For the thrilling conclusion

Recap day!

So, my recap this week goes: Africa, socially acceptable spousal abuse, colonization, suicide, boring description, transgressive engagements, society triangles, possible lesbianism.

It's fun to read two books in one week and compare them, especially when they're ridiculously different. Just wait for The Jungle and Finnegans Wake. Won't that be fun?

I made an orzo-based version of parmesan risotto this week to go with chicken with black olives, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and artichoke hearts. It wasn't new, but it was delicious. I highly recommend it. No other news. More books next week. (Well, probably just the one, actually; it's pretty long.)

Guard thy tongue from barking idly.

Current book: The Wings of the Dove
Pages read: 274 (57) - 349 (132)

Stuff actually happened! Kind of! If by "stuff happened" you mean "people talked to each other a lot," then it totally happened!

So, basically, Kate and Merton get secretly engaged to one another after Merton's interview with Maud, but both agree to keep it on the downlow (Are we capitalizing downlow? Is it silly to ask grammar questions about slang?) so as to keep Maud happy for as long as possible. Merton goes off to America, and the narration switches to the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress, and her sometime companion, Susie Stringham. The two women met each other in Boston and have basically become a pair of female best friends who keep each other company. (In the parlance of the time, this was referred to as a "Boston marriage," and considered an appropriate thing to do before you really got married. Is there speculation about a high number of lesbian relationships at the time? You bet there is.)

So, Milly and Susie gallivant to London, and there they meet, through mutual acquaintances, Aunt Maud and Kate. Milly and Kate hit it right off and become new best friends, thereby endangering the relationship between Milly and Susie. Also, as it turns out, Milly and Susie are acquainted with our dear Merton, whom they met in Boston. There's an implication, though it hasn't been said, that Milly and Merton may have had mutual romantic interest in one another as well. In the meantime, Aunt Maud has embarked on a campaign to get Kate to marry Lord Mark, a young nobleman from the area with good prospects who is also clearly a total jerk and whom Kate does not like at all. (Also, Lord Mark? Really?) Aunt Maud mentions, to Susie, the romantic entanglement of Merton and Kate, and Susie shares the information with Milly. That's where we are, then. At the moment, everyone is busy speculating about who's involved with whom, and how extensively, and whatever will become of them all.

It's a bit more interesting now due to the fact that things are occurring in the present, and therefore it seems as though the plot is actually progressing, although I still have to say that this was kind of a pathetic amount of development for 75 pages. Not a lot to add, I'm afraid. I'll try to be more thoroughly snide next week.

A note about my posting schedule: Monday through Thursday will be whatever I've read that day, Friday will be a recap of the week's conclusions and whatever else I want to talk about, including cooking, and Saturday and Sunday I'll be taking off. We all know how Saturday and Sunday posting went before, so I think I'll just nix all the excuses and call it a workweek blog.

Up with which I will not put

Current book: The Wings of the Dove
Pages read: 217 (1) - 274 (57)

This book, as you can see from the weird pagination above, is actually sandwiched together with another James novel in the edition that I got from the library. So, my page numbers will continue to be weird, although when I quote I will simply put the page number of the correct page in the edition I've got, rather than converting. You're fascinated by this information, right? Good. I could tell.

So, I forgot how I hate Henry James. Oh, how I hate him. (I think The Bostonians was only tolerable because I'd read it before, although I'm not really clear on how that makes any kind of sense, but there you are.) I mean, credit where it's due, he's not actually a talentless hack or anything, but the pacing of his novels makes me want to gouge out my eyes. Begin with the fact that every sentence has about twelve clauses in it, and you have to struggle to understand what in the name of God he's actually saying, and then follow it with the fact that hardly anything happens in the present because most of the major events of the plot are told in retrospective format, and finally, finish with the fact that every new person you meet gets about five pages of description of his or her character, and let's just say that "page-turner" is not a term we'd readily apply. Look at this sentence, for instance:

"Merton Densher, who passed the best hours of each night at the office of his newspaper, had at times, during the day, to make up for it, a sense, or at least an appearance, of leisure, in accordance with which he was not infrequently to be met in different parts of the town at moments when men of business are hidden from the public eye." (247)

Putting aside, for the moment, that I can't remember this guy's name and keep wanting to call him Martin or Morton (because those are actual names) it must have taken me a good 15 seconds to parse this sentence for actual meaning. And I read quickly. (No, really. It's kind of freakish.) There are six intervening clauses in this sentence. Six! Why would you do that? (Ok, I'll admit, I had to take a bit of delight in the post-Victorian ridiculousness of the diction, but still. This sort of thing just isn't sustainable.)

Anyway, to come to the actual plot, Kate Croy, our protagonist, is the child of dead mother and a deadbeat father. She and her sister have very little money, and Kate has recently begun living with her maternal aunt, Maud, who is quite rich. Said aunt has forbidden her from seeing her deadbeat father and is very keen on Kate's marrying well. Kate's sister, Marian, is also keen on her marrying well, since she's pretty much dependent on Kate for an income, due to the fact that she's the impoverished widow of a good-for-nothing Irishman and mother of several good-for-nothing half-Irish children. Kate, of course, is smitten with an inappropriate young bachelor - Merton Densher - who is a journalist about to embark on a trip to the United States. That's all. In 57 pages. Plot, Mr. James. It's a thing we do.

Well, all right, to be fair, Merton does go to talk to Aunt Maud to try to convince her to let him marry Kate, but Aunt Maud, who actually seems rather a decent lady, tells him that she thinks Kate has amazing potential, and that it is her due in life to marry a great man. (Why she can't be great on her own, rather than just marrying a great man, is not a subject we'll get into here, but we'll say, for now, that it was Another Time.) That's where we are. Romantic tragedy, coming right up.

James gets 10 points for using the word "penetralia." No, I did not make that up. I'm not sure a word can possible sound more filthy, though, in fact, it just means the most secret places, either of one's soul or a sacred building. But come on! It's like genitalia and penetration put together. Tell me I'm not the only one with my mind in the gutter.

Its hour come round at last

Current book: Things Fall Apart
Pages read: 126-209 (end)

And we're done! The difference in lengths between some of these books is funny to me. I mean, we've got Atlas Shrugged, coming in at 1070 pages, and then we've got this one at 209. It's also funny how the long ones are usually fairly excruciating. Well, that's not fair, actually. Atlas was excruciating, but An American Tragedy wasn't that bad, and I think it's the second longest one I've read. So, never mind. This one was short; that was the idea I was getting across there.

But to move on to something vaguely related to the point of this post, it turns out the exile thing just isn't that bad. Well, Okonkwo thinks it's pretty bad, because he's so invested in his manly position in society. In reality, though, it's pretty cushy exile: all they have to do is go to Okonkwo's mother's village, where they're immediately accepted, taken in by family members, and given land, houses, and seed yams to plant a crop. Okonkwo mopes around for a long time, but eventually steels himself to live out the seven years in this other village and then return to his own in a blaze of glory. In the meantime, the white man makes his way to the area, bringing, by turns, Christianity and the British government. (And things go well and everybody lives in harmony and there's no fighting and that's the end. Yeah, not really. It would have been refreshing, though, wouldn't it?) One of Okonkwo's sons, whom he has always disapproved of because of his tendency to be sensitive, thoughtful, and therefore womanlike, is converted by the missionaries. Okonkwo is displeased, as you might imagine. He disowns his son and embarks on a campaign to oust the white intruders through violence. Nobody's really behind it, though, due to the fact that the white intruders have got both guns and a tendency to kill people. Okonkwo and his family finally head back to their village, the seven years of exile being up, but when they return, they find that the Christians are causing trouble there, as well. Okonkwo is disappointed to discover that the men of his village are just as afraid to be aggressive towards the whites as everyone else, and in the end, he kills a white man out of rage and frustration and then hangs himself.

Well, cheery conclusion, as you can see. I felt like the end was rather sudden, but perhaps that was intentional on Achebe's part. The fact that Okonkwo, the individual most bound by tradition and the strictures of his society, is the one who ends up being destroyed by the invasion of the white men is pretty central to the theme of the novel. The other people in his society, especially his son, prove themselves more adaptable, and therefore survive. The tricky part about interpreting this is thinking about whether holding onto tradition, as Okonkwo does, is supposed to be a positive thing or a negative thing. Is Okonkwo admirable and martyrific (yes, I just made that up), or is he stubborn and hidebound? And his son, who converts and survives - is he forward-thinking, or a treacherous coward? The answer is neither. The book is a presentation of the things that happen in it, and seems to refrain from judgment of any kind. It's much more, "the white man came, and these things occurred," than, "and those who were bad were punished and those who were good were not," or anything of the sort. Things, in fact, fell apart, but in the same way that they did in the poem that the title references. The center of a society cannot hold when circumstances demand that that society must change drastically, and those who are the most invested in tradition will be the ones who are unable to survive in a new order, whether it is good or bad. (Am I too literal and referential with my echoes of Yeats's poetic diction? You'll live.)

It was a pretty good novel, and certainly an important one. I think it qualifies as listworthy, if only for the fact that I had to think damn hard about what the message was, and I'm still not sure. But I'm still interested.

Less slouching! More Bethlehem!

Current book: Things Fall Apart
Pages read: 3-125

I bet you thought I was lying, didn't you? You should know that when I make a blogging promise, I keep it. (Even if it's promising I'm going to post, and then saying nothing but, "I didn't read and I'm not sorry." Letter of the law, people.)

Anyway. Full disclosure on Things Fall Apart - technically I read it once before, when I was studying for the GRE subject test in English Literature. However, reading for the GRE English test pretty much consists of looking at the pages and absorbing 1) the characters' names, so that you can identify them in excerpts later 2) whatever tragic ending there may or may not and 3) if you possibly can, some sort of vague inkling of theme. Point being, my recall of Things Fall Apart pretty much consisted of the following before this morning: Chinua Achebe, first widely-recognized African author, book about Africa, tribal life, Okonkwo, yams. And it stood me in good stead on the test, I must say, but I think it's probably best that I actually read it this time.

Okonkwo's our main character, and he's a respected man in his village who's overcome a bad father who didn't leave him anything of use, subsequently creating his own prosperous farm and household, which includes several wives and children. The plot is...minimal. It's really more like a portrait of daily life among the Ibo than it is a story, although the chapters do touch on small stories within the larger outline of tribal existence. One of Okonkwo's daughters is thought to be a spirit girl, and her mother is trying to keep her here on Earth, since her other children have died. For several years, a boy who is a prisoner from another tribe lives with Okonkwo's household and becomes like a family member, but then is sentenced to death. Things like that. (Right here is where I almost used the wrong "they're." I almost put "their" there, instead of putting "they're" there. The world may have come to a premature and fiery end as a result. So count yourselves lucky. And now I've realized it really ought to read "These stories," but I've written this whole parenthetical, and damned if I'm going to waste it.) They're connected with one another, but there's no larger plot until the end of the first part. At that point, which is right where I finished, Okonkwo's gun accidentally explodes next to a young boy during a tribal ceremony, and, as a result, he and his family are banished for seven years.

I find myself wanting to judge the way that people treat each other, especially men and women, in this book, but I'm forced to pause because of the difference in culture between myself and the inhabitants of the novel. (Some of us were Anthropology minors in college, you know. Still haven't really forgiven Levy-Bruhl for some of those classes. Not to be confused with Levi-Strauss. Not to be confused with blue jeans.) It's hard to judge the abuse of women and their relegation to cooking and child-tending when one is judging a culture that is completely divorced from one's own. And, so far, that seems to be the point Achebe is making. His book is not organized in the way that a normal Western novel is organized because he comes from a completely different background than a Westerner. Why should there be a cohesive, plot-driven narrative if that's not how it's done in Ibo culture? And, if we're not judging the literary style by a Western yardstick (oh, man, that's actually kind of amusingly redundant, when you think about it), why should we judge the values of the characters that have been so strongly influenced by a non-Western society? It seems like a statement to me, and having heard Achebe speak about it several times, I'm pretty sure I'm right. This might be coming off sarcastic, but I actually mean it when I say that I am impressed by his insistence on sticking to his own mores instead of bowing to the world of popular and accepted literature. Things Fall Apart is a pretty big step forward for African literature in the world, and it's nice that it's been recognized as such. It is my favorite book ever? Not really, but I'm still interested enough in the story to keep reading.

On a purely personal level, just so you know what I'm objecting to, Okonkwo is pretty mean to his wives and children, often hitting and scolding them for things they do wrong, but again, and here's where the culture comes in, Achebe makes it clear that this is socially required and that he's respected for his actions. Okonkwo still takes it a bit far, though, due to the fact that his father was a lowlife; he's clearly trying to compensate, by being overly cruel, for fears that his village and family won't respect him. We'll see where that goes during the upcoming exile, 'cause I can't imagine it being anywhere positive.

More Yeats references! It's like I never left!

Deus ex Libris shall officially return on Monday. Yes, faithful readers, I realize that you've missed my biting sarcasm and lucid if not, in fact, revelatory prose. So I have, out of the goodness of my heart, contrived to return to you. (And by "the goodness of my heart," I actually mean, "leaving the job that was taking too much of my time and preventing me from reading.)

So, grateful masses, herald the second coming with joyful ululation!

The presence to concede

All right, I give up. This blog is officially going on hiatus. I can't possibly do this in addition to being a full-time teacher in my first year of teaching. I'm sad to say it, but there it is. I hope those of you who read so far enjoyed it, and I hope to be back someday. Perhaps in the summer.