As with most 22-year-old American males, my childhood was
spent weaning from the electric mother of television and video games. (You
wouldn't know it, because I deleted it, but I just absent-mindedly capitalized
both "Television" and "Video Games" as though they were deified.) According to
some people that I read somewhere once, I can blame the electronic sedentary
behavior of my younger days for the attention deficit that I blame for my most
of my shortcomings (including not being able to write a succinct sentence
<ooh, "succinct sentence", I like that word-pair>).
ANYWAY!
To make a short story long, I've replaced (for the most part) the sweet,
light-giving life of the television for the cold pages of a book.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to allow your brain to meander endlessly and
still get anything out of a novel. So, like so many people I know, I have
half-read Tolstoys andDostoevskies
adorning my nightstand and desk like some dilapidated tent-city.
My
inability to finish anything by "The Russians" (close your eyes and give your
voice the snootiest possible tone whenever you say "The Russians";it's a lot of fun) has automatically
restricted me from the category of "well-read"by the literati. So, without even realizing it, I read two books in a
row by Russians! I'm not sure if either of them counts as part of "The Russians", but I have still gotten
away with pretentiously referencing both of them.
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
This
one's just long enough and has just enough characters with unpronounceable
names to warrant pretention. Although the setting is of course dated (19th
century Russia) and the targets (Russian landowners, or Barins) no longer exist, the satire is easily applicable to
modern-day life. After all, it's a small step from the frivolity and greed of
the Russian nobleman to the attitude of the Wall Street culture. The "hero",
Chichikov, is essentially a Serpent in the Garden character, a careful manipulator
of the narcissism that plagues the wealthy and impoverished alike. His mission:
collect the "dead souls", those peasants who have died under the watch of their
feudal lords, but still remain on the census. The main interplay is between
swindler and oppressor, begging the question of who the real licentious
character is. Gogol spares nobody, showing that the lazy and the workaholics
alike suffer from the same disease of personal hubris.
The
history and structure of the manuscript is sort of strange one, and leads to
some continuity that takes getting used to. He originally intended it to be a
sort of Divine Comedy. Part one of
the book is a beautiful, haunting, and hilarious panorama of Russian life
during serfdom; just as in Inferno,
there are several levels to our social hell, all reserved with different
punishments and trials for the different classes. Part II isn't exactly
different, and I don't see many analogues to purgatory. Apparently, Gogol had a
tumultuous time with the manuscript, destroying much of the final version. The
entire novel ends in mid-sentence, but that actually makes sense.
Some
have commented that the "dead souls" as a plot device makes the novel too
ridiculous to have any merit. Personally, I think the metaphor translates beautifully
to all the useless stuff we put value into, and makes the scenes of the
flabbergasted landowners all the more entertaining. Not to mention, while all
the characters in the novel are living, all save a couple seem to be dead in
soul.
Apparently, Gogol, who by the end
of his life had become highly entrenched in spiritualism, meant to write an
uplifting part III about the redemption of the human soul. Well, that's not
exactly how it turns out; but that's all I'll say for now.
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The
next time I hear a politician reference 1984
in comparison to our social situation (especially one who supported the USA PATRIOT
Act), I'm going to take her or him hostage and make them read We. It is the prototype for all
dystopian literature to follow, and unlike 1984,
it is constantly poetic and beautiful. After all, Zamyatin's whole bent is that
our imaginations are the thing that a dystopian government would find the most
dangerous. Instead of a technical rundown of the way the omniscient state (One
State) works, we get sketchy details about day to day life. Buildings are
entirely glass, everyone's name is a number, and the Benefactor (essentially Big
Brother, except you meet him in this book) has the use of a giant machine that
zaps away his enemies.
The
whole book is a series of journal entries by the guy who's working on the
INTEGRAL, the government spaceship designed to bring the idea of this "perfect"
society to other planets. He starts breaking down into a neurosis whose
symptoms are moral conflict, emotional love, and dreams. He sees the state
doctor- and the diagnosis? He has a soul, a totally incurable and degenerative
disease! As you can see, the dystopian
context makes the everyday decisions we all make into a sadly hilarious drama.
Zamyatin's
prose-poetry is constantly biting and poignant, and the progression of the
narrator's "disease" is absolutely brilliant. The way the events and settings
are fantastical and imaginative lends it a higher calling than other dystopian
novels. It doesn't present a socialist or reformist agenda; although Zamyatin
himself was a socialist, he was much more interested in the importance of
preserving creativity and the human "soul", which got him exiled by both the
Tsar and Lenin.
It's so
easy for any of us to look at any of the classic dystopian novels and say, "If
I were there, I would realize it in a heartbeat! This is ridiculous, why would
anyone act like this?" Zamyatin, I think, realizes this, and constantly
lambasts "the ancients" (us) for their ways, satirically criticizing things
like free elections, etc., but also pointing out that the society of streamlined
logic and mechanization, metaphorically as well as literally, is very alive,
well, and growing.
I could
go into "America as dystopia", but that would be a subject for an entirely
different blog.
Several fun and creative nonfiction books have come in recently, and I'm very excited.
The Big Book of Dummies, Rebels, and Other Geniuses is a large hardcover volume that recounts the unlikely stories of 26 influential people. The individuals included range from artists to scientists to political activists to authors to entrepreneurs. The presentation is loads of fun: a mix of photographs and quirky sketches accompanying paragraphs of lively narrative and quotes.
From the introduction:
"Here is a portrait gallery of men and women who left their mark on literature, the arts, the sciences, and history, despite their chaotic beginnings. At school, many were declared mediocre, incompetent, slow - in a word, dummies!
Over time, history has bestowed genius and fame upon them... Encyclopedias describe them in hushed and serious tones, their pockets stuffed with virtues. But these pockets are more unevenly stitched than might be guessed."
Maybe this book is so striking to me simply because I know too many unappreciated geniuses - especially kids. Whatever the reason, I'm purchasing a copy for myself today.
Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance fills a gaping hole in our kids American History section.
The works of art, literature, and music from this era are among the best ever produced, but too often they are overlooked. This book is wide-ranging in scope and very informative, and the colors, pictures, and fonts do well to capture the energy and spirit of the Harlem Renaissance. Every middle or high school English teacher should have a copy!
Also noteworthy is a new Kingfisher book, The Middle East, a region that is written about very little, and almost never presented to kids. Its vibrant pictures and well-articulated descriptions of culture and history capture the beauty and complexity of this part of the world.
I was shocked and delighted to find that The Tortilla Curtain had been selected as one of this year's 5 finalists for the One Book - One Lincoln read.I remember also being shocked 3 years ago, when I read the book for the first time, to note that it in fact had been published in 1995.I found in 2007 that it seemed surprisingly topical, and think it may be even more so now in 2010.And though the political and social issues that drive the narrative of Boyle's novel are relevant and well thought-out, the characters take on a giddy realism that springs almost painfully from the page.I found myself positively aching with Cándido's absolute and oh-so-familiar obsession with the care of his family.Woven together with Dickensian coincidence, T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain is a brave and brilliantly crafted choice for this year's top 5.
Rock the vote and go to the One Book - One Lincoln official site to choose Lincoln's 2010 One Book!
Hi.I'm Kirsten, and I'm a bookoholic.Or bibliophile, if you want to be fancy about it.I don't care, as it comes down to the same thing:I have a problem, and I cannot deal with it alone.I cannot stop reading.Seriously.Sit me down at the breakfast table in front the cereal and try to talk to me, and I'll emerge from my trance halfway through your statement to tell you that I had stopped listening in order to read the nutritional information on the side of the box.I stop walking to look at graffiti.I've been known to make myself carsick reading billboards...while driving...
So, now you know, and that's over with.Here's the other thing:I compulsively avoid "trending" books.I wouldn't read The Time Traveler's Wife for years, because everybody's book club was talking about it.And you know what?It's now in my Top 50 Books Ever of All Time.No kidding.Same thing with The Sparrow, all the Harry Potter books, and The Worst Hard Time.I'm such a snob that I actually deny myself great literature simply because it happens to be popular.
Ha!I scoff at my foolishness, and vow to be more reasonable in the future.Let's just see how that goes...
My latest stunning surprise took the form of Steig Larsson's totally unbelievable series of mysteries which began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, continued with The Girl who Played with Fire, and has just concluded with The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.I had an extra reason to avoid this hot read:people just wouldn't stop giving me copies of the first one."Have you read this, Kirsten?"; "This is so sweet, and look - it's about you!"; "Dude, did you know that this Swedish dude wrote a book about you?"And so on.Yes, yes, I happen to have a dragon tattoo.His name is Smaug, by the way, and he predates Lisbeth Salander's now-famous ink by at least 10 years.Take that, peanut gallery.
Lisbeth Salander is the glue that holds this giant work of fiction together.She's exactly the type of heroine you'd expect to find in a William Gibson novel, or even Neal Stephenson, or running around in The Matrix.But she comes as a welcome shock tossed into the format of the contemporary thriller.Salander is unrepentantly antisocial, incredibly skilled with digital systems of all forms, a phenomenal hacker, and unfailingly guided by an internal moral compass that leads her sometimes astray but always on the path of justice.
And as the series progresses, Lisbeth Salander becomes more and more an archetypal blueprint for the modern, intelligent, capable, abused woman.Larsson's exploration of and empathy for her character are perfectly sublime.Even if you haven't a care for the murder mystery to be solved or the take-down of the industrial Goliath of the hour, you'll want to keep reading just to see what Salander does, and where her choices take her.
These definitely top my must-have summer reading list.I grudgingly encourage you to join me in seeing what all the buzz is about.We've got all three books in the Millenium trilogy in stock, and we just can't wait to grab one for you!
Up through adolescence, everyone loves the story of an individual with an idea so revolutionary, or a passion so profound, that they single-handedly shaped a part of the world around them for a short time.We all see ourselves as that hero on a quest, that mastermind concocting a grand scheme to better the world around us. As we reach adulthood however, we become more cynical, and who can really blame us? Just take a look at the headlines on the news: a few minutes is all it takes to become convinced that our society has become a runaway freight train, too weighed down with its own preoccupations to notice the trouble passing by on all sides.It is easy to forget the potential we each have for great things and the profound impact we have on the people we see every day.Yet there are those individuals who refuse to be overwhelmed or intimidated by the doubt and pessimism surrounding them, step off the train, and exploit the opportunities for growth, revolution, and change that they see all around them.They are the Santiagos, the Wonderwomen, the d'Artagnans of the real world.We loved those fictitious heroes as children; as adults we can discover their counterparts in the real world and maybe inspire ourselves to move beyond some of the cynicism we dwell in, to the better reality that we all have the potential to help create.This week's Staff Picks section is my salute to the explorers, geniuses, and larger-than-life individuals that make all the old stories worth reading and planet Earth a little more hospitable or, at the very least, more interesting.
