One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
Quick synopsis: Chief Bromden narrates the story of the mental institution in which he resides, and how McMurphy, the new-comer, turns everything upside down, resists authority, and refuses to follow the rules.
This book was one of those books that I had to take some time from to really appreciate and understand its implications and meaning. When I finished it, it was like, great, now I am done with this chore. But as I thought more and more about it--and as I talked about it with my husband (who, by the way, has read like 98% of my reading list), I realized I hadn't seen it all at first. But that's how it goes, and that's why discussion is imperative.
First off, I have to go back to point of view: this novel achieved a technique I find very fascinating. It was told in the first person from Chief Bromden (who is assumed by everyone to be deaf and dumb), but it focuses on McMurphy and the other patients more than it does him. One, I say because they are way more interesting than someone who doesn't speak and "can't" hear anything, and two, because we needed to see McMurphy for the charming, whacky, manipulating shrewd man he is. It would not be the same if it were McMurphy's first person. We need Bromden's perspective because he is the one who inhales it all, he is the lens we see everything through.
At first, I was put off by this first person choice, vexed, even, because I knew the complications that would arise with furthering this technique. Any scene that is rendered would NEED Bromden present. And what about thoughts and feelings? He certainly can't interpret those!
But this is where the innovation comes in. Although it is never explicitly clear why Bromden is in the mental institution, it is clear that he suffers from delusions and hallucinations. The fog that is sometimes thick, sometimes thin, sometimes something he gets lost in; the machines in the walls, in the rooms, everywhere--the wires that communicate, the switches that dictate, the machines that control--they all prove Bromden's mental state. It is because of this intuitiveness that I believe he can say the words "Billy felt compelled to speak," and "he knows that there's no better way to aggravate somebody..." I give him permission to interpret others thoughts because he's obviously got somethin' going on up there. And if he can see fog wrapping around him, and he if he can feel the robots in the other room, then why wouldn't he be able to read minds?
Of course, this all goes back to reliability. As a smart reader, I don't take everything he says seriously. His mental state isn't "normal,"--he has delusions, for cryin' out loud! I don't deny that they aren't true--just that maybe the things he tells us are twisted to fit his perceptions. He also uses empirical evidence and details--clues that don't need thoughts or feelings--to coney the meaning of the scene, to give us readers a bone and say, pay attention to these.
Throughout reading it, I felt McMurphy come alive, really jump off the page, and I became envious of the way Kesey characterized him. Everything from his dialogue to the way he hooks his thumbs around his belt loops and rocks back--it was so brilliantly done. I can only aspire to one day write a character as vivid and real as McMurphy.
I personally have an interest in the subject matter of this book. I once took an abnormal psychology class, and all my life I can remember being fascinated by the human mind. I find this text to be monumental for what it means for the mentally ill and for the hospitals that control them. I don't believe the mental institutions are the same now than they were back when this novel was published, but I do believe the culture significance of this book did perhaps start the talk of the mistreatment and the controversies of ESTs and lobotomies. I believe this is part of what has propelled it to classic status.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma...
The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
Quick synopsis: Due to the economic hardships of the Depression and the environmental terror of the Dust Bowl era, thousands of families were forced off their farms and headed out west to California, looking for jobs. This account follows particularly the Joad family, their particular times and travels.
After reading The Grapes of Wrath, I feel more American.
It's strange to think, feeling more American after reading a book about one of the most trying times in America, a book that is rife with segregation and bigotry, a narrative where being American means the land you own, and the land you own gets taken from you. But I do, because I've never read something more honest. Honest about American life, about the American family, about the American Dream, whatever that may be. And it's not pretty. It doesn't end well. What these people go through, what they are called, how they are treated and what they must do to survive--none of it's pretty.
But it's John Steinbeck, perhaps one of the greatest American writers of all time. So he takes humanity, as ugly and dirty and rundown as it was, and turns it into something beautiful, something marvelous.
Literarily (a word now!), this book succeeds because of its structure and technique. Steinbeck alternates each chapter using the "lyric mode," chapters mostly of exposition, where the main focus is either the land itself, the weather, or a collective "they," a group of people that are not particular nor distinct, but represent the overall condition typical of that time and those people. The action does not progress in these chapters; they are solely to take a respite, see it from up above. It's interesting that, although he makes these lyrical chapters anonymous, it still seems so applicable and personal.
I was most impressed with the use of 3rd person plural because I did something to that effect in one of my writing projects for last semester. I didn't do nearly as good of a job as Steinbeck, but this book proves it can be done (and what always gets me is that, I think doing something like that is so "new"--yet this was published in 1939!).
Another thing that Steinbeck does that I have not yet really attempted is the 3rd person omniscient point of view. He doesn't just limit the POV to one character, and he doesn't tell this story from the first person, but this story seems so personal. At times, I forgot it was from an omniscient, distant, disembodied narrator, how intimate it sounded. Of course, because this is Steinbeck, he has complete control over the scenes, so much so that it never felt heavy or weighed down by the many thoughts and feelings we are privy to; I never once was confused about who was thinking or doing what.
I questioned throughout reading this book why Steinbeck chose to do it in 3rd person omniscient, especially with the amount of characters that are on stage. It occurred to me that, had he written it limited to one person or from the first person account, so much would be missed; the bigger picture of the novel would be something completely left out due to the boundaries and restrictions of other POVs. Throughout the book, I felt Tom was the main character, but there are parts where he's not even physically present--how would those scenes be rendered if the POV was limited just to him?
Then the question remains: who is the protagonist in this book? Noah and Connie can be counted out. My sympathies lie most with Tom and with Ma (Ma being so feisty and fierce and crazy and loving and tender and strong, I love it). So does that make her the protagonist? Could the protagonist be the Joad family, as one entity? What about the 'Oakies,' collectively, all the thousands in the same boat as the Joads? Again: does it really matter?
I love this book for many reasons. One, I am fascinated by Route 66, and it is mine and my husband's dream to one day travel it from Chicago to Los Angeles. The chapters about Route 66 specifically made me giddy and excited for our future endeavor (and reading the very phrase "the Mother Road" in its original context was quite special, too). I also love the characterization of the many characters that come into play, how distinct they are just by what they say. And perhaps most of all, I love the honest humanity, the people and the life they lived, the tribute this book pays to the real families who made the trek westward, whose stories were probably never told.
I have more to say, but I don't even think I could conceptualize it all right now. I am glad I read it and finished it--throughout reading it, I was constantly reminded that I was in the presence of a masterpiece, and that alone made me want to keep reading.
John Steinbeck, this won't be the last book of yours I read.
by John Steinbeck
Quick synopsis: Due to the economic hardships of the Depression and the environmental terror of the Dust Bowl era, thousands of families were forced off their farms and headed out west to California, looking for jobs. This account follows particularly the Joad family, their particular times and travels.
After reading The Grapes of Wrath, I feel more American.
It's strange to think, feeling more American after reading a book about one of the most trying times in America, a book that is rife with segregation and bigotry, a narrative where being American means the land you own, and the land you own gets taken from you. But I do, because I've never read something more honest. Honest about American life, about the American family, about the American Dream, whatever that may be. And it's not pretty. It doesn't end well. What these people go through, what they are called, how they are treated and what they must do to survive--none of it's pretty.
But it's John Steinbeck, perhaps one of the greatest American writers of all time. So he takes humanity, as ugly and dirty and rundown as it was, and turns it into something beautiful, something marvelous.
Literarily (a word now!), this book succeeds because of its structure and technique. Steinbeck alternates each chapter using the "lyric mode," chapters mostly of exposition, where the main focus is either the land itself, the weather, or a collective "they," a group of people that are not particular nor distinct, but represent the overall condition typical of that time and those people. The action does not progress in these chapters; they are solely to take a respite, see it from up above. It's interesting that, although he makes these lyrical chapters anonymous, it still seems so applicable and personal.
I was most impressed with the use of 3rd person plural because I did something to that effect in one of my writing projects for last semester. I didn't do nearly as good of a job as Steinbeck, but this book proves it can be done (and what always gets me is that, I think doing something like that is so "new"--yet this was published in 1939!).
Another thing that Steinbeck does that I have not yet really attempted is the 3rd person omniscient point of view. He doesn't just limit the POV to one character, and he doesn't tell this story from the first person, but this story seems so personal. At times, I forgot it was from an omniscient, distant, disembodied narrator, how intimate it sounded. Of course, because this is Steinbeck, he has complete control over the scenes, so much so that it never felt heavy or weighed down by the many thoughts and feelings we are privy to; I never once was confused about who was thinking or doing what.
I questioned throughout reading this book why Steinbeck chose to do it in 3rd person omniscient, especially with the amount of characters that are on stage. It occurred to me that, had he written it limited to one person or from the first person account, so much would be missed; the bigger picture of the novel would be something completely left out due to the boundaries and restrictions of other POVs. Throughout the book, I felt Tom was the main character, but there are parts where he's not even physically present--how would those scenes be rendered if the POV was limited just to him?
Then the question remains: who is the protagonist in this book? Noah and Connie can be counted out. My sympathies lie most with Tom and with Ma (Ma being so feisty and fierce and crazy and loving and tender and strong, I love it). So does that make her the protagonist? Could the protagonist be the Joad family, as one entity? What about the 'Oakies,' collectively, all the thousands in the same boat as the Joads? Again: does it really matter?
I love this book for many reasons. One, I am fascinated by Route 66, and it is mine and my husband's dream to one day travel it from Chicago to Los Angeles. The chapters about Route 66 specifically made me giddy and excited for our future endeavor (and reading the very phrase "the Mother Road" in its original context was quite special, too). I also love the characterization of the many characters that come into play, how distinct they are just by what they say. And perhaps most of all, I love the honest humanity, the people and the life they lived, the tribute this book pays to the real families who made the trek westward, whose stories were probably never told.
I have more to say, but I don't even think I could conceptualize it all right now. I am glad I read it and finished it--throughout reading it, I was constantly reminded that I was in the presence of a masterpiece, and that alone made me want to keep reading.
John Steinbeck, this won't be the last book of yours I read.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins
I chose Lolita as my first book of this project for a reason: it was the one I perhaps resisted the most, it was the one I knew least about, and it was the one that, in a sense, I was scared to conquer. Would it make me feel uncomfortable? Would I have to stop reading it because of its "pornographic" nature? Would I even be able to look at it from an artist's point of view? But I was excited to start this project, and I knew the first book I read had to be something challenging, had to be something that was just as arresting as it was monumental. After finishing it, I am glad I saved it for first, because it was exactly what I needed.
For those who haven't read it, I should set you up with some context: our narrator, Humbert Humbert, goes to live with a widow and her only daughter in Ramsdale, a small New England town, where he falls in love (lust?) with the young girl, Lolita (a "nymphet"). He marries the widow in order to be near Lolita, and continues to be obsessed with her throughout her girl-childhood.
To reiterate, this is not a book-club for one; this is not a forum where I cast judgements on the book and say whether I liked it or not. This is where I study it, this is where I see what the author was up to, this is where I answer my question of why it's become the status it has become.
First things first: the style of this book is ingenious. Not only does it have a fictional foreword (much like Lauren Slater's Lying, which certainly must have been inspired by this), but it becomes this metaphysical novel, a "memoir," as it is so often referred throughout the book, even though it is labeled as "fiction/literature." I found myself falling in love with that style, and Nabokov did it successfully because he took it further than the manuscript's end--he penned a foreword by a fictional character, even dating it, totally setting up the reader.
Humbert also makes mention of making things up, which, in a weird way, is proving his reliability by admitting his unreliability. When he says that he was so handsome that every single woman his age would flock to him, marvel and drool over him, should I believe it when, in the same voice, he says that he's making up something somebody says? And, most importantly--does it really matter if he's telling the truth or not? In this case, I don't think it really matters.
Oftentimes I found myself completely mystified by Humbert Humbert. I was aware early on how incredibly unreliable he was, yet I could not doubt his feelings, his thought processes, his never-ending obsessions. He knew he was grotesque, often referring to himself as a monster, and I knew he was grotesque. I knew that what he was doing to and with Lolita was morally wrong, and he knew it, to some extent, but--and this is where this book succeeds so fantastically--I at times felt compassion for such a lewd man. Now that, my friends, is an artist at work.
Another thing that compelled me about this book was the language, the sentence-level beauty that makes all writers tingle in jealously because we did not think of it first. Here are a few of my favorite, for simply talking about them will not do them justice: "...like pain in a fatal disease that comes back as the drug and hope wear off, there it was again behind us, that glossy red beast." "We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today 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 Park was as black as the sins it concealed."
This book is a classic not only because of the subject matter it tackled (and no, it is not pornographic in any way, I'd argue--people who have said that just didn't read it) at a time when this subject was completely taboo for publishers, but because of its innovative style and voice, because of the very fact that Nabokov was playing with us this whole time, being constantly one step ahead of the reader. I don't understand every aspect of this book--there are some parts where I'm confused and would like some explanation, and some parts where I admittedly skimmed--but I do know that this book has gone places other books have not, and it has allowed its successors to go there as well. People haven't forgotten this book 56 years later because it uses its masterful prose style to transcend generations, leaving each reader with something, something that they've connected with, no matter what age or era they read it.
For those who haven't read it, I should set you up with some context: our narrator, Humbert Humbert, goes to live with a widow and her only daughter in Ramsdale, a small New England town, where he falls in love (lust?) with the young girl, Lolita (a "nymphet"). He marries the widow in order to be near Lolita, and continues to be obsessed with her throughout her girl-childhood.
To reiterate, this is not a book-club for one; this is not a forum where I cast judgements on the book and say whether I liked it or not. This is where I study it, this is where I see what the author was up to, this is where I answer my question of why it's become the status it has become.
First things first: the style of this book is ingenious. Not only does it have a fictional foreword (much like Lauren Slater's Lying, which certainly must have been inspired by this), but it becomes this metaphysical novel, a "memoir," as it is so often referred throughout the book, even though it is labeled as "fiction/literature." I found myself falling in love with that style, and Nabokov did it successfully because he took it further than the manuscript's end--he penned a foreword by a fictional character, even dating it, totally setting up the reader.
Humbert also makes mention of making things up, which, in a weird way, is proving his reliability by admitting his unreliability. When he says that he was so handsome that every single woman his age would flock to him, marvel and drool over him, should I believe it when, in the same voice, he says that he's making up something somebody says? And, most importantly--does it really matter if he's telling the truth or not? In this case, I don't think it really matters.
Oftentimes I found myself completely mystified by Humbert Humbert. I was aware early on how incredibly unreliable he was, yet I could not doubt his feelings, his thought processes, his never-ending obsessions. He knew he was grotesque, often referring to himself as a monster, and I knew he was grotesque. I knew that what he was doing to and with Lolita was morally wrong, and he knew it, to some extent, but--and this is where this book succeeds so fantastically--I at times felt compassion for such a lewd man. Now that, my friends, is an artist at work.
Another thing that compelled me about this book was the language, the sentence-level beauty that makes all writers tingle in jealously because we did not think of it first. Here are a few of my favorite, for simply talking about them will not do them justice: "...like pain in a fatal disease that comes back as the drug and hope wear off, there it was again behind us, that glossy red beast." "We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today 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 Park was as black as the sins it concealed."
This book is a classic not only because of the subject matter it tackled (and no, it is not pornographic in any way, I'd argue--people who have said that just didn't read it) at a time when this subject was completely taboo for publishers, but because of its innovative style and voice, because of the very fact that Nabokov was playing with us this whole time, being constantly one step ahead of the reader. I don't understand every aspect of this book--there are some parts where I'm confused and would like some explanation, and some parts where I admittedly skimmed--but I do know that this book has gone places other books have not, and it has allowed its successors to go there as well. People haven't forgotten this book 56 years later because it uses its masterful prose style to transcend generations, leaving each reader with something, something that they've connected with, no matter what age or era they read it.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Foreword
One of my professors, Gregory Martin, once said that speculation is the engine of all art. And although he was speaking of the craft of art, specifically the memoir, I apply this to my endeavor this summer: speculating the literary art that is considered timeless. My hope is to read fifteen "classics" in fifteen weeks, continuing this same rigorous reading schedule that I've kept up for the last sixteen weeks of the Spring semester. My hope for this blog is to write down my responses to these works, respond to these works in a way that is meaningful and insightful, and preserve my analyzations so that these works will forever stick with me. It would be all in vain if I did not put forth the extra effort to put my thoughts and feelings into words, if all I did was close the book and simply move on to the next. I know many of my readers may not be studying literature or writing, so I hope they read this if only for the act of reading something that is different from what they usually read--which is exactly what I'll be doing.
Actually, if anyone knows me well enough, they will know that I've long since rejected many of these books on my list. I've always thought, how dare someone call something a classic--what about all the other phenomenal books out there that are not labeled so superlatively? In fact, probably my resisting this whole time had less to do with standing up for the underdogs and more to do with the fact that I simply did not want to read what everybody else was reading. Luckily, I've been surrounded by many great writers and students, many incredible creative writing professors who I will be forever indebted to, who have shown me that I can learn a great deal from my literary fathers and mothers, and as a writer myself, that's exactly where I should go. And even though I may not "like" something after I read it, which I expect full well to happen, I will at least know that I came to this innovation* with a mind open and willing to learn and that there is something, something, I'm sure, that I can steal from it.
Wish me luck. I just got The Grapes of Wrath, and it's nearly 500 pages long. I don't normally "do" long books, so this will be a real challenge!
*Another Gregory Martin quote. I predict most of what I say in these blog entries to come straight from him, because he is the one who has helped me develop such and eye and an ear for responding to innovations that both vex and bedazzle me.
Actually, if anyone knows me well enough, they will know that I've long since rejected many of these books on my list. I've always thought, how dare someone call something a classic--what about all the other phenomenal books out there that are not labeled so superlatively? In fact, probably my resisting this whole time had less to do with standing up for the underdogs and more to do with the fact that I simply did not want to read what everybody else was reading. Luckily, I've been surrounded by many great writers and students, many incredible creative writing professors who I will be forever indebted to, who have shown me that I can learn a great deal from my literary fathers and mothers, and as a writer myself, that's exactly where I should go. And even though I may not "like" something after I read it, which I expect full well to happen, I will at least know that I came to this innovation* with a mind open and willing to learn and that there is something, something, I'm sure, that I can steal from it.
Wish me luck. I just got The Grapes of Wrath, and it's nearly 500 pages long. I don't normally "do" long books, so this will be a real challenge!
*Another Gregory Martin quote. I predict most of what I say in these blog entries to come straight from him, because he is the one who has helped me develop such and eye and an ear for responding to innovations that both vex and bedazzle me.
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