I could feel my anxiety in my body, in my blood, and I no longer fought to escape it. I focused on it and understood it to be energy and that it could be useful to me rather than a hindrance. The room was full of people and soon it would be my turn to speak. I stayed calm and receptive to the growing spirit in me which sought release. I asked my heart what it knew, and told it to my associates. The day would be long and arduous. A cat befriended me. When I got home I made myself a salad and watched Dr. Zhivago. The movie was full of trains and war and winter and romance. People were losing their homes, all in the name of the working man. The doctor was a poet and recognized by a soldier, who told him his work was no longer meaningful, that the time of shared personal intimacies was over. I felt the sting. I came to tears. War is terrible and can make hopeless fools of us all. But stay honest and keep about your work, and you will have life eternal.

Review: Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dickens creates such an terrifying circumstance for the little tyke at the very start, one cannot help but wish to uplift young Oliver Twist (and his little friends). I wanted to take him home and give him some hot chocolate and a pat on the head, hell, I would keep him for sure! He has kindness and compassion in his heart which will not be easily corroded. Almost everyone is out to manipulate the kid, even the ones - like the young girl Nance - I hoped would be helpful to him. He is abducted to dark and narrow streets of London, where the dirt and mud and impoverishment reflect the broken spirits living there. He is taught how to be a thief. The Artful Dodger and Charley Bates are lively little crooks, underlings of Fagin, and Sikes (with his mean dog in tow) is a frightful and towering king of this underworld.

This book establishes a nice rhythm and is narrated very well (strong and consistent voice). Many of Dickens' books were first published as serials in the London papers. I had to find out how Oliver would make out in the end, if he was to survive at all. Plenty of others like him died of starvation, fever, neglect, and broken hearts. Others turned to crime and saw the gallows. These were mean streets of old London, and Dickens does not spare us the details. In fact, he holds a candle to it all. He brings you into the darkest corners, then gets your adrenaline up as Oliver's situation becomes inadvertently hopeful, before being lost again to the murky, insensate underworld. It takes one who initially betrayed him and others who gave up looking for him, to unite and try to save him from a terrible fate on the streets. In the process, the mystery of his birth is unraveled. Aside from his rich/poor politics and narrow portrayal of Jews, I love the way Dickens tells a story. This story.

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Review: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Poe published this book a good decade or more before Melville published MD, the famous whale of a story (of a whale). This tale was an abbreviated version -snapshot- of life at sea on a whaling vessel from Nantucket, in the 19th century. I mention Melville only because in this Penguin version of the text, the (rather dull) appendices point out several persuasive arguments that Melville both read and borrowed from Poe's Narrative. I wouldn't be surprised (but I didn't need an appendix to convince me).

Poe, like Melville, tackles the life on the sea with incredible precision and an less fanciful vocabulary. The story follows a young stowaway with his dog Tiger and several colorful characters, in a harrowing and jagged course toward the South Pole. Poe has a wonderful way of describing the intense and frightful place on the edge of sanity, where Pym and the others frequently find themselves. Physical and mental breakdowns, which somehow the spirit survives (or not). Poe demonstrates his mastery of language, taking words back to their Latin roots like 'condescension' (coming down / with) and 'inhume' (the opposite of exhume: being buried alive). Writers can learn a lot by his writing style. I did.

Poe's story drew me in -- slowly. The setup was a recounting of Pym's journal which had been mysteriously placed in the author's hands. Pym was an endearing character, entrusted with many redeeming qualities. Friendship and loyalty. I liked him right away. He dreams of adventure, and his friend Augustus figures a way to stash him in the berth of his father's ship -- and away to sea we go!

The race to the South Pole was a magical and exciting time in the 19th century, what with Captain Cook and others journaling about their efforts and naming islands and sharing them with the world. Nobody knew what they might find! Ships would have to turn back when they reached latitudes full of ice and impassable, or ran out of time (seasons changing) or fuel. Worldwide folks began to realize that at certain latitudes closer to the pole, the ice actually let up and the weather placated. Ultimately pioneers would discover a continent full of burgeoning life.

This book is an adventure worth reading. I began to feel the adrenaline rush of the pioneers; Poe puts the pulse on discovery. The characters were likable, I wanted them to survive. I felt intimately involved in their circumstances, it was all very realistic. I also love how the story ends. There is a moodiness. An impression. The story made a remarkable impression on me.

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Review: Thérèse Raquin

Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was walking through my friend's house when I found this book randomly on a shelf. A 99 cent penguin classic. My friend's mom had died and she was preparing the house for an estate sale. Her parents smoked Marlboro Lights for fifty plus years in that house, and everything - including Thérèse Raquin - was yellow and smelled of tobacco. The flesh and body of the narrative turned out to be the same, yellow, describing the decay over time of a couple of cowards who sought to fool the world, and ended in fooling only themselves.

I chose the book the same way I choose any book; turn randomly to a page and start reading. I was excited because I had not read much of Zola. This was his first major novel, published in 1867 when he was 27 years old. Zola was quite wealthy and famous by his writing and politics, both of which had an impact in 19th century Paris, and may have been murdered (over the latter) when a chimney sweep later confided that he plugged up Zola's chimney deliberately, causing him to die by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1902. Zola now shares a crypt with Victor Hugo in the Panthéon.

The first half of the book was interesting. A good story. I was pretty excited to discover what would happen next. All the characters were set up in rubber band like tension against one another, and I was just waiting to see which one would snap! And for sure they did snap. The aftermath (the second half of the book) was a big let down. There's a whole lot more telling than showing, and Zola goes into long-winded psychological analysis of the characters as they quickly become unhinged. Apparently he called this a study of 'temperaments'. But there is little development of plot and the scene is planted rather firmly inside a dingy house above a haberdashery. The story dries up in there, and I felt pulled alongside the author in his psycho-babble for far too long.

This story could have been a winner if you cut out about two thirds of the second half. I imagine something got lost in translation. I should try and polish up my French and try reading the original text. The book was met with widespread disapproval if not condemnation by the general public in 1867. I can see why. There's not much in the way of redemption, it is nihilistic. Even François, the house cat, is not spared. I thought to myself: come on, now! Zola! Give us somebody to love!

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Book Review - 'The Virgin Suicides' by Eugenides

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book is told from the perspective of a young boy (and his friends) in suburban Detroit whose lives are basically put on hold as they are captivated by a mystery of 5 girls in adolescence. They watch the girls from behind trees and fences and blinds and a treehouse where they have - over time - collected minutia (photos, hairbrushes, shoes, etc) related to the girls whom they almost publicly obsess over. Suicide is obviously (from the first page) a topic of great concern.

Eugenides writing style is accessible and engaging throughout. He finds delicious language to describe the most common (and boring) affairs of suburban white America in the 70s, irony, like the city's aspirations to save the Elm trees by removing them one at a time until they are all gone. Their is an underlying sadness in the story, related to us through various characters from the OCD mom to the alcoholic neighbor to the unemployed teacher; an impotence against the fate not only of these young beauties but also of the home, the street, the neighborhood, the culture itself. You wonder if anything is sacred anymore.

I had a lot of fun reading about these boys and there efforts to establish contact if not connection with the girls, how they go about it. They report back on their mischief and it's all very entertaining. There's a desperation which drives the narrative of the spies. How can they get around the carefully constructed bubble the parents (and the culture) have created, to touch the objects of their adoration?

Something strange happens. Eugenides power of characterization could have really brought the girls to life (and I did begin to have feelings and bias towards each and every one of them), however the premise and setup prevent us (like the boys) from getting to know these 'virgin suicides'. I found myself thirsting at times for more direct quotes and closer proximity to Lux and her sisters. So the established POV is very powerful this way. I'm not sure I liked this aspect of the book. I mean, I think I wanted to get a more intimate view of everything. It's not always fun to be made into a voyeur by the author. But it's his book! And so the mysteries are not always gonna unravel.

In the end you are left to make your own judgments about everything. The narrator has his opinion and gives it to us, but not in a preachy way. Mostly we are given an intimate window to a place (post white flight suburbs of Detroit, the automotive center of the universe) and time (1970s) which will never exist again. Which makes me happy, because Eugenides kinda immortalizes it all in this book, so maybe something is sacred, after all.


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