelve years later, when a new settlement was established here, it took its title from the river's full name, becoming El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula, the Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Very Small Plot of Land. But the City of Angels now stood on a Very Large Plot of Land Indeed, thought India Ophuls, and those who dwelt there needed mightier protectors than they had been given, A-list, A-team angels, angels familiar with the violence and disorder of giant cities, butt-kicking Angeleno angels, not the small-time, underpowered, effeminate, hello-birds-hello-sky, love-and-peace, sissy-Assisi kind." (p.416)  
Note: This last one may be my favorite L.A. quote of all time. Definitely up there, anyway.

This is a sample of what you have in store when you read Shalimar the Clown.  So much wonderful!

quotes taken from mass market edition ISBN: 0-8129-7698-3

Highly recommended alert: Shalimar!

now finished: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

I hadn't really planned to read Shalimar the Clown. Careful readers of this blog(and even some of the half-assed ones) will recall that Salman Rushdie was my 'R' author in my A-to-Z Literary Blog project, wherein I read a book from each of 26 new-to-me-but-famous-and-I-always-meant-to-read-them authors, one for each letter of the alphabet. (Mostly. Sorry, Gao.) For my first Rushdie, a few years back during the project, I read The Satanic Verses. (Um, it was weird. Good, but weird. And anyone who wants to kill an author for writing a book is a stupid worthless stupid dumb jerkity jerk, end of story, but no, I did not see anything in that book worth getting outraged about.)  Now, I am deep into my A-to-Z Top Half project, wherein I chose my 13 favorite authors of the 26 and am reading a second book by each of them. I have only a few left! So, here I am in Mexico, with less access to the books in English than I normally would have, so I asked some of my fellow expat reading peeps around these parts if they had any Salman Rushdie, because that's a pretty likely thing among travelers/English teachers, unlike some of my other A-to-Z top half authors (I'm looking at you, Warren-Styron.) I pretty much just assumed someone would have Midnight's Children, but instead, I was loaned Shalimar the Clown.

Well, guess what? It's awesome. I mean, seriously awesome. Its awesomenes sneaks up on you, too, so you're going along about page 350, 360 or so, and you've been caught up in these characters for a while, and you've learned a lot, and you REALLY want to go visit Kashmir because it just sounds heavenly, and you really like what he did with his descriptions of L.A. in the first chapter, and you totally dig lots of the characters who live in these two villages, and you are starting to think about big global issues because you see how its all coming together, and - wow! It hits you. This is going to a really awesome place, isn't it?

Of course, it's horrible, what happens. Because revenge is horrible, but specifically, death as revenge is horrible. And no, I am not spoiler-ing, because said murder happens in the first chapter, but then you learn more about it for the rest of the book. And you learn about a million other things besides. Among them: on what grounds would you, yourself, kill. To save your own life? Your family's? Your country's?  What about to save those entities' honor? Ahhhh, the lines we draw.

Salman Rushdie is, of course, awesomely equipped to write about this subject, being the object of the horrible stupid horrible nonsensical violent murderous horrible fatwa and all. But he doesn't hit you over the head; like I said, the awesomeness of the big questions sneaks up on you.

As I mentioned in my Goodreads review, this book should be required reading for everyone in the post-9/11 world, but unfortunately, so many people just would not get it.

Don Jerky Juan

finished: Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla

My August book-in-Spanish (I'm actually trying to read two per month in Spanish, but this has proven difficult, mostly for reasons of budget) was the classic romantic play Don Juan Tenorio.  An old college professor of mine (note: not that he's old, just that he used to be my professor) recommended it to me when I asked for a list of five of the greatest hits of Spanish language literature. This play is one of the best-known tellings of the the Don Juan story, and bonus fact: it's performed every year here in Mexico on Day of the Dead. 

You may be wondering, like I was for the first few acts, what Don Juan has to do with Day of the Dead. Isn't he just about conquests and sleeping with all the ladies, you may be asking yourself? Well, yes, there is that. He also kills men by the way, dozens of them, in sword fights and the like. I guess that's supposed to be the equivalent "conquest"? Interesting, Mr. Lover. Anyway, not to be all SPOILER-y and whatnot, but it always seems it's somehow OK to spoil the ending of things from a couple hundred years ago, unless you're specifically asked not to. I mean, does anyone read Romeo and Juliet  and hold out hope for a happy ever after? I'm thinking no. Anyway, in the end, all these ghosts come to Don Juan's house and give him a little bit of what for. Hence the Day of the Deadness of it all. 

I love reading (duh) and reading in Spanish and making my way through lists of things to read, such as this "greatest hits of Spanish-language literature." This one was a little hard to read, because it was all Spain and "os" and "vosotros" and "hablarais" and all that silliness. Some of the vocabulary was a little difficult, so I did a wee bit of translating as I read, which I don't normally do, but there was the added challenge of this being in rhyming verse, which mean that backward ran soooo many of the sentences that I lacked some of my normal context clues for deciphering unfamiliar vocabulary when reading in Spanish. 

When we were in Mexico City the other week at Bellas Artes, in one of the display cases were programs from performances of Don Juan Tenorio in the 1800s! See, so famous, so always performed here and stuff. This was the exact goal of my reading-Spanish-language-literature project: to be more aware of things everyone here is aware of just by having grown up reading in that language. 

No, but seriously. Don Juan is a total jerk. And it's one of those things where there is NO actual reason for these ladies to love him, but they do. Just 'cause. Sigh.