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Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

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Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)I read The Old Man and the Sea for the first time last year and I was not exactly what you would call an instant Hemingway convert. “JUST THROW THE EFFING FISH BACK!” yelled the heathen literal reader within. However, I am a creature of persistence and so I picked up Ernest Hemingway’s Fiesta or, The Sun Also Rises. While I enjoyed it on the basic narrative level, I also wish it had delved deeper into the emotional complexities of these characters lives and world, rather than just making them seem like drunken animals. The prose is characteristically spare, devoid of all exposition or reflective passages – what happens simply happens.

It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.

Jake Barnes is living in Paris, impotent because of a vague war injury, and very much in love with the engaged Lady Brett Ashley. Jake discovers that Brett has also been having an affair with his friend Robert Cohn, and the tensions build on a trip to Pamplona where Jake, Brett, Robert, Brett’s fiancee Michael and Jake’s friend Bill travel to for the annual bullfighting fiesta. Cohn’s obsession with Brett grows, he cannot bear to be apart from her – frustrating not only Michael, but Jake and Brett as well. When Brett begins an affair with a young bullfighter Pedro Romero, jealousies between the men intensify and they resolve it in the way that men do: with some awkward, drunken fisticuffs. The novel ends in the aftermath of the fiesta, as Brett and Jake explore Madrid and she tells him that the two of them could have been good together. Jake’s great response to this is: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” In a line, summing up the exact pain and beauty of unrequited, impossible love.

It was a good morning, there were high white clouds above the mountains. It hadrained a little in the night and it was fresh and cool on the plateau, and there was a wonderful view. We all felt good and we felt healthy, and I felt quite friendly to Cohn. You could not be upset about anything on a day like that.
That was the last day before the fiesta.

The vagueness surrounding the war and how it has affected these characters is intriguing – what we assume to be a monumental event in their lives is given very little thought or reflection. Somehow, through Jake’s impotency through war injury, and the complete inability for these men to comprehend their situations through anything but violence and possession, Hemingway seems to be suggesting the war has altered the American understanding of masculinity, how men see themselves in relation to the world and to women. The bullfights and the seven day fiesta atmosphere act as a sometimes distracting backdrop to these concerns, but at the same time heightening the particular tensions between the friends. The intensity and bloodiness of the bullfight action disturbingly mirrors the intricacies of human affairs.

Hemingway manages to make the bloody sport – the bullfights, not the affairs – seem a graceful art, and it is here that the writing shows the most compassion and energy. While Hemingway’s sparse style doesn’t instantly appeal to me, after having read The Sun Also Rises and enjoying it on a narrative level, I am now more inclined to pick up another of his novels.

Aesop’s Fables (5th Century BC)

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Aesop: The Complete Fables (c. 5th century BC)It’s quite strange and revealing that although I’d never read Aesop’s Fables before now, so many of them have become so ingrained into the cultural consciousness to the point of complete saturation. It’s possible that they may had been read to me as a child, whether through adaptations or child-friendly renditions, but there is an unsettling viciousness about some of these fables. Beyond those of quiet platitudes about wits over strength/beauty, of good over evil, of truth over lies, there are fables here which highlight an essential absurdity or meaninglessness about our lives. Which is always somewhat difficult to stomach, isn’t it? One minute you are catching up on your Greek classic literature on the bus and the next a bout of existential angst about meaning and truth, and all this from something that has, in obviously sanitized versions, become basic storytelling rites and moral teachings for children?

Still, there is much to delight in here. Whether it is the fables of vengeful and spiteful gods who rule according to whim, or grotesquely comic tales of violence upon frogs (there really is a lot of murdered frogs in here), or just simply illustrative moral tales, the fables are worth revisiting. The genuine understanding of human behaviour evident remains relevant. There’s not much else to say really, is there? So, instead, here are some of my favourite fables from this collection.

The Ox and the Frog: Two little frogs were playing about at the edge of a pool when an Ox came down to the water to drink, and by accident trod on one of them and crushed the life out of him. When the old frog missed him, she asked his brother where he was. “He is dead, mother,” said the little frog; “an enormous big creature with four legs came to our pool this morning and trampled him down in the mud.” “Enormous, was he? Was he as big as this?” said the frog, puffing herself out to look as big as possible. “Oh! yes, much bigger,” was the answer. The frog puffed herself out still more. “Was he as big as this?” said she. “Oh! yes, yes, mother, MUCH bigger.” said the little frog. And yet again she puffed and puffed herself out till she was almost as round as a ball. “As big as…?” she began — but then she burst.

The Wasp and the Snake: A Wasp settled on the head of a Snake, and not only stung him several times, but clung obstinately to the head of his victim. Maddened with pain the Snake tried every means he could think of to get rid of the creature, but without success. At last he became desperate, and crying, “kill you I will, even at the cost of my own life,” he laid his head with the Wasp on it under the wheel of a passing wagon, and they both perished together.

Prometheus and the Making of Man: At the bidding of Jupiter, Prometheus set about the creation of Man and the other animals. Jupiter, seeing that mankind, the only rational creatures, were far outnumbered by the irrational beasts, bade him redress the balance by turning some of the latter into men. Prometheus did as he was bid, and this is the reason why some people have the forms of men, but the souls of beasts.

Demades and His Fable: Demades the orator was once speaking in the Assembly at Athens; but the people were very inattentive to what he was saying, so he stopped and said “Gentlemen, I should like to tell you one of Aesop’s fables.” This made every one listen intently. Then Demades began: “Demeter, a Swallow, and an Eel were once travelling together, and came to a river without a bridge: the Swallow flew over it, and the Eel swam across”; and then he stopped. “What happened to Demeter?” cried several people in the audience. “Demeter,” he replied, “is very angry with you for listening to fables when you ought to be minding public business.”

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (1945)

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Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (1945)Whenever I read a classic novel, or something by a renowned author, I stare blankly at the document in which I intend to write my review, deeply anxious and uncertain. “But, Cannery Row has been read by a million people before me, studied by thousands of students, what else can I possibly say about it?” Even though the act of reading the novel can be immensely pleasurable, when it comes to writing about it I freeze. I even considered rewriting the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” to reference Cannery Row (“Mack and the boys they’re restless/they need somewhere to go/as Doc and I look out tonight/from Cannery Row” it could work, I tell you.) in order to avoid actually talking about the book itself. (You have to wonder, what will I be like when I get around to that William Faulkner marathon I have planned? Interpretive dance review of The Sound and the Fury?)

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries or corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.

John Steinbeck‘s Cannery Row is set in the waterfront street known as Cannery Row in Monterey, California. Somehow, in the space of what is comparatively a novella, Steinbeck lets us into the worlds of a multitude of characters who reveal themselves to be more than our initial impressions of them and a testament to the necessity of community. The narrative is fractured between different characters as the poorer inhabitants of the street attempt to throw a party for Doc, a marine biologist who has offered much to the community. While the intention, led by the bums of the Palace Flophouse, is good, the follow through just doesn’t go quite to plan; but, the community eventually pulls together to throw a party that honours the kind-hearted Doc.

Within the narrative itself, Steinbeck – mainly through Doc’s observations of marine life, but also through the omniscient voice of the narrator – reflects on the natural world and how it reflects our own. Seemingly tranquil sea life proves to be capable of the the most vicious violence, the bums catching frogs for money is described with the detail of a bloody battlefield, a gopher builds a home in a safe area but cannot find a mate so moves on to a more dangerous area. The attention to these aspects of nature reveals life on the Row to be similarly delicate ecosystem.

Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the grey time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest.

Despite the brevity of the text, the nuanced cast of characters and their stories feel complete. To add more to them would be going overboard. Steinbeck’s simplicity possesses an innate awareness of the aspects of these characters which make them a.) interesting to a reader and b.) integral to the Cannery Row hive. They may not be extraordinary people, but their talents, their humanity and their generosity lend them a dignity which cannot be denied. Dora, the madame of the Bear Flag brothel, sends her girls out to look after the children of the town when influenza strikes and the ill cannot afford medical assistance, despite it being the busiest time of year at the brothel. Lee Chong owns the grocery store, and though the locals owe him large amounts of money, he doesn’t chase it up – knowing that eventually they’ll repay him rather than trek to the market in the next town. Henri the local artists constantly builds and dismantles his boat, never wishing to complete it.

Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost.

After the first disastrous attempt to give Doc a party – to which he doesn’t even arrive, and great damage is inflicted upon his house – the street not only makes outcasts of the perpetrators; but begins to suffer itself. It’s as though if one part of this community is ill at ease, the whole community faces great misfortune. As Mack and the boys are gradually forgiven, the town heals, the illness and misfortune lifts. It’s a beautiful illusion, and it is impossible not to feel a deep yearning for a sense of community as deep and essential as is evident in Cannery Row. Does community like this exist anymore? Did it ever?

‘It has always seemed strange to me,’ said Doc. ‘The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding, and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.’

Cannery Row is a deceptively simple story – the inhabitants of a street gather to throw a party for an honoured resident – but the heart and the faith in humanity that Steinbeck imbues this story with is amazing, and difficult to forget. Celebration of good deeds and genial warmth are essential to the proliferation of the human spirit, and despite their lack of ambition or lofty pursuits, and in this the folks of Cannery Row are richer than most. Sweet Thursday is a sequel set years after the events in Cannery Row, although I will be trying to get a copy soon, I think I’ll let the pleasures of Cannery Row linger a little while longer.

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh (1934)

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A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh (1934)Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust is such a curious novel. At once acerbic social satire and vicious family melodrama, it examines the question of social propriety among the upper echelons of the moneyed classes and yet loses steam in the last third of the novel. For the most part, however, it beautifully illustrates the ultimate cruelties and snide savagery that humans are all too capable of.

‘That’s always the trouble with people when they start walking out. They either think no one knows, or everybody. The truth is that a few people like Polly and Sybil make a point of finding out about everyone’s private life; the rest of us just aren’t interested.’

Waugh begins the novel by introducing us to John Beaver, a hideous young man of little social standing – he’s always being called up at the last moment to fill in empty seats at dinner parties, he’s something of a joke within the moneyed social circle he moves in. Waugh moves on and introduces the Lasts, Lady Brenda and her husband Tony and their precocious child John Andrew, living in the Gothic surrounds of Tony’s familial estate Hetton. Their lifestyle seems to be largely idyllic, they don’t want for anything and Brenda and Tony’s relationship appears to be healthy and thriving, if a little fallen to routine. Into this idyll the unexpected arrival of Beaver has a profound effect on Lady Brenda, whose fascination with him leads her to London and eventually, embarking on a scandalous affair with the younger man. Scandalous not because of the age difference, or because she is already married – these sorts of frivolous affairs are quite common amongst the married set – but because of the disparity between their social positions. Brenda’s desire leads her to taking up a flat in London, apart from Tony, her son and Hetton.

It had been an autumn of very sparse and meagre romance; only the most obvious people had parted or come together, and Brenda was filling a want long felt by those whose simple, vicarious pleasure it was to discuss the subject in bed over the telephone. For them her circumstances shed peculiar glamour; for five years she had been a legendary, almost ghostly name, the imprisoned princess of a fairy story, and now that she had emerged there was more enchantment in the occurrence than in the mere change of habit of any other circumspect wife. Her very choice of partner gave the affair an appropriate touch of fantasy; Beaver, the joke figure they had all known and despised, suddenly caught up to her among the luminous clouds of deity.

Waugh’s writing is careful not to lay the blame on either side of the marriage. Showing the moroseness of both John Andrew and Tony left behind in Hetton, not aware of why Brenda is so taken with London all of a sudden, shifts our sympathies from her boredom and listlessness to their loss. After the tragic death of John Andrew, Brenda feels compelled (or freed) to tell Tony the truth about Beaver and London and that she wants a divorce. Because of her social status and to maintain social propriety – despite the fact that everyone already knew about the affair – Tony’s lawyers go to great lengths to create marital disruptions on his side to allow the divorce to move smoothly. A clandestine weekend with a woman from a club is more comic that it should be given the circumstances. Once the divorce proceedings are underway, suddenly Brenda and company are talking about Tony’s mortifying actions that lead to the necessary divorce, which is a confusing about face. I suppose maintaining the reputation of her good name is more important that anything even close to resembling the truth.

‘I hear Brenda disgraced herself,’ he said.
‘Goodness,’ said Brenda. ‘People do think that young men are easily come by.’

Whereas the social comedy is largely written in sparkling dialogue, but when Tony ventures to avoid all divorce proceedings and familial manipulations by taking an exotic trip overseas the tone significantly changes. Rather than relying on conversations to drive the narrative forward, it takes on a very different, more reflective and descriptive tone once Tony is abroad. Here the novel lost me a bit. Tony’s travels may have been interesting in their own right, but to become so involved in the inner workings of the social circles of the Lasts and then to be torn right out of it had a somewhat jarring effect. Perhaps this is to suggest Tony’s equal removal from society through no real fault of his own?

After such effective portrayal of the petty worries of the London elite, the ending is rather unsatisfying and bleak. Tony is lost in Brazil, captive to an old man who forces him to read Dickens to him every night; Brenda has remarried, not to Beaver, but to another of Tony’s close friends, and Hetton has passed into the hands of Tony’s relatives. Reflecting on it, I suppose that in A Handful of Dust Waugh was trying to show that all humans are capable of great savagery – whether it is discussed discreetly among friends in beautifully decorated drawing rooms or in the remote jungles and clay huts of the tropics.

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (1985)

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Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (1985)I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction lately, and while I always enjoy learning about new things and discovering new perspectives, I also love getting lost in the imagined worlds of fiction, so I turned to some of my staple comfort fiction: Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. Not the typical warm and fuzzy type of comfort fiction, but I wrote my undergraduate thesis on novels and films about adolescent malaise, youth disaffected by everything around them: Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge, one of my favourite films, and the films of Gregg Araki (many of which have dialogue lifted straight from Less Than Zero.) It could be familiarity, or recognition, with these themes. Nonetheless, rereading Less Than Zero has confirmed that I still really enjoy it, disturbing, unsettling and confronting as it is.

I turn the radio up, loud. The streets are totally empty and I drive fast. I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is “Disappear Here” and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light. I put my sunglasses on even though it’s still pretty dark outside and I keep looking into the rearview mirror, getting this strange feeling that someone’s following me.

Less Than Zero sees eighteen year old Clay returning home to Los Angeles for Christmas after four months away at school in New Hampshire. He returns to his old life of endless parties, excessive drug use and general sense of apathy. Gradually, the horrors of L.A. infect his psyche and he begins to see violence evident everywhere, deciding to never return. He has an ambiguous sexuality, sleeping with both men and women, and having had an on/off again relationship with Blair, which neither of them seem to be too emotionally involved. This lack of involvement extends to every aspect of Clay’s life, frequent “I don’t know”, “I don’t care”, “nothing”, he just doesn’t care about anything. He’s not alone in this, his friends are all equally detached.

He’s staring at me and I look down and take a drag, a deep one, off the cigarette. The man keeps staring at me and all I can think is either he doesn’t see me or I’m not here. I don’t know why I think that. People are afraid to merge. Wonder if he’s for sale.”

The strength in Less Than Zero is how Ellis captures Clay’s disenchanted voice, everything is recorded with this blank monotone as though nothing can possibly touch him. It’s infectious, sort of rhythmic in a jagged, paranoiac kind of way. It’s only as Clay’s so-called normalcy becomes more and more surreal, that anything really begins to register with him. The images of violence start off relatively tame, watching a sick friend shoot heroin at a party wearing a vest that makes her look like she’s been shot, to coyotes hit by cars, dead bodies found in alleyways and his friends engaging in brutal rape. Clay’s search for his old school friend Julian takes a similarly violent turn as he discovers that Julian has become a male prostitute for a vicious pimp in order to pay off a drug debt. As Clay watches Julian engage with his pimp and his clients, his current image of Julian begins to clash with the images he has of him as a child. I think this, really, begins the descent into mayhem that eventually sees Clay denounce Los Angeles, as well as cementing the theme of the desire to return to the past, even if it is unknown, imagined, or just doesn’t exist anymore. Or never did.

The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. Images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. These images stayed with me even after I left the city. Images so violent and malicious that they seemed to be my only point of reference for a long time afterwards. After I left.

Less Than Zero is so much more than a novel which captured the zeitgeist of the materialist 1980s, not just a blank look into the superficial lives of bored, numb and dumb teenagers. Hypnotically narcotic, it is a reflection on moral deterioration and an underlying meaningless than we struggle (or refuse) to grasp.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)I picked up Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World with knowledge of its dystopian themes, but with no real awareness of its story; vague recollections of soma and babies being created mechanically, but nothing really beyond that. It’s amazing how in a culture in which we are continually spoiled or assumed to have a certain level of knowledge about canonical texts, somehow, basic information about Brave New World had passed me by. Set in the distant future, civilized society has taken technology and the methods of mechanical reproduction to every aspect of human life – the physical birthing process and concept of mothers are abhorred in favour of chemically differentiated humans assigned to castes according to tasks that need to be performed within society, work is performed in exchange for the perfect drug soma, promiscuity and carnality are encouraged, and above all the collective social order is more important than the individual. Within this system, Bernard Marx finds himself feeling “different” but it isn’t until he returns from a savage reservation with the naturally birthed son of Bernard’s Director that the social order can be examined from an outsiders perspective.

‘But people never are alone now,’ said Mustapha Mond. ‘We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it’s almost impossible for them ever to have it.’

Bernard Marx is such a complex character, he is for the most part of the novel the sole voice of protest but he is too afraid to really express it, surrounded as he is by others who have been successfully conditioned to passively accept everything on offer. When John revolts against the impassive acceptance of his mothers death and refusal to see his grief, Bernard just stands back unable to join him. In his heart, and in his thoughts he knows that the methods of distraction are against everything he wants to stand for, but because he is both critical and part of society he just cannot separate himself entirely because it is all he knows. I didn’t wholly understand the point Huxley was driving toward until John (the Savage) meets with the Controller, Mustapha Mond, and Mond discusses the basis of the civilized world to the alienated and confused John. It wasn’t until this point when all everything started fitting together for me, and became truly horrifying – and started to mirror aspects of our own culture as well. The cult of positivity, the fear of solitude, the use of entertainment to dull people. Here’s a graphic which lends the comparison to today a stark relevance, and compares the future as envisioned by Huxley to that of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

‘But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.’
‘In fact,’ said Mustapha Mond, ‘you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.’
‘All right, then,’ said the Savage defiantly, ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.’
‘Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.’
There was a long silence.
‘I claim them all,’ said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

I’m still stunned and taken aback by how powerful the final chapters of Huxley’s novel are. Reeling, I suppose one would say. I think my experience of Brave New World is going benefit immensely from multiple rereads, there was so much going on that didn’t become clear to me until the end. I feel completely unable to articulate how deeply it has shaken me. I wonder whether this paralyzing inability to write about Brave New World stems from the power and continuing relevance of its message or from the novels prestigious reputation. It’s the same feeling I had when I was reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for the first time (yes, I can really tie Carson McCullers into any and every book discussion I have.), the feeling of “yes. Yes. Yes! Someone else gets it.” I’m sure it’s just a matter of synchronicity, simply discovering it at the right time.

Morvern Callar by Alan Warner (1995)

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Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

Morvern Callar: I watched the film adaptation of Morvern Callar earlier this year, and really liked it, it was dream-like, very quiet and drifting. I’d often thought about picking up the book but hadn’t had the chance to read it until now. Around Christmas time, 21-year-old supermarket stock girl Morvern Callar finds her older boyfriend has committed suicide in their flat. He leaves her some cash and the unpublished manuscript of his novel. Rather than notifying the authorities Morvern simply sticks to her usual routine, and if He (the unnamed boyfriend) comes up in conversation, she merely tells family and friends that He has left her, packed up and gone.

“I love you Morvern; feel my love in the evenings in the corners of all the rooms you will be in. Keep your conscience immaculate and live the life people like me have denied you. You are better than us.”
(from His suicide note)

Morvern Callar is a hauntingly dark tale, but only when you stop and reflect. Told entirely from Morvern’s point of view, she remains disconnected from her actions – instead reveling in the banal details of her life – we may not know how she feels about her boyfriend’s sudden suicide, but we do know the colour of her cigarette lighter and what music she is listening to. Morvern doesn’t seem capable of realizing the gravity of what she is doing. Told heavily in her colloquial Scottish, Morvern remains emotionally unavailable to the reader, and to those around her.

“After a long time I says, Stay here a bit. In Nature. Away from Creeping Jesus and the work. This place, it doesnt care, it’s just here. It helps that this place is here just a few hours’ walk away. All this loveliness. It’s just silence isn’t it?”

The reliance on drugs, booze and sex as a narrative force doesn’t seem depraved and seedy as all of this is experienced through Morvern’s strangely detached manner. This possibly makes it all much sordid than it appears, though makes the point that regular drug and alcohol use is just as much a part of Morvern’s daily reality as listening to records or stacking potatoes at the supermarket. There is a shift in tone when Morvern and her best friend, Lanna, go on a holiday funded by the advance paid by London publishers for ‘her’ novel. Here it seems to revel in the weirdness of that youth gone wild on foreign shores holiday atmosphere. Some of the rave scenes toward the end of the book are described beautifully, keenly aware of the rhythm and chemical sensation that take over the body. Just another method for Morvern to distance herself from the magnitude of her situation and her actions.

I’m uncomfortable with saying that I enjoyed this novel, but it did have an impact on me. The story is dark, the characters are for the most part despicable and impenetrable, but there is an unsettling energy at the heart of Morvern Callar. Alan Warner’s The Sopranos has been recommended to me, so I think on the strength of Morvern Callar I might check that one out soon as well.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)

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The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale: Offred is a national resource. In the Republic of Gilead her viable ovaries make her a precious commodity, and the state allows her only one function: to breed. As a Handmaid she carries no name except her Master’s, for whose barren wife she must act as a surrogate. But Offred cannot help remembering subversive details of her former life: her mother, her lover, her child, her real name, women having jobs and being allowed to read, fun, “freedom.” Dissenters are supposed to end up either at the Wall, where they are hanged, or in the Colonies, to die a lingering death from radiation sickness. But the irrepressible Moira shows Offred that it is possible to cheat the system.

A short break from Palahniuk mania for the minute, and instead, some classic feminist dystopian fiction. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the narrator, Offred, is a Handmaid, a surrogate, live-in fertility vessel. She occupies the lowest position in the household of the Commander, she is given no voice, and no freedom. Her sole occupation is to assist the Commander and his Wife in producing a progeny.

She remembers, partially and quietly, her past life, her friends, her child, her husband and the political path that led to her current situation and the creation of the Republic of Gilead. She repeatedly reflects that after her, the future Handmaids won’t be able to remember anything from before, their reality as Handmaids will be the only one they know. This idea was profoundly effective, the idea that you need to have some grasp of alternate possibilities in order to hope. While Offred does hope, dream and remember about how things were before, and how things could be, she is ultimately oppressed by the new system. She can remember all the freedoms she took for granted in the past – of reading, studying, working, walking the streets without supervision – but the idea of these alone, purely because of the system in place, does not set her free. It almost becomes frustrating, because for every possible way out, the new political/social system seems to have a method of preventing it. Offred herself, however, never frustrates the reader because we recognize the brutality of a system which denies her her rights. The first person narration allows the reader to see her as an active subject, as a woman with thoughts and feelings that wildly contradict the social structure. Hers is a quiet subversion.

Also hugely effective is Offred’s recollection of the systematic removal of women’s rights that occurred with the political changeover. Almost overnight, women are forbidden access to their own money, they are fired from their jobs. What is most chilling about this, is it feels as though it is entirely possible. It doesn’t seem so alien and impossible.

“We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were men we knew. The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives.
We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.

Dystopian science fiction with a decidedly feminist twist, The Handmaid’s Tale offers a chilling glimpse of an all too possible future.

Saturday by Ian McEwan (2005)

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Saturday by Ian McEwan Saturday: Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man – a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind, a newspaper lawyer, and proud father of two grown-up children, one a promising poet, the other a talented musician. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. What troubles him as he looks out at the night sky is the state of the world – the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city, its openness and diversity, and his happy family life are under threat.

However irrational it may be, I cracked open this book expecting to dislike it. It could be a combination of the critical and popular acclaim awarded upon McEwan’s writing and the fact that I tend to not gravitate toward this sort of fiction. So I was somewhat surprised to find that I loved the writing style and the level of detail given to every aspect of Henry’s life. Saturday follows a day off in the life of a neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, as he navigates his way around London in the midst of a huge anti-war rally, from his traumatic experience mid-morning which colours his attitude throughout the day, his chance encounter with an afflicted hoodlum and a family dinner. In the first section, as Henry awakes early mid-morning and sees a plane on fire in the sky we are given insight into him, his thoughts, his work, his history and his family. In this section McEwan adequately captures that particular brand of post 9/11 paranoia, Perowne’s thoughts instantly turn to the worst possible scenario. He turns to that institution of instant reportage of the early morning news to discover more about what he has just witnessed, lightly distressed that it isn’t given too much importance.

Throughout, the writing maintains this high attention to detail. McEwan is able to inject Perowne’s thoughts as he goes about his daily actions and touches upon recollections of his past, insight into his profession, how he views the world and how it contrasts with those around him, and even how he thinks he came to hold such a position. There also seems to be a running hyper-awareness of the mediatization of experience:

He is cast in a role, and there’s no way out. This, as people like to say, is urban drama. A century of movies and half a century of television have rendered the matter insincere. It is pure artifice. Here are the cars, and here are the owners. Here are the guys, the strangers, whose self-respect is on the life. Someone is going to have to impose his will and win, and the other is going to give way. Popular culture has worn this matter smooth with reiteration, this ancient genetic patrimony that oils the machinations of bullfrogs and cockerels and stags. And despite the varied and casual dress code, there are rules as elaborate as the politesse of the Versailles court that no set of genes can express. For a start, it is not permitted as they stand there to acknowledge the self-consciousness of the event, or its overbearing irony: from just up the street, they can hear the tramping and tribal drums of the peace mongers. Furthermore, nothing can be predicted, but everything, as soon as it happens, will seem to fit.

However, this detail laden writing becomes something of a hindrance with the episode of violence upon the Perowne family. Rather than giving insight into what should be seen as a terribly traumatic experience, here it seems that Perowne is largely cold and detached from what is happening to him and his family. It is as though he is just recounting something from his past, something that they’ve already moved beyond. It could be that this is just his way of responding to the unknown, the frightening invasion of privacy and peace. It could also be a comment on how acts of terror are reported in the media, as something distant and unknowable, sanitized for our daily consumption. So while the style of writing may have placed me as a reader at an emotional distance from the turmoil, at the same time it triggered further ruminations upon the effects of doing so, and where else these effects are at work, and the implication of such distancing.

bh45k3acms

Book Loot: Week Ending August 30th 2009

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This week went by so fast! I didn’t have too many book-buying opportunities this week – some might say that’s a good thing. Here’s what my rummaging about at book sales scored me this week:

Book Loot: Week Ending 30th August 2009

I was hugely, ridiculously pleased to find February House on sale for a couple of dollars, mainly due to my rampant obsession and admiration for Carson McCullers. A signed copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was sold on ebay for US$500 this week, I’d been following it out of interest for a while now. It was originally listed at a couple of thousand but didn’t sell. The seller relisted it as a normal auction but with a reserve price. People bid on it, but it didn’t reach the reserve so the seller relisted it with the Buy It Now price of US$500 and it was snapped up almost instantly. Alas, not to me!

Reading: I have spent a lot of time reading short stories this week. Mainly short stories on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die List – Edgar Allen Poe, Nikolai Gogol and my favourite of the lot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper is suitably creepy and frightening, amazing that a story of just over 6000 words can explore so many themes so richly. I’m still reading the Flannery O’Connor short stories, but as I’ve said before, I am in no hurry to finish them all quickly. I read “Greenleaf” on the bus this week, and it was horrifying as I slowly realized where it was going. I started reading John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent today, enjoying it so far, but more on that later. Next week I’ll also be starting Jane Austen’s Lady Susan as part of the Austenprose group read.