Tag: classic

Grendel by John Gardner

Grendel by John Gardner

Grendel is the ill-fated monster from the ancient story, Beowulf. This is his tale.

There are very few details shared about Grendel in Beowulf. I thought that this story would be an opportunity for the reader to get to know him.

Unfortunately, we spend most of the time in Grendel’s mind, circling endlessly around the ideas of time, brutality, nature and the meaninglessness of existence.

I wanted to know more about Grendel’s mother, but there was very little about her.

John Gardner wrote her as some kind of void-filled slug monster: “Behind my back, at the world’s end, my pale slightly glowing fat mother sleeps on, old, sick at heart, in our dingy underground room. Life-bloated, baffled, long-suffering hag. Guilty, she imagines, of some unremembered, perhaps ancestral crime. (She must have some human in her.) Not that she thinks. Not that she dissects and ponders the dusty mechanical bits of her miserable life’s curse.” pg 10, ebook.

Not like Grendel does, endlessly.

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“I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist.” pg 17, ebook.

I think that was the biggest reason I didn’t enjoy this read. I believe every moment in life is, or can be, filled with purpose, meaning and happiness. Grendel falls on the exact opposite end of the scale.

In that way, Grendel is one of the biggest downers you could ever read. He believes that life means nothing. He acts and kills from this empty center.

Out of this morass, the one part I kind of enjoyed was Grendel’s conversation with a dragon in its hoard.

The dragon lives for millennia and sees the world from a view so wide that it is almost outside of time. Again, there’s a nihilist bent to his view, but the dragon brought a weird bit of humor to an otherwise bleak story.

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“Don’t look so bored,” he (the dragon) said. He scowled, black as midnight. “Think how I must feel,” he said.” pg 43, ebook.

Yeah, think how I must feel. All I wanted was the story of Beowulf from a unique perspective and what I received was a vague feeling of depression about the meaninglessness of it all.

Thanks for reading.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
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Although not my favorite of the classic dystopians, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is certainly a ground-breaking work about societal control through genetic manipulation, subliminal conditioning and socially acceptable drug use.

You are not born into this world; you are decanted. The institution of the traditional family has fallen apart- is even considered obscene.

Children run about naked and wild, experimenting with sex from a shockingly young age. This is a world where everyone’s body belongs to everyone else. Promiscuity is encouraged as well as mass consumption and instant gratification.

Men and women take a drug called “soma” to mellow out any pesky emotions. It is also used in quasi-religious ceremonies and public gatherings to create a kind of ecstasy.

A strict caste system is in place from the moment a baby is decanted. Societal mores are whispered into children’s ears thousands of times per week while they sleep. So, when they grow up, they fit seamlessly into the role that the world has chosen for them from conception.

Not everyone is happy in this world. Can you imagine that? Perhaps they just need more soma…

Recommended for those who enjoy classic works that examine the way society’s systems constrain and suffocate those who, for whatever reason, don’t or can’t fit in.

Thanks for reading.

1984 by George Orwell

1984 by George Orwell
1984

Spoiler warning at the end of this review. Please do not read the last paragraphs if you haven’t had the chance to read this classic dystopian.

In 1984 or thereabouts, Winston Smith is a hard-working member of the Party. There is only one Party and it rules with an iron fist. It is divided into divisions that specialize in different areas on the surface, but actually occupy themselves with maintaining power.

The country, an amalgamation of the countries we know now, is always at war with one or another of the two other world powers.

Winston works in a literary branch of the government. He is responsible for making changes to printed literature to make the past in-line with current party sentiment. “As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of the Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.” pg 39.

In the course of his job, he notices things changing. For instance, he knows that at one time, they were at war with someone different than the enemy they fight now. “Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains.” pg 155.

But this is not knowledge that he can share. The Party exerts control over everyone at all times through screens built into the wall of every home. You can see the state-sponsored programs like a regular television but they can look out through the screen and see you too.“The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand.” pg 193.

The Thought Police drag away any trouble makers or those whose thoughts aren’t acceptable to the Party. That could be anyone. Winston knows that one day it will be him. But not just yet.

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. … You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” pg 3.

The absolute powerlessness of Winston’s situation is terrifying. And then, he falls in love with a girl named Julia who works in his building. “He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation- people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog.” pg 131.

This was the first time I ever read 1984. I was still convinced, until a few pages before the end, that it was going to have a happy ending. The rat-mask part had me doubting but then, I still considered the possibility that Winston was faking his conversation. But, after he spoke to Julia one last time, I finally abandoned that theory too.

He lived through his ordeal, but at what cost? He lost everything- even his ability to think. I found it to be incredibly bleak, but worth the time, if only for the warnings that it contains.

Thanks for reading!

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell

animalfarmContinuing my series on ‘books I should have read in school, but didn’t,’ I tackled Animal Farm, a short story that is not just a political metaphor, but also a fable about what can happen to even good-intentioned revolutionaries as, after a successful rebellion, they slide slowly but inexorably back towards everything that they fought against in the first place.

Here’s a simplified run-down of the plot: so, there’s a farm. The animals rise up against the farmer and take the place for themselves. They work hard, starve themselves even to succeed, and, despite all obstacles, keep moving forward. The pigs are the smartest, can read and set up the morality of the farm in the form of commandments which are written on the side of a barn in white paint.

Most of the animals can’t read, but they think they remember what the commandments say. Then, as the pigs become more like the humans they overthrew, they find that the commandments are changing to fit the behavior of the pigs. And finally, after much hardship, things come full circle and the pigs have set themselves up as the farmer used to be and everything starts over again.

This is from the preface by Russell Baker: “Orwell called the book “a fairy story.” Like Voltaire’s Candide, however, with which it bears comparison, it is too many other things to be so handily classified. It is also a political tract, a satire on human folly, a loud hee-haw at all who yearn for Utopia, an allegorical lesson, and a pretty good fable in the Aesop tradition.” introduction vi. Also, I would call it a warning. Think for yourselves or others will think for you. Educate yourselves or others will tell you what the words say and will re-write them to benefit themselves or their friends.

Please read everything you can get your hands on. Here’s what can happen if you don’t: None of the other animals on the farm could get further than the letter A. It was also found that the stupider animals, such as the sheep, hens, and ducks, were unable to learn the Seven Commandments by heart. After much thought Snowball declared that the Seven Commandments could in effect be reduced to a single maxim, namely: “Four legs good, two legs bad.” This, he said, contained the essential principle of Animalism.” pg 50.

How do traditions get started?: “Mr. Jones’s gun had been found lying in the mud, and it was known that there was a supply of cartridges in the farmhouse. It was decided to set the gun up at the foot of the flagstaff, like a piece of artillery, and to fire it twice a year- once on October the twelfth, the anniversary of the Battle of the Cowshed, and once on Midsummer Day, the anniversary of the Rebellion.” pg 60 The brilliance of this story is the way that Orwell takes completely human tendencies like remembrances, parades and political speeches and reveals them for the manipulating tools that they can potentially be in the hands of the selfishly motivated.

Or how about the archetype of the ‘reluctant’ leader? : “Comrades,” he said, “I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice that Comrade Napolean has made in taking this extra labour upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility.” pg 69. The superior housing, connections, salaries and kick-backs… leadership is indeed a heavy and nearly impossible to bear responsibility. It’s a wonder that anyone volunteers for it.

And finally, the poignancy in the memories of Clover, one of the longest lived animals on the farm: “If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major’s speech. Instead- she did not know why- they had come to a time when no one dared to speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.” pg 95 How did it all happen? Was it the grasping of the pigs? The helplessness of the illiterate but good-hearted animals? What was it? Fate?

The greatest lesson of Animal Farm is that I could imagine this tragedy happening in a town/state/country near me. Couldn’t you?

Thanks for reading.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

fahrenheit451In a not too distant future, owning books is against the law. Firemen burn property instead of protect it and everyone is dialed in to their televisions, subsisting on a steady stream of sensational media stories and vapid entertainment to numb their quickly congealing brains. The nation is always at war, but you would never guess it from the populace’s empty conversations and emptier dreams. Guy Montag longs for something different, but what exactly, he can’t even say, until he meets a girl who wanders outside for fun and sees faces in the moon. He becomes convinced that what society has labeled as wrong and anti-social is more real than anything he’s experienced in a long time. However, these are dangerous thoughts. And, being a fireman, Guy knows, more than anyone, the price that is demanded of people who dare to think, read, and entertain original thoughts.

Fahrenheit 451 was shocking to me. Ray Bradbury predicted internet/social media addiction long before such things existed. He also called society’s horrifically shortened attention spans. Where once, we would have read through a novel or a long article, now we spend less than thirty seconds absorbing information before scrolling onwards to the next thing, then the next, and the next. (Goodreads friends excepted from the majority, of course.)

I listened to the audiobook version where Tim Robbins performed the narration. It was brilliant. He is a natural fit for this material and I highly recommend it.

The only annoying thing about listening to the audiobook is Bradbury’s use of repetition to build the tension and pound his ideas home. You’ll particularly notice it when the war planes fly overhead or when Guy gets into a big fight with his wife and she won’t turn off the television. It’s headache inducing but Bradbury certainly knows how to make a point.

This is one of those classics that I never got the chance to read in school, but I wish I had. I would have enjoyed this much more than Hard Times, which I managed to yawn my way through. Recommended for those who are disturbed by the shallowness of modern life and long for real connections with the people and world around them. The lessons that Bradbury teaches are still very applicable today and, as I said, shocking in their implications.

Thanks for reading.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

interviewwiththevampHalfway through reading this one, it occurred to me that I read Interview with a Vampire in high school, but it left so little impression that I promptly forgot about it until 16 or so years later when, as I was reading it again, I began to recall some of it as I went along. This is a cerebral treatment of the vampire genre, an examination of good vs evil, what immortality really means, the first of its kind in “vampire books” and an allegory of the soul itself. It is all of those things, but it’s not very fun to read. The pace drags along and, for being a horror novel, it’s not horrific, mainly dull.

Now, as back in high school, I wanted more information about what happened to Louis’s brother at the very start. Rice hints at paranormal interference on the stairs and in the brother’s religious vision, but the truth is never revealed. Maybe I have to dig through subsequent novels to find out what happened. That is the start of Louis’ troubles, the lynch pin of the whole book and Rice just glosses over it.

I also was unimpressed by Louis’s self professed “sensitivity” to life. It all combined to make him into an unending complainer. “People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.” pg 14, ebook. He monologues like that a lot as the book is set up as an interview, which I didn’t mind too much, but I could have done without for the last third. I mean, at that point, we know the kid with the tape recorder is there. I wanted to get lost in the story but we’re never really allowed to because we’re always flashing back and forth.

It’s difficult to enjoy a book when you don’t really like the main character.“I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself. I walked black streets and alleys alone; I passed out in cabarets. … And then I was attacked. It might have been anyone- and my invitation was open to sailors, thieves, maniacs, anyone. But it was a vampire.” pg 13, ebook. Interview with the Maniac just doesn’t have the same ring, does it. And yet, I might read it. 🙂

Rice’s vampires are emotionless, except for Louis who is seemingly exploding with sensitivity and angst: “By morning, I realized that I was his complete superior and I had been sadly cheated in having him for a teacher. … I felt cold towards him. I had no contempt in superiority. Only a hunger for new experience … Lestat was of no use.” pg 29, ebook. Or later with Claudia: “I even conceived a savage jealousy of the dollmaker to whom she’d confided her request for that tinkling diminutive lady, because that dollmaker had for a moment given her something which she held close to herself in my presence as if I were not there at all.” pg 176, ebook. On and on it goes. Lestat doesn’t understand him. Lestat’s a boor. Lestat this, Lestat that. Claudia’s out of control. Claudia too much like Lestat, Claudia’s too much like him…. Louis has eternity to explore the world and everything in it, and he chooses to hang out with the two people who makes him nuts. But, I hear you say, Lestat created him so he had control over him and he couldn’t leave Claudia because she was like an eternal child, wasn’t she?  As the story unfolds, we discover that separation was possible. Louis was simply too “sensitive” to do what was necessary.

Anyway, between the whining, the incomplete background information, and black/white view of good and evil, I did not enjoy Interview with the Vampire nearly as much as I had hoped I would. Perhaps I will revise my view if I read the rest of the series, but just thinking about digging into it makes me feel tired so I’m not sure that I’ll ever get that. Maybe I was ruined on this book by reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels, which I surprisingly loved (until the painfully awful final ones, skip those). Jump into Charlaine Harris’ novels for some vampire brain candy, save Anne Rice for the more serious, contemplative mood as it is considered a classic and beloved by many- just not me.

I plan to watch the film now and do a comparative review with the book. I watched it a long time ago too and can’t really recall it at all, but my Goodreads friends seem to think that it was better than the novel. We’ll see. 🙂 Thanks for reading!

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Art of War by Sun Tzu
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Frankly, I got tired of my husband quoting this and having no idea what he was talking about. So, Heidi-the-Hippie-Librarian picked up The Art of War. I must love him a great deal because this was so not my thing though I valiantly struggled my way through it. I’d say about three quarters of the book was commentary and translation quibbles on the text itself, which is really rather brief and kind of pretty in a “this is how you kill a bunch of people” sort of way.

My big take-aways from this were:
1 Pay attention to where you are and what’s going on around you all the time, especially in war. And also be super sneaky about what you’re going to do. “..concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions. Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act.” loc 1143

2 If you have to fight, do it fast because it’s too expensive to do for long.“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged war.” loc 822, ebook.

3 Everybody uses spies and if you don’t, then you’re going to lose because the other guy is for sure using spies.

4 Be flexible and make the call as things happen. Don’t stick to orders from an emperor who’s really far away because he doesn’t know what the heck is going on like you do. “Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.” loc 1296, ebook.

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5 Know who you are and who you’re fighting. This knowledge makes you strong so other people can’t determine your future. Use it to win your war.“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.” loc 1542, ebook.

6 Have a vision beyond what is right in front of you and guide yourself toward it, one good decision at a time. “To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence. Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, “Well done!” To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.”loc 1011-1030, ebook

7 The place that you fight is very important as well as the officer who is calling the shots and telling you which way to go. If either of these things suck, you’re in trouble. “The natural formation of the country is the soldier’s best ally; but a power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers and distances, constitutes the test of a great general.” loc 1886, ebook.

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8 Knowing small details about the enemy is very important. For example, if the dudes you’re going to war against put their pots and pans away, they’re planning on dying in battle. Who knew, right? “When an army feeds its horses with grain and kills its cattle for food, and when the men do not hang their cooking-pots over the campfires, showing that they will not return to their tents, you may know that they are determined to fight to the death.” loc 1752, ebook.

So, that’s The Art of War. Now back to my regularly scheduled reading. 🙂  And, thank you for reading.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Dark but powerful, The Road is about a father and son who are travelling through a destroyed world.

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They’re trying to get to the coast and south to warmer climates, but many obstacles lie in their way. In addition to starvation because of the nuclear fallout, the duo face external threats like cannibalistic tribes of savage men and women.

But it’s not just a battle to save their bodies, the father must teach the son the proper way to live (like not eating other people) to save his spirit from the crushing darkness that has overtaken everything. It is a struggle to retain the internal spark that divides humanity from the animals.

This is a book about survival in a dystopian reality, but it is also about the sustaining and literally life preserving power of love.

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My one complaint about this book is that the author didn’t clearly label who was speaking during the dialogue. He just went down a line to illustrate change of speaker. I had a really tough time keeping track of who was saying what.

Take this passage, for example: “Can I ask you something? he said. Yes. Of course. Are we going to die? Sometime. Not now. And we’re still going south. Yes. So we’ll be warm. Yes. Okay. Okay what? Nothing. Just okay. Go to sleep. Okay.” pg 9 The whole book is like that, anytime anyone is talking.

Otherwise though, this is an amazing, heart-pounding, thrill ride of a book.

I loved the father’s advice to the son throughout the journey: “A corpse in the doorway dried to leather. Grimacing at the day. He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, don’t you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” pg 10

The father/son relationship described in here was fascinating to me. Generally, at least in my experience, the relationship between a mother and a child is the closer one in the family because of certain biological imperatives. McCarthy flips that whole paradigm on its head with this story. In here, it is the father who stands between the child and death. It is the father who finds meaning in a world gone mad through helping the child find food, stay clean, and stay protected from the elements.

“The boy sat tottering. The man watched him that he not topple into the flames. He kicked holes in the sand for the boy’s hips and shoulders where he would sleep and he sat holding him while he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it. All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.” pg 63.

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I think one of the main lessons in here is that life holds the meaning that you assign to it. And, even if civilization falls apart, you can create your own mini-civilization through your actions and intentions.

“He’d had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much of it was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.” pg 75 Beautiful.

If civilization ever ends, look for me at the library. Probably will be reading this book. 🙂

I picked this classic up because of David Schaafsman’s excellent review which you can read here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show…

Some read alikes: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Railsea byChina Miéville, or The Last One by Alexandra Oliva.  Thanks for reading!

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Spoilers abound in this review, dear readers, so beware!  If you haven’t read this one yet, stop now.

I had never read this classic before now. It was one of the options in Advanced Literature, my freshman year of high school, along with Wuthering Heights and Dune. I ended up choosing Wuthering Heights, which, is an excellent read if you’re into the gothic romance stuff. So, I was bringing adult eyes to a book that most people seem to have read as a young adult. And, I have to say, I was enthralled.

As I mentioned in previous reviews, my undergraduate degree is in political science. For whatever reason, I love studying the building blocks of society, the structures of power, and the shifting sands of public opinion and group think. Lord of the Flies is a powerhouse of a book for all of those things.

For those like me who haven’t read this (I imagine there must be somebody out there), we start out on an island. There has been a plane crash and only children have survived. We’re on an island full of boys- no girls, interestingly enough. I guess Golding didn’t want to muddy the waters with gender issues in addition to the social hierarchy stuff. So, there’s a charismatic boy named Ralph who meets an overweight kid. Overweight kid shares with Ralph in confidence that the boys back at school used to call him, ‘Piggy’, but he’d rather be called anything but that. They find a huge conch shell on the beach and use it to call the other survivors to the shoreline. They’re sharing names and Ralph tells the group to call the fat kid, Piggy. Now, that was a huge red flag to me. When you tell somebody a secret and, not ten minutes later, they turn around and use that secret against you, you’ve got to know that you’ve got problems heading your way.

Well, the newly christened Piggy doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter, because there’s an older group of choir boys on the island and the head of that group doesn’t like Piggy. So, to protect himself from the provocations of the bigger and stronger boy, Piggy allies himself with Ralph. The entire group takes a vote and decides that Ralph is going to lead this rag-tag bunch. Ralph wants to keep a smokey fire burning at all times, in order to attract the attention of any passing ships, and get the heck off of the island. Choir boy leader, Jack, wants to hunt the wild pigs on the island for meat. He becomes strangely obsessed with this chore and begins to go a bit bonkers- sort like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. Remember, there are no adults around to keep the peace. And then things start to fall completely apart…

That’s the basic plot.  Now for some quotes: “This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we’ll have fun. pg 54 ebook. Famous last words, right?

Superstition and fear enter the picture in some of the first moments on the beach: “He wants to know what you’re going to do about the snake-thing.”… Either the wandering breezes or perhaps the decline of the sun allowed a little coolness to lie under the trees. The boys felt it and stirred restlessly. pg 55 ebook. Golding could have taken this story a completely different direction and made the beast real. It would have been so cool in a science fiction type of way. Oh well.

My favorite character was, of course, Piggy: “Ralph moved impatiently. The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise. And then the occasion slipped by so that you had to grab at a decision… Only, decided Ralph as he faced the chief’s seat, I can’t think. Not like Piggy. … Piggy could think. He could go step by step inside that fat head of his, only Piggy was no chief. But Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains. Ralph was a specialist in thought now, and could recognize thought in another.” pg 125, ebook. You think Roger ever got any psychological treatment for being such a psycho and killing people? One can only hope.

One of the original young adult dystopian reads, Lord of the Flies is an excellent pick for reluctant readers. Don’t let the label of “classic” fool you. It has a very fast pace and I’m still picking apart the details in my head even though I finished it a couple days ago. Some read alikes: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (of course) and The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey (fresh take on a dystopian world, accepted social order, and power struggles between characters).

Thanks for reading!