43 posts tagged “books”
Really, not the kind of story that bears telling via the film medium. Skip it and spend the money on the book instead.
This is a book with many characters, and I love it for how crowded it is. I love how characters are differentiated, how they react to events and situations unpredictably. Byatt has succeeded in creating several interesting roles, which inspire a variety of emotions in the reader: Olive Wellwood, an author of children's tales, beautiful, unrealistic, somewhat weak, inspires a fair amount of irritation; her philandering husband Humphrey, father to many women's children, is alternately disgusting and charming; Herbert Methley, advocate of free love, is sly and frightening; Elsie Warren, a young woman who falls prey to Methley, generates empathy for her innocence and admiration for her subsequent independence -- and so on.
The Children's Book follows the life and times of several creative, talented, offbeat adults in the late 19th century, and studies the impact of their choices on their children and the paths the new generation chooses for itself. In terms of plot, it is a success, though I personally feel it extends too far into the 20th century and there was not much need to include a wartime dimension. But it is so heavy and ponderous in the telling that the pleasure in reading seems to leach out about halfway through, especially after a painfully detailed and uninteresting description of the "Grand Exposition Universelle" at Paris, where Byatt insists on painting a verbal picture of every statue, every tent, every puppet and other conceivable artistic work displayed there.
But if you can manage to tolerate/skip the boring bits, the 600-page read is worth it for the richness of the characters. Anselm Stern, the German puppetteer; Julian Cain, intelligent, weak, confused about his sexuality; Dorothy Wellwood, who fights the prejudices of her times to become a doctor; Benedict Fludd, a wild, deranged artistic genius -- and many, many more. Be warned that it will take time and effort to make it through the whole book, though, and that the prose is patchy and sometimes even yucky (a young boy masturbating is described as "working himself into... a soaring wet ecstasy") but Byatt manages to achieve a compelling study of human nature, even if the free history lesson is quite unwanted.
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfilment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Let's put it simply. Cosmos is required reading for everyone who lives on this planet. It will give you a sense of perspective that nothing else can -- no lofty ideology, no omniscient religion, no inspiring quotations can explain things quite as clearly as Carl Sagan's treatise on science, reality, and the nature of things in this universe. Mind-bending and dazzling, and best of all, uncluttered by confusing scientific terminology. A book worthy of all the positive superlatives I can think of bestowing on it.
The protagonist is one of the funniest and most irreverent characters to appear on the literary scene in a long, long time. Yes, it also involves a school shootout, but it isn't some sort of sociological study of what happens in the heads of teenagers who are finally provoked to kill. It's not sentimental, so don't expect it to be. No euphemisms, no painstaking and annoying efforts at political correctness, no pretensions to being anything other than what it is -- the story of a fifteen-year-old trying to figure out this deal called life and in the process, to keep from being executed for a crime he didn't commit.
- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Next it was time for the graduates to receive their diplomas. Up they trooped, solemn and radiant, in many sizes, all beautiful as only the young can be beautiful. Even the ugly ones were beautiful, even the surly ones, the fat ones, even the spotty ones. None of them understands this -- how beautiful they are. But nevertheless they're irritating, the young. Their posture is appalling as a rule, and judging from their songs they snivel and wallow, grin and bear it having gone the way of the foxtrot. They don't understand their own luck.
- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
In Buddhism, knowledge is regarded as an obstacle to our understanding, like a block of ice that obstructs water from flowing. It is said that if we take one thing to be truth and to cling to it, even if truth itself comes in person and knocks at our door we won't open it. For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
When we are humble everyone is a potential best friend and our generosity naturally grows. We want to do things, to help out. A wonderful Zen tradition is called "inji-gyo," or secret good deeds. The virtue gained through performing a secret good deed is believed to be immense. So, in a monastery, if one watched closely, you might see a monk secretly mending another's robes or taking down someone's laundry and folding it before the rain comes. In our temple I often find chocolate spontaneously appearing in my mailbox, or a beautiful poem, unsigned. This year the Easter Bunny visited our Sunday service, leaving chocolate eggs under everyone's cushions, even the one prepared for a visiting Zen master. Sometimes the bathrooms are miraculously cleaned overnight. And flowers spontaneously appear in a neighbor's yard, thanks to the children in the temple. Secret good deeds. They are so much fun. In their doing you can't help but smile.
- Geri Larkin, Tap Dancing in Zen
There is something about Pamuk's writing style that brings me back to his works everytime, even though I feel too much is lost in translation from the original Turkish. The storyline of The White Castle is not gripping, though it is certainly interesting enough to make a reader want to finish the book. There is a steady undertone of philosophy that is perhaps more significant than the mundane who-did-what-and-when of an ordinary plot.
An Italian traveller is taken captive by a Turkish fleet and brought to Istanbul where he eventually becomes slave to a Turkish intellectual who, as it turns out, looks identical to him. The ways in which the two men influence each other's lives and contribute to each other's growth over the next twenty-five years or so are slowly unravelled in the rest of the book. However, I can't help but suspect that the original turn of phrase (in Turkish) must be much finer than the English translation, though the latter can't be called bad by any standard.
Pamuk's sharp mind and ability to sift the relevant from the irrelevant are immediately evident, as in his other works. He has a gifted understanding of human nature and the motives behind seemingly irrational human behaviour. For this, The White Castle, a short read of barely 145 pages, is definitely worth your time.
Many men believe that no life is determined in advance, that all stories are essentially a chain of coincidences. And yet, even those who believe this come to the conclusion, when they look back, that events they once took for chance were really inevitable.
- Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
