Maurice: It's OK To Be Gay

Like all EM Forster books, Maurice is about English social norms and mores and how they fuck with people's happiness.  Unlike most EM Forster books, though, Maurice is easy-to-read: you can easily finish it in a week.  That's why it's a great book for taking on your morning commute or a retreat vacation.

Maurice is, at its heart, a classic doomed love story: Maurice meets Clive; they fall in love; they pursue a secret relationship because Society doesn't approve; Clive breaks Maurice's heart by eventually marrying someone acceptable so that he can have a career in politics.

Clive never gets over Maurice, really.  But Maurice can't hang around forever being Clive's Secret-on-the-Side.  In many books (and modern movies), these two would buck society and reunite, living happily ever after.  I can just hear the dramatic music that would play during the Hollywood Ending!  Would Justin Timberlake be too old to play Maurice?

But EM Forster was a realist.  He knew that Clive would never stay "a confirmed bachelor", or even keep Maurice "on the side".  His political career was way too important for that.  Plus, Clive did a pretty decent job of lying to himself.

Instead, Maurice elopes with the gamekeeper.  Personally, while I love a happy ending -- and I love this happy ending -- I feel that Forster kinda tacked it on at the end to make a point.

And that's the thing with Maurice: aside from it being a really sad doomed love story, it's also a discussion on how being gay shouldn't be a crime.  Maurice spends a good deal of the novel trying to become "normal", but he can't do it.  He can't undo his own nature.  The whole point of showing Maurice doing this is to make him sympathetic and show that even though he doesn't want to be this way (it's not a lifestyle choice), he can't help it.  He's born this way, baby!

Now, as for the gamekeeper, Alec:  I would have liked it to have taken more than 10 pages for Maurice and he to go from "who the fuck are you?" to "you wanna come fuck my brains out?", but given that Lucy and George in A Room With A View go from sharing Meaningful Glances to macking in a field also within about 10 pages, all is forgiven.   Plus, George and Lucy have to elope to get married and who knows what happens after with them, either?  Just like Lucy and George, Maurice and Alec will end up living at the edges of society, not really ever fitting in.

Of Human Bondage: Philip Deserves Better

After writing that last post on Of Human Bondage, I felt pretty bad.  I wasn't really fair to the book or Somerset Maugham. Also:  I read the foreword.

The cover art is the best thing about my copy.

I know, I know, I should have read the foreword to begin with, but I never read forewords or introductions to novels.  Anyways, from the foreword it seems that the book is loosely autobiographical.  After reading that, I surprisingly hated the book more.

Mr Maugham, Mr Maugham, Mr Maugham!  Why the self-loathing?

Poor Philip! He's orphaned and spends his childhood living in the austere environment of his aunt and uncle's home.   No one really loves him, even though his Aunt Louisa is rather fond of him.  He's just a sad lonely boy.

He gets sent to a good school, but he has a club foot and gets tormented for it.  He finally strikes up a friendship with a boy, falls in love with him (the book doesn't say that outright, but you can tell).  Then gets all inexplicably (to himself) jealous after their relationship "cools down".  
 
He's dissatisfied with his life and doesn't want to go to Oxford just because he's supposed to.  He runs off to Germany instead, where he falls in love with Hayward (the book doesn't say that outright, but you can tell).

Then he has to go home. He becomes an accountant (or something) and hates it.  Then he decides to move to Paris to paint.  He's an OK painter, but he's not spectacular.  After Fanny Price commits suicide, he decides that he's not going to be stupid and be a suffering bad artist; he's going to become a doctor.

And that's where I stopped reading.  Because Mr Maugham, he is full of recrimination and lack of sympathy for poor Philip.  He takes every opportunity to tell us how Philip is being a moron because he's young, naive, and not the sharpest tool in the shed.

The whole book is "Philip is young, stupid and doesn't realize that everyone around him is just bullshitting him.  He's impressed because he's a simple.  And, like most youth, he's an obstinant hot-head who lets his emotions get the better of him."

Now, I don't mind reading autobiographies where people look back on their lives critically, but this is supposed to be a work of fiction.  Yes, it's loosely based on Somerset Maugham's life, and I'm sure he looked back on his life (Philip's life) and realized he had been, well, stupid.   But how am I, the reader, supposed to feel anything for Philip when the author/narrator is telling me that the guy's a loser?

I feel bad for Philip that no one --  not even the narrator, who ostensibly thinks Philip's story is worth telling -- thinks that he is anything but sad and pathetic.

Are we not supposed to like Philip?  Is this like those paintings that are ugly, but you're supposed to find beauty in ugliness?   Or is this some kind of manifesto of self-loathing on the part of Somerset Maugham? 

I don't know.

But I know that I can't feel interested in the protagonist's life if the narrator/author thinks the protagonist is a loser who is barely deserving of our contempt.

Why Am I Reading Of Human Bondage?

I first read Of Human Bondage when I was...Actually, I can't remember when I read Of Human Bondage the first time.  It didn't really stick with me.  What I recalled about the book was (SPOILER ALERT!):

• Philip, the protagonist, has a club foot.
• Philip goes to Paris to become a painter.
• While there, this chick falls in love with him, but he hates her because she's gross and eats the crust of her brie instead of cutting it off. (I didn't know you were supposed to cut it off.  I like the crust of the brie.)
• She subsequently commits suicide.
• Philip falls in love with some hussy named Mildred.
• Mildred's hair was "flaxen", a word I needed to look up in the dictionary because I read the book before the advent of the internet.
• Ultimately, Philip becomes a doctor and marries some chick he knocks up.

The book was so useless to me that it just became a string of facts.  I didn't remember if I liked the writing.  I couldn't remember if I read it in the subway or the park.  I couldn't even remember if I had to read it for a class (I might have).

Then last November I was sitting in the break room at work and I mentioned that thing about the brie.  I couldn't remember how it went, so I downloaded the (free) eBook and tried to find it.  I couldn't.  I ended up having to read the stupid book.

What struck me about the book this second time around, was that Philip was gay.  I don't remember him being gay.  Then again, maybe he wasn't gay; maybe men were just closer and more intimate in the early part of the 20th century than they are now.  And of course W. Somerset Maugham was bi, so maybe Philip was bi.

In any case, Philip was totally enraptured with Hayward in Germany and didn't give a flying fig about the womenfolk. 

By the time Christmas rolled around, I still hadn't gotten to that passage about the brie, mostly due to the fact that I only read the eBook during lunch at work.   I decided to find my physical copy of the book at my parents' place and start reading it outside of my lunch hour.

It's March and I've finally found the stupid passage I was looking for.  The reason I couldn't find it by doing a search is that Fanny Price eats the crust off her camembert not her brie.  I was going to keep reading to the end, but then it occurred to me that this book is boring me to bits.  I don't like Philip and I don't care what happens to him.  I'm not emotionally invested in it at all.  It's leaving me cold.  This is why I can't remember reading it the first time: it wasn't because I was young and immature, it was because the book didn't speak to me at all.

Even the realization that Philip may be a bi man living in a very queer-unfriendly time doesn't make it any more engaging.

Nope.  I think I'm gonna just stop where I am and move on to another book.  Actually, I have moved on already.  I'm onto E.M. Forster's Maurice.  If I'm gonna do olden days gay, I might as well do it right.

Mid Winter Depression: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Have you seen Blade Runner?  I bet you have.  I bet you've probably seen the original and the Director's Cut, maybe even as a late-night double bill at some repertoire theatre.  You were probably in University and sat around in a all-night coffee shop/diner discussing whether or nor Rick Deckard is a replicant.

I did all that, but I never bothered to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  (Let's shorten that to DADoES.) I always knew that Blade Runner was based on the book and I was intrigued by the title of the book, but I never actually bothered to read it.

I borrowed DADoES from my uncle in 2002 or so.  The book moved with me twice but remained unread.   My uncle eventually stopped asking for it back.

Then, last year, in the dead of winter, I got a nasty injury and spent some time off work, hanging out in radiology clinics and physiotherapist offices.  I don't know why I grabbed DADoES to read in the waiting room, but I did.  I think it was because it was a slender book that fit nicely into my purse.

In any case, there I was, in the middle of a bad winter, sitting in garishly-lit physio offices with dingy beige walls and signs asking you to have all your paperwork ready if you suffered from a workplace injury, reading this book instead of the office Marie-Claire magazines.

I should have read Marie-Claire.

Don't get me wrong:  DADoES is a great book!  It's well-written, dramatic, engaging.  The premise is interesting, the characters are believable and the protagonist is sympathetic.  But my god is it a depressing book!

Blade Runner is a sexy movie.  The dystopia Rick Deckard lives in is a sexy one.  There are zeppelin ads and cool Asian guys selling tasty food.  Deckard says glib things and has a sexy world-worn look about him.  He doesn't own a sheep.   He doesn't want to do this one last job so he can buy a cat.  He and his wife don't adjust their moods using some kind of strange device.  He doesn't even have a wife.  And he certainly doesn't subscribe to a hokey religion that preaches empathy and shared suffering.

But the Rick Deckard in DADoES does.  DADoES Rick Deckard is a tired man, doing a job he doesn't like.  He lives on a dead planet where nothing lives or grows.  There is nothing sexy about DADoES.  It's all misery, all the time.

And there are piles of dead owls.

I have not been able to think about owls the same way since I read this book.  Basically, the inhabitants of Planet Earth realize that the nuclear fallout has gotten bad when they start finding dead owls everywhere.  Seriously, people, imagine waking up one morning and finding dead owls everywhere.  And then the same thing happens the next day and the day after that and the day after that until there aren't any owls left to die.

Rick Deckard lived that.  And he lives in the aftermath of the nuclear fallout where nothing lives or grows and everyone who can has moved on to the colonies.  He, along with everyone on the planet, subscribes to a strange religion that involves tuning in to some communal consciousness and caring for pets.  Everyone on Earth strives to own a pet.  If they can't afford a real pet, they get an electric i.e., artificial, pet.

Rick Deckard has problems retiring androids.  He's not sure that they aren't alive.  He doesn't like doing this work.  He takes this one last job, though, because one of the androids he needs to retire almost killed his friend.  He's also hoping to use the cash to buy an awesome real animal.

The androids, meanwhile, come up with devious ways of getting away from him.  They even construct a separate police headquarters, with re-routed phones, to make Deckard think he's gone insane.   It appears that the androids really want to live. 

In the end, Deckard retires the androids.  He decides to do it because it becomes obvious to him that they don't value life and can't empathize with anyone or anything.  It's a realization that both he and the "chicken brain" -- who had befriended the androids -- discover when they see how they behave towards the animals.

It's incredibly sad and incredibly depressing.   You finish the book and feel awful.  You feel this hopelessness.  You feel hopeless for the planet and for the future of humanity.  And you feel very, very sad.

After reading this book, you will not spend hours in an all-night cafe discussing whether Deckard was an android with your friends.  You will not talk about your favourite parts of the book at parties with people who also quote The Princess Bride.  All you will do is wonder why you don't see owls in the daytime.

I Bought The Help at Walmart

The Help.  It's a very hyped book and movie.  It's got mass appeal.  It's not the kind of book I'd pick up.  I mean, I have EM Forster's Maurice in my purse and I'm re-reading Sputnik Sweetheart in the vague hope that I'll finally understand it.

I don't read mass appeal books. 

But there I was at Walmart, staring at a pile of these books, and I thought, "You know, if there was a place to buy this book, it's here."  And I picked it up.  I didn't even feel embarrassed when I got to the cash.  It was all OK.  I was buying a book.  At Walmart. 

I also bought my favourite recycled toilet paper.

SOPA Blackout

I'm doing the SOPA blackout thing.   I don't know all the details, but I'm trusting Wikipedia on this one.

I also don't like the idea that, potentially, my blog could be shut down if someone complained about my quoting some piece of poetry or some book.  If that's possible.  Which it might not be.

In any case, I'm doing it.

I Hate You, eBook Previews!

I have a bone to pick with eBook previews.

I don't really read eBooks.  I prefer the good old fashioned books where you can keep your page, but skip a few pages ahead or behind without having to bookmark your page, tap the screen a few times, and then go back.  But this isn't about the merits of eBooks.

I buy most of my books online because 90% of the time the only book store anywhere close to where I live -- a big box bookstore -- doesn't carry what I want.  Because I can't go into a bookstore and have a "sample read" of most of the books I want, I rely on eBook previews to make decisions about what to buy.

Lately, though, I've downloaded a bunch of previews that only provide the table of contents, acknowledgements and dedications.  Everything else is locked.  And now, while I'm sure it's nice to know that a book was dedicated to Henry, Alison and Mooshy, and their baked goods, but it doesn't help me decide whether or not I like the writing, tone, cadence or subject matter of the book.

I mean, dammit, eBook publishers, it costs you almost nothing -- NOTHING! -- to publish an eBook.   Would it kill you to provide one chapter?  It's not like people are just going to keep reading that first chapter over and over again and never buy the book if they really like it.  The alternate scenario is that people won't buy books they might like because there is no preview.  Cuz it's not like you can return a book to Amazon.  (Can you?  Like what would you say?  "I'm returning this book because, based on a casual skimming of the book, I can tell that I won't feel anything but apathy toward the main character"?  What if you read the last chapter and didn't like the ending?  Is that a good reason to return a book?)

Anyways, my guess is that publishers don't think proper previews are necessary because there are enough people out there who buy books because Oprah told them to, regardless of the content of the book.  I mean even I bought stupid Villette because the Internets told me to.  (Though we all know that that ended in tears.)

*sigh*

You know what the worst thing about this is?  It's that the latest shitty previews I downloaded belong to books that even my local library doesn't carry.  But the story of how bad my library sucks is for another day.

Now I'm going to go back to Skippy Dies, a book I bought on a whim at the bookstore when a casual skim made me laugh out loud.

Bow Before My Geekiness.

I don't get it: The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and The Giller Prize.  It was recommended by Amazon, Indigo, the chick in the bookstore, and some guy on the radio.  There was a write-up about it where someone went on about the book's design and how awesome it was.  So when I found it in soft-cover (I don't buy hard cover), I bought it right away despite really wanting to finish up Dombey and Son.

I was expecting a lot.  What I got, though, was the cowboy, post-modern lit version of Seinfeld: It's a book about nothing.

Now don't get me wrong: I loves me a book about nothing!  I've read four Barbara Pym novels and absolutely nothing happens in those novels.  I mean, what happened in Jane and Prudence?  Nothing!  OK, Miss Whatserface ends up with the widower instead of Prudence and Prudence starts dating that guy in her office.  Yeah, tonnes of action there!  And just the other day I was telling my workmates -- a bunch of engineers who all list "Lord of The Rings" as the last book they read -- that a book doesn't "need a twist" to be good.  But I spent the whole of The Sisters Brothers waiting for something -- anything! -- to happen.

All right, all right...In all fairness things do happen:  Eli's tooth gets infected and they meet some random women and they run into some guy who's crying on his horse and they meet a kid on a dying horse and whatnot, but it's like some kind of cheap version of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Trois Couleurs series where the random actions in the background all have some kind of metaphysical meaning.  And by "cheap version" I mean that none of these background actions appear to have any metaphysical meaning.  It literally feels like an unfunny, Old West, post-modern lit Seinfeld.

There is a dramatic dénouement at the end where our two protagonists change, but it's not like a real epiphany.  It's not Lucy Honeychurch coming to grips with her non-conformity and marrying George.  It's not Renton realizing that his friends are assholes and running off with their money.  It's not even Rob and Laura's anticlimactic realization that it's just easier to stay together than to start over, apart.  No.  It's nothing.

It is a book devoid of point.

And it made me wonder what everyone saw that I didn't see.

From The Shelf of Books Left Unread: Loose End by Ivan E Coyote

I have a whole shelf of books that I haven't read.  Actually, my new bookshelf can only stack books two levels deep, so it's two shelves of books.  But whatever.  In any case, I have a pile and a half of books that I've accumulated over time that have been left unread.  Many of them are leftovers from back when I was doing my radio show, when publishing houses would send me piles of craptastic books for my "consideration".     These books were usually Canadian and they were usually boring as all get out.  Sure, occasionally I'd get something awesome like...like...um...OK, I never got anything awesome.  I got a few Camilla Gibb books, but unlike everyone else in Canada, I can't abide her writing.  So I'd just abandon her books in building lobbies and on subway trains, hoping that someone would think it was a find.

Anyways.

Loose End was one of the books I got randomly.  It's published by Arsenal Pulp, so I probably got it at a book show or something.  I'm surprised it's not signed.  I never read this book for two reasons:  it's Canadian and it's supposedly short stories.   I already can't stand short stories, but when I get a book of short stories that has a picture of the author looking all Canadian-outdoorsy on the back cover, I know I'm just not going to like the book.

But I was wrong.

I picked up Loose End off the Books Left Unread shelf because I wanted something light to read.  I figured I'd give it a shot.  Plus, upon closer inspection of the cover, I discovered that Ivan E Coyote is actually a woman and her stories are actually selections from her "Loose End" column in Xtra!West.

These were not, as I thought, stories of the rugged outdoors written by some urban outdoorsman in a folksy tone.  No no no.  These were stories of being genderqueer in Vancouver!  And they were really short!  Like a couple of pages short.  This was awesome!

The "stories" (if you can call them that) are interesting vignettes of living in a city full of different people.  They span a variety of themes, though Coyote's genderqueerness is a factor in almost all the ... I can't call these stories ... um ... essays?  The stories are witty and sometimes funny.  The writing is accessible.  Even if you aren't queer, you can appreciate the stories.

Apparently since Loose End came out, Coyote's written more books of stories and even wrote a novel.  Go figure.  I don't know if I really want to read her novel, but I do know that I'm going to add her Xtra!West "Loose End" column to my list of "Things to Read When I'm Slacking Off At Work".

Villette or The Sucky Life of a Prude

Lucy Snow, the supposed heroine of Villette, is Charlotte Bartlett of A Room With a View, but years earlier when she was younger.  

Before I start discussing how much I came to really hate Lucy Snow, I need to first admit that I dislike the works of the Brontë sisters with a passion.  I tried reading Wuthering Heights something like 12 times over the past 20 years and never got past Chapter 1.   I never read Jane Eyre because I assumed that Charlotte Brontë was just as much of a bore as her sister.  But then someone told me that Villette was an awesome book, way better than Jane Eyre, and that I should give it a chance.  The internets confirmed this, telling me that Villette was the epitome of a great, but underappreciated, novel.  So I went out and actually bought the book before I realized that it was available as a free eBook.

Reading the eBook would have saved me money, but buying the book meant that I actually read the whole damn thing.  I had to skip many words to get through the book -- and I spent the better part of my several months with the book rolling my eyes -- but I finished the damned thing.  I finished all 500+ pages of it.

The gist of the story is that Lucy's orphaned and pretty poor.  She gets a job as a governess in a school in Villette (Belgium) and ends up becoming a teacher.  She ends up living a miserable life.  She divides her time between passing judgment on others, feeling superior to everyone else, feeling sorry for herself and congratulating herself for being so good that she's miserable.  Oh yeah, and she "falls in love" with an abusive asshole who is, supposedly, our romantic hero.

You can see in Lucy the beginnings of A Room with a View's Charlotte Bartlett.  Charlotte is a single, older woman (a spinster, in the parlance of the time) who spends a good deal of A Room with a View judging others, feeling sorry for herself and congratulating herself for being so good that she's miserable.  Charlotte also spends a lot of A Room with a View trying to convince Lucy, her niece, that she should also be proper and miserable and marry the socially acceptable, but totally dickish and cold, Cecil instead of the more interesting George.

Now back to Lucy Snow and her miserable existence. 

Lucy could totally change her fortunes if she just chillaxed and stopped spending her time over-analysing everything and second-guessing every single minute action of hers.  You want to wear a pink dress to the ball?  Wear the damned pink dress and STFU!  Don't spend your time wondering what everyone thinks about your dumbass pink dress.  So what if the students snicker at you and M Paul makes fun of you.

Speaking of M Paul,  he gets alternately called M Emmanuel.  Just like Dr John also goes by Graham and by some other name I now forgot.  I'm not sure why Charlotte Brontë insisted on using more than one name for these two characters.  Maybe she thought her book was too readable and she needed to make it a little extra confusing.  Or maybe they get referred by different names depending on context and I didn't notice cuz I didn't give a flying fuck about these characters.

Anyways.

Lucy gets rescued by Dr John after she collapses on the road on her way out of a Catholic Church (and of course Lucy's all "Oh Noes!  Did he see that I went to a heathen Catholic church?!").  She could have totally made her life so much less miserable had she just let the guy pursue her.  But no.  That wouldn't have been proper for reasons that were very wordy but otherwise amounted to "because I'm meant to be miserable."


Instead, Lucy "falls for" Paul Emmanuel, the incredibly abusive asshole who spends 90% of the book insulting her and putting her down -- to her face!

OK, look, I like stories where two head-butting individuals find love as much as the next sappy girl, but this storyline was not right.   I mean, Pride&Prejudice would be a boring book if Elizabeth and Mr Darcy didn't spend most of the book hating each other, but at no time did Mr Darcy ever call Elizabeth names to her face! 

Paul Emmanuel, though, is an arrogant prick who calls Lucy names, "punishes" her for imaginary indiscretions and puts her down at every chance he gets.  Then, when he sees she's getting upset, he apologizes and does something nice.  And Lucy, like a good abused wife, takes it.  And she likes it.  And she falls for it.  And they're totally going to get married so that he can continue abusing his victim, except (spoiler!) he dies in a shipwreck. 

Of course the death by shipwreck is described by Lucy as yet another misfortune to befall her and she totally feels sorry for herself at the end of the book, despite the fact that this guy's untimely -- and hopefully slow and painful -- demise at sea was the best thing that ever happened to her.

In conclusion, I hated this novel more than I've hated any novel I've ever read.  I hated the writing.  I hated the characters.  I hated the story.  I hated it all.  I want to take this book and throw it into a murky, sewage-filled canal and hope that time forgets it. 

Lost in Translation: Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami

I swear that I read a different "Sputnik Sweetheart" than my coworker.

My coworker read the Chinese translation and I read the English translation.

The book follows an unrequited-love triangle between the narrator, his friend, Sumire, and her boss, Miu. The narrator loves Sumire, but can't muster up the courage to tell her (he doesn't know if she's interested in him, or even men in general), Sumire is in love with Miu, but Miu is married and is Sumire's boss (and Sumire doesn't know if Miu reciprocates, either) and Miu...Miu feels nothing because of an otherwordly experience which left her a shell of her former self (and has left her hair totally white).

The story goes along in the usual "I'm in love with a girl who loves another girl so I'm screwing someone else that I don't like to make up for it" way until Sumire goes missing. She vanishes one night while she and Miu are vacationing on a tiny, isolated Greek island. Then our intrepid narrator joins Miu to "look" for Sumire. Except they don't look so much as tell each other their problems and Miu relates how she lost half of herself to another realm of existence, the realm which, presumably, Sumire has disappeared into.

The rest of the book is about the narrator's own feelings of isolation, loneliness, emptiness, etc. The narrator wonders about the other realm, which, I thought, was a metaphor for a state where you can allow yourself to let go and live uninhibited. A state where you can declare your love for people, free of hurt and stigma, where you can feel sexual pleasure without guilt. The question becomes, can the narrator let go? The answer is, well, no. He can't. He just waits for everyone to join him in his insular world (the "real world").

At least that's what I thought. My coworker had a completely different interpretation. He thought the narrator had let go. He thought the narrator finally joined Sumire. But he also didn't think that the other realm was the place where you let go, so much as an escape from real life.

I would have thought that these were just different interpretations, but when we discussed particular parts of the book, it was as if we had read two completely different books. The descriptions of the events and thoughts of the characters were completely different.

At one point I found a French version of "Sputnik Sweetheart" in a book store and skimmed over it. The French version also had a different feel to it. It was much more matter-of-fact and less magical than the English version.

Obviously, the translation changes the book, but I didn't think it would change the essence of the book. The translator appears to infuses their own understanding, esthetic and interpretation into the book, creating something wholly different.

This makes me wonder: is it fair to say that two translations of the same book are really the same book?

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.