Sunday, March 13, 2011
Next Up: Hemingway!
We are cruising along to an Ernest Hemingway novel, next up will be "The Sun Also Rises." This will be the first time in this project where I will be reading a book by an author from wich I have read a different work, in this case "A Farewell to Arms." I have already learned that Hemingway was born in Illinois, yay for midwesterners! I don't really picture Hemingway as being a midwest kind of guy, but, hey, it's still cool.
4: "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" by Muriel Spark (1962)
Alright, now we are picking up the pace. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" is a quirky little novel about the short career of an elementary school teacher in a small girls school in Edinburgh in the mid-1930's. This teacher, as you may have guessed, named Miss Jean Brodie, chooses several girls to be a part of an exclusive group that she seems to dote upon. She chooses each girl because they are all to be "famous" for something. To put it simply, one is brainy, one is beautiful and will be known for her sexuality, one is athletically gifted, and one is stupid and dies early, and so on. Miss Brodie is disliked by many of her colleagues because she seems to be progressive and wants to try new ways of teaching and emphasize different ways of thinking than what is the norm at a British private school. She has romantic relationships with both the male Art and Music teachers, while her relationship with the female science teacher is strained. She talks often of a love she lost in the First World War, and of her trips to Italy where she believes Mussolini and his black shirts are doing amazing things (whoops). As the story progresses, more and more teachers at her school lose their patience with her and her small group of favorite girls.
Initially, I assumed this would be the story, told many times since in literature and film, of a teacher with new ideas and a progressive outlook on education becoming unfairly discriminated against and forced out, something like "Dead Poets Society" except with girls. Surprisingly, that is not the case. Miss Brodie's attention to her girls doesn't seem to be rooted in a desire to help them, at least not completely. It seems to be more about having control over those girls' lives, and being associated with any success they eventually have.
Eventually Miss Brodie is betrayed by one of her own girls, who lets slip the romantic relationships that the teacher has had with her male colleagues. Due to those relationships, as well as the positive statements she had made about Mussolini, Hitler and their followers in her classroom, she is forced to resign, and she ends up losing the influence she once had on her girls, though they do keep in touch. Years later, we see that none of her girls end up in the places she originally had foreseen for them.
In reading up on Spark's message behind this novel, I found that much of the focus is supposed to be on the simple truth that we don't know that much about people. People's motivations, secrets, and desires are largely hidden from those around them, even those closest to them. Authors often write from an omniscient point of view, while they may not share everything with the reader, they know everything about their characters. Spark demonstrates that characters can be written in a way where their real selves are hidden from everyone, even the author. Did Miss Brodie want to help her girls, or control them? This is not revealed, and chances are the answer is a little of both.
I also realized while reading "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" that years of reading history books, biographies and legal texts, I am having a hard team reading critically and looking behind the literal meaning of the text for the author's purpose. This was especially evident to me in reading this novel and in retrospect a huge problem I had in dealing with "The Sound and the Fury." I need to focus on reading more critically in the future. See, I am improving myself! Yay!
Initially, I assumed this would be the story, told many times since in literature and film, of a teacher with new ideas and a progressive outlook on education becoming unfairly discriminated against and forced out, something like "Dead Poets Society" except with girls. Surprisingly, that is not the case. Miss Brodie's attention to her girls doesn't seem to be rooted in a desire to help them, at least not completely. It seems to be more about having control over those girls' lives, and being associated with any success they eventually have.
Eventually Miss Brodie is betrayed by one of her own girls, who lets slip the romantic relationships that the teacher has had with her male colleagues. Due to those relationships, as well as the positive statements she had made about Mussolini, Hitler and their followers in her classroom, she is forced to resign, and she ends up losing the influence she once had on her girls, though they do keep in touch. Years later, we see that none of her girls end up in the places she originally had foreseen for them.
In reading up on Spark's message behind this novel, I found that much of the focus is supposed to be on the simple truth that we don't know that much about people. People's motivations, secrets, and desires are largely hidden from those around them, even those closest to them. Authors often write from an omniscient point of view, while they may not share everything with the reader, they know everything about their characters. Spark demonstrates that characters can be written in a way where their real selves are hidden from everyone, even the author. Did Miss Brodie want to help her girls, or control them? This is not revealed, and chances are the answer is a little of both.
I also realized while reading "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" that years of reading history books, biographies and legal texts, I am having a hard team reading critically and looking behind the literal meaning of the text for the author's purpose. This was especially evident to me in reading this novel and in retrospect a huge problem I had in dealing with "The Sound and the Fury." I need to focus on reading more critically in the future. See, I am improving myself! Yay!
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Next Up
Next up on the list, and provided by my neighborhood soon-to-be-out-of-business Borders at a very reasonable price, is "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" by Muriel Spark (1962). My favorite thing about the book so far, despite the fact that I haven't actually started reading it yet, is that it is a mercifully short 137 pages long. Hopefully I can pick up the pace a little bit, because if I stick with the rate I am currently reading these books, I will be lucky if I get to #100 by 2025.
3: "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
Well, here we are. Four months, 660 pages and a heaping pile of life altering events later, I have finally finished "All the King's Men."
"All the King's Men" won the Pulitzer and is, according to the back cover, one of the best novels on American politics ever written. What stood out to me though, was that this novel didn't really feel like it was about politics, at least not the politics we think of today. I don't remember a political party being mentioned once in the book, though I am sure they were at some point. The story really focuses on relationships, and the politics of personal relationships across many different facets of life. The main character, though I hesitate to call him a protagonist, and narrator is a man named Jack Burden. He is a journalist who gets swept into the inner circle that orbits the personality of the small town politician Willie Stark, who becomes governor of the state of Louisiana. Willie Stark takes office on the strength of his small town/everyman persona. He aims to sweep the old guard out of office and put the needs of the common folk first. The irony being, of course, that Willie is as corrupt and power hungry as any of the old politicians, but he is able to rationalize and justify his behavior because he is doing it all in the name of the working man. Jack is employed and befriended by Willie, and is used to research and rake up muck on the people Willie desires to have leverage against. It is never clear how much he believes in Willie's message or his own role in Willie's schemes, but he sticks with Willie until the bitter end. Without giving too much away, Jack loses almost everyone he loves in the process, but the ending does leave a little hope that Jack finds peace.
Warren's writing style is really incredible. The words flow off the page, and he creates as vivid a mental image as I can remember ever getting while reading. An example: "out at the University, on the practice field, the toe of some long-legged, slug-footed, box-shouldered lad kept smacking the leather, and farther away scrimmage surged and heaved to the sound of shouts and peremptory whistles." All Warren is doing is describing a scene where the background includes a football team at practice, and he crafts this wonderfully simple to read, but incredibly deep and rich sentence to describe it. And the entire novel is like that. It really is a joy to read. And, unlike Faulkner, Warren regularly uses punctuation, which is appreciated.
I enjoyed this book immensely, unfortunately due to my own laziness and the disruptions that life can have, my reading of it was inconsistent and disjointed. I would have enjoyed it more if I had been able to commit to it regularly. To me, "All the King's Men" will always remind me of some of the most tumultuous months of my life. Since I began reading this book in late October of 2010, and in no particular order, I have had one cousin get married, my sister-in-law get engaged, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and Valentine's Day have all come and gone, my grandfather passed away, followed only weeks later by the death of my father, I lost one job and began another, and my football team won the Super Bowl for the first time since 1997, and I travelled to Kyoto, Japan and Hong Kong, China. And I read "All the King's Men." If someone had told me all of that would happen when I purchased this book on a beautiful October day in Baltimore, I wouldn't have believed them. I might have run screaming in the other direction. Needless to say, life can head in some funny directions sometimes.
On that note, I would like to end with my favorite passage from "All the King's Men."
Warren writes: "After a great blow or crisis, after the first shock and then after the nerves have stopped screaming and twitching, you settle down to the new condition of things and feel that all possibility of change has been used up. You adjust yourself and are sure that the new equilibrium is for eternity....I felt that the story was over, that what had been begun a long time back had been played out, that the lemon had been squeezed dry. But if one thing is certain, it is that no story is ever over, for the story that we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn't the game that is over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops, it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day."
"All the King's Men" won the Pulitzer and is, according to the back cover, one of the best novels on American politics ever written. What stood out to me though, was that this novel didn't really feel like it was about politics, at least not the politics we think of today. I don't remember a political party being mentioned once in the book, though I am sure they were at some point. The story really focuses on relationships, and the politics of personal relationships across many different facets of life. The main character, though I hesitate to call him a protagonist, and narrator is a man named Jack Burden. He is a journalist who gets swept into the inner circle that orbits the personality of the small town politician Willie Stark, who becomes governor of the state of Louisiana. Willie Stark takes office on the strength of his small town/everyman persona. He aims to sweep the old guard out of office and put the needs of the common folk first. The irony being, of course, that Willie is as corrupt and power hungry as any of the old politicians, but he is able to rationalize and justify his behavior because he is doing it all in the name of the working man. Jack is employed and befriended by Willie, and is used to research and rake up muck on the people Willie desires to have leverage against. It is never clear how much he believes in Willie's message or his own role in Willie's schemes, but he sticks with Willie until the bitter end. Without giving too much away, Jack loses almost everyone he loves in the process, but the ending does leave a little hope that Jack finds peace.
Warren's writing style is really incredible. The words flow off the page, and he creates as vivid a mental image as I can remember ever getting while reading. An example: "out at the University, on the practice field, the toe of some long-legged, slug-footed, box-shouldered lad kept smacking the leather, and farther away scrimmage surged and heaved to the sound of shouts and peremptory whistles." All Warren is doing is describing a scene where the background includes a football team at practice, and he crafts this wonderfully simple to read, but incredibly deep and rich sentence to describe it. And the entire novel is like that. It really is a joy to read. And, unlike Faulkner, Warren regularly uses punctuation, which is appreciated.
I enjoyed this book immensely, unfortunately due to my own laziness and the disruptions that life can have, my reading of it was inconsistent and disjointed. I would have enjoyed it more if I had been able to commit to it regularly. To me, "All the King's Men" will always remind me of some of the most tumultuous months of my life. Since I began reading this book in late October of 2010, and in no particular order, I have had one cousin get married, my sister-in-law get engaged, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and Valentine's Day have all come and gone, my grandfather passed away, followed only weeks later by the death of my father, I lost one job and began another, and my football team won the Super Bowl for the first time since 1997, and I travelled to Kyoto, Japan and Hong Kong, China. And I read "All the King's Men." If someone had told me all of that would happen when I purchased this book on a beautiful October day in Baltimore, I wouldn't have believed them. I might have run screaming in the other direction. Needless to say, life can head in some funny directions sometimes.
On that note, I would like to end with my favorite passage from "All the King's Men."
Warren writes: "After a great blow or crisis, after the first shock and then after the nerves have stopped screaming and twitching, you settle down to the new condition of things and feel that all possibility of change has been used up. You adjust yourself and are sure that the new equilibrium is for eternity....I felt that the story was over, that what had been begun a long time back had been played out, that the lemon had been squeezed dry. But if one thing is certain, it is that no story is ever over, for the story that we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn't the game that is over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops, it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day."
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