Two Books About Literature

As I've been toying with the idea of grad school, I've done some reading in the field of literary theory over the past few weeks.  Two books I've found both helpful and enjoyable:

Critical Theory Today by Lois Tyson
From the back cover:  "Critical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary critical theory.  It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness."  This is probably the most helpful book I could have read--a genuinely interesting refresher.

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods by Umberto Eco
From the back cover:  "We see, hear, and feel Umberto Eco, the passionate reader who has gotten lost over and over again in the woods, loved it, and come back to tell the tale... Eco tells us how fiction works, and he also tells us why we love fiction so much."  This book is a series of lectures given by Eco on how authors write and how we read.  Although the first chapter was a bit esoteric for my taste, Eco's genial humor and incredibly wide-ranging taste in reading matter made this short book a fun read.

Essay Challenge

Les Miserables

Les Miserables is the first book I've read by Victor Hugo.  At over 1200 pages, it's taken me several months to finish.  My reactions during those months have fluctuated between absorption, admiration, boredom, and excitement.  There's a lot of everything in it--adventure, philosphical lecturing, history, social commentary, war, romance. By the time I finished, I had formed an almost affectionate impression in my mind of Hugo as someone who just couldn't bring himself to leave anything out.

The story is mainly that of Jean Valjean, a man who served 25 years hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread when his family was starving.  He and the many other suffering poor in the story are the "miserable ones" of the title.  He comes out of prison a hardened criminal, and the book, with many (many!) digressions, tells the story of his spiritual redemption. 

That story is compelling.  Valjean, coming out of prison, is an outcast from society.  No inn will feed or shelter him.  He is advised to go to the Bishop's house.  The good Bishop takes him in, Valjean robs him, and the Bishop forgives him.  He sends Valjean on his way, along with what he stole, and tells him: "Do not forget, do not ever forget, that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man... you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good.  I have bought your soul to save it..." 

Part of the reason the Bishop's words are so moving is that Hugo has spent the last 80-odd pages telling the man's life story.  We know the Bishop, and we are pretty much in love with him;  he is that sweet and good a human being.  The Bishop will not appear again in the novel, but thanks to the mini-bio we understand, before Valjean gets to the Bishop's house, what a force for goodness he is about to come into contact with. 

Hugo does this again and again in the novel--provides huge chunks of backround history before introducing a character or before a major plot event.  Sometimes it's effective, as just described, and sometimes it's merely boring, as when a 50-page description of the battle of Waterloo, including extensive discussion of both Napoleon's and Wellington's personalities, precedes the introduction of two soldiers we will not meet until much later in the book.

There are, of course, lots of wonderful quotable lines, some of which are on the picture above, if you can make them out.  A couple of my favorites:

From a description of the Paris sewers:

This sincerity of filth pleases us and soothes the spirit.  When one has spent one's time on earth suffering the windy outpourings which call themselves statesmanship, political wisdom, human justice, professional probity, the robes of incorruptibility, it is soothing to go into the sewer and see the mire which is appropriate to all this.

Character description:

In the matter of prim hypocrisy Mlle. Gillenormand could have given points to an English miss.  She carried prudishness to the point of imbecility.  Her life was haunted by a terrible memory:  a man had once seen her garter.

Another character description:

For the rest, he had never succeeded in being as fond of any woman as he could be of a tulip-bulb, or of any man as of a manuscript.  When he was well past sixty, someone had asked him, "Were you never married?" and he had answered, "I forget."

As I said, this was my first Victor Hugo.  I've enjoyed it enough to consider adding some of his other work to my TBR list--and that list is much too long already.

Classics Club
Chunkster Challenge
Mount TBR Challenge

Language Freak Summer Challenge

As I had anticipated, 2013 is turning out to be much more busy than 2012 was, and I don't want to add to my mountainous TBR list.  But I love being connected to other readers, and therefore love a challenge I can participate in without doing anything I'm not already doing.  So here's another one:  Ekaterina at In My Book is hosting the Language Freak Summer Challenge.  We are asked to read one or more books in a foreign language during the summer: 

The idea is simple: read books in a foreign language, enjoy it and be proud of yourself! I will collect whatever you want to post about your experiences from now till the end of August and hopefully we will all have some progress in languages by the beginning of September!

Happily, I am reading in German pretty much all the time--not that I am fluent (if only!), but I'm trying to improve.  I'm not going to commit to more than one book, because I am very slow, and also because I'll be traveling for a good chunk of the summer.  Hopefully I'll get through two, though.  My current German read is Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen. 

Language Freak Summer Challenge

Open Letters

This collection of essays by Vaclav Havel, written in a dry, even deadpan style, testifies to the courage of the playwright, dissident, and first president of independent Czechoslovakia.  Havel spoke the truth to tyrants, again and again.

His writing influenced not only the Czech independence movement, but those of other Soviet-bloc countries, including Poland's Solidarity movement.  These documents dissect the peculiar nature of the totalitarian system Havel lived under, and reveal the train of logic that inspired the dissident movements. 

I read ten of the 25 pieces in this collection.   Of those, two stood out most.  

"Dear Dr. Husak," an open letter to the then general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist party, is an appeal on moral grounds to relax the iron grip of totalitarian control of all culture and ideas in Czechoslovakia:  

So far, you and your government have chosen the easy way out for yourselves, and the most dangerous road for society:  the path of inner decay for the sake of outward appearances;  of deadening life for the sake of increasing uniformity;  of deepening the spiritual and moral crisis of our society, and ceaselessly degrading human dignity, for the puny sake of protecting your own power.

"Reports on My House Arrest" shows the price Havel paid for writing things like the above.  It is a dispassionate, detailed account of the harassment inflicted on him by the police during 1978 and 1979, culminating in his arrest later in 1979.  He seems to want to set down every detail, from being watched, to being unable to receive visitors, to having his car and home vandalized, as a record:

When I shop, they now stick so close to me that if they were to slip their arm into mine we'd look like lovers.  At the post office, they boldly read my correspondence over my shoulder, and once they snatched the letters out of my hand and recorded the names of my correspondents (not very useful, since most of them only sign with their Christian names).  

This is, for me, Havel at his most interesting.  Harder for me to get through were pieces like "The Power of the Powerless," a very abstract yet very precise description of the peculiar nature of the totalitarian systems of the Soviet bloc countries.  He makes a good case that these dictatorships were unlike any others in history.  Sadly, writing that is long but not engaging, even if very important, quickly becomes a chore for me to read.  

There was a lot in this collection for me to love and learn from;  anyone interested in the period or in Havel would probably find much of it interesting and enjoyable.  

Essay Challenge

It's Monday--What Are You Reading?

Sheila at Book Journey hosts this weekly meme: "This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!"

Here's what I'm reading:

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Hugo's opus about the "miserable ones" of this world.  It's not just about misery, though.  It's about sin and redemption, and doing right, even when that means great personal sacrifice.  It's also an intermittently page-turning adventure story.  The opening chapters about the good Bishop of Digne  are unforgettable, and set the tone for the rest of the book.  I'm a little more than halfway through.

Open Letters by Vaclav Havel

Playwright, dissident writer, and independent Czechoslovakia's first president, Vaclav Havel wrote essays that influenced not only the Czech independence movement, but those of other Soviet-bloc countries, including Poland's Solidarity movement.  To be honest, I'm finding the style a bit dry, but the impact these essays and letters had, and the courage it must have taken to write them, was enormous.  These documents dissect the peculiar nature of the totalitarian system Havel lived under, and reveal the train of logic that inspired the dissident movements.  

Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen by J. K. Rowling

I've never read any of the Harry Potter books in English.  But in German, this one is enough of a challenge that it's taking me quite a long time to get through.  This is the first book (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone).  I'm almost halfway through now, and have gotten into enough of a "groove" that I can get through a chapter or so a day.  As always, I don't know every word, but I've improved enough that I can understand the story without resorting to the dictionary too often. 

Top Ten Authors That I'd Put On My Auto-Buy List

The Broke and the Bookish invites us today to share our top ten authors--authors we love so much that we would buy anything new they wrote, no questions asked.  Here are some of mine:

Irene Nemirovsky
Russia and France in the early twentieth century are the vividly evoked backdrops of her stories about family, maternal, and romantic relationships and histories.  Most of her books seem to have strongly autobiographical elements, and it's hard to read them without her own tragic life in the back of my mind.

Primo Levi
This author wrote very eloquently about his experiences in Auschwitz, but he also wrote many collections of short stories, which are wonderfully humane and creative.  I've read what is available in English in the US, but there are more not published here and/or untranslated that I'd love to get hold of.

Jared Diamond
An anthropologist who wrote the fascinating Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, and The Third Chimpanzee.  His new book, The World Until Yesterday, is out in hardcover, but I'm waiting for the paperback.

Vikram Seth
Not only would I, but will I, order his next book as soon as it comes out:  he is rumored to be writing a sequel to A Suitable Boy.  Can. not. wait.
 
Isak Dinesen
Dinesen's stories are layered, often one inside another.  Her themes are usually gothic, occasionally supernatural.  Her settings are always moody, storm-swept, nineteenth-century Europe.  Almost everything I love to sit down on a gray day with.

Ursula LeGuin
One of the very few fantasy/sci fi writers I enjoy.  Her Lavinia is an especial favorite of mine.  Her novels usually explore themes of displacement and alienation, of societies widely separated in time and space.  Not every one of them works for me, but they're unfailingly interesting and I would always try a new one.

Edward Said
A Palestinian-American professor at Columbia University who wrote passionately but by no means uncritically about the Palestinian people, their history, and the suffering and choices they now face.  He has been described as their most powerful voice.  Both eloquent and scholarly. 

M. R. James
He wrote the kind of ghost stories which I consider absolutely perfect--the kind often called "cozy."  Often with a scholarly setting or narrator, and a ghost with its origins in forgotten antiquity.  Gently creepy and sometimes amusing.  There isn't one I didn't enjoy and I only wish there were more coming.


Jane Austen
My first love in classic literature.  I've read all of her books, a few many times.  Her razor-sharp observation of her social class, seasoned with dry wit, is a pure pleasure to read.

Essay Reading Challenge

 

Well, here's another challenge that will allow me to read books I already own.  Carrie at Books and Movies is offering the Essay Challenge.   Here are the rules:

Welcome to the fifth annual Essay Reading Challenge! If you’re an avid essay reader, or just want to expand your reading horizons a bit, this is the challenge for you. If you’re thinking, “What would I read?” – check out this post: Recommended Reading for the Essay Challenge – and “Why read essays?”

~ This challenge runs from January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2013.
~ If you read a book of essays, that book can also apply to any other challenges you are working on.
~ To sign up, choose a goal of reading 10, 20, or 30 essays, and then write a challenge post.
~ Copy your challenge post’s link into the Mr. Linky on this main challenge page.
~ You don’t have to list your essays ahead of time – just have fun reading throughout the year.
~ This main challenge page will stay in my header for the whole year. Come back and link any reviews you write.

I'm going to commit to ten essays, although I'll probably read lots more, as I have on my TBR list two essay collections--one by George Orwell and one by Vaclav Havel.