31

Oct

~don delillo~ mao ii

m2Read it in: just under a week

I’m sorry, but this post will be biased.  Why?  Because I worship Delillo like cup of hot coffee during winter exams, like a hug from a friend during menstruation.  His prose is incredible and his plots are unfathomable and his works make me feel like there are no words to describe.  He’s probably married, but I would take him on as a literary husband.

So Mao II is about many things.  It’s about an author who feel lost in himself and travels the world somewhat aimlessly.  It’s about a woman with a strong sense of community and spirituality that she can’t let go of.  It’s about the changing nature of the world, about the point of authors, about terrorism, about life and death.  Like most Delillos, it’s about everything.  Everything in the world is compacted into this tiny 250 page novel.  That’s what it feels like when you’re reading it, anyway.

Not only do I love Delillo’s prose and his characters, his plots (well, everything about him…) but he also includes pictures in this novel, and that I really like.  There are pictures at every major break in the novel.

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Sometimes the pictures are talked about.  Sometimes they simply provide a raw setting for the events that follow.  They are all loosely connected.  I love them.  It adds to the sheer depth of the novel.

If you open the book and flick to any page, you will find some awe-inspiring quote, something to make you think, make you feel uncomfortable, that remains with you long after you turn the last page.

The future belongs to crowds. (pp 16)

 

“Crowds,” Scott said, “People trudging along wide streets, pushing carts or riding bikes, crowd after crowd in the long lens of the camera so they seem even closer together than they really are, totally jampacked, and I think of how they merge with the future, how the future makes room for the non-achiever, the nonaggressor, the trudger, the nonindividual.  Totally calm in the long lens, crowd on top of crowd, pedaling, trudging, faceless, sort of surviving nicely.” (pp 70)

 

“And isn’t it the novelist, Bill, above all people, above all writers, who understands this rage, who knows in his soul what the terrorist thinks and feels?  Through history it’s the novelist who has felt affinity for the violent man who lives in the dark.” (pp 130)

 

She saw a man weaving through the subway saying, “I have holes in my sides.”  Not even asking for money or shaking a plastic cup.  Just going from car to car in that firm-footed pace you learn to adopt in the subway even if you are broken-bodied.  She tried to read the Spanish directions about what to do in an emergency.  “I have holes in my sides.”  There must be something about the tunnels and crypts of the city that makes people think they are Jesus. (pp 145)

Oh, how I love Delillo.  I read him on the bus and spend the rest of the day digesting what I’ve just read.  I would sit in the back room at work with my headphones on, listening to Sigur Ros (as I will recommend you do in a moment), eating my food automatically while soaking up Delillo’s prose.  Everything was lost except the novel, the descriptions, the meaning of life (or lack thereof) that was contained within those pages.  Read it, please.  It’s a short one, and if you haven’t discovered Delillo yet, please do yourself a favour!

Read it if you: are literate.

While reading, listen to: Varúð Sigur Ros over and over and over again.  This song will never stop fitting this book.  It sounds like a crowd moving.  It sounds like a thunderstorm brewing.  It sounds like New York City and Beirut and London all squashed together.

11 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Last Name D/Postmodern literature

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12

May

~charles dickens~ bleak house

BHRead it in: a month and a bit

You will be pleased to know that, as with most people who attempt this book, it took me a very long time to read as well.  A very long time being about a month – in a situation where I did hours of reading per day.  Many people say that you haven’t read Dickens until you’ve read Bleak House – and they say it in the way that people mention you haven’t done mountain climbing unless you’ve attempted Everest – as if it’s an impossible feat that many try and finish.

This was only my second Dickens, my first being Oliver Twist read a while ago for high school.  Why did I decide to take up the monstrous challenge that supposedly is Bleak House?  I watched the television series and was quite inspired.  I really love BBC remakes, and given that this one had a whole host of brilliant British actors, I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.  But, as with all film versions, the book added so much more detail and I remembered once again why I loved Dickens.

My friend once said of reading Dickens that it was like wading through sludge, the sludge being the pages and pages of descriptive material that one must get through to eventually figure out what the point of the story is.  Obviously my friend hasn’t read much Victor Hugo in that case – she would probably liken it to wading through concrete.  However, I see it differently.  As a great lover of long, descriptive passages and a writer of many myself, I appreciate these and don’t tend to skip them or ‘wade’ through them as my friend does.  What I really appreciate about these passages is the way that Dickens uses them to create an entire atmosphere, a world in which the story lives in rather than the bare bones standing out for the reader to pick up.

Because his novels are often quite long (well, given the serial nature of them they almost had to be), diving into a Dickens is like diving into a different world.  In this world, you get a sense of what it feels like to live as a person in this world – and not just as one of the main characters lives, but as people from all walks of life live.

Another thing I love about Dickens are his wonderful side characters.  Strange individuals like Mr. Skimpole and Miss Flite populate his novels, filling them to the brim with strange anecdotes about life in Victorian England, or just how strange some people really can be.  Dickens is a master of comic relief, in some sense, and knows just when to bring it in.  The tragic tale of Jo the street-sweeper and the grinding tedium of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce is juxtaposed by the happiness of Caddy Jellyby  and the well-meaning attempts of Guppy to secure Esther’s hand in marriage.

Finally, what really captured my attention about Bleak House was the way it satirised life in Victorian England, especially the judicial system.  Jarndyce v. Jarndyce is a terrible case, stretching on for years and years with nothing ever being done.  The ending, in particular (and I won’t spoil it) really reveals the full extent to which Dickens is portraying the inefficiency of the court system.

Read it if you: like Dickens, don’t mind a bit of scenery-prose (or a lot), like well-rounded characters, enjoy quirky characters with very quirky names and habits, are interested in human combustion, would like to read a satire of the court system.

While reading, listen to: Piano Concerto No. 4 Ludwig Van Beethoven, Concerto for Flute and Harp 2nd Movement Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K 466 Domenico Scarlatti, Nocturnes No. 1 and 2 Chopin

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Classics/Last Name D

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15

Apr

~don delillo~ white noise

WNRead it in: ten days

Even before I read Don DeLillo’s novels, I knew he’d be my favourite author.  Just one of those feelings you get from the sort of people who recommend it to you, the sections of bookshops you see it in, the things you read on review websites about it.  And, because I am a wandering, aimless, philosophically minded, endlessly wondering, bored with life, depressive, inquisitive sort of person, DeLillo just happened to suit me perfectly.

This was the third DeLillo novel I’d read.  So it had to qualify with the expectations raised by Cosmopolis and, especially, Underworld.  It did well, I have to say.  It was sufficiently post-modern and depressing.  It was particularly thought-provoking.  It debated important philosophical questions.  It dealt with interesting characters.  The storyline satisfied me.

It is about a man who is professor of Hitler Studies at a university, and who is satisfied with his life until a cloud of toxic material forces his family to evacuate their homes.  This initiates much discussion about life and death and about humanity in general.

But I don’t usually read DeLillo for his storylines.  Rather, I like to see how he molds modern life into a spectral image haunting us every day, though we don’t realise it.  He gives us scenes set in supermarkets, on top of hills overlooking cityscapes, in air raid shelters, in bedrooms, in airports, on aeroplanes, on highways, everywhere that you would never think about setting a scene in.  He is the pedant of novelists – picking out the very trivial parts of life and giving them literary significance, empowering his readers with the ability to see what they always look over.

Actually, DeLillo always makes me quite depressed.  I do take pills for this, but I would like to commend DeLillo with the ability to do so, as it means his works stay in my mind for a long time and the thoughts he provokes are the subject of my mulling over for weeks, months, years to come.

Just to give you an example, here’s a conversation that I love, describing some very philosophic stuff:

We crossed the street.
“I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world.  Killers and diers.  Most of us are diers.  We don’t have the disposition, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer.  We let death happen.  We lie down and die.  But think what it’s like to be a killer.  Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation.  If he dies, you cannot.  To kill him is to gain life-credit.  The more people you kill, the more credit you store up.  It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions.”
“Are you saying that men have tried throughout history to cure themselves of death by killing others?”
“It’s obvious.”
“And you call this exciting?”
“I’m talking theory.  In theory, violence is a form of rebirth.  The dier passively succumbs.  The killer lives on.  What a marvelous equation.  As a marauding band amasses dead bodies, it gathers strength.  Strength accumulates like a favor from the gods.” (page 277)

Read it if you: want to feel ever so slightly depressed, like beautifully crafted language, are prepared to see the world through different eyes, like interesting characters, like plot points that are never quite explained, want to think philosophically about life and death, wonder what sort of literary significance a supermarket has.

While reading this, listen to: Capture the Flag Broken Social Scene, KC Accidental Broken Social Scene, Stars and Sons Broken Social Scene, Hotel Broken Social Scene, Lovers’ SpitBroken Social Scene, Pitter Patter Goes My Heart Broken Social Scene, etc.

11 years ago Short URL 3 Comments

Last Name D/Postmodern literature

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11

Apr

~don delillo~ underworld

URead it in: maybe three weeks

This was my inaugural DeLillo.  And what a fantastic thing it was.  Easily the best book I’ve read in my life.  Let’s just say it had everything I wanted out of it: interesting characters, many different intertwining plots, philosophical questions, moments of such poignancy that I could cry, images of beauty and of destruction, enough to interest me for the next of my life.  If I could bring one book onto a desert island, it would be this one.

We basically follow many different characters – I believe the main character might be Nick, who we meet as he is reunited with the lover of his youth, but we also follow the story of a baseball, the famous baseball hit during the Giants v Dodgers game, as it travels from person to person, against the backdrop of the Cold War.

DeLillo’s way of writing is not stable, it is fluid.  He flits between storylines – sometimes the thread that was raised in one section won’t be picked up again until hundreds of pages later – and his characters appear in multiple guises, in all ages, as many different sorts of characters.  It is a work of art, to say the least.  His mastery of language, the images he presents us, reflect not only an eye for what is beautiful, but what is startling about the human race.  He gives us humanity at its best and at its worst.  He gives us mysteries and problems unresolved.  He gives us thoughts that we never thought we could think.

In short, I am actually out of words to describe this work.  You will simply have to read it yourself.

Read it if you: want to think about life, want to be amazed, want to see the lives of a million different people without having to leave one room, want to explore the human mind, love a good book, love to think about philosophy, just love reading.  Just read it.

While you read this, listen to: Everything in its Right Place Radiohead, Black Wave The Shins, Cause=Time Broken Social Scene, Hold On Angus & Julia Stone

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name D/Postmodern literature

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