Wednesday, September 26, 2007

"That Symptom is fucking my wife!" Two books about random adultery.

Apparently marriages don't break up on account of adultery; the adultery is just a symptom of a much larger problem. Or so Bruno Kirby told Billy Crystal in "When Harry Met Sally". (And Billy Crystal's reply was "Well, that symptom is fucking my wife!")

Anyways, Bruno Kirby's character was apparently on to something because I've read three books and two short stories with various degrees of adultery and in each case, it was because of general malaise and not for the heck of banging someone else.

For the sake of brevity, I'm just going to talk about two of them: Haruki Murakami's "South of the Border, West of the Sun" and Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence".

Actually, in all honesty, I'm not 100% sure that Hajime in "South of the Border, West of the Sun" didn't bang Shimamoto for the simple joy of the conquest. I've discussed this at length with one of my coworkers who's a big fan of Murakami. His take on it is that Hajime is just as much a victim of a repressive society (in this case, modern-day Japan) as a character like Newland Archer in "The Age of Innocence" (in that case, early 20th century New York). But I don't know.

Both Newland and Hajime are bored bourgeois. Newland has had the requisite affairs of a young, bourgeois male and has now settled into his comfortable life of doing nothing at a law firm. He's engaged to May, but needs something more; he needs to escape this world that he secretly hates. He hates all the posturing and the hypocrisy and he hates how everyone's life is pre-determined. So he falls back in with Ellen Olenska (May's cousin), who is -- Goodness Gracious! -- getting divorced. He champions her because she's an outsider bucking the trends. And then he falls for her. And makes plans to run off with her. But, of course, society conspires against him and he falls back into line. Sorry for ruining the book for you (if anyone's reading this), but did you really expect anything else?

Hajime has a successful business, a wife, two kids and two luxury vehicles. He's had his affairs (some during his marriage). He's bored. He reminisces about this chick, Shimamoto, he knew when he was younger. He never had sex with her. And from what I can tell, all Hajime really gives a crap about in life is how many times he gets off. He's a selfish sonavabitch, as far as I can tell, because when he finally meets up with Shimamoto (and eventually beds her) and finds out that she has had her fair share of tragedy, he doesn't really give a crap. Even when she disappears, he doesn't wonder if she's OK. Like the selfish turdling he is, he wonders if she doesn't want to see him and obsesses over how he'll never fuck her. Hell, he thinks about her when he's screwing his wife.

I'm sorry, but Hajime is just a jerk. I don't care if Japanese society is repressive (including sexually repressive) and that women are only slightly more important than table lamps on a good day, and I don't care if Hajime is isolated and doesn't know how to interact with people because he's an only child. He has had a lifetime to learn how to act, and, despite hurting people to the point of damaging them psychologically, he learns absolutely nothing. He maintains this absolute inability to feel compassion or empathy towards others. Maybe he's a psychopath. Japanese Psycho.

Is Hajime a symbol for modern society -- cold and only interested in screwing you? Maybe. Does that make him any more likeable? No.

As for Newland Archer...Newland was a poor naive idiot. He gets roped back in and only at the end does he realize that despite what he thought or perceived or did, the society around him was making sure that nothing ever got out of place. Society spun around him and steered events to make sure that it was never disturbed.


BTW, "South of the Border, West of the Sun" is a fantastic novel. Any novel that inspires you to have heated discussions around the water cooler about the nature of the protagonist's angst is a good novel. It's provocative and intellectually challenging. And it has the usual Japanese claustrophobia (loads of inner dialogue, few emotions).

And it goes without saying that "The Age of Innocence" is a beautiful, smooth read. And while "South of the Border" has more sex in it, "The Age of Innocence" is by far the sexier book.

As for the two other short stories and the one other book about adultery. They were all about failure and entrapment. That is all.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

The Chrysanthemums: Why Can I Never Finish What I Start? or Mr Kenneally, Women Are Not Divided into Sluts and ManHaters

OK, so a couple of posts ago, I said I was going to go over these four short stories that I had to read for English class in CEGEP and that I thought were grossly misrepresented by my English Prof, Mr Kenneally. What I didn't take into account was how much I hate short stories.

I also didn't take into account the fact that I felt that this was some late-coming final exam and totally started to get anxiety over making sure I had covered all my bases and thought it all through before writing down my brilliant commentary.

Finally, I didn't take into account my ADD (undiagnosed...but everyone has ADD nowadays and all I'd need would be one frustrated teacher to point their diagnostic finger at me and PRESTO! I'd have some Ritalin in my hands and a good excuse for being messy in my pocket!). Where was I? Oh, right, my ADD. Yeah, so I lost interest in the short stories, but started to really dig "The Age of Innocence" and that made me start thinking of Gordimer and Camus and I wanted to write something about THAT. But I couldn't because of this damned short story exercise. What's worse is that I decided to finally read "Eva Luna" and "Pure Inventions", but "Pure Inventions" was pretentious, so I took out "Guns Germs and Steel", but I got mad at it within 35 pages. I desperately wanted to write about how the only reason "Guns Germs and Steel" won anything was because it fed into White Guilt but I couldn't because, hello!, stupid short story exercise.

Where does that leave me? It leaves me frustrated is where it leaves me! I have all these swishy ideas and I have to write them down somewhere so I won't do like I did with "The Grammar Architect" and come up with something utterly brilliant (OK, maybe not, but the author at least thought it was pretty insightful) and then forget all about it when I finally get around to writing it 6 months later.

And I'm also stuck trying to write something -- ANYTHING! -- about Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums".

Have I ever mentioned that I hate Steinbeck? No? Well, I hate Steinbeck.

Then again, it's not like anyone is reading this....so I could totally just write something random and no one would notice:

Mr Kenneally said that scissors represent both women and castration in reference to Elisa in The Chrysanthemums, and that reminds me of the fact that many men are somehow intimidated by strong women because they feel emasculated by them. This influences their judgement when reading a story like The Chrysanthemums; they diminish Elisa by interpreting the dead flower on the road as her having given herself away to some random guy and now being discarded as the random sexual object she has become. So Elisa is given two options of who to be: Strong, manly and castrating, or a sexualized cheap slut. Great going guys! How about this: given that Steinbeck liked to write about how the Great Depression was full of deceit and treachery and how it made good people easy targets, maybe, just maybe, this is more about Elisa's good natured trust in people. She temporarily believed that these guys who she thought were swindlers were actually good folks because they wanted to help give people her flowers (i.e. spread beauty and love to everyone). Really, all they wanted was the pot she put the flowers in so they could sell it. So Elisa is temporarily happy and hopeful and full of joy and looking great and then she sees the dead flower on the road, realizes she's been swindled and feels crappy again; she retreats and becomes resigned. She is a metaphor for society as a whole (The US, if you will) during the depression: lost faith, broken hopes.

There. I hate Steinbeck. And I hate the fact that I had to be exposed to misogynistic, outdated notions of female gender roles as a student.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Mr Kenneally, You Made Me Hate Joyce Carol Oates!

Dear Mr. Kenneally: "Where are you Going, Where have you Been" by Joyce Carol Oates is a sad story about loss of innocence, teenage angst, and family. It is not about The Devil or Religion of the evility (yes, evility; not evilness, evility) of pop culture. Thanks, Snad.

Back when I started CEGEP, I had had very little exposure to critical thought. My high school was not the kind of place where critical thinking was valued. Consequently, I spent little or no time writing essays or term papers (as if we had real term papers!), and any research I needed to do was done by breaking open an encyclopedia and rearranging the words a bit. It wasn't a proud time for me, but it got me high marks.

So when we read "Where are you Going, Where have you Been?" (WAYGWHYB) in Mr Kenneally's class, I just trusted Mr Kenneally's analysis of the short story. Sure I thought it was a bit cheap of Joyce Carol Oates to name her bad guy Arnold Friend because he was "An Old Fiend"; I thought it kinda smacked of grade school composition writing. And I do remember being incredulous about Connie, the story's anti-hero, worshipping at the altar of the Rock'n'Roll Radio Show instead of Church; I thought it was a bit far-fetched. I refused to believe that Joyce Carol Oates would have spent so much of her time cramming this sad, sad story about a very scary abduction by a creepy old guy, full of religious allusions that served only to blame Connie for her own fate at Arnold's hands.

Here's the Coles Notes of the story: Connie is a pretty, vain, superficial teenager. She doesn't like her family: her mom keeps picking on her, her dad ignores her and her sister is a vision of mediocrity. Connie spends a lot of her time doing teenage things like going to the mall, listening to the radio and making out with boys. One Sunday afternoon, instead of going to Church and then a bbq with the rest of her family, Connie, like many other teens, begs out and stays home. Her family is, predictably, frustrated and disappointed in her. While Connie's at home, a creepy weirdo and his even creepier buddy drive up to the house, and force her to go with them under pains of harming her family.

The way Mr Kenneally and prettymuch every other High School curriculum treats this story is as a religious allegory about a girl who has fallen and who eventually becomes The Devil's Bride. See, Connie has rejected family and Church, and has become a self-absorbed heathen-child, running around town doing Forbidden Things with boys and worshipping the radio (Connie never misses her favourite radio show on Sunday mornings). Consequently, An Old Fiend (Arnold Friend) comes to take her away.

Point taken Mr Kenneally, my Irish Catholic teacher at my secular-but-secretly-Catholic CEGEP: I will go to Church, stay chaste and not worship false idols so that Arnold Fiend doesn't come to get me too.

Now, I re-read the story and, to me, the most interesting part of the story is that Connie willingly goes with Arnold because she doesn't want her family harmed. She sacrifices herself for her family. In the end, Connie realizes that she loves them, but it is ultimately too late for her to let them know. And, to boot, her family will never know how much Connie loved them; they will probably assume she's run off with her friends and won't think anything is wrong until she doesn't show up for a few days, and then it will be too late for them too.

The story, to me, is about alienation in the family.

I also read an interview with Joyce Carol Oates about the story. She wrote it about a serial killer in the Tucson area (The Pied Piper of Tucson). The guy was running around, abducting the girls and all the kids knew, but no one did anything about it. And, guess what, the Tucson serial killer stuffed socks in his boots to look taller, so he had an odd gait! It wasn't that Arnold Friend had cloven feet and that's why his boots stood out at a strange angle, it was because he stuffed them with socks!

So Mr Kenneally, while Arnold Friend was a fiend, he wasn't the fiend you thought he was.

He was a much scarier one.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Dear Mr. Kenneally: You Made Me Hate Short Stories!

When I look back at all the crap I learned in CEGEP
It's a wonder I can think at all

During my first week at Marianopolis College (CEGEP) there was this BBQ on the grounds and this crappy folk band played 60s music while my new classmates, all dressed like hippies, danced around. It was the first time I had ever seen anything like it and I thought to myself, "Wow. So this is what rich people do!"

One of the songs the crappy band played was a modified version of "Kodachrome", with the words "high school" replaced with "CEGEP". And I thought to myself, "There is no way this will be worse than St. Pius X Comprehensive High School!" I was right; it wasn't. Except for First Semester English, taught by Mr Michael "Killer" Kenneally. That man made me hate short stories.

I realize that I've already blamed Mrs Gualtieri for making me hate poetry, so blaming Mr Kenneally for my hatred of short stories makes it look like I'm blaming a lot of random folks for my own youthful stupidity. But I assure you, I am not.

I have a crazy good memory, especially for stories, and for the past 14 years I have thought about four short stories I read in Killer Kenneally's class: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates; "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck; "Araby" by James Joyce; and "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter.

For 14 years I have wondered if all the symbolism Mr Kenneally made us find in those stories was really there. And for 14 years I have thought about literature and whether the symbolism was put there on purpose, whether it naturally emerged, or whether it was in the eye of the beholder. And, the same as with poetry, whether it mattered a stitch to the appreciation of the work.

Finally, yesterday, I looked up those four short stories. Turns out that they're all available for free on the weeb. Unfortunately, because every friggin first semester English class in the whole wide world studies these stories, there is at most one interpretation of each of them available, and it's usually the one I had to learn.

Because this has haunted me for so long (just under half of my lifetime, hello!), I am going to devote my next four entries to each of these four stories. I don't know if anyone will care, or if anyone reads this, but at least it'll provide me with some catharsis.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Bad Snad! No More Books!

I was taking a break at work today and read an article on the CBC website about the Barbara Pym Society. If you don't know who Barbara Pym was, she was this mellow English writer who mostly wrote books about English society ladies having tea and talking to their neighbours in the 1950s. They aren't the most exciting books. To be honest, you spend the whole book waiting for something -- ANYTHING -- to happen, but nothing ever does. Despite this lack of excitement (or maybe because of it), her books are oddly compelling.

Anyways, the article on the CBC website said that only one of Barbara Pym's books (Excellent Women) was still in print. I was like, "Oh noes! That means that I can't read any more of her books! I missed my chance!" So I went on the Chapters-Indigo website to see if there were any copies of Excellent Women left, and you know what? None of her books were out of print! Damnit!

Unfortunately, the mere threat of Pym's works going out of print gave me the desire to run out and buy her whole library.

Fortunately, I restrained myself. I'm still finishing up Foucault's Pendulum, I've barely made a dent in Eva Luna (actually, it fell behind my dresser and I'm still trying to workout how to get it out of there), I still want to read Guns, Germs and Steel, and, to top it all off, I went off and bought Michael Fabre's The Crimson Petal and The White (it called to me, ok!).

That said, I'm feeling kinda stressed lately and I think Barbara Pym would calm me down. I can splurge on something therapeutic, right?

Monday, March 19, 2007

Eva Luna: A Book That I Haven't Read Yet

OK, so way back in, like, 1990-something (after '95, before '99) I got into this Latin American author kick. I read Julia Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents), Jorge Amado (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands) and Laura Esquivel (Like Water For Chocolate). It's a long story about how this happened, but basically in 1995 I went to see this really wonderful Argentinian movie, "Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going". I remember that I loved that movie, but I can't really remember what it was about aside from reincarnation and love throughout lifetimes. (Though now that I've looked it up, I found out that it's about cinematography, using reincarnation as a metaphor. Who'd've thunk it? Turns out it was originally a book. I guess I'm doomed to go out and read it now.)

Anyways, I went to see the movie with a friend of mine who was into a Latin kick at the time, and she told me all about how South American movies and novels were full of this kind of stuff and it was called "magic realism". I was enchanted and I wanted more magic realism. This is what happens when a science-fiction-reading, hopeless romantic grows up: they end up becoming Magic Realism Junkies!

So I looked up the various different South American authors and gave them a whirl. The first was Julia Alvarez's book, which was nice, but lacking in magic realism. Then I went with Laura Esquivel (all the rage, because the movie came out around then). Let me tell you, Like Water for Chocolate was a really cool book! I didn't care about moral dilemmas: I loved food and I loved love and I loved magic and fantasy and the thought that cooking while in different emotional states could affect food gave me a desire to learn to cook and helped me connect to cooking in a way I hadn't before. I can't say enough good things about that book! (Though the whole girl-running-off-with-the-outlaws subtheme did lead me to Only Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was a tremendously bad idea).

Then it all went to pots when one of my friends gave me Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands for my birthday. I think it may have been a cheap translation, because while the story was interesting, there was something missing in the writing. It fell flat. I felt like I was reading a book narrated by a guy speaking staccato English with a thick accent! And it really saddened me because my Brazilian friends loved that book, so it must have been really great in Portuguese. (It also didn't help that I had two friends that reminded me of Flor and Vadinho, the ghost husband.)

After Dona Flor I laid off the South American authors for a while. But I regretted never reading any Allende. But the question was, what to read? Then one day I was at a dinner party and I ended up in the host's study for some unknown reason. On one of the shelves, looking over-read and loved was Eva Luna. I was overcome with a need to pick it up and start reading it. And I did. And then someone told me that we had to go downstairs for a toast and I left the book.

The next week, I went out and bought Eva Luna. Then I never read it. For some reason, it sat on my shelf for 6 years. Until two weeks ago when I picked it up and decided to read it. I haven't gotten far, but it's off the shelf and within reach.

I'll let you know how it is. Hopefully I'll start to love South America again.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

I Give Up! Life is Too Short for The DaVinci Code

I have had it with The DaVinci Code (TDVC)! Just like Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there was only so much unimaginative writing I could take. So TDVC is going to go back from whence it came, namely my parents' bookshelf, where it will remain more-or-less unread for decades to come.

Just so we're all on the same page here, I don't just hate TDVC because of its boatloads of misleading, misguided and blatantly false information. Nor do I hate it for its outrageously trivial "puzzles" that it tries to pass off as High Cryptography.

Heck, even the ridiculously preposterous opening premise is not enough in and of itself for me to hate it. However, I do have to say that the idea that a fatally shot seventy-six year old man has the time, the forethought, the strength and the will to run around a museum creating a scavenger hunt for his granddaughter (or whatever she is) to find is one of the most far-fetched premises outside of science fiction.

Each of these things is more or less a hallmark of a really craptastic book, but I bet they could all be forgiven if only Dan Brown had at least written plausible characters you could care about!

I swear Dan Brown cared only about his "shocking" ending. It's like the characters are an afterthought, put in just to give voice to his own offbeat theories. The characters are mere puppets for the "true story" of the Templars and The Holy Grael. (Also, "Le Saint Graal" is not "Sang Real". Nor is "Mona Lisa" meant to be an anagram for "Amon L'Isa". For cripe's sake Dan Brown, don't make fun of me! I can look things up and I took Art History in Undergrad.)

Just like Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was full of two-dimensional characters meant to construct stickmen arguments for the author to destroy, TDVC is full of two-dimensional characters that modify facts just enough to give credence to Dan Brown's crappy theories.

Life is too short to be wasted reading asinine books.

I'm going back to Foucault's Pendulum. If you want to read a mystery novel with real puzzles and riddles, that is grounded in religious history, read Foucault's Pendulum, The Name of The Rose or Le Club Dumas instead. They won't insult your intelligence.

In the meantime: Shut Up, Dan Brown.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Absolutely Giddy About Bad Writing!

Ladies and Gents, I'm sitting on my kitchen island, eating a cream cheese and black cherry jam sandwich, listening to loud music, and getting all giddy about bad writing!

After a week and a half of respite from work, it only took six days back for my mind to implode. I don't know if it was the billion emails about "processes" implemented on a "going-forward basis" or the water cooler talk about fellatio that finally did me in, but all I know is that I've been singing (and drinking!) "Red Red Wine" a lot. (Just so's I know, is the topic of fellatio now considered appropriate water cooler chit-chat? Is this part of the BritneySpearsParisHilton-a-Fication of America?).

But you know what? I've been reading The DaVinci Code (TDVC) again, so I'll blame it for my implosion because it's definitely the worst offender (yes, even worse than the fellatio water cooler talk).

Over the holidays, someone brought over TDVC:The Movie (TDVC:TM). It was a really, really wretched movie and made me angry in several different ways. The movie's most egregious crime was that despite the fact Dan Brown wrote TDVC as if it were a screenplay, TDVC:TM still managed to butcher it (well, at least the first five-six chapters).

I'm not naive: I understand that you have to take certain liberties in movies because narratives don't generally translate well to pictures. I understand that often books have to be condensed to fit a movie and thus characters get fused and events get muddied. That's fine. I'm all good with that. I don't expect everyone to be Peter Jackson making The Lord of The Rings (and, frankly, I wish Peter Jackson hadn't been so friggin' faithful to those boring books!). But TDVC was written for the movies. Heck, even Fache, the crusty/evil detective, is written as if he were Jean Reno in any American movie he's been in.

Frankly, given the characters' wooden internal narratives, the over-emphasis on location and scenery, and the choppy dialogue, it's hard to see how anything in the book would have needed to be cut for a movie adaptation. TDVC did all the work for the screenwriter and the director and yet, yet, Ron Howard still messed with the first few chapters and somehow managed to make them worse!

Thus my curiosity got the better of me: what else did Ron Howard screw up?

So, despite the fact that I was really getting into Foucault's Pendulum, I put it down and started once again on TDVC. And that's when my mind started its quick descent into madness.

I'm not even halfway through TDVC, but already I am very, very, tired of the cliffhanger chapters and the excessive exposition (Yes, it's a fibonacci sequence. I got that the first time. Don't insult me by repeating it again. Damn you.) And, seriously, the book moves at a snail's pace. In the twenty very short chapters I've read, the book has gone nowehere. Our protagonists are still in the bathroom in the museum. And they aren't doing anything exciting there, either, except acting as Exposition Fairies.

Also: WHY WOULD YOU NEED A CRYPTOLOGY EXPERT TO FIGURE OUT A FIBONACCI SEQUENCE? WHY? YOU LEARN THAT IN HIGH SCHOOL!!! 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...

Sorry. That was my brain imploding again. It needs more wine.

The book is full of stupid. No, seriously. It's like a mathematical idiot wrote the book. The codes aren't interesting or challenging. They barely qualify as riddles in those books they sell before you get on the plane. Jeebus!

After reading Foucault's Pendulum, that was dense with information, ideas, backstory, passions, motivations, conundrums, going back to TDVC is like eating Campbell's Tomato Soup after having a really ripping homemade Gazpacho.

Anyways, the loud music has stopped and my buzz has died. I'm going to feed my brain some wine, watch some reality TV and hope that it gets sedated enough to function again tomorrow without splattering all over the white board in my cube.